So January 2015, What Goodies Have You Got For Me?

Project Almanac

This looks like it might be interesting. I HATE "found footage" movies generally (the last movie I saw in 2014 was unfortunately Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, you can never get that time back) but this one is about time travel (and the butterfly effect) which is something that generally gets me excited. The first review doesn't seem all that bad (for a found footage movie!). I'll definitely check this out as soon as possible.

12 Monkeys

Mmm... more time travel. Based on fact it is a Syfy series I'm unsure about whether it'll be any good or not but its at least a welcome addition to genre TV. I'm looking forward to trying this out.

Star Wars 

A new comics era begins as the now Disney owned Star Wars returns to the now Disney owned Marvel. Yes I was sad to see Dark Horse stop publishing Star Wars but I'm pleased to see a new, canon approved, comic with all-new adventures for our favourite rebels. Who knows where it might take us and what parts of the Galaxy we might get to see. Excited!! Out January 14th. 

Uncanny Avengers

Rick Remender is up there with Scott Snyder as one of my current favourite comic writers. Uncanny Avengers is getting relaunched in January and I can't wait to see what fun (for which see terribly traumatic moments) he has in store for us with this new team. Plus.. .Rogue. :) 

Exciting Geeky Stuff Ahead In 2015

2015 is shaping up to be an exciting year for my inner-geek (Jae Fact: I'm 75% inner-geek). Thought I'd take a look at what is upcoming.

Movies

Jupiter Ascending

The Matrix was THE sci-fi event of my teens. The Wachowskis are returning to original movie sci-fi and regardless of whether it turns out to be any good I have to applaud any attempt at a non-sequel, non-novel adaption, non-superhero take on the genre. The trailer makes it look rather epic.

Jurassic World 

How long have we waited for this? FOREVER. I cannot begin to express how eager I am to see this. I was an absolutely Jurassic Park FREAK when I was 10 and I will attempt to out FREAK 10 year old Jae this time too. Plus... Chris Pratt is HOT.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens 

I own the Star Wars Encyclopaedia. I own vehicle guides, novels, comics and I even give the prequel trilogy a get out of jail free card. I'm that sort of Star Wars fan. I am sooooooo excited to get a new Star Wars movie. :)

So Many Marvel Movies 

10 years ago could you imagine Marvel releasing so many movies of such high quality in such a short space of time? Now we are just spoilt for choice! From the Marvel Cinematic Universe we have Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man upcoming with Age of Ultron looking absolutely fantastic.

Fox is also treating us to a reboot of Fantastic Four, something it very much needed (Jae Fact: Jae once disrupted filming on Rise of the Silver Surfer when he insisted on sticking to his normal walk to work filming or no filming. They weren't amused). I hope it won't be disappointing.

Terminator Genisys

Terminator canon is becoming very tricky, and the number of actors playing certain roles is starting to get a bit silly BUT Arnold Schwarzenegger is back and Terminator remains a foundational franchise in my rise to geekhood. I'm interested to see if some of the coolness of the first two movies can be salvaged and restored.

London Has Fallen

Olympus Has Fallen (along with White House Down) was my "I shouldn't really like it but I do" breakout movie of 2013. So its sequel set in London is something I'll be keen to keep a close eye on. 

Television 

Westworld 

I'm just intrigued as to how they are going to evolve this story into a TV series. Second Michael Crichton property to pique my interest in 2015, his legacy lives on at least!

More Marvel TV 

Marvel is taking over the world. In 2015 Agent Carter and Daredevil join Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D in representing the MCU on the small screen. Daredevil is the first of the Netflix series which will hopefully expand the MCU in interesting ways. 

Parks and Recreation 

Parks and Recreation is coming to an end. Sad times. It is an acquired taste but it is one that I actually did acquire. Wonderful show, great performances and Chris Pratt. Mmm... 

Comics 

Marvel

A new era in Star Wars awaits us as Lucasfilm's new sister company, Marvel, takes over Star Wars comics from Dark Horse. 

With the Expanded Universe now a thing of the past, we'll have to see where Disney's more canon-friendly approach takes us. But my pull-list is going to be heaving!

In other news... Spider-Man 2099 returns to the 2099 universe... yet another look back to young Jae's favourite things.

DC

Hmm... DC's New 52 (something that re-ignited a long dormant love of comics in me) has turned sour and seems to lack direction (with the honourary exception of some comics like Snyder's Batman). I will keep an eye on DC's April 2015 "Convergence" event to see if the outcome of that brings some spirit back to the DC Universe. 

Do Doctor Who Fans Really Have Anything To Worry About In This 50th Anniversary Year?

Much has been made on fan forums of this picture of a BBC Worldwide promotional poster taken at a toy convention.

After Steven Moffat suggested Doctor Who would take over TV for the anniversary I would say fans could be justifiably miffed at the paltry offerings on display. But I'd caution that 1) Doctor Who producers are infamous liars and should never be trusted and 2) we don't know that that is everything on offer. 

Unfortunately a lot of fans seem to be losing their heads over this. I suppose, because I became a Doctor Who fan in the wildnerness years of the early 90s, I'm a little more willing to accept whatever I'm given. But even if we get nothing more than what has already been announced I really don't think Doctor Who fans have anything to be complaining about. 

So we've got 8 standard episodes of Doctor Who series 7 to come. A 50th anniversary special and An Adventure in Space and Time which dramatises the production of the first series of Doctor Who. Plus we get  11 Doctor Who audio stories in the form of the Destiny of the Doctor (starting this month with Hunters of Earth). And we get a Big Finish multi-Doctor story The Light At The End featuring all 5 surviving "Classic" Doctors and multiple other Doctor Who stars. 

Big Finish are also giving us, in their main Doctor Who range, a trilogy of stories set in 1963 with the final story featuring a return of the stars of the 25th anniversary! Meanwhile their Companion Chronicles series will feature another trilogy starting in November with the first story telling the tale of the Doctor and Susan on Gallifrey before they began their adventures. 

Meanwhile in the world of books... Each month between now and November Puffin are releasing a short story by e-book written by well known children's authors. I read the first one last night, A Big Hand For The Doctor, and was suitably impressed. 

Plus IDW are printing a special 11 part series of comics featuring every Doctor and the Doctor Who Magazine has just started its own Doctor Who anniversary special comic story. 

And on top of all this we are getting other Doctor Who books, the usual Big Finish output (which is considerable) and the new IDW Doctor Who volume 3. 

So no, I think content wise this year is going to be mammoth!!

Primeval: S04E04

Sorry for the late update, I've been incredibly distracted by personal issues this last week or so.

Episode 4 of the fourth series of Primeval finally had me interested again. After the previous episode I was worried that there might be no hope for this programme at all but I love being proved wrong. There was a plot. There was several story strands that worked well. There was mild peril. There was character development. And there was less poor use of CGI (except for a couple of poorly edited reused shots).

I'm intrigued by Matt now, whereas before I was just annoyed by him. What is his backstory? When asked about school he suggested he didn't remember it. Is this a lie? Is he from a different time? Is that why he is so friendly towards Emily?

I want to know. I'm interested. Finally Primeval! FINALLY!

Primeval: S04E03

Talk about a mixed bag. This episode, "Tree Creepers" showed  us everything that can be good about the concept of the show. But it also showed us everything that can be bad about it's implementation. 

The A-plot was regarding 3 time travellers who appear through an anomaly in a theatre, followed by two rather nasty arboreal reptiles. The B-plot has Connor stuck back at base working on a security system that accidentally locks down the entire ARC. 

The good points: The time travellers (up to 15 of them supposedly) are an interesting addition to the show and something that appears, hopefully, to be adding a bit more depth to the usual "monster of the week" run of the mill show. In fact the story continues into at least next episode which is excellent. 

Connor had plenty of screen time. 

And there were some interesting questions that'll make me come back next week:

Will Rex survive?

Why are the time travellers around? Are they lost or simply adventurers? 

What are Gideon and Matt up to? 

What is Burton's "New Dawn" programme? 

Now for the really bad points:

The CGI-human interaction is truly appalling. The fight scenes between Matt and a Tree Creeper was truly boring as at no point would my mind allow me to believe the Tree Creeper and Matt were even in the same room. Something has to be done to avoid too much reliance on CGI if they are unable to use it in a compelling way. 

Doctor Who expects us to suspend all belief of reality and accept the insane, illogical and stupid as real. That works because Doctor Who's that sort of show and it's built up our trust over many, many years. Primeval's writers have obviously watched the Doctor's mad cap solutions to things (Think nice thoughts!) and thought they could try the same on their show, and that no one would care. They are very wrong. Showing electricity moving up a pole as if it would be visible, or Rex's amazing recovery from unconscious to happy flying Rex in about 2 seconds are just too unbelievable. They take me out of the story and ruin it for me. I don't want to have to sit there, in a show about time-travel for heaven's sake, and think this is just totally unrealistic. 

And it's not just in the technical, nit-picking aspects that this "unreal" feeling permeates through the show. The human reactions to situations don't ring true. Burton is dying in a room without oxygen. Connor is working on a solution. Connor seems unconcerned, slow, unhurried, and relaxed. It's jarringly awful writing. I wanted to see urgency, fear and focus. I wanted tension. The most tense I felt was as to whether or not Rex would survive and even that was ruined by his super quick recovery. When you're more concerned about whether a CGI flying lizard might survive than one of the more compelling characters (Burton), then you know something is up. 

The reason I stopped watching Primeval during series 3 was because it had an excellent concept that was being handled extremely badly. This show has a really great potential but it's now series 4 and I just don't see it being realised. I'll persevere but only because I hope for better.

Primeval: S04E02

The second episode of series 4 was a vast improvement over the first. Whilst both are still run of the mill monster of the week episodes, the second episode had a heart. There were jokes, Lester, Abby and Connor actually acted like themselves and there were more hints of what Gideon (the old man who keeps talking to Matt) is up to. And with Connor's friend from the dodo episode returning and our first look at Rex and his new home in the menagerie, we had a good sense of the highlights of earlier series.

Plus Kaprosuchus was this weeks monster. How anyone can not go "Whoop" at that, I don't know!

Primeval: S04E01

I've been looking forward to the return of Primeval for some time. It's a bit bizarre, given the fact that I gave up on series 3 halfway through and promised myself never to watch the show again.

So I sat down to watch the first episode of the fourth season with my expectations raised extremely highly and thus I was disappointed.

The problem with the show had been that it was becoming ever more a "monster of the week" show. That was forgiveable at the start, but I'd hoped to see a thread of a story going through each episode. The Helen Cutter stuff just didn't do it for me. Thus when this first episode turned out to be little more than just another monster of the week story (it's a Spinosaurus, which sort of makes up for it!) I was crushed.

However, I'm being unfair. The acting was better than usual. If we forget the massive plot holes (good to see somethings never change), the story was alright as a set up. The end showing Matt Anderson talking to some old fellow, and the possible dynamics of Philip Burton's relationship with the ARC leave me hopeful there might be something more to come.

So yes I was disappointed. I shall lower my expectations for tonight's episode accordingly and cross my fingers for improvement.

A Christmas Carol: 2010 Xmas Doctor Who Special

It just wouldn't be Christmas Day without a Doctor Who special! I imagine in a hundred years it'll be as much a part of the Christmas holiday as the Christmas tree and mince pies are today. Alright, a boy can dream can't he?

I was only saying to my better half today, whilst watching Scrooged, that A Christmas Carol must be the most adapted novel in all of history. So there was a big concern that Doctor Who's take on it might be dry, boring and old hat. Surely there's only so many ways to tell a story, after all. Yet I felt that this episode took the heart of the traditional Dickens story, and put a wonderful twist on it meaning it seemed fresh, and unpredictable.

I particularly liked the fact that as Kazran Sardick (this episode's Scrooge) was changed through the "Ghosts" process, there were unintended consequences blending the best of the old with the best timey-wimeyness one can expect from Doctor Who.

The acting was initially worrying but got stronger and stronger as the episode went on, the flying fish were an excellently alien but still charmingly kitsch addition and the flying shark was basically added just to please me. Surely a flying shark in a Christmas themed Doctor Who episode is as close to realising my ultimate dream as there can be?

The romantic/depressing subplot was played out with an unfamiliar subtlety. Whereas Russell T. Davies would have bashed us round the head with it, here it was allowed to just be and was all the more touching and upsetting for it.

And, as someone who hasn't particularly warmed to the Eleventh Doctor during the fifth/two hundredth and ninty first/twelth series of Doctor Who, I was mightily impressed by Matt Smith's performance and finally feel like I can accept him as our favourite Time Lord.

All in all an absolutely top notch episode of modern Doctor Who with the series 6/five million/-5 trailer looking totally epic!

The Walking Dead's First Season

So, after 6 awesome weeks we are at the end of the first season of The Walking Dead. Whilst, as a Brit, I'm used to short seasons, 6 episodes seems insulting considering just how great the show has been!

I'm usually the sort of person who finds any changes to the source material in a movie or TV adaption pretty disgusting. You should of seen my reaction, at the age of 10, to the differences between Jurassic Park the movie and the book (she's not meant to be the oldest, it's a Stegosaurus not a Triceratops! etc.). Unusually, I've been far more forgiving of this series. The changes have been fairly substantial, with totally new characters and some important characters missing. And the CDC storyline came out of nowhere. BUT it's all been handled well, scripted excellently and with enough nods to the source material to keep this fanboy happy.

If you think "Oh God, I hate gore and zombies" and refuse to watch this, I urge you to reconsider. Yes there is gore. Yes there are zombies. But it's so much more than that. This is, like the comic book, about the characters, and how they deal with their circumstances. And it will have you hooked!

I cannot believe there's nearly a year to wait for the next set of episodes! :( How will I cope??

The A-Team

The A-Team is far more enjoyable than Predators was. 

When I first saw the trailer for this movie, I thought it looked like total crap; cheesy and generic. But actually, apart from the rather dull ending, it's a very fun and engaging movie that holds your interest for a good while. 

Unfortunately it's let down by the lacklustre ending. If it hadn't been for that I'd put this movie as one of my favourites of the year... good acting, good script, good simple story and plenty of action. But alas, nothing's perfect. So I'd rate this a "Give it a look if you've nothing better to do". 

Doctor Who: The Beast Below

The Beast Below was the second episode of Matt Smith's first series of Doctor Who and, as a Whovian, I have to say I bloody loved it!

Firstly... how eighties was this episode? Dark, industrial, a little quirky with a Doctor who is a pronounces words a little funny and is a bit disparaging of the human race occasionally. As a Seventh Doctor obsessive (BRING BACK ACE!) I smiled.

Secondly... Star Wars references. We'll take the 10,000 smileys I could just put here as read.

Thirdly... the story wasn't all that bad with the Doctor hot on the trail of a nasty little secret whilst Amy is trying to forget it.

Fourthly... Amy and the Doctor work very well together.

Fifthly... the end scene (not related to main story) in which Amy picks up the phone to Winston Churchill was awesome... DALEKS!!

I'm way too excited about next week now!!

GLEE!

I know. I've come late to this party. My other half watched the first episode, without me, ages ago and reported back that it was rubbish. Loyally I ignored all information and anecdotes to the contrary until I found I was unable to even talk to someone or read my Twitter feed without the word "Glee" appearing somewhere.

So I watched the first episode. Then the second. Then the third. Then the fourth. I'm totally hooked! Sure, it's absolutely and totally wish fulfilment. What self respecting human being wouldn't wish to live in a musical high school, in which gay guys can be the saviour of the football team and footballers can be the saviour of the choir???

But it's also funny, clever and entertaining. I feel so bad for not getting into this earlier... but I shall make up for it!

Eurovision Selections: Two Very Different Shows

This weekend has seen two national selection contests for Eurovision (alright there has been more but I only watched two!). One was Your Country Needs You, which selects the UK entry. The other was Melodifestivalen, which selects Sweden's entry. They were very different entities... 

So this year we went back to the old "all on one day" format of Your Country Needs You. Last year's format of having 6 contestants who were gradually voted off by the public and the judge (Andrew Lloyd Webber) was great especially as Webber hadn't written the song until he saw who was in the final and who might be able to carry it off best. 

This year Pete Waterman was in charge of the song, and after some truly abysmal performances of Waterman classics and then a final 3 set of performances of the "winning song", we ended up with Josh Dubovie, 19 from Essex as our performer singing "That Sounds Good To Me". I can't say I'm inspired by the song. Given Waterman's record it is actually pretty awful. Couldn't we just have sent Steps??? 





Anyway, if you wish to hear the winning entry a video is here. I just wish we had an open competition in which actual artists could compete with their own songs and allow the best one to win. Alas... we must leave that for: 

Melodifestivalen is less a televisual event than it is a Swedish religion. Weeks of musical shenanigans in a large arena resulted in last night's final in which ten songs competed for the glory of Eurovision stardom. Not only were the songs and singers all of a higher calibre than our lacklustre one's. but the voting was done on a semi international basis with foreign juries and Swedish public votes all leading to the final result. That left them with the far better "This Is My Life" by Anna Bergendahl

Although I have to say I really enjoyed Eric Saade's Manboy:

Roll on Eurovision! 

Eurovision: Your Country Needs You!

We knew Pete Waterman would be taking the place of Andrew Lloyd-Webber as songwriter and producer this year. But now the acts who will be competing to take his song to Europe have been revealed as Your Country Needs You! is less than a week away.

Alexis Gerrard, aged 20. 

Esma Akkilic, aged 17

Josh Dubovie, aged 19

Karen Harding, aged 18 

Miss Fitz 

Uni5

A very young crowd, with no one older than their mid 20s. A good looking bunch, it'll be interesting to see how well they can sing and who is ultimately chosen to fight our corner in May!

For some reason the show is on a Friday this year, so this coming Friday you'll find me crossing my fingers and hoping for gold! 

Dinoshark and Sharktopus: Seriously!

Imagine a world in which movies with titles like Dinoshark and Sharktopus can exist. Imagine no more... Dread Central brings us some info on what surely must be considered the most eagerly awaiting B-Movies of the year!

And in other exciting news from Sci-Fi Wire, it looks like Steven Spielberg might be returning to sci-fi telly with a time travelling family AND DINOSAURS! If Terra Nova is greenlit I promise to bow down before Rupert Murdoch and never say mean things about Fox again (unless they then cancel it). Spielberg. Dinosaurs. Just keep saying it. *sigh*

Survivors: Improvements?

After last weeks post on Survivors current series and it's downsides, we were actually treated to a good episode this week.

Despite starting off as your standard Survivors "One/Two Of The Group Is Missing" story, it actually comes off as a refreshingly depressing take on human nature, in which a slave labour camp is being at a coal mine. The characters felt real, there was some gritty scenes involving harsh retribution and tough decisions, and we finally (if somewhat predictable) see a return of Abby's missing son to the storyline.

With possible foundations now laid out for future developments and the group finally seeming to accept the reality of their situation, I'm now eager to see how they round off this series. The Family is now united, the criminal and the nurse, the playboy and the schoolboy, together to face whatever the future holds for them. Maybe there is hope for the future of this series.  

Talking of BBC telly, whilst we wait for more news about exactly how/when Torchwood will be returning, Watch have issued a new online Torchwood comic... featuring Ianto!! Click here for more...

Fringe And Caprica: Could Be Better?

Fringe and Caprica are the only current US TV shows I watch on a regular basis. Both have interesting premises, but both have flaws.

Fringe is the X-Files for the 21st Century. It has awesome monster of the week episodes and a story arc from heaven. Plus both the monster of the week episodes and the story arc work together so the show feels far less disjointed than the X-Files sometimes did (oh we've uncovered a global conspiracy but next week we'll be in small town America dealing with a Satanic cult because we have no focus). Better yet, we actually learn things about the story arc. Where the X-Files served only to confuse whenever it tried to give you a little bit of info, Fringe slowly builds up the back story to the clash of the two universes.

But it has a few flaws. Astrid is a totally under utilised character even if she was just used for comic relief. The Olivia/Peter romance just doesn't ring true and certainly is being rushed. As we all know shows usually quickly jump the shark once any sexual tension is removed. The fact Bishop is linked to just about every case they investigate is starting to stretch belief. He may be a genius but even he only had finite time available. I think it could do with more focus on the Massive Dynamic storyline and general Fringe weirdness and less random emotional visits to places from Bishops/Olivia's pasts

Caprica is another very interesting proposition. Set in the Battlestar Galactica universe but 58 years before the Destruction Of The Twelve Colonies, it's very different to BSG. BSG was about imminent life/death situations, war and rebellion. Caprica is more a sci-fi soap opera about love, life and intrigue. Which is fitting as BSG at it's best was also sometimes pretty close to becoming a sci-fi soap opera.

The world we are presented with is a very advanced 1950s sort of place, with strange and unusual lifestyles and a new monotheistic religion rising in opposition to the mainstream Greco-Roman polytheism. It's actually pretty damn cool.

However for a soap opera to work you must like at least some of the characters. So far there seem to be very few characters I can actually say I like. And I feel like they are intentionally dragging the story out so it moves at a very, very slow pace. This last episode felt more like an extended middle with no beginning nor end and no great plot reveals or moves forward. I think the writers need to get a little sharper otherwise I know I'm going to be getting very bored soon.

However I think both series do have the potential to become very, very good pieces of television and move sci-fi telly to a new level. Fringe really does the push the boundaries of the imagination and Caprica might push the boundaries of genre's in general. Bring on the next episodes...

Survivors Series 2: We Have A Problem

Thanks mainly to many early Sunday morning showings of the original series of Survivors on UK Gold when I was young, I have a lot of time for the re-imagined series. The first series was alright, nothing spectacular and some of the acting really sucking, but it got us through and it ended with a major revelation which had me eager to see the second series.

Sadly, half way through, it is not living up to expectations. Every sci-fi/fantasy show sometimes suffers from "monster of the week" syndrome. Survivors seems to be trapped by "rescue of the week" syndrome. Episode 1: Anya/Al trapped under fallen debris. Episode 2: Abby finally escapes her imprisonment. Episode 3: Tom is kidnapped by Samantha and her group. Episode 4: Tom and Greg forced to work in a coal mine by a new set of captors. Etc??

This would be bearable if they added some new twists to what is happening to the main group. Instead we have no new additions (seriously, surely there would be people eager to join up with a group??), no permanent base (Abby's group seems to be the only nomadic group in the country) and nothing NEW. Basically the interesting parts of the first season were all those taken from Terry Nation's novelisation of the original series. Now they have run out of that inspiration it would seem like the show's writers have just given up trying to be interesting.

I truly hope something changes, and soon! This is a post-apocalyptic show... we need dirty clothes, tough choices, main character deaths and new additions. Or else this new series may be even shorter than the original!!

Primeval - Should We Give It One More Chance?

I gave up on Primeval mid-way through Series 3 and vowed never to watch it again given the pitiful state of acting and writing.

Well, it was cancelled at the end of the series and I was only slightly sad when I found out. This show has sooooo much potential. It could be the ITV rival to Doctor Who. But they bodged that last season so badly that they completely squandered the possibilities inherent in the show's premise.

But now new, international, funding has been found and the shows about to receive a big shake up for series 4. They will be focussing more on future based stories... with some more complicated storylines.

I'm willing to give it one more go. It better not disappoint!