Month: February 2018

TV

The Frankenstein Chronicles **/****

While the new Netflix series The Frankenstein Chronicles may have debuted last week here in the US, the series starring Sean Bean actually began airing in the UK way back in 2015. This show about detective John Marlott (Bean) working in London in the 19th century is an interesting twist on the standard cop drama. Here, Marlott uncovers the body of a girl washed up on the banks of a river. But it turns out it’s not just one girl he’s found, it’s actually parts of nine different girls stitched together. And when he begins trying to find out who all the body parts belong to, Marlott soon begins finding that kids have been going missing all over the city and no one’s taken notice.

I thought that The Frankenstein Chronicles had a lot of interesting ideas from what if Dr. Frankenstein was a real person to how these murders and 19th century morals conflict with one and other. Because this killer is putting people together and trying to bring this creation back to life it’s a question for people back then if he’s in fact doomed the souls of the dead to an eternity of damnation.

The again, after one episode I couldn’t quite escape the fact that at its core The Frankenstein Chronicles is a detective show, of which there seems to be 1,001 of these days. I think what helps this series is that there’s only twelve episode in the first two seasons, of which both are currently streamable. So I can’t imagine there’ll be enough time to do a lot of false leads in The Frankenstein Chronicles which for me anyways, always turns detective shows into great bores.

Lost in Space promo

Movies

The Movie Chain: #8: 28 Days Later… (2002)

Last week: Dunkirk

The Movie Chain is a weekly, micro-movie review where each week’s film is related to the previous week’s movie in some way.

As I sit here typing this it’s hard to believe that 16 years ago zombies weren’t much a part of films that were being released and weren’t a part of TV at all. Sure, there were a few zombie movies around and Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead were available on VHS and DVD, but for the most part back in 2002 only horror aficionados were watching anything that featured a flesh-chomping zed.

That was until the release of 28 Days Later…

That movie, about a bike messenger (Cillian Murphy also of last week’s Dunkirk) awakening in a hospital bed from a coma 28 days after a zombie apocalypse has burned through Great Britain single handedly took zombies from VHS rental fodder to the forefront of horror. The movie was popular, had several different releases with different endings attached in theaters and, more importantly, made a lot of money.

After 28 Days Later… would come a remake of Dawn of the Dead in 2004 that “borrowed” fast zombies from 28 Days Later… and the start of the comic series The Walking Dead in 2003 which would “borrow” the idea of its main character awakening in a hospital bed sometime after after the rise of the zombies and the collapse of society and basically took everything else from Day of the Dead.

And today the most popular type of horror monster is the zombie with the series The Walking Dead as one of the most popular shows on TV with there being several zombie movies out each year.

But without 28 Days Later… I doubt any of this would exist.

Next week: “So if you wake up one morning and it’s a particularly beautiful day, you’ll know we made it.”

Rumor Control

I started working on my yearly “Summer movie preview” column a few weeks ago. I got all the movies down I wanted to cover on the dates they’ll premiere. Even though these movies won’t open for a few months I felt confident enough listing them and starting work now since the dates of summer movies are always set in stone many months in advance. Except not so much this year. First Deadpool changed dates which wasn’t a big deal since it was only moving a week to keep away from the next Star Wars movie. But more recently two movies pulled out of summer altogether; Alita: Battle Angel and The Predator. I can’t really remember the last time two movies left their summer move slot altogether so late in the game and so close to summer.

I wonder if this is because nowadays movies are made so quickly and they require so much special effects work that sometimes the movies quite literally can’t be made fast enough to hit their release dates?

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Over the last few years I’ve found myself becoming very picky with what I watch. I can afford to be, if I can’t find something to watch with my satellite subscription I can always watch something on the hundreds of DVDs, tens of Blu-rays, dozens of digital downloads or any of the various streaming services I subscribe to like Netflix or Amazon Prime. At any given moment I have quite literally thousands of things I can watch at my fingertips.

So why is it that more times that not I find myself spending hours looking for something to watch on a Saturday night?

I suppose it’s all that choice. Even when I might find something I might want to watch there’s always the possibility that if I only spend a few more minutes looking that I’ll find something I really want to watch. And sometimes this does happen when I’m just about ready to give up looking and settle on something when I’ll come across something I’d wanted to see for some time but hadn’t. When this happens it’s like winning the lottery. But much like the lottery this doesn’t happen often and I’m more likely to spend time scrolling the titles than actually watching anything.

I don’t remember this being a big problem in the past. Years ago before on-demand, streaming, Blu-rays and DVDs I’d spend my TV time watching whatever happened to be on. A lot of the stuff I watched wasn’t very good and the only reason I watched it was because it was on when I had the TV on. Some of the stuff I watched was bad and a few programs were great, but those were the minority. In fact, I feel that my tastes in pop-culture right now was partially built on me watching things I wouldn’t normally and only saw them because there was nothing else on TV at the time.

And honestly, for better or worse, I’m not like that anymore. I can’t remember the last time I watched anything I really didn’t want to. I’ve even stopped watching good shows because I’ve grown bored with them since the flood of new content out there means there’s always something else new to checkout. I don’t know how I feel about that. On the one hand I’m not wasting my time watching some crappy show or movie just to fill the time. On the other hand because at one time I was willing to do that meant I discovered lots and lots of interesting TV series and movies like Doctor Who and The Last Man on Earth and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Night of the Living Dead to name a scant few that I would have otherwise missed.

Then again, in today’s age when something’s really great people will talk about it online and it will quickly become apparent what’s worth checking out and what’s not. However, there’s been many times when my tastes have disagreed with the pop-culture masses which would mean that if I’m not checking movies and TV series myself I’m invariably going to miss things I might otherwise like.

What drives me wild is we live in a world of almost limitless, new and good movies and TV series I find myself watching the same old stuff over and over again. I don’t necessarily think there’s anything wrong with watching, say, The Martian a few times over the course of a year. People listen to albums over and over again and there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with that. On the other hand, in a time where there’s more than 500 TV dramas and comedies scheduled to debut in 2018 shouldn’t I be at least checking out as many new shows as I can?

There is some comfort in watching the same movie or TV series over and over again. You know what you’re going to be watching something you like and not sitting through something that’s just as likely to be cruddy than cool. But if I’m not checking out new things, how will I keep discovering these good movies I’d want to watch over and over again in the first place?

What’s starting to get to me is that while we seem to be moving away from cable and satellite TV packages as a source for our entertainment, it means that to keep up on every movie and TV series being release it means you have to subscribe to many streaming services to do so. Before it used to be a case of getting a basic cable package and a paying for a few premium channels and you’d be set. Now it’s all that plus Netflix, Hulu, Prime, Acorn, CBS All Access, etc, etc, etc… and it’s even getting crazier with the likes of Apple, Facebook and YouTube all now getting into the original TV content game too.

I love drama and comedy TV and movies and love following the development of new series and movies, but at this point even I’m overwhelmed. There’s too many choices out there for streaming content to pick from and there seems to be more and more coming everyday. It’s too much and I’m tired always having to play catchup. I’ve decide that I’m going to stick with my current TV setup for a while longer — a basic package on DirecTV that includes HBO plus Netflix and Amazon Prime. And the rest is just going to have to live without me for a while. Series like The Handmaid’s Tale, Star Trek: Discovery and the upcoming Amazing Stories sound really good, but I not willing to subscribe to another service just to watch them.

With movies and TV series I just want to be entertained but with the way things are going it’s all becoming one big hassle to find that entertainment.

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week