Category: Feature

Direct Beam Comms #46

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TV

Black Mirror – Season 3, Episode 1: Grade B+

Until recently, the TV series Black Mirror wasn’t easy to see. Originating from the UK, other than a Christmas special that aired a few years ago on DirecTV, the six episode first and second seasons never officially aired anywhere here in the US. In fact, until Netflix picked up the series the only way for anyone on this side of the Atlantic to have seen any Black Mirror was via less than legal means.

new_star_studded_black_mirror_trailer_shows_social_media_gone_madBut luckily Netflix began streaming all existing episodes a few years back and even better last Friday debuted six new episodes for a third season of Black Mirror, the first of which is titled “Nosedive.”

“Nosedive” focuses on Lacie Pound (Bryce Dallas Howard) who lives near-future in a place where how many “likes” each person gets determines their worth and status in life. Think how someone like one of the Kardashians lives their lives online and that’s essentially how everyone in “Nosedive” lives.

If you’re one of the popular people with lots of likes you get all sorts of free perks, if you’re less than popular doors literally remain closed for you and you’re barred from even going certain places. And because everyone’s trying to get the most likes Lacie’s world is a place where everyone dresses their best, looks like they’re ready for a photoshoot which they have to be since they’re all constant shooting selfies and is super-nice to everyone else lest they upset them and get down-voted.

Of course just under their veneer people still can’t stand other people, the food, though gorgeous looking is practically inedible and there’s constant discrimination based this underlying algorithm.

What struck me was at one point Lacie says something about how their society is structured, “That’s just the way it is.” Which people say today with a lot of things too like with FICO scores.

In “Nosedive,” Lacie has enough likes that she’s just on the cusp of becoming a tastemaker and sees her friend Naomi (Alice Eve) who’s got it all and more importantly loads of likes as the way to get there. But as Lacie tries to get to Naomi’s wedding her world begins to crumble as a cancelled flight sends her online rating to a nosedive.

Black Mirror is the first 21st century sci-fi series that actually gets what it’s like be swept up in all the technology of the 21st century and not know where it’s taking us. Sure, things like cell phones and computers and laptops and AI are great, but what’s the downside? And that’s where Black Mirror excels. Series creator Charlie Brooker has created a show that takes things we all have today and asks what happens if that technology doesn’t go wrong, but goes to a slightly bad place? What happens if things like “likes” become the new currency of discrimination or like in another episode criminal justice becomes so twisted and bent that by the end of one episode we’re actively rooting for the criminals?

That’s when sci-fi and specifically Black Mirror works so well whereas other modern sci-fi series does not. A lot of regular sci-fi series are all about exploring tropes of the past that were once relevant but are now not. Or are still relevant but don’t resemble anything like they used to in the past. Black Mirror on the other hand is so relevant and so now that I wonder if the series will be as connected with viewers in 10 years as it has to the jugular of viewers today?

And yes, it does strike me as ironic that I’m rating the episode much in the same way people in Lacie’s life “like” her. Then again it’s the times that we live in.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Grade: C+

If anyone were ever to try and pin me down I’d have to say that my favorite book is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (HHGG) by the late, great Douglas Adams. I first read that book in a gigantic collection of all of Adams’ HHGG stories and tore through them as fast as I could. I think it’s Adams absurdist humor that appealed to me so much.

frodoEven with all of my love for all things HHGG and Adams non-fiction work as well I’ve so far never read Adams other book series based on detective Dirk Gently. However, when a new TV series was announced based on this character with Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency on BBC America my interest was piqued.

So I’m not sure what was taken from the Gently novels in this new series which means that I’m going into Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency without a lot of preconceptions as to how it should be.

Here, Todd (Elijah Wood) is a sad-sack, down on his luck bellboy when he stumbles upon a murder at the hotel he works at. And investigating the murder is “holistic” detective Dirk Gently (Samuel Barnett) who quickly puts himself upon Todd and tries to recruit him to be his assistant. And the Todd/Gently stuff/story is actually pretty interesting. Todd is mostly normal while Gently is this weird eye of calm in this crazy storm of weirdness that constantly swirls around him.

Unfortunately there’s so many other things going on in the first episode of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency that all this extra stuff overwhelms the Todd/Gently story. There’s a “holistic” assassin driving around killing people, a missing woman, a group of skinheads who may be involved in the murder, a group of crazed guys who go around smashing things up, a CIA team surveying Gently, a police team surveying Todd and Todd’s sister suffering from a disease all introduced very quickly without a lot of time for story development. All this seems like elements that will be important over the eight episode season but right now feels really weird and very confusing. Especially since after having watched the first episode I really don’t know what the overall story of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is or what it will be?

From the commercials it seems like the first season will be the examination of the murder Gently was investigating and Todd becoming his assistant. But I feel like if Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency would have taken a page from the Doctor Who manual and gone with more self-contained episodes even if there’s a season-long story/mystery running throughout the stories it may have been better for the show.

OR — was Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency designed to be a series people can watch over the course of a weekend in one long eight hour bing? Maybe that would work better for the series? Except here in the US it’s being shown as a weekly show where there’s a 167 hour wait between episodes.

Still, I’ll be sticking with Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency for the short term at least. I think Douglas Adams would have wanted it that way. 😉

Movies

Logan aka Wolverine part 3 movie trailer

“…the world is not the same as it once was.”

It’ll be interesting to see just how this movie fits in with the overall X-Men universe as a whole, especially since the events of Days of Future Past seemed to have made this bleak future impossible.

The Arrival final movie trailer

“What does it say?”

Books

The Art of Atari

Out this week is the loooooooooong awaited The Art of Atari book that collects many of the gorgeous illustrations that graced the packaging of Atari game cartridges of the 1970s and 1980s. In many ways those illustrations were better than the actual games since they were selling what those games could be, or what those games might be in the player’s imaginations rather than what the game would actually be like when played.

From Dynamite:

To usher in the new era of electronic entertainment, (Atari) hired an array of talented illustrators to emblazon game cartridges, boxes, magazine advertisements, and more with mind-blowing visions of fantasy and sports thrills, science fiction and adventure, that elevated pixelated gaming to the realm of high art. Art of Atari is the first official retrospective of the company’s illustrative accomplishments, spanning over four decades and cultivated from museums and private collections worldwide.

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1943: Michael Crichton, creator of Jurassic Park, Twister and the TV series ER is born
  • 1959: Sam Raimi, director of The Evil Dead and Spider-Man franchises is born
  • 1984: The TV series V premiers
  • 1984: Terminator opens in theaters
  • 1994: Stargate opens in theaters
  • 1996: The TV series Millennium premiers
  • 1997: Gattaca opens in theaters

What We Do it the Shadows: the best horror comedy of the decade

CategoriesFeature, MoviesPosted on

There are vampires in New Zealand, and their biggest problem is fitting in. That is according to the movie What We Do in the Shadows anyway.

Jemaine Clement
Jemaine Clement

I only discovered What We Do in the Shadows by happenstance. I’d heard of the movie via its trailers and posters but What We Do in the Shadows never got much of a buzz so I didn’t seek it out. Then, when I saw it pop-up on-demand I thought the poster was so, well, odd I didn’t rent it then either. It doesn’t help that the title of the movie What We Do in the Shadows sounds slightly risqué.

In fact, I only watched it last winter when I was flipping around the dial one Saturday night and caught it from the middle. The part I began watching has one vampire dying in a “freak” sunlight accident and I immediately knew what I was seeing was either going to be genius or crap — it’s exactly the same way I felt when I caught my first episode of the UK version of The Office randomly on TV. And like The Office, What We Do in the Shadows is pure brilliance.

Co-written, co-directed and co-starring Jermaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) and Taika Waititi (director of the upcoming Thor 3 movie) and also starring Jonny Brugh and Cori Gonzalez-Macuer, What We Do in the Shadows is about a group of vampires who share a home in Wellington, New Zealand and have problems. Most of their problems are related to the fact that even the youngest of them is a few hundred years old and they just don’t get our modern society.

They’re ancient vampires with modern problems like housecleaning that involves a lot of blood, but cleaning those hard to reach places is so much easier when you can fly.

Jemaine Clement, Jonny Brugh & Taika Waititi
Jemaine Clement, Jonny Brugh & Taika Waititi

Shot documentary style, in What We Do in the Shadows the vampires argue over who’s going to do the dishes that have been sitting in the sink for five years and when they should put down paper in order to keep spraying blood off the couch.

Enter new vampire Nick (Gonzalez-Macuer) who’s much cooler than the other vampires and can get into all the hot clubs and show them how to get along in modern society. But when vampire Deacon (Brugh) feels slighted since he used to be the cool one of the group and chases Nick off, it’s a question of whether or not Vladislav (Clement) or Viago (Waititi) want to go back to their old ways and leave things like eBay and their cell phones behind.

Even though What We Do in the Shadows uses the tried and true fauxcumentary technique that’s so popular these days, I think what makes the movie work so well are the characters. All of the characters feel like, err…, real vampires who aren’t the typical evil bloodsuckers but have their own quirks and personalities.

Taika Waititi
Taika Waititi

Virgo is a “bit of a dandy” who when slighted is likely to take a glove out and slap someone. Vladislav is probably the most stereotypical vampire of the bunch with his slavic accent and Gary Oldman style Dracula (1992) costumes but he’s lost his mojo after a defeat by “The Beast” that left him reeling. And Deacon is so self-centered he can’t even see what an asset Nick is to the group.

And when “The Beast” is revealed at the end of the movie it’s so hilariously true that I’m sure many of us have also fought “The Beast.”

Honestly, ever since I saw that first showing of What We Do in the Shadows I’ve watched the movie again and again about four times. I laugh every time I watch it and always catch something new.

Reading up it seems like What We Do in the Shadows only made about $7 million at the box office which is bad. The good news is that the movie did well enough and has gotten such a good word of mouth that a sequel, this time about the werewolves of What We Do in the Shadows titled We’re Wolves might be in the works and another spin-off TV series as well.

Direct Beam Comms #45

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, TVPosted on

TV

Falling Water – Grade: D+

The new series Falling Water on USA has a nugget of a great idea — that dreams might be interconnected and through these connections greater truths can be gleaned. Alas, other than that kernel Falling Water is a mess.

falling-water-3In the first episode these interconnected dreams don’t actually lead to much of anything. We see a few characters within other’s dreams, but for the most part these dreams are just, well, dreams. One character dreams of his mother, another of a son and the third a love. But otherwise not much happens in them. In fact, story-wise not much happens in the first episode at all.

The four main characters of the Falling Water don’t seem that unique or even all that believable either. There’s Tess (Lizzie Brocheré) who’s a bit like a toned-down version of the character Lisbeth in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo but instead of being a computer hacker is a sort of style prognosticator who can tell what’s going to be hot in a few months. There’s Take (Will Yun Lee) who’s a stock police detective as seen on many other TV series. There’s Burton (David Ajala) a corporate security director who feels like he’s a clone of the character of Michael Clayton. And there’s Bill (Zak Orth) who seems to be the rich, eccentric character from loads of series who’s the one person who suspects that dreams might be interconnected.

I’ve got no problem with series taking character types and putting them into different shows, but the characters of Falling Water seemed to be almost copies from other sources. Still, this could be interesting if the overall story had some intriguing aspect(s) to it. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much story in Falling Water and what story there was I wasn’t totally sure what’s going on.

Take’s investigating the death of a woman that leads to him finding a mass suicide that ends with someone’s house blowing up while Burton is trying to figure out if the girl of his dreams is real or is literally from his dreams. And Tess and Bill meet and begin to delve the depths of the interconnected dreams. But there just wasn’t any main story to hang things off of yet.

And that’s a big problem I had with Falling Water. It’s the show that’s built around this big central mystery of what’s going on in the dreams and how this relates to reality where the plot will be dribbled out throughout the season. There’s also hints that something else weird is going on from certain characters having monstrous shadows to the word “Topeka” turning up in different characters’ stories. Which is fine, except I’ve been burned too many times on series that do this, that rely on a season-long “mystery” rather than telling a story within each episode, to have any patience whatsoever with Falling Water. Maybe Falling Water will have a brilliant story and maybe not, but the only way to find out is to watch the whole season which I’m not willing to do.

It doesn’t help matters that the series is shot in a way where it seems to be aesthetically close to that of a pretentious perfume commercial with hands intermingling and characters gazing at each other across rooms both inside and outside the dreams. Plus at times the dialog came across as fake and phony that it seemed like the writers of Falling Water were more concerned that people recognize them for the craft than having the characters come across as believable human beings.

Maybe I’m wrong and Falling Water will be one of those shows that people look back on at the end of the season and think how great it was. If so, someone will have to tell me since I’m done with this one.

Channel Zero – Grade: C-

11-channel-zero-candle-cove-w529-h352Much like Falling Water, the first episode of the SyFy series Channel Zero isn’t so much a story unto itself, it’s a portal into the six episode limited series. But when the first episode of this horror series feels long and drawn out as this one did it can’t bode well for the rest of the series.

Here, Paul Schneider (Parks and Recreation) stars as Mike Painter, a very Stephen King-like character who’s a writer returning to his hometown years after he first left. Back in 1988 disturbing things happened around town, some of which we glimpse as flashbacks in the episode, but the major event for Mike was the murder of his twin brother. And once Mike returns to town weird things start happening again with creepy creatures stalking the countryside and the return of a children’s TV series called Candle Cove that only kids seem able of seeing and hasn’t been on the air since 1988.

Honestly, the first episode of Channel Zero felt like a cross between some lost King story and the movie The Mothman Prophecies, which sounds great. But somehow Channel Zero came off feeling long and drawn-out and I was quite bored with it by the halfway point of the show. Plus, I was never quite sure what the main plot was for the show. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but I felt more confused than intrigued. Mike has flashbacks to when he and his bother were growing up which seemed to show that the more they watched Candle Cove the more Mike’s brother started developing weird powers. And there’s also a thing that seems to be covered in teeth running around as well as someone in a skeleton looking costume.

The more that I think about the show it seems like it’s got a lot of good ideas going on all taken from other sources as base material for the show, but none of these differing things ever gelled into a one coherent story. Unfortunately, Channel Zero is a mess I don’t think I’ll be sticking around for any more visits to.

Movies

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story trailer #2

“Save the rebellion!”

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1948: Margot Kidder, Lois Lane of Superman is born
  • 2004: The TV series Battlestar Galactica premiers

Direct Beam Comms #44

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, TVPosted on

TV

Westworld – Grade: B+

Until now, Westworld on HBO was known as the series that was supposed to have premiered over a year ago but was pushed back when the production had to be shut down for “script problems” which is never a good sign. I was really looking forward to the show when it was first announced but after that maybe not as much. So, it’s with a bit of relief I’m happy to report that the first episode of Westworld is pretty good, with a few caveats at least.

160819-westworld-s1-blast-06-1920Based on the film of the same name written and directed by Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park), Westworld is a kind of western Disneyland stocked with era appropriate robots who guests can interact with, have sex with and kill with impunity. Created by Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins), the park has been running for decades without a hitch. The robots can’t harm any living thing, they literally can’t even swat flies from their face lest they kill them, and are reborn anew each morning with the memories of the previous day having been erased.

And some of these memories are pretty disturbing — rape and murder are a daily occurrence in Westworld but since all memories are erased it’s not much of a problem. Except now there’s a glitch in the system. The older the robot is and the longer they’ve been around somehow allows them start remembering things from their past. And when things start happening and robots begin to go “buggy” with them almost having what looks like strokes, no one’s sure if these changes are a mistake in the code or if what’s happening is about to be the next step in robot evolution.

Think The Truman Show (the overseers of Westworld watch what’s going on via a control center that overlooks things) meets Groundhog Day (the robots experience the same day over and over again) with a bit of Crichton’s own Jurassic Park too (the park designed where nothing can go wrong goes wrong) all mixed together. But these sources just makes up a small part of Westworld, much of the story of the show is about the robots who may be finding some sort of consciousness with the overseers of Westworld, mainly Ford, trying to figure out if this is good or bad.

What does hurt the show though, which has been pointed out by other reviewers as well, is that while the robots of Westworld come off as mildly fully formed individuals, the living people there do not. The park guests, especially so, are mostly one dimensional. They’re there to mostly live out their most debaucherous fantasies — be it via having wild sex or killing whomever they want whenever the whim strikes them. And the robots can’t fight back. Their guns though they work on other robots are useless against a park guest.

Enter the guest known as “The Man in Black” (Ed Harris) who has been coming to the park for 30 years. He’s the bad guy of the park and thinks that by causing destruction and mayhem that he’ll be able to uncover the hidden inner workings of Westworld. Some of which involves brutally attacking Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) the oldest robot at the park over and over again trying to get her memories to carry over from today’s trauma to tomorrow’s memory.

Which is another bit about Westworld that bothered me — the level of violence in the show is pretty extreme, even for HBO. And since the robots live the same day over and over again with small differences depending on how they interact with the park’s guests and each other, there’s always the opportunity for the same bad thing to happen over and over again.

Still, there’s a lot more good than bad in Westworld and I’m very intrigued to see where the series goes next.

Timeless – Grade: C+

Timeless - Season PilotThe new Timeless series on NBC really wants to be an American version of Doctor Who, unfortunately I think it goes about it in the wrong way.

Here, a stand-in for Elon Musk (Paterson Joseph) has created a time machine which unfortunately has been stolen by evil Garcia Flynn (Goran Visnjic). Flynn and his terrorist crew wants to go back in time and change things for his own devious ends. Enter extremely good looking history professor Lucy Preston (Abigail Spencer), extremely good looking ex-special forces Delta Force guy who punches people in the face Wyatt Logan (Matt Lanter) and average-scientist guy Rufus Carlin (Malcolm Barrett) who have to use the old, backup time machine to go back in time to try and stop Flynn who’s first target is the Hindenburg. Flynn doesn’t want the Hindenburg to explode, he wants to save it.

But will Lucy, Wyatt and Rufus have the skills to stop Flynn before he rewrites history and changes our present? Will Lucy and Wyatt ever get together? And can Wyatt control his urges to want to save people in the past and therefor change his/our present?

Timeless is interesting if it’s been done a few times before with the likes of Time Tunnel and Voyagers. In fact, what reminded me most about Timeless was the unaired pilot remake of Time Tunnel back in 2006.

Honestly, for a network show Timeless is above average. I think the problem lies in that it’s not that original. It feels like the show really wants to be the US version of Doctor Who with people traveling around in a time machine solving mysteries and fixing things. But I think where Timeless is going wrong is that it seems like they’re only going to be making stops in famous periods of the past from the Hindenburg, to the assassination of Lincoln and even a visit with the Rat Pack which really screams “network event TV” to me. Going to just parts of the past we all know about feels like a cheat to me.

It would seem that rather than concentrating on things that everyone’s heard of, and are therefor easy to try and predict and stop, if instead Flynn went after something a little more hard to guess what he was up to that he’d be able to do a lot more damage.

But maybe that’s thinking too much in-depth, Timeless is a network show after all.

Black Mirror season 4 TV spot

Iron Fist TV spot

The Reading List

On the Horizon

It seems strange but I only have three major articles left in 2016 — one on the movie What We Do in the Shadows, Doctor Strange and Star Wars and after that I start my “best of” lists that will carry over into the first weeks of 2017. And I’ve actually got a lot planned out in 2017 too, from new movies coming out next year to how bloody good the movies from 1987 were.

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1956: Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files, Millennium and The Lone Gunman is born
  • 1995: Strange Days opens in theaters

Sci-Fi Heaven

CategoriesFeature, Movies, TVPosted on

I’m amazed at the amount of great sci-fi movies and TV series that are being released each year. It wasn’t too long ago that sci-fi was relegated to late night TV syndication or movies of the week, but these days the most popular films are all sci-fi in nature and there are a plethora of quality sci-fi TV series too.

_captain_america__civil_war_trailer_-_h_2015
Captain America

What sci-fi movies am I talking about that are so popular? To me, just about each and every superhero movie is sci-fi in disguise. Don’t believe me? Superman is an alien, both Spider-Man and Captain America were created by experiments gone awry and The Guardians of the Galaxy takes place on far off planets in the depths of space.

Even ones that don’t directly contain sci-fi tropes none-the-less have sci-fi elements from Iron Man’s robot-like armor to Batman’s crazy gadgets.

And those are just superhero movies. There’s also loads of great obvious sci-fi movies too.

Mad Max: Fury Road
Mad Max: Fury Road

One of my favorites of the last few years was the underrated Tom Cruise/Emily Blunt movie Edge of Tomorrow about a soldier who’s trapped in a time loop and is forced to live the worst day of his life over and over again during an alien invasion. There’s also the new Planet of the Apes franchise that’s taken a story that’s been around nearly 50 years and put a fresh spin on it and even the latest Mad Max: Fury Road that’s based on a nearly 40 year old film series and recently won the most Oscars at the 2016 ceremony.

And it’s ostensibly a movie that’s a big car chase that takes place in a post-apocalyptic future!

And let’s not forget the two grand sci-fi franchises of the 20th and 21st century; Star Wars and Star Trek. The current Star Trek film franchise has been around since 2009 and has produced three movies, the latest of which was the number one movie in the country for a few weeks running. And Star Wars returned last year with Star Wars: The Force Awakens and earned more than $2 billion at the box office. Now there are new Star Wars movie due out every year forever — or until the movies stop making money.

Daisy Ridley from Star Wars: Episode VII
Daisy Ridley from Star Wars: Episode VII

Because TV series costs less to make than a movie things are even better for the sci-fi genera on the small screen. There, series like The Expanse on SyFy is a classic “people in very large ships in outer space” series updated for the modern day while The Man in the High Castle on Amazon Prime brings movie adaptation stalwart Philip K Dick to a TV series and even the oh-so-good Stephen King/Steven Spielberg/1980s mashup Stranger Things on Netflix.

In fact there’s so much good TV on these days I could go on and on and on. I didn’t mention the awesome Black Mirror on Netflix or even Doctor Who on BBC America with seemingly more sci-fi series announced each month.

Next year brings the return of Star Trek to TV screens for the first time in 12 years with Star Trek: Discovery. Discovery is co-produced with Bryan Fuller who created the amazing Hannibal series and was also a Star Trek writer in the 1990s. Which means there’ll be two totally separate Trek properties, one in movie theaters and the other streaming to TVs.

The Expanse
The Expanse

And because sci-fi is so popular and makes so much money these days the immediate future looks nothing but bright. The superhero genera is so popular there are SEVEN big-budget movies due out in 2017 and the next Star Wars movie Rogue One premiers this winter. What has me most excited are upcoming movies like Annihilation based on a book series of the same name, another Alien prequel and a new King Kong movie all due out next year.

Surly all this gold can’t last — one day sci-fi will return to the geeky depths that it emerged from earlier this century. Nothing this good can last forever, but until the bubble collapses I’ll be spending my time with my favorite stories and characters at the movies and on TV every week.