Charlie Brooker's BLACK MIRROR

Not big on this one. We'd seen the reality TV thing done in the first series, and this one felt much clumsier, like it was being made up as it went along.

not her fault, but the lead actress was spectacularly irritating

Ugh. Way too torture-porn-y for me. (The fact that that's what it "about", in part, doesn't really make it any more clever than Human Cenntipede II

Saw two mins of this. It was enough, quite enough.

how do you gauge anything based on two minutes?

probably works for wire songs.

If films were/weren't like Wire songs. I'd like to see a film that choruses out.

i can usually spot shite within two minutes, i dont consider it a rare gift tbh

one instinctively knows when something is shite

I've now watched the S1 episodes. They have a habit they share with S2 that the first 20 mins is thrilling and then you get the sense that they're not sure where to take the concept. The only episode that really worked all the way through was The Entire History of Your Life or whatever. I was genuinely surprised by the way it ended, and it it really showed the messy interstices of people's thoughts and private lives in a way the others have tried but generally failed to do

(Have not seen last night's yet btw)

my problem with last night's was the actors were famous for other things (comedy things) and that got in the way somewhat.

The only episode that really worked all the way through was The Entire History of Your Life or whatever

This one has been sold to Robert Downey, Jr., who's planning to produce a feature out of it. Sam Bain/Jesse Armstrong are writing it (as they did the original).

i can usually spot shite within two minutes, i dont consider it a rare gift tbh

Man, there are SO many shows/movies/albums that I am so glad that I haven't dismissed after two potentially-totally-misleading minutes.

I think all of Black Mirror has been brilliant so I guess this thread isn't for me -- it seems more like a thread to complain about how shitty it is. The first series was better than this one though. I think my favorite was the cycling/pop idol future one.

Me too. It felt like the best conceived even if it did borrow huge chunks from The Machine Stops

This was actually one of my favourites too. It was the horriblest but not knowing what was going on kept it interesting. The 'do you see' is obviously there but a little less hammered home than others? maybe? I dunno.
When Tyres steps out from behind the doors at the end he's totally meant to be Derren Brown, right? I thought it was him.

oh wait it's not your favourite. I dunno, I wouldn't watch it again but I think I enjoyed guessing the setup whereas before it's all laid out for you. Also it feels like it's just based on a TV Go Home idea.

Yeah I was getting a lot of Derren Brown vibes from that character's reveal.

I thought last night's one was kinda stupid for 50 minutes or so and then the ending mitigated it somewhat, but it was pointlessly cruel and manipulative nevertheless. I'm a cynical guy and all, but it was nuance-free cynicism. One of the interesting things about humans is how they can be hateful in general but invariably sympathetic up close. You can despair at the culture but I don't think this kind of exaggeration has anything useful to tell us about society. You could say the same about, I suppose, Nineteen Eighty-Four but the difference is that a story like that puts us, up close, with people who have some good inside them acting within a merciless framework. But there is nobody good in Black Mirror, or at least last night's one, so I don't believe in it. There were good Nazis even. People everywhere are holding doors open for and rescuing from drowning those who they would otherwise mock on Facebook. I'm kinda comfortable with that - though we could improve!

Considering it's been 20 years now, do you think there were parallels with the Bulger murder; how there'll always be a part of society that would like to see those boys tortured for eternity, regardless of if they ever learn their lesson?

I do think Bulger-murderer hatred is mostly kind of abstract and would be shown up as such if it came up against the killers, face to face. Some people would just stab them given the chance, no doubt, but it's not my experience that the hatred projected towards these people - or others in the past e.g. Myra Hindley - represents the soul of humanity. Far from it. I think the disparity is more interesting than portraying others as a clump. I'd give Brooker the benefit of the doubt and assume he's considered this - e.g. his proxy in the 15 Million Merits episode in the first series - but his depersonalisation of fictional depersonalisation seems too easily cynical.

Trailer for pt3 makes it look shit

Good posts EK

I don't know, I thought this was pretty much the best from either series. For all the comparisons you could make to Bulger or Brady/Hindley, it seems to me the nearest rivals are the April Jones case, Charlene Downes (and the attendant exploitation by the far Right) and the media circus of the Shannon Matthews case. As mainstream politics lurches all the time rightward and into populism (Labour's BNP styled People's Policy X-Factor is a prime example) it wouldn't be a step too far to imagine exactly what's portrayed here as a knee-jerk vote grabber. On the basis that there was a guy following Vicky Pryce as she walked to court with a placard slagging her off, it's not too far a jump that the public - or at least enough to make the park viable - would willingly want to participate in the 'justice'. In fact, the only players that I don't get are the actors. I don't see what they get out of it or their motivation.

comparisons with the human centipede are otm, especially in her sobbing nonstop for the whole final act. that went far beyond sympathetic/retributive and was just annoying.

as mentioned upthread this was far too long for its story (surprise surprise), but the concept was certainly fascinating, and encourages reevaluating the possible extent of people's obsession with celebrity/infamy, the popular thirst for visceral justice, videophones &c.

thought this was the best one of this run.

i generally find that the tone of these things is uncomfortably "off" - the blue bear was so so shit, but I guess that was the point. but they stick with me for the most part and i find myself thinking about them for weeks after, like a half-recalled nightmare.

saw first series in its entirety, and first ep of this series - feels like its professed strangeness is not at all strange and quite a dull strate extrapolation of current elements that don't cohere into something other than being direct refs of those elements.

(watched Penda's Fen (play for today) on YouTube the other week - now that IS fucked up and v good.)

feel these tend to do machinery of the future quite well tho.

this was awful! they didn't really explore anything? Just like, yeah, this is what the people want, all of the time, someone's finally realised and that lets him rule the world.

also I hate all his characters.

horrible episode, stupid glib ending

both endings were stupid and glib

btw if you're having to resort to an idea you rejected for nathan barley eight years ago, maybe it's time to stop

feels like its professed strangeness is not at all strange and quite a dull strate extrapolation of current elements that don't cohere into something other than being direct refs of those elements.

for this week's episode this post is otm, especially as the way the main plot ended (before the epilogue thing) is something that happens in democracies all the time without the involvement of a cartoon bear

Aren't these supposed to be exaggerated parables of things that happen all the time though? Brooker's whole thing, from Newswipe to Black Mirror is about pointing out the hypocrisy and foibles of politics and the media, particularly in relation to modern technology. It might not be as deep and clever as you would like it to be but given the remit, it succeeds.

this one just seemed pointless though. the story could have been told without a cartoon bear and it wouldn't have lost anything at all.

every s1 episode was clever in a near-future (or even distant future) context, that required a dramatic heightening of the technology that was at the core of each story. this week's episode could have featured sooty for all the difference it would have made.

i mean i don't expect brooker to read my posts and go 'oh okay, that's what my show is about is it, best get cracking then', i just don't see why he would use such an ingenious premise to tell a very dull contemporary story.

1. social media obsession quickly builds political/media crisis, couldn't have been told without the existence of social media

2. man earns credits to something something, couldn't have been told without constant connectivity, the rising trend of micropayments etc.

3. facebook taken to a logical extreme, couldn't have been told without facebook existing in the first place

4. woman fucks robot, couldn't have been told without the existence of social media

5. perpetual justice as theme park, probably could have been told without the growing obsession with videophones but arguably not

6. comedian dons a bear suit, enters politics

I think the cartoon bear was either an analogue for "personality" politicians like Boris Johnson (who says the most outright shit things all the time but people love him for being edgy and "telling it like it is" even though what it "is" isn't all that much at all. That or it's a semi-autobiographical comment on his own life and career - Brooker started out as an amusing video game and TV columnist but has for better or worse been turned into a current affairs pundit.

errr, close bracket in there somewhere

but i see what you mean - arguably the story could have been told in the 60s with a guy in a bungle outfit, yeah.

DL I thought it might be partly autobiographical too- guy achieves sort-of fame by sneering at everything, realises he doesn't use it for good, I dunno

http://www.ashleyhames.tv/sites/default/files/images/news%20bunny%20flyer.jpg

It's also a comment on how a very fluffy, lovable fascia can be used to manipulate public opinion, from politics to brand packaging. "How can you hate on Ronald McDonald or Mickey Mouse when they bring joy to millions of children?" etc.. when it's really just a marketing team using the character as a mouthpiece. I thought the TV exec guy was perfectly cast too - so many of these big bollock jack-the-lad media types walking around.

dl: i really hope it's the former (boris johnson) because the latter (autobiographical) would be wanky enough to eclipse everything he has ever done

re marketing team with a mouthpiece: it felt to me like that was completely derailed by the whole comedian-can't-control-his-emotions scene. i get why that had to happen, but it still looked quite pathetic; at that point i lost any personal investment i might have had in the character.

what was the deal with the cia agent? i did not understand his agenda at all.

another interesting premise with zero idea of how to end it :(

That's been the problem with all of these. Every single episode sounds good as part of a capsule-form rant but they feel vastly overstretched as TV episodes. It's as though he either didn't have enough ideas to fill a 45 minute show while simultaneously not having enough time to fully explore them.

I haven't actually seen any of these, but from what's been said, they sound like "Demos"..

.. like, "Take them to the "band" to put more flesh on them and fill them out, properly"

A film that somehow incorporated a few of these ideas might not be a bad idea. Think Brooker's definitely got an eye for good ideas but he needs a collaborator to optimise them properly. That Dead Set thing from a few years ago is the prime example.

ideas