New episodes of Doctor Who are not due until Autumn (boo!), but from BBC America (via Geek Exchange) comes news of four original documentaries due to air soon. Each covers a different subject important to the Doctor Who universe.
The Science of Doctor Who premiers on Saturday the 4th of August at 11:00pm (ET/PT). It explores the real life science behind the biggest concepts and most iconic ideas in the series.
The Women of Doctor Who premiers on Saturday the 11th of August at 9:00pm (ET/PT). It looks at the women who have passed through The Doctors life.
The Timey Wimey Stuff of Doctor Who premiers on Saturday the 18th of August at 11:00pm (ET/PT). It looks at the topsy-turvy confusing nature of time and time travel in the series.
The Destinations of Doctor Who premiers on Saturday the 25th of August at 9:00pm (ET/PT). It explores the myriad of places The Doctor has travelled to across time and space.
They all sound very interesting, and I am slightly narked that they are on BBC America. Hopefully they will show them over here in Blighty at some stage.
Elsewhere the BBC has announced the titles of the first three stories of the new series.
The series opening episode will be Asylum of The Daleks. It will, apparently, include every Dalek ever! Even including the Special Weapons Dalek. It will also feature the biggest set ever used on the show.
The second episode will be entitled Dinosaurs on a Spaceship. It will co-star Mark Williams (The Fast Show and the Harry Potter films) as Rory’s Dad, Brian, and Rupert Graves (Sherlock) as a big game hunter. It will also feature the second biggest set ever used on the show.
The third episode will be called A Town Called Mercy. This Western story – which was filmed in Spain earlier in the year – will co-star Ben Browder (Farscape and Stargate) and Adrian Scarborough (Psychoville and Gavin & Stacey).
As you know, I normally write about video games. Movies and TV shows are not my thing, but whenever I get a chance to take a shot at NBC, I have to. The peacock is so damn stupid, I almost feel bad about laughing at the network. It’s like laughing at someone who’s mentally challenged. It’s not their fault they do not have a normal IQ level. But then, NBC is run by people who are getting paid six figures, so f— them. Anyways, the NBC execs have cancelled a number of shows only to replace them with something worse. It’s OK if people actually watch NBC, but NO!!!! Even fewer people tune in to their new shows.
Remember Southland? They cancelled the show after they have finished shooting six episodes of season 2. We’re talking about flat-out withdrawing all of the episodes from schedule before the season premiere even aired. They replaced it with more Chris Hansen. (Thank God TNT picked up the show. The police procedural will air its fifth season in February, 2013.)
Don’t even get me started on The Jay Leno Show. You know you done messed up when you have an entire Wikipedia article dedicated to the controversy. Last year, their marketing campaign focused on Whitney, which many consider to be the worst “comedy” on TV right now. Obviously, there was little to no mention of Community or Parks and Recreation. NBC also started Grimm out on Fridays. Sounds like a great idea to be placing a show with potential broad appeal in the TV graveyard.
Someone has to be sucking someone’s dick to keep this show on air.
I don’t know who. For all I know, it can be the catering guy.
Oh, and they fired Dan Harmon right after Community’s third season. Yea, as if the show will last more than four seasons, especially after the peacock decided to air the show on Fridays this coming fall.
If they can’t net you 10 million viewers, nothing can.
Even more recently (we’re talking about a few hours ago recent), NBC decided against airing the Olympic opening and closing ceremony live. Really? I know you gotta make that paper but this is just a new low, even by peacock standards. Can’t you just display banner ads at the bottom of the screen?
Anyways, imagine how I feel when they decided to give Dracula a green light. No, I’m not excited or ecstatic, or anything along those lines. I am merely surprised, since this move is so damn logical (albeit safe). I mean, you have 9 million Twihards out there, and vampire is the hit thing right now. NBC maybe a little too late, but they can still make some money off the show.
Personally, I would have gone for Blacula. Just saying…
Johnathan Rhys Meyers (from The Tudors, which is pretty awesome) was casted as the titular role, Dracula. The protagonist will pose as an American entrepreneur trying to introduce technology to the late 19th century Britain. His real intent, however, is to take revenge on some people who stepped on his toes a few centuries ago. Obviously, there will be a girl whom he falls in love with, and the girl in question will bear striking resemblances to his long-lost love.
Say what you will but he’s one beautiful dude. Damn, it should be illegal to be that good-looking.
The fall pilot season is absolutely looking disastrous. Don’t believe me? Try taking this quiz. Find out which of the posters belong to actual NBC comedies airing in fall, and which were photoshopped. It’s not just the comedies either. The rest of the peacock’s schedule is just horrendous. See for yourself.
Dracula will not begin production until later this year. Expect the show to come out in 2013. Not like it matters. NBC’s 12-13 season is done. Keep going hard as the 4th among network TV. Yes, that was sugar-coating “last place”.
Well, at least we will have spent 12 episodes worth of time watching this piece of eye candy by the end of 2013. I’m straight, in case you’re wondering.
By the way, please watchParks and Recreation and Southland. Both of them are fantastic shows. As for Community, let’s just say it won’t be the same show without Dan Harmon.
AMC acknowledges that times are going to get pretty tough soon. Mad Men is heading into its swan song final season. Breaking Bad is about to end. They botched The Killing which resulted in the show being canceled, and Walking Dead is not on 24/7. So they have decided to go back into the well and tap the executive producer of Walking Dead (and The Terminator and Aliens), Gale Anne Hurd, and commission a new series about cult event: Area 51. Yes, you may get excited.
According to the Hollywood Reporter, AMC has decided to add Aliens to its zombies, ad men, and drug lab population. They got the rights for Annie Jacobsen’s best selling book, Area 51, which was just recently published in May. The book is about the never confirmed military installation in Nevada, and looks into the area and the people around that have their thoughts on what is truly going on. The author interviewed several people that served on the base as well others that have been employed at famous secret facility. Obviously there is a lot of potential considering that this was culled from actual servicemen and people’s reports so it will make for a good conspiracy show that will explore into what is or truly isn’t out there in the desert or the great beyond in the sky. The series will take place in the 1950s-1960s, most likely dealing with the Roswell incident as well as how the base came to be and the lengths to keep it on the down low.
I really dig this because AMC just puts out great stuff (how dare you cancel Rubicon!) and their track record on just going after shows that are not typical of network television, and pushing the envelope makes me excited. If anything, it has the potential to remind of the X-Files and the conspiracy and the mythology of aliens that we lack on television today. Between this and Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman’s new comic adaptation Thief of Thieves, we might have a few viable replacements in the near future.
One of them, however, will NOT be The Killing. AMC has decided to cancel the show due to falling viewership and lack of interest according to EW. This really is not a shocking move considering the gimmick of the show was to find out who killed Rosie Larsen and they could not answer that in the first season, thus pissing off viewers that felt like it was drawn out unnecessarily. They did at least reveal the end of that story by the end of the second season, but it was too late. Ratings went from 2.7 million viewers when the series premiered, to 1.8 million for the second season premiere, and down to 1.4 million for the last season (series) finale. [Ed. Note – For the record, I feel like this is more of an indictment on the audience in the Law & Order/CSI world we live in. This is the same formula used by Twin Peaks 20 years ago and that show is still praised to this day…]
There is still hope however as Fox Television Studios, who makes the show, plans on shopping around to other networks so who knows, maybe we will see the show given new life on FX or TNT. Granted, this would also require someone to actually care, but I never watched the second season so I cannot judge whether it was good or not. [Point.]Thoughts people? Should it be saved or was there reason to abandon the show after they botched their relationship with viewers? Also, for Area 51, is it too much to ask for a shot of Will Smith punching an alien saying, “Welcome to Earf!”? Maybe while performing Summertime? Just saying, you were thinking about it too…
Robert Rodriguez is currently in the middle of making Machete Kills, the sequel to Machete – starring Danny Trejo as the machete wielding Machete (…aaah! Too many machetes!).
It will also see the acting debut of Lady Gaga. Both she and Rodriguez are excited by this, if their tweets are anything to go by (as reported by The Hollywood Reporter). So here is her character poster, as ‘La Chameleon’ (image via I Watch Stuff).
It’s subtle and understated for her. Only the one dead animal wrapped around her.
Machete Kills is the second in a planned trilogy – and, technically, a spin-off from the Spy Kids films. It picks up from the first film with the title character mourning his lost love – so says the films website – then he is recruited by the US president to take down a cartel leader before he fires a missile at America.
It will star – along side Trejo – Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez, Zoe Saldana, Vanessa Hudgens, Sofia Vergara, Mel Gibson (as the cartel leader), Charlie Sheen (as the US president) and Alexa Vega as Killjoy.
Vega was, of course, in the Spy Kids movies (the first of which was 11 years ago). And now here she is – all grown up – in costume for this new movie. The picture was posted to Instagram and Twitter, and is now all over the internet (image via Starburst).
I’ve posted this at the end because, quite frankly, I knew nothing else I wrote would be read otherwise. You’re not even reading this are you? And who can blame you. Look boobs.
In this disturbing but intriguing story, writer/director Craig Zobel tells the true story of a fast food clerk who is the subject of a vicious and tragic prank call that leaves no victim unchanged. I find this trailer fascinating because, according to the filmmaker and the people who have been following the film closely, the events depicted in the movie were all true to life. This is a movie that illustrates the horrors of people who were just “following orders”.
The controversy surrounding this movie has been pretty huge, with many audience members claiming that there’s no way the stuff in this movie really happened. But, you know what they say, the truth is stranger than fiction.
Stars: Ann Dowd, Pat Healy, Dreama Walker, Bill Camp, and Philip Ettinger.
Release Date: August 17th, 2012
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The story of an Indian boy named Pi, a zookeeper’s son who finds himself in the company of a hyena, zebra, orangutan, and a Bengal tiger after a shipwreck sets them adrift in the Pacific Ocean. Allow me to opine for just a moment. I’ve never liked Ang Lee as a director. I thought Taking Woodstock was great, but Hulk is awful and Brokeback Mountain is overrated. This movie….this frigging movie. Why? Just…why? That is all.
Stars: Suraj Sharma, Tabu, Irrfan Khan, and Tobey Maguire (as Yann Martel, the author of the novel that served as the inspiration for this film…yeah, not sure how that’s going to work)
Release Date: November 21st, 2012
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Jack and Diane. Jack and Diane. Jack. Diane. Diane and Jack. Jack……and Diane. I’ll be honest I don’t even know what the hell this movie is about. The trailer, which stars Juno Temple (with hair as frizzy as ever), making out with a girl named Jack and then Jack is not really a girl she’s this thing and there was this awful trailer music and Kylie Minogue is in it and it just looks awful. But I mean…the possibility of Juno Temple getting naked and having hot lesbian sex and then getting eaten by her lover does have an appealing ring to it. Oh yeah, and Dane DeHaan (who’s awesome) and Leo Fitzpatrick (who’s even more awesome) are both in it. If there’s one way to explain it, it’s like Beastly meets Twilight meets Skinemax – with more bloody entrails.
Stars: Juno Temple, Riley Keough, Dane DeHaan, Leo Fitzpatrick, Haviland Morris, and yes…..Kylie Minogue
Release Date: November 2nd, 2012
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In this winner, we’ve got Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fisher, and Lizzy Caplan playing Bridesmaids to their old friend, Becky, played by Rebel Wilson. On the night before her wedding to Dale (Hayes MacArthur), the three girls rip the dress apart and end up spending the rest of the night trying to fix it. After watching this trailer, I remember liking this movie a lot more when it was called Bridesmaids. Rebel Wilson, who can’t seem to score a leading role, is billed as a supporting character IN A MOVIE ABOUT HER! And Adam Scott’s involvement in this movie, while slightly reassuring, is looking like another Our Idiot Brother. He’ll probably have, like, two scenes which is unfortunate because re-teaming him and Lizzy Caplan after “Party Down” would’ve made a great movie on its own.
Stars: Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fisher, Lizzy Caplan, Adam Scott, James Marsden, Rebel Wilson, and Hayes MacArthur.
Release Date: September 6th, 2012
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V/H/S is a POV, found footage horror film from the perspective of America’s top genre filmmakers. In ‘V/H/S’, a group of misfits are hired by an unknown third party to burglarize a desolate house in the countryside and acquire a rare tape. Upon searching the house, the guys are confronted with a dead body, a hub of old televisions and an endless supply of cryptic footage, each video stranger and more inexplicable than the last. I can’t even explain the sheer terror I felt while watching this preview. Directed as a series of shorts by ten of horror’s most prominent filmmakers, V/H/S looks and feels…revolutionary. Let’s hope the film lives up to it’s awesome preview.
The trailer for this movie defines “on the fence”. Director Paul Schrader (who is responsible for writing Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Last Temptation of Christ, American Gigolo, but also directing Dominion: A Prequel to The Exorcist so it can really go either way), and writer by Bret Easton Ellis, one of the most important and imaginative writers of all time, are making a movie about a group of 20-somethings in LA that stars….Lindsay Lohan and some guy named (I shit you not) James Deen who is (again, no shit being shitted) a porn star. I love this trailer because it sets up the location very well and gives literally nothing away. Bret Easton Ellis understands the mind of a troubled 20-something, and I feel like this film will assess that accurately. Paul Schrader is awesome and this could be a great comeback for him. I’m definitely excited for this movie but I’m also very skeptical. The reason there’s no footage of the actual film in the trailer is because the teaser was released just as production started. There’s no release date, no set photos, no nothing. Just some stock footage of LA. Go figure.
After vomiting in her car, Katie (Ari Graynor) is forced to room with Lauren (Lauren Miller) to pay for a fabulous Gramercy Park apartment, and in order to make ends meet, the unlikely pair start a phone sex line together. Shenanigans undoubtedly occur in this hilarious trailer for what could be this year’s only truly unisex comedy. Cameos by Seth Rogen ensure some comedy for the guys but with a crew compiled mostly of women (the film was written but not directed by women), the raunchy subject matter seems to be a front for what is essentially a comedy aimed at the ladies.
Man, it sucks to be an assistant district attorney in Cuesta Verde. That’s the impression I got when I viewed One Man’s Death. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it means you will have unrealistic sexual relations with the female population of the city, all of who were apparently models in their past life, but it will probably mean you are a corrupt son of a bitch and will face certain death, hence the title of the episode. So, someone’s love dies and it’s up to the lady friend to get to the bottom of what seems to be foul play. But how do you punch up that classic story a little? You involve two lady friends, duh.
If they can’t net you 10 million viewers, nothing can.
Grizzly Bomb 