At the Television Critics Association conference in Pasadena yesterday, Fox Entertainment President Kevin Reilly insisted that the network remains strongly committed to Fringe, despite the fact the poorly-rated show has been moved to a Friday night time-slot where shows often struggle to command large audiences.

“I beg you to not write the [show's] eulogy prematurely,” Reilly told the critics. “It’s a show we’re very passionate about.”

Reilly argued that the move to Friday does not indicate a lack of faith in the show: on the contrary, he spelled out a case that it’s a pretty good fit for the night.

“Friday has been a troubled night,” he said. “It’s not a free night for us. It’s not a night we can just sort of hang out a ‘gone fishin’ sign. We are continually looking for the solution to the night.”

Many of Fringe’s existing viewers already watch it via time-shifting (which is the term for programming not watched “live,” but via DVR, Tivo, or some other recording device). In other words, viewers don’t necessarily need to be home Friday night to watch the show.

“You already get about fifty percent of [Fringe's] audience watching it on
DVR, as it is, on Thursday,” Reilly said. “I’d really hope those fans would stick with it, even if it means that DVR usage goes up a little bit more on Friday.”

In arguing that the network is still strongly committed to the show, Reilly noted the critical praise the show has received this season.

“I was very happy to see it turn up on a number of Top 10 lists this year,” he said. The producers of the show “deserve it. The work is outstanding. They make a mini-movie every week. The production value is incredible.”

Reilly also insisted that there are currently no plans to change the show, trying to make it appealing to a broader audience.

“We are going to do the same show, and they are already on a track for the season,” he said. “They can’t make any changes to it. I think, if anything, they will be really liberated. Right now we are down to a core loyal audience that watches it each weekend.”

Reilly added, “I think, frankly, one of the conundrums of it is, as it’s really gotten to be more pure and a better version, kind of what I think it was destined to be, it’s probably a little bit difficult to join it in progress for some of the new viewers on Thursday. I think now they can say, ‘Do you know what? We are playing to our fans, happy to take anyone new that wants to get on board.’ But if our fans stick with us, you know, the show can stay on the air for many years.”

As for the show’s struggle in the ratings on Thursday nights, Reilly said, “It’s been the most challenging night — a four-way scripted race at nine o’clock on Thursdays. There is no other time period that’s even had that. [Fringe has] done a job for us. It put us in business on Thursday night. With the new structure, we are looking to go a little bit broader with the rating. I want every one of those audience members to transfer to Friday.”

Regarding the ratings the network hopes to achieve on Friday, which might be an early indication of the show’s eventual fate, Reilly said, “If we just literally transfer the rating we have, you know, even in that ballpark to Friday, we have significantly upgraded our Friday night both in terms of numbers and quality.”

It’s important to keep in mind that a network would never declare in public that they’ve given up on a show still in production. Earlier this year, for example, SyFy publicly claimed to be strongly committed to Caprica, despite reports now that behind-the-scenes, the channel had mostly already given up on the show.

That said, Reilly sounded genuinely sincere in his support for Fringe.

“It’s a fantastic show,” he said, “and honestly, I’d be heartbroken if it went away.”

Fringe returns Friday, January 21st at 9 PM.

• Megamind did very good, not great: $47.7 million (”winning” the weekend).

• I’ll say it: I think this new Snow White re-imagining looks stupid, but hey, re-imagining fairy tales is suddenly all the rage, with Beauty and the Beast, Red Riding Hood, and many other “retelling” projects forthcoming. In Snow White, Johnny Depp looks to be The Huntsman, and Charlize Theron may play the evil queen, named Ravenna here (but unnamed in the classic Disney version).

• A short interview with Deathly Hallows director David Yates. “It’s a road movie,” he says. “It’s got much more variety, it’s much more about the emotional states of these characters growing older, and it’s more nuanced than either of the previous films.”

• I’m loving these videos by Save Our Seeker (still trying to save Legend of the Seeker). Here’s a compilation of their “greatest hits”:
  

• If you’re watching Fringe, you know that it’s hitting an absolute creative peek with its “dual universe” storyline. The problem  is, no one’s watching Fringe: it hit a series low last week.

• This is bold: no Mary Jane in the Spider-Man reboot? (Interestingly, I still don’t care, as I don’t think superhero franchises don’t need to be “rebooted” every five years.)

• Disney is considering a Tron ride for Disneyland, which seems like really good synergy. But please: no more of those “simulator” rides. Even in 3D, they just don’t compare to “real”.

• Three new images from Tintin.

• Variety’s early review of Tangled. No surprise, but it sounds like they went the DreamWorks quippy “ironic” route. But they liked it.

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Four Torches (Out of Five)

It’s official: in three seasons, Fringe has now produced three great season-openers; the latest, “Olivia,” airing this Thursday, is perfectly in keeping with the tradition.

If you’ll recall in the last season’s finale, Olivia and Walter had gone over to the “alternate dimension” where they witnessed the death of William Bell. But in the confusion of his death, alternative-Olivia is able to pass herself off as the real Olivia, traveling over to our world, leaving our hero stranded in the alternate dimension. The final scenes had Olivia trapped in a prison cell.

What I’ve always liked best about Fringe is their over-arching story-arc; the alternative-dimension storyline was different and interesting. In “Peter,” last season’s best episode, we learned the reason for “The Pattern” and for so much of what had happened on the show — and, incredibly, it all hung together.

We weren’t being Lost-ed after all. Whew!

The episode, and the ones after it, were so good I even forgave them for all their incredibly crappy science mumbo-jumbo in earlier episodes.

Still, what I’ve liked least about the show is when they slow that over-arching story arc down to a crawl and give in to the “monster-of-the-week” temptation.

Been there, done that — on too many shows since The X-Files.

Fortunately, the producers of Fringe have taken my helpful advice, and this season they’re concentrating on the over-arching story, at least for the first half of the season. But they’re combining it with monster-of-the-week stories too.

How? The season’s very clever gimmick is that the show will feature two storylines: “odd” episodes will be set with Olivia and Evil Walter in the alternate dimension. And “even” episodes will be set with Evil Olivia (or “Bolivia”) in the original dimension.

So the premiere episode, being “odd,” tells us what’s going on with Olivia. It picks up exactly where the finale left, with Olivia imprisoned — and the episode is a winner.

I won’t spoil the plot by revealing specific details, except I thought it was a clever bit they did with the Statue of Liberty — and probably not too far-fetched, given xenophobic, anti-immigrant fervor currently gripping the country.

I also really liked Olivia’s relationship with the cab driver, which I found believable and touching. When we learn why the cab driver reacts the way he does, I found it very believable.

I’ve also seen the second episode of this season, and while I didn’t think it was quite as successful as the opener, my hat is off to Anna Torv, playing Evil Olivia. In much of the episode, she is, of course, playing Evil Olivia playing Normal Olivia — and the performance is terrific: very similar to Olivia, but just different enough to be off-putting.

Fringe has been notoriously hit-and-miss to date, so I’m reluctant to say, “This season is gonna be great!” But so far, things look good. I’ll definitely be tuning in.

• Anyone who has ever hung out in the science fiction/fantasy section of a book store knows: bad covers happen to good books. And bad covers also happen to bad books. Let’s be honest, as a genre, we’ve got some really awful covers. And there’s a whole website devoted to cataloging those awful covers. There went your productivity.

• Disney has announced their “original fairy tale” The Bear and the Bow has been renamed Brave, and will be released June 15, 2012. They also named November 16, 2012, as the release date for Monsters, Inc. 2.

• Supernatural has been insanely good this season (last night was epic, but I’ve always had a soft spot for a certain archangel). This compilation of footage from the season lets you realize just how much has happened, and maybe even gives hints to things yet to come.

• The nominations for the Locus Awards are out, and I’ve read several of the books in the science fiction category, and I see a dear old friend in the fantasy section in Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett. His fantasy competition includes:

• The City & The City, China Miéville (Del Rey; Macmillan UK)

• Drood, Dan Simmons (Little, Brown)

• Palimpsest, Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)

• Finch, Jeff VanderMeer (Underland)

• Imagi has mostly been out of business since 2007, which is really sad, because this trailer for Gatchaman that they were working on is amazing. Gatachaman is better known to Americans as the 1970s cartoon G-Force, but this one was darker and more violent.

• The Los Angeles Times takes four pages to explain why Frank Herbert’s Dune series has stood the test of time, and it apparently has nothing to do with Sting in a weird pointy Speedo.

• Paramount and M. Night Shyamalan intend to keep the release date for Avatar: The Last Airbender the same and still send it back to post-production to be converted to 3D. Enough already! These after-the-fact conversations don’t work — and we movie-goes are not just sheep to be fleeced with higher 3D ticket prices.

• ABC’s Happy Town looks like a small town drama, or maybe a mystery series, but the network continues to hint at a supernatural element to the program. Heck, in this trailer they don’t so much hint as they come out and say that magic is involved.

• Paramount just renewed their option for Max Brooks’ zombie universe novel World War Z, for “half the time and twice the money” so it sounds like we could be looking at an attempt to create a zombie franchise.

• Leonard Nimoy has decided at age 79 he wants to retire from acting. He won’t appear in another Star Trek film, and he says he’s filmed his last appearance as William Bell on Fringe. Thanks for all the fun, Spock! (Editor’s note: the Oracle does not agree!)

• George Mann’s Ghosts of Manhattan, billed as the world’s first steampunk superhero, has the first six chapters online at the publisher’s site so you can get a feel for the universe.

• I’m not even going to pretend I can explain this insane infographic showing the ebb and flow of science fiction and fantasy programming on television, from 1950 through 2009. Handy points like Star Wars and the moon landing are marked. What I didn’t realize was that the peak of “quantity” of genre television was 1997 and 2000, with 43 shows each. Clicking the graphic zooms in repeatedly.

Have a question about something fantasy-related? Please send an email to thetorchonlineoracle@gmail.com and be sure and include your city and state and/or country.

Q: What do we know about the upcoming musical episode of Fringe? — Amanda, San Francisco, CA

Q: We know that it airs April 29th, that it takes place inside the mind of Walter (who is telling a bedtime story to his niece), that it finally gives star Anna Torv a chance to babe out (in a private eye setting), and that even Astrid gets a number (from A Chorus Line).

We also know that Fringe is more or less “back” — that they’re making a serious attempt to right whatever had gone wrong with the show last fall (a creative lull that was reflected in cratering ratings).

It’s not just that they’re doing a musical episode — at this point, doing a musical episode is actually something of a hackneyed let’s-pretend-to-think-outside-the-box-but-not-really-think-outside-the-box cliche. But it does prove they’re willing to take chances and tamper with their “monster-of-the-week” formula.

For me, the terrific “Peter” episode (where we learned how and why Walter brought Peter from the other dimension) bought them all kinds of good will. And they sealed the deal with last week’s “White Tulip” episode, where they cleverly did a “time travel” story in which the past was changed such that the events of the entire episode eventually … never happened (and the main characters never knew)!

I’m excited to see what they do with the musical ep.

Q: Will there be a fourth Mummy movie? — Alice, Colorado Springs, CA

A: Yup. The Mummy 4: Rise of the Aztec, is currently in production. After the Egyptian setting of the first two movies (and the prequel, The Scorpion King), and the Chinese setting of the third movie, this one has the South American/Amazon setting hinted at in the ending of the last movie.

There was some question if Brendan Fraser would return, but he’s reportedly back, along with John Hannah and Mario Bello (who took over the role of Evelyn from Rachel Weisz). Rob Cohen (who took the directing helm from Stephen Sommers for the last movie) will return as well. Antonio Banderas and Jeremy Irons will co-star.

Is this all a good thing? Almost certainly not.

Q: Presumably any item can be imbued with magic, so how come we never hear about magic toilets? Seems like that would actually be quite helpful (not having to it clean and all), especially in a medieval setting! — Sam, Linwood, WA

A: Alas, wizards apparently have body-function issues. The only “magic toilet” I could find was the one this enterprising entrepreneur made as an iPhone app.

But just between you and the Oracle, I find plain, old flushing toilets pretty darn magical.

Q: You’re always hearing about “paradoxes” in sci-fi, but not fantasy. What do you think of this one? – Irvin, Winchester, MA

A: Cute.

Q: Your opinion is needed: is Halle Berry being cast as Storm in the The X-Men the worst casting mistake of all time? I mean, WTF! – John, Gig Harbor, WA

A: Could. Not. Agree. More. What do Halle Berry and Storm have in common anyway? Well, they’re both black … and female. That’s about it.

Berry’s disappear-into-the-background performances (and disappearing Kenyan  accent) didn’t help matters any.

I’m not the first to say this, but what makes this casting choice particularly egregious is that there was an obvious, far superior choice, an actress who was born to play this role: Angela Bassett.

What happens when you hire a “name” movie star rather than the actor who’s actually right for a part? You almost ruin a franchise, that’s what.

Have a question about something fantasy-related? Please send an email to thetorchonlineoracle@gmail.com and be sure and include your city and state and/or country.

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It’s that time of the year again, when TV fans either set their faces to smug because their favorite shows have already been renewed, or they chew on their fingers and rock back-and-forth in a corner like Gollum because NBC handed out a renewal for the asinine Marriage Ref, but there is still no word on Chuck. (Maybe that second thing is just me. Maybe I’m the only one in clutching a picture of Yvonne Strahovski and whispering “Precious, my precious.”)

Here’s our quick run-down on what’s in, what’s out, and what’s on the bubble for fantasy TV next year.

ALREADY RENEWED

CW
Supernatural
Vampire Diaries
Smallville

Fox
Fringe

HBO
True Blood (Third season begins in June)

Starz
Spartacus: Blood and Sand

Syfy
Warehouse 13
Eureka
Stargate Universe

ON THE BUBBLE

NBC
Heroes (could go either way, according to Entertainment Weekly)
Chuck (could go either way, according to EW)

ABC
V (could go either way, according to EW)
FlashForward (a long shot, according to EW)

CBS
Medium (could go either way, according to EW)
Ghost Whisperer (a safe bet, according to EW)

Syfy
Caprica (could go either way, according to EW)

Syndicated
Legend of the Seeker (studio exploring options for third season)

ALREADY CANCELED

Fox
Past Life

Both Chuck and Heroes have made it into the final round of E! Online’s annual “Save One Show” competition.  So if you want to be proactive about bringing either one of them back, go vote! If your show is on the bubble and it didn’t make it to E!’s final round, I’ll make room for you in my corner — but don’t touch my photos of Agent Sarah Walker.

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Four and a Half Torches (Out of Five)

This preview is spoiler-free, but does talk in a general sense about the Fringe episode, “Peter.”

They did it! They really, really did it!

On this Thursday’s Fringe, they answer a lot of questions.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time criticizing the show for its lack of momentum on the overall series story-arc.

I think it’s fine when a show answers “series” questions, and those answers lead to more, different questions. But it’s not fine to simply answer questions with more questions (*cough* Lost and The X-Files *cough*).

There has to be some closure. Otherwise you get the sense that the producers don’t have any real game-plan — that they’re just making it all up, pulling stuff out of their a*ses, as they go along.

It’s also not fine when a show puts off answering questions for too long. Then you get a sense that (a) they don’t know what they’re doing, and (b) they don’t care about their viewers!

Fringe has danced dangerously close to this territory, both last season and this one.

But all that changes this Thursday, when we flash back to 1985 to learn exactly how Walter first discovered the “alternate” dimension — and why Walter brought other-Peter back from there.

I don’t want to give anything away, but suffice to say: he has his reasons!

Not just for bringing Peter here in the first place, but for never taking him back, and not telling him the truth.

In addition, we also learn answers to:

• Why Walter so resents William Bell.
• What happened to Nina Sharp’s hand.
• (Probably) why Walter went insane.
• Why the Pattern exists and (sort of) what’s really going on.
• Why Reiden Lake is a rupture point between the worlds.
• What’s the deal with The Observers, and why they’re so interested in Peter and Walter.

Incredibly, it all hangs together pretty well!

Quibbles? Well, if technology is so much more advanced in the other dimension, wouldn’t individuals be completely different there too? Would Walter have even married Peter’s mother, and would “Peter” even have been born?

And — it must be said — John Noble looks pretty ridiculous (and unconvincing) in his 1985 wig.

But those are just that: quibbles.

I’ve been critical of Fringe lately, but I gotta say: this is the kind of episode — simultaneously plot and character-driven — that reminds me why I started watching this show in the first place.

I know they don’t care, but allow me to publicly say to them, sincerely, “All is forgiven. I’m sorry I doubted you.”

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I’ve just about had it with Fringe.

If it weren’t for the fact that this Thursday’s episode, “Jacksonville,” promises to shed major light on the series’ overall William Bell/dual dimension plotline, I think I’d be done with it completely.

What’s the bee in my bonnet? Two things about the show are driving me absolutely bananas:

First, there’s the fact that Dr. Walter Bishop was apparently intimately involved in every experimental research project ever conducted and is the world’s top expert in dozens of disparate scientific fields.

This is despite the fact that he’d spent the 17 years prior to the start of the show in a mental institution. In the real world, scientific knowledge reportedly doubles somewhere between every five and ten years. In the world of Fringe, not so much.

I understand how he would be privy to knowledge about the show’s central mystery, since he and William Bell were the one’s responsible for creating it. But does his previous research have to be the driving force behind virtually every mystery the show confronts? When did the man sleep?!

But mostly what’s driving me crazy about the show is that its science is just so unbelievably bad.

Here’s the thing: I am far from a science “purist.” I always tuned out the blowhards who criticized the science of Star Trek, since they clearly didn’t understand that, first and foremost, the show existed to entertain. Clearly, it also tried to provoke thought about issues both scientific and social, but I actually think it was (mostly) a good thing that they never let themselves get too bogged down in science, because it made the show accessible to a broad audience.

But in spite of all of Star Trek’s inaccuracies and inconsistencies, I believe they at least gave the science some thought. And the visionaries behind Star Trek clearly had a deep love of both science and the future — which is precisely why so many scientists claim to have been inspired by it.

By contrast, it’s clear that the producers of Fringe don’t give a f*** about science.

I understand that the gimmick of the show is that it deals with the paranormal which, by definition, stretches the boundaries of science. But they clearly want to highlight the simplest, most attention-getting (and most dumbed-down) “scientific” phenomena possible — and they don’t give a whit about actual science.

Consider:

• In “What Lies Below,” the January 21st episode, Walter confronts a preposterous “thinking” virus that infects his son, Peter, but in less than an hour, despite having no lab and very little equipment, he’s able to isolate the virus and concoct an antidote out of horseradish from a refrigerator — horseradish! — that immediately works on everyone infected.

• In “Of Human Action,” the November 12th episode, a researcher is conducting an experiment that would allow pilots to control planes with their brains, and when his son takes the “enhancement” drugs, it gives him the ability to psychically control other people — because, you know, the human brain is just “another kind of computer.” Fortunately, Walter is able to prevent the mind-control by creating special headphones (!!!) for the FBI agents to wear.

• In “Unearthed,” the January 11th episode (an unaired episode from the first season), a dying girl is “possessed” by an evil man who just happens to be dying at the same time. His spiritual energy didn’t dissipate due to, um, previous “heavy radiation exposure” while in a Russian sub, and he “jumped ship” to the dying girl.

• Despite the fact that the structure of DNA wasn’t even identified until 1953, in “The Bishop Revival,” the January 28th episode, it turns out that the Nazis (and Walter Bishop’s father, working as a spy) had developed an air-born toxin that attacked specific genes and could immediately kill anyone who had them.

I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

It’s like their not even trying — not even bothering with the fig leaf of Star Trek’s techno-babble to cover the nakedness of their pseudo-science.

Basically, Gilligan’s Island took science more seriously when they had the Professor making a car out of bamboo and coconut shells!

Hey, whatever. So there’s no love or deep affection for science on Fringe. So they’re even cheapening it — cynically flashing science’s most attention-getting elements, like dancers flashing body parts in some bawdy burlesque show, acting without nuance or elegance. They’re not the first to do this, and they won’t be the last.

But Fringe is not Gilligan’s Island. It pretends to be serious speculative fiction.

Basically, they’re making it impossible for me to enjoy the show. My knowledge of science is limited at best — hey, I was a social sciences studies major! But increasingly, I find my eyes rolling out of my head by the stupid and sloppily-conceived premises of most of their episodes.

Thursday’s episode better be spectacular. Because if it isn’t, I am so outta here.

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• Hey, a movie based on Mistborn is in the works! And author Brandon Sanderson is actually optimistic that it might get made.

• The Vatican has come out strongly against Avatar, because it presents “nature-worship.” Sadly, I think this (a) completely misses the point of the movie, and (b) is just more of their usual “man is the center of the universe” nonsense. Expect them to denounce The Force soon too.

• Everyone else is posting it, so I might as well: Star Wars burlesque — and Leia in the metal bikini is the least of it! The whole photo gallery here.

• Yes, I’m deliberately ignoring the whole Spider-Man fiasco. Everyone here knows what I think about sequels and “reboots,” especially in the superhero genre (cynical and unbelievably tired). You know what? There’s no Constitutional amendment that says that there must always be a “current” franchise for all these characters! Every time you retell one of these stories for the 30,000th time, that means there’s one more newer, fresher story that won’t get told. (Well, hey, I guess I didn’t ignore it after all.)

• It’s not fantasy-specific, but an interesting short piece on how all authors repeat themselves, but some outright recycle (*cough* John Irving *cough*).

• As I read this, it sounds like Buena Vista will release a soundtrack for Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, and another CD, Almost Alice, with the movie’s theme song and a bunch of other songs by familiar artists “inspired” by the characters in the movie (although the music doesn’t actually exist in the movie). This is either brilliant or cynical, depending on your point-of-view.

• Speaking of unnecessary sequels, Ivan Reitman will direct Ghostbusters 3. More bad news? The screenplay is by the writers of the painfully unfunny Year One.

• This interview with J.J. Abrams about Fringe, about how they’re still trying to decide the series’ overall story arc (and if, like Lost, it should have a definite “ending”), seems to be missing one crucial point: ratings have been lousy all season, and it may not be their choice when the show ends.

• Do you think D&D 4.0 is bland and homogeneous — that they tried to turn it into World of Warcraft? One blogger has a solution.

• I honestly thought this was a joke, but I guess it’s not: Christopher “Saruman” Lee (seen in the From the Palantir logo, above!) is releasing a “symphonic metal” album. Shades of Leonard Nimoy singing The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins?

• It’s official: Clash of the Titans won’t be 3-D. The glasses make my ears hurt anyway.

• The incredible shrinking sci-fi project! First, it was a series, then it was a mini-series, now it’s a two-hour movie! Poor Day One. If it does well, it could still be a series, but let’s face it: this (along with poor ratings for Heroes, Fringe, Flash Forward, and other shows) does not bode well for sci-fi on network TV.

• Are The Chronicles of Narnia being de-Christianed? The right-wing news outlet The Washington Times thinks so. But given how outrageously biased everything I read in that newspaper is — think Fox “News” without even Shepherd Smith — I am skeptical of anything they say.

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• Okay, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice isn’t what I expected at all. The first trailer is out, but can I just say? How in the hell did Nicolas Cage get to be a superstar? He’s annoyed me ever since Peggy Sue Got Married.

• Fringe has cast Peter’s mother (Walter’s wife). But what’s the deal with her age? (Spoiler alert) Incidentally, what happened to Theresa Russell anyway? I thought she was supposed to be a love interest for Walter.

• Maybe new media isn’t quite the king yet after all. Nielsen says 99% of video viewing is done on a traditional TV — and out of 31 hours of weekly TV viewing, only 31 minutes is in DVR/playback mode. Meanwhile, studio executives say that the death of the DVD market is wildly overstated — that it’s mostly due to the recession, and that, regardless, Blu-Ray is making them a bundle.

• A producer of speculative fiction magazines is paying 1/5 of one cent per word — a shockingly low rate. An editor says that obscure credits in magazines no one has heard of won’t help you break through. What do professional writers get paid? Here’s another writer’s more pessimistic take. (This is all complicated by the fact that there is basically no real professional market for short stories anymore, but both writers’ experiences are consistent with my own experience: pay rates for short stories vary wildly, which is why pay is only one of the things you should take into consideration when writing short stories. I’ll write em as a favor to a friend putting together an anthology, but that’s about all.)

• Hmmmm. Universal is bragging via email that The Wolfman, coming in February, received an “R,” for “bloody horror, violence and gore.”

• Despite all the rumors, casting for The Hobbit is just beginning (except for Ian McKellen, returning as Gandalf). Meanwhile, Peter Jackson says disregard those rumors that the film has been delayed.

• Why is sci-fi literature dying while fantasy is flourishing? One writer gives some good reasons.

• Sigourney Weaver really, really likes Avatar:  “It will pick you up and shake you like a little rag doll. I’m not too much of an emotional creature, but I was weeping by the end. I remember reading the script and thinking, I love this but how can he ever do this. Nothing like this has been done before – floating mountains! I think for a certain generation it will change what they want to happen in the cinema. It is as big as sound. I hope it won’t impact every movie, but for the big movies it raises the bar – it throws the bar away.”

• Will a sci-fi picture get a Best Picture nod now that the category will now have ten nominees? Conventional wisdom is that the movie with the strongest shot is Star Trek (which is ridiculous, IMHO), although I think it would be an outrage if District 9 was not a contender, since I thought it was easily one of the best pictures of the year. Where the Wild Things Are is also sometimes mentioned as a possibility, but I think that’s extremely unlikely (if you read this site, you know I think that was one of the worst movies of the year, hands down). The Road and Moon are also mentioned as possibilities.

• Terry Gilliam is interested in Robert Duvall for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, but as usual, Duvall is all “show me the money!”

• Author Joel Shepherd explains the power of the female protagonist, especially in fantasy: “Given that male leadership is the norm in most societies even today, putting a woman in the role of primary protagonist automatically creates a series of tensions that I don’t get with a male character. In a medieval-level society even more so.”

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Four Torches (Out of Five)

Warning: This review contains major spoilers for the “Momentum Deferred” episode of Fringe.

Well, finally we get some answers!

I’ve written previously how annoyed I was that Fringe was playing the “amnesia” card — for the second time! — when it came to Olivia’s return from the “other” dimension.

Fortunately, the “amnesia” didn’t last most of the season long (as I feared). In “Momentum Deferred,” Olivia remembers her time spent with William Bell.

(Incidentally, is it really a good idea to ingest an experimental concoction designed to induce lost memories right before going out on assignment?!)

So what exactly does William tell Olivia?

He confirms that shape-shifters are visitors from the other dimension and that they’re planning for some kind of invasion. More importantly, she — and only she — can find the person in “our” dimension who is capable opening a “door” between the two dimensions. That’s that “important thing” she couldn’t quite remember she had to do.

From this, Nina Sharpe adds in the rest: if the two dimensions ever do come together, only one will survive.

All good stuff. I just wish we’d learned it in the season premiere rather than having to wait four episodes.

Anyway, solid episode. Here’s what else I liked:

• Nicely visual, if slightly gimmicky, way to have Olivia realize that Charlie is the shape-shifter (with the cell-phone tapped into the laboratory).
• Leonard Nimoy can do no wrong — and I like the character’s moral ambiguity/indifference a lot.
• Blair Brown (as Nina Sharp) can do no wrong.
• The show is doing “creepy” extremely well, with the “disorientation” that Olivia experiences in the other dimension, the search for “heads,” and the pay-off at the end, when the head “reattaches” itself.

But Theresa Russell as Walter’s love interest? That could be interesting.

Two major guest stars are appearing on two different fantasy/sci-fi shows this week, ironically airing at the same time.

Leonard Nimoy makes his first appearance on Fringe since last year’s season finale (not counting brief glimpses), appearing as the enigmatic William Bell in Olivia’s flashbacks (Thursday, Fox, 9 PM).

Here’s a preview:

Meanwhile, Paris Hilton will guest-star on Supernatural as a demon version of herself (or is that redundant?) in a town where famous icons like Abraham Lincoln, James Dean’s car, and Hilton are killing people (Thursday, 9 PM, The CW).

Here’s a preview: