We were supposed to get a new Halloween sequel with Jamie Lee Curtis, but COVID got in the way. But don’t fret. Borrowing the creative team and some cast members from The Haunting of Hill House, as Halloween season approaches fans of ghost stories can get their fix next month with Netflix’s The Haunting of Bly Manor. Loosely based on Henry James 1898 horror tale The Turn of the Screw (although we can’t yet see how), the series will offer up nine episodes.
Review by C.J. Bunce
After what I viewed as the best superhero series pilot yet here at borg back in May, Stargirl never let up, never let us down, and with this week’s season finale rises to become the very best superhero series yet. We can slice and dice and compare series like The Flash and Arrow, Supergirl, and Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., but did any of them adapt the comic book mythos to the screen as written and drawn by years of comic book writers and artists? Or did they all twist the stories to cut away at what made the stories enduring in the first place? Even Riverdale and Chilling Adventures of Sabrina–two fantastic comic book adaptations–were nudged aside by thirteen perfect episodes of comic books in TV form. Not since the heart in the original series The Flash, The Incredible Hulk, and the animated series Superfriends has a series full of superhero characters gotten so much so right. And one scene in the season finale was so good, so surprising, it may have you stand up and cheer.
Review by C.J. Bunce
Isn’t this a great time for a new superhero series to begin? If you agree then you’re in luck, because tonight’s premiere episode of Stargirl might be DC Comics’ best TV pilot yet. Prepare to meet the next superheroes from the corners of 30 years of DC Comics. Courtney Whitmore’s relationship with her new stepdad is like you’d expect at first–awkward. But it’s doubly awkward when he’s an over-eager good guy named Patrick played by Luke Wilson (known best for his roles in Wes Anderson movies and an unforgettable spot on The X-Files). Courtney (seen above sporting a rather timely mask) discovers there is more than meets the eye with Pat, and the series opener will propel viewers further ahead into his secrets and past–sooner than you might expect. The result is incredibly promising, a pilot mixing well-done special effects with a great story, a coming of age tale targeted at kids, a fun cast of familiar faces and a new young actress hitting the ground running (or soaring), a cool car and a 1950s vibe, and throwbacks for viewers who keep their eyes open. And the entire first season is now available on digital.
What’s more fun than the idea of Joel McHale as a DC Comics superhero, and Luke Wilson as his sidekick? Unfortunately that’s not the focus of the CW’s next series of the Arrowverse, but it’s close, and if the volley of trailers are any indication, fans of the DC universe will see these two in recurring backstory in Stargirl, coming next month. The other famous league of extraordinary superpeople, the Justice Society of America meets its demise, but that’s the starting point, as a young woman named Courtney Whitmore, played by 20-year-old actress Brec Bassinger (School of Rock), learns her stepdad is a superhero sidekick.
Make that “was” a superhero sidekick. Luke Wilson, known best for his roles in Wes Anderson movies and an unforgettable spot on The X-Files, was once S.T.R.I.P.E, a mechanic in a powered armor supersuit, and sidekick to Sylvester Pemberton, aka Starman, played by Community, Ted, and The Soup’s Joel McHale (in the comics the Star-Spangled Kid from the 1940s aka Skyman). Members of Seven Soldiers of Victory, the All-Star Squadron, and the Justice Society of America, these guys got around. In the new series Courtney takes on Starman’s mantle, a cosmic staff that chooses her, and she’ll begin to assemble the next generation of superheroes.
Appearing at first blush a lot like DC’s Doom Patrol, the pantheon of superheroes includes Anjelika Washington and Henry Thomas as versions of Doctor Mid-Nite, Yvette Monreal and Brian Stapf as Wildcat, and Cameron Gellman and Lou Ferrigno, Jr. as Hourman, taking on Christopher James Baker as Brainwave, Joy Osmanski as Tigress, Neil Hopkins as Sportsmaster, Nelson Lee as Dragon King, and Neil Jackson as Icicle.
Here is the new trailer, and some recent trailers, for DC’s Stargirl:
Review by C.J. Bunce
I can’t hazard a guess as to how many times I have watched E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Probably a handful of times in 1982 and 1983, and at least once during a return to theaters in the past 35 years, plus a few times on VHS. What stood out today, watching the film as part of the Fathom Events and Turner Classic Movies 35th anniversary re-release screenings, is how ageless the film is. A teenager sitting behind me caught every single joke. In a time when parents don’t think to take their kids to classic film opportunities like this, the kids are truly missing a great experience. The film is a giant adventure story set in the backyard of a boy and his brother and sister. It’s relatable. Just check out Elliott’s room. There’s a toy Star Destroyer on the table. A TIE Fighter across the room. He carefully explains who Greedo, Hammerhead, Walrus Man, Snaggletooth, Lando, and Boba Fett are to E.T. And that advance LEGO builder set on the shelf. How many kids’ homes today, after all these years, still look so similar? And someone nearby is getting ready to dress up as Yoda, or a character from his neighborhood, in only a few weeks, much like the kid E.T. tries to run off with on Halloween.
It’s not only relatable, it’s about that subject that sci-fi does best when done right: Communication. Last year’s acclaimed sci-fi film Arrival was all about it, but does it reach into each of us like E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial has? We celebrated one of the best episodes of television this year here at borg.com, discussing the 25th anniversary of one of the greatest of all Star Trek episodes, Darmok from The Next Generation, a story entirely about the practical, real-world difficulty of communication. Elliott, played so well by Henry Thomas, and later Gertie, played equally well by the younger Drew Barrymore, each use what knowledge a little kid has to try to relate to an outsider. And we immediately see the problems–the barriers–that get in the way. Elliott tries to convey to the very curious new alien visitor so willing to learn that this giant object is a peanut. “You eat them, only you can’t eat this one because it’s not real.” He’s describing a bank that was made to look like a peanut. He then puts money in it. And the result: E.T. next tries to eat a toy car. Just as Dathon and Picard found, communication isn’t all that easy. Only when Gertie gets her only one-on-one opportunity, of the three kids she is the one who helps E.T. gain his vocabulary. The innocent and the youngest and the most awestruck. And she’s also the first to understand he is trying to phone home. Communication is difficult sometimes, but if kids can figure this out, what can adults do?
This week’s release was the original cut, as seen in theaters in 1982, not with any modifications. This is the first time the film has screened in theaters since the death of writer Melissa Mathison in 2015 (you might not have seen the laserdisc version of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the only version ever released to feature Mathison’s then kinda-sorta well-known boyfriend Harrison Ford in the shadows as Elliott’s principal, meeting Elliott’s mom Mary (Dee Wallace) after his frog rescue–a bad scene, justifiably deleted). I did not recall how much we see E.T. in the film’s first scene as he and other botanists search out samples. E.T. carefully digs up what appears to be a Redwood sapling. But I now understand what Spielberg was thinking in his later re-cut version. As a kid I thought the humans were the enemy and yet this time I found no evidence of the humans trying to do anything other than learn about E.T.–much like the humans in Close Encounters of the Third Kind were scientists attempting to communicate. In Close Encounters, the presence of weapons are to scare the public from the faked quarantine area. Maybe that was the purpose of the weapons in the original E.T. cut. But somehow the rifles seemed out-of-place when the kids were escaping on bikes, after E.T. dies, after showing all the adults desperately try to help, to save E.T, some even in tears. This was the differentiator of Spielberg’s alien films from those that came before–the same spirit that only a few years earlier guided scientists to launch a couple of records into space hoping to communicate with someone out there. So swapping out car phones or walkie talkies for rifles actually is consistent with the actions of the adults in the rest of the film. I also can understand why so many little kids look back on the film as scary. There’s plenty to scare little kids–those same things that scare E.T. throughout the film, as well as what might be many kids’ first introduction to death. But the scene is gracefully done, and three decades later it’s great to hear that the adults are clearly heard attempting all those real-world, life-saving techniques to save our new alien friend. Mathison masterfully blended a science fiction, a fantasy adventure, and a coming-of-age story all in one package.
