Keep/starting watching Heroes. Plus CSI science?

1 May 2007 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

UK viewers: if you haven’t been watching Heroes on SciFi or hadn’t been planning on watching it when it arrived on BBC2, reconsider now. Cos I promise you you’ll be giggling like 12-years-old thanks to the sheer unadulterated coolness of the show by the end of the series (or at least by last night’s episode, which was episode 20, BTW).

Also, I know CSI: Miami is a load of old rubbish, but I draw the line at this kind of inane cobblers coming out the mouth of a forensic scientist: “when gasoline burns, it produces carbon dioxide and there was no trace of carbon dioxide on your clothes”; and “that fire wasn’t going to start until you introduced oxygen into the mix.”

Seriously, there’s fudging science for entertainment purposes and then there’s the level of giving David Caruso one of Professor Zarkov’s rays to zap criminals with. CSI: Miami has now gone too far.

More day-off news

1 May 2007 Rob Buckley 7 Comments

Film/Comics

  • A new trailer for The Fantastic Four
  • Mandrake The Magician finally has a director. Seriously? They think we want an adaptation of that?
  • Robert Downey Jr explains the politics of Iron Man.
  • Hugh Laurie and the other Chris Evans join the cast of Night Watch
  • Mel Gibson’s planning a sequel to Maverick?
  • It’s all go on The Mummy 3: 26-year-old Luke Ford will play Brendan Fraser’s son, Michelle Yeoh will play the wizard and they’re recasting Rachel Weisz

US TV

News

Monday morning day-off news

30 April 2007 Rob Buckley Post a comment

Comic Doctor

You’d never guess I wasn’t supposed to be working today, would you? Must. Work. Harder…

Doctor Who

Films

  • Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez’s Grindhouse will be two separate movies in the UK. The first part will be out on September 21st
  • Iron Man will have both the original grey and the more famous red and gold suits
  • Frost-Nixon is being made into a movie with Frank Langella as Nixon. Will Michael Sheen get to be Frost again?
  • Ridley Scott to direct revisionist Robin Hood film Nottingham, with Russell Crowe as the brave and good Sheriff
  • Daniel Craig doesn’t like having his bottom snapped, allegedly
  • Darren Aronofsky wants to make a film about Noah
  • Gordon Ramsay: the movie?
  • Old Clive Owen mini-series Second Sight to be adapted

Technology

British TV

  • Freesat’s been given the all-clear by the BBC Trust. Good news: it’ll be futureproof
  • Richard Herring talks about his new sitcom

US TV

  • New characters for Adult Swim
  • Conan O’Brien blames NBC for the demise of Andy Barker, PI
  • Studio 60‘s coming back on May 24 in the current ER slot
  • Whatever happened to Masters of Science Fiction?
  • The UK’s Man Stroke Woman to be remade by and with Sean Hayes
UK TV

Review: Out – The Complete Series – Special Edition

29 April 2007 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

Many people will only know of the late Tom Bell as the sexist DS Otley in Prime Suspect. But his acting career was wide and varied. Perhaps Bell’s finest hour was in Out in his BAFTA-winning lead role of Frank Ross, a former bank robber who tears up his old manor after eight years inside, trying to find out who put him behind bars.

Written by Trevor Preston, a contributor to Callan and previous Euston Films productions such as Special Branch, Out is firmly rooted in the revenge thriller genre, as well as the general Euston Films milieu. Like Walker in Point Blank (1967) and Carter in Get Carter (1971), Ross is an iconic figure, a sharply dressed gangster who’s prepared to go to almost any lengths to find out who informed on him.

While the grittiness of those films lives on in these six episodes, it would be wrong to think of Out as simply a standard crime thriller. Taking the Krays and other real-life criminals as guidance, it explores the relationships that a career criminal might make with others, including his family, his friends, other criminals and the police, as well as the rules that bound societies like that together during the 60s and 70s.

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