No Scarlett Johansson, unfortunately, but here’s how Iron Man 2 was originally going to start before director Jon Favreau changed his mind.
[via]
Month: September 2010
Friday’s 3D plants news
Doctor Who
- Suranne Jones to guest in third episode of next series
Awards
- Results of the Rose D’Or TV festival
Film
- Kate Beckinsale to return for Underworld 4
- Woah. A third Bill and Ted movie on the way
- Day of the Triffids: 3D?
- Christopher Guest planning new comedy
- Trailer for The King’s Speech with Colin Firth
Theatre
- Avenue Q going on tour
- Penelope Keith and Peter Bowles’ The Rivals to transfer to West End
British TV
- Comedy Central UK wants one-third of its output to be British commissions by 2013 [subscription required]
- More details of ITV’s Monroe with James Nesbitt
- The InBetweeners to finish this series
Canadian TV
- The Listener gets a second season
US TV
- Army Wives and Drop Dead Diva get renewed for additional seasons
- Eliza Dushku to guest on Big Bang Theory
- Jon Seda joins Treme
- One Tree Hill and Hellcats get additional episodes
- Wolfgang Petersen developing 60s motor racing drama for Starz
- House’s Michael Weston to guest on The Good Guys
- Amber Benson to guest on Grey’s Anatomy
- Bryan Singer and McG working on two online series
- Modern Family sets ratings record, Undercovers okay, The Whole Truth tanks
US TV
Review: The Whole Truth 1×1
In the US: Wednesdays, 10pm Eastern/9pm Central, ABC
In the UK: Not yet acquired
So with most legal dramas (eg The Defenders, LA Law, Shark, The Deep End et al), you have a very obvious set-up. You have the heroic/anti-heroic lawyers who have to defend/prosecute the obviously guilty/innocent defendant. By the end of the episode, said defendant is proven guilty/innocent thanks to our hero’s/heroes’ resourcefulness. Cue the next episode.
Producer Jerry Bruckheimer likes to mix things up a little bit. For example, with 2006’s Justice, although our heroes were the intrepid defending attorneys, we never knew until the end whether the client was actually guilty or not – all we knew was that our lawyers were going to defend them to the best of their abilities, using whatever tricks they had up their sleeves.
The Whole Truth builds on this and takes it one stage further. Here we have both a heroic defending counsel and a determined prosecutor and we get to see both sides of the case built, with both lawyers using whatever tricks they can come up with to win. And at the end, we find out whether the defendant was actually guilty or innocent.
Sounds good, doesn’t it? Certainly, with Rob Morrow (Northern Exposure, Numb3rs) as well as Maura Tierney (ER, Rescue Me) on board, you’d be thinking that we were onto something good. However, while you won’t feel the pain you might get from watching The Defenders, The Whole Truth is still quite an average legal drama that you can quite easily ignore without feeling you’re missing out on the cultural zeitgeist.
Here’s a trailer, followed by another, almost identical trailer – see if you can spot the difference.
US TV
Review: Undercovers 1×1
In the US: Wednesdays, 8/7c, NBC
In the UK: Not yet acquired
I really wanted to like this. It’s a spy show (cool). It’s about a husband and wife team (cool, Mr and Mrs Smith notwithstanding). It’s from JJ Abrams (cool). It’s supposed to be fun and action-packed (cool). It’s got two black leads, one of them secretly British (cool, even if she has been in Bonekickers), one of them currently in a film with Ali Larter (so very cool).
Undercovers should be awesome with a side-helping of absolutely awesome.
Yet I was very far from captivated by this first episode, in which two married CIA agents turned caterers are brought back out of retirement to continue one of their old investigations. Or was it because the wife used to date the guy who’s missing? Or was it because of gruff Gerard McRaney’s special side project?
You see: that’s how uncaptivated I was.
Damn. I was really hoping for a halfway decent new show this season.
US TV
Review: The Defenders 1×1
In the US: Wednesdays, 10/9c, CBS
In the UK: FX UK, some time in 2011
Allow me to cut to the quick: James Belushi and Jerry O’Connell star in The Defenders.
Still here? Ah, you don’t watch much TV do you? If you did, you’d realise that having either names, let alone both, in the cast list of a TV show is enough to guarantee extreme dreadfulness and/or cancellation (cf According to Jim, Carpoolers, Rex is Not Your Lawyer, Do Not Disturb).
Now, while The Defenders doesn’t sink to the same levels as Do Not Disturb, this legal dramedy about two Las Vegas lawyers – originally intended to be part of a reality show about Las Vegas, until the producers realised the two lawyers they were working with had some very interesting stories – has very little going for it.
Here’s a trailer so you can see what I mean.