TV – Page 7 – Dangerous Universe

TV

Nightflyers ⭐⭐

Syfy has been heavily promoting their new series Nightflyers for months now and I think they have quite a bit riding on the show, especially since there’s not too much real sci-fi on Syfy right now. These days genre series like horror and sci-fi are king and Nightflyers, based on the George R.R. Martin novel of the same name, is a way for Syfy to capitalize on both since it’s a horror series that takes place aboard a spaceship in the future. And if Nightflyers is a hit Syfy might have something akin to HBO’s Game of Thrones on their hands, another Martin creation, in a series that gets huge ratings as well as critical acclaim.

While I thought Nightflyers was good, I don’t think it’s going to be the next Game of Thrones.

Here’s what I could gather about the first episode of this ten episode series Syfy is running every night until Thursday since the first one is kind’a confusing. It’s the future and a deadly virus is beginning to take its toll on mankind. There is a plan to escape the disease by colonizing the galaxy, but it relies on us getting ahold of advanced alien technology, the catch being that we haven’t been able to communicate with them yet. Enter the ship the Nightflyer on a mission to go out and say “hi” to ET before it’s too late. Aboard are several scientists along with a powerful psychic who might be our one chance at communication with the extra terrestrials. Except this psychic is dangerous, he’s spent his life locked away in isolation since he can hurt people with his mind. And when things start happening around the ship like engines failing and one of the scientists almost drowning in a recovery bath, naturally all suspicions point to him.

And that’s pretty much the first episode. Like I said the first Nightflyers is good, if a bit confusing. Things aren’t quite spelled out and I spent much of the first episode trying to keep up and follow the story. Like they’re going to meet these aliens but we get nothing on the history of mankind and the aliens other than they are out there in some ship simply waiting, and also we have these huge ships like the Nightflyer but apparently that’s not good enough to send out on a colonizing mission. Though maybe this will be explained later? While I usually like keeping up with stories like this in Nightflyers it bordered on confusion.

In many ways the series feels like a cross between Babylon 5 (psychics in space!), the busted Ronald D. Moore TV pilot that aired as a movie-of-the-week Virtuality (a colonizing trip to the stars presented somewhat realistically) and Event Horizon (evil things happen on a ship in deep space). But I’m not sure if it feels that way because it was in fact those movies and TV series took from the original Nightflyers novella Martin wrote 38 years ago rather than the other way around? It doesn’t help matters that the first episode is sloooooow. So much so that I kept wondering if perhaps the series should’ve been a six episode series rather than a ten?

The first Nightflyers is interesting and watching the promo that aired after the first episode about future ones has me intrigued. I love sci-fi and horror so I should be loving Nightflyers to death, I just don’t think I’m there quite yet.

Comics

Animal Man by Grant Morrison book one 30th anniversary deluxe edition

One critically acclaimed comic series that I’ve never read is Animal Man, especially the Grant Morrison run from the late 1980s to the early 1990s. That’s why I’m planning on picking up this new 30th anniversary edition of that material out this week.

Meet Buddy Baker: husband, father, animal rights activist and superhero. In these classic stories from ANIMAL MAN #1–13 and SECRET ORIGINS #39, Buddy is called by S.T.A.R. Labs to investigate a break-in related to an AIDS vaccine, only to learn what inhumane acts are going on. Then, Animal Man is invited to join the Justice League of America…but does he have what it takes?

Predator: The Essential Comics Volume 1

One comic series that I am familiar with are the nearly 30 year old Dark Horse Predator comics that are still running today. While the material in this new edition has been printed many, many times before, it’s always nice to see Dark Horse giving the Predator some love.

Before the film Predator 2, there were these comics–a four-color sequel to one of the greatest action films of all time. Written by Mark Verheiden and illustrated by comics mainstays Chris Warner and Ron Randall. Collects Predator: Concrete Jungle TPB, Predator: Cold War TPB, and Predator: Dark River TPB.

Movies

Brightburn trailer

Avengers Endgame trailer

Once Upon a Deadpool promo

Captain Marvel trailer

What To Watch This Week

Sunday

The second season of the Starz spies from alternate dimensions series Counterpart begins tonight.

Tuesday

The surprise superhero hit movie of the fall Venom is available on digital download this week.

Wednesday

A re-release of the hit of the summer Deadpool 2 entitled Once Upon a Deadpool, reconfigured from its original R-rating to PG–13 and including 20 minutes of new footage, hits theaters today.

Friday

The classic 1932 action-adventure flick The Most Dangerous Game airs on TCM today. This movie about a guy who lures people to his private island to hunt them was filmed at night on the same stages that were being used to film King Kong during the day.

Two new movies are released today, the first is the odd-looking Mortal Engines about a post-apocalyptic world where cities are mobile and eat each other, and the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse about all sorts of different version of Spider-Man being forced together after some inter dimensional shenanigans.

Saturday

Insomniac Theater: The exploitation classic Rappin’ from 1985 is set to air very early Saturday morning on TCM.

The Reading & Watch List

A 1,000-year-old road lost to time

Cool Movie Posters of the Week

Avengers: Endgame poster
Shazam! poster

TV

The Haunting of Hill House ⭐⭐⭐⭐

I am very jaded and it takes a lot for a TV show of movie to genuinely scare me. I’ve been watching scary movies since I was a little kid so things like Freddy Kruger or Jason from Friday the 13th don’t frighten me in the least. Since I’ve been watching movies like that since elementary school, to me most horror movies or TV series are more boring that frightening — and don’t get me started on the total yawnsville of most new horror. So when I heard about the latest Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House I figured it would be yet another of the long line of horror “things” I’d find dull.

And after the first episode I figured I was right.

The series starts off kind’a slow following the Crain family over two time periods, one in 1992 and the other present day. And because the show jumps around a lot between time periods at first it’s a bit hard to follow. In many ways, that first one felt like a typical modern horror series with slick visuals but a shallow story. But there’s something that happened at the end of that episode that genuinely gave me a fight, it’s something that got my heart beating a little faster and left me contemplating watching the next episode ASAP.

And later that night when I went to bed I was still thinking of the show. And even later on when I woke up at 3AM and was still thinking about The Haunting of Hill House, and also thinking, “Wouldn’t it be scary if the thing at the end of the episode reached out and grabbed my leg from under my bed,” that I knew this series was something special.

What starts off as a happy family in the 1990s turns into something more dark and fractured by 2018 in The Haunting of Hill House. The stereotypical nuclear family with mom, dad, two brothers and three sisters, don’t talk much anymore, and whatever communication they do have is indirect. What drove them apart is something that happened to them at Hill House, an estate the family was trying to flip back in 1992, that left the mother of the family (Carla Gugino) dead. The kids all swear that they saw ghosts before what was left of the family literally drove off with nothing more than the clothes on their backs the last night they spent at the house.

When sister Nell (Victoria Pedretti) starts seeing ghosts again present day and takes her own life, the family is forced back together to confront their past which is spilling over into the present whether they like it or not.

I think the ideas of The Haunting of Hill House are just as scary as the visuals, and the visuals are pretty darn scary. Ideas like a fractured family, siblings lost in their lives and looking for help but finding none and a father so far removed from his kids he hasn’t spoken to them in years is just as terrifying as the things the kids see in the house. Be it a creature that lives in the basement, the “bent neck lady” or the tall man that thumps along the halls at night are all things that left a chill up my spine.

One thing that The Haunting of Hill House does that most other horror movies and TV series don’t/are too afraid to do is that it actually delves into the realm of sadness. Whether it’s the sadness over the loss of Nell, which as the series progresses feels less and less like a suicide from mental illness than something much darker, or even the sadness of a once close family fractured and scattered to the winds after what happened in 1992 The Haunting of Hill House is just as sad as it is scary.

And I shouldn’t forget those ghosts.

They’re scary, there were a few times when I caught a glimpse of one hiding in the background that I nearly jumped out of my seat. And there are times when the characters of the show don’t see them, but the viewers do which added a point or two to my blood pressure. It’s one those things where there might be ghosts anywhere in the house/background of scenes at any time, and because of that it adds a layer of tension to scenes that generally would be tension-free.

There has been talk about how the ending of the first season of The Haunting of Hill House is a let-down, that it doesn’t fit with the rest of the show. Which I think is total bunk. It fits perfectly well and if you’re paying attention to everything that’s going on it’s really the only place things could’ve ended up.

One thing is I’m not quite sure where The Haunting of Hill House is going to go from here? It’s one of those shows everyone was talking about for a while and I can only imagine Netflix is going to want another season of it. But the first season ended here so perfectly, and there is an ending, there’s no cliffhanger that would easily lead to a second season, I kind’a hope that The Haunting of Hill House is a one-and-done show, even if it means we might never get to spend time with the Crain’s again.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 ⭐⭐⭐

It’s crazy to say, but I’m almost happy that the TV series MST3K was cancelled back in 1999. It’s only because the show went away nearly 20 years ago that it could have been brought back by Netflix in 2017 with the second season having debuted there last Friday. The revived MST3K still “feels” like genuine MST3K circa 1993 but with some smart updates for the 21st century. The basic premise is the same with a guy (Jonah Ray) trapped on a satellite who, along with his robot friends is forced to watch bad movie after bad movie by an evil scientist (Felicia Day).

MST3K is basically an excuse for some really talented comedians including Ray, Baron Vaughn and Hampton Yount who play the robots to riff and make fun of these movies while they run.

It’s a smart idea that I’m surprised hasn’t been copied 1,000 times since MST3K went off the air but somehow hasn’t –– maybe getting ahold of those bad movies is harder than it looks? Anyway, the simple fact that after one of the most successful Kickstart campaigns in history reignited interest in the show and Netflix went ahead and picked MST3K up and began streaming it on their platform, means that since the series first premiered 30 years ago we’re still getting new episodes of it and that’s a good thing.

Movies

Once Upon a Deadpool trailer

They Shall Not Grow Old trailer

The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part trailer

Aquaman trailer

The Lion King

What To Watch This Week

Tuesday

The latest Predator movie The Predator is available on digital download this week.

Wednesday

The sixth (!!!) season of Vikings begins Wednesday on History.

Books

Star Trek: The Art of John Eaves

A collected work of Star Trek designer and concept artist John Eaves is due out this week.

Over the past few decades, John Eaves has had a major impact on the look of the Star Trek Universe and played a pivotal role in shaping Gene Roddenberry’s vision. Starting with his work on Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Eaves has worked as a production designer, illustrator, and model maker across the franchise. He has been responsible for creating many of the props and ships, and helped develop the Federation design, from the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC–1701-E to the U.S.S. Discovery NCC–1031.
Star Trek: The Art of John Eaves represents the most extensive collection of designs and illustrations created by Eaves across the Star Trek Universe. Featuring fascinating pencil sketches and stunning concept art, this visually dynamic book gives fans a unique in-depth look into Eaves’ creative vision and the wealth of his remarkable work at the center of this spectacular franchise.

The Reading List

The Dark Side: An Oral History of The Star Wars Holiday Special

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

Black Panther
The Lion King