How do you make an interesting film about coding a videogame? It sounds like a difficult subject to dramatise on the face of it. But ultimately, all great stories are more about the relationships between characters than what they do for a living. A movie that contained nothing but boxing matches for 100 continuous minutes would leave audiences reeling. The Rocky movies were approximately 90 percent drama to 10 percent boxing, and audiences, for the most part, flocked to see them....

For the uninitiated, the setup for the novel is that fertility is incredibly low, environmental disasters abound, and North America is at war. Taking place in the not too distant future in the Greater Boston Area, all women are property of the state and classified by their purpose, for example as servants, surrogates, wives, or un-women. Offred, our sometimes-narrator, is a Handmaid, a class of woman designated to act as surrogates for the high-powered Commanders who run the new fundamentalist Christian totalitarian regime that rules the land now known as Gilead....

The movie stars Owen Vaccaro as a young orphan named Lewis Barnavelt who is sent to live with his eccentric Uncle Jonathan (Jack Black) in a large and creepy old house in the town of New Zebedee, Michigan. Once there, Lewis discovers that Jonathan and his good friend Florence Zimmerman (Cate Blanchett) are a warlock and witch respectively, and they’re trying to find the clock that’s hidden within the walls of the house....

(All totally innocent on my part, you understand. Merely the observations of those with vivid imaginations and a warped way of thinking!) I’m not sure I could manage to add anything to a site which requires one to be up with current affairs (no pun intended?). I’m very much out of touch with the world, down here on the coast. No TV or radio to disturb my tranquillity. I allow the world to pass me by with all its machinations of political upheavals, economic collapses and the latest cricket scores....

Over the last few weeks, Oliver Stone’s W. has been hailed as somewhat of a disappointment, a strangely uncontroversial picture from a nominally controversial filmmaker. These remarks are not entirely unfair. W. is a frustrating, underwhelming experience, a film that refuses to take any risks or ask any big questions of one of the most fascinating political characters of the 21st Century. And these are hardly problems one would expect from the director of such successful political pictures as Born On The Forth Of July, Nixon and JFK....

We’re always being bombarded with shows and films which ‘break all box office records’. What does that mean? Surely it is only bums on seats that count? Does the fact that Star Wars rakes in millions of dollars mean it is better than Gone With The Wind when today’s devalued currency is taken into account? Although MacNee was a good actor he didn’t have that extra something needed to get viewers summoning up the sinews to make the arduous journey across the carpet to switch channels....

So on Friday I girded up my loins and headed north. Virgin Trains was my method of transportation. I wasn’t too happy about that. I have had some nasty experiences aboard its trains. Twelve hours to reach Glasgow with a bus journey in the middle and an over crowded coach with no seats available. Another eight hour trip, that should have taken about two, to Wolverhampton. But I am happy to report that the company seems to have sorted out its timetable woes, at least....

Moss is mad and he’s not going to take it anymore. He’s had enough of living by society’s rules and now it’s time for him to break out! And Roy’s going with him, to avoid a leaving party. There are two bombshells in store, one metaphorical as Jen has to cover up for our zero heroes, and another quite literal one. This episode opens up with a predictable but effective visual setpiece where Moss is gangsta’d up and telling it straight to the kids, recounting how he ended up on his downward spiral into petty crime....

Oh no! Douglas’s long presumed dead wife Victoria has come back from wherever she was! All is joyous… for about two weeks, until Douglas decides he wants a divorce. Victoria wants to take him and Reynholm industries to the cleaners, and it’s up to Jen to provide legal counsel! Old faces pop up at the trial which could decide the IT Crowd’s very future! But the whole thing goes absolutely nowhere....

Those who pursue the ‘Life of the Mind’, whether they wanted to or were forced to, will probably end up passing through university or college at some point. These are the places described by that man behind the curtain in The Wizard Of Oz where great people go to ‘think thoughts’ and get a diploma at the end of it all. The Not-So-Great-And-Powerful Oz forgot to mention the binge drinking, baked beans and the aggressive student politicians who want you to join the Stop the Illegal Invasion of the Planet Pandora coalition, but never mind....

“We didn’t want to change anything from the books that we didn’t have to,” explains Gamble, “so we sat down with Lev Grossman, the author, and we kind of hashed it out what that change would mean… I think throughout the season, we’ll be hitting a lot of the sort of greatest hits of book one.” A major difference centers around the accelerated tale of Julia, whose story outside of the university from the second novel is now told alongside the initial Brakebills storyline....

The penguins are the most entertaining characters in Madagascar‘s animal kingdom, so it’s not surprising that they’ve also got one of the most consistently entertaining film outings of the bunch, with a very clever set-up. Skipper (Tom McGrath), Kowalski (Chris Miller), Rico (Conrad Vernon), and Private (Christopher Knights) – like the rest of the natural world – are sick of the Afro Circus song, so they load themselves into a cannon and fire themselves out of Brazil....

I’m going to preface my review of the comic book as a comic book by first mentioning how fun it is to have this much-coveted time capsule. Until now, Lucas’ original draft has been pretty much kept in the shadows, in a vault far, far away. To see a different version of this beloved story is a tasty treat. Any chance I get to experience Star Wars from a new angle or to revisit the beloved characters, I take it....

3.3 First Born Last week, Quinlan and Eph made a pack to try to lure the Master into a trap by stealing the Lumen from Setrakian. This week, Quinlan and Eph make their move and plan to set their trap as Eph tries to exchange the ancient book for his son Zack. You might imagine that Setrakian is mighty pissed when he finds his precious Lumen gone, because after all, that tome contains the secret to destroy the Master once and for all....

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It’s hard to judge a series after just two episodes, but going on the strength of what we’re seen so far, The Trip has the potential to be one of Coogan’s best pieces of work. Rob Brydon obviously shouldn’t be ignored for his role in all of this, but considering Coogan’s long line of TV successes, it’s testament to the quality of the two episodes aired thus far that I can honestly mention this in the same breath as Saxondale and Partridge....

3.4 Disturbing BehaviorI’ve been complaining quite a bit about the slow-moving pace of this season of The Vampire Diaries, and Disturbing Behavior hasn’t quelled any concern in that department. Less happens here than in any episode of recent memory, the events of the past two instalments simply considered rather than acted upon in any significant way. The episode barely moves, with characters stuck in the same locations for much of the hour, directly in contrast to the 1920s-set exposition of last week....

6.2 Yellow Ledbetter Firstly, we need to address Bonnie and Damon’s situation, which was barely touched upon in the premiere besides that enticing end teaser. So, we’ve established now that they’re trapped in a 90s time-warp with no means of escape, and it’s only taken the four months to settle into domestic bliss at the Salvatore Manor. If you’d have asked me at any previous point in the show’s run that an exclusively Damon/Bonnie storyline would be this enjoyable, I would have called you a liar, but here we are, and it’s a hoot....

2.11 Judge, Jury, Executioner A cold opening drops us right into the prison barn, where the lovely and talented Daryl is beating the ever-living undead crap out of Randall (Michael Zegen). Presumably, this is to uncover some information about Randall’s group of 30 rapey friends, but it’s also because Daryl’s the show’s token survivalist redneck, and we know they’re all experts at 24-style shakedown torture. As it turns out, Randall’s group is larger and better-armed than Rick’s, so perhaps letting Randall go is bad....

It feels like only yesterday that The Walking Dead wrapped up its fourth season in a flurry of gunfire and the unfriendly confines of a shipping container in the enclave of Terminus. In spite of AMC’s penny-pinching and the show’s history of picking one single location and making it a base of sorts for the action, there’s probably not much chance of season five keeping Rick, Daryl, and the gang trapped in a murky black box for the whole run....