Syfy launches its newest original scripted series Alphas this July.  In the action-packed thriller about five ordinary people brought together to form one extraordinary team, they are known as Alphas — people with the unique power to stretch the capabilities of the human mind giving them superhuman physical and mental abilities — and the impossible is what they do best.

Alphas premieres Monday, July 11 at 10:00PM ET/PT and will be presented by Verizon with limited commercial interruption

Alphas follows a clandestine group of average everyday citizens with amazing abilities operating within the U.S. Department of Defense. The team investigates cases that point to others with abilities like theirs, and as they work against the clock to solve this new brand of crime, they must prevent their own personality differences and disparate backgrounds from interfering with their missions.

In addition to David Strathairn, the ensemble cast stars Malik Yoba, Warren Christie, Azita Ghanizada, Ryan Cartwright and Laura Mennell.

Alphas consists of 12 episodes including the 90-minute pilot directed by Jack Bender (Emmy nominated director and executive producer of Lost).

The giveaway consists of winning a Alphas t-shirt! To enter the giveaway, post your name and we will pick the winner July 11, 2011.

Screenhead held a giveaway for a movie that the whole family can watch together.

Big Idea Entertainment is a faith-based studio and producer of children’s and family programming, characters and brands. Big Idea released an all-new DVD title, VeggieTales Live! Sing Yourself Silly. The DVD is available wherever DVDs are sold, particularly in Christian and general market stores.

We picked Jill Myrick as the winner. Jill says, “Thank you so much for the giveaway.”  You are welcome!  I hope you can watch the movie with your family.

The DVD captures all the fun of the live tour with energetic dancers, loads of bubbles, confetti, big bouncy characters and 18 of the most classic and popular VeggieTales silly songs performed live on a stage including “His Cheeseburger,” “Love My Lips!,” “The Hairbrush Song,” plus a few hits from the 80’s that both parents and kids will enjoy! There are also several fun and family-friendly bonus features included such as a peek behind the curtain on “Larry’s Backstage Pass.”

“After our successful Live! show tour last fall, we wanted to bring the VeggieTales’ high-energy and hilarious performance into households everywhere across the country, “said Leslie Ferrell, General Manager of Big Idea Entertainment. “We’re happy to provide this fun DVD full of music that’s perfect for the entire family.”

Bob, Larry and the whole crew are taking to the stage with the silliest Silly Song Countdown ever!  This high energy song and dance spectacular takes silliness to a whole new level!  But sometimes silliness just isn’t enough!  Archibald Asparagus prefers songs that have lessons, Mr. Lunt wants to sing about food, and Jimmy and Jerry are stuck in the 80’s!  But there’s only so much time…will the VeggieTales crew learn the importance of sharing so that the show can go and everyone will be able to sing themselves silly?

While everything I’d seen about Transformers: Dark of the Moon suggested that it was going to be, in the great Michael Bay tradition, a huge and loud overproduction with plenty of explosions, I wasn’t exactly sure about the quality. Never mind that this was set to be the last in the series; when you’ve got a movie that starts marginally, proceeds to sub-par, you don’t exactly look for the third one to turn it all around. In fact, it reminded me of a line from what I believe was Married…With Children: “Is this how it ends? / As long as it ends.”

Transformers: Dark of the Moon takes us up to the lunar surface, where there’s an old spaceship from Cybertron parked underneath the lunar surface. Those of you recognizing the name are likely very confused: it’s The Ark. Anyway, the United States finds The Ark on their first trip to the moon, and proceeds to attempt to reverse engineer holy hell out of it, with disastrous results. How disastrous? Chernobyl was caused by a Cybertron power cell, that’s how disastrous. But there’s worse waiting on board, and Optimus Prime and the rest of the Autobots aren’t all happy that it’s been hidden from the humans. And the situation only gets worse still when the Decepticons go after it. Turns out The Ark is packing Cybertronian technology sufficient to bring an invading army to Earth.  Now the Autobots have to square off against the Decepticons proper in a bid to save the planet.

As is the standard, Bay’s film shatters continuity all to bits and pieces, and replaces it with a constant string of explosions and some of the most hackneyed dialogue ever. Not to mention a string of logical bizarrities; Cybertronian technology has advanced to the point where they can move a planet thousands of light years with internal battery power, but to rebuild said planet they need the labor of a slave race that is to them the size of your average quarter. And then, despite the fact that they’ve announced to the audience that they need the humans for slave labor, they begin seizing a city full of them and start by killing several thousand of them.

Sometimes I wonder why Bay is even permitted to make movies any more, because most every time he actually makes one, it ends poorly for the audience. This one is no exception. Sure, Bay is an effects genius. A pyrotechnic wizard, even. And if you gave him a good script and had someone else direct, well, you’d probably have a thoroughly fantastic movie the like of which no one has ever seen. But it seems like he never has the good scripts. He never has a skillful director. He’s the guy who’s got continuity-busting chunks of awful featuring hot chicks standing in place watching explosions go off all around them yet never going for cover.

This is all he’s got to work with. It wasn’t without its entertaining points, sure enough–it’s hard not to be entertained by giant robots fighting each other on an epic scale–but it’s no one’s idea of a good movie. It’s beautiful, but it has no substance. It’s all sizzle and no steak.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Transformers Dark Of The Moon a six out of ten: it’s entertaining enough, but it’s entirely too long for what it puts on. Too many explosions, not near enough coherent storyline.

Red Riding Hood, from the director of Twilight, was released last week on Demand, for Download, and Blu-ray combo pack.

I hosted a giveaway in conjunction with the release of the movie.  The giveaway consisted of two (2) prize packs for our winners.

The winners are Kelvin and Ron Grande!  Congratulations!  Kelvin says, “I would like to win this contest.”  And, you did Kelvin. That’s fantastic.  Ron says, “[I] can’t wait to have this. My new laptop has Blu-ray for this sweet looking scenery in the movie.”

This is what Kelvin and Ron won:

•         Cable Cash (which is $5 off the winner’s cable or satellite bill)
•         Canvas Roll-up Bag
•         Tribal Wolf t-shirt

Catherine Hardwicke (Twilight) directs a fantasy thriller that puts a haunting twist on the classic fairy tale. For years the villagers of Daggerhorn have maintained an uneasy truce with a werewolf – but the beast changes the stakes by killing the older sister of beautiful young Valerie (Amanda Seyfried). Promised in marriage to one man but in love with another, Valerie has her life dramatically affected yet again by the creature’s bloody actions. When a werewolf hunter warns that the beast takes human form by day and walks among them, panic sets in as the death toll rises. And Valerie learns she has a unique connection to the wolf that inexorably draws them together, making her both suspect…and bait. Gary Oldman, Billie Burke, Shiloh Fernandez, Max Irons, Virginia Madsen, Lukas Haas and Julie Christie also star.

Remember: Watch it your way, On Demand, For Download and on Blu-ray combo pack.

It’s hard to deny Darren Aronofsky is a man with big ideas. Who can forget his trippy sci-fi The Fountain, which may have been derided and a box office failure, but nevertheless remains one of America’s boldest films in the last decade? Or of course Black Swan, in which the director convinced the highly googled Natalie Portman to fiddle with herself and make out with Mila Kunis enough to grab an Oscar. Earlier in the year Aronofsky disappointed fans when it was announced he was to sell his soul and direct the sequel to Wolverine. Fortunately that fell apart and Aronofsky is back working on Noah.

Noah is the telling of Noah’s Ark, the biblical tale of a man who survives God’s “clensing” of the earth by building a giant boat and collecting a pair of each creature on the planet. The fable can been found not just in Christian texts, but also in Islam and Judaism. Aronofsky is currently shopping it around and expecting a budget of $100 million and beyond to tell this tale. In an interview with the IFC Aronofsky said “I don’t think it’s a very religious story [...], I think it’s a great fable, [...] it’s a great story that’s never been on film.”

The project was something he had been working on several years ago, before he took on Black Swan. Feeling he could never get the funds together earlier this year he planned to release it as a comic (you can see some artwork here). With Black Swan‘s success the director is aiming high. How he’ll explain why the lions didn’t devour the gazelles is a mystery to me.

Like in the original film, a city kid named Ren McCormack moves to old fashioned and uptight Bomont, and rebels against its law that bans dancing and rock music. The remake will feature new songs with Craig Brewer saying, “I can promise Footloose fans that I will be true to the spirit of the original film. But I still gotta put my own Southern grit into it and kick it into 2011″.

It looks like Footloose has been kicked. I have never seen a pretty Christian girl act this way before. She must be part of Brewer’s youthful dreams when he was teenager or Michael Bay told him how to direct a pretty girl.

All in all, the film looks like fun, but the trailer is a bit choppy. I hope the story holds tighter.

The movie opens October 14, 2011.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 will arrive July 15, 2011 in movie theaters everywhere. I will be sleeping in that day because I have a ticket to the midnight showing at the IMAX theater. On July 14, 2011 at 11:59PM, my family and I will be watching the beginning of the final Harry Potter movie of a fantastic, if not, the best movie franchise to ever grace this planet.

Let me tell you about my next giveaway that the whole family can enjoy.

Big Idea Entertainment is a faith-based studio and producer of children’s and family programming, characters and brands. Big Idea released an all-new DVD title, VeggieTales Live! Sing Yourself Silly. The DVD is available wherever DVDs are sold, particularly in Christian and general market stores.

The DVD captures all the fun of the live tour with energetic dancers, loads of bubbles, confetti, big bouncy characters and 18 of the most classic and popular VeggieTales silly songs performed live on a stage including “His Cheeseburger,” “Love My Lips!,” “The Hairbrush Song,” plus a few hits from the 80’s that both parents and kids will enjoy! There are also several fun and family-friendly bonus features included such as a peek behind the curtain on “Larry’s Backstage Pass.”

“After our successful Live! show tour last fall, we wanted to bring the VeggieTales’ high-energy and hilarious performance into households everywhere across the country, “said Leslie Ferrell, General Manager of Big Idea Entertainment. “We’re happy to provide this fun DVD full of music that’s perfect for the entire family.”

Bob, Larry and the whole crew are taking to the stage with the silliest Silly Song Countdown ever! This high energy song and dance spectacular takes silliness to a whole new level! But sometimes silliness just isn’t enough! Archibald Asparagus prefers songs that have lessons, Mr. Lunt wants to sing about food, and Jimmy and Jerry are stuck in the 80’s! But there’s only so much time…will the VeggieTales crew learn the importance of sharing so that the show can go and everyone will be able to sing themselves silly?

I have a copy of Sing Yourself Silly to giveaway! Just post your name and I will pick the winner June 29, 2011.

A strange subheader for this review, folks, as we take a look at the recently-opened release Green Lantern. In grandest summer movie, comic book movie fashion, it’s shiny, it’s loud, it cost a fortune, the purists will probably hate it and it’s thoroughly mediocre.

Green Lantern joins us with test pilot Hal Jordan, son of a test pilot, who just showed up some automated jets that were going to get a federal contract for the area worth millions. But rather than dwell on the failure his ego wrought, he instead finds himself on the receiving end of a dying alien’s last wish, to induct him into the mythic Green Lantern Corps, a society of policemen created by immortal aliens who worship the power of will. Its immediate rival, the power of fear, has managed to find an inroad onto Earth, however, and that’s going to leave Hal Jordan in the position to defend not only our planet, but the entire universe in the process.

If that paragraph sounds like a lot to take in all at once, that’s largely because it is a lot to take in all at once. And it’s probably too much for a two hour movie, too. Remember the Green Lantern story spans dozens, if not hundreds, of comic book volumes, not to mention decades. So if the end result comes off looking disjointed and poorly planned, well, that shouldn’t be a surprise. Rather large plot threads will be assembled and then forgotten about for much of the movie, ostensibly to be “saved for the sequel”, or given a brief shout out in the end credits (and I hate when movies do that), which there will almost certainly be. Trying to pin down the movie’s main villain is a master-level philosophy exercise, because that which probably should be the main villain only gets about twenty minutes of screen time total, which shouldn’t be a main villain at all. Seriously, I don’t know when Green Lantern’s arch nemesis became the nefarious Dr. Phoneitin, but it’s not a good sign overall. Oh, and every time I saw Peter Sarsgaard as Hector Hammond I got vaguely disappointed that it wasn’t Brad Dourif. Because Dourif would have owned that role.

You’ve got to hand it to this movie for sheer loud. Everything is bright, shiny, and heavy on the green–which is exactly why I called it “the worst prom dress ever”. Seriously, this thing’s greener than Burrito Night on the Titanic. It’s fun, sure–at least, parts of it are–and the CG is as awesome as advertised. But as we all know, good effects can’t save a truly godawful script, and this certainly was powered by one. Considering the ring’s power is limited only by your imagination, why they couldn’t have imagined up some coherent plot connections is utterly beyond me.

So when you take absolutely pretty and stack it up against clunky and poorly assembled, the end result is probably pretty clear.

The Screenhead Ten Scale is looking a little green around the gills itself, so I’ll pass on that it’s calling Green Lantern a five out of ten for being great in some respects and truly horrible in others. When a movie takes it for granted that there will be a sequel like this one does, it just makes me cringe a little inside.