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Doux News: December 7, 2014

This week: Terminator: Genisys -- Star Wars: The Force Awakens -- The Wire relaunches -- The Walking Dead kills in the ratings -- Constantine is kinda sorta canceled -- Daniel Craig returns as 007 -- Ksenia Solo and James Frain join Orphan Black -- This week in cats and Christmas trees

I'm a huge fan of the first two Terminator movies (I reviewed them, here and here) and I very much enjoyed the too brief series, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. But I have been unsatisfied, big time, with the other sequels, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Terminator: Salvation. So as you can imagine, I actually sighed and rolled my eyes when I heard that we were getting another Terminator movie next summer.

But then I saw the trailer (see below), and went, what? It looks like they turned original time travel plot of the story on its ear. In the original movie, and I'll minimize the spoilers, Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) was sent back in time by the future savior of humanity, John Connor, to save John's mother Sarah (Linda Hamilton) from being killed before John was even conceived. In the new Terminator: Genisys, it looks like the original story has turned into a bizarre time travel loop. Instead of sighing and dismissing this new movie, I have to say that I'm intrigued. My only major complaint is that I'm going to have to keep looking up how to spell "Genisys". What's wrong with the Biblical spelling, huh? Huh?


General TV and movie news

-- The internet has been going nuts about the teaser trailer for next December's Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens. Our own Samantha M. Quinn has done an amusing detailed analysis of the trailer.

-- The classic television series The Wire has been remastered in high def for streaming on HBO Signature in December, and release on Blu-Ray next summer. And by the way, our reviews of the third season of The Wire will begin again before the new year.

-- The Walking Dead is still killing in the ratings. The mid-season finale got nearly as many viewers as the fifth season premiere, which broke the record. Now, if they'd just give us more Michonne...

-- Cue the "Sean Bean lives" jokes: Legends has gotten a second season. I didn't care for the pilot and haven't been watching. Is anyone watching this show? How's it doing?

-- Michelle MacLaren, director of Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones episodes, will be directing the much discussed Wonder Woman movie. Getting a woman to direct is almost as cool as it would have been if Joss Whedon had done it as originally planned before the idiots fired him. (After The Avengers, I bet those suits were kicking themselves.)

--AMC will be producing their own comic book TV series, Preacher. Sounds controversial, what with the God stuff and all. AMC must be looking hard for their next Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead ratings-buster, and I'm not certain that their respective spinoffs Better Call Saul and Cobalt are up to the task. Of course, I've been wrong before.

-- Production on the NBC series Constantine has halted. The producers are saying that doesn't mean that the show has been canceled, just that it won't get a "back nine" order after the original thirteen ordered episodes. But TV By The Numbers says that's ridiculous, it's canceled. For what it's worth.

This week in casts

-- Daniel Craig will return as James Bond in one more movie, entitled Spectre. Actors and writers from the successful previous Bond installment Skyfall will return as well.

-- Claire Holt (Rebekah in The Originals) has been mentioned as the possible lead in the new CBS Supergirl series. You know, the story we heard when Claire Holt left The Originals after its first season was that she was homesick for Australia. Will Supergirl be filmed in Australia?

-- Krysten Ritter will star in the new Netflix/Marvel series Jessica Jones.

-- Steven Weber has been cast as Thomas Jefferson on Sleepy Hollow. Jefferson has already been mentioned in the series many times, so I knew that they'd eventually get to him.

-- Old news, but I didn't post a Doux News last weekend: Ksenia Solo and James Frain are joining the cast of Orphan Black! Some of us here at Doux Reviews are big fans of Ksenia Solo, who is best known for playing Kenzi, Bo's sidekick, on Lost Girl.

This week in cats

One of my favorite greeting cards ever described Christmas trees as "six-foot-tall pine-scented cat toys". My current cat Fox (named after Fox Mulder) is so well behaved that he just sniffs the branches, but Vincent, one of my late cats, was obsessed with our Christmas tree and one year, he brought it down using brute cat force, breaking a lot of our ornaments. I still laugh when I think about that tree toppling in slomo; it was really, really funny. It was even sort of fun to shop for some new ornaments. (No, Vincent wasn't harmed in the least; just the ornaments.)

So in memoriam of my dear Vincent, this week's video is of a man and two cats putting up a Christmas tree.



(By the way, I devised an anti-cat Christmas tree deterrent: I started putting soft yarn cat-toy-like ornaments at the bottom of the tree so that our cats could just bat them off, drag them to a corner and chew the heck out of them. Hard on soft ornaments, but it saved our tree from destruction for years. And the cats loved it.)
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

6 comments:

  1. One year (I must've been around 10ish) my cat Missy LAUNCHED herself at the tree and, heavy as she was (20 lbs) the entire thing toppled over. Fortunately (I guess) I was sitting directly in front of it and broke its fall. It wasn't decorated yet so she really didn't do much harm and at least she never tried that again. She did make a very annoying habit drinking all the water out of the base. Her own water dish was full and not sappy but no, she wanted the Christmas tree water. Cats. (I also quit decorating the part of the tree she slipped underneath to get to the water because those ornaments would reliably end up on the floor)

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  2. I'm sad about Constantine, it found its groove and is very cool now. Best enjoy while I can.
    Ksenia Solo will rock in Orphan Black.
    Of course she always rocks.
    Kenzi is soo cool.

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  3. mazephoenix, is it worth watching just the 13 episodes of Constantine? I was waiting to see if it got picked up, cause I prefer to go for shows that are more likely to get some kind of conclusion or at least a couple of seasons, but I am vaguely curious about Constantine.

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  4. I think it is. It's hard to know if we're headed for a big cliffhanger when the series hasn't finished airing yet.
    I think what they've shown has been worth it. They are very true to the comic, and I think it might translate well to the screen even if you haven't read it.

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  5. GoT aside, the only show you've mentioned here worth watching is - Legends. It's fab. And yes, Sean Bean finally lives.

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