Year: 2010

US TV

More on the incredible disappearing Ali Larter from last year’s Superbowl

9 February 2010 Rob Buckley Post a comment

The Superbowl over in the US this weekend proved to be one of the most watched TV shows ever. This year it was on CBS, but last year it was on NBC and as you might recall there was a tie-in commercial to promote Heroes. If you don’t, here it is:

However, as you also may recall, despite turning up to film the commercial…

Heroes superbowl promo

…Ali Larter was edited out, even if you can still see her in it if you look hard.

So, my memory prompted by this year’s Superbowl, I asked someone who works behind the scenes if they knew why she’d been chopped out. Their response:

No… we were shocked too when we saw it air and she was out.

The mystery deepens. Solution by next Superbowl?

Tuesday’s “2.5, not 24” news

9 February 2010 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Film

British TV

US TV

US TV

Review: Smallville – Absolute Justice

8 February 2010 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Absolute Justice

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?

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The CarusometerA Carusometer rating of 3

Third-episode verdict: Life Unexpected

8 February 2010 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

In the US: Mondays, 9/8c, The CW

To maintain a sense of consistency with my first-episode review, I’m about a week late with this third-episode verdict. But hell – let’s do it.

So as we all recall, Life Unexpected sees a precocious teenager who’s been through seven foster families track down her birth parents so that she can be emancipated and lead her own life, free of adults. However, despite leading separate lives now, they decide to be ‘Lux’s’ parents for real.

Now, the first episode was actually quite good: it played a little with the darkness of the concept, had some reasonably witty dialogue and moments and the characters were broadly likable. Trouble was, it was pretty much a self-contained concept – where was the show going to go from there?

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