What's To Watch? - Oct. 7

 

     A firm, full seven days into October already! The greatest, truest horror is the speed of it all, as  we try to recover and rejuvenate from the press of obligations, only to find that the rest period's over and it's time to go give some more. At least the local weather's finally cleared - it was all clouds, rain and gloom hereabouts the first five days of the month! The first Thursday of the month was the first direct sunshine we'd seen since late September.

     Oh! Not something that's imminent, but definitely something I'm looking forward to and had to note: Official word came through recently that Peacock has greenlit the the long-awaited movie for the NBC (and then Sony) comedy series Community. It's been an in-joke for fans of the series that it would have "six seasons and a movie" - a line from Danny Pudi's obsessive-compulsive character Abed Nadir, who at the time was talking about a doomed NBC superhero drama The Cape. Fans of Community reused the reference each time the show was threatened with cancellation - and even after NBC cancelled it - and it worked to the extent that we even did get a sixth season, via an odd Yahoo! Screen online experiment. (They went in for what would be a final 13 episodes at $2 million per episode with no workable plan on how they'd generate revenue... which is why no one's talking about Yahoo! Screen. Still, as a fan of the show I appreciate the sacrifice.)
     Most of the cast who were in place as of the final season will be returning: Joel McHale, Danny Pudi, Alison Brie, Gillian Jacobs, Jim Rash, and Ken Jeong. Three of the original core cast characters, all of whom left the show at different junctures while it was ongoing, are not (currently?) attached: Donald Glover, Yvette Nicole Brown, and Chevy Chase. I admit that I'll be disappointed if they don't manage cameos for at least the first two -- Chase's character, Pierce Hawthorne, was killed off.

     The exact timing for this is unclear aside from being sometime in 2023, and that Peacock will also be adding the full run of the show to their inventory, albeit at least at first in a non-exclusive way as it currently available on Hulu, Netflix and Prime Video. I expect that eventually they'll continue to call all of their content back and be the sole streamer for it. Maybe (idle fan musing) Peacock will restore the full run, un-banning the "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" episode, which was removed from the streaming inventory back in 2020, I believe, due to a blackface scene - a scene which was both character- and situation-appropriate, and made it abundantly clear that all of the other characters were deeply put off by Chang's (Ken Jeong's character) move to come to the game as a Dark Elf. That I wanted the complete series was one of the reasons I bought a DVD box set.

 Okay, back to now.

     I may as well begin with the new adaptation of '80s horror writer Clive Barker's Hellraiser, which arrives today on Hulu.
     Reportedly this is a fresh start, ignoring the ten (?!) films made between 1987 and 2018, going back to Barker's 1986 novella The Hellbound Heart. The early "fan" outrage during the run-up to this was that some people reacted badly to having the lead cenobite - who came to be known as "pinhead" back

in the day, despite Barker's disdain for it - was now cast as a woman. In Barker's original tale the character was supposed to have been so heavily, surgically modified as to be effectively androgynous. The only thing that struck me as a possible immediate loss was that Doug Bradley (who's been a chum of Clive Barker's since their school days) has a wonderful voice that conveyed a barely contained, quavering hunger for sensation.
     The sadomasochistic themes, and ample bloodletting were never a draw for me, though the obvious drug analogies, drawing in those who were aimless, bored, or had become too damaged for regular life to hold any appeal to them helped make it conceptually interesting. Initially the draw was mostly in the elaborate puzzle boxes themselves, and the way they would alter the surroundings, summoning other spaces (along with the Cenobites themselves) such that a familiar room seemed to morph into part of a terrifying labyrinth.
     As with the earlier films, which only eventually made their way to me via cable/home video, even pre-pandemic it wouldn't be something I'd go out to see. Coming via Hulu, though? I'll probably find time to at least try it. It's Hellraiser (2022  R)

     I'll be looking to see if they tap any new and interesting angles, or if it's just another property recycling for a new cash-grab. Either way, this is unlikely to be the first thing I'm going to rush to this weekend.
     I did end up getting to it late Friday, and I was pleasantly surprised. They did come at it in a fresh way, one that ultimately looked at it more in a more concentrated way as a matter of addiction, and made a hero of someone who was in recovery. It even includes the lesson that the damage done is done, and there's no magical undoing of it. Regret is a permanent part of the ongoing process.

     Meanwhile, over on Disney+, they're taking a sharp seasonal turn in their Marvel fare, adding monsters and monster-hunters to the MCU via the black and white "special presentation" Werewolf By Night (2022 53m)

          In the mix is a version of Marvel's muck monster, the Man-Thing. It was impossible to tell from the trailer if we'd see much of him, but even just an appearance would be interesting. Odd, insomniac sleeping "schedule" has meant that I've already watched it, so I know we get to spend some time with this version of the character.
     It's a fun, atmospheric romp, all in all, and true to form for me as an old Marvel fan I'm in my typical spot in the cycle: I watched it once, gave it a blanket Like, albeit with numerous reservations as my internal editors have me in conflict with various changes, along with picking nits. In part I have to remind myself that "my" version of the Man-Thing is from the 1970s, and was an essentially mindless creature, driven by pure empathy - a sort of shambling, potentially very dangerous, magnetic mood meter. I'm only peripherally aware of the changes much (much) later writers wrought on the character. If the cycle rides true to form, when I watch it a second time I'll enjoy it more. Will there still be plot problems? Oh, most certainly, but I can still roll with it. I continue to enjoy the universe-building.

     [Digression: I've been a comics fan for most of my life, and it was the Marvel's focus on an ongoing, shared universe, where ultimately all of the pieces fit, and any character could meet and interact with any other, that proved to be a huge, essential hook for me. Their biggest rival, DC Comics, really only selectively played at that up through the sixties and seventies, instead often embracing an anything can happen approach that allowed more open silliness. Sure, there were missteps aplenty at Marvel, but nothing that couldn't be worked around and explained, and the overall editorial approach during those years respected what was being built. It was important to me, and it remains the ideal way as far as my Fan Within is concerned. It continues to be something I watch for as Disney builds its MCU. For various reasons details are often different from the source material, but I'm not only largely at peace with that, I think that on the whole we're often getting better versions -- given what they had to work with at the time. Comics fans know what I mean there (it's mostly tied up in how long it took Disney to get nearly all of Marvel's toys back in their box), and it's more than I'd want to add as a note here.]
     Much is thrown at the audience.
     The director for this project is Oscar-, Emmy-, and Grammy-winning (for Up, Lost and Rattatouille, respectively) musical composer Michael Giacchino, whose prodigious list of credits nearly assures you've heard some of his work over the years.

     Arriving on Netflix today is another South Korean production, a 10-episode series about a young woman whose boyfriend of four years disappears under increasingly odd circumstances. Her search finds her needing/getting the help of a community of UFO watchers. It's titled Glitch (2022).

     The title's a potential drop of confusion, as Netflix already has another show, an Australian one with a very different story, by that same name. I recommended that one back during the first year of this blog series.
     Meanwhile, also on Netflix, a new American series - also 10-episodes - arrives. In it, a group of seven terminally-ill young adults at a special hospice meet at midnight to tell each other ghost and  horror stories. They make a pact that whichever one dies first must try to contact the others from beyond the grave. After that first death, things start to happen. It's The Midnight Club (2022)

     This is an adaptation of a 1994 young adult novel of the same name by Christopher Pike, so for now I'm presuming that's its target audience.
     Actress and make-up effects coordinator Heather Langenkamp (perhaps best remembered at the heroine of the 1984 original Nightmare on Elm Street) plays the mysterious doctor who presides over the hospice.

     A seasonal film, lost in the sheer bulk of Netflix's inventory, and so I was unaware of until this week, is Apostle (2018  TV-MA  2h 10m).
     Set in 1905, Thomas (Dan Stevens), a former missionary, fallen from faith, travels to a Welsh island to rescue his sister, Jennifer (Elen Rhys) who has been abducted and held for ransom by the cult that controls the island. Pretending to be a convert, he infiltrates their ranks and starts to sort out what's going on. A slow, building dread, some stark, rough, but beautiful scenery, in a film that's strongly evocative of The Wicker Man, with an arguably Lovecraftian twist. Michael Sheen plays Malcolm, the cult's leader.

     A tad gory and intense, but that goes with the territory when blood sacrifices are intended to make the island fertile.
   

I've recently been drawn into a series titled The Sinner - not a title that would have caught my eye. I don't recall what got my attention enough for me to look - it probably just came up as a Netflix recommendation, and I paused on it long enough for the trailer to run. It was a USA network original series starring Bill Pullman as an aging police detective with a lifetime of personal trauma, an eye for detail, and a tenacious mind.
     A police procedural, it was originally intended as an eight-part, self-contained miniseries. Pullman wasn't even the promotional focus that first time out. It was promoted as a Jennifer Biel dramatic series, as her character was at the center of that story's mystery, and Biel was an executive producer on the show. She was compelling in a role where she was responsible for something horrific, which even she was at a loss to explain. Pullman's character was initially largely a mechanism, albeit a very human and troubled one, for uncovering the truth. Still, ratings and critical acclaim led to three more seasons of eight-part, separate, mysteries, with Bill Pullman's Detective Harry Ambrose being the constant. Here's the trailer for the first series.

     Each of the season's tales involve changes of perspective as new information arises, reminding us that a rush to judgement is ill-advised.
     Next Thursday, October 13th, the fourth and final season (originally aired in 2021) arrives on Netflix. I'm moving through the third at the moment, which I'm finding very affecting. To elaborate on the specifics would be to spoil, so I won't.
     It's one of those cases where I'm grateful I'm an audience of one, because I've found myself hitting pause multiple times in a single episode because I want to roll some aspects over in my mind. Some of this is mixed with my own insomniac ramblings. Over a dozen years into a widower's absolute control over what is on, when, and for how long, I don't think I could ever go back to cohabitational tv time. Watching a movie with someone? Great! Really nice to have that shared experience, and be able to talk about it immediately afterwards. But day to day, "what do you want to watch tonight?" It wouldn't end well, but it most assuredly would end.
     Anyway, three episodes into the third season/case, and I'm feeling more engaged than I had with the first two, which were each in their way engaging.

     As ever, I end this out of simple necessity, due to time, assured that I've mislaid a note to myself to include this show or that movie. I'm continuing to enjoy, each by their own lights, Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Amazon Prime), the generally fun She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (just down to next week's season-ender!), and the Star Wars series Andor (both on Disney+), the Steve Carrell psychological crime drama The Patient (Hulu), the final season of Atlanta (on FX and Hulu), Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon (HBO/HBO Max), and the current season of Rick & Morty, which has been stronger and better than the much more uneven previous one (late Sunday nights on Cartoon Network.) Last Sunday's debut episode for Interview With a Vampire (AMC/AMC+) was strong enough to draw me in, too.
     Another challenging (in a frankly unwanted way) professional week for me, I got this in place a little early, set to auto-publish Friday, because work demands have been monopolizing my time and energy this week.
     As a closing, free-to-all suggestion, I see that stalwart streamer Tubi has the 1990 tv version of Stephen King's It. This was aired over two nights on ABC back in the day, and had a fun, period cast -- including Tim Curry as Pennywise. I vaguely remember Sue and I watching it that year - it aired the Sunday and Tuesday night before Thanksgiving, but between work demands for me (including a time-gobbling commute) and us having had our first child March of that year, we recorded it on the VCR.
     Oh, plenty for fans of the source novel to complain about - I'm sure I did, too - but it was generally good going, especially for network tv fare. Sure, Tubi has commercial breaks, but they're reasonable. Here's a video trailer for it:

     That's all for this week. Take care, keep safe, and we'll aim to meet back here again next Friday. - Mike