"New" Isn't Always Better

With its nearly billion-dollar opening weekend, Spider-Man: Brand New Day clearly didn't need the people attending Gen Con to show up at the theaters for a smash success. But the fact remains, almost no one attending Gen Con actually got see the movie in its first week of release. But when I finally got my first "regular weekend" in what felt like ages, I did catch up.

The newest Spider-Man MCU movie pits the web slinger against a mysterious villain with the ability to possess almost anyone to use them as a human puppet. But it's hardly the only crisis facing Peter Parker. Years of isolation have left him at the edge of depression, and now he has a worrying mutation to deal with. We all know this won't be the end of the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man. But will it make for a good movie?

Kind of?

Here's the thing. The MCU struck gold years ago when it cast Tom Holland to play this hero... and then struck gold again in his first stand-alone movie when they cast Zendaya to play opposite him. Each is a charismatic and talented performer on their own, and the chemistry between them is off the charts. (It seemed that they seemed to think so in real life as well.) All that is to say that with the two of them anchoring a Spider-Man movie, you've basically set a floor where no matter how badly written, no matter how poor the visuals, the movie is still going to be enjoyable in many ways.

It's probably exaggerating to say the Brand New Day is "poorly written." I certainly can't claim it has poor visuals; there are some truly inspired action sequences, with unique camerawork that we somehow haven't seen even in any of the mountain of previous Spider-Man movies. There's fun banter. The key new actor in the story, Sadie Sink (whose role was kept secret in the publicity), gives a solid performance and winds up having her own interesting kind of chemistry with Tom Holland too.

But it's not the smoothest ride. All the most critical plot elements in the narrative are unjustified; there's no reason why the act two turn or act three revelation happen, it's just the time in the story where they're supposed to happen. There certainly aren't enough scenes between Peter and MJ (though as I mentioned, Tom Holland and Zendaya absolutely make the most of what's there). The movie sidelines the established "Spider-Man movie characters" in general -- an extra disappointment after how cleverly they were integrated into the very complex story of the previous No Way Home.

Instead, Brand New Day is clearly a movie about using Spider-Man and Tom Holland to shovel more coal into the engine of the MCU, which has lost some of its steam over the past few years. Not only is the movie stuffed with MCU cameos (some of which play better than others), the whole thing pretty explicitly ends up being "about" setting up pieces on the board for the future.

The result is a movie that did deliver some satisfaction as I watched... and then began to fade for me almost immediately after I walked out of the theater. Maybe it's just that the bar for Tom Holland Spider-Man movies had been set rather high by what came before.

I give Brand New Day a B-. As for the other movie in theaters right now featuring a surprising number of the same actors? I caught up with The Odyssey as well this weekend, and will get to my thoughts on that later this week.

The Film That Doesn't Exist

I caught a rather thought-provoking documentary recently (as good documentaries generally are): Zodiac Killer Project. It's the work of filmmaker Charlie Shackleton, who narrates himself (sometimes appearing on screen) to tell the story of a film that never came to be.

The Zodiac Killer is arguably America's most notorious serial murderer, and the fact that his identity was never confirmed has only fueled interest and speculation. Countless books have been written about his crimes and his possible identity, some recently, many more contemporaneous to the murders themselves. One such book was by a California police officer, Lyndon E. Lafferty, who had his own theory of the killer's true identity -- and a somewhat fanciful tale to go along with it.

Charlie Shackleton was this close to securing the rights to make a film based on that book, The Zodiac Killer Cover-Up: The Silenced Badge. He was deep through all the pre-production planning, head swimming with the footage he'd collect, when the bottom suddenly dropped out. The rights holders refused to sign the contract, Shackleton lost access to the book, and his entire film collapsed. So instead, he made a movie talking you through the movie he would have made.

The result feels to me like the cinematic equivalent a young child licking their palm and holding it half an inch from their sibling's face as they taunt, "what, I'm not touching you!" A more highbrow way of expressing that sentiment might be to say that, having been denied the opportunity to make a serial killer documentary, Charlie Shackleton chose instead to burn the whole format down.

With relentless precision, Shackleton talks you through all the metaphorical boxes he was going to tick in his abandoned film. There would have been a shot like this, because these movies always have shots like this. The credits were going to have this kind of dark and suggestive footage, as they do. There would have been this kind of music, because of course there would. His narration is a wistful dichotomy: showing you how deeply he'd thought about the genre and the movie he wanted to make, while perhaps unaware of how cliche and uninventive a movie it would have been.

In a way, it's very clever. I'll certainly never be able to watch a crime documentary the same way. This is the sort of thing magicians fear should their secrets ever be revealed: once you know exactly how the trick is done, the amazement evaporates. I think this is what Shackleton is going for: holding up the mirror to the audience as if to demand, "Why do you even like this stuff? It's so formulaic!"

But I also found that to some extent, the movie might have been too clever for its own good. Is Shackleton holding up that mirror to us because he isn't quite willing to look in it himself? The only regret I sense in his narration is that he didn't actually get to make his movie. That's a totally reasonable reaction from an artist who poured his time and effort into something that will never be seen by anyone. But while he's "made lemons out of lemonade" with a meta film that basically asks why we like this garbage, he never seems to ask himself "why did I want to make this garbage?" I feel like the grade A version of this documentary would have demanded not only of the audience, "are you not entertained?" but would have explored a bit more why he himself was complicit.

Still, I do love a good peek behind the curtain of how things get made. And, evidently, how things don't get made. The Zodiac Killer Project may not have been that grade A experience I imagine it could have been, but I thought it was worth the time. I give it a B+. If it sounds interesting to you at all, I think it won't disappoint you.

Strange New Worlds: The Griffin Incident

While I was away at Gen Con, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds served up a new episode that I was hearing really polarized the audience. I was eager to get back and see for myself what the debate was all about... and I found out when I watched "The Griffin Incident."

Returning to Enterprise in a shuttlecraft, James T. Kirk, Spock, and La'An discover a derelict Federation ship, the Griffin, which has been missing for years. When they board the Griffin to investigate, they find a dark and haunted ship where unexplained phenomenon are increasingly common. When the trio is separated, each one is subjected to intense hallucinations -- or are they hallucinations? -- striking at the heart of their own self doubts.

Star Trek has always been a franchise that mixes other genres into science fiction for unique one-off episodes... though with modern Star Trek not generally being a place for "one-off" storytelling, Strange New Worlds is the only series that's really been able to play with this. Over the years, as Star Trek has served up comedies, romances, westerns, and more, it has given us the occasional horror-tinged episode. (Strange New Worlds itself already did one, in fact.)

But horror itself has subgenres of its own -- and some of those were previously out of reach for Star Trek, a show airing on prime time network television. "The Griffin Incident" is free of those restrictions, and so we get to find out what Star Trek can do when it brings in elements of body horror. That's the most "you like it or you don't" of all the horror sub-genres... hence the polarizing reaction to the episode that I heard about.

I found the episode to be a bit mixed, but generally positive overall. On a technical and production level, it felt nearly flawless. Director Axelle Carolyn showed a deep understanding of horror, giving us great jump scares, moments of creeping dread, and visceral chills and thrills. Yes, this was a money-saving episode, using existing sets and a minimal cast after the super-expensive season premiere. But it didn't feel cheap with the effective dark lighting, creepy viewscreen graphics, and pitch perfect camera work.

Smartly, the story was also very much about psychological horror. The dangers faced weren't general, but specifically directed at La'An, Spock, and Kirk. I thought that was the right approach, even if not all three of the stories were maximally effective. Spock's gave us the most intense horror moments, from creeping dread with body bags (even if Beverly Crusher did experience that decades ago) to unsettling mutilations (Spock's ears; Chef Pike). And yet, Spock's story was fundamentally about the internal turmoil of his Vulcan and human sides, very familiar territory that this series and the original have both mined before.

La'An's story comes at the right time for her character, seizing on her very current self-doubts and magnifying them in horrific ways. But in the end, you might argue that she doesn't really emerge changed or informed by her ordeal. Certainly, the audience doesn't learn anything new about what's up with her.

The most effective story (at least in my eyes) was the one for Kirk. Playing on his insecurities about his son David was a fun dive into previously unexplored territory for the character. We've known David (and his mother Carol) are out there somewhere; Strange New Worlds has even mentioned it before. But we've never really examined Kirk's feelings about it all, outside of the movie that introduced David. Horror movies have done a lot with creepy noises from children, and this episode draws on that tradition. Perhaps the most effective moment of all (or, at least, the solid shout-out for long-time Trek fans) came when Kirk's very specific fear about what might happen to David some day is said aloud; this does what good prequels do, backfilling events we know with new emotional context.

Besides the extent of the violence in this episode, one other polarizing element is surely the way it ends: without any scientific explanation or resolution for anything we've seen. It could actually have been ghosts, for all we know. I know that this is also very much tradition for a certain kind of horror movie, but I personally find it a less satisfying element to port into Star Trek. The ending fundamentally felt more like The X-Files than Star Trek to me.

But as I said, there's more "positive" in my mixed reaction than not. I give "The Griffin Incident" a B.  

Strange New Worlds: Valles Marineris

It appears that the modern incarnation of Star Trek -- a nearly decade-long run of overlapping television series of a variety the franchise has never known before -- is coming to an end soon, a victim of corporate consolidation and meddling. But there are still a few more filmed episodes of television working their way through post-production, and we're now getting some of them with the return of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. It kicked off season four this past week with "Valles Marineris."

The Enterprise is critically damaged by an interstellar phenomenon, and transported to an unknown part of space. After a shuttle crew departs for a nearby planet to collect vital resources, the ship is captured by aliens. Pike must convince their militaristic leader of Starfleet's peaceful intentions. But once it becomes clear where Enterprise has really been taken, he must engage in a subterfuge that is sure to fuel the aliens' distrust.

It's kind of impossible to talk about this episode without getting into spoiler territory, so here's your warning to back out now if you haven't seen it. It's an episode that risks being almost goofy in taking on such a wild, big story -- that Enterprise has been taken to Earth 65 million years in the past, to a time of dinosaurs and interstellar Martians.

Frankly, the episode sometimes is a bit goofy. Number One stunning a T-Rex might be one of the wildest things Star Trek has ever presented... at least, until 15 minutes later when La'An straight up punches a velociraptor in the face. The not-terribly-veiled reference to Doctor Who made earlier in this episode feels right at home; it feels to me like just the sort of "not quite taking this seriously" sort of storytelling you get from that show.

Except... Strange New Worlds mostly does take this story seriously. Despite those Doctor Who-like trappings, the core story here is Star Trek through and through, an examination of the opposing ideas of cooperation and suspicion. And it all culminates in a classic science fiction paradox to tickle the brain. (Or... does it begin with one?!) Yeah, it's edging "almost silly" again to explain the barrenness of Mars, the extinction of the dinosaurs, and the existence of our solar system's asteroid belt all in one fell swoop. But the earnestness with which Strange New Worlds generally approaches it all pulls me along for the ride.

Along the way, there's effective and subtle acting from Anson Mount -- particularly opposite guest star Saffron Burrows. Ongoing threads of character building are woven into the self-contained story of the episode, as this series always does so well. And the production values feel just sky high. There was a time where a slow-motion horseback ride through a vast alien landscape would be the major centerpiece for an entire episode. Here, it's only an amuse-bouche before an episode that gives us a dangerous space cloud, a planet's destruction, and... did I mention the dinosaurs?

Strange New Worlds remains my easy favorite of the live action modern Star Trek series. I'm grinning ear to ear to be getting more of it. I give "Valles Marineris" a B+. 

The Stars Come Out

For All Mankind -- a show I absolutely raved about in its first and second seasons -- just came off its fifth and arguably weakest season. Less arguable: the alternate history show has been losing steam whenever it has drifted more into colonial allegory and away from space exploration. It feels like a show that really needs to get back to its roots for its upcoming final season.

Ironically, getting back to the show's roots is the elevator pitch for what's going on over on Star City. This spin-off series rewinds the clock to the first crewed moon landing of 1969 -- in this universe achieved by the Soviet Union, rather than the Americans. Star City also follows how the world unfolds differently under these alternate circumstances -- this time, from the Soviet perspective. But that simple description doesn't tell the full story of Star City. At least, not unless you immediately think very deeply about what "the Soviet perspective" might be.

Star City feels like a gritty Cold War thriller -- John le Carré by way of Dostoevsky. It's a show that zigs at almost every opportunity where For All Mankind zagged. Where the parent show filled in the space around outer space with family drama, the spin-off fills it with tense, paranoia-driven espionage. Where Mankind serves up a pristine digital picture, Star City is made to look like a grainy film print perhaps only recently dug up from some archive. Where Mankind fills out its cast of characters with civilians near the space program, Star City does so with the KGB operatives spying on their own people to keep everyone in line.

Nor is Star City content to simply retell major events of For All Mankind from a new point of view. Much of season one centers on previously unknown events in this alternate timeline. This deftly allows viewers to come onto this new show even if they haven't seen the first, and keeps fans of the original from knowing exactly where the new story is headed.

The acting is tightly restrained on this show, in keeping with the Cold War Soviet setting. Thus, it's harder to praise compared to many TV shows where the characters are showy and outwardly emotional. Still, there's solid work here from many performers. Rhys Ifans is the "chief designer" of the Soviet space program, and is no stranger to this sort of "palace intrigue" after House of the Dragon. Anna Maxwell Martin plays a delightfully detestable villain, the head of the KGB surveillance department within the space program. Two actors have the interesting challenge of playing characters we meet "later" in For All Mankind, Agnes O'Casey and Josef Davies; both give interesting hints of the performances of the other actors without being beholden to mere impersonation.

To be blunt, Star City didn't grab hold of me immediately, the way For All Mankind did. Still, I eventually found myself more deeply engaged than I have by the parent show since at least season three. By the very cliffhangery ending of the eight-episode season, I definitely wanted to see what comes next. (Sadly, no word yet on a season two.) I give Star City a B+, continuing the streak that almost every series I've ever watched on Apple TV+ is worth the time.

Here Comes Santa Fe

The morning of our day in Santa Fe began in the most unlikely of ways: we actually slept in. For hours! But we still fit plenty in once we got rolling. We started with breakfast at Cafe Catron, where we sampled a New Mexico staple: a burrito (breakfast, in this case) served "Christmas style" (smothered in both red and green chile). Pretty tasty. Locals may now jump in and name five other places they think serve a better breakfast burrito.

We decided to grab some coffee to walk around with, and the name of one spot in particular demanded our attention: CrashMurderBusiness. I was wondering what had inspired such a bizarre name, until the sign at the door made it all clear -- it was a play on fun-sounding "mass nouns," which extended to the menu and the "Race of Roadrunners" I ordered as my beverage. (It tasted like a chocolate bonbon with chili powder. Perhaps you sense a theme of New Mexico.)

We wandered the Railyard Artisan Market for a bit, partly for "nothing in particular" but particular for something very particular. From our trip to New Orleans a few years ago, our one lingering regret is that we didn't buy a pair of paintings that really caught our eye. Since then, on any trip that takes us near the possibility of picking up some art, we take a look. Nothing spoke to us in the same way this time -- not even with the added ease of driving it back home. But we'll always have Julia Street in New Orleans... and, until we find something, a nice reason to appreciate some local artists when we travel.

Art was also the theme of the next stop, the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum. This multi-room gallery is dedicated to the famous artist who ultimately made New Mexico her home, and is filled with many of her paintings as well as the work of a few contemporaries, and one room of modern artists creating in response to her work.

Next, we walked the area around Santa Fe Plaza, a shopping district with a wide range of stores. We spent a few hours, first grabbing drinks at a pub called Desert Dogs (where we caught a bit of the World Cup final, including the eclectic halftime show), and ultimately picking up some clothes. I finally was able to find a hat I think works pretty well for me. (But sorry, I don't have a decent picture of me wearing it yet. Perhaps that'll come on some future trip.)

In the afternoon, we took a short trip out of the city to Nambé Falls. You wouldn't expect to find a 120-foot waterfall less than an hour outside Santa Fe, but there it is -- and with only a modest 1/4 mile hike to reach it from the trailhead. Unfortunately, we weren't prepared enough to also take the 1/4 mile hike through water to reach the base... but if you're going to be in the area and are interested, I'll throw that out there for you: take shoes you can take in the water.

By dinner time, we were back in Santa Fe and continuing the Mexican food theme: this time at a place called Tres Colores, where I took a shot at Mole Enchiladas (not a normal order for me by any stretch). It wasn't quite my thing, but I was glad for the vacation change of pace. And from what I gather, it was really good mole sauce, as evidenced by a conversation at a nearby patio table between a patron raving about it and one of the restaurant owners proudly explaining it was a family recipe.

We finished the evening with a pair of stops for after dinner drinks. First was Santa Fe Spirits, a distillery where we picked up a bottle of whiskey to tap into later for trip memories; then finally Nuckoll's Brewery, a place with a large balcony overlooking the depot where the train we'd ridden the night before pulled in after another sunset trip.

We talked about a possible morning detour to Bandelier National Monument the next day... but pretty much already knew we weren't going to do that. In the morning, we tried one more breakfast burrito stop (Tortilla Flats this time), that one more stop pretty much ending my desire to have Mexican food for the next week or two. (Nothing against that place. When in Rome... stuff your face with the local cuisine. That's pretty much how that saying goes, right?) Anyway, after a satisfying few days that we'd found very relaxing, we decided against another hike before immediately jumping in the car for a six-hour drive home.

It was a lovely little getaway to get the batteries charged ahead of Gen Con. (I know this blog has become rather intermittent anyway, but don't expect any posts for most of next week.) Colorado's neighbor to the south is a nice place to visit.

New Mexico, New Outlook

Next week is Gen Con, billed as "the best four days in gaming," but for me and many others is also a "big week at the office." To help reset and mentally prepare, my husband and I took a long weekend to road trip down to New Mexico -- which, blessedly, was actually 10 to 15 degrees cooler than the Denver area right now.

After sleeping in the best we could (how better to start a long weekend), we set out on the drive. We stopped for lunch at Brues Alehouse along the waterfront in Pueblo, but from there it was south on down to Albuquerque. Our late start and a late afternoon delay meant there wasn't much time for activity that first evening. Still, we had the first of many Mexican meals at High Noon. Well... this meal was a bit "opt in," actually, as they're also known for their steaks. But I quite enjoyed my shrimp enchiladas.

After dinner, we enjoyed drinks at a bar along a stretch of what was once the historic Route 66 -- though that factoid was not the reason we picked it. A few years ago, we were briefly caught up in the whirlwind of a Netflix reality show called Drink Masters. A dozen different bartenders competed over several episodes in a cocktail making competition. We found it engaging, despite having the same central shortcoming that all the foodie reality shows have: you can’t taste anything being judged. But one of the show's contestants, Kate Gerwin, opened up this bar in Albuquerque. And while maybe you couldn't taste exactly what was made on the show, you could sample what she makes when not under time pressure and forced into bizarre restrictions.

You could also get a thrown martini -- not shaken, not stirred -- something I hadn't even heard of before this. Had to order one. Thrown, it turns out, is what you imagine a mad scientist doing to mix a concoction, showily pouring it back and forth between two containers. Martinis aren't my thing, so I certainly can't tell you if it makes a difference. But it's certainly a fun presentational thing for a bar to do.

The next morning, we stopped at Golden Crown Panderia to grab some empanadas on our way out of town. (The place has a 24/7 vending machine for pastries out front... but being there during business hours, we didn't need to use it.) Then it was west on I-40 for a stretch until we reached the Ice Cave and Bandera Volcano. We'd heard about the place from a friend, and decided we had to check it out for ourselves. Over a roughly 1.5 mile hike, you climb to the edge of a volcano crater, and along the path where flowing lava cut a trench several thousands of years ago.

Then a bit later on, you head down nearly 100 steps where you feel the temperature drop about 5 degrees with every 10 steps. At the bottom, you reach a cave where the temperature never rises about 31 degrees Fahrenheit, where dripping water has collected over the ages into a sheet of algae-covered ice. Like I mentioned earlier, New Mexico isn't as hot as Denver right now... yet it was still wild to descend from a warm summer morning into a frigid cave in barely a minute.

It's a fair drive out to the Ice Cave and Bandera Volcano (but worth it), and we were actually headed to Santa Fe for the evening. Still, we had time for a few stops, including La Cumbre Brewing Company. Some of you may recall the craft brewery map I picked up about a decade ago, where I mark places we've visited with pins. The craft beer industry has been going through quite the contraction since the map was new, and many of the places it shows don't exist anymore. But the possible quest to put a "gold pin" in every state continues with this stop (which had a great Mexican-style beer made with blue corn).

Our evening concluded with a "sunset serenade" excursion on the Sky Railway. Operating on a section of railroad track dating back to the earliest days of rail in the area, this tourist train takes you out to a picturesque spot in the desert to watch a truly beautiful sunset. The "serenade" part was a local Albuquerque musician who set up in the car and performed on his guitar on the two-hour round-trip journey.

Our long weekend still had one more full day ahead, which I'll recount later this week.