Mike the Knight

Yip, Sparkie, Evie, Mike, Squirt, Fernando, Queen Martha and Yap.

Mike the Knight is a children's animated series about the adventures of Mike the Knight, a young loner on a crusade to champion the cause of the innocent, the helpless, the powerless, in a world of criminals who operate above the law.

No, wait; that's Michael Knight.

Mike the Knight is a trainee knight (false advertising, right there) who is apparently too young to be allowed a sword and instead is armed with an expanding shield and a sword hilt which is attached to a random thing (a feather, a scroll, a candle, a handle) that is inevitably exactly what he needs to make good at the end of the episode. Each episode, he goes on adventures with his friends, invariably acts like a complete douchebag, then declares it is 'time to be a knight and do it right!' and makes amends for his dickish behaviour.

Think I'm exaggerating? In one episode he persuades his friend Trolly to take part in a tournament - with no training and crappy equipment - just so that he has someone to beat and can therefore 'win'. In another, he offers to take his dragon friend Squirt on his own adventure, but keeps showboating and hogging the glory while trying to shoehorn Squirt into a knightly (rather than dragonly) adventure.

In fairness, he always makes amends and feels bad when he realises that he's being a dick, but you'd think eventually he might learn to be more mindful of his actions.

Marvel's Agents of SHEILD - Season 2: Shadows

The cast of Season 2, who are apparently flat-sharing with the Tomorrow People.

It's a new dawn, it's a new day. SHIELD is in hiding, and in order to operate they need to get their hands on sufficient stealth technology to do so under the radar; to become ghosts, as Director Coulson declares. They also need people - so far their recruitment programme appears to have at best a 50% survival rate - and they need new tricks if they are to survive the even weirder world that is now throwing the Absorbing Man at them from day one.

Teaming up with four prospective agents (a group of mercenaries led by discarding stunt cast Lucy Lawless), the SHIELD remnant goes after the Absorbing Man - a psychopathic assassin who can absorb the properties of any substance he touches - as he tries to steal the Obelisk, an artefact seized from Hydra by the SSR (a cameo from Hayley Atwell, Neal McDonough and Kenneth Choi was a brief but welcome sight.)

More importantly, Skye has found time to get a sassy new do and Ward is growing a manly beard in confinement.

Season 1 of Agents of SHIELD really grew on me as it went on, but the shake-up forced on the series by Winter Soldier means that Season 2 is pitching a brand new game; less espionage procedural and more A-Team in darker suits. One thing I hoped that they would address was the underuse of the adorkable lab double act Fitz and Simmons, and they do; by having Fitz - last heard of in a coma - suffering from brain damage that has robbed him of his genius and putting Simmons on a bus.

You're not starting well, Agents of SHIELD. Elizabeth Henstridge and Iain de Caestecker are still in the cast shot above, so I have some hope that they might make a comeback, but I'm reviewing episode 1 and at present I am unhappy with this direction.

Also, I want them to drop Ward into a very deep hole, not for throwing FitzSimmons out of the bus (the in-series bus, which is to say their plane, rather than the figurative bus that Simmons was put on such that she only appeared as a passive hallucination in this episode) last season, but because then they can stop trying to make me give a crap about his tortured soul and Skye's broken heart or what the fuck ever. It's not a pairing I ever saw any chemistry in (de Caestecker's betrayed bromance face was more heartbreaking than anything Chloe Bennett ever managed) and I am so done with it. I guess the world thinks otherwise.

'Shadows' suffers from trying to introduce a lot of new characters and then make us care that they are in peril. Overall, it felt like there was too little of established characters like Antoine Triplett, Melinda May and even Coulson, in favour of people who weren't even going to make it through the episode.

I'm interested to see where they go from here, and what they do with the concept, but 'Shadows' has basically spent my goodwill credit.

Constantine

Maybe I'm spoiled on crossovers by the MCU, but I kind of want to see him
show up in Arrow's Starling City, or maybe Gotham; just to fuck with people.

About a decade ago, I went to see the film Constantine with my dad. It was... okay, but with Keanu Reeves in the lead, it wasn't very John Constantine. Now, I know only a little about the character, but it's obvious from the start that the new TV version, played by Matt Ryan, is a better adaptation. For starters, he's actually British, and kind of aggressively so. Maybe it's in the mind, but it strikes me that there's a particular kind of swagger that goes with all the Anglo Saxon swearing and Reeves didn't have it.

That being said, this Constantine is probably a little too clean, a little too heroic. He's a TV Constantine for a TV series, which actually makes him a decent match for the version I've encountered drifting in and out of Neil Gaiman's work in the Vertigo* imprint, but not quite as edgy as he is in his own title. He's rough around the edges, blunt as a hammer to the knees, but pretty clearly good, when the chips are down. He also doesn't smoke, but that's kind of unavoidable; a matter of regulations.

Within this limitation, however, Ryan is impressive. The supporting cast lacks a certain oomph, and outside of namedrops for fans of the comics none are truly memorable. Lucy Griffiths as the stock occult newbie is pretty, but bland, and I'm not surprised that she was dropped from the rest of the series, as the character brought nothing substantial to the table (her supernatural abilities notwithstanding; anyone could have those as the plot demands.)

The show plays out as something between a supernatural police procedural and The Surliest Hobo, but that's the pilot; it will be interesting to see how they go from here.

* Not Dark Horse at all; I am the world's worst comic nerd. I'm like an aspiring comic nerd; it's a sad state of affairs really.

Doctor Who - Flatline

I love these Radio Times posters.

"You are monsters! That is the role you seem determined to play, so it seems that I must play mine – The man that stops the monsters."

Landing on Earth, the Doctor and Clara encounter a problem. The TARDIS is losing its external dimensions, and as the outer shell becomes smaller, so do the doors. With the Doctor trapped inside, it's up to Clara to lead the investigation; to find out what is happening to all the missing people on the estate where they have landed, and to learn who is responsible for the rash of graffiti in the area. It's up to Clara to be the Doctor, with all that that entails.

The Good

• This episode does a lot to redress some of the imbalance in the preceding stories between Clara and the Doctor. By confining the Doctor to the TARDIS, Clara is left in the lead, and without the Doctor's usual brusqueness to counter, finds his high-handedness coming quite naturally to her. 'Grow your own conscience' yourself, Clara.
• The satirical element of the story, the invisible killers and victims representing the 'invisible' victims of class-based social segregation, is more than usually effective.
• The story explores the Doctor's method - his deception, his tendency to assume control of a situation - and by so doing it actually restores some of his standing in the series.
• The Twodis was kind of adorable.
• Conversely, the way that the Boneless kill is really pretty horrifying.

The Doctor has a small problem.

The Bad

• Doctor Who once more revisits old ground with an enemy beyond perception, and the Boneless are too alien to have anything very new about them beyond their gimmick.

The Ugly

• I still don't like Clara, even if I understand her better.

Theorising

• Missy has a particular interest in Clara, claiming to have 'chosen' her. Is she chasing the Doctor's timeline in the same way as Simeon/the Great Intelligence and Clara herself?

Top Quotes

• Doctor: Could you not just let me enjoy this moment of not knowing something? I mean, it happens so rarely.
• Doctor: Congratulations. Lying is a vital survival skill. And a terrible habit.
• Doctor: It’s true that people with hope tend to run faster, whereas people who think they’re doomed …
  Clara: Dawdle. End up dead.
  Doctor: So that’s what I sound like?
• Doctor: They may not even know that they’re hurting us.
  Clara: Do you really believe that?
  Doctor: No, I really hope that. It would make a nice change, wouldn’t it?
• Doctor: On balance?
  Clara: Yeah. That's how you think, isn't it?
  The Doctor: Largely so other people don't have to.
• Clara: I was the Doctor and I was good.
  Doctor: You were an exceptional Doctor, Clara.
  Clara: Thank you.
  Doctor: Goodness had nothing to do with it.

The Twelfth Doctor
The Twelfth Doctor is both excited and frustrated by things he doesn't understand. 

The Verdict
Flatline has some effective moment and an honestly horrific conceit. The Boneless are pure monster of the week; that's no bad thing, but they aren't quite distinct enough from other unseen killers to make this episode truly stand out. The development of Clara into a character that I get, but really dislike, continues. I hope that I'm not supposed to like her, because I suspect that that will really screw up the finale for me.

6/10

Radio Times Doctor Who posters

It turns out that the Radio Times has been producing a poster for each episode of the latest Doctor Who series/season, and they are gorgeous.

You can see the complete set on their site here and I know what I'm using for episode pics from now on.

The Age of Ultron teaser has sold me... on the MCU Civil War

So, as I was a little slow in finding out, the official teaser trailer for Avengers 2 (in the UK... what? Avengers Reassemble?) is now online. I am going to talk about it and the whole 'MCU are doing Civil War' bit, so if you're avoiding all spoilers... well, I sort of blew it already mentioning Civil War didn't I, but definitely don't read further, and if you do then don't blame me.

Okay, so the obvious: That's some solid epic right there. Lots to intrigue and tantalise, from James Spader's nigh-seductive* Ultron voiceover to Hulkbuster suits and some hardcore emoting from Elizabeth Olsen, hinting that maybe the big teen contract went to the wrong sisters. And our favourites are all there, and apparently being served; Cap kicking in doors, Stark and his armour, Hulk and Black Widow having a moment, Hawkeye... in a forest; Thor dropping his hammer. There's a creepy version of an old Disney song.

And everyone is talking about that, so I want to focus on something this sold to me personally.

I've never being keen on the idea of Civil War; I'd not yet seen a speculative path from Iron Man 3 to a Civil War storyline that didn't basically involve Tony Stark performing a complete 180-heel turn or Pepper getting shoved in the fridge.

Now I see a path. After that trailer, I can see exactly how they can do this, and how it could really, really work.

It's been speculated that the Hulkbuster is not intended to bring down the Hulk, just slow him down so that he can be put on the naughty step if he kicks off (also that it's Ultron in the Hulkbuster, but it looked like Iron Man's helmet in there to me.) If that's the case, and especially if the suit was designed at Banner's request (look at him in the shot inside the jet, all curled up and woobie, and tell me he isn't having some control issues again,) then that's the first step on Stark's path to feeling that heroes need to be policed. Add in Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch running around with Ultron and the seeds of registration are there.

There's an army of quasi-Iron Man drones in the trailer, either forming Ultron's army or being crushed by... I'm not sure if it's an early version of his body or another drone or suit he's puppeting; puppetry being a pretty clear theme. Stark also talks about the end of the path that he started them on, and there are scenes of the Avengers raiding a kind of monastery and anonymous army types led by bearded Andy Serkis, so if the Avengers (perhaps in line with SHIELD Mk 2) have set themselves up as Earth's Hydra-hunters and it's going to go horribly wrong, that's another step towards Tony being more in favour of opening up and letting the government control things, as much so he doesn't have to as because he thinks that they should.

Finally, the broken shield. It's a corny bit (unless done very well) but it makes me suspect that Quicksilver and Scarlet With may be used to give a glimpse into a darkest timeline. If that were shown to Stark, it could again lead towards the Civil War.

The trailer for Avengers 2 definitely makes me want to see Avengers 2, but it has also taken me past a bump in the road that made me wonder if I'd still be watching MCU movies further along. Civil War is going to be rough, and that's right and proper, but I'm looking forward to seeing what they do with it.

*Description amended as more and more responses make it clear that the voiceover is in fact just plain seductive.

And then you found me

We present some highlights from the list of search terms which brought people to the Bad Movie Marathon:

• logan marshall green bites the bullett - I'm not sure what Steve McQueen did to deserve being bitten.
• dolph lundgren bad knees - That's super specific and I'm not sure why Dolph's knees, bad or otherwise, are of such interest.
• sex scene from amazons and gladiators - Seriously, dude, it is not worth it.
• why does kiefer sutherlands character in pompeii look confused when asked about the new emperor - He just woke up and saw where he was. He was like, 'man, did I agree to be in a film while high again.' Oh, wait; I think I'm thinking of Charlie Sheen in... everything*.
• b- movie ninja nymphs in europe - Is that, like, the continent, or the band?
• matthew broderick film about iguanas - Yep; that's your new tagline 1990s Godzilla. It's more than you deserve.
• captain america 1990 the pen of my aunt - I am right there with you, pal. "Vere is the pen of my aunt!"
• hammer films heaving bosoms - Okay, fair; I do have a heaving bosoms tag that is attached to virtually all the Hammer films I've covered.
• dolph lundgren penis - I fear I may have disappointed you, but look at his poor knees!
• the lost future 2010 sex scene in house - That is an oddly specific and not terribly good sex scene to be so interested in (but probably better than the one in Amazons and Gladiators, if only on account of it not being in Amazons and Gladiators.)
• whats the movie where the incest family eats embalmed bodies - That is in fact a completely fair description of Hemoglobin. No, it's not about vampires.
• very nasty naked erotic film votch - Again, I hope that I disappointed you with this search.
• gratuitous +sex+screw - What does adding 'screw' really add to the search, I wonder.
• movie blind man kills wife boat softcore - I'm not sure I've covered a film in which a blind man kills his wife boat. Wasn't that the plot of the AI pre-release ARG?
• shaw brothers films gratuitous sex scenes - We've not covered any Shaw Brothers films, with or without sex scenes.
• pictures of julie sand in movie warlock 2 - I think you mean Julian, unless I just crossed over into a gender-flipped dimension. The absence of searches for Dolly Lundgren's bad knees or ladyparts suggests that I haven't.
• gratuitous sex scenes shaw brothers - Seriously? What is the deal with this?

The Bad Movie Marathon - drawing in class acts (at one location, and under one name, or another) since 1998.

*I kid of course; Charlie Sheen hasn't come down in years.

Doctor Who - Mummy on the Orient Express

Sadly, not this.

This.

"Start the clock."

On the Orient Express (in Space), a mummy is stalking the passengers; a mummy that only its next victim can see, for the sixty-six seconds that they have left to live. Onto this doomed transport comes the Doctor and Clara, for one last hurrah. He's been invited before and he knows that it's a trap, but perhaps on this occasion, a little trap is just what the Doctor ordered.

The Good

• Lounge-style Queen!
• The Doctor has a wonderful, melancholy moment watching a picturesque black hole and reminiscing on the planets that it has consumed.
• The difference in reactions of the doomed - the academic who struggles to bargain, the old soldier who gives all he can - are well-played, although see 'the Ugly' for how it interacts with previous episodes.
• I really like the resolution on this one; it works really well, and isn't just a screwdriver ex machina.
• I particularly liked the way the Doctor uses his lie to Clara to trigger Maisie and lure the mummy.
• "You're relieved soldier." The Doctor reminds us that he is an officer.

The Bad

• The Orient Express... in space - that is, the train itself - is a slightly lazy, if gorgeous, piece of design in the mode of the Titanic of Voyage of the Damned.
• Any hope of the Eleventh Doctor tackling Osirans on the Orient Express in space in another medium are pretty much scotched.

Once again, this season proves a grave disappointment to the
colossal nerd in me.

The Ugly

• Given his lambasting of soldiers, the Doctor's attack on Captain Quell for 'having the fight knocked out of him' seems more than a little hypocritical, although the real ugliness only comes from the flaws of earlier episodes and the lazy way the series is creating conflict between the Doctor and Danny Pink.

Theorising

• 'Gus' has been working on this for a long time. It is not unreasonable to propose a link with Missy, although that throws a bit of a curve ball into her goals. Previously she's been a collector of the dead, not a studier of weapons.
• Alternatively, given his attempt to kill the Doctor, he might be a rival interest. The Foretold still has that connection with death.
• Clara's increasing anger at the Doctor's lies to her and ease in lying to Danny... I don't know if this is a good or bad thing in the scheme of it, but at least it is clearly deliberate. As much as she dubs herself his conscience, Clara is becoming more like the Doctor; is becoming in particular like this interpretation of the Doctor. It doesn't make her a likable character, but it is at least a choice, not a mistake; I'm pretty sure that the makers no longer want us to like her.

Top Quotes

The Radio Times poster for this episode.

• The Doctor: "You're doing it again... The smile; the sad smile. It's confusing. Two emotions at once, it's like you're malfunctioning."
• Clara: "It's not like I'm never going to see you again."
  The Doctor: "Isn't it?"
• Moorhouse: "In all the myths, conventional weapons have no effect on the Foretold. It's immortal, unstoppable, unkillable."
  Perkins: "Can we get a new expert?"
• Quell: "It turns out it's three. The amount of people who have to die before I stop looking the other way."
• The Doctor: "People with guns to their heads, they can not mourn. We do not have time to mourn."
• The Doctor: "Are you my mummy."
• Clara: "You knew this was dangerous."
  The Doctor: "I didn't know. I certainly hoped..."

The Twelfth Doctor
The complexity of the Twelfth Doctor's character is strongly played in this episode; the juxtaposition of his almost callous pragmatism towards the doomed and his willingness to take his place in the line on the gamble that he has enough information. I like this; I like my Doctors at least two dimensional.

The Verdict
Some have accused this of being fluff, but I really enjoyed it. It was a rollicking adventure peppered with some genuine feels (oh, Captain Quell; that's the kind of soldierness the Doctor has always been okay with and why I hate this forced conflict bullshit.) The humour was spot on, the Doctor just the right combination of intellectual curiosity, care and darkness, and the clear deliberation of the shift in Clara's character makes me like the writers more, if not the character.

8/10

The Maze Runner

Here we are. In a maze. Running. Surprisingly little of the film actually consists of this.

The Maze Runner is the latest teen novel sensation to get the big screen treatment. Far more in the model of The Hunger Games than Twilight, it is purposely closed about its world for the majority of its running time, with the protagonists as much in the dark as the viewer.

A boy, Thomas, wakes in an elevator cage and is thrust into the Glade, a pastoral idyll surrounded by a vast maze. Here, a community of amnesic boys scratch out a living based on three rules: 1) Do your part, 2) Never harm another glader, 3) Stay out of the maze. The last rule is broken only for the Runners, who map the maze in search of a way out. After Thomas's arrival, things start to change; a girl, Theresa, arrives and the community comes under attack, leaving no options but to escape... or die trying.

The Maze Runner is a tightly paced movie with a great deal to recommend it. Overall it is well-acted and beautifully designed. The characters are drawn in broad strokes - the leader, the visionary, the obligatory jerk, the kid, Thomas Brdie-Sangster does his super-serious thing again) - but well drawn. The maze is an astonishing piece of design and the film projects a convincing sense of its monumental scale. The Grievers are deeply horrible, without quite being nightmare fuel.

It's imperfect, and will be getting a more detailed write-up on the Bad Movie Marathon presently. In the early stages it is overly reliant on people being enigmatic arseholes to develop tension (seriously, how hard is it to say 'stay out of the maze because it seals at sunset and fills up with streaming death monsters', rather than just 'we don't leave the glade'?), and Theresa is made out to be super tough and feisty but is primarily useless (I hope that she becomes more pivotal at later points in the trilogy.)

A sequel based on the second book, The Scorch Trials, is planned for next year. If that is successful then the third book will doubtless be adapted in two parts.

And in bad movie land

The Bad Movie Marathon goes from strength to strength, with three semi-regular contributors and fifteen followers, some of whom I don't even know (hey, it's a lot for me).

Gotham - Pilot

Apparently, Jim Gordon is going to meet everyone who will ever be anyone in Gotham City in his first week on the job. This makes finding a concise cast image challenging, and also leads me to suspect that the entire thing will turn out to be a dream he's having after being shot, or because Leonardo DiCaprio is trying to rob his brain.

James 'Jim' Gordon is a war hero turned detective, an honest and idealistic man trying to make a difference in a city that can charitably described as not honest and idealistic. The murder of noted local philanthropists Thomas and Martha Wayne brings Jim and his partner, the pragmatically corrupt Harvey Bullock, into contact with the now orphaned Bruce Wayne and his butler, Alfred Pennyworth. During the investigation, they encounter junior mob boss Fish Moony, her lieutenant Oswald Cobblepot and her boss Carmine Falcone, and cross swords with major crimes detectives Montoya and Allen. They also meet a young girl named Ivy Pepper, who likes plants, and in the background is cat-loving young thief Selina Kyle.

And this is just episode 1!

So, Fox's Batman prequel is clearly going for volume on its cast. I didn't even mention above that the GCPD forensics guy is one Edward Nygma, or Gordon's society fiancee Barbara, whose independent wealth allows them to have a really swish apartment set and who it is hinted used to have a thing with Renee Montoya, because we don't have enough plots and backstory layered in. Fish Moony was also auditioning a comedian for her club; a Joker, if you will.

Some may ask - and indeed, some of my friends have asked - what can possibly be achieved in Gotham, when we know that the city will remain a cesspit of crime and corruption and that the Wayne's killer - who may or may not be Joe Chill - kind of has to wait for Batman? Surely all Gordon's efforts will be for naught, otherwise why would Batman need to happen?

My guess would be that the 'war' which Cobblepot warns of will be a big part of it. There are the rival mob factions, of course, with Falcone's growing weakness hinted at here, but modern Batman mythology is, thanks in large part to The Dark Knight and Arkham City concerned with the idea of the soul of Gotham. Whether Ra's al Ghul and the League of Shadows/Assassins will make an appearance or not, it seems likely that Jim Gordon's part in Gotham will be to make sure that some light survives in the heart of Gotham City; that the corruption which riddles Gotham doesn't utterly destroy it.

Won't somebody please think of the children!
Sadly, Selina is not wearing a top hat, but they are goggles. I'm not sure why
'Ivy Pepper' isn't Pamela Isley.

I suspect that a key part of this will be the origin stories of the various characters. Cobblepot and Nygma must be driven into their future roles, in the former case by hatred and injury, in the latter presumably by frustration, and I suspect that the soul of Harvey Bullock is not yet lost, but the real meat is likely to come from the three pictured above: Bruce Wayne has to live in the darkness, but not fall to it, while Ivy Pepper must become so disillusioned that she comes to see plants as better than people. Most promising, Selina has to walk the line; she has to despise the wealthy enough to become Catwoman, but retain the fundamental humanity that makes her Gotham's favourite anti-villain (if you subscribe to the theory that her enduring appeal is due to her fundamental humanity, rather than boobs and leather, and since Camren Bicondova is fifteen I sincerely hope the show will do.)

So, 'Pilot' was a strong opening which promises great things to come. It's got a lot of work to do, and it really needs to bring its A game every week given the need to fight against the negativity that the known outcomes bring with them, but it has solid potential.

Something Special

Ladies and gents, perhaps the bravest man in television.
No joke.

Something Special is another CBeebies show that has caught Arya's attention. Presented by Justin Fletcher and produced by former special educational needs teacher Allan Johnston, in association with the Makaton charity (which promotes the use of Makaton signing as a communication aid for chidren with learning and communication developmental difficulties). Running for more than a decade now, with some slight changes in format, it was created to promote inclusion as well as teaching and demonstrating Makaton.

Notably, veteran children's broadcaster Fletcher (also appearing on CBeebies in Justin's House and Gigglebiz) has absolutely thrown himself into the programme. He works closely on the show with children with a great range of physical and developmental disabilities, and post-Saville is basically one malicious law suit away from prison and lynching at any time. I think he's pretty awesome.

Each show has Justin interacting with children on location somewhere (ranging from a canoeing lake to the Manchester City stadium), and looking for three special things requested by Mr Tumble (Fletcher), a clown who lives in Tumbletown with a group of relatives and friends (all also Fletcher) and who sends pictures of the things Justin has to find in his spotty bag, which is transported by magic. It's actually kind of trippy, but amazing too.

When a special thing is being sought, it's shown on screen (not hidden or anything) and the audience encouraged in a short rhyme to 'wave or cheer' if they see it. Arya has learned to do so, despite the lack of an audible prompt.

Why the success or failure of the Ghostbuster's reboot will not stand or fall on the gender of the leads

This poster has one of the better cast shots, which
is why I used one from the sequel.
Also, one of the men on this poster isn't on that cast
list. If it was the black guy people might make
assumptions!

Okay, so my title is a bit of a gimme:  the success or failure of the Ghostbuster's reboot will not stand or fall on the gender of the leads because claiming that casting women in the main roles is 'feminazing a classic' or 'gynocentric' are as much pathetically transparent misogynist strawmen as claiming that 'women aren't as funny as men'. It's also a little disingenuous, because casting women to lead Hollywood movies sets one up for the gauntlet of a production and marketing machine that sees male stars as the only bankable assets. Any film in the action or science fiction genres that doesn't cast a 'name' male lead is taking a gamble that the studio won't royally bollocks its advertising and bury it in a release dead zone so that they can blame their predicted poor turn out on overall low ticket sales, but I for one don't think that it's a gamble that it's wrong to take.

Also, this is not to say that the casting of the leads can't sink the film, just that it won't be because they're women. Casting the wrong women will kill a film as surely as casting the wrong men, but given that the script is unwritten, anyone claiming that casting a woman in purely hypothetical role X will ruin the movie since role X is clearly intended for a male actor (maybe that should be role Y?) is either the greatest prophet since Nostradamus* or talking out of their arse.

So, and working purely from my own NSHO, what are the factors on which Ghostbusters not-actually-3 will sink or swim?

To start with, what were the keys to the success of the original? To understand that, it helps to see that the film almost never happened at all; at least not the way it ended up.

Dan Ackroyd produced the first super-high concept version of the script as a vehicle for himself and John Belushi. Ivan Reitman saw the impracticality of the script and Ackroyd worked with Harold Ramis to ground the concept in the present day. The death of John Belushi led to Bill Murray being brought in, with Ramis - only an occasional actor - and Ackroyd as the scientific members of the Ghostbusters, and Ernie Hudson rounding out the crew as the straight man. Sigourney Weaver was the serious acting talent and Rick Moranis was annoying, but in a role that called for him to be so. The song 'Ghostbusters' was a sensation, despite not being very good on a musical level.

The result was almost a perfect storm of action, special effects and humour, making it hard to pin down why the film worked. There is no better illustration of this illusive quality than Ghostbusters II, which reunited the same team, but failed to please on the same level. Nevertheless, there was enough residual energy for The Real Ghostbusters to run another two years and Extreme Ghostbusters to... well, get made in the first place, and for people to feel a massively proprietorial affection for the original movie on its 30th anniversary**.

Perhaps the key lesson to learn from GII is that 'more of the same' is unlikely to cut it. A new Ghostbusters film is going to have to do something new. Nevertheless, its commercial success confirmed the affection for the original cast and characters. Obviously, the longed-for sequel with the original cast starring is never going to happen now, with the death of Harold Ramis, but if anything is to be done, the public - or at least vocal sections of it - will expect some serious cameos.

With that in mind, a hard reboot (as of 10/10/14 the confirmed direction for Paul Feig's female-led offering) is probably the thing most likely to kill the film. It's not definite, but it essentially squanders any nostalgic loyalty to the franchise and brings the commercial future of the movie down to the here and now.

Wow; when I say it like that it feels like a good thing, but the danger is that the association, once no longer a blessing, will become a bane. In addition to losing the resentful fans of the older film, there is an automatic skepticism of a remake/reboot to overcome. It's a shame, because done right the positive association with the original Ghostbusters would have been a good way to launch a female-led sequel with a boost to take it past Hollywood's usually gynophobia. As it is, there is every chance that the reboot factor will kill the film before a single frame hits the digital medium and idiots around the world will say: "See; we told you women weren't funny."

In an interview with Rolling Stone***, Feig said the following:

1. "My favorite thing to do is work with funny women. I was like, what if it was an all-female cast? If they were all women? Suddenly, my mind kind of exploded: that would be really fun,"
2. "I love the first one so much, I don't want to do anything to ruin the memory of that. So it just felt like, let's just restart it because then we can have new dynamics. I want the technology to be even cooler. I want it to be really scary, and I want it to happen in our world today that hasn't gone through it so it's like, oh my God what's going on?"

On the first point: On a high concept like Ghostbusters, I can't help but feel that this is a bad reason to fix on an all-female cast from the get-go. Maybe it will work, maybe it won't, but don't you want to see what's in the script first? Still, fuck it; if that's how you roll as a director maybe that's just what's going to bring out your best work, and if you're working with a writer you know writes those parts well (I'm not really familiar with Feig's collaborations with Katie Dippold, but clearly they feel they work well as a team) then go for it.

On the second... I don't think that anything in that want list couldn't be done with a 'new generation' sequel, except wanting the world to be a clean slate, and remember how I was saying of GII that it turns out more of the same isn't what people wanted then? I'm not convinced that it's what is wanted now. For fans of the old, it's a do-over of something that didn't need to be done over, and from the perspective of the project as a new film, relaunching just means that you're retreading old ground instead of making your own mark.

There exists a Ghostbusters film about the supernatural being forced into the public perception; there exists a Ghostbusters film about the world trying to deny it. Why not have this film be about a world that thinks it's ready for the next Gozer, the next Vigo? Hell, why not go balls to the wall and use the goodwill of a Ghostbusters project to make Ackroyd's original concept?

Ghostbusters hit the perfect combination of writing, cast and direction, in part from the combination of Bill Murray's improvisational performance and Ramis and Ackroyd's investment in their own script, which allows them to project Egon and Ray's total commitment to the high concepts of the movie which would otherwise seem laughable. The absence of anyone as utterly involved in the movie as Ackroyd was is likely to hurt the film, and the chances of pulling together an ensemble as great as the original line-up is slim, not because the female performers aren't out there - or, indeed, the male performers to pull off a reboot - but because the team-up in Ghostbusters was relatively untried, thus bringing in no preconceptions outside of Murray and Ackroyd's work on Saturday Night Live, and that it worked as well as it did a matter of ineffable alchemy. 

No producer can cast for the ineffable, as much as they might try. In other words, it is possible that such a cast could be pulled together for a rebooted Ghostbusters, but you couldn't do it a-purpose.

Ultimately, the film's success will depend on a multitude of factors, and its commercial and artistic success may vary wildly. For my money, the reboot is the greatest reason for skepticism, but I think that commercially that is going to end up shackled to an all female cast like an anvil.

* An attempt to do a prophet/profit pun fell down based on the fact that I don't know who posts obscene profits these days.
** I saw it at the cinema; I'm so old.
*** Rolling Stone online, http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/new-ghostbusters-film-will-be-series-reboot-20141009; get me, citing sources like some kind of professional.

Doctor Who - Kill the Moon

Lunar landscape shots; always a favourite.

"Why have you got all these nuclear bombs? No no no, easier question. What’s wrong with my yoyo?"

Education is a balancing act these days between hammering in facts and protecting the delicate sensibilities of the young and tactless so that you don't end up producing a generation of ill-informed neurotics. When one of her pupils is crashed into near-depression by the Doctor's dismissive attitude, Clara feels it incumbent on her to rectify the situation. Instead of an apology, however, the Doctor serves up a trip to the moon, which naturally leads to deadly danger.

The Good

• The gravity question was introduced in such a way that kids who get science can feel clever without overdoing it.
• The Doctor's insistence that humanity make its own choice was one of his stronger character moments of the season.

The Bad

• The 'we have forty-five minutes to decide' at the start was a flat push for a sense of real time.
• Apparently, as the moon creature approaches term it spontaneously generates mass. I would have accepted a bad science explanation but there was no explanation.
• There were shades of 'The Beast Below' in the moon creature.
• Clara's 'I hate you' speech would have had a lot more weight without 'don’t you dare lump me in with the rest of all the little humans that you think are so tiny and silly and predictable'. It turns a valid point about the Doctor's high-handedness into a statement that she is better than everyone else.

The Ugly

• Spider-germ, spider-germ! Freaks me out to no end! It wasn't too bad, as the CGI was fairly obvious, but why have all those cobwebs and legs and shit for something that isn't a spider if not deliberately to freak out the arachnophobes. Also, points off for not even mentioning the Eight-Legs of Metabelis III (famed blue planet of the Actaeon Galaxy).

Theorising

• Not much to theorise over for this one, unless Missy is the moon beast. That would be kinda cool, even if it didn't make any sense.

Top Quotes

• Courtney: One small thing for a thing. One enormous thing for a thingie-thing.
  Lundvik: So much for history.
• Doctor: She’s fine. What are you, thirty five?
  Courtney: Fifteen.
• Clara: How can the moon die, though?
  Doctor: Everything does, sooner or later.
• Doctor: Listen. We went to dinner in Berlin in 1937, right? We didn’t nip out after pudding and kill Hitler. I’ve never killed Hitler and you wouldn’t expect me to kill Hitler.
• Clara: When did you get to become so wise?
  Danny: Same as anyone else, I had a really bad day.

The Twelfth Doctor
Clara's lambasting of the Doctor for asking her to make a decision is fairly typical of both this Doctor/Companion relationship and the show's recent direction. It was a harsh thing for the Doctor to do, but for a pivotal and undecided moment in human history, it felt like the right thing. Perhaps it was supposed to be another sign that the Doctor wants to vanish into the shadows of history, but it was also the only thing to do without imposing his alien will on the entire Earth. Even if he knew that the people below would be so scared that they would choose 'wrong', it had to be an incontrovertibly human decision to override that call. It's a shame, and more so because Clara's actual response is so 'me, me, me', when this is one of his few moments of moral authority in the series so far.

I know I keep coming back to this, but I think it is important that the Doctor stands as a figure of moral authority. He can do pretty much anything he likes given his intellect and the TARDIS, so it is only his morality that stands between him and the Master or the Valeyard. If that is in question, the show is in trouble.

The Verdict
'Kill the Moon' has some good moments, but overall is one of the weaker episodes of the series so far, and in particular Clara's final rant is likely to further anger the sizable anti-Clara faction in the audience. Just as the banter between Clara and Twelve is lovely when it works, when it doesn't it becomes truly aggravating.

5/10

American Hustle

The hair! The clothes! The hair!

Irving Rosenfeld (Bale) is a jobbing conman who has worked his way up from the bottom of the pack after seeing his honest father ground down by bad people. He hits gold when he meets Sydney Prosser (Adams), a dancer whose turn as English aristocrat Lady Edith Greensly allows the pair to pull off increasingly high profile art and loan scams. Their life is complicated by Rosenfeld's estranged wife Rosalyn (Lawrence), who holds custody of their son over him, and then further when FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Cooper) catches them in a scam and ropes them in to help him get more arrests in exchange for immunity.

When the original operation offers the chance to net first Mayor Carmine Polito (Renner), then members of Congress and the Senate and a substantial mob operation represented by Victor Tellegio (Robert De Niro), Richie starts to lose control. Obsessed with his own glory as an agent, and with 'Lady Edith', his growing ambitions threaten to spiral the scam into something that can not survive its own weight. With Irving's growing admiration for and friendship with Polito and Rosalyn's relationship with a mobster, the stage is set for disaster, or for the con of the century.

American Hustle is loosely based on the real-life Abscam operation conducted by the FBI in the late 70s and early 80s, but that's mostly background. The dramatic core of the film is the relationships between the protagonists, both professional and personal, and the lies that they tell to each other and themselves. The lies in this movie are almost characters in their own right, in particular the big one, the scam that begins with an attempt to hook an art fraudster and grows into a monster than can not be tamed. "No more fake shit," Prosser pants in her entirely false English accent while deflecting DiMaso's advances in a nightclub toilet cubicle. That's the quintessence of the movie, right there; lies, sex and squalid glamour.

Renner's hair in this movie can only truly be appreciated in
profile.

The script and story are good, but the film really triumphs on the strength of its look and its cast. The faded glamour of the 70s/80s divide is everywhere. Bright clothes clash with a grimy backdrop, the collapsing promise of the American dream as elaborate and unconvincing a pretense as Rosenfeld's extraordinary comb-over. The cast put in note-perfect performances as slightly grotesque versions of the real figures involved in Abscam, and every aspect of the production design evokes the era as something extraordinary and almost alien to a modern eye.

American Hustle is not a tightly-plotted scam picture in the mould of The Sting or Ocean's Eleven; the Abscam plot is more of a bar on which to hang the personal drama, and while there are twists they are not the point. It's a film about lies and love and above all about what is fake and what - if anything - is real, and a damn good film at that.

Almost Human

Karl Urban's second toughest cop character.

Another of those cancelled shows, Almost Human had the Bad Robot/JJ Abrams factor going for it, but that didn't save Believe either.

In the not-too-distant future of Almost Human, a rising tide of lawlessness has led the police to deploy military androids - the MX series - alongside human officers, acting as a combination of mobile database, crime lab, lie detector and heavy fire support. John Kennex (Karl Urban) is a somewhat maverick cop who doesn't like 'synthetics', having been abandoned after a pair of MXs deemed the chances of rescuing his partner negligible and prioritised other officers in distress. Refusing to work with an MX, he is partnered with Dorian (Michael Ealy), a DRN series android designed to be much more human and to operate as a true detective in full partnership.

The resulting show is a combination of mismatched buddy cop narrative and techno-thriller, with each episode revolving around a speculative technology or use of current technology (as well as androids, the show uses synthetic organs, smart homes, self-guiding bullets and designer drugs, among others) and the case being cracked by a combination of Kennex's instinct and experience and Dorian's analytical abilities.

The core relationship between the gruff, macho Kennex and the soft-spoken, sensitive Dorian is effective, and Dorian's attempts to persuade Kennex to open up are never pushed to the point of becoming annoying or uncomfortable. The supporting characters, including the no-nonsense Captain Maldonato (Lili Taylor), genetically-engineered Detective Stahl (Minkha Kelly as the love interest who is literally too good for Kennex) and antisocial tehcnical genius Rudy (Mackenzie Crook) are also well used, although rival tough-guy Detective Paul (Michael Irby) is a bit lost in the ensemble.

Once again, it's a shame to have lost this one. The concepts were interesting, the acting good and there were plenty of teasers to what might have been to come.

The 100

The 100 - too stupid to live, too cute to die.

The 100 is the CW's big-budget, post-apocalyptic tale of cute teenagers sent down from a space station and struggling to survive the rigours of Earth, 97 years after a nuclear holocaust.

The high concept is that, due to the tight rationing needs of the Ark - a space station made up of assorted individual stations that were combined after the war cut them off from the ground - all crime carries a death sentence, but for those under 18 the sentence is commuted... until their 18th birthday. With resources running out, 100 young offenders are sent to Earth to see if the surface is survivable, while on the Ark a political struggle threatens to tear apart all that is left of humanity.

I call it 'Planet of the Hunger Flies'.

The 100 crash land miles from their target point, an old FEMA supply station on Mount Weather, although a quirk of the apocalypse means that where they actually land looks more like British Columbia than Virginia (because after the nuclear winter, the Earth's surface will resemble more affordable filming locations).

The key players on the ground are the rival natural leaders Clarke Griffin, an idealist, and Bellamy Blake, a pragmatist, reckless daredevil Finn, Bellamy's hot but useless sister Octavia, Wells Jaha, the son of Ark's chancellor, and nerd bros Jasper and Monty. On the Ark, Wells' father and Clarke's mother are joined by the ruthless Kane, worker's champion Diana Sydney and hot young technician Raven (who later ends up dirtside with all the other hot young things.)

What the show does surprisingly well is mess with your expectations regarding its characters. At the start of the show, Clarke and her mother, Abby, are the obvious moral cores of their respective groups. Bellamy is an anarchist opportunist and primary antagonist, mirrored by the authoritarian Kane, Octavia is too stupid to live, Finn is a chancer and Monty and Jasper are comic relief.

As the show progresses and needs must, it is Finn and Octavia who emerge as the truly moral characters, with both Bellamy and Clarke sacrificing integrity to perceived necessity in the fact of attacks by 'Grounders', a human culture living on Earth since the war. Meanwhile Abby's flaws are revealed and both Kane and Bellamy are revealed to have compelling and sympathetic reasons for their actions, with Kane in particular emerging as one of the strongest and most sympathetic characters in the series.

The series thrives on a continuing sense of peril, with the characters rarely allowed breathing room. The Ark bounces from disaster to disaster, first as Kane tries to secure a cull of the population, then as - with direct parallels to the Titanic - it is revealed that there is only enough space to evacuate some of the remaining population to the ground. Meanwhile, on the ground, each week sees more of the kids killed, by grounders, poison or each other; it's brutal as anything (the first episode of Season 2 has the title 'The 48'), and sometimes surprising.

For all my snark above, I've enjoyed the first season of The 100 a lot, and I'm looking forward to the second, since for once a series I've got into has actually been renewed.

Doctor Who - The Caretaker

There's a hilarious caption for this, I'm sure of it...

"Yes, John Smith's the name, but here's the thing. Most people just call me the Doctor."

Clara is (more or less) happily living two lives. In one, she is the Doctor's companion in his travels through time and space; in the other, she is a regular English teacher at Coal Hill School and dating Danny Pink, maths teacher and sensitive ex-soldier. She is very keen to keep these two lives separate, but they are about to collide as the Doctor goes undercover as the temporary caretaker at Coal Hill.

The Good

• Once again, there is some good badinage between the Doctor and Clara.
• Samuel Anderson as Danny Pink maintains a stalwart dignity throughout the proceedings which is necessary to keep the concept from exploding all over the shop.
• Pink also holds his own against the Doctor and establishes a clear and distinct relationship (there are some echoes of Nine and Mickey, but only echoes).
• The Doctor and Clara work the TARDIS doors by snapping fingers. somehow I like that better as a thing that the TARDIS does when she likes someone, rather than that the Doctor does because awesome.
• What causes problems for the Doctor is not Danny being stupid, but being intelligent and inquisitive.
• The Doctor's final solution to the Skovox is nicely Doctorish.

The Bad

• The Skovox Blitzer was a less than inspiring monster of the week; a sort of quadrupedal Dalek with even less conversation. Given the similarities in concept, I'm slightly disappointed that they didn't go for a Raston warrior robot (because I'm a huge nerd.)
• In a similar huge nerd vein, I was sad not to see a name drop for the head of governors pulling strings to get the Doctor into Coal Hill (said head of governors being established in The Day of the Doctor to be former Coal Hill science teacher Ian Chesterton.)
• Clara apparently takes as long to get to the store cupboard from the corridor as the Doctor does to get to the Blitzer's hidey-hole and Danny does to find and remove one of the time mines.
• Danny Pink's gymnastic prowess is bizarre. He didn't learn that in the army, lending credence to the Doctor's claim that he is really a PE teacher! Alternatively, maybe he took the silver in the same year Rose Tyler got bronze.

The Ugly

• The Doctor's attack on Danny is pretty much beyond the pale; outright nasty in the most childish way. The fact that it's the posh white lead denigrating the 'obvious' inferiority of the black supporting character dating his 'space daughter' makes this either slightly clueless or incredibly brave.
• Clara's 'surprise play' excuse is cringingly weak.

Theorising

• Apparently Missie is now delegating the reception of the Doctor-proximate dead to underlings and claiming to be God, unless there's another one out there. Is this a progression, or was the policeman just not close enough to being the Doctor's actual fault for a personal welcome?
• If the Blitzer is drawn to Artron energy, is it a relict of the Time War?

Top Quotes

• The Doctor: Why have you got two jackets? Is one of them faulty?
• The Doctor: Human beings have incredibly short life spans. Frankly, you should all be in a constant state of panic.
• Doctor: Oh, genius. That is really, really brilliant reasoning. How can you think that I’m her dad when we both look exactly the same age.
  Clara: We do not look the same age.
  Doctor: I was being kind.
• Danny: It’s funny. You only really know what someone thinks of you when you know what lies they’ve told you. You say you’ve seen wonders; you’ve seen amazing things and you’ve kept them from me. So, what do you think of me, Clara?
• Danny: One thing, Clara, I'm a soldier. Guilty as charged. You see him? He's an officer!
  The Doctor: I am not an officer!
  Danny: I'm the one who carries you out of the fire, he's the one who lights it.

The Twelfth Doctor
Going back to school seems to be bringing out the most childish aspects of the Twelfth Doctor. It's always been there, but in his confrontations with Danny it's front and centre, and the Doctor isn't very likable for it. It's a step beyond Nine putting down of Mickey, both in terms of viciousness and lack of justness. It seems that even when I'm impressed by Capaldi's performance and the commitment to the less palatable sides of the Doctor's personality, I'm not necessarily liking this Doctor. I may be starting to get him however.

The Verdict
The Twelfth Doctor is coming into focus now; it's not always a pretty picture, but we can see what it is. The doctor is a recurrent, rather than a constant, presence in Clara's life, using his currently good control of the TARDIS to drop in and out of her life to take her on adventures of one sort or another. This is an idea first really explored in the second season of the Eleventh Doctor's run, with his occasional visits to the Ponds, and it can be seen as a conscious attempt by the Doctor to be a less total influence on his Companions, allowing them a 'real life' concurrent with their travels in the TARDIS, to prepare them for normality after he moves on and they... well, in the only recorded case to date, when they wind up living out their lives in their own past and sending coded messages via pulp novel.

The dominant features of this week's episode are that 'Ozzie and the Squaddie' are terrible teachers (in real life, because it's funnier that way; I think they're supposed to be good in universe), and that despite his protests the Doctor really is Clara's space dad, at least in his own mind. If nothing else, the fact that he doesn't fancy her, but thinks she'd be best off with someone who reminds him of himself when he was younger, clinches it*. The Blitzer was kind of an afterthought; as if the episode was planned out and then someone asked 'so what is this alien threat again'?

'The Caretaker' is a solid, yet unremarkable, monster-of-the-week story, coupled with some character work. In the latter regard it scores in my book for giving some focus to the Doctor's sudden dislike of soldiers. More and more through his lives he has become 'the officer', and a soldier's ability to recognise that is not something that he wants in the TARIS.

6/10

* For the record, I don't think my daughter should ever date anyone who reminds me of me when I was younger, because I was insufferable.