Category: tv/movies

MOVIES:

Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (Amazon). So, I LOVE The Fifth Element. It’s one of my top ten favorite movies of all time. One time, I think it was during Christmas break maybe? My sister and I watched it five times in a row over the course of two days. Greatest way to spend your time? Quite possibly. Anyway, so I generally have favorable feelings towards Luc Besson’s work based solely upon my undying love for The Fifth Element. This move was apparently a passion project for him, and I am here to tell you that…. it’s not as good as The Fifth Element but nowhere near as terrible as the reviews for this movie make it out to be. It’s really fun and watchable. The movie it reminds me of is Jupiter Ascending… only far better than that movie. Anyway, so if you like space movies and can overlook some uncanny valley special effects for one species of aliens, then you will most likely enjoy this movie. It’s really fun.

Crooked House (Amazon). This is my favorite Agatha Christie mystery due to who turns out to be the murderer and this adaptation is impeccably cast! Glenn Close is delightful as the aunt. It’s a little slow though. Maybe I wasn’t in the mood for British mystery drama. *shrug*

Blade Runner 2049 (HBO). This is a sequel I guess of the original Blade Runner from 1982 and it takes place thirty years after that one. It is sort of interesting to look at but slow and kind of boring. I think in the middle I got up and washed the dishes and when I went back to it I hadn’t missed anything.

TV:

Lost in Space (Netflix): I watched the first two episodes of this. It’s…okay? Not binge-worthy though. I read somewhere that it’s paced better if you spread out the episodes and I would have to agree with that. It’s definitely episodic and not like, say, Stranger Things which is essentially like a 7 hour movie. Anyway, Lost in Space is a literal reboot of the classic TV show and it has high production values but I watched these episodes back when it first came out and haven’t gone back to it, so that should tell you something right there…

The 100 (CW & Netflix for earlier seasons). So, I have watched this show from the beginning when it started out as a teenybopper futuristic Lord of the Flies situation and have stayed watching it because it’s surprisingly a show that evolves with every episode and each season has reinvented itself. The show is also not afraid to kill characters off or have their characters do terrible things in order to survive. Recently I got caught up with the back half of Season 4 and have been watching Season 5 in real time.

PODCASTS:

Nothing too crazy to report on here, as I went through a couple MFM eps, an episode of Sword & Scale (#82, interview with a 911 dispatcher and a 911 recording that will break your soul in half and stomp on it, OMG). BUT aside from unrelenting murder I did want to slightly discuss my current favorite podcast.

The Adventure Zone. This is, simply, a podcast that is recording the ridiculous Dungeons & Dragons campaign of the McElroy brothers and their father (the brothers do other podcasts including Sawbones, which I have listened to before which is about medical history). I have an absolutely terrible sense of humor, i.e., there are many popular things I simply do not find funny (British humor in toto, every comedian but Jim Gaffigan, most sitcoms, toilet humor, etc etc. You name it, I probably don’t think it’s funny. I DO find almost anything with Danny McBride funny, and I like the 21 Jump Street movies. And the Lego movies but I don’t think they are supposed to necessarily be comedies? Anyway, I digress) so when I tell you that The Adventure Zone is hands down one of the funniest things I have ever had the pleasure of listening to, I mean that in the most heartfelt way. These guys are having an absolute blast and it shows – from the silly story arcs to the characters to the character voices these guys give their characters, I like it all. And it even kind of makes me want to play D&D. But don’t tell anyone that last part. I’m coming up on the end of the Balance Arc and I am bereft. I love this podcast.

TV:

Altered Carbon. This Netflix series is based on a book that I had never heard of but am kind of interested in now. Basically it’s about a far future where they have figured out how to download your consciousness into a disc (“stack”) and can move it from body to body (sleeve). Wealthy people can clone themselves and have available sleeves for whatever dumb things they get up to. People who may get murdered but their stack is still intact, they can get placed in a completely different sleeve regardless of what their original race or gender was. Basically the gist of this story is one of the rich guys gets murdered but it was right before his stack back up so he has no idea who murdered him.

(Just typing that right now… that is stupid – everything is on the cloud. My dang Google docs save automatically every few seconds. Hmm, plot hole).

The rich guy needs a detective so he gets the last Envoy (a specialized soldier who has the ability to easily move from sleeve to sleeve and can be dropped into the middle of combat situations) who had been put away for treason 250 years earlier. The failed rebellion was about the stacks and the unfairness of it all, or something. So, this guy, who was originally an Asian guy, is downloaded into the (white guy) body of the former partner of a police officer lady who probably would have left him alone except for all that.

Anyway, then adventures ensue. One of the things that I thought was funny was that the majority of the show took place in a cyberpunk (think Blade Runner, the aesthetics thereof) version of San Francisco called “Bay City”. Of course, it looked nothing like it actually does, but there were a couple of fun shots of the Bay between SF and Oakland, which were towering skyscrapery cities facing each other. The view kind of looked out like it was from the San Mateo Bridge.

So, final grade: solid B. It was super gorgeous to look at with impeccable set design and world building, but the story was kinda weak. I still liked it though.

MOVIES:

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Full confession: I recorded this off HBO thinking it was a documentary about the famous immortal cell line “HeLa” that helped many scientific breakthroughs since the 1950s. I wasn’t far off but you will imagine my surprise when I discovered that it was actually a movie starring Oprah as the daughter of Henrietta Lacks and it was more about writing the book, the family, getting to know Henrietta as a person, and a bit about the controversy about the ownership of cell samples and how the family received no compensation for it. It was a little “after school special” but all in all, interesting. I’m going to pick up a copy of the book and read it later. I find the science and the ethics interesting.

PODCASTS:

Astonishing Legends: Episodes 87-89, Black Eyed Kids. Dudes, this took me awhile to get through all three episodes (it was about 6 hours of content, I believe) and I got really creeped out (in a good way) during the first episode and had to turn it off! Though… it was like 1 in the morning. Anyway, these episodes deep dived into the phenomena of “black eyed kids” – what are they, where do they come from, and are they real. Totally interesting! I’ve started on the three-part Yeti series and I’m stoked!

Astonishing Legends site

Casefile. I forget what episodes, but they were interesting. I’ve listened to a number of these over the last few months. I will admit that I like the true crime aspects especially as most of these stories are set in Australia so it’s a different group of crimes (ugh I sound horrible, like, whelp I’ve heard all about the American horror stories! Give me foreign ones now! but like… no really, they’re interesting). I did just download one that is about a boy who disappeared in the 80’s from Martinez, CA, which is in the valley where I live, since I was a kid then I’m not familiar with it. So we’ll see!

Casefile site.

I did also listen to a couple episodes of My Favorite Murder, which I guess I like since I’ve listened to like 40 episodes now. Some future ones I have on tap are Dirty John, and Black Hands. I first heard about Dirty John from this article series. My sister has listened to the podcast, which is based on the articles, and recommends it. Black Hands is about the Bain Family murders which took place in New Zealand, and is supposed to be similar to Serial (which I have not listened to nor am interested in for whatever reason). I knew about these murders before and also I think there was a MFM on them.

Anyway, that is what I’ve been consuming lately.