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This Week: May 14-21

2012-05-14T09:00:26Z

This Week: TV
Grimm and Supernatural season finales, plus other good stuff. Read on...

This Week: Movies
Will the critics sink Universal's Battleship? Plus, a government techno-brainwashing conspiracy. Those are always fun. (I'm convinced that's the only way to explain Twilight.) Read on...

This Week: Home Video
A bunch of regular teens encounter the weirdness of having superpowers; plus Sebastian Cabot introduces spooky things. Read on...

New Trailers and Clips
New video from an encounter with Dracula, time travel hired guns, a strange child's link to nature, a helpful angel, a boy discovering his spider powers, and more Read on...

This Week: New Hardcovers
An ancient holy war, an apprehended WWII spy, Moby-Dick with huge desert moles, and a boy finding out there's another world of strangers right here in Earth; plus anthologies collecting future teen evil-fighters the Legion of Super-Heroes, Batman, and the Avengers, and an in-depth analysis of recent trends in the fantastic. Read on...

Tags: The Avengers, The Amazing Spider-Man, Battleship
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This Week: May 14-21 originally appeared on About.com Sci-Fi / Fantasy on Monday, May 14th, 2012 at 09:00:26.

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Renewed: Once Upon a Time, Touch

2012-05-14T05:18:14Z

David Mazouz as Jake in Touch, which will have a second season.

The success of the sprawling, deeply populated character drama Once Upon a Time, which ABC renewed this week for a second season, offers a nice counterpoint to the tightly focused procedural Grimm, also a hit and renewed by NBC in March. The two different approaches to fairy tale storytelling offer a satisfying reminder that stories with similar starting points don't have to be all alike.

That's especially reassuring given the arrival of more fairy tale creatures next season. Even if "battle of the Beasts" doesn't materialize (the ABC pilot has not been announced as having been picked up, but The CW one has), it was heartening that both pilots were sourced and realized very, very differently.

The renewal of Once, slotting nicely into the current fairy tale surge, makes sense in terms of both quality and marketing. But what to make of Fox renewing Touch, Tim Kring and Kiefer Sutherland's new essay into surreality?

Its ratings have not been ideal--less than the canceled Terra Nova, but more than the renewed-one-last-time Fringe. In this case, Touch had other factors to mitigate the middling ratings: it's produced at corporate sibling 20th Century Fox, and Sutherland has a tight relationship with Fox and its execs thanks to the colossal success of 24.

Almost incidentally, alongside the corporate arguments for renewal, is the gift of a serious show with heft and an unusually leveragable concept. Touch has at its heart a series of fertile and innovative premises that hold immense promise for future development. Like Awake, it's complicated and trusts its audience to find it rewarding to follow its threads; also, like Awake, it's anchored by a talented, hard-working veteran actor who takes the show on his own shoulders.

Unlike Awake, though, it will have a chance to continue exploring its universe. Perhaps Jake knows why some good and complex shows fail, and others succeed.

Tags: Once Upon a Time, Touch
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Renewed: Once Upon a Time, Touch originally appeared on About.com Sci-Fi / Fantasy on Monday, May 14th, 2012 at 05:18:14.

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Canceled: Awake, Secret Circle, Gifted Man

2012-05-14T04:31:56Z

It's all over for The Secret Circle.

NBC, CBS, and The CW left it until almost the last possible moment--the eve of the big network upfronts--to settle the fates of three freshman genre shows that had great concepts but didn't get the support in conventional ratings that the networks wanted.

It's a bloodbath of infant series this year. Awake, A Gifted Man, and The Secret Circle, like The Fades a few weeks ago, Terra Nova in March and The Nine Lives of Chloe King at the beginning of the fall season, will all join the ranks of good sci-fi/fantasy shows that were killed after a single season, before they'd had a chance to come into their own.

In fact, the only new genre shows for 2011-2012 to survive on the five broadcast networks were the two entries/progenitors of the current fairy tale fad, Once Upon a Time and Grimm, and a late entry, Kiefer Sutherland's Touch.

Were these latest three cancellations expected? Two of the shows have been on the pundits' "death watch" lists for some time--in the case of A Gifted Man, for months; Awake's lackluster conventional ratings have prompted more recent concern. The Secret Circle was more of a surprise: even after The CW renewed Supernatural and Vampire Diaries without any mention of The Secret Circle, many writers though the show was in a gray area and could go either way.

The worst part is, all three shows built up to a powerful climax toward their season finales that signaled new and stronger sophomore seasons--which now will never be. A great deal of creative energy--both in front of the cameras (Jason Isaacs, Patrick Wilson, and a number of others I could name did outstanding jobs evoking complex and interesting characters) and behind--has now been, not wasted, but tamped down, prevented from blossoming into something better. And all of them will have to start over from scratch with new concepts and the headaches of new production, and new pressure to conjure profits or else.

On the other hand, everything creative has risks. Secret Circle star Chris Zylka left this trenchant tweet this morning: "In art, you must be able to walk away. If you cant walk away from something that didn't work, how can you walk away from something that is."

And Awake creator Kyle Killen, who already had a highly favored ratings disaster under his belt, was able to laugh about it on his own Twitter feed. "guys its cool," he tweeted. "awake lasted 600% longer than lone star. at that rate next 1 be on until end of time."

I'll say it outright: it has its flaws, but I'm a big fan of Awake; losing this show in particular is another sad moment in a tumultuous season. Hats off and thanks to Kyle Killen, Jason Isaacs, and everyone else who worked hard to make Awake a reality.

Tags: Awake, The Secret Circle, A Gifted Man
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Canceled: Awake, Secret Circle, Gifted Man originally appeared on About.com Sci-Fi / Fantasy on Monday, May 14th, 2012 at 04:31:56.

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This Week: TV (May 14-21)

2012-05-13T22:00:15Z

Rachel Miner as Meg in the season finale of Supernatural.

This Week's TV Listings

● Next New Episodes
● Listings By Date
● Listings by Show Name
● Movies on TV

TELEVISION—New episodes this week from:

● Awake,
● Eureka,
● Game of Thrones,
● Grimm (season finale),
● Lost Girl,
● Supernatural (season finale),
● Touch.

Guest stars this week include Kevin Weisman continuing on Awake; Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio on Grimm.

Synopses below the jump. For details see the listings (regular or alphabetical). For sci-fi/fantasy movies on TV this week go to movie listings.

...

This Week: TV (May 14-21) originally appeared on About.com Sci-Fi / Fantasy on Sunday, May 13th, 2012 at 22:00:15.

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CW Renews Supernatural and Vampire Diaries

2012-05-07T09:32:34Z

Jensen Ackles as Dean Winchester and Jared Padalecki as Sam Winchester in Supernatural.

The CW is enjoying continued success with two big magic-'n-creatures series, Supernatural and The Vampire Diaries, both of which were just renewed for an eighth and a fourth season, respectively.

There was some indication that season 7 of Supernatural was intended to be its last, this two years after Eric Kripke's five year plan. But it's been pulling very good numbers, and on Friday at that.

But its third and newest genre show, The Secret Circle, is still in limbo. And the question of Secret Circle's future is quite open--while the show has a good fan base and rides Vampire Diaries's coattails without copying its formula, its future could go either way. But at least it has a fighting chance.

That means next year The CW will have four sci-fi/fantasy series, with Arrow and its version of Beauty and the Beast--five if Secret Circle gets a second season.

Tags: Supernatural, The Vampire Diaries, The Secret Circle
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CW Renews Supernatural and Vampire Diaries originally appeared on About.com Sci-Fi / Fantasy on Monday, May 7th, 2012 at 09:32:34.

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This Week: May 7-14

2012-05-07T08:46:22Z

This Week: TV
Two season finales this week (Once and Vampire Diaries), plus penultimate episodes (Supernatural, Fringe) and much more. Read on...

This Week: Movies
A vampire tries to adapt himself to how different his family and the world are, and a woman deal with her husband and three years of her life suddenly having never existed. Read on...

This Week: Home Video
The latest installment in the other, other vampire franchise and an exercise in adapting a zombified version of "tag" to the silver screen--plus the last season of Chuck, three new classic Who adventures, some Fantasy Island, and a Twilight Zone compilation. Read on...

New Trailers and Clips
The latest trailers for upcoming summer hits The Dark Knight Rises, Battleship, and Prometheus--plus more fighting against alien predators and immortality-seeking Nazis, a dystopian future, and a brave princess. Read on...

This Week: New Hardcovers
An all-star story collection focusing on the weird, a brace of Walter Mosley tales, yet another Doctor Who reference work bridging the classic and new series, and Turok--Son of Stone. Read on...

Tags: The Dark Knight Rises, Dark Shadows, Doctor Who: The Happiness Patrol
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This Week: May 7-14 originally appeared on About.com Sci-Fi / Fantasy on Monday, May 7th, 2012 at 08:46:22.

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Haven Cast Expands

2012-05-07T06:47:16Z

Bree Williamson.

The cast of Haven has, so far, been pretty tight—really it's just the three leads, Emily Rose, Lucas Bryant, and Eric Balfour. It's effective for keeping the narrative tightly focused on Audrey and Nathan's interactions with the Troubles, with Duke in erratic orbit on their periphery; but on the other hand, it's really difficult to suggest a living, vibrant, actual town with three regulars, a couple of recurring character actors, a corral of extras, and a freak of the week.

So it's probably good news that Haven is getting a new honest-to-goodness regular for the upcoming third season. Bree Williamson, who played Jessica Buchanan on ABC's One Life to Live for nine years, is joining the cast as Claire—who's described as a "mental cleaner."

"She is Haven's resident shrink," writers Lilla and Nora Zuckerman revealed on WormholeRiders.net's BlogTalk Radio podcast. "We talk about [Adam Copeland's character] Dwight being the 'cleaner,' and Claire is in a way the 'mental cleaner.'" She'll be helping people cope with the Troubles and the havoc they wreak in Havenites' lives.

This actually seems both useful and necessary in Haven's world. Each week's crisis is abated by Audrey, who calms the poor Troubled person down and stops them from destroying the town—and then walks away and forgets about them as she rushes to the next perilous development, and most of the time the person she just helped is never seen again. A little aftercare for these very powerful damaged souls sounds like a really great idea.

Syfy has yet to announce the premiere dates for its summer series, but in previous years they've launched the second week in July.

Tags: Haven, Bree Williamson
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Haven Cast Expands originally appeared on About.com Sci-Fi / Fantasy on Monday, May 7th, 2012 at 06:47:16.

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E! Developing Oz-Based Series

2012-05-07T06:10:02Z

So when you think of fantasy drama, your mind probably doesn't automatically drift to E!, the network devoted to gossiping about showbiz rather than creating it. But E! Entertainment Television, a subsidiary of NBC Universal, is working several scripted dramas for the upcoming season--one of them spun off from concepts related to the Wizard of Oz.

Dorothy isÂ "inspired by the book Dorothy and The Wizard of Oz about a girl from Kansas City who falls for a man and moves with him to the Emerald City to work at his Emerald Hotel."Â It's from writer Natalie Krinsky, who worked on Gossip Girl and Grey's Anatomy, and wrote the high-buzz screenplay for the upcoming film The Museum of Broken Relationships.

She also seems to be the same Natalie Krinsky who wrote Chloe Does Yale, an outgrowth of her sex advice column in the Yale Daily News. So that's an interesting background for a revisionist take on Dorothy Gale, as developed for E!.

So far that's all we know. Is anyone else picturing Joan Rivers standing alongside the Yellow Brick Road, dissing Dorothy's Kansas couture? Everyone is? Okay then.

Tags: Dorothy, The Wizard of Oz, Natalie Krinsky
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E! Developing Oz-Based Series originally appeared on About.com Sci-Fi / Fantasy on Monday, May 7th, 2012 at 06:10:02.

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This Week: TV (May 7-14)

2012-05-06T09:35:47Z

The Gilberts in simpler times: Jason MacDonald as Grayson Gilbert, Nina Dobrev as Elena Gilbert, and Erin Beute as Miranda Gilbert in "The Departed," the season 3 finale of The Vampire Diaries.

This Week's TV Listings

● Next New Episodes
● Listings By Date
● Listings by Show Name
● Movies on TV

TELEVISION—New episodes this week from:

● Awake,
● Eureka,
● Fringe,
● Game of Thrones,
● Grimm,
● Lost Girl,
● Once Upon a Time (season finale),
● The Secret Circle,
● Supernatural,
● Touch,
● The Vampire Diaries (season finale).

Guest stars this week include Kevin Weisman (Alias, Roswell) on Awake; Rebecca Mader on Fringe; Kenneth Mitchell (Jericho, Ghost Whisperer) and Roger Bart on Grimm; Jamie Dornan and Emilie De Ravin (Roswell) on Once Upon a Time; Misha Collins, Rick Worthy, Jim Beaver, and Mark Sheppard on Supernatural; Scott Michael Campbell (Push) on Touch.

Synopses below the jump. For details see the listings (regular or alphabetical). For sci-fi/fantasy movies on TV this week go to movie listings.

...

This Week: TV (May 7-14) originally appeared on About.com Sci-Fi / Fantasy on Sunday, May 6th, 2012 at 09:35:47.

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Syfy's Expanded 2012 Pipeline

2012-05-01T23:03:59Z

Grant Bowler, who'll star in next spring's new series, Defiance.

● Go to Article

Syfy has announced an unprecedented expansion in its original programming, both scripted and nonscripted. But what's most interesting is the broad diversity in the dramas it's developing, and the name-brand talent engaged behind the cameras. Read on...

Tags: syfy, defiance, rewind, grave sight, the adjustment bureau
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Syfy's Expanded 2012 Pipeline originally appeared on About.com Sci-Fi / Fantasy on Tuesday, May 1st, 2012 at 23:03:59.

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