In order to be in with a chance of winning a set of tickets to the VIP Hellboy party, you must answer the following question correctly:

Who does Hellboy work for?
A. Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defence (BPRD)
B. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
C. Men In Black (MIB)

Answers to scifinow@imagine-publishing.co.uk. All entries must be received before 3 December.

Film © 2008 Universal Studios and Internationale Filmproduktion Eagle Filmproducktionsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG. All Rights Reserved.
Artwork © 2008 Universal Studios. All Rights Reserved.

This competition is open to residents of the United Kingdom and Ireland. Universal Pictures Home Entertainment has the right to substitute the prize for a similar item of equal or higher value. Employees of Imagine Publishing (including freelancers), their relatives or any agents are not eligible to enter. The editor’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. Prizes cannot be exchanged for cash. Full terms and conditions are available on request.
From time to time Imagine Publishing or its agents may send you related material or special offers. If you do not want to receive this state it clearly on your competition entry.

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Since its launch in 2007, SciFiNow has proudly boasted the best retro genre content on the market, enthusiastically turning back the clock to once again revel in the best shows of yesteryear. So pick up your copy today, unfold the rose-tinted spectacles and gaze lovingly through them at some of the greatest milestones in sci-fi history. Marvel again at the exploits of Buck Rogers In The 25th Century, remember too Sam Beckett’s time-hopping adventures, revisit the good ship Serenity, learn about the history of the Daleks and the Cybermen, travel back through time with Doc Brown and Marty, think back to the first crack of Indy’s whip, recall the moment where Kirk screams “Khhhhaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnn!!!”, take another trip through Middle-earth, and enjoy yourself.

SciFiNow: The Timewarp Collection – Volume 1 is available from all good newsagents and the Imagine Publishing eShop located at www.imagineshop.co.uk priced £9.99.

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Interview by Sam Roberts.

How is production of the last Futurama movie, Into The Wild Green Yonder, going?
Good. As of Thursday 16 October I delivered the fourth and possibly final Futurama DVD movie to Fox. I’ve still got a bit of mopping up to do, but we basically just finished up this project.

Any news on whether Fox wants to do more straight-to-DVD Futurama movies?
I’d say we are cautiously optimistic based on the language we’ve been hearing regarding sales of Bender’s Big Score and Beast With A Billion Backs. In both cases, they use phrases like ‘greatly exceeded our expectations’, so we’re thinking they’ve done pretty well and that Fox is making a lot of money from them. So, logically you’d think they’d want to do more, but, on the other hand, I’ve never known logic to dictate anyone’s decision in Hollywood (laughs). We’re not counting our chickens, but there’s room for cautious optimism.

So, does Fox support Futurama’s new format?
They’re attacking our fans with two prongs: the DVD market and through various broadcasters around the world. So, they’ve got different ways of making their money back. If you go back about ten years to the beginning of the seeds of Futurama, that home video market didn’t exist. It couldn’t support a relatively expensive production like Futurama. Times have changed to the point where nobody knows the way to market a movie or a show any more. It doesn’t have to go through the normal channels. People, even now, are still trying to figure out if it’s the internet, or TV, or DVD, Blu-ray, cable TV… now it’s done in a non-traditional manner. The new economy has saved us, which is appropriate, I guess, for a show that’s set in the future.

Having to produce the show for both the TV and DVD releases must be difficult, though. What challenges did you face when conceiving the storylines?
That wasn’t something we had to deal with before, so we had to kind of make up the rules as we went along. The one thing that made it possible was that we were aware, from the onset of the project, that it was going to have to meet these different needs. If we had made these movies and were later told, “Okay, now hatchet these episodes”, it would’ve been a total mess. Luckily – and I will give Fox full credit for this – we were given our clear marching orders from the start. They said, “Eventually you’ll have to make this DVD into four episodes.” So, with that in mind, we were able to keep three cliffhangers in the middle of the story where we knew we’d break the episode. You know, Fry hanging off the event horizon of a black hole, something like that.

Do you wish to continue doing DVD movies, or would you rather revert to making full seasons of the show?
You know, I always prefer to do something different when given the choice, but I think I’d rather we go one way or the other in future. Either make more episodes into a full season of the show, or really go all-out – and this would be my number one preference – and make a feature film for theatrical release. Then we can just go crazy and pour on the space battles. We could do incredible animation and ridiculously dramatic storylines… for me, that’s the next big thing I haven’t done with Futurama.

In retrospect, how do you feel about the original cancellation of the show?
It’s interesting, because people have asked me before if there was this one devastating moment, but the answer is no. It wasn’t a sudden shock; it was a slow bleeding to death. The fourth production year, we were kept on the ropes longer than usual… and we knew what was coming. We wrote the last episode, ‘The Devil’s Hands Are Idle Playthings’, with a 90 per cent certainty that it would be our last. We felt quite wistful, because we were getting better and better at it – many of our best episodes were in those later seasons. Returning was more of a shock, actually!

The episode ideas you laid out before the cancellation – are these the storylines we’re seeing now in the DVD movies?
Some of them are. For example, there’s a revelation in Bender’s Game that we were aware of before we even pitched the show to Fox. Matt [Groening] and I were just talking to each other about our ideas for the show, which was now more than ten years ago, but we just never got around to writing it.

Are the three movies we’ve seen building up to a grand, series-changing revelation in Into The Wild Green Yonder?
Yeah. I don’t want to over-hype it, but basically, yes, we’re going for a really sweet moment at the end of Wild Green Yonder. It’s a situation we’re familiar with from writing the last episode on the Fox Network… We once again don’t know if we’re coming back or not, but we wanted to write something we were satisfied with if it was the last instalment of Futurama we ever got to do. Ken Keeler wrote ‘Devil’s Hands’ and Wild Green Yonder, so he’s really the only writer who’s actually //experienced at writing the last episode of Futurama. It’s really hard to describe, but I think it’s the most theatrical feeling of the four.

The Leela-Fry central romance has become so essential to Futurama. Do you ever see that dynamic changing?
I don’t want to get into too much detail, but that’s touched upon in the fourth Futurama movie. It’s hard not to come back to that when you realise this could be the last thing you do.

Bender’s Game is available now on DVD and Blu-ray from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

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To celebrate the DVD release of Speed Racer, SciFiNow has teamed up with Warner Bros. to offer one reader the chance to get their hands on some terrific prizes. Up for grabs is a copy of the movie on DVD as well as a goody bag that includes a T-Shirt, a Wii game, as well as loads of other fantastic prizes.

The film, directed by The Wachowski Brothers, tells the story of Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch), a young man born to race. Boasting eye-popping visuals, amazing effects and an all-star cast that includes Christina Ricci, Matthew Fox, John Goodman and Susan Sarandon, Speed Racer roars on to DVD on 10 November.

In order to be in with a chance of winning, you must answer the following question correctly:

Racer X, a mysterious, masked figure who looks out for Speed, is played by which star of the hit TV show Lost?

Answers to scifinow@imagine-publishing.co.uk. All entries must be received before 24 November.

© 2008 Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. All rights reserved.

This competition is open to residents of the United Kingdom and Ireland. Warner Bros. has the right to substitute the prize for a similar item of equal or higher value. Employees of Imagine Publishing (including freelancers), their relatives or any agents are not eligible to enter. The editor’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. Prizes cannot be exchanged for cash. Full terms and conditions are available on request.
From time to time Imagine Publishing or its agents may send you related material or special offers. If you do not want to receive this state it clearly on your competition entry.

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To celebrate the release of Dead Space on PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC, SciFiNow has teamed up with Electronic Arts to offer one reader the chance to get their hands on a Dead Space Survival Kit, which includes a copy of the game, a Dead Space T-shirt, space food, a Maglite, glow sticks, a Caribee wallet and fresh water.

The third-person sci-fi survival horror tells the story of an immense mining ship, the USG Ishimura, which comes into contact with a mysterious alien artefact in a remote star system. When its communications with Earth are cut off, engineer Isaac Clarke is sent to investigate, but on arrival at the ship he finds a floating bloodbath, with the crew unspeakably mutilated and infected with an alien scourge, turning his repair mission into a desperate fight for survival.

To be in with a shout of winning an exclusive Dead Space Survival Kit, you must answer the following question correctly:

What is the name of the engineer in the game Dead Space?
a) Isaac Mendes
b) Isaac Clarke
c) Isaac Hayes

Send your answers to scifinow@imagine-publishing.co.uk stating which console you own – PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 or PC.
Competition closes 30 November ’08.

© 2008 Electronic Arts Inc. EA, the EA logo and Dead Space are trademarks or registered trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. in the US and/or other countries. All Rights Reserved. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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For a night that’s supposed to be a celebration in the old pagan traditions (Samhain, for the uninitiated), we do have a curious fixation on dressing up as monsters whose primary modus operandi is the wholesale slaughter of us poor mortals. Vampires, mummies, zombies, zombie vampires… the list goes on. However, the fact that some of the old traditions remain is reflected by the fact that the ‘holiday’ has become more of an excuse to get tanked, eat rubbish food, forget about that morning run and watch a library of DVDs with your friends, for anyone who happens to be over 18. Or sometimes under, but we won’t go into that.

So, here’s my idea of a film line-up for that most egg-filled of October nights. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go set up the flamethrower by the doorbell, triggered by the words “trick or treat”…

DAWN OF THE DEAD – Look! It’s just like a real mall, isn’t it socially clever? Only it’s not really that alike on any level but the pretentious, because these patrons want to eat your brains. Either way it’s a good old romp through Zombieland.

THE EXORCIST – Because nothing says scary like a young girl vomiting everywhere and doing unspeakable things to a crucifix. Reminds me of Bournemouth on a Saturday night actually, the first bit that is. I’d worry about my social habits, too, if the second one brought back any nostalgic feelings.

EVIL DEAD – Boomsticks! Need I say more? Alright, its clever mix of low-budget scares, horny flora and Bruce Campbell makes this a mainstay of the Halloween DVD rack, but it does tend to be the only time of the year that it comes out of its box.

THE SHINING – Heeeeeere’s Jack Nicholson! As I said in the aforementioned forum post, you do feel sorry for Scatman Crothers, but poor Mr Torrance is a bit hard done by. All the man wanted was a drink, for crying out loud; we’d probably go mad for months at a time without a wet bar as well.

END OF DAYS – If you’re slightly damaged like us, then this is more of a Christmas film, but it can be watched pretty much all year round. Arnie, Satan, guns, rocket-propelled grenades, and Arnie! Winner!

FRIDAY THE 13TH – Oh dear Jason, we have made an awful mess haven’t we? Filled with enough slashing, smashing, and nudity to keep even the most absent of attention spans firmly focused, with just enough Eighties camp thrown in for good measure.

SHAUN OF THE DEAD – When it all gets a bit heavy and you come back from your very own Winchester, start reliving your existence in celluloid form by watching this film. With the added bonus of a zombie apocalypse, and who hasn’t hoped for that now and again?

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Win a copy of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for the Xbox 360!

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is released on 19 September, and to celebrate we’ve teamed up with LucasArts and Hasbro to give you the chance to win an Xbox 360 copy of the game plus an electronic Star Wars lightsaber from Hasbro, http://www.hasbro.com/starwars.

The Star Wars saga continues in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, a videogame developed by LucasArts, which casts players as Darth Vader’s “Secret Apprentice” and promises to unveil new revelations about the Star Wars galaxy. The expansive story is set during the largely unexplored era between Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope. In it, players will assist the iconic villain in his quest to rid the universe of Jedi – and face decisions that could change the course of their destiny.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed will be available September 19, 2008 on Xbox 360™, Nintendo Wii™, PS2™, PS3™, PSP™, and Nintendo DS™.

Two lucky winners will receive an Xbox 360 copy of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed plus an electronic Star Wars lightsaber.

For your chance to win simply answer the following question:

What is a Jedi information storage device called?

a) Holocron
b) Holostick
c) Holodrive

Answers to scifinow@imagine-publishing.co.uk. The two winners will be chosen at random from those who select the right answer at a later date.
For more information on the game click here: http://www.theforceunleashed.co.uk.

LucasArts and the LucasArts logo are trademarks of Lucasfilm Ltd. © 2008 Lucasfilm Entertainment Company Ltd. or Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM as indicated. All rights reserved. ‘2’, ‘PLAYSTATION’, ‘PlayStation’ and PSP are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment. Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox LIVE, and the Xbox
logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. NINTENDO DS, Wii AND THE Wii LOGO ARE TRADEMARKS OF NINTENDO. All other trademarks and trade names are the properties of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

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Released: Out now
Certificate: 12A
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz
Screenwriter: Eric Besnard, Mathieu Kassovitz, Joseph Simas
Cast: Vin Diesel, Michelle Yeoh, Mélanie Thierry, Gérard Depardieu, Charlotte Rampling
Distributor: 20th Century Fox
Running Time: 90 mins

In the early Nineties, a young, first-time feature director by the name of David Fincher set about shooting the third movie in the Alien franchise, Alien 3. Following from the genre-defining instalments by Messrs Cameron and Scott, he was determined his movie would do the blossoming franchise proud. Before the film could be completed, though, he had abandoned the movie, the set, the whole production. Why? The studio had him hamstrung at every turn, undermining his decisions and rewriting the script as it went along. The studio in question was Fox, and with Babylon A.D. comes clear proof that it’s not concerned with changing its methods, with French director Kassovitz this time feeling the wrath of a studio unaccustomed to not getting its own way.
There is a decent movie buried somewhere in Babylon A.D., admittedly very, very, deep within, but the actual film here is a rambling, befuddled mess of bad acting, bad writing and well, just bad execution full stop.
Vin Diesel, who for the most part appears unsure of whether he is coming or going – understandably such was the film’s prickly shoot – delivers a mumbling, bumbling performance here as Toorop, a gruff mercenary in a gritty dystopia who’s tasked with transporting a precious cargo, a young lady (Thierry), from the depths of Russia to New York. It is a dystopia defined by deprivation, overcrowding and omnipresent advertising and, as such, is a fairly well realised backdrop, but the events that unfold are not so much a film with a beginning, a middle and an end, but more just a ramshackle collection of action scenes that appear to have been somewhat randomly knitted together. And to make things worse, they’re poor action scenes, too.
A story that is unsatisfactorily, and lazily, explained away in the final act; villains, portrayed by Rampling and Depardieu, that are underused; wasted support, most prominently Yeoh; an aimless narrative that wanders to and fro with little to no purpose, and which is loaded with crass dialogue; this film is scuppered at every conceivable turn. Kassovitz has openly distanced himself from the whole thing in the media, chastising Fox for having no guts and for refusing to allow him to work to deliver the film he intended. It’s not hard to see why he’s so peeved.

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Released: 15 August ’08
Certificate: TBC
Director: Dave Filoni
Screenwriter: Henry Gilroy, Steve Melching, Scott Murphy
Cast: Matt Lanter, James Arnold Taylor, Tom Kane, Ian Abercrombie, Ashley Eckstein, Catherine Taber, Anthony Daniels, Christopher Lee, Samuel L Jackson
Distributor: Warner Bros.
Running Time: 97 mins

Do you remember playing with your Star Wars figures? Do you recall if the plots of those play moments matched anything resembling the movies you loved? Chances are they probably didn’t. More than likely they revolved around continual dust-ups between stormtroopers and Jedi. It’s clearly something that the makers of the new Star Wars movie, Clone Wars, remember only too well, yet unlike the rest of us, they decided to make a movie of their figurine playtime.

Set awkwardly between not only Episodes 2 and 3, but also between the two halves of the Cartoon Network animated mini-series that spawned it, Clone Wars continues the story of the campaign between the Separatists and the Republic, with the Sith manipulating everything in a massively convoluted power play that will pay off in Revenge Of The Sith.
The opening story revolves around the kidnap of Jabba the Hutt’s previously unmentioned son by Count Dooku, in a bid to destabilise the outer rim systems and stir up a second warfront for the Republic. Anakin Skywalker now with his own “sassy”, valley girl Padawan, must venture off to locate the “Huttling” before Jabba decides to side with the Separatists, turning the tide of the war in the process.
After the initial establishing of the plot and the stakes involved, director Dave Filoni hunkers down and sets about giving you 97 minutes of the CGI equivalent of those figurine dust-ups from yesteryear. The action, which initially starts off in spectacular fashion, quickly becomes dull and numbing, with swathes of droids and clones falling beneath a hail of laser fire and lightsaber hack-‘n’-slash combat that has you yearning for something, anything, in the way of meaningful dialogue to give you some respite.
When the dialogue does eventually arrive, it quickly slips into two very distinct categories: the first, childish action dialogue mostly cribbed wholesale from the original films; the second, huge lumps of leaden exposition, bringing those who may have dozed off during the 15th clone/droid stand-off in the past 5 minutes up to speed with exactly who is fighting who, where and why. The script by Henry Gilroy, Steve Melching and Scott Murphy removes Anakin’s whining and petulance, transforming the character in to a dull straight man to his hip young Padawan, but the effect is one that removes the series from the films that bookend it both in tone and content. Other characters fare little better: Padmé, 3P0 and Yoda get little more than cameos, while Obi-Wan is effete, consigned to being little more than Anakin’s backup where the story demands.

The action is certainly eye-popping in places, most notably a vertical assault up a cliff face by Anakin and his clones, yet it’s very hard to engage with. Partly this is due to the fact that the clones and the droids, who make up the majority of the cannon fodder, are utterly faceless and wiped out with monotonous regularity; partly it’s to do with the visual overload of what amounts to 90 minutes of the 97 being a constant fight. But ultimately the real problem comes with the innate knowledge that nothing that takes place on screen is going to have any impact at all.

The original animated Clone Wars series consisted of two volumes; the first took place directly after Attack Of The Clones, the second preceded Revenge Of The Sith, ending on the very opening shot of that movie, and so both halves felt relevant to the overall story. Unlike these, though, the new Clone Wars series feels redundant from the outset. It’s a feeling that increases as the film, an amalgam of multiple parts of a forthcoming TV series, moves forward. Only Anakin’s new Padawan, Ahsoka Tano, stands any chance of being interesting due to her introduction to the saga here, but even so, given her master’s actions in Revenge Of The Sith and her lack of appearance outside of this new series, her future isn’t exactly looking rosy.

Beyond the story, such as it is, the production of the film adds a lacklustre feel to everything; from the frankly dire score by Kevin Kiner  – who re-enforces the majesty of John Williams’s original work by turning in a rendition of the epic opening theme that’s so abysmal, that it sounds like a demo preset on a cheap electric organ – to the majority of the voice acting, which wavers between competent impressions to decidedly dodgier representations of characters and races. The one exception to this being Christopher Lee’s booming presence as Dooku.
The visuals fare little better. By turns striking and certainly iconic in places, the animation at times gives too clear an idea what the galaxy far, far away would look like had it been handed to Gerry Anderson in the Sixties. At times it’s dramatic and interesting but for the majority of the time the characters are lifeless, lacking in weight, pacing and empathy. In these CGI/DVD-extra savvy times, audiences will find very little to wow them, especially when the latest DreamWorks or Pixar beautifully-animated extravaganza plays in the theatre next door.

The overall result is one of profound apathy for all but the most hardcore (or undemanding) Star Wars fans who need to know the minute surrounding events between Volumes 1 and 2 of Genndy Tartakovsky’s original stylish series. For the rest of the audience, it will be hard to shake an overwhelming sense of cynicism that this is simply product to keep balance sheets looking healthy.

Lee Medcalf

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No doubt intended to combat the negative web chatter that followed the unveiling of the first look at The Spirit, Frank Miller’s big-screen take on Will Eisner’s iconic comic book, a new trailer has been released. It is longer, full of lots more stuff about who’s in it, features loadsa ladies, and has some guns that fire really, really loudly. Shame then that it is unlikely to quell the swarm that is quickly enveloping this film as one of the potential stinkers of the year.

Sin City saw all kinds of misogyny accusations levelled at Miller and his co-director Rodriguez. ‘All the women are just sexualised objects of male lust’; ‘they’re all just hookers in skimpy clothing,’ so the clamouring went, quite understandably. Well wait until they get a load of this latest Miller fantasy.

The initial posters should have sent alarm bells ringing. ‘Keep the mask on’; ‘On your knees then,’ they implored, over pics of the movie’s main female characters. Now backed up by this new trailer, which focuses on the Spirit’s obsession over women with particular attention paid to each of the four primary characters one by one, the film appears to be little more than a big budget filming of Miller’s own fantasies, complete with Eva Mendes and Scarlett Johansson. It is also, so it appears, tragically cheesy, and played straight in a manner that has not quite come off, same for the efforts in the visual department. The main goal, surely, when shooting a film on sparse sets using green screen to layer in the background must be to make it look like it wasn’t actually shot on an empty soundstage using green screen. Spirit’s appearance, though, looks bland and empty, with primary colours seemingly chosen to substitute for any kind of convincing, or even interesting, ‘locations’.

And then there’s Sam Jackson. Quite what he’s trying to do remains entirely unknown, although he does seem to be labouring under the impression that what is required of him is another shouty, Pulp Fiction-esque performance. Only with glittery eyeliner.
While we’re not one to judge a book by its cover, we are quite happy to spill forth with conjecture based on a trailer, and in this respect The Spirit looks like an unmitigated mess. Batman and Robin’s illustrious throne could be under threat…

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