Whether it’s working with copy, sourcing pictures, coming up with new ideas, writing material, being a pair of ears and having a brain in a crisis, or simply being a strong friend, Gaye Birch has been absolutely instrumental to where Den Of Geek is today.

Much of her work on the site isn’t obvious, but around 95% of the material that we’ve posted on Den Of Geek in the last year alone has her involvement somewhere along the line. It might be correcting grammar, it might be ringing up and chatting enthusiastically about a writer... heck, if I tried to get across to you everything Gaye has done for Den Of Geek over the years, and just how pivotal she has been to the site, I swear it’d be an impossible job.

That's just one of so many reasons why the next words we've got to write are so shitty: we lost Gaye last night.

She died after a short and sudden illness. She’s been taken from us far, far too soon, and we’re struggling to wrap our head around the fact that she’s gone.

She never sought or demanded the limelight, but hopefully she’ll forgive us this once if we give it to her anyway. Because if there’s one person who deserves top billing at Den Of Geek, it’s Gaye.

To a friend, colleague, and bloody decent person, our appreciation, and thanks. Human beings like Gaye Birch don’t come along very often, and we’re immensely fortunate to have known and worked with her. Our thoughts are very much with her husband, Aaron, and her family.

On a personal note, to a friend who has been a rock of support for me, I’m going to miss you, Gaye.  I’ve worked with Gaye pretty much every day for the past two to three years (and for several years before that, too), and in that time, we’ve had highs, lows, laughs, arguments, umpteen days chewing the fat about films and TV shows, and a lot more in between.

Words feel so bloody useless right now. Fortunately, Gaye's are better than mine, and you can find just a small fraction of some of the writing and work she did at the site here.

Rest in peace, Gaye. It's a privilege to have known you.

For those of us who've been avoiding Doctor Who spoilers this series, the ending of Saturday's episode, The God Complex, may have come as a surprise. To others, perhaps not, as last week's The Girl Who Waited dropped some pretty big hints that the Ponds may have been outgrowing the TARDIS.

Writer Toby Whithouse pulled off an unusual feat for Doctor Who. He showed Amy's faith in the Doctor being truly and comprehensively destroyed – because if any vestige of it remained, the minotaur wouldn't have been defeated – and yet still she departed as the Doctor's friend. "What's the alternative?” the Doctor asked as he dropped Amy and Rory off at a shiny new home. “Me standing over your grave?"

With a few exceptions, the tendency seems to be one or the other – the companion goes through a harrowing experience and decides to halt their travels with the Doctor, or their travels come to a natural end and they part ways. It's a little premature to call those final scenes one of the greatest departures the series has offered, especially as we can almost be certain that Amy and Rory will be present in some way for the finale, but it was nicely written nonetheless.

From a completely subjective point of view, though, we present our top ten greatest farewell scenes. Sometimes they leave because they should, or because they find someone else. Sometimes, they forget him. And sometimes, they wind up married to Brian Blessed. Here are some of their best parting shots.

10. Adam Mitchell: The Long Game

You can make the case that any list of favourite Doctor Who moments that is long enough to include Adam is too long, but there's an argument for its inclusion. As satisfying as Amy and Rory's departure scene was, it's great to get a glimpse of the Doctor outright booting someone out of the TARDIS for once.

In retrospect, The Long Game is an underrated and perfectly enjoyable mid-series episode that Russell T Davies penned during the first year the series was back on air. Adam joined the TARDIS crew at the end of the previous episode, and he struck out in spectacular fashion by trying to hijack some futuristic tech and endangering the lives of the Ninth Doctor and Rose in the process.

With no help from their dummy of a mate, the dynamic duo win the day, and don't have much time for Adam thereafter. Rather than ejecting him from an airlock as he feared, the Doctor delivers some poetic justice by dropping him back on contemporary Earth with a fully functional portal to his brain, activated by a simple click of the fingers. Adam wanted to know it all, and now he has to lie low in order to avoid being dissected.

Adam was always designed as a “Companion who couldn't”, and although he's not the most memorable character, the pay-off to his sheer ineptitude is more than worthy of mention.

9. Adric: Earthshock

Adric’s only so low on the list because he doesn't technically have a farewell scene at all. He doesn't so much depart the series as drop out of it, crashing and burning, before extinguishing the dinosaurs in a mighty, prehistoric collision with the Earth. If we were to discuss his farewell scene, it would be a discussion of that scene where he shakes hands with the Doctor on the freighter.

At this point, neither of them know what's going to happen, but in a list that includes Adam, his new series equivalent, it's only fair to look back at one of the series' most shocking exits. As I've discussed on the site before, actual companion deaths are rare in Doctor Who, but ask any fan worth their salt about the topic, and Adric's name will be the first that comes to mind.

It almost seems like a result of the infrequency of deaths in the TARDIS that the Fifth Doctor reacts with stunned silence as Adric and a freighter full of Cybermen plummet towards Earth. The credits roll in silence over the image of his broken star for mathematical excellence, but that's about as far as the grief for his demise extends.

It's an exit that puts the shock in Earthshock, but the Doctor seems to move on even quicker than usual. I never liked Adric anyway.

8. Wilfred Mott: The End Of Time, Part Two

Although he only travels in the TARDIS for a very brief time, we've known him for far longer when the time comes for him to say goodbye to the Time Lord for good. Making his first appearance in Voyage Of The Damned, it was revealed through a cracking bit of pathos and flim-flam that the Tenth Doctor's path was always destined to collide with Donna Noble's granddad.

Helping the Doctor out in his final battle against the Master and, ultimately, the resurrected Time Lords, Wilf implores him to save himself. It has been prophesied that the Doctor will die, and Wilf so badly wants him to avoid this fate throughout the story. But when the battle is over, Wilf's gotten himself into trouble, and it's saving him that eventually fulfils the prophecy.

Dying, the Tenth Doctor leaves Wilf at home while he revisits many of his previous companions, some of whom appear on this list. Towards the end of his victory lap, he visits Donna on her wedding day, and gives her a wedding gift that should set her up for life. Although he and Wilf salute each other and say goodbye, there's not much solace for Wilf.

Through the brilliance of Bernard Cribbins' performance, you don't have to imagine the guilt that Wilf feels. It's heartbreaking, and in the midst of an episode whose main task is to kill off one of the most popular leading men the show has ever had, it's a worthy farewell to an old soldier.

7. Nyssa: Terminus

As mentioned earlier, not all of the Doctor's companions get such an emotional send-off. Dodo Chaplet falls asleep in the second episode of The War Machines, the same point as actress Jackie Lane's contract on the show expired, leading to a supremely naff off-screen decision to leave the Doctor. But if Nyssa's departure seems sudden or forced to some fans, then it's certainly not borne from a bad excuse.

Season 20's Black Guardian Trilogy would finish strongly with Enlightenment, but not before the slightly difficult middle story Terminus, which is one of those stories with an appalling reputation. But the central idea, of the TARDIS landing on the outer space equivalent of a leper colony, was sound, and it lends a suitable end to Nyssa of Traken's time with the Fifth Doctor.

She was never going to be able to return to Traken after the events that brought her into the Doctor's life, and so it behooves the character that she opts to stay behind and help treat sufferers of Lazar's disease. The Doctor is simply leaving instructions and moving on his merry way, as is his fashion, but it's Nyssa who selflessly decides to stay and work towards a long-term solution.

In a show of affection for her companions, she hugs Tegan and kisses the Doctor goodbye. They seem surprised, but they don't protest. Simultaneously, Turlough may be sat in the TARDIS with the Black Guardian on his case, but it doesn't quite ruin the moment.

6. Rose Tyler: Doomsday

The scene that made fans weep. Some of them wept even more when they brought her back. Twice. Still, the ongoing fixation on Rose Tyler, even after her extraordinary exit, doesn't ruin the emotional punch of her original departure on Bad Wolf Bay.

It's a completely tragic situation that leads up to those final scenes in Doomsday. With Daleks and Cybermen laying siege to the world as they go to war with each other outside, the Tenth Doctor figures out how to stop them inside Torchwood Tower. It seems to mean splitting up with Rose by leaving her safe with her reunited but unorthodox family in a parallel universe, but she's having none of it.

Though he disapproves, he's clearly happy that they can stay together, at least until she's stranded on the parallel Pete's World after all. The Doctor duly burns up a supernova to breach the barrier between worlds, and appears on the beach at Bad Wolf Bay for one (seemingly) final farewell.

Although I actually prefer the happy ending she gets in Journey's End on a narrative level, it's a belated footnote to this perfectly executed scene. But while David Tennant and Billie Piper are both great actors, their series together shows that their characters weren't as good together as, say, the previous Doctor had been with Rose. It's no less tragic, but tragic isn't always better.

5. Martha Jones: Last Of The Time Lords

Yes, better than Rose's exit. Does it really count, when it's more of a shift to Freema Agyeman appearing semi-regularly rather than outright leaving the series? Yes. It's our rules.

Like the scene at the end of The God Complex, this is an unusual instance of the Doctor and his companion parting as friends, even after the companion has gone through hell because of travelling with the Doctor.

Unacknowledged by a world that has happily forgotten Martha's struggles in a year that never was, her trials at the hands of the Master seem to bring her to a tipping point, whereby she finally musters the gumption to say goodbye to the Doctor. At first, she suggests that she has to stay at home for her family, who are among the few people in the world who still remember the torment they suffered in the previous year.

What really elevates the scene, and Martha as a character, is how she comes back into the TARDIS, after giving that perfectly valid reason, to tell the truth instead. Having harboured an unrequited love for the Doctor all this time, it's time for her to stop pining after him and get on with her life. You have to wonder, knowing the Doctor, would he have even have given her a second thought after that, if she didn't come back?

There's more mutual respect in their parting after she does that, than if she'd just went home. Martha Jones, and Agyeman's portrayal, seem underappreciated, merely by the dint of her time being book-ended by Rose and Donna. And yet she proves the strongest of the Tenth Doctor's companions when it's time to go, and the only one who truly leaves with her head held high.

4. Susan: The Dalek Invasion Of Earth

One of two entries on the list where William Hartnell's performance completely sells the scene, and the first companion departure we ever had in the show. Carole Ann Ford left the series after nine serials of twisting her ankle in the course of running and screaming, and so it was time for her character, Susan, to fall in love with freedom fighter David Campbell.

It might not be Susan's own decision to leave the TARDIS, and indeed, she agonises over the fact that she has to leave David behind in order to look after the First Doctor. But Grandfather knows best, and he double-locks the doors of the spaceship and refuses to let her in.

In a way, he sets Susan free. Initially, she's distraught, but the Doctor explains that she's looked after him for long enough, and that she must put down the roots she's always longed for, before it's too late. He promises to come back and see her one day, and concludes that “Until then, there must be no regrets, no tears, no anxieties. Just go forward in all your beliefs and prove to me that I am not mistaken in mine.”

The scene is a turning point in the series' history, not merely in being the first departure scene, but being good enough that it set the high watermark for all the departures that followed. It's brilliantly played, and Susan finally accepts the Doctor's gift to her when she relinquishes her TARDIS key, and wanders off with David.

3. Jo Grant: The Green Death

Like Susan, Jo falls in love with a bloke she meets on her travels with the Doctor, Professor Clifford Jones. And it leads to one of the more emotional endings in the original run of Doctor Who, and certainly the most emotional in Jon Pertwee's era.

Unlike certain other “she's fallen in love with someone and she's going to stay here with him” departures that followed, such as Leela's in The Invasion Of Time, this romance is seeded all the way through the story. And it takes on an extra significance when you get to the end of the story and recall Jo's line to the Doctor, about Clifford, in the first episode: “In a funny way, he reminds me of a sort of younger you.”

After the menace at Global Chemicals has been defeated, Clifford proposes to Jo, and she accepts. Jubilant, the Brigadier and the rest of Jo's UNIT colleagues throw a small party to celebrate the happy couple. The Doctor wishes them the very best and bids farewell to his friend, but his actions speak louder than his words. He slips out of the room during the toast, and drives away alone.

Although the relationship between the Doctor and Jo was never romantic, the situation is still the same – he's been left behind in favour of a younger man, who will be better for Jo in the long run. Pertwee's stoic performance makes it all the better, and it's a bittersweet exit for one of the most popular companions.

2. Sarah Jane Smith: The Hand Of Fear

Having followed in Jo Grant's footsteps, Sarah Jane eventually became the most popular companion in her own right. She's almost certainly the best, even to this day, and she's travelled with more of the Doctors than any of her peers.

The Hand Of Fear is the story that BBC Four chose to repeat to commemorate Elisabeth Sladen after her untimely death earlier this year. It may be one of those departures which seems to sneak up on the story as much as the audience, and the reason behind it seems flimsy; apparently, humans aren't allowed to go to Gallifrey, even though they frequently went thereafter.

But it's the nature of the scene itself that makes this one so good. The good-hearted banter between the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane leads to a crucial misunderstanding between the two. Sarah Jane bemoans the hectic lifestyle they have in the TARDIS, and tries to get the Doctor's attention by flouncing away to pack her bags and leave.

While she's gone, he gets a summons from Gallifrey, meaning he'll have to send Sarah Jane home. He seems to be thinking about how to break it to her, when she returns, bags packed. He thinks she really wants to go. She thinks he really wants her to go. And so they each promise not to forget one another, and she leaves.

The story continued, of course, years later, but her original departure remains just as moving as it was before School Reunion, and her very own spin-off, and all those extra adventures we got with Sarah Jane Smith. How could we ever forget her?

1. Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright: The Chase

If Susan's departure made you wipe away a tear, the one that got me actually came in the following Dalek story, which ends with an unoccupied time machine being left at Ian and Barbara's disposal. All this time, the Doctor has told them that the TARDIS cannot land in the same time and place more than once, and the availability of another vehicle would seem to solve that problem.

Not knowing if they'll ever get another chance to go home, the pair ask the Doctor if they should risk it. Immediately, he puts his foot down and scolds them for being so stupid as to want to meddle with a Dalek time machine. They're the Daleks, for crying out loud, and he refuses to help them, equating the idea to suicide.

Behind all this, and perhaps behind his rule about the TARDIS, too, is an incredible fondness for those schoolteachers. When we met the Doctor, he was avuncular and somewhat anti-social. All the series up to this point has been his process of softening towards his human friends, and welcoming another companion, Vicki, aboard. He even bade farewell to his granddaughter, while he still had Ian and Barbara to keep him company.

For my money, William Hartnell is never better as the Doctor than he is in those scenes. In the same way as the later scene between the Third Doctor and Jo, the things that aren't said are more powerful. But while Pertwee played it silent, Hartnell has a full-on tantrum while still not saying what he's really feeling. It's incredibly well written and impeccably acted, and perhaps it's only less remembered because the story it's attached to isn't so hot.

Persuaded by Vicki, the Doctor helps Ian and Barbara to get home at last. Their relationship was never consummated on-screen, even at the end, but there was always a flirtation between the two of them, and their joyous romp through a London they recognise is a fitting coda to their time in the series. And then a great scene just continues to get better when we see that the Doctor is watching them, just the same as we are, from the TARDIS.

“I shall miss them,” he says sadly. “Yes, I shall miss them.” This, before regaining his composure and calling them “silly old fusspots.” While more recent Doctors seem emotionally incontinent by comparison, Hartnell makes it all the more sad by his performance of determinedly not grieving. Even while away from work, those fusspots were teaching him how to open up to the universe. Their farewell is right up there amongst the most moving moments that Doctor Who has ever produced.

I hate to say goodbye, so your comments on this list and the scenes mentioned are very welcome. Do you have a favourite companion whose departure hasn't been included? Or are we all in for a bit of Martha-bashing? Join in the discussion below. I can't say if I'll respond, but one day, I shall come back...

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Can you imagine a film like Con Air, where the filmmakers weren’t in on the joke? That’s roughly what your head needs to be expecting should you pop along and see Abduction, a film that’s presumably part-intended to highlight the standalone action-movie credentials of Taylor Lautner.

It’s Lautner whose face is front and centre of the posters. It’s Lautner who is at the heart of the movie, at one point staring straight down the camera. And it’s Lautner whose shirt comes off for the first time in five minutes flat.

What’s odd, though, for a film called Abduction, is that there’s, er, not much abducting in it. That’s no story spoiler there, it’s just the title doesn’t really cover what the film is actually about. Instead, it’s actually the story of Nathan, played by Lautner, a seemingly everyday American high school kid, who likes to party, likes to ride on the front windscreens of cars, and likes to be looked at alluringly by girls. The script duly obliges on all counts.

Nathan’s dad? That’d be Jason Isaacs, a man who bashes a lawnmower with a vigour never before seen on the big screen. He’s the tip of an impressive ensemble of supporting actors, which also includes Sigourney Weaver, Alfred Molina and Maria Bello.

The big story posers, though, are these. Is Nathan actually living someone’s else’s life? Is everything as idyllic as it seems? And can there be an assortment of expensive Apple-branded products always on hand to demonstrate the answers to these questions?

It’s best to point out now that common sense and Abduction only seem to cross over by accident from time to time. Yet, even though the film’s plot appears to have been bashed together by the gluing of a few fag packets together, it sort of gets away with it for the first half hour or so. It’s so gleefully ridiculous, so lacking in logic, that its regular swings from mild intelligence to outright stupidity feel like something we should cherish. Say what you like about Abduction, and many will, but there’s certainly some fun to be had.

The problem, though, is that it dawns on you more and more that everyone involved is actually taking this seriously. That they genuinely believe Taylor Lautner has a vibrant future in action cinema. That the plot twists bear any kind of scrutiny, and that people talk in the manner of the characters in the film.

For Abduction to even begin to get away with that, it needs a central actor who can command the screen, and who has the charisma and believability to hold an action movie together. Sadly, Taylor Lautner is not that man.

Given that this is supposed to be Lautner’s breakout role from the Twilight franchise, it’s surprising that he doesn’t give the impression of being more invested in it. Instead, he gives a performance that feels like it was designed by some intricate Adobe software, or one where every third shot sees him looking into a horizon on the set of a catalogue shoot, narrowing his eyes as he does so. At times, we’re supposed to believe that he’s smouldering with rage, but there’s not even any sign of a box of matches, yet alone any smoke.

It’s not as if he’s incapable of turning in a performance. Valentine’s Day is a pretty crappy film, but Lautner is decent enough in it. Here, he’s asked to convey a range of quite dramatic emotions, yet he distils this down to simply staring from a slightly different angle, and awkwardly spitting out a line that never sounds threatening, or backed by any resolve.

You can’t help but sense that he’s rented a few recent Liam Neeson flicks, and rewatched the Terminators, and tried to channel a performance based on some of that. This does not, however, work.

It doesn’t help that the dialogue he’s given to work with is so deliciously ridiculous, inciting numerous guffaws at the screening we caught the film at. “I’m shaken up a bit” he says at one point, after an incident that should have left him doing far more than narrowing his eyes again, and attempting to look angry.

Furthermore, never has a movie character in so much peril shown so little urgency. And heck, he can’t even notice when his webcam activity light has come on, when he appears to be looking down the lens of the damn thing.

Behind the camera, John Singleton has a decent stab at livening things up, and he’s certainly no slouch when putting an action sequence together. But he’s hamstrung from the start here, working from a screenplay that feels like the pitch meeting scribbled down (the oven and the Facebook line are amongst the best examples), and a star who, let’s be realistic, is no gift whatsoever to action cinema.

By the end, the supporting cast rally a bit, but even then, at the dramatic denouement, the dialogue is unintentionally utterly hilarious.

In the early set-ups, and sporadically across the film’s running time, Abduction bubbles up to offer some solid entertainment, even if it’s not quite the entertainment you feel its filmmakers thought they were making. But there’s little getting away from the fact that this is a desperately below average action film, with the olive branch of some very big chortles. Taylor Lautner will make better films like this, and might yet stand a chance of breaking out a standalone leading man career.

For now? It might be best if he keeps taking his shirt off. He's on safer ground there.

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If you cast your mind back to the start of this series of Doctor Who, it broke convention for the modern day show by opening with a two parter. Convention has dictated, too, that each series should end on a two parter as well. But this series doesn’t look like it’s going to do that. While storylines have been intertwined throughout the series, Closing Time – the penultimate episode – feels as though it could equally work as a standalone episode. In fact, that's what it arguably does.

It’s a standalone episode in the right place in the series, though, with the Doctor facing up to the fact that his demise is creeping up on him, even if we're basically getting more of what we already know. In the pre-credits sequence, we find him on something of a farewell tour, as he arrives at Craig's front door.

You probably remember Craig. He first arrived in last series’ The Lodger, also written by Gareth Roberts, and he’s played by James Corden. This time, though, there’s no football. Rather, Craig's juggling a new home (with humans either side, he assures us) and a baby.

Inevitably, when the Doctor turns up, trouble isn’t too far away (flickering lights are always a good sign), and if you’ve seen the trailers for Closing Time, you’ll already have a fair idea just what form this trouble takes. If you haven’t, we’re not spoiling the returning foe by identifying it here. If you don't hear who or what it is by the time the credits start on Saturday, though, we'd be amazed.

In places, Closing Time does still feel like a two parter. Its opening half hour feels quite leisurely, in fact, taking time and space to set things up. It's also a little lighter than we’ve had for the past couple of weeks. In fact, compared to the emotional wallops of The Girl Who Waited and The God Complex, Closing Time feels just a little like the show is breathing out a little.

Not for long, though, as ultimately, this is an episode that becomes more and more centred on where the Doctor finds himself. Corden’s Craig is alongside him for a good chunk of it, and isn’t played quite so overtly for comedy as in The Lodger. But then, the character has moved on, and Corden once more gently restrains his performance. His return is both welcome and successful, and he and Smith make a good double act.

The episode does find space for a bit of fun, with a nod of the head to Ghostbusters, another tip of the hat to Star Trek, and even spending a bit of time with some overpriced toys. But there is serious business at work here, and as you might expect, it folds things into place for what looks like an explosive finale, in the shape of The Wedding Of River Song.

Closing Time might not be the episode you’re expecting at this stage in a series of Doctor Who, but I think that’s one of the reasons I warmed to it. It obviously follows two very strong episodes, and, in truth, it’s not able to match them. As it turns out, it’s the moments with the Doctor and Craig, rather than the battling against certain foes, that give it the most enjoyable moments. The foes, for my money, are pretty much thrown away.

But Closing Time is still funny, entertaining, and worth sparing 45 minutes for. It just won't be one of the episodes that we're likely to be chatting about some time down the road. It does set things up, nice and ready, for the week after, mind...

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Considering how impressive the trailer for Paranormal Activity 3 was (and, whether you like the films or not, the promos for them tend to be very strong), it’s disappointing that this new poster for the film is quite so uninspiring.

The film still has something in its corner, though, namely that it’s being directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. They’re the pair behind the excellent Catfish, released last year. So, even though the new Paranormal Activity film appears to have bashed out at quite a pace again, it’d be unwise to write it off.

Paranormal Activity 3 is released a month today.

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Justin Lin is an in-demand director. The massive success of the last two movies in the Fast & Furious franchise have seen the helmer signing up for duties on a Highlander reboot, and the next Terminator movie. But, it seems, his schedule can’t keep up.

Lin is committed to making Fast & Furious 6 next, which is set to appear in cinemas in the summer of 2013. The first consequence of that was that he had to drop out of the planned Highlander reboot, which is now looking for a new director.

But, it seems that the same fate might have befallen his desire to make the new Terminator movie, too.

In spite of the fact that Lin has held meetings with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and been working on new ideas for the Terminator movies, the fact that he’s going to spend next year on Fast Six might just have kyboshed his chance of making Terminator 5.

According to Deadline, Lin is being forced to drop out of the next Terminator film, due to the fact that it was being lined up to be shot towards the end of 2012, which clashes with the Fast Six schedule. The director is reportedly still keen to make the two films, and has held the proverbial door open to a return, should the next Terminator project be delayed slightly to free up his availability.

Given that there’s no script in place, as of yet, there’s certainly no guarantee that Terminator 5 will be ready to go in a year’s time, so there may yet be a chance for Lin to direct the movie.

Interestingly, Deadline also reports that James Cameron has had one or two conversations about the new movie, and that the North American rights to the franchise will revert back to him in 2018.

There’s more on the story at Deadline, here.

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If the Internet is working properly today, then in the comments section to this article, you should be able to enjoy a collection of puns based around the colour blue. You might even get a couple of Smurf gags if you’re lucky.

The reason? Disney has announced that it’s going to set up an Avatarland-esque attraction at Disney World in Orlando (in the Animal Kingdom bit, apparently). The firm has snapped up the rights to do so from James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment, and the plan is to open a similar attraction in other Disney theme parks, too.

Construction work will begin in the next year or two, with the idea being to open the Avatar attraction in 2016.

Appreciating that Avatar is the biggest film of all time, by some distance, and appreciating too that there’s a pair of sequels on the way, this still all sounds a little odd.

It’s been a couple of years, after all, since Disney bought Marvel, and we would have thought that, were the firm to spend a few hundred million on a new attraction for its theme parks, that Marvel characters offered more possibilities. But then we don’t run theme parks for a living, to be fair.

Go on, then. Don’t let us down on this. Just what will Avatarland feature? Do your worst in the comments, below…

L.A. Times

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Currently in production in Cardiff, a few details have been released regarding this year’s Doctor Who Christmas special.

Last week, some set snaps appeared, which revealed that Outnumbered actress Claire Skinner was in the cast for the episode. And it’s now been confirmed not only that she’s in the cast, but that she’s going to be joined by Bill Bailey, Alexander Armstrong and Arabella Weir.

As usual, we’re promised a very Christmassy episode, and this time, it’s going to be set in the middle of winter, during World War II. Skinner will play a young widow, Madge, who has two children. She describes the character in The Sun as “a bit of a super-mum”.

We’ll bring you more details on the Christmas special as we get them. Although we’re happy to have a stab at what day it’ll be screened on, if you like?

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Over the past few years I’ve been responsible for thousands upon thousands of words, all dedicated to Jason Statham. I have made no attempt to hide my extreme levels of hero worship for the man and his work, leaping at the chance this year to write about Killer Elite at any, and every, available opportunity in the build up to the film's release.

So you can only imagine how crushed I felt about writing this review, when the opportunity to finally see it resulted in one overriding emotion: disappointment.

Like ripping a plaster off, I’m going to have to make this as quick as possible to minimise the pain: Killer Elite really isn’t very good at all. The worst part is that out of all Statham’s films to date (with the possible exception of The Expendables), this one promised so much more than any of the others.

Killer Elite’s trailer alone had me champing at the bit, with its 80s rock and promise of non-stop action. Yet that movie isn’t the one you’ll be watching. The trailer’s editor should be commended for cutting such a fine piece of work together, and then promptly slapped for creating such false hope, especially given that the promo features material from so late in the film.

Indeed, any attempt at creating a sense of suspense and surprise is utterly ruined by the ever present realisation that scenes from the trailer haven’t appeared on screen yet. And when they do, they’re still great, but have nothing new to add in the context they're presented, and are all too few and far between.

To give you a greater understanding of watching Killer Elite, it starts off fantastically, with Statham and the great Robert De Niro exchanging one liners and gunfire, in a nicely frenetic opening. Said opening also has the good grace to inform us that it’s set in the 80s. Suddenly, the prospect of setting an action movie back in the best decade for the genre seems inspired, as Statham’s character is dragged out of retirement, soulfully glancing out of a rain-covered window as a romantic flashback kicks in. My God, I can virtually hear the power ballad.

As the Stath takes out a man using just a cup, as only he can, I can almost sense the review writing itself in a flurry of praise. And by this point, Clive Owen hasn’t even appeared yet. Could this be the first ever five star Statham film?

No. And a long way from it.

From an opening that manages to emulate the best parts of a Bourne movie's action and gloss, we’re suddenly wrenched away to a miserable and rain soaked London, taking most of the budget away at the same time.

Now, I spent a large part of my childhood growing up in central London, but I sure as hell don’t remember it looking like such a dive, and neither do I remember everything looking greeny-blue. Yet as well as the clichéd British weather, along comes a whole host of pseudo British stereotypes.

You see, Killer Elite’s plot is in fact ‘based on a true story’, so in between the explosive start and end to the film, we’re subjected to a reluctant Statham and his gang grimly dispatching the members of a Special Forces team, whose only real crime was to do what they were told. As a plot device, this is a fundamental flaw, as there’s nothing to separate Statham and his gang of mercenaries from Clive Owen and his squaddies. It leaves no room for any emotional impact.

With no real action to hold up the film's central hour either (the fun punch up between Owen and Statham aside), no investment in any of the characters and no real thrills, all that’s left is some unintentional comedy and the spectacle of watching Statham’s character, Danny, not kill people. Yes, that’s right: not kill people.

Worse yet, every time the film does start to draw you in with its attempts at gritty drama, there’s suddenly a clanger of an accent to shake you out of it. Pity poor Dominic Purcell, who I can only assume wasn’t in on the joke when his dialect coach decided to make a mockery of his London accent. If you’re going to make the man do one (cast seemingly on account of the Australian funding, and he’s not alone), at least have the common sense to not do it in a film starring both Statham and Owen.

Sure enough, things get better towards the film's conclusion, but you’ll have seen it all in the trailer, and if you haven’t, then it won’t really make up for the arduous middle section that plays out like a poor man’s The Sweeney, crossed with Neighbours. The film is an absolute victim to a poor, clichéd script (which could have redeemed itself with a sense of humour), the budget, the casting by committee and a lack of strong direction.

It’s neither a thriller, drama or action movie, wasting and miscasting its talented actors, as they do their level best to get through some of the worst lines I’ve heard in a movie for a while. Statham and Owen are both great, proving to be a moderate salvation for the film as a whole, though despite starring roles, never seem to be on the screen for long enough. That's perhaps a symptom of how little they have to work with.

And De Niro? He actually isn’t on the screen long enough, scraping an ‘and’ credit, and only teasing us with the brief glimpse at what the film could have been. If only he and Statham had continued their team up throughout, this might have been better. As it stands, Killer Elite is a badly missed opportunity.

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It’s been known for some time now that Elite Squad director José Padilha is set to remake Paul Verhoeven’s 1987 classic, RoboCop. Up until now, not a great deal has been said about what direction his take on the film will go in, but Padilha recently spoke briefly about his RoboCop to the Dutch website, Film1.

“I love the sharpness and political tone of RoboCop,” Padilha, said, pointing out just how sly and intelligently made the original was, beneath all the violence. Not everyone will necessarily agree with what he had to say next, though: “I think that such a film is now urgently needed.”

Nevertheless, Padilha insists that his RoboCop won’t be a straightforward remake, but a film that explores rather different issues from the original.

“I will not repeat what Verhoeven did so clearly and strongly,” Padilha continued. “Instead, I will try to make a film that will address topics that Verhoeven didn’t cover. What is the difference between humans and robots? What is free will? What does it mean to lose your free will? Those are the issues that I think.”

Padilha’s RoboCop won’t be out until some time in 2013, so expect lots more snippets of information to trickle in regarding it over the coming months.

SFX

Film1

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This review contains spoilers.

9. The Usual Suspects

I love Agatha Christie detective stories, and given the contents of this week's Alphas, so do the writers of this show. It's a classic whodunit, where you're asked to accept that one of the main characters is a traitor – but which one?

I'm not going to tell you which it is, just in case you've not yet watched The Usual Suspects, but it's a neat, if certainly Christie inspired twist, that presents the ultimate resolution of this well woven if predictable narrative.

Instead, I'd like to talk about where the story is ultimately marching us, a progression that's been in the wind since the earliest Alpha stories. When the team is put under pressure to identify their bad apple, what comes to the surface is the resentment felt in respect of their government handlers, and the ever-present threat represented by Binghampton and the dreaded building seven.

The point at which this turns into a revolution appears to getting much nearer, and the actions of Red Flag are becoming increasingly contradictory. I've got a feeling that Red Flag isn't the threat that's represented, and that another undisclosed force is distorting our perception of their actions. Will the Alphas join Red Flag, or oppose them?

I'm now entirely convinced that the team is going to go freelance by the end of the season, which will screen next week. But I'm also sure that not all the Alphas we know now will make it to season two, because that's the nature of this type of show, which needs to have an edge to make it watchable.

Overall, The Usual Suspects was one of the better Alphas episodes this season, although I'm not sure I'd give it the accolade of being the best so far. The problem the show's creators fail to address is that things are far too formulaic at times, and many of their key narrative pieces are borrowed wholesale from other, better known mutant properties. After ten stories, I'm still waiting for the show to break its story and character shackles, and take me somewhere I've not been before.

It's been a long wait, but I'm just hoping that episode 11 is a turning point for Alphas, where I'm genuinely surprised by what happens and end up looking forward to reviewing season two, and not dreading the continuation.

Read our review of episode 9, Blind Spot, here.

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Is Warrior the most macho movie of the year? Given that it’s about two mightily proportioned men kicking and punching each other, it’s certainly possible. But because those mightily proportioned men also happen to be the exceptionally fine actors Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton, Warrior also functions as an engaging drama, as well as a thunderous mixed-martial arts movie.

With Warrior out in UK cinemas now, we caught up with the two leads for a lively round-table interview, where the pair talked about working with the great Nick Nolte, and training for the film. And as an added, unexpected bonus, Tom Hardy dropped in an anecdote about a scuffle with Shia LaBeouf…

Let’s start with the obvious: how fit were you when you signed up for Warrior, and how fit were you when it finished?

Joel Edgerton: You could see how fit we were when we finished. I always kept myself fairly fit. I think Gavin [O’Connor, director] wanted to get two actors who were right for these characters, and drag them towards the cage, rather than drag two fighters kicking and screaming into the world of acting…

Tom Hardy: Yes.

JE: …which would have been weird.

So, because the film’s presumably shot out of sequence, are there scenes where you think, I’m supposed to be bulkier there, but wasn’t, because I wasn’t at the right stage of my physical development?

TH: No, not really.

JE: You sort of plan properly, in a way. But leading up to the blocks of fighting, when we were fighting…

TH: Shirts off day. There was a shirts off day, wasn’t there? T-X minus 30 minutes is, like shirts off day. It was, like, three, two, one, go! It was a definite shirt off day.

Was there a difference in your training regimes, because your silhouettes, if you like, tell us a lot about your characters. Tom, your character’s quite hunched over and aggressive, for example. Was that just something that came about naturally?

JE: I think, when you put two separate people through… there were differences to the training regimes. I did a lot more wrestling and ju-jitsu than Tom’s character, so our regimes reflected that. But also, if you put two people through a training regime, and feed them truckloads of food, it’s going to affect them in different ways, as well.

Tom, how are you handling all the hype, that you’re the next big thing, with all these stories about you? Do you pay any attention to it?

TH: Well, the thing is, that’s… got to be normalised, hasn’t it? What does that mean? And at the end of the day, I’ve been doing this job for twelve years. Nothing has changed in the way that I approach my work, and all that has really changed is that I have more opportunities to work in bigger fields, with more financial support and different teams. I haven’t noticed anything else. So… I think there’s not been any fallout or paparazzi chasing me, or hitting reporters or anything like that. I’m ultimately quite boring.

Do you still live in the UK?

Yeah. My son’s here, and he lives with his mum and her husband. And I’m not going anywhere, because my little boy’s here. So the bottom line is, how am I handling it? I’m someone’s dad. That’s very grounding. The hyperbole part of it… I’m not going to not go to the shop and buy milk, or drive around town, with the top down and the music up. I’m just as lairy as I always was.

Speaking of hitting reporters, did either of you get injured while making the film?

JE: My shining moment was getting my MCL ligament torn on a grade three tear. I had six weeks of rehab for that. Apart from that, the odd elbow or punch in the face. Everyone was getting knocked around. You couldn’t really be an actor in this process without getting knocked around.

TH: There wasn’t any room to act, was there? It was so annoying. [Laughs] I want to act, but he keeps hitting me! Not my face!

As Gavin said, “It’s a fuckin’ MMA movie! It’s not a fuckin’ kite flying movie, now man up!” “But it hurts!” [Laughs]

JE: He literally said that, one day.

You were presumably aware of that before signing on, though…

TH: Well yeah, but I’m not as manly as I thought I was, when push comes to shove.

JE: It was definitely the brief. Gavin said, going in, “I expect this, this and this.”

TH: But you say yes, don’t you? It’s like, when someone asks you, “Can you ride a horse?” you’ll always say, “Of course I can. Absolutely!” And later, they’ll say, “Here’s a horse.” And you’ll just go, [high-pitched shriek]. “That’s a horse!” [Laughter]

Were you familiar with MMA before the film?

JE: No, I didn’t know much about it all. Through the eyes of any film, you get to learn and enter a world. That was our introduction to MMA was this crash course in becoming a fighter. Shy of actually getting knocked out…

TH: I got knocked out by Shia LaBeouf, actually, yeah. [Nervous titters all round] On The Wettest County In The World. Apparently. Behind the scenes.

That’s not true, though?

TH: No, he did. He, he knocked me out sparko. Got very aggressive. Knocked me out cold. He’s a bad, bad boy. But anyway, previous to, err… [Laughter]

….he did. He’s quite intimidating as well. He’s a scary dude.

Why were you fighting Shia LaBeouf?

TH: He just attacked me. But anyway… [Raucous, baffled laughter] He was drinkin’ moonshine. I was wearing a cardigan. It went down. I woke up in [personal trainer] Pnut’s arms. He was concerned for me. I was like, “What was that? It was lightning fast!” He was like, “That was Shy.”

“Fuckin’ hell! Can we go home now?” “No, we’ve still got three weeks to finish.”

So, anyway, the long and the short of it is that, no, MMA, I’d played it on the Xbox. When we were doing Black Hawk Down, we used to watch it on TV. We used to laugh about it, because it was so fuckin’ brutal. But I never really trained. But you had a black belt in something, didn’t you?

JE: Yeah, I had a black belt in Shotokan as a kid.

TH: Didn’t help you, though, did it? At the same time, when you get into the ring, it’s a completely different gig.

JE: Yeah, totally different.

What was the training process like?

JE: Eight weeks of seven AM until about three or four in the afternoon everyday. We’d literally get to the gym and seven in the morning, do some kicking and punching drills, I’d go off and do a bit of wrestling, until we’d all head off for a big steak together…

TH: Or a bit of pulled pork!

JE: A bit of pulled pork! Pulled pork jokes never get old. [Laughs] I remember the T-shirt on the waitress said, as we were cracking jokes, “Pulled pork jokes never get old.” [Laughs] And it’s true! Pulled pork jokes never do get old.

TH: We couldn’t keep eating pulled pork, sadly, because there came a point where pulled pork had to stop, and we were only allowed chicken and broccoli.

JE: Chicken, like, clean chicken and broccoli. Then in the afternoon we’d lift weights. So it was a full day dedicated to our bodies and our skillset. That got us prepared for the beginning of filming. And filming was a whole new challenge, because then you’ve got to figure in a 12-hour shooting day.

But a movie like this was good, because you’ve got two cars racing against each other. Tom’d shoot and I’d go and train, and then Tom’d train and I’d go and shoot. But still, trying to keep the regime.

We had a stadium booked for six weeks of fighting, and one week into that, I smashed my knee, and it was all over to Tom. “I’m just going to do scenes from the waist up for a while.” We had to book the stadium again six weeks later and resume the fights.

Were you united in the fact that a Brit and an Aussie, presumably, have more in common than they have with the Americans?

TH: I was just thinking about the Brits that went over to America, and the Brits that went down to Australia… aren’t we all related somehow anyway?

JE: Yeah. At some point, one of your great, great uncles stole a sheep, got caught, and became my family. [Laughs] Look, I don’t really think about it in those terms at all. All I know is that Gavin saw something in us that was right for this movie, regardless of where we were physically. I’m very glad, in hindsight, that he did.

I was halfway through filming, I found out that Gavin had his own battle in casting Tom and I. Because, when you think about it, at the time this film was made, neither of us had the right to be there when you think about Hollywood being the stockmarket that it is – completely fuelled by money.

TH: They wanted Jake Gyllenhaal and Hayden Christensen.

JE: Yeah, that’s who the movie should have starred.

TH: No one wants them. No what I’m sayin’ [Laughs]? We’d like to see them really get into a ring, and really see who’d go down, but not in a film. Good God, no.

You have a quite touching scene with Nick Nolte. Was that harder than the physical stuff?

TH: No, because that’s where I come from, that kind of background. That was me doing the bit I’ve done years of training on already.

I’m not being flippant, genuinely, that the whole addiction, abuse storyline was not a shock, and not far from home. Living with addiction isn’t something that’s difficult for me to access. I’m nine or ten years sober, anyway, so it’s not a long, long way from my last drink. But I know people who’ve died, so that’s a territory I feel responsible for being a part of.

Do you think it’s important to talk about that?

TH: I think it’s relevant. I think you have to be careful how you talk about it, because it’s one of those things that takes lives. It’s not to be taken for granted, it’s not a fashion accessory, alcoholism and addiction. It’s a really serious illness. It fucking kills people. If you have it, you need help – and the help is there.

To talk about it is one thing, to promote it is bad taste. But it’s important to be part of where you’re from, and addiction is part of my story. It’d be futile to pretend it doesn’t exist.

Those scenes with Nick Nolte, I thought were brilliant, and I really enjoyed doing them. When I watched it I cried, actually, because I’ve been in places like that.

The scene by the slot machine, with Nick, I thought was good, too. What was that like to do?

TH: Nick Nolte’s carved from the rock of actors. He is as prevalent in my life as a digestive biscuit. He just quintessentially exists, you know? He’s a staple part of a diet – a brand, like Marmite. He’s that American brand of actor, craggy faced, lived-in, tough guy, been through the mill, working class. Huge heart.

He is as wonderful to work with as he is to watch. He is as mercurial and funny and enigmatic and full of life as he is when I watch him on screen, and he is as troubled as you can imagine he could possibly get at times, too. He was the most exciting thing about working on Warrior.

JE: Who’s Nick Nolte? [Laughs]

TH: He worked with Eddie Murphy.

JE: Oh yeah, that one. [Laughs] Everything Tom said. I don’t think I could put anything as eloquently as Tom has. But there are a number of privileges that come with being an actor – special lights and everything. You get to enter these worlds, and live the life of the fighter…

TH: The question’s about Nick Nolte.

JE: Yeah, yeah, I’m getting there! I’m trying to make a big… He, er… One of the great privileges… [To Tom] Look, fuck you. I’m taking my shirt off again. [Laughs]

TH: You’re lucky enough to work with Nick Nolte, now say something nice.

JE: Part of the privilege of being an actor is the people you get to work with. And when you know you’re heading down the barrel of working with a great actor like Nick, you could either get really scared and freak out, or charge in and get excited about it.

Everything Tom said. He’s very special. And one of the great things about Nick is, as he gets older, he doesn’t relax and turn in half-performances. This film proves that.

TH: Six in the morning. Tell ‘em about the six in the morning.

JE: Yeah, me and Nick did the scene on the lawn, that was my first scene in the movie. That was part of the acting component. The non-punching component, I call it.

TH: Six pages long.

JE: Six pages long. Six PM until six AM. Nick’s close-ups were shot as the sun was coming up next morning.

TH: And he’s almost 70 years of age.

JE: He was as dedicated in every moment, and as heart broken in every word and gesture and breath, up to six in the morning. Including when the camera was away from him and onto me. He was never going to give anything less than the best, and that made me respect him all the more, that I got to be a part of that with him.

Tom Hardy and Joel Edgerton, thank you very much.

Warrior is on general release now.

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There’s a bit at the end of the film Contact, which I’ve got no intention of spoiling, where one character utters a line that removes a large degree of ambiguity from the last act. I remember walking out of the cinema, and wondering whether I’d have liked the film more had one character not uttered that one line. That they’d not offered up just a little bit of added explanation. I quickly concluded that I think I would have done.

The problem, though, with a film that revolves around any kind of big idea, is that there’s a subsequent compulsion to explain it. It’s what tends to lead to the first two acts of a film being far more interesting than the last. Take Independence Day. The build up, when you knew nothing about the invading force, was great. At the point where they’re seen, and the story goes about dealing with them, it’s less interesting.

Closer to the point I’m trying to make here, though, is the recent television series, Torchwood: Miracle Day. This had a big idea, in that it’s centered around a period of time where nobody in the world can die. But inevitably, any explanation it could offer for this was highly unlikely to be as interesting as the concept itself.

And so, in that case, it proved.

I appreciate that audiences are keen for answers, and I appreciate that a lot of clever writers are good at coming up with them. I’d also hate to see is somebody using ambiguity as a cover for not thinking a story through correctly. Like or lump what Lost did with its final episode, but I think, after six solid series of wading through bushes, it owed us a substantive answer. It at least tried to give us one.

However, I also can’t help but feel that a lot of people could still learn the lesson taught so brilliantly by Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day isn’t just a grand comedy, it’s also a terrific piece of light science-fiction. The concept is simple: a man lives the same day over and over again, until he gets it right.

The reason offered by the film for why this phenomenon comes about? Absolutely none. There’s no big space alien. No experiment. No nothing.

At no stage do the characters stop and ponder what’s causing what Phil Connors is experiencing in the film. Even Connors makes no attempt to investigate it.

The film is all the better for it, too. Because Groundhog Day’s big lesson is that sometimes, it’s okay not to give an answer. That the audience can appreciate you’ve elected not to do that, in favour of telling the more interesting story. 

With Torchwood: Miracle Day, I wonder if I’d be more intrigued for the next season of the show if the ‘miracle’ of the title had simply stopped one day, with no explanation at all, leaving everyone to deal with the ramifications?

Remember M Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable, too, which, after holding so many details at arm’s length for the bulk of the film, loses its confidence in the last five minutes and starts pelting you with them?

There’s no one size fits all, granted, to explaining away a big idea that’s at the heart of a film or television programme. But by far the most popular path chosen right now is to explain as much as possible, come what may. My argument is that it doesn’t have to be that way. I’ve never heard anyone criticise Groundhog Day for what it doesn’t tell us, and doubt I ever well.

Rather, it’s a very good film, that’s rightly still chatted about, for differing reasons, nearly two decades later. Particularly in the Internet age, audiences can come across as fickle beasts, not aided, granted, by websites such as this one that have a tendency to analyse, not always in the right places.

But that doesn’t mean that an audience can’t take a leap of faith from time to time, and that holding back large chunks of explanation isn’t, sometimes, a worthwhile path to take.

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Seemingly inspired by an innocuous tweet from Vernon Kay, Doctor Who has found itself back in the headlines this week, as a range of stories have appeared suggesting that it’s getting a bit of a battering in the ratings.

Furthermore, there’s also a strong suggestion that the show is apparently getting too complicated. And I wanted to address both of those points here.

The Ratings

Let’s do the ratings first. The source of the latest round of stories here was the news that last Saturday’s excellent The God Complex episode pulled in 5.9m viewers at its peak. Against it was an episode of All Star Family Fortunes, hosted by Vernon Kay, that scored 6.2m. Kay’s tweet, therefore, ran that "Wow! The Time Lord can beat the Daleks but not Family Fortunes! Great!"

This story was then picked up, being reported in various flavours in the likes of The Guardian and The Sun, which, depending on which source you read, will either tell you that Doctor Who was beaten in the overnight ratings, or that the ratings are in crisis. As it stands, only one of those are true.

The initial snapshot overnight ratings give you the figures of the number of people who watch an episode ‘live’, as it’s being transmitted. This, though, is only part of the modern day picture.

Back in the 1980s, if a show such as Doctor Who had got 5.9m viewers in a Saturday teatime slot, fire and brimstone would be called in. But it’s not the 1980s, and the number of ways that someone can watch a show has changed.

So, there’s those who catch an episode of Doctor Who on a repeat screening. There’s those who record in on a Sky+ or TiVo box and catch it later in the evening, or a day or two later. There are those who watch Doctor Who on BBC iPlayer.

In short, the number of ways to watch an episode is constantly evolving, and yet the reporting of ratings is still based on an archaic system where it’s only the people sat in front of the telly at Saturday teatime that count.

Let’s take a look, to see what difference it makes when the real ratings are considered. We'll use The Girl Who Waited as an example. On initial transmission, the reported overnight ratings for the episode stood at six million, a 26.8 per cent share of the audience, that made it the third most-watched television programme of that day on UK TV (behind The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing).

The consolidated rating, which includes figures for those who record the show, and then watch it within a week, was 7.6m, which lifted Doctor Who to a 30.8 per cent audience share. This isn't a number available for instant reporting the day after, obviously. And thus it rarely gets reported with the same level of exposure.

Then, there’s the numbers from the iPlayer to factor in. We don’t have figures for The Girl Who Waited, but if you hark back to Let’s Kill Hitler, that was requested via the iPlayer service 0,99m times in just five days. The most popular Doctor Who episode of the current series on iPlayer is The Impossible Astronaut, which was accessed 1.93m times.

So, for the sake of some fag packet maths, let’s say a million people will have watched The Girl Who Waited on iPlayer. That would take the total figure for the episode, excluding BBC Three repeats and such like, to 8.6m.

With no disrespect to All Star Family Fortunes, the show that’s being used as an unlikely yardstick against which Doctor Who is measured, that’s a far more instant, disposable show. It’s also one unlikely to add too many to its instant overnight ratings.

In short, Doctor Who, when everything is added up, will have comfortably beaten it in the ratings, if the ratings really are the absolute measure of success (heck, how many All Star Family Fortunes DVD boxsets and action figures do you own?)

But we’re still not done.

What’s forgotten, too, is that Doctor Who is growing outside of the UK, as well. The American ratings this year, buoyed by a decision to transmit much, although not all, of series six in tandem with UK transmission dates, have been on the up. And the worldwide popularity of the show is increasing.

Again, if you’re going to do a like-for-like against All Star Family Fortunes, you can hardly say the same of that show.

To be clear, then: when you dig into cold, hard facts, there’s little evidence that Doctor Who ratings are in trouble at all. But then that’s a less interesting story to report, perhaps.

Too Complicated?

The second criticism being directed at the show is that it’s become too confusing, and that viewers are complaining. According to a report in The Sun, fans are arguing that “the storylines have become too complicated”.

I’m not quite sure where to start with this.

Certainly, there’s an argument that episodes have become a little less self-contained, perhaps, given that series-long narratives have been woven in for the past two years. And there’s certainly a boldness and intelligence to what’s being put on the screen.

I’d happily listen to an argument, for instance, that The Big Bang needed a healthy conversation afterwards to get your head around. But are we saying that’s a bad thing now? Is adding a degree of complexity to a Saturday teatime show something we should be resisting?

Personally, I think that Doctor Who is asking a little bit more of its audience over the course of a series run, but there’s still plenty in each episode to make it work on a more simplistic level, if that’s what people are after. I do despair a little, though, that when a show is willing to treat its audience as human beings with brains, its gets criticised for it.

Surely the problem lies with the rest of the Saturday evening schedules?

At best, you’d have to suggest that The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing are brain-neutral shows, and at worst... well, you can fill in the blanks there. Either way, I do wonder why we’re criticising the beacon of a show that’s not dumbing down. Heck, when was it wrong for a TV show to be clever on a Saturday?

I say this fully appreciating that, at times, Doctor Who has become a bit of a puzzle. I’m still happy to listen to theories as to just how the Doctor got out of the Pandorica, as I’m not sure I’ve fully wrapped my head around that yet. But that's, surely, part of the fun?

Doctor Who is bold, brave television, with some wonderfully intricate storytelling, and I maintain my feeling that it's going through a golden age right now. It’s a show worth talking about, worth championing, and worth celebrating.

And, interestingly, if you ask most kids, they have no trouble following it at all. If anyone gets stuck with the show, I suggest they ask my seven-year old about it.

Thus, rather than finding different sticks to beat it with, isn’t it best that, from time to time, if we just express some appreciation that we’ve got the show, and the incredibly talented people working on it, in the first place?

Just a thought.

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While some movies enjoy immediate and vocal adulation, it’s a sad fact that many others pass by unnoticed. It’s only after several years that, after a period of obscurity, these unlucky movies finally receive the attention they deserve.

Such is the case with Manhunter, an adaptation of Thomas Harris’ 1981 novel, Red Dragon. Where the next rendition of the author’s work, 1991’s The Silence Of The Lambs, earned critical acclaim, won five Academy Awards, and brought in more than $270 million at the box-office, Michael Mann’s 1986 movie was largely ignored by audiences and critics alike.

The grotesque, belated sequel, Hannibal (2001) raked in even more cash than Silence Of The Lambs – over $351 million – and just to add insult to injury, even Brett Ratner’s star-laden but inferior adaptation of Red Dragon (2002) made around 26 times more money than Manhunter.

Movie-goers in 1986, it seems, weren’t ready for a glacially cool procedural thriller, that went for an atmosphere of unease rather than overt horror.

It’s fascinating, in fact, to compare Michael Mann’s approach to Manhunter with Jonathan Demme’s treatment of The Silence Of The Lambs. Where Demme goes for shadows and dungeon-like interiors, Mann, aided by the startling cinematography of Dante Spinotti, opts for oppressive brightness, empty space and disconcerting splashes of colour.

Before Manhunter, Mann was well known as the showrunner on the cop show Miami Vice. He brings a similar 80s machismo and cool air to Harris’ story, while sticking quite closely to the basics of the novel’s plot.

Will Graham (William Petersen), once one of the FBI’s most talented criminal profilers, is enjoying his early retirement at his family home in Florida. He’s just about recovered from the physical and psychological injuries he suffered while arresting serial killer Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox) a few years earlier, so when his old boss Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina) shows up asking for help with another murder case, Graham is initially reluctant to get involved.

Eventually prodded back into action, Graham begins the hunt for a serial killer dubbed the Tooth Fairy who, in Graham’s own words, “Butchers whole families to fulfil some sick fantasy.” With the killer operating on a strict lunar cycle, Graham only has a few days to catch him before the next full moon.

In an attempt to “get the old scent back”, Graham pays a visit to his old nemesis, Doctor Lecktor. It’s not clear why Mann chose to misspell the cannibal’s name in his screenplay – subsequent films would correctly refer to him as Lecter – but their meeting is one of the film’s electrifying highpoints.

Brian Cox’s performance as Lecktor is remarkable. Trapped in the pristine white cube of his cell, his Lecktor is an eerily restrained animal, his words laced with sardonic humour and malice, even as the tone of his voice soothes and insinuates.

Behind bars, Cox’s take on Lecktor is charming, even funny (“I don’t tear out the articles” he says off-handedly about the Tooth Fairy’s newspaper coverage. “I wouldn’t want them to think I was dwelling on anything morbid.”). It’s clear, though, that he’d be more than capable of committing the unspeakable acts Thomas Harris would write about about in his later novels.

Placed in the same room as Lecktor, William Peterson’s haunted ex-cop seems almost lost, like a mumbling child. When Lecktor gently teases Graham about his early retirement (“You’re very tan, Will. Your hands are rough. They don’t look like cop’s hands anymore.”), he has no answer, no witty retort to give, until the topic of conversation turns to Graham's capture of Lecktor years earlier.

When Lecktor asks how the intellectually inferior cop had found his man, Graham curtly replies: "You have certain disadvantages. You're insane."

In 1986, some critics wrote disparagingly of Petersen’s performance. The New York Times, for example, wrote that he played Graham with “unmodulated self-absoption”. Petersen’s performance isn’t the finest in the film, but it’s still a great one, and superior, I’d argue, to Edward Norton’s rather flat portrayal of the same character in Red Dragon. 

Petersen doesn’t get an opportunity to invest Graham with much light and shade, but he does succeed in giving him a memorably neurotic edge, as though he’s a mere hair’s width away from becoming as predatory as the killer he’s attempting to track down.

Dante Spinotti’s unusual framing and occasional, queasy hints of green – some shots look like a scrubbed-up homage to Suspiria – imply that both Lecktor and the Tooth Fairy’s psychosis is like a disease that Graham has to constantly stave off, a malaise that hangs over Manhunter’s lonely hotel rooms and cityscapes.

Graham spends long stretches of the film in solitude, watching videotapes of the killer’s victim over and over again, or staring out into empty back gardens, combing them for clues. Michael Mann’s fascination with procedure and the hunt for tiny scraps of evidence is infectious here, and Manhunter has since been cited as a major inspiration for hit shows such as CSI, in which Petersen also starred.

The film really clicks into gear, though, when the Tooth Fairy is properly introduced. Played to perfection by Tom Noonan, he’s possibly one of the most unsettling and downright odd murderers in all cinema.

Noonan plays him as a psychologically wounded outsider rather than an outright monster, and in spite of his heinous acts elsewhere in the film – not least his horrible treatment of sweaty, luckless paparazzo Freddy Lounds (a young Stephen Lang) – the Tooth Fairy’s brief relationship with blind co-worker Reba (Joan Allen) is extremely poignant.

For one evening, the Tooth Fairy is able to put aside the murderous part of his nature – the red dragon of the original novel’s title – and taste the life of a normal human being in a conventional relationship, before his jealous, murderous nature comes flooding back to sweep it all aside.

The portrayal of the Tooth Fairy as both a victim and a predator is best summed up by Graham: “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, I think someone should blow the sick fuck out of his socks.”

That the Tooth Fairy is something more than a heartless villain to be apprehended is part of what makes Manhunter enduringly engaging, even 25 years after it was made. It’s easy to dismiss Mann’s film as all style and little substance (as some critics did at the time), but here, the style actually provides the substance.

Its distractingly loud music, a mixture of rock and synth tones that is quintessentially 80s, is used to occasionally startling effect, conveying an oppressive atmosphere of barely suppressed rage. This is exemplified in a scene where the Tooth Fairy, while sitting in his van, thinks he sees Reba in an amorous clinch with a fellow co-worker.

In a jealous fit, he reaches forward and tears back the vinyl on the van’s dashboard. As the pounding rhythm of The Prime Movers’ Strong As I Am churns in the background, the tearing vinyl sounds like the roar of a tiger. It’s a nerve jangling, striking use of sound effects and music.

In shooting Manhunter, Michael Mann was as meticulous and methodical as the film’s central character. He trimmed out the more excessive parts of Harris’ novel – the Tooth Fairy’s tattoos, which were designed but left out of the final cut, and a ridiculous moment where the killer eats a William Blake painting – and in order to get the performances he wanted, made his actors run through take after take. The brief conversation between Graham and Lecktor alone took two days to shoot.

This attention to detail ultimately took its toll, however.

Manhunter was shot almost entirely in chronological sequence, and by the time the final scenes were due to be filmed, much of the crew, exhausted and disgruntled, had packed up and gone home. This perhaps explains why, after a careful build-up, Manhunter’s climactic shoot-out feels rushed and perfunctory.

William Petersen later revealed that many of the gore effects in this sequence were improvised by Mann himself. If you look closely, you can see little jets of blood being sprayed on to the Tooth Fairy’s body from a crewmember lurking just outside the frame.

Its faltering conclusion aside, Manhunter still stands up as a classic procedural thriller. It’s an example of a film that uses cinematography, music and unusual performances rather than bloodshed to unsettle the viewer. It’s a film about a cop catching a killer, but in the hands of Michael Mann and his filmmakers, becomes something much more deep and unusual.

No other film since Michael Powell’s infamous Peeping Tom has dealt so thoroughly with the theme of voyeurism, and the two films share other parallels, too. Both deal with a film-obsessed killer who remains sympathetic in spite of his crimes, who later strikes up a brief, doomed relationship with an innocent young girl.

Like Peeping Tom, it took some time before Manhunter’s brilliance was recognised. The subsequent adaptations of Thomas Harris’ novels would gradually become more violent and sensational as the years went on, and this devolution is reflected in Brett Ratner’s faithful yet thuddingly obvious adaptation of Red Dragon.

The elements of the book gently implied by Michael Mann are explicit in Ratner’s film. Exactly what the Tooth Fairy does with tiny pieces of broken mirrors, for example, is explored in grim detail in Red Dragon. In Manhunter, it’s illustrated in one sequence, with Will Graham’s poetic line, “I see myself accepted, and loved, in the silver mirrors of your eyes,” along with this surreal, beautiful shot:

This scene sums up everything that is brilliant about Manhunter – it tells a familiar story, but finds unfamiliar means to tell it. Its plot is simple, but the film reveals layers of complexity that a gorier, faster-paced film might overlook.

Michael Mann has gone on to make some great films since, but he has yet to better this lean, disturbing 80s thriller.

You can rent or buy Manhunter on Blu-ray at Blockbuster.co.uk.

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This review contains spoilers.

While across the pond, zombies are allegedly the new vampires, closer to home, it seems ghosts are the supernatural successors to the navel gazing undead, as BBC Three’s latest original drama, The Fades, kicked into life.

A much-heralded co-production with BBC America, writer Jack Thorne (Skins, This is England) originally pitched The Fades as “a cross between Freaks And Geeks and Ghostbusters.” Given that, between them, those two franchises gave the world its first glimpse of, among others, James Franco, Seth Rogen, Busy Phillips and the all-conquering humour of Judd Apatow, and made superstars of Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd respectively, that’s setting the bar stratospherically high.

Admittedly, that bar was set five years ago, and clearly the show has clearly undergone some fine-tuning since then – angsty teens versus the world of the supernatural is so mid-90s, and died with the demise of one Buffy Summers. Lucky then, that rather than focus too much on the angst, Thorne has come up with an altogether darker prospect – think Supernatural in Grimsby on downers, and you’re some way there.

Not that this is a bad thing – far from it. The premiere episode was surprisingly engrossing, peppered with what could be some very interesting concepts. This is a reality where death is not quite so straightforward as Highway To Heaven would have you believe. In the world of The Fades, life is a bitch, and “Death is similarly crap.” There’s no white light, no fanfare, definitely no long lost relatives, and for more than a few, no anything at all.

Even the afterlife is depressing in The Fades. With “ascension” to a better place essentially a lottery, the town is teeming with dead people with nothing to do but a spot of parkour. And it’s into this world that 18-year-old Paul – nerdy, highly strung bed-wetter – is unwillingly thrown, after a chance encounter in an abandoned shopping centre.

Okay, so there might be a little angst, but it’s in no way gratuitous, mostly because there’s no such thing as gratuitous angst when you’re an 18-year-old bed wetter. That encounter - with a ghost, and a buster - leads to the revelation that not only is Paul one of the few who can see the ghosts, or fades, as they’re known, but that he’s psychic as well. 

As is always the way with these things, there’s a big bad a-coming, and only a handful of plucky souls able to fight it. Paul, like it or not, is about to become one of them, which unfortunately for him and his untamable bladder means the constant threat of, if not actual, death. Two members of the ghostbusters have already died, and there were only three to begin with.

Given that one of the deceased busters was a priest with a healing touch, clearly this thing means business. Which leaves the fate of the world in the hands of a bed wetter and a one-eyed man. Surely those are odds even the mighty Buffy would have baulked at.

If nothing else, it’ll be a good fight. The creepy eyeball/tongue interface was without doubt one of the better horror inspired moments of the episode. And there were a few – although not as gory as they could have been, the horror elements were well placed and reasonably effective. 

As you’ve no doubt heard, premiere episodes are extremely tricky things to review. Stories and characters are brand new, and a series always needs a few weeks to bed down. Let’s not forget Supernatural was atrocious for at least a dozen episodes before it settled into the kickass show we can’t live without twelve weeks out of the year.

Having said that, what started off with a run of the mill horror convention, quickly became something far more interesting. Yes, the big bad/accidental hero/plucky band of warriors is well trodden ground, but the conceit – that death itself will cause the end of the world, all the while avoiding any religious implications at all – is nothing if not refreshing. 

Added to this the incredibly well written script, just the right side of self-referencing, with some excellently deployed Matrix quotes, and the darkly lit, atmospheric direction, and what you have is a show filled with possibilities. But the real revelation here is Iain De Caestecker (16 Years Of Alcohol), who plays the angsty psychic teen. Engaging and engrossing from the start, this is perhaps the best casting decision the BBC has made in a very long time. Particularly when you consider that this is a channel that still gives Will Mellor work. 

So, a promising start for the UK/US co-production – if you ignore the blatant rip off of The Gentlemen from Buffy, for the look of the big bad – and if they keep this up, I just might be tuning in a lot...

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There’s not too long to go now on the shoot of Christopher Nolan’s third and final Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. And just a few days ago, Gary Oldman, whilst doing the promotional rounds for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, affirmed the lengths that were gone to in order to keep the ending of the film a surprise.

That secrecy has also been confirmed by Frederick Z Roche, a boom operator on the film, and also a man with an active Twitter account. On that account, he’s been slipping out one or two details of The Dark Knight Rises, too, with the most interesting Tweet reading thus:

“#thedarkknightrises technical info: The ending sequence is soo secret that only 5 (Includ Nolan) know it and will be done completely in vfx.”

Appreciating that there are umpteen things that could be read into a single Tweet, there’s nonetheless something quite interesting about the VFX comment. After all, the Nolan Batman films have tempered their use of CG wherever possible, although that’s not always the same thing as VFX.

It’s being interpreted in some places as suggesting that Nolan is using CG for his finale, though, but we’d argue that even if he is, the man has surely proven over the past decade that he knows exactly what he’s doing.

Roche has also revealed that the shoot of the film has moved onto interior scenes (which explains the sudden lack of set photos appearing online!), with the batcave sequences being shot at MGM Studios in Los Angeles.

You can find Roche’s Twitter feed here, and Latino Review, which alerted us to the story, here.

Read all that's known about The Dark Knight Rises here.

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Shooting on The Expendables 2 starts in just a few weeks’ time, with the cast and crew of the film heading off to Eastern Europe, just in time for a nice, cold winter.

Earlier this week, the cast list grew again, with the addition of Liam Hemsworth to the film. We also learned that Taylor Lautner had turned it down, which, off the back of his performance in the new movie Abduction, might have been a bullet that The Expendables wisely dodged.

Definitely joining the movie, though, is Scott Adkins.

Adkins is no slouch when it comes to his martial arts, and amongst his film credits are Undisputed II, Undisputed III, The Bourne Ultimatum, X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Pink Panther. Amongst his television credits? You might just have seen him in Holby City and EastEnders. Not many members of The Expendables crew can say that.

Adkins joins a cast that includes Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundgren, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis, Jason Statham, Jean Claude Van Damme, Chuck Norris and Terry Crews. And The Expendables 2 arrives next August.

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This one looks quite interesting. Man On A Ledge is a film about a man who is standing on the ledge right up at the top of a tall building. That man us played by Sam Worthington. Meanwhile, there’s a police hostage negotiator who’s trying to talk him down. That negotiator is played by Elizabeth Banks.

The film’s cast is rounded out by Jamie Bells, Kyra Sedgwick, Ed Harris, Anthony Mackie and Edward Burns, and currently, it’s scheduled for release in the US next January.

We don’t know too much more about the film (although a January release slot rarely bodes too well), but we do have the first poster we’ve seen for it, which has popped up over at Moviefone. Not a bad piece of work, either…

Moviefone

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Off the back of the success of both Unknown and Taken, Liam Neeson is increasingly becoming the go-to actor for the lead in a good action thriller. Could The Grey continue his winning streak?

At the very least, off the back of this first trailer for the film, you’d have to say he looks bloody cold. And he looks angry again, which bodes well for the movie’s box office performance. Heck, it looks like he’s auditioning for Wolverine at one point.

The trailer is a bit muddled, though, We know that it’s a movie about survivors of a plane crash. We know that wolves have their eyes on said survivors. We know that Liam looks like he could, and probably will, kick their ass.

Perhaps most promisingly, it’s Joe Carnahan directing, a man who didn’t get enough credit for some of the terrific action sequences in The A-Team.

The movie is scheduled for release in late January in the US. We can’t find a UK release for the movie at the moment, but we’d imagine it’ll be kept close to its American debut.

Here’s the trailer...

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