I’ll be honest, The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy, available now from Orbit Books hit me like a sucker punch. I didn’t know what I expected from this whimsical, playful tale, but what I did not expect was a genre mash-up that at its heart (or Hart) riffed on the classic tale told in Shop…
Fringe (2010/2011) – Marionette, and The Firefly
While Olivia (Anna Torv) deals with the fallout in her life from Fauxlivia’s presence in their universe, the team gets called in on a case that sees victims with vital organs removed and a slower than average decomposition rate. It seems someone is killing these people for a horrifying reason. Marionette was written by Monica…
Absentia (2011) – Mike Flanagan
So digging into Mike Flanagan’s work, I found his first horror feature film, which you can source on YouTube. Sure, it’s shot on a digital camera, and looks a little less sleek than some of his later works, but damn if a lot of recognizable elements aren’t there from the off; the use of family…
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) – Steven Spielberg
Indiana Jones and the Temple of the Doom was one of three movies that came along when I was a youngster that really started to cement my interest in the way films were made. And they were all thanks to movie magazines that came along at just the right time. In 1982 there was one…
Hill Street Blues (1981) – Double Jeopardy, and Film at Eleven
Double Jeopardy, known in some markets as Dressed to Kill first aired on 31 January, 1981. Written by series creators Steven Bochco and Michael Kozoll, the episode puts Operation Duckling into action. It seems the serial rapist they’ve been trying to apprehend since the beginning of the series is still out there, and the precinct…
Red 2 (2013) – Dean Parisot
Bruce Willis, Mary-Louise Parker, Helen Mirren, Brian Cox, and John Malkovich are back in Red 2, a sequel that came hot on the heels of the previous film, and added some more star power to its roster with Anthony Hopkins, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Lee Byung-Hun, Steven Berkoff, and David Thewlis. Frank (Willis) gets the band back…
Fringe (2010) – The Abducted, and Entrada
Olivia (Anna Torv) knows who she is now, caught in the Other Universe but that’s not going to stop her from investigating a new case for Fringe Division in The Abducted. Written by David Wilcox and Graham Roland, this episode debuted on 18 November, 2010. With the discovery of pieces of The Device in our…
Mission: Impossible (1972) – Movie, and Hit
Guest stars John Vernon and William Smith are back for another round as baddies in Movie. Written by Anthony Bowers, Arthur Weiss, and Stephen Kandel from a story by Bowers, it first aired on 4 November, 1972. It seems members of the Syndicate are infiltrating the entertainment industry and Phelps (Peter Graves) and his IMF…
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) – Mark Haddon
This book has been sitting on my ‘to be read’ pile for a while, but it felt like now was the time to dig into it, and I was delighted to do so. Haddon introduces us to fifteen-year-old Christopher. He is autistic, has his likes and dislikes, and is brilliant at math and problem-solving. He…
Fringe (2010) – Amber 31422, and 6955kHz
Josh Singer and Ethan Gross allow Olivia (Anna Torv) to explore more of the other universe in Amber 31422. It first aired on 4 November, 2010 and begins to really illustrate that the alternate universe is not really all that great. They may have technological advances that we don’t but there are some real problems…
The Mind Reels 