Category: Direct Beam Comms

Direct Beam Comms #118

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

Star Wars Rebels

Over the years I’ve had to remind myself that for the most part, Star Wars Rebels is a kid’s show. Time and time again I’d get sucked into the story of the series only to get pulled out when there’d be an episode that was all-action, or one where the characters break into some location they realistically shouldn’t be able to or do some otherwise fantastical thing that didn’t fit with the “sci-fi realism” other episodes. Then I’d have to remember, Star Wars Rebels is a kid’s show on a kid’s network, Disney XD, and all the episodes with the complex stories and character relationships that I’ve dug so much over the last four seasons but came to an end last week; those were the anomalies that didn’t fit with the standard kid’s show episodes.

But beautiful anomalies they were.

Star Wars Rebels was one of the first Star Wars “things” to debut after Disney bought the franchise from George Lucas a few years ago. Taking place sometime before the events of Episode IV, in Star Wars Rebels it’s dark days for the nascent rebellion who, at that point, literally have no hope of defeating the Empire. Enter the crew of the ship the Ghost lead by one of the only Jedi left alive after Episode III Kanan Jarrus (Freddie Prinze Jr.) and ace-pilot Hera Syndulla (Vanessa Marshall) who, along with their crew, try and stop the Empire’s expanse anyway they can while also teaching young Ezra Bridger (Taylor Gray) the ways of the Jedi. Along the way the likes of Darth Maul and even Darth Vader (voiced by James Earl Jones himself!!!) shows up to try and put an end to the rebellion.

The creators of Star Wars Rebels did a great job of not upsetting hard-core fans of Star Wars like me while at the same time telling new and interesting stories from a period that, up until then, wasn’t mined very well for its potential in previous media. Anyone who knows Star Wars knows that the Empire is at its height in Episode IV and because Star Wars Rebels takes place immediately before the start of that movie, we as the audience knows the characters on the show aren’t going to be the ones to defeat the Empire. But playing on this, in Star Wars Rebels many of the victories are minor ones, and because the focus of the show is of the crew of the Ghost, even these small victories can feel like big ones.

Over the course of four seasons there’s been a few ups and downs with Star Wars Rebels, which is to be expected. Some episodes worked better than others and some seasons worked better than others too. But it’s the fact that any of the episodes worked at all on a level other than simple kid’s action series that I think Star Wars Rebels was one of those hidden animation gems that fans of the genera flock to but most others ignore because, “I don’t watch cartoons.”

I suppose even if Star Wars Rebels is done I should be happy that the creators of the series got to tell their whole story without the show being cancelled before the end of the story as so many animated series are.

Legion TV spot

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

Lost in Space TV spot

Comics

New Mutants Epic Collection: Curse of the Valkyries Paperback

New Mutants Epic Collection: Curse of the Valkyries PaperbackI have a feeling that this collected edition of New Mutants was originally meant to coincide with the release of the New Mutants movie that was originally due out this spring. Except that movie was pushed back til next year while this collected edition is still being published on its original release date. This edition is kind’a interesting in that it marks the end of the original New Mutants story run right before Rob Liefeld took over the book up until issue #100 when New Mutants would come to an end and be transitioned over to X-Force.

From Marvel:

From the horror of Limbo to the glory of Asgard! As the fires of Inferno burn, the New Mutants must escape Magik’s dark domain – but that leaves the way open for S’ym and his demons to invade Earth! Luckily, X-Factor’s former wards, the X-Terminators, are on the scene! Can Rusty, Skids, Boom-Boom, Rictor, Artie, Leech and Wiz Kid help the New Mutants repel an army of demons and save Magik’s soul? Then, when Hela’s evil spell corrupts Mirage’s Valkyrie side, Doctor Strange lends a magical hand! But to cure Mirage completely, the New Mutants must travel to Asgard, home of the mighty Norse gods! The trouble is, Hela is scheming to murder Odin and conquer Asgard! Will a handful of mortal mutants be enough to defeat the Goddess of Death?

Star Wars: The Classic Newspaper Comics, Vol. 2

Star Wars: The Classic Newspaper Comics, Vol. 2The second collected edition of the Star Wars newspaper strips is out this week. If the first edition was somewhat unique in that all they had to go on was the first movie, then this edition had the first and second movie, the Marvel comic book stories and a few novels for the creators of the newspaper strips to draw from.

From IDW:

The epic seven-days-a-week sagas begin with “Han Solo at Stars’ End,” based on the novel by Brian Daley, adapted by Archie Goodwin and Alfredo Alcala, followed by seven complete adventures by the storied team of Archie Goodwin and artist Al Williamson. The pair had previously worked together on Creepy, Eerie, and Blazing Combat comics magazines, the Flash Gordon comic book, and 13 years on the Secret Agent Corrigan newspaper strip. They seamlessly shifted gears to take over, at George Lucas’s request, the Star Wars newspaper strip. Included are all strips from October 6, 1980 to February 8, 1981.

Movies

The Movie Chain: #10: The Martian (2015)

Last week: Sunshine

The Movie Chain is a weekly, micro-movie review where each week’s film is related to the previous week’s movie in some way.

The Martian posterI thought the film The Martian was okay when I first saw it. This movie about an astronaut (Matt Damon) marooned on Mars when he’s left behind after a natural disaster and has to survive without any realistic hope of rescue, then having to wait years for rescue to arrive wasn’t my favorite movie of the year. But over the last few years I’ve found myself watching it again, and again. In fact, I’ve probably watched parts of The Martian at least ten times.

I think part of the appeal of the movie for me is the theme of never giving in to desperation. I’m pretty much just the opposite — I’m the guy who would have stayed in the CDC building at the end of the first season of The Walking Dead along with Dr. Jenner. But to see a movie where the message is fight ‘em til you can’t and then fight some more really resonated with me like with the movie Dunkirk did a few weeks back.

I liked The Martian so much that I recently had to put a moratorium on watching it whenever it comes on TV. Sometimes I’ll get so infatuated with certain movies I’ll watch them so many times that I’ll start to dislike them because of over exposure and I don’t want that happening with The Martian.

Next week: No memories? No worries, solve your problems by kicking people in their heads and punching them in their faces.

Cool TV Posters of the Week

Posters of the weeb

Direct Beam Comms #117

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

McMafia ***/****

The last few years AMC has been mostly known as the network that airs The Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, marathons of The Walking Dead, marathons of Fear the Walking Dead, repeats of The Walking Dead, repeats of Fear the Walking Dead, Talking Dead, marathons of Breaking Bad and, on occasion, wonderful shows like Better Call Saul. But, for the most part, what once was a network that used to air edgy shows like Mad Men and the above mentioned Breaking Bad now mostly devotes itself to airing back-episodes of shows about flesh-eating zombies. So when a show like McMafia comes along and there’s no characters literally eating other characters I’m not sure what to make of it?

I jest, but whereas McMafia feels like a show that would have fit perfectly on AMC ten years ago, today it feels a bit of an anachronism on there today. But I mean that in a good way.

In McMafia, James Norton plays 1%er fund manager Alex Godman who’s family emigrated to the UK from Russia decades ago. Alex’s life is wonderful. He’s got a beautiful girlfriend, a healthy family and a booming business. But when an item in the news wrongly claims ties from his fund to illegal money coming out of Russia it puts his business into a tailspin. And when Alex’s uncle is murdered, assassinated really, in front of him, he realizes that even though he was never directly tied to his father or uncle’s shady business practices, it doesn’t matter to the people against him and Alex needs to take the family crime mantle as it were or end up in an early grave.

In many ways McMafia reminds me of the TV series Damages, a seemingly legitimate business is involved in illegal activities, mixed with a series like Traffik where crime and corruption are worldwide and the only reason people don’t see it is because they don’t want to. I enjoyed McMafia a lot if I have a few reservations. I keep getting the feeling that this is going to turn into some bigger, British version of the series Breaking Bad. Where a seemingly nice and normal dude in the first episode becomes a not-so-nice and murderous man by the last one. Which is fine, I just hope that the creators of McMafia blaze their own trail rather than following the well-worn path established by Breaking Bad.

Heathers */****

The newest Paramount Network TV series Heathers is set to debut this Wednesday. Or at least it was until the debut of the series was pushed back until sometime later this year after real-life events at Parkland High overtook the fictional story in Heathers. However, the network released the series based on the 1989 movie of the same name a little early to streaming services so lots of people had the chance to see it before it was pulled last week.

The first episode of Heathers follows most of the major beats of the movie where at Westerberg High there are three people named “Heather,” all girls in the original but two girls and a guy here, who are the cool kids at the school. Alongside these Heathers is Veronica (Grace Victoria Cox) who’s semi-cool by association and new kid/dreamboat J.D. (James Scully) who quickly draws Veronica’s eye. One night out the two decide to go over to lead Heather’s (Melanie Field) house and take some embarrassing photos and videos and post them to her social networks. But things don’t go as planned and the two end up accidentally killing Heather.

Which is the first problem I had with the series. In the movie J.D. and Veronica (Christian Slater and Winona Ryder) actually kill Heather and spend the rest of the movie trying to cover it up by murdering others in that black comedy. Yet in the TV series, Veronica and J.D. think they’ve killed Heather when in fact she’s not dead. But a suicide video that J.D. And Veronica put together for her goes viral, so when Heather awakens she finds out that she’s famous. Which is really lame. The whole idea of the movie is of this weird, murderous spree J.D. tricks and the cajoles Veronica to go on. I’m assuming the TV version avoids the high school murder-spree thing since, unfortunately, kids being murdered at high schools is a fact of life in 2018 America. But if the creators of the TV Heathers aren’t going to address this in some way and instead are going to change the essence of this story then I don’t know why they’d choose to make a TV version of Heathers in the first place other than on name recognition alone?

Honestly, this all might be a case of the TV version of Heathers not being meant for me. I didn’t like the TV series Riverdale either and that one’s a big hit for The CW and Heathers might be a similar case for The Paramount Network. Regardless, I left watching the first episode TV version of Heathers with a bad taste in my mouth that I think only rewatching the movie version is going to get rid of.

The Expanse TV spot

Fahrenheit 451 TV spot

Legion season 2 TV spot

Comics

In the last few years comic book companies have been releasing big, hardcover collected editions of multi-issue comic stories that are very expensive. I find it ironic that for a medium that started where a kid could spend part of their weekly allowance to pickup the latest issue of whatever, for those same comics to be collected in these edition that cost around $100 each is kind’a crazy. Still, comic companies keep doing this with two sets due out this week so they must be popular.

Kamandi by Jack Kirby Omnibus

I’m a big fan of the Kamandi character and over the years have bought many issues of the comic as well as collected editions of all the issues. Of which a brand new edition is due out this week.

From DC:

One of Jack Kirby’s greatest epics of the 1970s is collected at last in a single hard-cover volume. These are the stories that introduced the postapocalyptic world of the Great Disaster and Kamandi, the last boy on Earth, along with his friends Prince Tuftan, Doctor Canus, Flower, Ben Boxer and more! Collects KAMANDI, THE LAST BOY ON EARTH #1–40!

Absolute WildC.A.T.S.

While I could see dropping $100+ on a good collected Kamandi edition, I really can’t see dropping that much on a collected WildC.A.T.S. edition. If you’re not familiar, WildC.A.T.S. was one of the original Image Comics titles, and while I loved these when they first came out I don’t think they’ve aged too well in the last 25 years. If anything, these comics are a sort of time-capsule to the 1990s style of comic books where action came first and story was a secondary afterthought at best.

From DC:

Twenty-five years ago, Jim Lee premiered the legendary team known as WildC.A.T.s and help launch Image Comics. Now, Jim’s entire WildC.A.T.s run is collected for the first time in one oversized Absolute volume, including WILDC.A.T.S #1–13 and #50, CYBERFORCE #1–3, WILDCATS #1 and WILDC.A.T.S/X-MEN: THE SILVER AGE #1. This edition also features remastered color for WILDC.A.T.S #1–4, the unpublished script for WILDCATS #2 and a new cover by Jim Lee!

Movies

The Movie Chain: #9: Sunshine (2004)

Last week: 28 Days Later…

The Movie Chain is a weekly, micro-movie review where each week’s film is related to the previous week’s movie in some way.

The movie genera of a doomed space mission is a popular one. There’s movies like Alien: Covenant, Life and Cloverfield: Paradoxto name recent few. I think it’s because this kind of movie captures a few different genres at once from sci-fi to mystery and a lot of times romance too is why it keeps getting made over and over again. Whereas most other movies that feature astronauts blasting off into the void end up finding some slobbering monster in their story, the more esoteric Sunshine plays things a little different.

Directed by Danny Boyle who also directed last week’s 28 Days Later…, in Sunshine the crew of the “Icarus II” are flying to our Sun in attempt to kickstart it back to life after something went wrong causing it to dim sending the Earth into a new ice age. Along the way the crew featuring a pre-Captain America Chris Evans, Rose Byrne and Cillian Murphy of the last three movies, find the remains of the “Icarus” and learn that spending too much time that close to a star as the crew of the “Icarus” did can have some very bad side-effects.

Practically a forgotten movie now, Sunshine is the rare sci-fi movie that takes place in the very near future, feels real along with having believable characters and one heck of a great story too.

Next week: Trapped on a far-off planet, surrounded by nothing, low on gas.

Cool Movie Posters of the Week

Direct Beam Comms #116

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

The Frankenstein Chronicles **/****

While the new Netflix series The Frankenstein Chronicles may have debuted last week here in the US, the series starring Sean Bean actually began airing in the UK way back in 2015. This show about detective John Marlott (Bean) working in London in the 19th century is an interesting twist on the standard cop drama. Here, Marlott uncovers the body of a girl washed up on the banks of a river. But it turns out it’s not just one girl he’s found, it’s actually parts of nine different girls stitched together. And when he begins trying to find out who all the body parts belong to, Marlott soon begins finding that kids have been going missing all over the city and no one’s taken notice.

I thought that The Frankenstein Chronicles had a lot of interesting ideas from what if Dr. Frankenstein was a real person to how these murders and 19th century morals conflict with one and other. Because this killer is putting people together and trying to bring this creation back to life it’s a question for people back then if he’s in fact doomed the souls of the dead to an eternity of damnation.

The again, after one episode I couldn’t quite escape the fact that at its core The Frankenstein Chronicles is a detective show, of which there seems to be 1,001 of these days. I think what helps this series is that there’s only twelve episode in the first two seasons, of which both are currently streamable. So I can’t imagine there’ll be enough time to do a lot of false leads in The Frankenstein Chronicles which for me anyways, always turns detective shows into great bores.

Lost in Space promo

Movies

The Movie Chain: #8: 28 Days Later… (2002)

Last week: Dunkirk

The Movie Chain is a weekly, micro-movie review where each week’s film is related to the previous week’s movie in some way.

As I sit here typing this it’s hard to believe that 16 years ago zombies weren’t much a part of films that were being released and weren’t a part of TV at all. Sure, there were a few zombie movies around and Romero’s Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead were available on VHS and DVD, but for the most part back in 2002 only horror aficionados were watching anything that featured a flesh-chomping zed.

That was until the release of 28 Days Later…

That movie, about a bike messenger (Cillian Murphy also of last week’s Dunkirk) awakening in a hospital bed from a coma 28 days after a zombie apocalypse has burned through Great Britain single handedly took zombies from VHS rental fodder to the forefront of horror. The movie was popular, had several different releases with different endings attached in theaters and, more importantly, made a lot of money.

After 28 Days Later… would come a remake of Dawn of the Dead in 2004 that “borrowed” fast zombies from 28 Days Later… and the start of the comic series The Walking Dead in 2003 which would “borrow” the idea of its main character awakening in a hospital bed sometime after after the rise of the zombies and the collapse of society and basically took everything else from Day of the Dead.

And today the most popular type of horror monster is the zombie with the series The Walking Dead as one of the most popular shows on TV with there being several zombie movies out each year.

But without 28 Days Later… I doubt any of this would exist.

Next week: “So if you wake up one morning and it’s a particularly beautiful day, you’ll know we made it.”

Rumor Control

I started working on my yearly “Summer movie preview” column a few weeks ago. I got all the movies down I wanted to cover on the dates they’ll premiere. Even though these movies won’t open for a few months I felt confident enough listing them and starting work now since the dates of summer movies are always set in stone many months in advance. Except not so much this year. First Deadpool changed dates which wasn’t a big deal since it was only moving a week to keep away from the next Star Wars movie. But more recently two movies pulled out of summer altogether; Alita: Battle Angel and The Predator. I can’t really remember the last time two movies left their summer move slot altogether so late in the game and so close to summer.

I wonder if this is because nowadays movies are made so quickly and they require so much special effects work that sometimes the movies quite literally can’t be made fast enough to hit their release dates?

+++

Over the last few years I’ve found myself becoming very picky with what I watch. I can afford to be, if I can’t find something to watch with my satellite subscription I can always watch something on the hundreds of DVDs, tens of Blu-rays, dozens of digital downloads or any of the various streaming services I subscribe to like Netflix or Amazon Prime. At any given moment I have quite literally thousands of things I can watch at my fingertips.

So why is it that more times that not I find myself spending hours looking for something to watch on a Saturday night?

I suppose it’s all that choice. Even when I might find something I might want to watch there’s always the possibility that if I only spend a few more minutes looking that I’ll find something I really want to watch. And sometimes this does happen when I’m just about ready to give up looking and settle on something when I’ll come across something I’d wanted to see for some time but hadn’t. When this happens it’s like winning the lottery. But much like the lottery this doesn’t happen often and I’m more likely to spend time scrolling the titles than actually watching anything.

I don’t remember this being a big problem in the past. Years ago before on-demand, streaming, Blu-rays and DVDs I’d spend my TV time watching whatever happened to be on. A lot of the stuff I watched wasn’t very good and the only reason I watched it was because it was on when I had the TV on. Some of the stuff I watched was bad and a few programs were great, but those were the minority. In fact, I feel that my tastes in pop-culture right now was partially built on me watching things I wouldn’t normally and only saw them because there was nothing else on TV at the time.

And honestly, for better or worse, I’m not like that anymore. I can’t remember the last time I watched anything I really didn’t want to. I’ve even stopped watching good shows because I’ve grown bored with them since the flood of new content out there means there’s always something else new to checkout. I don’t know how I feel about that. On the one hand I’m not wasting my time watching some crappy show or movie just to fill the time. On the other hand because at one time I was willing to do that meant I discovered lots and lots of interesting TV series and movies like Doctor Who and The Last Man on Earth and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and The Night of the Living Dead to name a scant few that I would have otherwise missed.

Then again, in today’s age when something’s really great people will talk about it online and it will quickly become apparent what’s worth checking out and what’s not. However, there’s been many times when my tastes have disagreed with the pop-culture masses which would mean that if I’m not checking movies and TV series myself I’m invariably going to miss things I might otherwise like.

What drives me wild is we live in a world of almost limitless, new and good movies and TV series I find myself watching the same old stuff over and over again. I don’t necessarily think there’s anything wrong with watching, say, The Martian a few times over the course of a year. People listen to albums over and over again and there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with that. On the other hand, in a time where there’s more than 500 TV dramas and comedies scheduled to debut in 2018 shouldn’t I be at least checking out as many new shows as I can?

There is some comfort in watching the same movie or TV series over and over again. You know what you’re going to be watching something you like and not sitting through something that’s just as likely to be cruddy than cool. But if I’m not checking out new things, how will I keep discovering these good movies I’d want to watch over and over again in the first place?

What’s starting to get to me is that while we seem to be moving away from cable and satellite TV packages as a source for our entertainment, it means that to keep up on every movie and TV series being release it means you have to subscribe to many streaming services to do so. Before it used to be a case of getting a basic cable package and a paying for a few premium channels and you’d be set. Now it’s all that plus Netflix, Hulu, Prime, Acorn, CBS All Access, etc, etc, etc… and it’s even getting crazier with the likes of Apple, Facebook and YouTube all now getting into the original TV content game too.

I love drama and comedy TV and movies and love following the development of new series and movies, but at this point even I’m overwhelmed. There’s too many choices out there for streaming content to pick from and there seems to be more and more coming everyday. It’s too much and I’m tired always having to play catchup. I’ve decide that I’m going to stick with my current TV setup for a while longer — a basic package on DirecTV that includes HBO plus Netflix and Amazon Prime. And the rest is just going to have to live without me for a while. Series like The Handmaid’s Tale, Star Trek: Discovery and the upcoming Amazing Stories sound really good, but I not willing to subscribe to another service just to watch them.

With movies and TV series I just want to be entertained but with the way things are going it’s all becoming one big hassle to find that entertainment.

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

Direct Beam Comms #115

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVPosted on

TV

The Punisher ***/****

There was realistically no way I wasn’t going to like the first season of the Netflix series The Punisher. I’ve been a fan of the character most of my life, have collected Punisher comics for forever now and have watched all of the Punisher movies to date. So even if this new Netflix The Punisher was just good, I’d probably still be gushing over it no matter what. So it feels good to be able to write that The Punisher on Netflix isn’t just good, it’s great and is my favorite Marvel Netflix series to date.

Jon Bernthal
Jon Bernthal

What I was surprised most with The Punisher was just how it deviated from where I thought the series was going to go from where the character ended up in the last season of Daredevil. It would make perfect sense if the first season of The Punisher would follow Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) hunting down the men who killed his family with later seasons having the character expand and doing something more. Except that’s not what happened. Here, in the first ten minutes of The Punisher Castle eliminates all these people in some very creative ways which pretty much ends that story. And instead of being a great revenger of crime he becomes a laborer on a construction site trying, but not quite ever being able, to put his life back together.

But since this series is called The Punisher and not Frank Castle of course we know that at some point he’s going to have to start battling crime and that comes in a very unique way here. In the show Castle meets David Lieberman (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) aka “Micro” an ex-CIA computer expert who faked his own death in order to keep his family safe. So, while Castle doesn’t have a family to go home to Lieberman does but can only watch them at a distance in order to keep them safe.

Jon Bernthal and Ebon Moss-Bachrach

As the two character’s paths cross, Frank realizes that the death of his family might have some connections within the government and more specifically within a secretive special forces squad he was once a member of. And Lieberman realizes that if there’s any chance he’ll ever get to be with his family again it’ll probably be through helping Castle.

In the past I’ve lamented over the lack of blood in the Marvel movies. There, characters can be pummeled to pulp, thrown against buildings and be exposed to colossal explosions which leads to the injuries in the films like maybe a trickle of blood out of the corner of someone’s mouth. While I get that a) these are superheroes and b) they’re in what’s ostensively family movies, none-the-less this is something that’s bugged me over the years. So when something comes along like The Punisher where characters can be hurt and there is a level of blood and gore not seen in any Marvel movie to date, it’s something I notice and appreciate. I like that The Punisher is a show created for viewers who are looking for something a little more intense than PG–13.

That being said, I think maybe the gore was overly done here. Well, maybe that’s not right — I thought the level of gore was good, but maybe the level of recovery time for people like Frank Castle was a little short. In some episodes Frank’s so badly injured that he has punctured lungs and broken ribs yet is up and ready to fight in a few hours time which realistically would mean weeks or months of recovery. Even a character like Billy Russo (Ben Barnes) at one point is shot in the shoulder. Which, even assuming the bullet missed the bone would require a long recovery in order to gain mobility back, is ready to have a knife-fight mere hours later.

Amber Rose Revah and Michael Nathanson

But this is a small complaint about a show that I liked a whole lot.

What I find most interesting about The Punisher is that in a lot of regards the character of the Punisher is someone the government can, and in the series does, categorize as a domestic terrorist. The guy carries rocket launchers around New York city and isn’t afraid to use them, assaults federal agents and has gigantic gunfights so there is a bit of people wanting to bring the Punisher to justice if just so that it cuts down on the open-street firefights in The Punisher. What’s fascinating is that while in The Punisher it’s shown that the media and politicians go after him for being a dangerous criminal, since he’s trying to eliminate crime and demolish corruption he can be a nice little tool for them to use as a means to an end. They don’t mind turning a blind eye to the tactics of the Punisher from time to time if it means furthering their agenda.

Movies

The Movie Chain: #7: Dunkirk (2017)

Last week: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

The Movie Chain is a weekly, micro-movie review where each week’s film is related to the previous week’s movie in some way.

When the movie Dunkirk was announced I honestly didn’t think it would make for a great movie. It’s the story of the British army having to evacuate from France after being routed by German forces in the early days of the second world war. So how do you make an interesting movie about one of the greatest defeats in military history and not make the movie feel defeatist? How writer/director Christopher Nolan did that was that rather than making a movie about defeat, instead Dunkirk is a movie about survival and is one of the most timely films in memory.

Told via several different perspectives during the evacuation, including that of a pilot (Tom Hardy from last week’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy), an army private (Fionn Whitehead) and a boat captain (Mark Rylance), in Dunkirk the British Expeditionary Force is trapped on the beaches of France waiting for rescue via the British navy from the encroaching German army. Except that the navy doesn’t want to risk too many boats picking up the stranded men when they have to save the craft for the next battle that will surly come. Enter private British citizens with boats of their own who can cross the short channel and rescue a few men at a time. But will this happen in time to save all the soldiers on the beach while the British airforce dukes it out in the air against the Luftwaffe in planes that run closer and closer to running out of fuel with each fight?

If there’s a theme to Dunkirk it’s to never, ever give up. Since when things are at their worst you never know if help is right around the corner.

“We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender…”

Next week: You can run, but they’re gonna catch you.

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week

Direct Beam Comms #114

CategoriesDirect Beam Comms, Feature, TVPosted on

TV

Black Mirror fourth season ***/****

I recently finished up the fourth season of the excellent Netflix Black Mirror series and thought it was the strongest one yet. There were a few episodes that didn’t quite work, but overall I thought from beginning to end Black Mirror is still one of the creepiest/scariest/prescient things on TV right now.

Hang the DJ

“Metalhead”: “Metalhead” isn’t the typical episode of Black Mirror. Shot in black and white, this one is a straight-up action piece that’s kind’a sort’a a British version of The Terminator, and doesn’t let up until the end. I like that series creator Charlie Brooker feels comfortable enough with the universe that is Black Mirror in that there’s no one standard episode of the show and he can stretch out with a slightly different story than usual like with “Metalhead.”

“Hang the DJ”: Honesty, half the fun for me is trying to figure out where each episode of Black Mirror is headed and I couldn’t figure out where “Hang the DJ” was going at all. Even right up to the very end of the episode I had no idea what was about to happen and that’s part of the reason I liked this episode so much so much. Four seasons in and Black Mirror can still surprise.

“Black Museum”: The “Black Museum” episode is closest to the “Black Christmas” episode of a few years ago where a few different interrelated stories are all told under the umbrella of an overall encompassing story. Here, it’s a weary traveler touring the titular Black Museum that contains all sorts of forbidden knowledge and what happens when the disgraced museum proprietor reveals one too many secrets.

USS Callister

“USS Callister”: The episode that was announced first before the series had premiered and got the most hype this season was “USS Callister.” What everyone, myself included, thought was going to be a riff on the original Star Trek series turned into something that was darker and deeper in meaning that anything I could have imagined beforehand.

“Crocodile”: Crocodile is an interesting take on what extremes people are willing to go in order to keep their lives and lifestyle intact. And, since this is all taking place in the universe of Black Mirror, there’s an interesting price to be paid for those actions.

“Arkangel”: The one episode this season of Black Mirror that I didn’t think quite worked was “Arkangel.” This episode about a mother who implants a device in her young daughter’s head so she can see out of her eyes with something akin to an iPad goes pretty much as expected as the girl gets older and doesn’t quite care for the fact that her mom can literally keep track of her wherever she goes 24/7.

Westworld second season TV spot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUmfriZoMw0

Movies

Venom trailer

Avengers: Infinity War TV spot

Mission Impossible: Fallout trailer

Solo: A Star Wars Story trailer

Deadpool 2 trailer

Night of the Living Dead

One of, if not the most, influential horror movies in history gets a Blu-ray release this week. While there’s been many different editions of Night of the Living Dead released to date, everything from VHS to DVD both in original black and white and colorized, this brand new 2018 edition marks the first time since the movie was originally released that viewers can see the film in all it’s gory at home.

From The Criterion Collection:

New 4K digital restoration, supervised by director George A. Romero, coscreenwriter John A. Russo, sound engineer Gary R. Streiner, and producer Russell W. Streiner

New restoration of the monaural soundtrack, supervised by Romero and Gary Streiner and presented uncompressed on the Blu-ray

Night of Anubis, a never-before-presented work-print edit of the film

Never-before-seen 16 mm dailies reel

The Movie Chain: #6: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2012)

Last week: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

The Movie Chain is a weekly, micro-movie review where each week’s film is related to the previous week’s movie in some way.

One of my favorite TV mini-series of all-time is Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy that starred Alec Guinness as George Smiley from 1979. So I was kind’a predestined to like the 2011 film of the same name that starred Gary Oldman from last week’s Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in the Smiley role.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy takes place in the 1970s within the “Circus,” or the code-name for British intelligence, where a Soviet mole has be discovered in their top echelon. Those in charge might know the mole’s there, but no one’s quite sure exactly who it is that’s feeding the Soviets all the British secrets they can handle. Enter Smiley who was booted out of the agency some time before and can be brought into investigate since he’s the one person everyone’s sure isn’t the traitor.

I like the Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy movie a lot, if I think it moves at probably a too fast pace to tell all its story. I think this comes after having read the novel movie was based on and having watched the six hour mini-series many times too. Scenes in the mini-series that take good chunks of hour-long episodes fly past in minutes, or seconds in the movie. However, this might not bother the casual viewer if they’re unfamiliar with the source material.

One thing I think other filmmakers can learn from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is that there can be a lot going on in a movie yet the material doesn’t have to be spoon fed to the audience. There’s quite a few characters and scenes in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, the dialog is steeped in inside jargon and the pace of the film is fast yet since the underlying story is sound and it all works.

Next week: “You can practically see it from here.”

Rumor Control

Looking at upcoming TV series premieres it seems as if things are going to be pretty light the next few weeks which I couldn’t quite understand at first. On the one hand there’s supposed to be 500 series all premiering in 2018 which would mean that right around ten shows need to debut each week to hit this number. But I figured out why things are so light — I think everyone’s trying to keep out of the way of the Olympics since any series going up against that the next few weeks is sure to be caulked in the ratings.

Then again, if you’re like me and have no interest in the Olympics, having a few series premiere against it might be some genius counter-programming to gain a few more eyeballs to your show than might normally get since there’s not really anything much going on those two weeks of the Olympics.

I’m just sayin’.

Cool Movie & TV Posters of the Week