Our first glimpse of Spielberg’s “Jericho meets Independence Day” series
By Charlie Jane Anders at io9
In Falling Skies, Steven Spielberg’s TV series coming summer 2011, it’s six months since aliens wiped out most of humanity. How can Noah Wyle and Moon Bloodgood prevail? Our first glimpse of a trailer gave us some hints. Spoilers ahead…
The panel, moderated by io9’s own Marc Bernardin, started with our first trailer for the series, which only gave a few gruesome glimpses of the alien attackers. I saw one clear shot of metal feet stomping past as someone cowered in hiding, and there were quick cuts of a scene where Noah Wyle and a friend take on a monster in a storage facility or supermarket storeroom, and I thought I could see a ridged head. (In the roundtables for Falling Skies, Noah Wyle hinted that the aliens had more than two legs, and you had to get up close and personal to kill one.)
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Is A Game of Thrones the most eagerly anticipated TV show ever?
by Mathilda Gregory at The Guardian
A Game of Thrones, HBO’s adaptation of the first book in a series of fantasy novels by George RR Martin, isn’t due to hit our screens until spring next year. But it doesn’t take long gazing into the enchanted fireplace of the internet to discover that anticipation for this show is all the way up to eleventy. There’s a series of blogs and forums devoted to a show that doesn’t even start filming until Monday.
So A Song of Ice and Fire was already a hot internet property, but with the first sniff of the TV show being commissioned back in 2007, the anticipation machine went into overdrive – revved up even further by news that every fan’s first choice, Peter Dinklage, had been cast as the machiavellian dwarf Tyrion Lannister. There are blogs cataloguing every casting rumour and location possibility. Martin keeps his own “Not A Blog”, where he gives cryptic clues about the development of the show, always solved by dedicated fans within hours. A tiny trailer broadcast in the US a few months ago caused massive excitement as fans heard the show’s star Sean Bean whisper “Winter is coming”, the most famous line of his character, Eddard Stark.
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Comic Con 1: Abusing the Sci of SciFi panel
via Bad Astronomy at Discover magazine
At Comic Con, I moderated a wonderful panel about how science sometimes gets screwed up by science fiction. Sponsored by Discover Magazine and The NAS Science and Entertainment Exchange, it’s the third time we’ve done this panel, and it’s been really fun every year. I already talked a bit about this — we had Jaime Paglia from Eureka, Kevin Grazier from BSG and “Eureka”, Zack Stentz from “Thor” and “Fringe”, and Sean Carroll who is a cosmologist and blogs for Discover as well.
We showed our picks for representative good and bad science in shows and movies, and I have to commend Sean for his pick of “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” for good science (the consistency of the time travel in that movie is wonderful) and “Big Bang Theory” for the philosophy of science — they discuss the physics of Superman, making the assumption that a man actually can fly.
A new show on The Discovery Channel will be called “Bad Science”, about the abuse of Science in Sci FI movies and TV.
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Details on the show here
Scoop on Being Human’s Second Season
via Seattle Pi TV Guide
A beguiling British mash-up of Friends and The Vampire Diaries, the charming Being Human (Saturday, 10/9c, BBC America) returns for its second season with the increasingly darker and more harrowing adventures of a trio of roomies who just want to fit in despite being a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost.
The action kicks off as the vampire coven seeks revenge for its leader’s death and targets renegade fangster Mitchell (Aidan Turner) and wolfman George (Russell Tovey). More danger lurks as a religious zealot and a mysterious professor set out to cure werewolves—and kill vampires. On the home front, Nina (Sinead Keenan) is furious at boyfriend George for infecting her with the werewolf “curse,” and Mitchell is attracted to human doctor Lucy (Lyndsey Marshal).
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The Walking Dead Will Save Sci-Fi TV!
By Hilary Rothing at ugo
The Walking Dead will be the best new show of the fall…
The trailer took snippets of scenes from the opening of Kirkman’s graphic novel, where Kentucky cop Rick Grimes goes down in a shootout and awakens in a hospital, to find himself completely alone. In between shots, we sees flashes of the Dead, as Rick comes to terms with his new reality. We see Grimes on horseback in downtown Atlanta, as zombies surround him and well, demonstrate their taste for horsemeat (this scene in particular was not shown. Gale Ann Hurd explained that SDCC organizers asked for a toned down version of the footage, in general.)
Here’s a breakdown of what Darabont, Kirkman and company had to say about the most anticipated new television show in recent history:
On working with zombies
Darabont said he loved the idea of “doing something a little bold for television that reaches back into the genre but is very character based, and that’s what Robert did so right away I started concocting this thing in my head.”
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A sneak peek at The Cape (and a conversation with Vinnie Jones)
By Cyriaque Lamar at io9
Yesterday we got a sneak peek of the pilot to NBC’s upcoming superhero drama The Cape, starring David Lyons, Summer Glau, and Vinnie Jones, who filled us in on his villainous turn as the reptilian crime boss Scales.
The audience saw approximately 40-or-so minutes of the pilot at the panel. The footage wasn’t entirely complete, but had some neat action sequences, moustache-twirling villainy, and some cool visual effects using the eponymous cape. All in all, an old-school superhero yarn with a similar tenor to the first Spider-Man film. Here’s what happened:
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Comic-Con: Barenaked Ladies make surprise appearance at “Big Bang” panel
By: Variety
Wil Wheaton’s introduction to “The Big Bang Theory” panel, which kicked off with a rousing round of the theme song, as performed by surprise guests, Barenaked Ladies (who were commissioned by producers Chuck Lorre and Bill Prady to write the show’s jaunty theme song).
The group singalong set the tone for the event, which please fans of the show who were waiting outside Hall H for hours.
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There are so many shows that look good this fall! I hadn’t heard of Falling Skies before, and I hoping that Terra Nova is still on, but I’m looking forward to The Walking Dead and The Cape. I’m really excited for the Bad Science in Sci Fi show too. I love Bad Astronomy anyway, so this is very cool. And I can’t wait for Game of Thrones.
What shows are you looking forward to the most?
