it – Dangerous Universe

Direct Beam Comms #136

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, MoviesJuly 15, 2018July 14, 2018

Movies

Here’s everything I’ve seen this year that’s new, or that I missed seeing in 2017.

It: I liked this one a lot and was very happy to see a Stephen King movie that’s horror-related finally get some love. See this one if you love Stranger Things but want more scares with your side of 1980s nostalgia.

Justice League: I still don’t understand the online vitriol against this movie. I liked Justice League. I didn’t think it was the best movie ever but I certainly didn’t think it was bad. See this one if you dig superhero movies and have an open mind.

Movies I’ve seen so far in 2018.

The Cloverfield Paradox: This surprise movie that was announced during the Super Bowl and premiered right after on Netflix is a fun, well-crafted sci-fi yarn about astronauts stuck on a space station fighting the unknown. See this one if you don’t demand that every movie you see be groundbreaking.

Mute: Another Netflix sci-fi flick, Mute takes place in a near-future that’s depressingly a lot like out own. More importantly, it’s a kind’a sort’a sequel to the movie Moon. See this one if you’re ever jonesing for a sci-fi fix.

Black Panther: I liked Black Panther if I thought at times it was a little cluttered in the story department. See this one if… who am I kidding, based on the box office returns you’ve already seen this one.

Avengers: Infinity War: Infinity War is the Marvel team-up movie to top all Marvel team-up movies with all the heroes together to fight a big baddie. See this one if you don’t necessarily always need to know what’s happening on-screen, but like watching things go “boom.”

Deadpool 2: The hilarious sequel to Deadpool both manages to differentiate itself from the original while being just as funny as that first film. See this one if you like to have a good time while watching movies.

Solo: A Star Wars Story: Another movie that was ravaged by online reviews, I quite liked Solo and thought it was a very strong Star Wars movie. See this one because this might be your last chance to see the character of Han Solo on-screen for a while.

Annihilation: Finally a movie this year I didn’t like. I loved the novel this one’s based on and couldn’t wait to check it out but found Annihilation slow and dull. Honestly, I couldn’t make it through this one and shut it off with about 20 minutes left. See this one if you’re looking for an all-natural sleep aid.

Extinction movie trailer

Books & Comics

Go Team Venture! The Art and Making of the Venture Bros.

Out nearly a year after it was originally scheduled to be released — though series creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer have a habit of turning in things late — comes Go Team Venture! The Art and Making of the Venture Bros.

From Dark Horse:

Ken Plume sits down with series creators Jackson Publick and Doc Hammer to have a conversation about the creation of every single episode through season 6 and much more. From the earliest sketches of Hank and Dean scribbled in a notebook to pitching the series to Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, learning the ins and outs of animation, character designs for each season, storyboards, painted backgrounds, and behind-the-scenes recollections of how the show came together–it’s all here.

Frank Miller’s RONIN

This week a brand new edition of the collected RONIN story by Frank Miller is set to be released. Though I’ve read the RONIN story before and own an issue or two of the original comic series, I don’t actually own the collected edition so I might pick this one up.

From DC:

Frank Miller’s six-issue miniseries RONIN returns in a new trade paperback! It’s the tale of a 13th century samurai who is reborn in a futuristic 21st century New York City with one last chance to regain his honor: he must defeat the reincarnation of his master’s killer, an ancient demon called Agat. This new edition includes promotional art, fold-out pages and more special features.

The Reading & Watch List

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

Direct Beam Comms #108

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVDecember 31, 2017December 30, 2017

TV

Black Mirror — “USS Callister” */**

When Black Mirror first premiered in 2011 I didn’t think I’d ever get to see it. Created by Charlie Brooker for Channel 4 in the UK, Black Mirror was a series everyone was talking about but no one could watch legally here in the US. It took some time but I was finally able to see that first season and was blown away — Black Mirror was as good as everyone said it was and it quickly became one of my favorite series.

A few years back Netflix picked up the show and suddenly what was very difficult to see became very easy with the outlet streaming old episodes along with brand new ones. And now comes a fourth season of Black Mirror beginning with a first episode titled “USS Callister.”

Here, a software architect by day Robert Daly (Jesse Plemons) moonlights at night as the captain of the USS Callister in a virtual reality simulation game. The USS Callister is a ship of the Space Fleet (think 1960s Star Trek) crewed by people who look a lot like Daly’s real-life co-workers. But since this is Black Mirror they don’t just look like Daly’s co-workers, they’re digital duplicates of them right down to their memories and personalities. The real people on the outside have no idea what’s going on, Daly created the duplicates in secret, meaning that for the clones on the USS Callister life is a hellish existence alternating between the boredom with having nothing to do while Daly’s at work and the nightmare of having him act as captain where he wants to play Space Fleet. And if they don’t play along he can do things to them like remove their eyes and mouth causing them to feel like they’re suffocating forever or turn them into grotesque alien creatures to populate the various planets around the digital galaxy.

And since these crew members aren’t real, it means they can never die either and will be stuck in this existence forever.

Enter new co-worker/USS Callister crewmen Nanette Cole (Cristin Milioti) who has a plan to get out. But if her plan fails it means an existence of eternal suffering for those crazy enough to cross Daly in the digital world.

Black Mirror is a great show at examining what life might be like in just a few years time if just a few things go wrong. Like what are the odds that someday technology will make it easy to make a perfect, digital clone of someone? And what are the odds that someone will use that technology for ill, like cloning people for their own private video game? Some of these ideas were also covered in the “Cookie” segment of the Black Mirror Christmas episode a few years back.

Regardless… Black Mirror is one of the best series on TV. I’m just glad that I don’t have to fight to watch it anymore!

Doctor Who */**

Each year the series Doctor Who airs a special Christmas episode. In years past those episodes have had a strong holiday theme — one year even featured the good Doctor teaming up with Santa Claus to fight evil. But this year was different. This year’s episode mostly skipped the Christmas theme and would mark the first official appearance of the latest incarnation of the Doctor, this time not to be played by a man as the character’s been the last 50+ years but by a woman.

“Twice Upon a Time” takes place at the South Pole in the 1960s, in the trenches during the first world war and in the future where people who are just about to die are whisked away to have their memories duplicated for historical purposes before being sent back to their own time to face their fate. The Doctor (Peter Capaldi) is on the verge of regeneration — or changing bodies. A way that producers of the series have used since the beginning to keep the show going by replacing the lead actor with a new face. But this Doctor doesn’t want to regenerate. He wants to die and finally rest after centuries of adventure.

Enter the very first Doctor from 1963, here played by David Bradley but originally William Hartnell who passed away in 1975. This first Doctor doesn’t want to regenerate either and he and the modern Doctor along with an army captain (Mark Gatiss) pulled from the trenches of the first world war and flung into the future and the Doctor’s assistant Bill (Pearl Mackie) who may or may not be a duplicate of the original have to uncover what they’ve done to cause time to freeze in place all across the universe.

I thought that “Twice Upon a Time” was the best episode of Doctor Who in recent memory.

I’m a big fan of the classic Doctor Who series and love it whenever the modern show mentions the old, which they do from time to time. And to see the original Doctor here returning to form, and even with his slightly smaller TARDIS than the current Doctor’s, made for one satisfying episode.

Especially interesting was the introduction of the new Doctor played by Jodie Whittaker. It’s traditional for the new Doctor to be introduced at the very end of the episode where the character’s thrown into some sort of extreme peril, to be concluded in a few months time at the start of the next season of Doctor Who. And this introduction was no different with the new Doctor being literally ejected from the TARDIS in the closing moments of the show.

It will be interesting to see just where that next series goes from here. I have no doubt that Whittaker will make a good Doctor but Doctor Who producer since its reboot in 2005 Steven Moffat won’t be returning next season, Chris Chibnall will be taking over the reigns. This will mark the first time in 13 years that someone new will be setting the direction of the show.

So, love Doctor Who or hate it, it’ll be interesting to see just where Doctor Who ends up in 2018.

Movies

A few months back I posted all of the new movies I saw to date in 2017 and here’s the rest of what I saw this year:

Spider-Man: Homecoming: I thought this was a really fun movie that did a good job of reintroducing a new Spider-Man without going through all the rigmarole of doing another origin story.
Logan Lucky
Logan Lucky: This “Ocean’s 7/11” was one of the hidden, overlooked gems of 2017.
Split: I was really surprised by this one. Writer/director M. Night Shyamalan has been on a cold-streak for literally 15 years at this point and for him to come out with a movie as interesting and powerful as Split was is amazing.
Thor: Ragnarok: I can’t remember the last time I had as much fun as I did at a superhero movie as I did with this one.
War for the Planet of the Apes: A fitting end for a superb trilogy of movies. I only wish all movie reboots could be as different as/paying as much homage to the original as War for the Planet of the Apes was.
Dunkirk: Easily the best movie of the year and probably the best Christopher Nolan movie since Memento, and that’s saying a lot.
A Trip to Spain: I really like the whole A Trip to… movies and A Trip to Spain was no exception.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi: I’m not sure what all the negativity was about surrounding this movie, but I liked Star Wars: The Last Jedi a lot. I thought it was better than Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Bright: This Netflix original has been getting a lot of flack for being one of the worst movies of the year. While I don’t think Bright was a great movie, it wasn’t a bad one either. It’s one of those films with a lot of great ideas, probably too many for a single film to hold.
Blade runner: 2049: Slow and ponderous at times, I’m glad I checked this one out. Though I’d be surprised if I ever watch it again.
IT: Essentially the TV series Stranger Things has been aping IT quite successfully for two seasons now. So for a movie version of this classic, beloved book to come along now and still be as stunning as it was is saying something.

For the record, I only saw 18 movies this year that were released in 2017, but for what I saw these were my favorite.

Dunkirk
Dunkirk
Logan
IT
Thor: Ragnarok
Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Rumor Control

Things I’ve misheard over the years:

For many years I thought the movie about zombies in the Caribbean The Serpent and the Rainbow was instead titled Surfing in the Rainbow.

I also thought the title to the Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was really Do Androids Dream an Electric Sleep?. And to this day I think my title’s better that the original.

When the song “Glycerine” by Bush was popular and got lots of radio play I used to think the lyric “Bad Moon White Again” was “Madmartigan Warrior” since surly everyone, including songwriter Gavin Rossdale was a big a fan of the movie Willow as I was.

Cool Movie Posters of the Week

IT’s better than you remember

Feature, Movies, TVSeptember 1, 2017August 30, 2017

The last few months I’ve been reading about how the new movie based on the Stephen King novel IT is finally going to do the story justice on the big screen. It’ll be the film that sets right what was done wrong in the 1990 made-for-tv movie IT. These articles talk about how bad that TV version was and how it was unwatchable in its day.

Either the people writing about how the 1990 IT stinks weren’t around back then or don’t have good memories, but as someone who remembers I’m here to tell you that good sci-fi and horror series were the exception rather than the rule back then and the TV version of IT was one of the good things on TV.

Back then there were a few sci-fi/horror series on like Twin Peaks, Quantum Leap and The Flash with other syndicated shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation and Swamp Thing as well. But non-sci-fi/horror TV series then ruled the day with shows like Murder, She Wrote, Matlock and In the Heat of the Night which were all top-rated series in the early 1990s.

But really there wasn’t too much good stuff on TV in 1990. Shows like The X-Files, Babylon 5 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer were all still in the future in 1990 so, when the IT TV movie was announced I was beyond excited.

In 1990, Stephen King was the one author who’s books kids at my school actually chose to read without having to. He was, and still is, a prolific writer who had a huge body of work that seemingly all of which was slowly being turned into movies. Some were good like Stand by Me and Carrie and some of which was not so good. But since there was a lot less to choose from then, genera fans like myself would devour the good stuff right alongside the not-so-good stuff. I think that’s why I was so excited about IT. To a certain extent, it didn’t matter if IT was any good or not. Fans like myself were going to watch it no matter what. I think what mattered was the “king of horror” was going to have one of his stories turned into something that was going to be shown on TV — in prime time — and on a major network.

Back then if you weren’t going to record something like IT to VHS then you had to watch each episode when it aired. And because IT aired over two nights meant you had to come back the next night to finish the story. Which a lot of people did — IT was a success for ABC when it aired with nearly 30 million people tuning in to watch.

Why do people dislike the 1990 IT today? My guess would be that by today’s standards the movie looks pretty crude. It stars a group of actors mostly known for TV work and has some special effects that are more “man in a rubber suit” funny than terrifying. Which is all true, if you look at the movie with 2017 eyes.

With my 1990 eyes I saw the movie in a whole other light. There was nothing like it on TV — it felt a bit like the kids from Stand by Me who were fighting a kid-killing alien from space which was not something that ever showed up on Murder She Wrote. And it had some truly scary moments, abet the end of the miniseries when you get to see the creature in all its glory probably isn’t one of them.

But still, there’s Tim Curry as the title character in its human form that was so good in the miniseries I think he turned a generation of kids off clowns for all time. Curry in his Pennywise guise is the most effective villains in any Stephen King adapted work, and that’s saying a lot.

Now comes a 2017 IT for a new generation, this one out September 8. This new IT might be the bestest, scariest, goodest Stephen King movie ever made, but I can only imagine sometime in 2044 there’ll be a whole new generation of fans talking about how bad it was.

Direct Beam Comms #86

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, TVJuly 30, 2017July 29, 2017

TV

Midnight, Texas

The new NBC series Midnight, Texas is the latest attempt at a network to bring serious horror out of cable and to broadcast TV. While I thought that Midnight, Texas was lacking, none-the-less I also felt that it’s probably the best that a network show can be right now given all the limitations of broadcast TV.

Based on the series of books of the same name by author Charlaine Harris who also wrote the novels the series True Blood were based on, the town of Midnight, Texas is a sort of safe haven for those things that go bump in the night like witches, vampires and fallen angels. But these aren’t evil witches, vampires and fallen angels, they’re everyday witches, vampires and fallen angels just trying to get along in a world out to get them.

While I thought the characters of Midnight, Texas worked well and I was intrigued in the setting what I wasn’t sure of was the overall story. It seems like much of the series will deal with an outside force attacking the weird Midnight enclave and trying to drive out these misfits. In the first episode there’s a murder by some bikers ala the Sons of Anarchy that seemed like someone decided that since horror is hot right now and TV series like Sons of Anarchy too then why not try and blend the two and make something great? But this comes off a bit overdone for my tastes, if it’s probably right in-line with what the average viewer of broadcast TV expects in terms of story.

What I wasn’t expecting was just how scary some of the moments in Midnight, Texas were.

Manfred Bernardo (François Arnaud) is a psychic who really sees dead people. Really gross looking dead people who are trying to make contact with the living world. Be it a dead husband who looks like he just rolled off the morgue table, Bernardo’s grandma who pays him a visit and looks like she crawled out of a dusty grave or a drowning victim who’s bloated and rotting but when she tries to talk it comes out like waterlogged bile.

If this and the characters were all that Midnight, Texas were about I think I’d be really excited about the show, especially since the last NBC horror series Hannibal was one of my favs. That being said, I am interested in Midnight, Texas and will keep watching the show, if it wouldn’t surprise me that at some point in the season I stop watching and head off looking for a series with the characters of Midnight, Texas if not the story.

People of Earth

The first season of the TBS comedy People of Earth wrapped up last winter with the second having launched last week. I thought the first season of People of Earth was one of the better comedies on TV in 2016 if it took a while for the series to get going.

In the first season, writer Ozzie Graham (Wyatt Cenac) travels to a small down to do a piece on a support group for people who say they’ve been abducted by aliens. And what starts out as a joke evolves into something different when Ozzie realize that he too was abducted in the past and that the entire support group’s been together for decades now since the aliens have been abducting them since they were children.

The aliens doing the abducting are a mix of creatures. One’s a traditional “grey” alien named Jeff (Ken Hall), one’s a dreamboat alien with white hair Don (Bjorn Gustafson) and there’s a reptilian one named Jonathan (Michael Cassidy) too. These are more workaday aliens than monstrous ones who have deadlines, overbearing bosses and monthly quotas to meet.

Think The Office crossed with The X-Files and you’d be close to what People of Earth is.

The second season starts right where the first left off with Wyatt, now a believer trying to find the truth, Jeff dealing with new management in the whole abducting thing breathing down his neck and group member Richard (Brian Huskey) coming to terms that his girlfriend who exploded last season was really an alien robot plant.

After having read that paragraph again I know that must make People of Earth sound like a really weird series and to be honest it is a weird one. But it’s a good kind of weird, the kind of weird we need on TV in 2017.

First season review

Movies

IT trailer

Cool Sites

Ted Nelson’s Junk Mail Cartons

The Reading List

This week in pop-culture history

1947: Arnold Schwarzenegger of Terminator, Predator and Total Recall is born
1956: Michael Biehn of Terminator, Aliens and The Abyss is born
1966: Batman the movie premiers
1966: Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. premiers
1971: The Omega Man is released
1983: The TV mini-series V premiers
1985: Weird Science opens
1986: Flight of the Navigator opens in theaters
1986: Howard the Duck debuts
1987: The Lost Boys premiers in theaters
1988: The Blob premiers in theaters
1991: Terminator 2: Judgement Day premiers in theaters
2002: Signs premiers in theaters
2011: Rise of the Planet of the Apes opens in theaters

Stephen King’s World of Horror

Feature, MoviesJuly 21, 2017July 8, 2017

The author Stephen King has had an amazing career. Over the last 40+ years he’s published more than 50 novels and has just as many films adapted from his works. Which, to me at least, would make King the most influential living writer of our time. And, recently too, a few of King’s work has been turned into TV series with the likes of Mr. Mercedes and The Mist this year and shows like Castle Rock due out in the future.

So, if King’s writing output has remained essentially steady the last few decades — he produces around a book a year, sometimes more — and movies based on his works come out every few years why does 2017 feel different? Why does 2017 feel like it’s the year of Stephen King?

I think it’s because while King’s had a lot of his works turned into movies since the late 1970s, 2017 seems like it’s the first time those movies are top of the line, big-budget films meant for everyday filmgoers rather than those who’d go see a Stephen King horror movie no matter what. It kind’a feels like when comic book movies made the jump from movies only fans of comic books would see to movies anyone would see that appealed to a wide range of people.

Out in theaters this summer is the first film of The Dark Tower saga August 4. This movie that’s based on a series of eight books takes place in a weird realm where old-west style gunslingers do battle with wizards more at home in something like The Lord of the Rings than The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Starring Matthew McConaughey and Idris Elba, if this first film is successful The Dark Tower will be to Sony what Harry Potter was to Warner Brothers — a long-running film series that will be the basis for all sorts of ancillary moneymaking things from Halloween costumes to theme park rides.

Then, a little more than a month after the release of The Dark Tower on September 8 comes It that’s the first movie of two based on the 1986 novel of the same name. Already made as a movie-of-the-week back in 1990, this new It is based on the first part of the book where a group of kids, the film takes place in the mid–1980s, must do battle with an evil presence living under their town that kills children. The It sequel due at some point in the future would deal with the kids as adults present day who must go back to their town and finish the job when the killings start again.

If The Dark Tower and It are successful I can only imagine that there’ll be a rush to turn all sorts of King works into movies since he’s got such a back-catalog of classics. And I’d also assume that much like with Marvel and DC other authors in the same vein as King will start getting their works turned into big-budget films as well. But there’s always a chance these two King movies could flop meaning that his movies would one again be relegated to low-budget flicks at best, direct to streaming at worst.

What I find most interesting here is that the The Dark Tower and It movies couldn’t be more different to one and other. One’s a fantasy flick with six-shooters and the other a horror movie with a monster so scary I think there’s an argument to be made that the titular “It” which in its human form looks like a clown scared a generation of kids so badly that they now have a phobia of them. The idea that these two separate works are both being released into theaters around the same time and both movies have a great chance at starting multi-billion dollar film franchises, means that the works of Stephen King might just about to be elevated from simple genera movies that a generation ago were more at home on VHS than movie theaters, to something more. Something more along the lines of serious films — scary clowns and all.

Tag: it

Direct Beam Comms #136