Voices From Krypton

MOONLIGHT: THE RINGER

Moonlight

Episode 1.7

“The Ringer”

Written by Josh Pate

Directed by Chris Fisher

Guest Starring: Tami Roman, Brian Maillard, Roddy Jessup, Rhomeyn Johnson, Stephen Jackson

Plot Summary: Mick arrives at a fire that is burning down a historic Hollywood hotel and sees a woman he believes is Coraline. But the dead ringer for his X-wife, and the vampire who turned him, is a professional photographer (and Beth’s colleague) who ends up asking Mick to find a thief who has stolen her expensive cameras.

Review: My fascination with vampire stories centers around how long they can exist and what that very long life can do to them emotionally.
   Viewers of Moonlight have been getting hints about the toll vampirism has taken on Mick St. John from the very first episode. But let me stress – we’ve only received hints. Mostly, we’ve seen Mick as a self-assured, intensely private, highly competent and hard to rattle vamp detective. Outside of his pesky blood habit, Mick has been the perfect primetime hero — and his story has been moving at a fast clip.

   In only six episodes, we’ve seen him get close to a human (our girl Beth), bite her, kiss her, and share some of his deepest secrets with her (like he’s a vamp). We also learned that he’s not ready for a loving and/or physical relationship, but he is willing to move, albeit slowly, in that direction. So, even with its obstacles (Beth’s boyfriend and Mick’s trust issues), the Beth/Mick love train has been rolling right along. And guess what? That’s exactly the way the writers wanted it until they went for our respective jugglers (no pun intended) and flipped the script.

   In the “The Ringer,” we learn that Mick St. John is not so together after all. Even before he was turned into a vampire, he was an obsessive guy. Throughout the episode, we see Mick unraveling, teetering on an emotional ledge. Then he jumps off in the final act when he attacks the photographer, Morgan, accusing her of being Coraline (okay, she is Coraline, but he has no proof).

So, in my humble opinion, this dramatic character reveal is at the heart of what makes “The Ringer” the best episode of Moonlight’s young season.

   It has it all: The first real appearance of Shannyn Sossamon as Coraline (aka, Morgan) was a great twist to the highly anticipated arrival of Mick’s sire. I really liked Shannyn in this episode. She stripped our hero bare (metaphorically) and played with his head without mercy. And by the way, Alex O’Loughlin owned Mick St. John in “The Ringer.” It was well acted and Alex had great chemistry with Shannyn, too.

Things I liked a lot: The relationship between Mick and Josef took a leap up on the intensity scale. I loved the scene where Mick and Josef teamed up to search Hank’s house. Also Josef’s growl…Josef jumping on the bed…Josef, period, was excellent.

Things that concerned me (in a good way): Mick and Josef both referring to Mick’s obsession with Coraline as crazy and insane, and that Mick was out of his mind over Coraline, both when he was human and a vamp. How wild can Mick get? Are the writers trying to warn us about something?

Another pearl: The scene in which Mick asks Beth whether she’s had an intense affair — he admits he has, she doesn’t know if she’s had one – yet. He describes his affair with Coraline as a fever, “It’s like an infection. It burns you up. It makes you do things you wouldn’t normally do.” Besides being fabulous dialog, was it also foreshadowing? Will Beth’s relationship with Mick become that kind of affair for her? (Is that why she hid the vile of Black Crystal in Episode 1.6—B.C.?).

Things I didn’t like: Not much, but the opening scene in front of the burning building with all three main characters was awkward. The actors looked uncomfortable and the writing was choppy.

   Beth’s jealousy didn’t click for me in all of her scenes. She’d underplayed that emotion a tad too much for my taste.

Things that were “hot”: Not much, seriously – not even the Body Heat (1981 Lawrence Kasdan thriller with William Hurt and Kathleen Turner) rip off scene was hot to me (chair crashing through window, man “takes” woman in angry sex). It was just another example of Mick St. John under emotional duress (and too much booze). The only heat in this episode was Mick reaching his boiling point.

More good: All flashbacks, all good. They are unique to the vampire genre in that they don’t stop plot or slow down story. They reveal character and motivation, adding context to our main characters’ behavior in the present.

Best Stunt: Mick fighting Hank at pool’s edge. That was Alex (doing his own stunt) arching up, wrapping his legs around Hank, flipping the vampire onto his back, and then pushing Hank’s face into the water. Way to go Mick/Alex!

Worst Stunt: Mick and Josef “flying” up to the rooftop. I saw the harnesses, I swear.

Pop Culture/Historical: Mahalia Jackson’s photo on Mick’s wall near the entrance showing up after the scene mentioning “The Devil’s Music,” a reference to black jazz in the 1920s (and beyond to early rock and roll days). Mahalia was an American gospel singer whose renowned career spanned from the 1920s through the 1960s.

   Can’t wait until next week!

   Yours in “Moonlight” solidarity,

   Denny S. Bryce/denny_dc

SUPERNATURAL: BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK

SUPERNATURAL

Episode 3.3
Bad Day at Black Rock
Written by: Ben Edlund
Directed by: Robert Singer
Guest Starring: Jim Beaver, Lauren Cohan, Sterling K. Brown

Plot Summary: The boys get a call that a hitherto secret storage room Dad kept in New York has been broken into.  What they find missing is only marginally less surprising than who did the stealing, and why.  Chaos shortly and enthusiastically ensues.

Review: Supernatural Season 3 is finally hitting its stride.  This episode opens with a properly brooding mood inside a gloomy prison block.  The prisoner is none other than Gordon Walker, locked up since "Hunted" (2.10).  Now another hunter visits to tell Gordon that the Devil's Gate in Wyoming is open and the Winchester boys were there.  "Track him down, Kubrick," Gordon orders. "Sam Winchester must die.”

   But that's about the last serious moment we see.  An argument between Sam and Dean assures us the boys are still brothers - Sam has come clean about the demonic Mystery Girl, now named Ruby, and Dean thinks Sam shoulda put her on an express elevator back to Hell. Sam insists they can use - literally - someone with an inside track to Hell's plans, but in the middle of all this sibling affirmation, a phone rings.

   Not theirs, but Dad's, which Dean kept (secretly) charged in the glove box because, you know, things might come up.  Like secret storage lockers.  Yes, turns out John kept a special storeroom in a secret place he never told his sons about.  Oh, come on, you know John too well to be surprised.  Clearly, he never thought his boys would need to know where he stored stuff like extra guns, land mines, and curse-proof boxes.  And Sam's sixth grade soccer trophy and Dean's sixth grade sawed-off shotgun and...

HAS THE JUSTICE LEAGUE MET ITS MATCH?

Although Max Lord, the OMACs and Superman himself are rumored to be the villains of George Miller's forthcoming Justice League, according to Variety, the supposedly go project may be held back by the Writer's Strike. Notes the trade, "Warner Bros. execs are nervous about how to proceed with Justice League of America, which is still uncast and is a crucial potential franchise boasting popular DC Comics characters." The bottom line is that although the studio had stated the script was good to go whether or not there was a strike, the inability to perform rewrites depending on casting or production contingencies is probably not the best way to go forward with a big-budget potential blockbuster.

EMBRACING WEB TV

Although this article doesn't really have anything to do with the gnere, it's nonetheless a look at what could be the next step in web entertainment.

Posted on November 09, 2007 at 06:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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November 08, 2007

A FEW WORDS WITH JUSTICE LEAGUE ART DIRECTOR DAMIEN DREW

Justice League Art Director Damien Drew (who is working alongside Production Designer Owen Paterson and Supervising Art Director Hugh Bateup) recently consented to a brief interview, though his confidentiality agreement with Warner Bros. prevents him from speaking specifically about Justice League.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Considering your credits — among them the Matrix films — is the genre something you seek out or, instead, is it something you’ve just fallen in to?
DAMIEN DREW: I haven’t sought out “genre material” specifically. A large proportion of film productions in Australia in recent years have been in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy genres. I think this has been a studio trend. These are also the productions that generally require large scale set builds of “other world” environments.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: With what you do, are films like Justice League, The Matrix, Superman Returns and Star Wars more creatively fulfilling?
DAMIEN DREW: I am equally interested in other film genres, but these types of films do afford exciting design opportunities by their nature.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: What are you responsibilities on a film?
DAMIEN DREW: My responsibilities as an Art Director bridge both creative and management roles. The Art Directors are often facilitators, ensuring that the Production Designer’s creative goals are implemented through the skills and talents of the many different crew in the art department. This begins with the development of concept art into sketch models and plans for physical sets, supervising the development of construction drawings and following through the construction, painting, dressing and delivery of the sets and locations to meet the shooting schedule. As the film making process  is increasingly influenced by digital technologies, the Art Department also develops and designs environments that will only exist in the realm of Visual Effects.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: When you work on the films you’ve been involved with, is there a personal sense of excitement to become a part of a larger mythos or legacy?
DAMIEN DREW: It is certainly exciting to work on projects where I may have had a relationship with characters or stories as a child. Star Wars has been a big part of many children and adults’ lives from its inception. Likewise the Superman character and its history are iconic. These projects were both hard work and lots of fun to be involved with.

Posted on November 08, 2007 at 09:09 AM in Justice League On Film, Superheroes On Film | Permalink | Comments (3)

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EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, ALEX O'LOUGHLIN ON "MOONLIGHT," PART 2

Interview Conducted by Ed Gross

In the concluding part of our exclusive interview with Moonlight's Alex O'Loughlin, he discusses the challenges of doing the series on a limited budget, the appeal of playing Mick St. John and shares his feelings about the   relationship between Mick and Beth Turner.

Check out part one of this interview by clicking HERE.

Posted on November 08, 2007 at 08:00 AM in Vampires & Slayers | Permalink | Comments (8)

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November 07, 2007

HEROES' JACK COLEMAN VIDEO INTERVIEW

Posted on November 07, 2007 at 07:38 PM in Superheroes On Film | Permalink | Comments (1)

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THE X-FILES: IN THE BEGINNING

With the current release of The X-Files: The Complete Collectors Edition on DVD and the announcement of production on the feature film X-Files 2 for later this year, it seems an appropriate time to look back at the show’s genesis.
   Back at the beginning of the 1990s, Chris Carter was best known for writing comedies for the Walt Disney Company. “If you look at my resume,” says Carter, “you won’t find any clear connection between my previous work and The X-Files.”
   Carter had what he terms a “fairly normal” childhood made up of Little League baseball and surfing. After graduating from Cal State Long Beach with a degree in journalism, he weighed the pros and cons of his two greatest ambitions – being a beach bum and being a writer – and decided to split the difference.
“I went to work for Surfing magazine, which is a big deal – an international magazine,” Carter says. “it was really to postpone my growing up, and those were the best years of my life. I ended up working for them for thirteen years and was listed as senior editor when I was twenty-eight. So I went around the world, surfing, and I got to write. I wrote constantly. I learned how to run a business. It was a wonderful, adventurous time. I did many other things, too, including being a potter.”
   At the suggestion of his wife, Carter “settled down” and began pursuing screenwriting as a vocation. His first efforts were strong enough to attract the attention of then-Disney execute   Jeffrey Katzenberg, who signed him to a multipicture deal. As a result, he wrote the TV movies B.R.A.T. Patrol and Meet the Munceys.
   “When I went to Disney,” Carter explains, “I actually became known as a comedy writer. So that was what people thought of me as: a person who had a certain handle on the voice of contemporary youth and the comedic voice. That’s what people kept wanting me to write. I like that type of writing very much, and I think I can do it. But The X-Files really is more where my heart is: in scary, dramatic, thriller writing.”
   In 1993 Carter was hired by Fox to develop programming. At that point, Carter began to nurture his idea for a series that would tap in to his childhood memories of The Night Stalker and The Twilight Zone.
   “Sometimes the Night Stalker influence is overstated,” Carter explains. “Somebody asked me in  what way it inspired me and I said, ‘I think I remember two scenes from the old show. One where Darren McGavin is confronted by a vampire and is able to drive a stake into his heart, and the other is in an alleyway.’ I just remember being scared out of my wits by that show as a kid, and I realized that there just wasn’t anything scary nowon television. The inspiration is general rather than specific.”
   He also points out a distinction between The X-Files and Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone that he feels is too often overlooked. “Rod Serling was telling fables, almost allegorically. You see a lot of that in The X-Files, too, but each of the episodes of The Twilight Zone had a bigger message, a bigger purpose, and that was to illuminate something about the human comedy. We don’t set out to do that; we don’t set out to be instructive – there’s no message behind each X-Files episode. Although there is something you can take from it, we’re not teaching.”

Continue reading "THE X-FILES: IN THE BEGINNING" »

Posted on November 07, 2007 at 04:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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SCI FI NEWSWIRE

Once you've finsished exploring Voices From Krypton, check out our sister site Sci-Fi Newswire for the latest headlines and announcements in the mediums of film, TV, video games and more. Recent headlines include new guest stars on Doctor Who, Daniel Radcliffe bringing Equus to Broadway, Shrek the Third on DVD and Jennifer Connelly joining the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Just click HERE.

Posted on November 07, 2007 at 04:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

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November 04, 2007

SUPERNATURAL: THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

SUPERNATURAL
Episode 3.2
The Kids Are All Right
Written by: Sera Gamble
Directed by: Philip Sgriccia
Guest Starring: Katie Cassidy, Nicholas Elia, Cindy Sampson
Plot Summary: Dean pays a visit to an old flame, only to find her precocious son seems oddly familiar.  But a social visit becomes a supernatural case, when a rash of fatal accidents points to something weird going on with local children.
Review: This season's second episode sets off with a bang - or more rightly a grisly splash, as the Victim du Jour falls on his own power table-saw.  I warned of the Creep Quotient ...
   We find Sam continuing his now-clandestine search for a means to break Dean's deal, while Dean, though somewhat less manic than the last episode, is still on his crusade to live life to the fullest.  Here he has been seized by the urge to look up a girl he met nine years ago - a really bendy yoga instructor in Cicero, Indiana.  Bless the boy; one wonders if Dean lives in a time warp of his own making.
   Of course, the girl, Lisa, has moved on since her wild days, and now lives in an upper middleclass neighborhood as the single mom of an eight-year-old son.  Anyone surprised at the math, there?  Didn't think so, but Lisa firmly denies that Dean is the dad.  Though rather ham-handed in its execution, there are some grin-worthy moments with Dean and Ben the mini-Dean, who is a precocious kid played by a wonderful child actor.  Mainly, we are led to ponder just how much of Dean's behavior is genetics, while fandom's view of Dean's rapport with children is now cast in stone.
   That, however, is the light side of the story.  The rest turns dark in several disquieting ways, not the least being in the disconnect between Sam and Dean.  They are on parallel paths, but not remotely the same page, and rarely even in the same scene.  Dean is preoccupied with tying loose ends and with Ben, and Sam ... well.
   Sam sits in a diner continuing his research, when who should slink in but the mysterious knife-wielding girl from 3.1.  Sly and smirking, she knows precisely what Sam is up to, but what really interests her is the whole "Anti-Christ celebrity death-match" thing, of which Sam is the sole survivor.  She says Sam must still be a pretty big deal among the demons, after all that happened to Mom - and Mom's friends.  To which we get Sam's "bzuh?" face, so Mystery Girl suggests Sam go and get up to speed, and she slinks back out again.  Just who is this chick, anyhow, that she knows so much about Sammy?
   While we chew on that, Kripke launches us into the only thing I find scarier than evil clowns: evil kids.  From smarmy little urchins cooing how much they "love you, Mommy", to blank stares at interlopers (read, Sam in a truly atrocious suit), to ghastly reflections of the real monsters in various mirrors, this episode rang the bell on my creep-o-meter.  I thought it really tipped off into Stephen King territory when one of the distraught moms drove her car - and her evil child - into a nearby lake.  Art imitates life to disturbing effect, reminding us once again that Kripke doesn't play by the usual rules.
   Changelings: that's what Sam and Dean face, evil creatures who steal children and hide them underground, leaving behind a life-sucking replica to feed off the mother until she dies.  The guy on the table-saw was only one of several victims, the fathers of other children having recently died gruesome deaths.  Dean's instincts kick into overdrive when he thinks of Ben, his might-be son, but he arrives at Lisa's house too late: the boy with whom he had bonded so well is now whining for Mom to "make him go away."
   The resolution to the tale seems a bit rushed, and we get to see Sam and Dean having their asses handed to them in the big showdown.  But we only have 43 minutes and so what if the changelings' "mother" wore a human female form?  I loved watching the Bad Thing throw these two strapping guys around like sofa cushions, physically demonstrating what a proper monster can do.  Though I gotta say, Sammy and a homemade flamethrower is a thing of beauty.  I was also charmed by Ben's coolness in helping the other kids escape their basement prison.  The little guy really pulled it off.
   Finally, regardless how the rest of the Dean-and-Ben stuff played, the last scene with Dean and Lisa won me.  Jensen Ackles knows how to break our hearts with just a look, and I ached for Dean as he walked away from her and Ben with grace and a wistful smile.  Oh, Dean, what you might have had, if the road were different.
   Sam's concluding scenes are equally compelling, but for different reasons.  One, we get to see him in uber-geek mode, as he crams a jillion phone calls and net searches into a what could only be a couple hours' time.  Sam soon reaches a chilling realization: his Mom's uncle, her doctor, and all her friends are dead since 2001.  The Yellow-Eyed Demon must have begun laying his plans about the time Sam was preparing for college.
   Two, listen closely as Sam confronts Mystery Girl for some answers.  When he demands for the third time that she tell him who she is ... his shout carries a subtle but distinct echo effect.  Does this mirror when Andy in "Simon Says" projected his powers of compulsion on other people?  Mystery Girl doesn't react beyond a sort of measuring pause, but then ... she closes and opens her eyes. Which turn jet, glossy, black.  A demon's eyes.  A demon who wants to help Sam Winchester for reasons we can only imagine.  WHOO-YA!  Kripke, you magnificent bastard, I take back every doubt I had about this character.  She has, in one stroke, become delicious.
   Plus, she's offering Sam the one thing he wants: help saving Dean in exchange for her helping Sam.  All of which leaves us with new worries for Sam, since keeping secrets among the Winchesters never ends well....  Stay tuned, kids!  Supernatural is underway.

Peace, out.

~ Gloria Atwater / ErinRua

Posted on November 04, 2007 at 03:54 PM in Vampires & Slayers | Permalink | Comments (1)

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Justice League Art Director Damien Drew (who is working alongside Production Designer Owen Paterson and Supervising Art Director Hugh Bateup) recently consented to a brief interview, though his confidentiality agreement with Warner Bros. prevents him from speaking specifically about Justice League.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Considering your credits — among them the Matrix films — is the genre something you seek out or, instead, is it something you’ve just fallen in to?
DAMIEN DREW: I haven’t sought out “genre material” specifically. A large proportion of film productions in Australia in recent years have been in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy genres. I think this has been a studio trend. These are also the productions that generally require large scale set builds of “other world” environments.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: With what you do, are films like Justice League, The Matrix, Superman Returns and Star Wars more creatively fulfilling?
DAMIEN DREW: I am equally interested in other film genres, but these types of films do afford exciting design opportunities by their nature.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: What are you responsibilities on a film?
DAMIEN DREW: My responsibilities as an Art Director bridge both creative and management roles. The Art Directors are often facilitators, ensuring that the Production Designer’s creative goals are implemented through the skills and talents of the many different crew in the art department. This begins with the development of concept art into sketch models and plans for physical sets, supervising the development of construction drawings and following through the construction, painting, dressing and delivery of the sets and locations to meet the shooting schedule. As the film making process  is increasingly influenced by digital technologies, the Art Department also develops and designs environments that will only exist in the realm of Visual Effects.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: When you work on the films you’ve been involved with, is there a personal sense of excitement to become a part of a larger mythos or legacy?
DAMIEN DREW: It is certainly exciting to work on projects where I may have had a relationship with characters or stories as a child. Star Wars has been a big part of many children and adults’ lives from its inception. Likewise the Superman character and its history are iconic. These projects were both hard work and lots of fun to be involved with.

Interview Conducted by Ed Gross

In the concluding part of our exclusive interview with Moonlight's Alex O'Loughlin, he discusses the challenges of doing the series on a limited budget, the appeal of playing Mick St. John and shares his feelings about the   relationship between Mick and Beth Turner.

Check out part one of this interview by clicking HERE.

With the current release of The X-Files: The Complete Collectors Edition on DVD and the announcement of production on the feature film X-Files 2 for later this year, it seems an appropriate time to look back at the show’s genesis.
   Back at the beginning of the 1990s, Chris Carter was best known for writing comedies for the Walt Disney Company. “If you look at my resume,” says Carter, “you won’t find any clear connection between my previous work and The X-Files.”
   Carter had what he terms a “fairly normal” childhood made up of Little League baseball and surfing. After graduating from Cal State Long Beach with a degree in journalism, he weighed the pros and cons of his two greatest ambitions – being a beach bum and being a writer – and decided to split the difference.
“I went to work for Surfing magazine, which is a big deal – an international magazine,” Carter says. “it was really to postpone my growing up, and those were the best years of my life. I ended up working for them for thirteen years and was listed as senior editor when I was twenty-eight. So I went around the world, surfing, and I got to write. I wrote constantly. I learned how to run a business. It was a wonderful, adventurous time. I did many other things, too, including being a potter.”
   At the suggestion of his wife, Carter “settled down” and began pursuing screenwriting as a vocation. His first efforts were strong enough to attract the attention of then-Disney execute   Jeffrey Katzenberg, who signed him to a multipicture deal. As a result, he wrote the TV movies B.R.A.T. Patrol and Meet the Munceys.
   “When I went to Disney,” Carter explains, “I actually became known as a comedy writer. So that was what people thought of me as: a person who had a certain handle on the voice of contemporary youth and the comedic voice. That’s what people kept wanting me to write. I like that type of writing very much, and I think I can do it. But The X-Files really is more where my heart is: in scary, dramatic, thriller writing.”
   In 1993 Carter was hired by Fox to develop programming. At that point, Carter began to nurture his idea for a series that would tap in to his childhood memories of The Night Stalker and The Twilight Zone.
   “Sometimes the Night Stalker influence is overstated,” Carter explains. “Somebody asked me in  what way it inspired me and I said, ‘I think I remember two scenes from the old show. One where Darren McGavin is confronted by a vampire and is able to drive a stake into his heart, and the other is in an alleyway.’ I just remember being scared out of my wits by that show as a kid, and I realized that there just wasn’t anything scary nowon television. The inspiration is general rather than specific.”
   He also points out a distinction between The X-Files and Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone that he feels is too often overlooked. “Rod Serling was telling fables, almost allegorically. You see a lot of that in The X-Files, too, but each of the episodes of The Twilight Zone had a bigger message, a bigger purpose, and that was to illuminate something about the human comedy. We don’t set out to do that; we don’t set out to be instructive – there’s no message behind each X-Files episode. Although there is something you can take from it, we’re not teaching.”

Once you've finsished exploring Voices From Krypton, check out our sister site Sci-Fi Newswire for the latest headlines and announcements in the mediums of film, TV, video games and more. Recent headlines include new guest stars on Doctor Who, Daniel Radcliffe bringing Equus to Broadway, Shrek the Third on DVD and Jennifer Connelly joining the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Just click HERE.

SUPERNATURAL
Episode 3.2
The Kids Are All Right
Written by: Sera Gamble
Directed by: Philip Sgriccia
Guest Starring: Katie Cassidy, Nicholas Elia, Cindy Sampson
Plot Summary: Dean pays a visit to an old flame, only to find her precocious son seems oddly familiar.  But a social visit becomes a supernatural case, when a rash of fatal accidents points to something weird going on with local children.
Review: This season's second episode sets off with a bang - or more rightly a grisly splash, as the Victim du Jour falls on his own power table-saw.  I warned of the Creep Quotient ...
   We find Sam continuing his now-clandestine search for a means to break Dean's deal, while Dean, though somewhat less manic than the last episode, is still on his crusade to live life to the fullest.  Here he has been seized by the urge to look up a girl he met nine years ago - a really bendy yoga instructor in Cicero, Indiana.  Bless the boy; one wonders if Dean lives in a time warp of his own making.
   Of course, the girl, Lisa, has moved on since her wild days, and now lives in an upper middleclass neighborhood as the single mom of an eight-year-old son.  Anyone surprised at the math, there?  Didn't think so, but Lisa firmly denies that Dean is the dad.  Though rather ham-handed in its execution, there are some grin-worthy moments with Dean and Ben the mini-Dean, who is a precocious kid played by a wonderful child actor.  Mainly, we are led to ponder just how much of Dean's behavior is genetics, while fandom's view of Dean's rapport with children is now cast in stone.
   That, however, is the light side of the story.  The rest turns dark in several disquieting ways, not the least being in the disconnect between Sam and Dean.  They are on parallel paths, but not remotely the same page, and rarely even in the same scene.  Dean is preoccupied with tying loose ends and with Ben, and Sam ... well.
   Sam sits in a diner continuing his research, when who should slink in but the mysterious knife-wielding girl from 3.1.  Sly and smirking, she knows precisely what Sam is up to, but what really interests her is the whole "Anti-Christ celebrity death-match" thing, of which Sam is the sole survivor.  She says Sam must still be a pretty big deal among the demons, after all that happened to Mom - and Mom's friends.  To which we get Sam's "bzuh?" face, so Mystery Girl suggests Sam go and get up to speed, and she slinks back out again.  Just who is this chick, anyhow, that she knows so much about Sammy?
   While we chew on that, Kripke launches us into the only thing I find scarier than evil clowns: evil kids.  From smarmy little urchins cooing how much they "love you, Mommy", to blank stares at interlopers (read, Sam in a truly atrocious suit), to ghastly reflections of the real monsters in various mirrors, this episode rang the bell on my creep-o-meter.  I thought it really tipped off into Stephen King territory when one of the distraught moms drove her car - and her evil child - into a nearby lake.  Art imitates life to disturbing effect, reminding us once again that Kripke doesn't play by the usual rules.
   Changelings: that's what Sam and Dean face, evil creatures who steal children and hide them underground, leaving behind a life-sucking replica to feed off the mother until she dies.  The guy on the table-saw was only one of several victims, the fathers of other children having recently died gruesome deaths.  Dean's instincts kick into overdrive when he thinks of Ben, his might-be son, but he arrives at Lisa's house too late: the boy with whom he had bonded so well is now whining for Mom to "make him go away."
   The resolution to the tale seems a bit rushed, and we get to see Sam and Dean having their asses handed to them in the big showdown.  But we only have 43 minutes and so what if the changelings' "mother" wore a human female form?  I loved watching the Bad Thing throw these two strapping guys around like sofa cushions, physically demonstrating what a proper monster can do.  Though I gotta say, Sammy and a homemade flamethrower is a thing of beauty.  I was also charmed by Ben's coolness in helping the other kids escape their basement prison.  The little guy really pulled it off.
   Finally, regardless how the rest of the Dean-and-Ben stuff played, the last scene with Dean and Lisa won me.  Jensen Ackles knows how to break our hearts with just a look, and I ached for Dean as he walked away from her and Ben with grace and a wistful smile.  Oh, Dean, what you might have had, if the road were different.
   Sam's concluding scenes are equally compelling, but for different reasons.  One, we get to see him in uber-geek mode, as he crams a jillion phone calls and net searches into a what could only be a couple hours' time.  Sam soon reaches a chilling realization: his Mom's uncle, her doctor, and all her friends are dead since 2001.  The Yellow-Eyed Demon must have begun laying his plans about the time Sam was preparing for college.
   Two, listen closely as Sam confronts Mystery Girl for some answers.  When he demands for the third time that she tell him who she is ... his shout carries a subtle but distinct echo effect.  Does this mirror when Andy in "Simon Says" projected his powers of compulsion on other people?  Mystery Girl doesn't react beyond a sort of measuring pause, but then ... she closes and opens her eyes. Which turn jet, glossy, black.  A demon's eyes.  A demon who wants to help Sam Winchester for reasons we can only imagine.  WHOO-YA!  Kripke, you magnificent bastard, I take back every doubt I had about this character.  She has, in one stroke, become delicious.
   Plus, she's offering Sam the one thing he wants: help saving Dean in exchange for her helping Sam.  All of which leaves us with new worries for Sam, since keeping secrets among the Winchesters never ends well....  Stay tuned, kids!  Supernatural is underway.

Peace, out.

~ Gloria Atwater / ErinRua

A FEW WORDS WITH JUSTICE LEAGUE ART DIRECTOR DAMIEN DREW

Justice League Art Director Damien Drew (who is working alongside Production Designer Owen Paterson and Supervising Art Director Hugh Bateup) recently consented to a brief interview, though his confidentiality agreement with Warner Bros. prevents him from speaking specifically about Justice League.

VOICES FROM KRYPTON: Considering your credits — among them the Matrix films — is the genre something you seek out or, instead, is it something you’ve just fallen in to?
DAMIEN DREW: I haven’t sought out “genre material” specifically. A large proportion of film productions in Australia in recent years have been in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy genres. I think this has been a studio trend. These are also the productions that generally require large scale set builds of “other world” environments.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: With what you do, are films like Justice League, The Matrix, Superman Returns and Star Wars more creatively fulfilling?
DAMIEN DREW: I am equally interested in other film genres, but these types of films do afford exciting design opportunities by their nature.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: What are you responsibilities on a film?
DAMIEN DREW: My responsibilities as an Art Director bridge both creative and management roles. The Art Directors are often facilitators, ensuring that the Production Designer’s creative goals are implemented through the skills and talents of the many different crew in the art department. This begins with the development of concept art into sketch models and plans for physical sets, supervising the development of construction drawings and following through the construction, painting, dressing and delivery of the sets and locations to meet the shooting schedule. As the film making process  is increasingly influenced by digital technologies, the Art Department also develops and designs environments that will only exist in the realm of Visual Effects.
VOICES FROM KRYPTON: When you work on the films you’ve been involved with, is there a personal sense of excitement to become a part of a larger mythos or legacy?
DAMIEN DREW: It is certainly exciting to work on projects where I may have had a relationship with characters or stories as a child. Star Wars has been a big part of many children and adults’ lives from its inception. Likewise the Superman character and its history are iconic. These projects were both hard work and lots of fun to be involved with.

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, ALEX O'LOUGHLIN ON "MOONLIGHT," PART 2

Interview Conducted by Ed Gross

In the concluding part of our exclusive interview with Moonlight's Alex O'Loughlin, he discusses the challenges of doing the series on a limited budget, the appeal of playing Mick St. John and shares his feelings about the   relationship between Mick and Beth Turner.

Check out part one of this interview by clicking HERE.

HEROES' JACK COLEMAN VIDEO INTERVIEW

THE X-FILES: IN THE BEGINNING

With the current release of The X-Files: The Complete Collectors Edition on DVD and the announcement of production on the feature film X-Files 2 for later this year, it seems an appropriate time to look back at the show’s genesis.
   Back at the beginning of the 1990s, Chris Carter was best known for writing comedies for the Walt Disney Company. “If you look at my resume,” says Carter, “you won’t find any clear connection between my previous work and The X-Files.”
   Carter had what he terms a “fairly normal” childhood made up of Little League baseball and surfing. After graduating from Cal State Long Beach with a degree in journalism, he weighed the pros and cons of his two greatest ambitions – being a beach bum and being a writer – and decided to split the difference.
“I went to work for Surfing magazine, which is a big deal – an international magazine,” Carter says. “it was really to postpone my growing up, and those were the best years of my life. I ended up working for them for thirteen years and was listed as senior editor when I was twenty-eight. So I went around the world, surfing, and I got to write. I wrote constantly. I learned how to run a business. It was a wonderful, adventurous time. I did many other things, too, including being a potter.”
   At the suggestion of his wife, Carter “settled down” and began pursuing screenwriting as a vocation. His first efforts were strong enough to attract the attention of then-Disney execute   Jeffrey Katzenberg, who signed him to a multipicture deal. As a result, he wrote the TV movies B.R.A.T. Patrol and Meet the Munceys.
   “When I went to Disney,” Carter explains, “I actually became known as a comedy writer. So that was what people thought of me as: a person who had a certain handle on the voice of contemporary youth and the comedic voice. That’s what people kept wanting me to write. I like that type of writing very much, and I think I can do it. But The X-Files really is more where my heart is: in scary, dramatic, thriller writing.”
   In 1993 Carter was hired by Fox to develop programming. At that point, Carter began to nurture his idea for a series that would tap in to his childhood memories of The Night Stalker and The Twilight Zone.
   “Sometimes the Night Stalker influence is overstated,” Carter explains. “Somebody asked me in  what way it inspired me and I said, ‘I think I remember two scenes from the old show. One where Darren McGavin is confronted by a vampire and is able to drive a stake into his heart, and the other is in an alleyway.’ I just remember being scared out of my wits by that show as a kid, and I realized that there just wasn’t anything scary nowon television. The inspiration is general rather than specific.”
   He also points out a distinction between The X-Files and Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone that he feels is too often overlooked. “Rod Serling was telling fables, almost allegorically. You see a lot of that in The X-Files, too, but each of the episodes of The Twilight Zone had a bigger message, a bigger purpose, and that was to illuminate something about the human comedy. We don’t set out to do that; we don’t set out to be instructive – there’s no message behind each X-Files episode. Although there is something you can take from it, we’re not teaching.”

SCI FI NEWSWIRE

Once you've finsished exploring Voices From Krypton, check out our sister site Sci-Fi Newswire for the latest headlines and announcements in the mediums of film, TV, video games and more. Recent headlines include new guest stars on Doctor Who, Daniel Radcliffe bringing Equus to Broadway, Shrek the Third on DVD and Jennifer Connelly joining the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Just click HERE.

SUPERNATURAL: THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

SUPERNATURAL
Episode 3.2
The Kids Are All Right
Written by: Sera Gamble
Directed by: Philip Sgriccia
Guest Starring: Katie Cassidy, Nicholas Elia, Cindy Sampson
Plot Summary: Dean pays a visit to an old flame, only to find her precocious son seems oddly familiar.  But a social visit becomes a supernatural case, when a rash of fatal accidents points to something weird going on with local children.
Review: This season's second episode sets off with a bang - or more rightly a grisly splash, as the Victim du Jour falls on his own power table-saw.  I warned of the Creep Quotient ...
   We find Sam continuing his now-clandestine search for a means to break Dean's deal, while Dean, though somewhat less manic than the last episode, is still on his crusade to live life to the fullest.  Here he has been seized by the urge to look up a girl he met nine years ago - a really bendy yoga instructor in Cicero, Indiana.  Bless the boy; one wonders if Dean lives in a time warp of his own making.
   Of course, the girl, Lisa, has moved on since her wild days, and now lives in an upper middleclass neighborhood as the single mom of an eight-year-old son.  Anyone surprised at the math, there?  Didn't think so, but Lisa firmly denies that Dean is the dad.  Though rather ham-handed in its execution, there are some grin-worthy moments with Dean and Ben the mini-Dean, who is a precocious kid played by a wonderful child actor.  Mainly, we are led to ponder just how much of Dean's behavior is genetics, while fandom's view of Dean's rapport with children is now cast in stone.
   That, however, is the light side of the story.  The rest turns dark in several disquieting ways, not the least being in the disconnect between Sam and Dean.  They are on parallel paths, but not remotely the same page, and rarely even in the same scene.  Dean is preoccupied with tying loose ends and with Ben, and Sam ... well.
   Sam sits in a diner continuing his research, when who should slink in but the mysterious knife-wielding girl from 3.1.  Sly and smirking, she knows precisely what Sam is up to, but what really interests her is the whole "Anti-Christ celebrity death-match" thing, of which Sam is the sole survivor.  She says Sam must still be a pretty big deal among the demons, after all that happened to Mom - and Mom's friends.  To which we get Sam's "bzuh?" face, so Mystery Girl suggests Sam go and get up to speed, and she slinks back out again.  Just who is this chick, anyhow, that she knows so much about Sammy?
   While we chew on that, Kripke launches us into the only thing I find scarier than evil clowns: evil kids.  From smarmy little urchins cooing how much they "love you, Mommy", to blank stares at interlopers (read, Sam in a truly atrocious suit), to ghastly reflections of the real monsters in various mirrors, this episode rang the bell on my creep-o-meter.  I thought it really tipped off into Stephen King territory when one of the distraught moms drove her car - and her evil child - into a nearby lake.  Art imitates life to disturbing effect, reminding us once again that Kripke doesn't play by the usual rules.
   Changelings: that's what Sam and Dean face, evil creatures who steal children and hide them underground, leaving behind a life-sucking replica to feed off the mother until she dies.  The guy on the table-saw was only one of several victims, the fathers of other children having recently died gruesome deaths.  Dean's instincts kick into overdrive when he thinks of Ben, his might-be son, but he arrives at Lisa's house too late: the boy with whom he had bonded so well is now whining for Mom to "make him go away."
   The resolution to the tale seems a bit rushed, and we get to see Sam and Dean having their asses handed to them in the big showdown.  But we only have 43 minutes and so what if the changelings' "mother" wore a human female form?  I loved watching the Bad Thing throw these two strapping guys around like sofa cushions, physically demonstrating what a proper monster can do.  Though I gotta say, Sammy and a homemade flamethrower is a thing of beauty.  I was also charmed by Ben's coolness in helping the other kids escape their basement prison.  The little guy really pulled it off.
   Finally, regardless how the rest of the Dean-and-Ben stuff played, the last scene with Dean and Lisa won me.  Jensen Ackles knows how to break our hearts with just a look, and I ached for Dean as he walked away from her and Ben with grace and a wistful smile.  Oh, Dean, what you might have had, if the road were different.
   Sam's concluding scenes are equally compelling, but for different reasons.  One, we get to see him in uber-geek mode, as he crams a jillion phone calls and net searches into a what could only be a couple hours' time.  Sam soon reaches a chilling realization: his Mom's uncle, her doctor, and all her friends are dead since 2001.  The Yellow-Eyed Demon must have begun laying his plans about the time Sam was preparing for college.
   Two, listen closely as Sam confronts Mystery Girl for some answers.  When he demands for the third time that she tell him who she is ... his shout carries a subtle but distinct echo effect.  Does this mirror when Andy in "Simon Says" projected his powers of compulsion on other people?  Mystery Girl doesn't react beyond a sort of measuring pause, but then ... she closes and opens her eyes. Which turn jet, glossy, black.  A demon's eyes.  A demon who wants to help Sam Winchester for reasons we can only imagine.  WHOO-YA!  Kripke, you magnificent bastard, I take back every doubt I had about this character.  She has, in one stroke, become delicious.
   Plus, she's offering Sam the one thing he wants: help saving Dean in exchange for her helping Sam.  All of which leaves us with new worries for Sam, since keeping secrets among the Winchesters never ends well....  Stay tuned, kids!  Supernatural is underway.

Peace, out.

~ Gloria Atwater / ErinRua