TV Series of the Month – Fringe

This month’s TV series: Fringe (2008-2013).

The sci-fi mystery series follows FBI agent Olivia Dunham as she is brought into the Fringe unit to investigate strange and classified cases. To help her, she recruits a brilliant but mad scientist Walter Bishop and his estranged son Peter.

The series is created by J.J. Abrams (his best show to date), Roberto Orci, and Alex Kurtzman, but J.H. Wyman, Jeff Pinkner, and Akiva Goldsman are also very influential in the show’s creative development. This group of writers is responsible for many of the biggest recent Hollywood films (like A Beautiful Mind, Star Trek, Super 8, and the upcoming The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and 3).

Abrams is known for ability to find great female leads, and with Fringe he found maybe his best in Anna Torv. She stars with Joshua Jackson and John Noble. Jasika Nicole, Lance Reddick, Blair Brown, Michael Cerveris, Kirk Acevedo, Seth Gabel, Mark Valley, Leonard Nimoy, Jared Harris, and Georgina Haig feature in support. The cast is fantastic overall.

Fringe follows in the steps of The X-Files, feeling very much as a modern update of that series. In today’s overly generic and commercial network TV landscape (basically, the networks know they have already lost and are just counting the days to extinction, so they are trying to make the most of it money wise and not it terms of making what is even close to quality television) it is shocking that a show like Fringe, especially with its production values, lasted as long as it did, and was able to remain as weird and great as it does. Network TV needs good sci-fi, but sadly Fringe might be its last best effort. It is a must-see for fans of the genre.

Trailer: Here

Available on: Blu-ray and Video On-Demand

Movie of the Week – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

This week’s movie is The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003).

The adventure film is the last in the trilogy. It finds Frodo and Sam on the edge of Mordor, while Aragorn and Gandalf must unite their ranks, including Rohan to aid Gondor and save it from the armies of Mordor. Like the previous two films, this is directed, produced and co-written by Peter Jackson (and he won Oscars for each of those roles). Composer Howard Shore (who won an Oscar), cinematographer Andrew Lesnie and production designer Grant Major (who won an Oscar) all return as well. As do all the cast members (more or less). New to the cast is John Noble (though he is briefly in the extended edition of The Two Towers), brilliantly playing the Steward of Gondor. The film is four hours and twenty-three minutes long, and yet it is compelling throughout. Jackson does a great job managing the multiple character narratives, but maybe the highlight of the film is the battle for Gondor. Like the other two films, this is an absolute must-see for fans of adventure fantasies. It is one of the best. While the first two films were nominated for Oscars winning a few, The Return of the King was nominated for eleven and won eleven, including Best Picture, in 2004 (a record). Check out the trailer.

The Extended Edition is available on Blu-ray (the whole trilogy), DVD and Streaming