Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back (1980) poster
Tag: star wars
Star Wars Episode III planet Mustafar concept illustration
Direct Beam Comms #19
Movies
Resident Evil: Extinction (2007)
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
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
- A MAD Cover Story
- ‘Deadpool’ Isn’t the Only Solution. But ‘Batman v Superman’ Is the Problem
- Capeless: The Batman and Superman movies that never happened
- ‘The Mist’: Spike TV greenlights series based on Stephen King story
- Anti-Punk: Cannon’s Fascist DEATH WISH Sequels
- How to make great TV, explained by FX spy drama The Americans.
- A Roundtable Discussion With the 12-and-Under Stars of ABC’s Comedy Slate
This week in pop-culture history
1996: The movie Mystery Science Theater 3000 opens.
Direct Beam Comms #18
TV
Classic Doctor Who
My local PBS station began airing episode of classic Doctor Who a few weeks back starting with the very first Tom Baker episode entitled “Robot” and it looks like for the most part they’re airing them in order. I couldn’t be more happy. I’ve been dying to watch more episodes of the classic Doctor Who for years now, ever since the 50th anniversary a few years ago and when BBC America began airing a handful of Baker episodes last year.
American Crime Story: The People v. O.J. Simpson
The first season of American Crime Story on FX ended its run last week about the trial of O.J. Simpson. The sad thing is that I know a few people who didn’t watch the show because they “knew how it ended.” Except that American Crime Story was anything but just about the ending. It was about all the bits that were never broadcast on TV in the 1990s; what was going on behind the scenes with the lawyers, and jurors and family members we never got to see.
The neat thing about the story was that it wasn’t just one sided — for or against O.J. It’s mostly about the lawyers — the prosecution building a seemingly airtight case against Simpson and the defense finding ways to make their case a little a lot less airtight while at the same time trying to expose what they see as a corrupt system against African Americans in Los Angeles.
In a TV season with a lot of simply great dramas, American Crime Story was one of the best. A
Movies
Edge of Tomorrow: Live Die Repeat
Last week writer/director Christopher McQuarrie announced that there’s going to be a sequel to the wonderful movie Edge of Tomorrow with Doug Liman set to return as director and Tom Cruise as star. I didn’t think that Edge of Tomorrow did well enough at the box office to warrant a sequel, but luckily I was wrong. Edge of Tomorrow is one of the best sci-fi films of the modern age and along with movies like Mad Max: Fury Road is redefining the sci-fi genera.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story movie trailer
“What will you become?”
Officially titled Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, this eighth movie in the franchise is the first one to be told outside of the main Star Wars storyline. Here, a resistance fighter, Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) is tasked with stealing the plans for the Death Star. Or, Rogue One would be what was going on immediately before Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope where those plans are hidden inside R2-D2. What I like about the trailer is the design aesthetic seems to be taken straight from those gorgeous Dave Dorman Star Wars paintings that seemed to be on everything Star Wars related in the 1990s. What I don’t like about it is that the vibe in the Rogue One trailer comes off a bit too Katniss in Hunger Games at times for my taste.
That being said, the trailer’s much more good than bad.
The Reading List
Chris Hardwick, King of the Nerds, Is Expanding His Empire
This week in pop-culture history
- 1979 The TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century premiers
- 1983 The Evil Dead premiers in theaters
Direct Beam Comms #17
TV
Star Wars Rebels
The second season of the wonderful Star Wars Rebels animated series wrapped up last week on Disney XD. I’ve enjoyed this show since the first season and really appreciate how the creators of Star Wars Rebels have been using design elements that were created, but never used, for the original Star Wars trilogy. While this is a series seemingly directed towards children, see “animated” and “Disney,” non-the-less at times the stories of Star Wars Rebels have had a depth not present in most other series being produced these days.
Taking place before Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope, Star Wars Rebels follows the crew of the ship the “Ghost” who are smugglers by day and proto-rebels by night. It’s sort’a equal parts Firefly and Star Wars in that respect. But Star Wars Rebels also deals with all sorts of interesting ideas like if droids served in the rebellion, would they see themselves as veterans? And most importantly, how does Jedi Knight Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze Jr.) train his apprentice Ezra Bridger (Taylor Gray) without Bridger being lured to the dark side?
Plus there’s a young Darth Vader (no joke, voiced by Darth Vader himself James Earl Jones) who’s not quite as in-charge as he is in later years, called in almost like a relief pitcher in baseball when the lower “Inquisitors” can’t get the job done against the rebels.
In fact, I catch myself from time to time wondering why some episodes of Star Wars Rebels are more action oriented than story and plot oriented as so many episodes are. Then I have to remind myself; obvstentively Star Wars Rebels is a cartoon for kids. All the extra stuff that I love about the show is just an added benefit that most other animated series don’t bother with. A-
Art
The artist Euclase does some amazing Photoshop paintings featuring pop-culture figures like Tron, Furiosa and Riddick to name a very few. Her art is simply amazing and drool-worthy. Euclase’s work is, IMHO, in the same realm of that of the great James Bama.
Movies
Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice
So Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was released two weeks ago and did great at the box office. It received terrible reviews across the board but non-the-less the film broke all kinds of records and earned something like more than $460 million at the box office world-wide with $181 from the US alone on opening weekend. To put that number into perspective, Avengers: Age of Ultron earned $191 million its first weekend here in the US and went onto gross more than $1.4 billion worldwide.*
What does this mean for the comic book movies overall?
First, along with Deadpool which was R-rated and has made more than $600 million at the box office and will surly make loads more on home media, there’s no one way to make a superhero movie. Studios don’t have to follow the “Marvel Method;” or bright, shiny and poppy, in order to make a movie audiences are willing to see. If Marvel movies are going to be full of color and positivity, then DC seems to be taking the track of going dark and grim.
Which, with how much Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice had to contend with the movie taking years to be released and bad press and bad word-of-mouth, seems to have worked for DC. And with the upcoming Suicide Squad movie later this summer, a movie people are actually excited about, I can only imagine that the hits will keep coming for DC.
DC movie release schedule:
- Suicide Squad: August 5
- Wonder Woman: June 23, 2017
- Justice League 1: November 17, 2017
- The Flash: March 23, 2018
- Aquaman: June 27, 2018
- Batman: 2018
- Shazam: 2019
- Justice League 2: June 14, 2019
- Cyborg: April 3, 2020
- Green Lantern Corps: June 19, 2020
*Though Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice did have a massive drop in ticket sales from its first to second week in release. That being said the movie made a load of money its first week so I’m sure that it’ll be profitable, just not as profitable as other similar movies.
The Reading List
- NBC to Produce ‘A Few Good Men’ Live, Written by Aaron Sorkin
- ‘Superman,’ The Inside Story: Director Richard Donner Remembers Meeting Stallone to Play the Lead, Working With Brando, and a Near-Fatal Knife Attack
This week in pop-culture history
- King Kong opens in 1933.
- 2001: A Space Odyssey is released in 1968.
- In 1978 The TV series The Amazing Spider-Man debuts on CBS.
- The TV series Twin Peaks debuts in 1990 on ABC.