Small Screen: The Pacific: Hell Was An Ocean Away
Posted on Monday March 15, 2010, 22:12 by James White in Small Screen
The latest World War Two miniseries from Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and much of the team who brought us 2001’s Band Of Brothers landed on American screens Sunday night, launched with a ringing, library footage reminder of why America got into the conflict: Pearl Harbor. I’ll answer one of the big, pressing questions up front: is it as good as Band Of Brothers? My response is I simply don’t know yet. Eschewing access to screeners, I’m watching each episode as it airs, savouring the experience of seeing it in 10 chunks and avoiding spoilers as much as possible to see how the story unfolds naturally. Unlike Brothers, which threw you straight in with Easy Company and stacked up any number of similarly-uniformed, mud-caked faces to try to recognise and familiarise yourself with straight away, The Pacific has learned from this minor downside and instead focuses on three characters – veteran John Basilone (Jon Seda), writer/machine-gunner Robert Leckie (James Badge Dal... Continue reading... Comment Now (9 comments)
Back To TopOff The Wire: What Chris Nolan Could Bring To Superman
Posted on Tuesday February 9, 2010, 17:22 by James White in Off The Wire
 It’s been a tough few years for Clark Kent and his superhero alter ego (or is it the other way round, as Quentin Tarantino had David Carradine argue?) but with the recent speculation that Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan will be helping to oversee Superman’s return to the screen, things might finally be looking up.
Like any decision regarding the Man of Steel, it’s bound to be a controversial one: the character has been around for so long and so many people (including Richard Donner and, more recently, Bryan Singer) have tried their hand at making a movie based on him, to varying levels of success, that no one can seemingly please everyone.
But Nolan has a solid, proven track record with DC/Warners’ other heavy hitter, Batman and while he has no plans to ditch Gotham City for Metropolis (he has his brother and David Goyer are currently working on the scr... Continue reading... Comment Now (21 comments)
Back To TopSmall Screen: Can Torchwood Travel?
Posted on Wednesday January 20, 2010, 08:52 by James White in Small Screen
 America, eh? They just can't stop stealing our telly ideas. Those colonials! Why can't they come up with some programmes of their own? Except, of course for The West Wing. And Battlestar Galactica. And Star Trek. And Mad Men. And… All right, so they've got a few.
But for some reason, there's an endless fascination with buying up UK properties, slapping on a few new names and tweaks like a house-flipper after a profit and shoving them out to a largely unsuspecting American TV audience. The misses, thus far, have outweighed the hits.
My focus, however, is not on the scorecard for US translations of UK shows. It's on one particular series: Torchwood. Yes, the Doctor Who spin-off. Which launched with the promise of being an X-Files for Cardiff, a locally-based, but universally-plotted peek into the world of a crack team battling alien problems conveniently centered in Wales.
Of course, what we actually got in that first season was a seriously off-kilter mishmash of oc... Continue reading... Comment Now (16 comments)
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