Category: TV

The best of the rest

CategoriesComic Books, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

My favorite movies about movies that never happened :The Death of “Superman Lives”: What Happened? & Lost Soul: The Doomed Journey of Richard Stanley’s Island of Dr. Moreau.

supermanlivesBoth these movies, one about a Tim Burton Superman movie that would’ve been released in the late ‘90s and a different version of the Island of Dr. Moreau than the one that came out in ’96, are a fascinating look inside the moviemaking process. The reason behind why Superman didn’t live with Burton is because of the nature of the moviemaking business, of a studio in trouble after a series of costly flops and of being scared to finance another risky looking film. While Lost Soul shows that while the writer/director of a film can have an amazing vision, that vision isn’t enough to keep them their job when the two stars of the movie want him off the set.

My favorite comic strip: Willie & Joe: The WWII Years

I’ve been aware of the Bill Mauldin’s Will & Joe comic strip for many years now but only when it was referenced in other works about how accurately Mauldin was able to portray the life of soldiers serving during WWII. It was only after I bought the book Willie & Joe: The WWII Years and was able to experience the cartoons for myself, there are 600+ in the book, that I was finally able to see Mauldin’s genius first hand.

My favorite hardest working actor on TV: Bob Odenkirk

Bob Odenkirk
Bob Odenkirk

I mean, c’mon. In the space of two years the guy’s co-starred in two series; The Birthday Boys and Fargo, had the lead role in another with Better Call Saul and created, co-wrote and co-starred in the W/ Bob and David series. I guess Odenkirk’s one of those guys who’ll sleep when he’s dead — which hopefully won’t be for many, many years.

My favorite book: Roadside Picnic (1972) by Arkady Strugatsky & Boris Strugatsky

I’m always on the lookout for old books that still resonate today. I heard of the book Roadside Picnic when I read about the ’79 film Stalker which was based on Roadside Picnic and decided to check it out myself. The book’s about the aftereffects of an alien visitation that only lasted a few hours but when the aliens departed they left all sorts of items behind. Is this “stuff” their garbage or something more? Some of it is extremely dangerous like a weird blue mist that turns bones of those who touch it to mush while others are beneficial like batteries that never run out of power.
Roadside Picnic mostly follows a new class of people dubbed “stalkers” who make a living and risk their lives venturing into these contaminated zones to take any of the alien leftovers and sell it to the highest bidder. But when the children of these stalkers begin displaying some weird birth defects, the question becomes are they only bringing out the artifacts or are they also bringing something else out with them?

My favorite post apocalyptic thing: Mad Max Fury Road

20120425222104In an era when there are loads of post-apocalyptic TV series and movies, I think the best of the bunch was the fourth film of the Mad Max franchise. Fury Road plays like some extended fever dream; from characters speaking languages the viewer can’t understand, to the oversaturated psychedelic landscapes to a movie that’s made of almost constant action… But it’s these differences from all the other post-apocalyptic TV and movies that set Fury Road apart and made it one of the best films I’ve seen in quite some time.

My favorite collected comic: Hellblazer

I suppose the only reason I started reading the Hellblazer comic was because of the failed Constantine TV show. But if that’s what it took then I’m okay with Constantine being cancelled. John Constantine, lead of Hellblazer, is a self destructive demonologist who, when he’s not battling the occult, is someone who mostly just wants to be left alone. Hellblazer, stories deal with everything from yuppie demons to a bleak, early 1980s Thatcher-lead England and new age cults, both good and bad.
Hellblazer was released in ’88 and I didn’t start reading it until this year, so I guess a 27 year wait to read something as good as Hellblazer is okay.

Top 10 posts of 2015

CategoriesFeature, Movies, TVPosted on

Based on total visitors to the site:

  1. How many zombies are there in the world of The Walking Dead?
  2. Quotes of note – Hannibal: “Ko No Mono”
  3. …Remember, He’s on Your Side (Mad Max)
  4. The Evil Dead Movies Part 3: Army of Darkness, Hail to the king!
  5. The Evil Dead Movies Part 2: Evil Dead II, Dead by Dawn!
  6. Quotes of Note – Hannibal: “Sakizuki”
  7. Dream of the Big, Huge Turtle (The Bermuda Depths)
  8. Joel de la Fuente The Man in the High Castle/Space: Above and Beyond
  9. L.A. Takedown vs. Heat, Spot the Differences
  10. The ages of actors who have played Doctor Who over the years

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.