MOVIES – Opening this week:

• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) was scheduled to come out half a year ago, but was delayed so that Warner Brothers could have a big July tentpole movie. This is the sixth Harry Potter movie, and it sets up a lot of crises that will be resolved in the final two films. Since the last movie came out two years ago, star Daniel Radcliffe has gotten good notices in Equus on Broadway, and here he's opposite Jim Broadbent, who elicits strong performances from everyone he works with. I've got tons of video clips, trailers, and interviews on this one, so be sure to check out the video page.
  - Watch trailers, clips, and video for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
  - Image Gallery for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Brince

TELEVISION – New episodes this week from:

• Warehouse 13,
• Eureka,
• Primeval,
• Merlin, and
• True Blood.

Guest stars this week include glamorous Battlestar alumna Tricia Helfer, on Warehouse 13; Leela Savasta, who was the ridiculously underutilized Alicia Vega on Stargate Atlantis and Tracey Anne in the final episodes of Battlestar, on Eureka; and Kenneth Cranham, who was Pompey on Rome, on Merlin.

Next week: BBC America airs Torchwood: Children of Earth. Watch for my review and more stuff on the 5-part miniseries later this week.

Synopses below the jump. For details see the listings (regular or alphabetical). Read more...

HOME VIDEO – Out on DVD this week:

• Alex Proyas's latest movie, Knowing (2009), starring Nicholas Cage (out July 7), never gained much traction.
  - Watch trailers, clips, and video for Knowing
  - Rebecca's review (2 stars out of 5)
• The likewise disappointing Push (2009), a psychic powers thriller with Chris Evans and Dakota Fanning, tried hard to build a world ordered by different kinds of special abilities, but didn't quite hold together (July 7). Random connection: If the actor playing the child version of Chris Evans looks familiar, it's Colin Ford, who occasionally plays Young Sam on Supernatural.
  - Watch trailers, clips, and video for Push

TELEVISION – Lots of good TV this week, with new episodes this week from:

• Warehouse 13 (series premiere),
• Eureka (return),
• Primeval,
• Eli Stone (series finale),
• Merlin, and
• True Blood.

Guest stars this week include Michael Boatman (Spin City) on the premiere of Warehouse 13; Kim Poirier (Paradise Falls) on the return of Eureka; Kate Magowan (Una in Stardust) guests on the third-season episode of Primeval; and Julian Rhind-Tutt (Quartus in Stardust) is a mysterious physician on Merlin. This week's repeat episode of Supernaural is the one with Ted Raimi.

Synopses below the jump. For details see the listings (regular or alphabetical). Read more...

Everything old is being resurrected again. Sometimes it works (Battlestar Galactica); a lot of times it doesn't, perhaps because the planning process doesn't progress beyond "Let's bring back Bionic Woman!"

And yet the trend seems to be escalating, despite recent disasters like the unloved update of Knight Rider. Current projects for next season alone include revamps of V: The Series, Eastwick, and The Prisoner. Fran Kuzui is reviving Buffy (the movie, not the series). Even Teen Wolf, the 1985 Michael J. Fox teenage werewolf romantic comedy, is being brought back by MTV.

So it's perhaps inevitable that someone should turn to Alien Nation, the story of a small population of spotty-headed Newcomers who try to integrate into human society. It began as a film (1988) and then ran on Fox for one season (1989-1990). It was canceled, the victim of a network financial crunch, but Alien Nation never really went away: its loose ends were explored in a series of books and comics and five made-for-TV sequel films airing from 1994 to 1997. Unlike some properties with a lot of potential that flared brightly and then vanished in the ether, Alien Nation has maintained a presence in the sci-fi pantheon.

And its time is now again. Sci Fi Channel, which next week will start calling itself Syfy, has let on it's in development on a new version of Alien Nation.
Read more...

NBC's last-minute renewal of Chuck in May was all about the numbers, so it's not surprising that the network looked to the show's major sponsor, Subway sandwiches, to shoulder a greater burden of the costs. NBC officials have confirmed that their decision to renew the show was made after Subway agreed to (shudder) "step up" its level of brand integration in the show next season.

Of course, you know what we'll be getting in return: even more intrusive product placement on a show where we've already had to watch major characters tell each other how wonderful and delicious their Subway sandwiches are.

Subway ended up getting drawn into the campaign to save the show after industry news mavens reported in April that its renewal was in jeopardy. Online fans decided that one of the most obvious ways to leverage their virtual numbers was to purchase lots of 5-dollar footlongs at their local Subway shops, which were already kitted out with tie-in Chuck imagery.

Chuck's producers haven’t said so far exactly how Subway will be introduced into the series, but they expect the chain to be a prominent fixture. There are lots of obvious possibilities: in previous seasons the cover for CIA handler Sarah Walker (Yvonne Strahovski) was as a counter girl in a nearby wiener or frozen yogurt shop. Before, those shops were fictional chains (like Buy More), allowing the writers to use or abuse the fictional products as they pleased; but if Sarah's working at Subway, what choice will she have but to shill the sandwiches to her costars – and to us? Read more...