Remember the first time you watched Jurassic Park on the big screen? Steven Spielberg created something like we’d never seen before, taking Michael Crichton’s masterpiece science fiction novel and giving it the spectacle it deserved. A new book will take you back to that magic. In James Mottram’s Jurassic Park: The Ultimate Visual History, available now here at Amazon, fans of the original movie and the franchise finally get a behind-the-scenes chronicle worthy of the amusement park ride adventure, just as the latest movie, Jurassic World: Dominion, is being finalized for a summer 2022 release.
If you need something to laugh at–and who doesn’t?–a quick fix can be found with Comedy Central’s series Nora from Queens(full title Awkwafina is Nora from Queens), and right when we need her, she’s back with an all-new second season beginning tonight on Comedy Central. The series of half-hour episodes is a semi-autobiographical look at Awkwafina, stage name of rapper/actor Nora Lum, who switches up her name slightly to Nora Lin for the series. Viewers will find a lot of truth with Nora, whose real-life persona won a Golden Globe best actress for The Farewell, and she’s had breakout roles in Ocean’s 8, Crazy Rich Asians, and Jumanji: The Next Level. Has any actor had a better year than Awkwafina? She was the voice of comic relief Sisu in Disney’s best animated film in years, Raya and the Last Dragon and she’s co-starring in Marvel’s latest superhero blockbuster, Shang-Chi and The Legend of the The Rings–and she’s in Disney’s new, live-action The Little Mermaid.
If you need something to laugh at–and who doesn’t?–a quick fix can be found with Comedy Central’s new series Nora from Queens(full title Awkwafina is Nora from Queens), the latest of that niche New York neighborhood local comedy show. The series was produced by Comedy Central, but airs across several cable channels, including MTV2, which is airing all ten episodes beginning this afternoon. The series of half-hour episodes is a semi-autobiographical look at Awkwafina, stage name of rapper/actor Nora Lum, who switches up her name slightly to Nora Lin for the series. Viewers will find a lot of truth with Nora, whose real-life persona won a Golden Globe best actress for The Farewell, and she’s had breakout roles in Ocean’s 8, Crazy Rich Asians, and Jumanji: The Next Level. Just don’t let the kids in the room–Awkwafina’s humor is over-the-top, all-out vulgar at times, and right there with Sarah Silverman’s stand-up comedy, even evoking some Cheech and Chong ghosts of comedy past.
As with the real Nora, Nora in the series was born of a Korean American mother (who died when Nora was young) and Chinese American father, and raised by her father and grandmother. Here BD Wong(Jurassic Park, Mr. Robot, Awake, Gotham) plays her amiable dad, a single father whose own mother lives with him and Nora (creating the core of the humor). Looking for a girlfriend, he sets his sights on a woman he meets at a single parent support group, played by Jennifer Esposito (Spin City, The Boys). Nora is frequently entwined in chaos with her nerdy but somehow more successful cousin, played by Bowen Yang(Saturday Night Live), who proclaims 2020 as “Year of the Ass.” He couldn’t be more on point.
But the best of the series is Nora’s sweet, mouthy, and feisty grandma, played by Lori Tan Chinn(Roseanne, Spin City, Orange is the New Black). Chinn has all the range, and gets the best writing and dialogue in the show, crude and endearing at the same time, like Ruth Gordon in Every Which Way But Loose. Grandma goes to the casino, but not to gamble, instead to watch Korean dramas with her friends. She picks fights with Korean Americans, and a highlight of the series is a flashback episode centered on her meeting Nora’s grandfather, all produced as a melodramatic Korean drama.
It was only back in 2015 that the fourth film in the Jurassic Park franchise, Jurassic World, premiered its first trailer, and a rather bad one at that. Now as 2018 approaches we have a trailer for the fifth film in the series, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. And the latest trailer reveals yet another rehash of the original, brilliant, Steven Spielberg adaptation of Michael Crichton’ fantastic novel. As with Jurassic World, the effort is not entirely futile, Jurassic World was simple entertainment on a big scale–a feast for the eyes. But for some of us, for all its incredible special effects and fantastic futuristic technology, Jurassic World proved the maxim George Lucas laid out in reference to the success behind the original Star Wars–“Special effects are a tool, a means of telling a story… A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.” And that summed up Jurassic World–the umpmillionth variation on the Frankenstein how-not-to-build-a-monster story, and the latest twist on Crichton’s original look at a theme park gone haywire in his movie Westworld.
Yet if every other blockbuster that takes the leap into Sequel World is able to continue forward with more and more and more and pulls audiences into theaters, why not Jurassic Park? For those that want to reclaim even a spark of the original in the theater again, maybe it’s enough. So what does the trailer tell us that Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom has going for it?
First off, Chris Pratt is back. Audiences like Pratt movies in part because they simply like Pratt’s charm. He has the same brand of star power as John Wayne, who always appeared to be playing John Wayne in all his movies. Like Schwarzenegger, Willis, Van Damme, etc. It must be an action star thing. So if you’ve watched Pratt (like we have) in everything from Everwood to Guardians of the Galaxy 2, we’re wagering you’re going to like Pratt returning as dinosaur wrangler Owen Grady. Bryce Dallas Howard is an equally good if not better actor, with less of a fan following, and here she and Pratt are back again being snarky with each other (snore) in a Jurassic World preview. If they didn’t have chemistry in the first film, why would we expect it to surface in a sequel? Maybe what we need is the return of Jeff Goldblum in his best-loved role as Dr. Ian Malcolm? His performance in 1993 was so well-received that Crichton, who killed off Malcolm in the original novel, resurrected the character for the sequel. Did Goldblum’s return help The Lost World: Jurassic Park? Not really. But it’s been twenty years since we last saw Dr. Nature… Finds… a Way, so maybe enough time has passed so we can love him all over again.
And there are dinosaurs. We’ll never get tired of more dinosaurs. I want to see a triceratops racing a stegosaurus on the big screen. How about you?
Check out this new trailer for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom:
When we last saw Gotham, Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith) was returning to the series to lead a group of denizens from Indian Hill, a motley band of “enhanced” people created by Dr. Hugo Strange (BD Wong). Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie), no longer with the police force, is still working with Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue), but he’s now in bounty hunter mode, investigating the Court of Owls.
Gotham dials up more villainy in Season 3, beginning next week, with The Mad Hatter (Benedict Samuel), Poison Ivy (Maggie Geha taking over from the younger Clare Foley), Calendar Man from The Long Halloween, a Bruce Wayne doppelganger (David Mazouz), and more of Oswald Cobblepot (Robin Lord Taylor) and his rise in power, Edward Nygma (Cory Michael Smith) and his downward spiral, Selina Kyle (Camren Bicondova), Barbera Kean (Erin Richards), and Fish Mooney. Morena Baccarin is also back as Gordon’s girlfriend Dr. Leslie Thompkins, along with Sean Pertwee as Alfred Pennyworth and Michael Chiklis as Nathaniel Barnes.
The “space adventure” is one of those sub-genres of science fiction that is not easy to define succinctly. Star Wars is science fantasy because of the existence of magic, and basic swords and sorcery elements. Star Trek and Firefly are science fiction since it is grounded in reality and attempts, with some exceptions, to steer clear of fantasy elements. Alien, Predators, and The Thing are sci-fi horror. So what is the space adventure? All of these arguably cross over into that category.
The space adventure story must exist at least in part in outer space or outer space must be a key part of the story. It may be easier to list off examples. You know a space adventure when you see it. The best ever may be Guardians of the Galaxy. The River Phoenix/Ethan Hawke film Explorers and Flight of the Navigator are great examples. Avatar, Zathura, Wall-E, and Titan AE, seem to fit, and maybe even Starman, Super 8,Howard the Duck, *batteries not included, E.T., the Extraterrestrial, and Thor arguably fit the category, although there are plenty of other ways to categorize alien visitation films (including Superhero movies). What about Armaggeddon and Gravity?
The new film The Space Between Us appears to fit the space adventure label. Not so heavy on the science, or not appearing to let science get too much in the way of the basic character study, the focus is on the adventure, the awe brought to the lead characters in light of something unique or special.
