Those Things'll Kill Ya - Aug 20 - Friday Video Distractions with Mike Norton

 

      "Nothing is more addictive than the past."

      Arriving today in theaters and on HBO Max (for 31 days) is the latest Hugh Jackman vehicle, the sci-fi gumshoe mystery Reminiscence.

      That's likely my first, post-early chores stop today. I'll update after I've seen it.

        I know it's a real hit or miss show, but last week on Netflix we had the surprise appearance of the first four episodes of the seventh (and final) season of the senior life buddy comedy Grace and

Frankie. (I'd written about it back in April 2020.) I'd all but forgotten that we were set to get a final, extended season, and had half expected that given the ages of the leads - Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Sam Waterston and Martin Sheen - the pandemic interruption was likely to be permanent for one or more of them. As it turns out, though, we have these four episodes, and then the final 12 coming in 2022, making a 16-episode final season.
     These new episodes are leaning too strongly on a Lucille Ball formula of "wacky" schemes and uncomfortable situations to work smoothly for me, but I'm well-invested in these characters (within the limits of what one can be with sitcom characters) and on the whole enjoyed catching up with them.
      Today, season 1 of a new dramedy series lands on Netflix: The Chair. Starring Sandra Oh and Jay Duplass, this is from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss... which would be platinum creator credits were this very early 2019. I've avoided other information on the series, deciding I'd rather sample it knowing no more than what was in this brief trailer.

     Not much to go on, I'm utterly unsure whether this will pull me in or if I'll quickly set it aside.
     Arriving three days later, also on Netflix, is an anime film based on The Witcher franchise. So, monster hunting, magic, and pseudo-medieval politics. Nothing here is screaming out for my attention so far, especially as this visual style of anime is a tough sell for me. As ever, your mileage may vary.

  Arriving next Wednesday, the 25th, is the documentary Bob Ross: Happy Accidents, Betrayal & Greed (2021). I'm very curious as to its content and focus.

  It was an interesting time, and managed to paint (no pun intended) a touching and ultimately somewhat tragic arc for Bob Ross' otherwise very public career. It clearly painted a pair of people as the villains of the piece, though they subsequently claim they were ambushed by it. For me, the matter of who has control of the Bob Ross empire and who doesn't speaks volumes in favor of what the documentary portrays. I know that while I celebrate the man, his accomplishments and what he stood for for millions of people around the globe, I won't buy any official Bob Ross merchandise or supplies given who will profit from that.
 Arriving that same day on Netflix is a 2014 Pierce Brosnan action film I vaguely recall seeing the trailer for: The November Man. The trailer makes it seem generic and made-by-committee, leaving me with that odd feeling that I may sit and watch the whole thing, believing vaguely all along that I must have seen it before, and end up no more sure than when I started.

     Anyway, I'm mainly noting it as an option for those of us who have Netflix and were perhaps in the mood for something Bond-ish.
     Again, offered at the level of "it's there if it looks interesting to you" is 2020 horror film The Old Ways.

     A Mexican-American reporter returns to her hometown in search of a story on witchcraft, and is abducted by a group who believe she is possessed.
     Returning August 26th to FXX (and FX on Hulu the following day) is the animated action comedy Archer, back for its 12th season.

      The first two episodes of this 8-episode season will arrive that first week.

     Quick side-note: This week - Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, brought us the second episode of the first season of What If...? on Disney +, and of the second season of Star Trek: Lower Decks on Paramount+. Each a welcome addition.
     While I enjoyed the first episode of What If...?, it didn't work for me half as well as this second episode, which also included some of the last work by the late Chadwick Boseman, voice acting as T'Challa. My presumption is that all episodes of this series, playing with elements of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as they are, will be specifically showing us reworkings of events from one or more of the 24 films they've released.

     Over on TCM, August's Summer Under the Stars continues its 24-hour spotlights on the careers of various stars. Next week's stars:
     Sunday, Aug 22nd:        Tyrone Power
     Monday, Aug 23rd:        Eve Arden
     Tuesday, Aug 24th:        Maurice Chevalier
     Wednesday, Aug 25th:    Jane Wyman
     Thursday, Aug 26th:        Tony Randall
     Friday, Aug 27th:            Merle Oberon
     Saturday, Aug 28nd:        Lee Marvin
     There are quite a few in the mix this week, and I know I'm going to miss out on so much of it given the limits of free time. As ever, I'll be torn between wanting to watch fondly-remembered items and trying to sample ones that are new to me.

     Tyrone Power's day includes the 1946, first adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's novel The Razor's Edge, about a man whose wartime experiences set him on a search for the meaning of life. I'd still like to eventually do a compare and contrast between this and the 1984 remake, starring Bill Murray, including a rereading of the novel so as to better appreciate where each adaptation captures or fails to capture the themes... but that isn't going to be this week.  The day also includes 1940's The Mark of Zorro, which has gained the arguably shallow pop cultural spot as the film that a young Bruce Wayne was taken to by his parents on what would be the final day of his childhood. The day also includes 1957's Witness For the Prosecution, directed by Billy Wilder, there Powers shares the screen with Marlene Dietrich, Charles Laughton, Elsa Lanchester and John Williams. I know I won't find immediate time for all three of those, much less for the various others I'm less familiar with, which could turn out to be memorable.  So it is with much of the rest of the week.
     Eve Arden, Tony Randall and Lee Marvin's days hold similar, direct attractions for me. The first two
are stars I first came to know via work made for television, and in the case of Arden I'm woefully under-exposed to her film work; I've never known her to be less than immediately engaging, managing to come across as the smartest person in the scene while not immediately deflating the illusions of the other characters.

    
Randall's day includes more costumed character work, including 1965's adaptation of Agatha Christie's 1936 novel The ABC Murders, as The Alphabet Murders, played with an entertaining but marginally unfortunate comedic turn by Randall. I blame no one for that, as success begs imitation, and they'd already managed much success that decade with several Miss Marple film projects by then, which leaned (though half as hard) into comedy. I would have bet that I'd already written about the 3-part 2018 adaptation done for the BBC (as The ABC Murders), starring John Malkovich, but searches through both years of the blog, sadly, came up empty. I may have only written about that for a zine. That later adaptation added much to the tale, both in a commentary on xenophobia and in terms of character backstory for Piorot, all of which was appreciated by this viewer. Checking, I see that it's still freely available to Amazon Prime subscribers. This would make for another, potentially interesting (at least to me) three-way compare and contrast between the films and the source novel.

     Randall's day also includes a fantasy film directed by George Pal. It's the comedic fantasy 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. Featuring the makeup work of William Tuttle, Randall appears as seven characters, including the eponymous Lao. Ideally there will be little to no pearl-clutching from modern audiences over cultural appropriation. In watching the film, it's perhaps a little unfair to be aware that the director wanted Peter Sellers for the lead - and Sellers wanted the role - but the studio prevailed, citing that they already had Randall under contract, and he was $50,000 dollars cheaper.
     With next Saturday's Lee Marvin sweep, it's likely to be tougher still given how tempting it'll be to just park myself from 3:15 'til nearly 10pm as they play through the fun genre sweep of Western comedy Cat Ballou (1965), war adventure epic The Dirty Dozen (1967) and crime & revenge tale Point Blank (1967). I sincerely doubt I'll do that, but I'm going to be tempted.

     I'm going to end this week as I've been doing for a while now, with another B-movie that would have been right at home on one of the Saturday horror host/creature feature programs I watched in the late '60s/early '70s... but have only just recently seen for the first time.
     This week it's 1954's Target Earth. Shot in seven days, it was obviously meant to be in the mold of the previous year's H.G. Wells adaptation of War of the Worlds. But here the aliens behind it are thought to be from Venus, so it's totally different, right?

     In this case, the invading action's centered on Chicago, though it was all filmed in Los Angeles, not that we rubes out in the sticks would spot it.
     We learn what's happened alongside a group of people who were otherwise too occupied when the alert came through to evacuate the city. This includes a failed suicide, a man who'd been mugged and left for dead, and a pair of partygoers who had been too drunk to bug out.
     Featuring the threat of a "robot army", though only one robot costume was built. It's manned by Steve Calvert, who, when not tending bar at Ciro's on Sunset Strip, had film credits wearing a gorilla suit in Bride of the Gorilla (1951) and Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952), so no expense was spared. The cast has several faces some of us will remember, if not always specifically from where. This includes character actors Richard Reeves and Whit Bissell. Ladies, try not to faint! It's also worth noting that actor Robert Roark got a part in this (as a late-entry character, the scenery-chewing, pistol-waving Davis) primarily because his father was a large investor in the film.
     For better or (mostly) worse, it's Target Earth (75 minutes)

  So, hey... that's enough for today.
  As ever, take care, keep cool, and I hope to see you back here next week. - Mike