HBO has released a new trailer for the fifth season of Game of Thrones to publicise their new HBO Go service, which will allow non-HBO subscribers in the USA to purchase HBO programming without a cable connection.
The first four episodes have been named so far as follows:
501: The Wars to Come
Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss
Directed by Michael Slovis
Airdate: 12/04/15
502: The House of Black and White
Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss
Directed by Michael Slovis
Airdate: 19/04/15
503: High Sparrow
Written by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss
Directed by Mark Mylod
Airdate: 26/04/15
A horrendous error of judgement sees Miles Vorkosigan summoned back to Barrayar to face disciplinary measures from his superior, head of Imperial Security Simon Illyan. As Miles contemplates a future outside of the military, he becomes aware of a growing crisis in ImpSec. Things are going wrong and the cause may be to horrible to contemplate...
Memory is, chronologically, the tenth out of fourteen books in The Vorkosigan Saga and marks an important turning point in the series. For the previous eight volumes Miles Vorkosigan as been masquerading as Admiral Naismith of the Dendarii Free Mercenaries, carrying out missions for the Barrayan military with total deniability. In Memory that abruptly comes to an end after Miles - suffering the after-effects of his death, cryo-freeze and revival in Mirror Dance - inadvertently slices the legs off a fellow agent he is supposed to be rescuing and then covers it up. The result is the most game-changing novel in the series. Such long-running series tend to do well out of stasis, maintaining the status quo and bringing readers back each time to enjoy the same cast of characters and the same format. Whisking that away can be creatively liberating for the author, but dangerous if the change does not go down well with fans.
In this case the change is well-judged, although it takes a while to execute. At a bit less than 500 pages Memory joins Mirror Dance as one of the longest novels in the series, but it's also a lot less active a book than its forebear. Mirror Dance had multiple POV characters, clandestine infiltrations, full-scale combat missions and a huge amount of character development packed into its pages. Memory, fitting its title, is more relaxed and reflective a novel. It gives Miles a chance to dwell on everything that's happened to him and what he is going to do with his life now his default position has been snatched away.
This reflective mode works well for a while, but it starts to bog down the book. As amusing as seeing Miles tackling getting a pet cat, hiring a new cook or going fishing is, it goes on for a bit too long. When the mystery kicks in and Miles is granted extraordinary powers by the Emperor to sort things out, it's a relief and soon the mystery is unfolding nicely. However, the longueurs at the start of the book lead to the investigation and resolution taking place quite rapidly and a little too neatly. There also isn't much personal jeopardy for Miles. This may be the point, as the book is more about Miles's growth and maturing as a character, but there is the feeling that this story could have been told a little more effectively as a novella. That said, it does bring about some dramatic changes in the set-up of the series and is among the best-written books in the series.
Memory (****) opens slow but finishes strong and succeeds in its task of resetting the series and giving Miles a new job to do. It is available now in the UK and USA.
Remastering old TV shows in high definition is apparently the new thing. With new generations of TV viewers growing up who have never seen a show in anything less than pristine high-def, the value for studios of dusting down their old series and sprucing them up for a new generation has never been clearer. Shows like Friends, Seinfeld, Star Trek: The Next Generation (and the original series), The Sopranos and The Wire have been given such make-overs and The X-Files is on its way. However, sometimes remasters go a bit...wrong.
A few months ago the Pivot Network in the United States began airing Joss Whedon's seminal late 1990s drama-horror-comedy (drahorcom?) series Buffy the Vampire Slayer in high definition. Fox had given the show a much-needed update for repeats, streaming and likely a future Blu-Ray release. And, to put it mildly, they've screwed it up.
Pretty much.
To clarify a few terms before we get into this discussion:
Definition refers to how many lines of information (pixels in the digital age) are used to make up the image. The more lines, the finer and more detailed the image. Older American TV shows used to have 480 lines of information running horizontally across the image. This is standard definition (SD). Modern TV shows have 1,080, which is referred to as high definition (HD) and is the current industry standard.
Aspect ratio refers to the dimensions of the on-screen image. Older TV screens had an aspect ratio of 4:3, resulting in a mostly square image. For TV shows filmed for 4:3, this is the original aspect ratio (OAR). Modern TVs have an aspect ratio of 16:9, resulting in a screen that is almost twice as wide as it is tall. This is what is generally referred to when the term widescreen is used (there are other widescreen aspect ratios, but they are not relevant to this particular discussion).
Remastering is the expensive and time-consuming process by which a SD image is replaced by a HD one. This process is complicated by the fact that most older TV shows were edited, finalised and distributed on video tape. Video tape is a locked SD format from which it is impossible to create a more detailed image. This means that the video master tapes for TV shows cannot simply be converted from SD to HD. However, most American TV shows were (highly fortunately) shot on 16mm or 35mm film. This is the same type of film used to shoot movies, which of course need to be displayed on massive cinema screens and contains high-quality, high-definition images by default.
As long as the original camera negatives have survived, it is possible to go back to them and extract a HD (or even super-HD, known as 4K) image which looks a hell of a lot better than the SD image you are used to from TV and DVD. The problem is that whilst TV shows were shot on film, they were mastered on video. So this means that every single episode of a TV show must be edited again from scratch, with music, sound effects, dialogue and any post-processing filters manually re-added. Editing is an enormous and expensive part of the process of creating an episode of television. For example, a typical TV episode spends as much time in editing (also called post-production or post) as it does being filmed in the first place. When CBS recently remastered Star Trek: The Next Generation, they spent a massive $9 million per season on the project, or about one-sixth the cost of actually shooting the entire series in the first place.
Remastering is thus an incredibly complicated thing to do and TV companies will only do it for shows where they feel there is a market for it. For enormously popular and prestigious shows like Star Trek and The X-Files there is clear value in doing a top job as these are programmes that were ahead of their time and will likely remain popular for decades to come (the original Star Trek is still being watched and making money today, fifty years after it was made, so updating it makes sense). Other shows like Babylon 5 are more cult and niche, and it's highly questionable if a HD remake will ever be attempted.
For vampires, going to sleep at 2pm in front of partially open blinds would appear to be a bad idea.
Something like Buffy the Vampire Slayer falls between the two stools. It was a hugely popular show at the time of airing and kick-started the career of someone who is now one of Hollywood's top directors and most influential creators. It has a passionate and dedicated base of fans, but its broader awareness has dropped off over time. This puts the creators, in this case Fox, in the quandary of either: 1) shelling out a large sum of money for a remastering project which could result in a renewed lease of life for the show on Blu-Ray and (more importantly) services like Netflix, or 2) simply remaking the show from scratch with a whole new cast. 1) is expensive, but not as expensive as 2) and less controversial. In this case, Fox has elected to remaster the whole show.
Furthermore, Fox have, at least initially, done it right. They've gone back to the original camera negatives and have re-scanned the whole show in HD. The image quality and detail is hugely improved, more important for Buffy than most shows as the first two seasons were filmed on a particularly poor stock of 16mm film and the resulting SD image looked grainy and blurry even on TV and DVD. Extracting a HD image makes these seasons look hugely better (they're still not as good as the later seasons, shot on 35mm, as the original film was the limiting factor but it's a still a vast improvement). They've even re-shot the early CGI shots involving things like vampires turning to dust, which is reasonably impressive.
That's where the good news abruptly halts. As the above video shows, they've also made a huge number of mistakes and introduced a large number of problems to the series, most of them resulting from poor editing.
The video goes into this in much more detail, but briefly, TV shows and movies often 'cheat' when it comes to things like time of day and weather. Filming a scene at sunset on a beach sounds great, but not when that means you literally have a window of a few minutes to nail the shot and if anyone messes up, you have to wait 24 hours and hope it works better that time. One dream sequence in Buffy required a sunset beach shot, so they cheated. They filmed Sarah Michelle Gellar walking on the beach earlier in the day and applied filters after the fact to make it look like sunset. Except that for the HD version of the same shot, the new editors forgot to add the same filter, meaning it now looks like it's taking place on a autumn afternoon rather than during a summer sunset.
More common is the cheat of filming scenes at night. Night shooting is hugely expensive (everyone's on overtime) so TV and film will instead shoot the scene in the day and then apply a filter to make it look like night. This is most noticeable in the third Lord of the Rings movie, The Return of the King, when Pippin finds Merry after the Battle of the Pelennor. In the theatrical version of the film, he finds him in daylight. In the Extended Edition, the filter has been changed and the scene is now set at dusk to indicate more time as passed. It's the exact same scene, just changed from one time of day to another thanks to the simple use of a filter.
In Buffy this practice is used to shoot interior scenes during the day and change them to night in post. Again, this has not been followed by the new editors, leading to scenes where Buffy appears to be going to bed at 2pm and where Angel (a vampire) happily looks out the window without being incinerated.
"EXTREME CLOSE-UP! EXTREME CLOSE-UP!"
These problems are annoying but also easily fixed by a simple further editing pass. Much more problematic has been the decision to change the show to a widescreen image.
As mentioned earlier, to turn a 4:3 image into a 16:9 one requires that the image be zoomed in so it expands out and fills the sides of the screen. This cropping is a massive no-no for most viewers, because it means that information that was originally on-screen is lost simply so the image can fill the whole screen. This also often wrecks shot composition, and if actors are already near the top or bottom of the screen, risks chopping off heads. Fortunately, going back to the original camera negative means that this problem can be avoided. As well as being shot on film, most older TV shows used widescreen cameras anyway, so the native film image is a widescreen one. So you don't have to crop images, you just get a wider image showing more stuff on the right and left hand sides of the screen.
"Hurrah!" you may say. Well, not quite. You see, most American TV shows in the 1980s and 1990s were "shot for TV" even if they used widescreen cameras. What that means it that the camerman had a square image on his viewfinder which showed the limits of the 4:3 TV image, and knew that anything outside that image would not be seen on TV. So using the full widescreen image becomes hugely problematic because you often find light stands, crewmembers, extras, boom mikes or even the edges of the set coming into view (the Friends HD remaster was particularly criticised for occasionally showing the edges of the sets on-screen). As shows entered the 21st Century and widescreen home TVs became more common, this problem was solved by the cameramen "protecting the image for widescreen", i.e. ensuring the entire image was clear of obstacles.
Buffy aired just at the time this transition was beginning (1996-2003), and later seasons are protected for widescreen. In fact, the later seasons have been available in widescreen even in SD on DVD for a few years now. There are a few incidents where extras, equipment can be seen but these are relatively few and far between. In the first three to four seasons, however, the problems are far more commonplace. In a few places Fox have solved the problem by using digital effects to 'paint out' equipment or extras where they shouldn't be, which is laudable as it is both time-consuming and expensive to do. However, far more often the editors have simply cropped the image instead to remove the offending obstacle...and also sometimes taking off the top of the heads of the actors in the process. Even more weirdly, they seem to have cropped some images and then used the original image in the "Previously, on Buffy..." segments, showing that the original image was completely fine to use.
"Adding space to the sides simply for the sake of trying to look more
cinematic would betray the very exact mise-en-scene I was trying to
create. I am a purist, and this is the purest way to watch Buffy. I have resisted the effort to letterbox Buffy from the start and always will, because that is not the show we shot." - Joss Whedon
For Star Trek: The Next Generation, filmed rather earlier (1987-94) than Buffy at time when there was zero expectation of there ever being a widescreen home TV market, CBS didn't even bother trying to create widescreen images. They instead just stuck to the OAR of 4:3 and left black bars down the sides of the screen for people with widescreen TVs. It certainly doesn't seem to have done them any harm. Joss Whedon himself has also been unequivocal in starting that Buffy was shot for 4:3 and should stay in that format.
Even more impressive, when Universal re-released the original Battlestar Galactica on Blu-Ray, they included both the 4:3 and 16:9 versions on the same disc, with the option to switch between them. This would be the most ideal solution for Buffy as well.
The hope is that the current version of Buffy airing is a test run for a future proper re-release, with these problems fixed and cleared up. There is some evidence that this might be the case: The X-Files has been airing in HD on a German network and also on the El Rey network in the USA and apparently early problems with the remastering have been fixed in later airings of the same episodes, so hopefully the same will be true for Buffy.
In the meantime, the Buffy HD/Blu-Ray Facebook page is monitoring each episode as it airs for issues and is collecting all the information together. It's worth a look to see what Fox are doing wrong - and in some cases right - with each episode.
Once more unto the breach, for the Third Edition of the All-Time SFF Sales List. The usual rules apply: these figures come from publishers, websites and the authors themselves, they may be for all books in print rather than sold (although this will only cause a big difference for authors at the tail end of the list) and they are certainly not all right up to date. The first 10 authors are listed here, the rest after the jump.
Please note that the text of some entries remains unchanged since the 2013 list, as I wasn't going to
rewrite every single one where no new information can be found.
As previously, I am indebted to the contributors to this thread on Westeros.org who kept the figures rolling in over the past eighteen months.
J.K. Rowling was SFF's only billionaire until she gave away most of her money to charity. The fact that the charity is named "Evil Despot Volcano Headquarters Ltd" should not be any cause for alarm.
1) J.K Rowling (c. 450 million)
J.K. Rowling may
have completed Harry Potter, but the series is still selling
phenomenally well. Coupled with the success of her three adult novels (The Casual Vacancy, The Cuckoo's Calling and The Silkworm), her position at
the top of the table is maintained.
2) Stephen King (c. 350 million) As said in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1996), King's worldwide sales are
totally incalculable and the above figure remains fairly conservative. King has
published a string of popular novels since 2008, so his sales are likely up,
but by how much is anyone's guess. King's Dark Tower series has sold more than 30 million
copies by itself, which would be enough to get into the Top Twenty comfortably
even without his many other books.
3) JRR Tolkien (c. 300 million)
Tolkien's sales are likewise incalculable: 100,000 copies of a pirated version
of The Lord of the Rings were sold in
the United States
alone in under a year, so the figures for unauthorised versions of the book in
other countries are completely unguessable. What remains certain is that The Lord of the Rings is the
biggest-selling single genre novel of all time, and possibly the best-selling
single novel of all time. More than 50 million copies of the book have been
sold since 2001 alone. The 100+ million sales of The Hobbit alone have also been bolstered significantly by the new
Peter Jackson movies. If anything, the above figure may well be the most
conservative on the list and Tolkien's sales may be vastly more (and possibly
more than King's).
4)Stephanie Meyer (250 million)
The Twilight
series has sold an enormous amount of copies in just ten years on sale. An
impressive achievement.
[Dean Koontz (c. 200 million)]
Dean Koontz's official website claims sales of 450 million, which seem hard to
credit for an author with a big profile, but nowhere near that of King or
Rowling. Other figures suggest 200 million, which seems much more credible.
However, Koontz's eligibility for the list is questionable given that he has
written numerous non-SFF novels (though many of them still within the horror or
suspense thriller genres). Thus his placement on the list is for those who
consider him to be a genre author.
[Michael Crichton (c. 200 million)]
The late Michael Crichton published 27 novels during his lifetime, selling more than 200
million copies. Only eight of those novels are SF, but these include most of
his best-known and likely biggest-selling novels (including JurassicPark, The Lost World,
Sphere, Congo
and The Andromeda Strain). His placement here is for comparative
purposes and for those who consider him to be a genre author.
5) Anne Rice (136 million)
Anne Rice's vampire books were a huge phenomenon through the 1980s and 1990s,
bolstered by the Tom Cruise/Brad Pitt movie.
6) CS Lewis (120 million+)
No change here, though Lewis's sales have likely increased somewhat due to the
movies based on his books.
7) Edgar Rice Burroughs (100 million+)
Edgar Rice Burroughs was a hugely prolific author. He has sold more than 100
million copies of his novels, including the SF Barsoom, Pellucidar,
Venus, Caspak and Moon series and the non-SF Tarzan series.
8) Sir Arthur C. Clarke (100 million+)
Sir Arthur C. Clarke gains the distinction of being the only author on the list
to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and have an orbit named after him.
Clarke was already a well-known, big-selling SF author when the film 2001: A
Space Odyssey and his television coverage of the first moon landing
catapulted him into becoming a household name. A steady stream of
best-selling, high-profile and critically-acclaimed SF novels continued into
the 1980s, when his profile was again boosted by his TV series, Arthur C.
Clarke's Mysterious World. As well as his SF novels he also published a
large number of non-fiction books and volumes of criticism on matters of
science.
9) Suzanne Collins
(100 million+)
Suzanne Collins's The
Hunger Games hadn't even been published when I created the first list. The
trilogy has been published in full, sold over 100 million copies (over 65
million in the USA
alone) and generated three hit movies since then (with another incoming). Very
impressive.
10) Andre Norton (90 million+)
Andre Norton was one of science fiction and fantasy's most prolificauthors,
penning around 300 books (either novels or story collections) in a career
stretching over decades.
Endgame. Walter White's identity as the crystal meth-cooking mastermind Heisenberg has been compromised, the law is closing in and his life is crashing down around him. White's only hope is an alliance of convenience with a criminal gang far more dangerous and ruthless than he is. But this move proves to be a mistake, leading to tragedy.
Breaking Bad's first four (and a half) seasons seemed to be based on one central pillar: Walter White's attempts to balance his 'public' life with his secret criminal identity. As the show approaches its finale that pillar is pulled away, leaving the show free and able to choose how it ends on its own terms. Many recent major serialised dramas - from Lost to Battlestar Galactica - have fudged their endings or (like Deadwood) been cancelled before getting there. Among its peers, only The Wire had really achieved the feat of having a satisfying conclusion that was true to everything that came before.
Breaking Bad shoots and scores. This final run of episodes is a triumph. Emotionally powerful, harshly-written and unflinching in following through the promise of earlier episodes. To borrow from another serialised drama, "If you though this was going to have a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention." And Bad delivers on that. As the clock counts down, Walter's plans for a happy ending become increasingly as crazy and outlandish as the theories of some fans anxious to see him somehow get away with everything and achieve what he'd set out to do, making enough money for his family to survive after he's gone.
There are few weak spots in this final run of episodes. Jesse gets a little lost in the mix in the first few episodes and the re-introduction of Elliott and Gretchen after an absence of four seasons is a little abrupt, but it does neatly bookend the series and help provide closure. Also, the bad guys now being white supremacist drug dealers feels a little cliched. The few times the show has faltered in following through on its premise is because it has always had a bad guy far worse than Walter hanging around to excuse his excesses (in the eyes of some viewers), and these new villains have you longing for the days of Gus Fring and his considerably better-written and motivated machinations.
Still, this is a minor issue. The central focus is on White as everything comes crashing down around him. Bryan Cranston gives a monumentally awesome performance, matched by Anna Gunn (as Skyler), Dean Norris (as Hank) and Aaron Paul (as Jesse). A huge amount of praise must go to Dean Norris, who has played his character's evolution from gun-toting lawman hick to a PTSD-suffering investigative genius over the course of the series with total conviction.
Vince Gilligan's writing team also have to be praised for coming up with an ending that is true to the series as a whole and delivering on it. The episode Ozymandias may be one of the most gut-wrenching episodes of any TV series ever made, astonishing in its dramatic power and focus. The actual ending that follows sacrifices any ambiguity for neatness and at least one unbelievable moment of cartoon ultraviolence, but the dramatic and emotional stakes are high and the show does enough to earn its ending. It is not a happy ending but it is an ending that stays true to the show and its themes, and that's rare enough in TV these days.
The final season of Breaking Bad (*****) is an unmissable triumph and a worthy conclusion to a remarkable drama series. It is available now
as part of the Breaking Bad Complete Collection in the UK (DVD, Blu-Ray) and USA (DVD, Blu-Ray).
The Wire, the HBO series once described by Charlie Brooker as the "Best TV series since the invention of radio," is getting its long-awaited Blu-Ray release on 2 June this year.
The show has been remastered in high definition and widescreen under the supervision of creator David Simon and the show's original editors. Although Simon has been vocally sceptical of the remastering idea, it turns out that, when done, it mostly worked quite well, although Simon noted some scenes where the composition was damaged by expanding it so they reframed and cropped where necessary. It is unclear if the new Blu-Ray release will given an option to watch in HD in the original aspect ratio.
Also up in the air is the price for the UK version. The American version is a hefty $199.99, which directly translates to £133. That's considerably more than The Sopranos complete Blu-Ray box set was on release (£99), for a significantly shorter series (60 episodes to The Sopranos' 86). The box set includes all of the previous special features from the DVD release as well as some new material. HBO's press release follows:
“One of the most daring dramas in the
history of the medium” -The Baltimore Sun
“One of the great achievements in television
artistry” -San Francisco Chronicle
THE WIRE:
THE COMPLETE SERIES
BLU-RAY WITH DIGITAL HD
Acclaimed Series Available for the First Time
on BLU-RAY Disc with Digital HD June 2, 2015
Loaded with Bonus Content Just in Time for Father’s Day Gift Giving
All 60 Episodes Beautifully Re-mastered in 16×9 Full Frame HD
New York, NY (March 5, 2015) – In the six years that have passed since the conclusion of the HBO seriesThe Wire,
the critically acclaimed drama has turned into a worldwide phenomenon
that has been hailed as “the best show in the history of television” by
MSNBC. This summer, the series will make its highly anticipated debut on
Blu-ray disc for the very first time. The 20-disc box set featuring all
60 episodes of the hit series in a stunningly re-mastered 16×9
full-screen HD format is showcased with newly redesigned box art.The Wire: The Complete Serieson
Blu-ray with Digital HD ($199.99) is loaded with an exciting slate of
bonus materials, including four behind-the-scenes documentaries, three
prequels that explore life beforeThe Wire, and an all-new cast and crew Q&A from the Paley Center for Media’sThe Wirereunion event.The Wire: The Complete Serieson
Blu-ray with Digital HD will be in stores June 2, 2015 – just in time
for Father’s Day and summer binge watching – and is a must-have for all
TV connoisseurs!
The Wire depicts an American urban dystopia, framed in our time, in
which easy distinctions between good and evil and crime and punishment
are challenged at every turn. In five successive seasons, the series
depicts a Baltimore in which institutional prerogatives, economic
inequalities and a brutalizing drug war confound the efforts to advance
the city and its people. The series’ first season lays out the futility
of the drug war, while the second highlights the deindustrialization and
the death of the working class. The third season introduces the city’s
political culture and lays out the forces that stand in the path of
actual reform. The fourth season addresses the educational system and
the actual opportunities that remain to coming generations. The fifth
and final season examines the media culture and its role in perpetuating
the status quo. Amid all of this, carefully drawn characters on both
sides of the law and from a variety of Baltimore cultures move forward
as best they can, human to a flaw, struggling against a system that
seems weighted against civic progress.
The seventh and final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation aired under very different circumstances to when the show began in 1987. Back then it was a tremendous risk by Paramount, an attempt to bring the franchise back to TV and make lightning strike twice. Despite a rocky opening season, the show eventually succeeded. By 1994 there was already one spin-off TV show on screen (Deep Space Nine), with another (Voyager) on the way. Plans were also underway for the first TNG-focused featured film, Star Trek: Generations.
In retrospect it was probably a mistake to have done all of this, plus writing and filming the last twenty-six episodes of TNG, at the same time. The writers, producers and actors were all over-worked and you can see this throughout the season. Season 7 of TNG is the show running on fumes, especially disappointing after the generally excellent sixth season.
The season opens with the disappointing Descent, Part II. Aside from putting Dr. Crusher in command of the Enterprise and defeating a powerful Borg ship, the episode is a huge disappointment, wasting both the Borg and Lore and featuring a poor resolution. Episodes like Liaisons, Interface, Dark Page and Phantasms seem to forget that ST:TNG is a science fiction show and instead spend a lot of time messing around with dreams and illusions. Other episodes like Attached and Inheritance spend time changing character dynamics and relationships when it's simply far too late in the day to resonate strongly. In the midst of the disappointing and mediocre episodes there are also some outright stinkers, like the goofy Genesis and the quite spectacularly horrendous Sub Rosa.
Fortunately, when the show actually remembers it's a science fiction series with an action adventure quotient, things improve markedly. Parallels, which features Worf shifting between multiple realities, is hugely enjoyable. The Pegasus, featuring a pre-Lost Terry O'Quinn as a dubious Starfleet admiral, is a very fine piece of work which makes Starfleet a more morally dubious organisation than previously thought (something Deep Space Nine would later run with). Journey's End and Preemptive Strike do good jobs of both setting up Voyager (although it would later squander the promise shown here) and rounding off the story arcs of recurring characters Wesley Crusher and Ro Laren in expectation-defying ways. Fortunately, the actual series finale itself, All Good Things..., triumphantly pays homage to the seven years of the show and manages the tricky balancing act of engaging in both nostalgia and sentimentality without becoming too over-mawkish. The episode is rammed full of plot holes you could steer the three-nacelled "Super Enterprise D" through, but it's so well done and fun that you don't care. There's also the possible highlight of the season, Lower Decks, which breaks new ground by showing us our familiar heroes from the POV of their subordinates, who aren't always quite so enamoured of them.
The final season of Star Trek: The Next Generation (***½) finds the show struggling to break new ground and is in danger of becoming moribund when a late burst of quality turns things around and (just about) gives the series a good send-off. The season is
available now on Blu-Ray in the UK and USA.
Having removed the problems caused by Gus Fring and his criminal empire, Walter White is now an independent operator. Aided by the increasingly guilt-riven Jesse, Walter cooks extravagant amounts of meth and distributes it with the reluctant help of his ex-wife. However, the DEA is continuing its investigation into "Heisenberg" and Walter becomes increasingly desperate - and lethal - in covering his tracks.
The final season of Breaking Bad was split in half to give the writers and actors more time to prepare the grand finale of the story. When you're making what a lot of people are calling the greatest TV show ever made, taking some extra time to give it a good send-off is a good idea. However, it does leave the penultimate chunk of the series in a little bit of limbo, with some wheel-spinning to do before the explosive ending can arrive.
The result is probably the weakest run of episodes in the Breaking Bad canon, although this is still very relative. Certainly the show remains almost as well-acted and well-written as ever, with a few more clumsy moments than normal. An odd moment with Walter going Don Corleone and pompously declaring that he forgives his wife for a perceived betrayal feels like self-parody, and early episodes with Mike and Jesse declaring they are out of the meth business, then back in, and then out again feel a little redundant. New character Lydia is also under-utilised, which is a shame as they cast the superb Laura Fraser in the role and gave her some good moments but then nothing more to do.
On the flipside, the show gives us one of its most memorable moments in the train heist episode. Although completely implausible, it is rollicking good fun and capped off by a disturbing, powerful ending that sets the tone for the end of the season (and the whole show). Dean Norris does a great job as Hank finally seems to be easing off from his pursuit of Heisenberg, right up until a masterfully-executed plot revelation leaves the half-season on one hell of a cliffhanger.
The first half of the fifth season of Breaking Bad (****½) is the show at its most stretched-out, but it mostly avoids problems by coming back strong after every weaker moment with a powerfully-written scene or piece of dialogue. Events build to a memorable finale which sets things up for the conclusion. It is available now
as part of the Breaking Bad Complete Collection in the UK (DVD, Blu-Ray) and USA (DVD, Blu-Ray).
Harve Bennett, a veteran Hollywood scriptwriter and producer, has passed away at the age of 84. He had been suffering from oral cancer for a number of years. Bennett had a long and storied history in genre TV and film, but he is best known for his work on the Star Trek movies, with many crediting him for saving the franchise from obscurity after the troubled release of Star Trek: The Motion Picture in 1979.
Leonard Nimoy and Harve Bennett
Born in 1930, Bennett worked in radio before a brief stint in the US Army and then joining the nascent film and television business in Hollywood. He worked through the corporate system, becoming Vice President of Programming at ABC, before switching to a more creative career. He developed The Mod Squad with legendary Hollywood producer Aaron Spelling and produced it from 1968 to 1973. He then teamed up with Kenneth Johnson to produce The Six Million Dollar Man (1973-78) and its spin-off, The Bionic Woman (1976-78). Bennett gained an impressive reputation for making quality work from very small budgets.
In 1980 Bennett was called for a meeting at Paramount. Paramount had concluded that they had dodged a bullet with Star Trek: The Motion Picture, produced for a then-monstrous budget of $45 million (almost five times the budget of the original Star Wars and twice that of The Empire Strikes Back, for comparison), but which had made almost $140 million at the box office. With the film's critical reception mixed, Paramount didn't want to take a similar risk with the sequel and asked Bennett if he could make a more exciting, faster-paced and shorter film for less money. Bennett responded that he could make five films for The Motion Picture's budget. With a budget just one-quarter that of The Motion Picture, Bennett set about making the new film.
Only vaguely familiar with the original series, he sat down and watched all 79 episodes over several days. He made special note of the first season episode Space Seed for its charismatic villain, Khan, played by Ricardo Montalban, and decided that he would make for a memorable enemy in the new film. With a short production schedule looming and no final script in place, Bennett called on an up-and-coming writer and producer, Nicholas Meyer, to assist. Meyer was assigned as director and performed a rewrite of the draft into a final shooting script in just twelve days, impressing both Bennett and the entire cast, who were concerned about the nightmarish constant rewrites from the original film. The resulting film, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), made more than seven times its budget back at the cinema, was a huge critical success and ensured that the franchise would continue.
Bennett returned as producer and writer for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), co-wrote Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) with Meyer and produced Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989). Bennett was developing ideas for a prequel film set at Starfleet Academy with a young Kirk and Spock when Paramount decided to do a "last hurrah" with the original cast instead. Bennett was offered the writing and producing gig, but turned it down in favour of Nicholas Meyer. Although Paramount offered Bennett the chance to make the prequel film after Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), Bennett turned them down and left Paramount. He subsequently created and produced the moderately successful SF TV series Time Trax (1993-95). Bennett's basic concepts of a prequel film eventually saw the light of day, in a somewhat different form, in J.J. Abrams's 2009 reboot movie.
Harve Bennett's impact on the Star Trek franchise cannot be underestimated: after The Motion Picture almost sunk it, his ingenious spending plans allowed the franchise to continue at a reduced cost. The films revived interest in the franchise and led to the creation of Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987-94) and its three spin-off series. Without Bennett and the work of his collaborators Nicholas Meyer and the late Leonard Nimoy (who directed Star Trek III and IV, as well as working on the scripts for III, IV and VI), it is questionable if the franchise would have gotten past those first couple of films.
Ridley Scott's production company is developing a film based on the Flashman novels by George Macdonald Fraser.
Dominic West casually putting it out there that he'd be down for this.
Fraser published twelve Flashman books in his lifetime, before his death in 2008. The books chronicle the military career of the fictional Harry Flashman. Flashman is a minor character in Thomas Hughes's 1856 novel John Brown's School Days, a noted bully and coward expelled from Rugby School for drunkenness, and Fraser decided it would be amusing to see what happened to him next. The novels begin in 1839 with the 17-year-old Flashman joining the British Army and getting caught up in the disastrous events of the First Afghan War, which ended with the British forces being routed from Kabul and being completely destroyed apart from a single survivor who made it back to friendly lines (and nine soldiers taken prisoner). Fraser made Flashman a second survivor and explained his lack of recognition due to the fact he was behind enemy lines in native dress, thanks to a supreme facility for learning foreign languages quickly (which comes in handy many times in later books).
Fraser's genius was making Flashman an anti-hero, a protagonist whose first reaction to danger is to run away, hide, or, reluctantly, attempt some kind of sneaky ambush or use overwhelming firepower to make up for his own lack of personal courage. Flashman is also a lecher and a womaniser, unafraid to claim credit for others' failings and to make full use of his plaudits and unearned reputation for his own advancement. As the books continue, Flashman finds his reputation backfiring on him as he is constantly ordered to the most dangerous and lethal places in the world to serve the ends of the British Empire. As well as a commissioned soldier and officer, Flashman is employed as a diplomat, and an agent provocateur. Flashman also, by sheer reluctant experience, eventually ends up as a fairly capable military commander and is not unskilled in personal combat, even if his cowardly instincts never entirely desert him.
The books range over most of the major British military entanglements of the 19th Century, including the Crimean War, the Indian Mutiny and the Taiping Rebellion. As Flashman is a lord and noble in his own right, his own personal adventures see him winding up in various foreign conflicts as well, including recurring visits to the United States. Sadly, Fraser never wrote the story of Flashman's involvement in the American Civil War, during which Flashman apparently fought on both sides and become a personal contact of Abraham Lincoln, with whom he shared a mutual dislike. This adventure is alluded to frequently in the other books.
Although not SFF in themselves, the Flashman novels have been hugely influential in the genre. Sandy Mitchell's splendid Ciaphas Cain series of novels depict the adventures of a very Flashman-esque Imperial Commissar in the Warhammer 40,000 science fantasy universe, whilst Mark Lawrence's current Red Queen's War trilogy features Jalan Kendeth, a protagonist cut from the Flashman mould. George R.R. Martin is a huge Flashman fan and elements of Flashman's character can be found in several Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones figures, most notably Tyrion Lannister. Outside of SFF, Rik Mayall's memorable character Lord Flasheart from the Blackadder TV series appears to be based on Flashman's public persona (the brave braggart, unstoppable warrior and unrelenting lech), although Blackadder himself is closer to Flashman's true character.
Ridley Scott's plans for the character are unclear, as one of the strengths of the character is that you can drop in on him at any time in his life. Actor Dominic West (The Wire, The Hour) is a huge Flashman fan and has made appearances as the character, so if they're aiming for the middle-aged Flashman he would seem to be the logical choice.
