Transformer Bots To Receive A Makeover

Don’t worry chaps, your favourite bots aren’t likely to emerge with cerise pink go-faster stripes and fluffy steering wheel covers attached to their backs.

Speaking to SciFiWire, animation experts for Industrial Light & Magic let slip that at least two of our robotic friends will undergo the glamour treatment, Bumblebee and Optimus Prime.

Animation supervisor Scott Benza said “Our two lead characters, Optimus and Bumblebee, needed to be updated for the next chapter in the Transformers series… We always want the robots to look cooler than they did the last time, so [Optimus Prime's] going to look a little more heroic, I would say.”

“Bumblebee’s matured a little bit, so I would just say look for subtle changes to his physique that have him look more mature.”, visual effects supervisor Scott Farrar comments. “[Prime will have] little tiny things that maybe the average viewer isn’t going to notice but probably the fan boys will” he added.

So whereas GG won’t fully appreciate the new location of the gear shift or a steering wheel, we’re sure you hard-core transformer d00bs will – inform us of any changes you find!

Oh and going back spectacularly on his 3D technology “might be fad” sound bite, Transformers director Michael Bay is now testing to see how his robots might look in 3D. Fantastic we recks.

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Check Out The New Iron Man 2 Trailer

While trawling the interweb this morning we were pant-wettingly excited to spot Paramount's new post-Oscars trailer for Iron Man 2. 

The new teaser features further footage of Mickey Rourke's villain Whiplash (complete with dodgy accent) and Scarlett Johansson's take on Marvel's kickass spy Black Widow (aka Natasha Romanoff). There's even a glimpse of Samuel L Jackson as S.H.I.E.L.D General Nick Fury.

What can we say? It looks A-MAZE-ING. See for yourself.

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The Academy Overlooks Avatar

Sci fi epic Avatar disappointed at last night's Oscars, winning only three awards out of nine nominations.

James Cameron's visual spectacular was trounced by Kathryn Bigelow's deserving low-budget Iraq drama The Hurt Locker, which nabbed best picture and best director for Bigelow - the first woman to be awarded the accolade (to add insult to injury, she also happens to be Cameron's ex-wife. Ouch). The film took six awards in total.

Cameron took home the statues for art direction, cinematography and visual effects (no surprise there), but was doubtless disappointed to miss out on the big 'uns.

The only other win for our favourite genre was in the makeup category, which predictably went to Star Trek (presumably awarded for Zachary Quinto's ears alone).

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R-Pattz Confesses: "I Didn't Want To Do Twilight"

The role of Edward Cullen may have brought Robert Pattinson fame and fortune, but the actor has admitted that the idea of starring in Twilight didn't appeal to him at first. In fact, he only auditioned to appease his agent.

"At first I didn’t want to do a movie like Twilight," said the actor in a recent interview with the Daily Mail. "I specifically hadn’t done anything that anyone would see since Harry Potter, because I wanted to teach myself how to act. I was going to wait for another year to do two or three more little things and then do something bigger. Twilight came kind of randomly.

"They actually asked me to take my shirt off at the audition," he added. "I thought, if that’s the criteria, then you’ve got the wrong guy. I knew about the audition five months beforehand, but I didn’t want to bother getting a six-pack or doing much else at all in preparation – but looking back, I might have combed my hair. I thought that I had to be this bland guy with his shirt off who people just project ideas onto. At first I thought to play Edward in an interesting way was totally impossible."

Thankfully, for the thousands of Twihards out there, Robert changed his mind about the role when he read New Moon - ironically, a book that his character doesn't feature in much at all.

"I understood Edward much more in the second one than in the first. New Moon is about his being compelled to do the wrong thing, and I understand that a lot – especially when it comes to relationships.

"Edward makes a mistake in New Moon that’s acknowledged by everybody, including himself. He’s totally undermined physically and emotionally and so is much more humanised. In the first one, he’s still an idealistic character from beginning to end.

"In New Moon, he’s more the hero of the story who refuses to accept that he’s the hero. I think that’s kind of admirable. Once you’re immune to failure, nothing matters. I saw that after being the hot thing for a few months after Harry Potter; it calms down until no one cares. It helps knowing that pretty soon, no one will care."

The actor went on to explain how he feels having firmly placed at the top of the A-List alongside co-star and current squeeze Kristen Stewart.

"I know I’m the luckiest guy on Earth, but I’m not massively concerned about doing lots of acting jobs," he said. "If it all just went away, right now, I’d think, 'All right. I don’t really care.' That’s probably a daft thing to say. But I think it’d be much worse to do a load of stuff that’s really awful. Because then you can’t go into another career. The only thing I want from anything is to not be embarrassed."

And what happens when the Twilight trilogy is over? "I don’t know. It scares me a little. Sometimes when I go to meetings for other projects, people only seem interested in the union of Edward Cullen and me. But if the role interests me and it can bring the public from Twilight into the cinema, then we’ve cracked it."

Somehow, we doubt R-Pattz will be disappearing from the big screen any time soon.

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Ashes To Ashes To Answer Life On Mars Mystery?

Ashes To Ashes, the squeal to Life On Mars, will return to our screens late March/early April.

Despite falling audience figures, (the opening second season drew in 7.9 million viewers, but later fell to 4.3 million) the Beeb have rightly decided to permit the wonderfully excellent Ashes To Ashes a final series and hopefully a proper conclusion. A big GG hip-hip-hooray!

We’ll list you three reasons why the 3 million or so who clicked off were completely nutty to do so:

1) The Ashes To Ashes cast are bloody superb - obviously this in due in equal measure to the talents of both the actors and the writers. We particularly love and adore Philip Glenister and show producers have revealed the climax of the next series will reveal who the character Gene Hunt really is, oo-er.

2) We care about the conclusion of the main story. The BBC confirmed that we finally learn how Alex Drake’s journey will end and call us soppy, but we hope it’s happy. We’d also like to point out how fantastic Keeley Hawes is in this role. From cool ice princess, to knee-you-in-the-goolies bad-ass the next minute – she does this all with aplomb and plummey glib. Fabulous.

3) And finally, probably most importantly, we still want answers to that horribly ambiguous Life on Mars ending. That was cruel script-writer dudes. Cruel. But they're obviously trying to atone for their sins as exec producer Matthew Graham explained to Digital Spy; "It will also hopefully explain the ending of Life On Mars as well. The idea is to unify the two shows. Series three unifies Life On Mars and Ashes To Ashes and makes them one show. By the time you get halfway through series three of Ashes To Ashes, you will actually feel like you're watching series five of Life On Mars!"

Well glory be, we love it when we get what we want.

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The Green Lantern Goes 3D

It seems that everybody is jumping on the 3D bandwagon following the success of James Cameron's Avatar.

Warner Bros today confirmed the news that is Ryan Reynold's upcoming superhero flick, The Green Lantern is set to get the treatment.

Ryan Reynolds in 3D. 

Give us a second to ponder that delicious thought.

We're back.

Filming on the movie, which also stars Tim Robbins and Blake Lively, begins later this month and is expected for release in June 2011

The studio also is in the process of converting upcoming films Clash of the Titans, both parts of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and Zach Snyder's action fantasy Sucker Punch.

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Smallville Gets 10th Season

Ok, don't get us wrong, we're BIG fans of Smallville at Geeky Girl Towers but we must confess that this is unexpected news.

The CW have renewed the Superman prequel series for a 10th season. Apparently, the series has improved the network's performance on Friday night's in the US in all major demographic categories.

Who knew?

More importantly, who cares?

More heroic antics from the not-so-caped crusader are welcome in our book, particularly if they involve more cameos from characters from the DC cannon (we're still crossing our fingers for a badass Batman episode).

But that said, there's no denying that Tom Welling - gorgeous though he might be - no longer passes for a guy fresh out of his teens. And there's only so long we can keep tuning in, in the desperate hope that Clark will get a cape, wear a cape and FLY, goddammit!

Here's hoping that Smallville bosses come up with some exciting and explosive stuff for season 10. If and when this show does come to an end, we'd really like it to go out with a superhero-style bang rather than a whimper.

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