Slice of SciFi News Briefs

It’s that time again for AFI 10 Top 10 this year. We count down the top ten movies in Animation, Fantasy, Romantic Comedies, Science Fiction, Western, Gangster, Sports, Courtroom Drama, Mystery, and Epics of all time. The list will be unveiled on June 17, 2008 on CBS.

We reported earlier this year that Jack Black would be starring in a new SF comedy called “Man Witch,” the story of a man who discovers he’s a witch and heads off to teach at a female witch school. Now it appears that Jack has opted out of the project leaving the studio to search for a new male lead. No definitive reason for Jack’s departure was given but rumors indicate it may have something to do with direction.

The Los Angeles Film Festival will be showcasing three major genre-related summer films at this year’s event, “Wanted” starring James McAvoy, Angelina Jolie and Morgan Freeman, Brenden Fraser’s “Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D” and “Hellboy II: The Golden Army” with Ron Perlman reprising the role of Hellboy. The Festival runs from June 19 to 29, 2008.

Director Louis Leterrier told Collider.com in an interview that this weekend’s debut of “The Incredible Hulk” will include a hidden reference to Hulk’s fellow Marvel Comics character Captain America.

“It’s not like, ‘Oh, it’s Captain America and it changes everything,’” Leterrier said. “It’s still a Hulk movie, but it’s really Captain America, and it’s there. You’ll see. It’s the real deal. You have to look for it.”

NASA started celebrating last night as the Phoenix Lander’s shovel arm finally hit its target and was able to successfully place Martian soil gathered from the area surrounding the Lander into the oven critical for analyzing its contents for signs of past or present life. Researchers at JPL and NASA have been very concerned over the last several days when attempts failed to produce desired results. Now that the arm and oven are working properly, analyses of the soil samples should be forthcoming in a few weeks.

China is poised to become the main shareholder and controller of digital TV throughout the Orient.

SPOILER ALERT Continue reading at your own risk!!!

According to EOnline, the two-hour Caprica pilot begins about 51 years before the destruction of the Twelve Colonies by the reappearing Cylon Fleet.

A computer whiz-kid named Zoe Graystone, portrayed by Alessandra Toreson, digitizes her identity, then dies but finds psuedo new life after her genius dad resurrects her computer image. Zoe becomes the first computer generated brain for the Cylons. One of BSG’s key character’s father, Joseph Adama (Bill’s father/Lee’s grandpa), a lawyer played by “Jericho” actor Esai Morales, somehow becomes embroiled in the whole fiasco. Joseph’s connections are both from a legal (Joe represents some seedy characters) and emotional standpoint because, Joseph’s wife and only daughter were killed by the same bomb blast that killed Zoe. All of these events allow the Graystones and the Adamas to have possibly been responsible for starting the First Cylon War.