Hope everyone has a great time tonight and a fantastic year ahead.

See you in 2010!

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The year started with Terminator promo and press tours. The show returned with the last nine episodes in the Friday slot in mid-February.

Later that month, Garret was spotted filming Winter’s Bone in Missouri. The film will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in late January. If anyone plans on going, the Sundance screening schedule is here.

The Last House on the Left opened on March 13. The reviews ranged from excellent to free branding campaign and the film made it to several lists of best horrors of the year. In October, it won a Reaper Award for Best Theatrical Release in 2009.

Toward the end of the month, Garret played his fifth character on T:SCC, the Skynet virus from the future. Previous four were George Laszlo, Cromartie, the Beastwizard and John Henry.

In late March, the first pictures from Burning Bright appeared online. Burning Bright was later renamed to Ravenous and it still awaits theatrical release. In November, it was screened at the AFM. The first reviews were pretty positive.

In early April, Water Pills had its U.S. premiere at the Florida Film Festival. Jasmine Jessica Anthony walked away with a grand jury award for best performance.

Also in April, two series finales aired two days apart. Garret snuffed the TV crew and gave Damian Lewis his final headache in Life on April 8. Life season two was released on DVD on August 25.

The Terminator finale aired on April 10. Despite cancellation, the show made it to #8 on the list of  the Top 10 Most Pirated Shows in 2009. Last year, it was the only new show among the top 10, at #4.

In the meantime, Garret joined Delroy Lindo and Roslyn Ruff in Things of Dry Hours, a play by Naomi Wallace about communists in 1930s Alabama. Rehearsals started on April 21.

The first trailer for The Road hit the web on May 15.

On May 18, Fox announced that they would not be picking up Terminator for a third season. Even though there has been talk of a possible TV/DVD movie, Terminator rights are currently up for grabs and in limbo until February 2010.

On May 20, Garret appeared in the season finale of Criminal Minds.

Two days later, Things of Dry Hours went into previews at the New York Theatre Workshop. The show premiered on June 8 and ran through June 28. Critics liked the cast, but were divided on the writing.

At some point over the spring/summer, Garret was cast in Madeleine Stowe’s Unbound Captives, an independent western epic with Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz and Robert Pattinson. If they get financing in time, the film will go into production in March (at the earliest).

In late July and early August, Garret filmed two TV guest appearances,  on CSI and Lie to Me, and a short film, One Night Only.

The Last House on the Left was released on DVD in mid-August.

Later that month, Garret was spotted filming the season three finale of Burn Notice. The episode will air in March 2010.

The trailer for One Night Only was released on September 2.

On September 3, The Road had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival. Ten days later, it was screened in Toronto.

Terminator: The Complete Season Two was released on DVD on September 22.

On September 24, the CSI season 10 premiere aired. “Family Affair” is one of the five hours of television nominated for an ASC (American Society of Cinematographers) Award this year.

Speaking of CSI, in a fine display of Terminator fanboyism, the last episode before the break, Better off Dead, had a bunch of people stealing Cromartie’s music and killing each other. Also, a killer described as a Terminator.

On October 13, Oliver Sherman, an independent drama with Molly Parker and Donal Logue, went into production in North Bay. The film will most likely premiere at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2010, but Canadians might get an early screening in the spring.

On October 21st, Garret appeared on Lie to Me.

And two days later, on Law & Order: SVU.

The Road finally saw its U.S. premiere at AFI fest in early November. On Thanksgiving, it got a limited release. Even though the film has been vastly overlooked in the early awards season, the reviews were mostly positive and it scored a few acting nods (Viggo Mortensen, Robert Duvall, Kodi Smit-McPhee) from several critics’ societies (Broadcast Film Critics, Utah Film Critics, St. Louis Film Critics).

On November 13, Garret appeared on White Collar.

And the next day, One Night Only had its premiere in New York.

In November, Garret was cast in two new projects. The comedy pilot Keep Hope Alive, with Martha Plimpton, Cloris Leachman and Lucas Neff, was filmed earlier this month. If it gets picked up, it will be aired in the 2010/11 season.

The other project, John Sayles’ film Baryo, starts shooting in February in the Philippines. The crew is already there, building the set and preparing for the shoot. You can follow the updates on the new production blog, at johnsaylesbaryo.blogspot.com.

And that about wraps it up. If 2010 is even half as eventful, it will be another excellent year.

Snippets:

Tell us a little bit about the plot of Burning Bright…

Carlos Brooks: Burning Bright is about an incredibly HOT CHICK trapped in a house with a TIGER during a HURRICANE. We had another version that explored the latent Freudian implications of her existential dilemma in terms of various indigenous animal myths, but we were running long, and something had to go… Oh yeah, and she has to face off with her demented stepfather, played by the brilliant Garret Dillahunt [The Road, The Last House On The Left - Ed], and all the while protecting her tripped-out little brother, played by newcomer prodigy Charlie Tahan. (…)

What was your reaction when you first read the screenplay? Because ours was ‘this sounds absolutely mental’.

Carlos Brooks: My first reaction, after I got over the crazy-sounding pitch, was to the extremely well crafted screenplay – which takes you by the hand and walks you into rural Florida where you have these low-rent wild animal preserves in people’s back yards, and where houses routinely get boarded up to protect from epic hurricanes.

Throw in a homicidal circus tiger bought on the cheap and one demented stepfather, and you have a story unlike that which we’ve ever seen, all of it rooted in reality. I found myself caught up in the girl’s struggle, and in the movie she becomes much more than just “the hot chick” – she becomes a thinking hero who has to use her wits and her household surroundings to outwit a natural predator who just happens to be stalking her from kitchen to bedroom. (…)

Did you have any tiger related accidents on the set? Did it take your direction well?

Carlos Brooks: No, the tiger didn’t like my direction. You find out early on that the tiger will rewrite your script for you. You may want the tiger to peer over the kitchen island. Then when you say “Action!” you find out the tiger’s idea is to actually leap up onto the island and crash into the hanging pots. You go with the tiger’s version. There were three tigers, actually. Once or twice they got loose on the set, but the trainers were the best in the business — had to be, we were getting very aggressive behavior. Nobody got hurt. Traumatized, perhaps. No injuries. (…)

Any news on a worldwide release? Will Burning Bright be released in cinemas or on DVD/Blu-Ray?

Carlos Brooks: None yet. Theatrical is still in the offing – we’re holding out. Of course it will be available on DVD worldwide, but the movie is worth seeing in the cinema. It’s a tough market these days, but this movie was made for movie lovers who actually still go out to the cinemas. Fortunately, everybody behind it believes in it so stay tuned. [TheShiznit.co.uk]

BURNING BRIGHT

A surly stepfather (Garret Dillahunt) has had enough of his stepdaughter and autistic stepson so he does what anyone would do: Set loose a ravenous circus tiger in their home. Trapped inside during a terrible hurricane, the two step kids must find a way to survive the night before they become tiger chow.

Believe it or not, Burning Bright isn’t anywhere near as ridiculous as it sounds and actually manages to build several intense set pieces. It’s a pretty conventional entry in the survivalist/nature-run-amok subgenre but it’s well executed enough and gets major props by forgoing CGI to use a real-life tiger in the carnage scenes. [Dread Central]

The movie opens with a hilarious exchange between Howie (Meatloaf) and Johnny Gavineau (Garret Dillahunt, who you might remember from THE LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT), where Johnny is looking to purchase a retired tiger from Howie in order to start a local safari in a get-rich-quick scheme. After attempting to swindle Howie into cutting the price, Meatloaf delivers an epic monologue that transforms this cute circus tiger into a blood-craving monstrosity. Following a good thirty minutes of character development – Johnny steals Kelly’s (Briana Evigan from SORORITY ROW) money that was being used to send her autistic brother into care so she could go off to college – the plot thickens when Kelly awakes to discover that there’s a tiger loose in her house. To worsen the situation, Johnny has boarded up the entire house from the outside to protect it from the hurricane. (…)

Watching this movie by myself just wasn’t fair; I was having too much fun and had nobody to share it with. There were moments that had me laughing, sometimes I cheered, and then there were a few occasions where I jumped out of my seat. RAVENOUS is straight-up FUN. [Bloody Disgusting]

Word just in from the AFM is that Carlos Brooks’ Burning Bright is being sold under the new title of Ravenous. (Not to be confused with the 1999 film of the same name starring Guy Pearce, Robert Carlyle and David Arquette) [ShockTillYouDrop.com]