silveragelovechild

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Six Degrees of Stan Lee

I haven’t posted one of these in a while but yesterday I saw an early screening of Ridley Scott’s “GLADIIATOR”. I hadn’t been paying attention to the cast list, except I knew Paul Mescal played Russell Crowe’s son from the 2000 film.

So I was surprised to see a couple new candidates for my “Six Degrees of Stan Lee” post that identify actors who costar in a comic book movie then appear together again in a different non-comic film.

The first: Connie Nielsen and Pedro Pascal appeared in “Wonder Woman 1984” (although they didn’t share any screen time together). Nielsen played Diana’s mother Hippolyte and Pascal played the villain Maxwell Lord. In Gladiator 2, they play a married couple!

The movie has another comic book movie connection. Pedro Pascal plays a general serving the Roman Emperor played by Joseph Quinn. Next year the duo will star in the MCU’s Fantastic Four film as Reed Richard and Johnny!

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Wicked Part 1 (no spoilers)

My local theater offered tickets to a very early screening of wicked so I decided to buy a ticket. I saw the musical years ago on Broadway. At one point, I even tried to read the book it’s based on (long before they develop the musical). But the book was not my style so I did not get very far into it.

I can’t say I was excited when I heard they decided to split the musical into two movies. Harry Potter, Twilight, and the Hunger Games all did something similar with the finale of their movies - splitting up stories that should’ve been one movie into two movies to make more money. That was the driving force for wicked in 2 parts

I guessed where the first one would end. It’s two hours and 40 minutes. And truthfully, I felt it was a little long, but I say that about most movies I see.

From my memory of the stage show I didn’t notice new plot lines, so maybe part two will be more new material. I didn’t notice any new songs either which surprised me. Invariably the studio would’ve wanted to submit a new song for an Oscar.

I saw Cynthia Erivo a couple of years ago in The Outsider, a series based on a book by Stephen King. She was very good and I was curious to see how she’d handle a musical. She is terrific as Elphaba, both and performance and vocally.

I’ve heard of Ariana Grande, but I can’t name any song she’s sang or show she’s appeared in. But she hold her own opposite Erivo.

Erivo is 35 and Grande is 31 but in the magical context, I could buy them as college age. Jonathan Bailey is 34 and opposite the women he looks 34 so playing a student required more suspension of disbelief. But he’s nice to look at.

Question: Does Jeff Goldblum ever actually play a character or does he just play himself in everything he’s cast in.

The supporting cast of students at Shiz University are comprised of every pronoun used by today’s youth, so I’m sure the movie will appeal to every current and former theater kid. Although Glinda’s character is surrounded by cronies, who to me, came off as bitchy gay stereotypes. It’s not their fault, the characters were written that way.

The special effects and art design are great. I can imagine Universal Studios transforming part of its amusement parks into the Emerald City. I’d go see it!

Erivo is particularly terrific in the closing number “Defying Gravity”. Is it enough to get an Oscar nomination?

I’ll see the sequel next year, but I may have forgotten the details from part 1 by then. A solid 4 out of 5 stars.

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Zombiefied Captain America

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Cylon (reboot version)

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Battlestar Galactica Viper MKII

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John Hamill portrayed crewman Mark Dominix in “Force of Life”, an episode of Space: 1999 (1975)

John S Barrington (British, 1920-1990)

John Hamill

c. 1966

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Peter Duryea with Gene Roddenberry. Duryea played helmsman Jose Tyler in the original pilot for “Star Trek”.

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Recently, I posted about a favorite sci-fi book of mine the Midwich Cuckoos by John Windham. The title refers to a breed of birds that lay their eggs in the nests of other birds, who are then tricked into incubating the eggs and raising what hatches as their own offspring

The book is also known by the title of two movies based on it – Village of the Damned from 1960 and the 1995 remake starring Christopher Reeve.

I read about a new version of the story, a seven episode series produced by Sky TV in the UK. At the time I couldn’t find it available to stream here in the US. I discovered it was offered on the Sundance Channel service, with one episode released each week.So out of curiosity , I subscribed for a month.

In the book after an odd occurrence in the village of Midwich, all the women of childbearing age become pregnant. When the babies are born, they are unusual, with fine platinum hair, and yellow eyes and they all look the same, no matter who was the mother.

The look of the children for the two movie versions is based on the book. But for the new TV version, the producers went an entirely different route. The village of Midwich is now very multicultural and the mothers are a variety of races. This time the children do not look identical and have the same ethnic characteristics as their mothers.

In the book, the children become very independent at an early age, and prefer to be left on their own, not needing their mothers to care for them. The TV series, went in the opposite direction. The children are obsessive about the mothers and father and refuse to let them leave town. In fact, in one episode, one of the children demands that the mothers love them.

In our modern times, I understand the desire to have the cast reflect the diversity of our population. But these changes defeat establishing that the children as something other than human.

The earlier films were only 78 and 98 minutes long each. But the series has seven hours to fill. So they’ve added a lot of soap opera drama which at times gets tedious.

With only one episode released a week I’m not sure if the series will be over before my subscription expires. If that’s the case, I don’t mind. This version of the Midwich cuckoo is far from Must-See-TV.

Note: in the film version because the children were supposed to look at identical they all wore blonde wigs. Oddly enough, the wigs from 1995 looked worse than the wigs from 1960, but in this new version, with all the children looking different, there really wasn’t any need to use wigs yet several of them have some pretty bad, fake looking hair.

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Was this the first appearance of Q in the Star Trek Universe?

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Jeremy Allen White costarred with Zac Efron in “The Ironclaw” (2023). They played real life brothers and professional wrestlers Kerry and Kevin Von Erich.

But here’s the thing… White is only 5’7” tall and Efron is 5’8”. (I suspect they both are even shorter.) But the brothers they played were much taller. Kerry Von Erich was a whopping 6’3” in real life and Kevin was 6’1”. That’s the magic of Hollywood!

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The Spectre

Art by Dan Schkade

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There are no consequences in the MCU. Anyone who dies can be brought back to life. Marvel Studios is plagued by a lack of imagination.

• Loki (Time variant)

“ Groot (rerooted)

“ Gamora (time variant)

“ RDJ (couldn’t resist the pay check)

“Scarlet Watch (who gives a fuck)

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Apollo of The Authority

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Storm

Art by Arthur Adams

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Georgia Schmidt, in costume and makeup as a Talosian, with Gene Roddenberry.