A steaming hot pile of our favorite things from around the internets.

• It's hard to tell yet if the movie's going to be much better than the first, rather disappointing, installment, but the trailer for Hellboy 2 is pretty cool.
• Some impressive Star Wars-themed cakes and confections. (Via)
• Check out the surprising and fascinating true history of Christmas (via Debbie). Or, if you prefer your Christmas slightly less true, check out NORAD's Santa Tracker instead (via).
• Time for some more fun year-end lists! First up we have Game|Life's top ten vaporware games of 2007. Next is the Movie Blog's top ten most surprising films of 2007. Then there's Moviefone's top 50 films of 2007 (via). And finally, the Joystiq staff did an informal poll of their significant others and put together their top 5 games of the year.
• Dude, today is National Hamburger Day! Now we know what we're having for lunch... (Via Sarah)
• We haven't linked to any of Game|Life's recent posts about Futurama, but now that they've collected them all into one post, we can resist no longer: behold, the Complete Gamer Geek's Guide to Futurama.
• Apparently if you run Windows Media Player in the background, World of Warcraft loads faster. That's... weird.
• Governor Schwarzenegger might be returning to acting around 2011. Beware!

• Shiny Shiny has a bunch of great products for us today, including solar-powered LED Christmas lights for the environmentally conscious celebrant, a Van Gogh action figure for the twisted art fan (although we have to admonish them for misspelling the names of both Van Gogh and Edgar Allan Poe in that post), and a liquor lock to keep your kids (or your annoying guests) out of your booze.
• Check out these crazy Soviet-era Christmas cards. Uh... didn't Soviet Russia outlaw Christmas or something? (Via)
• FEARnet's going to have a pretty cool New Year's Day horror movie marathon, featuring ten cult favorites selected by viewers.
• This intro video for one of the levels in Super Smash Bros. Brawl's adventure mode is pretty freaking sweet.
• Wired has an interesting article about how the Democratic presidential candidates are fighting each other on the internet.
• Another interesting article on Wired looks at how large meteorite impacts, instead of causing mass extinctions as previously surmised, may have actually helped foster life on Earth.
• Ouch! In a recent interview, John Hurt called his role in Indy 4 "lightweight" and described George Lucas as "a bit socially crippled, really. Not good with people. So I just left him alone." Ha! Good old Hurt, telling it like it is.
• Cinematical's list of the Seven Best R-Rated Christmas Movies has three entries in common with our list of the top ten twisted Christmas Movies. Great minds think alike!
• Remember that stupid lawsuit The Romantics put together, claiming that the cover of their song on Guitar Hero Encore Rocks the '80s was too good and stole their signature sound? Well, for once reason and logic prevailed and the judge refused to halt sales of the game.
• Most of it looks familiar, but there's also some pretty cool new footage in the latest TV spot for Cloverfield.

Image Credit: Flickr user Dr. Hemmert