Wednesday Odds & Ends: Cowboys & Aliens, Astro Boy, The Wizard of Oz and a sad '90s icon forced to sing Bon Jovi

Wow, I'm beat this morning. Did anyone else stay up all night to read the new Lorrie Moore novel? Okay, just me? Well, you should go buy it now and stay up tonight because it's excellent. But enough about me, here's the newsy stuff:

+ Well, here's a dream team if ever there was one: the makers of "Iron Man" and the recent "Star Trek" reboot (and yes, "Lost") are possibly joining forces to create a film version of the graphic novel "Cowboys & Aliens." Yeppers, that means Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. will meld their awesomeness with that of Roberto Orci, Alex Kurtzman and Damen Lindelof to give us two great tastes that taste great together. (I'm really hungry right now -- sorry.)

+ Here's a preview of "Astro Boy," which to me -- as someone who's never seen the original -- looks like a cross between "Caprica" and "The Iron Giant" but with squeakier voices and rounder heads. I could be wrong in that assessment.



+ This year marks the 70th anniversary of a lot of great movies including "Gone with the Wind" but perhaps none is as groundbreaking and generally fabulous as "The Wizard of Oz" which will be hitting the big screen once again in celebration. On Sept. 23, you can check out this masterpiece in high definition, which means the munchkins will look even freakier than you remembered. Check out the film's official site to see where the movie's playing near you -- beware though, turn the sound down if you're at the office because the site's really, really loud.

+ Speaking of great movies, it's also the 107th anniversary of the world's first science fiction film, the Melies brothers "A Trip to the Moon."

+ And finally, I was kind of creeped out by this video this morning. It shows clips from "Guitar Hero 5" in which they actually use the Kurt Cobain avatar to sing on non-Nirvana songs, meaning I now have a vision of a Cobain singing Bon Jovi, which if you were even mildly a fan of Nirvana is, well, bad and kind of insulting and perhaps disrespectful of the dead. Speaking of which, is it just me or does the Cobain avatar look a little zombie-ish? If so, I hope that means he'll be returning from the dead to kick somebody's ass over this. If you'd like to read a better diatribe, check out Topless Robot's rant on this very subject -- it's where I pilfered the video from.