LATEST ADDITIONS

During the golden age of cinema, the so-called ‘studio system’ ensured Hollywood could monopolise the biggest stars of the era to guarantee box office returns. Today, audiences are more fickle. Even A-listers can be a gamble. If you want to put bums on seats, shift Blu-rays by the bucket load and rack up those streaming receipts, then you need heroes. Really big ones, preferably with iron suits, hammers and shields. And if you’ve got a Hulk, that helps too.

It’s a good time to be a fan of classic Doctor Who right now. Not only did we have the news about the rediscovery of two missing episodes at the end of last year, but the DVD range is also getting closer to the end, with fewer than 15 complete serials still awaiting release at the time of writing.

YouView, the perennially gestating terrestrial digital/IPTV TV service, has finally arrived… in the guise of a rather anonymous-looking digital recorder from Humax. Developed by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Five, TalkTalk, BT and Arqiva, to the tune of £70m, the service was originally expected to launch in 2010. But at times it looked like it might never appear.

A simple business trip to Hong Kong results in a global pandemic that threatens to wipe out a vast proportion of the human race in Steven Soderbergh’s medical thriller. But despite it’s all-star cast (including Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Jude Law and Laurence Fishburne), Contagion couldn’t be further removed from the likes of Outbreak.