Michael*

I thought S2 had more going for it than S1, for sure. This time around, I didn't mind that the first few episodes were slowly paced because they did a better job of setting things up (a lot of the potentially interesting stuff in S1 was referenced only by Rand talking about it), which made the various machinations more watchable and the last couple of episodes wouldn't have had as much of an impact without them. No one was quite as compelling as David Wenham's portrayal of Harold, but I would say Alice Eve as Mary probably ran him a close second. It felt like they were really teasing us with all the Daughters of the Dragon stuff, though. Despite the parting of the ways between Marvel and Netflix, I still want that in the worst way.

Gibney's work is almost always a worthwhile watch, although I must confess, I don't know much about the subject matter here. Was it a big story at the time?

That would come as a surprise to me, honestly. Old 'ZZ Top' would command respect from the players but he didn't appear to fancy a rebuilding job at Real Madrid and I'm not sure he'd fancy one at Chelsea, where the scale of the task would undoubtedly be much bigger.

It felt like all the nominees bar Green Book and Roma were rank outsiders from the start, so I suppose, in a two horse race between a traditionally released, crowd-pleasing Hollywood movie and a foreign language film on Netflix, the outcome wasn't too surprising. I personally thought Green Book was a good film, not a great one. I wouldn't be shocked if, in a few years' time, people react with surprise when they're reminded that it won, like they tend to do with Argo now.

This rather lovely Lyon side is undoubtedly on an upward curve at the moment, but surely the more upward the curve goes, the worse their future will be as a competitive force on the European stage. The vultures, if they aren't already, will probably start circling with their cheque books soon. Monaco 2017 springs to mind.

I think if you compare pretty much anything by Nolan to other movies in their respective genres, they're almost all standouts. To find a mainstream filmmaker who combines quality with mass appeal as consistently, you'd probably have to look towards the realm of animation. Pixar or Miyazaki, possibly.

Second season is scheduled to begin in early April, once again putting a Marvel show in direct competition with a DC movie.

Yeah, I would say The Hand's plot (which was already very vague with a rather ropey evil plan involved), and Castle's plot both became somewhat less effective as the season rolled on. Looking back, I think the writers were seemingly a little too preoccupied with setting up the next season, as well as the big Defenders showpiece of course. What absolutely made S2 for me was the dynamic between Castle and Murdock. Parts of the third episode were positively spellbinding. The Punisher is, as a character, such a great foil for Daredevil.

It does seem like Hulu has already revealed an interest in acquiring Daredevil, at the very least. I'd imagine that when the purchase of Fox eventually goes through, Hulu would be a decent choice for Disney to show its more adult aimed properties on. Overall though, as great as Marvel traditionally is at marketing, this feels like something of a misstep. Letting all these shows be cancelled (and of course, we can now add Punisher and Jessica Jones to that list) with little word on their future, is just going to frustrate and disappoint the fans.

Perhaps even a little bit questionable for Olivia Colman to be nominated as leading actress, with Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz as supporting actresses, since all the parts were roughly about the same size. Still, I think it would be fair to say that Colman’s performance was probably the best of the three. Ethan Hawke missing out for best actor for First Reformed seems the biggest snub, although Bradley Cooper not being nominated comes close. Not that I was crazy about A Star Is Born, but it was still a surprising omission.

Honestly, just as the Terminator franchise became more or less unsalvageable after the third movie, I thought MiB was pretty much killed by the second. I don't mind the international angle though, feels like the right way to handle this and let them do their own thing with it. I sincerely believe too that Tessa Thompson is one of the best actors around right now.

Oh god, Chelsea are going to bring back Mourinho aren't they.

It would seem that S3 has found its Professor X in nasty old Viserys Targaryen, with Stephanie Corneliussen also on board as David’s mother, Gabrielle. As a huge fan of the series, I'll be sad to see it go after just three seasons, but I'm confident that it'll end on an artistic high note.

My perception of Coleman shifted a little afterwards, for the most part he comes across as an amiable guy who perhaps didn't deserve to be parachuted into something so disfunctional, and you could obviously see how much it meant to him when that radgie confronted him outside the stadium. However, he seemed to reach the end of his tether remarkably quickly, with the aforementioned summarisation by Aiden McGeady of his capabilities feeling like a bit of a wakeup call. I’d assumed, mainly from his stint with Wales, that Coleman was a modern, innovative coach who put hours of work into tactics and coaching the players to be better, but McGeady cut right through all that with a single withering assessment. Perhaps his particular management style just didn't work in such a toxic environment where the confidence of the squad was already totally shot. Looking forward to the second series, presumably with each episode dedicated to one of our attempts to land Will Grigg.

Yeah, I think the main question for me isn’t whether Disney could get the characters, because I'm sure they could, it’s whether they would want to keep producing the shows within their self-imposed “PG-13 and below only” rule. Or at least, make them in a way that kept them recognisable as continuations of the same shows. I’d be more inclined to have hope if they’d said they were looking to shift them to another streaming service. How are you liking Daredevil so far, by the way?

I suppose that line in the cancellation statement put forth by Netflix about the characters still being a part of future projects will have given people a glimmer of hope, either that Marvel is planning to use some of them in the MCU (maybe post Thanos when many of the current Avengers are likely out of the picture) or that Disney continue the shows on their own streaming service. Honestly though, as much as of a thrill as either of those scenarios would be to see, I don't know if I could see them happening anytime soon, if at all.

That would have been such a hell of a thing. The Jump Street Universe? Take that, Marvel! 😆

I'd consider Laura to be one of our most consistent artists and certainly one of our best, but at this point she's probably more of a critical favourite than a commercial one. She keeps a very low profile between releases and doesn't do a lot of media or fan engagement, so unless something unexpected were to happen in the future, it would be hard to see her 'breaking out', so to speak. Hopefully somewhere along the line though she makes that heavy metal album she keeps hinting at in interviews, that would be a lot of fun to listen to. My first experience of her music was similarly random, when I just so happened to catch a performance of hers on the Jools Holland show one week. Twelve years later, she's still the owner of one of the most understated but effortlessly pure voices I think I've ever heard.

I might give it a shot. A lot of the things I liked about the original Men In Black were forgotten about in the sequels, no idea if they'll be reinstated for this of course but Hemsworth and Thompson both being in it has me interested. As well as F. Gary Gray in the director’s chair.

'Big Game' TV Spot.

Our first look at S6 has arrived.

I had no clue who he was until about a year ago when the Channel 4 interview happened, after which I read up on him a little. Honestly, I'm not convinced he has an overarching philosophy beyond some fairly routine takes on gender roles, self reliance and not expecting the world to owe you a favour. The rest feels more like of a mosaic of notions, gathering together his observations on evolutionary biology, a pinch of Nietzsche and Jung, and a rather stern biblical take on creation. I think his biggest error is to hold up the west as a paragon of virtue, which obviously chimes with his traditional take on things, but doesn't acknowledge that the same set of values has also failed to prevent some of the worst behaviour that the relative modern world has ever seen, or allow for the possibility that those values might easily be subverted, to a catastrophic extent. That's not to say that some of what he dislikes completely misses the mark, but he seems downright myopic about the myriad of flaws in a system he values so much. As for his railing against Post Modernists and Marxists (two groups which aren't nearly as interchangable as he imagines), he appears to make a very simplistic leap of logic from his disdain for some Marxists and academics to an apparent supposition that some kind of totalitarian cabal is responsible for most of the ills of the 20th century, and has subsequently mutated into a potent force in education trying to unpick all the glue that holds western civilisation together. If that is indeed what he's saying and not just how I'm interpreting things, then there's more than a whiff of silly conspiracy theory there and frankly, I don't buy it for a minute. Of course, the problem with that sort of thing, as with flat earthers, climate change deniers etc, is that it's actually quite difficult to engage without acknowledging an alternate reality on which it's based and spending a lot of time unpicking it, and doing so seems to confer some sort of spurious credibility. Anyway, hopefully some of that was coherent, apologies for what is essentially a stream of consciousness rant.

Strange, a best director nod for Pawlikowski, but no best picture nomination for Cold War. It was at least the equal of the five other films I've seen from that list and probably my favourite of 2018 (with Sorry To Bother You and Leave No Trace not far behind). Much as I like Yorgos Lanthimos, The Favourite left me fairly cold.

The Solange Smith thread was removed when its creator was contacted by her team, who asked for it to be taken down. We really hate having to lose good content, but as I've mentioned before in the past, our hands are pretty much tied when formal delete requests come in.