Category: TV
Direct Beam Comms #79
TV
Homicide: Life on the Street: The Complete Series
Shout Factory is set to release a DVD set of the entire 122 episode series of the classic show Homicide: Life on the Street for a retail of $120 July 4. Homicide: Life on the Street is one of the finest TV series ever and was a show that would go onto inspire other series like The Wire and The Sopranos years later. What I find funny is that 15 years ago I bought the first few seasons of Homicide: Life on the Street on DVD when those sets were retailing for around $100. Even today those original sets will still retail for around $90. That would’ve meant buying a complete set of Homicide: Life on the Street back then would’ve cost between $600 and $700, making $120 now seem like a bargain.
Executive produced by Barry Levinson (director of Rain Man, Wag The Dog and Bugsy) and Tom Fontana (the creator behind HBO’s Oz), and based on the book Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets by David Simon (creator and executive producer of The Wire), Homicide: Life On The Street presented viewers with a gritty and realistic examination of detectives working the homicide division in Baltimore.
The Mist TV spot
Comics
DC Comics/Dark Horse: Batman vs. Predator Paperback
A newly reprinted edition of the Batman vs. Predator comics is out this week. I remember buying the first issue of Batman vs. Predator at a drug store on a spinner rack and the story of a Predator invading Gotham City with Batman being the only hope of stopping them has always been one of my favorites. Especially since Bats gets to wear one boss piece of anti-Predator armor in the comic.
After investigating a series of gruesome murders, Batman realizes that these crimes aren’t perpetrated by anyone from Gotham City…or even this planet. Soon, the Dark Knight finds his real enemy—the intergalactic hunter called the Predator! This collection features BATMAN VS. PREDATOR #1–3, BATMAN VS. PREDATOR II: BLOODMATCH #1–4 and BATMAN VS. PREDATOR III: BLOOD TIES #1–4 and is co-published with Dark Horse Comics.
Movies
Predator
The first time I saw Predator I was 13 years old and it was the night before a family trip to Washington DC. My brother, a cousin and myself were camped out that night in the living room and were watching the movie of the week on HBO, which just so happened to be Predator. Even though I hadn’t seen that movie in the theater, nor would I have really had the opportunity to do so back then, I was aware of Predator from it being covered in magazines like Starlog and Fangoria. But still, when I actually saw the movie I was completely blown away. It was like the creators of the film had gotten into my teenaged head, found out all the things I was interested in and put them up on the big screen.
And, nearly 30 years later Predator is still one of my favorite films. Let’s put it this way — at various times I’ve owned Predator on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray and I’m sure that whatever the next thing is that comes along to improve on what’s come before be it 3D or holograms I’ll buy that too.
Predator is the rare movie that actually expanded the sci-fi genera, I think by not exactly adhering to just the sci-fi genera. It’s kind’a a war movie with a group of special forces soldiers lead by “Dutch” (Arnold Schwarzenegger) on a rescue mission in the jungles of Central America. It’s also kind’a a horror movie with the alien Predator gruesomely killing just about anyone who gets in its way. And it’s also kind’a a sci-fi movie with the Predator coming from space on a hunting mission here on Earth.
And it’s probably because Predator isn’t just a war movie, or isn’t just a horror movie or isn’t just a sci-fi movie that it’s stood the test of time and is still a beloved movie by fans of those generas to this day.
I think one thing that sticks in my mind about Predator all these years later are the interesting details. Like the way the Predator’s heat vision is shown on screen in big bright primary colors along with a weird “Bwrarrrrrrrrr” sound every time the Predator is looking about. And the details of each soldier in Dutch’s crew, how they’re all different yet all have the same strange professionalism as warriors in the jungle. They feel like guys who are probably screw-ups when they’re back at home in, say, Idaho but are at their best when they’re in the jungle and people are trying to kill them and vice versa.
I’ve seen Predator many times since that first time and everytime since I catch some new detail that I had missed before, which to me is the mark of a great movie.
That being said, looking back at this movie 30 years later there are a few things that make Predator almost a stereotypical 1980s action movie in that I think some elements in Predator would go and be used in future 1980s and 1990s action movies. From how just about all of Dutch’s soldiers have muscles upon muscles, a weightlifters physique not typically seen in soldiers, to carrying around more firepower than a small army would have, let alone six guys. The most famous weapon in the movie is the mini-gun, it’s the kind of firepower usually seen on jet fighters that fires hundreds of rounds a minute, that a) would be practically useless since the amount of ammunition it needs would make it impractical to haul through the jungle along with b) the weight of the gun that would mean someone would need to carry around hundreds of pounds of hot, unforgiving steel in order to fire the thing once for a few seconds of, “Brrrrrap!”
But in the confines of an action movie made in 1987 — it’s a wonderful “Brrrrrap!”
Akira
Back in the early 1990s I bought a copy of the animated movie Akira on VHS for $30, which with inflation is about $60 today. I was getting $5 a week in allowance and saved up any money I got from Christmas to buy Akira on tape I so badly wanted to see. And this version of the movie was cropped from widescreen and in “pan and scan” with the original audio dubbed from Japanese to English without subtitles. Still, for many years until I picked up a copy of the movie on DVD this was the only film version of Akira I’d be able to see. So today when I was wandering around Walmart and saw they had a 25th anniversary edition DVD of the movie for just $5 I was a bit flabbergasted. For a movie that originally took me many months to get — my original VHS order was lost in the mail and I had to convince the company I bought it from that I wasn’t lying and I really didn’t get it — to see a good quality version of the movie for that low price, just $2.65 in early 1990s dollars, was quite a surprise.
Black Panther teaser trailer
American Made trailer
Starship Troopers: Traitor of Mars trailer
Toys
Aliens vs Predator figures
NECA is set to release some figures based on the original Aliens vs. Predator comic later this year. First up is a Predator known as “Broken Tusk” that’s the first Predator to have any personality other than “I kill things.” Also being released is a figure based on the character of Machiko Noguchi, a human who ends up joining a clan of Predators at the end of the series.
The Reading & Watch List
This week in pop-culture history
- 1973: Battle for the Planet of the Apes premiers in theaters
- 1982: E.T.:The Extra-Terrestrial premiers in theaters
- 1983: Superman III opens in theaters
- 1985: D.A.R.Y.L. premiers
- 1987: Predator opens in theaters
- 1989: Ghostbusters II premiers
- 1990: Gremlins 2: The New Batch opens in theaters
- 1993: Jurassic Park opens in theaters
- 2008: The Incredible Hulk premiers in theaters
- 2013: Man of Steel premiers in theaters
Opening Credits Sunday: Cagney & Lacey (1981)
Opening Credits Sunday: It’s Garry Shandling’s Show (1986)
Direct Beam Comms #77
Movies
On sci-fi and loneliness: Passengers
Passengers is part of a larger sci-fi trend of film and TV focusing on just one person. Before in similar movies and series, that “one person” was the only one because of some plague or natural disaster like in I Am Legend or The Quiet Earth. But the modern take on this is that this “one person” isn’t the last person alive, but they’re alone and are marooned by themselves none-the-less. Movies like Moon had the only person Sam Bell (Sam Rockwell) being the sole-occupant of a lunar mining station, Gravity had Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) as the only survivor of a Space Shuttle mission who’s trapped in orbit and The Martian had Mark Watney (Matt Damon) as an astronaut left behind on Mars who must survive with only duct tape, plastic wrap and his wits.
In all of these movies humanity is still alive and well back on the Earth but the main characters are so separated from us they might as well be the only person alive.
In Passengers, the last man is Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) is a passenger on a shiny space-liner taking thousands of hibernating passengers from the Earth to a new colony world. But because of a glitch Jim awakens from this 120 year journey a bit early — 80 years too early in fact. And since he’s the only one awake and since there’s no way for him to go back into hibernation Jim has to face the reality of spending the rest of his life living alone on this ship.
While Jim is utterly alone on this ship he’s surrounded by thousands of pleasantly slumbering passengers all around him and a robotic bartender Arthur (Michael Sheen) to talk with. But Arthur has a robotic personality to match and isn’t much company and Jim slowly begins to lose his mind from loneliness as he reads the computerized biographies of the other sleeping passengers. After falling in love with the backstory on another passenger Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence), Jim decides to awaken her too, blame it on the same glitch that woke him so they can live happily ever after together on this luxury-liner of the stars.
Or so he hopes.
Passengers is a good movie, if full of plot-holes. From the idea that a company would spend untold sums of cash to build a spaceship that’s like a 5-star hotel that’s but is only designed to be used a few months every 240 years or so is ludicrous. Also ludicrous is the idea Aurora has (get it with her name “Aurora” or Sleeping Beauty) of becoming the first writer to journey to this new colony world and back to write about what that experience is like. Except doesn’t the crew of these ships do that all the time? Plus, once Aurora arrives back on the Earth she’d be a 240 year old anachronism who’d be totally out of date and out of step with the realities of that civilization. Let’s put it this way — if someone from 1777 turned up in 2017 they would be the story. People would be interested in what it was like to live and work 240 years in the past rather than what the trip was like. Or even that Jim wouldn’t look to awaken a technician who might be able to put them back to sleep…
I’d be lying if I said the style of Passengers wasn’t anything that had been put to screen before. The ship of Passengers the Avalon, in and around which all the action takes place, from the inside looks like a 5-star hotel staffed by robots. There are some interesting futuristic bits and pieces here and there, but for the most part style-wise Passengers looks much like every other sci-fi movie of the last five years — very slick and very computer generated. The one thing that is different is the actual design of the outside of the Avalon that looks more like a twisting piece of modern art than a traditional-looking spaceship. But that only goes so far from separating this movie from the pack.
Passengers is good, but it’s not a movie that’s going to expand the genera. There’s really nothing new about the plot of Jim being the last man and facing the future alone but somehow finding companionship — which is what happens in every last man story. But it’s not bad either. I thought on the whole Passengers was a very interesting movie from the last man standpoint if not that unique.
Aurora: He woke me up. He took away my life…It’s murder!
Gus Mancuso: You’re right, Aurora. But, the drowning man will always try to drag somebody down with him. It ain’t right, but the man is drowning.
Spider-Man: Homecoming trailer
TV
Castlevania teaser
The Reading List
This week in pop-culture history
- 1940: Rene Auberjonois, Odo of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is born
- 1953: Colm Meaney, Chief O’Brien of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is born
- 1985: Star Trek III: The Search for Spock opens in theaters
- 1990: Total Recall premiers
- 1996: The last episode of Space: Above and Beyond airs
- 1991: The TV series Liquid Television premiers