Tag: doctor strange

Direct Beam Comms #33

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

Vice Principals Grade: C

Vice-Principals-HBOVice Principals, the latest HBO series from Jody Hill and Danny McBride of Eastbound and Down fame, looks, feels and has the same tone as that earlier series. And I supposed if you really dug Eastbound and Down you’re going to really love Vice Principals too. But if you thought Eastbound and Down was just okay you’re probably not going to be that into Vice Principles.

Here, McBride plays Neal Gamby, a vice principal from hell, running his South Carolina high school like some Soviet provincial governor where he deals out rewards and punishments to the students with little regard to the consequences. Walton Goggins (Hateful Eight) plays another vice principal Lee Russell who doesn’t get along with the Gamby and when school principal Welles (Bill Murray) steps down to care for an ailing wife both Gamby and Russell each think they’ll be the next principal. If Gamby is a bully Russell is a weasel willing to do anything if it means advancing his career.

But when the school board decides to go with an outsider as principal, Gamby and Russell team up to take her out and claim the position for themselves.

I think where Eastbound and Down worked where Vice Principals doesn’t is that the McBride character in Eastbound and Down was a self-centered foul-mouthed idiot that was believable in a show about an ex-ball player who’s been coddled all his life and was spat out of the MLB after he lost his pitch. It doesn’t work here for a character who has daily contact with the public, and their children, and could easily lose his job or be demoted for any one of things he does or says xin the first episode.

Vice Principals does have some funny moments and I can see myself watching the series — it is summer after all and there’s not a ton of new stuff to choose from — but it’s something I’ll probably watch off my DVR when there’s no other options rather than being excited about it and watching it live.

Halt and Catch Fire season 3 preview

Iron Fist preview

Defenders preview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wBZtM8q2Z1g

Luke Cage preview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ymw5uvViqPU

The Man in the High Castle season 2 preview

American Gods preview

Movies

Wonder Woman teaser trailer

Justice League Comicon footage

Kong: Skull Island teaser trailer

Doctor Strange trailer

The Reading List

Return of the Living Dead: The Chaotic Production Of A Zombie Classic

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1928: Stanley Kubrick is born
  • 1966: Batman the movie premiers
  • 1983: The TV mini-series V premiers
  • 1983: Krull opens in theaters
  • 1986: Flight of the Navigator opens in theaters
  • 1987: Superman IV: The Quest for Peace opens in theaters
  • 1990: The TV series Swamp Thing premiers
  • 2001: Planet of the Apes opens in theaters

Direct Beam Comms #19

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, MoviesPosted on

Movies

Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)

Doctor Strange poster
Doctor Strange poster

I’m not a big fan of the Resident Evil films. I think I saw the first one, or part of the first one at least, and that was enough for me. So I never went to seek out any of the four sequels released after the original. Yet the other morning when I turned on the TV the channel that I happened to be on from the night before was showing Resident Evil: Extinction and since it was still early and I didn’t have anything else to do I sat down and started watching it.

Resident Evil: Extinction isn’t a good movie. The story doesn’t make much sense and the visuals look like they were cribbed partly from a makeup TV commercial where all the actors have perfect skin and teeth along with model good looks mixed with C-grade horror flick special effects. Yet for some reason I couldn’t stop watching Resident Evil: Extinction after I’d started. I watched the whole movie start to finish and when it aired again later in the afternoon I started watching it again for the bits I’d missed in the morning when I was doing my laundry.

The only reason I can think that I watched the movie to the finish, like I said, Resident Evil: Extinction is a reeeeeal stinker, is that it’s so bad it’s good. To illustrate my point, here’s a list of things in the movie that alone aren’t much of an issue, but together doomed the film.

  • Most of the actors look like models who just exited the makeup trailer, not survivors of a zombie apocalypse and have spent the last two years running for their lives.
  • The women all either dress skimpy, showing as much flesh as they can which doesn’t make a lot of sense when one bite from a zed leads to transformation into a zed yourself, or like clones of Sarah Conner in T2.
  • For some inexplicable reason that I’m sure has to do with budget rather than story unless I missed it, most of the zombies are bald and all wear blue uniform jumpsuits.
  • The zombies can run too, which I don’t remember them being able to do in the first film.
  • The zombies and other monsters have a habit of attacking side characters first, and leaving the main cast for later. Which is odd since it’s mostly the main cast who are fighting back against the creatures while the side characters scatter and run away.
  • A major plot point of Resident Evil: Extinction is lifted directly from Day of the Dead. And I think this is more “lifting” than an “homage.”

I think it’s all this plus the mess of the story as a whole plus the crazy action scenes that don’t make a lick of sense plus the gore plus the dodgy special effects that made it so that I was unable to look away from this train wreck of a movie. Heck, after having sat through Resident Evil: Extinction I’m tempted to checkout the other films just to see how bad the they are. D

Suicide Squad trailer #2

“What if Superman had decided to fly down, rip off the roof of the White House and grab the President right out of the Oval Office? Who would’ve stopped him?”

“I want to build a team of some very bad people who I think can do some good.”

Doctor Strange trailer

“Forget everything that you think you know.”

“What if I told you (your) reality was one of many?”

Books

The last thing Sgt. Apone saw
The last thing Sgt. Apone saw

Out this Tuesday is Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back: The Original Topps Trading Card Series, Volume Two, the second book in what looks to be a trilogy that covers all of the various Topps trading cards released for the original trilogy.

Busts

These two Alien Warrior from Aliens and Dog Alien from Alien 3 life-sized busts are simply amazing. But they’re well out of my price range at about $1,500 each.

Cool Sites

  • Doctor Who Books: “A large collection of various Doctor Who-related books, texts, magazine articles and literature.”
  • SciFi80TV: ”Featuring short previews of classic Science Fiction TV shows.”
  • Vintage Toledo (and Detroit) TV: “This website will primarily be a place to view print ads from the 1960s and ’70s for Toledo and Detroit TV stations. ”

The Reading List

This week in pop-culture history

1996: The movie Mystery Science Theater 3000 opens.