Feature – Page 35 – Dangerous Universe

Direct Beam Comms #67

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, Toys, TVMarch 19, 2017March 18, 2017

TV

Iron Fist Series premiere episode 1 Grade: B+

There aren’t a lot of good comic book series on TV. To be sure, there are lots of them but only a few of them are worth watching. Legion on FX is very good and Daredevil on Netflix is pretty good too. But for the most part the Arrows and Agents of SHIELDs and Preachers of the world are time wasters at best and just plain bad at worst. Into this mass of comic book TV series comes the latest Marvel series to stream on Netflix Iron Fist.

So far Iron Fist has gotten pretty tepid reviews. I’d go as far to say that it’s the worst reviewed series of the four Marvel/Netflix series of Daredevil, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. So when I watched the first episode of Iron Fist I was a little concerned — was it going to be the “turd in the punchbowl” of Marvel TV series that everyone else is claiming?

Actually no — Iron Fist isn’t great, but it’s not a bad series either. In fact I’d say that it’s no better nor no worse than either Jessica Jones or Luke Cage.

Finn Jones plays Danny Rand, the son of a wealthy family who’s plane crashed decades ago in the Himalayas that left everyone thinking all the Rands were dead. Except Danny survived the crash, was rescued and now has returned to New York City to reclaim his spot in his father’s company. Only now Danny is different. Much like with the other Netflix Marvel shows that are action/martial arts oriented, Danny has returned as a kung-fu master who’s able to easily scale the outside of buildings, leap over moving cars and take out corporate security goons without breaking a sweat.

It seems like the first season of Iron Fist will focus on Danny reclaiming his rightful place as majority owner of his father’s company while at the same time trying to uncover a conspiracy of those now in control who want him dead.

I actually enjoyed Iron Fist a great deal and found it to be a lot of fun. It’s not as dark as Daredevil is, which is a good thing, yet still fits in the same corner of the Marvel universe the Netflix series all do nicely. The only reason I can think that other reviewers aren’t liking Iron Fist is that they’re coming to the show with some expectations of how it should be based on the other series like how the creators of Jessica Jones or Luke Cage handled those shows. Except Iron Fist is its own thing and I think should be treated as such. It’s not a Jessica Jones or Luke Cage and I think that’s a good thing — if it were Iron Fist would be redundant and not nearly as interesting as it is.

Trial & Error Series premiere episode 1 Grade: D+

The new comedy Trial & Error debuted on NBC last week. It was a show I was looking forward to the last few months and was something NBC had been pushing hard since last winter too. But after having watched the first two episodes I hate to say that Trail & Error was most definitely not worth the wait.

This series seems to be partially based on the 2004 documentary The Staircase that followed a man accused of murdering his wife and is followed by a film crew in the lead up to trial. In Trial & Error, John Lithgow plays Larry Henderson, a man also accused of murdering his wife who’s also being followed by a documentary crew. Junior attorney Josh Segal (Nicholas D’Agosto) is assigned to the case and quickly becomes lead attorney when Henderson’s funds dry up leaving Segal in charge. Helping Segal is investigator Dwayne Reed (Steven Boyer) and assistant Anne Flatch (Sherri Shepherd) who turn out to be incompetent and are more detrimental to the case than beneficial. Reed accidentally destroys some evidence and Flatch suffers from a variety of maladies from face-blindness to fainting whenever she sees a beautiful piece of art.

If it were just Reed and Flatch who were the goofballs of Trial & Error it might have made for an interesting series. It’s like with The Office that had two strong, goofy characters with Michael and Dwight with a lot of other “normal” characters orbiting around them. With Trial & Error it’s like every character is extremely eccentric and it pushes the balance of things totally out of whack.

There’s Henderson who can’t quite take the murder trial seriously and is more interested in rollercising and skate keys, the prosecuting attorney Carol Anne Keane (Jayme Mays) who wants to get the death penalty for Henderson and have sex with Segal no matter what and even a DNA expert (Andrew Daly) who masturbates whenever he’s stressed. The list of crazy characters goes on and on and is way too much.

Also, can we agree at this point sitcoms that are shot documentary style are passe? When the BBC version of The Office did this 16 years ago it was new, unique and fresh. But these days it seems old and stogy, even if it actually makes sense in Trial & Error with Henderson’s trial being the focus of a The Staircase like documentary.

Usually there’s something with 20 minute sitcoms that I can latch onto and stick with a season or two. Either there’s some tiny spark in the writing that interests me or a different kind of character than what’s come before. But with Trial & Error there were several times during the episodes that I very nearly shut it off since I was bored with the show. But I did stick with it until the end and, upon reflection, I think I would have been better off if I would have turned the episode off and watched something else instead.

Movies

Wonder Woman origin trailer

“It is our sacred duty to defend the world.”

Toys

ARTFX+ Spider-Man 2099

Kotobukiya’s ARTFX+ Spider-Man 2099 statue is gorgeous. It stands 5 inches tall, will retail for around $65 and will be available in September. I love everything about it from the colors to the physique of Spider-Man. My only issue is the Kotobukiya statues aren’t really statues, they’re like this cross between action-figure and statue. They’re not made out of resin so they don’t feel solid, but that makes them affordable.

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

1931: William Shatner, James T. Kirk of Star Trek is born
1948: John de Lancie, Q of Star Trek is born
1995: The TV series Sliders premiers
1999: The TV series Farscape premiers
2004: Dawn of the Dead opens in theaters
2009: The last episode of the TV series Battlestar Galactica airs
2012: The Hunger Games opens in theaters

Oh no, Power Rangers!

Feature, MoviesMarch 17, 2017March 4, 2017

I was born in the 1970s, was a kid in the 1980s and came of age in the 1990s. That means to me that my childhood was full of things like Star Wars, G.I. Joe, Transformers and Secret Wars. So, by the late 1980s I was transitioning out of kid pop-culture and into teen culture and my tastes were changing and by the mid–1990s, for the most part, I was only into grown-up things. So when the Power Rangers TV series first premiered in 1993 I was in college and was totally uninterested in it. To me, Power Rangers has always been, and will always be, kids stuff.

As a result, the new Power Rangers movie is the first sci-fi TV series to movie that I have no connection with and very little desire to see.

Power Rangers has never had its The Dark Knight Returns moment like Batman did where that character transitioned from something that would appeal to just kids but to adults as well. Or even with Batman: The Animated Series that was a kids cartoon that also had deeper elements that adults could enjoy too. Whenever I’ve sat down with friends’ kids and watched Power Rangers alongside them they love the show but the adults in the room can’t stand it since the show’s one-note — good guys vs bad guys where the good guys always win.

Which is great for kids, but not so much for grownups.

That’s not to say that I’m against media appealing to just kids. I remember as a kid loving things like G.I. Joe and Transformers cartoons, but watching those same cartoons now is a total bummer. The stories are so paper thin and obvious you’d have to be 10 years old to appreciate them. Which perfect for 10 year olds.

However, both G.I. Joe and Transformers did have things that were more adult in nature. There was the animated The Transformers: The Movie that had a decent story and actually had violence where characters died. And the original G.I. Joe comic book was never as one-note as the TV series and focused on adult themes and subjects. In fact, when the comic was re-released in graphic novel form a few years ago I bought ever volume and found that the stories within were still great even today decades years after they were originally produced.

But for Power Rangers this never happened.

I do wonder who the market is for this new Power Rangers movie? It’s got to be those who’ve grown up with the series the last few decades as well as children who are currently watching the show. Good or bad Power Rangers has been one of the most popular kids series of all time. Since the show debuted some 24 years ago there’s been hundreds of episodes produced and the series is still going strong.

Well, “produced” in a weird sort of way.

Power Rangers is actually an offshoot of the Japanese action series Super Sentai Series. What happens are all the action scenes with the Power Rangers and Zords doing battle with the bad guys are lifted from the Sentai series which are then married with new live action elements shot here in North America. So when Jason and Billy are walking around Angel Grove, that’s shot here. But when they “morph” into the Power Rangers that’s all elements shot years ago overseas. In any episode about 10 minutes of new footage is created along with lots of voiceover for the bits already shot in Japan.

And because each episode of Power Rangers contains much less footage than the average TV series and there aren’t really any new special effects shots since all that stuff is already done means there can be a whopping 60 episodes in a season.

Regardless, I doubt very much I’ll ever see this new Power Rangers movie. That is unless someone comes along and tells me that it’s more interesting than it seems now. Otherwise, it’ll be one of those shows I catch one day on cable, watch 15 minutes of and turn over to watch something more interesting like re-runs of Leave it to Beaver.

Direct Beam Comms #66

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, MoviesMarch 12, 2017April 9, 2017

TV

The Americans Season 5 episode 1 Grade: B+

The fifth and penultimate season of the series The Americans debuted last week on FX. I like this show a lot but as the series has progressed I think some cracks have started to appear in the structure of the show.

The last five season of The Americans have dealt with parents Philip and Elizabeth Jennings (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell), a seemingly typical American as apple pie family living in early 1980s Virginia. Except they’re anything but, the Jennings are actually Soviet agents hidden in suburbia who spend their days as the owners of a travel agency and nights doing bad things for mother Russia. Be it stealing secrets, helping fellow agents or even murdering the opposition. And as the series progressed and the missions the Jennings were sent on became more and more dangerous, a good chunk of last season of The Americans was about the Jennings trying to steal a sample of the virulent and deadly bioweapon, Philip and Elizabeth were also forced to bring their teenage daughter Paige (Holly Taylor) into the family night business since she’d be the perfect commie spy for the 1990s.

Except that whereas Philip and Elizabeth both chose the cloak and dagger life and were borne in Russia, one day Paige went from a typical American teen girl who wanted her MTV to the next finding out that her entire life was literally a lie that lead to a breakdown.

What I find most fascinating about The Americans is that it’s a series that features the bad guys as stars of the show. Philip and Elizabeth are doing everything in their power to bring down our way of life, to try and make it so that in the 1990s it’s not Communism that’s left on the scrap-heap of history, it’s Democracy. And every time they steal some special microchip or murder an American scientist or foil the FBI they’re one step closer to their goal. What’s amazing is that we, as the audience, collectively hold our breath as Elizabeth is almost discovered by a guard or quivers in fear when Philip might have been infected with that virulent bioweapon. When, in fact, since they’re the bad guys we should be cheering anything that might bring their demise.

All of which makes for some brilliant TV.

The one bit about The Americans that’s bothered me the last few years, those above mentioned “cracks,” is that the Jennings take waaaay too many risks which is starting to push the bounds of believability a bit for me personally. They’re called on to steal state secrets, murder people, shepherd assets out of the country, break into classified areas, and on, and on, and on… All of which I’m sure the Soviets did in the 1980s, but I’m guessing they had more than a two agents do. It’s like each week the Jennings stick their figurative necks out to do something that if they were caught would at best mean uprooting the family and running back to Russia and at worse death in a blaze of glory and each week they’re able to squeak out a win. But realistically, by taking on so many challenges and risks I’d think that one time they’d screw up, they’d do something wrong and one of them would be killed or caught which would bring their entire lives crashing down around them.

Still, this is a minor quibble since The Americans has been, and still is, one of the best things on TV and puts most other drama series to shame.

Time After Time Series premiere episode 1 Grade: B-

I’m sure it was unintentional, but the creators of the new ABC series Time After Time have totally won the “2016–2017 TV Bingo” game with their series that hits two of the most popular types of new shows this season; it’s a series that’s based on a film that’s about time travel.

BINGO!

Following the structure of the 1979 movie, TV’s Time After Time stars Freddie Stroma as H.G. Wells who just didn’t write about time machines in the 1800s, he invented one and Josh Bowman as Dr. John Stevenson who’s alter-ego just so happens to be Jack the Ripper. Just before he was captured by the police and just before Wells was able to test it, Stevenson rode the time machine to present day and arrived in New York City with Wells chasing close behind. They end up in New York since that’s where Wells’ machine was on display. And it’s up to Wells and assistant museum curator Jane Walker (Geneis Rodriguez) to hunt and stop Stevenson as he picks up in 21st century New York where he left off in 19th century London with stabbing lots of people.

The first episode of Time After Time isn’t bad, if it does seem to move a breakneck speed as we go from 19th century London to 21st century New York to Walker and Wells hunting Stevenson in the blink of an eye. The series isn’t bad even if it’s not something I would probably watch on a weekly basis. What concerns me most about the show, though, is that it seems like the first season will deal with the hunt for the Ripper. Which to me seems like there’ll be a lot of episode with Wells and Walker almost capturing the Ripper before he slips away until the end of the season where something big will happen. To which I ask if this is what’s going to happen, why watch the season and instead just tune in for the season finale?

Making History Series premiere episode 1 Grade: B

Leighton Meester, Adam Pally and Yasir Lester

The new FOX comedy series Making History is another time travel series this season with university facilities manager Dan (Adam Pally) and professor Chris (Yassir Lester) traveling back to 1775 via Dan’s time machine that’s just so happens to be hidden a large gym bag. In 1775 Dan’s a cool guy with limitless access to ham, which the locals adore, and has a girlfriend (Leighton Meester) who loves his songs like “My Heart Will Go On.” But on his latest trip when Dan returned to present day something wasn’t right with Starbucks serving tea instead of coffee and students eating fish and chips so he contacts history prof Chris to help fix things in the past to return our present to normal.

In some ways, Making History is the comedy version of the NBC drama Timeless, except whereas Timeless has a villain intentionally wrecking the past to try and change the present, Making History has inept Dan unintentionally “Homer J. Simson-ing” the past which alters the present.

One episode in and I feel like Making History does have some promise. It does fall into the “boy, aren’t people from the past dumb” cliche that crops up in time travel series — lampooned to great effect in the Austin Powers movies — but that doesn’t quite work here. But on the whole I enjoyed Making History and am interested in seeing how the series plays out over the season since the first episode ends without any resolution with Dan and 1775 girlfriend arriving in our present and finding that they’ve got to go back and rescue Chris.

Better Call Saul season 3 promo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzav_u7ZCpA

“You will pay.”

Movies

Evil Dead II

It took me many years to finally see Evil Dead II which came out 30 years ago this week. I was well aware of the movie from horror magazines like Fangoria but for whatever reason never saw it until about 10 years ago. I’d seen Army of Darkness when that originally came out on VHS but got on a The Evil Dead kick after that film was finally released on DVD and decided that I couldn’t call myself a fan of The Evil Dead if I didn’t also see Evil Dead II. And, to be honest, I was underwhelmed. In many ways Evil Dead II is a bit of a remake of Evil Dead with most of the same crew but with bigger and better splatter effects. At the time my favorite The Evil Dead movie was Army of Darkness with the crude, yet extremely effective original The Evil Dead as second with Evil Dead II pulling up the rear. But over the years as I’ve been more and more exposed to Evil Dead II I’ve found myself more and more a fan of that film.

It’s true that Evil Dead II is kind’a a remake of The Evil Dead but only really in the first 20 minutes. After that it ventures into its own territory. And it’s a great territory — with extremely effective special effects that covers everything from headless corpses flying around rooms to detached hands crawling across floors and even great monster makeup too.

Nowadays, I’m not quite sure which The Evil Dead movie is my favorite since they all have their strengths. The original The Evil Dead is a great horror movie that’s practically a blueprint for burgeoning horror filmmakers on how to create their own scary films without studio backing. Evil Dead II is an out of control gorefest with chainsaws buzzing, axes flying and shotguns blasting. And The Army of Darkness exists on a whole other realm from those two movies, being this rare comedy-horror gem that at times is really fun while also being really scary too.

But whenever I think of The Evil Dead franchise in general I keep coming back to Evil Dead II as the movie that best represents it as a whole. It’s got the perfect balance of comedy and horror and gore and action that really hasn’t been seen in the movies in the last 30 years.

“The Evil Dead Movies”

Toys

Aliens

There were a few announcements for some seriously cool Aliens toys last week. First up, Super7 is releasing a massive 18-inch Aliens toy that’s inspired by the 1979 Kenner Alien toy that disgusted parents, was pulled from shelves and now commands high prices on the vintage toy market. The Super7 toy is about as close as one could get to the design of the 1979 toy without copying it, yet it still feels fresh and unique. Unfortunately, this new Aliens toy costs nearly $200 which puts it just out of my price range.

A little more affordable, and a lot more smaller, are Alien/s/3/4, Predator and Prometheus statues from Eaglemoss. The figurines stand about 5-inches tall and retail for around $30 each.

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

1943: David Cronenberg, director of The Fly, The Dead Zone and Scanners is born
1951: Kurt Russell, Escape from New York, The Thing and Stargate is born
1956: Forbidden Planet premiers in theaters
1971: The Andromeda Strain is released
1973: The Crazies opens
1984: The Ice Pirates opens in theaters
1987: Evil Dead II premiers in theaters
1989: Leviathan premiers

King Kong (2005) review

Feature, Movies, ReviewMarch 10, 2017January 9, 2017

This is a repost of a review I originally wrote back in 2005.

The remake King Kong (2005) has been hailed by the critics as one of the best movies of the year. I’d argue that although King Kong is a good movie, it is by no means a great one. Parts of King Kong are brilliant and parts of the movie aren’t so brilliant. But the brilliant parts go a long way to making up for the not so brilliant ones.

King Kong (2005) follows most of the major plot points of the original (1933) – the crew of the ship “Venture” stumbles on a mysterious fog covered uncharted island. There, they find that gigantic creatures including dinosaurs and an ape known as Kong inhabit the island. When one of their crew is kidnapped and offered up as a sacrifice to the ape beast, the crew of the Venture must go into the deadly heart of the island to attempt rescue.

There were a few changes made to the characters. This time, filmmaker Carl Denham (Jack Black) is in debt up to his eyeballs and sees filming on an uncharted island as the perfect location to finishing a movie he has partially complete and making a little money in the process. Ann Darow (Naomi Watts) is a struggling actress brought on the trip more for her dress size, the same as the previous actress who has dropped out of the picture, than her acting skills. Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) is the writer of Denham’s movie, and only goes on the trip when Denham tricks him into staying on the boat a few minutes too long while casting off in order to finish the script.

The most notable difference between the versions is the relationship between Kong and Darrow. In the original, Kong is a beast who holds onto Darrow as a prize not wanting to give her back. She wants to get escape the beast, but she is no more than a plaything to Kong. In the remake, Kong also kidnaps Darrow but their relationship changes throughout the movie; it evolves to something special, something different. Darrow comes to see the true Kong, a creature who’s the last of his kind all alone in this world, and understands him. Most interesting of all, one thing I thought while watching the remake was that the Kong/Darrow relationship was more in line with The Iron Giant and Hogarth Hughes in The Iron Giant (1999) movie than wild beast/helpless woman of the original.

Peter Jackson’s King Kong has a much darker vision of the world that Kong exists in than the 1933 original. In his version, Darrow is so down on her luck that she considers stripping for money. At one point, a member of Denham’s crew is killed execution style with a club to the head by the island natives. A crewman from the Venture is swallowed alive by a slug-like creature and goes down screaming.

And that’s one of the problems with the movie. It’s almost as if Jackson wants to present the story of King Kong as a fantastical adventure mixed with realism. In the fantasy King Kong, characters run in between the legs of stampeding Brontosaurus while being chased by velociraptor-like dinosaurs. These characters keep up with the stampede delivering on-the-mark perfect machine-gun shots to the dinosaurs chasing them.

Then, though, Jackson seems to want to switch gears showing the “realities” of Skull Island. Characters are so frightened they cry, one of the characters is graphically speared by a native and as Kong searches out Darrow in downtown New York he chases down women matching her “look” and tosses them aside like rag dolls when he does not find her.

I’m not sure these two competing styles work together. At one point we’re to believe in the fantastical, the next the realistic. It’s a tough sell and I’m not sure Jackson is able to pull it off.

But what really hurts King Kong are several rather large plot-holes present throughout the story. These holes do detract greatly from the movie overall and I would chalk these up to either sloppy writing, bad editing or bits of the movie being cut out to cut down on the already long running time. However, even though there are problems with the overall story and mood, the character of Kong is magnificent. He is a joy to watch and acts and looks, for the most part, like a real ape. He becomes a real character. And I think that’s a very important quality here – in the confines of this movie Kong is real. When Kong dies at the end, it is a sad moment and not a relief as in the original. I would expect that by this point people would have become so emotionally involved with Kong that they might cry at his death.

I just wish that Peter Jackson could have delivered more emotional attachment with the rest of King Kong (2005) as he did with the last twenty minutes of the movie. (8/10)

Direct Beam Comms #65

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVMarch 5, 2017March 8, 2017

TV

Taken – Episode 1 Grade: C-

The parade of movies to TV series this season continues with the latest show Taken on NBC. The TV Taken is a prequel series to the film trilogy of the same name that starred Liam Neeson. This time Clive Standen, who’s a British actor and is I’m assuming mostly unfamiliar to US audiences, takes over the role of ex-special forces operative with a “very particular set of skills” Bryan Mills who was put on this planet to chew bubblegum and kick butt, and has long been out of gum.

The first episode opens with Mills being hunted by a narco kingpin who’s son Mills killed some years before when he was a Green Beret. The kingpin wants to take Mills alive to make him suffer for what he did but what he wasn’t counting on is Mills and his skills at dodging assassins, punching people in the face and not getting shot in any vital organs. Also following Mills since they’re using him to lure the kingpin out of hiding is Christina Hart (Jennifer Beals) the head of some super-secret spy agency who, along with her five or six employees, seems to be in control of all the US intelligence agencies. These six people alternate from interrogating cartel members to attacking compounds SEAL Team Six style.

To me, Taken felt a lot like a 1980s cops and robbers series like Miami Vice or Knight Rider where the good guys are very good and the bad guys are very bad in a world of black and white without any grey. There is absolutely no confusion as to if what Mills and company are doing is right or wrong, in Taken they’re doing God’s work in cleaning up the streets, and because of all this and because of how heavy handed everything’s handled Taken is one dull show.

Actually, if Mills had a talking car ala Knight Rider that might make for an interesting series, otherwise I’m done with Taken.

Movies

Bill Paxton 1955–2017

Last week actor Bill Paxton died unexpectedly after complications from surgery. Now I’d guess most readers of this blog would know of Paxton, or at least would know him by sight as a guy who turned up in loads of genera movies over the years and made those roles better. Paxton played doomed punk in Terminator, the evil brother Chet in Weird Science, vampire Severen in the oh-so extremely underrated Near Dark, “…is my specialty!” Detective Jerry Lambert in Predator 2, Morgan Earp in Tombstone, Fred Haise in Apollo 13, Mallroy’s dad in Haywire, Master Sergeant Farell in Edge of Tomorrow and most recently as Det. Frank Rourke aka the best thing about the TV series Training Day to name a scant few. Jesus, to look at just some of Paxton’s roles there and how many hours I’ve spent watching movies he was a part of is mind-boggling.

But Paxton is probably most well known as playing Private Hudson in the movie Aliens who turns from a cocky gung-ho Marine one minute to a quivering ball of nerves meek-man the next after the alien monsters wipe out his squad before becoming a heroic figure by the end of the film. His most famous line “Game over man!” has been loved by some, mocked by a few, made fun of by the clueless and has been in our pop-culture psyche for decades now. I think the reason we remember the line is because of how Paxton delivered it, in his over-the-top totally freaked-out I wanna be anywhere but here way. I think delivered any other way by any other actor that line would have been all but forgotten in a movie that exists in this sea of other great lines and visuals.

“Game over man” kind’a encapsulates Paxton’s career as a whole. He’s the guy who’d turn up in these movies in small to medium-sized parts and would steal the show. There’s been quite a few people over the years who’ve made fun of his dry acting style, but dry or not at the end of the day his style was memorable even when the movies he was in were not. He’s the kind of actor that I’d give a chance to whatever movie he was a part of since no matter if the movie was good or bad, Paxton was going to be great in it.

Over the last few years it seemed as if Paxton’s career was starting to have a second act of sorts. Recently, he co-starred in the critically acclaimed Hatfields & McCoys TV mini-series and began having parts in movies like Nightcrawler and the above mentioned Edge of Tomorrow. And with him starring in the CBS series Training Day it seemed like Paxton might be about to break through to another level of acting stardom.

But I guess that just wasn’t destined to happen but regardless of whether or not Paxton was or wasn’t well-known to most of the movie-going public, to those of us who knew him through his work Paxton will always be a giant of the genera cinema and will be greatly missed.

Lethal Weapon

Lethal Weapon, one of the finest buddy-cop movies ever was released 30 years ago this week. Its writer Shane Black would have a hand in creating some truly memorable movies like Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, Iron Man 3 and last year’s The Nice Guys. Currently, Black is filming the upcoming The Predator movie due out next year.

Alien: Covenant movie trailer

“Where is it?”

Kong: Skull Island movie trailer

“Let me list all the ways you’re gonna die.”

Books

So, Anyway…

So, Anyway… is writer/actor/director John Cleese’s autobiography from earliest memory to right up until the point of the creation of Monty Python. I’m guessing the book stops there since there’s been so much written about Cleese and especially Monty Python from that period that it would be redundant, but still, So, Anyway… is a wonderful book with lots of interesting facts and anecdotes of Cleese’s life. Like, I knew how close he was to Graham Chapman but I didn’t realize things like the second future-Python he met was Terry Gilliam or that Cheese did hundreds of hours of comedy radio while also appearing on TV in various comedy/sketch shows while climbing up the comedy ranks early in his career.

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

1964: The Last Man on Earth opens
1971: THX 1138 premiers in theaters
1972: Silent Running premiers
1978: The TV series The Incredible Hulk premiers
1984: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
1994: Weird Science the TV series debuts
2009: Watchmen opens in theaters
2011: Battle Los Angeles opens in theaters
2012: John Carter premiers in theaters