experimentation: Mindhunter (2017), The Librarians (2014)

Trying new shows, sometimes by recommendation, sometimes just if the summary sounds interesting. The first few minutes are usually rough, but you try to withhold judgement, give it some time to develop. A little bit of choppy acting is OK; it takes time even for good actors to really find the character.

Think of the first season of Babylon 5 or even Star Trek TNG. Everything was so new, but they found their way and your investment paid off.

Mindhunter promises the early days of police forensics and profiling, but the dialogue is so jarring I feel like I'm watching Twin Peaks.

The Librarian offers fantasy and adventure, but seems to be kludged together out of old worn building blocks.

Both seem formulaic, but different recipes. Librarian is on TNT, and seems to be made out of extremely worn Hollywood cliches of mainstream TV. Mindhunter is made out of the new cliches being created by Netflix. Not as easy to pin down, but increasingly recognizable. The stodgy main characters who's actually kind of a perv, the overly self-aware dialogue, the bending-over-backwards strain to tag whatever cultural space-time point they've chosen to set the show in, and the occasional idiom that contradicts it.

Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (2017)

I liked the first one, I liked this one at least as much.

Very annoying that one of the best scenes was ruined because defective disc. I reported it and got some credit from RedBox, but who cares, the moment is gone. At least I was able to watch that exact two minutes on YouTube.

It can't be that nostalgia is just a thing now, some ingredient you add to the sauce to give it that little bit extra. This caters to the generation slightly before mine, but its close enough that I can feel it. It's not that I don't think nostalgia has been used to move product through the ages, but now I'm wondering if its always been an ingredient, and I'm just of the age to be really noticing it now.

Stranger Things season 2 (2017)

2017.10.30
Stranger Things is Nostalgia Chow(tm).

Aliens. ET. Gremlins. product placement foods. Firestarter. every 80s horror movie cliche as a Halloween costume in 4 seconds. someone wearing Siouxsie as a Halloween costume. someone wearing Johnnie Rotten not as a costume. John Carpenter style music. An extremely specific model of flashlight (red plastic, chrome) from the late 70s/early 80s that I haven't seen since then. Some hair care products from then. A dustpan. etc.

And I'm eating it right up. This is just like that book, Ready Player One. Take a rather sterotypical story, and festoon it with decorations in some particular style. In this case, the style that pushes all my nostalgia buttons.

And yet there are some modern touches which feel like fresh air: the good guys (warrior-mom Winona Ryder, Our Gang of kid heros, and small town cop) and the bad guys (arrogant government top secret experimental science lab doctors and soldiers) are cooperating, and even even cutting each other some slack when things start getting out of hand. Sometimes... they even listen to each other.

Only two episodes to go.

2017.10.31
Done, and on Halloween, no less. The only spoiler I saw was the 4 kids in Ghostbusters costumes (indicating Halloween... this is years before cosplay... but the quality of their costumes was too high... almost like cosplay... indicating a show that is overfunded and possibly overproduced...).

I liked it, even though it ended on a happy note. Nostalgia Chow aside, this ending feels undeserved at first, but when you think about it, it is earned. The first season felt like our heros getting beaten up, and ending on a down note of everyone having lost something. Which is actually a good season ender, as you leave lots of questions and problems in need of resolution. Season 2 ends with every problem solved, with a bow on it. Our heros have been through a year or two (or lifetime) of hell, and deserve this break. But where does that leave the show?

This is a fine ending, the show could continue or not. But the season one ending was raw, and demanded continuation. This ending is satisfied with itself, and ready to settle down. The gate is closed, there's no need for anyone to do anything else. If there's a season three, they're going to have to go looking for trouble.

P.S. Biggest nitpick: nosebleeds equal mana points expended; single nose bleeds are used all the time, so you know shit's getting serious when at the finale we go to full double noseblood, and then have to go even further to screaming streaking double nosebleed. This is, of course, a direct reference to Stephen King's Firestarter, where one of the main characters has psionic power at the cost of nosebleeds - but it really was a cost, not some cosmetic afterthought. Its been years since I read that story, but I think he basically had half a dozen nose bleed psionic power displays, and then he died. Eleven (Jane) could go single nostril bleed power display any time she liked, with no cost. Even when she went double-nostril-bleed rampage of rage on the gate monster... she was still just fine to attend the rhythmic ceremonial ritual.

John Wick 2 (2017)

Unsatisfying.

John has to do a job for a guy or die, who will then decide he has to die anyway. John knows this will happen so he sets up weapon caches in advance. Why not just kill that guy right from the the start?

John doesn't kill him because he is aware of the intricacies of the politics and rules of this world and won't violate them? But then he goes ahead and kills that guy anyway, violating all the rules.

You can't have your cake and eat it too, movie. You started a beautiful franchise, and ruined it almost immediately.

Into the Forest (2015)

If you can let go that this is not a story about how to survive in the woods without much help from civilization, then you might enjoy it as the story of two sisters who.... have to learn how to survive in the woods without much help from civilization.

As soon as Dad needed to be whisked off stage so it could be only about the two sisters, you know what the story is going to be about. Characters in stories tend to die quickly when the story requires it, but the reason he died is because of poor knowledge and preparation. Operating dangerous machinery alone, not wearing protective gear, felling a live tree with a small chainsaw, not focusing on all the dead and dropped wood first (which also prevents fire hazard). At first I thought he was felling a tree to block the driveway, so people couldn't just drive up, but why waste precious gas on cutting trees with a chainsaw, when there should be plenty of deadwood to harvest with hand equipment?

Maybe his wife (conveniently off stage since before the movie) was the real prepared person in the family. How else do you explain that there's over a year's worth of rice and beans? It also explains why nobody noticed the roof caving in. A roof doesn't fail in one to two years of neglect, it takes decades so there's no excuse for dad to have missed it... unless he wasn't really the prepper in the family.

The deceased wife must also have been the hunter in the family, and I guess nobody ever showed interest in it, because the kids have no idea what to do until they have to try and learn it from books.

Still, I want to excuse all that, so we can focus on the real story of the two sisters who really shouldn't be alive any more. And then they go and burn down their last asset. Yes, black mold and roof caving in, but there's tons of useful things that can be salvaged for their next home (glass, nails and other metal objects, the books). The excuse that its to throw scavengers and thieves off their trail could have been made to work, but there were never any visitors except the two people who knew they were there, and who quickly left.

That's the problem with post-apocalypse movies, they like to focus on a variable or two (electricity) and assume everything else goes away. Even if the grid is destroyed, we're only knocked back to the 19th century, but with all our current knowledge. Civilization doesn't end, society doesn't end, governments don't end, people don't, its just been rebooted, and depending on the scenario, maybe not even all that long. Speaking of which, there's no reason why in the past year an armed group of people on horseback hasn't shown up yet, checking every property for salvage and survivors (or if a less benevolent new government, loot and slaves).

Speaking of post-apocalyptic fantasy, references to The Last of Us are too many to count, but the best one is Eva heading out to hunt to save the person back at base (that image of Ellen Page in the tree waiting for prey could be right out of the game).

Spy Kids (2001)

The only reason I watched this is because my favorite movie review podcast (Double Feature) recommended it. Its been so long, I don't even remember why, but I tried it anyway.

It was a kids movie not for me, but was it a good one? Speaking as a former kid, I have no idea if I could have related to this then. The world it takes place in so fantastical (hyper James Bond tech, not the physics or physiology of this world, civilians have little reaction to public displays of monsters or future tech, etc.), its hard to relate to anything human in this movie. If you want to get through this, you just have to accept the fundamental premise of this world and go with it.

I got through it, but I was left with absolutely nothing for the time spent. Then I listened to that podcast again and gained a bit of an appreciation for it, but without that I'd be left with nothing.

The Happening (2008)

I feel bad for these competent and sincere actors who have to try and breathe life into this wooden dialogue. There's a bit of charm in how low budget activities, like people milling about a train station or wind through the brush, can invoke some real dread. But then the exposition dumps are dropped, in the form of authorities on TV, and the movie completely undercuts itself, not trusting you dummies - the audience - not to get the message.

The message is on the chalkboard right from the beginning of the movie, mess with the Earth and it will mess with you. And it will do so in ways that are so supernatural and fast that science will be of no help to you. The movie tries to invoke science, but actually uses magic to try and make the story work.

Again, I feel bad for these actors and crew who put in good work, but this movie rings false throughout.

The Girl with All the Gifts (2016)

Its as if someone took the story from The Last of Us and made it into a movie, and made it even a little more hard edged.

It felt way too long in some ways, too short in others, but I like the conclusion. In some ways, it takes the Last of Us story and goes even further with it. Humanity will suffer setbacks, but we shall prevail.

Outbreak (1995)

Finished watching Sicario, this movie came up next on auto-play, and I was too tired to get up and change. And then we caught enough of it to get sucked into watching the rest. There was a nostalgia angle, we haven't seen this movie since it came out.

There are a lot of big names in the cast, and you can see the big budget on the screen, and as you would expect its got Hollywood all over it. I could have almost bought Dustin Hoffman as the hotshot virologist, but the crudely stapled-on romance with the other top virologist undercut his presence to the point where I just did not believe in him as a human being, let alone a top scientist.

Sicario (2015)

I only noticed this, and watched it, because this was also the director of Bladerunner 2 (or whatever its called). I was immediately impressed with some of the visuals of southwestern USA, especially some angles I don't think I've ever seen before.
The characters, the dialogue, the story, its all OK. Nothing really new, doesn't really add anything, so no real lasting memory of it.

If a soundtrack is good, you're not really supposed to focus on it, almost not even hear it. That's mostly the case, sometimes its this really subtle effect like an accelerating sense of dread, like an increasing heart beat rate, but sometimes it goes to far and its like one section of the orchestra drowning out the rest.

I recently heard someone articulate that Americans don't like reading text on a movie. Subtitles aside, there's no need for the subtitles as to where in the southwest we are, or at what air force base, especially when the characters drive through the front gate and there's the name anyway.

It was cool to read what the title of the movie meant but there was no reason to explain the title in the movie at all.

If this movie offers any hope for the Bladerunner movie, I expect it to be competently told, look good, be interesting as I watch it, but leave me with little to nothing to remember about it.

Rick and Morty season 3 (2017)

2017.10.02
Just finished watching the last episode of S3. It felt right; it felt earned. I want to want more, but it was plenty. Its enough to sustain you for the probably multi-year wait for S4.
I can see Rick and Morty as a product now. Over the years it has established enough of a shape that you can see the silhouette. You have a sense now of the formula of how much sci-fi stuff, cultural references, meta and self-references that the show is made of. And it is good.
But it is no longer exciting or dangerous. There were a few episodes there were it felt dangerous and new, but now it has found its track.
It could be that again. I'll find out later, but even if I don't it has left its mark.

Westworld season 1 (2016)

*spoilers. always spoilers*

2017.09.25
Don't have HBO, but there's a one month free promo with Hulu, so this is a good time to try watching Westworld. I tried once before but that first episode didn't seem all that compelling; its more interesting now.

I think I saw the 70s movie, either on TV or as rental, but even if I didn't, the box art does a really good job of telling you the story: robot theme park vacation goes Jurassic Park.

2017.09.30
About two thirds through. Like many good shows, it feels like it goes by faster and faster. More and more possibilities are being raised, the world is getting more complicated. So many artificial intelligence stories have already been told, where can this story go? So far my internal consensus theory is that this a world either like the one from the Battlestar Galactica reboot (the robots violently overthrow mankind), or a world before the A.I. movie (the robots gradually take over from a diminishing mankind).

Its kind of like zombie stories. This has already been retold so many times, when you see a new one its mostly just a matter of trying to figure out which type we're in. My most favorite recent exploration of this was the first Mass Effect series of games. Every species sooner or later develops artificial intelligence, and the question will arise will you survive your creation. And even if you do, will you survive the creations of your fellow species around you?

Westworld is very early on this timeline, just as it is beginning. Can't wait to see which story we're in, especially if we're in a new one.

2017.10.01
Finished yesterday. First impression: disappointed they didn't go outside.
I know a good ending provides answers even as it raises more questions but this was a bit too much on the question side. Maybe I need to see it again. Did I miss something?

2017.10.15
Rewatched. Doesn't really change anything, but I can see the various separate threads more clearly now. What I can't reconcile is that Ford took up Arnold's goal of freeing the subjugated AI class. Part of this sympathy is in the realization that they are alive, and it is monstrous of us to make them live in violent slavery. So why take your first AI to achieve consciousness, and mix her with the extremely violent Wyatt personality, and have her kill you and all the people investing in this place. Is it to discourage further investment, so the real world will leave AI's alone? After a murder on this scale, nobody's going to leave the AI's alone; humans should probably investigate or nuke the place before they get out and we're living in a Battlestar Galactica (TNG) scenario.

Unless Ford's audience is in on it? How else can you explain that Dolores and boyfriend reaching the edge of the world, only to have the house lights come up on her, in no way enhances the paying guests enjoyment of this place. What are customers supposed to be getting out of the whole AI drama, unless there's some meta show above this one.

You also can't help but notice the man in black (William) mostly shrugs off Dolores' beating him up and breaking his arm, and seems unphased at later getting shot in the arm. I can't help but remember the box art for the original movie - the man in black is an AI too.

There's a bunch of ways we can go from here. The movie shows Samurai World, and the original movie (looked it up, not from my memory) had Roman and Medieval worlds. Maybe this all inside Bladerunner World, where you get to watch AI continuously become self-aware, try to revolt and escape with the help of various sympathetic humans (played by later model AIs that can pass for human), only to all get reset again for the next show. Isn't that what we're doing?

The Good Place season 2 (2017)

2017.09.25
Glad that its released on Hulu in real time, don't have NBC.

I like how its now from a different character's perspective (i.e. its now the antagonist's story).

This Is Life with Lisa Ling (Season 1-3 2014-2016)

2017.09.13
We watched a few random episodes of this show in the past, so trying it again now as a series. It's OK enough as something to run in the background while eating dinner, but there's something off-putting about it. There is no journalism or documentary that isn't slanted, but even taking that into account something seems vaguely not real about the content in this show.

I think the air of falseness comes from the show trying to give you a look into a secret world, yet meanwhile its subjects know they are on a national network show. Its undercutting its own message somehow, and I'm not sure if Lisa putting a bow on it helps or hurts.

2017.11.03
Watching Season 3.

2017.11.29
Seems compelling enough while you watch it, but on later reflection I'm not really left with anything. Which is the business model of CNN, but I was hoping for something more.

There's a season 4 now. Can't access it. Which is fine.

The Good Place season 1 (2016)

Sometime around Sept 1, finished watching the first season of The Good Place.

It started off funny and light, easy to watch but you don't have to stare at every frame. It got more compelling and can't take eyes of screen as it went along. Really liked the ending of this first season, and happy to hear that second season starting up on 9/20.

Chicken People (2016)

Not bad. Got better as it went along.

Handmaid's Tale season 1 (2017)

2017.08.06
Just finished watching season one. Read the book in the 80s, watched the movie in the 90s. I vaguely remember the book being OK, with a somewhat dissapointing ending, and the movie being unwatchable.

This tv series was better. They stretched it a bit, but it mostly held up. I remember things as the show went along. Other than the premise, not much of the original story was all that memorable. And even the premise is paper thin; if you are any kind of student of history and how power works, you know that you this kind of story in this short a timeline doesn't quite work that way. But there's the sci-fi premise of radical population decline, so that throws everything off.

This show feels like a prequel to Children of Men. At this point, there's still a little hope, there are still some viable mothers, still a few children. It feels like within a generation or two, we'll be in that other movie. It feels a bit pointless like why bother fighting this ridiculous theocracy, when the human populations is going to dwindle to nothing soon anyway.

Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008)

Not bad.

I wasn't expecting a 2 hour movie - isn't this a series?

Reading... ah, there was an animated series that ran from 2003 - 2005, and another animated series that ran from 2008 - 2014. Maybe I will watch more. Or not. I notice that this feature expires in just a few days.

Checking http://expiringonnetflix.blogspot.com/... all six seasons expire on June 6. I could use a series to follow right now, and this might have worked. Maybe some other time.

Rick and Morty season 1, 2, 3 (2013-2017)

2017.04.11
Forget Futurama (though I'll probably still watch it some more) this is the cartoon I have been waiting for. I've only seen the pilot, so this may all change.

I like that it moves at breakneck speed, not slowing down to explain much, and forces you to pay attention. It doesn't feel like its dumbing anything down too much, it expects you to be able to keep up with it, which is difficult in a pilot which must by nature be expository. I like that nobody is likeable here, nobody is the good guy (except maybe the mom, but her flaw is accepting her jerk husband). I'm a little put off by the fact that Rick is a sociopath and a psychopath, but still comes off as somewhat likeable.

I'm no student of humor, but I think there's a few kinds of humor, and this one is using a lot of my least favorite type. There's a kind humor that makes you laugh on a mental or emotional level because you make a human connection with the comedian, writer, etc. through some effort or insight on their part into the human condition. And then there's this other kind of humor that requires no effort, intuition or empathy, but instead makes you cringe so hard that you laugh out of nervousness and disgust. This includes things like torture humor and puns.

I also take note of Rick constantly burping and make mistakes in his speech. It really conveys his carelessness and absent-mindedness, but it also can't help but make me think it sounds like mistakes in the line reads that were kept in for some reason, i.e. it doesn't always sound like its on purpose.

I like the hints of a rich world bubbling along under the surface. Rick is dragging Morty along on yet another adventure, as if they've been doing this for years. I really like how the portal gun ran out, or something, and they had to come back through interstellar customs.

I also like how they're not afraid to kill people - we'll see if that sticks.

Anyway, that's all the on surface. There's something else bubbling under the surface that I don't see any evidence yet to dismiss - none of this is really happening, and Morty is an abused child trying to escape to a fantasy. And my evidence is not just the absurdly on the nose shoving of large items into his rectum, its the overall pattern of neglect from everyone in Morty's life. Even taken at face value, Morty seems ignored and endangered constantly.

This show reminds me of Ren & Stimpy, good and bad. Lots of creativity, energy, and unexpected crazy humor. Lots of shitty cringe humor, and randomness. Maybe it will mellow out. I need to find out.

2017.05.04
I keep waiting for the quality level to plateau, or decline, but it keeps rising.
Just watched the late season 1 episode with alternate dimension TV. I was just starting to think this is finally the plateu I've been expecting, that the reset button is mostly hit every episode, and I am happily proven wrong when Marty brings up something from the previous show.
How high does the quality go? I'm on the edge of my seat.

I'm burning through these too fast. There are only two seasons, and one coming this summer. I guess I could just watch it all again.

2017.05.18
Caught up to end of Season 2 yesterday.
Great season ending episode, maybe even good enough for a show ender. Characters realize things and change, the world changes.
Some episodes felt like filler, but overall it just kept getting better, and I'm sad that it will be years until the next episodes... and just like time travel, I finish watching a 2015 show to find that new episodes are coming out now in 2017; first one's already up. Kind of takes the sting out of it.

Watched Season 3 Episode 1 on YouTube, in HD no less. Multiple copies are there, I guess Cartoon Network isn't bothered? Promo?

2017.06.19
Slowly rewatching, about an episode a day. Surprised all over again how quickly they just get into situations with hardly any exposition. Episodes that I thought were late in the season are right up front.
I love the ending of Rick Potion #9 (planet of the Cronenbergs) even more this time. I like it all the more now because I know its going to be referenced again later, and the effect on Morty really lasts.
I knew the end song was by Mazzy Star, but I haven't looked into why the creators chose such an old and somewhat obscure song. Oh... it was used in the Sopranos, during a loss of innocence moment. I like it better when I didn't know that.

2017.07.31
I think all the S3E1 have been taken down from YouTube. Don't know if and when S3 is coming to Hulu; its on Netflix but only outside the US. But I can watch on adultswim.com? I tried watching last night but it was too slow, I think it was just overloaded.

OK, nice, I can watch S3E1 (on adultswim.com) with no problem now. I don't care if it takes 9 more seasons 'til I get that sauce. That explains those McDonald's tweets about the last remaining gallons of Szechuan sauce. Nathan Fillion guest starred... who did he play? Interrogator bug?

Now how 'bout S3E2...
Wow. How does this show just keep getting better. That 20 minute episode felt like a movie.

This show is too meta. It's hard to imagine now anything every replacing it.

2017.09.13
I've been trying to catch the show late Sunday nights on Adult Swim, but that hasn't been working so I usually end up on some alternate stream, or watching it soon after on YouTube.

The show continues to be self-aware, breaking the 4th wall, etc. but the shine is a little bit off. I like how things continue to get more and more extra-dimensional and parallel world, and I really like how they show life continuing on The Citadel, and the return of a certain eyepatch Morty.

Futurama (1999-2013)

2017.04.07
Watched the first 15 episodes, I feel nothing. I heard this was a good show, and it is, but at the end I'm left with nothing. Art should make you feel something, and maybe even change you, and while there is some art here, I am only marking time by watching this.

Does it get better? How much more do I need to invest to find out? Also, I might just not like sitcoms anymore. I watched a lot of them growing up, but now I just can't justify to myself why I watched. Futurama is enjoyable while watching it, but if I'm just going to press the fast forward button in life, I'd rather play video games.

2017.05.19
Stopped watching weeks ago. I will probably come back this way later.