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What have you been watching? Including The Flash, Homeland, Elementary, The Blacklist, Arrow and Selfie

14 November 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.

Ah, backlogs, backlogs, backlogs. They build up so quickly, but they’re so hard to clear. Whether I do this on a Friday or a Monday, there’s still always something I should have watched but haven’t. Still in the viewing queue are last night’s Gracepoint, Tuesday’s Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD and Sunday’s Cara Fi – a new S4C romcom starring Dave The Coach from Gavin & Stacey that I’ll probably write about on Monday, once/if I’ve seen both episodes one and maybe two. I’m toying with watching HBO’s The Comeback, but that’s technically on its second season, after a gap of a decade or so between seasons, so I might not. I’m also only halfway through the return of the marvellous The Fall. But I’ll be doing a lot more commuting next week, so I should be able to work my way through a lot more then.

My backlog would be a lot longer, incidentally, if I hadn’t decided that good as they are, I’m just not wanting to watch any more of either Jane The Virgin or The Affair. You may continue to watch them if you wish and taunt me with their goodness.

After the jump, though, I’ll be running through: Arrow, The Blacklist, Doctor Who, Elementary, The Fall, The Flash, Forever, Gotham, Homeland, Muianey, Selfie and Scorpion. One of these will be getting dropped this week – which is it? Probably not the one you think I’ll be dropping.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including The Flash, Homeland, Elementary, The Blacklist, Arrow and Selfie”

What have you been watching? Including Interstellar, Arrow, Gotham, Elementary and Plebs

7 November 2014 Rob Buckley 3 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 the fact a couple of shows in the US have decided to take a wee break this week, the moving of “What have you been watching?” to a Friday hasn’t quite solved my backlog issues. So I haven’t yet watched this week’s The Affair or Jane The Virgin – which might be telling me something, or might not be. Otherwise, I’m up to date.

Elsewhere, I reviewed The McCarthys and I managed to watch a movie this evening:

Interstellar (2014)
Christopher Nolan’s latest. Christopher Nolan is, of course, a genius and Interstellar is another convention-defying, mainstream movie industry-defying blockbuster with little busting or indeed action. Three of its biggest stars are only revealed halfway through and the whole thing is set in some dystopian near future where the Earth is dying and our only hope is for Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway to travel through a wormhole to a distant galaxy and try to find a new planet. An odd combination of 2001, 2010, Silent Running, Planet of the Apes and, erm, Signs, it’s thoughtful, tries its best with science – it’s one of the few movies to even attempt to have the repercussions of relativity as a main plot point, let alone worry about whether a black hole is spinning or not in order for its singularity to be of the right kind, or try to simulate five dimensions with just two – and has some lovely outer space bits filmed in Iceland.

But I don’t know whether it’s because I’m a genius, too, because virtually all the twists and turns the movie runs through seemed blindingly obvious to me. I saw them all coming and was mildly disappointed when the movie did exactly what I expected it to do, particularly in one particularly bonkers bit towards the end. YMMV, but I’m off to watch Gravity and Inception again after this, both of which do aspects of Interstellar much much better. Still, it is a Christopher Nolan movie so automatically in the top 10% of all movies this year, despite a run time of three hours and nine minutes, and it does handles emotions and the people side of things much better than previous Nolan movies have, while still being very smart.

After the jump, I’ll be running through: Arrow, The Blacklist, Elementary, Gotham, Gracepoint, Homeland, Muianey, Plebs, Selfie and Scorpion.

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Interstellar, Arrow, Gotham, Elementary and Plebs”

What have you been watching? Including The Anomaly, Constantine, Chef and Doctor Who

3 November 2014 Rob Buckley 13 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.

Sunday’s overload of TV, as well as a generally busy weekend, means that I’m very slightly behind on my viewing. That means that still in the viewing queue are the latest episodes of The Affair, Homeland, Mulaney and Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD. I’ve also got the first episode of The McCarthys to watch as well. As a result, I think “What have you been watching?” should shift to Friday again for the next few weeks, to deal with the latest schedule fun.

I did give The Knick (US: Cinemax; UK: Sky Atlantic) a brief try. This is Steven Soderburgh’s little project, starring Clive Owen, which aired in the Summer while I was away on holiday. Set in a turn of the 20th century American hospital, it appears to exist mainly to allow Soderburgh to play around with a brilliant surgeon who’s a racist drug addict and for Owen to try out an American accent that doesn’t fit him very well. It didn’t inspire me to watch any more of it anyway.

Before I get on to the regulars, though, I’ll briefly mention a few films I watched this week.

Chef (2014)
Jon Favreau is a cook who ends up having a fight with a restaurant critic (Oliver Platt) and getting fired. He decides to go back to basics by driving around the US in a van, but thanks to the fight going viral – and his son tagging along for the ride helps out a lot there – he soon becomes incredibly popular. Largely, the movie exists as a metaphor for Favreau’s experiences of going from independent movie making to big franchise movies (eg Iron Man) and back to indie movies again, and he’s got a lot of acting pals along with him to help (eg Sofia Vergara, Scarlett Johansson, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Downey Jr). But it feels very self-satisfied, not least to the effect the portly Favreau has on women, and ultimately very predictable.

How Do You Know (2010)
Reese Witherspoon is a baseball player who hooks up with fellow athlete and ‘playa’ Owen Wilson. But should she really be with lawyer Paul Rudd, who’s a little bit too ready to commit. How will she know? Why should you care? You shouldn’t and won’t. A fabulous cast that also includes Jack Nicholson, and directed by TV comedy super-director James L Brooks, but the funny bits are all in the trailer.

The Anomaly (2014)
A strange futuristic little movie, in which Noel Clarke from Doctor Who is a soldier who keeps waking up to find himself in all kinds of strange situations, only for him to lose consciousness again after 10 minutes. Cue the next strange situation. Over time, he begins to piece together what’s going on – at least, when he’s not being punched a lot by Ian Somerhalder (Lost, The Vampire Diaries) – and it could change the world. Directed by Clarke and also featuring Alexis Knapp (Pitch Perfect, Ground Floor), it looks surprisingly good for a low budget indie movie and has some good ideas: in its own way, it’s the Megaville of this decade. But it’s somewhat sabotaged by some well choreographed but poorly shot, impactless fight scenes, a decision that all the female characters should be topless/naked at some point or other, and by leaving Brian Cox to almost literally hang around with nothing to do. Blink and you’ll miss Freema Agyeman as Clarke’s wife.

That’s it for new new shows, though, but after the jump, I’ll be running through: Arrow, The Blacklist, Constantine, Doctor Who, Elementary, Forever, Gotham, Gracepoint, Homeland, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, Muianey, Plebs and Scorpion. Will I be dropping any this week?

Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including The Anomaly, Constantine, Chef and Doctor Who”

The BarrometerA Barrometer rating of 1

Third-episode verdict: The Flash (US: The CW; UK: Sky 1)

23 October 2014 Rob Buckley 1 Comment

In the US: Tuesdays, 8pm ET, The CW
In the UK: Tuesdays, 8pm, Sky 1. Starts October 28

Three episodes into The Flash, the latest CW adaptation of a DC comic book, and it’s becoming pretty clear that despite coming from the same creative team as the rather good Arrow, The Flash is very much Smallville but with a superhero who’s human and capable only of running very fast. With its “kryptonitedark matter freek of the week” that only the Flash can stop, its young love and failed romances, its concerns with great powers bringing with them great responsibillities, you could probably take any Smallville script, run a reasonably simple find-and-replace on it and end up with a The Flash script.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – after all, Smallville ran for a record-breaking 11 seasons and there’s many a TV show that would kill for even half that run. All the same a little innovation would be nice.

And indeed that’s what you get with The Flash, which rather than waiting three seasons as Smallville did to realise it was a superhero show and geek out, went Nerd Factor 10 from the first episode, and mined the comics for some of the best Flash supervillains and other superheroes available. And in contrast with the early 90s adaptation starring John Wesley Shipp (who plays the Flash’s dad in this adaptation), it’s got series arc after series arc, crossovers with Arrow and a greater willingness to embrace the comic book’s later attempts to make the Flash more than just the fastest man alive, with a time travel plot that lifts the show above what could simply be fluffy, brainless, “crash bang”, teen kisses fare into somewhat darker territory. 

True, the science is still bobbins but we’re talking about someone who got to run at 300mph after a lab accident, so that comes with the territory. And as with Smallville‘s earlier episodes, there’s the frustration of watching our hero having to learn about his powers and come into others we know he’ll have, and so, for example, having to deal with a mist villain in the third ep by running around a bit, rather than using his arms to create disruptive air vortices as we know he’ll be able to do at a later point.

But as with Smallville, too, it’s all part of the journey, something again explicit in the (spoiler alert) time travel plot, with the Flash’s protective overseer from the future – probably Professor Zoom – potentially causing the accident that created the Flash in the first place so that he’ll become the hero necessary to save the day in years to come and maybe even cause that time travel capability to be created.

Of course, the Flash doesn’t have the real-world popularity of either Batman or Superman, so to the average viewer, it’ll all be new. And the producers are of course resultingly at liberty to change big chunks of mythos if they want to – need Barry and Iris end up married as they are in the comics? No more than helper doctor Caitlin Snow has to become Killer Frost, who was never engaged to the future Firestorm in the comics, no matter how many lines about their being ‘like fire and ice’ are thrown in for the fans.

This embracing of comics is ultimately going to be either a strength for the show, which has already been picked up for a full season, or a weakness. If you don’t like comics, prefer something a bit darker and Nolan-esque, and find even Arrow to be too escapist for you, there’s no way in hell you’re going to enjoy this. But if bright, shiny fun comics are your thing, and you don’t have huge expectations of its young cast or lowish budget, then The Flash is well worth your time – especially when the only real competition in town are  Gotham and Constantine. 

Barrometer rating: 1
Rob’s prediction: Should last at least a season but will need to work a bit to ensure it doesn’t fall into a rut

News: The Syndicate goes posh, ITV Encore’s Frankenstein Chronicles, Vinnie Jones is a Brick + more

21 October 2014 Rob Buckley 2 Comments

Film casting

Canadian TV

UK TV

  • BBC1 renews: The Syndicate with Lenny Henry, Anthony Andrews, Alice Krige et al

UK TV show casting

New UK TV shows

New UK TV show casting

  • Peter Mullan, Christian Cooke, Charlotte Spencer et al join the BBC’s adaptation of Iain Banks’ Stonemouth

US TV show casting

New US TV shows

New US TV show casting