Here are my candidates for the top five scifi quotes to make it into the pop culture vernacular.

5. “The Truth is Out There”

Ever since Mulder and Scully gave us a glimpse into The X-Files, we’ve been determined to find the real truth about aliens, Bigfoot, Elvis and Lady Gaga. That single phrase has inspired millions to look beyond what is presented to us and that’s a good thing and thanks to Chris Carter, that phrase and The X-Files will always be associated with conspiracies of every kind.

4. “I’ll be back“

Usually when you hear this phrase, it’s uttered in a flat, deep voice with an “a” that sound more like Bach than back. It’s one of the most basic lines uttered by Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator and it’s been used in hundreds of TV shows and movies since, and even in reference to Schwarznegger’s political career. He’s never living that one down.

3. “He’s Dead, Jim.”

It’s become a running joke, but has anyone ever counted how many times Dr. McCoy ever actually says this phrase on an episode of Star Trek? Along with “I’m a doctor not a. . . (insert job title here)” and “Beam me up, Scotty,” this phrase is recognized by non-geeks, the world over, leaving actor DeForest Kelley to remark that the line will likely end up on his tombstone.

2. “Danger, Will Robinson, danger”

This quote comes from one of my favorite scifi classics, Lost in Space. The line was  uttered by the Robot as he tried to keep his young charge from heading off into trouble on an alien planet. It was  only once in this exact format but somehow it has gone on to be copied and parodied time and again, even making an appearance on The West Wing.

1. “Luke, I am your father”

There’s something about this dramatic line from Star Wars that makes people giggle when it’s heard out of context. Said this way, it’s actually a misquote as Darth says, “No, I am your father” with the emphasis on “I”, again, not the way it’s usually repeated.  Two of the best uses of the catchphrase are in Austin Powers 2 and Toy Story 2.

Do you have a favorite scifi quote that you like to toss in when the proper occasion arises? Tell me about it in the comments below!

Graphic from Stock.xchng

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If you’re a Star Wars fan (or if you need a great gift for one) you must check out The Empire Muggs Back charity auction. Lucasfilm asked artists, comic book creators, and celebrity fans to get out their markers, paint brushes and glue guns and transform blank Mighty Muggs (donated by Hasbro) into custom art depicting their favorite characters, creatures, ships and scenes from the “Star Wars” saga.

Some of the many artists participating include “The Clone Wars” director Dave Filoni, “Fanboys” director Kyle Newman, actress Jaime King, Go-Go’s guitarist Jane Wiedlin, model makers from “Robot Chicken,” graffiti artist Urban Medium, and tattoo artist Karen Roze.

These amazing art pieces are being auctioned off for the benefit of  The Make-A-Wish Foundation so you not only get a one-of-a-kind piece, but you get to support this worthy cause. Visit  http://www.theempiremuggsback.com/ for details and hurry because the auction ends Aug. 14, 2009.

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Visit Operation Olivia at Atom.com to upload your video pitch. The winner will receive a $5,000 dollar shooting budget and Olivia’s services (acting, only acting) for six hours. Deadline to enter is September 3, so hurry!

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Lost in Space and Time Tunnel

Star Wars: In Concert, a unique multi-media event featuring music from all six of John Williams’ epic Star Wars scores and it begins its worldwide arena tour on October 1, 2009 at Honda Center in Anaheim, California.

Narrated live by Anthony Daniels (the actor who portrayed C-3PO in all six films), the production features a full symphony orchestra and choir, accompanied by specially edited footage from the films displayed on a three-story-tall, high-definition LED super-screen – one of the largest ever put on tour. The live music and film elements are synchronized in order to create a full multi-media, one-of-kind Star Wars experience.

“We’ve taken the key themes from the music and cut together all the images that fit with each theme, so you can really get a sense of how the music played into the images,” said George Lucas, creator of the Star Wars Saga. “The whole soundtrack is a testament to John Williams’ creativity and his extraordinary ability to enhance the emotional aspects of the films.”

In addition to a wonderful night of music, concert attendees will get to view an exclusive exhibit of Star Wars costumes, props, artifacts, production artwork and specially created behind-the-scenes videos from the Lucasfilm Archives. Many of these pieces are leaving Skywalker Ranch for the first time. The exhibit features many classic fan favorite artifacts, as well as several new and never-before-seen items, including:

· Full costumes for Jedi Masters Kit Fisto and Plo Koon will be on display.

· For the first time ever, pages from John Williams’ original hand-written sheet music for Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace will be exhibited for the public.

· Also on display will be various never-before-seen props from the films, including blasters and helmets from Coruscant, Tatooine and other iconic Star Wars locations.

For all of the concert dates and ticket information visit www.StarWarsInConcert.com.

Photos: APE Concerts and LucasFilm

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Robot Chicken uses stop-motion animation to recreate some of your favorite scenes from the Star Wars movies only with a crazy, and often creepy twist. Some of the sketches are completely off the wall, like the Stormtrooper participating in Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. But others have the characters saying things you know you were thinking. Like the Stormtrooper who calls Yoda on his inability to speak a proper English sentence. You’re 800 years old, the smartest guy in the universe and you still haven’t figured out how to mimic our speak patterns? So true, so true.

Luke, Leia and all the gang are on board for this round, but the focus shifts to some of the unsung heroes of the Star Wars franchise, like Boba Fett and his fellow bounty hunters, Emperor Palpatine and Gary the Stormtrooper. There’s also a cameo appearance by Jar Jar Binks (voiced by Ahmed Best) playing the celebrity interpreter in a spoof of those Geico commercials.

Carrie Fisher and Billy Dee Williams also graced the sound booth at the Robot Chicken studios voicing their classic characters Leia and Lando. Breckin Meyer takes on Admiral Ackbar, Seth MacFarlane is the Emperor, Adrianne Palicki is Padme while Seth Green fills in as dozens of other characters.

Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II may be a parody but these guys weren’t sloppy with the details. The crew made every attempt to duplicate not only the sets from the Star Wars movies but even the lighting and camera moves. The bigger the fan you are of the actual movies, the more you’ll appreciate the work on Robot Chicken.

The DVD contains the televised version of the special along with an extended version that has more than fifteen minutes of unseen footage. After that you have 90 minutes of bonus features, some of which are as funny as the show itself. You’ll get a behind the scenes look at how the figures and sets are made, listen in as the voice actors do their thing and ride along on a field trip to Skywalker Ranch for the premiere.

The best bonus feature is the footage of Seth Green acting out his vision of how the entire script will play out. Watch him for two minutes and you’ll truly appreciate his twisted genius.

Robot Chicken: Star Wars Episode II will be in stores this Tuesday, July 21.

Box Art: Amazon

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G4 will be airing an exclusive broadcast of the Lucasfilm panel. In addition, Attack of the Show hosts Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn will join Lucasfilm’s Steve Sansweet for an insider look at the Star Wars universe, with never-before-seen footage and a LIVE table read of an exclusive new Clone Wars script.

Lucasfilm will also use this years Comic-Con to launch their new Star Wars Stories Project. The project is designed to be an enormous archive of fan memories delivered as video testimonials. Fans at the convention will have a chance to record their stories at the Lucasfilm pavilion throughout the weekend. But if you can’t attend, you can upload your fan story at the new G4 Comic-Con website.

That’s 5 full hours of Comic-Con coverage on G4TV starting at 2:00 pm ET on July 25th.

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The series is hosted by Nar Williams, the Geek-in-Chief at AchieveNerdvana.com. He’s going to take you behind the scenes and give you a close up look at all how individual scenes were actually made. You’ll get to see the latest visual effects equipment and listen in on interviews with artists, stuntmen and directors on everything from Star Wars to Dexter.

In the first episode, Williams interviews Academy Award-winning special effects pioneer John Dykstra who invented the Dykstraflex – a motion control rig used to blow up the Death Star in “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.” Williams then gets up close, and maybe a little too personal, with the most used modern motion control system in the business today: Milo. Milo captures precise shots so that two or more scenes can be composited together to create one fluid moment, and is most famous for creating the “spidysense” scene in the first “Spider-Man” film.

Next, Williams moves on to Hydraulx, the company that created visual effects on movies such as “Terminator 3,” “X-Men 3” and “Aliens vs. Predator 2: Requiem,” for a crash course in how the latest visual effects and CGI are created. Finally, Williams stops at Doggicam Systems where Academy Award®-winner Gary Thieltges demonstrates an amazing inventory of camera mounts that have been used in movies such as “The Dark Knight.” There Williams slips on a body-mounted camera to experience firsthand a simulated chase.

Future episode topics include: a sneak peek into creating the miniatures used in “Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian;” demonstrating the camera crane technology that is used in “The Fast and the Furious” franchise; and even a lesson in crime scene reality simulation from Showtime’s popular TV series, “Dexter.”

Learn more by visiting the official series website where you’ll also find a list of the Top 10 FX Scenes ever created.

Science of the Movies premieres on Tuesday, May 26 on The Science Channel which is part of the Discovery Channel family of networks.

Photo courtesy of The Science Channel

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It’s also been ten years since the release of the original Star Wars fandom documentary, A Galaxy Far Far Away. Back in 1999, filmmaker Tariqu Jalil decided to take his camera along on an exploration of the Star Wars phenomena. He hung out with fans who camped for more than a month outside of Grauman’s Chinese Theater, captured the frenzy of the new action figure releases at Toys R Us and he profiled those that saw Star Wars as a way of life. He cut this all together with celebrity interviews and other madness to form an 80 minute pop culture documentary that was called “incredibly clever” by Fim Threat.

Me? I say, not so much.

On April 21, 2009, Cinevolve Studios released A Galaxy Far Far Away: 10th Anniversary Collector’s Edition and they sent me a copy for review. I’m sure they thought I’d praise it up one side and down, but sadly, I can’t. Working backwards here, I have to say, “collector’s edition?”

What you have here is the original documentary from the 90’s with a new package, and two additional commentaries by the filmmakers to go along with the old commentary, deleted scenes and new interviews. Seriously, fellas, you had that much to say that you needed three commentary tracks to do it? And when you take into concideration that this is a documentary — which by the very nature of the beast, IS a commentary on the subject matter being explored. . . it gives me a headache.

The bigger issue here is the documentary itself. It’s predictably a look at the freakiest of fans, the ones that can’t form an English sentence. The ones that think Luke Skywalker is the messiah, the ones that name their kids after the characters despite the fact that they’ll be teased unmercifully for the rest of their lives. I’m a fan, so I get it and I’m not denying that there are plenty of fannish people who need a reality check — but we’re not all like that. All I’m asking for is a little balance. I’m cool with the guys dressed as Stormtroopers, but where’s the guy who was so inspired by the movie he became an award-winning filmmaker.  How about those fans who put together a charity auction to help the bushfire victims in Austrailia? Or the talented Japanese artist whose work was influenced by Star Wars?

Mocking is easy, and we’ve seen it time and time again. But why is it that If a guy paints himself blue and sits in the bleachers with no shirt in 30 degree weather he’s a football fan! Whoohoo! But if a guy dresses up a Yoda and goes to a convention then he’s a reality-challenged freak.

Enough with the mocking already. Fandom rocks. This DVD, doesn’t.

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It’s these kinds of questions that keep Heroes’ star Milo Ventimiglia (seen here with a furry friend at the Fanboys premire) up at night and now he’s found an outlet! Milo and his team at DiVide Pictures are teaming up with Agility Studios to produce Ultradome, a tongue-in-cheek, short-format digital video series that taps into the comic book, video game, action-adventure, fantasy and science-fiction culture.

Each episode begins with two characters involved in a heated pop-culture debate (shades of The Big Bang Theory) when suddenly they’re transported to the Ultradome to battle it out with weapons and magics taken from the worlds they’ve been arguing about.

Lightsabers against Harry Potter’s wand? A phaser up against Wonder Woman’s golden lasso? Nothing is off limits inside the Ultradome – and creative and casting possibilities are endless, as Ventimiglia and Agility plan to use connections to sci-fi enthusiast actors, writers and directors to build a bevy of high-profile cameos and cinematic visual effects.

“My whole life has been spent engaged with friends in intellectual debate . like whether Kirk is tougher than Spock or if Middle Earth is a more difficult place to live than Tatooine. With Ultradome, we can bring these debates to the public and settle them in the most logical way possible: through armed combat,” said Ventimiglia. “We’re very excited to be working with Agility on this series and to tap into their expertise in digital programming.”

The Ultradome pilot episode, “Star Wars vs. Lord of the Rings,” is currently in post-production, and additional episodes are slated to follow.

Photo: PRPhotos

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We all know the power of fandom – this time we’re going to use it, not to save a TV show but to save lives.

Karen and dozens of other Star Wars fans have gathered together for a charity auction that’s sure to delight any fan of the films. Autographed photos, manuscripts, art prints and rare novels are all up for grabs. But my favorite item is the one Karen donated — a character named after you in her next Star Wars novel. How cool is that?  Get the details here or check out all of the items up for auction here.

Do something great for the less fortunate and bid, bid, bid. Let’s show them what fans can do when they put their mind to it.

For more information, visit the Star Wars Charity Auction Blog.

Book cover courtesy of Karen Miller

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