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I give special credit to Stephen Root, one of our most enjoyable character actors (NewsRadio; Office Space; Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?; King of the Hill; Pushing Daisies; and a stage production of Driving Miss Daisy I saw years ago). He enters the series as Nathaniel Sackett, a new Continental spymaster. We know little about the real Sackett (1737-1805) aside from how he came recommended to Washington as “a Person of Intrigue, and Secrecy,” and that let the show’s writers create an oversized personality for Root to deliver....

As the hour begins, Tallmadge is struggling to transport the captured, wounded, and still annoying British captain Simcoe (Samuel Roukin) across northern New Jersey to the rest of the American army. Above Tallmadge is Gen. Scott (Michael Gaston), threatening to court-martial him for mistreating Simcoe and dismissing his pleas to install “friendly eyes in New York.” Below him is a set of unreliable private soldiers from County Donegal by way of Pennsylvania....

Actually, I’m still not sure, but I can say there’s been, for the first time since the first two episodes, two really good episodes of V in a row. One of the strange things about the show is that every week I was sure that Tyler and Lisa were the weakest members of the ensemble. However, the more they get put into the background (or at least used properly), the more I see they’re actually not bad from an acting standpoint, or from character standpoints....

On Tuesday, it was announced that Diesel and his One Race Films had partnered with finance and production company The H Collective to acquire the rights to the xXx franchise, purchasing from Revolution Studios. xXx 4 will be financed by H Collective, alongside investment partners including Sparkle Roll Media, HCH Media, Dadi Cinema, and Angeleno Studio. Along with Diesel, Joe Roth and Jeff Kirschenbaum will produce, as well as Samantha Vincent for One Race Films and The H Collective....

Voltron Season 7 Episode 8 No beach episode for you, Voltron fans! It quite literally hits home because their families are in danger. Lance’s family is seemingly okay, same for Pidge, but what about Hunk? Did his family make it in with Lance’s? What about Shiro? What about… Adam? Was that him in one of the first fighter waves? We’ll have to see. If Adam is dead… Well, that’ll be a discussion if it happens....

The selection this week is the drowning in accolades but starving on viewers, former ABC series, Better Off Ted. Premise: This workplace sitcom on acid chronicles Ted Crisp’s (Jay Harrington) employment as the head of research and development of the tyrannical, soulless megacorporation Veridian Dynamics. The cast is fleshed out with Ted’s supervisor, Veronica Palmer (played with manic delight by a very in-her-game Portia DeRossi), and the rest of the co-workers and scientists that Veridian’s make-up consists of....

As appealing as all that potential fan service could be on a surface level though, I have to say the fact that it is still somewhat disappointing that this merger is all but certain to be concluded before the end of the year. Yes, despite surely committing heresy among the fanboy set, I’ve never really considered Marvel Studios to be the “home” of any property, and I find this growing sense of brand loyalty, where pledging an oath of fealty to one studio or another is demanded, to be reductive....

In the trio of movies he’s made so far, Chandor has marked himself out as one of his generation’s most exciting filmmakers. As both writer and director, he fills his films with crisis and uncertainty; whether they’re weathering the storm of a banking disaster or bailing out a sinking yacht, his characters are constantly dealing with the ground moving between their feet. Chandor’s movies may be low-concept, but their high-drama makes them endlessly absorbing....

Z Nation Season 3 Episode 3 It seems last week’s two-hour premiere of Syfy’s Z Nation, which took place chronologically in the middle of Season 2, wasn’t really our premiere. “New Mission,” on the other hand, dropped us right back into the action where Season 2 left off, and I mean to the exact moment. Finally, we get to know who this new foreign military faction is and, of course, if 10K (Nat Zang) is alive or perished in the submarine… OK, we all knew he’s alive, but how?...

Oh man. So, it turns out that Z Nation has totally won me over. Just when I thought I had the show perfectly summed up, it unwraps further delicacies for me to sample. This being a SyFy show, they also aren’t afraid of self-awareness. That’s why when this week’s episode centered around a volatile storm including a tornado full of zombies, I stood up and slow clapped when a character managed to quietly and seriously deliver the line “Well it’s not sharks....

People, on both sides of the pasture fence, feel very passionately about My Little Pony. Some people argue that it is ridiculous that grown men enjoy the show (as they play Mario on the SuperNintendo?). We think geek culture has always broken down gender and age barriers and that My Little Pony fits into this tradition. So here are the 10 reasons we think you should be watching My Little Pony....

24 Season 8 – 5:00-6:00am After last week’s revelation that Dana has been a terrorist mole all along, I was keen to see how the show would handle this plot twist, as I was far from impressed at the show’s sudden curve ball. It didn’t take long for us to find out that Dana is fully prepared to aid the cause of the IRK nationalists in this episode, and Dana’s character, totally switched....

Day 8: 12:00 – 1:00am Bazhaev, who turned almost ridiculously easily from hard ass sociopath with no morals to a blubbing girl in a matter of minutes, was a wet flannel, easily giving in to the pressure applied off-camera, apparently making a deal for his son’s immunity, should he turn himself in. And, in an almost equally wimpish turn, Josef quickly decides to put all of his hard work on the shelf, and agrees to return the nuclear rods to CTU....

This is representative of writer-director Tom Tykwer’s slightly sunnier take on Dave Eggers’ acclaimed novel, in which struggling salesman Alan travels to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to pitch a virtual reality conferencing system to the king. Unfortunately, Alan is on thin ice with his company, who have only sent him because he has a tenuous in with the royal family, and the delays to his presentation are manifold. Next to Hanks and Tykwer’s previous collaboration, Cloud Atlas, this one looks like the height of simplicity, but believe it or not, there are other grounds for comparison between the two films....

You couldn’t make it up. Well, Russell T. Davies could, because he’s brilliant, but he didn’t. As advertised at the beginning of all three instalments, A Very English Scandal is based on a true story, one told first by the national press and then retold by John Preston in his 2014 book of the same name, subtitled Sex, Lies and a Murder Plot at the Heart of the Establishment. The scandal’s absurd twists and unlikely characters are played here for knockabout laughs....

Marvel’s Agent Carter: Season 2, Episode 3 I said this before but it bears repeating: I really like Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. It’s not on my tip top of must see comic TV list (and isn’t it great we have a list these days), but it is an enjoyable way to visit the Marvel Cinematic Universe on a weekly basis. And while we are on the subject of Marvel TV, I am looking forward to Marvel’s Most Wanted as well....

Brian Gilcrest (Bradley Cooper) is a former military man turned defense contractor. When rich billionaires like Carson Welch (Bill Murray) need their dirty work done, people like Brian are the ones that respond. After a catastrophic event in Afghanistan that left him crippled and broke, the former high-flier is now working on a gate opening ceremony in Hawaii, his former base of operations and the home of the one that got away, Tracy (Rachel McAdams) and her husband Woody (John Krasinski)....

Blind Spot After a short hiatus, and the diabolically bad angel story that preceeded, I guess the only direction for Alphas was up, though if I’m honest Blind Spot wasn’t the best of this seasons offerings by far. I’ve come to the conclusion that Brent Spiner (Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation) is always asked to be one of a few things: a robot, a crazy scientist, or a crazy insane mad scientist....

Altered Carbon Episode 3 In this episode of Altered Carbon, Kovacs tells Elliot, “Don’t take this personally, but I don’t care about anyone. But if it gets me what I want, I’ll still help them.” Don’t believe it for a second! Yes, these reviews have made note of Joel Kinnaman’s one-note action hero portrayal of Kovacs thus far, but several scenes contradict his insistence on emotional detachment, and the character development both for the Envoy and for those he connects with enriches the series immensely....

American Dad!: Season 12, Episode 12 Last week’s American Dad might have been a worthy example of how Roger works in a microcosmic sense when we’re given him in small doses. “The Dentist’s Wife” dives head first into the wild card of a character and how his introduction to Meredith Fields, the most interesting and fabulous woman in Langley Falls, shakes him to his core. You see, at the time Roger is masquerading as the Samantha Kingsbury, and Roger naturally takes offense to fancy Meredith, her fancy book club, and her fancy charity (for awareness), as it means less cream at the top for Samantha Kingsbury....