NA VA News (Part One)

Alice Blue is Finally Being Released?

Via a Facebook group, a few days ago we learned that a movie shot in late 2005 involving two VAs is finally done the editing process and is being shopped around to film festivals including the Toronto International Film Festival and the Berlin International Film Festival. The Death of Alice Blue is a vampire movie intermingled with the advertising environment. Alice learns of the secret underminings of her advertising agency from her friends in an elite group known as "The Resistance", and also that she is genetically predisposed to become a vampire. It stars Barbara Radecki (Serena's Mom, Sailor Neptune) as Sherry, and Katie Griffin (Sailor Mars #1) as Katie. Katie's husband, rocker Michael Kulas, also contributed original music to the film. This film was also shot in 35mm and converted to HD for effects. Fans can check out a trailer here, and we will keep you posted once we hear that this film has been selected for a festival!

Mary Long in New Play!

Mary Long (Molly Baker) can currently be seen on stage at the Victoria Place Petrolia in Petrolia, Ontario. In Separate Beds, she plays two wives who take a cruise ship vacation along with their husbands to celebrate their wedding anniversaries. You read right, two wives - she is playing both Beth Stone and Twink Fraser. Beth is a movie actress married to an orthodontist, and Twink is the co-owner of a hardware store along with her husband. The play is about two different couples, and her costar Ralph Small plays both her characters' husbands. The revolving set features a cabin suite and a breakfast deck and both actors are transformed into other characters through different clothes, hair, speech, mannerisms and, of course, names. This definitely sounds interesting and from what we have read, the show sounds pretty good. The director also had lots of praise for the stars, saying: "I am indeed fortunate to have two artists of the calibre of Mary Long and Ralph Small to portray four wonderful characters. They are both gifted actors and talented comedians, and they bring the script to life brilliantly." Mary loves the play, and said that this is the playwright's (Mary Jane Cruise) best job, and added "Five seconds into the play, audiences will relate immediately to this first couple. It won't be long before they recognize themselves." The two even have their own rendition of Sonny and Cher's I've Got You Babe! The play runs until August 9th, and Mary will reprise the roles later this year when the show hits Orangeville.

Behind the Scenes of Flashpoint!

We're still waiting on the ratings for last week's Flashpoint in Canada. Turns out BBM (Canada's audience measurement organization) is the holdup. It's been over a week and they still haven't posted any of their top shows from the previous week. As soon as it's posted (and believe us, we are checking several times a day) we will update and amend the previous article.

In the meantime, this morning we came across something that all of you fans in Canada and North America can enjoy! CBS affiliate WIVB Buffalo sent their afternoon news anchor Victoria Hong to the set of Flashpoint, and she was given a tour by Michael Cram who plays Kevin "Wordy" Wordsworth. It's a really neat look at one of the most expensive sets created in Canadian Television History and you get to learn a lot of cool things, how the glass walls were built so they could swivel to fit a camera, or how the exercise equipment on the set is all real! We recommend all our readers click here to see what the set is like. We are still astounded that one of the former stars of Sailor Moon, Stephanie Morgenstern (Sailor Venus #1) has come so far since her VA days.

Sailor Moon Inspired Artist Scores Job With Marvel!

Emily Warren had dreams of being an illustrator. When she was young, she became intrigued by the manga artform after reading the Sailor Moon manga. To her, Usagi was the quintessential "regular girl", terrible at school and unable to find a boyfriend. As we all know, Usagi had to learn to come out of her shy, shell when she became Sailor Moon. Like Usagi, Emily was an introvert in middle school, and is coming out of her shell when she appears at conventions with her artwork. Emily pursued her dream further, by taking commercial art classes at Jefferson City High School (which have since been discontinued) and graduating with a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts from the Illinois Institute of Art in Chicago in 2007. She trained to be an animator, but she plans on being an illustrator. Emily's friend Christina Scrain, noticed her talent and introduced her work to editors at Marvel. Soon after, she landed a job at Marvel, as a colorist for series like Big Hero Six, Secret Invasion, and the upcoming Cloak and Dagger! Emily, we salute you for all your hard work and one day we hope to see your work on the cover of a comic! Check out more of her artwork here!

Flashpoint Ratings: July 31st

Nielsen Media reports that there was a gain in US viewers for last night's episode of Flashpoint! The show gained approximately 1.1 million viewers (around 16%) from last week, bringing the total to 7.34 million viewers, and a 1.8/6 with the 18-49 demographic. The re-run of CSI before it had 7.94 million viewers so Flashpoint retained a lot of the viewers. It is now thought that broadcast networks in the US will rely a lot more on quality programming from Canada (see, we Canucks aren't that bad at all!). Watch this space, we'll be updating with the Canadian ratings as soon as they are released!

EDIT: No sign of the Canadian ratings yet. Usually they are out a few hours after the American ones, but we don't know why the Canadian ratings haven't hit the web. We also didn't get the time to mention that this week's encore was moved to Saturday on both networks from Sunday . The encore still fared well on CBS , scoring 3.61 million viewers over NBC'sSaturday Night’s Main Event. It doesn't look like Episode 4 Attention Shopper is going to air this week. The show airing on August 7th will be Episode 6, Who's George. We sure hope the fourth ep airs soon!

EDIT: (August 8th) The ratings for this episode have finally been released by BBM! Flashpoint scored 1.216 million viewers in Canada and was the third most popular show in Canada that week, just behind So You Think You Can Dance.

This One Sure Blew Our Radar!

Last June, Toei quietly began their Anime On Demand video service by setting up a really flat MySpace and uploading episodes from Slam Dunk and Fist of the North Star to Direct2Drive. Direct2Drive also features other anime from other companies in North America. We're not really into either of these series, and judging from the poll, these two were approximately 2nd and 3rd-ish place picks, and not any of the top series that fans wanted to see. Nonetheless, we gave the free episode of Slam Dunk available on IGN.com a try. We were impressed with the quality, but we would have liked to have seen subtitles during the theme song. The show? We're not fans of sports anime so we didn't like it (but that's not to say that there may be some fans who think that Slam Dunk is better than Sailor Moon). We're wondering why Toei isn't hyping up this service at all, at $2.00 an episode it's a pretty good deal. As of this writing, we're not sure if Sailor Moon will be included (though it was definitely mentioned on the Myspace). We still think it's dependent ultimately on Naoko giving the thumbs up to countries outside of Japan. We also are still holding out some hope for the dub to be released in this service - despite all it's criticisms, many fans (including our staff) hold a special place for the dub in our hearts and we'd all love to see it again. Fans who are members of Direct2Drive and who are fans of these series, we'd love to hear from you to get your opinion on this service. Do you think that it was worth it to do it through Direct2Drive or would you have rather seen them do something more like their AnimeBB Service?

EDIT: We finally found Toei Animation's USA site and their On Demand site. Turns out they have also added Pretty Cure and Digimon Adventure 02. There is NO MENTION of Sailor Moon anywhere on these pages. In light of this, we're a little worried that the show may not make an appearance anytime soon on Direct2Drive.

Flashpoint Tidbits!

This week's episode, Asking For Flowers, featured former Jericho actor Kenneth Mitchell playing the abusive cop, Pete Fitzhaven. He talks about his experience with the show and his character in an interview with UGO. While he was really happy with the production being a co-production between the US and Canada, he found it a little challenging to play his character who was drunk the whole time. He also isn't fond of playing villains too much. Click here to read more about his role and his upcoming work!

And we thought we had it tough, being very busy with Moon Chase this summer. The success of Flashpoint has caused the size of it's audio production unit to double, as reported by Playback Magazine in their August 4th issue. Typically, a production has 2 sound editors and one assistant to handle all of the audio after the episode has been shot. Flashpoint aired two and a half months earlier than they expected, so now their audio unit has 5 sound editors and 2 assistants just to keep up with the workload and schedule. They are probably huddled right now at Technicolor Toronto on their seven ProTools workstations. Wow, it's almost as busy as Sailor Moon was when it first started. Roland Parliament said years ago that they had to finish an episode nearly every day, and it was a challenge to keep up with the schedule. Flashpoint also had to increase their picture editors from 2 people to 3, they've added another music editor, and they've had to hire 2 composers just to keep up with CBS's schedule. While no one is saying how much all this crew is costing the production, they do say that CBS is taking care of these increased costs. It is thought (but not confirmed) that the show costs between 1.6-1.8 Million dollars an episode to produce! To the crew of Flashpoint, we salute you for your hard work, and we can only hope the dessert you indulge into after all this is over tastes of nothing but sweet relaxation!

Flashpoint in a Flash: Episode 5

No, we didn't skip an episode. We just learned that this was actually supposed to be the 5th episode in the series, and not the 4th one (which explains why you Power Ranger fans didn’t hear Amy’s song this week). This was likely done because the Olympics are starting up soon and ratings may drop. Sorry for the delay, I had a few surprises I had to deal with tonight. I may change this later once I can actually watch the episode in peace (this was really rushed, even by my standards). I ignored the commercials this time around (sorry, for those of you who enjoyed my random commercial banter. It will return next week!). Read the summary after the jump!


Asking For Flowers

We begin with a shot of the lovely Harbourfront in Toronto. The team heads out into the Marina where a standoff is going down inside a boat. A woman holds a gun to a man as reinforcements move in... and REWIND! 4 hours earlier. The same woman is trying to get inside a house, calling to her sister to let her in. Desperation ensues, and she picks up a rock from outside and breaks a window in the front door to let herself in. The security alarm goes off, and we learn that the woman inside the house is Sadie. Sadie is found in the bathroom on the floor beaten and bleeding. Rebecca is this sister who has come to help her, and she helps her clean up. Back at SRU HQ, Braddock is running on a treadmill watching a chick flick. Sorry Sam, no matter how hard you try you are not giving Christian Bale a run for his money ~_~ . The other officers make small talk about his choice of movies amongst their banter. At the house, Rebecca goes to check on Sadie’s baby daughter Caitlyn. Sadie tries to get into a comfortable position on her bed. At HQ, the other officers talk about their lives, especially how Ed Lane and his son don’t have anything in common and how he’s getting bullied at school. Back at the house, Rebecca tries to comfort a crying Caitlyn when she discovers blood on the blanket and she tries to convince Sadie to call the police. Sadie doesn’t think it’s going to work because her husband is a cop. Rebecca finds a gun in the closet and loads it. She puts back the keys to the lockbox after she says, “This is going to end”. Rebecca reassures Sadie that everything is going to be okay, and she goes to give Caitlyn a bottle. ROLL OPENING! At HQ, the team finds that there’s nothing too much out of the ordinary so they split up and head out on patrol to different ends of the city. Rebecca walks into a bar and has a drink. She encounters Sadie’s husband Pete and invites him for a drink, hiding the fact she knows Sadie is bruised up at home. At the house, Sadie discovers the gun is gone and worries on her bed. She calls a guy named Matt. Ed and Wordsworth drive through the town , continuing to talk about what to do about this bullying situation. Ed gets a call from this Matt who is a lawyer and stuck in court. He gets the heads up on the situation, but he is unsure what is going on as not even Matt knows. At the bar, we learn that Pete has been promoted to Sargent. Ed and Wordsworth arrive at Sadie’s house, and they ask what’s going on. Sadie is hesitant but lets them into the house and she puts Caitlyn down. The SRU sees blood on the wall. Sadie says that her sister came by and took the gun. The officers leave and suspect there is more to the story. Matt tells them that Rebecca might be obssesed with Pete and has been stalking him. Pete leaves the bar, visibly wasted. Rebecca is outside waiting for him, and offers to drive Pete home, but Pete thinks he is good to drive. Rebecca plays fishy and says she doesn’t have a car, and gets into the car with Pete. Pete decides to go to another bar for some more drinks, but Rebecca suggests they go to Pete’s boat. The team goes into action and heads to the bar. Meanwhile, Pete and Rebecca head to his boat. Ed asks around about them at the bar, and no one knows where they are. Ed thinks they might be having an affair, but then Ed tries to suggest that maybe he is abusing her, but no one really confirms the accusation. The team mobilizes and heads to their vans. At the boat, Rebecca talks about how Pete and Sadie could have travelled to Italy in it and the team arrives at the marina. Pete drinks wine right out of the bottle and says something about Sadie not being good enough for him. The team plans their approach to end this situation. Ed finally comes out and says the wife was lying as they move into position and try to gather the background of the story. Pete continues rambling how Caitlyn’s birth made Sadie very grumpy. Jules starts to make the mission report, and the team jumps into nearby boats for a better view. Pete throws a complete curveball and tries to make moves on Rebecca claiming he picked the wrong sister. The team can’t see inside the boat, and uses a radio from someone else’s boat. Rebecca stops the game and starts accusing Pete of beating Sadie from the beginning of their wedding. An argument ensues, and Pete tells Rebecca to leave. She pulls out the gun, and Braddock spots them and moves in to see better. Rebecca is ready to shoot Pete. She tells him to go to a friend’s place, let her get a divorce, but he disagrees. Greg gets on a bullhorn and starts negotiating. At gunpoint, Rebecca forces Pete to take the rope off the post and the boat slowly floats away. It’s now sunset, and the boat is well away from the marina. Sadie arrives on the scene and they are trying to make sense of the situation. Greg rethinks his negotiation strategy with the rest of the team and gets Pete and Rebecca’s cell phone numbers. Wordsworth tells Sadie a story that it took 2 years for him to figure out that his best friend growing up was in an abusive marriage. At the boat, Rebecca tells Pete to turn on his cell phone and kick it over. Pete takes matters into his own hands and grabs a hold of Rebecca and throws her around. Wordsworth tells Sadie that they might have to kill Rebecca, and Sadie shows Wordsworth the wound on her chest. Sadie begs for them not to hurt Rebecca. . The team prepares to enter the boat without wetsuits. Pete fakes that Rebecca is beating him over the cell phone. Wordsworth tells Jules that Pete is problem, not Rebecca. Now the team knows what is going on and they change their strategy. Pete punches out Rebecca and It’s now night. Rebecca is unconscious, Pete continues to pretend that he is the victim. The team plays along with his story as they head to the boat. Ed tells Pete that Rebecca broke out of the house and plays along that Rebecca is the one out of control. He tells him he is a good cop and he shouldn’t let things get out of control, amongst talk of getting a restraining order. The team enters the boat, finds Pete and cuff him on the spot. He thinks that this is all going according to his plan. They cuff Rebecca just to make it look like it’s in his favor. The team brings him to their command truck, and they show him evidence he tried to kill Rebecca. Pete learns he is the one under arrest. Sadie goes with Rebecca in the ambulance to the hospital. And this isn’t Amy Jo Johnson’s song playing...Jules and Braddock share a laugh on a truck, and Ed calls his son telling him he wants to play video games with him. Ed goes home to his wife. Next week: A Bank Robbery goes out of hand when the Robber takes everyone hostage inside.

There was definitely a lot more at play than just the incident this episode, we saw a slice of Ed trying to deal with issues at home. This episode asked the question, how far do you go if the person responsible is one of your own? Sometimes you have to play a little to bring the enemy to justice. As always, we can't wait for next week's episode!