Category: Feature

Direct Beam Comms #62

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TV

Legion – Episode 1 Grade: A

We may have entered a second phase of superhero movies/TV series with the debut of the FX series Legion last week. Most superhero movies/TV series have always focused on the good guys vs the bad guys. Captain America against Hydra, Flash against Gorilla Grodd, Batman vs Joker. But Legion, along with the likes of last year’s Deadpool, does something different with the genre. It takes what has come before, turns it around, mixes things up and presents the story as something new and unique.

In Legion, David Haller (Dan Stevens) is in a mental institution as he has begun to lose his grip on sanity, hearing voices which drove him to attempt suicide. In the asylum, he meets Sydney Barrett (Rachel Keller), another patient who shows David that he might not be as crazy as he thinks he is. That these voices and his apparent ability to make things move with his mind might be something more. The word “mutant” is never uttered in Legion, but if you’ve read the X-Men comics or seen the movies you’ll know where this one is coming from.

David escapes the asylum but is kidnapped and taken by a shady government organization headed by some seriously creepy dudes who question him about his abilities, and give off the definite vibe that if they don’t like David’s answers they’ll kill him. But can David trust this reality? Is he really on the outside doing battle with these evil forces, or is everything that’s happening to him all happening in his head back at the asylum?

Created by Noah Hawley (Fargo), Legion feels like it’s a series where the creators have taken in decades worth of comics and movies and have distilled all this with other elements from pop-culture like a Wes Anderson/Stanley Kubrick aesthetic mixed with the tone and nonlinear storytelling techniques used in things like the TV series Hannibal. The first episode of Legion starts during the present and flashes to different points in David’s past. From when he was an infant, to an out of control teen and to his time in the asylum. And all these timelines play out during the episode which works brilliantly. I don’t think anyone would mistake Legion for another superhero series like Arrow or Agents of SHIELD since Legion doesn’t look or feel like any superhero thing that’s come before.

Which makes me really excited for Legion and the future of superhero movies/TV series in general. I’m a fan of anything superhero and have been most of my life. I’m going to love just about any superhero movie or TV series, or at worst give them a pass. But it makes me wonder how many movies like Batman vs Superman that people who don’t give anything superhero a pass are going to take before they stop going to them? What gives me hope is if superhero movies/TV series can evolve and change like Deadpool and Legion did/are, and hopefully the upcoming Logan movie might be, maybe I don’t have to worry about a coming superhero movie collapse and me with nothing to watch?

24 Legacy – Episode 1 Grade: B-

TV show revivals are popular these days. Last year FOX brought back The X-Files and later this year will premiere new episodes of Prison Break. But their latest revival series 24: Legacy is kind’a a spin-off, kind’a a remake and kind’a a continuation if the original 24.

24 Legacy follows the structure of the original series with each episode taking place in “real time” with the hero, this time ex-Army Ranger Eric Carter (Corey Hawkins) in the lead, racing around trying to stop terrorists before they can launch some attack. I swear I tried watching each new season of the original 24 with an open mind, but the longest I ever lasted was about six episodes in the first season. I could never get past the idea that events in the show are taking place in “real time” which meant people would be able to drive through city traffic that should take hours instead of minutes while at the same time having running machine gun battles all around town with seemingly no one noticing. I even remember one season where a terrorists set off a nuke in LA. Now if that happened today I’d suspect everyone in town would be hitting the roads heading for the hills, yet that kind of stuff never seemed to happen in 24.

And unfortunately 24: Legacy seems to essentially be the same 24 with subtle variations.

This time, terrorists are tracking down six members of an Army Ranger squad who killed one of their leaders in a Osama bin Laden Zero Dark Thirty style raid. The bad guys aren’t looking for revenge, but are looking for a lock box that contains a something that I’m sure this will be revealed in later episodes. Regardless, while four of the Rangers and their families are murdered by the terrorists, they didn’t count on Carter and Carter’s wife who together take out a terrorist team who breaks into their house looking for the box. And since the only people who knew Carter’s and the other Ranger’s identities were the leaders of the CIA, FBI and CTU, the only person Carter can really trust is ex-CTU head Rebecca Ingram (Miranda Otto) who thought she was out, but was pulled back.

24: Legacy is entertaining if a bit vapid. The stories for over 200 episodes of 24 never seemed to vary too much; terrorists want to blow something up and it’s up to one dude to stop them, which all becomes very repetitive. And by the looks of it 24: Legacy seems to be following the same mold.

24: Legacy isn’t bad TV, it’s just average ordinary TV.

Stranger Things season 2 TV spot

The Americans season 5 TV spot

Iron Fist first season TV spot

Comics

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: The Newspaper Comic Strips

Out this week is He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: The Newspaper Comic Strips that collects all four years of something I never knew existed.

For over four years, Masters of the Universe had its own newspaper comic strip! This story continued the tales from the Filmation cartoon and bridged the saga to the space-themed New Adventures of He-Man cartoon relaunch. The comic strip only ran in selected newspapers and was never reprinted, so most fans have never read it … until now!

The Forever War

Titan Comics begins reprinting the long out of print and now very expensive The Forever War comic series written by Joe Haldeman and illustrated by Marvano. Forever War is my all-time favorite book so I bought the first comic collection when it was out decades ago the last time the series was published but am seriously excited about this new comics series.

An epic SF war story spanning space and time, The Forever War explores one soldier’s experience caught up in the brutal machinery of a war that reaches across the stars.

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1957: LeVar Burton, Geordi of Star Trek: The Next Generation is born
  • 1975: The Stepford Wives debuts
  • 1975: Zardoz opens
  • 1988: Smeg! The TV series Red Dwarf premiers
  • 1989: Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure opens in theaters
  • 2000: Pitch Black premiers
  • 2009: The TV series Dollhouse premiers

Arrival (2016) movie review

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Grade: A-

As I watched the movie Arrival I couldn’t help but thinking I’ve seen this all before. The main concept of the story here, that aliens have arrived on the Earth and it’s up to a group of scientists to communicate with them to discover if they’ve arrived with good or bad intents is a standard sci-fi trope. There’s been loads of TV series like Twilight Zone and Outer Limits and movies like Close Encounters of the Third Kind that have dealt with this before.

However, just because this has all been done before doesn’t mean Arrival isn’t one heck of a good film and the plot even twists this well-worn concept enough to make the story new and fresh.

Here, seed-shaped spacecraft have arrived over twelve points across the planet and it’s up to linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams), scientist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) and army officer Weber (Forest Whitaker) to find out why. The aliens written language consists of these wobbly, almost painterly circles, and as Banks slowly figures the language out she finds more mysteries than answers. And when the Chinese military begin plans to attack the craft hovering over their territory when they don’t like the answers they’re given by the aliens, the question is if Banks can decode the meaning behind the language fast enough, and if her translations are correct before the US military follows suit.

Arrival has gotten a lot of buzz since it was first released and has been nominated for eight Academy Awards. All of which is simply amazing for a story that I can’t imagine would have ever been made as a movie even a few years ago before the current sci-fi boom. I liked most of Arrival, the first half is good enough if a bit typical sci-fi. But the last half, especially the ending, is pure genius. The ending takes Arrival into a completely unexpected direction, taking a so-so story and elevating it to a whole new level.

Arrival is one of those movies that when it ended I felt like I needed to watch again just to see everything I’d missed the first time through, even if everything I missed was hiding in plain sight all along.

Direct Beam Comms #61

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TV

The Expanse – Episode 1, season 2 Grade: A-

I won’t talk much about The Expanse on SyFy since I just published a feature-length article on the series a few weeks ago except to say that the second season, which premiered as two episodes back-to-back, kicks off with a bang right where the first ended. That season of The Expanse generally followed the first half of the book Leviathan Wakes with, I’m assuming, the second season covering the back-half of the book. Which should mean for some seriously good TV with ships zooming around the solar system, Mars and Earth at the brink of war along with an out of control city-sized asteroid with its sights set on the Earth.

Powerless – Episode 1 Grade B

Have we reached peak superhero yet? The creators of the new Powerless TV series sure hope we haven’t as they launch their new series on NBC that is “the first comedy series set in the DC universe.” Starring Vanessa Hudgens, Alan Tudyk and Danny Pudi, Powerless follows the staff of Wayne Security, yes it’s owned by Bruce Wayne, who try to invent products that will help the common person might someday be caught in the middle of a superhero battle with no place to go. Things like a device that alerts the wearer whenever villains are near or a suit that acts like an airbag when they’re about to be hit.

In many ways, Powerless seems like a cross between the series Better off Ted (2009–2010) that too was about the employees of a corporation trying to invent wild and wacky things along with the beginning of the comic series Kingdom Come (1996) that takes place in a world so overrun with superheroes and the battles that people aren’t even pawns in these “good guy” vs “bad guy” little wars, they’re completely ignored and expendable.

But whereas Kingdom Come was deep and brooding and Better off Ted wild and zany, Powerless is more of a mainstream comedy.

In Powerless, Emily Locke (Hudgens) arrives at her job at Wayne Security in Charm City from having grown up in a “flyover state” — or a place so insignificant the heroes literally flyover and ignore it. She’s got to lead her team of scientists and inventors to come up with something before Bruce Wayne shuts the company down. Which is pretty much a foregone conclusion since if they don’t succeed there wouldn’t be a Powerless series.

The first episode was a little light on comedy — I think I chuckled once or twice. But I think Powerless did have enough going for it and enough subtle insider DC humor, from “Shazam” to an interesting twist ending, that I can see myself sticking around with the series to see where it goes.

Santa Clarita Diet – Episode 1 Grade B

And speaking of Better off Ted — the new Netflix series Santa Clarita Diet, of which all episode are currently available to stream, was created by Victor Fresco who is also the creator of Better off Ted. Santa Clarita Diet follows married realtor couple Shelia and Joel, Drew Barrymore and Timothy Olyphant, who’s life take a turn for the weird when one day Shelia literally pukes her guts out during the showing of a home and apparently dies. Except that even without a heartbeat she still seems quite alive and mostly normal except for a few changes. For one thing Shelia’s gone from being slightly timid to more open and adventurous. Oh, and she has this need to eat raw meat and whenever she doesn’t feed that need bad things happen.

This isn’t The Walking Dead, there are no hoards of zombies threatening civilization as Shelia seems to be the only affected by this. In many ways, Santa Clarita Diet feels like a sitcom version of the serial-killer TV series Dexter. In that show, Dexter would only murder people who deserved it, a lot of times other serial killers. And In Santa Clarita Diet Shelia only wants to eat people who’ve done bad things.

Well, mostly bad things.

In the first episode the person she eats isn’t someone who’s killed or harmed anyone. He’s a dork who tries to have his way with Shelia and ends up, well, “feeding her need.”

Santa Clarita Diet joins a few other horror-comedy series like the successful Ash vs Evil Dead and the less-successful Stan Against Evil and on the whole Santa Clarita Diet is mostly successful. The first episode does wax and wane between feeling mostly real one minute to wild and wacky the next, which I’m not quite sure works just yet. I do give the series creators a lot of credit, though, for going for gore and gross-out humor in Santa Clarita Diet. They don’t shy away from thing like disgusting green vomit or showing the dismembered, twitching corpse of Shelia’a meal in the first episode.

And, much like with Powerless, I’m interested in seeing where Santa Clarita Diet goes and will be sticking with this one for at least a season or two.

Training Day – Episode 1 Grade D

The new CBS show Training Day is the latest movie turned series to turn up on TV this season joining the likes of Lethal Weapon, Frequency and the upcoming Time After Time. This Training Day is based on the 2001 Denzel Washington movie with Bill Paxton filling in as the corrupt cop Det. Frank Rourke with new officer Kyle Craig (Justin Cornwell) taking on the Ethan Hawke role from the film.

Essentially, the 2001 version follows relatively new officer, Hawke, being evaluated by a tough, grizzled street veteran cop played by Washington. Except that the grizzled cop is very dirty and when the new officer decides to expose the corruption he puts his life in danger. Early episodes of the series The Shield would borrow from the corrupt street cop Training Day plot before taking its own path for six seasons. Which makes me wonder about this new Training Day TV series, is there any new ground this show can cover? Especially being a CBS drama?

After the first episode at least it doesn’t seem that way. Training Day is basically a high octane version of The Shield with Craig leaping out of the window of an exploding apartment within the first sixty seconds of the show with a shootout on the streets of LA that’s reminiscent of the big shootout in the movie Heat (1995) abet smaller all within the first half. There’s also a few kidnappings and a house burned down that all happens in episode one.

I was really looking for something in Training Day to latch onto but, honestly, there just wasn’t much here. Paxton is interesting in his role but they make him a bit too Robin Hood in the first episode. Sure, he’s a corrupt cop who’ll shoot the bad guys and steal their money one minute, but it’s only because he’s trying to get them to stop targeting a kid who’ll end up getting the money in a trust fund when he turns 18. It’s like the creators of Training Day want there to be an edge to the Rourke character but do their best to make sure any edges are neatly sanded down.

It seems like the first season of Training Day will focus on the murder of Craig’s father when he was a boy and how Rourke, his father’s ex-partner, ties into it. But for me Training Day is a one and done show, so whatever happens in future episodes I won’t be there to see it.

Cool Sites

Made for TV Mayhem: A site that reviews 1970s and 1980s made for TV movies.

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1940: George A. Romero, creator of the modern zombie movie is born
  • 1960: Jenette Goldstein of Aliens, Near Dark and Terminator 2 is born
  • 1965: Michelle Forbes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Admiral Cain of Battlestar Galactica is born
  • 1974: Elizabeth Banks, Effie of The Hunger Games is born
  • 1983: Videodrome permiers
  • 2000: The last episode of the TV series Sliders airs
  • 2000: The TV series The Others premiers

The incredible disposable movie

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I often wonder what it was like to have been a fan of movies before the advent of home video? I’m of the generation who was born just before things like VHS and Betamax became ubiquitous in the early 1980s, but I don’t really remember what it was like when movies had to be seen on the big screen or not at all. For most of its existence movies were this ethereal thing, that could be seen once or twice on the big screen in a theater before they’d vanish forever.

It would have been perfectly normal for my grandparent’s generation to see a movie like King Kong in the theater and never expect that they’d ever see that film again. And for myself living in a time where movies are so common they’re disposable — they’re on network TV, pay cable, pay streaming service, free streaming service and available to buy digitally online — to think that I might not be able to see a movie within a few minutes of that notion popping into my head is completely alien.

Before home video, if someone were a fan of movies they’d have to actually go to the theater to see films — any film, not just new ones. Years ago older, popular movies used to return to theaters every few years or so since that was the only way to see them. I remember seeing the first Star Wars in the theaters, but in 1979 when it was re-released before The Empire Strikes Back. Sometimes movies would turn up on network TV a year or so after they were in theaters, but even then they’d air a few times at most with commercials. And since there was no way to record the showing if you missed it, if you were out doing something the night NBC aired Superman you missed Superman and might not see it again for years.

Talking with people a bit older than me, they have memories of scouring the TV guide looking for things to watch. Sometimes what they wanted to see might only air once late at night. Which meant they’d have to balance how much they wanted to see the movie with how much sleep they wanted to get. Now I can’t claim to have ever done that, but I do have memories of seeing the movie Alien was airing some random night and making sure that I was in front of the TV at a particular time to see it. I also remember that for the longest time it was really hard to see the original Star Wars movies. I believe you could rent them, but they really weren’t available to own for years after VHS became popular. And since I was, am and always will be a Star Wars nut I’d watch them whenever one of the networks aired them on TV as some special event.

Nowadays, if some odd or strange movie is airing on cable some night I can easily set my DVR to record it so that I can watch it delayed at 7PM the next day rather than live at 1AM. And while I’d argue that this is better than what people had to go through years ago to see movies I think this has intrinsically changed what movies are and what they mean to people. I don’t hear many people talking about their favorite movies anymore, or movies that affected them in one way or another Now, movies are a commodity and are treated as such by the public. While I think certain movies can affect people in certain ways, I don’t think that people see movies as anything special anymore. Bored? Search thousands of movies on Netflix to quell that boredom. Got nothing to do tonight, go see the latest Batman down at the cineplex or wait a few months until it’s available on-demand.

Today it’s harder for me to find movies that aren’t available in some form than ones that are. In fact, the other day I went looking for some Japanese anime to buy via digital download and found they weren’t available there which was totally odd since just about every movie ever released these days is. And it’s not like those movies aren’t available to buy on DVD or Blu-ray, they are, they just weren’t instantaneously there for me to see.

Direct Beam Comms #60

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TV

Riverdale – Episode 1 Grade: C

A live-action TV series based on the long-running Archie comic book series has been a long time coming. Both in the 1960s and 1970s pilot episodes of Archie were filmed but neither made it to series. And now, after decades of failed pilots and 75 years of comics comes the new The CW series Riverdale based upon the series. Except that other than the character names and location not much has carried over from the relatively light and poppy Archie comics stories to this grim and dark TV series that’s more in tone with Scandal than The Goldbergs.

KJ Apa and Luke Perry

The story here begins with Cheryl Blossom (Madelaine Petsch) who’s a “mean girl” cheerleader and may have murdered her brother a few months back. There’s also Betty (Lili Reinhart) pining for Archie (K.J. Apa) who spent the summer working on for his dad’s construction firm who spent his days lifting heavy things and “got hot.” But when new girl Veronica (Camila Mendes) comes to town she shakes up Betty and Archie’s relationship even if she finds a friend in Betty.

There’s really nothing new or unique about Riverdale, it’s a typical CW series about beautiful people hanging around other beautiful people and doing things. This version of Archie is hot and sexy with muscles and abs and perfect hair. Not only are Betty and Veronica both hot and sexy but they’re also both hot for Archie. However, Archie’s hot for his hot and sexy teacher Miss Grundy (Sarah Habel) and Betty shares a hot make-out scene with Veronica. Even the parents of the characters from Luke Perry to Mädchen Amick and even Marisol Nichols are hot and sexy. In short, Archie is a show about hot and sexy people.

The story about the murder seemed in place to give the series some sort of longish story to play off of. Without the murder Riverdale is just a standard teens in high school series that’s a CW staple.

Which makes me wonder why the creators of Riverdale decided to base their series off the Archie comic books at all? Other than the names of people and town they live in, there’s really nothing in Riverdale that ties the two together in a way that makes it seem like basing one off the other was worth it. They could have called this series Anywheresville with the exact same characters but different names and the same story and the series creators could have saved themselves a lot of money in license fees they’re paying to the Archie comics people.

The Reading List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1930: Gene Hackman of Superman is born
  • 1949: Brent Spiner, Data of Star Trek: The Next Generation is born