chiming in on The Nevers (not Whedon), may I say that after watching the pilot ep tonight…
I’m all in.
thoroughly enjoyable fun. almost even has a certain Dr. Who-ish vibe.
maybe old London town and weirdness and all, but that is only one ep in… things could change.
will watch more.
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Half-way through Intergalactic, having binged four episodes and had to stop to make sure we had some left. Really enjoying it, partly because the first few episodes reminded me of Blake’s Seven, but mostly because it’s well written and directed.
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I really enjoyed it. I didn’t read the original source so I watched it with no expectations.
It does get rather visceral but I never felt like it was just for shock value. But I can see others feeling that way as stated above. To me it addressed the the reality of super beings fighting around squishy humans. Most comics conveniently side-step the issue. One might also draw parallels with the reality of modern warfare and collateral damage.
But just to be safe I will say it’s not just “violence” of the punching and shooting variety. It’s people we are given a moment to care about getting the treatment we give a fruit fly. It is harsh. So as much as I enjoyed it, the squeamish should avoid it. I hope that is helpful.
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Yup, sounds like it is an accurate and well done adaptation then.
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The online episode reviews have pointed out the changes made. From what I can tell they are positive improvements. For example my understanding of Marks girlfriend in the comic is she is a 2 dimensional character that barely fills the role. In the animation she is cool and interesting and I’d watch her in her own spin off show. Other characters that also were barely developed originally get more depth as I understand it.
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Well the third episode of Mare of Easttown was confusing at first, but I think I got all the characters’ connections to each other straight.
Mare’s theft of the drugs to plant on her grandchild’s mom was uncharacteristically clumsy of her. But then, maybe her Chief is right after all-- she’s exhausted herself into incompetence. I guess we’ll hear about two paternity test results next time. Im predicting that some third guy is the father. Probably not that bike-tossing deacon. Maybe the best part for me was how well the actor playing Mare’s sidekick plays a drunk.
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For espionage fans. I am on season 3, really good so far.
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As much as I like him in the Quicksilver role, it’s nice to see him play someone his own age for a change. He’s a good actor.
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I was disappointed Dylan survived.
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It’s back:
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I’m finally caught up.
The fact that Mare is related to everyone, including thebparish priest, or is a friend, makes this interesting or incestuous. The thoughts of @PsiPhiGrrrl might be helpful here. My husband partly grew up in Center City, so he’s from another area altogether.
Also, @Melizmatic I was also disappointed that Dylan survived. Does this mean we’re awful? Also, I wonder when Dylan held his son, if he realized that the child wasn’t his?
Mare planting the drugs was awful, so I’m curious to see how she gets back on the case. And I feel like there is more to the case that Detective Zabel solved.
I’m still not sure if Guy Pierce’s character has anything to do with the overall story, but I’m thinking that something is up with Mare’s priest cousin and the deacon is helping him?
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Nope; it just means we don’t bother wasting time or energy on people who don’t deserve it, not even flat, one-dimensional fictional characters.
I agree with your suspicion by the way.
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Oh, and so far, everything I’ve seen from Barry Jenkins is transcendent, so I’m happy to hear this…
I love his work so much and pairing him with Whitehead was a stroke of genius.
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I really want to watch The Underground Railroad so i hope it gets shown on something other than Prime, of which i am not a user. I also think i’d like to see some sort of collab between Barry Jenkins and Steve McQueen because that’d be a force to be reckoned with.
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Yeah, I don’t think they release their stuff on DVD, usually. Which is stupid of them.
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The part that I found a bit distracting was the fact that in this universe earth, and the protagonist’s hometown in particular, seems to be under pretty much non-stop existential threat from random villains, muti-dimensional aliens, mad scientists, natural disasters, etc to the point where this one city block can have three 9/11 level disasters in a week and everyone just keeps plugging away like it’s no big thing. A cyborg comes up out of the sewer and attacks students on a college campus? The official response is to put caution tape up around the hole and investigate no further. Classes, campus parties go on as normal. This is often the case to some extent in most superhero comics, but it feels pretty extreme in this show. The collateral damage in this universe is frequent enough that it’s amazing that humanity isn’t facing a major population shortage.
The other thing which became more apparent in the later episodes is that it turns out that the character Atom Eve has the common superhero issue of having ill-defined but mind-boggling god-like powers and can apparently rearrange matter any way she likes, turning doors into walls, building houses out of nothing, levitating objects at a distance with her mind, etc. which begs the question- how could any villain pose a threat against such powers, and why wouldn’t a fight be over as soon as she decided to turn a villain’s weapon into a hamster or whatever. basically it’s the problem that a hero with all the powers becomes a problem to write plausible stories around.
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I don’t really see them as natural collaborators really and both have fully mature artistic praxes (sp?) on their own and with the teams of collaborators they have built up over years.
So I think that while Steve McWyern could have undoubtedly done an excellent UR his unflinching focus on violence (for example the beating and torture of a disabled man in a wheelchair in Widows) could be overbearing in UR whereas Jenkins’ desparate focus on beauty in the face of structural violence is, I think, a version I am more likely to enjoy.
I’m looking forward to it anyway.
Unrelated but has anything come of the TV adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s The Power (I read them right next to each other)?
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It was just an idle thought really but to me there seemed to be some overlap in the subjects they tackle, well there’s Twelve Years being a direct comparison to Railroad i suppose even though your point is a good one regarding violence and the former film. However, i’m not sure it applies wholesale to McQueen’s work when you take the quite brilliant Small Axe series as an example, there are plenty of moments in that focusing on the beauty when faced with overwhelming oppression.
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or Farscape, the other escaping-prisoners-steal-a-prison-ship show
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It’s the one where you realise that every single member of House Targaryen has looked identical for centuries, and that the whole clan is probably horribly inbred, and that there’s a good chance that the reason why Daenerys turned into Dragon Hitler at the end of Game of Thrones was because she suffered from a severe genetic deficiency. It’s the one where you think “Ooh, who is that sexy young lady?” and then realise that it’s actually Matt Smith.
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