My favorite book about things clipped from newspapers
As a kid I used to clip ads for movies out of the newspaper — Sundays were the best since the ads that day were in color.
While I gave up after a while, Michael Gingold didn’t and spent much of
the 1980s snipping ads for horror movies from papers in New York and
New England, of which became basis of his brilliant book Ad Nauseam: Newsprint Nightmares from the 1980s that collects more than 450 of these ads in one place. One thing I
found fascinating about the ads were that the film promoters had to
create different ads for different papers. What might fly in the New
York Post wouldn’t be acceptable in something more conservative like the
New York Times where artwork would have to be toned back, altered and
sometimes completely changed to fit their standards.
My favorite fictional occult investigative reporter
I’ve been obsessed with the character of Carl Kolchak (Darren
McGavin) for many a year now, but had to settle with DVD versions of the
two brilliant 1970s made-for-TV movies until now. Last fall Kino Lorber
released both Kolchak’s first appearance fighting a vampire in The Night Stalker (1972) and the next a ghoul The Night Strangler (1973) in glorious HD. If you’ve never seen these movies that went onto inspire things like The X-Files before, here’s your chance since made-for-TV movie or not, these two films are superb.
My favorite shows that woke me at 3AM in a cold sweat
Over the last few years there’s been a spate of really good horror series on TV, be it Hannibal from a few years ago or more recently things like Stranger Things, Black Mirror and The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix. And while there’s been horror on TV for years now, I can’t
think of another time when there’s been so much horror on TV that’s all
been so good, or scary. Yes, I really did wake up at 3AM last October after watching the first episode of The Haunting of Hill House that gave me a serious case of the heebie-jeebies.
My favorite comic book about one of the greatest unmade movies ever
Alien 3
Last fall Dark Horse Comics began releasing a comic book adaptation of the unmade movie Alien 3. “What,” you say, “Alien 3 was made, David Fincher directed it and it was released in 1992 you
imbecile!” And you’d be right, except before the Fincher version saw the
light of day there were quite a few different scripts for the movie
that were developed and then abandoned before producers settled on the
version that finally made it to theaters.
This unmade Alien 3 was written by cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson and would’ve been a more direct continuation of Aliens with Ripley, Hicks and Newt being the stars of the movie rather than just Ripley in the theatrical Alien 3.
The script has been floating around online for years now has been
called one of the greatest unmade movies ever. “Greatest” or not this Alien 3 never went into production because it was so big it would’ve been too
expensive to produce back in the early 1990s. But because there’s no
budget for special effects in a comic book we’re finally seeing this
version of the Aliens story come to life.
My favorite show about superheroes punching people really hard
Daredevil
There aren’t too many superhero TV shows that I’m into, one of the exceptions is Daredevil on Netflix. I think where Daredevil is so good while other superhero shows are so bland, is that the characters of Daredevil feel like real, breathing people. Whereas the characters of most other
superhero shows, I’m looking in your general direction The CW, don’t
feel real but instead feel like artificial characters constructed to be a
part of a superhero show. And I think that makes all the difference for Daredevil. Unfortunately, because of a contract dispute with Disney, Netflix cancelled much of their Marvel superhero TV series, Daredevil included meaning the third season of this show was also its final, which was a bummer of a way to end 2018.
I find that it’s really tough to rank TV series in this “best of” list every year. Like I think Better Call Saul and The Haunting of Hill House were my #1 and #2 shows of 2018, but for the rest the order is kind’a arbitrary. There were lots of great shows this year and putting them in any reasonable order is at best
guesswork and at worse however I felt the day I was generating this
list.
I’m honestly surprised that after all these years I still love Better Call Saul on AMC as much as I do. Usually, after a few seasons of a show I start
to lose interest but I haven’t so far with this one. I think that’s
because Better Call Saul has evolved and changed each season, meaning that what is Better Call Saul in its most recent fourth season is very much different than what it was in its first.
Essentially, Better Call Saul is the story of Jimmy McGill
(Bob Odenkirk) and his transformation from being a meek and mild
attorney to the infamous cut-throat lawyer to the criminal underworld
Saul Goodman. Maybe “transformation” isn’t the best word, maybe a better
one would be “descent.” Where Jimmy is a guy who can’t catch a break,
as he starts becoming more Saul-like ironically he starts catching loads
of breaks and begins making money doing things like selling disposable
cell phones to crooks and even getting his law license back by lying and
playing the sympathy card.
Crime does pay for Jimmy, even if we as the audience know
that the end of the road for Goodman doesn’t lead to a fancy house and
lots of riches, it leads to hiding out as a guy named “Gene” a lonely
manager of a Cinnabon in Nebraska, on the run and panic stricken
constantly looking over his shoulder for a bullet that may never come.
Each year there’s always at least one series a season that surprises me as to how good it is, and that show in 2018 was The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix. This horror series is the stuff of nightmares, and I mean that literally since watching it gave me real nightmares. While most horror shows follow the same tried and true path, there are monsters and they are out to get us, The Haunting of Hill House is quite a bit different. This series about a family set in two time
periods, one in the early 1990s where mom, dad and their four kids are
trying to flip what turns out to be a haunted house, and modern-day
where this family now grown are still dealing with all the ramifications
of what happened when they were living at Hill House, and especially
what happened the last night they stayed there, is fascinating.
Most horror shows rely on the scares first, second and last and while
there are a lot of scares in The Haunting of Hill House, see my report about nightmares above, it also has this underlying core of sadness to it.
The family of the 1990s were this not quite perfect but happy
together family unit, yet because of what happened to them, and what we
find during the course of the show is still happening to them, have splintered and shattered. They’re not quite family anymore and are instead simply “acquaintances.”
And honestly, I don’t know anything scarier than that.
What do you think this guy is eating on The Terror?
I never thought there’d be more than one horror series on my best of list yet this year there’s two. The second is another amazing AMC series The Terror about an expedition to the Arctic that went disastrously wrong in the
19th century. This fictionalized telling of a real-life event seems to
either be set a night, or the equally scary time of gloaming where the
sun has just set casting the world in a weird, mysterious glow. And
since this expedition was to the Arctic, a place where the sun is either
up for months at a time or set for an equally long period, it means
that much of the show is cast in this weird etherial light.
I hadn’t even heard of the FX series Mr Inbetween until I
stumbled upon a poster for the show that was set to start airing the
next day. I was suspicious at first about a series where the lead guy is
a hit-man in Australia who’s got anger management issues since that
sounds like something Tony was going through in The Sopranos 20 years ago. But Mr Inbetween is different and I was hooked right from the first scene. Starring and written by Scott Ryan, Mr Inbetween is the rare crime show that has fully fleshed characters, not character
archetypes. The stories vary from Ryan’s character Ray Shoesmith trying
to help out a friend who’s been beaten and put in the hospital while at
the same time trying to keep his new girlfriend in the dark about where
he slips off to at night when he goes out to hurt people.
The fourth season of the SyFy series The Expanse continued
to deliver in the realm of science fiction in one of the most satisfying
sci-fi series on TV these days. Wait, did I say “SyFy!?” Well, SyFy in
their infinite wisdom decided to cancel The Expanse shortly
before the latest superb season ended. I guess they must’ve needed its
time slot for more appropriate sci-fi shows like the reality monster
makeup series Face Off. Luckily, Amazon Prime quickly picked up The Expanse for a fifth season which is set to premiere there sometime next year.
The HBO dramety Barry about a depressed hitman (Bill Hader) who dreams of becoming an actor in LA was another surprise this year. Barry can go from hilariously funny to downright scary in the blink of an
eye, and I can’t think of any other show that can do that without coming
off cheesy. And the way Hader plays Barry, he comes off as a real,
troubled guy the audience is rooting for at the start of the show but by
the end of the first season might actively be hating because of some of
the things he does throughout the episodes.
I’m not quite sure how they do it, but a TV series about women’s
wrestling in the 1980s is one of the best things on Netflix right now.
Mostly about the behind the scenes lives of the women who star in this
show-within-a-show, GLOW chronicles how hard it is to make
something, even something as silly as a women’s wrestling show,
especially if you were a women in the 1980s.
Black Mirror is one of the most disturbingly accurate shows
on these days about what it’s like living in our 21st century where it
seems like we’re constantly crashing into the future where people
controlling the technology don’t always have our best interests in mind,
or even realize the ramifications of what they’re doing, while our
world constantly shifts around us and not always for the better.
Little Drummer Girl
Little Drummer Girl
Another limited series that ran on AMC this TV season was the adaptation of the John Le Carré novel Little Drummer Girl. I totally dig these spy series, especially ones by Le Carré like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Smiley’s People and now Little Drummer Girl too. I just wish AMC had given this one a little more time for people
to catch it, rather than burning its six episodes off in a three night
“event” the week of Thanksgiving.
I am very jaded and it takes a lot for a TV show of movie to
genuinely scare me. I’ve been watching scary movies since I was a little
kid so things like Freddy Kruger or Jason from Friday the 13th don’t frighten me in the least. Since I’ve been watching movies like
that since elementary school, to me most horror movies or TV series are
more boring that frightening — and don’t get me started on the total
yawnsville of most new horror. So when I heard about the latest Netflix
series The Haunting of Hill House I figured it would be yet another of the long line of horror “things” I’d find dull.
And after the first episode I figured I was right.
The series starts off kind’a slow following the Crain family over two
time periods, one in 1992 and the other present day. And because the
show jumps around a lot between time periods at first it’s a bit hard to
follow. In many ways, that first one felt like a typical modern horror
series with slick visuals but a shallow story. But there’s something
that happened at the end of that episode that genuinely gave me a fight,
it’s something that got my heart beating a little faster and left me
contemplating watching the next episode ASAP.
And later that night when I went to bed I was still thinking of the show. And even later on when I woke up at 3AM and was still thinking about The Haunting of Hill House,
and also thinking, “Wouldn’t it be scary if the thing at the end of the
episode reached out and grabbed my leg from under my bed,” that I knew
this series was something special.
Bad things are seen at Hill House
What starts off as a happy family in the 1990s turns into something more dark and fractured by 2018 in The Haunting of Hill House.
The stereotypical nuclear family with mom, dad, two brothers and three
sisters, don’t talk much anymore, and whatever communication they do
have is indirect. What drove them apart is something that happened to
them at Hill House, an estate the family was trying to flip back in
1992, that left the mother of the family (Carla Gugino) dead. The kids
all swear that they saw ghosts before what was left of the family
literally drove off with nothing more than the clothes on their backs
the last night they spent at the house.
When sister Nell (Victoria Pedretti) starts seeing ghosts again
present day and takes her own life, the family is forced back together
to confront their past which is spilling over into the present whether
they like it or not.
I think the ideas of The Haunting of Hill House are just as
scary as the visuals, and the visuals are pretty darn scary. Ideas like a
fractured family, siblings lost in their lives and looking for help but
finding none and a father so far removed from his kids he hasn’t spoken
to them in years is just as terrifying as the things the kids see in
the house. Be it a creature that lives in the basement, the “bent neck
lady” or the tall man that thumps along the halls at night are all
things that left a chill up my spine.
One thing that The Haunting of Hill House does that most
other horror movies and TV series don’t/are too afraid to do is that it
actually delves into the realm of sadness. Whether it’s the sadness over
the loss of Nell, which as the series progresses feels less and less
like a suicide from mental illness than something much darker, or even
the sadness of a once close family fractured and scattered to the winds
after what happened in 1992 The Haunting of Hill House is just as sad as it is scary.
And I shouldn’t forget those ghosts.
The Haunting of Hill House present day
They’re scary, there were a few times when I caught a glimpse of one
hiding in the background that I nearly jumped out of my seat. And there
are times when the characters of the show don’t see them, but the
viewers do which added a point or two to my blood pressure. It’s one
those things where there might be ghosts anywhere in the
house/background of scenes at any time, and because of that it adds a
layer of tension to scenes that generally would be tension-free.
There has been talk about how the ending of the first season of The Haunting of Hill House is a let-down, that it doesn’t fit with the rest of the show. Which I
think is total bunk. It fits perfectly well and if you’re paying
attention to everything that’s going on it’s really the only place
things could’ve ended up.
One thing is I’m not quite sure where The Haunting of Hill House is going to go from here? It’s one of those shows everyone was talking
about for a while and I can only imagine Netflix is going to want
another season of it. But the first season ended here so perfectly, and
there is an ending, there’s no cliffhanger that would easily lead to a
second season, I kind’a hope that The Haunting of Hill House is a one-and-done show, even if it means we might never get to spend time with the Crain’s again.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 ⭐⭐⭐
Mystery Science Theater 3000
It’s crazy to say, but I’m almost happy that the TV series MST3K was cancelled back in 1999. It’s only because the show went away nearly
20 years ago that it could have been brought back by Netflix in 2017
with the second season having debuted there last Friday. The revived MST3K still “feels” like genuine MST3K circa 1993 but with some smart updates for the 21st century. The basic
premise is the same with a guy (Jonah Ray) trapped on a satellite who,
along with his robot friends is forced to watch bad movie after bad
movie by an evil scientist (Felicia Day).
MST3K is basically an excuse for some really talented
comedians including Ray, Baron Vaughn and Hampton Yount who play the
robots to riff and make fun of these movies while they run.
It’s a smart idea that I’m surprised hasn’t been copied 1,000 times since MST3K went off the air but somehow hasn’t –– maybe getting ahold of those bad
movies is harder than it looks? Anyway, the simple fact that after one
of the most successful Kickstart campaigns in history reignited interest
in the show and Netflix went ahead and picked MST3K up and
began streaming it on their platform, means that since the series first
premiered 30 years ago we’re still getting new episodes of it and that’s
a good thing.
Movies
Once Upon a Deadpool trailer
They Shall Not Grow Old trailer
The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part trailer
Aquaman trailer
The Lion King
What To Watch This Week
Vikings
Tuesday
The latest Predator movie The Predator is available on digital download this week.
Wednesday
The sixth (!!!) season of Vikings begins Wednesday on History.
A collected work of Star Trek designer and concept artist John Eaves is due out this week.
Over the past few decades, John Eaves has had a major impact on the
look of the Star Trek Universe and played a pivotal role in shaping Gene
Roddenberry’s vision. Starting with his work on Star Trek V: The Final
Frontier, Eaves has worked as a production designer, illustrator, and
model maker across the franchise. He has been responsible for creating
many of the props and ships, and helped develop the Federation design,
from the U.S.S. Enterprise NCC–1701-E to the U.S.S. Discovery NCC–1031.
Star Trek: The Art of John Eaves represents the most extensive
collection of designs and illustrations created by Eaves across the Star
Trek Universe. Featuring fascinating pencil sketches and stunning
concept art, this visually dynamic book gives fans a unique in-depth
look into Eaves’ creative vision and the wealth of his remarkable work
at the center of this spectacular franchise.
I’m a little conflicted over the new Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House.
Part of it is really good but part of it is just okay. But I could
easily see the “okay” part turning good if given enough time.
Based on the Shirley Jackson novel of the same name that was turned
into two films, one in 1963 and one in 1999, this new ten episode
version takes place over two time periods. The first looks to be about
25 years ago when a family moves into renovate and flip a large manor
house named “Hill House.” Father (Henry Thomas), mother (Carla Gugino)
and five kids are living at the house during the renovation when weird
things start happening. Doors are locked and refuse to open, youngest
son Luke draws a woman he sees everyone assumes is an invisible friend
while youngest daughter Nell is haunted by an apparition at night.
Cut to present day where the family, now grown adults, have adult
problems and don’t quite get along. Especially Nell (Victoria Pedretti)
who seems unstable and Luke (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) who’s in rehab.
Nell’s never quite gotten over her experiences at the house, which
present day and past with the family at the house are flashed back and
forth quite a bit, and begins losing her grip on reality when the
apparition that haunted her as a little girl returns to her as an adult.
The part of The Haunting of Hill House I really liked was
all the stuff set in the past. Everything there from the acting to the
color choices to the design was really top notch, and scary too. I think
where things falter a bit in the first episode comes when the story is
set in modern times. To me that had the vibe of Six Feet Under: Paranormal Activity where a few of the characters were a bit too over the top for the
reality of the show that was set in the past. Of course Luke is addicted
to drugs and sister Theo (Kate Siegel) wears gloves all the time
because she’s a germaphobe — even if she doesn’t have problems bringing a
date home for a one-night-stand when we first meet her.
Present day in The Haunting of Hill House
It doesn’t help matters that all the time shifting in the episode got
to be a little confusing. At one point the family goes running out of
the house in the past when it seems as if things have gone all Amityville Horror on them one night and it’s either get out or die. But in the next scene
the family are back at the house and everything’s normal again since
that scene takes place sometime before the previous one. Even worse is
when part of the episode set present day flashes back a few years in
time, which left me scratching my head a minute until I was able to
figure out what was going on and play catch up with the scene.
I’m assuming this is done since this is how the characters in the
present are remembering what all happened in the past, which makes
sense. I just wish it had come off a little less confusing. My biggest
concern for the The Haunting of Hill House is that I’m not sure how they’re going to sustain the story over ten episodes and not slow things down too much?
Still, I can’t get over how effective and scary some scenes in the
first episode were or how good the stuff set in the past was. I also
liked how effetely darkness was handled in the episode. Here, the dark
is like a fog where things are clear close but lose detail and shape in
the distance which I really liked.
At the end of the episode something happens that I don’t want to
spoil that seems to indicate that the story set in the present might be
more than people just sitting around complaining about their lives.
Doctor Who ⭐⭐
The cast of Doctor Who
The eleventh modern, 38th overall, season of Doctor Who debuted last week on BBC America here in the US. For the first time in
55 years the Doctor is being played by a woman, Jodie Whittaker and
because this current season of the show has a new executive producer
with Chris Chibnall, Stephen Moffat left the series last season after
having produced it since 2010, in many ways this new season of Doctor Who feels like a fresh, new start.
My question is, is this new Doctor Who too fresh and new?
If memory serves me correctly always before whenever the Doctor would
“regenerate*” his companions, essentially side-characters who travel
the universe with the Doctor, would remain between the seasons. So
whereas the face of the lead character would change, the side ones would
stay the same giving the audience at least some continuity between lead
actor switches in the show. But this time everything’s new, from the
Doctor to the companions to the series’ look and feel and the producer
as well.
In this first episode the Doctor comes literally crashing down to
Earth and into a train after having been dumped out of her Tardis at the
end of the last episode that aired way back at Christmas.
She’s confused from having regenerated and finds herself in the middle
of an intergalactic hunt where a random unsuspecting person is picked to
be stalked by a clad-in-black armored wearing alien. Helping the Doctor
are four people she meets on the train. Much like with just about every
other companion the Doctor’s ever had, these individuals go from
skeptical to helping someone they’ve just met on an adventure in no time
flat.
Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor
If there’s anything that hurts the first episode it’s this lack of
anything connecting it to the past seasons. It’s almost like when Doctor Who was relaunched in 2005 with Christopher Eccleston in the title role.
That show was an almost total reinvention of the series, updated for a
21st century audience and the 2018 Doctor Who feels very much
the same way. It’s not as a severe a change as the 2005 one was with the
classic series, but there’s certainly a change present in the 2018 one
from what’s come before.
Still, while I noticed this I don’t seriously think this is going to
affect the quality of the show in a real, meaningful way. The latest
season of Doctor Who is different, but Whittaker is a lot of
fun in the title role and I love it when every so often TV series change
things around, tries something new and shake things up a bit. Shows
that rely on the same formula over and over again can get a bit boring
and sometimes changes like those made on Doctor Who can keep them feeling fresh and new.
*Regeneration is a brilliant ploy by the producers of the Doctor Who to keep the series going whenever the lead wanted to leave the show. He’d regenerate and a new face would take his place.
Better Call Saul ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Bob Odenkirk in Better Call Saul
Most TV dramas these days have stories that wash over the characters
like the sea does over the shore. The story is the thing that moves
around and acts upon the characters who mostly remain unchanged. And the
characters are just that, characters. They are archetypes — the doctor
who’s biggest flaw is that she cares too much about her job, the cop
who’s out of control, the scientist who’s brilliant but lacking social
skills — and don’t feel like people whatsoever.
I think that’s why I love the AMC series Better Call Saul so
much. In that show it’s not the story that interacts on the characters,
it’s the character interacting between each other that generates the
story. And the characters in Better Call Saul don’t feel like TV characters, they feel like real people.
This fourth season of Better Call Saul has been a series in
flux. We all know that eventually the character of Jimmy McGill (Bob
Odenkirk) will one day morph into the sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman who was
a part of the series Breaking Bad. And I think everyone,
myself included, thought this transformation would’ve taken place by the
end of the first season, only it didn’t. What we got instead was a slow
burn of Jimmy, who’s spent his life trying not to disappoint big
brother Chuck (Michael McKean) but failing miserably while also trying
to keep his relationship with girlfriend Kim (Rhea Seehorn) from
crumbling. And with each and every failure and misstep throughout the
seasons Jimmy draws closer and closer to down the path to Saulhood.
Looking back over the season(s) I think I know what went wrong with Jimmy, why he became a “bad guy” in Breaking Bad.
He always took the wrong lessons from his failures. Last season he
ended up losing his law license and rather than buckling down and doing
the right thing to wait out the mandatory period before he can get it
back by getting a normal job, he got a job at a cell phone store where
he realized the best way to make a little money was to sell “burners,”
disposable phones, to criminals for a markup.
If he’d only done the right thing I don’t think Jimmy would’ve ever
become Saul. Again and again Jimmy does the wrong thing, even if it’s
little wrong things, and because of this he edges closers and closer to
becoming the person from Breaking Bad.
Jonathan Banks
And that’s not to mention the wonderful Jonathan Banks as Mike
Ehrmantraut (I love that name) who’s going down a slippery-slope of his
own. He started out as a retired cop working as a parking lot attendant
and then graduated to becoming a member of a criminal organization led
by Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito). He’s a guy who’s great on details and
the small stuff and genuinely loves figuring things out for Fring. But
in the final episode of the season he’s asked to do something to someone
he genuinely likes which will cement his place in the organization and
get his nickname from Breaking Bad as the “Cleaner.”
Star Wars Resistance ⭐
Star Wars Resistance
The new Star Wars Resistance show on Disney Channel is a fun series that’s set right before the events of the movie Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Fighter pilot Kazuda Xiono (Christopher Sean) joins the Resistance and
becomes an undercover racing pilot in order to spy on the First Order.
Unfortunately, whereas the last Star Wars series, Star Wars Rebels,
had a lot of depth in terms of story and characters, even if it also
had elements that would appeal to the younger generation, Star Wars Resistance is a show meant to appeal to kids and not really adults. Which is fine, not everything Star Wars has to appeal to middle-aged men. But at the same time I really can’t see myself investing much time in something as lite as Star Wars Resistance in the long-run.
Mr Inbetween ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Scott Ryan in Mr Inbetween
The wonderful “blink and you’ll miss it because we’re gonna air two
episodes back to back at 11:30PM and blow through this one in less than a
month” series Mr Inbetween wrapped up its first season last
week after having debuted just a few weeks ago on FX. This Australian
show, written by and starring Scott Ryan, is about Ray Shoesmith who
does unsavory things for unsavory people and is quite good at his job.
While this sounds like a lot of other shows out there, especially ones on FX that’s a network know for over-the-top dramas, Mr Inbetween doesn’t feel like the typical FX show. To me the series it matches the most is Breakind Bad but through the lens of an Australian. Ray feels like a real person,
with problems, an ex-wife, daughter and girlfriend. And for the most
part he’s a guy who, other than some anger issues, is pretty normal.
It’s just that every so often he’s called on to hurt someone who owes
someone money, or even sometimes kill.
He’s a complex character and Mr Inbetween is a complex show I don’t think FX has ever seen the likes of.
The first season, just six episodes long, was mostly about Ray
dealing with his screwed up life. Be it explaining to a girlfriend why
he bashed two guys during a road-rage incident or stringing along two
hitmen out to kill him. It’s not really about any season-long story like
is in vogue with so many shows these days. Instead, Mr Inbetween is about characters first and story second.
Because this show was so different and so off-brand for FX, and since
they seemed to be trying their hardest to burn this one off as quickly
as possible, I figured Mr Inbetween was going to be one of
those “one and done” series that are here today and forgotten tomorrow.
But surprisingly it did okay for FX considering they didn’t air new
episodes until after 11PM and they decided to renew the show for a
second season.
Horray! Sometimes the good-guys do win, even if they’re bad-guys.
Deutschland 86 TV commercial
Movies
Pet Sematary trailer
Glass trailer
What To Watch This Week
The Old Dark House
Sunday
The follow-up to last winter’s James Cameron’s Story of Science Fiction is the new Eli Roth’s History of Horror that premiers on AMC tonight.
After airing on CBS for a season before moving to The CW where it became one of their more-popular series, Supergirl begins its fourth season today.
The new HBO series Camping about a family forced to get along together on a vacation to the outdoors debuts this week.
Monday
The only sci-fi movie to star Pee-Wee Herman, even if he’s listed in the credits as Paul Mall, Flight of the Navigator airs tonight on TCM.
Tuesday
Insomniac Theater: The mostly forgotten 1979 post-Star Wars Disney gem The Black Hole airs on TCM very early today.
Roseanne minus Roseanne The Conners premiers tonight on ABC.
Wednesday
TCM is set to air a whole slew of horror movies starring Boris Karloff including one of my favorites The Old Dark House tonight.
Friday
The third season of the Netflix hit Daredevil drops today.
Set 40 years after the original, Halloween premiers in theaters today. Though if we’re really picking up 40 years
after the original, wouldn’t that make Michael Myers a 60 to 70 years
old dude?
Saturday
Insomniac Theater: The totally trippy Dreamscape from 1984 about people traveling within other people’s dreams airs very
early Saturday morning on TCM. DVR this one for the “Snake Man” scene
alone!
Rumor is that Henry Cavill won’t be returning to the role of
Superman/Clark Kent/Kal-El he’s been playing in films since 2013. While
Cavill’s been portraying the character for five years, he’s only had one
movie of his own, the first Man of Steel, but has also played him in Batman vs Superman and Justice League.
Fans are reacting with the news with a bit of shock, but let’s face it,
Cavill was never going to play Superman forever. So far five guys have
played the character in the movies; Kirk Alyn, George Reeves,
Christopher Reeves, Brandon Routh and Cavill and a few more on TV;
George Reeves again, Tom Welling and Dean Cain.
And when it comes to the cartoons I’m not even sure how many have
voiced Superman. There are many as diverse as Bud Collyer who voiced him
on screen in the early 1940s to Jerry O’Connell who played him this
year in The Death of Superman.
And that’s not counting Nicolas Cage who very nearly played Superman in a 1990s production that would have been titled Superman Lives that would’ve been written by Kevin Smith and directed by Tim Burton.
So, in many ways Cavill is in good company. Sooner or later his
tenure would end and I think it’s best for these actors to leave on good
terms with roles like this. He’s played the character for a few years,
and whether or not you liked his version/take on the strange visitor
from another planet, I think he played him well.
In the short-term there’s been rumors that the new Shazam (Zachary
Levi) or the upcoming Supergirl will be filling in for the last son of
Krypton whenever a villain needs to be punched in the face really hard.
But fear not, eventually some other actor will be brought in to fill the
man of tomorrow’s boots.
Lost movies
The cast of Galaxy Quest
I’ve always been interested in versions of movies that almost were. One example of this is the recent Solo: A Star Wars Story.
That movie was originally going to be directed by Phil Lord and Chris
Miller who were three weeks away from being finished with their version
before being fired for “creative differences” and director Ron Howard
was brought in to complete the film/reshoot scenes.
While I really dig Howard’s version of the movie, I wonder what Lord
and Miller’s version would’ve been like? Here are a few other movies
that started out one way but ended another.
Enemy Mine Originally begun by director Richard Loncraine, this sci fi flick starring Dennis Quaid and Louis Gossett Jr. was halted and Loncraine fired when the studio didn’t like what he was delivering. Wolfgang Petersen was brought in and threw out Loncraine’s footage, redid everything from the special effects to the sets, reshot the script from the first page and delivered the finished film of what we now know of as Enemy Mine.
Galaxy Quest While there’s not another version of Galaxy Quest floating out there like there might with Solo: A Star Wars Story or Enemy Mine, the tone of Galaxy Quest did change after the film was completed. Originally, the movie was rated R and scenes were cut and objectionable language changed in order to secure a PG–13 rating. But if you pay close attention, there’s still a hint of this rated R version hiding in the PG–13 version of the movie that was released. When Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver’s characters are climbing through the innards of their ship the NSEA Protector, there’s a part where they have to crawl through a Rube Goldberg inspired section where it looks like everything inside is meant to cut, squash or burn the two to death. Weaver’s character takes one look at the setup and says, “Well, screw that!” But if you watch her mouth, what she’s really saying, and what was dubbed over, was “Well, f@#k that!”
Today that line might have survived the cut and made it into the
PG–13 version of the movie, but back in 1999 when the movie was released
that was a no-go.
The Girl in the Spider’s Web trailer
Captain Marvel trailer
TV
The Haunting of Hill House TV spot
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9OzG53VwIk
What To Watch This Week
Manifest
Monday
Mainfest This new series that looks absolutely not at all like a sequel to Lost mixed with This is Us premiers on NBC this week.
Tuesday
Doctor Who Beginning Tuesday morning with episodes of the Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood, BBC America will be airing 13 days straight of Doctor Who.
Thursday
Murphy Brown The old sitcom reboot train continues with Murphy Brown, a new show that picks up more than 20 years after the series ended back in 1998. And to be honest, I can’t believe Murphy Brown ran all the way ’til 1998.
The Good Place The third season of the oh-so-good The Good Place returns to NBC this week.
