Fright Night 2011 Craig Gillespie, Director Starring Colin Farrell and Christopher Mintz-Plasse Review by Wayne C. Rogers This is going to be a short review because of a lack of time this weekend. First of all, why remake a classic horror film if you're not going to surpass it? Why waste the money when it could be used for another movie? I've never understood Hollywood's way of thinking with regards to this. Of course, nobody ever sets out to make a bad movie, but it still happens on a regular basis, especially with remakes. Maybe the new version of Fright Night got made because Steven Spielberg was willing to put up the money through his Dreamworks Production Company. Okay, in 1985 the original version of Fright Night was written and directed by Tom Holland. Even a novelization of it came out that was by the great Craig Spector and John Skipp (authors of Light at the End). The movie starred William Ragsdale as Charley Brewster, Chris Sarandon as Jerry Dandrige (the vampire), Roddy McDowell as Peter Vincent, Amanda Bearse as Amy Peterson, and Stephen Geoffreys as Evil Ed. The film cost 9 million to make and grossed over 24 million. By Hollywood's 3-to-1 ratio, it didn't quite break even, but it got great reviews and became an instant classic in the horror genre. In '89, Fright Night 2 was made, based on the success of the first film, though it wasn't quite as good. Now, in the fall of 2011, the remake of Fright Night hit the theaters. This time the film was budgeted at 30 million dollars. It grossed only 18 million. I don't think there will be a remake of Fright Night 2. In the new version, Anton Yelchin (he played the young Bobby Garfield in Stephen King's Hearts of Atlantis) takes on the role of Charley Brewster and Colin Farrell as Jerry Dandrige and David Tennant as Peter Vincent. I have to tell you that Anton Yelchin as a teenager just doesn't look or feel like a Charley Brewster to me. William Ragsdale did, but not Anton. It just didn't feel right to me throughout the entire movie. Though Colin Farrell does a good job on Jerry Dandrige and tries to have fun with it, the whole thing just doesn't ring true to me. Chris Sarandon as the vampire was utterly handsome, suave,debonair, charming, an excellent dresser, and totally ruthless when provoked. Colin Farrell simply plays a handsome redneck vampire with little of the charm and debonair. It's not his fault, but rather the writer's and how the vampire is described within the screenplay. David Tennant as Peter Vincent, who's supposed to be a big Las Vegas magician/entertainer, reminded me quite a bit of Johnny Depp playing Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean. I never took his character seriously and felt it was a let down to the performance Roddy McDowell gave in '85. Forget about Christopher Mintz-Plasse. He can't even come close to Stephen Geoffrey as Evil Ed. The highlights of the film for me were Toni Colette as Jane Brewster and Chris Sarandon in a cameo as a driver who crashes into the back of Jane's car. Toni brought a sense of freshness to the role she portrayed, especially when she flirts with Jerry Dandrige and then later sticks a Century 21 sign through his back. That was funny. Chris Sarandon was a surprise to see when he appeared in the film. I found myself wanting him to show Colin Farrell how to play a damn vampire, but it didn't happen. The story supposedly takes place in Las Vegas this time around, but it was actually filmed in New Mexico. I live in Las Vegas, and I've never seen a suburb of new homes twenty miles outside of town in the middle of nowhere with nothing around them, except a two-lane highway. The housing in the suburb also didn't look like the houses in Vegas. They looked more like the homes in the mid-west or back east. Last, a foot or so beneath the top soil of Las Vegas is hard rock ... very hard rock. It cost a fortune to blast it out to make a basement below a home, yet Jerry Dandrige's house had an area about fifteen feet beneath the main floor that was vast in scope and filled with a ton of dirt. How did Jerry manage to do that with the neighbors living only fifteen feet away from him. Let's also not forget the multitude of vampires that crawl out hidden cavities within the dirt walls below the main floor of the house. Except for some aerial shots of Vegas that were mixed into the film, that's about as close as the production company got to sin city for the making of Fright Night. I thought I was going to see a bit of the city. Wrong! In the original version of the movie, facial makeup and prosthetics were used to depict the vampires in their natural state. CGI, however, was used in the remake and it clearly shows. Even in the way the blood was displayed looked like pure CGI. Now, after all of this, I'll say that Fright Night 2011 wasn't a totally bad film. I would give the original version an A+ and the remake a B-. Buy the original for your horror collection, but rent the remake. If you love the remake, then by all means buy it. Once last thing I enjoy about the movie was the song 99 Problems that was sung while the end credits rolled along. The tune with its banjo playing in the background reminded me of the music from the television series, Justified. There isn't much in the way of behind-the-scenes stuff on the single disc. Maybe the Blu-Ray edition has more. There are some bloopers that aren't very funny and mostly show actors flubbing their lines. There's also the extended version of a short film called Squid Man, which Evil Ed and Charley and another guy made when they were supposedly kids, yet they appear as teenagers in the short, short. Finally, there's a music video which I stopped watching after the first ten seconds. Needless to say, it wasn't 99 Problems. Whereas I still remember large parts of Fright Night 1985, I've already forgotten most of the 2011 version. Editor’s Note: Wayne C. Rogers is the author of the horror novellas – The Encounter, The Tunnels, and The Cat From Hell. These can be purchased as Kindle e-books on Amazon for ninety-nine cents each.

Gary Streiner hopes to restore the Evans City Cemetery Chapel by raising the dead. Well, actually, he’s raising funds with the help of Night of the Living Dead fans. The structure, which appears in the opening scene of George Romero’s iconic horror movie that was filmed in and around the town and cemetery, has fallen into a state of disrepair and was slated for demolition last fall. Streiner appealed to the Evans City Cemetery Association for a chance to save this piece of cinematic history and was given a one year deadline to raise approximately $50,000 to cover the cost of restoration. In 1967, Streiner was working at The Latent Image together with George Romero and his brother, Russell Streiner, in Pittsburgh when production began on the landmark film in which he was one of the original ten investors and owners. In 2008 and 2009, Streiner organized Living Dead festivals in Evans City which attracted the largest reunion of cast and crew to date, as well as fans from as far away as France. Streiner has leveraged the popularity of the film and the festivals and harnessed the power of the internet to bring together Living Dead fans to help with this monumental task. Grassroots fundraising activities include donations and merchandise sales through a dedicated web site and online auctions, as well as raising awareness at horror conventions and via social networks such as Facebook and YouTube. Approximately $12,000 has been raised to date. There will be a special screening of Night of the Living Dead on February 4, which will coincide with a Facebook-based effort to have 1 million people watching the film at the same time to celebrate George Romero's birthday. The screening event will take place at the Hollywood Theater in Dormont, PA, a community located just outside downtown Pittsburgh. Doors will open at 2:30 PM, with the film screening at 4 PM. Admission is $6 and all proceeds benefit Fix The Chapel. In addition to the film, there will be a silent auction, appearances by Mr. Streiner and original cast member Ella Mae Smith and others to be announced, plus merchandise for sale such as t-shirts and for the first time actual pieces of the chapel (great for collectors!). For more information, please visit Fix The Chapel

Nude Nuns With Big Guns Director: Joseph Guzman Cast: Asun Ortega, David Castro, Perry D'Marco Review by Brian M. Sammons This is an example of the title being so much better than the actual movie. Come on, how can you not love a movie called Nude Nuns With Big Guns? Well when it's rather boring, that's how. This flick can be so dull at times that all the naked ladies (and there are a bunch of those here), the few naked guys (for the ladies and dudes who are into that), and all the people getting shot by a vengeful nun with a collection of big guns can't save this movie from just sort of being a chore to sit through. I know, going into this film I expected it to be a lot of things, but boring sure wasn't one of them. So is this latest modern day attempt to cash in on the grindhouse nostalgia wave ushered in by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino when they released their fan-appreciated, but financially bombing, double feature Grindhouse in 2007, a complete wash, or can some giggles and ogles be found in this uneven movie? Well grab your habit and your .44 Magnum and let's find out. The story begins with a bus full of nuns driving through the desert so that the priest in charge can sell some drugs to a skevy looking couple of bikers. When it is discovered that a package of drugs has been stolen by one of the nuns, the leader of the bikers, Chavo, shoots all the nuns except Sister Sarah. The priest, in order to make things up to the bikers, gives the nun to the bikers who quickly turn her into a drug addicted whore right out of Thriller: A Cruel Picture. Continuing the rip-off ... I mean "homage" of that Swedish cult classic, Sister Sarah gets a message from God during a drug trip and soon turns into a nun of vengeance! She goes after the gang that turned her out and the entire Catholic Church that seems to do nothing but produce and sell drugs. What follows is lots and lots of nudity, as pretty much every woman in this movie gets naked in some degree, ranging from popping their tops to full frontal. If you're a fan of that, rejoice as this movie delivers the NUDE part of its title in spades. As for the BIG GUNS, the violence here comes in two varieties. There are at least three prolonged rapes (two are of nuns, and one is a very old nun) so if that turns you off, as it very well should, then know that before you go into this movie. As for the titular guns, their use is far less graphic and that's not a good thing for gorehounds like me. Sadly the nun's rampage of revenge is mostly resigned to blood splattering on walls or pretty fake looking CGI bullet holes. CGI blood effects, my old nemeses, oh how I loathe thee. Sorry about that, back to Nude Nuns which has lots of nudity but rather disappointing violence. Perhaps the blackest mark against it is that it's just boring. A grindhouse movie should be many things, but boring shouldn't be one of them. Even with all the gratuitous nudity and violence in this flick, I found myself checking the time again and again, wondering when this movie would be over. It had none of the crazy zaniness that other recent grindhouse-inspired movies had. But it did have a lot of the tedium that quite a few of the original exploitation flicks from the '70s and '80s had, so kudos for "keeping it real" I guess. That is not to say that everything is bad here. The movie isn't really horrible, just sort of monotonous. It had a sort of good idea with nun version of Thriller, a great title, and surprisingly at least one actor who was entertaining as hell. David Castro, whom I've never seen before, was wonderfully icky as the murderous, insane leader of the bikers. Whenever he was on the screen he easily stole the show. Then there was the look of the avenging nun, with her white habit and crisscrossed with gun belts, that looked totally badass. Sadly these good parts added together could not a great whole make. To top off this rather lackluster stab at over the top cinema, the Blu-ray from Image Entertainment is very lacking in the extras department. There is only a trailer (yay) and a three minute short film also called "Nude Nuns with Big Guns." However, the entirety of that short film was worked into the larger movie as a scene where the killer nun seduces a lesbian bad girl in order to make good her escape. The scene (and therefore the short movie) isn't bad, but since you've already seen it if you watched the feature film, it makes its inclusion here as the only extra unnecessary, disappointing, and a bit of an insult. To be fair, the HD transfer of the movie looks great, but even that might be a bit of too good looking for its own good. Grindhouse movies really shouldn't look this good. I'd rather the film had some of the faux grain and crappy film quality that made the Grindhouse and Hobo With A Shotgun movies look the part. But then that could just be me. Nude Nuns With Big Guns took a shot, missed the target, but it was not a huge miss. If it would have had more going for it, or perhaps been a little shorter, it would not have outstayed its welcome so much and have been better overall. As it is, I can only recommend this one to the most diehard fans of nunsploitation films, revenge films regardless of quality, or complete collectors of the modern grindhouse movement.

Relativity Media has released the official poster for their upcoming gritty thriller The Raven, opening in theaters April 27, 2012. Description: In this gritty thriller, Edgar Allan Poe (John Cusack, Being John Malkovich) joins forces with a young Baltimore detective (Luke Evans, Immortals) to hunt down a mad serial killer who’s using Poe’s own works as the basis in a string of brutal murders. Directed by James McTeigue (V for Vendetta, Ninja Assassin), the film also stars Alice Eve (Sex and the City 2), Brendan Gleeson (In Bruges) and Oliver Jackson-Cohen (Faster). When a mother and daughter are found brutally murdered in 19th century Baltimore, Detective Emmett Fields (Luke Evans) makes a startling discovery: the crime resembles a fictional murder described in gory detail in the local newspaper—part of a collection of stories penned by struggling writer and social pariah Edgar Allan Poe. But even as Poe is questioned by police, another grisly murder occurs, also inspired by a popular Poe story. Realizing a serial killer is on the loose using Poe’s writings as the backdrop for his bloody rampage, Fields enlists the author’s help in stopping the attacks. But when it appears someone close to Poe may become the murderer’s next victim, the stakes become even higher and the inventor of the detective story calls on his own powers of deduction to try to solve the case before it’s too late. Here's the trailer: The Raven opens in theaters on April 27, 2012.

Breaking Glass Pictures has announced the February 28 DVD release of the nautical bloodbath, retro-horror thriller El Monstro del Mar! (SRP $24.99). El Monstro del Mar! mixes sexy yet deadly beauties, the infamous Vernian monster, and a grindhouse feel that gets the blood pumping and brings a renewed fear of what lives in the sea. Let the bloodbath begin! Description: Three gorgeous but deadly hired killers, Beretta, Blondie and Snowball, hole up in a small beachside community to keep a low profile. But this town has a dark secret. The local old sea baron, Joseph, tries desperately to warn them to never go into the water. But these crazy vixens listen to no one, especially not some crazy-assed old fool. So the Kraken awakes! Now, along with Joseph and his beautiful grand daughter, Hannah, they must fight for their lives against this furious creature of the deep as the sea rises in a tidal wave of blood. Here's the trailer: The film stars Norman Yemm (Night of Fear, TV’s The Sullivans), alongside newcomers Nelli Scarlet, Kyrie Capri, and Karli Madden as the deadly vixens. Director Stuart Simpson brings the horrors of the deep into the light with fresh and familiar faces, which brings the thrills, chills, and buckets of blood to new and exciting heights. El Monstro del Mar! has received multiple awards at festivals including Best Director at the Fixon-Sars Film Festival, Best Film at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival, Most Cool at the Pollygrind Film Festival and Best Special Effects at the Atlanta Horror Film Festival. The DVD release will come packed with special features, including an exclusive interview with the Monstro Girls, audio commentaries with the cast and crew, a behind-the-scenes featurette, deleted scenes, and two short films, Acid Spiders and Sickie, from Director Stuart Simpson.

Relativity Media’s Co-President, Tucker Tooley, Edward R. Pressman, producer behind the cult-classic The Crow franchise, and The Weinstein Company’s Dimension Films, have announced they have closed a deal with F. Javier Gutiérrez (Before The Fall) to direct a reinvention of The Crow, the 1994 smash hit film based on the comic book series and comic strip by James O’Barr. Writer Jesse Wigutow has signed on to pen the script. Gutiérrez’s directorial debut, the Spanish-language apocalyptic thriller Before the Fall (Tres Dias), became an international and award-winning sensation after premiering at the Berlinale Film Festival in 2008. In Spain, the film won Best Motion Picture and Best Screenplay at the 2008 Malaga Film Festival, the Miradas Award (TVE) for Best Motion Picture of the Year, and garnered nominations from the Spain Critics Awards. In Europe, the film was a finalist for the 2008 European Film Awards and won main prizes in such science-fiction and fantasy film festivals as the Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival, the Trieste Film Fesitval, and later in the U.S., picked up four awards at Los Angeles’ famed Horror Festival “Scream Fest” in 2009 (for editing, Gutiérrez’s directing, cinematography, and actor Victor Clavijo). The film also ranked #3 on the “International Watch List 2008”. Gutiérrez is currently developing Dimension Films’ sci-fi thriller The Greys. Wigutow most recently did a re-write for Robert Ludlum’s thriller The Osterman Weekend for Summit, and adapted the book Steve McQueen: Portrait of an American Rebel for Brian Oliver’s Cross Creek Films. He is also developing Age Inappropriate at Universal and Irreparable Harm at HBO. Previously, he has worked on films including: Tron: Legacy, 8 Mile, Eragon, and The Ruins. The Crow adaptation will be a gritty reboot of the iconic character Eric Draven, who returns from the grave as The Crow on a mission to avenge his wife’s murder, so that his soul can finally rest. The original film is known for its breakthrough visual style as well as its unique production design and cinematography. The project is currently in development; start of production, targeted release dates and casting to be announced. The film is being produced by Edward R. Pressman, Jeff Most and Relativity’s CEO Ryan Kavanaugh. Relativity’s Tooley (Immortals), The Weinstein Company’s Harvey and Bob Weinstein and Farah Films’ Dan Farah (Armored) will serve as executive producers. Paradigm, Gutiérrez’s manager Farah, and attorney Stephen Clark of Lichter, Grossman, Nichols, Adler & Feldman, Inc. represented Gutierrez on the deal and Wigutow was represented by UTA and attorney Warren Dern of Sloane, Offer, Weber & Dern LLP, and Benderspink. Relativity recently released Oscar®-winner Steven Soderbergh’s dynamic action-thriller Haywire in theatres. Looking ahead, Relativity will release the the heart-pounding Navy SEAL action-thriller Act of Valor (in theatres February 24, 2012) and magical adventure comedy Mirror Mirror (in theatres March 16, 2012), starring Oscar®-winner Julia Roberts, Lily Collins, Nathan Lane, and Armie Hammer. The studio just wrapped production on the comedy 21 and Over and is currently in pre-production on Nicholas Sparks’ gripping love story Safe Haven and the international espionage thriller Hunter Killer. Pressman is currently in development on a reinvention of the iconic action film Bloodsport written by Robert Kamen (Taken) and to be directed by Phillip Noyce (Salt). The latest feature from Pressman, The Moth Diaries, directed by Mary Harron (American Psycho), will be released by IFC Films later this year.

FlashForward: The Complete Series ABC Studios DVD, Box Set Review by Wayne C. Rogers From September of 2009 to May of 2010, the television drama/science fiction show, Flash Forward (separating the words in the title is my idea), was broadcast on ABC ... twenty-two episodes in all, Now, I'm 61 and I've watched a lot of television over the years. Some of it has been good and a lot has been atrocious. Within the last several years and with the stiff competition of TV networks like FX, Sci-Fy, AMC, Showtime, HBO, and a number of others, the quality of many shows has gotten exceedingly better. In fact, many of the TV series are as good, if not better, than what you find on the big screen in movie theaters, and you don't have to deal with rude people with crying babies, ringing cell phones, someone kicking the back of your seat, and constant talking. Some of my favorite shows over the last few years have been Deadwood, Damages, The Walking Dead: Season One, Justified, and Flash Forward. Two that I still want to see, but haven't are American Horror and The Game of Thrones. These are coming out on DVD in the next few months. I think it's fair to say that nowadays many of the new television series are downright excellent in content and acting and certainly worth staying home for. Anyway, of all the shows I can remember seeing over the last fifty years, I consider Flash Forward to be the absolute best, and I don't say this lightly. Plus, the series only ran for one season. Now, I applaud ABC for putting up the money for it. It took a lot of guts to finance this show. Unfortunately, though the pilot episode started off with a big bang, it lost a lot of viewers due to a three-month hiatus from early December of '09 thru March of 2010. That was a huge mistake to my way of thinking. Flash Forward is definitely a thinking man's show. You simply can't afford to miss even one episode because something important is always presented to the viewers. You also can't afford to leave a three-month gap between the first half of the series and the last half. A lot of television viewers move on to other things during a long period of time like that. I feel this was where ABC lost half the viewers for the series. I also think this show should have continued on for at least a second season, but ABC made the decision to cancel it. Thankfully, all twenty-two episodes are now available in one DVD package. The show can now be watched without the commercials and with back-to-back episodes. I watched all of them during the course of a week. I can tell you that it was extremely difficult not to watch more than two shows on a work night. You simply wanted to continue on to find the answers. Though I saw the series when it was on television in 2009 and 2010 (they were recorded by my former roommate), I still got caught up in it again, finding that I'd forgotten a lot about what happened. This time, however, was infinitely more fun without the commercials to break the mood and interest that was created. I know commercials pay for the shows on television, but every time an episode breaks for a commercial to talk about Geiko insurance, cars, or tampons, you lose the mood of the show and only have a few minutes to get it back before the next segment cuts into still another commercial. I recently had this very problem with the Stephen King's Bag of Bones mini-series, and I found myself hating commercials by the second night. I'm now waiting for that DVD to come out so I can watch it again, but this time uninterrupted. The premise of the show is simple. On October 9th of 2009, the entire population of earth suddenly blacked out for over two minutes. Most of the people who were unconscious flashed forward to events that would transpire on April 29th of 2010. Some of the events were good, while others weren't. A number of people didn't see anything at all because they were already dead. Needless to say, it changed the lives of millions of individuals. This is where the frustrating dilemma of fate versus free will comes into play. Can the future be changed if you know what's going to happen, or is it set in stone? Do the things you do to try and change the upcoming events cause them to actually happen? The viewers find out as they follow the lives of a dozen or more people, some of whom are F.B.I. agents seeking an answer as to whom was responsible for the blackout (twenty million people across the world died during it), why the blackout was instigated in the first place, and if there will be another one sometime in the future? These are heavy questions, and I think the series does a fine job of attempting to answer them. As Gil Bellows says in the role of Timothy, a window washer who nearly died during the flash forward, but was saved by an outright miracle, "It's a combination of fate and free will." That's the only way he can explain it. Of course, you have quantum physicists on the show who talk about parallel universes and the possibility that we're really living several different lives at the same time, but in different universes or different realities. Like I said, this is definitely a thinking man's show. Before I go any further, let me add that this is also a thinking woman's show, too. The entire cast is truly excellent in their performances, but to balance out the strong male characters are an equally impressive list of females who hold their own and in some cases even surpass the men. I can think of several right off the top of my head, but there are at least a dozen more in the series who stand tall. Sonya Walger plays Dr. Olivia Benford, the wife of F.B.I. agent Mark Benford, who leads the task force in finding answers to the above questions. In Olivia's flash forward, she saw herself living with another man and everything she tries to do to prevent that from happening only draws her closer to this inevitability. To save her marriage, she even attempts to get her husband to quit the F.B.I. and to move away with her and their child. Christine Woods plays F.B.I. agent Janis Hawk, who saw herself pregnant and near the time of the approaching birth. The only problem here is she's gay and doesn't want a child. Janis also has deep secrets she doesn't want anyone else to know about and is tough as nails when confronting the bad guys, especially during a shootout when three assailants try to kill her. Gabrielle Union plays Zoey Andata, who is living with F.B.I. agent Demetri Noh. Demetri had no flash forward and is told later that he will die on a particular date. Gabrielle, whose character is a defense attorney, does everything in her power to get Demetri to change his path so they can get married and have a future together. Demetri, however, is like his older partner, Mark Benford. He's stubborn and determined to see everything unfold to its very end, hoping to find a solution to his dilemma before April 29th. Yuko Takeuchi plays Keiko, a Japanese engineer who really wants to be a rock singer and to meet the man of her dreams ... the man she saw in her flash forward. She goes against her parent's wishes (which is a no-no in Japan) and flies to the United States, hoping to make her flash forward come true. Ah, and there's the seductive Annabeth Gish who plays Lita, a killer for the organization that caused the blackout and who will use her powers as a smart, beautiful woman to lure both men and females into her dark web of intrigue. See what I mean about strong female characters? And these ladies are just the tip of the iceberg. The show was created by Brannon Braga and David S. Goyer (he wrote and produced the three Blade movies with Wesley Snipes, and directed the third one). Goyer directed the pilot episode of Flash Forward, and did an amazing job with it considering this is television. He put everything he had into the pilot, knowing it would catch millions of viewers and leave them in awe. It did me. The male cast includes a list of fabulous and intense actors to fill the roles of the characters in the show. There's Joseph Fiennes as F.B.I. agent Mark Benford, Courtney B. Vance as Stanford Wedneck, who is Mark's boss. Then there's John Cho as Demetri, Mark's partner, and Zachary Knighton as Dr. Bryce Vance (he works with Dr. Olivia Benford as a surgeon), who was getting ready to commit suicide when the blackout occurred and his flash forward saw him still being alive and meeting Keiko six months later. Jack Davenport plays Lloyd Simcoe, one of the scientists who inadvertently created the means to bring about the blackout and who is the man Dr. Olivia Benford sees herself with while her husband is being assassinated. Dominic Monaghan (Lord of the Rings and Lost) plays Simon Campos and is a physicist with a high three-digit IQ, who's utterly arrogant with those around him, not to mention he's Lloyd Simcoe's partner in scientific research and is a man who will do whatever it takes to keep those he loves alive. You hate Simon one moment and then like him the next. Last, but not least, is Brian F. O'Byrne who plays Aaron Stark, who is Mark Benford's sponsor at AA. More importantly, Aaron is ex-Marine Recon. In his flash forward, he saw himself in Afghanistan with his dead daughter actually alive and badly wounded. Nothing will stop him from making that come true, not even the security consulting firm that put a bull's eye on his daughter's back and is now after him. I want to say that both Courtney Vance and Dominic Monaghan somehow manage to steal the scenes whenever they're in them. These are two top actors who bring their characters alive in ways that make you hate and then like them, and then cheer for them, which is a hard task for any actor to accomplish. They both play their parts to the absolute hilt. You should also know that each episode of Flash Forward ends with a strong hook, propelling the viewer forward into watching the next one so they can find out what happens. It did that to me in spades even though I still remembered the basic storyline of the show. The hooks are usually whoppers and make you jump up and yell, "Wait, don't stop yet! I need to know what happens next!" With the DVD set, you can immediately go to the next episode and continue on with the show. No commercials to wade through or seven-day waiting period for the next episode to air. At the end of one episode, you discover that not everybody blacked out and had a flash forward ... that there was a mysterious man awake at a baseball stadium, watching everyone else pass out around him. This is Suspect Zero, who the F.B.I. now wants to find. Another episode has a man jumping to his death to prevent his flash forward from coming true where an innocent woman is killed. An episode that blew me away had an F.B.I. mole getting caught and then grabbing a Sig Sauer 9mm handgun from a fellow agent and shooting six of her team members in a couple of seconds before trying to make her way out of the building, killing anyone who gets in her way. That looked totally real. Still another episode ended with Dr. Olivia Benford meeting the man who would eventually take her husband's place in her home and bed. Like I previously said, these are just the tip of the iceberg. Every episode is great with its performers, direction, location sets, filming, and special effects. This is certainly a show you'll want to watch more than once. The sad part is the first season ended with several kickers that you'll never know the answers to. You'll left hanging in the wind with no recourse. I thank ABC for that. Oh, before I forget, the show is based on the novel by Robert J. Sawyer, though little from the book was used in the series except for the flash forward premise. The DVD set also has over a hundred minutes of behind-the-scenes information, which isn't enough in my opinion. I was hungry for more tidbits about the show, its creation, and its performers. So, if you enjoy excellent dramas with a science fiction premise, then this is a show you'll want to see and you won't have to deal with bloody commercials. Highly recommended! Editor’s Note: Wayne C. Rogers is the author of the horror novellas – The Encounter, The Tunnels, and The Cat From Hell. These can be purchased as Kindle e-books on Amazon for ninety-nine cents each.