Doctor Who

• The Sarah Jane Adventures gets two more series
• Series five to be fairy-tale like

Film

• Police Academy to be revived
• Pet Sematary to be remade
• Rome movie moving forward
• Trailer for The Runaways with Kristen Stewart as Joan Jett

British TV

• MTV acquires The Secret Life of the American Teenager and Sweet Valley High [subscription required]
• Being Human creatives want to launch production company, have new idea for a show [subscription required]
• BBC4 to go back to its high-brow roots [subscription required]

US TV

• Casting, including Jeri Ryan on Body of Evidence, Robert Patrick on Edgar Floats and Nate Corddry on Our Show
• Scott Caan to play Danno on Hawaii Five-O
• Smallville gets a 10th season
• NBC's Angela Bromstad discusses the chances of Chuck and Heroes returning
• 24 on the bubble still

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Film

• Ian McShane to play the villain in Pirates 4?
• Odeon boycotts Alice in Wonderland because of DVD window
• Isla Fisher to star in Kiss & Tell
• Stephen Chow to star with Jack Black and Anne Hathaway in Way of the Dragon remake?
• Kevin James joins Vince Vaughn in Your Cheating Heart
• David Tennant, Jason Isaacs and Thandie Newton to star in Retreat

British TV

• iPlayer gets 120m views in January
• Eurosport offers live iPhone streaming [subscription required]

US TV

• Mucho, mucho pilot casting including Adam Arkin in Who Gets the Parents?, Leah Remini in It Takes a Village and Zeljko Ivanek in The Event
• Archer gets a second season
• Jim Belushi to star in Defenders
• T:TSCC's Leven Rambin joins Scoundrels
• Gil Bellows to guest on Smallville

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Doctor Who

• David Tennant to star in Single Father
• Doctor Who to get a 3D trailer

Film

• Amanda Seyfried to star in The Girl in the Red Riding Hood?
• Laurence Fishburne joins Contagion
• Ben Stiller to star in Brett Ratner's Tower Heist
• Ethan Hawke and Kristen Scott Thomas to star in The Woman in the Fifth
• Trailer for Wall Street 2
• Matt Damon and Ben Affleck up for wife swapping
• Julian McMahon to star with Milla Jovovich in Faces in the Crowd

• Yes, Prime Minster: the play

British TV

• Another series of Taggart commissioned
• Rufus Sewell to star as Aurelio Zen for BBC
• BBC Worldwide looking to create drama franchises like 24 and Heroes [subscription required]
• Alibi acquires Castle [subscription required]

US TV

• Maggie Q to star in La Femme Nikita, Roselyn Sanchez in Cutthroat
• Rita Moreno and Allison Janney to guest on In Plain Sight
• The Deep End/Life on Mars's Rachelle Lefevre joins John Wells' new medical drama
• Lost's Harold Perrineau to guest on CSI:NY
• Smallville/The Dukes of Hazzard's John Schneider to star in Back Nine for Spike
• Heroes does well in DVR ratings

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Film

• Jeffrey Dean Morgan joins The Unblinking Eye
• Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen join Michael Winterbottom's The Promised Land
• Another Riddick film
• Kevin Costner to star in A Little War of Our Own
• The Three Musketeers to get the Sherlock Holmes treatment
• Trailer for Russell Brand's Get Him To The Greek
• Alicia Silverstone and Amy Heckerling reunite for Vamps
• Full Toy Story 3 trailer  

British TV

• Tamsin Greig and Paul Ritter to star in Channel 4 comedy
• Nickelodeon UK to rebrand
• S4C cutting jobs

US TV

• The chances of survival for various shows in danger of cancellation, including Heroes, 24, and FlashForward…
• …and for Smallville, Supernatural, Fringe, The Forgotten, Chuck and Human Target
• More pilot casting including Kate Mara on Danny Boyle's 127 Hours
• Dennis Pennis's Paul Kaye to star in Larry Charles comedy for CBS
• HBO picks up Kate Winslet mini-series
• Season highs for The Middle and Modern Family
• Marsha Thomason to return to White Collar as a series regular [spoilers]
• Hulu to work on iPad/iPhone?

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In the US: Friday 5th February 2010, 8/7c, The CW

I gave up watching Smallville at the start of this season. As I said at the time, for most of its previous nine years, the show had admirably tried to square the comic book silliness of Superman with the sensibilities of Dawson's Creek, albeit with decreasing success. Come the tenth season, it just all got very silly indeed and went into comic book overload.

This week, the producers of Smallville fired up their Flash-powered running wheel to give us a two-part story stuck together as a movie. Doing its best to channel Watchmen, Absolute Justice saw former members of the so-called Justice Society of America being killed by an old enemy, necessitating its disgraced surviving members team up again and join forces with the fledging Justice League that Clark Kent, Chloe, Oliver (Green Arrow) and co have been trying to put together.

And like a giant bat signal in the sky, it called to my inner geek to watch it. There's ironic, huh?

Continue reading "Review: Smallville - Absolute Justice"

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Doctor Who

• Big Finish to do The Four Doctors, another Mara story
• Neil Gaiman writing ep for second Matt Smith season

Film

• Lucy Punch to star opposite Cameron Diaz to Bad Teacher
• Sam Worthington to star in The Fields
• Prince of Persia trailer
• Carey Mulligan to star in My Fair Lady?
• Casting on The Thing prequel

British TV

• Mark Gatiss, Matt Horne and Marc Warren to star in Boy George drama for BBC. No filming in Eltham, though! Pah!
• Persuasionists ratings halve
• Trevor Eve to star as hostage negotiator in ITV1 thriller

US TV

• Michael Chiklis to star in No Ordinary Family
• A&E drops one pilot, still considering Sugarloaf
• More pilot casting
• Lost's Daniel Dae Kim to star in Hawaii Five O
• Smallville movie hits a high…
• …as does Parks and Recreation, while Supernatural drops
• Henry Winkler joins Royal Pains [spoilers]
• David Goyer out as FlashForward show runner
• Julie Benz to stay longer on Desperate Housewives
• Lexa Doig and Nicolas Lea join V
• Sheryl Crow to appear in Cougar Town
• John Rhys-Davies to guest on Legend of the Seeker
• Heroes producers Tim Kring and Aron Eli Coleite working on III
• Enrique Murciano joins Off the Map

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Awards

• The results of the SAG Awards

Film

• James Marsden to star with Russell Brand in I Hop
• Naomi Watts joins Daniel Craig's Dream House

British TV

• David Abraham appointed chief exec of Channel 4
• Zodiak to buy RDF? [subscription required]
• CNBC to air free on Sky
• Ofcom backs Freeview HD copy-protection plan
• Joanna Page and Sir Donald Sinden starring in latest Marple

US TV

• Joanna Garcia to star in ABC's sisters comedy, plus casting on Shameless
• NBC picks up two comedies, Fox adds a drama…
• …another drama from the makers of Prison Break…
• …and a comedy while ABC adds a drama
• Bones beats CSI in the ratings, while Deep End starts off shallow
• Rex is probably not your lawyer
• Odessa Rae to play Silver Banshee on Smallville
• NBC's profits fell 30% in the last quarter
• FX to pick up Kevin Falls' Powers TV pilot?

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Awards

• The results of the National Television Awards

Film

• Sony picks up movie rights to sci-fi novels by Jeff Somers
• Trailer for Ryan Reynolds in Buried
• Clive Owen to replace Paul Walker on Protection
• Peter Dinklage joins The Knights of Badassdom
• Andy Serkis replaces David Tennant on Burke and Hare

• Young Sherlock Holmes' Nicholas Rowe and Alan Cox to reunite on stage

British TV

• BBC head of drama in Northern Ireland steps down
• Online viewing continues to rise [subscription required]
• BBC2 and BBC4 avoid merger, but more sport on BBC3?

US TV

• Mädchen Amick joins CSI: NY as a recurring character
• Carter MacIntyre joins Undercovers
• NBC asks for even more episodes of Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, Trauma, Community, and Parks & Recreation to fill Leno-shaped hole in schedules
• ABC picks up Cutthroat, Generation Y and The Whole Truth
• AMC picks up Walking Dead and The Killing
• Michael McKean to return to Smallville [spoilers]
• Grey's Anatomy flashback to feature Sarah Paulson and J August Richards
• Gene Roddenberry's The Questor Tapes to be remade
• CNN to expand into entertainment programming

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Film

• The A-Team teaser trailer
• Gossip Girl's Blake Lively to co-star in Green Lantern
• Another trailer for Kick Ass
• Trailer for From Paris With Love
• Remakes of Robocop and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes shelved
• John Malkovich joins Red

Theatre

• Jeremy Irons returning to the RSC for The Gods Weep

US TV

• Jeremy Irons to star in The Borgias
• Maz Jobrani to star in Funny in Farsi
• Day One cut back to a two-hour movie
• NBC greenlights six drama pilots…
• …considers Law and Order: Los Angeles…
• …after moving Jay Leno from primetime…
• …but what's going to happen to Heroes, Chuck, Trauma, Mercy et al?
• ABC greenlights Scoundrels based on NZ series Outrageous Fortune
• CBS cancels Three Rivers
• A sixth season for Supernatural?
• …and a tenth for Smallville?
• Someone's coming back to Chuck [spoilers]
• Dana Carvey to develop and star in new Fox comedy show
• Alexis Denisof discusses his supernatural pilot for ABC/ABC Family
• Moonlight to return?

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Doctor Who

• Promo pics from Waters of Mars

Film

• Cecile de France joins Matt Damon in Clint Eastwood's Hereafter
• Len Wiseman to direct Nocturne
• Dolph Lundgren to appear in Conan?
• Dwight Schultz to cameo in The A-Team

Theatre

• Lesley Manville, Anthony Head and Obi Abili to star in Six Degrees of Separation

British TV

• STV criticised for not showing Collision
• Ofcom rejects Freeview anti-piracy scheme

US TV

• Pam Grier to guest on Smallville
• Matthew Perry turns down Cougar Town role
• Eastwick cancelled, The Forgotten gets five more episodes
• Melissa George to recur on Lie to Me
• CBS orders comedy script based on Twitter's Shit My Dad says
• Mad Men finale gets 2.3m
• Behind the scenes of David Simon's Treme
• White Collar down 36%, SGU down to new low, Smallville on season high

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