Who kills FlashForward's Demetri? Our favorite theories

Some of the most tantalizing mysteries about ABC's FlashForward concern where, when, why and how—or if—John Cho's excitable FBI agent, Demetri Noh, will die, and Cho himself confirmed that tonight's episode will begin to reveal major answers to some of those questions.
"In the next two episodes, there's a very major revelation on who my murderer is," Cho told us at the Star Trek DVD/Blu-ray launch party in Los Angeles on Monday. "It's really shocking."
While we wait for the answers to unfold, we've scoured the Web for theories on who will kill Demetri, and when, and why, and how. Here are some of our favorite theories. FlashForward airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on ABC.

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Fringe's Observers cross over into our reality

Remember we told you that Fox was going to be placing Observers (from its sci-fi show Fringe) in the real world?
They're here!
The Facebook page The Observer Trackers has posted a bunch of images from fan sightings of the first phalanx of the bald, suited, alien-like guys in Los Angeles and Atlanta. We've put some of them in the gallery below.
Is it a coincidence that they are appearing in the section of L.A. a stone's throw from the Fox studios? Or in Atlanta near the headquarters of CNN? Probably.
This all in advance of tomorrow's Fringe episode, "August," which promises to answer many of the questions about these weird guys. It airs at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Fox.

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V deathwatch: ratings drop another 18%

Wow, looks like ABC's V is definitely in trouble.
Last night's third episode saw ratings and audience drop significantly again, down 18 percent to 9.3 million (3.1 rating among adults 18-49), according to The Hollywood Reporter's Live Feed blog.

That after a precipitous 29 percent drop in week two from the blockbuster premiere.
We're going to go out on a limb and say that the lizard aliens won't be on Earth for very long. Remember, ABC is airing only four episodes now (the last one airs next week) and was planning on returning to the air next spring with the final episodes of season one.

We don't know, but we've always thought this was ABC's way of not committing to the production of the show before they had a good sense of which way the audience would go; as the production was slated to start up again next month or so, we're thinking they'll just go ahead and pull the plug once the four eps have aired.

It's kinda too bad. The show was starting to grow on us, and we love the actors and the franchise. And we were eager to see how a change behind the scenes was going to affect the direction of the show.

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Why New Moon kicks Twilight's butt

Fans clamored for the first Twilight movie despite its shortcomings (lighting, vampire makeup, etc.), but even those who aren't Twi-hards are in for a much better time with the second film, New Moon, which opens Friday.

At least that's the feeling of the stars: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and Taylor Lautner, as well as director Chris Weitz. All agree that the sequel, based on the second Twilight book by Stephenie Meyers, improves upon the original. (And check out our exclusive gallery of images from the film's world premiere in Hollywood on Monday, below this story.)

"When I read New Moon, it gave me ideas about how to play the first one," Pattinson said. "It's the one I connected to the most, and the one that humanized Edward for me the most as well. In the first one, he still does remain, from beginning to end, an idealistic character. But in the second one he makes a mistake that's acknowledged by everybody, including himself. Also, he is totally undermined by more powerful creatures, and he's undermined emotionally by people as well. I think that's what humanized it."

New Moon brings back the same characters, but with a new vision from a different director: Chris Weitz, who stepped in for Catherine Hardwicke. Weitz didn't want to do the same thing over again.

Weitz had ideas for different lighting, different visual effects, different camera moves and more. He gave the actors a 40-50-page syllabus full of his new directorial ideas. "What I really didn't want was sequelitis or the idea that we're just cranking out a franchise," Weitz said. "I wanted everyone to know what sort of movie we wanted to make."

Stewart, who plays Bella, said that Weitz's prep in part gave her a better idea of what to expect. "A lot of the effects movies are hard to do, because you don't know what you're reacting to," Stewart recalled. "So he had a full rundown of how he planned on making the movie. He was so sorry that so much of the movie was going to be CGI stuff that we were going to have to react to, but he was always going to make us aware of what we were acting with, that he was never going to leave us high and dry."

As for the romance in the new film, as fans know, it marks the breakup of Edward and Bella. "Just playing a scene where you're breaking up the ideal relationship, I felt a lot of the weight behind that," Pattinson said. "Also, it took away a fear of melodrama as well, because it felt kind of seismic, if that's the right word, even when we were doing it."

The torment challenged Stewart, too. "It was really hard to go back and forth, because you don't shoot a movie in sequence, obviously," she said. "I had to do stuff with Jacob where I was alive and happy and out of this depression thing, and then after lunch go back and scream in my bed for six hours. So that was difficult."
As for Jacob, it's been well documented how Lautner had to put on the muscles to play a bigger, badder Jacob for New Moon. "Jacob transforms a lot in New Moon, not only physically but mentally and emotionally as well," Lautner said. "So it was a matter of getting to the gym and eating the right food and a lot of it, but also reading and studying the book and my character over and over and over again so I could have his character down as well. He changes in many, many different ways. Basically, my job was to continue what I started in Twilight, which was this extremely happy, friendly, outgoing guy, best friends with Bella. I had to continue that for the first half of the film, but as soon as I transform, I snap, and I become a completely different person. I'm dealing with my issues, and it's really hard for me."

The big new effects in New Moon are the werewolves, and Lautner himself says they delivered. "I was blown away," Lautner said. "When I'm filming, the famous trailer shot where I'm running through the field, and I jump up and try and transform in midair, I'm attached to wires, and I'm running, and I let the wires pull me up in the air and jerk me to a stop, and I just have to freeze there and let them convert my body into a CGI wolf. The whole time I'm like, 'I hope I look cool.' After I saw the final version last week, after I saw the wolves, it was amazing. The fight scene that comes right after that, the fight between Jacob and Paul wolf was so cool. I thought they were extremely powerful and looked very real."

"The physical side was really fun," Lautner added. "Some of it was challenging. I'd never ridden a dirt bike before. I rode the dirt bike for a total of about five seconds in the film, but for those five seconds I had to look as cool as possible. So it did require a lot of practice, just for safety-wise, so they'd let me do it. The wirework, like when I run up the side of her house, the wires were there just so if I slipped and fell I didn't face-plant into the ground. That stunt was really complicated. You need to be 'on.' I'm using a little plug in the side of the wall to take off from and jump. Every single weekend I would practice that stunt for three hours a day. It was the last thing we filmed."

If that's not enough, New Moon has a much better soundtrack. "There were these incredible pickings on offer: Thom Yorke, The Killers, Bon Iver, Lykke Li," Weitz said. "I genuinely think it's one of the best soundtrack albums that's ever been done. The reason I will make this outrageous claim is that it's not music that was already completed. It's kind of easy to do that, but to be able to risk asking somebody to do a track and four weeks later or so a song comes back, to have it work as many times as it did was really extraordinary. I think that if any one of those artists had done a track for our soundtrack, I would have been really proud, but to have all of them is absolutely extraordinary."

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'Very good news' for Torchwood fans!

If you watched Torchwood's last season, the Children of Earth miniseries, it felt a lot like the end of the whole thing.
Well, that may not be the case, TV Guide reported (mild spoilers ahead):

Torchwood might not have concluded its run at the end of the thrilling miniseries Children of Earth after all—Ianto's tragic death not withstanding. The new year could bring some "very good news" for fans of the sexy sci-fi series, creator Russell T. Davies tells TV Guide Magazine.

"The recession has hit British television, but fingers crossed, it will be a go. We expect things to start to move in January. We've got great ideas for the show. I think there's a further lease on life for many years to come, but certainly for a [fourth season]," Davies says.

No word on when or where we'd likely see this new season of the Doctor Who spinoff, who might return or how long it might run, but any news is good news, right?

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Spider-Man 4 villains allegedly revealed: Black Cat and Lizard

Two top Spider-Man villains have allegedly been nailed down for Spider-Man 4, and it's rumored that one more bad guy (or gal) will join them.

Our friends at Mania.com are reporting that Rachel McAdams, soon to be seen in Sherlock Holmes, has been meeting with the film's producers. She's said to be in the running for the role of the Black Cat, a costumed antihero who in the comics has been both a cat burglar and romantic interest for the webslinger.
That's not all—the source also indicates casting is still ongoing for an additional villain. And since the role of the Lizard has already been filled in the previous films by Dylan Baker, that means that there's yet another villain to come.

We know who we'd like to see Sam Raimi and company come up with. How about you?

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Fringe audience falls, FlashForward fades

Thursday night is shaping up as the biggest night in sci-fi TV, but viewers of Fox's Fringe and other series apparently didn't get the memo.
A new episode of Fringe last night saw its ratings fall to a series low, possibly because many fans didn't realize that no World Series game seven meant a new episode of their favorite show.

Fringe ratings fell 23 percent, to 5 million viewers, The Hollywood Reporter's Live Feed blog reported:

ABC won the night, with its lineup slipping about 4% across the board: "FlashForward" (8.5 million viewers, 2.6 preliminary adults 18-49 rating) ...
Returning after a two-week hiatus, Fox's drama lineup had "Bones" (8.5 million, 2.5) down 11%. At 9 p.m., "Fringe" (5 million, 1.7) hit a serious low, falling 23%.
Things were also bad for the boys at Supernatural, whose audience fell 14 percent.
But there was good news for fans of The CW's Vampire Diaries: The show boasted 4.2 million viewers, maintaining its recent gain in audience.

So ... have you stopped watching Fringe? FlashForward? Supernatural?

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