3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Civil War

2024, Alex Garland (Annihilation) -- cinema

The post was started right after we saw it.

Ugh, my stomach still hurts. This movie had me anxiety ridden from almost the first moment. As a man who watches a lot of violent media, often as comfort food, and plays very violent video games, often as a relaxation mechanism, I was rather surprised how I reacted to the constant anticipation of very realistic violence, to something that seemed plausible. It was not a pleasant feeling.

And I believe that was the point of the movie.

One of them?

America is at war, with itself. Not the metaphorical version we are IRL, but a civil war. Texas and California have seceded, Florida breaks away (allies? on its own?) and the rest of the US is at war with them. It is not an isolated war, not one with clear lines. It is everywhere and everyone is affected. Who are the Bad Guys? Who are the Good Guys? This movie is not here to answer that for you.

You're ALL the Bad Guys, even the quiet motherfuckers who just sit quietly by and watch all this shit go down !!!

Lee (Kirsten Dunst, Bring it On) and Joel (Wagner Moura, Elysium) are war correspondents, journalists covering the war in their own country. They don't take sides, they just go where the action is and report on it, Lee with her camera and ... Joel writes? They are in NYC, suffering water shortages, brownouts and suicide bombers, but they want to get to Washington, DC to interview POTUS (Nick Offerman, The Last of Us). Despite the President's rhetoric, this seems to be the final days of him being in office. They want that story.

Tagging along is Sammy (Stephen McKinley Henderson, Dune): veteran reporter, old, overweight, walking with a cane, and Jessie (Cailee Spaeny, Priscilla): in her early 20s, but looks much younger, and softer and very very naive. The movie opens with Lee saving her from a bombing. But Jessie wants to be a war photographer like Lee, her hero, with her vintage film cameras and know-nothing attitude.

Its about a 1000 miles from NYC to DC by way of older highways and back country roads, because the interstates have been destroyed. A thousand miles of unknown danger. Their trucked labelled with PRESS and their badges are only expected to protect them so much. And in DC, "they shoot journalists on sight."

I am not sure if it was the anticipation, like I mention above, or recent latent anxiety I have been supressing of late, but it was tangible to me, the ache in my gut. In a lesser movie, the chosen music, style of filming, the mannerisms of the characters, would have set this journey as an adventure, instead of an ordeal to be survived. But here we get well-built characters: Lee, the world-weary photographer with the same name as another famous war photographer who suffered extreme PTSD after her WWII experiences, and Joel, seemingly unphased by it all, drinking, smoking, hitting on much younger women, and Sammy, who is tired of taking chances, and knows its all bullshit. And Jessie, young, scared, but very much assured this is the life she wants, hero-worshipping Lee and her namesake, not afraid to push past her fear to take the shot, but also so prone to stupid stupid moves. 

I feel I was aligned with Lee: she was upset at her own country doing what she had spent her entire career trying to caution them from doing, she was tired of atrocities, tired of scary little boys with big guns, and the people in power who just let it happen. She's doing what has to be done, but looks for the quiet moments, instead of finding herself in the key centre of action. Until that becomes impossible for her.

Part of what elicited the anxiety, extracting itself once again from lesser movies, was the sound design. From that first boom of the suicide bomber's explosion, which is less the familiar boiling rumble, and more the sound of a sledgehammer, to the sharp, angry retorts of gunfire, to the deafening din of helicopters at the staging ground, this was not your average action flick. These are the sounds that make you cringe, startle, not feel adrenaline and excitement.

What is Garland saying in this movie? Its obvious, and its not obvious. For those who walked out of the movie because its not the exciting, travelogue action movie of some of the deceptive marketing done for the movie, the clear cut "look at Americans doing right by their country, doing The Right Thing" is not there. Oh, there are hints of a side being chosen here, in that we hear about "the Antifa Massacre" and wonder what was so horrendous that it inspired Texas and California to ally against DC, but for the most part, we don't even know what side the soldiers we meet are one. When the journalists come across a battle between a small cadre of uniformed soldiers holed up in a university, while a handful of irregular looking, civilian clothing wearing, soldiers hunt them down, which side is which? Are the uniforms members of the Western Front and the un-uniformeds fearless locals defending their home? Or are the uniforms the standing army of the US while the un-uniformeds are just those who picked up arms to help fight the civil war? We see war crimes from "both sides" but most often, we don't have a fucking clue which side is which. Again, scary little boys (and girls) with big guns getting the opportunity to shoot at each other. Like Kent mentioned as we walked away, a strong comment in this movie is about the US being a country with a lot of guns, and its just itching to use them, on anyone, including each other.

The movie ends as the civil war is brought to an end, by an action we have seen in a couple of other movies, with the White House invaded. Where those movies were about the invading forces being very clear Bad Guys, and the brave men & women within the White House were defending America, this movie steps sideways, and this act seems more like a street action from any other war movie. But again, more visceral, more scary. The handful of secret service people and supporters are defending against a large force of heavily armed, highly trained soldiers. It also ends with Jessie becoming who she wants to be, getting the award winning shot that will be on the cover of Time Magazine, but at a cost she probably won't understand until she is Lee's age.

I liked this movie, a lot. It dragged me out of my usual comfort zone, or more accurately heightened my already severe discomfort zone? It made me feel things, for reasons more than my usual work drama. Unfortunately, all it left me was feeling bleak. I don't see the movie as much of an exaggeration of the US situation. The possibility of Americans killing Americans, almost gleefully, seems very real. And scary AF.

Kent: We Agree.

I really dislike most of the posters for this movie, not because they aren't evocative, but because most are deceptive. The movie doesn't take place there, that is not really what the movie depicted. And that's not even mentioning the incredibly terrible AI generated posters highlighting major American landmarks being destroyed.

I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching (PT D.4)

Pt. A, B, C, D.1, D.2, D.3 can be found there.

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Graig or David attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.  Y'know, red horny demon possession, bad.

Just to round out the pile, I am going to shoe horn in a show I am currently watching. So, this edition, we get a completed season (and series), a dropped show (but likely to be binge watched) and a nearly done season.

Meh; four (series) seasons completed.

Preacher, 2016, AMC -- download

When Preacher premiered, we were excited. The trailers showed an obviously different show than the comic, but I am always for a bit of retooling to allow a comic to come to life. Look what they did with Iron Man and it was a great movie -- the core is there, but in no way is it "faithful". And of course, the casting of Joseph Gilgun as Cassidy was brilliant, almost like the role was made for him.

But then we watched the first episode and were entirely underwhelmed. Then we watched the second episode and the underwhelming continued. It was not terrible, but ... but ... I don't know, it just didn't compel me to watch. And in today's age, there are always a half dozen other genre shows on TV for me to download/watch. So, it got dropped.

A month later I downloaded digital copies of the comic series, having release the original comics to the wild years ago. Back in The Day, that comic overwhelmed me. It was post-X-Men for me, and was so entirely different from everything else. It was also entirely different from The Sandman which has already taken me off the road of comics being only about superheroes. But Preacher was irreverent, angry, over the top fun for an angry, irreverent kid. Yeah, I consider 1995 as me-being-a-kid days. That definition is changing a lot these days, since my beard went grey.  I loved this comic. Until even it became old hat.

But even the re-read was underwhelming. Being so profane is a bit stylistically immature these days, but I get why Seth Rogen is still so attached to the story. He is hanging onto that exact sort of immature & profane. I still like the core story, and I still love pathetic Cassidy, but I don't hold as much reverence for it as I once did.

So, that confirmed that it was not (entirely) a Fanboy connection that had me not enjoying the show. Oh sure, I was kind of annoyed that Jesse was a bit of a self-questioning ass in the show, where he was always a Stand Up Guy in the comic. Also, the comic was a bit of a Road Movie while the show focused on establishing Jesse, his town and his "motivations". Gah; TV translations and all that. But still, it wasn't all bad and definitely wasn't a deal breaker. So, what? What stopped me? Was it just a few slow episodes? Why not watch the whole thing and see...

So we did.

And guess what, still entirely underwhelmed. They spend an entire season introducing asshole characters that Jesse cannot, and probably should not even try, to redeem. But guess what, he's just as much an asshole. And so is Tulip. And so is Cassidy, but who cares, because Cassidy is a 200 year old vampire so he's allowed to be an asshole. I get it; asshole is in --- Breaking Bad lost me because everyone was becoming one --- but it doesn't mean I have to subject myself to it. The genre bits were fun, especially the whole piling up of angel bodies, but it wasn't compelling enough to keep me watching. But we did, just to see where this whole thing was going, and to confirm our thoughts n what those occasionally whistling pipes sticking out of the ground were.

But we confirmed, a big fat "Meh!" and a big, fat confirmation that Seth Rogen is always best when being reined in by others. But I will get to that when I do Sausage Party.

3 Short Paragraphs: Frequencies

2013, Darren Paul Fisher (Inbetweeners) -- Netflix

I am not sure why, but whenever I see this movie in my mind's eye, I actually see images from Joss Whedon's In Your Eyes. Or more accurately, I see Zoe Kazan. But no, the lead is Eleanor Wyld, from British TV.  The connection probably comes more from the idea of a romance spawning in a fantastical environment. In the movie, everyone is attuned to a frequency. The higher yours, the better your life is, i.e. higher frequencies mean higher probabilities of success. The lower your frequency,  the more unlucky you are. So, while there are smart, educated and hard working people, it really doesn't matter because high frequency means things will go your way. And low frequency people have to work just that much harder, because things are always messing up. Also, the two should never mingle, because then things just get... messy.

Its a Romeo & Juliet story between low frequency Zak and high, very high frequency Marie. But he is desperate to overcome the barrier, is terribly smart and spends much of his youth studying frequencies and experimenting during the one minute of time that they can be near each other, before things start to go kaflooie... yes, that is a scientific term. Not only does he have to overcome science, but also emotion, for the side effect of high frequency is low emotion.

There is a bit of Paul Thomas Anderson here, a bit of Wes Anderson in how Fisher made this movie. Its small, quirky and deliberately set in a world just left of centre from ours. I would like to be as impressed with the movie, as much as Rotten Tomatoes is, but I felt it was just cute. It had a good centre but didn't really draw me in. Perhaps it is overshadowed by the other movie, or perhaps it was my underwhelment, that allowed such to happen.

3+1 Short Paragraphs: The Zero Theorem

2013, Terry Gilliam (Time Bandits) -- netflix

It may be accredited to the fact I waited this long to see the movie, that my enjoyment of the movie was diminished. For the first time ever, I can say a Terry Gilliam movie really just didn't do it for me. Despite an array of visuals that were as Gilliam as ever and a plot that actually sang to my core, I was just not... impressed.

The Zero Theorem looks incredible, visually distinctive like no movie (of his) since Brazil. But where that movie was all dull earth tones, muted palette for a dull bureaucratic world, this is all colour and jazz, for a world set as an extreme mockery of our own, one of screens and advertising and the desire to be unique from the grey crowds. Computers are everywhere, but using unique interfaces much more like a child's toy, than intelligent UIs. And colour! Outrageous, riotous colour!

Qohen, played by Christoph Waltz, is a programmer with Mancom. And when I say programmer, I mean he crunches numbers. And when I say crunches numbers, I mean he wiggles icons to fit into other icons. He is the best at it, but is broken, having missed a phone call that would explain the meaning of life to him. He now waits forever, for that phone call, and has stopped living life. That makes him perfect for Mancom's management (unrecognizable Matt Damon) plan to understand the antithesis of meaning; the Zero Theorem. A man who (un)lives while always seeking the meaning of living, can be so perfect to the finding of an algorithm that proves everything is meaningless. Sorry if that hurts your frontal lobe.

And yet, despite the visuals and the current question of meaning ("waiting for my real life to begin"), it just didn't work for me. Not completely bored, but not completely bought in, I kept on waiting for something to actually happen. I kept on waiting for enlightenment. I kept on waiting for the Gilliam rush. Part of me believes Terry Gilliam was very very intentional in that, in that he needed me to find that meaning for myself, like he needed Qohen to actually find meaning, instead of just waiting for it to be explained by a phone call that would never come.

3+1 Short Paragraphs: Lucy

2014, Luc Besson (The 5th Element, The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec)  -- cinema

Even if you include Bruce Willis in the mix, you can easily see that Besson loves to have a strong woman as the lead character. OK, she might need a bit of help, but she definitely stands out from the average heroine mindset. Nikita, Joan of Arc, The 5th Element, ...Adèle Blanc-Sec; whenever Luc takes the reins of the movie (as opposed to producing or writing), we should expect the female lead to kick some ass. Hell, even the bio pic of Aung San Suu Kyi, the democratic leader in Burma who spent so much of her adult life in house arrest, could easily join this list.

In Lucy, Scarlett Johannson is a student in Taiwan who dates the wrong guy and ends up detained and forced to be a mule for mobsters. The blue drug, a little more indigo than the stuff in Breaking Bad, is a synthetic version of some chemicals fetuses use to grow their brain. A little is a good high, a lot is ... well, never before seen. We never know exactly why Lucy is delayed from her mule flight in a cell with nasty, abusive men who kick her in the stomach releasing the contents of the bag, but it jump starts her towards the mythical "more than 2% use of her brain". And with more brain, comes more control of one's body. She kicks ass getting out.

Yes, the idea that we only use a small percent of our brain and if we had more use, we would become gods, is a myth but this is specfic and it works here. In typical stylish Besson manner, we track the increase of dosage, the increase of brain function and all the fun that comes with it. Both frightened and inspired by what she has become, she is aware of the time clock in her metamorphosis -- if it doesn't kill her, she will definitely be trans-human by the end, by the time the metre hits 100%. She can control her body, her mind, other minds, other physical objects, see transmissions, understand... everything as the number increases. And in a trippy Kubrick-est, final experience she ... becomes.

Through all of this, Lucy is in control. Of course she is, she is more human then anyone ever has been. But so many of these stories, the expanded is always along for the terrifying roller coaster, never in full control, always fearful of where it will lead. Lucy knows that things will come to an end, a finality, so she has a plan, a goal that does not make her above humanity but its benefactor. Like the AIs in the movies of late, who become one with the technology, become everywhere and everything, Lucy expands beyond comprehension but leaves a bit of herself behind. I imagine, in the end somewhere out there, she will run into Samantha from Her.

3 Short Paragraphs: The Purge

2013, James DeMonaco -- download

I have a short list (long) of movies I remind myself I want to see. For some reason, I never get around to seeing many of them. I download some, but they sit on the HDD. I add some to my Netflix list but they sit there, passed over time and again. The other day, I went through the list, and the HDD and chose one. I am glad I did.

I hesitated watching The Purge because it is a speculative film about a very bleak concept. In the near future, the US is almost crime free. Peaceful. Their solution, instituted by a very Christian government (one nation under god), was one night to purge all negative feelings like jealousy, rage, anger, upset, etc. On this one night anything is OK, nothing is illegal. Some people hide behind locked doors, others step outside and do whatever the fuck they want -- they kill, rape, assault, steal, burn... whatever comes to mind. No police no ambulances no fire brigade. And in the morning, they move on with their lives. That sounds horrible, doesn't it? But the results are evident: crime is low, the economy is booming and employment is almost non existent. That is this world. And I thought the movie would wrap itself in the bleakness and savour it. It doesn't.

Ethan Hawke sells security systems, so wealthy people can hide in their big houses and wait out the Purge. He is happy, his family is normal. His neighbours are jealous but safe behind the walls he sold them. He supports the Purge because of what it gives him and what it has given his nation. But like most people, he really hasn't experienced it first hand. This night he does as his idealistic son lets a homeless into their house to hide. And his pursuers, amoral youth who revel in the night, want him. We find out how useless the security really is, how the whole system benefits the wealthy while purging the unwanted and we find out how committed Hawke is to the night. Its a movie that presents the moral grays and then takes a stance, in story and in action. So, we are given a violent thriller (we all love violence) but one with a message to consider, and a side to take.

3 Short Paragraphs: I, Frankenstein

2014, Stuart Beattie (Tomorrow When the War Began) -- cinema

I can honestly say I was actively excited about this movie. It fits my type of genre flick so wonderfully, with a tortured mysterious possible anti-hero, more than one type of mythical antagonist and a dark & gritty setting. These types of movies are never good but I enjoy most of them, Underworld and Van Helsing being a pair of my favourites. And considering this one was written by the guy who also wrote Underworld I was expecting a schlocky movie full of great world building and exciting adventure.

What I got was... well, boring. Can I actually say a movie that was basically wall to wall action boring? Yes, because no matter how well done the fight scenes were done, after you have seen them three times you want something else. Think of the opening sequence of Blade and apply it to the entire movie. I cannot latch onto what exactly bored me but it feels like it was the lack of deep world building. It was like the next to last episode in a TV series season, with all the background dispensed for a drive to complete a story arc. Nobody was fleshed out, the bad and good guys were all cardboard and no real motivations -- good guy wants to kill all bad guys, bad guy wants to Be Bad Guy.

The trailer tells you all you need to know. Gargoyles / Angels are fighting Bad Guys / Demons and Adam / Frankenstein (finally, a good reason to call him Frankenstein, i.e. he is the Doctor's "son") is just stuck between the two factions. Fast forward, for no reason than to highlight that he is ageless and have the story set in current times, to the same pseudo-European city that Underworld is set in, where the Bad Guys are trying to recreate the Frankenstein process so they can give the endless hordes of Hell a nice supply of uncontested bodies to possess. So, the Gargoyles and the Demons fight. And fight. And fight. And Frank growls grouchily. And fights.

What I Am Watching: True Blood, Luther, Under the Dome

SPOILERS.  You are warned.

Yes, we are still watching True Blood long after having given up on it. Why? Because of the train wreck appeal (forgive me that phrase considering the news of late) the show currently has, as if they were writing the show to elicit outrageous, over the top internet reactions and spawn terribly funny recaps. Consider what is going on this season. Werewolf Alcide, when not selling ice cream, is now full-on angry wolf leading his pack and being an asshole, Sookie the Half-Faerie is still fucking anybody who comes around the corner, this time being Ben, the Faerie-Vampire who happens to be the oldest vampire on earth and the alluded Big Bad of last season Warlow. Meanwhile Vampire Bill drank Lilith's blood (yeah, that Lilith) and has become some sort of uber-vamp. Meanwhile the Governor of Louisiana is on a rampage, tossing vamps into concentration camps, where they have them concentrate on fucking and killing each other. Meanwhile Terry, the damaged war veteran, got himself murdered and the 4 faerie daughters of Sherrif Andy got themselves eaten by Jessica, after having grown to teenager age in a few episodes. Annnd breathe.

Those are just the story lines I care to talk about. Its all a chaotic mess of intersecting plots with no attempt at order. Internet ready taglines and common phrases, ready to be shouted at the screen, are the norm for this season. They pick up and drop story lines sometimes in less than an episode. "Its the merkin queens !!" when Lilith and her ghostly, always nude, entourage shows up. "Faerie vaginas glow when they are aroused ?!?!" But will I stop watching? Nope. LaLa still rocks.

Ending its three series / season run this year is Luther. The show stars Idris Elba, the coolest guy on big and small screens these days, as a cop working the serious & serial crimes division. We were introduced to him as a man of extremes, letting some criminals die instead of bringing them to justice, and just not dealing well with his breakup. But a series of unfortunate deaths and a cat & mouse game with a sociopathic suspect tempers him as the show progresses. At first he is all about anger, and he scares those around him, but he is always a skilled investigator, if a bit unorthodox.

This unorthodox but always productive nature is what almost brings everything down around him. He is finally getting over the death of his wife, at the hands of his best friend & partner, and is dating Mary. But a previous colleague, at odds with his brusk attitude and that unorthodox behaviour is working her own investigation, trying to pin all the world's woes on him. She does have a point though, as numerous people have died in his presence, from suspects to friends.

Elba is incredible as John Luther. We all know he is a big man, but in this series he looms over all the supporting cast, even as he constantly slouches under his tweed coat. I want to describe how compelling his character is as an investigator, instinctive and resourceful, but its not about being all Sherlockian, its about the nature of his approach that is appealing -- that and the equally compelling villains. The whole show started with Alice, the sociopath in love with Luther (if she can even feel love) and there was the dice rolling twins, obsessed with playing a real life RPG, killing people to earn experience points. This season the killers are secondary to his own investigation, but the lynch pin remains a vigilante who is killing those who escaped justice and presenting it to the world via the Internet. Luther should be his peer, so everyone thinks, but this is an evolved man who understands the murderous crusader has to stop.

On the lighter side, I am compelled to watch Under the Dome but really, I should have listened to my burbling gut. Anytime Stephen King highly recommends a screen adaptation of his story, we are in for trouble. He just loves the TV and film production process so much, he never seems to notice how much crap has been produced from his work.

In the book King takes a small specfic premise, of a town that is suddenly trapped under an invisible dome (no not perfectly half sphere) with no explanation, and expands it into a Lord of the Flies analogy. What makes the book so good are the characters, who are often brought into the show in name only. So much has changed, I don't find any characters interesting or sympathetic. As expected, acting is middling and since they wanted to extend this into a full blown series, not even a short-life mini-series, they are stretching plot ideas very very thinly into episodes. I am still watching but I am not sure for how long.

Web2Movie: BSG & Halo 4

I have an odd relationship with webisodes. I appreciate them as a medium but have not really explored them as a viable outlet. I may have been tainted by some early attempts at web TV when people were producing low(er) budget specfic TV in short bursts in the early 2000s. These pioneers were seeing what you could do with a small budget, limited locale supported by a lot of CGI and PC generated backgrounds. But the plots were scant and oh so focused on introspection. They did do one thing though --- set the precedent of micro-length episodes, usually less than 10 minutes.

As supporting material, perhaps additional content for an existing show, they worked, but for new stories they were less successful. How do you keep an ongoing narrative alive if it keeps on pausing every 10 minutes... and waiting a week? And then there was the required shooting style, assuming that people will most often watch on small screens, from PC monitors to laptop screens all the way down to mobile devices. The change of focus was both the interesting choice and the detractor.  Early attempts were distracting at best?

The smaller format must influence a director or perhaps I should say should ? We can only see so much on a smaller screen, and much in the way TV is done differently than cinema, I hope a different tactic is chosen. So far, other than in those early weak attempts where the episodes were dominated by closeups of faces and very clean, empty wide shots, I have not seen it exhibited. Perhaps widescreen TVs as portals for web content has become ubiquitous? I doubt such. As we have seen, wide release (promoted) webisodes are shot like TV if perhaps with a bit more CGI but since a lot of specfic TV already makes use of that, we cannot tell much of a difference.

So, to followup Battlestar Galactica, the re-envisioned series that ended a few years ago, we got Blood & Chrome.  Technically we got Caprica as the followup but that was a straight-up TV series, where we are told the origin story of the cylons themselves, from advanced service robot to self-aware sentient.  We are also introduced to a young Bill Adama and his connection with events. In Blood & Chrome we are given the Cylon War and Adama is brought back as the cocky viper pilot, again caught up in more than he should.

The first thing I noticed is the high quality of the CGI and backgrounds, but given the backing behind this series and the already available source material, its not that surprising. Again there is a wide variety of familiar Canadian actors including my favourite stand-by, Ty Olsson, which is amusing unto itself considering he had a recurring role as a different character on the main series. But there is weight here, a momentum that carries the short choppy episodes forward.  Skilled people do help things.

The story is one long establishing scene for the milieu that is BSG, answering questions such as what was the first war like? What did the first Cylon centurions look like in the re-imagined world?  What made Adama so famous before he even became a battlestar commander? As well, we get the fan service of seeing old style vipers and raiders in the new CGI supported combat. Its all a nice re-visit to a familiar world. And, as expected, we get a few more blanks filled in about how the Cylons went from awakened robots to the humanoid bodies that like to seduce men.  Its a decent story, gritty and compelling but really just a nod and a wink for fans.

Speaking of nodding & winking, that is all that Forward Unto Dawn is. As the milieu that establishes the Halo world is almost entirely focused on Master Chief, any expansion of the story has to be separated from him but eventually connected. So, instead of his back story or anything that could be milked officially in the actual games, we get a predecessor to the whole Covenant war.  Please note, forgive me any inaccuracies because, while I have played most of the games I am not all that steeped in the world that is Master Chief's. This one is set just before the true war begins, on a training planet, a place where cadets are being taught to fight in a war against a rebellious group of human insurrectionists.  There are no aliens in their world... yet.

This is also from the production valued people that did the above, the group of specfic actors and production people in Vancouver that produce so much of the "Canadian style" of speculative fiction TV. In fact, Ty Olsson is back in a cameo as the older version of our main character Lasky. Lasky is the odd duck among a squad of capable cadets, he brings them down with his attitude and refusal to follow standard orders, believing in his own capability more than his learning. He is mostly wrong but events teach him. The story carries the cadets through training and personal interaction until the planet is attacked by Covenant forces. Its a bit Starship Troopers and a bit Ender's Game.

The story really shines in its production values, using well design sets, interiors and makes use of the familiar forests of BC. But it really gets to be enjoyable when the invasion happens, changing from annoying CW squabbling teenagers to a true life and death situation. There is one scene, where something important is destroyed and the dead fall, that is utterly chilling and really cements that what is happening to the cadets is real.  Then Master Chief shows up and saves the remaining cadets.

There is no spin off show here, no attempt to bring Halo to the small screen. This is a small story set somewhere between a proper TV series and a stand alone web series. It works as a small budget movie and really only would appeal to someone with a passing knowledge of the game. The nod & wink is required. Still, it did lay the ground work for actually exploring the universe of Halo in a proper series. It established it could be done even if the cinema released film died in its infancy.

3 Short Paragraphs: Fall 2011 (pt 4)

Mixed bag this time with Terra Nova, Revenge and one sitcom Suburgatory that I was not even looking out for.

Conventional television specFic is not very good.  Sometimes it surpasses it's genre and becomes good drama, ala Battlestar Galactica, but usually it just falls into templates and formats and gets boring very quickly. Terra Nova is going to be one of those, I can just smell it like dinosaur poo.  The pilot was one of those rare two-hour premieres where we see the dark world of the future and are almost immediately tossed into the dinosaur & big bug filled past so humanity can "start again".  Luckily they cover the time-travel trope of "new timeline" so they don't step on any butterflies -- I commend them for addressing that. The annoying thing is that there has to be uppity teenagers and precocious kids and bad guys who saw The Road Warrior too many times. I will watch another few episodes, at least until it bores or annoys the hell out of me.

Then there is something I never thought I might watch again but... might... just... have... to.  It's Revenge, loosely based on the premise inside The Count of Monte Cristo, a premise I very much enjoy. Here we have a pretty girl returning to the Hamptons where nobody recognizes that she is the daughter of someone they destroyed years ago. She has a fortune given to her by an internet billionaire and connections every which way. The weird thing is that we are going to root for this pretty girl as she destroys lives and probably kills a few people. Its very standard but I am curious if it will get as dark as it could.

Suburgatory seems to be one of those out of the studio sitcoms based on a series of teen novels, but it isn't. It's narrated by our teenage girl lead who, along with her dad, has moved to the suburbs -- dad wants to give her a better life. I grew up in the suburbs of the 80s and they were not this idea of vast houses, boob jobs and plastic kids. And Jeremy Sisto is not the kind of guy I would expect playing a nice, schleppy dad who is a fish out of the pool around all the manicured and orange-tinted men of the burbs. But Alan Tudyk is in it, so it will warrant some more attention before the jaded daughter is converted into thinking every in the burbs is actually ok, afterall.