Circle Us—combined with week 6’s Everything is Illumenated—is like the second half of a 1-2 punch that now has me completely plugged in to season 5. I’m not suggesting I didn’t like episodes 1-5; they were slow, but the writing still strong, with plot points—large and small—introduced and then calculatingly formed into a scattershot picture.
Hayden Panettiere (Heroes) and Nikki Reed (Twilight) have signed on to star in director Nelson McCormick’s (The Stepfather) Downers Grove.
The film, based on a script by satirical novelist Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho), from a novel by Michael Hornburg (Bongwater), tells the story of a Chicago high school that’s supposedly cursed: each year, one member of the senior class dies a bizarre death. Panettiere’s character is convinced she’ll be this year’s prey to the curse.
Newly formed independent studio FilmDistrict has acquired US rights to the upcoming sci-fi actioner Lock Out. The film is scheduled to begin shooting in January and stars Guy Pearce and Maggie Grace. Described as a kind of Taken (which also starred Grace) in outer space, the film is written and produced by Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) and directed by James Mather (Prey Alone) and Stephen St. Leger (Prey Alone).
Deadline Hollywood reports that The Weinstein Company has acquired rights to Apollo 18, a found-footage sci-fi horror film that centers on NASA’s cancelled Apollo 18 moon mission. Conspiracy theorists have long maintained that the Apollo 18 mission—along with also-cancelled Apollo 19 and 20—was conducted in secret. Indeed, producer Timur Bekmambetov (Wanted) purportedly showed studio chief Bob Weinstein footage from the secret Apollo 18 mission shot by the mission’s crew.
NBC announced today that it has renewed daytime soap-opera stalwart Days of Our Lives for 2 more seasons. The announcement comes on the show’s 45th anniversary. Fans of the genre (their numbers ever dwindling) should be especially pleased with this news, as the climate for daytime soaps has been anything but certain in the last few years.
Despite Kaley Cuoco’s return from a horseback riding accident, The Apology Insufficiency marks a new season-4 low. In fact, the opening sequence, wherein our four favorite ‘so-smart-their-dumb’ geek’s discuss capybara’s (a rodent the size of a baby hippo), Leonard’s new approach to dating and Howard’s impending FBI background check, is as humorless as any I’ve seen in the show’s 4-year run.
Everything Is Illumenated marks both season 5’s halfway point and the season’s best episode to date. It’s not a perfect episode—certain plot points come across as badly contrived—but the faults are easily overlooked (including the title’s corny pun).
Leonard’s dry spell with women ends in The Irish Pub Formulation, but the woman he scores with makes for an awkward state of affairs within his geeky, ‘so-smart-their-dumb’ peer group; it also forces Sheldon into the position of keeping a secret, and, even worse, it forces him to serve as Leonard’s voice of reason. Wow; that can’t end well.
Season 5’s measured pacing continues in First Blood, an episode that works almost as well as a stand-alone outing as it does as a piece of season 5’s overarching story.
Even an appearance by Amy Farrah Fowler couldn’t stop The Desperation Emanation from largely falling flat. This wasn’t a terrible episode, but it’s certainly season 4’s least amusing to date. The opening segment, in fact, is a decent preview of the episode that follows; Leonard and Sheldon’s banter regarding girlfriends and “Hulk” movies and jealousy was typical “Bang” stuff, minus any true laugh-out-loud moments.
