Michael McManus (Canadian actor)

Michael McManus (born April 15, 1962) is a Canadian actor best known for his portrayal of the ex-assassin Kai in the sci-fi series Lexx.

Early life

Michael McManus was born in London, Ontario, Canada. He studied acting at the University of Alberta in Canada before embarking on an acting career.

Career

He has appeared in various television and film roles including Forever Knight, A Taste of Shakespeare, and the 1994 film Paint Cans, opposite Neve Campbell.

Filmography

Award nominations

References

External links

List of Lexx episodes

There are four seasons of Lexx totalling 61 episodes, initially televised from 1997 (in Canada) to 2002.

Series overview

Summary

The first season, debuting in Canada at April 18, 1997 on the channel Citytv, consisted of four two-hour TV movies (sometimes screened as eight one-hour episodes), alternatively titled Tales from a Parallel Universe. However, some episode guides do not list the two-hour movies as a season but list the subsequent seasons as the first through third.

The second season, debuting in Canada at December 11, 1998 on the channel Space The Imagination Station, consisted of twenty forty-five-minute episodes with an overall story arc concerning an evil scientist called Mantrid who proceeds to convert all matter in the "light" universe (the Light Zone) into one-armed "Mantrid drones". Mantrid largely succeeds before he is defeated by the Lexx, but not without causing a Big Crunch that results in sending the Lexx through a singularity to an alternate "dark" universe (the Dark Zone).

Lexx

Lexx is a science fiction television series that follows the adventures of a group of mismatched individuals aboard the organic space craft Lexx. They travel through two universes and encounter planets including a parody of the Earth.

The series is a Canadian and German co-production, with some additional funding from Britain's Channel 5. The Sci Fi Channel purchased the series from Salter Street Films and began airing versions of Season 2 episodes for United States' audience in January 2000.Lexx was co-produced by Salter Street Films, later absorbed by Alliance Atlantis. In Canada, Lexx aired on the Alliance Atlantis-owned Showcase network. The series was primarily filmed in Halifax (Nova Scotia, Canada) and Berlin (Germany), with additional filming on location in Iceland, Bangkok (Thailand), and Namibia.

Characters

The crew

The crew of the Lexx includes:

Bligg

Marco Bliggensdorfer better known as Bligg (born September 30, 1976 in Schwamendingen) is a rapper from Zurich, Switzerland. His albums 0816 and Bart Aber Herzlich reached #1 on the Swiss charts; four of his other albums have peaked in the top 20. In 1999 and 2000, he was part of a duo Bligg'n'Lexx with rapper and producer Lexx (real name Alex Storrer) releasing one album together.

Career

Beginnings

At age 16, Bligg began freestyling. In 1995, he released a limited EP, Zürislang Freistiil, which was the first opportunity to really hear him rap.

Bligg'n'Lexx

Three years later, Bliggensdorfer met Alex Storrer, a producer and rapper known as Lexx. Forming a hip hop duo, the two worked together on Chocolate, Cheese and Sounds. In 1999, they released their first single, called "Schnitzeljagd" under the name Bligg'n'Lexx. The single was remixed by DJ Cutmando, whom the pair met while on tour. Ever since then, DJ Cutmando has worked with Bligg.

In 2000, Bligg'n'Lexx collaborated with Pete Penicka to release the single "Du & Ich" from the Bligg'n'Lexx debut and only studio album Nahdisnah. The album received positive reviews and increased the group's popularity.

LEXX (text editor)

LEXX is a text editor which was possibly the first to use live parsing and colour syntax highlighting. It was written by Mike Cowlishaw of IBM around 1985. The name was chosen because he wrote it as a tool for lexicographers, during an assignment for Oxford University Press's second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. The program ran (and still, 2012, runs) on mainframes under (VM/CMS). LEXX's design was chosen as a middle ground between specialized syntax directed editors such as Grif and JANUS and general purpose editors such as the contemporary Emacs and XEDIT.

LEXX uses dynamically-loaded parsers which assign classes of elements (tokens formed from character strings) to fonts and colors. It allows indention to be used to format and show the structure of the file being edited, and other formatting options allow (for example) the hiding of selected classes of text, such as tags. A collection of screenshots is available.

Reimplemented derivatives of the LEXX concept known as LPEX (for 'Live Parsing Editor) were originally produced for OS/2 and AIX, but now also run on Windows, Linux, and the Java JVM.

Brian Downey (actor)

Brian Downey (born 31 October 1944 in the Dominion of Newfoundland) is a Canadian actor best known for his portrayal of Stanley Tweedle in the science-fiction television series Lexx.

Downey is a character actor who has appeared in various films and guest starring roles on TV, including a recurring role on Millennium. His first film role was in a 1986 Andy Jones film called The Adventure of Faustus Bidgood, which features the entire cast of CODCO. Downey has enjoyed a long professional relationship with Lexx creator Paul Donovan, dating back at least to 1988, when Donovan cast Downey in the time travel adventure film Norman's Awesome Experience. Downey also appeared as Cardinal Juan de Mella in Donovan's medieval TV thriller The Conclave. Downey has worked with Jessica Lange, JoBeth Williams, Sam Rockwell, and directors such as Joe Sargent. He won the 2010 only acting award at the 2010 Atlantic Film Festival for his role in Whirligig, directed by Chaz Thorne, with whom he has worked on two previous features. He played the evil gang leader "The Drake", who runs the town in the feature film Hobo with a Shotgun, starring Rutger Hauer and directed by Jason Eisener.

Eva Habermann

Eva Felicitas Habermann (born January 16, 1976) is a German actress who has appeared in numerous films and TV series. She is best known for playing the role of Zev Bellringer in the television series Lexx. She was succeeded in her role by Xenia Seeberg.

While studying for (the German equivalent of) her Senior High School diploma ("Advanced Placement" courses only), Eva received singing and dancing lessons. Soon after graduation, she obtained her first television role in Lexx. She also moderated the children Pumuckl TV broadcast on German TV (1995/1996).

While Lexx was on hiatus between seasons 1 and 2, Eva appeared in the ZDF series Rosa Roth and the ARD series The Beach Club as well as appearing in the Rosamunde Pilcher film Two Sisters. Due to scheduling conflicts, she was ultimately unable to commit to the second season of the show, as, with a two-year gap between the first and second seasons, she accepted other projects and thus, when season two was ultimately greenlit, she was unavailable. She was, however, able to free up enough time in her schedule to appear in the first two episodes, allowing the writers to deal with her character properly.