Debuts, Departures, Dystopia and Debacle - Aug 12 - What's To Watch?

 

     Rolling into the heart of February!
     As discussed last week, this week's already seen the return of Resident Alien (Syfy) for the start of the back half of its second season, and the arrival of the third and final season of Locke & Key on Netflix. The former's going to be a week-to-week affair which should take us to the last week of September; this week's new episode quickly brought me back up to speed on the plot points; mid-March seems longer ago than it probably should. The latter series had all ten episodes land at once, and will most likely fall for me this weekend; at 61 I still have no portion-control skills.
     Casually watched fairly quickly - the longest episodes were 47 minutes, and there were only eight episodes for this season. Locke & Key's final season gave it an appropriate send-off, in part by changing the perspective on the nature of the keys. The very final scene had some formulaic winces, but we're left with a reasonably well-rounded and complete tale, while still having options open for someone to pick the story up somewhere in the future.
     This Sunday will see the third season finale of Evil arrive on Paramount+, with a Rockne S. O'Bannon script. This season was pared down from the 13 episodes each of the previous two seasons, to a mere ten. I can't be happy about that shrinkage. I'm curious to see the state of the characters by the roll of closing credits. A fourth season was greenlit last month, so barring a new national/global upheaval it seems reasonable to expect we'll see that season commence roughly next June -- a world away. If things go as planned I'll be a couple months into looking at a different set of walls by then.
     Watched that season finale of Evil around 4AM - a peaceful time of day to wake up, especially on a day when you know you can go back to sleep when you want. (Which I did... and I did.) The story moved fairly well along, including some intentional frustrations, and gave us an interesting starting place for next season. Now to see if Kirsten, her husband and daughters, and their allies all put their heads together to be sure they have as clear a picture as possible.
     A cleverly-written show, I'll be watching for the full fallout from the revelations in this season-ender... and to see what the tone of season four will be now that the season's pop-up book changed just ahead of the new season. Also, I'm wondering if Wallace Shawn's Father Ignatius will be sticking around for the new season.  
     Monday will see he final episode of Better Call Saul arrive on AMC. It's been a pleasure seeing the story unfold, and now we'll finally see the end of that journey. Grievous flaws and all, I'm still sympathetic to Jimmy/Saul, and Kim, and so am conflicted in figuring out what to realistically hope for. Self-destruction seems to be the theme, though.

     An odd item I came across on Amazon Prime recently is a 2017 film co-written and directed by Bill Watterson. A fantasy adventure comedy horror piece about a largely aimless 30 year-old with a history of never finishing anything. In a weekend plunge of creativity, with his girlfriend out of town, he creates something surreal. Using cardboard boxes and art supplies, he builds an elaborate labyrinth inside a fort - all in their apartment - that is vastly more than it appears to be. It's Dave Made a Maze (2017  NR  81m)

     It's a whimsical fantasy adventure piece, though it does ultimately stick with the horror category; however abstract and craft-y the carnage may be, it's of lasting consequence. The film's peppered with familiar faces and voices from various (often genre) shows, including actors from Criminal Minds, to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Venture Brothers.
     As with nearly anything on Amazon Prime, I've no idea how long it's going to stay put, or more importantly how long it's going to remain as a free to Prime members item; things randomly slip back behind additional paywalls all the time. It's also available on Tubi, where there'll be some commercials, but it's much more likely to stay accessible. References along the way at least suggest that it is/has been part of both Shudder and Epix, so if you have either of those it's possible it may be found there. I currently do not, or else I would have checked.

     My experience with concert events has been minimal, both because I've never been a fan of large concentrations of people, and I've seldom seen one that was a good listening experience. Oh, some great performances have come out of live music events, but I've still found that the recordings from properly miked bands are the way to go if I really want to hear and enjoy it. Live and in-person the crowd's going to ultimately put me off, the chances I'll be able to hear anything clearly on-site are low, and sense of "connection" with the performers is almost guaranteed to be illusory. Your mileage may certainly vary, and I'm genuinely happy for fans of big venue, live music events -- I wish you weren't so routinely being absolutely ripped off by the criminal ticket sale system.
     Sometimes these things go so horribly wrong that no one can sanely claim anything to the contrary.
     Between HBO/HBO Max and Netflix there's roughly four hours of critical retrospective about the debacle that was Woodstock 1999. A tragic failure at almost every level, made so much worse by the unbridled, unprincipled greed behind the (nominal) organizers' actions. From food and water, to sanitation and security, organizational ineptitude, and a bottom line focus on maximizing profit, it was a perfect shitstorm.
     On HBO/HBO Max it's the 2021 documentary (that had previously been on Netflix, where I hadn't taken notice of it last year) Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage (1h 50m)

     (Related aside, HBO Max also currently has a director's cut of the 1970 film about the 1969 Woodstock concert, for historical and cultural contrast.)
     Meanwhile, back on Netflix, there's the recently-arrived, three-part documentary Trainwreck: Woodstock '99 (2022)

     The three-parter currently on Netflix has some issues, particularly in how it covers the sexual assault aspects. They seemed to manage to upset various viewers by simultaneously rushing through that aspect, while including graphic, insufficiently edited material that struck some as insensitive to the victims.

     Shifting back to the far more comforting world of a purely imaginary apocalypse:
     Arriving on AMC (with advance episodes appearing on AMC+, as they will doubtless stress during commercial breaks and most assuredly as the first episode ends - AMC in 2022 increasingly exists as marketing for an AMC+ streaming subscription) this Sunday is the first of a six-episode series set in the zombie apocalypse of The Walking Dead.
     These are to be six, separate slices of life, wherein we see how different people reacted to the catastrophic changes, survived (or failed to), and came to see that world. Stand-alone stories offering different perspectives on a catastrophically changed world. Tales of the Walking Dead.

     When The Walking Dead premiered back in 2010, I had already been having one of my personal worst years, with a death back in April that was a bookend of a nineteen month stretch of mostly surprise deaths that had been violently flipping my world since September of 2008. No need to relive those specifics here.

     I'd been a fan of Robert Kirkman's source series, The Walking Dead comic, since its debut in 2003 as a black and white comics version of "the zombie movie that never ends," which is how Kirkman framed the project in the first issue. His intention at the time being that aside from the normal market element of being canceled if it failed to sell well, this would be his own Romeroesque story of a zombie apocalypse that would go on and on. In the end, he pulled the plug on it in 2019 (confessing that he'd come close to doing so at one or two much earlier junctions in the story, changing plans mostly because the inspiration for new character and plot directions struck), not wanting it to become repetitive -- but that, too, is incidental.
     While I rode out the monthly comic through its unannounced end (Kirkman took pains to make it seem as if the comic was still going to be in production, only announcing the end of the story in what became its final issue), when the tv series went to its (very) roughly "mid-season" break in November of 2017, during their war with Negan's forces, I was finding it all too depressing against the day-to-day backdrop of a MAGA-infested U.S. out here in the so-called real world. While the tv show had made selective changes to the story from the comics, it was still following an outline of key events, so I had a good idea of what was coming for the characters. I wasn't in the mood for seeing them take the losses they would, nor to see them coming within a stroke of winning only to lose all over again, at least in the short term. So, I put it all on pause... and have yet to get back to it. That series is set to finally end just before Thanksgiving this year, btw, but that's not important now.
     The six-episode, standalone format for this new show will let me step back into that universe, no strings attached, for the first time since late 2017. That feels like just the right comfort level for me.

      Coming to Disney+ next Thursday, the 18th (why they shifted from Wednesdays as their new release day I've no idea), is the latest Marvel series. An action comedy starring Tatiana Maslany (Orphan Black) as Jennifer Walters, an attorney who also happens to be the cousin of Bruce Banner, aka The Incredible Hulk. It's a nine-episode first season of She-Hulk: Attorney at Law.

     I know, I know, "She-Hulk" was and will always be a terrible name. So blunt and unimaginative that it's barely juvenile. One of the more embarrassing ones. You're going to need to get past that.

     The thumbnail sketch reason for the leaden sobriquet is that in the late '70s Marvel's extremely one-sided contract with CBS (all the power was on CBS/Universal's side) for the Incredible Hulk tv movies and show, made Marvel vulnerable to CBS creating a female version, which they would then own outright. Show biz almost always moves to duplicate anything that's a success, the Bill Bixby/Lou Ferigno Incredible Hulk had been a hit for the network, and a successful, female-led spin-off of The Six Million Dollar Man - The Bionic Woman - had been done a few years prior.
     To preempt any such move, Stan Lee and the folks at Marvel slapped this

character together and launched her in her own comics series. That this hadn't happened until 1980 is probably the most surprising part. Lousy name, and nearly as poor of an origin story - that's not worth yet another digression here; I'll touch on the comics origin next week, after we've seen how they decided to handle the specifics in the show.
     It's important to understand how powerless and unsophisticated Marvel was back in the day. As a business it had been hanging by its fingernails through much of the 1970s; had they not scored a  contract to do a comics version of a new, little property no one had many expectations for - Star Wars - in 1977 it's well within the realm of possibility that the company might have collapsed. They did, however, and George Lucas' project was an unprecedented success, and all involved got a dynamic new lease on life.
      So, the creation of a She-Hulk (shake, shake, shake-off the cringe) was a blunt legal move, neither a creatively- nor an even remotely aesthetically-driven one. The lackluster, formulaic series that ran for just over two years did little to improve on any of that. It existed as a staked claim, which was all that was required of it. The early item most to their credit was that they didn't copy the rage-driven creature model the Hulk had long since fallen into, with Jen, instead, retaining her personality (what there was of it initially) and intellect in the transformation.

     It would take later writers to infuse her with more personality, and then take her one step farther by giving her a fourth wall-breaking shtick. She would eventually make occasional, narrative side-comments to the audience or the writer, showing signs that she was aware she was a character in an entertainment. It would also find her eventually finding herself back to some version of the career she'd studied so long and hard for prior to some of her cousin's blood being transfused into her.
     In introducing the character, as is the case with the MCU in general, Disney has the benefit of those miles and years of developmental rough road from the comics. Knowing what ultimately worked, the screen version appears to have skipped fairly straight to it. The series will abound with guest-stars, some of whom have already been introduced elsewhere, others making their MCU debut. We'll get to see, in a snappy, action-comedy format, how much they manage to expand and firm up elements of the MCU over nine episodes.

     Meanwhile, Summer Under the Stars (that link pops out to an interactive page of the listings) month continues rolling out for TCM viewers, offering 24-hour spotlights of various stars. The next block, starting with today:
         Friday Aug 12:     Jane Powell
         Saturday Aug 13:    Marlon Brando
         Sunday Aug 14:     Elizabeth Taylor
         Monday Aug 15:    Randolph Scott
         Tuesday Aug 16:    Raquel Welch
         Wednesday Aug 17:    Spencer Tracy
         Thursday Aug 18:    Shelly Winters
         Friday Aug 19:    Toshiro Mifune

     So many interesting choices in the mix, few of them I'll have practical time for with the work week and currently limited DVR space - I've so much on there, much of it from TCM, that I've yet to make time for. Far too much in the week for me to make a good highlights list for, but one of the items that popped for me is 2PM on Tuesday, as part of Raquel's day. It's the 1973 Stephen Sondheim co-written (with Anthony Perkins), multi-star whodunnit The Last of Sheila. Here's the theatrical trailer from back in the day:

     For me it's been another draining week, including some very unwelcome health news, and I need to try to... I'm not quite sure. Distance myself from the stresses will have to be part of the process, though. There's much to sort out, and I'm aces at putting such things off. Getting myself to accept, usefully, that time is running out will be a challenge. I'm used to hiding in the margins and uncertainties, and evading what I'm told is inevitable. Those are tough behaviors to break, especially when I don't want to.
     I hope you've found something in the movies and shows above (and in previous Friday posts) of interest, and that we'll all make it back here safely next Friday. - Mike

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

Bada Binge! Where the time goes, and where it may go next - Oct 15 - Friday Video Distractions

 

      Somehow, suddenly -- mid-October! Paradoxically sunny and set to top out at 81° hereabouts Friday, but also set to suddenly change over the course of a rainy Saturday, ushering in much cooler weather next week. Probably a good time to be thinking of things that need doing out in the day, saving the video hermit's life for colder, darker days... but that's not why I'm here. Come! Grow fat, indolent, sleep-deprived and eye-strained with me!

     Such notes as I'd put together for this week are primarily for things coming out next week, and there are so many items I've mentioned in previous posts - including all of the various new items mentioned last week - that I haven't gotten around to watching.
     I've been plowing through my first ever rewatch of The Sopranos, all the way through the still-controversial finale, and finished that up overnight Wednesday. The aim is to get in a rewatch of series prequel film The Many Saints of Newark, which I'd talked about several weeks ago. While, yes, it is a prequel to the series, much of what drives it for the audience is what will happen to the many characters decades later as seen in the series. I don't see it as a film that would draw someone into the series; it works best as a supplement. That'll be available on HBO Max neatly through the month of October, and I'll want to give it at least that one additional viewing now that I've refreshed myself on the full series.
     Beyond that, my most recent viewing's included a couple of season wraps.
     Evil (Paramount+) closed its second, 13-episode season with some character milestones and growing complications. It's fair to say the characters have been tied - tied themselves - into a knot of Gordian complexity. It's likely to take more than a single slice of a sword to resolve the complications. Leads Kristen (Katja Herbers) and David (Mike Colter) get to a particularly sticky turn in the closing frames of the season, and her character's moral polish has taken almost as much damage as her mother's (played by Christine Lahti). I'm curious to see what redemptive arcs, if any, are to come.
     The cast is a joy to follow, so much so that I continue to be reluctant to single anyone out, as even the supporting players often shine.

     Season two brought us a new recurring character with comedic actress Andrea Martin (who most of us have known since her SCTV days) as Sister Andrea. She rises in prominence over the course of the season, as an ally and mentor, managing to bring a coiled intensity to her character that soon draws our attention whenever she's in a scene. I don't know how much of this is unique to those of us who were in a Catholic school setting, where holy sisters (colloquially "nuns", but as one of them pointed out to us many, many years ago, they're "sisters", because nuns are cloistered, not out in the world) were often intimidating figures, but she does a wonderful job of channeling the threat, authority, and a sense that she knows just what you're up to, young man, through a tiny frame beneath that black and white habit. Her best scenes have been as adversary/foil to Leland Townsend (Michael Emerson), who is the series' #1 agent of evil, and her relationship with series lead David. Knowing moments between Leland and David have made for sudden, comedic highlights during this second season, too.
     Checking, I see that season one has disappeared from Netflix, where they'd cannily placed it to help fish for viewers (a move that worked -- that was where I watched it) and even from CBS.com, despite the first season being broadcast on the network. Paramount+ is the sole place to watch both seasons of the series. Exclusive content is all part of building a streaming service, I suppose.
     Currently, my primary reasons to go to Paramount + are Evil, and the still-ongoing Star Trek animated action comedy series Star Trek: Lower Decks. A fourth season of Star Trek: Discovery will begin next month.
     I should note that third season of Evil was approved back in July, so that's off for us somewhere in 2022.
     As I'm on the subject of Paramount+, I'll mention a new series that's just launched there this week. Starring Kate Beckinsale as a disgraced reporter who is looking for a way back for herself, making for potential moral and ethical complications as she latches onto the story about a woman who may have been falsely convicted of murder, it's Guilty Party.

     If you've watched the trailer then you know almost as much about it as I did about the show fifteen minutes ago.
     It's being promoted as a dark comedy, and I think that's near the root of the show's likely conceptual problems. The danger of setting something up for humor is that often that's used as a cover for poor plotting, as it's in service of a joke.
     This was one of those items that I wasn't aware of until it landed on my doorstep. The first two episodes of the series are available on Paramount+. As best I can tell it's set up as a 10-episode series, though I'd be more encouraged if it was being pitched clearly as a limited series -- so we'd know the aim is to give us a complete story rather than to get a nod for a second season and make those mortgage payments.
     The initial critical response on the whole is a wait and see call, as few to none seem to be convinced the show has a real direction or can even justify its foundations -- the main character has a reputation as a star journalist we're told to just accept how good she is despite seeing no signs of it in her approach to anything, and she ends up working for a clickbait celebrity and fashion site... why? Just because it's frustrating to her? None of it can't be overcome, but the most positive calls to come out of the early episodes are that newcomer Jules Latimer, playing Toni Plimpton, a woman convicted of killing her husband the previous year, is the one to watch.
     With episodes roughly half an hour long, it likely would have been a better call to either drop the entire series before the audience at once, or at least give more than the first two episodes. Give people a little more chance to get some traction.

     The other season-ender I got to this past week was the season 12 close of the animated action comedy Archer. The 8-episode season wrapped with a story that gave a graceful exit for character Malory Archer, the hard-bitten, hard-drinking matriarch of the show, and more pointedly to the late Jessica Walter who was her voice. They combed through the show's archives to select lines for her (and for another, departed, character) to provide an appropriate bow.
     New seasons of Archer run on FXX, and all are available on Hulu. Season 13 was approved for production by late September.
     Today (October 15th), Amazon Prime sees the launch of a slasher style series based on horror film franchise, which was itself based on a 1973 novel of the same name. It's I Know What You Did Last Summer.

    I haven't watched any of it yet, and based on what I've seen and read of it I'm thinking I'm not part of the target audience, though it seems there's some confusion as to who the target audience is supposed to be. It may be fun (for me) to watch it and then revisit the three reviews I skimmed, as much to take note of what things are touchier subjects (no pun intended) for particular reviewers, as nudity seems to be pushing some reviewer's buttons more than violence and death. Daniel Fienberg of The Hollywood Reporter even used the phrase "...unsightly and unexpected penises..."  It could be fun to turn this experience into a psychological profile tool for some of these reviewers. The general nudity, including full frontal, seems to be rattling a few cages.
     They opted to drop the first four episodes (each around 48 minutes, give or take) on this premier Friday, with one episode each Friday thereafter. That's half of the eight-episode limited series. I know that the hook of the show is reportedly revealed near the end of the first episode, and to expect attempts at shock value to be more prized than reason by the filmmakers. As with any of the items I mention in these pieces, if I get around to watching them I'll come back to this piece and add comments in green.
     Sticking with that seasonal theme and primary target demographic, coming to Netflix October 20th: College student Benny, working part time as a chauffeur picks up two women, Blaire and Zoe, for a night of club-hopping across Los Angeles. Before long, Benny discovers there's something dangerously different about these two women, and that the night's dangerous in ways he'd never expected. It's Night Teeth (2021  1h 48m)

     Yes, it's not the smoothest of titles. It's almost like something an A.I. would have come up with if told to come up with a two-word title that hadn't been used before, that had two, key elements from the movie.
     It seems to be a teen/young adult-focused item, and - again - so far I only have the trailer to go on. Hopefully it'll be at least fun, but for the moment I only have the trailer, and I'm not getting my hopes up.
     The same day (also on Netflix) a comedy from France takes us back to the early peak of fearful excitement for the COVID-19 pandemic, as strangers living in the same building get to know each other during a three-month lockdown. Perhaps a tad too quirky, I found myself wondering if this is a film Jerry Lewis might have made. (I know, that's a dusty, cheap, lazy shot at the French. Still, it seemed at least a little warranted by some of the antics in the trailer.) I'm not familiar with Dany Boon, who co-wrote, directed and stars in Stuck Together (2021   1h 5m) That's the U.S. title they decided to go with, rather than the direct translation of 8 Humanity Street.

     Might it be genuinely funny? Anything's possible. Might it be interesting even just as a view of how others have been reacting to the pandemic, lockdown and general safety measures, and dealing with people? Sure, it could be.
     I expect this will be available with the usual range of Netflix options, including dubbed into English, or French with English captions.
   Arriving on Netflix next Friday, the 22nd, is the long-awaited second season of Locke & Key. I almost held off and made it part of next week's post, but wanted to mention it ahead of time in case, harking back to season one (we were still in the Consortium's first year, and it's odd to look back to when one of these Friday posts was on a single show), the week's lead time might find some either wanting to refresh themselves with a partial or full re-watch, or simply try it out if they hadn't already. The season two trailer is already starting to bring many of the details back.

     The same day, arriving both on HBO-Max and in theaters, is Dune (2021  155 m).
     I'll confess, that while I've been peripherally aware of this being in development for the past couple years I have not been following any of the details. So much so that until I started looking for info for this piece, I didn't know whether this was going to be a feature film or a miniseries. Plans for new adaptations of Frank Herbert's 1965 novel have been announced as in the works in various places since shortly after the novel first hit, the majority of times ultimately falling through. I'm not involved in the process, certainly not being paid nor polled as part of a focus group, so I long ago decided to wait to see what runs the gauntlet and makes it to market.
     As it turns out, this one's a feature film, covering roughly half of the 1965 novel. At least that's better than the 1984 attempt, where they aimed to handle the full thing in a single, albeit roughly 3-hour film (then cut to a ridiculous 137 minutes for theatrical release). Part of me is still thrown by the decision to go the route of a feature film again in a world where pay channels and streaming services are flourishing, and epic tales being adapted into series - where more of the characters and plot elements can have a chance to be explored and savored - seem to be doing well. The impression here seems to be that they are hoping to make this work after the fashion of Peter Jackson's adaptations of Tolkien.
     I've only just finally gotten around to watching the trailer, despite being aware of when it debuted, and of the many people who seemed very appreciative of it at the time.

     Amazingly, all that's been reportedly done for the sequel/second half is that writing has begun on the script. This is almost shocking to me, as I'd have expected this to be one of those projects where all of the principal photography for both films would have been done at the same time, allowing additional time for post-production work. I know that Warner's decision to handle this as a simultaneous theatrical release and 31-day HBO-Max streamer greatly disappointed director Denis Villeneuve, for a combination of financial and artistic reasons - the latter including the filming of it for a theatrical showing. The project's vision was for the big screen, and it's upsetting to him to know that so many will be watching it on small ones.
     As of this writing it appears that there hasn't been a formal approval given for the second film -- a fact that manages to surprise me each time it comes up. This just seems like the kind of project where both parts (or at least much of the second part, too) would have been filmed at the same time.
     Shifting gears here at the end, I'm not ending this week's piece with an old horror or sci-fi film. It's not that there's a shortage of them to draw on, but last week I indirectly linked to three of them (if you go to that page, scroll down to the bottom where the links are for the three Vincent Price revenge films spotlighted), and I just wasn't in the mood this time.
     While I was looking around for some other items, I saw that Tubi has the full four-season, 13-episode run of the period sleuth series Cadfael.
     Adapted from The Cadfael Chronicles, a series of novels by Ellis Peters (pen name of linguist and scholar Edith Pargeter), they center on the (fictional) 12th century Benedictine monk Cadfael. He is what is known as a conversus, someone who entered monastic life after having lived a (for the times) long and full life out in the secular world, as a man in his forties. He had been both a sailor and a soldier, including service as a crusader in so-called the Holy Lands. It was there that he became a knowledgeable herbalist, learning it from the Muslims. His worldly experience and knowledge, an analytical turn of mind, and being a keen observer of the human condition, combine to find him becoming a sort of detective, primarily solving murders. Given his status within a religious order, and the complications of the church and crown, he has to take considerable care at times in how he approaches each mystery.
     The source novels were set between the years of 1137 and 1145, a time known broadly as the Anarchy, when a dispute over the crown of England was going on between King Stephen and Empress Maud. Various historical events were woven into the stories, presumably to encourage readers to seek out more information on the period. Along with the political history, elements of then-contemporary culture, custom, and technology play parts in some of the stories. Each episode is a self-contained tale, running about 75 minutes. It's been roughly a quarter century since I saw these, so I can't recall if there were elements that made the order important, but I'd still defer to trying to watch them in order even just to give it the best chance of allowing the revelations to the audience about Cadfael's pre-monastic life to be doled out as intended.
     Starring Derek Jacobi, and with scattered appearances by other faces familiar to various audiences over the years, these shows were produced by ITV between 1994 and '98. Here in the states, I saw them as part of PBS' Mystery! series.
     As mentioned, these are currently on Tubi, and are also on imdb.tv (which can also be accessed through Amazon Prime), and most of them are on YouTube, too - so, all of these essentially free. The YouTube videos I've looked at are clean copies, so that might be the place to start. Otherwise I'd lean in favor of Tubi over imdb.tv, as the latter seems noticeably more aggressive with their commercials, but as all are free you can see which suits you best. Here's the first episode, "One Corpse Too Many"

     Time to make my exit for the week. I hope you found something of interest to look into above, or in one of the previous installments. There's no shortage of things to watch, only of time. Take care, and come back next week. - Mike