Created By Matt Groening
Starring Billy West, Katey Sagal, John DiMaggio, Tress MacNeille and Maurice LaMarche

When a beloved cult TV series gets cancelled before its time (which is pretty much a guarantee over at Fox TV/FX), fans tend to go through the usual stages of loss and grief:

1. Denial (“I don’t believe it. It’ll be back at midseason, I’m sure of it! It must be a mix-up – maybe they just meant to axe Jersey Shore instead?”)
2. Anger (“They cancelled Firefly!? It’s time to strap C4 to our chests and suicide bomb Fox Studios! Just make sure there’s enough of us left alive to pee on the ashes!”)
3. Bargaining (“Halve the budget! Or just do another, shorter season before you end it?! I’ll sell my left kidney to help fund new episodes! And if we bombard the studio with petitions and mail gherkins to NBC – because the lead character ate a gherkin in the background of an episode once – they’ll be sure to realise their mistake and bring it back!”)
4. Depression (“I just can’t see the point in waking up to a world that doesn’t have a second season of The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr…”)

The only stage fans never seem to reach is acceptance; people still cling to the hope that their favourite short-lived shows will be brought back from the dead and better than ever, never entertaining the notion that the returning product might not be as great as they remember, or that the writers might’ve lost the show’s mojo in their time away. I’m as guilty as anyone: I’d kill Jedward for another season of Veronica Mars or Terriers (Though I’d probably kill Jedward for a half-eaten mayonnaise sandwich, and I vomit at the sight of mayo). But while there are exceptions – like the 2011 revival of Beavis & Butt-head, which is smarter and funnier than it’s ever been – shows brought back from the dead don’t often recapture the giddy heights that made you adiore the series to begin with.
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After its untimely cancellation by Fox in 2002 at the heady peak of its quality, the renewal of Futurama by Comedy Central five years later seemed like proof that there certainly was some heavenly being watching over us and wanting us to bask in the glowing light of phenomenal TV entertainment. The subsequent series of lacklustre direct-to-DVD movies should’ve been enough to give any fan of the show pause, though. Futurama’s fifth season finally saw the show return to its 30 minute episodic roots last year, but the results are less than spectacular, and while there’s a few great episodes that come damn close to the show’s former greatness, as a whole it’s the series’ weakest season yet by a wide margin.

The show’s writers seem to have lost their previously impeccable skill for intelligent, timeless, rapid-fire comedy in the years since the show’s cancellation, and Futurama’s fifth season often relies on remarkably lazy gags. Pop culture references are hardly new for Futurama, but the writers used to side-step topical humour which would date the show, careful to frame 20th Century jokes through the eyes of fish-out-of-water Fry. In revived Futurama, characters born in the 30th Century throw out references to CSI Miami and The Boondocks, and already-dated and unfunny topical satire becomes the focus of episodes, with ‘Attack of the Killer App’ poking fun at iPhones, Twitter and featuring a giant, talking boil named Susan Boil.
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CSI gags were already worn transparently thin years ago and making fun of Susan Boyle is like hitting low hanging fruit where Futurama usually aspires to a much higher, smarter, wittier level of humour, and Killer App manages to be the worst episode the show has ever had. That general laziness is felt in later episodes, too. Christmas special ‘The Futurama Holiday Spectacular’ rehashes far too much of past episodes – Fry feels distant and disconnected at Christmas, only to have Robot Santa attack Planet Express, and a return to the planet of the deadly space bees, for instance – with a few clunky musical sequences, awkward pacing and without much of the fun of past ‘What If?’ anthology episodes.

Thankfully, it’s not all bad, and there are a few standout episodes that almost manage to rival the quality of Futurama in its prime. ‘Lethal Inspection’ manages to capture the heart and pathos of classic episodes like ‘Jurassic Bark’ and ‘Leela’s Homeworld’, Bender-centric body-swapping opus ‘The Prisoner of Benda’ nails the kooky, clever and hilarious sci-fi tone that fuels the show’s best episodes, and ‘The Late Philip J. Fry’ – in which Fry, Bender and The Professor test out a time machine that only goes forwards – combines an intelligent and hilarious story with character-driven emotional payoffs.
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Sady, season five is Futurama’s most wildly uneven yet, with some of the series’ worst episodes to date. Though there’s a trio of excellent adventures to balance it out, the rest manage to be just decent enough, with a laugh-out-loud moment or two per episode, and that’s a far cry from the usual ‘A’-grade-laugh-a-minute writing of the show’s heyday. Still, the couple of duds aside, it’s an entertaining enough selection of episodes, and worth it just for ‘Lethal Inspection’, ‘The Prisoner of Benda’ and ‘The Late Philip J. Fry’, which give fans a blight glimmer of hope that the series will hopefully find its footing again and recapture the hilarity that it once delivered effortlessly.
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Futurama: Season 5 is the series’ first to be released in high-def Blu-ray format, but if you’ve yet to buy a player, the DVD set is an incredibly attractive compromise, with a great visual transfer and a generous selection of special features.

• Audio Commentaries w/ Cast & Crew on all 13 Episodes
• Deleted Scenes (10 mins, 20 secs)
• Behind The Fungus: Makin’ a Hit Song – Billy West Hits the Studio to Record ‘Shut Up And Love Me’ (4 mins, 49 secs)
• Previously on Futurama: Unseen Intros from the Feature-Length Movies (1 min, 22 secs)
• The Adventures of Delivery-Boy Man: An Original Video Comic Book Scribbled and Performed by Philip J. Fry (w/ Optional Commentary)
• Bend it Like Bender: Bender’s First Best and Only Music Video (2 mins, 41 secs)
• The Prisoner of Benda Live Table Read (35 mins, 8 secs)

The ‘Prisoner of Benda’ table read, which offers up a live rehearsal for the episode, is a fun inclusion, but it’s strangely delivered as audio over storyboards. A proper behind-the-scenes recording of the actors doing their thing in the rehearsal room would’ve been better, but it’s a cool extra nonetheless. The deleted scenes and Fry’s goofy animated comic are entertaining, too, but the Bender’s best bits montage music video is a little pointless.

It’s the commentaries that’re the crown jewel of the set, though, as Matt Groening, David X. Cohen and a revolving door selection of the voice cast and crew jump in for a jovial chat about each episode. Like past Futurama tracks, or those from The Simpsons DVDs, Groening & Co. have a tonne to say and have a lot of fun doing it, which makes for pretty damn infectious fun and some incredibly enjoyable commentaries.

The Season:

The DVD:

Futurama: Season 5 is out on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK now.
Click here to order the DVD from Amazon.co.uk.

Directed By Lee Tamahori
Starring Dominic Cooper, Ludivine Sagnier, Raad Rawi, Philip Quast and Mimoun Oaïssa

Loosely based on a true story, The Devil’s Double tells the story of Latif Yahia (Dominic Cooper), a respectable Iraqi soldier from a noble family who has the questionable honour of being a dead ringer for Saddam Hussein’s despicable, entitled son Uday (Cooper again). Imprisoned, tortured and his family’s life threatened, Latif is coerced into becoming Uday’s decoy body double – an increasingly dangerous job as Saddam’s playboy heir’s life of vicious debauchery leaves innocent victims in his wake and earns him plenty of enemies. But being a bullet magnet for assassination attempts seem like a cakewalk in comparison to noble soldier Latif’s life spent shackled to insane Uday, whose villainous impulses grow by the day and go completely unchecked by the country’s police and government, who turn a blind eye to the rapes and murders that he commits daily.

The story of a morally decent man forced to stand by powerless as an evil dictator destroys lives for his own sordid enjoyment, The Devil’s Double sees director Lee Tamahori and writer Michael Thomas tweak the actual story of Latif Yahia and Uday Hussein for the screen, even toning down and omitting many of the modern historical monster’s more gruesome atrocities, but the resulting movie is more undercooked potboiler thriller than the gritty, gripping character study it should be.
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Latif seethes and looks on with helpless contempt as Uday, aided by his bodyguards, abducts schoolgirls from the street to rape and drug them, dumping their bodies in the desert, or raping a young bride at her own wedding. He eventually summons the courage to stand up to Saddam’s evil offspring, plotting his escape and revenge, but while the film makes for a solid thriller, the plot spends more time dwelling on Uday’s life of stylish, shocking and brutal excess than it does getting under the skin of either character.

As a man of unshakable integrity, there’s little complexity to Latif, who’s never tempted or swayed by the immoral spoils at his fingertips, while we never see Uday as anything more than a monstrous sociopath. It’s ultimately a gangster movie without the benefit of seeing the rise and fall of its villainous protagonist. That’s not an entirely terrible compromise, and The Devil’s Double still milks a lot of tension, style and shocks from volatile Uday’s ’80s middle-eastern Tony Montana lifestyle, and it’s a thoroughly entertaining story from start to finish. But Tamahori and Thomas expend so much effort on trying to make the story fit into a flashy Hollywood box that they miss out on a potentially much more potent, substantial film. A formulaic, go-nowhere forbidden fruit romance subplot between Latif and Uday’s favourite moll only bogs the film down further.
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But while the script is never as deep or involving as it could be, the acting is phenomenal, and only makes the screenplay’s short thrift of character much easier to overlook. In a blistering dual performance, Dominic Cooper plays both Latif and Uday, and it’s a two-for-one role that shines new light on the hidden talents of an actor largely relagated to cocky romantic interests previously. His portrayal of Uday is cut from the Joe Pesci in Goodfellas cloth – combustible, unpredictable and chillingly compelling – while he instills the comparatively less interesting Latif with enough quiet nuance to make him a solid moral anchor for the film and a stark contrast to his villainous counterpart. Aside from one short scene in which a CG copy of Cooper’s face distractingly hangs loosely and disproportionately on a body double stand-in next to the real Cooper, the effective practical and digital effort that’s gone into the trick rarely calls attention to itself. But it’s Cooper who deserves the credit for quickly making you forget you’re not watching two separate people and sucking you into the story and its two distinct characters.

A stylish and sometimes shocking gangster movie filled with debaucherous ’80s excess, The Devil’s Double makes for an often tense and incredibly watchable thriller, and as an acting showreel for Dominic Cooper it’s incredible, but a slightly slapdash script fails to deliver the incisive character study that the story demands.
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• The Making Of
• Interview with Latif Yahia
• Interview with Dominic Cooper
• Production Design
• Make Up
• UK Premiere Highlights

The DVD comes with a generous amount of featurettes, but unfortunately they don’t extend beyond the usual promotional fluff. Clocking it at around 4 minutes each, the extras are sadly pretty shallow and simply cover the expected ‘everyone was great to work with’ spiel without offering any insight into the filmmaking process or the story that inspired the film – even the Latif Yahia interview focuses more on Tamahori and trivial on-set stuff rather than the man himself and his experiences. Still, it’s all better than a bare disc, and worth a quick look, while the AV transfer is excellent.

The Film:

The DVD:

The Devil’s Double is out on DVD and Blu-ray in the UK now.
Click here to order the DVD from Amazon.co.uk.

Directed By Ernie Barbarash
Starring Jean Claude Van Damme, Scott Adkins, Kevin Chapman, Ivan Kaye and Marija Karan

For a long while, Jean Claude Van Damme, Steven Seagal and their fellow action movie legends had become the punchline to an easy joke. As the climate of cinema changed and the general moviegoing public’s interest in seeing ageing martial artists starring in mindless action movies waned, Van Damme and his ilk became relegated to the wastelands of the direct-to-video market. Still stubbornly churning out increasingly tiresome (if stupidly fun) ’80s era action a decade and a half too late, their lack of range become all the more apparent as the action movie world evolved beyond them.

Van Damme and pals would eventually have the last laugh, though: Previously humourless Steven Seagal finally developed a self-aware sense of humour, poking fun at himself in corporate ads before inexplicably becoming a real-life sheriff’s deputy with a hit reality TV show; Sylvester Stallone proved that there was still life in his long-dormant action franchises, resurrecting John Rambo and Rocky Balboa with blockbuster success, following them up with hit ’80s throwback The Expendables, while The Muscles From Brussels quietly began stretching himself as a performer, finally gaining widespread critical acclaim for his revelatory performance in J.C.V.D.

Sadly, Assassination Games denotes a regressive step backwards for Van Damme, dropping him squarely back in the land of wafer thin plot, half-baked character and distinctly DTV production values, but strangely without any of the action that made even his lesser works worth wading through.
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Van Damme plays renowned assassin Vincent Brazil. He lives a Spartan existence, practising the violin and tending to his pet turtle in his minimal, but classically furnished pad when he’s not killing people for bagfuls of diamonds. Up-and-coming Brit action star Scott Adkins (Undisputed III: Redemption, The Tournament) plays rival hitman Roland Flint, who has spent the past several years in isolated retirement, caring for his wife after she was gang-raped and beaten into a coma. When corrupt Interpol agents release the imprisoned, sadistic criminal responsible in an attempt to lure Flint out of hiding, the job to bump off the kingpin gets double-booked and Brazil gets the assignment, too. The two killers team up, Brazil just in it for the pay, but Flint on a personal quest for revenge.

The big problem with Assassination Games is that in Van Damme and Adkins, it pairs up two of the most prominent movie martial artists of the last and the current generation and then has neither of them engage in any martial arts. There’s a sloppily edited blink-and-you’ll-miss-it punch-up between the two stars, and a quick scene of Adkins dispensing with a few warehouse guards, but those painfully brief moments aside, it’s an action movie with no action. That’d be easier to overlook if the film fully exploited the acting talent of Van Damme and crafted some genuine character material for him to play around with. But the film’s drama just coasts by on the charisma of Scott Adkins, lazily relying on borrowed clichés and recycled story from countless other movies (Van Damme’s the laconic, Leon-esque hitman who grows a heart after finding himself protecting a young girl, Adkins is the retired killer summoned out of hiding for one last job and the burly avenger out for blood after his wife is raped and beaten into a coma).
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Adkins is a great screen presence, but unfortunately isn’t afforded as interesting a character as that of Yuri Boyka, the role that put him on the action map in surprisingly excellent DTV films Undisputed 2 & 3. He’s not given much to do beyond growl at everyone, while Van Damme looks noticeably bored, and understandably so; it’s not until the last act that he’s finally given the chance to emote a little and stretch himself beyond the character’s weary, stoic foundations. Until then, the film spends far too much time languishing with underdeveloped, convoluted subplots barely propped up by sup-par supporting actors and overworn ideas. Both actors do the best they can with what little material they’re given, and the movie does admirably embrace the moral ambiguity of its characters in moments where other movies might cop out, but it’s all material we’ve seen done before and better in countless other hitman movies.

Scott Adkins is a charismatic and incredibly talented martial artist, and one whose star is steadily on the rise in a big way, while Jean Claude Van Damme is entering the most interesting phase of his career, having redefined himself as a genuinely gifted actor. Teaming the two up should be an easy home run, but Assassination Games is a step backwards for both stars, squandering their considerable talents with baffling regularity. It doesn’t give Van Damme anything resembling a worthy follow up to J.C.V.D. in terms of substantial character, but even those expecting a fun, mindless martial arts flick will be incredibly disappointed by the sheer lack of action to be found here.
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The DVD hits UK shelves courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and packs an attractive video and audio transfer with no problems at all.

The disc isn’t exactly overflowing with extras, though, and comes with only a selection of deleted scenes which add little beyond padding.

The Film:

The DVD:

Assassination Games is out on DVD in the UK now.
Click here to order the DVD from Amazon.co.uk.

To celebrate Warner Home Video’s DVD release of The Mentalist: The Complete Third Season on 10th October 2011, we have three copies of the set to give away to lucky readers.

Patrick Jane returns in the year’s most gripping crime drama. Follow everyone’s favourite ladies man as he continues to exert his unconventional crime solving technique on the California Bureau of Investigation in THE MENTALIST Season 3, out on DVD from 10th October 2011, courtesy of Warner Home Video.

Our super-suave protagonist, played by Golden Globe nominee Simon Baker (The Guardian, The Devil Wears Prada), has a remarkable track record for pinpointing the ‘perp’ by using his razor sharp skills of psychological observation and body language analysis. Jane is notorious for his blatant lack of protocol and his suspicious past as a quasi-famous psychic. No-nonsense CBI senior agent Teresa Lisbon (Robin Tunney – Prison Break, House) takes the heat from her boss, Chief Madeleine Hightower (Aunjanue Ellis– The Help), for Jane’s theatrics, but with a daily job load ranging from homicide to kidnapping, they must ultimately work together in order to crack the complex cases.

The CBI team includes agents Kimball Cho (Tim Kang – The Office, Rambo), Wayne Rigsby (Owain Yeoman – Midsummer Murders, Troy), and relative newcomer Grace Van Pelt (Amanda Righetti – Friday the 13th, Captain America). Though they know Jane is a loose cannon, they are often charmed by his uncanny ability to bring the guilty to justice.

Don’t miss the highly anticipated home entertainment release of one of the most engaging and intelligent police dramas on television; THE MENTALIST Season 3, available on DVD alongside a complete Seasons 1-3 Boxset from 10th October.

To be in with a chance of winning a copy of The Mentalist: The Complete Third Season on DVD, simply email us here and include the following:

1. Your full name and mailing address.
2. The answer to the following question: The Mentalist actress Robin Tunney was the lead in which ’90s teen witch movie?

(UK entrants only. One entry per household. Entrants must be over 15. Competition ends 17th October 2011.)

Created By Joss Whedon
Starring Kelly Albanese, Daniel Taylor, Natalie Lander, Julie O’Conner and Whitney Thompson

Reviving a show after its cancellation can be an incredibly risky proposition. Futurama should be a prime example of that, having followed up an increasingly perfect four season run and untimely demise with an unexpected revival which has been too often depressingly cringeworthy, building entire episodes around stale Susan Boyle jokes and already outdated pop culture gags in a future-set show that was formerly ingenious and timeless with its comedy. With rumours re-circling an Arrested Development renewal, as they do every year, “be careful what you wish for” is the watchphrase, as it can prove near impossible to recapture a beloved show’s initial magic long after its end, untimely or not.

Joss Whedon and a handful of Buffy The Vampire Slayer alumni writers took on that challenge in a different medium in 2007, reviving their fondly-remembered cult classic series for an eighth season, albeit in the form of a comic book. It’s not uncommon for TV shows to get tie-in novels and comics, but it is a rarity to find one with such huge involvement from the creator and writers of the series, and the comic book form affords a TV show a convenient escape from budget, casting problems and studio interference. Taking things a step further, 20th Century Fox have now translated the books into motion comic form – partially animated digital versions of each issue that fall somewhere between comic and cartoon. But while Buffy: Season Eight generally does a fine job at recapturing Whedon’s trademark wit and providing some incredibly fun, action-packed adventures with The Scooby Gang, it’s not without its considerable flaws, and the sloppy digital comic interpretation proves a far from ideal way to experience the show’s revival.
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Picking up about a year after the Season Seven finale and the apocalypse-diverting destruction of Sunnydale, Buffy and the gang are now living in a farmland compound in Scotland. After awakening the dormant power of thousands of potential worldwide slayers, Buffy is now leader of an army of considerably powerful female ass-kicking monster hunters, with Xander taking up role as Watcher and Willow as the group’s go-to mystic, her Wiccan powers stronger than ever. With hundreds of slayers in squads around the world, led by Rupert Giles, Andrew Wells and Robin Wood, the girls have caught the attention of an Initiative-style military sect and been tagged as a dangerous terrorist group. On top of that, a powerful masked adversary named ‘Twilight’ has made it his mission to destroy Buffy and the slayers.

I bought the first 15-20 issues of Buffy: Season Eight when the comics first hits shelves, but even though I read and enjoyed the first few issues the second I got them, the rest fell on the backburner, piling up each week as I planned to catch up when the season ended and just never got around to it. So I was curious to check out the motion comic to see what I’d been missing and how well it translated to screen. Split up into four story arcs of four issues apiece, with a few standalone issues inbetween, the DVD set collects the first 19 issues of Season 8 for your viewing pleasure. Unfortunately while the content of the comics has moments of brilliance and is generally a solid filler season, the jump from physical comic to digitally animated comic is a far from flattering one.
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Occasionally the animators seem overly intent on piling on animated visual flourishes at the cost of storytelling. The reveal that Dawn has become cursed and is now a towering giant is handled in the comic as a two-page wide-shot image of giant Dawn cramped in a barn, segmented into four vertical strips which follow the comparatively tiny Buffy’s movements around her; it’s simple, elegant and works as a great visual way to instantly establish Dawn’s new humongous predicament while carrying on her conversation with Buffy.

In the motion comic, that same scene unfolds through cluttered close-up window panels dumped upon other moving panels; there’s never a wide, establishing view of the scene, the presentation is needlessly busy, and the result is borderline incoherent – if I wasn’t already aware of Dawn’s situation from having read the comic, I’m not sure the scene in the digital comic would’ve made it instantly clear. It’s just poor visual storytelling, and sadly it’s a recurring issue with the animated delivery of Buffy’s motion comic incarnation.
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The animated framing work is clunky and never sits still for a second, bogged down by hyperactive wipes, judders, shifts and sliding panels upon panels, even going so far as to needlessly flip some artwork, causing continuity errors (Xander’s eyepatch is on the wrong eye for a major shot in ‘Wolves At The Gate, Part 4′). And though the original artwork for the comics is impressive, the motion comic chooses to focus and zoom on unflattering sections, highlighting indistinct, crude and simplistic bits of art that were intended as background detail and not meant to be blown up to full frame. Chunks of dialogue are cut in the shift from paper to pixels, the “midseason finale” 20th issue isn’t included, and as an incomplete set in more ways than one, the motion comic is far from the best way to experience the stories. It’s not all terrible, and on average it’s a serviceable, often pretty dynamic and entertaining interpretation of the comics in its own way, but for every impressive shot, there’s at least one shoddy, cheap-looking section to let the experience down.

Though the sharp and snarky wit of Joss Whedon & Co. is all present and accounted for, the other major factor that made Buffy so fantastic – the incredibly talented and comically gifted cast – are sadly and noticeably absent. None of the original actors return to voice their roles, which is especially unfortunate since the great Nicholas Brendon especially isn’t exactly swimming in work nowadays and the cast have always had a tonne of love for the show, being eager to participate in tie-in stuff. Even in lieu of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Giselle Loren, who replaced Gellar for the Buffy video games and the scrapped animated series, did such a fantastic job playing stand-in, nailing a dead-on impersonation and delivering a spunky, energetic performance, too. It’s a surprise she’s not the go-to gal for all Buffy voice work now, but even she bafflingly wasn’t hired for the motion comic.
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The actors who do provide voice work are almost entirely mediocre. The fact that they don’t really attempt to sound much like the characters you know and love isn’t such a crime – after all, given a choice it’s better to have a solid voice actor than a one-note impersonator filling a role. But the cast fail at both, sounding stiff and lifeless, failing to bring any sense of life, comic timing or vocal inflection to the snappy writing given to them. Even worse, the large selection of female voice actors all fall into generic soundalike territory, and it’s often tough to tell which character’s saying what during some scenes, adding to the sometimes incoherent presentation. There is, however, one major exception: Whitney Thompson manages to perfectly nail that sweet spot between dead-on impression and genuine performance, playing Faith with the same spirit as her live action counterpart while having Eliza Dushku’s voice down to a tee.

Thompson’s performance is a big part of what makes the second story arc of the season – a mostly Buffy-free story which follows Faith as she’s wrangled by Giles into assassinating a murderous aristocratic slayer – the strongest that the comic has to offer. Another major factor, though, is that the comic’s storylines are most focused, cohesive and riveting when they aim further afield than the core Buffy/Xander/Willow group. Faith’s storyline proves to be the most driven, substantial and effective in terms of character, while the standalone issue ‘The Chain’ does a phenomenal job at telling a simple, but sharp, funny and heartfelt self-contained story based around one of the new potentials-turned-slayers. When the comic is dabbling in less familiar territory, it’s at its most rewarding and comes so close to reaching the heights of the show itself that it’s a shame that more of the new slayers aren’t fleshed out in the same respect.
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On the flip-side, when the comic focuses on the core Scooby Gang, there’s the overwhelming feeling that Whedon is short on ideas for where to take them after the considerable character exploration of the show and the closure of the Season Seven finale. The story arcs of the main group range from the fun, but familiar and directionless to outright fanservice. Dawn’s gigantism seems like little more than a way of using the boundary-free scope of the comic now that there’s no TV budget to worry about, but without any ideas to back it up, it just leads to an utterly daft turn into kaiju territory. Xander has a short-lived, hardly fleshed-out romance, but is mostly used as the obligatory comic relief. Willow is used more as an all-powerful magical deux ex machina rather than a character, her wiccan powers allowing her to fly, teleport people anywhere or heal pretty much anyone as a convenient plot tool and little else. And Buffy is stuck pinballing between begrudging, apprehensive leader and sex-starved ball of frustration, while her left-field romantic/sexual exploits in the comic feel less like a natural progression of character and more like gratuitous fan-fiction.

That latter problem is echoed in Season Eight’s insistence on shoehorning past characters (or future ones, in the case of a convoluted Fray crossover that never really comes together) into minor and major roles, whether they belong or not (mostly not, considering one of them was very much dead and their reappearance is sloppily constructed). That’s not to say the comics themselves are bad. Far from it – as the sum of its parts, Season Eight is largely a witty, delightfully fun fantasy romp with characters you know and love, some A-grade standalone arcs with a handful of epic and entertaining action set-pieces to boot. But despite the freedom the form offers, the writers never quite manage to put it to use in the right ways, with the budget-free scope put to use in goofy ways and the comparatively short length of comic issues stripping the cast of character development. The strength of the few standalone issues and arcs leaves it tough to shake the feeling that Season 8 would’ve been much better served as a wide-ranging series of extended vignettes centred on the new slayers and more neglected characters rather than old, familiar favourites.
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On the whole, Buffy: Season 8 is an unfortunately flawed continuation of the show, but it’s buoyed by Joss Whedon’s quirky, pop-culture-infused wit and peppered with occasional spots of brilliance. It never quite reaches the dizzying genre highs of the series, but it’s a solid bit of comic entertainment that hints at potential growth should Whedon & Co. focus their abilities and use the strengths and freedom of the medium to do their ideas justice. Sadly though, while Buffy: Season 8 is something all fans owe it to themselves to check out, the digital comic incarnation isn’t the best way to do it. You’d be better off picking up the collected volumes in trade paperback form, where there’s no stilted voice acting, cut content and hyperactive, often incoherent presentation to sully the sharp and snarky dialogue and engaging stories.
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While the US got a choice between Blu-ray and DVD for the motion comic, in the UK it’s only available DVD flavoured courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. Added to the generally messy presentation of the digital comic source material, the DVD transfer itself suffers at times, with compression artifacts and fuzziness especially evident around text. Generally it’s a solid presentation of the source, though, and the 5.1 track does a pretty impressive job bringing a layer of life to the comics with added score and effects work.

To sweeten the pot somewhat, a selection of special features are thrown in for good measure:

• Buff: Season 8 Motion Comic Test Pilot

An even rougher around the edges version of the pilot that was put together as a proof of concept for the motion comics. It’s not particularly different from the final version, though.

• The Buffy Trvia Experience

A pop-up trivia track that runs with each issue, delivering sparse and random titbits of info from the show’s past (mostly just banal recap stuff, like “Kendra was the first slayer that Buffy met”).

• ‘Under Buffy’s Spell’ Featurette

A short feature filmed at ComicCon, with interviews from a few of the writers and fans about Buffy’s lasting impact and the comics themselves.

• Season 8 Comic Covers Gallery

Exactly what it says on the tin – a gallery of Jo Chen’s gorgeous cover art for the issues, which vastly surpasses the drawn art inside.

• ‘Create Your Own Buffy Comic’ DVD-Rom Feature

If you’ve got a DVD-Rom drive installed on your computer, you can install a ‘make your own Buffy comic’ art studio program. It gives you access to a selection of backgrounds, character art, effect animation and sound clips from the motion comics to cut together your own Frankenstein’s monster issue. It’s a decent enough distraction, but the incredibly limited selection of art assets means it’s not very versatile.

The Motion Comic:

The DVD:

Buffy: Season 8 – The Motion Comic (Issues 1-19) is out on DVD in the UK now.
Click here to order the DVD from Amazon.co.uk.

Directed By Fernando Barreda Luna
Starring Cristian Valencia, Clara Moraleda, Chus Pereiro and Sergi Martin

A lazier reviewer might be tempted to point out how aptly Atrocious fits its name. The thing is, while not a particularly good film, Spain’s latest stab at found footage horror isn’t so much an offensively bad movie as a simply dull and lethargically made one which copiously borrows from other films in the sub-genre without ever approximating the all-important scares and atmosphere.

Setting up a premise that sows potential for creepy frights, Atrocious purports to be footage of the last days of the Quintanilla family, who were found dead under mysterious circumstances. As the tapes unfold, siblings Christian and July Quintanilla are dragged off to a remote villa in the country for a getaway with their parents. The two teens, who run an amateur video blog centred around their exploits investigating urban legends, plan to make the most of their trip by seeking the truth behind a local legend. Supposedly a young woman named Melinda disappeared in the Garraf Woods in 1940, never to be seen alive again. Rumours of her fate are abundant, but legend has it that if you get lost in the woods at dusk, the ghost of Melinda will appear.
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While Atrocious nails its set-up just fine, dropping us in with a couple of likeable, believable teens, it soon suffers from a meandering pace, with scares that’re too few and far between and which prove damp squibs when they arrive. Found footage movies work primarily because they foster a sense of realism and use the limitations of handheld cameras and grainy footage to embrace the ‘less is more’ approach to horror, chilling us with creepy sound design and showing us the most fleeting glimpses of otherworldly terrors to send our imaginations into overdrive, resulting in infinitely more fright than just being shown some hokey CG or a nutjob with a knife.

Atrocious sadly manages to fumble the execution on almost every front. Believability largely gets tossed out the window when Fernando Barreda Luna realises that he needs to start making weird things happen and characters do baffling things to engineer a set-up (why would anyone toss their beloved, well-behaving dog outside for the night to wander alone around an unfamiliar, creepy woodland area, then act surprised that it goes missing?). The attempts at suggestive scares fall flat because Luna never even hints at what we should be afraid of for many scares; Christian claims he hears something strange in the night, but all we hear is the dog barking, July sees something in the woods, but the camera is too dark and murky to see anything. Instead we’re expected to be scared by their reactions to things that we don’t see or hear, and simply having people scream and run around dark places is about as effective as an especially terrible episode of Most Haunted.
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Between that, there are seemingly endless shots of the characters wandering around the villa’s nearby woodland labyrinth, seeing and saying nothing. The location is a great choice for a Blair Witch-style movie, but all that needless, dull padding constitutes about a quarter of the runtime and ensures that the pacing grinds to a crawl when it should be creating an escalating atmosphere of tension and dread. Luna never finds a happy medium between showing nothing and telling everything, and by the time of the final act, he ditches his “show nothing” approach and opts for a clumsy, overblown and underwhelming ending which follows up a news report finale with an “Oh, and we found some more alternate footage which explains it all!” ending. There’s potential for a satisfying finale – there’s subtle hints sprinkled throughout to pave the way for the final reveal – but the awkward way in which its presented, coupled with the unengaging build-up means that the intended creepy coda falls entirely flat and fails to tap into the same feeling of urgent terror and dread that the best found footage movies have.

It all amounts to a movie that’s filled with dull, repetitive padding, sloppy storytelling and poorly engineered frights. It’s far from the worst Blair Witch knock-off around, but it also fails to deliver the creeping chills and primal terror that we’ve come to expect from the best of the found footage genre, leaving Atrocious a wildly flawed and highly disappointing entry.





The DVD hits UK shelves courtesy of Revolver Home Entertainment. Naturally, this is a fount footage movie shot on handheld camcorders, so it’s not going to look and sound amazing, but the disc delivers the film exactly as intended, with a choice of 5.1 or 2.0 audio tracks and, naturally, English subtitles for the Spanish audio.

The only extra is a 14 minute ‘Making Of’ featurette which does its job well, even if it’s not the most substantial documentary.

The Film:

The DVD:

Atrocious is out on DVD in the UK now.
Click here to order the DVD from Amazon.co.uk.

Series Developed By James Manos, Jr
Starring Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Carpenter, Desmond Harrington, David Zayas, Julia Stiles and Jonny Lee Miller

(This review contains spoilers for Dexter: Season Four)

While last season ended with a shocking cliffhanger and what seemed like the beginning of major change for the show, it’s unfortunate how quickly Dexter’s fifth season slips into the old routine with familiar stories and a handful of uninteresting, time-consuming sub-plots with supporting characters. Thankfully Michael C. Hall continues to deliver phenomenal work and is impressively assisted by a revelatory Julia Stiles. Though season five is a sometimes rushed, formulaic and disappointingly inconsequential year for the show, it’s still an incredibly well acted and engrossing series that’s far more entertaining than most shows on TV.

When we last left vigilante avenger/serial killer Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) in the fourth season finale, he was still reeling from the shock of finding his wife Rita murdered and left in their bathtub by the Trinity Killer. Now a single parent and struggling to deal with the guilt of her death, Dexter’s on the hunt for a group of killers who prey on young blondes, brutally raping, torturing and murdering them before dumping them in sealed barrels. But guilt-ridden Dexter’s usually calculated and methodical approach to killing has started slipping, resulting in careless, emotional outbursts of violence that risk exposing his dark secret.
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The worst happens when surviving abductee Lumen (Julia Stiles) witnesses him in the act, but when she enlists his help in seeking revenge on those responsible for her torment, Dexter seems to have found an unlikely kindred spirit as he begins teaching her the art of his trade. Elsewhere, Dex’s sister Deborah (Jennifer Carpenter) is starting to fall for bad boy detective Quinn (Desmond Harrington), who is beginning to suspect that Dexter killed his wife and had ties to the Trinity Killer. His suspicions lead him to call in sleazy corrupt Stan Liddy (Peter Weller), who soon starts to uncover Dexter’s secret life.

Sadly, while the core story for this year is great, the supporting stuff is less than gripping. A tonne of screen time is devoted to the relationship drama of Detective Sergeant Angel Batista (David Zayas) and his now public marriage to supervisor Lieutenant Maria LaGuerta (Lauren Vélez), which is a laborious story that serves little purpose but eating up space. Add to that the go-nowhere plot about the Santa Muerte killer, which is completely unresolved and forgotten about by season’s end. Some strands of story feel a tad too familiar (Deb gets a new boyfriend and requisite relationship drama, Dexter’s secret is exposed to a newcomer, who becomes an apparently understanding ally, while a grudge-bearing detective suspects their colleague Dex is a murderer, but nobody believes him), which wouldn’t be quite as frustrating if the writers would have the guts to introduce a little game-changing follow-through with those ideas.
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Unfortunately the show’s rigid refusal to break from its usual formula means that some threads of plot become instantly predictable. Sadly, any time a newcomer learns Dexter’s secret, we know they’ll be quickly rushed out the door by the season finale one way or another. There’s also the usual ‘series regular might be about to discover the serial killer in their midst, but wait, nope, they won’t’ moment in a rather laughable and ridiculous Deb scene. By the time the season’s over, some plots are hurriedly resolved or entirely forgotten about and everything’s back to the old status quo. The show likes to toy with the idea of changing things up and having Dexter being outed to Deb or the public, but never does, and the constant fake-outs quickly grow repetitive and ultimately make the supporting characters look like clueless morons.

But what the season lacks in supporting material and forward progression, it more than makes up for with its guest actors and larger story. The hunt for those responsible for the murder of blonde girls dumped in barrels leads to a twisted rape, torture and murder club led by self-help guru Jordan Chase (Jonny Lee Miller), which proves to be a riveting story, especially when it intertwines with the revenge plot of Lumen, who acts as unlikely partner-in-crime to Dexter. Last season’s Trinity Killer left some huge shoes to fill in terms of story and performance, with John Lithgow exceptional as the family man murderer. While that role is almost impossible for any subsequent actor to live up to, the acting on show this year does a commendably close job at competing.
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Julia Stiles delivers a revelatory performance as tortured survivor Lumen, and she makes such a fantastic addition to the cast as Dexter’s partner in crime, with her story such an involving one and her character so eminently likeable that it’s hard not to futilely hope that she becomes a permanent fixture on the show. Jonny Lee Miller does a great job too, and while he doesn’t rival Lithgow, he does bring a different kind of chilling energy to the show as the charismatic corporate guru/sadistic murderer. Then there’s RoboCop himself, Peter Weller, who makes a welcome appearance and relishes the opportunity to play the slimy, morally bankrupt disgraced cop on Dexter’s trail. Again, he’s such a great actor and so immensely watchable that it’s hard not to wish he had more time on the series. And, naturally, the fantastic James Remar is back as Harry Morgan.

Sadly, the formulaic structure combined with some lazy storytelling means that the show is starting to wear slightly thin, with season five feeling more than ever like writers spinning their wheels until they’re allowed to change things up. Problems aside, though, a thrilling and engrossing major plot fuelled by amazing performances and interesting characters results in a hugely entertaining season for Dexter.
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Paramount Home Entertainment’s DVD release brings the show to home video with a clear, crisp and fantastic looking transfer and an impressive 5.1 track. Sadly the extras on offer don’t go too in-depth concerning the show, but there’s a decent selection of behind-the-scenes features:

• ‘Making of a Scene’ Featurette (15 minutes, 39 seconds)

A selection of writers, editors, directors and crew members walk us step-by-step through the making of the show, from the writer’s room, through to scouting locations, production meetings, filming, editing, foley recording and sound editing, visual tweaks and colour correction.

• ‘Sounds of Splatter’ Featurette (7 Minutes, 12 Seconds)

A closer look at the sound supervisor’s job, recording foley which recreates sound effects to add to the final soundtrack.

• ‘Dexter’s Kill Room’ Featurette (3 minutes, 23 minutes)

Interviews with Michael C. Hall and the creative crew as they talk about the concept of Dexter’s ritual kill room and the handiwork that goes into preparing those sets.

• ‘Interview With Ty Mattson’ Featurette (4 minutes, 59 seconds)

A chat with the artist who created a set of visually impressive minimalist print posters for the show.

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• ’20 Questions’ Feature

20 questions posed to the cast and crew about various aspects of seasons four and five, from the decision towards Rita’s death to the direction of the show afterwards. Awkwardly, it’s split up so you have to scroll, pick and click each one from an odd, slow-rolling animated selection screen, when just editing them all into one longer feature would’ve been much easier.

• Photo Gallery

A gallery of various promotional stills from the season.

• Get Connected

A rather pointless static screen extra which gives the links for the show’s Twitter and Facebook pages.

The Show:

The DVD:

Dexter: The Complete Fifth Season is out on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK now.
Click here to order the DVD from Amazon.co.uk.

Directed By Matthew Hope
Starring Toby Kebbell, Adi Bielski, Tony Curran, Ashley “Bashy” Thomas and Brian Cox

After a lengthy tour in Afghanistan, young British soldier Robert Miller (Toby Kebbell) returns home to a run-down housing estate in South London. Haunted by his experiences, he’s man without a place in the real world, whose talent for killing has seemingly no purpose outside the battlefield. He’s soon recruited by a low-key black ops team running surveillance on terrorist cells in Britain, but he finds himself a new war much closer to home in the drug-dealing young scum who’re running the estates.

Attempting to juggle three different movies at once (the “coming home” war veteran psychological drama, the gritty Bourne Identity-style espionage thriller and the Harry Brown-esque soldier-versus-hoodies vigilante revenge movie), The Veteran spreads its trio of layers far too thinly and connects them too sloppily, resulting in a film that doesn’t fully deliver on either front.
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The psycho-drama elements pay homage to Taxi Driver (most notably in its drug den shootout finale), but are undone by sketchy character work and a lazy script (we know Miller’s psychologically fractured because he spends so many scenes staring into the mirror and punching the wall it’d make a potent drinking game). The spy thriller thread unravels thanks to a predictable plot and action that occurs incredibly infrequently, while the hoodie warfare layer of the movie is too sparsely plotted, rife with cliché and rather preposterously linked to the rest of the film.

The bright side is the cast, who do sterling work and manage to elevate the character-deprived screenplay. Toby Kebbell, who made a phenomenal splash with his performance in Dead Man’s Shoes and delivered an immensely charismatic turn in RocknRolla, slips into the stoic, tortured action hero role with similarly impressive ease, it’s just a shame he’s not given more character meat to chew on. Brian Cox classes up the joint in another spin on his Bourne Supremacy CIA handler role, while Tony Curran and Ashley “Bashy” Thomas bring presence to rather thankless roles.
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The Veteran is a diverting enough film, but Robert Henry Craft and Matthew Hope’s script struggles to justify its feature length, with precious little character, plot or action to fill it with, resulting in a movie that’s begging for more focus and more fleshing out. A great central performance from Toby Kebbell does wonders with little material, but unfortunately The Veteran is far from the British Bourne.
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The DVD boasts a solid A/V treatment, with a clear video transfer and a 5.1 Dolby Digital track that caters well to the film’s dialogue and adds added oomph to the couple of action scenes dotted around (a close-quarters fight in a car and a third act estate shoot-out). A 2.0 English track is also included.

The special features on the set are pretty scarce, with a selection of deleted/alternate scenes, a collection of short and rather unenlightening solo interviews with the cast and director, a few minutes of behind-the-scenes B-Roll footage and a trailer. The deleted scenes hold the most value, with a few scenes fleshing out the relationship between Miller and undercover informant Alayna (Adi Bielski), but the alternate takes are almost exactly what you see in the finished film.

The Film:

The DVD:

The Veteran is out on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK now.
Click here to order the DVD from Amazon.co.uk.

Directed By Gore Verbinski
Starring Johnny Depp, Isla Fisher, Ned Beatty, Abigail Breslin and Bill Nighy

After taking an unfortunate tumble out the car window during a family move, a fast-talking pet lizard (Johnny Depp) used to a spoon-fed city life finds himself alone on the edge of the Mojave desert. He soon finds himself in the western town of Dirt, home to all manner of quirky small-town animal cowboy critters. Dirt has found itself in the middle of a mysterious drought, with water becoming the town’s most valuable commodity.

As lawlessness raises its head, the town are in need of a new sheriff, but while the fish-out-of-water lizard snags the job by naming himself Rango and fabricating tales of his Wild West heroics and badassery, he’ll have to rise to the challenge and summon the hero within in order to save the people of Dirt from drought, destruction and giant, murderous reptile Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy).
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While few animated family movies manage to be just as fun for adults as kids, and the majority will only appeal to those under the age of ten, it’s incredibly rare to find one that’s infinitely more enjoyable for those old enough to remember a time before Facebook. Rango manages to be exactly that – an animated film tailor-made for the parents in the audience that their kids might just enjoy, too.

All the great moments, the sharpest bits of dialogue and even the visual style are aimed squarely at adults, from the quirky and not-exactly-cuddly cast and the phenomenal second act two-pronged cameo, to the numerous sublime nods to movies like Chinatown, Django and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Sure, there’s enough slapstick and action hi-jinks dotted around to ensure that youngsters will never get bored, but they’ll also likely be entirely confused as any adults in the room spend the whole movie laughing their butts off at things that the young tykes don’t understand.
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Deliciously quirky, beautifully animated and impeccably well performed by Depp and the eclectic collection of voice talent, Rango might not be an instant hit with kids who’ll probably find its obscure references and slant of surreal existentialism sails over their heads, but older viewers will likely have a huge grin plastered across their face until the credits roll. It’s a dyed-in-the-wool western movie rife with gleeful homage – a cult classic masquerading as a kids’ film.
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While the top-notch animation mean it’s a film tailor-made for Blu-ray (that and some extra special features on the HD version), Paramount Home Entertainment’s DVD provides an excellent visual transfer and a great audio treatment. Elsewhere on the disc, a selection of quality extras provide some more bang for your buck:

• Theatrical and Extended Versions

The DVD comes with the choice of the theatrical version of the film or an extended edition that’s 4 minutes longer and includes a few new scenes and an extended ending.

• Audio Commentary by Gore Verbinski, James Ward Byrkit, Marc McCreery, Hal Hickel and Tim Alexander

Only available on the extended version, this commentary with director Verbinski and the technical crew is a surprisingly enjoyable and in-depth track, providing a tonne of honest insight into the making of the film.

• Deleted Scenes

Around 10 minutes worth of cut content, including the longer ending put back into the extended version, showing the town of Dirt’s fate after the big finale.

• Previews

Trailers for Puss in Boots, Kung Fu Panda 2 and Rango: The Game.

The Film:

The DVD:

Rango is out on Blu-ray and DVD in the UK now.
Click here to order the DVD from Amazon.co.uk.

Directed By Joel Anderson
Starring Rosie Traynor, David Pledger, Martin Sharpe and Talia Zucker

Shot in 2008 but only now getting a straight-to-DVD UK release, this small, subtle Australian film follows the Palmer family who, in the wake of their daughter Alice’s accidental drowning during a picnic, struggle to cope with their overwhelming grief. In the weeks that follow, the family begin to encounter strange phenomena, from unexplained bruises to a ghostly apparition appearing in photographs, spurring Alice’s brother Mathew (Martin Sharpe) towards setting up video cameras in hopes of capturing his departed sister on film.

Sure, from the outset, it sounds like the set-up for a Paranormal Activity rehash, but writer/director Joel Anderson is less concerned with primal, overt scares and more with exploring the way in which a family copes with trauma. While the ‘found footage’ approach to faux-documentary horror is increasingly popular with film-makers with a desire to creep the newly-soiled underpants off movie audiences over the past decade, less directors are eager to adopt the traditional documentary format. With the standard documentary structure of candid and news footage proving less conducive to outright scares, Anderson wisely uses it to craft a slow, meditative, often unsettling exploration of a family coping with a tragic loss and the ensuing revelation of long-hidden secrets kept by the deceased.
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As Alice’s father Russell (David Pledger) buries himself in work and her mother June (Rosie Traynor) turns to radio call-in psychic Ray Kemeny for solace, Mathew clings to the hope that his sister’s presence is still in the house, while interviews with friends and neighbours slowly unearth new and scandalous information about her. It’s unfortunate that these potentially shocking human closet secrets feel as sordid and chilling as a slow day on Wisteria Lane in comparison to the suggestion of more supernatural themes at play, and as a result, many of the twists and turns fall somewhat flat, feeling more daytime soap-like than intended. Thankfully though, that’s not all Anderson has up his sleeve as he quietly and creepily screws with your expectations, and while the nature of the film’s dark suburban underbelly plotlines fall limp, the human drama and the larger focus of the plot never does, with Traynor and Pledger deftly handing the act of naturally portraying “real” people, rather than rehearsed, acted characters.

Sitting down to watch Lake Mungo expecting an outright horror film, though understandable considering it’s been marketed as such, would be unwise. More a quiet, emotional drama with strong supernatural undertones than anything akin to The Blair Witch Project, Anderson’s film certainly requires a patient viewer to appreciate it, but is nonetheless effortlessly rewarding for its restraint. And while the few overt shocks are indeed immensely effective, it’s the subtle complexities of the eerily dreamlike final reel that linger on the mind long after the credits roll, unsettling the viewer with its intelligently structured narrative and marking writer/director Joel Anderson as a talent to watch in coming years.
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Lake Mungo makes it to DVD in the UK courtesy of Second Sight Films. The 16:9 Anamorphic widescreen transfer looks as clear and problem-free as you could hope for; Lake Mungo isn’t the most visually crisp film, being comprised of mock-documentary footage and videotape recordings, but the DVD preserves the film’s look perfectly. There’s a choice of 5.1 Dolby Digital or 2.0 audio tracks, the former giving an effective jolt to the few louder moments in the film.

Sadly there’s no extras to be found, which is a shame since Lake Mungo’s Australian DVD came with a commentary and deleted scenes. Even so, a barebones release is better than none at all, and certainly preferable to being shelved in favour of the dreaded unnecessary remake that US studio goons mulled over for a while…

The Film:

The DVD:

Lake Mungo is out on DVD in the UK from Monday 25th July 2011.
Click here to order the DVD from Amazon.co.uk.