TV Watch: Batman - The Caped Crusader

Some time in 1992, I stumbled across Batman: The Animated Series.  What I remember is that I was on the phone with my ladyfriend, and asked to call her back in a bit, not wanting to tell her "Batman is currently being dragged through the darkened skies of Gotham behind Man-Bat, and it is amazing."  And, amazing it was.

I was pretty much *in* on the show after that, and my dorm room my first year of college became the 4:00 PM stop off where dudes (and an occasional lady or two) would crowd in for 30 minutes and watch Batman fight his way through his rogues gallery.  

I'd been reading Batman comics since the mid-1980's (I picked up right before Death in the Family, so whenever that was) and was only familiar with what I'd seen in current comics and some very old comics from the 1930's and 40's.  In many ways, Batman: The Animated Series had as much or more to do with how I'd think of Batman than the prior six or so years of comics.  

The series led into Batman/ Superman Adventures and, then, whatever other titles the show wore, but essentially DC animation had continuity from that Man-Bat episode to the final moments of Justice League Unlimited - lasting almost fifteen years.

Fox/ Marvel Watch: Deadpool & Wolverine (2024)

Watched:  08/03/2024

Format:  Alamo

Viewing:  First

Director:  Shawn Levy

SPOILERS

And also a forewarning - this is going to be scattershot.  There's so much going on in this movie.

Olympics Broadcast Summer 2024 (so far)

We've been having fun watching the Olympics.  Gymnastics, soccer, basketball, and beach volleyball are my main things to follow.  But I've been all over the map checking out everything from Equestrian to Fencing (did you see that venue?  Holy cats.)  

Hot tip:  US soccer looks good!  Also both women's beach volleyball teams.  And I think we have really good teams for both basketball squads.

Men's gymnastics was a show stopper Monday evening.  Really good stuff.

I'm Gen-X, so my memory of the Olympics from growing up - really starting with the 1984 LA-based games - was that you essentially got 3 or so hours of coverage in primetime.  There was definitely daytime coverage on the weekends, but I can't recall if they showed daytime games during the week.  Viewers were more or less at the mercy of what the networks wanted to show.  And they showed swimming, women's gymnastics and then some track (I remember Carl Lewis and FloJo very well).  

I think it was 1992 that someone cooked up the idea to make the Olympics pay-per-view and that went over like a lead balloon.  For you kids, it's somewhat like renting a movie in Amazon Prime, but imagine having to place a phone call and pay someone $15 over the phone - and it's showing in real time.  Apparently viewership slipped and the carriers were criticized for trying to make profits *this way*.

But, yeah, the old broadcast model was partly great, partly irritating.  I got to see some amazing moments - I watched Mary Lou Retton live!  But every Olympics, you'd know there were dozens of other things happening you could be watching, but - instead - you'd have to sit through package after package about athletes who would then, inevitably, not do very well.  Or you'd be watching swimmers stand around for ten minutes - and then NBC would say "oh, and by the way, this amazing thing happened in Pentathalon, but you'll never see it.  But we did, and it was greeaaat.  Oh, well.".

I didn't and don't understand the self-fulfilling prophecy of "Americans like only these four things" they used to/ somewhat continue to do every Olympics.

SW Reads: Norse Mythology (Neil Gaiman)

The past few years, I've been digging a bit into Norse myths and whatnot, somewhat spawned by what I saw in the Ring Cycle operas and my absolute certainty that Marvel's Thor is probably not accurate.

Let me be clear before someone with a PhD in Norse mythology shows up in the comments to correct me:  I am just scraping the surface, looking into this on my own, and moving slowly/ piecemeal.  Feel free to leave helpful information in the comments, but trust I'm no expert.* 

If you read any Sandman, you've known since the 90's that Neil Gaiman has some particular ideas about myth, and some pretty solid knowledge pulled from traditional sources.  

Recently, I finished the Prose Edda, which I probably should have written up, but I didn't.  It's a transcription by a 13th century monk of what were the oral traditions of the Scandavian and Germanic folklores, touching cultures stretching from Germany to Iceland.  Previously, I'd read Beowulf and Saga of the Volsungs.  I'll be making my way to the Poetic Edda, but...  that feels so much more challenging.  Me and poetry have a difficult relationship.  There's plenty more I need to dig into in the way of Germanic epics and legends, but it's going to be slow going.

Happy Birthday, Hannah Waddingham

Happy Birthday to actor, singer, dancer, award winning presenter, etc...  Hannah Waddingham!  I believe that today, Ms. Waddingham is 50.*

Ms. Waddingham has had a stellar year, co-starring in The Fall Guy, voicing a cat in Garfield, winning an award for Eurovision 2023, presenting at the Oliviers and BAFTAs, I think.  She has a Mission Impossible movie coming, and a show with Octavia Spencer.  And, she's up for an Emmy for her voice work on Krapopolis.

This year she met the Royals a few times and even came briefly to Austin, TX for the SXSW premier of The Fall Guy. 

Summer 2024 Games Begin - Opening Ceremony

Things I didn't know I needed:  a chorus of beheaded Marie Antoinettes singing along with French metal band, Gojira, reminding the world that France knows a little something about liberté, égalité, fraternité - and that France hasn't forgotten that liberté sometimes comes with a bad end for tyrants. 

The Paris Summer Games Opening Ceremony has officially (and finally) raised the bar for what is possible for a 4-hour long broadcast that has, now seen every two years thanks to Summer and Winter Games, become a bit of a slog.  

Rather than the usual attempt to do interpretive dance numbers that serves both an arena and a television audience and fails both, followed by hours of anonymous athletes walking in a big circle - Paris put the athletes on a variety of boats and shipped them down the Seine to the Eiffel Tower, making it more of a floating parade.  A sort of narrative was created with pre-recorded videos of what I think can best be described as "Assassin's Creed torch bearer parkouring their way across the city".  And then songs and dance along the river.  In the brief moment they included children, there was less a sense of wonder and, instead, a crocodile attack and a tour of the catacombs.

Vive la France!

Zut Alors! It's Time for the Paris Olympics

Well, you'll definitely see a lot less in the way of movies the next few weeks.  Here at The Signal Watch, we are fans of the Olympic Games, both Summer and Winter, and will tend to watch whatever we can.

That said, we've got Peacock - and it looks to be the best bet.  Looking at the menu over on The 'Cock, they have amazing coverage planned with a menu telling you what all the sports will be, and when.  And, I am sure, all of them will be available asynchronously.

I can guarantee I'll watch:

• Soccer/ Futbol
• Beach Volleyball
• Track and Field - all events
• so looking forward to seeing our sprinters - we were great at trials
• Table Tennis
• Swimming
• Gymnastics - need to get a box of Wheaties to see if they're on there (yay, Simone Biles!)

But I'll watch pretty much everything!

Don't forget:

• Dressage - horse dancing
• Breakdancing
• Handball
• Archery
• Basketball
• Pentathlon

This year the opening ceremonies will be in the middle of the day on Friday with evening replays.  My belief is that the parade of athletes is taking place on a flotilla coming down the Seine.  

It's gonna be a hell of a show.  My belief right now is Beach Volleyball will be played in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower.  They're really using the city as a backdrop.

My default is to cheer for the US, then Mexico and Canada, then randomly cheer for whomever I feel like.  

Mostly I cheer against any announcers who think it's s good question to ask an athlete how they feel about not getting the gold.  Them, I hope a boom mic hits them in the face.

Anyway, let's go, Team USA!  

1980's Watch: Starman (1984)

Watched:  07/24/2024

Format:  Alamo

Viewing:  First

Director:  John Carpenter

I'd not previously seen Starman (1984).  When I was a kid, I think my folks decided it would have hanky-panky in it when it started and we didn't make it past literally the first scene.  There was a briefly lived TV show based on the movie starring Robert Hays of Airplane! fame, and I caught that a few times.

When I was renting movies on my own, I just tagged it as "romance E.T." and took a pass.  

Anyway, here in 2024, Simon suggested we pay tribute to John Carpenter, who wrote and directed the film, so - with Jamie included, we took in a screening.

I don't take it as a knock that Starman is pretty much exactly what I expected out of the premise as I understood it from 40 years of occasionally stumbling across discussion of the movie, but if you watched 1980's media, it's pretty much what you'd expecting, and that's "romance E.T."  

So if that's true, we have to ponder the execution - and that's where I think the movie does okay.  

Karen Allen plays a Wisconsinite who has been recently widowed when her husband died suddenly in an accident.  Aliens from a distant planet have intercepted Voyager 2, and taken the messages of welcome at their word, sending a craft to Earth.

The ship crashes near Karen Allen's home, and an alien enters, taking on the form of her deceased husband.  The alien forces Allen into taking him to Arizona, where he is set to rendezvous with his people in a few days.  

Along the way, she sees he's benevolent and an okay alien.  But they're pursued by a military detail supported by Charles Martin Smith.  

As I say, all of this is pretty boilerplate stuff.  So what's asked of the film is that the actors - who mostly are just two people acting together in cars, motels, diners, etc...  sell the relationship which starts at uncanny terror and evolves into romance in a short time.  The vibe is a sort of romantic poem wherein an outsider sees us for what we are, and falls for an Earth woman and an Earth woman has reason to fall for an awkward alien wearing her dead husband's face.

And, for the most part, I think the movie works because of those performances.  Jeff Bridges earned an academy award nod for the part, to which he brings a charm and warmth instead of a hammy performance that would have turned this into slapstick or schlock.  Karen Allen gets the most screentime and dialog of any picture in which I've seen her, and she's really, really good.  There's so many things to play, both as an avatar for the audience dealing with an actual alien, and as a character who is still dealing with grief and trauma who now has this experience, and I can't think of how you improve on what she did.  

The movie kind of works on those performances, vibes and the occasional bit of wonder in acts performed by the alien.  

Anyway, yeah.  Like I say, in 2024 and having seen many movies, I don't know that the plot held many surprises, but as a movie it still works.  And would be a swell date movie some time.  

By the way spoiler here - but the alien doesn't just magically become Jeff Bridges as a full adult.  There's a pretty remarkable FX sequence that was made by a combo of work by Dick Smith, Rick Baker and Stan Winston - all on one brief sequence.  But it also is the only time I've seen a movie - where there's a clone or copy of someone - start as a baby, which, to me, is the logical thing to happen.  I'll accept it doesn't usually, but was impressed that's what they did.

Franchise Watch: Ghostbusters - The Frozen Empire (2024)

Watched:  07/23/2024

Format:  Netflix

Viewing:  First

Director:  Jason Reitman

The expansion of a good movie or two into sprawling franchises makes for a curious environment as we have been seeing again and again and again - especially as we resurrect decades old concepts.  In the mid 2010's, because everyone else had franchises popping, it seems Columbia looked at their catalog of perennial favorites that could possibly withstand transformation into a franchise and came up with the 2016 Ghostbusters, which - at best - enjoys lukewarm and damning praise of "well, it's kind of funny" from it's defenders. 

No matter where you landed on that movie, it failed to meet Sony/ Columbia's financial expectations, and - with no path forward for those characters and Jason Reitman in the wings, Sony immediately greenlit an un-reboot, and put out Ghostbusters: Afterlife - dropping it squarely in the middle of the pandemic shutdown.  

The movie meant only the most ardent fans would go see it, pulling in only $204 million.  I have no idea what the studio's expectations were but we weren't quite done thinking a franchise film should make $800 million or more at the time.  Here in 2024, I think getting more than $5 and some pocket lint is considered a win.  

To maybe set the tone, and give people a chance to opt out of the rest of this post, I'll put my cards on the table: I deeply did not like Ghostbusters: Afterlife.  I am not even sure I'd describe it as a competently made movie.  Not that there are exactly *technical gaffes* like boom mics falling into frame, but from a "what is Ghostbusters, and are we delivering something that fosters the multi-decade enthusiasm for at least that one movie?" 

I think... it kind of sucked.  

Undaunted, and with the promise of action figure sales, Columbia made a follow up.

Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire (2024) is, perhaps, as bad or worse for many of the same reasons, but also finding all new ways to make me not want to watch any more of these movies.  

So now is your chance to run away, fair reader.  Because here we go.

Baseball Watch: Eight Men Out (1988)

Watched:  07/23/2024

Format:  TCM

Viewing:  Second or Third

Director:  John Sayles

I haven't seen a ton of John Sayles, but if you want to see me get excited, let's talk Matewan or Lonestar sometime.  Sayles has become sidelined in the movie conversation.  If folks like Coppola, Lynch and Cronenberg are having a hard time out there, you can only guess how it's going for a guy who has always had a hard time convincing exhibitors that people will like his movies when he was at the top of his game.  Sayles' general lack of huge Hollywood success is partially why I think we can safely ignore awards/ box-office and just enjoy a movie.

I remember watching Eight Men Out (1988) the first time back in college, well before I was watching baseball, and eventually kind of fell in love with the sport (I'm currently watching the Cubs try to lose to the Brewers here in the 9th - whoops.  Yup.  They lost.).  But movies were a huge part of how I developed an interest in baseball to begin with.