I had ambitions, big ambitions to get my September round-up post up near the beginning of October, not the middle or the end. But then, life got really busy and here we are.
Actually, at the moment I’m in the airport in Australia, waiting for my flight to New York, where I plan to spend just a couple of weeks seeing my mother and aunt, and some other friends and relatives. Getting ready for this trip was the main reason why I struggled so to get to this post earlier.
September now seems like a long time ago, but it was a good month where I got to watch, read and do a fair bit. One of the early highlights was that we celebrate one of my daughters’ birthdays this month. As part of our celebrations we took her to an indoor skydiving place, where she got go into this big wind tunnel and float several meters off the ground!
Pretty neat, right?
September is also Father’s Day (at least here in Australia), which meant all sorts of blessings for me as well. One of those was the Father’s Day card I got from another daughter. She actually created connecting cards for her sister’s birthday and my Father’s Day, as you can see here.
So yeah, that’s Johanna as a StarFleet officer from Star Trek (she’s a Trill, it looks like) and me as the Doctor from Doctor Who. I’m wearing a long black leather coat that I am frequently found in when the weather is cool, and the thing in my hand is the coffee cup I usually use, repurposed as a Sonic Screwdriver. We appear to be standing together in the TARDIS from the most recent season of the show. Very creative!
For Father’s Day I took a trip to the comic shop to spend some $$ on a couple of books. Most notably, I bought the first issue of the newest iteration of the Legion of Super-Heroes.
Legion of Super-Heroes #1
The Legion, if you don’t know, is my favorite comic book property, but it’s had a rough time this past decade or two. You can read about the concept here but the gist of it is “teenaged superheroes in the future.” The newest version is by Joshua Williamson and Hayden Sherman. We’re only a single issue in so far (maybe we’ll be up to #2 by the time I finish this post) but it’s pretty enjoyable.
Rather then deluge us with characters right off the bat like they did with the ill-fated (and I’d say, ill-conceived) version by Brian Michael Bendis from a few years ago, this Legion #1 takes its time introducing us to just a few characters:namely Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl, Cosmic Boy and Brainiac 5 (with the latest version of Matter-Eater Lad also on hand), and gives the reader a pretty accessible jumping-on point into what has often been an expansive and kind of impenetrable mythology. In this way, it reminds of me of one of my favorite eras of the book, the so-called “Reboot”, which also kicked off its take on the team right from their starting point. It also has echoes of the “Threeboot” in terms of the greater world-building, with the idea of the Legion as an inspirational movement that comes into conflict with a more authoritarian and repressive status quo.
Anyway, it’s not my “perfect” take on the Legion, but almost nothing is. And I’d rather have someone else’s earnest and heartfelt take on the concept than whatever my imagination might cobble up.
Incidentally, I opted to buy the particular variant cover version that you see in the photo above. To my surprise, this cover wrapped around the book’s main cover, so I actually got them both.
Is this the standard practice with comics nowadays? It’s been so long since I’ve bought a new single issue, I have no idea.
Green Lantern: With This Ring
With the opportunity to indulge that Father’s Day provided, I also bought a couple of other things, a bit randomly. One of them was this Green Lantern book, which evidently reprints a recent run from the current Green Lantern series, written by Jeremy Adams. Though I like comics and acquire new things on a regular basis, I rarely know what’s going on with the characters currently, so this was a bit of a stab in the dark for me.
The series focuses on Hal Jordan–my favorite Green Lantern–who has discovered his name is mentioned in an ancient tome called the Book of Oa (Oa is the planet where the Guardians of the Universe, the Green Lanterns’ bosses, reside). This sets him off on a bit of an existential quest where he tries to make sense of this bizarre twist, and ends up having a series of one-off adventures with the likes of Batman, Green Arrow, and Barry Allen (not currently the Flash for some reason). Hal’s long-term love interest, Carol Ferris, is also on hand in the identity of Star Sapphire (it’s a whole thing that I sort of understand, but not completely). These individual adventures are fun enough but the book overall is a bit of a disappointment for someone like me simply because very little is resolved within its pages.
Indeed, the last issue reprinted wasn’t really about Hal Jordan at all, but Kyle Rayner. I like Kyle Rayner but it wasn’t what I was hoping for. But I know I can’t really complain because that is the nature of ongoing comics, and the book did not promise to be a self-contained story.
Oh well, it was a fun read, but not enough to make me want to chase down all the other volumes or issues to fill in the gaps.
Absolute Martian Manhunter: Martian Vision
This is another new series, but at least it’s the first volume of the series, so there should be no problem catching up with what is going on.
However that said, this is a pretty unconventional book. As part of DC’s newish “Absolute” line, this is a brand new take on the Martian Manhunter, completely disconnected from whatever we’ve had before. In this version, “the Martian” is a non-corporeal consciousness that bonds with human FBI agent John Jones, giving him a new (and extremely psychedelic) perspective on the world around him. We watch him struggle with this while also trying to take advantage of the insight it gives him to fight a new kind of evil in the form of a White Martian.
I’m not 100% sure what I think of it. It’s obviously excellently written and drawn (by Deniz Camp and Javier Rodriguez), but it’s also pretty far out there in terms of style and approach. So I think it’s good, highly creative and engaging, but I’m just not sure if it’s my cup of tea. However, I have just learned that this isn’t an ongoing series, but as 12 issue limited series. That means I can read the whole thing with just one more book–that makes me a lot more likely to want to check it out.
In addition to all that, I flew to India in September for a smartphone filmmaking seminar that I was helping with. That was a good time although I think maybe now that I’m in my mid-50s, ‘m finding the whole “fly through the night” thing a lot more challenging than I used to. (Ironically, I’m now writing this in Melbourne, after having flown through the night here, waiting for my onward connection to Los Angeles.)
Anyway, flying on planes usually means watching movies on planes, and this time was no exception.
In the Grey
My first outing was In the Grey, a well made action thriller by Guy Ritchie about some very good looking people (Henry Cavill, Jake Gyllenhaal and Elza Gonzalez, specifically) who have to do all sorts of action and caper shenanigans to take down a ruthless crime lord who lives on an island surrounded by corrupt police and his own private army. It was exactly the sort of breezy nonsense that I enjoy watching on those aforementioned middle-of-the-night flights–entertaining, well-produced, but also kind of soulless. Like, you don’t want anything bad to happen to the main characters, but you don’t actually care about them at all either. They are just cool people riding around on motorcycles and cruising down ziplines and staring down bad guys across their big scary desks, but not really fully-fledged people with actual depth or anything like that.
So yeah, it passes the time, but not much beyond that.
But you know what is has above the other movie that I watched on these flights for the first time? I can actually remember what it is, that’s what!
Yeah, I watched something else on my way back from India and for the life of me I cannot remember what it is. I’m pretty sure I liked it, though. Like, distinctly better than In the Grey. And I saw it more recently, since In the Grey was on the way there. Maybe it’ll come back to mind before I’m finished with this post; if so I’ll include it.
Now I also watched two movies I’ve already seen:
Superman by James Gunn & The Batman by Matt Reeves
In both cases, this was the first time I’ve seen either movie since my original viewing near the time of release. I enjoyed them both then and I was pleased to discover that in both cases, I still liked them now.
In some ways, both Superman and The Batman are exactly the movies about their respective characters that I most want to see. Superman is a story about earnest characters in world full of goofy, pulp-nonsense science fiction. It might unironically be my favorite superhero movie ever. And The Batman is a long, slow burning mystery punctuated by moments of angst and action. I’ve long wished for a serious Batman TV series (one that actually stars Batman, and not one of his supporting characters), and The Batman is probably the closest I’ll get to that. It’s really long and I could totally imagine something quite like it as a modern streaming series. And even though I really love Christian Bale and his performance in Batman Begins in particular, Robert Pattinson’s Batman is the one that adheres the most to my physical picture of the character, when he’s in the suit anyway.
I also checked out a few TV series, including the first episode of The Studio on Apple TV. It stars Seth Rogen as a newly promoted Hollywood studio executive. The first episode was expertly scripted: Rogen’s character wants to make serious movies but is tasked with developing a film based on the Kool-Aid sugary fruit drink, which he then tries to pivot into Martin Scorcese’s latest passion project about the infamous Jonestown massacre where people drank poison Kool-Aid, which of course does not make his boss happy. But it (and the start of the second episode, which I saw before my plane landed) is also so incredibly cringe-inducing that I couldn’t bring myself to return to it on my next flight. Maybe some day, when I have Apple TV again.
I also watched the first episode or two of both R.J. Decker (about a former convict turned private eye in Florida) and CIA (about an FBI agent tasked with working with a team from the CIA who are operating domestically in the United States). Both shows were fine, and a lot more benign than The Studio.
Heart of the Beast
After returning from India I had an unusual weekend in that I got to the cinema twice. The first time was to see Heart of the Beast, a film my wife had expressed interest in, prior to her heading out for a short trip to Thailand (lots of comings and goings in the family lately).
Heart of the Beast is a survival thriller starring Brad Pitt as James Belmont, a retired special forces officer who gets lost in the Alaska wilderness, with his retired combat dog Odin. Both man and beast suffer from PTSD from their experiences in combat, which just exacerbates their life and death struggle against the elements after Belmont suffers a heart attack and crashes the small plane he was flying. Together they must contend with a bear, with wolves, a slippery log over roaring rapids, and all sorts of other hazards and obstacles.
We all liked Heart of the Beast a lot. It’s well-paced, consistently tense and engaging, and always enjoyable. Belmont makes a few questionable decisions but it’s hard to fault him for it–he survives many many things that would have immediately killed me. Brad Pitt is solid in the lead role and is almost the only human character of any consequence (though J.K. Simmons and Anna Lambe have small roles). Four dogs, it seems, played Odin, and together created a very compelling animal character. The film is directed by David Ayer, who I only know from Suicide Squad, a movie I just rewatched the previous month. It goes without saying that Heart of the Beast is indescribably better.
Coyote vs. Acme
The other movie that we saw that weekend was Coyote vs. Acme, a live action / animation hybrid about Wile E. Coyote from Looney Tunes hiring a lawyer (Will Forte) to sue the Acme corporation for all the defective equipment he’s bought over the years in his efforts to catch the Road Runner. This is one of the movies that Warner Bros. infamously decided to shelve, after it was basically complete, choosing to take the financial loss in order to get a tax write-off. The same thing happened to a Batgirl movie, and a Scooby Doo film, but the difference is that the studio later walked back their decision and allowed another company to release the film instead.
This was good news for both the filmmakers and the audience, because Coyote vs. Acme is actually really good. Not a masterpiece, by any stretch, but solidly funny and enjoyable, with good use of the Looney Tunes characters and the right amount of heart. The story is about the main characters uncovering a conspiracy that is behind the Coyote’s struggles with Acme products, which is kind of clever but I thought could have been more concretely put together. But it still provided the necessary framework for the set pieces and character bits, and I liked the film a lot.
Coyote vs. Acme has proved to be a hit and seems to be seen as evidence of how ill-advised the studio was to pull this nonsense of cancelling projects after they were either done or almost done (something I definitely don’t want to become more frequent in this industry). So in going to see the movie I felt like I was both supporting Warner Bros. and sticking it to them at the same time.
Exit 8
I still can’t remember the other movie that I watched on that flight. I know that one of my options was Exit 8, but I didn’t choose it because I already had a plan to watch it with My Friend Rod, who had recommended it to me prior to my departure for India.
Exit 8 is a Japanese movie directed by Genki Kawamura about a man (known only as “the Lost Man” who finds himself in a set of subway corridors that continually loop (complete with the same person walking past him each time). He realises that he has to spot anomalies in the repetitious environment, and that if he can do this successfully he can advance toward the promised Exit 8, which he believes will allow him to escape. Some of these anomalies are extremely subtle, like an “8” being printed upside down in a sign, while others are blatant and unmissable, like gallons of blood pouring from the ceiling.
It’s a creepy film but also one that is surprisingly uplifting and positive. There’s no concrete explanation in the end for what is happening, but it does provide a completely satisfying emotional journey for our main character, and I enjoyed it a lot.
And that’s it for this month! I still can’t remember the other movie I watched on the plane, which is kind of frustrating. I still have to add photos and tags to this post, plus I think I need to stop writing for a bit because I think I need to get something to eat before my next flight, and I’m also super-tired.
So all that to say I might still have to add this other commentary, if I can think of what it is I want to comment about. Maybe I’m just imagining I watched something else? I don’t know. Either way, if the post ends without another review, you can assume that nothing came back to me!
Now I’m writing from LAX, my last layover before I get to New York, and I remembered! The other movie I watched on that flight from India was…
Pressure
I remembered because it was also an option on the plane I just got off of.
Pressure is directed by Anthony Maras and is about James Stagg, a British meteorologist who finds himself leading a team whose job it is to forecast the weather conditions for the planned D-Day invasion. Because so much is at stake for the Allied Forced with this plan, there is a great hope that Stagg will deliver a favourable prediction. This is compounded by the lead American meteorologist, who announces that things will be calm and agreeable on both the seas and in the air. But this guy uses historical records to make his predictions, which Stagg insists are irrelevant in this case, and leading to the pressure of the movie’s title. \
Andrew Scott (Moriarity from Sherlock) plays Stagg as a man who keeps all that pressure deeply internalised–you know that’s all going to bubble over at some point and you spend much of the film waiting for it to happen. Providing balance is Brendan Gleeson as the impassioned General Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied Forces and the man upon whose shoulders rests the final decision for whether the invasion will go ahead or not.
The whole movie they talk about the planned invasion day being June 5th, which means if you know history at all (as I do just a little), you go into the movie aware of what Stagg’s forecast must be, and how all this turns out. But that doesn’t stop the movie from being a gripping piece of drama. Pressure is a bit higher class than what I normally gravitate toward on the plane but I liked it a lot.
Starfleet Academy
And also, all this time in the air has reminded me that I forgot to mention that we also finished watching Star Trek: Starfleet Academy, the latest (and as it transpires, the last) new series to debut in this current production era of the Star Trek franchise.
The show is a direct spinoff of Star Trek Discovery, taking place as it does in the 32nd Century, further forward than Star Trek has ever gone before (at least as a regular setting), in the period after a galactic disaster called “the Burn” devastated all the space-going civilisations, including the Federation. So this is the happening in a period where the Federation is re-establishing itself, and Starfleet Academy is actually opening for the first time in like a century. The central relationship of the series is that between the new chancellor of the Academy, Captain Nahla Ake, and the capable but discontent cadet Caleb Mir, whom Ake regrets her role in adhering to Federation law and separating from his mother. The show’s main recurring antagonist is space pirate Nus Braka, who is also wrapped up in Caleb’s backstory.
All this is a good setup for a series, and gives everything a potential interest that it might not have had at any other point in the franchise’s fictional history. But the show itself is one I have very mixed feelings about, partly because the whole Young Adult genre that it is evidently aiming for (with show’s great emphasis on the relationship drama amongst its young cast) leads to loads of stuff that just feels indefensibly ridiculous. I often found myself cringing at a lot that was on screen, but I’m willing to admit that that might be mainly me struggling with the type of show this is; I think it is overall well produced with decent performances, and others might like it better than me.
Holly Hunter stars in as Captain Ake–she might possibly be the most already-famous person to ever take on the lead role of a Star Trek series (maybe Scott Bakula?) Paul Giamatti does a good job as Braka, a character who is just the worst but is generally well portrayed. Robert Picardo is on hand as the Doctor from Voyager, who is still around and working as an instructor at the Academy. And Stephen Colbert has a regular audio-only role as an AI Dean at the Academy who makes funny announcements all the time.
And now I’m finally done with this post. And as I sign off I’m still in Los Angeles, with another couple of hours before my flight to New York is scheduled to go. Traveling definitely takes it out of you, but I don’t think I would have gotten this post done so quickly if it weren’t for all this time sitting around airports! Look at the bright side of life, I guess.
