SciFiChick.com

Allison Mack directs this Friday night’s episode of Smallville entitled “Warrior”!
Smallville airs Friday, February 12th at 8pm EST.

Smallville Webclip – “Warrior”

Smallville Trailer – “Warrior”

The Time Traveler’s Wife Blu-ray Edition

Henry DeTamble is a time traveler who cannot control when or where he travels. When he meets beautiful Clare Abshire, she seems to know him, but he has never met her before. The two share a love that crosses time, beautiful and tragic. As Henry is unable to stop himself from disappearing from any certain time or place, usually the most inopportune of times.

The Time Traveler’s Wife is based on the novel of the same name by Audrey Niffenegger. Having read the novel, I had many preconceptions going in. And even though many details were left out that I thought were fairly important to the story, the overall feel and message of the story remains.

Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams star as the two time-crossed lovers, playing their roles to perfection. Though, the movie character of Henry is much more likeable than the drug-addicted novel version. And thankfully, some of the other darker events in the novel were left out.

I actually did not care for the book much at all. Though I appreciated the unique idea, it was too depressing for my taste. But I ended up really enjoying the movie version. It’s a fascinating and powerful love story with a touch of science fiction.

The Blu-ray edition includes a couple of featurettes, and a download copy on a separate disk.

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Get it on Blu-ray, DVD, and Download February 9th.
Check out the official site here.

SciFiChick.com had the opportunity to sit in on a conference call with Kelli Giddish, star of FOX’s upcoming show Past Life, and David Hudgins, executive producer and creator.

The pilot episode for Past Life airs this Tuesday, February 9th on FOX. Then, the show’s actual premier (and regular time slot) entitled “Dead Man Walking” will be on the following Thursday, February 11th.

Kelli, could you talk a bit about how you first became involved in the series, and about some of the acting challenges you found stepping into the Dr. McGinn role?

K. Giddish: Well, there is a pilot season every year and this is actually one of the first projects I went out on probably about a year ago — last January. I really, really loved the character and went right in for it. Actually David and Deran Sarafian, the director of the pilot, and Lou Pitt, were all down in Baltimore and I was living in New York at the time. I went in and tested and it went from there. They had found Nick Bishop and so it kind of just rolled into a project from there.

When I first got the script looking at Dr. McGinn it was just someone that I immediately connected to, in terms of just a through-line for me. It was immediately a character I felt like I didn’t have to take a lot away from myself to play her; I just got to add on layers, one being that she believes in a system of reincarnation and past lives and that’s her way to help people.

A challenge which I think is really nice to see her overcome as a character and one for me as an actor is to really get people on your side and to get the patients on your side. I think she really acts as an emotional conduit to people that are having trouble or experiencing trauma, from what she assumes and is from their past lives.

David, could you tell us first where your inspiration for this series came from and some of the challenges creatively, and with production, getting the show off the ground?

D. Hudgins: Sure. First let me add on to what Kelli was just saying. The way we cast Kelli Giddish in this role was very unique. Here’s what happened. I got her audition on tape, which is actually an e-mail they send. I was sitting at my computer and I queued it up and I watched it and I was absolutely blown away. In the moment I said to myself that is Kate. That is exactly who I had in mind so we flew Kelli down to Baltimore and we screen tested her for this pilot which is not that common anymore these days.

As soon as we screen tested her and showed it to the studio and the network everybody agreed that she was perfect for the role. I just think that’s – there was good karma from the beginning with Kelli. In terms of my inspiration the series is inspired by a book called The Reincarnationist written by M. J. Rose. I had a pilot deal with Warner Brothers. They sent me the book and asked me to read it and I did. Frankly, I didn’t really have any expectations when I picked up the book but as soon as I finished it I was immediately engaged. I said this is an incredibly cool world. It was a world that I was not that familiar with so I immediately started doing research, started talking to people. I happened to see a three-part special on Oprah that she was doing with a guy named Dr. Brian Weiss about past lives and regression. I just got hooked immediately and thought this is just such an interesting, different, unique world.

From a storytelling point of view what I love about it is it is so wide open. There are so many different stories you can tell based on this world. I came up with this franchise of The Past Life detective team and building around that just sort of went forward with the series, and created the characters. The inspiration really for the project was this book, The Reincarnationist by M. J. Rose.

You asked about some challenges for production. One of the great things about the show and frankly, something that we were pretty surprised with when the pilot and the first episode started coming in is there are these regression episodes within the shows where the patients are having – they’re basically flashbacks. They’re going back and they’re experiencing their past lives and we really wanted to have these sequences – we really wanted these sequences to have a unique look.

Deran Sarafian, who directed the pilot, did an amazing job with that and he came in and he created this visual style that’s very filmic. It’s very cinematic, it’s scary, it’s fast. What we ended up with were these really interesting sort of mini thrillers that play throughout each episode which were a challenge to shoot because there is a lot of different coverage and a lot of different pieces that you have to get.

At some points Deran [was] running through the forest with the camera in his hands. I mean it was that much fun and that sort of outlaw style of shooting. It really worked. It really cut together well. We developed a whole system for shooting those regressions with a second unit. It required a lot of cutting and a lot more visual effects than we originally anticipated.

We actually hired a special editor to do the visual effects and to edit those sequences. That was a challenge to do the regression episodes. The rest of it was really just a dream. It’s just an amazing case and we had a really great crew in Atlanta and it was a great time.

Kelli, are there any similarities between you and your character?

[Read the rest of this entry...]

Catch the preview event of Past Life this Tuesday, February 9th at 9/8c on FOX.
This is another surprisingly captivating premier, joining us late in the season. If you’re into psychic detective series, don’t miss it.

Pandorum

When Corporal Bower awakens aboard a damaged and seemingly abandoned spaceship, he has little memory of anything beyond his training. His memories about his mission and previous life are gone. Lt. Payton soon wakes up as well, and the two try to restart the ship and discover what has happened to everyone else. They soon realize they are not alone, and the terrifying reality is just as scary as fighting the madness that threatens their own minds.

Ben Foster stars as Corporal Bower, a frightened but capable flight crewman. He’s the only one who can reach the reactor and save the ship and all of her precious cargo. Joining him are Dennis Quaid as Lt. Payton, the senior officer on board, directing Bower via radio and Cam Gigandet, Cung Le, and Antje Traue as crewmen that Bower meets along the way, helping him piece together the mystery of this decrepit ship.

Reminiscent of the classic scifi film Alien, this scifi horror film was surprisingly riveting. The horror aspects are chilling, but the story is strong with more than a few surprises along the way. I was definitely impressed, having little-to-no expectations beforehand. Pandorum is a highly entertaining thriller, with impressive set designs, a gripping story, violence and gore (for the R rating), and fantastic acting.

Greetings and salutations! First of all, I want to say thanks to Angela for having me on the blog. Thanks so much Angela!

As some of you may know, I have a new book out – Spider’s Bite, which is the first book in my new Elemental Assassin urban fantasy series.

As the series title suggests, the heroine of the book is Gin Blanco, an assassin codenamed the Spider. In fact, the first line of Spider’s Bite is “My name is Gin, and I kill people.” So I thought I would talk a little bit today about what it’s like to write an assassin character.

I like assassin characters. I always have ever since I started reading epic fantasy books in high school. Eventually, I decided to write my own assassin in my own fantasy world, and thus Gin Blanco and the city of Ashland was born.

[Read the rest of this entry...]