Category: Toys

Direct Beam Comms #55

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, Toys, TVPosted on

TV

People of Earth – Season 1: Grade: B+

I wasn’t totally sold on the TBS comedy series People of Earth when it premiered a few months back. The series about a support group for people who’ve been abducted, err…, experienced aliens where it turns out the members of the group really were abducted started off a bit too broad but within an episode or two found its footing.

Wyatt Cenac stars as writer Ozzie Graham who starts off the series as a journalist doing a story about the abductees but quickly finds himself at the center of things when he’s abducted. The group, lead by Gina (Ana Gasteyer) quickly welcomes Wyatt with open arms if everyone there has their own issues. But People of Earth isn’t just about the abductee group, in a hilarious twist it’s also about the aliens doing the abductions too. There’s bug eyed monster Jeff (Ken Hall), lizard Kurt (Drew Nelson) and dreamy nordic hunk Don (Björn Gustafsson) who go about their day snatching people and erasing their memories in order to prepare for an invasion.

In many ways, People of Earth reminds me of the series Community, not so much in tone but the idea of a group of disparate people thrown together who only have one thing in common and are forced to deal with each other. The characters are interesting and the interactions within the group on People of Earth are pretty funny too. I especially liked the character of Father Doug (Oscar Nuñez) who runs the church the group holds their meetings at. He’s not too interested in the group until one night he experiences something which sends him down the path of abandoning the cloth and getting his old fusion-jazz band back together.

But what’s funniest and best about the show are those aliens. They’re so workaday just doing a job who are a little in over their heads which makes People of Earth work so well. Plus, I’ve got to hand it for whomever did the makeup for the aliens, especially the one for Jeff. It’s a wonderful appliance with the piece covering his entire head that includes blinking eyes and everything.

Even though TBS has renewed People of Earth for a second season I’d be down for a Jeff spin-off series!

Movies

Blade Runner 2049 teaser trailer/announcement

“Replicants are like any other machine, their either a benefit or a hazard.”

Toys

Aliens – Foam Replica – 36″ Alien Skull

This replica skull of the monster from the movie Aliens is awesome. At first I wondered if I were to get it what I’d even do with it, but then I thought that it might make a cool Halloween decoration to scare the kiddies with. Then I saw the cost, $270, which is just a few hundred bucks out of my traditional Halloween decorating budget!

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1932: Nichelle Nichols, Uhura of Star Trek is born
  • 1980: Altered States is released
  • 1982: The Thing premiers in theaters
  • 1997: The Postman premiers
  • 1999: Galaxy Quest opens in theaters

Direct Beam Comms #24

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, ToysPosted on

TV

The Goldbergs, Fresh Off the Boat & black-ish

AJ Michalka and Troy Gentile of The Goldbergs
AJ Michalka and Troy Gentile of The Goldbergs

Last week, the ABC series The Goldbergs and black-ish ended their third and second seasons respectively while Fresh Off the Boat ends its second season this Tuesday. I enjoy watching these shows but honestly, I’m not sure I can point to one single moment last season from any of them that was memorable to me. That’s not criticism of these series since there are usually several times each episode that I literally LOL. But I’m not sure if it’s because there are so many episodes of TV here, between the three of them there’s 72, or if it’s because these shows are really like the lite-sitcoms of the 1980s, but there’s not a single moment in either The Goldbergs or black-ish or Fresh Off the Boat that sticks out to me.

To me, Fresh Off the Boat is an enjoyable show but is most like a 1980s sitcom with the characters being almost over-the-top and it being very heavy on the “situation.” And while I think that The Goldbergs and black-ish are better shows, to me The Goldbergs works best when the creators of that show find their own stories. But I get the sense that they’re being pushed to do more “event” style episodes like ones that pay homage to Dirty Dancing and Risky Business which are a bit contrived.

And while black-ish can, at times, be a much deeper show than either The Goldbergs or Fresh Off the Boat are, it can fall into the tropes that were popular in past sitcoms like the “very special” episode and “someone’s unexpectedly pregnant” that were staples of series past.

Grade: B for all

Robotech

Recently, Crackle began offering all 85 episodes of the classic animated series Robotech streaming via their service. Honestly I can’t remember the last time I watched Robotech from start to finish, but I plan to spend this summer filling some of my TV time catching up on this show that’s one of my favorite of all-time.

With the fall TV season slowly winding down and options for things to watch dwindling by the week, there’s a few new series I want to checkout in May.

Preacher Sunday, May 22 at 10PM (EST) on AMC

The cast of The Preacher
The cast of The Preacher

I hate to admit it, but I’m mostly ignorant on just what the Preacher comic and new AMC TV series is about. Checking out the marketing materials for the show and reading articles on it, Preacher seems to be a version of Hellblazer, except instead of a demonologist the main character is a priest who smokes, drinks and is otherwise self-destructive all while battling the unknown. That being said, having watched some of the promos for the show, Preacher seems to be less supernatural than I’d always assumed the comic was. Like the show really could just be about a hard-drinking preacher where, as it’s put several times in one promo, “anything can happen.”

Which is kind’a a bad thing. If the people involved in the show can’t properly describe what it’s about in a sentence or two, other than to say “anything can happen,” to me that doesn’t bode well for the show as a whole/moving forward. How can you create a compelling show if you’re not sure what it’s about?

DC Comics describes the comic series as:

After merging with a bizarre spiritual force called Genesis, Texan preacher Jesse Custer has become completely disillusioned with the beliefs to which he had dedicated his entire life. Now possessing the power of “the word,” an ability to make people do whatever he utters, Custer begins a violent and riotous journey across the country. Joined by his gun-toting girlfriend Tulip and the hard-drinking Irish vampire Cassidy, Custer loses faith in both God and man as he witnesses dark atrocities and improbable calamities during his exploration of America.

So who knows what the TV version will be about? Still, I’m interested enough in this one to check it out.

Wayward Pines Wednesday, May 25

The cast of Wayward Pines
The cast of Wayward Pines

The first season of this horror/sci-fi show about a small, isolated town in the Northwest US and all the weird goings-on there was interesting enough to me. It had some nice, unexpected, twists and turns and with the story of the first season being told in ten episodes start to finish felt about right. And now comes a new, second season with a new story and new lead actor. The first season featured Matt Dillion while the second has Jason Patric in a different story also set in Wayward Pines.

…the 10-episode, second season will pick up after the shocking events of Season One, with the residents of Wayward Pines battling against the iron-fisted rule of the First Generation.

Which, admittedly, doesn’t make much sense if you haven’t seen the first season of the show. But like I said, the creators of Wayward Pines took the series to some unexpected places and while the show wasn’t great, at times it was a fun one to watch.

Movies

Star Trek Beyond Trailer #2

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

Everything is a Remix: The Force Awakens

On the Horizon

Currently, I’m working on articles about; animated films of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the movie Independence Day, the weird movies of 1986 and the movie Aliens which isn’t weird but is also from 1986. 😉

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1970: Beneath the Planet of the Apes debuts on screens.
  • 1979: Dawn of the Dead opens in theaters.

Direct Beam Comms #22

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, Toys, TVPosted on

Term of the week

Gunpla: Stands for “Gundam Plastic Model.”

TV

Doctor Who 1996 TV movie

Comparatively, the mid–1990s weren’t great when it came to sci-fi. Sure,TV series like Star Trek and The X-Files and other sci-fi shows thrived, but for the most part sci-fi films and TV were a niche market at best. Back then, there were a very few successful comic book movies and in fact, most comic titles aired as after school cartoons and not as films. And even what’s now one of the world’s most popular TV series Doctor Who’s original run was cancelled in 1989 and was then considered decidedly uncool.

Paul McGann as the Doctor
Paul McGann as the Doctor

Yet “uncool” or not in 1996 FOX TV decided to create and air a made for TV reboot movie of Doctor Who.

Starring Paul McGann as the Doctor, Eric Roberts as the Master and Daphne Ashbrook as Dr. Grace Holloway, this new Doctor Who was a continuation of the old but tweaked a bit for American audiences. Gone was the UK setting for a Canada doubling as the US and really the only English “thing” in the show that previously was defined by its “Englishness” was the Doctor himself.

At the time I remember FOX heavily promoting the show and it seemed like they were hoping they might have a hit on their hands that they could then spin out to a new Doctor Who TV series. Maybe it was because FOX was just beginning to ride the wave of The X-Files mania that was starting to grip the nation that they thought that reviving a cult British classic TV series might lead to winning ratings.

And the spring of 1996 I was extremely excited about the prospect that Doctor Who might be returning to TV screens. I was a Doctor Who fanatic as a kid thanks to my friend Cameron but had drifted away from the show in my teenage years. (Though I might be mis-remembering this as I’m not quite sure just when our local PBS station stopped airing episode of Doctor Who.)

But watching the 1996 Doctor Who movie was a disappointment. It was Doctor Who and it felt like an honest attempt at translating something that was so different than the average TV series into something more palatable for American audiences. But something was just missing from the 1996 Doctor Who. The ratings for the TV movie were poor and that was that. It would be nearly a decade before the relaunch of the now mega-popular Doctor Who TV series that would return the series to prominence.

One thing about the 1996 Doctor Who that I appreciate — it might have failed but it’s never been ignored by the most recent incarnation of the show. The movie was celebrated a few years ago during the series 50th anniversary and McGann has appeared as the Doctor in a flashback episode of the current series and has voiced the Doctor in a series of audiobooks too.

Oddly enough, just after the 1996 Doctor Who movie aired sci-fi was about to become huge with the likes of mega-blockbusters Independence Day and The Matrix. I kind’a wonder if the 1996 reboot Doctor Who had been released more around the time of those movies if it would have found more of an audience on TV?

Movies

Dune (1984)

The sleeper must awaken!
The sleeper must awaken!

I rewatched the movie Dune a few weeks back — theatrical, not the extended cut thank you — and noticed that several of the actors in the movie went onto star in various sci-fi/genera TV series in the 1980s/early 1990s.

  • Kyle MacLachlan (Paul Atreides) – Played Special Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks that was co-created by David Lynch who also directed Dune.
  • Dean Stockwell (Doctor Wellington Yueh) – Co-starred as Al Calavicci in the series Quantum Leap.
  • Patrick Steward (Gurney Halleck) – Starred as Captain Jean-Luc Picard over 176 episodes and four movies of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Toys

Alien Warrior Dron ARTFX+ Statue

This statue, which retails for $80, can hang off the walls of its diorama and upside down on its base via magnets. (Space Marines not included.)

The reading list

The day we discovered our parents were Russian spies

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1973: Soylent Green opens in theaters
  • 1994: The TV mini-series The Stand premiers.
  • 1996: The TV movie Doctor Who airs on Fox.