Tag: thor ragnarok

Best of the rest

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Superheroes with a sense of humor

There is a tendency to make superhero movies dark — just look at almost any movie based on DC comics to see what I mean. That’s why I’m so happy that movies based on Marvel characters have a sense of humor, and lately those movies have even been funny too. Films this year like Thor: Ragnarok and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 had downright comedic elements that made me laugh more during them than any comedy film in recent memory. And to be honest, I’d rather go to a movie to have fun and laugh with the characters on screen who take revelry in the joys of having superpowers — than spend that time contemplating how bad things are. There’s too much of that kind of contemplation in real-life right now.

Even the non-Marvel Marvel movies were pretty good this year

If you ask me the best superhero movie of 2017 was the final X-Men movie Logan. It had it all; was well-acted, well written, had an interesting setting, etc. etc. etc. And the same goes for the latest Spider-Man movie Spider-Man: Homecoming too that had lots of humor and a great story too. And the most interesting thing about those films is that while they’re based on characters from Marvel, they were produced by studios other than Marvel Studios. 20th Century Fox for the X-Men characters and Sony for Spider-Man. Which means that it’s not just the geniuses at Marvel who can make good superhero movies, it can be anyone if they’re given enough leeway from the studios to see their vision through to the end without too much interference.

Taika Waititi

I think the director of the best Marvel Studios movie this year Taika Waititi with Thor: Ragnarok should be let to direct whatever movie he wants next. Be it comic book or otherwise. The guy had a hand in the brilliant Flight of the Conchords TV series and his last two movies before Ragnarok, What We Do in the Shadows and Hunt for the Wilderpeople were funny and moving and as brilliant as Ragnarok too. Heck, he also played via motion capture and voiced the character of Korg inRagnarok who arguably stole the show from the likes of Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and even Thor (Chris Hemsworth).

The Eclipse

I’ve been looking forward to the eclipse that happened last August for quite some time now. And though it wasn’t a total one in our area, nonetheless I thought it was pretty cool. It’s not every day that the Moon has the gall, downright audacity to pass in front of the Sun!

Bruce Springsteen had a really interesting life

I wasn’t huge fan of Bruce Springsteen’s music growing up. I think some of that had to do with him being one of the mega-music stars of the 1980s, his music being everywhere and his “Born in the USA” being used as an anthem for, well, just about everything. Still, I’m interested enough in Springsteen as a person to have checked out his autobiography Born to Run and am glad I did. Springsteen’s lived such a unique and varied life, from being penniless to almost

being drafted during the Vietnam War to then becoming one of the most successful musical acts of all time that his autobiography is one of the best reads I’ve had in a while. Oh, and he can really write and is one heck of a wordsmith too. Then again that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise as the guy’s become a multi-millionaire by being one of the world’s most recognizable songwriters.

The best story to take place in Antarctica since The Thing: Whiteout

The comic series Whiteout has been around for a while now but recently a new collected edition was released that includes every Whiteout comic story ever. About a US Marshall at a station in Antartica who has to investigate the first murder there, Whiteout is a nail-biter from beginning to end written by the great Greg Rucca with some of the best looking harsh, yet realistic looking art from Steve Lieber.

Direct Beam Comms #108

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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.

  1. Dunkirk

    Dunkirk

  2. Logan
  3. IT
  4. Thor: Ragnarok
  5. 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

The best movie & TV posters of 2017

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The best posters of 2017 were for the TV series Stranger Things.

Stranger Things

Not too many posters these days are illustrated. There was a time when all posters were, but that time ended with the advent of Photoshop where photos of the actors could be used in lieu of having an artist draw/paint them. But recently that’s changed a bit, especially with the company Mondo creating old-school illustrated posters. And to a certain extent Hollywood’s followed their lead and has produced a number of illustrated posters for big-budget movies. So it’s no surprise an outlet like Netflix would have one of their shows feature an illustrated poster too. What is surprising is how well the illustrated poster for Stranger Things turned out. Illustrator Kyle Lambert created this poster and the attention to detail on it is astounding. This poster manages to be both modern and have a classic 1980s movie poster touch at the same time.

I also like the non-illustrated posters for Stranger Things too. They all work together well as a set and evoke the theme of the series in just a few images.

Thor: Ragnarok

The posters for Thor: Ragnarok shouldn’t work, but they really do. The colors of them are hyper acidic and I get a sugar high just looking at them. I think what makes these posters work is that they still look like the standard Marvel movie posters, but because of the choice to use these colors make them unlike any Marvel movie poster that’s come before. I know I’ve always said I judge the best posters of the year based on whether or not I’d like to have them hanging on the walls of my office. But the posters for Thor: Ragnarok might be the exception to the rule. I adore these posters, but having to stare at them every day on the wall my be too much for my weak psyche to take.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Much like with the posters for Thor: Ragnarok, the posters for Star Wars: The Last Jedi don’t look like any other Star Wars poster I can think of yet still feel like posters for a Star Wars movie. To me the standard Star Wars poster has a bunch of characters on either black or white, and if the movie came out pre–2015 was probably illustrated by Drew Struzan. Except the posters for Star Wars: The Last Jedi look nothing like this. From the teaser poster to character to final, they have characters colored red on a while background. Which makes these posters totally different in the pantheon of Star Wars yet none-the-less still amazing.

Spider-Man: Homecoming

I’ve been in love with the playful designs of the Spider-Man: Homecoming posters since they started dropping earlier this year. These posters look like they’re capturing discrete moments in Peter Parker’s life balancing things as your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man like hiding clothes in a backpack or getting ready to leap off a tall building along with being a regular New York teenager. I especially like one of the posters where Spider-Man is framed perfectly in the center of the image but the background is askew. The first time I saw it and noticed that, and realized the angle that Spider-Man’s really at and it literally made me a bit dizzy.

Star Trek: Discovery

I don’t know if it’s the colors, the blocky typography or the design of the USS Discovery on the poster, but I’ve been a big fan of the teaser poster for Star Trek: Discovery every since it debuted last summer.

Wonder Woman

I really wanted to include the teaser poster for Wonder Woman last year, but I like to include posters for movies in my best of review that premier in the same year as the review. So I sat on this poster for a long time. It’s so simple, with just a near-silhouette of Wonder Woman over an orange and blue sky with the words “Power Grace Wisdom Wonder” below. It’s practically the perfect poster for this movie.

Ghost in the Shell

The Ghost in the Shell movie might have been a disappointment at the box office, but this poster is anything but. It features star Scarlett Johansson becoming invisible via a suit utilizing futuristic technology over the garish neon-infested city the movie takes place in.

Legion

The poster for the FX series Legion, which features the mind of the main character of the series exploding into a nebulous pink/blue mass is the perfect summation for the awesome-weirdness that is this show.

Blade Runner: 2049

It’s interesting to see how the designers for the posters to Blade Runner: 2049 handled things since Ghost in the Shell deals with many of the same themes this film does. Here, they chose to focus on the main characters of the movie like Ghost in the Shell, but to present them in such a way that their photos are totally colored either an intense orange or blue with just the actor’s name and movie title below.

The Dark Tower

The minute I realized I was looking at a city upside down with the negative space of the sky actually forming another city outline from below with the characters of the movie standing in the sky as it were made this poster go from “oh well” to “oh WOW!” for me.

Direct Beam Comms #71

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TV

Better Call Saul Season 3 episode 1 Grade: A

Some people think that Better Call Saul is a pale imitation of Breaking Bad, of which the latter is a prequel. When these people watch Better Call Saul they don’t want Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk), they want the guy Jimmy becomes in Breaking Bad; Saul Goodman. Except what I think these people are really getting at is that they’re not as much interested in a Better Call Saul TV series and aren’t willing to take that show on face value, what they really want more Breaking Bad.

Which I get, Breaking Bad is one of the most critically acclaimed and loved series of all-time except I’d like to point out one difference between Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul — Better Call Saul is the better series of the two.

Much like from the first to second and now second to third, this latest season of Better Call Saul kicks off right where the last season ended. With Jimmy having betrayed his brother Chuck (Michael McKeen) which ended up with Chuck in the ER and then Chuck turning the tables on Jimmy. And Mike Ehrmantraut* (Jonathan Banks) finding out that while he might be following and keeping tabs on the criminal element of Albuquerque, the criminal element is also keeping tabs on him.

I think this is all why Better Call Saul is better than Breaking Bad. I’ll admit that while Breaking Bad was a great series in its last few seasons, I honestly don’t think it was very good in its first few. I know I’m in the minority here, but I’ve tried watching that series from the start but could never get into it. That was until I started watching it from later on when the character of Saul Goodman was an integral part of the show. Then I liked Breaking Bad, a lot. But there’s the pesky fact that its first few seasons are just not that good, while Better Call Saul has been great right from the start.

I think a lot of that has to do that the creators of Breaking Bad having learned a lot of lessons from that series, especially what not to do, and applied them to Better Call Saul.

I find it ironic that Better Call Saul is a show with a lot of heart, from Jimmy trying and constantly failing to do right to his partner/girlfriend Kim (Rhea Seehorn) always trying to see the good in Jimmy and make him a better person. Even if in the end with the character of Saul and what he does/has done in Breaking Bad we know that’s a doomed task.

  • What’s not to love about his last name!?

Mystery Science Theater 3000 Season 12 episode 1 Grade: A-

It’s crazy to think about, but until last week the last new episode of MST3K aired nearly 18 years ago. What first started on a local TV station in Minneapolis in 1988, then moved over to the cable on The Comedy Channel which became Comedy Central before switching to The Sci-Fi Channel originally ended its initial run in 1999. I think most fans of the series, myself included, assumed that would mark the end of MST3K but a nearly $6 million dollar Kickstarter campaign in 2015 meant that there was now money to produce 14 brand new episodes of the classic series, which are now streaming on Netflix.

Jonah Ray and the bots

The classic MST3K is one of my seminal cultural touchstones, even if I only ever saw a handful of episodes when they originally aired. To me, MST3K is one of those shows that I keep coming back to year after year. And even though the sets and special effects of the show are cheesy, the spirit behind MST3K has been unmatched the last few decades. I think in the current era we live in when it’s very easy for filmmakers to make things look very slick, to have something like MST3K that at its core is about having things very raw and not slick at all is a bit of an anachronism. But it’s a good anachronism and is something that I adore.

This new MST3K is slightly updated with new faces like Jonah Ray in the lead as Jonah Heston as well as Felecia Day and Patton Oswalt now as the bad guys. But the bots are back and there are lots of familiar names working on the series behind the scenes so this new MST3K looks, feels and has the same tone as the classic series. There are the same cheesy hand-built sets, funny models and goofy inventions. But there are some updates too from Tom Servo sometimes flying around when they’re watching the movie and modern pop-culture references too. There’s a Walter White joke at one point.

The first Netflix MST3K episode takes on the dreadful Danish movie Reptilicus that I’d say was unwatchable in its original non-MST3K form. In fact the only thing that made the movie bearable was having it spoofed on MST3K.

Since all episodes are available and we can see what movies will be featured in upcoming episodes, my only wonder is that most of the movies that will be joked on are all at least 30 years old at this point? It’s not a complaint, just a wonder. Classic episodes of MST3K spoofed movies that were only a few years old at that point, it wasn’t all jokes being made about movies several decades old. I just wonder if getting the rights to even newer bad movies is more difficult that getting the rights to older, bad movies?

I’m Dying Up Here TV spot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kye0QwGX9E

Comics

Vigilante by Marv Wolfman Vol. 1

This edition collects the first 11 issues of the classic 1980s Vigilante series written by Mary Wolfman and illustrated by Keith Pollard. The 1980s Vigilante is DC’s kind’a sort’a answer to Marvel’s the Punisher, except whereas the Punisher doesn’t wear a disguise and goes after any criminals, Vigilante is masked and is a district attorney by day Adrian Chase who goes after the criminals he sees escape justice at the courthouse at night. From Amazon:

As a district attorney for New York City, Adrian Chase used the legal system to keep the streets safe. But when it came to protecting his own family, that system failed him. After losing his wife and children in a failed assassination attempt, Chase makes the fateful decision to take justice into his own hands!

Concealed beneath a featureless mask and supported by an arsenal of custom weaponry, Adrian Chase becomes the Vigilante—and declares all-out war on criminals, using their own brutal methods against them. But Chase’s new vocation comes with a price. Can inflicting violence on others truly heal the pain of his family’s death? Or is the Vigilante doomed to become the final casualty of his all-consuming need for revenge?

Movies

Star Wars: The Last Jedi trailer

Thor: Ragnarok trailer

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

  • 1946: Tim Curry of the mini-series IT and movie Legend is born
  • 1954: James Morrison, TC McQueen of Space: Above and Beyond is born
  • 1964: Andy Serkis of The Lord of the Rings and Rise of the Planet of the Apes is born
  • 1966: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, the Comedian of Watchmen is born
  • 1969: Joel de la Fuente, Paul Wang of Space: Above and Beyond is born
  • 1973: Soylent Green is released
  • 1979: James McAvoy, Charles Xavier of X-Men: First Class is born
  • 1979: The TV series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century premiers
  • 1996: The movie Mystery Science Theater 3000 opens
  • 2011: The first episode of Game of Thrones airs
  • 2013: Oblivion debuts in theaters