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Series needs to focus on its holy trinity. Review by Brandon Wolfe Preacher ’s central trio of characters is the best thing going for it thus far, and it’s a shame the series stubbornly refuses to keep the focus squarely on them. In trying to grab at so much mythology all at once, the series is still coming no closer to congealing into a tightly woven package. The series remains a colossal mish-mash at exactly the point where its grasp should be more concise and concentrated. In trying to do so much at once, it winds up doing precious little at all. “Monster Swamp” kicks off with a gripping opener, with the girls from Mosie’s brothel running for their lives (and in their skivvies) from a menacing band of armed marauders. Our focal point is Lacey, who tears off into the night like a potential Jason victim. The sequence is exciting, versed as it is in recognizable horror-movie language, with the ultimate twist being that this is just a paintball game put on for the purpose of allowi...

Series is still preaching to its choir. Review by Brandon Wolfe As a newcomer to the Preacher universe, I very much want to like this series. I like much of the acting, I like the behind-the-scenes talent, I like the visuals and the humor, and the world that it seems to be building seems like it has the potential for great things. Which is why it remains so terribly frustrating how scattershot and unfocused the series is thus far. Three episodes in, I don’t precisely know what to make of Preacher . I’m not even sure I could tell you with any real certainty what it’s about. It feels more and more like a series made by and for existing Preacher fans, with little patience for those of us on the outside who don’t already speak the language. The series keeps offering fragments that feel less like a slow build and more like teases for things with which we are already expected to be intimately familiar. For instance, we get a peek this week of the criminal past once shared by Jesse an...

Series is compelling but still too focused on its flock. Review by Brandon Wolfe In its second outing, Preacher seems to retain the pilot ’s issue of preaching to the converted, the converted being fans of the comic. In an opening flashback to 1881, we meet a mystery man setting out on horseback into an utterly apocalyptic horizon to procure medicine for a sick child. The man meets a group of upbeat travelers, but his taciturn nature clashes sharply with them. We then see him ride his horse past a tree decorated with hanging, scalped bodies of Indians like a perverted Christmas tree. The man barely seems to notice. This all seems terribly important and meaningful, and I’ve no doubt it immediately struck a chord with the Preacher faithful, but we neophytes in the audience are left scratching our heads. It’s one thing to be a bit mysterious, and to plant some seeds for a future harvest, but Preacher doesn’t seem to feel any powerful need thus far to be inclusive to those of us who ...

AMC comic adaptation gets preachy. Review by Brandon Wolfe AMC’s adaptation of the cult comic Preacher is clearly intended to be something of a companion piece to the network’s similarly comics-derived The Walking Dead , but going off of the new series’ debut episode, the two are dramatically different in their respective approaches. The Walking Dead is a very simple show, by design. The world has ended, zombies run rampant, and our heroes try to stay alive while encountering other, more sinister factions of survivors. Preacher is far more complicated than that. Its first outing just about breaks its neck to set up its unwieldy premise. Spanning from outer space to Africa to Texas to Kansas to Russia, the pilot is in a mad dash to convey its world and characters to us. It mostly pulls it off, but you can see the sweat from the effort. In a comically low-fi opening, a mysterious force is bounding about the cosmos before touching down in a small African village, taking up residen...

What an amazing first season and now it has been confirmed we will be getting a second season.  INTO THE BADLANDS for 10-episode second season that will premiere in 2017. AMC announced today that it has renewed the acclaimed martial arts drama “Into the Badlands” for a 10-episode second season, premiering on AMC in 2017. The show delivered the third highest-rated first season in U.S. cable TV history and scored with critics and fans for its immersive world and the artistry of its elaborate fight sequences. In the U.S., Nielsen live+7 ratings, the show’s first season averaged 5.6 million viewers per episode, including 3.5 million adults 25-54 and 3.4 million adults 18-49. “With its deep dive into authentic martial arts, the visually stunning ‘Into the Badlands’ proved to be unlike anything else on television,” said Charlie Collier, president of AMC, SundanceTV and AMC Studios. “Co-creators and showrunners Al Gough and Miles Millar, along with a talented team of producers, ...

This show is developed by Sony TV, AMC Studios, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. Rogen and Goldberg direct the pilot written by Sam Catlin who’ll be the showrunner. Preacher is the story of Jesse Custer ( Dominic Cooper , Agent Carter), a conflicted preacher in a small Texas town who is inhabited by a mysterious entity that allows him to develop a highly unconventional power. Jesse, his ex-girlfriend, Tulip (Ruth Negga , Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), and an Irish vampire named Cassidy ( Joseph Gilgun , This Is England) embark on a journey to, literally, find God. Ruth Negga plays Jesse Custer’s ex-girlfriend, Tulip Ian Colletti plays Eugene Root a.k.a Arseface who has a disfigured face and speech impediment but he’s very nice and loyal to Jesse. Despite his kindness, Arseface is troubled by something he’s done in the past. Joseph Gilgun plays Cassidy Lucy Griffiths plays a no-nonsense single mother of three, a waitress named Emily, who’s also the church organist, bookkeeper and J...

AMC’S MARTIAL ARTS DRAMA SERIES “ INTO THE BADLANDS ” TO PREMIERE SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15th AT 10:00 P.M. ET/PT Series Debut Will Coincide with Network’s Newest Movie Event, “ AMC FightFest ,” Featuring Fan-Favorite Martial Arts Films The new martial arts drama series “ Into the Badlands ” will premiere Sunday, November 15th at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT. In a land controlled by feudal barons, “Into the Badlands” tells the story of a ruthless, well-trained warrior named Sunny ( Daniel Wu ) and a young boy named M.K. ( Aramis Knight ) who embark on a spiritual journey across a dangerous land. From AMC Studios, the six-part series is created by executive producers/showrunners/writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (Shanghai Noon, “Smallville”), and executive produced by Oscar®-nominated producers Stacey Sher and Michael Shamberg (Pulp Fiction, Contagion), director David Dobkin (Wedding Crashers, Shanghai Nights), fight director Stephen Fung (Tai Chi Zero, House of Fury) and Daniel Wu (Tai Chi Z...

No, fear the boring show. Review by Brandon Wolfe Though it has hit its stride in the last couple of seasons, The Walking Dead was far from a strong show in the early goings. The show took its sweet time to figure itself out, a process exacerbated by a revolving door of showrunners. The show spent years lost in the wilderness, figuratively as well as literally, visibly struggling to decide just what it was that it wanted to do and who its motley collection of ciphers were supposed to be. These were things the show eventually did start to crack, but only just fairly recently. However, The Walking Dead ’s lone triumph in those early days was found in its fantastic pilot episode, which confidently set the stage for a series that didn’t seem to materialize in the episode’s immediate wake. In that 90-minute premiere, which aired Halloween Night 2010, Sheriff Rick Grimes is shot in the line of duty and goes into a coma, only to awake some time later in a broken world that bore little res...

AMC Takes A Page From The CW Story by David Clark Warning, in shocking news The Walking Dead is a wildly successful television show. In other news AMC is taking a page out of the superhero playbook with a spin-off. With the intention of building upon the popularity of The Walking Dead original series AMC has inked a deal for not one but two seasons of the spin-off show. For years The Walking Dead has followed a scrappy group of individuals as they fought, scraped, and hacked their way through one mind bogglingly impossible situation to the next. The show always has branching plot lines but for the most part it has been very focused on the immediate surroundings of the main characters. As that universe has grown in scope , curiosity has sprung up about what is taking place in the rest of the world during the zombie apocalypse. "From the beginning of The Walking Dead on AMC, we've been asked questions about what was going on in other parts of the zomb...

AMC  unleashed this promo teaser for their HALT AND CATCH FIRE starring Lee Pace and Scoot McNairy . Set in the early 1980s, series dramatizes the personal computing boom through the eyes of a visionary, an engineer and a prodigy whose innovations directly confront the corporate behemoths of the time. Their personal and professional partnership will be challenged by greed and ego while charting the changing culture in Texas’ Silicon Prairie. Halt and Catch Fire premieres Sun., June 1 at 10/9c. Only on AMC Please Leave A Comment-

AMC has released the poster for The Walking Dead's 2014 return, when the second half of the show's fourth season roars back to the schedule on Feb. 9. The art features a battered Rick ( Andrew Lincoln ) and stronger, almost taller Carl ( Chandler Riggs ), hitting the road and turning their backs on the prison after the deadly battle with the late Governor ( David Morrissey ). With the prison (finally) out of the picture and Rick's group divided (again) and on the road (again), several new characters are poised to make their debut in the final eight episodes of the season. Among them are three staples from the comic book series that serves as source material for the drama: Southland's Michael Cudlitz , Retired at 35's Josh McDermitt and Twilight's Christian Serratos , who play Abraham, Eugene and Rosita, respectively. In the comics, Abraham is a former Army sergeant turned sports coach who travels with high school science teacher Dr. Eugene Porter and ...

AMC is taking a page out of last year's book, offering viewers an expanded premiere episode of The Walking Dead when it returns this October. The zombie drama will once again open its season with a 90-minute episode on Sunday, Oct. 16 at 9 p.m., kicking off the two-weeklong Fearfest. The supersized premiere will be aired internationally following the U.S. premiere. Following the premiere, six more episodes will air in the following weeks. But unlike the first season, which only featured six episodes, AMC will break out the second half of the season to air next year. The final six episodes of the season will begin airing Sunday, Feb. 12 at 9 p.m. The Walking Dead , based on the comics by Robert Kirkman , has been in the spotlight as of late, with showrunner Frank Darabont exiting the series and Glen Mazzara stepping into the position. Darabont gave no indication at Comic-Con this year that he was stepping down, noting at the time that there would be three major characters a...

More Zombies Are Coming It's not a surprise to the people who watch The Walking Dead   was going to get picked up for another season. And if you haven't seen the show yet. Shame On You! I am excited that AMC will air 13-episodes next year. With this year we are only 6-episodes. Here's the official press release making the announcement: AMC announced today the renewal of The Walking Dead for a 13-episode second season. Since debuting Sunday, October 31, The Walking Dead has broken ratings records, with the series reaching more Adults 18-49 than any other show in the history of cable television. Today’s announcement also includes Fox International Channels ’ (FIC) global renewal for a second season, following record-breaking premiere ratings in 120 countries in Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East. The Walking Dead was the highest-rated original series premiere ever to air on FIC simultaneously worldwide. “The ‘Dead’ has spread!” said Charlie Collier,...

AMC's "Walking Dead" Cast Photo And Comic-Con Details AMC has released the first picture featuring the entire cast from the upcoming AMC show "Walking Dead" The show will not air until October of this year. SandwichJohnFilms will be bringing you Exclusive news from the press junket for " Walking Dead " this year as we were invited to cover the press junket at Comic-Con this year. The Walking Dead tells the story of the weeks and months that follow a pandemic zombie apocalypse. County Sheriff Rick Grimes travels with his family and a small group of survivors, constantly in search of a safe and secure home. But the constant pressure of fighting off death on a daily basis takes a heavy toll, sending many to the lowest depths of human cruelty. As Rick struggles to keep his family alive, he will discover that the overwhelming fear of the survivors can be far more dangerous than the mindless walkers roaming the earth. Here are the detail...

AMC Best Picture Showcase Two Days Of Great Films AMC Theaters will be showing the 10 Best picture nominees on two Saturday's on February 27th and March 6,2010. So if you didn't get a chance to watch the movies on the big screen this is going to be your chance. I know 5 movies a day, but what else do you have to do on those two days? 10 Best Picture Nominees. 2 Saturdays. 1 Unforgettable Experience. February 27 & March 6, 2010 Double the films means double the days, and we need you to help us choose the lineup! Your input will help us decide the four movies that we will show along with AVATAR (3D)* on Saturday, February 27. Vote here and vote soon – polling ends Sunday, February 7 at 11:59PM EST. We’ll share the results with you on Monday, February 8 and tickets go on sale Friday, February 12. Vote now! Program Information Double the films also means more ways to enjoy the showcase! We’ll take care of you with a free large popcorn and unlimited refills. Standard Ticket...