As with nearly every week, the column's subtitle is just one that came to mind as I rolled lightly over the choices I'd made. It's not to be leaned on as a strict theme.
I watched the first of the three Julia episodes that just landed on HBO Max - introducing us to Julia Child and her husband in 1961, and beginning to recount her journey to becoming a celebrated tv chef. I'd have happily rolled through the next two, but, unfortunately, I had a job to get off to. I plan to get back to those soon.
Aside from that, I'll note that four episodes in on season two I'm still very much enjoying this season's time travel story arc in Star Trek: Picard (Thursdays on Paramount+), and that this was the second week in a row where the episode ended with me hungry for the next scene - drawn in well enough that I wasn't mindful of the time. So, if you haven't been catching up, maybe that's an incentive to let it build up a little more so you'll have the luxury of being able to roll through to the next one.
Also as talked about/lightly speculated on last week, this Wednesday saw the debut of Moon Knight on Disney+. This six-part miniseries is primarily intended to introduce the character(s), who will subsequently appear in other (big) screen projects.
A suitably confusing opening episode, given that we soon discover the long-suffering main character has more than one personality and identity, and that seemingly mystical elements are involved. We don't know how much of this is being filtered through the mind of someone who's significantly other than well. So it is with that the booming, commanding, generally unhappy voice thundering in the main character's head at some points of crisis... well, we should wait for a little more substantiation.
I'm looking forward to seeing how the rest of it plays out. As I watched the first episode at an insomniac's hour - mere minutes after it appeared on the service, and so a few tics past 3 AM here on the East Coast - I'll be interested to see what a rewatch of the episode does.
The rewatch, at an hour of clearer consciousness, had me noticing more details. There's also at least one more, confirming reveal in the closing credits (one of the credits -- there aren't any mid- or post-credit scenes) as the impatient, commanding voice thundering in the thick of Steven's confusion - by F. Murray Abraham - is named.
Today on Netflix, we have an ensemble comedy about a group of actors confined during COVID-19 lock-down in a hotel, where they're trying to complete the 6th film in a flying dinosaur, action movie, franchise. Judd Apatow directs and stars with a cast that includes Karen Gillan, David Duchovny, Keegan-Michael Key, Kate McKinnon, Pedro Pascal, Fred Armison and Peter Serafinowicz: It's The Bubble (2022 R for language, sexual content, drug use and some violence 126m)
The screenplay was inspired by the situation the actors went through during the making of Jurassic World Dominion
(2022). Pandemic protocols found them all living in, and essentially
confined to, the same hotel. As this comedy includes elements of a film
within a film, they took advantage of that to initially release an arch
teaser for the fictional film (Cliff Beasts 6: The Battle For Everest) back in early March... before revealing the name of the actual comedy film they've made.
While
nothing remotely new - fourteen years old, in fact - I took note that
arriving today on HBO Max is one of the first official Marvel Studios
movies, The Incredible Hulk (2008), which hasn't been streaming
(sans commercials) anywhere I'm subscribed to. It'll be nice to have
access to it again after all this time. (There's a persistent tangle due
to an agreement made with Universal back in the '70s that complicates
all big screen things titled "Hulk", which is why this may never make
its way to Disney+, and why multiple, likely, Hulk-centered projects
aren't likely to be coming to the big screen as such. I can tell anyone
interested in some detail, but I'm not going to get into it here.)
That
year they knocked out the first two films in what would become an
entertainment franchise juggernaut, and we really weren't at all sure
what they were going to get right and what they weren't. Honestly, they
weren't at all sure either, including what the audience would respond
well to, and how much detail they'd be looking to absorb. Sure, the
comics fans generally live on the details, but even now we're relatively
few. They weren't even sure they'd be able to hook a
fiscally-significant audience, as the vast majority of mainstreamers
didn't know Iron Man, much less Tony Stark, as we entered 2008, and the
only Hulk those people were aware of were those who were old enough to
remember the late '70s/early '80s tv movies and shows, and maybe Ang
Lee's, underexposed, 2003, almost-nature film.
It was fun to revisit that after all these years, seeing how they were feeling their way through the process. I'd somehow forgotten the much-appreciated at the time touch of allowing the origin to be treated via some flashback scenes and a brief bit of exposition, rather than pulling a DC and thinking they had to ponderously reintroduce the main characters and reshoot the origin arc.
I'm almost at the stage where I might go back to rewatch Hulk (2003) - mainly to refresh myself on a few specifics, just for the hell of it. At the time I was mainly happy to see it even just in finally getting a Hulk at an appropriate power level.
The sixth and final season of the show will begin arriving on AMC come April 18th, so we'll get to that in a couple weeks.
Netflix's offerings so far include season recaps for each of the first four seasons, but I'm not sure to expect one for the fifth to be included in this roll-out. I haven't decided how much of a rewatch I want to do ahead of the new episodes -- I don't want to race through a full rewatch, but I also don't want to drop back in cold. As often, I really won't know how I'm going to handle it until I'm doing whatever that will be.
All the enhancing was done 20-odd years ago, when the big push to move everything over to DVDs was on, and so had been done in standard definition, hence this not being something they'd been trotting out in the past 20 years. Now it's all in 4K HD, and being promoted as part of First Contact Day, celebrating April 5th (2063), when the first human warp speed craft flew, and a Vulcan survey ship made first contact. It remains to be seen if any of the tinkering will render the film less of a sleeping pill - if nothing else, the losses of the years between make seeing some of the faces a little more poignant - either way, intrepid viewers will soon have a chance to find out. Here's the new trailer.
Additionally, here's an interview/promotional piece with Producer David C. Fein about the timeline and process.
I know almost without a doubt that it won't have aged well, or certainly not evenly, that it'll likely quickly remind me that the line between shtick and formula is largely a matter of audience mood, but I like the concept, I like John Astin, and I remember enough of the silliness of it fondly. Astin played Roy with a childlike affability that seems to come naturally to the man.
John Astin stars, with a cast including Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, Henry Gibson, Dom DeLuise, Edie Adams, and Milton Berle, It's Evil Roy Slade (1972 97m)
That should be an ample start for April. I'm sure I've forgotten to mention some things, but I want to get this in place so it can auto-publish on schedule, and then I have a lasagna to assemble in the crockpot so Friday's dinner is taken care of before I head off into the (too-) busy work day. So, of course, I'm suddenly wanting to go through the TCM schedule for the coming week... but I simply don't have the time to even begin that. Take care, get your tax filings out of the way if you haven't already (I wish I had!), and watch something you enjoy. See you back here next Friday. - Mike
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