When a film sails in on a wave of high expectations, disappointment is near inevitable. It may not be genuine, deep disappointment—as many felt after last summer’s sci-fi flick “Super 8”—but the kind that lurks in the back of your mind and reminds you of everything you wish a film had been.

TUCSON - A Mexican woman suspected of trying to smuggle six children into the U.S. using false documents has been arrested at a southern Arizona border crossing, federal authorities said.

Well-meaning humans allowed Arizona’s evergreen forests to grow so thickly that they became ripe for huge wildfires. Wildfires in our deserts are being assigned an equally human cause: non-native plants Arizonans brought with them from elsewhere.

Joe Guzzardi

Tina Dupuy, guest commentary

Thirteen motel owners in Mesa charged for catering to human smugglers and conspiracy to harboring illegal aliens were sentenced Friday.

Maricopa County Sheriff’s deputies arrested 21 illegal immigrants Thursday including their suspected smuggler Jose Manuel Flores Rubio, who was working out of a home in Tempe.

Arizona expects to pay millions of dollars more to incarcerate undocumented prison inmates because federal funding was slashed by more than half this year, state officials say.

LOS ANGELES — Since hatching "Alien" 33 years ago, Ridley Scott has hoped no other filmmakers would try to answer this question: Where did the space eggs containing those terrifying beasts come from?

The genre mash-up of "Cowboys & Aliens" is more a mush-up, an action yarn aiming to be both science fiction and Old West adventure but doing neither all that well.

"They came from outer space," claims David Salman, who sent out a press release that claims he discovered a unique group of extraterrestrial plants in an unmapped meteor crater just west of Roswell, N.M., of all places. Though he discusses it at length on YouTube, we cactophiles know it was all a tongue-in-cheek marketing campaign to encourage people to take a fresh look at the importance of our precious native cacti.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) - In the mountains of Northern California, a field of radio dishes that look like giant dinner plates waited for years for the first call from intelligent life among the stars.

Guest commentary by Joe Guzzardi

Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are clever and endearing fellows. So one could easily expect the British duo of the zombie comedy "Shaun of the Dead" and the cop buddy riff "Hot Fuzz" to make their alien-meets-lads comedy "Paul" an out-of-this-world ride.

Disaster films will really get interesting when they start running out of iconic skylines to destroy. How about "Battle: Wichita" or "Deep Impact: Albany"?

Homeland security chief Janet Napolitano is defending the decision by the Obama administration to pay states only a fraction of what they are owed for incarcerating illegal immigrants.

LONDON — For decades, scientists have scanned the heavens in search of extraterrestrial life. Perhaps they should have looked closer to home.

A longtime Higley Unified School District information technology director has lost his job and is under police investigation for taking computers home, downloading pornography and installing computer software throughout the district that searches for extraterrestrial intelligence.

LOS ANGELES -- Giant alien robots don't actually exist. So the dozens featured in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" had to be built from the ground up.