For this week's post, it's a small scatter of items. As ever, I invite you to look back through previous Friday posts for an array of streaming material options, as there are many items even I haven't gotten around to doing more than preview, and I watch far more video than anyone should.
Newly-arrived on Amazon Prime is a fantasy comedy series created and directed by Boots Riley, who made his directorial debut in 2018 with Sorry To Bother You.
This new series starts just after the birth of an unusually large baby, who is then raised in secret in Oakland. It's a coming of age tale, as young Cootie, age 19 and standing around 13 feet tall, comes to know the world, and it eventually starts to get to know him. It's I'm A Virgo (2023) All seven episodes arrived this week.
Arriving next Monday, the 26th, to Max is an Elseworlds (alternate timeline), retro (set in the 1920s), Lovecraft-themed animated film, loosely based on Mike Mignola, Richard Pace, and Troy Nixey's 2000/2001 miniseries of the same name.
It's Batman - the Doom That Came To Gotham (2023) It includes a variety of period-shifted versions of characters familiar to DC comics fans.
At the start of June Max had added Sam Raimi's '80s and '90s Evil Dead "trilogy": Evil Dead (1981), Evil Dead II (1987 which is honestly just a reshot version of the 1981 film, with a better budget and greater confidence in Bruce Campbell's Ash as the star), and Army of Darkness (1993), along with the 2013 franchise restart/"reimagining" attempt The Evil Dead (2013). Today on Max, they're all joined by this year's franchise reawakening Evil Dead Rise (2023), which I saw and enjoyed back in late April.
This latest film is perhaps best thought of as a re-seeding of the franchise, and (once it gets rolling) centers it in an urban setting. I'm looking forward to a second watch of it, in part curious to see (and hear) if it's as effective at home. As I'd noted back in April, along with the visual effects I was taken by the sound effects work in it, too, which effectively raised the creepiness factor.
Not the sort of thing I'm quickly drawn to, but it's been quietly teasing on the periphery since May, and some of the people involved have helped get my attention, is a series initially made for Peacock, which has more recently begun airing on NBC. Starring Peter Davidson, it's an exaggerated, "heightened" version of the comedian's life. Edie Falco and Joe Pesci are also series regulars, and the list of guest stars is occasionally impressive. It's Bupkis If someone's had to deal with personal, family issues related to drug and alcohol use, their tolerance for related comedy may be understandably low to nonexistent, and so this may very well not be an entertainment choice for them. This has come up before, as I've met those whose personal tragedies have made things like Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas (1998) anathema to them, or at least too personal and painful to them to be a source of laughs. I've been fortunate enough to have had layers of distance between that sort of thing and my life, so it isn't triggering for me.
The 8-episode first season is, as mentioned, over on Peacock.
Another periphery-teasing series I may soon take a look at is over on Hulu, its ten-episode second season having arrived just yesterday. A comedy-drama series, it stars Jeremy Allen White as an award-winning New York City chef who returns to Chicago to take over his family's dysfunctional, economically- and operationally-challenged Italian beef sandwich shop following the suicide of his older brother. It's The Bear.
Back in February 2003, both yesterday and a lifetime ago, late night Cartoon Network viewers (myself included) of Adult Swim were treated to what would be a pilot episode of a series riffing on and satirizing themes of early '60s cartoon Jonny Quest. The creation of Chris McCulloch (aka Jackson Publick) and Doc Hammer, it would become a much-beloved, if tortuously produced, series, with long, dry stretches in between seasons. In hindsight, we see that from that 2003 pilot, to the 2018 final series episode, we had seven seasons, including that floating pilot and several specials, over a fifteen year period.
The series grew in scope and complexity, with the creators noting from early on that a core concept for it is failure. We come to see that the boy adventurer with the brilliant scientist father template would inevitably take a toll on the child - at the very least render them traumatized and unfit for a more normal life - and potentially see them age into a role they're ill suited for.
As for the show itself, it all seems even longer because none of us knew it had ended in 2018, as the official story was that we were back into another of those uncertainly-long stretches between seasons, with work on what was meant to be season eight already in progress. It wasn't until 2020 that formal notice of cancellation was made. In May of 2021 word came though that much of what had been kicked around as a planned eighth season was being reworked into a movie-length episode, intended to close out the series. Now, at last, we're getting close to that.
As a direct-to video feature, it will be The Venture Bros: Radiant Is the Blood of the Baboon Heart (2023 R) -- and I suppose the trailer will make little sense to anyone who isn't steeped in the series.
Digital sales July 21, available on Blu-Ray July 25th, and joining the rest of the series streaming content on Max roughly 90 days later, in late October.
As the medium is animation, and voices don't tend to age as harshly as the rest of us, fans will at least be able to entertain the possibility that this won't be the last we'll see of the Venture crew.
I may be trying something out starting this weekend, and if that's the case I'll be aiming to report on the start of that next Friday. For now, I'll wish you as pleasant a weekend as you might hope for. - Mike
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