Four years ago, Jack Bauer ( Kiefer Sutherland) was branded a traitor and forced to go on the run in the final episode of “24.” Jack’s return has been heavily anticipated for years and now we know just what it takes to bring Jack out of the shadows once again.
Fox has unveiled the first full trailer for “24: Live Another Day,” the upcoming 12 episode miniseries that will catch up with Jack in London as he evades the CIA and attempts to stop a devastating terror plot that puts his former friend and ex-boss, President Heller (William Devane) in the line of fire.
The trailer also teases the new renegade status quo of Chloe O'Brian (Mary Lynn Rajskub) and formally introduces two new characters: Mark Boudreau (Tate Donovan), who is both the White House Chief of Staff and the new husband of Jack’s ex, Audrey Raines (Kim Raver) and Steve Navarro (Benjamin Bratt), the leader of a CIA team that is attempting to hunt down Jack.
“24: Live Another Day” will begin on Monday, May 5 on Fox.
inFAMOUS Second Son, a PlayStation 4 exclusive, brings you an action adventure game where surrounded by a society that fears them, superhumans are ruthlessly hunted down and caged by the Department of Unified Protection. Step into a locked-down Seattle as Delsin Rowe, who has recently discovered his superhuman power and is now capable of fighting back against the oppressive DUP. Enjoy your power as you choose how you will push your awesome abilities to the limit and witness the consequences of your actions as they affect the city and people around you.
A New Origin Story: Step into an open world adventure that offers a realistic take on being superhuman
Choice and Consequence: Witness how the city, the people you encounter, and even the story itself is all affected by the actions you take
Control Multiple Powers: Draw powers out from other superhumans, creating your own set of distinct powers to use as you see fit
Freely Explore the City of Seattle featuring highly detailed environments, realistic weather, reflections, shadows and lighting
Unlock Cole’s Jacket for Delsin to wear in the Bonus Exclusive Downloadable Content, Cole’s Legacy:
Uncover what happened between the devastating events of inFAMOUS 2 and inFAMOUS Second Son in Cole’s Legacy.
Cole MacGrath’s actions in New Marias set in motion a chain of events leading to the now forceful occupation of Seattle by the oppressive Department of Unified Protection. Cole’s Legacy bridges the gap in time with a series of missions Delsin Rowe must complete that reveal unique insights into how the world of inFAMOUS Second Son came to be.
Pre-order now from Amazon and get the limited edition version. Also, get a free 30-day trial of Amazon Prime.
This week's installation of The Series Project will incorporate an obscure backwater in television history, so I feel a brief explanation is in order.
The final Smokey and the Bandit feature film was released in theaters in 1983, and if you read last week's article, you'll recall that it was an awkward flop with broad dumb jokes and little-to-no Burt Reynolds. That essentially put the last nail in the coffin for the series. However, fast-forward a decade (to 1994), and series creator (and now stunt luminary) Hal Needham felt the eager need to return to the material… in TV movie form. He recast The Bandit, sliced his budgets way, way down, came up with a series of contrived, PG-rated, TV-ready plots, and presented the world with four new 90-minute TV specials.
So, yeah, over the course of 1994, the world was treated to four new Bandit movies (no Smokey at all), all of which are pretty equal in quality, and – when taken as a unit – may serve as a single season of a Bandit TV series. I don't know the politics of these TV movies – if they were always intended to be feature-length special of if they were meant to kickstart a much larger TV project – but I do know that I have seen them all. I might have to apologize for the brevity of this week's article, as, well, I'm not sure if I have a whole lot to say about these Bandit TV movies. But, as your humble critic, I have done my due diligence and sat through every last minute of all four.
Each film stars Brian Bloom (from “As the World Turns” and almost every animated iteration of Captain America) as a newer, younger, handsomer version of Bandit. He has that mid-'90s Jason Priestly look about him, what with his clear blue eyes. He is not the child of Bandit, and, as far as I can tell, he has not inherited the name. This is a hard reboot of the franchise. Each film starts with the same theme song “Another Dream Away” (yeah, I know) as sung by minor country star Dawn Sears. In this universe, Bandit is friends with the Governor's spoiled son Lynn (Brian Krause), but there is an otherwise rotating bevvy of female leads. Each film can really only be marked by its notable guest stars. Let's start this a-rolling with…
By 1994, the enthused trucker culture phase of pop entertainment had long since passed, and even the “Dukes of Hazzard”-inspired love of the good ol' boy hero was kind of out of the public eye, so bringing back Bandit in this climate strikes me a s little odd. I guess nostalgia-based entertainments stretch back much further than the Great Remake Blight of the '00s.
So Bandit is no longer the down-home charmer he once was, and doesn't even seem to be Southern. Indeed, Brian Bloom is pretty much a Hollywood pretty boy of the highest order, wrapped in some of the most unfortunate of '90s “country” fashion; seriously, he wears pink and aqua cowboy shirts. Bandit still drives a fast black car, and seems to make ends meet by a string of freelance trucker-for-hire jobs in his custom-painted rig. He's not liked by the local law, but he doesn't have the same flip dismissal of the sheriffs that he previously possessed. He also doesn't rely on his charm to escape certain situations. He's essentially a bland, neutered version of the Bandit we've previously seen.
The story of Bandit Goes Country: Bandit is asked back to his small Texas (?) hometown to help out his cousin Johnny (Christopher Atkins) with some sort of vaguely defined illegal business. Bandit is asked under the pretense that his old sweetheart Beth (a pre-Showgirls Elizabeth Berkley) wants to get back together with him, but she is still bitter about an old breakup. Also, Bandit has to – for reasons I don't rightly recall – give a ride to a traveling country star with a stammer (real life country star Mel Tillis), along with his neurotic city-boy agent, Charles Nelson Reilly.
There's a subplot about two star-crossed lovers who would be kept apart because Bandit's home down is divided into sects, or something, and there's a bit city-wide festival wherein the two sects compete in good-natured games, centered on finding a long-lost wooden bear statue. Bandit ends up bringing the two sides of town together by allowing the two youngsters to marry, else he saw the bear in half. Meanwhile Beth is forced to choose between Bandit and a large, mean guy named Jake, played by Tyler Mane, who would go on to play Sabretooth in X-Men and Michael Myers in Rob Zombie's Halloween remakes. In true mid-'90s fashion, she picks neither. I think I saw a similar romantic standoff in an episode of “Beverly Hills 90210.”
It's a TV movie, so it has Aaron Spelling production values and cheesy melodrama all over it, although Aaron Spelling would never produce something to forthrightly comedic. This is only vaguely entertaining, largely for the cheesy romantic flashbacks, the would-be studly men, and the notable celebrity cameos; Charles Nelson Reilly is always a pleasure.
The level of quality will not change for the next three movies. Although the title for the next one is certainly amusing…
It seems to be the week of grizzled old superheroes facing their bleak futures. We saw it in Starlight #1, and there's a bit more of it in Worth #1, from Aubrey Sitterson and Chris Moreno. Whereas Mark Millar's Duke McQueen is an obvious Flash Gordon type, Sitterson's Grant Worth doesn't have that easy an archetypal allegory. We first meet him as a dashing young buck in late-1960s Detroit, riding around on a Mustang and quelling riots, saving people, and stopping guns with his ability to control machinery. He's a hero that military guys call a hippie, and in the summer of 1967, he didn't sleep for days in his effort to keep the peace in the Motor City. In 1968, he agrees to let a friend of his, Dr. Eddie Ludlam, study his power to try and replicate it in order to allow the masses to do the same.
Then, in 2013, he's an old man living alone having arguments with his refrigerator.
It doesn't seem as though Ludlam's work panned out, but we also quickly see why the world seems to have left Worth behind – because machines did. He can only deal with old machinery, as he turns away a kid looking for help with his motorcycle because it's a crotchrocket with a computer in it. Grant Worth can't deal with computers. He can't even use an ATM and has to wait in line at the bank to deal with his money. The man is certainly grizzled.
Alongside Grant's woes unfolds the story of Elliot, a latchkey kid in today's Detroit who lives in Worth's neighborhood, trying to resist the peer pressure from his friend Damon about busting into abandoned old houses to steal their copper wiring for cash while working on his school robotics project. Elliot's path crosses with Grant's when Damon gets the bright idea to steal a bulldozer, which goes badly because it's actually the opposite of a bright idea.
Worth #1 is pretty solidly entertaining, because we like grizzled old coots as well as glory days from important times in history, we like people who can talk to machines and talk mess to ATMs, and we like watching idiots who think stealing a bulldozer is smart. I almost didn't review it because Sitterson uses "must of" instead of "must have" once and editor Paul Morrissey didn't catch it (sorry to only call out an editor for mistakes – but I'm one, too, and I expect to be called out on mine so I can fix them and avoid them in the future), and my hatred for "of" instead of "have" or even "apostrophe-ve" makes me twitch. But thankfully, I got over myself so I can tell you that Chris Moreno's artwork is also pretty interesting, as he crafts a very different style – also thanks to Cirque Studios coloring – to denote the difference between Worth's heyday and the grit of the now.
So that's a thumbs up, a notch in the yay column for Roddenbery and Arcana and Worth #1. It's definitely worth a look.
Magnus: Robot Fighter has been around for a long time, and the entirety of my experience with the character involves me constantly seeing his books at comic shops and wondering if he has anything to do with Magneto, and then remembering he doesn't, and then wondering why anyone would want to fight robots, because robots are cool, and now I'm going to read Transformers. So now that Dynamite is busting out a new relaunch of Magnus with writer Fred Van Lente and artist Cory Smith, I finally have a place to check in and see what this guy's beef with mechanoids is.
Magnus: Robot Fighter #1 seems to indicate that Our Man Mags has a very happy relationship with robots in the not too distant future, next Sunday A.D. In fact, he considers one of them, an A.I. called 1A, to be a father figure, even though it insists that anthropomorphizing him is a bad idea, their concept is love is just aping human words, and he apparently watches with a creep's eyes while Magnus bangs his wife, Moira Oh. Humans and robots live in harmony in Maury's Peak, though, and he teaches them both about Frederick Douglass and his assertions on how one makes a slave out of others. Then, suddenly, weird clunky robo-drones attack, and Magnus suddenly wakes up with a cool jumpsuit in a Blade Runnery future where all people are robots, and he's got no clue how he got there or where he even is anymore. Was it all a dream, was it 1A's version of the Matrix, or is he hallucinating now? It's all unclear, but we begin to see why Magnus has to start fighting robots – because he can't get any answers from them, they try to arrest him as an 'unregistered human,' and they keep trying to shut down his father figure for "deviation against the singularity."
It's an engaging first issue, with enough mystery and confusion to entice us into the second, and Van Lente's always pretty solid with crafting entertaining dialogue. Smith's art has a lot of dynamic action going on, and his designs for the various robots are fun and interesting, allowing for all shapes and sizes, from giant tin cans to multi-armed, sleek-looking receptionists. Magnus isn't a grizzled bastard like I always expected from the title of his book, for some reason, but actually a pleasant guy who is about to find his appreciation for robots severely challenged, and there's every indication that 1A is going to be a really big bad, even though it sounds like it's trying to help right now.
So, hey, if you've ever been curious about Magnus: Robot Fighter, and you should have, because it's called Magnus: Robot Fighter, maybe give the new Magnus: Robot Fighter #1 a shot when it comes out next week, and see if it's your bag, man. It's solid sci-fi stuff. Not super exciting as yet, but it has promise.
The nanotech are dying and they won’t take “no” for answer from Aaron (Zak Orth), the only person on Earth capable of keeping the “reject Skynet piece of crap” alive. In exchange for fixing the code, the nanotech, manifested as Priscilla (Maureen Sebastian), promises Aaron he can stay in the alternate universe dream world where the lights are on, there’s cold beer, hot food and internet porn.
It’s a tempting offer, but when “belly shirt girl” aka Charlie (Tracy Spiridakos) shows up at his office with a crossbow and a reality check, Aaron realizes it’s all just a dream, constructed by the nanotech. Unfortunately, Charlie isn’t long for this world as she's killed by Dr. Horn (Zeljko Ivanek) and his men, another manifestation of the nanotech.
Aaron manages to escape and takes a taxi to Chicago where he finds Rachel (Elizabeth Mitchell), who he saw earlier on TV talking about using the power outages as a weapon, in a parking garage. She’s just a little freaked out by his ranting and raving and ends up using a stun gun on Aaron. But this is his dream and so just when he needs it, Aaron finds a gun in his hand, which he uses to force Rachel to take him to Miles.
Unfortunately, 2014 non-blackout Miles (Billy Burke) is more “shady” drunk than swashbuckling hero and on top of that, he also thinks “Beardy McGee” is off his rocker. Monroe (David Lyons) shows up moments later, but he also doesn’t remember Aaron or the army he led decked out in “on the nose Civil War uniforms” though the idea is appealing to him. But when Horn and his men arrive, Miles, Monroe and Rachel suddenly find themselves armed with a sword, a machete and a whiskey bottle as well as their memories of Aaron “Stay Puft” Pittman.
After defeating Horn’s men, the foursome decides the best thing Aaron can do to wake up from his dream is jump off his own office building. Just as he’s about to take the fall, nanotech Priscilla appears with one last minute plea to fix the code, have children together and enjoy microwavable food. Aaron wants nothing more than to have kids and eat Hot Pockets, but he knows it’s not the answer.
After the jump, Aaron wakes up in a chair in an office with Horn holding a scalpel near his face. He remembers what Rachel told him about concentrating on controlling the dream and is able to free himself from the restraints and disarm Horn. He wakes up yet again, this time next to Priscilla in Peter’s compound in Lubbock. The two walk to Willoughby where they’re reunited with Rachel and Miles who show them what the Patriots are up to. The power is flickering on and off and the Patriots are loading up on weapons and flat screens in hopes it will stay on.
Lightning starts crashing, hitting several Patriots and the foursome takes shelter in an electronics shop where Aaron explains that the lightning is the nanotech’s "death throes." Just then Rachel is struck by a bolt and Miles tells Aaron to do something. He finds the nearest laptop and fixes the code to appease the nanotech and save Rachel’s life. Horn appears again and thanks him. With Rachel, Priscilla and Miles gone, Aaron realizes he’s been tricked into saving the nanotech. Aaron wakes up for the second time at the compound and finds Preacher Pete (Daniel Henney) happy about the miracle he performed.
“Dreamcatcher” teaches us a couple of important things about the nanotech. Like for example, it’s everywhere, even in Aaron’s mind. It’s also got a personality, takes offense to comparisons to Skynet and like its human counterparts, it has a very strong survival instinct.
That’s good to know but we still don’t know what the nanotech’s end game is and how Aaron and his friends fit into it – or don’t. After fixing the code, Horn tells Aaron he’ll leave him alone now. With the nanotech thriving once again, do they have further plans for the Revolutionaries? “Dreamcatcher” is one of the more creative episodes of the season. but will it have an impact on the big picture or is it just a clever distraction from a stagnant storyline?
Ultimate Spider-Man was the first ever Ultimate Comic, and now it's hitting its 200th issue, and it will be a memorial remembrance of Peter Parker, the original Spider-Man of the Ultimate Universe, whose legacy is being maintained by Miles Morales. A gathering of Peter's friends will mark the anniversary of his heroic death, but new secrets are going to come to light as part of a new sinister plan in motion.
Check out this first look at Ultimate Spider-Man #200, from Brian Michael Bendis, featuring art from original Ultimate Spider-Man artist Mark Bagley, as well as Dave Marquez, Mark Brooks, Sara Pichelli, and David Lafuente.
Magneto #1 came out of the gate strong, and now it's time for your first look at next month's follow-up. He's keeping a low profile, hunting down those who've committed crimes against mutants and slipped through the system. But what happens when SHIELD gets wind of that?
Check out this sneak peek at Magneto #2, from Cullen Bunn and Gabriel Hernandez Walta, featuring a cover from Chris Samnee and a variant cover from Jerome Opeña.
Canadian porn needs more Canadian content… no, it's not your buddy's opinion (or maybe it is), but it's something The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission is reporting.
The CRTC has set its sights on three X-rated cable channels: AOV Adult Movie Channel, AOV XXX Action Clips and AOV Maleflixxx, owned by the Toronto company Channel Zero, who are required to air 35 per cent Canadian programming over the broadcast year with 90 per cent of its content having closed captioning (Postmedia). As part of proposed licence renewals, in April the CRTC will hear evidence of this purported non-compliance.
The CRTC is an administrative tribunal that regulates and supervises broadcasting and telecommunications in the public interest. They supervise and regulate over 2,000 broadcasters, including TV services, AM and FM radio stations, and the companies that own these entities.
The new station FXX has unveiled its programming slate, launching on Tuesday, April 1st – as the younger-skewing funnier extension of FX Canada, FXX is an outlaw of the mainstream, featuring original scripted series, acquired movies and series, and original Canadian programs.
“Our viewers have shown us that they have an appetite for thought-provoking programming, and FXX will deliver the unconventional series that have established the FX brand as an industry leader in creating critically acclaimed content,” said Hayden Mindell, Vice President of Television Programming & Content at Rogers Media, in a press release. “Along with our partners at FX Networks, we look forward to rolling out even more compelling and ground-breaking programming in the year ahead.”
As the destination for non-traditional content in Canada, FXX will mirror its U.S. counterpart with a rebellious roster that defines the FX brand. The specialty channel will broadcast a combination of established hit comedies, such as "It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia," "Eastbound & Down," and "Wilfred," as well as new series "Ali G: Rezurection," new animated comedy "Chozen," and the Canadian-filmed black comedy "Fargo," based on the Coen brothers' Oscar®-winning film and starring Billy Bob Thorton.
FXX will be available to Rogers digital customers via free preview until June 30 on channels 64 and 566 (HD).
Join Blair Marnell (CraveOnline's TV Channel Editor) and Film Geek Radio founder Andrew Johnson (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.C.A.S.T.) for our return episode as we review “True Detective,” “Justified,” “Community” and “Almost Human.”
Blair and Andrew also dive into the forthcoming return of “Heroes” in NBC’s “Heroes: Reborn.” Did anyone really want “Heroes” to come back? Find out in “The Yellow Kring.”
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In the editorial afterword of Starlight #1, Mark Millar mentions that someone accurately described this series about an old man who once had some crazy space adventures as "Buzz Lightyear meets Unforgiven." Comics trying to bring some Clint Eastwood style into the proceedings are generally pretty compelling. Pre-New 52 Jonah Hex was often rendered like The Man With No Name, only sporting a scarred face, and that was great. The Dark Knight Returns is a very Clinty Batman. Garth Ennis' Nick Fury MAX has a Clinty vibe to him when he's not throwing down with three hookers at once. So when we're introduced to Captain Duke McQueen in Starlight #1, we're predisposed to liking him.
I got a more Flash Gordon vibe than Buzz Lightyear, though, at least from the surroundings. Duke's getting a medal on the planet Tantalus from an elf woman named Attala nearly twice his height, after he crash landed on their world and liberated them from a dictator named Typhon. But that's all in flashback, as McQueen is now an old man – still burly and strong, but he's just lost his wife Joanne to breast cancer and his sons aren't as close as he'd like – not that there's necessarily anything wrong, but they're adults with their own lives and families. We see more flashes of his time in space, and then the real world aftermath of being a disgraced pilot when nobody believed his space stories. It's a stark contrast between bright fantastical adventure and depressing old age, but the arrival of a fancy space ship outside his house promises to mix the two in short order.
Now when you see Millar as the writer of something, you may have come to expect some over-the-top bombast, as we saw in his Ultimate X-Men, his Kick-Ass, his Wanted, his Secret Service, etc. But Starlight strikes a great, understated tone in its first issue, and really makes you want to see what happens to Ol' Duke McQueen when a grizzled old man is called up for intergalactic action hero duties. Of course, the next issue could be full of him frying aliens and stunt-banging scantily-clad elf-giantesses, but there's nothing about this first installment that makes you think Millar's going that particular brand of apeshit, and that gives me some hope that this could turn out to be really, really cool. Goran Parlov (who also did the art for Fury: My War Gone By, coincidentally) brings a lot of that 'seen more than you'll ever know' vibe to the look of McQueen, although without the anger and aggression and more with the sadness that Fury was constantly running away from. The art is bright and real, even when he's riding a dragon.
Starlight #1 is a great start to the Millarworld universe. Let's hope it lives up to the promise.
On the surface, what makes “The Americans” such a seductive TV show is the world its two main characters inhabit. In between packing lunches for their two kids and running a travel agency, Philip (Matthew Rhys) and Elizabeth Jennings (Keri Russell) don wigs, steal cars, plants bugs, decipher codes and bed anyone they have to in order to stay one step ahead of the FBI while dutifully accomplishing the many dangerous missions their taskmasters in Mother Russia send them on.
But what keeps “The Americans” so engaging, after the initial lure of the show’s spy thriller antics wears off is something much more mundane and everyday than Cold War-era espionage. As show creator, Joe Weisberg has stated, “The Americans” is about Elizabeth and Phillip’s marriage. In “Cardinal,” that definition broadens a bit, when the usually unwavering Elizabeth realizes the threat her devotion to her county poses to not just herself and Philip but her family.
After the brutal murder of their comrades, Emmett and Leanne and their daughter, Philip heads to Virginia to check out Emmett’s handler, Fred while back at home, paranoia sets in as Elizabeth gets spooked by the utility workers set up across the street from their house. Though not easily shaken, after the murder of her friends and fellow officers Elizabeth starts questioning what will happen to their children should she and Philip make the ultimate sacrifice for the motherland. Sure, Moscow will “take care of the kids,” but in the life these two have chosen, Elizabeth wonders what exactly that means?
In Virginia, Philip vets Frank and realizes he had nothing to do with the hit. He returns home and turns his attention to Martha (Alison Wright), whose value to him may become worthless if she decides to pursue a clerk position at another agency. Lucky for Philip aka “Clark,” Martha decides to climb the ladder in-house at the FBI but after hearing about the murders on TV, she also decides to get a gun.
While most of the threats facing Philip and Elizabeth are external, there is one slowly developing in their own home, as Paige (Holly Taylor) continues to act on her suspicions about her parents. This time, she’s interrupted by her mother just as she’s about to call Elizabeth’s “sick aunt” in Pennsylvania. If and when she finally does find out the truth, the Jennings family will be faced with a test greater than any KGB assignment.
In the meantime, Philip and Elizabeth find themselves keeping one enemy a little too close, as Agent Beeman (Noah Emmerich) continues to show up unannounced. When he drops in at the travel agency looking to plan a bachelor party weekend for another agent, the two smoothly handle the situation though their surprise is evident. However, the trail has gone cold on the couple who Beeman holds responsible for his partner’s death and the kidnapping of a CIA official and Beeman, himself, has his hands full with Nina (Annet Mahendru), who’s playing both ends to the middle by telling Beeman about a walk-in visitor at the Embassy while reporting the details of her sex life with the FBI agent to her boss, Arkady (Lev Gorn).
“Cardinal” keeps the game of cat and mouse going between the KGB and the FBI while keeping us guessing who’s who with new threats arising while old ones still linger. It’s hard not to miss the dysfunctional mother-daughter-like relationship between Elizabeth and Claudia (Margo Martindale) but the evolving tension between Elizabeth and her own daughter is quickly becoming one of the show’s more fascinating subplots. As the late Leeann told Elizabeth in the season premiere, “nothing prepares you for watching your kids grow up – here.” That lack of preparation might just be Phillip and Elizabeth’s undoing.
