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NetFlix - 1899
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 556
From the sofa, while on the sofa, might as well check out the old NetFlix account.
Loads of good movies, which, unfortunately I've already seen. And - by NetFlix standards - real dogs, like "No Country for Old Men", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", their reviews, by NetFlix Standards, lousy, 3, 4 stars....really?
Anyways, I know what I'm looking for. "!899", which was some new series with great trailer reviewed on Boing Boing, and I'm going to give this a try.
It's about about a ship, set in "1899", the "Kerberos" that gets sidetracked by a cryptic message from it's sister ship, the "Prometheus", that vanished some 4 months earlier...
5 Stars on Netflix. No, really, 5 stars. This got 5 stars. It's going to be really good, settle in to binge watch them all on a Sunday, because Sunday you can't go to the library and find any piece of mind so you might as well resign yourself.
Now know that I'm going to be merciless and give abundant spoilers and this - with the understanding that you too might be as offended as I was. But you won't have to be because I've gone and saved you the bother.
Mother of fucking god.
How did this get made? A bunch of Germans sitting around smoking pot and one of them says..."Hey, I know a computer guy..." and somebody else said "I heard it's really easy to get grants for TV and Movies" and before you know it the casting call was sent out for bearded men, swart men, steampunk men, and hipsters.
I mean, in ridiculously bad dialogue and acting, every cliché in the book, "Follow me" and "I'm coming with you...", the appalling dialogue, delivery in part to blame on NetFlix dubbing service - but - no, even that can't take all the blame, no actor could make this good.
1 episode in, 7 to go, I'm hooked.
There's the appalling music soundtrack, and accompanying descriptions in Close Captioning: [Ominous Synth Music] [Haunting German Lullaby] [Mournful Dirge] [Low Foreboding Music] [Menacing Creaks and Scratches] [Anxious Panting] [...music playing/continues] [High-Pitched Mysterious Tunes][Uneasy, Dissonant Music][Low Sinister Music].
A cast of nearly a hundred people meant to represent thousands, everyone a stock character out of some Steam-Punk Commedia-Del-Arte, Everyone has a secret, a backstory, a murder or skeleton in their closet, there's the tropes of the "Seriously creepy little boy with a secret" and "Serious Victorian Scientific Lady" "Religious Zealot" and the "Busy Homosexuals" and "Mutinous 2nd Mate" with his perpetually scarred and bleeding face and the "Treacherous First Mate with Hidden Knowledge" and I could go on, boy I could go on...
What's it about? Well, as I said earlier, Ii's about about a ship, set in "1899", the "Kerberos" that gets sidetracked by a cryptic message from it's sister ship, the "Prometheus", that vanished some 4 months earlier...
And it's about maybe a dream life that the passengers can't wake from (AKA "Inception") or maybe they're all living in a Simulation, (AKA "The Matrix"), or it could be about the mental hospital, or the giant pyramid, or the magical green beetles, or it could be about an interdimensional ship portal (or - maybe this is just a gimmick?), the point is that only you, the viewer, are given enough pieces of the puzzle to make sense of it all, only there is no way anyone could make sense of this rubbish.
It's your standard What-When-Where-Why-Who-dunnit(dun what?), complete with double crossing first mates and villains in front of alien pyramids, and televisions and computer banks with flashing lights and slide-puzzle controls and Rubik's pyramids that open portals to...Aliens? Time Travel?
Throughout everything the steampunk aesthetic prevails, missing only the hot air balloons and Zeppelins and telescopes, but probably they're coming...
Confused? Maybe they'll throw in mediocre philosophical references to "Plato's Cave", to "UP" the intelligence level, make you feel like your just not smart enough to grasp the big ideas they're putting out there...
There is a scene in which 2 characters are fighting over a machine, control box, and the (presumably good) guy says: "You don't understand - if I don't turn that thing off - everything will start again!!!" and this - this - as I understood it - is a direct threat to the viewer, the audience, it's a ploy to get everyone onside of our protagonist, do you really want to watch this all again?
20 Minutes into the final episode and I can see they're not going to be wrapping this up anytime soon, finally - finally, the fucking end, the big reveal: Our Heroine "wakes up" to discover she's been in suspended animation the entire time, along with the rest of the cast members in a (camera pulling back) spaceship travelling through SPACE!!!
And probably you should be slapping your knee and going "See, see, I knew it all along" and - no, no no no, this is SOOOO FUCKING LAME.
Commercial Space
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 489
And this, the commercial space I'd had my eye on before it got let, first paper in the windows, now this sign:
And I'm more and more certain that somebody somehow got into my head and stole my ideas...
"Do you know how much this is worth?"
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 482
I can imagine this being used in any number of contexts, but - apparently Michael thinks I've (wasn't me, I would have priced it lower) undervalued a piece.
This piece:
Now this, THIS - I'm pretty sure I have a good idea as to it's worth, only M****** is assuring me it's worth far, far more.
Which I sincerely doubt, but supposedly all things are possible. Anyways, now I have to live with it staring at me from the shelf for the next month while he gets 'round to appraising it.
I really want to film him showing up on the Antiques roadshow with his collection of kitsch and treasures...
The Inanity of Facebook
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
- Hits: 505
The videos that pop up, the unsolicited "content" that's designed to "engage" and keep you on the page. I mean, there's a few-very few- of the movie clips that are lightly amusing, but by and large it's generated garbage content, here are but a few of the more ridiculous examples:
A Prisoner, black, in orange sitting in a courtroom being interrogated by a judge. The defendant denies any knowledge of the crime, any involvement, because he can't walk. An accident a few months earlier has left him paralyzed.
Meanwhile, behind the defendant and invisible to him a cop/courtroom security officer has dressed himself up in a gorilla suit and is slowly pantomiming his way towards the prisoners box. The judge continues his interrogation. Nope, he can't walk, he's paralyzed, blah blah blah. This will go on for the next 8 minutes. I haven't even clicked on play, just paused the scrolling. You know how this ends.
It's absolutely inane, completely stupid, and having paused the page to look at it (remember I didn't click) I'm besieged with these videos. They're all exactly the same, only a different convict, a different costume sneaking up on him, it's all bollocks. They probably film a hundred of them at once.
Or, one recently, the Albino girl makeover. A 25 year old poor albino virgin gets makeup, hair dye, contacts, turns out to be a stunner, and ends up heading out for a night out on the town. The same, again, this time a buff albino athlete. It occurs to me that probably I don't spend enough time thinking about the troubles albino's must have dating.
Or, maybe I'm spending a little too much time...
The homeless man makeovers, where some barber pulls a vagrant off the street, gives him a shave, haircut, he as well turns out to be a model, gives him a pep-talk and sends him on his way. There's a whole series of these.
The trick, of course, with these makeover videos is to find the model and make them look plausibly homeless. Or Albino. And then "clean" them up for the camera.
So, my god I must be getting old that I'm actually not scrolling past these, and the solution is probably to get rid of facebook but then how would I know what's going on...?
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