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 time for me to be all agile again and move “What have you been watching?” to Fridays – there’s now almost nothing on Thursdays to watch, other than Vikings and The Blacklist (which isn’t long for this world), and given there’s now Game of Thrones, Silicon Valley and American Odyssey (well…) in the US, and Deadline Gallipoli over in Australia on a Sunday, I think one must follow the advice of Miyamoto Musashi in the second of The Book of Five Rings and be like water, flowing round the obstacle of the TV schedules, rather than trying to oppose them.
That means there’ll be another one of these on Friday. But for now, I’ve already reviewed and previewed The Messengers and Wayward Pines elsewhere, and as I mysteriously managed to overlook The Comedians until now, won’t be able to review the first two episodes of that until later in the week. I’m also planning on doing a full season review of Daredevil at some point this week, too, having binge-watched it last week.
So that means that after the jump, it’s just the regulars: American Crime,American Odyssey,The Americans, Arrow, Community,The Flash, Game of Thrones, iZombie, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, Silicon Valley and Vikings. One’s for the chop, BTW. And isn’t that a lot of Americans? Reminds me of Dodgeball…
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’ve been away for a fortnight, so that means there’s a fair bit to cover this time round, including (gasp!) some new shows. But first, movies.
The Raid 2 (2014) (Netflix)
Sequel to the brilliantly kinetic The Raid, in which the cream of Indonesian martial arts talent kicked arse in a variety of amazingly choreographed scenes, photographed beautifully by Welsh director Gareth Evans. This time, hero Rama, rather than fight his way up a building, instead has to go undercover with a crime family, first in prison, then in Indonesia at large, as the young son tries to take over the empire from his dad by stirring up trouble with his Japanese rivals.
Unfortunately, compared to the brilliant original, The Raid 2 is a somewhat dull affair for most of the first half, as Evans makes the mistake of trying to give us story and acting, rather than fists and kicks to the head. Everything starts to crank up nicely towards the end, though, with Evans giving us some beautifully shot scenes and the various martial artists do some death-defying tricks. However, everyone’s ability to survive multiple machete strikes starts to get more than a tad improbable at times.
Zero Dark Thirty (2012) (Netflix)
Kathryn Bigelow’s dramatisation of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, with Jessica Chastain the driven CIA analyst on a decade-long quest to catch the al Qaeda head. Again, a slow starter with years going by with nothing much happening. It’s only once Chastain makes the right connections that things begin to crank up, with Bigelow lending Seal Team Six her Oscar-winning action skills at the end. The movie is thankfully jingoism- and hyperbole-free, giving us a thoughtful CIA trying to do its best against near impossible odds, with no sci-fi weapons to help out. But weirdly, in retrospect, the movie feels more like a trial run for later Marvel movies, with Seal Team Six seemingly recruiting largely from SHIELD (Callan Mulvey, Frank Grillo) and Guardians of the Galaxy (Chris Pratt). There’s also the mysterious cameo by The Barrowman himself.
After the jump, tele, including first tries of American Odyssey, Olympus, Thunderbirds are Go! and Daredevil, as well as look at the regulars: 12 Monkeys, The Americans, American Crime, Arrow, The Blacklist, Community,The Doctor Blake Mysteries,The Flash, Forever, Fortitude, House of Cards, Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD, One Big Happy, The Returned and Vikings. I’m giving up on not one, not two but three of those – which do you reckon they’ll be?
And no, I haven’t watched last night’s Game of Thrones yet, so no spoilers.
After all, she’s quite important to the Daredevil comic strip.
Probably not, though. I mean if they couldn’t get Scarlett Johansson for Marvel’s Agent Carter, which actually had the entire Black Widow programme’s back story in it, what chance a Netflix TV appearance, no matter how good it might look?
Back in 1975, things might have been different. Angela Bowie acquired the TV rights to both Daredevil and Black Widow for all of a year and tried to create a TV series based on the two characters. That got as far as a photo shoot with actor Benny Carruthers as Daredevil and Bowie as Black Widow.
However, it was considered too difficult and expensive to film, so nothing happened. A shame or small blessings? You decide…
PS I should probably say “Next time, baby” for the full Iron Man effect. It’s not really me, though.
