More than a year after the miniseries debuted, Battlestar Galactica returns tonight in the United States on the Sci Fi channel (and tomorrow on Canada's Space) as a regular TV series. The series debuted weeks ago in England and is almost through its initial 13 episode run, so fans in North America already know a great deal about what to expect on Galactica in the coming weeks. One of the more interesting aspects of the new series was the casting of Richard Hatch (Captain Apollo on the original series) in a guest role as a political prisoner/terrorist. Hatch was one of the more vocal critics of producing a remake miniseries. Hatch wasn't alone at voicing his displeasure at some of the changes. Fans cried foul over some of the larger ones, including casting a woman (Katee Sackhoff) to fill the role of Starbuck, a character originally portrayed by Dirk Benedict. Edward James Olmos, the star of the new Galactica, isn't apologizing to the show's critics. According to Zap2it, he reiterated his feelings from a year ago when he recently suggested that those who don't like the changes just shouldn't bother to watch. At yesterday's Television Critics Association press tour he suggested that those who didn't like the idea of the remake should just watch the old series on DVD instead of watching the new one. After more than a year of hearing complaints, Olmos made it clear that he wasn't about to try to win disgruntled fans over, instead suggesting that they are going to have to realize that this is a very different series from the original. Apparently the Sci Fi Channel must be expecting a good response for the new series despite the criticism. According to Sci Fi Wire, they've already ordered scripts for the show's second season. Sci Fi Wire has more on the show's second season as well as comments from series creator Ronald D. Moore made at this week's TCA press tour.

¶ 1/14/2005 06:32:00 PM //

According to The Hollywood Reporter, James Marsden, best known as Cyclops from the X-Men movies has signed on to play Richard White, the son of The Daily Planet's Perry White. Coincidentally, Hugh Laurie (House) is coming close to signing on to play the role of the elder White. The two actors join Kevin Spacey and Kate Bosworth who also recently signed on as Lex Luthor and Lois Lane. Unknown actor Brandon Routh will round out the cast in the title role.

¶ 1/14/2005 06:31:00 PM //

Alvin Sargent has been hired by Sony to write the third Spider-Man movie. Sargent, who was responsible for rewriting the first two Spider-Man movies, has also been given the option of writing the fourth, according to Variety. Spider-Man 3 is scheduled for a spring 2007 release.

¶ 1/14/2005 06:30:00 PM //

Disney has hired screenwriters Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal to come up with a script for the remake of the 1980's sci-fi movie Tron, according to Variety. Apparently this time out a programmer will get caught in some sort of cyberworld rather than the cheesy video game featured in the original. Sci Fi Wire has more information.

¶ 1/14/2005 06:29:00 PM //

Bollywood actor Amrishi Puri has died at the age of 72. While he had a long career career in India, he was best known to western audiences as Mola Ram, the evil cult leader in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The CBC has a more extensive look at the life of Mr. Puri.

¶ 1/14/2005 06:26:00 PM //

Congratulations to Paramount on the crappy website for their upcoming War Of The Worlds. Not only did someone neglect to ad a "skip" button so we wouldn't have to endure the site's painful flash intro, but once you sit through the pointless animation, there is almost nothing on the site. Yeah, sure, the trailer is there, but you can get that just as easily on the Apple website without having to endure any flash crap. If you must go to the official War Of The Worlds site, perhaps for the privilege of handing over your email address so they can send you "updates" (also known as advertising), I'd recommend using the non-flash version of the site. By the way, that's an option I would have liked to have been given when I went to the site. The only reason I even found it is because I never bothered to install flash in my Firefox browser. Here's a little tip to the morons at the Paramount web design team: just because someone happens to have flash installed in Internet Explorer doesn't mean they don't want the option of a plain html site that loads quickly. People go to movie web sites to get information about the movie, not to suffer through some web designer's newest flash-enhanced vanity project.

¶ 1/12/2005 06:03:00 PM //

USA Today is reporting that X-Files star David Duchovny confirms that a second X-Files movie will shoot either this year or next. Duchovny describes the new movie as a horror film that will focus on the supernatural rather than aliens.

¶ 1/12/2005 05:41:00 PM //

I just caught a rebroadcast of CBC's very enlightening Fifth Estate documentary on preacher and "miracle worker" Benny Hinn the other night. Too bad whoever was running their control room was asleep at the wheel. The commercials kept coming on several minutes early, and ran at least twice as long as they should have. As a result I missed a good 10 to 15 minutes of the show due when it consistently cut out in mid sentence to accommodate the extra set of ads that ran during every commercial break. Good work kids. I hope it runs again in the near future (in its entirety this time), because it was very well done. Clearly those responsible for producing the content are a lot more skilled than those who are supposed to get it on the air in one piece. As for Hinn, let's just say I won't be handing him any cash in the near future. That is, unless he promises to use it to do something about that bad comb-over of his.

¶ 1/03/2005 06:06:00 PM //