“Words like ‘realism’ and ‘dark’ and ‘gritty’ get bandied about Hollywood as if the only merit a story can have is in its verisimilitude, but that’s a lie,” the former Action Comics and Adventures of Superman writer said.

“Emotional honesty transcends reality - it’s what allows disbelief to be suspended, and yet what makes a story stay true. When Superman: The Movie was released, Richard Donner promised us we’d believe a man could fly. We did, but it wasn’t the wire-work alone.

He makes good points. I’m taking a wait and see approach though.

I am happy to announce that Instacast for Mac is available for download as a free beta version. We’ve been working very hard for the last 4 months to bring everything that you love from Instacast on iOS to the Mac. While it resembles a lot of similarities to the iPhone and iPad app, Instacast for Mac is not merely a port of the iOS app, it is a true OS X app in every possible way.

Everything’s there: subscriptions, show notes, playback and playlists, but also a lot of stuff that you can only get on the Mac: True Background Processing, Flattr, Search and an Up Next Playlist to only…

I just want to remind you that we will not have the live broadcast of The MovieByte Podcast tonight as we normally do. We will instead be broadcast tomorrow (Thursday, May 2), live at 3:30 PM Central Time, and we will be joined by special guest Dan Benjamin to talk up Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. To find out more about that, see my announcement article from last Friday.

I’m really excited about this episode of the podcast and I can’t wait to talk to Dan about this film. Actually, I just can’t wait to talk about this film anyway so be sure to tune in tomorrow!

I do have a couple more Star Trek clips that I didn’t just want to lump all together in the one article I posted earlier. I wanted to spread it out a little bit so here are the other two.

In the first clip, Kirk and Spock meet Carol… Wallace? Maybe this has something to do with her British accent as well? Maybe in this timeline with the way things have unfolded, Admiral Marcus and Carol’s mother divorced and she goes by her mother’s last name? And they moved to the U.K.

Who knows, we’ll find out.

And in the following clip, Simon Pegg talks about playing Scotty. They have definitely…

I still remain skeptical that this is going to be anything other than a giant robot smash ‘em, crash ‘em action fest with no real plot. Indeed, this plot seems pretty generic.

I don’t mind familiar plots if the story deserves to be told, I have not been convinced about this story.

But, with this trailer, originally released at WonderCon, we do get to see a peek into the film for a bit more detail about the plot, about the people, and yes, we get to hear GLaDOS as the computer voice again, which, as you might expect, is ominous.

Like I said thought, I’m going into this film ready for…

It’s pilot screening time. CBS just started viewing its pilots, with the other networks slated to follow over the next few days. Feedback from the screenings and extensive focus group testing inform the networks’ series pickup decisions and are capable of catapulting a pilot from an also-run to frontrunner status overnight…

...

It’s tight because two slots have already been penciled in forMarvel‘s S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Once Upon A Time spinoff, whose early footage I hear ABC brass liked.

So that’s a good sign.

One thing is for sure though, in looking over that list of shows and…

Wait, wait, wait, is this becoming a Star Trek site or something?

Well no, but it’s certainly hard for me not to talk about it since I love Trek so much. Also, the response from you, my readers, has been really great with Star Trek. So you guys are just throwing gasoline on the fire here.

I’ve got a couple of new goodies. First is a look at Uhura. You might remember that last week “John Harrison” sent out two messages like this, one about Captain Kirk, and the other about Spock. This week it’s Uhura. Take a look.

This video is fun and all, but there’s one really awesome thing that…

“THIS IS CETI ALPHA FIVE!”

No, actually, this is not Ceti Alpha Five. But it is one of those reviews that I am really nervous to write. Why? you might ask. The answer is that this would be my second favorite film of all time. You might remember when I wrote my review of The Matrix that it was my favorite film of all time. Well this is the second film on that list.

It is true that I love pretty much all things that have to do with Star Trek, but I am not blind, nor do I place this film in second place of my favorite films list lightly. And indeed, as much as I love Star Trek, I think if…

Marvel: Phase Two hasn’t even started to hit theaters, but sometimes you just want to rush to desert.  While walking the red carpet at the Iron Man 3 premiere, writer-director Joss Whedon was asked a couple questions regarding The Avengers 2.  First up, since it sounds like Robert Downey Jr. is considering retirement from the Marvel Universe, some may be wondering if we’ll see Iron Man flying around in Whedon’s film.  Whedon responded, “I am not the guy who has to worry about him being replaced. He is Iron Man at this point. When I heard that he was cast I knew that something had just…