– Okay, so I know that this Devastator figure by MakeToys is an unlicensed, unofficial product that I shouldn’t support, but… HOLY MOTHER OF ARTICULATION, IT LOOKS F’ING AMAZING.

You can check out more photos at TomoPop.

(via Kotaku)

– The first trailer for “Goon” premiered last week (not “The Goon” animated movie based on the comic, but the hockey movie starring Seann William Scott), and it looks pretty great. After watching it, it suddenly dawned on me that football and hockey movies are my favorite sports movies. I don’t really connect with baseball or basketball movies, but I love a good football movie or hockey movie.

(via IGN)

– I think my pal Erik Davis may be right. This could be the greatest movie trailer of the week (and maybe the entire year):

– I wonder how long I could get away with using the Cattache before my cats sever a major artery in my body.

(via laughing squid)

– BBC is holding a pretty cool “Doctor Who” contest that you should definitely have a look at if you’re the time- and space-traveling sort. Here’s the ad for it:

– Oh, that Archie. Remember the time he had an adventure with… KISS?!

Eek.

“Guest-starring Sabrina the Teenage Witch!”

Oh, man. Do NOT let Gene Simmons near her.

(via alex)

– Finally, I love this video of a dog carrying a stick with a GoPro camera attached to it. That dog is having a ridiculous amount of fun, and apparently his guardian is, too.

That’s it for this week!

Moving on, here are this week’s links…

– I’m sure this has made the rounds already, but it’s the first time I’m seeing it: Abraham Lincoln with an M-16, riding a Grizzly Bear.

See also: Teddy Roosevelt fighting Bigfoot and Andrew Jackson, Alien Slayer.

– Yet another reason The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson is the best talk show on television: the video below features Amanda Palmer, Moby, Stephen Merritt, and Neil Gaiman performing “Science-Fiction Double Feature” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show…

Brilliant.

– Over at Destructoid, they posted a pretty great story about how the developers of the game Borderlands memorialized the recent death of one of their fans who died at age 22:

This morning, we received an email from a Destructoid fan named Carlo who shared a story about his late friend Michael John Mamaril. Last month, Michael passed away due to cancer at the young age of 22. Both were huge Borderlands fans, so Carlo thought a great way to honor his buddy’s memory would be to shoot Gearbox Software an email asking for a short eulogy to be read by the game’s smart-mouthed robot mascot Claptrap. Not only did Gearbox comply with the request, it also promised to insert Michael into the upcoming Borderlands 2 as an NPC.

You can hear the eulogy over at Destructoid, and I recommend that you do check it out. It’s a truly impressive, heartfelt message that goes above and beyond anything I expected to hear when I read the post about it.

– Switching gears, I think Jon Rosenberg is on to something in his latest Scenes From A Multiverse.

We’ve been doing it wrong, people. You can’t fight idiocy with science. Science is a mosquito to idiocy.

You have to fight idiocy with superior idiocy.

Truth.

– I want to try out the new Doctor Who Encyclopedia for the iPad, but would love to hear more about it before I open my (virtual) wallet. Is there enough info in there to justify the price (and the need to pay more for each Doctor’s info)? I desperately want this app to be awesome.

If anyone reading this has given it a whirl, let me know!

It certainly has a nice little promo video, too:

Could this be the app my iPad was created to run? It just might be.

– Finally, for any of my fellow Gator fans out there, I found this article about the 2011 team’s struggles to be pretty entertaining — if only because of the wording of certain comparisons. Like this one, for instance:

And that, my friends, is what John Brantley has been facing this entire season: receivers that can’t catch, an offensive line that can’t block, and a glass menagerie of running backs who, no matter how small or quick, cannot run through holes that just aren’t there. Florida’s pass protection is a bit like watching a Best Buy open its doors on Black Friday: the flood through the gates is quick, grotesque, and can be accomplished by out of shape middle-aged women. The difference is between John Elway in his first year and John Elway in his last year: one was perpetually running for his life, and the other was a Super Bowl-winning Hall of Famer. Do you really think the answer is any combination of two doe-eyed freshmen quarterbacks who have ranged from simple competence to flat-out ineptitude? That question is rhetorical, by the way.

And that’s it for this week’s links!

Personally, the scariest thing I’ve encountered lately was the way I felt on Sunday morning after a late night at The Astor Room. Basically, I felt the way the creature in “The Thing” looks.

*shudder*

Moving on, here are this week’s links…

– I have to give credit to magician Rahat Hossain for pulling an impressive Halloween prank on his housemate. He spent a month using magic tricks and practical effects to make his housemate think their apartment was haunted, and recorded his building paranoia with secret cameras.

It’s the sort of trick that you have to appreciate even if you’re the victim, because it clearly took a lot of creative effort. Here’s the result:

(via Movies.com)

– I love everything about this free, downloadable set of art that can be used to make your regular old Monopoly board game into Bioshock-themed celebration of the glory of Rapture. It even comes with printable money and title cards.

Interesting to note that Cohen’s Apartment and Fontaine’s Apartment are Boardwalk and Park Place, respectively.

(via Kotaku)

– Everyone’s been asking me how I felt about Tim Tebow’s performance this weekend, and I’ll have more on that in its own post soon. Until then, I think that Dan Shanoff makes some great points in his analysis over at TimTeblog.com:

Tim Tebow isn’t owed fealty. He isn’t owed a free pass. No one will be tougher on Tebow’s performance today — not his worst media critic, not the folks on Twitter, not John Fox — than Tebow himself.

What he is owed is another half-season to develop, to get better — hey, maybe even finally get some play-calling that fits his style — before he is judged the worst QB in football or given up on.

. . .

It was a terrible game, on all fronts. Let’s see how Tebow responds next week before shivving him an hour after this week’s game.

Like I mentioned earlier, I’m putting together some of my own thoughts on the Tebow hysterics, so keep an eye on the site for more on this subject.

– The good folks at Disney sent out a Halloween card that I just had to share with everyone. Like their other recent Muppets-themed parodies, it’s pretty hilarious and makes me that much more eager for “The Muppets” to hit theaters.

Buzzfeed has a gallery of 2011′s Most Offensive Halloween Costumes, and it contains the requisite amount of racism and age-inappropriate outfits. However, it also contains a photo depicting the one costume I thought I’d see more of this Halloween: Dead Steve Jobs.

– Also from Buzzfeed, here’s a helmet-cam video of one person’s experience in “Run for Your Lives,” the 5K race through the woods that features participants in full zombie makeup who try to chase after runners and steal their “brains” (flags attached to their body). It’s a great idea, and though I don’t think I’ll be joining the race — I prefer the barricade-and-shotgun method of zombie avoidance — I have a suspicion that I’ll be a spectator at some point.

It looks like… fun?

And there you have it, folks. This week’s links, served up with a side of Halloween terror.

Oh, and I’m posting some photos of this year’s jack o’lantern later tonight!

Moving on, here are this Friday’s links:

– In honor of Halloween, here’s a pretty awesome light display that — as a Gawker headline suggested — I’m happy I don’t live near.

This is Halloween, indeed.

– Planking is sooo earlier-this-year, folks. What’s the new trend?

Tebowing.

And yes, I’m planning to submit my own “Tebowing” photo soon.

– With all of the protests and related chaos going down around the country, this reform bill proposed on Wil Wheaton’s site certainly seems like a level-headed solution:

Congressional Reform Act of 2011

No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office and receives no pay when they are out of office.
Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system, and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for any other purpose.
Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans do.
Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.

You can read the rest of the proposal, and his comments on it, over at his Tumblr page.

– Matt Smith’s comments about jumping to Hollywood in another year or so generated a lot of buzz around the Doctor Who scene, but I didn’t read into them nearly as much as everyone else seemed to. Thankfully, there’s been a few more follow-up interviews that have clarified his position on the show and his future with it.

But, speaking at the launch of the next series, he said: “It’s certainly not a part I want to give up any time soon.

“I kind of take it a year at a time and I finish shooting this season in a month so thereafter we’ll wait and see. There’s a Christmas special so I guess that means that everyone will sit down and figure it out, but it’s certainly something I’m keen to be involved with because I love it – it’s a thrilling job.”

While it doesn’t set anything in stone, it certainly sounds like he’s sticking around.

(via stv)

– From Tim Tebow to Doctor who and back to Tebow again…

Check out the Taiwanese-animation recap of Tebow’s first start of the 2011 season:

My favorite part is when he impales the dolphin with a spear.

(via TimTeblog)

I took some time off the grid earlier this week to recover from New York Comic Con, but my return to regular blogging got sideswiped by the arrival of Batman: Arkham City. As I mentioned on Twitter, pretty much every waking hour that I haven’t been working on assignments this week has been occupied by Arkham City.

Given that confession, do I even need to mention how amazing the game is?

Moving on, here are this week’s links:

– Question: Is “Teenage Mutant Ninja Noses” the greatest form of graffiti in the world right now?

Answer: Yes. Yes, it is.

There’s more to be found at Buzzfeed, as well as the official TMNN Tumblr.

– I always feel a little self-conscious playing some of the more interactive, duck-and-cover games in arcades, but after watching this video, I don’t think I will ever be embarrassed again. Sure, this guy in a Thai arcade looks pretty crazy as he acts out every movement and line of dialogue in Ghost Squad, but as Kotaku points out, he did make it through the whole game on a single credit.

Crazy guy in a Thai arcade, I salute you.

– If you were blown away by the season finale of “Breaking Bad,” make sure to read this interview with Giancarlo Esposito, who played one of the series’ most memorable characters: Gustavo Fring. Here’s an excerpt:

What has playing this character meant to you?

Esposito: I set myself up to do something that was truly different in its nature, by creating a character who is … so relaxed and so poised and cultured. It took a lot of courage to be able lay back on something and try to create someone who was so calm. I let the menace come out of my movements and my eyes and everything else. I did what I set out to do, and I think I’ve created a character that will live on for a long time in people’s nightmares.

Oh, I think that’s a pretty safe bet, Giancarlo. You can read the rest of the interview at TVGuide.com.

– Courtesy of Cracked, here’s an excerpt from a sobering analysis of Six Classic Kids Shows Secretly Set in Nightmarish Universes:

… Scooby-Doo villains are not run-of-the-mill criminals: They all have the uncanny ability to manufacture realistic monster costumes, project full-scale holograms and carve out high-tech hideouts in abandoned mineshafts. Many of them already had impressive vocational skills prior to their criminal lives — three of the villains were PhDs, two were lawyers, one had the ability to produce near-identical forged paintings, one could repair boats, one was a magician, one was a stuntman and one could hypnotize people.

See that? That’s the educational system, art world, maritime engineering and entertainment industries — all in the toilet. Each of these villains showed creativity, intelligence, diligence and ambition. In our world, they would easily be employed, maybe even famous. But, in the universe of Scooby-Doo, it simply wasn’t enough. The Scooby gang ran into a new, desperate genius every single week for decades. Either brilliance is simply run-of-the-mill in their universe, or else the entire economy has collapsed, and what we’re witnessing is the death throes of society itself. Although there are signs that the sandwich ingredient and dog marijuana industries are booming, so it’s probably the former.

So, basically what this is saying is… “Scooby Doo” is the most depressing cartoon ever created.

– Over at Twisted Sifter, there’s an amazing gallery of photos from the Bregenz Festival “Opera on the Lake” in Austria showing the elaborate, breathtaking stages created on Lake Constance for the shows. Check out this one from the 1999-2000 performance of “A Masked Ball” by Giuseppe Verdi:

(Photo by Benno Hagleitner)

– Heidi MacDonald has a thought-provoking analysis of the recent Marvel layoffs that had everyone down in the dumps this week. It’s definitely worth reading for some behind-the-scenes perspective on the situation at Marvel:

Yesterday was a gloomy day for the comics industry, as 15 Marvel staffers — including several popular editors and a couple of legendary Bullpenners — were laid off. This followed the recent layoff of COO Jim “Ski” Sokolowski. We all know the economy sucks, and that comics sales are down this year. But was that the reason for the cost cutting?

Or was it Disney? The Mouse purchased Marvel for $5 billion two years, two months ago and they are well known for being very budget conscious. Did some Disney suit look at revenue, say it wasn’t enough and order some budget cuts?

While both these scenarios sound plausible, according to Marvel insiders contacted by The Beat, neither seems to be the case. The budget slashing is the work of Marvel’s CEO, Isaac Perlmutter, an executive of legendary stinginess whose fanatical devotion to saving money —an increased interest in being hands on at Marvel — has led to the layoffs and other draconian measures inside the company.

Please send good vibes out to all the Marvel crew who find themselves looking for new jobs these days, as they’re a good bunch. As is often the case these days, one of those laid off by the House of Ideas is a former co-worker of mine at Wizard, Alejandro Arbona, who’s a genuinely decent guy and someone who’s certain to be a great asset to any company that brings him onboard.

He’s good people, folks. Here’s hoping he lands somewhere soon.

– Finally, as I mentioned on Twitter, Google Plus, and Facebook this week, a buddy of mine just launched a nice little iPad app for kids (and their parents) that I hope you’ll put on your radar. It’s called Looking Glass, and it provides original videos for kids that teach them about all sorts of subjects with educational videos set to music.

When he first described the app to me a while back, I immediately thought of those vintage videos that aired during “Sesame Street” and “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” that showed you how crayons were made and things like that. It’s a really great idea, and I’m hoping it takes off.

Here’s an example of the sort of videos they’ve created:

If you’re interested, please give it a try — and if you like it, spread the word.

You can find out more at the Looking Glass website.

That’s it for this week, folks! Back again with more links on Monday!

So, without any more stalling on my side, here are this week’s links:

– Submitted without comment, here’s a trailer for an interesting spin on the Luke Cage movie:

– Comic book and storyboard artist Francesco Francavilla created a series of posters for each of this season’s Doctor Who episodes that are absolutely beautiful. You can check them all out at his blog, but here’s one of my favorites:

Yes, that’s from the series premiere, “The Impossible Astronaut.” Pretty amazing, eh?

– I love this little promo for some sort of “FOX Retro” programming in Italy. It’s bright, it’s fun, and it’s full of awesome.

– Yet another reason I’d rather be in Chicago: the likelihood of seeing an AT-AT.

The painting was created by Tony Bamber, who has a few other cool Star Wars-related pieces of art on his website.

(via @abloustein)

– In other news, it’s nice to know that Tom Cruise can bust a move when challenged.

It’s also nice to know that celebrity weddings are as ridiculous and full of drunk people who can’t dance as regular people’s weddings.

(via TMZ)

– Precious! (And definitely not “based on the book Push by Sapphire.”)

(via @jmbloustein)

– I totally did this same thing to annoying people on MUDs back in the old text-only adventuring days:

(via Kotaku & Felicia Day)

Sure, it’s a jerk move, but it’s so wonderfully amusing.

That’s it for this week’s links, folks! Back again on Monday with more mind pollution.

Here are this week’s links:

– If you’re wondering what to do with those old 3.5-inch disc drives lying around, here’s one creatively geeky option:

(via @jmbloustein)

– I mentioned last week that DC was taking some heat for the way a few of their female characters have entered the “New 52″ landscape (DC’s massive reboot of their entire line of characters). Case in point: this interview fantasy author Michele Lee conducted with her 7-year-old daughter about one of her favorite superheroes, Starfire, who received a sexed-up redesign in the new DC universe.

“What about this Starfire? What do you think about her?”

“I can see almost all of her boobs.”

“And?”

“Well she is on the beach in her bikini. But…”

“But?”

“But, she’s not relaxing or swimming. She’s just posing a lot.” *my daughter appears uncomfortable*

“Anything else?”

“Well, she’s not fighting anyone. And not talking to anyone really. She’s just almost naked and posing.”

From the mouths of children… But hey, it’s not like they’re the ones buying comics, right?

– My buddy Rob Lammle is using Google+ to conduct a Dungeons & Dragons campaign. I’ve never actually played any D&D (no, really!) but I feel like this is a pretty cool — and ambitious — use of Google’s new social media platform.

Here’s some of what he had to say about the experience so far:

The reason I thought G+ might work for a play-by-post campaign is the concept of Circles. Creating a Circle with only the players in it has definitely helped cut down on the clutter; however, if you’re a busy poster like I am, it only helps so much. Players still have to search through a lot of non-game posts to find the next in-game information. To that end, I was really excited to see Google recently added the ability to search Google+ posts. It may not be perfect, but we’re using a custom hashtag (#robsgplusdnd) to designate our D&D posts and, in conjunction with a saved search for that hashtag, it’s working out pretty well.

So if you want to see what’s up with the game, you just click on that saved search and it takes you right to those posts. The search results default to the Most Popular posts for the hashtag, but you can easily click Most Recent to see the latest posts. It would be nice if you could set one or the other as the default, but that’s definitely a First World Problem in the big scheme of things.

You can read more about it on his website, where he details more of the process.

– I’m a big fan of the Paranormal Activity movies, so you can probably imagine how many times I rewatched the latest trailer for Paranormal Activity 3. A lot of people ragged on the second film, and though I thought it wasn’t as scary as the first, it was still a great little scare-fest.

I’m ridiculously excited about the third movie, which serves as a prequel to the others. Here’s that trailer:

Scary stuff!

– I’m of mixed opinion when it comes to those interns suing the Black Swan studio because they were basically just unpaid assistants instead of students receiving some on-set education. On one side, I agree with Matt Singer at IFC, who argued that it was their responsibility to realize they were being exploited and find a better gig. Internship horror stories abound, and it’s hard to believe anyone could go into an internship without knowing what constitutes a bad situation.

However, I also feel that since they’re interns, we shouldn’t expect them to know how the industry works, and it makes sense that they only realized they were being exploited after the fact. Similar to the stance we should take on anyone who commits crime against children, the people doing the abusing are supposed to know better, and we shouldn’t blame the victims for not extricating themselves from the situation.

Now I know this is nothing like child abuse, but it does fall into that middle ground where we’re not sure whether to blame the arrogance of the exploiter or the ignorance of the victim. What’s the cutoff point? What determines the stance we should take?

Tough questions, and I’m terribly interested in finding out how this case answers them (if at all).

– On the Doctor Who front, check out io9′s coverage of the Doctor Who spoof on Community (which is a show I really should start watching).

Inspector Spacetime, eh? Brilliant!

– In other news, I’m not sure whether to be entertained or terrified of this chipmunk sleeping in a girl’s hair:

– If you’re interested in media philosophy, my friend Kevin Marshall (no relation) has an interesting analysis of a recent controversy that erupted in the Capital Region regarding a Times Union writer’s tongue-in-cheek column that made fun of the BuffaloBills and their fans. Apparently, there’s fury on all sides with this one, as commenters are spewing all of the venom one would expect with a sports-related opinion piece, but that’s not the only weird element of it.

As Marshall explains it:

According to [one of the fans quoted in the piece], the tone of the interview was light and he was given the impression that an entirely different piece was being constructed than what was eventually published. Which, as Lydia Kulbida pointed out on her blog, sometimes happens. What isn’t acceptable is that she took hisquotes out of context to make him look foolish, shoving him into a media pillory and embarrassing him on a grand scale. She never gave the impression that she would use anything resembling the tone and slant she ended up with, and when confronted about it, she replied to him and said that she told him that the article was going to be about the fans needing a reality check. Which is flat out not true: the only reference to a “reality check” was when she asked him if the game against the Patriots was going to be one for Bills fans.

Owch. While I usually side with the journalists in scenarios regarding intent and final text, the details Marshall outlines are pretty damning when it comes to the writer. I think the angry sports fans have a point on this one.

– Finally, I know this cat is terrified, but I can’t help laughing:

For those wondering, I’m not sure if the video is legit, but I’m fairly certain the animal in it isn’t being abused (so it’s okay to laugh).

That’s it for this week, folks. Back again with more links on Monday!

Well, more big projects…

More on that later, but for now… links!

– You may have heard that I’m a big supporter of the Oxford Comma. This is a great reason why:

(via @killeromelets)

– Wait, so this guy was inspired to go hiking alone after watching “127 Hours,” and then had a horrible accident?

Wait… seriously?

A North Carolina man crawled four days across the Utah desert after breaking his leg on a solo hike, a risky trip he was inspired to take by the Hollywood film about a man who cut off his own arm to free himself from a boulder in the same canyon.

Amos Wayne Richards, 64, of Concord, N.C., is now recovering at home. He said he was inspired to hike Little Blue John Canyon after he saw the Oscar-nominated movie “127 Hours,” but fell 10 feet during his trek on Sept. 8.

Canyonlands National Park rangers found Richards four days later. Along with the leg injury, he had dislocated his shoulder, but was able to work it back into place.

Wait… SERIOUSLY?

– Among the other questions bothering me so, WHY DON’T I OWN THIS ALREADY?

Many thanks to @shoveke for making me aware of its existence. It will be mine.

– Comic publisher Archaia Entertainment has unveiled a pretty amazing preview of Jim Henson’s Tale of Sand, an upcoming graphic novel based on one of Henson’s unproduced screenplays.

Here’s the synopsis:

Discovered in the Archives of The Jim Henson Company, Tale of Sand is an original graphic novel adaptation of an unproduced, feature-length screenplay written by Jim Henson and his frequent writing partner, Jerry Juhl. Tale of Sand follows scruffy everyman Mac, who wakes up in an unfamiliar town, and is chased across the desert of the American Southwest by all manners of man and beast of unimaginable proportions. Produced with the complete blessing of Henson CEO Lisa Henson, Tale of Sand will allow Henson fans to recognize some of the inspirations and set pieces that appeared in later Henson Company productions.

This is definitely one to keep on your radar, folks. It looks beautiful.

– My buddy Adam is a professional photographer. He also likes to make crazy videos.

This is one he cut together from random footage recorded during a trip to NYC last week for a photo shoot:

Yes, that’s Jessica and I making a cameo around the 2:13 mark.

Sadly, I didn’t realize he was recording anything, otherwise I might have been more interesting. As you can see from the video, Jessica is always being interesting.

That’s it for this week!

A few people have asked me what the mysterious assignment is all about, and though I’m not at liberty to say (since it’s for a large corporation that could pay to have me killed), it does involve Halloween. More specifically, it involves Halloween history and horror movies.

So, given how much time I’ve spent on this project, there’s a good chance that if you name any horror movie made in the last 50 years, I can probably rattle off some facts about it. Seriously.

How this knowledge will come in useful once October 31 is in the rearview mirror, I’m not entirely sure — but hey, I’m not getting paid to think beyond Halloween… yet.

Okay, enough of that for now. Here are this week’s links:

– Arriving via io9, this video of Sgt. Slaughter singing about monster trucks is the sort of thing that will melt your brain, but once you hit “play” you won’t be able to stop watching it.

I suddenly feel bad about the fact that I’ve never attended a monster truck rally. The people in the audience seem like they’re having so much fun, and… AAAAHHHHHH!!!! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?!?!?!?!?!

– Well, it’s good to know that at least one of the comics I listed in my “10 to Avoid” lived up to the anti-hype. I’m actually sort of amazed that someone at DC thought this panel (and associated storyline) from Catwoman #1 was actually a good idea.

Graeme McMillan at Newsarama really sums it best:

Yes, that is Catwoman having sex with Batman. You know, that thing that those people who really wanted to see used to have to go online and search for? Now it’s right there in the comics themselves! Obviously, a victory for people with specific fetishes and limited imaginations and/or Google skills…

Honestly, when I first saw that panel online, I had to locate the issue myself just to be 100% certain it wasn’t a piece of fan-art.

– I don’t follow boxing in any way, shape, or form, but I was in a store the other day and heard people talking about the end of a recent fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Victor Ortiz. What they were saying about it was so wild, I had to find some video online.

Well, it was definitely a crazy way to end a boxing match, that’s for sure. Check it out for yourself:

– On an equally crazy, but significantly cuter note, someone on Facebook (I’m not sure who) posted this video of professional wrestler Kenny Omega facing off with a 9-year-old girl named Haruka.

Yes, you read that correctly.

And I have to admit, this Japanese wrestling match is so weird and sweet, I’m not sure whether to call Child Protective Services or check my sugar levels.

– Changing gears…

I don’t actually use ketchup or mustard that often, but I might make a habit of it if I could shoot them out of a CONDIMENT GUN!

(via LaughingSquid)

– I have Doctor Who comic book writer Tony Lee to thank for passing this very true, very necessary reminder along:

Seriously, people… Don’t do it. Don’t watch The Jersey Shore. Trust me: I’ve met the cast.

– Finally, while I think this “Pepsi Bottle to Brighten Up the Day” video is pretty cool and all, I can’t help wondering how far the money it cost to make it would’ve gone in a village like the one it’s showing.

Also, I tried visiting the website listed at the end of the video about six times, but I keep mis-typing letters. An easier URL could’ve also gone a long way toward helping the cause.

– Oh, and just in case you haven’t heard the news about this year’s Doctor Who Christmas Special, here’s the text of the official press release from BBC America:

UK COMEDY STARS JOIN MATT SMITH IN THIS YEAR’S DOCTOR WHO CHRISTMAS SPECIAL

Emmy nominee Steven Moffat has penned the episode which is now in production

Production has started on the 2011 Doctor Who Christmas Special in which the Doctor (Matt Smith) finds himself in war-torn England embarking on a magical and mysterious adventure with a young widow and her two children.

A stellar guest cast including Claire Skinner (Outnumbered), Bill Bailey (Black Books), Arabella Weir (Skins, The Fast Show) and Alexander Armstrong (Armstrong & Miller), join Matt Smith in the emotional festive special, packed full of Christmas thrills and chills.

Steven Moffat, Lead Writer and Executive Producer, commented: “The Doctor at Christmas – nothing is more fun to write. Maybe because it’s so his kind of day – everything’s bright and shiny, everybody’s having a laugh, and nobody minds if you wear a really stupid hat. Of all the Doctors, Matt Smith’s the one that was born for this time of year – so it’s the best news possible that he’s heading back down the chimney.”

The special, set during World War II, sees Madge Arwell and her two children, Lily and Cyril, evacuated to a draughty old house in Dorset, where the caretaker is a mysterious young man in bow tie, and a big blue parcel is waiting for them under the tree. They are about to enter a magical new world and learn that a Time Lord never forgets his debts…

Claire Skinner said: “I am thrilled to be in Doctor Who playing Madge who is a bit of super-mum. It’s a magical part.”

This marks Matt Smith’s second outing as the Doctor at Christmas time and will follow hot on the heels of the successful 2011 season. The season finale, “The Wedding of River Song,” written by Steven Moffat premieres Saturday, October 1, 9:00pm ET/PT on BBC AMERICA.

Steven Moffat is Lead Writer and Executive Producer with Piers Wenger and Caroline Skinner, also executive producing.

Filming on the Christmas special will continue until mid October 2011.

It’s hard to believe another season of Doctor Who is almost over, eh?

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Of course, the absence of travel plans really just means more time playing Resistance 3, which has become my latest obsession. I can’t get enough of the game, folks. Seriously. This is a call for help.

Meanwhile, here are some links…

– The new Bioshock Infinite trailer that premiered during the Tokyo Game Show doesn’t offer much new footage, but it still succeeds in getting me even more amped for this game. The Bioshock is one of the very few franchises (alongside Resistance and Dead Space) that I follow with anything resembling “franchise fan” interest.

Yup. Can’t wait for 2012.

– Even though I didn’t love the second Chronicles of Riddick film, I’m looking forward to the third one — especially after seeing this concept art posted by Vin Diesel:

(via Digital Trends)

– We’re quickly approaching the Halloween season, so it’s nice to see a new teaser for the second season of The Walking Dead.

Thus far, it sounds like Virgil’s farm is a definite for the next season, and the arrival of Michonne is also a possibility. Yesssss.

– Also on the Halloween theme, there’s a new trailer that just premiered today for The Thing, which will serve as a prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 classic. As far as I’m concerned, the original film is one of the scariest movies ever made, so the prequel has some big shoes to fill.

The Thing is out October 14, just in time for scary-movie season.

– On a lighter note, I love Michael DePippo’s retro concert posters featuring each of the Dr. Teeth and The Electric Mayhem band members (Dr. Teeth, Janice, Sgt. Floyd Pepper, Zoot, and Animal).

Apparently, he’s making full-size posters available. I’m terribly tempted to add one to our wall.

(via Laughing Squid)

– In other news… At least the family in the video below is spending a lot of quality time together, right?

(via Kotaku)

– There have been some bizarre Transformers over the years, but the latest addition to the “Robots in Disguise” universe has me wondering, “Is the world ready for Snoballimus?”

I also find myself wondering about the usefulness of a Transformer that turns into a tasty, creme-filled snack.

(via Seibertron)

– I’m usually pretty lenient when it comes to the gritty redesigns certain comic book characters receive for live-action movies or video games, but I have to admit I’m not a fan of Deadshot’s new look for Batman: Arkham City.

You can check out more images over at The Daily Blam.

– And lest you think I’ll conclude this roundup without a bit of Doctor Who, here’s the teaser for this weekend’s new episode, “Closing Time.” I’m pretty excited about this one (more than I usually am), as it features the return of James Corden as Craig, the guy The Doctor roomed with in “The Lodger.”

(via Den of Geek)

That’s it for this week’s Monday Mix!