TV

Broken Saints
Chapter 23 Ascent
See here for my thoughts on this chapter.

The Omid Djalili Show
2x04 Episode 4
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

The Wire
2x04 Hard Cases
The Wire's second season seems to be suffering under the same problems that seem to blight most second seasons these days: a lack of focus and struggling to retain or recreate the elements that made the first so great. Still, we're only a third of the way in, there's plenty of time yet.

Articles

Sam Mendes Says Preacher Script Is Half-Done, ‘Plenty Left Over’ For Sequels by Silas Lesnick
(from MTV Splash Page)
There's way too much in Preacher for just one film, but it sounds Mendes has the right handle on how to bring this to the screen: make one excellent standalone film and hope it does well enough to allow for more. Though considering Preacher's overarching story, some of that may be tricky. It's an excellent series though, so fingers crossed.

Warner Bros. And Facebook Team Up For Watchmen Blu-Ray Feature by Josh Wigler
(from MTV Splash Page)
This sounds decidedly odd, but potentially interesting. The full announcement for the US DVD/Blu-ray release can be found here. It'll be interesting to see how much more will be found on the eventual Ultimate Edition (which will include an even longer cut of the film).

The William Shatner Kirk Cameo that was cut from the Script
(from GeekTyrant)
Of the new Star Trek, of course. He really would've been shoehorned in, just like J.J. Abrams said. A wise cut to have made.

Broken Saints - Chapter 23: Ascent

No series has ever been worse for spouting endless irrelevant technical jargon than Broken Saints. Along with the rambling pretension, you have to wonder how much shorter the 12-hour series would've been if they'd had a decent script editor involved.

Despite that, this penultimate part manages to further the plot a decent amount, and even bring in a handful of twists and revelations (some blatant, some perhaps surprising). There's still plenty left to be revealed however, and it pulls off an ending that made me anxious to see the final feature-length episode -- though quite how there's enough story left to fill almost an hour and a half will be interesting to see.

It's around these final few chapters that one also realises that, while it seems as if almost nothing has happened over the preceding 10 hours, there's actually been quite a lot of rather complex plot tucked away under all the time wasting. In fact, some of that time wasting (by no means all, but some) wasn't actually time wasting at all, just elements whose meaning would be revealed later. Much later.

It's this kind of thing that makes me think Broken Saints will benefit from a second viewing, once I've seen the ending. But certainly not straight away.