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“We’re gearing up for it now, so I’m sort of in the process of getting back into that character of Pennywise,” said Skarsgard on the line from Sweden, where he lives. “I’m sort of in the mindset and we’re gearing up for it. I think they start in July. I’m not sure exactly when my start date is, but some time this summer.” Skarsgard, who will also be seen later this summer in Hulu’s Stephen King-based Castle Rock series, added that he’s especially thrilled about the way the adult cast is coming together....

Where this show works best is when it stops trying to relive the glory days of X-Files, and serves up its own brand of uneasiness. Having well established the characters, for the writers they now have the space to explore how they might react in any given circumstances. Personally, given how well we now know Olivia, Peter and Walter, I’d really like a story about Astrid. But this one is another Olivia adventure....

Here, he chats to us about The Debt, and bringing Star Wars to the airwaves… Well, Helen was the starting point. You couldn’t even embark on this film if you didn’t have somebody of her stature playing that part. Rachel Singer, the female character, is the centre of the story. So I started with Helen, and proceeded mathematically, to cast a younger version of Helen first. And I was on record saying I wanted to cast a relatively unknown actress, if I could....

1.5 Arabella Forget BARB meters drily totting up television ratings, the true measure of a TV episode should be judged by the volume of a viewer’s involuntary wail when the end credits appear. By that system, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell registers off the scale. When the screen turned black at the close of tonight’s instalment, my neighbour knocked on the party wall to check I hadn’t done myself an injury....

5.1 A Murder Of Crowes Turning economic decline into economic prosperity by preying on the economically disenfranchised is a something that organized criminal organizations thrive on. Going deeper for a moment, I’d argue that a very important subtextual component of Justified has always been about examining rural America and attempting to examine why some people from this supposedly lower economic class turn to crime while others reject the lifestyle altogether....

Kick-Ass ostensibly asks the question “What if superheroes were real?” and answers it. Not in the same way that Watchmen did, by deconstructing the politics and very human motivations behind vigilantes. No. Kick-Ass answers by saying , “Well, they’d get the shit kicked out of them, wouldn’t they?” And such is the kind of ride you’re in for over the film’s two-hour running period. Graphic violence mixed with dark humour....

In the 70s, George V Higgins kept the hard-boiled genre alive well after the post-war economic boom, with his acclaimed debut novel The Friends Of Eddie Coyle, which was adapted into a similarly acclaimed film starring Robert Mitchum that stripped away the glamour of the gumshoes and added the nihilistic atmosphere and grim realism prevalent in American studio films of the period. It’s the logical next step for all the things that have combined to create the best crime fiction, and the results are suitably spectacular....

Few actors can impart the wisdom of life as a child in Hollywood’s spotlight quite like Mumy can. Luckily for 12-year-old Maxwell Jenkins, who stars as Will Robinson in Netflix’s reboot of Lost in Space, Mumy came to the set to shoot a surprise role in the new series and graciously spent his time with the young actor. They bonded over music and their mutual love for Bob Seger and the Will Robinsons traded war stories of their time in outer space....

Last season, Desmond laid some hints about the island’s recently-confirmed time-traversing properties when, rather than merely flashing-back, he actually travelled into his own past and found himself able to influence it. This episode sees Desmond’s past self flashing-forward into the present, and being naturally very surprised to find himself on a boat full of people he hasn’t yet met, thousands of miles away from home. In order to save himself, Desmond has to find an “anchor” that exists in both time periods to help him psychologically reboot his brain, ending the time-jumps that will kill him – and he chooses his only love, Penny....

7.12 Lost Horizon First of all, a goodbye to the firm itself. In the space of a month, SCP had been gutted, its swish operation transformed into an uninhabited wasteland. Offices won in tooth-and-nail battles had been deserted, their victors swallowed up into the gargantuan McCann Erickson or sloughed off and discarded. Wires hung from ceilings. A violent splatter of coffee was left unmopped on the kitchen floor. The monolithic computer that was ushered in last year as an emblem of the future was wheeled out, defunct....

Is it just me, or is Mad Men getting funnier? While always sharp and wittily written, Matthew Weiner’s series has become increasingly humorous of late, offsetting the frequently depressing inner life of its characters. Perhaps sensing that last week’s episode was insurmountably sublime – and irrespective of channel or country of origin, it ranked among the very best forty-or-so minutes of television drama of the last few years – The Summer Man was an altogether quieter, more modest installment....

When he passed at the end of last year, the film based on his best-selling book Long Walk to Freedom was premiering as the news broke, which was a rather tragic coincidence that almost set the film up for further scrutiny now the great man himself was no longer around. Now when I say unravel, I don’t mean in a terrible, unwatchable way. But sometimes, it’s hard to tell whose story you’re supposed to be watching, as the focus seems to be on Winnie: her story, struggle, and eventual downfall....

4.17 Identity And Change That’s why it’s very ironic and very cool that right now there are two awesome villains on Agents Of SHIELD. Madame Hydra is the cool part of that dastardly equation. Madame HYDRA may be very different to the comic version of HYDRA’s leading lady, but boy, does she look like she just stepped off a comic page. As Madame HYDRA, the former AIDA is every inch of the femme fatale that has intrigued SHIELD fans for decades, but of course, with this Madame HYDRA, the viewer is more familiar with Aida’s complex back story....

Matador’s writers know exactly what they’re doing; or better said, that they know exactly where they are taking the spectator at a given moment. They have shown a masterful grasp of suspense and intrigue, withholding key information while giving us just enough to stay narratively afloat. If there were a slogan for this episode and its renewed narrative strategy, it would be Tony Bravo’s not so subtle insistence on taking “a more direct approach”....

Developer: Reptile Games Platform: PC Genre: Sidescrolling Platformer, Brawler The first thing you’ll notice about Megabyte Punch is that the in-game physics are very heavy to the touch, so to speak: so much so that when you smack an enemy robot in the face, you can actually FEEL like you’re really smacking him in real life, with a slight pause of anticipation before the meaty THWACK of robot fist to robot face resonates and sends your robo adversary flying....

We all idealistically imagine that being able to turn back time would be of huge benefit to us. We could make sure we undo all our mistakes and re-pave the path back to a saintly version of who we are today. But what if changing one thing sets something else in motion that’s actually a much worse thing than the thing you ended up with? Oh, crikey. The episode definitely had my mind in knots, which was unexpected in a supposedly ‘teen comedy drama’ that, so far, I have been enjoying mainly for the escapism and the sheer entertainment....

Our focus was on Alex in the first episode, Rudy in the second and now its Abby’s turn. Prior to this week’s episode, Abby was the most underwritten and mysterious character on the show, but another strong outing from the final series of Misfits has meant that she’s now as much a part of the gang as anyone. That’s quite a feat and, although the promise of a bogeyman imaginary monster wasn’t quite used to its full potential, this episode showed off another of Misfits’ signature moods – discomfort that ends up being quite touching....

This is Tom Cruise’s Impossible Missions Force agent Hunt in a nutshell: a romantic daredevil who seems to actively enjoy throwing himself off tall buildings. After nearly 20 years, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Cruise might have grown weary of his thrill-seeking alter-ego. But here he is in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation (film number five), clinging to the sides of planes, making leaps from high places and hurtling around on motorbikes....

In short, Walt Disney Animation Studios is on an almost-unparalleld run of continued success for it at the moment. And there is no way that Moana will derail that. But whilst you can’t help but draw a few The Little Mermaid (and maybe even Pocahontas) parallels watching Moana, the truth is that they’ve ventured off in a different direction again. Their focus is on a film where only two characters are on screen for a surprising amount of time....

And, of course, in addition to establishing a highly tangible seasonal atmosphere with the snow-drenched pavements of Philadelphia and the lavish decorations at the Heritage Club, Christmas is an integral part of the film’s middle section, as the Christmas Eve party at Duke and Duke represents the lowest point in Winthorpe’s cruelly-induced fall from grace – drunkenly crashing the party in a grubby Santa suit before getting pissed on by the weather, a passing dog and, indeed, life itself....