Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review

She-Hulk Trailer Notes/Star Trek: Strange New Worlds/Slow Horses/The Coen Brothers

Director’s Note: Having watched the most recent trailer for the upcoming Marvel TV series, She-Hulk: Attorney At Law, we here at the Division of Media Review have been both bemused and flummoxed at the incendiary reaction the trailer seems to have caused in the Geek Nation, particularly with regards to the CGI.

We’d like to take a moment to remind everyone in North America that Marvel Studios has single-handedly brought back the trailer fake-out to modern cinematic experiences, often using scenes and digitally rendered characters that are not in the scene in the completed movie. This is intentional and has been done many times in the past. Also, Marvel Studios is fond of using the modern trailer as a “proof-of-concept” device, as was the case in the first Iron Man trailer. Finally, it should be noted that many trailers from every studio use footage that has been rendered, but not cleaned up for the final cut of the film. Most notably, the trailer for Bryan Singer’s X-Men featured a rickety-looking special effect sequence involving Wolverine using his claws to swing himself around one of the spires on the crown of the Statue of Liberty to fight Sabertooth. It was, in a word, awful. However, when the final cut of the film was released, the sequence was cleaned up and in all other ways vastly improved.

In short, we’d like to tell everyone freaking out about the CGI to please take whatever passes for a Xanax in their world and breathe deeply. Also, we’d like to suggest, however gently, that they were probably going to complain about the CGI looking fake AF anyway, regardless of how well it was rendered, because the willing suspension of disbelief is a rapidly dwindling art.

Also, the Administrator has, with our blessing, re-posted a series of articles from the vault dealing with The Movies of Dungeons & Dragons, a five-part reminiscence about the 1980s, playing D&D, and watching the sword and sorcery movies of that decade. A great many beloved classics are discussed, and just as many others are thrown under the metaphorical bus. You can find the first four entries below, with the fifth and final entry set to post tomorrow.

The Movies of Dungeons and Dragons Part 1

The Movies of Dungeons and Dragons Part 2 The Harryhausen Playbook

The Movies of Dungeons and Dragons Part 3 Secondary Sources

The Movies of Dungeons and Dragons Part 4 The Best of the Rest

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Paramount Plus)

I’ve not commented on any of the more recent Star Trek shows like Picard, because I just didn’t like them. I thought Star Trek: Discovery had the same problem as the NBC show Heroes, in that they changed their premise every season. I’d argue that the show actually changed premise in mid-season, as well, which is, I’m sorry to say, a cardinal sin, and a tactic that also never works.

Picard was just...the weirdest fan service ever. He literally went back through his personal Rolodex, visiting everyone he knew, who all said, “You’ve got SOME nerve, showing up HERE, after what YOU did!” And he said, to all of them, “I’m sorry,” and they all said, “Oh, okay, then.”

Gripping television.

Thank God for Strange New Worlds, a Trek show that looks like Trek. Colored tunics, intellectual problems in space, The Enterprise, Mr. Spock. I mean, it’s good. At least, the first three shows are. There’s some service being paid to canon...that damned concept that will drive me to drink for all of the creativity it manages to stifle. I hope that doesn’t derail this series, as it’s the best thing they’ve done in a long while. It would seem to pick up the interpersonal soap opera threads that plagued Discovery and meld them with “We have a problem on the planet below,” which is what, I daresay, most Trek fans want, if not outright need. It feels like the right amount of balance, but I’m not holding my breath, for fear of passing out. Paramount has managed before to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. I’m hoping they get out of their own way, for this first season, at least.

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Slow Horses (Apple)

Gary Oldman plays an old school spook, running out the clock on his career by babysitting the agents at MI-5 who screw up in some way or otherwise shit the bed. Despite his best attempts to keep them out of trouble, they all get pulled into a domestic terrorist hostage situation with a ticking clock. They have no resources, no favors to call in, and oh yeah, their own organization hates them, but they are determined to stop what’s going on before it’s too late.

This is a great—GREAT—spy thriller. I love Gary Oldman unreservedly, and I always want more screen time for him. Here, he’s front and center, being a nickel-plated asshole to everyone around him. It’s brilliant, sardonic, edgy, cynical, and based on a series of books. The show is six tense, gripping episodes long. I’m tempted to mention the Sandbaggers, but it’s really nothing like that legendary show, other than it’s largely procedural and deals with people trying to get things done behind the scenes.

If you love Cold War-era Shades-of-Grey, morally-bereft espionage fare, get to a TV this instant and cue it up. You’ll be glad you did. The second season is already in the can. It’s that good.

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NTAB Directorial Culture Exchange Update: The Coen Brothers

It was inevitable, of course, that these two make the list. Both Janice and I are big fans, and I find I like all of their movies, even when I don’t like them. They just make and tell stories a certain way that speaks to me. Ever since I first saw Raising Arizona, I’ve decided that they can do no wrong. That, along with Miller’s Crossing and The Big Lebowski, are in my orbit continuously.

Despite our unabashed enthusiasm, there were movies both of us hadn’t seen. I missed a few in the early aughts. Janice hadn’t seen some of the more esoteric outings. Since we had been watching some classic films in this series, I decided to treat her with my selection and picked The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)

This is one of the brothers’ “Hollywood” movies, done in admiration for a certain style of filmmaking that is no longer in fashion; namely, Frank Capra films. Tim Robbins is brought into a ruthless and cutthroat corporation, where he is feted and forged into an instrument through which the board of directors would first devalue the company and then wrest control of it through economic hijinks. Along the way, Robbins meets a fast-talking girl, falls in love (and vice versa), and loses himself in the goings on. He’s saved by a bit of magic, a literal God-in-the-Machine, and makes his way to the big homage to It’s a Wonderful Life just in case you hadn’t picked up on it by that time. If you’re not a Howard Hawks and Frank Capra fan, or if you haven’t seen their most beloved movies, some of the performances, in particular Jennifer Jason Leigh (channeling Rosalind Russell from His Girl Friday) and her over-the-top emoting and enunciation will be utterly baffling to you. If you do know what the score is, this movie is a hoot to watch and marvel at just how well they pulled it off.

Janice hadn’t ever seen Blood Simple (1985), the Coen’s first film. I think she’d hoped for the beginnings of what would become their signature style sheet, but she hadn’t counted on it being a dark, twisty, Texas Noir film with a tense and intense thirty-minute climax that you have to remind yourself to quit holding your breath through. It’s hands down the creepiest thing M. Emmett Walsh has ever done, and Frances McDormand looks like she’s right out of high school.

It's bleak, and when you consider their very next movie was the aforementioned Raising Arizona, it almost seems baffling. However, the Coens have done bleak, dark, and even Noir before, in movies like Barton Fink, Miller’s Crossing, and The Man Who Wasn’t There, among others. I’ve come to love Blood Simple more for its outlier status among their work. Janice was suitably impressed with both movies, and agreed that watching Capra ahead of time helped her see what the Coens were trying to do in The Hudsucker Proxy. We are now going to have to work in time to watch The Big Lebowski. “How do you keep them on the farm after they’ve seen Karl Hungus?” I mean, come on, folks...