I've been hearing about this movie on and off for years, had some vague notion to see it if it was ever convenient. Tonight, it was.
It was OK. It was kind of pleasant and easy to watch, but I am not left with much to take away. Maybe that will come later, but at least its checked off my list.
I was expecting a little more NJ for something titled Garden State. The rampant drug use, random mixed poverty and wealth, and luscious greens were all spot on though.
Monday, July 30, 2018
Sunday, June 3, 2018
Alien: Covenant (2017)
TL;DR = whoever is running the Alien franchise hates science and reason and needs to be curb stomped.
I remember how much Prometheus sucked (how did that movie even make money) so I was on guard for the sequel. Avoiding spoilers, preliminary reports indicated more of the same suck. So I'm only watching this because its on HBO and costs me nothing extra, and I was tired of looking for something else to watch.
It sucks. A little less at first, but then it gets sucked into a black hole of suck. I keep getting tricked that this might be a sci-fi movie, and might try to do something remotely smart, but its always a horror movie, and it just needs to keep setting up the next scare, no matter the cost.
Once I realize this, I can kind of let go. But the sci-fi trappings still have a hook in me. In the Alien universe, human ships always seem to have a synthetic on board. On a ship the size and importance of a colony ship with 2000+ people, why only have one? Why not have 100? And why keep only one active at a time, when you could have several online at once, so if there is an emergency they can be all over it (and they could keep an eye on each other for "Three Laws of Robotics" violations). And if more help is needed they can uncrate more of themselves as needed without ever waking up a colonist.
A new planet is found (because of a distress signal) that is just as viable if not more so than the potential colony site they are headed for. Why wouldn't they want to check it out? And yet they make the captain seem crazy for just wanting to check it out.
Speaking of the crew, these people seem like random civilians who were shoehorned into the executive positions. There is nothing professional or disciplined about them. Who in their right mind would entrust these people to run a fast food franchise location, let alone a big colony ship that must have cost a fortune to build?
So they get to the planet, to check it out. So far, I'm OK with this. Then they immediately send down a lander with half the command staff. What!? Why not orbit for a while, and collect data? And only after you have all that info (take a month at least, what's the hurry), send down drones to collect more data, and then send down a team of synths to collect even more data. And only then start risking humans. And then, not the top leadership (such as it is).
And even if you do send down humans, why trust the magically Earth-like environment? Why not wear suits until you have completed the biological survey, at the least? I'm glad to see they make a nod at least to a bio assay, but very late into the game, and seemingly as an afterthought.
And then the orbital crew starts making increasingly dumb risks to try and save the field crew, who should rightly be expendable in comparison to the ship. There are night managers at convenience stores who wouldn't make this many bad decisions this quickly. At this point I shut off the TV.
I know, its horror, not sci-fi. I hope I don't get bored enough to start it up again. I did like the interaction between old and new model synthetics, so that bit of acting might be worth it.
Future me, if you are reading this, don't come back this way. You have been warned.
I remember how much Prometheus sucked (how did that movie even make money) so I was on guard for the sequel. Avoiding spoilers, preliminary reports indicated more of the same suck. So I'm only watching this because its on HBO and costs me nothing extra, and I was tired of looking for something else to watch.
It sucks. A little less at first, but then it gets sucked into a black hole of suck. I keep getting tricked that this might be a sci-fi movie, and might try to do something remotely smart, but its always a horror movie, and it just needs to keep setting up the next scare, no matter the cost.
Once I realize this, I can kind of let go. But the sci-fi trappings still have a hook in me. In the Alien universe, human ships always seem to have a synthetic on board. On a ship the size and importance of a colony ship with 2000+ people, why only have one? Why not have 100? And why keep only one active at a time, when you could have several online at once, so if there is an emergency they can be all over it (and they could keep an eye on each other for "Three Laws of Robotics" violations). And if more help is needed they can uncrate more of themselves as needed without ever waking up a colonist.
A new planet is found (because of a distress signal) that is just as viable if not more so than the potential colony site they are headed for. Why wouldn't they want to check it out? And yet they make the captain seem crazy for just wanting to check it out.
Speaking of the crew, these people seem like random civilians who were shoehorned into the executive positions. There is nothing professional or disciplined about them. Who in their right mind would entrust these people to run a fast food franchise location, let alone a big colony ship that must have cost a fortune to build?
So they get to the planet, to check it out. So far, I'm OK with this. Then they immediately send down a lander with half the command staff. What!? Why not orbit for a while, and collect data? And only after you have all that info (take a month at least, what's the hurry), send down drones to collect more data, and then send down a team of synths to collect even more data. And only then start risking humans. And then, not the top leadership (such as it is).
And even if you do send down humans, why trust the magically Earth-like environment? Why not wear suits until you have completed the biological survey, at the least? I'm glad to see they make a nod at least to a bio assay, but very late into the game, and seemingly as an afterthought.
And then the orbital crew starts making increasingly dumb risks to try and save the field crew, who should rightly be expendable in comparison to the ship. There are night managers at convenience stores who wouldn't make this many bad decisions this quickly. At this point I shut off the TV.
I know, its horror, not sci-fi. I hope I don't get bored enough to start it up again. I did like the interaction between old and new model synthetics, so that bit of acting might be worth it.
Future me, if you are reading this, don't come back this way. You have been warned.
Friday, May 18, 2018
Handmaid's Tale season 2 (2018)
2018.05.18
About halfway through the season - when did this show turn into torture porn? Did they do some testing and find that people really just want to watch our hero suffer and stare into space a lot? And because there's only so much of that you can do, we need to introduce B and C level characters who suffer even crueler fates?
2018.07
I don't know who the hero of this story is but the villain is June. Everyone she touches is made worse by the interaction. June routinely gets people to risk their lives at the wrong time and get stomped on for it. But June is a survivor, and often gets away with it with little more than an inconvenience.
Season two should have been an episode or two, and then on to the revolution. It felt really stretched. And yet this is Hulu's cash cow so of course it will be watered down some more and pushed out again.
About halfway through the season - when did this show turn into torture porn? Did they do some testing and find that people really just want to watch our hero suffer and stare into space a lot? And because there's only so much of that you can do, we need to introduce B and C level characters who suffer even crueler fates?
2018.07
I don't know who the hero of this story is but the villain is June. Everyone she touches is made worse by the interaction. June routinely gets people to risk their lives at the wrong time and get stomped on for it. But June is a survivor, and often gets away with it with little more than an inconvenience.
Season two should have been an episode or two, and then on to the revolution. It felt really stretched. And yet this is Hulu's cash cow so of course it will be watered down some more and pushed out again.
Lost In Space season 1 (2018)
2018.05.18
Saw episode one last night. It's not good, but its good enough. Those of us who want to watch sci-fi learn to lower the bar or go without. It might get better, but first impressions are usually mostly correct.
2018.07
I vaguely remember quitting on episode 2 or 3 as it got exponentially dumber.
Saw episode one last night. It's not good, but its good enough. Those of us who want to watch sci-fi learn to lower the bar or go without. It might get better, but first impressions are usually mostly correct.
2018.07
I vaguely remember quitting on episode 2 or 3 as it got exponentially dumber.
Monday, April 23, 2018
Westworld season 2 (2018)
2018.04.24
Resubscribe to HBO just to watch Westworld.
After the mysterious season one ender, there's a surprising amount of actual new information, but still no visit to the real world. More like the real world comes to us, in the form of soldiers and some salvage mission.
Now more than ever, you don't know who's human and who's a repli^H^H^H^H^H rob^H^H^H host. But now we've seen the hosts brain, and its a plasticy metally structure the size of an orange inside the skull - you'd think this would be trivial to scan for, even at a distance. These soldiers should have equipment that lets them easily do this, but the plot seems to require they don't.
The conversation between the man in black / park owner and the park operator / Anthony Hopkins as a kid felt really cool and pivotal to the story, and utterly undercut by the weird voice affect they decided to shoehorn in. It almost worked, but it was so overproduced I couldn't make out the words.
That was a very nice episode one, looking forward to next Sunday.
2018.05.18
About four or five episodes in. I've been wondering if the real world was going to be exotic or mundane, they went with mundane. I'm a little disappointed, I guess I wanted to see a clean and antiseptic utopia, to contrast the dirty and chaotic theme parks. Or maybe aliens. Well, there's still always time for it to turn out that the human race died long ago, and newer model A.I.s are playing with the old.
Just how real world is the theme park? It seems huge, and yet there's never any air traffic. Now that the park is in a state of emergency, why not send in the air cavalry to take back the park? Why isn't there a backup command center in case the inner one falls? Why isn't there a kill switch that would shut down every bot in the park. I'm still extending credit on suspension of disbelief, but I feel like I'm not going to get my money back.
2018.08
I guess I never wrote anything about the ending of season two? I guess it left that little of an impression on me. I'm not sure if this show is just flailing about, struggling to stretch the narrative to deal with unexpected success, or if they're actually going somewhere with this. I feel like its the second Matrix movie, where they are obviously starting to go off the rails, but we're hoping they can still save it.
Resubscribe to HBO just to watch Westworld.
After the mysterious season one ender, there's a surprising amount of actual new information, but still no visit to the real world. More like the real world comes to us, in the form of soldiers and some salvage mission.
Now more than ever, you don't know who's human and who's a repli^H^H^H^H^H rob^H^H^H host. But now we've seen the hosts brain, and its a plasticy metally structure the size of an orange inside the skull - you'd think this would be trivial to scan for, even at a distance. These soldiers should have equipment that lets them easily do this, but the plot seems to require they don't.
The conversation between the man in black / park owner and the park operator / Anthony Hopkins as a kid felt really cool and pivotal to the story, and utterly undercut by the weird voice affect they decided to shoehorn in. It almost worked, but it was so overproduced I couldn't make out the words.
That was a very nice episode one, looking forward to next Sunday.
2018.05.18
About four or five episodes in. I've been wondering if the real world was going to be exotic or mundane, they went with mundane. I'm a little disappointed, I guess I wanted to see a clean and antiseptic utopia, to contrast the dirty and chaotic theme parks. Or maybe aliens. Well, there's still always time for it to turn out that the human race died long ago, and newer model A.I.s are playing with the old.
Just how real world is the theme park? It seems huge, and yet there's never any air traffic. Now that the park is in a state of emergency, why not send in the air cavalry to take back the park? Why isn't there a backup command center in case the inner one falls? Why isn't there a kill switch that would shut down every bot in the park. I'm still extending credit on suspension of disbelief, but I feel like I'm not going to get my money back.
2018.08
I guess I never wrote anything about the ending of season two? I guess it left that little of an impression on me. I'm not sure if this show is just flailing about, struggling to stretch the narrative to deal with unexpected success, or if they're actually going somewhere with this. I feel like its the second Matrix movie, where they are obviously starting to go off the rails, but we're hoping they can still save it.
Thursday, April 12, 2018
Travelers season 1-2 (2016-2017)
2018.04.12
Three episodes in, it starts out promising.
Reminds me of Sense8 (diverse personalities and roles, becoming a team), Source Code (sending people into the past to change it or learn from it), Dollhouse (downloading new personalities), Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (sending personnel, equipment, and messages into the past to accomplish objectives). It also has a Vancouver kind of early seasons X-Files vibe, which may or may not be intentional.
Let's see where this goes.
2018.04.16
Spoilers, always on, but now especially. I just got to the episode where stuff is really starting to happen. It's been all setup, and now the various travelers are coming together to do something. And we learn a fair bit about what went wrong in their past, and why its so important to stop it.
I really like the engineer, except for the few moments where she needs to carry the idiot ball to create some tension. It's possibly the most important moment in human history, and she dismisses the help so she can stay behind and turn the switch herself. She's so adamant about doing things by the numbers, but she's willing to throw it all away to save a handful of lives who will probably be erased in a few minutes anyway?
Still, as frustratingly poorly written as that was, it was worth it to see one soldier after another get "possessed" until finally the boss bad guy seems to get what's going on, turns the gun on himself, only to be out of bullets, get possessed, and turn the key himself in a moment of triumph. You can almost see the slow mad scramble in the future as they line up people to go back and soak up the bullets and get the job done.
I was starting to get bored of this show as it veered into a procedural, and then it squarely brings it back into sci-fi. The fact that the team, after mission success, doesn't get erased is nice extra moment of awesome, but then you realize its a TV show, we've invested a lot into these actors and characters, and we can't just toss them away. I hope what comes next can live up to this.
2018.04.18
And another nice subversion, as you think a character is going one way, goes another way, and as it turns out the organization is not so dumb and had a contingency plan. Interesting that everyone present gets to vote on the fate of the traitor.
Its also an economical bit of storytelling that the person sent back to be a prisoner for life finds being a prisoner here more satisfying than being free in the future.
2018.04.22
Now that's a season ender. I like how things are getting more and more sci-fi. Of course the director is an AI, makes nothing but sense. Can't wait for season 2.
2018.05.08
Almost done with season two, and I feel a growing sadness that it will end soon. All the things I like about this show just keep on growing. I love how this show looks like it was made on TV show budget, but keeps out sci-fi'ing shows and movies with many times its budget. I like how much of the show is quiet and thoughtful, and doesn't fall into stupid writing and plot holes.
I search for travelers season three renew, and it looks like shooting started in March, so hopefully it will be less than a year from now before there's more.
2018.05.15
Finished season two. Good ending, it makes sense. I was just thinking earlier today that if any travelers were discovered they would seem like a terrorist cell. It only makes sense that their global pattern of activity would generate signals that even current intelligence could detect.
Traveler 001, and his shrink, don't make nearly as much sense, cool reveal aside. And what device is traveler 14 building? A way to re-download himself, like Marcy, but better this time? Or am I missing something like traveler 001 used it to transfer himself into his shrink? I think I missed something there.
You have to wonder how they could possibly reset things for season three, but this show has demonstrated many times how to smooth over temporal incursions. But even if they do, they won't be able to reset their loved ones. I'm really looking forward to season three, but its going to be later this year at soonest.
2018.05.18
I've been using the metric "am I still thinking about it" more and more on everything, and I'm still thinking about this show. There's so much that hasn't been revealed yet, I'm just running scenarios on what the future is like, where the story can go, etc.
Three episodes in, it starts out promising.
Reminds me of Sense8 (diverse personalities and roles, becoming a team), Source Code (sending people into the past to change it or learn from it), Dollhouse (downloading new personalities), Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (sending personnel, equipment, and messages into the past to accomplish objectives). It also has a Vancouver kind of early seasons X-Files vibe, which may or may not be intentional.
Let's see where this goes.
2018.04.16
Spoilers, always on, but now especially. I just got to the episode where stuff is really starting to happen. It's been all setup, and now the various travelers are coming together to do something. And we learn a fair bit about what went wrong in their past, and why its so important to stop it.
I really like the engineer, except for the few moments where she needs to carry the idiot ball to create some tension. It's possibly the most important moment in human history, and she dismisses the help so she can stay behind and turn the switch herself. She's so adamant about doing things by the numbers, but she's willing to throw it all away to save a handful of lives who will probably be erased in a few minutes anyway?
Still, as frustratingly poorly written as that was, it was worth it to see one soldier after another get "possessed" until finally the boss bad guy seems to get what's going on, turns the gun on himself, only to be out of bullets, get possessed, and turn the key himself in a moment of triumph. You can almost see the slow mad scramble in the future as they line up people to go back and soak up the bullets and get the job done.
I was starting to get bored of this show as it veered into a procedural, and then it squarely brings it back into sci-fi. The fact that the team, after mission success, doesn't get erased is nice extra moment of awesome, but then you realize its a TV show, we've invested a lot into these actors and characters, and we can't just toss them away. I hope what comes next can live up to this.
2018.04.18
And another nice subversion, as you think a character is going one way, goes another way, and as it turns out the organization is not so dumb and had a contingency plan. Interesting that everyone present gets to vote on the fate of the traitor.
Its also an economical bit of storytelling that the person sent back to be a prisoner for life finds being a prisoner here more satisfying than being free in the future.
2018.04.22
Now that's a season ender. I like how things are getting more and more sci-fi. Of course the director is an AI, makes nothing but sense. Can't wait for season 2.
2018.05.08
Almost done with season two, and I feel a growing sadness that it will end soon. All the things I like about this show just keep on growing. I love how this show looks like it was made on TV show budget, but keeps out sci-fi'ing shows and movies with many times its budget. I like how much of the show is quiet and thoughtful, and doesn't fall into stupid writing and plot holes.
I search for travelers season three renew, and it looks like shooting started in March, so hopefully it will be less than a year from now before there's more.
2018.05.15
Finished season two. Good ending, it makes sense. I was just thinking earlier today that if any travelers were discovered they would seem like a terrorist cell. It only makes sense that their global pattern of activity would generate signals that even current intelligence could detect.
Traveler 001, and his shrink, don't make nearly as much sense, cool reveal aside. And what device is traveler 14 building? A way to re-download himself, like Marcy, but better this time? Or am I missing something like traveler 001 used it to transfer himself into his shrink? I think I missed something there.
You have to wonder how they could possibly reset things for season three, but this show has demonstrated many times how to smooth over temporal incursions. But even if they do, they won't be able to reset their loved ones. I'm really looking forward to season three, but its going to be later this year at soonest.
2018.05.18
I've been using the metric "am I still thinking about it" more and more on everything, and I'm still thinking about this show. There's so much that hasn't been revealed yet, I'm just running scenarios on what the future is like, where the story can go, etc.
Sunday, April 8, 2018
Black Mirror season 4 (2017)
Just caught up with the last episode of Season 4, because completionism. Black Mirror looks like good modern cyberpunk tv, but it is the opposite. Black Mirror is written by people who don't understand sci-fi, barely understand cyberpunk, and rarely understand even good story-telling. It's Twilight Zone For Dummies.
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