• For those of you out there who, like me, are children of the ’90s, it’s possible that Baywatch holds a very special place in your memories … but let’s keep the memories to ourselves for now, okay? Anyway, the often-genius folks over at CollegeHumor.com created a pretty hilarious version of Lost’s opening credits done in Baywatch style, and it’s well worth a look.

• Syfy is apparently so pleased with Caprica that they’re looking to start another series within the Battlestar Galactica universe. May I suggest a CSI of some kind? (Kidding.) Also interesting to note in the article is talk of a show called Three Inches, about a less-than-stellar group of superheroes. Not sure how promising that sounds to me, but hey, I’ve been wrong before. You know, that one time.

• I want to toss my name in the hat to play Captain America, since everybody else is. (Think they’ll go against type and cast a skinny writer?) Apparently, Channing Tatum is now up for the role, which really burns me, because I had such high hopes for my boy John Krasinski.

• Interestingly, another contender for Cap is Ryan Phillipe, who co-starred with Tatum in Stop Loss. Who would I pick? Let me put it this way. I walked out of Stop Loss thinking two things. One: “My god, Ryan Phillipe can really, really act. He was amazing. I had written him off as just some blond pretty-boy, but man, he really impressed me.” Two: “Channing Tatum was also in this movie.”

• The good folks at Slashfilm know how to make even the lamest seeming movies look a bajillion times better. If this were the actual poster, I would totally see The Bounty Hunter.

• Robert Downey, Jr. is in talks to appear in the new Alfonso Cuaron-helmed 3D space thriller, titled Gravity. Now, let’s recap everything that’s awesome in the previous sentence: Robert Downey, Jr. Alfonso Cuaron. 3D. Space. Thriller. This has the makings of a geek’s delight.

• Cinematical has a pretty hefty preview of the new Predators film. I know that the Predator and Alien films are wildly uneven, ranging from sublimely awesometacular to the dismally unwatchable, but for some reason I salivate at even the mention of a new movie whenever one is on the horizon.

• An interview with the Big Lebowski himself, Jeff Bridges, from the set of Tron Legacy. It sounds like Bridges really is that cool.

• It seems that Matthew Vaughn would love to make an epic series based on Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comics, since he finds the world of that graphic novel series far too vast for a single movie. That would be sweet, even though we’d have to deal with all the emo/goth fanboys inevitably storming the internets and talking about how they got it all wrong.

• Just in case True Blood wasn’t racy enough for ya, series shapeshifter Sam Trammell pretty much confirmed that he and Vampire Bill (Stephen Moyer) are going to get all freaky with each other in the upcoming season. I bet that’ll confuse poor old Sookie.

• I doubt I’m alone when I say I’m relieved to hear that Watchmen star Patrick Wilson shot down the rumors of a movie sequel. The best way to ruin such a rich tapestry of story is to turn it into yet another superhero movie franchise.

• Finally, do you think Paul Bettany will ever play a suburban soccer dad? He’s got the best career right now, playing supernatural ass-whooper after supernatural ass-whooper. Currently he’s starring as the vampire-killing lead in Priest. Here’s a preview:

• 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.

One of the best ways to cement a character as otherworldly or ethereal is to give their skin (or fur) a brilliant hue that’s unlikely to exist in nature. After all, who can forget how the Wicked Witch of the West burned her way into our collective conscious, due in a large part to her conspicuously verdant epidermis? Or how Tim Curry’s character Darkness threatened Tom Cruise and Mia Sara in Legend, wielding ebony horns and a fire-engine red complexion?

In honor of the upcoming Avatar, which showcases some pretty spectacular CGI blue feline aliens, here’s a little list of some of our favorite characters of a sapphire persuasion.

Interestingly, our mutant friends in the X-Men give us not one, not two, not three, but four bluesy folks.

Mystique

Beast

Nightcrawler

Archangel

Who can forget the brazenly nude Dr. Manhattan, who goes postal (and atomic) in Watchmen?

Maybe not fantasy in the strictest sense, but anyone whose seen the Blue Man Group know they have a touch of the otherworldly to their shows.

As mentioned before, the Na’vi from Avatar look like an intriguing character design. Let’s hope the story lives up to the effects.

And finally, those adorable Smurfs, led by their villainous leader, Papa Smurf.

Many beloved fantasy films (and these days, television series as well) are adapted from novels and comic books, and it’s almost unheard of that a story will be reflected on the screen precisely as it’s described on the page.

There are several reasons for these changes, but the broadest one is this: novels and movies are simply different animals. For example, while pacing in the written word can afford to take its time, a movie has a time limit, usually around 2 hours (or 3, for epic fantasy like Lord of the Rings.) The number of characters is as limitless in a novel as the author’s imagination, while in film and television, for each new character you face the very real issues of casting, salaries, agents, actors’ egos, etc.

Ultimately, for those charged with the thankless task of adapting a story for the large or small screen, the job becomes about remaining true to the spirit of the story, rather than making a literal translation.

And wouldn’t it be nice if it were always as cut-and-dry as that?

The problem adapters often face is the cruel and vicious reaction from the fanboy community. No matter what, no adaptation is ever good enough to appease everybody, and fantasy fans are a particularly fanatical bunch. (In fact, by sheer coincidence, someone wrote in this week to the Oracle to discuss this very topic.)

When Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa Boyens set out on the monumental task of adapting The Lord of the Rings for the screen, they knew there would be much that had to be changed in order to streamline the events into a cohesive trilogy of films. Large sections were cut or simplified. Whole characters, like the enigmatic Tom Bombadil, were excised completely. For Frodo, who was 50 years old in the book, they cast the teen-aged Elijah Wood. The love story of Arwen and Aragorn was significantly beefed up.

Did the writers go too far? The reaction is split, and while almost everyone can agree that the films were a success, there still remains a faction of rabid fanboys who have turned their back on the movies (often after watching them many times to find out just why they hate them.)

The first two Harry Potter films were very true to the books, and as a result, while enjoyable, they felt a little long and leisurely paced. The third film, Prisoner of Azkaban (the best of all the films thus far, in my opinion), departed both in style from its predecessors, and in the way it streamlined major plot points. Every film since then has begun to play like a reader’s digest version of the books, which grew to mammoth lengths.

When Watchmen came out earlier this year, the director Zach Snyder brought to the screen what many people considered an “unfilmable” story, and it worked splendidly. But because of some plot-tweaking in the end which included the omission of a giant squid, a whole slew of devotees of the graphic novel thought the film was ruined.

Is there an obvious answer, a litmus test to determine how much change made in adaptations is too much? Unfortunately, no. Adapting a story is an art, and like all art, whether the artist achieved their goal is entirely subjective. What one would hope is that those in the fan community maintain a level of civilized and polite discourse when bringing up their opinions via the internet.

What a world that would be, huh?

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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.

Viewers aren’t responding to either of two recent fantasy-esque projects, the superhero movie Watchmen and NBC’s modern-day retelling of the King David story, Kings.

In movie theaters, Race to Witch Mountain, a movie debut, easily beat Watchmen in its second week of theatrical release: $25 million to $18.1 million. Even worse, the $140 million superhero production saw its revenue plunge 67% from the weekend before — worse than every previous superhero movie that had debuted over $50 million. Among all comic book adaptations, only Hulk and Hellboy II: The Golden Army had steeper drops.

Meanwhile, on TV, Kings‘ overnight ratings (which are not final) were disastrous: the show drew a mere 6 million viewers, making it NBC’s second worst premiere of the season (after Chopping Block). It didn’t even do well in either of the coveted 18-34 or 18-49 demographics. Ratings were akin to NBC’s fall fantasy-esque flop Crusoe.

Kings was an expensive show to produce and market, so it’s unlikely that NBC will pull the plug immediately. The show was given an initial order of 13 episodes, most of which have probably been produced. But unless ratings rise dramatically, it’s unlikely the show will continue beyond the episodes that have been filmed, and we may not even see all of them aired on NBC.

Meanwhile, a sequel to Watchmen was always doubtful; the movie is an adaptation of a popular graphic novel, and both the novel and the movie have a very definite ending. But the box-office plunge probably means no prequel or Watchmen-related movies will even be considered.

Four and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

They didn’t dumb it down.

Plenty of naysayers said that Watchmen, writer Alan Moore’s landmark comic book series (later turned into a graphic novel), was unfilmable, not just because of its complicated story, but because of its challenging, sophisticated ideas.

They naysayers were wrong. The mainstream critics who are, even now, saying the film is too hard to follow, or that it hews too closely to its source material, are wrong too.

Really wrong. Watchmen is a fantastic film, the best superhero movie since, well, ever. It’s easily as good as Spiderman and The Dark Knight, probably the best two superhero movies to date.

Yes, the film is a surprisingly faithful adaptation of Alan Moore’s graphic novel, but that is the opposite of a bad thing. Because of it, the film is also more sophisticated than any superhero movie that’s ever come before. Yes, the enduring popularity of superhero movies has allowed some writers and directors to venture into smarter, edgier fare, in films such as V for Vendetta and The Dark Knight.

But there’s never been anything like Watchmen — which is ironic since its source material, first published in 1986, preceded by decades even the most sophisticated film superheroes of today.

And yet, in many ways, those superheroes have Watchmen to thank. It was the graphic novel (and other works by Moore) that played a pivotal role in the 1980s in humanizing superheroes and comic books, making their ideas far more sophisticated. This caused a giant forward leap in the genre, which had not strayed far from its simplistic 1940s origins.  Moore’s work led to a resurgence in superhero popularity, which led to film adaptations, which led to the current avalanche of superhero movies.

In other words, with Watchmen, the film, we’ve come full circle.

What makes Watchmen so interesting? It dares to ask the ultimate, and by far the most interesting question about superheroes: if a person or being has nearly ultimate power, what exactly are his or her limits — or what should be his or her limits?

The superheroes in Watchmen are human — all too human. They cheat, make mistakes, suffer from petty jealousies, and give into darker temptations — sometimes much darker.

In short, they are absolutely indistiguishable from all human beings, except for the fact that they have extraordinary powers.

And yet they do have super-powers.

If, like a rorschach test, you have the ability to “read” people’s souls, should you personally be allowed to punish them when they commit unspeakable crimes?

If you have the ability to travel to Mars and literally reshape matter, should you align yourself with one government, and submit to its authority? Why? The concerns of state are so unbelievably petty compared to the wisdom of the universe!

If you’re the smartest person on earth, if no one else can understand what you’re talking about, does it make sense to run your ideas past them before executing them? Why? They couldn’t understand you anyway! But what if one of your ideas to “save” the planet costs other innocent lives?

But if you don’t submit to human authority, how are you different from the super-villains you do battle with? How does that make you different from a vigilante?

And even though you’re a superhero, what if you’re wrong?

“Who watches the Watchmen?” is the graphic novel’s tag-line, and it’s the question the film asks too.

How are these questions relevant in world where superheroes don’t really exist?

Well, we live in a world where some police feel they are trustworthy enough to be a criminal’s judge, jury, and executioner; where captains of industry make sweeping, unfettered decisions that affect us all (and then expect the rest of us to bail them out financially and legally when their plans go awry); and where a U.S. president decides he has the authority to ignore our laws and our Constitutions at will, so long as he’s doing it in the name of “good.”

In other words, we live in a world where plenty of people do have super-powers, and they act like superheroes accordingly.

Who watches them?

Watchmen is a successful film on all levels: magnificently acted, wonderfully scripted, and beautifully shot. (Warning: its also a brutal, violent film — by far the most sexually and violently explicit superhero movie ever — and it’s definitely not for kids.)

But it’s Watchmen’s profound, and eerily relevant, ideas that make it special.