Wookiee? 'Star Wars' Sequel Casting Call Suggests Hairy Biped

So you want to be a Wookiee? This could be your lucky day! That is, if you're extremely tall, relatively thin, and have good posture.

British casting service Spotlight has reportedly put out feelers for actors who fit the body type of Chewbacca. The film is unnamed in the call, but we're all but certain it's for "Star Wars: Episode VII" as the production date is listed as "early 2014" and the producers named include Lucasfilm co-chair Kathleen Kennedy and "Episode VII" writer-director J.J. Abrams.

Not a lot of actors will meet the physical requirements for role: "Male, 7 ft. to 7.3 ft. tall with a slim/thin build and upright posture. Not too worked out or too 'thick set' especially in the shoulders. Broad facial features would be a bonus."

That's in the range of the height of Peter Mayhew, who played everyone's favorite Wookiee in the previous "Star Wars" films. The Chewbacca actor stands 7 feet, 2 inches tall. Mayhew is now 69 years old and has been having health problems that make it difficult for him to walk, so if Chewie is coming back, they'll need someone new to fill the suit....
http://movies.yahoo.com/blogs/movie-talk/wookiee-star-wars-episode-vii-casting-c...

Getting rid of the human police and using robots could be a good thing

Quote:


http://gizmodo.com/new-robocop-trailer-a-badass-robot-cop-built-to-save-t-146014...

Robot Olympics: Japan's Schaft Takes Lead in 2-Day Competition
HOMESTEAD, Fla. — After one full day of competition, a two-legged, 209-pound (95 kilograms) blue robot sits atop the leaderboard here at the DARPA Robotics Challenge Trials.

The world-class robotics competition features 17 teams from five different countries attempting to demonstrate some of the most advanced disaster-response capabilities in the field of robotics. DARPA, the agency within the U.S. Department of Defense responsible for developing new technologies for the military, designed the contest as a way to foster the development of new robots that could one day work with humans to secure disaster sites in the aftermath of a natural or man-made catastrophe.

The two-day event is being held at the Homestead Miami Speedway. The scored competition is based on the teams' performance in eight challenging tasksthat test the robots' mobility, perception, strength and dexterity. [WATCH LIVE: DARPA Robotics Challenge]

http://news.yahoo.com/robot-olympics-japan-39-schaft-takes-lead-2-135331699.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — NASA is plotting a daring robotic mission to Jupiter's watery moon Europa, a place where astronomers speculate there might be some form of life.
...Robinson said the high radiation environment around Jupiter and distance from Earth would be a challenge. When NASA sent Galileo to Jupiter in 1989, it took the spacecraft six years to get to the fifth planet from the sun.

Last year, scientists discovered liquid plumes of water shooting up through Europa's ice. Flying through those watery jets could make Europa cheaper to explore than just circling it or landing on the ice, said NASA Europa scientist Robert Pappalardo....

NASA will look at many competing ideas for a Europa mission, so the agency doesn't know how big or how much it will cost, Robinson said. She said a major mission goal would be searching for life in the strange liquid water under the ice-covered surface.

In January of this year, an expectant father named Stephen started the website NameMyDaughter.com, where anyone on the Internet could suggest and vote on potential names for Stephen’s forthcoming baby girl.
Well, as noted by the folks at Betabeat, Stephen’s wife gave birth on April 7. And the winning name is — drumroll, please! — Amelia Savannah Joy McLaughlin.
Kind of sweet, right? Or, sweeter than you might have expected from the feces-hurling cesspool that is the Internet?

Unfortunately for those looking to have their faith in humanity restored, “Amelia Savannah Joy” did not technically win the vote. The real first-place name was “Cthulhu All-Spark.” (“Cthulhu” won the vote for first name, and “All-Spark” won the vote for middle name.)
The parents, who live in British Columbia, Canada, rejected that one in favor of the second-place name, Amelia. Though they did have a good sense of humor about the results...Let’s all just be thankful that Stephen and Kathryn chose responsible parenting over contest integrity. Congratulations to the new parents, and also to the newborn, for not being named “Chalupa Batman.”

An interesting list, the guy's not afraid to put on some action films like Matrix & The Terminator.
I've always preferred Deep Impact to Armageddon because it seemed more like a good drama about the event rather than having the event an excuse for an action hero to go save us.

Watchmen's reputation continues to grow now that we've had Avengers and know what Watchmen was a more serious version of.

Biggest surprise is daring to put Contact and The Island on his list.