Once upon a time, in a land far away, director Sam Raimi decided he wanted Tony Sta—sorry, Robert Downey Jr. (easy mistake to make) to play the lead in Oz the Great and Powerful. It didn’t work out, of course. Negotiations fell apart and the role eventually went to James Franco.

But why? There’s a very scandalous reason. Wait for it…

Wait for it…

Stu Zicherman is on the interview circuit for his new movie A.C.O.D., and in a recent interview Badass Digest took the opportunity to ask about his experience writing the 2005 flop and all-around awful movie Elektra. Because apparently they like rubbing salt into wounds over at Badass Digest.

Want to hear an awesome female roboticist talk very frankly about how to improve robots? Wearing a tophat? I mean, so do we, although we didn’t quite have time to watch the whole video. We do know, however, that it contains a valid argument for why robots hate looking in mirrors and should always wear sunglasses, just like Lt. Horatio Caine.

(NSFW for language, throw on some headphones.)

(via Boing Boing.)

Every now and then you hear an amazing story of a surgeon who went the extra mile to get to the operating room in time for a needy patient, like packing their whole family into the car on very little notice so that they could use the carpool lane. Last week, a tanker truck full of isobutane fuel gas was rear-ended and sprung a leak near Baton Rouge and the ensuing efforts to drain the gas to a new tanker, and to keep drivers safe from the very possible explosion and fire, gridlocked traffic around the closed road and surrounding area. Breast cancer surgeon Catherine Baucom was one of those stuck in the jam, on her way to the operating room, but so far as we know, she was the only person to find a solution to the slow down so close to our interests.

Well, isn’t this 50 shades of awesome*. For the moment it appears as if The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia has displaced the fanfic erotica juggernaut 50 Shades of Grey as number one on Amazon’s bestseller list.

In a hearing in Centennial, Colorado yesterday morning, friends and family of victims as well as survivors of the Aurora shooting gathered to be present as James Holmes was charged with twenty-four counts of murder (one count of “murder” and one count of “murder in extreme indifference” for each of the twelve victims) and one-hundred-sixteen counts of attempted murder for the fifty-eight other people in the theater that night. The Hollywood Reporter talked to Don Lader, who said that the Batman shirts worn by some of the survivors were at least in part a sign that Holmes’ actions did not have power over them. Lader has gone back to watch The Dark Knight Rises twice, once with his wife, who was also in the Aurora theater, and once with the son of another survivor who the Laders have befriended since their ordeal.

There’s something in what Lader said, about the rumors that Holmes was interested in the Joker (still too unsubstantiated for me, but interesting insofar as it’s clear that a lot of people really want the connection to be there, whether it’s because they’d like to blame comics or movies, or just because they’d like a simple, knowable answer to the question “why would someone do this?”), and about the resolution to still act as a, well, a fan of Batman normally would, that reminded me of something that comic writer Gail Simone said recently on her Tumblr, after finding out that some of the fans she’d connected with at a con were at the theater in Aurora, and that one of their friends died saving the life of another.

I like to think I get a healthy refund from the IRS (one of the few financial benefits of exiting college more than four figures in debt), and am pretty excited about receiving it every year, but Virginia Hopkins got quite a bit more than she expected.

The check she picked up on Tuesday was made out for the sum of $434,712.

The Doubleclicks offer us an important lesson for con season: sometimes people aren’t quite as cool in real life as they are online.

Except for the editors of The Mary Sue. We are 100% awesome throughout the universe and all time.

…trust me.

Well, that’s just super disappointing. Remember that story we brought you on Friday about Mars Attacks! coming to Broadway, and how maybe — just maybe — this might not be a bad thing? Guess what? It was a prank. An early April Fool’s Day joke that we didn’t find out was a joke until we had all (or just some) gotten our acky little hopes up. How do we know it was a joke? Because the companies that “announced” the musical on Friday, IDW and Topps, provided the graphic above themselves. Thanks, guys. An April Fool’s Day joke that was not issued on April Fool’s Day, but two days before it. That’s not how that works. After the jump, a much better April Fool’s Day joke that arrived on time and has unicorns in it.

Ok look. We like HBO’s Game of Thrones. Scratch that. We love HBO’s Game of Thrones. We pretty much drool over whatever little bread crumbs they happen to throw us for the new season but this latest production video just made us laugh. It’s a good watch but it’s basically the cast and crew telling us how awesome Game of Thrones is and how you can expect everything to be even more awesome this season. Did we mention Season 2 is going to be awesome? Awesome. (For the record: corsets? Not awesome.)

(via Topless Robot)

Previously in Game of Thrones