With the Silver Surfer limping into cinemas last year in Fantastic Four 2: Rise of the Silver Surfer (noted for not only being mediocre but also the longest title for a film last year – apart from that Jesse James thing), and an impending Dr Strange film potentially being worked on by Guillermo del Toro the back catalogue of Jack ‘The King’ Kirby’s work is a pure goldmine. With Kirby’s passing nearly a decade ago, the King’s legacy has never been so popular....

Does Hollywood stuntman and special effects artist-turned-criminal Quentin Beck’s arrival mean the next Spider-Man film will be Marvel’s first movie about making movies? In other words, could Marvel Studios be laying the groundwork for its first Deadpool-esque attempt at meta-filmmaking? Because if they stick to the first Mysterio’s origins in the comics, then Spider-Man 2 might very well be Marvel’s Tropic Thunder. THR’s initial report mentions the classic Beck version of Mysterio that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko introduced in 1964....

I’ll be testing my formula out soon enough, as I plan on seeing Semi-Pro as soon as possible and giving a complete report, but it doesn’t grab me at all. Just consider the fact that Will Ferrell is only good when he’s not the centre of attention. Could it be possible that the only way to make a Ferrell film work is for other people, not Ferrell, to be funny?...

2.12 I Hope You Dance It’s hard to pull off a great TV season finale. You have to answer enough questions to bring closure to the season’s arcs, while also leaving the viewer with mysteries and lingering threads that leave them hungry for more. Hoo boy did Wynonna Earp do that with I Hope You Dance. Baby Earp was born! Waverly isn’t a revenant! Jeremy has some kind of super secret power!...

Wonder Women:This was so camp and funny as a 70s TV show, but I have huge reservations about the character now. Her powers are matching bulletproof bracelets and a lasso that makes people tell the truth. What? Okay, I accept that in the early comics she had the powers of the ancient gods, but presumably no costume making ability whatsoever. If they succeed in filming this it could actually be worse than the horrendous Catwoman....

The modern DVD and Blu-ray market? Well, it’s all so corporate isn’t it? No slight on the releases, or the companies involved, but I don’t think anyone gets a frission of excitement when they see a Warner Bros. Home Entertainment logo on a box, in the way they used to when the Medusa logo popped up. And whilst there are firms such as Arrow and Eureka keeping the flag of quirky film companies flying, there are still a few names consigned to the VHS recycle bin, whose story is in danger of being lost....

The final seconds of last weeks show saw Jack sat against the rig he had pinched, awaiting the arrival of a bio-team to check him over. The clock struck 11pm and the show ended. This show does the catch up and then we get the obligatory “The following takes place…” and then: The opening seconds of this show sees Jack surrounded by an ‘already arrived’ and set up team of experts in biohazard gear!...

24 Season 8 10:00-11:00am Things kicked off a little disappointingly though. Jack’s escape and apparent upcoming helicopter chase was more of a damp squib really. Despite two Air Force Apache attack choppers flying into the scene; there was little aerobatic action as Jack quickly landed on a nearby building, and did so rather calmly, making the whole helicopter hijack a bit of a wasted opportunity. He then quickly dropped to ground level where, although having a clear view of the direction Jack was going, the Air Force chopper pilots decided to keep the information from the Cops, and BAM!...

24 Season 8 11:00-12:00pm I’m not going to mess around. This week’s episode of 24 was a corker, and certainly one of the best of the season by far. It was a fast moving ride towards perhaps the best, and most shocking closing scene yet. This was 24 carat action. With last week’s events leaving Dana in the hands of the waterboard-happy private security firm, and Jack teaming up with Cole to go against CTU and the President, this episode couldn’t really go wrong, and from the start it was all go....

That pretty much sums up ‘The Baby Show’. The last episode was so chockful of good stuff that I couldn’t fit it all in the review (including, as was mentioned in the comments, ‘Black Frasier’, on BET at about 8 or 8:15). My favourite episode of the first series is coming up in two weeks time. But this is…not the best. The writers, obviously thinking they were on to a good thing with Jack’s phone calls to Not Condi Rice last week left him hanging on the telephone to his mother all week....

In an odd sort of way, period drama-thriller All The Money In The World is also fascinated by people who look like us, but have something decidedly inhuman running through their veins. For most of us, money is just something we need to pay the bills and buy sandwiches. For people like John Paul Getty, in the 1970s the richest man in the world, it’s his lifeblood: certainly more important than passing whims like friends, family, or a little thing like paying taxes....

3.8 The Sacred Taking Some television shows are nothing if not worthy of praise for their special effects. On a show like The Walking Dead, the special effects are obvious. Zombie rotting faces, impaling, and so on are the sorts of effects that attract attention and win awards, but there are more subtle sorts of special effects. In the case of this week’s episode of American Horror Story, it’s mostly makeup tricks and old-school appliances, but they’re very effective ones (like the self-lighting cigarettes so many of the witches smoke)....

Rubber Man This week is the origin of Rubber Man, one of the more fascinating minor characters on AHS. As it turns out, the latex suit which gives RM his name is brought into the home by Chad and Patrick, the home’s owners before the Harmons. Patrick’s been exploring himself on the Internet, and Chad wants to spice things up. After a hilariously weird trip to the sex shop, he comes home with a rubber bondage suit....

2.1 Welcome To Briarcliff In the wake of the successful and highly entertaining first season, which featured the Harmon family in a haunted house populated by souls both friendly and evil, creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk made a brave, wise decision. Rather than revisiting the first season and continuing that story, they decided to tell a new American Horror Story with completely different characters, a completely different setting, and a whole new sort of horror....

That’s not to say that we place the blame at Eastwood’s feet, although his no-frills approach to directing is one of the many things that works against the film. The memoir American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History has been kicking around for a long time at Bradley Cooper’s production company. At various times in its development, it’s been intended for Chris Pratt to star as Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle, with David O....

Arrow Season 4, Episode 18 Let it never be said that Arrowdoesn’t know how to pull off the Main Character Dies, Motivating The Rest of the Characters Into Action plot. They do it every season around this time. It was most effective in season 2 with Moira Queen’s death when we hadn’t yet had time to figure out the pattern. Things were rawer then, the stakes less predictable. The Arrowverse was still one little show, with no commitment to anything outside of the confines of its narrative....

1.23 Sacrifice We pick up right where last week left off, with a now shirtless (of course) Oliver being questioned by Malcolm. This is where the idea of sacrifice is first raised, with Malcolm asserting that the reason he can beat Oliver time and time again is that he knows what he’s willing to give up in the fight. Everyone in this episode sacrifices something for someone else, and every single character, with the exception of maybe Laurel, gets some sort of heroic moment....

Arrow Season 5, Episode 22 It’s fitting that the penultimate episode of Arrow Season 5 featured Thea Queen playing around with a chess board. After months of distracting twists and turns, the Green Arrow, his team and his adversaries are all finally in place for a highly anticipated and much-needed showdown. However, before we get to that, let’s talk about the final maneuvers. Even in the episode’s flashbacks to Lian Yu, Oliver is given some kind of drug that makes his old scars feel new again....

With Alex on the verge of returning to the ‘real world’ and the future (or present version, depending on how you look at it) Summers goading her to become part of ‘Operation Rose’, she is in a dilemma. If she wants to return home and see her daughter Molly again she must become the thing she hates, a corrupt police officer. With this thought we find that she has been recording her issues down on tape, and while this is incriminating (and a bit of a bolt-on plot device) it all seems very much in character with somebody who has to analyse everything....

Both Barbara Broccoli and her half-brother Michael G Wilson grew up surrounded by Bond lore, with Barbara working as assistant director on Octopussy at the tender age of 23, while Wilson acted as producer or writer on numerous movies, from Moonraker to 2008’s Quantum Of Solace, while also popping up repeatedly in various cameo roles. As Skyfall arrives in UK cinemas, here’s what the duo had to say in a round-table inreview about the film’s making, Bond’s birthday, and who we can expect to see in the 24th movie....