It seems surprising in this day and age, when Michael Bay is a director best associated with astonishingly stupid, hardware-based, explosion-packed summer blockbusters with a serial killer’s attitude towards women, but there was a time when he was an enfant terrible ready to transform cinema with a unique kinetic visual style.
Similarly, Will Smith was not the action movie star he is today but was merely the Fresh Prince of Bel Air – a singer/comedian in baggy clothes with as much right to big pecs and a gun licence as Ant and Dec.
The thing that changed both their careers was Bad Boys (1995), a funny but also hugely exciting, genre-changing action-comedy directed by Bay, in which Smith and fellow comedian Martin Lawrence played Miami detectives.
The movie catapulted all three onto the Hollywood movie A-list. Lawrence then bounced straight off into some frankly terrible comedies, with not even the frankly terrible but successful Bad Boys II (2003) being able to redeem him.
Bay continued to do well right up until The Island (2005), which flopped horribly. Bay took away precisely the wrong lesson from its failure – no more intellectually interesting content (the first half), only smash-crash-brain dead content (the second half), for his films in the future. After that, there was no saving him as a director.
Smith’s career continued to be strong for longer, right up until 2013 when he made the mistake of starring with his son in After Earth. Since then, he’s had numerous flops, but his career has started to head back towards more stellar heights of late. And now he’s returned to where it started for him – the second sequel to Bad Bays, Bad Boys for Life (2019).
Lawrence is back, too, but you’ll be glad to hear that the only thing Michael Bay has to do with Bad Bays for Life is that he makes an acting cameo as a wedding announcer.
I’ll let you know if it’ll do anything for anyone’s career after the trailer and the jump.
Yes, a day late. Would you have expected anything else from me of late? But this really is only temporary – my workload should finally be abating a tad next week, so WHYBW should be back on Monday again.
In the past week, I did manage to review the first episode of Perry Mason (US: HBO; UK: Sky Atlantic), but that was it. Not that there was much new TV last week, so actually that was a pretty high success rate.
I’ve got one more episode further into season 3 of Baron Noir, so the end is nearly in sight. I also finished the first episode of season 2 of Das Boot, but rather than try to boxset that, I’ve learned my lesson – I’m adding that to the regulars and trying to do one episode a week. Should have thought of that with Baron Noir, shouldn’t I?
I’ve also started on season 3 of Dark. I’m pleased that three episodes in, the thing I was worried about at the end of season 2 has simply led to even more of the same as before, rather than shark-jumping. However, the whole show has now become in the process even more infinitely complicated. Somehow.
There’s no point trying to review it episode by episode, so I’ll try to Boxset that for next week. Once I’ve finished reading some Cliff Notes about Schopenhauer. It’s that kind of show.
There’s a new New Zealand TV show out: Head High. That’s about secondary school rugby, though, so the chances of me loving it are small (I had enough of secondary school rugby at secondary school). But let’s see what happens.
Warrior Nun starts on Netflix on Thursday, so I might give that a try. But that seems to be all the new shows out this week. As usual, don’t be too surprised if I missed something and a surprise review pops up, though.
We’ve also watched another Disney movie: Aladdin (2019). Hopefully, I can Covideodrome that, along with Bad Boys For Life (2019) some time this week. Coming to Disney+ on Friday, though, are Hamilton (a recording of the theatrical performance) and Frozen 2 (2019), so I’m pretty sure they’re going to be our weekend viewing – and next week’s Covideodrome offerings.
After the jump, reviews of the latest episodes of Condor and Stargirl, as well as the aforementioned Das Boot. Doom Patrol and The Twilight Zone both returned last week, so I’ll be covering them, too. See you in a mo.
Continue reading “What have you been watching? Including Doom Patrol, The Twilight Zone and Das Boot”
There’s been a late addition to the 19th July schedules at Talking Pictures. Airing at 6am is Night Prowl, a ‘lost’ 1958 sitcom pilot that aired as part of Studio 57, in which Dennis O’Keefe plays the editor of music magazine Take 5 – and solves crimes as a side line. Guest stars are Dennis Day, Bethel Leslie and Ray Anthony.
I also appreciate I’ve not been too comprehensive in my schedule-checking, so I’ve had a quick data mine of the schedules for June and July. Starting/being repeated at some point are the following shows: Hannay, Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans, Jack the Ripper (the mini-series with Michael Caine and Lewis Collins), Rooms, Special Branch, and Target: The Corruptors! Some of those have already started, in fact, so rush to the Talking Pictures schedules page to see when you can see them, as I’m in a rush.
All the same, that brings everything up to date – only new things from now on! Well, new old things, obviously…
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