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Well, at least he knows something about the crazy science: though the reboot of 1990's thriller Flatliners has to this point been lining up a new cast that includes Ellen Page and Diego Luna , Deadline reports that one of the original actors will be popping by in some capacity. Kiefer Sutherland is that actor. The 1990 film saw the likes of Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon and William Baldwin as medical students causing themselves all kinds of surreal mental anguish with their ill-advised near-death experiments. Purposely stopping their hearts to discover what might be on the Other Side seems like a good idea, but they end up with some paranormal consequences and have to face their own dark pasts. Quite how the new version – which Niels Arden Oplev is scheduled to start directing in the next couple of days – will tweak that story has yet to be revealed, but the cast including Page, Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton and Kiersey Clemens (and, assuming he finds time in ...

EW is reporting the reboot of the iconic action series has cast Straight Outta Compton breakout Corey Hawkins in the leading role. Taking over for previous series star Kiefer Sutherland , Hawkins will play an entirely new character named Eric Carter in 24: Legacy . “Strong and smart, Eric came from a very rough background and turned his life around in the Army Rangers,” reads the official description. “Now back home in Virginia with his wife Nicole, he’s pulled back into action as his past comes looking for him.” Carter will join forces with the Counter Terrorist Unit to try and prevent an attack on American soil. None of the original 24 cast is expected to appear in the new version, which Fox ordered to pilot earlier this month. Unlike the first version of the series, where Jack Bauer (Sutherland) was basically a lone wolf protagonist for nine seasons, the new 24 also features a female co-lead role (not yet cast). If given a series order, 24: Legacy will also play looser wit...

Jack to become a part-timer. By Brandon Wolfe TVLine has broken the news, previously only rumored, that Fox’s next 24 event series will revolve around a new hero rather than Kiefer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer. The idea is that Bauer would still pop up sporadically as a guest star, according to executive producer Howard Gordon. The new terrorist-hunting agent will work alongside a more experienced female agent (though not Kate Morgan, Yvonne Strahovski’s character from last year’s Live Another Day ). Though this new 24 will launch as an event series, it could turn into a regular series eventually. Perhaps there was a time when 24 could have neatly spun-off like this, earlier in the show’s original run ( 24: Miami , perhaps), but 14 years on, Jack Bauer is the only aspect of this franchise anyone remains invested in. Creating an entirely new character out of whole cloth (otherwise known as the Speed 2 approach), rather than building it around, say, Carlos Bernard’s fan favorite T...

OLIVE FILMS ANNOUNCES A SLATE OF FOX AND ABC TELEVISION RELEASES ON DVD Celebrating the television renaissance that is currently reshaping the pop culture landscape, Olive Films announces the release of a number of FOX and ABC television collections previously unavailable on DVD. From irreverent animation ( NAPOLEON DYNAMITE: THE COMPLETE ANIMATED SERIES ) to fan-favorite sitcoms ( DADS: THE COMPLETE SERIES ) to risky drama ( TOUCH: THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON ), these releases showcase Olive Films' commitment to its dedicated audience who love and cherish motion pictures of varying formats and who want to own and collect these works in their private libraries. These releases include the long-running hits such as KING OF THE HILL: THE COMPLETE 7TH SEASON through 13TH and gems such as BETTER OFF TED: THE COMPLETE SECOND SEASON . Known for its carefully-curated and handsomely-packaged releases of classic Hollywood films on home video, Olive Films is proud to bring this same c...

TV Review 24: Live Another Day  Finale  “10:00 PM-11:00 AM”  By: Brandon Wolfe ‘24’ is a nasty piece of work. It’s a violent, ruthless, completely unforgiving enterprise. Apart from the fleeting moments of catharsis when a villain meets his or her demise or a crisis is averted, there are no happy endings on this show. The heroes never truly win, even when they’ve technically won. In the early goings, ‘24’s’ bleakness set it apart, made it unique. That the show could end a season on a soul-crushing downer gave it a mean-spirited edge that seemed refreshing in the comparatively brighter television landscape into which it was birthed. But ‘24’ has been bumming us out for nine seasons now, never letting even a tiny ray of light sneak through its aura of oppressive gloom. So resolute is ‘24’ in its bid to constantly shock its audience that it doesn’t seem to realize that it has made being defiantly cutthroat into a formula. After 13 years, the most shocking thing ‘24’ could...

TV Review: 24: Live Another Day “9:00 PM – 10:00 PM” By: Brandon Wolfe ’ 24: Live Another Day ’ has a lot of story left to tell and not a lot of time left to tell it. “9:00 PM – 10:00 PM” is the penultimate episode of this 12-episode event series and it breaks its neck setting up all the pieces for next week’s finale, yet it still feels like it’s setting up the next 12 weeks, as if the writers somehow forgot that they weren’t required to fill their usual quota of 24 episodes. The episode is a non-stop dash for Jack to put many pieces together in a very short amount of time. It’s a busy hour that rarely takes a breath, usually ‘24’s’ strong suit, yet it all feels a bit like speeding toward a red light. I don’t know how the writers intend to resolve not only this season satisfactorily, but perhaps the entire Jack Bauer saga altogether (those ratings ain’t great, after all), with just one measly hour left. Historically, these guys aren’t the best closers even when they have all the...

TV Review: 24: Live Another Day “8:00 PM – 9:00 PM” By: Brandon Wolfe The ‘24’ writing staff is pretty much set in their ways. They know their formula inside and out and adhere to it as if their very lives depend upon it. In the series’ original run, this rigorous sameness grew wearying. In ‘Live Another Day’, it has mostly been fine, even welcome, like revisiting an old friend who hasn’t let the years away change him one bit. But the sole aspect that marks this event series as a deviation from the original series is in its length, 12 episodes versus the usual 24. With the Al-Harazi threat neutralized and defenestrated last week, this is the precise point where ‘24’ would be gearing up for the next big thing that will act as the primary focus for the next ten or so hours, and that is indeed what happens in “8:00 PM – 9:00 PM” when the override device is used to successfully order an American military sub to launch a strike against a Chinese aircraft carrier. This is huge, an eve...

Does Jack finally get his woman? Read on after the jump. Review by Brandon Wolfe If there is one ‘24’ hallmark that ‘Live Another Day’ has thus far denied us, it’s with displays of Jack Bauer’s ruthlessness. We’ve seen him shoot a couple of people and he did inflict some light torture on Simone, but Jack has played things relatively straight thus far, not really unleashing his full wrath upon any of his adversaries. But when Jack finally does catch up to Margot Al-Harazi, after he has incapacitated her and foiled her plans, she can’t help but throw in his face the hundreds of lives she was successful in taking on this day, deaths that she claims are on his head. Jack’s response: “The only death tonight on my head is yours” before chucking her out the window. It’s at once shocking, rousing and even a little hilarious in its audacity. Jack murdering a neutralized villain out of pure spite is a character trait that extends all the way back to the first season’s finale,...

TV Review: 24: Live Another Day “6:00 PM – 7:00 PM” By: Brandon Wolfe One of ‘24’s’ most harrowing moments occurred in the third season, when terrorist mastermind Stephen Saunders ordered the death of CTU higher-up Ryan Chappelle. Instructed to present Chappelle’s body by the end of the hour under the threat of further biological attacks on the public, Jack spent every second he had left hunting down any lead he could before being forced to escort Chappelle to the rendezvous point and execute him. It was raw, disturbing and powerful, and all these years later, it still stands as one of the show’s most memorable moments. So it’s not surprising that ‘24’ would try to recreate that moment. ‘24’ recreates every moment. It keeps its favored handful of tropes on a repeat cycle at all times. Really, the only surprise is that it took so long for them to pull this move out again. It’s President Heller who finds himself in Chappelle’s shoes this time, having been ordered to surrender him...

TV Review: 24: Live Another Day “5:00 PM – 6:00 PM” By: Brandon Wolfe Jack Bauer’s propensity toward torturing suspects for information became one of his defining character traits during the original run of ‘24’, and contributed to the ugly national discussion that took place all throughout the George W. Bush era about torture’s place in counterterrorism. The show always seemed to insist that Jack did not want to be doing the horrible things he did in the name of national security, but that he felt it was what needed to be done given the time constraints and millions-will-die stakes he was perpetually up against. Yet still, the guy defaulted to torture so often and so immediately that one couldn’t help but suspect that maybe, just maybe, he got off on hurting bad people, even if it was something he would never admit, either to himself or anyone else. So when Jack finally climbs back on the torture horse in “5:00 PM – 6:00 PM” to squeeze the bloody little stump where Simone Al-Ha...

TV Review: 24: Live Another Day “4:00 PM – 5:00 PM” By: Brandon Wolfe And we have a mole. On ‘ 24 ’, there’s always a mole, so it was only a matter of time. It’s a well the show went back to time and again in its original run, much to its detriment, so when CIA chief Steve Navarro ( Benjamin Bratt , the show’s other Julia Roberts ex) furtively dashes into that back room in the episode’s final minutes and snaps that secrecy device over his phone, we instinctively knew precisely what was about to happen. Navarro speaks to another party, their voice cloaked, concerning some conspiratorial matters involving Kate Morgan’s duplicitous former husband whom, the show has tirelessly insisted upon reminding us, sold secrets and betrayed his country. Whether or not Navarro’s mole status extends to the season’s central terror plot remains to be seen, but at least we can now stop wondering when the inevitable mole will pop out of his mole hole. Before it falls back on that musty old trope, ‘...

TV Review: 24: Live Another Day “3:00 PM – 4:00 PM” By: Brandon Wolfe Hours where Jack Bauer is sidelined are generally never the best episodes of ‘24’. Jack is the engine that makes the whole thing run, but every once in awhile, a plot development will force the writers to take Jack out of the game, as with his current military apprehension. It never lasts more than an hour, but it invariably means that the hour in question won’t be one for the time capsule. “3:00 PM – 4:00 PM” is an episode calibrated toward inching the plot forward and bringing other characters up to speed. It’s housekeeping, plain and simple, but it’s not the worst instance of ‘24’ stopping to line up its ducks. Agent Morgan successfully takes possession of the flight key before Jack is taken into custody. With help from Chloe, with whom she’s probably a bit more instantly chummy than she logically should be, she manages to upload the key’s contents to Open Cell, where Chloe finds proof of the override’...

TV Review: 24: Live Another Day “2:00 PM - 3:00 PM” By: Brandon Wolfe ‘ Live Another Day ’ thus far has not been presenting us with an all-new ‘ 24 ’, but rather with an optimal version of the old ‘24’. It’s been great about keeping the excitement up while still throwing enough obstacles in Jack’s path to keep things interesting. It hasn’t completely shaken off some of the more frustrating aspects of ‘24’, but the relentlessness of this first batch of episodes recalls the show at its white-knuckle best. The meat of “2:00 PM - 3:00 PM” concerns what happens after Jack made his way into the U.S. Embassy last week. Attempting to locate accused drone pilot Chris Tanner, Jack knocks out an agent and grabs his jacket and key card. Once he locates Tanner, he gives the man his assurances that he believes he is innocent and then absconds with his flight key, which Jack thinks will prove to the American government that the drones are being hijacked by the override device. Where thin...

TV Review: 24: Live Another Day “1:00 PM to 2:00 PM” By: Brandon Wolfe “ 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM ” (perhaps confusingly, a title eight other ‘24’ episodes bear) starts out reminding us what ‘24’ does so well before going on to remind us of the things ‘24’ frequently did to hurt us, or at least make us very sleepy. The show, even at its worst, was always masterful at building tension, even if the things happening onscreen weren’t technically of grave consequence to us, and the entire first act involves Jack’s breathless pursuit of comely, improbably named terrorist Simone Al-Harazi from a subway to a train station. Only the most attentive viewers probably even remember from last week the reasons why Jack is pursuing Al-Harazi, but when ‘24’ starts using its split-screens and Jack is sprinting and scowling his head off, you often find yourself gripping your armrest in spite of yourself. The entire sequence lasts almost 15 minutes, before Jack loses Al-Harazi because Chloe was asleep at the...