August Seems Uncomfortable For So Much Spandex - Aug 6 - Friday Video Distractions with Mike Norton

 

     A large clump of genre items first, then other material.
    However it fell into place, August 2021 has a sudden burst of new and (mostly) returning costumed comicbook-derived items arriving on screens. Most of them involve DC characters, which for those outside such circles means characters owned by Warner, and so characters who live in one of the many worlds that involve Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc. I'd think it was part of a concerted plan, but, well... DC/Warner? With a plan? Hey, who knows. Most evidence to the contrary, anything's possible.
     I'll hit them in order of premiere date.
     Today, in the latest simultaneous theatrical and HBO-Max release, we have the long-awaited, James Gunn-directed, fresh take on The Suicide Squad. Costumed villains pressed into government service of the generally black ops variety, complete with follow-orders-or-else micro-bombs implanted in their skulls.
     A window of opportunity opened for this project when the House of Mouse had a corporate brainfart a few years back, and severed ties with James Gunn over some deliberately ugly tweets from back when he was much less successful and overtly trying to be the Bad Boy for attention. That Gunn had subsequently recanted, yet let those comments and rude attempts at jokes stay in place as a personal reminder to himself, were at first ignored during that moral purge, and Gunn temporarily found himself severed from the studio he'd directed two highly successful Guardians of the Galaxy movies for. Fans, co-workers, industry folk, and from what I can tell the complete cast of those Guardians movies all stepped up publicly in his favor, but for a time it was someone's pinheaded version of a moral imperative to treat him as eternally damned by the textual indiscretions of ever-relative youth.
     Happily, Disney came to their $enses in time and mended the relationship. In the interim, though, some bright soul who also happened to have some authority at Warner reached out to Gunn and asked if there was anything in their toybox he was interested in playing with on film. The result of the talks was a Gunn-directed Suicide Squad project.

      It has an interesting cast, and seems intent on merrily embracing its juvenile side.
      Yes, Warner did another Suicide Squad movie before, but that's not an issue here. It's not being directly referenced and validated by this new movie, nor is it being formally over-written, so this isn't Suicide Squad 2, nor is it an official reboot.
     It's very much an R picture, somewhat with the profanity and sexual references, mainly in the service of juvenile-leaning humor, and definitely with the bloody violence and resulting carnage. Heading into it with appropriate expectations, I enjoyed the ride as Warner decided to make it available at 7pm (Eastern) Thursday. It's in theaters now, too, and will be available on HBO Max through September 5th.
     Next Tuesday the second season of Stargirl begins on the CW.
     A mostly teen-centered drama, it's a growing group of the young exploring the legacies of an earlier generation of heroes and villains, most of whom were their parents. Discovering their hidden pasts, and often finding that the most conservative adult is also the one with the most major indiscretions to hide.
     The show has a charm to it, and, again, requires no audience background on the characters, though there are plenty of fan service Easter eggs dropped along the way to get a rise out of those of us who (mis)spent our youth on various comics. Strong themes of family, legacy, and redemption. As with nearly everything else, the COVID protocols made for a longer break between seasons, so I expect they'll go a little out of their way to help bring people back up to speed on things. The reaction to the first season was strong, and the CW has already approved season three, so they're committed to the show.
     I liked the first season more overall than I'd expected to, so I'm looking forward to seeing what this second brings us. This is the trailer for the new season:

     The first season of the series is available both on HBO Max and via the CW App, though the latter will have commercials, and I believe the former includes some scenes in the first two eps that were trimmed for time in broadcast.
     The season rolled out with a minimum of recap, reminding me indirectly that it's been a full year (to the day, as it turns out) since the last episode of season one aired. My general, low level face blindness in too many cases leaves me needing more exposition to sometimes remember if I'm supposed to remember each character from before. It's not the case for everyone, of course, but in an ensemble of supporting and B-characters some become lost.
     Anyway, in the aftermath of their big, mixed, perhaps even pyrrhic victory - including some apparent deaths and losses - things in the small town of Blue Valley have been quiet, and the characters are reacting to it in different ways. Beyond that, the show is continuing the mission of turning up new legacy heroes (and, one would expect, villains) while also teasing the return of various villains and heroes from the previous generation. Legacy, family, responsibility, and what constitutes an acceptable life are all continued themes.
     Next in time is the only one in this group that's not connected to DC properties, it's Marvel's What If? arriving on Disney+ starting Wednesday, August 11th.
     This is an animated anthology series that approaches the Marvel Cinematic Universe from the perspective of a member of a highly-evolved race known as Watchers, who are sworn to chronicling events in the universe but not interfering. The series will essentially be hosted by Uatu, the Watcher assigned to the section of the universe Earth is part of. Each episode will examine what might possibly have happened had there been one significant change in how a given event played out in the stories we've seen in the Marvel movies and shows. The first episode, for example, sees Peggy Carter receiving the super soldier process instead of Steve Rogers.
     The voice cast includes most of the actors who've played the characters in the movies and shows, and as a result at least one of the episodes in this 10-episode first season is presumably the last work the late Chadwick Boseman did for Marvel, portraying T'Challa in a timeline where a very different set of choices were made.
     So, each episode is in a large sense a stand-alone item (hence this being an anthology series), though the greater impact in each case will depend upon audience familiarity with the characters as they exist in the main Marvel Cinematic Universe. Considerable latitude was given in themes and directions, as these are pointedly meant to stand as contrasts to how things "really" happened.
     I'm looking forward to seeing how the mix of talents, styles and story choices go, week to week. These will be appearing just past midnight Pacific time each Wednesday morning starting next week:

     Visually, they've made an effort at giving it a color palate to better match it to the broader, cinematic universe. The first episode has a brisk flow, packing in a movie's length of alternate history plot in a half hour. Such complaint as I have is that they seemed to make Peggy's Captain Carter, super-soldier, more powerful than Captain America was. There were multiple times when it seemed her feats were more appropriate for Wonder Woman levels of superhuman strength and damage-resistance.
     Regardless, I'm looking forward to what the remaining 90% of this season has to bring, and will undoubtedly get back around to a second watch of this first one. 
     Finally, back (exclusively, in this case) over on HBO Max, August 12 will see the start of the 13-episode season three of Titans. This is a live-action adaptation of a version of the once Teen Titans. It's its own animal, a generally self-contained, self-explanatory universe requiring no other comics background; if you need to know something, they tell you. As we're seeing it here in our COVID-verse, there was a solid year of pandemic interruption between seasons, so I expect I'll need to to a little refreshing. Here's the season 3 trailer.

     Yes, it all seems rather unrelievedly "grim 'n' gritty" as the '80s comics scene catch phrase went, so only you can judge how well or not that's going to work for you.
     Looking at the calendar and the start and end dates, it appears HBO Max will be handling this as they did with the previous season of both this show and its spin-off, Doom Patrol (we'll talk about the third season of that show once we're into September), dropping the first three episodes of the season on that first day, then shifting to one episode per week thereafter. I recall that working very well for me.
     Indeed, that's what they did, and again it works well in giving the viewer a good run of three, roughly 45-minute, episodes to get back up to speed and into the groove of the series. The grimness of events seemed particularly unrelieved in these few episodes, though, reminding me that this is a generally darker timeline. Light, fun moments are scarce as hen's teeth, and to be honest, by the third episode it's clear that they're guilty of many of the sins too much DC big screen fare has been guilty of in the age of Zack Snyder - not only grimness and dystopia, but of rushing through characters' stories to get to where things go dark.
     Returning to Paramount+ for its second season debut next Thursday (the 12th) is the animated Star Trek comedy/adventure series Star Trek: Lower Decks.
     The first season didn't immediately grab me, but as I came to see it wasn't all just a belittling parody of the plot tropes of the various Star Trek series it gradually won me over.

     The characters gradually rose above the level of parody "types", and I became interested in where they might be going.
     It dives right back in with this first, new episode, doing a generally nice job of continuing the characters' stories and relationships as they navigate their lives and careers in Star Fleet -- albeit all with a comedic emphasis and the manic pace of a cartoon series. Comic riffs on various Star Trek tropes.

     Leaving (generally - with likely exceptions for Esther Williams and at least one Jane Fonda role) the world of leotards behind for now, the coming week's (Sunday through Saturday) celebrity focus in TCM's Summer Under The Stars month is as follows:
         Sunday Aug 8th: Esther Williams
         Monday Aug 9th: Kay Francis
         Tuesday Aug 10th: George Segal
         Wednesday Aug 11th: Kathryn Grayson
         Thursday Aug 12th: Ramon Novarro
         Friday Aug 13th: Jane Fonda
         Saturday Aug 14th: Gregory Peck
     As mentioned last week, each day's spotlight will run from 6AM Eastern to just before that the following day, presenting films with (and the occasional special focus program on) that star du jour. Not necessarily claiming to present the pinnacle of each person's career, but instead trying to primarily present a broad sweep of their work.
 

    The frank nadir of my interest in this week's choices has to be Sunday, though I must confess I wrote Esther Williams off from the start as being a gimmick choice. Much as with other stars who initially broke in due to some other sports or arts endeavor, that aspect presents no draw for me. My eyes will glaze over at the first sign of a bit of water ballet. Drown me now, fish-lady!
     Sadly and, again, likely a bit unfairly, the same will apply to Wednesday's star Kathryn Grayson, whose break-in to films was through her operatic stardom, and so is obliged to break into song. I have a fairly narrow tolerance for musicals, ill-aged grump that I am.
     A mostly interesting mix otherwise, including the recently-deceased George Segal getting this focus for the first time on TCM. Ramon Novarro's mostly of the silent era, though the mix presented for him includes talkies, among them the Greta Garbo vehicle Mata Hari (1931). That's a film C7 blogger Garbo covered as part of her series on Greta Garbo recently, btw.
     Jane Fonda's mix covers a 30-year span that looks potentially interesting enough to just leave on all day, provided I'm home for it. Among the known (to me) items there sees a broad swing from Agnes of God (1985) to Barbarella (1968).
     I'm going to try to give a little attention to Kay Francis (spotlight Monday, August 9th) via some DVR captures, because she's one of those people who was a huge star in her era, dubbed at one time "The Queen of Warner Brothers" and commanding an annual salary well over six times what Bette Davis received in the same era -- but is now nearly forgotten. Having read a little about her and her

career I'm not entirely sure what to expect. That part of her fame was tied to her fashion sense isn't the most encouraging thing for me, though, at least planting the seed of doubt that her career peak may have rested on an odd mix of elements and a particularly fortuitous moment in time. I may initially record more than a few of the day's mix of films, but with the expectation that most of them will be sampled rather than viewed end to end. I won't know until I see.
     Still, even a casual reading of events strongly suggests it was almost entirely studio politics, turning on her vehemently, even venomously, for daring to challenge her contract. This was especially the case the first time the box office went sour for her - regardless of whether or not any of that had to do with poor decisions on what sort of pictures to put her in. Indeed, past a point it seemed that they were more intent on chastising and tearing her down than they were on placing her successfully on the screen, intent on making an example of her for having dared to challenge the studio's control of her life.
     However shallow and juvenile the motivation, I also have to at least dip an ear into the stream to try to catch the reported speech impediment of the Barbara Walters/Elmer Fudd variety, leading some of the buzz around the Paramount lot to refer to her as "the wavishing Kay Fwancis." This ended up being something they used to help undermine her, placing her in not only creatively narrowing, matronly roles, but handing her scripts loaded with Rs and Ls. By the late 30s her "Queen" crown at Warner Bros. had been placed on Bette Davis' head, leaving Francis to move into some B-movies she co-produced in the 40s, and stage work, before retiring in '52.

     Finally, I came across another film that I'd not seen or even heard of until recently, but which would have fit right in with the Saturday afternoon horror host movie set of youth. Complete with B-movie icon John Agar, it's 1962's Hand of Death.

     As with one or two of the others I'd covered in previous posts, a likely big reason why this didn't make it to the Dr. Shock or Chiller Theater shows I'd watch each week is its short length - barely tapping out at an hour.
     In this, some rather broad and reckless bit of science leads to a man absorbing a chemical that makes his touch deadly. It also gradually turns him into a hideous, lumpy, swollen state that was unfortunately all too reminiscent of a couple horrible allergic reactions I had many years ago. A monster that was me! ...though I was spared the death touch.
     Fame footnotes for this one include scenes with former fill-in Stooge and Abbot & Costello, then Joey Bishop sidekick, Joe Besser as a gas station attendant, and a scene late in the film with then-future Munsters kid Butch Patrick toddling along the shoreline at a particularly dangerous moment. I can promise you that at least one of them dies quickly and horribly.
     That's more than enough for this week, but it's all about options!
     Take care, and we can meet back here next week.  - Mike