• Ah, the canceled TV series that leaves the whole show on a cliffhanger! A pretty decent list. Some of these — like Odyssey 5 — still kinda haunt me.

• NBC’s highly-hyped The Event disappointed in the ratings.

• Oh, my Lord, they’re talking about a third movie in the Bill & Ted (Excellent Adventure) series. As anti-sequel as I am, I actually think it could be kinda meta after all these years (not to mention after Reeves starring in The Matrix).

• The unstoppable folks over at Save Our Seeker are working on a campaign to get the People’s Choice Award to include a new fantasy-related category (which, of course, they hope Legend of the Seeker would win). Go, SOS!

• Please, God, not another Godzilla reboot. But apparently he’s fighting other monsters. They don’t say who, but Mothra seems like a given, right?

• Firefly re-imagined as a musical, below. The browncoats will truly never die, will they?

• Orson Scott Card is an unmitigated bigot, but Ender’s Game is still a great book — and it looks like the movie version might finally happen.

• The most (only?) interesting thing about the Hulk movie franchise is, and always has been, the behind-the-scenes drama. Edward Norton is the latest to speak out, about not being cast in the upcoming The Avengers. It was all about greed, he says.

• Twenty “epic” failures in TV sci-fi/fantasy.  Damn, there’s been a lot of crappy sci-fi/fantasy! But it still seems weird to have a list that includes both Firefly and the horrible Bionic Woman reboot.

• After being knighted last year, Terry Pratchett made his own sword. Out of meteorites. Which is just so beyond cool:
  

  

When you were a kid, did you ever go digging around in your backyard looking for dinosaur fossils? And even if you didn’t, haven’t you kind of always dreamed of owning dinosaur fossils anyway? Well, good news! Bonhams Auction House in NYC is selling artifacts from the Ice Age. Listen to the descriptions of some of these prehistoric pieces:

Exceptional, Very Large T. rex Tooth – An Unsurpassed Marvel

Superb Whip Scorpion in Dominican Amber

Giant Squid Beak, with Four Sucker Rings

Tyrannosaurus rex Vertebra

Don’t you feel like every one of those descriptions should be punctuated with six exclamation marks? (T. Rex Tooth!!!!!!) (Four Sucker Rings!!!!!!)

I got so hopped up planning to buy one of these fossils and recover some DNA and build my own theme park on a deserted island — because what could go wrong with that plan? — that I made a list of the best fictional dinosaurs.

Dino, The Flintstones — You might be tempted to call Dino a “brontosaurus,” but first of all, brontosaurues (brontosairi?) aren’t even reals dinosaurs. Apparently there was some mix-up when two paleontologists were racing each other to put bones together back in the day. And second of all, Dino is a Snorkasaurus. He’s better behaved than any pet you’ve ever had, and for a time, he even served as Fred and Wilma’s butler!

Littlefoot, The Land Before Time — You think it’s sad when Bambi’s mom gets shot? How about when Sharptooth sneaks up on Littlefoot and the gang and forces him to flee and leave his treestar behind? It was the last gift his mother gave him! But Littlefoot presses on and leads his friends to their new home. “Oh, you can’t quit now. What if the Great Valley’s just over the top of these rocks?” Oh, Littlefoot! You are our hope for the future!

Rex, Toy Story — Wallace Shawn’s Tyrannosaurus Rex with an inferiority complex is one of the greatest dinosaur ironies ever committed to film. “What if Andy gets another dinosaur? A mean one? I just don’t think I can take that kind of rejection!” And the poor guy is so pathetic that he actually yarfs when he sees Buzz Lightyear’s dismembered arm. Oh, and don’t forget: He’s not from Matel, he’s from a smaller company that was purchased by Mattel in a leveraged buyout.

Tyrannosaurus Rex, Meet the Robinsons — I like to think of Meet the Robinsons as Disney’s promise to stop sucking. After the Golden Age, the Mouse made some seriously mediocre movies (Home on the Range? Really?), but Robinsons was a fine return to Disney form. Besides Bowler Hat Guy, the best part of the film is the 15 seconds  T-Rex is on-screen with my favorite dino dialogue ever. “Why aren’t you seizing the boy?” Bowler Hat Guy demands. ” I have a big head and little arms!” T-Rex answers.

Velociraptor, Jurassic Park — “Try to imagine yourself in the Cretaceous Period. You get your first look at this ’six foot turkey’ as you enter a clearing. He moves like a bird, lightly bobbing his head. And you keep still because you think that maybe his visual acuity is based on movement like T-Rex — he’ll lose you if you don’t move. But no, not Velociraptor. You stare at him, and he just stares right back. And that’s when the attack comes. Not from the front, but from the side.” Yeah. That sounds like a lot of fun. Let’s go to that theme park, Dad!

Godzilla — At the end of 1954’s Godzilla (Gojira), Kyohei Yamane-hakase says, “I can’t believe that Godzilla was the only surviving member of its species. But if we continue conducting nuclear tests, it’s possible that another Godzilla might appear somewhere in the world again.” He was right! In fact, Godzilla has appeared in 30 films since then! Plus he’s got his comic book line, his video games, his full-length novels. At this rate, the only thing that can break Godzilla’s stride is another freak Ice Age.

The dinosaurs from Dinosaurs — Conceived by Jim Henson, Dinosaurs was the best thing to happen to ABC in the early ’90s (besides Lois and Clark, of course). The sitcom is ludicrously camp, with a little bit of subversive humor on the side. Earl pushes down trees for Wesayso Corp, and since the show is set in 60,000,003 BC, Robbie always wants to know what they’re counting down to. You’re counting down the to the birth of a religion that will one day oppose the idea that 60,000,003 BC (or you) even existed, little dinosaur.

Dopey, Land of the Lost (the TV series) — I’m pretty sure all of the dinos on Land of the Lost were named after the dwarves from Snow White. The T-Rex, who is constantly trying to eat The Marshalls, is called “Grumpy.” And the young brontosaurus, who became their family pet and cart puller, is called “Dopey.” I think the lesson here is: always trust the vegetarian.

Yoshi, Mario Bros. — After playing Super Mario World on Super Nintendo, it’s hard to remember a time when Mario or Luigi got along without Yoshi. He is a shield against Koopa Troopas. He makes the cape easier to use. He can throw turtles and flames, and fly like a superhero when eats a purple shell! Every Mario game is made better by him, and Yoshi on the mach bike on Mario Kart is just absolutely unbeatable.

Barney and Friends — He loves you. You love me. We’re a happy family. Despite the ardent protests of my six-year-old pseudo-nephew, Barney is a dinosaur. And he’s so mesmerizing with his clomping around and dancing and really weird voice that you can pop in a DVD and sit your kids in front of him and get an entire hour of peace — as long as you can stomach his singing voice.

What dinosaurs did I miss?

New York, as they say, is a hell of a town.

Sometimes literally.

I’ve lived in or near New York all my life, and for the past seven months I lived right in the heart of Manhattan, in a neighborhood affectionately known as Hell’s Kitchen. But is there devilry (and devilish cooking) truly afoot?

According to Hollywood and certain comics, you bet.

Unlike DC’s superheroes which exist in New York substitutes like Gotham City and Metropolis, the brain children of Marvel patriarch Stan Lee were living it up in the very real New York City. Spider-man swung from the Empire State Building. The Fantastic Four’s headquarters are found in midtown Manhattan. And Daredevil, the man without fear, has chosen my old neighborhood, Hell’s Kitchen, as the area he’s going to defend.

When aliens attack the Earth, they’ll often start with New York, but fortunately the Avengers will always be there to make a stand. (The same was true of the X-men until those lousy mutants recently defected to San Francisco. Boo.)

And there’s more than just the Marvel clan. Hellboy, after all, resides in New York and fights off the demon spawn that may attack it. And then there’s the Watchmen, those angsty heroes desperately in need of therapy, who also patrol New York City, although really they’re just defending us from themselves.

But before you think it’s superheroes who have the market on the supernatural goings-on in the city that never sleeps, take a look at the staggering amount of fantasy or fantasy-esque movies that have taken place here.

The occult has a long history with the Big Apple. One of the scariest movies I’ve ever seen, Rosemary’s Baby (based on the novel of the same name), has its demonic activity going down in the Dakota, the building in Central Park West where John Lennon was tragically killed.

And for the mother of all ghost stories, who can forget the immortal film Ghostbusters, that standard-bearer of 80’s comedy, along with its less favorable but still admirable sequel? Surely the sight of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man strolling through the streets of Manhattan will go down as one of the most infamous images of cinematic New York of all time.

And deep below the streets, in our very sewers, there dwell a clan of four heroes known as the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, protectors of the weak and devourers of the pizza. What would they be without New York as their backdrop?

The much-maligned action-fantasy Last Action Hero took the cinematic ideal of Los Angeles and juxtaposed it with the “reality” of New York, much to the dismay of the fictional-turned-real action hero played by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Monster and disaster movies thrive in a setting like New York; how many other cities have such a memorable skyline upon which to wreak your havoc? King Kong, Godzilla, and most recently Cloverfield have done their best to wipe clean the buildings of beloved Manhattan with their monstrous paws, and Independence Day and The Day the Earth Stood Still have brought that destruction from above. The Earth herself has turned against New York in The Day After Tomorrow and the upcoming 2012.

Will Smith memorably carted himself around a New York that had succumbed to the rule of zombie creatures in the apocalyptic I Am Legend. (And what a fascinating future New York it was, with its glimpses of skyrocketed fuel prices and an ad for a Batman/Superman film!)

And perhaps the most iconic image of a post-apocalyptic New York comes from The Planet of the Apes, in which Charlton Heston sees the buried Statue of Liberty, leading him to realize that mankind had destroyed themselves, ushering in the rule of sentient apes. (Oh, by the way, spoiler alert! You’ve all seen the movie, right?)

But I’m going to truly geek out here and admit that might my favorite fantasy film of recent years to feature New York is the slightly sappy yet utterly amusing Disney film Enchanted.

Now, hear me out!

Yes, it’s soft fantasy. Yes, it’s Disney. Yes, there are musical numbers and talking animals. But with Enchanted, Disney really gave its own movies a send-up for their occasionally laughable sappiness, and particularly the shallowness of some of their older stories — a princess and a prince fall in love in a single day?

Maybe it’s just that I’m getting older (I’m in my seriously late 20’s now), but the sight of Amy Adams blissfully singing her way through Central Park is a pure joy, considering how most people doing so in real life would have a hat on the ground for you to throw change into.

Yeah, I’d rather watch that than a monster topple skyscrapers. So what?!

New York is the place to be for some of the finest culture, cuisine, and entertainment in all of the United States. It’s also, as it happens, the place to be for your choicest assortments of ghost, demons, and magical spells. Keep that in mind next time you’re searching for vacation hotspots. After all, as the song goes, if you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere. Even another plane of existence.