There’s something different about TXF this year. By all rights, a series in its sixth season should be flagging, as the writers run short of ideas, the actors lose their energy and settings and scenarios begin to look frustratingly familiar. Furthermore, following in the wake of last year’s blockbuster movie, one would expect a sense of anti-climax, a feeling that it’s all so much smaller and less significant on the tv screen. This hasn’t happened. Against the odds, fans and critics have been quick to praise the latest series as one of the best yet, which ... [Continua a leggere]

X-Files actors live in mortal fear of it: the big kiss-off from series creator Chris Carter. The bell doesn’t toll often for regular characters (among the unlucky few: Deep Throat, X and Bill Mulder), but the possibility hovers, like an alien spaceship, over the cast. For one actor, the phone rang days before shooting began on a momentous two-parter (airing Feb. 7 and 14), a sweeps event that Fox is trumpeting as “The X Files conspiracy…exposed!” Divulging the identity of the doomed player would, of course, ruin the second episode’s penultimate shoc ... [Continua a leggere]

PASADENA – Ultimately, we may never know if the truth is out there. Chris Carter, the man who created “The X-Files” – which is now in its sixth season – said it’s highly unlikely that the show will go beyond a seventh season, so he’s going to start telling the truth. Of course, that’s a little like a sheep-herding young man we all know crying wolf for the 99th time. Fox is touting a special two-parter on Feb. 7 and 14 – in the heart of sweeps – that “reveals the series’ deepest secrets.” In fact, Fox say ... [Continua a leggere]

It seems like just yesterday that The X-Files was the little cult show that could. But now the successful series is heading into its seventh-and likely final-season. And although the series isn’t quite the media hype magnet it once was, in many ways the show is still on top of its game. “It’s like a marriage,” says X-Files executive producer Frank Spotnitz. “We have been around for six years and people know us. It becomes harder to surprise people, but we just keep doing the same hard work we’ve always done and try and deliver the best quality ... [Continua a leggere]

When the show begins its seventh season on Nov. 7, it may be the beginning of the end for the long-running series about two FBI agents who specialize in investigating the paranormal. Ever since David Duchovny – who plays one of the two FBI agents – announced last summer that he wanted to leave the show when his contract expired at the end of this year, the show’s eighth season has been in jeopardy. Creator Chris Carter’s contract with the show is also expiring this year. Now there has even been talk that his co-star, Gillian Anderson, wants to leave &nda ... [Continua a leggere]

Neither of the show’s two main stars have returned yet. David Duchovny, who plays Fox Mulder with a deadpan aplomb, is due to return first, and his Emmy nominated co-star Gillian Anderson, who plays the scientific and pragmatic Dana Scully, returns the following week; both spent the summer hiatus filming feature films (Return To Me and House Of Mirth, respectively). But you can already feel the energy as the crew gears up for a new season. For the moment filming is limited to a scene in a psychiatrist’s office, an otherwise ordinary looking set with perfectly slanted ... [Continua a leggere]

MARK Snow is one of the most important contributors to the hit Fox series “The X-Files,” but he’s never appeared in an episode, never directed one and never written a single plot twist for the show’s famously bizarre stories. Snow, a Brooklyn kid transplanted to the West Coast, is the music-driven series’ chief composer. While “The X-Files” promises that “The truth is out there” and explores the possibility of alien life on Earth, Snow is decidedly grounded in his own life. He’s a Juilliard graduate who has written for & ... [Continua a leggere]

Here is a man who, to X-Files and Millennium fans, requires no introduction. From day one of both series he has been composing some of the most powerful underscore music we could ever hope for. He’s used sounds in some of the moodiest, most atmospheric, and most frightening manners possible. That man is, of course, Mr. Mark Snow. You’ll find his name in the credits of every Millennium episode made. A powerful part of the Ten-Thirteen crew, Mr. Snow is the creator of the wailing violin sounds that are the very soul of Millennium’s onscreen presence. He’s given pa ... [Continua a leggere]

The Cool View Motel is not the kind of place you would expect to find outside the balmy, bustling activity of Los Angeles. A breeze rustles leaves belonging to a thick stand of trees nearby. The gravel lot shifts uncomfortably as the occasional truck rumbles over its skin. The decor is anything but trendy. The Cool View us a rustic stop somewhere in the middle of nondescript territory. Its only distinguishing feature on this mid-October evening is the remarkable sunset consuming the Western sky, an explosion of red hues that is the inadvertent result, a random passerby mentions ... [Continua a leggere]

Chris Carter, master of the X-mythos, keeper of the conspiracies, sounds quite pleased with his first cinematic X Files. “I am very pleased. I thought that The X Files translated wonderfully to the big screen,” he enthuses. “I thought the story worked. I thought the special effects were really nice, that they serviced the story well – you wouldn’t call this an FX-driven movie. I felt the scares were there. People jumped and they laughed and, hopefully, they were moved. It also sets up season six of The X Files beautifully. It did all I could ask of a ... [Continua a leggere]

After contributing one episode each for TXF seasons two and three, VG graduated to co-producer, writing five episodes for season four and six entries during season five. And he has already penned an early episode of season six. His 13 episodes made him, in the first five years of TXF, a collaborator behind the conspiracy. Soft Light, which aired May 5, 1995, told the story of a man whose shadow could kill by reducing matter into pure energy. “I wrote this one BEFORE I was on staff,” VG says, “and it was the one I had the least to do with. When I did my first dr ... [Continua a leggere]

Sotto i cieli plumbei di “X-files”, nel suo mondo popolato da ombre contorte e inquietanti, non poteva mancare Stephen King. O maglio. Lo scrittore più prolifico (35 romanzi, al ritmo di 500 parole al giorno), più pagato (riceve anticipi da 40 milioni di dollari), più tradotto sullo schermo (25 film) che memoria ricordi non poteva non sentire il richiamo di far vedere i sorci verdi a Scully e Mulder. Si dice infatti che sia stato lui a contattare Chris Carter, l’anno scorso, proponendogli un episodio con la sua firma. E pare che si sia divertito a tal pun ... [Continua a leggere]

Director Chris Carter may be busy giving a new look to his famous TV series in L.A., but he hasn’t forgotten his roots in Vancouver. The X-Files may have fled the rain but Chris Carter, the southern California-raised surfer dude turned pop-culture savant, has quietly donned his hipwaders for more wet nights in the city that gave The X-Files its dark, brooding look for five years. On Sunday, Carter’s most ambitious X-Files yet — an episode called Triangle, a loose amalgam of The Wizard of Oz, Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope and Casablanca revisited on acid — ... [Continua a leggere]

Where does a television show go when it’s coming off a summer that saw the release of a successful feature film, the relocation of production, and a whopping 16 Emmy Award nominations? Well, when you’re the X-Files, you keep on doing what you do best: Throwing curve balls to your audience while striving to reinvent yourself and raise the creative bar even higher. The X-Files is due for a shake up. After all, the series is entering its sixth season, a time in any show’s life span during which lethargy can set in and stories can become stale. But the series&rsquo ... [Continua a leggere]

You might say Keanu Reeves inspired the first stand alone episode of Season Six, the action packed “Drive.” “I sort of wanted to do our version of the Speed,” says writer Vince Gilligan. “[I wanted] something to do with people who couldn’t stop moving. I guess it speaks to how fast paces society is nowadays.” Fast paced is a good way to describe the episode, in which Mulder is taken hostage by a man who forces him at gun point to drive across the country. If the agent stops the car, the man dies. “I had this crazy teaser ... [Continua a leggere]