Alien Nation (1988)

Los Angeles, 1991. A year after a massive alien spacecraft lands in the Mojave Desert, a population of 300,000 humanoid aliens - known as "Newcomers" - have settled in the city. A human police detective, Matthew Sykes (James Cann), is teamed with the police department's first Newcomer detective George Francisco (Mandy Patinkin) on a homicide investigation.

Science fiction is a great genre for allegory, and that's pretty much what we are dealing with in Alien Nation. It is, for all intents and purposes, a buddy cop movie with a focus on Los Angeles racism, but rather than pick up racism against Latinx or African-American communities it fictionalises the issue completely.

It is a rather clever conceit, and the Newcomers themselves look great in terms of make-up design, and it work very well to paper over the tremendously stereotypical cops-versus-drug-lords narrative underneath.

The Pull List: 30 November 2016

I have a rather ambivalent reaction to comic book annuals, since they usually only exist to fill in gaps in the weekly schedule when a month has a fifth week. They're longer than a usual book, sure, but in recent years that doesn't mean more story but rather more splash pages and a lower panel-per-page count. That is certainly the case with Superman Annual #1, the first DC annual (along with Batman, see below the cut) for the DC Rebirth period. The story is short, but the page count is comparatively long. In the end I feel somewhat ripped off by the US$4.99 price tag.

It must be said that Jorge Jimenez's artwork does a pretty sensational job, despite my general dislike of big splash pages and low panel counts. Superman investigates the disappearance of water from the farmland around his home, and stumbles upon Swamp Thing - who has arrived because he has sensed this new Superman is not properly connected to the world he inhabits. In true superhero fashion there is a misunderstanding and they wind up fighting. Plotwise it is pretty ordinary stuff. It does tease a bit of the slow-developing Rebirth arc, but not in any particularly intriguing way. It is a nice combination of characters, however, and does a reasonably entertaining job. I just wish DC would do a better job with their annuals than this: I want either a longer story, or a couple of shorter ones, and not just a normal length one-shot inflated by big pictures. (2/5)

Superman Annual #1. DC Comics. Written by Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason. Art by Jorge Jimenez. Colours by Alejandro Sanchez.

Under the cut: reviews of Batman, Black Widow, Doctor Who: The Third Doctor, MASK, Ms Marvel, Saga and Seven to Eternity.

Star Trek: The Next Generation: "Relics"

It is 12 October 1992, and time for another episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

The Enterprise stumbles upon a dyson sphere, a huge spherical construction enclosing an entire star and producing a staggering large living environment on the sphere's interior surface. Embedded into the exterior of the sphere is a 75 year-old Starfleet vessel, with its transporter still recycling the same pattern. When La Forge (LeVar Burton) successfully beams the pattern out of the transporter, it is revealed to be legendary engineer Captain Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (James Doohan) - decades out of his own time.

After the huge success found in bringing Spock to The Next Generation is Season 5, the same trick is attempted again in "Relics". Scotty comes to the 24th century and is immediately paired up with his future replacement Geordi La Forge. At the same time the episode plays with the idea of the dyson sphere, which is one of my favourite pieces of 'out there' engineering concepts. In the end neither concept seems to get exploited quite as well as it could have been, but there is still an awful lot of fun to be had in watching Scotty interact with the Next Generation characters.

Perfume: Game (2008)

Game is the debut album of Japanese vocal group Perfume, released back in 2008 to fairly mixed to positive reviews. The album was produced by electronic musician and composer Yasutaka Nakata, whose own band Capsule have been performing since 1997. It was Nakata who developed Perfume's 'technopop' sound: electronic music, strong beats and digitally transformed vocals.

It is clear on the first listen of Game that French electronic duo Daft Punk was an influence. The two bands share a similar pace, tone and melodic style. Like Daft Punk, Perfume have a relatively homogeneous sound. It is possible, if you enjoy the general sound of the band, to play it in the background and simply let the album flow from one upbeat pop number to the next. Assessing the relative quality of each individual song comes down to which ones have the best combination of beats and specific sounds. If this kind of ultra-cute Japanese electronic pop does not appeal in the first place, none of the songs on Game will likely change your mind.

The Treasure of Abbot Thomas (1974)

It is 23 December 1974, and time for another Ghost Story for Christmas.

The Reverend Justin Somerton (Michael Bryant) is a medieval scholar investigating the apparent hidden treasure of the Abbot Thomas - a priest in the Middle Ages accused of demon worship.While aided by his young protege Lord Peter Dattering (Paul Lavers), Somerton's research appears to awaken unearthly and unwelcome powers from beneath the church.

I recently mentioned in a review of The Stone Tape just how impressive and underrated an actor Michael Bryant appears to be. Here he is again, delivering a sterling lead performance in this excellent short horror feature. At 37 minutes in length, it does not have much time to tell its story, and so it boldly dives in without an unnecessary moment in it. The short feature is a near-impossible length of movie to sell commercially, and so it's commendable that the BBC dedicated so much time in the 1970s to such productions.

Pink and Gray (2016)

In the opening moments of Pink and Gray, a new film by director Ikao Yukisada, we watch a young woman lead a contemporary dance troupe. At the same time an impeccably well dressed young man in an expensive apartment climbs onto a stool, wraps a rope around his neck and hangs himself. A friend arrives and discovers the body, as well as six separate suicide notes sealed in envelopes and an invitation for the friend to choose one - and only one - to act as the victim's final words. That is one hell of an opening hook.

Before we can process what has actually happened, we are thrown back 14 years to the childhood of the two friends. We follow them into adolescence and adulthood, where they are spotted by a talent scout one day and invited to become part-time models and extras. One friend, Gotch (Yuto Nakajima), immediately finds success and becomes a major film and television star. The other, Daiki (Masaki Suda), struggles and largely fails. The contrast in their lives begins to tear their lengthy friendship apart. Between them is a third friend, the aspiring artist Sari (Kaho), who enters into a troubled relationship with Daiki during his career collapse.

That is honestly as far as this film can be discussed without ruining some of its best surprises. The bottom line is that Pink and Gray is a surprisingly inventive and unexpected sort of film that stands head-and-shoulders above other Japanese idol dramas.

The Angriest: November 2016 in review

I was underwhelmed by Class, the BBC's new Doctor Who spin-off series, so much so in fact that I still haven't watched past the first episode. That still didn't stop my review of that one episode from being the most-viewed post on The Angriest in November. Now that the series is almost over, I'd actually be interested in hearing other people's thoughts on whether or not they liked the show and if it improves after the first middling episode.

Other popular posts this past month included reviews of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes "Realm of Fear" and "The Inner Light", as well as two instalments of The Pull List reviews column - one headlined by Ms Marvel, the other by The Sheriff of Babylon. All up, in November The Angriest reviewed five 2016 films, five older films, 10 TV episodes, one anime episode, four music albums and 54 comic books. Thanks for reading.

A full breakdown of November's posts is included below the cut.

Star Trek: "The Next Generation: "Man of the People"

It is 5 October 1992, and time for another episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Counselor Troi (Marina Sirtis) begins acting strangely after she meets an alien diplomat sent to negotiate a badly-needed peace treaty. She becomes highly sexualised, jealous and ages rapidly. I would go on with the synopsis, but to be honest it is a superficial, simple and blindingly obvious story that is not very entertaining to watch.

In the production team's defence, they were making TV drama at a time when they were required to produce 26 episodes every year. That's a tall order, and not all of those resulting episodes are going to be winners. It's inevitable that a few low-quality ones will get across the line, and very occasionally an absolute stinker will make it too. It is usually an issue of time: there's simply so much pressure to get the episode made that now and then one goes through without a script that works.