Thursday Odds & Ends: new "Battlestar," "Avatar," AMC meets zombies and 3-D Hamlet

+ Rumors are flying fast and furious (that was a shout-out for all you Vin Diesel fans!) this morning about Bryan Singer developing a feature film version of "Battlestar Galactica" for Universal, based not on the Ron Moore-David Eick series but on Singer's own re-envisioning of the series, which got shelved in 2001. What do you think about this idea?

+ This Monday, free tickets will be distributed for a special 16-minute preview of James Cameron's upcoming 3-D flick, "Avatar." Word on the street is that this will be much of the same footage that was screened at Comic-Con but with some new bits added and also with the added benefit of not being shot with someone's iPhone from 1,000 yards away and then posted on YouTube. To vie for tickets, go to the Avatar website at AvatarMovie.com.

+ From the network that brought you "Mad Men" comes...zombies! Yeppers, AMC has bought the rights to turn Robert Kirkman's comic book series, "The Walking Dead" into a TV series produced, written and directed by Frank Darabont, who gave us "The Green Mile" and "The Shawshank Redemption." (Sadly, he also gave us "Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors". Oops.) Given that its AMC and Darabont, this is something I'm looking forward to.

+ Check out this great article by a physicist looking at time travel and how it stacks up in films and television. Specifically, he gives "The Time Traveler's Wife" pretty good marks on realism. It's a fascinating read...although I'm saddened to discover that the whole "infinite number of alternate universes" thing may be a big fake out. I've always enjoyed imagining an alternate universe where I'm a gazillionaire and my pool boys all look like Daniel Craig. Thanks for ruining my day, science!

+ Want to look at pictures of pretty people? Sure you do! Entertainment Weekly gives us their gallery of "12 High IQ TV/Movie Hunks" -- some of the captions are kind of insulting, like "this guy's way too handsome to play a smart dude" but really, who's looking at the captions when there's pictures of Jeremy Davies to be had? There's a gallery of smart chickie characters as well. You know what's nice about swimming in the shallow end of the pop culture pool? You totally don't need water wings.

+ And finally, I file this one under the "we made him, we can do whatever we want with him" section of British hilarity. A UK-based theater company called Shakespeare 4 Kidz -- which is wrong on so many levels right there -- is planning to do six 3-D musical versions of Shakespeare plays, starting with "Hamlet," as well as a televised "American Idol"-style show to choose the leads for "Romeo and Juliet." (As someone who watched every episode of "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria" on BBC America last month, I will quietly refrain from comment on that.) What I don't understand is...how does a theater company produce a 3-D play? I mean, aren't live human beings generally considered 3-D? Will they be launching Yorick's skull into the audience for maximum effect or what? If so, AWESOME!