Monday, February 5, 2007
Blood Ties On Lifetime in March
Lifetime has announced that they will start airing the series Blood Ties, based on the "Blood" novels by Tanya Huff on Sunday, March 11th at 10 pm ET/PT. It will be interesting to see how it does in the ratings. For fans of paranormal drama who don't care for Galactica, that makes for a good back to back scheduling block.
Not too much info has come out about how this series will adapt the Tanya Huff books that I've come across so far. Some details on the series can be found at The Futon Critic and on the >IMDB .
Here's how they describe the series:
Blood Ties follows the misadventures of Vicki Nelson, a feisty, attractive, 29-year old ex-cop turned private investigator with a degenerative eye disorder, who seems destined to sit on the sidelines until fate intervenes, turning her life upside down. After witnessing a terrifying murder, she finds herself on a collision course with a stranger who is also investigating the murder. He is Henry Fitzroy, a 450-year old vampire who just happens to be the bastard son of King Henry VIII. After solving the murder, Vicki finds her forays into supernatural crime are anything but over. Week after week, Vicki's relationship with Henry draws her into baffling cases involving a terrifying pantheon of occult adversaries. Forget fraud investigations and cheating spouses - she's squaring off against ghosts, goblins and ghouls. Vicki and Henry's unlikely alliance soon progresses beyond a purely professional arrangement, complicating her relationship with her long-suffering ex-partner in policing and love, Detective Mike Celluci… and pretty well everything else in her life.
It stars Christina Cox as Private Investigator Vickie Nelson, Kyle Schmid as vampire Henry Fitzroy, and Dylan Neal as Mike Celluci. This looks to be Cox's first starring role in a TV series for a while. She has done a lot of guest shots on shows going all the way back to Forever Knight and co-starred in FX: The Series. Schmid has done a few guest shots as well, but nothing major. Neal has the most notable credits with stints on Dawson's Creek, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and the lead role of David Martell in Babylon 5: The Legend of the Rangers.
Huff only wrote six books in the series, and there are some dramatic changes in Victory Nelson's life through those six books. Huff has done a sequel series, Smoke and Shadows, featuring one of the supporting characters, Tony, that has three books so far. Those are fun in that Tony works on a Canadian TV series about a vampire detective. Maybe they will eventually work that into the Blood Ties tv series down the road.
Lee Whiteside
Posted by sftv @ 06:53 PM MST
Sunday, February 4, 2007
MTR Ticket Fiasco, Penn Jillette, and the new SFTV BlogFor Neil...
First of all, I'd just like to say Penn Jillette!
MTR Paley Festival Ticket Fiasco
I'd sent out the information to the SFTV News list about the 2007 William S. Paley Festival at the Museum of Television and Radio in Los Angeles. This year, they are having a good number of panels SF/F fans might want to see (George Lucas, Heroes, Jericho, etc.). I was looking to get Heroes tickets and was planning on making a weekend trip of it from Phoenix.
This was the first time they have done the tickets via ticketmaster and there's a lot of people out there making their living off of reselling tickets. The tickets went on sale to members of the MTR first, but they also made it easy for anyone (i.e. scalpers) to get a MTR membership (or multiple memberships) via ticketmaster and get first crack at the tickets. I opted to renew my membership via the MTR website and not give TIcketmaster a processing fee. I was given a code that supposedly would allow members to get tickets when they went on sale last Friday. When the site went live and you could buy tickets, it wanted a membership number. I tried mine and it didn't work. I tried the password and it didn't work. Finally, after about thirty minutes it finally accepted the password but by that time, the majority of the sessions were sold out and some tickets were already up on Ebay!
I guess I won't be making the trip to the MTR this year. I'm definitetly not going to pay $250 or more for a pair of tickets (one seller has four tickets at $1399!). I hope they will at least make the Heroes session available via DVD like they did the one for Lost.
A New Blog
I'm experimenting with Blogspot to set up the new SFTV Blog on a regular blogging site. I'll be switching this blog over to there as part of an update to SFTV.org. It will allow comments and other features that I can't really do on here.
Lee
Posted by sftv @ 08:40 PM MST
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Hiro Meets Sulu on Heroes Next Week! UPDATED
Heroes returned to NBC last night, going up against 24 for the first time, and Heroes held on to its ratings in spite of the new competition.
Next week, George Takei joins the show for the first of several episodes as Hiro's father.
For a video interview with George and some behind the scenes video, follow this link to IESB.net
Lee
Posted by sftv @ 10:12 PM MST
Friday, January 12, 2007
Some additional Links for Dresden and GalacticaDresden Files Interview - Movieweb.com has a good interview with Dresden Files star Paul Blackthorne, and producers David Simkins and Robert hewitt Wolfe.
Battlestar Bloopers Up on Google video (and posted by the Scifi Channel) is the Battlestar Galactica Season Three Blooper Reel. Not for the faint of heart....
Lee
Posted by sftv @ 11:59 AM MST
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Catching Up a Bit ....A Few random Notes on things in an attempt to get this blog more active...
The Dresden Files - The Dresden Files will be starting on SciFi on January 21st, along with the relocated Battlestar Galactica. It is based on the novel series by Jim Butcher, which comes highly recommended. (You can order all the books from Amazon via this Magrathea astore page. I've just finished the latest entry, White Night, and it keeps Harry's overall story moving ahead as well as provides another good adventure for Harry and his associates. For news on Jim Butcher, visit the official Jim Butcher website where you can get info on his books, discuss them in the forums and also get updates on the TV series from producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe. You can also find out more about the TV series on the SciFi Channel Dresden Files web site. I'm looking forwrd to meeting Jim at the Arizona Book Festival in April in Phoenix, AZ.
Peter S. Beagle - Last Unicorn News - The upcoming release of the animated adaptation of Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn is a much better release than the first one. However, as with prior home video releases, the author of the original story is not getting any money as a result. Peter has been in a long legal battle with the owners of the movie trying to get the money he is contractually owed. They are making progress. In the meantime, Conlan Press has arranged to sell copies of the new DVD release that you can have signed by Peter and for which Peter will benefit from the sale of. For details on the DVD release and Peter's ongoing legal battles, visit the Conlan Press web site. Peter's recent short work, Two Hearts, won the Hugo Award last year, was nominated for a World Fantasy Award (but didn't win) and it was just announced that it is on the Preliminary Ballot for the SFWA Nebula Award.
New Apple Stuff - Apple announces the iPhone, the next logical step in the evolution of the iPod. If I was going to spend $500 on a phone and who knows how much each month for the service, this looks like the way to go. Then again, I still haven't convinced myself to get a cell phone yet, but did finally get an iPod last year. The Apple TV looks neat, but from what I can tell it will only play back video stored withing iTunes. That means any other video you have on your computer would need to be converted and imported into iTunes to be able to use it with the new system.
Heroes Hype and Such NBC is pulling out the stops to keep Heroes at its ratings high with the spectre of some real competition in the time slot with the return of 24 starting this weekend. Masi Oka did a press interviews that Comic Book Resources has a good report on, Wizard Entertainment has an interview with show creator Tim Kring, as well as TV Guide's >Michael Ausiello, and the new Herosite web site (from the creator of Kryptonsite and Neptunesite) has gone live. If you want lots of spoilers, check out the Heroes section on SpoilerFix.com.
Battlestar Galactica Interviews Also returning to our screens and PVRs is Battlestar Galactica on January 21st. SciFi is attempting to raise live viewership levels by moving it to Sunday nights. Too many people were timeshifting it on Friday nights with their PVRs causing it to drop to series low ratings last fall. Maureen Ryan's interview with Ron Moore and David Eick gives you the lowdown on what to expect for the rest of the season.
Lee
Posted by sftv @ 04:28 PM MST
Monday, December 18, 2006
It's that time of the year.....It's that time ofd the year when US TV is a big snoozefest with mostly repeats and occasional holiday specials while the networks figure people are out shopping or spending time with their families. About the only realy new genre stuff over the next week is the season finale of Doctor Who on the SciFi Channel on Friday night. If you haven't been watching the series, try to catch this two parter that should have you a bit teary-eyed by the end.
Over across the Atlantic, however, UK TV is getting into high gear with a slew of specials for the holidays (not all of them holiday themed, but definitely some new, high profile stuff). Some of it will turn up over her eventually, or be available via DVD or by other means. A quick rundown of stuff:
Hogfather (Sky One) - A four hour live action miniseries adaptation of the Terry Pratchett novel. Dec 17 & 18 (the first part appears to have exceeded Torchwood's record debut numbers for a multichannel rating).
Doctor Who (& related)
(For a full schedule, check the Gallifrey One news pages, click on the UK Broadcast Schedule icon)
Torchwood (BBC3 & BBC2) three more episodes, One on Christmas Eve, and the last two on New Year's night.
Doctor Who Confidential (BBC1) - Christmas Day
Doctor Who A Celebration (Children In Need concert) - BBCi via the "Red Button"
Doctor Who - The Runaway Bride (BBC1) - Chirstmas special on Christmas Night
Sarah Jane Adventures (BBC1) - New Year's Day
Other BBC stuff
(Check the BBC Press Office page for some highlights)
Robin Hood - two more episodes to air on the next two Saturday nights.
Dracula (BBC1)- New adaptation - Dec 28
Ruby in the Smoke (BBC1) Adaptation of Phillip Pullman story starring Billie Piper - Dec 27
My Science Fiction Life (BBC4) - Documentary on Science Fiction fans - including Paul Cornell - Dec 29
BBC 4 has also been running a "The Cult of..." series featuring the likes of fans of Blake's Seven, Tripods, and more.
Posted by sftv @ 11:25 AM MST
Friday, December 1, 2006
TV on DVD - Glut Leads to Lower Prices on back stock!Now that TV on DVD has become such as big seller, we're not seeing the results of maybe too many things in the marketplace out there and back stock DVD sets are now being greatly reduced in price, some as soon as just a couple of months after the initial release.
Currently, Amazon.com is having a big DVD sale with 50% off of all of the Babylon 5 sets, Smallville, Lois and Clark, the BBC (via Warner Bros) has 50% off on some of the Doctor Who collections, early Red Dwarf seasons, and more.
If you haven't checked it out, Amazon now has what they call their "aStore" setup for Amazon Affiliates and I have mine set up with DVDs, books, music and other things that might be of interest to SFTV.org readers. My old Amazon Associates site pretty much fell into dormancy but this new system makes it easy to update things. If there's something you are thinking of getting from Amazon and you don't see it in the SFTV.org store, let me know and I'll add it. I will get a cut of most things you buy through it, so instead of following those links on Ain't it Cool News and lining Harry Knowle's pockets, help support SFTV.org instead!
Visit the SFTV.org aStore Here or go directly to the Amazon TV on DVD special section.
Also, if you want to give an Amazon.com gift Certificate, follow the link below and I'll get credit for it, too!
An as one more instance of cheap TV DVD sets, in my email I got a notice from Deep Discount DVD that they are having a big Buy One Get One Free sale with FOX DVD sets. This includes Buffy, Angel, Futurama, Dark Angel, The X-Files, The Pretender, The Lone Gunmen and more. I don't get any cut of this, but everyone saves!
Lee
Posted by sftv @ 09:51 AM MST
