AP Photo/Danny Moloshok

For photos, see Raising Hope on FB and Zimbio.

The next new episode, Mrs. Smartypants, airs next Tuesday. Hit the link for the synopsis and photos. The teaser is embedded below.

And just a quick update on Cogan’s Trade: The Film Stage writes that it won’t be released in March as previously announced, but in the last quarter of 2012.

(^ Via Spoiler TV.)

They’ve also put out the pics from the episode “Prodigy,” with Greyson Chance guest starring as the young Jimmy. The episode is listed as 2×01 (Sept. 20, 9:30), even if earlier reports said that “Kidnapped,” with Sean Bridgers, would be the season opener. The photos are here: Raising Hope 2×01, Prodigy. Here is the press release:

JIMMY CHANCE SINGS THE BLUES ON THE SEASON TWO PREMIERE OF “RAISING HOPE” TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, ON FOX

Greyson Chance makes a Special Guest Appearance

When Jimmy watches a home video of himself as a thirteen-year-old (guest star Greyson Chance), he discovers that he was a musical prodigy with a promising career as a singer and pianist until a horrible accident involving a golf putter rendered him talentless. Jimmy recruits Burt, Virginia and Maw Maw to help him rediscover his lost abilities in the “Prodigy” season premiere episode of RAISING HOPE airing Tuesday, Sept. 20 (9:30-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. (HOP-202) (TV-PG D, L, V)

Cast:

Lucas Neff as Jimmy; Martha Plimpton as Virginia; Garret Dillahunt as Burt; Shannon Woodward as Sabrina; Cloris Leachman as Maw Maw

Guest Cast:

Baylie & Rylie Cregut as Hope; Greyson Chance as Young Jimmy; Andy Umberger as Dr. Finklestein; Aimee McKay as Woman; Blake Hogue as Employee; Greg Barnett as Instructor; Derik Nelson as Young Jimmy Singer

The Daily Beast has a nice three-page interview with Alan Cumming, Garret’s co-star in the mystery movie set in the 1970s, filmed over the summer. On page three, he talks about being harassed by Cloris Leachman and mentions this:

The film I did this summer was with Garret Dillahunt. We played boyfriends in [Famlee] and we had such a laugh.

Here is the synopsis, from Cumming’s site:

Famlee was written and directed by Travis Fine and is the story of a gay couple in the 1970s and their struggle to keep custody of a down syndrome child who they have become fathers to.

And here is another bit from a casting call posted at FamleeMovieCasting.com:

In 1975 Marco is the neglected son of a junkie mother. When the mother is arrested, charged and incarcerated, Marco is befriended and taken in by his neighbor, a flamboyant female impersonator who gets Marco the care and education that he has been missing. The film is a fictional story of a real account. Marco’s speech needs to be good enough to be understood by strangers, which doesn’t always work in his favor, due to the potty mouth he has developed while living with his mother.

Isaac Levya plays the son and Frances Fisher is also in the film. She mentioned it on Twitter back in June.

Elsewhere, Fox Broadcasting has uploaded a short interview with Garret and Martha on YouTube (after the teaser), in which they give away a few details about season two:

And Fox News has a short interview with Lucas Neff and Shannon Woodward.

The show returns in 19 days – Tuesday, September 20 at 9:30/8:30c.

The team encounters an Alpha who is the leader of a cult and has the ability to obtain his followers’ complete obedience; Doctor Rosen and the rest of his team must find a way to save Hicks and Nina after they fall under the Alpha’s spell.

Syfy has released the promotional pics from Garret’s episode of Alphas.

There are a couple more on the Alphas page. The episode airs on Monday, August 29.

Amigo finally opens in a limited release in the U.S. tomorrow. You can find the list of theatres here. The film will also be shown at the Albuquerque Film Festival tonight.

There are a couple of great interviews with John Sayles at NY Mag and Twitch Film. A couple of snippets:

Where did you base your characters on?
Chris (Cooper)’s character was based on someone very specific named ‘Hell Roaring Jake Smith’ who was famous for telling his subordinates, “I want you to make this place howling wilderness. The more you kill and burn, the more you will please me. And I want you to kill every one out of ten Filipinos who are capable of carrying arms,” which meant anybody older than 10. So yes, we had some hard-ass characters like the Colonel who had bullet in his hip from the Civil War who were useful in that kind of military operation. The Mayor is based on hundreds of other mayors that I read about, who got killed by one side or the other. Garret Dillahunt’s character (Lt. Compton) is very much based on the soldiers’ letters to home, who might have liked the army life but had very mixed feelings about their mission. Garret asked me about the character. He asked if he could play a character who likes being in charge but doesn’t really know where to lead them. …
How is Amigo being distributed?
The supportive mid-90s to early 2000 independent film environment doesn’t exist anymore. Even the movies with big names don’t get distributed and go directly to video. They don’t want to take the gamble with dramas. It’s either comedies or comic book superhero movies. The 30 plus weeks in the theater days are over. It’s all about opening weekend where they recoup the money and the 2-3 weeks run at best. For smaller movies, studios can’t take their chances. Even if they do put up the money to make it, they ask you to spend your money for the promotion and distribution. So I’m going back to what I did with couple of my first films. I made 12 prints of the film (10 on film and 2 digital) and hit 12 mainstream theaters throughout the country where there are large Filipino-American population. If it does well, then we will make more prints and art house theaters distribution will follow.

Last, IGN has the DVD details for Raising Hope. Here is the list of bonus features:

– Exclusive featurettes
– Deleted and extended scenes
– Gag reel
– Commentaries
– Unaired pilot never shown on television

The DVD is out on September 20. You can pre-order it on Amazon.com.

Syfy’s new hit series Alphas will feature an impressive lineup of special guest stars for its debut season. Garret Dillahunt (Raising Hope), Summer Glau (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles), Alaina Huffman (Stargate Universe), Rebecca Mader (Lost), Brent Spiner (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Lindsay Wagner (The Bionic Woman) and Peter Wingfield (Caprica) will join previously announced recurring guest star Valerie Cruz.

Alphas, airing Monday nights at 10PM ET/PT on Syfy, follows a clandestine group of ordinary people whose unique neurological condition equips them with extraordinary physical abilities. Operating within the U.S. Department of Defense, the Alphas team is led by preeminent neurologist and psychiatrist Dr. Lee Rosen (Emmy Award-winner and Academy Award-nominee David Strathairn (Temple Grandin, Good Night, and Good Luck). The ensemble cast also stars Malik Yoba (New York Undercover, Why Did I Get Married?), Warren Christie (October Road), Azita Ghanizada (Castle), Ryan Cartwright (Mad Men, Bones) and Laura Mennell (Watchmen).

Episode #105 “Never Let Me Go”
Premieres Monday, August 15th at 10PM ET/PT
Guest star: Lindsay Wagner reprises her role as Dr. Vanessa Calder from Warehouse 13.

Episode #106 “Bill and Gary’s Excellent Adventure”
Premieres Monday, August 8th at 10PM ET/PT
Guest Stars: Alaina Huffman and Peter Wingfield

Episode #107 “Catch and Release”
Premieres Monday August 22nd at 10PM ET/PT
Guest star: Summer Glau

Episode #108 “A Short Time in Paradise”
Premieres Monday, August 29th at 10PM ET/PT
Guest star: Garret Dillahunt

Episode #109 “Blind Spot”
Premieres Monday, September 12th at 10:00PM ET/PT
Guest star: Brent Spiner and Rebecca Mader

Garret will guest star on Alphas (Syfy’s new show with David Strathairn, filmed in Toronto, that premiered a few weeks ago) later this season. The show airs Mondays at 10 pm. Impressive robot line-up going on there, too, with Summer Glau, Brent Spiner, Lindsay Wagner and Callum Rennie all showing up this season.

No details yet. Here is what IGN says:

In today’s panel for the Syfy show Alphas, executive producer Ira Steven Behr announced the names of a few upcoming guest stars that genre fans should know, including Summer Glau (Firefly, The Sarah Connor Chronicles), Brent Spiner (Star Trek: The Next Generation), Garret Dillahunt (Deadwood, Sarah Connor) and Lindsay Wagner (The Bionic Woman).

Behr didn’t go into details about the characters they’d be playing, but he did say that he’d just seen Glau’s episode and that she’s “terrific” in it.

And it looks like Garret’s episode of Memphis Beat airs this week. From TNT’s site:

Memphis Beat – Season 2, Episode 7
Body of Evidence
Premieres Tuesday, July 26 at 9/8c
In the middle of the funeral for a man known for helping at-risk kids, his body goes missing, and it’s up to Dwight and Whitehead to find it. They soon suspect the man may not have been the model citizen everyone believed him to be.

No previews yet.

You had so many great guest stars last season. Anyone we can look forward to?
We’re early in the process. We start shooting Aug. 8, and we have some really cool guest roles, but we haven’t actively started courting anyone yet. There are a few giant swings that we’re going for. I’m not even going to say their names because it’s not going to happen in a million years. But, you know, I think that what we try to do is create good guest star roles and see who can do them. We’ve had a lot of luck, like with J.K. Simmons as Burt’s brother. He may or may not come back — just because of availability because he’s doing The Closer. That’s a problem, too. You get somebody great, but they have other jobs. Amy Sedaris is going to come back for an episode, so we’re looking forward to that. We’re also going to meet Burt’s parents this season, so that’ll be a fun thing to cast. Oh, and we have Greyson Chance, the kid whose YouTube video has, like, 40 million hits. He’s going to do three episodes. (…)

Any teases as to the storylines we’re going to see this year?
The whole family is going to go to Vegas for Amy Sedaris’ wedding. And we’re also going to learn a lot about our side characters: Frank who works at the grocery store, and we’re going to investigate Barney. His ex-wife is going to come to town. We’re going to have fun with that. The first episode we shoot is a lot of flashbacks, and one of the fun things about flashbacks is that Cloris can be lucid. So it gives her different things to play. So we’re definitely going to do more this season.

No word on the Blu-ray yet, but you can sign up to be notified when it becomes available here.

The region 2 DVD has been available on Amazon.co.uk for at least a week now. The release date for the UK is September 5. You can pre-order the show below:

And finally some new clips. Episode 18, “Cheaters,” airs tonight at 9.

In the meantime:

The Futon Critic has a good summary of the main points from the panel.  So does TV Guide.

Fancast has a few spoilers from the upcoming episodes.

There is a pretty good article at Examiner, too.

THR has a nice little teaser:

Actor Garret Dillahunt (Burt) teased a scene in the Garcia-helmed season finale — which was screened for the audience — that was memorable for all the right reasons.
“I think it’s very complex, lots of Memento weaving time-travelling thing going on, and I also have a spitting contest with an alpaca, which has never happened before,” Dillahunt revealed to THR. Who wins? “Don’t look an alpaca in the eye, that’s all I can say,” he warned.
Dillahunt also hypothesized where the characters might be at the start of Season 2. “We didn’t know if they were going to go back in time further or if we’re going to skip ahead in the life of the babies, so I’m anxious to see what [the writers] have in store,” he said.

TV.com has interviews with the main cast. Here is the one with Garret:

You’re well known for your dramatic work—Winter’s Bone, No Country for Old Men. What are the challenges of doing comedy after all this heavy, heavy drama?
You know, it oddly doesn’t feel challenging. It feels like fun. I’m not saying it’s easy, but I just like the change of it, to do something different from the last thing I did. I guess I always sort of thought that’s what we’re supposed to do, just travel between the styles as gracefully as possible. This is a good one and I’m really proud of it. I’m proud of my cast, and I hope people keep telling their friends to watch, because I think it’s one of those kinds of shows. I think it’s smart and it has a slow, steady growing appeal, and that pleases me.
How has Burt grown as a father and as a grandfather?
I think he’s learning that he can’t just be a pal. I think he’s going to grow up slowly—obviously he already is growing up slowly, but he’s going to find his joy in that and realize it’s not a death. It’s just another phase.
Tell me a little bit about the flashbacks you get to do.
[laughs] With the wigs and everything? They’re fun. I especially like working with the three-year-old Jimmy, played by Trace Garcia, the creator’s son. He’s so funny that I just have a ball working with him. I love it. They’re so ridiculous that the pressure is taken off of you.
Are you looking to do more comedy in the future, if there are film offers?
Absolutely. I’m about to go do this sci-fi thing that’s more in my old wheelhouse, and I’m looking forward to that. But this is a good one. I feel like I’m making a film, a short comedy film every week.

And here is a video interview: