You see watching Heroes this season hasn’t been the carefree and joyous ride that I enjoyed during season one. Back in these innocent, naïve days when I had not discovered the awesomeness of the show I had no expectations, in fact I had very little hope seeing as TV execs have a history of screwing up my television enjoyment (for evidence here I cite Firefly as a case in point)....
We’ll be back with more next week.
7.1 As Good As It Gets Is it me or is this show now starting to feel tired and mechanical? Perhaps. The first story of season 7, As Good As It Gets, wasn’t classic Hustle, but it was generally entertaining in a very light entertainment manner. But then, I guess that’s what most of the audience tune in to see. So, there’s a paradox to it returning, but without contributing anything especially new....
“Whose lap is your child sitting on?” That’s the question asked in Tommy Avallone’s I Am Santa Claus. This documentary takes place over the course of 2012, following the lives of four men who take up the Saint Nick mantle, as well as a certain WWE hardcore legend trying to see if he has what it takes to become Santa Claus himself. Mick Foley gets some focus too. The retired pro wrestler and acclaimed author loves Christmas to death and has dressed as Santa on TV a couple times, but that was still just him blatantly being Mick Foley in a costume....
Ten months after Charles Manson’s death, the special comes out during a slew of examinations on his cult, and production on Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood moves forward after the loss of Burt Reynolds. The documentary mixes the footage of the lost tapes with current interviews of cult members Catherine “Gypsy” Share and Dianne “Snake” Lake, as well as Manson prosecutor Stephen Kay, FBI criminal profiler John Douglas, and Robert Burnbridge, the cop on the scene when a call came in that a man was down....
Kate Winslet reintroduces us to Veronica Roth’s world with a jargon-filled video message that reminds us of the important facts: that society here is divided into factions, everyone lives within a wall, and the freaky Divergents who can transcend personality groups (assigned at GCSE option sort-of age) are perceived as dangerous. This is intercut with footage of government foot-soldiers wreaking mild havoc, just to remind us that Winslet’s Jeannine is a baddie and we probably shouldn’t trust what she says anyway....
iZombie Season 4, Episode 11 Killing off the adorably precocious teen girl with wisdom beyond her years, iZombie? Emotionally manipulation, perhaps, but very effective. Isobel never felt like a real person, not really. Her dying and death were too neat, too amiable with not even a hint of anger from Isobel. Her character would have benefitted a great deal from coming on earlier in the season as something other than the manic pixie dying girl, but Izabela Vidovic used her too-short time on the show to amazing effect....
Appearing on Variety and PBS’ Actors on Actors, interviewed by fellow star Matthew McConaughey, Oscar-winning actor Jeff Bridges looks back on his experience on the set of director Jon Favreau’s original Iron Man. While Bridges, a veteran actor and consummate professional, claims to have arrived on the set of the upstart film in 2007 prepared and knowing all his lines, he was shocked to discover that the production was in a state of chaos, especially regarding said lines with almost daily re-writes of the script....
Starship Troopers‘ Neil Patrick Harris (okay, okay, it’s Doogie Howser as a supervillain) plays the titular Dr Horrible, a wannabe supervillain whose inventions don’t quite seem to work the way he’d like them to. He’s not giving up, though – he’s determined to enter the Evil League of Evil, and he’s managed to get the attention of uber-villain Bad Horse. All he needs now is to steal the final component for his freeze ray (a weapon that will allow him to stop time and wreak havoc on an unsuspecting world that way) and then he’s practically guaranteed a place in the League....
However, all of a sudden, Red State appears to be back on. Earlier this year, Smith had investigated fan funding for the film, but nixed the idea seemingly due to tax issues (amongst others). But yesterday, he revealed via the magical world of Twitter that things are pressing ahead. “I talk about lots of stuff I wanna do that either happens years later or never happens at all. Happy to report RED STATE is not the latter,” he posted, before adding, “Looks like we start shooting this July....
Lethal Weapon: Season 2, Episode 16 “Roamers gotta’ roam…” “Ruthless” starts off in a rather tense place when a gun buy-back program goes terribly awry. Gun control and firearm safety are obviously a very important topic right now, but Lethal Weapon fearlessly marches on with all of this. Lines like “it’s raining guns out there,” are said as the camera scrolls past hundreds of guns changing hands. Some individuals decide to be opportunists here, but the idea to steal guns with the use of more guns is absolutely ridiculous, but there’s a certain poetic justice to it....
I refer to this totally non-Lost story due to the fact that this week, I (kind of) had my David Cross moment. In the final moments of “Ji Yeon”, what we believed was a flashforward starring Jin was, in actuality, a flashback, meaning that somewhere in the future, the former mob hand is dead. Big news, except I firstly read it as follows: the Jin flashback is a flashforward and since leaving the island, he’s had to take up work with Mr Paik (Sun’s shady father) (a la Sayid working for Ben) and is working in hiding with an unknown new wife while Sun mourns....
Well, that was stupid of me. “Back,” of course, has no interest in continuing or touching upon past plots whatsoever. However, that lack of connection with what came before it establishes an overall consistency with the rest of the series. In addition to being disconnected from what came before it, the scenes that make up “Back” are largely unrelated to one another and alternate in tone, resulting in an episode that is surreal, dark, awkward, and hilarious....
It’s really quite lazy to liken this film to Mamma Mia, or the other one going around, Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, since there’s a lot more going on here than its simple premise suggests. Trine Dyrholm stars as recovering cancer sufferer Ida who, returning home from a hopeful doctor’s visit, finds her husband sleeping with the girl from accounts. If we didn’t already dislike him, then his entitled reaction to being caught solidifies our feelings and, sadly, he and Ida will have to face each other at their daughter’s impending wedding....
5.20 The One Who Will Save Us All Okay, there’s going to be some Avengers: Infinity War spoilage in this Agents Of SHIELD recap so be warned. And for frak’s sake, what are you waiting for? See the darn film, it’s really good. Anywho, we now know where on the timeline the current episodes of Marvel’s Agents Of SHIELD take place. According to Qovas, Thanos and his invasion is taking place concurrently with the events on Agents Of SHIELD....
In episode two, Self struggles to convince his movie’s lead actor to change his name from Spunk to the less embarrassing Hunk (“I know what Spunk means,” the American innocently protests, “it means bravery and strength.”) The kind of character Amis had in mind was surely a monster, an oily embodiment of everything that was grasping, desperate and plain avaricious about the 80s. By contrast, Frost is almost apologetic, like a mildly annoying punter in a local pub, rather than the epitome of an era of vulgar excess....
Question: when did it suddenly get so warm in cinemas? That’s been two night screenings in a row where I actually felt like I was getting a fever or something, leading me to take off my socks, shift uncomfortably in my seat, and roll up my jean legs like a stereotypical tourist. If anything could have made these heated experiences any better, I would have been watching the films in nothing more than boxers, a vest and a cold glass with Three Fingers of Glenlivet (with a little bit of pepper and some cheese, word to Ron Burgundy)....
2.11 Python Pt. 1 It also involves Angela being taken by her kidnappers to a suburban home where a young girl asks her questions like “Have you ever cried during sex” in a room that contains nothing but an aquarium and an ancient computer. But among all of those truly reality-bending, mind-fucking moments there is the surprisingly affecting story about a young FBI agent and her digital household helper. “They can’t get away with this,” she says....
3.2 Undo It’s a good episode because all episodes of Mr. Robot inevitably are. We talk about the style of this show to the point of critical self-parody sometimes but how can we not? This, only the second episode of the season, opens with an extended montage set to New Sensation as Elliot clocks in to his new day job at Evil Corp day after day, hallucinates his fellow subway riders wearing deadmau5-style emoji helmets, and gets no fewer than six E Corp employees arrested by the FBI....
3.9 Stage 3 Elliot “wakes up” to find himself standing in front of his mirror and Mr Robot having carved “They own the FBI” into it. “What did Mr Robot do last night?” he asks us. And here’s the amazing part: Mr. Robot immediately shows us. Throughout almost three full years of this show, we’ve grown accustomed to questions like “what did Mr Robot do last night?” going unanswered for an extended period of time....
