Together and Apart - Friday Video Distractions with Mike Norton

  

   I'd not only not read any of Mark Millar and Frank Quitely's* Jupiter's Legacy comics series, I wasn't even aware of it when single-image ads for the Netflix series started showing up. The actors

faces meant nothing to me, and the relatively old-school tights, with a central character with long white hair and beard, it would have been easy to think this was going to be yet another also-ran production originating in Spain or Italy. (I can get away with this, as I, too, am an also-ran item originating in Italy.) There's a circus-like garishness to the costumes that makes static, posed shots a little uncomfortable, even after years of this sort of thing being normalized. That would likely have meant it would be dubbed into English as that (bad) choice seems to suit a larger part of the audience than those of us who prefer subtitles. But, that wasn't the case.

     Mark Millar is a Scottish writer who regards his time - now close to a couple decades in the rearview - writing some big event titles for Marvel, as a training process. This included the series The Ultimates, an alternate universe version of The Avengers, substantial parts of which have translated into the versions seen in Marvel's big and small screen universe.  It provided him with the background (and an audience tracking his moves) to move onto developing his own stable of properties, resulting not only in a Wanted movie, and the Kick-Ass and Kingsman film franchises, but all of this under his Millarworld publishing and production company, which he sold to Netflix for $31 million in 2017. Jupiter's Legacy is the first show to come out of that deal.

     It's a generational drama, with family and legacy as a theme. With a dynasty of super-powered folks - thanks to an uncertain-but-pronounced extension of natural lifespans for these godly few - that started during the Great Depression and is only ninety years later on the verge of its first succession. There's considerable tension built into the questions of whether yesterday's values are more important than ever, or if they've been rendered dangerously quaint.
     This is an 8-episode first season. It worked well for me, once I got into the groove of it, though based on some of the reviews there were a great many impatient souls who simply wanted much of it to be presented as a given. Instead, we're introduced to this world and its characters in what becomes two tracks in time: The present, where there's a rising question of whether or not the heroic code of The Utopian (the long, white-haired and bearded patriarch) has fatally outlived its usefulness, becoming a high road that is getting starry-eyed, super-heroic true-believers killed. And the past, as we dive back to 1929 to meet key characters when they were mere mortals.

    Part of the journey is in realizing the bad side of what it would be like to have Superman as a father. His obligations keep him on call around the clock, and prospects of being his successor mean lessons of responsibility, with the mantle of impossible standards conceptually laid on tiny shoulders from childhood. Daddy's eternally busy, but he's around often enough to always remind you that you need to be better... and don't forget to praise Jesus! We see the contrasting reactions to this via his son and daughter, one dutifully

trying to follow the path laid out for him, the other throwing arms up in frustration, rejecting it for a path to cash in on the glamor side of it, including engaging hedonistic passions as only someone with a superhuman constitution could. We see that some of the other children of that first generation have fully gone their own ways, cashing in on their gifts, though even in the instances where they've gone a criminal route there's still the distinction between those who adhered to a no-kill rule and those who, most decidedly, did not.

     By the end of episode eight, viewers have a fairly good grasp of the characters and their histories - who they are and how they came to be. I was fine with it, and didn't feel as if the story was being padded, but as mentioned above quite a few others complained about the pace. So far no official announcement's been made about a second season.

     If one's looking for more of a video game style action piece, then perhaps a recent arrival on Hulu will fit the bill. Boss Level (94 min   TV-MA for primarily for graphic violence) stars Frank Grillo as Roy Pulver, an ex special forces antihero who's not gotten his personal life together. A time loop gives him an opportunity for both wanton mayhem and a good deal of personal growth as he works through the details of a particularly challenging day, trying to save both his research scientist girlfriend and the world. His day resets each time he's killed.

       The cast includes Naomi Watts as scientist Jemma Wells (I guess if there's going to be a time travel element, a Wells is appropriate), Mel Gibson as the the bad guy behind it all, who's a proper bad guy inasmuch that he believes he's trying to improve the world. Will Sasso plays Brett, the bad guy's heavy right arm. It's a tidy, cliched but entertaining action film with a cadre of paid killers who are appropriately just as shallow and narrow as their skill sets, and which does its best to bring the fun with loads of casually gory finishes and some unrelated father-son bonding. No Mensa requirement for admission.
     In a radically different vein, I routinely go through the TCM listings as far ahead as the DVR will allow, looking for items to set to record. (That's usually around two weeks.) So, just enough time that I'll check what's in the DVR net and be mildly surprised at something I'd tagged on a whim. One of those items turned out to be a 1996 documentary.

     The improvisational comedy duo of Nichols and May was one that came in the very late '50s to a national and international stage, had a massive impact on comedy's form and content, and disappeared by the time I was a year old, having officially disbanded the year I was born. An already faint echo by the time my parent's stepped off ship, bringing an infant me to the U.S. for the first time in early 1962.
     Hugely influential in the field of comedy, they're well-remembered by so many, but that was all of an era where such acts were pop cultural ephemera -- intensely of The Now. Between live acts and tv appearances, their most lasting physical legacy for most of my life being comedy albums which mostly existed in the record collections of the cognoscenti. Out of sight and earshot, and so, too, of mind.
     Here, a reasonable (if less than crisp, visually) copy on YouTube, is that 1996 documentary Nichols and May: Take Two (If you have TCM, you should also have access to their website, where a much sharper copy is available on TCM Watch until June 7th, including a curated intro and outro by a TCM host and the author of a recent Nichols biography.)

     The documentary's less than 55 minutes long, which includes many clips from sketches and at least two, full versions of their more famous ones. More of their work, full sketches along with clips and appearances, is also waiting over on YouTube.
     Their association was reminiscent of a bittersweet marriage, where they were brilliant together, but while staying together as a team would have been a comforting and welcoming thing for one it was a slow, creative suffocation for the other, so the act split.
     They each went on to individual fame.
     May had much success as an actress, far more as a writer, and had a directorial career that started with a hit (1971's A New Leaf, co-starring Walter Matthau, where she was writer, director and actress), followed by films infamous for their failures: 1976's Mikey and Nicky, and 1987's Ishtar.
     Nichols is most widely remembered as a director of both stage and screen. Until watching the above documentary I only knew of him as that decades-spanning director with an impressive slate of films, including his 1966 (screen) directorial debut Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?, The Graduate the following year, 1988's Biloxi Blues (much, much more a favorite of my wife's than mine), and 1996's The Birdcage, using a screenplay adapted by May.

     On the newly-arrived and Haven't Yet Seen front, this week brings a new action thriller to HBO Max (and theaters) with what's being promoted as a "neo-Western action thriller": Those Who Wish Me Dead.

     Directed by Taylor Sheridan (Sicario), starring Angelina Jolie as a reassigned smokejumper with survivor's guilt, whose lonely placement at a watch station finds her drawn into a new guardianship, pitted against assassins played by Nicholas Hoult and Aiden Gillen. The cast also includes Jon Bernthal (most recently recalled by me for the Marvel Netflix role of Frank Castle: The Punisher). The film went live on HBO Max just past 3 this morning here on the East Coast, and may be part of my weekend mix.
     Follow-up: Well-paced,written and acted, we're spared scenes of people acting stupidly just to keep the movie from ending early. Also, particular note to Hoult and Gillen as the pair of assassins, as their clean-cut look and calm, low-key pleasant manner combined with a matter-of-fact ruthlessness made them particularly effective and formidable. No posturing, preening or ego-pumping involved, it was very believable how they would put people off-guard, and that they'd operated as a pair for a while. Regardless, we still get to see glimpses of humanity come through, though through narrow slits; in a lesser production that either wouldn't have been an element or it would have been leaned on to make sure the audience caught it. They also brought us insight into how their work environment is ultimately very corporate in its culture. 
     As a polar opposite to the great outdoors of the above film, a recent arrival on Netflix is the French, sci-fi thriller Oxygen (2021,  101 min, TV-MA or R - depending on where one looks)
     A claustrophobic affair, as an amnesiac comes back to consciousness trapped in what may prove to be a very high-tech coffin, as breathable air becomes scarce**. (Note: the trailer appears to give away waaaaay much more than it should -- so, consider this a potential spoiler warning to avoid the trailer. It may just find you impatiently watching the movie, tempted to jump to the final ten minutes or so to see how it resolves since so much else is already told.)

     This is the latest from producer Alexandre Aja (Crawl), and stars Melanie Laurent (Inglourious Basterds) as pretty much the sole, visible, real-time player.
      While this trailer shows it still in French, with English subtitles, the promotional material I saw on Netflix was dubbed into English. I believe it's available both ways, with Netflix defaulting to the dubbed version.
     That's as much as I have time for this week. I've too, too much else to do, too. It turned out to be one of those weeks where I took a little time to myself for one day and was reminded that the cosmos is indifferent to my desire for things to be a certain way... so I either have to live with the reality or find a way to change it. A simple Known for the sharper, savvier souls out there, but a matter of sullen

reflection for someone like myself who's more of a Jiminy Cricket without the baked-in work ethic (but, oddly, still all of the guilt about it), whose useless default is looking for a wishing star.
   On the other hand, this week I passed the two week mark since my second Pfizer shot, and so now am officially in the COVID-resistance cruising zone. Not planning to do anything with that immediately, though, as I'll be waiting out much of June to see what impact the broad lifting of restrictions here in PA on May 31st will bring as wider abandon meets potentially more aggressive, variant strains.
  Take care, and I hope you'll be back again next week.  - Mike

* Frank Quitely (artistic pseudonym of Vincent Deighan) was featured by C7 associate blogger Esther in a March 2020 piece during the first incarnation of the Consortium of Seven, and turned up again at #80 in her 100 Great Artist series. As a lifelong comics fan it's always interesting to me when people steeped in the fine arts favorably come across someone whose work I learned of from their comics work. I'll need to remember to ask Esther if she's familiar with the work of Bill Sienkiewicz, who's proven to be another strong Art School and Comics bridge, and who is otherwise simply a superior human being.
** One of those matters of possible pedantry: In reality the build-up of carbon dioxide kills before the oxygen is used up. No real comfort there, because suffocation is suffocation. Much as one can die of thirst in an even very humid place, it's all about what one needs not being concentrated enough to do a body any good.