Threats and Warnings - Friday Video Distractions with Mike Norton

 

     I'm not sure what's completely gone into my personal brew this week, but I'm feeling low, sad, regretful and particularly mortal. I'm sure getting into a sudden binge of the first season of Criminal Minds - a 15-season crime procedural that ran from 2005 through last year, but which I'd never bothered to watch while it was running - hasn't helped. You'd think I'd remember from Chicago Hope and Dead Like Me that spending too much time with Mandy Patinkin playing a non-conformist authority figure overseeing grim matters isn't conducive to good emotional health. Live and hopefully learn. Nah, I can't blame it completely on Patinkin, but the rest of it are things for me to work out. At least (so far) they haven't let him sing.
     A hodgepodge this week. If I mention something new-to-me that you've seen, any reinforcements or warnings are (almost) always appreciated.

     This week Disney+ wrapped the first season of Loki, which I enjoyed greatly.
     That the final episode did a nice and unique job of introducing someone who will be one of the next Big Bads for the MCU was almost icing on the cake. (I can't explain the "unique" without giving too much away.)
     Having so many years of comics history for the MCU creators to distill these versions of characters from continues to be a treat for me. In a modern, social context, the biggest problems for me are avoiding spoiling details for anyone who's at a different point in their journey through it, and stepping carefully around the piles of shite left by various shades of toxic "fans." Regarding Loki, the most oft-seen, dismissive comment has been from those who declared it to be a thinly-reposed Dr. Who. It's contributed to my having snoozed several facebookers of late to allow a 30-day break from each other.
     Anyway, regarding that final episode character intro and the advantages of having the MCU architects synthesizing a better final form, they chose an actor who has the right style and skin tone to be wearing a lot of purple over the next couple years. 'Nuff said.
     Once again, for those who have Paramount +, I can scarcely recommend Evil enough - currently in its second season. An investigative procedural (a priest in training, a skeptical psychologist, and an agnostic technical problem-solver are employed by the Catholic church to investigate situations for the involvement of either the demonic or the divine) with interesting characters, a strong supernatural

underpinning, and done with wonderfully playful humor. Robert King and Michelle King (they seem to have an insistence on full, separate, credits) have a very entertaining style. The show manages to merge the genuinely creepy with humor, reminding me of nightmares that deeply unsettle while being difficult to relay to someone else without being a little embarrassed. This is all conveyed with aplomb by a terrific cast. Leland Townsend (Michael Emerson) is becoming a more entertaining foil for the main trio almost week to week.
     As much as I enjoyed the first season, so far the second has seen everyone's game stepped up. The full, 13-episode first season is still on Netflix, though I see CBS has completely purged it from CBS.com, where the first season had aired. I was happy to see they've already given the go-ahead for season three.
     A rare note of disappointment is that I'm seeing a break in their schedule, as after this Sunday's 6th episode, the next won't be until August 29th, a full month later, when it resumes a weekly run. I'm going to chalk it up to lingering production interference from COVID, having seen the jump to their streaming platform as a step up from the scheduling shenanigans one often finds on a broadcast network, as holidays, award shows and sporting events pre-empt or temporarily suspend a season's run of a series.
    While I've yet to step into it, the Kings' style has won me over enough that I've added The Good Wife, and if that goes well, The Good Fight, to my potential watch list. I know to expect very different themes, and realize they'll lack genre hooks, but their eye for situations and ear for humor (which in general extends to the rest of their writers' pool) have me encouraged.
     While on Paramount+, I'll note that I did watch A Quiet Place Part II.
     It was suddenly there on a streaming platform I was already paying for, so I took a look. If you liked the first one, then this is essentially more of the same, primarily following the main survivors of the first film. If you had issues with the core concept, ramifications and flaws of the first film, you'll have them here all over again. Yes, the menace is implacable and relentless... until the needs of the plot are otherwise. Yes, you figured out ways to protect yourself ten minutes into the first movie. Yes, you would doubtless be king of this apocalypse. So shut up already.     
     While most of the film picks up where the first one left off, the opening scenes of this sequel may be of interest because they're a flashback to the day it all began -- something we didn't see in the first film, which dropped us deep into that harshly, fearfully silent, new world order.   

     Both films are available on Paramount+.
     Over on Neflix, I was surprised to see the second season of the German science fiction thriller series Biohackers appear last week. I'd watched and written something about the first season early September last year. (Good Lord, how much longer ago that seems!) The first season was a very focused vengeance trail, while this 6-episode second season drops us into a confused present, where main character Mia Ackerlund is understandably feeling especially gaslighted. As with the first season, the Netflix default is to provide a fully-dubbed version, unlike what's shown in this trailer.

          Another dive into the Saturday afternoon sci fi films of youth fished one out I hadn't last seen since I was maybe ten: Gog (1954, roughly 1h 23m).
         A film from an era when science was run by sexually predatory white men, most of whom seemed to put 40-weight oil or axle grease in their hair. They hired mainly nubile women to be their assistants, and worked in secret, subterranean labs for the government in a facility largely run by the buzzing electronic brain NOVAC (Nuclear Operative Variable Automatic Computer ). Their primary aim is the design and implementation of a permanent space station, because whichever nation does so first will be able to lord over the entire planet with a parabolic mirror capable of frying entire cities. And, you know, God would want that to an American death mirror.
     Anyway, all is not perfect in this seeming paradise for well-credentialed, vigorously-pomaded men who want to freeze cute little monkeys and gleefully letch over smiling, accommodating, bullet-bra-ed

women half their age, as there have been a series of deaths. Washington sends in Dr. David Sheppard from the Office of Scientific Investigation to, well, investigate.
     I opted to use a still from this film as the opening graphic this week, even though mostly for the unintentional comic value. It looks to me for all the world like a Robert Crumb self-portrait, where for some reason he's frosted and wielding a half-eaten fudgesicle. He may be yelling something nasty about Bruce Springsteen.
     I caught this on Amazon Prime, but there's a full version of it - and a nice, clean copy, too, it seems - waiting on YouTube. They even sprang for color!

     While there's no blurriness to the print, multiple scenes in the film easily mark it as being part of that era's attempted wave of 3D movies, as the studios, fearful of the rising tide of television, were frantically searching for gimmicks to get people to come buy tickets. All it really means here is that it's peppered with scenes where the action is directed straight at the camera, so you can be directly menaced by flame throwers, robots with a penchant for waving their arms as they roll, etc.
     Okay, now to the things I haven't watched as yet.
     One of the items I tagged on Netflix is How To Become a Tyrant, a 6-part series of half hour or less episodes that examine the makings and habits of successful tyrants. Based on the trailer it's nearly three hours of warning about the threat of Trump and his followers without mentioning them directly.

      On a far lighter note, also on Netflix, there's an over-the-top, female-centered shoot-em-up with what looks to be an entertainint cast. I've already mentally renamed it the Jane Wick Society, but purely in fun. It's Gunpowder Milkshake. It's a bonus that this snuck up on me completely. Over a year of not going out to the movies means I haven't taken in a bunch of trailers.

     Meanwhile, ten years ago, I spotted over on Amazon Prime a psychological thriller I was oblivious to back in 2011 when it came out: Take Shelter. This should be worth it alone for leads Michael Shannon and Jessica Chastain, not to mention Shannon's fellow Boardwalk Empire star Shea Whigham. I'm genuinely interested in seeing how this plays out.

     As I've been doing, I intend to come back and add comments in red once I get around to watching any of these new-to-me items.
     That's likely enough for one week. I have a list of some other, upcoming items, but as they're all for things in August (and four of them are all of the same theme) I'll set those aside for another week or two for when they're more relevant.
     If you're most places in the Northern hemisphere I hope you're able to find a cool place to be, and are getting to enjoy life or find a pleasant refuge from it.  See you back here next Friday! - Mike