Gary Graham, the beloved film and television actor, has passed away at 73. Graham was a featured player in the Alien Nation franchise, a chameleon of numerous characters in the Star Trek universe, and motion pictures across multiple genres. His ex-wife, actress Susan Lavelle, announced his passing in a Facebook message. She did not provide a cause of death for the gifted actor.
“It is with deep profound sadness to say that Gary Graham, my ex husband, amazing actor and father of our beautiful only child together, Haylee Graham, has passed away today,” wrote Lavelle. “We are completely devastated especially our daughter Haley. His wife, Becky was by his side.”
Graham got his start performing in episodic television in the mid-1970s. With his signature mop of swooping brown hair, Graham appeared in shows like Eight Is Enough, Starsky and Hutch, Police Woman, and more. When the 1980s came about, Graham contributed to shows like CHiPs, The Dukes of Hazzard, T.J. Hooker, Remington Steel, and Moonlighting, to name a few.
In 1989, he played the human detective Matthew Sikes in the TV movie Alien Nation. Partnered with the alien George Francisco (Eric Pierpoint), a Tenctonese police officer, the duo learn about each other’s culture while attempting to solve a drug conspiracy hidden in the subculture of Los Angeles. Driven by Graham and Pierpoint’s on-screen chemistry, Alien Nation became a hit, resulting in a television series and multiple TV films, including Alien Nation: Dark Horizon (1994), Alien Nation: Body and Soul (1995), Alien Nation: Millennium (1996), Alien Nation: The Enemy Within (1996), and Alien Nation: The Udara Legacy (1997).
Graham was also an essential player in the Star Trek universe. His Star Trek debut was for Star Trek: Enterprise as the Vulcan Ambassador Soval. He played a different character in a 1995 episode of Star Trek: Voyager and played Ragnar in Star Trek: Of Gods and Men and Star Trek: Renegades.
Gary Graham may be gone, but his talent and contribution to the entertainment industry live on through his powerful performances and fans. We here at JoBlo wish Mr. Graham safe passage to the Hereafter and would like to extend our sincere condolences to his family, friends, and fans. Rest well, Mr. Graham.
A new episode of the Awfully Good Horror Movies video series has just been released, and in this one we’re taking a look at a movie that was supposed to be a happy reunion for Scream director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson… but it turned into a total mess. It’s the 2005 werewolf movie Cursed (watch it HERE), and you can hear all about it by watching the video embedded above!
Craven and Williamson told the following story with this one: In Los Angeles, siblings Ellie and Jimmy come across an accident on Mulholland Drive. As they try to help the woman caught in the wreckage, a ferocious creature attacks them, devouring the woman and scratching the terrified siblings. They slowly discover that the creature was a werewolf and that they have fallen victim to a deadly curse. Now that they have been sliced by the werewolf’s claws, they will be transformed into werewolves themselves.
The film stars Christina Ricci, Jesse Eisenberg, Joshua Jackson, Judy Greer, Milo Ventimiglia, Kristina Anapau, Portia de Rossi, Shannon Elizabeth, Mýa, Michael Rosenbaum, Eric Ladin, Michelle Krusiec, and Nick Offerman, with Derek Mears as the werewolf and Scott Baio, Craig Kilborn, Lance Bass, and Bowling for Soup making appearances as themselves.
With the Awfully Good Horror Movies series, we take a journey through the world of “so-bad-it’s-good” cinema in the horror genre. We’ll provide you with some fun trivia, details on the production, and some food/drinks to go with it. So join us for some schlock as we go through the who’s who of terrible horror cinema!
The Cursed episode of Awfully Good Horror Movies was Written, Edited, and Narrated by Tyler Nichols. The show is Produced by John Fallon and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.
A couple of the previous episodes of Awfully Good Horror Movies can be seen below. To see more, and to check out our other shows, head over to the JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channel – and subscribe while you’re there!
On the JoBlo Originals YouTube channel, they’ve been running a series called Awfully Good Movies for a while – you can check out the playlist at THIS LINK.
What do you think of Cursed, and of this episode of Awfully Good Horror Movies? Let us know by leaving a comment below.
The CBS drama Fire Countryis turning up the heat with plans for a spinoff starring Morena Baccarin (Deadpool, Homeland, Greenland). Reports say Baccarin plays a sheriff in a Season 2 episode with the option to become a series regular in the simmering spinoff series. Deadline was the first to report the news, saying CBS Studios would produce the potential spinoff.
Baccarin’s sheriff character is named Mickey. She’s been a sheriff’s deputy for fifteen years and spent much of her tenure studying the landscape and populace of Edgewater. With a tremendous amount of hometown pride flowing like fire through her veins, Mickey does whatever it takes to keep the citizens of Edgewater free from harm.
Deadline says negotiations for the series began before the holiday rush, with Baccarin as the top runner to lead the proposed spinoff. The upcoming episode introducing Mickey acts as a backdoor pilot for the character, with more development ahead for the spinoff. Fire Country is a tremendous hit for CBS, becoming the most-watched new broadcast for the network. Last season, Fire Country stoked the flames with an average of 8 million viewers per episode and 10 million in live+35 multi-platform viewing.
“We are focused on mass-appeal franchises,” CBS President and CEO George Cheeks said. “This season’s number one show was Fire Country, which completely lends itself to building out a whole new universe… It became very clear that not only was the show special, it really felt like this could be a great example of us building together a franchise from scratch. And so I’m like, ‘you guys, congratulations, you got your back nine. Now let’s start talking about ideas for new extensions.’ They’ve already come up with some great ones.”
In Fire Country, a young convict named Bode Donovan (Max Thieriot), who is seeking redemption, joins a firefighting program to shorten his prison sentence. He and other inmates work alongside elite firefighters to extinguish massive regional blazes.
In addition to Thieriot, Fire Country stars Billy Burke (Twilight, Red Riding Hood), Kevin Alejandro (Arrow, True Blood), Diane Farr (Californication, Rescue Me), Stephanie Arcila (Don’t Breathe 2, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels), Jordan Calloway (Black Lightning, Riverdale), and Jules Latimer (Rustin, Guilty Party).
Are you excited about Morena Baccarin joining the Fire Country cast? Do you like the show? Will you tune in for the spinoff if it happens? Let us know in the comments below.
The Overwatch League, the Overwatch 2 esports league that (somewhat ill-advisedly) adopted an NFL-like franchise model, died last year. The brainchild of former Blizzard president Bobby Kotick, it failed to flourish thanks to expensive buy-ins, the covid pandemic kneecapping in-person events, and more—but after it…
The Overwatch League, the Overwatch 2 esports league that (somewhat ill-advisedly) adopted an NFL-like franchise model, died last year. The brainchild of former Blizzard president Bobby Kotick, it failed to flourish thanks to expensive buy-ins, the covid pandemic kneecapping in-person events, and more—but after it…
Tekken 8 comes out on January 26 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, and reviews are popping up ahead of the game’s release date. It’ll be the eighth mainline entry in Bandai Namco Entertainment’s long-running franchise, and it seems critics are enjoying the game, with Tekken 8 currently boasting a score of 90…
Tekken 8 comes out on January 26 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, and reviews are popping up ahead of the game’s release date. It’ll be the eighth mainline entry in Bandai Namco Entertainment’s long-running franchise, and it seems critics are enjoying the game, with Tekken 8 currently boasting a score of 90…
Yesterday, we shared a new interview with director Renny Harlin that mostly focuses on his latest film, the action movie The Bricklayer, which was given a theatrical, On Demand, and Digital release earlier this month. But the interview also branches out with mentions of other Harlin projects, including the 1999 shark thriller Deep Blue Sea (watch it HERE), which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. During his conversation with JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray, Harlin revealed that Samuel L. Jackson’s character – and therefore the famous scene involving that character – was added into the script at the last minute.
Harlin said, “The whole scene has its roots in the fact that I had done Long Kiss Goodnight with Sam, and we sort of made a pact that we would always work together as often as we can. So then Deep Blue Sea came up and Sam called me and he’s like, ‘I hear you’re doing a new movie, what’s my role?’ and I’m like, ‘Oh shit, I don’t have anything for him, this is horrible.’ So I sat down with the writer and I said, ‘We have to create a role for Sam.’ I got my idea, I totally ripped off Alien, where in Alien Tom Skerritt was the best known actor in that movie and he was the captain of the ship and everybody was like, ‘Okay, we’re gonna follow him,’ and the audience was like, ‘Okay, thank God, as long as we have Tom Skerritt we’re going to be okay.’ Then Tom Skerritt tells everybody, ‘I’m going to go around the corner and take care of business, and don’t you worry about anything.’ And he goes there, turns on the light, and there’s the alien and Tom Skerritt’s gone. The audience is left completely rudderless and then they realize they have to rely on Sigourney Weaver, who is this woman who wasn’t that well known at that point and they have to re-calibrate their brains and they realize nothing is safe in this story. I took that and I said, ‘Let’s create a Tom Skerritt character for Sam Jackson so that he comes into the movie, we think he’s the lead, he’s the most famous person in it, he has to be the lead, and then we give him this speech that has to be long enough that you start feeling like, ‘Oh yeah, sure,’ but it’s short enough so that you don’t get bored, and then we’re going to just take him in the middle of it and we’re going to throw everybody off balance.’ It worked and Sam relished that role and we got to work together, but his character was completely added to the story. Nothing like him was in the story until I realized that I had to have Sam in the movie.“
Once he had that scene in the movie, Harlin then had to argue with the studio over whether or not they should spoil it in the trailer. “There was a huge debate with Warner Bros. whether to put that in the trailer or not. I refused to put that in the trailer. They wanted to put it in the trailer because they felt like, ‘Oh my God, that will sell so many tickets.’ We’ll never know if that would have made a difference or not, but to me it had to be a surprise.“
Directed by Harlin from a screenplay by Duncan Kennedy, Donna Powers, and Wayne Powers, Deep Blue Sea has the following synopsis: On an island research facility, Dr. Susan McAlester is harvesting the brain tissue of DNA-altered sharks as a possible cure for Alzheimer’s disease. When the facility’s backers send an executive to investigate the experiments, a routine procedure goes awry and a shark starts attacking the researchers. Now, with sharks outnumbering their human captors, McAlester and her team must figure out a way to stop them from escaping to the ocean and breeding.
Jackson is joined in the cast by Thomas Jane, Saffron Burrows, L.L. Cool J, Jacqueline McKenzie, Michael Rapaport, Stellan Skarsgård, and Aida Turturro.
What do you think of that famous Samuel L. Jackson moment in Deep Blue Sea? Share your thoughts on this one by leaving a comment below.
Netflix is making the tag, as the streaming giant has just acquired exclusive broadcast rights to WWE Raw. The deal, worth $5 billion over the course of 10 years, will find the flagship show moving from the USA Network to Netflix in 2025.
This is just the latest major business deal related to the WWE over the past year, as the sports entertainment company merged with the UFC under Endeavor’s TKO Group Holdings in April 2023.
In a statement, TKO President and COO Mark Shapiro said of the deal, “This deal is transformative…It marries the can’t-miss WWE product with Netflix’s extraordinary global reach and locks in significant and predictable economics for many years. Our partnership fundamentally alters and strengthens the media landscape, dramatically expands the reach of WWE, and brings weekly live appointment viewing to Netflix.”
WWE president Nick Khan stated, “In its relatively short history, Netflix has engineered a phenomenal track record for storytelling…We believe Netflix, as one of the world’s leading entertainment brands, is the ideal long-term home for Raw’s live, loyal, and ever-growing fan base.”
But USA won’t be completely void of WWE content, as SmackDown will move from Fox back to the network in the fall. However, it’s worth noting that Netflix will host SmackDown — in addition to the pay-per-view events, the most famous of which are the “big four” of Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series — outside of the US. The January launch of the WWE and Netflix partnership will presumably begin with the first Monday of the year.
USA has been home to Raw for the majority of its 30+ years in existence. The program launched in 1993 with New York’s Manhattan Center serving as the central venue until it branched out to other cities. To date, more than 1,600 episodes have aired. As per the press release, Raw draws more than 17 million unique viewers per year.
This move further demonstrates Netflix’s interest in live streaming, as they have previously aired Chris Rock’s Selective Outrage special, the Love Is Blind reunion and more.
What do you think of the WWE teaming up with Netflix? Will this change how you watch pro wrestling? Give us your thoughts on the matter below.
What is the meaning of success? And how far would you go to be successful? These are just some of the many questions I’m left with after watching Dan Gilroy’s directorial debut film- Nightcrawler. A film that packs many questions and shockingly few answers as intended by the filmmakers behind it. It’s a movie firmly planted in “literally me” culture with a main character who is equally interesting and terrifying- yet strangely observable at the same time.
For a riveting viewing experience that will entertain you (and leave you heavily reflecting on your morals)- Nightcrawler may be what you’re looking for as we follow Lou Bloom, a shady L.A. loner who gets by on low-level schemes and odd jobs. But when he discovers the dark and dangerous world of freelance crime scene photography- Lou becomes obsessed with rising to the top of the food chain as a professional stringer. Along the way, we’re taken for a ride complete with breakneck speed, back ally deals, blackmail, betrayal, manipulation (mentally and physically), and even murder while we watch the unlikely success of a truly despicable person.
But what can we learn from this movie and the brilliant first-time filmmaker behind it? What does the character of Lou Bloom say about the news industry, and what does that say about us for watching it? These are all questions I hope to unpack in today’s episode, where we take a thrilling look back on Dan Gilroy’s film and try to determine, once and for all, what Nightcrawler is really about.
So, where do we start? How about the same place that Gilroy started? L.A crime-scene reporting. Specifically, the world of stringers- a freelance industry of videographers that film crimes and sell the footage to news networks. Gilroy was fascinated with photography in general and originally wanted his film to be centered around the medium. Still, once he learned about the world of news stringers, he found that to be a unique and deeply rich perspective from which to tell his story. In my opinion, he’s right- but inherent themes need to be acknowledged with the story being set around this kind of industry. Things like the questionable ethics of certain kinds of journalism and our constant need to consume it as an audience. Are we feeding the beast? Is it our fault? Did we do this? Well, it’s not for me, or even Gilroy, to say.
Dan Gilroy is an interesting storyteller. He delivered this movie with style and confidence, and I really admire that level of effort. But I love how Gilroy plays with the audience by using his main character as very unlikeable. Of course, this has been done before- but rarely in this way. The character of Lou is clearly a master manipulator and arguably just a flat-out sociopath. He’s creepy, his tone and vocal cadence are unsettling, and he doesn’t do anything other than feed a plant that proves he’s even human. But somehow, for some reason, we want to watch him. We want to see what he’s going to do. We don’t want him to lose if it means the rush will be over. Do you know what this sounds like to me? The news.
Lou’s many interactions with Nina and other news executives show that the business thrives on shock value. Basically, the more bloody and gnarly the news, the better the numbers for their news station. They don’t see these victims as people but rather as content for their show. Lou sees them as financial opportunities, as made clear many times throughout his journey. Above all, the very nature of their work has de-sensitized them to the reality of what they’re doing because we, as consumers, have given them the incentive to do so. Listen to this line that Nina says to Lou in their first interaction-
That scene shows us two things. One, it shows us that this is how Lou automatically sees the industry. He didn’t get into it innocently and became jaded over time. His first impression is “If it bleeds, it leads.” and this scene solidifies that idea. It also shows how Lou finds his competitive edge. He learns from what Nina tells him: the key to success is finding the worst-case scenario and exploiting it for all its worth. I think Gilroy wanted to parallel the dynamics of unethical journalism and viral consumption to his film, where we see an unethical man doing horrible things- but we all sat firmly in our seats lined up to watch it.
So, why do we like this? We see this guy blackmail Nina into some unexplained fetish thing. We see him tamper with dead bodies and crime scenes. We see him lie, cheat, steal, and even set up his own partner to be murdered to get good footage to sell. This guy should repulse us. Jake Gyllenhaal once spoke on the character and said he saw Lou as a coyote. Someone who sort of wanders around at night only eats when he needs to, and is focused completely on his one goal. The character almost seems like an alien impersonating a human in the way that Gyllenhaal gives the character a rapid and sharp speech pattern that pierces through each page of dialogue. The actor states that he did this as a means to get all of Gilroy’s writing into the scene so that none of it had to be cut for time. I hope that’s true because, honestly, what a compliment.
The character of Lou is also similar to that of many “literally me” characters that all seem to share some sort of skewed vision of right and wrong. Lou can smile while he’s filming gunshot wounds and dead bodies and can also give a menacing stare when you’ve pissed him off. He can change on a dime. He’s unpredictable.
So, why is Lou somehow not scaring us off?
Well, simply- we want to know if he’ll win. This movie is the perfect way to do a villain origin story because they don’t make Lou a hero in any sense of the word. He’s only a hero to himself. If the movie had been told from, say, Riz Ahmed’s character, Rick’s perspective, Lou would be all villain in our eyes. But the difference is that from the beginning, we know Lou is only out to do one thing- succeed at something. That’s it. He doesn’t even know what he wants to succeed in at first. He just wants to be a memorable guy with social status. We’re really watching a terrible person with vague but intense ambition who figures out his goal as he goes, and, in the end, – he gets it. Lou wins.
See, this differs from other unlikable success stories because in other films, for instance, The Wolf of Wall Street- Leo as Jordan Belfort was sort of an anti-protagonist. He was definitely loose on his morals and ethics, cold and manipulative to his customers, and immensely motivated. But Scorsese didn’t tell the story as a success story. It was more, the rise and fall of a real-life person. But Lou doesn’t have the fall. Just the rise. He doesn’t get his just dessert or learn from any of the many wrongdoings he’s racked up. Instead, he’s rewarded for his bad behavior by becoming the head of his own successful newsgroup, video production news- and obtains an entire catalog of freelance stringers who are ready to go as far as it takes to uphold the company’s ruthless standards.
Think about the feeling you get when you watch movies like The Sandlot or The Matrix. We see our leading characters start at the bottom, learn their craft (like baseball or jujitsu), and then take on the antagonistic force and win the day by the end. And we feel that warm and cozy feeling because the leading characters we follow are generally likable and good. But with Lou, he’s none of those things- but he follows the traditional outline only. Gilroy replaced the likability with ruthless determination and the good nature with gross manipulative charm. Take, for example, this scene where Lou is literally dragging a dead body closer to the headlights of a flipped car to get a better shot. The behavior is horrifying, but the music and the framing are inspirational and triumphant. This makes for conflicting feelings about the kind of news we watch.
So, what’s the point of it all? Why care if a bad person gets everything they want, even if it means sacrificing innocent people for your desires? I don’t think we’re really supposed to know. Dan Gilroy seems to be happy raising questions rather than giving his own commentary. I find this to be immensely annoying when trying to figure out what he wants us to think about his movie, but I think that’s also kind of the point of it. Gilroy’s ambition was to create a movie that shows us the world and lets us decide if we’re morally conflicted enough to watch it unfold. He isn’t interested in judging Lou or the other stringers for their loose morals, but rather, he’s interested in what we might think of their behavior once we’ve seen behind the curtain.
So, at the end of the day, what I take away from Nightcrawler is that it’s a movie about success, the cost of getting success, and the vicious cycle of perpetuating success by our deep and dark desires to watch bad things happen. It’s not a movie that says I’m a bad person for consuming unethically sourced news. It’s not saying you’re a bad person for it. It’s not even saying Lou is a bad person for it. It’s simply saying that this is how it is- and you can do what you will with this information. And that is what Nightcrawler is really about.
