Category: TV

Direct Beam Comms #103

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, TVPosted on

TV

Godless

I’ve been looking forward to the new western Netflix series Godless for some time now. The series was created and the first episode written and directed by Scott Frank who’s had a hand in such films as Out of Sight, Minority Report and Logan. And the reexamination of the western in TV series have already produced some interesting series like Westworld already. However, I’m not sure if it was its pace of story or the story in general, but Godless never connected with me.

There’s quite a few storylines going on in Godless and that’s one of its faults. There’s the story of outlaw Frank Griffin (Jeff Daniels) and his gang terrorizing the southwest robbing, killing and raping anyone they meet. Young Roy Goode ( Jack O’Connell) who stole from Griffin and is now on the run from him. Goode being shot and having to recuperate on a ranch owned by Alice Fletcher (Michelle Dockery). And a town full of mostly women who’s husbands were all killed in a mining accident that if Griffin every found would certainly attack.

And that’s not saying anything about a sheriff who everyone calls a “coward” or the marshal hunting Griffin’s gang who can’t find anyone to help him since anyone who’s ever gone up against him has wound up dead.

Reading what I’ve just written I’d say Godless sounds like one heck of an interesting series, and it may become that. But even with everything going on the first episode the show felt extremely slow. Like at one point I paused the episode thinking that about 50 minutes had passed to find I was only 20 into it. And then later on I paused it thinking that surly there must only be a few more minutes to go when there was still a good 20 minutes left.

It doesn’t help matters that several elements of the story are, shall we say, fantastical. Which, done in moderation is fine, but here they just add up to a bit of a mess. There’s the town with nearly no men since apparently every man was down in the mine standing in the same area and was killed when disaster struck. There’s also Griffin, who’s arm is so badly shot that it’s amputated 19th century style. Yet he’s able to get back on a horse and ride his gang out of town a few days later after having major surgery with major loss of blood in a time when at best it would take several weeks to recover, if that was even possible since most would have died after such a surgery. There’s also a few members of Griffin’s gang who are caught, almost lynched before Griffin and the rest of the gang ride to the rescue and, get this, lynches the entire town. Apparently in the old west this was the one town on the frontier that wasn’t armed and didn’t know how to fight back.

Godless is the kind of series where a line like, “The sons’a bitches lynched the damned mob!” Is delivered with a straight face.

Godless is so over the top in certain aspects that it wouldn’t surprise me that if part of it lies within the confines of Westworld. At least that would explain some of those fantastical elements. Otherwise I’m not quite sure what to think about Godless.

Random Zombie Movies/TV Observation

Yesterday I watched the 2016 movie Cell based on the Stephen King book of the same name. In that movie a weird pulse sent through cell and other mobile devices causes anyone who’s exposed to it to turn into mindless murder machines. The movie’s not great, but it’s not bad either. It got me thinking about all the odd things that I’ve noticed in various zombie films/TV series over the years.

Night of the Living DeadDid you ever notice…

  • There aren’t too many, if any, zombies UNDER the age of 18. And according to the US census about 24% of all people living in the US are under 18. So where are those missing millions of zombies?
  • There aren’t too many, if any, zombies OVER the age 60 which is about 11% of the population.
  • Most zombies can walk. Sure, there are a few of them now and again who are missing legs and have to crawl, but for the most part zombies who should be falling more and more apart with every step instead are completely mobile.
  • In a world where about 75% of the people need some sort of vision correction zombies are the exception and all have perfect, 20/20 vision and never miss even the tiniest detail.
  • Most zombies wear both long sleeved shirts and pants. Depending on what time of year the apocalypse happened, or especially what part of the country it’s taking place in, you’d assume at least some zombies would be sporting shorts and some would certainly be wearing short-sleeved shirts. Or no shirts at all.

The Reading & Watch List

Cool Movie Poster of the Week

Marvel’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier
Captain America/Steve Rogers (Chris Evans)
Ph: Zade Rosenthal
© 2014 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

Direct Beam Comms #102

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

The Punisher

I am such a big fan of the character the Punisher I think my review here might be a little skewed. I’ve been collecting Punisher comics since the heyday of the character starting in the late 1980s and have spent the intervening 30 some odd years filling out my collection with various comics, collected editions, statues, toys, posters, magazines, etc., etc., etc. So to say that my review of the first episode of the new Netflix series The Punisher might not be as balanced as I’m used to would not be an understatement. Still, I endeavor to try to at least be somewhat fair here.

A little backstory on this version of the character — played marvelously by Jon Bernthal, Frank Castle aka the Punisher first appeared in 2016 during the second season of Daredevil where he served as a sort of agent of chaos in Matt Murdock/Daredevil’s world. Here, Punisher was a sort of “yin” to Daredevil’s “yang” where he had no qualms about killing bad guys even if it made Murdock’s life, who won’t kill and wants to bring the bad guys to justice, a lot harder. But in the end the two did team together to take the bad guys down, even if Castle used a lot more firepower than Murdock wanted.

What I found most interesting about the first episode of this new The Punisher series is that it starts where I would have assumed the first season would have ended. Literally in the first ten minutes of the episode Castle hunts down and kills all the men responsible for the murder of his family — what originally sent him to becoming the Punisher in the first place. I figured that the first season of The Punisher would deal with this. Or if not the first season then a good chunk of it.

What we get instead is a Frank Castle hiding under an alias living life as a construction worker in New York, City. His job as the Punisher is done yet the nightmares of his murdered family remain. So what’s Castle to do? Stay hidden in plain sight and let things like a young worker at the work site be pulled into a life of crime and do nothing? Or put back on the bullet-proof vest and declare an all-out war on crime?

I’ll let you guess as to what he does.

I was expecting a lot of things from the first episode of The Punisher and I didn’t really get any of them in this first episode. Which is a good, no, GREAT thing. I love being surprised in situations like this where the creators of the show could’ve played it safe and given the audience a version of Frank Castle/The Punisher we were all expecting from the start. It’s great that they chose to give Castle the option of being removed from his days of blowing the bad guys away or returning to his life of a vigilante. A life that would seemingly be a one-way trip to an early grave when Castle slips up or slows down one night and loses his edge for long enough for the criminals to get the upper hand on him on day.

Just that the character’s given the chance to make this decision — even if we know what decision he’s going to make since the series is called The Punisher and not Frank Castle — is a breath of fresh air.

One critique I’ve heard about the show from others is that there are more episodes than there is story to support it. Which might be true. It might also be true that The Punisher is one of those shows that needs to be watched slowly, and not binged over a weekend. We’ll see since I don’t plan on watching more than a few episodes of The Punisher a week at most.

Mindhunter – Season one

I’m not going to go into a lot of details here on the first season of Mindhunter since I’m currently working on my list of the best TV series of the year of which Mindhunter plays a part. And I’d just end up repeating myself here and there. But rest assured that Mindhunter is one of the best TV series of the year airing wherever. This show about the birth profiling serial killers by the FBI is so unlike any of the similar shows out there these days, and there are loads and loads of serial killer shows or shows that feature them, that it’s worth to note how different Mindhunter is from the rest. Those shows are all about vengeance and tracking people down whereas Mindhunter is all about talking, and trying to figure the killers out so that the next one can be stopped before he starts hurting people.

Mindhunter might just be the best show on Netflix right now and that’s saying a lot for a platform that has loads and loads and loads of great shows.

Comics

Batman: Year Two 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition Hardcover

Every comic fan knows of the Batman: Year One but it wouldn’t surprise me if most aren’t aware of the Batman: Year Two story. I’m aware that Batman: Year Two is a thing, but even having read comics for decades I’ve never read that story myself. That is, I’d thought I’d read that story, but it turns out that what I’d really read was a graphic novel called Batman: Full Circle. I know that Batman: Full Circle ties into Batman: Year Two, but Year Two Full Circle ain’t.

One thing, this collected edition retails for around $30 but if you do some hunting you can find previous collected editions of the same material for less than $10 in softcover.

From DC:

Collecting a Batman classic in hardcover for the first time! A close friend of Bruce Wayne introduces him to Rachel Caspian, and the two quickly develop a romantic relationship. But in the midst of love, Rachel’s father decides to come out of retirement as the Reaper, Gotham City’s first vigilante!

Movies

Rampage movie trailer

Deadpool 2 movie trailer

The Reading & Watch List

Rumor Control

I’ve started making a list of things to write about over 2018 for my bi-weekly columns and much like in 2017 I was easily able to fill out much of 2018 with things to write about very quickly. Looking at my list, there’s really only eight non-movie things I’ll write about next year in 24 columns. And much like last year a lot of what I have listed to write about are upcoming superhero and sci-fi films. Which even just a few years ago I’d have had problems finding even a handful of movies I was interested in to write about, now there’s so many I literally can’t get to them all.

Here’s a list of films I’ll probably write longer articles on in 2018:

  • Annihilation
  • Black Panther
  • The New Mutants
  • Rampage
  • Avengers: Infinity War
  • Solo: A Star Wars Story
  • Deadpool 2
  • The Incredibles 2
  • Ant-Man and the Wasp
  • Mission: Impossible 6
  • The Predator
  • Venom
  • X-Men: Dark Phoenix

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week