Yes, I’m a little bit late in posting today’s music video of the day. Sorry, the Texas Office of Through the Shattered Lens got hit by some bad weather last night and this morning! Plus, yesterday, I was going on about 90 minutes of sleep so just the fact that I’m semi-coherent right now is probably something of a minor miracle.
Anyway, allow me to make up to you with this video for Public Service Broadcasting’s inspiring tribute to space exploration, The Other Side! Yes, those are the voices of actual NASA engineers and astronauts, experiencing the dark side of the moon for the very first time. This is from PSB’s album, Race for Space.
Free Guy is due to be released on August 13th. It stars Ryan Reynolds as a cheerful bank teller who discovers that he’s just a character in a ….
“Wait a minute, is The Truman Show?”
No, no. The Truman Show was about reality TV and it starred Jim Carrey, who was kind of annoying in the film, if we’re going to be honest. Free Guy is about someone who discovers that he’s a character in a video game and it stars the always wonderful Ryan Reynolds! So, as you can see, they’re totally different. Plus, The Truman Show was all about Truman trying to reach the real world, whereas Free Guy features Reynolds taking control of his artificial reality.
“So, it’s like The Matrix?”
Well, maybe. But it seems to be a lot less pretentious.
Some things just make you cringe and that was kind of my reaction after watching the teaser for the upcoming musical adaptation tick, tick …. BOOM! I say this as someone who likes musicals, though I should admit that I usually prefer to see them on stage as opposed to on film. On stage, it’s very easy to get caught up in the magic of the music and the dancing. On film, it’s more of a balancing act. Just one misstep on the part of the filmmakers can doom the entire enterprise.
Despite my own less than enthusiastic reaction to the teaser, there are quite a few people who do seem to be looking forward to tick, tick …. BOOM! Not only is it the feature film directorial debut of Lin-Manuel Miranda but it’s also based on both the work and the life of Jonathan Larson, the writer and composer of Rent whose tragic death contributed in no small amount to that show’s legendary and rapturous initial reception and continuing popularity.
While I’m sure some people initially assumed that this musical was an adaptation of the 1970s Jim Brown film, tick …. tick …. tick, it’s actually something very different. In tick, tick …. BOOM!, the very talented and guaranteed-to-win-an-Oscar someday Andrew Garfield plays Jonathan Larson, who is portrayed as being nearly 30 and frustrated that he has yet to write a masterpiece. He can hear the time ticking away. Well, you can see for yourself in the teaser below. Now, as I said earlier, this teaser made me cringe but it’s hard for me to explain why. I think some of it is because the trailer has a definite Smash-feel to it. In case you’ve forgotten, Smash was the heavily-hyped and ultimately very poorly planned NBC series that spent a good deal of it’s second season following the production of The Hit List, a show that was obviously very much based on Rent. The scenes of Garfield exhorting the wonders of bohemia have a very Smash/Hit List feel to them. My other problem is that “Boy Genius” line which is just such an obnoxious line.
But who knows! There’s a lot of musicals coming out this year and tick, tick …. BOOM! does look a bit better than Dear Evan Hansen. Here’s the teaser:
tick, tick …. BOOM! will be released on Netflix this fall. Considering the wonders that Netflix did for The Prom, well …. let’s just hope for the best.
I will admit that I was a little bit concerned when I first heard about the upcoming Fear Street trilogy, just because the whole thing sounded a bit like American Horror Story and I was worried that the end result would be more Ryan Murphy-like than R.L. Stine-like. Even though Murphy wasn’t actually involved in the production of the film, American Horror Story, with its heavy-handed approach and it’s somewhat condescending attitude towards the genre, has influenced several recent horror films and series and very rarely has that influence been for the better.
However, I just watched the trailer for the Fear StreetTrilogy and it looks pretty good. It looks like they captured the feel of Stine’s books while also thematically updating them a bit for the present age. It also looks like they avoided most of the overly cutesy stuff that often makes American Horror Story such a struggle to slog through. The trailer features plenty of scenes that will warm the heart of any regular reader of R.L. Stine’s. There’s Sunnyvale! There’s Shadyside! There’s a witch! There’s a dark and haunted night! There’s mayhem on a school bus! There’s a mall massacre! There’s a haunted camp! There’s a bloody murder! There’s teenagers in danger! There’s a man with an axe! There’s a landline phone!
Anyway, Fear Street is actually three connected films. Much like the Red Riding Trilogy, each film takes place in a different year but they share certain characters in common and they all add up to tell one big story. They were originally scheduled to come out last year but, like so many films, they were delayed by the pandemic lockdowns. (Ironically, they were delayed because they were originally meant for a theatrical release. However, the delay was so long that 20th Century Fox’s deal to distribute the films expired and they were then picked up by Netflix. So, even with the pandemic ending, the Fear Street Trilogy will still mostly be seen by people sitting in their living rooms. Seriously, just think about how much fun your lockdown would have been last year if you had three new R.L. Stine movies to watch. Sometimes, life is unfair.)
The three films will be released during the first three weeks of July, on Netflix! Here’s the trailer:
I was recently surprised to discover that Jessica Chastain has only been nominated for two Oscars. She received a best supporting actress nomination for her role in The Help (and mind you, this was the year in which she also appeared in The Tree of Life and Take Shelter) and she received a nomination for best actress for her role in Zero Dark Thirty. Though her performances in Miss Sloane, A Most Violent Year, Molly’s Game, and Crimson Peak all received some buzz, none of them led to an Oscar nomination. That’s odd, as Jessica Chastain is one of those actresses who I think we tend to assume gets nominated every year. There’s already a narrative about how she’s long overdue for an Oscar.
Well, this year, she’ll be getting another shot at the Oscar. For that matter, so will Andrew Garfield and Vincent D’Onofrio. (Garfield was nominated for Hacksaw Ridge. D’Onofrio has never been nominated that, in all fairness to the Academy, he’s recently been more busy on television than in the movies.) They will be appearing in the upcoming autobiographical film, The Eyes of Tammy Faye. This film is directed by Michael Showalter, who previously did the respected (if not exactly Oscar-embraced) The Big Sick. Chastain and Garfield will be playing televangelists Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker. D’Onofrio will be playing Jerry Falwell. One imagines that the film will not only give them a chance to pick up some of those “I barely recognized them, they were so good!” reviews but it will also probably pick up some “If you want to understand how Trump happened, watch this movie” buzz. That could add up to Oscar glory, though I’m not sure if the early September release date is going to do the film any favors. With the way awards seasons goes, the most acclaimed films of September often seem to be forgotten by the time January roles around.
The trailer was released earlier today. As I watched it, I found myself thinking about I, Tonya, a film that picked up a lot of acting nominations, even if it didn’t pick up a nomination for best picture. Who knows? It’s probably silly to even speculate at this point. I will say that, based on the trailer, Chastain and Garfield’s performances both look really good while D’Ononfrio looks just a bit …. well, hammy. But sometimes, hammy works!
The film is set to be released on September 17th. Here’s the trailer:
If you don’t know who Hydra is, they’re an international group of villainous superspies. The organization was founded by a Nazi war criminal named Baron Von Strucker and they’re always trying to take over the world or destroy it. Hydra hasn’t had much success on either front but it’s not for lack of trying. Fortunately, there’s another super secret organization that’s been founded to keep Hydra from reaching their goals. The name of this organization is S.H.I.E.L.D. and they are headquartered in a big flying helicarrier thing. So, if you work for S.H.I.E.L.D., you not only get to save the world but you also have a hell of a work commute.
Anyway, Hydra’s latest plan is to steal the body of their founder and somehow not only bring him back to life but to also spread a deadly virus across the world. S.H.I.E.L.D. knows that it’s going to take the world’s greatest secret agent to defeat this plot but, unfortunately, Nick Fury (David Hasselhoff) is retired and living in an abandoned mine shaft in the Yukon. Nick wears an eye patch, smokes a cigar, and speaks in a permanently annoyed tone of voice. Nick’s done with saving the world. Or, at least, that’s what he thinks. When S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Lina Rinna) informs him that Hydra killed an old friend of his while stealing the Baron’s body, Nick emerges from the Yukon in search of revenge!
Long before Samuel L. Jackson donned the iconic eye patch and brought Nick Fury to life as one of the mainstays of the MCU, David Hasselhoff played the character in this made-for-TV movie from 1998. The movie was meant to serve as the pilot for a Nick Fury television series. (Hasselhoff, by this point, was looking to move on from Baywatch.) Of course, it wasn’t picked up and today, whenever this early Marvel film is mentioned, it’s usually in a somewhat dismissive manner.
And, believe me, I can understand that instinct to preemptively dismiss Nick Fury: Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. I mean, it’s David Hasselhoff and its from the 90s and it was made for TV. I get it. But, having watched the movie on Saturday night, I have to say that it’s actually not that bad. It’s low budget. It’s campy. It’s thoroughly silly. The film is full of actors giving uncertain line readings. And yet, it’s also fast-paced and, when taken on its own admittedly “special” terms, rather entertaining. In the role of Nick Fury, Hasselhoff plays the role with just enough self-awareness to indicate that he’s in on the joke. He delivers his lines with just the right amount of deadpan humor and he chews on that cigar as if the fate of the world depends upon it. In short, as opposed to almost everyone else in the film, Hasselhoff appears to be having a good time. In fact, one could argue that David Hasselhoff is a good Nick Fury for the same reason that Samuel L. Jackson is a good Nick Fury. Both of them play the character as if he’s someone who secretly realizes that he’s a character in a comic book film and who is determined to have as much fun with the role as he can.
The film’s plot does occasionally border on being incoherent but, honestly, who cares? Are you really watching a film like this for the plot? There’s a lot of explosions and one-liners. Hasselhoff has fun with the lead role, as does Sandra Hess in the role of Strucker’s daughter. It’s a dumb but entertaining. It’s also only 90 minutes long so it’s not like you’re having to sacrifice a major part of your life to watch it. Explosions and a short running time, who can complain about that?
I’m a Texas girl so I loved this. Admittedly, I’ve never ridden on a mechanical bull but I have seen a few and I’ve seen more than a few people get thrown off of them. They’re a bit scary looking and I’m already accident-prone enough without tempting fate. Still, I admire anyone who tries.
(And, as scary as mechanical bulls are, they are nowhere near as scary as real bulls.)
I am currently writing from a place of great frustration. Now to mince words but I absolutely hate that new WordPress editor. That may chance as I get used to it but, as of right now, I find it to be clunky, cluttered, and overly difficult. I wouldn’t be quite so frustrated if I had been given some sort of choice in the matter, if perhaps WordPress had given me the option of sticking with the so-called classic editor.
Instead, this new block editor was forced on me and it’s driving my ADD crazy. Things that were once very simple — like determining the size of the images in my post — now have extra steps. For obvious reasons, I write all of my week in review posts throughout the week but that’s not always easy to do with block editor. (For one thing, whenever I try to add to a pre-existing list, the editor tries to create an entirely new block.) Block editor is kind of like a friend who is always so eager to help that they end up getting in your way. Add to that, since this is an ongoing update, there are random moments when some WordPress function will suddenly stop working because it’s currently being tinkered with. It’s frustrating and I’d be lying if I said it hadn’t effected my productivity my week.
But you know what? I’ll figure it out and we will survive. This site had been through a lot since 2009. If nothing else, TSL survives.
(Late NoteFrom Lisa: About an hour after I wrote the three paragraphs above, I figured out how to switch over to classic editor so yay! I once again love WordPress and I’m totally looking forward to next week now!)
Here’s what I watched, read, and listened to this week!
As I write this, we’ve got a nice thunderstorm going down here in Dallas. Thunder. Lightning. Pounding rain. Lights flashing on and off. It’s very atmospheric and so is this music video! So, it only makes sense to pick it for today’s music video of the day!
This is a cover of an Isley Brothers song. It’s good night music.
Between Memorial Day and spending a lot of time deep in thought, I didn’t really watch much television this week. That’s probably a good thing! Here’s a few thoughts on what I did watch:
Allo Allo (Sunday Night, PBS)
Rene and almost everyone else managed to escape the POW camp and they made their way back to the cafe, just in time to open up for the day. Unfortunately, Maria got mailed to Switzerland, which is unfortunate since Maria was the character to whom I always related. Oh well, that’s how it goes when you’re watching a British comedy that might be older than you are. Anyway, the important thing is that life goes on! Of course, the British Airmen are still stranded in France, Rene is still just trying to carry on his affair with Yvette without getting caught, and the British spy pretending to be a French policeman still hadn’t figured out how to properly say “Good morning.”
Baywatch (Weekday evenings, H&I)
The first of Sunday’s two episodes featured Cody and CJ breaking up a nude beach while Caroline, Neely, Samantha, and Mitch prevented a terrorist from poisoning Malibu’s water supply …. wait a minute, what? Every episode of Baywatch is like a weird mix of lifeguard humor and melodramatic action. It’s like 24, if Jack Bauer has spent his spare time running around in a speedo and pulling people out of the water. This was followed by an episode in which Caroline was sued by the mother of someone who died during the previous season. On the one hand, it was realistic to have something like that brought back up after a year. On the other hand, it was hard not to feel that this episode was mostly just an excuse for a clip show.
On Monday, the episode started off with the Baywatch lifeguards transporting an injured sea lion to Sea World. This led to an hour-long commercial for Sea World. The Baywatch lifeguards even designed a new water show for Sea World. The second episode took a jump into Baywatch’s future, as it was a Memorial Day episode from a later season. Suddenly, there were new lifeguards and new opening credits and the entire show revolved around Carmen Electra and Kelly Packard, the former bass player for California Dreams. This episode featured the lifeguards finding a drowned veteran and trying to give his spirit the peace that it deserved by retrieving his dog togs from the bottom of the ocean. Of course, it also featured a lot of slo-mo shots of the team running on the beach. As with most episodes of Baywatch, it was an odd mix of sincerity and exploitation.
The first of Tuesday’s episodes featured Neely and Cody looking for a bipolar surfer who was having a manic episode. It was well-intentioned but, from the point of view of this reviewer who happens to be bipolar, also extremely cringey. It promoted the idea that the only thing you have to do is take your meds and suddenly, you’re magically okay and you don’t have a care in the world. That’s really not the case but let’s move on. The next episode was a bit more fun, as it featured CJ getting kidnapped by a disfigured phantom of the beach type. He may have lived under a pier but he really wasn’t that bad of a guy. It was incredibly silly but kind of fun.
Remember how I mentioned that the Memorial Day episode appeared to be broadcasting from the future? Well, the future began on Wednesday with a new season of Baywatch! The opening credits were slightly different. CJ and Caroline were gone! Both of Wednesday’s episodes attempted to generate some suspense over who would make it through rookie school but, since the opening credits already included Kelly Packard and Carmen Electra as being the new lifeguards, there really wasn’t much suspense to be found. Along with rookie school, the first episode featured Electra being kidnapped by her ex while the second featured Manny becoming a lifeguard despite only having 20/40 vision. Mitch accepted a promotion to captain, presumably so David Hasselhoff would have time to make more movies like Gridlock. In the end, everything worked out for the best. Yay!
Thursday’s episodes were both pretty good. The first one featured Mitch having to pick an new lieutenant. Should he pick JD, an old friend, or should he pick Taylor, who had red hair just like me? The obvious choice was Taylor but JD, who looked almost as good as Cody in a speedo, was given a position with Baywatch as well. The second episode was about a boy named Charlie who was dying of cancer and who spent his last days at Baywatch. It was cheesy but it was also the type of unapologetically sentimental episode that Baywatch usually excelled at. It was the perfect mix of sincerity and schmaltz, made all the more effective by the fact that the episode was inspired by an actual Baywatch fan who passed away shortly before it aired. If you watch the “Charlie” episode and you don’t tear up during the final scenes, regardless of what you may think of Baywatch as a whole, then I would be concerned about your soul,
The first of Friday’s episodes featured the return of Caroline Holden. She came back to Baywatch after spending a few months in New York as a struggling actress. Since she was still listed as a special guest star in the credits, it was easy to guess that she would eventually return to New York, which is what she did at the end of the second episode. Other than Caroline’s return, the first episode also featured some jackass who flew around in a helicopter and shared all the latest gossip about the Baywatch lifeguards. The second episode featured Mitch pressuring Jordan to track down her birth mother. It wasn’t much of a storyline but at least Traci Bingham, who played Jordan, got to deliver more than four lines for once.
On Saturday’s episode, the beach was attacked by yet another sea monster. This time, it was a giant electric eel. Agck! The beach is scary. Manny nearly died but, as always happens on Baywatch, he was brought back to life by a combination of CPR and defibrillators. Yay!
Hell’s Kitchen (Monday Night, FOX)
Chef Ramsay’s back for the 20th season of Hell’s Kitchen! (20th!?) This time, all the chefs are in their very early 20s, which should lead to a lot of emotional meltdowns as Gordon tells them that they’re going to kill someone if they don’t learn how to make a proper risotto. I’m looking forward to it!
Hill Street Blues (Weekday Mornings, H&I)
For me, Hill Street Blues came to an end this week. The final episode of both season 7 and the entire series aired on Friday. Though H&I is now re-showing the entire series from the beginning, I don’t particularly feel the need to go back and re-experience any of it, at least not yet. I will say that, if you want to see a good, retro cop show, Hill Street Blues is available on Hulu, as well as on H&I. The first four seasons are gritty and well-acted and hold up surprisingly well. The final three are increasingly uneven.
Tuesday morning’s episodes were pretty typical of Hill Street Blues in its final season. Neither one of them made much of an impression. For once, neither one of these episodes centered on Norman Buntz. Instead, they increasingly centered on Patrick Flaherty, a patrolman who was added to the cast during the final season and who, in his way, was an even more annoying character than Buntz. Flaherty was always trying to either get laid or getting angry about some minor issue. It didn’t particularly make him an interesting character to watch. Anyway, the first episode also featured Henry Goldblume trying to turn yet another former gang member into an informant. The second episode featured yet another controversial police shooting and it ended with Detective Belker getting shot. I guess that makes sense when you consider that Belker was the only member of the show’s ensemble who, at that point, hadn’t been shot at least once. (Neal Washington, on the other hand, got shot at least three times that I can remember.)
On the first episode of Wednesday morning, there was some fear that Belker might be paralyzed but then it turned out that he wasn’t. The majority of the episode centered on Buntz trying to catch the guy who shot Belker. In other words, one of the show’s longest-running characters got shot and the show made it all about Buntz. The second episode was a silly one about a radio station doing a contest to see who, in the city, could pull off the most outrageous stunt. During the morning roll call, Detective LaRue asked if the police were eligible to win the contest. Patrick Flaherty continued to be the most annoying character on the show by shouting, “Real stunt …. not a sex stunt, DETECTIVE!” Like, seriously, Flaherty, shut the fuck up. Who are you exactly? Why are you taking so much screen time away from the characters that I actually like? Anyway, this was a dumb episode but it did feature brief, before-they-were-stars appearances from Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Don Cheadle.
On Thursday morning, things got started with an episode in which a star football player was arrested for soliciting a prostitute but was then left off the hook because he was a celebrity. Meanwhile, Buntz nearly won the department’s marksmanship contest but, in a rare example of the show admitting that Buntz had flaws, he ended up losing by two points. Meanwhile, newly reinstated Lt. Howard Hunter ended up trapped in a collapsed room and Capt. Furillo made peace with his brother by helping him get a loan. It wasn’t really a terrible episode, though it wasn’t particularly memorable either. The morning’s second episode was a uneven mix of the good and the bad. On the good side, Howard Hunter was rescued after being buried alive for 11 days (he later admitted to honoring a pact that he had made with a friend that the first one of them to die would be eaten by the other), J.D. LaRue survived a near-death experience, and Henry Goldblume finally published a short story. All of these storylines gave underappreciated cast members James B. Sikking, Kiel Martin, and Joe Spano a chance to shine. Unfortunately, they all had to compete for screen time with yet another storyline about Bunt being framed and also the return of the incredibly annoying Grace Gardner. The top it all off, Jesus Martinez returned to the show for his sister’s wedding. The end result was an overstuffed episode that had some good moments but which never quite came together.
On Friday morning, we finally reached the final episode of Hill Street Blues. On the one hand, it felt strange that — after hundreds of episodes — the final episode began and ended with Norman Buntz, a character who wasn’t even on the show when it first started. The storyline of Buntz attempting to prove that he wasn’t a dirty cop was nothing special, largely because every Buntz storyline seemed to involve him having to prove he wasn’t a dirty cop. That said, the finale did get one thing right. By including scenes of LaRue pulling another stupid prank, Bobby and Renko dealing with another fighting family, and Belker finally going through his mother’s belongings, the finale showed that, even though the show was over, life on Hill Street would go on. Crimes would be committed. Life would continue to be a struggle. But, at the same time, there would still be moments of grace and times when people came together to do the right thing. Life goes on, the finale said, even though the faces may change. It was a decent ending for the show, one that did it justice despite the uneven quality of the last two seasons.
Lost In Space (Netflix)
At Case’s suggestion, I finally watched the first episode of this Netflix show. (Only three years late!) The Robinson family was pretty annoying but I liked the robot and I cheered a little when Parker Posey showed up. I imagine I’ll check out the rest of the series eventually.
Moone Boy (Sunday Night, PBS)
Martin’s uncle comes home with stories about being a traveling musician in Europe and working as a roadie for U2. (“Edge would see a really heavy piece of equipment and he’d say, ‘Let Bono get that.'”) Eventually, it turns out that Martin’s uncle has actually been working part-time at a factory for the last few years but Martin’s Dad allows Martin to believe that his uncle had to leave town because U2 was going on tour again. It was a sweet episode.
NASCAR Cup Series (Sunday Night, Fox)
I’m enough of a Southern girl that I can enjoy watching NASCAR. My family loves it and you better believe that we watched the race on Sunday night. One of the drivers was even named Bowman!
Open All Hours (Sunday night, PBS)
I didn’t really pay much attention to Sunday’s episode, as I watched it later during the week off the DVR and the show was having to compete with the cat for my attention. I did notice that Granville looked pretty miserable.
Upstart Crow (Sunday Night, PBS)
The evil Robert Greene tricked Shakespeare into writing Titus Adronicus when his client wanted a comedy! Fortunately, Kate and Marlowe fell briefly in love and inspired Shakespeare to write The Two Gentlemen of Verona instead. Yay! Kate did tell Shakespeare that she doubted the play would be remembered as one of his better plays. “Nonsense!” Shakespeare responded.
Yes, Minister (Monday morning, PBS)
When the Prime Minister shocks everyone by announcing his retirement, everyone scrambles to find a replacement who is free of scandal and who, most importantly, won’t actually do anything once he’s in office. Hello, Jim Hacker! Yay! This charming one-hour episode was apparently the last episode of Yes, Minister before the show became Yes, Prime Minister. I don’t know if PBS is going to show Yes, Prime Minister or not. It’s not currently scheduled but that could just be because the big pledge drive is coming up. Still, regardless of what PBS does, this was a perfect episode and honestly, I got a bit teary-eyed at the end when Sir Humphrey announced that the Party had selected Hacker to be their leader. It was a great moment.
Through the Shattered Lens 