Again! – Oct 22 - Friday Video Distractions with Mike Norton

 

Mostly a topic post this week personally long and draining week, after a few, quick notes: Check last week’s post for key, new items this week. Once I finally get to the weekend the new items of greatest interest to me will be Dune (HBO Max) and the new season of Locke & Key (Netflix), both of which were among last week's previews. I’ll add any reaction notes there in green once I do.
     Next Monday, the CW will premiere a new series: 4400 The base premise is that 4400 people who vanished over the past century suddenly reappear, having not visibly aged a day, and with no memory of having existed since the moment they were plucked from.
     Sound familiar? Well, yeah, it might.
     Between 2004 and 2007, four seasons of a show that began with the same premise, titled The 4400, ran on the USA network here in the states -- it was on Sky One in the U.K. In that earlier series it was gradually revealed that each of them came back with a different paranormal ability, along with who was responsible for their abductions, and - while remaining mysterious on the details - that they were taken and returned collectively as part of a mission to avert a catastrophe. Successive seasons added other layers, both in their origins and among contemporary forces' reaction to them being here.
     A combination of the 2007-08 Writers Guild of America strike and weak & weakening ratings saw the show cancelled while on hiatus, so the series never got a resolution.., though they did manage to leave it with exactly 44 episodes.
     The new show's received a string of teaser promos, each one focusing on a different character. Here's one that strung the first three of them together.

     The new series' promotional materials lean on the vanished and returned being marginalized people.
     While the CW series are hardly immune to mid-story cancellation, we're in a better age with respect to shows being seen as long-term properties that are potentially more valuable if they have a chance to wrap their main storyline up. These days it comes down to a mix of the old broadcast tv element - ratings - along who has the rights locked down. I don't have a clear bead on the details to that second element, but the CW's made a good going of operating as a niche network, running series for audience sizes that would never have a chance on a "main" network.
     As mentioned, the new series will be on the CW, on Monday nights. The 2004-07 series is available on Netflix.

     Now, for this week... a conversation-starter.
     Always subject to one’s free time, and whether or not there’s a significant other/tv buddy in the

picture to make some or most of one’s viewing a compromise affair, it’s fair to say that even before reaching the current market of streaming services and other view-on-demand options that have allowed us to have personalized entertainment feeds, each of us have had movies that we seemed to always be up for. (Let's not raise it to the level of marathon replay items, as we've come to see with A Christmas Story getting a 24-hour, back-to-back showing each year. That works best as a background element, unless the intent is aversion therapy, like forcing someone to smoke a carton of cigarettes.) We like what we like, and while much of that will change over time, some of it seems immune to the years and otherwise changing tastes.
     I'll leave the topic of tv series for another day. We'll stick to movies today, as they’re discrete, single-sitting blocks of time -- and because I've left myself too little time to do more than raise even just this  subject.
     It could be something one made a point of owning a copy of, or maybe it’s something that whenever you come across it already in progress, you’re immediately drawn into it again. For some of us this can be a large group, so it’s best to try to think of the ones you’ve long since lost track of how many times you’ve seen it.
     (There's even a possible groaner sub-set, especially among those who came through the first decade or two of pay channels like HBO, where their 24/7 flow and more limited inventory saw them playing often C-list productions ad nauseum, resulting in a weird class of running joke items.)
     It doesn’t have to rise to the level of someone’s nominees for Top Ten movies of all time – if one’s even inclined to do that sort of thing at all. (I'm not. It's too mood-driven, and any list I'd make now would be overthrown by a largely different one an hour from now. Besides, I've little patience for  "Greatest of All Time" suppositions.) It could easily be that one has much more respect for films that one has to be in a special mood for.
     The ones we watch again and again, it seems to me, are more a measure of comfort viewing – reminding us of better times, or simply something that we find entertaining, without pretense or a need to put on airs.

    In no particular order, I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Life of Brian (1979),  Somewhere In Time (1980), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), Being There (1979), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Time After Time (1979) - they're all films I’ve seen innumerable times, and all ones where chancing across any random scene is likely to find me watching it through to end if there’s no other fire lit beneath me. Most of those have a strong nostalgia factor, with where I saw them and who with are

significant factors. This impromptu summoning is almost entirely clustered circa 1979, and while all of these are true, I can almost guarantee that if I gave the topic a fresh thought tomorrow morning I'd find a different cluster came to mind, and would feel embarrassed that I stuck to so narrow a band, momentarily ignoring so many other films. It's not a competition, the field's as broad and open as our tastes and our heart's desire, and there's no final answer save for the last one life permits.

     There are films I get around to at least every few years, sometimes to see how well or poorly they hold up, and how my aging self reacts to the message. Coming up on two years ago I spotlighted one such film, John Frankenheimer's Seconds (1966). It's not in the least an upbeat picture, but it's a dark fantasy about the complex web of adulthood, identity, and relationships. That belongs to a smaller group of films, where I can't claim it's a comfort film, and it has no social association for me because I've always watched it solo, yet when I see it's going to be on I manage to fit it into my schedule. It's a good candidate for me to finally add it to my collection of discs, come to think of it.
     So, off the top of your head, what films do you always seem to be up for?
     I've an exhausting Friday ahead of me, in an already exhausting week. I have to turn my mind and will to getting through that, ideally without having to collapse for the weekend.
     I hope to see you back here next Friday, as we just about close out the month. Take care. - Mike