TVSquad

Oh, I'll be there, probably on opening weekend, but something about the new X-Files flick makes me nervous as hell.

Maybe it's the fact that it has been ten years since the last movie, and I wonder if people are still interested in it enough to make it a hit (and push another movie into production). I also worry about the plot, since nothing much has been leaked about what the film is about, other than it involves snow, mysterious happenings, and Billy Connolly bleeding from the eyes.

No, the real reason I'm worried is that the movie has a "standalone" plot and is not part of the mythology arc from the show and the first movie. I think this could be a mistake.

This latest trailer for The X-Files movie, coming out July 25th, actually has some meat to it. The past teaser-trailers haven't shown much except some snow and a lot of flashes of black. In this trailer, we actually get to see some of Mulder and Scully's co-stars -- namely, Amanda Peet and Billy Connolly. Peet appears to be an FBI agent who is a bit of an outsider because she's a believer in the paranormal, which is why Mulder is brought on to the case. Connolly plays an unusual man, a psychic, who may or may not be nuts.

Can you hear the eerie music becoming louder and louder? That's the sound of the X-Files movie being one step closer to being released on the big screens this summer (more than likely on July 25)! Being an X-Files and a spoilers fan, I jumped up and down a few times while humming the show's theme this morning when I stumbled on a SCI FI Wire article that offered just what I was looking for: spoilers about the upcoming X-Files movie!

X-Files fans rejoice: the sequel really is going to happen. In fact, they've already started filming!

On the right is one of the first pics from the set. David Duchovny has his Fox Mulder hair back, while Gillian Anderson seems to be sporting a new do. But I'll stop talking about hair right now because it's weird.

Creator/director Chris Carter says that they're completely dumping the whole alien mythology storyline from the show, since they already "wrapped up a lot of threads" from the show (really?). Instead, the new flick will settle on a standalone plot, which will not only please old fans but also the new fans that Carter is trying to hook into the movie.

The truth is still out there.

David Duchovny, during an interview for the DVD release of The TV Set, reveals that the script for the long-awaited (seriously, it's been ten years!) X-Files movie sequel is indeed done and it looks like they're going to start filming in December.

Duchovny had no further details on plot, though he has hinted in past interviews that this will be more of a stand alone movie and not part of the mythology arc from the show and first movie (aw, come on, I want to know what's been going on with that whole thing the past several years). Duchovny does ask one thing of people: don't spoil the damn movie by leaking info about it. Thank you.

[via TV Tattle]

Welcome to TV Squad Lists (formerly 'The Five'), a feature where each blogger has a chance to list his or her own rundown of things in television that stand out from the rest, both good and bad.

Since I've already done a list of the greatest police detectives and the greatest private eyes, the next list is a natural: Greatest Spies and Agents!

The guidelines for this list? A spy that worked for an agency or someone that worked in an official governmental capacity, such as the FBI or CIA. Here we go:

1. Kelly Robinson and Alexander Scott (I Spy): These two guys weren't only resourceful, but they were the coolest cats around. Robinson and Scott were spies, but they travelled the world working on cases disguised as a tennis pro and his trainer. How awesome is that? The show was filmed on location (you hardly ever see that), and a lot of the dialogue was improvised and casual. Great theme song too.

Joss Whedon took a cue from screenwriter James Gunn's list of the all-time best characters on television and made his own. Whedon's list includes George Michael Bluth, Josh Lyman, and Lou Grant, among many others. Gunn's list, which also includes rules about no Muppets or cartoons, includes Buffy, David Brent, Jack Bauer, and Creed and Pam from The Office (Gunn's married to Jenna Fischer).

Without putting too much thought into it, here are a few of my faves (and my list shows a far inferior knowledge of television):

• Claire Huxtable, The Cosby Show, the perfect balance of cool mom, tough love mom and working mom;
• Elaine, Seinfeld, for being one of the guys;
  
• David Brent, The Office (British version), because he's wickedly, uncomfortably funny;
• Capt. Mal Reynolds, Firefly, for being a funny, loving man underneath a thick shell of mean;
• Fox Mulder, The X-Files, for not giving a rat's ass what others think and believing in the wholly unbelievable;
  
• Dana Scully, The X-Files, for being the perfect complement to Mulder.

Who are your all-time favorite television characters?

[Via Pop Candy]

(S01E15) So, how creepy is that opening scene in the hospital? Yikes. Scully insists that a fellow FBI agent, who was shot during a bank robbery, be revived. As the doctors are hitting him with the defibrillator, the dead body on the next bed is bouncing with the electric shocks. The dead body is that of the bank robber. This is the only good part of this episode, by the way.

When the FBI agent wakes up, he's not himself. He obviously has the mind of the bank robber but the body of the agent. Since Scully is the one who shot the robber, methinks she's in a bit of danger.

(S01E14) I can honestly say I had never, ever seen this episode of The X-Files. I'm not sure why I passed it over or missed it over the years, but it was new to me. And I totally loved it! Oh, and Nic Lea, who plays villain Alex Krycek in subsequent seasons, makes an appearance in this episode as 'Michael', a near-victim of the Monster of the Week.

The opening scene of Gender Bender made me wonder what time of year this episode aired. It opens with sex, after all. But, alas, it was not created for ratings as it originally aired on January 21, 1994.

(S01E12) We're back to the Monster of the Week episodes and this one's a doozy. This time the perp is a pyromaniac who can start fires with his mind or something. That's bad news for Mulder who is deathly afraid, of all things, fire. Oh, and Mulder's investigating the case with his ex-girlfriend (Phoebe) from Oxford.

The episode opens in England with a gardener smiling as his boss suddenly explodes into flames and dies on his front lawn. The next time we see the gardener, he has dropped his accent and is posing as a caretaker for an American home where a British family is moving in. He really hates the British aristocracy.

(S01E11) While many of the episodes so far in season one have dealt with typical things like ghosts and aliens, Chris Carter really gets his freak on with Eve. He knows there's nothing creepier than twin girls.

The episode opens with joggers finding an 8-year-old girl outside her house without a coat on. She tells them her daddy needed some time and they find him in the backyard, sitting on the swingset. He's dead. With two holes in his neck.

(S01E10) We're back to the Mythology episodes with Fallen Angel. This time, Chris Carter plays to conspiracy theorists' fears that the U.S. military is covering up the presence of aliens on earth. The episode opens with a fire in the woods outside Townsend, Wisconsin, where something appears to attack a curious sheriff's deputy. In a military control room, a tech tracks an unusual object in the air that cannot possibly be an aircraft. The tech is told by the colonel to write it up as a meteor, while the colonel calls someone and launches Operation Falcon.

(S01E08) The teaser at the beginning of this episode is excellent. We're up in Alaska, at the Arctic Ice Core Project where the scientists are either dead or out of their minds. One guy is shirtless and bloody and he transmits a message to HQ, repeating, "We're not who we are.". He's attacked by another guy. They wrestle, point guns at each other, and then end up killing themselves.

(S01E07) Well, this was never one of my favorite episodes of The X-Files and, as it turns out, the writer wasn't too fond of it either. According to The X-Files wiki, writer Howard Gordon described this episode as "one of my biggest disappointments". Apparently, FOX thought the computer-comes-to-life story was a bit "pedestrian" for The X-Files. I have to agree.

(S01E06)  According to The X-Files wiki, this episode was penned with the direction of FOX, which wanted an episode about poltergeists. Luckily, two of the writers for the show (Glen Morgan and James Wong) were fans of the paranormal and we got a very X-Files-style ghost story.