Tag: venom

Venom ⭐⭐

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I am surprised that a movie based on the Marvel Comics character Venom ever got made. It seems like ever since the release of Spider-Man 3 more than a decade ago where Venom played a part there was talk of a movie featuring that character and even more recently with the Andrew Garfield version of Spider-Man there were rumors of a Venom spin-off movie then too. But over the years nothing ever happened and quite frankly I didn’t think anything was going to happen so I was kind’a surprised when this modern Venom movie was announced a few years back.

Venom opened late 2018 and was trashed by critics but it made a lot of money at the box office. Still, it took me until recently to checkout the movie on home media and honestly I think that was for the best. Venom does have its moments but for a relatively short superhero movie it drags in places and is kind’a boring.

Here, Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) is a crusading investigative journalist who because he asks the hard questions is fired from his job and loses his fiancé. The hard questions he was asking were to Carlton Drake (Riz Ahmed), a tech billionaire who while exploring the stars brought back a ship full of alien “symbiotes” that need to bond with a human host in order to survive our environment. Drake sees these symbiotes as a way to be able to survive things like climate change, but the symbiotes pretty much just want to eat us. That is except for the one called “Venom” who bonds with Brock and while it still needs to eat people in order to survive, agrees to only eat bad people and help Brock do good like stop Drake and his symbiote alien conquest.

I felt this when I heard about Venom and feel it still, but to me Venom and Eddie Brock are need to be the bad guys, but in Venom they’re mostly good. In the comics the Venom symbiote was the black Spider-Man costume for a long while, that’s why Venom has the spider-designed costume and shoots webs like Spidey. And after Spider-Man got rid of the symbiote, it found and bonded with Brock and became the anti-Spider-Man character Venom. Venom is one of the classic Spider-Man villains but the movies have changed him to a mostly good-guy and it’s just weird.

Why does Venom look like a spider and shoot webs like Spider-Man in Venom? Well, that’s never really explained. Why does Venom look monstrous? Well, that’s because the symbiotes look monstrous I guess.

All of which I could overlook if the story of Venom weren’t so by-the-numbers dull. It doesn’t help matters that the first hour of Venom is Venom-less and the big fight scene at the end of the movie, all superhero movies have a big fight scene at the end of the movie, is Venom against, essentially, another Venom.

But like I said this movie made bank at the box office and there’s already talk of another Venom in the works. Will that movie be as boring as this one? Only time will tell.

Direct Beam Comms #139

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TV

GLOW second season

Have I mentioned how hard it is to write about the Netflix series GLOW? The show about a women’s wrestling series in the mid–1980s has an element that’s a show-within-a-show, where episodes of the show-within-a-show GLOW are produced to “air” on LA cable TV. There’s also the fact that GLOW is based on the real-life Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling program that really did air all over the country in syndication in the mid to late 1980s.

So when writing about GLOW I’ve had to remember to differentiate the Netflix GLOW from the show-within-a-show GLOW while also keeping in mind that the modern GLOW was based on the 1980s Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling.

Things got even harder in this latest second season of GLOW on Netflix, which was brilliant by the way, when one of the episodes was presented as a “real-life” episode of the show-within-a-show GLOW that “aired” with commercials and everything. While that episode entitled “The Good Twin” may have been my favorite single episode of anything that’s aired in 2018 so far, it certainly was the funnest, it would be easier to describe the plot of The Matrix to someone who knows nothing about the movie rather than describe “The Good Twin” and keep everything straight.

The cast of GLOW

On one level “The Good Twin” is based on real episodes of the show Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling.

THEN “The Good Twin” is also an episode of a Netflix show starring all sorts of great actors like Alison Bree, Kate Nash and Betty Gilpin.

BUT THEN these actors are playing characters in GLOW from Ruth Wilder, Rhonda Richardson and Debbie Eagan.

BUT THEN EVEN DEEPER these characters on GLOW are also playing characters in the show-with-a-show GLOW from “Zoya the Destroya,” “Britannica” and “Liberty Bell.”

BUT THEN NOT TO GET CRAZY the show-with-a-show that “airs” on LA cable TV in 1986 is also called GLOW just like the Netflix show.

BUT THEN TO BRING IT ALL BACK AROUND the characters of GLOW are also kind’a sort’a based on the real-life characters from Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling including “Colonel Ninotchka,” “Godiva” and “Americana.”

Except these “real life” Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling characters are no more real than the ones from the Netflix GLOW since in the end they’re all fiction.

AAAAGGH! Someone get Philip K. Dick on the line, I’m gonna need help rebuilding my psyche trying to keep this all straight!

Anyways, the second season of the Netflix GLOW was wonderful and is a lot easier to watch that it is to write about.

Movies

Venom trailer

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Direct Beam Comms #138

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

Fall Movie Preview

The fall movie season is a bit of an oddity these days. Ever since the movie studios found out they could make billions off of superheroes and Star Wars, first the spring movie season started filling up with movies that would feel more at home during the summer, then the winter season as well. But the fall season has been relatively untouched with these kinds of movies as that was always the time of year that films were released with higher expectations than making wheelbarrows full of money, these were Oscar hopeful movies. While there are still a lot of movies due out that have Academy Awards on their minds this fall, there’s quite a few as well that feel more like summer blockbusters than award winners.

The Predator – September, 14

The Predator
The Predator

What was originally due out this summer before being pushed to the fall, the third film in the Predator franchise, unless you count those awful Aliens vs Predator movies of a few years ago and who wants to do that!? The Predator marks the return of Shane Black (Iron Man 3, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) to the sci-fi genera. Black co-starred as Hawkins and did some on-set rewriting on the first film. The Predator looks to move the action from the jungles of Central America in Predator and Los Angeles in Predator 2 to a rain-soaked little town where the only thing standing between the population and total destruction are a rag-tag team of special forces soldiers being carted off to prison.

Venom – October, 5

Venom
Venom

There’s some confusion with this one. Starring Tom Hardy, technically Venom takes place in the same film universe as the fan-favorite Spider-Man: Homecoming movie, except if reports are to be believed out of the San Diego Comic-Con your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man won’t be making an appearance in this one. And it almost seems as if Sony is positioning Venom, who’s been the nemesis of Spider-Man in the comics for 30 years now and even appeared in Spider-Man 3, to be more an anti-hero than a villain. Think Punisher rather than Ultron and that sounds more in-line with this new movie version of the character.

Halloween – October, 19

Halloween (2018)
Halloween (2018)

This latest version of Halloween will be the TENTH sequel to the original film and will bring back Jamie Lee Curtis in the Laurie Strode role she originated in the first film and has reprised on and off the last 40 years. This new Halloween reportedly ignores everything after Halloween II (1981) — though how can anyone ignore that ear-worm of a song “ten more days ’til Halloween” from Halloween III: Season of the Witch?

The Girl in the Spider’s Web – November, 9

The 2011 film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was supposed to be the first of a series of movies taken from the novels of Stieg Larsson directed by David Fincher and starring Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig. But for whatever reason it was decided to cast aside that creative team and start anew this time with director Fede Alvarez (Don’t Breathe) and co-stars Claire Foy and Sverrir Gudnason in the Mara/Daniel roles respectively.

Maybe Fincher’s vision for the Dragon Tattoo sequels was too intense since the movie did decently enough at the box office for something not starring super-heroes?

Alita: Battle Angel trailer

TV

Freaks and Geeks

Freaks and Geeks
Freaks and Geeks

Recently, I caught a documentary about the TV series Freaks and Geeks and had some memories of my own to share of this gem of a show.

  • I remember when Freaks and Geeks premiered it was difficult to see new episodes. NBC seemed to either air a lot of repeats or they moved the show around a lot to different timeslots.
  • I remember that the episode “Kim Kelly is My Friend” was controversial for its time and didn’t run in my area during the series original run.
  • In fact, I didn’t see all of the episodes of Freaks and Geeks until Fox Family reran the series in 2000 as there were a few episodes including “Kim Kelly is My Friend” that never aired on NBC.
  • When Fox Family began rerunning Freaks and Geeks and premiering unaired episodes I started recording the show on my EyeTV which was a device that allowed you to record a cable signal to your computer and save shows as MPGs. While I’m pretty sure I recorded the entire run this way, I’m also pretty sure I never watched them other than maybe the one time since the files it produced them were small and SD cable grainy too.
  • In 2003 or 2004 Shout! Factory promoted a DVD set of the entire series, urging people to preorder the set since this might be their only chance to own this, then, forgotten series on home media. Of course I ponied up something like $120 for the set.

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