We’ve received the new plot summary for the newly-titled Fast and Furious, the Justin Lin-directed sequel starring Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Jordana Brewster, John Ortiz, Laz Alonso, Shea Whigham and Tego Calderon:

Vin Diesel and Paul Walker reteam for the ultimate chapter of the franchise built on speed — “Fast and Furious.” Heading back to the streets where it all began, they rejoin Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster to blast muscle, tuner and exotic cars across Los Angeles and floor through the Mexican desert in the new high-octane action-thriller.

When a crime brings them back to L.A., fugitive ex-con Dom Toretto (Diesel) reignites his feud with agent Brian O’Conner (Walker). But as they are forced to confront a shared enemy, Dom and Brian must give in to an uncertain new trust if they hope to outmanuever him. And from convoy heists to precision tunnel crawls across international lines, two men will find the best way to get revenge: push the limits of what’s possible behind the wheel.

Fast and Furious is scheduled for a June 5, 2009 release.

Confirmation has come, first from Eonline’s Kristin Dos Santos, and now also from TV Guide’s Michael Ausiello, on the news Ausiello had earlier this week that ABC was considering adding an extra hour to Lost this season, bringing its Season 4 total to fourteen hours. Of course fans will remember that the original plan was for a sixteen episode season, which got dropped to thirteen episodes thanks to the writers’ strike.

Ausiello says Lost executive producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse really pushed for that extra hour, feeling it was necessary to complete the story they intended for the season. Ausiello quotes Cuse, who says, “We are very excited and grateful to [ABC president] Steve McPherson for working out the scheduling difficulties to allow us to make the second part of our finale two hours. Damon and I were working on the script and we just couldn’t get it all done in one hour without shortchanging the story. Now the finale will have all the sweep and emotional completeness we wanted it to have — along with, of course, answering who’s in the coffin.”
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Last August it was revealed that Rose McGowan was set to star in Robert Rodriguez’s Barbarella remake at Universal Pictures. But then rumors began over budget issues and that the studio didn’t want McGowan in the role.

Wrong, she tells MTV. “[The news that I was out] was really irritating because I know all the people over there and obviously it wasn’t true. It was very malicious and there was no proof. Oftentimes these things have basis in truth but this didn’t. I have contracts to prove it.”

She added that half of the sets have been built and the costumes are done. She’s “even got my spaceships. I’ve got part of a spaceship built for me!”

The hold up at the moment? The possible Screen Actors Guild strike in June.

April 8, 2008 - Actress Jewel Staite, who played Kaylee on the fan-favorite TV show Firefly, recently made an appearance in Melbourne at the 2008 Supernova Pop Culture Expo in which she announced an upcoming re-release of Firefly to DVD.

“I just heard that they’re re-releasing…a special edition of Firefly in a box set,” Staite stated. “They actually asked me if I was able to come down to L.A. and do a commentary in the spring.”

Fox Home Video has confirmed that the new release will drop in both standard-definition and Blu-ray formats. Specific details such as bonus materials and a relase window are still unavailable.

April 7, 2008 - At the recent Paley Festival X-Files reunion/tribute, I had the chance to speak one on one with both Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz about the upcoming new X-Files sequel. Carter, who wrote and directed the upcoming film, said that reuniting to make the film “was strange, but it was actually as natural as can be.” Co-writer Spotnitz added, “It’s amazing. I’ve just come off filming the movie for the last three months. To revisit characters who were gone is such a unique opportunity in Hollywood – to have a chance to come back to people like this.”

It’s known that the film is a stand-alone story, not tying into the overreaching mythology stories the series also did. Carter explained that with the new film “We knew we wanted to do something that wasn’t a mythology episode. We’d kind of wrapped up the mythology, to a large extent, in the series. So I think, especially coming back a number of years later, the best thing to do would be to reintroduce The X-Files to its core audience, but also maybe introduce it to a lot of people who haven’t had a chance to see it before, who were maybe too young to see it before. I talk to college kids now who were too young fifteen years ago [when the series began], and if you’re 22 years old and in college, you were just a kid. So I think there are lots of kids who didn’t see it. ”
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