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BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE Featurette

Breaking Bad Movie In The Works

Given that Vince Gilligan has been busy with Breaking Bad prequel series Better Call Saul , fans of the original show probably weren't expecting him to be cooking up a movie based on the idea. But, sneaky man that he is, that's exactly what Gilligan has been doing. Collider reports that Gilligan has written the script and is gearing up to direct starting this month in the traditional Albuquerque haunts. Apparently the film bears the code name Greenbrier, but beyond that, no details have been released. Indeed, there is a strict veil of secrecy over the movie, which has yet to confirm any casting or setting, other than it'll take place in the Breaking Bad universe. Prequel? Sequel? Side-quel? That's still to be announced. We suppose we'll know more if the likes of Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul or Anna Gunn are spotted on set... The Albuquerque Journal, which received early word, has heard the story will concern the escape of a kidnapped man and his quest for fr

2015 TV Winners and Losers

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

Vince Gilligan Planting a Beanstalk for Disney

TV giant climbing into movies. By Brandon Wolfe Vince Gilligan, the mastermind behind Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul , is looking to venture from the small screen to the big one with Beanstalk , a revisionist take on Jack and the Beanstalk that has been acquired by Disney. The story comes from a detailed outline written by Gilligan, which will be fleshed out into a script by Thomas Schnauz, one of Gilligan’s frequent collaborators. Gilligan is also eying the director’s chair for the project. The classic tale has recently received an updated take in the form of 2013’s Jack the Giant Slayer , directed by Bryan Singer, but that film was poorly received and barely made back its budget. Let’s hope Gilligan’s take is better. Hard to imagine it could be worse. Discuss this story with fellow SJF fans on Facebook . On Twitter, follow us at @SandwichJohnFilms , and follow author Brandon Wolfe at @BrandonTheWolfe .

TV Review: Better Call Saul "Marco"

Jimmy breaks bad. Review by Brandon Wolfe It’s been easy to forget that Jimmy McGill, the put-upon protagonist of Better Call Saul , is the same man as Saul Goodman, the oily sleazebucket from Breaking Bad . It’s not just that Jimmy goes by a different name and largely interacts with people unfamiliar to us, but more that he simply hasn’t felt like the same individual. Jimmy is a good-hearted man who can’t catch a break, where Saul was as crooked as a barrel of snakes and almost always in control. Over and over, throughout the first nine episodes of the spin-off, we’ve seen Jimmy struggle to do what’s right, to not slip back into the “Slippin’ Jimmy” con-artist ways of his youth, only to watch him eat the pavement with each attempt. The lesson that Jimmy takes from his trials over the course of the season is that crime does pay and being a straight-arrow is for suckers, and given what he’s been through, it’s difficult to argue to the contrary. “Marco” opens with a flashback to

TV Review: Better Call Saul "RICO"

The inevitably tragic tale of the Brothers McGill unfolds. Review by Brandon Wolfe One of the very few gripes I’ve had with Better Call Saul thus far is that I haven’t felt like the show has yet done the proper legwork for filling out who some of the supporting players in Jimmy McGill’s world are or what his relationship with them is like. We know Chuck, Jimmy’s brother, is a big-deal attorney for Jimmy’s law-firm nemesis, Hamlin, Hamlin & McGill, and that he suffers from a (likely psychological) allergy to electromagnetic energy, but the nature of his relationship with Jimmy has been a bit murky thus far, as has Jimmy’s relationship with fellow lawyer (and love interest?) Kim Wexler. Well, “RICO” has heard my pleas and has come to provide the necessary shading for who these people are and what they mean to our hero. In a flashback, we learn that a younger Jimmy (read: Bob Odenkirk with a slightly fuller hairpiece) once worked the mailroom at HH&M, yet secretly pursue

TV Review: Better Call Saul "Bingo"

Jimmy finds it’s not easy being sleazy. Yet. Review by Brandon Wolfe The road to Saul Goodman is a twistier one for Jimmy McGill than initially expected. Many Better Call Saul episodes thus far have seemed to indicate that the naïve young (-ish) attorney was only a hop, skip and a jump away from becoming the unscrupulous shyster we came to know on Breaking Bad . Yet “Bingo” shows that the path to becoming a strip-mall sleazeball was littered with moments of selfless virtue for Jimmy, at the steep cost of money and career advancement. Jimmy still has a lot of pesky integrity he’ll need to shake off before he completes his journey. “Bingo” finds Jimmy experiencing some measure of success in his newfound focus on elder law, charming the old biddies at the nursing home as the zany bingo announcer. He’s earmarked a roomy office with a stellar view (even if that view is of downtown Albuquerque). Even Chuck seems to be showing some improvement, venturing outside for quick intervals

TV Review: Better Call Saul "Five-O"

Despite new revelations, he’s still the same old Mike. Review by Brandon Wolfe Jimmy McGill cedes the spotlight this week to his fellow Breaking Bad alum, Mike Ehrmantraut, to fill in some of the many blanks concerning the past of the gruff, endlessly resourceful man of few words. Unlike Jimmy, who’s still walking the road to becoming Saul Goodman, picking up certain defining traits along the way, Mike is basically fully formed at this point. He may not be a criminal fixer as of yet, but he’s unmistakably the same Mike we knew from this show’s predecessor. However, certain previously unknown facts about Mike’s life come to light this week, even if none of them are exactly earth-shaking. On Breaking Bad , all we ever knew about Mike’s personal life was that he was the doting grandpa to a young girl named Kaylee, that he was once a cop in Philly and that, in a throwaway comment from Hank Schrader, his police career ended in a unelaborated-upon dramatic fashion. “Five-O” finally

TV Review: Better Call Saul "Alpine Shepherd Boy"

Better call Chuck a mental health professional. Review by Brandon Wolfe Another lesson Jimmy McGill learns on his path to becoming Saul Goodman is that lowbrow stunts, like his big show of “rescuing” the worker from the billboard last week, don’t net you the highest caliber of clients. We know in the future that garishly chintzy advertising techniques are Saul’s bread and butter, and that he’s perfectly fine with the riff-raff that this brand of promotion brings in. But here in his nascent Jimmy McGill days, he finds himself crestfallen when his reward for his calibrated public relations bid is a kook who wants to secede from the country and pay Jimmy in homemade currency, the inventor of an inadvertently suggestive talking toilet and a bunch of nice grandmas hammering out their wills for pocket change. Jimmy still aspires to greatness. He hasn’t yet accepted that a thriving practice can be built on a foundation of crumb-bums and schmoes. “Alpine Shepherd Boy” could have gotte

TV Review: Better Call Saul "Hero"

Jimmy McGill plays the long con right into a career. Review by Brandon Wolfe Better Call Saul continues using the device of dipping even further into Jimmy McGill’s past to help inform the man we see in the series’ present (which, in turn, informs the man we saw in Jimmy’s Breaking Bad -set future) to terrific effect, this week showing us what an elaborate con artist the guy once was as a sketchy bottom-feeder and how that trait hadn’t diminished in any way once Jimmy started putting on a suit. Past Jimmy strolls down an alley with a drinking buddy he just met and the two stumble across the wallet and then the passed-out body of a large man who, in his drunken stupor, likes to talk tough about his Van Damme-like roundhouse kicking abilities. While Jimmy’s new pal cleans out the contents of the fat man’s wallet, Jimmy is more interested in the Rolex on the drunken sot’s wrist. Recognizing that the Rolex’s worth far exceeds the contents of the wallet, Drinking Buddy frantically h

TV Review: Better Call Saul "Nacho"

Trouble calls Saul from all directions. Review by Brandon Wolfe One of the neater tricks that Better Call Saul is pulling thus far is tinkering with its chronology. The series opened with a glimpse of Saul’s future before flashing back to explore his past, but “Nacho” sets the Wayback even further, opening with a scene from Saul’s more distant past, when he was in hot water for a laundry list of unspecified crimes serious enough to possibly label young Jimmy McGill a sex offender (!). In this scene, we see Saul as the sort of sketchy lowlife we frequently saw loitering in his waiting room on Breaking Bad , begging his own slick lawyer, a much more cogent version of brother Chuck, to save his bacon. Better Call Saul ’s status as a prequel initially seemed limiting (and, in some respects, still does), but the spin-off’s eagerness to not only offer us Saul’s pre-Walt past, but to present a cross-section of the lawyer’s entire life, makes it a more exciting and elastic prospect tha

TV Review: Better Call Saul "Mijo"

Jimmy McGill’s destiny as Saul is calling. Review by Brandon Wolfe The one-two punch of “Uno” and “Mijo” could have been alternately called “Goodman Begins.” These episodes really lay down, almost a little too neatly, the quick succession of events that turned hapless Jimmy McGill into the Saul Goodman we knew on Breaking Bad . In “Uno,” we saw how Saul began compromising his ethics out of sheer desperation. Now “Mijo” shows just how Saul developed his unique rapport with the criminal element. When Tuco and his goons (including fellow Breaking Bad returnee No-Doze) haul Saul and the skater boys out to the desert, Saul has to use that silver tongue of his to not only save his own life, but the skaters as well, no mean feat since they made the grievous error of referring to Tuco’s beloved abuelita as “biznatch.” That Saul is able to not only talk his way out of the desert alive, but negotiate the fates of his cronies down from violent death to one broken leg apiece with a comple

TV Review: Better Call Saul "Uno"

Walter White’s lawyer makes his opening argument. Review by Brandon Wolfe If a Breaking Bad character had to be spun off, “criminal” lawyer Saul Goodman probably made the most sense (an entire show about Walter Jr. spending an hour each week at the breakfast table would dry up fast). The character was not only a regular source of engaging comic relief, but he was also the one character who had a life outside of Walter White’s corruptive quagmire, a life that the parent series never really sought to explore. Saul, of course, had a bustlingly shady practice involving any number of Albuquerque-based goons and ne’er-do-wells. Walt and Jesse might have been his most pivotal clients, but they weren’t the only ones, and seeing Saul in action (or even in a courtroom) in the service of something other than bailing out the eternally imperiled meth duo is a concept that could have legs. The last thing television needs is another show about lawyers, but Saul Goodman is hardly your average

BETTER CALL SAUL Teaser Trailer

Vulture got their hands on this new teaser for “ Breaking Bad ” spin-off, BETTER CALL SAUL , so is money the point or beside the point? BETTER CALL SAUL premieres Sun., February 8th at 10/9c, with the second episode airing Mon., February 9th at 10/9c on AMC. Watch the trailer after the Jump... Please Leave A Comment-