• When doing an interview promoting Spartacus: Blood and Sand in the UK, Lucy Lawless dropped two pieces of information that shocked me. The first was that her children have no interest in her work: “I may as well work in a bank.” The second was that a man once asked her to sign his axe. She says, “ Was a bit creeped out by that,” but she doesn’t say she didn’t sign it.

• The Catherine Hardwicke-directed, Amanda Seyfried-starring Red Riding Hood movie has just added Saul frakkin’ Tigh to the cast. Michael Hogan is joining the picture as a character known as The Reeve.

• St. Paul University in Ottawa is making waves by offering a course on ethics in The Lord of the Rings. It was inspired by books like The Simpsons and Philosophy (The D’oh! of Homer); The Matrix and Philosophy (Welcome to the Desert of the Real); and The Sopranos and Philosophy (I Kill Therefore I Am), but I’m betting those didn’t cost some kid’s parents $735.

• Only days apart, I stumbled across two lesbian-interest blogs publishing stories of interest. First was the Top 10(ish) Actresses(ish) You Didn’t Know You Need To Know. This brings the ladies of Legend of the Seeker at the top of a genre-heavy list. The very next day came The Top Women of Sci-Fi TV, which definitely leans to science fiction with characters like Seven of Nine, but also includes Cara Mason (Tabrett Bethell) of Legend of the Seeker.

• The world’s shortest teaser-trailer premiered for Smurfs; it has 3 seconds of Smurfs for 53 seconds of trailer, but at least you get to see the little blue guys in Times Square. USAToday also says that Gargamel isn’t out to eat them anymore, just use them to make his magic more powerful.

• HBO has signed Brian Kirk to direct two episodes of Game of Thrones. He’s previously knocked out episodes of Dexter and Brotherhood, but I don’t see a lot of genre work. The bonus is that he’s from Northern Ireland, where they intend to film.

• In other news for Game of Thrones, sci-fi geek goddess Jane Espenson has been tapped to write an episode of the fantasy series.

• And one of the more unusual casting calls I’ve seen has gone out for Game of Thrones requesting amputees in Northern Ireland for the series. They’re also seeking hairy, bearded men, and women with dark hair.

• This featurette from The Sorcerer’s Apprentice explores the legacy of creating a live-action version of the mops and buckets scene from Fantasia, one of the most iconic pieces of film of all time.

• Ther new DLC for Dragon Age: Origins will have you exploring the backstory of a non-playing character. Dragon Age Leliana’s Song will show how the bard got to Ferelden.

• If you had given up on Narnia.com during the long silence between films, it’s time to check it out, because it has been updated in advance of Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

• Buried deep in an interview about Tilda Swinton’s new film I Am Love, she expresses shock that the trailer for Voyage of the Dawn Treader revealed she was in the film. She also swears that she spent less time filming the scene than the interview took, which was only 23 minutes.

• The new international trailer for Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has a “Pee gauge.” Hmmmmm.

• E3 has been going on all week, and there’s been a ton of game news, but we knew most of it already. The detailed specification sheet for Lord of the Rings: Aragon’s Quest looks like it has some new information though.

• And as long as we’re talking about Lord of the Rings, I just have to share this picture, which made me do a spit-take on my laptop. Yes, I’m twelve on the inside.

• And I was unaware that Snoop Dog was a huge fan of True Blood in general, and of Sookie Stackhouse in particular. But HBO has released his Oh Sookie.

• Do you know the most surprising thing to happen to me this week? Reading that Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter might be a pretty good book. I mean, let’s face it, it sounds like a total gimmick. Who knew?

• Speaking of vampires, the first Twilight: Eclipse footage is out and zzzzzzzzzzzz – huh? Sorry I dozed off watching the trailer. I hope I didn’t snore too much. Good grief, who can watch these two lay there and talk like this? I prefer my vampires killing and boning, not talking about watching people die of old age.

• So the current story on Captain America is that they offered the role to Chris Evans, who could certainly fill out the tights in all the right ways. But he’s balking over a few things, like it being yet another genre piece, low salary, and a nine-film commitment since Marvel is determined to milk this Avengers thing for all it’s worth. Which is fine with me, as long as all the costumes are snug.

• Speaking of casting news, Hank Azaria, who does Moe the Bartender and tons of other voices on The Simpsons has been cast as Gargamel in the Smurfs. Despite what the article says, Neil Patrick Harris assures us via Twitter that Gargamel is live-action, not animated.

• Alice In Wonderland sits atop the weekend box office again, with another $34.5 million coming it. All together after three weeks, the film has taken in $565 million worldwide, a record for Tim Burton.

• In case you’ve forgotten from the very first one of these I wrote, Never Seen Lost is a recap of the current and final season of television’s most inscrutable show as written by someone who never watched the first four seasons. It’s hilarious and up-to-date.

• As we rapidly approach summer, it should be worrying that John Barrowman is shooting Desperate Housewives and not the next season of Torchwood. In fact, what about the next season of Torchwood? Anybody? Bueller?

• Matthew Vaughan, while doing press for Kick Ass, told MTV that he wants to take Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and turn it into an HBO series. Not that he’s explored it, he just thinks it would be cool. But he’s wrong: it would be way, way, way, way cool.

• The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec is in French. It doesn’t really matter, because you can tell from the trailer that there are mummies, period costumes, and a pterodactyl terrorizing Paris, which is enough to get my ten dollars even with subtitles.

• Warner Bros has been paying the rent with Harry Potter films for years, but it’s run out of material. So now they’re promising to make up the cash by parading DC Comics movies in front of you like Dark Knight, Green Lantern, Flash, maybe another Superman. No word on why they just won’t even talk about Wonder Woman though.

• Think Spartacus: Blood and Sand is the only gladiator being put to screen? At SXSW this past week Neil Marshall (The Descent) screens his latest, Centurion, in front of a bunch of drunk folks, then answered some questions, including why he shot it in cold blue tones, more Robin Hood than Gladiator.

• Porn stars play D&D. It’s a web series. And it’s an interesting twist on the normal “playing D&D while watching porn stars.”

• I have to admit, I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen The Thing as an adult. There’s some twitch at the back of my brain that says I’ve seen it on cable at some point with 10% of my attention. So I don’t know how to feel about the fact they’re doing a prequel to the original. Well, not the original, the one from the 80s.

• And finally, we have a Season 5 trailer for Doctor Who viewable in the United States. Somebody please get Matt Smith an Ativan to calm down. Or to calm me down so I can watch him be frantic.

• The cast and crew of The Vampire Diaries entertained journalists at The Paley Center, and they’re spinning up for a serious cliffhanger for the season with between seven and nine unresolved points. They’ve also got gadget fever, and seem to think adding something even more unlikely than the “vampire compass” is a good idea.

• The Guardian sits down to talk with Matt Smith, the new Doctor Who. Actually, I doubt there was any sitting involved, because it sounds like he could use a decent dose of Ritalyn. Absolutely manic-sounding, and it appears the Doctor will be the same when he returns next month.

• In other Doctor Who news, the rumor is that the new season has more of a fairy tale flavor bordering on Twilight. Please, God, no.

• Good news! The insanely bad science on Fringe is back for another season. How sad is it that I’d rather they spun Walter and the cow off into their own series instead?

• The teaser for the upcoming (licensed and authorized) Buck Rogers webseries premiered Friday. It’s from James Cawley of Star Trek: Phase II fame, and has the odd twist of starting with Buck before he gets sent forward in time, and his father is played by Gil Gerard, who was Buck in the famously so-bad-it’s-good television series.

• Matthew Greenberg, who wrote the ridiculously bad 1408, is trying his hand at another Stephen King property. This time he doesn’t want to expend too much energy, so we’re getting a remake of Pet Sematary. Recycling ideas must pay better than aluminum cans.

• Alice In Wonderland shattered all opening records this weekend, raking in $116.3 million domestically ($10.50 of that was mine I’d like back), and $210.3 million globally. So which records fell? Biggest Q1 opening, biggest 3D opening, and the biggest IMAX opening record that was just set by Avatar.

• Urgent Smurfs Update: Casting we’re aware of includes Neil Patrick Harris as a human, Alan Cumming as Gutsy Smurf, George Lopez as Grouchy, Jonathan Winters as Papa Smurf, and now this gem: Katy Perry is Smurfette. Still missing is the little girl who helps a lost Smurf find their way back to the Smurf Village located in Central Park. This update marked as urgent so you can plan to be plugging your ears in a very remote village in the Himalayas when this movie is released.

• I don’t really know what to make of this trailer for Neowolf – it’s just bad-looking. And is it about vampires or werewolves? I saw fangs and neck marks, but then they talk about the full moon. The movie is due out April 20^th.

• Everybody hoping Lost had a plan to answer all the ridiculous questions they’ve posed over the last few years? You’re out of luck, because it looks like they’re only going to deal with the “important” questions.

• And this last picture has no news value: I simply want someone to tell me what a “super-wizard” is capable of, and cite three examples.

• The Hubble Telescope has found a spiral galaxy living by the “live fast, die young” philosophy. NGC-2976 (they need to employ a better naming scheme if NASA wants their budget back) got a little frisky with a bigger galaxy sometime in the past and went nuts making stars to the point that it just doesn’t have it left in it anymore.

• We mentioned before that Daniel Craig was putting on the spurs in the lead role in Cowboys vs. Aliens, but every cowboy needs a cowgirl, and Olivia Wilde is ready to mount up. The John Favreau project is the second sci-fi/fantasy piece in a row for the House actress, who has been hard at work on Tron: Legacy.

• In news I could live without, the change at the top of DC Comics is clearing the way for Watchmen 2. Nobody that was associated with Watchmen being the best-selling graphic novel in DC history will touch the project, but the suits are already counting their money.

• The Palantir (that would be me) once had to go to the bathroom during season two of Lost. He hasn’t understood a thing since. That’s why this parody from TV Wasteland makes him laugh.

• Catching up with John Wagner, the creater of Judge Dredd, we find that he’s read the script and seen some of the visuals for the new movie, and likes what he sees. He also dishes on Dredd aging, how 70 is the new 40.

• Last month we showed you the Star Wars Burlesque show, now io9.com has pictures of the more generalized Sci-Fi Burlesque show, adding Leeloo and Silk Spectre, among others.

• Sam Raimi may have walked away (or been pushed) from  Spider-Man, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to do a genre film. He’s planning to remake The Shadow. Is there not a new comic book character to exploit?

• SyFy has announced a development slate of original SyFy movies based around dark retellings of fairy tales. Hansel will be an imagining where twenty years after the original woods trip, Hansel returns to the woods for revenge. But the twist is he finds Gretel has become the witch’s apprentice. Just one of SyFy’s many ideas to get into making something other than tornado movies.

• You’ve probably heard that there’s a new live-action/CGI Smurfs movie under development. The producers of said project occasionally leak concept art that people pray to be fake. This is another such piece of art. But it comes with a story that the movie will be set in New York City because Smurf Village is in Central Park. Mayor Bloomberg has summoned Papa Smurf to his office to discuss back taxes.

• Dragon Age: Origins Expansion has got a glittery version of the Ghost Dragon, and the new DLC content Return to Ostagar has finally hit the Xbox 360 and PC.

• Alice In Wonderland continues to release new trailers and featurettes. The latest marketing assault is to give us slightly different trailers across all of Disney’s major networks, ABC, ESPN, and ABC Family. We’ll start with ABC Family, and then move to ABC. Play them together and note the not-so-subtle, but fascinating differences:

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• Tor.com has a piece on why the Oscars don’t respect genre films, and hints that if the Best Picture category wasn’t expanded to 10 films this year, none of the genre films would have been nominated.

• Universal Studios Orlando isn’t the only park getting a cool new attraction. Well, depending on how you define “new,” they are. But King Kong is coming back to Universal Studios Hollywood, and it’s in 3-D.

• Locus Online has come out with their consensus Recommended Reading List 2009, and there are a few books on there I really enjoyed, like Transition and Ark. But we can all use more books in our life, so I’m going to try something else I haven’t read. What about you – what looks tasty?

• On April 6, 2010, we can go back to The Shire. No, no – they’re still going nowhere with Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, but that’s when Ralph Bakshi classic animated Lord of the Rings movie comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray.

• Speaking of The Hobbit, Elijah Wood wants James McAvoy as Bilbo Baggins. For some reason, that seems like it should count for something.

• Going in the other direction from LoTR, we have Andy Serkis, who voiced Gollum, trying to get someone to make a biopic of Bono, and he wants to play the rocker. No word on why Bono wouldn’t just play Bono, because Bono seems to be pretty good at playing Bono.

• Remember that Ollivander’s Wand Shop video we had? Well, Universal shelled out $2.6 million to promote The Wizarding World of Harry Potter on the Super Bowl this Sunday. The park addition itself seems fairly amazing — this multi-million dollar spot, notsomuch.

• Reaper was a quirky, fun show that died too soon. It had a delightful mix of comedy and action, and promised an intriguing story arc that never got finished. Since it died quietly, we never heard that story, but if you talk to the creators, they’ll tell it all, including the mystery of Sam’s father.