One of the History Channel’s lesser-known gems probably has to be Ancient Aliens. When you get people together who actually think that aliens have visited the Earth, and couple them onto places and things that are downright unexplainable today, the end result is bizarre and sometimes hilarious. And that’s why I’m glad the folks out at the History Channel sent over a copy of Ancient Aliens Season Two for me to review for you.

Ancient Aliens Season Two will take you all over the world to see strange things that make precious little sense and then explain how those places may be related to or otherwise serve as the work of aliens. Each episode works together to attempt to establish proof that aliens of all sorts have been visiting Earth for millions of years, and indeed, meddling in history for just as long.

The weird part about Ancient Aliens is that it’s all impossible to verify. They’re going to explain a whole bunch of things, and absolutely none of this may be true. It’s hard to get your head around watching the History Channel put on a show that is only vaguely about history.

But at the same time, they will spend a lot of time going to a lot of different places, and that’s more than interesting enough for just about anybody. A lot of the strange descriptions have even stranger overlapping moments. Sure, some could call it a bunch of coincidences, or someone could find deeper meaning in there, depending on how you choose to interpret the things that are going on around you.

Whether or not you believe a word of this stuff–and frankly, I don’t–it’s still interesting to hear about, to hear them draw the connections between events and places and things to get these strange theories all in one place.

Ancient Aliens is weird, bizarre stuff, and if there’s nothing you enjoy quite so much as baffling theories linked together by thin webs of coincidence, then you and Ancient Aliens will get along nicely. I have to hand it to them for the sheer audacity of what they’ve done here; all the greats, from Stonehenge to crop circles and beyond are here, and lots of places I’ve never even heard of are involved.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Ancient Aliens Season Two an eight out of ten for doing strange things with places we’d only thought we’d known and loved. This is actually pretty good, if very weird, stuff, so if you want to have your mind blown, this is a great place to start.

Okay all you Glee fans you can get super excited because Twentieth Century Fox will have special advance showings of Glee: The 3D Concert Movie. It will unspool on August 10, 2011, giving fans of the global phenomenon, known as “Gleeks,” an early opportunity to celebrate, share and experience Glee like never before…and in 3D…two days prior to the film’s global launch.

Ticket holders for these special screenings will get a merchandise packet created especially for the event, including a GLEE logo lapel pin, commemorative ticket and lanyard, silicone bracelet, hat, commemorative Glee RealD 3D glasses, and backpack. It’s wild and it’s crazy!

The screenings will take place in 291 theaters across the U.S. and Canada. Tickets for the event go on sale July 13, for Gleeks on the official movie Facebook page. Public sales begin the next day at the special Gleek site. Ticket sales end August 2, to allow for mailing of the special ticket and bag.

I was so excited about the special screening that I forgot to show you the poster for the movie. What do you think!?

The movie is a new way to see all your favorite characters — including Rachel (played by Lea Michele), Finn (Cory Monteith), Mercedes (Amber Riley), Kurt (Chris Colfer), Artie (Kevin McHale), and Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) – as never before, with their spectacular musical performances, captured in 3D, interwoven with intimate behind-the-scenes revelations that are a story unto themselves. The movie is directed by Kevin Tancharoen.

I can’t believe that I am writing this and saying that Jack and Jill looks like a funny movie. Adam Sandler plays both Jack and Jill. They are twins; one is a boy and one is a girl. Neither one looks very handsome or pretty.

But that’s not the point. The point is that it is a little raunchy, most Sandler movies are, but I had fun watching this trailer.  Call me crazy or stupid, it still looks like a winner.

Katie Holmes also stars as Jack’s wife; she is adorable. Al Pacino also stars as a love struck man hitting on Sandler as Jill.

Chances are you’re already familiar with Dog The Bounty Hunter, whether from our previous coverage of it or you watch it on television. And the folks out at A&E sent over a little chunk of Dog The Bounty Hunter history for us to review in the form of Dog The Bounty Hunter: This Family Means Business.

Dog The Bounty Hunter: This Family Means Business takes us back to Hawaii and beyond where the Chapman clan is once again engaged in bounty hunting. This time, we go after a variety of cases, including one that makes history. This particular DVD contains the two hundredth episode of Dog The Bounty Hunter, as well as a collection of others including a special retrospective.

This particular set of Dog The Bounty Hunter episodes is unusually preachy, I found; they spent a whole lot of time preaching to their targets about the evils of drug use. One particularly awkward moment featured the ladies of the Chapman clan going after a mother on what I’m guessing was crystal meth (they called it ice, as I recall, which I believe is another name for crystal meth), and then, once they got her, they said they were there for a “mom’s intervention”, being as they were all apparently mothers. I found that spectacularly disingenuous; we all know full well they’re not there on some kind of charity case. They’re there because they were paid to be there, not because they wanted to help. To suggest otherwise is ludicrous, to actually say otherwise is either preposterous ignorance or an outright lie.

Still, it’s interesting enough, all things considered. There’s a note of predictability here; you have a good idea what the Chapman crew will be doing at any given time, but every time the circumstances will be different. It’s a different target most every time, but the end result will generally be the same. If you’re already a fan of the show, then you’ll enjoy the interplay and the various idiosyncrasies between cases. Each one is a little bit different, if very similar at the roots, but still most of the time there will be differences to appreciate.

If you already like it, you’ll enjoy your time here. If you don’t like the show, then this will waste a little over three hours of your time.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives the preachy, vaguely familiar joy that is Dog The Bounty Hunter: This Family Means Business a seven out of ten. It’s great if you like this kind of thing, but don’t look for it to win many converts.

The folks out at Acorn Media have sent us a lot of interesting pieces over the last few months; they’ve introduced me to a lot of British television that’s been a lot different from anything I’ve seen before, like the Upstairs Downstairs series, Murdoch Mysteries, and of course, Doc Martin. So when they sent out a copy of The Far Pavilions, I was definitely interested. Would it prove as good as the other stuff they’ve sent out? The answer was yes, but for unusual reasons.

The Far Pavilions joins us with Ashton Pelham-Martyn, raised in India as the son of British parents. Ashton’s returned to India as a young military officer, and he’s got some serious problems on his hands. With the troubles of the locals on the one hand, and the troubles of British society on the other, he’s walking a fine line from this dichotomy pulling at him. And things will only get more complex when he reunites with childhood sweetheart Princess Anjuli. How will it all end up? I won’t be spoilering it here.

Clear your schedule for this one, because it’s going to take a chunk out of your calendar. Like five hours of chunk, and just a little bit extra. But this thing is spectacularly rich and dense in terms of content; there’s so much going on in here that it’s actually a bit hard to follow. There are the strangenesses of the Indian culture, the intrigues of the British culture, and between the lot, a world of difference. It’s part war movie, part drama, and largely unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.

It’s a bizarre title; there’s not much to compare it to, and that leaves the whole thing with this sort of unfathomable quality. When you haven’t seen much of anything like what you’re watching, it becomes rather unpredictable, strange in its way. But at the same time, that sheer unpredictability gives it an edge that you wouldn’t expect, and makes The Far Pavilions a lot more fun than it really has any right to be.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, gives The Far Pavilions an eight out of ten. There’s a whole lot going on here, and if you don’t want to follow along you’re likely going to be lost here from a very early stage. But if you’ve got the intestinal fortitude to keep up with Ashton and his many adventures, then you’re going to get a very welcome and very unique shot of drama here that’s unlike anything you’ve seen before.

Fourth season of the smash hit U.K. crime series debuts on DVD.

Featuring a brilliant cast, top guest stars, deft writing, and an irresistible blend of compelling drama and dry humor, New Tricks, Season 4 makes its highly anticipated DVD debut from Acorn Media on June 7, 2011. Amanda Redman leads a motley crew of semi-retired detectives investigating cold cases in this fast-paced, witty British series. New Tricks has run on the BBC for seven seasons since 2003 with an eight season currently in production, and has enjoyed ongoing broadcast exposure in North America on public television, garnering fans on both sides of the Atlantic. The series co-stars Dennis Waterman, Alun Armstrong and James Bolam. The DVD 3-Disc Set includes all eight episodes from Season four.

Three former detectives thought they were retired—until the lovely and persuasive superintendent Sandra Pullman recruited them to right the wrongs of the past. Now members of the unsolved crimes unit of the Metropolitan Police, they reinvestigate tough cases no one else can crack.

Their methods are old-fashioned, and they don’t care about the rules because they have little to lose. Gerry Standing is thrice divorced; Brian Lane is depressed; and Jack Halford is mourning the death of his wife, killed by a hit-and-run driver. But their camaraderie is real and their skills are still sharp.

I have a copy of New Tricks Season 4 to give away. Please post your name and you will be a part of the giveaway. I will pick the winner July 28, 2011.

Syfy’s newest original scripted series Alphas is an 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 premiered Monday, July 11 at 10:00PM ET/PT. We held a t-shirt giveaway celebrating the arrival of the new series. Susan Ladd is our lucky winner. She says, “Syfy is my favorite station and [I] hope to win.”  You won Susan, and I hope you wear the t-shirt while watching Alphas.

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).

With every passing installment of the House of Payne series, I wonder, more and more, how this thing stays on the air. Because it seems like it only gets more depressing with each passing installment. In fact, it says on the back of the box, “the family comedy everyone can relate to!”, and I can’t help but agree with that…if by “everyone” you mean “everyone who’s ever been in an Anton Chekhov novel”. Seriously, I saw a live performance of The Cherry Orchard when I was in college, and by comparison, that was an episode of Mister Ed compared to Tyler Perry’s ultra-depressing House of Payne. But would House of Payne Volume Eight be more of the same? Or would the broken clock that is Tyler Perry’s career be right for the first time today?

Once again we go back out to the Payne house, which is generally a house of its homophonic equivalent, with horrors and terrors and all the pits and perils of domestic life, often hitting one right after the other like some kind of bizarre fun house attraction. And this season will feature the Paynes once again…but in something of a new light.

For once, the season didn’t start off with horror and terror and disaster. I was puzzled!  No one caught fire. No one’s house caught fire. No one got laid off. And there were jokes.  Funny jokes. Curtis and Ella were in rare form, their new neighbors were a little weird but weird in a funny way, there was a little discontent going on over at the condo, but this was really rather minor, and interspersed with wholesome lessons about teaching a baby the value of fishing.

And then it took a bizarre left turn of the most lunatic sort. But even then, the twist was funny. But this doesn’t last long as the weird and angsty kicks back up in earnest. And even this doesn’t last either. It’s strange, but most of the time I didn’t see it coming. This may well be the best season of Tyler Perry’s House of Payne yet, not that that’s saying much. It may be less charitable, but more accurate, to say it’s merely less painful than normal. Or even, to reuse the sweet pun in the headline, less payneful.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, gives Tyler Perry’s House of Payne Volume Eight a more than tolerable seven out of ten. It’s a pretty decent showing they had here, and probably the best one yet. If you haven’t been pleased with earlier installments, you’ll be surprised by this one.

I am wondering if you are familiar with Bloodworth, which Screenhead is running a giveaway. It looks like an awesome movie about redemption. The DVD is available now wherever DVDs are sold.

It’s been 40 years since E.F. Bloodworth (Kris Kristofferson) abandoned his loving wife and sons for a life on the road. Now at the end of the line, Bloodworth reappears, forced to reckon with the stale aftermath of his departure. With his ex-wife Julia (Frances Conroy) mentally destroyed and his three sons, Warren (Val Kilmer), Boyd (Dwight Yoakam) and Brady (W. Earl Brown), soured by years of anger, Bloodworth’s only solace is a budding relationship with Fleming, the grandson he never knew.

But when Fleming meets Raven (Hilary Duff), the woman of his dreams, will Bloodworth’s presence force history to repeat itself? Bloodworth features music produced by Academy Award winner, T Bone Burnett (Best Original Song, Crazy Heart, 2009), and an original song from country music legend Kris Kristofferson.

To enter the giveaway, post your name and I will pick the winner July 26, 2011.

I am super happy about this extraordinary giveaway from Acorn Media.

Starring Michael Praed and Ray Winstone, Robin of Sherwood combines elements of history, myth and magic with a healthy dose of action. The Blu-ray from Acorn Media is on the streets now, with all 13 episodes from Series 1 and 2.

Marking the series’ first Blu-ray release, this lavishly produced 1980’s British series comes digitally remastered and presented in stunning high definition with over eight hours of bonus materials. Shot entirely on location in England’s castles and countryside, the set brings the centuries-old legend to vivid life.

Broadcast on PBS and Showtime as Robin Hood, the superb ensemble cast are Michael Praed (Dynasty) as Robin of Loxley, Ray Winstone (Sexy Beast, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Departed) as seething-mad Will Scarlet, and Nickolas Grace (Brideshead Revisited) as the greedy, conniving Sheriff of Nottingham. The 3-Disc Blu-ray and DVD bonus disc set includes a wealth of extras including 5 episode commentaries, behind-the-scenes documentary, outtakes and photo galleries.

Rich with gritty medieval realism and cunning plot twists, Robin of Sherwood adds a bit of sorcery and mysticism to the swordplay and social justice that have made the heroic outlaw so endearing and enduring for fans of all ages. The series boasts an authentic atmosphere enhanced by an award-winning soundtrack of haunting melodies by the Irish band Clannad.

Whoever wins this DVD set with have over 8 Hours of Special Features: 5 episode commentaries by series creator Richard Carpenter, director Ian Sharp, and producer Paul Knight; behind-the-scenes documentary, The Electric Theatre Show, upgraded and expanded from the original series; Nothing’s Forgotten: The Making of Robin of Sherwood (remastered), two documentaries about the making of Series 1 and 2; new featurettes for three episodes; 40-page booklet with extensive production notes; photo galleries with nearly 500 images in HD; outtakes; PDF material including PR, Richard Carpenter’s original story treatment, and several scripts (access via the bonus DVD via your computer) and more!

To enter the giveaway, post your name and I will pick the winner July 25, 2011