Japanese broadcasters won’t show the final season of Fox’s “24,” as planned — because its storyline involves radiation poisoning.
Executives at TV Tokyo say they’re sensitive to the storyline in light of the 9.0 magnitude earthquake and resulting tsunami in Northern Japan on March 11 — which severely damaged the Fukushima nuclear power plant, unleashing large doses of radiation.
In the final (eighth) season of “24,” which ended last May, the son of a Russian terrorist becomes ill after he’s exposed to nuclear rods.
TV Tokyo will, instead, re-air the fifth season of “24.”
“With the many victims of the current disaster in Japan, and ongoing concerns about radiation leaks from the nuclear power station, TV Tokyo has decided not to show the planned final season and show season five instead,” the network said in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.
As promised, the eighth and final season of 24 has went live on Netflix Instant Watch today, just two months after the DVD release. This addition of 24 Season 8 to Netflix streaming now makes the entire 24 series available on Netflix Instant Watch.
Like the previous five seasons and Redemption, Netflix offers 24 Season 8 in high-definition. Here’s the page to watch 24 Season 8 on Netflix.
24 Season 8 is arriving on Netflix instant streaming on February 12th, just two months after its December 14th retail release. It’s been in high demand on Netflix with a “Very long wait” time so I’m sure this will make many people happy.
This addition will make the entire series available on Netflix for streaming. The past seven seasons were put on the service last April along with the two-hour television movie “24: Redemption” (which is listed as the first episode on the 24 Season 7 page). [click to continue…]
Here’s a promo called “The Clock Has Stopped” for the 24 Season 8 DVD. It’s mostly the same as the early “Run This Town” Season 8 promo but was updated with new text and music. Probably not exciting for most people, but posting it for the sake of completeness.
BuzzFocus has awarded Jack Bauer with “Best Action Hero” in their “Best of TV 2010″ awards. Here’s what they had to say about our favorite action hero:
Best Action Hero
Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), 24
Fact: Chuck Norris wears Jack Bauer pajamas. After personally saving America’s butt seven times, Jack Bauer wasted no time springing into action in Day 8, this time saving New York from a major terrorist attack. And just when he was ready to retire for good, he lost yet another love, Renee Walker (Annie Wersching). The result? Bauer went absolutely berserk and singlehandedly saved the day…again. And he gets a special helping of props for putting Dana Walsh out of her misery. When it was all said and done, he was able to escape and disappear into the shadows, presumably until Fox approves on a viable movie script.
Reader’s Choice Winner: Michael Western (Jeffrey Donovan), Burn Notice
Since several people have asked me, here are all six of the deleted scenes found on the 24 Season 8 DVD.
There aren’t any audio commentaries for the deleted scenes this time around, so there’s no way to know why these scenes were cut. Most of them were probably removed for time reasons. [click to continue…]
Since I posted all the stories praising the series finale, it’s only fair that I post a differing opinion too. Cinema Blend is listing the 24 series finale as one of their “Biggest TV Disappointments Of 2010″ and here’s what they’ve got to say:
Jack Bauer’s Dismal Ending – 24
The season finale of 24 wasn’t bad. It resolved most of the issues for the season and even delivered on a few big moments, including Jack almost being executed and a very touching final conversation between Jack and Chloe that surely made plenty of die hard 24 fans tear up. Did the finale leave a window open for the movie? Sure but as a series closer, Jack should’ve gone out in a blaze of glory, either buried in medals for his acts of bravery or just plain buried (because some great stories have to end that way). Instead, 24 ended with Jack all alone, injured, grieving and a wanted man who now has to go into hiding. Potential movie or not 24 deserved a better ending and so did we.
The 24 Season 8 DVD has sold 178,830 copies and grossed $6,716,855 dollars in its first week on sale (December 14-19).
That’s quite a large drop from last years 24 Season 7′s DVD debut which sold 275,000 copies during its first week on store shelves and became the second highest-grossing TV DVD of 2009 (behind HBO’s True Blood) after eleven weeks on sale.
Reviewers have criticized the 24 Season 8 DVD for its dissapointing lack of extras – zero audio commentaries, no bloopers, and just two special features. The “Chloe’s Arrest” epilogue was also excluded from the US standalone DVD set despite being available on the DVD in every other regions release.
Here’s how sales stack up compared to the last few seasons: [click to continue…]
The Los Angeles Times has listed Renee Walker as one of the ten beloved television characters who passed away in 2010 which will be missed. I can definitely agree with this one!
Here’s what they say:
Renee (Annie Wersching on “24″). Jack Bauer finally gets to have sex and minutes later his girlfriend is shot by a sniper. Man, it sucks to be Jack.
Blu-Ray.com has reviewed the 24 Season 8 Blu-Ray set giving it high marks for the audio and video quality while dinging it for the lack of extras. If you’re one of those video and audiophile types that want to know all the specific technical details of the transfer, this is the review you want to read.
If you’re a longtime 24 follower, you owe it to yourself to see the series to its completion. Season 8 may not be as groundbreaking or intense as the show’s first few seasons—really, how could it be?—but it’s still damn good television. This is a satisfying Blu-ray release as well. Minor compression issues aside, the high definition image is a pleasure to watch, and the show’s frequently bombastic sound design is given the full lossless audio treatment. Certainly worth a purchase for fans.
24 Season 8 Blu-Ray, DVD, and Complete Series box set
The picture quality is excellent on both the Blu-Ray and DVD and presentation is really nice as usual, with fancy animated menus playing brief scenes from the episodes on that disc. Unfortunately if you’re a first time viewer these fancy menu backgrounds may spoil certain key moments (such as Kayla’s kidnapping) for you before you get to see them unfold in the episode.
I’m not going to bother reviewing the plot of Season 8 since I assume most people reading this have already watched, so I’ll mostly focus on the extras in this review. For the final season of such a monumental television series like 24 you would expect them to go all out and produce a fantastic DVD with tons of extras celebrating the series long run. Unfortunately that isn’t the case and this ends up being the weakest 24 DVD release yet.
The Ultimate CTU is a special feature found on disk 6 of the 24 Season 8 DVD.
Production designer Carlos Barbosa, art director Carlos Osorio, construction coordinator Philip Stone, Olivier Benamou who creates the computer graphics, and showrunner Howard Gordon describe the new CTU New York.
Virtually New York special feature found on disk 6 of the 24 Season 8 DVD.
Director Brad Turner, showrunner Howard Gordon, Director of Photography Rodney Charters, producer Paul Gadd, and visual effects supervisors Sam Nicholson, Eddie Bonin, James Riley, digital compositing supervisor Chris Martin, and CGI supervisor Al Lopez describe how they faked New York with creative use of green screens and CG technology.
