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Auction house won't say how much it hopes car sells for
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Batman's ride is up for sale — just the thing for cruising on those Dark Knights.
The original Batmobile from the 1960s TV series will be auctioned on Jan. 19 at the Barrett-Jackson auction house in Scottsdale, Ariz.
Bing: More about 'Batman' | More about the Batmobile
The 19-foot-long black, bubble-topped car was used in the TV show that starred Adam West as the Caped Crusader.
The car's owner — famed auto customizer George Barris, of Los Angeles — transformed a one-of-a-kind 1955 Lincoln Futura concept car into a sleek crime-fighting machine. On the show, it boasted lasers and a Batphone and could lay down smoke screens and oil slicks.
And just like Batman, the Batmobile has its secrets. The auction house won't say how much it hopes to get for the car.
'Scream 4' star signs on for more terror

Follow Don Kaye on Twitter @donkaye.
Find out how human pilots drive those massive robots

In honor of 'Fast & Furious 6,' horror/sci-fi on the road

"Duel" (1971): This early Steven Spielberg thriller was made for television but was later expanded for theatrical release in Europe. Dennis Weaver plays a traveling salesman who is caught in a deadly cat-and-mouse game with a massive tanker and its unseen driver, who seems intent on running Weaver to his death. Based on a story by Richard Matheson, this gripping and lean shocker will keep you watching the rear view mirror the next time you're on a lonely road.
"Horror Express" (1972): We're going to jump briefly from cars and trucks to trains for this Spanish-British production that put Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas on the Trans-Siberian Express with an ancient frozen ape creature that is actually the hiding place of an alien entity from another galaxy. By the time it starts turning everyone on the speeding locomotive into zombies, you'll be hooked by this wild, over-the-top horror/sci-fi/runaway train mashup.
"Death Race 2000" (1975): Roger Corman produced this now-classic sci-fi satire, set in a future fascist America where the annual Transcontinental Road Race provides the ultimate in violent reality TV to keep the masses distracted. The more pedestrians you kill, the more points you acquire. Crashes and chases ensue -- and all of it seems eerily plausible these days.
"Race With the Devil" (1975): Two couples accidentally stumble upon a satanic ritual and are pursued in their RV across Texas by the cult. Peter Fonda and Warren Oates are the menfolk, Loretta Swit and Lara Parker are the ladies, and the movie builds a decent amount of tension while also delivering some knockout chase scenes.
"The Car" (1977): Notice how a lot of these movies are from the '70s, when films based around autos were very popular? "The Car" is as simple as it gets: A black Lincoln Continental begins laying waste to the citizens of a small Utah town. Why? It's possessed by a demon, silly. James Brolin plays the lawman tasked with stopping the infernal machine. Look for future "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" sisters Kyle and Kim Richards as his daughters.
"Damnation Alley" (1977): This cheesy post-apocalyptic film was based loosely on a novel by sci-fi great Roger Zelazny and follows four men as they travel in 12-wheeled Landmasters across "Damnation Alley," the devastated heartland of what was once America that is now populated by freakish weather and giant mutated insects. The Landmasters almost outshine the actors -- Jan-Michael Vincent, George Peppard, Paul Winfield and others -- in one of two sci-fi films released in 1977 by 20th Century Fox. This one was supposed to be the hit. The other? "Star Wars."
"Mad Max" (1979) and "The Road Warrior" (1981): Australian director George Miller delivered some of the finest action sequences of their time in these brilliant first two entries in the "Mad Max" trilogy, starring a young Mel Gibson as a cop who lives through the collapse of society to become a near-mythic hero. The slamming automobile action in "Mad Max" paved the way for the climactic extended chase in the second film, surely one of the greatest in modern cinema.
"Maximum Overdrive" (1986): When the director -- who happened to be Stephen King -- calls his own picture a "moron movie," you know you're in for either a painful sit or an enjoyably bad time. Sadly, "Maximum Overdrive," which first-time (and only-time) director King based on his short story "Trucks," leans closer to the former. The idea of trucks, cars and other vehicles and machines coming to life and coming for us is a fun one, but King just sends it all into the ditch.
"Drive Angry" (2011): Car-chase movies with a supernatural or sci-fi slant dropped off the pop culture radar for a long time, but director Patrick Lussier and star Nicolas Cage tried to bring them back with this 3-D exercise, which does feature some well-staged automobile action but an ultimately dull story. Cage does the same loony schtick he's been doing for the past decade, while William Fichtner races off with the picture as the demonic Accountant.
Be prepared for moments between Plutarch and President Snow

During a Stella Artois-sponsored media event at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, "Catching Fire" director Francis Lawrence revealed that the film, while keeping very faithful to the book, will also feature some entirely new scenes:
"Lots of new stuff—new cast members, new action, a new arena and a fantastic story. There's very little that's been taken out—there's some additional scenes with some of the characters," says Lawrence, who specifically mentions new moments between Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and President Snow (Donald Sutherland).Could the still image shown above be from one of the scenes?
Bing: More about 'Catching Fire' | More about Francis Lawrence
Jennifer Lawrence has revealed, when asked about how "Catching Fire" compares to "The Hunger Games," that, "Visually, it's a lot bigger this time. We get a little deeper into The Capitol as Katniss is trying to get her life back together."
As the book is written from Katniss' perspective, we only see The Capitol as she does. We'd definitely be fascinated to see more of what goes on behind President Snow's closed doors.
"Catching Fire" is out in theaters Friday, November 22.
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Kryptonian fight comes to Earth in spectacular new footage
That's what series star Sam Neill says

Matt Smith, Steven Moffat also set to return

Follow Don Kaye on Twitter @donkaye.
Odds favor 'Doctor Strange' and 'Hulk' movies

We already know what lies ahead for the rest of Phase Two: "Thor: The Dark World" arrives in November, followed next April by "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" and in August 2014 by the weirdest, most cosmic new addition, "Guardians of the Galaxy." Those, of course, will all lead up to "The Avengers 2" in May 2015, for which writer-director Joss Whedon has already confirmed the addition of mutant brother-sister act Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch to the roster. But what happens after that presumably takes in its billion-plus box-office earnings?
Next comes Phase Three, and plans for that have been, until now, mostly murky. But Marvel president Kevin Feige, the public face of the studio, just gave an extensive interview to EW.com in which he discussed a number of potential candidates for Phase Three movies and gave some better chances of making the schedule than others. So let's take a look at the possibilities and lay our own odds on which heroes, villains and otherworldly beings could be blasting onto movie screens in 2015, 2016 and 2017:






And then there are the wayward children who have recently come home: the rights to "Daredevil," "Ghost Rider," "Punisher" and "Blade" have all reverted to Marvel from the studios that owned them previously. But don't expect to see any of them -- even Blade, the vampire hunter whose hit 1997 movie arguably launched the current wave of comic book movies -- back on the big screen in the near future.
Why? Because with the exception of Blade, none of these characters have truly caught on with the public. The first "Ghost Rider" and "Daredevil" were modest hits despite being widely regarded as lousy movies, while the second "Ghost Rider" and the "Punisher" films have been almost complete write-offs in both quality and commercial success. No one's asking for a new movie about Ghost Rider, and we suspect it will be a long time before anyone is.
Plus, there's only so much room in Phase Three, unless Marvel expands beyond its current pace of two films a year. With "Ant-Man" locked in and, say, "Doctor Strange" or "The Inhumans" making their debut, Feige and company still have to figure out where to put a "Thor 3" or a "Captain America 3" or, depending on how current negotiations go with Robert Downey Jr., an "Iron Man 4." This is a quality problem, one that will keep the Marvel brain trust up nights and the rest of us speculating madly until Phase Three is officially unveiled at Comic-Con 2015.
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