WEDNESDAY CONNECTION: A Notable Twit...er, Tweet

WEDNESDAY CONNECTION

... is it that time again?

Hey, everybody. I'm sitting here with my next door neighbor Raley. She's a ball to hang with, plus she's got good taste in comics, which doesn't hurt at all when it comes to friends. And just because some people out there in this crazy world like to make minor celebrities out of notable bloggers like Perez Hilton or your the 'Dabbler here, allow me to squash the rumor mill right now, folks. Raley's is just a friend who happens to be a girl. Who happens to be sprawled out on my bed as we speak in a pair of my boxers and her boyfriend's T-shirt. Notice the keyword in that last sentence is boyfriend - not sprawled, not bed, and not boxers. Got it?

You're good people. So while Raley gets back to my copy of last week's new Batgirl, we'll get back to your favorite connection and mine -- the Wednesday Connection.

THE SURROGATES ARRIVE FRIDAY

Another comic book-inspired flick hits theaters tomorrow, The Surrogates! It's true, too many of us got burned by Whiteout earlier this month. Now there's a movie that should live up to its name and go erase itself, am I right?

The Surrogates will restore your faith in comic book adaptation movies of the non-superhero fare, trust me. I mean, how can it go wrong? It's got (1) Bruce Willis as FBI Agent Harvey Greer, and you know Bruce always kicks ass (2) robots everywhere - the "surrogates" -- that look just like all the real people in the movie except they're even sexier (3) futuristic special effects plus the whole "conspiracy thing" going on -- one of my favorite plot devices btw (4) scores of underlying messages -- but they're mostly about sex, looking sexy, people's obsession with being sexy with just a little bit of the technological tipping point Malcolm Gladwell stuff thrown in for the more cerebral viewer AND (5) even Greg Rucka's doing promo for the flick tomorrow on Live! With Regis and Kelley!

I really expect Director Jonathan Mostow to do a bang-up job with his adaptation of Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele's critically-acclaimed Surrogates action-thriller comic series, and so I'll definitely be in the front seats tomorrow night. Need more convincing? Mania.com just put a brand-new preview clip from the movie up on their site, and as of this morning, you can read the entire first chapter of The Surrogates graphic novel for free over at Newsarama.com.

MISHKA'S MASTERS

There used to be a time when I didn't leave the house without a baseball cap on my head. I had a look, dig? I don't so much anymore, but I still like to think I haven't lost my eye for fashion.

That's why I noted this trio of new "street-wise" baseball caps from Mishka NYC. All three have been inspired by characters from the classic 1980's toys, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. They definitely make some kind of statement, and are available only through Miska's online shop. Take a peek.

ALL-STAR TWEET POWER

My mobile phone can barely squawk out a text never mind tweet. Yet as much as I'm convinced that Twitter's a passing fad and not one of life's basic necessities, the social networking site's colored me two shades of impressed this week.

WildStorm Comics boss and superstar artist Jim Lee tweeted welcome news last week: fans of Lee's and writer Frank Miller's All-Star Batman and Robin The Boy Wonder should be reading a new issue of that series before the year is over. And to prove he's not just tweetin' Dixie, his new pencils are up on his Twitter page.

Twitter's amazing. I could fart right now, tweet it, and Comic Book Resources or some such would have the news posted before I made it across the room. I love the people at CBR and the work they do is impressive. I'm just saying Twitter does some %#@*! - up stuff in a very intriguing way.

According to TweeSpeed, over 20,079 tweets will be posted in the next minute. Because that's how many actual tweets posted live-time one minute ago. Frak me.

The take-home "tweet" there is to Tweet good content - and for Pete's sake, don't mis-tweet, especially on purpose. Lord help the mis-tweeter, man.

(Raley's laughing. I guess she thinks this is funny. Raley, I'm deadly serious when it comes to tweeting, okay?)

My Case In Point:

Tim Pocock. I've never heard of Tim Pocock before. With a name like that, right? Anyway, Pocock's a young actor, the same guy who played a gradeschool-aged Cyclops in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (the DVD of which hit stores last week, including PM Comics on Amazon - where we make getting a little Pocock, easy.) In my book, he's also a Mean MisTweeter.

Pocock posted a tweet last week that catapulted fans of Marvel Entertainment's X-Men film franchise into a happy frenzy. From major movie news-sites to top comics industry mecca-sites like Newsarama to Pocock's own webpage (which is web-mastered by his "official fan club" aka Pocock's mom, no doubt), word spread like Emma Frost's legs across the web, confirming as truth what before was only X-speculation.

Pocock's post:

currently shooting Australian TV series till February 2010…then X-men first class

[If you haven't been to the comic shop recently, Marvel Comics' X-Men: First Class tells the adventures of Cyclops, Iceman, Beast, Angel, and Jean Grey as wild 'n crazy mutant teenagers attending Professor Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. Bryan Singer's name has been bandied about as being possibly attached - or attached soon - to direct the project, and a spec script has apparently even been written by the guy who created The O.C. television show.]

Short story long, the tweet was an utter sham. (Of course, so was my bit about Greg Rucka being on Regis and Kelley!) It took maybe two days, but Popcock was back on Twitter Friday, tweeting to a very different tune as he requested that any sites posting his mis-tweeted news retract the fateful tweet. He wrote:

victim of cruel prank.last tweet=NOT me.AM filming Aussie show till2010. no official word on XM:FC but am interested.please post retraction.

Retract they did, too. Lauren Shuler Donner, the woman responsible for producing every X-movie to date, humorously called the whole embarrassing incident 'Pocockgate.' She debunked the tweet, stating there was no truth to it whatsoever, and that the movie, still more concept than reality, has not a single young actor attached to it.

And in case you missed it: someone's out there, it seems, cruelly pranking poor Pocock. This unknown nemesis is even hacking into his Twitter account to make him look bad before all of comics fandom AND Lauren Shuler Donner. Please, my young Cyclops. The X-Men is no place for a MisTweeter.

I think Pocock's days as a mutant are behind him, don't you?

Studio 22: The Once and Future Battlestar Galactica

BREAKING NEWS!!

In a statement issued just before five a.m. PST this morning, producers from two of television's most popular science fiction series broke the news that the next time audiences see Star Trek's U.S.S. Enterprise on the silver screen, it will be pitted in battle against none other than the Battlestar Galactica.

While all sources close to this ambitious project are keeping mum, already the internet has become home to rumors that may well be more than speculation. Worth noting is that longtime Star Trek "baddies" The Klingons will return to Trek's newly altered time line...and they won't be alone! It seems they'll have a warship that's "more than a match for Kirk and crew," thanks to some nasty Cylon tech!

Isn't that like the absolute most amazingly best news you could ever possibly hope to wake up to -- ever?!?!??!!

Well, it's not true.... But if it makes you feel any better, I had me going there for a minute, too.

The Big Question

You're probably reading my blog today for one of two reasons: (a) you really find anything I write to be engaging and worthy of attention or (b) you freakin' love Battlestar Galactica.

If I was in your shoes, I'd pick (b). You did? I knew we had a lot in common.

For example, I know you think Syfy's Battlestar re-imagination of Glen A. Larson's 1970's TV drama was and still is the epitome of quality television programming. We truly are less of a nation without her airwaves.

Or take last spring, when you were watching Galactica's final episodes and you started to feel like President of the Colonies Laura Roselyn (Mary McDonnell) when she'd cry just a little each time she returned to her dry erase board to lower the Fleet's headcount while the Cylons were kicking serious human butt in 33? Well, I felt more like Apollo. But I won't make fun of you for pulling a Laura.

In retrospect, BSG's series finale really did a great job of tying up all the show's loose ends. They answered all the looming questions -- except for the one that mattered most:

What the frak are we gonna do now?

A Plan (sort of) Comes Together

Even before BSG went off the air in March, word was already out that fans could expect more new Galactica come the fall, thanks to series executive producer Ron Moore and the Syfy Channel. And that's still true -- for the most part.

Caprica, the BSG spin-off prequel starring Esai Morales and Eric Stolz, will finally make it to prime time when it takes over Battlestar's former Friday time-slot in January. Most BSG devotees, however, won't find anything new at first, as Caprica's two-hour pilot episode was already released as a DVD last April. Nine months to wait for new Caprica is a bitch, Syfy!

Apparently, Caprica's DVD debut was a sci-fi success -- successful enough, even, to make Syfy Channel president David Howe eat his own words.

Howe in June, and the network itself several times since Battlestar's finale, have advertised that fans could look to Syfy for an early November premiere of The Plan -- BSG's follow-up film of Galactica's early battles against the Cylons, now re-told from the Cylons' perspective. With Edward James Olmos in the director's chair, The Plan's promise of Cylon fun is more than enticing. But Syfy sent word early last week that the two-hour movie won't be airing on the network.

Instead, Syfy will release The Plan onto DVD /Blu-Ray October 27th, as scheduled. Presumably, The Plan will make it to cable sometime in 2010. But

But so far, Syfy's not saying. I say, Who cares? Especially when you can check out a very cool video trailer here, get the scoop on the DVD here, and pre-order your very own copy of The Plan today, courtesy of PM Comics and Amazon.com!

Universal Appeal

Glance back up the page at my False Breaking News for a second. What fanboy or fan girl among us wouldn't be overcome by excitement if Galactica Vs Enterprise was slated as next summer's blockbuster? Sure, the fundamentalists among us would get their panties in a bunch, maybe we all find our panties up and over our heads. A movie like that would certainly ruin everything, wouldn't it? Then again, it might be frakkin' awesome.

From where I'm sitting, Universal Studios could be fixin' to put Battlestar fans into a doomsday scenario a lot like the one I concocted. While not new news, the fact that Universal picked up the movie rights (from original series creator Glen A. Larson) to bring Battlestar Galactica to the Big Screen definitely came in under the radar. The deal was signed while every Battlestar fan on the planet was glued to their small screen, watching Richard Hatch sow mutinous seeds throughout the rag-tag fleet. You've gotta hand it to Universal: they struck while that iron was hot!

They've kept on striking ever since, too. On August 13th, when Universal officially signed one of my favorites, Bryan Singer (X2: X-Men United, Superman Returns, The Usual Suspects), to direct and produce a big-budget Galactica, they effectively hyper-jumped the films status nearly into pre-production.

One thing that I'd never heard (although one of the main Battlestar fan news sites has apparently had the info posted for years) was that Singer, back in the 2001 heyday of his first X-Men years, was actively co-developing (with Larson and partner Tom DeSanto) a Battlestar series at Universal for Fox TV. Although the specific reasons why Singer's show, which was intended to actually pick-up where Larson's series left off, have never fully been explained, multiple sources I've come across suggest the show's production came to a grinding halt due to the chaos which followed the September 11th World Trade Center attacks. The show, I guess, never recovered from those delays.

While no other names or writers or producers or talent other than Singer's have been attached to Universal's new Battlestar, the Studio, Larson, and Singer have all stated that their BSG will be yet another re-imagining of the franchise, completely self-sufficient science fiction that won't have anything to do with the canon Ronald Moore established over on Syfy.

Past is Prologue

And there you have it. All in all, there's Battlestar aplenty ahead for everyone. The Colonial Fleet sails from Ron Moore's safe Syfy harbor into the very capable awaiting hands of Bryan Singer.

Singer, I read somewhere, sees Battlestar as a white-hot property right now, one that definitely resonates with audiences and that has plenty of story left to tell those audiences. It's a Concept show that's not weighed down with the concerns of, say, Star Trek. BSG's characters of Adama, Apollo, and Starbuck don't come close to being the pop cultural icons that are Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

The stuff that shapes Galactica is much more malleable, and in the right hands, its already proven its potential.