GLASS SEEMS FRAGILE
But it’s looking half full of debuts on the small screen, Chris Lackner writes.
MOVIES
Big release on Jan. 18: Glass
Big picture: M. Night Shyamalan fooled us all. Audiences entered 2016’s Split not knowing (spoiler alert) it was the unofficial sequel to 2000’s Unbreakable. Glass finds Unbreakable everyman David Dunn (Bruce Willis) continuing to set his superhero sights on Kevin Wendell Crumb (James Mcavoy), as both are manoeuvred by Elijah Price (Samuel L. Jackson) — a.k.a. Mr. Glass — who is again motivated to prove real superhuman heroes and villains exist.
Forecast: This Glass will prove Shyamalan’s career isn’t unfixable. (Go with what works, buddy.) I predict a straight-up sequel to The Sixth Sense. Then again, the director has a track record for making poor decisions. He could also elect to “gift” us with a superhero movie in which Willis can only speak to tooth fairies who help him stop an alien invasion because the aliens end up being allergic to teeth and pixie dust — and the whole movie happens in a fake pioneer village, or an angry, toxic forest, or a mermaid’s swimming pool … or whatever. He’ll think of something nonsensical.
TV
Big events: The Passage (Jan. 14, Fox); Roswell, New Mexico
(Jan. 15, Showcase/the CW); Star Trek: Discovery (Jan. 17, Space; Jan. 18, Cravetv); Deadly Class (Jan. 16, Space); Black Monday (Jan. 20, Cravetv)
Big picture: Deadly Class is my dark horse pick of the week.
It’s Harry Potter meets Kill Bill meets The Breakfast Club. Based on the graphic novel series, it follows Marcus (Benjamin Wadsworth), a homeless teen recruited to attend a secret private school run by the world’s top crime bosses. Their goal: to train the assassins, spies and thugs of the next generation. Gym class has way more hand-to-hand combat than you remember, and biology has been replaced by Poison 101.
Star Trek: Discovery beams back for season 2. New members of this TV crew include a young Spock (Ethan Peck), original USS Enterprise captain Christopher Pike (Anson Mount) and Rebecca Romijn as No. 1, Pike’s first officer.
Speaking of aliens, Roswell (1999-2002) is reborn as Roswell, New Mexico — with more alien-human love triangles and cover-ups. The first Roswell gifted us with a young Katherine Heigl; it could never guess that future co-stars would come to feel she lives on another planet. Meanwhile, Black Monday is a promising Don Cheadle comedy set during the Wall Street crash of 1987.
Finally, The Passage offers hope to supernatural network dramas — in as much as it stays somewhat true to author Justin Cronin’s superb, genre-twisting, dystopian vampire series. Mark-paul Gosselaar stars as a federal agent who becomes the unlikely guardian of a 10-yearold girl he illegally recruited for a secret government experiment that could unlock the secrets to eliminating all disease — or could create creatures that make Bram Stoker’s Dracula look like a Boy Scout (albeit one with badges for blood-sucking, shape-shifting and stalking people named Mina). Forecast: I predict a Star Trek: Roswell crossover in which a young, time-travelling Spock crashes in the New Mexican desert only to spend most of his time attending a local high school, falling in love with mortal women to the backdrop of heartbreaking indie music and Vulcan nerve-pinching all deserving jocks and government agents.
MUSIC
Big releases on Jan. 18: Whitehorse (The Northern South Vol. 2); Deerhunter (Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared?); Juliana Hatfield (Weird)
Big picture: Whitehorse, comprising a Canadian indie rock power couple Luke Doucet and Melissa Mcclelland, releases a sequel to The Northern South Vol 1. Get ready for more inspiring, unique reinventions of blues classics from the talented duo. Covers take on legendary tracks by Howlin’ Wolf and Jimmy Reed and traditional songs like John the Revelator and St. James Infirmary.
Meanwhile, Deerhunter releases its eighth album Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? — which is exactly what much of the Western world has been thinking since Nov. 9, 2016. The band has promised “a science-fiction album about the present” that’s “concerned with the disappearance of culture, of humanity, of nature, of logic and emotion.” Logic and emotion?! Sounds like young Spock has his indie soundtrack for Earthly love in Roswell!
Hatfield releases Weird, her followup to an acclaimed album of Olivia Newton-john covers (so let’s just call this album Weird 2).
Forecast: One listen and you’ll eagerly await The Northern South Vol. 3.