Tag: the expanse

Direct Beam Comms #123

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

Lost in Space

The Lost in Space franchise has been around longer than the Star Trek franchise, yet while there’s been more than 700 episodes of Star Trek on TV and 13 movies in the last 50 years, with Lost in Space there was only the original 93 episodes of TV that ended in 1968 and one poorly received film in 1998. But the original concept behind the series is even older. It’s based on the novel Swiss Family Robinson from 1812 about a family marooned on an island after a shipwreck which was almost certainly inspired by the even earlier story Robinson Crusoe from 1719.

Lost in Space
Lost in Space

Lost in Space has been gone so long that there are a few generations of people who’ve grown up without it, and their only connection to the material is the series’ catch phrase, “Danger, Will Robinson!” I know I’ve only ever seen a smattering of classic Lost in Space episodes as I don’t ever remember it rerunning in my area when I was a kid.

While there hasn’t been much Lost in Space since that 1998 movie that starred William Hurt, Mimi Rogers and Gary Oldman there was an attempt to reboot Lost in Space on The WB in 2004 that would have starred Adrianne Palicki (currently starring in The Orville) as Judy Robinson. But that series never got any further than a single pilot episode and was never brought to series.

The Jupiter 2
The Jupiter 2

But now, 50 years after the original 1960s series ended comes a new Netflix version of Lost in Space. Starting Molly Parker and Toby Stephens as Maureen and John Robinson, the duo along with their three kids are part of an evacuation of the Earth after it was hit by a comet causing an ecological disaster. But instead of ending up where they were supposed to be the Robinsons were separated from the rest of their colonists when their ship the “Jupiter 2” crash landed on an uncharted planet. This planet is full of wonders and dangers as the family must overcome obstacle after obstacle in order to survive even their first day lost in space.

I enjoyed this new Lost in Space if there was a bit too much, erm, danger going on in the first episode for my taste. If it’s not the family crash landing on the planet than it’s Maureen breaking her leg or Judy (Taylor Russell) trapped in ice or young Will (Maxwell Jenkins) being lost in a woods … and that’s not all that happens in the first episode that feels overloaded.

Lost in Space isn’t Stranger Things or even something like The Expanse — and I think that’s a good thing. This new show feels more like a family adventure show, something that’s really not made anymore. I’m interested to see where this new Lost in Space goes, if I hope it slows down a bit on the whole family in peril every few minutes thing.

The Expanse

Over the last few years the one bright, shining spot on the Syfy channel has been The Expanse. There was a lot of talk when this series premiered that Syfy was trying to turn its act around, to become more like the channel it used to be that ran series like the Battlestar Galactica reboot rather than what it had become known for more recently as the home to cheap-o movies and schlocky genre reality series. Yet here we are three years later and Syfy still airs those cheap-o movies and is still producing schlocky reality shows.

The Expanse
The Expanse

Oh well, while it might be on a channel questionable character, it doesn’t take away from the fact that The Expanse is still one of the best series on TV no matter where it happens to air.

I remarked at the time The Expanse debuted that we were experiencing a dearth of “very large ships in outer space” shows. Which three years later we still mostly are — there’s also Star Trek: Discovery that covers this same sort of ground too but that’s the only other one I can think of. Which is really odd. We live in a time where sci-fi, horror and other genre series are king yet the most traditional sci-fi show out there of people zipping around the cosmos in ships is still mostly missing from the crop of current series. I’m not sure if this is because that “very large ships” bandwidth is being taken up by 700+ episodes of Star Trek that seem to air in constant rotation on TV, not that I’m complaining since I love that stuff, or if what’s popular sci-fi now are more Earth based shows like Black Mirror or Westworld? But the last few years The Expanse has been filling a very large hole as it were in my sci-fi yearnings since there’s not much else out there new that’s like it.

The crew of the Rocinante
The crew of the Rocinante

In The Expanse, it’s a few hundred years in the future where mankind has colonized most of the solar system. People are living on the Moon, Mars and on asteroids out in the “belt.” But even though it’s a bright, shiny future we’re still squabbling over petty things and mankind isn’t going to let a little thing like the discovery of something in the depths of space that threatens all life in our solar system dissuade us from having an all out solar-system war with the Earth on one side, Mars on the other and the people living in the belt caught in the middle.

Much of the first two seasons of The Expanse focused on the lead-up to and the eventual start of this war and this new third season of the show picks up mere moments after the second season ended, with the solar system exploding in war all around the crew of the Rocinante while the one person who might be able to stop the bloodshed Chrisjen Avasarala (Shohreh Aghdashloo) is being held hostage on a ship far out in space.

Much like with the Battlestar Galactica reboot The Expanse isn’t a show viewers can just start watching now, three seasons in. There’s so much backstory going on from plot to character relationships to politics it’s really only possible to start watching this show from the beginning.

So, if you haven’t seen The Expanse yet do yourself a favor and check the first two seasons first before jumping into this new third one. But it’s worth your time and effort to do so.

Movies

Solo: A Star Wars Story trailer

The Reading & Watch List

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

Posters of the Week

Direct Beam Comms #119

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

The X-Files season 11

Over the decades the series The X-Files has had many endings. The first of which was its ending in the 1998 theatrical film, then there was an ending to the series when that finished in 2002, there was also an ending to the 2008 “I want to believe” film and the ending to the series again when it returned to FOX for a short run in 2016, all of which could easily have stood as a series ending but didn’t. So this new ending to the current crop of The X-Files episodes on FOX next Wednesday is nothing new, if this time it feels more permanent than before.

The X-FIles

What started this season as a little confusing with the first episode evolved into a strong season of The X-Files with some standout-episodes like the hilarious “The Lost Art of Forehead Sweat,” the nearly dialog free “Rm9sbG93ZXJz,” the creepy “Familiar”and brilliant/gross “Nothing Lasts Forever.” For the most part, the episodes that worked this season were ones not tied to the overall conspiracy mythos. The conspiracy episodes were odd and really didn’t fit well with the stand-alone ones, but still, even a halfway decent episode of The X-Flies is better that most other series episodes out there these days.

Why does this ending to The X-Files feel different then before? It’s because this time Gillian Anderson has said she’s done with the show. Now this has happened in the past with co-star David Duchovny in the early 2000s when he effectively left the series after its seventh season. This time, though, with Duchovny pushing 60 and Gillian Anderson finding success in other shows, I could see this season of The X-Files being the last.

Well, last to a certain extent. Though I’d love to see Duchovny and Anderson return to The X-Files at some point in the future, even Darren McGavin famously kind’a sort’a reprised his role as Kolchak at age 76 in an episode of The X-Files, I think it’s more likely than not that at some point in the near future FOX will reboot the series with a brand new Mulder and Scully or with new characters replacing the old like has been done in the Star Trek and Star Wars films.

Still, to me Mulder and Scully will always be Duchovny and Anderson.

The Expanse season 3 TV spot

Comics

Infinity Gauntlet Box Set Slipcase Hardcover

Infinity Gauntlet Boxed SetThis nearly 5,000 page edition, that’s no type-o folks, will retail for $450 and is out this week just in time for the release of Avengers: Infinity War.

From Amazon:

The Mad Titan Thanos has gathered the Infinity Gems – and he plans to transform our universe into a nightmarish tribute to his true love, Death! Adam Warlock and the Silver Surfer unite Earth’s heroes and the universe’s cosmic powers to stand against Thanos and his Infinity Gauntlet…but when the dust settles, Adam Warlock’s good and evil sides – the Goddess and the Magus – may prove to be even bigger threats! Witness the birth of the Infinity Watch, as the universe must deal with infinite war and a cosmic crusade! But through all the chaos, what is Thanos’ secret agenda? Jim Starlin’s cosmic masterpiece, the 1990s’ “Infinity Trilogy,” is collected in full in this titanic box set, including every chapter, crossover and tie-in – plus an entire volume of bonus stories and behind-the scenes extras! It doesn’t get more Infinite than this!

Movies

Avengers: Infinity War trailer

The Movie Chain: #99: The Bourne Identity (2002)

Last week: The Martian

The Movie Chain is a weekly, micro-movie review where each week’s film is related to the previous week’s movie in some way.

The Bourne IdentityI remember how excited I got when The Bourne Identity was released. In 2002 the spy movie genera was waning with the stalwart James Bond franchise experiencing its last gasps before being rebooted in 2006. But otherwise there wasn’t much else out there spy-guy-wise. Enter The Bourne Identity.

Part of the reason I was excited about this one was that it seemed like it was a spy movie meant for my generation. Jason Bourne (Matt Damon of last week’s The Martian) was a young guy at the time and the movie was being directed by Doug Liman who’s previous film Go was, and still probably is, one of my all-time favorite films. Differentiating itself from the Bond franchise, in The Bourne Identity Jason Bourne is a man who’s lost his memory and is in a journey across Europe with Marie (Franka Potente) to find his origins. Along the way he finds that when backed into a corner or threatened he can kick almost anyone’s butt on “autopilot,” can fight his way out of any situation or get out of any building when things look bleak.

Watching The Bourne Identity today I’m surprised as to just how small this movie is when compared to the other films that would come. The big action sequence here is Bourne and Marie in a car chase, except they’re driving an old, beat-up Mini Cooper rather than some flashy car like in the Bond films. Of course, all this would come later and this “smallness” that was a feature of The Bourne Identity was chipped away in subsequent films until now there’s not much difference between Bourne and Bond.

One interesting thing — The Bourne Identity didn’t do that well at the box office when it was released. It certainly made money for the studio, but it wasn’t a smash movie that year. I think what saved the franchise from doom was word of mouth and strong DVD sales. Let’s put it this way — in 2002 The Bourne Identity wasn’t even a top 20 movie in terms of box office. In 2004 The Bourne Supremacy was in the top ten.

Next week: Dance the night away!

Rumor Control

I’ve been overdosing on sci-fi lately. It’s easy to do. These days sci-fi is the most popular type of genera programming so it seems as if every week or two there’s some new sci-fi movie or TV series to come along that demands attention. Be it a series like Black Mirror or movie like Mute, more and more is available every month.

Mute
Mute

And that’s not taking into account all the classic sci-fi series and movies out there too. In the last few weeks I’ve bought films like 2010, Outland and Akira and series like Babylon 5 and Battlestar Galactica as well. Some weeks, especially when the Olympics were on and there weren’t too many things to watch, I was sci-fi all the time. If I wasn’t working through series like Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams then I was sampling shows like Altered Carbon while also catching movies like Alien Resurrection on TV. It’s almost like TV programmers have finally figured out that more people than just the geeks like me are into sci-fi and have started adjusting their programming accordingly.

One Sunday I was flipping back and forth between Mad Max: Fury Road and Alien: Covenant with The Martian airing a little later on. I was in heaven.

What’s really cool are things like the two original Netflix movies that debuted the last few months. First was The Cloverfield Paradox and then Mute. While I didn’t think that either of these movies were great, I still dug both of them a lot and thought they were each a lot of fun.

And all these shows and movies seem to be just the tip of the iceberg as it were in 2018 sci-fi wise. There’s also the upcoming new ABC show The Crossing, Krypton on Syfy and Netflix series Lost in Space to look forward to as well as returning shows like The Expanse and Westworld too. And that’s just what’s coming out in the next few months. If the flood of sci-fi that’s been coming out for some time now continues into 2018 I can only imagine what wonders we’ll be brought.

WestworldI’ve been watching so much sci-fi the last few weeks/months I had to ask myself the question, is it too much? On the one hand how can “too much” sci-fi be a bad thing? On the other hand there’s so much of it coming out, and so much is good, is the flood of it diluting sci-fi in general? Like will people one day look back on 2018 at some point in the future where sci-fi has returned to its traditional levels, a few series on TV and a few movies a year, and see this year as an aberration?

I’d suppose so. I think we’re living in this weird time when there’s so many outlets for TV be it cable, broadcast, streaming, on demand, online, digital download… and all these outlets want their own original programming means that programmers are willing to take chances on things they might not have a few years ago. So instead of just getting clones of CSI and Grey’s Anatomy we get a lot of interesting shows too like The Orville and Counterpart and what sounds like interesting series like Fahrenheit 451.

I always seem to be able to find interesting things to watch, even in times like in the early 2000s when it was very hard to do so. But these days when there’s so much TV out there and so much of it is great I think it’s now possible to find great things I want to watch just in my favorite niche of sci-fi. My concern is that I’ll get lost in my little pop-culture bubble, will become so immersed in sci-fi that I’ll forget to pop my head out and take a look around at what else is out there. I love sci-fi and I can’t get enough of it, but there’s more out there TV and movie-wise than just sci-fi. Am I right, or am I crazy and should I just enjoy all my sci-fi programs while they last?

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

Posters of the week

Direct Beam Comms #117

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

McMafia ***/****

The last few years AMC has been mostly known as the network that airs The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, marathons of The Walking Dead, marathons of Fear the Walking Dead, repeats of The Walking Dead, repeats of Fear the Walking Dead, Talking Dead, marathons of Breaking Bad and, on occasion, wonderful shows like Better Call Saul. But, for the most part, what once was a network that used to air edgy shows like Mad Men and the above mentioned Breaking Bad now mostly devotes itself to airing back-episodes of shows about flesh-eating zombies. So when a show like McMafia comes along and there’s no characters literally eating other characters I’m not sure what to make of it?

I jest, but whereas McMafia feels like a show that would have fit perfectly on AMC ten years ago, today it feels a bit of an anachronism on there today. But I mean that in a good way.

In McMafia, James Norton plays 1%er fund manager Alex Godman who’s family emigrated to the UK from Russia decades ago. Alex’s life is wonderful. He’s got a beautiful girlfriend, a healthy family and a booming business. But when an item in the news wrongly claims ties from his fund to illegal money coming out of Russia it puts his business into a tailspin. And when Alex’s uncle is murdered, assassinated really, in front of him, he realizes that even though he was never directly tied to his father or uncle’s shady business practices, it doesn’t matter to the people against him and Alex needs to take the family crime mantle as it were or end up in an early grave.

In many ways McMafia reminds me of the TV series Damages, a seemingly legitimate business is involved in illegal activities, mixed with a series like Traffik where crime and corruption are worldwide and the only reason people don’t see it is because they don’t want to. I enjoyed McMafia a lot if I have a few reservations. I keep getting the feeling that this is going to turn into some bigger, British version of the series Breaking Bad. Where a seemingly nice and normal dude in the first episode becomes a not-so-nice and murderous man by the last one. Which is fine, I just hope that the creators of McMafia blaze their own trail rather than following the well-worn path established by Breaking Bad.

Heathers */****

The newest Paramount Network TV series Heathers is set to debut this Wednesday. Or at least it was until the debut of the series was pushed back until sometime later this year after real-life events at Parkland High overtook the fictional story in Heathers. However, the network released the series based on the 1989 movie of the same name a little early to streaming services so lots of people had the chance to see it before it was pulled last week.

The first episode of Heathers follows most of the major beats of the movie where at Westerberg High there are three people named “Heather,” all girls in the original but two girls and a guy here, who are the cool kids at the school. Alongside these Heathers is Veronica (Grace Victoria Cox) who’s semi-cool by association and new kid/dreamboat J.D. (James Scully) who quickly draws Veronica’s eye. One night out the two decide to go over to lead Heather’s (Melanie Field) house and take some embarrassing photos and videos and post them to her social networks. But things don’t go as planned and the two end up accidentally killing Heather.

Which is the first problem I had with the series. In the movie J.D. and Veronica (Christian Slater and Winona Ryder) actually kill Heather and spend the rest of the movie trying to cover it up by murdering others in that black comedy. Yet in the TV series, Veronica and J.D. think they’ve killed Heather when in fact she’s not dead. But a suicide video that J.D. And Veronica put together for her goes viral, so when Heather awakens she finds out that she’s famous. Which is really lame. The whole idea of the movie is of this weird, murderous spree J.D. tricks and the cajoles Veronica to go on. I’m assuming the TV version avoids the high school murder-spree thing since, unfortunately, kids being murdered at high schools is a fact of life in 2018 America. But if the creators of the TV Heathers aren’t going to address this in some way and instead are going to change the essence of this story then I don’t know why they’d choose to make a TV version of Heathers in the first place other than on name recognition alone?

Honestly, this all might be a case of the TV version of Heathers not being meant for me. I didn’t like the TV series Riverdale either and that one’s a big hit for The CW and Heathers might be a similar case for The Paramount Network. Regardless, I left watching the first episode TV version of Heathers with a bad taste in my mouth that I think only rewatching the movie version is going to get rid of.

The Expanse TV spot

Fahrenheit 451 TV spot

Legion season 2 TV spot

Comics

In the last few years comic book companies have been releasing big, hardcover collected editions of multi-issue comic stories that are very expensive. I find it ironic that for a medium that started where a kid could spend part of their weekly allowance to pickup the latest issue of whatever, for those same comics to be collected in these edition that cost around $100 each is kind’a crazy. Still, comic companies keep doing this with two sets due out this week so they must be popular.

Kamandi by Jack Kirby Omnibus

I’m a big fan of the Kamandi character and over the years have bought many issues of the comic as well as collected editions of all the issues. Of which a brand new edition is due out this week.

From DC:

One of Jack Kirby’s greatest epics of the 1970s is collected at last in a single hard-cover volume. These are the stories that introduced the postapocalyptic world of the Great Disaster and Kamandi, the last boy on Earth, along with his friends Prince Tuftan, Doctor Canus, Flower, Ben Boxer and more! Collects KAMANDI, THE LAST BOY ON EARTH #1–40!

Absolute WildC.A.T.S.

While I could see dropping $100+ on a good collected Kamandi edition, I really can’t see dropping that much on a collected WildC.A.T.S. edition. If you’re not familiar, WildC.A.T.S. was one of the original Image Comics titles, and while I loved these when they first came out I don’t think they’ve aged too well in the last 25 years. If anything, these comics are a sort of time-capsule to the 1990s style of comic books where action came first and story was a secondary afterthought at best.

From DC:

Twenty-five years ago, Jim Lee premiered the legendary team known as WildC.A.T.s and help launch Image Comics. Now, Jim’s entire WildC.A.T.s run is collected for the first time in one oversized Absolute volume, including WILDC.A.T.S #1–13 and #50, CYBERFORCE #1–3, WILDCATS #1 and WILDC.A.T.S/X-MEN: THE SILVER AGE #1. This edition also features remastered color for WILDC.A.T.S #1–4, the unpublished script for WILDCATS #2 and a new cover by Jim Lee!

Movies

The Movie Chain: #9: Sunshine (2004)

Last week: 28 Days Later…

The Movie Chain is a weekly, micro-movie review where each week’s film is related to the previous week’s movie in some way.

The movie genera of a doomed space mission is a popular one. There’s movies like Alien: Covenant, Life and Cloverfield: Paradoxto name recent few. I think it’s because this kind of movie captures a few different genres at once from sci-fi to mystery and a lot of times romance too is why it keeps getting made over and over again. Whereas most other movies that feature astronauts blasting off into the void end up finding some slobbering monster in their story, the more esoteric Sunshine plays things a little different.

Directed by Danny Boyle who also directed last week’s 28 Days Later…, in Sunshine the crew of the “Icarus II” are flying to our Sun in attempt to kickstart it back to life after something went wrong causing it to dim sending the Earth into a new ice age. Along the way the crew featuring a pre-Captain America Chris Evans, Rose Byrne and Cillian Murphy of the last three movies, find the remains of the “Icarus” and learn that spending too much time that close to a star as the crew of the “Icarus” did can have some very bad side-effects.

Practically a forgotten movie now, Sunshine is the rare sci-fi movie that takes place in the very near future, feels real along with having believable characters and one heck of a great story too.

Next week: Trapped on a far-off planet, surrounded by nothing, low on gas.

Cool Movie Posters of the Week

Direct Beam Comms #107

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

Rumor Control

2017: Sci-Fi Report

Looking back at 2017 I realized this year was actually a wonderful time for sci-fi movies and TV series. In years past there’s been one or two sci-fi things of quality to celebrate, but this year there are many. It feels weird writing this, but in 2017 sci-fi was the king of generas and every TV network is looking for the next Stranger Things and movie studio Star Wars. Now, not every movie or TV series below was successful, but “success” doesn’t always equate to “good” so I’ve listed everything I liked or found interesting in 2017.

Movies:

  • Alien: Covenant: This one didn’t get great reviews or do that well at the box-office, but I mean c’mon — it’s a frickin’ Alien movie directed by Ridley Scott. What’s not to love!?
  • Blade Runner: 2047: A remake 35 years later of a beloved movie using the latest computer technologies for special effects that has the original star return? Sounds interesting to me.
  • Ghost in the Machine: I know a lot of people didn’t dig this one but I liked it.
  • Kong: Skull Island: This is a silly, fun movie about a group of army soldiers vs a giant ape. It’s not the greatest, but is still a lot of fun.
  • Life: I didn’t dig this one overall, but still dug its setting and characters.
  • Passengers: Another one I found “ok.” Still, “ok” in 2017 would have probably been on my yearly “best of” list ten years ago.
  • Star Wars: The Last Jedi: I loved this movie. It had problems, but what Star Wars movie in the last 20 years hasn’t? The Last Jedi is better than The Force Awakens, and I liked The Force Awakens.
  • War for the Planet of the Apes: The final(?) modern, Planet of the Apes movie which was the perfect ending to a six year trilogy of films.

TV:

  • Black Mirror: Creepy as [email protected]#$ and one of the best things on TV at the moment.
  • Doctor Who: Who would have guessed that a series which originated in 1963 would still be going strong in 2017, and beyond?
  • The Expanse: I love, love, love this show.
  • The Orville: See above.
  • Star Trek: Discovery: The latest Star Trek series isn’t getting a lot of love by the fans, but it marks the return of Star Trek to TV after an absence of 12 years which I think is a good thing.
  • Stranger Things: This series is the biggest reason to have Netflix.
  • Star Wars: Rebels: This series about what happened between movies Episode III and IV is as smartly written and acted as any of the great TV series out there. Even if it’s an animated show that aires on Disney.
  • Westworld: An HBO series about a theme park filled with murderous cowboys set in the future? Sure sounds like the perfect show to me!

TV

A Christmas Story Live! **/****

I’ve never been a huge fan of Christmas movies. I don’t have anything against them, but personally I’ve never found any I liked. Except for one movie, that is; A Christmas Story (1983).

I think it was partly because when it was released A Christmas Story didn’t do well at the box office and therefor showed up a lot in the mid–1980s during movie Christmas marathons when, I’m assuming, the movie was cheap to air so it played all the time. My parents and grandparents might have been into It’s a Wonderful Life or White Christmas, but for me and my brother the only reason to sit through those yawn factories was that eventually A Christmas Story would air.

I remember watching A Christmas Story and thinking that I felt the same way that the kids of the movie felt in terms of school, parents and friends. And now when I watch the movie I identify more with Ralphie’s “Old Man” than Ralphie and yet the movie still works. I think it helps a great deal that the movie’s set in my home state of Indiana and, even though it was filmed in Ohio, A Christmas Story looks and feels right.

Several sequels to A Christmas Story would follow but none of them would tackle Christmas time like A Christmas Story so perfectly captured.

So to say that I was a little concerned that FOX would be airing a three hour long live “event” of A Christmas Story just before Christmas would not be an understatement. For a movie as beloved as A Christmas Story that’s traditionally aired back-to-back for 24 hours every Christmas Eve to Christmas to be remade as a something that looks like from all outwards appearances as a cheap ratings stunt turned my stomach a bit.

Still, I decided to give this A Christmas Story Live! a chance and watched it last Sunday.

And to be honest, it wasn’t bad. I didn’t end up watching the whole thing but about an hour’s worth at the start and then flipped back to it every once in a while. A Christmas Story Live! has a sort of polished feel to it that’s not present in the more realistic, run down and slightly threadbare original. I feel like if you’re a fan of musicals, then you might be interested in the three-hour long A Christmas Story Live!. If not, you should probably just skip it and stick with the original.

Movies

Sicario 2: Soldado trailer

Ocean’s 8 trailer

The Reading & Watch List

Cool Movie Posters of the Week