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I have one major thing to say about the trailer for Stardust, and that is, if they’re going to make so much fuss about this film being an adventure “unlike you’ve ever seen before,” they ought to have refrained from showing Michelle Pfeiffer rounding out a trifecta of wiches, especially ones that out to steal someone’s youth. Nice try, assholes!

Beyond that, I can’t really say much, other than it seems mildly interesting, in the way that most Neil Gaiman non-comic offerings seem to me these days. Oddly enough, I almost universally adore Gaiman’s comic work, but have never been able to get excited about any of his prose books, much less movies based on them. I finished Neverwhere, but could barely tell you a thing about it; Anansi Boys was equally forgettable, and I never could make it through American Gods at all, despite weeks of trying. Stardust is still sitting on my shelf, and I should probably tackle it before the movie comes out and I no longer care.

In the meantime, this trailer doesn’t actually look half bad. Pfeiffer looks amazing, and I’m always happy to see Claire Danes in something, even if she should never be a blonde. I wish I could say I was more thrilled to see De Niro than I am; with every passing year, I wish a little more that he’d just take a few years off from acting. Remember when just the fact that De Niro was in something meant that it would probably kick ass? Yeah, me neither, and that’s kind of what I’m getting at.

Meanwhile, the trailer for Day Watch looks overwrought, noisy, and goofy — precisely all the attributes I adored about the first one, so this is good news. More than anything, I’m glad to see that the sequel to Night Watch will be hitting the States, as I had serious doubts. If you haven’t seen the original, I’d love to link you to my lengthy review, but it appears I never posted it. Long story short: I recommend it for a good bit of Saturday afternoon fun.

The story of the sequel looks as adorably corny as the first — a titanic battle over a piece of chalk? Not just any chalk, mind you — the chalk of destiny. I can only hope, in my filthy little heart, that they approach this subject with a completely straight face. It’s the only way to make a titanic, generations-long battle over chalk really work.

If nothing else, it certainly looks as though the special effects are a big improvement over the first, and it seems that, as per the first film, heavy cues are being taken from American pop culture — most notably the car being driven up the side of the building at the end of the trailer, which seems to be the new schtick, apparently. That sequence had me rolling my eyes and laughing; it looks exceedingly stupid, but in a very fun way. I’m hoping to enjoy Day Watch as much as I did Night Watch… they just better have those cool animated subtitles like the first film did, or else I’m storming out in a huff.

Early in the wee hours of Sunday morning, as I mulled over the events of last night’s Battlestar Galactica, I suddenly hit upon an idea for another weekly feature. After all, No One Reads Fridays had gone so well — by which I mean it required little effort on my part and was a lot of fun to write — so why not create a Monday TV Roundup, wherein I talked about the few shows I watched the previous week? Dear God! So beautiful!

Of course, the sheer brilliance of this idea will be immediately evident to savvy readers. Rome just aired its series finale, and BSG won’t be back until 2008. See, this is why you should never try to do things. It’s a mistake. And yet, I’m going to go ahead with this anyway. Take that, universe! I’ll readily admit that I have no idea what I’ll be writing about next Monday, if indeed I’m writing about anything at all. But, whatever it is, I can almost certainly assure you it won’t be Robin of Sherwood. (Okay, it probably will.)

Anyway, on to the Battlestar Galactica season finale. Spoilers follow.

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“No one reads the Internet on Fridays” — a nugget of wisdom coined by one Sean D. Francis, author of The Savvy Life, The Stygian Labyrinth, The Savvy Stygian Life, and other projects too numerous to recount. In general, I’ve found this to be true — Friday is the day people are getting out of work early, packing up, leaving town, having hot threesomes with supermodels — well, whatever they’re doing, they’re not reading the Internet, that’s for damn sure.

In the spirit of this, I offer a brand-new “feature,” No One Reads Fridays — the central gag of which is my writing something so casual and devoid of substance, that I don’t care whether or not you read it — which you won’t, because it’s Friday! Now, I know what you’re going to say. How does this differ from any other blog entry? Oh, you’re a laugh riot. I’ll tell you how — because this one has a cool name, Carlos Mencia. A name that breaks down to the acronym NORF.

The defense rests. On with the show.

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Sorry for the lack of updates lately, but there have been… things. Mysterious, creepy things I can’t talk about, lest my life be forfeit. Actually, I’ve had houseguests and a bit of change on the job front. It’s actually all very dull, despite my feeble attempts to pump it up. It has, however, kept me from bringing you bloggy goodness, but we’ll soon fix that — again. Thanks for keeping the faith.

A few days ago, I put together a review of the 1981 Michael Crichton film Looker, a mildly cyberpunk thriller featuring a mustachioed thug with hat-hair, a pudgy Albert Finney, and an occasionally naked Susan Dey. Rather than grace — and by grace, I may possibly mean pollute — the pages of dimfuture.net with my analytical and mildly sarcastic offering, I instead wrote it up for our fine friends over at Cyberpunk Review, a slicker and more popular site than we poor fools can ever hope to be. But I wouldn’t want our own loyal audience to go without — that would be deeply unfair to both of you. Anyway, have a “look” (haha! Oh, the wit) at the Looker review over at CP!