true detective – Dangerous Universe

Direct Beam Comms #159

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, TVDecember 16, 2018December 15, 2018

TV

This time of year I always get into the Christmas spirit and put on some of my favorite holiday movies like Die Hard and Lethal Weapon as well as rewatch some very special Christmas episodes of my favorite TV shows.

Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire

The very first episode of The Simpsons was in fact a Christmas special that aired on December 17, 1989. If you want to see just how good The Simpsons was when it was an animated show about people rather than a cartoon about broadly drawn characters as which it has become you should check out this very first one.

Sherlock — “The Abominable Bride”

While most of the modern Benedict Cumberbatch Sherlock episodes were set present day, the special 2015 Christmas episode “The Abominable Bride” was set in a more appropriate Sherlocky year of Christmastime, 1895.

Space: Above and Beyond — “The River of Stars”

Not too many hard-edged sci-fi shows have a Christmas episode, yet “The River of Stars” from Space: Above and Beyond was the exception.

Community — “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas”

Right at the height of the greatness that was Community came the fully animated Christmas episode “Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas” that had lots of laughs along with lots of tears and would go onto cement this series into the annals of history.

Batman: The Animated Series — “Christmas with the Joker”

In this episode that originally aired in 1992 Batman, in fact, did not smell nor does (spoiler alert) the Joker get away.

Black Mirror — “White Christmas”

It really isn’t the holidays without watching one of the most depressing episodes of Black Mirror ever in one entitled “White Christmas.” Divided into three chapters, each starring Jon Hamm and each more downbeat than the last, “White Christmas” begins with murder and ends with a man trapped in hellish loop of December 25th where the song “I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day” is on a constant, never-ending loop.

Happy holidays!

True Detective season 3 commercial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZP6t1FmVO8

Star Trek: Discovery season 2 commercial

Movies

Glass trailer

Godzilla: King of the Monsters trailer

What To Watch This Week

Tuesday

Last fall’s thriller Bad Times and the El Royale is available on digital download today.

Wednesday

Mary Poppins Returns for a sequel more than 50 years after the original in theaters. Let’s put it this way, when the previous Mary Poppins movie was released The Beatles had only just arrived in the US.

Friday

The one movie I thought would never get made since the character was the butt of many a joke for years, DC’s Aquaman, hits theaters today.

The sixth film in the 11 year old Transformers franchise, this one taking place in the 1980s, Bumblebee is released to movie screens today.

The Netflix original movie Bird Box, about people who kill themselves after seeing some paranormal thing and the survivors having to wander the world blindfolded otherwise they’ll suffer the same fate, is available today.

The second season of the HULU series Marvel’s Runaways is available today.

Cool Sites

Lost Media Wikia — We explore and hunt for lost media and we use teams, and our fellow community members to contribute.

The Reading & Watch List

Cool Movie Posters of the Week

Godzilla: King of the Monsters poster
Captain Marvel poster

Direct Beam Comms #153

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVNovember 4, 2018November 3, 2018

Rumor Control

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about sci-fi films in the late 1970s and early 1980s and I came up with a theory: for a time every sci-fi movie back then either wanted to be the next Star Wars or Alien. Released in 1977 Star Wars would quickly become one of the most influential movies ever, and while Alien didn’t do quite as well at the box office in 1979, it too would go onto become one of the most influential sci-fi movies in cinema history.

In 1978 there were such films as the dreadful Starcrash that was an Italian version of Star Wars and Battlestar Galacticawhich was the TV version of Star Wars that aired as a feature film in some countries. In 1979 Disney released their version of Star Wars with The Black Hole.

1980 saw the released of The Empire Strikes Back along with movies like Flash Gordon which, ironically, the source material from was influential to the creation of Star Wars while equally Star Wars was influential to the creation of the film version of Flash Gordon, as well as Battle Beyond the Stars which was Roger Corman’s low-budget version of Star Wars.

In 1981 there was Outland that was basically Alien minus the monster set on a mining colony and Galaxy of Terror that was Corman’s low-budget version of Alien.

Much like with Outland, Blade Runner from 1982 was essentially Alien minus the monster but set in a dystopian Los Angeles while The Thing also from that year was Alien only not on a futuristic spaceship but instead an Antarctic research station present day. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was more Star Wars than classic Star Trek in many regards with gigantic spaceships zapping each other while Disney’s Tron that year also owed a lot to Star Wars as well.

I think what changed things that year was the release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial that was a huge box office hit in 1982. That movie broke the mold as it was a sci-fi flick set present day about a nice alien visiting nice people on the sometimes not-so-nice Earth and, other than special effects wizardry, didn’t owe a thing to either Star Wars or Alien.

After 1982 there would be a much more diverse group of sci-fi movies like Terminator, Dune and Enemy Mine to be released. While there were still movies like The Last Starfighter that were essentially versions of Star Wars and Creature that was essentially a clone of Alien, for the most part filmmakers were done with trying to make new versions of Alien and Star Wars.

For a while, at least.

The one major sci-fi movie from the late 1970s that doesn’t fit the “clone” mold was Star Trek: The Motion Picture from 1979. While that film relies on the special effects revolution created with Star Wars, in no way shape or form did Star Trek: The Motion Picture want to be Star Wars. I think that’s because Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry was helming this first feature film version of the TV series and seemed to be an individual with a strong sense of how he wanted Star Trek: The Motion Picture to be. While I think he was fine with utilizing the special effects wizards that came out of Star Wars, at the same time he wanted his Star Trek to be something entirely different that Star Wars. Which, for better or worse it is.

TV

True Detective season 3 commercial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btoZfxs0pE0&feature=youtu.be

Comics

William Gibson’s Alien 3

Dark Horse Comics is releasing an adaptation of William Gibson’s script to Alien 3 in comic form starting this week. Gibson’s version would’ve been more of a direct sequel to Aliens than the theatrical Alien 3 was and would’ve featured both Hicks and Newt as well as Ripley and is considered by many to be one of the great unmade films of all-time.

After the deadly events of the film Aliens, the spaceship Sulaco carrying the sleeping bodies of Ripley, Hicks, Newt, and Bishop is intercepted by the Union of Progressive Peoples. What the UPP forces don’t expect is another deadly passenger that is about to unleash chaos between two governmental titans intent on developing the ultimate Cold War weapon of mass destruction.

What To Watch This Week

The Girl in the Spider's Web — The Girl in the Spider’s Web

Out this Friday are two new films in theaters. First up is the fifth film to bring anti-social anti-hero Lisbeth Salander (Claire Foy) to the big-screen The Girl in the Spider’s Web whileOverlord features American paratroopers battling it out with Nazi zombies during World War 2 in a horror/action flick.

The Reading & Watch List

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

From Russia with Love
Adventures of Captain Marvel

Direct Beam Comms #144

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, TVSeptember 2, 2018September 1, 2018

TV

Jack Ryan

I have this certain rule about movies. That rule, if I ever see that there’s a scene in a movie where a character is casually walking away from an explosion happening right behind them, I won’t see that movie. The first time someone walked away like that in a movie it was probably pretty cool, but over the years it’s become so lame it’s cliched and is an indication of the overall quality of said movie. I really haven’t had to worry about this with TV series since television budgets don’t really allow for effects like this, until recently. That was when I saw one of the posters for the Amazon Prime Jack Ryan TV series. There, the title character is walking away from an explosion that’s so immense it’s occurring over the horizon that would have to be so gigantic it would have been atomic in size.

And does Jack Ryan notice what’s happening behind him? Not at all.

Ultimately, I decided to give Jack Ryan a pass because, as Pee-Wee Herman so eloquently put it, “I’m a rule-breaker…”

The character of Jack Ryan was originally created by author Tom Clancy in his novel The Hunt for Red October (1984) and has been a feature of many books since. On screen Alec Baldwin appeared as Ryan in the movie version of that novel, then Harrison Ford in two films, Ben Affleck one and Chris Pine one too.

I’m a fan of the Jack Ryan character in general so I come at this new TV version as such, and as a fan I’m on the lookout for certain things. The history of the character is that he’s an analyst for the CIA who’s not a guy who goes out into the field to do things, he’s more comfortable tabulating statistics behind a desk. What happens is that Ryan’s thrust into situations he’s not prepared for — be it trying to find out if a Soviet submarine captain wants to nuke the US or defect or stop a terrorist attack his family is at the center to name a few.

With something like The Hunt for Red October, the only really Ryan’s even in the mix is because he’s one of the few people who knows of the special submarine in that movie and the background of its captain. And since he’s the only one with any knowledge whatsoever, he’s sent to try and figure things out. It’s not because he an expert marksman, has six-pack abs or knows eight silent ways to kill a man that he’s chosen to go, it’s because he has a little knowledge but still knows more than anyone else.

Wendell Pierce and John Krasinski in Jack Ryan

I don’t need much from the latest Jack Ryan TV series from Amazon, except the character should be somewhat true to this. Otherwise, if he’s going to be a Jason Bourne/James Bond/Captain America superhero, why make a Jack Ryan thing and not just make up a brand new character? I say let Jack Ryan be Jack Ryan.

Now comes the TV series version of the character in Jack Ryan, this time starring John Krasinski in the title role.

This version of of the character is more in-line with the Affleck one, they’re both young, single and brash. This Jack Ryan uncovers large sums of money moving through accounts overseas, and when it turns out Ryan is onto something he’s put onto a plane by the head of his department James Greer (Wendell Pierce) where the two end up at a CIA black site in order to interrogate suspects in moving the money. But there Ryan is thrust into being a man of action when the compound is attacked by terrorists in order to free these suspects.

I thought Jack Ryan was interesting, if it wasn’t quite strong enough to hook me just yet. The characters are thinly drawn — Ryan’s biggest characteristic is that he cares too much and Greer is one-note gruff. I also thought the plot was a sort of mish-mash of things that had come before like Zero Dark Thirty and 24.

I wish we could get a Jack Ryan TV series that was a little closer to the characters from the Baldwin/Ford films, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards these days. It seems as if every character like that on TV or in the movies has to have almost superhuman abilities, they are a perfect physical specimen, never get tired and are never afraid. Which is how I felt about this latest Jack Ryan character. That character didn’t feel like a character, he felt like a real guy and I think the series would’ve been better if he did.

Can I also mention I couldn’t tell if the audio mix on the first episode was off or if it was something about my setup? I practically had to turn my TV speakers up to 11 to hear it when anyone was talking. This could’ve also been a stylistic choice to have everyone mumble and talk under their breath which was a bit maddening. It would be nice to hear what people are speaking now and then to catch what’s all going on.

True Detective season 3 commercial

Movies

First Man trailer

What To Watch This Week

Tuesday

Mayans MC
The spin-off series of the super-successful FX series Sons of Anarchy about a group of terrorist motorcycle riders running guns, murdering people and selling drugs in small-town California debuts this week.

The Purge
A ten episode mini-series based on the The Purge film franchise begins Tuesday on USA. Since The Purge is now a TV series, does that mean there’ll be no more The Purge movies? We couldn’t be that lucky.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
One of the biggest hits of the summer is set to be released on digital download this week.

Friday

Iron Fist
A second season to the Marvel series begins this Friday on Netflix. The first one got ugly reviews so here’s hoping the second does a bit better.

The Reading & Watch List

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

Mayans MC poster
Overlord poster

Opening Credits Sunday: True Detective (2014)

MoviesFebruary 11, 2018February 8, 2018

Screaming for attention: 400 TV shows and counting

Feature, TVMay 6, 2016April 26, 2016

Late last year researches at FX Networks found that there were more than 400 scripted TV shows in 2015. Not 400 HOURS of scripted shows, but 400 DIFFERENT shows. Let that sink in for a minute. If there’s 400 scripted shows and each show has on average 10 episodes, some would have more and some less, that’s something like around 4,000 hours of NEW TV produced last year. To put that number in perspective, with that amount of content you could watch nothing but new TV shows 24 hours a day from December to mid-June.

And that’s not including news programs and game shows and variety shows and reality and TV movies either. That’s 4,000 hours of scripted dramas and comedies.

Part of why there’s so much “stuff” out there is that every channel wants to have a hit series that draws in viewers, which might turn a channel very few are watching, and therefor getting less ad dollars, into something many are watching and talking about and getting lots of ad dollars. Case in point AMC. A decade ago AMC aired classic movies, hence the name; American Movie Classics. Then in 2007 they launched Mad Men to great acclaim and have since launched other popular series like Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. Before, AMC was a channel that hardly anyone watched. Now, AMC is one of the most watched spots on TV and one that now makes a lot of money.

And with viewers “cutting the cord” as it were online services are also trying to get in with scripted shows too. Netflix and Amazon have have been creating series specifically for their service for a few years now and now other platforms like Hulu and YouTube are getting in on the game too with content of their own.

I watch a lot of TV, probably too much. And even with my prodigious TV habit I couldn’t watch everything last year that I probably would have in years past. For example, the series Humans on AMC looked interesting enough but I had too many things to watch at that time and never got around to it. And with a show like Jessica Jones on Netflix I did watch the first episode but when it didn’t immediately connect with me I moved onto something else.

Now I’m not saying that I’ll won’t go back and try and watch Jessica Jones or Humans again this summer when there used to be fewer new things to on, but I can’t guarantee it since nowadays there are just as many new and interesting series premiering during the summer as there are in the fall/winter months.

New shows last summer like Halt and Catch Fire, True Detective and The Carmichael Show, all of which I enjoyed a great deal, took whatever time I would normally have to checkout things I’d missed during the fall and instead put the focus on them. In fact, the only show I did catchup on last summer was Fargo, and that was only because a friend highly recommended it.

Which makes me wonder, what am I all missing? Years ago I was only ever able to get into The Wire when I caught up with it after HBO aired the first few seasons before the start of the third. Up until then I’d watch a few episodes at the start of each new season and give up. It was only because I had the time to catch up on it that I was able to be sucked in by that wonderful show.

But the last few years that really hasn’t been happening for me. I tell myself that I need to watch the latest season of House of Cards or Justified or Maron and something else new will appear on my pop-culture radar and I find myself putting off things for one more season.

I suppose the solution to all this is to count my blessings, too much of a good thing is better than nothing, and wait for the day that the eventual collapse of all this good stuff which is inevitable. There’s no way that all the networks and cable channels and online services can be pouring BILLIONS into these new shows with all expected to make back any money.

Maybe what I need to do is to get a colossal DVR and record EVERYTHING I might be interested in when the day comes after the pop-culture collapse when the only thing on to watch are reruns of The Big Bang Theory and episodes of Redneck/Swamp-Truckers/Fishermen/Miners/Pawn on The Discovery Channel.