Collider spoke with Rachel Nichols about her role in the recently released movie Raze and then got to the third season of Continuum. She has some news here, such as that Season 3 will reveal more about The Freelancers. Beware there are spoilers as she tells what happens with the Season 2 cliff hanger in which Alec traveled through time. She reveals exactly where/when Alec went, which is one of the more common answers which people speculated about after Season 2 concluded. Not surprisingly, it is also clear that Kiera does get out of that cell she was dropped into.
Continuum has really become one of the best sci-fi shows on TV, right now. What can you say to tease where Season 3 is going, especially with how ripped apart all of the characters were, at the end of last season?
NICHOLS: We started shooting Season 3 already. We got three episodes finished before Christmas break. What I can tell you is that, at the end of Season 2, Alec (Erik Knudsen) clearly betrayed Kiera and went back in time. At the beginning of Season 3, you learn a lot more about The Freelancers. I can’t say how, but I can say that Kiera ends up going back in time to the point where Alec went back in time to save Emily (Magda Apanowicz). So, suddenly there are two Alecs and two Kieras and we can’t run into each other, obviously. Right off the bat, in Season 3, you’ve got craziness ensuing. There’s a death. There’s a description of The Freelancers. I’m happy to say that Terry Chen is back, in a big, big way. And overall, for this season, what I’m feeling is that where Kiera was always about getting home before, acknowledging her impact on the world, with everything she was doing in the present day, now I think there’s a part of her that’s going to be relegated to staying here and really setting up life and knowing she’s going to be here for awhile, and maybe even wanting to. That will be a back change for her, given the fact that her family is in the future.
Teasers from Showcase and SciFi above.
Sherlock returns in the United States this weekend, but as the show already completed the season on BBC One I wonder how many fans are still unaware of what happened. I will avoid any spoilers here and have a few comments leading into the series. The first two episodes are written far more than other episodes for the fans, but would not be good episodes to start with for those who are not already fans of the series. Start with the first two seasons. At very least watch last season’s finale and cliff hanger before the first episode of this season, The Empty Hearse.
The second episode, The Sign of Three, is about a very difficult task for Sherlock and doesn’t start out seeming like a typical episode at all. It is the weakest of the three but if you stick with it you will find that there is a mystery, and the events brought up earlier turn out to really matter. Quite often this season, things are not as they seem.
The third episode, His Last Vow, is the best of the three, and some reviewers have called it the best of the series. It is a more conventional mystery. Lars Mikkelsen, brother of Mads Mikkelsen of Hannibal, makes a fantastic villain, and there is a huge cliff hanger. Make sure you watch until the very end. I’ll hold off until it airs in the United States to discuss speculation about the cliff hanger.
Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim told Entertainment Weekly about upcoming plans for Roy:
After being injected with Mirakuru in the mid-season finale, the first episode back, airing Wednesday night, will explore the benefits — and consequences — of his newfound strength. “We’re going to learn starting with episode 10 that the Mirakuru may give you incredible strength and it really may accelerate your healing, but it comes with some very significant mental downsides as well,” teases executive producer Marc Guggenheim. “And Roy will be experiencing those in the present, and Slade in the past [via flashbacks] will begin to develop those difficulties.”
Guggenheim adds that as everything about Roy’s current predicament becomes clearer, we’re also going to see how it affects the people around him — Thea and Oliver included. “We always said that this year, Roy is going to go through a crucible. And the Mirakuru [storyline] is basically that ordeal and for sure when he comes out the other side — if he comes out the other side — he will be a different person and set on a different path,” he says. “You will start to see that as early as episode 12.”
It’s part of the longer story the writers are telling with Roy, explains Guggenheim, one that shows him going “from being sort of the street urchin we met in episode 15 last year to somebody who could potentially inherit the Arrow’s mantel as Roy Harper did in the comic books. We’re never really driven too much by what we call the comic book destinies of characters, but we’re very much aware of them and we’re very much aware that we’re telling a Batman Begins-style story for all of our characters. And obviously the Mirakuru and what Roy will experience in the wake of episode 9 is a big part of that Batman Begins-like story for him.”
Some additional points were discussed:
+ Have they decided what they’re doing with Flash in episode 20?
Not yet. After it was decided that the Flash pilot would stand alone — rather than being part of the 20th episode of the season — plans had to change, said Guggenheim. But the official plan is still in the works. “We’ve had a lot of afferent internal discussions of how episode 20 basically becoming an Arrow episode instead of a backdoor pilot could operate in terms of the connection to Barry. But we haven’t come to a decision yet, so we’re not ready to talk about it yet,” he said.+ Will Oliver (Stephen Amell) and Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) continue to have tension over Barry?
Yes. And you will see more of it in Wednesday night’s episode. “One of our pet peeves is when a show does a backdoor pilot and the episode that follows it tends to ignore what happened in the backdoor pilot. And episodes 8 and 9 served as the introduction of Barry Allen, and it struck us as wrong not to acknowledge everything that happened in those two episodes, particularly in regard to Barry’s burgeoning relationship with Felicity,” he says. “So a good chunk of the emotional real estate in episode 10 is spent on Felicity’s reaction to Barry being electrocuted at the end of episode 9 and being struck by lightning.”
Guggenheim also discussed Slade with The Hollywood Reporter:
In the winter finale, Slade declared that his sole mission was to turn Oliver’s world upside down. Has Slade turned pure evil, or is there some redemption for him?
What a great question. I will say that I don’t think anyone on our show is pure evil. We always try really hard to write according to the axiom that everyone is the hero in their own story. In other words, in real life, even the most evil people think they’re doing the right thing — at least, through their own lens through which they view their world. Slade is taking actions that he feels are very justified and thus in his mind, he’s not pure evil, he’s not even evil. He’s just a man with a very serious vendetta. For us, the advantage of doing it that way are even our antagonists are grounded and realistic, and I think they’re made more compelling when their motivations are made more human than the comic-book trademark “pure evil.” That’s just as true for Slade as for any of the villains on our show.
Hypothetically, if Oliver were to find out about Slade, how do you think he’d take the news?
I can tell you that hypothetically, were he to find out that Slade is alive and kicking in Starling City, Oliver would not take that well. (Laughs.) And I guess I can spoil and say that it is just a matter of matter of time before Oliver discovers that Slade is in Starling City. We actually have a whole episode and a whole storyline devoted to Oliver’s reaction to that news. I won’t tell you what episode that is.
He was also asked about Sara:
Will Sara come back into the fray in the modern day? Will she come face to face with Laurel?
It’s probably not spoiling anything to say that it’s only a matter of time before Sara returns to modern-day Starling City. We’ve already made the decision as to when and how and why exactly all that [Sara coming face to face with Laurel] will happen. When, over the course of the next 13 episodes that happens, I’m not saying.
So, it appears that Oliver will figure out what is going on with Slade, but still not figure out that Sara is not the same girl he last saw on the yacht in the Season one pilot, with Jacqueline MacInnes Wood’s scenes later reshot with Caity Lotz.
While both series had already been excellent, there are two shows I watch which have become even better this year: Arrow and Person of Interest. In early episodes, Person of Interest was often just a procedural with the machine used as a gimmick to get the leads into the action. Over the last couple of seasons the series has evolved more into a science fiction show about the surveillance state. The Nerdist discussed how the show has become our reality:
Person of Interest is unique in the world of procedural dramas. While plenty of shows have been able to claim they’re ripped from the headlines, POI has the distinction of being able to say it predicted them. As The New Yorker points out, the show predicted Edward Snowden a year in advance with its episode “No Good Deed.”
Is is worth reading the entire article on this show by Jonathan Nolan and Greg Plageman now that the show has become increasingly relevant. Another passage:
Nolan and Plageman are on the same page as to where this data mining will lead: the singularity. “The cornerstone of the show is that out of this arms race of information technology that we’re now thoroughly engaged in,” said Nolan, “cyber warfare, which was a silly idea, a silly phrase fifteen years ago, is now an absolute reality and quite terrifying in its own way. This is definitely the moment we find ourselves in and our idea was that out of the kind of carnage of this aggressive information arms race you might well see the emergence of something that probably in hindsight we’ll see was an Artificial Intelligence. It’s probably going to emerge out of the NSA or out of a data call center like the one the New York Times profiled. It’s either going to be a sales tool or it’s going to be a spy tool.”
With the audience now fully on board with the Orwellian nature of the show, Plageman says his fake world collides with the real one more than he thought it was going to. “On the show,” Plageman responded, “even though there is this science fiction aspect, there’s a heightened tone to the show – we always try to ground that. We always try to use technology that is in existence. That’s actually here and material. So, I’m always surprised when we talk about something in the writers room, whether we’re talk about AI or Ray Kurtzweil and the singularity. Then all of a sudden he’s hired at Google and you’re like, ‘Wait a minute.’ That’s just ridiculous. We’re talking about this now and you see these things converging and you’re going, ‘Okay, what’s that going to look like?’ [Amy Acker’s] Root is, to a degree, an acolyte of Kurtzweil, and all of a sudden he’s in the hen house. There’s this non-stop drum beat of material coming our way; We’re even struggling to keep up with to a degree.”
Scarlett Johansson spoke with Parade about Her and about reprising her role as Black Widow in Avengers 2:
“Oh boy! Well, we can expect the Avengers. Joss [Whedon], again, is back, wrote the script, and is directing. I think the script is dark and it’s dry, it’s got this amazing one-liner, glass-cutting sense of humor. Obviously the script is very cerebral. It doesn’t lose that exciting comic book aspect that people enjoyed in the first film, but it’s smart and it feels like the next installment. It doesn’t feel like a rehashing, it feels like these characters are moving forward, plotlines are moving forward. It’s deep and I think that’s why people really respond to the Marvel universe, because the films are fun and exciting and have all that flashy stuff, but there’s a gravity to them. People can expect that gravity this time around.”
Aaron Paul says that both he and Bryan Cranston are interested in reprising their roles in the Breaking Bad prequel/sequel Better Call Saul.
The CW Network has obtained the US rights to show The Labyrinth
The CW Network has acquired LABYRINTH, the four-hour event miniseries with a multi-national and award-winning cast, including John Hurt, Sebastian Stan, Jessica Brown-Findlay & Tom Felton, it was announced today by Mark Pedowitz, President, The CW. Premiere night and time will be announced at a later date.
Filmedon-location in the medieval town of Carcassonne in southwest France and Cape Town, South Africa, the historical miniseries jumps back and forth between modern and medieval France as it follows the lives of two women who are separated by centuries, but united in their search for the Holy Grail.
In Carcassonne, France, in the year 1209, 17-year-old Alaïs (Jessica Brown-Findlay, “Downton Abbey,” “Misfits”), is given a mysterious book by her father; a book which he claims contains the secret of the true Grail. Although Alaïs cannot understand the book’s strange words and labyrinth symbols, her father instructs her to protect the book no matter what happens to him. Alaïs realizes that her destiny lies in keeping the secret of the labyrinth safe. Eight centuries later, at an archeological dig in the French Pyrenees, a young volunteer named Alice Tanner (Vanessa Kirby, “The Hour,” “Great Expectations”) discovers two skeletons in a forgotten cave. Puzzled by the labyrinth symbol carved into the rock, she realizes she’s disturbed something that was meant to remain hidden. Somehow, a link to a horrific past – Alice’s own past – has been revealed.
In addition to Brown-Findlay and Kirby, LABYRINTH features a multi-national cast which includes two-time Oscar(R) nominee, three-time BAFTA Award winner and Golden Globe(R) winner John Hurt (“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy,” “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”), Sebastian Stan (“Captain America: The First Avenger,” “Gossip Girl”), Tom Felton (the “Harry Potter” films, “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”), Oscar(R), BAFTA and Golden Globes(R) nominee Janet Suzman (“Nicholas and Alexandra,” “Midsomer Murders”), multi-award winner Claudia Gerini (“The Passion of the Christ,” “Under the Tuscan Sun”), Katie McGrath (“Merlin,” “Red Mist”), Emun Elliott (“Game of Thrones,” “Black Death”) and Tony Curran (“The Pillars of the Earth,” “The Adventures of Tintin”).
It would have been better if this was being shown on premium cable so that it wouldn’t be necessary to cut the nude scenes with Jessica Brown-Findlay and Katie McGrath which are in the original version. I wonder how many people will wind up downloading the show as opposed to watching on CW.
In somewhat related news. the sex scenes in the movie version of Fifty Shades Of Gray are being toned down compared to the books.
Season two of The Fall, starring Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan starts filming in Belfast in February. The first season of the the BBC mystery, also released simultaneously on Netflix, was excellent. Filming will be delayed a month as Gillian Anderson has been tied up with filming for Season two of Hannibal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVjLxhL6gpE
Entertainment Weekly has more news on Season two of Hannibal:
1. Will Graham is in prison and everybody thinks he’s guilty: Fuller brilliantly subverted audience expectations at the end of season 1 by having FBI profiler Graham (Hugh Dancy) framed for Hannibal’s (Mads Mikkelsen) crimes when fans expected the show to follow Thomas Harris’ novels and have the cannibal psychiatrist end up in prison (he’ll get there, we assume, eventually). Graham hasn’t magically been released between seasons and he isn’t going to pop back into his old job after one episode (unlike, for instance, Patrick Jane on CBS’ The Mentalist). Graham is also going to be a much more focused and proactive character this season now that he’s no longer suffering from encephalitis and knows he’s not crazy. He’s going to actively try to get himself released, or at least take down Hannibal.
2. Hannibal has Graham’s old job: With Graham in prison, now the FBI is relying on Hannibal even more to help solve crimes, so we’ll get plenty of scenes of the serial killer working to catch other serial killers. “Hannibal becomes the new Will Graham in many ways,” Fuller teases. “There’s a lot of fun seeing him interact with the FBI.”
3. It’s still surreal, though more clear: Hannibal‘s haunting surreal imagery is a signature of the show and will continue. But with Graham no longer ill, he’s a more reliable narrator, which helps ground the storytelling a bit more.
4. Gillian Anderson is back: Anderson reprises her role as Hannibal’s psychiatrist. Expect this season for her character to grow suspicious of her most mysterious patient. “She’s doing a really fun closer examination of her patient and figuring some things out for herself, and that’s dangerous for anyone,” Fuller says.
5. The opening scene of the premiere. Though I suspect it will be widely reported before airing (Hannibal‘s TCA press tour day is Sunday, where it will probably come up), I can’t bring myself to reveal this. I’ll just say it’s the best scene the show has done to date.
6. The murders are more grotesque than ever: You thought that human mushroom farm was unappetizing? Just wait until you see “the beehive”…
7. Mason and Margo Verger are in this season: Fans of the books know the story of Hannibal’s tragically doomed wealthy patient and his sister from the Hannibal novel. They will be introduced later this season and have not yet been cast. Yet another major character from the canon, Francis Dolarhyde from Red Dragon, will likely not come into play until season 3.
A musical version of Groundhog Day is in the works. I loved the movie but am not sure about a musical. Will we have to sit through the same songs over and over?
Community had one of its better episodes last week with Cooperative Polygraphy, showing what Dan Harmon can accomplish with just the group sitting around the table for the almost the entire episode. The episode also concluded the storyline for Pierce, despite him not appearing, and revealed how Troy will be leaving the series. Plus we had this great line from Britta, after finding that Jeff kept her underpants and made up the story of a hawk stealing them: “You exploited me…and made me believe in a slightly more magical world!”
I’m looking forward to the two-hour season finale of Sleepy Hollow this week. Monday nights on Fox shows the advantage of a genre show having a continuing storyline and a strong mythology. Given the premise of the two shows, I’d expect to be far more interested in the harder science fiction of Almost Human. While I do enjoy it, the lack of signs (so far) of the story really going anywhere have made Sleepy Hollow the show I more look forward to. Next season Fox plans to run Sleepy Hollow uninterrupted without dividing the show up as it did this year.
“The Fall” is returning – excellent news! A well-above average thriller series.
Watched the 2nd episode of “Hostages”. Total tosh but more twists and turns than a naughty pol in front of a Congressional committee!
They always planned to return with The Fall, considering how they left off. It was just a matter of whether they got it filmed as planned, or as it turned out, falling a month behind.