TV
The Alienist **/****
TNT has been pushing their new The Alienist TV series for months now. Since last summer with nearly every commercial break TNT would run an The Alienist promo which would lead to the odd pairing of A Christmas Story last month, about a boy’s dream of getting a bb gun for Christmas, with The Alienist commercials that had the line (sic) “We’re hunting a killer of boys…” But I digress, lately TNT’s been trying to get into the (semi) serious drama game with shows like Animal Kingdom and Claws with The Alienist being the latest entry.
Here, it’s New York in the 19th century and someone is murdering kids. Enter Dr. Laszlo Kreizler (Daniel Bruhl) the “alienst” or proto-psychologist, John Moore (Luke Evans) a newspaper illustrator and Sara Howard (Dakota Fanning) the first female employee of the police department. Kreizler thinks he’s dealt with this murderer in the past with another unsolved case, but will he Moore and Howard be able to stop the killer before he strikes again? Or will the wheels of the 19th century bureaucracy stop them before they’re even able to begin since those in power are already convinced only an insane person could have committed the crimes?
I think a series like The Alienist is going to stand or fall based on the strength of its characters since the subject matter, a serial killer, has been done to death (haha) over the years on TV. Unfortunately, the characters of The Alienist just aren’t that strong. Or, whatever character traits they do possess seem more like those of TV characters rather than real, relatable people. Like Kreizler is mostly a guy who cares too much about solving the crime and is overtly concerned with his patients. Moore visits prostitutes on a nightly basis nut otherwise doesn’t seem to possess much of a personality at all. Howard is probably the most well-drawn of the characters, but even here her main trait is of a woman living in a man’s world.
A series like The Knick that took place around the same time as The Alienist had characters who felt like they were flawed people with real personalities. The characters of The Alienist mostly feel like stock, blank slates meant to keep the plot moving forward.
Counterpart ***/****
What Counterpart on Starz reminded me of the most, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, was one of the many sci-fi related TV series that seemed to thrive in syndication/cable in the late 1990s early 2000s. The log-line from Counterpart reads just like one of these shows, “A UN employee discovers the agency he works for is hiding a gateway to a parallel dimension.” I could easily see this show airing at midnight every Thursday night before Seven Days and after Hercules: The Legendary Journeys with one killer, trippy opening credits sequence.
Even the theme of Counterpart, that a seemingly ordinary person is thrown into a world of intrigue and espionage with a more experienced partner is a well-worn TV trope too — the “buddy cop” show.
Of course while Counterpart might share some of the same themes/DNA of these earlier shows it’s of a pedigree well above them. The series was written and created by Justin Marks who wrote the Academy Award wining The Jungle Book and stars prolific actor J.K. Simmons who’s an Oscar winner himself.
And while those 1990s/2000s series might have also starred Academy Award winners too, it was usually actors who’s time in the spotlight had past and were only forced to do TV as a way to pay the bills. Today it’s a completely different world where popular actors are lining up to do series like Big Little Lies, Fargo and, yes, Counterpart.
The first episode of the series mostly deals with lowly cog Howard Silk (Simmons) who has a weird job for a UN agency in Germany where he goes into a room and recites certain preselected phrases to another person in a similar room separated by glass. What Silk learns when he meets a copy of himself at the agency is that during the Cold War an experiment accidentally created a duplicate Earth 30 years ago and ever since then the two Earths have been diverging and have entered a dimensional Cold War of sorts. Enter alternate Howard Silk (also Simmons) from this other dimension. If our Howard Silk is meek-mannered then this Silk is a man of action who’s a secret agent who shoots first and ask questions later. He’s on our Earth chasing an assassin who’s slipped over and is out to murder meek Howard Silk’s wife.
But can we trust this alternate Howard Silk when there’s really no way to check his story other than his history with our Silk? Does he have other motives from crossing back and forth between the two Earths?
I enjoyed Counterpart a lot but unfortunately don’t get Starz — I got to watch the first episode over a free preview weekend. So while I might get to see the rest of the series later I didn’t think the show was strong enough to turn me into a subscriber.
Comics
X-Men: Legion – Shadow King Rising
With Legion being a much talked about show on FX, Marvel has started releasing collected edition of comic books that featured David Haller the main character of that series. One is an edition entitled X-Men: Legion – Shadow King Rising.
David Haller is no ordinary mutant. Son of Charles Xavier, founder of the X-Men, David’s incredible mental powers fractured his mind — and now, each of his personalities controls a different ability! And they’re not all friendly, as Xavier and the New Mutants find out the hard way! But as Legion struggles to control the chaos in his head, he attracts the attention of one of Xavier’s oldest and most malevolent foes: Amahl Farouk, the Shadow King, who’s secretly been stalking and manipulating the X-Men and their allies. When the Shadow King sinks his hooks deep into David’s mind, will two teams of X-Men be enough to defeat him — or will David be the key to the villain’s ultimate victory?
Movies
Threads
One of the scariest movies ever made, and is now more relevant than ever, is set to get a Blu-ray release.
In September 1984, it was aired on the BBC and shocked tens of millions of UK viewers. Four months later, it was broadcast in America and became the most watched basic cable program in history. After more than three decades, it remains one of the most acclaimed and shattering made-for-television movies of all time. Reece Dinsdale (Coronation Street), David Brierly (Doctor Who) and Karen Meagher (in a stunning debut performance) star in this “graphic and haunting” (People Magazine) docudrama about the effects of a nuclear attack on the working-class city of Sheffield, England as the fabric of society unravels. Directed by Mick Jackson (THE BODYGUARD, TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE) from a screenplay by novelist/playwright Barry Hines (Ken Loach’s KES) and nominated for seven BAFTA Awards, “the most terrifying and honest portrayal of nuclear war ever filmed” (The Guardian) has now been fully restored from a 2K scan for the first time ever.
The Cured trailer
The Death of Stalin trailer
The Movie Chain: #4: Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Last week: Strange Days
The Movie Chain is a weekly, micro-movie review where each week’s film is related to the previous week’s movie in some way.
One of the more controversial movies of the last decade is Zero Dark Thirty. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow of last week’s Strange Days with script from Mark Boal, Zero Dark Thirty presented a cinematic version of the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and the eventual raid on his compound that would lead to him being killed by elite Navy SEALs.
The controversial part of Zero Dark Thirty was that it depicted torture as being used as one of the ways that would eventually lead to the location of Bin Laden. On the one hand I can see the controversy here since the movie links torture to the eventual outcome, which may or may not be factual depending on who you trust. But on the other hand if it is historically correct why not put it in the movie and then audience members have the debate if it was necessary/right or not? Which is kind’a what happened.
Regardless, if Zero Dark Thirty was controversial it’s got to be the most controversial yet influential movie in modern history. By my count there are at least four TV series on now that all, shall we say, borrow heavily from the raid on Bin Laden’s compound by the SEALs featured in Zero Dark Thirty. There’s SEAL Team on CBS, Six on History, The Brave on NBC and Valor on CW. Now these series pretty much ignore most of the theme of Zero Dark Thirty — that it was years of hard work by people working on the ground in dangerous places to that lead to the raid — and instead just concentrate on the action aspects of soldiers kicking down doors and shooting guns while wearing night vision goggles.
Next week: Motion capture never looked so good.
The Reading List
- Titan Announces The Forever War Comic Book Sequel Adaptation
- Deep Space Nine Is TV’s Most Revolutionary Depiction of Black Fatherhood
Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week
The new Comedy Central sitcom Corporate debuted last week. The series is funny enough if it borrows maybe a bit too much from what’s come before in other similar corporation themed series. Like the beginning of Corporate is pretty much a direct lift from the “TPS reports” part of Office Space — here it’s being sure to CC everyone in on e-mails, but the gist if the joke is the same. In many ways too Corporate feels like a version of the British TV series The IT Crowd with the zany, slightly nutty and dangerous bosses with a dash of Better Off Ted’s weird corporate culture and faux corporation TV commercials thrown in for good measure.
All through the 1990s there was an excitement building about the turn of the millennium where we’d be leaving the 20th century and heading to the 21st where surly things would be great. One of the movies of the time that capitalized on this fervor was Strange Days. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow and co-written by James Cameron of last week’s The Abyss, Strange Days takes place on New Year’s Eve 1999 and is a little too ahead of its time with its technology. In the movie Ralph Fiennes plays Lenny Nero, a dealer of black market videos that depict everything from porn to robberies. But these aren’t just regular old VHS tapes, in the 1999 of Strange Days these recordings give the viewer an immersive experience where they actually feel like they’re making it with a porn star or robbing a convenience store. The twist here is that one of these recordings accidentally captures the LAPD murdering a man, and the two cops that committed the crime will stop at nothing to destroy the recording. And all this is taking place around the turn of 1999 to 2000 with all the celebrations and craziness and hedonism that was happening in the world of Strange Days.
