LeMarchand

Looking good!

The Accountant (Sky Movies) Ben Affleck Stars as a high-functioning autistic accountant (surprise!) who has sidelines in helping out struggling folk with their taxes, helping out various legal an illegal types work out why they appear to losing cash and occasionally using his skills with high powered rifles, machine guns, hand weapons and martial arts to dispense justice. OK action thriller but Affleck's character and some of his motivations didn't really convince. Hopefully the sequel is better.

It's earned him a place in the Guinness Book of World Records: https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/news/2025/6/hollywood-legend-tom-cruise-becomes-record-holder-for-his-fiery-mission-impossible-stunt

Missed this S2 date announcement trailer: They're claiming that it was always the plan to wrap it up in two seasons as a lot of the comics barely feature Dream and so they're only going with the main arc. Guess this means no "Midsummer Night’s Dream" or "Facade" . However, they made "A Dream of a Thousand Cats" and "Calliope" and are releasing "Death: The High Cost of Living" on the 31st of July. This seems to suggest it was more a case of a combo of "not enough viewers, but enough to give you a season to wrap it up" and Neil Gaiman's alleged behaviour.

Looks great, but "everywhere doesn't seem to include the UK. AFAICT we only get it August 25th rather than June 12th, by which time it'll probably be streaming stateside.

Watched the first 4 eps and enjoying it. Scottish peeps: Is it a thing up there for ladies to coat themselves in white makeup like the owner of the home and the red haired policewoman? Mind you, I think they've shown too much of the lady at the microphone. She's obviously

Everly (Prime Video) Salma Hayak stars in this 2014 actioner as a woman forced in being a sex slave for nasty Yakuza types. One day she cracks and fights back, but the building she is in is under Yakuza control. Will she be able to make it out? This is one of those "bottom self of the video store" type low budget efforts that relies on a lot of violence, blood, and flesh. Probably OK to stick on with the lads after a night's drinking but not recommended.

I haven't heard of a good old-fashioned mail-in campaign for a while. Start mailing Jeff Bezos wheels from toy cars or similar or maybe Wagon Wheels - or watches.

But is the last one a regeneration?

At TUDUM, a new S2 character was introduced by Iñaki Godoy on stage "talking to" the character on screen.

Mistle Thrush photographed feeding an orphaned Blackbird: https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/rare-moment-orphaned-blackbird-chick-31696681

The Librarians: The Next Chapter A new group of librarians, mainly played by Brits, must try to quell an outbreak of magic in Belgrade/Serbia. This was supposed to be on CW in October, but has just come out on TNT Stateside. No UK date that I can find.

Nonnas (Netflix) Adrift after his mother dies, an Italian-American man decides to pay tribute to her by opening an Italian restaurant where all the cooks are "nonnas" cooking their own family recipes. Based (loosely, I suspect) on a true story - the real restaurant owner can be seen in the the restaurant scene towards the end of the movie - this isn't a "great" movie, but is the cinematic equivalent of one of the nonna's meals*: warm and comforting. Well worth a look but make sure you've eaten before watching, or you will feel hungry. *Maybe not the sheep's head. P.S. Susan Sarandon is 78!!! Also started on the Beetlegeuse sequel but soon drifted off to sleep.

@ICTDirect_Dave hasn't posted since this news. He must be in mourning.

Fountain of Youth (Apple TV+) An adventure cons his sister into joining his team on the quest for the fountain of youth. Maybe I wasn't in the mood for this, but it just didn't grab me. Possibly because what they really needed would have been the Tree of Life, possibly because John Krasinki's character came off as a self-centred jerk most of the time, or possibly because the plot seemed to have come from one of those sub-Dan Brown books that flooded the shelves when the DV Code hit big.

Wasn't impressed by the first 2 eps. Felt a bit like Resident Alien with the voice-overs, but fell flat to me.

Paradise on Disney+. S01E07 (the one where The Versailles Protocol is seen being enacted: What an episode!

I've been using Firefox since before Pocket was a thing, but have never used Pocket - so no great loss for me. Was more annoyed about the mobile app Lockwise being shuttered, though recent improvements to the Android browser have softened that blow.

Mission:Impossible - The Final Reckoning (Cinema) A direct sequel to Dead Reckoning, this has Ethan Hunt and his team trying to stop The Entity before it unleashes nuclear armageddon on the world. I thoroughly enjoyed this. It was a bit long and Tom kept taking his shirt off, plus you shouldn't think to hard about how realistic things are, though. It reminded me of 007's Spectre in that it came across as a "greatest hits"/"farewell tour" with lots of flashbacks to earlier movies and character appearances. As such, it would make a fitting end to the franchise - or they could reboot without Ethan Hunt.

Apparently getting AI to write your article about summer reading isn't a good idea: https://lifehacker.com/tech/the-chicago-sun-times-summer-reading-list-is-full-of-ai-slop

I guess Kevin isn't bringing home the bacon anymore.

Booksmart (Sky Movies) When 11 year old Mildred's mother is rendered comatose in a freak accident her absentee father flies to New Zealand from the US to care for her. He agrees to accompany her on a trek in the wilderness to try to get footage of the NZ equivalent of the Beast of Bodmin which could earn them $5ok and clear her Mum's debts. Low key comedy/drama. OK, but there are far better things to watch.

I'm finding all of the Star Wars and most of the Marvel shows to be ponderous affairs. I'd rather have fewer episodes without the scenes or even entire episodes that seem to be designed solely to pad out the episode count. This seems to apply to a lot of streaming shows. The last season of Reacher felt padded, though the finale was fun. We'd just watched an episode of Citadel: Honey Bunny (also way too many eps and probably better as a movie or with half the eps) before it, which meant that we'd changed the language to Hindi and subs to English. Amazon remembers the last language you used rather than the fact that you prefer subs to dubs, which led to accidental hilarity when Reacher has speaking in Hindi for the recap. The dubbing into Hindi seemed better than when it happens the other way around though this might be because i don't speak Hindi.

So far only a pilot order with SMG apparently behind an in front of the camera and no Joss Whedon in site, for obvious reasons. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the new slayer: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DJrsKPQuUIY/?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet https://www.themoviedb.org/person/2072566-ryan-kiera-armstrong

This week's freebie on Epic is Dead Island 2: https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/dead-island-2