Tag: halloween

Direct Beam Comms #145

CategoriesComic Books, Direct Beam Comms, Feature, TVPosted on

TV

Mayans MC

We seem to be living in the age of the spin-off series. If it’s not the NCIS… variety on CBS then it’s the Chicago… series on NBC. That’s not to say there’s not a few spin-offs on cable and streaming too. There, you’ve got things like Better Call Saul and Fear the Walking Dead on AMC which are spin-offs from Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead respectively and Star Trek: Discovery on CBS All Access which is a spin-off from the Star Trek TV franchise.

There are really two ways that TV creators can handle the spin-off. The first way is to essentially remake the original show, but put it in a different local with different characters. The stories essentially remain the same, it’s just the small details that change. Most spin-offs are like this from NCIS… to Fear the Walking Dead and even most of the Star Trek series too.

The second way is to take characters and situations from the original series and place them into a new story which Better Call Saul is a great example of.

Mayans MC
Mayans MC

The new series Mayans MC on FX is a spin-off of Sons of Anarchy, which is kind’a, but not quite, a spin-off of The Shield. The Mayans are a California based motorcycle gang, like the Sons of Anarchy motorcycle gang, except the Mayans are latino.

To me, Mayans MC feels like a continuation of Sons of Anarchy in that the same people are working on the show behind the scenes, namely Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter, and both deal with essentially the same things — bad guys riding motorcycles doing bad things. Now, maybe Mayans MC will diverge from Sons of Anarchy in some way at some point in the future — though I doubt it.

I could never get into Sons of Anarchy since everything on the show was so heightened. On the one hand, the show seemed to be set in a California very much like our own but on the other there were machine gun shootouts every day, murders and drug and gun running that would’ve been national news headlines with the FBI busting up the gang in a matter of weeks. And after one episode I think Mayans MC will probably just like Sons of Anarchy in that regard.

I think that fans of Sons of Anarchy are probably going to love Mayans MC but I’d be surprised if the show brings in any new fans.

The Purge

The Purge
The Purge

I am a The Purge virgin.

So far, there’s been four The Purge movies that have collectively made over $400 million at the box office. Yet I, the self-described “movie nerd” who digs horror flicks, hasn’t seen a single one of them. I think the reason is simply because I generally don’t see horror movies in the theater, and The Purge movies never turned up on any of the cable channels I subscribed to. So I come at the new ten episode The Purge mini-series on USA with fresh eyes.

Honestly, I think seeing some of the movies would’ve helped understanding what was all going on in the TV series. I’m assuming all explanation about what the purge is was described in them, but for the TV show all we get is a little on-screen announcement of what’s about to happen. Why the purge exists in the first place or why people let this happen… we don’t get any explanation about that whatsoever.

There are essentially three stories in The Purge TV series. The first of which is of a brother searching for his sister who’s joined a cult who’s goal is to get purged. There’s also a couple spending the evening at a swanky party riding out the purge. And there’s a business woman doing sneaky things of which we’re not quite sure of during the purge.

The first episode was very much the first chapter in a longer story, and as such it was a bit hard to make heads or tails of how the season would play out. I suspect that The Purge TV series is going to be a ten hours long story about a purge, which the movies seem to be able to do in an hour an a half.

Watching the first episode I kept thinking that I was missing something. That people who had seen all the movies were going, “Oh, this is just like that part from the second movie!” Or, “This guy’s doing that thing because of what happened in the first one.” Or, “This character’s just like that other character from the fourth one.” I, on the other hand, was a bit confused. I’m sure that if I watched the whole series I’d be less confused at the end, I’m just not sure if I’m willing to invest ten hours in it.

The whole idea of a The Purge TV series at this point is a bit odd. The movies are still making money, In fact, the last The Purge movie was released just a few weeks ago in theaters and was the highest grossing movie of the bunch. Maybe it’s because The Purge movies are more of an anthology series of films rather than a continuous series means that splitting off to a TV series makes sense? But I don’t get it.

Comics

The Killing Joke
The Killing Joke

Absolute Batman: The Killing Joke

A 30th anniversary edition of the seminal work by Alan Moore and Brian Bolland gets the “absolute” treatment in a new edition from DC this week. At just 64 pages the nearly $50 retail seems a bit high to me, then again there are the standard editions out there of The Killing Joke that can be bought new for $15.

This edition collects BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE with Bolland’s reimagined colors and the original edition’s colors, a story from BATMAN BLACK AND WHITE and Joker artwork from Bolland’s long career with DC, including never-before-published artwork.

Movies

Halloween trailer

What To Watch This Week

Rel
Rel

Sunday

The Deuce
The second season of the critically acclaimed HBO series The Deuce begins airing this week. The first season took place in an early 1970s era NYC where prostitution and vice was rampant, while the second is set in 1978 where, I’m assuming, prostitution and vice were just as rampant.

Rel
The first new network show of the 2018–2019 is Rel also debuts this week. I was excited about this one when I first heard about it, I really liked the actor Lil Rel on The Carmichael Show, but all the commercials I’ve seen about Rel makes it look like a stinker to me.

Monday-Friday

The X-Files
Starting Monday at 6AM BBC America will be airing five solid days of The X-Files in what looks like episode order starting with the first one and including airings of both feature films too.

Wednesday

American Horror Story: Apocalypse
The eighth (!!!) season of American Horror story looks to deal with the, well, apocalypse on FX. I really dug the first season of this show but, because I think it’s so stylized, haven’t been able to get into later seasons of the show since.

Clear and Present Danger
HDNET MOVIES will be airing Harrison Ford’s final appearance as Jack Ryan in this thriller from 1994 today.

Friday

The Predator
What looks to be one heck of a ride, the fourth film in the sci-fi horror genera The Predator opens in theaters this Friday.

Solo: A Star Wars Story
Solo: A Star Wars Story was the one of the movies I had the most fun at this summer and is available for digital download Friday. This one is a must-buy for me, if to see the deleted scenes alone.

Cool Sites

  • Stellarium Web Online Planetarium: Stellarium Web is a free open source planetarium running in your web browser. It shows a realistic sky, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.

The Reading & Watch List

Cool Movie Posters of the Week

  • Solo: A Star Wars Story Poster
    Solo: A Star Wars Story Poster
  • The Predator poster
    The Predator poster

Direct Beam Comms #138

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

Fall Movie Preview

The fall movie season is a bit of an oddity these days. Ever since the movie studios found out they could make billions off of superheroes and Star Wars, first the spring movie season started filling up with movies that would feel more at home during the summer, then the winter season as well. But the fall season has been relatively untouched with these kinds of movies as that was always the time of year that films were released with higher expectations than making wheelbarrows full of money, these were Oscar hopeful movies. While there are still a lot of movies due out that have Academy Awards on their minds this fall, there’s quite a few as well that feel more like summer blockbusters than award winners.

The Predator – September, 14

The Predator
The Predator

What was originally due out this summer before being pushed to the fall, the third film in the Predator franchise, unless you count those awful Aliens vs Predator movies of a few years ago and who wants to do that!? The Predator marks the return of Shane Black (Iron Man 3, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) to the sci-fi genera. Black co-starred as Hawkins and did some on-set rewriting on the first film. The Predator looks to move the action from the jungles of Central America in Predator and Los Angeles in Predator 2 to a rain-soaked little town where the only thing standing between the population and total destruction are a rag-tag team of special forces soldiers being carted off to prison.

Venom – October, 5

Venom
Venom

There’s some confusion with this one. Starring Tom Hardy, technically Venom takes place in the same film universe as the fan-favorite Spider-Man: Homecoming movie, except if reports are to be believed out of the San Diego Comic-Con your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man won’t be making an appearance in this one. And it almost seems as if Sony is positioning Venom, who’s been the nemesis of Spider-Man in the comics for 30 years now and even appeared in Spider-Man 3, to be more an anti-hero than a villain. Think Punisher rather than Ultron and that sounds more in-line with this new movie version of the character.

Halloween – October, 19

Halloween (2018)
Halloween (2018)

This latest version of Halloween will be the TENTH sequel to the original film and will bring back Jamie Lee Curtis in the Laurie Strode role she originated in the first film and has reprised on and off the last 40 years. This new Halloween reportedly ignores everything after Halloween II (1981) — though how can anyone ignore that ear-worm of a song “ten more days ’til Halloween” from Halloween III: Season of the Witch?

The Girl in the Spider’s Web – November, 9

The 2011 film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was supposed to be the first of a series of movies taken from the novels of Stieg Larsson directed by David Fincher and starring Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig. But for whatever reason it was decided to cast aside that creative team and start anew this time with director Fede Alvarez (Don’t Breathe) and co-stars Claire Foy and Sverrir Gudnason in the Mara/Daniel roles respectively.

Maybe Fincher’s vision for the Dragon Tattoo sequels was too intense since the movie did decently enough at the box office for something not starring super-heroes?

Alita: Battle Angel trailer

TV

Freaks and Geeks

Freaks and Geeks
Freaks and Geeks

Recently, I caught a documentary about the TV series Freaks and Geeks and had some memories of my own to share of this gem of a show.

  • I remember when Freaks and Geeks premiered it was difficult to see new episodes. NBC seemed to either air a lot of repeats or they moved the show around a lot to different timeslots.
  • I remember that the episode “Kim Kelly is My Friend” was controversial for its time and didn’t run in my area during the series original run.
  • In fact, I didn’t see all of the episodes of Freaks and Geeks until Fox Family reran the series in 2000 as there were a few episodes including “Kim Kelly is My Friend” that never aired on NBC.
  • When Fox Family began rerunning Freaks and Geeks and premiering unaired episodes I started recording the show on my EyeTV which was a device that allowed you to record a cable signal to your computer and save shows as MPGs. While I’m pretty sure I recorded the entire run this way, I’m also pretty sure I never watched them other than maybe the one time since the files it produced them were small and SD cable grainy too.
  • In 2003 or 2004 Shout! Factory promoted a DVD set of the entire series, urging people to preorder the set since this might be their only chance to own this, then, forgotten series on home media. Of course I ponied up something like $120 for the set.

The Reading & Watch List

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

Direct Beam Comms #131

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, TVPosted on

TV

Cloak & Dagger

One of the last of the 2017–2018 TV series to premier is Cloak & Dagger based on the Marvel comic of the same name on Freeform.

Olivia Holt & Aubrey Joseph
Olivia Holt & Aubrey Joseph

I could be wrong but I think that the comic book Cloak and Dagger was one of the books where there was a lot of talk about turning it into a movie in the 1980s and 1990s. And I can see why, the story centers around two teens and at that time teen oriented movies and TV series were very popular. So Cloak and Dagger on the big screen was a no-brainer. But for whatever reason that also kept other comics making their way to the big screen like X-Men and Spider-Man kept Cloak and Dagger off the big screen too.

Honestly, I come at this series without a lot of knowledge of the source material. I know that the essence of the Cloak and Dagger story is that there’s one character who’s a girl “Dagger” who can create powerful daggers of light while guy “Cloak” can absorb the bad guys into a darkness that surrounds him. And that’s about it. I never collected a Cloak and Dagger comic nor did the characters ever pop up in comics I did collect. So it’s interesting to come at something comic book related that I’m not already familiar with.

This TV Cloak & Dagger — yes, it uses an ampersand while the comic went with an “and” — stars Olivia Holt (Kickin’ It) as Tandy Bowen aka “Dagger” and Aubrey Joseph (The Night Of) as Tyrone Johnson aka “Cloak.”

Olivia Holt
Olivia Holt

The TV version takes place in modern day New Orleans where, as young children, Tandy and Tyrone meet after an oil rig explodes causing an accident that sends the car Tandy’s riding in crashing into a bay while Tyrone’s brother is shot by police, falls into the same water with Tyrone diving in after him. This explosion causes a big “something” that somehow gives both Tandy and Tyrone their powers.

Honestly this whole sequence had my “coincidence meter” pegged at “unbelievable” since all the different things that had to happen to put both Tandy and Tyrone in the same place was a little much. But thankfully the rest of the episode doesn’t rely on coincidence to this extent.

The rest of the first episode takes place in modern day where Tandy has become a grifter, using her good looks to get into people’s houses and steal from them. Tyrone is a high school student and basketball player so when the two meet at a party and Tandy steals Tyrone’s wallet and he gives chase and grabs her their powers suddenly manifest. Later on Tandy stabs a would-be rapist while Tyrone uses his power to travel around and hunt the cop who got away with killing his brother.

I thought Cloak & Dagger was interesting, if it seemed to be directed towards teens and twenty-somethings. Which is fine. I was just surprised that the episode contained sex, an attempted rape, drug use and alcohol use on Freeform, which used to be the old ABC Family and still airs The 700 Club from when the channel used to be The Family Channel.

Condor

Based on the 1975 movie Three Days of the Condor which was based on the 1974 novel Six Days of the Condor — guess they didn’t have the budget to do all six days in the film or any days apparently in the TV series, the new ATT/DIRECTV series simply titled Condor premiered last week on Audience. Starring Max Irons as Joe Turner, Robert Redford in the film, this new version updates the story a bit. The film had CIA analyst Turner go on the run when everyone at the office he works with is murdered after they uncovered something of import — Turner’s not sure what, only that it was worth killing everyone in the office to keep it a secret.

Max Irons
Max Irons

In this new version, Turner’s employers are more a silicon valley tech group working in DC for the CIA when an algorithm he created is used to uncover a terrorist about to release a deadly bio-toxin in the US. But when the group begins looking at who funded the creation of this weapon Turner gets too close to the truth so someone sends in two assassins to kill everyone there. Turner only escapes because he was out on a fire escape sharing a smoke with a co-worker who was killed when she turned left instead of right so Turner’s forced to go on the run alone.

I thought Condor was good if it had a bit too many plot-holes for my taste. The smoking section on the fire escape of a building so protected it has layers of security in order to get in with armed guards has got to be the biggest. But there’s also one of the assassins sleeping with Turner the night before the hit that strains credulity since who wants to leave DNA evidence at the guy’s apartment you’re going to try and kill?

Still, the whole “who can you trust” angle of the Condor story is interesting, so I’ll probably end up sticking around to see where this one goes. Even if the movie version of this told the same story in much less time than the ten episode TV series is set to.

Movies

The Girl in the Spider’s Web trailer

Halloween (2018) movie trailer

First Moon movie trailer

The Reading & Watch List

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

Posters of the Week