Thursday, August 14, 2008

Michael Shanks - Burn Notice - Video: 'Bad Blood' Episode

Courtesy of USA and HULU, Burn Notice's 'Bad Blood,' starring Jeffrey Donovan, Gabrielle Anwar, Bruce Campbell and Sharon Gless. Guest stars include Rob Benedict, Ben Watkins, Paul Tei with Michael Shanks and Method Man.

In order to catch an embezzler from a hip-hop mogul's charity, Michael must convince the thief to steal a larger amount.

Burn Notice - Zap2It: Review of 'Bad Blood'

At Zap2It:

(Please follow the link for the complete review.)



'Burn Notice': Meet Michael's mini-me


By Sarah Jersild

August 14, 09:34 PM

Burn Notice is normally compelling enough to make me ignore any elements that might cause disbelief. Big guns? Huge explosions? A constant array of family friends who need help? Michael's infinite skillset? I can buy that. But Michael's Mayor Quimby-gets-brain-damage Baaaahstahn accent? Oh, hell no.

This spoiler can never have enough shoes.

There's a new bad-ass in town -- Victor [Stargate SG-1's Michael Shanks], one of Carla's cohorts, is brought in to bring Michael to heel. Victor's into firearms and killing and the potential destruction of everyone Michael holds dear. He gives Michael a cunning bedazzled cell phone (pretty!) and tells Michael he is now officially at Victor's beck and call...

...Meanwhile, Victor summons Michael to play driver for a heist, but he won't tell Michael what they're stealing and why. Fortunately, Michael has improvisational x-ray skills, and, along with making things go boom, he manages to get a picture of the mysterious item. No, it's not a Stargate (dammit!) -- it's a sniper rifle. Huh. Why steal such a thing? And why didn't the Evil Spy Overlords want Michael to know about it?

Highlights, thoughts and odds and ends

* What did you think of Victor? I think he's appealingly unhinged, but I don't know if I buy him as a bigger bad-ass than Michael himself. I did like the note around the GPS in the phone, though.

* Victor's crazy came out the most, I think, when he accepted that Michael would be cowed enough to not want to see what's in the box. Or maybe they figured Michael would figure out how to see into the box, an the sniper rifle hides something else. Or maybe Michael knows that they know, and he... my head hurts...



Michael's spy bits

* Fire alarms are passe. No one pays attention unless they, themselves, have burst into flames. A bomb threat on the building next door gets people out of the building you're targeting and has them concentrating on another place. Plus, modern bomb squads use RF jammers that block potential bomb triggers, cell phones and wireless security camera...

Sci-Fi Invasion - Labor Day Marathon on STARZ

A press release from Yahoo Financial News:

(Please follow the link for the complete article.)



Press Release Source: Starz Entertainment

Starz Entertainment's Weekly Hot Items List August 25-31


Thursday August 14, 2:50 pm ET
http://starz.mediaroom.com/
(All times listed are ET/PT.)


Friday, August 29

Sci-Fi Invasion


A four-day movie marathon of science fiction flicks on Encore over Labor Day weekend.


Friday, Aug. 29

-- 8 p.m. The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton,
Michael Biehn)
-- 9:50 p.m. Independence Day (Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum)



Saturday, Aug. 30

-- 12:20 a.m. Waterworld (Kevin Costner, Dennis Hopper, Jeanne
Tripplehorn)
-- 2:40 a.m. Mad Max (Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne)
-- 4:20 a.m. Repo Man (Emilio Estevez, Harry Dean Stanton, Tracey
Walter)
-- 6 a.m. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Donald Sutherland, Brooke
Adams, Leonard Nimoy)
-- 8 a.m. Mimic 3: Sentinel (Karl Geary, Alexis Dziena, Rebecca Mader)
-- 9:20 a.m. Tank Girl (Lori Petty, Malcolm McDowell, Ice-T)
-- 11:10 a.m. John Carpenter's They Live (Roddy Piper, Keith David, Meg Foster)
-- 12:50 p.m. Universal Soldier (Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, Ally Walker)
-- 2:35 p.m. Stargate (Kurt Russell, James Spader, Jaye Davidson)
-- 4:40 p.m. Mad Max (Mel Gibson, Joanne Samuel, Hugh Keays-Byrne)
-- 6:15 p.m. Judge Dredd (Sylvester Stallone, Armand Assante, Diane
Lane)
-- 8 p.m. Alien (Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, John Hurt)
-- 10 p.m. Aliens (Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn)



Sunday, Aug. 31

-- 12:20 a.m. The One (Jet Li, Carla Gugino, Delroy Lindo)
-- 1:50 a.m. Robocop 3 (Robert John Burke, Nancy Allen, Rip Torn)
-- 3:45 a.m. The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth
Dimension (Peter Weller, John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin)
-- 5:35 a.m. Deep Rising (Treat Williams, Famke Janssen, Anthony Heald)
-- 7:30 a.m. Screamers (Peter Weller, Roy Dupuis, Charles Powell)
-- 9:30 a.m. The Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton,
Michael Biehn)
-- 11:30 a.m. Robocop (Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Ronny Cox)
-- 1:15 p.m. Robocop 2 (Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Dan O'Herlihy)
-- 3:15 p.m. Deja Vu (Denzel Washington, Val Kilmer, Adam Goldberg)
-- 5:30 p.m. The Abyss (Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Michael Biehn)
-- 8 p.m. Contact (Jodie Foster, Matthew McConaughey, James Woods)
-- 10:30 p.m. The Faculty (Jordana Brewster, Clea Duvall, Laura Harris)


Monday, Sept. 1

-- 12:20 a.m. Mars Attacks! (Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette
Bening)
-- 2:15 a.m. Alien 3 (Sigourney Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles
Dance)
-- 4:15 a.m. John Carpenter's Village of the Damned (Christopher Reeve, Kirstie Alley, Linda Kozlowski)
-- 6 a.m. Mission to Mars (Tim Robbins, Gary Sinise, Don Cheadle)
-- 8 a.m. The One (Jet Li, Carla Gugino, Delroy Lindo)
-- 9:30 a.m. Deja Vu (Denzel Washington, Val Kilmer, Adam Goldberg)
-- 11:40 a.m. Waterworld (Kevin Costner, Dennis Hopper, Jeanne
Tripplehorn)
-- 2 p.m. Independence Day (Will Smith, Bill Pullman, Jeff Goldblum)
-- 4:30 p.m. Mars Attacks! (Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette
Bening)
-- 6:20 p.m. Tremors (Kevin Bacon, Fred Ward, Finn Carter)
-- 8 p.m. Stargate (Kurt Russell, James Spader, Jaye Davidson)

Stargate Atlantis - iO9: Video: Why Is Jewel Staite Always In Bondage?

At iO9:

(Please follow the link for the complete article and for the embedded video clips.)



Why Is Jewel Staite Always In Bondage? We Asked Her

Jewel Staite is best known for playing the mechanic Kaylee on grungy space-opera show Firefly. But if the writers of Stargate Atlantis have their way, she'll become better known for being bound and gagged in the woods. She mentioned on the Stargate panel at Comic-Con that her character, Dr. Keller, is in bondage in a few upcoming Stargate episodes, not to mention being pinned to a bed by an alien spore recently. We had to ask her about this, plus the differences between Firefly and Stargate. And what she thinks Kaylee is doing right now.

So what's it like going from a show like Firefly that's kind of gritty and down on their luck to a show like Atlantis where there's lots of fancy gadgets?

Everything's clean. Isn't it like super clean? I'm always afraid to put my hand on the glass. I'm just leaving fingerprints all over that set all the time. Everything's nice and gleaming. The best thing about it for me is that they're in their groove. They've been at it for so many years that they're very blase, and they shoot like 10 pages in 12 hours, which is unheard of. And we wrap every day at the 12th hour, which is also unheard of. So it's just like this well-oiled machine, they're all reading each others' minds or something. But I guess that comes after 10+ years of working together. I felt new for a bit, I don't feel that new any more...

Eureka - NEW Photos from 'I Do Over'

NEW publicity stills from Eureka's next new episode, 'I Do Over,' scheduled to air Tuesday, August 19 at 9pm on the SciFi Channel (US).



Henry Deacon (Joe Morton)




Lexi Carter (Ever Caradine) and Sheriff Jack Carter (Colin Ferguson)




Jack




Lexi Carter, Zoe Carter (Jordan Hinson) and Henry



Allison Blake (Salli Richardson) and Nathan Stark (Ed Quinn)

Colin Ferguson - SciFi Talk: Audio Interviews - 'Fear Itself' - Recap

From SciFi Talk:

Wed, 13 August 2008

Fear Itself - Recap


A review of most of the episodes of this summer series with Executive Producer Andrew Deane plus comments from the stars and directors of some of the episodes. Included are Breck Eisner, Eric Roberts, Rachel Minor, Brad Anderson, John Landis, Ronny Yu, Colin Ferguson, Mary Harron, Brandon Routh, Shiri Appleby, Larry Fessenden, Doug Jones,and Molly Hagan. Special thanks to NBC and EPK.TV for supplying audio. Music is by Clear Plastic.

Podcast Link

Stargate Atlantis - SF: Universe: Checking in with Major Lorne

From SF Universe:

(Please follow the link for the complete SF Universe article.)



Checking in with Major Lorne

Spent some time on the phone today with Kavan Smith, aka Major Lorne on Stargate Atlantis and Jed Garrity on The 4400...

Keep an eye on SFUniverse for the full interview coming soon.

Fringe - Total SciFi: Joshua Jackson Interview

From Total SciFi:

(Please follow the link for the complete interview.)



Joshua Jackson, Anna Torv, John Noble


Posted on Thursday 14 August 2008

Joshua Jackson: Beyond the Fringe


From ice-hockey-playing child star to Dawson’s Creek pin-up, Joshua Jackson has walked the streets of Hollywood in a back-to-front fashion. From movies to TV and theatre, and then back to movies, in recent years he has managed to avoid the mainstream hysteria courted by other actors of his age and caliber. But that could all be about to change. The 30-year-old Canadian is embarking on a TV series journey that could be the making of him, all over again. As the star of J.J. Abrams’ new pilot show, Fringe, he should be preparing for a media circus. Bryan Cairns caught up with him to find out how he got involved…

These days, most of your credits are for feature films. What attracted you to the TV series Fringe?
Very simply, the appeal is good work with good people. The script is excellent and the character is Indiana Jones-ish. The whole piece is slightly darker than that but the character is adventuresome and smart. Usually on TV, you can be the smart guy but you have to wear glasses and sit in the car or you can be the adventuresome guy and look like Superman and be a lunkhead. This is a nice change.

You can’t really get any better than J.J. Abrams as a producer on television or film. Alias was pretty damn good, Lost is excellent, and Felicity was good as well. He’s definitely made his mark on television. That is the difficulty of television, maintaining quality and being able to keep cranking these things out. That is the thing that has held me back over the last few years from working in television, is knowing the amount of work that goes into it and how difficult it is to keep something good, fresh and interesting for the audience...

Doctor Who - VFX World: Doctor Who Season Four: More VFX Razzle-Dazzle

From VXF World:

(Please follow the link for the complete VXF World article.)



Doctor Who Season Four: More VFX Razzle-Dazzle

Tara Bennett speaks with Dave Houghton about raising the CG bar in the fourth season of Doctor Who.

By Tara Bennett

[ Posted on August 08, 2008 ]

With the recent conclusion of the fourth season of Doctor Who on SCI FI Channel, the series is riding high on a swell of praise from both critics and fans on the cracking good stories taking the venerable franchise to new heights. The cheesy sets and bargain basement production values of the past decades once synonymous with the series are now gone, replaced with Russell T. Davies' completely fresh approach. Along with new doctors (the current being David Tennant), Davies has also introduced new millennium visual effects to the series which finally match the franchises ever inventive storytelling.

Steering the path of the show's effects reinvention is Visual Effects Supervisor Dave Houghton. A fan of Doctor Who from its earliest incarnations, Houghton says he was thrilled to help contemporize the series. "I knew it was ripe for bringing back and I knew based on my work in this industry, it was possible to achieve what was necessary now."
"I think one of the reasons the show failed in the first place was because the technology available even in the '80s, was not as available to television as it was in film," Houghton continues. "It hit a point where [Who] couldn't catch up and was sort of waiting in limbo for technology to catch up with the kind of show people expected to see..."

Stargate: Continuum - SciFi.com: Stargate Continuum Props Sweepstakes

From SciFi.com:



Enter the Stargate Continuum Props Sweepstakes


Buy the "Mona Lisa" and you have a framed picture. But win a Gold Ark from SG-1's season 10, and, well, that's a collector's item!

Here's your chance to enter to win that prop and others from Stargate, including the Continuum movie.


Prizes include:

1 Gold Ark from season 10 of Stargate SG-1
2 Goa'uld flash props
1 "The Truth About Pyramids" book cover
5 Continuum DVDs

Don't wait. This is one sweepstakes you absolutely want to enter!

Unfortunately, the .pdf file they have right now for their Official Rules is for the wrong contest, so no further info. But dollars to donuts you must be a US Citizen and 18 years of age or older when entering the contest.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Video: Pilot Episode

Courtesy of HULU, the pilot episode for 'Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles,' starring Lena Headey, Thomas Dekker, Summer Glau and Richard T. Jones. Guest stars include Owain Yeoman, Sonya Walger, Dean Winters, Aurora Antonio and Chad Brummett.

In the series premiere, Sarah Connor struggles to keep her son John Connor safe from an enemy Terminator from the future.


Psych - Video: Pineapple: Q & A

Courtesy of USA and HULU, Pineapple: Q & A.

Psych

Interview |05:29 |

Psych cast and crew are asked about the pineapple

Stargate: Continuum - EyeCraveDVD: Video: Stargate Continuum Red Carpet

From EyeCraveDVD:



Comic-Con: Stargate Continuum Red Carpet

Wednesday, August 13 2008

Contributed by: Shane

Last year we covered the DVD release of 300 on the red carpet and this year Fox Home Entertainment invited us to cover the straight to DVD release of the latest Stargate movie - Stargate Continuum.

Unfortunately, the red carpet started a little late and was only suppose to be 1-hour so EyeCraveDVD.com didn't get to speak to everyone that was there. We missed Beau Bridges, Richard Dean Anderson even though we have footage of him we never got to speak with him, Ben Bowder, Michael Shankes, or Atlantis' Joe Flanigan.

Fortunately, we got to speak to everyone else who was there about the movie which debuted on DVD and Blu-ray July 29th.

[NOTE: The video runs 17 mins 56 secs, and there are also photos at the link above.]

Wallace & Gromit - Video: The Autochef

Courtesy of HULU, Wallace & Gromit's 'The Autochef.'

Wallace & Gromit: Cracking Contraptions


Short Film |01:46 |

Wallace's newest invention cooks breakfast and serves it, too, but Gromit thinks the robot is more trouble than it's worth.

Stargate Atlantis / SG1 - SciFi Friday: NEW Episode 'Ghost in the Machine' Aug 15 '08

From the SciFi Channel's schedulebot, the SciFi Friday line up for August 15, 2008:

5:00P STARGATE ATLANTIS BEFORE I SLEEP



6:00P STARGATE SG-1 ORIGIN



7:00P STARGATE SG-1 CHIMERA



8:00P JOAN OF ARCADIA JUST SAY NO



9:00P STARGATE ATLANTIS THE DAEDALUS VARIATIONS - repeat of last week's episode



10:00P STARGATE ATLANTIS (SEASON 5) THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE - NEW episode



11:00P STARGATE SG-1 (SEASON 9) ETHON



12:00A STARGATE ATLANTIS (SEASON 5) THE GHOST IN THE MACHINE



01:00A STARGATE SG-1 SUMMIT



02:00A STARGATE SG-1 LAST STAND



Stargate photos courtesy of the SciFi Channel and GateWorld