News Around the Net!

This Paramount+ Star Trek ad, saluting the history of the franchise, is pretty spectacular.  Ok, there’s a little too much modern Trek in here, but this is surprisingly well-edited, with some lovely deep cuts from the history of the franchise (Captain Sulu! The original animated show from the seventies!).  I do love Star Trek:

In other Star Trek news: it looks like the first two episode of season four of Lower Decks are going to be screened in theaters!  Very cool.

Click here for a wonderful interview with Jonathan Frakes, who played William Riker on Star Trek: The Next Generation and has become one of the best and most important directors working with the franchise.  The interview focuses on Mr. Frakes’ directing the recent crossover between Strange New Worlds (the Captain Pike prequel show) and the animated Lower Decks.  (I’ll have my full review coming soon, but in short I will say it was a masterpiece.  I don’t really care for Strange New Worlds, but the crossover was insane and joyous.)

I must also confess that I quite enjoyed the Strange New Worlds musical episode.  Here’s a taste:

That a cappella version of the classic Star Trek theme gets me…

One final bit of Trek news… I haven’t written anything yet about the surprising cancellation of the animated Star Trek: Prodigy, despite its second season having already been deep into production.  Not only that, but the first season was removed entirely from Paramount+.  (Thank heaven for my blu-rays!  Once again, physical media is important!)  I thought Prodigy was surprisingly good, even though this show aimed at kids wasn’t exactly what I’m looking for in new Trek.  But I was excited to see season two, and I do hope the show finds a home somewhere.

This is a spectacular trailer for the film Golda, starring Helen Mirren as Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir:

And Liev Schreiber as Henry Kissinger?  I can’t wait to see this.

The premiere of Ahsoka is so close…!!  I can’t wait!  This trailer is amazing:

I’m so curious to see how this show plays to people who haven’t followed Ahsoka’s story through the animated Clone Wars and Rebels shows.  This trailer makes the show feel like a full-on Rebels trailer.  Hera Syndulla!  Chopper!  Sabine!  Ezra!  I got so happy seeing the live-action version of that weird long highway on Lothal!!  But that was nothing compared to seeing the live-action version of the final scene in the Rebels finale, between Ahsoka and Sabine.  Or how about the mural that was so important at the end of the show?  All this plus the introduction of Grand Admiral Thrawn into the live-action Star Wars universe?  (I loved hearing them reference Heir to the Empire, the novel from 1991 that introduced Thrawn!!)  I am excited.  (Click here to read my guide to watching The Clone Wars and Rebels…!)

Futurama is back!!!

I’ve already watched the first two episodes of the new season, and they’re great.  I’m so happy that Futurama has, yet again, returned miraculously from cancellation!

Will the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender Netflix series be any good?  I have no idea, but here’s a teaser:

And here’s a first look at the cast.  I’m curious…

I’m also quite curious about this new Babylon 5 animated film, The Road Home:

I’m a big fan of J. Michael Straczynski’s Babylon 5, and it’s a shame that none of his follow-ups in the B5 universe have worked.  (Crusade was cancelled halfway through its first season back in 1999; the 2002 Legend of the Rangers pilot made by the Sci-Fi channel never went to series, and 2007’s direct-to-DVD Babylon 5: The Lost Tales, which was supposed to be an anthology of short stories, never went beyond that first installment.)  I’d love to see lots more great B5 adventures.  I hope The Road Home is good!!

This is a fun teaser trailer for the latest Pixar film, Elio:

That looks like fun!

I can’t wait to watch the third season of How To with John Wilson, though I’m sad the show is ending after this third season!  That’s a bummer.  I love this show.  Here’s a teaser for season three:

I love seeing Wolverine wearing his classic yellow duds from the comic books in this first look at Hugh Jackman in Deadpool 3!

I’m a big Nathan Fillion fan (even since Firefly), and I’m excited that he’s been cast as Green Lantern Guy Gardner in James Gunn’s Superman: Legacy!

I was sad to read that Alan Arkin passed away at the end of June.  My favorite role of his was in Glengarry Glen Ross, but I also loved him in so many films, from Little Miss Sunshine to Argo to The In-Laws to The Seven-Per-Cent Solution to Grosse Pointe Blank and so many other great performances.

Mark Hamill thinks they should recast Luke Skywalker in future Star Wars projects, and I agree.  It was cool to see the CGI hybrid that utilized an aspect of Mr. Hammil’s on-set performance and voice in Luke’s appearances on The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett.  But it was also super-weird and not altogether convincing.  I’d LOVE for Luke to continue to appear in these post-Return of the Jedi stories, and I think for that to happen they need to cast an age-appropriate new actor for the role.

OK, this is wild: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, a film about the multiverse, actually had multiple different versions released simultaneously to theaters!  Click here to read about the differences!  (I wonder which version will be released to DVD/blu-ray?)

What was a key reason why the third season of Star Trek: Picard was so great, and so much better than all the rest of the modern Star Trek shows?  New show runner Terry Matalas and Production Designer Dave Blas are both huge Trek fans themselves, and they brought back a lot of key behind-the-scenes creative people who had worked on the franchise in the past.  Click here to read more.  Wow, people who know and love Star Trek can make good Star Trek!  What a shocker.  (It’s sad that most of the people running Star Trek these days don’t seem to understand that.)

The latest example of why I believe in physical media?  Apparently if you stream The French Connection on The Criterion Channel, it’s a censored version.  The French Connection is a classic and important film, and it’s upsetting to think the film has been censored, probably without most viewers’ noticing.  Thank goodness the blu-ray sitting on my shelf preserves the original version.

This is a complicated subject.  In general, I think censorship is dangerous.  I also think that there should be nuance in these conversations, and I can understand how the use of the N-word in The French Connection might be very upsetting.  It was always supposed to be upsetting, but here in 2023 the use of that word might render the film unwatchable for some.  If a small tweak to delete that word helps keep this film alive, is that bad?  No, I don’t think it is.  But 1) if this is done, it should be available in conjunction with the original film, not instead of it.  And 2) this can be a very, very slippery slope.  (See the criticism of what seems to have been rampart censoring and re-writing of the novels of Roald Dahl recently…)  I think we should be very, very careful about this sort of thing, and my default position is one of suspicion of censorship whenever it rears its head…

Thanks for reading!  I’m hoping to get back to a more regular posting schedule soon.  I have lots of fun stuff to share!  Hope to see y’all back here soon…

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