Author: Bert Ehrmann

Dangerous Universe has been Bert’s web playground since 1998 when personal web sites were a rarity rather than the norm.

Direct Beam Comms #104

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, FeaturePosted on

Rumor Control

I’ve been working on my yearly “best of” TV series column for the Fort Wayne Reader the last few weeks and I’m amazed at how many great series there are out there. Depending on what all gets printed due to space limitations, right now I’ve got seven shows on my “best of” list. And I could pretty easily find seven more shows to put on the list and then seven after that. There’s so much great TV on nowadays it makes “good” TV series look average. These days I find myself watching one or two episodes of shows that just a few years ago I would have watched full seasons of simply because there was nothing else on. And I still wonder how many shows other people love that I end up skipping altogether since I just don’t have enough time to watch everything I should?

There are shows I don’t watch because I don’t have enough time and there are shows I don’t watch because I don’t get whatever streaming service or cable outlet they happen to be on that I don’t get. I’d love to watch shows like Star Trek: Discovery, The Runaways or Ash vs Evil Dead, but because I don’t pay for CBS All Access, Hulu or Starz means I don’t have an opportunity to check out those shows.

But honestly, though, I’d rather be in the position of there being too many good things to watch than what it was like a decade ago. To be sure there was good, no, great shows on then too — there always have been. The difference was the good things to watch a decade ago were few and far between. Looking back at my “best of” list even from a decade ago there are a few shows I’d consider “great” even by today’s standards, but the majority of the shows on that list are simply “good.” That’s not meant as a knock against those “good” shows, just that when I was building my list back in 2007 I had to put a lot of “good” shows on it when there were just a few “great” ones airing.

Now it’s an entirely different matter. There are so many shows that are “great” the problem is I don’t have enough room to list them all or time to write about everything. I have to think that there’s surly some “great” shows these days that don’t get critical acclaim since today shows can’t just be “great,” they also have to be “innovative” or “ground breaking” or “unique” too to get loads of people to watch them.

I do wonder where this all ends? There are so many networks, channels and services all creating original content and there are only so many eyeballs available to watch said original content, what does the TV landscape look like 10 years from now? I think we’ve already caught a glimpse of what’s coming with WGN. This year the channel which had done some original content of its own in the past with the likes of Manhattan and Salem cancelled all their original series and instead decided to focus on cheaper syndicated fare. In 2018 the channel will begin running series from Canada and Sweden instead of original programming. And that’s not saying those Canadian or Swedish shows might not be interesting, but they’re not being created by WGN.

It’s happened in the movies already. The 1970s were considered a high watermark of cinema in the US yet by the mid–1980s things had devolved to the point where everyone was chasing big box office successes rather than wanting to make interesting movies. For example, in 1976 a movie about Watergate All the President’s Men was the third highest grossing film in the US that year. By 1986 the third highest grossing movie was Platoon, but that was overshadowed by the likes of Top Gun and Crocodile Dundee as the two highest grossing movies that year.

I feel like we’re living what films went through with TV series right now. There’s a lot of really great stuff on, but right now that “great” stuff isn’t attracting as many viewers as the creators of these shows would like. Oddly enough that doesn’t matter since everyone’s in the same boat as it were ratings wise. I figure someday some network will “crack the code” and create some lowest common denominator (read “bad”) show that gets lots of viewers that’s easy to emulate that other outlets will start copying. We’ve kind’a seen that with reality TV already that’s very cheap to make that in a few cases lots of people watch. But I think it’s only a matter of time the same thing happens on the drama/comedy side of TV too.

It will be interesting to see how this all pans out someday. My only hope is that when everything does come crashing down and all networks start running repeats of Big Bang Theory and whatever hot new show from Croatia everyone’s talking about, that I’ll have missed enough of the “good” shows over the years that when all this happens I’ll have the chance to go back and check them out.

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Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

The best movie & TV posters of 2017

CategoriesFeature, MoviesPosted on

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.