Category: Feature

Direct Beam Comms #43

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, TVPosted on

TV

Luke Cage – First episode – Grade: B-

I’m a big fan of the Netflix Daredevil series but for whatever reason was never able to get into the Jessica Jones show and only ever watched a few episodes. But when a Luke Cage series was announced a while back as a sort’a spin-off to Jessica Jones I was intrigued enough to watch.

miiiistyHere’s the thing, the story of Luke Cage is so-so, but whenever the character of Luke Cage (Mike Colter) is on-screen it’s pretty great.

This third Marvel Netflix show follows the titular character who works days sweeping hair in a barbershop and nights washing dishes at a restaurant in order to get paid on the sly since he’s in hiding, from what is never quite clear. Cage was in prison and suffers nightmares from his time locked up and is now trying to turn his life around. Enter Cornell “Cottonmouth” Stokes (Mahershala Ali) the requisite bad guy in a really nice suit who’s working with elected official Mariah Stokes (Alfre Woodard) and is funneling ill-gotten gains into her campaign. But when one of Stokes’ deals goes bad he’s willing to do whatever it takes to get his merchandise and money back.

All of which is stuff we’ve seen before. It seems like in these superhero TV series the “bad guy in a really nice suit” has replaced the costume wearing villain as the main nemesis to the show’s title character. I’m not sure if it’s a budget thing where the series producers think they can’t afford showing things like CGI villains like Ultron or waves of Chitauri soldiers or if they just think that having costumed super villains is corny. But for whatever reason they keep going back to having the main baddy of the season be a powerful criminal boss. Which is fine, but it tends to get really old really fast. Even Daredevil, which has arguably the most famous bad guy in a really nice suit Kingpin, only did this in their first season. The second had Daredevil facing off against the likes of zombified ninjas!

marvel-luke-cage-mahershala-ali1So it is a bit of a disappointment to see much of the plot of Luke Cage trudging down that same well-worn path. Still, whenever the show’s about Luke Cage and not Cottonmouth’s criminal empire it’s pretty great.

This version of Luke Cage is this super-powerful guy who’s able to lift a washing machine like it’s nothing, take a punch in the face that ends up breaking the the hand of the person throwing it and even catch a bullet at one point. But at the same time he’s on the run not wanting to expose his identity and be found out and is even sensitive to boot.

But, with all these powers and a neighborhood that’s being overrun by Cottomouth’s goons it’s a shame that Cage isn’t able to do something about it which is pretty much where the first episode ends.

Looking back on the episode now, I think its main problem is that we spent as much time with the villains as Cage. And while I could see this being something that’s done later in the season I’m not sure it works here. Ali is great as Cottonmouth but I don’t think that character can carry a show as much as he’s given to carry it in the first episode here. Colter as Cage, on the other hand, I think can carry this show. I just hope in future episodes we spend a lot more time with Cage and not as much with the bad guys.

Movies

The Siege of Jadotville trailer

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1923: Charlton Heston of Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green and The Omega Man is born
  • 1949: Sigourney Weaver, Ripley in Alien, Galaxy Quest and Avatar is born
  • 1959: The TV series The Twilight Zone premiers
  • 1987: Near Dark opens in theaters
  • 1988: The movie Alien Nation premiers in theaters
  • 1999: The TV series Roswell premiers
  • 1999: The TV series Harsh Realm premiers
  • 2000: The TV series Dark Angel premiers

Direct Beam Comms #42

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

The Exorcist – Grade: A-

To be honest, I’ve never seen the original 1973 film of The Exorcist. It was never one of those movies that turned up all that often “edited for TV” on the networks and for whatever reason I don’t ever remember seeing it on any of our pay cable channels we got either. Now I’m certain that I’ve seen parts and pieces of the movie over the years when I happened to catch it here and there. But I’m also very certain that I’ve never seen the movie from start to finish.

mv5bmtuznjg2odk5m15bml5banbnxkftztgwntiwotm3ote-_v1_sy1000_sx1500_al_And that may be why the new FOX The Exorcist TV series caught with me — I really don’t have anything else to compare it to.

This version of The Exorcist story takes place modern day in the same universe as the film — one of the priests of the show (Alfonso Herrera) sees a newspaper article mentioning the events of the film. In the TV version it’s Chicago and one of Angela Rance’s (Geena Davis) daughters has been behaving differently ever since the death of a friend. And ever since her daughter began behaving this way weird things have started happening around the house like voices inside the walls and weird shadows moving behind doors. Enter young Father Tomas Ortega (Herrera) who goes in and realizes he’s in over his head and isn’t even quite sure what’s happening and gets Father Marcus Keane (Ben Daniels) who has experience in exorcisms to help.

And that’s pretty much where the first episode ends, well after a pretty big/interesting twist to the TV version. So it seems like the story of the TV The Exorcist will be of these two fathers fighting for the soul of Rance’s daughter while at the same time finding out that there’s more than one demon involved.

I really got a kick out of The Exorcist — even if it does fall into the trap of having the demons only affecting people who are already religious which doesn’t quite make sense. Isn’t evil equal opportunity?

I went into it not expecting much — it doesn’t pay to expect much out of new TV series. But I left The Exorcist liking it a lot with the show giving off a strong The Sixth Sense and The Mothman Prophecies vibe in a good way. The show is creepy enough with a few genuine scenes of horror — even if there’s a few scenes where things happen that don’t quite make sense logically other than they happened that way in order to make the scene scarier.

I’m genuinely excited to see where this one goes — with one caveat. I think what worked so well here is that it seems like the story of The Exorcist is going to play out over the course of a season which is great. But only if that season is something like 10 or 13 episode. I think if FOX tries to turn the story of The Exorcist into something more/longer it’s not going to work.

But for right now The Exorcist looks to be the best new show of the season so far.

Also, I realized watching The Exorcist that this is Davis second foray in starring in a remake of a horror classic. She also starred in the 1986 movie remake of The Fly.

Star Wars Rebels – Grade: B+

Star Wars Rebels
Star Wars Rebels

This third, and reportedly final season of Star Wars Rebels on DisneyXD jumps ahead a few years in time from the first two seasons. Here, Ezra Bridger (Taylor Gray) has matured from a young boy to a young man, and where he once had burgeoning Jedi powers now wields these same powers as an almost master.

The only problem is that without the guiding hand of Jedi Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze Jr.) Ezra is being lured by evil forces to serve the dark side.

The story complexity of Star Wars Rebels is surprisingly deep. This is much more than a simple action series where the good guys go and fight the bad guys. Instead, this is a show about what can happen to people fighting the good fight if they even take one step in the wrong direction. Like is Kanan’s decision to train Ezra as a Jedi which could possibly help bring down the Empire a good one, if it also means there’s a chance Ezra might instead be turned to bring down the Rebellion?

Now the rumor is that this is the final season of Star Wars Rebels since there’s a desire to rather than having a bridge show between the two film trilogies to instead have a new series focused on events around the new movies. Which is fine — it’s just a shame that Disney can’t find a few extra dollars in the billions that Star Wars is bringing in to support, I dunno, two Star Wars cartoons instead of just the one?

Just an idea. 😉

The Good Place – Grade: B

913084_770The premiere of the new show The Good Place debuted last week on NBC. It was billed as a comedy but after having watched the first three episodes that all ran last week I don’t think that The Good Place had many laughs — I think I chuckled a few times during the episodes. But what the show really is, is one of the darkest and most disturbing things on TV in the guise of a comedy which is actually kind’a interesting.

In The Good Place, Eleanor (Kristen Bell) is a newly deceased person who ends up in “the good place” where the good people go and not the “bad place” where everyone else ends up. Except it turns out that there was a mixup where Eleanor should’ve ended up in the bad place but instead wound up in the good place. And after Eleanor hears what it’s like in the bad place, which involves lots of screaming and loud noises, she wants to stay in the good place and enlists the help of her soul-mate Chidi Anagonye (William Jackson Harper) to stay. Which means he’s got to try and make her a better person.

Except that every time Eleanor has a bad thought or does something not good it makes bad things happen in the good place — like trash being strewn everywhere or giant ladybugs attacking the city. So it’s a question of can Chidi reform Eleanor before the good place is destroyed by her, or should he turn her into the good place overseer Michael (Ted Danson) and save everyone else?

Much of the comedy of The Good Place is supposed to come from Eleanor doing bad things like getting drunk, being selfish and envying others. And there are flashbacks to Eleanor when she was alive doing those same sort of things. However, what she did when she was alive wasn’t all that bad — she litters in front of an environmentalist and sneaks off to have sex with a bartender when she’s supposed to be her group’s designated driver. She’s not bad, she’s just a self-centered jerk.

And I think that’s where the darkness of The Good Place comes from. In the mythology of The Good Place only the best of the best get in. New arrivals watch an orientation film of why they made it to the good place and it’s obvious that the vast majority of people on the Earth aren’t good enough to make it to the good place and go to the bad place instead.

I think what interested me the most about The Good Place was thinking about just how people get picked to go into the good or bad place? It seems like there’s some algorithmic based decision going on there — doing good things adds up in your favor and bad takes away, but doing really good things adds up more than just slightly good and vice versa — but who made the algorithm and who made the good place? Is it god who’s pulling the strings?

In certain ways The Good Place reminds me of the 1980s The Twilight Zone episode “Dead Run”. In so much as in that episode it turns out that god isn’t the one deciding who goes to heaven and who goes to hell, that’s the devil’s job. And he’ll take anyone who’s even sinned in the slightest taking nice old grandmas who had impure thoughts and murders alike.

And The Good Place feels very much like the mirror of “Dead Run,” except here it’s the story of the lucky very few who avoid going to the bad place.

Honestly, if The Good Place were more of a drama I’d think it’s the next Lost wondering just what’s going on with the behind the scenes mechanics of the good place and the mystery of how and why everyone got there and what the bad place is like. Is the good place some lie? Are the people living in the good place not actually in the good place?

But since The Good Place is a comedy and not a drama I highly doubt this is the case. I’d be pleasantly surprised if there were something more hiding in the depths of the story of The Good Place, but I won’t be surprised whatsoever if there isn’t.

Lethal Weapon – Grade: C+

This new FOX series based on the 1987 Lethal Weapon film is basically Lethal Weapon-lite by way of the movie Last Action Hero where every police chase is a HIGH-OCTANE chase and every police shootout is a HIGH-OCTANE shootout. And, if a good character is going to be shot it’s going to be in their shoulder so they’ll be able to be up and around that same day. The bright shining spot of the mostly “we’ve seen this all before” Lethal Weapon is Damon Wayans as Roger Murtaugh who plays the role with just enough cheese to make the first episode at least watchable. Clayne Crawford as Martin Riggs, on the other hand, starts off the episode with a thick southern accent which he somehow looses after the first ten minutes. His version of the Riggs character seems to prowl the depths of depression one minute, pining over a dead wife and child while drinking shots and almost playing Russian Roulette, and almost joyous the next.

I get that the Riggs character is supposed to be a loose cannon and suicidal, but in tone I’m not sure that the TV version of Riggs is there yet.

MacGyver – Grade: F

I just threw up in my mouth a little.

Movies

Passengers movie trailer

The rom-com-space-con?

Cool Sites

Pilot Callsigns: The web’s largest collection of callsign stories

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1951: Linda Hamilton of Terminator, Terminator 2 and the TV series Beauty and the Beast is born
  • 1952: Christopher Reeve, Superman, is born
  • 1968: Night of the Living Dead opens in theaters
  • 1985: The TV series Amazing Stories debuts
  • 1987: Star Trek: The Next Generation premiers
  • 2001: Star Trek: Enterprise premiers
  • 2005: Serenity opens in theaters

Direct Beam Comms #41

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, TVPosted on

TV

Son of Zorn – Grade: C

Alan_Zorn_Bird.JPGFox premiered their new Son of Zorn series last Sunday a few weeks early to coincide with the start of football. I wasn’t too excited about this one and was still underwhelmed after the first episode.

In Son of Zorn, Jason Sudeikis stars as the voice of He-Man-like cartoon character Zorn. But instead of being a kid’s TV series, Zorn comes from a real place where he occasionally visits his flesh and blood ex-wife Edie (Cheryl Hines) and their son Alan (Johnny Pemberton) in LA. Since Zorn’s been off fighting and killing these animated fantastical beasts on his island, he and his son have grown apart but Zorn wants to reconnect which means getting a job and moving to LA full-time.

I really hope there’s more to Son of Zorn than just deadbeat dad Zorn trying to make up with his son since not a lot of the universe the series takes place in makes much sense. Like, Zorn’s animated and everyone else is flesh and blood, yet no one ever makes mention of it. Which is all right, except as far as I can tell Zorn is the only animated being to live alongside us.

And Zorn was married to a real-woman and they had a kid, so that seems possible. Yet it’s never discussed how odd that is even though there’s never any other animated people around.

So are there other animated characters that live alongside people other than Zorn or is he unique? And if he’s unique wouldn’t that make him somewhat of a celebrity rather than someone who can only land a phone sales job because he meets their “diversity” quota?

Which could be overlooked if the series were trying to comment on something or, at the very least, made me chuckle once or twice. Except here there’s a one-note joke that Zorn is this fish out of water manly-man who can’t quite transition from his world to our own that’s played over and over and over again.

Son of Zorn feels a bit like the TV series Greg the Bunny that had puppets ala The Muppets rather than an 2D animated character. Except that while Greg the Bunny was actually funny and interesting, after one episode Son of Zorn so far is not.

Documentary Now season 2 – Grade: B+

960The hilarious IFC series Documentary Now starring Fred Armisen and Bill Hader returned for a second season last week and is great as ever. Each episode of the series is a parody of different, acclaimed real documentaries. The first episode of the second season was about two political strategists stealing the 1992 Ohio gubernatorial election in the style of the real 1992 documentary The War Room.

I love Documentary Now and even the few episodes that don’t quite work still can be very interesting. I honestly hope Armisen and Hader keep making new episodes of their series for years and years to come.

American Horror Story season 3 – Grade: B

ahs_childrenofthecorn_1200x1200The sixth season of the FX series American Horror Story debuted last week with “Roanoke.” I really enjoyed the first season of the show and liked the second one, but I thought the third was pretty dull and gave up on the show sometime in the fourth.

I think American Horror Story works best when it’s telling an gripping, twisting season long horror story with an unexpected ending. Which is exactly what the first season of the show did. But after that I think the filmmakers started concentrating more on trying to top themselves in terms of sex, gore and violence rather than trying something different from what they’d done before.

Which is why the sixth season of American Horror Story is so interesting looking — after one episode it seems like it’s different from what’s come before.

This time the show’s focus is on a married interracial couple Shelby and Matt played by Lily Rabe and André Holland who move to the woods of North Carolina looking for a simpler life after they were attacked on the streets of LA. But in true American Horror Story fashion, in North Carolina they find unwelcoming locals, a storm that rains teeth and some weird creature that stalks around their house at night leaving things like eviscerated pigs on their doorstep.

But the difference in the sixth season of the show compared to previous ones comes in just how the story’s being told.

Rather than telling a straight up story like in previous seasons, the sixth season is presented like some Discovery Channel horror show. Where the “real” Shelby and Matt give interviews documentary style in a studio while actors (Sarah Paulson and Cuba Gooding Jr.) playing Shelby and Matt reenact the stories they tell on screen in the studio.

I think the only problem I have with how these reenactments play out in the “Roanoke” show-within-a-show is that it appears as if they actually were filmed with some sort of budget, not the no-budged-no-frills-slightly-cheesy how most reenactment series end up looking these days. 😉

Star Wars Rebels season 3 TV spot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DD_9LAMJhaA

Punisher War Journal by Carl Potts & Jim Lee

detailOut now in a massive 504 page trade paperback is Punisher War Journal by Carl Potts & Jim Lee. This edition collects the first 19 issues of the Punisher War Journal classic series that defined a comics movement of the 1980s and 1990s.

Frank Castle doubles down on his war on crime courtesy of two of the finest creators ever to take on the character. If you’re a mob boss, hitman or hired goon, one day you’re gonna end up in Punisher’s War Journal. And it won’t be long before he crosses you off . As Frank continues his relentless mission, he’ll lock horns with old foe Daredevil, team up with Spider-Man, and meet a feisty new sparring partner – get ready for Punisher vs. Wolverine as only Jim Lee could draw it! “Acts of Vengeance” sees Frank take on new foe Bushwacker as Doctor Doom and Kingpin machinate behind the scenes. COLLECTING: PUNISHER WAR JOURNAL (1988) #1–19, MATERIAL FROM PUNISHER ANNUAL #2.

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1928: Adam West, Batman, is born
  • 1947: Stephen King is born
  • 1962: The TV series The Jetsons debuts
  • 1989: The TV series Alien Nation premiers
  • 1995: The TV series Space: Above and Beyond premiers
  • 2002: The TV series Firefly debuts
  • 2004: Shaun of the Dead opens in theaters
  • 2004: The TV series Lost premiers

At the Drive-In

CategoriesFeature, MoviesPosted on

I was watching the film Grindhouse the other week which is a celebration of low-rent movies that used to play in low-rent theaters. That movie is made up of two films; Planet Terror and Death Proof, shown back-to-back with faux trailers before and in-between. Since I’m of a generation who came of age after grindhouse cinemas had already start to disappear I thought to myself that I’d never actually seen a true double feature at the movies like Grindhouse is a love letter to. Then I caught myself — actually I have seen a double feature, two in fact.

The Hunt for Red OctoberWhen I was a teen there was a drive-in movie theater near the town I lived in. Before I had my driver’s license I’d hang around with some neighbor friends and would end up doing whatever it was they were doing. And a few times they’d be going to the drive-in to catch a feature so I’d end up tagging along.

That drive-in was located just east of town, off a highway in an open stretch of country. You could see the movie screen from the road and would pull off and onto a short gravel track where you’d drive up to the ticket booth. I’m not sure but I think tickets were for the carload, but I could be wrong. Regardless, after you paid you’d drive out into a field with all these posts sticking out of the ground situated in front of a large white metal movie screen. At the center of the field was a building that housed the concession stand as well as the projection booth.

Arachnophobia
Arachnophobia

We’d find a nice spot, park, get out and setup lawn chairs — I only ever remember watching from inside the car once when it rained. You could hear what was playing by a speaker attached to the pole with a long wire or via an FM station on you car’s radio. Since there were literally hundreds of posts and speakers planeted throughout the field it was a weird sort of stereo sound since the movie was playing all around you at once.

The drive-in was a social event more than anything and most teens whom would roam around car to car meeting up with friends. My guess is that if kids in my town weren’t out “cruising” city streets summer evenings they were at the drive-in back then.

The movies I remember seeing there were the spider-horror Arachnophobia, the druid-horror The Guardian, the thriller The Hunt for Red October and horror-anthology Tales from the Darkside the Movie all from 1990. Now I’m not sure as to what movies played when, but they played as a double bills.

The Guardian
The Guardian

Why did we chose to go see those movies? Easy answer — we didn’t. We saw them ‘cause that’s what was playing!

I remember sitting out in that field as the night would come on and everything would start becoming damp because of the humidity and dew. The time it rained meant that we’d scattered from our seats to the dryness of inside the car for a while until the shower passed and we went back out to finish the movie. I remember families sitting in the backs of station wagons watching the first film and leaving before the second, and that I fell asleep sometime during The Hunt for Red October and woke up just as the Soviets were attacking their own sub. And I remember heading home in the wee hours of the morning after we’d stay until the closing credits of the last movie started.

Tales from the Darkside the Movie
Tales from the Darkside the Movie

That drive-in had been open for decades before I ever went to it, but the year after I first went it closed not because of lack of business, but because a bypass was set to change the landscape around it. Nowadays, the place that used to be the drive-in is owned by a church, and a screen that once showed all the terrors b-grade movies could muster for decades now, on occasion, plays religious themed movies a few times each summer.

I only ever went to the drive-in twice but every time I cruise past it on the bypass and see the movie screen still sitting out in the field all alone I think of that summer and those movies I saw at there.

Blair Hype Project

CategoriesFeature, MoviesPosted on

This is a repost of an article Michael Summers originally wrote back in 1999.

ONCE UPON A TIME, AN INTERESTING, WORTHY MOVIE WAS BURIED UNDER AN AVALANCHE OF HYPE. . .

 If I have a talent, it’s for mockery, sarcasm and ridicule. So, then, what am I going to say about the BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, a movie I actually liked? Because whatever complaints you might have about BWP, it doesn’t invite mockery. Satire? Sure. The new crop of sitcoms and SNLs this Fall will deliver truckloads of humorous take-offs on BWP. I could also see where someone might be misled (or exasperated) by all the hype this movie has generated. But the hype that doesn’t really have anything to do with the movie itself, and the movie itself is very impressive. It’s also difficult to explain the appeal of BWP without telling you what it’s not. By now, you already know the plot of the BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, and if you don’t, the less you know about the movie going into it, the better.

One thing you do have to know: DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE. THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is not a horror flick! I was never horrified watching BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. I was scared, creeped-out, unsettled and very, very tense (more on that later), but BWP doesn’t have the full-on depiction of human suffering and bloody death required for horror. The “horror” is all once removed from the audience, hinted at in the re-telling of an old story, screaming in the dark, handprints on a wall, bits and pieces of. . . something not quite identifiable. That is the movie’s greatest strength, and one of the things that makes this movie worth seeing. It’s a testament to the people who made BWP that they can evoke a reaction by these hints and suggestions, scare us with what we DON’T see. So, in a day and age when any fear we can imagine can be brought to full life on the screen, BWP works by evoking that feeling you might have had as a kid getting chased by a dog at night, or hearing an unexplained thump, or being. . . well, lost in the woods.

Which brings me to my second DON’T-BELIEVE-THE-HYPE point: THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT is not a monster movie, or even a ghost story. A great deal of the tension and fear comes from the breakdown of group dynamics between the unhappy campers lost in the forests of Maine. The fact that there is SOMETHING out there raises the bar. The witch, or whatever it is that is hunting them, is not the primary source of conflict, as it was in a movie like JAWS, or ALIEN. It’s an “evil force,” and because the characters can’t see it, they don’t have anything to lash out against except each other. . . I’m getting too “wanky critic” here, so I’ll just cut to the third and final point.

Is the movie indeed “scary as hell” as one poster blurb claims? Yes, it is very scary. Actually, “intense” might be the better word. The movie works its way up to a level of tension and never lets up. In fact, at times it’s so tense that it’s almost not fun to watch. I felt a little rung out by the time the end credits rolled. It’s one of my reservations about the BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, the thing that makes it difficult to pronounce the movie just plain “good.” It’s innovative, a fresh, creative approach to the “scary movie” (as opposed to “horror movie”) genre. I saw THE SIXTH SENSE very soon after I saw BWP, and though SIXTH SENSE wasn’t a bad movie, all I could see was artifice and film craft; get a certain camera angle and lighting, cue the music up, and you can make an audience jump at the sight of a flower arrangement. But I’m well aware that innovative and interesting does not a good movie make. I also have a couple of regular complaints about BWP that have nothing to do with how the movie was filmed, namely what I saw as a distinct lack of “pay-off” at the end.

But those aside, you should see BWP. The movie is an “experience,” an experience every movie fan should check out. And see it soon, too. I guarantee you that this is going to be one of the most imitated movies in Hollywood over the next few years. You can bet on at least one shaky video camera scene in every monster movie and horror flick that comes out between now and the next STAR WARS. So see BLAIR WITCH PROJECT while it’s fresh and new, before increasingly cheesy movie tie-ins and exploitative sequels cheapen it, and before it becomes so bloated by the weight of its own hype that it’s impossible to simply see BWP for what it is: a very striking movie.