Patton Oswalt on Futurama & other updates

First, a reminder to watch Futurama tonight. The second half of season six starts at 10 pm and Patton Oswalt guest stars as Unattractive Giant Monster in the second episode, "Benderama," which airs at 10:30 on Comedy Central. Entertainment Weekly has an exclusive preview.

Esai Morales and Gun Hill Road director Rashaad Ernesto Green were interviewed for the Movie Addict Headquarters podcast on Blog Talk Radio. You can find the link to the interview here. Esai will be doing a tweet-up this Sunday at 3 pm ET. Eyes on @gunhillroadfilm for further updates. The film will next be screened at the Kansas City Gay and Lesbian Film Festival on Saturday, June 25.

Eric Stoltz seems to be everywhere this week. DVD Talk reports that they've seen him in a deleted scene of Elektra Luxx, out on DVD since Tuesday. Also, according to his IMDB page, he is directing an episode of Californication this season – episode 5x06. He isn't in any of the previews for the Leverage season premiere (frakssakes, TNT), but he will definitely appear in the episode.

Genevieve Buechner is shooting a new film, Girl Fight, in B.C. these days. The Province mentioned it the other day:

Real-life couple James Tupper and Anne Heche star in this TV movie as the parents of a teen (Canada's Genevieve Buechner) whose beating by other girls was recorded and uploaded onto the Internet.

In related news, Judas Kiss is available for pre-ordering on Amazon.

Spoiler TV has the official press release for John Carter, with Polly Walker, which will hit theatres next June.

Cast: Taylor Kitsch, Lynn Collins, Samantha Morton, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, Dominic West, James Purefoy, Daryl Sabara, Polly Walker, Bryan Cranston, with Thomas Hayden Church and Willem Dafoe
Director: Andrew Stanton
Producers: Jim Morris and Colin Wilson
Screenplay by: Andrew Stanton & Mark Andrews (credit not final)
Based on the story by: Edgar Rice Burroughs

From Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Andrew Stanton, “John Carter of Mars” is a sweeping action adventure set on the mysterious and exotic planet of Barsoom (Mars). Based on the classic sci-fi novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, the film tells the story of John Carter (Taylor Kitsch), who is inexplicably transported to Mars where he becomes embroiled in a conflict of epic proportions amongst the inhabitants of the planet, including Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe) and the captivating Princess Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins). In a world on the brink of collapse, Carter discovers that the survival of Barsoom and its people rests in his hands. (…)
Set in the wounded planet of Mars, JOHN CARTER OF MARS chronicles the journey of Civil-War veteran John Carter (TAYLOR KITSCH), who finds himself battling a new and mysterious war amidst a host of strange Martian inhabitants, including Tars Tarkas (WILLEM DAFOE) and Dejah Thoris (LYNN COLLINS).

Hart of Dixie with Scott Porter has a definite premiere date: Monday, September 26 at 9 pm. Meanwhile, season two of The Good Wife will be out on DVD on September 13.

Hungry Hills with John Pyper-Ferguson has been picked up by CBC. (Fantastic little film, see it if you get a chance. If you liked Winter's Bone, you'll love this one, too.)

A staged reading of Macbeth that James Marsters did for L.A. Theatre Works’ Audio Theatre Collection will be released on August 15.

Nickutopia reports that filming has wrapped on Rags: A Hip Hop Fairytale, with Avan Jogia and Zak Santiago.

The Jessie Awards were presented this week. The full list of winners is at Jessies.ca. Each of the productions with the Caprica cast involved – The Philanderer with Anna Galvin, Tear the Curtain! with Hiro Kanagawa, and Glengarry Glen Ross with Brian Markinson and John Pyper-Ferguson – nabbed at least one award.

Several new interviews with Mark Verheiden showed up at Collider, Coming Soon and Daemon’s TV. He also posted some fun facts about the show on his blog.

Here is a snippet from the Collider interview:

Were there things that you specifically wanted to bring to this series, once you had signed on?
VERHEIDEN: What we had was an incredibly great template that suggested all sorts of things we could do from the pilot. I wanted to do was continue what had been established, but what was wonderful about working with TNT and with everyone on the project was that they were open to explore things that came to mind, as you were actually writing the episodes. You can have a real strong path of where you’re going, but then you get to a point where you go, “Hey, this would be fun,” or “This is a change,” or “That’s not working as well as we’d like.” But, my mandate going in, for me, was that we did not want to tell a bleak story about humanity on the ragged edge. This is a story about a man with three kids, who he’s trying to protect more than anything on this earth. He’s trying to retrieve one of them from the Skitters and protect the others. And, it’s about six months after an invasion that’s turned their whole lives upside down and taken away everything that they used to take for granted, and finding that hope in humanity within yourself, gathering and becoming that resistance, the Second Mass. Then, the show that TNT wanted was one that had a sense of hopefulness to it. It’s about these people that are thrust together, who had never met, and now are finding ways to not only fight back against the aliens, but who are also reconstituting themselves after this terrible event and making a life that’s not just a life but is one that’s worth living, not just for Tom but for his kids. That, to me, was its core. It was trying to find and make sure that we held onto those emotional values, at the core of it.

The Falling Skies premiere was seen by more than 5.9 million viewers, which made it the top cable series premiere launch this year. Congrats to all involved.

Falling Skies airs Sundays at 10 pm on TNT.