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A look back at the highs and lows of 2015 television. By Brandon Wolfe Winners 1. Fargo (FX) Last year’s biggest surprise has evolved into television’s most consistently excellent and creatively energized series. In its second year, Fargo unleashed a boldly complex, tightly interwoven narrative concerning a brutal gang war in 1979, the hapless couple (Jesse Plemons and Kirsten Dunst) who unwittingly ignite the fuse between the warring factions and the decent cop (Patrick Wilson) trying to keep order amidst the chaos and bloodshed. With a knockout cast, superb humor, delightful characters, defiant weirdness (those UFOs!) and more Coen Brothers references than you can shake a snow shovel at, Fargo is the best thing on the air right now, you betcha. 2. Justified (FX) After a penultimate season that seemed muddled and confused, FX’s contemporary Western came roaring back with its guns a-blazing, brimming with renewed purpose. The ballad of Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant) and

Last we heard, just over a year ago, the English-language remake of The Raid was still a going concern. Screen Gems were behind it, The Expendables 3's Patrick Hughes was directing, and Taylor Kitsch and Frank Grillo were in talks to star. This morning, however, it's less Iko Uwais and more Pete Tong, since both Hughes and Screen Gems have abandoned the project. Only production company XYZ Films remains attached. The Tracking Board's sources don't quite address exectly what's caused this collapse. They speculate that continual delays have forced the Aussie Hughes to move on to a more going concern, that of Sydney-To-Hobart Yacht Race disaster drama The Storm Warning - but quite what chilled the collective feet of Screen Gems remains to be seen. Brad Ingelsby (Out Of The Furnace, Run All Night) and Eric and John Hueber (Red) have all contributed to multiple drafts of the screenplay, as has original Raid director Gareth Evans, who still seems to be attache

This week's episode of Inside the Bucket is online! Revel in the digital mastery! The Summer Movie Season might be ending soon, but it doesn't mean the Hellish temperatures outside will keep Inside the Bucket from the bringing the apocalypse right to your earbuds, as Matt and Brandon break down the best movie and television news from our website SANDWICHJOHNFILMS.COM with all the style of a bull and full of greasy attitude. The show kicks off with our news segment, as the boys discuss several stories from the past week, including news from the D23 conference, the release of the Hateful Eight trailer, and news on Patrick Stewart joining Hugh Jackman for The Wolverine 3 . They discuss a lopsided weekend box office, as well as lament the lack of quality Blu-rays releasing this week. After a quick break, they return to their Rants and Raves, as they bitch and complain about all the things they're watching, following, and are generally pissed off about f

Some decent character work finally happens at the 11th hour. Review by Brandon Wolfe As True Detective ’s second season nears its ending, it is building to a crescendo that at once highlights just what’s wrong with the structure of this season while simultaneously cranking up the excitement levels, if just from anemic to watchable. While the dream that the show was waiting until its second half to spring to life is now dead, it has, to its minimal credit, managed to manufacture some adequate late-stage stakes for its central characters. I can’t imagine how fantastic that finale would need to be in order to redeem this whole misbegotten season, but at least the show is finally giving us something to keep our eyelids propped open. "Black Maps and Motel Rooms" finds our core characters at their lowest points, which is fairly remarkable for this collection of wretches. The massive conspiracy has sharpened its defense mechanisms against the task force, making Bezzerides a mur

A few sparks can’t save a show in ruins. Review by Brandon Wolfe This far into its second season, it’s now a foregone conclusion that True Detective has forfeited its status as one of contemporary television’s great shows. The remaining two episodes would have to each count themselves among the greatest hours ever broadcast to redeem the sheer amount of inertia and waste we’ve trudged through thus far. No, all True Detective can hope for at this late stage are moments, fleeting shards of promise emanating out of the abyss of tedium. “Church in Ruins,” it must be said, has at least a few such moments. By this season’s standards, that almost looks like a triumph. The first moment comes early on, as Velcoro and Semyon sit across a kitchen table from one another, guns in their hands just underneath, and have a tense discussion about the man Semyon once handed Velcoro for the price of the former cop’s loyalty and soul. Velcoro now knows that this man was not actually responsible for

Someone solve the case of this show's missing pulse. Review by Brandon Wolfe At what point will it be officially appropriate to throw our hands in the air and declare True Detective a lost cause? The show’s second season only has three episodes left and I’m still waiting for it to begin. At this point in Season 1, the show was actually starting to wind down a bit from a series of consecutive highs, but with the current season, we remain stuck in this monotonous, low murmur. Maybe lightning can’t be captured twice, but True Detective isn’t even catching a spark this time. Even deploying the time jump, the de rigueur shakeup move in TV these days (one that the show’s initial season, in particular, benefitted tremendously from), doesn’t help matters. It’s now two months after the previous episode’s climactic firefight, an adequately staged yet curiously non-riveting attempt to elicit some of the thrills of Rust trying to extricate himself and an informant from an urban warzone

It’s time for this season to stop being a flat circle. Review by Brandon Wolfe It would seem that rumors of Ray Velcoro’s death were greatly exaggerated, which is something the Internet tends to do. The truly rumpled detective, it turns out, was blasted twice at close range with “rubber buckshot,” leaving him with light bruising and some cracked ribs, but otherwise no worse for wear. This is, of course, patently ridiculous. Whatever the form of ammunition, the blasts we saw Velcoro absorb would have almost certainly been fatal, or at the very least would have resulted in devastating bodily injury. Also, if the mysterious parties who killed Ben Caspere, among others, were as ruthless as we’ve been led to think, then why would they cut Velcoro a break like that? The net result of his shooting stands as a really cheap cliffhanger ending and a crushing blow to the show’s own internal logic. For what is thought of as a high-caliber prestige show – or what was once thought of in those ter

Show still crawling along but ends with a bang. Review by Brandon Wolfe True Detective ’s second season continues to plod along without generating much urgency or excitement. Now that the team of detectives have come together to investigate the brutal murder of city official Ben Caspere, we are starting to get more formally acclimated with this bunch of mopes, and the ways in which each of them is uniquely broken fails to make any of them compelling. If there is a common thread uniting all of the core characters, beyond a shared hatred of smiling, it’s how the wounds of the past fail to ever heal with time. “Night Finds You” opens with a long monologue delivered by Vince Vaughn’s upwardly mobile Mr. Big, Frank Semyon, as he relays to his wife a tale of how he was once locked in a basement by his drunken bastard of a father, who then subsequently forgot about his son’s confinement for several days, leaving young Frank trapped in the dark, nibbled upon by hungry rats, one of which h

This week's episode of Inside the Bucket is online! Revel in the digital mastery! On this week's truncated edition of I nside the Bucket , no one is brave enough to battle Matt for top host on the show except for Brandon, so the two duke it out for the heart and mind of our single podcast listener! The boys sit down to deliver the best movie and television news from our website SANDWICHJOHNFILMS.COM with all the style of a bull and full of greasy attitude. The show kicks off with our news segment, as Matt seeks Brandon's thoughts on a wide variety of topics, from the Tom Hollard/Spider-man announcement, Jason Statham returning for Fast & Furious 8, as well as the new title for Independence Day . After a quick pee and beer break, they go into their Rants and Raves, where they bitch and complain about all the things they're watching, following, and are generally pissed off about from the past week. The show ends with a review of Ted 2, but not bef

The series is back, but without all its key ingredients. Review by Brandon Wolfe Anthology series seem to work at cross purposes with the modern appeal of television. For bygone shows like The Twilight Zone , the format made perfect sense on an episodic basis, allowing for the telling of a different mindbending tale each week, but for most viewers today, TV characters are seen as buddies to spend a few years checking in on, to watch grow and evolve. We become attached to these fictional people and enjoy spending 30-60 minutes of our week in their company. Their lives become extensions of our own. It’s one of the unique traits of television over films and books, that experience of observing characters on a weekly basis over an extended period of time. The anthology format is antithetical to this. By reshuffling the deck, that sense of intimacy and familiarity is lost. This is the approach that HBO’s True Detective has opted to take in its second season. Gone are detectives Rust Co

Vince Vaughn, Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch glaring, throwing punches and engaging in shoving matches. Matthew McConaughey’s Rust Cohle is nowhere to be seen, regrettably. See all the posters after the Jump... True Detective's new season as Sunday, June 21 Please Leave A Comment-

A24 AND TRUE DETECTIVE ’S CARY FUKUNAGA TO DEVELOP AND PRODUCE INSPIRING FATHER-SON DRAMA FOR FUKUNAGA TO DIRECT Award-winning filmmaker Cary Fukunaga and A24 will develop an untitled drama based on the true story of Joe and Jadin Bell that Fukunaga will direct, with BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN writers Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana to write the script, it was announced today. This marks the first project to be developed from script to screen by A24, who are producing the film along with Fukunaga’s Parliament of Owls production company, Daniela Taplin Lundberg and Riva Marker of Red Crown Productions, and Eva Maria Daniels of VisionChaos Productions. Daniel Crown of Red Crown will executive produce. The project is based upon the true story of Oregonian father-and-son Joe and Jadin Bell. Jadin, a fifteen-year-old openly gay sophomore, took his own life after being both bullied at high school and struggling for acceptance from the people closest to him. In the wake of Jadin's suicide

HBO’s noir series returns June 21. By Brandon Wolfe The teaser for Season 2 of HBO’s True Detective has dropped and is suitably intense and serious-looking. The wordless, minute-long teaser doesn’t provide any hints of plot, just glimpses of new cast members Vince Vaughn, Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams and Taylor Kitsch glaring, throwing punches and engaging in shoving matches. Matthew McConaughey’s Rust Cohle is nowhere to be seen, regrettably. The teaser also reveals the premiere date of True Detective 's new season as Sunday, June 21, far earlier than had been previous anticipated. Discuss this story with fellow SJF fans on Facebook . On Twitter, follow us at @SandwichJohnFilms , and follow author Brandon Wolfe at @BrandonTheWolfe .

Read on for the ten best and worst television shows of 2014 2014 TV Winners and Losers by Brandon Wolfe 2014 was a surprisingly great year for television, with an unusually large crop of incredible new series debuting alongside a handful of rejuvenated returning favorites. But as with everything, you take the good with the bad, and there was still plenty of bad this year. Here are my picks for TV’s ten biggest winners and losers of 2014. Winners 1. Fargo (FX) The year’s biggest surprise. There was no reason to expect anything from Noah Hawley’s ten-episode interpretation of the Coen Brothers classic. It seemed like the most thankless of tasks; at its best, it could only wither in the shadow of the film. But the show’s best turned out to be much better than anyone could have guessed, matching the humor and tone of the film while staking out its own unique ground. It helped that it was impeccably cast. The very British Martin Freeman disappears completely into the skin (and