Cinema advertising in the UK seems to have got worse since the dawn of the new millennium. As more and more cinema chains have popped up, the increase in the sheer number of advertisements we are forced to watch has meant the time taken to get through them all is getting beyond a joke. When I were a lad, I remember watching just a few adverts for concession snacks, local businesses and a couple of big name brands, followed by one or two trailers for upcoming films before the main presentation began....

“I think we’re in an inflection point right now,” said Hennig. “Obviously what happened with our Star Wars project didn’t come out of the blue. A lot of too-dramatic articles were written about it — the death of linear story games and all that kind of stuff — but look, there is a real problem: this line we’ve been running up to for a lot of years, which is the rising cost of development, and the desires, or the demands even, of players in terms of hours of gameplay, fidelity, production values, additional modes, all these things....

Will & Grace Season 9 Episode 5 This episode could’ve easily have been titled “Be Careful What You Ask For” or “All That Glitters Isn’t Gold” due to what unfolded. Setting and achieving short and long-term goals is a good thing, sometimes, until we attain a specific personal or career benchmark and realize there are unforeseen circumstances or penalties. Insecurities and comparisons can motivate us to do what might seem impossible in life if only to quiet the voices in our head, family, friends or loved ones....

Z Nation Season 3, Episode 10 Syfy’s Z Nation has separated itself into three main storylines in Season 3, and it’s getting harder and harder to care about these fragmented parts of an already broken mythos. However, with only a handful of episodes left until the camp zombie series either gives its last bow or shocks everyone and picks up a 4th season run, things are starting to come together, however odd....

An hour and a half outside of New York City, widowed mommy vlogger Stephanie (Anna Kendrick, Pitch Perfect) takes us back to the beginning, her nascent best friendship with cool girl alcoholic working mom Emily (Blake Lively), who she met when their sons befriended each other in school. The two moms couldn’t be more different, and Emily teaches Stephanie to be less of a doormat and how to make a real London martini in exchange for basically making perpetually-chipper Stephanie her unpaid nanny....

Having conclusively proved the arcane links between Ayn Rand, the 2008 global economic crisis and Monica Lewinsky, one-of-a-kind filmmaker turns his attention to ecology in the second episode of All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace. Or more specifically, this second episode looked at how ecological theories would later inform the growth of computer systems. This week’s lesson, begins in 1918, when English botanist Arthur Tansley came up with the modern concept of the ecosystem, and ends with the rise of social media in the 21st century....

Alleluia is a fictionalised version of the story of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, first told in Leonard Kastle’s 1969 pulpy cult horror, The Honeymoon Killers. They were a serial killer couple who lured their victims using lonely hearts ads before brutally murdering them, racking up around 20 victims in total. She’s all silence and meek stares but he’s full of easy talkative charm. His words are compelling and reassuring for Gloria as she sits there so timidly you can practically see the crosshairs encircling her....

Episode six is the halfway mark of the series and this is definitely one of the best episodes so far. It really taps into an emotional side of the characters, showing their humanity. Up until now, it’s mainly focused on the absurdity of these insane individuals, but tonight we see how these people care for each other. It’s ground breaking for the series. On one hand, it’s a shame it took so long to get here, as some viewers may have lost interest....

That series go on for hundreds of episodes. Fights take about 30 episodes and involve characters going “Hahaha, you can never defeat me” and then releasing their super-secret move, only for their opponent to release a super duper secret move in a sort of daft haduken ping pong. Better break this to you gently: all of these clichés are true of Naruto. It’s a long running series (Mmore than 380 manga chapters and 250 TV episodes and counting) in which characters spend ages talking about how undefeatable they are, mwahaha, where’ve my arms gone, etc etc....

Arrow Season 4, Episode 17 Welcome to the Arrowepisode that has never met a bee pun it found superfluous. “Beacon of Hope” (or should I say “Bee-con of Hope”?) was actually a lot of fun, proving that Arrowcan be just as light-hearted and energetic as its superhero counterpart The Flash.(Which has itself gotten darker in its second season.) Sure, the episode was a little too excited about having its characters say “beacon of hope” as many times as possible....

Ash vs Evil Dead Season 3 Episode 8 What is Ash vs Evil Dead about? Mostly, though, Ash vs Evil Dead is about not letting the haters get you down. That’s a lesson that anyone who has felt like an underdog at some point in their lives needs to hear to keep on keepin’ on, baby. And “Rifting Apart” really drives this theme home, pretty much literally, in the beloved 1973 Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale....

This week’s show was dark, in fact it’s a lot darker than we have seen before as things get a lot nastier with the show really pushing the boundaries of its scope. Gone are the car chases, memorable 80s tunes, smashing through boxes, and even though there is a bit of obligatory fisty-cuffs, things really do take a turn for the worst. Plot-wise we have Gene and Alex being asked by Jackie, an old flame of Gene’s, to help track down her missing niece who has come down to London to seek her fortune....

Atlanta: Season 2 Episode 8 A while back, Donald Glover said that, with Atlanta, he was trying to make Twin Peaks for rappers. He later corrected that statement, saying it’s more like Curb Your Enthusiasm for rappers. Respectfully, in “Woods” I think it’s both, though heavier on the former. The major theme for Paper Boi throughout Robbin’ Season has been how fame has made it so he’s unable to live his life the way he used to....

For more context, its current 1.17 billion cume is higher than the entire box office runs of other successful superhero and franchise films, including Captain America: Civil War ($1.2 billion), Transformers: Dark of the Moon ($1.12 billion), Lord of the Rings: Return of the King ($1.119 billion), and Skyfall ($1.108 billion). In fact, the only superhero movies ahead of it in its genre are the two other Avengers movies and Black Panther, all of which look passable....

Banshee has already reached its halfway point and the Cinemax original series is really started to chug along and has found its rhythm. The character development from the pilot episode to the fifth has really excelled, giving us more and more breadcrumbs about the people that make up the sleepy town of Banshee, PA. The layers of the proverbial onion continue to peel away, showing the audience that it is not the size of the town but the people in it....

3.1 The Fire Trials Rather than a story engine, Hood is now our guide to what really makes Banshee so utterly entertaining and compelling; the insane, pulp universe it takes place in, and with the Rabbit storyline mercifully put to rest along with seemingly any more fears about Hood’s past catching up to him, season three has a clean slate to dive headfirst into the gloriously convoluted politics of Banshee’s many warring factions....

Paul Giamatti, actor par excellence, isn’t really one to shy away from difficult to play characters, or roles that embody the less pleasant side of human nature, and so it is with Barney Panofsky, Jewish Canadian TV producer and seeming all-round asshole. Told through a series of flashbacks, the story encompasses some 40 years of Barney’s life, beginning in the present, with him as a middle-aged divorcee, and taking in Rome in the 60s, hippies and crazy first wife included, the biggest Jewish wedding you’ve ever seen, crazy second wife included, and the possibility that he is responsible for the death of his best friend, and everything in between....

Baskets Season 3 Episode 6 With all the silliness going on, it’s easy to forget how well Baskets functions as a slice-of-life show. But many episodes have a sleepy tone that suits the suburban setting of Bakersfield. Despite all the madcap clown nonsense, there’s a sense that this series is ultimately all about average Americans just trying to get by. The previous Baskets, in which the whole family fought and Dale decided he was going to sue his mom, was pretty devastating, so a little levity was warranted....