What's To Watch? - Nov 4 - Simple Diversions

 

     Another week where trying to keep some concept - or at least personally-convincing illusion - of balance in play, and keep on keeping on, is a challenge.
     My votes have been cast - official notice that my ballot's been received and accepted - and I need to find some peace in that and in simply surviving.
     Shifting attentions to the trivialities of entertainments feels insane in the face of so much, but we do need distractions to help us reset when the so much is buzzing in the brain that sleep isn't an easy option, and must be tricked into settling in.

  

   I'll note in passing that I'm continuing to enjoy AMC/AMC+'s Interview with the Vampire (Sunday nights), Amazon Prime's adaptation of William Gibson's The Peripheral (new episodes Fridays), and IFC's fourth season of mockumentaries Documentary Now! (new episodes Thursdays.) The latter's generally fun on its own, but all the more so in the instances where one's familiar with the documentaries being parodied. While I enjoyed what I saw of the first season, it drifted out of sight and so of mind, with me just picking it up again as season four premiered. I've only just now realized that this is another series that's being aggregated under AMC+, shown relatively briefly on cable, before disappearing behind a streamer's paywall. This explains why I hadn't been reminded of it in a while. I'll add that to the list of arguments for adding AMC+ to my streaming services in the coming year.

     Also enjoyed each week has been Disney+'s Star Wars series Andor, which while building the story of the title character is really the story of an insurgency, as we really get to see the machinery of oppression at work in The Empire. That they're taking the time to bring the story to us from a variety of perspectives, including imperial zealots working the machinery of oppression, I'm curious to see if we'll at least, at last, see any personal

epiphany that they were so terribly on the wrong side of things.
     I also quite enjoyed the six, animated episodes of Tales of the Jedi, which arrived there last week. These tales, each of which is really only 10 to at most 15 minutes once one eliminates the relatively huge block of credits at the end of each, bring us backstory, primarily on two Jedi we know from elsewhere in the Star Wars story. We see the origin and key moments for Ahsoka Tano, and we see key moments that moved Count Dooku (who had been played by Christopher Lee in the live action films) to the dark side of The Force. In bits and pieces, the overall story is being nicely humanized, and what began in 1977 as little more than a fairy tale with sci-fi props is being given depth.

     With all of the recent upset over at the recently rebranded Warner Discovery corporate offices, particularly as concerns the futures of work on their DC comics properties and the general future for HBO Max, I'd completely lost track that we were still getting at least one more season of two of their live-action comics shows, Titans and Doom Patrol. While the latter won't arrive until December 8th, the fourth season of Titans began yesterday, with the first two episodes. New episodes will arrive each Thursday. The series has been a little chaotic, and often dark, but overall enjoyable. For what it's worth, here's the trailer for this new season:

    While on current DCU properties, I may as well note that - badly in need of a few hours of non-routine diversion - I took the back half of Thursday afternoon off and went to the movies. Specifically, I caught Black Adam (2022 PG-13  2h 5m)

     While it was nice to finally see The Rock the title role, and to catch some version of a modern Justice Society in action, the film is so thick with counter-productive posturing and utterly unnecessary fight scenes that I was eventually close to nodding off a couple times. A few calm words from a level head would have made a world of difference, but that would have removed most of the easy routes to fights and mass destruction, I suppose.
     Hopefully the very recent ascension of James Gunn and Peter Safron to oversee the studio's DC Universe characters for tv and film will see them taking the pieces from this and some other projects that are worth saving and making something better of them.

     Thursday Netflix got a new, ten-episode workplace comedy series. Set in the last, operating Blockbuster video store, it's appropriately enough called Blockbuster (2022)

     The creation of Vanessa Ramos, who had worked on both Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Superstore, and they're hoping some of that success will manifest here. It was pitched to NBC, who passed on it, but Netflix might be a better fit for it. One of the leads, Randall Park, has not only generally landed multiple roles, but also has one foot in each of the big comics studios film universes, as Dr. Stephen Shin in the Aquaman films (including next year's sequel) and as Agent Jimmy Woo in various Marvel productions, including next year's Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which will be the big screen kick-off for Marvel's Phase 5 come next February. Something that can be shot and released in 10-episode season blocks, as opposed to being tentatively authorized for a few episodes at a time by ratings-obsessed network execs, will likely better suit someone like Park's broader career, while his success (and that of any of his co-stars) elsewhere can lead to people looking to see what else they've been in, and follow that back to Netflix. I don't know. That's not my problem.
     As my last public-interface/retailish job was manager of a West Coast Video back in the eighties, I'll likely check it out even just for any potentially nostalgic notes. It could be a fun, character-rich environment... well, within the likely limitations of a sitcom originally pitched at a network... so it's better to keep hopes in check.

     Fans of true crime documentaries got what Netflix is hoping will be a new one to watch as of this past Wednesday. It's the story of professional bodybuilder Sally McNeil, who on Valentine's Day 1995 shot her husband, Ray (also a bodybuilder) as an act of self defense and after repeated physical abuse of herself and children. It has various elements to hook potential viewers, including some sexual kinks -- all based on the trailer. I don't expect it'll draw in the numbers the serial killer docs do, but issues of abuse, various notions of empowerment, and the questions that always come up in the wake of these events as to what actions are and aren't justified, all add angles some will be interested in trading opinions on.
     Overall it's not something for me, but I thought I'd toss it out there as a recent arrival. It's Killer Sally (2022)

     Arriving today on Netflix is another of those new sequels that largely remind me that I never got around to watching the first part. Indeed, it only registered moments ago that these are not series, but made-for-Netflix movies. In this case I'm referencing the arrival of Enola Holmes 2, the sequel to the 2020 film Enola Holmes.
     Based on Nancy Springer's young adult fiction series of the same name, these films star Millie Bobby Brown as the titular Enola, the youngest of the illustrious Holmes family, with older, more storied brothers Mycroft and Sherlock. It's a contrivance one either commits to roll with for the sake of a story, or inflexibly rejects perhaps because it grinds against Doyle's original works. Perhaps as with 1985's Young Sherlock Holmes, which wholly upended the foundations of Doyle's works by introducing Holmes and Watson when they were schoolboys, it's best if the audience just relaxes and rolls with it. Here's the trailer for the newer film, which may at last prompt me to go watch the first one sometime soon.

     Henry Cavill plays Sherlock, and Helena Bonham Carter plays Holmes family matriarch, Eudoria.         It all seems to be innocent enough fun, and I'm in favor of making room for more female representation in the general sausagefest that were Doyles' Holmes tales.
     I'll note that these films began as Warner Bros. theatrical projects, but became distribution pick-ups for Netflix -- more casualties of the COVID-19 pandemic.

     As off-balance as it was, that's what I have for this week. Next week we'll be in the aftermath of the mid-terms, and the Black Panther sequel will be out from Marvel Studios -- though I'm still not at the level of confidence and abandon to have any plans to get into a packed, opening week, theater to see it. At best, I'll be setting up a plan to catch it some weekday afternoon the following week. For the hell of it, though, here's the final trailer for that:

     For now, it's getting through this final day of the work week and seeing what I can get to this weekend. Take care. - Mike