…if you have a problem, if no-one else can help and if you can find them…

I only know Martin Amis’ novel ‘Money’ by reputation, but it’s a big reputation as one of the defining novels of the 1980s, with lead character John Self hailed as a scabrous avatar for the excesses of the age.

Credit where credit’s due – if you were running a sci-fi show featuring parallel dimensions where several of the characters in one dimension were evil counterparts to those in the other – and where Spock plays a recurring character – would you have the willpower to resist dressing one of them in a sinister goatee?

‘What They Died For’ attempts to answer a question by never really doing so, or perhaps by giving the simplest explanation that we all already knew. In that sense, this episode could be viewed as the series in microcosm.

‘Heroes’ is dead. After four seasons, five ‘volumes’, and about forty seven instances of Sylar switching between good and evil for no apparent reason, US network NBC have dragged the unfortunate series, ailing from ratings deprivation, around the back of the studio lot and put seven Kryptonite bullets through its head.

A couple of years ago Philip Glenister, TV’s Gene Hunt, swore he “wouldn’t do bloody ‘Tin Machine’” so it’s best to assume that this really is the end of the ‘Life on Mars’/'Ashes to Ashes’ franchise. Huge spoilers ahead…

I know this is my second architecturally themed entry in a row, but WebUrbanist’s gallery of ghost towns and abandoned cities couldn’t go unmentioned.
If, like me, you take fascination in what happens to lived-in places after humanity moves on, and how more recent abandoned buildings gradually become the ancient ruins that future generations will take [...]

In case you hadn’t noticed, the 80s are back again, specifically 80s style action adventures.

It’s certainly not a brave or controversial critical move to say that ‘The Hurt Locker’ is a great film. Indeed, to come out with such a statement after this year’s Oscar ceremony is conventional thinking at its most pointlessly facile.

I’ll come out and say it: although it may have been a matter of simply having too high expectations, ‘Across the Sea’ was a disappointment for me.

It seems to be an unwritten rule in Hollywood that the second film in a major motion picture franchise has to be the darker, more introspective entry.

Good news, bad news, bad news and good news for this episode.

BLDGBLOG is a classic of tangential timewasting: it provides so many nuggets of strangeness that I can wander off for an hour thinking about flooded cities or where a hacked lift could take me, or what the urban landscape would be like if Archigram had ever actually built some walking cities.

‘King Tut’s Tomb’ collects three issues of ‘Batman: Confidential’, smartly re-inventing a villain from the 1960s ‘Batman’ TV show as a far more serious threat in a story well-served by the gorgeous pencils of José Luis García-López.

Written by the highly respected Jason Aaron and drawn by superstar artist Adam Kubert, ‘Astonishing Spider-Man & Wolverine’ is a fun, frothy stand-alone adventure for Marvel’s two most popular heroes.

The verdict on Paul Chambers – a £1,000 fine and a criminal record for making a joke about blowing up an airport on Twitter – is of course absurd and the CPS should be ashamed of themselves. However, the case has brought back some thoughts I’ve recently had about the nature of the internet.
As Graham [...]

I hope you like novelty episodes folks, because ‘Fringe’ has gone for it big time here.

Make no mistake: ‘The Candidate’ is a sucker punch to the gut.

It shouldn’t really be possible to make something as universal as stick figures your trademark, but I’ve been reading Randall Munroe’s ‘xkcd’ for so long that when I see someone else doing stick figures, I now automatically consider them to be pastiching ‘xkcd’.

If Grant Morrison’s introduction is to be believed, the comics chosen for DC’s ‘The Black Casebook’ – a collection of Batman issues from the 50s and 60s which influenced Morrison’s run – are generally unpopular among Batman fans, owing to their supernatural and sci-fi content.

Luther, the first British star vehicle for Idris Elba, is a combination of lightweight detective show cliches and preposterously grandiose villainy that isn’t so much bad as a bit baffling.

‘First Wave’ features a curious mash-up of DC heroes (including a gun-toting Batman) and pulp characters (Doc Savage), as well as throwing in the Spirit for good measure. The first issue is passable, but not terribly exciting.

You know what you’re going to get with Asylum. Their business model is simple: produce the kind of B-movie fun that kept Amicus, Hammer, Roger Corman and others going.

Unhappy Hipsters is a great dripfeed of humorous venom to brighten up the working day.

Convergence is a theme that runs through this episode. Several characters and threads, some running for a couple of years, finally come together here, as the layers for the endgame are slowly beginning to be peeled back.