Struggle and Dream - August 5 - What's To Watch?

 

   First Friday of August, 2022. As a kid, in Eastern PA, I'd be staring down at the last month of summer vacation, with the new school year lurking just after Labor Day.
     Friday's piece now expanded by colored notes, after watching several of the new items.
     This week saw the season-ender for Seth MacFarlane's semi-comedic Star Trek hommage, The  Orville: New Horizons. I've been watching it week to week, but have been avoiding saying much about it as it's an episodic series and I prefer to avoid spoiling details for potential viewers. Also, it seemed that the majority of Orville posts I've read, the comments on them at least, in social media tend to quickly devolve into a race to the bottom sniping match at all or nearly all of the modern Trek series over on Paramount+, perhaps peppered by the occasional mentally-stunted chime-in from someone who uses "woke" as a pejorative much the same way as those same people used to reference something as "PC." Who wants to court any of that?
     Anyway, this long-delayed third season was the first one to be on Hulu -- and one way or another seems certain to be the only new season of it to be on Hulu.
     As had been seen even while it was still on Fox, working to find its footing and tone, the series is ultimately a fan's love letter to Star Trek, and while the comedic elements are still there, this latest season did lean more on the drama and, for lack of a more species-inclusive term, humanity, all while proselytizing enthusiastically for the ideals of Star Fleet The Planetary Union; a message of humane, post-capitalistic existence I can wholly embrace. More than its first two seasons, the 2022 show is an earnest Star Trek variant where the defining difference was mostly a

technical one: No transporters.
     The media landscape has changed considerably over the five years the show's been around. While this season aired first on Hulu, next Wednesday it'll move over to Disney+. At the moment, there are no contracts for a season four, so all of the talent has been lining up other projects. This season resolved some big plot complications by the penultimate episode, and ended on a note of calm and contentment that could serve as a series finale -- we don't know. Word from Seth himself is that its future will now largely depend upon what Disney sees in terms of streaming viewers.
    If they made more, I would watch. If this ends up being a wrap, well, they ended it with an overall upbeat, life goes onward & upward note. That's more than most tv projects have gotten.

     From 1988 until 1996, Neil Gaiman, in collaboration with some two dozen, diverse, graphic artists, produced a comics series called The Sandman for DC Comics' mature readers' imprint Vertigo. A series that ultimately developed spin-off series and specials, the titular focus is Dream - the lord of dreams and nightmares - who has also been known by various other names, including Morpheus. A being whose kingdom touches all of humanity as they enter his realm when they sleep. As it turns out, Dream is part of a family of anthropomorphic beings called The Endless, In descending order by age, they are: Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair and Delirium.
     The series begins with the circumstances that captured and imprisoned Dream nearly a century earlier, when an occultist accidentally did so while trying to capture and nullify his older sister, Death, seeking immortality and the return of cruelly lost loved ones. While the wrong sibling was captured, Dream was not released -- for reasons best left in the story to explain.
     In the decades of Dream's absence from his kingdom, it falls into disrepair, additional elements of it escaping and running riot while others quietly occupied themselves, and others lay fallow. Mankind suffered for it all in various ways, including a plague of sleeping sicknesses. So, an early part of the journey is about Dream escaping, recovering, surveying the damage, rebuilding his power (including reacquiring various totems from unworthy hands), confronting old friends, acquaintances, and rivals, reclaiming his kingdom, reigning in rogue elements, dispensing punishments, and attempting to undo damage.
     Over the course of the series the emphasis sometimes wandered, and it became a gateway to other stories, on the way filling out the history of the world and the Endless, and allowing us to meet the many players.
     Today, a ten-episode first season of this series finally arrives on Netflix. Villains, eccentric characters, and schemers aplenty, I'm hopeful it'll make for a good time.    
     This first season aims to offer an adaptation of the first two collected volumes (the first 18 issues of what would become a 75-issue series) Preludes and Nocturnes, and The Doll's House.

     It's an ambitious undertaking, and I'll be interested in seeing the choices made. A series with so many strong, divergent visual styles and story elements is bound to fail in some respects - to varying

degrees and judgements by readers - a consequence of pinning elements down, casting roles, etc. This is especially the case not only here in 2022, where gender-bending and gender fluidity in general is increasingly common, though in the case of a series like this, populated by characters many of whom are themselves concepts, it really should be no problem at all. Still, I know for some it will be. Even if a Lucifer played by Gwendoline Christie is no issue, the seeming decision to remake supernatural conman John Constantine as Johanna Constantine (played by Jenna Coleman) will doubtless ruffle some feathers, even if just at the simple level of being forcefully at odds with broader notions of the DC Universe of characters, given that John has been part of two television series and was a key character introduced in comics earlier in the '80s as a conniving player in Alan Moore's reinterpretation of Swamp Thing. I can roll with it, but - on the face of it, here, before seeing the show - that does seem to be a gratuitous move. Then again, I'm getting ahead of things, as I haven't watched any of this yet.
     I will be trying to mostly allow it to tell this version as they decided. The source

works are still there, unchanging, safe, waiting to be revisited. A four-volume set of slipcase books collecting the main series, all in an oversize format to better appreciate them - especially with older, feebler eyes - has been part of what I've assembled in the past couple years as I (with no small degree of presumptive hubris) plan elements of a new stage of life for myself in four or five years.
     I'm not the person I was 30-odd years ago, and part of the interest in revisiting this sort of thing is to see what stuck with me from then, how that estimation holds or falls with the revisit, and to ideally catch many elements that I couldn't appreciate back in the day for lack of life experience.
     So far I've been saving my revisit of them, aside from some light browsing. The temptation to dive into them ahead of this series, as a refresher, was there, but I ultimately decided I'll allow the new series to tell the story its own way, and see how that works out.
     As mentioned, all ten episodes of this first season arrive today, so pacing will be a matter of available time, and restraint or lack thereof. Habit and history makes the bet that I'll have seen it all by Sunday where to put the smart money. Looking forward to this.
     Indeed, I had run through the complete season - even with restraint - by Saturday morning. I didn't apply the brakes by going back to reread the roughly corresponding books, preferring at the moment to let this production be its own, self-sufficient thing -- which it was. Removing any and all overt ties to the DC universe of characters was a wise move on more than one front. Most simply, there was nothing to be gained by the larger audience in retaining those ties, and certainly not enough even at points to justify all of the effort and inevitable distractions that would have involved; also, the DC universe as it currently exists is at best a patchwork, with multiple iterations of itself discarded along the way. While the comics started with many of those linkages and groundings, as it moved on they were left farther and farther behind.
     What the series is intent on bringing us is a cohesive narrative that is, again self-sufficient. No previous comics reading is required. There are echoes of some characters in the mix, but almost entirely sticking with the originals would have been of no interest to the mainstream audience. The echoes function as knowing nods to the comics cognoscenti; the most effective of which is when a character from an even earlier era, who was then refitted to be superheroic crusader of the dream realm, is suitably worked in as the fantasy life of a twelve year-old boy, complete with period costume. Also, as is so often the case with comics series that run over the course of years, it was a work in progress, published in serial fashion rather than produced as a single novel which was then subject to editing as a whole, including a rewriting process. What they become is often not what was key to the plans at the start. Here, adapting the first two story arcs of a 75-issue series, the early material's been rewritten to match what the full series came to be.
     What we have, is something that should work well for a broad audience, particularly if they are content with what is more of a concatenation of fables than an exacting story worked out in clockwork detail. If one is intent on finding fault with it, they can fairly easily do so, as the fuzziness of dream logic suffuses the story and the characters. Relationships, foibles, and possibilities for character growth are what are prized here, well over concerns for seamless storytelling. That's Gaiman's way.
     I enjoyed this first block, and am hoping that the bottom-line bloodbath that's been going on over at Warner following a recent regime change won't interfere with this project rolling on into a second season. I find myself just waiting for official word, one way or another, rather than trying to comb through the imdb listings for key people involved, because that can be maddening. Consider that the people behind and in front of the cameras have their own lives, and bills to pay, and that the final filming for what landed on Netflix this week was done a couple weeks shy of one year ago. The lack of financial commitment to a complete project from the start screws around with the paths of so many people.
     Regardless, what's been done stands well on its own. Stories are told, and the first two arcs of the larger tale are told. While it leaves us much more to potentially look forward to, any notion of "waiting for it to be finished" before starting to watch would be distinctly bone-headed.

     Over on Hulu today (here in the U.S., that is, in most other parts of the world it'll be on Disney+), a different, more visceral and sinewy item, part of a franchise also going back to the 1980s, arrives. In this case the franchise is the sci-fi horror action stories involving alien game-hunters known as Predators.
     Set in 1719, in the Comanche Nation (what are the Southern Plains of the present United States), it's the story of an early encounter between humans and one of these powerful, stealthy hunters that came to Earth looking for what it judged to be worthy prey.
     Suitably enough, it's simply titled Prey (2022  R  1h 39m)

     This is technically the sixth film in this franchise (the other five are also there on Hulu), though by far it's the one set earliest in time. I'm optimistic about this one.
     I see they've even offered an option where it's all dubbed into Comanche, so someone gave this project their special attention.
     Nicely conceived and ably done, fans of the 1987 film, in which a band of highly-skilled mercenaries found themselves up against a mysterious and powerful opponent, should enjoy this period piece in which the flip the characters encounter is the more basic one of the roles of hunter and prey. That this fits in with a Comanche coming of age ritual where hunters prove themselves by hunting something that is also hunting them, makes this an even tidier package, in terms of theme. Those who may be inclined to rush to identify "woke" elements, self-tellingly using such as a pejorative, are invited to keep their peace and come back when they mature.

     Also arriving today on Netflix is a movie I'd barely been aware of, which I'm mentioning here simply because I see it's hitting the streamer and many people find themselves looking for a couple hours of random actions to munch popcorn to. I'm assured this is another adaptation of a video game I've never heard of and will almost certainly never play, a treasure-hunting romp starring Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg, and Antonio Banderas, the latter looking rough enough in the trailer to remind me that we're only 8 months apart. Yeesh! It's Uncharted (2022 PG-13 1h 56m)

     From the look of it it's going to be a great deal of sudden, random movement (maybe something the cat will want to watch with you?) strung together by cliches. Maybe it'll be better than that.

     Returning August 10th - next Wednesday - to Syfy with the back half of its second season, is the sci-fi comedy crime procedural Resident Alien. It hit its mid-season break back in mid-March, and in all the flurry of life I'd forgotten they still owed us eight more episodes in this expanded season. Out of sight, out of mind. It's almost amazing how this brief teaser trailer from back in March refreshed the plot points for me.

     I'll also note that a couple weeks ago they formally greenlit season three, which will be 12 episodes.

     Speaking of August 10th and returning series that have sneaked up on me - over on Netflix this time - the third (and final) season of yet another comics-derived series, Locke & Key, arrives.

     Adapted from Joe Hill's (pen name of Stephen and Tabitha King's son) comics, the first two seasons were generally fun and conceptually engaging, including the central gimmick of the magical keys. All factors considered, I think they've paced this out just about right in wrapping this up.

     While you're there, kicking around Netflix on the 10th, I'll note for no particularly good reason that arriving that same day will be a sci-fi workplace action comedy from South Africa, which mainly seems to remind us that work is, and people in general are, so bad an alien invasion is going to be more welcome than another day of that shit. Ideally it'll at least offer us the catharsis of seeing lousy co-workers and foul roommates eviscerated and fried by alien visitors. I don't know -- that was my most optimistic take-away from the trailer. It's Office Invasion.

     As mentioned last week, August is TCM's Summer Under the Stars month, wherein each 24 hours, from 6am to 6am, is a spotlight of films and features on a single actor. (That link will pop out with an interactive page for the month.)
     From today through next Friday the stars in the spotlight are:
         Friday, Aug 5:     Orson Welles
         Saturday, Aug 6: Audrey Hepburn
         Sunday Aug 7:    Gene Kelly
         Monday Aug 8:    Maureen O'Sullivan
         Tuesday Aug 9:    William Holden
         Wednesday Aug 10:    Greta Garbo
         Thursday Aug 11:    Laurence Harvey
         Friday Aug 12:     Jane Powell

     As is often the case with these spotlight months, if one looks down the list of offerings for a given star and fails to see what should be an obvious choice, be patient enough to scan through the other offerings for that month. A good example among the above is that Greta Garbo's 24 hours doesn't include Grand Hotel (1932). However, if one looks to the 20th, Joan Crawford's day, they'll find that film in the mix. TCM's curated by movie fans, after all, and they generally try hard to work all the angles they have available.
     So much goodness in the mix for the month, it reminds me how near-certain it is that there's material that's as good or better in there, I just don't know it yet.

Odd bits in the mix, too, such as the last of Orson Welles' 24 hours being given over to a Brian DePalma-directed absurdist comedy starring Tommy Smothers as a corporate man who attempts to escape his highly-paid career straight-jacket by becoming a poor-but-happy tap-dancing magician: Get To Know Your Rabbit (1972  92m). Including supporting players John Astin, Katharine Ross in the role of "Terrific Looking Girl", extremely familiar-faced character actors including Charles Lane, Hope Summers, and Allen Garfield, and the late Bob Einstein as a police officer, there should be plenty to watch for.
     Oh, I know the film by reputation, that it bombed and did so in large part because the tone was too flat and deadpan for U.S.audiences at the time. Tommy Smothers hated the production enough that he skipped out for days at a time and refused to return for retakes. The studio was unhappy with DePalma's cut, so they hired Peter Nelson to recut it and direct a new sequence, still didn't like it, so it sat on the shelf for a couple years before they dumped it into theaters without any fanfare, where it quickly disappeared.
     A seemingly serviceable copy of it is here on Youtube, so I'll add that here if you're casually interested:

     As I have TCM, have the DVR set to record it, and am awash in more that I want to see than I have time for, I'll catch it over there.

     That's all for this week. I have things to do, as I'm sure is the case for you. Time to get to it! Keep cool, and I'll see you all here again on the 12th. - Mike