The Shannara Chronicles: Season 1

Fantasy television series always have a hard time proving themselves on television. For every Game of Thrones or Xena: Warrior Princess, there’s a Wizards and Warriors or Covington Cross. While television viewers are happy to welcome superheroes and aliens into their living rooms on weekly basis, elves, dwarves and trolls have had a tougher time…

Doctor Who (Peter Davison) – The Awakening

  The Doctor (Peter Davison) encounters the entity known as the Malus on this two-parter that was written by Eric Pringle and that aired from 19 to 20 January, 1984. The Doctor, Teagan (Janet Fielding) and Turlough (Mark Strickson) arrive in Little Hodcombe, where a reenactment of an English Civil War battle is rousing the…

Stranger Things (2016) – Season 1

  Picture a Stephen King novel directed by Steven Spielberg, with a score by John Carpenter, and a beautifully balanced touch of nostalgia and you have the wondrous, scary, funny, and exciting ride that is Netflix’s latest winner, Stranger Things. Created by Matt and Ross Duffer, the series is set in Indiana in the year,…

Lost In Space (1998) – Stephen Hopkins

  The next big adventure in the Sci-Fi Chronicles book is the big-screen reboot of the classic 60s television series, Lost in Space. Boasting an all-star cast, William Hurt, Gary Oldman, Mimi Rogers, Heather Graham, Lacy Chabert, and Matt LeBlanc, the film follows the family Robinson as they leave the dying earth to prepare the…

Magnum, p.i. (1987/1988) – The Love That Lies and A Girl Named Sue

  The Love That Lies opens Magnum’s (Tom Selleck) case book this week. Originally airing on 18 November, 1987, this episode was written by Jeri Taylor (who would later go on to work on both Star Trek: The Next Generation, and Star Trek: Voyager). Brenda Babcock (Eileen Brennan) hires Thomas to find the child she…

The Newsroom – Season 3

  I have two big problems with The Newsroom Season 3 that releases today from HBO on blu-ray and DVD. The first is that this is the last season. Boo to that! The second, is that it is only 6 episodes long. Not enough! That being said, Aaron Sorkin’s brilliant drama goes out on a…

The Newsroom: Season 2

  HBO knows how much I love my Aaron Sorkin dramas, and were kind enough to let me catch up on a Season 2 blu-ray before the third and final season (sad sigh) is released in June. So this past weekend, I settled in to watch the 9 episode season, and relive all those fantastic…

Honeymoon (2014) – Leigh Janiak

  Also available on Blu-Ray and DVD today from Magnolia Pictures is this creepy thriller starring Game of Thrones’ Rose Leslie and Penny Dreadful’s Harry Treadaway. Bea (Leslie) and Paul (Treadaway) are newlyweds, who have decided to have a quiet honeymoon at her family’s cabin in the Canadian wilderness. After the first night there, which…

Divergent (2014) – Neil Burger

Sometimes my disappointment should be something I can throw at the screen. Not that you shouldn’t always worry about book adaptations, because invariably, the books are almost always better. But by the time we got halfway through screening this film, I wondered whether anyone in the production of this film had read the first book,…