Feature – Page 56 – Dangerous Universe

The best TV series of 2015

Feature, TVDecember 18, 2015December 5, 2015

The best TV show of the year is AMC’s excellent Better Call Saul.

Better Call Saul

I was never much a fan of Breaking Bad, of which Saul is a prequel to, so how is it that I liked Better Call Saul so much? To be sure, Saul and Bad are two shows that while related are very different in tone. Bad was much more about what happens to people when things going wrong while Saul is a character study of how Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) went from an earnest, abet mostly unsuccessful, lawyer to become Bad’s Saul Goodman who’s involved in organized crime, drugs and murder.

“You’re the kind of lawyer guilty people hire.”

The thing with Better Call Saul is that it’s almost as like we’re witnessing a character who could’ve gone several different ways if certain circumstances were a bit different. After the events of the first season leave Saul a bitter and broken man, he vows that he’ll never again put anything ahead of making loads of money for himself. But it didn’t have to be that way. If just a few tiny things had gone differently for him Saul could’ve been a legitimate lawyer working at a legitimate firm.

Halt and Catch Fire

Halt and Catch Fire is a series watched by shockingly few people when compared to other series on AMC like The Walking Dead and the above mentioned Better Call Saul. However, I’ll be the first to say that while not many people might be watching Fire, that doesn’t mean that Fire isn’t a fine show.

The first season of Fire dealt with the creation of a new computer in early ‘80s Texas while the second shifted gears and turned the focus of the show to two of the characters played by Kerry Bishé and Mackenzie Davis who have created an online gaming system and community. That’s not to say that the two leads from the first season played by Lee Pace and Scoot McNairy are out of the picture. In the second season one has to deal with suddenly becoming wealthy after creating the computer from the first season and the other coming to terms with being self destructive both personally and career-wise.

If I could have one wish for Christmas it would be that more people watch Halt and Catch Fire which was thankfully picked up for a third season earlier this year.

Fargo

I didn’t watch the first season of Fargo when it originally aired. For whatever reason I couldn’t get into the first few episodes and gave up soon after. But last winter a friend watched the show, liked it a lot and told me I needed to check it out again. Which I’m glad I did since this time I was able to get into the show, like it a lot and now absolutely love the second season.

Much like with Better Call Saul, the second season of Fargo is a prequel to the first. Here, it’s the late ‘70s in places like Minnesota and North Dakota where the crime family the Gerhardts are contemplating a war with a Kansas City crime syndicate.

And mixed into all this is a missing Gerhardt family member, the couple who are responsible for his disappearance, a start trooper trying to solve a murder and stop the war and a wife with cancer…and UFOs too!

W/ Bob and David

This four episode Netflix series reunited comedians Bob Odenkirk and David cross of Mr. Show with Bob and David along with most of the same performers and writers of that show. And while the series could’ve easily been Odenkirk and Cross performing a “best of” Mr. Show, instead W/ Bob and David went to some hilarious, unexpected places.

The Americans

The Americans continued its strong run of storytelling into the third season of the show, this time the characters Phil and Liz Jennings (Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell) are ordered by their controllers in the Soviet Union to bring their American born daughter into the spy family fold. Except is this too much for a girl as American as apple pie to take?

The Knick

Much like with Halt and Catch Fire I don’t get the sense that many are watching The Knick. I feel as if The Knick were on HBO instead of Cinemax everyone would be talking about his little gem and watching it, but instead it’s a great hidden show about the perils of “modern” medicine at the turn of the last century.

Deutschland 83

A sort of German version of The Americans, Deutschland 83 follows an East German spy working inside the West German military and NATO in 1983 when there still was a Cold War and Germany was split into two countries.

Star Wars Rebels

I don’t care that Star Wars Rebels is a cartoon airing on Disney XD. All I care about is that it’s the best Star Wars movie or TV show since Return of the Jedi.

Babylon

Babylon was a weird/interesting mini-series that aired on Sundance Channel last winter. It was weird since Sundance never aired the first episode of this seven episode show. It was interesting since it followed the inner-workings of the London police department from the offers on the street to the PR operatives in the offices trying to keep the city from boiling over.

Manhattan

The second season of Manhattan on WGN continues to be a riveting look at what it took to create the first atomic bomb and the toll that creation took on the men and women tasked at making this “gadget.”

Community

Thank you Yahoo for giving us one more season of this brilliant show.

Direct beam comms #1

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVDecember 13, 2015December 31, 2015

TV

The SyFy series The Expanse and Childhood’s End premier Monday night this week. The Expanse takes place several hundred years in the future where space travel is common but something found in the depths of space might spell doom for humanity while Childhood’s End is an adaptation of the Arthur C. Clarke book of the same name where seemingly benevolent aliens visit the Earth. And if sci-fi has taught me anything it’s that aliens are almost never as benevolent as they first appear!

I’ve already watched the first episode of The Expanse, SyFy released it early a few weeks ago. The show’s pretty good, it seems to be a cross between the aesthetic of, say, a Stargate and storytelling of Battlestar Galactica. Which means it’s slick, but with substance.

Movies

The third week of December marks the traditional start of Star Wars, where the fans line up in droves and wait hours to see a movie we’ll all be able to watch for ourselves at home in a few months.

Books

I recently picked up the art books The Art of John Bolton, The Fastner & Larson Gallery and The Art of Brom at a local used book store. I really like Bolton and Fastner & Larson’s styles, but was surprised just how much cheesecake art these two books contained. I’ve got nothing against cheesecake, but the sheer amount of scantily clad women in these books… wow! And I’ve been on the lookout for a Brom book for years now ever since my brother picked one up many moons ago where I fell in love with his art.

On the Horizon

Currently, I’m working on articles for “The best of the rest of 2015” which is due out January 1, one about The X-Files which should be out January 15 and Better Call Saul for February 5. I really need to start watching and reviewing the back half of Space: Above and Beyond in order to finish up my series since this is the dark, shut-in time of year, but I’ve been really lazy of late and haven’t been able to bring myself to do it.

The Star Wars pop-culture desert

Feature, ToysDecember 11, 2015December 2, 2015

Star Wars spans nearly 40 years of history. From the first movie that opened in 1977 to the five that would follow, many TV series, a line of books and comics and hundreds if not thousands of toys and even now inexplicably a line of COVERGIRL makeup there’s very few places that the Star Wars phenomenon hasn’t seeped into.

I’ve been getting Star Wars memorabilia since the first movie premiered and have been a collector on and off ever since. I’ve bought the movies on VHS then DVD and then Blu-ray, have loads of Star Wars comics and quite a few toys too. In fact, I’ve got toys from the 1970s, ‘80s, ‘90s, ‘00s and now ‘10s too with the new movie.

But what’s most striking about the latest toy releases is that alongside toys for characters from the latest film there’s also toys for characters who’ve had dozens and dozens of variations of toys out there already like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. And I’d wager that as more toys for the new movie are released we’ll see other familiar characters get new toys of their own as well.

Which made me think; how much of Star Wars product marketing is getting people to buy (nearly) the same thing over and over again?

I’m not immune to this. A quick look at my Star Wars action figure shelf, yes, there is a “shelf” of Star Wars figures in my office, shows that I have four different Storm Trooper figures and EIGHT Boba Fett figures. A good estimate here with these two characters is that I’ve spend more than $80 essentially buying the same thing over and over again since I had my own money to spend.

The question is; are these re-release figures meant for me, the middle-aged collector? Or, instead, are they really for new collectors who don’t already have loads of Storm Troopers and Boba Fetts?

I get the feeling that over the long term the Star Wars movies are less about telling a story and more about creating new characters for upcoming toy lines and video games and theme park attractions too.

Which I suppose is all right. There was about a decade from the mid-‘80s to the mid–90s that Star Wars was a non-entity. The original movies played a few times a year on cable and that was about it for the franchise. The public had moved on to new things.

But slowly, from Lucas “enhancing” the special effects in the original trilogy and re-releasing those films to him doing a whole new trilogy from ’99-’05 Star Wars came back into pop-culture preeminence with new toys, TV series and video games too.

But after the new movies ended much like with Star Wars slipping from view in the ‘80s happened again over the last decade. To be sure this wasn’t as bad as things were from the ‘80s to ‘90s when Star Wars was a non-entity since this time there were still animated TV series, video games and a few toys out there. But in terms of popularity over the last decade I doubt Star Wars was at the top of mind of anyone but the most ardent fans.

But with the upcoming release of the new film and all the excitement that it’s bringing, Star Wars has once again become a preeminent pop-culture touchstone for many people out there and the fans are once again excited about all things Star Wars.

And I suppose if that means that there’s more Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker toys to buy again alongside the new characters and if the original films that were available on VHS and Betamax and LaserDisc and DVD and Blu-ray and now digital download…well, to me that’s better than revisiting the Star Wars pop-culture desert we’ve been living in the last decade.

The Best Movie and TV Posters of 2015

Feature, Movies, TVDecember 4, 2015December 2, 2015

2015 was a so-so year when it came to movie and TV posters. There were several strong poster designs in 2015, but in a year when dozens of movie and TV posters were released — there were only a few strong poster designs among the masses.

The best poster of 2015 was for the WGN TV series Salem.

Honestly, I don’t watch Salem. I tried but it’s not a series I could get into. However, after having seen one of the posters for the second season of the series it was an image that I couldn’t get out of my head and made me want to check out the show again.

The image features one of the witches of Salem perched atop the cross of a church. Except the poster is upside down and she’s not so much “perched” as she’s really hanging off the cross defying gravity. And with the image being rotated, off balance and the use of an inverted cross and all that connotes, I’m surprised the designers of this poster were allowed to execute this design at all. But they were/did and it’s one of the more striking images I’ve ever seen on a movie or TV poster in quite some time.

I can’t decide if I LOVE or HATE the poster campaign for the movie Ant-Man, but since I’m still thinking about it months after it was released I decided it needed to be on this list. The early posters for Ant-Man featured the title character who has the power to shrink atop Avengers things like Captain America’s shield, Thor’s hammer and Iron Man’s shoulder. It’s a neat way to both introduce the character to an audience who’s probably unaware as to who the character is, to show that he fits in with the other Marvel movies and even bring in some of the comedy elements to the film too since the photos feature a teeny-tiny man who has some large shoes to fill.

ant_man

There’s a few things that I don’t like about the poster for the TV show Supergirl but there’s a lot more that I do like. The poster is simple, with just the title character swooping down between skyscrapers with a blue sky in the background. But it’s what this poster does so well that many other movie and TV posters fail to do; it sets tone and expectations for the series.

supergirl_mission_impossible_man_from_uncle

Another poster that I think sets expectations well is the one for Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. Pulled straight from the movie trailer, the poster has lead character Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) holding onto the side of an airplane for life as it lifts into the sky. Where the tendency of most movie posters these days is to cram as much onto the poster as possible, from actor’s names to movie title to tagline to who the director is… the poster for Rogue Nation is one of the more simpler ones out there with just the movie title, release date and other minor legalese on it.

The Man from U.N.C.L.E. flopped at the box office, but that doesn’t mean that the poster promoting this film was a flop. Much like with the poster for Rogue Nation, the poster for U.N.C.L.E. takes the simpler is better approach, though not to the extreme that the poster for Rogue Nation did. Here, we get a shot of the two leads along with the title on a yellow background. And while the poster might not have a lot to it, the contrast between the two figures on a simple background makes this one catch the eye.

mad_max

I really liked the poster campaign for the movie Mad Max Fury Road. Not only does it feature some nice images, but the contrasting warm/cool color combination and off-balanced layouts make these posters very appealing.

The posters for Fury Road are the question to the answer of how exactly do you sell a movie that’s a continuation of a series that’s been going on since the ‘70s? What the designers did here was rather than try and copy what was used in the past, to instead come up with something new that borrows from the look and feel from the film while at the same time showcasing the new actors in the Mad Max universe as well.

Other kid’s Star Wars toys

Feature, Toys, UncategorizedNovember 20, 2015December 2, 2015

From as far back as I can remember I’ve always had Star Wars toys. I don’t remember which ones I had first, I was two when Star Wars was released and tidal wave of merchandise that followed, but I have photos of myself getting the Death Star playset which was released in ’78 so that must’ve been one of the first. And I remember having lots of toys like Han Solo and Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker and more that I got when I was still too young to remember getting them.

Bert Star Wars Death Star — Me and my Death Star playset

I had everything from the X-Wing, the Millennium Falcon, the Land and Snow Speeders, the Cloud Car, the AT-ST, the Speeder Bike, dozens of figures and on and on and on. And I have one definite memory of getting Slave I Christmas of ’80.

Unfortunately, other than a handful of figures that I still have, my Star Wars toys that would be worth many thousands of dollars today in mint condition was thrown out when they were broken one too many times or left behind in a move.

The weird thing is that I can remember the Star Wars things my friends had almost as much as the ones I did.

I remember my friend Chris’ older brother in elementary school had a Return of the Jedi storybook. And since I had a “making of” book the brother let me read the storybook while he checked out my book at recess one day. I remember around that time being interested in just what the new Scout Trooper would be up to in the film and learning of his name via Chris’ brother’s book.

My neighbor friend Jeremy was cool because he had a pool at his house AND he and his little brother had turned their bedroom into a miniature Ewok village. I was much more into all the various characters from Return of the Jedi than just the Ewoks, but Jeremy had some sort of laser focus and had most of the different Ewok figures along with the corresponding playsets too. I remember being particularly intrigued over how neither Jeremy nor his brother never have to put their toys away when they were done playing with them as their room was setup all Ewok all the time.

Which is something my brother and myself would adopt the next summer as we’d turn out rooms into toy “bases” in order that we could have all our toys out all the time too.

PJ was the friend with a plan. He was a few years older than me and had a closet full of Star Wars toys. And if Jeremy’s toys were always out ready to be played with PJ’s were always put away and secure. In fact, other than a few times I don’t ever remember seeing his Star Wars toys out. EVER.

PJ was the one kid I knew who had the colossal AT-AT vehicle. Really more of a playset than a toy, the AT-AT was bigger than anything else Star Wars and I only ever remember him having it out one time and him letting me try the legs and turn the head. Otherwise I suppose it resided in the closet with the rest of the collection as I never saw it again.

Which was, and still is, maddening for a Star Wars toy fiend like myself.

And PJ’s plan for his toys? He wanted to keep them nice and as new as possible because he figured that when he was an adult these toys would be valuable and therefor hard to get. And that if he wanted any future children of his to be able to play with Star Wars toys in the future they’d have be his toys from when he was a kid and he wanted to keep them as nice as possible for them.

Meanwhile, I played with my toys hard, would eventually break every vehicle I ever had and as I got older used some of my collection a fireworks fodder when I was a teen looking for fun on the 4th of July.

Though we’ve lost touch over the years I’ve always wondered if PJ’s kids ever ended up with his toys, though somehow I doubt it.

Category: Feature