Broadchurch: The Complete Season Two

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I’ve been a fan of David Tennant since I watched him in Doctor Who. I try to watch him in just about everything he does (but he does a lot of things, so I’m always way behind.) I caught him in the first season of Broadchurch right as it was airing.  I think that was the first time I ever saw Olivia Colman in anything, but I immediately became a fan.

That first season was excellent. It was one of those murders in a small, picturesque British village type things that they’ve done a million times, but the writing was good and the acting was excellent. 

I was worried that season two would do what a lot of these types of stories do when they get a second season and add yet another murder to solve in this same sleepy little village, but it circumvents that problem in interesting ways. 

I never did get around to watching Season Three, but reading this old review makes me want to go through the entire thing again.  You can read my review of Season Two here.

Batman: House of Gotham

house of gotham

I’ve been a comics reader for about fifteen years now. I’m not hardcore about it. I’m not one of those people who reads single issues as they come out each month. I read the stories packaged into graphic novels or omnibuses. I’m fairly random at that too, just picking up one book here and there without paying much attention to where it falls within the greater continuity of the character.

My favorites are Batman and X-Men (although I also really love Saga, Chew, and Sandman, among others.) Those two favorites have been around for decades. They have a long list of writers. They have all sorts of spin-off characters (X-Factor, New Mutants, Nightwing, Catwoman, etc.) that get their own runs. And then there are all kinds of one-off stories and side stories, and to be honest, I don’t really understand it. I get lost in all the titles.

Shadows of the Bat ran from 1992-2000 and its focus was on side characters. Or at least that’s what the Wikis say. But while the cover of this graphic novel has “Shadows of the Bat” on it, the single issues were apparently released as part of the Batman Detective Comics line.  Like I said, I don’t understand all this stuff.

House of Gotham focuses on a boy whose family was killed by the Joker.  Batman tries to help him by putting him in a Wayne-funded orphanage and various other things, but he’s an awfully busy superhero, so the kid winds up slipping through the cracks.

He finds help in the strangest of places – some of Gotham’s most notorious villains take the boy under their wing. Clayface befriends him inside Arkham Asylum. Penguin gives him a job. It is true that these villains help the boy with ulterior motives, but at least they are truly present. Unlike Batman.

The story takes place over the course of about a decade. Some of Batman’s most notorious cases – Knightfall, where Bane breaks his back, and No Man’s Land, where an earthquake seals off Gotham from the world – serve as a backdrop to this story. We understand why Batman is so busy he can’t pay much attention to the boy, but also that this is still a failure of our hero.

The art by Fernando Blanco (Artist), Jordie Bellaire (Colorist) is excellent, and the writing by Matthew Rosenberg is good.  I love these kinds of stories where we get to know more about characters who would normally be in the background, who might normally get just a page or two, or a few lines to move the larger plot along.  I’m also a huge fan of stories that allow the more famous stories to be seen just in passing. 

I’ve been trying to read every Batman story ever written (a monumental task, I know).  I bought this one randomly because it was on sale for cheap. I’m glad I did because I really liked it.

Murder in the First: The Complete First Season

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I used to write a lot more TV reviews. For a while, back when this blog was still young, I’d actually do what they now call recaps of different shows (running down the plots of single episodes and discussing their good and bad points.) Sometimes I wish I’d stuck with that, as it later became something you could actually make a living at. But it was a lot of work, and I stopped.  But even after that, I did a lot of seasonal reviews when the DVDs came out.

I don’t do that anymore, but I keep thinking about it. In my continuing effort to write about all the arts I consume (and I really hate that word – consume – but it is hard to find a better one that fits all the arts), I may try and do more TV talking.

I hate to sound like a broken record as I’m posting all these old reviews, but I don’t remember this show at all. It sounds like it had a lot of potential but wound up being just another dumb cop show.  You can read my review of it here.

The Running Man by Stephen King

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For a time in the late 1970s and 1980s, Stephen King published several books under the pen name Richard Bachman. His publishers didn’t think it was a good idea for King to release more than one book a year, and he is a prolific writer, so he came up with Bachman as a way to release more books.

The Bachman books tend to be grittier, more intense, and grim. Such is the case with The Running Man.  Set in the near future (2025!) America’s economy is in shambles and has become a totalitarian hellscape (!).  The gulf between the rich and the poor has never been wider (!!). To keep the poor from rioting, the government has created a Games Network that features a variety of violent game shows in which people can win loads of cash (if they don’t die in the process, which they usually do.)

The biggest game and the one you can win the biggest loot from is The Running Man, where a few folks are set loose into the world, given a small head start, and then hunted like animals. The longer they survive, the more money their surviving family will receive. 

Ben Richards is poor; his wife has turned to prostitution to make ends meet, and his young daughter is very sick. He becomes a Running Man. He learns he will do anything to survive – lie, cheat and even kill.  He also learns there is a whole underground movement trying to get the people to rise up against the government.

This is King at his most cynical and his grimiest. He breaks his story into tiny chapters (each one with a heading counting down to presumably Richard’s end). There is none of that usual King excess. As such, we barely get to know Richards or this world he’s living in. Still, it is a cool concept, and King is always good at keeping me turning the page.

It is nothing like the Arnold Schwarzenegger film from the 1980s. The more recent adaptation is much more faithful, but it loses a lot of the stories bleakness.

Now Watching: Cherry 2000 (1987)

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Cherry 2000 (1987)

Directed by Steve De Jarnatt

Starring Melanie Griffith, David Andrews, Pamela Gidley, Ben Johnson, Marshall Bell, and Harry Carey, Jr.

Synopsis: When successful businessman Sam Treadwell finds that his android wife, Cherry model 2000, has blown a fuse, he hires sexy renegade tracker E. Johnson to find her exact duplicate. But as their journey to replace his perfect mate leads them into the treacherous and lawless region of ‘The Zone,’ Treadwell learns the hard way that the perfect woman is made not of computer chips and diodes.

Rating: 3/10

The other day a friend of mine posted on Facebook saying that he had created a Substack, and he linked to his first post.  It was a bunch of nothing. Just a list of some recent movies he’d watched and a couple of words (not even full sentences) on what he thought. That was it.

I was shocked. I’m shy about promoting my official reviews or well-thought-out essays on social media, and here he was proudly posting this nonsense.  I was kind of jealous, actually. 

I have always had this idea that I should post about everything I’m reading, watching, and listening to. I like the idea that this blog could be just a collection of little things, mad thoughts, pictures of my cats, etc. But I’m bad at it. I’m bad at social media. I just don’t have the personality to post regularly everyday.

This is especially true with thoughts about films and the like. I always feel like I should write full reviews. But I just don’t have the time or mental energy for that. This is also complicated by the fact that I do write full reviews for Cinema Sentries and this little blog. When I hope to write full reviews, then I don’t write little bitty ones. But then sometimes I don’t write full reviews. 

Even for things I know I’m not going to write full reviews on, I sometimes write things for Five Cool Things. It seems silly to write some little something here and then have to repeat myself for those articles.

And yet.  And yet, here I am. I’m gonna try and do better. I’m gonna try and write at least a tiny thought on the various things I’m enjoying (or not enjoying, as the case may be.) If I then write full reviews, or include it in Five Cool Things, then that’s just the way it is.

Or, knowing me, I’ll write this one post and then never do this again.

And here are a couple of thoughts about Cherry 2000.  For a movie about a dude hiring a sexy bounty hunter to find his sexbot in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, this movie is really rather dull. 

There is a version of this film that is wild, sexy, and fun. One that leans into the ridiculous nature of that story. But this movie just limps along. Melanie Griffith is dressed with absolute drab, and her performance isn’t much better.

Rio Bravo (1959)

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Sometimes when I’m reading these old reviews, I wonder what I was thinking. In this review of Rio Bravo that I wrote in 2015, I compare it to High Noon (famously, Howard Hawks made Rio Bravo because he thought High Noon was stupid). I note that both movies are great, but I’d give High Noon the higher rating. I can’t believe I wrote that.  I still think both films are great, but in terms of sheer entertainment, Rio Bravo is one of the greatest movies ever made. 

I think about it often. I pull it out to watch pretty regularly. I rarely think about High Noon.  But whatever, you can still read my review even if I don’t even agree with it myself.

Inside Out (2015)

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Every now and again my connections to Cinema Sentries will give me access to something fun beyond just getting Blu-rays to review. I’ll get tickets to a con or to some special event. Just before Inside Out was released, I got to go to an event with my family where they gave you a commemorative poster (I still have it; it hangs on my wall right behind me), and there was some fun behind the scenes stuff on the screen. We had a lot of fun, and the movie was great. You can read all about it here.

Ripper Street: Season Three

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There is just too much TV to watch these days. I can’t keep up. I can’t even remember what I’m keeping up with. Ripper Street periodically pops up as a recommendation to me in my streaming feeds. Sometimes I think I ought to watch it. Apparently, I already have. At least the third season. Reading my review, I have the vaguest recollection of watching it. At least some of those plot points sound familiar. I don’t know if that means I should go back and watch the entire thing, or if I should just give up on it entirely. but I did like that third season, so that’s something.

Ghost Story: The Turn of the Screw (2009)

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I have this memory from my teenage years of walking through Mega Movies – the former Burger King turned massive video store rental place – looking for something to watch. We went there at least once a week (and in the summer multiple times a week). Going so often, I’d reach the point where I’d seen all the new releases and regularly dug into the regular shelves. But it was a big enough place I’d still stumble upon something that looked interesting.

I remember seeing an adaptation of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw. The cover had a girl in a bikini or some scantily clad outfit, and she was standing by a great big hook of some kind. That cover and the fact that the title had “screw” in it made me think this was something titillating, not an adaptation of one of the great literary works of the last century.

I want to say I rented it and was greatly disappointed by it, but I really can’t remember.  But the idea they were trying to reach dumb, horny teens like me with a scintillating cover for a Henry James adaptation makes me smile. I just tried to figure out which adaptation it was, but I had no luck. 

This is not that movie, but a rather dull BBC adaptation starring Michelle Dockery and Dan Stevens. You can read my review at Cinema Sentries.

Compound Cinematics: Akira Kurosawa and I by Shinobu Hashimoto

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Originally posted on Cinema Sentries in 2015.

Akira Kurosawa is one of my favorite film directors.  Shinobu Hashimoto is one of the great Japanese screenwriters.  The two collaborated on some of the greatest films ever made, including The Seven Samurai, Rashomon, and Throne of Blood. This book, written by Hashimoto, details that collaboration, but dives into how he became a screenwriter and gives tips on how to write a script.  It’s pretty darn cool.  You can read all about it over at Cinema Sentries.