I’m going to come right out and say that before I got season 3 to review, all I had previously seen of Longmire was through advertisements I would catch every now and again.  It was a show that seemed to have a lot of promise, but with the amount of DVD watching that comes with writing for the site, you have to be a bit picky about what you want to watch in your “spare time”.  Thanks to the help of the internet I was able to watch some season 1 and 2 recaps and surprisingly when I started up season 3 there wasn’t much difficulty in catching up and getting into the groove of the show. 

Unfinished Business starring Vince Vaughn, Tom Wilkinson, Dave Franco, Sienna Miller, James Marsden and Nick Frost is a raunchy comedy. I say that because it is the most important thing I can say that would make people want to see this movie. It is raunchy, but it is mixed with so many other issues and tones that the raunchiness and comedy sometimes get lost in the mix. The film is really more about anxiety and failure. There are so many elements mixed in that this emotional rollercoaster of a movie is so full of strange turns that it is difficult to enjoy the ride.

Despite the twinge of disappointment I felt as I exited the theater after seeing Elysium, I still believed writer/director Neill Blomkamp was more than a one-trick pony with District 9. Now two years after the release of Elysium, Blomkamp is set to release Chappie, a sentient-robot film that from the trailers evokes comparisons to Robocop and Short Circuit, which could mean either that could be a hit or another disappointment.  A disappointment could be trouble for Blomkamp. After all, his concept images and storyline for an Alien sequel has relit excitement for a franchise that many had felt died after the third entry.

When Stephen King wrote The Running Man back in 1982, he might very well have been looking through a crystal ball at the television landscape of the 21st century. While we haven't started executing criminals in game-show fashion ...yet … reality television has had a huge impact on our pop culture. From Big Brother to Survivor, Americans continue to get their kicks watching attention-needy "contestants" engage in silly little dramas and the occasional shoving match. Maybe we should blame it all on Jerry Springer.

“There’s no place on Earth with more magic and superstition mixed into its daily life than the Scottish Highlands.”

To build its slate of original programming, Starz has largely decided to look to the past. In recent years, the premium cable network has produced shows like Da Vinci’s Demons, The White Queen, and Black Sails, each of them (loosely) historical dramas with varying amounts of nudity sprinkled in. But it took a trip to the Scottish Highlands — and to the 18th century — for the channel to find its biggest hit to date.

"Remember when our biggest problem was which Mayan to kill?"

All good things come to an end, and all rides eventually reach their destination. It's all come home for the gang at Sons of Anarchy, and you can believe that if anyone is left standing when it's over, there will be scars. Kurt Sutter has taken the culture of the motorcycle club, don't call them a gang, and made it accessible to a regular audience. He did that not by attempting to overwhelm us with the iconography of the genre.

“The cop here thinks he's The Bodyguard.”

At first glance, Beyond the Lights could easily be dismissed as an updated, less starry version of the Kevin Costner/Whitney Houston romantic blockbuster. Both feature a glamorous pop star falling in love with her strait-laced protector. But while The Bodyguard became a bona fide pop culture phenomenon, Beyond the Lights had a much less dazzling run in theaters, grossing just over $14 million. It’s a shame because the flawed newer film has some interesting ideas about celebrity, artistic integrity, and…black women’s hair.

"The world has indeed gone topsy turvy".

It's as inevitable as death and taxes. When you review movies that come out on home video, you will see a lot of zombie films. Every wannabe filmmaker with a camcorder and 20 bucks thinks they can break into the business with a few staggering zombies, bare breasts and a screaming hero laying down profanities and head shots for 80 minutes.

"We are assembled here today to pay final respects to our honored dead. And yet it should be noted that in the midst of our sorrow, this death takes place in the shadow of new life, the sunrise of a new world; a world that our beloved comrade gave his life to protect and nourish. He did not feel this sacrifice a vain or empty one, and we will not debate his profound wisdom at these proceedings. Of my friend, I can only say this: of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most... human."

Many of the headlines read: "Spock is dead". Of course, that's not really true. Spock is a fictional character that will live on likely longer than any of us. But fans of science fiction in general and Star Trek fans in particularly have lost a friend today who was very human. Leonard Nimoy was 83. 

“That’s what you get when you hire a con man.”

As much fun as it is to watch clever, cagey characters try to outsmart one another on screen, the real appeal of movies about con artists is watching filmmakers try to pull the wool over the audience’s eye. It’s an especially tricky proposition when you consider that — thanks to the Internet — moviegoers might be more sophisticated than ever in terms of knowing how movies are supposed to work. (Or at least *thinking* they know how movies are supposed to work.)