We recently upgraded our home entertainment system here at Opus HQ, and we’ve finally been able to partake in the joy that is Netflix Watch Instantly, which allows you to stream movies and TV episodes from Netflix’s library directly to your TV or computer. (We’re currently making up for lost time with 30 Rock, if you must know.)

Now, not everything in Netflix’s library is available with their Watch Instantly service, which is where Streaming Soon comes into play. It’s a website that keeps a running tally on everything that will be added to Netflix Watch Instantly in the coming months. For example, Howard The Duck will be available on January 29… you know, just in case you were wondering.

Peter Chattaway chronicles the many faces of Mr. Spock.

Since I am a compulsive list-maker, screen-grabber and continuity nut, I figured I would create a gallery of all the various actors (and one possible prop or special effect) that have played Spock over the years, arranged according to the age of the character at the time of the image in question.

This large-scale (1:180) model of Firefly‘s Serenity gets my vote for “Geek Christmas present of the year”.

Every bolt, every seam and every asymmetrical plate has been recreated with exacting detail in this first and only screen-accurate replica. Years of intense effort have gone into all aspects of this model, from the sculpture taken directly from the movie CG master files to the paint job created to match not just the colors of the ship, but the materials as well.

There are even lighting effects and each replica comes with a Nathan Fillion autograph. All of this ultra-coolness can be yours for $2,495.

New York Magazine: “Why Neoconservative Pundits Love Jon Stewart”:

Conservatives like Stewart because he’s providing them a platform to reach an audience that usually tunes them out. And they often find that Stewart takes them more seriously than right-wing political hosts, who are often just using them to validate their broad positions, do. Stewart will poke fun, but he offers a good-faith debate on powder kegs—torture, abortion, nuclear weapons, health care—that explode on other networks. “Shepard Smith did the same discussion [on torture],” says [Cliff] May. “He kept yelling me at me: ‘This is where I get off the bus! Not in my name!’ He wasn’t arguing with me. It was just assertions and anger. That’s not what Jon deals in.”

I meant to link to this article sooner, but forgot all about it until I watched Stewart’s recent, and lengthy, exchange with Betsy McCaughey, a major opponent to the proposed health care reform (watch part one, watch part two). Via

Variety has just announced the latest round of castings for HBO’s adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. Martin has chimed in with more thoughts and info on the announcements on his blog.

Den of Geek has put together a list of the top 75 spaceships in movies and TV that’s much more than your typical list: each entry contains related links, resources, and “behind the scenes” info.

Most of the actual inclusions are pretty obvious (I’m glad to see Firefly‘s Serenity and the ship from Flight of the Navigator, a childhood fave, included). However, there are some pretty glaring omissions—and no, I’m not referring to the Death Star (which is something of a grey area if you ask me, since it was a space station that was also mobile).

Where are the creepy-yet-ultra-cool Shadow capital ships from Babylon 5? And it would’ve been nice to see a few more anime-related ships, like the SDF-1 or even the Veritech fighter.

PopMatters reviews Burn Notice: Season Two, which recently came out on DVD:

Burn Notice‘s strengths come from its reworking of a classic premise: a spy putting his skills to use against the bad guys while helping the good guys. For instance, the series shies away from the protagonists directly killing their adversaries. Instead the show creates clever scenarios wherein the villains are pitted against each other to do the real dirty work, while never really making an issue of the team’s preferred method of dealing with an opponent. Campbell goes on to say as much in one of the commentaries when he refers to this tactic of dealing with enemies as “a higher moral ground than taking a live wire and just sticking it in their ear for half an hour”.

I was thinking something similar at the end of last night’s episode, during which the villain is slowly caught in a web of their own making and eventually left high and dry when their carefully constructed plans come crashing down around them (thanks, of course, to our heroes’ efforts).

New York Magazine ponders the Sci Fi Channel’s recent relaunch as “Syfy”:

...let’s say you see an ad for the network on a bus shelter, and puzzle it out. Your thought process goes like this: “Seefy? What’s Seefy? Oh wait… sigh ... fi… I get it. Like science fiction.” All you do is translate the new name into the old one. This is not rebranding. It changes no association in the consumer’s mind. It just adds a layer of translation to trying to figure out what the hell that word is…

...An association with science fiction, because of its geeky connotations, may limit the network’s ability to branch out. But frankly, that is not a problem that can be addressed by misspelling the name. If you want to get out of the science-fiction genre ghetto, guys, you’re really going to have to stop making series like Battlestar Galactica and showing Star Trek reruns.

Regarding that last point, you could argue that the Sci Fi Channel—sorry, I just can’t bring myself to use something as asinine as “Syfy”, not yet anyways—has been slowly doing that already, with shows like Cha$e, Destination Truth, Estate of Panic, Ghost Hunters, and Scare Tactics.