As Warner Brothers and Zack Snyder begin their hunt for a new Superman, it seems that everywhere I look, I see potential candidates. While watching The Social Network, I thought Armie Hammer would make a good Man of Steel, and likewise, while watching the new Hawaii Five-0 series, I kept imagining Alex O'Loughlin in the cape and tights.

However, while watching 30 Rock, I saw an actor who, in my eyes, looked exactly how I'd imagine Superman on the big screen: 6'3", well built and with a diverse acting range. The actor was Cheyenne Jackson, who plays Danny Baker in the show (and previously played Mark Bingham in United 93). Curious about what else he had done, I went on his IMDb page to browse his filmography and discovered that he is one of Hollywood's few openly gay actors.

As soon as I read that my heart sunk, because whether you agree with the casting or not, Hollywood studios are seemingly never going to cast an openly gay actor in such a role.

Think back to when Daniel Craig was cast as James Bond. Do you remember the fervour and rash of media headlines about MGM and United Artists making the 'crazy' decision of hiring a 'Blonde Bond'? To the casual observer, it seemed like Daniel Craig had ruined the role, before he had even said a line of dialogue. However, he gave a performance to prove his critics (well, most of them) wrong and is considered to be one of the best Bonds of recent time.

Unfortunately, that controversy seems to have ruled out my personal choice of Damien Lewis (Band Of Brothers) ever being cast as Bond. Can you imagine the controversy at the casting of a 'Ginger Bond?'

Now imagine what would happen if the studio cast a gay actor as James Bond?

Now, there is no reason why a gay actor could not play James Bond. The actor's sexuality should and would have no basis on how he played the character, and it's not like James Bond would suddenly be bedding men instead of women. It is a completely ridiculous assumption to make that, simply because an actor playing a role is gay, that somehow the character he is playing is also gay.

In fact, fans of TV series How I Met Your Mother will know that the character of Barney Stinson is the greatest lothario the small screen has seen since Sam Malone stood behind the bar in Cheers, and is played by the openly gay Neil Patrick Harris. However, there is still the impression from the general public that a gay man playing such an iconic role is not acceptable.

This can be best seen during the 1980s, when Rupert Everett was one of the UK's hottest young actors. In fact, he was widely rumoured to play James Bond at some point in the future. However, in 1989, he openly declared that he was gay, a decision, he has said, that improved his personal life, but seriously damaged his film career.

In interviews over the years, Everett has suggested to gay actors that, for the benefit of their careers, they should 'stay in the closet' or risk losing plum roles. Speaking to The Guardian last year, Everett said, "It's not that advisable, to be honest. It's not very easy and, honestly, I would not advise any actor necessarily, if he was really thinking of his career, to come out."

He said that a general homophobia in Hollywood had kept him from becoming a leading man and that the studio system even preferred to cast heterosexuals as gays (such as Brokeback Mountain and Transamerica).

"The fact is that you could not be, and still cannot be, a 25-year-old homosexual trying to make it in the British film business or the American film business or even the Italian film business," he said. "It just doesn't work and you're going to hit a brick wall at some point. You're going to manage to make it roll for a certain amount of time, but at the first sign of failure they'll cut you right off."

Now, while I don't entirely agree with Everett about an underlying homophobia in Hollywood, I do believe that, when it comes to casting an openly gay actor in a role such as Superman or James Bond, there is a large financial concern at stake for the studios.

Whether we like to admit it or not, there are still certain demographics and elements of society that don't accept homosexuality, and from a business point of view, it is a large chunk of potential box office that studios might lose if they were to cast a gay man in such an role for a tent pole movie. I don't agree with it and I think it is a complete shame, but if a gay man was to be cast as the Man of Steel, you can imagine the kind of comments you would see on Internet boards and concerned conservative family groups.

For a taste, simply look back to 2006. Bryan Singer is one of Hollywood's few openly gay directors, and while it seems no one had a problem with him directing the X-Men films, with their clear message of fighting intolerance and prejudice, there seemed to be a fear that with him at the helm of the new Superman film, he would suddenly 'gay' up The Big Blue Boy Scout, a character that stands for Truth, Justice and The American Way, despite being an illegal alien.

This led to Bryan Singer having to give numerous interviews where he described Superman as "the most heterosexual character in any movie I've ever made" and denying he was making a 'gay Superman' film. However, the newspaper, magazine and Internet speculation continued, with reports even querying Superman actor Brandon Routh's sexuality. It was only when he announced his engagement to his long term girlfriend that the rumours seemed to die down.

It is no surprise that many actors have kept their sexuality such a secret. In this age of tabloid gossip and paparazzi, many actors go to extreme lengths to keep their lives private, and it is completely reasonable to see why.

It is not a recent occurrence either. During the 50s and 60s, actors such as Richard Chamberlain and Rock Hudson hid their homosexuality for the impact that it would have on their careers, only opting to reveal all later in life. For many, their revelations came as a shock, especially considering the manly roles the actors had played throughout their careers. As a matter of note, Richard Chamberlain was the first Jason Bourne.

There are exceptions, however. Sir Ian McKellen has long been an advocate of gay rights. His roles in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy and X-Men films have shown that studios do not mind hiring gay actors, just as long as they are in a supporting or mentor role. It also seems to help that Sir Ian is a widely respected and well established actor. In fact, I don't seem to recall any outcry when he was cast as either Gandalf or Magneto.

So. where does this leave gay actors in the near future? Should they come out, and essentially give up on their dreams of playing such iconic roles, opting instead to be pigeonholed as a 'gay actor', or take Everett's advice and 'stay in the closet' and have a successful movie career? More importantly, why in the 21st century is this still the case?

As my choice for Superman, Cheyenne Jackson, said, "To be frank, I think I've missed out on big parts because I'm open. I've screen tested on some really big projects, and you can't tell me that behind closed doors big execs aren't like, 'We have Dean Cain or this gay guy who played Elvis on Broadway.' I'm not that naive to think that that doesn't play into it."

What are your thoughts and opinions on the subject? Add them the comment section below.

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Famously the director of what is surely the best Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back, Irvin Kershner has sadly passed away at the age of 87.

Kershner also helmed Sean Connery’s belated reappearance of James Bond, Never Say Never Again in 1987, and the sci-fi sequel RoboCop 2 in 1990.

In a career that stretched back to the 50s, Kershner’s body of work is voluminous and varied, ranging from dramas, such as 1959’s The Young Captives, to the supernatural thriller Eyes Of Laura Mars, in 1978, which was written by a young John Carpenter.

It’s for The Empire Strikes Back that Kershner will be best remembered, however, and for this truly spectacular contribution to geek culture, he has our unending gratitude.

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Like grunge music, it appears that the era of rhythm games has been somewhat short-lived. The once burgeoning genre has seen a sharp decline in sales over the past year or so, perhaps due to a parade of mechanically identical games, or because people have simply grown bored of their living rooms being crammed with plastic instruments.

Even Harmonix, the developers responsible for bringing these types of games to prominence, has been released from its parent company, despite recently releasing the critically lauded Dance Central and Rock Band 3.

Many would point their finger at Activision for this state of affairs. After the enormous success of the initial Guitar Hero games, the publishing giant pushed the franchise into an annual development cycle - not necessarily the best way of letting a series grow, or allowing developers Neversoft to invigorate its core gameplay. 

Savvy to the success of the Hero name, Activision has also affixed the moniker to FreeStyle Games’ turntablism-themed DJ Hero series, the first of which was released last year. Whilst this featured some good ideas, it certainly felt more proof-of-concept than a fully-fledged title, and hardly the shot in the arm many hoped it would be.

However, it feels great to be able to cast any disappointment and jaded cynicism aside when playing DJ Hero 2, because the sequel not only expands upon the solid foundations laid by its progenitor, but also breathes new life into a stale genre.

DJ Hero 2’s core gameplay revolves around hitting and holding correctly coloured notes, beats and samples across three tracks of an ever-spinning vinyl pathway. Like the first game, this is complemented by scratching and knob-fiddling effect sequences, as well as the ability to initiate Euphoria mode, which acts as a score multiplier. However, the sequel also introduces Freestyle Mode – portions of pathway that give you full control of the mix, allowing you to freely scratch and shift audio channels to your heart’s content.

This is a significant addition, as it not only adds greater variety to the gameplay, but also gives you the feeling of legitimately controlling a song’s overall sound through some measure of musicianship. All of these elements make DJ Hero 2 more complex than most other rhythm games, and can feel overwhelming at first. As such, newcomers will find investing some time with the game’s extensive tutorial to be worthwhile.

True to the nature of actual DJing, playing DJ Hero 2 is a somewhat solitary activity. While a few multiplayer modes are present, it doesn’t lend itself to party situations quite as effortlessly as Rock Band. Instead, the single player Empire mode provides the bulk of the experience and sees you selecting a DJ and conquering the world’s club circuit one city at a time.

Along the way, you’ll face off against and play as other DJs such as David Guetta, Deadmau5 and RZA, artists who might give you some idea of the game’s eclectic track list of mixes and mash-ups. Whilst the nature of mixing tracks means that specific songs feel less crucial to the overall experience, it is particularly delightful to suddenly identify a song that you like fade into the mix.

At the same time, the breadth of featured artists gives the impression that DJ Hero 2 has something of an identity crisis on its hands, unsure of whether to ally itself with the zeitgeist of club music or the more technical but less culturally relevant hip-hop. This has few implications from a gameplay perspective, but means that the whole package lacks a distinct feel. That being said, the clean, crisp graphic design-influenced presentation is a welcome departure from the crusty roadies of the Guitar Hero aesthetic.

Given DJ Hero 2’s focus on single player content, it’s disappointing that the options to customise the look of your character are so limited. The meagre number of unlockable outfits and accessories seem especially stingy in comparison to some of the more recent entries in the genre. Aspiration is an essential part of music games, so giving players the ability to fully invest in their avatars is something that shouldn’t be undervalued.

The turntable peripheral itself remains unchanged from those bundled with last year’s release, a no doubt pleasing fact to the wallets of early adopters. It’s slightly more utilitarian than the snazzy, iconic guitars of the Guitar Hero and Rock Band games, but is nonetheless a solid piece of hardware. There’s a pleasing heft to the turntable itself, which makes spinning and catching it at key moments of a song gratifying.

The only real criticism is that finding the midpoint on the crossfader can be infuriatingly messy at times, and some more reassuring mechanical feedback would be appreciated.

The role of a DJ might not, to most people, seem as immediately alluring as striding onstage with a Gibson Explorer, but FreeStyle Games has done a fantastic job of creating an enjoyable game which also provides some meaningful methods of musical expression.

While DJ Hero 2 is a great game in its own right, this is another solid addition to a series on the rise in an otherwise declining genre, and it’s exciting to consider the ways in which it may evolve.

DJ Hero 2 is out now and available from the Den Of Geek Store.

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It's official, zombies just make anything better. Or at least that seems to be the general trend these days, as more and more zombie-themed games keeps appearing. Left 4 Dead and Dead Rising are two of the most memorable undead kill-a-thons around, and CoD fans just can't get enough of the dearly departed's invasion of realistic shooters.

Rockstar must also have a fondness for all things shuffly and rotten, as its old west sandbox has been beset by the walking dead, and John Marston's world is turned upside down, with an adventure that piles on the carnage.

Clearly a tribute to all manner of cheesy B-movie horror flicks, and a game that never takes itself too seriously, this add-on for Red Dead Redemption takes the core game mechanics of the original adventure, and ramps up the combat and adds a light essence of survival horror. The end result is a thoroughly enjoyable zombie-slaying tale, if one that's a mite on the overly repetitive side.

The game begins with Marston and family living it up in his ranch (obviously not paying attention to the ending of Redemption) when all of a sudden Marston's uncle, now a zombiefied flesh eater, attacks, biting Marston's wife, who in turn takes a chunk out of their son. After quickly tying up his beloved, John sets out to find out what's going on, and to find a cure for his now ravenous family.

What follows is a story that takes Marston back through the world we saw in Redemption, meeting familiar faces and revisiting old haunts (literally). As is traditional with Rockstar's sandbox releases, there's a main story to plough through with more than a smattering of side quests and collecting diversions, but this time combat is far more central, with a shift towards Left 4 Dead-style battles, albeit on a smaller scale.

The first major change you'll notice is the addition of clearing town invasions. As you approach a settlement or town, it'll usually be under attack by the dead, and a handful of survivors will be frantically trying to stay alive. You have to help stem the tide of the zombie horde, and free the town, making it safe(ish). Do this, and you'll not only be able to relax and find some supplies, but you'll also be able to rest up and save (this can't be done in hostile settlements).

Another important change of note is the lack of shops. This makes ammo conservation a must, and although ammo isn't exactly rare and at Resident Evil levels of scarcity (most settlements have chests of ammo, and you can loot the dead), you can't simply go in shooting, or you'll soon find yourself fighting off an army of zombies with a stick.

This adds an element of strategy to the game, far more so than Redemption, and you'll soon develop an absurdly fanatical fondness for the headshot. Well, that's all that can kill a zombie, right?

To facilitate this, Undead Nightmare features a far more generous Deadeye meter, so you'll be able to pull off several impressive multiple headshots with relative ease in a short space of time. This meter builds up quickly, so you'll rarely be unable to slow down time to line up the shot.

You're also helped out by a couple of new armament additions. The torch is used to keep the dead at bay and can set them on fire, the tomahawk is deadly at close range and can be thrown, and the blunderbuss is a powerful rifle that can shoot body parts for explosive results. You can even lob bottles of holy water a la Castlevania.

On a fiery horse I ride

Other elements of the game are similar, but altered a little. Horses return and are as essential as ever, but you'll also be able to find and tame mythical steeds, namely the four horses of the apocalypse (including a plague ridden Pestilence and a fiery War) as well as the fabled Unicorn. These horses have special abilities, such as setting foes on fire or instant death of foes, and most have near-unlimited stamina and are very hard to kill.

Random events are present again, but are tailored to the theme. You'll find people being attacked by zombies (who require you to save them lest they become a member of the undead legion), and witness poor husbands sobbing next to their zombie wives, only for the wife to attack, leaving the husband to shoot her and then himself. It's occasionally grim, but never too much, and as I mentioned earlier, Undead Nightmare never takes long to lighten the atmosphere. Hell, you can even unlock Ash's costume from The Evil Dead and take your boomstick to the Wicky, Wicky, Wild West.

It's all entertaining stuff, make no mistake, and the dialog and cut scenes are as polished as ever. Side quests are enjoyable, and there's plenty to see and do. My only major gripe here is the repetition. Saving settlements is enjoyable at first, and it never really get's dull, but it does get more than a little familiar. What's worse, you never really feel all that threatened as you can easily jump up to higher ground and take pot shots at the undead in safety.

Even if you run low on ammo, as long as you keep an overly powerful tomahawk handy and simply press the right trigger to use it as a melee weapon, you can kill most zombies with a single hit.

The only difficulty here comes from the game's ropey close combat. Often you'll think you're going to hit your foe, only to swing wildy in the wrong direction as they circle you and start to rip chunks out of you. And other times you'll be running around like a loon, desperately trying to hit something or someone. It's glitchy at best, but even with i's hiccups, melee combat is far too powerful.

Marston is also blessed with regenerating health, and as he takes damage, the screen slowly turns blood-red. As long as you stay out of trouble, though, you'll regain health, and can keep fighting. This makes things a little less challenging. The game isn't a push over, but a little more danger would have been welcome.

Xbox Dead

Undead Nightmare adds a couple of new multiplayer modes to the series alongside the single player mode. Land Grab is a nifty mode that sees players grabbing up deeds to valuable real estate and fighting to keep it, and Undead Overrun is a Horde-style co-op mode that pits players against waves of relentless undead. They're both welcome additions, and help to bolster the already addictive online modes.

At around £20, Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare is a great little package, and it adds more quality Red Dead gameplay, giving us one more excuse to head on into the old west. The gameplay changes make it different enough from Redemption to entice players who've played the original to death, and you can play Undead Nightmare if you don't own the original, if you go for the disc-based release (reviewed here).

In fact, if you buy the disc, you'll also get all of the previous DLC, such as Legends And Killers and Liars And Cheats. It may be a little samey at times, and combat could have brought more challenge, but this is still a classy addition to any zombie killer's collection.

Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare is out now and available from the Den Of Geek Store.

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The history of director Michael Powell's Peeping Tom is almost as disquieting as the film itself, and represents one of the most unfortunate falls from grace in cinema history. Partnered with screenwriter and producer Emeric Pressburger, Powell was one of the most respected directors of the 40s and 50s, internationally recognised for such films as The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp, Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes.

Then, in 1960, Powell embarked on a solo project, a psychological thriller called Peeping Tom. Written by former WWII cryptographer Leo Marks, the film's depiction of a creepy man-child serial killer was demolished by critics, effectively ending Powell's career as a filmmaker.

Only granted an X rating by the BBFC after several cuts were made, the film was shown in a few adult cinemas before quietly fading into obscurity. It was only a decade or so later that Peeping Tom began to be reassessed, with Martin Scorsese's enthusiasm for the film doing much to raise its profile.

Even viewed in 2010, Peeping Tom remains a quietly disturbing film. Time has done much to erode the impact of its violence and brief nudity, and its cast of well-spoken actors, who enunciate their lines terribly, terribly well, seem rather quaint to modern ears, but it's not difficult to imagine what it was about the film that disgusted early 60s critics as it did.

Mark Lewis (sympathetically played by German actor Carl Boehm) is a handsome, haunted loner obsessed with capturing the moment of death on film. Once subjected to horrible psychological experiments by his maniac father (played by Powell himself, in a Hitchcockian cameo), Mark now lives as a virtual recluse, seldom venturing far from the cavernous Victorian house in which he grew up.

Skilfully dividing his waking hours between working as a cameraman in the daytime and a photographer of sleaze in the evenings, Mark also finds the time to continue his father's work, albeit in an even more sadistic manner. Creeping around with a cine camera whose tripod doubles as a deadly stiletto, he preys on young women, capturing his victims' final moments of terror for use in what he later describes as a documentary.

Despite his innate awkwardness, Mark embarks on a cautious relationship with Helen (Anna Massey, who would later appear in Hitchcock's Frenzy), an innocent young girl who lives downstairs. It's perhaps this humanising aspect of Peeping Tom that upset critics the most.

Far from a mere monster, Mark is a nuanced, human character, and despite his depraved crimes, remains sympathetic throughout. The casting of Carl Boehm is an inspired choice. His portrayal as a softly spoken outsider is affecting and believable, and his struggle to control his murderous urges is reminiscent of Peter Lorre's similarly starry performance in Fritz Lang's M, and could also be seen as a template for Tom Noonan's startling turn as Francis Dolarhyde in Michael Mann's underrated Manhunter.

In fact, there's a line in Manhunter that perfectly sums up the audience's conflicted relationship with Peeping Tom's protagonist. Struggling to get into the mindset of that film's serial killer, macho detective Will Graham (William Petersen) says, "As a child, my heart bleeds for him. Someone took a little boy and turned him into a monster. But as an adult? As an adult, he's irredeemable."

Peeping Tom could therefore be seen as one of cinema's more twisted romances as well as a psychological thriller. Despite critics' hysterical disapproval of its scenes of depravity, Powell's film spends far more time exploring Mark's doomed relationship with Helen, and their moments together are full of awkward chemistry.

Powell's direction is similarly filled with flashes of brilliance, capturing the sleazy underworld of 60s London in beautifully framed shots of searing colour. A scene where Mark spies on police from the top of a lighting gantry is a moment where Peeping Tom tips over into pure thriller territory. In glorious slow motion, we see a pocketful of pens spill from his jacket and spin almost gracefully into the lens.

As Martin Scorsese once pointed out, Peeping Tom is a film about the voyeurism of both filmmakers and audiences. As Mark sits in his darkened studio quietly watching his horrible acts, we're made aware that we, too, are sitting in the dark watching murders for our own amusement.

In the film's closing scenes, Mark reveals that, as well as the deadly stiletto on the end of his camera, he's also fixed a mirror, which forces his victims to see their own terminal moments even as he films them. Like a mirror reflecting a reflection into infinity, Peeping Tom acts as a comment on the obsession of filmmaking, and the voyeuristic underbelly of being an audience member.

It's this aspect of Peeping Tom that, for me, makes it of enduring interest. Powell's depiction of a 60s London's illicit and hypocritical lust for pornography may be almost unrecognisable in the Internet age, but his depiction of a man obsessed and ultimately destroyed by cinema (a depiction that sadly reflects the fate of Powell's own career) remains as sharp as it ever was.

Peeping Tom is out now now on DVD and Blu-ray.

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This review contains spoilers.

3.12 The Coming Of Arthur Part 1

So, the season finale is upon us and Morgana's greatest day is at hand. The Cup of Life (last seen in the season one finale Le Morte d'Arthur) has somehow fallen into the hands of the Druids since Merlin's battle with Nimueh, and they use its powers to revive Sir Leon after Uther's men are ambushed and slaughtered by King Cenred.

Sir Leon returns to Camelot and tells Uther that the Cup is still in existence. A panic-stricken Uther sends Arthur and Merlin to retrieve it. If a weapon like it was to fall into the wrong hands "Camelot would be all but lost."

Morgana learns of their plans and talks to Morgause, who decides to ally herself once more with Cenred and use his resources and manpower to get it by whatever means necessary.

Arthur and Merlin are captured by a slave trader and are reacquainted with Gwaine. Unfortunately, Gwaine and Arthur are forced to compete in a brutal pit fight to the death, but the boy wizard has some sly pyrokinetic tricks up his sleeve and the triumvirate quickly escape.

Once they find The Druids whereabouts and make sure the Cup is in safe hands, they head back to Camelot. They are ambushed by Cenred's soldiers and Arthur is wounded with a poison dart. Merlin tries and fails to get the Cup and it is soon in Morgause's hands.

Morgause wastes no time in making an immortal, unstoppable army who march toward Camelot. She also wastes no time in betraying Cenred and having him executed. The army leaves a trail of carnage in their wake and a pleased Morgana tells Gwen she will be spared if she remains loyal to her.

With the poison working through Arthur's system and Merlin's attempts at reviving him failing, Camelot falls. They make it back, but realise they're too late and there is nothing they can do but run. Arthur chooses to stay and fight, while Gwaine and Elyan take Gaius to safety. The boy wizard stays by Arthur's side.

Uther is brought to the throne room and tells Morgause she cannot do this, that she has no right to the throne, and Morgana emerges from the shadows. She spitefully tells Uther she knows he is her father and her deception is revealed. Uther is lost for words and Arthur and Merlin helplessly look on as Morgana is crowned queen.

This episode was by far the best of the season, with multiple betrayals, a pace which never slowed down, and villains who finally revealed different facets of their characters.

Morgana's bargain with Gwen offered us a glimpse of the woman she once was. I am under no illusions that even though Morgana has been crowned queen, Morgause is the real leader now and the new order in Camelot will be anything but a peaceful one.

Katie McGrath was given very little to do in the first part, though I expect that will change come next week. Emilia Fox shined in her occasionally flamboyant performance as the duplicitous witch, and it'll be exciting to see where her character goes next.

Next week's teaser promises The Round Table, the Lady of the Lake, Excalibur and an epic battle between Morgana and Merlin. Who will be left?

Read our review of episode 11, The Sorcerer’s Shadow, here.

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This review contains spoilers.

5.10 In The Beginning

I've noticed the signposts that things on Dexter are about to get deadly serious, because this story, in particular, was almost entirely devoid of any humour, even the very dark variety the show can do so well.

But then the season was always going to have an explosive finale, from the moment that Dexter saved Lumen, and with her a huge can of worms that got unleashed.

Before In The Beginning, we didn't really get much of a handle on the sort of person that Jordan Chase was under the marketing driven exterior, but now how nasty a piece of work he is has finally been revealed.

I couldn't help but be impressed with the elegance of his plan to have Dexter/Lumen eliminate the last of his associates, and to get them arrested before they got to him. It seems to be working rather well, except that Dexter's possibly an even more ruthless killer than Chase can even guess.

I'm not going to go into the details of what transpired, but some of the scenes with Lumen this week were quite harrowing, and what interested me most was to see Dexter's reaction to them. He's a seriously reformed sociopath, if such a creature exists, and the tenderness with which he treats Lumen was genuinely moving in places.

This is turning into the oddest love story ever, but that doesn't make it any less watchable, with both actors firing on all cylinders.

My only problem with this was where it ultimately led them, as I'm not sure that, given what Lumen had been through, she could actually handle being physically intimate. But in the context of their most unusual allegiance, their union made some sense. I accept that.

Given the emotional journey that Dexter is making, one can't ignore how badly the last season ended for him, and what another blow like the death of Rita might do to him.

But it's not just him that's on the edge. There are strong hints that at the end of season 5 life's not going to be the same for most of the key characters in the show, with a simultaneously crisis enveloping them all.

The two who look most likely to come to the fore are Debra and Joey Quinn, who are both close to working out the chain of disappearances and linking it to Dexter.

Liddy has stumbled into Dexter and Lumen's hobby, and that might be a fatal mistake. I'm curious how he thinks he's going to present his case, because he stole equipment to spy on the couple, and as he's not got a warrant for the surveillance, almost none of the evidence he's got is admissible in court. But clearly those aren't things he's bothered about.

Two more episodes to go, and we're on the edge of a disturbing precipice, wondering how long the fall takes. I'm not even going to attempt to guess where we're being taken and what the consequences for all concerned might be. It's a white knuckle ride and there's no getting off now.

I so want Lumen to survive, if just for Dexter's sanity. But maybe her destiny just isn't that neat or it's just an implausible resolution for her to live?

The only certainty is that we'll know soon. Tick-tock, tick-tock!

Read our review of episode 9, Teenage Wasteland, here.

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This review contains spoilers.

11. Paris Green

There seems to be an unspoken rule that prevails throughout the crop of serious-minded, serial dramas that have come out of America in the past decade, which is this: it all kicks off in the penultimate episode.

We've seen it in The Sopranos, we've seen it in Breaking Bad, and we've seen it in The Wire. The theory seems to be that, by saving the action for the second-to-last instalment, the final episode can be a place for rumination and introspection, as well as a tantalising ellipsis to persuade the commissioning suits that this is a story worth seeing more of.

So does Boardwalk Empire adhere to this tried and tested template? No, it doesn't. It's clearly saving up some of its big moments for next week's finale. But does it still provide an exhilarating, satisfying hour of television? The answer is, unfortunately, no.

Let me just clarify that I wasn't expecting action of the explosions and carnage variety in this episode. For one thing, from watching for the previous 11 weeks, I know that Boardwalk Empire just isn't that type of show. As I've mentioned in previous recaps, the gangsta shit is at a premium, but I've stuck with the show because I felt like it was leading towards something worthwhile.

Also the big ‘wham' moments in dramas such as these aren't always the big action set pieces. In fact, more often than not, they're played out verbally, or as a minor act that is afforded huge significance due to the groundwork laid by (hopefully) skilful writing. Tensions that have been building to a head all season should either resolve or explode by this point.

Which is why this is probably the most disappointing episode of Boardwalk Empire so far.oO course, there is still one more episode to go, and the storylines of the main characters may yet resolve themselves in an exciting and unpredictable way, but after Paris Green I somehow doubt it.

I still maintain that Boardwalk Empire is a show you should definitely check out, as there is still some great stuff in there (even in this episode), but overall it was as muddled and frustrating an hour of television as I've seen in a while.

One of Boardwalk Empire's biggest problems this season has been its fear of subtext and inability to convey anything subtlety. Any kind of point the showrunners try to make about the characters, the period or the politics is sledge hammered home until it loses any insight or meaning.

Case in point, there were obvious parallels between Houdini's crap brother Hardeen and Nucky's ineffectual brother Eli, but that neat bit of storytelling was capsized by Nucky screaming ‘You should check out Houdini's crap brother because he's crap just like you're a crap version of me.' (Paraphrasing here.)

Similarly, Nucky and Margaret's big confrontation consisted of them shouting a rough synopsis of their storyline over the last ten episodes at each other, in case some of it may have passed you by. (Even if you've seen only one episode, it won't have, unless you've had the sound off and the contrast set to ‘white screen'. Even then you could probably make an educated guess.)

And don't get me started on when Jimmy's awful kid hands his distraught and heartbroken mother a blurred picture of her recently eloped lover embracing her husband, before cheerfully adding "Look mommy - ghosts!" in a moment hoary enough to make M Night Shyamalan wince.

The other big problem is that the pacing and structure of the series has been completely off. The switch in focus between characters is so quick and jarring that it's next to impossible to build up any empathy for the characters.

A key example is Angela Darmody's story. She played a minor role in the first couple of episodes, then was almost totally absent for the next six or seven, then her doomed lesbian relationship became a key focus of this final run of episodes. Why? Her breakdown when returning to Jimmy should have been a big emotional climax, but the feeling I had was one of complete apathy. The series just hasn't offered me enough over the past ten weeks to make me give two figs about her fate.

Come to think of it, that's a criticism that can be applied to nearly every character in the show. We're one episode from the end, and still the only characters I'm invested in are Al, Chalky, and Richard, bizarrely, considering their screen time has been relatively short. I'm also beginning to wonder whether I look forward to seeing them on screen because they're well-drawn and interesting, or because I'm a fan of the actor's previous work.

Al and Chalky are certainly no Combo and Omar, but the lure of those characters is so strong that it can't help but inform Stephen Graham and Michael K Williams' performances. You keep waiting to see if a flash of Combo's unbridled fury, or bit of Omar's laconic bad-assery will appear and liven up proceedings. Anyway, it's a moot point as, once again, neither of them appear at all in the episode.

Margaret was on her way to becoming an interesting character, with her inner conflict over her relationship with Nucky providing a potentially interesting angle for storylines, but her turmoil has been played out so excruciatingly slowly (every other episode seems to end with her staring pointedly into the middle distance) that any and all dramatic tension has been lost.

The big set piece in this episode features Agent Val Alden ‘baptising' his partner, who has turned out to be in cahoots with Nucky. This scene, like everything else in Boardwalk Empire, is well acted and exquisitely filmed. However, also like a great deal of Boardwalk Empire, it is hugely derivative (There Will Be Blood says hello, wants its hat back) and it just doesn't quite work.

It's supposed to be a big shock moment when he drowns his partner, but because the groundwork hasn't been adequately laid (the partner is completely two-dimensional and Van Alden has turned into a totally unrelatable monster nutbag) your reaction isn't "OMG. WTF. I can't believe he just killed his partner in broad daylight!", it's, "He's not going to kill his partner in broad daylight in front of fifty witnesses, because that would be ridiculous. Oh. He has. Now I have to spend the next five minutes figuring out whether that would be even the tiniest bit credible."

I gave last week's episode basically a rave review, praising the show for taking its time to build up to what I assumed would be a big payoff. I realize now I probably jumped the gun there. I've really, really wanted to love Boardwalk Empire, but there's simply been too much sloppy writing in this first series to ignore any more, regardless of what happens next week. You can't wait eleven episodes to pull a rabbit out of the hat.

A lot of Boardwalk Empire Season 1 has been so clunky it would appear to have been written by the Terence Winter who wrote Get Rich Or Die Tryin, rather than the Terence Winter who wrote Long Term Parking, Pine Barrens, and The Second Coming, some of the best episodes of a candidate for the best television series ever made, The Sopranos. Boardwalk Empire isn't as bad as that film, obviously, but it is riddled with basic storytelling errors that are inarguably hampering it from achieving its still massive potential.

I've become accustomed to the lethargic pace of Boardwalk Empire by now, but this episode was ponderous to the point of lifelessness. At one point during the episode, I left the room to get a cup of tea, completely forgot that I was watching/reviewing the episode, and became distracted and fascinated by my radiator for the best part of 20 minutes. This is either a reflection of the uninspiring storylines served up by the writers, the opening salvo of a premature onset of Alzheimers, or a deadly combination of both.

Television can be many things, fast-paced or slow-paced, violent or gentle, funny or serious. But one thing it never should do is make you think you might have Alzheimers. Only one more episode to go.

Read our review of episode 10, The Emerald City, here.

Follow Paul Martinovic on Twitter @paulmartinovic.

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5. The Yorke Arms

We've all been there, but I don't think I've ever seen the issue of a failing relationship handled quite as well as it was in last night's The Trip. A telephone conversation between Coogan and girlfriend Mischa portrayed everything you needed to know about the state they're in, in seconds. The looks on the faces, the awkward ramblings, the questions of infidelity hanging in the air - the end has already come to pass for the pair, although the attempts to keep on going will be familiar to most.

Watching this relationship in decline was heartbreaking last night, although Coogan's frequent womanising hardly allows you to sympathise with him.

Predictably, he bedded photographer Yolanda and, equally predictably, she hotfooted out of the door before he had time to bid her good day. Such is the life of Coogan portrayed throughout the series, a man beset with inner turmoil, attempting to turn things round for himself by finding solace in women and wine (and the odd partaking of drugs here and there).

More than any other episode so far, The Yorke Arms brought to the screen the full gamut of Coogan's fragile emotional state. The series has obviously played heavy on the public perception of Coogan the womaniser, Coogan the control freak, and it came to a head here in several moments of exquisite drama.

Take the overall flow of the episode, for example. Coogan, as he has done in previous episodes, wakes up re-energised, ready to begin a new day with new horizons, but as the programme continued apace, his mood noticeably changes from energised and content to tired and deeply unhappy. His work and his personal life are in disarray and he is clearly not a man happy with his lot, deep down. So it seems that no matter the mood he starts off in, he is destined to end up ill at ease, as the slow realisation that this is his life sinks in.

Then there is the notion that Alan Partridge is a character closely based upon Coogan, something he's made clear himself in past interviews. There were several moments where this was apparent, but perhaps the best was when he found himself surveying the stunning Northern landscape atop the Malham limestone hills. As a friendly chap came up to him to tell him all about the limestone and the scenery (a case of bad timing as Coogan just wanted some time to himself), the careful placing of the sunglasses and twitchy gestures suggested that Alan's annoyance at the world around him has clearly come directly from Coogan's own frustrations.

The fact that this was mirrored moments before by Brydon's annoyance at Coogan's own insistence to talk at length about their surroundings was clever, as was the lingering shot of the chap who wanted to speak to Steve. Was he just as lonely, I wonder?

The food, as with last week, took something of a backseat here, but it still plays a vital role in all of this. The series has been a love letter to the North, its food, landscapes and pets and artists past and present.

Whether it's a canny impression of Alan Bennett or a conversation about northern music, this has been an embracing of the North and I hope that, as a northerner myself, this isn't the reason why I have enjoyed it so much. I trust the humour and references translate to others too?

As the programme progressed, Cogan's ire at having to hang out with Brydon erupted over dinner, as did the worry that both Brydon and the wider world would compare the two. "I've got three Baftas!"

And just as you thought that there were no redeeming qualities about the man portrayed on screen, the show throws in a scene as wonderful as the telephone conversation between him and his son. Making him admit that, actually, Brydon is a good friend and has been for some time. It's a perfectly realised moment of self-reflection.

Touching dramatic moments like this have been the hallmark of the series and the return of Coogan's attempts to nail the Small Man In A Box routine only added to the moment.

The only shame of leaving on such a high is that it all comes to an end next week.

Read our review of episode four, Hipping Hall, here.

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A potential early 2011 hit, this one, as director D J Caruso (Disturbia, Eagle Eye) tries his arm at a bit of science fiction. The film in question is I Am Number Four, a mix of action, science fiction and thriller, produced by Michael Bay.

The flick stars Alex Pettyfer as a human-looking alien who ends up in an American high school to avoid other aliens. Or something. And while the premise doesn't offer too much meat to go on, we have had one trailer for the film thus far, which looked reasonably promising.

The poster is a bit of a bland-a-thon, though, save for the blue glowing hands. But take a look and see if it floats your boat. The film itself arrives in February.

Collider

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We suspect you know the basics by now, but just in case you don't, Torchwood's fourth season is to be a co-production between the BBC and the US cable network, Starz. John Barrowman and Eve Myles are returning as Captain Jack and Gwen, while the new run will be ten episodes old. Plus, it will be called The New World.

The latest news? Well, Eve Myles has revealed that she's now decamped to a new residence in Hollywood for the next seven months, while the show is in production. And we've learned that the shoot for the new season will begin on 11th January.

The New World won't entirely be shooting in Los Angeles, either, as the show's Welsh roots are being taken into account. Thus, production will also take place in Gower, Wales. The scenes in Wales are set to take up two weeks of the shoot, and are scheduled for the end of January.

Elsewhere, Steven Moffat has turned down calls for Ianto Jones to be brought back. The popular character has been subject of Internet campaigns since his demise on Torchwood: Children Of Earth, and for some reason, The Moff has been continually asked about bringing him back.

However, as he pointed out over Twitter, not only is Ianto a Russell T Davies character, and not only are Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures still under Davies' watch, but "I thought his death scene was brilliant. Not reversing it. Stop asking."

We'll bring you more news on Torchwood as we get it...

Wales Online
Steven Moffat Twitter

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It's been said plenty of times since the sad news came through about the death of director Irvin Kershner yesterday, at the age of 87. But that doesn't make it not true. For Kershner is the man who directed the finest Star Wars movie of the lot, The Empire Strikes Back, and while his career had some less successful movies in there, it's hardly a bad life to look back and have made a film like Empire.

Fittingly, George Lucas has now written his own tribute to the man, which was posted over at StarWars.com. Here's the statement that went live on the site:

"The world has lost a great director and one of the most genuine people I've had the pleasure of knowing," says Lucas. "Irvin Kershner was a true gentleman in every sense of the word. When I think of Kersh, I think of his warmth, his thoughtfulness and his talent. I knew him from USC - I attended his lectures and he was actually on the festival panel that gave the prize to my THX short. I considered him a mentor.

Following Star Wars, I knew one thing for sure: I didn't want to direct the second movie myself. I needed someone I could trust, someone I really admired and whose work had maturity and humor. That was Kersh all over. I didn't want Empire to turn into just another sequel, another episode in a series of space adventures. I was trying to build something, and I knew Kersh was the guy to help me do it. He brought so much to the table. I am truly grateful to him. He was a friend as well as a colleague. He will be missed."

You can read more memories of Irvin Kershner at StarWars.com, right here.

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Now that the cast for the Spider-Man reboot appears to have pretty much fallen into place, the spotlight appears to have fallen upon the logistics and design of the new film. Specifically, rumours have popped up regarding the new direction for the Spider-Man suit in the upcoming film.

Over at Showbiz Spy, they've revealed there that the new webslinger, Andrew Garfield, will be wearing a skin-tight suit in the new film, which isn't actually much fresh for Spider-Man. More interestingly, though, we're promised a "very high-tech design", whatever that actually turns out to mean.

Much of the focus of Showbiz Spy's piece, meanwhile, is on Garfield's crotch, specifically tailoring the suit to ensure that there's not too much showing. Right-o.

The shoot for the new Spider-Man film, meanwhile, is weeks away now, which means we're likely to get some idea as to just how the suit will be shaping up shortly.

Showbiz Spy

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As Inception heads for DVD and Blu-ray next week, Mr Christopher Nolan has been talking to the US edition of Wired about some of the theories surround the film's ending (thanks to Collider for the heads up). And he has some interesting things to say about it.

It goes without saying that the spoilers start now. But we'd better say it anyway. So we have.

The key points that Nolan puts across?

Firstly, that Leonardo DiCaprio's character, Cobb, is an "untrustworthy narrator". Most of us had worked that out, to be fair, but this comment was in specific relation to the sound of the top toppling at the end of the film. Thus, not a dream, surely? "This gives Cobb a base-line reality," notes Nolan.

On the spinning top at the end, it is still spinning when the film cuts to the credits. So, what should we read of the character of Cobb into that? "The prop guys just made a top that would spin for a long time," notes Nolan, but adds, "The important thing is that Cobb's not looking at the top. He doesn't care."

The issue of the children at the end was picked up on over the summer, namely that they're wearing different clothes from when we see them at the start. Furthermore, the children have aged when we see them at the end. Nolan confirms this, also saying, "We were working with two sets of kids."

You can read more of Nolan's responses to theories at Collider, here, and in issue 18.12 of Wired magazine (US edition).

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Not unreasonably, there's a growing amount of buzz being generated with regards HBO's take on George R R Martin's Game Of Thrones. Starring Sean Bean and Mark Addy, the adaptation is set to begin screening in spring of 2011. Ten episodes have been made, and on the basis of this latest trailer for the show, we've got plenty to look forward to.

Take a look here and see what you think...

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For devotees of the Gran Turismo series, this fifth instalment has been a ridiculously long time coming. For what feels like an eternity, Kazunori Yamauchi and his team at Polyphony Digital have been quietly tinkering and fettling, polishing and honing. One of the games industry’s most infamous perfectionists, Yamauchi has repeatedly delayed the release of GT5, apparently dragging it back into the garage again and again for yet another round of minute adjustment.

The wait may be finally over, but much has changed in the six years since Gran Turismo 4. In the intervening period, other developers have rolled out their own takes on the racing sim genre, each applying their own subtle spin – Race Driver: Grid, with its stunning damage modelling and innovative rewind system. Forza 3, and its realistic handling and vibrant courses. Placed against competition such as this, how will Gran Turismo 5 fare?

Very well, is the short answer, and Polyphony Digital has done little to upset the balance of its series’ time-honoured elements. The process of applying for your various licenses is as much of a grind as it ever was, while hurtling around a race track in, say, a Pagani Zonda S is, if anything, even more joyous.

If there’s one thing that has evolved noticeably over the course of the Gran Turismo series’ 13 year history, it’s the handling of its vehicles, and this element has reached its peak in GT5. Each car is invested with its own believable characteristics and minor quirks, from the understeer of front-wheel drive hatchbacks to the tail-happy frenzy of a Japanese muscle car. The series has always been prized for its attention to detail, particularly when it comes to handling, but none has felt as polished or just plain right as it does in GT5.

Buying upgrades for your treasured ride brings about immediate and tangible results on the track – as you’d expect, simply strapping huge turbos and sports exhausts to your car without upgrading tyres and suspension will result in some truly terrifying race experiences. It was a mistake I made early on with an RX-7 – purely for testing purposes, of course – and the result was a beast of a machine that hurtled, skittering from the starting grid like a tiger with its tail on fire, yet flatly refused to be coaxed around corners.

When you do get the balance right, racing is thrilling. Whether you’ve climbed the ranks in the A-Spec career mode, or simply jumped straight into an arcade race, the feeling that you’re at the helm of a genuinely powerful machine has never been more palpable – with practice, you can feel the car begin to lose grip through fast bends, or wriggle and squirm if you jump back on the gas as you emerge back onto a straight.

The new addition of go-karts is equally welcome – Polyphony has got the feel of these just right, with their petulant, fizzing little engines and rollerskate handling. The difference between a go-kart and a comparatively lumbering supercar couldn’t be more pronounced.

As you’d expect, Gran Turismo looks almost as good as it handles, though I should emphasise the word, ‘almost’. Polyphony’s quest for realism is such that, as you’re hurtling round tracks or looking over the collection of cars in your garage, you can’t help noticing odd little deficiencies here and there.

The cars themselves are frequently stunning, particularly the ‘premium’ range, which have been lavished with a level of detail that borders on the exquisite. With a squeeze of the right bumper, the headlights even pop up on your MX-5, an unnecessary, but charming touch. Some standard cars, however – which are old models imported from the low-def days of GT4 – are notably less detailed, even after a bit of HD spit and polish.

If you really wanted to be picky, you could also criticise GT5’s trackside furniture, with its toy-town trees and wooden spectators. While lavishing so much attention on their cars, it sometimes looks as though Polyphony ran out of imagination when it came to the game’s environments.

Such niggles pale into insignificance when you’re screaming round a track, however, and in fairness there are some courses – the Eiger Nordwand Track, or the Trial Mountain Circuit, perhaps – where you just about have time to appreciate the detail of the snow-capped ranges in the distance as you belt round a hairpin.

As well as the standard A-Spec career mode, GT5 has a variety of side attractions to bolster the main event. The first, and perhaps most mystifying, is the B-Spec mode, in which you give up your driving seat and allow an AI-controlled driver to race on your behalf. From a remote viewpoint, you issue orders – speed up, overtake – and hope your car crosses the finish line first. It’s mildly diverting, but odd that it’s taken such prominence on the main menu – it really is a side attraction, and far less interesting than the other modes on offer.

The Special Events are far more compelling, though inevitably, some more so than others. An early Top Gear challenge, in which you race around the show’s infamous test track in VW Camper vans, is far less amusing than it sounds, largely because you’re forced to retire if you so much as brush a cone – and when your AI-controlled opponents are as mindlessly intent on sticking to the racing line as they often are in GT5, you’re constantly being shoved out of contention.

Rally driving, on the other hand (in which you chase after a computerised and faintly sinister approximation of Sébastien Loeb) is an absolute riot, your car sliding and careening around the sands of Toscana or the snowy wastes of Chamonix.

Elsewhere, there’s Gran Turismo TV, where you can watch short programmes of petrol head interest, and even download them to your PSP.

The course maker is inarguably the best additional feature in GT5, and it’s quite possible to sink hours into building what is essentially a posh, digital Scalextric set. Using a basic track as starting point, you use slider bars to adjust track width, straight length and the sharpness of bends. You can’t build anything as creative or as outlandish as, say, Trackmania’s rollercoaster-ride of jumps and skid-pans, but then, this is a Gran Turismo game, after all.

Online racing, meanwhile, is fiddly. Before you can join a competition, you have to find a lounge. Polyphony has attempted to bring a social media aspect to GT5, where you can chat with friends, share images and cars, or search for lounges with an appropriate themes (“450bhp or under” competitions, for example). While this is a good idea in theory, it’s a pity there’s no quick race option in arcade mode – instead, finding and then entering a race is a lengthy, arduous process of sifting through lists to find a lounge suitable for your skills.

Racing itself is, in my experience, occasionally glitchy, with latency issues and stuttering framerates threatening to derail GT5’s slick aura at every turn. It’s likely that Polyphony will iron out these issues – and hopefully introduce some form of matchmaking system – in forthcoming updates, but for now, GT5’s online racing is perhaps the game’s weaker aspect.

Viewed as a complete package, GT5’s range of features and sheer scope is quite remarkable. No other game has a garage as expansive as this, with its 1000+ fleet of vehicles, ranging from low-end Hyundais, to seven-figure exotica.

You could argue that GT5 is a mere shuffle forward in the series’ growth, rather than the quantum leap a six-year development time may have implied, and it’s a pity, too, that Polyphony appear to be as reluctant to scratch its pristine cars as they ever were. Despite the promise of damage modelling, even the biggest high-speed collision will seldom produce more than a slight ripple in paintwork.

How much this bothers you will depend entirely on how devoted you are to the Gran Turismo series – for those who find these games a bit too sterile, a bit too clinical, there’s little in GT5 to change your mind, and those who expect crashes in their racing sims will probably find more to enjoy in Forza 3.

It’s a pity, therefore, that after such a long, long, wait, GT5 has emerged from the garage with a few defects under the bonnet. The issues currently present in its online mode – not least its lack of a matchmaking system – are disappointing, and there’s an overall feeling that little of has changed as a whole since GT4 all those years ago.

Such qualms dissolve into the ether while you’re racing, though, and it’s here, as ever, that GT5 lives up to expectations. Tearing round the Nurburgring in a Ferrari F40 – tyres barely clinging to the road, engine screaming and chattering – is now more thrilling, and more seductive than ever. And as you beat your own lap time by a few tenths of a second, and feel a flush of achievement and smugness, you can just about forgive GT5 for its weaker areas. Just.

Gran Turismo 5 is out now and available from the Den Of Geek Store.

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"They had it coming. They had it coming. They had it coming all along."

So sang the hosiery-clad vixens of smash hit musical Chicago. Of course, they were referring to the many men they had brutally murdered, whereas I'm responsible for the deaths of no one on this list. But it's an appropriate introduction to a run-down of movie characters who, for one reason or another, really did bring their own cinematic demise on themselves.

Undoubtedly some of the 10 deserved their deaths more than the others. But as I've watched each of them shuffle off this mortal coil, either shaking my head in sorrow or slapping my thigh in triumph, I've been compelled to declare on each occasion, "Well, they asked for that."

Here then (in no particular order) is a very personal take on 10 movie characters who, for one reason or another, had it coming. And then some...

Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) - Return Of The Jedi

According to the Old Testament Book of Proverbs, "Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth." Words that would have fallen on very stony ground if ever they were uttered in the presence of Emperor Palaptine, in whom we have one of the supreme gloaters of cinematic villainy.

And it is for world class gloating rather than being the very embodiment of the dark side of The Force that he earns his place in my top 10. He never misses an opportunity to crow over young Luke during that climactic face-off aboard the Death Star with jibes such as "You will die", "The alliance will fail", "Your feeble skills are no match for the dark side", Blah blah sodding blah. And for a man with a face like a soggy bollock he's pretty full of himself.

But by giving Luke a dose of Force lightening while stood next to an obviously conflicted Darth Vader, he really is asking for it. How fitting then that, in cinema's greatest 'face turn', it is Vader himself who throws the old scrote plummeting to his doom in a moment that finally allows everyone to cheer the meanest bad ass in the galaxy.

Sgt Hartman (R. Lee Ermey) - Full Metal Jacket

As a leader, effective utilisation of the carrot and the stick is essential. However, in Gunnery Sgt Hartman, we have a man whose only use for the carrot would be to threaten to insert half of it into his subordinate while promising to beat him with the rest. You see, Hartman enjoys the process of taking a man apart so that he can rebuild him as a soldier.

Unfortunately, in Private Leonard ‘Gomer Pile' Lawrence, Hartman takes the man apart, but is unable to put him back together again. So, when Private Lawrence goes insane late one night and is found in the shower room doing that Jack Nicholson thing with his eyebrows, it is clear that, if ever there was a good time to try and offer the boy a gentle word or two, it would be now.

Alas, Hartman steams in with all the subtlety of a swift kick to the oojahs, and in delivering yet another stream of invective, seals his fate (although the character reappeared in all but name in Peter Jackson's The Frighteners). Lawrence responds by employing some motivational techniques of his own, namely how to motivate Hartman to shut up the hell up, by persuasively shooting him in the chest from point blank range. At ease, Sgt Hartman.

Dr Frederick Chilton (Anthony Heald) - Silence Of The Lambs

Anybody who willingly and gleefully goads one of the deadliest serial killers in cinematic history must surely deserve a place on a list of characters that had it coming. So, step forward Dr Frederick Chilton of the Baltimore Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

He really is an odious little twerp, a fact demonstrated early on by the rather ham-fisted chat-up techniques he attempts to employ on Clarice Starling. Then, having failed to turn the girl's head with the offer of a night on the Baltimore tiles and a photograph of a nurse with half her face missing, he proceeds to set in motion a series of events that culminate in the escape from prison of Hannibal Lector (not to mention jeopardising the rescue of Senator Ruth Martin's daughter).

Unfortunately, we don't actually see Chilton die on screen. But the way that Hopkins' Dr Lector casually saunters after him on a busy Jamaican street as the credits role provides a highly satisfying ending both for the movie and for the man.

The Shark (Bruce) - Jaws

The shark in Jaws is a complete and utter bastard, the very embodiment of the movie monster and, for me, the bête noire of my childhood terrors. It is a relentless, primal force of nature with big teeth and beady eyes that thinks it is perfectly acceptable to chow down on children and dogs. (Dogs, I ask you!)

But as far as I'm concerned, its unforgivable crime was instilling in me such a deep dread of the water that I couldn't take a dip in the local swimming pool for fear that a trap door would open, James Bond-style, and the bloody thing would heave into view to the ominous strains of that tune.

So, after experiencing a childhood of seaside trips where I wouldn't even go into the water at places like Bournemouth, I always enjoy that moment of catharsis in the film when the shark starts chewing on a gas tank just as Chief Brody blows said tank to smithereens.

The Latin name for the great White is Carcharodon Carcharias and I, for one, was glad to see this Great White forced to kiss its own Carcharodon Carchari ass goodbye.

Stuntman Mike (Kurt Russell) - Death Proof

If ever a character deserved to die for behaving like a big girl's blouse, then Stuntman Mike is that man. Initially, what we have here is a very cool character indeed, personified by the loin stiffening 1970 Chevy Nova we see before he actually makes an appearance on screen.

Then we get to know Mike in The Texas Chili Parlour right before witnessing his gleeful offing of poor Rose McGowan. But, hey, that's okay. As movie fans we've put up posters of bigger sadists on our bedroom walls.

Then he drives head on into Jungle Julia and friends, resulting in such gruesome onscreen carnage that we're forced to acknowledge that yes, this is one very sick son of a bitch, indeed.

But crucially, still quite a cool villain. And then he blows it. After trying it on with the wrong bunch of girls, the tables are turned in spectacular style and he turns into the biggest puss since Garfield. By the time the women drag him from his car as he begs for mercy, you're desperate for Rosario Dawson to finish him off with a round house to the head and a booted heel to the face. Which, rather obligingly, she does.

Bernie Bernbaum (John Turturro) - Miller's Crossing

"Look in your heart Tommy. I'm praying to you, look in your heart." It is with these words that Bernie Bernbaum successfully begs for his life when faced with Gabriel Byrne's ice cool Tom Reagan in the Coen Brothers gangster classic. It's a highly affecting scene, a rare moment in cinema where we are exposed to the reality of what it means to take another man's life and hear him plead for it while doing so. You feel for Bernie and want him to embrace the second chance he's been given.

So, when he subsequently blackmails Tom by threatening to reveal his continued existence to the mob boss who ordered his death, you feel cheated. And as he sneeringly issues his threats, it becomes clear that he's nothing but a low down dirty rat who'd sell his own mother for two bits.

When a similar scenario plays out again later on in the film (Tom having successfully taken care of anyone who could cause him trouble), neither the viewer nor Tom are prepared to be taken in again. Bernie once more pleads that Tom look in his heart. Tom retorts with a bullet between the eyes and the line "What heart?"

Liz Hunter (Cassandra McGrath) - Wolf Creek

Okay Liz, you've shot and injured the insane Aussie serial killer but he's clearly not dead, so go over there and finish him off. Don't worry that you're out of bullets. Just bludgeon his head to spaghetti sauce with the rifle butt. No! What are you doing?! Don't give him two ineffectual taps on the back. Smash his skull in!!

Oh. You've chosen to make a run for it, thus giving him ample opportunity to come after you in the dark in an area you're unfamiliar with, but he knows like the back of his hand. Brilliant. I'm sure that'll work out just fine.

Ah, there now you see? You've reached a dead end and so you've had to backtrack to his camp leaving your terrified friend in the outback on her own. Okay, okay, get another car if you must, but do it quickly!

Hang on. What are you doing? Don't dilly-dally looking at videos of all the other people he's murdered. Just get out of there now! And before you get into that car to make your escape, check the back seat! The killer is always in the back seat! Erm, Liz, you haven't checked the back seat. Oh, I give up.

Carlo Rizzi (Gianni Russo) - The Godfather

The first time I watched The Godfather I remember thinking how much I was looking forward to seeing Sonny Corleone dish out some Sicilian justice to Carlo Rizzi. Carlo, you recall, had just given Sonny's sister another beating, making Sonny very angry indeed.

Unfortunately, Carlo knows that Sonny is a man for whom revenge is a dish best served piping hot and, in taking the bait, Sonny is lured to the tollbooths, where he dies in a hail of machine gun fire. I was devastated.

Not only had I been deprived of seeing Carlo the slime ball get his just desserts, but my favourite character in the whole movie had just been brutally slain. And as the film rolled on, I began to suspect that Carlo was going to get away with it, since nobody mentioned the role he'd obviously played in setting Sonny up.

And so I rejoiced like the big mamaluke I am when Michael finally reveals to a weeping Carlo that he'd known about it all along. Assuring him that he won't be killed, Michael then ensures that Carlo receives a nice, big hug from Clemenza, as the fat man wraps piano wire round Carlo's throat. Badda, as they say, bing!

Carter Burke (Paul Reiser) - Aliens

Oh, Carter Burke, you spineless corporate gimp. There are a number of things that irk about Burke. There's the way he sits astride a chair and wears those suits with the stupid turned up collar. (Yes, I know it's supposed to be futuristic, but he still looks like a tit). Then there's the way he talks about ‘substantial dollar values' and ‘exclusivity rights' in a way that marks him out as the sort of numb nuts who would appear on a futuristic version of The Apprentice.

But, of course, it is for his acts of cowardice and treachery that he earns his place on this list. First he sends the colonists on LV-426 to their doom with orders to investigate the abandoned alien spacecraft. Then there is his dastardly plan to impregnate Ripley and Newt with alien embryos by locking them in a room with a couple of facehuggers. All to make a dollar, whatever the cost in human life.

He probably likes Dire Straits and drinks white wine spritzers as well. So, it is always a moment of intense satisfaction for me when he finds himself on the receiving end of the ultimate French kiss from a Xenomorph. The git.

Rika van den Haas (Patsy Kensit) - Lethal Weapon 2

There are many reasons why a movie character may deserve a sticky end. Displays of arrogance, insensitivity, stupidity, treachery, cowardice and just plain old villainy are justification enough for the Big D of Movieland to swing his scythe in a character's direction. But having witnessed the performance of Patsy Kensit as Rika van den Haas in Lethal Weapon 2, I'd venture to add another reason. Namely, the crime of bad acting.

Now, at the risk of jeopordising my hard man of film geekery image, I'll state here and now that on the BBC's Strictly Come Dancing Patsy Kensit seems like a lovely woman. However, Lethal Weapon 2 she's just bloody annoying. Everything about her grates. She has a dodgy South African accent, the charisma of a stale sausage roll and often adopts the look of a woman who's vaguely trying to remember if she's left a bath tap running somewhere.

Still, the performance does improve when Rika is found washed up and drowned, having come a cropper at the hands of some fiendish South Africans who discovered the nature of her relationship with Riggs. Well, either that or they'd just watched her in Absolute Beginners.

What are your favourite, most satisfying justified exits? Add them to the comments below.

See Also:

• Top 10 surprise deaths in blockbuster movies
• The most fearsome movie teachers
• Videogaming's best player deaths
• Looking back at Lethal Weapon 2

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When we got to speak to Stephen K Amos, for the launch of his newly released stand-up DVD, he'd just appeared on breakfast television, and looked a man in need of caffeine. We needn't have worried, though, for he was wide awake and happy to chat about his new television show, his comedy career, and a certain appearance on Have I Got News For You...

Edinburgh seems to have been a magnet for building and refining your performances over the years. Would you say that it's pretty much the core of your career?

I think every comic, you spend the majority of the year doing lots of clubs, a 20 minute set, going around the country. Edinburgh is the only time where you get a month in one place, you get an hour, so you get time to hone a show really well, and learn how things work better. And the audience let you do that.

Whereas if you do the club circuit, you don't really have time to do that, to experiment, because you have to nail the gig, every time. Edinburgh's a great space for growing.

There's a gong show mentality in some of the clubs, even if you are a named comic?

Exactly, yeah.

I understand you financed last year's stand-up DVD yourself. Is that right?

Kind of. I filmed it in Australia, and I paid for it myself. Basically, I wanted to have full control of what I was putting into it. I had the finished product, and then ITV and other companies said, "We'll release it for you." And I went with ITV.

There's quite an element of gamble there, though? Was there pre-order interest in there before you went and did it?

No, to be honest. I just had belief in myself, and also, because I do Australia quite a bit, I knew they'd be a really good audience, and they'd be really up for it. And so, I thought go out on a limb, and do it. Thankfully, it worked.

The advantage you had then, with it being your maiden stand-up DVD, is that you could take a ‘best of' approach to the material you chose for it.

Yeah. Had I thought to myself when I started doing comedy that one could release a DVD of yourself and sell it, and put it out there ... I've done about seven or eight previous Edinburgh shows, and last year's DVD was a culmination of all of those into one. It made a laugh-a-minute gig, I suppose.

How was it when you came to this one, then?

There's a lot to live up to! I kind of knew when this one was going to be made, that it was always going to be good, because I started the show literally as I finished the last DVD. So, I've been working on it for at least nine months, perfecting it. So, by the time we got to film it at Hammersmith Apollo, I'd already taken it out on tour for about 70 dates. So, I knew where we were going to go with it.

I love the ending of your DVD, too. I like the build up to it, which I don't want to spoil. Presumably, then, ITV committed to this DVD before you filmed it, and it meant you could plan on it being the culmination of every idea you couldn't take to the smaller venues. How did it all pan out live?

Basically, the live version is slightly different from what you see on the DVD, because there was a lot of stuff we couldn't use, because of music, rights, that sort of jazz. But ITV came to see - I've got a very good exec who came to see the show about four or five times, so they kind of knew what they wanted. They said this is fine, and so it was just thinking about what we could leave in and leave out.

So, the day we recorded it, we basically put in the entire show and snipped off a bit at the end and a bit at the beginning.

I detected a little crackle of nervousness in the crowd as you were recording your finale. You must know, after years of doing stand-up, roughly where an audience is going to go, but it's still quite a bold gamble. It could have gone badly wrong!

[Laughs] It could have gone badly wrong, but I did try it for the whole of Edinburgh with that ending. I tried it, not on the tour, but on the last four nights before we got to film.

Normally, I don't like those kind of surprises, but it was done in such a way that the audience didn't see it coming. And that's what I liked about it!

You strike me as a mix of stand-up comedian and a real performer, and they're two very different disciplines. Your TV show, for instance, sees you being a lot more collaborative, inevitably. But secondly, there feels like a creative release, in some of the off-the-wall stuff you're able to throw into a TV show. Has that been storing up for a while?

I think it has been. Even though I love stand-up comedy in its purest form, a bloke standing there telling jokes, I prefer somebody who brings a story alive. Or brings something of themselves to it. All my years of being a little kid, playing dress-up... me and my brother used to play detectives...

Who did you used to dress up as?

[Laughs] That's another story!

We used to play this double act, as detectives, and we modelled ourselves on Roger Moore and Tony Curtis. And all that kind of stuff just came to life with this show. I got a chance to do lots of different characters, and if you want the entire series, every sketch stands on its own. We could actually do a compilation show of all the sketches. They're not recurring characters. Short and sharp, and bang - you get a punchline.

It meant I could be a different person all the time.

The thing that strikes me about sketch shows now is that there's a perception they have to be extreme, be at the Little Britain level, to work. And yours isn't. Yours is pulling slightly back to the tone of the old Harry Enfield shows. There's that kind of spirit to it, even though the material is very different.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. That is exactly what I was trying to do. I've seen a few sketch shows, and what I can't stand in some of the shows that I've seen is that the sketches are too long, they're trying to be too clever, and they've lost me. I want to do something with me doing a bit of stand-up, and a sketch that punctuates, or illustrates what I've just spoken about. But it's short, sharp, to the point, bang.

I was very conscious that I didn't want to be catchphrase-driven. There's only two characters I think that you see again. The mum character and the guy who's the stunt man. He comes back two or three times. Apart from that, every other sketch is standalone. I didn't want to walk down the street with people shouting a catchphrase at me!

Was that never even a mild temptation?

No. When I was doing this show I looked at people like Dave Allen and Dave Chappelle, who, if you look at their shows, it was a monologue thing, then a sketch. Bear in mind that Dave Chappelle was only a few years ago, and Dave Allen was many years ago. It's very similar, and I think it's fine. You don't have to be out there, or deep and whatever. You can just be funny. That's what I went for.

Finally, I have to ask about your appearance on Have I Got News For You, when Boris Johnson first hosted it. You were a panellist that day, and I think it's fair to say that you had one of the most pronounced WTF looks on your face I've ever seen...

[Laughs]

We got 40 minutes of that, then an hour on DVD. Can you give us a flavour of what it was like in that studio as the man was going mental?

Do you know, it was the most surreal thing I've ever done! I think it was my second appearance on Have I Got News For You, and what I didn't anticipate was that they would alter some of the rounds around him, the host. And I also wasn't banking on the fact that the audience absolutely loved him. That really threw me.

I was about to go, "Okay, you're the host, I'm going to give you a lot of stick." But I had to change tack, because the audience were just lapping him up. And he, all credit to him, just played along and was hilarious.

You had two or three carefully guided missiles that night...

Exactly. It was really strange. And now he's mayor! The world's gone mad!

Stephen K Amos, thank you very much.

Stephen K Amos: The Feel Good Factor is out now on DVD.

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"My orders are that every single child in this country shall be r-r-rubbed out, sqvashed, sqvirted, sqvittered and frrrittered," barks the Grand High Witch in Roald Dahl's The Witches, a controversial tale about 'real witches', that has pushed the fright envelope more than any other contemporary children's book or film.

It's been twenty years since one of the most unorthodox fusions of talent pooled together to scare kids silly, with Roald Dahl's source material played surprisingly close to the text, Jim Henson's muppets in full grotesque mode, and strangely enough, maverick director Nicolas Roeg at the helm of a 'children's movie'.

Dahl's spin on childhood is uniquely humorous and violent. His protagonists are often lone operators in which death is not only a fact, but is dished out as creatively as possible. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory is particularly notable for disposing of spoiled children in increasingly macabre ways, but in this, his most horrific tale, Dahl's evil antagonists plot child genocide on a global scale.

First published in 1983, The Witches is inspired by folk tales from Dahl's own ancestral Norway. Nearly the first fifth of the book is given over almost entirely to backstory, tales of real witches to bait the reader for the adventure to come. The back and forth storytelling session between grandmother and child protagonist provides the witches with a rich history and several harrowing vignettes (of particular note is a child trapped in a painting where she ages and dies).

Dahl doesn't seek to explain the psychology of his witches. They're motivated purely by an abhorrence of children (who reek of "dogs' droppings") and will stop at nothing to obliterate them all. In its portrayal of relentless child-murdering evil, The Witches bypasses the editorial filters of the children's book genre and harkens back to the more primal storytelling of the Brothers Grimm.

Although frequently hilarious (and complimented by Quentin Blake's caffeinated illustrations), at its core, The Witches plays on primordial childhood fears: separation from parents, and fears of being disbelieved by authority figures.

Here, the world is an unsafe terrain in which death may strike at a moment's notice, from evil witches interloping unseen (and under the guise of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children), to, even more unsettling, the very adult figures who seek to protect children. The scheme, in which the witches plot to taint ordinary chocolates with a potion that turns children into mice, will cause the world's children to get crushed and stamped to death by their parents and loved ones.

So, what happens when you put Jim Henson and Nicholas Roeg in charge of Dahl's work? Few films aimed at a family audience have gone this far to scare the bejeezus out of kids. Dahl's own Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory came close, but those shocks were more psychedelic in nature, not to mention being singlehandedly fuelled by Gene Wilder's manic take on Wonka.

In Roeg's moody version, the dangers are monstrous and lethal. The film retains the verve, and more or less the entire plot of Dahl's book (if providing a more uplifting ending than the original tale). Henson's Grand High Witch (played by Anjelica Huston) bears an uncanny resemblance to the skeletal skeksis in The Dark Crystal. Here, Henson lets loose with perhaps the most outlandish witch transformation on film.

Roeg's best films elicit fear by immersing protagonists in foreign, threatening locations: the crumbling autumnal Venice in Don't Look Now, the orphaned children pitted against the indifferent Australian outback in Walkabout, and even David Bowie's earthbound alien in The Man Who Fell To Earth. The Witches puts a fractured American family in Europe (Norway and the English coast) and sets both figurative and literal monsters upon them.

Roeg, a former cinematographer, is constantly finding creative ways to lens the story, using unorthodox angles and lenses to create a sense of distortion and visual unrest in what might have merely been a romp in lesser hands. Very few shots in the film feel as if they've been secured on a tripod or dolly. Much of the film's effect comes from its reliance on handheld camerawork and shots that are constantly tilting and moving.

Visually, Roeg thrusts his audience into an unsteady world that's never quite in balance. His reliance on wide angle lenses and extreme low/high angle combinations reinforces Dahl's themes by dwarfing the child protagonists in unsafe worlds, all the more so when pint-sized Luke gets turned into a mouse. And then there's Stanley Myers' score, which apart from a spirited main theme, is brimming with dissonance and discord.

Casting is also note perfect. Anjelica Huston's performance is admittedly more camp than menacing, but her transformation, along with the other witches, delivers the goods (and someone, perhaps the casting director, made the inspired choice of having men play some of the witches seen in the background).

The book gives the Grand High Witch oodles of hysterically seething verse, and to her credit, Huston vamps it up in her portrayal. She's a hoot for grownups and a walking terror for the tots.

Mai Zetterling, meanwhile, balances the right notes of playfulness, defiance, and terror as the cigar-chomping grandmother, and Rowan Atkinson's take on the hotel manager is an agreeable riff on some of the elements that worked themselves into both Blackadder and Mr. Bean (not to mention a tip of the hat to John Cleese's Basil Fawlty).

Twenty years on, The Witches is notable in how well it bridges the gap between kiddie and adult fare. Sure, Disney had already started to bring a certain amount of class to animated musicals like The Little Mermaid and Beauty And The Beast, and Henson's own Dark Crystal served as a solid prototype for this kind of dark fantasy. But it's a niche genre that's otherwise devoid of offerings.

Only the recent adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Coraline or the Harry Potter films (particularly the latest, darkest offering) really provide the same level of horror for the younger crowd.

In its seamless fusion of comedy and horror, The Witches is a yardstick which can stand alongside genre classics like Evil Dead 2 and Re-Animator.

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The works of the late, great sci-fi author Philip K Dick have been a frequent source of inspiration since his untimely death in 1982. And while the adaptations of his work have been patchy at times (please, please don't make us watch Paycheck again), some treatments of Dick's work have been truly spectacular, from the obvious Blade Runner to the underrated 1995 film, Screamers.

Very few of these adaptations have been particularly faithful to Dick's source material (though Richard Linklater's A Scanner Darkly, which we wrote about here, was a sublimely made exception to the rule), and The Adjustment Bureau is once again "loosely" based on the 1954 short story, Adjustment Team.

Matt Damon stars as a politician whose attempts at forming a relationship with a ballet dancer (Emily Blunt) are continually disrupted by the controllers of fate, the sinister Adjustment Bureau of the film's title.

The teaser poster, which you can see here, hints at a stylish noir thriller, with the Adjustment Bureau agents spookily outlined in silhouette. We could point out that the perspective on the text is slightly off, but that would just be picky.

The Adjustment Bureau is due for release next March.

IMP Awards

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