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Honestly, the Lannisters can't spare a few guys to hold Dragonstone? There isn't some minor Baratheon lord who wants to live in a big castle? It's only the historical site of the first invasion of Westeros by Targaryens with dragons.
posted to FanFare by whir at 8:40 PM on July 16, 2017

Someone reminded me yesterday of the scene from early in the series when Cooper and Truman are at the shooting range, and Cooper manages to put one bullet through each eye of his paper target; the constant eyeball-shootings in this new season are maybe a callback to that (and to "Bunuelian eye-damage," as someone said in the post for the last episode).

I have to say I didn't love the Michael Cera bit - I like him as an actor, and I'm certainly game for some… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 8:18 PM on May 25, 2017

I finally finished this season, and I dunno, I'm just kind of meh about the whole show. I really like the main triumvirate of actors, but I just can't bring myself to care that much about the plot.

I think part of the problem is that the show goes out of its way to show Meyerism as specifically not a cult, but rather a loose amalgamation of anodyne New Age platitudes. There's nothing wrong with that, but I guess I was hoping for more of either some spooky… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 6:32 PM on May 16, 2017

I just watched this this weekend too. It doesn't make any sense to me to try to watch it outside the context of the show, but I still think it's a good movie all in all, albeit not one that I feel up for watching very often. It's got maybe one of my favorite single shots in it where Donna is being taken out of the Pink Room and we see from her perspective all the beer bottles and cigarette butts on the floor of the bar, and it's got a lot of my favorite scenes from the series as a whole, like… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:03 AM on May 15, 2017

Wow, this was amazingly done. It's been long enough since I read the book that I didn't know how much of June's internal monologue was taken directly from it, but it's surely in Atwood's voice, fiercely intelligent with a mordant edge to it.
posted to FanFare by whir at 8:44 PM on April 30, 2017

I don't mean to be an apostate here, I loved Hannibal and I think Ian McShane is amazing, but I thought this first episode was kind of ...bad? The CGI looked it was from a midrange video game from three years ago, I'm surprised that there was any scenery left in the graveyard after that one scene, the bar-fight with Nick O'Sobotka went on far too long, and I don't have any read on the main character or particularly care what happens to him. I have a lot of respect for Fuller and I liked the book… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 8:26 PM on April 30, 2017

I liked this, basically, though I agree that it seems slight for Wheatley. It was dumb fun and not much more, but it was fun. I kept expecting a big reveal that the woman in the film actually was an FBI agent, but that never came. I was reminded of how I felt watching Hot Fuzz: that I was seeing a loving homage to a whole genre of movies that I don't particularly care for. Still, it's good to see Wheatley get some hopefully higher-profile work.
posted to FanFare by whir at 11:09 PM on April 29, 2017

I definitely think this the strongest work I've ever seen by Murphy, not least for its quite feminist take on the protagonists and the power dynamics in Hollywood during the era. I usually hate biopics and have a very limited tolerance for Murphy's antics, but this was genuinely pretty great. (I don't think I'll stick around for Charles and Diana, though, because enough already about Charles and Diana.)
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:27 PM on April 26, 2017

I expect there'll be very few guns allowed on spaceships, or anything that easily makes holes in the walls

For what it's worth, in the books they do talk about how there is special ammo designed for in-ship shooting which is designed to go through human beings but not ship bulkheads (and also recoilless ammo where the gun is actually more of a miniature rocket-launcher so that people shooting guns in zero-g don't necessarily go flying back in the… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:38 PM on April 23, 2017

I haven't seen this yet, but I found this interview with Anna Biller to be interesting reading.
posted to FanFare by whir at 9:58 PM on April 20, 2017

Man, they crammed just a shit-ton of plot into this episode.

Not entirely sure how I feel about Eliot looking directly into the camera as he says "they must be getting tired of all the whimsy" or some such.
posted to FanFare by whir at 7:52 PM on April 20, 2017

I'm only two episodes in, so will probably try to avoid this thread, but I'm a little on the fence about continuing with the whole series. The narrative structure is cool, with the tapes gradually filling in back-story and a general paranoid sense that a lot of the characters have hidden ties into the narrative that are yet to be revealed, but I'm not really fond of the performance of the actor playing Hannah so far - I like the character as written, but the actor seems like she dropped in from… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 9:58 PM on April 11, 2017

I think there's a pretty good chance that I would notice a new/different gas cap on my car.

That's true, but since they'd need to physically mess with the gas cap in the first place, and since they're tracking both of Mike's cars, they could probably find some time when they're sure Mike is far away from the station wagon and implant the bug in the existing gas cap.

Alternatively, Mike's antagonists did replace the station… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 9:47 PM on April 11, 2017

I'm still not entirely sure whether Chuck's outburst/confession to Ernesto at the very end was a completely self-aware put-on in order to set Jimmy up for a trap, or whether it was just a kind of self-sabotaging reflex born out of internalized guilt towards Jimmy and his generally flouncy, melodramatic personality.
posted to FanFare by whir at 9:51 PM on April 11, 2017

As I recall, in the books she's initially on the Mao ship on the pretense that she's going to head towards Venus and check out the post-Eros situation there, right? It seems like that could still happen, and she'd maybe have more of an internal reason to do it now that we've established some character ties between her and the scientist on the Venus science ship.
posted to FanFare by whir at 11:55 PM on April 1, 2017

It was good to see Avasarala let herself off the leash in this episode, and the actor playing Amos continues to steal the show. That was a great expression when he he told Prax he couldn't leave "because the captain said so" - like a mixture of wide-eyed surprise that anyone would ever go against that, combined with a little bit of worry that if Amos himself doesn't follow what the captain says, he'll slip up and do something bad without thinking about it.

I… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 5:52 AM on March 24, 2017

I'm still pretty confused by the greenhouse scene in Illinois. Has the CIA invented Roundup™?
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:11 PM on March 14, 2017

I'm actually hoping Eugene did turn coats, if only because I don't like the character much so any change will probably be a net positive for me.
posted to FanFare by whir at 9:02 PM on March 2, 2017

It's interesting how many of the characters in this show have powers that involved confused identities of some kind - Syd switches bodies, the science guy has a different identity inside himself, the Eye is able to present himself as another person, and David seems to hallucinate people who aren't there (and switches their identities around in his memory, like Lenny/Benny). That one shot of two hands emerging from a single sleeve stuck with me, and made me start to wonder whether all of the… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 8:56 PM on March 2, 2017

FWIW, the AV Club has started covering this show again, and they liked this episode.
posted to FanFare by whir at 2:07 PM on February 9, 2017

I've just started listening to the podcast The Churn, which features interviews with the authors of the books (who are also heavily involved in the writing of the show), and it's pretty good. This week's episode also has Wes Chatham (Amos) on it, saying some things about the character of Amos that are pretty similar to the things he said in the IO9 interview above. They seem to be trying to avoid spoilers from the book, though they do talk about some book elements.
posted to FanFare by whir at 4:53 PM on February 10, 2017

I've read the books but my significant other has not, and I had to explain to her about the niffle thing, so I think they were smart to include it in the previously-on segment. They didn't really explain it very well in that one episode, though, and as far as I remember they never went back to the concept as a refresher either, so the whole thing came across as pretty confusing to her, and I imagine I'd feel the same way if I hadn't read the books. Maybe they'll have the characters do a recap in… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 5:59 AM on February 10, 2017

This was definitely one of the more stylishly-directed TV premieres in some time. I always thought the comics character was kind of boring in kind of a "grab bag of powers" way, but I'm definitely hopeful based on this first episode.
posted to FanFare by whir at 7:57 PM on February 9, 2017

I think Dresden's speech to Holden and Johnson came off as way more convincing in the books than it did on the show, to the point where you could believe he had talked them into seeing it his way, which also made Miller's actions more understandable.
posted to FanFare by whir at 3:58 PM on February 9, 2017

Without wanting to give away any book spoilers, I've been impressed by how closely this series is hewing to its source material, right down to little details like the cheese cartel.
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:51 PM on February 1, 2017

I thought in one of the last shots of the new host that was being constructed in Ford's lair you could start to see the shape of a female breast being 3D printed, which would support the idea that Ford is going to make a host replacement for Theresa.

"What door?" was definitely the line of the night for me.
posted to FanFare by whir at 9:09 PM on November 13, 2016

I think Bernard being a copy of Arnold makes some sense, but a major hole is that some people should know what Arnold looked like. In this world, Arnold would be like Woz to Steve Jobs: maybe a little less famous, but the board of Apple would still recognize him on sight.

Well, if we take the three timelines theory as given (to wit, that the scenes of Bernard interrogating Dolores actually show Arnold interrogating Dolores), and we assume that… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 9:31 PM on November 13, 2016

The 5 off-loop hosts were Ford's "family" in the cabin.

Something that just occurred to me is that I counted four obvious hosts in the cabin: Young Robert Ford, his dad, a brother and a sister. Unless I missed one, that's one host unaccounted for. At first I thought it could possibly be present-day Ford, but even if Ford is a host, I don't know that he'd be able to function as a pretend human being if it's that easy for the computer systems… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 6:13 AM on November 10, 2016

I think I'm beginning to buy the two timelines / William = Man in Black theory, though it raises a lot of questions as well. If it holds up, I'm guessing that at some point in the season we'll have William run into the CGI'ed young version of Anthony Hopkins which we saw in an earlier flashback. I'm also guessing that we'll witness the death of Arnold in William's story, and that he'll be played by the same actor who plays Bernard in the future/present timeline.

There's… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 9:40 PM on October 31, 2016

Unlocking Westworld’s 7 Most Baffling Mysteries

This is well-done; I'm on board with the three-timeline theory, having already bought into the Bernard = Arnold theory. (Synopsis: the third timeline is the interrogations between Bernard and Dolores, but it's actually Arnold speaking to her, not his robot clone Bernard, and it is the chronologically oldest timeline, taking place before the William timeline at which point Arnold has already committed… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:27 PM on November 3, 2016

Having thought about it a bit, I have now talked myself into believing that Bernard is himself an android, though most of my evidence comes from the last episode and not this one. Ford created him as a sort of replacement for Arnold and gave him a similar storyline (when they are discussing Arnold, Ford mentions that Arnold had recently experienced a personal tragedy; Bernard has lost a son), the ability to retain memory, and seemingly higher cognitive abilities. Bernard only speaks to his wife… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 8:57 PM on October 27, 2016

I really want to like this show, it's got a lot of actors I like in it, but between the clunky dialog, the affectless performances and the glacial pace I just can't seem to get into it. The tooth monster was creepy when I first saw it, but the effect has kind of worn off by now, and seeing it just kind of stand around and amble aimlessly through this episode didn't exactly leave me cowering in fear. I did like this episode's big twist that it was Mike's twin brother who killed the other kids,… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:02 PM on October 26, 2016

The bromigos remind me of the doctors at Gary Larsen's horse hospital. Like, really, you have to shoot people once they injure a leg? Even for Less than Zero style nihilist sociopaths, it seems like a waste of bullets.
posted to FanFare by whir at 9:52 PM on October 6, 2016

FWIW, it looks as though next Tuesday will bring a two-part finale for the season. I haven't read one way or another about the show being renewed for another season after that. Personally I hope it is, since this season seems like a big improvement over the melodrama of the previous two to me.
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:09 PM on October 5, 2016

Technically, this episode stood right on the border of my willing suspension of disbelief. Ryan uses FTP, I guess over a modem connection to McMillan? Then he downloads the source code (written in BASIC) for their antivirus software, and publishes it... where? On the internet that he and Joe McMillan are about to apparently invent? On Mutiny? Did he just put it on floppy disks and mail it to a bunch of people? Also, he's been reading Joe's email, I guess on Mutiny or something because he wrote… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:17 PM on October 5, 2016

I thought the main point of the glowing backpack was that it was in the shape of a diamond, and it was placed on his back.

I agree with the above comments about Diamondback being a much weaker character than Cottonmouth overall. Partly that's just because the show spent a lot of time early on fleshing out the back-story of the Stokes, and almost no time on the early lives of Carl Lucas and Willis Stryker. I was sort of… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:01 PM on October 5, 2016

I have to admit that while I'm still enjoying the show, which I've come to see as a sort of present-day Neuromancer, this season really frustrated me with it's seemingly endless succession of cliff-hangers. It's the same thing here, we don't really find out what stage 2 is (apart from the plot to blow up what is apparently the AT&T Long Lines Building) and there's no word on the warehouses or whatever in Angela's home town that seem to be the driving force behind… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:48 PM on September 21, 2016

The only major question I had left hanging is what White Rose's long term plan here is

Yeah, sorry, that's really what I meant by "stage 2." We did find out the Elliot/fsociety angle on it, but I was hoping to learn more about what Whiterose and Mr Robot's motivations were for setting the whole thing in motion in the first place.

The more I think about this Mr Robot as external AI idea, the more it makes sense to me.… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 11:56 PM on September 21, 2016

I didn't really like this one, it seemed like a watered-down version of Eastbound and Down and I never found it all that funny apart from a few good moments. I really like Walter Goggins, so I was hoping for better. Maybe if they amp up the crazy next season I'll like it better.
posted to FanFare by whir at 7:26 PM on September 21, 2016

Like they really expect us to believe that Elliot would use nano as his text editor.

Ha, yeah, I caught that too. Even the slimmest busybox-based embedded system OS comes with vi.
posted to FanFare by whir at 8:07 PM on August 18, 2016

Yeah, this season went out with a whimper. The sudden introduction of the fencing Strong Female Protagonist reminded me of that move they do in sitcoms where the ratings are flagging so they introduce an adorable moppet. I will say I was surprised by the revelation that the Native American dude was a werewolf though (although they never did address the racial politics of that storyline in any satisfying way).
posted to FanFare by whir at 8:50 PM on June 23, 2016

The thing that disappointed me the most about this episode is that I actually really like the siege of Riverrun and the whole lead-up to it in the books. Jaime has realized that Cersei is actually not that cool, he spends a lot of time reading the White Book, he spars with Illyn Payne and tells him introspective things about himself, and he basically undergoes massive character development because his missing hand has made it necessary for him to think about things instead of solving every… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 9:29 PM on June 13, 2016

I liked the finale overall, and I thought that this season was miles ahead of the first one in getting me to care about the characters on the show.

That said, I agree that I'm not really sure what the whole thing with Meg's big plan was about. If the GR's end goal was really just to insinuate themselves into Jardin, TX this seems like a bad way to do it - given their seemingly limitless membership roster it wouldn't be too far-fetched to just have a bunch of them take… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 11:22 PM on December 9, 2015

Amazon has released a preview of the second episode of this, with the full season to be available for streaming on November 20. (I haven't watched episode 2, but I plan to.)
posted to FanFare by whir at 9:25 PM on October 29, 2015

I liked this episode a lot - the new family is way more interesting to me than any of the characters from the first season, and it's nice to actually see people laugh and act like there is some enjoyment to be had in this universe rather than just torrents of grief, frustration and numb despair. It's also cool to see some persons of color as the main focus of one of these prestige dramas for once.

About the hole in the road, they mention something about fracking in the… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 10:57 PM on October 6, 2015

Also, having just looked back through some of the season 1 threads, I will be perfectly happy if this season just sticks with the town of Jarden, TX and doesn't really focus on very much of that convoluted nonsense again.
posted to FanFare by whir at 11:05 PM on October 6, 2015

I'm surprised no one has mentioned how much he looks like Michael Shannon.

That's definitely occurred to me too. I think of such people as "Skeets" (after Skeet Ulrich's resemblance to Johnny Depp). Christian Slater is himself the Skeet of Jack Nicholson, or at his career sort of started out that way. I tend to think of them as watered-down, off brand versions though, which isn't really how I think of Malek at all.
posted to FanFare by whir at 12:28 PM on September 7, 2015

I was wondering that too about the Ashley Madison bit. Very topical!

I thought this was a little anticlimactic for a season finale, not really addressing several threads I thought would be addressed. The Times Square bit sort of had me thinking he might be in a Matrix-style virtual reality or something, and the scene with Tyrell's wife again gave me the suspicion that Elliot and Tyrell are the same person. I like some ambiguity in my entertainment, but this seems a… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 9:46 PM on September 2, 2015

That ending was amazing. I was a little disappointed that they had the little post-credits coda, it was so fantastically bleak as it was.
posted to FanFare by whir at 7:03 AM on August 17, 2015

I've been flirting with the theory that Elliot and Tyrell are the same person but I'm not sure how he could hold down two full-time office jobs.

This was a strong suspicion of mine after Tyrell murdered the CIO's wife last episode, but I agree that it doesn't really seem logistically plausible. I do think there's something to it, though, insofar as Elliot and Tyrell are shown to have a lot of characteristics in common - lack of empathy and existing… [more]
posted to FanFare by whir at 6:33 PM on August 13, 2015