TV Corner – April 2024

The extended Bluey episode left Rogue emotional.

Well, it’s been an unexpectedly busy month for TV, including a couple of ongoing weeklies on Disney+, most of a single-drop series on Amazon Prime and of another on Paramount+, and the start of the fifth and final series of Star Trek Discovery. It was also the month of one of the greatest TV events of a generation.

Rebel Moon – Part 2: The Scargiver

Directed by Zack Snyder (Zack Snyder’s Justice League)
Starring Sofia Boutella (Kingsman: The Secret Service), Djimon Hounsou (The King’s Man), Ed Skrein (Alita: Battle Angel), Michiel Huisman (Kate), Doona Bae (Jupiter Ascending), Charlie Hunnam (The Gentlemen), Anthony Hopkins (The Lion in Winter), Staz Nair (The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again), Fra Free (Les Miserables), Sky Yang (Tomb Raider, extra), E. Duffy (Rebel Moon – Part 1: A Child of Fire) and Charlotte Maggi (Rebel Moon – Part 1: A Child of Fire)

Okay then; let’s do this.

After the events of A Child of Fire, Kora (Boutella) returns to Veldt with her surviving warriors – General Titus (Hounsou), the swordswoman Nemesis (Bae), beastmaster-with-no-beasts Tarak (Nair), rebel soldier Milius (Duffy) and Veldt native Gunnar (Huisman) – confident that the death of Admiral Noble (Skrein) will force the dreadnought to stand down for complex ritual reasons. Unfortunately, as the audience already knows, Noble was saved/resurrected and is on his way, but Aris (Yang), the nice Imperial soldier who vanished from Part 1 so precipitously, has been maintaining comms and learns of the impending attack in time for the team to enact their original plan of training the villagers to mount an infantry defence against a planet-destroying starship.

Book Nook – April 2024

Another light month for books – four novellas, essentially, three of them part of extended series.

Classic Doctor Who – The Third Doctor, part 2 (1972-1974)

Despite the success of the Master as a season-long villain, the experiment was not repeated in the rest of the Third Doctor’s run, although Roger Delgado (The Road to Hong Kong) would appear twice in season 9 and once in season 10. A final appearance in season 11 was to have been the Master’s last as well as Delgado’s, but was tragically cancelled due to the actor’s death following a car accident. The Master would eventually undergo his own regeneration, but not until a respectful time later. Pertwee would not appear alongside another Master until the fourth, Anthony Ainley (The Blood on Satan’s Claw), confronted him in the anniversary serial ‘The Five Doctors’.

Rebourne: The Fall Guy (2024)

Directed by David Leitch (John Wick)
Starring Ryan Gosling (Barbie), Emily Blunt (The Adjustment Bureau), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Bullet Train), Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso), Teresa Palmer (Warm Bodies), Stephanie Hsu (Everything Everywhere All At Once) and Winston Duke (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever)

The Original

Full disclosure, this is not one I know a great deal about, beyond vague memories of Lee Majors (The Six-Million Dollar Man) singing the theme tune ‘The Unknown Stuntman’. The Fall Guy was a 1980s action TV series starring a post-bionic Majors as Colt Seavers, a movie stuntman and occasional bounty hunter, Douglas Barr (The Unseen) as his cousin and apprentice Howie Munson, with Heather Thomas (Kiss of the Cobra) in the recurring role of fellow stunt performer Jody Banks.

As near as I can recall, it was a lot like other shows of its ilk, with Seavers and Munson travelling widely (in part for their stunt work) and taking on jobs to help out the needy and take down the corrupt, like the A-Team, but with the protagonists performing a wild stunt of the week instead of getting locked in a fully-equipped machine shop.

It ran for 5 seasons and a total of 113 episodes, and got adapted into a boardgame and a video game in the early 80s, so by some metric it must have been successful.

The Reboot

As usual, there will be spoilers. The film has a mystery element, so if you haven’t seen it and plan to, be aware.

A film based on the series has been in the works for almost fifteen years, with Martin Campbell (Casino Royale) and McG (Charlie’s Angels) attached to direct at one time or another, and Dwayne Johnson (Jungle Cruise) at one point in talks to play Seavers, before settling on Leitch and Gosling in 2020, with Blunt and the rest of the cast brought on in 2022.

Colt Seavers (Gosling) was one of the greatest stuntmen in the world, working mostly with action star Tom Ryder (Taylor-Johnson) and producer Gail Meyer (Waddingham). At the top of his game, and in the middle of falling in love with camera operator and aspiring director Jody Moreno (Blunt), an accident during a reshoot leaves him with a broken back and a crisis of confidence which makes him pull away from Jody and disappear into a hole.

Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024)

Directed by Mike Mitchell (Sky High)
Starring Jack Black (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle), Awkwafina (Jumanji: The Next Level), Bryan Cranston (Total Recall), James Hong (RIPD), Ian McShane (Hercules), Ke Huy Quan (Everything Everywhere All At Once), Dustin Hoffman (Wag the Dog) and Viola Davis (The Suicide Squad)

Po’s (Black) life as the Dragon Warrior is interrupted when Master Shifu (Hoffman) announces that the next step of Po’s journey is to become spiritual leader of the Valley of Peace, passing the mantle of Dragon Warrior on to another. Po drags his heels, and choses to head off on ‘one last Dragon Warrior adventure’ when word reaches him that Tai Lung (McShane) has returned. Zhen (Awkwafina), a thief Po caught trying to steal from the Jade Temple, offers to lead him to the true villain: The Chameleon (Davis).

TV Corner – March 2024

Never let it be said this blog is above pandering.

March was a mostly animated month for me, with nothing really new in the live action department. Still, I got through a lot of cartoons. Yay.

Book Nook – March 2024

Epic novels give you bang for your buvck, but they really don’t help pad the old review blog. Thankfully, I also have novellas that are included with my Audible membership to inflate those numbers that matter to literally no-one but me.

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire (2024)

It was a bold move to make this a rollerblading movie.

“Rise Together or Fall Alone”

Directed by Adam Wingard (Death Note)
Starring Rebecca Hall (The Prestige), Brian Tyree Henry (Joker), Dan Stevens (The Guest), Kaylee Hottle (Godzilla vs. Kong), Alex Ferns (The Batman), Fala Chen (Shang-Chi and the Legend Of the Ten Rings) and Rachel House (Moana)

Another period of relative quiet is broken when a mysterious signal begins to emanate from Hollow Earth, provoking Godzilla to deviate from his pattern of Titan policing, collateral damage and sleeping in monuments and start cruising around, soaking up radiation from reactors and the like. Meanwhile, Kong comes to the surface because he has toothache, and is lonely.

Straight up, this film is a wild ride.

Classic Doctor Who – The Third Doctor, part 1 (1970-1971)

Doctor Who – In Colour!

Season 7 introduced a new Doctor in the form of Jon Pertwee (Adventures of a Private Eye and other, non-sex comedy appearances, but we’ve found a theme and I want to know if and when it gives out) and saw a shift to colour production. For much of the run, the Doctor was limited in his mobility, with the TARDIS disabled by the Time Lords and all knowledge of its function erased from the Doctor’s mind. This meant that the majority of stories were Earth-bound and set in the near future of the 1980s (or the contemporary 1970s, there’s a whole thing.) The Doctor therefore entered into a slightly rocky relationship with UNIT, represented by the Brigadier (Nicholas Courtney, Bullseye!) and now-Sergeant Benton (John Levene, Automatons), and later commissioned smoothie Captain Mike Yates (Richard Franklin, Crossroads).