Michelle Forbes Community Blog

DIPLOMACY on iTunes

2011-12-12T22:24:00.000+01:00

Diplomacy has come to the iTunes Store! Download available in over 63 countries.

Link to the US iTunes store (1.99$ SD or 2.99$ HD):
http://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/diplomacy/id487803563

Go Michelle!

2011-09-18T16:13:00.001+02:00

Trophy or not - you've won our hearts with your magnificent performances. All these years. Over and over again.

Go Michelle!

Primetime Emmy Nomination for Michelle Forbes

2011-07-14T18:18:00.004+02:00

Michelle Forbes has been nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award 2011 in the category 'Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series' for her performance as Mitch Larsen in 'The Killing'.

Congrats!! It was about frakking time.
We love you, Michelle,
your fans and watchers, geeks, nerds and pirates.

P.S. The Killing has nabbed another 5 nominations.

They Don't Care About Us

2011-06-22T21:29:00.000+02:00

Randy here, with my two cents on 'The Killing':

The series has shown how difficult it is for an adaptation to compete with a strong source material. Forbrydelsen's an unique TV experience - suspenseful, engrossing and real. AMC's 'The Killing' lost its purpose by trying to be different. The 'game aspect' of the series (guessing the killer & keeping the audience guessing) became the main focus instead of the human drama in the wake of a terrible murder.

Mitch was disappointingly one-dimensional, which is a shame because Michelle's extraordinary acting gifts were not used to their full effect. Nevertheless, she was wonderful, as was Brent Sexton and the younger actors.

Chris' take on AMC's The Killing:

I don't really know what to say. Brown is a difficult colour. Real life is messy. Wellies. Torrents, lots of torrents.
Denny Larsen: "They don't care about us." (episode 5, Super 8)
Great performances by Michelle Forbes, Brent Sexton and the kids actors.

I'd wish that producers and writers would treat Michelle's character(s) with more respect and love.

Faith moves mountains, Dad moves the rest.

What Ekström is saying:
http://mcnlive.blogspot.com/2011/06/chris-and-ekstrom-watching-amcs-killing.html

Chris' confusion about deception:
http://mcnlive.blogspot.com/2011/06/story-matters-elsewhere.html

One more thing. Watch the original, watch Forbrydelsen. It's fantastic, entertaining and suspenseful TV. Subtle and understated characters. A sparse dialogue, plenty of close ups from different angles, stunning lighting. A careful use of sound. A gentle camera which is in love with the portrayed individuals. An outstanding Sofie Gråbøl as Sarah Lund, brilliant supporting actors. A straightforward storytelling that never lost its focus as a thrilling murder mystery: the investigation of a brutal killing.

Something Dark and Touching

2011-06-18T14:42:00.002+02:00

Will you be watching The Killing season finale this Sunday?

* "So, if The Killing wraps up Rosie's murder in the season finale, will the Larsens be around next year? — Leslie
ADAM: I certainly hope so, given the strong performances by Michelle Forbes and Brent Sexton this season. And it sounds pretty likely. "The family is back in Season 2," Sexton tells us. "I'll leave it at that."
* Michelle Forbes:
Q : Anything on the second season?
A: I know nothing. I have no idea, I'm always so stymied when I'm asked that question.
* Grief comes in many different colours.
* Forbrydelsen had these insanely compelling dramatic last 4 episodes, with Pernille (=Mitch), one of her boys and Sarah teaming up. And Theis (= Stan) ....
* In AMC's adaptation the real stuff has only just begun :p Compared to Forbrydelsen they're only mid-way through.
* The killer has done it before.

The Killing: The Silence That Follows

2011-04-18T22:23:00.000+02:00

Screen caps from episode 3 (El Diablo) and episode 4 (A Soundless Echo):

There is a solitude of space

A solitude of sea

A solitude of death

but these

Society shall be

Compared with that profounder site

That polar privacy

A soul admitted to itself

Finite infinity

* Emily Dickinson, There is a solitude of space
* "Whatever the mood of the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows. It is a soundless echo." - Beryl Markham, West with the Night

More pictures in our Gallery.

The Killing Premieres, Absorbs and Mesmerizes

2011-04-05T00:39:00.003+02:00

While there are many landmark American tv series, a lot of television seems to be concerned with enforced stereotypes, bland storylines and gratuitous violence. It's at such times that an European 'kick' is needed to propel the overseas into exploring new and utterly absorbing characters and stories. It's a delight to see that while fiercely loyal to its predecessor (Forbrydelsen), The Killing appropriates the essence of the show for American audiences.

The series centres around an investigation into a girl's murder, and the impact of this act of violence on those close to her and the community. It's very rare for a series to engage the consequences of violence. Moreover, the excitement of a murder mystery (investigated for a dozen of episodes) is perfectly married with the humanity of the characters. They appear so ordinary and real, and could well be your next door neighbours. There's nothing artificial about them. Sarah's (Mireille Enos) smooth features belie the matter-of-factness required by her profession. Her soon-to-be-husband understands that her work comes first. The street-smart Stephen (Joel Kinnaman) joins the police force, stirring up some tension with peculiar methods of investigation. Michelle Forbes and Brent Sexton are incredible and affecting as Rosie's parents. Their scenes range from happy times,not knowing where their daughter is, to having to tell their sons about her death. The camerawork is languid and precise, the shots - beautifully composed, the frames could as well be pictures by themselves.

The premiere and repeats were watched by 4.6 million viewers! Here's hoping that the rest of the series is even more engrossing and that the suspense will barely be contained.

What others thought:

The series is excellent, absorbing and addictive. When each episode ends, you long for the next -- a hallmark of great dramas...Michelle Forbes and Brent Sexton are exceptional as the parents of the murdered girl.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter

There's always an appetite for murder mysteries, and the raw performances by Sexton and Forbes give the show more upfront humanity.
Source: Hit Fix

The Killing is the sort of show that is not served well by its description. Truly great art of any medium cannot be broken down into a synopsis that fully captures the power of the finished product. It is so rare to find television programming that fits that description these days that I often forget it is even true. The Killing is one of those rare instances....The Killing will absorb you as readily as you absorb it.
Source: TV Overmind

...it's true that the first episode is compelling, clever television with...a particularly powerful turn from Michelle Forbes as the missing girl's mother.
Source: The Guardian

Check out AMC's latest masterpiece "The Killing". Quality TV show,worthy of cinema even
Michelle Forbes...is amazing in The Killing! Killer performance!
Couldn't believe Michelle Forbes and Brent Sexton could to kill me every time they were on screen. Actual tears were happening.
I shed tears. Michelle Forbes is brilliant. That is all
Source: Twitter

Michelle to TV LINE on choosing the project and her approach to the role:

I’ve always wanted to play the regular, working-class mom, and I’ve never really had the chance to do that. So as I was reading through the scripts when this came across, and I said yes.

...with this [show], I really didn’t want to know any more than [my character] would know. I wasn’t interested in what was happening with the political storyline as an actor because Mitch wouldn’t know any of that, so at the table reads, I tried to make myself go a bit deaf.

What did you think of last night's premiere? Have you seen the original? How did they compare?

********
More unfiltered twitter shouts: (added by Chris)

* @kevinsharkey: Can we just give Michelle Forbes and Brent Sexton Emmy's now for their roles as the parents in The Killing? Holy crap were they great.
* @marleneb4 "The Killing" is definitely living up to it's hype. Michelle Forbes is heartbreakingly good.
* DayDiMaggio: Whether she's a Maenad or a grieving mother, Michelle Forbes' onscreen presence is utterly captivating
* pineapplecakes: Can Michelle Forbes just be my mom?
* marcmason: Damn. THE KILLING was incredibly intense television. Hats off to Michelle Forbes, who broke my heart into pieces with her performance.
* sicrowe: Can Michelle Forbes get a TV marriage where something doesn't go wrong?
* alexqsmith: weeping through the final minutes of 'the killing.' bravo, AMC, you've done it again. so beyond glad michelle forbes is back on television.
* the_mcgone: In #TheKilling, Michelle Forbes has a fictional daughter headed to college. That makes me feel non-fictionally old.
* lula34: There's also a former battleship admiral/Maened on The Killing.
* NerdAlert19: AMC completely sucked me in with #TheKilling tonight. Can't take my eyes off Mireille Enos and Michelle Forbes.
* DomSalvaggio: AMC's #TheKilling is cinematic, well-acted & utterly heartbreaking. As a new Dad this show has me.
* @stamos I've watched the pilot for #TheKilling so many times but still now, I get goosebumps & heart pains watching Forbes react.
* xiratania: @ash0283 #MichelleForbes made the show tonight her performance was just.....(no words that do justice) Please watch!
* @soniafaleiro: What kind of idiot goes running in the woods alone? Murderers hide in woods! #thekilling #amc
* jaredshelby: I really hope I can successfully make it through life without having to identify a body. #TheKilling
* max_bell: #TheKilling is excellent thus far; pleased with the attention to detail in getting Seattle to look right. And Forbes is teh awesome.
* thebobkessler: WOW, that ending scene of hour one, WOW. #TheKilling
* theres a cylon on this show!!! watch out!! #thekilling
* laynemorgan: oh my goood Lord. Rosie's parents in #thekilling . heart is broken.
* kasmithphoto: Cried like a little girl watching the series premiere of #TheKilling tonight. What on earth is AMC trying to do to us?! So good, but SO sad!
* Brettne: It rains a lot on #TheKilling. It's great but I feel like I need to watch it under an umbrella.
* stylson: Yeah, AMC has earned my complete faith at this point. #thekilling is excellence. No one else produces shows with characters this deep.
* SeanPatriKernan: #TheKilling is Murky, Mysterious and Fascinating
* nicransome: #TheKilling hashtag nightmare! BBC4's Eng Lang subtitle version #TheKilling. AMC's version #TheKillingAMC and the Danes keep #Forbrydelsen?
* Mireille Enos is great, but I’d say Michelle Forbes stole the show with her heart-wrenching performance.
* AMC made a killing with "The Killing."
* latxcvi: The supporting cast is terrific, with Michelle Forbes (the mom), Brent Sexton (the dad) & Joel Kinnaman (the lead's partner) the stand-outs.
* BenjaminBirdie: How the hell is something this quiet this fucking tense?!?!?!?! #TheKilling
* ThomDownie: This show is brilliant stuff. I rarely connect with a show and its characters so quickly. #thekilling

Somebody killed Admiral Cain's daughter?

2011-03-18T14:32:00.001+01:00

Watch your back, Cylon! If it turns out that you've killed Mitch's daughter, I can't guarantee that you'll survive The Killing.

AMC is adding more content to the Killing website, an interactive game (flash only) lets you explore the room and life of Rosie Larsen. Head over to amctv.com to discover Rosie's videos, her favourite song (Roses In My Side by Alanna Cherote), her social network activities, and her family photos:

(The Larsens: Michelle Forbes as Mitch, Brent Sexton as Stan, Seth Isaac Johnson as Denny, Evan Bird as Tom, Katie Findlay as Rosie)

And there's a good deal more to discover ... most notably for Forbrydelsen fans. The similarities and clues are remarkable. But shhhh, don't tell :)

The Suspicion is Mounting

2011-03-14T23:12:00.002+01:00

The Killing kicks off with a 2-hour series premiere on Sunday, April 3 at 9PM | 8C. New episodes will then air on Sunday nights at 10PM | 9C beginning Sunday, April 10.

Official 4 Minute Trailer

Ep 1: Pilot
On her last day of work, homicide detective Sarah Linden is drawn into a
new case about the disappearance of a teenage girl, Rosie Larsen. Mitch
and Stan Larsen frantically try to track down their daughter when they
learn she did not show up at school. City Councilman Darren Richmond
prepares for an important forum with the Mayor as the election nears.

Ep 2: The Cage
The investigation into Rosie’s killer begins as Sarah and Holder
question the missing girl’s parents, Stan and Mitch, as well as Rosie’s
friends and City Councilman Richmond. Rosie’s school becomes a potential
murder site when Sarah and Holder uncover shocking evidence on campus.
Heartbroken and grief-stricken, Mitch and Stan face the aftermath of
losing their daughter.

MF/Mitch: a "no-nonsense parent ... a bit rough around the edges, Mitch
doesn't put up with any bull. She is a force of nature who wants a
better life for her children"
http://www.amctv.com/originals/the-killing/cast/

Head to AMCtv.com for plenty of info and original content:

About The Show
Cast & Characters
Episode Guide
Newsletter
Talk Forum
Blog
Downloads
iPhone
Photos
Video

The series ties together three distinct stories around a single murder,
The Killing will tell the stories of detectives assigned to the case,
the victim’s grieving family and the suspects. Set in Seattle, the story
also explores local politics as it follows politicians connected to the
case. As the series unfolds, it becomes clear that there are no
accidents; everyone has a secret, and while the characters think they’ve
moved on, their past isn’t done with them.

AMC will be engaging social media and interactive media online at the
site AMCtv.com, to let viewers feel involved in the show by offering
games and downloads. The site will feature "Rosie's Room," an exclusive
interactive experience that allows users to enter and explore the
bedroom of the teenage murder victim Rosie Larsen to learn more about
her life and uncover clues about what may have led to her untimely death.

The Crime Thriller Quiz (Flash Only)
http://www.amctv.com/originals/the-killing/crime-thriller-quiz/
Who would you be in a crime thriller? Take a quiz and see which part
you'd land in The Killing.
Both Chris and I got 'lead detective'. :-)

In other news, here's a video of the panel with producers of Forbrydelsen and The Killing, and comparisons of the two versions:
http://video.tvfestival.dk/?poditemid=9368

"I've already got my main suspect, it's the creepy looking
Jamie Wright, the campaign manager. ;-)
He's the only character of the main cast, who hasn't even the slightest
resemblance with the resp. character Morten in Forbrydelsen." (Chris)

As for me, I just can't wait to watch it, and especially Michelle. How excited are you?

The Killing - Stills, Characters, Soundtrack

2011-02-25T13:41:00.004+01:00

I'm in eager anticipation of the US adaptation of The Killing. While AMC keeps excluding us from viewing their videos, I'm quite excited about the newest stills, pictures and on-location shots. Enjoy the characters Mitch (Michelle Forbes), Stan (Brent Sexton), Sarah (Mireille Enos) and Stephen (Joel Kinnaman):

Also, Veena Sud and Patty Jenkins on set:

(Photos by Chris Large and Frank Ockenfels - © AMC)

According to IMDb they'll be using the original Forbrydelsen soundtrack composed by Frans Bak. Wonderful! Last week I made a video with pictures and stills of the Danish characters, listen to this haunting theme tune on Youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8RqsQKEtGQ

Official Portrait Photos of The Killing Cast

2011-02-19T12:29:00.004+01:00

AMCtv.com published an exclusive first look at the official photos of The Killing cast:

Michelle Forbes (Mitch Larsen)

Brent Sexton (Stanley Larsen)

Mireille Enos (Sarah Linden)

Billy Campbell (Darren Richmond)

(Photos by Frank Ockenfels/AMC)

Visit the official AMC site for more pictures, videos and news.
Follow The Killing on Twitter or Facebook.

My first impression after the first videos, interviews and photos: It looks fantastic, the adaptation does work for me.
Looks like they stay close to the original story line, the atmospheric depth and to a character driven drama with an authentic look. And I hope that Mireille Enos will make Sarah her very own, unique character. It's futile trying to copy the - at least in Europe - iconic Sarah Lund portrayed by Sofie Gråbøl :)

To our UK visitors who are approaching episodes 9 and 10 of Forbrydelsen this weekend: Stay away from Twitter. Avoid the IMDB and any discussion boards. Forbrydelsen aired several times the last years all over continental Europe, and is out on DVD. Some viewers tend to give away the killer, the twists and plot.

The Guardian on Forbrydelsen:

"... TV of the absolute finest quality...
... the drama is allowed to breathe. Events don't unfold at breakneck speed: so far we've ventured down a number of apparent dead ends with detectives Sarah Lund and Jan Meyer; Lund has reneged on promises to leave for Sweden more times than Meyer has sparked up cigarettes in the office; and mayoral candidate Troels Hartmann has sported a number of ever-more perturbed looks. But most importantly, we've also spent a great deal of time around the Birk Larsen kitchen table; the one that Pernille and Nanna carefully crafted together one holiday...
This focus on the family is one of The Killing's greatest strengths. Its portrayal of a couple ripped apart, trying to come to terms with the violent death of their daughter while keeping the family, home and business on track is heartbreaking – I have yet to get through a single episode without at least a solitary tear escaping down my face. The acting is wonderful: Ann Eleonora Jørgensen brittle, contained, silently screaming as Nanna's mother; Bjarne Henriksen gentle, loving, and occasionally menacing as her father Theis. Parental guilt and grief perfectly played.
The writing helps, of course. It's odd to talk about the dialogue given the number of Danish words I speak. (That would be none.) But not only does the translation feel full of personality and verve, the spareness of the dialogue does not need translating. Silences hang. People stare. The light fades yet further. Not everything is about exposition and moving the story on."

Killer Television

2011-02-11T14:32:00.003+01:00

Ready for some 'Killing' news?

* AMC has five new teasers online.
As expected, they're restricting again the videos to US citizens.

* The Killing will debut with a two-hour premiere on Sunday, April 3 beginning at 9pm ET/PT. Subsequent episodes will be one-hour long presentations on Sundays at 10pm ET/PT.

* From an interview with Veena Sud:

"Sud was cagey about whether viewers will learn The Killing's secret by the time the first 13 episodes are over.
"At this point, we're going to organically follow the story, and whether or not it gets solved at the end of the season is a mystery."
The Killing is set in a more violent societal milieu than Forbrydelsen, and that will mark one major stylistic difference between the two versions, Sud suggested.
"We live in a society that is incredibly violent, much more so than Denmark. Amber Alerts are the norm, it seems, so much so, that a missing child, a missing teenager in a major American city, never makes the news. So the biggest challenge is to make us, as Americans, care about this young girl over a long period of time. I don't know if it's a cultural sensibility per se, but there's a clear societal difference between America and Denmark.
"We're creating our own world. We are using the Danish series as a blueprint, but we're diverging, as well, and creating our own world — our own world of suspects and, potentially, our own solution and resolution to the mystery.
"I love the qualities of the Danish version, but we're blessed, too, with our own actors, like Mireille, who has come in with all her own strengths and qualities, creating a deeper backstory for our main character, for Sarah."
The Killing may be many things, but one thing it will not be, when it finally sees the light of day, is exploitative, Sud vows.
"The most important thing to me is not pornographize murder," Sud said. "I want to show the real cost . . . when a child is lost. What you see on the screen, in the clips that are already out there, is incredibly graphic, and heartbreaking.
"But we're not spending time looking at a dead child's body and just analyzing that. We're spending time with all the people who have lost her, the impact of this loss on her mother, on her siblings, on her father.
"Again, every episode is one day, about what happens every day in the moments and the hours after you've lost a child — what it's like to pick out a dress, what it's like to have to identify your daughter at the morgue, what it's like to make breakfast for her younger brothers the next morning. What do you tell them?
"When I was doing research for the pilot, I spent a lot of time with parents who had lost their children, expressly for the purpose of telling this story in a way that is authentic and respectful. Most television overlooks the victims. And what I kept hearing, over and over again, was not, 'Tell our story,' but, 'Tell our story in a truthful way.'
"If The Killing does one thing, I want it to be that."
Source: vancouversun.com

And since AMC excludes us on purpose from viewing their video teasers, I'll bring you some Forbrydelsen news.

The UK joined Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Germany, France, Australia, Belgium and The Netherlands: BBC 4 began airing season one of the orginal Danish series Forbrydelsen some weeks ago, with subtitles. A DVD will be available on amazon.co.uk on April 4th.
Viewers and critics are absolutely thrilled:

"Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone, put a few beers in the fridge and book a pizza delivery; you're going nowhere on Saturday nights for the next ten weeks. The Killing is, indeed, thrilling ..." RadioTimes

The Killing is one of the most intense, brooding and dark thrillers ever to make UK TV.
What a contrast between the characters and personality of the two main detectives - poles apart yet inextricably bound together. Politicians full of outward charm, mastery of spin and easy deceit. The bereaved family are the third part of this outstanding series. The father mostly dark, silent and brooding - his emotions waiting to erupt. The mother so desperately trying to hold herself together after her daughter's murder drawing on every ounce of her physical and mental resources to keep the family together. And the two small brothers, part innocent and part aware of what might have happened to their elder sister. Like another reviewer, I watched the funeral with tears pouring down my cheeks ...

Stunning. Having watched six of twenty episodes, this,so far, is by some distance quite the best crime drama I have ever seen on television. The plot,characterisation,acting and cinematography are all outstanding.

'The Killing' is just pure, perfect, quality television. I have loved the Swedish and Branagh versions of 'Wallander', and have been watching a number of Danish films recently (especially recommend 'After the Wedding', starring Mads Mikkelson - brothers of Lars Mikkelson ('Troels Hartmann')). What ties all of these things together is: outstandingly subtle, understated but heartfelt acting performances, nuanced mood and atmosphere, intelligent direction, slow pace and naturalistic production values. However, I think 'The Killing' is quite definitely the best TV I've ever seen.
The storyline, and the performances of Sophie Grabol as 'Lund', and the dead girl's parents are hypnotising to watch, and as others have said - make the viewer really face up to what grief does to people (and what it looks like). It is painful to watch, but also beautiful. I can not recommend this highly enough.

Addictive crime drama at it's best. I started watching this series after the "radio times" said it was one of the best crime dramas on TV...they weren't wrong. I'm six episodes in and I can honestly say it's brilliant...I can't wait for Saturday night and the next two episodes.

Thank God for Scandinavian crime / the BBC. - I thought my withdrawal symptoms once Swedish Wallander had finished on Saturday nights were going to require therapy then Hallelujah! the Scandinavians have come up trumps again. This is wonderful stuff, totally addictive. When the parents sat the two little boys down to tell them that Nanna had gone to heaven, I sobbed like a baby. Four episodes in and I don't want it to end.

I thought it was excellent. It's one of the few times I've been presented with a PC-character who didn't make me feel like I was being lectured and wasn't forced. Sarah is decent and treats people with respect because that's who she is and because it gets her results. She's not self-righteous with it, nor are the writers. More than that, she is not at odds with her superiors. She recognised as good at her job. Meyer, the more usually-seen Callahan-like maverick detective, is shown up as the liability that such a person realistically would be. I liked too that the senior Larsens are a happily married couple - much less rare in the real world than TV would suggest. Even Hartmann the politician isn't a cliché.
-----------------
Totally engrossing. The two hours just flew by.
-------------------
The emotional impact of the daughter’s death on those left behind is something you rarely see to this extent in TV drama as all too often the 45/60 minute slot just doesn’t allow the space to show it in a realistic fashion. The time constraints of single episode drama or even a mini-series demands that the parents have to be totally composed and talkative almost in the very next scene (Law & Order I’m looking at you!) after they’ve just learned of the tragedy. Real life isn’t like that and with The Killing the skilfull work of the two actors playing Nanna’s parents really does convey the massive emotional trauma of her death in such a convincing way that as a result we, the audience, are completely sucked into the piece and involved in a way that we simply cannot be with something lasting just an hour or 90 minutes.

Loving the double act of Meyer and Lund. Thank God they’re double-billing this show! I only wish it were three or four eps a time instead of only two.
------------------------
I can only begin to imagine the crushing grief of losing a child, particularly in such horrific circumstances but the portrayal of the Larsens is masterful acting, understated yet deeply moving. As you say, it adds an extra level of involvement and authenticity.
-----------------------
6 episodes so far. The US version got to do well to compete with the Danish version ...
----------------------
Like everyone else I have been glued to all opening 6 episodes of The Killing. It's a great murder mystery, I love the fact that it's Danish, somewhere I've been a few times, and I've found it really emotional at points. I think this is partly because of the strength of characterisation but also just because it is written over 20 hours. There's so much quality time spent on Nanna's family and friends and their grief. Also Sarah Lund, without saying or doing much, is clearly affected by the tragedy. It's clear why she's putting her own family on the back burner.
--------------------
State of Play is the nearest we’ve come to this kind of programme. Prime Suspect at it’s best and Cracker also compare well but that said none of those committed 20 hours to one story.
----------------------
The Killing is riveting stuff and beautifully acted, the best thriller I've watched in a long time.

Happy Birthday, Michelle Forbes!

2011-01-08T00:58:00.000+01:00

Our very best wishes to Michelle on her special day, as we, the fans, all wish spring would arrive sooner so we could watch her in The Killing. :)

May each day bring you joy, health and happiness.
May you succeed in everything you do and
Delight in the world around you
as we are moved and inspired by seeing you,
your talent and presence captured on our screens.

The Killing Will Premiere on April 3

2011-01-07T23:48:00.000+01:00

Official AMC press release:

"AMC announced today, from the Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena, California, the premiere of AMC's next original series, The Killing on Sun., Apr. 3 at 10PM | 9C. From writer, executive producer and series' showrunner Veena Sud (Cold Case), The Killing is based on the wildly successful Danish television series Forbrydelsen. It tells the story of the murder of a young girl in Seattle and the subsequent police investigation. Season one consists of thirteen, one-hour episodes.

The Killing ties together three distinct stories around a single murder including the detectives assigned to the case, the victim's grieving family and the suspects. Set in Seattle, the story also explores local politics as it follows politicians connected to the case. As the series unfolds, it becomes clear that there are no accidents; everyone has a secret, and while the characters think they've moved on, their past isn't done with them.

Online, fans can access videos of AMC's The Killing, including a trailer, exclusive behind-the-scenes footage, first-look photos, and read the latest news and information about the series through an updated blog. Users can also participate in a community talk forum. Throughout the month of April, The Killing website will expand to include games, downloads, and cast and character profiles. Following the premiere, each week AMCtv.com will feature new episodic and behind-the-scenes videos, exclusive Q&As with the cast and crew, trivia games, and more. The site also introduces a customized feature entitled, "Rosie's Room," which is an exclusive interactive experience that allows users to enter and explore the bedroom of the teenage murder victim Rosie Larsen to learn more about her life and uncover clues about what may have led to her untimely death.

The Killing stars Mireille Enos (Big Love) as Sarah Linden, the lead homicide detective that investigates the death of Rosie Larsen; Billy Campbell (Once and Again) as Darren Richmond, Seattle's City Council President, running for Mayor; Joel Kinnaman (Snabba Cash) as Stephen Holder, an ex-narc cop who joins the homicide division in the investigation to find Rosie's killer; Michelle Forbes (True Blood) as Rosie's mother, Mitch Larsen; and Brent Sexton (W., In the Valley of Elah) as Rosie's father, Stan Larsen."

Source: amctv.com

Merry Christmas and Peace On Earth

2010-12-23T12:03:00.001+01:00

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you all :)

The Killing - First Look

2010-12-05T15:25:00.003+01:00

AMC released the first two 'The Killing' videos on their site:
http://www.amctv.com/originals/the-killing/about/

US citizens (sniffed by IP address) are able to watch the videos, the rest of the world is excluded unless you use a US proxy to access the site.

Update :: It's on YouTube now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ey5Vj_v0Fx4

Meet Sarah (Mireille Enos), Stephen (Joel Kinnaman), Mitch (Michelle Forbes), Stan (Brent Sexton) and Richmond (Bill Campbell):

Mitch Larsen:

Mitch and Stan Larsen:

Richmond:

Sarah Linden:

Stan Larsen:

Stephen Holder:

Btw, the third and final season of the original Forbrydelsen has been commissioned by DR and ZDF, production starts next year. Airing September 2012.

Miss You

2010-11-05T23:15:00.002+01:00

Ekström wants me to post that he sorely misses Michelle:

Update :: I'm so sorry, Ekström. I do have two screencaps of AMC's The Killing, no picture of Michelle though :-(

Wonderland at HULU

2010-10-02T10:45:00.001+02:00

For people in the United States Wonderland is now available at HULU:

http://www.hulu.com/wonderland

(Poster premiere, 2000)

Homicide: Life on the Street - Revisited

2010-09-19T10:34:00.001+02:00

Some of our readers may have noticed that I've added a page called 'Reviews by Sparky' to the blog some months ago. In November 2009 Sparky Lightbulb startet a project "Trade It in for Twinkies", watching the work of a single actress (Michelle Forbes) and then writing about each piece. Courtesy of Sparky I'm posting excerpts of her latest review, revisiting 'Homicide: Life on the Street'. --chris

"For a viewer who has followed Homicide from the beginning, Season 5 is different. Detectives still work interesting cases, relying more on their brains than on their guns. And the variety of deaths still make a viewer conclude, as Det. Stanley Bolander [Ned Beatty] points out in Season 1, that any human is capable of murder, whether it is a child firing her father's revolver out the window [the stray bullet hitting a woman loading groceries blocks away] to planned executions by drug lord Luther Mahoney [Erik Dellums]. Circumstances, though, have crippled a number of the characters, and Season 5 inserts us into their shoes so well that we understand how badly shaken are their lives.

Sometimes the damage to a character is physical, as is the case with Pembleton, who returns to half-day desk duty until he can pass his firearms test. We immediately notice the lack of precision—in speech, memory, and small physical tasks like punching the correct numbers to return a call to his wife. The contrast is stark, for we remember the competent Pembleton of past seasons whose movement was as meticulous as his dress, whose voice had more agility than the hands of an archeologist as it excavated the truth. We get to see the indignity of his weakness: His wife Mary [Ami Brabson] doesn't trust him with the baby, Lieutenant Giardello [Yaphet Kotto] doesn't want him at investigation scenes, and the office staff sends him on lunch runs. Even after he returns to the streets, his tape recorder—a crutch for his still shaky memory—makes colleagues wonder if he is competent enough to do the job. These trials play out over nearly three months of episodes, which adds to the reality of the injury. And Braugher depicts a stroke victim with such authenticity that we want to believe, as his character does, that "bagel" is that dark brew people enjoy for a jolt of energy. [...]

Season 5 also introduces the new chief medical examiner Dr. Julianna Cox [Michelle Forbes], a character who initially seems the least damaged of the regular cast. In her first episode, Dr. Cox conveys such authority that we never ask how this young snot acquired the medical expertise and political savvy to run a big-city lab, and so we don't question what inadequacies her ambition must be filling. Her authority appears grounded in an appreciation for the big issues in life, not the small stuff too many people sweat. For example, she champions a dead prostitute, firing an established older peer for helping a lazy detective ignore a murder he could pass off as an overdose. She insists on professionalism, disciplining Det. Meldrick Lewis [Clark Johnson] when he moves a body before her arrival at the crime scene, but admits her own fault to another officer as she politely accepts a [deserved] speeding ticket. When she remarks at an exhumation that she likes cemeteries, it's not a goth fascination with death but an evolved recognition that our inevitable demise should inspire better behavior the short time we're alive. Her idealism and edgy beauty attract Kellerman, but when Cox learns the toll of the false accusations against him—his flirtation with suicide and spiral into self-pity—she withdraws, choosing drink and a long-haired poseur over earnest Mike. As many women would rush to fix a broken man, we can only wonder what damage Cox has suffered that makes her retreat in the season finale.

Despite all the crises in the characters' lives, the work still gets done, and done well. The focus of Season 5 might be different, but the stories are still first rate.

Video Teasers
You can view a very moving scene featuring Det. Bayliss and Dr. Cox at YouTube:"

Head over to Trade It in for Twinkies to read the full review.

Hello From Toronto!

2010-08-31T15:04:00.002+02:00

Enjoy loranc's report from the FanExpo in Toronto! --chris

Hello from Toronto!

Earlier this month, Chris asked if I would be interested in doing an interview with the creators of Durham County at Fan Expo 2010. Well, how could I say no? The interview was originally with writer Laurie Finstad Knizhnik, but because the show was such a collaborative effort, director Adrienne Mitchell and producer Janis Lundman themselves suggested to be part of it as well, to create a more complete piece.

With a list of 16 questions, sent to me by Chris, and a shiny new voice recorder in hand, I set off early Saturday morning for the Metro Convention Centre downtown. When I arrived, I found line ups several blocks long and general confusion everywhere, which pretty much set the scene for the rest of the day. Infact, it was only 15 minutes before the interview that I got confirmation on where and when to set up. And it wasn't until we were actually setting up in the hotel hallway (where our interview was to now take place, instead of the mysterious room 204 that none of us could find) that I was told Laurie could not attend and I only had 10 minutes with Adrienne and Janis. So, I turned to my little entourage of Forbes fans I met along the way that day (Deb from the Miranda Zero blog, a woman from the Propworx forum, and another woman who had travelled all the way from Germany) to assist me in quickly scrapping 11 questions and choosing the best 5 that applied to Adrienne and Janis only.

The result is what you hear on this audio file, lol. That rustling of papers sound was me flipping back and forth between sheets of questions while balancing myself as I knelt on the floor. It appeared the con ran out of chairs. The laughing and clapping in the background was from my little entourage, who were also on the floor, but were very supportive and clearly enjoyed the opportunity to sit-in on the interview.

Despite the initial fluster, it was a great experience and I was inspired by what these two trailblazing women had to say. Many thanks to Chris and the Durham County crew for making all this happen!

Your browser does not support the HTML5 audio element :(

Update :: You can find a transcription of the interview here:
--> This Moment Of Tenderness

Note by chris: Sorry, no interview picture of Janis & Adrienne, instead: Michelle Forbes signing autographs for fans at the Anchor Bay booth, taken by loranc:

Anyone?

2010-08-30T19:00:00.000+02:00

Anyone interested in continuing, administrating a Michelle Forbes Community Blog?
I.e.: writing articles, creating videos, maintaining a picture gallery, coding the design and much more ...

Let me know: mcnlive@gmail.com

Chris

P.S.: Durham County fans, I've got a surprise for you:
http://durhamcountytv.blogspot.com/

This Weekend, it's Fan Expo Toronto

2010-08-27T18:00:00.008+02:00

It’s Fan Expo time in Canada!

Apparently, Michelle Forbes was busy this Friday morning with interviews.

Michelle on Breakfast Television Toronto ...

Source: bttoronto.ca

Watch the video on citytv.com :)

... and on CBC Radio Q live in studio. You can listen to the podcast tomorrow. Update:: The podcast is already online.

Don't miss the much anticipated Durham County panel and the autograph session tomorrow at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre! More info on our sidebar, and on the official Durham County Facebook page.

Wonderland Revisited Part II

2010-08-26T17:10:00.003+02:00

Wonderland, the eight part television series about a fictional psychiatric Hospital in New York City evoked a strong response when the first two episodes aired in 2000, and ABC decided to took it off the air.

Many of the reviews and debates are hard to find on the Internet or apparently lost. Thanks to archive.org it was possible to recover substantial parts of the discussion. This second part of 'Wonderland Revisited' will solely focus on these documents, without any further commentary, pictures or videos.

----------------------------
TV Guide April 8, 2000 issue
Next Stop, Wonderland by David Handelman

Forget the emergency room - welcome to the psychiatric ward. The extreme hospital drama has arrived
It's just another morning on the hospital ward. Doctors Robert Banger (Ted Levine) and Neil Harrison (Martin Donovan) are leading an entourage of medical students on their daily rounds from bed to bed, waking up the patients and assessing their status. Today, there's a patient who says he's "depressed." Banger asks him why. "Something happened," the man says evasively. Turns out he poured gasoline on his mother and set her on fire.

OK, this isn't your everyday hospital ward. It's got prison bars, uniformed guards and signs warning: NO WEAPONS BEYOND THIS POINT. Doctor Banger runs the forensic psychiatric ward of a New York public hospital, tha place where crime suspects displaying mental disorders land between arrest and their ultimate destinations.
Nor is it your everyday network drama series. But Wonderland (Thursdays, 10 P.M./ET), created by former Chicago Hope star Peter Berg, got the go-ahead from ABC to air as an eight-week, mid-season tryout. "There's no question this is a very risky show for us," says Lloyd Braun, cochairman of the ABC Entertainment Television Group. "But it's unlike anything else on television right now."
The risky, gritty Wonderland further blurs the line between cable and network programming. Like The Sopranos and Oz, the show takes a decidedly non-glossy approach to its volatile subject matter. It's shot in a documentary, improvisational stye; its writing staff includes literary humorist Mark Leyner and Scott Burns, an advertising executive who had never written for TV before; and it's filmed in New York on locations that include the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, which radiates an institutional creepiness that set decorators could never fake. Even the actors' dressing rooms are former solitary confinement cells.
"It's the real deal," Levine says with a bit of a shutter. "There's some ghosts in those walls for sure." When Berg left ChicagoHope after four years, he swore he was done with hospital drama and was convinced that his taste was too extreme for the networks. (One Hope episode he'd written about family psychoses was deemed so disturbing that CBS has vowed never to rerun it.) Yet just a year later, Berg, 38, is behind an extreme hospital drama on ABC. He was inspired watching the 1975 movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" on TV and, he says, "It occured to me that there'd never been a show that took a realistic approach to the psychiatric concepts of medicine."
When Berg was 13, his mother, Sally, who voluteered at New York Hospital's psychiatric unit, introduced him to Frederick Wiseman's "Titicut Follies," a 1967 documentary about a Massachusetts mental institution that made a profound impression on him. Growing up in Chappaqua, New York, he had always heard about the city's notorious Bellevue hospital, where the corrections department and psychiatry met. "It represented a scary, forbidden place," he says, "and there's something irresistable about scary, forbidden places."
When Berg got a deal with Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's Imagine Entertainment to create a pilot, he spent six months there following the doctors on their rounds. "From the minute I walked in, I was hooked," he says. "It's a very dramatic and dynamic place. I felt like I'd stumbled onto some uncharted territory."
After securing stringent non-disclosure agreements, Bellevue opened its doors to the writers (including veterans of Law & Order and Homicide) and actors (Homicide's Michelle Forbes, Joelle Carter, Michael Jai White and Billy Burke), who spent time with patients whose sordid crimes had landed them on the covers of New York tabloids. "It was amazing," recalls Forbes. "I walked away with enormous respect both for the doctors and for patients who are devastatingly ill and have families broken apart by this illness."
Despite the harrowing backdrop, what will ultimately drive the show will be the doctor characters' personal struggles. "Their lives are very complicated; there's a lot of pressure," says Donovan. "When they get a high-profile case, like subway shovers, they have to deal with the D.A.'s office, the press and all the pressure to, quote-unquote, fry these people. And they have to be able to steer clear of the politics of it and fight for what they believe in."
The toughest problem has been fashioning plot resolutions. "It's not like a cop show or a traditional medical show where you can cure a patient or convict a criminal in one episode," says Berg. "Mental illness is a bit more ambiguous than that. So it's a curse and a blessing for the show that we're trying to portray it as realistically as we can."
But realism still has its limits in network TV. When Berg submitted the pilot to ABC, the brass found some scenes too disturbing. So he wrote and filmed a softer first episode, which emphasized the family lives of the principals. After much debate, the network decided to go with a toned-down version of the original pilot. "It was the best example of what the show is and the version Peter had in his head," Braun says. "Some scenes were tough for me to watch, too, but it also was extraodinarily gripping television."
ABC's view, says Braun, is that "it's not about mental patients; it's a much broader show than that. It's about very multidimentional, flawed and yet heroic characters who work in this world." Even if it's toned down, the show is certain to spark debate -- which is fine with the cast. "The worst thing you can do," says Levine, "is be half-baked."
Besides, Donovan has a foolproof plan for selling Wonderland to the public: "We're thinking of bringing in Regis to run the hospital."

NOTE: This episode never aired. TV Guide was published before ABC put Wonderland on hiatus.
---------------------------------

Toronto Sun
Actor in Wonderland By CLAIRE BICKLEY

You'd expect Martin Donovan to be disappointed by the cancellation after a mere two episodes of his ABC-TV series, mental hospital drama Wonderland. And you'd be right. But he wasn't as surprised by that harsh outcome as you might assume.
"I wasn't totally shocked. This profession is 90% discouragement. It's 90% rejection and disappointment and bad reviews or people dismissing your work or ignoring it. It's really not even 10% of the time where you get the rewards," Donovan told me a few days ago, on the set of Lifetime movie Custody of The Heart.
"Which is why you have to do it for yourself. You have to really love the work. It has to be a very personal thing. If you're relying solely on outside (feedback), which I'm not saying you don't need, but if that's all you're looking for, you're going to be a really bitter, disappointed person."
-------------------------------

Cnn.com April 12, 2000 - ABC axes 'Wonderland'

NEW YORK -- ABC is burying "Wonderland"after just two episodes, but don't rule it dead yet. The network says it may resurrect the drama after the May sweeps.
Set in the criminal psychiatric ward of a fictional Manhattan hospital, the gritty drama won high critical praise -- if few viewers.
Blame the competition from NBC's "ER," which is in the same time slot. Last Thursday it had about twice the combined audiences of "Wonderland" and CBS' faltering new series "Falcone."
"Wonderland" has had troubles on other fronts, too. Mental health professionals argued for a boycott of the series, saying it demonstrated "reckless indifference" to the mentally ill.
-----------------------------

E! Online TV Scoop

When NYPD Blue Meets ER Leery about yet another medical drama on the tube? I was, too, but I confess I'm hooked after watching the first two episodes of ABC's Peter Berg-produced/written/directed Wonderland, which premieres Thursday at 10 p.m. (opposite ER). The intense, fast-paced show takes place at a New York City psychiatric hospital, and in the first episode, a crazy man opens fire in Times Square, killing two cops, wounding pedestrians and eventually causing a shocking trauma to one of the medical staff members in the ER. The show, which stars Ted Levine (Silence of the Lambs), Martin Donovan (The Opposite of Sex), Michelle Forbes (Homicide: Life on the Streets) and Michael Jai White (Spawn), only gets better in the second installment.
-----------------------------

New York Magazine - April 3, 2000 issue
Dark Shadows
"Wonderland," set in a fictionalized Bellevue (think "ER" meets "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" filmed by Quentin Tarantino) is spellbinding TV.
BY JOHN LEONARD
Since nothing else seems to work, why not throw excellence at ER and see what happens? All at once like a speed-freak rush, Wonderland (Thursdays, starting March 30; 10 to 11 p.m.; ABC) is simultaneously an ensemble series set mostly in the psych ward of a public hospital in New York City; a handheld inquiry into the nature of madness and mercy; a savage critique of the politics of justice; a dream-tracking of fault lines and fissures in the seething self; a descent by bathysphere into a therapeutic hell that makes Girl, Interrupted, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and The Snake Pit look like summer camps; and -- as if it were possible to hear the music of wounds whose edges crave to heal, played on strings of raw nerve -- a cantata of the damned.
It is a Wonderland in which Alice herself is stalked. Executive producer Peter Berg, who used a knife on people in Chicago Hope, has written and directed the pilot. Co-executive producers Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, and Tony Krantz have apparently spent time in places like Bellevue. But they also seem to have consulted Robert Altman (on cross-cutting scenes, overlapping voices, and extreme behavior) and maybe Paul Thomas Anderson (an excess of everything except frogs). And the shrinks they've rounded up to staff this frantic intensity are as frazzled as the clientele.
Dr. Robert Banger (Ted Levine), chief of forensic psychiatry at "Rivervue," is fighting his estranged wife (Patricia Clarkson) for custody of their two children. Dr. Neil Harrison (Martin Donovan), a specialist in psychiatric criminology, worries about his wife, Dr. Lyla Garrity (Michelle Forbes), who, besides being in charge of a critical-response facility for patients suffering broken-mind emergencies, is five months pregnant and feeling deprived of caffeine and nicotine. Dr. Derrick Hatcher (Michael Jai White) goes home from boot camp for med students to single fatherhood. Dr. Abe Matthews (Billy Burke) is the compulsive womanizer. Dr. Heather Miles (Joelle Carter), as you'd expect with a name like Heather, is the nubile resident.
All these doctors, and their nurses, and their security guards, talk all the time, and only occasionally hear one another, because their patients are screaming. And so are cops, the media, and the D.A.'s office screaming, because Rivervue's patients are usually suspected perps. Outside the psych ward, their gaudy derangements are grisly crimes. They are what one doctor calls shadow people, who embody society's worst fears -- to be wished away or put down like a mad dog. "I catch ghosts," Lyla tries to explain to a review board. And those ghosts don't show up in the blood work; medical technology can't see the misfiring of a neurotransmitter that turns into an instruction from Gaia, Zeus, or Satan.

Lyla is explaining herself to a review board because she turned away a walk-in patient named Rickle (Leland Orser), who will later on take rejection in the Coliseum Books store from a young woman looking at a paperback copy of Pindar's Odes as a paranoid-schizophrenic excuse to gun down six people in Times Square. Lyla turned him away because the computer was down, she didn't have access to his previous history, and she made a judgment call that he wasn't dangerous. On the other hand, as she admits to her husband, she was sick and tired and just didn't like him: "I wanted him gone." On a third hand, she will never be 100 percent successful catching ghosts because she isn't psychic. And on a fourth, one would think she's already been punished enough for her mistake by what happens in the emergency ward. I'm not going to tell you what happens in the emergency ward in the very first hour of
Wonderland, but it might be the most shocking thing I've ever seen on commercial television, especially for those of us who felt that Homicide never quite recovered from the departure of Michelle Forbes.
Meanwhile, between competency hearings on his parenting skills, Dr. Banger must try to persuade a babbling Rickle to take his medication against the advice of an attorney who wants him in "psychotic free fall" to bolster his insanity defense, while an A.D.A. seeks to choreograph the gunman as a "poster child" for capital punishment in what Banger refers to as "the Giuliani death dance." And a Morgan Stanley investment banker (Jay O. Sanders) is so distraught at his wife's leaving him that he isn't safe so long as he's still attached to his own wrists. And if a 71-year-old grandmother really attacked her silent husband with a pair of scissors, what about her knitting needles? And rising all around these screaming wounds, these manic arias, is a choral movement of Greek myths and French bras, of flying-saucer wallpaper and hypodermic syringes, of handcuffing and channel-surfing -- a liturgy of panic disorder, sexual dysfunction, substance abuse, and suicide. This is the sort of series so craftily written that after a ballpoint pen fails to work in the first hour, in the next hour we can count on a fountain pen's being used to kill somebody.

If shrinks are generally reviled in novels and films, they are more often valorized on the small screen -- maybe because an intimate medium is predisposed to believe, like a Freudian, that most of our ogres live at home, under the bed, instead of outside in the lousy weather of politics or history. Still, it's a friendliness to the profession that not only includes Hal Holbrook and Tom Conti in TV movies but goes back to Bob Newhart's therapy group, Allan Arbus as Sidney Freedman on M.A.S.H., Elliott Gould in Sessions, Robbie Coltrane as Cracker, and Carolyn McCormick on Law & Order, as well as forward to Frasier and Dr. Katz. Even in this distinguished company, Wonderland, like The West Wing, is as good as television gets.
-------------------------------

Time Magazine
Shadowland: A drama looks at mental illness, with empathy by: J.P.

There's no lack of crazy folks on TV. As in Stark Raving Mad, as in "cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs," as in, that Dharma? Woo, is she cra-a-zy! Mentally ill, though, that's another story. "The shadow people," as the psychiatric drama Wonderland (ABC, debuts March 30, 10pm ET) calls them, pervade overstressed hospitals and precincts in real life, yet lurk invisible in prime time's institutional dramas. This literate and impeccably executed series, alas, may prove why. From the opening scene of a patients' group session developing into a shouting match, to the story of a multiple murderer with a Zeus complex, Wonderland all but begs viewers to flip to the comparatively cheery bloodbaths of ER.
That would be a shame. Wonderland is not about craziness. Its much repeated mantra and true theme is "balance" - mental, professional and personal. It's a frustrating gal for both patients and the well-cast staff, such as Dr. Robert Banger (Ted Levine), who juggles chaotic patient evaluations with Zen cool (he's the Phil Jackson of psychiatry) which fighting for custody of his kids in his spare time.
Ultimately, Wonderland disturbs not because it is violent or loud - though it can border on pathos - but because, unlike crime or injury, its subject defies easy blame and explination. But creater Peter Berg (Very Bad Things) balances its starkness with writing of remarkable empathy. As Banger says at his custody hearing, "I have a tremendous respect for [my children's] minds, for the beauty of their minds." Wonderland has a tremendous respect for its audience's minds, and for the beauty of even a shattered psyche.
-------------------------------

MSN CultureBox - Why We Need Wonderland
By: Judith Shulevitz
Posted Friday, March 24, 2000, at 7:28 a.m. PT

Every once in a while, a talented person takes a threadbare television formula, turns it inside out, and finds something extraordinary in the lining. Peter Berg has done this with Wonderland, the E.R.-like hospital drama that makes its debut opposite that show on ABC next Thursday night, March 30, at 10 p.m. Eastern time. (Berg is an actor turned writer, director, and producer who played a doctor on Chicago Hope.) Concept-wise, the twist is minor--a switch in setting, from a public general hospital modeled on Cook County Hospital in Chicago to a public mental hospital modeled on New York City's Bellevue. But the ramifications are enormous.
To begin with, there's the messiness of it all. Emotional disturbance defies easy television-style closure. The people who show up in the admitting rooms of public mental hospitals are people for whom happy endings are no longer imaginable. Having lost spouses and jobs and sanity, or never having had any of these things in the first place, they're living lives of unthinkable complexity. And unlike emergency-room doctors, forensic psychiatrists can't cut, snip, or even medicate their patients' pain away. No one gets better by the end of the hour. The human detritus keeps pouring in.
But so do the dramatic possibilities. Dealing with this much raw suffering puts doctors under extraordinary strain, so naturally they sprout personal problems. The people they treat are going through similar stress and trouble, just on a vastly larger scale. Since the doctors and patients have something in common, the writers can establish a powerful rapport not just among the physicians, as on most hospital dramas, but between them and those they treat. The one-on-one encounters between the psychiatrists and their charges unfold like musical duets running up and down the scales--they're variations on emotional themes--and a rich sense of the main characters' inner lives accrues scene by scene, show by show, with the slow, serial development that only television allows. A handsome young doctor grappling with his fear of emotional involvement conducts several intake interviews in which nightmarish relationship stories emerge. One man has tried to kill himself because his wife just left him. A husband and wife married for 50 years have begun to drive each other, literally, mad. We begin to understand why the doctor is afraid.
Have I mentioned that the actors are good? They are, especially the two lead male psychiatrists, the understated Martin Donovan--the star of many Hal Hartley movies and also a character in the recent Portrait of a Lady--and Ted Levine, who played the killer in The Silence of the Lambs. Levine brings the same kind of scary concentration to his portrayal of Dr. Robert Banger, a man who's overinvolved with, and almost too compassionate toward, his violent patients, but who is himself weirdly bottled up, with several flavors of impatience and rage waiting to erupt.
Another reason to watch this show is that it's important. I know that sounds portentous and implies that the series is secretly boring. It isn't, though, because it does something rare. How long since you saw a network television series accord the mentally ill--including those who have committed heinous criminal acts--anything like dignity? How long since a network television series treated anybody on the wrong side of the law with respect? The main story line in the first two episodes of Wonderland deals with a psychotic who's a barely disguised version of Andrew Goldstein, the young New Yorker who, having been unable to obtain care and medication from state mental hospitals, lapsed into schizophrenia and pushed a young woman off a subway platform into an oncoming train. In the somewhat more overwrought Wonderland version of events, he's a graduate of Columbia University with a classics degree who shoots two cops and kills three civilians in Times Square, then in a struggle at the hospital plunges a needle into the belly of a pregnant psychiatrist, who happens to be the admitting doctor who turned him away four days earlier.
Goldstein was convicted of murder last week, despite his plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. The Wonderland writers would probably take issue with that outcome, but in their adaptation of the story, they stay focused on the difficult questions: the unbearable amount of damage the man wreaks, the failure of the mental-health system to stop it, the terrible sadness of a person driven to do things he doesn't understand by voices in his head. By reminding us of the humanity of the violently ill, Berg has found a way to sneak onto television a political agenda infrequently furthered by the popular media, because it depends on the ability to get beyond stereotypes. I hope Berg can resist the pressure of time and ratings to cheapen his vision. Call me crazy, but I think shows like this are our salvation.
------------------------

San Francisco Gate - Next stop, "Wonderland' by Tim Goodman
Wednesday, March 29, 2000

ABC's riveting new hospital show is shaping up as TV's next great dramatic series
When "ER" first burst onto the scene, it was a mix of supreme drama and over-the-top hospital theatrics - yelling, running, cameras swooshing around the room. The worry then was that even though you couldn't take your eyes off it, who could bear the clatter?
A lot of people, apparently. "ER" has been the most dominant drama on television since it debuted. With two other hospital dramas already on the schedule - "Chicago Hope" and "City of Angels" - a cynic might say a fourth is overkill. But ABC's new midseason replacement series, "Wonderland," is a special kind of hospital drama, one that recalls all the greatness of "ER" without having yet fallen into the soap-operaesque storylines of a tired front-runner. In fact, "Wonderland" is the new "ER," the fresh take with a twist. Anyone with an inkling that "ER" has played itself out and needs a discharge should take a look at this show's premiere (10 p.m. Thursday, Channel 7). Yep, a head-to-head battle with the champ - conventional programming wisdom would call that a suicide mission.
However, "Wonderland" is worth skipping "ER" for. It isn't about ruptured spleens and heart attacks. It's about the mentally ill, the psychotics and schizophrenics and the severely depressed. It's about the doctors who take care of these special cases, the so-called gatekeepers holding the barbarians back from society.
Produced, written and directed by Peter Berg (himself an alum of "Chicago Hope," as well as an independent filmmaker), "Wonderland" is a riveting if challenging bit of television. Berg and a team of writers spent months at New York's Bellevue hospital, where they were allowed to witness and interview doctors working with the mentally ill. They've borrowed storylines from there and have gained a convincing knowledge of psychiatry and its terms, much as "ER" mastered the fine art of yelling for drugs and clinical tools with the right words.
To further the effect of being in what is essentially an asylum, Berg uses hand-held cameras and lets the actors improvise when needed. This gives "Wonderland" a gritty, realistic feel. But the technique also adds a sense of chaos to the viewing experience. Watching "Wonderland" is a sensory overload, as patients scream at the top of their lungs, bang on things, turn TV channels rapidly and provide a kind of non-stop white noise over the show's dialogue.
Parents who have put to bed unruly children will find no relief here, nor will anyone else seeking to unwind from the day's work. "Wonderland" makes the frenetic talking-and-walking banter of "The West Wing" look like a mime show.
In fact, "Wonderland" has more in common with Martin Scorsese's "Bringing Out the Dead" than any hospital drama on TV.
But those who hang in there will discover the potential of television's next great drama. The doctors and patients in Rivervue Hospital's psychiatric and emergency wards are an engaging bunch. Dr. Robert Banger (Ted Levine, "Silence of the Lambs") heads up the forensic psychiatry department. He's the calmest in the storm - a trait he needs with a crumbling marriage and the impending custody loss of his two beloved young sons. Levine is brilliant, by the way.
Another forensic specialist is Dr. Neil Harrison (Martin Donovan, "The Opposite of Sex"), who is married to Dr. Lyla Garrity (Michelle Forbes, "Homicide: Life on the Street"). The two are expecting their first child - and for two tightly wound people, that's just added pressure. Donovan has been wonderful in every movie he's been in and Forbes' intensity is her greatest asset. She heads up the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program - meaning she has to decide if people checking in to the crowded hospital are really disturbed or not. A misread in the pilot leads to the dramatic crux: A mentally ill man who thinks he's taking orders from Zeus guns down five people in Times Square.
Also in the mix: young Dr. Abe Matthews (Billy Burke), whose womanizing and fear of intimacy sometimes cloud his psychiatric evaluations; Dr. Derrick Hatcher (Michael Jai White), a physician (as opposed to a shrink) at the hospital; and resident Heather Miles (Joelle Carter), who is bright and understanding (and a potential romantic partner to Dr. Matthews). Like any good series, "Wonderland" is littered with smaller characters giving fine performances, and its "crazy people" truly get into their parts.

The writing and acting in this series are superb. And Berg hasn't tried to tell too many stories too quickly, so we can get to know the characters slowly. That said, the pilot has an explosive subplot that kick starts everything.
If you've been attracted to the reality feel of "NYPD Blue" or the fine writing of a show like "The West Wing," you'll see the potential in "Wonderland" right away. This thing is just dripping with quality. The question is whether you can adjust to the in-your-face chaos and, more importantly, if you can give up "ER."
You ought to at least give "Wonderland" a chance. It's time to switch hospitals.
--------------------

US News - A prime time for madness
TV takes on the world of the mentally ill - By Joannie Schrof Fischer

The man lies strapped to a gurney, screaming gibberish about Hercules, as five people he has just shot are dying all around him in an emergency room. Then, still in a fit of delirium, the schizophrenic grabs a hypodermic needle and stabs himself. A pregnant psychiatrist rushes in to wrestle the needle away, and in the struggle it pierces deep into her abdomen, through her developing baby's skull, and into its brain.
This scene of bedlam is the dramatic peak of the première episode of Wonderland, a one-hour drama set in a psychiatric hospital that will debut this Thursday on ABC. Whether critics and viewers will decide that this psychiatric version of the popular ER makes for good television, nobody knows. But even before the first episode airs, some members of the mental health community who have previewed the show believe that it dangerously misrepresents both the mentally ill and the professionals who treat them. "The show is all caricature and stereotype, and plays to people's worst fears about mental illness," says Michael Faenza, president of the National Mental Health Association, a group that represents the nation's 51 million who suffer from some kind of mental disorder.
Playing up violence. The most strenuous objection to Wonderland is that it portrays too many of its mentally ill characters as violent. One young man bites off his mother's finger and eats it, then bloodies his own head against a wall. An elderly woman obsessed with killing her husband lifts scissors above her head, Psycho-style, and when doctors pry them away she finds some knitting needles instead. Mental health professionals say this kind of depiction does enormous damage at a time when the largest cause of stigma borne by the mentally ill is the fear that they will become violent. In truth, they say, not only are the vast majority of the mentally ill not violent, but they are more likely than most to become victims of violence.
Wonderland creator Peter Berg says that he intends the show to be constructive, shedding light on the many struggles and indignities that the mentally ill must endure. But in order to do that, he must capture viewers' attention with compelling drama, which can mean resorting to extremes. And even though only a tiny fraction of murders are committed by the mentally ill, that still makes for close to 1,000 homicides every year, says psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, author of Out of the Shadows: Confronting America's Mental Illness Crisis. "We can't solve the problem by pretending it doesn't exist," Torrey says. "I applaud the makers of Wonderland for having the courage to address such an explosive but important issue." Faenza has asked ABC to at least run a disclaimer before the show, clarifying that most mentally ill people pose no threat to others. The network has not yet decided whether or not it will do so.
But even if ABC makes that concession, it will not appease other critics who worry that the drama leaves the impression there's little effective help for the mentally ill. For example, when a severely depressed man who has gashed both his forearms deep toward the bone asks for help, a young psychiatrist distracted by interruptions tells the patient that recovery simply takes time. "That's offensively inept," says National Institute of Mental Health psychiatrist Philip Gold. "There are so many sophisticated, compassionate, and proven methods that offer relief to the suicidal, it's a crime to leave viewers who might need help with the impression that that's all they would get."
Berg counters that tapes of his first eight episodes are being used to train medical students and says that over time, skeptical psychiatrists will see that his treatment of mental illness is more constructive than harmful. Even so, NMHA's Faenza is mobilizing his group's 340 affiliates to register their disgust with both ABC and advertisers. Those complaints could be lost amid cheers, though, if the wider audience decides that Wonderland's crisis-a-minute chaos makes for good entertainment.
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Yahoo Daily News Wednesday March 29 2:15 AM ET
'Wonderland' what the doctor ordered - By Laura Fries

HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - By creating a show built around a symbiotic relationship between the forensic psychiatric department and the emergency room of a New York hospital, Peter Berg is able to draw upon a virtual gold mine of material.
"Wonderland'' synthesizes Hollywood's holy triumvirate: It's a medical show, a police story and an emotional drama rolled into one. Full of the same type of energy and promise that "ER'' enjoyed in the early seasons, "Wonderland'' is the first series in a long while that has the actual goods to give the stalwart NBC drama a run for its money at 10 p.m. Thursday nights. To up the odds, ABC is making its strike midseason against reruns and amid grumbles that "ER'' has lost its edge.
Berg, a former "Chicago Hope'' regular, reportedly spent months researching "Wonderland'' in a New York psychiatric hospital. His dedication pays off with a realistic, utterly engrossing and intricately drawn show set in the chaotic confines of the mythical Riverview Hospital.
From the opening moments of the pilot, we quickly learn that the doctors here, while dedicated and top notch, are quite fallible; they walk a fine line between normalcy and the aberrance of the socially challenged patients who fill up the ward.
Dr. Robert Banger (Ted Levine) is the ringleader, a man who functions on high simmer but maintains amazing composure when it seems like everyone around him is losing control. Adding to the building pressure is Banger's divorce case and ensuing custody battle.
His staff includes Dr. Neil Harrison (Martin Donovan), whose worries include not only his patients but his pregnant wife and co-worker, Dr. Garrity (Michelle Forbes). Garrity handles psychiatric emergencies, sometimes at her own peril. Dr. Abe Matthews (Billy Burke) is a commitment-phobic psychiatrist who often butts heads with resident Heather Miles (Joelle Carter), while the no-nonsense Dr. Derrick Hatcher (Michael Jai White) struggles to balance career and single parenthood.
"Wonderland's'' diverse ensemble cast is colorfully drawn, and the pilot sets ups some disturbing and intriguing plotlines that touch just about every character. Filmed like a documentary, the show maintains its frenetic momentum start to finish, and serves up a crackling balance between work and home life.
Levine is a standout, adding subtle layers to a deceptively complex character. Forbes carries the lion's share of drama in the first two episodes and handles it well, if not completely realistically. Her character, several months pregnant, is put through traumas that would send even the most stoic individual home to rest. Other cast members prove equally promising, with White making a particularly powerful impression in his limited intro as the single dad.
Technical credits are solid, with Ron Fortunato working overtime to create a realistic documentary style, which is enhanced by the deft editing of Dan Lebental. Sets by Michael Boonstra are grim and realistic. Madonna provides the show's theme song.
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EW April 15, 2000 - Why ''Wonderland'' is the latest TV programming miscue. Josh Wolk says the networks should give quality a chance to thrive

Two weeks ago, ''Wonderland'''s second episode crumbled in the ratings against a new episode of ''ER,'' and ABC did what any supportive owner would do: It canceled the show. You have to wonder what ABC execs expected to happen when they pitted the complex, dark series against the No. 1 drama on television. Did the network think it was going to be an instant smash? That's like pitting Verne Troyer against Mike Tyson and being surprised when Troyer's head rolls out of the ring into your lap.
It defies logic that the networks repeatedly seem surprised when unique shows don't do well instantly, and then panic and axe them posthaste. Why do they produce remotely edgy programming at all? If you're going to be a chicken, do it all the way! Just put on all cheap crap all the time and nobody will miss it when it's gone. But, dear networks, if you're going to attempt to try something different, have the courage of your convictions and give these shows a chance, moving them if need be.
Last fall, Fox yanked ''Harsh Realm'' after three airings when it suffered on Fridays. The network must have known it was a risky venture -- it was complicated and serialized, so if you came late you might be hopelessly confused -- but went ahead with it anyway, then gave up as soon as the ratings faltered. And while Fox gave its caustically clever ''Action'' a whopping nine weeks, it was on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m., a time when people are trapped on NBC by Must See TV inertia. Why didn't Fox try pairing it with ''The Simpsons,'' which has an equally smart audience? And ''Freaks and Geeks,'' while getting 11 episodes in two time slots on NBC, was never given the promotion or the chance to appeal to everyone's inner outcast.
I'm not saying television has to be a charity case for quality; shows should be canceled if they've been given a fair air and still can't find an audience. I will miss ''Sports Night,'' but I respect ABC putting it on near-permanent hiatus after nearly two years with no ratings improvement: It's not in the business of making sure an intimate group of Aaron Sorkin fans are kept entertained for life.
And there are situations where immediate cancelation has its benefits: ''The Mike O'Malley Show'' was killed this fall after 2 episodes, which felt like 46 in bad-show years. And the fact that ''Daddio'' has made it past two airings qualifies as a hate crime against audiences. (But why these shows got on in the first place is a different issue.)
But lame sitcoms aside, the quick slaughter of creatively unconventional shows has to stop, for the networks' good as well as ours. Audiences are going to get tired of the old bait-and-switch as intriguing programs quickly vanish in favor of garbage, and they'll jump to cable for good, leaving the networks feeling joyless and depressed. Maybe then they'll know what it's like to sit through ''Daddio.''
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www.wchstv.com/abc/wonderland/ : Wonderland

"Wonderland," a riveting, gritty, one-hour drama shooting on location in New York City, delves into the lives of the doctors manning Rivervue Hospital's psychiatric and emergency programs. Writer, director and former "Chicago Hope" star Peter Berg is the executive producer/writer/director.
Mr. Berg and the writers of the drama spent months at a New York hospital researching the project and working side by side with top psychiatrists and ER physicians. They were able to observe everything from electric shock therapy sessions, to interviews with serial killers, schizophrenics and suicidal housewives.
Edgy and real, the stories for "Wonderland" are inspired by the experiences of staff and patients. The cast of "Wonderland" is encouraged to improvise, and the show is shot documentary style, resulting in nothing less than gripping television. With personal lives as complex as their patients' minds, the doctors of Rivervue endure joys and sorrows that often mirror the triumphs and tragedies of the afflicted they strive to heal.
The cast stars Ted Levine ("Silence of the Lambs") as Dr. Robert Banger, Martin Donovan ("The Opposite of Sex") as Dr. Neil Harrison, Michelle Forbes ("Homicide: Life on the Streets," "Kalifornia") as Dr. Lyla Garrity, Billy Burke as Dr. Abe Matthews and Michael Jai White as Dr. Derrick Hatcher.
In the realm of psychiatric medicine, this public, city hospital is the Mecca, and its doctors are among the world's best, brightest and toughest. Professionally, Dr. Robert Banger (Mr. Levine) heads up the forensic psychiatry department (the psychiatric study of criminology); while personally, he struggles to cope with the break-up of his marriage. Still in love with his wife, Dr. Banger is forced to fight her tooth and nail for the custody of their two young sons. Dr. Neil Harrison (Mr. Donovan), who also specializes in forensics, grapples with the fears and joys of impending fatherhood. His wife, Dr. Lyla Garrity (Ms. Forbes), heads up the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program, a.k.a. CPEP (a critical response facility for people suffering psychiatric emergencies).
Dr. Abe Matthews (Mr. Burke) is recognized as a talented psychiatrist who works in the CPEP, but has a well-earned reputation as a first-class, commitment-phobic womanizer, both inside the hospital and out. Dr. Derrick Hatcher (Mr. White) balances the struggles of single parenthood with working daily miracles in the emergency suite -- all while simultaneously leading med students through the ropes of Rivervue's "boot camp."
In addition to Mr. Berg, executive producers for "Wonderland" are Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Tony Krantz, along with co-executive producer/director John D. Coles. Peter McIntosh is the line producer. The program is produced by Hostage Productions, Inc. in association with Imagine Television.
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weeklywire.com/ww/04-10-00/austin_screens_tveye.html
Down the Rabbit Hole By Belinda Acosta

APRIL 10, 2000: As I was engrossed in the premiere of Wonderland (ABC), the new drama set in the psychiatric unit of New York's fictional Rivervue Hospital, I couldn't help but wonder what Fred would have thought. Fred wasn't exactly a friend, but someone whose life sort of sideswiped mine 13 years ago. He was a brilliant and diabolically funny man. He was also schizophrenic, and I took part in admitting him to a state mental hospital. The talk about Wonderland has ranged from glowing to dismissive ("It won't last against ER"), and mental-health advocates have objected to the show, complaining that the show focuses on "the extremes of mental illness," thereby playing off stereotypes of the mentally ill.
For the less die-hard ER fan, or for those of us whose interest has been waning with the re-hashed storylines, Wonderland is a breathtaking alternative. First of all, the central cast is marvelous. Michelle Forbes and Martin Donovan play married doctors Lyla Garrity and Neil Harrsion on the Rivervue staff. Billy Burke plays Dr. Abe Matthews, and head of the whole place is Ted Levine as Robert Banger. The first episode introduced each character, but more importantly, showed how each person copes with the demands of their job -- which range from the head-bangingly routine to high-voltage. It is the high-voltage aspect of the show that's brought the most criticism.
After a seriously disturbed man opens fire in Times Square, the shooter and his victims are rushed to Rivervue. The camera careens around the graphic emergency room scene with breakneck speed; all the while, the shooter becomes more and more agitated. Cutting away to other scenes in the hospital doesn't bring much respite. A suicidal man is surrounded by blathering patients, and the intake nurse, with calm -- but worn -- composure, tries to check in a patient whose inability to focus makes the task tedious and maddening at the same time.
Sound mind-scrambling? It is. But to hear critics talk, it's the only aspect that drives the show. Quieter moments are provided in scenes away from the hospital and in some scenes with patients, as in the touching encounter between an elderly homeless woman who apparently visits Garrity from time to time.
In some respects, the patients-in-distress scenes cannot be avoided. After all, Wonderland is set in a hospital, not a therapist's office. But it's not just "crazies" going haywire. In the fine closing scene of the show's pilot, a group of patients on the mend are shown in a group therapy session. A young man talks about wanting to heal, wanting to have a little Christmas back in his life. "I was wondering if you could help me with that," he asks the off-camera therapist.

As for the representation of the mentally ill, it's not as damning as the show's overall indictment of the public's poor attitude toward the mentally ill, the desire to make them invisible, and the deep fear that, given the right circumstances, anyone's mental health can move from good to bad as easily as turning a coat inside out. Wonderland is not about "crazy" people. It's potentially about the humanity required to help those at their most vulnerable.
As for Fred, my last time with him was at a competency hearing. He was stoked up on Thorazine but willed himself past the narcotic haze to lift his head and forearm to give me a "Hiya, Belinda," so that I knew that he was still "there." That was one of the great lessons I learned from Fred during that turbulent time. That in spite of his illness, he was still human with a need to connect. He was still "there." The groundbreaking Wonderland is capable of similar lessons -- depending on viewers' ability to endure a little discomfort and see what has been shunted to the shadows.
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www.jsonline.com/enter/tvradio/wein/apr00/weincol20041900.asp
Wonderful 'Wonderland' a ratings victim April 19, 2000
Joanne Weintraub

Is there anything to be learned from the short, unhappy history of "Wonderland"?
Ted Levine in repose on "Wonderland," a strong but dark show that didn't get much of a chance to flourish.
The third episode of ABC's newest drama, which was scheduled to be shown tonight, was canceled so abruptly that most weekly publications couldn't delete the information in time. TV Guide not only lists the episode in its schedule but praises it in an "Editor's Choice" entry as "alternately funny and heartbreaking."
I didn't get to see the third installment - which will be replaced by "20/20 Downtown" at 9 tonight on Channel 12 - but "funny and heartbreaking" is an apt description of the first two. Set in a New York City psychiatric hospital based on Bellevue, "Wonderland" boasted strong writing, a wonderful cast and adult subject matter.
But it had two big problems. Its ratings were terrible - no surprise for a drama forced to compete with "ER" - and its premiere, in which a patient killed five people in a shooting rampage and later injured a pregnant doctor, outraged what might otherwise have been part of its natural audience.
Even before the series' March 30 debut, the 210,000-member National Alliance for the Mentally Ill condemned ABC and "Wonderland" creator Peter Berg for "presenting people with mental illnesses as killers, crazies and freaks." The American Psychiatric Association warned that the premiere, along with a similar "ER" story line earlier in the year, "show(ed) only the bad news about a small minority of persons suffering severe illnesses."
Gloria Krasno, director of advocacy services for the Mental Health Association of Milwaukee County, found the premiere deeply troubling.
"It does so much damage to the work we've been trying to do in showing people with mental illnesses as human beings," Krasno said in a phone interview after watching the episode, which also featured a suicide attempt by another patient. "It was incredibly, horribly compelling, but I felt almost manipulated because of all of the terrible things that were squeezed into that one hour. . . . I'm familiar with a lot of (hospital) horror stories, but nothing like this."
Andrew Kane, a Milwaukee forensic psychologist, also felt "Wonderland" presented a distorted picture.

In some 1,500 evaluations of individuals alleged to be mentally ill and possibly dangerous, "I've never been hit, and even a threat is very rare," Kane said. "If I had a choice of being in a roomful of people with mental illness and a roomful drawn from the general population, I'd feel safer with the mentally ill."
Like many who deal with mental illness personally or professionally, Kane also took exception to a much-hyped February "ER" episode in which two doctors were stabbed, one fatally, by a patient who was thought to be schizophrenic.
The story was written by Neal Baer, who, in addition to serving as co-executive producer on the series, is a resident in pediatric medicine at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles.
Unlike Kane and Krasno, Baer doesn't believe viewers will generalize from one character's violent actions to an entire group. He also notes that last year, when an "ER" episode depicted a mentally ill homeless woman as a caring, responsible mother-to-be determined to have her baby in the hospital, virtually no one noticed.
"I understand why people in the mental-health community are upset" when a mentally ill character commits a violent act, Baer said, "but I think we've shown positive portrayals, too."
Of course, part of the reason the February "ER" story got so much attention was that NBC started promoting it weeks in advance. Their assumption - borne out, in fact, by the episode's sky-high Nielsens - was that melodrama sells.
At the moment, "Wonderland" is "on hiatus" until further notice; in "ER" terms, that means it's on the critical list. Its status undoubtedly has more to do with the scarcity of viewers than with the volume or passion of the protests.
But the sad thing is that, if "Wonderland" vanishes, we're unlikely to see the kind of portrayals of the mentally ill that those protesters say they're looking for - the patients who aren't "killers, crazies and freaks."
For all the melodramatic excess of its premiere, Berg's drama, especially in its second week, showed signs of a humanity rare in prime time. Pardon my pessimism, but it's hard to believe "Wonderland" will ultimately be replaced by something better.
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www.contaxguide.com/newsarchive/000907/lavender_tube.htm
LAVENDER TUBE * SEPTEMBER 7, 2000
A couple of years ago, Martin Donovan spent a couple of months on a 100-foot boat moored in the lagoon of a nearly deserted island located some 600 miles northeast of Papua, New Guinea. The actor, who was born in Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, was starring opposite Maya Strange in the Australian adventure-drama "In a Savage Land," in which a respected anthropologist and his young student-bride chase Trobrianders and each other all over the South Seas.
"There were no facilities on shore, including the lack of electricity and lodging, so the cast and crew stayed on the film equipment-crammed boat for about eight weeks," says Donovan. "On the third day we were there, we suddenly got hit by swells that seemed to come out of nowhere. In a matter of hours, I was deathly seasick, along with a dozen other people.
"It was a strange, strange feeling to be caught in an enormous force of nature – the ship was tossed around like a toy in a bathtub – that we had no explanation for," he continues. "The next day, we were advised by fax machine and satellite phone that everything was due to a tsunami created by an undersea earthquake. The tidal wave subsequently destroyed large parts of New Guinea. It was a killer."
Shortly thereafter, Donovan starting to question his own sanity while shooting "Onegin" with Ralph Fiennes in Hungary during the dead of winter. It didn’t take long to get tired of hotel cuisine in Budapest either, where chefs often operate on the principle of "If you don’t like the way this meat is boiled, we’ll boil it some more." It also occurred to him that it would be nice to see his actress wife Vivian Lanko before she goes back to work on a semi-regular basis and his sons, 4 and 6, before they enter college.
Donovan, 42, stayed fairly close to home last year, portraying philandering Tom Buchanan to Mira Sorvino’s long-suffering Daisy in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s "The Great Gatsby." He also starred opposite Irene Jacobs in a high-intensity independent film, "The Pornographer, A Love Story," which still seeks distribution. A viable plan eliminating major travel commitments for the year 2000 was the only thing missing in his life. That’s when "Wonderland" (formerly in the 10-11 p.m. slot on ABC, opposite NBC’s "ER") was practically pitched into his lap.
The one-hour drama series – created by former "Chicago Hope" star Peter Berg, who also executive produced along with Ron Howard and Brian Grazer – examined a group of forensic psychiatrists at Rivervue Hospital (a fictional institution loosely patterned after New York’s famed Bellevue). Fortunately for the Manhattan-dwelling Donovan, "Wonderland’s" interiors were shot at a sound stage in Queens and in an unused wing of a functioning psychiatric hospital on Long Island.
He portrayed Dr. Neil Harrison, a passionate human being dealing almost exclusively with the criminally insane. His wife, Dr. Lyla Garrity (Michelle Forbes), who heads up the hospital’s Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program, is about to deliver the couple’s first child. Harrison works closely with chief forensic shrink Dr. Robert Banger (Ted Levine), a man battling to keep his head on straight while his marriage is in tatters and a bruising custody battle is looming for his two young sons. Rounding out the cast was Derrick Hatcher (Michael Jai White) and cute, precocious psychiatric intern Heather Miles (Joelle Carter).
"Ted (Levine) and I had a good look at the psychiatric ward at Bellevue and the guys who run it, but no one in that organization is connected to the show," says Donovan. ‘But I learned a lot observing there and met some pretty famous New Yorkers charged with crimes. You’re struck by their normalcy. Nobody is sitting in corners drooling or scratching themselves.
"In terms of the psychiatrists, I was fascinated by the rapport carefully built with each patient," he continues. "There is no judging; no condescension. They have empathy, compassion and respect for (the criminally insane). They are victims of mental illness, too, regardless of the crimes they committed."
Born in Los Angeles and reared in the Reseda section of the West Valley, Donovan is the third of three children born to a homemaker and a public school administrator. With his brother educated as a psychologist and his older sister a registered nurse, there is now plenty to talk at the dinner table when they meet for holidays and family occasions.
Donovan found his calling while doing a production of "Bye, Bye Birdie" at Crespi Carmelite High School in nearby Encino. He spent the next seven years studying acting at L.A.’s American Theater Arts, financing it with odd jobs ranging from painting houses to hanging draperies.
"I tries to avoid waiting on tables – I was never good at dealing with the public," he laughs. "But I’ve mellowed."
His professional debut, while still in school, was making $50 for recording an answering message sounding like a "pirate" for a treasure hunter, followed by an obscure TV commercial. In l98l, he obtained his Screen Actors Guild card as one in a cast of thousands on "Masada," the massive miniseries starring Peter Strauss. Two years later, Donovan and Vivian loaded their 1972 VW Squareback and drove to New York City at a leisurely pace, visiting friends and relatives along the way. With no immediate Broadway prospects, he joined the Cucaracha Theater Company in Tribeca shortly after arrival. It didn’t provide a handsome living, but led to collaboration with New York film auteur Hal Hartley on six short subjects, including "The Book Of Life" (as Jesus Christ), "Trust," "Flirt" and "Amateur."

The exposure at film festivals finally paid off with roles in films closer to the mainstream, such as "The Portrait of a Lady," "Heaven," "Hollow Reed," "Nadja," "Living Out Loud" and "The Opposite of Sex."
Life is very, very good and Donovan is extremely happy to be home – even after 15-hour work days.
" ‘Wonderland’ was very intense work, day in and day out, but the rewards were great," says Donovan, "especially since the show came complete with a terrific cast, crew, producers, directors and writers. Most of these elements add up to something far superior to several of the so-called art films I’ve done. Now, I just want to enjoy the simple life for a while, like discovering good restaurants with my wife and hanging out in the park with the kids."
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www.geocities.com/failt/wonderland_nytimes.html#newaddress
NY Times: A New Prime-Time Address: The Mental Hospital
By BERNARD WEINRAUB

The scene in the opening episode of ABC's "Wonderland" is harrowing. A pregnant doctor in the emergency room of a hospital patterned after the forensic psychiatric unit of New York's Bellevue intervenes when a violently unhinged patient tries to harm himself with a syringe. In the scuffle that follows, the syringe pierces the doctor's stomach.
"It's a powerful scene," said Lloyd Braun, co-chairman of the ABC Television Entertainment Group. "Like any series that pushes the envelope -- and this one clearly does -- there may be some people who will find the show too intense. But we repeatedly talk at the network about how important it is to take risks with programming. Without question, this show represents a risk."
The risk, of course, is that a drama about psychiatric patients and their doctors will prove simply too unsettling to network audiences accustomed to sitcom humor and twentysomething angst. Compounding the difficulties for "Wonderland" -- it was actually called "Bellevue" before legal concerns prompted the name change -- is that the series, which starts on Thursday, will be pitted against NBC's enduring medical drama, "E.R."
Yet ABC and the creator of the show, Peter Berg, a film and television actor who spent three seasons as a hockey-playing surgeon on "Chicago Hope," are convinced that the provocative nature of the show will rivet viewers unaccustomed to such intensity. Then again, are television audiences ready to spend an hour each week with the criminally insane?
The show has attracted attention at the top level of ABC. Mr. Berg recalled that at a personal low point, when he was sure that the network was going to scuttle the show, he was working late in a New York hotel room where he goes to write and escape phones and family distractions. The phone rang, and a woman's voice announced that Michael Eisner was calling. Mr. Berg, thinking it was a friend needling him, shouted an expletive and hung up. Minutes later, the phone rang again, and a man's voice said sternly: "Don't hang up! This is Michael Eisner." Mr. Eisner is chairman of the Walt Disney Company, which owns ABC.
"I had the most productive conversation with him about the show in terms of its strengths and weaknesses," Mr. Berg said. "Eisner has been tremendously supportive. He said he felt that America was not ready to sit down with a show that was entirely about the mentally ill, and if we added an emergency room set with an emergency room physician, we would have some sort of portal that felt familiar to an audience."
"Wonderland" is set in the psychiatric and emergency rooms of a fictional New York hospital called Rivervue. (It was filmed mostly in an abandoned building at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens.) The series deals specifically with forensic psychiatry -- that is, the treatment of mental patients who have committed crimes. For this, Mr. Berg had the cooperation of Dr. Robert H. Berger, director of Bellevue's Forensic Psychiatry Service, and Dr. Alexander Sasha Bardey, a clinical and forensic psychiatrist at the hospital.
Mr. Berg, who is 37, said the idea for the show had been tugging at him for years. When he was a teenager, growing up in Chappaqua, N.Y., his mother, Sally Berg, a homemaker, began doing volunteer work in a psychiatric hospital in White Plains.
"I watched her transform herself from a suburban housewife to a volunteer psychiatrist -- and she was exhilarated," said Mr. Berg, who lives in New York with his wife, Elizabeth Rogers, a public relations executive for Calvin Klein, and their 4-month-old son, Emmett. "She came home with daily reports about the patients, the staff, the issues. And it had some kind of imprint on my consciousness."
Years later, while Mr. Berg was performing in "Chicago Hope," he saw the Frederick Wiseman documentary "Titicut Follies," about a state prison for the criminally insane. "I was sort of shocked, horrified and intrigued at the same time," he said. At a meeting with Imagine Television, Mr. Berg proposed a show about a psychiatic hospital. "I couldn't recall it ever having been done -- especially in a way that was realistic and honest," he said.
Bellevue was selected because of its preeminent reputation, and Mr. Berg spent nearly seven months at the forensic psychiatric unit observing and taking notes. But getting into Bellevue was not easy.
Dr. Berger had been extremely reluctant to allow Mr. Berg to, essentially, hang around. Screenwriters and novelists who had made similar requests in the past were granted only a brief tour.
"Peter told me he wanted to present to the public what mental illness really is and not to whitewash it in any way," Dr. Berger said. "He impressed me. He was geniune. And he hasn't proven me wrong yet."
Dr. Bardey said that depictions of mental hospitals in films are generally inept. "People have a very, very two-dimensional notion of what mental illness is," he said. "The depictions are often way out there -- like cartoons. Very rarely is individual pathology made accessible."
Some of the patients in the series were inspired by the kinds of people Mr. Berg saw at Bellevue -- although he and the psychiatrists, who have seen several episodes, said there were no breaches of confidentiality. Patients in the opening show range from a Wall Street broker who had tried to kill himself to a young man who bit off his mother's thumb. Dr. Berger said that the story lines are realistic, but that situations are sometimes unrealistically condensed because of time strictures.
As would be expected, the plots also involve the personal lives of the doctors. One of them is fighting for custody of his small sons; another is struggling with single parenthood. A third is a womanizer, inside and outside the hospital. (Mr. Berg said that ABC raised more objections to a brief but steamy sex scene between the doctor and a girlfriend in the opening episode than to the violent behavior of the patients.)
Mr. Berg, who does not act in the new show, made his feature film writing and directing debut in 1998 with "Very Bad Things," a violent comedy with Cameron Diaz and Christian Slater. Casting "Wonderland" presented an unusual hazard, Mr. Berg said. It seems that many of the actors who sought roles as patients had seen Dustin Hoffman in "Rain Man" way too many times. In the end, he said, many of those who were selected, often from the New York stage, knew something about mental illness because, through friends or family members, they had been touched by it.
The cast includes Martin Donovan ("The Opposite of Sex"), whose character is based loosely on Dr. Berger. Mr. Donovan said that everyone on the show understood the pitfalls of turning it into something overwrought and not truthful, of turning the patients into monsters. "There's no moralizing here," he said. "These doctors have tremendous compassion for the patients and passion for the work. Their job is to get at what makes these people tick and what has gone wrong -- is it chemical, is it treatable, how severe is it, are they, in fact, ill or faking it?"
Dr. Berger, who has worked at Bellevue for 23 years, owns up to being stirred by the show. "Every time I see the pilot, I don't know, it sounds corny, but I get chills when, after the patient has been so obstructionist and agitated and against treatment, I hear him say, 'I've got this problem; you think you can help me?' I feel like hugging him."
Mr. Berg, the actors and producers are, not surprisingly, apprehensive about facing "E.R." One reason for the unenviable time slot is that ABC's schedule revolves around the ever-present "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," and only a handful of hours are available. And, for their part, the producers are persuaded that "E.R." may be getting a little tired.
"Sure, it's a difficult time slot for us, but so many people say they don't watch 'E.R.' anymore," said Tony Krantz, the chief executive of Imagine Television, which is producing the show along with Touchstone Television. "These people who watched 'E.R.' might be interested in checking the 21st-century version of a medical show."
Mr. Berg said that nearly every "Wonderland" episode presented to ABC executives has provoked friction with the network. "We keep getting calls saying, 'it's just too intense, too disturbing, can you take the edge off?' Every show. 'Tone this down. Ease back. Don't let this patient get too upset.' "
In the end, though, Mr. Berg has few complaints. "It's an odd marriage," he said. "Walt Disney and a show about the insane: we aren't necessarily the most obvious of bedfellows."
Mr. Braun, at ABC, put it another way: "We feel we have a unique program -- very fresh and very risky. Are there concerns? Yes. Are we proud of it? Yes."
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'Wonderland': Wrung Out, Strung Out in Bedlam
March 30, 2000 By CARYN JAMES

To watch "Wonderland," the unsettling series set in a New York psychiatric hospital, is to step into a world of pure chaos. Everyone races, everyone yells, doctors scream instructions, patients scream delusions, somebody dies, someone is saved and at the end a viewer is wrung out. It is a perverse compliment to say that near the end of the first episode you may wonder if you'll ever want to enter this hellish atmosphere again.
But the show is so gripping and often so dazzling in its visual command that if you had two episodes on tape (as reviewers did) you might watch them back to back, against your expectations. Whether viewers who have a week to decompress will choose to re-enter a landscape of such excruciating intensity is the big question ABC and "Wonderland" are staring at.
This new series is the anti-"E.R.," and the fact that it is running opposite that other medical show is the least of the reasons. "Wonderland" defies the conventions of episodic television. When someone dies on "E.R.," a doctor's heroic struggle offers redeeming light and uplift. The doctors of "Wonderland" are dedicated, but the very first episode reveals that one has made a medical mistake that will haunt and maybe ruin lives, including her own.
"Wonderland" (originally called "Bellevue" for the hospital where it was researched) is even more directly the anti-"Chicago Hope." It was created, written and directed by Peter Berg, who played the volatile Billy Kronk on that series. Mr. Berg's wily new series turns his old one upside down. While the "Chicago Hope" doctors thrive on up-to-the-minute medical wizardry, the psychiatrists of "Wonderland" are simply trying to keep themselves, and their patients, afloat. With "E.R." aging into predictability, "Chicago Hope" ready for the scrap heap and the new "City of Angels" already a stale imitation of the others (despite its largely black cast), "Wonderland" comes at just the right time to reinvigorate the hospital genre.
Because the patients in "Wonderland" are psychiatric cases, the series has a surreal aura, sparing and effectively used. Here a patient behind barred windows looks down at his slippers and sees a tiny rhino step around them. Because these shots from the patient's perspective are rare, watching the show is not like existing in some mad state of mind. The effect is more jolting, as if the sanity of the doctors and the illness of the patients were present in the air, at times colliding with a physical force.
What saves the series from total bleakness is the shaky order the doctors impose. They are played by a spectacular cast. Ted Levine is the head of the criminal psychiatry department, Dr. Robert Banger, who is battling his ex-wife for custody of their two small sons. Mr. Levine is still best known for his chilling performance as the killer in "The Silence of the Lambs." Add to that his ominous deep voice and large presence and Banger is not instantly likable, even though he is first seen making Mickey Mouse-shaped pancakes for his sons. But Mr. Levine is remarkable in making the stern and thoughtful Banger the sympathetic center and conscience of the series without moving an inch toward sentimentality.
Martin Donovan is calmly powerful as Dr. Neil Harrison, also a forensic psychiatrist. His pregnant wife, Dr. Lyla Garrity (Michelle Forbes, once the coroner on "Homicide"), is the head of the emergency department at the hospital, called Rivervue here.
Early in tonight's premiere, as a man walks through Times Square during morning rush hour, his thoughts are heard in voiceover: he babbles about Zeus and transmitters. Abruptly he takes out a gun and shoots half a dozen people. When the police take him to Rivervue, it turns out that Garrity, cranky, exhausted and wrong, had examined and released him the week before.
There are horrifying scenes in "Wonderland": the shooting in Times Square and the aftermath in the Rivervue emergency room, when the pregnant Garrity is stabbed in the stomach. But individual scenes are not what make the series hard to take; the relentlessness of its nervous energy does. The cacophony of people yelling seems constant; the jangly visual style mirrors the unrelieved tension and high-voltage impact of the story. When Garrity is attacked, the camera picks up isolated images as she sees them: one patient's bloody leg, another's bleeding neck.
Mr. Berg also wrote and directed "Very Bad Things," a 1998 black comedy about murders. The film didn't completely pull off its humor, but Mr. Berg was not afraid to go over the edge trying. He brings that daring and a touch of dark wit to "Wonderland," but the series is also shrewdly connected to the world of real people. When the Times Square killer, Wendell Rickle (Leland Orser), is arrested, he recites his own Miranda rights, "like 'N.Y.P.D. Blue,' " he says. The line astutely captures the way so many people gain any knowledge about the police, and also winks at television clichés.
"Wonderland" poses significant questions in a dramatic, unpreachy manner. Dr. Banger tries to protect and treat Rickle in the second episode; earlier Dr. Harrison had tried to strangle him. Should a mad killer be forgiven or punished?
And the show sheds light on the rest of network television. This series makes the pablum of typical happy endings understandable; they're easier. Here, even the commercials may come as a relief from the tension. "Wonderland" asks viewers to be discomfited week after week and trust that the effort will be rewarded. Even the toughest series tend to get soft over time, but for now the uncompromising "Wonderland" is worth every demand it makes.
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www.post-gazette.com/tv/20000330wonder2.asp
TV Review: 'Wonderland' pits its fine acting and gritty reality against 'ER'
Thursday, March 30, 2000 By Rob Owen, Post-Gazette TV Editor

Wonderful "Wonderland"?
Yes and no.
The new ABC medical series is a smart, thought-provoking drama. But for some it will be tough to sit through the show's unrelenting gloom.
TV viewers who like to be challenged -- I'm thinking of the "Homicide: Life on the Street" fans out there -- will cotton to the murkiness of "Wonderland" (10 tonight on WTAE).
And why not? The series stars a former "Homicide" cast member, Michelle Forbes, who is one of the smartest actresses working today. She's not business smart (opposite "ER," it's a given the paychecks she takes home from "Wonderland" won't last for long), but artistically smart. Forbes has an uncanny knack for picking quality shows and staying with them just long enough to make an impact on viewers so they'll miss her character when she leaves. It happened when she played Ensign Ro on "Star Trek: The Next Generation." It happened when she spent just a year and a half as medical examiner Julianna Cox on "Homicide: Life on the Street."
In "Wonderland" Forbes stars as Dr. Lyla Garrity, head of Rivervue Hospital's critical response facility for people suffering psychiatric emergencies. She's pregnant, which plays a pivotal role in tonight's pilot.
Lyla's husband, Dr. Neil Harrison (Martin Donovan), works in the forensic psychiatry department with its chief, Dr. Robert Banger (Ted Levine). They lead group sessions with patients, most of whom have committed crimes during psychotic episodes.
Based on New York City's real-life Bellevue Hospital, Rivervue is an ugly, claustrophobic institution. It gets uglier tonight when a patient is brought in after shooting several people in Times Square.
"Wonderland" was created by Peter Berg, the former "Chicago Hope" star (bad boy doc Billy Kronk), who also wrote and directed tonight's pilot. His old friend, Madonna, performs the theme song.
Berg is a pretty angry and tortured guy, as evidenced by his film directorial debut "Very Bad Things," about a bachelor party that leads to murder. "Wonderland" isn't as gruesome as that movie, but there's little sunshine.
Banger is fighting with his ex-wife (guest star Patricia Clarkson) for the custody of their children (Erik Per Sullivan from "Malcolm in the Middle" and "The Cider House Rules" plays one of the kids tonight). Dr. Abe Matthews (Billy Burke) can't imagine a 50-year marriage filled with passion, making him loathe to commit to any one woman. Then there's the crisis Lyla and Neil face, which carries over to next week's episode.
If you watch tonight and feel overwhelmed by "Wonderland," give it another chance. Next week's episode does a better job of shining a non-exploitative light on the hospital's patients and their problems. It's also stronger, in no small part, because it gives actress Forbes a showcase. She's a master of subtlety, conveying a handful of emotions with the slightest of facial movements and expressions.
Levine, best known as serial killer Jame Gumb in "The Silence of the Lambs," is an unconventional choice for a TV show's leading man. But his gruff demeanor evaporates the moment Levine interacts with his on-screen children.
It's too bad this thought-provoking show doesn't stand a chance. By throwing it up against "ER," ABC is essentially saying it has no faith in "Wonderland." Maybe if "ER" was in the doldrums, as it was a year ago, but the veteran medical drama rebounded this year.
At least tonight's "ER" is a rerun, so "Wonderland" might get a decent sampling. But with the premiere episode as harsh as it is, viewers are likely to flee and never look back.
There is an audience out there for this drama. It's probably just not a mainstream audience. "Wonderland" isn't wonderful in the conventional, chipper, upbeat sense, but it is a wonder.
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www.geocities.com/failt/wonderland_nydaily.html
NY Daily News: 'Wonderland' Therapeutic For Indy-Minded Actor Donovan offers alternative to mass entertainment
By DONNA PETROZZELLO Tuesday, March 28, 2000

Martin Donovan hates clichés.
When he agreed to take on the role of Neil Harrison, a doctor in a Manhattan psychiatric hospital in "Wonderland," he insisted that Harrison lead both an alternative professional and personal life.
While Harrison's work at Rivervue psychiatric hospital was different enough to hold his attention, Donovan said he also "fought and won" to make Harrison a fan of alternative singer PJ Harvey.
"We'll use her music at the end of the eighth episode and throughout the rest of the series," said Donovan.
Donovan's already a Harvey fan. In his most recent collaboration with independent film maker Hal Hartley, he played Jesus Christ to Harvey's Mary Magdalene in a 1998 featurette, "The Book of Life."
Starring in the ensemble cast of the gritty ABC drama marks Donovan's first prime-time TV series.
He's best known for starring in "The Opposite of Sex" as schoolteacher Bill Truitt. This fall, Donovan will play the philandering Tom Buchanan to Mira Sorvino's Daisy in an A&E production of "The Great Gatsby."
The subtle, in-control actor says it has never been his nature to play a role that's meant to "appeal to a mass audience," but "Wonderland" is offbeat enough to suit his taste.
"There's no way to go out and try to pursue a mass audience," said Donovan. "I don't know how to do it, and I'm not interested in it."
He is interested, though, in portraying a profession that he knew little about before studying for the role.
Donovan spent time with real-life Bellevue Hospital doctors. He watched them work with criminally insane patients, seeing how the doctors kept their cool in tense situations and how the patients behaved.
After walking into their world, Donovan recalls, "I realized I didn't know anything about it, and probably most people don't. I don't think on TV we've ever seen the inside of a criminal psychiatrist's office in a hospital.
"There are areas of medicine and the law that come together that people know very little about," said Donovan.
"These doctors have to deal with medical issues, legal issues and high-profile patients locked up for committing major crimes. It's fascinating."
Not that he's simply going to mimic the real-life doctors. That's a lesson he learned at 19 when he played Oscar Madison in a college production of Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple" and "just imitated Walter Matthau's performance" from the film."
"I was naive, I was 19, and I hadn't yet figured out that I shouldn't be imitating someone else," he said.
Later that year, Donovan met Matthau and blurted out that he'd tried to lift his rendition of Madison, move for move.
"He told me that I should be playing roles my way and shook my hand, but he was very nice about it," Donovan said.
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Peter Berg's Crazy 'Wonderland'
Inspired by Bellevue stay, he takes on 'E.R.'
By RICHARD HUFF Tuesday, March 28, 2000

Peter Berg really gets into his work, and frankly, that's a bit frightening.
To get the details right for "Wonderland," his psychiatric hospital-set ABC drama, Berg, known to many as the spirited Dr. Billy Kronk on "Chicago Hope" (CBS) and the director of the film "Very Bad Things," went deep inside Gotham's Bellevue Hospital.
"I basically lived at Bellevue for six months straight — not as a patient, as an observer," Berg said, showing a guest his official identification card. "The hospital provided me with a tremendous amount of access."
As part of the access, Berg had to agree not to disclose the identities of real-life patients or the staff at the hospital.
But what he got in return was in-depth information that, in one way or another, worked its way into the New York-shot series, which launches Thursday at 10 p.m.
He spent most of his time in the forensics unit — an in-house prison of sorts — and the emergency room. What he saw, he said, was much different than the images of psychiatric wards presented in films like "The Snake Pit" or "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."
"Bellevue was a much more inspiring, heroic, healing place than I had ever imagined," Berg said. "And it was a place where so many of the issues of society collide.
"It's a place where people come when their minds no longer work. Their minds become sick and they need help — and the reasons our minds become sick are as varied as we are."
ABC picked up eight episodes of "Wonderland," which stars Ted Levine ("Silence of the Lambs), Martin Donovan ("The Opposite of Sex"), Michelle Forbes ("Homicide: Life on the Street"), Billy Burke ("Without Limits"), Joelle Carter ("High Fidelity") and Michael Jai White ("Mutiny").
Berg said he's been fascinated with issues of the mind since he was a kid growing up in Chappaqua. His mother worked at a local hospital and he became intrigued with the workings of his own mind, while dabbling in psychedelic drugs at boarding school.
"I can remember being in high school and taking psychedelic mushrooms and LSD and being amazed at areas of my mind I quite simply wasn't able to access without these drugs."
But translating issues of the mind to the small screen isn't easy. Unlike, say, "ER," or Berg's former place of fictional employment, where a medical case can be solved in the course of an episode, mental problems take time.
Additionally, there's a built-in stigma with mental problems — especially those requiring stays at a psychiatric hospital — that might turn some viewers off. For example, in the first episode, a patient jams a needle into the belly of a pregnant doctor.
Adding to the darkness of the series is the documentary style of production, which adds more edge.
"The fear about doing a show about a psychiatric hospital is that you're going to present something that is unrelentingly grim for an audience and people are immediately going to turn off the television or change the channel to something more comfortable," he said. "So for us, the challenge was convincing the network and the studio that we could find a way to make the experience of spending an hour in a psychiatric hospital something that felt satisfying and, in a way, enjoyable."
Finding the series at all may be more of a problem for viewers, though.
ABC has scheduled it to air against "ER," in a time period littered with the cancellation notices of well-intentioned shows that have failed against the NBC drama.
On the other hand, "Wonderland" has the benefit of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" as a lead-in. "Wonderland" replaces "20/20 Downtown."
"I'm glad I have a time slot," he said, adding that he was happy to have gotten the chance to produce eight shows.
"If I had my choice, I wouldn't want to go up against 'ER,' but nobody asked me. I didn't have a choice.
"My only hope is that we can establish some heartbeat as a show and quickly be moved to another time slot. I have no desire to take on the monster which is 'ER.' I have no illusions that we can co-exist peacefully with that giant right now."
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A Stunning 'Wonderland' by David Bianculli
Wednesday, March 29, 2000

The opening scene of "Wonderland," the intense new ABC drama series premiering tomorrow night at 10, starts off by throwing you right down the rabbit hole and into a world of chaos.
The first taste we get of this excellent new series — the first episode was created, written and directed by former "Chicago Hope" star Peter Berg — is a cacophonous psych-ward session where all the patients are babbling and gesturing simultaneously.
With all the noise and confusion, it's hard to distinguish the characters who need help from the ones who are giving it — and if there's any central theme to "Wonderland," it's that the dividing line between those two poles is often treacherously thin and elusive.
True to the form staked out by the landmark hospital series "St. Elsewhere," and carried on currently by "Chicago Hope" and NBC's massively popular "ER," the medical personnel in "Wonderland" are far from perfect, and burdened with personal problems that often become major factors in their lives.
In "Wonderland," the psychiatric workers at a public New York hospital (think Bellevue, though this is called Rivervue) are burdened indeed.
Robert Banger, the chief of forensic psychiatry (played with edgy aggressiveness by Ted Levine), is on the other end of the evaluations for once, being assessed by other experts to determine his fitness to retain custody of his two young kids. His ex-wife is played by Patricia Clarkson, who played Daniel Benzali's wife on "Murder One."
Abe Matthews (Billy Burke) is a womanizing hotshot with a gift for relating to patients but not to his explosive girlfriend. Neil Harrison (Martin Donovan) and his wife, Lyla Garrity, (Michelle Forbes) both hold important posts at Rivervue, and she's nearing her third trimester of pregnancy.
Two other psych specialists, played by Michael Jai White and Joelle Carter, are less defined in the two episodes available for preview — but given time, and given this show's fertile soil, should blossom nicely.
"Wonderland," like NBC's "The West Wing," is a TV viewing experience that both demands and rewards attention. It's loaded with dialogue, and with intense characters, all of which you'd expect from a show set in a psych ward. But it also has a sense of drama, and action, that makes the most of the characters being introduced.
Forbes, who was so unfailingly believable and bewitching on "Homicide: Life on the Street," is just as good here. She and Levine, in the first two episodes, are the pace cars that relentlessly drive this show. In the first two hours, the guest stars playing psych patients — including Leland Orser as a cop killer and Jay O. Sanders as a suicidal banker — add tremendously to the mix, and to the overall sense of urgency and chaos.
Berg, who does not appear on camera, is enough of an actor's writer, and actor's director, to give his cast room to breathe and work. We get to know them as people, often by little bits of business captured not by dialogue, but by a glance or a telling camera shot. And then, once we know them, all hell breaks loose.
There's one scene in tomorrow's pilot, which I won't detail at all so that its surprise impact will remain intact, that literally made me gasp in shock. "Wonderland," in the truest sense, is Must-See TV. For ABC to schedule it smack against NBC's reigning Must-See medical drama is either aggressive faith of the highest order or an unfortunate and undeserved death wish.
If ABC doesn't find a way to save and nurture "Wonderland," though, the executives responsible should have their heads examined.
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Patient Advocates Rip Drama 'Wonderland' is called threat to the mentally ill
BY RICHARD HUFF Wednesday, March 29, 2000

A mental-health watchdog group yesterday lashed out at ABC's new psychiatric hospital-set drama, "Wonderland," calling the show a "potentially dangerous threat" to those suffering from mental illnesses.
The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, a grassroots organization dedicated to improving life for mental-illness victims, says that the drama may increase the risk of suicides.
Wonderland" is an hour-long show conceived by Peter Berg ("Chicago Hope") that is set in a Bellevue Hospital-like psychiatric facility. To research the story lines and setting, Berg spent six months making the rounds with doctors at Bellevue. He has used some of them as consultants on the show.
But after seeing two episodes of the series, the executives at NAMI say they are concerned that "Wonderland," which debuts tomorrow at 10 p.m., will perpetuate the stereotype that mental-illness patients are "killers, crazies and freaks."
"We get a lot of messages in the show that treatment doesn't work or is ineffective. We get a very grim, very dark picture of mental illness," said NAMI executive director Laurie Flynn. "And while this is a slice, unfortunately it reinforces every negative stereotype of mental illness."
Flynn asserts that the show "stigmatizes" mental-illness patients and presents an image that "they're violent, you can't get near them, that they're pathetic, hopeless and can't get well."
Berg said the group misreads his intentions.
"The patients we present are individuals who have emotional problems who are handled by extremely dedicated doctors in an empathetic, caring, optimistic, professional way," Berg said. "It is our intention ... to provide a catalyst for honest dialogue about the often misunderstood and inaccurately represented world of the mentally ill."
"Still, in the first episode, a mental patient who stops taking his medicine stabs a pregnant woman with a needle. The man, who killed people in Times Square, later commits suicide after being treated.
"For him, the system failed." Berg said. "With this character, we are trying to highlight the importance of continuity of care and the tragedies of that failure. ABC picked up eight episodes of the drama, which it will air Thursdays against NBC's "ER" and CBS' "48 Hours."
Flynn said people suffering from mental illness would likely be more interested in the show than the average viewer, and thus would be hit with a negative portrayal that could lead to more suicides and to fewer people getting help.
"It's really not about our lives," she said. "It's about this very extreme slice of life that isn't typical.
"They're all wired and freakish," she added. "It would be like having a show about African- Americans in this country today and it all takes place in a ghetto welfare office."
Earlier this week, Flynn sent letters to ABC and Berg, asking that the show be toned down, especially the violence.
She wants ABC to air the show with warnings, to promote suicide hotlines, and to add warnings to offset negative content.
"We're hoping we'll have some response from them," she said. "We'd like to work with them to get a less-than-sensationalized program. We would like to see it be a little more reflective."
By going public with its concerns, the group is bringing more attention to the show, a fact not lost on Flynn.
"We just felt we couldn't be silent and have this picture presented," she said. "We had to say, this is not right. This is not our lives."
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www.geocities.com/failt/wonderland_ultimatetv.html
Ultimate TV: Production Begins On "WONDERLAND"(12/6/99)

"Wonderland," a riveting, gritty, one-hour drama shooting on location in New York City, delves into the lives of the doctors manning Rivervue Hospital's psychiatric and emergency programs. Writer, director and former "Chicago Hope" star Peter Berg is the executive producer/writer/director.
Mr. Berg and the writers of the drama spent months at a New York hospital researching the project and working side by side with top psychiatrists and ER physicians. They were able to observe everything from electric shock therapy sessions, to interviews with serial killers, schizophrenics and suicidal housewives.
Edgy and real, the stories for "Wonderland" are inspired by the experiences of staff and patients. The cast of "Wonderland" is encouraged to improvise, and the show is shot documentary style, resulting in nothing less than gripping television. With personal lives as complex as their patients' minds, the doctors of Rivervue endure joys and sorrows that often mirror the triumphs and tragedies of the afflicted they strive to heal.
The cast stars Ted Levine ("Silence of the Lambs" ), Martin Donovan ("The Opposite of Sex" ), Michelle Forbes ("Homicide: Life on the Street," "Kalifornia" ), Billy Burke and Michael Jai White.
In the realm of psychiatric medicine, this public, city hospital is the Mecca, and its doctors are among the world's best, brightest and toughest. Professionally, Dr. Robert Banger (Mr. Levine) heads up the forensic psychiatry department (the psychiatric study of criminology); while personally, he struggles to cope with the break-up of his marriage. Still in love with his wife, Dr. Banger is forced to fight her tooth and nail for the custody of their two young sons. Dr. Neil Harrison (Mr. Donovan), who also specializes in forensics, grapples with the fears and joys of impending fatherhood. His wife, Dr. Lyla Garrity (Ms. Forbes) heads up the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program, a.k.a. CPEP (a critical response facility for people suffering psychiatric emergencies).
Dr. Abe Matthews (Mr. Burke) is recognized as a talented psychiatrist who works in the CPEP, but has a well-earned reputation as a first-class commitment-phobic womanizer, both inside the hospital and out. Dr. Derrick Hatcher (Mr. White) balances the struggles of single parenthood with working daily miracles in the emergency suite -- all while simultaneously leading med students through the ropes of Rivervue's "boot camp."
In addition to Mr. Berg, executive producers for "Wonderland" are Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, Tony Krantz, along with co-executive producer/director John D. Coles. Peter McIntosh is the line producer. The program is produced by Hostage Productions, Inc. in association with Imagine Television.
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ABC Premieres "WONDERLAND" (3/30/00)

"Wonderland," a riveting, gritty, one-hour drama shot on location in New York City, delves into the lives of the doctors manning Rivervue Hospital's psychiatric and emergency programs. Writer, director and former "Chicago Hope" star Peter Berg is the executive producer/writer/director. "Wonderland" makes its premiere THURSDAY, MARCH 30 (10:00-11:00 p.m., ET), on the ABC Television Network.
Mr. Berg and the writers of the drama spent months at a New York hospital researching the project and working side by side with top psychiatrists and ER physicians. They were able to observe everything from electric shock therapy sessions, to interviews with serial killers, schizophrenics and suicidal housewives.
Edgy and real, the stories for "Wonderland" are inspired by the experiences of staff and patients. The cast of "Wonderland" is encouraged to improvise, and the show is shot documentary style, resulting in nothing less than gripping television. With personal lives as complex as their patients' minds, the doctors of Rivervue endure joys and sorrows that often mirror the triumphs and tragedies of the afflicted they strive to heal.
In the premiere episode, the series pilot, New York City's Rivervue Hospital comes alive when a patient shoots down police and pedestrians in Times Square -- and then commits another horrific act in the emergency room.
In the realm of psychiatric medicine, this public, city hospital is the Mecca, and its doctors are among the world's best, brightest and toughest. Professionally, Dr. Robert Banger heads up the forensic psychiatry department (the psychiatric study of criminology); while personally, he struggles to cope with the break-up of his marriage. Still in love with his wife, Dr. Banger is forced to fight her tooth and nail for the custody of their two young sons. Dr. Neil Harrison, who also specializes in forensics, grapples with the fears and joys of impending fatherhood. His wife, Dr. Garrity, heads up the Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program, a.k.a. CPEP (a critical response facility for people suffering psychiatric emergencies).

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"Wonderland" Gets Inside Your Head
Fri, Mar 24, 2000 11:53 AM PST by Torye Mullins

This Thursday on ABC, a man sees miniature rhinoceroses walking amongst his fuzzy slippers; another claims to be missing his imaginary monkey. A newly admitted patient tells the nurse checking his bags for "dead animals" and sharp objects" that his name is "Ronald Regan McDonald Giuliani." And a psychopath opens fire in the middle of Times Square, shooting up everyone in his way, from police to pedestrians.
Keep in mind, all of this happens before lunch.
Welcome to "Wonderland" (premiering March 30 at 10 p.m.), brainchild of creator Peter Berg ("Chicago Hope"). The setting is New York's fictitious Rivervue hospital, where sanity and madness blend seamlessly, and the chaotic, criss-crossing lives of patients and staff is bound to hit a nerve with viewers, if not a whole synapse.
STARTING THINGS OFF WITH A BANG
The pilot episode revolves around crazed gunman Wendell Rickle, who opens fire in downtown Manhattan. As he walks madly through the New York City crowds to his destination, a voiceover recites the "ABC's" of insanity: "A is for addiction, B is for beta-blockers, C is for convulsions." By the time he gets to Z, you know Rickle knows his ABC's pretty well.
As the psychotic shooter, actor Leland Orser gets under your skin like a tick about to pop. Laying on a hospital gurney after his spree--one of his victims lying beside him--he yells to his doctors: "Quit wasting your time with me and get over there and help that man die!"
LIKE PATIENT, LIKE DOCTOR
Dr. Robert Banger, a confident yet vulnerable doctor played by Ted Levine ("Silence of the Lambs" ), heads the forensic psychiatric department at the hospital, but inwardly he struggles with his recent (not very mutual) divorce and the custody battle over his two boys. In a funny and frantic scene, Banger has to convince a panel that he is the more fit parent while his sons undress him shoe-by-shoe from his work clothes, readying him for playtime.
Martin Donovan plays Dr. Neil Harrison, anxious about impending parenthood with his very headstrong and very pregnant wife, Dr. Lyla Garrity (Forbes).
Michelle Forbes' character shows the most riveting complexity of the ensemble. Heading up the hospital's psychiatric emergency area, Garrity prides herself on her relationships with her patients and her ability to accurately diagnose them. Of course, Rickle turns out to be the one she let slip through the cracks.
She's a perfectionist (in the opening scenes she stares at her pregnant form in a mirror and laments that she's "lost her body…lost everything), yet her poor judgement with Rickle may cost her more than she wants to give.
Garrity is five months pregnant, yet she values women who pursue education in lieu of becoming " baby factories." She can be confident, arrogant, impatient, or lovable, turning from one trait to the next almost without warning, and you find yourself waiting on the edge of your seat to either love or hate her.
EMERGENCY MEDICINE VS. MENTAL MEDICINE
"Wonderland," like its main time slot competition "ER," features captivating story lines, complex characters and enough blood and gore to make the squeamish squirm. And in a way, the " Wonderland" cast also bares an uncanny resemblance to the original "ER" meds. Most notable is the Doug Ross-like commitment phobe, Dr. Abe Matthews (Billy Burke), seen in the opening shots making passionate love to a foreign beauty whom he later snubs. And Dr. Banger, like "ER's" Dr. Green, plays the balding, intelligent staff leader who works well professionally under pressure, but buckles under the stress of his failing family life.
Unlike "ER", which lost Gloria Reuben, Kellie Martin and will soon be saying adios to Julianna Marguiles, the "Wonderland" cast won't be leaving the show anytime soon.
But the one element that truly separates the two hospital dramas is "Wonderland's" added element of psychosis. Not only does the show portray the breakdown of the patients' minds; it burrows itself into the minds of the staff and the insanity that infests all of us in our everyday lives.
SHADOW PEOPLE
Patients at Rivervue moan, fidget, repeat themselves, screech, whisper and laugh. In the opening shot, titled "Group" what starts to be a peaceful therapy session turns into a chaotic screaming match between patients, and the uncomfortable presence of these people permeates many scenes in the pilot. They're always nearby, muttering, singing, banging or rapping. They are, in Dr. Banger's words, "The people society would rather just go away…the shadow people."
But in " Wonderland," these shadow people have major story lines.
INSANITY: A VIEW THROUGH THE LENS
Shot documentary-style with jerky camera action much like "NYPD Blue," Berg uses camera movement to manipulate mood, tension, confusion, agitation, sympathy or all of the above.
The use of voiceovers are at times almost poetic, blending the insanity of those admitted to Rivervue with the internal chaos of the doctors' lives.
Berg, along with his team of writers, spent months at a New York hospital researching the project, working directly with psychiatrists and ER physicians to get the lingo and the situations as authentic as possible.
So if you start to squirm, or cover your eyes, or even feel the urge to flip the channel because "Wonderland's" debut makes you uncomfortable, it only means that Berg succeeded in what he set out to do. He's gotten inside your mind."
---------------------

www.nj.com/features/ledger/f0518b.html
Wonderland' takes viewers down the rabbit hole 03/30/00

"Wonderland" (Premieres tonight at 10 p.m. on Channel 7) A new series about the doctors and patients at a mental hospital. With Ted Levine, Michael Jai White, Martin Donovan and Michelle Forbes. Created by Peter Berg. Rated TV-14 for intense situations and violence.
Few TV series express their ideas in pictures as well as "Wonderland." This new ABC series, created by "Chicago Hope" regular Peter Berg and set at a New York City mental hospital, is shot in a jagged, jumpy style that suggests a world on the brink of breakdown.
The cutting is fast, the acting naturalistic but tightly wound, the music pounding and dissonant. The handheld photography (by the excellent Ron Fortunato) consists mostly of close-ups taken from very far away; you're right up in the anxious faces of the patients and doctors, but they're often half-obscured by blurry objects in the foreground. Dialogue from one conversation continues even when the camera shows us action happening in another place. The sounds of the hospital mix and merge with the sounds of the city – horns and boom boxes, traffic rumbles, shouts and murmurs.
This is the most uncompromising and stylistically innovative approach to TV drama since "NYPD Blue" – maybe since "Hill Street Blues" 20 years ago. The effect suggests a world where all people, from workaday medical professionals to desperate patients, are trying to focus on living in the moment, despite a nonstop barrage of unwanted information and uncontrolled feeling that continually threatens to knock them off track. The characters, the hospital, the city and the world all seem to be extensions of this central idea; every facet of the drama's universe is under constant assault from within and without, like a powerful radio antenna that picks up signals from a dozen different stations simultaneously.
The first two episodes introduce most of the major characters. They're a conscientious, likable bunch, but with a gallows humor reminiscent of "M*A*S*H" and a spiky individuality that raises them above convention.
Ted Levine ("Silence of the Lambs") plays Dr. Robert Banger, head of Rivervue Hospital's forensic psychiatry department (the department that deals with criminals). He's a good man and a good leader, but he's on the edge emotionally because of an ongoing custody battle with his soon-to-be-ex-wife, Tammy (the excellent Patricia Clarkson). Before the pilot concludes, he'll undergo a parental competency hearing, playing with his two young sons in front of a tribunal of note-taking bureaucrats – a scene that ironically mirrors the fishbowl atmosphere of Rivervue.
"I am the keeper of the gate, the gate at the hospital, " Banger tells the board, deliberately ignoring the fact that his young sons are prankishly undressing him. "When the pressures become too much, they come to us. These are the people that society would prefer just go away." If you were channel surfing and came across this scene at random, you might think Banger and his children were disturbed patients rather than representatives of so-called "normal" society. And that's precisely the point.

Michelle Forbes of "Homicide" plays the massively pregnant Dr. Lyla Garrity, and independent film veteran Martin Donovan plays her husband, Dr. Neil Harrison. Their decision to bring a child into the world amounts to a moving statement of optimism, but it will be challenged – shockingly – by events in the pilot. Michael Jai White is Dr. Derrick Hatcher, who's doing his best to balance career demands with single fatherhood. His opposite is Dr. Abe Matthews (Billy Burke), a philanderer and commitment-phobe who, in a memorable scene, counsels a distraught husband (Jay O. Sanders) whose marital woes he can't begin to imagine.

The patients are an equally colorful (and in some cases, dangerous) bunch, and their high-octane dramatic predicaments are mirrored by the more down-to-earth domestic concerns of the doctors. Leland Orser is superb as a gunman who goes on a rampage in midtown Manhattan, then undergoes a makeshift psychiatric evaluation while strapped to a gurney; his evaluation is intercut with Banger's stint before the parental competency board, suggesting that sanity is more a matter of degree than kind.
As the husband who attempted suicide to relieve his depression, Sanders is equally memorable in a subtler, less showy role. When he protests that he really shouldn't be here, your first inclination is to believe him; the script implies that the stress of an unhappy marriage could push an unhinged person over the brink. This idea is teased out further in episode two, which includes a subplot about an old married couple, one of whom might be insane (it's not easy to tell which one).
Will viewers want to revisit "Wonderland" after its opening episode? It's rough going – the pilot contains two acts of violence as upsetting as the much-discussed Zapruder-film head wound in the pilot of CBS' 1998 series "Brooklyn South." And the dialogue walks the knife-edge between realism and brazen theatricality. In this jittery, unbalanced milieu, even mundane phrases have menacing overtones. When one patient asks another, "Do you like fish sticks?" it sounds like code for something unspeakable; when Orser's gunman begins moaning, over and over, "Turn the volume down!," it's both a plea for silence and a comment on the show's unrelenting intensity.
Viewers are equally likely to find "Wonderland" exhilarating or off-putting. (It's already controversial; the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill has denounced the series for depicting a hospital full of "killers, crazies and freaks.") In any case, it's impossible to deny that Berg, who wrote and directed the 1998 black comedy "Very Bad Things," is one of those rare TV producers with more on his mind than mere entertainment.
Over the decades, TV has given us plenty of hospital shows – notably the juggernaut "ER," which "Wonderland" faces on the schedule – but despite differences in tone and pacing, they all place a certain amount of faith in society's institutions. And although they're ensemble shows that take on social and political issues from time to time, they usually concentrate on individual human dramas.
"Wonderland" is conceived on a much broader canvas; from its opening moments, it announces itself as less of a traditional TV drama than an essay on contemporary anxiety that just happens to revolve around the doctors and patients at a mental hospital.
It's less inviting and conventionally satisfying than "ER" or "Chicago Hope" because the problems are usually internal, invisible, elusive; the patients and doctors have problems that can't be resolved with a rib spreader and a scalpel. The real subject of "Wonderland" isn't medicine or even big city life. It's the frenzied pace and alienating anonymity of modern society, which can make even the most well adjusted person feel unbalanced.

A Nightmare In Suburbia - Durham County Reviews

2010-08-20T18:51:00.008+02:00

While I'm looking forward to the third season, in a thrill of anticipation, the Durham County DVD reviews of the second season keep coming in.

Anh Khoi from Montreal writes:

"Despite being the most violent and darkest crime TV series you're very likely to see, Durham County finds a magic way to put substance over grittiness. Besides, the show contains the best performance I've ever seen in crime dramas [...]
Like the first season, the second season of Durham County is magic. The writing is still first-rate. Above all, some will find that the second season's pilot has way less difficulty to set the tone because the "villain" doesn't have a dichotomous personality. Besides, in the second season, the TV series goes way further when it comes to dealing with violence. In fact, while the first season dealt with violence expressed in an extroverted way, the second one talks about people who commit it by manipulating other people [...]
...despite its very heavy topic, Durham County's charms lie in its way it depicts its gallery of disturbed characters [...]
expect to see a performance full of depth from the actors, especially from Michelle Forbes."

Full review here at anhkhoi.blogspot

Gary writes:

"[Forbes] played the role of Verity with such humanity and intensity that you totally understood her actions, even while finding yourself repulsed by them.
You see her doing reprehensible things, and yet much like Ray Prager in Season 1, you can almost see the method to the madness. And with Verity there was a definite sense of madness about her, a result of trauma in her past.
At one moment you find yourself empathizing with what she's gone through and what she's currently going through, and then you see her poisoning some chocolates to harm someone close to Mike and your feelings change, and you see that this same person you're sympathizing with earlier you can see her in her full on evil mode, and then you can STILL feel for her later in scenes where she's falling apart. It takes a special kind of actress to pull that off, and not just make a one dimensional villain."

Full review at searchingforchetbaker.com

The Europeans, and here especially the German TV viewers, are a little late. Season 2 has yet to debut on 8 September (RTL Crime). All the more enthusiastic are the reviews of the S1 DVD set which just has been released in Germany.

dvdrome.com writes (translated by me):

"Durham County is a powerful piece of television, a drama, a thriller, a gloomy reflection of the Western middle class and its moral decline [...]
Durham County is the nightmare of a middle class suburbia. Thousands of nice small houses, surrounded by huge hydro towers which transport the convenience of civilisation to the County. The middle class lives here. Or are they just surviving? You can live here? Or do they merely close their eyes to reality? To the mortgages - for decades at the mercy of the banks? To years without prospects for the adolescents who, though living wealthy, yet don't see a bright future, a youth that generates odd little games whereby sex decays to a commodity and a murder in the neighborhood isn't daunting - but eventually a bit of excitement and variety? [...]
The first 4 episodes directed by Holly Dale are probably the best crime TV ever produced. The director remains an observer and leaves a judgement to the viewer. [...]
(On sound editing) A perfect sound is not a question of booms, it's the orchestration, the mixing, the sound effects ... in this series they are outstanding."

German source at dvdrome.com

Update:: Give away of Durham County DVDs

* "To celebrate the end of summer, the The Cultural Post organizes its first give away of DVDs for fans of Canadian films and TV shows. [...]1rst Prize:
Durham County is a very dark crime drama that takes place in a fictitious suburb of Toronto. There's a killer in the suburb of Durham County and Det. Mike Sweeney (Hugh Dillon) tries to find him/her. Besides, Mike also deal with his inner demons. Note that Michelle Forbes delivers a legendary performance as a manipulator."
Source: anhkhoi.blogspot
"Since both prizes are zone 1 DVDs, the contest is only opened to Canadians and Americans." (quote)
Dear Anh Khoi, all Europeans are perfectly able to watch NTSC and region 1 DVDs. Just saying :)
24 August: Anh Khoi opened the contest to more regions: "... if you don't live in North America but can read zone 1 DVDs, then feel free to participate."

* DVD S1 review in the August issue of the German magazine 'Cinema': (translated by me)
A surreal suburban nightmare and a gloomy character study, with a Making-of well done [...] Suspense on its highest level.

(Original text: 'Surrealer Vorstadtalbtraum und bittere Charakterstudie mit einem gelungenen Making-of [...] Spannung auf höchstem Niveau')

Sunday Pleasure

2010-08-15T01:02:00.001+02:00

Talking Tom is bi-lingual. Danish and English. And he is delighted that Forbrydelsen goes to Seattle:

* Fan ExPo Toronto Update - Durham County Cast and Creators:
- 28 August 12:30, ROOM 104A Panel with Michelle Forbes, Greyston Holt, Adrienne Mitchell, Janis Lundman, Laurie Finstad-Knizhnik (Deluxe Pass required, acc. to the FanExpo site)
- 14:00: Cast and creators of DC S2 will be at the Anchor Bay Booth (#525) to meet fans and sign autographs (must provide proof of panel attendance to guarantee autograph)

We might have a surprise for the blog visitors. The DC gang rocks! I'll keep you posted.

* News from Ekström
He'll be visiting Edinburgh in September. WITHOUT ME. Arrrghh.

I wish you a wonderful Sunday!

AMC Greenlights The Killing

2010-08-11T23:48:00.004+02:00

Great news! It's official, AMC is going to produce the US adaptation of Forbrydelsen:

* 13 one-hour episodes
* Production on the series begins this fall
* The series is slated to premiere in 2011
* The Killing is a working title

Mireille Enos as Sarah Linden and Joel Kinnaman as Stephen Holder:

(Click to enlarge)

Sarah: yes! The sweater: check! Jan Meyer (sorry, Stephen Holder): awww!

From the AMC press release:

"New York, NY – August 11, 2010 - AMC announced today a full series order for the pilot that was formerly known as The Killing, from writer and executive producer Veena Sud (Cold Case). Sud has signed on to also serve as the showrunner for the series, which is currently untitled. Set in Seattle, the series is based on the wildly successful Danish television series “Forbrydelsen” and tells the story of the murder of a young girl and the subsequent police investigation. Produced by Fox Television Studios, it is executive produced by Mikkel Bondesen (Burn Notice) for Fuse Entertainment. Fuse’s Kristen Campo co-produces. AMC first announced the pilot order in January 2010 with Patty Jenkins (Monster) directing the pilot. Production on the series begins this fall in Vancouver and season one consists of 13, one-hour episodes. The series is slated to premiere in 2011 on AMC. [...]
“We are thrilled to be moving forward with this stunning piece of television. It is a crime drama, but it is also a gripping character based story that pulls you in and doesn't let go. The storytelling is completely compelling, and the show is visually breathtaking. Veena, Patty, Fuse, FTVS and the cast did a phenomenal job of bringing it to life.” said Joel Stillerman, AMC’s senior vice president of original programming, production and digital content.

"Ever since Mikkel Bondesen brought us this remarkable Danish mini-series, we were determined to bring it to American television,” said David Madden, Executive Vice President, Fox Television Studios. "We are so proud to be working with AMC and our extraordinary cast on this very special series."

As “Sarah,” Mireille Enos (Big Love) portrays the lead homicide detective that investigates the death of Rosie Larsen. Other previously announced castings include: Billy Campbell (Once and Again, Enough) as Darren Richmond, Seattle’s City Council President, running for Mayor; Michelle Forbes (True Blood) as Mitch Larsen, the victim’s mother; Joel Kinnaman (Snabba Cash) as Stephen Holder, an ex-narc cop who joins the homicide division in the investigation to find Rosie Larsen’s killer; and Brent Sexton (W., In the Valley of Elah) as Stan Larsen, the victim’s father."

Source: AMC News

"...for my money, the best news about this announcement is that it also stars Michelle Forbes, one of the best actresses working today."
--> Maureen Ryan, The Watcher

AMC Close to Picking Up The Killing to Series

2010-08-04T21:42:00.010+02:00

This just in from deadline.com:

"EXCLUSIVE: I hear that AMC is close to picking up drama pilot The Killing to series, which would extend the network's perfect pilot-to-series ratio.

Based on the successful Danish series Forbrydelsen, The Killing tells the story of the murder of a young girl and the subsequent police investigation through the perspective of the detectives, the grieving family, and the suspects. It centers on Sarah (Mireille Enos), the lead homicide detective that investigates the murder. Billy Campbell, Michelle Forbes, Brent Sexton, Kristin Lehman, Eric Ladin, Jamie Anne Allman, and Joel Kinnaman co-starred in the pilot directed by Patty Jenkins and written by Veena Sud."

WOOOt :)

... I just lost a bet to Ekström. Now, I have to pay for his Kung Fu training program, he's preparing to fight alongside Circe to combat Wonder Woman.

Twitter:

stamos: One of the best pilots I've ever seen. Seriously.
@KateAurthur It is. Super duper amazing.
KateAurthur: I've heard this is amazing.
clairethebelle: Yay! LOVED this script, love Mireille Enos!

Added (5 August) ::

Brendan Sexton III will be playing Belko Royce, Larsen's employee.
Katie Findlay will be playing Rosie Larsen, the victim.

* Forbrydelsen II: The DVD box set went on sale today in The Netherlands. Special offer of 'De Volkskrant' :)
"Een nieuw seizoen van de bloedstollende Deense thriller The Killing is nu op dvd te koop bij de Volkskrant! Sarah Lund onderzoekt een reeks moorden en bijt zich vast in een race tegen de klok."

* At arte.tv (French or German) you can find great videos, behind-the-scenes, character descriptions, interviews, wallpapers and more - of the original Forbrydelsen. Don't go there if you don't want to get spoiled.

First comments@deadline.com:

* Michelle Forbes? I’m there. (Though she would be great as the lead in Prime Suspect, too.)
* I was wondering what was going on with The Killing. I know nothing of the original show, but if it was successful in Denmark, maybe it’ll be successful here, too. Hopefully AMC sticks to its tagline: story matters. I trust AMC at this point.
* It’ll work – in fact, with Vena twisting this tale – the deeper family voyeur perspectives that can be infused over a season, will be like crack – especially with the character dynamics that this cast is capable of. If AMC sticks with this, and the season is strong – you can’t tell me that the speculation for the season 2 plot line will be anything less than monumental. Viewers in the bank, all of whom will be sticking around even if they hate themselves in the morning. I’m in.
* AMC produces great shows – ‘Mad Men’ & ‘Breaking Bad’ are two prime examples. I anticipate they will only set the bar higher with ‘The Killing.’
‘Forbrydelsen’ has proven that following the single crime storyline is successful. I don’t think the plot is dependent upon solving the murder, but more so on the effects it has on the family and the people in the community. It’s a new crime every season, so I don’t think it will be hard to keep the audience intrigued. In fact, I think it’s more impersonal when a series has a different crime per episode. I think this format is what will make “The Killing” a stand out drama this season. - Can’t wait!

Quiz No 7: Gadgets

2010-08-03T12:15:00.000+02:00

Due to the busy Canal-Parade-Weekend in Amsterdam I'm presenting the Sunday Quiz on a Friday. Gadgets.

"En gadget er en teknologisk mindre objekt eller dims (apparater - f.eks. et værktøj, udstyr eller en hvidevare), som har en bestemt funktion. Gadget er især geniale apparatpåfund, som kan være brugbare eller måske overflødige ting. Mange gadgets har et smart design og/eller usædvanlig(e) funktion(er). Gadgets er en de ting, som anvendes af mennesker, der gerne vil være "trendy"."

That was Danish :p

It's easy. Do not flinch. Just guess where each picture is from. Comments are open. Have fun!

Summer In The City

2010-08-01T00:07:00.005+02:00

So, I have been experimenting with a poll widget for this site.

Looks good. But POLLS, really?

Ekström says hi to everybody, and wants you to know that he still hates me. Because I refuse to buy an iPad. He has to wait until the first usable Android-based and affordable tablet hits the market. Ekström can't type :(

On a related note, a recap of our talks about the future of this blog.
* Derek (location unknown) enjoys it as it is now.
* Luca (hi, Rome) doesn't care much, but is looking forward to Linux & gadget articles
* Rebecca (NL), Nicole (UK) and iHelix (NL) prefer to keep this site about Michelle and to open the blog to occasional off-topic posts
* Randy (Dublin) is dreaming of being an actor and has a vision of a Global Frequency Network
* Akima (Budapest) suggests a second blog "Aleph and the green bubble"
* Deb (Buffalo) is enjoying the summer and wouldn't mind a second blog
* Chris (Amsterdam) loves Durham County and adds bubbles to the css codebase

I wonder if we qualify as 'a bunch of nutters' as well ...

Have a great weekend. Enjoy yourself!

Cast & Producers of Durham County at FanExpo Toronto

2010-07-30T20:05:00.012+02:00

Meet the cast & crew of Durham County season 2 in person at this year's Fan Expo Canada (Toronto, August 27-29 2010).

Featured guests:

* ADRIENNE MITCHELL - Director / Executive Producer
* LAURIE FINSTAD KNIZHNIK - Writer / Executive Producer / Co Creator
* JANIS LUNDMAN - Executive Producer
* GREYSTON HOLT - Ray Prager Jr
* MICHELLE FORBES - Dr. Penelope Verrity (Saturday only)

Update ::
* Panel with Michelle Forbes, Greyston Holt, Adrienne Mitchell, Janis Lundman, Laurie Finstad-Knizhnik : 28 August · 12:30, ROOM 104A (Deluxe Pass required, acc. to the FanExpo site))
* 2:00pm: Cast and creators of DC S2 will be at the Anchor Bay Booth (#525) to meet fans and sign autographs (must provide proof of panel attendance to guarantee autograph)

And for those poor souls who can't make it to Canada, meet the producers of Durham County at their official Facebook page:
http://www.facebook.com/DurhamCountyTV

Fresh from the Canadian DVD bonus features - 38 minutes, interviews with cast and crew and 'Making Of':

Btw, the DVD includes two tracks, English and French :)

Update :: Quotes from a recent interview:

"Forbes [...] has an interesting take on visiting Canada. "It's funny to think that a very thin border separates the two of us. We look alike (in a multi-cultural sense). We sound alike. And yet it's a completely different feeling when you cross that border."
For her, the feeling is elation because she is fascinated by Canada's unique culture [...] Durham County offered stimulation."

Head over to torontosun.com to read more.

Second Season Durham County on German TV

2010-07-27T23:54:00.004+02:00

Excellent news for the German Durham County fans! The German (Pay-for-TV) channel RTL Crime finally airs the second season this fall, of course the uncut and uncensored version, and dubbed in German. After a season one marathon (5 September), 6 new episodes start on 8 September, 20:15.

The official press release, translated by Randy:

"MORE UNCOMPROMISING, MORE THRILLING: THE SECOND SEASON OF "DURHAM COUNTY - IN THE FRENZY OF VIOLENCE" EXCLUSIVELY ON RTL CRIME FROM 8 SEPTEMBER

RTL Crime airs six new episodes of "Durham County - In the Frenzy of Violence." In the second season of the award-winning Canadian series, more terrifying secrets will be unveiled, that must be kept in the dark under all circumstances. New enemies take stage and new conflicts break open.

From 8 September 2010 on RTL Crime viewers will require a particularly strong set of nerves! After serial killer Ray,from the first season, goes to jail, a woman who puts everything in the shade with her behavior takes the stage. Therapist Pen Verrity (Michelle Forbes, known from "True Blood", "24") is a truly seductive opponent to Detective Mike Sweeney (Hugh Dillon, known, among others, from "Flash Point") . Sexy, mysterious, and with murderous intent!

Mike is very depressed following the separation from his wife and easily becomes susceptible to his co-worker Pen's charms, who, a psychologist, acts as an advisor in their current investigation. However, the detective would never think it possible that Pen is very disturbed and poses life-threatening risk to him and his family... The depths of the human soul are opening up. An implacable war of life and death begins.

Michelle Forbes won the prize for Best Actress in the Monte Carlo TV Festival for her performance in the second season of "Durham County - In the frenzy of violence," Hugh Dillon was also nominated for Best Actor in Monte Carlo. The Directors Guild of Canada nominated the new season for Best Direction, Best Picture Editing and Best Production Design.
The series' first season won the majority of TV awards for the 2008 season in Canada, including five Gemini Awards, among others for Best Screenplay, Best Actor and Best Direction. It was also named The Best Prime-Time Series in the field of drama at the "FTPA Indie Awards 2008".

@the RTL PR folks: We're glad our blog served as a prompter :D

* DC Season 2 DVD set went on sale in Canada today. From a DVD review:
"Let’s just say if you can only make room for one new dramatic series in your schedule, let it be Durham County — it’s some of Canada’s finest television work."
Source: tvguide.ca

* I'd love to write about the third season on this blog as well, but haven't found a smart way to assimilate it, mirandazero.blogspot was meant as a site covering the work of Michelle Forbes, after all. And her characters have, as we all know too well, the unfortunate tendency to end up dead. How dead? Ultimately and perfectly dead.

We 'could' rename the blog title to:

You Are On The Global Frequency
Formerly known as: Michelle Forbes Community Blog

... and write about all the great stuff we love. What do you think?

(Alex Cardillo on set of Durham County)

UPDATE :: From the Durham County S2 DVD - Extras:

(Click to enlarge)

Michelle Becomes Circe for DC Universe Online

2010-07-21T23:30:00.008+02:00

Great news for all gamers & comic fans! Michelle is lending her unique voice to the iconic supervillain Circe, for the upcoming online action game, DC Universe™ Online, reports Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE).

"We’ve hit the jackpot with a full cast that are veterans of all the movies, TV shows, and games that our fans are crazy about,” said Sony Online Entertainment Vice President of Development John Blakely. “Several of these actors are recognized as the definitive voices for these characters, and will help us in creating an authentic and exciting experience for fans when they get in the game.”

The "triple-A cast of voice actors" also includes Mark Hamill (The Joker), Kevin Conroy (Batman), Adam Baldwin (Superman), Gina Torres (Wonder Woman) & James Marsters (Lex Luthor).

Michelle Forbes (Circe) – One of the industry’s most prolific actors, Forbes brings an intense quality to every role she tackles. She has appeared in such independent films as Kalifornia and Swimming with Sharks. Last year she made her debut in the groundbreaking HBO series True Blood starring as Maryann, a wealthy local who has mysterious intentions. She has also appeared as Kate Weston in the critically acclaimed HBO series In Treatment. In 2005, Forbes received rave reviews when she starred as Admiral Helena Cain in the intelligent and politically charged series Battlestar Galactica.

In DC Universe Online, players will be thrust headlong into an action-packed online world based on the heroes, villains and landmarks of the DC Universe. In the game, players step into the role of the next legendary superhero or villain and are given the choice to save or conquer the universe online. Along the way, players will be fighting alongside or against iconic DC characters as well as other players for the fate of the DC Universe.
Source: blog.eu.playstation.com

Circe is, of course, inspired by the Greek goddess. An immortal sorceress, she can turn objects and people into animals, seduce and manipulate; she is a powerful arch-enemy of Wonder Woman.

*Images from Who is Wonder Woman?

Update! Exclusive 'Who Do You Trust' video. It's quite awesome, I must say.
We catch a glimpse of Circe. Watch closely just past the 2 min mark. Delicious!

DCU Online release on November 2, 2010 for PS3 and PC. However, you can sign up for the beta right now! To register for beta access (both PS3 and PC) visit the game website at www.dcuniverseonline.com and click on the beta registration link.

And finally, the game will have a special collector’s edition available for PC only that will include a bitchin’ Batman statue designed by game director and artist extraordinaire Jim Lee. Also included will be a 56 page art book going over the making of the game, concept art and “insight into some of the iconic characters players will encounter.” Collector’s Edition buyers will also get a copy of the DC Universe Online: Legends issue #0 comic, written by Tony Bedard (Green Lantern Corps) and illustrated by Oliver Nome, Michael Lopez and Livio Ramondelli, with a variant by Jim Lee.

Source: craveonline.com

Circe screencaps added. Amazing! --chris

(Click the pics to enlarge)

Saturday's Bits and Pieces

2010-07-17T14:25:00.005+02:00

* A reader who wants to stay anonymous writes us:
"I'm seriously missing the quizzes and giggle postings, bring it back!"

Uh ah, yeah that was fun, wasn't it? But, you know, we're a tad understaffed atm. Randy is enjoying life in the countryside, and my skills in writing something funny are fairly limited. Did you ever try to be humorous in your third language :p
We could introduce a sort of "The five most crack-ups Or: When fangirling goes wrong". A la cracked.com.
Btw, I've heard that Michelle called a few of her fans 'a wonderful bunch of nutters'. How sweet is that?

* Do you remember Kalifornia? A Blu-Ray edition has been released in Europe, and is expected in the US next month. More details on the sidebar.

Apropos. It would rock my (virtual) world if you would join us and submit a Revisited article. Come on, guys and gals, it can't be that hard. Homicide - Life on the Street, anyone? Kalifornia, Alias - anything but True Trash!

* German TV will finally air the second season of Durham County, it starts on RTL Crime 8 September 2010, 8:15 pm.

* On the sidebar you can follow the few things and updates I know about the FanExpo in Canada.- I'm still knitting and customizing the new blog template. You may have noticed that we can now create static pages (up to 10), apart from the normal postings, take a look at the tabs. Nice summer job for me :) I'm broke this year, thus no travelling, why not doing something useful on this site, hehe.

Wish you all a pleasant and sunny weekend!

Dandelion 2004 - Revisited

2010-07-10T21:16:00.001+02:00

Subtlety is a forgotten art. Nature and landscapes have their own tales. Silence is not just another word. Melancholy can be beauty. I loved Dandelion.

Synopsis
In a small town of rolling fields and endless skies, isolated 16 year old Mason lives in a world where families exist in fragmented silence and love seems to have gone missing. Then Mason meets Danny, a sensitive and troubled girl, and their tender bond is soon tested after a fatal accident and a series of complications takes Mason away for something he didn't do. Upon his return, the two find what they're looking for - but with tragic consequences.

The audience about Dandelion
Source: user comments IMDb

"The movie is rich with symbolism so subtle that it manages not to slap you in the face with obvious, cheesy links between each character and/or event, all while still pulling everything together, leaving no annoying loose ends to tie up in the end. The music was written for the movie, so it compliments the movie instead of distracting from it, and the scenery (as you'll read in many more reviews) is stunning."

"For all of those who have yet to see this, the movie opens with a very teary Vincent Kartheiser placing a .357 in his mouth and pulling the trigger. I was so amazed that I sat completely still waiting to see what would happen next.
I'm not typically a drama-movie guy. I like action, explosions, nudity, horror and just plain disgusting things in movies. This movie has very little if any of the afore mentioned things. What this movie does have though is amazing sense of compassion and real life circumstances that draw the viewer (this viewer at least) into this hypnotic trance where you just can't take your eyes off of the screen...
Let me also say that every character in this film is played fully and believably by the actors portraying them. The scenery from upper Washington and Idaho where it was shot adds so much to the film itself that I find it impossible to imagine this film being as believable and prolific if it were set anywhere else."

"Hauntingly Beautiful Portait of Love, Hope and Tragedy Will Capture Your Heart
Debut director/co-writer Mark Milgard masterfully makes the long hot summer of the lovely Idaho and Washington landscapes redolent with both the magic of young love and the dread of violence in a very "Days of Heaven" fashion. The perceptive camera fills in the silent gaps of the inarticulate characters, between parents and their teens, between parents and between teens. The sins of the parents are literally visited on the children. The action is moved along not by theatrically explosive explication but by the existential choice that each character makes, even as one gently points out that his passivity at a key point was a choice. Using cinema as a storytelling technique, the director unveils these choices visually."

Michelle Forbes as Mrs Voss in Dandelion:

"From the beautiful shots of Idaho fields to the perfectly understated acting, Dandelion is its own greatest compliment. The editing, although only using very few techniques succeeds in making the most powerful transitions possible. As well, for a movie of its length and bare bones story it is amazing that the film never feels boring. Most directors would have felt like making Dandelion a short, but in its full length one can see its true colors. Anyone who watches independent film will not be surprised by the plot, but the beauty with which Dandelion executes the simple story is a testament to artistic film making."

"I found this film to be intriguing. I relate to these characters and the place they find themselves stuck in. I appreciate the use of metaphor (guy at the train tracks, the beating a tractor with a shovel)and found the cinematography to be beautiful. The actors did a fantastic job of telling the story of these characters. I found each to develop through a series of emotions. Hurting, Angry, Happy, Good natured, fearless in the face of difficulty, honest, frightening, dangerous, under pressure, heart broken, in love, and many more I can't list here. This film is nothing like any other film and cannot be grouped with any other, it stands along in its expressiveness and investigation of the human condition. I think they have really created and captured something here and it takes someone with the ability for sensitive and artistic observation to catch it, slow down otherwise you won't get it."

"The cinematography is breathtaking."

What the critics are saying

"A Search for Human Connections in a West Where the Land Is Bleak and the Lives Are, Too
In a movie filled with long, pensive silences as the camera slowly pans over the land and sky, the characters' reluctance to speak borders on affectation. The cinematographer Tim Orr finds a bleak magnificence reminiscent of the cosmic melancholy evoked by Nestor Almendros's camera in Terrence Malick's "Days of Heaven." The teenage protagonist of "Dandelion," Mason Mullich (Vincent Kartheiser), is a milky-skinned John-Boy Walton type mired in hopelessness. The film's opening scenes observe him alone in a field putting a gun into his mouth and rehearsing his suicide."
Source: nytimes.com

"Dandelion is one of those rare movies about and for teenagers that's driven by real human drama rather than by ancillary sales of soundtrack CDs and videogames. Milgard and his uniformly excellent team of actors invest the story with such emotional richness that, early on, we sense these characters are worth spending time with."
Source: variety.com

"There's nothing particularly earth-shattering about this gentle drama — there are no shocking revelations, no sudden explosions of violence — but Milgard has an unerring sense for the quietly dramatic. He's also got excellent taste in music — the soundtrack includes songs by Cat Power, Sparklehorse and Doves — while Tim Orr, who captured the real grit of New York City's Lower East Side in RAISING VICTOR VARGAS, and brought grace and beauty to David Gordon Green's otherwise overrated GEORGE WASHINGTON and ALL THE REAL GIRLS, just might be the best young cinematographer working today."
Source: tvguide.com

Director: Mark Milgard
Writers: Mark Milgard, Robb Williamson & Richard Murphy
Original Music by Robb Williamson
Cinematography by Tim Orr
Film Editing by Amy E. Duddleston

Cast
Mason Mullich - Vincent Kartheiser
Danny Voss - Taryn Manning
Luke Mullich - Arliss Howard
Layla Mullich - Mare Winningham
Eddie - Blake Heron
Mrs. Voss - Michelle Forbes
Uncle Bobby - Marshall Bell
Arlee - Shawn Reaves

Durham County Nominated for three DGC Awards

2010-07-08T11:09:00.000+02:00

The Directors Guild of Canada (DGC) announced the 2010 DGC Awards nominees. Durham County scored three nominations:

* BEST DIRECTION - TV SERIES
Adrienne Mitchell for Durham County - "Little Lost Children"

* BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN - TV SERIES
Donna Noonan for Durham County - "Little Lost Children"

* BEST PICTURE EDITING - TV SERIES
Teresa De Luca for Durham County - "Little Lost Children"

Congrats to the Durham County gang :)

The ceremony takes place Saturday, September 25, 2010 at the regal Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto.

On Set of Durham County

2010-06-18T21:16:00.001+02:00

On set of Durham County Season 2, Alex Cardillo (Mark Verrity), shooting with screen mom, Michelle Forbes (Pen Verrity):

Durham County DVD Edition

2010-06-12T13:14:00.005+02:00

* The DVD cover of the Canadian S2 edition (release date July 27, 2010), as it appears on amazon.ca:

* Adrienne Mitchell and Janis Lundman wrote on their facebook site that we'll get "some great behind the scenes interviews".
I compiled for ye'll a little teaser picture, taken from the (meanwhile taken down) extra features videos on the official durhamcounty.ca web site.
I'm in fact clueless about what we might see on the DVD:

Btw, Australia has already released a S2 DVD of Durham County if I'm not mistaken.

* A short overview of S1 DVD editions in other regions: Canada, USA, France (multilanguage English and French), Australia. Germany (multi-language English and German): release date 6. August 2010.

And finally, Amazon customers about the S1 DVD:
* A brilliant piece of storytelling. This is extremely intelligent, bleak, thrilling noir, with a great deal of subtext into dynamics between men and women, and male violence toward women. The writing is exemplary, as is the cinematography and performances. ... The best piece of television storytelling I've seen since The Wire.
* It's a great crime drama that I am really surprised hasn't had any advertising on any other channel. It has great characters with depth, mystery/crime plots, along with some family drama, great sets, slightly creepy, sometimes super creepy, great acting...what can I say, I love the show. I am so thrilled to have a second season coming out...
* A "killer" series!

Update :: DVD releases Season 2:
* Canada: 27 July 2010 (NTSC, amazon.ca)
* Europe: 20 October 2010 (PAL, amazon.fr)
* USA: November 2010 (NTSC, amazon.com)

Michelle Forbes - Durham County - Golden Nymph in Monaco

2010-06-10T22:55:00.006+02:00

Tonight at the Monte-Carlo TV festival, Michelle Forbes won the Golden Nymph Award - Outstanding Actress - Drama TV Series, for her performance in Durham County season 2. In absentia.
The annually held Monte-Carlo TV festival honours the best in international TV programming, on a magnificent location, the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco, at the French Riviera. And she wasn't (t)here :((

Congratulations to Michelle Forbes and to the creators of Durham County!

More winners:
Outstanding drama series Europe: Forbrydelsen II/ The Killing (woohoo!!)
Oustanding drama series international: Mad Men (AMC)
Outstanding actress mini-series: Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander - Millennium Trilogy

Friday update by Chris&Ekström@airport, list of Golden Nymph winners 2010:

CATÉGORIE FILMS DE TELEVISION
Meilleur Film de télévision : Goldfish (NHK Japan Broadcasting Corporation) - Japon
Meilleure Mise en scène : Vera Glagoleva pour One War - Russie
Meilleur Acteur : Pierre Vernier, dans Farewell De Gaulle, Farewell - France
Meilleure Actrice : Julie Walters, pour Mo - Grande-Bretagne

CATÉGORIE MINI-SÉRIES
Meilleure Mini-Série : Once Upon a Time The City of Fools - Italie
Meilleure Actrice : Noomi Rapace, dans Millenium - Suède
Meilleur Acteur : Fabrizio Gifuni, dans Once Upon a Time The City of Fools - Italie

CATÉGORIE SÉRIES DRAMATIQUES
Meilleur Acteur : Michael C. Hall, dans Dexter - Etats-Unis
Meilleure Actrice : Michelle Forbes, dans la saison 2 de Durham County - Canada
Meilleur Producteur International : Lionsgate, pour Mad Men - Etats-Unis
Meilleur Producteur Européen : Danish Broadcasting Corporation, pour The Killing II - Danemark

CATÉGORIE SÉRIES COMIQUES
Meilleur Acteur : Steve Carell, dans The Office - Etats-Unis
Meilleure Actrice : Diana Amft, dans Le Journal de Meg - Allemagne
Meilleur Producteur International : NBC Universal, pour 30 Rock - Etats-Unis
Meilleur Producteur Européen : BBC Productions, pour The Thick of It - Grande-Bretagne

Durham County News

2010-06-04T15:47:00.004+02:00

* Durham County season 2 fan video, set to the song "Bitter" by Remy Zero. Focuses on Mike/Pen, contains spoilers for S2. Check it out:

* Janis Lundman and Adrienne Mitchell, two of the DC producers, have a facebook site:
http://www.facebook.com/DurhamCountyTV
.... and a Twitter account:
http://twitter.com/DurhamCountyTV

* Durham County 2 - Behind the scenes with the crew:

Source: Facebook DC

---> "Anchor bay is doing an incredible job of packaging the DVD of season 2. Some great behind the scenes interviews in store for fans." :)

* Reminder: The series Durham County S2 and Michelle Forbes and Hugh Dillon are nominated for the Golden Nymph Award at the upcoming Monte Carlo TV Festival (the winner will be announced June 10th). As far as I know no one of the crew or actors will be attending :(
They don't know the Grimaldi Forum, do they? You'll miss a beautiful location, guys!

* Durham County season 3, without Michelle, but hey, that's the fate when playing the killer:
- "In the heart-stopping third season of Durham, Mike Sweeney’s new task force investigates the brutal murder of two young boys along the 401 highway corridor, while one of their own officers struggles to bury a dangerous secret."
- " Durham County 3 airs on HBO Canada (Movie Central & The Movie Network) this fall!" - "As season 3 is shot in the fall and into the winter, we think its going to work well airing in the fall. Put the fire on, get a glass of red wine, and descend into the wonderful madness of Durham."
* EXCLUSIVE PICTURES** Durham County - Season 3

* Clips from Durham County - Seasons 1 & 2, a compilation by Back Alley Films:

Update ::
The second season of Durham County will come out on DVD July 27th, 2010 in Canada. You can pre-order DC on the Canadian portal of Amazon.

Collectormania Milton Keynes

2010-05-29T00:13:00.008+02:00

Collectormania, Milton Keynes (UK). Three days signing & photo shoots.

Today at the Stadium:MK:

Update :: tomorrow, Sunday:

Sunday fan reactions (blogs, forums, twitter):

* No question, Michelle made my day and was the friendliest guest! She was amazing. Just a short conversation but when I said "I'm so glad you came over" she said "I'm so glad you came."
* Oh I loved Michelle, she was so friendly and I got talking to her about her role in True Blood and how much sexy dancing she had to do XD We had a laugh about that.
* i was very happy how close she allowed me in the photo shoot, she is gorgeous, lovely person
* I was keen to meet Michelle Forbes as a big fan of TV show Homicide Life on the Street and she was amused when I told her my friends and I thought she was really hot when we watched it back in the 90's, thankfully I managed to add she still looked great. She semed so friendly and her photoshoot was great ( her hands were so warm it was like a radiator on my shoulder ).
* she looked as always stunning, and she was very friendly and polite, smily, Im even thinking of a repeat visit ;-)
* her laugh is SO amazing. She's just so amazing. She really took time to talk to us. She thought we were CRAZY for coming all the way from Amsterdam just for her. And when we took a picture with her she told us to 'relax! youre not at the dentist!' I'll post a full update (incl pic) when I get back... Right now... Im just.. SO...IN...LOVE
* Woah michelle forbes actually came to me to give me a hug!!!! And then she asked me if I was having a good time and OMG I love her!!!
* Michelle Forbes was lovely! She told me the best things are small a la Audrey Hepburn b/c she towered over me in the photo. Lol!
* Met michelle forbes at collectormania: milton keynes and oh my god. Not only was she stunning but one of the friendliest, nicest people ever
* And Michelle Forbes was gorgeous and sooo tall!!
* Ohmyohmy! Michelle Forbes is one of the nicest, sweetest celebs I've ever met.
* One of the best moments of today. Chaske Spencer walking past Michelle Forbes and fangirling "Omg she's here? She's AWESOME!"
* She is indeed absolutely gorgeous. And so nice and friendly that I can't even hate her for it, dammit. If you get the chance to see her, go do it.
* I'm now a huge fan of Michelle Forbes. She's lovely ! <3
* michelle was lovely, gorgeous, polite and smily

This picture was posted on twitter, with an embed option:

Source: twitpic

* My god, was she amazing!!! Just so friendly and warm.
* Michelle Forbes is one of the nicest, funniest & most intelligent actors I've ever met. Great job doing creepy on TB
* I also thought Michelle was awesome! When I went to get my autograph she noticed that I was wearing short sleeves and said, "You must be freezing" and she rubbed my arms to help me get warm ... Shortly after, during her photoshoot she saw me and said "have you warmed up yet?" ... Definitely my favourite guest of the day.
* Michelle Forbes - gorgeous, very friendly and welcoming in the photo shoot, and still friendly (if frazzled!) when I went to get her autograph (she'd done several hundred by then).

Update :: Monday@MK:
Signing from 10 am - ~ 5 pm, signing zone D - 12
Photo shoots, booth A: 12:05 - 12:35

P.S.: Ekström sends survival kit to Michelle:

* FYI, Michelle Forbes is utterly GORGEOUS in RL! Photos and TV don't do her any justice.
* As for Michelle, she shook my big hairy hand in her two lovely delicate ones and they were like toast! I jst could not resist and after telling her that we really enjoyed her run in TRUE BLOOD, I said that she was totally gorgeous! She thanked me and gave that 'perfect white teeth' smile of hers. What a real lady.
* Michelle Forbes. Well what can I say. Very friendly, very chatty, she shook my hand in both of hers and I suddenly felt vey warm!! Damned sexy woman.
* Michelle really made my day, being so genuinely interested and friendly. Definately the best, loved her in Star Trek and 24 now an even bigger fan.
* I know I've said this elsewhere, but she really was everything you guys have said and more! Lovely, warm, funny and just a wonderful person all round, she loved meeting everyone and was worried about everyone else being cold a pleasure all round.
*Michelle was lovely wasn't she, an amazing lady all round ::Michelle was as you say an amazing lady - looking fantastic (wish I'd look that good at that age) and really nice to talk to and said hello and smiled at us when we saw her in the morning ::Showmasters please bring her back to another show!!!!!

AMC's The Killing - Status Update

2010-05-16T15:52:00.003+02:00

* The Killing has got an official »» IMDb page.

* Filming of the pilot started last week in Vancouver.

* The cast known so far:
Michelle Forbes - Mitch Larsen (victim's mother)
Brent Sexton - Stan Larsen (victim's father)
Mireille Enos - Sarah Linden (DCI)
Bill Campbell - Richmond (the politician)
Liam James - Jack Linden (Sarah's boy)
Kristin Lehman - Gwen Eaton (campaign advisor)
Brandon Jay McLaren - Bennet Ahmed (school teacher)
Eric Ladin - Jamie Dempsey (campaign manager)
Chad Willett - Rick Felder (Sarah's boyfriend)
Richard Harmon - Jasper Ames (Rosie's ex-boyfriend)
Gharrett Patrick Paon - Kris Emerson (??)
Seth Isaac Johnson - Denny Larsen (Larsen boy)
Evan Bird - Tom Larsen (Larsen boy)
Jamie Anne Allman - (Mitch's sister)
Joel Kinnaman - Holder (Sarah's co-worker)

Mikkel Bondesen - executive producer
Shana Fischer Huber - associate producer
Veena Cabreros Sud - executive producer
Patty Jenkins - Director

* AMC created a »» twitter account for The Killing.

* No official announcement yet if the series will go into production.

AMC's Killing Forbrydelsen

2010-04-15T23:57:00.000+02:00

Forbrydelsen ensemble cast

Hollywood Reporter announces that Michelle has been cast in AMC's The Killing pilot, a remake of the formidable Danish series Forbrydelsen.

In Forbydelsen, investigator Sarah Lund/Linden(US version) prepares for a new life in Sweden. Just before she leaves, a girl is murdered, and a police investigation is launched. In the AMC version, the events move from Copenhagen to Seattle, with Michelle playing the victim's mother Mitch Larsen (Pernille in the original). We're, as yet, clueless as to who will be cast as Sarah.

Pernille, the mother

The Killing ties together three distinct stories by a single murder and as the detectives assigned to the case disagree about the best course of action, they chase down a variety of leads and suspects. Along the way there are major repercussions for the victim's family, the detectives, the suspects, and the local politicians connected to the case. It is an exploration of Seattle politics; a unique portrayal of a victim's grieving family, and a study of the personal life of a cop. There are no accidents in The Killing. Everyone has a secret, and while our characters think they've moved on, their past isn't done with them.
Source: blogs.amctv.com

The pilot will be directed by Patty Jenkins (Monster) and with Veena Sud (Cold Case) and Mikkel Bondesen (Burn Notice) as executive producers.

The victim's family

Golden Nymph Awards

2010-04-09T17:35:00.002+02:00

The Monte Carlo Television Festival announced the nominations for the Golden Nymph Awards 2010.

I'm absolutely thrilled to report:
* Nominated in the category Outstanding Actress - Drama TV Series: Michelle Forbes, Durham County Season 2.
* Nominated in the category Outstanding International Producer - Drama TV Series: Janis Lundman, Adrienne Mitchell, Laurie Finstad Knizhnik and Michael Prupas for Durham County Season 2.
* Also nominated Hugh Dillon for Outstanding Actor.

The festival will be held June 6 to 10. The 'Golden Nymphs' are honoring the best of worldwide television programming.

Canada, eh

2010-04-01T21:12:00.006+02:00

* Watch the Zack Taylor Interview with Michelle who is currently in Toronto, CA:

ZackTaylor.ca Interviews Michelle Forbes

She can't talk yet about her upcoming project (they'll be filming in Vancouver) - ....

* And more news: Durham County season 2 coming to DVD
DVD, eh !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

* Update ::
Michelle on 'The Hour' (CBC)

Go here to watch the video:
http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/

Spring

2010-03-21T01:53:00.001+01:00

Since it's the first day of spring today (in the Northern Hemisphere), and to let you all know that we're still alive, I thought of posting some pictures.

(Click to enlarge the pictures)

Saturn Awards Nomination

2010-02-19T20:48:00.001+01:00

I'm glad to announce that Michelle is nominated for Best Guest Starring Role in Television for her role on "True Blood" in the 36th Annual Saturn Awards. Michelle's fellow nominees are: Bernard Cribbins for "Doctor Who: The End of Time", Raymond Cruz for "Breaking Bad", John Lithgow for "Dexter", Leonard Nimoy for "Fringe" and Mark Pellegrino for "Lost. "True Blood" is also nominated in four other categories including Best Cable Television Series and Best Actor/Actress in Television (Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin respectively). "Battlestar Galactica" also landed a nomination for Best Cable Series.

The ceremony will be held on June 24 in Burbank, California. The full list of nominees.

Just to remind you, if you live in the UK, the 2nd season of "True Blood" will premiere on FX next weekend.

While waiting, take a peek at Michelle's 3-part interview with SKY TV.

Michelle in the UK

2010-02-08T19:43:00.003+01:00

This afternoon in London, live on BBC Radio 5 - Michelle talked about In Treatment, True Blood and more:

I listened at work - if you missed it, you can download the interview from the BBC site ... link dead, sorry.

On Saturday Michelle accepted an award for True Blood at the SFXWeekender:

SAG Pictures

2010-01-24T18:20:00.001+01:00

Michelle Forbes yesterday at the 16th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards (SAG) 2010 in L.A.:

* Tonite on ION 'Durham County', episode 5: 'Boys Do Things'

Bellissima in Bianco e Nero

2010-01-18T23:54:00.003+01:00

Michelle was reunited with her True Blood co-stars at the HBO Golden Globes' after party last night, Jan 17.

Pictured below with co-stars Anna Paquin and Deborah Ann Woll (with whom she shares the screen in the upcoming film Highland Park)

SFX Weekender

2010-01-16T16:45:00.001+01:00

Michelle will be appearing on Saturday, Feb 6th, at the SFX Weekender in Camber Sands holiday camp in East Sussex, UK. Hosted by SFX magazine, the con's premise is the ultimate experience for every sci-fi fan. According to the news announcement, Michelle is be presenting a Golden Raygun award and holding a Q & A.

Tickets are said to be selling out fast, but you can still try getting them here. Let us know if you'll be attending.

AFI Awards and In Treatment Coming to DVD (UK)

2010-01-16T06:02:00.000+01:00

Here they are! First pictures of Michelle Forbes in the roaring 2010!

The year has already begun with the AFI Awards' honorary luncheon in LA yesterday. Every year The American Film Institute celebrates outstanding work in film and television during the past year. True Blood has been chosen as one of the best TV programs. In its rationale, AFI singles out "Michelle Forbes' brilliant performance as Maryann Forrester[,] the magnetic center of an audacious and orgiastic season that [...] asks penetrating questions about what it is to be human - to desire, to discriminate and to dig deep into the delights of television."

Pictured below with co-stars Sam Trammell and Carrie Preston:

click onto the images for higher quality

***

Season 1 of In Treatment will be out on DVD in the UK on February 1st. You can pre-order it on amazon.co.uk.

The series has reportedly been picked up for a 3rd season. Production should begin early this year. Let's hope that Michelle will be back as Kate. :)

Happy Birthday, Michelle Forbes!

2010-01-08T01:44:00.001+01:00

Happy birthday, Michelle - have a wonderful day and a fabulous year!

Love,
your fans and watchers, geeks, nerds and pirates

Tragedy, Laughter and Acceptance

2010-01-05T06:48:00.042+01:00

Below are the best parts of another insightful interview with Michelle on Durham County:

"The beauty of her acting is that we see the character, not the actress...she disappears behind their personalities. 'My [project] choices are instinctual a lot of the time,' she said.

'[Pen Verrity's] confronted with her own failures as a wife, a mother, a psychiatrist. Pen's so far gone; she's drowning...'

'It's still not acceptable for women to express outrage,' she said. 'It's just not socially acceptable. They're expected to keep a lid on it.'

'[Finstad]'s not afraid to walk boldly into this world,' Forbes said. 'She's able to show the frail, dark side of the human condition...'

'...I wanted to be part of [DC],' she said.'It was something you won't find in Hollywood, which I love.'

...despite the serious nature of Durham County, 'The great thing is Laurie and Adrienne have such a great sense of humor, and Michelle Forbes has an incredible sense of humor...'

'My way of dealing with tragedy is laughter...Directors sometimes worry when they see me laughing before a scene.'"
Source: chicagonow.com

Police shows are almost always just about the crimes. But what are the psychic after-effects? That's what we're exploring.

Note: Dear reader, you may have noticed that this and the previous post
have been edited a number of times. I received a bollocking by Chris, [-: I've quoted too much. - Randy

Michelle Shines in Durham County

2010-01-05T02:54:00.009+01:00

Season 2 of Durham County has just aired and there are already two interviews with Michelle. Enjoy!

"On Durham County you play a very conflicted woman - part victim/part villain and very sad -what do you think of Pen Verrity?
Michelle Forbes: It was an amazing opportunity to play someone as tricky and as complicated as Pen, and how [series creator] Laurie Finstad-Knizhnik came up with this character, I have no idea. But I think Laurie takes a cold stark look at true womanhood on many different levels, including the ugly parts of being female that we don’t want to look at. I think one of the things that fascinated me the most is what happens to a woman’s psychology when she’s not a good mother. It’s the one thing you are biologically predisposed to do, and if you don’t have that maternal instinct, what happens to you psychologically when you fail at being a mother and at being a wife? She truly explores the darker side of what happens to us as human beings.

What do you think makes this series so special?
I think that Adrienne [Mitchell], Laurie and Janice [Lundman] have an uncompromising vision. They want to explore the darker aspects of our humanity and they do it with a beautiful visual style. They have a unique voice that belongs just to them and they haven’t had to compromise it yet. So I think it’s just their voice. that’s what makes Durham different. And Adrienne Mitchell’s visual stamp - that bleak landscape sort of lends itself to the story and created a full environment for it...

What have been some of your favorite roles?
There have been so many. I would say those on Homicide: Life on the Street, True Blood and In Treatment."
Source: channelguidemagblog.com

[...]“I thought [Durham County] was so visually stunning and haunting - the music was haunting, the visuals were haunting - I had to be a part of it,” Forbes said... “It was something outside of the Hollywood box, which I love. It was psychologically daring, and I am really, really pleased and proud to be a part of it.”

[...] “I don’t like the ‘Twin Peaks’ parallel,” Forbes said. “A lot of people have said that, and I’m a little perplexed by it. It’s misleading. People expect to see a Log Lady. ‘Twin Peaks’ is one of the most phenomenal series America’s ever produced, and I think ‘Durham County’ is fantastic. They’re just not anything alike.”

[...] “It was an entirely new group of actors and an entirely different production team,” she said. “Because I’ve been around so long, it’s rare to walk onto a set and not know half the people, whether they’re crew or actors. But it was delightful to walk into an entirely new company and not know anyone. I love walking into new companies and countries and cultures. It was very different in that sense, having the Canadian outlook.”
Source: BostonHerald.com

Following last night's premiere, what (some) people are saying (while others remains speechless):

oh man, you'll love it. Michelle is scary amazing as Pen.
Watching Durham County. So far, highly recommended
Creepy, dark & twisty.
this Durham County shit is crazy!!!
It pains me that Durham County commercials say "True Blood's Michelle Forbes" and not "Homicide: Life on the Street's Michelle Forbes."
Source: twitter

Also, S2 of BSG has been acknowledged as one of the Top TV Seasons of the decade thanks to the wonderfully-written and performed story arc involving Admiral Cain.

#6. Battlestar Galactica, Season 2 (Sci-Fi, 2005-06)
Probably the most engrossed I've been by a TV series this decade...The characters all got deeper, darker, more complex, and the critiques (of the Iraq war, specifically) never more trenchant.

Top Episode: "Resurrection Ship, Part 2," where the conflict between Adama and Michelle Forbes's Admiral Cain came to a chilling conclusion.
Source: Low Resolution Blogspot

(9) Season Two is Battlestar Galactica at its best...the "Pegasus" saga, where another Battlestar commanded by the royal c-word Admiral Cain (played to perfection by Michelle Forbes of Star Trek: TNG and Homicide) shows up and starts really ****ing everything up. These episodes really could be the best of the whole series.
Source: www.cultureblues.com

Durham County 2nd Season US Premiere Only Days Away

2009-12-31T14:46:00.001+01:00

Michelle Forbes is not the kind of actor who avoids variety and challenging roles. If you liked her as the tough Admiral Cain in Battlestar Galactica, the enchanting Maryann in True Blood or the lovely but troubled Kate in In Treatment, you should definitely add Pen Verrity from Durham County to the mix. A new, challenging role takes her to the award winning Canadian series with an unique, dark and realistic tone. The first season, which contains 6 episodes, anatomized male violence through the story of Detective Mike Sweeney (Hugh Dillon) and investigated how it affected us. Michelle joins the cast in the second season as Pen Verrity, the sexy, mysterious forensic psychiatrist, who has more skeletons in her closet, than we can imagine. Women can be as nasty as men, that’s for sure.

Penelope is quite troubled, to say the least, because of what’s happening and because of some trauma that had not been dealt with or transformed when she was younger,” {…}. “All of this comes bubbling to the surface. There’s a certain fracturing of her soul and her mind, and she’s desperately trying to grab onto Mike Sweeney.” said Forbes. This character is not less complex than she played before. “I was really seduced by the darkness of it, by the truth of it. Laurie Finstad (Knizhnik), our writer, has this extraordinary ability to hold up this frail, human dark side of ourselves and confront it. That was what was so compelling to me and made me jump at the chance to be a part of it.
Source: Tv,eh?

The writing is extraordinary, sensitive and very expressive, as is the cinematography. The show is perfectly cast, which adds to its quality. Every part of the production seem to work flawlessly. Michelle plays Pen Verrity with much complexity. Her ability to express a dozen emotions in one look comes to the surface now more than ever before. As we witness Pen desperately try to control herself and others, we constantly swing between feelings of hate, pity, love, sympathy, frustration towards her. She leaves us in a daze. If you thought Maryann was scary, you haven’t seen anything yet. Durham County challenged my intelligence and I loved it.

Switch your television on on Sunday, January 3 from 9:00 – 11:00 PM, ET and tune into ION Television and watch the second season of Durham County which launches with episodes 1 and 2 back to back. In case you missed the beginning of the story, they’ve set up a marathon of the first season on January 2. - Akima

Pre-order DC Season 1 from Amazon.com. (Available from January 19th, 2010)

Here's a мищка joining us and our polar friends in wishing all a peaceful end to 2009, and a strong start to 2010!

Happy Holidays

2009-12-24T13:34:00.003+01:00

Season's greetings from Chris and yours truly, from Amsterdam and Dublin, to everyone, our readers, our contributors. Thank you so much for participating in your own unique way.

We wish you all a holiday filled with happiness, love, warmth, and bellies full of wonderful food.

There's no snow in Dublin yet so I had to fake it a little bit. You may click on the picture to see it falling. :)

Emotional Impact

2009-12-19T23:29:00.004+01:00

"Emilie Lopez : Vous avez tourné dans de nombreuses séries particulièrement appréciées du public. Êtes-vous habituée au succès?

Michelle Forbes : J’ai vraiment eu de la chance d’être dans de telles séries, auxquelles je croyais et que j’aimais. Après avoir passé 16 à 18 heures par jour, parfois 6 jours par semaine à faire ces histoires, et que tu vois l’impact qu’elles ont sur le public, que tu vois tout le monde tellement excité à l’idée de te rencontrer, que tu les voies si respectueux, comme cela peut-il t’énerver ? C’est ce que l’on fait, c’est ce pour quoi on travaille pendant des jours et des jours : avoir un impact émotionnel sur le public. Donc quand cela arrive, c’est toujours extrêmement touchant."
Source: toutelatele.com

My attempt to translate it. I apologise in advance for any mistakes.
"You have played in many TV shows which are particularly appreciated. Do you get used to success?

I was indeed lucky to be part of shows in which I believed in and which I loved. After working 16 to 18 hours a day, sometimes 6 days a week, creating these stories, and seeing the impact that they have on the public, when you see everybody so keen with the idea to meet you, and how respectful they are, how does this thrill you? That's what you do, that's why you're working day after day, to have an emotional impact on the audience. Because when this happens, it's always incredibly touching."

I'd like to say that it's equally moving as a viewer how Michelle Forbes makes us laugh and cry, scream and lament, or squee with delight. And sometimes let us become absolutely silent.
How does she achieve this? What is her secret, what are the techniques to attract, engage, and fascinate us?

Since it's quiet on the blog in these December days, you'll get an unrelated Sunday picture. Yesterday in Amsterdam, on my way to work. Tonight it's bitterly cold, and it's snowing :)

The Salzburg Connection

2009-12-16T02:32:00.001+01:00

From the series "Load of Bollocks" we're glad to bring two more 18th century music videos to your attention. Lots of Michelle scenes from True Blood, Messiah, Durham County, In Treatment, Wonderland, Swimming with Sharks and Battlestar Galactica to Pop music from 1785, disrespectfully mashed up.
Rebecca's video was first, then I've cut all eeeek-moments and replaced them by cute scenes.

Rebecca's video:

My (= Chris') video:

Anyone else into ancient Austrian pop music layered with scifi, crime, psychodrama and a gorgeous actress?
Well, as long as Michelle doesn't hurry up and grab a role in a period drama, we're forced to make our own show :)

Wonderland Revisited

2009-12-12T01:19:00.007+01:00

Wonderland is an eight part television series, a gritty and realistic portrayal of the doctors and patients of the fictional psychiatric Rivervue Hospital in New York City. Wonderland first aired on ABC in the spring of 2000, but because of its controversal story, its dark tone and intense nature, it was taken off the air after only two episodes. - In Europe all eight episodes could be watched on various French, Scandinavian and Swiss TV channels.
In the US DirecTV's 101 network aired the entire series in January 2009, complemented by opening commentaries by series creator, producer and writer Peter Berg, and provided with a different music score.

Episode 3: Sanity.
(This was episode 1 in the US)

Intro. Madonna, humming. Group therapy.
Lupinta: "Sometimes I slap someone or stump with my foot when I'm angry ..."
"I just ... I just..."
"I love my wife, you should never hurt or frighten or hit ...
"Be kind."
"I AM KIND."

7 A.M. in New York City. 'The Little Drummer Boy' introduces this episode. The song will also end it.
'Come they told me, pa rum pa pum pum // A new born King to see, pa rum pa pum pum.'
A couple make love. Feet on a scale. Staten Island Ferry. Yoga exercises. Children brushing their teeth.The hospital awakens.

I was trying to tell the story of this Wonderland episode. I can't. You need to watch it. Please do. And if possible try to get the original version with the original music score.

The ending. Group again. Lapinta: "I know it's not yet but I'm feeling a pretty strong sense of Merry Christmas. I've got a feeling of love. You know, it's so hard to get in that touch of love ... where you really feel that this is a regular part of who you are.
That's what I want. That's what I wanna work on. Being with my love, living with my love..
I'd need help with that. - I was wondering if you could help me with that."

Main cast:
Ted Levin - Dr. Robert Banger
Michelle Forbes - Dr. Lyla Garrity
Michael Jai White - Dr. Derrick Hatcher
Billy Burke - Dr. Abe Matthews
Martin Donovan - Dr. Neil Harrison
Michelle Barker - Julie McCray
Patricia Clarkson - Tammy Banger
Leland Orser - Wendall Rickle

Series creator: Peter Berg

Quote from Wonderland, Dr. Rober Banger:
" When the pressures of modern society become too great for a person, when one's chemical dynamic becomes such that they are unbalanced, that they cease painting within the lines, they come to us. These are the people that society would prefer just go away -- the shadow people. The shadow people that project upon us their shadow and remind us just how tenuous mental health is. Our worst fears. They remind us how easy it can be to slip."

Wonderland isn't for everybody. It is visually demanding and stunning. And it is honest, authentic, realistic and true.

----------------

"The best one-season wonders of the ’00s -
Wonderland (ABC, 2000) Peter Berg’s first TV series was often too frenetic by half, but in its dedication to showing a mental hospital The Way It Really Is, the series sported a verisimilitude that few shows even dare approach. Filled with actors who went on to flit through numerous other acclaimed series of the decade—Michelle Forbes and Martin Donovan, to name two—Wonderland could be darkly humorous, but it was often just dark, willing to go to places of bleak despair. Since it was kind of like a major-network Oz, and since it was on after Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, it was quickly shown the door, though DirecTV’s Channel 101 has broadcast the previously unaired episodes."
Source: avclub.com

"It isn’t about ruptured spleens and heart attacks. It’s about the mentally ill, the psychotics and schizophrenics and the severely depressed. It’s about the doctors who take care of these special cases, the so-called gatekeepers holding the barbarians back from society.
Produced, written and directed by Peter Berg (himself an alum of “Chicago Hope,” as well as an independent filmmaker), “Wonderland” is a riveting if challenging bit of television. Berg and a team of writers spent months at New York’s Bellevue hospital, where they were allowed to witness and interview doctors working with the mentally ill."

"To further the effect of being in what is essentially an asylum, Berg uses hand-held cameras and lets the actors improvise when needed. This gives “Wonderland” a gritty, realistic feel. But the technique also adds a sense of chaos to the viewing experience. Watching “Wonderland” is a sensory overload, as patients scream at the top of their lungs, bang on things, turn TV channels rapidly and provide a kind of non-stop white noise over the show’s dialogue."

"I wasn’t totally shocked. This profession is 90% discouragement. It’s 90% rejection and disappointment and bad reviews or people dismissing your work or ignoring it. It’s really not even 10% of the time where you get the rewards." (Martin Donovan)

"Actually, because of some of the work I've done in the past, I was fairly familiar with it. I did a series about 10 years ago, called Wonderland, for ABC, that was set in Bellevue Hospital in New York, and I played the psychiatrist heading the emergency room. So, for quite a while I hung out with forensic psychiatrists, and spent a lot of time speaking to their patients. I once spoke to a man who killed his children ... so I had a fairly large grasp of that world."
Source: Michelle Forbes, theglobeandmail.com

"Dank einer quasi-dokumentarischen Kameraführung und tollen Schauspielern - darunter Ted Levine, Patricia Clarkson, Martin Donovan und Michelle Forbes - erreichte "Wonderland" 2000 eine Unmittelbarkeit und Vielschichtigkeit, die nur wenigen der hochgelobten Serien, die seither entstanden sind, eigen ist."

(I'm sorry but I lost some of the sources of the quoted reviews.)

The cast and crew attend the DIRECTV Premiere of Wonderland, January 2009:

En garde!

2009-12-06T18:51:00.004+01:00

True Blood

* And yet another interview with Michelle Forbes from Paris (series-tv.premiere.fr):

* En garde - Spiderman a votre service! Thanks to Akima for this Sunday bliss:

Durham County

"As great as the series is on the acting and writing side, its just as good on the filming side as well, the lighting, the flashbacks and looks into the minds of each character as they remember or imagine scenes, the ghosts that haunt them all appearing in certain places, the constant images of the powerlines, hinting that the electro magnetics of the powerlines are slowly driving everyone insane, just the whole thing is a huge iconic film noir style case study in how to shoot a film or a tv series to give it the very feel you want. Its just so brilliantly done it makes me almost slack jawed in complete and utter awe of its assault from all sides fo the creative spectrum at once. Truly a thing of wonder with no real equal."
Source: thelastangrycritic.blogspot.com

In Treatment UK

"- The first season run of 'In Treatment' ended today after 44 terrific episodes... This is one of the only shows that I have really been excited about seeing each night. I would go as far as to say; In Treatment is the best half-hour straight drama I have ever seen. I haven't done any research but, I can't honestly think of anything that it is comparable to.
- Seen them all so far - brilliant acting, scripts, direction. Top-quality drama."
Source: digitalspy.co.uk

Blog news inside

* We've got a new look&feel. Hope you like it :)
* iHelix takes a time out until Spring. Thanks, iHelix!
* In the background we're working on more 'Revisited' articles. And we'd love to plan even more. Let us know!

Un max de True Blood

2009-12-06T01:17:00.003+01:00

Michelle Forbes, Rutina Wesley, Sam Trammell and Alexander Skarsgard in Paris, November 2009

"A l'occasion du lancement sur Orange ciné max de la saison 2 de True Blood, Sophie Soulignac a rencontré en exclusivité les comédiens de la série lors de leur venue à Paris. «Un max de True Blood», c'est 26 minutes exceptionnelles d'informations, de révélations et de surprises autour de la série culte d'Alan Ball."

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Femme fatale - Femme fragile - Femme héroïque

2009-12-03T17:48:00.003+01:00

Six miniatures from a photo session with Michelle Forbes in Paris, November 2009, with the allusion of archetypal characters in literature, film and art, the femme fatale, the femme héroïque, and even a glimpse of a femme fragile.

Source: gettyimages.com

The housewife and mother, the business woman, the psychopath, the mentor and protector, the loner in modern society, the tomboy, the damaged soul, the heroïne - she plays them all, in stirring and blazing performances. One role, various voices and interpretations. Just when we're about to get comfy with one face of a character, she turns her role upside down and surprises us again.

Did she already play a femme fatale? I'm uncertain ...

Battlestar Galactica: Razor Revisited

2009-12-03T02:00:00.002+01:00

Sometimes we have to do things that we never thought we were capable of, if only to show the enemy our will. - Admiral Cain

I've to say that BSG is one of the very few contemporary series I have faithfully followed and been genuinely inspired and moved by. Admiral Cain, of course, is one of the landmark character in the BSG universe. The Pegasus episode, and the sound of her voice accompanied by the mellow, dream-like piece of soundtrack, marked the arrival of someone special, a character so incredibly present and intense. In me, she instilled so much emotion including fear, dislike as well as a sense of comfort as a strong, driven leader. The Pegasus story arc was albeit too brief. Luckily enough, the ship and the captain are revived in Razor, which is, well, incredible. It does make demands on the viewer by switching back between 3 time periods, and being told from the viewpoint of a never-before-seen character Kendra Shaw, but that makes the story even more compelling. Most importantly, we really get to know Cain and the forces that drive her. It's an excellent performance by Michelle, and the rest of the cast, a movie I often watch again and again.

Now, what do you like about Razor? - Randy
---
Moving portrayal of high emotions at times of distress true to the Battlestar Galactica style. You just can't be wrong with the writers of BSG. And you won't be disappointed with RAZOR. Michelle Forbes's acting as Admiral Helena Cain is once again bold, heartpounding and perfect; it goes on to illustrate the even tougher side of this leader, as well as the human side of her. Unlike all the other movies out there where a protagonist and antagonist stands out, there are no truly "good" or "evil" in RAZOR. And that's exactly the case with human society. Each character is uniquely portrayed with each of their own ambitions, fears, motives, strengths and weakenesses.
Source: IMDb.com

"Battlestar Galactica" has always been sci-fi at its best -- an exploration of politics and morality in their purest state: post-apocalypse...the Battlestar community is no longer a civilization in the traditional sense. All rules have been broken or bent beyond recognition. The necessities of war have stripped society down to its essence, for better and worse.
In "Razor," written by Michael Taylor, those issues and tensions are embodied by Cain and Shaw. How much collateral damage can the greater good afford? What is the greater good? How far is too far when survival is at stake, and what decisions will the soul simply refuse to bear?
...good science fiction has always dealt with that which plagues the poets and the playwrights -- the nature of love, the value of loyalty, the nature of power, the split-second decisions that change our lives. Shaw is not the only character haunted on "Battlestar Galactica." With its metallic blues and grays, its eerie lighting, echoing corridors and New Age drumbeats, the ship itself is ghostly at times, its inhabitants all damaged, by events and the choices they have made; resilience has become the new heroism.
Source: LA Times

When does the will turn malignant? When do the actions that a person takes to survive make that individual no longer worthy of the title “human”? When do the ends no longer justify the means?
Those are the questions that the reimagined “Battlestar Galactica” has asked for the past few years. And the genius of the series is that it asks these questions obliquely, without preaching or grandstanding. The solutions to these dilemmas aren’t easy, and the show doesn’t insult its audience by pretending that they are.
Source: Chicago Tribune, The Watcher

She became very misguided at that time [of Gina's betrayal]. I feel the actions that she took in that misguided place still were along the lines of what she felt she needed to do. And there’s nothing that she did that some world leader has not done.

It’s very painful, what she did to Gina. There was such a deep sadness, but [for her] duty overrides that sadness, otherwise things don’t get done. There’s a lot of sorrow [in Cain]. It was not a punishment as much of a means to an end...

What got left out of the TV version [of ‘Razor’] was what happened to Cain in the first Cylon war. She lost her family. That trauma at that young age is what shaped her. As a child, on her own, she had to find a way to survive and that was by hardening herself. In the TV version, you don’t get to see that. And if that hadn’t happened, who’s to say [who Cain would have become]?
Source: Chicago Tribune, Interview with Michelle

[Michelle]'s almost like a force of nature in a way. She's really - if she was just - just her focus and her intensity I have to say that working with her was one of the - she made this one of the easiest jobs I've ever done in a sense.
Because responding to what she provides on set as a fellow actor is absolutely effortless. It's like she does almost everything. You just have to listen to her and watch her. Yes, she's incredible. I recommended working with her to anyone. - Stephanie Jacobsen
Source:ugo.com

The story isn’t ultimately about what happens, but why. And that “why” has to be explored in terms of character rather than in terms of plot, which again has always been the essence of this show.

Cain skirts the boundary of the limits we set for our leaders, and indeed for ourselves, in wartime. She has the strength to inhabit that grey area and yet plunge ahead with black-and-white resolution. I think we find her conviction compelling, especially when we understand the kind of experience and choices that shaped it.
Source: Chicago Tribune, Michael Taylor Q&A

From the DVD commentary by Ronald D. Moore and Michael Taylor:

Origins
Razor began life with a phone call from the Home Video Department at Universal, saying they'd be interested in doing a project where we'd do two episodes for a one-time showing on SyFy and then have those almost immediately released on DVD...a stand-alone project, not tied in to the continuity of the show.

We were drawn to tell some sort of story from the past that we hadn't seen before...One idea we had involved Pegasus...and suddenly David Eick was like: “Pegasus Yeah!” and that was sort of our inspiration to focus on that.

Cain/Michelle
One of the treats...was revisiting Admiral Cain. I really wanted the chance to bring Michelle Forbes back...I was really happy that she was available and she was really happy to do it. She had just come in and created this indelible character...and it was great to go back and see who she was just before the attack. We had long conversations about who she was and where she came from, and what her attitudes were like.

One of the challenges of the character was that she was set up to be so hard core and so unflinching in the original Pegasus episode, so this was our opportunity to go back and humanise her a little bit, and show who she was as a person before all these events happened.
There were a couple of hints we sort of took up on this show to sort of expand...and enlarge her character...there was a sense [in the Pegasus story arc]...that maybe she and Adama had turned the corner and can now work together, that there was regret on her part for a number of the things she had done.

The thing about Michelle though, it's like Eddie, they're both such captains, I mean they're real captains on the set on each of their sides on the show...Michelle brings such an intensity to this role. She really inspired a lot of our other actors too.

When we did Pegasus and Resurrection Ship, as we were shooting, I remember all of us saying collectively:"Wow, it's a shame we're killing Admiral Cain and we're getting rid of her because she's so good...The whole series would've had to change fundamentally for her to stick around...It would've been a whole different show...it was never constructed to be that...There was always this general of 'what a shamE it is we couldn't have kept Admiral Cain and the Pegasus around a little bit longer'. And this was a great opportunity to go back and revisit a really rich area of the show.

Cain & Gina
There was also another aspect...the intensity for her hatred for Gina...where did that come from?
Cain seemed to have more than just commander's interest... in a scene in the original Pegasus episode...the moment she says: "She was close to us, she sat at our table"...the way Michelle played it, you really felt that...there was a real backstory.

Michelle Forbes called me: “So we're gonna do is, ah?...and this is part of who she is?” I said “yeah, how do you feel about that?” She said, “well, I'm surprised but I think it works. I just want to see what your intention was, and why...” and I talked to her on the phone for a little while and she said “...sounds good, let's do it,” and she just went for it.

We didn't want to make a villain out of a gay character. This was their relationship. This was who she was in love with.

There wasn't an actual love scene because we wanted to tell the story through Kendra's eyes.

...you make your choices and you live with them and in the end you are those choices.- Kendra Shaw

Durham County Season 2 Premiere on ION

2009-12-01T20:55:00.001+01:00

Finally!

“Durham County”, ION Television’s Critically Acclaimed Crime Series, to Launch Second Season as Two-Hour Premiere on Sunday, January 3, 2010

Network to Marathon Season One on Saturday, January 2; New Season Moves to Sunday Nights

“True Blood” and “In Treatment” Actress Michelle Forbes Joins “Durham County” Cast

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The lesson that “love hurts” is well learned by the characters who inhabit the eerie suburb of “Durham County,” when the second season of ION Television’s critically acclaimed original primetime series launches with a two-hour premiere on Sunday, January 3 from 9:00 – 11:00 PM, ET. A marathon of the series’ first season will precede the season two launch, airing from 5:00 – 11:00 PM, ET on Saturday, January 2. “Durham County,” which debuted this past fall, returns to the bleak and disturbing landscape of an alienated suburbia with a new star villain – Michelle Forbes, known for her intense portrayals on the hit HBO series “True Blood” and “In Treatment” this year. The show will be broadcast in its new regular timeslot at 10:00 PM, ET on Sundays beginning Sunday, January 10.

Produced by Muse Entertainment and Back Alley Films, “Durham County” unfolds season two in the aftermath of the devastating impact of serial killer Ray Prager (Romano Orzari) on the lives of its characters, anchored by Homicide Detective Mike Sweeney (Hugh Dillon, CBS’ “Flashpoint”), his now estranged wife Audrey (Hélène Joy) and their traumatized teenage daughter Sadie (Laurence Leboeuf). While the true villain of the first season turned out to be Sweeney’s former high school classmate and new neighbor, the evil threat in the second season comes from a woman who develops a close bond with Mike, the brilliant, but deeply troubled forensic psychiatrist Pen Verrity (Michelle Forbes). Rejected by her husband and grieving for a daughter we can’t be certain she didn’t kill, she sets her sights on having Mike Sweeney – at any cost.

“The successful debut of ‘Durham County’ fulfilled our expectations as our first original series, particularly among our key 25–54 demographic,” said Leslie Chesloff, Executive Vice President, Programming, ION Media Networks. “In season two, our protagonist is trying to keep his broken family together in the aftermath of a serial killer, while he is lured into an incredibly dangerous place by a seductive woman. Viewers will be on their seats wondering what Pen will do next, who she might target and whether Mike will realize the terrible threat she poses before it’s too late. Season two will be a real nail-biter!”

“Durham County” is written by Laurie Finstad-Knizhnik (“Bliss”) and helmed by directors Adrienne Mitchell, Alain DesRochers (Nitro) and Rachel Talalay (Terminal City). Michael Prupas (“Human Trafficking”) of Muse Entertainment and Janis Lundman and Adrienne Mitchell (“Bliss”) of Back Alley Films serve as executive producers. The series has received 13 Gemini Award nominations, including five wins: Best Actor for Justin Louis, Best Actress for Hélène Joy, Best Direction for Holly Dale, Best Writing for Laurie Finstad Knizhnik and Best Sound. In addition, the show was nominated for four Director’s Guild of Canada Awards, winning two and taking home the CFTPA’s Indie Award for “Best Dramatic Series.”

The program was also recognized with nominations from the Writer’s Guild of Canada and ACTRA Montreal. In a deal signed last January with ITV Global Entertainment, ION Television acquired the exclusive U.S. rights to the critically acclaimed and award-winning original TV series, “Durham County.” In addition, the network secured all U.S. television, digital media rights, internet streaming and video-on-demand rights for the program.

Source: businesswire.com

...and a little treat: a tune from Hugh Dillons's recently-released solo album 'Works Well With Others'. Available on iTunes. I can highly recommend. :)

The Mozart Connection

2009-12-01T02:38:00.000+01:00

A couple of days ago, Chris asked me to make a video to a period piece, the 3rd Movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto in E Flat, K. 482. I agreed, excited. What emerged is a compilation of, for me, memorable scenes from some of Michelle's roles in tune with the piece of music.

Later, for good measure, Chris decided to create her own video to bring forth her vision. It turned out to be much different from mine. It's remarkable how different moments have stayed with each of us. Mozart's jovial tune gets a remarkable treatment. And we both agree that Michelle would be excellent in a period piece. :)

For your enjoyment...

Chris's vision:

and mine:

Randy, waving from Dublin, and soon to be hidden behind James Joyce's 'Ulysses'.

Sunday Quiz: The Voice, Round 2

2009-11-29T05:35:00.001+01:00

Due to the unflinching dedication of our contributor, Akima, we are able to bring you yet another Sunday quiz. This time we have got another video full of sound clips from....that's your guess. If you found the former quiz difficult, then this one will be even more of a challenge. But do not flinch. There is a visual clue, a picture, which comes with each segment. Good luck and have a wonderful Sunday.

Dublin's finally signing off...zzzz.

More of Michelle in France

2009-11-26T19:14:00.004+01:00

This weeks edition of the L'Hebdo Séries programme on Canal + is dedicated to Michelle. L'Hebdo Séries brings you current TV news, interviews etc. in the scope of just 7 minutes...in French. Aside from featuring interviews with Michelle and Alexander Skarsgård on True Blood, the episode also announces the Global Frequency adaptation news. You can watch it online here.

Transcript of the Interview with Michelle:

Looking at her from the outside in, she could be seen as predatory, but, in playing her, standing in Maryann's heart and her body for so many months, I never felt that. It was always a loving gesture. It's just different. It's a different kind of love than what we're used to.

Like any good writer, he [Alan Ball] raises the questions, and he lets the audience answer for themselves. Luckily, in the meantime, we get to have a lot of fun.

Credit and many thanks go to Emilie who contributes to the programme and also our blog. :)

Salome in the Garden

2009-11-23T17:16:00.005+01:00

Michelle Forbes: True Blood asks us about our beliefs

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 'The Day Dream', 1880.

Michelle Forbes is a beautiful woman who resembles her characters. She punctuates her sentences with an attentive and patient smile, but it can not dissipate the intensity of her gaze. She smiles and speaks in a deep voice, husky and warm, which she modulates at will and without effort. She smiles and looks at you with her dark eyes, shining with a dusty glaze. We imagine her slipping easily into the skin of Salome and demand the head of John the Baptist from Herod Antipas. Because she carries an element of mystery that one may construe her as a femme fatale. The role of Maryann Forrester in Season 2 of True Blood fits her like a tunic a Greek god.

Before that, she was the wife of Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) in the first season of In Treatment. She was also an enigmatic and tortured mother in Season 2 of the excellent but little-known Canadian series Durham County. The time of three episodes, she was Admiral Helena Cain on Battlestar Galactica, but also among other things Dr. Julianna Cox in seasons 5 and 6 of Homicide: Life on the Street set for NBC by David Simon, the father of The Wire.

The actress was visiting Paris for the launch of Season 2 of True Blood which starts broadcasting on Tuesday, 1 December on Orange cinema series.

How important is the role of Maryann Forrester in your career?

My first important role on television was that of Julianna Cox in Homicide: Life on the Street, which is certainly one of the best crime series that has ever been filmed. In Treatment has also been a role I enjoyed playing. At the same time I turned to True Blood. Maryann is certainly the most flamboyant character I had ever embodied. But Helena Cain on Battlestar was so iconic that people remember me most for this character than the one I played in True Blood.

In hindsight, how do you see her?

It was only last week that I really realized what was the character of Maryann. It is a cliché to say that, but all the actors agree and that's true that you can not see a character that you embody as absolutely evil. When Maryann makes Eggs and Tara eat the soufflé, she really believes in giving them a gift. She is sincere in her whole approach. She is really convinced that it gives them freedom. And she really wants to get closer to the God. When she prepares the dish for them, she does so as a mother would do in preparing gifts for her children. For me, it was love.

Season 2 revolves around several different stories.

In this second season of True Blood, there are actually three distinct parts. The first season tells of a wretched little village, and we learn to know the people who live and work there. During the second season, three stories are pursued simultaneously. It is the journey that Bill takes to Dallas, there is the story of the Fellowship of the Sun, which for me was the funniest one to watch, and then there is the story of Maryann and the people of Bon Temps. What I like about this season is that it clearly addresses the question of our belief system. The purpose of Maryann is to challenge the moral beliefs and ideals of each of us. At the same time, the entire section on Fellowship of the Sun denounces the belief systems that require blind adherence from its followers. With regard to vampires, the question is about being judged, being regarded as different, and this questions our beliefs on the status of minorities. This forces us to ask us questions about our willingness to lead ourselves in a sheep-like manner, to follow a leader, one who can be very disruptive.

Music plays an important role in True Blood.

Yes. It is an essential element. What was amazing during the shooting was that we had one of the best sound engineers, Nathan Barr. In the series, the music is extremely important for Maryann but also for all of us. And the music was already included in the script when it was received. Each week we downloaded music from the episode that we will be filming next. This gave the impression that we had a sort of a soundtrack. And that immediately put us into the mood of the episode. I could not remember the B 52's, I had completely forgotten and when I downloaded the song, I said 'damn, it's really good'. "

To prepare for filming, I read about the maenads on Dionysus and Greek mythology, but what is interesting with Alan Ball and Charlaine Harris is that you can carry out all the searches you want, when you end up with the script in hand and you read that you'll need to dance to the B 52's, you try to understand how two things can agree with each other. And finally, you let yourself be guided by the text.

Working on HBO is a particular experience?

This may sound strange but I tend to work better when you're in a somewhat military environment. It is very difficult for an actor to find a series in which they believe. And when I discovered HBO, I almost felt too weak. They have a philosophy so strongly marked, they have such determination and at the same time such humanity. They really want to tell stories and they support their creators, they maintain their projects and they do not throw them out if they do not seem to work immediately. I am really impressed by their willingness to produce stories. This is not about money, it is like family to me. Perhaps I do embellish things a bit, but the more I worked with them the more I discovered on a personal level and I'm still admiring them.

What are you going to do now?

It has been almost two years since I have been shooting without interruption and I need to take some time for myself. I love gardening and I can not take care of my garden when I'm not in Montreal. I would also like to learn the joy of reading without having to memorize the text. I'll take the opportunity to cultivate my garden, in both senses of the word.
Source: Le Monde des Series (translated from French by me)

Al Roach: Private Insectigator Revisited

2009-11-22T20:46:00.006+01:00

Rome joins the Global Frequency on a rainy Sunday night. Luca felt inspired by the voice quiz and has sent us this informative Al Roach overview. Another fan of shorts. --chris

Al Roach: Private Insectigator (2004) takes place in the weeds behind the Hollywood sign where a colony of insects mirrors the golden era of Hollywood. Created by Obie Scott Wade, this CG film noir short won Best in Show and Audience and Critic's Pick at the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival and qualified for an Oscar® Nomination.

Cast:
James Garner - Al Roach
Michelle Forbes - Dede Dragonfly
Kathy Kinney - Betty Earwiggins
Freddy Rodríguez - The Fly On The Wall
Gregg Berger - Professor Bugdonovich

Director: Obie Scott Wade
Writers: Jordan Beswick, Michael Maler
Original Music: Harold Barefoot Sanders III

USA 2004 - 6min Short Animation

"Al Roach" is a triumph of 'toon noir, a black-and-white tribute to every Philip Marlowe story you've ever watched or read. It even opens with the Warner Bros. logo, making me think for a while that it was decades older than it is. Verbal and visual puns abound at a pace that would give the Simpsons a run for their money, and the adult situations -- watch the antennae -- will tickle you without damaging the delicate sensibilities of any little ones who may also be watching."
Source: imdb.com

"Jim Rockford goes buggy!
In this six-minute animated spoof/homage to film noir and old RKO detective B-flicks from the forties, James Garner provides the voice for AL ROACH, PRIVATE INSECTIGATOR.
Roach is the fedora-sporting roach gumshoe with a seedy office in Doowylloh (read it backwards), an entire town of insects in the dirt behind the Hollywood sign. And, like the real Tinsel Town, Doowlloh is a "colony dripping with gilt, seduction, and betrayal."
But down these streets a roach must go, and Al IS that roach. The trouble starts when a beautiful bug fatale named Dede with more curves than "Motholland Drive" struts into his seedy office, promising to do "anything" in exchange for his help in finding her missing scientist father, Dede's father, Professor Bugdonovich.
Originally produced as a pilot (for a potential series of shorts?) for Turner Classic Movies, the six-minute cartoon claims to be "one of the first - if not the first - black and white CGI animated film." So far, it's been well-received at The Palm Springs International Festival of Short Films, LA International Short Film Festival, Atlanta's DragonCon Film Festival and the Silver Lake Film Festival.

UNDER OATH
"I love the expressionistic, clean, stark use of contrast (in film noir) -- light and shadow. It's almost architectural." And this palette serves CGI perfectly. All the classics of film noir are stored in Wade's feverish brain. "I love Orson Welles' 'Touch of Evil.' "
What's the funniest thing about noir? "The hair," (Obie Scott Wade) laughs. "And the language is really very funny. We just don't talk that way anymore, but it has a quick back-and-forth, ratt-tatt-tatt banter that reminds me of the radio announcers of the period. It also manages to say a lot of very dirty things in double entendres."
If there's a sequel to "Al Roach," Wade says his roach fatale will ask Al to "Give me a chirp sometime. Ya knows how to chirp, dontcha? Ya just put yer legs together and rub!"
Source: thrillingdetective.com

The director Obie Scott Wade about Michelle:
"I first spoke to Miss Forbes by telephone a few days prior to the record session. She has a very funny and warm personality and made me laugh right away. [...]
... each actor was only there for an hour and a half maximum. However, Michelle and I had such a good time talking, she stayed longer and we talked for hours. We talked about very meaningful topics such as global issues and her work in animal rescue. She's very active in the area of rescuing, rehabilitating and finding good homes for homeless dogs. Did you know that? Yes, she has a very big heart. [...]
Michelle required very little directing. Her instincts and inflection were perfect. She brought unparalleled sexiness and intelligence to the character. I could not have cast a more perfect actor. As far as casting, Michelle was my first choice and we were lucky enough to have her agree to be involved."

The dialogue

"Yes...
Yes!
Eureka!

You!
No. No!
Stay away!
Stop!

So let me get this straight, Miss Dragonfly.
Your father's missing and you want me to find him.

Yes, Mr. Roach. Please, you must help me.
The buzz is that you're the best private dick in the business and I won't settle for less.

You see, my father is a brilliant scientist who's invented a cure for insectigen.

I see.

You have heard of insectigen, haven't you, Al?

Yeah. First you get a
Nasty rash.
Next thing
Hallucinating.

An hour later you're
Belly up.

Mmmmm.

Deadly stuff.

Will you handle my case?

Nothing would give me more pleasure.
But I'm afraid I might get in too deep.
Sorry.

(Cries)

Get out of my way.

What's buggin' her?

Daddy's missing.

Well with a thorax like that, she shouldn't have trouble finding a replacement.
Anyway, Wormer Brothers sent over those passes for the big premiere tonight.
They said we should get there early.

We?

You promised, Al.
Besides, I already went and pulled my fancy dress out of moth balls.

That's some moth.

Wha...?
Where are you going?

Nature calls.

I hope it's collect. Rent's overdue.

Again?

Why didn't you take her case, Al?
We could really use the dough.

Drop it, Betty.

Uh oh, looks like somebody got bit by the lovebug.

That's all I need, another dame gettin' under my skin like a tick
Last queen bee who stole my heart ended up gettin' me in trouble with the mafia.
Ow.

Betty. What stung me?

Insectigen. You got the rash.

Oh.
Al, maybe you shouldn't -

Where are you going?
You need to rest.

If I don't find that dame's father,
that's all I'll be doing.

I turned the town upside down
looking for that dame and her dad.
At least I think I did.

The insectigen was starting to play tricks on my mind.
I was feeling weak.
The rash was spreading fast.

I started seeing stars.
Not just the ones on the sidewalk.
I needed help, I knew it.
There was only one place to turn.

Yeah yeah, I saw the whole thing.
The old man's in room nine at the Motel Ticks up in Silverfish Lake.

Thanks pal. You never cease to amaze me.

Heh heh heh, they don't call me the Fly On The Wall for nothing.
Now give me some sugar, handsome.

Please, don't kill me.
You can have the antidote.

What the -

Thank you, Mr. Roach.
I knew you'd make a beeline to the serum
once you were infected.

Please, keep her away from me.
She's been trying to kill me.

You and me both, pal.

Well guess what, I'm through trying.
Now say goodnight fellas.
The bed bugs are about to bite.

Not so fast, sister.

Bitch!

Name's Betty. Bitch is waiting for you in the state fly trap.
Cuff her, boys.

So it turns out the old man wasn't even her father?

They'd never even met.

Then why all the buggabaloo?

She was the owner of the big pharmaceutical outfit
that makes all the drugs used to treat insectigen.

I get it, once the old man's cure goes up for sale, her company's profits go down the tubes.

Bingo.

What a louse.

You don't use drugs, do you, Betty?

I've got the only drug I need, Al.
You and a good movie.

You're a good egg, Betty."

Everything you wanted to know about Global Frequency

2009-11-21T15:45:00.004+01:00

...plus Diplomacy news and some savoury snippets.

In preparation for this article, I had a read through the first couple of issues of Global Frequency, and I really enjoyed it. There's an immense amount of possibilities for a potential TV series. In the hands of the right people, it could become great TV, whether with Michelle's involvement or not.

Global Frequency originates as a 12-issue comic series from Wildstorm Productions, consisting of a series of single-issue, standalone stories. Written by Ellis, with covers by Brian Wood, each stand-alone story in the series featured artwork by a different artist. Whilst separate, each of the stories centered around The Global Frequency, an independent, covert intelligence organization headed by a former intelligence agent who uses the alias of Miranda Zero. There are reportedly 1,001 people on the Global Frequency, forming an active smart mob communicating by specially modified video mobile phones through a central dispatch system coordinated by a young woman code-named Aleph.

The purpose of the organization is to protect and rescue the world from the consequences of the various secret projects that the governments of the world have established, which are unknown to the public at large. The people on the Global Frequency are chosen and called on for their specialized skills in a variety of areas, from military personnel, intelligence agents, police detectives to scientific researchers, academics, athletes, former criminals and assassins. These threats that the organization deals with are equally varied and usually world-threatening, ranging from rogue military operations and paranormal phenomena to terrorist attacks and religious cults.

If this news is true, this would be the second attempt by The CW (formally The WB) network to adapt the Wildstorm comic into a TV series, with the first attempt being in 2005, when they produced a pilot episode that was based heavily on the first issue of the comic. However, they never aired this pilot, and did not commission the series.

The original series proposal was prepared by Mark Burnett with Michelle Forbes as Miranda Zero, Josh Hopkins as Sean Flynn, Jenni Baird as Dr. Katrina Finch and Aimee Garcia as Aleph. The characters of Sean Flynn, an ex-policeman who accidentally stumbled on a Global Frequency mission and Katrina Finch, a brilliant scientist with expertise in multiple fields, were created especially for the series.

Unlike the comic book, which had an ever-changing cast of field agents, Flynn and Finch were to be regulars along with Zero and Aleph, with other Frequency members coming in as and when necessary in supporting roles. This would allow for the character continuity expected of a television series and yet allow other characters to be killed off as in the comic book.

John Rogers was the principal creative force behind the television incarnation, writing the pilot episode, with Ellis credited as producer and creator. Other writers waiting to come on board included David Slack, Ben Edlund and Diego Gutierrez. The pilot was directed by Nelson McCormick.

The unaired pilot was leaked onto the Internet in June 2005 and continues to be downloaded and shared, primarily via BitTorrent and other P2P networks. Although it was popular and critically acclaimed, according to Ellis himself the leaking of the pilot annoyed Warner Brothers to the extent that they killed the project.
Source:hypergeek.ca

...of course since it's coming to the CW than expect young GQ model looking performers and cheesy love triangles.
-
I love those books. No way they can do them the same way on TV, given the gore and political overtones, but there's enough meat to the stories to make for a good show.
-
It was an excellent comic. But without going to a cable station so they can swear, cut off limbs and the like... I'm not seeing it. :/ that's sad because it of so many comics from that era/genre/authorbunch would have been excellent with the right people behind it.
Source: boards.cityofheroes.com

I actually managed to somehow see said mystery pilot and freaking loved it. I thought Michelle Forbes was absolutely perfect as Miranda Zero and was hoping to see more. But it was never to be.

I’m cautiously optimistic. I despise the CW most greatly. It is all that is wrong with broadcast television. Suck suck sucking suck! I’m also worried that we won’t get to see Michelle Forbes reprise her role as Miranda Zero. I really think it’s time for her to get some steady work and Global Frequency would have been perfect. But we’ll see. I’m hoping Ellis gets some influence over the production. If it’s done right, Global Frequency will definitely fill the void left by Sara Conner Chronicles.
-
I like the idea that while the Frequency is Global, we as a show focus on the exploits of the members in a large metropolitan area and the cases that they in particular are called on. Various members get called elsewhere for missions on occasion, but for the show to succeed we'd need a recurring cast in the field.

Plus that sets up the eventual "Global Frequency: London" "Global Frequency: Miami" "Global Frequency: LA" spin-offs.
-
The problem is that, aside from holdovers Supernatural and Smallville, CW seems to be built around the teenage girl demographic.

Yeah, this was what I meant upthread when I said I wasn't sure if the CW was the best place for Global Frequency which is, let's be honest, not really your typical teen girl property. Really, the "special effects budget" issue isn't...only some of GF stories would really require a heavy effects expenditure to make happen. But then you have the fun of pitching stories which involve, say, rogue military cyborgs planning to murder-fuck everyone in the greater Los Angeles area, crazy Japanese scientists sculpting a cathedral out of human beings, and "two biofeedback-enhanced people beat the shit out of each other for thirty minutes until one makes the other eat his own arm" to the network that brought you Gossip Girl.
Source: angryzenmaster.com

-
I remember reading something by Rogers where he commented that one reason his version didn't get picked up was because it was "too much of a downer ending". Not that you can't have downer endings for TV, especially nowadays, but when your *pilot* goes that route, it might not be as easy a sell.
-
I'll second the Michelle Forbes Needs To Be Miranda Zero sentiment.

Whenever I see her in other stuff (BSG, In Treatment) I always exclaim 'Yes! It's Miranda Zero!' She owns that role.
-
As for the downer ending...I can imagine why people wouldn't like it, but on the other hand, world rescue situations don't always end with people in jail and the rescuers on a mountain with enough vermouth to tank ten elephants. People die. Some are innocent, some are merely victims and just ended up being a part of something bad and not really knowing. But in the end the world/city/town is saved. At least until the next time it's in danger. And in all honesty I think that makes the story stronger.
Source: freakangels.com

Global Frequency? Yes please!

Not so much on the Michelle Forbes tho. She kicked ass on the leaked pilot, but True Blood has ruined her for me for a little while...
Source: io9.com

Diplomacy website has seen a revamp. A director's statement and the full list of cast & crew have been added. Moreover, a DVD will be available sometime next year.

The United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran face great hurdles in re-establishing democratic relations after thirty years of antagonism and mistrust. Recent elections in both countries have only confounded expectations. Language is how we bridge differences and build trust, but there is no telling whether a common language can be found. Interpreters play and essential role in bridging that divide.

I intended "Diplomacy" as a piece of diplomacy in itself, to strike up a certain conversation. The way these interpret diplomacy may be outrageous, it may be unwise, and it may have ulterior motives. But at least they're talking. - Jon Goldman.

And finally:

mkuplens: Thinking about recently-seen TV, Durham County is probably one of the best North American series I've seen in a while.
Absolutely brilliant.
200dollarshirt: Pizza, beer, opening two parter to BSG 2.5. Purrrr. Michelle Forbes is sexy as hell. Now sleep.
JBTakaTheStory: Just finished watching Durham County. Sucha bomb series dont yall think? Havnt seen it? Watch ion television
jillkill: Blown away by Can. TV series Durham County-suicide, multiple murders, abduction, rape, voyeurism, infidelity,
creepy children- 1st episode!

Global Frequency To Be Adapted (Again)

2009-11-18T20:09:00.007+01:00

"Warren Ellis' "Global Frequency" is making another run at the small screen, as The CW Network is allegedly trying to adapt the comic book series once again.
According to Production Weekly's Twitter feed, a second adaptation of "Global Frequency" is in the works courtesy of The CW and writer Scott Nimerfro. The news was further touched upon by Ellis himself, who wrote on his personal website that he hadn't "been cleared to comment yet" by the network.
"Shouldn't say any more until I get the nod from the studio," said Ellis. "But yes."
For some context, "Global Frequency" was previously attempted as a television series for The WB Network — the initial form of The CW — back in 2005. The project went as far as the pilot phase, with "True Blood" and "Battlestar Galactica" actress Michelle Forbes assuming the role of Miranda Zero, the leader of the Global Frequency, an organization of roughly 1,001 people with specialized skill sets that are used to resolve top secret crises. The pilot never made it to the network, despite support from fans that managed to watch a leaked version online.
After "Global Frequency" made our recent list of five Warren Ellis comics we want to see adapted, the CW will now give the series a second chance with Nimerfro working on the script — and Ellis said that he's already spoken with the writer about the project.
"I've spoken briefly to Scott Nimerfro — by which I mean I threatened to have him stabbed, and he thanked me and told me a funny story about how he's had worse threats — and he is Okay," Ellis described.
The writer also spoke towards John Rogers, the creative force behind the initial "Global Frequency" attempt. Rogers seemingly won't be involved in the new pilot due to his own TNT television series "Leverage," though he apparently "wishes [Ellis] luck."
Source: mtv.com

Twitter:
* topbit: Global Frequency 2nd attempt: http://www.warrenellis.com/?p=7975 Hell yes. And with Michelle Forbes? Double hell-yes!! http://bit.ly/j8rQN
* planetclark: Awesome! Call Michelle Forbes! RT @warrenellis: RT @prodweek: "The CW will again try to adapt Warren Ellis' comic book "Global Frequency"
*notlikecalvin: I declare myself Officially Uncaring about a new Global Frequency series unless Michelle Forbes is cast as Miranda Zero again. So there.
* mizzelle: @johannadc I hope they get Michelle Forbes back as Miranda Zero. She was perfect.
* warrenellis: @rfrancis I love Michelle, and would pay real money to just have her reading on TV for an hour a week.
* rfrancis: @warrenellis I know you couldn't possibly comment. But I'm just sayin, I want the one with Michelle Forbes. Or any one with Michelle Forbes.
* SpeedForceOrg: The real question is, can they still get Michelle Forbes to play Miranda Zero?
* catvincent: Previous via @warrenellis - Guess enough water has gone under the bridge. Can't imagine anyone but Michelle Forbes as Miranda Zero though
* chr0me: The *only* question is will Michelle Forbes be cast as Miranda Zero again? #globalfrequency

Quiz No 5 - The Voice

2009-11-15T12:33:00.003+01:00

...it's the voice does that, it goes all knowing, to make me think I know, to make me think it's mine... - Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable

Dublin joins the Global Frequency on a sunny and cool Sunday morning. We're very happy to present you with another quiz. This one was compiled by our very special correspondent, Akima.

All you have to do is watch the video below and guess where each scene is from. It could be any work by Michelle for film, tv etc. Each segment is somehow disguised so you must pay great attention to the voices and the audio. However, Akima tells me to let you know that there are some hints, so be very vigilant. Watch out for...cherries. ;)

Have fun!

Champagne and Delicacies

2009-11-12T23:55:00.006+01:00

True Blood event in Paris
* The weekly French magazine Télérama (Le Monde) is said to feature Michelle Forbes in its edition of November 25.
* More about the Paris True Blood soirée last week:
"Arrive ensuite le moment de découvrir qui sont les acteurs de la série venus tout spécialement pour l'événement! Montent alors sur la scène dans l'ordre d'arrivée: Michelle Forbes, Rutina Wesley, Sam Trammel et Alexander Skarsgard. Les interprètes de l'énigmatique Maryann Forrester, la toujours directe Tara Thorton, le gérant beau gosse Sam Merlotte et l'anti-vampire Bill, vampire Eric Northman. Je dois dire qu'ils ont vraiment la classe ces acteurs américains, sauf peut-être Alexander Skargard qui ne fera pas oublié son pantalon orange par son nœud papillon... Ça va faire cliché mais les deux actrices sont encore plus belles en vrai!"
Source: allocine.fr

* "Après un résumé de la saison 1 en image, le premier épisode de la deuxième commence. A la fin des 50 minutes, je décide de m’éclipser avant le second pour me diriger vers le Hard Rock café où se tient la soirée privée « en présence des acteurs ».
Entrée sur listing et bracelet, et là, c’est le choc visuel. On en prend pleins les mirettes. Pourquoi?
Simplement parce qu’au rez-de-chaussée, ils ont reconstitué le décor du Merlotte’s. Les enseignes sont là, les têtes d’animaux, la disposition des tables, les hamburgers (oui, les même que ceux servis dans la série), et surtout, à mon plus grand bonheur, du Tru Blood. Bon, certes, c’était du soda à l’orange (excellent ceci-dit), mais le packaging est tout simplement fabuleux (imaginez, au bar « Bonsoir, deux Tru blood s’il vous plait »).
Le temps de manger un bout, le premier étage ouvre et la claque visuelle est encore plus grande. Fumigène, lumière et rideaux rouges et un panneau. Nous voilà à Fangtasia, le bar des vampires.
Bouteille de sang derrière le comptoir, poche de sang au plafond, seringue de soupe tomate et fiole de coulis de cerise, une ambiance très glauque tout en restant jovial.
« En présence des acteurs » donc. Oui et non. D’abord dans une partie VIP (forcément, on était une bonne centaine), ils ont eu la gentillesse de sortir assez souvent pour quelques photos et autographes. Ils ont simplement été adorables, très ouverts et disponibles."
Source: cloneweb.net

* Rumour has it that there was a champagne party @ The Ritz in Paris :)

Durham County
* Durham County season 2 re-airs in Canada on 'Canal Mystère', first episode starts November 23.
* In Czechia they are already showing episode 4 of season two. - It looks like I'm missing more European air dates. Sorry for that.
* A multilingual English-German DVD of the first season of Durham County will be released in December.

The Chosen One
Michelle's short film The Chosen One has got a trailer on IMDb. Now .... here's the link: http://www.imdb.com/video/wab/vi1403127065/

Diplomacy
Don't believe what they're trying to tell you about aging 'gracefully'. I missed the screening of Diplomacy in Leiden (that's a few minutes from where I live) two weeks ago. Of course, the lads from the Leiden Film Festival don't answer my email.

MF Community Inside
* We were having a talk at the 'Messiah Revisited' article planning more 'Revisited' postings. So far the plan is ... Randy: Razor. Chris: Wonderland. Nicole: Swimming with Sharks. Akima: Durham County - for the January US premiere. Akima was first, and you'll never see my non-written posting 'A Love Letter to a Murderess'. - Would you like to join us?
* I was thinking of a multilingual mirror of this blog ... the advantage would be that the contributors can write in their native language, and the translated text would get published here.
* There's hope that we get another quiz soon ;-)
* Embedded Vimeo videos don't play on the iPhone nor on Androids or any other mobile device. :(
* We've got a no-nonsense listing of Michelle's work. It's a compilation of the IMDb listing, all episodes included.

Sunday Picture

2009-11-08T13:09:00.002+01:00

Portrait of Michelle Forbes, 2008.

"Having just finished watching the second series of True Blood, I feel the DS Cult page needs some space for people, starting with me, to praise, gush about, and generally extol the virtues of my personal choice for the title "Queen of Cult".
Source: Michelle Forbes appreciation thread@digitalspy.co.uk

Posted on a cold and sunny November day in Amsterdam --chris

Added :: Randy found it. Are we to start a new articles series?

Michelle in Paris

2009-11-06T11:00:00.010+01:00

Michelle Forbes, Sam Trammell and Alexander Skarsgard last night at the Max Linder Cinema in Paris. True Blood Season 2 premieres in France in December.

Welcome in Paris, Michelle. - She's back in Europe, woohooooo :)

More photos at: wenn.com

"Orange Cinéma Séries avait fait les choses en grand pour annoncer la nouvelle, lors d'une soirée au Hard Rock Café redécoré en bars de Vampires. Plusieurs comédiens de la série avaient été invités pour l'occasion: Sam Trammell, Michelle Forbes, Rutina Wesley et Alexander Skarsgard.
La saison 2 de True Blood démarrera dès le mardi 1er décembre à 21h30 sur Orange Cinéma Séries. Chaque mardi, un nouvel épisode sera diffusé, ce qui devrait laisse la série à l'antenne jusqu'en février."
Source: cinemovies.fr

(Click to enlarge)

"La soirée :
Pour cette soirée nous avions rendez-vous au cinéma " Max Linder Panorama " à 20 h pour assister à la projection des deux premiers épisodes de la deuxième saison de la série . -Cette soirée fut organisé par orange cinema series. - Avant cette soirée je ne connaissait pas cette série et ne la suivait donc pas. - Mais au vu des deux épisodes elle a l'air intérréssante et plûtot pas mal. Etant devant le Max Linder je découvre que l'entrée du ciné a été décoré pour l'occasion avec 2 gros projecteurs et un tapis rouge et un vigil plutot balèse ( bon ok le vigil n'etais pas là que pour la déco ni pour donner un coté "star "a la soirée ).
A l'entrée les noms et prénoms des personnes sont demander (ainsi que l'invitation ) et un sac nous est remis (il contenais des friandises, chips , etc...) ce qui permettais de grignoter un peu pendant la séance. - Un bracelet est également remis car après la projection la soirée continuais dans un bar ( le Hard Rock Café ) et ce bracelet etais le sésame pour y entrer.
La soirée commence avec l'arrivée des 2 acteurs et 2 actrices de la série et qui nous parle de leurs rôle et de cette série. Après le visionnage direction le Hard rock café qui se situe un peu plus loin et la quel surprise , le café a été entierement privatisé pour la soirée. Un peu d'attente a l'entrée et ceci due au monde qu'il y avait . Une fois entrée nous avons eu droit a un open bar plus nouriture a volonté. Hamburgers , Nuggets épicées , petites cuisses de poulets , etc... etais au rendez vous. Tout comme le champagne ,coca et True Blood (la boisson des vampires dans la série ) a volonté.
Et tout ceci sur de la musique ...rock bien évidement vue le lieu.
Apparement les acteurs et actrices etaient présent durant la soirée , perso je ne les ai pas vue."
Source: blogs.allocine.fr

We're all multilingual ... so, you get the first impressions of the evening in French. - Click on 'comments' for a translation. --chris

Update ::: ... and here's the video of the Soirée in Paris:

Soirée Promotion TRUE BLOOD saison 2 @ Paris from flexgraph on Vimeo.

More pictures :: (Click to enlarge)

Messiah Revisited

2009-11-03T19:39:00.004+01:00

In 2001 and 2002, BBC Northern Ireland released the first two installments of a drama miniseries, entitled "Messiah - The First Killings" and "Messiah - Vengeance Is Mine". Alongside Michelle Forbes (Susan Metcalfe), Ken Stott (DCI Red Metcalfe), Neil Dudgeon (DI Duncan Warren) and Frances Grey (DS Kate Beauchamp) lead the ensemble of talents in this brilliantly produced TV crime drama. The third episode, "Messiah - The Promise", was aired in 2004.
Unfortunately, Michelle Forbes does not appear in the fourth chapter of the series, "Messiah - The Harrowing".

For in-depth information, interviews and behind-the-scenes videos visit the BBC Northern Ireland website:

»» Messiah II

»» Messiah III

Viewers of BBC crime dramas know that what they see is what they get. No fast paced action sequences followed by visual murder scenes. Instead, with the "Messiah" miniseries, we get a haunting drama in the style of box office hits such as "Silence of the Lambs" and "Se7en".
The story begins with a rather dreary scene of a car driving through London in the pouring rain. The initial sense of uneasiness sets the mood for the rest of the series which may not be entirely for the weak hearted. We watch DCI Red Metcalfe struggle with a case of mysterious and grisly killings. And as the body count rises, Metcalfe must face a ruthless killer who always seems to be a step ahead. Soon enough, Red's work begins to threaten the safety of those around him, especially his loving wife Susan. Seemingly disadvantaged, in her deaf condition, Susan may prove to be the pillar of strength for her husband, as she tries to keep him out of the darkness that the gruesome killings are continually driving him into. Not only that, but Red is also desperate to reunite with his estranged brother which will bring back old memories that he thought to have been able to forget.
Will Red overcome the many obstacles and catch the murderer?

The experience of shooting "Messiah" proved to be very different from what Michelle Forbes was used to in the USA:

"American Actress Michelle Forbes looks on her time working on MESSIAH 2 - VENGEANCE IS MINE as a welcome change from life in the States - where she says there is so much violence. [...] "Back in the States, we concentrate so much on violence and with some of the parts I've played; I'm always knee deep in dead bodies - another day at work!"

Michelle on learning British sign language:

"It makes you realise just how much you rely on the voice and how much you rely on hearing another person's voice in order to get you somewhere. [...] Communicating without speaking - for two people who are hearing - means that you have to go to a completely different place. But to be able to walk into the deaf world is such an opportunity and I feel grateful for it every day and completely honoured. [...] On MESSIAH I, I have had five days to learn sign language and I didn't know that British sign language is completely different from American sign language, so it was an intensive five days."
Source: bbc.co.uk

The acting is superb and the storyline will take your breath away while keeping you in your seats until the very last minute. It is rare in today's TV landscape to find a mini-series which puts its emphasis on the relationship of its characters and not on lavish violence.
Most importantly, as I am probably the laziest person on this planet, I admire and worship the tenacity of Michelle Forbes for learning British sign language in under a week's time and acting with her 'hands and feet' only. Watch out for those kitchen scenes in parts I and II between Stoot and Forbes. Who needs dialogue?

And as one viewer commented:
"To sum up, this was an electrifying piece of ground-breaking drama, every moment communicating mesmerising details about this complex plot and it's highly believable characters."
Source: imdb.com

To see Michelle at her sign-language acting brilliance, watch scenes from 'Messiah - Vengeance is mine':

Messiah 1-4 is available on DVD sets at amazon.co.uk (Region 2, PAL version). Regularly re-airs on many European TV channels, free-to-air and ad-free.

Article written and submitted by Nicole. Thank you :)

We're looking forward to publish more articles about Michelle's work. Please contact us at mirandazero.blog@gmail.com
We'd love to hear from you! --chris

"One of the BBC's prestige shows, Messiah perfectly balances the quiet character moments it needs with scenes of pure Grand Guignol horror and jet black humour [..] Stott as DCI Metcalfe is a unique hero for this kind of story, a man who is calm, rational, well balanced and happily married. He's relentlessly intelligent and punishes himself constantly for not quite being clever enough. The way in which he and his wife (a superb performance by Michelle Forbes) deal with this is contrasted to great effect with the break up of Reid's relationship with his wife and Beauchamp's budding romance with a colleague."
Source: videovista.net

" 'Messiah', which is based on a novel by Boris Starling, is an exemplar of efficiency, a demonstration of just how much story can be put across using layered sound, scrupulous close-ups, broad atmospherics, visual shorthand, a few flashbacks and simple dialogue [...] most striking here are the performances: the pale British faces of all the lead actors, who, with their baggy undereyes untouched by surgery or Botox, look plainly sad and afraid. Those faces tell a story, swiftly."
Source: nytimes.com

"Ein Thriller, der nicht einfach die inzwischen gängige Serienkiller-Routine abspult, sondern seine Handlung mit intelligent konstruierten Nebenhandlungen und lebendig gezeichneten Figuren so gut unterfüttert, dass sich die Geschichte neben dem reinen Krimiplot noch weitergehenden Fragen zuwenden kann: Schuld und Sühne, Verdrängung, Reue und der oft qualvollen Konfrontation mit sich selbst. Nicht umsonst wurde "Messias" in Kommentaren häufig mit David Finchers Genre-Highlight "Seven" verglichen."
Source: zdf.de

Diplomacy Screenings - Festival Circuit

2009-11-01T16:04:00.004+01:00

The short film Diplomacy is making a circuit around Europe's film festivals. Screenings have been announced for Derry, Northern Ireland and Bilbao, Spain.

* Nov 20 - 28, 2009: The 22nd Foyle Film Festival celebrates ‘Art & The Cinema’ – embracing cinema as an art form in itself but also as the magical vehicle that can give the audience an exciting and inspiring glimpse into other artistic worlds.
Diplomacy is scheduled for Saturday, 21st November, 4:00pm (The Nerve Centre Cinema 2, Derry)

* Nov 23 - 28, 2009: The 51st Bilbao International Festival of Documentary and Short Films will be held in Bilbao from November 23th until November 28th 2009.

Diplomacy, USA 2009, 9min Short
Relations between the United States and Iran take an unexpected turn when two senior diplomats and their interpreters meet for a closed-door session.
Written and directed by Jon Goldman
Cast: Michelle Forbes, Navid Neghaban, Omid Abtahi, Nazanin Boniadi

In July Diplomacy won the 'Prix du Public' at the Paris Cinéma International Film Festival.

Quiz No 4 - The Halloween Edition

2009-10-31T17:01:00.003+01:00

Eallra Hālgena ǣfen. Samhain. Calan Gaeaf. Summer's end. The beginning of the 'Celtic New Year'.
Let's start the darker half of the year with yet another quiz. Rebecca compiled this Halloween edition for you, centered on hair, eyes and makeup. Pretty, huh?
So ... who's who and what's what? Anyone can participate. Just hit the comment link at the bottom.

Happy Halloween everybody!

And for the blissfully happy melancholics among us, a poem entirely unrelated to Michelle Forbes.
* Chris off to a long walk along the autumn canals *

Herbsttag

Herr: es ist Zeit. Der Sommer war sehr groß.
Leg deinen Schatten auf die Sonnenuhren,
und auf den Fluren laß die Winde los.

Befiehl den letzten Früchten voll zu sein;
gib ihnen noch zwei südlichere Tage,
dränge sie zur Vollendung hin und jage
die letzte Süße in den schweren Wein.

Wer jetzt kein Haus hat, baut sich keines mehr.
Wer jetzt allein ist, wird es lange bleiben,
wird wachen, lesen, lange Briefe schreiben
und wird in den Alleen hin und her
unruhig wandern, wenn die Blätter treiben.

Rainer Maria Rilke
------
The following translation is by Edward Snow 1991:

Autumn Day

Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your long shadows on the sundials,
and on the meadows let the winds go free.

Command the last fruits to be full;
give them just two more southern days,
urge them on to completion and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

Who has no house now, will never build one.
Who is alone now, will long remain so,
will stay awake, read, write long letters
and will wander restlessly up and down
the tree-lines streets, when the leaves are drifting.

Meet the True Blood Hounds

2009-10-30T22:57:00.001+01:00

(From left - Rutina Wesley, Michelle Forbes, Kristin Bauer and Mariana Klaveno)

Last night Michelle Forbes was among the cast of True Blood who showed some well-needed love to our homeless four-legged friends on the first night of the “Bow Wow Beverly Hills” dog adoption event. The occasion benefits The Amanda Foundation animal rescue and comprises three days of dog adoptions in some of the most stylish establishments throughout Beverly Hills. Duffy who plays Dean/Sam on True Blood was also in attendance.

About The Amanda Foundation:

The Amanda Foundation was founded in 1976, and has since placed thousands of homeless animals. It is a nonprofit organization that rescues dogs and cats who, through no fault of their own, are spending their last days at City and County Shelters[...]

Every year, Los Angeles County's 28 shelters are forced to destroy well over 200,000 pets. These animals were either strays or brought into the shelters by their owners. We believe they all should have a second chance, and we will work tirelessly to rescue as many as possible.

You may go here to support The Amanda Foundation.

Quiz No 3 - Animalistic

2009-10-28T22:55:00.002+01:00

Apparently, there's a charity event tomorrow in L.A. (True Blood Hounds, The Amanda Foundation animal rescue, Michelle Forbes to be expected one of the hosts. I know nothing about it, Randy is our exclusive Hollywood reporter;-). What about a warming up here on the blog?

You know the deal, don't you? Which movie/TV show/whatever do you recognise on the pictures? And do you happen to know the name of the cutie? No rules, all comments are welcome. Just guess! I can't wait to read your posting.

P.S.: There's hope that we return to post substantial stuff sometime. We're working on it.

Update :: True Blood Hounds :: The Doggie Benefit

--> Direct link to ABC 7 video

Quiz No 2 - The Ears

2009-10-25T00:46:00.003+02:00

“Oh! dreadful is the check - intense the agony - / When the ear begins to hear, and the eye begins to see; / When the pulse begins to throb, the brain to think again; / The soul to feel the flesh, and the flesh to feel the chain.” Emily Brontë

There are no rules, you may guess as often as you wish. I'd like to ask Deb (she knows it all) to wait with her answers and give the mere mortals a chance, but Deb: you may want to confuse or help the participants ;-)
Comments are open. It's (almost) Sunday, midnight, Greenwich time. Will we outnumber the 49 comments from the legs quiz?

Edit: Everyone can post comments. As anonymous, or with a name of your choice, or logged in with your Google or LJ etc account. Lurkers, come out of your coffin ;-)

Good luck!