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.
Elsewhere, I’ve already previewed Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and reviewed Grace and Frankie, which is all the new shows I’ve had time for this week (so far…). But it’s winding down time for a lot more shows this week, so after the jump, as well as the latest episodes of Community, The Flash, Game of Thrones and Silicon Valley, a look at the season finales of American Crime, Arrow, The Blacklist and Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. Some of these I won’t be returning to next year, some I will.
I have, however, watched a movie. Well, half of one.
Birdman (2014)
Michael Keaton is a washed up actor who once played a superhero. No, that’s his role in this, which is as meta as it sounds. Here, he’s trying to put on a Broadway play to revive his career. Unfortunately, while Naomi Watts is great, the male lead isn’t, but when an accident puts him out of the running and Ed Norton volunteers to replace him, Keaton finally has a chance at success. Except Norton’s a flake and producer Zach Galifianakis won’t let Keaton fire him, because they can’t afford to.
Unfortunately, this is dull stuff. We managed to get halfway through before we lost interest completely and if you were expecting anything really to riff off Keaton’s Batman credentials in that time, you’d be wrong, beyond a couple of jokes and occasional voiceover – I believe ‘Birdman’ turns up later. Instead, it’s largely about the relationships between the film’s slightly tedious, annoying characters (including Andrea Riseborough and Emma Stone). Maybe it gets better in the second half but the first lost us.
The film’s most notable feature, though, is director Alejandro González Iñárritu’s decision to shoot the entire movie to make it look like a single continuous take. While it’s fascinating to watch (and to see if you can spot the joins), it’s more an intellectual puzzle rather than anything involving.
A few days ago, I offered you trailers for all of Fox’s new Fall 2015-6 shows. Kind of. Fox has more shows up its sleeve – it just didn’t have trailers for them.
Maybe it was protecting us, maybe it was just being a bit forgetful, but now I’ll regale you with two new trailers: comedy The Guide To Surviving Life and part comedy, part slasher flick Scream Queens.
The Guide To Surviving Life
Single-cam comedy in which a bunch of college graduates try to work out what they want from existence, being dissatisfied with life and even partying like epic twats not holding the allure it once did. It looks absolutely horrendous and is notable mainly/only for Justin Bartha (the one in The Hangover who never got to do anything fun with the others) as the elder brother of one of the characters, and Meaghan Rath, who’s potential girlfriend material – assuming she goes with this, rather than NBC’s People Are Talking, which she’s also lined up to star in.
Scream Queens Glee/American Horror Story’s Ryan Murphy gives us something that’s part comedy, part horror show that stars horror doyennes Jamie Lee Curtis (Halloween) and Emma Roberts (American Horror Story, Scream 4) as dean and sorority queen of Wallace University, where every episode someone is going to get killed by someone dressed as a killer. Everyone is a possible murderer, but whoactuallydunnit? Also stars Lea Michele (Glee), Abigail Breslin and Nasim Pedrad (SNL, Mulaney). Tongue-in-cheek horror mixed with actual horror ain’t my thing, but YMMV.
You may notice that in comparison to all the other upfronts entries I’ve written, USA’s is a bit different. That’s because USA has this habit of showing at the Upfronts programmes it’s going to be airing in the summer and later. And it’s also difficult for me to class at least one of these as a new show, for obvious reasons. Looks like Suits and Royal Pains are going to last forever at this rate, because USA’s never going to have anything to replace them with…
Mr Robot
Rami Malek is an anti-social programmer whose life is uprooted when he is recruited into a hacking group by the mysterious Mr Robot (Christian Slater). Looks dark, miserable and uninviting in exactly the same way that last year’s new USA shows Rush and Satisfaction did. Plus it’s got Christian “Show Killer” Slater in it, so is likely to be cancelled by the end of the season, tops.
Complications
Jason O’Mara stars as a doctor who becomes a vigilante while grieving the death of his wife. No change there for the voice of the animated Batman, then. If, incidentally, this sounds familiar, it’s because USA unveiled this at last year’s Upfronts, too – yes, it’s been sitting in the back catalogue for an entire year. Sounds like USA has a lot of faith in it, doesn’t it?
