But let’s start with Beastwizard. io9.com has a hilarious little interview with TSCC’s Zack Stentz and Ashley Miller this week that you can (and should) check out here: The secret history of Beastwizard.

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.