S3 premiere is June... er... *something*...

According to Michael Ausiello's latest column on TVGuide.com, the third season of The 4400 premieres not June 4 as the SciFiWire article said a few weeks ago, but June 11 instead.

Curioser and curioser. Does anyone out there know who's right? Leave a comment, with sources, preferably. =)

S2 DVDs To Have Actual Bonus Features OMG!

Considering the first season had exactly jack and s@#% in the way of extras, I'm excited to report that TVonDVD.com has posted a brief description of the bonus features for the second season of The 4400, which comes out on DVD May 23. You can find the (IMHO still bare-bones) list of extras here. I still find myself asking, "That's it?" I mean... "the making of the ball of light?" Seriously? The main draw for the commentaries on this one is that we'll finally get to hear Jacqui speak with her natural Australian accent. Squee! (And yes, I know that any and all Australians reading this just rolled their eyes at me.)

The May 23 release will see these babies being shilled for $43USD/ $49CDN retail, but the bargain hunters among you may be pleased to hear that it's going for $27 on Amazon, which you can get by scrolling down and clicking on the link on the right-hand column of this site. Just sayin'!

Joel Gretsch's Trek Family Ties

And other news...

I was just perusing Joel Gretsch's IMDB profile (no, I actually don't have anything better to do) and have discovered that he's married to Melanie Shatner, a.k.a. daughter of William "Captain James Tiberius Kirk" Shatner. They've been married since 1999, and Google even tells me that Bill Shatner was present at the birth of Joel's first baby! This makes me and, I'm sure, other hopeless lifelong Trekkies very happy.

Melanie was one of the child extras in the original Star Trek series episode "Miri." (See? I wasn't lying about the hopeless Trekkie part.) More six-degrees-of-separation kookiness: according to her IMDB profile, she's best friends with Sex and the City's Kristin Davis. Weird.

According to a post on IMDB made by SushiGal who runs Laura Allen's official web site, Laura started filming the new FX pilot Dirt on March 7. She will be playing Julia, a sexy starlet on whom the lead characters (Courtney Cox Arquette and her sidekick) are trying to get "dirt." I'm pretty sure that Laura's only attached to the pilot, as the series hasn't been greenlit, and its regular shooting schedule wouldn't overlap with The 4400's, but you never know. Lily/Richard is the main reason I got hooked on this show (that and the fact that Patrick Flueger is the second-hottest man on basic cable, the first being Nip/Tuck's Julian McMahon) so I will be seriously fuming if anything happens to Lily as is the rumor going around on TelevisionWithoutPity. Much like Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons, I will be on the Internet registering my disgust within minutes.

Detailed spoilers for Episode 3.3

Thanks to cujoy over at the 4400 Spoilers community on LiveJournal, I discovered detailed spoilers about the third episode of the season, incuding its title, major plot arcs, etc. You can find them here.

Is it June 4 yet?

Season 3 Premiere Date Announced!

AWESOME NEWS!!!! According to this article posted yesterday on SciFiWire, the third season of The 4400 will premiere on USA on June 4, 2006 and will run concurrently for 13 episodes. Huzzah!

The article contains some general spoilers for the third season, but nothing too major, except one casting notice. Continuing in this show's grand tradition of hiring actors whose names I totally can't pronounce, Megalyn Echanowke will be playing the role of Adult Isabelle. That's her picture from IMDB and it does her absolutely no justice. I recall her compelling turns on both 24 and Veronica Mars and definitely think this is going to be a huge boon for the show. Her IMDB page is here.

Peter Coyote on Brokeback Mountain

In this article from SFGate, Peter Coyote and several other actors ponder all the different ways in which Brokeback Mountain failed to impress Academy voters this year, losing out the Best Picture nomination to Crash. Peter denies that it's because the movie was "too gay," and basically blames it on the marketing. It's an interesting article about the current state of Hollywood politics and Peter has some interesting, if random, things to say about it.