Year: 2015

Weekly Wonder Woman

Weekly Wonder Woman: The Legend of Wonder Woman #2, DC Bombshells #18

23 November 2015 Rob Buckley 3 Comments

As with last week, most excitement for our Amazon Queen stemmed from movie news. But fashion got a look in, too, funnily enough.

We started by getting our first glimpse of Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman in Wonder Woman, courtesy of Gadot herself.

The observant will note the presence of Big Ben in the background. Whether that’s simply because that’s where Wonder Woman will be fighting a wartime menace (Ares, the Nazis, AN Other baddie) or because this is the incorporation of the nu52 orthodoxy that Diana lives in London in modern times, I can’t say – I suspect we’ll have to wait until the movie is released.

We also got a press release, too.

Principal photography is underway on Warner Bros. Pictures’ Wonder Woman feature film, the highly anticipated action adventure from director Patty Jenkins (“Monster,” AMC’s “The Killing”), starring Gal Gadot (the “Fast & Furious” movies) in the role of Diana Prince/Wonder Woman. The character will make her big screen debut this spring in “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” but the new film will mark her first time headlining a feature.

The film also stars Chris Pine (the “Star Trek” films) as Captain Steve Trevor, Robin Wright (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” Netflix’s “House of Cards”), Danny Huston (“Clash of the Titans,” “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”), David Thewlis (the “Harry Potter” films, “The Theory of Everything”), Ewen Bremner (“Exodus: Gods and Kings,” “Snowpiercer”), Saïd Taghmaoui (“American Hustle”), Elena Anaya (“The Skin I Live In”) and Lucy Davis (“Shaun of the Dead”).

The film is being produced by Charles Roven, Zack Snyder and Deborah Snyder, with Richard Suckle, Stephen Jones, Wesley Coller, Geoff Johns and Rebecca Roven serving as executive producers.

Joining Jenkins behind the camera are director of photography Matthew Jensen (“Chronicle,” “Fantastic Four,” HBO’s “Game of Thrones”), Oscar-nominated production designer Aline Bonetto (“Amélie,” “A Very Long Engagement,” “Pan”), and Oscar-winning editor Martin Walsh (“Chicago,” “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit,” “V for Vendetta”), and Oscar-winning costume designer Lindy Hemming (“The Dark Knight” trilogy, “Topsy-Turvy”).

Principal photography will take place on location in the UK, France and Italy.

Set to open in 2017, the Wonder Woman feature film is based on characters created by William Moulton Marston, appearing in comic books published by DC Entertainment. It will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.

How wonderful.

Of course, this isn’t the first effort to get Wonder Woman onto the big screen, although it’s certainly the most successful. One previous effort was George Miller’s Justice League: Mortal, which was to feature Megan Gale as Wonder Woman. And it’s been revealed this week that she would have looked like this:

Megan Gale as Wonder Woman in Justice League: Mortal

Of course, there was also an earlier attempt by one Mr Joss Whedon to develop a Wonder Woman movie. That got as far as a script and if you happen to be in Manhattan Beach, California, on December 5, you can watch the whole thing performed in costume. Maybe.

And if all that weren’t enough, Gwyneth Paltrow and Valentino are teaming up to develop their own Wonder Woman clothing line: 

Gwynnie's Wonder Woman line

But back in the comic book world, last week, things were looking a little better for our Wondy with two appearances, which we’ll be perusing after the jump: DC Bombshells #18 and The Legend of Wonder Woman #2. 

Continue reading “Weekly Wonder Woman: The Legend of Wonder Woman #2, DC Bombshells #18”

News: Netflix is Lost in Space, Sky Arts’ HG Wells anthology, extra Code Black

23 November 2015 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Internet TV

New UK TV shows

  • ITV green lights: Paula Milne ‘domestic horror drama’ HIM
  • Sky Arts green lights: anthology adaptation series The Nightmare World of HG Wells, with Ray Winstone, Michael Gambon, et al

US TV

US TV show casting

New US TV shows

New US TV show casting

What have you been watching? Including Master of None, You’re The Worst, Arrow, Doctor Who and Limitless

21 November 2015 Rob Buckley 22 Comments

It’s “What have you been watching?”, my chance to tell you what movies and TV I’ve been watching recently that I haven’t already reviewed and your chance to recommend things to everyone else (and me) in case I’ve missed them.

The usual “TMINE recommends” page features links to reviews of all the shows I’ve ever recommended, and there’s also the Reviews A-Z, for when you want to check more or less anything I’ve reviewed ever. And if you want to know when any of these shows are on in your area, there’s Locate TV – they’ll even email you a weekly schedule.

I’m starting to lag a bit, as you may have noticed by the fact I’m writing this on a Saturday. It hasn’t helped that Netflix put out all of Marvel’s Jessica Jones yesterday, at the same time that Amazon Instant Video decided to do the same with The Man In The High Castle, both of which I’ll hopefully be reviewing in full next week. I was also still having to deal with the second half of the first season of Master of None.

So although I managed to review Into The Badlands (US: AMC; UK: Amazon Instant Video) this week, I’ve yet to get round to either Chicago Med – a hospital spin-off from Chicago PD which itself was a spin-off from Chicago Fire – and Crackle’s auction house drama The Art of More. Hopefully, I’ll get round to them on Monday, but on the strengths of the reviews of The Art of More and the strengths of both Chicago Fire and Chicago PD, I can’t imagine they’ll be shows worth sticking with.

All the same, and despite the fact a few shows are coming to an end anyway as December looms on the horizon, I think it’s time to make some room in my schedule by deleting a few programmes from my list, since The Bridge/Bron/Broen is returning to the UK tonight, guaranteeing I have two more hours of viewing every week to get through. And I haven’t even tried The Last Panthers on Sky Atlantic yet.

So I don’t think I can be bothered to watch the second episode of Donny!, and I think The Last Kingdom and The Beautiful Lie can be dropped without the world ending – Heaven knows I’ve been patient enough with them, as they’ve taken a long time to not do a huge amount so far.

I passed a third-episode verdict on the marginally improving Agent X this week, but I don’t think it really merits a second chance in this time-constrained time, despite the presence of Sharon Stone. I’m also going to give further episodes of Blood and Water a miss, since although it’s quite a brief show and it’s started to find its feet this week by turning into a sort of ‘Chinese-Canadian Detective meets In Treatment‘, with whole episodes just multi-lingual, three-handed interrogation scenes at the police station, the actual crime being investigated just isn’t that interesting. 

I’ll let you know what happens with Ash Vs Evil Dead once I’ve watched the latest ep. Supergirl would be off the viewing list by now if it weren’t for the fact I’m watching it my wife so we can mock its atrocious dialogue and plotting. Grandfathered is just too variable but hits highs enough and is charming enough that I might stick with it for a while. Blindspot‘s on Mondays – that’s probably the only reason I’m watching it now.

But I’ll be reviewing the lastest episodes of them and Arrow, Doctor Who, The Flash, Limitless, Master of None, The Player, and You’re The Worst after the jump, so we can talk more about them there.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Master of None, You’re The Worst, Arrow, Doctor Who and Limitless”

News: Irvine Welsh’s TBS Hype, German Martin Suter adaptations, 11.22.63 trailer, ITV’s The Good Karma Hospital + more

20 November 2015 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Film trailers

  • Trailer for Extraction with Bruce Willis, Gina Carano and Kellan Lutz

Canadian TV

European TV

Internet TV

New UK TV shows

  • ITV green lights: Goa medical drama The Good Karma Hospital, domestic horror drama Him

US TV

US TV show casting

New US TV shows

New US TV show casting

Into The Badlands
US TV

Review: Into The Badlands 1×1 (US: AMC; UK: Amazon Instant Video)

19 November 2015 Rob Buckley 55 Comments


In the US: Sundays, 10/9c, AMC
In the UK: Tuesdays, Amazon Instant Video

There is a famous paradox. Although Knight Rider claimed it was Zeno’s Paradox, it’s not. But it is at least a paradox. Here it is:

What happens when an unstoppable force hits an immovable object?

What’s the answer? Into the Badlands. How so? Because it’s an actual, real-world test of that paradox. It takes the unstoppable force that is the Hong Kong martial arts movie and confronts it with the immobable object of an AMC TV series.

Despite the likes of Indonesia’s The Raid coming along to challenge them, Hong Kong martial arts movies are, of course, the fastest genre in the world. If you have any interest in martial movies, you watch Hong Kong martial arts to see the best – and fastest – martial artists the silver screen has to offer. I’m most partial to classic Jet Li myself, but Donnie Yen, Sammo Hung, Jackie Chan et al have all formed part of my viewing habits since Jonathan Ross’s Son of The Incredibly Strange Film Show revealed their delights to me back in the 80s.

And the slowest genre in the world? AMC TV series. The network practically fetishises slowness:


Even its fastest shows – Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead, Better Call Saul – have a glacial chill to them, and that’s before we consider the almost geological time scales over which the likes of Mad Men, Hell on Wheels and Halt and Catch Fire operate.

And Into The Badlands is a deliberate attempt to bring these two genres together. Rather bizarrely the brainchild of Smallville creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, it stars Daniel Wu, an American actor but the star of dozens of Hong Kong martial arts movies.

The show is set in a post-apocalyptic America. This isn’t that surprising: martial arts date from before guns and are made largely redundant by the presence of guns, so a martial arts movie usually needs to have a reason for there to not be any guns – something somewhat problematic in modern-day and even historic America, but not so hard in a post-apocalyptic, post-technological society. Unles you turn the guns into a virtue, of course.

As with most other post-apocalyptic societies, everything’s become weirdly patriarchal and feudal in Into The Badlands, with seven ‘barons’ now running America, following a series of wars. Each has made their territory safe and stopped the wars by getting rid of guns. In return, everyone either learns how to be a ‘Clipper’ – martial arts soldier cops – assuming they’re male or goes to work in the fields picking poppies or getting married to the Baron.

Wu plays one such Clipper, who patrols the territories, enforcing the justice of his increasingly unstable, increasingly bewived Baron (Marton Csokas from Falcón, Rogue, The Equalizer, The Bourne Supremacy). One day, he comes across a peaceful boy sought after by another Baron, ‘The Widow’, only to discover that he gets superhero killing powers at odd moments. 

What will he do? WIll he take the boy into the lawless ‘Badlands’ between Barons’ terrorities, looking for the boy’s mother and answers to his own past? And will he do it before the Sun expands into a Red Giant and dies (aka the next AMC Upfronts)?

Continue reading “Review: Into The Badlands 1×1 (US: AMC; UK: Amazon Instant Video)”