We Jack Bauer fans have a lot of waiting to do over the next few months. Okay, so this past season of 24 certainly wasn’t the finest in the series, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss spending Monday nights with my favorite CTU agents.

That said there is a whole world of 24 out there, including plenty of ways to spend time with Jack while we wait for Day 7 to arrive in January. You might be surprised by the amount of options, ranging from books to video games. Take a look.

The other day, Lucasfilm released a teaser for their new CGI animated series, Clone Wars. It takes place between Episode II and Episode III and follows the exploits of Obi-wan and Anakin as they battle their way through the Clone Wars. Genndy Tartakovski has already helmed the “micro-series” Clone Wars which appeared on Cartoon Network a year or so ago. Reminiscent of Samurai Jack, that series had a fast paced storyline driven by highly stylized character designs. Personally, I liked Genndy’s take on the material a whole lot more than what was served up in the latest trilogy.

This new Clone Wars has completely abandonded the traditional take on Anakin and friends. However, there is a strong resemblance of the previous CN effort as these new designs sport very angular and sharp lines. This is all well and dandy, but the soft, diffuse lighting they employ seems at odds with the graphic shapes defining our star war’n buddies. There doesn’t appear to be much in the way of any facial acting and just about everyone is staring off into space much like their live action counter parts. Of course, this is just a teaser. It is a television series afterall and not a feature. With that in mind, they did a really great job of capturing the look and feel of the trilogy, and it looks action packed. I think Clone Wars is slated for a fall ‘07 release, so keep your DVR’s at the ready for some lightsaber-swinging fun.

Shamoozal is mildly pleased to announce the launching of a new “sister” site… Letmeshowyouthem.com. We’re still in the process of getting things set up, so pardon the generic WordPress appearance and lack of features. Head on over and check out the internet goodness!

Update: We’ve been hard at work adding a new rating system for the pictures, as well as cleaning the site up even more. Check out the Submissions link up top and start contributing to the “next big thing”.

Ba-BAM! One year down, 5 billion to go… we present Shamoozal Radio Podcast #7. We have ourselves a champagne jam, talk about lesbian GameStop employees and smack each other silly with wiffle-ball bats. All is right with the world.

This one pretty much speaks for itself, so I won’t bore you with a lot of descriptive text. Check it out through any of the usual sources and pass it on to someone you love… like the clap.

Links and stuff after the jump…

This July 10th marks the arrival of the new Smashing Pumpkins album, Zeitgeist. Personally, I’m a huge Pumpkins fan, and while a really dig Zwan Billy Corgan’s last solo effort, The Future Embrace, left me kind of cold. So when I heard that there was a going to be a re-union (minus Iha and D’arcy), I got pretty pumped.

On May 21st, the Pumpkins released their first new single, “Tarantula” and I have to say I’m a fan. Gone is the harsh, grungy, and over processed sounds from Machina. Alot of online posters have been saying its a return to Gish and I think I agree. There’s a cleaner sound, but there’s a few parts where it rocks out and reminds me of Siamese Dream.

Apparently, the Pumpkins are gearing up for a tour. According to this wiki, they just recently played for the first time in France on May 24th, 2007. They introduced Jeff Schroeder and Ginger Rheys as the second guitarist and bassist. I’ll tell you what, this Ginger Rheys (A.K.A. Ginger Sling) reminds me of the red-haired, punky chick from Guitar Hero…she can rock out, kick some ass, and look good doing it. Sounds good to me!

(Updated: 5/29/07: Added a few more images)

As much as we love to rag on Gamestop around here, earlier in the month they had an awesome clearance on old Nintendo 64 and Playstation 1 games. The pickings were slim, but for every 20 cartridges of WWF Warzone was a copy of Excitebike, F-Zero X or Pokemon Puzzle League waiting to be adopted. Needless to say, I picked up five games for under 10 bucks, not a bad haul by any means.

It’s the end of May and things are in full swing for the summer blockbusters. Spider-Man 3 broke box office records and Shrek the Third did the same in the animated movie category. This week’s releases have a lot of competition with 2 of the biggest movies ever standing in the way of box office glory. Lets see which movies are going up against these behemoths.

Look at all these damn pirates!

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End – The third and supposedly final chapter in the Gore Verbinski/Jerry Bruckheimer swashbuckling adventure trilogy. Johnny Depp reprises his famous role as Captain Jack Sparrow when he is brought back from the dead (by all the characters from the last one) to meet with a bunch of other pirates in order to do battle with Davy Jones who is now under new control.

After a few technical issues we had moving to our new server, things are finally back to order. Thank the heavens, huh? We will now continue with our regularly scheduled blog updates, and of course the Smorg is fully operational again. Hooray.

Apocalypto – A brutally violent Mel Gibson film showing the downfall of the Mayan culture. It’s all subtitled in some ancient language just like The Passion.
The Good German – A Steven Soderbergh film starring George Clooney in post-war Berlin. It’s about a military journalist investigating a murder.
Epic Movie – much like Scary Movie and Date Movie, this spoofs a bunch of popular films of the current day. There’s Pirates, Borat, Superman and other pop culture icons.
Venus – an Oscar nominated performance by old man Peter O’Toole as he stars as an aging actor who has a teenage girl move in to take care of him.
Letters from Iwo Jima – The Battle of Iwo Jima as told from the Japanese point of view during World War II. This is the counterfilm to Flags of our Fathers. Both directed by Clint Eastwood. All in subtitles for the Japanese language.

Also being released today is the special editions of The 40 Year Old Virgin, Summer School, Rush Hour 1 and 2, and Porky’s.
On the TV show front we get Afro Samurai, Kyle XY Season 1, Martin Season 2, The OC Season 4, and Scrubs Season 5.

This morning, the entire crew at Animagic animation studios in NYC have been laid off. Animagic was contracted to produce 40 episodes of “Nate the Great” for PBS. The show had several false starts and suffered from shifting start dates earlier this year. However, only one month in with the entire production ramped up does “Nate” come to a close. This morning, the animation staff was greeted with locked computers when they came in to work and were asked to leave the building. They were paid for that day and were handed the pink slip.

I personally know several very talanted animators who were on staff there, and they were all very excited to have been a part of a new studio that showed alot of promise. Alas, today that all came crashing down on their heads and their jobs came to an abrupt end. There are a ton of rumors floating around as to why this happened and I have a few theories of my own, but I’ll keep all editorial to myself at this time. However, this I do know. I know that today alot of people were kicked to the curb like a bunch of trash. I’m sure most of them will land on their feet because they’re a talaneted group who just weren’t given a chance to do what they do best.

Keep on keep’n on, my friends.