Buttons and Unbuttons

Of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

2011-09-17T00:08:00.006+01:00

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a slow paced movie.

Not that I mean that in a bad way at all.

Of course, a film with a running time of two hours and seven minutes built upon moments of silence was never going to be as fast paced as any number of modern spy thrillers. But Tomas Alfredson (last seen directing the brilliant Let The Right One In back in 2008) has created a film that harkens back to the spy thrillers of yesteryear, and does away with the need for non-stop action.

Based on the 1974 novel John le Carré (as well as the 1979 BBC miniseries), Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is heavily influenced by 1970s conspiracy thrillers. Gary Oldman plays George Smiley, a retired M16 operative is called back in to the spy world, to investigate who within M16 is a Soviet mole. Playing the four suspects are Toby Jones as Percy Alleline (Tinker), Colin Firth as Bill Haydon (Tailor), Ciarán Hinds as Roy Bland (Soldier) and David Dencik as Toby Esterhase (Poorman). From there, the plot gets understandably more complex.

It is here, however, that Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy runs into its biggest flaw. Whilst the plot may seem to drag at times (particularly during its first act), it would have been greatly improved if it had had more time to play-out its ideas. This is not to say that it should have been longer, more-so that maybe it should have been adapted as a miniseries, like the 1979 original. It would have given more time for actors such as Colin Firth and Toby Jones to make more of an impact, and to add weight to some suspects (such as Ciarán Hinds) who are sidelined for the majority of the film More time spent with the suspects would have allowed more chance to surprise the audience, rather than having it be one of two characters on whom the most time is spent.

But making it as a minseries would have probably acted as a double edged sword, in that whilst obvious improvements could have been made in terms of depth, the quality of actors would be almost sure to decline.

Whilst many of the film's actors are relegated to a single scene, these scenes are uniformly fantastic. Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy) relating the events of his time to Russia to Smiley and Peter Guillam's (Bendict Cumberbatch) reactions as he is interrogated by the top members of Circus, being some of the best examples of the great acting work that is at hand in this film

This is of course probably Gary Oldman's strongest chance of winning an Oscar in years, and he is given ample opportunity to lay down his claim. This is particularly true in the scene where he recounts his sole encounter with the Russian spy, Karla, by re-enacting it to a distressed Bendict Cumberbatch. An utterly compelling scene that manages to shine in a film filled with so many of them.

Despite reservations at the films length, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a triumph. It's pacing may be a turn off to many but Tomas Alfredson has continued his sterling work from Let The Right One In and made another fantastic film. With the sheer strength of the acting talent on display, in particular the performances of Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch, and the sure to be award winning performance by Gary Oldman, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy is simply put one of the best films released in 2011.

9/10

X-Men: First Class Review

2011-06-01T11:46:00.008+01:00

It's been almost 5 months since I last posted a review, but that's not to say that there haven't been films that I've wanted to review. I loved Black Swan (someday I'll copy my review for the uni paper and stick it up here), Thor was great and Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger's Tides was as mediocre as the last two. But X-Men: First Class is the first film in a while that has exceeded my expectations. I have hated the last 2 X-Men films, with Last Stand being, quite possibly, my least favourite super-hero film ever and Origins: Wolverine just completely failed to bring the character of Wolverine to life. But X-Men: First Class is exactly what the franchise needed to resuscitate itself.

I don't think it can be understated just how much of the films strengths lie on Matthew Vaughan (director of last year's brilliant Kick-Ass) who brings so much to the franchise (after dropping out of directing Last Stand). Gone is the darker tone of the X-Men films of the last decade, instead settling on a far more fun tone that goes hand in hand with the 60s setting. The sets look brighter and more colourful, as do the costumes (including Emma Frost who seems to only wear lingerie....not that I'm complaining) and there are obvious James Bond parallels that can also be levelled, particularly at the early scenes featuring Michael Fassbender. Matthew Vaughan was exactly what the franchise needed two films ago, but now that he seems to have full reign of the franchise I couldn't be happier.

The anchor to this film is, of course, the relationship between Michael Fassbender's Erik Lehnsherr/Magneto and James McAvoy's Charles Xavier/Professor X. Luckily, both are absolutely fantastic. Quite easily they are able to live up to the performances given by Sir Patrick Stewart and Sir Ian McKellen in the older X-Men films, whilst also appearing to having more fun in their roles than those veteran actors.

X-Men: First Class's Charles Xavier feels more human than before, actually spending his time drinking, womanising and just having a good time. Of course we still have to see his more serious side and driven nature, but at least we get to see a refreshing new side to the character. But the true revelation here is Michael Fassbender (also fantastic in 2009's Inglorious Basterds), his Magneto is utterly tormented by his childhood in a WW2 Concentration camp and yet is a completely relate-able character despite the audience knowing what Magneto will eventually become. It becomes clear from early scenes that Fassbender shoulders a large piece of this movie on his own (and would make for a fantastic James Bond) but it's the scenes between Charles and Erik that make 'X-Men: First Class' as great as it is.

Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) is the villain intrinsicly linked to Magneto's past and shown to be an instigator behind the Cuban Missile Crisis. His aims might seem oddly cartoonish, especially in context of the rest of the film, but the anguish that he has caused, make him a compelling force throughout. Particularly in any scene when he is paired with Fassbender. The chilly January Jones plays Emma Frost, carrying over almost the exact same performance from Mad Men, but it's good one so we ignore that. Sadly though, some of the other villains in the Hellfire Club just aren't serviced in the plot well enough at all, receiving maybe a half dozen words between them. And it's here that the main weakness within the film lies.

Whilst James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender are clearly great as the leads, the other X-Men are left with minimal screen time, with only Jennifer Lawrence's Mystique and Nicholas Hoult's Beast getting any time to themselves. It helps that Hoult and Lawrence are good, but characters such as Lucas Till's Havok and Caleb Landry Jones' Banshee are short changed. The film does a great job at creating these characters and setting up their world, but it's the sequel that's going to be the one that is able to take full advantage of it.

Apart from some dodgy special effects and the obvious growing pains that come with having to introduce an entire universe within two hours, X-Men: First Class achieves what it sets out to. At times it might bite off a bit too much, but it all goes towards creating this new cinematic world. If you were left disappointed by the last two X-Men films, then this will almost certainly make you happy. In many ways it does a far better job at introducing the X-Men than 2000's own 'X-Men' film, and apart from those teething problems, this is a world that I want to spend a more time in. It's good to see that the franchise has once again found it's feet (although I am disappointed that Darren Aronofsky dropped out of The Wolverine*). 'X-Men: First Class' is a great first step to rejuvenating the X-Men franchise and I can't wait to see where Matthew Vaughan takes them next.

8/10

*speaking of Wolverine......

Top 10 Lost Episodes - One Year Later Edition

2011-05-24T12:50:00.013+01:00

So yesterday/today (depending on where you live) marked the end of the sixth season of Lost and so I wanted to do something to mark the occasion. Yesterday, after finishing my final exam of the year, I watched the final episode of Lost, 'The End' and now I've decided to mark the day the actual finale aired in the UK (at stupid o'clock in the morning) by revisiting a post I did last year before the sixth season had even aired. So after 113 episodes and 121 hours of television, here are my picks for my favourite episodes.

Honourable Mentions:

Season 1: All The Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues / Deus Ex Machina / Exodus
Season 2: 23rd Psalm / The Long Con / Lockdown / ? / Live Together, Die Alone
Season 3: Flashes Before Your Eyes / The Man From Tallahassee* / The Brig / Man Behind the Curtain / Greatest Hits
Season 4: Cabin Fever
Season 5: Jughead / LaFleur / Dead is Dead / The Variable / The Incident*
Season 6: LA X / The Substitute / Dr. Linus / Happily Ever After / The Candidate / What They Died For

And now on with the list (and of course SPOILER ALERT for all 6 seasons of the show:

10. The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham - Season 5 / Locke centric
Written by: Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof / Directed by: Jack Bender

We all knew that this episode was coming. Since the season 3 finale, this episode was almost a necessity to explain who was in that damned coffin and why exactly they ended up there. We already knew Locke was in there, and we'd already seen him walking around after having being killed so what was left to shock the audience? Well that scene where Ben convinces Locke to not hang himself and then almost immediately strangles him using the very same rope he would have hung himself with. And of course the added poignancy that this episode really was the last time we saw Locke alive. One of the best bait and switches the show has ever done, and it pulled it off superbly.

9. Ab Aeterno - Season 6 / Richard centricWritten by: Melinda Hsu Taylor & Greggory Nations / Directed by: Tucker Gates

After 4 seasons of getting to know the character of Richard, we still didn't know all that much about him. We knew he didn't age and that he had close ties to Jacob, but we didn't find out his backstory until this amazing Season 6 episode. Not only did we finally get an answer to the mystery of how exactly the Black Rock ended up in the middle of the jungle but also what destroyed the Four-Toed Statue and probably the most definitive answer we'll ever get as to what exactly the island is. All this, as well as getting to know the characters of Jacob and The Man in Black a little better. This could have turned the episode into an info dump, but a fantastic performance from Nestor Carbonell helped salvage it and he gave his best performance of the entire show, proving that he earned that regular credit far more than say Ilana .

8. Man of Science, Man of Faith - Season 2 / Jack centric
Written by: Damon Lindelof / Directed by: Jack Bender

The premiere of the second season was probably the best episode of that entire season, not only did it offer a statisfying answer to the cliffhanger at the end of season 1, with quite possibly the single best scene that Lost ever produced, but also came at time where Jack centric episodes still felt fresh and needed rather than the jumbled mess that they would become later like in Season 3's 'Stranger in a Strange Land'. It also marked our introduction to the character of Desmond, who became one of the shows strongest characters in later seasons. Yes the Swan hatch may have been a small waste of an entire season in hindsight, but at the beginning this was a fantastic opening to that chapter of the Losties island quest and still contained some of the best acting that Terry O'Quinn gave on the entire show. But yeah, I'm all here because of the Mamma Cass song that opened the season. "But you've gotta make your own kind of music, sing your own special song. Make your own kind of music, even if nobody else sings along"

7. The Shape of Things to Come - Season 4 / Ben centric
Written by: Brian K. Vaughan & Drew Goddard / Directed by: Jack Bender

The first episode back after writer's strike really set Season 4 up to have a mind blowing ending (which it did). Despite Ben still having a very rich past to delve into, this episode delved into his future and showed us what exactly he was doing off the island after it was revealed he was Sayid's employer in 'The Economist'. What followed was an hour filled with taut conversations between Ben and Sayid or Ben and Charles Widmore, and that's forgetting the island half of the story where shit was getting real. The mercenaries had killed Rousseau and Karl and kidnapped Alex and I don't think anyone was expecting Keamy to shoot Alex point blank so coldly after Ben tried to manipulate him into letting her go. This was one of Ben's greatest failures and he paid the price dearly. Michael Emerson sold the hell out of every scene in this episode, showing the pain he felt at causing the events that led to his daughter's murder. So he sets the Smoke Monster on them. Any episode with fantastic acting and an epic smoke monster attack is going to rank highly, and this one is probably the best of those in the entire series' run.

6. There's No Place Like Home - Season 4 / Oceanic Six centric
Written by: Damon Lindelof & Carlton Cuse / Directed by: Jack Bender & Stephen Williams

Remember how I said Season 4 ended in a big way? This is that big way. Filling in the blanks of how exactly that mind blowing twist that concluded Season 3 actually happened by showing us who got off the island and how they did. Throughout there were noble sacrifices on the behalf of Michael and Sawyer, tragic seperations with Jin being left on the Freighter as it exploded and Desmond finally reuinting with Penny (yes I cried). Oh and the twist which was codenamed 'Frozen Donkey Wheel' which little did the fans know was a very literal interpreation of what the twist was. All three hours of Lost's Season 4 finale were just jam packed with so much action, and brilliance that it could have felt overstuffed but it didn't, instead it was just a fantastic capper to a season which many agree ended the first year of Lost's incredible mid-life renaissance. And that's not even mentioning the fact that we fianlly found out that it was Locke who was in the coffin at the end of Season 3...

5. The End - Season 6 / Everyone centric
Written by: Damon Linedolf & Carlton Cuse / Directed by: Jack Bender

Perhaps a controversial decision? But I don't care. I loved the ever loving shit out of this episode. After spending the vast majority of my teenage years obsessing over the show, 'The End' did not dissapoint. Yes, in retrospect the flash-sideways were perhaps a little pointless and not every question that the show ever posed was answered, but as the last 2.5 hours we were ever going to spend with Jack and Hurley and Sawyer and Kate and Locke and Ben and Juliet and everyone else, it was perfection. Everyone involved in the production was on the top of their game, with special shout-outs going to both Michael Giacchino for his brilliant score and Jack Bender for his tireless work behind the camera. We had a chance to say goodbye to nearly every character the show had let us grow attached to over the years, we (I) cried, we (I) laughed and we (I) were (was) blown away by the pure adreneline rush of the whole episode. This was the only way that Lost could have possibly ended and I'm pleased as hell that I got to be there to watch it happen.

4. Pilot - Season 1 / Jack, Kate & Charlie centric
Written by: J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof & Jeffrey Lieber / Directed by: J.J. Abrams

It's very apt to have this episode directly follow 'The End', not only because of the amount of similarities between the show's first and sixth seasons, but because they mark the beginning and the end of the phenomenon. Back on the 22nd September 2004, Lost began with one of the best television pilots that has ever been produced. The fact that the show was only able to surpass this episode three times throughout it's run (in my opinion of course) is a fundamental statement behind just how much this episode got right. So much of what made Lost amazing was already present in this episode, the fantastic on location shooting, the original score, characters with actual depth and mysteries that pervaded the show throughout it s entire run. Whilst the show only expanded from this point and the show that concluded last year was a fundamentally different beast to some of the seeds sewn in this first episode, that does not stop this episode from being fantastic. It's main aim was to hook people from the beginning, and it did that, and then the show kept me hooked for the entirety of its time on the air.

3. Walkabout - Season 1 / Locke centric
Written by: David Fury / Directed by: Jack Bender

Whilst 'Pilot' had me hooked for a little while, it was 'Walkabout' that made me know I'd be sticking with this show for its entire duration. The previous episode 'Tabula Rasa' still had all the signs that this show was going to initially be about Kate, but 'Walkabout' was where we got a true sense of the ensemble and the true acting might of Terry O'Quinn. O'Quinn would go on to become the show's MVP during its low points but here is the episode which began to scratch at the surfact of his character. 'Walkabout' superbly introduces the tragic character of John Locke, still probably the greatest acheivement of the entire show, and gives us a compelling on and off island narrative. On island we are introduced to John Locke, a man with no fear whereas off island we meet the fundamentally broken John Locke, the contrast between these two was one of Lost's most compelling uses of the flashback format making the audience want to know what in that plane crash changed this man so much, then we found out. HE WAS IN A FREAKING WHEELCHAIR OFF ISLAND?!?!? Still standing as one of the most compelling story threads throughout all of Lost focused on John Locke and that wheelchair and this is where that was introduced, and it still stands tall as one of the best single episodes of Lost.

2. Through the Looking Glass - Season 3 / Jack centric
Written by: Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof / Directed by: Jack Bender

The Season 3 finale had to be on this list because this the episode where Lost probably started to run head first into it's endgame. Of course, overwhelmingly, it is remembered for that final twist and a bearded Jack yelling at Kate "WE HAVE TO GO BACK!", which remains one of Lost's most quotable lines, but there's so much more to this episode. There was the complete decimation of the Others, the 'villains' of the first three seasons of the show, getting to see Rousseau's radio tower mentioned all the way back in Season 1 and the answer to what that wire was that Sayid found in Season 1. We have the beach assault with the "FUCK YEAH" moment when Hurley ran other one of the Other's in a Dharma van, closesly followed by Sayid breaking a guys neck with his FREAKING LEGS!! Sawyer killing Mr. Friendly in retaliation for kidnapping Walt in Season 1. Locke's ghostly visit from Walt leading to him knifing Naomi in the back. The whole idea of a Freighter coming to the island to take them home! And of course the events down in the Looking Glass. Charlie's conversation with Desmond's girlfriend then realising that she wasn't the one who had sent the boat which was closely followed by his death at the hands of Mikhail (still one of Lost's saddest moments) and of course "NOT PENNY'S BOAT". 'Through the Looking Glass' was a jam packed 2 hours of entertainment, something that rivalled movies in terms of production, and yet it's better than movies because it was preceeded by 70 hours of getting to know these characters. 'Through the Looking Glass' is just a breath taking acheivement in television and not many episodes of television can top it...

1. The Constant - Season 4 / Desmond centric
Written by: Carlton Cuse & Damon Lindelof / Directed by: Jack Bender

...but one episode has. 'The Constant' in many ways is the opposite of 'Through the Looking Glass'. Focusing almost entirely on Desmond (another of the show's best characters), 'The Constant' creates a far more intimate feeling. First and foremost 'The Constant is love story, the greatest love story that Lost ever told, between Desmond and Penny. Desmond quite literally has to battle against time itself to reuinte with his love or else he will die. Whilst some may be turned off by the overt sci-fi nature of the episode, what really grounds is the work that Henry Ian Cusick and Sonya Walger put in to really ground the emotion. The sense of elation that is felt during the final phonecall is incredible. To put it simply 'The Constant is the best writen, directed, acted and scored episode of the entire show. Despite in many ways being a stand-alone episode it just works. There's a reason that Desmond and Penny were the couple that fans of the series rooted for the most, and 'The Constant' is the purest distilation of the chemistry that made that so. 'The Constant' might be marked as the point where Lost began to show it's true science fiction colours, but it did so in one of it's most emotional and intimate episodes ever and it's a true testament to the cast and crew that it worked. Some of the other episodes might be truer reflections of what the show was, but 'The Constant' stands as my favourite episode of the shows entire run.

See ya in another life brother.

Favourite TV Shows 2010 - Favourite Episodes 10-1

2011-01-12T12:50:00.010Z

So here we are, my list of my 10(11) favourite episodes of television from 2010. Ranging from 10 minutes to 2 hours, these were, in my opinion the finest episodes that the medium of television produced between 1/1/2010 and 31/12/2010.

10. Sons of Anarchy - 'NS'

Despite the unevenness of the third season of Sons of Anarchy the finale was an absolutely superb way to end the season. 'NS' was a culmination of three seasons worth of story-lines, most notably all the drama involving Stahl and Jimmy O'Phelan. Yes the central drama to the show surrounding Clay and Jax still remains but the outside forces which had plagued the show for three years were wiped out in one tremendously suspenseful episode. When the club finds out that Jax has turned snitch you being to legitimately wonder how on earth SAMCRO is going to get out of it and then the double bluff is revealed. Maybe it was a little too neat an end, with SAMCRO ultimately taking very little fallout (beyond the 14 months in prison) but this episode makes the list purely for the scene where Opie shoots a weeping Stahl in the back of the head to avenge his dead wife Donna. Beautiful scene and a perfect way to end a season which was plagued by disappointments.

9. Adventure Time - 'What is Life?'
'What is Life?' was the first episode of Adventure Time that I ever watched and from that a magical friendship was born. Think Spongebob Squarepants but instead of being underwater it's set in a post apocalyptic world where quite literally ANYTHING can happen. The world of Adventure Time is wonderfully surreal and despite what could just be a funny concept the characters are legitimately well written and relate-able. 'What is Life?' focuses on Finn the Human trying to out prank his friend Jake the Dog by building a Never Ending Pie Throwing Robot (NEPTR for short) and here things go off the walls. What kind of kids show would have a robot where only one of his wheels works causing him to go round in circles and then ask his master 'Why do you forsake me?'. Or the pies which contain boysenberry....and poison. Or the balloons who fulfill their BLOOD OATH, cheer and then happily float up to the mesosphere in order TO DIE. Yes Adventure Time has enough jokes for adults to appreciate it but it's also wonderfully colourful so that kids don't get bored. Whilst there are many other episodes of Adventure Time I'd recommend to people ('The Eyes' is fantastic, as is 'Tree Trunks') 'What is Life?' is a fantastic place to start.

8. Parks & Recreation - 'Sweetums'
There were many episodes that I could have chosen from the second half of Parks & Recreation's second season such as 'Telethon', 'Freddy Spaghetti' and 'Park Safety' but I went with 'Sweetums' for two reasons. One being the fact that we got an amazing public forum, where once more we get to spend time with the amazingly insanely stupid residents of Pawnee (hell and Ron's face when he looks under his chair expecting to find a prize is golden as well) but the second reason is of course DJ ROOMBA. This ingenious idea takes an already great episode and raises it to amazing levels. It might not be a very Ron heavy episode, but it's an episode that uses all of the ensemble well, which lead to some of the very best episodes of Parks & Recreation. It's also helpful that we get to see the entire Parks department suffering from a sugar rush, because sometimes people being stupid is just funny dammit!

7. Terriers - 'Change Partners'
Whilst the pilot episode of Terriers was fantastic, it took until 'Change Partners' for me to realise was going to be something special. The episode starts quite low key with Hank looking for a bank loan to pay for his new house which then spins off into him being offered a job into looking into the bank manager's wife and whether or not she is cheating on him. And this is where the episode kind of gets fucked up. Particular needs to be made of Olivia Williams' fantastic guest role as the wife and playing her exasperation at the weird fetish her husband has of making her live out this faux-lifestyle of infidelity. By the end of the episode we realise that Olivia Williams' character Miriam has never actually been unfaithful but is driven to actually sleep with Hank by the end of the episode. This sets off the chain of events causing the bank manager to commit suicide and Hank to, instead of helping, forging his signature so that he can pay for his house. It's a fantastically dark moment and one that could have made the lead character seem unlikable but Donal Logue's performance just makes him so damn likable as Hank. Then as a cap to an already fantastic episode, we end with a shadowy figure crawling into Hank's attic whilst he's not looking. Utterly gripping stuff.

6. Doctor Who - 'The Time of Angels'/'Flesh and Stone'
Steven Moffat might just be my favourite TV writer currently still making TV shows. Whilst I quite often find the standalone episodes of Doctor Who to be somewhat lacking, a Steven Moffat script is almost always guaranteed to be fantastic. and the same can be said of this two-parter. Whilst maybe not scaling the same heights as 2007's fantastic episode 'Blink', 'The Time of Angels' and 'Flesh and Stone' serve as a fantastic reminder that the Weeping Angels are probably the best creature that Doctor Who has introduced since it came back in 2005. Along with the Weeping Angels, Moffat also brings back another of his fantastic creations with River Song from his own 2008 two-parter. Over the course 90 minutes Moffat slowly ratchets up the tension and questions and whilst some were disappointment I thought it was fantastic. With story beats that wouldn't pay-off until 'The Big Bang', Moffat showed all the writers of Doctor Who how to conceive a two part story and that he is quite definitely a genius that everyone should pay attention to.

5. Party Down - 'Steve Guttenberg's Birthday'
Party Down ran for two terrific seasons and this episode might just be it's crowing achievement. Maybe it's just because I've always been fascinated by the work that goes into screen writing but Martin Starr and Christopher Mintz-Plasse working together on an horrific screenplay was a fantastic idea. The two completely different read througha were hysterical in their own ways. From the over the top scientific vocabulary that littered the first draft to Henry's amazing overacting during the second, there was almost always something to love about this episode. And that's discounting how weirdly lovable Steve Guttenberg's house is. Filled with crazy memorabilia, thousands of DVDs, a home cinema, a fountain filled entirely with water from a iceburg and of course the picture of a guy fucking a porcupine. Party Down shall be missed, but I'm glad that it lasted long enough to give us the comic genius of this episode.

4. Lost - 'The End'
I've written far too much about Lost over the years so I'm going to make this a short one. Have all the issues with the final season you want. Have all the issues with the final 20 minutes as you wish. But those first two hours of the Lost finale were pretty incredible. Everything that came to represent Lost over it's six years came crashing together in one hell of a satisfying way to way to send of the Island in style. From the sentimentally moments of bringing back nearly every single significant character that appeared over those six years, to Jack Bender's fantastic direction or Michael Giacchino's award worthy score. 'The End' was a microcosm of pretty much everything that made Lost so great. Maybe the trip into theology at the end rubbed people the wrong way, but it was an apt ending to a show which was so much about the characters and their relationships. It might not be the best finale for a TV show ever, but it's a damn good one.

3. Community - 'Modern Warfare'
During it's first season was a very funny show about about the lives of a group of people who went to a Community college. Occasionally it would dip into meta references of the larger plot at hand (mostly given to the audience by Abed) but I don't think anyone expected something as amazing as this. In it's first season on the air Community brought to the table a pantheon level episode of television. Something that will through the ages as one of the greatest episodes of television ever. 'Modern Warfare' was a quite literally a perfect pastiche of so many fantastic action movies. With overt references to films such as 'Die Hard', '28 Days Later', 'The Matrix', 'Hard Boiled', 'Scarface' and 'The Warriors' this episode was a smorgus board of geeky references. It managed to nail the cheesy lines of dialogue ("Check mate bitches" whilst shooting a member of the chess club in the back) and overall feel of action movies with aplomb (thanks to the sterling work of director Justin Lin). 'Modern Warfare' is an episode for the ages, and the fact that it's only number 3 on my list shows just how strong the remaining episodes truly were.

2. Breaking Bad - 'One Minute'
Another series which could have had so many different episodes on this list, from 'Fly', 'Half Measures' and 'Full Measures', Breaking Bad Season 3 was one of the best seasons of television that I have ever seen. But if everything I saw on television over the last 12 months stuck me it was the titular One Minute of this episode. I have never been so tense whilst watching a television series than when I was watching Hank fight for his life against the cousins. Not only did it come as a surprise that such a big moment was coming so early in the season but also the fact that there is legitimately no way to know who is going to make it out of the shoot out alive. Of course one scene does not a great episode make, but the ever brilliant Aaron Paul gave one of his best monologues on the show to date (a feat in itself) and Dean Norris proved that he was more than ready to take on the increased role that was being demanded of him. Topped off by fantastic direction by Michelle MacLaren and beautiful cinematography by Michael Slovis and you have yet another pantheon episode of television.

1. Mad Men - 'The Suitcase'
Despite Breaking Bad having the (marginally) better season, it wasn't going to go down without a fight. 'The Suitcase' is the kind of episode that only a serialised show can do. Working off of three and a half years worth storylines and plot threads, 'The Suitcase' ties everything together seamlessly within one night of the lives of Don Draper and Peggy Olson. Anger is vented, truths are revealed and tears are shed. With quite possibly the performance of both Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss' lives, 'The Suitcase' is a absolutely stunning episode. After the death of Don Draper's closest friend, the only person in the world who the knows the whole truth behind Dick Whitman, he has no one left to turn apart from Peggy, the girl who all those years ago thought that she would have to sleep with her boss as a natural part of her job. The only man who knows the whole truth about her own hidden pregnancy, the man who gave her such a high placing job in Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. Almost four years worth of angst came rushing out over the course of one 40 minute episode and it's amazing in the level of catharsis it is able to give. Maybe Mad Men reached its peak in this episode, but it's not a peak that much else on television will ever be able to reach.

Favourite TV Shows 2010 - Favourite Episodes 25-11

2011-01-11T20:04:00.014Z

This year's list of my favourite episodes is a little longer than it has been in previous years. Not only did I manage to find a fantastic episode in every show I featured on my list, but also a couple of shows which didn't feature also get their dues. So onward with the first 15 of my favourite episodes of 2010!

25. Charlie Brooker's Newswipe - Series 2, Episode 2
Newswipe isn't the kind of show which necessarily has perfect episodes, it's just a uniformly fantastic show with moments that stick out more so than actual entire episodes of sheer perfect. I love almost everything that Charlie Brooker has ever laid his hands (particularly the XXXwipe shows) but it's hard to pin point an individual episode as the best of a particular series. So I chose Episode 2 of the second series as a true example of the show at it's best. There was the fantastic 'How to Report the News' segment, the genuinely informative piece on British journalists and the complete ripping apart of the Wooton Bassett story from early last year. Yes I don't like every element of the show (*cough*TimKey*cough*) but the bits I like, I absolutely adore and this episode had that in spades.

24. Modern Family - 'Manny Get Your Gun'
The best episodes of Modern Family will normally have the entire cast in one place (see 2009's 'Fizbo') and whilst 'Manny Get Your Gun doesn't have the cast together for the majority of its run time, when everyone does meet it is literally a collision. Modern Family might not be the most hilarious comedy on TV but this episode was able to have enough funny moments (Phil, Claire and Alex breaking down in the car etc.) whilst holding together the sense of family that makes Modern Family so enjoyable.

23. 30 Rock - 'When It Rains, It Pours'
After the resurgence that the show had back in spring, this episode was the solidification that 30 Rock was back on top form. A fantastic, but not flashy guest appearance by Paul Giamatti, Jack making the video for his future son ("the secret to good hair is dove....blood") and of course Tracey playing Cash Cab in order to see the birth of his child. 'When It Rains, It Pours' played to the strengths of most of the cast proved how 30 Rock can still hit it out of the park.

22. South Park - '200'/'201'
South Park celebrated its 200th episode in 2010 and definitely pushed the show to the limit. '200' and '201' were celebrations of a show that has been on TV for almost 15 years. Almost every celebrity that South Park had taken the piss out of was back, we had Tom Cruise (and more gayjokes), Mecha-Streisand, Scott Tenorman and of course Muhammad. What followed over their combined 40 minute run time was a fantastically hilarious and even thoughtful look at the ideas of censorship. Of course the show ended up getting censored and the creators received death threats for trying to portray Muhammad on TV, showing just how right South Park was in the first place.

21. Futurama - 'The Prisoner of Benda'
Futurama came back to our screens after great anticipation. Whilst it maybe wasn't as consistent as it was back before it was cancelled, there's no denying that Season 7 had flashes of the Futurama we loved, and 'The Prisoner of Benda' was the clearest example of this. Everyone knows body swap episodes, pretty much every sci-fi TV show ever has done an episode about, but what made Futurama's take so great was to the lengths that they took it. By the end of the episode almost everyone was in someone else's body and always leading to hilarity (Scruffy & Wash-bucket Amy FTW). The episode was intricate and even proved how dedicated the writing staff of Futurama are by having the writer Ken Keeler actually create an entire mathematical theorem to have the episode work.

20. Justified - 'Fire in the Hole'
'Fire in the Hole' was a template for the Justified was going to succeed as the show went forward. Based on the short story by Elmore Leonard and developed for TV by Graham Yost (Band of Brothers, The Pacific), the pilot Justified turn out to be a fantastic piece of television. This first episode hinted at a larger plot to the show, but also showed how it could work within a self contained. The fact that the show was buoyed by a fantastic performance by leading man Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood) and a fantastic villainous portrayal by Walton Goggins (The Shield), made Justified's first episode one of the most rounded hours of television all year.

19. Rubicon - 'The Outsider'

Rubicon may have stumbled a little out of the gates, especially when compared against AMC's other fantastic shows Mad Men and Breaking Bad, but 'The Outsider' proved that Rubicon might have had what it took to actually compete with those two shows on a qualitative level (barring that godawful finale). This was the episode was the lose threads started to come together and the show became less interested in the central mystery behind the show and focusing on the characters jobs within API and the moral responsibilities it holds for them. It also Truxton Spangler's fantastic tie speech, one of the best scenes of television all last year.

18. Better Off Ted - 'The Impertinence of Communicationizing'

Sometimes a show is just so damn for funny for reasons that are quite simple to explain. A memo goes around the offices of Veridian Dynamics urging the employees to insult each other and hilarity ensues. Here is a series of hilarious outtakes from the episode. Enjoy.

17. Supernatural - 'Weekend At Bobby's'

I could have quite easily chosen the Season 5 finale 'Swan Song' as the best episode of Supernatural in 2010, but that episode would have worked on a whole other level if it had actually been the final episode of the show. Instead I decided to use this as a chance to speak of unsung heroes. Bobby has been the closest thing the boys have had to a functioning father figure since the beginning of Season 2, and whilst he's been a constant presence on the show since then, it took us until Season 6 to get an episode highlighting his awesomeness. Sometimes moves away from established format can prove to be messy and muddled, but Supernatural offer consistently offer up interesting ways of subverting their format, and 'Weekend At Bobby's' was one of the best.

16. Cougar Town - 'You Don't Know How It Feels'

Cougar Town magically transformed a few episodes into Season 1 and became one of the most consistently funny ensemble comedies on TV. Yes, Courtney Cox is still the obvious weak link and it's a shame the show has to built around her, but even she can't take away from the natural chemistry all the actors have together. Guest-starring Scrubs' Ken Jenkins as Jule's dad, Cougar Town finally strives for some more of the lofty emotional moments that Bill Lawrence's other show so often achieved. But even removed from the most emotional beats there was the fantastic Halloween themed hilarity, with a multitude of fantastic costumes. Ellie and Laurie going dressed as each other was the gift that kept on giving and Bobby's Windy Man is genius on so many levels. If you aren't watching Cougar Town, you are definitely missing out on a very worthy successor to Scrubs.

15. Chuck - 'Chuck versus The Beard'

Whilst Chuck Season 3 didn't quite reach the heights that the show was able to achieve in it's second season, 'Chuck versus the Beard' was an episode the fans had been waiting a long time for. Ever since Chuck gained the intersect, it was obvious it was only a matter of time until it bled more and more into his personal life and his family and friends would inevitably become privy to his life as a spy. First came Captain Awesome and then, finally, in this episode, Morgan found out. Of course this all took place during yet another assault on the BuyMore but what made the episode was Morgan's of sheer elation when his friend told him he was a secret agent. Chuck in 2010 had many great moments, in particular the first episode with Chuck and Sarah as a couple on the train, or Timothy Dalton's fantastic guest appearances, but it shall forever be remembered as the year Morgan found out about the Intersect.

14. The Pacific - 'Peleliu Airfields'/'Peleliu Hills'

Whilst some people don't hold The Pacific to the same lofty heights that they hold Band of Brothers (I cannot honestly say, seeing as I have only seen the first 4 episode of BoB) but I will say The Pacific is fantastic in its own right, dealing fair more with the emotional tole of warfare, rather than its visceral nature. But no episodes were as harrowing as the episodes that dealt with the assault on Peleliu. The men were completely out of their element and completely outmatched. Images from these episodes still float when I think back on the miniseries, from Sledgehammer finally breaking and trying to rip out the teeth of a dead Japanese soldier or Snafu throwing rocks into the blown apart skull of a corpse. They might not be pleasant images, but they came from some of the strongest hours of television I watched last year, and I'm grateful I saw them.

13. Louie - 'God'

It's very hard to describe Louie as a series. Louie takes the form of a series of vignettes, sometimes 10 minutes, sometimes 20 or 40. One of the standouts vignettes from it's first season was the episode which dealt with the idea of religion. What starts of seemingly innocently turns into one of the most downright terrifying lessons on Jesus' crucifixion I have ever heard, going into disgusting details of how much pain Jesus would have been on the cross with only the choice between the pain being in his legs or arms, for three days. Even that scene alone would have been enough to earn this episode a place on my list, but the later scene with Louie talking to his mother about religion and the expertly placed stand-up excerpt helped prove that Louie is definitely something very special.

12. Dollhouse - 'Getting Closer'

Dollhouse only aired 3 episodes in 2010 and whilst the final two episodes were a mixed bag in the way that concluded the series, 'Getting Closer' was an amazing penultimate episode from writer Tim Minear (Firefly and Terriers). We got an action packed 40 minutes filled with so many mind blowing twists and revelations that showed that even with only 3 episodes left it was going to be hugely enjoyable. The two big twists of course were Dr. Saunders coming back and then proceeding to shoot Bennett in the head immediately after she and Topher had a moment (a Whedonesque twist on so many levels). But of course the huge twist of the piece was that Boyd had in fact been the head of Rossum since the very beginning. Yes in context it doesn't make much sense, but that doesn't take away from the sheer amount of fun that this episode really was.

11. The Walking Dead - 'Days Gone Bye'

What a pilot episode this was. You can argue as to whether the rest of the show was able to reach the heights that this episode did (I'd say episodes 4&5 came closest) but there's no denying that Frank Darabont wrote and directed one hell of a pilot episode here. Capturing every single beat from the first issue of the comics, The Walking Dead proved that there was still life in the zombie genre. From Lennie James' fantastic portrayal of Morgan to Rick shooting the half Zombie in the face was filled with little moments of sheer brilliance. Compared to other works of Zombie fiction, the pace was positively sedate able to properly explore the toll of being alone in a world infected by zombies. To start a tale of ongoing survival, The Walking Dead couldn't have possibly hoped for a stronger episode than this one.

Of 127 Hours

2011-01-11T16:07:00.005Z

127 Hours is the new Danny Boyle film and I think it's safe to say that it is pretty fantastic. The basic premise of the film should of course be well known to anyone familiar with the real life story. Aron Ralston goes hiking in Utah and ends being trapped underneath a rock for 127 Hours where he ultimately is forced to amputate his own arm in order to escape. Of course this film isn't for everyone, but if you think that it's just James Franco under a rock for 2 hours then you're wrong, what 127 Hours is far more interesting than that.

That isn't to say the vast majority of the films events don't occur in one very small section of a canyon, because it does, but this film is elevated by an absolutely fantastic performance from James Franco. 127 Hours is the sort of film that lives and dies on the performance of its lead actor and luckily James Franco is superb and really does elevate this film. The sheer range that James Franco is able to portray in this film is extraordinary and shows just how far he has come from his days of playing Harry Osborn in the Spider-man films. Over the course of 93 minutes, James Franco shows the audience sheer joy, sadness, intense anger, pain, hints of madness, exhaustion and a list nearly as long as my arm. Whilst the short run time might not be nearly as long as Ralston's real life ordeal, 127 Hours really places the audience into the canyon with Franco to the extent we feel his pain and every emotion he is going through. 127 Hours is a character piece of the highest order, James Franco's performance is near flawless and really does have to be seen to be believed.

Whilst James Franco's outstanding performance is of course the main reason to go see this film, we must not forget the works of Danny Boyle and the rest of the crew. Special mention must be made to cinematographers Anthony Dod Mantle and Enrique Chediak who do an absolutely outstanding job of filming Utah in all of it's daunting glory and the small space that Franco inhabits throughout the film. Again, if you like your films to look good, they don't look much better than 127 Hours.

Then we have Danny Boyle who has done the amazing task of filming the un-filmable. One of the main reasons that people I know have been hesistant to see this film is because they don't know how on earth it is going to work as a film, but Danny Boyle and fellow screenwriter Simon Beaufoy (also from Slumdog Millionaire) achieve this in their script and Danny Boyle in his filming of events. Whilst the majority of the film does take place with that canyon, Danny Boyle portrays the toll that these events are playing on Aron Ralston through the use of such strange and out of place imagery that it feels like the audience is seeing what Ralston was seeing, as he slowly dehydrates and hallucinates.

Really though what I need to talk about is that scene, the scene where after 5 days at the bottom of this crevasse, Ralston amputates his own arm. I don't think it's any surprise that the scene is hard to watch. Films don't portray violence in a realistic light very often which makes a film like 127 Hours that much more stark when it actually does so. What it is about the amputation scene isn't the sight of the desecrated arm (although it kind of is) but the sound of what is happening. The sound of Ralston breaking the bone in his arm in two is one that I will not forget for a long time, nor will I forget the scene where he is forced to sever his own nerve endings.

127 Hours isn't a film for everyone, for sure, but those that do appreciate it will absolutely love it. Danny Boyle proves, once again, how he is one of the best working directors in the world and James Franco puts in a stunning performance as Aron Ralston which has already picked up a lot of buzz as we move into awards time. At it's heart 127 Hours is a very intimate story about a man who wasn't prepared for what happened to him, he isn't some kind of superhuman, but a man who knew what he needed to do to survive. And that makes 127 Hours that bit more outstanding. 9/10

Favourite TV Shows 2010 - Top 5 Dramas

2011-01-06T00:51:00.006Z

This is where things get really interesting. If you read my blog regularly, then you'll know that most of passion towards TV is directed towards the more dramatic serialised shows, and it should come as no surprise that all of these shows are exactly that. Whilst I do sincerely love Community and Parks & Recreation, the passion I have for these shows far exceeds them. I might not have seen shows like Treme and Boardwalk Empire and The Pacific may have been fantastic, but the 5 shows I have selected here were my favourite dramatic shows of 2010.

Onwards with the list!

5. Sons of Anarchy

Sons of Anarchy was a show that I actually watched in its entirety this year, so technically this ranking is all 3 seasons of the show (I know, I promised I wouldn't do that again). So whilst if I had ranked this based purely on Season 3 it might not have made it on to this list at all (it wasn't awful, just very deeply flawed) but looking at all 3 shows as a whole, it's utterly fantastic. The show focuses on a biker gang in the Californian town of Charming. It might look from adverts as just an excuse for some guys to get all testosterone-y at each other but it's actually more interesting than that. The show has a lot of similarities with Hamlet, what with the show focusing on Jax Teller, who's father was murdered (?) and now his father's best friend is married to his mother and ruling the Sons of Anarchy, so of course there's a lot of tension between those two. The show touches on themes of family and duty and all kinds of morality themes that make it more interesting to watch. But that's not all, Sons of Anarchy has a sense of "shit is going down" that almost no other sh ow on TV (apart from maybe Breaking Bad) can even match, over three seasons shit ranges from the death of Donna, Gemma being raped and the Irish stealing Jax's baby. Whilst the Jax baby arc in Season 3 was handled badly (mostly because of artificial roadblocks in the story and the fact that the new characters had almost no time to grow), Sons of Anarchy still has the power to punch you gut as you watch these things happen to the characters. Whilst Season 3 wasn't all that great a season, Season 2 was absolutely superb and I regret not having watched it then. Don't be turned off by the fact that Sons of Anarchy looks like a homoerotic mess, it's an incredibly compelling and often fantastic TV show that finished with a terrific finale this year and will hopefully recover in Season 4.

4. Lost

If you've been reading my blog or actually know me, then I think you know what my feelings are towards Lost. It will foreve r be my favourite television show ever, it's the show that got me hooked on TV in the first place, the inspiration behind this very list. Without Lost I have no clue what I'd be like today. Maybe less nerdy? Probably not to be honest, just nerdy about different things. But Lost was a special show for me and 2010 was the year that it's last ever episode aired and it's final remembrance might be here (although probably not). I'm going to miss Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Locke, Ben, Hurley, Jin, Sun, Desmond, et al. for years to come. It feels weird to me now being in January and not having any new episodes to look forward to. It's been 7 months since the last (fantastic) episode of the show aired and still the emotional resonance of that episode is with me. I was sat ther e at stupid 5 o'clock in the morning crying my eyes out as I said goodbye to some of my favourite fictional characters ever. No, Season 6 of Lost wasn't the greatest season of television ever (hence why it's at 4), the flashsideways won't play as well on second viewing and there were a few narrative dead-ends, but that's Lost in a nutshell. Not every question was answered, but when it came down to it, the focus on the characters was all anyone really watched for and the sixth season delivered on little character moments throughout, making Lost one of the finest shows of the year, but one of the finest shows ever.

3. Terriers

Terriers will go down as one of the most damning cancellation of any show on TV in 2010, in a year we lost fantastic new shows like Rubicon, Party Down and old favourites like 24 and Lost, Terriers still hurts the most. In a single season, that is sure to go down as one of the greatest 'one and done' series ever (a pantheon also hosting Freaks & Geeks and Firefly), Terriers did what so many shows strive for over their entire runs. It created an entire world, it created a stable ensemble of likeable and memorable characters, it was written to perfection and just worked in a way most shows don't. Luckily Terriers tells a complete story, so in years to come people will be able to pick up the box-set and just enjoy what exists of the show. This isn't a Firefly where once you reach the end you want to know more, Terri ers ends on a logical point and whilst you'd love to spend more time with Hank and Britt, it still feels like an end for the show, even if it's not the end that you or the showrunners would have wanted. If Terriers did come back, who know's if it would have been able to maintain that lightning in a bottle, which I guess is the only consolation that fans of the show can hold onto. Terriers wasn't the flashiest show on TV in 2010, it was about scruffy looking people who aren't necessarily leading man material but are just damn likeable. It was funny, light-hearted but it also knew how to punch its audience in the emotional gut, like the culmination of the third episodes 'Change Partners' or Hank consoling Katie after she cheated on Britt. The show was just superb, a show I'm going to try and force onto as many people as I can (if it ever gets aired in the UK) because it's just that good.

2. Mad Men

Mad Men, 2009's best show, aired it's best season in 2010, and yet somehow finds itself at the 2nd spot in my list. Season 4 of Mad Men was a very different season for Mad Men, most noticeably for what the show was doing the charact er of Don Draper. This year he was a wreck, nothing was coming easy to him (not once did the show have one of the famous Don Draper pitches of the past) and he was falling more and more heavily onto drinking. He was sleeping with the wrong people, making the wrong decision and was just an all round wreck. Season 4 of Mad Men essentially became a character study into the mind of Don Draper. It takes a lot for a show to put it's leading man into such a low place but Mad Men Season 4 did it so well. The character of Don Draper was completely broken down, ever single element including Dick Whitman. In the end we don't know whether Don marrying Megan in the last episode will actually be a good decision in the long but knowing Matthew Weiner, it's sure to be interesting. But away from Don the show was still doing interesting things, Betty was no longer such a huge character because of the divorce and Kiernan Shipka as Sally Draper really stepped her game up in Season 4 to fa ntastic levels. Then of course the normal fantastic performances from the entire cast (shout out to Elisabeth Moss and John Slattery). Mad Men is still one of the best shows on TV, and Season 4 was easily the show's best season so far. If you haven't been watching, do yourself a favour, Mad Men is nuanced and just an all round fantastic show, but still was not the best show of 2010.

1. Breaking Bad

HOLY FUCK. That is the reaction I had to entirety of Season 3 of Breaking Bad, last year Breaking Bad was the show that came closest to taking the crown from Mad Men with a fantastic second season I didn't think it could top, of course I was wrong. Creator Vince Gilligan came back in 2010 and delivered with one of the greatest television seasons ever, the season that finally allows Breaking Bad to throw it's hat into the ring of all time greats. Most of the praise for the show probably comes off as hyperbole, but believe me when I saw this show is fantastic in every single way. Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul are two of the best actors working on television currently, the show proves that television really is a visual medium with Michael Slovis's photography and the writing is of the highest calibre. The show constantly leaves the audience guessing where exactly it's going to go, which helps when the show is written with almost no long overarching plan, creating a sense of spontaneity that just drips from the show. This is a show that could just list reams and reams of moments off, the end to 'One Minute' and every single monologue for instance, but that's not experiencing the show. This is a show that should be watched by as many people as possible, Breaking Bad (along with Mad Men) is the current benchmark for what can be done with the medium of television. It allows for far more interesting and nuanced characters and performances than films can ever dream, long form narratives to progress over time rather than be wrapped up in 2 hours. Breaking Bad wasn't just the finest achievement that the world of television had to offer in 2010, it's also fast becoming one of the finest offerings the medium has ever given us.

Favourite TV Shows 2010 - Top 5 Comedies

2011-01-05T19:01:00.004Z

Well here we go, finally my top 10 (or at least the start of it). If you can't tell this year's top 10 list will be done in a slightly different style to the way that it has been done in the past few years, I'll be doing two top 5s. This first top 5 shall be documenting my favourite funny shows on 2010 (not that all of them are only funny) and the second will be my favourite dramas of 2010 (again not that they're all strictly dramatic). I don't know how long this messing around with the lists will last, but this way seems an interesting way to give people 5 shows if they prefer comedies to dramas. Although really I could have just done two top 10s with my honourable mentions....

Ahhh fuck it, on with the list.

5. Charlie Brooker's XXXwipe

If you know me then you know that I hold Charlie Brooker in the highest regard possible. The pinnacle of this achievement can be found in his XXXwipe shows, ranging from Screenwipe, Newswipe, Gameswipe and this years 2010wipe. Whilst 2009 had more overall episodes, I didn't actually put him on my list last year even though the shows would have been just as worthy then. So this year I'm giving Brooker the respect that he deserves. All of the shows in the XXXwipe vein look at the world of television, news, etc. through the highly cynical eyes of Charlie Brooker who brings the hilarious smackdown like almost no one else. Whether it is pointing the sheer stupidity and hypocrisy that can be found in the news media or just ripping a crap TV show to shreds, Brooker is nearly always hilarious and never not interesting. Not many shows can be this brilliantly funny, topical and just down right fascinating to watch.

4. Cougar Town

This time last year, I don't think I'd seen an episode of Cougar Town. Whilst the involvement of Bill Lawrence of Scrubs had me interested, but the idea that the show would centre on Courtney Cox (from Friends dontcha know) fucking guys half her age just seemed like an awful idea. The first few episodes did absolutely nothing to alleviate these woes with one scene in the pilot focusing on Courtney Cox's character Jules giving a college student a blowjob. This was the kind of thing that happened for about 6-7 episodes, until all of a sudden the show started doing stuff right. Bill Lawrence started using the ensemble in interesting and often hilarious ways. Eventually the show completely dropped the idea of Jules being a cougar and instead focused on the extended family of the cul-de-sac crew. Now the show easily ranks as one of the best comedies currently on TV, a wacky sense of humour very reminiscent of Scrubs (without the hospital drama element) focusing on a bunch of functional alcoholics who come up with hilarious ways to spend their time (PENNY CAN!!!). Any show that pokes fun at the awfulness of it's title every week is worth watching if you ask me.

3. Party Down

Sadly one of the best comedies of the year was also cancelled this year. Luckily there still exist 20 hilarious episodes of Party Down for people to watch and treasure for years to come. Party Down centres upon a catering company called 'Party Down' and every week the show travels to some new function or even that they're hosting. Every week you just don't what sort of event you'll get with parties ranging from orgies (yup, orgies), birthday parties, picnics and funerals. The show thrived on the awkwardness that can be produced from these situations, but the best part of the show had to be the superb ensemble cast. Whilst Jane Lynch left part way through Season 1 to go and do Glee, that came as no harm to the rest of the cast. Adam Scott plays Henry (now of Parks & Recreation) was great as the straight man lead for the show who could also be funny when the time called, and especially worked as a counterpoint to Ken Marino playing Ron (Veronica Mars) who has so much shit happen to him that it's hard not to laugh. There was Ryan Hansen playing Kyle, the aspiring actor and the only one of the team who can get jobs purely because of his looks and not his talent. The superb Martin Starr as Roman, an aspiring writer who writes hard-sci-fi, so woefully fantastic as a completely up himself douchebag who was great in every scene he was in. The show thrived and making it's characters lives awful, such as Lizzy Caplan's character Casey having her scenes in the latest Judd Apatow movie, cut or Megan Mullally's Lydia, be completely oblivious to the actual nature of show business. Party Down was a show that left our screens far too quickly but left 20 perfectly formed episodes that all comedy fans should track down and watch.

2. Community

Community for a while had the number 1 spot on this list, based on the pure virtue that it had aired more episodes and that I had seen it far more recently than the show that currently resides at the top spot. But now it must settle for this (equally fantastic) number 2 spot. Community, as almost every show on this list, has an absolutely superb ensemble that it would be unfair to focus on any one character. Community is a show that ranges through so many different ideas that it is easily the most ambitious comedy on television. Whilst not every idea may work to the fullest of it's potential (the space episode, I'm looking at you) but how many other shows can boast episodes ranging from paintball spectacular, gangster movies, zombie apocalypse, stop motion Christmas special, conspiracy movie and religious morality tale. Even at the end of it's first season, Community did two finale episodes in a row. Community completely thrives upon pop-culture references, and if you're a pop-culture geek like me then that kind of thing just appeals to you. Luckily the meta-ness doesn't come at the cost of the shows heart, with the characters still feeling like real people, even amidst the craziness. Community is a testament to the versatilely of television as a medium and is damned funny in the mean time, making the second best comedy of 2010.

1. Parks & Recreation

How could it not be? Whilst there have been no episodes in 7 months*, Parks & Recreation was still far and away the best comedy of 2010. It's amazing to think that every single show on this list made it's début in 2009, but that just proves how fantastic a year for comedy it truly was, but Parks & Recreation still reigns supreme. All I will say about this show is that it really just has to be watched, it has a reached a level of just sheer comedic consistency that it almost never fails to make me laugh. Almost no other show on TV can attest to being as consistent every single episode as Parks & Recreations is. The show is now at a level that the US Office was at during it's 2nd season, and has no sign of slowing up. If you aren't watching this show then you truly don't know how funny TV shows can be. So now I'm just going to list brilliant moments from the show in 2010. DJ Roomba, Jerry falling into the river, every single forum that is held that lets the citizens of Pawnee speak their mind, the entire relationship between April and Andy, Mouserat!, any scene where the characters from the Parks department are in or mention a library, Rob Lowe's character introduced at the end of Season 2 and how he himself introduces himself to people and of course...

...Ron 'Fucking' Swanson. Breakfast connoisseur, wood work specialist, self defence trainer, hunter and jazz musician, Ron Swanson is just a superb character, effortlessly hilarious and played to perfection by the brilliant Nick Offerman. If there is only reason to watch Parks & Recreation (there isn't) it's because of this guy and his epic moustache.

And now I leave you with the single most infectious piece of music I've ever heard.

*IT'S COMING BACK IN 2 WEEKS, I AM SO FUCKING PSYCHED TO HAVE THIS SHOW BACK IT IS UNREAL.

Of The Way Back

2011-01-05T01:30:00.003Z

Having just seen 'The Way Back' in the cinema (not sure exactly I'll be posting this review) I wanted to get a few thoughts down whilst they were still fresh in my mind from the experience.

'The Way Back' is a movie that tells the tale of a group of men in a Siberian gulag during World War 2 who escape and decide to make their way south, to escape from Communist rule. This journey spans 4,000 miles of harsh conditions ranging from blizzards to deserts and a general selection of not very nice conditions.

At one point in the movie, Irena (Saoirse Ronan), a young Polish girl they find on their journey, asks Mr. Smith (Ed Harris) why the men who escaped from the gulag do not discuss their personal lives and to this Mr. Smith replies along the lines of "in the gulag we learned to keep quiet unless necessary" and it is this exchange of dialogue for me which sums up what worked and what didn't work about 'The Way Back'.

What did work, astonishingly well, is the general tone, atmosphere and look of the entire film. Peter Weir clearly knows how to shoot a scene and Russell Boyd's cinematography is absolutely breathtaking. If there is one reason to go and see 'The Way Back' it is because of how amazing the cinematography is. The shots of the snow racked forests of Siberia, the enormity of Lake Baikal, the heat and vastness of the Gobi desert all look absolutely gorgeous. Many films don't make good enough use of on location scenery, but by the sheer nature of the story that is being within 'The Way Back', it would almost be impossible to not show how awe inspiring these locales are.

Then there was the use of silence, whilst the score to the film isn't exactly sparse, there are moments when there is no sound at all. All that is left on the screen is the image of this small group of people battling against nature so that they might live. Some of the most memorable moments in the film come when everything goes silent and all that can be seen is the silhouette of the haggard band of travels walking across a sand dune. The visuals in this film are some of the best I've seen from a film in a while and show that Peter Weir is a fantastic visual director.

Sadly what let's this film down is the fact that there is almost no characterisation of the people we are following on this epic journey. Beyond the lead character, Janusz (Jim Sturgess), none of the characters we spent the following two hours with are developed at all. In fact when the gulag is left behind, I didn't actually know who had been taken with them on this journey. Maybe it didn't help that I couldn't latch onto names or that because whilst in coats in Siberia, it was difficult to tell the characters apart, I found myself unable to give any personality traits to these characters. Of course it was easy to recognise who and what sort of character that Colin Farrell* was playing in Valka** but the actual attempts at making a fully formed three dimensional character weren't even attempted until half way through the film by which point it was far too late.

However by far the most telling moment of this complete lack of characterisation came a third of the way through the film where two characters are arguing, one of whom had been shown to be an artist (hence why he became known to me as 'The Artist'), the other has had zero screen time at all. During this exchange the character with almost no screen time (apparently named Zoran) proclaims "My job is to make everyone laugh". Up until this point in the film, 'Zoran' had done absolutely nothing funny, there was no scene of him telling an amusing anecdote, it felt like this line of dialogue was there to make us have something to identify him by, but how hard could it have been to have a scene where he tells a hilarious joke.

The main problem with not having compelling characters is that when stuff happens to them, you just don't care. Because this film focuses upon a gruelling 4,000 mile walk, of course some of the characters are going to die. However when there has been almost no attempt to make them fully formed characters, it almost becomes a nuisance. The characters were just there to service the plot in the end. Instead of coming to life as real breathing human beings, they just were. They did what they were supposed to do and died when they were supposed to. The character of Irena played absolutely no role in the film other than to act as a confident between Jim Sturgess and Ed Harris so that later they could have an intimate conversation.

'The Way Back' is a long way from being perfect, mostly due to the fact that none of the characters feel like actual characters. However luckily the rest of the movie is able to compensate for this. I've already stated how amazing it looks, but truly it does, watch the trailer above at the highest quality to get a taste of how good it looks. The characters might not be the most compelling in the world but the plot is interesting on almost a primal level, it might be a shade too long but it's hard not to be interested in the plight of the characters, even if you aren't particularly interested in the characters themselves.

It might have some large shortcomings but 'The Way Back' is still made enjoyable by stunning visuals and compelling narrative. 7/10

*Surprisingly, Colin Farrell isn't in the movie as much as the adverts and billing would have the audience believe.

**I've had to look up pretty much every character's name to do this review.

Favourite TV Shows 2010 - Honourable Mentions

2011-01-02T12:26:00.013Z

2010 was yet another fantastic year for TV shows, it might not be the golden age that was occurring a few years ago with The Wire, Sopranos, Deadwood etc. but it was still a year that gave us fantastic seasons of shows like Mad Men, Breaking Bad and Parks & Recreation. But those aren't the shows that I'm here to talk about, instead I want to focus upon the shows that haven't made it into my top 10. Instead this blog post will be almost an other top 10 (or 12) with shows which whilst more often than not fantastic for various reasons didn't quite make it into my overall top 10 of the year.

So enough with the introductions, here were the great shows of 2010 which didn't make my top 10 (bearing in mind that I have yet to watch some shows like Treme and Boardwalk Empire) in alphabetical order:

30 Rock
30 Rock didn't have a fantastic 2009, there was still a lot to laugh at still but it wasn't as consistent as it was during it's 2nd Season. Then there was the fact that it was having to compete with the new 2009 comedies of Community and Parks & Recreation. But then 2010 gave the show a massive comeback. There were some fantastic guest stars with Elizabeth Banks, Matt Damon, Jon Hamm, Michael Sheen, James Franco and Paul Giamatti and outright hilarious gags. James Franco and his Japanese sex pillow, Tracy remembering his past and having a mental breakdown, Jack making the video to his future 'son' about how to live, Buzz Aldrin shouting at the moon, Tracy making the advert but continually flubbing his lines and of course every moment that Michael Sheen was on screen as Wesley Snipes. 30 Rock might not be my favourite or the most consistent comedy on TV, but when it's on form it rivals the very best the medium has to offer.

Adventure Time
Adventure Time is a show that you wouldn't expect to be on any other critical TV list for 2010, but personally I think that this show is fantastic. Adventure Time is a Cartoon Network (yes THAT Cartoon Network) animated series about Finn the Human and Jake the Dog and the adventures that they have. That description doesn't highlight just how insanely surreal this show is though. It's the kind of thing that just appeals to university students in the same that Spongebob Squarepants is so appealing. But Adventure Time is something special, every episode is only 10 minutes long but you'll get vignettes dealing with a zombie invasion, pie throwing robots, how Finn deals with being turned into a foot and the art of imagination during a knife storm. It's hard to describe what makes this show so wonderful but it is, quite definitely one of the best new shows of 2010, if only for Lumpy Space Princess.

Better Off Ted
Better Off Ted is the first show on this list that was cancelled in 2010 (and sadly not the last). Better Off Ted was a comedy show set inside the fictional multi-national corporation Veridian Dynamics and dealt with the work force who helped create the inventions that they use to shape the world, which also gave birth to some absolutely fantastic fake adverts for the company ("Friendship. It's the same as stealing"). Better Off Ted was a fantastic satire of large corporations and how they deal with people. The ideas ranged from sending out a corporate memo encouraging the employees to swear (the fantastic outtakes can be seen here) and turning an employee who died on the job into a Jesus figure. All of this is topped off with a great ensemble which also gave fresh work to the Arrested Development alum Portia De Rossi as well as Jay Harrington as the titual Ted andJohnathan Slavin and Malcom Barrett as the wonderful Phil and Lem.

Chuck
After the fantastic Season 2, I think that most fans were just thankful that Chuck managed to survive being cancelled, twice I might add. Chuck is still a great show, maybe not quite as good as it was in Season 2 (although it quite often gives episodes of that level) but still one of purest blasts of fun to be found on TV these days. In season 3 the show maybe got a little too dark for what it was but that's forgetting what was great about Season 3 and the first half of Season 4. We got more Jeffster, Brandon Routh (Superman) put in a great performance as the villain of Season 3, Chuck and Sarah finally consummating their relationship and Morgan and Ellie both finally found out that Chuck was a spy (as well as a great plot featuring Awesome being brought into the spying life). Then there was the continued fantastic guest casting the show does with the crown jewels at the moment being Timothy Dalton as Volkoff and Linda Hamilton as Chuck and Ellie's mother. Timothy Dalton, especially, has been fantastic as the possibly insane but increasingly scary Volkoff and I can't wait to see where this goes in the second half of Season 4.

Doctor Who
2010 and the fifth season of Doctor Who was possibly the most important year for the show since its rebirth in 2005. Not only David Tennant leaving the show after four years of inhabiting the role of The Doctor but so was Russell T Davies the man who had sheperherded the show into coming back. Luckily Steven Moffat and Matt Smith stuck the landing in what was one the better seasons of the show since it's return. There was the normal wavering quality between certain episodes but the charismatic Matt Smith and Karen Gillan were great throughout and finally the audience was getting more than one or two Moffat scripts a year. A lot of what made 2010 great for Doctor Who must be laid at Moffat's feet (not counting David Tennant's goodbye which January 1st 2010) with the terrific two parters of 'The Time of Angels'/'Flesh and Stone' and 'The Pandorica Opens'/'The Big Bang' as well as a superb Christmas special with 'A Christmas Carol' which closed out the year and left anticipating Season 6 even more.

Justified
Justified could have just turned out as just a show which let Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood) take out bad guys in a cowboy hat, but instead it became so much more than that. Whilst the pilot was based off of a Elmore Leonard story, the rest of the show expanded to the point where it existed on it's own away from that story. Whilst not every episode was great, Justified was a show that put out some fantastic stand-alone episodes such as the fantastic 'Long in the Tooth'. Eventually the show achieved that hard sought balance of procedural and serialised story telling putting a great compelling overarching narrative which was frequently backed-up by a series of very well done one and done plots. Justified might feature as strong an ensemble as other shows but Timothy Olyphant as Raylan Givens and Walton Goggins as Boyd Crowder put in two of the best performances of any actors this year something which just makes the show that much more compelling. The final 'Bulletville' might not have been the best way to end the season, but the first season was more often than not great and I can't wait for Season 2 in February.

Louie
Louie is the reason why I haven't this blog post up sooner, because I wanted to watch the complete season to make sure I was right about putting it on here. Luckily it is and if I'm perfectly honest, probably completely worthy of making the top 10. Louie is the brainchild of the hilarious comedian Louis CK (Parks & Recreation) and is one of the most difficult shows to pigeon-hole. On face value it would appear to be a sitcom, but really it's more a collection of vignettes with a loose continuity between them all bookended by some stand-up from Louie himself. The fantastic thing about Louie is that in any given episodes it's almost impossible to guess what might happen. Some episodes have downright hilarious moments, such as Louie's trip down to the South or the heckler during one of his shows, others will poignant such as the poker episode which turned into a discussion of homosexuality or just intentionally unfunny such as the fantastic episodes 'God' and 'Bully'. Not every bit or episode will work but it never tries one thing for two long and it's nearly always refreshing to watch.

Modern Family
Modern Family also made the honourable mentions last year, and that isn't to say it isn't any worse than it was last year, it just isn't up to the level of the shows I selected for my top 10. The main problem with Modern Family is one that pervades many shows with ensembles, that some plot lines just might not work in some episodes, and the episodes that do work have a meeting of all the plot-lines. Luckily the cast for Modern Family is one of the most likeable on TV with great performances from Ty Burrell, Eric Stonestreet and Ed O'Neill. Modern Family is definitely not the most experimental or ambitious comedy on TV, it's just an incredibly reliable, often hilarious family sitcom which is more often than not just what you want.

The Pacific
Say what you will about The Pacific being "just another war show/movie" and you're probably right, but that doesn't stop it from being any less fantastic. At 10 hours long, The Pacific offered one of the most psychologically draining shows on all of TV last year. In it Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks offered yet another superb war drama on par with Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers, and it was an entirely different beast. Instead of being based on the western front, The Pacific, as the name suggests, focus on the far less reported by far more gruesome Pacific front. What was a delivered was a 10 hour tour de force that looked into the psychological nature of being a soldier in the war and what exactly it puts you through without every shying away, which as a result meant that The Pacific had a far darker tone than Band of Brothers. Bolstered by amazing production values and fantastic performances by James Badge Dale, Jon Seda and Joseph Mazello, The Pacific was one of the best shows to air on TV in 2010 and only just missed out on the top 10.

Rubicon
Moving from one show that starred James Badge Dale to another one. Rubicon was an entirely different beast to The Pacific, but was just as great and despite numerous early problems a great addition to the AMC line-up. Sadly though Rubicon was cancelled after it's first season but that still doesn't make enjoyment of that season any less. Rubicon was a show that started out as in the same vein as 70s conspiracy thrillers but eventually found a far more comfortable setting focusing on the moral ambiguity that goes into researching terrorists and appropriate responses. It was fascinating to watch what was essentially four people in a room reading files, but it became compelling viewing. If only episode 12 'Wayward Sons' (Journey reference FTW) had been the finale, Rubicon would have been one of the best shows of the year, sadly the far more conspiracy centric 'You Never Can Win' served as the finale and sadly focused on the weaker elements of the show. Luckily the first 12 episodes of the show were still uniformly fantastic especially with great performances from the likes of Arliss Howard and Michael Cristofer.

Supernatural
It wasn't the best year for Supernatural mostly due to the fact that the show is never as good as when it was as focused as it was in the early parts of 2010 but it's still just a great show. Whilst I might have been happier if 'Swan Song' had indeed been the last episode of the show (I'm a sucker for when shows end when they feel like they should have ended) I'm still getting new episodes of one of my favourite shows. Season 6 at the moment is only half way through and therefore it's almost impossible to make any snap judgements so all I can say is that I have no fucking clue where it's all going, which is interesting if slightly worrying at the same time. Season 6 might be slightly muddled, but has still been made enjoyable by the occasional fantastic episode ('Weekend At Bobby's), the usual great performances from Jensen, Jared, Jim and Misha and the fact that the show week-in, week-out puts out a great and interesting take on the Supernatural.

The Walking Dead
The Walking Dead makes it onto this list almost entirely because of the potential it holds to become fantastic. Season 1 seems far more like a prologue to a far more fantastic second season than anything else. Because of it's incredibly short length (only 6 episodes) there wasn't any real room for the show to breathe, it was in those moments in Season 1 that the show was fantastic. Whilst the show does need to work on certain characterisations, overall it's found a very sturdy foundation, especially when it comes to the divergences that it has made from Robert Kirkman's graphic novel series. The Walking Dead has probably the most promise of all the returning shows this year to improve, and it when it does come back in October I know I'll be waiting with bated breathe to see what Frank Darabont and the rest of the team will deliver.

So those were the honourable mentions, feel free to weigh in with any of your own thoughts and be sure to check back over the next few days for Top 10 favourite shows, my favourite episodes and my biggest disappointments of 2010.

January 2011

2011-01-01T21:46:00.003Z

I'd planned on having my TV show list over a week ago, however Christmas got in the way as well as the fact that the more I kept looking into TV shows I really enjoyed over the past 12 months, the longer my list has grown to the extent that it's now over 20 shows long. All of them are shows I would endorse for many people to watch, but now that the majority of the drafting is done and I've only got to figure out a couple of episodes to put on my list, you can look forward to reading all of my thoughts about TV in 2010 tomorrow.

But that's enough about talking about, we're here to celebrate the fact that it is now 2011. Well to be honest I have no clue what on earth 2011 will be bringing. 2010 was a complete surprise on multiple levels. Some very good stuff happened, some less than good stuff happened, but that's what happens in any year. 2010 wasn't an awful year, in fact for the most part it was pretty fantastic, blah blah cliché bullshit.

So now it's 2011, which really so far doesn't feel all that different from 2010 and I don't think it will be apart from the arbitrary fact that that is where we decided that a year was going to begin.

Nothing really interesting to impart upon anyone because my life isn't really blog worthy. Apart from the failed New Years celebrations last night but it was still fun because I was hanging out with two of my closest friends. And really (sappy bullshit) that's what the new year is supposed to be about.

What to look forward to this month are things such as 127 Hours, The King's Speech and Black Swan being released in cinemas as well as the return of Parks & Recreation coming back to our screens in about 3 weeks! So yeah lots of media related goodness to look forward, as well as those TV show blogposts I've got cooking, which still need to be finished...

Currently Listening to: Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
Currently Watching (TV): Louie

Of Supernatural Season 5

2010-12-30T19:42:00.004Z

Hooray, another really late review that I should have got out of the way at the end months ago instead of waiting for the show to be half way through it's current season. But what the hell, I'm reviewing it now and it's the thought that counts...right? Anyway, the normal drill of spoilers ahead.

This was it for Supernatural, this was the big season, the one that the show had been leading up to for four years. This was the projected end point for the show and for a lot of the season it sure felt that way. Sam and Dean were up against the apocalypse, the end of days and all the rest of that shit. There's no coming back from that (although as Season 6 has shown, the writers are trying). This was the season they were going to deal with the religious tales of the end of the world. Hell, Satan himself is a major supporting character for the majority of the season.

Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles continued to be great as Dean and Sam Winchester, as did Jim Beaver as Bobby and Misha Collins as Castiel. Mark Pellegrino (Lost, Dexter) was also a great addition to the show playing Lucifer. But I think everyone knows that Jared and Jensen are exceedingly charismatic and great in every single scene they're in. I don't need to go on about that, but just reinforce the fact that these two put in a damn good performance every single week. It's not award worthy but they're just consistently great.

So what about the season as a whole? Coming off of the superb Season 4, my hopes were set extremely high for Season 5, to the extent it was almost impossible for the show to reach them. Which sadly the show didn't reach. That's not saying it was bad, and more often than not it was great even! Occasionally however (particularly in the early portion of the season) the show was putting out some really weak episodes, 'Fallen Idols' and 'Children Are Our Future' were definitely not all time great episodes. They weren't bad but when it's coming from a show that has delivered episodes like 'On the Head of a Pin' and 'In Our Time of Dying' they were definitely disappointments.

Most of my disappoint in Season 5 however didn't stem from the occasional weak episode but from the pacing of the season. The apocalypse was so huge that it just took over the whole show. The urgency that the Winchester's were facing the apocalypse just wasn't there in some episodes. It felt a lot like Season 3 which suffered from similar problems. Dean was supposed to die within a year but some episodes ignored this fact and went on like nothing was wrong. Of course I'd say Season 5 was probably a stronger season than that one, but it suffered from a lot of the same flaws (but luckily no Bella). When we go through entire episodes about Paris Hilton murdering people and not focusing upon the pressing matter that Dean and Sam are the vessels for Satan and Michael, then something is very wrong with the pacing.

Overall though the apocalypse story was exactly the kind of thing Supernatural does well. We got to meet the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse with great performances from Titus Welliver as War and Julian Richings as Death who of course had the natural creepiness needed for that role. Then there was 'Hammer of the Gods' where the show branched out into other mythologies such as Norse and Roman, making the Supernatural universe that much larger (even if Lucifer did come in and decimate all of them). But for every 'Hammer of the Gods' or 'Abandon All Hope...' which featured the deaths of both Jo and Ellen, we got an episode like 'Children Are Our Future' which focused on the anti-christ and had absolutely no long standing consequences on the season.

But I'm not going to focus on the misgivings of the season, When everything was right, Supernatural did exactly what it does so well, a horror movie with a twist every week. Of course there were the occasional funny episodes such as the terrific 'Changing Channels' which wrapped up the Trickster trilogy with an episode riffing on TV shows that was not only hilarious but also tied wonderfully back into the main conflict of the season. Then there was more traditional fare such as the fantastic premiere, 'Sympathy for the Devil and two time travel episodes with 'The End' and 'The Song Remains the Same'. When Supernatural went for a story relating to the apocalypse it didn't hold back, it gave it's audience nearly every single trope relating to the biblical tales of the end of days even on it's very minimal budget, fuck, they even took Sam and Dean to heaven in 'The Dark Side of the Moon'.

All of this ambition though was for a reason, this was originally going to be the show's final season and it really shows. The 100th episode of the show 'Point of No Return' might not have had the world falling apart, but there was a pervading sense of doom and exhaustion that consumed the Winchesters. Kurt Fuller as Zachariah put in another great performance in this 100th episode trying to convince Dean to give his body to Michael which of course was never going to happen. 'Point of No Return' was where the season hit double speed and started the ball rolling for the epic final string of episodes and the finale, and boy, what a finale it was.

'Swan Song' was so obviously meant to be the show's final episode that in many ways the obvious changes made in light of the Season 6 pick-up weakened it (both Bobby and Castiel coming back to life, Sam appearing outside of the pit all of 5 minutes later) but it was still a superb cap to those first five seasons. Whilst the end of the apocalypse story wasn't as epic and crazy as many people expected it to be, it did stay true to the shows roots. It was emotional, with great acting from all involved and that sense of familial love that this show does so well. It was an utterly satisfying finale for the show and would have been a perfect series finale if the show had ended. I'm not upset that we have at least one more season of this show because I do love it, but I can't help but feel that any future series finale might not be able to top this one.

Overall, Supernatural 5 wasn't the perfect season of the show, but it did what the show does well. The pace might not have been spot on and it definitely wasn't as consistent as Season 4, but it still delivered more often than it failed. Supernatural was as ambitious as ever and more or less stuck the landing. Whilst this would have been a perfect point for the show to bow out, you can't really complain when you're getting essentially an extra season of a great and amazingly fun show. Hell where else could God be a white guy that orders hookers?

It might not have been the swan song for Dean, Sam and that Impala, but in the end it was just a great season of television and that's all we really ever wanted.

8/10

Of Doctor Who - A Christmas Carol

2010-12-25T19:57:00.004Z

I don't think it would surprise anyone to find out that the Doctor Who Christmas Specials are not the episodes that people hold up as their favourites. Really they are meant to be set apart from the rest of the Doctor Who mythos and just be a little stand alone special. The best of these Christmas specials so far has been 'The Christmas Invasion' and that was mostly because it was David Tennant's first episode and had the added benefit of actually being an integral episode. Last year we had 4 specials, but two of those were pretty much normal episodes and the last 2 were saying goodbye to David Tennant. so this year's 'A Christmas Carol' was the first Doctor Who Christmas Special we've had since 'The Next Doctor'. Which leaves with the question as to whether 'A Christmas Carol' was any good.

Well I'm going to answer that very bluntly and say that yes it was, very good in fact. By far the most Christmassy Christmas Special that Doctor Who has done in a long time and also quite possibly the best one. Now I feel I should get it out of the way and point out that of course I may be slightly biased because of my love of Steven Moffat, but really he's just a talented writer and brought all of his skill to this episode.

'A Christmas Carol' focused upon a very loose retelling of the classic Charles Dickens tale, 'A Christmas Carol'. There are still three ghosts, still a Scrooge like character and of course a poor family whom he must go visit, but this being Doctor Who there must be a twist. For starters, the ghosts were all a product of time travel, with the Doctor literally going into the past to influence events back then or taking someone to the future to show them what they will be like when older. 'A Christmas Carol' is such a Christmas classic, that it's no wonder that this story was chosen as the frame work and with the added benefit of already having time involved, Steven Moffat was able to utilise his patented timey wimey manipulation to genius effect.

This was an episode that heavily relied on guest characters, mostly that of Kazran Sardick (Michael Gambon as the elder version) and Abigail Pettigrew (Katherine Jenkins). Katherine Jenkins didn't have to do much other than sing but Michael Gambon was great as the torn old man who had to suffer through life knowing he could only spend one more day with the person he loved. Amy and Rory* were involved in ancillary plot line about a spaceship they were honeymooning on crashing into a planet, it was the set-up for the main plot of the episode but they spent most of their time in a little exploding room.

The main plot of the episode focused on Kazran Sardick who had control over the planets weather and could quite easily save all 4,003 people on board the ship but because he's a Scrooge he doesn't want, so the Doctor is forced to go back in time to when he was a child and make him a better person as he grows older (yay timey wimey). Of course this inevitably leads to flying sharks and Kazran falling in love with a woman frozen in his fathers dungeon (not as kinky as it sounds). Kazran and Abigail spend every Christmas Eve together for several years, until eventually it is found out that every day she is let out leads her closer to death. So to save his love Kazran vows not to unfreeze her again as she will die.

Now I've skirted around what will probably be the most controversial element of the episode. The fact that fish on this planet fly around in the sky. Steven Moffat gives the Doctor a moment of incredulity to this but then he goes along with it in his normal enthusiastic sense. And really that's all I needed to go along with. It's Doctor Who, anything can happen so I was there from the beginning. Apart from the part when they went on Shark-led sleigh ride, but really that wasn't enough to pull me out. The fish float around in ice crystals in the sky which resonate at the frequency of singing which is why Abigail becomes so important.

Of course by the end of the episode, the ship has been saved and Amy and Rory are fine. But then we also had the show not shying away from the fact that Abigail will indeed die after this last Christmas Day. But she got that last perfect Christmas with the man that she loved which gave everything just the right tone to end the episode on.

This only scraping the surface of why the episode worked, Amy and Rory in those costumes (who knew they were into that?), The Doctor speaking to both the past and present version of Kazran over the video camera and the normal cornucopia of funny lines that Moffat is able to pen ("There isn't any lottery!"). All I can really say about this episode was that it was tremendously fun. It wasn't dark and heavy, it did exactly what it should have done and offered a light and enjoyable Christmas episode. Something feel-good to be enjoyed by the family. It didn't have to resort to childish humour or contrived plot developments, and that's what made it work. Overall an absolutely fantastic Christmas special. Now who can't wait for the main series in March?

9/10

*Nice to see Arthur Darvill being bumped up to regular now

Of Doctor Who Season 5

2010-12-24T16:47:00.003Z

It's been a while since Doctor Who season 5 ended and since this years Christmas special airs tomorrow I thought I should get around to reviewing the season that preceded it before actually reviewing that tomorrow. So how was Matt Smith's first year as the Doctor and in turn, Steven Moffat's first year as the lead writer.

Well if you don't already know that Steven Moffat is one of the best writers in the world then really you should learn this little fact. Dude wrote 'Blink' which is proof enough. Overall the last year of Doctor Who continued to show how great a writer Moffat was, even if the episodes not penned by himself rarely held up to his normal brilliance.

But more importantly, how was Matt Smith? Well for starters he was different to David Tennant which was something the show definitely needed. They couldn't have found a guy to replace David Tennat because he was such a fine actor and played his incarnation of the Doctor with such relish and bravado that anyone hired to just replace him would have been awful. Matt Smith's Doctor has rarely had to play the moments of pure drama that David Tennant had to play. That probably came from the change in the writing though but Matt Smith was definitely not playing a carbon copy of David Tennant and for that I'm very thankful.

Of course you cannot speak about the Doctor Who without mentioning his companions. For Season 5 we had Amy Pond played by Karen Gillan. Of course she fulfilled the role of attractive female on the show by Gillan was also immensely likeable and of course added that human element that the Doctor lacks. Amy had to act as our gateway into the series and she did that tremendously well. Then there was the fact that she was the key to the biggest plotline of the season, which hadn't been done before on the show and was again handled very well by Moffat (but of course he is a master writer). Then there was Rory Williams played by Arthur Darvill who whilst not present as often as Amy Pond, was a nice addition to the team in the episodes that he featured in.

But of course the most important thing about Doctor Who is the episodes themselves and how they come together. Doctor Who shows probably the biggest flaw in the idea of having a team of freelance writers in that the writers will occasionally fluctuate so wildly in quality. Occasionally you will have a writer of Steven Moffat's calibre or Paul Cornell but then someone weaker will write the next episode and it'll be leagues worse than the episode that preceded it. So I'm going to separate the Steven Moffat episodes from the others and then say which episodes I enjoyed and which I didn't

The episode I enjoyed least this season was easily 'Victory of the Daleks', I mean this episode was pure wank. It went absolutely nowhere, it failed to have the Daleks as a remotely interesting villain (which honestly they haven't been since Season 1). Yes I enjoyed the look at World War Era Britain and the shows portrayal of Winston Churchill was fun but then was pure shite like the robot scientist who was a bomb but could switch himself off because the Daleks had given him real memories therefore meaning that he could be human as well. I mean fucking seriously? That's how they defuse the bomb, by making a robot believe he is a human. Not a noble sacrifice, not going dark but in the most convoluted and non-nonsensical ways possible. Easily one of the worst episodes the show has ever done.

Other episodes this season such as 'Vampires in Venice' and the Silurian two parter were both good but neither had anything special going on about them. Neither were really integral to the overall story of the season, neither were particularly memorable if I'm completely honest. What they did have going for them was that they were perfectly serviceable little episodes that didn't really anger anyone but didn't exactly do much to make them memorable. Really just average episodes for no fault of their own. What was memorable about the Silurian episodes though was the death of Rory, which was genuinely quite shocking as well as then having Amy forget that her fiancée had ever existed was a bold move on Moffat's part (even if it was undone by the finale, but it didn't feel like the slap in the face that RTD's death fake-outs used to be)

Now we move onto the really very good episodes of the season. 'Amy's Choice' was a very interesting foray into the dream world where things got really quite dark. The characters didn't know which was the dream world and which world was the real world and which was the dream world. Whilst I wasn't a big fan of the reveal of what the Dream Lord was (mostly due to lack of set-up) I enjoyed the sense of peril that the show put the characters and that the show was willing to put them in this place. 'Vincent and the Doctor' was a script written by Richard Curtis and he fit in wonderfully into the world of Doctor Who. It was a story that could only be told on this show featuring an historical figure and based around historical truths whilst mixing in the science fiction element of time travel. Of course it all got a bit weepy at the end, but Curtis does that so well and the episode had been fantastic that I can forgive that little pit of pathos. The episode was also held aloft by a fantastic performance by Tony Curan as Vincent van Gogh and awesome cameo by Bill Nighy. Then there was 'The Lodger', whilst normally these light-hearted episodes can be very hit and miss, 'The Lodger' worked in a very good way. It definitely wasn't one of the shows best episodes ever but for a light-hearted episode it worked very well and had a great James Corden performance.

But what I really want to talk about is Moffat. Moffat began this season by telling the story of the cracks in time, how silence would fall and this all tied into Amy. Whilst not every plot-line was wrapped up, Moffat actually used this season as well a way to tell to a longer narrative. Rather than a buzzword that was just dropped throughout the season, Moffat actually had a lot of the events play into a larger narrative, particularly in the opening of episode 12 'The Pandorica Opens'. Hell he's even spread out one plot line over two seasons showing he has bigger plan and really thinks ahead about the plots of the show.

But what about the episodes he wrote? Well 'The Eleventh Hour' acted as our introduction to the new Doctor and companion and was one of the best seasons openers that the new Doctor Who has had. Over the course of this first hour I got a really good picture of who this new Doctor was as well as the character of Amy. Plus it was fast paced and very fun. Sadly the second episode of the season, 'The Beast Below' was nowhere near as strong and is quite definitely the worst episode of Doctor Who that Moffat has ever written. Whilst it wasn't bad it just suffered from maybe being a little too ambitious and not coming together in a wholly satisfying way.

Now we get to the good parts however, with Moffat's two two-parters of the season, 'The Time of Angels'/'Flesh and Stone' and 'The Pandorica Opens'/'The Big Bang'. Holy fuck were these episodes amazing. The first of the two parters focused upon the return of the villains from the single best hour that the new Doctor Who has made, 'Blink'. Yup the Weeping Angels were back and they were just as creepy as ever. Just the idea of constantly having to look at something or it will devour is so creepy, like taking a fear of the dark to a whole other level. Not only that but River Song (Alex Kingston) returned to start paying off one of the most intriguing elements of Season 4. The Angels two-parter was so well done and is the only that the first two-parter of a Doctor Who season was in actually fact the better. So that left the finale and what Moffat would deliver there. Well he delivered and he delivered big. There was his trade mark time-wimey manipulation, shocking deaths, the return of pretty much every villain of the series (if only for a second), amazingly dark turns and hugely witty dialogue ("It's a fez, I wear a fez now"). If I'm honest I'm still finding it difficult to process just how good that finale was. If anything it cemented just how much of a genius Steven Moffat is, especially as he had begun seeding elements of the finale way back 'Flesh and Stone' in a small conversation between Amy and the Doctor.

Season 5 of Doctor Who suffered from many of the same things that Doctor Who had previously suffered from in that it is almost impossible to keep a sustained level of quality throughout an entire season because of the change in writers. Luckily the highs (particularly those written by the now ubiquitous Steven Moffat) looks so much better in hindsight. Yes 'Victor of the Daleks' was still utterly wank, and many of the other episodes were just average, but I look back on Steven Moffat's two-parters and am astounded by the level of creativity those episodes hold. If I were able to judge based on those episodes alone this season of Doctor Who would be my favourite yet but sadly I can't so the fifth season of Doctor Who has to settle for an:

8/10

Favourite Albums of 2010 - 10-01

2010-12-23T13:39:00.016Z

Well here we are, wrapping up my favourite albums of 2010 list, so what follows were the albums in 2010 which I truly loved, the ones that in the years to come I'll keep looking back on as having defined my 2010. My list may not to be everyone's taste but these albums were my favourites of the year that has been 2010.

10. Los Campesinos! – Romance is Boring

Romance is Boring was the first album that I heard in 2010 and still stands as one of the very best. Whilst Los Campesinos! sound has become less poppier after their 2008 début Hold On Now, Youngster but still retains the sarcastic, almost morose humour of that album. What Romance is Boring does retain from Los Campesinos! past albums is the sheer loudness and noise, maybe not as loud as other albums this year, but Los Campesinos! don't shy away from the noise when the time comes. The lyrics are a true stand-out on this album with the lead singer Gareth penning some of the wittiest lyrics you'll hear in any song this year: "I think we need more post-coital and less post-rock/Feels like the build-up takes forever but you never get me off". Whilst the songs rarely follow any kind of lyrical pattern, you become more engrossed in the stream of conciousness story that is being told. Los Campesinos! might not have put out the most critically acclaimed or most recognisable album of the year, but it's one that I wanted to put out there so that hopefully more people will get around to hearing it.

'The Sea is a Good Place to Think of the Future' - Los Campesinos!

09. Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles II

The first Crystal Castles album is noisy and messy as fuck. Songs like 'Alice Practicce' and 'Crimewave' sound like they could collapse in on themselves at any point. The second Crystal Castles is still noisy as fuck but it lacks some of the messiness that was to be found on their first album and whilst that may be a turn off to some fans, Crystal Castles II is still just as stand-offish as the first album. Whilst it might be less-punk, it makes up for that for being a more cohesive album. There are still the absolute highs in the form of 'Baptism' and 'Celestica' but the other songs on the album don't pale in comparison as much. Even though Crystal Castles strayed more towards pop, this album still isn't clean enough for radio play. Sure it's less raw, but the experimentation is still there and is the sheer balls to walls noise and dance ability that make Crystal Castles one of the best electronic bands around.

'Baptism' - Crystal Castles

08. Janelle Monae – The ArchAndroid

The ArchAndroid is eclectic as all hell. Being a concept album telling the story about a messianic android in a future society, the album jumps into so many different genres over the course of it's 70 minute run time. Listening to this album for the first is almost overwhelming how many different genres it spans but it also becomes clear that the album is just a joy to listen to, especially if you let yourself be swept away by the ambition behind it. Of course The ArchAndroid is first and foremost an R&B album but then you can hear rap, rock and even an orchestral element. But most noticeably of all this album is just fun. It's lively and just creates a joyous atmosphere around its songs. Like so many other artists on this list, Janelle Monae gets what makes pop music fun and likeable, this album doesn't feel sterile and overproduced instead it bursts with so many ideas and so much ambition whilst still being inherently listen-able, making it one of the best full fledged débuts of any artist this year.

'Tightrope' - Janelle Monae feat. Big Boi

07. LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening

If This Is Happening really is the last LCD Soundsystem album then James Murphy and company will have left behind one of the strongest discographies to grace the 21st Century. Hell the guy wrote 'All My Friends' which is one of my favourite songs ever. We can debate for hours whether this album is as good as 2007's Sound of Silver (it probably isn't) but that doesn't take away from the fact that This Is Happening is so very good. James Murphy knows how to write great songs, songs that make you want to move and not in that shitty way that clubs do. Songs that tip their hats to the great music makers of yore such as David Bowie and Brian Eno. Over the years LCD Soundsystem have become the epitome of cool within the music industry and This Is Happening is no different in that respect, the songs barrel along with so much urgency but never outstay their welcome even though there is only one song on the entire album that is less than 5 minutes long. Songs like 'Dance Yrself Clean' still have that un-paralleled electronic build that LCD Soundsystem have perfected over the years. This Is Happening could have so easily been a disappointment and fallen into the shadow of Sound of Silver but it didn't and LCD Soundsystem cemented themselves as one of the best bands in the world and This Is Happening one the best albums of 2010.

'Dance Yrself Clean' - LCD Soundsystem

06. Gorillaz – Plastic Beach

If I'm going to be perfectly honest, I didn't think that Gorillaz had this album in them. Sure songs like 'Feel Good Inc.' and 'Clint Eastwood' were good and enjoyable but they didn't even hint at how good Plastic Beach was going to be. If you've been paying attention, you'll realise that the cartoon figureheads of the Gorillaz have disappeared from everything but the music videos and now the band has just allowed Damon Albarn to collaborate with as many people as he wants. Snoop Dogg, Mos Def, Bobby Womack, Mark E. Smith (The Fall), Gruff Rhys (Super Fury Animals), Little Dragon and even members of The Clash. The diverse range of people offering their voices to Plastic Beach could make the album seem bloated but amazingly it doesn't, Damon Albarn gives the album room to breathe an accommodate all the different collaborators. Little Dragon contribute the spectacular electro-pop wonder of 'Empire Ants' whilst Gruff Rhys and De La Soul rap out a cereal commercial on 'Superfast Jellyfish'. And yet it doesn't feel out of place because of Damon Albarn's fantastic production across the entire album and his presence on the fantastic 'On Melancholy Hill'. Plastic Beach is an eclectic assortment of alternative hip-hop songs that don't really sound like hip-hop. Instead, on this latest Gorillaz album, it feels like Damon Albarn has created something wholly unique. Losing the cartoon front, Albarn was able to stretch his creative roots to whole new levels and I can't wait to hear what else comes from this new era of Gorillaz.

'On Melancholy Hill' - Gorillaz

05. Arcade Fire – The Suburbs

My love for Arcade Fire should come as no surprise to those that know me or are frequent readers of this blog, especially with Funeral topping my favourite albums of the decade a year ago, and I stand by that choice. Funeral and The Suburbs are too entirely different beasts though and it would be unfair to compare them. The Suburbs to many might seem overly long at over an hour, but so were The ArchAndroid and This Is Happening so that argument becomes mute. The length of the album goes a long to aiding the concept, it forces the listener to actually listen, to pay attention to what happens. The Suburbs like so many other great albums before it works as a cohesive whole, one that begs to be listened to all the way through to see the message, to experience the full brunt force of it. The album yearns for the days of youth, days of the Surburbs and whilst in many ways the subject matter is intimate, the sound is epic. Arcade Fire have made some of the most joyous music of the last decade and that doesn't change here. Tracks like 'Ready to Start' and 'Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)' still sound so very much like Arcade Fire but at the same time they don't. I could wax lyrical about this album but this might be the toughest album on the list to get my point across without having someone listen to it. The Suburbs is an album that needs to be experienced, The rock, the synths, the orchestral elements and the lyrics to get the full extent of why this album is as good as it is.

'Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)' - Arcade Fire

04. Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma

Cosmogramma is unlike any album I've heard in my life up until this point. For lack of a better way to describe it, I can only say it sounds like electronic space jazz. But that threat of the unknown is what makes this album so irresistible to me. I wanted to hear more of it, more music like it, but of course that doesn't exist. Cosmogramma is unique in the world. Cosmogramma was born because technology has allowed everyone to make music using their laptops, but of course only the very best will every survive the competitive music world and that's exactly what Flying Lotus has done. Cosmogramma is dense, it doesn't take just one listen to get this album, you might like portions of it but as you delve deeper you notice more and more intricacies, more to get excited about, more that makes the album feel unique. Sure listeners will be able to pick up on traits of IDM and dubstep but trying to peg the album into either of those genres would just detract from the work that Flying Lotus has done. Flying Lotus is currently working as one of the biggest visionaries in the music world, he's working at a creative level unseen by anyone else working in the field of laptop electronica. Hell he even got the Radiohead front-man Thom Yorke to contribute vocals to '...And The World Laughs With You', and he made Kid A which is not only an incredible album but asure influence on this album. Flying Lotus' Cosmogramma, like so many other albums on my list, has succeeded in fusing so many different genres and creating something cohesive and unique. Flying Lotus seems poised to make something better than Cosmogramma for his next record and I cannot for the life of me figure out what it might sound like.

'...And The World Laughs With You' - Flying Lotus feat. Thom Yorke

03. Sleigh Bells – Treats

Sleigh Bells are noisy as fuck. They are a sensory overload. They are pop music on steroids. They were the best new band of 2010. Sleigh Bells were so many things but mostly they got pop music right. They knew that it was about the pure jubilation and joy. Yes you could quite easily think of them as a gimmick, with so much feedback that makes you think that songs like 'Crown on the Ground' have actually broken your speakers. Treats is 30 minutes of a non-stop sonic attack, the noise doesn't let up for that entire time. I've seen Sleigh Bells live twice this year and am going to see them again early in the new year and it still astounds that the level of noise that is coming from only two people, one of whom is only providing vocals. Other bands I've seen live with twice as many members cannot stretch the speakers to the level that Sleigh Bells do. Sleigh Bells might not be the deepest album on this list, the lyrics might be comparatively simple and the technical side comparatively basic but it's the lack of depth, the fact that it doesn't require multiple listens to understand what this album is about that makes this album so joyous. It's pop, plain and simple. Sleigh Bells achieved what they set out to do, create some of the most visceral and fun music they could. The opening bars of 'Tell 'Em' lay out exactly what you should expect from the entire album with Derek E. Miller's riffing and Alexis Krauss' wonderful vocals. There's so much to love about Treats, the moment where all shit breaks lose on 'Infinity Guitars', the entirety of the Funkadelic sampling 'Rill Rill' and of course the flat out 'Crown on the Ground'. Sleigh Bells had the best début album of anyone this year as well as easily the most fun and exuberant one.

'Rill Rill' - Sleigh Bells

!!!!!JOINT FIRST PLACE!!!!!

01. The National – High Violet

This was album that was sat as my number 1 choice for months and months, and as you can see it still sits here at number 1. But I think it's safe to say that the album that The National's fifth studio album has tied with is so all encompassing that it just became an inevitability it would be first. High Violet is the sound a band who work together as well as any band could ever possibly want to work together. The National have become an entirely cohesive unit and over the course of their last three albums and have became a force to be reckoned with in the indie world, and have now created three pretty much perfect albums with Alligator, Boxer and now High Violet. Yes you can call them dour but you cannot call them boring. Everything that is done throughout this album has a calculated precision, every hit on the drum, every orchestral swell, every moment Matt Berringer is singing on the album. More than any other artist on this list, The National make albums rather than songs, everything is made to play better when strung together, to paint a bigger picture. Sure it makes it more difficult to pick out which song is the best but that's just because every single is so uniformly strong. There's the almost too fuzzed out 'Terrible Love' which opens the album with it's slow build and rumbling guitars. Or 'Bloodbuzz Ohio' which still stands as the most single worthy song on the album and has some of the best lyrics The National have ever committed with "I still owe money/To the money/To the money I owe". But that's not even the best sample lyrics on the album with Berringer proclaiming on 'Conversation 16' that "I was afraid… I’d eat your brains/Cause I’m eeeeevil". And whilst High Violet lacks a crescendo like 'Mr. November' on Alligator, second to last track 'England' is the closest the album gets to an emotional release with the rise and swell of the piano throughout, before bleeding into the hauntingly wonderful 'Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks'. The National's albums have always done better in hindsight (at least in the case of Alligator and Boxer) and if High Violet has hit me this hard within it's first few listens then it's hard to imagine it not becoming one of my favourite albums ever. Hell it's one of only two albums I'd give a 10/10 this year, but if you haven't figured what this album has tied with then you clearly haven't been paying attention to music this year.

'Bloodbuzz Ohio' - The National

01. Kanye West – My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

A year ago if you had told me I'd be saying that Kanye West had put out one of the best albums of 2010, I'd have laughed in your face. How much I enjoyed this album was a complete surprise. I had been following all the news stories about Kanye for a while, the MTV breakdown, the ludicrous quotes he kept coming out with, THE ALL CAPS BLOG POSTS, the Twitter account, saying that George Bush hated black people, the hilarious smack down that South Park laid down on him last year, but I'd never heard his music really before. Of course I knew 'Gold Digger', I knew 'Stronger' but I'd never gone out of my way to listen to Kanye. In fact I found him so much of an insufferable douche that I decided I probably would never like him even if I did listen. But then 'Power' dropped back in May and somehow I found myself listening it, and then even more unlikely, actively enjoying it. This was quickly followed up by the surprising reveal that one of my favourite artists, Bon Iver, was not only doing some production work on Kanye's new album but was also contributing vocals to several tracks. Following this I started following the buzz leading up to the album's launch. There was the fantastic performance of the 'Power' on Saturday Night Live, the 30 minute short film for 'Runaway' and even the untimely leak of 'Lost in the World' which not only caused Kanye to stop his G.O.O.D. Fridays but was heavily based around on the song 'Woods' by Bon Iver. All of this was amazingly good and Kanye started to improve dramatically to me, but I've rambled on so long about what lead me to listen to the album and haven't actually talked much about why this album is so good. You could talk about how perfectly the album opener 'Dark Fantasy' sets up the album or how 'Power' features Kanye at his most big headed, but then is also just a damn likeable and huge sounding song. Or on 'Monster' where Nicki Minaj's delivers not just the best lyrics on any song in 2010 but the best vocal delivery on any song this year. What about 'Runaway' where the tinkling piano turns into a 9 minute epic that not only has Kanye deliver the self-deprecating line: "Let's have a toast for the douchebags/Let's have a toast for the assholes/Let's have a toast for the scumbags", which then morphs into the single best use of auto-tune on any song in 2010. Then there's 'All of the Lights' where the guests range from Elton John to Rihanna, and that's without mentioning the Chris Rock skit on Blame Game or the aforementioned Bon Iver morphing 'Lost in the World'. My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy has so many stand-out tracks and moments that it's impossible to list them all. This is the album that finally proved that maybe Kanye had a right to be as cocky as he has been. The guy has finally gotten around to creating his masterpiece. Of all the albums that were released in 2010, this is the one that will be remembered for years to come, the defining album of 2010. Hell it was Kanye's year all round.

'Runaway' - Kanye West

Favourite Albums of 2010 - 20-11

2010-12-21T15:49:00.011Z

Well here we are, the start of my wrap of 2010, I had aimed to do this post yesterday but instead went to London with a load of people from my old school and didn’t get back in until gone midnight so just went to bed and decided to this post and the Top 10 today. So as I posted on Twitter, because so much good music was released in 2010 I’ve decided to do a Top 20 list. So if there’s anything that looks at all interesting to you go and listen!

So now on with the list

20. Weezer – Hurley

This does not mean that Weezer are back at 90s level awesomeness, it just means that they put out a very fun album in 2010. Whilst not much will ever reach the level of how good Blue Ablum and Pinkerton are, Hurley is just a very solid dose of fun pop/rock tunes. Whilst of course there’s the normal Weezer corniness in songs like ‘Where’s My Sex’, this album as is the best collection of songs that Weezer has released in years. ‘Memories’, ‘Trainwrecks’ and ‘Smart Girls’ are absolute stand-outs of the album.

'Memories' - Weezer

19. Frightened Rabbit – The Winter of Mixed Drinks

The Winter of Mixed Drinks is not as incredible as 2008’s The Midnight Organ Fight but it still shows that Frightened Rabbit are one of the best bands working in the United Kingdom at the moment. Of course this album doesn’t come with the pain that The Midnight Organ Fight, but it doesn’t suffer from it, in many ways this album is like the ray of sunshine that comes after the crushing pain and proves that Frightened Rabbit that can pull through almost anything.

'Swim Until You Can't See Land' - Frightened Rabbit

18. Girl Talk – All Day

Girl Talk is just one guy who makes albums out of other songs. Ever wanted to hear Black Sabbath mixed with 2Pac? How about Electric Light Orchestra mixed with Juicy J? All Day is an album that takes samples from so many different artists, Aphex Twin, Radiohead, Beck, Miley Cyrus, Lady Gaga, Daft Punk, Eminem, Fugazi and Michael Jackson. Whilst not as straightforward as other mash-ups, Girl Talk creates a tapestry of so many recognisable riffs and vocal samples that it makes for a damn good album.

'Oh No' - Girl Talk

17. Beach House – Teen Dream

Beach House’s Teen Dream was one of the first albums I heard in 2010 and it still sounds great, especially now we’re back in the winter months. Melodic vocals, hazy synths create just a warming atmosphere. Whilst lacking a hard immediate edge, Teen Dream created one of the most comforting atmospheres on album this year with songs like ‘Zebra’ and ‘Norway’. For lack of a better way to describe it, Teen Dream is a beautiful album that makes the most out of its shoegaze roots.

'Norway' - Beach House

16. Titus Andronicus – The Monitor

Titus Andronicus have made a fantastic concept album The Monitor. Based around the American Civil War, the album stretches for over an hour. Hell the last song on the album is 14 minutes long. Titus Andronicus were aiming for the ceiling with this album and they pulled most of it off. ‘A More Perfect Union’ is one of the best songs of the year and that Jersey punk atmosphere gets me pretty much every time I hear it (see also Gaslight Anthem).

'A More Perfect Union' - Titus Andronicus

15. Spoon – Transference

Spoon are still the most consistent band in the world. Whilst Transference isn’t as uniformly strong as earlier albums such as Kill The Moonlight and Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga, Transference was still one of the best releases of year. Transference is uglier as can be heard on the song ‘Written in Reverse’ where the piano sounds like it’s on the edge of breaking for the entire song. Transference is just a more raw album that the rest of Spoon’s back catalogue and whilst that might seem strange to those that fell for Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga’s poppier outlook, Transference is a more than worthy entry into the Spoon discography.

'Written in Reverse' - Spoon

14. Robyn – Body Talk

Body Talk is just straightforward pop album, but it’s a damn good pop album. Robyn has more originality than almost every single pop star going at the moment (apart from possibly Lady Gaga but she’s insane). There’s a sheer joy to songs like ‘Dancing on my Own’ and ‘Hang with Me’, and whilst it might be to everyone’s taste, Robyn has made some of the best dance songs in a while. At least in the way that I don’t feel like retching every time I hear them, and for pop music that’s an achievement.

'Dancing On My Own' - Robyn

13. Emeralds – Does It Look Like I’m Here?

I have a feeling that this album could end up like Fuck Buttons, an album that I heard comparatively late in the year and that I feel in love with and regret not putting a lot higher. Emeralds, along with the next album on this list is one of the best instrumental electronic albums I heard all year and is quickly becoming one of my favourite sub-genres. The ambient swell of Emeralds is one of perfect rising and falling, with obvious elements of post-rock and shoegaze. Emeralds are one of those bands the work best when you just let the sound engulf and take you somewhere else.

'Candy Shoppe' - Emeralds

12. 65daysofstatic – We Were Exploding Anyway

This was an album I downloaded completely at random. Last year’s Tarot Sport by Fuck Buttons was one of my favourite albums of the year and would probably land highly on my decade list if I did it again. So this year I tried to find an album that would fill the hole that Fuck Buttons, and 65daysofstatic came closest. Whilst not as perfect as Tarot Sport, We Were Exploding Anyway has the same post-rock influence, the same level of just sheer noise. 65daysofstatic’s new album feels in some ways to be a new generation of The Prodigy with so many great hooks throughout the album that I’m sure those guys would be jealous. 65daysofstatic are one of the few bands that get how to build on a song to an almighty crescendo and for that I’m thankful.

'Crash Tactics' - 65daysofstatic

11. Sufjan Stevens – The Age of Adz

This was Sufjan’s first proper album in almost 5 years. Whilst he’s been releasing music since his seminal Illinois, The Age of Adz is the first proper LP since that album came out. Whilst many people were expecting an enhancement of that sound from so long ago, Sufjan has seemingly gone in an entirely different direction. Although that’s a lie, The Age of Adz seems to be a synthesis of every style that Sufjan has been working with over the years. Illinois, ‘You Are the Blood’ from last year’s Dark Was the Night and even Seven Swans. Hell he even goes all out on auto-tune. Age of Adz needs to be listened to a lot to finally get but when you do it’s completely worth, being one of the richest and thematically rich albums released this year.

'Too Much' - Sufjan Stevens

Of Chuck Season 3

2010-12-21T15:41:00.000Z

Now that we're heading towards the last week of the year, I've decided to go back and review a few seasons of television I didn't get around to earlier in the year, so those of you waiting for my thoughts on Chuck Season 3 and Supernatural Season 5 are in for a treat.

I'm going to open with the statement that Chuck Season 3 wasn't as good as Season 2. That's not in anyway a bad thing because Chuck Season 2 is an absolutely fantastic season of television. Season 3 mostly suffered from the fact that the show had had a reduced budget and some minor storytelling annoyances.

Chuck Season 2 finished with a fantastic twist in the form of the Intersect 2.0 and already a wealth of storytelling options were open for the show. Chuck was now able to claim that he was indeed a spy, he could perform kung-fu or even play an instrument without having any prior instruction. It's refreshing to see shows change up their formula slightly before the old status-quo became stale. We'd already had 2 seasons (although technically 1.5) of Chuck being a liability for a lot of missions with his natural abilities coming in handy throughout various missions such as the memorable Season 2 episode 'Chuck versus Tom Sawyer'. Now Chuck was actually able to go on missions on his own and handle them as seen in 'Chuck versus First Class' which had Chuck entirely alone on a plane to Paris where he had to arrest Stone Cold Steve Austin single-handedly. Whilst the changes made by the Intersect 2.0 it felt like there was a lot more mileage that could have been gotten from it. In the end the Intersect 2.0 became a little bit of a crutch for the writers to get Chuck out of bad situations. This wasn't the case in every episode, but it did become a regular occurrence for Chuck to just kung-fu his way out of problems in most episodes.

What Chuck did get very right this was dealing with the people who found out that Chuck was in fact a spy. Awesome had of course found out that Chuck was a spy at the end of Season 2 and the mini-arc that took place at the start of Season 3 was great with Awesome being roped into a number of spy missions and was one of the best uses of the supporting cast in a long time. Then there was 'Chuck versus the Beard' in which Morgan found out that Chuck was a spy. 'Chuck versus the Beard' was easily the stand-out episode of the season. The best episodes of Chuck will normally utilise the Buy-More in some way as well as the rest of the supporting cast and this episode used it fantastically. It was also just a purely fun episode which of course Chuck does fantastically. Then was Morgan actually finding out, whilst many people would have expected Morgan to be crushed his best friend never told him, Morgan turned out to be elated and over the course of the rest of the season became a more than welcome addition to Team Bartowski. Whilst he essentially filled the role that Chuck had filled pre-Intersect 2.0 it was still a feeling that had been missing through the early episodes of Season 3.

In Season 3 Chuck went for a darker tone than the preceding seasons and whilst some of that can be put down to the budget cuts in the wake of the near cancellation it did sacrifice the supporting cast in some episodes. Whilst this benefited certain episodes where having the Buy-More or the Awesomes would have made the show feel more cluttered, the show would go through long periods of not being as fun. Of course episodes like 'Chuck versus the Beard' showed the show could still be fun and the darker tone wasn't unwelcome it felt a little oppressive occasionally.

The biggest problems that Season 3 suffered from though were pacing issues. The biggest issue was in the "will they, won't they" of Chuck and Sarah. I wrote an entire post about the so called Chuck-pocalypse here earlier this year. This came from people who said that the show became awful purely because Chuck and Sarah hadn't gotten together yet and that characters such as Shaw (Brandon Routh) and Hannah (Kristen Kreuk) had been added to the show to purely act as a roadblock. In some ways those characters had been used in that way and a "will they, won't they" plotline does eventually become a little grating. But Chuck and Sarah did get together at the end of the 13th episode and created the memorable 'Chuck versus the Honeymooners' wherein Chuck and Sarah spent the entire episode having sex and fighting crime. The eventually hooking up was probably left a little too late and characters like Shaw were poorly implemented into this plotline, but the eventual hooking up was a well deserved pay-off.

Then there was the strangeness of the two mini seasons of Chuck. Both of which were satisfying but had their own issues. Such as The Ring was not nearly as well set up as Fulcrum in Seasons 1 and 2 but were then dispatched by the end of the season. The Ellie and Awesome trip to Africa didn't really go anywhere. But that can be laid at the feet of the network for adding the 6 extra episodes so late into production. Luckily only one episode of these extra was even slightly disappointing that was the Christopher Lloyd guest-starring episode 'Chuck verus the Tooth'. Mostly because the show didn't know whether it wanted to be dark or light in its tone.

But I'm being too harsh, Chuck Season 3 still succeeded on almost every level that Season 2 beyond those quibbles. I haven't even mentioned the rest of the cast yet with the normal great performances of Adam Baldwin and Yvonne Strahovski. Then there were the guests stars. Of course the most notable was Superman himself Brandon Routh. Whilst his involved in the romance portion of the show wasn't welcome, he became a fantastic Big Bad for the season and I was glad for the extended period of time that we spent with his character and his motivations. Then there were the single episode stars like Vinnie Jones, Stone Cold Steve Austin, Kristen Kreuk, Robert Patrick, Mark Sheppard, Christopher Llyod and the return of Scott Bakula as Chuck and Sarah's father.

Chuck Season 3 wasn't the all out success that Season 2 mostly because of a few minor missteps with withholding the Chuck and Sarah pay-off and slight mishandling of tone. But everything was pure Chuck. Casey was still awesome, there were still pop-culture references, great music, fantastic use of guest-stars and JEFFSTER! Chuck is still one of the must and purely enjoyable shows on television and is still just a great all around show.

8.5/10

Of Dexter Season 5

2010-12-21T14:20:00.004Z

Here we are, a little over a week after Dexter Season 5 finished. How did this fifth season compare to the preceding four and how much longer will I actually be sticking with this show, find out now!

Dexter's fifth season was like a solidification of every single problem the show has had in it's earlier seasons. Every single season of Dexter is a self contained story with almost all guest stars drafted for each season not making it into the next, and after five seasons of the same shit it's getting a little dull. Every promise that the show-runners have made that there would be a change in the formula in the show have proven to be false. This year, fans were promised that there would be no Big Bad, but a collection of them, and whilst in some ways this was true, the last episode still focused upon a single Big Bad. Dexter has now proven that it has a set formula and that the show is in many ways too scared to stray from its chosen path.

Dexter is not a show like Breaking Bad which takes risks and puts it's characters into compromising situations. In Breaking Bad, Walt's wife has now found out that he is a drug dealer, this happened 2.5 seasons into the show. In Dexter, Rita never found out, Deb still comes annoyingly close and any character that does find out has to be dealt with in some way by the seasons end. This year three new characters found out that Dexter was a serial killer. Lumen (Julia Stiles) the new love interest, Jordan Chase (Jonny Lee Miller) one of the years Big Bads and Liddy (Peter Weller) a corrupt cop hired by Quinn to spy on Dexter. By the end of the year, two of these people were killed and the other has left Miami. Whilst it's nice to have Lumen out there in the world knowing Dexter's secret, it would have been better to keep her close-by. The show avoided a chance to add a new wrinkle to their formula, Dexter could have had a partner in crime, someone who knew and cared for him even though he was a serial killer. Dexter needed something like this to shake up it's formula five years in. Sadly this didn't happen and so Dexter is once again alone and no one knows that he is a serial killer.

The other thing that the show needs to stop doing is teasing that Deb will find out that Dexter is a serial killer. Five seasons in and Deb is still coming increasingly close to finding her brother is a serial killer. This year she was less than 10 metres away from him with only a dirty plastic sheet in between the two of them. Progressively over the season she began to see that the murders of certain people (i.e. the people who raped and almost killed Lumen) were necessary and decided to let the pair of vigilantes (her brother and Lumen) go without even seeing them. What makes this so annoying is that a moment like this has happened in every single preceding season. It would be alright if it was only a recent occurrence or used sparingly, but it's not, the show continues to use this plot point. I'm beginning to lose my faith in the writers at this point, if I can't trust them to go through with this then there's not much I can trust them with. I know it probably won't happen until the end of the show, as the writers themselves said that once Deb finds out the show is over, but then they need to downplay her finding out so it stops being infuriating. It would be a big change to the formula of the show but it doesn't have to be the end, of course if done wrong the show could spiral out of control, but done right and the show enters a creative renaissance. Five years into the show something big has to happen and clearly Rita's death at the end of Season Four was not it. Season 6 needs to rectify this in some-way or I might be done with Dexter.

But Dexter Season 5 wasn't horrid, just infuriating and that was purely from the formula that every season of Dexter follows. The show is stale but there's enough there to like. Michael C. Hall is still one of the best actors on television and Jennifer Carpenter is still enjoyable as Deb. The police side of the show is never as interesting as Dexter's but I still like characters like Masuka and Quinn. Then the new elements of Season 5 were all very good, Julia Stiles and Jonny Lee Miller were both great and I wish that Julia Stiles could stick around or show up in future seasons, because I did like Lumen as a character. But standing head and shoulders above those two was Peter Weller (aka Robocop) as Liddy. Whilst Peter Weller is no John Lithgow, he was just hamming it up and having a hell of a time as the corrupt cop. He was a joy to watch in every scene he was in, and I'm slightly annoyed he didn't live out the season to become a thorn in Dexter's side, but again that's not how Dexter works as a show.

I'm beginning to waver on Dexter, I still enjoy the core of the show, particularly Michael C. Hall as Dexter and I always enjoy the guest stars they rope in for each season, but it's getting stale. Something big needs to happen in Season 6 of Dexter, be it a large twist or just announcing that Season 7 will be the last year so they can create a story that extends on for more than one season. Dexter has my attention for at least one more year but unless it's starts to show some degree of risk taking I might be out come the end of 2011.

7/10

Of Walking Dead Season 1

2010-12-12T17:36:00.008Z

Now that Walking Dead has been over for about a week, of it's very long hiatus, it's time that we reviewed this inaugural season. In case you haven't heard The Walking Dead has become something of a phenomenon, mostly because it's zombies, and as well know, zombies are awesome. So without further ado, let's get reviewing.

The Walking Dead is based off of the similarly named The Walking Dead comic book written by Robert Kirkman (who also wrote episode 4 of the TV show). It's also masterminded by Frank Darabont, the guy behind Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile, meaning that there is an undeniable pedigree to this show. When the man who directed and wrote one of the greatest films of all time decides to 'lower' himself to television you damn well pay attention. The pilot that Darabont both wrote and directed, still stands as the best single episode of the Walking Dead.

Over the course of a very solid first season, The Walking Dead was able to showcase what viewers would eventually have to look forward too, albeit with some stumbling blocks forming lessons for the shows writers. If anything, it's most similar to both the US Office and Parks and Recreation in their shortened first seasons. Both Parks and Office had average first seasons and then quickly bounced back in their second seasons to become two of the funniest shows on TV. If this is the trend that The Walking Dead will be following then great things are ahead for this show. The writers (or what's left of them) will hopefully be able to take away a lot from this first season, find what did and didn't work and then reform the show around the good parts.

First of all what did work, the cast are all uniformly very good in their portrayal of the characters from the comics. Whilst no one on the show is a Bryan Cranston or Jon Hamm level actor, the show works well as an ensemble, but no one at the moment is really coming forward as the stand-out actor. Andrew Lincoln is very good as Rick Grimes and is a spot on interpretation of the Rick Grimes from the comic series, but again it isn't a showy performance, it's just a good one, similar to the work Matthew Fox was doing on Lost. The other performances on the show are enjoyable to varying degrees with Laurie Holden as Andrea being the most noticeable, particularly during the scenes where she is dealing with the death of her sister Amy.

Gore, is something don't see done well on television very often by The Walking Dead is producing the graphic nature of a zombie apocalypse every week and I couldn't be happier. There have been decapitations, mutilation of corpses, gunshots to the head, zombies eating someones entrails and some absolutely brilliant zombie make-up. The Walking Dead isn't shying away from making this show very gory and bleak. Whilst the zombies aren't present in every episode, when they are used they are used to great effect, in particular the end of the fourth episode showing how the sparse use of the zombies adds to the overall effect of the show. The zombies are a constant threat, always out there but the group of survivors aren't battling hoards of them off in every episode.

When it comes to adapting a piece of work from another medium, the question is always how close should this new adaptation be to the original, Darabont and the other writers have found the right balance of original and new ideas. Whilst the broad strokes of the comic have been followed, such as Rick finding his family outside of Atlanta and leaving the camp after a zombie attack which dealt them heavy loses, the show isn't afraid of going off on it's own. Entire storylines have been made from scratch such as the siege story found in Episode 2 'Guts' or the gang story found in Episode 4 'Vatos' and they have been integrated into Kirkman's world of the comics without feeling like they were just shoehorned in to using the original material too quickly. The season's final episode 'TS-19' was entirely divergent to the comics and whilst it probably could have benefited from another episode of development to help it feel less rushed, it was still a great hour of television. In fact on of the biggest divergences from the comics comes from the Rick/Shane/Lori storyline which has featured a subtle tweak from the comics (if you've read the comics you'll know what the difference is actually quite large) and gives their storyline a sense of not actually knowing what is going to happen, which is an exciting prospect.

However not all of these changes have been great. For the most part the new characters introduced to the show who aren't present in the comics aren't particularly memorable. T-Dog is just a stupid name for a character. It also doesn't help that they are underdeveloped. When some of these non-comic characters were written out towards the end of Season 1, it was apparent I didn't care about any of them, with the only ones I liked were the ones we'd spent prolonged time with (T-Dog and Daryl) and the ones who had been characters in the comics. This is of course more a fault of the shortened length of this season and the size of the cast. What was the fault of the writers was that Merle and Daryl (at least at first) were written very badly. Merle was an early red flag for that the show could handle itself wrong. Merle was so one dimensional that it was just hard to watch. It was obvious the show wanted us to dislike him from the start but it turned into a racist red neck sterotype. Luckily Merle's actor, Michael Rooker was able to salvage the character a little in a largely wordless appearance in Episode 3 'Tell it to the Frogs'. Even Daryl (Norman Reedus) suffered from similar faults but 'Vatos' spent a prolonged amount of time with the character and began to become more fully formed, however this could be laid at the feet of Robert Kirkman having fun with a character who wasn't in his comics and didn't have a hand in creating.

Beyond these character issues, and some dialogue problems the show was largely fine, it just suffered from a lack of time to develop. Had it had the full 13 episodes to develop a proper season the show could have quickly found it's feet and shown what it was fully capable of. But as it stands the show must have what may eventually be seen as a prologue season before the show starts proper. But I enjoyed an awful lot of Season 1 of the Walking Dead, the pilot was superb with Morgan (Lennie James) being a character I hope we see a lot more of, and not after as long an absence as found in the comics. Almost every scene at the camp was brilliant, the zombie siege in 'Vatos', Jim slowly realising his fate and Noah Emmerich's fantastic supporting role in the finale as Dr. Jenner.

The first season of Walking Dead had some rough spots but overall I can see the show as ultimately pulling through, as long as some of the new characters are made more fully developed and less one dimensional and the show is able to find some kind of arc to play out over 13 episodes, rather than just the prologue this first season turned out to be. Whilst this first season wasn't perfect, it was damn good. Most of the low points are quick fixes and for the most part the show works great, but with a bit more polishing it could become one of the best shows on TV.

7.5/10

Of Terriers Season 1

2010-12-02T21:06:00.004Z

Terriers finished it's first and potentially only season last night and now I'm here to review what has been one of my favourite TV shows of 2010. Terriers is absolutely fantastic, the lead actors had crazy amounts of chemistry and it had one of the best 13 episode runs of any television show I've ever seen. And today it was cancelled. Goddammit general public, why does this get to survive and complete trash get to continue. However this post isn't about me hating people not watching Terriers, but instead the wonderous single season that was Terriers.

If you don't feel the title has told you what the show is then you are not alone. One of the main reasons that people are saying that Terriers wasn't a hit was because no one really knew what the show was about and the title and cryptic advertising did not help matters at all. However the people who actually watched the show and stuck with it for all 13 fantastic episodes know exactly were treated to one hell of a ride. So here I go about to explain what exactly Terriers is about.

Terriers is (was) a show that centred upon the P.I enterprise of two men, Hank Dolworth (Donal Logue) and Britt Pollack (Michael Raymond-James), and the general ebb and flows of the business. They're two men who are a long way out of their league and even called "too small to fail" (*sigh* if only that were true of the ratings). Behind the scenes, Terriers had an all star writing staff made up of Ted Griffin (Ocean's Eleven), Shawn Ryan (The Shield), Tim Minear (Firefly) and Jed Seidel (Veronica Mars) who get to work their usual magic here. The show is a deft mixture of comic and serious moments, and is able to go between the two tones with ease. Even though a pervading tone of the show is the messiness of their operation, you still get sucked in and want to watch these two succeed even though it's clear they are completely out of their depth.

Much like shows of a similar ilk, Veronica Mars and Justified, Terriers swaps between procedural and serial plot lines, and even stories which appear to be stand alone have personal or even serial elements buried within the plot. Just like Veronica Mars did in it's first season the serial plot develops at just the right pace to keep you on your toes whilst also managing the thoroughly engaging one off plot lines. It took Justified, earlier this year, a few episodes to get the tone just right but Terriers succeeds at this from the very first episode. There isn't a single bad episode throughout the shows 13 episode run which is something that not many shows can attest to.

The main overriding plotline of the season focuses upon a large land grab happening within Hank and Britt's home town of Ocean Beach and whilst it isn't present it is still the driving narrative of the season. However every single episode advances the personal lives of the two main heroes, be it Hank's relationship with his ex-wife Gretchen (Kimberley Quinn) or his ex-partner in the police Mark Gustafson (Rockmond Dubar). The ex-partner storyline in particular leads to a fantastic episode of the series written by Firefly alum Tim Minear who wrote 'Out of Gas' for that particular show, and if you've that episode then you know the sort of thing to expect from that episode. The relationships between the characters are key to development of the show, from Britt and his girlfriend Katie or Hank's with relationships with the aforementioned ex-wife, ex-partner and his sister Steph (Karina Logue, Donal's real life sister). However of course the key relationship to the show is that between Hank and Britt.

Luckily their relationship is so good that it's easy to forget that these two are acting. Logue and Raymond-James have such clear chemistry that it just bubbles through in their acting. Be it from the brilliant dialogue or just the looks that they give each other, it's easy to tell that these two men are the best of friends who will have each others backs throughout whatever it is they get involved in, even if it puts them both in serious mortal peril. Character relationship as good as these two are rare, but when chemistry like this happens within a show that is already got such a great creative team, it makes the whole show doubly better.

I could wax lyrical for ages about what makes Terriers work, the chemistry, the great parade of actors, in particular Logue who is doing something akin to career best acting, the writing, the humour and the fact that the show isn't afraid to punch you in the gut (Alan Sepinwall's line). Terriers has great emotional heft that just makes the show work, you care about these guys and their fate and when something bad happens (and bad stuff does happen) you feel hurt. Terriers is one of those rare shows where everything clicked from the start, and sadly has the same story as Firefly (sorry Tim Minear). Even though Hank and Britt aren't the most advanced P.I's in the game you want to spend time with them all the same and the messy ways in which they achieve their goals. Terriers is the an absolutely fantastic one-and-done series, and whilst I'd love to have a second season, this first and only foray into the world of Ocean Beach was damn near close to perfection.

9.5/10

Of True Blood Season 3

2010-12-02T13:31:00.005Z

Another massively late review, however since my True Blood Season 2 review is apparently the most popular review on my site, how can I not review this third season? Spoilers ahead!

Looking back on my review of True Blood Season 2 review, I probably rated a bit too high. The main issue being that the show lost a lot of steam after the characters came back to Bon Temps. The Big Bad of the season just wasn't as interesting as the other stories that were happening away from the town in the form of the hunt for Godric and The Fellowship of the Sun. The finale was a clear indication of how Season 3 was going to go. Season 2 technically ended about 30 minutes into the last episode, the rest of the episode was devoted to set up for Season 3, where we visited almost every single character and gave them a new story to follow.

This is where we land in Season 3, with about 7 different stories happening and it being more than likely you'll only care about 1 or 2 of them. Going in I found myself only really caring about Eric, Sookie and Bill's story and the one devoted to Hoyt and Jessica. Even my goodwill for Andy and Jason was taken to extreme levels of not caring by having the great comic chemistry of those two ruined by the fact that they spent most of the season in stories unrelated to each other and rarely got to be as hilarious towards the end of Season 2 when they were together.

Sam trying to find his real family started off as interesting and eventually became tedious. Tara is still the most grating character on the show and the most fun I had was watching her be abused by Franklin Mott, and then that story just kind of ended. Terry and Arlene's baby woes sucked up far too much valuable and the only enjoyable part of that was the brief appearance by Michael Raymond-James returning as Season 1's Rene. Then there was Jason and the werepanthers which never really went anywhere at all, beyond the promise of more story next season. Hell even Lafayette lost all his Season 1 edge by being embroiled in an almost superfluous plot about V and the wonders that it does for prophetic dreams

That was the main problem with Season 3 was that it felt like the start of something much bigger. Because none of the stories really ended in any satisfying way what we were left with in the finale didn't really feel that final. It felt more like a pause before the Season continues...just not for another year. Season 3 was just an unfocused mess, and whilst the messiness is part of the fun of True Blood, Season 3 suffered for it. A good season of television is able to take a variety of different strands and create a compelling narrative out of them. Whilst these different strands might not connect at the beginning of the season, by the end it's kind of expected that they intersect in different and interesting ways. True Blood Season 3 didn't really do that at all. Occasionally certain characters would cameo in someone else's story, such as Tara helping Sookie and Alcide get Bill out of Edgar's house or Jason killing Franklin for Tara, but on the most part there was no narrative cohesion. Season 3 suffered because every character seemed to exist within their own bubble and didn't care for anyone else. Whilst everyone existed in the same universe, it just felt odd that no one really knew what was going on in anyone else's lives. Watching True Blood was like watching 7 different television shows crammed into one show.

That's to say that everything sucked, I stand by the fact that Deborah Ann Woll and Jim Parrack have insane amounts of chemistry and the main story of the Season with Eric trying to take down Russell was great all the way through. Of course there were a couple of weak portions, such as whether or not Bill was truly evil got tiring a few episodes into the season. Luckily everything with Eric continued to be create because of the presence that Alexander Skarsgård brings to the show. Then there was the new character of Russell Edgington this season played Denis O'Hare who was absolutely brilliant. He brought the right amount of crazy and sinister, especially in the way he dealt with many characters throughout the season. However even this plotline hit some pot holes. Sookie being a fairy (yes Sookie is indeed a fairy) went almost nowhere this season and is probably being held onto for next season and there was the handling of Russell towards the end of the season. When episode 10 ended, it felt like shit was going to hit the fan, but then it didn't. It felt like such a disappointment that the Big Bad of the season didn't actually make anything bad happen. He just kind of got burnt to a crisp and then buried in cement. Only issue was that Eric was also buried in cement but quickly escaped, leaving us to question whether or not it was actually the end of the villain.

However enough complaining, True Blood is still True Blood. It still offers a campy show about vampires. There's still an over abundance of sex and violence. Hell there were more than enough awesome moments in Season 3 to make up for the messiness. There was Bill and Lorena's oh so violent sex scene, Sookie verus Debbie and of course Russell's excellent appearance on the news (spine rip FTW). Hell there were even werewolves and I actually quite liked Alcide. True Blood Season 3 was messy as hell and the finale wasn't nearly satisfying enough as a finale. However there were enough enjoyable moments and story potential that I'm not ready to give up on the show, but if it continues with being this mess and unsatisfying I might have to consider dropping from my rotation.

7/10

Of Mad Men Season 4

2010-12-01T16:45:00.005Z

I know that Mad Men Season 4 has been finished for nearly 2 months now, but I've finally decided to get round to reviewing it. Spoilers ahead obviously.

Mad Men Season 3 was fantastic, but Season 4 absolutely blew it out of the water. After the game changing finale to Season 3, the big question was what was going to become of the new law firm that Don, Roger, Burt and Lane started. Season 4 began almost a year after the firm had started and found them located in a far more luxurious location than the hotel room they were forced into at season's end, but still far small than the old Sterling Cooper offices.

Donald Draper was in a bad place for most of Season 4. Drinking heavily and attempted womanising. Of course Don was a womaniser in the old days, even when married to Betty, the key difference here was that he was failing, spectacularly at it. Whilst it would be easy to get annoyed at watching our hero fail at something he used to be good, it still led to a fantastic character study. With an early trip to California to see Anna, we were once again brought back to the Dick Whitman character and which version of Don was the real Don.

Which leads us on the to the fantastic episode The Suitcase. It's hard to describe just how good this episode was. Focusing almost exclusively on Don and Peggy and their relationship, Mad Men created one of the best single hours of television this year. Don hit rock bottom, drinking to excess in front of Peggy, getting into a drunken brawl with Duck Phillips, which he lost. Then of course in the background to all this was the presence of the death of Anna, and Don's reason for self destruction. Anna was the only person that knew Dick Whitman, the only who knew what Don was really like. With Anna's death, the torch of this knowledge was passed onto Peggy and Don was able to make an upward climb to his old self.

This led to Don Draper courting for a lot of the season, many potential love interests were introduced with Faye being the most likely. Faye was Don's equal, someone who knew what made him tick, someone he actually revealed some of his past to (obviously not all of it). Someone who looked to be a far better match than Betty. A true intellectual equal. But Don didn't choose Faye, he chose his secretary Megan. We the audience know just how bad a decision this is going to be in the long run, but the fascinating thing about Mad Men is that it is willing to let it's characters make mistakes. This marriage almost certainly work out, or at least won't make Done happy. Season 5 will obviously spend a lot of time analysing this new relationship and it's ups and downs which just makes me all the more excited.

Of course Don's relationship and life woes weren't the only story in Season 4. Roger losing Lucky Strike at the end of Season 4 which sent Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce into a tailspin as they lost their main financial backing. Not only did it place Roger's position within the company in question but gave us another key moment for Don Draper to shine (alright it is almost impossible t0 discuss the show without talking Don). His letter to the tobacco business was just awesome. Peggy manages to get a new client towards the end of Season 4, which might solve some of SCDP's worries but probably not. Whenever we come back it seems more than likely that they'll be hanging on by the skin of their teeth.

Then we have Joan now being pregnant with Roger's baby. Of course this will pose huge problems for both their marriages, although we should be more scared for Joan. After her husband raped her in Don's office, we know just how evil her husband can be, even if she is love with him. Hopefully whatever he does to (if he ever finds out) won't be too heinous because Mad Men can't lose Joan, the sheer amount of chemistry that she shares with Roger is mind boggling. Whilst at this point it would be counter intuitive to have those two end up together, as long as we get one scene with them together an episode I'll be satiated.

One of the key elements that made fantastic was Kiernan Shipka as Sally Draper. Easily one of the best child actors I've ever seen. Whatever they have her do, from the oh so creepy masturbation scene, arguing with her mother, running away to her dads is fantastic. The show keeps asking her to do more and more complex things and it just amazes me how easily she handles it. I just hope that next season she keeps up having such a large role, although with her now being with mother further away this may be difficult.

My only down issue on Mad Men Season 4 was the lack of presence of Lane Pryce. Whenever he had a fair amount of screentime, be it when he and Don went out drinking and then slept with the prostitutes or his father coming over Britain and ordering to come back with him. Not only did we find out what made Lane tick, with his father smacking him around the head with a cane, but also that he is so much happier here in America than at home in the far more domineering world. Jared Harris is an absolutely superb actor and I desperately want to see more of him next season, of course that is difficult when there are 5 other actors who are far more pressing to the ongoing narrative of the show.

Overall, Mad Men Season 4 was the best seasons of television I've ever seen, much like all other seasons of Mad Men. It's hard to fault with it. The writing and acting continue to be exemplary and engrossing and the direction and art direction is pretty much faultless. The game changing end of Season 3 wasn't so much a kick in the rear for Mad Men, but more an interesting new narrative with so many potentials. Mad Men Season 5 can't come soon enough, and the fact that it will more than likely be airing alongside Breaking Bad Season 4 makes me more excited. Right now AMC have put out the two best shows of 2010 with Breaking Bad and Mad Men, the only hard part will trying to figure out which show was better this year....

10/10

December 2010

2010-12-01T16:41:00.004Z

Today there will be a special treat in the form of reviews for Season 4 of Mad Men and Season 3 of True Blood. Coming in the next few days reviews of Terriers and Walking Dead. This will be followed later in the month by my top 10 albums of the year and my favourite TV Shows. As well as a special blowout focusing on the release of Fables issue 100.

Currently Listening to: Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Currently Watching (TV): Terriers

November 2010

2010-11-03T13:06:00.003Z

Apologies for not posting in sooooo long but I've been busy/completely forgot about the blog. However that will be changing very soon.

I'll be doing the normal end of year wrap ups and I might do some reviews if/when I can find the time.

Also stuff on Fables 100 and Walking Dead TV Series

Currently Reading: Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass - Stephen King

Currently Listening to: Age of Adz - Sufjan Stevens

Currently Watching (TV): The Walking Dead

October 2010

2010-10-03T13:01:00.000+01:00

It was October. That is all.

Yes this post is boring, but mostly because I was forced to by some dick.

Currently Reading: The Italian - Ann Radcliffe

September 2010

2010-09-29T21:07:00.003+01:00

It is September. That is all.

Yes this post is boring, but mostly because I was forced to by some bitch.

Currently Reading: Foe - J.M Coetzee

August 2010

2010-08-24T23:11:00.004+01:00

Hmmm, I need to update more often. It's been August for a loooong time and I want to say I've been busy, and I have, but not too busy for this.

Life isn't hectic, actually it's kinda sedate. I could brag about results but I shall not, I could talk about personal matters but again shall not. Instead I'm just going to say I'm going to Reading Festival this weekend which should be a lot of fun. Lot's of great bands.

Then I shall recommend a lot of albums that have been awesome this year:

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

Beach House - Teen Dream

Crystal Castles - Crystal Castles II

Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma (personal favourite)

Frightened Rabbit - Winter of Mixed Drinks

Gorillaz -Plastic Beach

Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid

LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening

Los Campesinos! - Romance is Boring

The National - High Violet (personal favourite)

Sleigh Bells - Treats (personal favourite)

Spoon - Transference

Titus Andronicus - The Monitor

65daysofstatic - We Were Exploding Anyway

I know this isn't a normal monthly post, but I kind of wanted to get my first half of the year album post out of the way (even though it is now slightly over half the year).

Apologies for not updating more often but ahh well all the Chinese spam is what keeps me going. Spambots you guys rock!

Of Lost Season 6

2010-07-23T15:42:00.003+01:00

I've been sat on this post for months. I've gone through my head about how I'm going to put my feelings about Lost Season 6 down. Was it Lost's best season? No, that stands as either Season 1 or 4. Was it good? Of course, great even. I even stand by the finale as being on the best episodes the show has produced. Sure so many questions are left open but I found myself completely un-caring. The character and emotional story overrode all annoyance over the mystery. I still find myself not caring why Walt's powers were never explained. Why Libby was important and so many small inconsequential things. The End will make my favourite episodes of television this year, as may Ab Aeterno and a few others. But the reason why I can't put my thoughts down is because Lost is over. I've spent 5 years (not 6 due to differences in the UK and US) following and adoring the work of Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and now I don't know if I'm quite ready to let go.

Lost is probably the most important piece of fictional work that I'll ever experience. Before Lost I was a gamer but then Lost opened me to so much more. I'd have never gotten into movies, comic books, books, music and most important of all television had it not been for television show. I read Watchmen because of Lost. I read The Stand because of Lost. I listened to some of my favourite albums ever because of Lost. I watched Veronica Mars and the Wire because of Lost. Not all of the direct links but the world online which Lost opened me up to was so vast that I've coasted along watching and experiencing so much. Actors works, blogs critiquing Lost, music inspired by Lost. Lost was a gateway drug to what has become my entire life.

To me Lost is by far the most important piece of popular culture ever conceived. To me.

Lost isn't perfect. There are too many narrative dead ends (the Temple), characters been underused (Frank), characters having no reason for existence (Nikki and Paulo (no matter how good Expose was), Bai Ling) and ultimately the flash sideways universe probably not playing as well on second viewing (particularly those before Desmond makes his triumphant return). But that's ignoring what Lost did so well. So many perfectly crafted characters from Locke, Ben, Desmond, Richard, Daniel, Mr. Eko, Sawyer, Juliet, Hurley and Jack. It gave us 'Not Penny's Boat', Flashfowards, flashbacks, new otherton, Sayid being generally awesome, Sawyer's nicknames, the smokemonster, Jacob, hatches and buttons and mind blowing plot twists. Also it gave us The Constant. Never has there been a more perfectly crafted episode of television (apart from maybe Lost's very own Through The Looking Glass).

So far this hasn't been much about Lost season 6, but the show overall. I apologise but now it's over I can't talk about this single season on it's own. Lost is longform narrative pure and simple, each season benefits from the preceding season. Sadly the nature of television means that it's impossible for Lost to be perfect, actors aren't available, budget, strikes etc. But the achievement of Lost is that despite all of these problems it was still insanely watchable, addictive, well crafted, well written, well acted. Lost is an anomaly in television. It's success will never be repeated and what it did should never be tried again. It needs to stay as it is. Would I like if Lost could have been made exactly as Damon and Carlton had envisioned? No constraints? Of course, but sometimes it was the idiosyncratic that made Lost so enjoyable.

Lost has it's place in my heart as being the piece of work that has defined my teenage years. That's a place that can never be taken by anything. I can't wait for this final epilogue on the DVD. I can't wait to see what the actors go onto do. I especially can't wait to see what Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse do. I'll be following Jack Bender and Michael Giacchino. I cannot overstate how much I love and adore this show. Maybe I'm a fanboy but Lost in many ways was my first love. The emotions its made me feel. Pure joy, sadness, excitement, tension.

But Season 6 then? It isn't perfect. The flashsideways would have benefited from Desmond coming in earlier on, the temple whilst necessary due to fan anticipation amounted to little more than a detour, the lack of answers to some questions will of course be frustrating. And the flashsideways probably won't play out as well on second viewing. But who gives a fuck?

Season 6 was all about the memories. Getting all our favourites back (particularly the spectacular and heartbreaking finale), giving a satisfying conclusion to the island story. It was a season where Jack finally became the true hero (and to a lesser extent chose Kate). The smoke monster became a main character. We found out who Richard was. Claire and her squirrel baby. Lapidus and his shirt. The Black Rock blew up. Ben finally got his revenge of Charles Widmore. Sawyer mourned the death of his true love. Desmond actually got his happy ending. Hurley proved how irreplaceably awesome he was. Jin, Sun and Sayid died within 10 mintues of each other. And so much more.

Then there was the finale. That perfect finale Everyone came back (minus a few notables) and we got the heart felt goodbye. One of the series most important lines was subverted, changing from 'Live Toghether, Die Alone' to 'Live Together, Die Together'. The finale was an encompassing of everything that made the show great, the characters. Everyone got their moment to say goodbye, and I was reduced to tears multiple times (Claire giving birth, Sun/Jin realising, Sawyer and Juliet, Jack's death). Even the controversial ending was perfect in tone. Then there was the mirroring of the series first ever scene as Jack lay dying in the bamboo he woke up in six years ago. Those final seconds were a perfect farewell to the show I loved for my teen years. I don't think anything will top the feeling I had being sat in my living room at 8 in the morning watch Lost end in such a cathartic way.

Lost was an irreplaceable force in my life. Whilst Lost Season 6 'only' gets a 9/10 the show overall merits a complete 10/10 for sheer personal and emotional resonance. Nothing I view will hold me, engage me in the same way. But at least I was able to experience it as happening and I'm deeply jealous of those who will be embarking on the Lost journey in the future because they might experience one of the greatest achievements in entertainment history with fresh eyes.

'See you in another life Brother' - Desmond Hume

Of Breaking Bad Season 3

2010-07-23T15:19:00.003+01:00

Last year I put Breaking Bad at number 2 in my best shows of the year. In some ways that may have been one place too low. This year, unless Mad Men has a breathtaking season (which to be honest is still highly likely) Breaking Bad is the best show I'm going to see all year. Season 3 may have been better than Season 2 in terms of just about everything. And since Breaking Bad Season 2 was no slouch that's saying something.

After the somewhat controversial end to Season 2, Breaking Bad came back with a string of slower more meditatively paced episodes to bring us back, Walt is still reeling from guilt and wanting to leave the drug business and Jesse still recovering from addiction and the death of Jane. Jesse decides that he is fundamentally evil and Walt wants to still believe he's a force for good. Whilst putting these two at loggerheads may not seem the best way, it lead to some incredible moments such as Walt's criticism of Jesse's cooking style and of course the scene in the 'Fly' where Walt almost admits to his role in Jane's death.

Of course I can wax lyrical about how fucking incredible both Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul are on this show but if you don't know that these two can own any scene their in you clearly don't watch the show (in which case FUCKING GO!). But Season 3 gave us a lot more depth to the other characters. Hank got a showcase in the seasons early episodes leading to the sublime 'One Minute'. This episode is by far one of the greatest hours of television I've ever watched. Aaron Paul owns the shit out of every scene in the hospital all leading to the concluding scene in the parking lot with Hank. It is by far the tensest I've been watching anything since 'No Country for Old Men' in 2007. Even Skylar gets her own depth having to deal with divorcing Walt as well as slowly being pulled into the drug world. She shows herself to be just as cunning as Walt showing maybe that these two were meant for each other more than originally expected.

Of course, if you can't tell the meditative pace of the early episodes soon gets burned away and we go from one explosive moment to the next. Walt of course goes back to drugs (working now for Gus who is another character that chews the scenery) and shit goes down. Breaking Bad is a tower of cards on the constant verge of collapsing and Vince Giligan makes everything feel like it could explode at any second.

I'm trying to say so much about Breaking Bad without delving into too many specifics which I've already failed at). Just know Breaking Bad is television at it's best and needs to be viewed by as many people as possible. If you don't watch it you'll never see so many insane moments (including why I never want to get on the wrong side of Mike following the finale), monologues, amazing cinematography, great acting, writing and just about everything else.

Overall if you aren't watching Breaking Bad you owe it to yourself to do so. It's the best show currently airing. Quite often tense, very often hilarious, dramatic, heartbreaking. The hyperbole I could spout about this show is never ending. As good as you think you're favourite show is, Breaking Bad is better no question. After a spellbindingly good Season 2, Breaking Bad continued on an upward streak, making Season 3 one of the greatest seasons of television ever. Now I just need to sit and wait till fucking next July to find out what happens next to Walt and Jesse.

10/10

Of July 2010

2010-07-06T11:27:00.002+01:00

Well what do you know I'm late once again...

Apologies, pretty much all my past week has been spent celebrating the fact that I've broken up and finished with all my friends at various gatherings. Now I'm into the idea that I'm going away this Sunday for 10 days, should still have access to the internet.

I'll be starting drafts of my blog posts today and will then set them up to maybe post whilst I'm away. We'll see how that goes anyways.

This month has a ton of awesome films coming out, mostly in the form of Toy Story 3 and Inception. Also planned is a drunken trip to see Eclipse, should be interesting (I might even be able to live tweet if my iPhone arrives...)

Currently Listening to: Sleigh Bells - Treats, Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma
Currently Watching (TV): Justified Season 1

Of June 2010

2010-06-28T22:27:00.003+01:00

Well it's still technically June, so it's not that late.

Apologies I haven't been blogging much. Exams whilst not getting on top of me kinda stopped me from blogging for a while. Since I finished almost two weeks ago though I've had no excuses other than the fact I've been having too much fun relaxing, listening to music and playing Assassin's Creed 2.

But now I come to rectify the issue!

I will be reviewing Supernatural, Lost, Chuck, Breaking Bad, Doctor Who, Glee, Sons of Anarchy and a whole host of comedy shows in he coming days. But I also have a small matter of leavers of socialising and drinking which may result in some posts being delayed a bit more. By the weekend they should all be up (I promise).

I always am toying with the idea of reviewing Assassin's Creed 2 (great, great game) as well as doing a post recommending Six Albums for the first Six Months of 2010. But we shall see.

Other that, I've finished my exams!!! Yayness. I've also managed to chip a cap off of my tooth and now I look like a complete chav. Should be getting it fixed in the next few days (hopefully before leavers as I do not want to have that remembered for me looking like a boxer).

Well see you in about 2 days for the July post (unless I'm late then as well).

Currently Listening to: Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

Of Iron Man 2

2010-05-08T14:56:00.006+01:00

Well this is late....apologies, more about why in my next blog post.

So Iron Man 2. It takes place a few months after the first film and deals with Tony Stark having just revealed that he is Iron Man to the entire world. So this being an Iron Man film we get plenty of weapon contracts, government involvement and a corporations are dicks message. Really you aren't going to see this film for the plot. It's to watch Robert Downey Jr. play a suave and slightly douchey yet ever hilarious playboy. And giant robots beating the shit out of each other.

Iron Man 2 delivers in spades on one of those and the other, whilst present is neglected a little bit. Iron Man 2 is bigger in every way than the first film and whilst this helps the actions scenes immensely, it takes away some of the spark of what made the first film great. Iron Man 2 isn't bad, but when the first Iron Man so fun and witty and didn't need to rely on huge action set-pieces, it feels a bit out of place this movie improves a weak area of the first film at the neglect of what was working in the first place.

Robert Downey Jr. is still Tony Stark but because the world has increased in scope, he gets slightly less screen time. Luckily the likes of Sam Rockwell (proving he makes all films better by just being in them) and Mickey Rourke are able to shoulder scenes without Downey being in them. But the movie doesn't just rely on those three actors, and whilst no one else is 'bad' you do wish that we'd go back to the others. Even when Tony Stark is embroiled in the Shield parts of the film, which are only there to build mythology for the Avengers movie, he still shines.

I don't want to be too overly critical of this film. The humour is still there, the action is very well done. The balance and tone are great, far better than the shit heap that is Transformers 2. But it lacks a spark of what made the first film rank up there with Dark Knight and Spiderman 2 as truly great comic book films. Maybe it's trying to pack in technically two franchises into one with set-up for Avengers as well as dealing with plot lines from this own franchise. Or maybe a distinct lack in movement of this franchise. I would have loved to be building towards the Armor Wars or the Demon in a Bottle storylines but there didn't seem to be much expansion beyond what we found in the first film. Maybe it's being left for Joss Whedon's Avengers film but I would like to see something set up for an Iron Man 3.

Overall Iron Man 2 is a very fun film. Great action, good acting, particularly Downey, Rockwell and Rourke (Cheadle wasn't brilliant though). Sadly the spark of what made Iron Man 1 a fantastic film has lessened a little bit. I'm still super excited for Thor, Captain America and The Avengers but my excitement for Iron Man 3 isn't burning as strongly as before. I'm sure in roads will be laid in the Avengers film but that movie is still 2 years away. Iron Man 2 could have been one of the greatest comic book movies ever (especially due to the normal comic book movie rules) but sadly it's been bogged down by trying to appeal to two different franchises. When it focuses on or the other it works a lot better, so lets hope Iron Man 3 will be free from the tethers of having to work within the time frame of The Avengers 2.

7.5/10

Of May 2010

2010-05-08T14:49:00.003+01:00

Normally I try to multiple blog posts, but I guess I kinda fell behind this month. Probably something to do with the election and that I didn't anything overly interested (apart from see Iron Man 2 which I shall review!!!)

Well the election happened a few days ago and I think it's fair to say that it would be impossible to be happy with the result. But (to briefly go political) it does show how we need to use a Proportional Representation system. When a party gains almost 25% of the votes and yet only gains a sixth of the seats, then surely that shows that there is something severely wrong with the system.

But avoiding politics. We've hit sweeps!! In other words we're gearing up for finales and therefore almost every show will be ending. Supernatural bows out this Thursday so expect a review of Season 5 very soon. This will soon be followed by some sort of comedy show post, purely because I can't analyse comedy as well as drama. But stay tuned for a mini ranking of 2009/2010's best comedy shows.

Currently Listening to: LCD Soundsystem - This is Happening and The National - High Violet. Two of the best albums so far released in 2010
Currently Watching (TV): Party Down Season 2 Episode 3

Of April 2010

2010-04-01T00:35:00.002+01:00

Ultra, ultra short little post today. Today is the day I turn 18, so it means lots of busy time for me (at the moment I count 2 meals with different groups of people, followed by drinks with a third group of people). So I'm just going to say, I hope your April is as awesome as my April (or at least this first day) will inevitably be!!!

Really that is everything, fairly sure there aren't any big finales coming up, just the normal great TV shows continuing to be great and the return of Doctor Who on Saturday (I'm hearing great things) and the return of Party Down (a show I heartily recommend)

Also quickly a little bit on David Mills who died last night of a brain aneurysm. The man was an absolute genius who worked on my favourite show ever, The Wire as well as on NYPD Blue, Homicide, The Corner and ER. TV lost one of the greats yesterday and all my thoughts go out to his family and friends.

Currently Listening to: This Dust Makes That Mud - Liars (30 minutes of the same repeated 4 second beat, oddly really good)
Currently Watching (TV): Sons of Anarchy

Of Kick-Ass

2010-03-27T10:30:00.002Z

Long time no review. I haven't written a film review since the release of Jennifer's Body, but I'm glad my first review is for a movie as brilliant as this one. First off Kick-Ass is just a hell of a lot of fun. This isn't Oscar as I'm sure you'll realise from the purple haired girl saying the word "cunt" in the trailer. Kick-Ass is a new breed of superhero movies, it's completely irreverent and pays homage to so many comic book series which just makes it fun to watch.

On a very basic level, Kick-Ass shares some similarities with Watchmen, despite being tonally completely different. Both focus on a world in which there are no superheroes and real people, influenced by comic books decide to dress up and fight crime. However the first difference is that Watchmen takes place in a world in which superheroes have been around for decades and being one is now a criminal offence, Kick-Ass takes place at the very beginning with the obsession with superheroes. Plus the whole not actually taking itself very seriously idea.

If you've seen the trailers you know that this film is gory as hell, but what is seen very slightly in the trailers is just how well choreographed the fight scenes are. Seriously the fights are just a joy to behold, with bullets and knives flying everywhere.* Also whilst there is so much swearing and violence the movie still manages to fit in some adult themes and comments on the world at large (particularly the idea of social media). So we have swearing, violence, themes and of course due to some scenes set in high school, banter! And such glorious banter it is. Maybe it's the British writers, with a background in 90s gangster films, but the gangsters sparkle with wit, as well as the high school students which in some ways feels like an extension of what was found in Superbad (and not just because of McLovin).

It feels odd to say but Kick-Ass is maybe one of the most realistic superhero movies ever. Yes the final fight scene does take a lot of liberties but up until this point it feels like it could happen. Someone may very well eventually dress up as a superhero and try and fight crime (and it would probably end up in the same way that the Kick-Ass's own first attempt ends). It probably sounds stupid to say the movie feels realistic but it really does in a lot of key areas, but it's also a stupid amount of fun because of how over the top it is. It's a weird but awesome mix of "maybe this could happen, but it could never look as fucking awesome as we're making it look".

The main performances in the film are also uniformly great. Aaron Johnson plays Kick-Ass to perfection. He might not steal the show but he plays the everyman well and you root for him throughout, which is all that is needed. He's a geeky everyman character and you understand his motivations, even if they're not as melodramatic as say Peter Parker's. Mark Strong as the villain is superb, but if you've seen any film such as Sunshine or Sherlock Holmes then you know that Mark Strong can play a villain superbly. Chrisopher Mintz-Plasse as Red Mist is probably the weakest but still offers a great performance. It's clear he's trying to branch away from his role as McLovin which admirably but he doesn't get as much to chew on as the other actors, however by the final reels of the film it's clear they're setting his character up for bigger things in a potential sequel.

However far and away the scene stealers in Kick-Ass are Nicolas Cage and Chloe Moretz. Nicolas Cage puts in his best performances since Adaptation as the unhinged Big-Daddy. He swaps between this gleeful naivety when in civilian dress, but the moment he dresses up as a superhero he's a supreme bad-ass killing people left and right. The costume is clearly taking infulence from Batman, however you'll also notice that he's putting on a weird voice when dressed up, until it clicks he's impersonating Adam West. It's a surprise and just makes his performance that much more enjoyable. And then we have Hit-Girl. The one thing EVERYONE will be talking about when they leave the cinema. She swears and she's got no qualms with killing you. If you've seen the red band trailer you know what I mean. Chloe Moretz is a revelation and I can't wait to see what she goes on to do, but it's quite clear she's got a long career ahead of her.

Also a quick shout out to the Kick-Ass soundtrack, it fits the scenese perfectly and I now need to find the remix of the Sunshine theme that is used for one of the films action scenes. It's so epic and fits it perfectly.

Overall Kick-Ass is a hell of a lot of fun. Easily the best film that I've seen so far in 2010 and just a great thrill ride. It's not trying to be Oscar fodder, but it's just a great film. Everything from the acting, directing, editing and choreography come together to make a great whole. Sure it's over the top, incredibly violent and features an 11 year old girl saying the word "cunt" but when the movie around it this enjoyable, I couldn't give two shits because of how well it works. Apart from some green screen issues during the final scenes, the film is a near perfect comic book adaptation. It not be as brilliant as The Dark Knight, but it doesn't try to be. Kick-Ass is fun, irreverent and chock a block with geeky reference. The benchmark for 2010 comic book movies has been set high, so we'll see if Iron-Man 2 and Scott Pilgrim can live up to it.

9/10

*of note, same choreographers are working on Scott Pilgrim, just makes me more excited for it!

Of March 2010

2010-03-01T22:07:00.004Z

March! In one month I'm eighteen! Not that it really matters because I already do a lot of things that shouldn't be legal until then. Like going to the pub or seeing 18s. But still it's a big event in my life that should be celebrated

I anticipated this being a really angry blog post full of how I hated the hapless twats that run my school IT Department. But I've had a really good day so I'll let them off. Also, it's helped me actually do some work which will be really good in the long run. Specially after a godawful report.

So instead I'm just going to say HAPPY MARCH and then return to trying to think of what to put in my yearbook.

Oh and Lost is still awesome, especially because we got what looks like the worst episode of the season out of the way at episode 3. Plus all the awesome shows are coming back this week, and whilst I won't be able to watch in school, it's something to do which is always nice.

Currently Listening to: Common People - Pulp/Machine Gun - Portishead
Currently Watching (TV): Glee!
Currently Reading: The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Klay
Currently Playing: Super Mario Galaxy (in preparation for number 2 in May)

Chuck versus the Apocalypse

2010-02-09T20:46:00.004Z

If you've been on the internet today, particularly the TV-centric parts, you may have notice something. That fans were in uproar because of Chuck. Apparently this episode of Chuck was so offensive it has now led countless people to boycott the show entirely, or at least they say they will.

All I can say is that some people are quite deluded. Was Chuck last night a great episode? Not really, it was OK but nothing special. Did it make me want to drop the show like a hot potato? NO! I still find Chuck to be one of the most refreshing shows on television. I'm sticking with it till the end.

And yet the episode is getting responses like this:

- "that was the worst episode ever they killed the characters. A comment for one poster on NBC was "The show runners finally killed Chuck..."

- "If we can bring the number of on air viewers below 1 million, the advertisers will take note. You can count on that. You can also bet the advertisers will be on the phone to NBC and the producers of Chuck. Money talks after all."

- "Our sad decision to remove Chuck from our viewing schedule came from the abhorrently low-grade soap opera style this program has delved into. Specifically, forcing characters to behave in stark contrast to their established norms. And all for nothing more grand or "progressive" than cheap shock value."

These just seem completely over the top reactions. Luckily some sane people have been able to speak sense during all of this, particularly the person who doesn't seem to understand that any show with sub-1 million viewers is going to get cancelled fairly quickly, no matter the level of online support.

My main issue is that so many people are planning to jump off of Chuck just because they don't agree with the relationship issues. Whilst indeed the Chuck/Sarah chemistry has been an important part, it's just one of many parts that make up this great show. I think Alan Sepinwall put it best:

"If you're only watching the show for the chance of Chuck and Sarah getting together, you've spent more than two years missing an awful lot of other good stuff happening on this show."

There's a lot to love about Chuck and so many people seem to be shocked that Sarah has decided to hook up with Shaw that they've decided to completely abandon the show despite this being one small flaw, that is probably only a road block on the inevitable coupling of Chuck and Sarah. If you think that Josh Schwartz and Chris Fedak are stupid enough to keep them apart forever then clearly there's something wrong or you've simply never seen a "will they, won't they" relationship"

I see no problem with them being a pairing. Chuck and Sarah have drifted apart because Chuck is becoming a spy and less of the man that Sarah had fallen in love with. He hurt her extremely badly, leaving her at the train station alone. So what has she done? She's gone back to her "type", people like Bryce, Cole and Shaw. Manly spies because she knows they won't her, at least not in the same way that Chuck did.

Chuck on the other hand had been pining over Sarah for years and now she hates him. He clearly still loves her but a gorgeous girl has fallen head over hells for him and Sarah is showing no signs of forgiving him. Both characters are in weird headspaces and yet they apparently aren't allowed to be in a relationship unless it's with each other?

I'm not going to say the leap to relationship was handled perfectly. I will admit that the Shaw/Sarah thing could have done with an extra episode just to put it across more but still when you only have Brandon Routh for a set number of episodes and a story to tell in that time, I don't mind if some corners are cut, just as long as the end result is great. Looking at Chuck's track record they're setting up for something epic but the fans on the blogs seem to be forgetting that.

For them this hook-up is the last straw. They don't care to see the inevitable failure of both relationships due to the fact that they're only contracted for a little while. They don't care about the Ring story. They don't care about the great supporting characters. They care about the now and the fact they aren't getting what they want NOW. All good things come to those who wait, but apparently a lot of Chuck fans seem incapable of waiting.

Interesting Reading
I'm just going to include a few links for some more background and comments from people on the matter

Alan Sepinwall's Review
Maureen Ryan's review
Linda Holmes brilliant outline of events for NPR
NBC Board postings (will need to skip to page 10 or so)

And some indivdual comments:
Alan Sepinwall's comment on Shipping in TV
SerendipityWAF (who helped save the show last year)

Overall I thought the episode was OK, about a 7 or 7.5 But honestly nothing that makes me feel like they've jumped the shark or have made a mistake they can never come back from. Whilst the fans did help Chuck back last year, they don't have a say in how the story goes, that's the writer's job. Let's just hope the fans who are up in arms don't enact upon any of their crazy schemes because that could kill what has up until now been a fantastic show. The show is still on the bubble and one weak episode shouldn't mark the end for it.

Of February 2010

2010-02-09T19:00:00.004Z

Apologies for lateness but this is only a quickie blog post (for now, I will come back later with some extended thoughts on the current Chuck-pocalypse)

Well it's February and not much is going to happen, you'll get some Lost ravings as well as possibly some film musings but I plan on spending much of the half term break being drunk so don't expect too much thoughtfulness. Definitely helps that not much is happening, no really big films and no returning shows or shows ending (apart from Heroes so I'll need to catch up on that). The big stuff is happening in March and April so for now this blog will be snooze-ville (unless I do my Lost review posts).

Stuff Coming Soon
- Heroes Season 4 Review
- Chuck-pocalypse thoughts

Currently Listening to: In Rainbows - Radiohead
Currently Watching (TV): Chuck versus the Mask
Currently Reading: The Amazing Adventures of Cavalier and Klay (amazing read)

Top 10 Lost Episodes

2010-02-04T21:18:00.003Z

A bit late, I watched the premiere. Damn was it good. I actually debated about putting it on this list, but I feel that the time for Season 6 will come in May when it's all over and we can look back on the show as a whole and say whether it was a success or not, but I still think Lost will go down in history as a show which took narrative to new and exciting places. Even if the final episode sucks, it'll just be three hours of a 120 hour show, which has put out so many good hours. Sadly a lot of people will focus on the finale as to whether the show was good or not, something that a lot of people are still doing about The Sopranos' ending.

But anyway, my personal favourite episodes of Lost from the first 103 hours of the show.

10. The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham - Season 5
We'd been waiting two seasons for this episode, why exactly was Locke off the island and why was he using a different name? Luckily this episode delivered in spades and gave us a lot too chew on. Plus the scene where Ben choked Locke using the wire was one of the best scenes Lost has created. Biggest complaint? Possibly the last time we will ever see Walt.

9. The Incident - Season 5
Season 5 was probably one of the weaker seasons of Lost but luckily the finale delivered in spades. It was action packed, romantic and we got a nuclear bomb. Oh and we finally met Jacob. To Lost fans, that's pretty much reason enough to put this episode in any Top 10 list.

8. Man of Science, Man of Faith - Season 2
This was probably the last time we saw Jack as a truly sympathetic character. It also kicked Season 2 off with a bang and whilst it fizzled towards the middle, this episode is one of my favourite ever and also contains my favourite single Lost scene ever. Damn is that opening just a great piece of misdirection, character introduction and an awesome song choice.

7. The Shape of Things to Come - Season 4
This was the first episode of Lost we got after the writers strike and damn was it amazing. First it was payoff to the reveal that Ben was off the island in the future and it was sooo good. But it was confusing as all hell, why was he in Tunisia? In a Dharma jacket? Plus his conversation where he promised Charles Widmore he'd kill Penny! because Widmore's men had killed his daughter (another shocking scene from the episode). On top of all that we got some smoke monster ownage. Yup this episode is pure Lost at its best.

6. The Man From Tallahassee - Season 3
Another episode that we'd been waiting for 2 seasons. It was in this episode we finally found out why John Locke was in a wheelchair and it was just such an amazing payoff. Of course it was down to his father (who would go onto play a pivotal role in another Season 3 doozy 'The Brig' along with Sawyer). And Season 3 added to its explosion quota with that submarine

5. Pilot - Season 1
It couldn't not be on the list, it started it all and is one of the most filmic hours of television ever. You just need to show someone those first 10 minutes and they're hooked for ever. Strong characters, monsters, polar bears and weird French transmissions were just the start of the epic narrative web that is Lost.

4. There's No Place Like Home - Season 4
It came at the end of an epic season and gave us so much to ponder over the hiatus. Why was Locke in a coffin? How did that Donkey Wheel make the island move? What happened to all the people left on the island? Plus storylines came to a close such as the Oceanic 6 story and a cherry on the cake? Desmond and Penny were reunited after 3 years apart!!! I know I'm a sap, but it's my favourite fictional relationship ever and it came as such an awesome surprise I actually cried (I know)

3. Walkabout - Season 1
I could talk about Terry O'Quinn's masterful performance or the cool hunting story on the island, but really there is one reason this episode is seen as a definitive Lost episode. It's that end scene, we've spent an hour with this hunter Locke, with his knives and cool demeanor. But then we find out that off-island he was wheelchair bound. The definitive Lost WTF moment, and if you weren't hooked before hand, then you definitely were now.

2. Through The Looking Glass - Season 3
It's another definitive Lost episode that throws one of the biggest curve balls in Lost history. Not only was there a lot to love in the episode, twists, Dharma Stations, war with the Others, ghost Walt and of course the scenes with Charlie down in the Looking Glass. It's another of Lost's best scenes, had me in tears and is easily the most affecting death the show has done so far. Oh and a little thing in the shape of the flashforward.

1. The Constant - Season 4
The best single hour has ever produced and I know I'm boring for saying so. Simply the best acted, directed, scored, edited and just generally put together episode of Lost in existence. It's where the idea of time travel was properly explored plus we had Desmond and Penny and THAT phone call which like so many other scenes already mentioned is one of the best scenes that the show has produced. But also this could be my favourite scene ever put to any sort of film, movies or TV. It's just that damn good and you're doing yourself a disservice if you haven't seen it.

Top 10 Lost Characters

2010-01-31T10:40:00.003Z

Well the Lost premiere is in two days and I've decided to celebrate w hat is one of the greatest television shows ever by giving my personal list of the best episodes and the best characters. Because of the sheer amount of great characters on Lost, I decided to limit myself to only Series Regulars, so no Penny, Mikhail, Keamy, Rousseau, Charles Widmore, Eloise Hawking, Rose, Bernard or Arzt. So what I feel we're left with is a fairly definitive list of the best characters, which is oddly very male skewed. But that's mostly because the male characters are normally a lot better written, or in the case of Kate, get bogged down in a very boring love triangle and soap opera back story.

So let's delve into Lost's best Characters

***WARNING SPOILERS BELOW***

Honourable Mentions

Charlie Pace
Charlie was probably seen by many people as one of the main characters in Season 1, especially considering that Dominic Monaghan was coming to the show fresh off the success of Lord of the Rings. If we could include the Season 1 and Season 3 Charlie only, then he would have probably made it into the top 10, but sadly the characterisation of Charlie in Season 2 drags the character down with a very boring addict storyline. Luckily Season 3 redeemed Charlie so much that when he died in the third season finale it resulted in what still remains the most touching and emotional death the show has produced (and of my favourite scenes from the show as a whole)

Richard Alpert
Richard Alpert is still a mystery but it's such a compelling mystery. For 3 Seasons we slowly found out more about Richard, he's been off island and hired Juliet, he seemingly doesn't age, he's worked for both Charles Widmore and Benjamin Linus, he was behind the murder of the Dharma Initiative and is one of the only people on the island who has interacted with Jacob. Season 6 is going to be a big season for Richard and I'm sure by the shows end he may have cracked my personal Top 10

Frank Lapidus
Probably the character who has appeared in the least episodes and is arguably one of the least pivotal, but damn is he awesome. In Season 4 he was the only one of the freighter characters who wasn't classed as a regular and yet he made such a great lasting impression. Effortlessly cool and a helicopter pilot, he got a great deal of laughs near the end of Season 4 and was the reason why the Oceanic 6 got off the island. But then it seemed his job was over. He appeared briefly at the start of Season 5 in flashbacks to the aftermath of Season 4 but then it seemed like he was gone forever. But then they got on Ajira 316 and possibly the coolest part of the episode was the reveal that Lapidus was the pilot and as he looked out at the passengers on his flight he uttered the immortal words "We're not going to Guam, are we?". Since then we saw bits and pieces of him landing a plane on a tiny island as well as playing a big part in the final reveal of the season. Being bumped up to a Series Regular means that we'll only get more of Lapidus' awesomeness in Season 6 and I couldn't be more happy for that.

10. Jack Shephard
Jack is the closest that Lost has to a main character. He was also supposed to be killed off at the end of the first episode, but because they didn't get a big name star (they originally wanted Michael Keaton) and it distressed the audience too much they decided to keep him around. Whilst Jack has had some of the best episodes centered around him, he's also had some of the worst which keeps him from climbing up the list any higher. If it hadn't been for the tattoo episode or the love triangle he would be a lot higher, based purely on episodes like 'Through the Looking Glass' and 'Man of Science, Man of Faith'. But I guess the fact that we've almost overdosed on Jack Shephard (he's had the most centric episodes and has appeared in the most episodes) means that he just doesn't feel like the strongest character that the show has to offer.

9. Mr. Eko
If Mr. Eko had been around for more than a Season then I'm sure that he would have been a lot higher. However because the actor who played him wanted to leave the show due to his parents dying whilst filming, so sadly Mr. Eko's was cut short and he was unceremoniously killed by the Smoke Monster in Season 3 and most of his story moved over to Desmond (presumably). But for Season 2 he was a triumph, he was quiet and stoic but also scary. He was the character who first met the Smoke Monster on screen and had one of the cooler flashback stories. He quickly became a fan favourite and was easily my favourite character through most of Season 2. If only he'd stuck around longer he would have only been even more fleshed out and could have quite easily have topped this list.

8. Sayid Jarrah
Sayid is an Iraqi soldier and also the shows resident badass. Of all the characters on the show he probably has the most "Crowning Moments of Awesome". From killing someone using a dishwasher to breaking someones legs using his thighs whilst in handcuffs. He's just awesome. Whilst he doesn't have the most interesting backstory, it still builds on a more emotional side to the character and adds even more to him when eventually he becomes morally compromised after the death of his love, Nadia. It's this that feeds him to work for Benjamin Linus in Season 4 as well as his attempted assassination of Benjamin Linus during the 1970s to prevent the events in the future from happening. It's this dark sided character, mixed with the more romantic side that make Sayid such an interesting character. Every time he thinks he's escaped his dark past as a torturer for the Republican Guard than he is dragged back into this life be it as a torturer or professional hitman. Last we saw of Sayid he was bleeding from a gunshot would to the chest, so let's just hope he survives into most of Season 6.

7. Juliet Burke
Juliet is the only female character on this list for good reason. Whilst when she was introduced in Season 3 she wasn't the most interesting, partly because of coming in during a storyline which just seemed to drag along for 6 weeks, she made up for it with 2 great flashback stories. Whilst her episode in Season 4 took away from the far more interesting Oceanic 6 storyline, she still made an impact in Season 4, but it was her relationship with Sawyer in Season 5 which pushed her over the top. Before hand she was just there to kind of act as a buffer between Jack and Kate, but once they were off island, she was left alone with Sawyer and the two started to show some great chemistry. It quickly became one of the shows better romances (similar to Charlie and Claire and Desmond and Penny) and is one of the better parts of Season 5. But of course Kate comes along to screw this up and by the end of the Season Juliet wants to forget everything and ends up bashing a nuclear device with a rock to reset the time-line. A strong but understandable reaction to Jack-Kate-Sawayer Love Triangle

6. Daniel Faraday
Daniel Faraday was the best character introduced in Season 4, mostly because he was mysterious, he was a tiny bit insane and seemed like he'd be able to give so answers. He did experiments with time which led us to find out that island time is different to off island time. He was able to explain the shows concept of time travel and for most of the early part of Season 5 when it came to the jumping in time. He was using Desmond as his constant and got some really cool scenes of him interacting with past versions of characters. He had an awesome part in Jughead and then his reappearance in the Variable seemingly cemented the fact that "What happened, happened" when he is ultimately murdered by his own mother. He may have been around for only two seasons, but he's had a massive impact on the show and with news that he'll be appearing in Season 6, I can't wait to see what answers and more story that he has to bring to the show.

5. James 'Sawyer' Ford
Whilst Sawyer is probably well liked within the non-hardcore members of the fanbase, he's also very popular within the hardcore fanbase. When the show started he was a bit of a jerk and was probably the least liked character on the show and it wasn't until the flashback episode where we found out that his mother had been conned by a man named 'Sawyer' which led to his father murdering his mother and committing suicide in front of him. What makes this story even more interesting is that the real 'Sawyer' (a man he has vowed to kill) turns out to be Locke's dad as well. It's a great backstory for the character and if that weren't enough, his on island persona is just as good. His long con in Season 2 was a great part of the story, his fights with Jack over leadership, nicknames, occasional comic relief episodes and relationship with Juliet are some of the lasting memories of the show. Plus Josh Holloway portrays him to tee, just watch Season 3 episode 'The Brig' to see some of the best acting that that the show has produced

4. Hugo 'Hurley' Reyes
Hurley for the most part is comic relief. Most of his episodes are often lighthearted and don't really stand up against the shows best. But Hurley is a stealth player. There's always something funny for him to say or react to. His reaction to Arzt blowing up in Season 1 is one of the funniest single moments in the entire show, plus he's inextricably linked to the Numbers which is only a plus. Whilst Hurley's centric episodes aren't great, he is used amazingly in other peoples peoples episodes which makes him such a strong part of the show. He may just be the shows most recognisable character, because everyone knows about the fat guy but really Hurley is so much more than that. Plus he saved the day once by running over the Others in the Dharma Van, in what was probably one of the shows best single scenes (but we'll talk about that more in my favourite episodes list)

3. Desmond Hume
Desmond is probably my overall favourite character on the show. He's got the story I love the most, the best romance, the best single episode that the show has produced and I love every second that he's on screen. Especially since he was introduced in my absolute favourite Lost scene ever. He gave us time travel, emotional grounding, Charles Widmore, the death of Charlie and so many great things about Lost. However he isn't the shows best character, there undoubtedly two characters better than him but Desmond is such a fan favourite that he's always top 5, no question. It's so hard to imagine the show without everyone's favourite Scottish "brother" and it's sad to see him not being a series regular for his last year, but he'll still be back occasionally, so I just hope he makes a big impact this year and gets the happy ending that his character has deserved from the beginning. But knowing the way good television works, that almost wouldn't seem fair...

2. Benjamin Linus
Introduced to the viewers as Henry Gale, we didn't know whether he was good or bad. All we knew was that he was a riveting character. Michael Emerson was originally only brought on for 3 episodes but he was received so well that his stay got extended, then he became a series regular in Season 3 and now he's one of the most important players on the show. Michael Emerson is perfect as Benjamin Linus, every scene is stunning and whenever he's on screen it's hard to take your eyes off of him. He's weaselly and cunning and has done so many bad deeds on the show but he's had such a tragic past. Blamed by his father for his mothers death then practically ignored by the leader of the island. All he wants is recognition and whilst his methods are dubious you can't help but feel sorry for him. Ultimately though, it seems inevitably that something bad is going to happen to him in Season 6 which is probably the only way that his character can leave the show, because he is the closest thing that we've had to a villain for three years.

1. John Locke
Undoubtedly the shows best creation is the character of John Locke. He's the shows most tragic and interesting character. He's been abused by his parents, by the island, by co-workers, lovers, friends, enemies and people he's never met. He was put in a wheelchair for four years after his dad (the same one who Sawyer wanted to murder) pushed him out of a window and ultimately regained the power of his legs on island, which seemed to enjoy taking them taking them away every so often, just because it could. He lost faith pushing the button for months, was shot in the stomach and left for dead, briefly became leader of the island until eventually he moved the island to save it, but not before losing the use of his legs again. On his quest to send everyone back, he was ignored and turned to suicide. Whilst he may have been talked out of it, he was then choked to death by Benjamin Linus and set up to look like a suicide. Then we're led to believe that when his body was brought back to the island he came back to life, but that's not the case. John Locke in fact died halfway through Season 5 and now the mysterious Man in Black has possessed his body. For such an interesting and tragic character it was the perfect way for him to go. Whilst Terry O'Quinn is still on the show, John Locke shall be missed even if he was essentially never anything more than a puppet from the very beginning of the show, he was a puppet who was never anything less than engrossing even during his lowest moments and when Lost is looked back upon in the years to come, will probably be seen as the single greatest achievement of the show. More so than the complex story, amazing writing and direction, Locke is the embodiment of Lost and no other character comes close to matching the impact that he has had.

Of Dollhouse Season 2

2010-01-30T09:20:00.006Z

Well here we are, the end of Dollhouse. It also looks like this is the end of Joss Whedon's involvement with network television. Whilst we might get a cable show out of him, it seems more likely that we'll be getting a lot more internet content from him in the future. But before I launch into the review, it must be said that my Top 10 Lost Characters and Episodes will be up over the next two days. I may need to discuss some placements (there are a lot of characters and over 100 episodes to choose from).

But now we must go into mourning of Dollhouse... kind of.

Dollhouse was a show that never truly worked. I will say that a lot of the actors were superb, Enver Gjokaj was a revelation and an actor that needs a long and healthy career after this show. The very definition of a character actor, he just his body stance, accent and mannerism for each different character that he played. Then there were many single episodes of Dollhouse which were great. My personal favourites from Season 2 were 'Belonging', 'The Attic' and 'Getting Closer' and they definitely stand as some of my favourite episodes from last year, and maybe even this year. But ultimately, it never came together as a cohesive whole. All the elements were there for something truly great, I mean it's a Joss Whedon show, so obviously there's something there! But when you compare Dollhouse to something like Firefly there a lot of differences. Whilst Firefly was dicked around by Fox, it had an identity from the pilot and you could tell the cast meshed well together. On Dollhouse, the two leads feel miscast and the show suffers for it, whilst the story and the strength of supporting characters do buoy some of the problems, they sadly don't make up for them.

I'm not saying Dollhouse is a bad show though, I gave Season 1 a 7/10 and Season 2 was better, but sadly it's also incredibly flawed and whilst a string of later episodes, like in Season 1 do help make the show feel better, they sadly don't erase the missteps from existence. Like in Season 1, Season 2 of Dollhouse opened with a string of standalone episodes and whilst the first episode had some great moments between Dr. Saunders (Amy Acker) and Topher (Fran Kranz), the "Assignment of the week" wasn't really engrossing. The same can be said of the following two episodes, 'Instinct' (in which Echo becomes a crazy mother in what was easily the worst episode of the season) and 'Belle Chose' (which had a cool serial killer element but sadly just a shone a massive spotlight on Eliza Dushku's lack of range). But after this the season stepped into high gear.

We got the episode 'Belonging' early in the season (which I've already reviewed) which still stands as one of the best hours the show has put out and the show just keeps going in this fashion. We get a two part episode focusing on different Dollhouse's, featuring Summer Glau (Firefly, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) and Alexis Denisof (Angel), which was then fully rounded into a four part story arc. Sadly after a string of strong episodes, I felt episode 9 'Stop-Loss' was the weakest episode in the second half of the season, but then we got the incredible 'Attic' and 'Getting Closer'.

These were the two trippiest and twistiest episodes that Dollhouse has produced, 'The Attic was visually stunning and took us around the insides of various employees of the Dollhouse as well as setting up the final conflict of the season. This was quickly followed by 'Getting Closer' which took all of our safe assumptions and turned them on theirs heads by making probably the friendliest character into an insane Big Bad of the season of the entire show (a move which many believe didn't come to proper fruition in the following episode). Plus the normal Whedonism that whenever someone is truly happy, that has to be ended fairly quickly.

Finally the final two episodes were the wrap up which whilst too many didn't feel overly satisfying, I did feel they did their jobs admirably. Whilst episode 12 seemingly wasted the shows final use of Amy Acker, and the biggest twist was ultimately not so fleshed out but I still enjoyed the pay off that was given to many of the characters over the course of the show. Same can be said of 13, whilst it should have probably been longer due to the amount of plot that needed to be filled in, it still did it admirably.

The shows cancellation was a double edged sword. Whilst it meant that the writers knew it was ending so they could build towards a conclusion. This increase in momentum definitely helped the show as a whole because we got that terrific string of episodes. But sadly we also got too little time to tell the story in, both of the last episodes would have been better if their content had been fleshed out more (especially episode 12 where the first 10 minutes are spent recapping the end to episode 11).

Ultimately Season 2 was a great improvement over Season 1, but sadly it was still a mixed bag of a show. Some terrific episodes, writing and supporting characters don't make up for the miscast lead actors, subpar standalone episodes and a concept which from the beginning was flawed and tampered with. Whilst there are many single episode I loved a lot, they were always balanced out with something that didn't mesh completely. But in the end those great episodes are too good to ignore and luckily the show isn't horrendous, just flawed. I would recommend that people should watch Dollhouse, it did a lot right but a lot wrong. As long as you go in not expecting a perfect show, a lot of fun can be had. In the end however, I will await Joss Whedon's next project with baited breathe, especially if the Dollhouse experience is what leads him to start looking for creative freedom. Because we all want to see what he can come up with given complete control and little input from executives is surely going to help.

However we're here to talk about Dollhouse Season 2. I'm not sure I'll miss it the same I do other shows, partly because it feels like a complete run. Season 2 was good season of television, with enough great episodes to elevate that much higher. The fact that it has an endpoint is a definite plus but ultimately a lot of the show is still frustrating, but that shouldn't put potential watchers off from what is a very cool idea for a show with some superb performances (and some mixed) along with great episodes and writing (for the most part).

8/10

Of Doctor Who - The End of Time

2010-01-24T10:05:00.004Z

Well I promised it weeks ago so lets get rolling with my review of David Tennant's final episode(s) on Doctor Who. However whilst it was indeed David Tennant's last episode, it also worked out to be Russel T. Davies' as well. Luckily Davies realised it was David's last episode and so instead of managing to fuck up by doing an epic sci-fi story which he is incapable of writing, he went for his strong suit of a character driven story. Whilst I had some complaints with how the story was wrapped, the strong performances and emotional moments definitely made this one of the stronger finale episodes that Doctor Who has aired since it came back in 2005.

It would seem that Doctor Who finale's were getting progressively worse Series 1 and 2 were fantastic (apart from the ease with which the Daleks were defeated in Series 2). Series 3 managed to screw up by focusing on Martha, turning Tennant into Gollum and a very stupid "I believe in fairies" ending, luckily John Simm made up for this. But Series 4 is almost offensive. Whilst the build up episode "The Stolen Earth" is brilliant in it's build-up, dark and emotional moments as well as fan service. Sadly this all comes crashing down when Davies' was unable to create a satisfying moment for his characters, plots and worst of all, showed his incapability to kill of his characters. This might seem a little sore but I still feel if you promise "someone will die" you deliver. Having your brain wiped and unable to remember your life with the Doctor isn't a fate worse than death, you're with the people you love and still have decades left to live. Oh and the stupidity of spinning Daleks

So what sort of ending did Davies go for this time? Well oddly he almost went backwards in terms of how these episodes work. Normally the first half is a lot stronger. Just look at 'The Sound of Drums' and 'The Stolen Earth', both are two of the strongest episodes that Doctor Who has produced, but sadly the payoff doesn't meet the buildup. In 'The End of Time' this almost worked backwards. The first half was very choppy, cohesiveness and the only part that kept it together was the strength of the three main performances. It felt like we were being spread too thin, across too many stories rather than what should have been a very personal story just about the Doctor and his rival, the Master. However we got all sorts of almost tangential and odd stories. It was still decent but that first half definitely felt more about what was going on elsewhere apart from with David Tennant (whilst I thought John Simm was superb, it can be argued he was given a bit too much to do).

Well as by now we all know The Time Lords came back in the second half. However most of the episode was spent by them trying to get to earth. In fact most of the episode is spent creating as much distance between the different characters until the ultimate showdown which occurred about 40 minutes into the episode. The Doctor was on a spaceship, The Master had literally taken over the world and crafted it in his visage and The Time Lords were still in the time lock of the Time War. So we spent most of the episode building up to an epic conclusion, a war between the Time Lords and The End of Time.

Sadly the buildup was dissipated in about 10 minutes. It takes 40 minutes for The Time Lords to reach earth and 5 for them to be defeated. It's like the Daleks. They need to be used sparingly and if you want them to maintain some kind of fear, they need to be able to almost win but ultimately have victory taken away by the quick witted hero. But here The Time Lords show almost no strength. Nothing is damaged by The Time Lords arrival. We're told Earth's orbit will be knocked out place but The Doctor stops that very quickly. The closest we get to being scarred by the villains in this episode is The Master transforming the whole world into him. But even that is reversed within the first few seconds of The Time Lords arrival to show their strength. But The Doctor defeats them so quickly that you wonder how he had any trouble against The Master.

Ultimately the threat is destroyed by The Master doing something good by sacrificing himself (unless a future writer wants to bring him back) to defeat The Time Lords and send them back into the Time War. Following this is where the truly great portion of the episode lies.

Before this point the episode is decent. It isn't brilliant, plotting issues aside it's enjoyable. Again the performances are stellar. But it's about 50 minutes in that the episode turns round and does what Davies is talented at. Intimate character moments. One of my favourite episodes from Series 4 is 'Midnight'. It was written by Davies and almost all the action takes place on one set. There's very little CGI and it relies entirely on psychological horror and acting. It's great because it relies on strong characters and their interaction. There's nothing epic, just personal moments which is what I would have preferred David Tennant's last episode to be.

Luckily a good 20 minutes was this small scale intimate idea. First off the perfection of the reveal of what the 'He will knock four times' prophecy is. It wasn't the Master's heartbeat. First we get the Doctor celebrating victory and not having died but then Wilf knocks on the door of the radiation chamber. Just the look on David Tennant's face shows he realises and how upset he is. We all knew Wilf was there for a reason and ultimately he's the bringer of the Doctor's death. David Tennat and Bernard Cribbins act their socks off in the following scene. It's emotional and even though the Doctor contemplates leaving Wilf to die, you know he won't He needs to save people, even it's just one person. So he saves Wilf and ends up sentencing himself to death. It's a powerful moment and I really can't say enough about how perfectly David Tennat and Bernard Cribbins act it out. It's scenes like this that make me realise how much Matt Smith will have to live up to. Christopher Eccleston was great but David Tennant was transcendent. It's fitting he's the first Doctor to have his death be built up to, he was just that good.*

So what follows is an epilogue. It's much like Series 2 where we spent time afterwards just to say goodbye to Rose and family. But this time we were saying goodbye to everyone. Mickey and Martha, now married and fighting aliens. Sarah Jane still having adventures with her son, Luke. Captain Jack looking around space for what he lost during the last Series of Torchwood but also getting a new beau in the form of Alonso from 'Voyage of the Damned'. We find Donna on her wedding day where we say goodbye to Wilf and he gifts her a (presumably winning) lottery ticket. Then finally Rose Tyler. She might be in the alternate reality with the Other Doctor but we find her about 4 months before she boards the TARDIS for the first time. It was a great little cyclical moment ending RTD run on the series saying goodbye to all the characters he created.

Again David Tennant is just superb but of course we need to say goodbye once and for all, so we get the regeneration. Those last few seconds where he says he doesn't want to go, the exploding TARDIS in space. It's a truly emotional goodbye to someone who has just owned his character for the 4 years he's portrayed him. But that's the nature of Doctor Who. A truly revolving cast and new writers. So now we get to see where Mr. Moffat is going to take us in a couple of months.

So in conclusion whilst I wasn't a fan of Mr. Davies attempt at doing an epic sci-fi story it was still buoyed by great performances by David Tennant, John Simm, Bernard Cribbins and Timothy Dalton (if only he'd been used more). Luckily the last 20 minutes more than make up for all my problems. It was still a satisfying story with some great performances and emotional goodbyes. Really this episode was all about David Tennant saying goodbye and that was done in spades. If the rest of the episode had been as good as his performance this would have been an easy 10. Sadly it wasn't so 'The End of Time' ends up with an

8.5/10

*However next time I wouldn't mind if it was a total surprise. Have Matt Smith die in the middle of a series or something. Make sure it doesn't leak to The Sun or leak so much crap that it comes as a real mind fuck. Don't do it in the next two series though. Just do something to shock the audience and take us back to classic Who stories. I wanted Doctor Who to surprise me now and if any writer can do that it'll be Stephen Moffat.

Favourite TV Shows 2009 - Episodes

2010-01-18T14:59:00.006Z

Well we are at the end of 2009 in television. I know this is a bit late but I've been busy or lazy, but it's here. I aim to post two other posts this week, a review of The End of Time and Daybreakers, so I'm going to build up my blog count. Finally I won't do anything till late January/early February where I'll be going Lost centric with my top 10 episodes and 10 characters. It's going to be fun! (I'm also toying with the idea of doing individual episode reviews for each episode of Lost, but because it'll be going on until exams, I'm not sure that that will happen)

But here we go, my favourite episodes of television from the preceding 12 months, in alphabetical order.

Breaking Bad - Peekaboo
Ironically, this might actually be my favourite episode of television from last year and I get to write about it first. Well for starters it's Breaking Bad, and if you don't watch then something is clearly wrong with you. 'Peekaboo' might not the best example of what an episode of Breaking Bad is but it's one that got to me the most. For starters this is not Bryan Cranston's episode but Aaron Paul's (Jesse). Jesse is sent to get some money back from drug addicts armed with a gun he's never fired before. When he gets to their shack he finds a small child and what follows is on the of the most heartbreaking hours of television I've ever seen. Plus then of course there's that scene with the ATM Machine (similar to the bed+drugs scene later on in the season)

Chuck - Chuck Versus The Colonel/The Ring
Whilst technically not a two parter, it definitely felt like it with the events of one episode directly setting up the next. What we got were two of the most satisfying hours that Chuck has produced. Whilst I don't think they were as brilliant as the Chuck Versus Santa Claus, they made up a brilliant finale. There were twists, deaths and of course plenty of awesome music and action scenes. Oh and Jeffster, and Jeffster make anything about 500% more awesome (and that's a fact)

Dexter - Hungry Man
Ahhh Thanksgiving, that American holiday which we do not get in the UK, what would the Morgan's be doing for Thanksgiving I wonder? Well considering Dexter is a serial killer it wasn't going to be without some blood shed. Of course there were the events going on in the Morgan household, the affair, the breakthroughs in Lundy's shooting. But we were all there to see John Lithgow own the room as Trinity. There's the scene where he breaks his sons fingers which is absolutely brutal, but of course we have Michael C. Hall wrapping a belt around his neck dragging him to the kitchen and telling him he should have killed him when he had the chance. All in all it made for a near perfect episode of Dexter.

Dollhouse - Epitaph One
Dollhouse Season 1 had its ups and down. It definitely picked up towards the end but sadly the best episode didn't air on television. Instead 'Epitaph One' was kept for the DVD. Whilst episodes like 'Belonging' and 'The Attic' were great in Season 2, 'Epitaph One' was the first true taste of what the show could be and the main cast barely featured. Set 10 years in the future, with very little exposition, all we know is that technology is bad and the world is ripping itself apart. It makes for a riveting episode of television and whilst later episodes through some events into doubt, it doesn't take away any of the effect that is left upon the viewer with this brief and oh so brilliant look at what Dollhouse could have become if it weren't for network meddling, higher ratings and a better lead actress.

Lost - The Incident
It's a Lost season finale. There was action, romance, heartbreak, time travel and deaths. Plus of course mind blowing twists (the reveal of what was in the luggage trunk) and we followed Jacob around for two hours, the mysterious patriarch of the island. I'm keeping this one short because Lost ends in a few months and I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say about the show in the near future.

Glee - Sectionals
Probably the most feel good episode of any television last year. It could have wrapped up the first Season of Glee and it would still be as good. Stories came to an end and we got some great conclusions as well as hints for potential future stories. We find out if the Glee club make it to regionals (hint they do) and of course Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch) is her normal evil brilliance. The show is still airing in the UK but suffice to say, Sectionals was the perfect wrap up for the shows first 13 episodes and I can't wait for the back 9 to come in April.

Mad Men - The Gypsy and the Hobo
I could have chosen pretty much any episode of Mad Men, 'Guy Walks Into An Advertising Agency' for the punchline to that joke (it involves a lawnmower) but I chose 'The Gypsy and the Hobo' for the scene where Betty confronts Don on his past. It's the moment that's been 3 Seasons in the making and it was just as good as we thought it was going to be. It was the start of the end of their marriage and you know what made the scene so tense between Betty and Don? Knowing that he had his kids teacher in the car outside who could come and make what was already a bad situation even worse. Master class entertainment.

Mad Men - Shut the Door. Have a Seat.
I did say I could chose any episode of Mad Men, so I chose two. The finale of Season 3 was perfect. From top to bottom, nothing was wrong with it. It paid of entire seasons worth of stories and was just an overall very fun hour of television. It wasn't as bleak as other episodes of Mad Men, instead we got a classic caper of building together a team of experts. From the witty dialogue (which at many points is downright hilarious) and playing with audience expectations (for a second you actually think they might call Sal). Mad Men is the best show on television for a reason, and this episode is the perfect example of that.

Parks and Recreation - Ron and Tammy
Not much has to be said about this episode other than it's absolutely hilarious. Ron Freaking Swanson is the man and any episode that focuses on him is bound to just be full of laughs. Honestly all I'm going to say is if you haven't seen this episode take a break from this and do so, no context is needed and it's only 20 minutes long. You just need to experience the awesomeness that is Ron Swanson and why he is quickly become one of my favourite comedy characters.

Party Down - Sin Say Shun Awards After Party
It's from the people that gave us Veronica Mars so you know it's going to be good. Whilst this episode seems quite a random one to choose I just remember laughing so much during it (perhaps revealing myself to have an extremely dirty mind). It's set after porn awards so of course everything is shaped like a penis. But there are also boobs! And the normal awkward hilarity from our Party Down crew. Ron's invitation to the porn industry and his massive penis (which just ends so badly and hilariously), Roman refusing to take dating advice Kyle trying to be so dirty and perveted that even porn stars run away and of course the woman who has people cum up her nose. Probably the most underrated comedy on TV at the moment (Season 2 beings April 23rd by the way)

Scrubs - My Finale
I felt My Finale was the perfect way to end Scrubs, whilst the jokes weren't always hitting, it spent time with the characters we know and love and said goodbye to them in such a meaningful way. JD and Turk acting like idiots with Eagle, the Janitor's name being resolved and Kelso finally leaving the hospital after being there ever since he was forced into retirement. But of course the big goodbye was to JD, he finally got that hug and acceptance from Dr. Cox, and that led us the perfect last 10 minutes. The walk through the hallway, the movie screen flashforward and then the quiet goodbye to a janitor (show creator Bill Lawrence) whilst an acoustic version of 'Superman' played in the background. Yes, I was in tears, so what?

Supernatural - On The Head Of A Pin
I had a tough time coming up with the perfect episode of Supernatural but ultimately I chose this one. Firstly it was just a superb episode, Alastair was a brilliant villain and got plenty of awesome moments. And we got great performances out of both Jensen Ackles and Jared Padalecki. But I also chose it because it was written by Ben Edlund who has the incredible talent of being able to write many of the quirky funny episodes but also the best dramatic serious ones. This episode came with plenty of great reveals and shocking twists, so gets on as the best episode that Supernatural aired in 2009 (close 2nd goes to 'Changing Channels'

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles - Born to Run
The show may not have ended where it was supposed to but it ended perfectly. Whilst we'll never know what happens next, it still feels almost complete and I'm able to let go. Whilst earlier episodes in 2009 suffered from being to centric on Sarah Connor, this episode utilised the entire cast. I was still reeling by the scarily realistic death of Derek the week before (I was still sure it was a dream sequence) but 'Born to Run' still took us so many different places. Garret Dillahunt was, as always, brilliant (he's the one Deadwood star I'd kill to see on Lost this year) and the story took us to more thoughtful places than other Terminator movies have taken us whilst still providing us with action. But of course this is here for those last few minutes and the mindfuckery that went with it (time travel will do that to you).

Favourite TV Shows 2009 - Top 10

2010-01-10T15:03:00.007Z

I know I've put the title top 10 up in the title, but it's actually a top 11, so already I'm lying, also apologies for not getting this up sooner but a mixture of snow (and not actually being too ill this year to take advantage of it) and jumping back into school right in the middle of mocks means that I'm really quite busy. I'll have more time come summer once exams and the television season are over, but really this being done quite disjointedly whenever I have a free moment and I'm not trying to maintain a social life and my education. Not easy to say the least.

But here we go, my favourite shows of 2009.

11. Scrubs
Scrubs hit its eighth season (and technically ninth) this year, and whilst the past few seasons had been disappointing, it’s hard to say that Season 8 wasn’t an overall success. Whilst some people began to experience ‘show fatigue’, overall this eighth season was a huge return to form. Gone was the cartoony buffoon that JD had become over the preceding few seasons. Also gone were the over long fantasy sequences that had plagued the past few season. Overall, Season 8 was just back to basics Scrubs which is what we wanted all along. With one of the best episodes that Scrubs has ever made in the form of ‘My Last Words’ and a perfect finale, Scrubs Season 8 was an absolute winner, even if it did come a couple of years too late.

10. Glee
People who know might have expected to see this one a bit higher, and whilst I do deeply love Glee, it's only had 13 episodes and there were better shows from 2009. Glee is kind of the spawn of High School Musical and Freaks & Geeks. It definitely errs more towards Freaks & Geeks which is definitely a positive, considering how well regarded those 18 episodes of F&G are. Glee takes popular and show tunes and then has them be covered by the outcasts of the Glee club. It sounds like a crap idea for a show, but a mixture of the talent and it being really quite cynical about high school life make it great. Jane Lynch is superb as Sue Sylvester, one of the best comedy characters produced this year (along with Ron 'freaking' Swanson) and the rest of the cast are just as enjoyable. The show might sound like a real hard sell but overall it just works, the songs are well done, the cast is great and it just exudes happiness. It might be camp as fuck, but I love Glee and cannot wait to see what's coming in the back 9 (with an episode directed by Joss Whedon!!!)

9. True Blood
The best vampire fiction to be debuted in the post Twilight fervor. It's more adult, funnier, sexier and more enjoyable. More events are crammed into one hour of True Blood than almost any other show on television. Whilst it's easy to say that True Blood is shit, that's mostly from people who can't see the camp and humourous side to the show. You're supposed to realise that none of this is supposed to be taken seriously. There are so many great moments within True Blood that can make you laugh or even occasionally cry. There are some great characters and the plot just moves at such an unbelievable pace. Whilst the show does occasionally slip up (look at the long and protracted Maenad arc in Season 2) pound for pound, it offers the most content and enjoyability a week for each episode.

8. Parks and Recreation
Easily the best show to debut in 2009, Parks and Recreation started out slow. However like the US Office, it quickly found it's feet and when it came back for its second season it was firing on all cylinders. The characters were meshing and the writing was tighter. Everything was just working now and what went from one more tepid shows from earlier on in the year has become one of my absolute favourites. It's easily the best out of NBC's Thursday Night comedy lineup (far better than Community which flits between good and bad episodes) and one I want to see survive for a while. Hopefully it won't become like The Office where it just seems to run out of ideas, but when you have a scene stealing character as Ron 'Freaking' Swanson, I don't really mind how long it stays on the air, just so long as it maintains it's current quality.

7. How I Met Your Mother
Still my favourite overall comedy on television. Mostly because of some incredibly inventive writing and Neil Patrick Harris' portrayal of Barney Stinson. It's not the most critically acclaimed comedy on television but for me, in terms of laughs, I will get a couple of good laughs an episode and that's honestly all I really want from a comedy. We're barreling into How I Met Your Mother episode 100 tomorrow and I can't wait to see what the show does to celebrate it's longevity. HIMYM is probably the best example of a classic sitcom still on television, especially compared to the other awful examples that still exist (apart from BBT). I don't really care if we never find out who the mother is, the show is always funnier when not focusing on that story and again, it's really only the humour that matters.

6. Dexter
Dexter came back for Season 4 far stronger than it left us at the end of Season 3. Whilst Season 3 wasn't bad, it certainly wasn't as good as Season 1 or 2. It moved at a far slower pace and whilst Michael C. Hall was fantastic, as well as the stellar performance from Jimmy Smitts, they were still the two main pulls. Luckily Season 4 not only had the stellar performance of Michael C. Hall and John Lithgow, the story was a lot more exciting and delivered some terrific twists (seriously that last scene was such a curveball and just changes how the show will be next season). I can't wait for Season 5 now with such a changed landscape. My only wish is that an end date gets announced because the concept of the show is one that begs for an endpoint, we can't keep following everyone's favourite serial killer for 6 years and not have any kind conclusion. So whilst I'm sure Season 5 will be just as good, the show needs to end within the next year or two if it wants to go out on top.

5. Supernatural
I started the year watching Supernatural Season thinking it was decent yet seriously flawed show. After a couple of months break and I kept seeing good things about the show. So I decided to get over my trepidation and watch Season 2, which blew my mind. It was such a solid season of television that perfected pretty much everything that was wrong with Season 1. It was the strength of this season that led me to watch all of Season 3 and 4 before Season 5 premiered. It was such a fun ride and whilst Season 3 has sooo many flaws it doesn't harm the overall feel of the show at all. Supernatural is just a great show from start to finish. It mixes standalone and mythology based episodes with such precision that it always feel like the show is continuing and now we're actually moving into the final 12 episodes of a story 5 years in the making. I couldn't be more excited to see Eric Kripke is taking us on the final stretch of episodes. The show is a superb mixture of humour and drama and the supernatural that just make it winner overall and also a sucess story when it comes to networks messing with their writers story in the fact that they promised a five year story and that's what we're getting (even if the show is renewed this year).

4. Chuck
Chuck is just fun, a hell of a lot of fun. I can't believe that last year I only ranked the show at 11. Chuck didn't really improve in 2009, it stayed true to what it was but somehow it just clicked and became one of the shows that I'd just want to watch over and over again. Season 2 was an amazing season of television and I'm so glad that we're getting a third season (which starts tonight). Chuck just wins on so many levels. It's abashedly geeky with so many film and game references, it has quite possibly the best guest cast on television with it being almost guaranteed that anybody in a one time guest role or even a recurring arc will be incredible and the fact that it has one of the best soundtracks on television. The show is never anything less than it what it aims for and it does so perfectly. The entire is cast is great and there are so many great moments throughout the season (JEFFSTER!!!). Chuck is action packed and hilarious and a show that wouldn't give up for anything, whilst my other favourite new show from 2007 might have died, I'm glad that Chuck is sticking around to give me one of the most pure fun hours of television that I can find each week.

3. Lost
Last year Lost was number 3 because there were 2 better shows. This year, Lost is number 3 because not only were there 2 better shows, but also Lost didn't actually have an amazing year in Season 5. Not that the show wasn't brilliant, Season 5 was still fantastic, it just wasn't as good as it has been in Season 3 or 4. Whilst we're still barreling along at an impressive pace. The show was setting up all the pieces for Season 6. We got the normal fantastic acting, great twists and great writing but overall it just seemed the show was hitting the normal stratospheric heights that it hit in Season 4 with episodes like 'The Constant'. Luckily when it comes to Lost, even an episode that can only be labeled 'good', it's just better than 95% of everything else on television. The show is going to have an incredible sixth season, I'm sure, and since it is one of my favourite shows ever, I'm sure it'll top my list next year. But before we move onto Season 6, let's focus on some great moments from Season 5. Episodes such as 'The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham', 'Dead is Dead' and 'The Variable' were all superb. And there was the finale, which I'll talk about in my next blog post based on top episodes.

2. Breaking Bad
If it hadn't been for the number 1 show, this would have been there with a bullet. But I think we all know what number 1 is. Breaking Bad is another show I regret putting so low last year (number 10? what on earth was thinking), it's just a phenomenal show. Everything about it just drips quality. The writing is darkly funny and the acting is incredible. Bryan Cranston is a revelation but in Season 2, Aaron Paul really stepped up the game and was going head to head with Cranston in so many scenes and just elevated the season above pretty much everything on television. The frequent foreshadowing used during the beginning of episodes, incredible set up as well as some genuinely disturbing scenes scattered throughout the season, really made it stick out in my head. When a show has only aired 20 episodes and already people can be asking whether or not it's deserving to be on not just end of the year lists but end of decade lists, you know you have a winner. Season 3 starts in March, which still feels so very long away.

1. Mad Men
Mad Men is the best show on television at the moment. No other show is anywhere near as good. At all. Lost on the whole might be and Breaking Bad is close, but Mad Men is just transcendent. Like The Wire it just feels like a perfect whole. Everything comes together in such a satisfying way. The performances, the writing, the set decoration and costumes. It might be a slow burn but when it gets to the end it just feels like so much has happened. The way show mixes in real life events over the top of the characters lives just seems amazing and...and...you know what I go into a massive long stream of hyperbole of what makes this show work. Essays can be written about it's tone and style, analysing the characters motives. But all you really need to know is that, yes it's as superb as you've heard and if you're not watching it you should be. It's one of the greatest televisions shows ever produced and should be seen a lot more outside of those people who actually take critics opinions seriously (they like stuff you've never heard of for a reason, it's just better than the shit you watch).

Favourite TV Shows 2009 - Honourable Mentions

2010-01-06T23:40:00.006Z

Here we go with my third annual list of the best television shows of the year. 2009 was a brilliant year for television and whilst once again the list will be made up entirely American shows, I would like to give special mention to Gavin and Stacey for just being an immensely enjoyable show and along with Outnumbered being one of the better British sitcoms to come about in years. Think of this as being an Honourable Mention for the Honourable Mentions. That being said, I now bring you the honourable mentions.

Honourable Mentions

Dollhouse
Joss Whedon's new show isn't as fully formed as Firefly was when it came about, and Eliza Dushku isn't the best lead actress in the world, and yes, when the show is bad it's damn near awful. But when it's brilliant it can stand up with the best of them. Not every episode of Dollhouse is a winner but the ones that are such as 'Belonging', 'Briar Rose' and 'Epitaph One' are some of the best hours of television you'll come across from 2009. Sadly we had to sit through some real clunkers to get to the gems and now with the show hurtling along for it's final three episodes, I really want to find out where Joss Whedon would have gone with this great but seriously flawed show.

Modern Family
One of the shows I seriously considered putting on the list. Whilst Modern Family came out of the new season as the clear winner of the best shows, I picked another show to be representative. But Modern Family is superb. It's not quite as cartoony and brilliant as Arrested Development but it's kind of a safe funny family comedy, in the same way that Gavin and Stacey is. It doesn't have the same kind of story, but the ideas behind it being about family and a large expanse of very different people from different cultures whilst still being hilarious make Modern Family a clear winner and a show which will probably go from strength to strength in the coming months/years.

Party Down
It's the new show from Veronica Mars creator, Rob Thomas and it's absolutely hilarious. It's very sarcastic, dark but it's just so damn good. Following a group of unemployed actors working for a careering firm, we get not only an inside look at Hollywood but also some truly insane characters. Along with Chuck, probably my favourite show for guest casting and not only for the stars from Veronica Mars but actors such as JK Simmons, Breckin Meyer and Ken Jeong. Also Kristen Bell has guest starred and will guest star again in the coming season, so honestly if that isn't reason enough to watch I don't know what is.

Pushing Daisies
Only three new episodes of Pushing Daisies aired in 2009 but it's one of my favourite shows ever and whilst it could never quite make it onto my favourite shows of the year, I'm giving it it's final dues right now. Pushing Daisies was one of the most original shows ever put to the small screen and it was an honour to have been there from the beginning. Pushing Daisies I salute you. Now let's Bryan Fuller (a God amongst men) can get the comic book series out.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Apart from Pushing Daisies, this was probably the most painful cancellation of the season. Whilst the show kicked off 2009 with a very boring trilogy of episodes focusing on Sarah Connor which weren't very interesting and took a lot of the life out of the show. However they followed this up with a final string of 5 episodes which made the show awesome again. Whilst those three episodes hold the show back so much, I couldn't not put this one my list. Not only for a brilliant finale, some incredible ballsy moves but for the prospect of what might have happened if it had gotten a third season with which to answer the questions so tantalisingly raised in the final episode.

Of January 2010

2010-01-06T23:23:00.003Z

Well here's a blog post I didn't really expect to make. I might not update frequently but still, I expected to be bored of this now. Whilst I'm not prolific, I do enjoy sending my opinion into a big expanse.

Coming up later tonight and ealy tomoorow will be the Third Annual Top 10 TV Shows list. Due to the large amount of snow (yay snow) I've actually got some time to do blog post about this. Unlike last year, it isn't a long series of blog posts but more in line with those music related posts I've been doing in the past few weeks. However it will still take up multiple posts. About three so I can A) Get some sleep and B) Boost my blog post number. Whilst I haven't seen everything great in 2009 (Sons of Anarchy probably being my biggest grievance), I do think it's a fairly good list and for the first time ever, is entirely made up of shows which debuted new episodes in 2009.

My top 10 movies of 2009 can be found on my Twitter. I didn't review a lot of them but that's because, someone else reviewed them first or I just simply didn't have enough time (or I simply couldn't be arsed). Of course The Wrestler is number 1, that movie is just superb and a must see.

Doctor Who review will be coming soon, as soon as I've watched the episode again. It was good. The first half was patchy but the stellar performances more than made up for it. My only complaint is that the villains were an actual threat for all of 5 minutes before dying. Whilst like in Series 2 it was followed by a great epilogue, it just felt a little bit of waste (although Timothy Dalton did salvage some of it.)

I'll be doing some stuff about Chuck very soon, it's back on Sunday so make sure you watch BOTH episodes! Probably just a first impressions/suck-up fest because Chuck is just fantastic.

Finally Lost is back February 2nd so in the run up I'll be doing a top 10 episodes and top 10 characters to get back into the feel. However if Obama has his way I might need to wait until February 9th, in which case some people may end up being castrated because I NEED my final Lost fix ever. With only 18 hours left, I'm going to savour every single second that Damon and Carlton are going to give us.

Currently Listening To: Nothing Like You - Frightened Rabbit
Currently Reading - 1984, Enduring Love, Jane Eyre and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (I've also finished The Lost Symbol and Peter and Max in the past month)
Currently Watching (TV) - Gavin and Stacey

Favourite Albums of the Decade

2009-12-27T22:48:00.011Z

Damn this was tough. I decided against putting any albums from my 2009 list on this because I'm sure a couple were good enough to make it. Then I needed to make some really tough decisions, how could it be a best of list without one White Stripes album? But sadly I had to cut the wondrous 'Elephant' from my list. No Gaslight Anthem with their spectacular albums '59 Sound' (honestly go and download that right now). No Wilco (despite the incredibleness of 'Yankee Foxtrot Hotel'). No OutKast. No LCD Soundsystem, no Knife, no Arctic Monkeys, no Libertines, no Animal Collective, no Thrice, no New Pornographers, no Portishead. All of these bands released superb albums decade and I more or less narrowed it down to 10 (give or take 5). So without further ado.... the honourable mentions.

Honourable Mentions

Boxer - The National
The National are just an awesome band and whilst some people think Alligator is the better album. At first this album sounds good. But the more you listen, the more you realise the genius behind it. People say it's the perfect 20something album. So I don't know what that says about me (although some albums higher up are definitely more teen orientated), all I know is that Boxer is a superb album and one I would definitely recommend to many people. You might shrug it off as boring at first, but give it time and you'll realise the depth behind one of the best indie-rock albums of the decade. Plus the fact that it sounds like a mini-orchestra with lots of piano definitely helps it on this list

Chutes Too Narrow - The Shins
A few months ago I placed The Shins debut album on this list and whilst that's still a great album, Chutes Too Narrow is just a bit better and perhaps a bit more cohesive. The sound is a lot better and whilst no song can top the l0-fi brilliance of New Slang, one song doesn't help make an album the best by a band. The fact that sound quality and maturity just seems to have come on in leaps and bounds make this a great album. Whilst I'd still say to people that they should listen to New Slang to see whether they like The Shins, Chutes Too Narrow is the album I'd tell people to listen to if they liked New Slang. Whilst a lot a of the lo-fi nature is gone, the infectious melodies and James Mercer's voice still shine through. Natalie Portman said in Garden State that they'd change your life, and whilst they haven't given me an epiphany, this album is certainly one of the best of the decade.

Is This It? - The Strokes
Know people in the UK? Know when they say "Indie music all sounds the same"? They're referring to the sound that this band brought. Arctic Monkeys and Franz Ferdinand both are influenced heavily by this bands form of guitar based rock for the 21st century. The Strokes were hailed early on in the decade as the saviours of modern rock. Whilst The White Stripes have proven to be one of the most consistent bands of the decade and The Strokes have steadily released less and less polished albums, The Strokes still win because of this album. Simply a masterful album full of infectious guitars and hooks that will be stuck with you for days after hearing it. You might not like this kind of music, and it certainly isn't the best indie rock album of the decade but the modern music scene owes this album so much and if it can still be this fantastic nearly 9 years on, well then it definitely deserves it way onto this list.

And now for the real list. Of course I'm starting at 11, because honestly I just couldn't narrow this list down enough.

11. Illinois - Sufjan Stevens
The king of multi-instrumental indie music. Sufjan has already appeared on this list due to the fact that he played piano on some tracks on Boxer. But here on his own record we have an album of just staggering ambition. So many different styles and tracks on this album (22 different tracks) contain just one of the best albums of the decade. Part of Sufjan's now discarded 50 states project, he showed us what he might be capable of in Michigan, but it was Illinois that really made you sit and take notice. Songs about love and with UFO in the title make you think twice about what sort of album you might be hearing, but in all honesty I'm going to tell you to just listen to the tracks Chicago and Casmir Pulaski Day. If you enjoy both of those (they're his two best tracks) then you OWE it to yourself to go and download this masterwork of the 21st century (at least what little part of it we've experienced so far.

10. ....is a Real Boy - Say Anything
So far all of my albums have been of the indie ilk and whilst this album is too, it falls far more into the realm of scene music. Music that depressed and angry teenagers find themselves listening to. Since I'm still in my teen years I don't feel too bad for putting this album on a list with those great bands I'm going to be putting up higher. Yes this is a pop punk album and yes I'll probably outgrow it. But for where I am in life and just how damn funny and yet awesome the lyrics are. Max Bemis may not have the best voice in the world but his lyrics tell a story. From the holocaust tinged 'Alive With The Glory of Love' or the final rant in the form of 'Admit It!' make it worth it just to hear this album. Plus it's damn catchy and has some pretty damn awesome riffs as well. However it's also probably the sweariest album on my list, but it goes with that emo-teenage angst I must be feeling to put this album on my list.

9. Give Up/Transatlanticism - The Postal Service/Death Cab for Cutie
How could I include two albums in one place? Well for simple reasons. They are both by Benjamin Gibbard, both released in the same year and I honestly couldn't decide between the two of them. Give Up is The Postal Service's only album and is electro-pop at is very best. Whilst I know people who aren't into electronic music at all, The Postal Service however are one of the best. The whole album might not be perfect but it is just a great album, all topped by the song Such Great Heights, which is the greatest song that Benjamin Gibbard has ever written. It's also the most positive song he has written about love, as well all know that Death Cab for Cutie and Transatlanticism is known as one of the breakthrough emo albums ever. However it's also just a superb indie rock album. It's got all the right highs and lows and are just bolstered by Gibbard's voice and lyrics. Like Max Bemis of Say Anything, Ben Gibbard is one artists who I just love to listen to the lyrics of.

8. Kill the Moonlight - Spoon
Spoon are the perpetual underdog. Every single album they've released this decade has been superb and it's honestly difficult just selecting one. But I went for their first which is kind of the crystallization of their sound. You're bound to have heard at least one Spoon song in your life, as their sound is just so unique. That beating drum pattern or particular riff of a guitar and you know what you're in for. Spoon play around with space and strip songs down and still manage to maintain what the song is. Just go and listen to The Way We Get By. Again I seem to be recommending the best song by these guys but if you like the songs then you really owe it yourself to listen. Spoon never failed to be great this decade and whilst every year they released an album they were outshone, I'm here to give them a little bit of their dues. Whilst others might say that White Stripes or Radiohead were the most consistent band of the decade (and they were very consistent) I'm going to have to give that award to Spoon who released 4 superb albums and I can't but wait for their new album Transference which will be out in all of two weeks (I haven't even heard it and I know it's going to be great).

7. Kid A - Radiohead
You can't do a best of list for the last two decades without including Radiohead. In the 90s they released The Bends and OK Computer and this decade whilst all four albums were great, it was really Kid A and In Rainbows that stood out. But Kid A just represented this decade. When it came out people were confused. Why had Radiohead completely left their anthemic rock roots behind and gone electronic. Coldplay came along to fill that anthem space that Radiohead had perfected in the 90s whilst Radiohead went on one of the most creative streaks in history. Kid A is the soundtrack of the 21st century. It turns so many people off when you first listen to but give it time and you realise the genius hidden inside this album, it's eccentric, imaginative and incredible. Whilst people thought that Kid A would be the album that would save rock music (a mantel quickly shifted to The White Strips and The Strokes) what Radiohead did was far more important, they almost changed the way that people should look at music, especially if you look at their recent experiments with releasing songs to the public for free.

6. Origin of Symmetry - Muse
Nope Muse have not made my top 5, but they did beat Radiohead to whom many art snobs say that Muse are inferior copy. Overall I'd say that Kid A and Origin of Symmetry but I put Origin of Symmetry in front mostly because Kid A is getting far more press that Origin of Symmetry. Muse are one of the biggest bands in the world and some of the most experimental. Not experimental in that completely extreme way that Radiohead are but in ways that their sound benefits. But Origin remains their biggest triumph. It's not their breakthrough like Absolution is and sadly far too many fans name that album as their best when really it's a bit uneven. But Origin of Symmetry is the sound of a confident band who know the sound they want to achieve. Look at songs like New Born and Plug in Baby, those are two of the best songs of the decade and they come from the same album. Muse are undeniably one of the best rock bands of the decade. Rock is a fundamentally changed genre from what it meant in the 70s and 80s, but as long as bands like Muse stay in the driving seat, I'll be excited to see where they take us.

5. The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me - Brand New
Brand New used to be an average pop-punk band. There are still fans who clamour for those days. I have trouble understanding that. 70x7 is one of their most requested songs and it just sounds like all those Blink182 and Jimmy Eat World wannabes. Then Deja Entendu happened and Brand New matured. It was still pop-punk but it sounded different. Edgier, rockier. Whilst it wasn't quite the masterpiece that this album it was a move in the right direction. Then TDAGARIM happened and it was one of the best post rock albums ever. They perfected the quiet loud dynamic used by so many different bands with cryptic lyrics (so cryptic that there was an actual outcry from fans that the lyrics weren't included with the CD). Two instrumentals and some absolutely incredible songs. They might be classified as emo, but even if you have distaste for the entire emo movement, there's no denying the expert musicianship found in this album.

4. For Emma, Forever Ago - Bon Iver
The story for this album will probably go down in history. There was a break up, so James Vernon decided to go away to get over this relationship. Whilst there he may have gone a little insane and starting to write lyrics all over the wall. However the lyrics and music that he wrote are some of the best to come out of this past decade. If you like acoustic folky music with almost an ethereal sound then you need to hear this album. Yes the album is achingly romantic and the back story has been so oft repeated that it loses a lot of its impact, but it's just amazing music. Bon Iver (Justin Vernon) is now one of the biggest forces in indie music, going so far as to feature on the Twilight soundtrack (along with other list makers, Radiohead, Muse and Death Cab for Cutie). It came out of nowhere with it's immense loneliness and near mythic story. But behind all of that lies one of the best albums to ever be recorded. Just listen to Skinny Love and hear for yourself.

3. The Midnight Organ Fight - Frightened Rabbit
Recently voted as one of the best Scottish albums of the decade, Frightened Rabbit provided not just that, but one of the best British albums of the decade. Considering that includes bands like Radiohead and Muse, that's praise indeed. Whilst I'm probably speaking in hyperbole, I don't think I can convey how much I love this album. Again it's another break up album (much like my favourite album of all time is Pinkerton) but that probably speaks more about my mental state through most of the decade (hence the emo albums on this list). But that doesn't degrade how great this album is. Modern Leper kicks of the album in absolute style and we get taken through 14 tracks of these drunk potty mouthed Scotsmen and their awesome music. One of my anticipated albums of 2010 is Frightened Rabbit's third album and if it's anywhere near as good as this triumph then you should be excited as well. It's hard to convey what makes this album work. They're not the most innovative band in the world but their music is just filled with a vigorous amount of heart that just begs to be listened to. So many different styles that just come to together to make that oh so rare cohesive whole, Frightened Rabbit succeded at make a perfect indie rock record which sadly hasn't received as much attention as countless other Scottish bands this decade who in my mind have just made inferior albums. Sadly two other albums from across the pond managed to beat the best British album of the decade, but let it be known us Brits put some incredible music this decade as well.

2. The Red Tree - Moneen
People who know me might be a little surprised by this albums placement and honestly for months it was going to be number 1. Easily my most played album of the decade and despite not being a concept album or progressive rock, it's just one of the most seamless albums of the decade. There are practically no breaks in sound but you know when each new song begins. They just float into each other and create this seamless whole. Brand New may be one of the best quiet/load bands in the business but Moneen have a seemingly God-like ability to make songs sound as brilliant in either an acoustic or full band form. Some bands are better in one or the other but Moneen are one band I could listen to in either form. Just listen to The Red Tree and then Saying Something You Have Already Said Before and you'll understand. They even managed to perfect the perfect song which I was shocked by. They might be emo, they might be loud but they wrote one of the hardest hitting emotional albums of the decade which just sounds incredible. Moneen might not be the best known band in the world but these Canadian rockers are just so well liked within bands in Canada. Even indie purists know these guys have incredible talent. Whilst Canada has put out some incredible albums this decade, two stand head and shoulders above the rest and rank in at numbers 1 and 2 on my list.

1. Funeral - Arcade Fire
It couldn't not be. It's the most critically acclaimed album of the decade and it came out in 2004. It's the best debut of the decade by far and it's influence is just so far stretching. Hell even Coldplay tried to emulate what this album does on their latest and failed at capturing the heart and soul that this album has. Funeral is lightning in a bottle that even Arcade Fire were unable to catch again on Neon Bible. It's a great album, but Funeral is the try success story of the decade. Win Butler may not have the best voice of all time but you can feel his passion behind every word that he sings. It just makes this album sizzle. It might not be in English all of the time as there are occasionally parts where it lapses into French, but when an album can overcome having French on it you know you have a winner. Dual vocals, a menagerie of instruments and some epic songs. There are danceable tunes and whilst it's not all guitars and drums like many music purists would prefer to see, Arcade Fire have created an orchestra of sounds. This album is my most consistently listened to. I'll bring it at least once a week without hesitation and I can actually remember where I was the first time I heard it, which is more than I can say for a lot of these albums no matter how much I love them. Hearing this album for the first time, you might think it sounds good because it sounds different. Even if you only listen to about 15 minutes of it. After that you just know it's special. You'll come back just to listen again and make sure, but it's still got a spark. That spark will keep you coming back for more and more. If the 2000s are remembered for anything let's hope it isn't terrorism, recessions, natural disasters, the reality TV show boom or corrupt politicians. I hope we're remembered for bringing the world the perfection that is Funeral, an album bound to go down as one of the best albums in history.*

*I was going to say the decade should also be remembered for The Wire, but then I realised that corrupt politicians are a big part of that. So instead it gets listed down here in an addendum.

First Impressions - Doctor Who - The End of Time

2009-12-26T22:23:00.004Z

This is only a first impressions post because it's the first two parts and in all honestly this will either be the best thing ever or come crashing down on itself next week. So let's get this underway.

What was good? Well first the obvious parts, David Tennant and John Simm proved that they are two of the best British actors currently and practically any scene with one or both of these actors was mesmerizing (particularly those with both). It's going to be a shame when Tennant leaves, whilst I'm sure the writing will be a lot stronger, we'll be losing one the most talented actors in the world. Depending on how next week plays out, John Simm could actually return in the Matt Smith years, but David Tennant would be relegated to the " 'X number' of Doctors" episodes, which they haven't actually done as a whole episode yet, only the short 'Time Crash' (written by Steven Moffat, so who knows).

However yes these two actors just completely dominated this episode. John Simm particularly, playing almost a complete 180 of the Master he portrayed two years ago. However he was still fantastic and next week with him being around a lot more is just even more enticing. Honestly I do hope that someone has the bright idea to create a show with these two as the lead actors. Maybe a showcase idea where they portray different characters and tell a different story every week or if they wanted series. It would be an amazing showcase for writing and these actors. Just an idea, but its something I'd love to see, especially with actors who have such incredible chemistry on screen (much like Michael Emerson and Terry O'Quinn do on Lost)

We got RTD normal set up here, whilst I wasn't as pumped as I was a year and a half ago at the end of the Stolen Earth, I honestly can't wait till next week. I will say maybe that's a good thing, this ending felt a lot less epic than last years so would apparently take less to wrap up. Yes the Time Lords are back, but this feels a lot more intimate, with only about 5 characters they could focus on next week, it's a lot better than last years massive cast of character each having to have their own beat. Plus the promise we have for next week is that David Tennant is going to die and we ALL know that's going to happen. RTD can't pussy out like with Billie Piper and Catherine Tate so we will see a proper death (as far as any Time Lord death can be 'proper'). However I feel if he were given the choice some crazy plot-hole would mean David Tennant could stick around (hell he could what with the Other Doctor existing in the parallel world).

Alright other good things? Bernard Cribbens was great but sadly didn't get as much to chew on as John Simm despite being the announced Companion for this two-parter. It is odd that John Simm's involvement was quieted for quite a while (at least as quiet as it can get in this age of spoilers) and yet he has such a massive part within these episodes. I'm glad for it, but you'd think they'd have made a bigger deal of it.

Time Lords coming back was the next logical step for RTD so not massively surprising, however turning the whole world into John Simm was. I have no clue how that will get wrapped up but still I'm intrigued. I've seen all the making of footage for this and listened to the commentary and I have to say how much of a bloody good sport John Simm was to go through so many costume changes for his scenes at the end. Plus I'm surprised to say that all the clothes actually suited him, even the women's.

It wasn't the best set up episode RTD has done, but it felt right. He doesn't have as many loose threads as he has in the past so hopefully he can pull it all together. At the moment whether it's going to more like the Series 1 end or the Series 2 end. Whilst both were great goodbyes, Series 2 suffered with the Daleks being wiped out far too easily. So I'm hoping for more of Series 1 ending, even if that was the last time we had a regeneration and I see David Tennant getting one last meaty scene to chew on as he regenerates. But I can't honestly say.

My main complaints are just normal RTDisms. Such as the stupid campy humour, such as the Silver Cloak with obligatory gay member. I'd braced myself for that because they released all those scenes to the public so it wasn't too bad. However I cannot forgive the music playing during the alien scenes. It was completely wrong and I'm upset because it really costed Murray Gold of his normally impeccable scoring. But those are just niggles and the camp bit came with the territory. However I can say John Simm camp humour I can live with, him in dresses h actually pretty cool (his dance in 'Last of the Time Lords' was pushing it though). So I think it mostly just depends on when the camp humour is used (last year taught us to never do it with the Daleks).

However the episode was quite disjointed. It darted all over the place in terms of setup and whilst I enjoyed the performances (for some reason I've found people who disliked John Simm's performance) I can't say the story was the most satisfying. As I said it worked perfectly well as set up but was definitely one of RTD weaker set up storylines. I can't believe I'm actually somewhat defending a man who's probably going to fuck up everything next week, but this episode felt like he had a lot of ideas he wanted to get down on paper in time for the second part and I hope beyond hope it works.

If I were to rate the episode so far I'd say about an 8 out of 1o. But as I said it all rests on next Friday's episode. Let's see how the joint villains of John Simm and Timothy Dalton are able to kill everyones favourite Time Lord. Hell even if it sucks I've got Series 5 to look forward to with Steven Moffat taking over as writer.

Favourite Albums/Songs of 2009

2009-12-23T15:26:00.012Z

Here we go. To all those people who read my blog and might at all be interested in what it is that I've been listening to all year. You might have seen the odd song in my monthly posts which might give some idea (although probably not as I do tend to skip around different years when I'm sat listening to music). But here we are at the end of 2009 and in music, 2010 has officially started (albums are already leaking such as the new Los Campesinos! (damn good btw)). So lets look back upon the last 12 months in music. I definitely felt that 2009 was stronger for more alternative music than for critically acclaimed indie music but it does seem that the two tend to swap between being my favourite genre (the last time this happened was 2006 when ironically both Brand New and Moneen had new albums out, so maybe it's something to do with those bands?).

So without further ado, album number 11

11. Hell or High Water - As Cities Burn
Probably the most underrated album of the year. Whilst they may be (unfairly pegged) as a Christian rock band, As Cities Burn made something excellent on this their last record. It's hard to say what exactly makes this album so good. But it was the first album of 2009 I truly dug, so it's just a shame that so much great music was released this year that it only finds itself at number 11

10. These Four Walls - We Were Promised Jetpacks
Another awesome year for Scottish music. Whilst The Twilight Sad released a great album this year, I felt we should give some respect to the newbies. They not be as polished as The Twilight Sad were on their debut or as superb on Frightened Rabbit's last release (still one of the best of the decade) but this album is just a great little album. It's dripping with the style of it's Scottish brethren and post-punkness. And yes, there is a little bit of the Arctic Monkeys in there.

9. xx - The xx
I haven't been listening to The xx for that long but their debut is just that impressive. By far the most intriguing debut of the year (whilst number 1 is technically a debut it is very much linked to a band that disbanded in 2007). The xx are an entirely unique band with a sound like no other. Already this debut is having words thrown around such as it being the most important debut since Arcade Fire's Funeral (I'd be intrigued by any album if it was compared to that album). Whilst completely differently sonically from Arcade Fire, it's an entirely unique album and really very minimalist. Whilst I'm not sure The xx will be able to sustain this level of greatness (one member of the band left due to exhaustion) this debut seems to have captured lightning in a bottle, which I'm sure I'll be enjoying for months to come.

8. Daisy - Brand New
One of the best bands of the decade released their fourth album this year. Whilst it definitely isn't their best work it still shows signs of their ordinary brilliance. The album starts off in extraordinary fashion with 'Vices', one of the biggest mindfucks of the year. Sadly it tails off with 'Bed' (dreadful, dreadful song) then the "obviously made for single" 'At the Bottom' which ruin the flow of the album. Luckily after the weirdness of 'You Stole' the albums shifts it into high gear and opens up as one of the richest and most dense albums of the year. Whilst it's still polarising to fans (it just isn't as good as 2006's 'TDAGARIM') it still comes out on top proving that even when they only make half an album work, Brand New are just one of the bands making music in the world at the moment.

7. The World I Want To Leave Behind - Moneen
One of my favourite bands in the world came back in 2009 with another awesome album. Whilst it might not be as brilliant as The Red Tree (I seem to be saying that a lot of these albums aren't as good as another album) but it still shows that these guys are one of the most underrated bands in the world. The fact that these guys haven't blown up when they are one of the best 'rock' bands in the world at the moment seems insane to me. This record is a lot more produced and clean than their past releases, and in some cases a lot more straightforward (the level of math rock has definitely decreased) but they have come out with some of the best songs of the year on an amazingly cohesive album. It's just a shame that these guys already recorded the perfect album and that this work, whilst brilliant has to live in The Red Tree's shadow.

6. Beggars - Thrice
You've probably heard of Thrice by now. Whilst not in that pantheon of critically acclaimed artists like Radiohead, they receive a lot of praise from the 'scene' for being one of the most creative bands in the world and always striving for a different sound, which is what they achieved here. Gone are the post hardcore screams and instead we get a slower more refined piece which I would argue is the bands finest effort. Beggars is melodic and if you went back to their first release (which came out some 8 years ago) you'd see just how far this band has progressed. Thrice are by far one of the most captivating bands in the world and you'd be stupid to miss out them, another of those under appreciated 'rock' bands.

5. Merriweather Post Pavilion - Animal Collective
It's probably sacrilege by this point to not have Animal Collective on the end of 2009 list. These guys are the new critical darlings and whilst of course that brings with it the backlash of people not normally listening to this genre jumping in and proclaiming it shit (it happens with films all the time, see last years Oscar winner 'Slumdog Millionaire' and the year before 'Juno'). Whilst I can see a lot of the problems that these people (normally from the 'scene') have with it, I have to say it's one of the most fun and original indie pop records ever. It might just be noise but the different vocals and styles make for very layered noise. And 'My Girls' is probably one of the most likable songs of the year. Animal Collective have been around for years but it's with Merriweather Post Pavilion that they blew up to be indie poster boys with the likes of Arcade Fire and Spoon.

4. Mean Everything to Nothing - Manchester Orchestra
Best rock album of the year? Yes they were on Gossip Girl but all that music is chosen by a woman with one of the best ears for music in the world. Manchester Orchestra are best friends with Brand New and whilst Brand New might beat them to one of the defining moments of alt-rock this decade, Manchester Orchestra trounced 'Daisy' this with 'Mean Everything to Nothing'. One of those albums that just needs to be listened to from beginning to end. It's emotional, full of awesome hooks, anthems and is just one of the best albums of the year. The lead singer even described it as 'Pinkerton on steroids' and whilst it might not be the epitome of perfection of that album, it still is worthy of that name. In any other year I might have proclaimed this as the best album of the year, but of course we still have three albums to go. Now those have to be outright incredible

3. Tarot Sport - Fuck Buttons
A band I only discovered recently. Very much a spur of the moment download, it stems from a friend saying that no band with 'Fuck' in their name was good and from a very regular stream of tweets between directors Edgar Wright ('Shaun of the Dead' and 'Hot Fuzz') who was listening to this band whilst editing his new movie and Jason Reitman ('Juno') whom was in discussion of how good the album was. So I listened and was blown away. I'm a big fan of post-rock. No vocals and just instruments building to a climax and then slowly fading into the next song. So many different styles can be found on one album and bands like Mogwai and Godspeed! You Black Emperor corner the market, but Fuck Buttons are unique. Fronted by only two people, one raised on rock, the other electronica, we get a wholly unique creation. The birth child of Mogwai and Aphex Twin. 'Tarot Sport' is more easily accessible than 2008's 'Street Horrsing', whilst they're still loud and aggressive there's a lot more subtly. The songs will frequently be 9 or 10 minutes long and take you on a cinematic journey through sweeping epics. With only two albums under their belt, Fuck Buttons have cemented themselves as one of my absolute favourite British bands and I can't wait to see what 2010 has in store for them, I just hope we got more of the best electronic noise band in the world

2. Aim and Ignite - fun.
fun. didn't come from nowhere. fun. is kind of like a phoenix (not to be confused with French band Phoenix who put out a pretty incredible album this year), it rose from the death of another great band, The Format, the band that lead singer Nate Reuss was part of. Luckily fun. feels like an extension of their original sound. The Format had released the brilliant 'Dog Problems' just before they broke up which showcased a brilliant indie pop sound. fun. takes this sound and begis to go in so many different directions. The songs are vibrant, original, full of energy and ultimately unpredictable. There's so many different elements to all the songs and listing them all seems like a pointless en devour. It might not be as seamless as other albums I would normally proclaim as one of the best of the year, but when your album has songs such as 'Be Calm' (I love that song soooo much) then I can forgive it not being as seamless as my favourite album of the year. fun. wrote a pop album which should be the touchstone of the 'pop' albums we hear in the charts. It's uplifting, enlightening and no one could listen to this album without feeling happy afterward. Nate Reuss is one of the best vocalists in the world (so yes that does mean no auto tune) and I'd be a lot happier with the world if decent 'pop' music like that which fun. makes were topping the charts instead of artists like Lady Gaga and Miley Cyrus. But I'm also a selfish bastard, and finding an unknown band like fun. is the half fun of music, the fact that I get to hear a new and refreshing sound before it gets bastardized by the corporations or (heaven forbid) covered for the X-Factor.

1. Act III: Life and Death - The Dear Hunter
Before I start this I would like to say, don't start with Act III of The Dear Hunter's six part epic, instead it's necessary to start with Act I and Act II, it shows the evolution of one of the most promising bands in the world. Concept albums are becoming startlingly common and whilst a lot of them are quite bad, Dear Hunter injects new life into the concept. All three of their albums are dense and it's almost a requirement to just sit and concentrate upon them. They're also so dense and it's draining to listen to them (although the hour long length doesn't help). The band have had two albums to experiment and now they come about to hone their sound, it still darts across so many influences and genres but it now sounds like The Dear Hunter, due in no part to the tremendous vocals and effort put in by Casey Crescenzo. So many different genres are littered throughout, jazz, ragtime, prog, rock, bluegrass, ballads. There are slow songs and fast songs but all come to together into a cohesive blend (again this an album that needs to be listened to in its entirety. If you've been listening to this band since the beginning then you know just how far they've matured, but if you're interested in them you need to start from the beginning and be a part of that journey. But for now we have to long wait for Act IV, whenever that might eventually come out.

And of course my favourite songs of 2009.

11. Lady Blue - As Cities Burn
My favourite song from of the most underrated albums of the year. Taking pieces from earlier songs on the album and even using a chain (?) as an instrument. Gang chanting make for a great song which was probably heard by far too few people.

10. Vices - Brand New
Chosen for more for the "Holy Fuck!" moment but an awesome way to kick of an album. Whilst all the momentum in this first song is lost by the awful 'Bed' (I really hate that song) it still stands as a glowing moment on the album which sadly finds itself so disconnected from the superb second half of the album
*WARNING* YOU MAY WANT TO BLOCK YOUR EARS *WARNING*

9. Two Weeks - Grizzly Bear
Sunshine-y indie pop music will litter this list but it was fantastic year for that sort of thing and this Beach Boys tinged song is absolutely superb (although the video is a tad creepy)

8. Crystalised - The xx
The very definition of headphone music. Minimalist beats with dual vocals mean not a single second of this song is wasted on extra elements

7. MK Ultra - Muse
The Resistance wasn't the second coming like many people were hoping and whilst it was a great album it doesn't hold a candle to Muse's other efforts but we still need to recognise the awesomeness of 'MK Ultra'. This was the yer that Muse showed they were fans of Battles ('Uprising') and Queen ('United States of Eurasia'). Hell they even wrote a symphony, but MK Ultra is the true centrepiece of The Resistance. Luckily Muse are still the best live band on the planet, so we can forgive them for the misstep that is 'Undisclosed Desires'

6. Doublespeak - Thrice
I could have chosen any song from Beggars but I chose this one mostly because it's cacthy, has a very cool piano and ends up being one of the heavier songs on the album. Plus references to 1984 are always welcome in my book.

5. I've Got Friends - Manchester Orchestra
The biggest anthem from the undeniably best rock album of the year. Whilst it's another one of those albums that lends better to be listened to all the way through, this lead single is an excellent in point for a band that just brought it in 2009.

4. Waterfalls - Moneen
I love all things acoustic and string. Moneen might be a rock band but they can do acoustic music like no other. Whilst this song is less acoustic than the one released on their EP earlier in the year, Moneen just know how to layer music to make already great songs even better.

3. My Girls - Animal Collective
Yes it's the most critically acclaimed song of the year and yes Animal Collective is now bigger than Jesus (in some circles) and now the backlash is coming in waves. So many people hate these guys but I'm not here to slam them, instead sing their praises for writing one of the most ingenious and near unanimously loved songs of the year/decade. Even haters have to admit the genius behind this one.

2. Surf Solar - Fuck Buttons
10 minutes long of just static I've heard this described as. Whilst that description does hold some weight I can't help but love this song and this band. The rises and the slowly layering of different elements. Rock purists might feel this is an electronic wank fest but honestly I couldn't give a fuck, one of the best songs of the year easily

1. Be Calm - fun.
No other song that came out this could touch this masterpiece. So many different elements make this song as awesome as it is. There's the string instruments, trumpets, accordian, Nate Ruess' vocals. Hell there's even a theremin used. A few months ago I was asked what my 'happy' song is. I can now safely say it's this song easily my most played of 2009.

Of Dexter Season 4

2009-12-16T12:18:00.006Z

Well it's been a year, Dexter has come to an end once again. This really does mark an end to 2009 American television. Whilst Brits have a plethora of Christmas television to get excited all the big American shows are over. Glee ended last week, Mad Men has been of for weeks and we're now counting to the mid-season premieres of shows like Lost, Chuck and Breaking Bad.

Luckily 2009 ended in spectacular fashion for what has been a fantastic year in television. So Dexter Season 4 was a great improvement over Season 3. Whilst Season 3 was great, it larked the spark of Dexter in Season 1 and 2. Even though the show will probably scale to the heights of Season 1 and those tense last few episodes of Season 2, the show is still absolutely fantastic.

If you've followed my blog long enough then I'm sure you know that Michael C. Hall is superb as Dexter. One of those perfect character/actor blends. But I've spoken way to much about how great his performance in my other Dexter blog posts. So instead this year I'm going to focus on two other actors who made Season 4 so great.

Whilst Michael C. Hall takes almost all of the spotlight for the show, especially since he is named in the title, the other characters on the show are often overshadowed. Julie Benz as Rita is decent but comes off as a tad unlikeable. Also whilst LaGuerta and Batista are likable they're aren't the main draw for the show. The show has had tremendous talent such as Erik King's character of Doakes whose death was certainly one of the more annoying things about that second season finale and Jimmy Smits as Miguel Prado in Season 3 was absolutely brilliant.

But how was Season 4 going to top Jimmy Smits' performance? Well by hiring John Lithgow of course! John Lithgow was absolutely incredible this past season on the show as the Trinity Killer as one of the most detestable serial killers ever put to screen. He abuses his family and has killed four people a year for the past 30 years. Honestly this performance is a tour de force. He's someone you hate and yet whenever he's on screen you just can't look away. You know he could snap at any minute and whenever he's on screen it just ratchets up the tension a staggering amount. Truly one of the best performances that I've seen all year.

Then there was Jennifer Carpenter as Deborah Morgan. Whilst she might be as incredible as her real life husband Michael C. Hall, she holds her own and has to deal with some extremely tricky pieces of acting through the season. Reacting to her loves death at the hands of Trinity as well as finding out that the Ice Truck Killer (Season 1) was her step-brothers brother. She buoys all her scenes with some great emotional actor and has definitely moved on in leaps and bounds since Season 1.

This season of Dexter was interesting off the bat with the idea of that there was someone out there killing all these people and logically Dexter wanted to stop him, but was balancing this with his family and newborn son. However then the first twist of the season came. Trinity wasn't some loner, instead he was a family man, who went to church and built houses for the homeless. Whilst at first the season stalled after this, all was rectified by the time we got to 'Hungry Man'. An absolutely superb episode where we learned the true nature of Trinity and spun the season on to a truly fantastic final string of episodes.

Whilst in the end we all knew what the outcome would be, it was still so tense. Trinity was matching Dexter, and whilst he may not have been as closer as any of the innumerable killers that Dexter has had to dispatch, this one definitely had the biggest impact. Trinity was evil and had a system which he sadly managed to somewhat carry out in the finale episode of the season.

Many people have commented that ending to Season 4 of Dexter was similar to that of 24 Season 1 but that doesn't take away the impact. The finale was great up until that point including the poignant final scene between Dexter and Trinity but it's when we get to see the true extent of his evil. Trinity did not no other killer had done and killed someone close to Dexter, Rita. Those final few minutes of Dexter finding his wife in a bath tub of her own blood (echoing Trinity's first kill on the show) and his son on the floor, covered in her blood (echoing Dexter's own gateway to become a killer) were almost poetic. Upsetting but poetic but really leave us wanting to know what's going to happen in Season 5.

However this leads me to a final point. Whilst Dexter Season 4 was fantastic, the show NEEDS to announce an end date. Dexter is a show that has finite concept. We can't follow Dexter forever and the show needs to end soon. It also doesn't help that Season 2 felt like a final season and that we knew that Season 4 wouldn't be the last. The moment the show announces an end date the tension is really going to ratchet up to levels not seen since Season 2. Luckily the show managed to do something that changes the show this year but it would be nice for a two season arc, but every single season wraps everything in a bow which is quite grating (paticularly Season 2). So please Dexter, end next year whilst you're still on top. Sadly shows that get record breaking ratings in their fourth season don't go away easily. Ahh well Season 6 maybe?

In conclusion Dexter Season 4 was fantastic. It might not be better than Season 1 or 2 but was definitely better than the glacial Season 3 and actually did something that is going to change the show (hopefully for the better). John Lithgow was absolutely superb and we got the normal brilliance from Michael C. Hal. Now that the show has done something to significantly shake up the status quo going into their fifth season, I can't wait to see what happens next. Sadly we're going till next September to find out what the true impacts of this event were.

9/10

Of December 2009

2009-12-14T21:40:00.002Z

Well it's December. And I do mean December. I'm writing this half way through the month so I apologise for the lateness. I would say I've been busy, which I have been, but honestly not too busy to keep putting off a blog post. However I will be doing a lot more later on in the month and early on in the New Year as part of a wrap up of 09 and the decade.

However first up is the important part. It's almost Christmas! Which brings with it the onslaught of Christmas Television! So lets get it started. First off, American television dies this time of year, so us British people have to rely on the shows that our country produces but luckily the best shows are normally on this time of year so that's a good thing.

First up the Glee premiere tomorrow on E4. I'll speak more about Glee in my Top 10 Shows of 2009 (spoilers) but for now if you want a very funny light show which has a very mean sense of humour whilst being on of the most fun shows on television (as long as you don't have any qualms with the idea of popular hits being played). Think of it as my Pushing Daisies replacement without the impeccable art direction and superb dialogue. (On other UK debuts HIMYM and Big Bang Theory start new seasons this Thursday also on E4)

Then are the current seasons of Gavin and Stacey and Top Gear which will be running throughout the Christmas period will have another Special episodes where they go to Bolivia which is guaranteed to be hilarious and Gavin and Stacey will be airing their last few episodes with the penultimate episode being moved to Christmas Day (two years in a row plus the episode that will be airing will only be set a few months after last years) and New Years Day where the last ever episode will air (*sob*).

Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe Review of 2009 will air December 22nd on BBC4 and is a much watch for anyone. The only real shame is that it isn't an entire series but we still get Charlie Brooker's absolutely perfect, biting criticism of the television industry as a whole. It's like Christmas will be coming early.

Then the inevitable elephant in the room, Doctor Who. David Tennat's last ever episodes as the Doctor and of course the BBC's pimping out of David Tennant with his stint as Hamlet airing on Boxing Day and Tennant appearing on shows such as QI and Nevermind the Buzzcocks. Doctor Who is taking over the BBC this year and with good reason. David Tennant was a superb Doctor and it will be sad to see him go, however next year marks the first year with Stephen Moffat in control which will be superb (particularly if rumours of a Neil Gaiman penned episode are true) If you aren't watching Doctor Who this year then something is seriously wrong with you (even if the second episode will probably disappoint).

Outnumbered will be airing a Christmas Special on 27th December but it's airing at 10:30 on BBC1, seems if anything a bit of a kick in the balls for one of the funniest shows on British television airing that late two days after Christmas. Especially when it's one of the few shows which has been able to find endearing and funny child actors (and of the best uses of ad-libbing I've ever seen).

Channel 4 will be airing countdowns of the best songs and TV shows of the decade so I'm curious to see what tops their list. Whilst the song list will probably be dire, the TV show will be forgiven as long as The Wire is at number 1 (or at the very least top 5). Those are both on various points after Christmas Day with the main one being New Year's Eve (however crammed in the middle is "Your Top 20 Celebrity Big Brother moments which thankfully Radio Times have not given their stamp of approval).

Also as the decade ends we get to revisit many brilliant shows with Sky2 spending all of December 30th re-airing Lost Season 5, whilst of course some of it will be censored, if you want to catch up for the inevitably jaw dropping Season 6 in February I'd watch just to remember all the important developments of Season 5. Also More4 from New Year's Eve onwards are doing a Graham Linehan marathon with all of The IT Crowd, Father Ted and Black Books airing for those who love British comedy it's a must see.

Whilst New Year's Day is going to be very busy what with David Tennat's last episode of Doctor Who (plus John Simm is in it and who doesn't love John Simm?) and last ever episode of Gavin and Stacey but Channel 4 are airing their Big Fat Quiz of the Year. Charlie Brooker is one of the contestants (on the same team as David Mitchell) and the only judge I want to see replaced is Claudia Winkelman, for whom I would love to see replaced by Noel Fielding as him and Russell Brand work so well together (even if you hate them). However it's on at the same time as Gavin and Stacey so I'd watch that first and then flip over (I have Sky+ so I can see both)

That should be about it in terms of Christmas television. Look out for my reviews of Doctor Who (they'll be reviewed separately) and Dexter Season 4 and Gavin and Stacey Season 3 (and possibly the show as a whole). Plus a review of Avatar and Where the Wild Things are! (but you probably know I'm lying).

I will also posting my Favourite Albums and Songs of the year/decade and my Top 10 Shows of 2009/decade like last year (without it being spread over 10 days like last year as I've already reviewed most shows on the list properly and it will get very boring to hear me raving repeatedly). I might do a movies list and I'm also looking for recommendations for best songs of the decade as it will be a list of 25 and I want to make sure I include a lot of genres on my list (not just my own personal tastes)

So for now I say goodbye and I wish my small reader base a Merry Christmas!!!

Currently Listening To: Christmas TV - Slow Club
Currently Reading - Blankets
Currently Watching (TV) - Big Bang Theory Season 2 (followed by Damages Season 1

Of Doctor Who - The Waters of Mars

2009-11-15T22:54:00.010Z

I'm incredibly sorry for posting this so late, but honestly I've been really very busy, at least too busy to blog. I promised this weeks ago along with my thoughts on Muse. All I'll say about that is that was a fantastic night out, awesome set list (although a bit too much Resistance) and a superb light show. If you do ever get a chance to go see Muse ever, I would heartily recommend you do so as not only are they one of the best bands in the world, but also one of the best live bands in the world.

But anyways, on with my review of The Waters of Mars. Waters of Mars was one of the previously announced Doctor Who specials that we would get in place of a real season of Doctor Who this year. I gave Planet of the Dead a very positive review a few months ago (maybe a little bit too positive, but I really enjoyed it even if no one else did) and I'm going to do the same here. This review is going to be very short and sweet and I'm not going to delve into a lot of areas that I might normally do. If you've read any of my previous Doctor Who reviews then you know that David Tennant is absolutely superb and there's no need to reiterate that here. I will be doing say come new years which might devolve into more of David Tennant memorandum consider it will be his last foray as the Doctor*

So instead this review is going to focus on one thing. Russel T. Davies. I have a love/hate relationship for this man. He has shepherded this new Doctor Who since the beginning and has written some amazing episodes. He picked the actors and has done some incredible character moments. However he's also proven an incredible lack of ability at writing science fiction beats, relying quite frequently on dues ex machina type endings, particularly the finale to Season 4. The man has done a lot to help this series but also harmed with an overabundance of campy, kiddie humour and cop out endings. It's making me incredibly excited to think what Stephen Moffat will do when he takes over next spring, but on some level I will be upset to see RTD leave the show.

This episode was pretty much a showcase for RTD best and worst talents. Luckily the good out weighed the bad by a lot but there still existed a lot of quite annoying points about this episode. Firstly we had the robot. This was probably my biggest complaint about the episode. It was stupid and kiddie. Whilst it was arguably necessary for the conclusion, there was no reason for it to be so goddamn annoying or the weird inter-cutting of the guy controlling it being electrocuted. I should have known it would be bad when it was described as a 'cute robot sidekick, because kids love robots!' It was just stupid. It wasn't cute. TV and movies have done little cute sidekicks frequently before but this robot wasn't interesting at all. It didn't have any personality which was probably its biggest flaw and the scene where it is made to go super fast was awful. However that did save us from the awful running sequences. Whilst we got some funny jokes with the Doctor asking for little fold away bicycles, so much of the time was taken up by running sequences that it go a little tedious. For a time period where we had lasers and a space station on Mars (both of which could be possible by 2059 IaSg14) we for some reason don't have a transportation system between different sectors of the base? Seriously, if you want to make a joke RTD at least ground it in reality and not make the audience have to take massive leaps of faith.

Now the good stuff. It was character based and not really sci-fi based. Just like Season 4's 'Midnight' (also written by RTD) we had something alien causing commotion but the reactions were human and grounded. That's what made Battlestar Galactica work so well and it did so here. Whilst Doctor Who will never touch BSG in terms of darkness just due to when and where it airs, it was nice to see something that whilst not believable was grounded in reality. The situation was significantly harrowing with the crew being whittled down until we didn't know who would survive. There were some nice hero and sacrificial moments (guy in rocket ship which annoying at first was a sufficiently awesome death scene) as well as the emotional points where some of the lesser crew members who we haven't actually spent time with get water on them and we know they're done. It made you feel for them because they had personality, if only a little. Although it was weird to see the two least developed characters ultimately surviving.

Then we have Adelaide played by Lindsay Duncan. She was great and was the main focal point of the story. The fact is that her death is a fixed point in time and if she doesn't die then the universe would completely change as it is her death which brings about contact with the outside universe. This is where we get a really interested moral quandary on the behalf of the Doctor. He knows she must die and wants to stay uninvolved from this in order to keep time under wraps (he is a Time Lord after all) however he comes around and decides to save all of the people he can on the station. Ultimately he saves three, including Adelaide but also tells her that she is meant to die or else all the good things brought by her death won't come about. This leads to one of the most powerful scenes Doctor Who has ever done.

Adelaide confronts the Doctor after he saves her and tells him how no man should wield the power to change time (all of this wonderfully grounded by David Tennant seemingly manic power rush from this event**) and eventually concludes with Adelaide deciding to take this into her own hands. So we get the darkest moment that Doctor Who has ever done and even rivals the superb scene in Torchwood from earlier this year. A companion literally kills herself. It was dark and well done and almost seemed like RTD had learned something from writing Torchwood that sometimes going a little dark is a good thing. It was necessary to sort out the timeline and show how power mad the Doctor had gone and whilst I've read complaints about that scene all I can do is applaud RTD for doing it. It was utterly fantastic and rounded off a great episode of Doctor Who.

Overall, this was a great special. Whilst a silly first 10 minutes drag this episode down a little, the rest is dark and dramatic with real tension and characters we can care for even with very little screen time. Overall this has probably been my favourite special that Doctor Who has done, including David Tennant's first Christmas Special and the dark turn towards the end to wrap up the story was the icing on the cake. I can't wait to see what Christmas will bring and am on tender hooks for Stephen Moffat's run. Lets just hope that RTD doesn't cock David Tennat's swan song.

9/10

*just as a note, I want to know if I should review the Christmas/New Year specials as a whole or two separate reviews. Considering they're a two parter I'm slightly torn and wondering whether I'll have a enough to say to pad out two reviews of what is essentially one story.

**goddamn it, I said I wouldn't do that

Of Mad Men Season 3

2009-11-09T21:18:00.003Z

Well that marks the end of Mad Men Season 3 and this also marks the beginning of my third and final review of the show this year. Yup you read that right, I've reviewed all three seasons of Mad Men in these short 11 months. All I can really say is that Mad Men is without one of the best, if not the best, show that currently airs on television. Breaking Bad and Lost can both come close to reaching it's consistency but Mad Men just has that something that takes to a higher (and if you watch any of the shows I've just mentioned you know they're at a very high level to begin with).

So without further ado my review of the shows third season. If you have yet to watch the show then all I can really say is that there will be spoilers and that you should probably go out and watch it, it's just amazing.

So first off I want to get the acting out of the way just due to the fact that if you watch the show then you already know the high calibre that they have on the show. Jon Hamm continues to be superb as Don Draper, the character is just magnetic and Hamm just owns the character and his multiple layers and the dark past that he hides underneath all the business suits. January Jones as Betty was again amazing this year, as was Elisabeth Moss as Peggy, who sadly was sidelined a little after two superb episodes kicked off the year. John Slattery continues to steal pretty much every scene he's in as Roger Sterling with the best lines of anyone on the show. Christian Hendricks as Joan and Bryan Batt as Sal both were spectacular but they two sadly were left early on (but for completely understandable reasons). Also I need to mention Vincent Kartheiser as Pete for also being fantastic.*

However those were the main characters who we know are fantastic, this year we had several new characters and one in particular stood out. Jared Harris as Lane Pryce was an utterly superb addition to the cast this year. Jared Harris can be recognised for his work as Mr. Jones last season Fringe (ie the villain) and whilst he was a very good part of Fringe, he really shows off some astounding talent on Mad Men. It does seem like the writers were doing something similar to what the writers of Lost were doing in Season 2 when they introduced the character of Henry Gale. In Lost they were looking for an actor to portray the leader of the Others and went looking for an actor, if that actor worked then he would stay around, if he didn't he'd be killed off and they'd look for someone else. In both cases it worked and Michael Emerson came into play Henry Gale and is currently one of the best things about Lost and is easily one of the best character actors working today. Jared Harris has done a similar thing. Of all the scenes this season, I found myself looking forward to his scenes the most. He was funny and just a joy to watch, and with how the season ended it does look like he may be bumped up to main cast next season.

Now for the main crux of the season. Of course the show is set in the 60s and we've been told we'd see the entire decade in about 5 seasons. However the first surprise of the season was that the season didn't open like last year with a jump of a year but instead only a few short weeks. Meaning we saw a lot of the pregnancy announced at the end of last season. This led to some very trippy scenes which signaled that Mad Men was going to play around with pre-concieved notions of how the show normally is. There were hallucinations, sojourns to Italy, firings of not one but two main characters and unlike most cable shows the major event of the season didn't take place in the second to last episode but in the third to last episode AND the last episode.

Then there was the lawnmower scene. Mad Men doesn't do violence or push the censors much. Of course the show is dark and there's lots of sex and occasional swearing but overall it's done in a tasteful and realistic way. However the lawnmower that runs over someones foot was completely unexpected, in much the same way as the vomit scene in season 1. It comes out of nowhere, or at least whilst it's obvious that something is going to happen, you don't think that THAT would happen. But it does and blood sprays everywhere and it was shocking. It shows that Mad Men isn't playing it safe and wants to mess around with the conventions that it's made for itself.

We of course have to mention that Sal and Joan both left Sterling Cooper this reason. Sal for reasons that amounted to black mail due to the fact that he wouldn't sleep with a male client. Sal is by far one of the most interesting characters. He's the only gay character in the cast and the 60s attitude to homosexuality is something that has only been lightly touched on and I just hope he comes back in Season 4, even if we don't see him get his job back. Then there is Joan who leaves for different reasons in the fact that it's due to the belief that her husband will be able to support them both. He doesn't and we get some awesome moments, particularly due to the fact that this was the guy that raped her in season 2. The best moment being hitting him around the head with a vase and of course the "Hell Yeah!!" moment in the finale when she shows up to help save the day. Whilst this did lead to the false hope Sal might come back to do something similar. Instead Don kicks in the door, which if anything was even awesomer.

Of course this being Mad Men, it isn't really a straightforward story. The show is more a random collection of events in the lives of the people at Sterling Cooper. When you begin a season, you have no clue how or where it will end up. At the beginning each episode will be very loosely connected to what preceded it and it isn't until about episode 7 or 8 that the landscape of the season becomes clear. Mad Men did that this year, adventures based on different characters. There were moments for both Peggy and Pete to shine. Sal's secret came out to Don, the episode where Betty gave birth and Betty's father, Gene dying (which led to Kiernan Shipka make me take back what I've said about child actors been incapable of acting unless they're on The Wire).

However then we saw where it was going.

This season is where it happened. Betty found out about Don's true past. How he stole the real Don Draper's identity. Of course she didn't take it well, although at first it did seem very strange. Divorce papers and photos of a man called Dick Whitman. Then we got the scene where it all comes out. It was played superbly and of course in the background we had the fact that Don was having an affair with his children's teacher who was sat in the car during the entire confrontation who could make this already tense scene blow up even more than it already had. She didn't but it was quite possibly the tensest thing the show has ever done. Betty forgave him after she heard the full story..at least until the next episode where she revealed her plan to divorce Don. Which is where we ended season 3, Don and Betty's marriage has come to end. Whilst it was inevitable due to Don's endless affairs and secrets it does change the landscape of the show significantly.

The other significant event? Nope it wasn't the assassination of JFK which occurred in the second to last episode. Nope it was the shocking turn of events which led to the entire collapse of Sterling Cooper and the formation of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce. This is the game changer that the show unleashed on us in the finale episode. A pitch perfect episode from start to finish. Whilst it did contain some dark and emotional moments such as Don threatening to beat Betty when she announces the divorce and the reaction of their children to the news, the episode was actually amazing upbeat, hilarious and a hell of a lot of fun. The episode was built like an old fashion caper like Ocean's 11 where we got to see the building of the team over the episode, there was jazzy up beat music and of course some brilliant lines. We had the return of Joan where then she and Roger acted like an old married couple**, Peggy deadpanning a no when asked to coffee. The brilliant reaction of Pryce when he told his bosses how he'd fired everyone, got himself fired and then managed to wish the a merry Christmas. It was superbly well done and of course we got some beautiful moments such as the conversation between Don and Peggy and how he would spend the rest of his life trying to hire her if she didn't say yes to his offer. So by the end we'd lost a large proportion of the cast and I honestly have no clue where we're going in season 4.

Overall Season 3 was fantastic. It took Mad Men to unexpected and unusual places. It played with normal conventions and mixed in the normal fantastic writing and acting we've come to expect. I haven't even mentioned some of the mixing of real life events of the sixties and key figures. There was of course the matter of race where we found out about racially motivated murders, the fact that Conrad Hilton (yes Paris' grandfather) was a key character and then the murder of JFK. Mad Men is essential television. It is the best thing currently on the air, this season showed it doesn't go for the expected conclusion instead throwing frequent curve balls that constantly keep you guessing.

If you aren't watching Mad Men then honestly there is something wrong with you. The fact the show gets very ratings proves that the vast majority of people of idiots. Mad Men is one of the most unique and brilliant shows on the air. I have no clue what is going to happen in Season 4, how long will the time jump be? Will Don stay away from Betty for long? Will SCDP be succesfull? Will we still see all the old characters? When is Don going to have his next affair? All I do know is I can't wait till next August and the return of the best show on television. Especially with the scope of the show now being expanded beyond the confines of the Sterling Cooper offices.

9.5/10

*If the acting quality weren't so high on this show I may have focused a little more on or two specific actors but it is and I love it for that.

**Side note, get those two back together in a relationship!