legion

So what am I going to watch until Legion comes back?

I just binge-watched the series on Hulu. Like so many of the new series popping up this days this show has comic book roots. But it's not a show about a guy or girl solving crimes while wearing a cool suit. It's not a show that's easy to describe.

The series opens with the main character, David Haller (Dan Stevens), living in a psychiatric hospital after a suicide attempt. But all is not as it seems. In fact, in Legion, nothing is like anything anyone has seen before. The show was created by Noah Hawley (Fargo). Viewers learn early on that Legion is part of the X-Men universe, and David and many of the characters he meets are mutants. The X-Men are always, at their heart, stories about outsiders, and David Haller is as outsider as they come. Diagnosed as schizophrenic when he was just a child, David's grasp on reality is tenuous at best. As the series progresses we learn a bit more about his childhood and his abilities, but it becomes clear that the show and David may just be scratching the surface of what he is and what he will become.

Telekinesis ...

Alternate reality ...

Don't mess with David

Legion is not just action-adventure, but it is also a love story. When David meets Syd at the institution (Rachel Keller) it is love at first sight for the pair, and the course of their romance runs smoothly - except for the part about Syd not wanting to be touched ...

"Holding hands"

Hawley has assembled a great cast for Legion. Dan Stevens takes on a very different role from his previous appearances in Downton Abbey or Beauty and the Beast. Other stand-out performances include Aubrey Plaza as David's pal Lenny, and David's Scooby gang: Bill Irwin, Jean Smart, and Jemaine Clement.

Jean Smart as Melanie Bird

David and Lenny

Legion sets itself in ... well, it's not exactly clear. The show has a late '60s, early '70s look, but so much of the show takes place in David's mind that it's hard to tell when we are exactly, or if he just really likes the look of films like A Clockwork Orange and classic television shows like The Avengers and The Prisoner. I know I like those shows, so Legion appeals to me aesthetically. I don't want to tell too much more about what happens in the show, as it's best experienced spoiler-free. Maybe a rewatch is in order until David and the gang return in February 2018 ...

Syd at Clockworks Psychiatric Hospital

where no star trek fan may have gone before ...

There are so many branches to the Star Trek universe: novelizations, movies, re-boot film series, animated series, magazines, television series, toys, games, etc. that even the most dedicated fan, Trekkie or Trekker might have trouble keeping up. ...

Star Trek's popularity and influence was not limited to the United States. The show may have been cancelled in 1969, but the next year in England, before the series had even premiered on British television, a series of comic strips appeared in weekly television magazines. Star Trek: The Classic UK Comics, Vol. 2 is the second in a series of three volumes collecting and reprinting these comics. These compilations may offer the first time these comics may been seen and read in the U.S. The British Star Trek comics ran for five years, longer than the original show.

Fans will recognize all of their favorite characters, at least by appearance. The artists, mostly uncredited, do a good job of capturing the likeness of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, et al. While readers might blanch at seeing Kirk wear a red shirt in the first group of comics in this volume, halfway through the first captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise appears in his familiar gold shirt. Slightly more off-putting is hearing Mr. Spock frequently refer to Kirk as "Skipper" and utter such exclamations as "What the blazes?" throughout the strips. Not the cool and analytical Vulcan science officer we know and love. ...

You can read my full review on Cinema Sentries

as spooky as ever: we have always lived in the castle

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is an amazing, unsettling book. It is a tale told by a fanciful and unreliable but fascinating narrator, Mary Katherine Blackwood, or Merricat, as her older sister Constance calls her. Merricat and Constance and their Uncle Julian and Merricat's cat Jonas live in Blackwood House, on top of the hill overlooking a small and small-minded village.

The author Shirley Jackson was a master of the macabre and creepy. Her short story "The Lottery" continues to haunt schoolchildren every year, as does her masterly haunted house novel, The Haunting of Hill House. Jackson lived for many years in North Bennington, Vermont, and has ratcheted up the standoffish prototypical New Englander to the nth degree in this story. The Blackwoods experienced a family tragedy six years ago, when four of the family members died one night after sprinkling what they thought was sugar on their blackberries. It turned out to be arsenic. Constance was acquitted of the crime, but the cloud of doubt, distrust, and thinly-veiled hate has hung over her and her remaining family ever since.

The details of the Blackwoods' existence and the genteel, class-conscious life that their family has led in contrast to their unneighborly neighbors plays out throughout the book. The devil is in the details - descriptions of china patterns and the meticulously kept remnants of their departed relatives - a hairbrush, a gold watch, a harp. Merricat admits her life is a difficult one, but she enjoys it - until a visit by distant cousin Charles threatens to destroy all the barriers she has carefully, and sometimes magically constructed to the outside world.

Merricat's and Constance's home and way of life are under siege. Can they hold onto any of their old, familiar graces? Can their neighbors treat others equally, without suspicion, and not resort to violence? We Have Always Lived in the Castle seems an especially pertinent and spooky read, as we sadly read more and more discussions of "otherness' and persecution daily in our press.

big little lies

I just finished watching the HBO series Big Little Lies and, I'm sure, like many others, didn't want it to end. The slow, almost hypnotic pace of the direction by Jean-Marc Vallée in producer and writer David E. Kelley's adaptation of Liane Moriarty's book eased viewers into the complicated lives of the mothers of first graders in an affluent suburb of Monterey, California.

I quickly scooped up the book and was not disappointed by its southern Australian setting. The characters are the same: the charismatic, rapid-fire and funny Maddie, the outwardly serene but haunted Celeste, the tortured young mom Jane. These three women and their children and the men in their lives are all tangled together in a web of lies, both big and small. The story begins with a crime scene and the reader must shuffle through a series of entertaining, and at times, disturbing unreliable narrators until the truth is finally revealed.

Jane, Maddie, and Celeste share a high-end kaffee klatsch

Moriarty perfectly captures the Mommy Wars that some people indulge in these days and invites the reader inside the heads of the three main female characters. We see the men in their lives through theirs and other's eyes, but a little like the classic film The Women, the emphasis is squarely on the ladies. Themes of abuse, to children and adults, runs throughout. The setting may be beach/bucolic, but the passions run deep. Big Little Lies is a great read and I'd be willing to check out more by this author. There are rumors of a second series of the HBO show, too.