Category: Toys

Direct Beam Comms #9

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TV

The X-Files

Last week’s episode of The X-Files entitled “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster” was probably the best single episode of any TV series in quite some time. In fact, I’d rate it up there with the best episodes of The X-Files classic series. It’s certainly as good as “Home” or “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space.” A

American Crime Story (The People vs OJ Simpson)

Mulder, Were-Monster, Were-Monster, Mulder
Mulder, Were-Monster, Were-Monster, Mulder

I was in college when the OJ Simpson trial was going on and seemingly every cable news channel was airing court coverage of it all day every day. To say that in the mid–90’s the trial of OJ Simpson was overexposed would not be an understatement. So much so that afterwards both the trial and OJ would mostly be forgotten other than as a historical footnote.

But, 20 years later this story somehow feels fresh again with the new FX mini-series American Crime Story that focuses on what was going on behind the media circus that enthralled the nation back then with OJ and the trial.

Looking back on it now, did the trial of OJ Simpson predict the rise of reality TV that would happen just a few years after the trial and the current rise of “true crime” documentaries? The trial had intrigue, well-defined characters and an unbelievable story that, unfortunately for the victims, just so happened to be true. B+

Toys

NECA’s new line of Cinemachines, die cast vehicles about 6 inches size the first series featuring toys from the movies Alien and Aliens are really cool. I just wish they weren’t as pricy as they seem to be, about $25 each. Though I might be forced to pick up a dropship and Sulaco “just because.”

Cool sites

2 Warps to Neptune: 2 Warps to Neptune is an attempt to document the experiences, ideas, and artifacts—the entire cultural and physical landscape, really—that defined a generation of kids in the ’70s and ’80s. My focus is on how a confluence of cultural forces—Star Wars and the resulting sci-fi boom, D&D and the fantasy boom, the evolution of the comic book industry, the video game and personal computer revolutions—gave rise to the original geek.

70s Sci Fi Art: A Tumblr picture blog with loads of cool artwork from the 1970s and ‘80s.

Aerospace Projects Review Blog: A blog about unbuilt aircraft and spacecraft projects.

Branded in the 80s: I grew up and came of age in an environment that was equal parts depressing and amazing. When I sat down and decided on a name for this project I wanted it to honestly reflect my passion and fondness for my childhood experience, and when I think about my childhood it brings to mind all of the corporate pop culture milestones I grew up with. For me, nostalgia can be a pretty odd beast, especially when it comes to mining through the proverbial junkyard left in the wake of decades of pop culture.

Culture Japan – Your portal to Japan: Danny Choo, the founder of Culture Japan, started his blog as a way to document the process of moving to Japan from the UK. As the years have past Culture Japan has evolved from documenting his life there, becoming a TV host and also chronicling Choo found his own company, the “Smart Doll.”

Strange Shapes: STRANGE SHAPES is dedicated to Ridley Scott’s Alien and Prometheus, James Cameron’s Aliens, and David Fincher’s Alien3. Valaquen’s blog has some of the most eloquent writing I’ve ever come across on the Alien series of films.

Direct beam comms #7

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

TV

Colony (USA)
The new sci-fi show on USA Colony by Carlton Cuse of Lost fame and writer Ryan Condal has an interesting concept. The country, if not the entire planet, has been invaded and all the governments overthrown and replaced by some black uniformed wearing human “collaborators” who seem to be working for a greater power. Los Angeles is walled off and travel between areas is strictly prohibited.

Suicide Squad poster
Suicide Squad poster

I think the first episode of Colony does a great job of setting up this post-invasion world very interestingly. Some things are the same; people still go to work and families still eat breakfast together. But a lot’s changed from the travel restrictions to the lack of cars, most everyone rides bikes, to a “resistance” against the invaders and these “collaborators” too.

I think where the series falters in a big way is that while all of the characters of the show know what’s been happening the last few years, who invaded and why there’s a giant wall around LA, the audience doesn’t. I suppose Cruise and Condal’s plan is to slowly dole out these facts as the show goes on. But as a viewer that’s really frustrating. It seems to me that the series creators should’ve either gone the way of Falling Skies where what happened in the past is presented at the beginning of the series to the audience or The Walking Dead where when the characters learn what happened to their world the audience does too.

By having the characters of Colony know things that the audience doesn’t puts us in a weird position. Are we watching the show because of the story, or because we want to learn about the mystery of what’s going on in the series? And if Colony doesn’t have a strong enough of a story, which seemed rather weak to me, is tuning in week after week for a few more tidbits about what’s actually going on a strong enough reason to keep watching the show?

Angie Tribeca (TBS)
TBS aired all ten episodes of the new Angie Tribeca TV series from late last Sunday night to all day on Monday during a “binge-a-thon” with regular airings of the series Monday nights. The comedy is a police procedural in the vein of an Naked Gun/Police Squad show. I wonder if this, airing everything at once, will become more popular now that more and more people get their entertainment in season-long “binge” chunks thanks to Hulu and Netflix?

DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (The CW)
This series is Doctor Who meets Guardians of the Galaxy and isn’t bad after the first episode. As long as it doesn’t turn into the typical superhero vs super villain of the week — which gets really old really fast — I’ll stick with this one for a while. I think if I was 14 years old DC’s Legends of Tomorrow would be my new favorite show.

Captain Cold: “We go out for one lousy drink, and you guys somehow managed to pick a fight with Boba Fett?!”

Occupied (Okkupert) (Netflix)

Xenozoic
Xenozoic

This Norwegian series about that country being invaded by Russia after Norway stops producing fossil fuels in the near-future is quite interesting. The whole thing feels a bit like an updated 21st century version of the Tom Clancy novel Red Storm Rising (1986) except instead of tanks, artillery and jets battling it out on and over plains of Europe, Russia with the backing of the European Union, simply threatens Norway with annihilation and takes over the energy producing parts of the country unopposed.

My only complaint about the show is just how fast the Norwegians essentially give up much of their freedoms to the invaders. The Russians kidnap Norway’s Prime Minister, spend a few minutes threatening him and his country, let him go and the Prime Minister essentially capitulates to the Russians in order to try and save lives. And maybe this is how things would go down in Norway, I don’t know. But I do know if this same story were set here in the US there’s be a lot more shooting and bloodshed — see Red Dawn for an example of what I mean.

But that’s a minor quibble with, after watching the first episode, a series that looks to be quite interesting.

Comics

Xenozoic Tales
The 352 page Xenozoic features most, if not all, of artist/writer Mark Schultz’s Xenozoic Tales comic books in a collected format. Schultz has always been one of my favorite artists and Xenozoic Tales one of my favorite comics, even if there’s only 14 actual issues of that series.

I discovered Xenozoic Tales in a roundabout way. In the late ‘90s I picked up issue 14 and over the years would buy back issues of the comic too. However, at the time older Xenozoic Tales comics were quite pricy but I discovered that the series had been mostly reprinted under the Cadillacs and Dinosaurs title during the time the cartoon series of the same name airing on TV. And these Cadillacs and Dinosaurs issues could be bought much more cheaply than the original Xenozoic Tales ones.

In the collected Xenozoic Tales edition, you can see how Schulz’s style evolved from that of a pulpy EC comics inspired style to that of clean lines and gorgeous drawings that would become instant classics in later issues.

Movies

The trailer for the upcoming Suicide Squad was released last week and it’s a doozy. Before the trailer I debated whether or not I’d even see the movie, after I couldn’t wait to see it.

Toys

Mondo released a 1/6 scale Raphael figure from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles this week for pre-order. The figure has 25+ points of articulation and comes with things like multiple heads and hands and weapons and retails for around $150.

Direct beam comms #6

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

TV

The Man in the High Castle
I recently finished Amazon’s The Man in the High Castle series and I liked it a lot. After I watched the pilot last winter the first thing I did was to subscribe to Prime so that I’d be able to see all the episodes of High Castle when they were released, and the second thing I did was to read the Philip K. Dick book of the same name just to see where everything in the show was headed.

The thing I liked most about the book is that there was really no central story. Not to spoil anything, but the book’s a glimpse a very intense few weeks of life of the characters living in this world where Japan and Germany won the Second World War. That being said, the idea that no story is story could kind’a be frustrating at times.

The Americans Season 4 TV poster
The Americans Season 4 TV poster

So when the High Castle Amazon series was announced I wondered how the creators of the show would handle all this since I couldn’t imagine something like a TV series could embrace the “no story is story” mantra of the book. And they didn’t, which I think is a good thing. Instead what they did was to take many of the elements of the book — mainly that in this alternate world someone is producing works of fiction where the Allies won the second world war — and to build a story with these characters around this.

It also helps that my favorite part of the book, what happens to one of the Japanese characters at the end of the novel, is still present in the TV series. B+

The X-Files
I thought I’d written more about The X-Files over the years but I guess I really haven’t. Which is surprising since I originally started this blog in 1998 when that series was at its height. Then again when I started Dangerous Universe only really covered movies so that would explain things. Regardless, here’s a few pieces I’ve written on the show over the years:

The X-Files and the steamroller of pop-culture – 01/15/16

The X-Files, one of the greats, turns 20 – 09/20/13

I Want to Believe in The X-Files – 07/04/08

Movies

So, the movie Lifeforce (1985) is just an update of the Quatermass and the Pit (1958) story, yes? (I know I’m coming to this realization 31 years after the release of Lifeforce but no one ever said I was fast.)

Toys

Out in March the Lego set for the classic TV series of Batman is pretty amazing. It features Wayne Manor, the Batcave, the Batcopter, the Batcycle and the Batmobile along with a whopping NINE figures including Batman, Bruce Wayne, Robin, Dick Grayson, Alfred, Catwoman, Joker, Penguin and Riddler. Which is impressive, but this all comes at a very impressive price of nearly $270!

Hiya Toys is set to release a series of 3.75″ tall figures based on the movie Aliens, starting with Hicks and Hudson. These figures might be small but they have a big price at almost $25 per figure! Both are due out in March.

But if price is a factor, checkout the Aliens Vs. Colonial Marines Army Builder, a set of 35 “green army men” scale figures of Colonial Marines vs. Aliens out now.

On the Horizon

I’m working on columns about having watched most movies on VHS growing up and have started gathering content for my yearly summer movie preview column out this spring.

Direct beam comms #3

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

TV

I’m really digging The Expanse on SyFy. It’s very space-opera-isa with a heavy story.

 

Last fall BBC America aired several movie-length episodes of classic Tom Baker Doctor Who. It seemed that perhaps BBC America was about to start airing classic Doctor Who alongside the new but alas this seemed to only be a short experiment where only a few episodes ever aired.

Classic Doctor Who shows usually consisted of four or six half hour episodes that were aired weekly in the UK but were sometimes edited together into two or three hour stories for overseas markets — which is how I saw Doctor Who in the 1980s on my local PBS station and how BBC America is airing the shows.

After having watched several of the episodes on BBC America it’s plainly obvious that some of the classic Doctor Who was greatly padded.

Sometimes it seems as if characters spend what would be an entire 30 minute episode running from something, or getting ready to do something. But not actually getting anything done. And a 30 minute block seems only to exist to move characters from point “A” to “B,” which though the magic of editing could be done in a few seconds of screen time.

I think that the only reason this padding exists is because four or six episodes were needed per Doctor Who story back then, not that four or six episodes were actually needed to tell the story.

Not that this is a horrible thing or that it makes classic Doctor Who bad or anything — I actually prefer it over the new series — just that there was a reason when I was a kid I almost never made it to the end of a two hour episode of Doctor Who without falling asleep.

Movies

Neca Alien 1/4 scale figure
Neca Alien 1/4 scale figure

I mean this in the best possible way — Sicario is a cross between the movies Zero Dark Thirty (2012) and Traffic (2001). A-

 

For how much reviewers disliked Terminator Genisys I thought it was a good movie. There is the issue of a big story turn in the second act of the movie that doesn’t quite work — or make sense — but it’s not enough to spoil the film as a whole. I actually liked how the filmmakers of Terminator Genisys actively played with and used the idea of time travel in different ways than in the other films and introduced the idea that just one thing amiss in a timeline can totally change the future. B

My preference of Terminator movies in order:

  1. Terminator (1984)
  2. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)
  3. Terminator Genisys (2015)
  4. Terminator Salvation (2009)
  5. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003)

Toys

The Neca Alien 1/4 scale figure stands a whopping 22 inches tall and has 30 points of articulation including its alien tongue. It’s everything I didn’t get when I missed getting the original 1977 Alien toy as a kid. The figure retails for around $110 which isn’t totally insane considering its size.

On the Horizon

I’m working on columns for the second season of Daredevil and the Dark Horse Aliens comic books.

The Star Wars pop-culture desert

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lrg-packaged-frontStar 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.

bacdb037-9fe8-4006-884e-f83197cfa830Which 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.

91ymwv-55gl._sl1500__5b1_5d_30733cf0-1621-4055-8e3c-42710cde8854Which 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.