by Damon Martin

Over the past four seasons, Sons of Anarchy has been a show that has developed its cast along with its storylines. Creator Kurt Sutter has always created formidable villains inside and outside of the outlaw motorcycle club, but for Season 5 he upped the ante when introducing all new big bad Damon Pope.

Described as the biggest gangster in Oakland, Pope’s name was first introduced at the end of Season 4 when enforcer Tig Trager took out his daughter accidentally when gunning for the leader of a rival gang. Now, Pope wants payback and he’s getting it with devastating results, with all of the members of SAMCRO falling victim.

Veteran actor Harold Perrineau, who portrays Damon Pope, has worked for some of the best show-runners and directors in all of Hollywood, but he knew he had to be ready when stepping onto a set headed up by someone with the presence of Kurt Sutter.

“I’ve been saying this all along that I need to show up and know my lines because Kurt Sutter, he writes the shit out of that show. I’m really glad everybody really liked it, but that first episode Damon Pope is no joke,” Perrineau said in a recent interview with SuicideGirls.

The first episode officially put a face to the name Damon Pope, and his reaction when coming head-to-head with the man who killed his daughter was nothing less than incendiary.

With his enemy Trager tied up in chains, Pope revealed that he had kidnapped his daughter and put her in a pit alongside several other victims. After dousing her with gasoline, Dawn Trager awoke, but only for a few seconds, before Pope stared at her father and said, “Know my pain,” as he tossed his lit cigar into the pit, burning the young girl alive.

In his veteran career, Pope had seen a lot and acted in some very tough and even disturbing scenes, but even he was taken back when he read the script to the first episode he would appear in as the ominous Damon Pope.

“Kurt and I had the conversation after I got the job, and he said ‘listen, your character’s going to do some heinous things. Don’t judge it, hopefully just go with us.’ I was like, ‘I was in prison in Oz, on Lost on the island, you probably couldn’t scare me with anything,’ and that first thing I was like ‘Oh my god!’. I was flipped out as soon as I read it. I was like here we go,” said Perrineau.

We’re now well into Season 5, and Pope hasn’t slowed down with his systematic destruction of the Sons of Anarchy. Perrineau promises that burning a girl alive may seem harsh, but that’s nothing compared to what’s ahead.

“Without giving away anything, he’s definitely a different character. It was really interesting when I got the gig, and people asked me if I knew how to ride bikes, and if I looked really cool on a bike. I said ‘You won’t see Damon Pope on a bike.’ When you do see Damon Pope you’ll know why,” Perrineau stated. “So this is a different kind of monster for SAMCRO and it’s going to be tough for them to deal with him. All I can say after the first episode is it just gets worse.”

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by Fred Topel

“We’re just acting like a bunch of idiots.”
– Lake Bell

The four season run of Childrens Hospital on Adult Swim has also mirrored Lake Bell’s rise in popularity and success in the entertainment industry. What began as a web series created by Rob Corddry is now an Emmy winning television mainstay. While playing Dr. Cat Black on the comedy, Bell has appeared in big movies, comedy and drama, and this year she directed two episodes of Childrens as well.

Childrens Hospital is ostensibly a comedy set in a hospital, though not a children’s hospital. It’s named after Arthur Childrens. And the characters are doctors, but the random episodes can put them in a horror movie, a courtroom drama, whatever. Bell plays Dr. Cat Black, who at one point died, but then it turns out she didn’t really die. That’s Childrens Hospital.

Bell was at the Creative Arts Emmys on Saturday, September 15 where Childrens Hospital won the Emmy for Outstanding Special Class: Short-Format Live-Action Entertainment Program. That’s a mouthful. It means the best show under 30 minutes. Adult Swim airs blocks of 15 minute shows. After the big night, Bell returned to the editing room on the film she directed. She also took on a kick ass role in the upcoming film Black Rock, about women on a camping trip fighting for survival, which premiered at Sundance.

While putting the finishing touches on In a World…, Bell chatted about her creative growth on Childrens Hospital and what’s still to come this season. She also shared a good perspective on her sex appeal, which has gotten her on the cover of Maxim and other provocative photo spreads. Childrens Hospital airs Thursdays at midnight on Adult Swim.

Read our exclusive interview with Lake Bell on SuicideGirls.com.

A.J. Focht

Marvel’s next new movie project will be the Guardians of the Galaxy. There have been a lot of rumors and worries in the fan community when it comes to Marvel’s space superheroes. It’s now official that James Gunn is rewriting the script as well as directing. If that doesn’t put your mind at ease, know that Joss Whedon has full faith in Gunn being the man for the project. As for the many rumors, there is one that we can put to rest. Nathan Fillion has confirmed he is likely to be too busy with his day job (Castle) to star in the film.

Has Marvel decided to retcon the death of Agent Coulson? In the Marvel Avengers Assemble UK release, the film has been edited to exclude the blade sticking out of Coulson’s chest. This could be a censorship issue, or it could be Marvel making the change in order to keep Coulson in continuity. The Avengers releases on DVD and Blu-ray in the US on September 25 and then we’ll know if the US version was edited as well.

Captain America is now President! Oh wait that was a SPOILER for this week’s issue of Ultimate Captain America. Despite this being a major event change in Marvel’s Ultimate Universe, they felt the need to spoil it for everyone a day early. The news of the story broke a full 24-hours before the issue hit shelves and it came straight from Marvel.

Arrow, the new CW show about Green Arrow starts on October 10. There have been many rumors of what characters would appear in the show, and now eleven have been confirmed. You can expect all of the following lineup: Black Canary, Huntress, China White, Constantine Drakon, Deadshot, Deathstroke, Felicity Smoak, Merlyn, Speedy, and Walter Steele. There are still some rumored characters not confirmed, and no one knows much about John Barrowman’s character, other than he’s being called the ‘well-dressed man.’ There are also reports the Royal Flush Gang will be in the show and Kyle Schmid will play Ace.

The upcoming Star Trek film has an official name: Star Trek: Into Darkness. The J.J. Abrams sequel has finished initial shooting and will include most of the original cast, including Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Zoe Saldana. Star Trek: Into Darkness is scheduled to release in theaters on May 17, 2013.

Speaking of Star Trek, Michael Dorn, who played Worf on Next Generation, has been cast in the Castlevania movie. Dorn will be playing a werewolf in the Konami game inspired film, for which there is no current release date set.

One last bit of Star Trek related news. NASA is working on a warp drive. That’s right, a real life warp drive. Keeping the science simple, NASA wonders if we can indeed warp space and time to harness the power of warp bubbles. Essentially, the ship compresses the space ahead of it while expanding the space behind it to move forward at speeds of 10c (10x the speed of light). We are probably a long ways off from this technology, but we now know NASA is actually researching it.

This weekend at the comic store I work at, All C’s Collectibles in Aurora, Colorado, J. Scott Campbell will be doing a signing with all proceeds going to Aurora Rise. Campbell is best known for co-creating and writing Danger Girl, but he has done cover art for several comics including The Amazing Spider-Man and Witchblade. SuicideGirls was in attendance a few weeks ago when Aurora Rise had their first benefit event and silent auction, which raised $20,000 that went directly to the victims of the shootings. Campbell was unable to make the first event, but wanted to come out and support the victims of the shootings on his own time. While the second event will be smaller, it will include a silent auction with specialty items from Todd MacFarlane and much more. The signing takes place this Saturday, September 22, between noon and 3 PM MST. For more details visit the Facebook event page.

by Damon Martin

Season 5 of Sons of Anarchy is in full swing, with the debut episode breaking all records for ratings for any show ever airing on FX. Now as the heat turns up with the new big bad Damon Pope making all kinds of trouble for the boys in SAMCRO, more stories from previous seasons will rear their ugly heads.

Last season was the toughest, but most telling for Juan-Carlos ‘Juice’ Ortiz, as he had to suffer silently as the cops twisted him in the wind with threats of telling his club that he actually had an African-American father unless he turned informant. The race issues broke down barriers in terms of telling the inner workings of biker clubs, or any social club really, but at the center of it actor Theo Rossi shined as a tortured soul who lived with shame while trying to deal with the fact that he was ratting out his friends at the same time. Ultimately, the cops decided to let him go from his obligation after the entire operation was shut down at the season’s end, but that doesn’t mean you get out from under the thumb of law enforcement so easily.

“Juice is just the clown crying on the inside. He’s trying to act as if. Like when he came into that chapel at the end of Season 4 and Jax said ‘are you alright?’ and he says ‘yeah, I’m good,’ and he took that picture of his father and the ATF, and realized it’s all good and got rid of the files. You know, that’s not the case,” Rossi told SuicideGirls in an exclusive interview. “So this is a guy who’s living with secrets and secrets eventually turn to shame and how that all plays out we’ve just got to watch and see.”

Juice already felt the sting from last season in the debut episode when Sheriff Eli Roosevelt looks for a little ‘good faith’ help from his past informant when trying to find dirt in the new found war between the Sons of Anarchy and the Oakland street gang the One-Niners. The new president of the motorcycle club Jax Teller also knows there was something dirty going on within his group from a drug sting that only could have happened from the inside.

Will Juice’s dirty little secret be revealed this season or is he destined to face the wrath of SAMCRO if they find out he was the rat that outed their drug scheme to the cops?

Sons of Anarchy Season 5 continues every Tuesday night at 10 PM on FX.

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by Daniel Robert Epstein

“I would like to see a film review show like mine where they ask questions that are of substance and are not just vanity questions where the guest can talk about how great they are.”
– Henry Rollins

Of all the outspoken rock musicians out there in the world Henry Rollins probably ranks in the top five. There are even fewer that are so outspoken that they need to do hundreds of spoken word shows all over the world in order to get everything they want to say out. In fact Rollins has so much to say that in addition to his weekly radio show, he now has a movie review show, called Henry’’s Film Corner, on the Independent Film Channel once a month. In addition to some amazing interviews, the first show has David Fincher. Rollins will review movies in a true punk fashion. He absolutely rips apart the movies he hates and praises the ones he loves to no end.

Read our interview with Henry Rollins on SuicideGirls.com.

by Lee Camp

Look around you. Are there zombies? Are there vampires? If you answered yes, then maybe you don’t need to watch this video. If you answered no, then I’m about to change your mind…or eat it.

[..]

by A.J. Focht

A year ago, NBC buried their Wonder Woman pilot and all hopes of seeing the Amazon princess during prime time. The CW, known for their superhero television series such as Smallville and the upcoming Arrow, is now in talks to revive her with a Wonder Woman origins series. The prelude to the legend of Diana of Themyscira’s is being penned by Allan Heinberg. The CW is only working on a script now; the pilot has yet to be greenlit.

Henry Cavill, who will be playing Superman in the upcoming Man of Steel film recently spoke about the project in an interview. He wasn’t able to relay much, but he did say that beyond making Superman easier to identify with, they wanted to take a realistic approach to the movie. It seems likely that Man of Steel will be the first feature in the new DC movie universe, leading into the Justice League movie, and there have been rumors that it may cameo other Justice League members – namely Wonder Woman. Man of Steel will premier in theaters in June 2013.

Kick-Ass 2 is bringing back most of the main actors from the first film, including Chloe Moretz, Aaron Johnson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, and even Nicolas Cage. And a new big name has also joined the crew; Jim Carrey has been confirmed playing the part of The Colonel in the sequel. Kick-Ass 2 is set for a summer 2013 release.

With the release less than a year out, Star Trek 2 has wrapped up filming and is headed for post-production. In recent interviews, actors Chris Pine (Captain Kirk) and Zachary Quinto (Spock) both gave their opinions of the project. Pine insists he can’t give the movie enough hype, and that the threats are even greater this time around. Quinto said the project was more challenging, but bigger and bolder than the last. We will all know soon enough as Star Trek 2 is set to release on May 17, 2013.

J.J. Abrams’ new NBC series Revolution has released the full first pilot online early. The series deals with events fifteen years after a post-apocalyptic scenario where all electricity on earth shuts off. The pilot delivers tremendous performances and is a great hook into the series. It’s a must see for all fans of post-apocalyptic stories. That’s not all Abrams is working on though, he is also currently developing a ‘android buddy cop drama’ for FOX.

Last week’s premiere of Doctor Who, “Asylum of the Daleks” broke records for BBC America. The long awaited return of the Time Lord brought in record numbers, with 1.6 million tuning in to see the premiere. In a recent interview, Matt Smith discussed the upcoming season and the future of Doctor Who in general. On a final Doctor Who note, Neil Giman announced at his Hugo acceptance speech that he will be writing a second episode, which is slated for the second half of season seven.