Hans: Are you a Christian?
Malica: I’m Muslim.
Johanna: Does that count?
Hans: … I have no idea.
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I have been rewatching Warehouse 13 and Eureka the past few months. I had only watched them during their initial runs, and I never saw the last season of either because I was pissed when they were canceled. I have thoughts now that I’m done with W13 and almost done with Eureka.
First, I think W13 is better than Eureka. They can both get a little ridiculous, but W13’s ridiculousness seems more intentionally campy while Eureka’s seems more accidentally campy. W13’s final season is short, and was obviously intended to just wrap up the story because they knew it had been canceled. Good for fans in a way, I guess, but I still feel like I wanted more, once it was over. The ending was disappointing rather than satisfying. It’s a show that could very easily be brought back, though. With different characters. I liked Eddie McClintock at the time, but he’s turned out to be a bit of a Trumpy right winger, so fuck that guy.
Eureka…honestly deserved to be canceled. I don’t think it’s held up well over time. At all. That show was all over the place. It rebooted itself at least twice with time travel and alternate realities. It started to make this character a bad guy, and then shifted directions to make them good, and …yeah, it was just all over the place. It feels like it was probably the victim of studio execs meddling with the story lines based on ratings and focus groups. And they should have used Wil Wheaton more. He was honestly really, really good in the few episodes he was in. And the soap opera-y bullshit of the last season was completely unnecessary. Also…man, a whole bunch of people from that show have ended up as regulars in Hallmark romcoms. A suspiciously large number of them.
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holy fuck, that was quite the ride! jeeeezuz!
apart from the somewhat cronenberg-ish body horror and themes, a lot of gilliam-esque close-ups and the overall grotesqueness of it, dialed to max. kinda amazing in these times. demi moore is just great.
Actually it draws from across the comic-horror-fantasy board, not least Carrie (1976), Freaky Friday (1976), Death Becomes Her (1992) and in subtler ways, Moore feels, All About Eve (1950)
as for your mentioned society, I would also add the films very clear nods to the shining to that list.
e/ in case I didnt made myself clear enough; this one is an absolutly must see as far as I can tell.
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W13 started out as a guilty pleasure of mine, because of the general silliness, but I came to appreciate how well done it was. The humour and the interaction between the characters were what made it.
I only watched a couple of episodes of Eureka, but it didn’t grab me and it looked as if it might end up in an X-Files-like tangle of plots so I gave up.
Looking at the Wikipedia page, I see there were quite a few crossover episodes between the two shows.
It’s notable that about half the cast were Canadian, headed by the amazing veteran Saul Rubinek. With production in Toronto, It was probably the cheapest way to go. 
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That probably explains the Hallmark movie connections with Eureka, then. I think all of those movies are filmed in Canada.
ETA: There were, I think, only two true crossover episodes: one on W13 and one on Eureka, with Fargo coming to the Warehouse to update their computer systems with Claudia, and then Claudia appearing in that same week’s episode of Eureka. However, Saul Rubinek appeared as a different, one off character in the first season of Eureka, and Joe Morton appeared in an early episode of W13, again as a completely different character than the one he played on Eureka. The true crossover episodes happened after the timeline shift in Eureka. Jesus, I now know way too much about these shows.
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https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/megalopolis-movie-review-19760949.php
This is not a review. This is a warning. If I gave Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” a standard movie review and told you that it was an incoherent mess on par with “Rebel Moon” (which it is), your fanboy reflexes would kick and you’d write me off. You’d take me as just another pair of glasses dead set on panning a movie just to bolster their art cred. I hate critics like that, and so do you.
So I’m telling you this not as a reviewer, but as a friend: Do not see this movie. It is a piece of s—t.
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I have often, well occasionally, given that review to people of some big budget things that are pushed at you and it has never worked. People just needed to go and see it.
In this case it mightn’t work for me either. I may well go to it on Sunday as it won’t cost me anything and the time works out, and there isn’t anything else on at the time I want to see enough to actually pay for.
ETA
but thanks for the warning. I will give it serious consideration…
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thats funny; didnt saw the post from mspie500 before yours, but knew immediately which film you both were referring to. damn.
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The very biggest turn off for me is the Roman thing.
I mean if it was the Phoenicians I’d be queuing up at the cinema waiting for the film to arrive but Rome? Seriously who thinks Rome is cool?
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For real though… so many cooler and more interesting parts of ancient history…
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I do think Romans make great villains, and then you have your choice of heroes. You can have them versus slaves like in Spartacus. You can have them versus Gauls or Greeks or Hebrews or Parthians. You can of course have them versus Phoenicians, and I’m kind of surprised that isn’t more of a thing. You can of course have them versus other Romans, though ideally out in the provinces to give it some kind of flavor. Because if it’s just Romans in Rome…yeah, we’ve seen it a lot, haven’t we.
Megalopolis was in Arcadia. 
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isnt that the point? I get the impression coppola tried an obvious and very flat satire here (usa seen as new roman empire by a lot of people nowadays) and -according to the sfgate-review warning- failed miserably. guess I will give it a try if theres a decent 
version.
okok, seems to be the fountainhead. sort of. damn.
e/
(20 min in and trying to supress it, but at a certain point you just cant help it but to start rolling your eyes…)
yep, first hour the roman stuff is meant to be the half-assed, sort-of “satirical” part; its weird, its flat, its bad and it doesnt work. and then comes the second hour; its clear that drivers character is the tortured, misunderstood and framed genius. thats it. then he loses his mojo (cause he is tortured, misunderstood and framed). and then he gets it back, five minutes later, thanks to the “heroine” of the film and his true muse (aka love interest). (gawd, its getting worse by the minute…I cant watch this anymore.)
jumped to the end. its like the ending of things to come with metropolis on top, sprinkled with some musk-esque sf-absurdity, only even more pathetic. the masses are rising up and the bad guy gets spanked. I have to assume this is meant to be as serious as it gets. good grief. kinda wanna puke. this is bad. real bad. sorry, francis. (feels like a las-vegas-show, trying to be a society-critical social drama. but rich people. or whatever.)
oh, fuck off, movie! (godda be shittn me 
)
e2/ ah, there it is again;
And that to me is the most outrageous part: if there is one thing we learned in the 20th century, besides “demagogue Hitler-types are bad” (which is the basic level at which the film’s polemics take place) it is that Utopia should never be a one-man-invention and gift to the people. Yet, to cut a long story short, there is a sense that it is exactly what Coppola is driving at, removing any kind of nuance and subtlety in the process. It’s not exactly “The Fountainhead” level of disgraceful, but it shares with it too many ideas already.
(good review)
(sorry my sudden obsession, but the film and the stuff around it is just such a trainwreck of such epic proportions that its hard to resist to stop digging)
e3/ the overmaxed praise astroturf-ai-reviews at imdb are really something;
Megalopolis is a cinematic tour de force that unflinchingly dissects the precarious state of contemporary American democracy through a chilling parallel with the fall of the Roman Empire. Directed with audacious vision, the film’s chaotic narrative structure mirrors the tumultuous reality it seeks to critique, deftly illustrating how systemic instability can erode even the most resilient of republics.
The screenplay navigates a labyrinth of political intrigue, social unrest, and ideological extremism, echoing the historical disintegration that befell Rome. This intentional disorder in storytelling serves as a profound metaphor for the modern world’s volatile dynamics, underscoring the fragility of democratic institutions in the face of rising neo-fascism and pervasive disinformation.
…
In an era where the specter of authoritarianism looms large, Megalopolis is not just a film but a prescient warning. It implores us to heed the lessons of history and remain vigilant, lest we witness the collapse of our own democratic ideals.
This film is an intellectual triumph, demanding reflection and action from its audience.
fuckyeah!
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Best show on TV right now.
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Eagerly awaiting the finale tonight.
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Well I didn’t go to see it earlier on today so I probably won’t.
I did go to see The Substance and we hated it.
It’s a splatter movie. I mean like an actual literal splatter movie with a spinning pressure hose of fake blood. When it gets to the point that she shits a boob out of her eye socket at least you are laughing at it but the minutes of repeated blood splattering beatings had worn out patience out. Yes it was gross but in an utterly boring way. Compare that to, say, the horror that Cronenburg managed to bring to a very tiny little knife in Eastern Promise.
It was as if someone had a very short episode of Black Mirror written and largely ran out of ideas so decided to go all in on an 80s style splatter movie. Without the humour.
I believe this won a script award at Cannes for some reason….
As I’m listening to Naomi Klein’s Doppelgänger on my way into work it’s kind of vaguely interesting to fit into doubles films. But barely to be honest.
I know reviewers are terrified of being accused of spoilers but if people go in thinking they are in for a feminist satire of beauty and celebrity rather than a film which utterly runs out of ideas other than more silicon models, more splatter, and a literal fucking firehouse of blood all over the place they have been misled.
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bummer. truly sorry to hear that; I didnt love it (how do you “love” a movie like that?), but and it was a highlight in a personal must-see kinda way and I definitly dont regret seeing it. but thats exactly why I wrote;
this one is an absolutly must see as far as I can tell
and as politeruin put it;
so, seems even if youre a fan of “Cronenberg-esque body horror”, there is a real possibility you still gonna hate it. which I didnt. far from it.
(here hoping you didnt payed too much for the “experience” and are not mad at me.)
naahhh…I would call that rather consequent / going all the way than running out of ideas. but yeah, its a sledgehammer.
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(I dont know, I feel the need to defend my very high opinion of this film, but let better someone else articulate their thoughts on this one)
(and her adressing the dennis-quaid-character; yes, I also met multiple men who were exactly like him. his performance is actually not exaggerated)
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Holy shit, that made the Red Wedding look like Sesame Street.
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I’ll watch it tonight, so no spoilers please.
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