Jason Isaacs stars in Awake on NBC

You might know the actor Jason Isaacs from the many movies he's been in, playing memorable characters such as Colonol Tavington in The Patriot, Lucius Malfoy in the Harry Potter series, and the traditional dual role of Mr. Darling and Captain Hook in Peter Pan.

Isaacs is now starring in a new television show on NBC called Awake.

I've been looking forward to this show for a long time, ever since I first watched a trailer for it last year. Isaacs plays a police detective who gets into a car accident with his wife and teenage son. From then on, he experiences two realities. One where his wife died and his son is still alive, and one where his son died and his wife is still alive. Every time he goes to sleep, he wakes up in the other reality.

It starts on Thursday night (March 1st) on NBC, at 10/9 Central after the rest of the Thursday night lineup of 30 Rock, Parks And Recreation, The Office, and Up All Night.

Although Awake hasn't aired on television yet, NBC put the first episode on the internet for people to watch. I saw it, and it's such a good show. The acting by B.D. Wong and Cherry Jones (the two psychiatrists), and especially by Jason Isaacs is incredible. Isaacs' monologue at the end of the episode made the hairs on my arms stand up. Besides the acting, the whole concept of the show is very interesting to me, the cinematography is absolutely gorgeous, and I really enjoy the music. I'm really looking forward to seeing more. I'd love to see the show do well, and I highly recommend you check it out. The first episode has also been getting great reviews.

You can watch the first episode on NBC.com, youtube, hulu, or just watch it on the embedded player below.

UPDATE: The episode has now been removed.

If you'd rather wait for Awake to actually be on TV, like I said, it will be on NBC this Thursday night (March 1st) at 10/9 Central. Maybe you should go set it to record right now.

Alternate Universe Movie Posters

Can you imagine an alternate universe where movies we know and love were made in completely different eras by completely different people?

Artists like Peter Stults create the movie posters for some of these alternate universe movies. Click on the poster to see more.

"Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!"

Dan Aykroyd visited the office of Empire magazine today and answered some questions about the development of Ghostbusters 3. Questions that were responded to with rather baffling answers.

Aykroyd said that Bill Murray's "position on his involvement in Ghostbusters 3 has been made clear," and according to Empire, then hinted that Bill Murray may not return as Peter Venkman, and that the character could be played by a different actor, a la Jack Ryan, a character created by Tom Clancy that has, to date, been played by 3 different actors in movies based on Clancy's books.

Speaking about the possibility of the retired Rick Moranis returning to play his character Louis Tully, Aykroyd said, "None of us would want to do the movie without having him as a participant." So they'll make the movie without Bill Murray, who was the star of the first two Ghostbusters movies (and easily the best thing about the movies), but they wouldn't want to make it without Rick Moranis, who played a supporting character? That doesn't make any sense to me.

Han shot first, What's on second.

I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with the "Han shot first" controversy surrounding a scene in the Star Wars movie A New Hope in which Han Solo kills Greedo. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter on February 9th, George Lucas claimed that Greedo always shot first:

                    GEORGE LUCAS

          The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode
          IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it 

          upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who 

          shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he 

          actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was 

          confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in 

          there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but 

          everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to 

          think that he actually just gunned him down.

I don't know, Mr. Lucas. I still think Han is the only one who fired his blaster. Take a look at this clip from the theatrical version of A New Hope.



I don't know what you see, but this is my perception of the scene: Han and Greedo talk, while Greedo points his blaster at Han. Han secretly goes for his blaster under the table, and the audience can see this. Greedo heavily implies that he is about to kill Han. One shot is heard, sparks and smoke are seen in front of Greedo. Here, I think the editing was supposed to be ambiguous. It's one of those classic and cliche movie scenes where there is gunfire, and for some amount of time, the audience doesn't know who was hit. It gets the audience involved in the scene because they are concerned for one of the characters until it is revealed who actually got shot. That's what happens in this scene in A New Hope until a second or two after the blaster fire when Greedo falls onto the table. Not only did Han shoot first, but he was the only one to shoot.