To describe The Walking Dead as ‘dark’ would be an understatement approaching libellous proportions. Robert Kirkman’s tale of the poor wretches unlucky enough to still be alive during a zombie apocalypse has crossed the event horizon and is now circling a black hole from which no light (joy, humour, hope or general merriment) can escape.
For once the word horror can be applied accurately; forget all of those dreary remakes and mindless torture-porn offerings at the multiplexes, for a story that will truly horrify head down to your local comic shop and pick up a copy of The Walking Dead.
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Unless the person signing your cheques is James Cameron or John Lasseter, work as a digital effects artist in Hollywood is a pretty thankless task at the moment. The best you can hope for is to be ignored, however more often than not critics will use your life’s work as a stick to beat the whole industry with. Why is it that in spite of the huge possibilities CGI has brought to modern filmmaking, it is treated with such snobbery?
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(Spoiler Warning: This post has major spoilers for both Lost and Sandman. If you haven’t watched all six seasons of Lost or read all 75 issues of Sandman then DO NOT READ.)
Like a lot of geeks, a fair number of goth girls, and the odd literary critic, my favourite comic book of all time is Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. And although I may often profess the genius of TV shows like The Wire and Mad Men, if I’m being honest with myself the show that I have enjoyed more than any other is Lost.
It recently occurred to me that some of the reasons that I love Lost are also the reasons that I loved Sandman back in the day. The more I thought about it the more similarities I saw between the two. After the last article about video games and war got a little heavy, I thought it might be fun to look at just what Sandman and Lost share. (I also thought it might be fun to have a bit of a play with photoshop.)
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Following in the critically acclaimed footsteps of The Deal and The Queen, The Special Relationship is the third film in Peter Morgan’s “Blair trilogy.” It charts the tumultuous relationship between Tony Blair and Bill Clinton as they strive to overcome terrorists in Northern Ireland, war criminals in Kosovo, and most dangerous of all, 22-year-old interns in Washington who don’t know when to keep their mouths shut. (No pun intend… oh forget it.)
The Special Relationship is well written and features some fantastic performances, but sadly as the credits rolled I felt as though the last 90 minutes represented something of a wasted opportunity.
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As we approach the orgy of videogame releases that accompanies the winter months, EA are finally unleashing their PR army and flooding us with information about the upcoming reboot of the Medal of Honor franchise. Following the lucrative example set by Call of Duty, Medal of Honor is being dragged out of the muddy fields of World War II and thrown headfirst into the sandy deserts of the War on Terror. The M1 Thompson, French villages and Market Garden are out, and the M16, Afghan mountains and Shock and Awe are in. But with these modern trappings comes the unshakeable feeling that something is a little off – I’ve spent hundreds of hours trekking through virtual Europe and slaughtered countless digital Nazis, so why is it that as soon as I’m handed a controller and told to go kick Al-Qaeda’s ass I feel uneasy?
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Pour out the scotch, light that cigarette, and if you’re entering Burt Cooper’s office take off those shoes, because Mad Men is back and it’s as spectacular as ever.
On Sunday AMC broadcast the first episode in the fourth season of Mad Men, their ongoing saga of sharply dressed ad men, alcoholics and adulterers. The year is now 1964 and much has changed for the residents of Madison Avenue. As Donald Draper struggles to adjust to his new situation, he appears to be making grave errors of judgement that could very well lead to his ultimate downfall. After years of being ten steps ahead of everyone else, is Don finally in over his head?
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When The Guardian began hosting The Ricky Gervais Show back in 2005, no one predicted what a phenomenon the podcast would become. And how could they, the premise – comedy writers Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant talk to some guy called Karl Pilkington for 30 minutes – was hardly earth shattering. Yet here we are, after five years and several million downloads, with an HBO animated version being broadcast on both sides of the Atlantic.
But before the animated version, before the spin off books, before Karl’s TV career and before The Guardian podcasts, there was The Ricky Gervais Show on London radio station XFM. Every Saturday Londoners were treated to a show that was, it’s fair to say, an utter shambles. The show exhibited no signs of planning, outright contempt for its listeners and was often downright incomprehensible. And it was glorious.
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And it’s over. Lost, a show that I would unreservedly describe as one of the greatest to ever grace our screens, has finished. The final episode aired a couple of Sundays back and left long term fans in tears and those who had only caught the first half of season one, but tuned in to see how it all ended, utterly baffled. As the show’s final hours played out mythology questions were answered and character arcs completed, but the writers still threw enough curve balls at us to ensure that the series’ true meaning will be debated for years to come.
One of the philosophical debates running through the heart of the show has always been the battle between science and faith. It was put centre stage in the season two premiere Man of Science, Man of Faith in which the conflict between Jack, the man of science, and Locke, the man of faith, came to a head. This conflict perfectly mirrored the competing theories about the nature of Lost itself: would the island’s seemingly magical properties be explained by pseudo-science or mysticism? In short, was Lost a sci-fi or fantasy show? And if you thought that science and religion could inspire heated debates, you’ve never seen sci-fi and fantasy fans go at it on a message board. Now that the series has finished, can we finally declare a winner?
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