"His Dark Materials," Year Two

Minor spoilers ahead.

I've been looking forward to this latest season of "His Dark Materials" for a while, because this is a series where I genuinely have no idea what happens next in the story. While the first season was a little bumpy and lackluster at times, it was also clearly setting up bigger events to come, and I wanted to see where it would go.  Immediately, the second season is an improvement on the first, more focused and smaller scale. Lyra crosses over from the frozen North into the almost empty city of Cittàgazze, where she meets Will Parry (Amir Wilson), who has similarly crossed over from contemporary Earth.  They use Cittàgazze as their secret hideaway that they can retreat to while exploring Will's world and learning more about Dust, Will's missing father (Andrew Scott), and the "Subtle Knife," a weapon that can create portals between the different worlds.  

We also continue to follow Mrs. Coulter, Boreal, and Lee Scoresby, whose storylines are all greatly expanded from the books, but also tighter and more interesting to follow this year. Lord Asriel (James McAvoy) was reportedly also supposed to have an entire POV episode to himself, but COVID cut the production short, leaving the season with a very abrupt ending at seven episodes instead of eight.  Otherwise, the season looks gorgeous, with more screen time for the daemons, more beautiful fantasy environments, and more impossible creatures and concepts brought to life.  Cittàgazze is prowled by sinister spectres who look like living plumes of smoke, and provide some of this season's best visuals.  Several of the characters really gel at last, like Will and Boreal.  Lin Manuel-Miranda is especially good this year as Lee Scoresby, and it may be the best performance I've ever seen from him.  

This is a much more satisfying season to watch than last year, because it pays off its character and plot developments more regularly.  Boreal is no longer hanging around the edges of the story, but becomes a central antagonist.  Mrs. Coulter and Lee Scoresby are able to accomplish major goals and reveal some shades of gray.  The most significant new character is Dr Mary Malone (Simone Kirby), a physicist who Lyra meets in Will's world, which inspires Dr. Malone to go off on her own journey of discovery.  All of these characters' paths intersect in various ways, and the stakes of their interactions are clearer and more interesting.  Two of the season's best scenes involve Mrs Coulter being shown in a more sympathetic light - one where she interrogates Lee Scoresby, and another where she meets Dr. Malone.  In addition to giving Ruth Wilson more opportunities to seethe wonderfully, they have so much impact because they do so much character building, world building, and hammer home some of the series' big themes too.  

Things do get rushed and messy in the final episode, almost certainly because of the lost eighth episode.  The clashes between the Magisterium and the witches mostly fall flat, because the witches continue to be the show's dodgiest players.  Its difficult to parse the rules for their powers, their personalities are awfully stilted, and I had trouble telling them apart because of all the murky action scenes that take place at night.  They're important in setting up the big oncoming conflict that will be central to the next season, so I hope we'll see some improvements as Will and Lyra interact with them more.     

And I do look forward to next season.  "His Dark Materials" had such a big jump in quality this year that I'm thrilled that the creators will have a chance to finish the series on their own terms.  I'm fully convinced that long form television serves the story here much better than the originally envisioned film trilogy, and I'm very attached to these versions of the characters, especially Lyra and Mrs. Coulter.  However, given the complications and demands of the production, I expect it'll be a long time before we get to see the final chapter.

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"The Undoing" Keeps Us Guessing

Mild spoilers ahead.

It's hard to watch "The Undoing" without thinking of the last miniseries David E. Kelly wrote for HBO, "Big Little Lies," which also happened to star Nicle Kidman.  We're back in the world of the privileged elite, who coexist nervously with the less fortunate, and are all too aware of the outsized scrutiny they attract.  This time Kidman plays Grace Fraser, a psychologist married to a celebrated pediatric oncologist, Jonathan (Hugh Grant).  They have a son, Henry (Noah Jupe) who attends a posh Manhattan private school with a boy named Miguel (Edan Alexander).  It's Miguel's beautiful mother Elena (Matilda de Angelis), whose appearance in Grace's world signals the end of her seemingly perfect life.  Soon Elena is brutally murdered, and Jonathan is the main suspect.

"The Undoing" runs for six episodes, directed by Susanne Bier, who does an excellent job of maintaining the tension and ambiguity of the characters through the entire series.  I can think of no better compliment than to admit that I wasn't sure who the murderer was until the last episode.  However, the point of the show isn't figuring out whodunnit, but wrestling with the doubt that keeps rearing its head.  We're put into the headspace of Grace, who is desperate to hold her family together, and is perhaps a little too willing to believe that her charismatic, unstable husband could never do the things he's accused of doing.  And while Nicole Kidman is very good here, it's definitely Hugh Grant who steals the show.  Jonathan Fraser is such a bundle of contradictory information, but it all comes down to Grant's performance.  He's sympathetic and charming and so good at putting on a show that you want to believe him, even when everything he says is improbable.

I like how the show's creators use the common tropes of the mystery genre against the audience.  We've been so primed to expect twists and turns and secrets in these kinds of stories, the red herrings are often irresistible.  Why is Grace's father, played by Donald Sutherland, so adamantly against helping Jonathan?  Surely Elena's husband Fernando (Ismael Cruz Cordova) knows more than he's letting on about the night of the murder.  Or what about Grace's best friend Sylvia (Lily Rabe), who seems to know everything about everyone?  Or what about Grace herself, who has clearly been under a lot of strain?  David E. Kelley only has to make the most innocuous suggestions, and the speculation easily runs rampant.  There are two episodes that end on juicy pieces of evidence being uncovered, which aren't actually what they seem.      

"The Undoing" is highbrow melodrama, and indulges in all kinds of courtroom theatrics  and soap opera logic that wouldn't pass muster in a more grounded kind of legal thriller.  The media scrum is milked for all it's worth.  However, if you can suspend disbelief, it's such fun to see the court battles unfold, and the big name cast getting into these juicy performances.  The Grants hire a lawyer named Haley Fitzgerald (Noma Dumezweni), who is a standout in the later episodes for her no-nonsense, breathtakingly cynical way of operating.  I love how she clearly figures out the truth long before Grace does, but that it wouldn't matter one way or another to her legal strategy.  I love that the POV shifts unexpectedly between different characters, especially in the finale where we finally get inside Jonathan's complicated head.   

Viewers who are expecting a more typical, fast-paced mystery show may be disappointed with "The Undoing," because it's another kind of animal entirely.  It's far more of a psychological thriller, one that gets a lot of its power from an unusual amount of slow, deliberate character and worldbuilding.  So much is implied here without being made explicit - the obvious class difference and power imbalance between Grace and Elena's families, the insular private school culture, and everyone's use of social media.  In hindsight, the first episode is less about introducing Grace than it is about establishing Elena's motives, a woman who desperately wants to be part of the Frasers' world, but is marked as an outsider from her first appearance.

Was six hours really necessary to tell this story, though?  Probably not, but I enjoyed every minute of them.  

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"Wonder Woman" Makes an '80s Movie

 I feel the best way to think about "Wonder Woman 1984" or "WW 1984" is to imagine that it was actually made in 1984, the year that brought us "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," "Romancing the Stone," "Conan the Destroyer," and "Supergirl."  Lots of cheese, lots of winking at the camera, lots of bright colors, and lots of excess.  The usual DC fanboys are up in arms because "Wonder Woman 1984" has very messy plotting, and leaps in logic that often defy gravity, much like its heroine.  As escapist action-adventure fare, however, it works just fine.

Being set in the '80s gives Patty Jenkins and her crew the opportunity to poke some fun at the age of parachute pants and video game arcades.  More importantly, the '80s embrace of shopping mall consumerism and mass media provides some nice thematic context to the story, which involves the discovery of a magic rock that grants wishes.  Diana (Gal Godot) works for the Smithsonian at her day job, and still fights crime in secret.  She comes across the magic rock when her colleague, a nerdy nebbish named Dr. Barbara Minerva (Kristen Wiig), receives it from the FBI as part of a lot of stolen goods that need identifying.  Soon the Gordon Gekko-like entrepreneur Maxwell Lord (Pedro Pascal) shows up, looking for the rock, which he intends to use for his own greedy ends.  The rock's powers soon bring Diana's lost love Steve Trevor (Chris Pine) back from the dead, and set Barbara on a path toward empowerment and supervillainy.

Like most recent superhero films, "WW 1984" is built around its fancy action set pieces, loosely connected with a semblance of a story.  So Diana gets a big sequence in Egypt, beating up a convoy of trucks and tanks, a brawl with Barbara in the White House, and a big climactic clash at a mountain stronghold wearing a new set of shiny golden armor.  How we get from point A to point B to point C is not particularly elegant.  However, what "WW 1984" does manage fairly well are its character arcs, and using the action scenes to emphasize character progression, even if the plot is full of obvious holes.  We open with a pricey-looking flashback scene to Diana as a child, competing with the Amazon warriors on Themyscira and getting an early lesson in why cheaters never prosper.  There's also a fun bit involving Wonder Woman's famous invisible jet - though it's best not to think too hard about how she got the jet or how Steve figured out how to fly it.

I came away from "WW 1984" satisfied, because I felt that it did right by its four major characters - Diana, Steve Trevor, Maxwell Lord, and Barbara Minerva.  None of the actors are very especially good in the movie, with Chris Pine's WWI vet discovering the '80s schtick easily the best performance of the lot, but everyone is trying very earnestly to good effect.  Kristen Wiig and Pedro Pascal both have flimsy, evildoer characters who they nonetheless manage to imbue some genuine pathos into.  Gal Gadot, unfortunately, is less successful this time around at making Diana interesting to follow, but she still handily delivers on the action and spectacle scenes.  As for Chris Pine, it may have been an outrageous cheat to bring him back, but the movie benefits significantly from his comic timing and charm.  

Moreover, I liked what the movie wanted to say and wanted to be, even if the execution was often awkward and clunky.  The twist on the monkey's paw scenario is interesting.  The messages about upholding truth against wishful thinking and self-delusion are timely and well-considered.  There are some tonal issues, and the two and a half hour runtime is excessive, but when the movie is leaning into the camp and the humor, it's as good as anything DC has made in the last few years.  It's not remotely as good as the first "Wonder Woman," despite the heftier price tag, but it's perfectly suitable for all your superhero blockbuster needs. 

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"The Witches" and "The New Mutants"

Okay, continuing the HBO Max binge, I guess I should write something about "The Witches," since it was one of my most anticipated titles for last year.  This is a new film adaptation of the Roald Dahl book, directed by Robert Zemeckis, with a big list of great creative people both behind and in front of the camera.  The cast includes Anne Hathaway as the evil Grand High Witch, pitted against Octavia Spencer as our young hero's wonderful Grandmother.  The screenplay is credited to Zemeckis, Kenya Barris, and Guillermo Del Toro.  So I think I can be excused for having some high expectations for this film.

To their credit, the filmmakers make some good and interesting choices.  The action has been moved from Scandinavia to the American South circa 1968.  The heroic young Boy (Jahzir Kadeen Bruno) and his Grandmother are African-American, and there are some lovely early scenes of the two bonding in the wake of tragedy.  However, the filmmakers also make some regrettable choices.  There are the wraparound scenes with Chris Rock that are awful.  There is the heavy, heavy emphasis on CGI imagery and broad slapstick once the witches enter into the picture.  Maybe I've been watching too much "Lovecraft Country," but you'd think the film would do something with the new racial dynamic of the characters and the Southern Gothic setting.  This version keeps Dahl's original, bittersweet ending, but then promptly undercuts it with goofy antics. 

This feels like a film that was intended to be dark and strange and unsettling - and you occasionally see hints of that here and there in "The Witches."  However, this impulse has been totally subsumed by more kid-friendly, pandering elements that trade in real scares for humorous grotesquerie.  I like Anne Hathaway's campy Grand High Witch performance very much, but she's not frightening.  The transformation sequences look silly instead of alarming.  While the CGI enables some impressive visuals, the design choices leave a lot to be desired.  There are mouse characters in the film, voiced by Codie-Lei Eastick and Kristin Chenoweth, who are far too anthropomorphized.  The film ends up looking and sounding very much like every other overly bright,  overly colorful, overly cartoonish fantasy adventure aimed at small children of the past decade.  I hesitate to be too harsh, since I'm clearly not the target audience for this one, but it's a disappointment all around.  Even Stanley Tucci as an unwitting hotel manager looks lost here.

Now, on to the long-delayed "The New Mutants," which takes place in the "X-men" universe, and follows five troubled teenage mutants who have been sent to a specialized hospital facility overseen by the mild-mannered Dr. Reyes (Alice Braga).  A good collection of young actors have been assembled to play the mutant kids.  Our lead is Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt), a Cheyenne girl whose entire reservation was wiped out by some unseen force.  She's quickly befriended by Rahne (Maisie Williams), who can turn into a wolf and hybrid wolf-girl, and bullied by Illyana (Anya Taylor-Joy), who can teleport and grow a sword out of her arm.  Rounding out the group are Sam (Charlie Heaton), a literal human cannonball, and Bobby (Henry Zaga), an entitled Brazilian who overheats in destructive ways.

Fox originally sold this film as a merging of the superhero and teen horror genres, but chickened out in the execution.  For a horror film, this is  very tame and plays like a PG-13 installment of "Nightmare on Elm Street."  However, I like it as a superhero film, though one that's leaning hard on teen movie cliches.  It's good to see the usual origin story formula shaken up a little, and it makes it all the more upsetting that Disney's merger with Fox means the end of the cinematic "X-men" universe, and this kind of experimentation.  I mean, Disney is never going to be gutsy enough to have one of their Marvel films lead by a LGBT Native-American teenager.  Or heavily imply trafficking and sexual abuse in the backgrounds of other characters.

That said, the film clearly went through a shaky production, and seems to have spent the vast majority of its budget on effects.  The cast is limited, and mostly stuck in a single location for the entire film.  There are sequences where footage appears to be missing, and awkward edits abound.  The performances are also uneven - bad accents are endemic - and unfortunately the greenest actors get the most screentime.  That said, for all its deficiencies, I found the film an easy and enjoyable watch, and I'm sad the planned sequels will not be forthcoming.

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"Raised by Wolves" Raises the Bar

The premiere episode of "Raised by Wolves," which was directed by Ridley Scott, is one of the best pieces of high concept science-fiction media I've seen in ages.  Most of the hour follows two androids, the white-skinned, strong-willed Mother (Amanda Collin), and the dark-skinned, more good-natured Father (Abubakar Salim) as they arrive on the planet of Kepler-22b with a group of precious human embryos who they have been programmed to protect and nurture.  The youngest of the children they raise is a boy named Campion (Winta McGrath), who is roughly aged eleven by the end of the episode.

It was a canny decision by creator Aaron Guzikowski to make the androids the main characters of "Raised by Wolves."  They speak and behave in a very detached, alien way, and are able to approach all kinds of moral and philosophical quandaries with a certain analytical distance.  They have emotions, and they're very sympathetic and even lovable at times, but there's a pronounced otherness to them that the show maintains all the way through to the end.  Though the production values are wonderful, most of the effectiveness of the show comes down to the excellent performances of Collin and Salim.  Mother in particular is an instantly iconic character, merciless and rigid when it comes to fulfilling her directives, but also warm and open-hearted when she's interacting with the children.  

Little by little, more and more is revealed about the group's circumstances.  We learn that the androids left a war-torn Earth where most of humanity was destroyed.  We learn that they were sent by one group, the Atheists, and reached Kepler-22b in advance of the religious Mithraics, who worship a god called Sol, and decided to send their survivors aboard a larger, slower-moving Ark.  We learn that Mother has certain hidden capabilities that are revealed upon the arrival of the Ark, and that Kepler-22b has its own mysteries to unravel.  A second major narrative emerges involving Caleb (Travis Fimmel) and Mary (Niamh Algar), a pair of Atheist soldiers who found a way to sneak aboard the Ark in disguise.  We also follow some of the children from the Ark, including the son of the ship's captain, Paul (Felix Jamieson), and a teenage girl named Tempest (Jordan Loughran), who secretly hates the Mithraics.

As the first season rolls on, the show falls into the more typical pattern of cat-and-mouse games as the androids and the Mithraics engage in hostilities, while the kids are caught in the middle trying to sort out complicated allegiances. Some of the conceits are very old hat, like a Mithraic prophecy of a chosen one that might refer to Campion, or Paul, or Caleb.  There's a lot of business with mysterious voices and visions in the second half of the season, when the pace slows down.  I appreciate that the show aims to be respectful of religious impulses, but few of the spiritual elements in the show work very well, aside from some of the broader symbolism.  None of the Mithraic true believers are given much depth, and the Caleb storyline drags considerably.

On the other hand, "Raised by Wolves" is willing to tackle some pretty wild material that no other science fiction program has ever gotten near, and I like how it handles difficult subjects.  There's a lot of violence in this show and some sex, but little of it is graphic.  Children are constantly put in danger and die, but we never see them harmed directly.  The body horror is constant, and very tactile, but when it's happening to the androids, that softens the impact just enough.  The show is very good about showing what it needs to show, and getting the wow factor from the great effects and environments.  However, it also knows when to pull back and let the viewer's imagination fill in the blanks.  

I'll add a warning that the series looks like hard science fiction, but it's not.  As it goes on, the show becomes more fantastical, nothing about the alien planet makes any sense, and the religious allegory becomes far more pronounced.  However, I can't help but love that the show goes so big, that it's about ideas and conflicts with some real weight behind them.  "Raised by Wolves" has plenty of faults, but its operating in the realm of the old school science-fiction stories I grew up with, and have been waiting far too long to see onscreen.  So, let's see where this goes.      

      

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Exploring "Lovecraft Country"

I have never seen a show like "Lovecraft Country" before.  It's a genre program that is very aware of its status as a genre program, full of the occult, ghosts, magic, demons, and time travel.  However, it is also very deliberately a story about African-Americans inhabiting roles within those genre stories that are usually reserved for white protagonists.  There's a ton of pointed commentary about the history of African-American oppression, and the show often contrasts the supernatural monsters with the even more frightening monsters of real life racism and bigotry.   

Taking place in the 1950s, we follow Tic Freeman (Jonathan Majors), recently returned to Chicago from the Korean War, his Uncle George (Courtney B. Vance), and Tic's childhood friend Leti (Jurnee Smollett) as they take a cross country road trip into hostile areas where Jim Crow laws are still in effect.  They discover that Tic has a mysterious heritage connected to a group of cultists, including the sinister Christina Braithwaite (Abbey Lee) and her minion William (Jordan Patrick Smith).  This sparks a series of adventures that affect all of Tic's family and friends.  Each episode highlights different characters, including George's wife Hippolyta (Aunjanue Ellis), and daughter Diana (Jada Harris), Leti's sister Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku), Tic's long estranged father Montrose (Michael K. Williams), and Ji-Ah (Jamie Chung), a Korean nurse Tic met during the war.

There's a season-long storyline about Tic and Leti trying to learn more about magic and the Braithwaites, culminating in a big final standoff.  However, that's probably the least interesting part of the show.  "Lovecraft Country" functions as an anthology of different kinds of genre stories.  One episode features a haunted house, another is a body horror romance, one is a cosmic adventure, and one involves time travel.  The creators prove to be wildly ambitious and never afraid of taking big swings.  Sometimes the show falls on its face.  Sometimes the results are only so-so  However, roughly half of the episodes are flat-out fantastic television, a potent combination of genre tropes, unblinking examination of the history of American prejudice, and some deep dives into the scarred psyche of Black America.  There is nothing subtle about this, with the repeated use of anachronistic music, civil rights speeches, or even snippets of interviews paired with the action.  We get loads of references to figures from Black history of the era, including cameos from Jackie Robinson, Emmett Till, and Josephine Baker.  A rousing version of "Sinnerman," sung by Alice Smith, plays over the closing credits.

The show was developed by Misha Green, based on a novel by Matt Ruff.  H.P. Lovecraft fans may be disappointed to find that Lovecraft's work has little to do with the series directly.  Instead, "Lovecraft Country" borrows elements from his works, including some of the famous monsters, to tell its own story, subverting some of Lovecraft's notoriously racist narratives in the process.  And thanks to the involvement of HBO, the series looks absolutely gorgeous, and can be as R-rated as it wants.  There's a lot of beautiful gore in this show, healthy amounts of sex, and very out-of-this world imagery. The cast is stellar, with Jurnee Smollett standing out as the fiery Leti.   It's so heartening to see major resources being committed to a show like this, which is vehemently about the Black experience on its own terms.  It's not afraid of being too angry or too aggressive in its views, and it's wonderful.      

The anthology format does make for a rather disjointed season, and occasionally the creators bite off far more than they can chew, cramming too many concepts and characters into too little time.  The show raises the issues of the black LGBT experience, and colorism, for instance, but doesn't really have the time to explore them in much depth.  I'm glad that Ji-Ah was part of the show, but outside of her spotlight episode she's an odd presence in the story.  Nonetheless, there is so much passion and so much wild creativity on the screen, and the themes are so potent, when the material does work, it's magic.   It's my sincere hope that "Lovecraft Country" doesn't end up being a fluke, and we get more media in this vein for years to come. 

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My Top Ten Films of 1961

This is part of my continuing series looking back on films from the years before I began this blog. The ten films below are unranked and listed in no particular order. Enjoy.

Breakfast at Tiffany's - Audrey Hepburn was a star before this, but "Breakfast at Tiffany's" made her an icon.  Frankly, the story is wildly outdated and sometimes in very poor taste (ahem, Mr. Yunioshi), but Hepburn's Holly Golightly is one of the greatest cinematic characters who ever existed, the template for all future  winsome manic-pixie-dream creatures.  And writer Dalton Trumbo and director Blake Edwards ably manage the balancing act of turning a fairly dark story into an utterly effervescent romance.      

101 Dalmatians - One of the best of Disney's '60s features.  It looks simple and uncomplicated on the surface, but was responsible for a whole host of technical innovations behind the scenes.  However, it's the charm and well-observed performances provided by the animators that really make the picture.  Those who make jabs about absent Disney parents clearly never met Pongo and Perdita, and who could ever forget the funniest, most outrageous Disney villainess in the pantheon, Cruella DeVil?

Yojimbo - And so it begins.  This was the Akira Kurosawa film that was so memorable, it spawned multiple copies and imitators that went on to be classics themselves, including "A Fistful of Dollars" and "Django."  Toshiro Mifune shines in one of his signature roles, the ronin who plays both sides walks away from the carnage alone in the end.  As with many of Kurosawa's samurai films, the storytelling is so clear, and the filmmaking so strong, the film easily transcends culture, language, and history.

La Notte - The second of Michelangelo Antonioni's trilogy on "modernity and its discontents," is about a disintegration marriage between characters played by Jeanne Moreau and Marcello Mastroianni.  However, what the picture is really remarkable for is its alienating portrayal of the modern world mirroring his characters' emotional lives.  Antonioni creates all these environments full of absences and ambiguities.  Boredom, doubt, and distance have rarely been evoked so skillfully.

The Children's Hour - The filmmaking is fairly sedate, and the material doesn't have the nerve I wish it did, but I love the performances.  The adults, lead by Shirley McClaine, are very good, but it's the two girls played by Karen Balkin and Veronica Cartwright who I thought were really interesting.  Children on film were rarely portrayed with so much candidness and complexity.  Balkin's Mary is especially upsetting, a bully and manipulator whose destructive behavior is uncomfortably true to life.   

Judgment at Nuremberg - A big screen dramatization of the military tribunals convened against the Nazi regime.  It was one of Stanley Kramer's big social justice pictures, full of big names, showstopping monologues, and grand ideals.  It's about as subtle as a hammer, but the scale of the filmmakers' ambitions and the willingness to tackle sensitive material is very admirable.  I find it also works better if you treat the players as allegorical representations of certain ideas, rather than specific individuals. 

Through a Glass Darkly - A small, intimate family drama about madness and faith, introspection and guilt, from Ingmar Bergman.  We spend a day with the characters on a remote, bleak island, where a schizophrenic woman sees visions and threatens to drag other family members into her delusions.  The film is minimalist and simple, but the symbolism is endlessly fascinating and evocative.  Even relayed secondhand, some of Bergman's most effective nightmares are found here, just offscreen.    

A Woman is a Woman - This has been described as Jean-Luc Godard's take on the Hollywood musical form, using many playful filmmaking tricks and conceits inspired by song and dance numbers.  It's his first film in color!  He uses widescreen!  However, in most ways it's still a French New Wave film, about a trio of young people being irreverent and playing love games with each other.  Fortunately Anna Karina, Belmondo, and Brialy are all terribly endearing here, and easy to love.  

Pocketful of Miracles - I'm a sucker for a good Cinderella story, and I found I couldn't resist the charms of Frank Capra's very last film, a remake of his 1933 picture "Lady for a Day."  The Cinderella in question is an elderly peddler, played by Bette Davis, who is  made up into a wealthy socialite by her street friends to impress her future in-laws.  Most critics and audiences of the time disliked it, but I was charmed by Peter Falk's exasperated hoodlum or Davis's heartwarming transformation.

The Absent Minded Professor - Disney has been making big effects spectaculars longer than you'd think, and one of their most delightful is this Fred MacMurray comedy.  It's full of funny ideas and set-pieces, using old school special effects for great visual gags.  My favorite scene is the flubber-ized basketball game, which sends the players into the rafters.  This and its sequel, "Son of Flubber" were childhood favorites, which I remember for their sweetness as much as their silliness.    

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"The Queen's Gambit" Pays Off

 

The first thing you need to know about "The Queen's Gambit" is that it's a miniseries about a fictional female chess prodigy during the 1960s, and it's currently being hailed by chess fans as one of the few pieces of media that is actually fairly accurate in its depiction of chess.  The second thing is that you don't need know anything about chess to enjoy the story, which uses the format and many of the storytelling tricks of a sports film, but is more of a character study of its central character, the brilliant and troubled Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy as a teen and adult, Isla Johnston as a child).

Beth's story is one of tragedy and constant setbacks.  At the age of eight, after the death of her mother (Chloe Pirrie), she's sent to an orphanage that liberally doses the children with tranquilizers to make them easier to manage.  She learns chess from the janitor, the stoic Mr. Shaibel (Bill Camp), and befriends an African-American girl named Jolene (Moses Ingram).  When she leaves the orphanage to join the household of Mrs. Alma Wheatley (Marielle Heller) as a teenager, Beth brings with her not only a fixation on chess, but lifelong substance abuse issues and plenty of emotional baggage.  As she enters the chess world, and begins to compete in earnest, her genius quickly propels her into the ranks of the top players, but her unstable home life and unhealthy coping mechanisms keep holding her back.

Written and directed by Scott Frank, and based on a novel by Walter Tevis, "The Queen's Gambit" takes place in an idealized version of the 1960s.  The series is an absolute pleasure to look at, from the period fashions to the decor to the glimpses of various international cities.  Initially I was expecting Beth to face more push back for being a very young woman competing in a world of men, but almost all her male rivals are friendly ones, and she forms friendships and relationships with several of them, including Harry Beltik (Harry Melling), Benny Watts (Thomas Brodie-Sangster), and the man she wants to be more than friends with, Townes (Jacob Fortune-Lloyd).  Even the Russians, lead by the intimidating Borgov (Marcin Dorociński) turn out to be perfectly sympathetic human beings.  

Instead, Beth's greatest challenge is charting her own way through life after years of neglect and loss.  Anya Taylor-Joy does a great job of portraying Beth from an awkward fourteen year-old to a nervy grown woman in her twenties, struggling to stay sober and avoid burnout.  She's very visually striking, and able to show so much of Beth's thinking without saying a word.  I appreciate that she isn't a nice person for much of the series, too wrapped up in her own self-preservation to respond to other people's vulnerability and kindness.  She's downright terrible at times to many of the people who care about her, often out of fear or ignorance.  And yet, Beth is very easy to root for as an underdog, both in chess and in finding happiness.

I haven't seen much of Scott Frank's directorial work, but what he does with the material here is very impressive.  I rarely binge series, but "The Queen's Gambit" is so engaging that I went through the entire miniseries in one day.  Beth's story is the stuff of very predictable melodrama, but there's such a specificity to the characters, and there's such a clear love of the subject matter, it was a real pleasure to follow along with all the familiar story beats as Beth grows up and takes on the world, step by step.  The ending may come off as too happy and unlikely for some, but the characters earn it.  And there are some strong, positive messages about feminism here, though conveyed more indirectly than we usually see in period dramas.  The contrast between Beth and her various mother figures is especially well done.  

From what I've read, "The Queen's Gambit" is also a treat for chess players, full of references and gameplay easter eggs that show a real care and consideration for the history of the game and its community of devotees.  I can't vouch for that, but I can say that its dramatic bona fides are considerable, and easy to enjoy.  And it's been a while since I've had a straightforward drama in any format surprise me the way that this one did.   

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Visiting "Bly Manor"

Minor spoilers ahead.

Created by Mike Flanagan and the same team that did "The Haunting of Hill House," "The Haunting of Bly Manor" offers a very different style of horror compared to its predecessor.  Where "Hill House" was a more typical supernatural program full of shocks and tension, "Bly Manor" is a sadder, more empathetic kind of ghost story about a group of people who are all being haunted by different things.  It may have several actors in common, and some of the same storytelling sensibilities, but I don't think it's aimed at quite the same audience either.

"Bly Manor" loosely follows the broad outlines of Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw."  An old woman in the present day (Carla Gugino) tells the story of an American au pair, Dani Clayton (Victoria Pedretti), who is hired by a London businessman, Henry Wingrave (Henry Thomas), to look after his orphaned niece and nephew, Flora (Amelie Bea Smith) and Miles (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth).  The children have not only lost their parents, but also their previous nanny, Rebecca Jessel (Tahirah Sharif), who died under mysterious circumstances.  The children live at the remote country estate of Bly Manor, staffed by the housekeeper, Hannah (T'Nia Miller), the cook, Owen (Rahul Kohli), and the groundskeeper, Jamie (Amelia Eve).  We soon learn that Bly is also haunted by various ghosts, including the faceless Lady in the Lake (Kate Siegel). 

"Bly Manor" mostly follows the same structure as "Hill House," in that each episode features a different POV character or set of characters, and many of the stories are told in different overlapping time frames.  Strange occurrences or behavior in one episode are often explained a few installments later from someone else's POV.  Some of these episodes are much better than others, but all together the pace of the series tends to be slower and more melancholy.  There are fewer jump scares and less action outside the last few episodes.  Instead, you can easily view the series as a collection of tragic character pieces.  The inhabitants of Bly Manor are put in supernatural situations that act as allegories for grief, terminal illness, trauma, guilt, and all manner of relationship issues.  There are maybe two characters who could be seen as truly malicious, while the rest are all terribly sympathetic people trying to process hefty emotional baggage.  

So, no doubt some fans of "Hill House" are going to be disappointed with "Bly Manor."  However, if you like moody Gothic chillers and can put up with some melodrama, "Bly Manor" is a very satisfying watch.  It's shamelessly manipulative, and little Flora is a walking pile of twee, but in a way that's part of the series' charm.  Of course the children have a dollhouse full of creepy little dolls representing all the characters in the show.  Of course Uncle Henry's sinister ex-valet Peter Quint (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) is lurking around the place.  No points for guessing the housekeeper's terrible secret, which is blatantly telegraphed from the very first episode.  However, I like how the show treats its characters with great empathy and care.  Several of the show's apparitions turn out to not have a supernatural origin at all, which might seem like a cheat, but is appropriate for the more character-focused stories.

Production values are about on par with "Hill House," and all the performances are strong, though I do appreciate the effort to have more diverse faces in the mix this time.  There's a fabulously creepy opening credits sequence, and some good use of special effects.  My major quibbles with "Bly Manor" mostly have to do with a few clumsy story choices.  For instance, there's a big, pivotal episode that goes into the past of Bly Manor near the end of the season, which works very well as a standalone story.  However, it doesn't have nearly the effect that it should because the prior episodes don't set up the POV character very well.  Other storylines and plot elements are mysteriously dropped after a few episodes, and there are several characters I wish had gotten more time and attention.    

It also doesn't help that there have been such a glut of ghost stories lately, that some of the concepts used in "Bly Manor" feel awfully derivative.  I think the series would have gotten a much better reception if it had been released a few years earlier.  Still, I continue to enjoy Mike Flanagan's work and have high hopes for his next project, "Midnight Mass."  Hopefully some time away from the ghosts will do him some good.

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"The Devil All the Time" and "Blow the Man Down"

You have to admire a film like "The Devil All the Time" for committing so hard to being a thoroughly uncomfortable piece of work, even though it's not always successful. Directed by Antonio Campos, who also co-wrote the screenplay with his brother Paulo Campos, it tells the story of a group of characters in the post-War American midwest, mostly from small rural communities in Ohio and West Virginia.  Terrible things happen to them, thanks to tribalism, religion, and poverty, and cycles of violence are shown to progress from one generation to the next. 

What's notable about "The Devil All the Time" is that it gives several up-and-coming actors a chance to sink their teeth into some high octane melodrama.  At first, our central character is Willard Russell (Bill Skarsgård), who returns from WWII and marries Charlotte (Haley Bennett).  We also meet two other couples, the evangelical preacher Roy (Harry Melling) and his wife Helen (Mia Wasikowska), and a photographer named Carl (Jason Clarke) who marries Sandy (Riley Keough), the sister of a police officer, Lee Bodecker (Sebastian Stan).  Eventually the story shifts to focus on Willard and Charlotte's son Arvin (Tom Holland) and Roy and Helen's daughter Lenora (Eliza Scanlen) when they're teenagers.  Finally, the most colorful and memorable performance of the lot belongs to Robert Pattinson, playing the scumbag Reverend Teagarden.

Based on a novel by Donald Ray Pollock, who also serves as the film's garrulous narrator, this is not a viewing experience that I would recommend to most people.  It's a lengthy family epic that has a lot of brutal violence against women, and forces the viewer to spend a lot of time with some really reprehensible people.  Campos is very good at making every frame feel suitably miserable and desperate, often soaking in the depressive atmosphere.  Some of the most upsetting material features no violence at all, such as Reverend Teagarden's antics with a plate of chicken livers.  On the other hand, I did enjoy many of the performances and I appreciated that the filmmakers followed every piece of this miserable history through to the end.  While the oppressive darkness of the film is relentless and sometimes over-the-top, neither does it feel implausible or out of place.  Clearly it's not a film for everyone, and I can't say I enjoyed it, but I respect everything it took to get it made.  

Now, for a story about violence in an insular community of a different stripe, I can heartily recommend "Blow the Man Down."  This is a film noir that takes place in a New England fishing village, and nearly all the major players are women.  Directed by Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy, the story follows the Connolly sisters Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor) and Priscilla (Sophie Lowe) who are dealing with the aftermath of their mother's death.  Mary Beth accidentally kills a man named Gorski (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), which gets them tangled up in a different murder, and the machinations of the town madam, Enid Devlin (Margo Martindale).  Other characters include a trio of local matrons (June Squibb, Annette O'Toole, and Marceline Hugot), the suspicious Officer Coletti (Skipp Sudduth), and one of Enid's employees, Alexis (Gayle Rankin)

I take so much joy from watching actresses who are usually playing moms and grandmas essentially in the mobster roles of your usual detective murder mystery.  Secret dealings are couched in very feminine terms, but are still deadly serious.  Tonally, we're often operating in the realm of the Coen brothers, or perhaps Martin McDonagh.  There's a Greek chorus of fisherman, who sing sea shanties during the act breaks, and one confrontation is sparked by a dress code violation.  During the second act, where Officer Coletti is going around conducting interviews, one of the matrons totally stonewalls him, and sends him off with a nice slice of pie.  However, the Connolly sisters are more grounded, realistic heroines who are easy to root for and empathize with.      

"Blow the Man Down" is low budget and takes a while to get going.  However, once all the pieces are on the board, the tension and thrills are executed beautifully.  I have a few quibbles with technical shortcomings, common to the efforts of first-time directors, but the film was really a great surprise and a significant mood-lifter after sitting through "The Devil All the Time."  I hope it finds a bigger audience.   

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The "Game of Thrones" Aftermath

So, eighteen months after the final episode of "Game of Thrones," there's been the expected dropoff in fandom activity.  HBO is still busy trying to put together a prequel series - the latest attempt, "House of the Dragon," will feature Paddy Considine as an early Targaryen warrior.  George R.R. Martin is still working on the sixth "Song of Ice and Fire" book, as he has been for nearly a decade now.  The actors have all been busy.  In fact, it's been a running joke that you can't have a British prestige project without at least one "Game of Thrones" or "Downton Abbey" alum in the cast.  Nonetheless, there's a very palpable feeling that the wider culture is done with "Game of Thrones." 

"Game of Thrones" was a huge piece of pop culture for most of the 2010s, one of the last few programs that everyone knew about and used as a point of reference.  This was remarkable given that it was R-rated, aired on premium cable, and featured complicated storylines juggling dozens of different players.  Characters like Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow, and Tyrion Lannister became iconic.  Hype for the final season reached new heights in 2019, but to say that expectations weren't met is an understatement.  There's no question that the finale was ambitious, featuring several feature length installments, but the final six episodes were marred by technical glitches, rushed storylines, and some downright bad writing.  It was a ratings winner, but a total disaster on every other level.  Many of the fans placed the blame on showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss for trying to rush the franchise to a premature conclusion.   The reaction to these episodes was so poisonous, Benioff and Weiss skipped Comic-Con that year, and it's widely believed that they lost their "Star Wars" project in part because of the fallout.        

In the wider culture, "Game of Thrones" disappeared.  Nobody references it anymore, except in mostly disparaging terms.  Knowing the lackluster fates of the major characters really seems to have killed all the enthusiasm for the franchise.  You can see its influence all over the pop culture landscape, but it's a challenge to find much true enthusiasm for the show anymore.  Suddenly, "A Game of Thrones" feels very much like a product of its era, the 2010s, which are behind us.  Now we're stuck in the 2020s, where everything turned out awful, and it's difficult to be optimistic about anything.  It's telling that over the summer when every remotely nostalgic piece of media was doing Zoom reunions, "Game of Thrones" was noticeably missing.    

This is the age of franchises, and several are experiencing a similar kind of ebb.  There's a third "Fantastic Beasts" movie in the works that nobody much cares about, and J.K. Rowling really needs to get off social media.  Amazon is trying to put together a "Lord of the Rings" series, though there are doubts about how successful they'll be without Peter Jackson and company involved.  After tons of hype and fuss, the "Star Wars" cinematic series is currently kaput, and the franchise's best hope lies with "The Mandalorian" and other Disney+ shows.  However, these are all series that have weathered decades of ups and downs already. 

What stands out about the "Game of Thrones" situation is that the franchise hit the skids so quickly, and nearly everyone was caught off guard.  The final season of the show was supposed to be a franchise high point, something that could fuel future spinoffs and ancillary projects.  HBO and all their various subsidiaries invested heavily in its success through advertising partnerships, merchandise, and related media coverage.  And it's telling that in spite of the disastrous finale,  HBO went ahead with the development of those spinoffs.  Frankly, the series was so huge, and the potential financial rewards are so great, it would be silly of them not to try and capitalize off any remaining goodwill that the fans might have.  

So, it's safe to say "Game of Thrones" will be back in some capacity, even if "House of the Dragon" doesn't get off the ground.  Eventually Martin will finish another book, or someone will finish it for him.  All those millions of fans will get nostalgic for the show in a decade or two, and maybe look back on it in a more forgiving light.  Someday, someone will try and reboot "Game of Thrones," and try to get the ending right next time.  As "Star Wars" has proven, once you've been a major success, it provides lots of  incentive to give a franchise no end of second chances.         

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss may be out of luck, but "Game of Thrones" is going to be around for a very long time.

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"The Boys," Year Two

Spoilers ahead for the first season.

The second season of "The Boys" is a different beast than the first.  The show is now a proven success and trying to pace itself, setting up storylines and conflicts that we're going to see play out over a longer timeline.  This means that the show is less about exploring the disturbing world of "The Boys," and more about getting the show's various factions to fight with each other - with mixed results.  Sure, we still get plenty of blood and guts and gore, but there are fewer truly nasty shocks, and the writing has a tendency to maintain the status quo.  The good guys and baddies are pretty well sorted out now, and though certain characters flirt with crossing the line, in the end everybody does the right (or wrong) thing.  

For instance, the unlikely romance and alliance between Hughie and Starlight continues, despite the constant threat of death or capture hanging over them.  The Boys are wanted fugitives, and Starlight has a Vought tracking chip in her, but the lovebirds keep hanging out in public places together and somehow keep getting away with it.  There are some good arcs for Billy Butcher and Queen Maeve, who both have to wrestle with big moral questions, but most of the other characters' subplots are pretty unsatisfying.  There's a lot of Homelander this year, for instance, but we see very little new from him, despite so much time spent on the discovery of his son, Ryan (Cameron Crovetti), being raised in secret by Billy's wife Becca (Shantel VanSanten).  He gets a couple of good scenes trying to bond with the kid, but in the end he's exactly the monster we already know he is.  We learn more backstory for characters like Kimiko and Frenchie, but it doesn't really illuminate much or change anything for them.

However, this season does feature one great new character, Stormfront (Aya Cash), who joins the Seven's roster.  Initially she seems very likeable, not letting Homelnder steamroller her, and rolling her eyes at the Vought marketing efforts.  Learning more and more about her over the course of the season is very rewarding and includes some great reveals.  We also get to meet an ex-Seven member, Lamplighter (Shawn Ashmore), a pyrokinetic with a long history of problematic behavior.  Among the normies, the people with the real power behind the scenes are becoming more visible: Vought CEO Stan Edgar (Giancarlo Esposito) and the Scientology-like Church of the Collective leader Adana (Goran Visnijc).  The Deep spends a lot of time with the Church of the Collective trying to reform himself, which yields some good comedy.  However, the show's best comic relief is the neurotic Ashley Barrett (Colby Minifie), who becomes the Seven's handler.  I hope the show gives her more to do next season.

 

And really, what I think put more of a damper on this year was the certainty that there was going to be a next season.  Suddenly, the stakes were so much smaller and the wild swings turned out to be not so wild after all.  Now that the shock of watching superheroes behaving like psychopaths has worn off, the show is slowly finding its way into the groove of a more typical action adventure program.  Nobody important is going to die.  Vought can never truly be brought down.  Butcher and Homelander are destined to hate each other, but we're never going to see them truly fight to the death the way they want to.  However, along the way there are still some absurdly violent R-rated fights, plenty of pitch-black satire (did someone say superhero porn?), and not-so-subtle commentary on current events.  

And this is all very enjoyable on its own terms.  There are some great action set pieces, some truly disgusting stunts, and I like that the show keeps pushing at boundaries big and small.  Stormfront explaining the power of internet fanatics, and Maeve's sexuality being co-opted for a marketing campaign strike a nerve in a good way.  I highly doubt that "The Boys" is ever going to be as good as its first season again, but it's good enough that I'll keep watching for the foreseeable future.  

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Quick Thoughts on "Muppets Now" and "Star Trek: Lower Decks"

I'm not going to have access to Disney+ or CBS All Access for a few months, so it's going to be a while before I have a chance to really dig into these shows, but I wanted to at least put down a few initial thoughts on the latest Muppets and "Star Trek" series.  

"Muppets Now" returns to the Muppets' sketch comedy roots.  The gimmick is that Scooter is put in charge of piecing together a new series from sketches that are submitted by the various muppets to his E-mail inbox.  These include the Swedish Chef celebrity cooking show "Økėÿ Døkęÿ Køøkïñ," a "Lifestyle With Miss Piggy" segment, "Muppet Labs Field Tests" with Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker, and a game show hosted by Pepe the Prawn.  All the various Muppets crossover in various segments, and there are lots of guest stars like RuPaul and Danny Trejo to bounce off of.  

This is a much less ambitious, smaller scale Muppet program than the recent ABC "The Muppets" sitcom or even their last variety show, "Muppets Tonight."  However, I like this stripped down approach.  The sketches are quick and simple.  The jokes are absurd and plentiful.  The Swedish Chef is easily the most consistently successful, satirizing the celebrity cooking show format by horribly abusing the culinary arts.  Some are less so, like Pepe's game show, where the rules change at a whim.  The gags are very repetitive, so I wouldn't recommend bingeing this.  However, it's perfect for kids, or for nostalgic adults who want a weekly dose of Muppet nonsense. 

I have my personal quibbles, of course.  Matt Vogel took over as the main Kermit the Frog performer, and he's still got some work to do on the voice.  Also, I find it very curious that the show doesn't feature musical numbers at all - which have always been such a big part of the Muppet brand.  There isn't even  a theme song. Rowlf the Dog, alas, remains AWOL.  While I'm glad that the Disney+ push for more content has given the Muppets more time in the spotlight, it's also pretty clear that they're not putting many resources behind this.  

Now, on to "Star Trek: Lower Decks," which is much more promising.  It's essentially what happens when you let one of the showrunners of "Rick and Morty," in this case Mike McMahan, make his own "Star Trek" animated show.  The series follows four ensigns, aboard the U.S.S. Cerritos, described as one of Starfleet's "least important ships."  There's Boimler (Jack Quaid), the rule-spouting, ambitious one with no actual practical experience.  There's Mariner (Tawny Newsome), the troublemaker who prefers to fly by the seat of her pants, and has a very colorful history.  There's Rutherford (Eugene Cordero), who is getting used to new cyborg implants and slowly cozying up to Tendi (Noël Wells), a green Orion ensign who works in Med Bay.

The humor is very rapid, very visual, and nerdy as anything.  Like "The Orville," "Lower Decks" was made by people who clearly love "Star Trek" down to its bolts, and are comfortable playing in this universe.  Unlike "The Orville," the R-rated content rarely involves toilet humor or locker room banter.  There are plenty of references, but they tend to stay in-universe.  "Lower Decks" is also a bit sweeter and more focused on its characters.  The romance is played straight.  The camaraderie is very solid.  For all the mishaps of the Cerritos crew, and the focus on the less glamorous parts of space travel, the portrayal of Starfleet is still very positive.  There's a nice balance maintained between the cynicism and the idealism.  

So far, the production values have been pretty good.  Animation allows for things that live action doesn't, so we get to see far more aliens, more action setpieces, and more instances of gooey carnage.  You can definitely see some DNA from "Rick and Morty," but the aesthetics remain firmly "Star Trek," down to the opening credits sequence which parodies its live action counterparts.  The cast is a lot of fun, with Tawny Newsome being the standout as the enthusiastically insubordinate Mariner.  

I'll be happily finishing off the whole season of this the next time I get a chance, and you'll likely see a more extensive writeup for it somewhere down the line.

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On Turning Forty and Staying Optimistic

Well, we've survived 2020, "Venture Bros." has been cancelled after seventeen years, and I'm turning forty in a week.  It's time to gaze at the ol' navel again.

I've spent the past quarter century now being a movie obsessive, tracking projects and various filmmakers over multiple years, watching thousands of movies and television shows, and also maintaining a life, job, and relationships in the meantime.  I've been around long enough now to see the media business undergo massive, sweeping changes, and also to see the careers of so many artists and filmmakers rise and fall.  I've literally been watching some actors like Elizabeth Moss onscreen since they were kids.  Especially as I've been digging so hard into the films of previous decades lately, I've been getting a more macroscopic look at the industry over time, and how quickly standards and mores keep changing.  Everything really does go in cycles, but nobody ultimately knows anything.

I find myself getting more cynical about film in some respects.  It's harder to get excited about future projects when I've seen so many holy grail productions like "Ender's Game," "John Carter," "The Dark Tower," and "Justice League," all go sideways.  I still do get hyped up for some of the big blockbusters every year, but I tend to remember the hype and fuss around these movies more than the movies themselves.  Every single one of my filmmaking idols has disappointed me eventually.  The once untouchable Steven Spielberg is slowly running out of steam, and all the '90s superstars who once looked so invincible have proven to be fallible human beings.  It's totally commonplace for great, prolific artists to be largely forgotten over time, or to be discarded as hopelessly out of date.  Though it's hard to argue with its aims, cancel culture has been pretty brutal this year.  I have no idea if I'll ever be able to admit to enjoying Woody Allen movies again.  

And yet, every year brings no shortage of surprises and new discoveries.  For every "Game of Thrones" that has crash landed, there's been a "Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse" that got me to love a superhero I'd long ago assumed was not for me.  For every crummy "It: Chapter 2," there's been a "Doctor Sleep."  For every Zack Snyder's "Watchmen," there's been a Damon Lindelof's "Watchmen."  I've learned to be wary of nostalgia, and especially Disney's endless assembly line of reboots and retreads.  Often, they're just another reminder that everyone is getting old.  However, I love it when familiar properties strike out in a new direction.  I love it when known talents figure out how to reinvent themselves.  Somehow Keanu Reeves and Charlize Theron are major action stars again.  Somehow musicals are in again.

It helps that I have my own kids now, who I'm doing my best not to influence too much in their viewing choices, except to steer them away from obvious problematic media.  Through them, I've been happily reintroduced to cartoons and puppets and the joys of a good sing-along video.  They provide me a strong, constant reminder that just because a piece of media is not for me - jaded forty-year-old Miz Media Mommy - doesn't mean it's not perfectly good for someone else.  And they keep me honest about the fact that getting older means that I'm steadily exiting the mainstream.  I find myself getting fewer current cultural references, being out of the loop, and often way behind on trending topics.  And that's perfectly okay.  I have no desire to be in my teens or twenties again.

I've also found it to be true that certain media hits you differently at different ages.  I'm looking forward to revisiting some of the shows and films I once wrote off as boring.  And for every new reference that I don't get, I've found myself noticing older references that I missed the first time - I just saw Robert Altman's "Pret-a-Porter," which was obvious quoting the striptease from Vittorio DeSica's "Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow."  There's so much media out there - and still so much I've yet to see - I can't imagine that I'll ever run out of the good stuff.  

Here's to a new year and the oncoming tidal wave of post-COVID media.  And here's to my forties, which I hope will be as weird and wonderful as my thirties were.  

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My Most Anticipated Television and Web Series of 2021

Usually at the beginning of a new calendar year, I write up a funny post about the movies that I expect will be bad, and that you probably won't see further mention of on this blog.  Since last year, however, the movie business has found itself in dire straits, and it just feels rude to pile on the jibes in these dark COVID times, even if it is just for fun.  

However, there's plenty of media still in the works and being readied for mass consumption, so my TV and web series anticipation post is all ready to go.  Keep in mind that with television it's always more tricky to predict release dates because the production timelines are so different.  Last year's post included the "Cowboy Bebop" and "The Wheel of Time" series, which are still nowhere in sight.  I fully expect that some of the titles below won't show up on our screens until 2022 or later.

Also, keep in mind that I'm an unrepentant genre nerd. 

"Lord of the Rings" (Amazon Prime) - I've been wrestling with this one for ages.   The new series is expected to take place well before the timelines of "The Hobbit" or the "Lord of Rings" trilogy,  but isn't actually based on any of Tolkein's material like "The Silmarillion."  Best case scenario is that we end up with an original story that happens to take place in this universe, like "The Mandalorian."  More likely, however, we end up with another drawn-out prequel narrative that is way too beholden to the previous adaptations.  In any case, it'll be fun seeing how this all plays out.

"What If…?" (Disney+) - Of all the Marvel series in the works, this is the one that has piqued my interest the most.  I love animation, and I'm totally onboard with the idea of a wide open anthology series remixing the Marvel universe every week.  What would have happened if Peggy Carter took the super-soldier serum instead of Steve Rogers?  What if Thanos was a chill dude?  The series will surely be less wild and wacky than I want it to be, but the possibilities are endless.  

 

"The Nevers" (HBO) - I am aware of how problematic Joss Whedon has become over the past few years, but I can't help being excited for his return to serialized television.  A good chunk of the Mutant Enemy gang is back, including Jane Espenson and Doug Petrie.  Also, the show is a period sci-fi drama about a bunch of Victorian women with superpowers.  And it's got Olivia Williams, Pip Torrens, and Nick Frost in the cast.  How could I not?

"The Sandman" (Netflix) - It's not too likely we'll see this before the end of the year, but Netflix has already got the marketing machine going pretty hard, so you never know.  I have been a fan of this property for a very long time, and I've been following developments very closely over the last few years.  Whether the final product turns out well or not, I'm very excited that it's finally happening and the "Sandman" series is something that will exist soon.    

"Station Eleven" (HBO Max) -  So, a post-apocalyptic show might be a little too on-the-nose right now, especially one that takes place in the aftermath of a global pandemic of swine flu.  This one, however, is based on a well-received 2014 novel, stars Mackenzie Davis and Himesh Patel, and will be directed by Donald Glover's frequent collaborator in visual madness, Hiro Murai.  I think that's at least worth some consideration.   

"Nine Perfect Strangers" (Hulu) - The latest David E. Kelley miniseries, based on a Liane Moriarty novel.  The cast is star-studded, lead by Nicole Kidman as the Russian resort director of an exclusive health retreat called Tranquillum.  The book got mixed reviews, but is full of eccentric characters for actors like Melissa McCarthy, Michael Shannon, and Samara Weaving to play.  Jonathan Levine is directing the whole shebang. 

"Foundation" (Apple+) - I still have a free trial of Apple TV pending, and I'm probably going to use it for this series.  Based on Isaac Asimov's "Foundation" novels, which I vaguely remember reading in high school, the show will feature Jared Harris as Hari Seldon, and Lee Pace as, (I kid you not) the Emperor of the Galaxy.  Will this redeem showrunner David Goyer in the eyes of nerddom at last?  I don't know.  Let's find out!

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