David O. Russell, director of last year’s hit Silver Linings Playbook, is back with a new drama, American Hustle. Loosely based on the FBI ABSCAM operation of the late 70s, American Hustle stars a fantastic ensemble who give "mind blowingly" amazing performances.
From the creators of Fringe, comes Almost Human a show set in 2048 where science and technology has advanced so far that crime has risen to unmanageable rates, forcing police officers to be paired up with lifelike combat androids. Part police drama and part science fiction, Almost Human stars Karl Urban as a gruff Detective John Kennex, who is forced to pair up with a discontinued model of androids who were created to be as human as possible and known as DRN’s. Michael Ealy has the incredibly hard job of portraying Kennex’s android partner, Dorian.
Richard Kadrey, best known for his Sandman Slim urban fantasy series, enters the world of YA fiction with Dead Set. Not a completely unexpected thing, as YA fiction has become an incredibly popular genre, with almost every popular urban fantasy author writing a YA novel. However, Dead Set strangely does not read or feel like a YA adult novel. It doesn’t focus on a lot of the current YA tropes such teenage romance, someone finding their destiny and or trying to save the world. Kadrey avoids these trappings by making Dead Set all about dealing with grief– specifically the grief of the teenage character, Zoe, who is still mourning the loss of her father.
The Walking Dead premiered its fourth season this past week to some of the biggest ratings seen on television in recent years. Based on the widely popular comic series of the same name, The Walking Dead is a show about surviving in a world after zombies have taken down civilization. The other side of this show is that it’s not only the zombies you have to worry about– or walkers as they are called on the show–because the survivors are often more dangerous than the dead. This and the theme of what surviving in this world does to people and their humanity are the three long running themes of the series.
Sandman Slim, James Stark, returns in Kill City Blues, the fifth book in the Sandman Slim series. Having survived being the ruler of hell, Stark is back in LA looking for the weapon he lost that has the power to kill gods. Unfortunately for him, so is every other supernatural being in the city looking to use the power of the weapon.
Beginning its ninth (possibly its final) season, Booth and Brennan are stronger than ever. Finally, getting together and making a baby in the last two seasons was the creative jolt this show needed to keep long time fans happy. Not only that, but also this season is the season where marriage finally happens unless producers are teasing us in a cruel way.
Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi, Olivia Wilde, and Jim Carrey star in this comedy about magicians and the increasing absurdity of magic tricks in recent years. Steve Carell plays the incredible Burt Wonderstone an aging, disgruntled, and pompous magician who is no longer relevant in today’s world where the new magic tricks are doing crazy stunts with your body. Steve Buscemi is his childhood partner Anton, with Olivia Wilde playing the stereotypical magician’s assistant. Jim Carrey is the antagonist, lampooning people like David Blaine, and Criss Angel, delivers the breakout and most enjoyable aspects of the movie.
Kevin Williamson, the man behind the Scream film series and The Vampire Diaries, comes to FOX with a new gory, gutsy show starring Kevin Bacon; giving his take on serial killers.
If you saw the trailers for Silver Linings Playbook, you probably thought you would be getting another raunchy romantic comedy starring two of the hottest actors right now: Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence. Well let me tell you these trailers were completely misleading. I am not the biggest fan of rom coms, but I loved the talent involved with this movie. Aside from the leads, the film also includes Robert DeNiro, Jackie Weaver, and Julia Stiles.
If you are an avid reader of Urban Fantasy, there comes a point when you have read pretty much everything that’s really good, and you have to work to find the next series you can get addicted to. And it gets even harder when every book seems to be derivative of the same sort of stories: fairies, witches, vampires, shape shifters, etc. That’s precisely why Kevin Hearne’s The Iron Druid Chronicles is freaking amazing. Besides being good in the sense of the writing and storytelling, it is completely original (at least to me, because I rarely see anything dealing with druids of the Celts).
