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Any new release by Wes Anderson is a cause for celebration for some, for skulking about issuing cynical remarks about all that is good and pure in this world for others (I might be biased). Surprisingly, one of the biggest Anderson nay-sayers on our crew, Martin, might be the Unusual Suspect who liked this new film the most. You’ll have to hear it to believe it.

Chris, JC, Beau, and the aforementioned Martin all take turns digging into this period piece comedy starring Ralph Fiennes as the perfect hotel concierge who finds himself in way over his head when the death of a beloved patron leads to strife with her family. Wackiness ensues….

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The Unusual Suspects have their work cut out for them on this one, as Touchstone Pictures (re: Disney slumming it) tries to speed past the Fast & Furious franchise by grabbing a popular video game brand and putting a recognizable star behind the wheel of high performance cars.

Ok, so why that recognizable star is Aaron Paul we have no idea either. Not exactly the career jump we expected after his amazing performance on “Breaking Bad”. Even if they do have him going up against the likes of Dominic Cooper, who surely could be doing better by now himself.

Still, we got fast cars, hot girls (Imogen Poots), lots of trash-talkin’ buddies…how can this possibly go wrong? Well…. let Brian, Martin and Chris explain this one to you. I’m out.

Hey there folks, and welcome back to Big Finishing Move here on One Of Us! In this fine series, I take a look at the various Doctor Who audio dramas presented by Big Finish Productions and let you know if I think they are worth a piece of your hard-earned paycheck.

It seems I just can’t get away from the Eighth Doctor (not that I’d want to, he rocks!). Counting my mini-marathon of his stories in celebration of The Night of the Doctor last year and today’s subject, Dark Eyes II, I’ve covered Paul McGann’s version of the Doctor almost more than all the other Doctors combined. This wasn’t the plan, mind you, just a fluke of both Big Finish’s and my own scheduling.

The Dark Eyes series directly follows the end of the regular Eighth Doctor Adventures series. It follows a much more world-weary Eighth Doctor whose soul has been more than a little bit crushed by the (MAJOR SPOILER AHEAD, SKIP THE REST OF THIS SENTENCE IF YOU DON’T WANT THE END OF THE MAIN EIGHTH DOCTOR SERIES SPOILED!) unfortunate and heart-breaking death of Lucie Miller. The nearly suicidal Doctor ultimately finds himself in the middle of WWI and with a new companion in a young nurse by the name of Molly O’Sullivan, played by the lovely Ruth Bradley. The pair went on a whirlwind adventure, the conclusion of which saw each going their separate way. The universe it seems, isn’t done messing with the pair however, as this installment (there will be four parts in total) sees the pair reuniting once again.

Part of the appeal for this series is that this is as close to the Time War as Big Finish has ever gone, both the Daleks and the Time Lords ramping up for what we know will become the conflict that threatens to destroy the universe and serves as the gap between classic and new series Who.

With all that said, let’s dig in here and see what is what!

TARDIS Team: Eighth Doctor, Molly O’Sullivan, and Liv Chenka

First of all, I’m happy to report that you do not have to have listened to the original Dark Eyes to understand what is going on here. Also, you won’t need to have listened to Robophobia, the Seventh Doctor story that introduced Liv Chenka or Unit Dominion which introduces Big Finish’s newest take on a classic foe. In fact, this whole series is a grab bag of characters and creatures from across the past couple years, but they don’t let that bog the story down. The writers do a good job of dropping just enough info that even if you are coming in fresh you can piece together enough of what happened to follow along. It rewards long standing listeners of Big Finish without totally alienating any newcomers, and for that I tip my hat to them.

Another feature I’m quite happy about is that in true “timey-wimey” Doctor Who fashion, this story has more then one entry point. I would suggest going in the regular numbered order presented to you so you can see how all the puzzle pieces fit into place, but you can go back and listen to each section as a standalone entry or have some extra fun mixing up the stories to match the chronology to a particular character. The story is so well woven that I’m willing to overlook the extremely convenient and overly-coincidental way in which they have Molly and the Doctor find each other because I honestly believe they will explain it away in the coming releases.

Nicholas Briggs is the overarching mind behind the whole series, but it is broken up into sections handled by both Briggs and other authors and each section can be considered a standalone so this set of stories is free of most of his bad habits and actually goes to show off what a good writer and collaborator he can be. More like this Mr. Briggs, this is where you excel.

Our plot for this set of stories finds the Doctor, Molly, and Liv drawn together and then drawn into an even bigger game in the continually rising tensions between the Daleks, the Time Lords, and something possibly worse than either of them. From the ravages of a Dalek-conquered planet, a deep exploration space vessel, and London both during the tail end of WWI and the 1970’s, the Doctor and Co. are going to have to make some hard choices and wade through a lot of horror and death just to make it to the other side, if all of them even can.

While everyone is at the top of their game and I do enjoy how Ruth Bradley portrays Molly, the standout has to be Alex Macqueen as a new twist on a classic enemy of the Doctor. It is extremely easy to figure out who he is playing, but given that this is a big reveal in Unit Dominion I’ll keep it unsaid here (one big spoiler in this review is quite enough). Macqueen makes this character sing and leave you hungry for more. It is kind of sad to think that Macqueen’s great interpretation of this enemy will never face his fellow In The Thick Of It co-star Peter Capaldi’s Doctor.

Dark Eyes II does more than just surpass its predecessor, it blows that sucker straight out the water. If you have any love for the Eighth Doctor at all this is a must have. Twenty bucks might seem like a big squeeze on the old wallet, but the amount and quality of the material here makes it worth the price tag. The next installment of Dark Eyes is set to drop this November, and if they can keep up the quality this may go down as one of the best things Big Finish has ever done.

Purchase Doctor Who: Dark Eyes II Here:

Keep in mind people, Big Finish isn’t the only name in audio dramas. One Of Us has its own series, Infinite Variations, which you should go give a listen if you haven’t already.

For next time, it’s back to the Fourth Doctor Adventures with:

Check out my previous reviews of Doctor Who releases from Big Finish:

Phantasmagoria

The Fearmonger

The Light At The End

The Spectre of Lanyon Moor

Storm Warning

Blood of the Daleks

The Chimes of Midnight

Seasons of Fear

The King of Sontar

White Ghosts

Sunday has arrived once again, so of course, we’re going to The Strip Club. That’s right, you and all the other miscreants we know are going to sit in front of the computer and check out comic strips submitted by friends and fans of One of Us.

What? Strippers? “Making it rain?” I have no idea what you’re talking about. What made you think we were going to one of THOSE places? For shame! Just stay here and enjoy this week’s offering, submitted by Mr. Zach Martin. It’s better for your wallet anyway.

We’d love for you to start submitting comics for our Sunday Strip Club feature. If you’re interested, please contact us at oneofusnet@gmail.com.

This past Sunday, TNA Wrestling’s Lockdown pay-per-view featured a six-man tag team match between Chris Sabin, Christopher Daniels, and Kazarian vs Yasu, Sanada, and wrestling legend The Great Muta. Muta’s appearance was quite a treat as he put on a clinic in the ring. Thankfully, this rare U.S. appearance won’t be so rare in the future.

For those of you in the dark, Keiji Mutoh (also known as The Great Muta) is an extremely popular personality in puroresu, or the Japanese professional wrestling scene. His career spans 30 years, during which he has built an extremely loyal following and an exemplary reputation in and outside of the ring. He is perhaps most famous for participating in one of the bloodiest professional matches of all time against Hiroshi Hase in 1992. Muta lost so much blood that many wrestling fans now judge blood loss in the ring on the Muta Scale, 0.0 Muta being no blood loss and 1.0 Muta being as much blood as Muta lost in that match. Needless to say, he has given much of himself to promote the wrestling industry. That explains why he has so many passionate fans, both in Japan and in the United States.

Muta launched his Wrestle-1 promotion last summer and has had an ongoing partnership with TNA since. Fears were prevalent that a lack of presence of Jeff Jarrett, who has since left TNA, would kill this deal. After all, it was Jarrett who helped to solidify this partnership. But Wrestle-1 and TNA have had a prosperous partnership. Several TNA superstars have showed up for shows in Japan and vice versa.

Muto stated that they need to make a name in Japan first, as they attempt to do 70 shows within their first year. With his 30 years in the business, especially his prolific runs in NWA and WCW, he knows how to work over crowds and knows what works for a Japanese wrestling crowd as well as an American one. Here’s hoping that Wrestle-1’s first year is a successful one and their alliance with TNA helps them gain the exposure in the United States that they most desperately need to compete on a global stage.

Welcome back to ‘Write a Movie With Us’. Over the Christmas holiday you guys were hard at work coming up with ideas for our very own script. Jordan Cobb has submitted his draft based on the themes, plot and imagery we created and you can download it now to read.

Based on the feedback, we will begin to work on the second draft. But it’s not too late to submit your own drafts this week, so get them in to chris-harrison@outlook.com or paste them below in the comments.

Enjoy reading Jordan’s draft, bringing your own ideas to the table and way to go for putting together such creative work. I myself will begin to inject ideas in later drafts.

File “Write A Movie With Us- The Instructor (working title) First Draft.pdf”

For those of you who have been living under a rock the past 8 weeks, there has been a new HBO drama rocking the boat of the television world. True Detective premiered right in the midst of awards season and rode Matthew McConaughey’s Dallas Buyer’s Club popularity right out of the ratings ballpark. Sunday night’s finale literally broke HBO Go because so many people were trying to stream it.

While people might have started watching for McConaughey, they stayed for the whole package. Woody Harrelson and Michelle Monaghan matched McConaughey scene for scene, and the writing outshines them all. Basically, if you haven’t binge watched it yet, I’m telling you it’s worth 8 hours of your life.

The short run is part of the reason the show scored such bankable talent in the first place; the other is each season is going to be a different cast in a different place working on a different case. Seeing that HBO has already asked writer/creator Nic Pizzolatto for scripts, I might be dreaming for nothing, but I still have a few suggestions of who’d I’d like to see next season.

While Monaghan was heart-breaking as Harrelson’s betrayed wife, I would love to see a female detective as one of the main leads. A female perspective on the emotional toll of a case would open itself up to great writing possibilities, but it needs to be an actress that can hold her own. I don’t want to see an actress who would be overwhelmed by the crime scenes and and material or one that would be so sickly sweet and naive that she isn’t believable as a real person. One of the most compelling parts of the show was that each character had his or her own faults. There wasn’t one wholly good character to weigh everyone else against. With this said, here are a few of my picks for a potential female lead on True Detective.

Kate Winslet

Kate Winslet is someone who is comfortable enough in her own skin to play a stretching emotional role, and strong enough to be believable as a detective. I would love to see the power struggle she would put up against a strong male partner as well. She’s given plenty of leading men a run for their money: Leo, Johnny Depp, and most recently Josh Brolin.

Michelle Dockery

A newer star already used to playing a part of high emotional content, although in a much different setting, is Michelle Dockery. Giving Lady Mary a chance to get a little dirty but still keep her rock hard, unemotional exterior on the job could set the series up for quite a few interesting insights into her backstory. The hardest part would be to find time for filming away from Downton.

Jessica Chastain

If we want to keep on the Oscar train as with McConaughey, Jessica Chastain has proved herself as a total badass in the face of tension and stress. The Zero Dark Thirty star not only courted the Academy, she made the audience see what happens to someone seeped in operations and intelligence work over the period of many years. The obsession that overcame her would translate well to a case that covered a decade or more.

Charlize Theron

The last female I’d love to see in True Detective is Charlize Theron. We know from experience she can get dirty, crazy, and frightening in the matter of a few minutes. I’d love to see what she could bring to a role in this setting.

I have a few ideas for the men as well. While most people are looking for another A-List leading man, I vote we give a look at a few that might not be at the forefront of people’s minds lately, but who would bring an incredible amount of depth. Men like Edward Norton or Ralph Finnes would be my ideal casting, but I also think while Pacific Rim wasn’t the best movie, Charlie Hunnam has proved his acting worth over the course of time on Sons of Anarchy. If the writers wanted to take a more mentor/mentee direction, I would love to see what someone like Liam Neeson could do as a worn-out detective damaged after years on the beat. Finally, I think HBO could really shake it up a bit and get a flamboyant, over-the-top persona with a deep, menacing backstory out of an actor like Robert Downey Jr.

Alright HBO, ball’s in your court, but I can promise you this–no matter who you cast, you have millions waiting for the outcome. Good luck.

P.S. Fern votes Benedict Cumberbatch for everything. I personally think he should just get on making another season of Sherlock and make everyone happy.

Who would you like to see as a lead on the next season of True Detective? Aside from casting choices, what are some other ways that HBO can grow and improve the show’s brand? Let us know what you think in the comments!

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Though it was only a few days into the festival, it’s clear from this first audio recap that Brian and Chris are already showing signs of wear. They’re old, whaddayagonnado?

But that doesn’t mean they were about to leave you in the dark, wondering what they’ve been up to the last few days. Perched on a balcony above the hustle and/or the bustle of SxSW, the guys talk about a few of the flicks, and even TV pilots, they’ve seen thus far.

If you’re looking for the festival gems, these recaps are your headlamps through the mine.

…or something like that.

There are certain albums that can take you back to a very certain place in time. After the first few notes of the first song the listener is transported back to wherever they were when they first heard the album. Most Circa Survive albums sound like winter to me because that’s when I really got into them. My girlfriend can’t listen to Wounded Rhymes by Lykke Li without thinking about her semester abroad in Belgium (If you haven’t heard it, Wounded Rhymes is well worth your time).

Broken Bells’ self-titled debut album takes me back to the town where I went to college. It was spring time and I was driving on some weird back roads looking for a book fair that had really awesome deals on a bunch of old books that interested no one but me. I wore that album out that summer.

Stacks of books — *I’m still working on those books, though.*

After the Disco is the sophomore album of the aforementioned Broken Bells, a collaborative between Brian “Danger Mouse” Burton and James Mercer of The Shins. The album is peppered with dancy-y disco beats, but one of my favorite things about this album, and I’m not sure if I’m being prompted by the name, is that it sounds like a hangover feels. Repetitive drums, layered keys, and thick vocal reverb lead to a very hazy and dream-like sound. On the more up-tempo tracks, Danger Mouse’s production combined with Mercer’s knack for melody make for instantly catchy songs. The problem, though, is the slower songs don’t seem to balance the dance songs. After the Disco certainly has an ebb and flow like any good album should, but the give and take on this particular album seems a bit off for some reason. The highs are super high, and the lows are super low.

Here are a few starting points if you’re going to skim the album:

“Perfect World” – A lot like the first sentence of a novel, the first track to any album sets the tone for the entire thing. A driving dance song that’s easy to get lost in really hits its stride after the bridge with the half-time semi-breakdown.

“After the Disco” – The second single and the title track to the album harkens back to disco. The song relies heavily on the synth and bass to get the listener moving. But the hand claps on the upbeat of 3 and the downbeat of 4 are one of my favorite devices that Danger Mouse employs (on the first album too) to ensure that “After the Disco” gets stuck in your head.

“Medicine” – This song in particular sounds like it belongs on their first album. It’s a mid-tempo song that starts with just vocals, bass, and percussion, but then kinda gets stuck there. There’s something about the song, though, that makes it one of my favorites.

So what is it that makes an album speak to someone? Is it a certain person, a certain album, a certain place, and a certain time? Do all of those things have to combine to make an album unforgettable? Or can an album be so good that other factors don’t matter? Or are both of these scenarios possible? I’m not sure what it was that made me like the first Broken Bells album so much. I’m also not sure what it is that isn’t speaking to me about After the Disco. It has yet to grab hold of me as intensely as the first album did, but that’s probably the worst thing I can say about it. Ultimately, it’s a fantastic album that I highly recommend. After a few months of listening to it on and off I’m sure I’ll come around.

Interested in purchasing After The Disco and helping One of Us at the same time? If you click the image above and buy the album (or anything else), the site will receive a cut of your purchase! Thanks for your support!

Whenever you are dealing with technology, there is always the possibility that something can go wrong. Whenever you are dealing with technology at a film festival, that possibility rapidly approaches Murphy’s Law territory.

Such unfortunately was the case with SxSW’s first attempt to screen The Raid 2. The wrong version of the film was downloaded to the theater’s server and eventually the screening was cancelled. Obviously, folks were disappointed. But in testament to how much director Gareth Evans and the cast care about Raid fans, Iko Uwais and his castmate Cecep Arif Rahman climbed up on the stage to engage in a live, impromptu fight sequence.

YEAH, WE KNOW!

Luckily, Brian was there with his phone and caught the moment on camera. You absolutely MUST WATCH this video. The Raid 2 has since been rescheduled during SxSW and you can bet a pile of pummeled henchmen that we will be there.

Movie Review: Grand Budapest Hotel

Movie Review: Need for Speed

Big Finishing Move: ‘Doctor Who: Dark Eyes II’

The Strip Club: 3/16/2014

SMARK COUNTRY: Puroresu Makes An Impact

Write a Movie With Us – Week 9

Ash & Fern: ‘True Detective’ – Looking Ahead

Infestation: SxSW Recap Day…?

Listen to This: Broken Bells – ‘After The Disco’

Video: ‘Raid 2’ stars fight on stage during SxSW premiere