Sam Glanzman Sgt Rock illustration
Month: September 2017
Opening Credits Sunday: Taxi (1978)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1QJ8ijnNxM
Direct Beam Comms #91
Rumor Control
Late early September is always a sort of doldrums for TV and movies with the 2016/2017 TV season essentially over and the next not quite having started yet. And the summer movie season has also ended which means there’s a lull in new interesting movies out before the fall season starts with more interesting fare.
On TV I’ve been watching series like People of Earth, The Guest Book, Halt and Catch Fire and The Defenders. But I’ve also been checking out things like episodes of the original Star Trek on Netflix as well.
So far this year movie-wise I’ve seen:
Passengers: I liked it but I don’t think I would have cared as much for it if I would have paid full price to see it. See Passengers if you ever wondered what I Am Legend would have been like in space.
Logan: So far I think Logan is the best movie of the year and is one of the best comic book movies of all-time. Just see Logan if you haven’t.
Life: I was disappointed in this one. This sci-fi movie about astronauts in space doing battle with an alien lifeform didn’t connect with me for whatever reason. See Life if you always wanted to see an unofficial sequel to The Thing set on board a space station.
Kong: Skull Island: Not a great movie by any standards, but not a terrible way to spend a few hours either. See Kong: Skull Island if you love movies about giant monsters stepping on/eating people.
Ghost in the Shell: See above. See this movie if you understood what was going on in the Ghost in the Shell anime.
Alien: Covenant: This sequel to Prometheus/ prequel to Alien is a good movie if it takes a bit of time to get going and has a few too many plot-holes. Still, I dug this one. See Alien: Covenant if you love the Alien movie franchise even if you have conflicted feelings about Alien Resurrection.
Guardians of the Galaxy 2: For whatever reason I wasn’t a fan of the first Guardians of the Galaxy but liked the sequel a lot. It’s a fun, poppy movie that moves at a nice pace and features characters the audience likes to be with. See Guardians of the Galaxy 2 if you like watching superheros hanging out and having fun.
TV
Mindhunter series promo
Comics
Batman: Year One — The Deluxe Edition
The Batman: Year One storyline of a Bruce Wayne on the cusp of becoming Batman might be my favorite Batman story of all-time. Written by Frank Miller, Year One has a strange positivity whereas his much more acclaimed The Dark Knight Returns is almost its opposite.
One of the most important and critically acclaimed Batman adventures ever—written by Frank Miller (BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS) with art by David Mazzucchelli (Daredevil)—returns in a new deluxe edition hardcover. In addition to telling the entire dramatic story of Batman’s first year fighting crime from BATMAN #404–407, this collection includes introductions by Miller and editor Dennis O’Neil, reproductions of original layouts, promotional art, unseen Mazzucchelli Batman art, Richmond Lewis’s color samples, script pages and more!
Books
Bernie Wrightson: Art and Designs for the Gang of Seven Animation Studio
Artist Bernie Wrightson was one of the best all-around comic book artists/illustrators/painters/storytellers ever. One body of Wrightson’s work that so far much of hasn’t seen the light of day is his conceptual work for film and TV. Of which Bernie Wrightson: Art and Designs for the Gang of Seven Animation Studio is set to rectify publishing conceptual work from his time working at this studio.
Wrightson’s extensive design work for the Gang of Seven Animation Studio, while known, has never been documented until now with the creation of this new in-depth monograph that utilizes the archives of the studio. Marvel at concept drawings, model sheets, and hundreds of designs for projects including Biker Mice From Mars, The Juice, and Freak Show. All of the artwork in this book has been scanned directly from the original artwork so fans can savior Wrightson’s genius up close and personal.
The Reading & Watch List
- Goosebumps’ covers owe their weirdness to one hardworking artist
- In 1.3 Million Years, the Solar System Will Briefly Contain Two Stars
- How the Defenders Are Saving New York
- NASA at Saturn: Cassini’s Grand Finale
- ‘Buck Rogers’ Ownership at Center of Coming Trial
- Tinker, tailor, soldier, Sandbagger: sometimes TV from the 70s holds up
This week in pop-culture history
- 1907: Fay Wray of King Kong and The Most Dangerous Game is born
- 1966: Star Trek (The Original Series) premiers
- 1966: The Time Tunnel debuts
- 1973: The TV series Star Trek (The Animated Series) premiers
- 1975: The animated series Return to the Planet of the Apes debuts
- 1980: Battle Beyond the Stars premiers
- 2008: The TV series Fringe premiers
Punisher Saturday: Mike Zeck Punisher poster
IT’s better than you remember
The last few months I’ve been reading about how the new movie based on the Stephen King novel IT is finally going to do the story justice on the big screen. It’ll be the film that sets right what was done wrong in the 1990 made-for-tv movie IT. These articles talk about how bad that TV version was and how it was unwatchable in its day.
Either the people writing about how the 1990 IT stinks weren’t around back then or don’t have good memories, but as someone who remembers I’m here to tell you that good sci-fi and horror series were the exception rather than the rule back then and the TV version of IT was one of the good things on TV.
Back then there were a few sci-fi/horror series on like Twin Peaks, Quantum Leap and The Flash with other syndicated shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Swamp Thing as well. But non-sci-fi/horror TV series then ruled the day with shows like Murder, She Wrote, Matlock and In the Heat of the Night which were all top-rated series in the early 1990s.
But really there wasn’t too much good stuff on TV in 1990. Shows like The X-Files, Babylon 5 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were all still in the future in 1990 so, when the IT TV movie was announced I was beyond excited.
In 1990, Stephen King was the one author who’s books kids at my school actually chose to read without having to. He was, and still is, a prolific writer who had a huge body of work that seemingly all of which was slowly being turned into movies. Some were good like Stand by Me and Carrie and some of which was not so good. But since there was a lot less to choose from then, genera fans like myself would devour the good stuff right alongside the not-so-good stuff. I think that’s why I was so excited about IT. To a certain extent, it didn’t matter if IT was any good or not. Fans like myself were going to watch it no matter what. I think what mattered was the “king of horror” was going to have one of his stories turned into something that was going to be shown on TV — in prime time — and on a major network.
Back then if you weren’t going to record something like IT to VHS then you had to watch each episode when it aired. And because IT aired over two nights meant you had to come back the next night to finish the story. Which a lot of people did — IT was a success for ABC when it aired with nearly 30 million people tuning in to watch.
Why do people dislike the 1990 IT today? My guess would be that by today’s standards the movie looks pretty crude. It stars a group of actors mostly known for TV work and has some special effects that are more “man in a rubber suit” funny than terrifying. Which is all true, if you look at the movie with 2017 eyes.
With my 1990 eyes I saw the movie in a whole other light. There was nothing like it on TV — it felt a bit like the kids from Stand by Me who were fighting a kid-killing alien from space which was not something that ever showed up on Murder She Wrote. And it had some truly scary moments, abet the end of the miniseries when you get to see the creature in all its glory probably isn’t one of them.
But still, there’s Tim Curry as the title character in its human form that was so good in the miniseries I think he turned a generation of kids off clowns for all time. Curry in his Pennywise guise is the most effective villains in any Stephen King adapted work, and that’s saying a lot.
Now comes a 2017 IT for a new generation, this one out September 8. This new IT might be the bestest, scariest, goodest Stephen King movie ever made, but I can only imagine sometime in 2044 there’ll be a whole new generation of fans talking about how bad it was.