Yeah, I'm geeked!

George Takei, Sulu from the original 'Star Trek' series made the following announcement on Facebook today:

Friends, I'm thrilled to share this news with you today. As announced at Emerald City Comicon, where I'm appearing this weekend, Paramount Pictures has green-lit a new Star Trek Movie entitled "Excelsior" in which I will play the captain. This announcement is part of Paramount Studio's 100th-year anniversary campaign. The studio has acknowledged the fan enthusiasm for this concept ever since I appeared in command of the vessel in "The Undiscovered Country." J.J. Abrams will direct, with Robert Orci again writing the screenplay.

My co-star in Allegiance, Paulo Montalban, has been cast opposite me to play the mercurial "Agha," the grandson of Khan (played by Ricardo Montalban in the Second Star Trek Movie). Also featured are Gilbert Gottfried (playing a wily Ferengi First Officer) and Lisa Lampanelli (as a Bajoran security officer).

More to come on this breaking story soon. Thanks again for the years of support, and I'll see you on the Bridge of "Excelsior."

The original Star Trek series only ran three years, but developed its cult following after it was syndicated in 1969.

It was 1985 when Rankin/Bass Productions premiered their animated action series ThunderCats as part of the syndicated after school animation block that aired on most Tribune stations across the country. Every day, kids were glued to the set to watch Lion-O and his band of feline-humanoid warriors fight to create a new home on Third Earth and keep the evil mutants and their nemesis Mum-Ra at bay. Now 26 years later, Cartoon Network is giving the beloved series a reboot, complete with a new look, new characters and a new story. The new ThunderCats premieres Friday, July 29 at 8:00 p.m. on Cartoon Network.

In the original series, the Thundercats were a band of nobles: Panthro, Tygra, Cheetara, and WilyKit and WilyKat - assigned to protect a then cub Lion-O and the Sword of Omens as they escape the destruction of their home world, Thundera. Fleeing the Mutants invasion, Jaga, Lion-O's mentor, navigated their ship to a new planet, Third Earth while the others were placed in suspended animation to survive the long journey. The ship crash lands on Third Earth and upon awakening, they learn Lion-O's suspension capsule was damaged and he's grown to an adult. This sets up the premise of the various trials and moral lessons Lion-O learns along the way as the Thundercats set up their new home on the planet. During the '80's, the FCC required children's programming to be informational or have an educational component per episode. For the ThunderCats series, this involved a 30-second, moral recap at the end of each episode.

Those days are long gone and today's looser regulations for children's programming affords Cartoon Network to add new depth to the Thundercat mythos.

Around lunch time in downtown Atlanta yesterday, you may have caught a group of people wearing sad face mask and toting apocalyptic signs that read, “Death Ends” at some point or the other. It was part of Starz big push to promote their latest sci-fi series Torchwood: Miracle Day that premieres tonight at 10pm.

Miracle Day, as fans now call it takes place just a couple of years after the Children of Men debacle that spelled the untimely end of the Torchwood team and separated its two surviving members Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) and Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) to parts unknown. Until now that is.

In the show’s pilot: A New World, people are starting to come to a shocking reality — no one is dying. No matter the circumstance or severity of injury, no lives are lost. The word spreads and the media dubs the incident Miracle Day. In Kentucky, Oswald Danes (Bill Pullman), a hated pedophile and child killer is about to undergo execution by lethal injection. When the deadly dose of poison doesn’t do the job, people are stunned. The CIA investigates and a nervous analyst, Esther Drummond (Alexa Havins) uncovers a single word in her fact finding — Torchwood. Esther’s senior field agent it Rex Matheson (Mekhi Phifer), a rough-and-tumbled jock vying for a promotion who could care less about the incidents occurring, until what should have been a fatal accident pulls him into an unwilling pawn in the events unfolding around him.

The jury is still out on whether or not Kate Levering's character, attorney Kim Kaswell is the queen of mean on Lifetime's dramedy Drop Dead Diva. On the show, the sultry, smart and ambitious Kaswell pits her venom towards her in-office nemesis, rival attorney Jane Bingum (Brooke Elliott) who unbeknownst to everyone is really Deb, a bubbly L.A. model who was killed in a car accident and wakes up in Bingum's body. Sandwiched between the office politics and her stony approach to practicing law, Levering's Kaswell character slowly sheds her armor-clad, cold persona and glimpses of her true self to seep out weekly.

Kim Kaswell is just the latest character in the Levering's arsenal. Levering, a veteran of stage and the small screen received a Tony nomination for her role in Chicago and has appeared in more than 20 television shows spanning over 10 years. With Drop Dead Diva gaining momentum in the midst of its second season on Lifetime Network, Levering's character comes back with a new look and a new outlook - but not too much, she still has it out for Bingum. Recently CL spoke with Levering about her role on the show, the new season and what its like living in Atlanta where the series is filmed.

Drop Dead Diva starring Brooke Elliott, Margaret Cho, Kate Levering and Jackson Hurst airs Sunday nights at 9 P.M. on the Lifetime Network.

So now tell me about your character. You play a no nonsense lawyer on the show but I feel that the jury is still out on you - are you good or bad?

Obviously because I play her I cannot like see her as bad, because you know, nobody is all good or all bad. I think that she’s conflicted and I think that she’s misunderstood by a lot of the people around her but I think, the key to, you know, playing a character who’s seemingly a villain or a nemesis you know is breaking it down into everybody behaves the way they do for a reason. She can’t be your stereotypical bitch, and I don’t think the writers want her to be so last season and this season-towards the end of last season- she softened up and continued to see that through this season. And I think that her actions come from insecurity and you know fear of being hurt, fear of love, fear of not being in love, fear of not succeeding, the same, you know, issues we all deal with, hers just manifest themselves into you know this hardened kind of exterior.

What is the tension, in your opinion, between your character, Kim, and Jane (Brooke Elliott)?

That’s a great question. You know it’s interesting because as writers we haven’t really gotten into it. I think the underbelly of the conflict that the audience sees right away is that Kim has only ever dealt with old Jane-old Jane, the pushover, old Jane the, uh, you know the kind of grumpy, insecure version of Jane. So what they haven’t addressed is Jane is now Deb or that Deb is now Jane, Kim is dealing with a totally different person. So all of a sudden, overnight, Jane is standing up for herself, dressing differently, Jane is pushing Kim’s buttons in a way that she doesn’t recognize. And so I think that a lot of reactions from Kim are because she’s like “Who is this person, you know?” So that creates a really fun push and pull as actors for us to recreate. But I think it hasn’t really been addressed with the audience that this is a totally different personality Kim’s dealing with at work that she’s not used to. She did not have any competition in that law office until Jane came back as Deb, you know.