How to use this Page

Find the clues in the widget - the more it’s downloaded and played, the more clues appear!

Avatar returns, The Prisoner is in the works, and there’s something strange going on around The Fringe. It’s a quick look at the fannish TV news.

IN THE WORKS
AMC is developing an American version of the cult British classic The Prisoner. Jim Caviezel and Ian McKellen are slated to star in the series about a government agent who finds out the hard way that there’s no quitting the biz. He’s drugged, kidnapped and dropped in “The Village,” a mysterious community where people are just numbers and from which there is no escape.  The original was known for its perplexing plot and highly metaphoric imagery, a style that is much more popular today in TV. I expect the new series will be highly ficable!

CASTING COUCH

Clea DuVall is taking over co-pilot duties on Ronald D. Moore’s Virtuality.

WATCH THIS

Calling all Avatar: the Last Airbender fans! The last 10 new episodes of book three, including the showdown between Aang and the Firelord, are about to begin. 

Nickelodeon bows the new Avatar episodes beginning Monday, July 14, with an hour-long special, The Boiling Rock, on Wednesday.  The week will end with the debut of the 2-hour TV movie Sozin’s Comet, Saturday, July 19, 8-10p.   Meanwhile, that same week, Nicktoons Network will host daily Avatar 5-hour marathons each day, Monday-Saturday, July 14-19, featuring 10 episodes of Avatar each day.

And don’t forget, Stargate Atlantis returns for a fifth season this Friday, July 11.

READ THIS

Need a Lost fix?  ABC.com is here to help with their new “Lost Book Club.”

The club gives fans a new insight to a number of books that have been referenced or seen on episodes of Lost. Each week, a new book will be introduced with a synopsis and reference of how it fits into the show. Then a message board area will be created for the discussion.  Books include Sawyer reading Watership Down, Juliet’s book club reading Carrie and an orientation film hidden behind The Turn of the Screw.

LISTEN TO THIS
Fox’s new radio ads for their upcoming X-Files-ish series, Fringe are leaving many people scratching their heads in wonder. First up is a typical auto dealership radio spot which is disrupted first by static and then the words “find the pattern.” Next up is a news report that is disrupted and finally a strange report over a police scanner about a wedding party who can’t remember a thing.

The commercial spots make no mention of Fringe, though there is a whispered “Fox” at the end of each indicating that it’s likely a promo for a TV show.  Listen in:

According to Fox, these radio ads are just the start of the convoluted and cryptic campaign they have planned. Have you spotted “the pattern?” If you have a link to a part of the Fringe puzzle, post it in the comments below.

SITE OF THE WEEK

Tired of seeing your favorite show canned because of a ratings system that is horribly outdated? Viewers with Voices agrees with you and they’re banning together to give Nielsen what for.  The forum is hoping to united the fannish communities for shows such as Jericho, Moonlight and Dark Angel into one, loud and proud force to be reckoned with. The long term goal? To rework the method of collecting TV ratings so it gives a more accurate sampling of how many people are actually watching a show.

Sadly, the one thing ratings will never be able to evaluate is the level of enthusiasm fans have for any given show. Grey’s Anatomy might be one of the highest rated programs on TV, but how many fans of that show will buy the mug, the books, the TV shirt and convention tickets to see the stars?

YOUR TURN

I can’t do this alone people. Use the comment section to add your casting news, production news, con reports, vids, podcasts, charity efforts — if it’s about a fan favorite TV show we want to hear about it.  NO SPOILERS in the comments please, but feel free to link to them with a proper spoiler warning.

Welcome to the first edition of TV Talk, a round up of TV news for all your favorite fandoms. So let’s get started.

WATCH THIS

If you haven’t been watching The Middleman, you must! Don’t let the fact that it’s on ABC Family fool you. It’s witty and fun - kind of Austin Powers meets The X-Files and every episode is a pop culture trivia game. Check it out Mondays at 8:00 on ABC Family.

Start your jumpers, Stargate Atlantis returns for a fifth season starting on July 11. It begins with the exciting “Search and Rescue” effort for Teyla and her unborn baby and it’s a non-stop action-palooza with the promise of much more to come. I can’t wait.

CASTING COUCH

Supernatural’s Eric Kripke told TV Guide that Katie Cassidy (Ruby) was being let go due to budget cuts. Months ago, Lauren Cohan (Bela) was also released so we’re back to square one. Spoilers for the season opener include two new characters and rumor has it that both of them may become recurring.

In a related note, Cassidy is said to be appearing in Chris Carter’s “secret movie” Fencewalker. Yes, the X-Files guru is keeping quiet about the project which may, or may not be shooting right this second in Los Angeles, somewhere. . .

And in another related (in family tree kind of way) note, Battlestar Galactica’s Tricia Helfer has been cast to play a shrink in the new series Inseparable. The series, from the wonderfully twisted mind of Shaun Cassidy (Uncle of Katie Cassidy, as noted above), revolves around a partially paralyzed forensic psychiatrist whose alter ego is a charismatic criminal.

On a completely unrelated note, Shark’s Sophina Brown will be joining the FBI, replacing Diane Farr on Numb3rs. And New Amsterdam star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau has signed on as mission commander of the very first Earth starship in the backdoor pilot for Fox called Virtuality.

LISTEN UP

Moonlight creator, Trevor Munson was interviewed on BuzzWireRadio the other day. You can listen to the playback at their blog.

Supernatural’s Jared Padalecki was a guest at the Supanova Con in Australia last week.  Couldn’t make it? No problem.  Jared’s 45 minute Q&A is now available to watch on YouTube.

SITE OF THE WEEK

Remember The WB?  Michigan J. Frog and those neon signs for Buffy, Gilmore Girls and The OC? Well, The WB is back, sort of. It’s now a website where you can watch episodes of WB shows. In addition to watching TV, you can play games such as the Gilmore Girls pop culture quiz and you can snip your favorite scenes to send to friends. There is also a video search that swears it will find the scene you want if you give it enough information, but when I try it crashes my browser.

Right now, the site is in beta mode but you can sign up to be a tester. Personally, I’d like to see more show related text content - articles, interviews - but it’s a good start.

YOUR TURN

I can’t do this alone people. Use the comment section to add your casting news, production news, con reports, vids, podcasts, charity efforts - if it’s about a fan favorite TV show, we want to hear about it.  NO SPOILERS in the comments please, but feel free to link to them with a proper spoiler warning.

It’s Thursday and everyone knows what that means! Git yer contest hats on. A bunch of fun stuff this week to get involved with. As always there’s a bunch of Twilight Contests - you Twilight fans are so active - plus, make your own FanLib Fortune Cookies. Cool Huh?

Member contests open for submissions:

These contests will end by next Thursday (which is my birthday) and need your votes.

Guest blogger Dee Doyle returns for yet another Fandom 411.

My first introduction to The Incredible Hulk was in the comic book store my parent’s owned, but it became more of an interest due to the 1996 animated TV series on UPN. The creators were no doubt trying to compete with Fox for the popular opinion of the fans that enjoyed the X-Men and Spider-Man animated shows in the 1990s. The Hulk is about the inner darkness of the human heart and, while personal demons are usually kept inside, Bruce Banner’s demon is there for everyone to see. And he’s green! The Hulk was created in 1962 by the amazing team of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, who also created such popular teams as the X-Men and the Fantastic Four. While the comic had some difficulty gaining attention at first, the Hulk was used as a guest star in several other comic books until a small fan community started to gather, especially in the college age bracket. Originally, the Hulk was gray and he transformed back into Banner during dawn, but in modern comics he transforms due to emotion or triggers and is that glorious shade of emerald.

Dr. Bruce Banner is a mild mannered scientist who designs a gamma bomb for the government. He saves a teenager named Rick Jones who stumbles onto the testing grounds and ends up being caught in the explosion himself. The radiation causes him to turn into the savage beast named the Hulk whenever he loses control. The Hulk is a creature of quick anger and violence, but he is able to think enough to form full sentences and refers to himself in the third person. Banner is pursued by the US government because of the damage and devastation he causes as the Hulk. His long suffering girlfriend, Betty Ross (who eventually becomes his wife and adopts his last name) is often used as bait to draw him out and is capable of calming even the Hulk with her presence. Her father, General Thaddeus Ross is the main force behind the armed forces trying to capture the Hulk, much to Betty’s dismay. The teenager Banner saved, Rick Jones, remains with the Hulk as his friend and sidekick. The major villains in the series are the Abomination and the Leader, both of whom are also radioactive, super dangerous monsters.

Over the decades, the Hulk has been a Frankenstein monster with a twist because even with his blind fury he was a founding member of the Avengers and the Defenders. He has helped save the Marvel world several times and is more than just the twisted side of Banner’s psyche because he is capable of friendship and loyalty. In a recent comic storyline, the Hulk was sent away into deep space by the Illuminati to protect Earth. He crashes on a planet named Sakaar and becomes the King after an intense rebellion. The rocket he was sent on explodes and kills millions of people, causing Hulk to come back to Earth for revenge in an arc titled “World War Hulk”.

What I love about the Hulk is mostly what I love about his predecessors - for example, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or Frankenstein. The former is a story about a kind-hearted man who tries to help humanity and only ends up damning himself. His obsessive control over being good makes him oppress his evil, but the evil inevitably comes out in the form of a murderous counterpart. It connects closely to humanity’s struggle between right and wrong and the fact that we are often our own worst enemies. It is Bruce Banner who destroyed himself - his creation brought the Hulk into being - just as humans are often the cause of their own destruction.

On the other hand, like Frankenstein, the Hulk’s story is about a creature that everyone fears because it is different and alien. Often the Hulk is merely protecting his life from the government’s attacks when things go horribly wrong and Banner’s intentions are always good but often misinterpreted by others. The Hulk is a study in human behavior - in our desire for acceptance and our fear of the unknown evil.

The main types of fiction found are tragic or angsty because Banner spends most of his time running from the law and wishing his life had turned out differently. There is a great deal of Betty/Bruce and Betty/Hulk pairings and the occasional Rick Jones/Hulk friendship stories. She-Hulk often factors into the mix as his cousin and good friend.

There are very few items to find on FanLib, but hopefully that will change with last weekend’s release of the new Hulk movie featuring Edward Norton and Liv Tyler!

Story about the Hulk/Bruce Banner

Lovely Photoshop picture of the Hulk

Hello blue jean babies, and welcome to this week's Project Runway Preview. It's going to be a hurried and abbreviated preview this time, as I'm less than two hours away from walking out the door on a school visit trip to talk about Samurai Shortstop and Something Rotten. (Now that was some product placement worthy of Project Runway!) There's something rotten in the state of New York in this week's episode as well . . . or perhaps it's New Jersey. Well, somewhere in New York harbor at least.

The preview videos this week employ the new choppy misdirection tactic we've seen of late, but there's still lots to talk about. First, careful TV schedule investigations on the part of some rabid RunHeads has revealed that this week's episode will be a denim challenge--one which Kevin no doubt wishes he'd been around for, as he was a jeans designer before landing on the Runway.

And speaking of runways, we also know for a fact that this week Tim takes the seven remaining designers on a trip to a Port Authority warehouse. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, according to the venerable Wikipedia,

is a bi-state port district, established in 1921 (as the Port of New York Authority) through an interstate compact, that runs most of the regional transportation infrastructure, including the bridges, tunnels, airports, and seaports, within the New York–New Jersey Port District. This 1,500 square mile (3,900 km²) District is defined as a circle with a 25 mile (40 km) radius centered on the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor.

Hmm. Denim and the Port Authority? Speculation on the Blogging Project Runway boards guesses that this might be unclaimed clothing, and we here at Gratz Industries think that's a great prediction. The Port Authority operates both JFK and LaGuardia airports, and we'll bet that a lot of lost luggage finds its way into their warehouses. It's a recycle challenge! Of a kind. At least this time there's real fabric to be had, disgusting though Christian may find it.

At the Port Authority warehouse, Tim tells the designers they will have a scant three minutes to stuff their laundry bags full--laundry bags, we assume, will immediately go to a real laundry to be cleaned before the designers get their paws on them. He also tells them that they will have "complete freedom," but that their look must be "wearable and iconic." Oh, wearable--there's that word again! We'll have to see how that's interpreted this time.

As for "iconic," this is a head scratcher. An icon, again according to Wikipedia, is "a graphic device that represents some object or action, the graphic device being ascribed symbolic meaning(s) beyond the object represented." Okay. Good example: Baseball and apple pie, both of which are icons of America. Both have symbolic meaning, but neither is a direct definition of America. So what's to be iconic in this piece?

At first, we wondered if the icon in question was a visible one right in the heart of the Port Authority--the Statue of Liberty. That's a little too obvious an icon to remake though, and doesn't have much to do with denim. (And Lady Liberty seems already to be draped to look like a thirty-five-year-old, thank you very much, Rami.)

Instead, what if the icon is jeans themselves? What is more iconic about American fashion than blue jeans? The first pair wasn't made or worn here, but Levi's put copper rivets and button-flies on them, cowboys and miners throughout the Old West wore them, and American kids in the 1950s made them everyday wear for the masses. They're as American as, dare I say it, baseball and apple pie.

So this week, if our guess is correct, the designers will stuff bags full of the blue jeans like the ones that were in your suitcase when it got lost on the way from Albuquerque to New York, and then they'll have to create something new and original but that still carries the iconic quality of the great American blue jean. Sounds like a good challenge. So why do some of the designers look like they've swallowed a button-fly before the models ever walk down the runway?

In the first of the two Bravo/Blogger previews, Victorya, Christian, and Chris all look like they've got heartburn even before the judging. Christian, in particular, does not look like his usually cocky self, and in other videos we hear him walking around muttering, "Deconstruct, deconstruct." Everyone's taking jeans apart to rework them, but Christian must be talking about deconstruction in the philosophical, analytical sense. And yes, we know, we're ascribing high-level intellectual thoughts and actions to a young man who calls himself "Ferrosh." We're guessing Tim gave him the word "deconstruct."

The videos chop up much of the praise and the slamming, but the designers are arranged in such a way that we can make guesses about who's getting groomed and who's getting grilled. Ricky smiles, pleased with something that's said. Chris looks pensive. Nina tells someone on the left they were "inventive," while someone on the right is being asked why he didn't play with fraying all over his garment. Then there's an extended "Ricky crying on the runway" edit--and are we crazy, or are these tears of joy?

Meanwhile, Victorya, who cannot seem to forget that Kit has been eliminated--or perhaps has never really taken the time to figure out who those other girls who live in her apartment are--keeps calling Sweet P Kit. (Well, they do both have blonde hair, and, um, well, yeah. That's about it really.) Then we get the "I grew up sewing at my mother's knee" story from Victorya, ringing alarm bells that Victorya is getting the loser edit. (Though we've been tricked once before!) In the workroom, Jillian is getting the "I'm too exhausted, I can't go on, I'm ready to give up" edit that Christian got during the Prom Dress challenge, so color us not-so-scared.

With only seven designers left, there's not much middle ground between top three and bottom three. We're guessing Sweet P is safe--although we really don't see anything of her one way or the other in the clips--which leaves the rest to settle out one way or another. Rami's clearly getting raves from Nina, so we'll put him in the top three. Jillian's piece, just visible over the sobbing Ricky's shoulder, with a very cool collar reminiscent of last week's Mad Max jacket, looks strong too. And then there's the sobbing Ricky, who seems to be crying tears of joy that he'd finally been validated as a designer. He could also be crying about crashing out though. It's hard to tell with "Senor Squirt."

That leaves the Maalox Triplets at the bottom: Chris, Christian, and Victorya. Chris seems to be the one getting Kors' disappointment about the fraying, while we don't have much besides a "that's what I was going for" on the runway and a bunch of moaning and groaning in the workroom from Christian. He seems really resistant to this challenge, as does Victorya--and resistance, as we know from Project Runway and Star Trek, is futile.

The past few weeks, we here at Gratz Industries have been looking closely at all the video evidence, and we've guessed the winner correctly now twice in a row. But we've been voting for the loser with our hearts, not our heads, and we've been burned (and downright surprised) a few times. This week, we resolve to put aside all our prejudices and try to just call 'em like we see 'em. So here goes. (Deep breath.)

Here's how we see it: Jillian, you're third best. Thanks for playing. Rami, nice work. Go sit in the holding cell. Ricky--and we cannot believe we're going to say this--you're the winner of this week's challenge. That's right, Gratz Industries is going with Ricky for the win. We're shaking our collective company heads even as we type that, but there it is.

As for the aufing, well, we're left with three talented designers who've all showed us something in their time on the show. Christian, you're third worst. Get your skinny butt off stage. Chris, Kors wanted to see more with the fraying, but it's not too bad. You're in. Victorya--you who have won two competitions and been high up or safe many more times--Victorya, we think your design turns out auful this week and you'll be out.

There you have it. Our fearless, heartless predictions. To tell the truth, we're not so in love with Victorya--or her designs--that it will break our hearts if she goes. It's the other part of that Bizarro situation that has us crying Ricky-tears. One more week . . . maybe two if he wins immunity! Unfathomable.

You know, last week one of the recap blogs asked us to name the designer we'd most like to see win--and we confess, we couldn't name one. There's talent here, but we don't find ourselves pulling for anyone in particular. Michael, Nick, Austin, where have all you talented and loveable designers gone?

TRESemme time: "Which designer wore braces during the finale episode?" That would be Michael Knight, who got the metalwork in the hiatus between the last regular season challenge and the fashion show at Bryant Park. As for hair? How about . . . Jillian this week.