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Once Upon A Time season 3 episode 12 review: New York City Serenade

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ReviewKylie Peters10 Mar 2014 - 08:12

Once Upon A Time hits the reset button and introduces a new villain. Here's Kylie's review...

This review contains spoilers.

3.12 New York City Serenade

Remember at the end of the midseason finale when Storybrooke got destroyed, and all the fairytale characters were sent back to the Enchanted Forest, and Emma and Henry ended up in New York City with all their memories of Storybrooke erased? Big deal, right?

By the end of this week’s mid-season premiere, all that has pretty much gone down the toilet. Emma easily regains her memories by drinking a potion from Hook. The fairy tale characters have mysteriously returned to Storybrooke, and can’t remember anything that happened during their year back in the Enchanted Forest. All of this has something to do with the Wicked Witch of the West.

So everybody’s stuck in Storybrooke and some crazy evil person is casting some world-jumping curses on them. Sound familiar to anyone?

There are a few repercussions, though, that will remain. One is that we now have an extra year’s worth of Enchanted Forest flashbacks to tap into, which hopefully will reveal how the fairy tale characters got back to Storybrooke. Another is that Henry still has not regained his memories. Serious Regina angst is sure to follow.

The episode jumps through both time and space, between Emma in New York City one year after Storybrooke was destroyed, and the fables in the Enchanted Forest mere hours after Storybooke was destroyed. Emma is living in a swanky apartment with Henry, who has grown ridiculously wise in a year. I guess that’s what happens when there’s no Snow around for the writers to feed lines like “Not every guy’s just going to leave you” and “You’re always looking for something to be wrong… Sometimes it’s okay to accept things are good.” Emma is dating a guy named Walsh, who freaks her out with an overly hasty engagement proposal.

Emma is also being stalked by Hook, who uses photos from Storybrooke, old plane tickets, and the suggestion that she break into Neal’s apartment to convince Emma that he might not be entirely crazy. Eventually Emma drinks his deus ex machina potion and remembers everything. She goes to break up with Walsh and it turns out he’s secretly a flying monkey. Well, that’s weird. And also a convenient way of getting Emma’s newest ball and chain out of the story. But seriously girl, you thought you loved him? You got played by a flying monkey? Respect points lost.

In the Enchanted Forest and one year in the past, the gang tries to regroup and heads for the Queen’s castle. Along the way they are joined by Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Looks like that old “Regina’s true love” plot point is going to return. I admit they might make an amusing couple, both being sassy and willing to do questionable things. But I prefer Regina as the strong, independent single woman.

They meet Aurora and Phillip, and afterward Aurora makes a foreboding comment about having to tell “her” about their arrival or “she” will take it out on their unborn child. Meanwhile, Neal hasn’t given up hope that Rumple might be alive. Which obviously he is, and he needs to come back. Like, now. Regina attempts to eradicate the pain of losing Henry by burying her heart in the forest. Good coping mechanism, Reggie. Luckily, Snow stops her.

When they reach the castle, the fairy tale folks discover that someone is inside, and is casting a spell to keep them out. They’ll have to figure out who it is and how to get around it.

Fast-forward again to the Emma timeline, one year after Storybrooke was destroyed. She, Henry, and Hook return and find the town intact, and all its citizens back from the Enchanted Forest, unable to remember the past year. But it definitely involved Snow getting preggers.

The episode ends on an appearance by the much-hyped Zelena, the Wicked Witch of the West, who declares, “The Queen may be evil but I’m wicked and wicked always wins.” Umm, synonymous words are synonymous. She’s got a great costume but is this awful metallic shade of green. The flying monkeys actually don’t look too bad, for Once CGI.

The Wicked Witch will take next week’s episode by storm. Can she hold up next to Once’s outstanding villains Regina and Rumple? I’d be surprised and impressed if she could, but I’m ready to give her a try.

Read Kylie's review of the previous episode, Going Home, here.

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Grimm season 3 episode 14 review: Mommy Dearest

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ReviewChristine Horton10 Mar 2014 - 08:12

Grimm might just have created its scariest monster yet. Here's Christine's review of the latest episode...

This review contains spoilers.

3.14 Mommy Dearest

After last week’s episode, fans of the show could be forgiven for thinking the title of this week’s instalment, Mommy Dearest, would relate to the imminent birth of a new royal heir.
Not so. While Adalind does finally give birth – in a log cabin with hitman Meisner playing midwife no less – the title refers to another scary mother, one that’s far more sinister than Adalind.

In fact, despite stretching out the pregnancy plotline since season 2, the birth of Adalind’s baby was strangely downplayed. The events in the Swiss Alps act as bookends to an episode that instead focuses on probably the most hideous Wesen yet, and the discovery by Sergeant Wu that some folktales are actually real.

But back to the birth: Adalind is now the mother to a baby girl – who is already displaying some pretty freaky powers. Speaking of powers, as soon as Adalind delivers the child her Hexenbiest powers return in full force, which judging by the self satisfied smile on her face, was her priority.

We should also prepare for the awesomeness that will be a protective baby daddy in the shape of Renard; when he hears about the birth of the little girl there is a definite softening, before he sets about making plans to extricate mother and daughter from Europe.
Keeping on the pregnancy theme, Mommy Dearest features a mother so scary she makes the original Mommie Dearest Joan Crawford look like Ma Larkin.

Many fans of the show have wondered when Wu will be brought into the Scooby Gang, and this week he drops the wisecracks when he gets involved with a Wesen-related crime against one of his friends.

This episode is rooted in Filipino folklore, and the Wesen is as horrific as we’re likely to see on the big screen. The Aswang is a terrifying demonic creature that climbs into the bedrooms of pregnant women as they sleep, and unleashes a long, black spiky tongue that pierces their stomachs and sucks the baby’s amniotic fluid out though the women’s navels (the tongues are reminiscent of the alien’s tentacles in the movie Slither.)

This happens to Wu’s childhood friend, Dana, giving us an opportunity to find out more about Wu’s background than we’ve had before, providing some character depth – as opposed to just being on hand to provide sarcastic comments during investigations.

Yet again Grimm’s tackling the issue of tradition versus the modern ways, a recurring theme this series; it turns out its Dana’s mother-in-law who expects to feed on her son’s firstborn child in order to prolong her own life. “You owe me this,” she tells her son. Yikes.
But more than any Wesen plotline, it’s a big moment for the series when Wu sees something he can’t explain.

However, despite Hank’s protestations, Nick and the gang decide not to bring Wu in on the secret. “I don’t want to drag him into this, not until we absolutely have to,” says Nick.
“Hearing the truth is not the problem. It’s seeing it and not being able to explain it that pushes you over the edge,” Hanks argues.”You leave him unprepared anything could happen.” LISTEN TO HANK, PEOPLE!

Wu can’t reconcile what he’s witnessed and checks himself into a psychiatric hospital – but even then Nick doesn’t tell him he’s not crazy. I understand the writers wanting to string it out a little longer, but the whole thing is just annoying – especially considering how comparatively well Hank and Juliette took the discovery. The ship of denial has sailed people, and not telling Wu now is just cruel.

Aside from all of that, we finally discover Wu’s first name: Drew. Yes, Drew Wu.
Let’s do more secret sharing next week.

Read Christine's review of the previous episode, Revelation, here.

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Helix episode 10 review: Fushigi

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ReviewBilly Grifter10 Mar 2014 - 11:18

Julia and Alan take a ride in the wilderness to discover they still love each other. Here's Billy's review...

There’s a cardinal sin that a TV show should never commit, and Helix flirted with doing that this week. The unforgivable action was being tedious, because up to this point Helix hasn’t been utterly boring even if it’s not always made sense.

The first five minutes focused almost entirely on Sarah, trying desperately to drum up some sympathy for this character. Sorry, I didn’t feel it, as I nearly fell asleep. She’s annoyed me from the outset, and it’s patently obvious now that she’ll be given Narvik-A in an attempt to save her life at some point. Probably by Alan, who is also infected with poor judgement, the true virus of this show.

With some interludes where people have conversation where they ask questions, don’t get replies but walk out of the door anyway, the rest of Fushigi involved Julia and Alan talking a road trip to find the errant Dr. Adrian, and the missing samples. Luckily they don’t need to walk the 50 miles to the base he’s headed to, on a snowmobile.

And, this is where Helix managed to irritate the hell out of me, because those who write it just can’t be bothered to remember information that they’ve previously given us.

In the first episode we got told that the helicopters had to leave because they’d freeze outside without cover, suggesting that the base had no hanger or garage. But now they magic up a snow tractor that’s obviously been kept inside. We know that because later in the piece Daniel comments that the engine hadn’t frozen up after it was left for just a short time outside Echelon base.

Logically they go to the base to meet Doc Adrian, and see his snowmobile outside. Oops, sadly it is nowhere to be seen. In fact we only see one snowmobile there during the entire Echelon sequence, when we should see three. Because the soldier needed one to get there, and so did Daniel. Continuity - they’ve heard of it.
I should also mention the confused geography again, because Juneau is nowhere near Greenland, and it’s over 500 miles south of the Arctic Circle, a distance you’d never cover in 8 hours on a snowmobile. At some point we’ll probably discover that this is all set in the South Pole, and the person who wrote this uses a Sat Nav to navigate his ride-on mower.

But I’m getting distracted by details, because what goes on at Echelon is tripe of the highest order. I could see it all being silly the moment that the red dot appeared.

I wish US shows would stop using the laser red dot on guns, because it’s moronic. Not only does it warn anyone you’re shooting at where you’re aiming, but it also gives away your location too. That during this one-sided firefight that Julia and Alan decide it’s the perfect time to resolve their post-marriage difficulties seemed like a really poorly timed homage to Mr and Mrs Smith.

If redemption came, and I’m not sure it ever did, it was the discovery of Gunnar, chained beneath the station. From here we found out about the 500 special people, the immortals. That hints that Hitake broke the golden rule with Julia and made number 501, though he’s since addressed the imbalance with Constance.
According to Gunnar, and he was a bit loopy, he’d been there for 29 years. That information didn’t explain how he wasn’t frozen solid in all that time, even if he is immortal. And, if true, it also doesn’t provide any convincing theory as to why cutting his jugular with a set of bolt cutters would actually kill him.

What stops ‘rebirth’, as Gunnar puts it, is decapitation, but I’m yet to be convinced he’s dead and won’t regenerate eventually. With the sneaky reveal at the end where we see that Julia ended up with the strain, the possibility that it will get used on Sarah took a step closer.

I’m getting quite bored with Helix, and would rather like it to end soon, before the summer comes and all the ice in this wonky landscape melts.

Read Billy's review of the previous episode, Level X, here.

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The Vampire Diaries season 5 episode 15 review: Gone Girl

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ReviewCaroline Preece10 Mar 2014 - 21:24

Is The Vampire Diaries spending too long focusing on boring love stories? Here's Caroline's review of the latest episode...

This review contains spoilers.

5.15 Gone Girl

Is Katherine really gone, or is this just another turn of events bound to come back and haunt Stefan and co. in the future? I’m leaning towards the latter simply because, if the writers had wanted to kill Katherine off for real, they would have done it back in the 100th episode. Even then, if they were really keen to do this doppelganger body-swap storyline first, surely this episode, Gone Girl, would have been her swan song?

Instead, despite Katherine’s spirit being expelled from Elena by the gypsy dagger the gang used to help Matt at the beginning of the season, her spirit lives on presumably in some hell dimension.

This leaves the door open for her return (it’s not as if they need to sort the actress’s schedule out in order to bring her back) and, with every other character coming off more and more frustrating and unlikeable as the show progresses, that’s fine by me. This episode, for example, was a more than fitting send off in that it humanised Katherine more than ever while still allowing her to be the upfront, manipulative villain we’ve known her to be all of these years. It brought her journey with Nadia full circle at last, with mother and daughter finally finding peace just before dying, and even her relationships with Damon and Stefan were somewhat finished off.

The flashbacks of Nadia’s search for her mother were, as usual, pretty boring distractions from what was really going on, but the way they tied into her final goodbye to Katherine (and, less importantly, Matt) almost made them worth the screen time. Even if the show does yet another u-turn and brings both Nadia and Katherine back to life at a later date, the fact that this episode at least allowed Tyler’s werewolf bite to kill someone was kind of refreshing. When was the last time someone important actually, really, properly died on this show? The only problem is, with Katherine finally out of their lives, where do we go from here?

Because, as has been spoken about again and again by ardent fans and rapidly departing casual viewers alike, The Vampire Diaries really isn’t at its best right now. Katherine, despite being a relatively minor character for the show’s overall run, have been the sole element keeping things interesting and afloat and, through her presence, Stefan has also had something to do besides obsess over the tired central love triangle. Now that Elena has control over her body back and Damon has sworn to come clean, is all we have to look forward to yet more passive aggressive conversations about who’s better for who and who loves who more?

The show would not necessarily improve with new love interests or new twists on old relationships – such as with Stefan and Caroline or Jeremy with the new witch – and what it needs to do is establish some area of interest outside of the love lives of these characters. That’s why Katherine’s arc has been so endlessly compelling, because she was a complicated character with more on her plate than her love for the Salvatore brothers and, by taking it back to her regret surrounding Nadia and away from her life-long obsession with Stefan here, we were reminded of that. All shippers have been scorned too many times at this point, and trying to keep them all happy at once is just dumbing the show down.

Even the twist of having Katherine inject Elena’s body with super-strong Augustine serum before she departed was more about her relationship with Damon that anything else, and I can’t imagine her dangerous new bloodlust will make her any more interesting now that my least favourite Nina Dobrev character is back. How is this more dangerous than the serum that Damon’s currently grabbling with, and does it mean that they’ll still want to feed on each other or will their mutual affliction somehow cancel that out? Either way, I’ll reserve judgement on this until after the mini-hiatus, hoping and praying for some compelling new developments to invest in soon.

Read Caroline's review of the previous episode, No Exit, here.

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Looking back at Sabrina The Teenage Witch

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FeatureCarley Tauchert11 Mar 2014 - 07:00

Carley's 90s kids TV look-back comes to a Melissa Joan Hart classic, Sabrina The Teenage Witch...

“Sabrina, we have something to tell you. You see there are two realms, the natural and the supernatural and it turns out the immutable laws of physics...You’re a witch”

1996 saw a revival of big action, big budget movies taking the top spots at the box office (Independence Day, Twister, Mission: Impossible and The Rock), the Spice Girls making their mark on the UK pop charts as another, Take That, decided to call it a day.

In the September of that year, ABC began to air a supernatural sitcom which would go on for seven seasons, span a series of merchandise and introduce the TV world's best talking cat ever.

What’s it About?

Sabrina Spellman (Melissa Joan Hart) finds out on her sixteenth birthday that she is a witch and has been sent to live with her aunts not because her parents are away working but to learn the art and responsibility of magic. Navigating her way through high school and college with powers proves not to be an easy feat but with her aunts behind her and major love interest Harvey to keep her busy, nothing too disastrous can happen, right?

Why Did I/Why Should I Watch It?

After the success of Saved by the Bell in the late eighties and early nineties, there seems to be a very quick succession of teen based sitcoms filling the airwaves, some were more successful (Boy Meets World, California Dreams) than others (USA High, Saved by the Bell: The Collage Years) but they were mostly all in a similar vein: a group of friends getting into trouble, fixing it while getting sage advice from the adults involved.

Sabrina, although very much in line with the winning formula set out by the above mentioned shows, had the supernatural twist of the lead being a witch and not only trying to get though being a teenager but also handling her powers while in many ways reining in her aunts who, unlike other shows in the genre, end up causing more chaos then they solve.

It was filled with great strong female characters who were not written into the usual, ‘girl next door’, ‘love interest’, ‘friend’ but as educated, funny and independent women, something which felt lacking back in the genre then and in some ways even now.  

As great as that was, the real reason I tuned in every week was because it truly was just very funny. There were huge slapstick elements which caused genuine laugh out loud moments along with funny, culturally relevant scripts which although have dated slighted now, are delivered to perfection. 

And then there was Salem. If I were to ever create a list of my favourite TV characters ever he would have to be up there. Sarcastic, funny with a constant somewhat evil plan to take over the world he was and still is the best thing about the show, and some of his antics make me giggle to this day just thinking about them.

Best Episodes

 

Pilot

To Tell a Mortal

Pancake Madness

Welcome Back Duke

What A Witch Wants/Soul Mates

 

What Else do I Need to Know?

Sabrina the Teenage Witch is based on the Archie Comic Book Series, first published in 1962. The first screen version came in a made of television movie starring a young Ryan Reynolds.

An animated spin off of the show, Sabrina: The Animated Series aired from 1999-2000 and the main character of Sabrina was voiced by Melissa Joan Hart’s sister Emily Hart.

The show started actors who had made names for themselves in other teen franchises most notably Melissa Joan Hart (Clarissa Explains it All), David Lascher (Blossom), Soleil Moon Frye (Punky Brewster) and Elisa Donovan (Clueless).

 

If You Like This You May Also Like

Eerie Indiana

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Boy Meets World

Clarissa Explains it All

 

Read Carley's look-backs at The Wonder YearsRound The Twist and Are You Afraid Of The Dark?

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The rise and fall of Carolco

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FeatureRyan Lambie11 Mar 2014 - 05:39

In the late 80s, Carolco was one of the biggest studios in Hollywood, but by 1995, it was gone. Ryan charts its dramatic rise and fall...

Paul Verhoeven is not a happy man. It's 1994, and the Dutch director of (among other things) RoboCop and Total Recall is in a pivotal meeting with executives at Carolco Pictures. They're in the boardroom to discuss Crusade: a lavish, $100m historical drama described as Spartacus meets Conan.

With a script by Walon Green (The Wild Bunch, WarGames), and a cast headed up by Arnold Schwarzenegger, it sounds like the kind of star-filled, opulent film Carolco Pictures is famous for making. The supporting cast includes Jennifer Connelly and Robert Duvall. The script is vibrant and brash. There are massive sets being built in rural Spain. But privately, Carolco's bosses are anxious; they have another hugely expensive project in the works - the pirate action picture Cutthroat Island - and with debts mounting, they can ill-afford to finance one film, and certainly not both at the same time.

When Carolco's executives tell Verhoeven they want guarantees that Crusade won't drift over its agreed budget, the director is outraged. His previous films with the studio, Total Recall and Basic Instinct, had made them millions. With he and Schwarzenegger at the helm, Crusade would surely follow suit. And they wanted guarantees?

Arnold Schwarzenegger was sitting next to Verhoeven at the time, and as he later told Empiremagazine, could only observe as the director vented his fury.

"There's no such thing as guarantees!" Verhoeven raged. "Guarantees don't happen and if anyone promises you guarantees, they're lying! We don't even know that if you walk out of the building here you won't get hit by a truck. There's no guarantee that we're going to make it 'til tomorrow! I cannot have control over God – I don't even believe in God, why am I talking about God? But someone, nature, could just rain for three months and then what do we do? How can I give you a guarantee? This is ludicrous!"

And with that, Crusade was dead. Desperate to save itself by turning out what it hoped was a sure-fire hit, Carolco ditched the blood-and-thunder Verhoeven picture and put its money on the more upbeat, crowd-pleasing Cutthroat Island instead. Except, as history now recalls, Cutthroat Island didn't please crowds, and instead became one of the most infamous financial misfires in Hollywood history.

Cutthroat Island represented the final roll of the dice for Carolco, a company that was once one of the biggest independent production companies of the 1980s and early 90s. In its heyday, the names of its founders, Mario Kassar and Andrew Vajna, were a familiar sight on posters, and the pair's extravagant deals resulted in some of the era's most expensive and successful movies.

Yet even at the peak of its powers in 1991, the cracks in Carolco's edifice were already beginning to show, and by 1996, the company was bankrupt. To find out what went wrong, we have to head back to the company's beginnings in the 1970s.

Kassar and Vajna: the early years

Before Carolco, Mario F Kassar and Andrew G Vajna were two young outsiders with big ideas. Mario Kassar was born in Beirut in 1951, and caught the filmmaking bug from his father, an independent movie producer. By 18, Kassar had already established himself as a miniature mogul, having purchased several Italian and French films for distribution in the Far East.

Andrew Vajna, meanwhile, took a rather more circuitous route into the film industry. Born in Budapest in 1944, Vajna moved with his parents to America when he was 12. He was greatly interested in music and later studied photography, but by the time Vajna was in his early 20s, he was living in Hong Kong and the proprietor of a large and profitable wig-making factory.

It was in Hong Kong that Vajna began to move into the film business, first by purchasing a pair of cinemas, and then by producing a kung-fu movie - Deadly China Doll (1973), starring martial arts star Carter Wong. Made for a snip at $100,000, the movie was a hit, and earned $2.5m worldwide.

Vajna and Kassar met at the Cannes Film Festival in 1975, and bonded over their mutual ability to successfully market films in foreign markets. With a long term aim to finance their own movies, the pair formed Carolco in 1976 - a name they'd taken from a long-dead company based in Panama.

"We just bought the name," Kassar later told Entertainment Weekly. "It means nothing."

Cracking Hollywood

The pair's first venture together was The Sicilian Cross (1976), a best-forgotten Roger Moore thriller shot in Italy. Despite its suspect quality, Vajna and Kassar managed to buy the rights for $130,000 and sell it on for a profit. By the early 1980s, Vajna and Kassar had bought an office in Hollywood, and had served as executive producers on The Changeling (1979), The Amateur, and Escape To Victory (both 1981).

The first two movies were well-received but financially less successful. World War II football drama Escape To Victory, however, was a minor hit, and marked the first time the producers would cross paths with Sylvester Stallone - a star who would play a key role in Carolco's future growth.

Hunting around for a project they could produce together, Kassar and Vajna settled on First Blood, a novel written by David Morrell in 1972 about a returning Vietnam war veteran's mistreatment and subsequent psychological meltdown in small town America. Warner Bros had been trying to get a film adaptation of the book off the ground for years, and having cycled through several major stars and dozens of scripts, they decided to wash their hands of it.

Kassar and Vajna gamely paid Warner $385,000 for the rights to First Blood in 1980, and settled on Stallone as their star. After a fair amount of back-and-forth negotiation over Sly's fee, a hefty seven-figure salary was agreed on. Carolco didn't yet have the finances to even make the movie, much less pay Stallone, but the producers knew that Stallone's star status could be used to secure the requisite investment.

Having acquired the funds to make the film from a European bank, First Blood went into production, where its filming overran and its budget quickly crept over the $11m originally earmarked. Then Kirk Douglas quit the role of Colonel Trautman in the middle of filming - he disliked the alteration of the book's ending - and Richard Crenna had to be rushed in as a replacement.

Yet despite the bumpy production, First Blood was a major hit in October 1982, and eventually made $125m on its $14m investment. Carolco was now a major Hollywood production company.

The 80s boom years

Kirk Douglas may have strongly disliked Sylvester Stallone's altered ending for First Blood, but Carolco would soon reap the rewards from the actor’s decision. The source novel saw Rambo die at the hands of his superior, Colonel Trautman, but Stallone was determined to make Rambo more sympathetic and less violent in the movie. Above all, Stallone wanted Rambo to survive to fight another day.

That decision led to Rambo: First Blood Part II, a $25m action film that would focus on the more upbeat aspects of the first picture - action, helicopters, Sly's rippling muscles - and less on fascist cops and damaged psyches. This time, Rambo would go back to Vietnam and win the war all by himself.

A young James Cameron wrote the script, and Italian filmmaker George P Cosmatos was the headlining director. (Legend has it, however, that Stallone was secretly at the helm, and dominated the film's direction even more than he reportedly did on the set of First Blood.)

The release of First Blood Part II was (cynically, you could argue) timed to coincide with the anniversary of America's withdrawal from Vietnam ten years earlier, and critics largely hated it. Yet the sequel captured a feel-good, patriotic mood among the American public, and it was a huge success, making $150m in the US alone. First Blood Part II also demonstrated Kassar and Vajna's understanding of the global market, since the film made the same figure again overseas, pulling in a grand total of just over $300m in worldwide receipts.

Carolco continued to expand in the wake of First Blood Part II's success, and would soon become known for its high-profile movies led by major Hollywood stars. Those stars came with a price tag, however, and the company quickly became infamous in trade magazines for its huge payouts to actors like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger. As British producer David Puttnam noted in Stephen Prince's book, A New Pot Of Gold, "Carolco in particular became an instant 'major' by offering the stars more money than the established studios offered."

After First Blood Part II, Carolco produced such movies as Angel Heart and Extreme Prejudice, which weren't huge hits, but were well received and made by respected filmmakers - Alan Parker in the case of Angel Heart, and Walter Hill in the case of Extreme Prejudice. But what Carolco really wanted was another Rambo - and they were willing to pay just about anything to see it made.

To this end, Stallone was handed $16m to reprise his starring role - a startling amount of money for the time - and the resulting sequel wound up costing around $62m. The excess spilled into a film itself, which arrived in a dervish of explosions, gunfire and even more helicopters than First Blood Part II.

Although Rambo III fell short of the domestic grosses enjoyed by the previous movie, its success abroad pretty much guaranteed a profit - and then there were all the videogames, toys and other bits of lucrative merchandising to consider.

Bolstered by the financial cunning of tax attorney Peter Hoffman, who'd become president in 1986, the late 80s saw Carolco climb to the heights of its success. The company's deep pockets funded the likes of Red Heat, a buddy-cop movie that earned Arnold Schwarzenegger an $8m pay packet. Films of the late 80s and early 90s like Lock Up (starring Stallone), Jacob's Ladder, King Of New York and Mountains Of The Moon were more low-key, but all Carolco needed, the thinking went, was one major hit each year to bankroll those lesser performers.

The peak years

Stories of Carolco's extravagant spending became common during the late 1980s. According to Entertainment Weekly, there were parties, private jets, generous dividends, the names of new movies deals lit up in fireworks, and stretch limos prowling around Bel Air with the company's name proudly emblazoned on the number plates. Back at Carolco HQ, big names including James Cameron, Paul Verhoeven and Oliver Stone were all working away on movie projects.

For Andrew Vajna, however, Carolco's growth was all too much. "After Rambo, we were trying to become a major studio. I felt that was the wrong direction," Vajna told Entertainment Weekly. "My feelings were very negative and it caused a lot of friction between Mario, myself, and Peter, who was by then Mario's right hand. I disagreed with where they wanted to go, and Peter played our egos against each other. He wanted to be a partner."

Kassar and Vajna's partnership had fallen apart by 1989, and Vajna was paid approximately $100m for his share in the company. Kassar and Hoffman carried on regardless, and the massive international success of Total Recall in 1990 (box office: $262m) seemed to indicate that Vajna was wrong and that Carolco was on the right track.

Yet as the 90s dawned, it seemed as though Carolco's expenditure was beginning to spiral out of control. Millions were being spent on scripts and multi-picture deals with actors. When Schwarzenegger signed up to make Terminator 2 (Carolco having bought the Terminator rights from Hemdale for $5m in 1990), he was given a $17m jet as a gift - on top of the $14m salary he'd already been awarded for reprising his role as the T-800.

Behind the scenes, the company was beginning to struggle, hastened in part by a recession that made borrowing huge sums of cash less easy than it was in the 1980s. Its TV and home video label was also faltering, causing Carolco's stock value to fluctuate wildly throughout the start of the 90s. One banker damningly summed up Carolco's situation as "A disaster waiting to happen."

Carolco's problems were such that, even when Terminator 2: Judgment Day made a phenomenal $520m at the box office in 1991, Carolco still posted a loss of $91m in the first nine months of that year. The films following Terminator 2's release did little to brighten the studio's fortunes - Rambling Rose, Defenseless and The Dark Wind all failed to make much of a financial impact.

The erotic thriller Basic Instinct, directed by Paul Verhoeven, was a big success the following year, having made $352m. (Interestingly, Andrew Vajna had originally planned to produce the film under his new Cinergi Pictures banner, but Kassar, perhaps keen to get back at his old partner, purchased Joe Esterhas' Basic Instinct script for $3m after a furious bout of bidding.)

After Basic Instinct, Carolco's other 1992 releases all struggled. Aces: Iron Eagle III was a flop in cinemas, Universal Soldiers was only a modest hit, while even the critically-acclaimed Chaplin failed to make more than a third of its $30m budget at the box office.

When Carolco made plans to produce Cliffhanger in 1992, it was forced to make a drastically unfavourable deal to get the $60m it needed. This involved giving up the US distribution rights, both in cinemas and on video, in exchange for half of the project's budget. As a result, relatively little of the Stallone action vehicle’s $255m profits went to Carolco.

The films that came after Cliffhanger faced mixed fortunes. Sci-fi epic Stargate (1994) was a hit, yet John Candy's last film, Wagons East! was a widely-forgotten miss. As the mid-90s approached, Carolco was forced to sell off the rights to some of its own projects, not least Showgirls, a Paul Verhoeven-Joe Esterhas reunion that would later become a critical and financial misfire.

Cutthroat Island

All of this led back to that fateful meeting with Verhoeven in 1994, where Carolco felt compelled to drop the Dutch director's lavish Crusade in favour of Cutthroat Island. Yet ironically, the studio that had once prided itself on making huge deals with Hollywood's biggest stars found itself unable to secure a major actor.

Michael Douglas was initially interested, yet left the project when director Renny Harlin refused to increase the size of Douglas' role - instead, Harlin was fixed on making his wife Geena Davis the movie's lead. Other stars, including Keanu Reeves, Ralph Fiennes and Liam Neeson, were all approached, and all passed. Perhaps in its late 80s pomp, Carolco could have afforded to make one of those big names an offer they couldn't refuse. In 1994, they had to settle for the less bankable Matthew Modine.

The production was not a happy one, with illnesses on set, a full-size replica pirate ship accidentally set on fire and huge cost overruns - which at this point, Carolco was less than able to afford. Faced with certain doom if they didn't press ahead with the film regardless of cost, the studio battled on.

"We knew from that point if we lost Cutthroat Island as well bankruptcy would be inevitable," a former executive told the Independent in 1996. "If we made the film, there was at least some chance we could survive."

By the time Cutthroat Island came out in US cinemas in December 1992, Carolco had already filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and if there were hopes that the pirate movie could save the studio, they would soon be dashed - the $98m Cutthroat Island sailed quietly in and out of theatres with little more than $10m to its name that winter. Carolco's assets were duly flogged to the highest bidder, and today, the rights to its catalogue of films are owned by StudioCanal.

In the wake of Carolco's collapse, Mario Kassar moved to Paramount, before forming a new studio - C2 Pictures - with his old partner Andrew Vajna in 2002. Their new partnership brought mixed fortunes, however; Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines provided an echo of Carolco's glory days, and made $433m in 2003. The lambasted Basic Instinct 2 (2006) failed to follow suit.

The legacy

For some, Carolco's turbulent history will always be associated with lavish blockbusters, outrageous deals and the spiralling costs of filmmaking in the 80s and 90s, and its demise was often regarded as hubris by rivals who blamed the studio for grossly inflating the earning potential of Hollywood’s biggest stars. But while Carolco’s most famous hits were loud and over-the-top, it was also responsible for producing some of the era's most interesting American films, too. First Blood Part II, Red Heat and Total Recall may have been among the defining action movies of the period, but they were joined by quieter, superbly-made films such as Angel Heart, Jacob's Ladder and L.A. Story. 

Like another major independent production company of the time, Cannon Films, Carolco understood the importance of the overseas market - something the rest of Hollywood wouldn’t latch onto for several years. It's also possible that, had its business decisions been a little different, Carolco could have survived its mid-90s struggles, and perhaps even flourished.

"Think about it," Stargate producer Dean Devlin said to Entertainment Weekly. "Had they been able to keep Carolco going a little bit longer, the next two movies would have been Independence Day and Titanic. [Nearly] 3 billion dollars in worldwide box office."

With the benefit of hindsight, we can only wonder what would have happened had Carolco decided to make Crusade instead. Would Crusade have succeeded where Cutthroat Island failed, and saved the studio from oblivion? Or would its greater cost and violent, earthy subject matter have led Carolco down the exact same road to bankruptcy?

Ultimately, the story of Carolco is one of high-stakes gambles. The canny deals and big-budget film took the studio from obscurity to the top of the Hollywood power list in just a few years, before it fell, Icarus-like, in the 1990s. But for all the failings that would ultimately become its undoing in its final years, Carolco remained an independent studio from beginning to end.

"We always work outside the studio system, and the studio for us just means a method of distribution for the product," Andrew Vajna told the BBC a few years after Carolco's collapse. "We like to creatively do the projects ourselves, and not do it by committee. Independence is the only way we work."

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Chris Hemsworth bigs up Avengers: Age Of Ultron

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NewsSimon Brew11 Mar 2014 - 06:24

Filming is underway on Joss Whedon's The Avengers 2. Chris Hemsworth reckons we're in for a treat...

The long shoot for Joss Whedon's upcoming Avengers sequel, Avengers: Age Of Ultron is underway, although the production is still a little way from arriving in the UK, where it will spend most of its time.

Chris Hemsworth is one of the returnees for the movie, and he'll be playing the character of Thor for the fourth time on screen in the film. He also attended Wizard World Comic-Con in California over the weekend, and whilst there, he teased a little about how Avengers 2 is shaping up.

"Everything is ramped up", he said. "It kind of blew me away reading [it]. I don’t know how Joss does it, but everyone has gone up another notch and the whole thing is bigger and more exciting and crazier. Yeah, he’s a genius".

Hemsworth hasn't begun work on the film himself yet, revealing that "I'm really excited to start Avengers 2 in two months and get back on set. We're going to meet in London and shoot there for four months, so I'm excited to get back together with everyone and catch up".

As we hear more on the film, we will of course pass the information on.

CBM.

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New posters: The Raid 2, Maleficent, Godzilla

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PosterSimon Brew11 Mar 2014 - 06:28

Our latest poster round-up stars a double dose of Angelina Jolie, the latest The Raid 2 promo, and a new Godzilla one-sheet...

We've not done a poster round-up for a little bit, and felt very guilty about it. With that in mind, here's the latest collection of freshly released one-sheets for upcoming movies.

First up, Disney has released a pair of posters for its upcoming Maleficent, starring Angelina Jolie. We wonder, off the back of the two new pictures, whether a new trailer may be imminent. But for now, here at the posters...

Over in the US meanwhile, there's a new poster for Gareth Evans' upcoming The Raid 2 that's popped up at Entertainment Weekly. Note that the film has dropped the Berandal subtitle in America, as it has in the UK. We get the film over here in April.

Finally, visitors to SXSW, the posh event taking place in the States at the moment, have been treated to a new limited Godzilla poster. Which has now appeared everywhere online. We'd had not to get in on the action, so here it is...

More on all of these films soon...!

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Captain America: The Winter Soldier early reactions roll in

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NewsSimon Brew11 Mar 2014 - 06:36

The first reactions to Captain America 2 suggest Marvel might just have another winner on its hands...

When we go and see a preview screening of a film that's been laid on for review purposes, we generally have to sign a piece of paper. That piece of paper tends to tell us we can't run a review of said film under a given date and time. Every now and then, though, we're 'encouraged' to give our instant reactions over Twitter and Facebook.

That's just what happened, it seems, with the first press screening of Captain America: The Winter Soldier that took place in the US yesterday. And thus there's been a bunch of Twitter reactions to the film.

We've sifted through them to find those of people we recognise, and the response so far has been incredibly good.

For instance, this is Silas Lesnick of Coming Soon...

And this is Steven Weintraub of Collider (we like Collider a lot).

From Buzzfeed's Jarett Wieselman...

Finally, here's Eric Eisenberg from Cinema Blend...

Obviously, these are a long way from final reviews, but we've gone through the reaction to that initial screening, and the omens are looking very good indeed.

Captain America: The Winter Soldier arrives on March 26th in the UK.

Jason Sudeikis to take lead in Fletch remake

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NewsSimon Brew11 Mar 2014 - 06:53

The new take on Fletch is finally going ahead, and Jason Sudeikis is set to star in it...

A project that's been on Hollywood's remake radar for a long time now - Kevin Smith was developing it at one stage - has been Fletch. The original proved to be a solid hit, with Chevy Chase in the title role. That was in turn based on the novels by Gregory McDonald.

Mind you, Chase's take on Fletch wasn't too heavily informed by the original novels, but the new Fletch is going to be. It's being developed by producers Steve Golin, Michael Sugar and David List, and they're on the lookout for a director for the film.

It looks like they have their star, though. Jason Sudeikis, off the back of his 2013 hit We're The Millers, has landed the role of Fletch. The project is currently going under the title of Fletch Won, has been set up at Warner Bros, and is being described as a "gritty action comedy".

Grit is the in-thing in Hollywood, it seems.

More news on Fletch Won as we get it. If it hits big, plans are afoot for a comedy franchise here...

The Hollywood Reporter.

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Being Human (USA) season 4 episode 9 review: Too Far, Fast Forward

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ReviewKaci Ferrell11 Mar 2014 - 07:13

Kaci is frustrated by one of Being Human's remaining episodes having no consequences...

This review contains spoilers.

4.9 Too Far, Fast Forward

In this week's episode of Being Human, the points are made up and the plots don't matter. 

Before I begin to recap this episode, I have to begin with my only criticism because it's a big one. One of the first things you learn in screenwriting class is that every word you commit to the page should matter. The things you put your characters through (and, by proxy, your audience), should... well, stick. You can't kill off a character because you need to create drama this week and then buy it all back next week because you don't want to actually deal with the consequences of that character being dead. And if you do buy it back, you better do it for a very good reason and you have to go places with it. There has to be a con for every pro — like when Sally got her body back, there were major cons to that arc. Her development wasn't erased, coming back to life was just another part of it.

This is why, ultimately, I'm so bothered by this episode and last week's in retrospect. Having Sally travel back to the past and unintentionally destroy everything that was good in their lives could've been a really interesting way to end the series, except the writers didn't really commit. They bought it all back and it wasn't even challenging to do so — a quick spell from Donna and Sally's back home again. The only lasting effects of what happened is that Sally remembers her relationship with Aidan and saw Aidan killing Josh in the future. All of that development and drama, and it's almost for nothing. The lasting effect it had does not, in my opinion, justify nearly wasting two entire episodes out of your only remaining six. If the show had been renewed, I might be a little less harsh on this (although I'd still be annoyed; like I said, first rule of screenwriting is to never buy it all back), but sadly that's not the case. 

Did I like last week's episode? Yeah. Heck, did I like this week's episode, until I found out it was all for nothing? Also yeah. Right up until I found out that almost none of it mattered. 

So okay. We're going to go through a very quick rundown of the plot so that we can talk about the stuff that's actually relevant. 

Aidan gets swept back up with Bishop after Sally's death, and starts to return to his darker personality. After killing Ray, he tells Josh he's letting him live because he knows that will cause Josh to suffer more and that he never wants to see him again. 

One year later, Josh is running a pie shop and raise your hand if his whole "I'm a werewolf and therefore must isolate myself with pies" thing made you think of Ned from Pushing Daisies. I guess that makes Sally Being Human's Chuck, because she's the dead girl hanging around the pie shop. 

The virus hits Boston just like in the original, but this time Bishop is there to sell clean blood. Business is booming, but after an argument between him and Aidan, Aidan goes rogue and uses Josh and Sally showing up to offer him Josh's blood as an excuse to kill Bishop and take over Boston. 

Josh visits Nora, who is addicted to painkillers due to how unhappy her life is, at the hospital, where she reveals she's getting divorced from her "serial cheater" (ouch) of a husband. Josh looks her right in the eye and implores her to take care of herself because, "No matter what, you are so, so awesome." It's okay if you shed a tear at this part. I did, too. 

Donna and Sally finally make contact and Donna agrees to send Sally back to the original timeline if the boys also agree. Josh is desperate for a life where he gets to be married to Nora and so quickly agrees. Aidan is more reluctant, but also consents once Sally promises to try to make him remember that he loves her. 

Donna sends Sally back to the original timeline, but not before she gets a very brief glimpse at the original timeline's future — wherein Aidan snaps and murders Josh right before her eyes. So the question now is...will Sally learn her lesson about meddling and trying to change the future by not telling the boys? Or will she be unable to stop herself and try to warn them? 

If she actually did learn from this experience and doesn't try to control future events...you know what? I will actually retract everything I've just said about this arc not mattering, since nothing else has worked to get her to stop meddling. If this is what it took, then okay. But other than that, I can't see any way that any of this matters since it's been undone and no one but Sally remembers it. 

I liked the episode right up until the ending. Now it just feels like a waste of precious episodes in this, our final season.

Read Kaci's review of the previous episode, Rewind, Rewind, here.

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First new footage in Orphan Black season 2 trailer

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TrailerLouisa Mellor11 Mar 2014 - 07:22

Tatiana Maslany's tour de force performance in Orphan Black continues this April with a brand new season...

Premiering on the 19th of April on BBC America is Orphan Black's much-anticipated second season, which sees Sarah discover more about her shady origins and those responsible for them.

Season one was met with surprise acclaim as Orphan Black proved itself a little show with big ideas, led capably by the inestimably talented Tatiana Maslany, tasked with what's arguably the toughest job of any TV lead in recent years.

We'll let you know as soon as news of a UK transmission date arrives for the BBC Three import.

Read more about Orphan Black on Den of Geek, here.

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Teen Wolf season 3 episode 22 review: De-Void

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ReviewRon Hogan11 Mar 2014 - 07:45

Teen Wolf rewards long-time viewers by digging into its history in this week's impressive episode...

This review contains spoilers.

3.22 De-Void

As Teen Wolf's third season heads to its impending big conclusion, there's a definite, deliberate attempt to build up the pace and create a fever pitch of paranoia, fear, and anxiety among both the viewers and the characters on the show. With De-Void, Teen Wolf reaches a fever pitch of weird craziness, thanks in no small part to the show's three seasons of twists, turns, betrayals, romances, and bromances. Jeff Davis and company have shown a renewed willingness to reach back into actual history for inspiration, and now they're reaching back into the show's history to create some conflict in the waning hours of its winter semester.

When you think about it, it's kind of amazing just how much ground Teen Wolf has covered in such a short time. They've packed a whole lot of stuff into 48 episodes, and it's nice to see that Jeff Davis is willing to dig back into the past to mine fresh material for the show's current situation. Indeed, the show reaches all the way back to the first season to remind the long-time loyal viewer that watching has its perks, and that Teen Wolf's rich cast of characters provides several opportunities for the actors to do some great work tonight.

Indeed, after a confrontation with Noshiko Yukimura in the basement of Echo House, the next step in the nogitsune's mission is to turn our heroes against one another. A united front is a difficult force to oppose, but a front fractured by infighting and old grudges is something much easier to navigate when you're a creature that feeds off discord, chaos, and violence. The nogitsune, via an awesome cloud of CGI mind control flies, is able to create a great deal of chaos in the Teen Wolf camp, because there are a lot of festering conflicts between the characters just aching for exploitation.

Remember how the twins killed Boyd and Erica? Isaac does. Remember how Chris Argent's sister Kate killed Derek's entire family? Derek does. Remember how the twins disagreed on their future in Beacon Hills and whether or not they should join Scott's pack? The twins remember. As if that wasn't enough intrigue, there's more than meets the eye. Stiles, the information vacuum that he is, has some information about the break-up of the McCall marriage that he knows Melissa doesn't want Scott to know, and he's going to throw that out there to make her nervous. Everyone has something to atone for, everyone has secrets, and everyone has failings in the Teen Wolf universe, and the nogitsune is going to use ALL of those things to his advantage.

Kudos to Jeff Davis, who gets the screenwriting credit for tonight's episode. It's a brilliant piece of writing, and every character gets to do something meaningful. From background players like Danny and Peter Hale to languishing leftovers from the Alpha Pack plot, everyone is involved in the nogitsune story, and it all seems to work really well. There's a lot of stuff happening at once, but the show does a really good job dividing its attention to all its characters, and having an actor like Dylan O'Brien at the core of the show to bring it all together in spectacular fashion just makes it all work that much better.

Christian Taylor has a knack for crafting really creepy visuals. Given the dreamlike state that Lydia and Scott enter into when they use werewolf mind powers to sneak into the depths of Stiles' mind, it's only natural that the show gets a little weird, but the way he used used callback images to the show's first season (Lydia at the prom, sneaking through deserted hallways, Scott and Allison making out in the closet) and third season (the massive white room where the kids went after freezing themselves to death and the Nemeton stump) was very impressive.

As if that wasn't enough, every time one of the little flies from the nogitsune entered someone via wound, ear canal or drinking water, I cringed; I have a thing about accidentally being infested with insects that is probably the result of having watched the end of Creepshow at a too-young age that the show tapped into tonight. To top that off, when Stiles throws up a huge pile of rags that slowly forms the nogitsune, the show manages to both be disgusting (Stiles gagging on rags for what seems like minutes) and frightening (the way the rags form black mist that slowly takes the shape of the nogitsune) at the same time. It's one of the best uses of CGI in Teen Wolf's canon, and it's a real credit to Taylor that he stages it perfectly (and even more so, it helps provide cover for Evil Stiles to escape with Lydia as hostage, since I don't think anyone would argue that watching a monster emerge from a pile of barfed-up rags isn't a distraction).

Taylor also puts together some really good action sequences this week, especially the opening Mexican stand-off between Evil Stiles, Sheriff Stilinski, and Chris Argent. When Evil Stiles strikes, it's a stunning display of ferocity and power, made all the more surprising by the fact that it's Stiles beating up werewolves and hunters and professional killers. The latter scenes with Derek and Argent are also really well executed, and the Twins versus Isaac versus Kira and Allison scene from the school is a great example of how the show uses its shooting spaces to good effect, with the locker room feeling both claustrophobic and maze-like depending on how it was being shot.

Three seasons in, Teen Wolf continues to be really impressive television, even to folks who are far outside the show's demographic. It can be funny, scary, gory, and touching all within the same 52 minutes or so of screen time. It has been far, far better than it has had any right to be, and I'm really glad I paid attention to it when it first came on the air. Episodes like this, which embrace Teen Wolf's deep and satisfying universe, are greatly appreciated and show a cast and crew that's as invested in the show's mythology as the fans are (which hardly seems possible, since the fans are VERY invested).

Read Ron's review of the previous episode, The Fox And The Wolf, here

US Correspondent Ron Hogan also has a pretty strong gag reflex, so watching Stiles gag up a trash can full of old bandages was pretty horrifying. Find more by Ron daily at Shaktronics and PopFi.

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Fargo TV series coming to Channel 4 in the UK

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NewsLouisa Mellor10 Mar 2014 - 23:28

Channel 4 has acquired the UK rights to FX series, Fargo, based on the original 1996 Coen Brothers film...

Channel 4 has been out shopping for import drama and once again has returned home with what promises to be a great buy. FX's forthcoming TV series Fargo, executive produced by Joel and Ethan Coen and inspired by their 1996 crime film, will air on Channel 4 in the UK this spring.

The teaser promos released so far have been footage and dialogue-light, but undeniably share the original film's combination of macabre humour and small-town atmosphere. Though inspired by the film, Fargo the TV series introduces a new raft of characters and a brand new crime story.

Martin Freeman, Billy Bob Thornton, Colin Hanks, Bob Odenkirk and Allison Tolman all appear in the series, which has been written by Bones and TheUnusuals' Noah Hawley.

We'll bring you a UK start date as soon as one is confirmed, but in the meantime, UK Fargo fans can set their alarms for 'springtime'.

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David S Goyer talks Constantine TV series

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NewsLouisa Mellor11 Mar 2014 - 08:33

New Constantine series will be closer to the Hellblazer comics than the Keanu Reeves film says David S Goyer...

He's British, he's blonde, he'll have the signature trench coat and skinny tie, but whether Constantine in NBC's forthcoming TV pilot will be a chain-smoker is currently under negotiation with the network, according to executive producer David S Goyer.

I Am Rogue stole a few minutes to chat with Goyer, a man currently with more geek pies than fingers to stick in them, about the Constantine pilot, to be directed by The Descent and Game Of Thrones' Neil Marshall. The writer/director assured fans that the series, if it goes ahead, will stick more closely to the Hellblazer/Alan Moore creation than the Francis Lawrence-directed 2005 feature, a film he calls "interesting".

What do we know of the cast so far? Welsh actor Matt Ryan is in the lead, with support from Lost and Romeo + Juliet's Harold Perrineau playing an angel, TrueDetective's Charles Halford in the role of Chas, and RobinHood's Lucy Griffiths as, in Goyer's words, "an amalgam of characters". According to Goyer, the announcement of another character fans know from the comic books is also imminent, played by "a pretty cool actor"

If it's picked up, Goyer also plans to bring in "some of the other occult figures" from the DC universe. Any guesses as to whom he's alluding?

I Am Rogue

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Evan Goldberg promises "same characters, same story, same ending" for Preacher TV series

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NewsLouisa Mellor11 Mar 2014 - 07:42

Evan Goldberg has been chatting about his and Seth Rogen's forthcoming Preacher pilot...

Fidelity to the source material is ever a contentious part of adaptation. Follow the original too slavishly and you may end up hamstrung by reverence, depart from your sources too drastically, and why even call it an adaptation? Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, currently working with Breaking Bad's Sam Catlin on a TV version of Garth Ennis' Preacher comics, are currently trying to strike that balance.

Speaking to Collider, Goldberg said, "We just had a meeting with AMC and Garth Ennis, who’s the writer, and we all kind of seemed to agree that we’re gonna stay as true to the comic as we can. We need to change some stuff but we’re not gonna change much, I hope."

Goldberg continued, "We’re just gonna do a little more of the preamble instead of doing flashbacks and restructure how we dole out the information a little, but we’re gonna [do the] same characters, same story, same ending.  We’re gonna try to stick to Preacher as best we can."

The broader canvas allowed by a TV series will be, Goldberg argues, key to this version of Preacher's success, "The big difference is everyone else tried to make it a movie and it shouldn’t be a movie. It should be an AMC show, that’s the proper way for it to get done… It’s too big; you can’t do that in a movie. It’s just too big. You’ve gotta learn the characters, it’s all about a love triangle and you need to grow with them and see the woman swayed one way or the other, and in a movie you just can’t accomplish all that."

Read the full interview at Collider

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True Detective season one finale review: Form And Void

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ReviewMichael Noble11 Mar 2014 - 17:30

As True Detective reaches its finale, it's possible that the light's winning. Here's Michael's review...

This review contains spoilers

1.8 Form and Void

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Matthew McConaughey described the pattern of thinking that helped him create the ‘psychedelically complex’ character of Rust Cohle at each stage of his appearance. Of the boozy and dishevelled 2012 vintage, he says that ‘he’s a guy who lived longer than he hoped’, a marvellous phrase that, like ‘psychedelically complex’, I rather wish I’d written myself. It encapsulates a great deal of Cohle’s southern-fried nihilism, pitching him as a man who has not only left his best years behind him, but who has left pretty much everything behind him. His family, his career, his health, every productive relationship, all gone. All that’s left is the case, the investigation he no longer follows so much as inhabits, like a bad dream from which waking seems impossible. 

That dream, as Cohle himself predicted a few episodes back, has a monster at the end of it. Finally, that monster has a name to go with his scarred face: Errol Childress. We, and Hart and Cohle (and Papania and Gilbough) have seen him before, hidden in plain sight. If there was a sense of anticlimax to the fact that, as in Scooby Doo, the monster was the humble janitor all along, then it was perhaps a justified one. From the first episode, it’s been clear that the Yellow King case was about more than a simple bad guy doing bad things, or even a group of bad guys doing lots of bad things; it was the product of the corruption of an entire culture. The participants might be powerful and well known, like Old Man Tuttle or pudgy nobodies like Childress but they are equally affected and infected by it. 

Childress himself was a curious little oddity. One of the creepiest villains we’ve seen on TV, the opening scene showing him in his dilapidated hovel with his sister-lover, shuffling around, flitting from emotion to emotion and from personality to personality was grim, uncomfortable viewing. Played with sustained creepiness by Boardwalk Empire’s Glenn Fleshler, he was both monster and victim, simultaneously an agent of horror and the subject of powerful forces beyond his limited comprehension. It is possible, in our most empathetic moments, to even feel pity for him, at least for as long as we could forget that other item of grim, uncomfortable viewing contained on the VHS tape that Hart and Cohle forced Sheriff Steve to sit through. 

The section with Steve was among the most straightforward of the episode and of the series as a whole. Our two detectives finally had the upper hand, their target out-thought and outgunned. The show has struck a fine balance between meditative moments (such as the attempt to make the car ‘a place of silent reflection’) and controlled action sequences (the adrenalised denouement of episode 4 being the strongest case in point). Here, the shooting out of Steve’s car was not only satisfying on a personal level, given that he damn well deserved it, but necessary from a practical point of view. The Yellow King’s tentacles run everywhere, only an idiot would try to take the thing on without an insurance policy or two. Hart and Cohle, as we have seen, are not idiots and placing Steve in a double-bind was a smart move, as was the various destinations of the multimedia dossiers that were to be sent out if the detectives did not return from their mission. As a man who had already lived longer than he’d hoped to, Cohle is more than prepared for ensuring that his case is completed even in his absence. That became a very real prospect when it became necessary for Hart and Cohle, like so many Hollywood cops, to enter the villain’s own territory to take him down by force. And what force it was. The pursuit of Childress was as tense and doom-laden as anything the show has yet offered; it gave us moments of genuine horror, suspense and dread and, for a moment, made it seem as though neither detective was going to walk back out. Of course they did, as soon as the guy left for dead picked up his partner’s gun to take down the baddie. It was True Detective once again donning the clothes of cop drama to make a point about its characters. True Detective was not, like The Wire, a deconstruction of cop show tropes, but it did deployed them intelligently with the aim of telling a larger story.

That much was obvious by the structure of this season finale, which featured an extended coda once the central mystery had been solved. To the end, the show sustained an interest in its leads than ran beyond its concern for the case. The themes that the show has floated throughout its run were addressed, if not answered. The issue of manliness was picked up in an  episode in which its two Y-chromosomed leads cried. Hart, who measured himself against his father by considering which of them could ‘take’ the other, has been dwelling on his fight with Cohle. He was worried that his partner was holding back, that, of the two of them, it was Cohle who could do the taking. It was a classic piece of Marty Hart thinking. Their partnership, often fractious, occasionally violent, ultimately became one of genuine buddy-ness. Their bruised reunion at the hospital sparkled with the back-and-forth banter but permitted a discussion that could only take place between the two of them. ‘We didn’t get ‘em all’, says Cohle, of the thing that’s bugging him. ‘Yeah, and we aint’ gonna get ‘em all. That aint what kind of world it is’ replies Hart ‘but we got ours’. It’s a decent piece of matey reassurance but, as an idea sown in Cohle’s fertile mind, it blooms. He still stumbles, finding ‘a vague awareness in the dark’ but in that darkness comes the feeling that his daughter and his pop are present and Cohle can still feel ‘a part of everything he ever loved’. In those last moments of the episode, he and Hart act not as assigned partners but as genuine friends of the kind to exchange small token gifts. Their relationship is mutually supportive and they can look back on a solid job of detective work. The dark may have ‘most of the territory’ but piece by piece, case by case, ‘the light is winning’ and maybe, just maybe, Rustin Cohle didn’t live beyond his years after all. 

True Detective will return with new actors, new characters, a new story but the same dogged reviewer. Until then, thanks for reading. 

Frederik Pohl's Gateway coming to TV?

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NewsMichael Noble11 Mar 2014 - 17:20

Award-winning sci-fi novel being adapted by company behind Dune...

Frederik Pohl, who died last year at the age of 93, was a prolific author of science fiction and a writer whose ideas still resonate today. That resonance is just one of the reasons that his 1977 novel Gateway has been the subject of frantic bidding by TV production companies. 

It would seem that the bidding has now stopped with the winning parties being Entertainment One Television and the De Laurentiis Company, who between them have production credits for Conan the Barbarian, Dune, Hell on Wheels and The Walking Dead. The companies are in the process of hiring a writer/showrunner for the project, which is still in its very early stages.

Gateway tells the story of Robinette Stetley Broadhead, who travels to the titular space station, which was built into a hollow asteroid by an alien race known as the Heechee, whose technology is only partly understood by humankind. 

Pohl wrote several Heechee stories, suggesting that, if successful, this project could run into several seasons. 

We'll keep you updated with more information as it becomes available. 

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Grant Gustin's The Flash costume in full

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NewsLouisa Mellor11 Mar 2014 - 17:45

See The Flash from his masked head to his tippy toes in this first full length picture of Grant Gustin in costume...

We had a peek at the neck-up section a fortnight ago, now gaze upon Grant Gustin's Flash costume in full-length glory!

We're going to use our best front-row-at-London-Fashion-Week lingo now to give you a run-down of what you're looking at: an all-in-one leather-effect suit with burgundy snakeskin-looking arm-bits, leggings, a torso with a badge that looks as though it won't survive its first dry clean, knee-bendy bits, waffle-y gloves and mid-calf welly-style boots without laces (presumably for speed).

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Muppets Most Wanted review

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ReviewSimon Brew12 Mar 2014 - 05:43

Can this sequel live up to the pure joy of the first Muppets movie? Simon's still singing that last song...

If ever a film was worth it for the opening number, then Muppets Most Wanted is it. A glorious Bret McKenzie song that's up to the standard of anything in the last film - from which this film picks up directly - it gets the movie going with a few minutes of concentrated in-jokes, madness and sheer brilliance. Arguably, the rest of the film never quite gets to that level again, but conversely, the bar is set so ridiculously high within minutes that it's hardly surprising.

Muppets Most Wanted is no slouch after that outstanding beginning though (the closing number alone will bring tears of joy to anyone who's ever given two hoots about The Muppets). It has to work harder in some ways than the last film, given that the level of narrative ambition is heightened, but - despite one or two minor stumbles - it's a second straight big screen success for The Muppets.

This time, the film doesn't have nostalgia and goodwill to work with to such a degree though, so instead it injects a touch of The Pink Panther - with a nod to several classic movies along the way - as it takes the Muppets on a world tour, and a bit of a caper.

Said world tour is the masterplan of a pair of top criminals: the evil mastermind Constantine, and his sidekick, The Lemur, played by Ricky Gervais. Thus, the Muppets take in various cities, crimes are committed, and it's up to a mix of America's finest - Sam The Eagle - and Europe's laziest - Ty Burrell, channelling a bit of Peter Sellers - to work out what's happening.

There's more to it than that of course, and also, there's a generous collection of jokes, fourth wall breaking, cameos and musical numbers. In that sense, the recipe hasn't changed an awful lot from last time (and it hasn't from Muppets past). Nor should it. What does change though is that, once things get going, the emphasis seems a little more notably weighted towards humans rather than Muppets.

If you go back and look at the 2011 movie, that was a criticism there too. But the centering of the human action on the duo of Jason Segel and Amy Adams worked wonders. Here, the human side is shouldered fairly equally between Ricky Gervais, Ty Burrell, Tina Fey and a scene-stealing Danny Trejo. None of them is given the chance to contribute too much to the core of the movie as a result, and it does make Muppets Most Wanted bumpy at times (three of them are paired up with Muppets though). We're going for the engine metaphor here: at times there's spluttering, although for the most part, the film roars into life.

We should touch on Ricky Gervais here as well. You don't need more than 20 seconds in the company of Google to know that his casting in Muppets Most Wanted has been divisive. But fear not: he fits his villainous role very well, generates a good few laughs, and fits in far better than many may end up giving him credit for. In fact, the same applies to all the main human performers. Some of the cameos are priceless, too, but we've no intention of spoiling them here.

As always in the land of good Muppets films, you've never too far away from a song and dance number, and Oscar-winning songwriter Bret McKenzie's return is very, very welcome. There are a couple of smashing songs in here (not least that opener), and even the weaker ones (if it's even fair to call them that) are entertaining, and serve purpose.

The real joy of Muppets Most Wanted though is being able to sit back and admire the sheer craft and brilliance that continues to breathe life into the Muppets themselves. Some of the sequences, again giving nothing away, must have been severe headaches to work out, but are utterly joyful on the screen. The expression that the performers behind the Muppets can wring out what's on the end of their arm is ceaselessly impressive. That it's turned into such magical entertainment is all the better.

Furthermore, director James Bobin pushes the visuals of his film a lot harder this time around, soaking up the surface of the European cities he takes the film across, and rarely resisting a nod to another film or a good joke as he does so. Should a further Muppets adventure be greenlit on the same timescale, it's likely that it'll proceed without Bobin, given his apparent commitment to make Alice In Wonderland 2. And that'd be a pity. Along with Nicholas Stoller, Jason Segel and Bret McKenzie, he's been one of the leading lights in bringing the Muppets back to the screen in such striking form. He would not be easy to replace.

Muppets Most Wanted, then, may lack the novelty of The Muppets, a film it doesn't quite match the standard of, and it certainly treads a very different path. But it's hard to feel shortchanged. It's not the best Muppet film, but it's another very good outing nonetheless. Plus whilst you don't quite get the Muppet equivalent of Nick Fury popping up after the end credits teasing another film (there is a very brief sting though), as you walk out of the cinema humming the film's final tune, it's very likely that you'll want one.

As Waldorf and Statler would never often say, "more please". And soon.

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