The Directors Chair

The slew has started, but where do I begin? I think I’ll start in reverse order of how I watched them. Once again I leve you with the warning.

THESE SHOWS ARE YET TO DEBUT IN THE UNITED KINGDOM. DO NOT READ THESE POSTS UNLESS YOU’VE SEEN THEM OR WANT TO BE SPOILED! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Desperate Housewives started with a recap on what happened five years ago as Susan gave birth to her son, it parrelled her life with that of another who she shared a hospital with and had many other close encounters with without actually meeting her, until one fateful night where she and Mike crashed into this other womans car, killing both her and her daughter. This leaves Susan devestated and we find out later that she left Mike because she can’t come to terms with what she’s done and Mike can’t keep having the same arguement with her over and over. But it’s not all bad for Susan, she is getting some loving from her painter who wants more from her but Susan doesn’t think she deserves it. It also looks like she still has feeling for Mike.

What about the rest of Wisteria Lane? Gabby is concerned she’s losing her looks, looking after two children and a blind husband. Wanita is only four yet incredibly overweight, Gabby doesn’t want her to become obese so makes her chase after the car to get home. Lynette is same old same old, her and Tom still are having trouble with the kids, we only saw the twins in this episode but they’re a right pair of tearaways. Tom is more concerned over his car but with some words from his wife he seems to come good in the end. I wonder how this one will play out, much like every other season before where the kids end up getting the parents into trouble no doubt.

Bree has become a cookbook author with Andrew as her PA and Katherine is one of her chefs. It seems as though their friendship is going to get strained again as Bree is using Katherines recipies and not crediting her. We also find out that Danielle has taken baby Benjamin back from Bree, she also has got married to a lawyer and dares her mother to come for the child. Orson makes it blatantly obvious to us all that cooking has since become Bree’s “baby”. Surely we can’t see another enemies turned friends between Bree and Katherine, angry over getting shunned who goes soft when she learns of Bree’s family troubles?

Look who’s back and in her old house to boot! Edie Britt is back but with her new husband Dave! Dave was desperate to get to Wisteria Lane and is more determined to have Edie get back on with everyone, he says it’ll make things “easier”. We learn that Dave actually has a history of anger management and isn’t a danger to himself, just others. He tells his doctor that he’s in the right place and not to worry, but who can Dave be looking to get revenge on? Edie? None of the girls seemed to recognise Dave when they met him, but Katherine wasn’t there and Carlos can’t see him so they look like the likely candidates at the moment.

Overall a good start to the season but predictable? We’ll see how it goes over the next few weeks however it seems to have been a success as it garnered 18.4 million viewers, although that is down 7% from season four’s premier. Early reports are hailing the premier as a return to form for Mark Cherry and co.

Y2Rating: 8/10

I am a huge Family Guy fan but even I can see that the last season or two has dipped in quality, thankfully the premier episode of this season had me in stitches! It’s a Brian centric as he looks to get over his last girlfriend and find another lover. Taking advice from Stewie of all people, Brian decides to take it slow, even though he’s getting some pretty strong signals from Caroline. It proves to be a mistake as the night he finally decides to do it he finds Caroline getting it on with Cleveland! This inspires Stewie and Brian to get Lloretta to ask for Cleveland back but he refuses only to find Caroline sleeping with Quagmire! I think this is all building up to the Family Guy spin-off that focuses on Cleveland, he needs a reason to leave Quahog and perhaps he can finally decide that now is the time to do it.

Some genuinly funny moments in this episode, starting off with Brian dressed as Snoopy for a fancy dress party and doing the Snoopy dance, on his date with Caroline and showing that he is still a dog at heart by killing a rabbit and licking ice cream from his nose. There is also the part where Stewie and Brian go to Lloretta and have a discussion over weather or not Lloretta is part of the main cast who can understand Stewie or if she just thinks he’s taking baby.

I’m keen to see more and hope they can keep this sort of level of show up. Only 9.2 million people tuned in for Family Guy, a drop of 15% from last year, but I’m sure they can claw those viewers back if they can provide the material.

Y2Rating: 7/10

American Dad has always

I happened to stumble upon what became the most interesting piece of news I read over the weekend by simply fiddling with my RSS feeds. It turns out the Ridley Scott is working on a new Robin Hood flick with a twist, instead of being the hero, Hood will be the bad guy and The Sheriff of Nottingham is going to be the hero. But that’s not the interesting bit, it is currently rumoured that Russell Crowe is scheduled to play both Robin and The Sheriff in dual roles! Whilst I have no doubt that Crowe could play either role well, I don’t understand why they want him to play both. How would this work? Looking back over other films where the lead actor has spawned multiple roles, such as Austin Powers’ Mike Myers, The Nutty Professor’s Eddie Murphy…well just Eddie Murphy in general, they don’t seem to work out so well. Who knows? This is just a rumour that is doing the rounds, perhaps it’ll never come to fruition, perhaps it’ll work well. Time will tell. The film, titled ‘Nottingham’ is due for release in November 2009.

Update: Whilst looking for that release date I have read that the in the film the Sheriff and Robin Hood are one in the same person. That is an interesting take on the franchise and it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out.

In some tragic news, Paul Newman passed away yesterday. The actor that I knew best from ‘The Color of Money’ will be greatly missed and leaves behind an impressive resume for future film generations to cherish. Our thoughts are with his family and loved ones.

Originally I was going to talk about Thor here, however since I’m a lazy so and so and managed to procrastinate on this post yesterday some more news has been released and so I’m going to talk about it all at once.

We shall still start with Thor which yesterday was announced had a new director, none other than British thespian and Shakespeare legend Kenneth Branagh. This is an interesting move isn’t it? There are rumours, (well you can’t call them rumours really can you?) that this will mainly be set is Asgard and deal with a teenage Thor who has to grow into his powers. Branaghs grasp of history and the English language should really help this title and give it some character.

Thor has also been set a release date, it’s due to be released on July 16th, 2010. But it’s not the only film that has a release date, lets look over Marvel’s release calendar. There’s Captain America due for release on May 5th, 2011, Iron Man 2 on May 7th, 2010 and the Avengers movie on July 16th, 2011.
But what about the rest of the cast of The Avengers? Ant-Man and the Wasp? Whilst they don’t want to over-do the cast list which is already bulging with Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man and Thor, surely they’ll want some T&A from the Wasp to grace the screen, no?

Marvel aren’t the only ones with their fingers in the pot, The Green Lantern has finally been green-lit, without a cast or a director but shooting is pencilled in for Spring 2009 for a 2010 release. What are your thoughts on who should sign onto this project?

Who said superhero movies would be the death of cinema?

It’s that time of year again, if we thought last week was heavy with the number of American TV shows that premiered or made their debut, then this week will blow us away. Last night season 5′s premier of Desperate Housewives will no doubt steal the show but it has to content with Family Guy, American Dad, The Office and My Name Is Earl.

I am still way behind in my catchups, I’ve not seen any of My Name Is Earl seasons 2 or 3, nor season 4 of The Office – I know! I’m going to be catching up this week though, don’t worry and as soon as I am you can expect episode reports from me right here!

However I am up to date with Desperate Housewives and am really looking forward to catching the latest episode tonight! There has been a lot of talk about Eva Longoria during the break and how she could be pregnant, although those rumours were trounced when it was made clear she’s just putting on weight for the role. This would make sense to fit in with the story, afterall five years have passed, Gabby now has kids, her husband (presumably) is still blind, she can let her appearance go a little. I was pretty shocked by the ending to the last season, honestly, who would believe Mike and Susan split up after having a baby? It will also be interesting to see Lynette’s kids all grown up…maybe it’s me, maybe I’m just getting old and can’t judge the ages of kids anymore, but only five years have past, I thought the twins were only like ten, that makes them fifteen now…can you drive at fifteen? Anyway, I’m sure everything will be explained.

New Heroes to look forward to tomorrow, after not receiving any comments or criticism after my last post you can damn well be sure I’ll be doing another episode review tomorrow. Damn I’m excited.

It’s this time of year that bleeds our wallet dry with the amount of Christmas releases in the game and movie market, but with television like this, should we worry?

Now I know what you’re thinking…we’ve covered this topic before and you’ve made your opinions on sequels and threequels predominatly clear, please don’t bore us again. Well I’m not going to moan again about the state of modern cinema but turn your attention to this trifecta of news.

Not satisfied with bringing you triple bills of movies, Disney Studios’ chairman, Dick Cook, has announced at a massive event they staged in downtown LA yesterday the upcoming plans for the studio over the upcoming years and at the centre of it all was Hollywoods hottest talent at the moment, Johnny Depp. The theme to the power of three over spilled from movies to actors as it was announced that Mr. Depp would feature in three of Disney Studios upcoming features.

Depp will play The Mad Hatter in his good friend Tim Burton’s adaptation of Alice In Wonderland, which also features Little Britain’s Matt Lucas as Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dee. He will also reprise the role of Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean 4 (what we can only assume will be subtitled ‘The Fountain of Youth’) and most surprisingly of all he will also play Tonto in the upcoming movie version of The Lone Ranger.

We weren’t really surprised by the first two items as you can pretty much guaranteea Burton flick will have Depp in it somewhere, somehow. The third Pirates hinted at another and with the money the franchise has made it seems stupid not to do it. Depp even has gone on record saying he loves the character and if the story is right, he’ll return. We can only hope we get a slight reboot, no more Keira Knightly or Orlando Bloom, lets have Jack on his own adventure shall we? But playing Tonto? No one saw that coming! There haven’t been any announcements over who will play the lead, but if Depp is the support you can only imagine they’ll have a legend to play the Ranger, hopefully not The Rock who seems to have appeared in all the latest Disney movies.

What are your thoughts? Are we going to be Depped out? Is Pirates 4 a ridiculous idea? Is casting Depp as Tonto going to cause a racial nightmare? We’ll find out. More as it happens.

Tim Burtons Alice In Wonderland is targeted for a release in 2010.

So I said I’d be back with some movie related news and so here I am. Nothing too dramatic has happened this weekend which means this post is not only short on meat and gravy, but just going to generally be short.

I’ll start off with the least interesting thing in my mind. The Alien v Predator films could be all but over. Forgetting the fact that they were terrible in the first place the second ended with news of a weapon and plans to invade one of the homeworld planets of these creatures. If that wasn’t an obvious set up for a third in the franchise then paint me green. Although according to bloody-disgusting.com Producer John Davies has said “I think we’ve logically done what we could’ve done with the two AVP movies. But I think there’s something to go back to with Predator…”

This comes after Californian Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has said that after his political career is over, and providing he doesn’t run for senate, he wouldn’t mind doing a movie or two again. He has also gone on to say “Predator was the first movie I was ever involved with, so it’s always going to have a really soft spot in my heart.” So my theory is, if Arnie is up for it, expect another Predator movie, if he’s not, expect AvP3.

Moving swiftly on, news has broken this morning that after the success of Legally Blonde: The Musical, Broadway is about to get a bit more gritty as American Psycho looks to get musical. This is just a joke, there are plenty of other decent subject matter out there, why oh dear God why, are we so deft of ideas that we have to turn things to musicals. Ridiculous. Don’t expect Christian Bale to reprise his role.

There has been ongoing debate at the EmpireOnline forums about Video Game Movies, can they work, why don’t they and should they make any more? This writer enjoyed Mortal Kombat and the original Resident Evil, they weren’t perfect by any step of the mark but what seems to have most people excited is the prospect of a Bioshock movie that is being directed by Pirates of the Caribbean man Gore Verbinski. I think the problem most people have is that the games, although have a cracking story, are more about the gameplay elements and puzzle solving etc. This will never transfer well to the big screen and so movie companies have to strip the story down to its barebones and often build around it adding things to fill out the plot. Sometimes this isn’t needed but fans of the game won’t enjoy a movie with bits that aren’t faithful to the game. Personally with a games like Bioshock,

WARNING. THERE WILL UNDOUBTEDLY BE SPOILERS

It’s that time of year again, Autumn, or “Fall” as my American friends would say. We’ve had the “summer blockbusters” at the cinema and are itching (in the case of The Dark Knight) for the DVD releases this winter, but Fall/Autumn is the time of the home entertainment. Not only is the game market flooded with games, possibly a little too early to wait for Christmas, the likes of Fifa 09, Pro Evo 09, NBA 09, Spider-Man Web of Shadows, Brothers In Arms Hells Highway, Saint’s Row 2, Fracture, Lego Batman, Fable II and so many more, but it’s also the time of year when our beloved TV shows start to air again. (Well, all but one thanks to Lost hanging on for a “Spring” release).

Some of the TV shows that have either returned this week or are returning next week include, Boston Legal, Desperate Housewives, Two & A Half Men, American Dad, Family Guy and Heroes! It’s Heroes that has me the most excited. So the second season of this show was a bit of a flop, coming off a huge and award winning first season, there were high expectations on the second and it just didn’t deliver. It wasn’t helped by the writers strike which cut the season short, but the flaws cannot be blamed on that alone. The question remains that after such a poor second outing, why is there so much hype about the third season? Are we building up only to let ourselves down again?

No, I disagree. From what I’ve heard about the season premier and the latest comments coming out of the States we have every reason to be wetting ourselves with anticipation over the third season. Ok, considering the fact that the damn American’s have already had the pleasure of seeing it and us Brits get the shaft once again as we wait until October before it’s delivered, some people have already had the satisfaction of viewing so I can’t really claim that we need to be excited…but we shall be.

You can fully expect a complete Fall Season run down of all the season premiers and episode reports…maybe…right here, at Y2Neil.com!

Talking of anticipation, I’m getting closing to flipping another number. This year I’ve asked for support from my family and friends to help feed my addiction. That’s not usually a good thing but the way I see it is at the moment I’m craving and on the cusp of doing something radical and stupid. If I can get the support from my family and friends to help feed my habit, then the risk of me doing something myself is greatly reduced. I’m talking of course of Blu-Ray. I’m so itching for a BD Player and I’ve got my eye on one. I don’t expect anyone to buy it for me for my birthday (but if any of you lovely readers want to, feel free) which is why I’ve asked for support, instead of presents or vouchers, how about a cash donation which in turn I’ll use to put towards the player and finally I can live in the now with the High Definition in front of me. More on that when it happens. Needless to say I’m on a DVD embargo until I get HD! I don’t plan on upgrading my current collection (which stands at 711 strong) apart from a few titles (Spider-Man for example), so it seems silly to purchase titles on regular definition when HD is only a stonesthrow away…

Well my time is drawing near for today. Hopefully I’ll be back tomorrow (or at least by the end of the week) with my take on all the latest Hollywood developments. Until then…stay classy!

It really is. I’m not really someone who is out to bad mouth other people but I feel a certain need to vent frustrations. For the past four months I have been trying to transfer my domain name (www.y2neil.com) from Lycos over to Dreamhost. Not a hard task by any means. It entails being sent a transfer out code from your current registar and then you give that to your new one who then take the domain. The whole process is supposed to take about seven to ten working days.

Not this transfer. Lycos supplied me with several dodgy transfer out codes that were instantly rejected by Dreamhost. I contacted Lycos over and over again asking them to sort this problem and each time they either gave me another dodgy transfer code that failed and then blamed me for inputting it wrong or they told me my query was on the “critical” list and that it’d be dealt with as soon as possible. I was helpless during this entire process.

But today, after four months of arguing and failures I have finally liberated Y2Neil from the evil clutches of Lycos and am free to bathe in the glowing light of Dreamhost. What’s the big deal? Surely all hosts are the same? You’re wrong. Dreamhost offer me so much more, have been so friendly, answering my emails almost immediatly and the features they are giving me are incredible. Look out for these on the site as time goes on, finally I’ll have full control over my shop!

Talking of being free from the Dark Side, things have gone a bit Skywalker lately with me. I’m currently in a Star Wars mood and it’s all thanks to The Force Unleashed being released on all major next-gen platforms today. I’m looking forward to using the dark side of the force to crush some Stormtroopers into X-Wings. C’mon!

It’s also a bit Star Wars heavy because last Sunday I watched that “Bring Back Star Wars” with the wannabe wookie Justin Lee Collins. I’m sure you all saw it, basically they have ten days to reunite members of certain franchises, in this case Star Wars, and bring them together in a formal party held in London.

One of the problems I had with this was that it was so obviously staged. For example, they had ten days in which to do this, they spent days one to three in LA, day four in London and Bristol, day five in New York. Now you’re telling me they made those sorts of flights? No way. Secondly, when getting hold of Warwick Davies they at first couldn’t go near his house because of all the security camera and he had been tipped off, so they jump over his neighbours wall and then just walk in through his back door and then have a naked interview in the jacuzzi.

They didn’t really do very well in getting everyone there, probably didn’t help they held it in London which would have meant the bigger names flying over but they didn’t even really try with Harrison Ford and Mark Hamil wanted $50,000 to do an interview. For a guy who says he wants nothing to do with Star Wars he sure as hell will make as much money as he can from it.

Another thing I’ve learnt is that the prequel trilogy is to be re-released with some shiny new packaging in time for Christmas. This is essentially the same three discs, just all put together for the first time. Who buys this? I’m a fan of Star Wars but c’mon, this is just silly.

I’ll get back to movie news after the weekend, I’ve got a busy one lined up, full of cramming, rocking and designing. I’ll be back next week with information on how I got on and with whatever is new in the world. Until then, keep it real.

Original Air Date: 12 September 2008

I haven’t blogged in a while, mainly because I’ve not felt there has been anything worthwhile to moan about but I didn’t want to leave it too long in case you forget about me. And I wouldn’t want that.

I suppose the biggest news to come out lately is that Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire have both signed on to film Spiderman 4 and 5. The rumour is that both films will be shot back to back so we can expect one villian to be in both movies and the fourth to leave us on tenterhooks! The latest arguments are on who is going to be the bad guy and Empire have gone and put up a list of just who it could be (omitting Carnage for unknown reasons but ones that sparked debate).

The Lizard is obviously the main choice of villain, but again debate has been risen over how that will make the movie a CGI mess and isn’t believable enough. Excuse me? Is a giant octopus or space goo really believable? Again, I really don’t have a preference…ok, yes I do, I want Venom back and I’ll explain again how later…movies today are all about the CGI, there have been great leaps in the technology and I don’t think that by having The Lizard as the villain you’re creating a CGI mess. It’ll be interesting if they do choose that option as we know how much Raimi hates hiding faces behind masks.

Now, my choice of baddie is Venom. Yes, Eddie Brock was vaporised at the end of the last movie but there is still some symbiote left and there could easily have been some that escaped the blast. This symbiote just needs to feed on some unsuspecting sap to gain some more power and turn itself back into the beast we know and love. When confronted by Spidey he tries to talk Eddie out, believing him to still be alive only for the symbiote to reply “there is no Eddie, only Venom”, a classic line from the comic/cartoon series. If you don’t want the symbiote to be hanging around on its own then Empire made a good point in that the Eddie Brock who was the first Venom was Edward Brock Jr. Why not have the symbiote track down Edward Brock Snr who is tricked into thinking Spidey killed his son. (Well, ok, he did, but he tried to save him).

As for the back to back…yes, I’m all for this, I already think Tobey is getting too old to be playing the character so get the most films out of him while you can! Good move. As for the plot line itself, well I think we need to have the Black Cat get involved. I had read that supposed script that was leaked on the net a while back which started with Peter and Mary-Jane getting married. Bad decision. Get the Black Cat in, or get a more real love triangle between Peter, Mary-Jane and Gwen Stacey that ends in either the death of MJ or the death of Gwen…the latter has obviously been done in the comics so that’d be the more logical choice, but before that Peter and MJ would have to split up. And keep them split until the very end of the fifth movie when they get back together.

Anyway, enough Spidey talk, I’m sure you’re sick of it all. Something else that caught my eye this week was the debate that raged over a photo of The Governator on the set of Terminator 4. People again are torn, is this a good thing, is this a bad thing? I put it to you that perhaps he’s not even in the film? Perhaps he was just visiting the set of the franchise he’d been a part of for God knows how long? That or considering Arnie is The Terminator they have to have his likeness and or voice involved in the apocalypse of Judgement Day otherwise what they send back, wouldn’t match.

This weekend I have no immediate plans. I think I shall indulge myself in some movies that have yet to be determined. Next Wednesday I shall go see Pineapple Express at the cinema and tonight I think I’ll get back onto Call of Duty 4, so if you see me online, say hello. I actually had a crack on CoD4 last night after about a six month hiatus and the one thing I’ve learnt is that people don’t get worse. The game has been out for the best part of a year and I’ve never improved at it, everyone I fought against seems to be able to kill me with one shot and my aim is all over the place. If that’s not an incentive to get online and challenge me to a game, I don’t know what is.

Update coming next week, until then! Keep it real readers!

The internet obviously has spoken with people pulling every which way on as to who the bad guy will be, what a bad choice it was to shoot them back to back, to bring back Tobey etc, etc. Personally I’m ecstatic they’re making more, being the Spider-Fan I am, everyone already knows my views on casting, whilst I do enjoy Tobey’s work he just isn’t charismatic enough now he’s an older spider and one that’s supposed to be full of wit.

Original Air Date: 27 August 2008

Recently, over at the Empire forums, I’ve found myself repeating the same message over and over again so I thought I’d stop, take a minute and try to analyze it deeper. The results have upset me, made me think about who I am. Before you continue reading, you have to ask yourself the question. Are you ready?