On This Day in 1993: Agents Mulder and Scully Begin Searching for the Truth That's Out There...

It was 30 years ago today that The X-Files made its debut on television! I was just starting 8th grade when the sci-fi mystery drama by Chris Carter (a fellow alumnus at my college, Cal State Long Beach) began airing on FOX TV, and was about to complete my fourth year in college when the original 9-season run of The X-Files ended on May 19, 2002.

I watched the first X-Files movie that was shown in theaters back in 1998, but never saw the sequel, The X-Files: I Want to Believe, in 2008. (Based on the Rotten Tomatoes reviews for this film, I didn't miss out on anything!)

And of course, I watched FBI agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny, who I saw on set when I worked as a background actor on an episode of his SHOWTIME series Californication in Culver City 10 years ago) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) make their return to television for Seasons 10 and 11 of The X-Files between January 2016 and March 2018, respectively.

The X-Files inspired other sci-fi and paranormal TV shows like Fringe and Supernatural over the last two decades—with Supernatural itself employing the monster-of-the-week and mythology episode format during its 15-season run, just like what the Chris Carter series did.

The 1996 hit alien invasion flick Independence Day also paid its respects to The X-Files...though Chris Carter's homage to that summer blockbuster with the '98 X-Files movie (where in one scene, Mulder is seen outside a bar urinating on the poster for Independence Day that's hanging to the side of the building) isn't exactly something that ID4 filmmakers Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin would find flattering!

The X-Files will always be one of my favorite television programs...along with shows like 24, Prison Break, Supernatural and The Big Bang Theory (which of course, isn't a serialized drama).

Would I watch Season 12 of The X-Files if FOX ever decided to give this trailblazing series one more year? You betcha!

And as a reminder: The truth is out there. Happy Sunday!

Farewell, SUPERNATURAL...

Last night, the CW Network aired the 2-hour series finale for Supernatural...one of the longest-running genre TV series that began back in 2005. The first hour was devoted to a special where the cast and crew shared their memories on working on this hit show for well over a decade. It was in the second hour where "Carry on," the final episode of Supernatural, showed the fates of Sam and Dean Winchester after spending much of their lives hunting ghosts, demons, vampires, Wendigos, Bloody Mary and the like. All I can say is, it was hugely emotional. To dedicate 15 years of my life to watching the exploits of these two brothers as they—with the help of Bobby Singer (their surrogate father), Castiel (the angel who raised Dean from perdition in Season 4), Crowley (the crossroads demon-turned-King of Hell), Jack (Lucifer's part-human son, a.k.a. a Nephilim) and company—take on the Yellow-Eyed Demon, Lucifer, The Darkness (a.k.a. Amara) and even God (a.k.a. Chuck) Himself was an epic thing. And now it's over.

I've been getting the Supernatural season DVDs as a Christmas gift from one of my brothers since 2008... It's gonna be interesting when he has to find something else to buy for Christmas 2022! Heh. It's all good. In terms of other TV shows that I watch on a weekly basis, there are none. Except for reruns of my other favorite series, The Big Bang Theory, on Channel 13 here in Los Angeles. I hope you guys have a great weekend!

Video of the Day: THE CARD - My Short Film!

Happy Thursday, everyone! Just thought I'd post my newest project that I worked on after completing Envious last month, which is my other short film The Card! I shot this project back in 2002 (during my spring semester at Cal State Long Beach)—using a Super 8mm camera provided by my school's film department. Unlike Envious, I didn't have a sound mixer and boom operator to work with me on set...meaning that I had to create the audio track (and record dialogue) entirely in postproduction. That was pretty interesting!

I used Final Cut Pro to edit The Card 18 years ago, but utilized Lightworks on the Apple MacBook that my brother got me for my birthday last month to update it. Unlike Envious, I didn't have a version of The Card without its music track—so it was tricky retaining sound effects and the dialogue while also removing the songs that were featured in the original film (these songs being hip-hop jams by Dr. Dre, Warren G., Ashanti, K-Ci & JoJo and Usher). I would have kept the songs if YouTube didn't slap a copyright claim on videos that use trademarked music...but it's all good.

Anyways, here's The Card as presented on YouTube. (You can also view it on Vimeo.) Why did I choose today as the film's release date, you ask? Because tonight is the 2-hour series finale for the hit TV show Supernatural, which I've been watching since it premiered on the CW Network back in 2005! Carry on. (FYI, that's the episode title for tonight's finale.)

Long Beach Comic Con...

So yesterday afternoon, I drove down to the Long Beach Convention Center to get my geek on at the LBC's very own Comic Con. I didn't go because I wanted to be in a room full of cosplayers dressed as Deadpool, Boba Fett, Stanley Ipkiss (Jim Carrey's character in 1994's The Mask) or Batman (yes, the Ben Affleck version from next year's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice), but I attended the show to meet two lovely actresses from a pair of my current favorite TV shows. The first one I met was Lindsey McKeon, who played Tessa (a 'Reaper') on the long-lived CW Network TV series, Supernatural. The second actress I took a pic with was Chloe Bennet...who plays Skye (whose real name is Daisy Johnson and is now known as Quake, a so-called Inhuman) on the hit ABC TV show, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Ms. Bennet was originally supposed to appear at 1:00 PM but instead arrived at 5:30 PM for a photo op event at Comic Con. Thank God for the change though; Chloe showing up at the earlier time probably would've prevented me from meeting Lindsey (can't call her Ms. McKeon now since she got married two years ago—to a dude named Brant Hively) first. A long line formed about an hour before Bennet's photo op was supposed to begin. Everything worked out!



Unlike the Star Wars Celebration in April and Disney's D23 Expo last month (I was thinking about attending this one but changed my mind), there were no new news at Comic Con pertaining to Star Wars: The Force Awakens...which opens in theaters 95 days from now (94 if you live in the UK; bastards). The only sign at the Long Beach Convention Center that Episode VII will soon be upon us were the two First Order Stormtroopers (shown towards the bottom of this entry) milling about inside the main showroom, and a booth that sold some Force Awakens merchandise. It's all good. I'm just wondering when J.J. Abrams will reveal the next trailer for the 7th live-action Star Wars installment, and in front of which film? Yea, I'm too lazy to go to Google and see which movies (other than the next Paranormal Activity film, Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies and the very last Hunger Games flick) are coming out this October and November. Carry on.

Sleepy Hollow...

Did Sam and Dean Winchester ever take on the Sandman in the CW's hit series, Supernatural? No? Well anyways... The 'Dream Demon' looked pretty cool on tonight's episode of Sleepy Hollow. This show is awesome.

Sleepy Hollow...

So I watched the newest sci-fi thriller on FOX tonight, and all I can say is: The Headless Horseman welds an M-16?? I'm sold. Bring on next week's episode of Sleepy Hollow!

This show is The Following (the Bible's Book of Revelations plays an integral role in explaining the villains of Sleepy Hollow the same way Edgar Allan Poe's poems motivated Joe Carroll's cult followers in the Kevin Bacon TV drama) and Supernatural (like the CW show, Sleepy Hollow will hopefully last long enough for Death and his fellow Horsemen to almost succeed in bringing about the Apocalypse to the world) both rolled into one. (There are definitely other TV shows that this can be compared to, but I don't watch them so they don't count.) Awesome.

10 YEARS AND COUNTING!... Just as a quick FYI, today marks a decade since I posted my very first (and brief) journal entry for this Blog. Time suuure goes by fast...




Anyways, I saw Paranormal Activity 2 yesterday, and as expected, I thought the film was pretty darn scary. Every time that ominous rumbling sound was heard in the background during a scene, you know that something freaky was obviously gonna happen inside that house—whether it was at night or at day. Of course, it would’ve been more frightening if most of the shocking moments in the movie weren’t seen in the TV ads [though it was showing shots from these scary scenes that obviously got me and every other person who saw this film to wanna watch Paranormal Activity 2 (or PA2)...DUHHH]. In the first Paranormal Activity, the most intense scene in that flick was the moment Katie was dragged out of her bed and down the stairs in her house by an evil unseen entity. A similar scene occurs with Katie’s sister Kristi after she is dragged out of her son’s nursery room in PA2...but for me, the "been there, seen that" attitude after seeing the first flick diminishes the impact of this scene. However, I have to give the filmmakers credit for nicely tying the story of this film with the first one. Paranormal Activity 2 is a prequel to the 2009 surprise hit (which was actually shown at the Screamfest Film Festival in 2007 but released nationwide in the U.S. on October 16 of last year).



If there’s one gripe that I have with Paranormal Activity 2, it’s that the backstory seemed like it was ripped off from an episode of the hit TV show Supernatural (the whole "making a deal with a demon to live a more prosperous life" bit). I’m surprised Jared Padalecki and/or Jensen Ackles (who play ghosthunters Sam and Dean Winchester on Supernatural) didn’t make cameos in the movie. Or at the very least, the daughter in PA2, Ali, tried to find out via her laptop computer how to contact a ‘crossroads demon’ (a recurring character/villain on Supernatural) to deal with the haunting of her family. Anyways...



I also watched Back to the Future at the theater yesterday. The 1985 sci-fi adventure classic was shown during a special 12:30 PM screening at the AMC theater in Puente Hills Mall (which served as the Twin Pines Mall in Back to the Future). Needless to say, it was a sell-out crowd...as lots of other people wanted to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the release of Robert Zemeckis’ hit film. Everyone in the audience got free theatrical posters of the movie afterwards. Would you guys chew me out if I said this was actually the first time I saw Back to the Future in its entirety? Would you chew me out even more if I said I never saw Back to the Future 2 and only bits and pieces of Back to the Future 3 as well? Great Scott! Quit hurling tomatoes at me!

THE TOWN... I saw the Ben Affleck-directed film yesterday, and much like other bank heist flicks such as Inside Man, The Bank Job and even Takers, I thought it was pretty entertaining. I always think it’s cool to see on-screen robbers wearing crazy masks and disguises (such as The Joker’s goons wearing clown masks during that bank robbery at the beginning of The Dark Knight, and the late Patrick Swayze and Co. dressed up as the Ex-Presidents in the 1991 movie, Point Break) as they pull off capers against armored trucks and city banks.



I’m trying to decide which disguise was better: The grim reaper masks Ben Affleck and his gang wore in the opening scene of The Town, or those nun outfits they sport later on in the movie. Speaking of the nun scene, the funniest moment in the film was Affleck and his posse ditching one getaway vehicle to escape in another (after their armored truck robbery goes awry)...only to realize they parked right next to the squad car of a lone Boston police officer. Seeing as how he was the only cop in the area, and he was going up against four dudes dressed as old religious women armed with automatic rifles, it was understandable that this officer would literally look away as Affleck and his gang made their final escape.



If there’s one gripe I had about The Town, it’s that for some odd reason it seemed like the ending to the movie felt a little "safe". On one hand, Affleck’s character is obviously portrayed as someone to sympathize with, despite being an anti-hero and all, but there was something about that final scene in Florida that seemed a little too "Hollywood happy ending-ish" (yes I made up this term) to me. Then again, it might have actually been a cliché for Affleck to be gunned down by the FBI just like the rest of his posse did in the finale. It was cool to see Clive Owen leave that bank unscathed in Inside Man, so in hindsight, there’s absolutely nothing wrong to see Affleck leave the crime-ridden streets of Charlestown to start a new life in the middle of a Florida swamp. It’s not like he was able to get the girl at the end, after all...



I also saw the horror film Devil last night. I thought it was okay. My opinion would probably be more favorable if not for the stigma created by the "Story by M. Knight Shyamalan" credit at the beginning of the movie. Oh well. One of my co-workers mentioned a few months ago that the twist in Devil was that it was a creature terrorizing those five folks in that elevator, as opposed to one of those folks being the culprit themselves. He was wrong. I had the sudden urge to watch the TV show Supernatural (its 6th season premieres on the CW Network this Friday!) after the demon finally revealed itself in the movie’s climax. If Sam or Dean Winchester was on that elevator, the devil wouldn’t stand a chance. Then again, considering what happened in Supernatural's Season 5 finale last May, maybe not. That is all.

SUPERNATURAL... Castiel got Rorschached! Wait, he didn't? Awesome. If you watched the movie Watchmen or read its original graphic novel, then you'd know what I'm talking about. Anyways... I'm lookin' forward to Season 6 later this year—even though Supernatural was intended to only be a 5-season TV series (like 24, originally). We'll see what the producers have in store for the Winchester brothers next fall.

SUPERNATURAL... Just thought I’d comment on how awesome this latest season (Season 4) has been so far. But first, let me do a RECAP on past seasons: In Season 1, Sam and Dean Winchester are out to look for their missing dad, as well as the Yellow-Eyed Demon who killed their mother when they were young. In Season 2, Dean vanquishes the Yellow-Eyed Demon but makes a deal with the Crossroads Demon to resurrect Sam after he is "killed" towards the end of the second season. Their dad, John Winchester, died at the beginning of Season 2 as part of a deal he made with the Yellow-Eyed Demon to spare John’s sons from further harm. In Season 3, Sam tries his best to save Dean after he made that deal with the Crossroads Demon in Season 2. The deal: Dean would only have one more year to live if he wanted Sam brought back from the dead. Unfortunately, Sam fails in saving his brother...and Dean ultimately meets his fate at the hands (or claws) of 'hellhounds', and is brought to Hell.



This brings us to Season 4. At the beginning of the first episode, Dean wakes up and finds himself inside a coffin lying in the middle of a grass field. He emerges from the coffin, and is bewildered to discover that he is alive. We don’t know why Dean was brought back...until we are introduced to Castiel (Misha Collins), an 'Angel of the Lord'. Turns out, it was Castiel who rescued Dean from Hell, the reason being that Castiel needs Dean to help him and the rest of the forces of Heaven to wage war against the demons. Under Lilith (who escaped from Hell at the end of Season 2 and was responsible for Dean’s death at the conclusion of Season 3), the demons are out to break 66 Seals that will unleash Lucifer and the apocalypse onto the world. At the same time this is happening, Sam—who it is eventually revealed had demon blood given to him when he was an infant (by the Yellow-Eyed Demon)—is perfecting the telekinetic powers that allow him to exorcise and kill demons.



I’ll end the recap above, haha. As you can see, what makes Supernatural such a kick-ass show is the fact that like other TV serial dramas such as 24 and Prison Break (I don't watch Lost or Heroes), we see continual progression with Sam and Dean’s characters. Sam is increasingly changing (for the worse?) ever since he discovered he had psychic abilities in Season 1, and Dean is discovering that he has a large role in the battle between Heaven and Hell. Castiel himself is such an awesome character. Imagine having him as a guardian angel watching over you. That sounds kinda cheesy, but you wouldn’t have to worry about the boogeyman hiding in your closet at nights, hahaha. Castiel would kick his ass. Seriously though, Misha Collins does a great job portraying the angel. The concept of Sam having a demon as a girlfriend (Ruby) is also interesting. I can't wait to see what the writers have in store for Sam during the rest of Season 4, as well as future seasons. Hopefully it’ll be epic. We’re talking about the apocalypse here!



One more thing: What also makes Supernatural awesome is the fact that there is at least one hot chick per episode. There has to be. Otherwise, this wouldn’t be a true CW show, haha.



All images courtesy of the CW Television Network

SUPERNATURAL... I began watching the WB hit a few weeks ago, and needless to say, it is one cool and at times scary TV show...even scarier than The X-Files (though I don’t think The X-Files wasn’t necessarily suppose to be scary, but just deal with Area 51 and the paranormal, haha). In case you don’t watch the show, it revolves around two brothers who are out to find their dad, who went missing after a hunting trip. The dad just so happens to be a ghost hunter, and he left behind a book with all the notes he took on dealing with different supernatural occurrences and evil spirits. The brothers use that book to fight these demons as they go about searching for their dad.

I only watched two episodes of the show so far, but these episodes were definitely fascinating. The first episode I watched dealt with the Wendigo—a half man/half beast who in Indian myth preys on human beings in the forest. The other episode I watched dealt with (should I even type this? Haha) Bloody Mary. Even though this episode borrowed an element or two from the film The Ring (especially at the end of this episode... The pic above is from the climax), the story was still interesting. I think what makes Supernatural so appealing, other than the fact the two brothers ride in a sleek '67 Chevy Impala (just being facetious), is that the show borrows from actual ghost legends... The X-Files did too—and so did other shows that copied the Chris Carter hit—but mostly during the “monster” episodes (The X-Files had two kinds of episodes... The ‘mythology episodes’, which is the overall storyline of Fox Mulder trying to find his sister amidst a government conspiracy, and the ‘monster episodes’, where Mulder and Scully literally dealt with creatures like the Chupacabra. Sorry for veering off-topic). Supernatural is gonna be aired everyday this week, so I definitely need to watch it and catch up on all the episodes I missed. It’s at 9 PM (Pacific Standard Time)...which means I’ll miss the special episode of FOX’s House tonight. Oh well... Tonight’s House episode is a rerun anyway, haha. Unless Supernatural airs at 8 PM, the same time slot as the new episode of Arrested Development, then I'm screwed.


EDIT: Nope, Supernatural aired at 9 PM. And tonight's episode was about Sam and Dean (the two brothers) trying to stop a demon who possessed air travelers and caused them to crash the planes. Cool.