When I was growing up in the 1980s, Disney wasn’t very popular with
the kids I knew. I don’t mean we didn’t see Disney movies, even if many
of them were released under the Touchstone Pictures brand, nor did we
not watch Disney on TV since there were quite a few cool TV movies
released then under the Disney brand then too. But as for what people
think of as Disney with Mickey Mouse, Goofy, Pluto and the rest, I don’t
remember them being around at the movies or on TV growing up.
The kids I hung out with were much more into characters from Looney Tunes than Mickey Mouse. In fact, for a time in the 1990s Looney Tunes characters like the Tasmanian Devil and Marvin the Martin were
everywhere, on t-shirts, cars and body parts with tattoos. But not so
much with the mouse.
And I think I know the reason why.
While in the 1980s episodes of Looney Tunes and Tom and Jerry running after-school were ubiquitous across the TV dial, during that
time period Mickey Mouse was nowhere to be found. The reason was back
then all things Disney related were moved from regular TV to the new
Disney Channel, and back then the Disney Channel was a premium channel
you had to pay extra for like HBO. So if your parents didn’t pay up
you’d never see any Mickey Mouse cartoons. I knew of exactly one person
back then who had the Disney Channel as a kid, the rest of my friends
and family did not.
And because there was a whole generation of kids who grew up without a
way to easily see Disney cartoons we never had too much fondness for
them or their characters.
Which is why the whole idea of these new streaming services popping
up all over with that have their own series you can see no where else
frightens me a little.
If you want to see new episodes of Star Trek you can only do that on CBS All Access. If you want to see new episodes of the upcoming Star Wars TV show, and eventually any of the Star Wars movies outside of the theater, you’ll have to do that on Disney streaming.
Star Wars TV series
All of which is fine, except I wonder how this will affect those brands in the future?
Part of the reason I love all things Star Wars was growing
up the original trilogy of movies would turn up on broadcast TV from
time to time. And even when it eventually moved to cable it wasn’t on
the premium channels and was easy to see. I remember watching marathons
of Star Wars many a Thanksgiving.
The same goes for Star Trek. I only really started watching that series when Star Trek: Deep Space Nine premiered. And when that show hooked me I went back and watched all of The Next Generation since it aired in syndication and was pretty easy to see.
And since I’m a fan of both Star Wars and Star Trek I’ve spent many hours and more money than I’d like to think about on
them, collecting everything from the films to posters to toys and
everything in between.
I don’t think I’d be as infatuated with them if the only place to see
them would’ve been two outlets that my parents would have had to pay
extra to get. I might have bee into Star Wars because of the
films, but I’m not sure how into them I would’ve been if it wasn’t as
easy as it was to see them after the theater?
Right now it makes perfect financial sense to move Star Trek and Star Wars to these streaming services. They have this incredibly dedicated
fan-base who’ll follow those franchises to the ends of the Earth and
don’t mind paying $10 a month to do so.
My question is in 20 or 30 years when there’s a generation of kids
who grew up knowing about shows that only appeared on streaming they
might not have gotten, will they care as much as we do today? I think
not, I think they’ll be like my generation and Disney. We’re aware of it
but we’re not invested in it.
Ironically, right after my generation came of age Disney began
getting its act back together and in the 1990s the Disney Channel became
part of basic cable. Even more importantly they started releasing a
popular series of movies and syndicated TV shows that really connected
with the next generation of kids. To them Disney and Aladdin and Rescue Rangers and The Little Mermaid are their childhood touchstones where Looney Tunes and Transformers and G.I. Joe are part of mine.
It will be interesting to see if in a decade or so places like Paramount who owns Star Trek and Disney Star Wars will look back at what they’re doing now as some great mistake? That
instead of tapping into a well of fandom they’ve actually capped that
well and have taken short-term gains but setup a long-term collapse.
DC Entertainment is set to release the seminal Mark Waid/Alex Ross comic mini-series Kingdom Come in one of their gorgeous “Absolute” collected editions. The downside is this runs about $100 retail.
In the not-so-distant future, the DC Universe is spinning inexorably
out of control. The new generation of heroes has lost their moral
compass, becoming as reckless and violent as the villains they fight.
The previous regime of heroes—the Justice League—returns under the most
dire of circumstances, which sets up a battle of the old guard against
these uncompromising protectors in a conflict that will define what
heroism truly is. Collects KINGDOM COME #1–4.
Overlord movie trailer
Aquaman extended look
What To Watch This Week
Teen Titans! Go to the Movies
Sunday
The latest animated Star Wars series Star Wars Resistance premiers this week on Disney HD.
TCM begins gearing up for Halloween and will be airing a whole bunch of movies featuring mummies including The Mummy’s Hand, The Mummy’s Ghost and The Mummy’s Curse Sunday evening.
The Walking Dead returns to AMC for it’s 1,790th season.
Tuesday
The surprisingly underperforming Teen Titans Go! To the Movies is released on digital this week.
TCM will air the 1992 Stephen Hawking documentary A Brief History of Time today.
Wednesday
After “Mummy Sunday” TCM will air a “Christopher Lee Wednesday” with a
bunch of horror movies that featured the iconic actor with the likes of The Devil’s Bride, Horror of Dracula, Dracula, Prince of Darkness, Horror Hotel, The Face of Fu Manchu and Rasputin, the Mad Monk.
Friday
Netflix will release its horror series The Haunting of Hill House Friday.
Matt Weiner’s first new series since Mad Men entitled The Romanoffs debuts on Amazon Prime.
First Man about astronaut Neil Armstrong starring Ryan Gosling premieres in theaters this week.
I hadn’t even heard of this FX show until a few weeks ago, and it
wasn’t because I saw a trailer or commercial for it on TV or online. I
only heard about Mr Inbetween because I happened to see a
poster for it that caught my eye, otherwise I doubt I’d have checked out
this wonderful series at all since I can’t watch what I don’t know
about.
Originally developed for FX Australia but airing here on FX since that channel went “belly up,” Mr. Inbetween follows Ray Shoesmith (Scott Ryan), an underworld hood who’s equally at
home tossing guys off of balconies as he is threatening someone for
owing $10,000 to the wrong people. As Ray puts it, “I’m the guy who’s
here to make you regret not paying up.”
And since Mr Inbetween is an FX show I figured it would have
all these over-the-top action scenes of machine guns and violence like
practically every other original show they air but that’s just not the
case here. There is violence in the first episode, Ray does toss one
unsuspecting man off a balcony and onto the hard ground below and in the
second he murders a man who might not had it coming, but Mr Inbetween is much more nuanced, grounded, and much more a character piece, than say a similar show on FX like Mayans.
Ray feels like a real person with real problems from his job to being a
single dad who’s also on the wrong side of 40 for someone who needs to
stay in top condition to beat people up for a living.
Unfortunately, I suspect because Mr Inbetween is grounded
and because there aren’t machine gun fights every episode, it seems as
if FX is burning this one off, airing two episodes back-to-back Tuesday
nights at 11:30 PM Eastern. I guess the prime-time slots on FX are
already full of things like airing The Avengers for the 100th time.
Oh well. If you’re interested in quality programming that’s character based, checkout Mr Inbetween while you can.
The Good Place
The Good Place
Most sitcoms ascribe to the rule that nothing ever changes. Just look at something like Big Bang Theory.
That series has been on the air 12 seasons yet new episodes today
aren’t that much different then the ones that debuted more than a decade
ago. Which is perfect for shows headed towards syndication where
episodes air out of order all the time which might lead to confusion if
shows tied together in any real meaningful way. Sitcoms are the comfort
food of the TV world where viewers know they can tune into just about
any episode and spend a half hour or so with their TV friends. All of
which is fine, I just find those kinds of shows in permanent stasis boring.
But it doesn’t have to be that way, there’s one network sitcom that breaks this mold and that sitcom is The Good Place On NBC. In The Good Place characters change all the time.
Spoilers for the first few seasons of the show follow.
In the first season Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) awakens in
heaven after an accident only to realize that because of a mixup she was
supposed to go to the bad place but switched places with another person
who just so happens to also be named Eleanor Shellstrop too. As the
season progressed and Eleanor did her darnedest to turn good and really
earn a spot in the good place it was revealed that, a) there were others
in the good place who were supposed to be in the bad as well and b) it
was all a ruse by supposedly good overseer Michael (Ted Danson) who
reveals that they’re really in the bad place.
And the second season starts with the characters having their
memories wiped and Michael starting over tricking everyone that they’re
in the good place. Only this time if Michael fails he’ll be put in a
very bad place himself.
The third season begins right after the end of the second where
Michael, not wanting to be burned alive for all eternity on the surface
of a star, helps Eleanor and her group find a way to the real good
place. But in order to do so they’re all sent back to the Earth as if
they never died in order to prove to the universe they really do deserve
a place in the good place. The group comes together not realizing they
already know one and other but there’s one small problem, a new member
who just so happens to be a demon (Adam Scott) sent to make sure they
don’t earn a ticket to the real good place.
The Good Place
What I dig about The Good Place is that the characters have
evolved and changed throughout the series. If in the first season
Eleanor is a self-centered destructive person then by the second she’s
actively looking out for others in her group, going as far as turning
down a spot in the good place if it meant that everyone else couldn’t go
with her. And the same goes for Michael, who’s the character who’s
changed the most in the series. If in the first season he’s a goofy,
lovable guy who can’t understand why his perfect creation is failing in
all these weird ways, he’s trying to trick Eleanor into believing it’s
because of her, then in the second he starts as this slimy demon who’s
actively trying to hurt the main characters of the show until he comes
to the realization, abet over hundreds and hundreds of times of
“rebooting” everything and trying to convince Eleanor and her group that
they’re really in the good place, that what he’s doing is wrong until
he goes about helping them escape.
Not only do the characters change but each episode of the show builds
upon the last which is death for syndicated series. Viewers can’t start
with a random episode and enjoy the show. The only way to watch The Good Place is to start from the first episode and watch from there. Though the series might be bad for syndication it’s great for binge watching via streaming services.
But that’s why I think I like The Good Place so much. I never know what’s lurking around the next corner or how the characters will evolve as the season progresses.
Manifest
Manifest
The plot to the new NBC series Manifest is genuinely
interesting. In it, a airliner takes off from Jamaica in 2013 but lands
in New York in 2018. Five years have passed outside, but inside the
plane it’s only been a few hours. For some like Michaela (Melissa
Roxburgh) it means a mother who’s passed away and a fiancé who ended up
marrying her best friend. For others like Ben’s (Josh Dallas) son, it
means treatment options for what was considered five years ago terminal
leukemia.
Now the idea that a plane taking off and landing someplace/somewhen else isn’t unique, “The Odyssey of Flight 33” from The Twilight Zone and the Stephen King novel The Langoliers immediately spring to mind. Still, Manifest could be a really interesting series about what it’s like to fall asleep in one world and wake up in another.
Some of which is present in Manifest, there are interesting
ideas about what happens to a family separated for years and brought
together and a woman trying to pick up the pieces of a life broken while
she was away and how these people are seen by the outside world.
But in the first episode of Manifest the show takes a
bizarre left turn. Instead of focusing on the whole time travel thing,
which is pretty interested in itself, the creators of it decided to
insert a weird, almost superhero, thread to the series. Here, Michaela
begins hearing voices, one warns that a bus she’s riding in is about to
hit a little kid and another tells her that she needs to release a few
dogs locked behind a gate. She thinks she’s going crazy until her
brother shows up after hearing the same thing. And it turns out letting
the dogs go was the beginning of cracking the case of two missing girls.
I don’t know how interested I am in sticking with Manifest,
the whole voices thing has me really worried. Like, isn’t the whole
airplane full of people traveling in time five years interesting enough,
isn’t there enough material for at least one season of a show from that
all by itself?
Murphy Brown
Murphy Brown
I remember I used to watch Murphy Brown when it was
originally on but honestly can’t remember when I stopped. I wasn’t
watching it up until the series ended in 1998 after 10 seasons, nor can I
honestly even remember a single episode of the show. Some of that has
to be that as far as I can tell other than the period Murphy Brown aired the series never ran in syndication. I’m assuming this is because
episodes were sometimes very topical so that jokes about Dan Quayle
that worked in 1988 might not be as funny to those alive today who
weren’t even born with he was Vice President.
I take it back, I do remember two things about Murphy Brown.
The first was that one of the running gags on the show was the
character of Murphy Brown had a rotating cast of characters who played
her secretary with a new face at the desk every week. That and she had a
guy played by the late Robert Pastorelli who spent the seasons
constantly renovating her house.
But as for actual episodes and stories, I don’t remember a single one.
And now 20 years after the series originally ended comes another
season of the show also on CBS. This time instead of being a brash
40-something Murphy’s a retired 70-something who’s watching the world
change around her with no outlet for her opinions. So she decides to get
the gang back together and take a job hosting a new show.
I though the first episode of Murphy Brown was interesting,
if I’m not sure that I’ll stick around for many more. Sitcoms that
measure success by how many jokes they can deliver per minute usually
aren’t my thing.
Comic book artist and illustrator Alex Ross has already had a collection of his work from DC published with Mythology: The DC Comics Art of Alex Ross and now comes a collection of his work at Marvel with Marvelocity.
Here is the beloved Marvel Universe of comics characters, brought to
thrilling life as only Alex Ross can. They’re all here: Spider-Man,
Captain America, Iron Man, the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy,
the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Black Panther, and many more—all seeming
to leap, blast, and launch off the page.
For almost thirty years, Ross has been working nonstop to create some
of the most astonishing images in comics, and while Marvelocity
collects the very best of that oeuvre, it’s much more than that. Inside
are hundreds of drawings, paintings, and photographs that have never
been published before, including an original ten-page story featuring
Spider-Man versus the Sinister Six, redesign proposals for the X-Men and
the Fantastic Four, and a re-creation of an epic battle between the
Sub-Mariner and Iron Man.
But this isn’t just the story of the Marvel characters—it’s also the
incredibly inspiring true tale of a little boy who only ever wanted to
draw and paint super heroes. And with enough determination, talent, and
very hard work, that’s precisely what he did. Marvelocity is the result,
and is sure to entrance and delight fans of all ages.
If you’ve yet to checkout the early appearances of Swamp Thing you
might want to pick up this reasonably priced collection that retails for
just $25.
Deep in the bayou of Louisiana, far from civilization’s grasp, a
shadowed creature seen only in fleeting glimpses roils the black
waters…a twisted, vegetative mockery of a man…a Swamp Thing! These are
the tales that introduced Alec and Linda Holland, Anton Arcane, Abigail
Cable, the Patchwork Man, the Un-Men, plus an appearance by Batman!
Collects THE HOUSE OF SECRETS #92 and SWAMP THING #1–13.
Movies
The Night Stalker
The two classic Kolchak TV movies get a first-time-ever release on HD
this week from Kino Lorber. This is a “must buy” for me as these movies
were some of the best things to ever air on broadcast TV.
An investigative journalist takes a stab at the supernatural. This
unforgettable first entry in the Night Stalker series introduced the
world to the quirky reporter with a penchant for the paranormal and
became one of the top-rated TV movies of all time. Investigating a
series of Las Vegas murders, Carl Kolchak (Darren McGavin, The Night
Strangler) discovers that each victim has been bitten in the neck and
drained of blood. Though Kolchak’s outlandish theory about the murders
gets him nowhere with the police, his initiative to apprehend the killer
himself gets him into hot water… with a modern-day vampire…Teleplay by
legendary sci-fi/horror writer Richard Matheson (The Incredible
Shrinking Man).
Supernatural phenomena, baffling murders and offbeat humor mark this
second Night Stalker offering with a great cast and suspense so
palpable, it’ll feel like a presence right there in the room with you.
Surfacing in Seattle, Kolchak (Darren McGavin, The Night Stalker)
uncovers another maddening mystery: Every 21 years—for the past
century—a serial killer commits a spree of murders, drains his victims’
blood and then quietly disappears. But Kolchak is onto this monster and
is about to discover a shocking underground lair… an army of rotting
corpses… and the ageless madman behind it all. The great Dan Curtis
(Burnt Offerings) produced and directed this highly-rated TV movie
written by legendary sci-fi/horror writer Richard Matheson (I Am
Legend).
Dark Phoenix trailer
What To Watch This Week
Deadly Friend
Tuesday
The most recent Marvel Studios movie Ant Man and the Wasp gets a release on digital this week.
Wednesday
HDNET Movies will be airing one of the greatest horror movies of all time today, The Evil Dead.
Saturday
Insomniac Theater: A truly bizarre horror flick from 1986 Deadly Friend that has one thing going for it — it was directed by Wes Craven — airs very early Saturday morning on TCM.
Quite possibly my favorite classic sci-fi horror movie of all time The Thing From Another World also airs on TCM Saturday afternoon.
Rumor is that Henry Cavill won’t be returning to the role of
Superman/Clark Kent/Kal-El he’s been playing in films since 2013. While
Cavill’s been portraying the character for five years, he’s only had one
movie of his own, the first Man of Steel, but has also played him in Batman vs Superman and Justice League.
Fans are reacting with the news with a bit of shock, but let’s face it,
Cavill was never going to play Superman forever. So far five guys have
played the character in the movies; Kirk Alyn, George Reeves,
Christopher Reeves, Brandon Routh and Cavill and a few more on TV;
George Reeves again, Tom Welling and Dean Cain.
And when it comes to the cartoons I’m not even sure how many have
voiced Superman. There are many as diverse as Bud Collyer who voiced him
on screen in the early 1940s to Jerry O’Connell who played him this
year in The Death of Superman.
And that’s not counting Nicolas Cage who very nearly played Superman in a 1990s production that would have been titled Superman Lives that would’ve been written by Kevin Smith and directed by Tim Burton.
So, in many ways Cavill is in good company. Sooner or later his
tenure would end and I think it’s best for these actors to leave on good
terms with roles like this. He’s played the character for a few years,
and whether or not you liked his version/take on the strange visitor
from another planet, I think he played him well.
In the short-term there’s been rumors that the new Shazam (Zachary
Levi) or the upcoming Supergirl will be filling in for the last son of
Krypton whenever a villain needs to be punched in the face really hard.
But fear not, eventually some other actor will be brought in to fill the
man of tomorrow’s boots.
Lost movies
The cast of Galaxy Quest
I’ve always been interested in versions of movies that almost were. One example of this is the recent Solo: A Star Wars Story.
That movie was originally going to be directed by Phil Lord and Chris
Miller who were three weeks away from being finished with their version
before being fired for “creative differences” and director Ron Howard
was brought in to complete the film/reshoot scenes.
While I really dig Howard’s version of the movie, I wonder what Lord
and Miller’s version would’ve been like? Here are a few other movies
that started out one way but ended another.
Enemy Mine Originally begun by director Richard Loncraine, this sci fi flick starring Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr. was halted and Loncraine fired when the studio didn’t like what he was delivering. Wolfgang Petersen was brought in and threw out Loncraine’s footage, redid everything from the special effects to the sets, reshot the script from the first page and delivered the finished film of what we now know of as Enemy Mine.
Galaxy Quest While there’s not another version of Galaxy Quest floating out there like there might with Solo: A Star Wars Story or Enemy Mine, the tone of Galaxy Quest did change after the film was completed. Originally, the movie was rated R and scenes were cut and objectionable language changed in order to secure a PG–13 rating. But if you pay close attention, there’s still a hint of this rated R version hiding in the PG–13 version of the movie that was released. When Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver’s characters are climbing through the innards of their ship the NSEA Protector, there’s a part where they have to crawl through a Rube Goldberg inspired section where it looks like everything inside is meant to cut, squash or burn the two to death. Weaver’s character takes one look at the setup and says, “Well, screw that!” But if you watch her mouth, what she’s really saying, and what was dubbed over, was “Well, f@#k that!”
Today that line might have survived the cut and made it into the
PG–13 version of the movie, but back in 1999 when the movie was released
that was a no-go.
The Girl in the Spider’s Web trailer
Captain Marvel trailer
TV
The Haunting of Hill House TV spot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9OzG53VwIk
What To Watch This Week
Manifest
Monday
Mainfest This new series that looks absolutely not at all like a sequel to Lost mixed with This is Us premiers on NBC this week.
Tuesday
Doctor Who Beginning Tuesday morning with episodes of the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood, BBC America will be airing 13 days straight of Doctor Who.
Thursday
Murphy Brown The old sitcom reboot train continues with Murphy Brown, a new show that picks up more than 20 years after the series ended back in 1998. And to be honest, I can’t believe Murphy Brown ran all the way ’til 1998.
The Good Place The third season of the oh-so-good The Good Place returns to NBC this week.
The first new network show of the fall season Rel premiered
last Sunday on FOX, with regular episodes scheduled to premiere Sunday,
September 30. Last season that network did much the same thing with The Orville, premiering the first episode to coincide with the start of the NFL. But, whereas The Orville had an interesting first episode, Rel did not.
I really dug The Carmichael Show on NBC which was co-created by Jerrod Carmichael and co-starred Lil Rel Howery — and Carmichael is co-producing Rel which was created by Howery. But whereas The Carmichael Show was a series with bite, Rel is a relatively toothless.
I giggled a few times during this first episode about Rel, a nurse
who’s wife’s left him and taken the kids to Cleveland after she slept
with Rel’s barber, but overall the first episode felt like a standard
sitcom with lots of jokes that come out of all the obvious places. I’ll
give Rel one more try when the series returns in a few weeks
since you never can be sure if the first episode is any indication as to
where the show’s going to go from here, but otherwise I’ll probably be
done with this one by the end of the month.
The Deuce
The Deuce
The second season of the David Simon/George Pelecanos series The Deuce premiered on HBO last Sunday and makes a jump in time five years in
time from the first. Mostly gone are the grimy streets of New York City
1972 which have been replaced with nicer ones circa 1977. The grime
might not be visible, but it’s still there hidden behind closed doors.
Prostitutes and drug dealers still abound, but now they ply their trade
more quietly and not in the open.
It’s a good time for people like ex-prostitute turned porn
star/producer Eileen (Maggie Gyllenhaal) who’s off the streets and is
now making money shooting dirty movies. Even people like Vincent (James
Franco) who once made a living day-by-day tending bar now runs a
successful establishment, even if behind doors the mob is really pulling
the strings.
I thought the first season of The Deuce was interesting, if I
lost interest in it towards the end. It might have been too dark and
depressing for me, even if that’s how it really was in early 1970s New
York. In the second season much of the darkness is gone, replaced with
an interesting sort of late 1970s glamour.
The characters are still the same characters from the first season, they’re still prostitutes, pimps and drug dealers. But it’s like as long as they don’t look like prostitutes, pimps and drug dealers everything’s going to be okay, even as mayor elect Ed Koch and his decades long stint of cleaning up the streets looms on the horizon.
American Horror Story: Apocalypse
American Horror Story: Apocalypse
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about horror movies that used to turn
up on TV from time to time but really don’t anymore. I remember seeing
things like Dawn of the Dead and The Evil Dead on
basic cable abet edited for content, but still on cable. But these days
those movies almost never turn up on TV. Sure, maybe they’ll run on some
premium channel now and then or make some special appearance in
October, but for the most part those movies have been absent from public
view the last 20 years.
I think I know the reason why, it’s because newer versions of those
movies have been made, and when there’s screen time to show a horror
movie the channels always go for the remakes.
And that’s what the latest American Horror story series American Horror Story: Apocalypse feels like to me, a remake.
Nuclear war and WWIII was a big subject of movies and TV shows in the
1970s and 1980s. There were things like the made-for-TV movie World War III, The Day After, and Threads that approached the subject matter with a bit of gravitas and there were also movies like Hell Comes to Frogtown, Radioactive Dreams and, while not directly about nuclear war, Night of the Comet that approached it in a more silly and fantastical manner.
But in the 1990s, 2000s and much of the 2010s fiction about nuclear
war was passé and was mostly replaced with movies and TV series about
zombies. However, as we enter a new age of fear of the “bomb,” comes American Horror Story: Apocalypse about just that.
Here, it’s seemingly a normal day in downtown L.A. when unexpectedly
alerts begin going out and sirens wail of approaching nuclear doom. What
follows is panic and chaos on the streets, but for a select few there
are safe havens that exist, safe havens that come with a price.
Other than the costumes, the first episode of American Horror Story: Apocalypse felt like bits of Miracle Mile, The Day the World Ended mixed with the colors and styling of a 1960s Hammer Films production.
Which makes me wonder, while I thought the first episode of American Horror Story: Apocalypse was interesting, if the episode is essentially one long “homage” of
movies like these that have come before, why not just watch Miracle Mile, The Day the World Ended and virtually any of the Hammer Films from the 1960s instead?
A third and final volume of the collection of the Star Wars newspaper comic strips is released this week. This collection covers 1982 to 1984, with the entire run of strips having been published from 1979 to 1984.
The concluding volume that reprints for the first time the classic
Star Wars newspaper strip in its complete format. The only edition to
include each Sunday page title header and bonus panels in meticulously
restored original color. Featuring nine key stories from Star Wars
Legends written by Archie Goodwin and illustrated by Al Williamson.
Movies
Captive State movie trailer
What To Watch This Week
The Dark Crystal
Sunday
The Bedford Incident_ The Bedford Incident from 1965 airs this week on Sony Movie Channel. Most of this flick just is okay, but it has one heck of a brilliant ending!
Monday
Mothra Insomniac theater — the Japanese giant monster classic Mothra airs very early Monday morning on TCM.
The Dark Crystal The Jim Henson and Frank Oz fantasy epic The Dark Crystal also airs on Sony Movie Channel this week. I remember being seriously creeped out by this one as a kid.
Tuesday
Sicario: Day of the SoldadoSicario: Day of the Soldado got hammered by the press last summer, though it did decent enough at the box office. It gets released on digital Tuesday.
We seem to be living in the age of the spin-off series. If it’s not the NCIS… variety on CBS then it’s the Chicago… series on NBC. That’s not to say there’s not a few spin-offs on cable and streaming too. There, you’ve got things like Better Call Saul and Fear the Walking Dead on AMC which are spin-offs from Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead respectively and Star Trek: Discovery on CBS All Access which is a spin-off from the Star Trek TV franchise.
There are really two ways that TV creators can handle the spin-off.
The first way is to essentially remake the original show, but put it in a
different local with different characters. The stories essentially
remain the same, it’s just the small details that change. Most spin-offs
are like this from NCIS… to Fear the Walking Dead and even most of the Star Trek series too.
The second way is to take characters and situations from the original series and place them into a new story which Better Call Saul is a great example of.
Mayans MC
The new series Mayans MC on FX is a spin-off of Sons of Anarchy, which is kind’a, but not quite, a spin-off of The Shield. The Mayans are a California based motorcycle gang, like the Sons of Anarchy motorcycle gang, except the Mayans are latino.
To me, Mayans MC feels like a continuation of Sons of Anarchy in that the same people are working on the show behind the scenes, namely Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter, and both deal with essentially the same things — bad guys riding motorcycles doing bad things. Now, maybe Mayans MC will diverge from Sons of Anarchy in some way at some point in the future — though I doubt it.
I could never get into Sons of Anarchy since everything on
the show was so heightened. On the one hand, the show seemed to be set
in a California very much like our own but on the other there were
machine gun shootouts every day, murders and drug and gun running that
would’ve been national news headlines with the FBI busting up the gang
in a matter of weeks. And after one episode I think Mayans MC will probably just like Sons of Anarchy in that regard.
I think that fans of Sons of Anarchy are probably going to love Mayans MC but I’d be surprised if the show brings in any new fans.
The Purge
The Purge
I am a The Purge virgin.
So far, there’s been four The Purge movies that have
collectively made over $400 million at the box office. Yet I, the
self-described “movie nerd” who digs horror flicks, hasn’t seen a single
one of them. I think the reason is simply because I generally don’t see
horror movies in the theater, and The Purge movies never turned up on any of the cable channels I subscribed to. So I come at the new ten episode The Purge mini-series on USA with fresh eyes.
Honestly, I think seeing some of the movies would’ve helped
understanding what was all going on in the TV series. I’m assuming all
explanation about what the purge is was described in them, but for the
TV show all we get is a little on-screen announcement of what’s about to
happen. Why the purge exists in the first place or why people let this
happen… we don’t get any explanation about that whatsoever.
There are essentially three stories in The Purge TV series.
The first of which is of a brother searching for his sister who’s joined
a cult who’s goal is to get purged. There’s also a couple spending the
evening at a swanky party riding out the purge. And there’s a business
woman doing sneaky things of which we’re not quite sure of during the
purge.
The first episode was very much the first chapter in a longer story,
and as such it was a bit hard to make heads or tails of how the season
would play out. I suspect that The Purge TV series is going to be a ten hours long story about a purge, which the movies seem to be able to do in an hour an a half.
Watching the first episode I kept thinking that I was missing
something. That people who had seen all the movies were going, “Oh, this
is just like that part from the second movie!” Or, “This guy’s doing
that thing because of what happened in the first one.” Or, “This
character’s just like that other character from the fourth one.” I, on
the other hand, was a bit confused. I’m sure that if I watched the whole
series I’d be less confused at the end, I’m just not sure if I’m
willing to invest ten hours in it.
The whole idea of a The Purge TV series at this point is a bit odd. The movies are still making money, In fact, the last The Purge movie was released just a few weeks ago in theaters and was the highest grossing movie of the bunch. Maybe it’s because The Purge movies are more of an anthology series of films rather than a
continuous series means that splitting off to a TV series makes sense?
But I don’t get it.
A 30th anniversary edition of the seminal work by Alan Moore and
Brian Bolland gets the “absolute” treatment in a new edition from DC
this week. At just 64 pages the nearly $50 retail seems a bit high to
me, then again there are the standard editions out there of The Killing Joke that can be bought new for $15.
This edition collects BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE with Bolland’s
reimagined colors and the original edition’s colors, a story from BATMAN
BLACK AND WHITE and Joker artwork from Bolland’s long career with DC,
including never-before-published artwork.
Movies
Halloween trailer
What To Watch This Week
Rel
Sunday
The Deuce The second season of the critically acclaimed HBO series The Deuce begins airing this week. The first season took place in an early 1970s era NYC where prostitution and vice was rampant, while the second is set in 1978 where, I’m assuming, prostitution and vice were just as rampant.
Rel The first new network show of the 2018–2019 is Rel also debuts this week. I was excited about this one when I first heard about it, I really liked the actor Lil Rel on The Carmichael Show, but all the commercials I’ve seen about Rel makes it look like a stinker to me.
Monday-Friday
The X-Files Starting Monday at 6AM BBC America will be airing five solid days of The X-Files in what looks like episode order starting with the first one and including airings of both feature films too.
Wednesday
American Horror Story: Apocalypse The eighth (!!!) season of American Horror story looks to deal with the, well, apocalypse on FX. I really dug the first season of this show but, because I think it’s so stylized, haven’t been able to get into later seasons of the show since.
Clear and Present Danger HDNET MOVIES will be airing Harrison Ford’s final appearance as Jack Ryan in this thriller from 1994 today.
Friday
The Predator What looks to be one heck of a ride, the fourth film in the sci-fi horror genera The Predator opens in theaters this Friday.
Solo: A Star Wars Story Solo: A Star Wars Story was the one of the movies I had the most fun at this summer and is available for digital download Friday. This one is a must-buy for me, if to see the deleted scenes alone.
Cool Sites
Stellarium Web Online Planetarium:
Stellarium Web is a free open source planetarium running in your web
browser. It shows a realistic sky, just like what you see with the naked
eye, binoculars or a telescope.
