The nominees have been announced for the fourth annual Scream Awards, held every year by Spike TV. The decisively more “fan-friendly” award ceremony (compared to the Oscars) honors films from the sci-fi, fantasy, horror and comic-book genres of movies, TV shows and comic books. The awards are described as, “the first and only global event of its kind,” to honor those genres.

The Scream 2009 nominees were chosen by the Advisory Board of Hollywood and Genre Leaders, a list which this year includes the likes of Wes Craven, Roland Emmerich, Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, Eli Roth and Zack Snyder, plus many more. The event will be taped on Saturday, October 17th this year at The Greek Theater in Los Angeles, and will air on Spike TV ten days later on Tuesday, October 27th (check for local times).

Along with the awards, the show will also be airing some exclusive, world premiere of footage of some of the most anticipated movies of 2010! Presenters and musicians for the event are to be announced shortly.

Before Dragonball was a movie, it was a Japanese manga comic book created by Akira Toriyama, which later became an anime cartoon series. I was too young to read the manga in the 80’s but I first became aware of the anime around 1989, when a Dragonball Tv movie premiered on my local TV station.

My brother and I instantly shoved a tape in our VCR, trying to preserve this new awesomeness we were seeing. As fate would have it, that tape ran out just before the climatic final battle at a Martial Arts Tournament, and Dragonball was lost to us until the series’ next installment, Dragon Ball Z, premiered on American TV in the late 90s. Fate had given me a second chance and I snatched it up.

This week:

Miley is smiley over the box office; Gyllenhaal joins Thompson and Fiennes in Nanny McPhee; Terrance Howard may not be in Iron Man 2 – but he will star with Method Man and Gooding Jr in George Lucas’ Red Tails; Jennifer Garner likes Butter and  we discover Burt Dickenson: The Most Powerful Magician on Planet Earth.

Short version: Dragonball: Evolution is a badly written film with horrible dialogue, lackluster action and a sense of fun that’s nowhere to be found.

Screen Rant’s Ross Miller reviews Dragonball: Evolution

When you head to the theater to see a movie called Dragonball: Evolution, you obviously aren’t expecting Shakespeare. From the advertising, the whole thing gives off a feeling of light, campy, action-packed fun that you would hope would allow you to just sit back, relax and turn off your brain for 90 minutes or so.

Yeah, well, that’s why we have words like “hope” as a counterpoint to “guarantee.”

[NOTE: THIS ARTICLE IS 100% SPOILER-FREE]

No matter the source material – be it a novel, comic book, graphic novel, TV show or cartoon – there is always going to be some complaints about the movie adaptation. Even if the changes are critical to making the adapted story work on-screen, fans of the source material get up in arms about simple, unimportant things like changed hair colors or age differences.

One such movie catching that flack right now is Dragonball, which is based on the ultra-popular anime series. In an interview with MTV News, the cast and crew of Dragonball have gone out of their way to try and justify any changes they may have been made from the original cartoon to the movie.

The release of Dragonball hasn’t even come along yet (we’re still a few days away), and yet there’s already a script written for the inevitable sequel! According to star Justin Chatwin (who plays Goku in the film), it’s not just some ideas wrote down on some pieces of paper, but an actual completed script that has been written, although I doubt it will be the final version.

Here’s what Chatwin told MTV:

With the U.S. release of Dragonball approaching, MTV Splash Page has exclusives that will make die-hard fans cringe. Hints of how adaptation was handled are here, it doesn’t look good.

Already released in various places around the globe, the marketing team keeps peddling this movie despite the negative press. The last time we checked, we had 5 character-centric TV spots and a name change but this time we get a little closer with actual scenes. Full of cheesy dialog, terrible acting and bad fight scenes, the three clips are excruciating to watch. You have been warned.

The footage we’ve seen of the cartoon-to-movie adaptation known as Dragonball (they dropped the “Evolution” part, in case you’re wondering) has been less than satisfactory to say the least. No one is expecting Shakespeare from this thing, but by the looks of a couple of the trailers, it almost seems like a joke or spoof of some kind.

There’s all sorts of news buzzing about Dragonball Evolution.  First, there’s the release of clips of the dragon that appears to be Shenron.  Although there is no indication in the clip that the dragon is in fact Shenron, if you followed the cartoon Shenron was the dragon that was summoned once all the dragonballs were collected on Earth and can grant one wish to the summoner.

Back in October, I wrote a little piece on the leaked trailer for Dragonball (now re-named Dragonball Evolution) and in it I basically talked about how terrible the teaser looked. I was clearly not the only one who thought this and after 91 comments and some feuding, Screen Rant Master Vic had to shut down the thread to simmer things down.

Fail.

That’s the quintessential word of choice describing what I think about this trailer, and even the movie for that matter. Today we get our first look at what the Dragonball movie is shaping up to be, with the release of the first teaser trailer.

Coming Soon is reporting that 20th Century Fox (boo, leave Watchmen alone!) will be releasing the first trailer for Dragonball before Max Payne, which hits theaters on October 17, (and looks pretty good judging by its trailer!)

While you wait for October 17 to roll around and deliver the first real impression of whether or not Dragonball will flop, take a look at the new pics which have hit the Web, and let us know your first impressions.

First Showing is reporting that Keanu “Whoah” Reeves is adding another straight-faced hero to his resume, playing intergalactic bounty hunter Spike Spiegel in the live-action adaption of anime cult-favorite, Cowboy Bebop.

Here’s a new promo image from the live-action Dragonball movie. The new picture features Goku (Justin Chatwin) looking real chummy with best friend Bulma (Emmy Rossum). It’s an all right picture, but the hairstyles and that “ironic” t-shirt Chatwin is wearing worry me. It makes it look like the film is trying too hard to imitate the series’ oscillation between kick-ass action, EXTREMELY cheesy humor, and long, still frames of characters posing, growling and looking like they might eventually do something cool. Not a big draw for the general public.

The first teaser poster for the live-action adaptation of anime action/soap-opera Dragonball has been released… in Japan, anyway. Still, the poster shows star Justin Chatwin looking quite the part of Saiyan martial-arts master Goku, holding what appears to be one of the mystical dragonballs in hand.

Yawn.

You can check out a picture of Justin Chatwin as Goku from the upcoming Dragonball Z movie below.

I haven’t talked about this one much because frankly I was just never into the cartoon, but from what I’ve seen so far it looks like they’re really trying to capture the look of the characters (lots and lots of hair gel required, no doubt).