I’m truly sorry I wasn’t able to make the Clone Wars panel at Comic-Con this year. It’s the first time I’ve missed it since the show has been on the air. Sadly, the panel conflicted with my daughter’s birthday and I had to make a choice. I made the right one, but that doesn’t mean I liked missing The Clone Wars panel.

Plenty of footage was shown and we have it here for you now and it’s a doozy.

Here’s the first clip:

Really. How bad have things gotten with the Darth Maul situation that Darth Sidious, the Phantom Menace himself, is showing up in person?

That’s just insane.

Here’s the next clip of Maul and Savage getting even more out of hand, but to what end?

Season 5 will premiere at Star Wars Celebration VI next month. No word when it’s going to be shown on Cartoon Network, but I can’t imagine it’ll be much longer after that. Until then, we’ll simply be left being teased.

We have a look at The Clone Wars Season 4 on DVD. It comes out October 23, 2012 and you can preorder it on Amazon now.

First is the DVD/Blu-ray trailer:

Next is a behind the scenes look at what what went into a scene from the Pong Krell arc:

And finally, we have a Darth Maul walk around, to really give you an idea of what his model looks like.

Like I said, it comes out October 23, 2012 and you can preorder it on Amazon now. In the months leading to its release, we’ll be revisiting my favorite episodes on the site, so be sure to keep checking back.

Aaah, third quarter. Welcome to the doldrums. It’s the high season for movies, and the dead season for games. There are a few notables hitting retail shelves this season, but you should really be watching the downloadable space on your consoles and handhelds. Those quick snack downloadable games tend to carry the quality through the heat. That’s all going to start with Quantum Conundrum on July 10th, one week before Microsoft’s official kick-off to the Summer of Arcade with Tony Hawk’s HD makeover. As for what I’ve got listed to watch in retail, the same rules apply as usual. Details are as accurate as I can validate at the time of publication. Everything is subject to change and I am allowed to be wrong occasionally. Just for fun, and to keep up spirits during the slow months, I’ll recommend a good drink (for responsible gamers of legal age in their respective countries) to pair with a particular title.

July 10th
NCAA Football 13

Arguably the better of the two major football titles since EA monopolized the sport, the college game tends to have a little more depth than its NFL cousin. This year sees introduction of the new Heisman Mode. GameStop’s preorder bonus is a 3-player Heisman Challenge for that new mode. Amazon’s bonus is the Nike Pro Combat pack, featuring premium uniforms for Army, Universtity of Georgia, Oklahoma State, Oregon, and Michigan State. Best Buy is giving you the Five Star Quarterback DLC. None of those are special enough to make up for Amazon offering the game for $45 right now.Recommended beverage: This is football. Don’t get complicated. Cheap American Lager, your favorite brand.

July 31st
Kingdom Hearts 3D Dream Drop Distance

If you love Disney and Final Fantasy you’ve certainly played one of these games over the years. I quite enjoyed the second one, then got really bored really fast with one of them for PSP. I would say I like both franchises, but don’t love either one, so I’m hardly the target audience. Don’t read too much into this, but I think this series will be most “at home” on a Nintendo platform, and the handheld space just seems ideal. As for preordering, it appears to not be store-dependent. Any preorder should get you the Dream Eaters AR cards. The three AR cards unlock a 360 degree viewing platform for the Dream Eaters, R&R Seal, and one of three random characters (Sudo Neku, Meowjesty, or Ursa Circus).
Recommended Beverage: Sorry, I know plenty of adults are buying, but I just can’t bring myself to recommend alcohol with this one. But it’s the height summer, grab a Slurpee in your favorite flavor.

August 14th
Darksiders II

Another one I can’t say I’m excited to play, but will be very popular. I know I’m in the minority, but the first game just bored me. Which I don’t get because it seemed to have everything going for it that I would be sure to like. It was probably just a victim to being played at a time when I wasn’t in the right mood for it. Regardless, this one has you playing as Death instead of War and looks to be just as amazing as I expected the first one to be. Though all preorders will get the “Argul’s Tomb” expansion, other bonuses do vary. GameStop’s “Death Rides” pack provides several exclusive sidequests, allowing further exploration of the Maker’s Realm and Dead Plains. If you’d rather soup up your apocalyptic mount, Amazon has the “Deadly Despair” pack, providing a permanent speed boost for Despair, Death’s pale horse. Best Buy will net you a prequel comic and the “Angel of Death” pack – including new armor, a pair of deadlier scythes, and a new colored trail for your crow (really???).
Recommended Beverage: Possibilities are endless for this one. Something biblical like wine would work. But for my money (and palate), there’s nothing like a good scotch for facing down the end of the world. No need to be snobby about it, rocks or even a little water is okay, but make sure it’s a decent scotch. You really don’t want to face the Apocalypse drinking Johnnie Walker Red.

August 28th
Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

Yes, this is the same week as Madden, but I’ve already done one football game. And this is Big Shiny Robot! Of course I’m going to recommend the game that has two factions of giant robots battling to escape the planet their war has destroyed. If you’re a fan of the classic Transformers, you’ll want to order your copy from GameStop. They’re including the G1 Retro pack with classic Optimus Prime (robot and vehicle form), Megatron gun, and Shockwave cannon. If you’d rather have the merged Combaticon form of Bruticus (G2), get yours from Amazon.
Recommended Beverage: Yes, there is a drink called Motor Oil, and yes the it’s most appropriate one for this game. Prepare to feel like you’ve been punched by a giant robot. Start with one once of Jagermeister in a triple shot glass (or use the similar but much better Underground from Ogden, UT). In order, add 1/2 ounce each of peppermint schnapp’s, cinnamon schnapp’s, and coconut rum. If you’d prefer it as a cocktail, mix it up in a rocks glass with ice and garnish with mint leaves.
For the more adventurous and disturbed, how about a transforming shot, the Cement Mixer? Take a shot of Irish cream but don’t swallow it. Add a shot of lime juice and swish the mixture up like mouthwash. Hope you like milk flavored gelatin.

September 18th
Borderlands 2

Something about this quarter, it’s just filled with franchises I know I should like, but just didn’t interest me. I know Wrath-o-Tron is about to malfunction over his excitement for this one. Only GameStop seems to have a preorder exclusive, the “Creature Slaughter Dome.” In the dome you’ll face off against the toughest monsters in Pandora. It will be difficult, but the rewards are worth it. Even if you don’t care for that bonus, you’ll still want to preorder a copy from somewhere to get access to the Premiere Club. Club membership gets you a pack of gold guns to begin your Pandora journey, the Golden Key in the Sanctuary Loot Chest, the Vault Hunter’s Relic, and free access to the Mechromancer class when it’s released.
Recommended Beverage: I actually had this one planned for Far Cry 3 but it’s delay to November 30th killed it. I really wanted to include this drink and I didn’t have a good one for Borderlands 2. Which means you get my weird adaptive logic to make it fit. Specifically that 151 is deadly and can be used as flamethrower, which I’m not even sure are in the game but should be. Also, it’s an island drink. Pandora isn’t really tropical but it is remote like an island. It’ll all also knock you on your ass, something I imagine would always be the goal when drinking on Pandora. So, the Caribbean Breeze: one ounce of 151 proof rum, 1/2 ounce of coconut rum, five ounces each of pineapple and cranberry juice. Fill a Collins with ice, add all ingredients, and stir. Garnishing with fruit is optional but recommended, especially cherry bombs (Everclear-soaked cherries) or loaded watermelon cubes.

September 25th
Family Guy: Back to the Multiverse

The show really isn’t for everyone, but you can’t deny it’s popularity. I’m not even sure what to expect of the game but I simply have to give it a try. Details are still a little scarce since it’s so far away, but it seems to be spinning off from the “Road to the Multiverse” episode of the cartoon. You’ll be playing as Stewie and/or Brian. Competitive and co-op multiplayer are included. Again, this is pretty far off, so preorder bonuses aren’t showing up anywhere. I’d expect to see something announced, even if it’s just a downloadable episode of the show, sometime in mid-August.
Recommended Beverage: Hmmm, breast milk for Stewie? No, that’s gross. Toilet water for Brian? Slightly more gross. Beer for Peter? Maybe, but we already did that. Something multiverse related? Yes, something to make you see double. Like a Boilermaker. It’s simple but effective. The traditional version is often called a Depth Charge. Drop a shot of rye whiskey into half a pint of pale ale and knock it back. Vary your whiskey for preference. Variations include the Car Bomb (Irish whiskey with a float of Irish cream dropped into a Guinness) or the Loaded Cerveza (a shot of tequila into a full bottle of Mexican lager, like Corona or Dos Equis, and drank slowly).

Some honorable mentions that I skipped this quarter for various reasons but you’ll probably want to play:

July 31st – Risen 2: Dark Waters Special Edition
August 14th – Sleeping Dogs
August 19th – New Super Mario Bros. 2
August 28th – Journey Collector’s Edition
September 11th – Tekken Tag Tournament 2

All of these are really just keep you entertained until October, of course. That’s when the gaming market really picks up again. You can look forward to Just Dance 4 (which fits our drinking theme nicely as no adult has ever played the franchise while sober), LEGO Lord of the Rings, and Assassin’s Creed III, among others.

I’ll be honest, I was getting a little tired of watching the trailer to Brave on every other movie I saw. Sure, it looked good, it was funny (the first few times), and looked as though it would make a pretty good Pixar movie. But the repetition with which I was forced to endure it made me feel like Brave could probably be in the very narrow category of Pixar movies that elicited a shrug and a “It was okay,” instead of the love I have for the rest of their films.

After seeing Brave, I can safely say that it fits into the category of non-Cars Pixar movies.

Brave is a beautifully told tale of a Scottish princess and her desire to live her own life instead of marrying a son of one of three rival clan leaders. She’s more adept at the manly arts of combat than any of them and greatly enjoys her freedom.

Her mother is loving, but very old-fashioned and proper, and so it is her mind that needs to be changed so that her daughter can live life on her own terms.

The young princess, Merida, played by Kelly Macdonald, seeks out a way to change her mother’s mind and finds a witch that will do it with a spell. Thus the stage is set for a thrilling race to set things right, filled with action, adventure, suspense, and comedy.

It does an excellent job of exploring the different perspectives of a mother and a daughter on the same issue in a way I think will be insightful to young and old alike.

There really wasn’t anything about this movie I didn’t like. I found the script to be extremely tight, the voice acting to be top notch, the animation was stunning, and the movie was just fun. I had lots of fun watching it.

The scene-stealers, though, are easily Merida’s little brothers. Their presence brightens every scene they’re in, adding an extra element of hilarity.

I saw the film with my kids, and it’s important to note that they were howling with laughter through the entire picture, then appropriately wound up and ready to cry at the right moments as well. My son is 10 and on the edge of perhaps being too jaded to enjoy a movie like this, but he was invested the whole way through.

Comparisons could be made to other Disney films, sure, it certainly has lots of DNA from other Disney films in it, but the setting and the characters set it apart as its own.

If you’ve written it off because of the ubiquity of the trailer, you should give it a shot. I really liked it, and am certainly planning on going again.

ALSO: The opening short is very charming and well photographed, but don’t expected the breathless whimsy and comedy of some of the other shorts attached to Disney or Pixar films.

Futurama hits the airwaves again tonight with two all new episodes that I couldn’t be happier with. This has consistently been the funniest show on the air since it started and now that we’re getting into Season 7, though it’s taken us much longer to get here than it should have, the writers have completely hit their stride and every episode delivers the sort of belly laughs I used to expect out of The Simpsons. But this show has always been much smarter and edgier than The Simpsons and the season 7 premiere bears that out.

The first episode of the premiere, The Bots and the Bees, sees Bender knocking up a Beverage Dispenser named Bev (played to hilarious perfection by Wanda Sykes). She bears the child and disappears, leaving Bender to raise the small bot on his own. The episode touches on problems with the lack of sex-ed in schools, custody disputes, deadbeat parents, and is packed front to back with laughs. Episodes starring Bender are usually my favorite and this one certainly didn’t suck.

It also includes a brilliant retelling of the Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer story.

The second episode, A Farewell to Arms, is a play on the Mayan calendar fiasco, and the Earth is scheduled for destruction in the year 3012. They’re working to evacuate Earth on an ancient Martian spaceship (never mind the fact that everyone has their own ships and could leave at their leisure anyway). Insert Zapp Brannigan into the equation and you’ve got the makings for an episode that had me holding my sides from laughing too much.

The moral of the story here? If you love Futurama, these episodes aren’t going to disappoint you in any way. If the episodes remain this consistently good and they cancel this show again, I might need to do something horribly inappropriate in a blustering, Zapp Brannigan sort of way…

Both episodes air on Comedy Central tonight at 10pm. (Though I’d check your local listings for actual times…In Utah, 10pm everywhere else means midnight for us.)

If you need to catch up on Futurama, the first 6 seasons are on Netflix Instant, or you can snag them all on Amazon.

This month, we discuss the finer points of why Mr. Sinister should be in the next X Men film, how The Avengers changed our lives forever, the return of Toonami, and the terror that is zombies eating faces. On “Ask the Girlcast,” we cover some of the places you can meet geeky girls and how to strike up a suitably awesome conversation.

Listen here or Download from our Big Shiny Robot iTunes feed. Don’t forget to check out our Facebook Page and follow our geeky musings on Twitter: @BSRGirlcast

On this month’s podcast:

Darcy – The Geekiest Girls You Know

Jessie – Miss Mecha – Big Shiny Robot

Kelly – Scarlett Robotica – Big Shiny Robot

It’s getting closer and closer to the premiere of The Clone Wars’ new season and I couldn’t be more excited.

This trailer gives us a long look at the Civil War brewing on Mandalore and I get the idea they’re only showing us one arc in this trailer, two tops, meaning there will be all kinds of surprises left when the season starts.

Filoni has been talking about Mandalore as a powder keg for a long time, just like Europe prior to World War I. I’m delighted to see that story finally play out.

And the fact that there are Falleen in the trailer… That makes me happy.

This movie looks much better than I would have expected. And the fact that they got licensed characters from Pac-Man, Street Fighter II, and Nintendo make me very happy…

Seriously… That stuff with Zangief almost tore me to pieces with laughter.

And it stars John C. Reilly, making it almost impossible to go wrong.

This movie hits theatres in November.

It’s time! Toonami returns tonight at midnight on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. I’m here to share tonight’s schedule, and you can be sure I’ll be tuning in tonight!

12:00 AM – Bleach – Long running and varied in style and story – this show brings a little something for everybody.

12:30 – Deadman Wonderland – A post-earthquake Japan meets sci-fi and fantasy in this gritty thriller about a boy named Ganta.

https://youtu.be/ICyghQBiog4

1:00 – Casshern Sins – A reebot of the classic series Casshern – this story mashes up cybernetics, robot wars, and a world where humanity faces the very serious possibility for extinction.

https://youtu.be/Pe5pfGcxUaw

1:30 – Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood – If you loved Fullmetal Alchemist you’ll love Brotherhood even more. This new series more closely follows the story of the manga and brings a lot of valuable depth to the characters we know and love like Edward and Alphonse Elric.

https://youtu.be/FaazgkzFg7k

2:00 – Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex – Another classic series that aired on Toonami many years ago, Stand Alone Complex follows a group known as the Section 9 mobile police force as they attempt to track down the infamous terrorist “The Laughing Man.”

https://youtu.be/yz59RhWk-nA

2:30 – Cowboy Bebop – If  you haven’t watched Cowboy Beebop this is a must-see as it is one of the greatest anime series of all time.

I’m very excited for this. Manchester Black was one of my favorite Superman characters back when I was reading his titles regularly.

From the press release:

In SUPERMAN VS. THE ELITE, Superman’s effectiveness as a super hero comes into question when a new group of super powerful crusaders, known as “The Elite,” appear on the scene. As super heroes, the Elite know no bounds, and are more than willing to kill, even on a massive scale, to stop villainy — putting them on a collision course with the ever-ethical, yet preferably non-lethal Man of Steel.

The all-new, PG-13 rated film is scripted by award-winning comics writer Joe Kelly and the story is adapted from his original 2001 DC Comics release, “What’s So Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way?” The single-issue comic, Action Comics #775, was lauded by Wizard Magazine as the “Greatest Superman Story of All Time,” and ranked the epic tale at No. 21 on its list of the “Top 100 Comics of the last 30 years.”

George Newbern (Father of the Bride) reprises his Justice League animated television role as Superman, and primetime television star Pauley Perrette (NCIS) provides the voice of Lois Lane. Downes steps in as Manchester Black, leader of The Elite. David Kaufman (Justice League: Doom) also reprises his Justice League TV series role as Jimmy Olsen.

The film is directed by Michael Chang (Batman: Brave and the Bold).

Bruce Timm (Batman: Year One) is executive producer, and Alan Burnett (Green Lantern: Emerald Knights) is producer.

You can preorder it on Amazon now.