A quick route on a certain online auction site showed that even though the console has only really been out for a few years, they cost peanuts to pick up. That notwithstanding, I opted to buy a second-hand one from a high street retailer. On closer inspection, the one I picked up seemed to be straight from stock, left around after the influx of the DS. So for thirty quid I have a new handheld console, and I must say I am really impressed with it....
The Good Place Season 2 Episode 11 The Good Place is such a fundamentally sound show. Still, there are plenty of fundamentally shows on television. And there’s only one The Good Place. Season two’s second to last episode “Rhonda, Diana, Jake, and Trent” shows us why. All the sound creative decisions in the world are nice. But those sound creative decisions are elevated to pure brilliance when the show is able to pull something off like having its four lead characters watch animatronic versions of themselves verbalize all of their own worst qualities in Hell’s literal museum of torture....
Piven plays Don Ready, the world’s best car salesman, in a role that was undoubtedly written for him. He’s a hired gun, moving from town to town with his crack sales team of Jibby (Ving Rhames), Brent (David Koechner), and Babs (Kathryn Hahn). When Ben (James Brolin) Selleck’s car dealership is at risk of failure, Don is the man who answers the call. The challenge is set for Don and his crew....
Bilbo Baggins (the always wonderful Martin Freeman) leads a simple life that he doesn’t care to see change. Unbeknownst to Bilbo, the great wizard Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellan) has signed Bilbo up to take part in a perilous journey for which he is ill equipped. Gandalf has agreed to help a group of thirteen dwarves reclaim their home from the great dragon Smaug. To complete their plans of re-capturing their home, Gandalf has convinced the dwarves they need a Hobbit to fulfill the role of, burglar; someone who can sneak in and out of the dragon’s lair without being detected....
The films of the ‘fifties’ still have resonance today. Many of the subjects were anchored firmly in world moving events. A more cavalier look at what happened in the recent world war and what the outcome meant for the future. There was also a new wave of escapism with extravagant Hollywood Musicals and costly costume dramas filched from the Bible. Hollywood was having its own internecine war. The expensive Studio system of making films against the guerrilla tactics of the swift moving freedom of the Independents....
This review contains spoilers. Guthred really should have taken the precaution of a series one iPlayer catch-up before putting the Lord of Bebbanburg in a cage. It didn’t last when Alfred did it and it won’t last now, especially with Ragnar and Brida on the trail. That lot will be sharing a flagon of ale and reminiscing about all the people they’ve beheaded and fields they’ve ploughed in no time....
The Magicians Season 2 Episode 13 Introducing a paradigm shift into a show like The Magicians in its season finale is a bold move that will no doubt pay off in season 3 the way that the introduction of Fillory shook up the current season, making the shenanigans at Brakebills seem like child’s play. But with the introduction of gods and now even older gods that can turn off the flow of magic, are things moving too fast?...
The clue to what that is in the title: the stone construction’s a maze. More to the point, it’s a maze that can’t be escaped, that shuts its doors at night, and makes noises that test the bass of any half decent sound system. It would be fair to call the maze itself a CG achievement of some triumph. As the film pulls back on its intriguing premise, though, and tells you more and more about its world, it starts to go wrong....
2.2 The Turtle And The Stick Like the trusty coma, dementia is the perfect illness for a thriller. It enables writers to store key information inside a character and release it precisely when the plot demands without anyone being able to scream ‘but why didn’t you say that weeks ago?!’. Characters suffering from dementia can legitimately flit in and out of lucidity, giving away nothing until the time comes for them to give away everything....
We open with a meeting, where everyone seems to be willing to offer up crazy suggestions. But for what? Why, apparently, the head office of Dunder-Mifflin has taken out some local air time to advertise the various branches of the company to their local market. You see, apparently not everyone knows about Dunder-Mifflin’s great paper prices. Andy suggests a catchy jingle, then proceeds not to remember the last line of the Kit Kat candy bar jingle (break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar!...
Seconded to intelligence following his drunken outburst last week, Leckie is quickly punished by the petty commanding officer Larkin, who assigns him the dangerous rearguard duty. This leads to a confrontation with a Japanese patrol, and then a later night battle with a small Japanese attack force and it seems that The Pacific is back on the familiar territory of its opening two episodes. Except it’s most definitely not. The following day he is sent on patrol to the abandoned Japanese camp, whereupon they witness the haunting and terrifying sight of Gibson strangling a Japanese soldier and then grinning at them....
Ben Barnes has spont the last year or so occupying our TV screens as the kind of villain who hits a little too close to home. We’ve all known the kind of overbearing, privileged asshole that he played on Westworld, for example. But his role as Billy Russo on The Punisher takes him to a different, if still slightly familiar place. Billy Russo is a charmer, a handsome devil, and one who can’t be trusted....
1.4 Victor This week’s instalment set up many more questions and cliff-hangers than it resolved, as befits the mid-way point in a mystery series. As such, it was perhaps the most plot-heavy, functional episode so far, as the interwoven stories ticked off disclosure and connections rather than continuing to build the beauty and atmosphere of earlier episodes. That’s certainly no criticism, as the story is as compelling as ever, and you can’t very well fill eight hours of television with sublime lighting and beautiful set pieces like week one’s glass-breaking butterfly and expect people to keep watching....
1.5 Serge et Toni What makes this particular act horrifying then, is that it isn’t perpetrated by a zombie. The blood-lapping, organ-tearing is carried out by a living, breathing man (though one who will eventually return from the dead). Serge, for whom this week’s episode is named, was a serial killing cannibal long before he came back to life. From any other series, that three-word description would sound like another kitsch entry in the ‘vampire nuns from Mars’ playbook of schlocky premises, but The Returned achieves the impossible by making a zombie cannibal serial killer plot seem… what’s the word?...
PLEASE NOTE: This review includes SPOILERS It was a stinker. The Gift saw the return of the Slitheen but it also saw the rare return of the ‘clunker’ for Sarah Jane and the gang. We’ve had three series worth excellent stories with only the odd duffer in there. And like last year’s finale, this one fails to entertain. In fact, it serves only to annoy. At first we’re meant to think the Blathereen (voiced by Simon Callow and Miriam Margolyes) are benevolent but, as SJ & Co....
Ok, so the burning question for me has been, will they show Marge’s new car?? It wasn’t in the last episode AT ALL. I need to see it, for some odd reason. AHHHH the old car is in the intro! Seriously?? Where is the car that caused the baby fight??? Homer is in a new bowling league, with a new member, who gets called to a work emergency mid-throw. Cut to Fat Tony, with his buddies, who needs a temporary replacement, Dan....
This The Simpsons review contains spoilers. It’s going to be a cool hot wave of fun on the beaches of Springfield, now that the safety standards have been lowered and beached whales are domiciles. Boobs are beating butts on the volleyball sands and the most disgusting thing on the beach is Homer’s booger. Lisa boogie boards her way to a surf shop and finds the endless summer enchantment of a magic hat that turns can even turn Trump into an adorable troll....
The Strange Season 3 Episode 3 The Strain is at its best when it bounces through history to build the immense mythology that keeps the series from becoming just another survival horror drama, and this week, things go all sorts of period as we travel back to ancient Rome in order to discover the secret origin of everyone’s favorite altruistic bloodsucker, Mr. Quinlan. All this is a backdrop to reveal the origin of Quinlan....
I’m sooooo confused… Astrid reappears, but after her attack she’s agoraphobic and pretty paranoid, but when she attempts to connect with Stephen she ends up confessing to John instead. And in a late night trip topside for provisions, Cara runs into Julian. They have a little fight in the yogurt aisle…you know how it goes. Stephen plays double agent as usual, letting the Tomorrow People free but pretending he knows nothing about it....
A supernatural teenage drama (okay, mostly we’re talking about melodramas, yes) has to be hyper-vigilant where its story is concerned. True, an attention to story never hurt any form of serialized entertainment, but a supernatural teenage drama lives or dies on the knife’s edge of its story. It’s got to be well-ordered, cohesive, and well-maintained. In order to keep the stakes (ha, I said stakes in an article about The Vampire Diaries –– but no time to laugh about it now) appropriately high from week to week, this can mean sacrificing things like a character’s emotional journey....
