Zack Snyder describes it as “Alice In Wonderland with machine guns”, while we’d humbly suggest that the director’s forthcoming Sucker Punch looks like Sailor Moon filtered through the kinky mind of Quentin Tarantino. Or an action fantasy starring the Spice Girls. Or something.

At any rate, Sucker Punch has been surprisingly divisive so far. Reader reaction to the movie’s debut trailer, which we brought to these pages earlier this month, ranged from “This flick looks cool” to “It just left me bored.”

Certainly, Snyder’s saturated, CG-heavy style of filmmaking won’t be to everyone’s taste, but we’re certainly willing to give Sucker Punch the benefit of the doubt, not least because we love the idea of a deadly killer robot with a bunny face painted on the front.

The latest pair of promotional images are sadly robot-free, and instead feature Emily Browning, Abbie Cornish, Jena Malone, Vanessa Hudgens and Jamie Chung, all heavily armed and looking vampish in their impractical warrior garb.

There’s a definite World War I vibe here, too, which makes it look as though the quintet of ladies have stumbled onto the set of Black Adder Goes Forth. We’re sure it’ll all make sense once the film’s finished…

As ever, click on the little thumbnails to have these lovely images fill your screen.

SpoilerTVMovies

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This review contains spoilers.

Like the Led Zeppelin classic, there's a whole lotta love going on in the latest episode of Misfits. Our favourite chav, Kelly, has her tattoo retouched, while cheeky-boy Nathan stares aghast at a picture of a tattooed willy. As they leave the parlour though, Nathan suddenly wants to get to know Simon more intimately, a move that will launch a thousand slash fanfics by Saturday morning. But there's something distinctly fishy about Nathan's new tattoo...

Elsewhere, it's looking like curtains for Curtis and Alisha. Both have new interests in their lives, Curtis goes to apologise Nikki who's bed Nathan staged a dirty protest in, and finds she's not as tough as her attitude. But it's Alisha's discovery of the Superhoodie's identity that's the big surprise here. When she wakes up in his lair, like Vikki Vale in Burton's Batman, she's gobsmacked to find out the parkour loving hero is Simon!

No longer the shy wallflower, he calmly explains that he's come back from the future to ensure events take place as they should, and offering a small glimpse of what's to come.

This week's instalment, then, confirms why this series goes from strength to strength. There's a superpowered villain, after all, using his powers to... turn Nathan gay. Which isn't as dastardly as Magneto exterminating the human race, perhaps. But this leads to a great confrontation where he's defeated by an all too human weakness, a nut allergy.

Iwan Rheon has the hardest task here, playing two versions of the same character. But the differences between Simon-present and Simon-future are subtle yet recognisable. Simon-present is still the twitchy, awkward nerd he ever was, while Simon-future positively oozes calm and confidence. The reveal of the Superhoodie's identity opens up more questions, such as how the hell did Simon ever manage to come out of his shell anyway? But also how has he managed to jump back? And why is it that certain things have to happen? Where is this all leading up to?

With such a big reveal, you'd expect the mystery to have lessened somewhat, but only the surface has been scratched. With bigger developments in store, it's anyone guess as to where this is heading. Is Simon-future working towards the group's best intentions? Or is it so he could finally score with Alisha? And why is he unaffected by her power?

I fear I'm sounding like a broken record every week, but once again, Misfits delivers a top quality episode. Each moment pushes the story forward, and you find yourself actually giving a damn about what's going to happen next.

My only nit-pick is every so often the dialogue sounds like it was written by a horny 14 year old boy. But until a duff episode comes along, I'll just keep praising this show for being a gripping and fresh take on superpowers.

You can read our review of Misfits series 2, episode 2 here.

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This review contains spoilers.

2.1 Ilsa Pucci

"Hey, dude, welcome back. Good to have you home."  Guerrero

The second season of Human Target kicked off last week after a delayed return of the comic-based show. Here's a recap of what happened, what new members may be joining the team and what we thought of the season opener.

The first scene opens with Winston talking to his captor, interspersed with clips of him walking into a bank. Unfortunately for the bad guys, Chance and Guerrero are already in the bank dressed as cops. Chance tries to get a teller to sound an alarm, but apparently that isn't very easy.

Unfortunately for the good guys, the bad guys planned on this and Winston has a bomb strapped to him. This doesn't go well because of Guerrero blowing the bad guys hand off with a shotgun and Chance saying goodbye before disarming the bomb. When he said goodbye, he was talking about forever.

In a slight change to the usual format where the show jumps back in time to show how Chance got into an impossible situation, this episode instead jumps forward a week with the revelation that Chance really is gone forever with Winston clearing out the office. A few men dressed in suits led by Peter (the awesome Tahmoh Penikett of BSG and Dollhouse) walk into the office with a view to hiring the team and are informed that Chance is gone.

Flash forward another six months and we see Chance up a mountain in Nepal where he's been meditating for three days. This is interrupted by a delightful brunette, Ilsa Pucci, arriving in a helicopter.

Cue the new opening sequence, which, in my opinion, fits the show even less than the last one.

Turns out that the Ilsa's husband was murdered and now they're after her, so she wants Chance to help her. Reluctantly he agrees to help and starts by getting the team back together. Back in their office the client explains why she's hiring them.

After her husband was killed there was a threat to her life in Geneva, where one of her security staff was assassinated. Peter expresses his concern that two people aren't enough to safely watch the client at the party she's throwing. Of course, there are three of them and a hilarious scene reintroduces Guerrero, where he takes a guy out the trunk of his car, telling him that it's his lucky day.

Then it's off to the party, where Chance is talking to Ilsa when her creepy lawyer shows up, just before Guerrero walks through the front door, and metal detectors, with a sniper rifle. Winston then watches a rather suspicious woman walk up to security wearing a security uniform and start having a go at them about not doing their job properly. Cut to a sexy montage of said woman discarding wig and suit while getting dressed up for the party. Amazingly, the blonde wig and security uniform seem to have thrown Winston, while Chance gives Ilsa the good news that someone is there to kill her.

The lawyer then brings over someone he wants her to meet, a Lars Neilson, whose ‘date' we had just seen coming through security a few minutes ago wearing a blonde wig. She introduces herself as Melinda Wilson and something she does triggers Chance's spidey sense. He tells Winston to grab her.

A chase ensues when Melinda runs away, with Winston having a little trouble keeping up with her, until Guerrero steps in. She thinks he's security and asks for help. He obliges by punching her in the face. They find a ring on her identical to the ring worn by Ilsa. This warns Chance something is about to happen and just in time he tells her to get down, just before shots are fired into the room.

Chance figures out the sniper is a diversion to flush Ilsa out of the room, but Peter grabs her and takes her out anyway, while Peter's staff stop Chance. Well, for a few seconds anyway and she gets into the elevator. A few shots are fired and when it opens at the bottom, she is gone and Peter is lying dead in the elevator. Chance chases the kidnappers, but is only quick enough to see her being driven away.

Back at the office, Guerrero is sitting with ‘Melinda' tied up on a chair. Just before Guerrero gets a chance to torture her, Winston comes in. This seems to annoy Guerrero. It turns out her name is Ames and he was able to match a print. Winston had arrested her back when he was a cop. Winston then leaves the room, but as he's leaving, Ames finds out Guerrero's name and her face drops. Apparently, he has a reputation.

Chance and Winston then have a conversation about what happened and what the plan is. Ames tells Guerrero that she's not an assassin, she's a thief. She was only hired to switch the ring and get out of there. After a little coercion, he finds she's telling the truth and after checking private jets they figure out Ilsa's being taken to Geneva. Surprisingly, it's the creepy lawyer who's had herkidnapped and she's being taken to a bank.

Meanwhile, Ames has escaped being tied up and wants to help (looks like she's going to be recurring. Hopefully they do more with her than they did with Autumn Reeser) and after reminding her of how dangerous Guerrero is, they let her.  Off they go to Switzerland.

In the bank, the lawyer escorts Isla through security before taking her husband's eye out of a case for the retina scanner. (Told you he was creepy.) Inside the vault the lawyer only takes a briefcase. He was after Mr Pucci's deeds and titles that are worth billions. Of course, by now the team are outside the bank just in time to see Isla make a stand in the bank. She knows she's going to die, so she wants to do it there.

Ames is already in the bank, distracting a security guard while stealing his security card. Chance makes a joke about how hard it is to get an alarm to go off in a bank before shooting his gun at the roo, which again seems to work quite well. 

Chance chases the lawyer and his security staff up the stairs. When confronted, the lawyer holds a gun at Ilsa's head, forcing Chance to drop his gun. Thankfully, Guerrero is across the street with a sniper rifle and he causes havoc just before Chance grabs Isla and they jump out a window into the river, where Winston, of course, is waiting to pick them up.

As the episode is wrapping up Ilsa talks to Chance about why he does what he does. She then offers to bankroll the team as a silent benefactor. The offer of access to a private plane sways them.

The final scene sees Chance and Winston walking back into their newly refurbished office. Looks like Chance is back for good.

Overall, I thought this was a solid season opener with good action, humour, and A slightly ludicrous plot. Basically, everything that makes Human Target so enjoyable. Mark Valley (Christopher Chance)and Chi McBride (Winston)are great as always and seem to walk back into their roles pretty easily and, as usual, Jackie Earle Haley (Guerrero) just makes every scene he's in. Getting him was an absolute casting masterstroke by someone.

The only down side was the criminal underuse of Tahmoh Penikett, although I may be biased due to my man-crush on him. I'm not sure what adding Isla Pucci (Indira Varma) as a regular member of the cast is going to add, but I guess we'll see as the season progresses and I, for one, won't be too upset if Ames (Janet Montgomery) is in it a lot more.

The Thanksgiving celebrations over in the US mean the normal tidal wave of news, rumours and gossip that typically surrounds Hollywood movies appears to have temporarily abated.

But during our daily investigations around the Internet, we discovered this mysterious clip, which originated in the newfangled iPad edition of Wired. Tucked away on one of the magazine's digital pages, the clip is apparently a teaser from District 9 director Neill Blomkamp.

Amounting to a little over a minute of shaky camera footage, the promo depicts a pair of anonymous chaps discovering the corpse of a grotesque, pig-like creature in what appears to be an abandoned industrial area. It's short, minimal and strangely disquieting.

So, what is it promoting? It's presumably a viral teaser for Blomkamp's next movie, but what is it? Whatever it is, we'll be fascinated to see it.

Hollywood Reporter

Much has been made of the behind-the-scenes woes on the set of Michel Gondry's upcoming Green Hornet, but we're still quietly hoping that the finished film will be a great one.

Certainly, the new trailer we saw earlier this week looked quite promising, and was filled with the touches of quirkiness for which the director's famous.

This latest poster, which is self-evidently aimed at the film's potentially huge eastern market, has just arrived, and features Seth Rogen, Jay Chou and Cameron Diaz in character.

It's also a riot of Photoshop compositing, and one of the busiest posters we've seen in quite some time, and looks like several scenes from the trailer all mashed together in one image.

In fairness, it's no worse than the slightly odd western teaser poster we saw a short while ago...

The Green Hornet hits UK cinemas on 14 January 2011.

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It's the moment fans of Dwayne Johnson have been waiting for since he burst onto the movie scene in The Mummy Returns. He followed that brief cameo up with a full-length Scorpion King movie, Doom, and a few other action flicks, but like a lot of movie stars, he wanted to branch out.

Trading on his good will and renown with kids, he eased into a lucrative career as a Disney movie star. However, he didn't abandon his action movie roots, and now The Rock is back and starring in Faster, which sells itself as a classic 70s-style revenge flick that wouldn't look out of place in the canon of Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson.

Dwayne Johnson plays Driver. None of the characters in Faster have names, they're simply archetypes. Johnson's character was the getaway driver for a crew of convicts who were double-crossed, robbed, and executed. Even Driver was left for dead with a bullet wound in the back of the head.

However, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, and Driver spends his 10 years in prison pacing, working out, and beating the crap out of other prisoners. As the Warden (Tom Berenger in a brief cameo) says, he didn't start trouble, but he didn't back down from trouble either. But now, Driver is free, and it's time to finish what got started 10 years ago.

Driver was just helping out his brother, Gary, after their original getaway driver dropped out. After his brother's death, Driver had one thing on his mind, and that's revenge. He contacted a private eye to hunt down the men responsible for his brother's murder, and now Driver's got a list, he's checking it twice, and those who have been naughty are going to be put on ice.

If there's one thing Johnson should be doing, it's making action movies. While he's not a great actor, he's got a definite charismatic streak that allows him to dominate the screen just how an action hero should. He's got the look. That's the most important thing for a lead actor. When he emotes, it's very restrained, but more effective when he does show emotion, because it's surprising. He sheds a few tears, and it means more in the context of the film than a complete sobbing breakdown. The other actors in the movie don't really matter, though Billy Bob Thornton looks like the broken down junkie that is Cop and the movie's various adversaries are appropriately creepy.

One of the movie's better elements is the car. The film's director, the very talented George Tillman, must have watched a lot of old Steve McQueen flicks, because they do a wonderful job of shooting the scenes with the car. We're talking crane shots, tracking shots, follow shots in another car. They do a great job of making the car a character, which is important because the car is as integral to Johnson's character as the massive revolver he totes throughout the film. When the hotshot Killer (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) in the Ferrari chases the Driver's Chevy SS, it's a great sequence reminiscent of Bullitt's iconic car chase, but without the length.

That's the best thing about Faster. It's an old-school action movie. Hence the characters being named by archetype rather than being given names in the script written by Tony and Joe Gayton. Only the victim, Gary, gets a name. Everyone else doesn't matter, because most of them have to die. The Rock says basically nothing. Instead, he lets his Ruger Super Redhawk (and the detectives) do all of the exposition for him. That's why the movie works on a sheer, visceral entertainment level. The Rock is like a half-black, half-Samoan Charles Bronson, but without the frightening mustache and helmet hair.

Much like the Kill Bill saga merged samurai movies, westerns, and sleazy 70s revenge movies, Faster blends the car porn of the 60s with the vigilante justice movies of the 70s. If you like that sort of thing, Faster is the sort of thing you'll like. If you don't like that sort of thing, there are plenty of romantic comedies out there just begging for your film dollar.

As for me, I'd take an average, non-CGI action movie over the slick, ultra-modern output of Hollywood any day. Give me a real action movie star for once. Don't hand me a legitimate actor with some tacked-on muscles and call him an action star. I want a muscular, emotionless death machine, and that's what Dwayne Johnson gives us in Faster. We know he can do legitimate acting, but who wants to see that?

US Correspondent Ron Hogan wants to drive a 1965 Pontiac GTO through a plate glass window, then leap from the car into a hail of gunfire. Isn't that what every little 80s child dreams of? Find more by Ron at his blog, Subtle Bluntness, and daily at Shaktronics and PopFi.

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This review contains spoilers.

6. Phoenix

An attractive woman bringing in her shopping after dark. A hooded ne'er-do-well lurking in the shrubbery. An irritating, yappy little dog with a face like a startled scrotum. If these images seem familiar for some reason (besides that of the the ballbag, hopefully), it is because the opening scene of this week's episode whizzed by as one slasher movie cliché strung after another, intercut with a leatherclad MS Q. hurtling valiantly to the inevitable rescue atop her snarling two-wheeled steed.

Yet, as Anna Harcourt laid dead in her kitchen, leaving the previously infallible Nikita dealing with the bitter realisation that she was seconds away from saving her, and with Thom revealed as the contrite but merciless assailant, by the time the prologue was over we were set up admirably for what eventually became a top-notch hour of television. Well, a top- notch half-hour, anyway.

For a show only in its eighth episode, it would be worrying, indeed, if a plot at this early stage could seem par for the course, but for the first half-hour, this is exactly what it was. We had the corrupt public official buying Division's services in order to erase the evidence of an affair with a subordinate, as well as the pregnancy that arose as a result, with Nikita seeking to expose the truth to a, no doubt, aghast public, thus bringing shame on the Government and further woes to dear old Percy.

Nikita's investigation into Anna also repeatedly kicked us in the face with cliché, introducing us to the oblivious boyfriend with a heart of gold, taking us to the least secure ‘Secure' meeting place ever ripped straight out of True Lies (allowing Nikita to break in and eavesdrop on incriminating conversations between a senator and a shady government agent really quite easily), and also Anna's Federal workplace, accessed via stolen keycard and populated by some of the least perceptive and most abominably stupid individuals ever to figure out how to walk bipedally.

Seriously, if you work for the government and don't notice an extraordinarily beautiful woman accessing your colleague's computer, using her phone, and lifting other people's possessions right from their desks, then you should just empty your desk out and go and stand in the nearest dole queue.

The episode, in fairness, did seem to know exactly how silly it was being at times. Nikita's method of speaking in any Eastern Bloc language seems to be exactly that which is utilised by fat, drunken stag weekenders that venture to these same countries to have sex with local prostitutes. That is, take a word, and add ‘ski' on the end. Brillski. Indeedski. Enoughski nowski.

At almost exactly the halfway point, however, things suddenly got a lot more interesting.

Anna's parents' serene, depressed house became the setting for the best fight sequence of the series thus far, reminiscent of the Eastern martial arts films it was unashamedly influenced by, where any household item was a potential weapon. We had vases, tables and even a vacuum cleaner being utilised for purposes to which they are unaccustomed, and the close-quarters quick-cut nature of the bout accentuated the brutality of the eventual death that occurred (which reminded me a lot of Ghost. (You know, err, in a cool, manly way. Shut up.)

By far the most interesting point raised by this great scene is that so far we have been led to believe Nikita is nigh on invincible. But here she is beaten and, not only that, forced to operate against her will for people she doesn't like one bit, with an injection that liquefies the stomach in twelve hours unless an antidote is administered? That is nasty, dawg.

The fact that the antidote could be found in only one other place (the medical wing at Division) is about as deus ex machina as it is possible to get, but this is forgivable, and it did at least provide Alex with something useful to do. Alex was very much in a supporting role this week after a couple of episodes in the limelight, and a bruised wrist and her underhand seduction of the whimpering Thom was almost all we got to see of her.

This is because the show wisely kept focus on the main story thread. The revelation that Anna was not the victim she appeared to be lent the second half of the show momentum the first sorely lacked. Not only did we find out that Division was involved in a seemingly justified assassination, we were also introduced to an intriguing organisation called Gogol, headed up by the brilliantly smarmy Ari Tasarov.

Tasarov appears to be a character we will get to see much more of. This is very good news. He secretes the arrogance and cold charm that you sometimes wish Percy had, but in the introduction of Tasarov it seems Percy's comparative benignity is intentional, as they are opposite faces of the same evil coin. His admission of his knowledge of Percy's black boxes and his offer of allegiance with Nikita paint him out to be a major player in future episodes, and while there's no doubt at all that the any of your enemy is most certainly not your friend, his relationship with Nikita will be an interesting one.

So, while the episode wrapped up its own plot quite nicely, with the senator exposed, Thom unconscious and Michael pouting down the barrel of a gun he is once again not firing at Nikita, it left Division with a whole heap of new problems to add to all the old ones.

Very much an episode of two halves, the sloppiness of the first was very much undone by the pace and plotting of the second.

Questions we are left with:

• Where is Jayden?
• Will Thom ever complete a mission conscious?
• Is a dog licking a person's face, like, gross, or what?
• Will Nikita play Devil's advocate with Gogol?
• When will Michael eventually just give it up and switch sides?
• Will Owen and the other rogue agents side with Gogol?

Read our prior review, Resistance, here.

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This review contains spoilers.

2.2 The Wife's Tale

The second episode in the season begins with a flashback to when Chance was still an assassin and we watch as he kills an unnamed man in a house. Flash forward and Chance's old contact, Donnelly (M.C. Gainey), lets him in on a contract for the unnamed man's wife.  Someone has already been hired to kill her, but Donnelly is letting Chance have a chance to protect her. There is obviously more to this than there seems.

After Chance pretends to be a blind date to get close to the target, Rebecca Brooks (Molly Parker), we are treated to some epic scenes involving the assassin who is hired to kill her. Needless to say, he would give Ezio Auditore a run for his money!

The team and Rebecca then try to figure out why her husband was killed and why she's now a target. This leads to a shootout at the university where Rebecca works, and leads to the best use of a fire extinguisher I think I've ever seen. Guerrero and Ames manage to figure out that Rebecca's husband was blackmailing a company, which is why he was killed.

Meanwhile, Chance and Rebecca chase down her husband's work files and figure out why it was so dangerous. It seems he had a system to predict stock movements. This is when Rebecca figures out that Chance killed her husband and we're treated to a rather tense scene. The assassin, though, has already tracked them down to the house and after a pretty cool fight Chance manages to subdue him. The twist here is that Donnelly already knew Rebecca's husband's work was worth a lot of money and wanted it for himself. When he shows up at the end to kill them both, it's only the timely intervention of Winston that stops Chance being killed.

The first season of Human Target was quite light on back story for the most part and this season slowly seems to be addressing that. In this episode we get a direct look at what Chance used to do, something we haven't seen much of before, and some of the consequences of it. Throughout the episode, we begin to see how much Chance's past haunts him and the lengths he'll go to to ease that guilt.

The episode also uses the (let's face it) pretty poor narrative device of Guerrero having broken his glasses to team him up with Ames, as he needs a driver. This does lead to the funniest scenes of the episode, such as when Ames pretends to be Guerrero's girlfriend to lift a phone from Donnelly and my favourite line: "Want to hear a joke about your brother? The punchline is he drives off a bridge." Although her inclusion in the episode is a little tenuous, it does lay down the first bricks of an interesting relationship between Guerrero and Ames that could be incredibly amusing, as the characters play off of each other very well.

This episode also gives a hint as to why Ilsa Pucci has been brought in. When she finds out about Chance's past and the things he used to do, she isn't particularly happy with it, as she can relate directly to what Rebecca is going through, having suffered similar the previous week. Over the course of the episode, however, as she learns more about him, she begins to understandChance and why he does what he does.

Overall, this was another good episode which has continued the show's slightly more serious edge this season. We see a bit more of Chance's history and how it sent him down the road he's on. It'll be interesting to see where it leads if they keep this up. With Janet Montgomery (Ames) now added to the permanent cas,t we should also get to see a lot more of her and Guerrero sparring. Hopefully, they can keep up the quality the show has had so far and I look forward to next week's episode, where Ames promises to take centre stage.

Read our review of the season 2 opener, Ilsa Pucci, here.

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This review contains spoilers.

3.11 The Sorcerer's Shadow

Merlin's latest episode is a wasted opportunity, with yet another tournament and moral dilemma easily resolved for the boy wizard, which proves that this series is running low on fumes creatively.

As a viewer, you can forgive a show for cannibalizing a storyline from another season, but when an episode not only treads familiar territory in the same run, but cobbles together an episode which feels like a copy and paste of two earlier episodes of that year, you begin to wonder how the show was re-commissioned at all?

Gilli (Harry Potter's Harry Melling) arrives for a tournament in Camelot. The tournament is one without any rules, which is the first glaring inconsistency in this instalment. If there are no rules, then surely the ban on magic would be lifted?

Gilli is accompanied by a multitude of dangerous warriors who bully and laugh at the demure young man. But Gilli has a secret weapon, a magic ring bestowed to him by his father, which, when used, can conjure up any number of magical tricks, including defeating the most ruthless warriors in the competition.

Morgana uses the opportunity to encourage Uther to take part in the fighting, once Arthur is out of earshot, and revels in the beheadings and general anarchy as she oversees one bloodbath after another. Merlin is reduced to a slave by two one-dimensional villains, the same villains who are later despatched by Gilli.

Shortly afterwards Gilli is wounded and cauterizes the wound with magic, in broad daylight, in the castle, which draws the attention of Uther's guards, who can't remember what he looked like because they where blinded by the light.

Gaius takes the ring back to Merlin, who confronts Gilli and this was when the episode had the potential to be much better. Gilli's argument echoes Morgana's earlier in the year in The Tears Of Uther Pendragon, but peters out and is replaced by shoddy camerawork with dull wide angle shots in the fight sequences that we've seen a dozen times before!

The storyline plays out like a watered down Gwaine and Love In The Time Of Dargons. It isn't like the writers don't have a lot of source material to draw on. The Arthurian legends offer a million possibilities.

As the season nears its end, the creators will really need to up their game. This series got off to a fantastic start and the forthcoming two-parter looks promising. And as I pointed out before, Merlin works best at its darkest, and the show hasn't fully delivered on the promise made by The Tears Of Uther Pendragon. Let's hope the finale lives up to it.

Read our review of episode 10, Queen Of Hearts, here.

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As a white, British male, one could be forgiven for assuming that the nuances of a documentary investigating the amount African American women spend on hair products might be lost on me. You might also be right, but while the odd baseball reference and the star power of Raven-Symoné's talking head appearance sail cleanly over my head, Good Hair as a whole provides a manageable access course to the strange world of weaves and perms (fun fact: if you think you might know the latter, you don't), allowing the blissfully ignorant to become a little more informed.

The 'story' Rock presents is broken down into BBC Bitesize sections, consisting of conversations with regular people in salons and barbers; talking heads from celebrities, such as the aforementioned Raven (of That's So Raven fame, allegedly); interviews with the CEOs profiting from this lucrative market; and the sideshow of a high stakes hairstyling contest apparently included to make the informative parts easier to digest.

That isn't to say Good Hair is a documentary that serves only to present the world of black hair to oblivious outsiders. Rock appears genuinely driven to answer his daughter's question of why her nappy hair is widely considered ‘bad' and shows as much concern for the regular women spending thousands on imported Indian hair as he does pride for those graduating with diplomas in the alchemy of making black women's hair look like white women's.

While it's reductive to approach this as a study of a delusion of beauty unique to black women (their same obsession with flattening their hair can be seen in innumerable products targeted to make Caucasian hair ‘fuller'), it is an all too rare pleasure to see a specific culture represented by someone that grew up with it, yet has the objectivity to question and challenge it.

It is in Rock's omnipresent narration that the film hinges. Funny, honest, and open-handed, he proves a far more likable guide here than in any number of his recent film roles. He displays a magic touch in interviews. No matter who the subject is, they appear at ease and open up to offer rare insight in their world. But while he is a natural entertainer, it's when the conversation demands more journalistic enquiry that his repartee begins to crack. Apparently unsure whether to be chummy or critical, he often smiles ambiguously and allows post-production sound effects and heavy-handed commentary to carry the brunt.

This may be a flaw inherent in the too many cooks production model. Rock may, indeed, have been inspired to make the documentary for his daughter and act as writer, narrator and interviewer, but with his fellow comedian Jeff Stilson co-writing and sitting in the director's chair and three other writers lending a pen, it's no wonder that the film often seems to swing wildly from Fahrenheit 9/11 one minute to Spellbound the next.

Nevertheless, unlike lesser documentaries, Good Hair stands up to comparison with such heavy hitters and comes out swinging. Like all great documentaries, it provides a window on to a world many people wouldn't know exists, let alone have the opportunity to explore. It won't wow you with its depth and complexity, but then it's rather apt that such a story be presented straight, simple, and with barely a kink.

Good Hair is out now and available from the Den Of Geek Store.

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A regular fixture on such shows as Eight Out Of Ten Cats and Live At The Apollo, Sean Lock’s stand-up is sometimes dark, occasionally surreal and consistently funny. As his latest tour, Lockipedia, appears on DVD, we enjoyed a chat about writing, touring and his invention of something called Audience Battleships…

Lockipedia was recorded towards the end of your current tour, is that right?

Yeah. I’m still on tour now – I’ve got seven dates left – but it was recorded at the Hammersmith Apollo after my 60th gig or something. 

What is it about the Apollo that makes it such a common venue for stand-up comedy DVDs?

There are two reasons. One, the West End is a pain in the arse. It’s all owned by Westminster Council, and logistically it’s a nightmare to organise. And it’s a big public space – it looks impressive, but it’s expensive to play in.

You have to play the West End for ages and ages before you can get a reputation and make any money. But at the Apollo, you can put on a show, and if it makes any money.

The Apollo’s a big venue, but you don’t have to have it rammed to the gunnels to play there. It’s a good venue.

How does your material evolve over the course of a tour? Does it change very much from how you initially wrote it?

Yes. I spent most of last year writing it – I probably started writing in February 2009, I think. I started working on stuff, worked on it all year. And that winter I did a few small arts centres, small theatres, almost like a work-in-progress.

And it’s just constant polishing. I did my first show in Leicester, and it’s so different now from what it was back then. You slowly restructure the show, taking out bits of material that don’t work, and expanding other bits.

Without sounding like a wanker, it’s an organic – you see, now I’ve said that, I know I sound like a wanker. [Laughs] It’s an organic process.

As the tour went on, did you find that certain parts of your routine worked better in some venues than others? Is that something you become conscious of as you’re touring around?

I wouldn’t say material works better. The big thing I have identified, now I’ve done a few big tours, is the venue. In a nice theatre, like all those old Victorian theatres, in a proper, theatre-shaped room, the gig is just so much easier. They’re designed for performance. They’re designed to make people feel like they’ve had a proper night out. When you sit down in them, they’re nice places to be.

Whereas, you go to some venues, which are these cobbled-together town halls that someone’s stuck a couple of chairs in, they’re hard to play. There’s not that sense of occasion, and they’re not designed for performance.

So I often find it’s the venue that decides how hard or easy the gig’s going to be. The time of the week and the time of the month – there are lots of other variable factors.

I’ve often thought that some of your material feels improvised – there’s a part in your new tour about birds tweeting abuse at one another, for example – are these sections as spur-of-the-moment as they appear?

What that is, is a comic idea which I mess around with – some nights I do it one way, some nights I’ll do it differently. It can expand and it can contract. It’s not a set in stone joke, and some nights I won’t even do it.

I’ll make a judgement based on the audience. Some nights I’ll think, this bit’s not going to go that well. One of the skills of being a comedian is making something look fresh and alive like it’s just happened.

There are moments where that [improvisation] does happen, but also you’ve got to make people feel like it’s happening all the time. There would have been a night it happened, and you go, “That really worked, I’ll do that again”, and there’ll be other nights where it expands even more.

But that bit on the DVD, I’d done that before – I’ll be honest with you, I’m not going to lie! That bit had been honed and shaped by the time it got there. But that’s all down to my skill. I’ll take the credit for it, even though it sounds shallow. And it’s all been done before. [Laughs]

One thing that is new, though, is your idea of audience Battleships. How did that come about?

Well it came about because I was writing lots of material for the show, and I was thinking to myself that it’s hard to constantly set up jokes, a reason to talk about something. I like there to be some kind of purpose.

So I had this idea of getting the audience involved in a way that they would request stuff. I don’t like asking people where they’re from and what they do for a living – I didn’t seem to get anything particularly funny out of that, other than a really dull postcard about someone.

That’s where it came from. Originally, I thought I could do the whole show like that, where people would shout stuff out and I’d respond. But then I realised that I can’t control what people shout out. If they shout out “Titanium”, I’m fucked!

I realised what was good about it was the element of “How does he get out of this?” You put yourself in these ridiculous situations. It’s good to change the pace and tone of the show, and it’s good fun. I think people to get that.  

It almost becomes like escapology, really…

Yes, that’s what it is. It’s a bit of fun, and it gets people involved in the show in a new way. Sometimes I get lucky, and come up with some fresh bits and pieces from things people have shouted out, and other times it’s how I wriggle out of it.

But you couldn’t do it without the stand-up. I tried to do that at the very beginning, and I realise that it was really going to test people’s patience. You need the solid base of a stand-up show.

I noticed on the extras that there’s an extended version of the Battleships segment, and there’s a real air of anarchy in the room. Is that quite hard to control?

It’s quite exciting. I like it. It’s harder in big rooms like that – it works better in the smaller theatres, since you can control it a lot easier. It’s never going to get completely out of hand, but when there’s people just shouting out anything they want, it’s usually something filthy!

Has there ever been a time on tour where you’ve become completely stuck on an audience member’s suggestion?

Oh yeah, loads of times. But I don’t really mind that. When I first started, I’d deconstruct stand-up as I was doing it, but I’ve stopped doing that because people didn’t really enjoy that. They didn’t enjoy having something they liked being ridiculed in front of them.

It was like I was ridiculing them. Like I was performing to the dressing room rather than to the audience. There’s that saying about playing to the gallery – I was playing to the dressing room. I was amusing myself. I was saying “Comedians – this is what they’re doing.”

I stopped doing it, and concentrated on telling funny jokes. I’m glad I did that. I enjoy it a lot more, and there’s a more sincere relationship between me and my audience. But I’m still quite fascinated by the idea of finding out how funny people think I am. I’m quite fascinated by that.

I can come up with something quite funny sometimes, but I’m not always going to do that. I’m just like, “I’m going to mess up.”

I don’t think comedians should be so processed and so slick, and that they should have no chinks in their armour or flaws. Audiences generally like that you show that you are capable of being crap in places. Some nights it works, some nights it doesn’t work.

There’s this impression given by comedians that they’re impregnable, that they’re perfect, formed things, and that they can’t go wrong. That’s another thing that attracted me to doing it.  

There’s an element of that fallibility elsewhere, I thought. I liked the running joke you have, where you have these confrontations with people, and can’t think of anything witty to say until it’s too late. As you say, that’s not something that comedians necessarily do all that often.

Yeah – most of the time, you think of the funny stuff much later. Nearly always.

Without getting too personal, how much of your set is as autobiographical as it sounds?  There’s the man in the car who you almost had a fight with – did he really exist?

That’s absolutely true. I wasn’t actually carrying a carrier bag, I had my girlfriend’s bike, with a basket on the front, and I was walking across the road. It was a real ladies’ sit-up-and-beg bicycle with a basket, and he obviously thought, “I’m going to beat the shit out of this bloke.”

I don’t say it in the piece because it sounds a bit too cocky, but I realised that if he was going to hit me, he’d have got out of the car straight away. And when I said, “It’s not mine, this bike”, I didn’t realise what a potentially provocative, confrontational thing it was to say. But he really did spit at me and drive off.

I think he was angry with himself because I’d kind of trumped him!

As a comedian, do you find yourself in real-life situations and automatically think, “This has to go in the routine. I’m in the middle of a sketch?”

Sadly, not often enough. I wish it happened a lot more, because then my job would be so easy. One of the sad things about being a successful comedian is that you lose your anonymity, and those moments in your life become shorter and more brief, because you don’t put yourself in those situations anymore. You’re recognised, you don’t go to pubs. You don’t do things where randomness occurs. So your source of material diminishes, definitely. You stop being the observer, and become the observed.

I would like that to happen more often, but I wouldn’t like to be threatened more often – if anyone’s reading this and thinking I want to be threatened more, I don’t!

If I may say so, your on-stage persona can appear quite bitter at times. In your latest tour, Twitter comes in for quite a dressing down…

It’s one of the tools comedians have. I try not to be one particular type of comedian – I try to be foolish, and silly, and surreal, and quite angry and sarcastic and dry. There are certain types of stand-up, who are very successful, who do one type of joke, and never stray out of that. The audience knows that he’s the depressive comedian, he’s the up-beat, crazy comic. He’s the one that talks about real life.

I’ve always maintained that I’m quite hard to describe, and I’m proud that I can’t describe exactly what I do. I don’t want to be that type of comedian – I like the ability to do whatever feels right at the time.

So the fact that I take the piss out of Twitter – which is so ripe for the mockery and contempt levelled at it – it’s a good topic, because it’s so ludicrous. It’s a ludicrous inflation of vanity when connected with celebrities, and there’s enough inflation of vanity connected with celebrity as it is.

And it’s all pretty basic material that’s knocking around on there. I think I’m actually quite mild about Twitter. I used to go on about it a lot more, but the jokes that worked, worked so well that I took out the ones that didn’t. I used to go on about it for about ten minutes. It’s a weapon in  my comedy toolbox.

But I think, also, that your demeanour on stage lets you get away with quite dark topics without actually being insulting.

Can you give me an example?

There’s the routine about the IBS sufferers at the Olympics, which you could almost imagine small pockets of the audience reacting against, but it doesn’t come across as offensive or ill willed…

Yeah. I’m quite pleased by that. I’m glad you’ve noticed. It’s nice to talk to somebody who’s actually bothered to watch it! [Laughs]

I think the reason I get away with it is because of the way I say it – I treat it as a celebration. I say, “Irritable Bowel Syndrome weightlifting!” like it’s a good idea. You often get away with things that are potentially very distressing and dark if you act like they’re a really good idea, and everyone involved will have a really good time.

I’ve never really thought about it before, but now you’ve asked me that question, I think that’s probably the reason why I get away with it.

But IBS isn’t that bad, is it? I’ve got a sister-in-law who has it. She probably won’t be very happy about it, but I don’t think I’m going to get attacked!

Do you think that’s a balancing act on stage, though? I remember Stewart Lee once saying that you can sometimes feel that you’ve divided the room on a certain topic, but that’s often quite exciting.

The thing about stand-up is the amount of assumptions you make about what’s going on in the audience’s mind. It’s a constant commentary of paranoia from the stand-up. All you’re doing is measuring all the time.

I’m being very honest here, and I don’t know how many comics would admit to this, but we all do it. You’re guessing how it’s going down. It’s up to you how much you care whether it’s going down badly or not, but it’s never going down really well all the time, every second that you’re speaking.

Often you’re wrong, you misjudge it. You speak to someone afterwards and they say, “No, they loved it”, and I’ll say, “It was a bit quiet, wasn’t it?”

As a comedian, you’re making so many observations, so many measurements. You might catch someone’s eyes as you’re telling a joke, and they can have this sort of glazed expression on their face, and that can set all your dials off. You can misinterpret the sense of the room.

Then you speak to someone afterwards, and they’ll say, “No, it was great.” So it’s all how you’re measuring it in your head. It’s a very strange experience. It can take a while to talk yourself round.

Comedy’s the only artform where the appreciation can be measured. You can’t measure whether people are enjoying a song or a play, or darts, or film. You can’t measure it while it’s happening.

I realise I’m giving quite long answers, Ryan, sorry about that!

It’s great! So what’s next for you, once these last few dates are finished?

I’ve got nothing in the diary, so I don’t know. Usually something comes about. I remember 10 years ago, when I decided to go out on this tour, in the December I had one day’s work for January, and my third son was due to be born. And I said to my wife, “I’ve only got one day’s work!” and I had a kid on the way. But then work started to come in, and I’m sure it will this time, too.

Is there any more TV work in the pipeline?

I don’t know. Eight Out Of Ten Cats might come back. I’ll probably do QI again. I need to sit down and decide whether I’m going to do another stand-up show or another TV show. I’ll take a few weeks off and make a decision about that.

I really like doing stand-up, because it gives you an immense amount of freedom. You haven’t got anyone telling you what to do. It’s great to have that much power over what you do. You don’t have that in television.

So I’ll make that decision in January, and decide what I’m going to do in the year. Then I’ve got an idea for a sitcom, but I don’t know if I want to go down that route, with all the hurdles involved. [Coughs] I’m also hoping I’ve gotten rid of this cold by then!

Sean Lock, thank you very much.

Sean Lock’s new stand-up DVD, Lockipedia, is available now.

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What a sad way to start a week. We've learned this morning that the great Leslie Nielsen has died, at the age of 84. He died from complications relating to pneumonia.

Nielsen was a rarity amongst actors, having effectively had two careers. The first part of his acting life was dedicated to more serious roles, most notably including the likes of The Poseidon Adventure and Forbidden Planet. In all, he appeared in over 100 films, and 1500 television programmes.

But the ones for which most we'll remember him came in the second wind of his career, starting with 1980's Airplane! David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker cast him for straight delivery of often-insane material, and even though his role in the film was effectively a supporting one, it's one that inevitably springs to mind whenever the film is talked about. Rightly so, too.

Nielsen would find the role that would bring him the most success with the ZAZ team once more, when they cast him as Lt Frank Drebin, in the TV series, Police Squad! Canned after just six shows, it nonetheless planted the seeds that led to the Naked Gun trilogy of movies. Nielsen had always been open to a fourth film, which was being chatted about as recently as the last year or two. But it was never to happen.

Instead, Nielsen enjoyed his newly-found comedy career, starring in a series of spoofs that, in truth, hardly set the world alight. Repossessed, 2001: A Space Travesty, Spy Hard, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Wrongfully Accused, Superhero Movie and the last two Scary Movie films were all added to his resume.

Nielsen kept working right up until this year, and his is a screen presence that'll be very sadly missed. Our thoughts are with his family. And our memories are fond ones.

Here's when we had the honour of interviewing Leslie Nielsen, back in 2008...

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In its second week of wide release, Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1 easily surpassed $220 million in US grosses. It has taken in just under $610 million internationally. It also fought off Disney's highest-grossing non-Pixar release ever to retain the box office crown over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend.

Harry Potter's latest adventure grossed a staggering $50.3 million in its second weekend, holding off the game challenge of Tangled, which took second with $49.1 million. That's an incredible showing, made possible due to the incredible power of a four-day weekend off from school.

It's no wonder that the family fare dominated the weekend. The other new releases, Burlesque (fourth place, $11.8 million), Love And Other Drugs (sixth place, $9.85 million) and Faster (seventh place, $8.7 million), couldn't hold a candle to the power of the Harry Potter franchise, the allure of a Shrek-style fairy tale retelling in Tangled, and of course, the continued drawing power of the weekend's other big-budget family animation, Megamind (third place, $12.85 million). Rounding out the top five was Unstoppable, which took in $11.75 million.

The numbers are drawn in even more stark relief when you look at the five-day holiday totals. Harry Potter outgrossed Tangled by an even wider margin over the holiday, with HP7 picking up $76 million versus Tangled's $69 million. The other flicks aren't even in the same league as these two, but it really shows just how strong Harry Potter's fanbase is that it's still drawing such huge interest long after the opening weekend has ended.

With five new releases for the weekend, it pushed a lot of other flicks out of the top ten. Megamind and Unstoppable weren't so harmed by the release glut, but the other films took a big hit.

Dropping to eighth this weekend after a respectable fourth last weekend was Due Date. The flick managed only $7.3 million over the week, but that pushes its total to date to $85 million. I thought for sure it'd break $100m, and it's not out yet, but its days are numbered.

Dropping out of the top five after last weekend was The Next Three Days. It managed only $4.8 million, and so far has only taken in $14.5 million in two weeks. That's not a good sign for the Lionsgate thriller.

Rounding out the top ten is Morning Glory. The Rachel McAdams vehicle picked up $4 million in the US, and looks to be bleeding box office faster than its $40 million budget would like. It's kind of a shame, because if the movie isn't successful, that means Harrison Ford might think twice before signing on for that next big comedic role, and I think he's a great funny actor.

Speaking of great funny actors, as I'm writing this I just got the news of Leslie Nielsen's parting. He lived to be the ripe old age of 84, but it's always kind of stunning when someone you've grown up watching, from Forbidden Planet all the way through his Naked Gun days, passes away. (I was even one of the few people to see Spy Hard in theaters when it came out!) When you think about the scope of the man's career, it's incredible how he hit his most successful streak of film roles at an age when most actors are winding down their careers. He'll definitely be missed.

So, what's out next weekend? Well, I'm glad you asked, because I was going to tell you anyway. It appears that there's only one movie in wide release, and that's the samurai western mash-up The Warrior's Way. However, in limited releases are the long awaited, ill fated comedy I Love You Phillip Morris and the much anticipated Black Swan. I really hope Black Swan rolls out in my city, because I really want to see it.

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Irrespective of budget, Monsters is most definitely one of the most unusual, thought-provoking science fiction movies we've seen this year. That Monsters, a film shot, directed and written by Gareth Edwards, was made with the kind of money that buys a family car makes it all the more remarkable.

We caught up with Mr. Edwards on a chilly Friday afternoon to talk about his film, starting with the genesis of the idea while watching fishermen on holiday in the Maldives...

I gather you're indebted to some fishermen for the idea of Monsters...

Allegedly. They're not getting any of the back end profits, though! It's funny, you say something in an interview, and you don't want to contradict yourself, so you end up saying the same thing in the next one. And after a while I was like, "Was that really the first time I'd ever thought about it?"

I was having this exact same conversation with my girlfriend last night. She remembers that moment. It's basically the first time I can put a date on it, because I remember saying it out loud: "Watch these fishermen. Imagine there was a creature on their boat. Watch how they behave. It would be totally realistic." And she said, "Yeah, it would."

That was the first time I could definitely put a date on it. But my graduation film, which was in 1996, was a monster movie, so I wanted to do monster movies back then.

And I saw Jurassic Park, like everybody, and my only disappointment was that I was hoping [the dinosaurs] would get on the mainland. I was hoping they'd affect suburbia, homes and towns and stuff. Obviously, it stays on the tropical island, and so I was thinking to myself that I wanted to do a monster movie that took place in our back yard, like it's in the place I live in and you live in.

That's what I did in my graduation film. It's terrible. You wouldn't ever want to watch it. I'd burn every copy of it if I could. But it was a monster movie set in suburbia. And what happens is, movies come along like War Of The Worlds, and you think, "That's not going to be special anymore."

My biggest problem was, if I shoot a low-budget film, it's going to look low-budget and shoot it on video. So, I thought, why don't I embrace that, like Blair Witch. So I went ahead and wrote up a document about this, and even wrote on the front "Blair Witch meets War Of The Worlds", and I was about to go and try and do it, and the Cloverfield trailer hit the Internet.

So, I had to forget about that, and move on. The next thing was, if Cloverfield was like September the 11th, the logical progression from there is Afghanistan, so let's do a film that's set a few years later, where it's a war going on somewhere on the other side of the world, and no one cares.

In the middle of filming, while we're in Mexico, District 9's announced, and the vague text that we read on the Internet felt like it could be similar, but we weren't sure. But it gets to the point where, if you worry about every other film everyone else is making, you'd never make anything.

All you can do is make the film you think you'd enjoy watching, and just cross your fingers that other people are like you.

What I found interesting about Monsters was the science fiction elements of it are in the background rather than the foreground, which is unusual in cinema but common in sci-fi literature. Were you influenced as much by books as film?

I don't read as much as I should. I need pictures and colouring-in sections in my books. But I've read a lot of John Wyndham. And what I like about him is that he doesn't explain the world. He takes it for granted that you understand the crazy situation you're in.

That makes it more realistic than if he said, "What happened here was this." He just starts talking about a situation, with two characters and something, and you have to figure out as you go what the hell's happened.

There's a particular book, called The Chrysalids, where you think that it's set in medieval times or something, and it's only about a third of the way in that it's post-apocalyptic, and that there's been a nuclear war. But he never says it out loud. It's only through the way he describes the ruins of Big Ben, or something, that you know.

And I love that. I love that assumption. When I worked at the BBC, one of the projects I worked on was this series of fake documentaries set in Victorian London. The producers would always want big establishing vistas of London. As a character walks in, they'd want the camera to turn around and show everything.

But watch any TV programme set in London in the modern day, and they're not showing big shots of Big Ben. They're just following the characters because they exist in that world, and they're bored of all that stuff because they see it every day.

It feels like the more you throw that away, and act as though the filmmaker's bored of it, like, "Yes, yes, we've seen that a thousand times," the more valuable it becomes.

I love the parts [in Monsters] say, where they're on the boat, and there are post-apocalyptic ruins behind them, but they're not looking around going, "Oh my God, look at that."

It gives it more scope. I feel like less is more, and more is less.

In the original Star Wars films, I thought Tatooine, Endor and Coruscant, I thought in our world, they were like Newcastle, some town in Morocco, and some city in New Zealand. But when they did the special edition, and they had all those celebration shots at the end of Jedi, and they went to Tatooine, Endor and Coruscant. I thought, "Oh, right. So they went to Paris, New York, and London."

It felt like a bigger world, to me, when these characters occupied a tiny part of a city we never saw.

So, you could fill in the blanks for yourself...

The more you show off, the more the world gets smaller, if that makes sense.

You've been talking of the way you approached the filming, and the way you walked into situations with your characters. Does that make you feel more alive as a director, rather than having it all planned out and scripted?

Yeah, for sure. Because if you were trying to write a scene with an interview situation with some journalists, I'd be thinking, "How does a journalist sit? Does he hold his book like this? Does he take notes?" It's all these ideas you wouldn't normally get.

I mean, no offence to anyone, but no matter how imaginative you are, but it's all these ideas you get that you could never think of. When you're in a real situation, they happen for free that add to the realism.

The idea that there's this golden moment, while you're sitting at home writing three months before you go to a location, and you think, "That's it. That's golden. That's perfect. If we get this, we're going to get the greatest film ever made." I think that's bollocks, really.

Why can't that golden moment be consistent throughout the entire process, like when I'm stood there with the camera on my shoulder, I can say, "You know what? I thought that was a good idea, but let's do this."

And previously, the problem with that is that you need a contractual document because there's a lot of money at stake, so you need to somehow convince everyone that it's all agreed and that everyone that's investing is happy. But because the budget was so low on this film, they weren't so precious about it.

They were really good about that here. They weren't nervous at all. "Just get something, and we'll figure it out in the edit."

I think what happens is, you write the film, then on the plane over to Mexico, the film dies, and is reborn when you're on location, a brand new thing. And on the plane back it dies again, and is reborn in the edit.

Even in a Hollywood film, the script is gold and sacred, but how many Hollywood films do they scramble in the edit and change things. It's like, "Hang on. I thought this script was perfection? Why are we having to change it? Shall we all admit to each other that the script isn't perfect? Maybe we should adapt when things don't work."

It's so frustrating, the way Hollywood works. Only when an idea doesn't work do you address how to fix it. Whereas you can see it's not working right then and there on set, and you're going, "This line's clunky, or this isn't looking as sexy as I thought it would look. Stand there instead, and maybe don't say anything."

We were free to do that, because there wasn't a contract as such. It does worry me now, that if I'm lucky enough to make a bigger film, and there's a contract in place, how I'll maintain that freedom, without people saying, "Woah, woah. He's taken over the plane and he's going to crash it."

Does that make you more choosy about what you'll do next?

There are so many carrots that are dangled, that all my life I've wanted to be in this position, of maybe doing a big film, and it's hard. There are certain projects that are just so tempting. I sometimes think, if I don't do that, or it doesn't work out, I'll end up regretting never trying.

It's like being a footballer, and everyone has that dream of playing in the World Cup final, and if possible scoring the winning goal. That's what everyone wants to do. If someone invites you to be in the World Cup, it's like, what else am I going to do with my career?

One review of Monsters said that it could imagine you at the helm of a huge special effects laden blockbuster. Is that something that would interest you, then, if it were offered?

I tell you what I've learned on this film: you can make a movie for nothing. You can make a film for 10 grand, 10 million, whatever you want. We're very lucky in the UK, the film's getting a big push from Vertigo, but in the US, unless you spend 20 million on advertising, no one will have heard of your film outside the industry.

I was there at the weekend, and there are Skyline posters everywhere. Skyline, Skyline, Skyline. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. I may be wrong, but on its opening weekend it made 15 million, because it was everywhere.

That's the thing that would be heartbreaking. If you tried to make a really good film that's popular and artistic, and all those things you're trying to balance, and no one's heard of it. That's not what I'd want. I want everyone to like it, and everyone to see it.

Only studios can afford to do that kind of crazy marketing campaign. So, if you want that career where you make movies, then you've got to have a 20, 30 million dollar PR campaign behind you, and if you do that, then no matter how much you spent making your film, that's a big risk.

So, then you get into that realm of, "We're spending a lot of money here, Gareth, should you really have your character doing that?" or, "We think you should have an ending more like this?"

That's the problem: do you perpetually want to be this filmmaker who makes films nobody really sees, or do you want to be on this big stage, but with all that pressure of compromise because you've got to reach a wider demographic. It's the ultimate dilemma for any first time filmmaker.

At the same time, the reassuring thing is that the films I like most are the ones that achieve commercial success and are artistic, are made in the Hollywood system. So, someone achieves it. Is it because of the filmmaker? Is it luck? I don't know, but it's at least possible.

The reaction to Monsters has been incredibly positive. What's been your favourite reaction to it so far?

I've managed to get it in front of a couple of my heroes. There was a screening in LA, and they said, "Oh, you may as well come down and introduce it." So I went in, and I was really nervous because I knew a few important people would be there. And I was like, "Hi, I'm Gareth and thanks for coming because I know you're really busy."

And as I was saying it, I noticed, Quentin Tarantino. And I got really nervous. Later, I was looking through the projection booth, kind of spotting his head, "Does he look like he's interested? Does he hate it?"

And we went for drinks, because I knew we had to shake people's hands afterwards, and thought I'd better have a drink first. When we came back, there was this high-up Hollywood producer talking to me, and Quentin was standing there waiting to say hi or goodbye or whatever.

I kept looking at him, because I was worried he was going to leave before I had a chance to say hello. And this producer looked around, because he could tell I was distracted, and he was really nice and said, "Don't worry about me, we'll talk some other time," and left.

Tarantino came along, and in my mind I pressed all the record buttons I could on everything to memorise it all so I can tell guys like you. And when I go to play that tape, I didn't record any of it. He was just shaking my hand, going and talking, but all I heard was, "I'm Quentin Tarantino. I'm Quentin Tarantino, and I'm talking to you right now. You saw Reservoir Dogs seven times at the cinema because you liked it so much, and now I'm talking to you having seen your film."

I don't know what he said. And when he left, everyone came up and said, "What did he say? What did he say?" and I said, "I've no idea!"

So, things like that are really freaky. I really did see Reservoir Dogs seven times, and it changed my world. There's even a bit in the behind-the-scenes we're doing for the DVD, and I'm on the set and I'm going into an explanation of how you don't see the cops in Reservoir Dogs. And there's a bit at the end of Monsters where you don't really see the soldiers, because they're out of focus. I was trying to use Reservoir Dogs as the example.

If I knew, as I was standing there, that Quentin Tarantino was going to see this one day, I think it would throw you. It's good sometimes to think, "No one's going to see this. It's going into the bin," because then you can be a bit braver about it and a bit less self-conscious.

We've been very lucky in that Peter Jackson's seen it, and Ridley Scott saw it the other day, and I've had very nice emails. If I knew that while making it, I'd be saying to everyone in the van, "No one panic! It's all going to be okay! Ridley Scott's going to see it! Quentin Tarantino's going to see it!"

When we were filming it, we thought it was going to go straight into the bin. Is this even going to get a release on DVD? Will it even edit together? We didn't know back then. Were we just wasting two years of our lives?

I think if we had known, we'd have been more relaxed, and maybe we wouldn't have made the film we made.

Gareth Edwards, thank you very much.

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The review contains spoilers.

1.5 Wildfire

The bodies are stacked up like cord wood in the aftermath of last week's zombie attack on the survivor camp, and those who were lucky enough to escape unscathed are counting their blessings and trying to figure out just how to handle the deaths of their friends and loved ones.

For some, like battered wife Carol (Melissa Suzanne McBride), it's a chance to vent some frustration via pickax to the brain. For others, like shattered big sister Andrea, it's a chance to do one last good deed for a departed sibling.

Unfortunately for Rick and the merry band of remainders, not all of their party escaped the events of the zombie attack unscathed. Not only were some of them killed, one of them was injured. That would be Jim, who spent last week's episode digging graves and this week's episode filling them, at least until eagle-eyed Jacqui spots some fresh blood on his shirt and alerts the others. Jim's been bitten. Now it's up to Rick to figure out what to do next.

Fortunately, Rick's got a plan. Granted, Shane and the others might believe it's a dumb plan, but it sure beats waiting around outside of Atlanta for the walkers to head out to the country for a picnic. After the attack last episode, the survivors realize just how precarious their position is. A moving target is a harder to hit target, and according to Rick's reasoning, the Center for Disease Control building outside of Atlanta might be the most secure government facility this side of Fort Benning, Georgia (which is about 125 miles outside of Atlanta). Plus, Rick is holding out hope that somewhere out there is a safe, well-armed, secure facility where some sort of power structure remains (and where a cure for Jim's zombie-itis can be found). Morales (Juan Gabriel Pareja) and his family will not be making the trip, opting to head for Birmingham and some dead family members.

Well, they're partially right. The CDC building is a safe, secure facility. However, where Rick's gamble is wrong is the idea that it's well armed. In order to be well armed, there have to be people alive who know how to use the armaments, and while the CDC does have a tank on its doorstep, the enormous pile of bodies in the area around the facility suggests that hope of survivors is useless. Well, besides one researcher who is a little on the loopy side due to stress, isolation, and lack of sleep, among other problems.

This might be more of a problem than a solution for Rick, Lori, and the gang.

Speaking of the gang, there are some very interesting tensions bubbling under the surface, namely the question of which survivor is the alpha dog of the pack, Rick or Shane? Daryl is behaving himself, for the most part, but it's only a matter of time before that tightly wound bundle snaps and starts picking off the people who he's blaming for leaving his brother to die in Atlanta, and Carol isn't exactly a shining example of mental health. Oh yeah, and there's also the issue of the love triangle, or rather the married couple and the pseudo-suitor.

I also like that this week's episode put some explanation into the issues involving the dead. Namely, how long does a person have after being bitten/killed before they come back? The Walking Dead's zombie universe seems to be pretty generous with the time until return, unlike the Romeroverse. This fits in nicely with the efforts of the nameless CDC scientist who tries to figure out the reason behind the outbreak, known as Wildfire in CDC speak.

This episode was really well done, both in terms of writing and direction. Director Ernest R. Dickerson is another TV veteran, working on shows like The Wire, Dexter, Heroes, and even an episode of Masters Of Horror (The V Word). He mixes in wider shots with tighter, more traditional television shots to good effect. There's some very impressive special effects shots in this week's episode, particularly when the survivors use a pickax to ensure the zombies remain dead, rather than becoming undead again, but it's not excessive (as some have said about the use of guts in Guts). It's a zombie show, there's going to be awful moments, but Dickerson deftly weaves crowd-pleasing gore moments with critic-pleasing acting performances.

On the writing front, scriptwriter Glen Mazzara is another TV vet with a lot of great work to his name, especially as writer on The Shield and Crash. Unlike Crash, this week's episode was thankfully low on spousal abuse and racial tension, aside from Daryl calling Glenn a Chinaman again. However, Jim got some great material to work with, and the disagreements between Shane and Rick were awesome (and the teased moment in the woods was phenomenal, especially Dale's expression).

The Walking Dead, aside from a few missteps, has been a spectacular show. Even the episodes that didn't quite work have had enough good content within them to make the show worthy of an hour a week. This week's episode might actually be the best one since the pilot episode. All the moments that have made the show great, from the zombie violence to the conflicts between survivors and the human drama elements, were united in a single episode. My few quibbles are simply that. No major issues, and my few problems are related to decisions made by the special effects team (shooting day for dusk, the blinding white light) than any real, rightful complaint.

It's hard to believe that there's only one episode of The Walking Dead left to show. I'm not sure I can handle waiting an entire year for new episodes. If only there was some way to get AMC to move the next season ahead so as to get more zombie action on TV sooner than next August.

Read our review of episode 4, Vatos, here.

US correspondent Ron Hogan would love to go to the CDC building and take a tour. Find more by Ron at his blog, Subtle Bluntness, and daily at Shaktronics and PopFi.

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It's hardly rare for Internet chatter to settle on a subject and then be proven far from correct. The latest example of this? That'd be the upcoming Transformers: Dark Of The Moon.

Over the past few days, virtual tongues have been wagging, suggesting that the 3D in the film is proving problematic. But the other side of the coin where the web is concerned is that it allows the subject of such rumours to put the record straight. Hence, Michael Bay has addressed them on his official website.

He posted, therefore, on the message board at MichaelBay.com, the following:

"Wow, I read these morons on the internet who think they are in the know. "We have problems with our 3D????" Really? Come into my edit room and I will show you beautiful 3D. There has never been a live action show that has pushed the boundaries of 3D like Transformers 3. We shot the entire movie with 3D cameras. I actually loved shooting in 3D.

I will give full details of my process and why I liked 3D in the next week right before the Transformers announcement piece comes out on Tron and Narnia.

And don't watch this movie in 2D, we made it for 3D.

Michael"

Some are reading into that last sentence, incidentally, that we might see a trailer for Transformers 3 this side of Christmas.

You can find Michael Bay's site right here. And Transformers: Dark Of The Moon will be released on July 1st 2011.

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And so the wheels of the Superman rumour machine continue to turn, as yet another actor gets linked with filling the famous blue tights. Director Zack Snyder and producer Christopher Nolan have, wisely, been keeping their cards close to their chest where the casting of the film is concerned, but that hasn't stopped lots of speculation doing the rounds.

The latest name to be thrown into the frame? That'd be Anderson Davis, who spoke to Comic Book Movie about the role. From what we can see, David hasn't been officially linked, although he does have a link to Superman, having done some voiceover work on the DVD of All Star Superman a month or two back. However, he reveals to the site that "I have a team of people keeping their eyes and ears open regarding casting start-up." Make of that what you will.

He did talk about the direction he'd take the role at the site, mind, saying, "Though I love Reeve's portrayal I would try to take it down another path, Superman is such an iconic character who has a foundation of based beliefs, keeping that foundation but not being afraid to explore the possibilities of the character would be a lot of fun.

Superman was also a human, therefore he was flawed. I think to see him as a perfect being all the time just makes the character lack reality. He needs true human emotion, be a person we can relate to and that same to look up to as our hero."

Meanwhile, and perhaps more substantively, Ben Affleck has been talking to Deadline about why he turned down the chance to direct the film. Affleck's second film behind the camera, The Town, provided a big critical and sizeable commercial success earlier this year, but talking to Deadline, he said, "The one benefit of having done all kinds of movies as an actor is, you learn the pros and cons of being tempted to do a really big movie because it costs a lot of money."

He added that "With Superman, I think they're going to do a great version. Chris Nolan is brilliant and they've got a great director for it. I'd love to do something like Blade Runner, but a lesson I've learned is to not look at movies based on budget, how much they'll spend on effects, or where they will shoot. Story is what's important. Also, there are a lot of guys ahead of me on the list to do epic effects movies."

It's well worth reading the interview, incidentally, where he talks about make The Town amongst other subjects, right here.

And you can find Comic Book Movies here.

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Here's the latest in a line of examples (and the second today!) of a director putting straight a series of rumours that have sprung up online. And this time, it's Mr Kevin Smith who's been doing the correcting.

He's done so via Slashfilm, which contacted him surrounding a quote that had been attributed to him in the Boston Phoenix. Smith was quoted as saying that "Red State is done. Next step is the hockey movie, Hit Somebody. Then I'm done. There's possibly a Clerks 3. If I have something to say in my late 40s about being in my late 40s, I'll think of [Clerks'] Dante and Randal. Shy of that, I don't have any more movies I want to make."

As it turns out, though, those who concluded that the quote meant Smith was retiring had very much, unsurprisingly, got the wrong end of the stick.

Smith wrote a long e-mail response to Slashfilm, and it's well worth checking out. Key passages? Try this:

"But THIS "retirement" crap? Not news so much as another sad example of how fucking lazy movie press has become: they cannibalize stories by other writers just to have something to post on their own blogs. Yours was the only website that bothered to go DIRECTLY to the source, Peter - other cats ran articles without even tossing a Tweet my way to check veracity."

He went on to tell the site, "At this moment in time, I've got no other flicks I wanna make," (once he's done with his upcoming hockey movie, Hit Somebody), adding that "There are no concrete plans to make Clerks III."

Do check the rest of the article out, which also touches on the unusual way that Smith is set to pick the distributor for his now-in-the-can horror movie, Red State. Plus, it's worth checking out his Smodcasts for the latest, up to date information on both Red State and Hit Somebody.

Slashfilm

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A phenomenally successful composer with dozens of credits to his name; John Barry is best known for his contributions to the James Bond franchise. Throughout his work for the franchise, Barry helped create iconic scores that would set the foundation for those who would follow him, and whilst he didn't receive any recognition from the Academy for his work, the scores he created are held in high regard.

Below is a look back at the full scores Barry composed for the Bond franchise:

From Russia With Love

Barry's first full score for the Bond franchise really set the formula for what followed, and what is now deemed as being iconic and fairly typical as far as action scores go, was, at the time, seen as being quite dynamic.

All in all, it's a near perfect action score and on the strength of this alone it's easy to see why Barry would go on to score so many of the Bond films over the years. Every piece compliments the action on screen, and even though some of the pieces go for a tone of suspense, and as such are not as all out action as others, there's relentlessness to the piece as a whole that makes this an incredibly thrilling piece of work.

Goldfinger

Following the quality of the previous score can't have been an easy task, but in many ways Barry surpassed his previous work with his efforts here and earned himself a number one record in the process.

Whereas the previous score provided a musical blueprint that many Bond scores would follow, Goldfinger saw the introduction of another Bond staple in the Bond theme song, this time sung by Shirley Bassey.

Highlights here include the incredibly suspenseful Dawn Raid On Fort Knox, which outshines the more overt action pieces. There are specific leitmotifs for characters in the film, making this a more complete and interesting score than what preceded it.

Thunderball

Whilst this is a reasonably strong effort, it doesn't have the same impact as the previous two scores in my opinion. This could partly be explained in that the score was only finished shortly before the film was released. Part of the reason for the delay in finishing the score can be attributed to the uncertainty around the title song for the film, which was originally going to be Mr. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, which was recorded by both Shirley Bassey and Dionne Warwick.

Eventually, it was decided the film's theme should carry the film's title, and Tom Jones was called in to sing the piece after a submission by Johnny Cash was dismissed.

Mr Kiss Kiss Bang Bang was reworked into the score and stands as one of the highlights.

You Only Live Twice

Not one of the Bond scores that I've seen gets a great deal of appreciation, but this is one that I'm particularly fond of. For me this is an interesting change from the relentless action outings heard previously and instead places a greater emphasis on atmosphere.

Capsule In Space is a sublime piece of music and is certainly up there with the finest pieces heard in the franchise. The score as a whole, though, is hugely impressive, incorporating a number of styles, the most interesting being the Japanese stylings.

Nancy Sinatra's title song also seems at odds with many of what are considered to be the classic title songs, but is in no way a poor effort. Barry's music provides a great backdrop to this Leslie Bricusse penned ballad.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Not only is this one of the best scores for the Bond franchise, but it's arguably the finest score Barry composed. This score marks the evolution of a number of factors that were gradually introduced throughout the series and it balances these aspects brilliantly to create a hugely effective score for the film and a fantastic standalone listen. It also saw Barry revamp the main theme and introduce a new action theme.

The film also boasts one of the finest title songs of the series in Louis Armstrong's We Have All The Time In The World, which was his last recording before his death. Whilst the song doesn't carry the film's title, it shows that this isn't essential to create a hugely effective and memorable feature song.

Diamonds Are Forever

Continuing his run of quality scores, Diamonds Are Forever sees Barry offer up a number of variations on the title theme, as well as incorporating a number of musical styles in the score as a whole.

Of course, Barry is no stranger to offering varied and interesting scores, but this not only utilises a number of musical styles, but also references film genres such as film noir.

The stand out for me is Circus, Circus, which is one of the better standalone pieces in the franchise.

The Man With The Golden Gun

One of Barry's weaker efforts, not only for the Bond franchise, but from his career overall, the score for The Man With The Golden Gun is a fairly uninspiring effort that is even more disappointing considering it was preceded with a run of quality scores that are up there with the composer's best works.

Barry himself acknowledged his dislike for his work here. It just seems to lack a sense of urgency or invention that makes the music for the series so interesting. It's a shame that this is something of a letdown, as the film that preceded this, Live And Let Die, saw Barry take a break and George Martin take over on composing duties and compose an excellent score and title theme.

Moonraker

Following a disappointing effort for The Man With The Golden Gun, Barry took another break from the franchise for The Spy Who Loved Me, but returned for Moonraker. Not a strong effort by any means, but it's a much better score than his score that preceded it.

There's a difference in style and sound that can be attributed to the fact that he recorded his work in Paris as opposed to London, where he composed all of his other scores for the series. His work here sees him ditch the brass-heavy sound that dominated the music in the franchise to date, and instead he goes for a series of down tempo string passages.

As is typical with Barry's work, there's a variation on the title theme that sees him adopt a Samba style as well as featuring experts from his work on previous films such as On Her Majesties Secret Service.

Octopussy

A number of previous scores for the franchise saw Barry experiment with traditional instrumentation and styles to evoke a sense of place. He opts to stick with instruments familiar to him and the effects are rather good. And whilst they perhaps lack the impact of some of his previous efforts, it's still a strong overall score that, although it isn't up there with the best of the franchise, is certainly not the worst.

A View To A Kill

The film features one of the stronger Bond title themes by Duran Duran on a track co-written by Barry. It blends pop with the up-tempo and exciting musical backing that served the franchise so well.

Certainly one of the better efforts, it earned the band a number one hit. The score as a whole is as equally impressive, as there is a lack of some of the complacency that typified the composer's later efforts for the franchise, and a return to a combination of the themes that made his early work so great.

Action, romance and melancholy are all present and handled effectively, creating a score that far outweighs the quality of the film it accompanies.

The Living Daylights

With his final score for the franchise, Barry goes out in style as he creates an 80s action score without a heavy reliance on synths. They're used sparingly, with Barry instead opting to use the orchestrations that he is so accustomed to. It's a well balanced score and one that, taken as a whole, ranks among the finest Barry composed.

It's great that he finished his work on the franchise in such grand style, by creating two extremely memorable scores after a hit and miss spell. One of the finest contributions to a series by any composer.

Please add your thoughts on Barry's contributions to the Bond franchise below, along with any scores you'd like to see covered in a follow-up article.

See Also:

• See all the Music in the movies

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Battlestar Galactica's incredibly successful re-imagining led to an inevitable slew of re-imagined series, none of which seemed to match the rollercoaster of emotion and drama that was Galactica, with its deeply textured and well acted storylines and above par special effects.

It suddenly became de rigueur to re-imagine any number of classic (and not so classic) television series from the last thirty years. So, from BSG, we were subjected to abysmal Bionic Woman and the dire Knight Rider (having already been rebooted a couple of times previously). This new incarnation of V has a lot to live up to, not only for fans of the original, but also from those expecting more depth from their dose of sci-fi.

V was one of those series of which I had fond memories. I can remember staying up way past my bedtime to watch the series when I should have been going to school the next day. I also recall being quite shaken by the sight of the aliens tearing off their human skin to reveal the lizard beneath, the eating of rodents and the birth of the star baby.

I also remember watching it a few years ago and being bewildered by the way that series went from the gripping and chilling V: The Mini Series to the over-the-top high campery of the ongoing TV series. 

So, here we have the re-imagined V, following the story of the resistance that wants to fight against The Visitors, a race of aliens who approach Earth with messages of peace and love. Quickly, they befriend whole nations with offers of technology and support, allowing the humans to live amongst them aboard their spaceships and expanding our minds with their promises of a peaceful future.

As twenty-nine alien spaceships appear above Earth, we're introduced to the key characters, Tyler (teenager with independence issues), Chad Decker (charismatic reporter extraordinaire), Father Jack Landry (doubting religious man), Erica (FBI agent and Tyler's mother), Ryan Nichols (man with a past and a secret of his own). Each of them has their own agenda and they're all forced to challenge their own beliefs as their paths cross.

Led by the lovely Anna (Morena Baccarin), the aliens call themselves the Visitors, or Vs for short, and claim to be offering technology in exchange for peaceful living on Earth for a while. After this, they'll be on their merry way, leaving the Earth a better place and heralding a new era of world peace.

At first, it doesn't seem like a bad idea. Anna and the aliens offer technology, healing, peace and harmony. Things are going swimmingly as the humans begin to accept what the aliens have to offer, despite the occasional protest. It quickly turns out that the Visitors have a remarkably dark agenda and Anna is intent on making sure that her master plan goes without a hitch.

The series wouldn't last long if the aliens just conquered the Earth with no opposition. Thankfully, we've got Erica, teaming up with Landry and Ryan, who is rapidly drawn into the world of the resistance, having to make difficult choices about work and family. Slowly, she sees through the veil of the Visitors and risks losing her own son as he falls for Anna's own daughter, Lisa.

Working with an FBI tasked with protecting the Visitors and with a resistance trying to overcome the alien threat, her loyalties are torn and tested on a weekly basis. Thankfully, she gradually grows more resilient and militant with each passing challenge, treading the fine line between right and wrong.

With the arrival of Kyle Hobbes, British mercenary, the group gain a character that is dark, dangerous and at odds with our two heroes. He manages to breathe life into the group and charges forth with his military sensibilities and knowledge of weapons, whilst also offering more conflict between the otherwise agreeable Landry and Erica. He's tactless and violent, but he knows what he's doing and is well portrayed by the Charles Mesure.

Whilst his mother plays freedom fighter, Tyler has his own problems, falling in love with Lisa and discovering the truth about his mother and father. As his mother gets drawn into her own fights, Tyler finds himself part of Anna's schemes as she tries to use his connection with Lisa to bring him aboard the mothership. It gives Logan Huffman plenty of time to be love struck and emotional, though he does seem to have very little else to do in the season.

As if manipulating Tyler weren't enough, Anna begins to amass her own army of soldiers, manipulates Chad Decker on more than one level and works on her grand plan to conquer Earth. Whilst she convinces the world's media that she is a peaceful ambassador from the stars, she is vicious and deadly aboard her own ship.

With her second in command, Marcus, she dispenses her own form of brutal justice and ensures that her dictatorial control is absolute. There's often talk of flaying as the ultimate punishment (as the human skin is grafted onto the Visitors' own), though we're not shown the act or the result. Suffice to say, few aliens are willing to challenge their leader.

Trust, loyalty and respect are key concepts throughout the series, with the lines often blurred. When the Visitors arrive, people flock toward religion and wish to embrace the advances that the Visitors offer. Terrorism remains at the heart of the story throughout the season, though one man's terrorism is another man's fight for freedom.

Erica, FBI agent to the core, goes from hunting terrorists to joining them as she sees her son slip away from her and the truth begins to be revealed. The humans aren't alone in their fight as, gradually, it becomes apparent that some alien dissidents are fighting the invasion for their own purposes. Both the aliens and the humans are armed with, as Erica puts it, the most powerful weapon of all: devotion.

As the series progresses, we see more of Anna's plans as she seeks to destroy the Fifth Column and anyone who opposes her. By the end of Season 1, Erica, Hobbes and Chad discover new truths that shake their worlds, Lisa begins her own plans for control that may or may not involve her own mother, and a resistance is truly born. Despite suffering losses of her own that leave her seething with rage and seeking vengeance, we're left in no doubt that Anna may just have the upper hand.

Roll on season two!

Visually, the whole series looks pretty good, from its location filming to the special effects. There are, however, a couple of moments that seem to scream digital backlot with the characters blatantly superimposed onto the background. There are a number of scenes in the 'observation lounge' or other large spaces that stand out as examples of this odd phenomenon. If you do spot it, it becomes more and more obvious each time you see it and distracts from what is an otherwise attractive presentation. This aside, the majority of the CGI work is impressive and convincing.

Talking of good looking, this stretches to the cast too! Thankfully, none of the actors have been cast on looks alone and they all portray their characters effectively, especially Elizabeth Mitchell, fresh from her role in Lost. Aside from Mitchell, genre fans will also recognise The 4400's Joel Gretsch. As the two leads in the series, they are equally effective, with Mitchell bringing a sense of gung ho to her otherwise cool and calm demeanour, whilst Gretsch's portrayal of Father Landry is that of a man caught between his pacifist nature and desire to protect mankind.

There are many opportunities for the actors to give wonderfully emotional performances, especially towards the second half of the season as storylines come together and worlds are torn apart (figuratively speaking.) Even Scott Wolf's portrayal of Chad Decker offers a character that quickly goes from one dimensional to something deeper and more investigative, giving him the opportunity to play a reporter that balances his desire to be successful with his instincts for the truth.

Baccarin, as Anna, is alluring and charismatic instead of the rather soap opera styling of the previous leader, Diana. Mitchell, as Erica, delivers a far more nuanced performance than Marc Singer (the 80s lead) could ever have delivered.

Each episode presents a multi-faceted story that allows the characters and storyline to develop at a decent pace. Admittedly, there's a bit too much duplicity and conflict on the go all at once and, on occasions, it can feel a bit contrived. There are moments where you feel that the plot twists could have been better had they not been there. (Tyler's problems are a major part of the storyline, but you do occasionally feel that there's one issue too many for the poor lad.)

The alien underneath the human skin is only hinted at and first comes at an unexpected moment during the first episode. As the series moves on, we learn more about the presence of aliens upon Earth in a pre-invasion force and the various tensions that led to the creation of the resistance group, the Fifth Column started by John May, the first V to rebel against Anna. Sadly, the full extent of the alien look isn't revealed by the end of Season One and I'm hoping that, at some point in the near future, we'll see a full face, at the very least.

Of course, techno babble-filled science fiction isn't enough these days, with textured and layered narrative being the marker of such series as Babylon 5 and, much later, the recent series Battlestar Galactica. Whilst the re-imagined Galactica had the idea that anyone could be a Cylon, V really ramps up the concept, bringing us the idea that anyone could be a Visitor, including our closest and most trusted friends and allies.

With the Visitors' use of media manipulation and political machinations at all levels, you'd be forgiven that the series had some underlying political agenda. Add to this a hint at loss of privacy, as the V's monitor those around them through their Peace Ambassador programme and track subjects through a seemingly routine inoculation. It's not the first time that science-fiction has referenced the political opinion of its day. Star Trek did it far more crudely as it explored cultural divides, opposing political ideology and the wonder of being American.

V is mostly subtle about its political agenda, though it does occasionally smack you around the head with its point of view. (A whole episode is dedicated to ‘blue energy' and there's the ongoing offer of universal healthcare.)

Season One has a short run compared to most modern series, only twelve episodes, with a second season of ten already ordered. But, in those twelve episodes, we get plenty of plot, ample character development and an absence of season stretching filler episodes. There are enough plot threads left open to continue the series into a second season, well before the final episode.

If you are on the lookout for originality, you're going to be looking in the wrong place. It's a reboot/reimagining of a classic series that, in itself, wasn't an entirely original idea, so you're not going to find heaps of originality in every passing moment. However, it does what it sets out to do incredibly well and crafts its own version of a tried and tested formula, bringing together aspects of the original series, freshening it all up and adding ample drama and emotion.

With plenty of story still playing out by the end of Season 1 and one massive cliffhanger, there's opportunity for the series to develop into a long running, gripping, pseudo-political science fiction epic.

Extras

The Actor's Journey From Human to V is a 17 minute featurette that offers a look at the cast and crew and their recollections of the original V, what drew them to the series and the themes of the first season. Interspersed with clips from the season, the cast and crew don't really tell us anything that we don't already know. However, they do speak intelligently about their roles and the series as a whole. Scott Peters talks about the casting of the principle players, whilst each of them gets the opportunity to express their opinions on their roles.

Selected episodes have deleted and alternate scenes, which could have been put back into the episodes without much fuss. It appears that up to four minutes were trimmed from the episodes and some character development and interaction opportunities were lost.

There is one audio commentary that covers episode 10 of Season 1 and allows two Executive Producers, Steve Pearlman and Scott Rosenbaum, the chance to discuss the production of this pivotal episode, the themes that run through the series and various pieces of filming trivia. As commentaries go, it is quite interesting and fact-filled, with very few moments of silence.

Breaking Story: The World of V is a 17 minute featurette taking us inside the writers' room and exploring how the series develops and characters interlink throughout the first season. It's, by far, the most interesting of the features, as it goes some way to show how complicated it is to produce a series with an ongoing narrative and keep it accessible to a mass audience.

An Alien in Human Skin: The Makeup FX of V looks at the makeup and how they developed from the original series. Various members of the crew explain how the use of CGI and traditional special effects has created the glimpses of the alien and how CGI was used to enhance traditional prosthetics.

VFX: The Visual Effects of V explores the links between the original miniseries and the modern series of V, offering us a look at how the visuals of the original series were improved upon, how the virtual sets were created and the other uses of CGI within the series, from skin to weapons. Despite the variable results of the virtual sets, it is quite interesting to see the designers as they work on their creations and the actors discuss their experiences of working on green screen.

Overall, the Season One boxset offers just enough to hold interest. Admittedly, there are opportunities to increase the number of extras. Pre-visualisation footage, a deeper comparison between the concepts in this series and the original, more commentaries and longer features would have all made nice additions. Having said that, if you're a fan of the original series or the genre itself, you'll like this set.

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V: The Complete First Season is out now and available from the Den Of Geek Store.

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