millennium | the m0vie blog

New Podcast! The Time is Now – “The Nature of Evil in Millennium”

Posted on March 3, 2020 by Darren

The Time is Now has been on hiatus for a little while, after a frantic rush to get the Midnight of the Century episode released in time for Christmas. However, the show has returned with a very special treat, a deep dive into the idea of evil in the world of Millennium.

It’s a fascinating discussion, and it was an honour to be asked to join Russ Hugo and James McLean for a broad and varied discussion. It’s fascinating, because it’s the first time I’ve really got to talk on The Time is Now podcast about the unique structure of Millennium as a show that basically rebooted itself between seasons. This means that Millennium arguably has three very different ideas of what evil actually looks like across its runtime, which makes the discussion of the topic a fascinating and wide-ranging discussion.

As ever, you can listen directly to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: chris carter, evil, millennium | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 2, Episode 10 (“Midnight of the Century”)

Posted on December 24, 2019 by Darren

It’s Christmas, so The Time is Now has a special treat lined up for you. It’s the night before Christmas, so it was the perfect opportunity to discuss Midnight of the Century with the wonderful Tony Black. It’s something of a companion piece to our discussion of The Curse of Frank Black at Halloween.

It’s strange to imagine Millennium producing a Christmas episode. It’s even stranger to realise that’s a pretty much perfect episode for the season, following Frank Black through his Christmas Eve as he tries to work through his own complicated feelings about the holidays. Then again, it probably shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, the second season was show run by Glen Morgan and James Wong who had written Christmas-themed episodes like Beyond the Sea on The X-Files and River of Stars on Space: Above and Beyond. It is a delight.

As ever, you can listen directly to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below. Have a Merry Christmas!

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: christmas, frank black, midnight of the century, millennium, podcast, tony black | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 2, Episode 9 (“Jose Chung’s Doomsday Defense”)

Posted on December 10, 2019 by Darren

With Christmas coming up, The Time is Now is firing up again. This week, I finally got to talk about a Darin Morgan episode, joining I was flattered to join Paige Schector and Kurt North to discuss Jose Chung’s “Doomsday Defense.” It remains one of my favourite episodes of television ever, in one of my favourite seasons of seasons of television ever.

If you have never watched Millennium, this is actually the perfect opportunity to dip your toe in the waters. Jose Chung’s “Doomsday Defense” is an episode of Millennium through and through, suitably “millenniumistic” and concerned with the themes of the show around it, but it is also an accessible Darin Morgan script feature Charles Nelson Reilly reprising his iconic role from Jose Chung’s “From Outer Space.” It is playful, funny and deeply moving. It is all that one could want from an episode of television.

As ever, you can listen directly to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below. I really hope you enjoy.

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: Darin Morgan, jose chung, Jose Chung's "Doomsday Defense", jose chung's "from outer space", millennium, millenniumistic | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 2, Episode 6 (“The Curse of Frank Black”)

Posted on October 31, 2019 by Darren

Because it’s Halloween, The Time is Now has a special treat. I was flattered to talk about The Curse of Frank Black with the one and only Tony Black. A perfect piece of Halloween viewing, it is one of my favourite episodes of Millennium, and so was a huge honour to be asked to sit in on this one.

I’ve gone on record about this before. The second season of Millennium is one of my favourite twenty-odd-episode seasons of television ever produced. It is hard to pick a single favourite from a season that features episodes like Jose Chung’s “Doomsday Defense”, Owls and Roosters, and The Fourth Horseman and The Time is Now. Nevertheless, The Curse of Frank Black is one of those episodes of television that has really stayed with me over the years. I have lost track of how many times I have watched it, and every time I still find something new. So this was a delight.

As ever, you can listen directly to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below. I really hope you enjoy.

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: discussion, frank black, halloween, Lance Henriksen, millennium, podcast, review, the curse of frank black, the time is now | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 1, Episode 22 (“Paper Dove”)

Posted on October 9, 2019 by Darren

Recently, I had the pleasure of stopping by the first season of The Time is Now to talk about Millennium, joining the great Kurt North to discuss Paper Dove. It was a delight to be asked back, particularly because it’s the first season finale.

Paper Dove is a fascinating episode. Because every season of Millennium essentially reboots and reinvents itself, each season finale also becomes a sort of series finale. Each season-ender essentially bids farewell to a certain vision of what Millennium was or could be. This is very much the case in Paper Dove, which stands as one of the series’ most compelling and engaging “serial killer of the week” episodes right before the second season makes a conscious effort to move away from that approach to storytelling. It’s a wonderful illustration of how far Millennium has come since those early episodes, and a fantastic piece of television.

As ever, you can listen to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: kurt north, millennium, paper dove, serial killers, the time is now | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 1, Episode 19 (“Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions”)

Posted on September 2, 2019 by Darren

Wrapping up a late-first-season exploration of Millennium with the incomparable Christopher Knowles, I was thrilled to pop onto The Time is Now to discuss Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions.

In case the title doesn’t give the game away, Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions is a delightfully weird episode of television. It finds Frank Black confronting the loss of his best friend Bob Bletcher by becoming embroiled in an epic and existential conflict that exists at the very limits of his understanding. It might involve a ritualistic killer and a corrupt lawyer, but it may also involve renegade angels and the forces of hell operating on the mortal plane. The beauty of Powers, Principalities, Thrones and Dominions lies in the ambiguity.

Indeed, that ambiguity was a huge part of the fun in discussing the episode with Chris. I think we both had slightly different reads on what the episode was about and where it was coming from, which speaks to its strength as an episode of television. It’s a staggering piece of work, one that obviously lays the groundwork for Patient X and The Red and the Black in the fifth season of The X-Files.

As ever, you can listen to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: angels, chris knowles, demons, epic, frank black, millennium, war in heaven | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 1, Episode 18 (“Lamentation”)

Posted on August 26, 2019 by Darren

As ever, a delight to stop by The Time is Now to talk about Millennium, this week as part of triptych with the great Kurt North and the wonderful Christopher Knowles.

An interesting installment this week. Kicking off a loose two-parter that effectively serves as Millennium‘s version of a mythology episode, Lamentation offers a clear escalation in the stakes of the first season. It’s a fascinating episode that seems to mark a clear transition in what Millennium is about, a strong signalling of creative intent from the production team. It’s a weird and eccentric episode of television, a real showcase of what Millennium could do when it set its mind to it.

I was pleasantly surprised at the variety of opinion on here, with each of the three of us having very different takes on the episode’s strengths and weaknesses. As ever, you can listen to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: evil, frank black, hannibal lecter, home, house, lamentation, legion, lucy butler, millennium, serial killer | Leave a comment »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 1, Episode 17 (“Walkabout”)

Posted on August 26, 2019 by Darren

As ever, a delight to stop by The Time is Now to talk about Millennium, this week reteaming with the fantastic Christopher Knowles.

As the show moves through the second half of its first season, it becomes progressively more adventurous and ambitious. While complaints about the “serial killer of the week” format might be a little unfair to the first fourteen or so episodes, the final stretch of the season embraces a more experimental aesthetic. Walkabout centres on a drug trial, one in which Frank appears to have been a participant. His memory foggy, Frank struggles to figure out what he might have been doing there. As tensions rise with both Catherine and Peter, Frank becomes convinced there’s more to the situation than meets the eye.

It was a joy to discuss the episode with Chris. As ever, you can listen to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.

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Filed under: Millennium, Podcasts! | Tagged: chris knowles, drug trials, frank black, millennium, pharmaceuticals | Leave a comment »

142. American History X – Summer of ’99 (#34)

Posted on August 10, 2019 by Darren

Hosted by Andrew Quinn and Darren Mooney, and this week with special guest Charlene Lydon, The 250 is a (mostly) weekly trip through some of the best (and worst) movies ever made, as voted for by Internet Movie Database Users. New episodes are released every Saturday at 6pm GMT.

This time, kicking off our Summer of ’99 season, Toby Kaye’s American History X.

1999 was a great year for movies, with a host of massively successful (and cult) hits that would define cinema for a next generation: The Matrix, The Blair Witch Project, The Best Man, Cruel Intentions, Fight Club. The Summer of ’99 season offers a trip through the year in film on the IMDb‘s 250.

Danny Vinyard finds himself called to the principal’s office after submitting a salacious and controversial essay citing Adolf Hitler as a civil rights hero. There, the school principal Doctor Sweeney sets Derek another assignment: a personally essay exploring his relationship with his white supremacist brother Derek. Derek Vinyard was just released from prison that morning, and is about to discover that putting his life back together will not be as easy as he might have hoped.

At time of recording, it was ranked 34th on the Internet Movie Database‘s list of the best movies of all-time.

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Filed under: The 250 | Tagged: american history x, charlene lydon, cycles, edward norton, film, hate, millennium, Movie, review, summer of '99, tony kaye, white supremacy | 2 Comments »

New Podcast! The Time is Now – Season 1, Episode 14 (“The Thin White Line”)

Posted on August 3, 2019 by Darren

As ever, a delight to stop by The Time is Now to talk about Millennium, this week with the estimable Christopher Knowles.

This week, I got to show how deep my love was for The Thin White Line, the last episode of the first season to be penned by James Wong and Glen Morgan. As with Force Majeure, this is one of my favourite episodes of the first season. It is interesting, because it’s also one of the last “serial killer of the week” stories in the season. It is also among the very best of that subgenre, and deals thematically with ideas that the show will explore in the season ahead.

This was a fun, broad discussion. As ever, you can listen to the episode here, subscribe to the podcast here, or click the link below.