Direct Beam Comms – Page 26 – Dangerous Universe

Direct Beam Comms #48

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, TVNovember 6, 2016November 5, 2016

TV

Stan Against Evil – Grade: D+

I generally like horror series and even the ones I don’t care for I can see things in them things that other fans may like. However, I didn’t see anything in the new IFC series Stan Against Evil that I liked nor do I see what other horror fans would care for in this show either.

Here, John C. McGinley plays the title character who’s an ex-sheriff forced to resign after he attacked a woman at the funeral for his wife. Enter new sheriff Evie (Janet Varney) who one week into the position learns that every other sheriff before her, minus Stan, was killed on the job. And the rumor is it’s all related to 176 witches burned at the stake centuries earlier by the first town sheriff. Stan only survived his tour because his late-wife was going out nights to do battle with these witch-spirits, and now that she’s gone and Evie’s the new sheriff it’s up to Stan to continue the good fight.

It seems like Stan Against Evil wants to be something like Ash vs. Evil Dead meets 30 Rock. So it’s got some of the gross-out humor of Ash vs. Evil Dead and some of the deadpan humor of 30 Rock which unfortunately aren’t a great fit with each other. It doesn’t help matters that McGinley, whom I genuinely like, is doing a rougher and gruffer, though definitely a version of his Dr. Cox character from Scrubs which is amusing but gets old fast here.

Stan Against Evil seems to be a show that won’t really appeal to either the horror crowd or the comedy crowd and perhaps that’s why IFC premiered it late Halloween night after the horror season’s mostly done? Maybe they see this show as a comedy first horror second show? All of which is disappointing — the creators of Ash vs. Evil Dead make this kind of horror/comedy look easy which from the looks of Stan Against Evil it isn’t.

The Crown – Grade: B+

I seem to be a sucker for dramas written by Peter Morgan. I loved his movie The Queen (2006) about the death of Princess Diana and the reaction of the British royal family to this event, and more specifically how Queen Elizabeth (Helen Mirren) almost lost the monarchy, I think the movie Frost/Nixon is an underrated little gem and now I like his new Netflix series The Crown too.

The Crown starts in the late 1940s with the marriage between Princess Elizabeth (Claire Foy) and Phillip (Matt Smith) and then we quickly jump to the early 1950s where Elizabeth’s a young military wife who’s father King George (Jared Harris) is succumbing to lung cancer which will very soon leave her as the 26 year old Queen of the UK. In many ways, The Crown is the middle story of a trilogy that would have started with The King’s Speech (not written by Morgan but David Seidler) where King George had to overcome his stuttering in order to deliver a speech about Great Britain enduring the second world war, here The Crown as a middle story where power transitions from George’s generation to the next and then The Queen where Elizabeth almost becomes the last monarch of the UK after a few missteps.

What I think works so well in The Crown, and of Morgan’s other dramas mentioned above as well, is that he does a great job of going behind the scenes of events that played out in the public eye and showing them in a new way. In Frost/Nixon it was the behind the scenes preparations of the two Frost and Nixon camps before the interview, in The Queen it showed what was going on behind the curtains of Buckingham Palace the news cameras couldn’t see and here in The Crown that was happening between George, Elizabeth and Phillip might not have been as cozy as the monarchy wanted everyone to believe with all sorts of real human emotions playing out in private.

People of Earth – Grade: B

The new TBS series People of Earth has a lot of potential, however, while the first episode was a disappointment the second was good.

I’m not sure what to make of it but episode of People of Earth are just 15 minutes long. Which almost makes me wonder if the series was originally developed as an Adult Swim series that ended up on TBS instead? The show follows journalist Ozzie Graham (Wyatt Cenac) as he interviews a group of people who’ve been abducted by aliens over the years. And in these interviews he finds that he too might have been abducted in the past so he decides to move closer to the abductees and the common place they were all taken of.

The first episode of People of Earth fell short was all of the jokes seemed telegraphed. I could tell when a lot the jokes were coming and was saying the punchlines before the characters were. And the show also falls into the trope where the lead character Ozzie is the one normal character on the show while the rest of the characters all seem like they’re standard, abet all a bit weird, sitcom characters and not real people.

That being said a lot of these issues were corrected in the second episode where the characters felt toned back a bit, and not as cartoony, and the humor was a bit more naturalistic as well.

One thing I did like and did find intriguing and funny in both episodes were the alien characters. These aren’t your standard scary The X-Files aliens, these are workaday Joes one of whom is the typical “bug eyed monster,” another a reptile and a third a nordic hunk. They complain about their jobs to each other and get on one and other’s nerves and two mercilessly tease the nordic alien.

I’m interested enough to see where this is all going and had enough of a good time with the second episode and watching the alien characters that I’ll probably stick with this one for at least the rest of the season.

Movies

Wonder Woman movie trailer

“The closer you get, the more you see the darkness within.”

Life movie trailer

Sort’a looks like Gravity meets The Martian by way of Alien.

Toys

20th Anniversary Starship Troopers Tanker Bug

Chronicle Collectibles is releasing a 20th Anniversary (!!!) statue of the Tanker Bug from the movie Starship Troopers. The statue is a whopping 25” long, 20” wide and 10” tall and retails for $350. That’s a lot of money, however, when statues of 12” figures regularly retail for $150 and up, $350 doesn’t seem too pricey in comparison.

I have been a Starship Troopers super-fan the last 20 years and am excited that it seems like there might be some sort of recognition/merchandising push for a movie that was so badly slammed/misunderstood when it was first released. Even if there’s reportedly a reboot movie in the works from the writers of the upcoming Baywatch movie.

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

1970: Ethan Hawke of Explorers and Gattaca is born
1975: The TV series The New Adventures of Wonder Woman debuts
1982: Creepshow opens in theaters
1994: The TV series Earth 2 premiers

Direct Beam Comms #47

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, Review, TVOctober 30, 2016October 29, 2016

TV

The Living and the Dead – Grade: B-

BBC America recently ran the six-episode BBC horror mini-series The Living and the Dead one evening back-to-back all-night binge-style. The series is available to stream on the BBC America website and I would assume will air again there at some point in the future.

The Living and the Dead is set in late 19th century England where Dr. Nathan Appleby (Colin Morgan) and wife Charlotte (Charlotte Spencer) have moved from the city to the countryside when they inherit Nathan’s family estate after his mother died. Nathan is a psychologist which is brand new for the time and Charlotte a photographer and hope that the move to the country will be a change to a simpler way of life. But what they’re not expecting is that something’s amiss at the estate when young Harriet (Tallulah Haddon) begins acting weirdly and speaking in voices with her being able to control people’s thoughts as well. When Harriet puts a farmhand under a spell that leads to the man’s death Nathan steps up and wants to try and help the girl before she’s thrown into the asylum forever.

I thought The Living and the Dead had an interesting concept, but I’m not quite sold on the show just yet. At times I thought the episode dragged just a bit with lots of shots of farmhands harvesting a field and Nathan and Charlotte gazing longingly into the distance. And the story of the episode, poor Harriet seemingly possessed, has been done many times before and is the current horror movie du jour too doesn’t help.

So when Nathan’s, let’s call it, Harriet “case” is solved by the first episode I was relived. I couldn’t see myself sticking around until the end of the season to watch Nathan battle Harriet doing creepy voices and killing people in mysterious ways. It seems like moving forward the main theme of The Living and the Dead will be of Nathan investigating the weirdness of the estate with each episode focusing on some weird specific thing.

In many ways The Living and the Dead is a cross between Sherlock (young/hip investigator here of the paranormal) with Downton Abby (gee, wasn’t the past before we had indoor plumbing and vaccinations wonderful?). Which is interesting in a purely British way.

That being said the episode did anything but “fly” by and the last half hour felt every bit like a half hour. There are some clues planted in the episode that there’s something even weirder happening at the estate than might be let on from the first episode. So I thing I’ll probably finish out The Living and the Dead, even if it sits on my DVR a few weeks/months before I do so.

Halloween

Is The Crow (1994) the perfect underrated and forgotten Halloween movie? I think so.

I think there should be a law that requires all TV channels to air a certain amount of horror related programming each October for Halloween. I’d say that 30% of everything shown that month should be required to be horror related. Is anyone with me?

I always feel a strong sense of melancholy at the end of October. I think part of that is that by the end of October it’s hard for me to keep denying that fall’s here and summer’s over since it’s dark out where I live by seven which in a few weeks will be six, the leaves are starting to drop and the nights are getting colder. But I think a large part of that melancholy is because October marks the end of the Halloween season which means the end of lots of good movies on TV.

I don’t know what it is but the TV channels almost never air any classic horror movies throughout the year. Or, if they do it’s late at night and maybe once or twice a month. But during Halloween those same channels have no problems letting their horror flags fly and will air a bevy of new and old scary flicks throughout the month. There’s usually so much of an embarrassment of riches that at times I’ll feel like I’m not watching enough of them if I chose to watch something else.

But come November 1 all that ends. That’s when the horror movie marathons end and the channels start turning their gaze towards Christmas movies and programs.

I know, I know. With things like Netflix and Amazon Prime and all of the other streaming options out there it’s not like horror movie express ever has to end. With the click of a button I could be watching any number of scary films instantly. And while we can argue about the quality of the films available to stream, to me there’s still something special about a whole month full of horror films all airing at once and knowing that other people too are all caught up in the season of Halloween too.

The other thing is that really Halloween is the only thing I’m really interested in that has an entire month devoted to it. There’s no single month devoted to sci-fi, superheroes or action flicks, that’s solely reserved for October and horror films.

I think a big part of it is that in my neck of the woods is that after Halloween and then Thanksgiving, we move into the time of bad weather and days that are basically done by the time you get home from work. So maybe that’s it — maybe it isn’t that October and Halloween are done, it’s that once those things are over with it means that we’re moving into a new part of the year. And while moving onto just about any other part of the year is nice — Yay! Winter’s over and it’s spring… Horray! It’s summertime! … Fall is here and with it cooler temperatures! — Moving onto winter, to me at least, is dreadful.

So when Halloween’s over it means that by extension what I consider the good part of the year’s over and we’re onto the slow, cold dark time that is winter. And that’s what I’m dreading and not the end of October/Halloween?

Nah, I’m going to go with me missing watching things like Frankenstein, Dracula and The Wolfman on TV. 😉

One thing I have noticed of late is that with all the horror movie remakes created over the last few years means that there’s less opportunities for the original movies to be shown on TV. I see things like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dawn of the Dead remakes on TV all the time, but I honestly can’t tell you the last time, or perhaps ever, that I saw the original movies air.

Books

The Signature Art of Brian Stelfreeze

Out November 1 is The Signature Art of Brian Stelfreeze which collects illustrations from the illustrator’s long career. I’ve been an admirer of Stelfreeze’s work for many years now especially his painted covers for various comics and now Stelfreeze is gaining a wider reckognition as the artist on the new The Black Panther comic as well.

From Boom Studios:

Brian Stelfreeze Artist: Brian Stelfreeze Cover Artist: Brian Stelfreeze ’ The definitive art collection of the quintessential artist’s artist, perfect for fans of the craft. ’ Explore the career of comics legend Brian Stelfreeze in exquisite detail. ’ An unprecedented look at never-before-seen sketches, process sections, fan-favorite classic pieces, sequential pages, covers across Brian’s career, and commentary from his collaborators, including Scott Peterson, Doug Wagner, and Cully Hamner.

The Reading List

This week in pop-culture history

1949: Armin Shimerman, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Quark of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is born
1954: Godzilla opens in Japan
2009: The TV series V premiers

Direct Beam Comms #46

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, TVOctober 23, 2016October 22, 2016

TV

Black Mirror – Season 3, Episode 1: Grade B+

Until recently, the TV series Black Mirror wasn’t easy to see. Originating from the UK, other than a Christmas special that aired a few years ago on DirecTV, the six episode first and second seasons never officially aired anywhere here in the US. In fact, until Netflix picked up the series the only way for anyone on this side of the Atlantic to have seen any Black Mirror was via less than legal means.

But luckily Netflix began streaming all existing episodes a few years back and even better last Friday debuted six new episodes for a third season of Black Mirror, the first of which is titled “Nosedive.”

“Nosedive” focuses on Lacie Pound (Bryce Dallas Howard) who lives near-future in a place where how many “likes” each person gets determines their worth and status in life. Think how someone like one of the Kardashians lives their lives online and that’s essentially how everyone in “Nosedive” lives.

If you’re one of the popular people with lots of likes you get all sorts of free perks, if you’re less than popular doors literally remain closed for you and you’re barred from even going certain places. And because everyone’s trying to get the most likes Lacie’s world is a place where everyone dresses their best, looks like they’re ready for a photoshoot which they have to be since they’re all constant shooting selfies and is super-nice to everyone else lest they upset them and get down-voted.

Of course just under their veneer people still can’t stand other people, the food, though gorgeous looking is practically inedible and there’s constant discrimination based this underlying algorithm.

What struck me was at one point Lacie says something about how their society is structured, “That’s just the way it is.” Which people say today with a lot of things too like with FICO scores.

In “Nosedive,” Lacie has enough likes that she’s just on the cusp of becoming a tastemaker and sees her friend Naomi (Alice Eve) who’s got it all and more importantly loads of likes as the way to get there. But as Lacie tries to get to Naomi’s wedding her world begins to crumble as a cancelled flight sends her online rating to a nosedive.

Black Mirror is the first 21st century sci-fi series that actually gets what it’s like be swept up in all the technology of the 21st century and not know where it’s taking us. Sure, things like cell phones and computers and laptops and AI are great, but what’s the downside? And that’s where Black Mirror excels. Series creator Charlie Brooker has created a show that takes things we all have today and asks what happens if that technology doesn’t go wrong, but goes to a slightly bad place? What happens if things like “likes” become the new currency of discrimination or like in another episode criminal justice becomes so twisted and bent that by the end of one episode we’re actively rooting for the criminals?

That’s when sci-fi and specifically Black Mirror works so well whereas other modern sci-fi series does not. A lot of regular sci-fi series are all about exploring tropes of the past that were once relevant but are now not. Or are still relevant but don’t resemble anything like they used to in the past. Black Mirror on the other hand is so relevant and so now that I wonder if the series will be as connected with viewers in 10 years as it has to the jugular of viewers today?

And yes, it does strike me as ironic that I’m rating the episode much in the same way people in Lacie’s life “like” her. Then again it’s the times that we live in.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Grade: C+

If anyone were ever to try and pin me down I’d have to say that my favorite book is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (HHGG) by the late, great Douglas Adams. I first read that book in a gigantic collection of all of Adams’ HHGG stories and tore through them as fast as I could. I think it’s Adams absurdist humor that appealed to me so much.

Even with all of my love for all things HHGG and Adams non-fiction work as well I’ve so far never read Adams other book series based on detective Dirk Gently. However, when a new TV series was announced based on this character with Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency on BBC America my interest was piqued.

So I’m not sure what was taken from the Gently novels in this new series which means that I’m going into Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency without a lot of preconceptions as to how it should be.

Here, Todd (Elijah Wood) is a sad-sack, down on his luck bellboy when he stumbles upon a murder at the hotel he works at. And investigating the murder is “holistic” detective Dirk Gently (Samuel Barnett) who quickly puts himself upon Todd and tries to recruit him to be his assistant. And the Todd/Gently stuff/story is actually pretty interesting. Todd is mostly normal while Gently is this weird eye of calm in this crazy storm of weirdness that constantly swirls around him.

Unfortunately there’s so many other things going on in the first episode of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency that all this extra stuff overwhelms the Todd/Gently story. There’s a “holistic” assassin driving around killing people, a missing woman, a group of skinheads who may be involved in the murder, a group of crazed guys who go around smashing things up, a CIA team surveying Gently, a police team surveying Todd and Todd’s sister suffering from a disease all introduced very quickly without a lot of time for story development. All this seems like elements that will be important over the eight episode season but right now feels really weird and very confusing. Especially since after having watched the first episode I really don’t know what the overall story of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is or what it will be?

From the commercials it seems like the first season will be the examination of the murder Gently was investigating and Todd becoming his assistant. But I feel like if Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency would have taken a page from the Doctor Who manual and gone with more self-contained episodes even if there’s a season-long story/mystery running throughout the stories it may have been better for the show.

OR — was Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency designed to be a series people can watch over the course of a weekend in one long eight hour bing? Maybe that would work better for the series? Except here in the US it’s being shown as a weekly show where there’s a 167 hour wait between episodes.

Still, I’ll be sticking with Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency for the short term at least. I think Douglas Adams would have wanted it that way. 😉

Movies

Logan aka Wolverine part 3 movie trailer

“…the world is not the same as it once was.”

It’ll be interesting to see just how this movie fits in with the overall X-Men universe as a whole, especially since the events of Days of Future Past seemed to have made this bleak future impossible.

The Arrival final movie trailer

“What does it say?”

Books

The Art of Atari

Out this week is the loooooooooong awaited The Art of Atari book that collects many of the gorgeous illustrations that graced the packaging of Atari game cartridges of the 1970s and 1980s. In many ways those illustrations were better than the actual games since they were selling what those games could be, or what those games might be in the player’s imaginations rather than what the game would actually be like when played.

From Dynamite:

To usher in the new era of electronic entertainment, (Atari) hired an array of talented illustrators to emblazon game cartridges, boxes, magazine advertisements, and more with mind-blowing visions of fantasy and sports thrills, science fiction and adventure, that elevated pixelated gaming to the realm of high art. Art of Atari is the first official retrospective of the company’s illustrative accomplishments, spanning over four decades and cultivated from museums and private collections worldwide.

This week in pop-culture history

1943: Michael Crichton, creator of Jurassic Park, Twister and the TV series ER is born
1959: Sam Raimi, director of The Evil Dead and Spider-Man franchises is born
1984: The TV series V premiers
1984: Terminator opens in theaters
1994: Stargate opens in theaters
1996: The TV series Millennium premiers
1997: Gattaca opens in theaters

Direct Beam Comms #45

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, TVOctober 16, 2016October 15, 2016

TV

Falling Water – Grade: D+

The new series Falling Water on USA has a nugget of a great idea — that dreams might be interconnected and through these connections greater truths can be gleaned. Alas, other than that kernel Falling Water is a mess.

In the first episode these interconnected dreams don’t actually lead to much of anything. We see a few characters within other’s dreams, but for the most part these dreams are just, well, dreams. One character dreams of his mother, another of a son and the third a love. But otherwise not much happens in them. In fact, story-wise not much happens in the first episode at all.

The four main characters of the Falling Water don’t seem that unique or even all that believable either. There’s Tess (Lizzie Brocheré) who’s a bit like a toned-down version of the character Lisbeth in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo but instead of being a computer hacker is a sort of style prognosticator who can tell what’s going to be hot in a few months. There’s Take (Will Yun Lee) who’s a stock police detective as seen on many other TV series. There’s Burton (David Ajala) a corporate security director who feels like he’s a clone of the character of Michael Clayton. And there’s Bill (Zak Orth) who seems to be the rich, eccentric character from loads of series who’s the one person who suspects that dreams might be interconnected.

I’ve got no problem with series taking character types and putting them into different shows, but the characters of Falling Water seemed to be almost copies from other sources. Still, this could be interesting if the overall story had some intriguing aspect(s) to it. Unfortunately, there wasn’t much story in Falling Water and what story there was I wasn’t totally sure what’s going on.

Take’s investigating the death of a woman that leads to him finding a mass suicide that ends with someone’s house blowing up while Burton is trying to figure out if the girl of his dreams is real or is literally from his dreams. And Tess and Bill meet and begin to delve the depths of the interconnected dreams. But there just wasn’t any main story to hang things off of yet.

And that’s a big problem I had with Falling Water. It’s the show that’s built around this big central mystery of what’s going on in the dreams and how this relates to reality where the plot will be dribbled out throughout the season. There’s also hints that something else weird is going on from certain characters having monstrous shadows to the word “Topeka” turning up in different characters’ stories. Which is fine, except I’ve been burned too many times on series that do this, that rely on a season-long “mystery” rather than telling a story within each episode, to have any patience whatsoever with Falling Water. Maybe Falling Water will have a brilliant story and maybe not, but the only way to find out is to watch the whole season which I’m not willing to do.

It doesn’t help matters that the series is shot in a way where it seems to be aesthetically close to that of a pretentious perfume commercial with hands intermingling and characters gazing at each other across rooms both inside and outside the dreams. Plus at times the dialog came across as fake and phony that it seemed like the writers of Falling Water were more concerned that people recognize them for the craft than having the characters come across as believable human beings.

Maybe I’m wrong and Falling Water will be one of those shows that people look back on at the end of the season and think how great it was. If so, someone will have to tell me since I’m done with this one.

Channel Zero – Grade: C-

Much like Falling Water, the first episode of the SyFy series Channel Zero isn’t so much a story unto itself, it’s a portal into the six episode limited series. But when the first episode of this horror series feels long and drawn out as this one did it can’t bode well for the rest of the series.

Here, Paul Schneider (Parks and Recreation) stars as Mike Painter, a very Stephen King-like character who’s a writer returning to his hometown years after he first left. Back in 1988 disturbing things happened around town, some of which we glimpse as flashbacks in the episode, but the major event for Mike was the murder of his twin brother. And once Mike returns to town weird things start happening again with creepy creatures stalking the countryside and the return of a children’s TV series called Candle Cove that only kids seem able of seeing and hasn’t been on the air since 1988.

Honestly, the first episode of Channel Zero felt like a cross between some lost King story and the movie The Mothman Prophecies, which sounds great. But somehow Channel Zero came off feeling long and drawn-out and I was quite bored with it by the halfway point of the show. Plus, I was never quite sure what the main plot was for the show. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but I felt more confused than intrigued. Mike has flashbacks to when he and his bother were growing up which seemed to show that the more they watched Candle Cove the more Mike’s brother started developing weird powers. And there’s also a thing that seems to be covered in teeth running around as well as someone in a skeleton looking costume.

The more that I think about the show it seems like it’s got a lot of good ideas going on all taken from other sources as base material for the show, but none of these differing things ever gelled into a one coherent story. Unfortunately, Channel Zero is a mess I don’t think I’ll be sticking around for any more visits to.

Movies

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story trailer #2

“Save the rebellion!”

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

1948: Margot Kidder, Lois Lane of Superman is born
2004: The TV series Battlestar Galactica premiers

Direct Beam Comms #44

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, TVOctober 9, 2016October 8, 2016

TV

Westworld – Grade: B+

Until now, Westworld on HBO was known as the series that was supposed to have premiered over a year ago but was pushed back when the production had to be shut down for “script problems” which is never a good sign. I was really looking forward to the show when it was first announced but after that maybe not as much. So, it’s with a bit of relief I’m happy to report that the first episode of Westworld is pretty good, with a few caveats at least.

Based on the film of the same name written and directed by Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park), Westworld is a kind of western Disneyland stocked with era appropriate robots who guests can interact with, have sex with and kill with impunity. Created by Dr. Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins), the park has been running for decades without a hitch. The robots can’t harm any living thing, they literally can’t even swat flies from their face lest they kill them, and are reborn anew each morning with the memories of the previous day having been erased.

And some of these memories are pretty disturbing — rape and murder are a daily occurrence in Westworld but since all memories are erased it’s not much of a problem. Except now there’s a glitch in the system. The older the robot is and the longer they’ve been around somehow allows them start remembering things from their past. And when things start happening and robots begin to go “buggy” with them almost having what looks like strokes, no one’s sure if these changes are a mistake in the code or if what’s happening is about to be the next step in robot evolution.

Think The Truman Show (the overseers of Westworld watch what’s going on via a control center that overlooks things) meets Groundhog Day (the robots experience the same day over and over again) with a bit of Crichton’s own Jurassic Park too (the park designed where nothing can go wrong goes wrong) all mixed together. But these sources just makes up a small part of Westworld, much of the story of the show is about the robots who may be finding some sort of consciousness with the overseers of Westworld, mainly Ford, trying to figure out if this is good or bad.

What does hurt the show though, which has been pointed out by other reviewers as well, is that while the robots of Westworld come off as mildly fully formed individuals, the living people there do not. The park guests, especially so, are mostly one dimensional. They’re there to mostly live out their most debaucherous fantasies — be it via having wild sex or killing whomever they want whenever the whim strikes them. And the robots can’t fight back. Their guns though they work on other robots are useless against a park guest.

Enter the guest known as “The Man in Black” (Ed Harris) who has been coming to the park for 30 years. He’s the bad guy of the park and thinks that by causing destruction and mayhem that he’ll be able to uncover the hidden inner workings of Westworld. Some of which involves brutally attacking Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) the oldest robot at the park over and over again trying to get her memories to carry over from today’s trauma to tomorrow’s memory.

Which is another bit about Westworld that bothered me — the level of violence in the show is pretty extreme, even for HBO. And since the robots live the same day over and over again with small differences depending on how they interact with the park’s guests and each other, there’s always the opportunity for the same bad thing to happen over and over again.

Still, there’s a lot more good than bad in Westworld and I’m very intrigued to see where the series goes next.

Timeless – Grade: C+

The new Timeless series on NBC really wants to be an American version of Doctor Who, unfortunately I think it goes about it in the wrong way.

Here, a stand-in for Elon Musk (Paterson Joseph) has created a time machine which unfortunately has been stolen by evil Garcia Flynn (Goran Visnjic). Flynn and his terrorist crew wants to go back in time and change things for his own devious ends. Enter extremely good looking history professor Lucy Preston (Abigail Spencer), extremely good looking ex-special forces Delta Force guy who punches people in the face Wyatt Logan (Matt Lanter) and average-scientist guy Rufus Carlin (Malcolm Barrett) who have to use the old, backup time machine to go back in time to try and stop Flynn who’s first target is the Hindenburg. Flynn doesn’t want the Hindenburg to explode, he wants to save it.

But will Lucy, Wyatt and Rufus have the skills to stop Flynn before he rewrites history and changes our present? Will Lucy and Wyatt ever get together? And can Wyatt control his urges to want to save people in the past and therefor change his/our present?

Timeless is interesting if it’s been done a few times before with the likes of Time Tunnel and Voyagers. In fact, what reminded me most about Timeless was the unaired pilot remake of Time Tunnel back in 2006.

Honestly, for a network show Timeless is above average. I think the problem lies in that it’s not that original. It feels like the show really wants to be the US version of Doctor Who with people traveling around in a time machine solving mysteries and fixing things. But I think where Timeless is going wrong is that it seems like they’re only going to be making stops in famous periods of the past from the Hindenburg, to the assassination of Lincoln and even a visit with the Rat Pack which really screams “network event TV” to me. Going to just parts of the past we all know about feels like a cheat to me.

It would seem that rather than concentrating on things that everyone’s heard of, and are therefor easy to try and predict and stop, if instead Flynn went after something a little more hard to guess what he was up to that he’d be able to do a lot more damage.

But maybe that’s thinking too much in-depth, Timeless is a network show after all.

Black Mirror season 4 TV spot

Iron Fist TV spot

The Reading List

On the Horizon

It seems strange but I only have three major articles left in 2016 — one on the movie What We Do in the Shadows, Doctor Strange and Star Wars and after that I start my “best of” lists that will carry over into the first weeks of 2017. And I’ve actually got a lot planned out in 2017 too, from new movies coming out next year to how bloody good the movies from 1987 were.

This week in pop-culture history

1956: Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files, Millennium and The Lone Gunman is born
1995: Strange Days opens in theaters