1.4 Inside Mans One loose end got tied off this week, or at least it looked that way: Mr Lau finally got his money, minus £50 for that art dealer’s cab home, minus whatever Sam and Phil spent in that posh hotel on room service and hot stone massages. Since he now doesn’t have a hostage, and Mr Stevens is dead, and he’s got his cash, that might be the last we see of him – though you never know, with this show....
Timeless Season 1, Episode 14 The historical setting this week, as usual, was gorgeous. The costume design alone is a huge ingredient in making the story immersive, and Abigail Spencer always does her part to highlight the fashion of the era. “The Lost Generation,” a label popularized by Hemingway, was another rich time period to explore with plenty of colorful figures from history to assist in the mission. Using Josephine Baker’s time with the French Resistance to explain her investigative skills, for example, was a particularly effective narrative device....
When JRPG fans think of a Shin Megami Tensei: Persona crossover, Fire Emblem usually isn’t the first game to come to mind. The two series certainly feel worlds apart—Fire Emblem is based in a magical fantasy setting, whereas Persona largely follows high school students dealing with a demonic infestation from an alternate dimension. While both series remain wildly popular in the West, it’s rare to find the two franchises mentioned in the same sentence....
Not 100 per cent true, but Rhys is the Welsh heart of the show (did you know it was set in Cardiff?), so it was perhaps inevitable that he was brought into Torchwood proper. Gwen, or ‘Man’ for short, has now spent almost a series and a half keeping Rhys in the dark – possibly literally, as Rhys so far has been so dumb that flicking the light switch would probably just send him to sleep....
1.2 Conditions The strengths of this second episode of the BBC’s new series about the fall of Troy are largely the strengths we saw in episode 1, and the same can be said for some of its flaws. As one man sacrifices his own daughter while another goes to war to protect his son, the core ideas remain compelling, but the execution needs a bit of work. There is some really interesting storytelling going on in this series....
True Detective Season 1 Episode 3 “The Locked Room” episode of HBO’s True Detective opens on an examination of some artwork. A painting on the wall of an abandoned and burnt out church. Somebody thought enough of the Lange murder to commit it to an enduring canvass. That takes commitment. Someone suffered for that art. Rust Cohle and Martin Hart, the detectives on the case played by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, wants to make the artist suffer for putting the model through the pains of his creation....
Anna has traveled to New York to retrieve her Patriot husband, Selah (Robert Beitzel), from the Jersey prison ship at the cost of all his property. But when she reaches that ship, the royal authorities tell her that Selah has died. We viewers know that he hasn’t. Instead, we see Selah being included in a prisoner-of-war exchange under the name of Samuel Tallmadge, younger brother of Maj. Benjamin Tallmadge (Seth Numrich)....
Part 17 “The past dictates the future.” With the season finale distinctly divided into two separate episodes, Part 17 of Twin Peaks: The Return is unquestionably the more climactic of the two. Considering the unhurried pace at which David Lynch and Mark Frost eased into Cooper’s return in Part 16 (and, well, the entire series), the pacing of this episode is practically breakneck. Beginning with a joke about how Gordon Cole’s penis is still functional (yeesh), we then get a big chunk of exposition about the infamous Judy, who is an evil entity (so, I’ve narrowed that down to either BOB or that ghostly thing that came out of the box in the first episode and killed those kids or it’s that frog-roach thing or it’s Sarah Palmer, who maybe ate the frog-roach thing as child?...
Van Helsing Episode 5 To a large extent tonight’s episode of Van Helsing plays out as an elaborate game of cat and mouse. The series’ fourth episode “Fear Her” fleshes out a number of significant plot details that bring to the forefront the power brokers of the apocalypse, and while it seems the writers may have introduced too much too soon, there’s no question they’ve fashioned an intricate story able to split in any of a number of directions....
Veep begins as Selina Meyer (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is about to be the first female president of the United States. At first you don’t believe it. It seems like a dream sequence. HBO is renowned for their dream sequences. They spent two episodes on a dream sequence to begin their final season of The Sopranos. James Gandolfini with his non-Tony Soprano Montclair, NJ, accent and ever-present briefcase stops short of walking in the door of the big house with the uncertain future....
The new Veep season opens as we learn that the president isn’t going to be running for re-election in two years. The Team is at a wedding vying for who will be the vice president’s campaign manager and Selina Meyers is in Iowa, weighing unrefrigerated butter sculptures. Next. It shows her growing unease and the ease with which Selina Meyers can write off her constituents. Governing people would be so much easier without the people....
This Vinyl review contains spoilers. Richie is actually in a really good place to help with the feds while keeping himself out of Corrado Galasso’s (Armen Garo) sights. His office is already bugged. He can beneficently offer Maury Gold (Paul Ben-Victor) his desk and let the oldies guy give the feds, or the local cops, enough rope to hang the whole crew. But Richie is a standup guy. It doesn’t matter how many times he gets knocked down, he seems to get back on his feet before the count runs out....
Whether by deliberate policy or not, it’s certainly true that some of the business elements of the music industry were changing. Many of the sixties generation of artists, among them such giants as the Beatles, the Stones and the Who, had been working to contracts that grossly favoured the record label over the musicians. As their contracts expired, and they grew more business savvy, these artists started to recognise their power and demanded far better settlements....
Executive producer Joaquim Dos Santos says that plots like the Galra civil war are still happening in the background but there’s so many moving parts in the story they can’t pull focus away from the still expanding group of main characters. “There are still planets out there dominated by Galra. I like to think the Coaltion is out there pulling off their missions. They’re slowly but surely freeing those planets....
With shooting having started in May according to the show’s official Facebook page, series three of Misfits is now a third of the way through production – if star Iwan Rheon’s July tweet is accurate, that is. Robert Sheehan is to leave the show This is the biggie, and much of it we already covered when the news first broke. In short, it seems pretty clear that this was a last minute decision, as Nathan’s departure is to take place in an online special set in Vegas rather than in a full episode....
The book covers her 1,100 mile hike across America’s Pacific Crest Trail, from the Mojave Desert to the border of Washington State, through extreme weather on both ends of the spectrum, without any prior backpacking experience. Having met her at this low point, the film then jumps back to the start of her trek and connects key milestones in her journey to earlier points in her life, exploring her relationship with her mother, (Laura Dern) the breakdown of her marriage to estranged husband Paul (Thomas Sadoski) and her history of substance abuse....
At first glance, Wizards vs Aliens sounds like the sort of programme that would be designed by a committee of marketing executives. “What if Harry Potter and Star Wars had a fight?”, one would ask another, chuckling away thinking about all the money they’re going to make to enrich their ultimately hollow lives. Like its predecessor, Wizards vs Aliens is very firmly rooted in suburbia, as is evident from the very first scene, in which a wizarding father, his robes hiding a very sensible shirt and cardigan combo and a faint Brummie twang in his voice, takes his son out for his first magical experience....
Certainly 2010’s Clash had the elements in place to have me onside – a solid director who’d injected some heart into The Incredible Hulk and had a solid action background, as well as a sterling cast headed up by the mighty Liam Neeson, a man who’s seldom made a film I haven’t loved. Sadly the result was a flat, below average yarn with substandard effects and appalling 3D, that left many of us with no real interest in any further films....
Wynonna Earp Season 3, Episode 8 One of the weakest aspects of a very strong season of Wynonna Earp has been the shoddy integration of Kate’s character. The Contessa is an intriguing character—she’s smart, sassy, strong, and has impeccable fashion sense—however, the show has prioritized the mystery of her character over the exploration of it. It took a similar tactic last season with Rosita, who served a similar, narrow function in the show that never fully paid off: a character of color who is romantically involved with Doc, is somehow tied to Purgatory’s past, and who has the begrudging respect of Wynonna, yet is still very much treated as an outsider....
You Season 1, Episode 2 When I first saw Joe clock artisinal soda entrepreneur Benji over the head in the You series premiere, I assumed he had killed him only to find out slightly later that he had only given him a dangerous, bloody head injury and locked him in his book/murder vault. After seeing the second episode of the season, which is ostensibly an hour of Joe trying to work out whether or not he should kill Benji for reals this time, I’m so glad Benji didn’t bite it in the series premiere....
