Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Alien: Earth"

Babou Ceesay as Morrow, the cybernetic Inspector Javert figure of Alien: Earth. (F/X)

On today’s Pop Culture Happy Hour I had a gay old time (double) jawin’ with Glen Weldon and Joelle Monique about Alien: Earth, an attempt by Legion and Fargo showrunner Noah Hawley to implant a feature-film embryo into a prestige-TV host body.

"The Naked Gun," denuded.

Liam Neeson has a very particular set of briefs in The Naked Gun. (Paramount)

Funny is back, baby. My Washington City Paper review of The Naked Gun ‘25 is here.

Supermen Return

Lex Capacitor: Nicholas Hoult and David Corenswet are archenemies. (Jessica Miglio)

I have a piece in the Paper of Record today running down the sordid history of the first Superman movie franchise, the one that started with Richard Donner’s iiimperfect masterpiece. Is that a contradiction? Let us agree to disagree.

And here’s a deleted scene, of sorts, from the piece, addressing the 2006 “Donner cut” of Superman II, which was released on home video only once the rights issues around Marlon Brando’s footage were resolved so his voice and likeness as Jor-El could be used in Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns that same year:

When the contractual issues regarding Brando’s participation were settled so that director Bryan Singer could use the Brando footage from 1977 in 2006’s Superman Returns, film editor Michael Thau took the opportunity the assemble “The Donner Cut” of Superman II, a curio that draws upon unseen footage from the late-seventies production — and even, in one instance, a screen test of Kidder and a scrawny Reeve, who’d not yet bulked up into Kryptonian shape — to offer a rough approximation of what Donner had intended some 25 years earlier.

Fourth Time's the Charm: "The Fantastic Four: First Steps," reviewed.

When it comes to putting First Family of Marvel Comics in the movies, the fourth time’s the charm. My Washington Post review of Fantastic Four: First Steps is here.

Talking "Superman" '78 on The Next Picture Show

I’m on the marvelous podcast The Next Picture Show! I recorded my appearance last Wednesday night live from my parents’ kitchen, while my dad was in Fair Oaks hospital, and my brother, who’d just flown in from Tokyo, dozed on the sofa in the living room. Which prevented me from asking him to leave the TV off for three hours while NPS regulars Genevieve Koski, Keith Phipps, and Tasha Robinson and I discussed Richard Donner’s 1978 Superman and James Gunn’s 2025 Superman — the subject of the next Next Picture Show — in one marathon session. I was filling in for Scott Tobias, and not one of us thought to exclaim, “Great Scott!” That’s negligence, if not malpractice.

Hail to the Chiefs: Ranking the Ten Most Two-Fisted Action Movie Presidents

“A reunion of the blue-chip screenwriting-and-directing duo of Tony Kushner and Steven Spielberg, and a showcare for the generational acting skills of Daniel Day-Lewis — sorry, that was 2012’s other Lincoln movie, which in focusing on the final three months of our most-revered president’s life omitted every one the Illinois statesman’s totally sick vampire kills.’”

So many jokes had to come out of my Washington Post ranking of the ten most two-fisted action-movie presidents.

Undead Reckoning: "28 Years Later," reviewed.

You can trust him; he’s a doctor. Ralph Fiennes in 28 Years Later.

I don’t know if I need two more of these in the next couple of years, but 28 Years Later, the reunion of director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Alex Garland 23 year after their influential zombie flick 28 Days Later, is pretty great. My Washington City Paper review is here.

Snatching Defeat from the "Jaws" of Victory: A Chronicle of Sequels Unremembered

Can’t believe I forgot to mention that Jaws 3D heel Simon MacCorkindale starred in a short-lived NBC series about a shapeshifting crimefighter called Manimal that premiered two months after the shark three-quel hit cinemas.

Can’t believe I forgot to mention that the boat The Widow Brody uses to impale Jaws the Fourth in Jaws: The Revenge was named Neptune’s Folly.

I did remember to mention that J:TR cast member Mario Van Peebles directed a film 40 years after Jaws called U.S.S. Indianapolis: Men of Courage that dramatized the events Robert Shaw related in his immortal monologue from Jaws, but that was cut for space. Anyway, my contribution to the Paper of Record’s Jaws anniversary package — The Sequels, and a unified theory of sequelology — is here.