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We’re talking about drinking this week, and in particular, the signs that you, or someone you know, may be over-reliant on alcohol. This isn’t a judgemental piece or anything like that. More a show that genuine help is out there, and people do want to help. • A need to drink to get through the day, or relax, or simply feel better• Hiding or lying about drinking• Regularly seeming to drink too much, getting drunk• Blacking out, and drinking so much that you forget just what you were doing, or have done• Withdrawal symptoms if you don’t drink• You think about drinking a lot when you’re not drinking• Drinking a lot when you’re by yourself Again, these symptoms may apply to you, to someone you know....

One of the least useful things I read when I’m in the depths of my weight loss despair are articles from people who have lost loads, and are invariably grinning as they hold up some trousers/a skirt/grundies/whatever that they used to squeeze into, but are now way too baggy. On the one hand, genuinely good for them. On the other, nothing got me reaching for a bag of crisps faster....

It’s overall direction is by Bruce Timm (Batman: The Animated Series), and was produced by three well known anime studios (Production I.G., Studio 4C, and Madhouse), under his control. The result is six connected Batman stories, one each by noted anime directors Shojiro Nishimi, Futoshi Higashide, Hiroshi Morioka, Yasuhiro Aoki, and Toshiyuki Kubooka, and the last one by Jong-Sik Nam. The source material for the stories came from six equally well known writers, Josh Olson (A History of Violence), David S....

3.6 Follow The White Rabbit But, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Gotham needs to stay consistent much longer than a few episodes if it’s going to claim that title. While we wait to see if that’s going to happen, let’s break down all of the great things about this week’s episode: Follow The White Rabbit. A villain making a hero choose between two people he loves is nothing new....

The 2005 book Hunt for the Skinwalker: Science Confronts the Unexplained at a Remote Ranch in Utah was co-authored by Las Vegas-based investigative reporter George Knapp and biochemist Colm Kelleher. Kelleher works for Robert Bigelow, the owner of Budget Suites of America and Bigelow Aerospace. According to Kelleher, during their multi-year study, the scientists did experience strange and often terrifying paranormal activity. However, it alluded their cameras and recording devices and always seemed to be one step ahead of the researchers....

4.1 Thanks For The Memories After last season’s wedding-themed cliff-hanger, Grimm season 4 kicks off with Nick having lost his powers to detect Wesen and Captain Renard fighting for his life after being shot by the rogue Hundjäger, Steward. If you remember, there was crying in the chapel at Monroe and Rosalie’s wedding as Nick realised Adalind had tricked him into bed, Juliette was – naturally – pissed about it, and to top it off, he had lost his Wesen-detection abilities....

5.6 Wesen Nacht Thankfully we experience a welcome return to form for our favourite fairytale-based detective series this week. There was heaps of exposition, plenty of pace and a midseason finale shocker that will, no doubt, leave some fans wailing and gnashing their teeth over the winter break. With Trubel safely back under Nick’s roof we finally discover more details about the shady government organisation with which she’s been working …for an entire year!...

The draw of Grown Ups isn’t the story (this isn’t The Hangover, after all), but the stars. It’s a mini-reunion of SNL‘s glory days of the mid-90’s, with Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, David Spade, and Rob Schneider all taking major roles. There’s also Happy Madison veteran Kevin James filling out the roster, no doubt as the Chris Farley replacement. (Also on tap are Maya Rudolph, Colin Quinn, Steve Buscemi, and Tim Meadows, to further add to the SNL/Happy Madison favorites list....

You see, Hanna’s not just another teenage girl. She’s actually the obsession of CIA agent Marissa Wiegler (Cate Blanchett) and the last remnant of a secret government project to create the perfect soldier. Of course, the fact that Hanna allows herself to be caught is a clue to all involved. This girl’s got a mission. And that mission is revenge. Sending a child to do an adult’s job isn’t always the best idea, and when Hanna goes on the run with her work undone, the hunter has become the hunted and the predator has become the prey....

1.2 Amuse-Bouche Since then, most such shows have attempted to find a happy medium between the two. Hannibal, on the other hand, shows clear signs that the pendulum may be swinging back. This week’s Amuse-Bouche, for instance, provided a morbidly fascinating crime: the perpetrator buried people alive (and kept them alive) to serve as fodder for fungus. The setup was intricate, and in a sense, beautiful – I looked forward to understanding the psychology of a man who would do such a thing....

3.10 And The Woman Clothed In Sun Film has a way, and it’s utterly intentional, of confusing normal reactions. What I mean by this is that a camera forces us to look at scene in a particular way, and point of view is often everything (go rewatch how Holmes faked his death for Watson in Sherlock’s The Empty Hearse, if you don’t believe me). By limiting or focusing what we see and hear on one set of things in a scene (rather than pulling back and letting us see the whole thing and choose what to look at ourselves), a director can mould how we feel about people or ideas in that scene....

3.9 And The Woman Clothed With The Sun But just because you enjoy a series doesn’t mean you don’t see the flaws. As with old friends, some flaws you accept with a quiet resignation, like the fact that Vikings will never really have the budget for the epic story it tells. Some are instead minor irritations which you more actively put up with, such as Castle’s ridiculously large plot holes....

Audrey grants Duke his Trouble back, so that he can kill the cursed baby’s father. “As soon as we get rid of William, Audrey’s gonna be fine,” Nathan says, but Duke already knows that isn’t the case. The two really are connected somehow. And Duke really does kill Ben, ending his family’s curse. Four people born in other worlds are needed to stand in the lighthouse circle to send William back....

It couldn’t have been easy for Cullen to swear in Ruth Elizabeth Cole before the kangaroo court, but as the standing sheriff, it was duty. The assembled townsfolk looked on as the avenging angel stood defiant. Who in the right mind would convict Ruth when she took out the trash that was Sidney Snow? Far more troubling, was Ruth’s conviction to stand trial. It takes a strong person to walk freely to a hangman’s noose without regret....

I know people won’t agree with me, and indeed one of the best bits of this site is you can all post your comments and have your say. So go on, write something, have your say…maybe wait to the end of the article though, first… Now I love The Wire and to be totally honest I rate it as one of the best pieces of entertainment around. But you just can’t compare Heroes to The Wire; its like comparing blancmange with a pair of socks, they just don’t go together....

The episode represented a rare Hiro-less outing for the series – a sure sign that things have moved on from the early days when Hiro was one of the characters who bound the show together. That said, where once his absence would’ve been immediately apparent, I didn’t even notice it until I sat down to write the review. It’s a far cry from the days when Hiro was the only character worth tuning in for, and highlights the character’s slow descent into mediocrity, spurred on by tedious power-mangling plots and uninventive time-travel paradoxes....

2.4 The Return Of Baptiste Turns out Baptiste (Lennie James) is the only person who knows where Cervantes is, so under the ruse of being FSB, Chance gets him released. Baptiste agrees to help so he can get back a vintage watch that he had taken from a former target. When Chance and Baptiste arrive in South America, Ilsa gets a visit from a Captain Harmen (Cameron Daddo), saying her plane in South America (which was to be used by the team for the rescue escape) is grounded and under heavy armed guard....

7.6 However, when it started out, I was slightly dubious, because the story’s basic idea of helping a grifter out, who’d got himself into trouble, had already been covered earlier in the season. Except in some respect, this element, and the long con that Mickey plays to keep Cool Hand Cooper from swimming with the fishes (shouldn’t that just be just ‘fish’?) is actually more of a backdrop to a much more interesting narrative that’s entirely Albert’s (Robert Vaughn)....

Nolan’s latest magnum opus, arguably his riskiest so far, is a grand meditation on exploration, loneliness, love and self-sacrifice. In the tradition of such weighty genre classics as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Solaris, this feels like the director’s own attempt to make what Arthur C Clarke famously described as “the proverbial good science fiction movie” and it’s likely to perplex and thrill audiences in equal measure, just as Kubrick’s Space Odyssey did on its release in 1968....

And yet Iron Man 2 is, ultimately, an exception to that law. But it gives things a damn good go nonetheless. It’s time quite well spent too: the first act of Iron Man 2 manages to introduce Mickey Rourke as Ivan Vanko and set him quickly on the path to becoming Whiplash, while it also begins to examine and nibble at the character that Tony Stark has become. Significantly, it digs into Stark’s background and the relationship with his father, explaining some of the vulnerabilities in the character that the film subsequently explores....