6.4 Book Of The Stranger One of the happiest moments we’ve seen on Game Of Thrones is a Stark reunion. Having been rescued by Deus ex Brienne and her faithful sidekick Pod, Sansa Stark has gone from bad to worse to even worse, and all the while she’s held on to the hope of Castle Black, and a reunion with her half-brother Jon Snow. So far those hopes have all been dashed, but as Jon and Edd discuss the future of the Night’s Watch, a horn and yells announce arriving riders....

Perfect Crime, by playwright Warren Manzi, is the longest running play in New York theater history. It opened in 1987 and had its 12,000th performance on July 16, 2016. Leading lady Catherine Russell, who plays Connecticut psychiatrist Margaret Thorne Brent, is part of the original cast. She is so committed to the work that she’s never taken a sick or vacation day, earning her the title the “Cal Ripken of Broadway,” as bestowed by People magazine....

This week, we’re handing over to the brilliant Lindsey…. Until we lost a close family friend that is. The husband of my mum’s closest friend, and dad to the two people I consider surrogate brothers. He died away from home, the effects of a particularly strong asthma attack being simply too strong for him to fight off. I couldn’t process it. Asthma wasn’t meant to kill you, it’s what classmates of mine had little blue pumps for, and when they used them it went away....

I was 21 years old when I contemplated suicide. For a period of time it was the only consistent train of thought I could maintain. It was the clearest thought, the loudest and – horrifyingly in retrospect – the one that made the most sense. It wasn’t because I wanted to die, which sounds utterly ludicrous, but it’s true. I just wanted to stop. I wanted it all to stop and the only way I could think to bring a stop to proceedings was the ultimate one....

It is made instantly clear that Caroline is a bizarre and extreme character, rambling off articulately insane, breakneck soliloquies about the various people who have slighted her. Her first bit of dialogue includes the following phrase: Bwuh? Hannah wants to do the hospitable thing and take Caroline in, but Adam is pleadingly insistent with her that Caroline is a horrible, toxic person who invents disasters, drawing everyone around her into them....

Don’t tell me you’ve never seen the classic spy satire with the phone booth entrance to an underground enclave of wall-to-wall doors. If you’ve only seen the Steve Carell reboot, you can keep that to yourself as well. Mel Brooks and Buck Henry’s Get Smart, is celebrating its 50th anniversary today and I found out that HBO is releasing the series digitally. I figure, if I plug it maybe they’ll send me something free, even if it is just two cops in a rowboat....

Indie comedy-drama Gold finds Ray “trying to get things back on track” after a prolonged stay in a mental health hospital. Back in town to visit his dying father and pay his respects to the woman and child who left him twelve years earlier for the stability of P.E. teacher, Frank, (James Nesbitt), Ray soon gets his feet under the table at the family home, stirring up the past with Alice (Kerry Condon) and attempting to connect with his amateur runner daughter, Abbie (Williams)....

Beth Solano has yet again broken out of her home, which is now nothing more than a domestic prison poisoned with happy memories to get some alone time.* She flees to the beach and sits on a park bench where Raymond Connelly, would-be medium joins her. He tells her he has a message for her from Danny. Beth reacts with immediate horror. It’s not just that Ray is a stranger and likely very crazy, it’s that there is no escape from the hell she is living in....

6.3 Captain, My Captain Things weren’t looking good for Nick and the gang last week, with Nick still on the run and Renard out for blood. However, Nick and Eve (is it still Eve, or are we back to Juliette now?) devise a plan to turn the tables on the Captain. They decide that Nick should replicate Renard’s body using the magic witch’s hat, which first made its appearance in season 3....

The Guardians of the Galaxy are an intergalactic team of superheroes who defend Earth from alien forces, ostensibly billed (as the subtitle suggests) as the cosmic Avengers. The leader is Peter Quill aka Star-Lord, an alien/human hybrid and the son of King J’son of Spartax. Also on the team is Gamora, the femme fatale labelled as the Most Dangerous Woman in the Universe and also the adopted daughter of Thanos the Mad Titan; Drax the Destroyer, a behemothic alien brawler created to destroy Thanos; Rocket Raccoon, an anthropomorphic alien who happens to look like Earth’s raccoons, Rocket is a brilliant tactician, engineer, and marksman, often wielding enormous powerful guns; and finally a tree-like creature called Groot who can only say “I Am Groot” and can regenerate if destroyed....

(Editor’s Note: hug)

2.3 Hassun But the best moments belonged to Gillian Anderson’s Bedelia du Maurier, which is unfortunate considering this also appears to be her swan song in relation to the show (she’s on two other series, so I think we’re safe in assuming she won’t be reappearing anytime soon). In a story that has made a great deal of hay out of who knows what, du Maurier has been the biggest question mark: how much insight does she truly have into the monster who visits her regularly for psychological guidance?...

The Hollywood Reporter “More than even the most faithful of the earlier episodes, this film feels devoted above all to reproducing the novel onscreen as closely as possible, an impulse that drags it toward ponderousness at times and rather sorely tests the abilities of the young actors to hold the screen entirely on their own, without being propped up by the ever-fabulous array of character actors the series offers.” The Express The Guardian “It’s not so much that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows feels at times largely indistinguishable from the six outings preceding it, nor even that part one offers so little in the way of resolution(part two will surely take care of that)....

That part of your brain that just processes ‘Like/Dislike’ (essentially the bouncer for your tastes) will surely be satisfied by what it has to offer. Then, after it’s hung out with your synapses for a bit, everyone becomes bezzies and make plans to hang out with each other as often as possible. It’s a canny operation that editor Tharg the Mighty is running. 2000 AD’s been going since 1977, and you may have noticed it is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year....

Yet despite its lacklustre second season, Heroes has been an unquestionable ratings success on both sides of the Atlantic and I for one am eagerly anticipating its return, especially as all of the talk coming out of Comic-con was that the season three premiere sees the show back to its best packed full of action and intrigue. The SymbolThe symbol was everywhere in season one. You know the one, the little DNA helix that represented the ‘powers’ gene....

Homeland Season 7 Episode 10 Well, I think it’s fair to say that none of us exactly saw this episode coming, at least as far as Carrie’s storyline is concerned. Indeed, last week I was less than thrilled with seeing yet another hour devoted to Carrie strengthening the legal case against her for Frannie’s custody, and yet when this week decided to be all about pulling that Band-Aid off, its removal felt relatively painless and therapeutic....

In a piece at The Hollywood Reporter to mark Batman Returns’ anniversary last June, some of the key players have got together to look back on the film. In the piece, for instance, Michael Keaton reveals that he stripped away around half of Batman’s lines from the movie, reckoning that the sheer imagery of the suit would do some of the heavy lifting for him. Furthermore, Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman suit was vacuum-packed once Pfeiffer was in it, and helpfully, “they didn’t leave me a way to use the restroom in the suit....

The most imposing force in BattleBots Arena might be the “BattleBox.” The competition’s stage, which looks like a greenhouse, is made of bulletproof plastic that can consistently conquer flame-throwing robots. To get it into the studio, pieces of the box were placed in nine trucks, maxing out the weight capacity on the largest trucks the BattleBots brass could find. As far as using its heavy-duty stage to create a spectacle, the box is the show’s answer to the shock-absorbing canvas of WWE’s ring or UFC’s street-fight inspired Octagon....

It was also a hit, which meant the ‘we have a new horror franchise!’ signs lit up at the offices of original backer Film District. So Insidious 2 came along in 2013, with Wan and Whannell taking up camera and pen again, but it proved to be an unnecessary, overplotted and often incoherent follow-up that actually dissipated the good will of its predecessor. Insidious: Chapter 3 (2015), a prequel, was directed by Whannell himself from a streamlined script, making for a marginally better film but still something of a wheel-spinner....

How did you get hooked on Gerry Anderson shows? My first memory of it was my mother bringing me home a video of the American compilation film Countdown To Disaster (an edited movie-length video of the episodes Terror In New York City and Atlantic Inferno) and balling my eyes out when Thunderbird 2 was shot down thinking that Virgil would be killed. I’m pretty certain I was no older than four in my defence!...