4.10 Hands And Knees

If this season of Mad Men were a novel, episode ten would serve as its darkest hour - the moment in the story where everything teeters on the brink of collapse, and the future looks uncertain for almost every character involved.

Matthew Weiner’s series has always been so effortlessly cool, so seamlessly constructed, that it’s often easy to overlook the uniform excellence of the acting on display. Not so in Hands And Knees, where this normally simmering drama begins to reach boiling point.

Over the course of Mad Men’s previous three seasons, we’ve seen how ad man Don Draper has carefully built up his persona around him like a nest. Having borrowed the identity of a deceased soldier he served with in the Korean War, Don (née Dick Whitman) reinvented, chasing his own version of the American dream, and acquiring huge success along the way.

In a season that has seen Don Draper’s life gradually unravel - he’s already dealt with a messy divorce, alcohol addiction, Chicken Kiev and the sudden death of his secretary - the season reaches its tenth episode with the possibility that his true identity may about to be discovered.

When government officials show up on Betty’s front door asking questions about Don’s identity and loyalty to the flag, the latter’s breakdown is immediate and devastating. Draper’s never been a man to break a sweat in public, but the possibility that the government may be about to bring his high-flying existence to an abrupt full stop leaves him flustered and desperate.

Ironically, it was a form that Don had signed that triggered the appearance of the G-Men at Betty’s house. New clients North American Airlines, who in turn have a contract with the US government, had requested background checks on SCDP’s employees - including Don Draper himself.

In a panic, Don demands that Pete - who stumbled upon Don’s secret back in season one - end SCDP’s dealings with NAA before it’s too late.

Meanwhile, Roger learns that SCDP are about to lose Lucky Strike, its most lucrative client. It’s a turn of events that ruin the agency, and Roger begs Lee Garner Jr. for thirty days to “Get his house in order.”

In the midst of all this drama, Mad Men’s writers still find time to cram in a plot strand about Lane and his sadistically abusive father (who, in a scene of startling brutality, strikes him around the head with a cane) and a quietly tragic moment where Joan awaits an abortion.

In lesser hands, moments such as these could descend into mere soap opera, but the sensitivity of Mad Men’s writing and acting places it in a higher league. With all the shouting and angst elsewhere in the episode, it’s Christina Hendricks’ quiet performance as Joan provides a moving counterpoint.

It’s an episode filled with secrets and lies, with Roger just about keeping a lid on the potentially ruinous departure of Lucky Strike. And while Pete may have helped keep Don’s identity a secret for a little while longer by ending the NAA contract (provoking a stinging attack from Roger in the process), how long can SCDP continue with the loss of two such lucrative clients?

There are just three episodes left in season four, and the future of Mad Men’s central characters has never looked more precarious. I can’t wait for the next instalment.

Read our review of episode 9, The Beautiful Girls, here.

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Blue screen? Check. Shia LaBeouf pulling funny faces at the camera? Check. The return of Bumblebee? You can check that one too.

For these new photos from the set of Transformers: The Dark Of The Moon show LaBeouf and Megan Fox replacement new co-star Rosie Huntington-Whiteley gamely battling against a post-production special effect on the set of Michael Bay's new film. The shots have come from Just Jared and The Daily Mail, as the shoot for Transformers 3 nears its end.

The usual plan works here: click on any of the pictures, and they will get bigger. Splendid.

Just Jared

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It raised eyebrows, at the very least. Last week, we reported the news that budget spender extraordinaire, Mr Roland Emmerich, was putting aside the requirement for a big cheque to a special effects company to instead focus on a far smaller project. That project was The Zone, a $5m sci-fi film that worked around the 'found footage' concept.

The problem, of course, is that ‘found footage', a la The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity and Cloverfield, is becoming an increasingly popular storytelling device. And in the past week, a similar-sounding found footage sci-fi movie by the name of Apollo 18 was bought by The Weinstein Company, with a March 2011 release date mooted.

Given that Emmerich was looking to have The Zone ready for April, that's likely to have had an impact somewhere along the line.

The news of the project's demise was brought by The Hollywood Reporter, which quoted a source close to the director as saying, "This is not a project [Emmerich] is pursuing at this time."

Work had begun on the project, it reports, with the largely improvised film already in the rehearsal stage with actors. But it looks like The Zone is now firmly off the radar. It'll be interesting to see if Emmerich does pursue a lower budget film for his next project, though...

The Hollywood Reporter

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There's been a mixed response to the news that Darren Aronofsky is signing up to direct Wolverine 2 now that his potential awards-magnet Black Swan is slowly beginning its roll-out. The bone of contention seems to be thus: that Aronofsky is easily one of the most interesting directors working in American cinema right now, and it seems a shame that we'll lose him for a couple of years to what will effectively be X-Men 6.

However, that does overlook the fact that the director has come close to helming a blockbuster movie before. He developed Batman: Year One for some time, before Warner Bros opted to reboot the Dark Knight's big screen adventures with Christopher Nolan on-board instead. And he was also attached, to some degree at least, to a new take on RoboCop.

We can't begrudge Aronofsky taking a bigger budget blockbuster movie, and the success of Christopher Nolan is arguably the template for what happens when it goes right. Nolan has delivered both interesting blockbuster films, and also, in between his trips to Gotham City, has used the clout they've given him to put The Prestige and Inception together. Is Aronofsky looking to follow a similar path, we wonder?

And if he is, could RoboCop be back on the radar? There's not a frame of the original RoboCop that we'd touch, to be fair (although there are plenty of frames in the sequels that we'd go for), but it had been widely assumed that Aronofsky's attachment to the franchise was long over.

In all truth, it probably still is, given that MGM's well-documented financial woes delayed the project, and also given that his next couple of years will be spent in the company of Hugh Jackman. But Moviehole is suggesting that all isn't quite lost.

It's a long shot, granted, and there seems no fuel to this particular fire from Aronofsky himself, but it's reporting that MGM is still keen to push ahead with a new RoboCop. That bit is easy to believe. Where it gets more testing is when it suggests that someone has spoken to MGM's production department about when a green light for the project might happen, and that the answer is "If we can raise 150 million dollar[s], the movie will happen with Darren Aronofsky on board."

I'd buy that for 150 million dollars? It doesn't quite have the same ring to it, does it?

Still, we'd suggest that a new RoboCop film will happen in the next five or six years. But we'd also suggest that Darren Aronofsky will not be directing it.

Here's the piece at Moviehole.

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Blimey, Warner Bros is happily shovelling these out right now, as the build up to Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part I intensifies. We've got a couple of new clips from the film, and you can catch them all here...

Firstly, there's 'The Sign Of The Deathly Hallows'...

The film itself? It's out on November 19th. Our review? You won't have to wait quite as long...

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This review contains spoilers.

3.10 Fírinne

Within the first ten minutes of this week's episode of Sons Of Anarchy, one of the members of SAMBEL has been strung up. Within minutes more, a man has cut him open and is pulling at his insides with tongs. The man, understandably, is in great pain, and within a few more minutes, he is dead. And yet, whilst I was near enough watching through my fingers, I almost couldn't stop jumping up and down with glee.

Of course, I don't condone violence in real life, but it feels like this week's Sons Of Anarchy has gone back to doing what it did best in season one and two, combine hard hitting action scenes with gut punching emotional plot arcs.

So, this week, aside from the terrible Irish accents and the Californian sun blasting over 'Belfast', the scenes in the capital of Northern Ireland are absolutely fantastic. The action starts from the word go.

Liam, the one who bombed the truck last week (I know a lot of the SAMBEL characters aren't very memorable, so he's the one with the long hair and sounds like he might actually be from Belfast), is caught by the Sons, tortured, and then killed by Jax. It's a standout moment in the series and one of the very few times where Jax has killed someone.

Prior to expiring, Liam admits that he and McGee have been working with the Army, and the confession is caught on tape for Father Ashby. Shortly after this, and on McGee's tip-off, Jimmy and his men storm the building. This culminates in a standoff on the rooftop and there is yet another moment where Jimmy could quite easily have been taken out, but manages to escape.

Sadly, McGee knows that he's been found out, and it's time for him to go. Clay gives him a kiss goodbye and pushes him off the rooftop. The whole scene was very well done and makes you almost sad to see forgettable characters like McGee and Liam killed off.

SAMCRO's visit to Belfast has been an absolute disaster for SAMBEL. In the last two episodes alone, around seven of them have died. The charter must be damn near wiped out by now. Thankfully for the viewer, this is tying up a lot of the loose ends, and most of these loose ends have been crippling the momentum of the show.

Above all of these dangling threads, I was glad that the almost-incest storyline between Jax and Trinity was resolved. After Gemma and Maureen walk in on Jax and Trinity, moments before the show could have gone all kinds of wrong, they decide to tell both of them the truth about their father. I've already mentioned last week that I hated this storyline and that the show was above it, but the resolution was handled very well. I particularly liked the way that they showed the two reactions one after the other. Trinity seems upset as she's found out that her father isn't who she thought he was, and Jax sort of laughs it off, uttering the immortal line: "Two minutes later and I'd have been dancing in Tig territory."

The slower than a robot dancing in treacle Abel storyline starts making some heady progress at the end of this episode when Father Ashby tells Jax that he made a promise to John Teller that he would not let his son go into the life that he chose.  Father Ashby was unable to keep this promise, but he fully intends to stop Abel from ending up following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather.

As I mentioned a few episodes ago, it might not be such a bad thing if Abel is adopted by a loving family. Jax disagrees. He tries to attack Father Ashby, but ends up being thrown to the ground. Who knew that the Priest was so powerful?

Unhappy with being defeated by Ashby, Jax stabs his henchman and threatens him with a gun, making Father Ashby divulge the location of Abel.

So, finally, Jax can go and find Abel, but will he? Father Ashby has given him a lot to think about. It'll be interesting to see where Sutter goes next with this particular storyline, now that it has finally picked up some speed.

Back in Charming, and the main matter of business is the kidnapping of Tara and Margaret. With Tig, Kozik, and Piney being the only Sons still in Charming (I'm not sure where all of the prospects have gone, as they were MIA in this episode), they're in charge of meeting Salazar's somewhat ambitious demands. 

First of all, he wants the Sons to kill Alvarez, and then he wants them to steal $250,000 from the safe in his house. This is problematic, as the Sons know that killing Alvarez is out of the question. They do, however, pay Alvarez a visit. 

There's naturally a lot tension, with guns being pointed on both sides, but Alvarez says that he will spread a rumour that he is dead for 24 hours, even if it bad for his business. All that's in the safe is some insurance documents, his child's baby teeth and two watches, so the Sons will need to find the money elsewhere.

At the end of the episode, they seem a little blasé about the whole thing, so I'd imagine that they have a surprise or two in store for Salazar. Truth be told, I'd be very surprised if Salazar lives to see season four.

So, to conclude, I was very happy to have what was easily the best episode of the season this week. It was a happy reminder of what a great show Sons Of Anarchy can be. There are only three episodes left in the season, and with a lot of the weaker storylines now being resolved, I would like to think that Kurt Sutter can keep up the standard.

This season has not been a good one, but if the final three episodes are as good as this last, then I'm sure we could all find it in our hearts to forgive him.

Read our review of the episode 9, Turas, here.

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As many of you will have already seen, the Tron: Legacy trailers are filled with subtle references to the 1982 original. For those who grew up with the first Tron, these loving nods and allusions are a heartening sign that, although director Joe Kosinski’s take on the property is slick, contemporary and very much its own film, it still has a knowledge and respect for Steven Lisberger’s 80s classic.

Here are a few of the references to the 80s Tron we spotted in the third Tron: Legacy trailer that arrived yesterday…

00:08 – Tron duvet and pillow set

We’re a mere eight seconds in, and the references are already there to be seen – first there’s the great Tron duvet and pillow set, which is covered in Light Cycles and Recognisers.

On the young Sam Flynn’s shelf, there are numerous Tron toys that are easy to spot, including Light Cycle toys, a little guard figurine, and tucked away among a collection of board games, a few replicas of Bits, the floating polyhedrons seen in the first film.

There’s also a reference on the top left to Disney’s 1979 The Black Hole, a film Tron: Legacy director Joe Kosinski is set to remake next.

00:09 – Tron poster

This one’s fairly self-explanatory – a reproduction of the classic 1982 Tron poster. Viewed in HD, there’s also a strapline that reads, “From the creators of Space Paranoids”, a reference to the game Kevin Flynn programmed in the original movie.

Note, too, that the Encom logo is just as it was in 1982…

00:19 – 80s helicopter

In a direct lift from the conclusion of Tron, this shot sees a youthful Kevin Flynn emerging from an Encom helicopter in a rather dapper grey suit.

00:45 – Flynn’s arcade

Tron: Legacy uses the exact same building for Flynn’s arcade as the original Tron – which is actually a restaurant located in Culver City, Los Angeles.

00:50 – Touchscreen technology

The retro look of the touch-screen controls here is strikingly similar to the MCP console David Warner’s character, Dilinger, used back in 1982. Back then, of course, touch screen technology was akin to witchcraft.

00:54 – Digitizer

This entire sequence, where a 27-year-old Sam Flynn is sucked into the virtual world of the Grid by the Digitizer, is directly inspired by the first film, with the laser in the same position as it was when it zapped Sam’s father Kevin almost 30 years before.

Are there any references we’ve missed? If so, let us know in the comments!

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Do aliens really hover in our skies, waiting to kidnap us for their own unfathomable ends? Ever since the case of US couple Betty and Barney Hill became widely publicised in the mid-60s, hundreds of people have come forward with similar claims of extraterrestrial abduction, missing time, strange medical examinations and grey-skinned extraterrestrials

And while psychologists and ufologists disagree on the reality of such claims, the theme of alien abduction has been revisited several times by filmmakers since the late 70s. And as this list demonstrates, the results of such films can be decidedly mixed...

Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977)

Following the financial success of Jaws, director Steven Spielberg took the risky step of remaking Firelight, a small low-budget movie he'd directed when he was just 16. The resulting movie, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, approached the subject of UFOs and alien abductions with a seriousness and sense of artistry that hasn't been seen since.

Displaying echoes of Betty and Barney Hill's experiences, the aliens in Close Encounters quietly abduct humans from all walks of life, including World War II fighter pilots (whose planes are later found abandoned in the Sonoran Desert) and a three-year-old boy (Cary Guffey).

Richard Dreyfuss stars as an electrical engineer who develops an unhealthy obsession with lights in the sky, and his sculpting of an oddly shaped mountain from mashed potato has been lampooned repeatedly since.

Slowly building to a climax of almost religious proportions, Close Encounters features some stunning special effects courtesy of Douglas Trumbull (with Carlo Rambaldi on alien construction duties), and an unforgettable score by John Williams.

Spielberg's aliens, despite their repeated, sinister kidnappings, are later revealed to be benign and oddly childlike, and the movie concludes with the abductees returned to Earth and Dreyfuss boarding a cathedral-like mothership, no doubt destined for adventures somewhere in a galaxy far, far away.

Flight Of The Navigator (1986)

A kind of junior Close Encounters, Flight Of The Navigator was Disney's family-friendly rendering of an alien abduction story. 12-year-old David (Joey Cramer) is knocked unconscious and wakes up to discover that eight years have passed. A quick brain scan reveals that his brain is crammed full of star maps, placed there by his alien abductors, and that his lost eight years were the result of a faster than light journey to the distant planet, Phaelon.

This being a Disney film, Flight Of The Navigator is high on cute aliens and low on disturbing experiments, and the latter half of the movie is essentially an excuse for its young hero to go for a joyride in a shiny alien spacecraft (which, incidentally, bears more than a passing resemblance to the ship in Hammer's classic 1969 movie Quatermass And The Pit).

Memorable for its once groundbreaking CG depiction of a shiny flying ship, Flight Of The Navigator is a fun sci-fi romp (particularly if you were a nine-year-old boy in the 80s), despite the fact that its breezy second half can't match up to the intriguing set-up of the first.

Communion (1989)

Christopher Walken turns in an extraordinary, bizarre performance as author Whitley Strieber, in this adaptation of the writer's apparently real account of extraterrestrial visitation.

Returning from a weekend stay at his woodland cabin, Strieber is haunted by memories of strange lights and grey faces in windows. Seeking the help of a psychiatrist, he recalls, while under hypnosis, his abduction at the pale hands of aliens.

Communion is an odd, often surreal film, and the nature of Strieber's encounters are frequently ambiguous. Do the dreadful puppet effects serve to underline the delusional nature of the author's apparent recollections, or are they merely a reflection of the film's low production values? Rubbery aliens notwithstanding, Communion has occasional moments of genuine unease, and if nothing else, the film underlines how frightening such encounters must be to those who experience them.

While critics treated Communion with disdain in the late 80s, it's nevertheless worth watching for Walken's eccentric, semi-improvised acting. He spends much of the film wearing weird hats, mumbling to himself and complaining about paintings that "attack without provocation." It's surprising, in fact, that aliens would choose such a terrifying man to abduct.

Fire In The Sky (1993)

Where Communion treated its character's experiences ambiguously, allowing the audience to draw its own conclusions, director Robert Lieberman's Fire In The Sky treats its events as absolute fact.

Based on the experiences of Arizona logger Travis Walton (played here by D. B. Sweeney), Fire In The Sky opens in November 1975, with Walton and his fellow workers (who include Robert Patrick and Hancock director Peter Berg) returning home from a day's work in the forest.

When Walton steps out of his truck to take a closer look at a UFO, he's struck by a blinding beam of light. His co-workers, rather selfishly, drive off and leave him. Walton is found five days later, traumatised and naked. Questioned by a suspicious local Lieutenant (James Garner), Walton gradually remembers disturbing events that apparently occurred aboard the UFO.

A quiet, slow-paced film, Fire In The Sky is more interested in the emotional effects of Walton's experiences than the details of his abduction. In interviews, Walton's colleagues describe their guilt at leaving their friend behind, and details of the characters' personal lives are related at frustrating length.

But when the film does finally delve into what happened to Walton, it's surprisingly effective. Indeed, its depiction of what an alien craft might look like, based on abductees' accounts, is one of the most memorable in 90s sci-fi cinema, and this nine minute sequence, where Walton is dragged around the ship's interior and subjected to weird experiments, is remarkably disquieting.

Independence Day (1996)

Included here for the sake of completeness, Independence Day is, of course, more interested in blowing up famous landmarks than the psychological effects of alien abduction, but Roland Emmerich's blockbuster uses numerous elements from UFO lore to tell its story, including references to Area 51 and the 1947 Roswell incident.

There's also a plot strand in which crop duster Russell Casse (Randy Quaid) claims to have been kidnapped by extraterrestrials, and his experiences are the frequent source of jokes in his local pub.

Unlike most abductees, Casse is given the opportunity to avenge himself at the film's conclusion, and with a final, defiant "Up yours!" brings down an alien destroyer in a moment of fiery self-sacrifice.

Progeny (1998)

A typically irreverent, daft movie from Brian Yuzna, the producer of Re-Animator and director of the brilliantly icky Society, Progeny is the polar opposite of films like Close Encounters Of The Third Kind or Fire In The Sky.

An alien abductee (Jillian McWhirter) discovers that she has fallen mysteriously pregnant, and that the baby inside her isn't entirely human.

A great cast, including Arnold Vosloo, The Thing's Wilford Brimley and Brad Dourif, all tackle the hokey, exploitative premise with admirably straight faces, and Progeny's full of moments that, unintentionally, or not, are absolutely hilarious, including lots of floating, naked bodies, rubbery alien effects (including plenty of rubbery tentacles) and Vosloo shouting "Nooo!" a lot.

Altered (2006)

Writer and director of The Blair Witch Project, Eduardo Sánchez, directed this low-budget but surprisingly well made sci-fi horror thriller. Like Independence Day's Russell Casse, Altered's characters have all suffered an unpleasant alien abduction, and all have a lust for revenge.

Armed to the teeth, the trio of abductees reconvene several years later, and in an interesting reversal of Blair Witch, head to the woods to hunt down a xenomorph. Predictably, their weapons are no match for the alien's strong jaws and sheer cunning, and Altered degenerates into a gritty, grim horror.

Mysteriously overlooked by Hollywood distributors in 2006, Altered deserves to be rediscovered on DVD. The film concentrates more on the cat and mouse hunt between humans and aliens than abduction, but it's well written and shot, and contains an extraordinary moment of visceral tug o' war straight out of Day Of The Dead.

Night Skies (2007)

Another low-budget oddity, director Roy Knyrim's Night Skies is rather less successful in its attempt to marry UFO-based sci-fi and horror than Altered was the year before.

Partially inspired by a real-life mass UFO sighting that occurred in Arizona ten years earlier, the film introduces a group of travelling friends (headed up by Jason Connery) who encounter strange lights in the sky and then an altogether closer encounter of the extraterrestrial kind.

Playing out like a far gorier, more sensationalistic Fire In The Sky, Night Skies takes too long to click into gear, and falls into the earlier film's trap of opening the film with lengthy scenes of dialogue.

And when the abduction finally takes place, it's neither as artfully staged or chilling as Fire In The Sky's (the interior of the ship looks like it's made of tripe), and despite a few surprising moments, is neither as memorable nor as well made as Sánchez's Altered.

The Fourth Kind (2009)

Milla Jovovich stars in this most recent tale of alien abduction, a film that, like Spielberg's classic, takes its title from legendary ufologist J. Alan Hynek's classification of extraterrestrial encounters.

Apparently based on actual events, The Fourth Kind mixes dramatised sequences with ‘real' footage (actually shot as part of the film) of abductees undergoing hypnosis.

Jovovich plays Doctor Abbey Tyler, a psychologist based in Alaska whose patients recount their experiences of abduction under hypnosis.

As a fake documentary (which it essentially is), The Fourth Kind is far less effective than similar films such as Paranormal Activity, and its attempt to evoke the same scares from alien abduction as the latter did for poltergeists fails for the most part.

The film's docudrama status also means that aliens are notable by their absence. Unlike every other film mentioned here, The Fourth Kind is the only entry where extraterrestrials are barely even glimpsed. Instead, we're treated to lengthy sequences of people lying on beds or couches and screaming, or perhaps yelling, "It's not an owl!"

Still, the movie made a reasonable return on its $10 million budget, though it's debatable whether there's much mileage in a cash-in sequel. There are only so many times audiences will pay to see people lying on couches, after all...

Conclusion:

It's interesting to note, looking back over the nine films we've covered here, how the alien abduction movie has apparently shifted in tone. That Close Encounters Of The Third Kind is the biggest budget, and most visually sumptuous movie of its type is indicative not only of the clout Spielberg enjoyed at that moment in his career, but also just how interested the movie going public was in the topic of extraterrestrials in the late 70s.

Communion and Fire In The Sky were perhaps the last films to cover the topic with any kind of seriousness (though even Fire In The Sky embroidered on the facts of Travis Walton's case somewhat), and alien abduction has become the stuff of schlock horror in the years since, culminating in the cod-documentary scares of The Fourth Kind.

On the subject of schlock, there's perhaps nothing more schlocky than the extraordinary 1989 abduction movie, Alien Seed. Starring CHiPs' Erik Estrada, it boasts one of the finest trailers I've seen since Grindhouse. On the strength of this, I'm desperate to track down a copy. Viewer discretion advised!

See Also:

• A brief history of the alien invasion movie

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Imagine you're holding a photo album full of cherished childhood memories: you riding your first bike, building a sandcastle on a windy beach, baking cakes with your nan. Now imagine a movie exec going at your album with a copy of Empire magazine and a Stanley knife until your BMX has become a podracer, it's Matthew Broderick with the bucket and spade, and Jaden Smith seems to be making a victoria sponge with Nicole Kidman in a CGI version of your nan's kitchen. Not quite the same, is it?

Once you've seen those versions, it's difficult not to forget them. Whenever you think back to the real memories, the other ones are still lurking around, tainting them.

Like the belief some cultures have that being photographed steals part of your soul, when a film we love is remade it can feel like a little piece of it is taken away. Even if we ignore the new versions, the originals seem somehow altered. Fans get het up about remakes because this stuff feels like it's ours. It's our lives and our memories being tinkered with, and a lot of the time it's not welcome.

Which is why when October not only saw the release of the 35th anniversary edition Blu-ray of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, but also the revival of yet more remake rumours (this time with Glee and Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy at the helm), there wasn't a whole lot of love coming from Transylvaaaniaa-uh-huh.

Rumours of a Rocky Horror remake have popped up every so often since Richard O'Brien's 1981 sort of sequel Shock Treatment, but the current studio lust for remakes makes it more likely than ever that these whispers might now become a reality.

In 2008, MTV announced their intention to produce a new version of the cult classic, news which sent many fans of the original movie and stage show screaming to the forums to wail over the possibility of Zac Efron strutting out of that elevator in a corset, Miley Cyrus sliding down the bannister in a maid's uniform or (and this might actually be worth seeing) 50 Cent doing the time warp.

The slew of online petitions, YouTube pleas and Facebook groups that sprang up in response to the MTV news are likely to be revived in the light of the news that Fox 2000 are courting Murphy to spearhead a new remake (without the involvement or blessing of creator Richard O'Brien) in the wake of the recent Rocky Horror-themed episode of Glee.

So, why the hubbub? Well, the word ‘cult' is bandied around a lot in the world of entertainment, but very few movies or stage shows can lay more claim to it than Rocky Horror. The 1970s midnight screenings at New York's Waverly Theatre, where crowds of regulars began the Rocky Horror tradition of arriving in costume with an arsenal of props and shouting additional dialogue at the screen, has become the stuff of legend. (It's the midnight experience that the new Blu-ray aims to recreate in your living rooms, giving you the chance to throw virtual rice and digital toast from the corner of the screen in a sterile recreation of tradition that's probably kinder to your home furnishings than the real thing).

After a shaky box office start, Rocky Horror is considered to be the longest running release in film history, having played worldwide in cinemas for 35 years. In the mid-seventies its blend of sex and songs, costumes and comedy, and hefty number of fan-boy movie references seized the attention of a small group of fans who began an obsession that has endured for decades. But what explains its longevity?

Adapted in 1975 from the UK stage show, the film does the same job as all good sci-fi and horror movies by transferring people's real-life fears onto fantastical creatures and situations. But this time the threat wasn't coming from the atom bomb or communism. It came from inside people's homes and families.

Created at a time when the ripples of the sexual revolution were being felt across America, O'Brien's film satirises fear of any sexuality that deviates from the Ralph 'n' Betty or Brad 'n' Janet model with a smart premise.

Ignorant enough to think of gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender or transvestite people as aliens from outer space hell-bent on corrupting America's innocence? Well, voila! Just as Buffy The Vampire Slayer made the point that high school can be a monstrous experience by filling the halls of Sunnydale High with real monsters. Rocky Horror takes small town fear of difference to its natural conclusion by showing so-called 'deviant' sexualities to be even more outrageous and devious than people feared.

So, here comes the rub.  I think they should do the remake.

Maybe depressingly, now seems like the perfect time for a decent satire on the parochial fear of difference, whether it's men in fishnets, women in veils or US presidents with foreign-sounding names. If Rocky Horror did it once, then in the right hands, it could do it again. But is Ryan Murphy the man to do it?

The recent Rocky Horror-themed episode of Glee ends with Will Shuester making a subtext-laden speech about how Rocky Horror gave outcasts and people on the fringes a place they could feel they belonged. Well, maybe. But doesn't that all sounds just a bit warm and fuzzy for Rocky Horror?

If Murphy does take on the project, let's hope he hangs on to Glee's more acerbic lines, but loses the feel-good moments. The original is a hugging- and learning-free zone. If it doesn't stay that way, then Murphy deserves to join Eddie in the freezer.

There's also the question of casting. Fan chatter has unimaginatively linked Marilyn Manson, Russell Brand and Lady Gaga with the Frank-N-Furter role, none of whom will cut it, showing what a rare package indeed is needed to fill Tim Curry's satin panties.

A major reason not to get hot and flustered about the remake is that it's already been done. Rocky Horror has been remade pretty much continually for 30-odd years. Hell, it's probably even being remade as we speak. Perhaps not in the usual way, but in performances and screenings in theatres, cinemas and living rooms around the country, people are remaking Rocky Horror by shouting new lines, using new props and dragging along lipstick-anointed virgins who will go on to do the same to others.

Richard O'Brien and Lou Adler bid their hideous progeny to go forth and prosper, and fittingly for its B-movie loving creators, it's alive!

So, while I understand the pain that's caused by redundant cash-in remakes from studios unwilling to take risks with original material, I won't be signing any petitions against the new RHPS. If it's good, it could be great and if it's not, at least we've still got the original and the new Blu-ray, which looks beautiful in its 1080p 2K/4K master and sounds fantastic with a DTS-HD 7.1 mix and a host of other ‘extras' goodies.

Remaking movies is a tradition almost as old as the art form itself. Like theatre directors putting on a new Hamlet, it can give cinematic audiences a chance to see the material in a new light and could even show us a new way to love an old favourite.

Having said all that, if anyone touches Labyrinth I will cut them.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show is out now on Blu-ray and available from the Den Of Geek Store.

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7 Alternative Uses for 3D Glasses (With Catastrophic Consequences)

I hate to upset James Cameron, God knows I do. But amongst the many things I took away from Jackass 3D was the knowledge that 3D clearly works best as a novelty. Sorry, J-Cam. I like looking at 3D forests and dragons flying into sky-rocks as much as the next chap, but it doesn't quite compare to having chunks of 3D faeces flying out of the screen at you. If you're honest with yourself, I'm sure you'll agree.

Like any person who wishes to maintain the sacredness of the 3D experience, I limit my 3D cinema visits to only the most essential outings (which, based on this article, include Avatar and Jackass 3D). Therefore, my 3D glasses (which I'm now lucky enough to get to take home with me) are not getting much use. This simply won't do.

I've considered other possible uses for them and have come up with these ideas, all of which are incorrect answers to a question nobody asked.

1. Sunglasses

Because real sunglasses cost upwards of £6 and you've already paid for these ones, there's no reason your 3D glasses can't multitask and be sunglasses too. My motto has always been ‘Why do one thing well when you can do several things at a sub-standard level?' I've even got a wooden plaque proudly displaying this motto hanging above my desk as I write this. I made it myself, using a piece of old door and a biro. It looks dreadful.

Catastrophe is inevitable because: They offer almost no protection against bright light. Aside from potentially damaging your eyes by putting these glasses on and staring directly at the sun, you might also find yourself temporarily blinded by brightness while driving. Or maybe you use them to protect your vision-balls from the sun whilst on an exotic holiday to a mountainous area. I've seen people lose their balance on cinema steps while wearing these glasses. So, on the edge of a cliff or some such would prove problematic and ‘splatty'.

It's worth noting that it does warn you on the bag that they aren't actually sunglasses, which is why this is a lazy suggestion as well as a stupid one. 

Potential fatalities: Lots. Should the car crash scenario come to be, a high death count can be expected. And should you take a tumble from a great height, there's no telling who you might land on or who might slip on your liquidy corpse-jam.

2. Creating a false reality

Make tedious, everyday tasks exciting by pretending that they're simply part of a 3D film. Give your bus journey to work a narrative arc, perhaps involving the driver being an evil robot monster who will explode if that group of annoying teenaged hate-sacks don't stop playing bad rap music on their phones. Just because you have to live in reality doesn't mean you have to interact with it! 

Catastrophe is inevitable because: People interact with reality for a reason. It's one of those unfortunate necessities of life. If I could spend all day at home sitting in my pants and an Iron Man helmet making swooshing noises because I'm pretending to fly, then I would. But it would ruin Christmas dinner for the rest of the family in much the same way as you turning up in silly glasses, munching on popcorn and hysterically laughing every time Nan gets a pop culture reference wrong would.

Furthermore, it would trivialise danger. 3D films have taught us that when something long and sharp is flying towards your face, you're perfectly safe. Reality has, correctly, highlighted that this isn't the case. By ignoring reality, the chances are that you're going to end up sticking your head in front of moving arrow or recently fired bullet while going "ooh".

Potential fatalities: 1. You.

3. Part of a disguise

These 3D glasses surely would come in handy for lurking in bushes or committing any other acts where identifying features, such as sparkling blue eyes that you could get lost in for hours, can cause you to stand out when your victim next sees you, likely in a police lineup.

Catastrophe is inevitable because: This will only work if everyone starts doing it. It won't be difficult to catch the only criminal wearing 3D glasses, will it?

Police Officer: Would you mind describing the man who waved his genitals at you, madam?

Shaken Victim: He was thin, pale, had fake Star Trek ears, 3D glasses like they give you at the cinema and a blue t-shirt with the Den Of Geek logo on, available for purchase online for only £14 (plus p&p) in a variety of colours and sizes. And while you're buying one of those, why not treat yourself to a mug for only £8.99?

Police Officer: Is that the man there in the bushes, madam?

Shaken Victim: Yes, it is. Please buy a mousemat.

Alternatively, what if they lure you into thinking you're watching a crime caper rather than causing one? You'll get careless. I just don't see a scenario involving this idea that doesn't involve some jail time. 

Potential fatalities: 100s. If you did find they offered your criminal activities an effective cloak of anonymity, then who knows what you might do. A bloody killing spree with a homemade shiv seems likely. 

4. Weaponry  

To adapt your 3D glasses into a shiv, you're going to need to go a bit Blue Peter. I'll include a handy step-by-step guide, so it's as simple for you as possible.

Step 1: Snap the arms off of the glasses and put them somewhere safe. Take the section of the glasses with the lenses on, the front bit, and forcibly insert it into your anus. Alternatively, you can dispose of it in any other way you see fit. Just be sure to keep it out of reach of children, as there will be some sharp edges.

Step 2: Take a knife, and whittle one end of each arm into sharp point.

Congratulations. You've just created your very own shiv. Perfect for recreating some of your favourite prison movie moments.

Catastrophe is inevitable because: It's a flimsy weapon and once you bring stabbing into an equation, you really are going to want something sturdy. If nothing else, because you're probably going to get stabbed back. This is another one that also carries serious jail time and is, I'd probably concede, morally wrong. I'm actually going to go right on ahead here and say that of all of the ideas on this list, this one is probably the worst. Also, if you're using a knife to create the shiv, you're absolutely wasting your time.

Potential fatalities: 7. You, plus a group of us who will die laughing at you for having the audacious stupidity to actually try it. 

5. Impersonating Kanye West

There's no way that the giant-skulled rap-warbler has never worn cinema 3D glasses as a fashion accessory. It's simply impossible that it hasn't happened.

Catastrophe is inevitable because: You end up looking like Kanye West, a man with a figuratively and literally giant head, who might be, even though nothing factually suggests it, a toilet nuisance. Once you've started to look like Kanye West, it's only a matter of time before you start to act like him. Your relationship self-awareness will immediately strain and then shatter, the pieces frothing into nothing and disappearing forever. Then you'll start singing like a robot.

Potential fatalities: 0. Consider this to be harmless, although be warned that you're reaching Uwe Boll-ian levels of hatefulness if you do it.

6. Tomfoolery and deception

Have you ever watched a 2D film and wished that it was in 3D? No? What do you mean 'no'?

Work with me, lie and say you have.

Yes? Well, how about pretending that it is by wearing your 3D glasses into the cinema for a non-3D film. This time, the pretending is not for your benefit. For this to work you need to pick a crowded showing and you're going to have to make lots of 'ooh' and 'aah' noises. If you really want to sell it, reach out a little bit to try to touch the thing that isn't actually coming out of the screen (although exercise caution. You don't want to prod someone in the back of the head. It's impolite and they might be carrying a homemade shiv). 

Once you've been banned from your local multiplex, you could try the same trick but in more interesting places. How about a highbrow play? (And by highbrow, I specifically mean not panto.) You could even make some stickers saying ‘Now with added 3D' and stick them on the posters outside the venue.

Be creative. Maybe try it at home while watching TV with your family. Try it at a pop concert or while watching a video on your phone in a bustling public area.

Catastrophe is inevitable because: You're will either anger a mob or become the subject of their collective ridicule. Once people work out that you're playing a prank on them, or punkulating them, as the kids say, they will either think that you're very stupid and tut loudly, or they'll become infuriated and tear you limb from limb.

Also, while you may not count this as a catastrophe, it's worth noting that this one involves wasting huge amounts of your time with absolutely no benefit.

Potential fatalities: 1. You, and if not you, then your dignity. Seriously, you're better than doing this.

7. Further tomfoolery and deception

For this one you will need a beloved pet dog and several months to train that dog to wear 3D glasses without causing a fuss. We do a similar thing in my house where we make Dr. Poodle Von Cuddlestein wear reindeer antlers all year just so he looks adorable on Christmas morning. Interestingly, if you look into his eyes for long enough you can see an aching for death. It's mesmerising.

You need for your dog to be used to wearing the glasses by 1st July 2011. On this day, take him to see Transformers 3. Now, you are going to need to get your dog into the cinema. However, if you look closely at what this list is, it's ‘alternative uses for 3D glasses', not ‘how to sneak a pooch into a Cineworld'. You're going to have to do some of the thinking for yourself. What, do you want me to tuck you in at night, read you a bedtime story and tenderly kiss you on the forehead too?

Anyway, you bring your dog into the cinema and have it wear the 3D glasses for the duration of Transformers 3. Then, at the end, you have to loudly ask what it thought of the film, wait a moment like you're pretending to listen, and then agree that you thought it was shit as well.

Catastrophe is inevitable because: You have to watch Transformers 3.

Also, I can only imagine that it would be next to impossible to control a dog in a cinema. Too many smells, too many people, too many flashing images of colourful robots clumsily scrapping for no interesting reason. No matter how well you've trained it to wear its glasses, it'll still more than likely go on a rampage through the multiplex, leaving a trail of aggravated anarchy as it does.

Potential fatalities: 1. A beloved pet in what will no doubt be a case of court-ordered euthanasia.

• See all the Confused Views

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Let's start with a little bit of timey-wimey stuff, because context is everything. 2010 was a big, no, make that huge, year for Doctor Who. Five years and two doctors after its incredibly successful relaunch, the series saw two key departures. The show's creator, Russell T Davies, handed over control to superfan Steven Moffat, while David Tennant ceded the blue box to an eleventh Doctor. Regeneration has always looked rather painful, but the Tennant-Smith transition has to have been the most wince-inducing in the show's near fifty-year history.

Tabloid headlines and fan outbursts alike screamed that Smith was too young, too inexperienced, too quirky (Heaven forbid that we should ever see that trait in a Time Lord) and, just to add to his crimes, had unforgivably fabulous hair.

Incredibly, all this contradictory invective spread to the farthest reaches of the internet months before the young pretender had uttered his first line as the Doctor. How could this mere babe in arms of 27, with nothing but a sterling career in theatre and television behind him, possibly hope to fill the departing Tennant's shoes?

The answer to this, of course, was that such an utterly pointless exercise would have been a little bit beneath Smith's talents. Not since Daniel Craig's Bond has such a mammoth quantity of humble pie been swallowed by the critics.

The complete fifth series DVD set is an opportunity to savour the development of this most complex of Doctors as one satisfying whole. Smith's Doctor is a vision in tweed, touchingly confident of the ‘coolness' of his bowtie and blissfully unaware of how very alien he actually is.

This Time Lord is a new, richly drawn and deeply mysterious character in his own right, but the echoes of his predecessors are there, a dash of Pertwee, a soupçon of Troughton. Never so overt as to be derivative or to veer into pastiche, they lurk beneath the surface as a wholly plausible reminder of the complex psychology of a constantly evolving being. Elegant, and yet hopelessly clumsy, a wonderfully silly super-genius (must I mention the fez?), fresh-faced and brimming over with youthful enthusiasm, even as he talks to kids with grandfatherly affection, this is a Doctor with genuine gravitas who can command the rulers of whole worlds and jump out of a wedding cake with aplomb.

I'd say more, but Moffat got it about right. We're looking at "Patrick Moore in the body of an underwear model". As rebirths go, it's a pretty cool way to end up. The fact that Sir Patrick is actually in the first episode, as himself, is a definite plus.

The low expectations attached to Smith's tenure were matched only by the unfeasibly high standards expected of Moffat as executive producer. Having crafted some of the most memorable and poignant episodes of the Davies era, there was understandable pressure on ‘the Moff' as he took the reins. Oddly, the balance shifted over the course of series five. As Smith was lauded, so Moffat's storytelling was derided in some quarters as cold, formulaic and derivative. Call me stupid (and, no doubt, some will), but I don't get it. Yes, some storylines worked better than others. Welcome to the world of episodic television.

Okay, so Karen Gillan's Amy Pond seemed a little underwritten at first, but the series finale helped to fill in the apparent gaps in her personality. Arthur Darvill could have been the squeakiest of third wheels as her luckless fiancé, Rory, but instead gave us some of the series' most touching moments and a sterling comedy double act with the good Doctor.

The Eleventh Hour launched us into the brave new Whoniverse as the freshly regenerated Doctor met little Amelia Pond and promptly left her for ‘five minutes' that turned into twelve years. Whoops. Returning to find his young friend all grown up and employed as a kissogram, the Doctor, still fizzing with nervous energy after his involuntary makeover, finally got round to solving the mystery of the terrifying Prisoner Zero and his equally scary pursuers. The crack in Amy's wall, however, would prove to be a more intractable problem, and provided a continuing story arc that ran for the whole series.

After this exhilarating opener, The Beast Below was something equivalent to a difficult second album, liked and disliked in roughly equal measure. I loved the wisecracking Liz Ten, the high concept idea and the first sign that this was a spectacularly kind Doctor. Plus, you can't quibble too much with anything that stars the Demon Headmaster in a supporting role. The real sticking point for many, however, was Victory Of The Daleks. Key to the controversy was, needless to say, the presence of the metal shuttlecocks of doom, reimagined here by Mark Gatiss as Professor Bracewell's Ironsides (love it) and conscripted for Churchill's war effort.

The Daleks' inevitable ulterior motive led to another shocking revelation: they'd had a facelift more drastic than our hero's. Widely mocked as ‘iDaleks' for their toddler-friendly bright colours and obvious Christmas gift appeal, this new incarnation of the scourge of the Galaxy, like so much of this series, divided opinion. My only criticism was the lack of a purple one. Gatiss' corblimey guv'nor vision of 40s London was a treat. And I'm sorry, but Spitfires in space are, as someone would definitely say, cool.

Almost nobody, it seemed, had a bad word to say about the following two-parter, The Time Of Angels/Flesh and Stone, which will undoubtedly have left an entire generation with a pathological fear of statuary. The return of the intriguing archaeologist River Song threw a little confusion into the mix, while the mystery was heightened by the taciturn scheming of soldier-bishop Octavian (a superlative Iain Glen, one of the most impressive guest stars in a generally great bunch). The Weeping Angels didn't scare me at all, by the way. Nope. Wait, what was that noise?

Next up, pure fun. The Vampires Of Venice might have been low on real vampires (they were, erm, a bit more aquatic than usual) but was high on comedy as the Doctor and Rory vied for Amy's trust. There was much to love here, from the stand-off between a superb Helen McCrory and a Doctor who proved to be more than her match in cunning and dignity, to the sumptuous evocation of sixteenth-century Venice.

After this, we got a character piece, Amy's Choice, in which the tensions between the Doctor, Amy and Rory in the aftermath of that kiss came to a head. Toby Jones' performance as the sinister Dream Lord provided the perfect foil to the Doctor, and the final revelation behind his identity left us with tantalising hints of a darker side to our favourite madman with a box. Weird and wonderful.

The second two-parter in the series, The Hungry Earth/Cold Blood saw the return of the Pertwee-era misunderstood antagonists, the Silurians, back to claim their planet, and a devastating loss as Rory fell saving the Doctor's life, compounded by Amy's utter failure to remember her lover's existence as the dastardly crack in time sucked him into oblivion.

The only person other than the Doctor to feel her subconscious pain was a man with quite enough of his own, Vincent Van Gogh, who came to the duo's aid in Richard Curtis' magnificent Vincent And The Doctor. Tony Curran's stellar depiction of this fascinating, tragic artist was one of many highlights in a beautiful, brave portrayal of mental illness. I saw this weeks after visiting the Royal Academy's blockbuster exhibition, so the wish-fulfilment fantasy struck a deep chord. This was Blackadder Goes Forth Richard Curtis rather than his romcom persona, and all the better for it.

The Lodger defied expectations, as the Doctor's unlikely flatshare with everyman Craig (James Corden) turned into a hilarious and sweetly touching tale in which a socially clueless Doctor gained a more than anthropological perspective on the human lives he so briefly shared.

With the finale, The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang, we were taken from the minutiae of daily life to the survival of the universe, as we learnt that the Doctor wasn't the only one capable of cheating death.

The stakes were huge, with the prospect of Amy throwing a strop on her Doctor-free wedding day only slightly less terrifying than that of the universe disappearing at a rate of knots. Romans, an alien cast of thousands and Smith's rather fantastic audition for Henry V. I'll enjoy seeing Moffat top this one.

Extras

As if all that wasn't enough, the DVD set also contains some choice goodies. 'Meanwhile in the Tardis' scenes add extra depth to the characterisation, my favourite being Amy's extended introduction to the blue box of dreams, during which she bombards the Doctor with endless questions ("Why is it a police box? Is the bowtie a cry for help?").

We also get the Cut Down versions of the Doctor Who Confidentials for the insider's perspective on the show, along with commentaries and a selection of bloopers. If you haven't already heard Smith's rendition of the Who theme, prepare yourself.

So, there you have it. Smith might have done ancient convincingly, but an amateur he ain't. How long is it until Christmas?

Feature:
Discs:

Doctor Who: The Complete Series 5 is out now and available from the Den Of Geek Store.

Glitches appear to be the price we pay for having games as big and complex as Black Ops. And as was the case with every other Call Of Duty title in recent memory, those who’ve been playing away at Black Ops over the couple of days since release have been reporting all kinds of glitches and bugs within the game.

These range from clipping issues – the most notable one being the ability to sneak through a wall and into the driving seat of a truck – occasional freezes on the PS3 version, and connection problems in multiplayer mode.

The most acute problems appear to be with the PC version, which appears to suffer from quite serious lag issues on even the most powerful hardware set-ups.

While these problems will almost certainly be patched up in forthcoming updates, publisher Activision has since responded to the complaints, stating that “Every game has bugs.”

“…The bigger the game, the more likely you will find bugs that would never even come to light in less popular titles," wrote Activision PR man Dan Amrich on his blog, One Of Swords. “So the best way to help get rid of those bugs is to share what you’ve learned with the team that has the power and insight to fix them.”

Meanwhile, Black Ops developer Treyarch has issued a statement of its own, warning players who attempt to exploit the game’s glitches for their own advantage.

“We are disinterested in making mini-celebrities out of douche-bags,” wrote multiplayer design director David Vonderhaar on the Black Ops forums. “You better think twice before you glitch. You never know who in your game doesn't like glitchers who reports you and saves the game in their File Share and tells us about it.”

You can read Vonderhaar’s full, very stern statement over on the Black Ops forums here.

CVG

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For anyone who associates the name of Charlotte Brontë's classic novel, Jane Eyre, with dreary English lessons at school or genteel Sunday evening costume dramas, the trailer for Cary Fukunaga's new adaptation will almost certainly come as a shock.

Playing up the horror/thriller undertones of the 19th century story, this is Jane Eyre filtered through the mind of Alejandro Amenábar or Dario Argento, and therefore makes it more than worthy of geek attention.

In fact, the classic, jingly tune from Argento's classic Suspiria is cheekily incorporated into a few scenes in the trailer, though we'd be extremely surprised if it made it into the finished cut of the movie itself.

The adaptation stars newcomer Mia Wasikowska as Jane Eyre, the girl of humble origins who works as a governess for the wealthy and faintly sinister Edward Rochester (Michael Fassbender, in magnificent sideburns), and apparently features lots of shouting, creaking doors, and Dame Judi Dench.

Whether the finished film will live up to the creepy brilliance of this trailer remains to be seen, but it's certainly got our attention, at the very least.

Jane Eyre is due for release next year.

MTV

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Remember when someone in the US thought it would be a good idea to remake the classic late-90s sitcom, Spaced? It's now two years since an abortive pilot episode was filmed and then quietly canned after a hugely negative reaction from fans of the UK original.

Last year, series director Edgar Wright made a quite reasoned argument as to why Spaced simply wouldn't work outside its north London setting.

"Part of the charm of Spaced is it's people in north London acting out stuff from American films... you know, Hollywood in, kind of, suburbia," Wright said in a Spaced reunion back in 2007. "American TV is much more glamorous. It doesn't make any sense. I remember that the producer at the time said, 'Yeah, we'd have to change a few things. We'd have to take out the drugs and the swearing, and obviously, Mike can't have guns."

Understandably angered that neither he nor fellow writer and performer Jessica Hynes had been consulted over the remake, Simon Pegg wrote a measured but vociferous statement about the matter in March 2008.

Two years after the proposed Spaced remake was nipped in the bud, a four-minute clip of the pilot appeared on the Internet, proving that such a production really was as bad as everyone feared it would be.

Most recently, the pilot's shooting script, written by Adam Barr, has appeared online, providing a better impression of how the entire episode would have played out for the first time.

The premise, of course, is the same - two 20-something house hunters pretend to be a married professional couple in order to secure a place to rent - and there are the requisite geek culture references familiar from the original Spaced, but the sparkle is clearly missing. That's, er, something of an understatement...

You can read the complete script at My PDF Scripts here.

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First appearing back in 2007, GSC Game World's open world first-person shooter, Stalker, offered a window into an eerie, science fiction world set among the wastelands of the Chernobyl disaster.

Inspired by the science fiction short story, Roadside Picnic, by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, the game was filled with mutant creatures, bad weather and strange anomalies. Players took on the role of an amnesiac whose initial aim was to kill a mysterious character by the name of Strelok, but soon found themselves searching for an equally strange artifact called the Wish Granter.

While quite clearly low budget, the television adaptation of Stalker looks quite intriguing, and appears to have retained the same gritty, grungy look of GSC's original games. At the very least, it'll be interesting to see how it compares to the 1979 movie, also called Stalker, directed by Andrei Tarkovsky.

While similarly atmospheric and often beautiful to look at, the movie, clocking in at almost three hours, moved at the pace of a drifting glacier.

It's fortunate, too, that the TV adaptation isn't based on a typical session of Stalker, as played by your humble writer. If it did, each episode would boil down to a man standing in a field staring at a map with utter incomprehension, and then hiding in a ditch from a roaming mutant canine.

There's no word yet as to when the Stalker series is likely to air. In the meantime, here's the first trailer...

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This review contains spoilers.

5. No Ordinary Visitors

I'm starting to really despair with this show, because the writers have somehow convinced themselves that they can have both a dramatic show with genuine threats and a lightweight knock-about comedy in the same package.

No Ordinary Visitors had two plotlines, one of which was a dark one about criminals who invade a home and attack a family, and another that appeared to be borrowed from an episode of Friends. The dramatic story was mildly interesting, but the annoying relatives narrative was painful from beginning to end.

As is the fashion for introducing parents into shows, they have to be recognisable actors, and here Cybill Shepherd and Bruce McGill turn up uninvited as Barbara and Allan Crane, the parents of Stephanie Powell (Julie Benz).

I've seen some good performances from Cybill Shepherd over the years, and her comic timing can be excellent (as it was in Cybill), but here she's wheeled on to play the uber-bitch in a manner that had me wondering if she was reading from cue cards. But Bruce McGill doesn't actually get any more meat on his plate either, and he's as annoying as the irritating bartender character (or God, if you like) that he got to be in Quantum Leap.

Both of these characters come out with such bile on their in-laws that I found it entirely unbelievable that either Jim or Stephanie would put up with them, but they do, like they're entirely restrained by the ironwork of a family relationship. Please! I was waiting for Jim to punch Allan, but what we're given instead is Jim's joy in using JJ to beat him on the pool table, which was hardly a substitute for a super left hook. The small victory was further depressed by Allan's seeming indifference to losing his classic car to a child who can't drive.

What it left me with was that, far from being 'No Ordinary Family', the Powells are excessively mundane, possibly to the point of catatonia.

What annoys me most is that this show started with lots of potential, a competent cast and a slightly quirky take on a superhero world. But what it's so far boiled down to is the occasional super act, wall to wall family bickering, and comedy so light that it makes Friends seem like a live Eddie Murphy in full flood.

If this is what the show's creative team intended from the outset, they've executed it flawlessly, but I think their strategy is entirely misplaced.

At this point, unless they take the training wheels off this show in a hurry, I can see that the rest of the season is going to be a painful trudge to inevitable TV oblivion.

I'd love to be wrong about this and see the viewing audience soar as they deliver gripping storylines and super-daring-do, but at my heart, I'm entirely convinced that what I'm much more likely to get is JJ getting super-zits and George unable to get off a single story roof without a self help program.

Read our review of episode 5, No Ordinary Earthquake, here.

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James Bond: Quantum Of Solace wasn't a bad game. In fact, it was quite good. Sure, it was certainly no game of the year, but it delivered some quality Bond action nonetheless, even if it was a little unoriginal. With the lack of a film out any time soon, Activision didn't want to let the world's most famous spy get too rusty, and called Daniel Craig's incarnation of Bond back into active service for Blood Stone.

If you're expecting more of the same Call Of Duty-style gameplay, though, you'll be surprised. Developer, Bizarre Creations, has dropped the previous game's mechanics in favour of some more old school Bond action that plays much more like older 007 title, Everything Or Nothing, only much smoother. Think Metal Gears of Bond, and you're about there.

The game is played primarily in third person, and features a ton of cover-based gunplay similar to Epic's chainsaw-wielding series. Stealth also plays a pivotal role, and aside from the copious amounts of ballistic combat, you'll spend a good deal of time trying to silently get the drop on foes, performing stealth takedowns and outflanking enemies in numerous locations around the world.

Licence to imitate

Controlling Bond is pretty standard stuff, with the usual by-the-book cover system being one of the central components. Ranged combat is similarly familiar, with over-the-shoulder aiming, blind fire from cover and a simple easy kill system that lets you kill any foe with a single precise shot. This focus mode is gained by performing stealth kills, a la Splinter Cell, and is useful, but not all that impressive.

Bond can use a range of weapons above and beyond his trusty Walther pistol, and he also has a rather handy mobile phone scanning device that can locate and scan evidence, reveal the direction you're supposed to go, and track the location and awareness level of enemies, as well as hack computers and the like. (I bet the iPhone can't do that!)

Although none of this is exactly revolutionary and most features have been seen before many, many times, all of this hangs together well for the most part, and the controls and feel of the game are about right. The cover system, although fairly rudimentary, works well enough, and gun combat, mixed in with simple stealth and basic melee attacks, help create a surprisingly enjoyable romp. Sadly, the enemy AI and challenge don't stand up quite as well.

Toasty!

The enemy AI is pretty poor, and when enemies aren't standing right out in the open soaking up James' bullets, they're hunkered down behind objects, bobbing their heads up and down out of cover with the regularity of a nodding dog in the back of a rickety old banger. It's comical at times, and placing your sights over the hiding place of a terrorist, waiting for him to laughably pop his head out, into your sights, for the easy kill is commonplace.

Even on hard difficulty foes rarely put up a struggle, and are usually non-events that exist merely to fill up space and give you something to do. They'll certainly return fire, though. In fact, so happy are their collective trigger fingers, they'll even fire constantly into walls and other objects that dare to get in their line of sight towards Bond, emptying clip after clip with nary a sidestep to look around obstructions. You do have to make use of cover if you wish to stay alive, though, when the enemy actually figures out how to move and target you.

This is because the harder difficulty only lets you take a couple of shots before James croaks, so cover is essential. But once seated in a hidey hole, you'll rarely have to move, as enemies just aren't that intelligent, and will often be content to wait until doomsday behind the closest wall or barricade. They'll even get nestled down right next to conveniently placed explosive barrels, as if daring you to blow them to kingdom come.

Obviously, effective battlefield movement and cover use wasn't important in their respective criminal organisations orientation programme. They will sometimes attempt to press the fight onwards, moving in on you, albeit very slowly, but you'll rarely find yourself flanked or outthought.

Spice of life

Luckily, while the on foot gameplay is fairly traditional, not exactly pushing any boundaries, it's mixed together with the various other elements well enough that it all combines to make an enjoyable game. Stealth never feels awkwardly forced, the slick, easy to execute melee moves are cool and the gun play is polished enough, especially with the slow-mo headshot-tastic focus mode, and despite the flaws, it's always entertaining.

To mix things up a little, some missions throw in stealth-heavy sections that let you sneak around without firing a shot, and others see you locating computers and other devices to hack and recover information. There's even a rooftop chase sequence that stands out as a highlight of the game. This variety helps to keep the admittedly repetitive core gameplay interesting, and it all feels very Bond in the process.

Mota

Breaking up the main course of third person combat are a few vehicles sections. These are usually short and sweet, but offer some hugely entertaining high speed thrills that wouldn't be out of place in a real Bond movie. There's a host of James Bond moments, including exploding oil tankers, strafing helicopters and frantic pursuits through oncoming traffic, and each handles very well, which is no surprise, coming from the developers behind Project Gotham.

As with the main game, these sections are rarely all that challenging, and serve mainly as a distraction from the combat-heavy and occasionally repetitive nature of the on foot sections, but they look great and play well, and are a step up from Bond's previous outings behind the wheel in past videogame adventures.

Pacemaker

When you first plough into Blood Stone, you'll experience an initial wow factor. The opening act is a non-stop thrill ride, packing in on foot combat, an epic speedboat chase and a rubber-burning road race pursuit. But this soon gives way to a far more mundane and slow paced game, at least initially.

Eventually, after a few sluggish (but still enjoyable) sections, things pick up, and the latter part of the game certainly tightens things up, but then, before you know it, it's all over. The story will last only around five to six hours for most, with little to no reason to replay it.

There is a multiplayer component included, but it's more of a throwaway extra than a real reason to keep the game in your playlist. In fact, I suspect most will try the multiplayer out one or two times and never return. It's just so, well, meh.

You expect me to be good?

007: Blood Stone has a lot going for it on face value, including decent visuals, solid controls, some exciting and varied locations and an authentic cast, but it's let down by some basic, overly formulaic features, dodgy AI and light challenge.

Like Quantum Of Solace, Blood Stone isn't a bad game, and is, in fact, a very enjoyable one while it lasts. The main bulk of the game may be a little samey and unoriginal for some, but the vehicle sections and some great Bond-like situations help to keep things interesting.

It's just a shame that it never quite manages to escape mediocrity, and there are so many similar style games that do the same thing better. Bond fans will definitely get a kick out of this, but it's no GoldenEye.

007: Blood Stone is out now and available from the Den Of Geek Store.

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Eight days. That's all that's left to wait for the cinematic return to Hogwarts, as Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part I gets ready for its worldwide rollout. The world premiere takes place in London today, but if you're not on the guest list (don't worry, we're not either!) then feast your eyes on this latest collection of images from the film that Warner Bros has just released.

Wave your magic wand and shout ‘makebigapictureus' at any of the images you want to make bigger. Or just click on them. Your call, really.

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Things get off to a bad start here, as the Godfocker joke wasn't funny in the last trailer for Little Fockers. Now? It's been moved up front, to draw people in. Bad plan. Still not funny.

That said, Little Fockers has been attracting bad buzz for months now, with stories of reshoots, and rumours of the film just not being very funny. Thus, Dustin Hoffman was drafted back in, and we see the first signs of him in this latest trailer.

The promos, we feel, still aren't doing the film many favours, although we do think that the drafting in of Paul Weitz to take over directing duties is a smart move. So, we're holding out hope that the final cut here will be a lot more impressive than its predecessor, Meet The Fockers.

The film is out in the UK on 22nd December. And here's that trailer...

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A few weeks ago, we had the trailer for Scream 4 doing the rounds, although then it seemed to be taken offline by Dimension Films shortly afterwards. This time, it's all a bit more official, as a teaser trailer for Scream 4 has now been unleashed.

It points out it's from "master of suspense" Wes Craven, but this is the same Wes Craven who posted on Twitter that he didn't have control of the script of the production, which has raised chatter that all is not well with Scream 4. That said, if you gave us a pound for every film beset by such rumours that turned out to be fine, then we'd have enough money to buy at least a second cup of coffee. Which would be a start.

The film comes out next April, and here's that teaser trailer...

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