Anybody who has ever listened to a Jay-Z song, read The Great Gatsby or rightfully chuckled at this album cover knows that fame and fortune come with their own perils. Survivor’s Remorse has flirted with the concept of mo’ money, mo problems for two episodes but the opening minutes of “How to Build a Brand” offer as clear and concise a statement on the matter that the show has offered yet* Cam and company are making their way down a hospital hallway while Cam is voicing his discomfort with having to visit a terminally ill teenager, Johnny, as part of a Make-a-Wish obligation....

To say that Seth MacFarlane is a subtle director would be to redefine subtle completely. Ted’s a jerk, John is an idiot, and Lori is a shrew who is tolerated mostly because she’s hot. There’s a turn at the end of the film, but it’s abrupt. Like all of his projects, Ted is a glimpse into MacFarlane as a person, from his interest in 80s sci-fi and his love of drinking and drug humour to his attitudes on pop culture and his love of self-referential humor....

Complications starts just minutes after the previous story, with a weird dream sequence where John is embraced by three polymorphic cacti. Sarah’s asleep in the back of the 4×4 on the way back from Mexico, and wakes with the compulsion to vomit. After she’s done being ill, she sees a tortoise by the side of the road, on its back, and turns it over. The strength of this symbolism for sci-fi buffs is overwhelming, as it’s a direct reference to the ‘blush response’ sequence from Blade Runner....

I really wasn’t sure what we were going to be getting with this episode. I mean yes, I knew that an atomic bomb was going to go off, and needed to be stopped. Simple enough. But that could play out in a lot of different ways. I guess I was picturing something like the series’ seventh episode “Deuce,” a brilliant, boiled-down episode about tracking a bomb down in an airport....

The third adaptation of a Discworld novel for Sky, Going Postal opens with an excellently executed title sequence, easily matching many big screen films frame for frame. But more than just hinting at a healthy budget, this sequence introduces us to a main subject of the story, taking us through the inner workings of the clacks. The clacks system is a mode of communication in Discworld, a sort of telegraph business that converts customers’ messages to ticker tape which are then relayed from one clacks tower to the next through the city and beyond by semaphore signals using opening and closing shutters at each tower’s top....

2.9 Remember Me Clarke has always been a funny little character in the sense that she started out as a leader. Most shows would have someone like her start off reluctant and somewhat incapable of leading a huge group of unstable teenagers, but from the very first scene we’ve been asked to believe that she would be the most suitable for the job. That’s something that bugged me in the pilot – that Abby told the audience Clarke was a strong, moral leader before we had a chance to see it for ourselves....

7.12 The Hesitation Ramification As the above summary implies, this episode has the distinct feeling of a show stuck on repeat. We’ve said before that it’s in the nature of a sitcom to change slowly if at all, to maintain a status quo for as long as possible because without the ‘situation’ that defines it, the comedy wouldn’t be the same show any more. But there’s a difference between maintaining the status quo and simply repeating yourself, and unfortunately this episode falls into the category of the latter....

While Black Panther does an excellent job of explaining what the virtually indestructible and rare metal is and where it came from, vibranium has already appeared in several Marvel movies, Notably Avengers: Age of Ultron, where the evil android solicited some vibranium stolen from Wakanda…which ended up becoming the body of the synthetic Avenger, the Vision. In the comics, though, there’s one small difference. Captain America’s shield is made from an alloy of vibranium and adamantium....

“Today he came out in support of a pedophile for Senate,” Berger says in the midst of Alabama’s special election race for senate. “I mean that’s insane. That’s not a partisan issue. Before this everybody would agree that you would not elect a pedophile to the Senate.” “I don’t find anything of him funny anymore,” Berger says. “You know, if I find something funny I’m laughing because it’s so painful to see....

Young and handsome Father Tomas (Alfonso Herrera) is the new superstar priest on the block. It’s comically apparent how annoyed and overwhelmed he is with all his needy parishioners. It doesn’t help that the Father is suffering from these incredibly lucid nightmares involving a priest named Father Marcus Keane (Ben Daniels) performing an exorcism. Somehow seeking help from Father Tomas veers into a “Carmela Soprano and Father Phil” situation. All the characters are very reminiscent of the 1973 Exorcist with a little upgrade....

The Exorcist Season 2 Episode 9 “Lather, rinse, repeat,” Homer Simpson once fantasized answering about how he kept his hair so luscious and full if he’d grown up in a hippie community instead of on The Simpsons. “Always, repeat,” he emphasized ethereally. The title of The Exorcist season 3, episode 9 is “Ritual and Repetition,” and the way former father Marcus (Ben Daniels) tells it, they go heavy on repeat. While you can’t really say exorcists have a boring job, they are on the same kind of run mill they would have had if they stayed at their day jobs....

If you’ve seen The Expendables documentary, Inferno, on its Blu-ray, you’ll appreciate that Stallone almost killed himself trying to get it made, while both starring and directing. My hopes were high, then, that by handing over directorial responsibilities to Simon West (Con Air), The Expendables 2 would surpass the original. What I could never have predicted was how superior Expendables 2 would be in every single way. I’m used to action movies starting with bombastic openings – after all, anyone who’s grown up with James Bond simply expects such things – but the opening scene for The Expendables 2 is excellent....

2.3 Trust Me The other thing the FBI does well is harass Ryan Hardy. Sure he’s conducting his own vigilante investigation of Joe’s remaining Carrollers and is generally being uncooperative in his dealings with the FBI – for the most part – that doesn’t mean… oh wait, evidence tampering is a crime? Breaking and entering is a crime? Jaywalking everywhere without looking both ways is a crime? Assault is a crime?...

Her role stands out too because the film around her falls a great deal flatter than you might expect, with all but one-and-a-bit characters reduced to two dimensional roles. The film is the story not quite of the genesis of McDonald’s, but that of the man who took it around the world. That man is Keaton’s Kroc, who we meet trying to sell milkshake machines, not with a great deal of success....

1.6 A Woman’s Place Serena Joy never used to be quiet. Before Gilead, she was a writer and activist. She wrote books and addressed crowds. Standing on the shoulders of feminists who’d fought to allow her an education and a voice, she used both to silence women and collude in a system that abuses and dehumanises them. Gender treachery’s a crime alright, Gilead’s definition is just way off the mark....

It’s always exciting to see when genuine risks are taken in filmmaking. It can be easy to reach a tunnel vision of sorts with the typical entertainment that comes out, so when something tries to be different it becomes reason to celebrate, and it doesn’t get more different than The Happytime Murders. Coming from director Brian Henson and screenwriter Todd Berger, the film presents a unique world where puppets and humans co-exist and a sudden slew of puppet murders brings two cops together to clean up the mess....

There are some superheroes who really don’t need much by way of introduction. We all know that Superman’s from Krypton; that Spider-Man was bitten by some kind of scienced-up spider; and that Bruce Banner, when he gets angry, becomes the Hulk. So it’s hugely refreshing when, instead of rehashing the same old tired origin story all over again, The Incredible Hulk dispenses with the pleasantries and gets all that gamma ray stuff out of the way during the credits sequence....

Our stay in Montevideo had been a exercise in futility, but with the political situation in Argentina settling down, Tonio and I had decided to return to Buenos Aires. Tonio wasn’t having it quite so easy. He spent his days dodging from office to office trying to raise some interest in our proposition. Everybody seemed interested in our attempt to open up the Argentine film market but with the current unstable military situation and the diarrheic inflation in that country they wanted to wait a month or two before making a commitment....

I arrived a day earlier and was surprised at the amount of interest Ken’s visit had sparked. In England, he seems to be the kicking boy of every critic and pundit with a column to fill. In America, they really appreciate his innovative bad-boy image. Ken isn’t known for his appearances at public spectacles and that was sparking the interest. Next day, he swept into the hotel, full of apologies....

When The IT Crowd first hit screens back in 2006, the traditional multi-camera studio-based sitcom was seen as an anachronism. The received wisdom at the time was that people didn’t want light hearted gagfests with pantomime performances and laugh tracks, that instead they preferred the sophisticated single cam film look Gervais-style comedy of awkwardness with ‘ironic’ racism, rape as a one word punchline and some funny dancing. The IT Crowd has now carved its own niche and has an international fanbase thanks to speaking the almost universal language of Nerd....