Assignment X - The Pop Culture Entertainment Magazine for Movies, TV, DVD, Blu-ray, Video Games, Books, Comics and Technology - News, Interviews, Reviews, Photos and Videos

Interview: Graham Yost talks about being JUSTIFIED for Season 3

ABBIE BERNSTEIN — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 02:14:26 +0000

Interview: Graham Yost talks about being JUSTIFIED for Season 3

JUSTIFIED, the widely-acclaimed series based on Elmore Leonard’s short story “Fire in the Hole,” is now in its third season on FX, Tuesdays at 10 PM. JUSTIFIED follows Timothy Olyphant’s character, U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, who reluctantly accepted a transfer back to his birthplace of Harlan County, Kentucky. Over the seasons, Raylan has grown even angrier at his criminal/con man father Arlo (Raymond J. Barry), reconnected with his ex-wife Winona (Natalie Zea) – the two are now expecting a baby together – and developed a mistrustful but sometimes mutually beneficial association with former friend Boyd Crowder (Walton Goggins), who is seeking to expand his illegal activities but sometimes saves Raylan’s life.

Graham Yost, who developed JUSTIFIED for television and serves as executive producer and show runner, talks about where the show has been, where it’s going and drops some spoilers about Raylan and Winona’s baby – and about Raylan’s crummy motel room.

ASSIGNMENT X: Is there a difference between a hero and a protagonist? And if there is, which is Raylan Givens?

GRAHAM YOST: I think there’s a little bit of Arlo in him, and I think that little bit of Arlo in him is what makes him more of a protagonist than a hero. He has these demons, he has this family history that lets him understand criminals perhaps better than other marshals would, but also it’s a bit of a burden. So he’s not just a pure as the driven snow hero. On the other hand, in the general TV landscape, especially the last ten years of antiheroes, Raylan is more of a hero.

AX: Raylan has great instincts much of the time. He did something very shrewd with a tablecloth earlier this season …

YOST: That scene was not written with the tablecloth initially. Tim [Olyphant, who is also one of JUSTIFIED’s producers] was sitting at home over the weekend and a friend was over. And I think he literally put a tablecloth on the table with something heavy on it and just looked at it. “What can we do that’s different?” and then came up with that. That’s just Raylan. And listen, I think since Homer – not Simpson, the other one – the hero is not always the biggest, the strongest, the fastest, not even the smartest. It’s the guy who is clever, as when Perseus figures out the trick of killing Medusa with the reflection. Because we’re writers, we’re schlubs in a room, we want to imagine, “Well, what could I do? What could I bring to it?” and it’s usually [a character] who’s trying to be clever.

AX: How do you decide on your seasonal villains, and how likely is it that any of them will survive from season to season?

YOST: Well, we always need people to kill on JUSTIFIED, and that’s a sad part of our weird fictional world. We don’t want to be locked into saying, “Oh, this is the bad guy of the year.” We did feel after Mags Bennett [Margo Martindale, who won a Supporting Actress Emmy for her performance] that we wanted to do that again this year, to satisfy people who enjoyed the bad guy of the year. And then we wanted to turn that around and make Neal McDonough’s character Quarles something absolutely different from Mags. For one thing, he’s male, and he’s from out of the area. But Limehouse, who T. [Mykelti Williamsonl plays, is not so easily pegged. Is he a bad guy, is he a good guy, is he somewhere in between? So that gave us something to play with. But we don’t know what Season Four, if there is a Season Four, will be.

AX: Neal McDonough and Mykelti Williamson were both on your series BOOMTOWN. Can you talk about the differences and similarities between BOOMTOWN and JUSTIFIED?

YOST: Well, BOOMTOWN wore its heart on its sleeve a lot more than this does. BOOMTOWN was a little more real. This exists in a fictionalized Kentucky crime marshals. I think that’s one of the differences.

AX: Is Raylan exasperated by Quarles, since Quarles is a big-city outsider stirring up trouble in Harlan? Raylan didn’t particularly want to come back to Harlan, but since he is in Harlan, he’s at least dealing with people he knows in Harlan, big-city crime without him being personally able to get away from his hometown, so it seems like this could be the worst of two worlds for him.

YOST: Well, in a way. The Quarles character is someone that everyone on the show can unite in their dislike for him. They all have a problem. And that’s fun.

AX: Will JUSTIFIED’s primary action ever go outside of Harlan County?

YOST: Every year, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, we just don’t have room.” At the end of the first season, we did go toSouthern California for one episode, and I love that episode, but a lot of people felt that it was not [in keeping with the show’s overall tone].

AX: Are we going to be seeing any more of Mags Bennett’s surviving son Dickie, played by Jeremy Davies, this season?

YOST: He plays a prominent role in the first four episodes. I don’t want to give it away, but I think he’s in a total of seven or eight episodes in this season.

AX: Last season, Raylan befriended Caitlyn Dever’s character Loretta, a young girl who was left orphaned by the Bennett clan. We’ve seen Loretta once so far this season. Will she be back?

YOST: I think Caitlyn is one of the unsung heroes of Season Two, although she got some singing. She did such a great job, she was really one of the anchors of the season last year. There is a scene between Raylan and Loretty, as we call her in the writers’ room – she’s not Loretta in the writers’ room, she’s Loretty – “How’s Loretty doing?” – and frankly, over the course of the series, we’d like to check in with her every now and again, just so we can have her back and say, “Caitlyn, how are you doing, are you maintaining a true and steady course?” And just sort of make sure that she stays true to her Harlan roots.

AX: Is having her back a scheduling issue, as Caitlyn Dever is now a series regular on LAST MAN STANDING?

YOST: It is a scheduling issue. She couldn’t ever be a big part of a season, but we could work it out with them to get her for a scene here and there, and I think she’s having a blast on LAST MAN STANDING.

AX: This season, you also had Carla Gugino on as a U.S. Marshal named Karen, who might or might not have been Karen Sisco, an Elmore Leonard character who Ms. Gugino played on a short-lived series. Will she be back?

YOST: No, she’s just in the second episode. She’s doing a play on Broadway now, THE ROAD TO MECCA. She’s doing a revival. So [the thinking at the time of filming was], if we want to have fun with Carla this year, we’ve got to do it now. And she is just a delight. And it’s a fun episode. She and Raylan get to kick some ass.

AX: Are you bringing in any other Elmore Leonard-associated actors on, like, say, Danny DeVito, who is on FX’s IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA?

YOST: No, but we had a fun thing. JUSTIFIED was being honored and [FX network president] John Landgraf was being honored, and Danny introduced John and we got to sit at the table with Danny, and he’s a big fan of the show and we were thinking the other way. We’re going to have Raylan stumble into the bar in IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA. They would probably tie him up and cover him with butter or something.

AX: How far do you and the writers plan ahead? When do you start thinking about the next season

YOST: We do, and we think about that perhaps more in July and August when we’re planning the season in front of us. So we think, “Well, where could this lead us, so we don’t go tearing off down a blind alley and find, oh, we killed everyone off. Now they’re ghosts. And we can cross-meld with AMERICAN HORROR STORY.” So we do think about it, but once the season gets going, then that goes into the back of our minds. But now we’re breaking [the end of Season Three], we’ll start thinking about it again.

AX: What is the time frame on Season Three, because now Raylan and Winona are going to be parents, unless something really terrible happens.

YOST: I will tell you this right up front – something really terrible does not happen to that child. We are not going there.

AX: So how far along does Winona wind up in the pregnancy by the end of the season, or does Season Three cover nine months?

YOST: That gets back to his question about what are we going to do about Season Four. We have an idea for the end of Season Three that would relate to that – we’ll have to see where we go. JUSTIFIED is a slightly expanded time frame over, let’s say, LOST. They ran over six years but the main plot took place over three months or something, right? Which is why they had to get [the child character] Walt out of the show at the end of the first season, because they realized he was going to grow up and it would screw the timeline. There are times when we’re talking about things when we realize that really, from the pilot, only six months have gone by in the JUSTIFIED world. We might expand that a little bit at the end of Season Three.

AX: Would you say there’s a theme to this season?

YOST: You know I love my themes. Last year was feud and to boil it down this year would be crossing the line and what happens when you cross the line.

AX: How do you feel about the intensity of critical and popular love JUSTIFIED ha received?

YOST: It’s incredibly gratifying. The goal from the beginning was to do just an entertaining show. We wanted to do something that was fun. It’s our job to get people to tune in every week. I remember with certain shows that I’ve loved over the years that sense of, when you start watching a show, “What are these guys going to do this week?” And that’s what we want for our audience.

AX: Raylan and Winona have started house-hunting. Will Raylan be out of the motel by the end of this season?

YOST: I can guarantee that Raylan Givens will be out of that damn motel.

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Article Source: Assignment X
Article:Interview with JUSTIFIED Executive Producer Graham Yost on JUSTIFIED – Season 3

Assignment X - The Pop Culture Entertainment Magazine for Movies, TV, DVD, Blu-ray, Video Games, Books, Comics and Technology - News, Interviews, Reviews, Photos and Videos - Pop Culture marks the spot.

TV Review: CASTLE – Season 4 – “Linchpin”

ANNE LOUISE BANNON — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:47:25 +0000

TV Review: CASTLE – Season 4 – “Linchpin”

Stars: Nathan Fillion, Stana Katic, Susan Sullivan, Molly Quinn, Tamala Jones, Seamus Deaver, Jon Huertas, Penny Johnson Jerald
Writer: Andrew W. Marlowe
Director: Rob Bowman
Network: ABC, Monday nights, 10 p.m.
Original Telecast: February 20, 2012

“Linchpin” is one of those odd episodes of CASTLE that feels satisfying in the moment, but when you think about it later, something feels off. Maybe it’s because it falls back on the ol’ “Who’s the Real Bad Guy” routine that’s more than a little clicheed. Or that even hoarier cliche of having to save the world.

So Castle (Nathan Fillion) and Becket (Stana Katic) just barely get out of the car that got pushed off the pier (how do you fire a gun underwater?). Like we didn’t know that was going to happen. Then Castle confesses to Beckett that he did sleep with CIA agent Sophia (Jennifer Beals) way back when. Only Sophia is obviously on the prowl and challenges Castle on his relationship with Beckett. Then she goes and tells Beckett that what the two had was the sexual tension and once that was, um, relieved, there was no relationship there.

Oh, goody. Another excuse for the writers to keep Castle and Beckett apart. I don’t get it – why do writers insist that the only interesting part of the relationship is the sexual tension? It’s the relationship itself that’s the most interesting part, but I guess you have to find a way to have people in conflict without hating each other and that takes a lot of work.

Anyway, Beckett and Castle are technically off the case, but like that’s going to stop them. Kevin (Seamus Deaver) and Javier (Jon Huertas) still have no clue what’s going on beyond the fact that they’ve got this really tough case, but Javier finally figures it out, sort of. And thanks to Kevin and Javier doing the footwork, Castle and Beckett find where our mysterious professor has hidden his work that discovered the linch pin – the one tiny element that if harmed, could start World War III.

Turns out that she’s a little Chinese girl whose father has a tremendous amount of power and, surprise, surprise, she’s in New York with her family. Oddly enough, bad guy Thomas Gage (David Chisum) may not be the bad guy we thought him to be. But if he isn’t, who is? By that point, I knew and wondered why Castle and Beckett didn’t.

Can’t say more, but we know how it all works out. Interestingly enough, CASTLE does end with a very nice, very real moment from Castle and the opening up of a secret from his past. Maybe.

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Related Link: TV Review: CASTLE – Season 4 – Rise

Related Link: AX’s interview with CASTLE star Nathan Fillion

Related Link: AX’s interview with CASTLE star Stana Katic

Related Link: AX’s exclusive interview with CASTLE creator Andrew W. Marlowe

Related Link: AX’s Review of CASTLE – “Law & Murder”

Related Link: AX’s Exclusive Interview with Susan Sullivan and Molly Quinn

Related Link: AX’s interview with Executive Producer Laurie Zaks

Related Link: NAKED CITY book review

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Article: TV Review: CASTLE – Season 4 – “Linchpin”

TV Review: ONCE UPON A TIME – Season 1 – “Whatever Happened to Frederick”

ANNE LOUISE BANNON — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 00:05:45 +0000

TV Review: ONCE UPON A TIME – Season 1 – “Whatever Happened to Frederick”

Stars: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jennifer Morrison, Robert Carlyle, Lana Parrilla, Jared Gilmore, Josh Dallas, Raphael Sbarge
Writer: David H. Goodman
Director: Dean White
Network: ABC, Sunday nights, 8 p.m.
Original Telecast: February 19, 2012

If you want to know “Whatever Happened to Frederick,” keep your eye on the guy with the soccer balls in the school scene. That’s because just about everyone in Storybrooke, Maine, has a fairy tale counterpart in ONCE UPON A TIME. We’ve got two basic problems in the episode, both revolving around the relationship between Snow White and Prince James Charming and their real world counterparts Mary Margaret (Ginnifer Goodwin) and David (Josh Dallas) and that problem is Princess Abigail/Kathryn (Anastasia Griffith).

Charming (whose real name is James) has been engaged to Abigail, who is King Midas’ daughter, thanks to an arranged marriage between King George (Alan Dale) and Midas, and George is pretty determined to see to it that James sees it through, even though James is in love with Snow White. David, who started out the series in a coma, happens to be married to Kathryn, only since he woke up, he and Mary Margaret have been dealing with this intense attraction to each other.

So when Kathryn tells David that she’s been accepted to law school in Boston, he figures it’s the perfect time to get out of that relationship so he can be with Mary Margaret, who is insisting that Kathryn be told the truth about her and David.

In the meantime, we now have a name for our mysterious stranger, August W. Booth (Eion Bailey). Booth, as we saw in earlier episodes, has rescued the mysterious fairy tale book belonging to Henry (Jared Gilmore) and has seen to it that Emma (Jennifer Morrison) gets it to Henry. August is also being strangely nice to Emma, as well.

Back in fairy tale land, James and Abigail confront each other – turns out that not only is Abigail onto James’ love for Snow White, she’s got a love of her own. Only he’s a gold statue because he bumped up against Midas while trying to protect them. James offers to go after water from the magic lake, in spite of the fact that no one has ever gotten away from there alive. Sure enough, there’s an evil shape changing being in there who tries to suck James under by changing into Snow White’s shape.

In Storybrooke, Regina (Lana Parilla) tells Kathryn that David and Mary Margaret have been having an affair, and Kathryn confronts Mary Margaret, who’s pretty upset that David didn’t tell Kathryn about them. So she confronts David and tells him it’s off. And Regina steps up to some nasty skullduggery just to make things worse.

So what we’ve got is one nasty mess, since James also just finds out that Snow White is attempting to stop his wedding and is risking her life to do it. And Booth. Who is Booth? He doesn’t have a fairy tale counterpart (that we’ve seen yet) and he has come from outside. But how did he get the book and why did he go to such lengths to make sure Emma (and hence Henry) had it? What’s with him and the wishing well?

So, not surprisingly, this is one of those episodes of ONCE UPON A TIME that’s all about leaving us with more questions than answers. Oh well.

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Article Source: Assignment X
Article: TV Review – ONCE UPON A TIME – Season 1 – “Whatever Happened to Frederick”

TV Review: ALCATRAZ – Season 1 – “Johnny McKee”

PETER BROWN — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:33:34 +0000

TV Review: ALCATRAZ – Season 1 – “Johnny McKee”

Cast: Sarah Jones, Jorge Garcia, Sam Neill, Parminder Nagra, Jonny Coyne, Robert Forster
Writers: Toni Graphia
Director: Brad Turner
Network: Fox, airs Mondays @ 9 p.m.
Original Telecast: Feb. 20, 2012

I’m beginning to doubt the longevity of ALCATRAZ.

This isn’t a show like FRINGE or SUPERNATURAL that can give us compelling and cool experiments and weird s*** happening all the time in a non-mythology story or even two or three episodes that will stand alone and we’ll be happy.

The whole premise of the show is finding out why these inmates have traveled through time and are re-appearing and returning to their dastardly nature of committing acts of crime and murder that seem to be focused on getting into a vault or secret area of Alcatraz from the past. Without that one defining theme in each episode, it loses much of the appeal.

When those said “contained” episodes involve something completely dumb, it doesn’t help.

“Johnny McKee” is one of these craptacular episodes that contained little to nothing in terms of forwarding the mythology of the show and the storyline was just bunk.

In a nutshell, McKee was a chemistry geek that didn’t like getting bullied because when he was in high school he got his balls blown off by a cherry bomb. So, he decided to use his talents to good use by killing more than 70 people all for revenge. REVENGE!

Can it get more clichéd than this?

While previous inmates that have returned had some purpose from a mysterious “they”, the last two weeks have been just random acts of violence because boo freaking hoo my balls got blown off or the government only gave me a silver medal in the war (last week’s abomination of an episode). Not to say these are bad things but these are pretty lame excuses for committing mass murder.

So we go from having a defined purpose for these inmates returning and stealing either keys to unlock the vault/secret area of Alcatraz to the inmates returning, having no clue as to why they are back and instead of just loving the fact they have a new lease on life and are free, decide to kill mass amounts of people for REVENGE!

Speaking of which, one thing ALCATRAZ is not … low on body counts. Since this show has gone on the air, San Francisco’s homicide rate must have gone through the roof. Each week, we get a former killer from the infamous prison getting set loose on society once again only to end up massacring droves of innocent civilians in the process. “Johnny McKee” had at least 10 alone die at the hands of a guy disgruntled over anyone that gives him just a minor bit of lip.

Look I know that these guys are the worst of the bunch — cold blooded killers but are we to believe that because some dude wants a new towel from the towel guy that he’s gonna not only poison the water he swims in but take out five other dudes along with him? Seems like a major overreaction. Obviously, McKee’s elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top but even for a nutjob these seems like a bit overboard. Then to poison an entire train of people that did nothing to him at all because he’s following some Jules Verne philosophy is just plain stupid and lazy writing.

The flashbacks in this episode also just went to prove that McKee didn’t like bullies, therefore, just being a waste of time if not to show us anything different from what we already know.

Unlike last week’s ALCATRAZ where we at least got some bone thrown at us that gave us a few questions about the overall storyline happening, this had none. The only nugget we got was that Tommy Madsen, grandfather of Rebecca Madsen (Sarah Jones), was one of the inmates forced to give blood in high quantities. Oh and we got another awkward/setting up a romance moment with Hurley (Jorge Garcia) and the geeky morgue lady – yes, I called him Hurley because he’s the exact same character just not on an island, OK not on a big island.

Even Hauser (Sam Neill) had his own balls blown off in this episode as he didn’t have a growling or grumpy moment at all. At least give us a grumpy Hauser moment, sheesh.

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Related Link:TV Review: ALCATRAZ – SEASON 1 – “Paxton Petty”

Article Source: Assignment X
Article:TV Review: ALCATRAZ – SEASON 1 – “Johnny McKee”

Exclusive Photos from THIS MEANS WAR Los Angeles Premiere

SUE SCHNEIDER — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:51:32 +0000

Exclusive Photos from THIS MEANS WAR Los Angeles Premiere

Recently Twentieth Century Fox celebrated the Los Angeles Premiere of THIS MEANS WAR at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood.

Chris Pine and Tom Hardy star as the world’s deadliest CIA operatives. They are inseparable partners and best friends until they both fall for the same woman (Reese Witherspoon).

Seen walking the carpet were the stars of the film, which included: Reese Witherspoon, Tom Hardy, Chris Pine, Angela Bassett, Chelsea Handler, Abigail Spencer, John Paul Ruttan, Aleks Paunovic, Laura Vandervoort, McG (Director), Writers – Timothy Dowling and Simon Kinberg.

Joining them were guests, which included: Kelly Sullivan, The Bella Twins – Brie and Nikki, Alex Russell, Sophia Bush, Whitney Cummings, Jen Lilley, Corbin Bleu, Zachary Gordon, Nick Turturro, Frankie Delgado, Jake Pavelka, Ashley Ann Vickers, Holly Marie Combs, Ashley Jones, Marisa Coughlan, Perry Reeves, Tom Payne, Christa B. Allen, Francois Arnaud, Kristin Cavallari, Melanie Lynskey, Monet Mazur, and Brian Friedman.

LET US KNOW WHAT YOU THINK – COMMENT BELOW!

Related Link: Movie Review – THIS MEANS WAR
Related Link: For more EXCLUSIVE premiere photos

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Article: Exclusive Photos from the THIS MEANS WAR premiere

TV Review: SUPERNATURAL – Season 7 – “Repo Man”

RACHEL REITSLEFF — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 00:18:48 +0000

TV Review: SUPERNATURAL – Season 7 – “Repo Man”

Stars: Jared Padalecki, Jensen Ackles, Mark Pellegrino, Russell Sams, Nicole Oliver
Writer: Ben Edlund, series created by Eric Kripke
Director: Thomas J. Wright
Network: The CW, Fridays @ 9 PM
Original Airdate: February 17, 2012

The standalone plot of SUPERNATURAL’s “Repo Man,” scripted by Ben Edlund, dovetails nicely into the arced storyline, featuring Sam (Jared Padalecki) being continuously bedeviled by his visions of Lucifer (Mark Pellegrino). The thematic resonance between the two works well, and having a recurring smartass along for the ride, especially one as insinuatingly menacing as Pellegrino’s Devil in Chief, works even better.

Four years ago in Idaho, Dean (Jensen Ackles) did most of the work in exorcising a woman-killing demon from Jeffrey (Russell Sams), a seemingly nice young man. The exorcism involved beating the hell out of the demon – who, unfortunately for Jeffrey, was residing within at the time. Jeffrey, given a moment of lucidity, tells Dean and Sam to do whatever they need to do, and Dean gets the demon to spill some information about Lilith (remember her?) before the exorcism ultimately works. Dean drops Jeffrey off at a hospital.

Four years later, Nora (Nicole Oliver), the good Wiccan witch who tipped the Winchesters off to the possession in the first place, is afraid the demon is back due to a new string of serial killings. Jeffrey is living in a group home, but seems to be making progress. Sam and Dean talk to him – the beating took a toll on Jeffrey’s life. He lost his job, became an alcoholic, started talking about the demon and wound up in psychiatric care. Sam, meanwhile, is seeing and hearing Lucifer a lot more these days, though he doesn’t let Dean know.

Dean, searching for the demon, finds a young man tied up in a chair. Then Dean gets a needle in his neck. Sam starts to worry when he can’t reach Dean on the phone and finally starts listening when Lucifer offers help. Lucifer leads Sam back to Nora, who says that Jeffrey came to her and asked her to summon the demon. When Nora refused, Jeffrey kidnapped Nora’s son and cut off his ear. Sam says that it seems unlikely that particular demon could be summoned again – he’d be locked up tight in Hell after betraying Lilith. Nora says that’s why Jeffrey needs the blood of the exorcist – Dean – who banished the demon in the first place.

With both Dean and Nora’s son tied up, Jeffrey sacrifices a dog he’s just adopted from the pound and explains that he loved his demon. The demon allowed Jeffrey to be the serial killer he always wished he could be; Jeffrey feels incomplete without him. But when Jeffrey summons the demon, it jumps into Nora’s son instead of Jeffrey. The demon explains that he was just there to bring out Jeffrey’s potential – Jeffrey doesn’t need him any more in order to be a serial killer. Nora’s son, on the other hand, shows no potential. Then the demon realizes he’s walked under a demon trap painted on the ceiling. Sam and Nora come in – Nora exorcises her son, Sam shoots Jeffrey and all seems well.

Then Sam and Dean go back to their motel. Dean promptly falls asleep, but Sam is kept awake by Lucifer, who says Sam has let him back in – and Sam sees the room as being on fire.

The little twists in the story are fun and smart. It also makes sense emotionally to have Jeffrey kill the dog – we don’t know his human victims, but the dog is so charming that we want to see this s.o.b. smote down at once.

However, the richer material here is the interaction between Sam and Lucifer. Pellegrino doesn’t overdo it, but he really conveys that this guy has all the time in the world and yet still enjoys teasing Sam with pretending to be bored, lonely, etc. Padalecki takes Sam from diligently ignoring Lucifer to starting to interact with the devil without even being fully aware he’s doing so – it’s a good, smooth segue. The dynamic between them livens up the proceedings in the way the sarcastic otherworldly characters often do on the show (think Crowley and the Trickster), which tends to bring out the best in SUPERNATURAL – spooky, serious drama with a little snark about it all.

It’s also nice to see in Nora a female character with some innate power who uses it, survives the episode and doesn’t seem too histrionic about things. Again, the right tone is struck.

As for the episode’s finale, well, we do love Pellegrino’s Luci a bit despite ourselves, so we’re eager to see where he and Sam go next.

AGREE? DISAGREE? LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD – COMMENT BELOW!

Related Link: Interview with SUPERNATURAL star Misha Collins

Related Link: The scoop on SUPERNATURAL – Season 7

Related Link: Details on SUPERNATURAL – THE ANIME SERIES

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Article: TV Review: SUPERNATURAL – Season 7 – “Repo Man”

Exclusive Photos from THE SIMPSONS Ultimate Fan Marathon Challenge Kick-Off

SUE SCHNEIDER — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 18:25:07 +0000

Exclusive Photos from THE SIMPSONS Ultimate Fan Marathon Challenge Kick-Off

Recently for the celebration of the historic 500^th episode of THE SIMPSONS, FOX invited fans to participate in THE SIMPSONS Ultimate Fan Marathon Challenge at the Hollywood & Highland Complex in Hollywood.

Fans came together to watch 500 continuous episodes of THE SIMPSONS in a building put together in the middle of the courtyard with oversized couches and a huge television. The contest winner that broke the current Guinness World Record of 86 hours, 6 minutes and 41 seconds would win a prize worth $10,500 and an array of THE SIMPSONS merchandise.

Fans, the press and everyone that was in the complex that day were treated to SIMPSONS Donuts and caramel and cheese popcorn.

Joining Homer Simpson, Marge Simpson, Maggie Simpson, Lisa Simpson and Bart Simpson was Al Jean (Executive Producer), Nancy Cartwright (voice of Bart Simpson) and Yeardley Smith (voice of Lisa Simpson).

Visit www.TheSimpsonShop.com to get the latest SIMPSONS merchandise, and in February, a special selection of products created exclusively to celebrate the 500^th episode milestone will be on sale.

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Related Link: For more EXCLUSIVE premiere photos

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Article: Exclusive Photos from THE SIMPSONS Ultimate Fan Marathon Challenge

CD Review: PHASE 7 soundtrack

DANIEL SCHWEIGER — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:10:48 +0000

CD Review: PHASE 7 soundtrack

A pandemic in Argentina causes a quarantined condo to go bananas with expectedly arch, gun-toting anarchy.

But if you were only trying to decipher this disease’s effects from listening to PHASE 7‘s score, then you might think it was musical bacteria that caused you to chew bubblegum and kick ass. That’s how spot-on composer Guillermo Guareschi’s south-of-the-border replay of John Carpenter and Alan Howarth’s THEY LIVE is, from a slow, military march to its eccentric blues vibe. Thankfully, the score gets significantly more interesting as civilization really begins to break down, and Guareschi’s well-played homage starts to develop its own identity, bringing on a piano freak-out of “Swan Lake,” cheesy retro-horror synth tones and a strumming, Spaghetti Western-styled guitar.

By the time the PHASE 7 soundtrack reaches its apocalyptic alpha and omega Guareschi’s strain has pretty much mutated into it’s a distinctive, and thoroughly entertaining antibody, one that’s successfully assimilated its love of classically quirky genre scoring with its own black-humored edge. It’s a fun musical bug worth that’s worth catching.

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CD Review: HIDEAWAYS soundtrack

DANIEL SCHWEIGER — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 14:07:58 +0000

CD Review: HIDEAWAYS soundtrack

French composer Eric Neveux (INTIMACY, SITCOM) goes into the English woods with HIDEAWAYS, where a young man with death-dealing powers has chosen to hide from those he might unintentionally harm. That is until his solitude is interrupted by a girl already at the grim reaper’s door.

Thought the sight of the couple’s love blooming as flowers wilt about them lets us know this will be the stuff of ill-fated fairy tale romance, Neveux’s work is far more about hope, tenderness and even whimsy. His score conjures a magical Garden of Eden for these two lost souls, as gentle bells, soothing voices and bucolic strings make for a soundtrack caught somewhere between the verdant symphonic nature of William Walton and the dark, instrumental eccentricity of Danny Elfman.

Sure fate might casts its harsh shadow with ominous electronics and orchestral thunder in Neveux’s idyllic soundscape, but it’s the strikingly poetry of his melodies, as enchantingly captured for strings, guitar and piano, that assure love, and life will conquer all- a theme movingly summed up in Bless’ end title song “With Love and Faith.” For a Euro-composer centric label with a mission of introducing organically-produced scores, Movie Score Media’s release of another film that might not likely see the light of day over here produces one of its most rewarding listens, let alone finds in Eric Neveux.

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CD Review: STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME: Ultimate Edition soundtrack

DANIEL SCHWEIGER — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 01:48:50 +0000

CD Review: STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME: Ultimate Edition soundtrack

Hardcore fans might be loathe to admit that the most popular entry in the STAR TREK film series (at least until J.J. Abrams re-booted it) was the “save the whales” picture STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME that had the least to do with Gene Roddenberry’s mythology – let alone the movies’ majestically adventurous musical character that had been established by Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner.

But dismissive purists aside, there’s no denying the one-off pleasures that abound in the lightweight, character-driven VOYAGE HOME especially in director Leonard Nimoy’s decision to bring a seriously avant-garde composer like Leonard Rosenman aboard for whale watching.

From his remarkable filmscoring debut with 1955’s EAST OF EDEN, Rosenman’s experimental, overlapping use of the orchestra was usually caught somewhere between melody and dissonance, making much of his work anything but casual, pleasant listening. But it was precisely this stirringly discordant, strange approach that made him a a natural for science fiction, particularly when exploring the genre’s most foreboding frontiers- whether they lay inside of the human body in FANTASTIC VOYAGE or BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES. The time-traveling aspects of STAR TREK IV gave Rosenman plenty of opportunities to go at warp speed with his undulating walls of symphonic sound and rising brass cries, from the unsettling motiff of an alien probe to eight, modernistic minutes of returning two cetaceans to future earth. But for most of this TREK score, Rosenman is in an uncharacteristically joyful, and catchy mood. Indeed, TREK IV offers the most enjoyable theme of the series, a rousing, bell-clanging, and horn-blowing melody that not only captures the nautical spirit of the TREK universe, but also the film’s San Francisco setting. From the comedy opera-style hospital chase to the synth jazz funk for “Market Street” (abetted by The Yellowjackets) and the merry Scottish horn and drum strut of “In San Francisco,” Rosenman’s “Star Trek IV” has a sweet twinkle in its eye, while also delivering one of the series’ most suspensefully thrilling cues as Kirk’s Klingon Ship intercepts “The Whaler.” Rosenman’s appealing quality is right in line with the can’t-we-all-just-get-along appeal of this very special VOYAGE, a score that marked the only one in the TREK series to get an Oscar nomination.

Intrada gives this appealing odd musical duck its long-overdue royal treatment. With always-informative liners by noted Trek music authority Jeff Bond. The CD adds over twenty minutes of alternates, including an original man title that used the Alexander Courage theme to far less effect than Rosenman’s own melody (thought the composer more than pays off Courage’s nostalgic glory for the end reveal of a new Enterprise). But the coolest unheard piece of music here is the full, notorious version of “I Hate You,” associate producer Kirk Thatcher’s hilarious punk song whose nihilism was more than worthy of its Mohawked singer getting a Vulcan nerve pinch.

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