Torchwood however I can deal with. It’s simple even when it’s complicated, because it’s episodic and the formula works. Also, it goes from strength to strength – the second season was even better than the first with the awesome Owen Harper character arc and when things went disastrous in the last episode I really cared.  Heroes I enjoyed… hell, I even liked the second season when not a lot of others did, but what happened next? I doubt I’d be able to explain if my life depended on it.

I was looking on the SFX site earlier and came across their Torchwood Children Of Earth post. It’s the first I’ve heard about this but it sounds pretty cool.

Apparently it’s a mini-series over five nights where the three remaining members of Torchwood – that’s Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman), Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles) and Ianto Jones (Gareth David-Lloyd) must face their biggest threat yet. Roll on Thursday’s trailer!

Also, check out the official Torchwood site.

We’ve got a thiiing goin’ awwwn…

Tropic Thunder has a brilliant ensemble cast and features one of my favourite actors, Robert Downey Jr. It pays homage to films like Platoon and Apocalypse Now, and it is laugh-out-loud funny.

Tropic Thunder sees Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) filming his directorial debut a war movie and it going badly. When he enlists the help of the author of Tropic Thunder the book, Four Leaf Tayback (Nick Nolte), the grizzled nam-vetran suggests they take the sheltered actors to the jungle and rig up cameras to shoot a far grittier movie. At this point things get all too real and Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller), Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr) and Kevin Sandusky (Jay Baruchel) must fight their way through the jungle and its hostile inhabitants.

The cast are all good, but two of them really shone for me – Downey Jr and Tom Cruises’s unexpected cameo as Les Grossman. Downey plays an Australian method actor whose dedication has driven him to have a controversial skin pigmentation to turn him black. All of his jokes are delivered perfectly. Jack Black’s Jeff Portnoy, who is known as a comedy actor playing all the roles himself (Nutty Professor style) loses his drugs and spends much of the film in a cold sweat. At his most desperate when tied to a tree, he offers his services to his comrades if they release him – “I’ll cradle the balls, stroke the shaft, work the pipes, and swallow the gravy.” . Stiller’s character sees Tropic Thunder as a way to reboot his waning career after his last lukewarm performance in Scorcher 6 (shown in an amusing trailer at the beginning of the film) and doesn’t realise that fiction has suddenly become a battle for survival. Tom Cruise’s character Les Grossman is a complete maniac and constantly shouting, be it at colleagues, friends, or ransom-demanding Viet-Cong bad guys. In his more philosophical moments he dances to rap music and dishes out reassurances – “Speedman is a dying star. A white dwarf headed for a black hole. That’s physics. It’s inevitable.” It is a pleasant surprise to see Cruise in this role and he gets plenty of laughs.

Exchanges between Downry Jr and Stiller concerning his “Simple Jack” character are both funny and at times immoral, but shouldn’t be taken to heart. Equally there are jokes concerning race, but these are never overbearing.

I would rank this near to the likes of Shaun of the Dead and Borat for laughs and for that bit more substance than your average insipid comedy – you know, the kind that have those DVD covers of puke-worthy pinks and whites with people’s faces all over them, it’s the same for books and music too…

Go see it! You will laugh. Oh, and I know what dude I am. I’m the dude playin’ the dude, disguised as another dude!

Enjoy.

I loved Ron Perlman as Hellboy and del Toro’s directing, not to mention his take on Mignola’s world of nutcase Nazis and and Lovecraftian monsters. From the trailer it was quite plain to see that Hellboy 2 would be bigger – at least visually and character-wise, but I was a little worried that the CGI-factor would swallow up everything else.

The story revolves around three pieces of a crown that are broken up in an impressive fairy-tale opening sequence and the pact between man and elf, who split the crown between each other and vow never to combine them and raise the Golden Army – an unstoppable, monstrous army of robots that were created to do very bad things. Prince Nuada (Luke Goss), the elf-king’s son, doesn’t agree with the truce, and after going into exile, returns in the present to reclaim the fragments of the crown and resurrect the Golden Army for himself.

Hellboy 2 is, as far as I’m concerned, a big success and a very enjoyable sequel to a well-rounded piece of cinema. It has fantastic visuals, great action sequences and cool characters. It has also retained the ability never to take itself too seriously, which is important for this type of film. Best of all, the humour is actually funny, so when you’re not being treated to cool fantasy sequences, you can have a giggle with the big red ape and his pals.

I’ve heard some negativity surrounding the drunken sing-song between Hellboy and Abe (Doug Jones). Personally I found this highly amusing and sadly felt I’d rather like to get drunk with the pair (yes, a big red demon and a blue aquatic psychic sometimes feel more accessible than peers). One-liners are as sharp as they were in the original, which helps (like the original) to lift the series above other, bog-standard comic book romps. Characters are built on from the previous adventure – Selma Blair’s character Liz has to deal with pregnancy, and a fiery relationship with Hellboy which they are both finding difficult. Even Abe has a new love interest in the form of Princess Nuala (Anna Walton).  Meanwhile Johann Krauss (Seth MacFarlane) appears on the scene in full, smoky glory to mix things up a little and to tread on Hellboy’s toes in some amusing scenes.

The Bureau’s gone a little bit Men In Black and the brother/sister/father thing (including the drying up skin-factor) is very Blade 2 (a previous del Toro effort, also with Luke Goss), but this can be forgiven as there are some nice, fresh ideas in the movie and some great set-pieces, for instance, the Golden Army themselves and the Elemental’s attack on the city.

If you enjoyed the first movie, I don’t see why you wouldn’t enjoy this, which is bigger, brighter, and a surprisingly welcome departure from the “Hellboy’s cursed destiny” vibe of the first film, which although present, seems to me to take a back seat. Go and see it!