I just don't think film is the ideal medium for unreliable-narrator-syndrome type narratives
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 26 September 2019 21:24 (five years ago) link
I'm trying to think of film examples where it's done successfully but usually they involve dumb gotcha/reveal endings (Usual Suspects, Fight Club, etc.)
― Οὖτις, Thursday, 26 September 2019 21:26 (five years ago) link
Not a huge Vandermeer fan, but I was pleased by this today:
Wow. Nice one, Dan Simmons. What a jerk. pic.twitter.com/6VKCFPvU6a— Jeff VanderMeer (@jeffvandermeer) September 25, 2019
Our generation of speculative fiction fans really need to view past generations of right-wing anti-environment sci-fi authors with a critical eye.
― hedonic treadmill class action (Sanpaku), Thursday, 26 September 2019 21:57 (five years ago) link
didn't realize simmons was a right wing loon. that's ok though because i could barely finish Hyperion and it's sequel and decided he is not for me.
― akm, Thursday, 26 September 2019 23:00 (five years ago) link
apparently he’s always personally been an asshole but was of many who ramped it up and took it public after 2001
― mh, Friday, 27 September 2019 02:19 (five years ago) link
Loved Hyperion/Endymion and some of his other books even though he's a right wing loon.
Flashback however is fucking abysmal and the one where his shitty views are on prominent display.
― groovypanda, Friday, 27 September 2019 09:06 (five years ago) link
Needing some distraction from the news, so I'm watching Annihilation again...geez, why does it start out like Arrival, fer fuck's sake...?!?— Jeff VanderMeer (@jeffvandermeer) January 4, 2020
Personally, I think the director had things he wanted to address that included Stalker and my book was just a convenient vehicle for that. Which created complications for me, given my book is not at all influenced by Stalker/Roadside Picnic.— Jeff VanderMeer (@jeffvandermeer) January 4, 2020
― Number None, Saturday, 4 January 2020 10:10 (four years ago) link
that first tweet is a thread
not sure if serious
― wasdnuos (abanana), Saturday, 4 January 2020 17:29 (four years ago) link
no, it’s definitely a thread
― hot nuts (small) (bizarro gazzara), Saturday, 4 January 2020 17:34 (four years ago) link
New show from Alex Garland. Pretty sure I'll be watching this:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoNloYTsH0Y&feature=youtu.be
― DJI, Friday, 10 January 2020 01:44 (four years ago) link
"(Playback ID: 7MsQp_v670f9y-sv)" is an episode of Mr Robot iirc
― don't care didn't ask still clappin (sic), Friday, 10 January 2020 04:22 (four years ago) link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8klax373ds
― groovypanda, Friday, 10 January 2020 07:42 (four years ago) link
interesting cast. dunno about longform fiction from this guy tho'.
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Friday, 10 January 2020 20:08 (four years ago) link
maybe it's fine in context but characters who say "nothing ever happens without a reason" (more usually "everything happens for a reason") and writers who write those characters can, unless the character is obviously meant to be a grade A idiot, fuck right off.the next line "everything is determined by something prior" - reasons are not causes.
― Paperbag raita (ledge), Friday, 10 January 2020 21:46 (four years ago) link
any talk about his new show Devs? just starting it
― just sayin, Saturday, 14 March 2020 08:35 (four years ago) link
“ my book is not at all influenced by Stalker/Roadside Picnic.”
sure brah
― the ghost of tom, choad (thomp), Saturday, 14 March 2020 09:16 (four years ago) link
yeah, the cancer without radiation is taken directly from roadside picnic.
― wasdnuos (abanana), Saturday, 14 March 2020 09:32 (four years ago) link
Devs is getting a little more interesting. It feels like a cross between Ex Machina and a few others, with a slow roll-out
― mh, Saturday, 14 March 2020 15:06 (four years ago) link
I’m really digging Devs. The camera work is gorgeous, and I think some of it is shot at UCSC. Don’t want to spoil anything though.
― DJI, Saturday, 14 March 2020 15:27 (four years ago) link
We just binge watched the first 5 episodes of Devs, and it's pretty good, yeah. Some of the themes feel maybe a bit too well-trodden in sci-fi, but the look and sound of the show is consistently great, Salisbury and Barrow have done as great a job with the music as with Annihilation. And some of the visual details they've put into creating an eccentric tech geek's paradise are neat, love those ring lights around the trees, and the Dev team headquarters look amazing.
― Tuomas, Saturday, 28 March 2020 21:51 (four years ago) link
no idea what Devs is but maybe it should have its own spoilers thread so ppl idly scrolling thru here don't get them...
― Doctor Casino, Sunday, 29 March 2020 00:20 (four years ago) link
I’d be down for a thread
It’s a new show on FX/Hulu from Alex Garland fyi
― mh, Sunday, 29 March 2020 00:41 (four years ago) link
Devs is an eight-part miniseries created, written and directed by Garland, currently airing weekly, that I'd intended to start until the spoilers above.
― Dollarmite Is My Name (sic), Sunday, 29 March 2020 00:42 (four years ago) link
xpost
― Dollarmite Is My Name (sic), Sunday, 29 March 2020 00:43 (four years ago) link
Sorry about that, though the stuff we discussed happens in the second episode, and it's not really a big spoiler regarding the main plot... Like I said, this is not really a mystery show, they show they cards almost right from the start.
― Tuomas, Sunday, 29 March 2020 08:55 (four years ago) link
I'll start a new thread and ask the mods to delete the spoiler posts.
― Tuomas, Sunday, 29 March 2020 08:56 (four years ago) link
A thread for Devs, the new Alex Garland show on FX/HBO (with SPOILERS)
― Tuomas, Sunday, 29 March 2020 09:01 (four years ago) link
Saw Men tonight. Good build-up for the first half, some beautiful shots, and a final 30 minutes that was insane and felt twice as long. Between this, I'm Thinking of Ending Things, and her weird turn in Fargo, Jessie Buckley seems to be the default actress for--I'm not sure how to describe whatever it is.
― clemenza, Thursday, 16 June 2022 02:06 (two years ago) link
she's in The Lost Daughter too, although a bit less - whatever it is
― kinder, Thursday, 16 June 2022 19:20 (two years ago) link
I like a lot of Alex Garland, writer and director, but I'm really not sure what could convince me to see the new one. When I was last in the theatre and saw the trailer, even this little old lady in the back piped up "Why would I want to see that?"
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 5 April 2024 18:45 (five months ago) link
You talking about the civil war movie?
― Andy the Grasshopper, Friday, 5 April 2024 20:08 (five months ago) link
Yeah. Not sure I really need it.
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 6 April 2024 04:01 (five months ago) link
There’s a new book in the series coming this year.
― JoeStork, Saturday, 6 April 2024 04:28 (five months ago) link
Civil War was extremely unsettling overall, particularly the short Jesse Plemons scene, which might be as scary as anything I've seen in a horror movie as of late.
there are definitely eyerolly bits but it's fairly po-faced as things go
― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal), Tuesday, 9 April 2024 21:59 (five months ago) link
some are making it out to be like The Day After for a new generation, and some of the 'violence-porn to SHOCK U out of complacency' is in this film for sure, but I don't really find the description accurate.
really hits a lot of themes, not any very deeply, it kind of wants you to sit with your own discomfort for a bit. you're kind of left to your own fill-in-the-blanks on every character's past/personality, and there's no real examination of how the conflict began, you're also somewhat meant to piece that together; but I didn't think that was a bad thing, I don't think it would have been satisfying for constant drip-coffee dialogue pointing out "this here event and that here event led us here today".
a lot of 'fog of war', where enemies often don't know who or why they're fighting, who's winning/losing, and some of the conflict seems as expressions of localized despair and rage as opposed to part of a bigger mission. the scarier parts of the movie aren't the depictions of wanton violence, but the moments of beauty that torture people with memories of more civilized times before they inevitably drive by people hanging from a pole or see burnt out husks of cars littering the road, people standing in FEMA-esque lines waiting for water.
obviously given what the US is going through right now it's not easy to watch something like this, but it's also far enough away from our current reality that it isn't massively triggering. for one, the film assumes California and Texas would ever collaborate on anything, or that a Floridian militia could ever become organized and terrifying on a national scale.
― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal), Tuesday, 9 April 2024 22:12 (five months ago) link
It's essentially like from the journalists' perspective? That's my impression.. I might check it out in the future but no big rush to see this in the theaater
― Andy the Grasshopper, Tuesday, 9 April 2024 23:10 (five months ago) link
Yea entirely from theirs
― CEO Greedwagon (Neanderthal), Tuesday, 9 April 2024 23:14 (five months ago) link
I'll let you know. I may go to a screening tonight.
― poppers fueled buttsex crescendo (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, 10 April 2024 09:28 (five months ago) link
I thought it was very very good
― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Monday, 15 April 2024 04:24 (five months ago) link
Annihilation is screening this month at the imax screen at the OMSI Sci-Fi Film Fest in Portland, OR.
They are also screening Stalker.
(Not Solaris, tho, which is disappointing)
― Glower, Disruption & Pies (kingfish), Monday, 15 April 2024 05:41 (five months ago) link
Nice write-up Neanderthal. I saw this yesterday and enjoyed it
― your mom goes to limgrave (dog latin), Monday, 15 April 2024 08:33 (five months ago) link
my kid came home from school annoyed today that his government teacher went off on the movie in a very predictable fashion, primarily that there wasn't enough explicit stuff about race and that 'the only person of color sacrificed himself for a white girl'. my son didn't want to get into it with her but was fuming that she overlooked the explicitly cuban journalist, and that she seemed to not pick up on every element of subtext in the film (like, the entire Jesse Plemmons sequence). It's a complaint I've seen a lot online. IMO it's really quite obvious that Offerman is a Trump stand-in (third term, 'greatest victory in the history of mankind', 'antifa massacre', disbanding the FBI); it's only the inclusion of Texas in the WF that makes this not a 100% proxy for the current situation. I did think perhaps it would have been wise to not have a white girl as the main protagonist, but then she would not have lived past the Jesse Plemmons scene and would never have made it to the end of the movie. I think the film did an amazing job of telling a story from a unique POV, and developed very realistic characters for whom the viewer builds an incredible amount of empathy in 2 hours.
The final 15 minutes or so of this film are among the most intense scenes I've ever seen in a theater (I generally avoid war films).
― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Tuesday, 16 April 2024 00:05 (five months ago) link
(I guess that actor is Brazillian but since the character was from Florida I assumed he was Cuban)
― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Tuesday, 16 April 2024 00:09 (five months ago) link
This was a great film with a terrible name that almost kept me from watching it. Glad it didn't
― H.P, Friday, 19 April 2024 11:23 (five months ago) link
I've seen your takeaway in lots of places, but I still can't quite bring myself to watch this, at least not in the theaters. Maybe it is just the title, but the title is terrible enough to give it the discomforting tinge of from-the-headlines exploitation.
Obviously "Civil War" is a great title, very eye-catching, but what would have been a better fit?
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 19 April 2024 12:11 (five months ago) link
(By both great and terrible title, I mean, yeah, it's certainly eye-catching, from a marketing standpoint, which is great, but it's terrible because of what it conveys, which may or may not reflect the plot/premise of the film itself, which I and of course others find uncomfortable, given this country sometimes feels like it is teetering on the brink.)
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 19 April 2024 12:20 (five months ago) link
Josh you should go watch it. If it's about civil war, it's maybe 1% of what the movie is about. Just pretend it was called "war journalist - 5 stars and two thumbs up from everyone - best picture nominee".
I think it has more to say about the current situation in Gaza than the sitch in America. But then again I'm not a US citizen so maybe it is saying things to US citizens that our kind aren't picking up (doubt it tho)
― H.P, Friday, 19 April 2024 12:57 (five months ago) link
I think this film particularly benefits from the cinema experience too. There are many tense scenes made more palpable by it.
I found the "cars" scene more tense than the obviously tense scene that came afterwards. My heart rate was up!
― H.P, Friday, 19 April 2024 13:01 (five months ago) link
Maybe a terrible headline could help
https://i.postimg.cc/CxWWHBR4/Screenshot-20240419-231131-Chrome.jpg
It really doesn't want to say much at all about "civil war", but it's a great backdrop for the things it does want to say
― H.P, Friday, 19 April 2024 13:13 (five months ago) link