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I can recommend the audiobooks, too, if you're an audiobook person (I think it's a good fit for this kind of book which is more about plot than language). Just make sure to stick with the same narrator throughout. They switched to an inferior narrator for one of the books at one point and then later re-recorded that book with the person who did the rest of them, I assume because of fan outcry at the bad job the new guy did.
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:01 PM on February 2, 2021

If I have one criticism of the books, it's that the main crew tended to have too much plot armour. All kinds of crazy stuff happens to them, but they always survive.

I agree, with the one exception of that doctor guy who came with them from the Canterbury and got killed off early on. (On looking him up - yes, Shed Garvey! He's like the Pete Best of the Rocinante.) But I do think the books (and show) have been good at introducing us to ancillary… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 9:35 PM on February 5, 2021

I had myself convinced for a little while that Agnes was a Hydra/AIM agent whose mission was to manipulate Wanda into resurrecting some supervillain or another (I thought maybe the Red Skull as the ne plus ultra Hydra villain, but I guess in the MCU he's off on some other planet guarding the spot where that one infinity stone used to be). But Agnes's shocked reaction to the suggestion that Wanda has power over life and death seems to suggest otherwise. If she didn't consider… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 9:15 PM on February 5, 2021

This is kind of a more mainstream MCU version of Legion, not that I'm complaining. I agree that the comedy took a serious hit in this episode, but then again 70's sitcoms are not very funny, so it's accurate to the period.

Did that last shot with the helicopters show some kind of Annihilation-esque shimmery barrier with floodlights set up outside of it? Maybe the border of whatever reality-distorting field it is that Wanda has set up?… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:09 PM on January 22, 2021

...also, I've enjoyed how in the moments when Wanda starts to break through to reality, the camerawork changes from fairly static long shots and two-shots and the like to more cinematic language with slow zooms and low angles.
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:23 PM on January 22, 2021

I definitely thought AIM when I saw the beekeeper too. They haven't made an appearance in the MCU yet, to my knowledge, but they're compatible with Baron van Strucker, and I'm sort of hoping that MODOK is keeping Wanda trapped inside of this hallucination somehow. Also, could that have been a S.W.O.R.D. logo on the helicopter?

The references to "for the children" make me strongly suspect that the storyline is headed in a House of M direction (if not exactly… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:26 PM on January 18, 2021

The wife's repeating her line "stop it" was straight up Lynch.

Yeah, that was absolutely the "Kyle McLaughlin finds a severed ear in the lawn" moment from Blue Velvet.
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:02 AM on January 18, 2021

I really like this show (I'm five episodes in so far). Among its other merits, it has probably the most intense credits sequence I've ever seen, with a full-blown Passion of the Christ squeezed into 60 seconds, culminating in Judas's on-screen suicide. The sort of show it's trying to be seems to gradually shift over the season; there are definitely hints of shows like Evil and The X-Files in there, with monsters of the week, team-ups, some soapy stuff, and generous helpings of CGI thrown in for… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 8:15 PM on January 17, 2021

Wow, for some reason I didn't put together at all that this was The Fall of the House of Usher. The thing it most reminded me of in its setup was Alex Garland's Ex Machina, which now that I think about it definitely shares some narrative DNA with the Poe story.

I like movies that don't need to spell out all of their elements, and I liked this movie, which was not in the least inclined to. What is the Bloodhound, precisely? JP… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:35 PM on December 27, 2020

Argh, I really didn't like this one, and I wanted to because the first one seemed like the only good DC movie to date. I did not like how Wonder Woman's lasso turned her into Spider-Man. They didn't explain the mechanic with the wishes at all. It seemed like Max Lord's kid made like three wishes and they never worked? And then WW lost her powers, but only enough that she got shot in the shoulder, but all of her other powers worked fine, and she gained the plane-invisibility… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:08 AM on December 26, 2020

What is it about Stephen Strait that with a shirt off he's a cut Adonis, but the instant he puts a shirt on he looks like a consumption victim who should be getting sand kicked into his face somewhere?
posted to FanFare by whir at 2:16 PM on December 22, 2020

I enjoyed that one of the Imperials called out the Rebellion for killing everybody on board the Death Star(s).
posted to FanFare by whir at 8:38 PM on December 18, 2020

I loved this. It's kind of an NYC version of Joe Pera Talks with You.
posted to FanFare by whir at 12:06 PM on December 17, 2020

Yeah, I feel like "more anxiety" and "random person reveals a weird sexual thing" are the things that make it very NYC-specific, versus something you might find on the Upper Peninsula. But I still feel like the overall air of wry, bemused contemplation is common between the two shows. (I mean, there's some aesthetic similarities, it's not a hill I want to die on or anything.)

Fans of How To with John Wilson will probably enjoy… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 8:51 PM on December 17, 2020

This is one of those books I've read once every few years ever since I was a kid - this is a great excuse to get back into it! I've often thought of the Earthsea trilogy of one of the twin pillars, along with Tolkien, that all the rest of what you might call "classic fantasy" rests upon. Looking back now, I wonder how much that's just a kind of selection bias, since I connected much more strongly with this book than with other early fantasy trope-establishers like Fritz Leiber, but at… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 4:45 PM on December 4, 2020

we can lament that the story focuses on Yet Another Privileged Dude, but it takes him down a few pegs, and maybe that's the part to focus on?

Does it, though? Ged is poor and uncultured, at least relative to his classmates on Roke. Possibly he belongs to a majority ethnic group despite being dark-skinned, though Le Guin doesn't really talk much about people's preconceptions of each other from their skin color in the original trilogy (that I can… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 6:52 PM on December 10, 2020

(Sorry, kind of a meta-comment here: I appreciate all the horror movies you put up during October, miss-lapin! I haven't been able to track many of them down, but I do plan to search a bunch of them out and retroactively comment later. I was a little meh on Dear White People and I feel slightly meh after watching the trailer for Bad Hair, so this may not be the first, but anyways I'm grateful to see an interesting selection of horror movies to look through.)
posted to FanFare by whir at 8:29 PM on November 2, 2020

I actually thought this was maybe the best of the Netflix Originals™️ I've seen. I liked how easily the characters slipped in between dreamlike states and waking life - especially the shot where the dining room table melts away into an ocean scene. I found it to be thematically reminiscent of The Babadook (which I love) in its examination of how people respond to trauma.
posted to FanFare by whir at 8:20 PM on November 2, 2020

This is a fairly faithful rendition of the novels - at least the Fremen are wearing realistic stillsuits that don't expose their faces to the elements for once. It's unusual that after killing the sandworm at the end they go to extract the pre-spice mass instead of the traditional cryskives though - according to canon, the mass should only form in the larval sandtrout phase of the sandworm lifecycle.
posted to FanFare by whir at 11:40 PM on October 30, 2020

I thought this was a well-made film when I saw it way back when and have been curious about its sequel, so thanks for posting this. I've also read Ketchum's novel about the Likens murder, which was pretty strong stuff but, like this film, didn't seem titillating or exploitative in the least.

I recall this movie causing a bit of a kerfuffle at Sundance—I'm not sure what it is about festival audiences that makes them so prone to start shouting things or fainting or… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:53 AM on September 8, 2020

I just rewatched this, as a refresher for Darlin'. It's kind of an odd bird, there is a lot more slow motion and a larger number of music montages than I remember, and a ton of dissolves and slow fade-outs. One thing I like about it is that it sort of sets up a Texas Chainsaw Massacre type "demented family in the woods" scenario, but with all the roles reversed - it's the suburbs rather than the country, and the villain is a respected lawyer instead of a gas station attendant, the… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 4:58 PM on September 20, 2020

the only living animal life we’ve seen on this planet are carnivores

I'm holding out hope that the person-sized lizard guys are actually sentient (partly due to script logic, because here at the end of episode 3 our heroes have imprisoned one and no doubt its parents will come looking for it). Maybe they have all the herbivores penned up in underground warrens somewhere.

One thing I like about this show is how Father takes on… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 6:23 AM on September 9, 2020

discovering that the creatures are just (jazz hands) some kinda goddamn antisemitic trope

I don't think I follow this, what do you mean? Are you talking about them in the context of atheists versus believers?
posted to FanFare by whir at 8:30 PM on September 13, 2020

I do think that the Young Woman is real and has agency, and at the same time that she is a fragment of Jake's / the janitor's personality. She's kind of his imagining of what he wants in a partner, projected on to the form of the woman he saw at a bar one night, but is also very much an element of his own personality.

Having read the book, the movie seems like a huge improvement, mostly in ditching the book's third act entirely and coming up with a better one (although… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 6:39 PM on September 7, 2020

Belatedly, I really liked this! The characters are nicely drawn and I liked how the contemporary story rhymed with the flashback story. My only reservation is that although I think LaKeith Stanfield is a fantastic actor, I sort of wished he had turned down the mumbliness about 15% for this role. I am a fan of mumbliness, but to me it didn't quite jibe with the ambitious journalist character.

I also recently watched Personal Problems by Ishmael Reed, and the initial… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 3:17 PM on September 7, 2020

I liked this, it's a bit of a bog-standard creature feature but with better than average character development and a realistically shitty high-school milieu.
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:57 PM on September 2, 2020

One thing I liked about this was the continuing theme of deception. The fact that Veshnyakov knows exactly what is happening the entire time but fails to do anything about it in order to save his own skin seems like a particularly apt metaphor for life in the Soviet system (maybe a little too obvious even, but I thought it worked well).

I wasn't crazy about the end of the movie--not really sure what General Semiradov's plan was there, but it didn't seem well thought… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 6:57 AM on August 24, 2020

I liked this overall, but my favorite thing by far was Ransom's almost exclusive use of the James T Kirk double-punch technique.
posted to FanFare by whir at 6:42 AM on August 24, 2020

I really liked this, but found it pretty hard to watch having had some real-life experience with a person descending into dementia. Some of the spatial-dislocation bits provided an interesting contrast with You Should Have Left--definitely a lesser movie, but hitting some of the same elements with a mainstream Blumhouse aesthetic, versus the decidedly more A24 style of this one.
posted to FanFare by whir at 8:54 PM on July 12, 2020

I thought that was a very thematically satisfying ending, even though there were plenty of loose threads I wanted to get resolved. I was glad to see Benni get a seat at the table in the last scene (maybe she and Peter are a couple in the fixed universe?), and I thought not explaining about Wöller's eye again was hilarious. Before the end I was about 70% convinced that the appearance of Jonas and Marta was going to cause the car accident in the first place, sending the whole thing into yet… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 9:18 PM on June 28, 2020

I'm not sure how conscious Helge would be of this, but when he says "tick, tock" he actually is describing the infinite loop that Winden is in pretty well: the "tick" is the Universe A loop, where Jonas hides under the house to survive the apocalypse. The "tock" is the Universe B loop, where Marta B steps in to save Jonas and bring him back to Universe B. Each one creates the other (right? I'm sure this is the case but I'm having trouble remembering the exact… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 4:24 PM on June 30, 2020

Ha, I like that Slate article.

- The most accurate part of the movie is that audiences always want to hear “Jaja Ding Dong.”
- Wait, is that a real song?!
- No.

posted to FanFare by whir at 9:27 PM on June 28, 2020

Aargh: ‘The Expanse’ Star Cas Anvar Under Investigation Over Sexual Misconduct Allegations
posted to FanFare by whir at 8:59 AM on June 28, 2020

Holy shit, that scene with Katarina's mom!
posted to FanFare by whir at 8:53 AM on June 28, 2020

I thought this was a great start. I'm staking my prediction now that Herr Köller's missing eye / missing arm will never be explained.

I am also wondering whether the mysterious Alexsander Tiedemann ties these two universes together; his sudden appearance to save Regina was never really resolved over in the original universe.

I like how the show gives us subtle visual cues that we're in a new universe, from the character appearances to that kind… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 12:16 PM on June 27, 2020

oh yeah! linked to a recap in the Season 2 thread. There's also the Dark Wiki but I've been avoiding it like fire until I watch the series entirely (since it was full of big spoilers for Season 2 as soon as that was released).
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:59 PM on June 27, 2020

So the murder trio are the ones writing the time journal, and the editing at the end there heavily implies they're the son of Jonas and Marta B.

I took the older woman at the bunker to be Marta, Adult B Universe variant. The scar on her cheek is very similar to aged Marta B's scar.
posted to FanFare by whir at 9:13 PM on June 27, 2020

One thing that stuck me about the garrote trio: back in S2, Adam shows Young Jonas the scar on his neck to prove they are the same person. If Adam isn't Jonas, though, we now have another possible in-universe explanation for how he could have got that scar (further along in the narrative, of course).
posted to FanFare by whir at 3:28 PM on June 27, 2020

I have to confess that two episodes in I'm beginning to find it somewhat difficult to follow the narrative threads, especially with Tronte and company. I also realized I've lost track of the time machines. Katarina must have used one to go back to 1987, but where did she get it? I thought the last time we saw one was when 2020 Hanna took it back to 1954 (where she, and it, presumably still reside).
posted to FanFare by whir at 2:14 PM on June 27, 2020

Assuming adult-Jonas is telling the truth about not remembering ever traveling to Martha's world, I wonder how he survived the apocalypse?

That is why I was thinking there might be three universes. Jonas doesn't exist in Hanna B's universe, and 1888 Jonas doesn't have any memory of meeting Hanna B, so I don't see any other simple explanation. But he also seems to be hanging around with the Universe A Scooby gang of Elisabeth, Magnus and Bartosz, so… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 2:21 PM on June 27, 2020

Same here!

I'm rewatching Season 2 and one thing that leapt out at me is that June 27th, 2020 is both the date of the apocalypse in the show and, in a nice bit of stunt-scheduling, the date of final season's premiere. (Assuming that a German time-loop hasn't ended civilization, that is.)
posted to FanFare by whir at 3:23 PM on June 22, 2020

It's mostly a puff piece (and chock full of spoilers for season 2, though none for season 3) but the Guardian has an interview up with the actors playing Jonas, the Stranger, and Adam; among other things they say that they made a conscious decision not to get together too much to try to coordinate their acting.

Who among us would not welcome it, at this point?

Y'know, at first I agreed with this, but then on reflection I… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 8:37 AM on June 26, 2020

I'm here for the cast and the production seems solid, but the Variety review seemed pretty right on to me. I like this kind of show but I'm not sure why this has to be Perry Mason instead of Joe Detective. Maybe the last two episodes will just be Matthew Rhys cramming for the bar exam?
posted to FanFare by whir at 9:23 PM on June 21, 2020

I did enjoy the shifting House of Leaves like weirdness of the house itself

I agree, I wish they had spent more time with that, and with some of the time-loopy bits they gestured towards at the end. That ending was really not so great, but I did enjoy some of the uncanny moments before it.
posted to FanFare by whir at 9:42 AM on June 21, 2020

Season 2 will be streaming on HBO Max starting on July 25th.
posted to FanFare by whir at 7:57 PM on June 10, 2020

I'm sorry to bring this awful guy into the thread, but this is quite peculiar. This episode was good, still hoping Issa and Molly can make it work but it's not looking like it.
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:01 PM on June 8, 2020

I enjoyed the naturalistic dialogue in the hang-out portions of this, a little Altmanesque and I liked the accents (though they sounded a lot closer to Tennessee or something than New Mexico, and I got pretty confused about where exactly Cayuga was supposed to be located). Overall I agree it could have used a bit more plot and the TV episode framing seemed more distracting than useful.

For some reason the version I watched via Prime in 4K HDR seemed like a really crappy… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 2:46 PM on June 4, 2020

I'm pretty sure Alice was standing in front of the screen during the only exciting part of Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxells—I'd be pissed at her too.
posted to FanFare by whir at 12:53 PM on May 28, 2020

I have to say that genre is perhaps the most boring futuristic fictional drug ever invented. Like, all it does is play some background music and change the film stock? I wanted to see everyone's dialogue go all hard-boiled in the first segment of it if they were really going to buy into the concept. (It's also still not clear what the motivation for dosing Caleb with it was in the first place.)
posted to FanFare by whir at 11:52 PM on May 16, 2020

I really hated this, starting with the classic boring white dude who would be able to lead such an amazing actualized life if it weren't for the clingy, controlling woman holding him back, and then leading up to the love interest whose personality mostly consists of "inexplicably in love with the protagonist." So many things about this were awful, and then it ends on a cliffhanger. I won't belabor the point, probably the rom-com genre just isn't for me and I can't manage to suspend my… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 11:06 PM on May 8, 2020