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American Primeval is a Western thriller drama series created by Mark L. Smith. The Netflix series is set in 1857 during the Utah War, and it revolves around the violent feuds and schemes to gain control over the American West. American Primeval stars Taylor Kitsch, Betty Gilpin, Dane DeHaan, Saura Lightfoot-Leon, Derek Hinkey, Joe Tippett, Jai Courtney, Preston Mota, Shawnee Pourier, and Shea Whigham. So, if you loved the gritty Western backdrop, thrilling story, and compelling characters in American Primeval, here are some similar shows you should check out next.

Hell on Wheels Credit – AMC

Hell on Wheels is a Western thriller drama series created by Joe and Tony Gayton. The AMC series follows Cullen Bohannon, a former Confederate soldier who joins the railroad construction to find the Union soldiers who killed his wife and son during the Civil War.

Yellowstone has become one of the biggest shows on television, as it should because the series is a brilliant piece of art, which deserves every praise it gets. Created by Taylor Sheridan, the neo-Western drama series revolves around the Dutton family who own the largest ranch in America. While there is a lot of infighting amongst the family they must all stand together to protect what’s there from several enemies. Yellowstone stars Kevin Costner, Kelly Reilly, Cole Hauser, Luke Grimes, Kelsey Asbille, Wes Bentley, Jefferson White, and Ian Bohen. Now, that Yellowstone is ending soon with Part 2 of its Season 5, we are here to suggest some similar shows while you wait for the final Yellowstone episodes.

Succession (Max & Rent on Prime Video) Credit – HBO

Succession is a satirical dark comedy-drama series created by Jesse Armstrong. The HBO series revolves around the Roy family, who own one of the biggest...

Back in 1994, writer/director Roland Emmerich and co-writer Dean Devlin brought us the sci-fi adventure film Stargate, a box office hit that launched a franchise, being followed by multiple TV shows, books, comic books, video games, and direct-to-video features. The most popular of those follow-ups was the TV series Stargate Sg-1, which ran for ten seasons and then wrapped up with the aforementioned Dtv movies. It’s been a while since we got any new Stargate to watch, though – and not for lack of trying. Back in 2014, it was announced that Emmerich and Devlin would be rebooting the franchise with a new trilogy of films, starting the story over again from the beginning and tell it to its completion. Then developed the idea for a couple of years, but then it all fell apart. Last year, we learned that Stargate is one of the properties Amazon is looking to revive now that they required MGM,...

Roland Emmerich initially nervous working with Mel Gibson on The Patriot. Heath Ledger helped bridge the gap between Emmerich and Gibson. Gibson's career remains controversial due to a number of problematic comments.

At San Diego Comic-Con, Roland Emmerich explains his initial nervousness upon working with Mel Gibson on The Patriot. Emmerich was the director of the film, which starred Gibson as Benjamin Martin, a farmer who becomes a part of the Colonial Militia during the American Revolution. In addition to Gibson, The Patriot featured a leading cast including Heath Ledger, Joely Richardson, Jason Isaacs, Chris Cooper, Tcheky Karyo, Rene Aubjerjonois, Lisa Brenner, Tom Wilkinson, Donal Logue, and Leon Rippy.

Speaking with Collider at Sdcc, Emmerich explains his initial hesitation about working with Gibson. The director described Gibson as "a very angry guy deep down" making Emmerich "really, really nervous to shoot The Patriot." Emmerich also worried about crossing Gibson when...

Stephen King has written hundreds of short stories and more than sixty novels, but he has only directed one movie: the goofball 1986 film Maximum Overdrive (watch it Here). King has avoided directing ever since and star Emilio Estevez has said that not only does he regret working on the movie, but that King has even begged Estevez to forgive him for getting him into that mess. But one cast member who doesn’t share the negative opinion King and Estevez have on Maximum Overdrive is Giancarlo Esposito, who appears in the film as a character called “Videoplayer.”

Esposito, best known these days for his role on Breaking Bad, told Cinema Blend that he thought King did a brilliant job on the film. Esposito said, “I thought Stephen was brilliant in directing that film and thought he would have a long career as a director. He’s prolific as a writer of course,...

The historical drama miniseries Manhunt was a fascinating look at the pursuit to track down President Abraham Lincoln’s assassin John Wilkes Booth, and, following its conclusion, many viewers may be looking for a similarly great historical drama series to watch. Luckily, there have been plenty of fantastic historical dramas that dealt with similar themes and present extraordinary depictions of real-life historical figures. Lots of these explored the incredibly varied history of the United States, but several historical dramas looked at other locations, periods, and themes.

From high-quality Westerns like Deadwood, which explored the formation of modern American civilization and the disintegration of the Wild West, to fascinating chronicles of other United States presidents like the miniseries John Adams, historical dramas have the power to both entertain and inform. Outside of America, there were also highly engrossing series dealing with other cultures, including Ancient Rome in Rome or feudal Japan in Shōgun.

Stephen King has written hundreds of short stories and more than sixty novels, but he has only directed one movie. The goofball 1986 film Maximum Overdrive (watch it Here), which came to Blu-ray as part of the Vestron Video Collector’s Series back in 2018. Now it has been announced that Vestron Video has put together a special steelbook release of Maximum Overdrive – and this steelbook will only be available at Walmart! The street date is May 30th, and pre-orders are already been accepted on Walmart.com.

Images of the steelbook case can be seen at the bottom of this article.

Based on King’s short story Trucks, Maximum Overdrive has the following synopsis: After a comet causes a radiation storm on Earth, machines come to life and turn against their makers. Holed up in a North Carolina truck stop, a group of survivors must fend for themselves against a mass of homicidal trucks.

Director Roland Emmerich has brought us a whole lot of fun movies over the years, from Independence Day to The Day After Tomorrow, but as far as I’m concerned the best movie he has ever made was his 1992 sci-fi action film Universal Soldier (watch it Here), an awesome movie that pits Jean-Claude Van Damme against a villainous Dolph Lundgren. And that happens to be the movie The Arrow in the Head Show hosts John “The Arrow” Fallon and Lance Vlcek are talking about in the new episode of their show. To find out what they think of Universal Soldier, check out the video embedded above!

Scripted by Richard Rothstein, Christopher Leitch, and Dean Devlin, Universal Soldier tells the following story:

During the Vietnam War, soldier Luc Deveraux (Jean-Claude Van Damme) finds that his superior officer, Andrew Scott (Dolph Lundgren), has turned violently deranged, and the two fight to the death.

Many of Stephen King’s works have been adapted to TV and film for years, and there are many actors who have appeared in more than one – and here’s who has appeared in most Stephen King adaptations so far. The success of Stephen King's novels and short stories has led to a number of TV and film adaptations, and they have built a list of frequent collaborators in the Stephen King universe.

It all started with Brian de Palma’s adaptation of the novel Carrie, in 1976, regarded as one of the best horror movies ever made and one of the best adaptations of King’s works. Carrie was followed by over a hundred adaptations of King’s stories in both TV and film, such as Misery, Pet Sematary, It, and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and there are many actors who have appeared in more than one Stephen King project,...

While "Star Trek: Lower Decks" is a delightful workplace comedy in its own right, Trekkies have been having a ball combing through every episode looking for cute references to classic "Star Trek" episodes. In the first season episode "Veritas," the characters visited a museum of alien artifacts that featured a 50-foot humanoid skeleton that appeared to be wearing a tattered blue Starfleet uniform. This, for the well-trained eye, was a reference to the "Star Trek: The Animated Series" episode "The Infinite Vulcan" wherein a species of intelligent plant people cloned a giant version of Spock to be their leader. At some point, that giant clone died and, by the 24th century events of "Lower Decks," ended up in an alien archive lightyears away. For the uninitiated, that skeleton was a spooky background detail. For Trekkies, it was everything. 

The new season of "Lower Decks" premiered today, and it comes barreling...

Thirteen years after its untimely cancellation, the sun rose once again on the town of “Deadwood.” On Tuesday HBO premiered its long awaited TV movie, which wraps up several loose ends from the original show’s three-season run, at the historic Arclight Cinerama Dome in Hollywood.

Creator and writer David Milch, returning stars Timothy Olyphant, Ian McShane, Molly Parker, Paula Malcomson, W. Earl Brown, Dayton Callie, Kim Dickens, Brad Dourif, John Hawkes, Jeffrey Jones, Leon Rippy, Robin Weigert, Peter Jason, Geri Jewell, Cleo King and Keone Young, newcomer Jade Pettyjohn, director Daniel Minahan, and several others were on-hand at the event, which took place on May 14, 2019. There were even a few familiar faces in attendance whose characters ended up below ground during the original series, including Jim Beaver and Keith Carradine.

See Ian McShane and Timothy Olyphant may get their Emmy I.O.U. for ‘Deadwood’ – but not in acting...

Lights. Camera. Action. HBO has given the green light to the Deadwood TV show revival movie. Today, during the TCA Summer Press Tour, Programming President Casey Bloys confirmed production would begin in October, possibly with an eye toward a spring 2019 premiere. The Deadwood movie had been expected since the project received a California tax credit in April, and creator David Milch has had a script ready since 2017.

An HBO Western, Deadwood premiered on March 21, 2004 and ran for three seasons, before being cancelled. The Deadwood TV series finale, episode 3.12, "Tell Him Something Pretty," first aired on August 27, 2006. The series cast included: Molly Parker, Timothy Olyphant, Ian McShane, Brad Dourif, W. Earl Brown, John Hawkes, Paula Malcomson, Dayton Callie, Leon Rippy, William Sanderson, Robin Weigert, Sean Bridgers, Bree Seanna Wall, Jim Beaver, Jeffrey Jones,...

Saving Grace alum Leon Rippy has booked a recurring role on the fourth season of NBC’s hit drama series The Blacklist. Rippy will play Hunter, a mysterious survivalist who stumbles upon a secret that will have dire consequences. He's an enigmatic character whose unhinged behavior makes him hard to pin down as friend or foe. Rippy, who starred in HBO’s Deadwood, most recently was seen on Hulu miniseries 11.22.63. He is repped by Greene & Associates Talent Agency. The Cosby…...

"The past hates trespassers" in the new teaser trailer for Stephen King and J.J. Abrams' 11.22.63 event series, premiering February 15th on Hulu.

"Based upon the best-selling 2011 novel written by King and published by Scribner, 11/22/63 is a thriller in which high school English teacher Jake Epping travels back in time to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. But his mission is threatened by Lee Harvey Oswald, his falling in love and the past itself … which doesn’t want to be changed.

A nine-hour event series, 11/22/63 has received a direct-to-series order from Hulu, and the project marks the first original programming collaboration between Hulu and Wbtv. J.J. Abrams, Stephen King, Bridget Carpenter and Bryan Burk are executive producers of 11/22/63. Carpenter will write the teleplay, based on the novel by King. Bad Robot’s Kathy Lingg is co-executive producer, and Athena Wickham is producer."

An eight-part event series, the first...

"I'm gonna tell you something that's gonna seem crazy." Readers followed time traveling English teacher Jake Epping back to the ’60s in Stephen King's novel 11/22/63, and soon they'll witness his cautionary adventure on the small screen in Hulu's event series adaption of King's work. Ahead of its February 15th debut, the upcoming series is glimpsed in its first teaser trailer.

The first two-hour portion of the eight-part event series was directed by Kevin Macdonald (How I Live Now, The Last King of Scotland).

In addition to James Franco playing the lead role of Jake Epping, the cast includes Chris Cooper as Al Templeton, Sarah Gadon as Sadie Dunhill, Cherry Jones as Marguerite Oswald, Daniel Webber as Lee Harvey Oswald, George MacKay as Bill Turcotte, Lucy Fry as Marina Oswald, and Leon Rippy as Harry Dunning. Stay tuned to Daily Dead for more updates.

"Based upon the best-selling 2011 novel written...

We're less than four months away from the February premiere of Hulu's event series adaptation of Stephen King's 11/22/63, and a new photo unveiled by EW offers fans their first look at James Franco as time traveling English teacher Jake Epping.

EW's first photo of Franco in 11/22/63 gives a glimpse into the event series that will follow an English teacher who attempts to stop President John F. Kennedy from being killed on that fateful day in Dallas over fifty years ago. The nine-hour event series premieres February 15th on Hulu.

The first two-hour chunk of the series will be directed by Kevin Macdonald (How I Live Now, The Last King of Scotland). In addition to Franco, the cast includes Chris Cooper as Al Templeton, Sarah Gadon as Sadie Dunhill, Cherry Jones as Marguerite Oswald, Daniel Webber as Lee Harvey Oswald, George MacKay as Bill Turcotte, Lucy Fry as Marina Oswald,...

The upcoming Hulu miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's "11/22/63" has added yet another big name to its already-sprawling cast, with actor Josh Duhamel joining the ensemble.

The Hollywood Reporter writes that Duhamel will have a regular role on the series, which stars James Franco as English teacher Jake Epping, who travels back in time to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on the titular date. According to THR, Duhamel's character is an antagonist for Epping:

Duhamel will play Frank Dunning, the father of Jake's student Harry Dunning (played by youngster Jack Fulton and Leon Rippy), in 1960s Kentucky. Frank is the rakish town butcher, a ladies' man with an effortless smile that everyone welcomes -- except Jake, the only man who knows the full violence of which Frank is capable.

The rest of the impressive cast includes Daniel Webber (who's playing assassin Lee Harvey Oswald), Chris Cooper, Cherry Jones,...

Arrested Development, which producer Brian Grazer confirmed would be returning

Netflix’s upcoming series The Get Down has cast its four lead roles. The hip hop drama, set in New York in the 70s, has tapped Shameik Moore, Justice Smith, Skylan Brooks, and Tremain Brown Jr. to star in the series. Moore, who will soon be seen on the big screen in the Sundance feature Dope, will be playing Shaolin Fantastic, while Smith, who is in this summer’s Paper Towns, will play Ezekiel. Brown Jr. will make his acting debut on the series by playing Boo-Boo, while Brooks, who was one of the two leads in The Inevitable Defeat of Mister & Pete, will play Ra-Ra.

Netflix describes The Get Down thusly.

The Get Down focuses on 1970s New York — broken down and beaten up, violent, cash strapped — dying. Consigned to rubble, a rag-tag crew of South Bronx teenagers are...

11/22/63 is proof that not every literary adaptation starring James Franco is based on the works of John Steinbeck or William Faulkner. This upcoming miniseries hails from legendary horror author Stephen King (whose works outside of the scary realm are equally as prolific as those within it) and focuses on a small-town school teacher who realizes he is able to travel through time via a door in a local diner. Franco previously snagged the lead role as the teacher Jake Epping, who takes it upon himself to prevent the assassination of JFK, and the show has now secured a director and supporting cast.

Academy Award winner Kevin McDonald (The Last King Of Scotland) has signed on to direct and executive produce the first two episodes of the nine-hour event series. He will work from a script penned by Bridget Carpenter (Friday Night Lights, Parenthood), who is expected to seriously curtail King...

Hulu doesn't quite have the original content success Netflix and Amazon has celebrated, but they are trying their hardest to change that. As they accelerate into motion their mini-series adaptation of Stephen King's JFK assassination novel "11/22/63", they roped in Chris Cooper, Lucy Fry, George MacKay, Leon Rippy and Cherry Jones to star alongside James Franco, Sarah Gadon and Daniel Webber for its upcoming nine-episodes. Also, Kevin Macdonald (Black Sea) is on board to direct the first two episodes. Franco was already confirmed to lead as Jake Epping, a modern-day high school English teacher who travels back in time to prevent the president's assassination. Meanwhile, Gadon, just as of yesterday, signed on as the female lead Sadie Dunhill, a librarian in the '60s who falls for Franco's character. Webber will portray Lee Harvey Oswald, the man credited with the assassination of JFK. Cooper will play diner owner and Franco's mentor,...

It feels like just yesterday we were reporting on Sarah Gadon joining the cast of J.J. Abrams and Hulu’s streaming adaptation of Stephen King’s JFK time-travel take 11/22/63. That might be because it was just yesterday. Today, though, brings word that Chris Cooper, Cherry Jones, Daniel Webber, George MacKay, Lucy Fry and Leon Rippy are also all part of the cast. James Franco is starring as Jake Epping, a divorced English teacher who stumbles on a time portal than can send him back to late 1958, kicking off a quest to prevent the shooting of President John F. Kennedy while on a tour in Dallas in 1963, a mission complicated by his falling in love and the tricky, resolute nature of time, which keeps springing back into shape.Gadon is Sade, the plucky librarian Jake falls for. Cooper will be Al Templeton, the owner of Al’s Diner and a mentor...

Hulu’s J.J. Abrams-produced adaptation of the timey-wimey Stephen King novel 11/22/63 has cast presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, plus another half-dozen roles.

RelatedJames Franco to Lead J.J. Abrams’ Hulu Adaptation of Stephen King’s 11/22/63

Based on King’s best-selling novel, 11/22/63 follows Jake Epping (played by James Franco), a high school English teacher who travels back in time to try to prevent the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Ergo, you need your shooter, and Aussie actor Daniel Webber (Home and Away; above photo, left) will fill the role of Oswald. In turn, Cherry Jones (24; photo, center) and Lucy Fry...

To mark the release of Leverage: The Complete Fourth Season on 11th November, we’ve been given 5 copies to give away on DVD.

Season 4 features cameos from big screen legends Eric Stoltz and Danny Glover as the Leverage team navigate their way through international conspiracies, in a bid to take revenge on those who use their wealth and power to victimise others. The new season opens up on a picturesque Alaskan mountain top, continuing last season’s thrilling cliff-hanger where Nate and Sophie (Gina Bellman) must now make a tricky decision on their next move.

Season 4 sees the team wrapped up in a murder mystery night, an international chess tournament, and soon they learn they are being followed by a mysterious business man named Jack Latimer (Leon Rippy), who has discovered how to profit from their cases. As they attempt to learn more about him, the team is drawn...

Review Frances Roberts 14 Aug 2013 - 13:10

Joe and Julia receive a cryptic message from an egg in this week’s insultingly dim episode of Under the Dome.

This review contains spoilers.

1.8 Thicker Than Water

There’s something indecorous about laying into Under the Dome. For a start, it’s too easy (titling an episode ‘Thicker Than…’ is just asking for it). Secondly, if I wasn’t writing about it for this site, I’d have switched off by now. Only sticking around to take swipes at something I’m fairly sure will piss me off each week really isn’t cricket, especially as everyone who agrees with me me will have skedaddled long ago, leaving only a robust ten million fans to shout me down in the comments.

And yet.

Every clunker of a line, every melodramatic stare-down, every attempt at depth flattened by overly on-the-nose exposition and dialogue feels...

[Warning: This story contains major spoilers from Monday's episode of Under the Dome as well as the Stephen King novel the series is based on. Read at your own risk.]

Following the frantic chaos of riots, Chester's Mill has moved on to the politics of being stuck under a dome.

During Monday's episode, Big Jim (Dean Norris) tries to take Ollie's (Leon Rippy) land under eminent domain. Ollie shows his strength in numbers, forcing the group to leave empty-handed. They also leave one less in number since Junior (Alexander Koch) decides to join Ollie's band of outlaws. After Junior learns the truth that his mother killed herself, he sets his sights on taking his father out, but things don't go as planned. With new mysteries raised, TVGuide.com turned to executive producer Neal Baer to get some answers:

Read More >...

As de facto leader of Chester's Mill, Big Jim Rennie (Dean Norris) has had a lot on his plate since the dome descended on Under the Dome. Whether it's a greedy racist hillbilly trying to take over the town or the threat of Rev. Coggins (Ned Bellamy) outing his drug business, Jim has faced adversity without turning into his dastardly novel counterpart — but that's about to change.

Last week, when the aforementioned Ollie (Leon Rippy) set out to take control of Big Jim's propane, the councilman made an example by blowing up his lackey. That act of aggression set things in motion for Big Jim to face off against his son Junior (Alexander Koch) for a family reunion that could turn deadly when secrets are revealed. To get the scoop on what executive producer Neal Baer calls an Emmy-worthy performance from Norris, TVGuide.com turned to the man himself:

Read...

Last night’s episode of Under the Dome marked the precise midpoint of the summer breakout’s freshman season. This means that, according to the basic rules of serialized sci-fi drama, there had to be some minor revelations, or at least answers that only lead to more questions, like a dream within a dream or a dome within a dome. Executive producer Brian K. Vaughan has talked frequently about the influence of Lost on the show — an influence which he earned more than most people because, well, he wrote for Lost — and in the TV schema, this episode ties in...

Review Frances Roberts 30 Jul 2013 - 17:00

Under The Dome shows some signs of improvement this week, as the people of Chester's Mill start to turn on one another...

This review contains spoilers.

1.6 The Endless Thirst

Sometimes it takes nearly being blown up by a thermobaric missile to really put things in perspective, don’t you find?

Having survived the Us government’s attempted mass-murder, the folk of Chester’s Mill finally got their priorities straight this week and set about looting and murdering like it was going out of fashion. The result was an episode that provoked a slightly less furrowed, frustrated brow than usual. You could go so far as to say it was sort of, you know, alright.

Granted, Sheriff Linda was still burdened with the dialogue of a nineties videogame character (“This thing is spreading. We need to do something and fast” she told Barbie this week,...

Under the Dome is a new TV series on Stephen King’s novel of the same name and the first episode airs tonight. If you’d like a sneak peek, we’ve included our photo gallery and recently released videos from the TV series.

“Pilot” – When the residents of Chester’s Mill find themselves trapped under a massive transparent dome with no way out, they struggle to survive as resources rapidly dwindle and panic quickly escalates, on the series premiere of Under The Dome, Monday, June 24 (10:00-11:00 Pm, Et/Pt) on the CBS Television Network.

Niels Arden Oplev (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) directed the premiere episode.

Under The Dome, a new 13-episode serialized drama based on Stephen King’s bestselling novel, is the story of a small town that is suddenly and inexplicably sealed off from the rest of the world by an enormous transparent dome.

We’re only four days from the premiere of Under the Dome and we have two and a half minutes of new footage, including a scene between Dean Norris and Jeff Fahey. We’ve included some of the previous video releases below and will return on Monday with an interview, character details, and more.

“Pilot” – When the residents of Chester’s Mill find themselves trapped under a massive transparent dome with no way out, they struggle to survive as resources rapidly dwindle and panic quickly escalates, on the series premiere of Under The Dome, Monday, June 24 (10:00-11:00 Pm, Et/Pt) on the CBS Television Network.

Niels Arden Oplev (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) directed the premiere episode.

Under The Dome, a new 13-episode serialized drama based on Stephen King’s bestselling novel, is the story of a small town that is suddenly and inexplicably sealed off from...

Get ready to start seeing plenty of Under the Dome content over the next few months. CBS is set to air the first of thirteen episodes on June 24th and we’ve put together a gallery of fifteen images, including new photos from the pilot episode.

CBS has also issued a new press release, confirming the main cast and giving us the official plot description for the first episode:

“Pilot” – When the residents of Chester’s Mill find themselves trapped under a massive transparent dome with no way out, they struggle to survive as resources rapidly dwindle and panic quickly escalates, on the series premiere of Under The Dome, Monday, June 24 (10:00-11:00 Pm, Et/Pt) on the CBS Television Network.

Niels Arden Oplev (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”) directed the premiere episode.

Under The Dome, a new 13-episode serialized drama based on Stephen King’s bestselling novel,...

By Allen Gardner

Pier Paolo Pasolini’S Trilogy Of Life (Criterion) Pier Paolo Pasolini was Italy’s last Neo-Realist, a product of post-ww II Europe who was fervently Catholic, openly gay, defiantly Marxist, and one of the most original voices of the 20th century’s second half. Before his brutal murder in 1975 (after the premiere of his still-controversial swan song, “Salo”), Pasolini directed a trilogy of films based on masterpieces of medieval literature: Boccaccio’s “The Decameron,” Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales,” and “The Thousand and One Nights (also known as “The Arabian Nights”). The three films celebrate the uninhibited, earthy, raw carnal nature of the original texts, leaving little to the imagination, but also offering Pasolini’s own very unique and pointed views on modern society, consumerism, religious and sexual mores (and hypocrisies), and an unexpurgated celebration of the human body, both male and female. Extraordinary production design by Dante Ferretti and another evocative,...

Alcatraz: The Complete Series

Stars: Sarah Jones, Jorge Garcia, Parminder Nagra, Sam Neill, Jonny Coyne, Leon Rippy, Jason Butler Harner, David Hoflin, Jeffrey Pierce | Created by Elizabeth Sarnoff, Steven Lilien, Bryan Wynbrandt

“In 1963 America’s most notorious and infamous prison closed and some of the nation’s worst murderers, rapists and thieves vanished. Now they’re back. And about to be let loose on modern age America…”

When San Francisco Police Department detective Rebecca Madsen (Jones) is assigned to a grisly homicide case, a fingerprint leads her to a shocking suspect: an Alcatraz inmate – one who died over 30 years ago. Given her family history — both her grandfather and surrogate uncle, Ray Archer, were guards at the prison — Madsen’s interest is immediately piqued, and once the enigmatic, knows-everything-but-tells-nothing government agent Emerson Hauser tries to impede her investigation, she’s doggedly committed. Madsen turns to Alcatraz expert and comic book enthusiast Dr.

Most television series hit the fourth season mark with the characters firmly established allowing the creators and performers a chance to stretch a bit, certain they won’t lose their audience. The better shows know just how far to stretch, how far to push the formula, and when to pull back. Thankfully, TNT’s Leverage toed the line carefully by varying the stories told in the two half season comprising the 15 episode fourth season. The series has never been anything less than a delight as the con men turned good guys find corruption everywhere they turn and can’t help themselves, coming to the rescue.

The series features a strong, tight ensemble that is allowed to grow and develop, making us love the characters just a little bit more. The fourth season came out on a four disc set last week, just in time for the fifth season’s debut.

Since this week's episode of Alcatraz was supposed to air before the two-hour special, "Clarence Montgomery" was light on new reveals. We did, however, learn that Warden James (Jonny Coyne) charged Dr. Beauregard (Leon Rippy) with using Lucille's mind-tampering techniques in reverse, causing an actually innocent prisoner to commit murder using the same techniques he was falsely convicted of.

Dissecting Alcatraz's Mysteries: Is the Warden a '63? Or is he pulling the strings?

Since we already learned about the colloidal silver in the prisoners' blood last week, it came as no surprise when Doc (Jorge Garcia) and Rebecca (Sarah Jones) deduced that there were experiments going on at Alcatraz. Thus, a shortened Dissection this week. Check out two of our big questions, along with a few fan theories worth mentioning:

Read More >...

Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer The Lone Ranger First Photo. The Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer first The Lone Ranger (2013) photo has the Gore Verbinski film stars sitting atop horses. The Lone Ranger (Armie Hammer) is looking off into the distance while Tonto (Johnny Depp) is staring almost disapprovingly at The Lone Ranger.

Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer The Lone Ranger first photo:

Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer, The Lone Ranger

The Lone Ranger‘s plot synopsis: “Native American spirit warrior Tonto (Johnny Depp) recounts the untold tales that transformed John Reid (Armie Hammer), a man of the law, into a legend of justice—taking the audience on a runaway train of epic surprises and humorous friction as the two unlikely heroes must learn to work together and fight against greed and corruption.”

The Lone Ranger also stars Helena Bonham Carter, William Fichtner, Tom Wilkinson, Barry Pepper, James Badge Dale, James Frain, Ruth Wilson,...

With the initial week of production completed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, producer Jerry Bruckheimer has tweeted a first look photo of Gore Verbinski‘s The Lone Ranger. Above one can see Johnny Depp in full garb as Tonto and Armie Hammer as the titular character across a cloudy background. It is quite an update compared to the original (which you can see below to the right). Bruckheimer is also keeping up blog posts surrounding the production and you can read a bit of his first below, with the rest on his site.

We have just completed our first week of filming in Albuquerque, and after a touch and go pre-production, things are going great! We have an amazing group of cast and crew. Our first day of filming went great, but came with many obstacles. On day 1, one of our Special Effects guys measured winds of 70mph!! However, we made...

First image or Johnny Depp as Tonto and Armie Hammer as The Lone Ranger from The Lone Ranger movie! The very first photo from the eagerly anticipated release has been sent out to the world via Twitter by über-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, showing Johnny Depp as Tonto and Armie Hammer as The Lone Ranger. Western adventure which reunites Johnny Depp with his Pirates of the Caribbean and Rango helmer Gore Verbinski, opens on May 31st via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Cast has names like Helena Bonham Carter, Tom Wilkinson, William Fichtner, Barry Pepper, James Badge Dale, James Frain, Ruth Wilson, Leon Rippy and Matt O'Leary in the cast. Ted Elliot, Terry Rossio and Justin Haythe wrote the script for The Lone Ranger...

First image or Johnny Depp as Tonto and Armie Hammer as The Lone Ranger from The Lone Ranger movie! The very first photo from the eagerly anticipated release has been sent out to the world via Twitter by über-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, showing Johnny Depp as Tonto and Armie Hammer as The Lone Ranger. Western adventure which reunites Johnny Depp with his Pirates of the Caribbean and Rango helmer Gore Verbinski, opens on May 31st via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Cast has names like Helena Bonham Carter, Tom Wilkinson, William Fichtner, Barry Pepper, James Badge Dale, James Frain, Ruth Wilson, Leon Rippy and Matt O'Leary in the cast. Ted Elliot, Terry Rossio and Justin Haythe wrote the script for The Lone Ranger...

First image or Johnny Depp as Tonto and Armie Hammer as The Lone Ranger from The Lone Ranger movie! The very first photo from the eagerly anticipated release has been sent out to the world via Twitter by über-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, showing Johnny Depp as Tonto and Armie Hammer as The Lone Ranger. Western adventure which reunites Johnny Depp with his Pirates of the Caribbean and Rango helmer Gore Verbinski, opens on May 31st via Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Cast has names like Helena Bonham Carter, Tom Wilkinson, William Fichtner, Barry Pepper, James Badge Dale, James Frain, Ruth Wilson, Leon Rippy and Matt O'Leary in the cast. Ted Elliot, Terry Rossio and Justin Haythe wrote the script for The Lone Ranger...

The person who might've been the most dangerous man on Alcatraz may not have actually died.

This week's episode of Alcatraz revealed that Warden James (Jonny Coyne) might be alive -- and that's not all. Could he be one of our Powers That Be. With the return of the Ames brothers (Graham Shiels and Travis Aaron Wade) and Officer Donovan, who tried to track down an urban legend of gold on the island, along with the reappearance of angry former kidnapper Sonny Burnett (Theo Rossi), Rebecca (Sarah Jones), Diego (Jorge Garcia) and Hauser (Sam Neill) were scrambling to bring these new '63s to justice.

Meanwhile, Dr. Beauregard (Leon Rippy) uncovered a disturbing new truth about the '63s: They are healing rapidly. It's just one of the new mysteries that Alcatraz introduced this week. Let's take a look at the others:

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Vacation

"The Hangover" and "Cedar Rapids" star Ed Helms is in the lead to play a grown-up Rusty Griswold in the reboot of the "Vacation" series.

The film will follow Clark Griswold's son who now has his own family. Still no word if Chevy Chase will put in a cameo. [Source: Deadline]

The Bling Ring

"Harry Potter" series regular Emma Watson will lead the ensemble cast in Sofia Coppola's next project "The Bling Ring".

The story is inspired by real events in which a group of teens engage in a string of celebrity burglaries. [Source: Deadline]

Adult World

Acting veteran Cloris Leachman will play the owner of a porn store in Scott Coffey’s "Adult World" which is currently shooting in upstate New York.

John Cusack, Evan Peters and Emma Roberts star in the film about a girl who moves back with her parents to write poetry and ends up working at an...

After a tumultuous pre-production, Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer Films revealed today that filming is underway on the new big screen version of The Lone Ranger. Directed by recent Oscar winner Gore Verbinski, and written by Eric Aronson, Justin Haythe Ted Elliott, and Terry Rossio, the epic action-adventure western commenced on-location shooting in New Mexico, Arizona, Utah and Colorado.

The announcement also brings an official plot synopsis and some more confirmations on casting. Joining lead stars Armie Hammer (The Social Network) and Johnny Depp are an assemblage of new and award-winning talent, including Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton, In The Bedroom) and William Fichtner (Armageddon, Pearl Harbor). Fichtner recently replaced country singer and occasional actor Dwight Yoakam as Butch Cavendish, the right hand man to the film’s villain (Wilkinson).

British actor James Frain will take the role of a railroad foreman, while Barry Pepper (True Grit, Saving Private Ryan), James Badge Dale (The Grey,...

After months of negotiating, shutdowns, renegotiations and script tweaking (which we like to imagine involved the oft-composed Jerry Bruckheimer flying into Hulk-style rages when he didn’t get his way), Gore Verbinski and Johnny Depp are finally cranking the cameras on The Lone Ranger. And they’ve locked in four more actors to round out the cast, with Harry Treadaway, Matt O’Leary, W. Earl Brown and Leon Rippy all aboard. Depp stars as Tonto alongside Armie Hammer’s titular Ranger, John Reid in the story of betrayal, corruption, Old West heroism and, possibly, some supernatural elements all thrown into the script pot by writers Ted Elliot, Terry Rossio and Justin Haythe.While Rippy and Brown’s roles have yet to be revealed, Variety reports that Treadaway and O’Leary will be members of the criminal gang led by Burt Cavendish (William Fichtner). They’re all joining a cast that also includes Ruth Wilson,...

The larger story of Alcatraz continues to be doled out piecemeal with common elements consistently referred to again and again, like the exsanguinations of Tommy Madsen and Dr. Sengupta’s work with the inmates’ memories. Meanwhile ‘Johnny McKee’ works to bring some procedural elements into the overall narrative of the series (by bringing back inmates from previous episodes), and not just to fulfill the needs of a single episode.

Once more, an episode begins with Lucy Banerjee/Lucille Sengupta (Parminder Nagra) and her condition as a result of a sniper bullet in the episode ‘Ernest Cobb.’ Hauser (Sam Neill) is tasked by Dr. Beauregard (Leon Rippy) to try reading to Lucy, as a way to rouse her from unconsciousness – or dreaming of a place other than this so-called reality, to paraphrase the good Dr. Beauregard.

Click to continue reading ‘Alcatraz’ Season 1, Episode 7: ‘Johnny McKee’ Recap...

The weekly wrap:

First, there are two things to check out on TV tonight.

Richard Harmon is in The Pregnancy Project, which airs at 8/7c on Lifetime. NiceGirlsTV.com has a preview.

And Winston Rekert, Maya Massar and Hrothgar Mathews (Obal in "Unvanquished," Helen the widow in "Retribution" and Dave in "Apotheosis") appear in Goodnight for Justice, a western starring Luke Perry, which also airs at 8 pm, on Hallmark. Synopsis and preview at Daemon's TV.

Some great news on other fronts:

Esai Morales will guest star in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit in episode "Home Invasions," which airs on February 15. Synopsis from NBC:

"Law & Order: Special Victims Unit"

"Home Invasions"

02/15/2012 (10:00Pm - 11:00Pm) (Wednesday) : When A Family Is Massacred In Their Home, The Investigation Into Their Lives Forces Detective Rollins (Kelli Giddish) To Reveal A Career-threatening Secret. Jake T. Austin And Esai Morales Guest Star.

A gunman storms a family’s home,...

What happens when The Office meets Leverage? Fans of the latter will find out tonight.

On the aptly-titled "The Office Job," Nate Ford and company will attempt to bust up an embezzlement scheme by infiltrating a business and acting as its employees. But this basic mission will take a turn when team members find themselves thrust into a documentary being filmed on location.

Leverage Promo: "The Office Job"

Previews Aldis Hodge, who says he's a huge fan of the NBC sitcom to which Leverage is paying homage:

"It was fun to mash up our style with theirs... they deal directly with the cameras every week, while our job is to be conspicuous, to be the guys you don't see. The results end up being terribly funny."

This week's installment marks the first in a run of unusual episodes for the TNT hit. Over the next two Sundays, for example, viewers...

TNT’s Leverage resumes its fourth season this Sunday at 9/8c, rejoining what has in recent months become a ferociously competitive night of TV. Luckily, the caper drama has some of its most clever (and noisiest) episodes in the pipeline. Among them, there’s a riff on The Office (where Nate’s team infiltrates a workplace that is the subject of a documentary), “girls night out” and “boys night out” episodes that fit together like a puzzle, and a season finale that promises to trot out “a foe from the past.” TVLine invited Aldis Hodge, who plays Hardison aka “The Hacker,...

This episode could've had a few different names - "The Chocolate Job," "The Moonwalking Bear Job," or "The Mako Job" - as it shifted from one story element to the next.

What was great about "The Boiler Room Job" was how well it did the shifts and still blended together in the end to make a truly well told story.

Did anyone else expect the civilian actors were actually Sherman’s other victims? I was as stunned as when I found out Darth Vader was Luke's father. I had not expected this heartfelt revelation in the plot to take down Sherman, but it was a nice surprise.

Of course, the episode was full of surprises as Nate and Sophie’s relationship was outed by Sherman as well. Shows you how good he really is, given than Parker, Hardison, and Eliot hadn’t suspected a thing.

It’s really hard to...

Someone's been keeping tabs on Leverage's Nate Ford (Timothy Hutton) all season. In Sunday's episode, that man will reveal himself, and we have your exclusive first look!

Exclusive: Leverage recruits Saving Grace's Leon Rippy for recurring role

Guest star Leon Rippy (Deadwood, Saving Grace) returns as professional investor Jack Lattimer in Sunday's "The Boiler Room Job" (10/9c, TNT). His Warren Buffet-type character has figured out the Leverage team's game, and he has begun lining his own pockets by taking advantage of the companies Nate's team destroys...

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