Continuum

What have you been watching? Including Murder In the First, Continuum, Suits, Old School and Undateable

20 June 2014 Rob Buckley 6 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.

A slightly slower week this week, with only one new show unveiled – SyFy’s Dominion. Hopefully, I’ll be reviewing that later today, but so far it looks like possibly the worst TV show ever made. Although obviously The Starlost still provides strong competition there.

After the jump,  a round-up of the regulars, with reviews of 24, Continuum, Enlisted, Game of Thrones, Murder In The First, Old School, Penny Dreadful, Suits and Undateable.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Murder In the First, Continuum, Suits, Old School and Undateable”

What have you been watching? Including Power, Crossbones, Halt and Catch Fire, Continuum, Suits and more

13 June 2014 Rob Buckley 7 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.

Despite working from home for most of this week and ironically therefore having more time to write things but less time to watch them, I’ve managed to keep up with the vigorous summer schedules (blimey, I remember when summer was dead and there was nothing to watch. Now look at it). Not many new shows starting this week, though, although I have reviewed the first episode of Steve Bochco’s new TNT show Murder In The First. And I also gave Power a go.

Power (US: Starz; UK: iTunes et al)
To say I was putting this one off as long as possible would be an understatement. Stop me when you want to get off: night club owner is also a drugs kingpin in a series exec produced by 50 Cent. It just sounds like it’s going to be horrible. And it was. I managed to get through 10 minutes before just deciding that the torture, relentless 50 Cent soundtrack, abuse/debasing of women et al was really not going to make it an enjoyable experience. It wasn’t without its virtues: it stars Omari Hardwicke (Dark Blue) and Naturi Naughton (The Playboy Club), who are both good, even though Naughton basically only has to act selfish and stupid. The direction is fine and it’s well shot. It’s surprisingly bi-lingual.

However, the next 50 minutes of the episode might be the best crime show since The Wire, but I’d rather watch open-heart surgery, because there’d be more humanity in that.

After the jump, yet more, with a round-up of the regulars, with reviews of 24, Continuum, Crossbones, Enlisted, Halt and Catch Fire, and Penny Dreadful

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Power, Crossbones, Halt and Catch Fire, Continuum, Suits and more”

What have you been watching? Including X-Men: Days of Future Past, Game of Thrones and Old School

2 June 2014 Rob Buckley 6 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.

You take a day off and blimey, even in summer, it’s suddenly all systems go at the networks. As a result, still in the viewing queue are the first episodes of NBC’s Undateable and Crossbones as well as AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire. Fingers crossed, I’ll have reviews of them up tomorrow and Thursday – and not such a backlog for my next round-up, which should be on Friday.

I did watch a movie, though:

X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014)
Probably the most famous of all the X-Men comic storylines – if any X-men comic can truly be said to have famous storylines – with the cast of the first three movies facing an apocalyptic future thanks to some killer robots called Sentinels. So they get Kitty PrydeWolverine to travel back in time to 1973 where he has to meet the cast of X-Men: First Class and guide them on a different path that doesn’t involve them all dying.

With an amalgam of X-Men writers and directors to match the on-screen melange, this feels like X-Men: First Class crossed with X-Men: the more fun, action-packed storyline and period setting of the former but with the coldness and coolness of the latter. Largely a Mystique/Professor X piece, with a lot of added Wolverine, it still manages to feature cameos from pretty much everyone who was in X-Men and X-Men: First Class, as well a few new ones, even if it’s only for a few moments, and with its time travel element, don’t be surprised by the fact it effectively wipes out X-Men 3 from the canon so that they can have more fun in the next movie, X-Men: Apocalypse, based on the second most-famous X-Men/X-Men: Evolution storyline.

None of it makes a lick of sense, mind, and no more fits into continuity than X-Men: Origins: Wolverine. All the same, the second best of the X-Men movies, thanks to Jennifer Lawrence, James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender (with a consistent accent for a chance) and Hugh Jackman. In fact, I’m going to see it again later this week.

After the jump, a round-up of the regulars, with reviews of 24, Continuum, Game of Thrones and Old School.

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What have you been watching? Including Hobbit 2, Penny Dreadful, Hannibal, Game of Thrones and Elementary

17 May 2014 Rob Buckley 8 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.

It’s been finale week in the US for the main networks, so nothing new for me to try out, but I did watch a movie.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
The second in a trilogy of movies that could easily have been squished into one movie or at most two, without losing anything. Considerably better than the first, however, the second sees aspiring burglar Hobbit Bilbo (Martin Freeman) heading off towards the Lonely Mountain with a bunch of dwarves headed by Richard Armitage to help them reclaim their birthright from the dragon Smaug with just a little help from the wizard Gandalf and a certain magic ring. As you might imagine, there’s a lot of extra plotting, largely involving Evangeline Lilly from Lost as an elf who has designs on Legoland Legolas (Orlando Bloom) but starts getting interested in Aidan Turner from Being Human (UK) instead, and Stephen Fry does an odd turn as the leader of Lakeland Laketown; Benedict Cumberbatch manages to interact with Freeman as the voice and motion-captured body of Smaug without conjuring the memory of Sherlock at any point. But for all the extras, which excel when they try to recapture the more adult feel and tie into the plot of Lord of the Rings, this still feels like a kids movie and not a particularly good one, either, although there are some good scenes recreated from the book at least. Watching it on iTunes, it suffered a bit from not being in 3D since as well as largely being shot like a fairground ride, with dwarves, elves and dragons sliding in and out of shot willy nilly, the colour loss of 3D hides the fact that the CGI is more than a bit rubbish.

After the jump, a round-up of the regulars, with reviews of 24, Agents of SHIELD, The Americans, Arrow, The Blacklist, Continuum, Elementary, Game of Thrones, Hannibal, Penny Dreadful, and Silicon Valley.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Hobbit 2, Penny Dreadful, Hannibal, Game of Thrones and Elementary”

What have you been watching? Including Bosch, 24, Agents of SHIELD, Hannibal Rising and Prisoners of War

10 May 2014 Rob Buckley 4 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.

Thankfully, there wasn’t much new on this week, so I haven’t been able to play catch-up on a few shows, and in fact I was able to watch one new show:

Bosch (Amazon Prime)
Based on the Michael Connelly series of books (which my mother in law likes so they must be okay), this stars Titus Welliver (of numerous shows but particularly Lost) as LA police detective Hieronymous Bosch. No really. That’s his name. Apparently co-starring most of the cast of The Wire, including Lance Reddick and Jamie Hector, it sees Bosch dealing with a civil suit in which he’s accused of shooting an unarmed man while also dealing with the discovery of the body of a long-buried child. But there’s no resolution to any of these stories, since this is just the pilot episode and a series is now on its way. It’s above average as cop shows go and there’s a definite air of authenticity to everything, but fundamentally it features a preposterous lead character who is also simultaneously very ordinary – it’s not like he’s writing poetry or doing brass rubbing for a hobby but is off listening to jazz and drinking while having a silly name. Worth a glance, but nothing special.

I also watched a movie!

Hannibal Rising (2007)
Given it’s the one Hannibal Lecter story I’d neither read nor watched, I figured it was about time, despite the bad reviews, to give it a go. And it’s an odd little piece, a prequel story that gives us a teenage Hannibal Lecter escaping cannibalism in wartime Lithuanian to find refuge in France. It’s interesting as it both informs and is informed by other Lecter pieces, giving us a reasonable explanation as to why Hannibal’s Hannibal is so handy in a fight, for example, while also giving us some piggy foreshadowing for Hannibal (the movie). It’s also got a good cast, with Dominic West as a dodgy-accented war crimes investigator, and Rhys Ifans and Kevin McKidd as the naughty war criminals who ate Hannibal’s sister. But its low budget, poor French lead (Gaspard Ulliel) and equally French setting make this feel like an international co-production B-movie along the lines of Mr Frost, rather than any of the preceding blockbusters, it uses the same technique as Hannibal to try to make Lecter look a hero by giving him an even worse enemy to deal with (although as the name suggests, he does become monstrous towards the end) and it can’t be said to be scary or horrifying in any real sense. One for completists only.

After the jump, the regulars, with reviews of 24, Agents of SHIELD, The Americans, Arrow, The Blacklist, Continuum, Elementary, Game of Thrones, Hannibal, Prisoners of War, Silicon Valley and Surviving Jack.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Bosch, 24, Agents of SHIELD, Hannibal Rising and Prisoners of War”