Dangerous Universe

TV

Deutschland 86 ⭐⭐⭐

The first Deutschland 83 series on Sundance ended its run way back in the summer of 2015. That series, about East German spy Martin Rauch (Jonas Nay) infiltrating West Germany in 1983 was pretty good, kind’a like The Americans but from a German perspective. And now comes the next season Deutschland 86 that unfortunately, much like Mr Inbetween on FX, seems to be being burned off by Sundance since the series is airing at the very desirable slot of midnight (Eastern). What’s crazy is Deutschland 86 could easily be airing in primetime except that Sundance are instead airing episodes of Law and Order that at this point are nearly 20 years old.

Anyway…

Now set in 1986 just four years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, which symbolically was the end of the Cold War and the beginning of German reunification, the action has shifted from averting a conflict between East and West Germany to instead the survival of East Germany. They’re literally running out of money as the Soviet Union begins pulling back as their economy begins to implode leaving East Germany short on everything from food to medicine. They’re so desperate that East German spy Lenora Rauch (Maria Schrader) is in South Africa trying to broker an arms deal, even though the South African government are their enemy, while back at home government officials Walter Schweppenstette (Sylvester Groth) and Annett Schneider (Sonja Gerhardt) work on a deal with a West German drug manufacturer to run a trial on some shady drugs in the East in order to obtain some hard currency.

Deutschland 86 wasn’t at all what I had expected. The first season was much more the traditional spy drama, with Martin having to hide in plain sight in the West as he desperately tries to avert World War III. But this season is a bit different. Now, these spies are using their trade not to get one up on the west, but to instead try and save their country as it begins spiraling down the drainpipe of history. It’s a very interesting story/twist that I’m really interested in seeing where it all goes.

What To Watch This Week

Sunday

In their final “Mummy Sunday” before Halloween, TCM will be airing The Mummy’s Shroud and Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb tonight.

Monday

TCM will be airing loads of horror movies today including The Curse of the Cat People, Children of the Dammed, Village of the Damned, Island of Lost Souls and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Tuesday

Insomniac Theater: Very early this morning TCM will run The Fly and The Frozen Dead.

Later on in the day they’ll also be airing King Kong and Things to Come.

The surprise hit of the summer The Meg is available on digital download today.

Wednesday – Halloween

Insomniac Theater: TCM will broadcast the classic Night of the Living Dead and the not-so-classic Plague of Zombies very early this morning.

The IFC horror series Stan Against Evil will debut its third season tonight.

TCM will be running loads of horror movies all day long including Dementia 13, Cat People, Carnival of Souls, Spirits of the Dead, From Beyond the Grave, Black Sabbath and Dead of Night. Halloween evening they have a marathon of movies featuring Vincent Price planned including House of Wax, Pit and the Pendulum, The Masque of the Red Death, House on Haunted Hill, Theater of Blood and The Last Man on Earth.

Thursday

Beginning very early Thursday morning TCM will be running a load of genre movies including Mighty Joe Young, The Valley of Gwangi, 2001: A Space Odyssey, One Million Years B.C., Brainstorm and Clash of the Titans.

HDNET Movies will be airing The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension this morning.

Friday

The final season of the Netflix series House of Cards is available today.

The second season of the animated Mike Judge Presents: Tales From the Tour Bus debuts tonight on Cinemax. Whereas the first season followed the behind the scenes goings on of country musicians, the second will follow funk.

Bohemian Rhapsody about the band Queen premiers in theaters today.

Saturday

Insomniac Theater: Based on a Stephen King story of the same name, though the two are wildly different, TCM will run The Lawnmower Man early this morning.

The Watch List

DC Collectibles – The Joker by Rick Baker

Rumor Control

I’ve been od’ing on horror movies the last few weeks, which is something I tend to do during the month of Halloween. Beginning in September I start DVRing scary movies and save them for October. And during October the TV channels air loads of horror movies too so at any one time I might have 10 of them queued up to watch next.

This October I’ve watched things as diverse as movies like The Old Dark House, Halloween and Evil Dead to name a few to TV series like The House on Haunted Hill and old episodes of Making Monsters too.

When I watch movies I try and watch them as uncut as possible but sometimes I do have to admit that I’ll watch them with commercials or even worse “edited for content.” It’s hard to pass up a showing of Creepshow even when it’s on AMC that tends to insert commercials every few minutes and cut the good parts of the movies to ribbons.

But all that ends this week.

Sure, I’ll still watch horror movies throughout the year, but not as many as I am right now. Part of that is there’s less of them airing on TV after October when everyone goes right into Christmas mode. The good news is that I’m still working my way through The House on Haunted Hill series too which I probably won’t get through until the end of the year.

But for the most part, I’ll be back to watching maybe one or two horror movies a month until next fall.

+++

This is also the time of year I start working on my “best of” columns for the end of the year. I usually do three of them; the best posters, TV shows and what I call “best of the rest” which is a catch-all. But this year I don’t think I’m going to be doing a “best of” posters column. It’s not like there weren’t a lot of good posters out this year, but I don’t think there were a lot of great ones either, with a few exceptions. And I don’t know if those few exceptions are enough to justify an entire column — or that I can come up with enough to write about them?

What sucks is that the “best of” posters column is usually one of the more popular things I write each year. And these columns tend to drive a lot of traffic to my site years after they’ve been published as well. So I’m a bit weary of not doing one because of that.

But on the other hand, is that a good enough reason to write a column I might not be into writing? Instead I might write a ”My Movie Rundown” column about all the movies I saw in 2018. I always felt weird about writing a “best of” movies column since I really don’t see too many movies a year, but maybe a general “rundown” column would make me feel better about writing about them?

Cool Movie Poster of the Week