3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): New Life

2023, John Rosman (debut) -- download

Thoughtful, indie, scifi thrillers are my bag. A coworker, whose English is probably her third or fourth language, has commented on how everything I say involves idioms, most of which she doesn't understand. When I try to explain further, I just add on layers of idioms. My brain is wired that way. See? My brain is also wired to be a better communicator via text than via spoken word, probably the primary reason Kent won't get his podcast via me.

I cannot imagine how I would properly communicate should me primary methods be taken from me, my ability to type or speak. What else would be left? Motion command speech engines? Even they take some amount of motor skill.

Elsa Gray (Sonya Walger, Flashforward) has ALS, early stages. But they already affect her way of life, causing tremors and forcing her to walk with a cane. She knows she only has a little time but her line of work needs her, at least one last time. She's a fixer, that scary mix of off books investigator and assassin that does things for the government when they can't use traditional means.

Her current focus is Jessica Murdock (Hayley Erin, General Hospital), a young woman on the run. We first meet Jessica covered in blood, sporting a black eye. Abused woman fleeing her spouse? So think the nice people who feed her, clothe her, give her a drive. But when Elsa tracks her to the farm of Frank and Janie, we see the real reason -- Jessica is a carrier, of something deadly, something horrific, something the government wants contained; something apocalyptic.

This is a small movie, the kind I like. Jessica was a normal girl camping with fiancé, who was nice to a dog with fleas. The flea bites didn't take long. Elsa is a hard woman, dialed down emotionally, connected only to her work, fleeting friendships with the people she works with regularly, people she knows over phones and texts. This is probably her last job, and she needs it, not just because of the consequences of Jessica getting into general population, but.... well, you know.

Was this a plague movie? A zombie movie? A conspiracy thriller? Yes, all of the above (debatable on the zombie, but who knows....) but also more. I am not beholden to movies with themes, artful structures, I generally gravitate to the story and/or the style. But I did enjoy the movie's themes -- that Jessica wanted nothing but to start a new life with her fiancé, to travel and see things outside her small town. Elsa has had a new life forced upon her, one that probably won't last long but she is too stubborn to give into it. And what new life was Jessica carrying in her blood? The big stories happened in the background; your own stories are generally smaller but arguably more important?

31 Days of Halloween: Viral

2016, Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman (Catfish) -- Netflix

If anything defined this year of Halloween movie watching, it was ... attention span. This night started as a watch of acclaimed ultra-low budget flick Skinamarink but was quickly identified that the 9000 opening atmospheric ultra-grainy video-camera shots of the ceiling were not going to keep our attention -- best left for another night. So, onto Netflix to find something.... fluffy. Not a lot of horror-comedies that caught our interest this year, so why not this old one that combines zombie-plague-creature-feature. I was also keen on seeing how a plague movie played out pre-COVID.

So, it begins in Obama's run as president, with some conversation about an epidemic that might or might not come to the US. The dialogue must have been about SARS but it all sounded sooooo familiar, and the playbook of how the government and the populace would deal with a quick quarantine was... predictive.

Emma (Sofia Black-D'Elia, Single Drunk Female) and Stacey (Lio Tipton, Lucy) are relatively new to town, having been moved there by Dad (Michael Kelly, Person of Interest) after some undefined family drama that has Mom absent. Emma is reserved and Stacey, with her blue streaked hair, is not. Like most of these movies, the emerging epidemic is happening on TV screens in the background mostly, but almost immediately Emma's friend Gracie is coughing up blood and the California desert suburban community is put under lockdown.

Grocery store stockup runs for food and toilet paper were replaced by a Dad run to the airport run to pickup Mom. The typical Dad stocked house has only.... condiments, so the girls have to fend for themselves. In very typical teen response to a lockdown, they go party in a partially finished home wherein the kids are attacked by the first fully infected kid, someone who Gracie coughed blood all over. And Stacey gets coughed upon.

At this point I should mention that this particular plague is parasite-based, worms in particular. There is some earlier commentary on dealing with bot fly larvae, but when Stacey gets a face full of blood we see a small worm quickly worm its way into her eye, which she, of course, denies happening. 

The rest of the movie follows the quick escalation of these movies. Dad never returns, the burb is cut off, soldiers are taking away the infected, Stacey's infection progresses slowly enough for her to hide it but the step-dad for Emma's love interest is not so subtle. By then, most of the burb is gone or infected and you can see the collapse of the US happening in the background. Yet, Emma believes she can save Stacey via the knowledge she gleaned from the science class she barely paid attention to. At least she didn't try to use Ivermectin, but in this case, it being an anti-parasitic for horses, it actually might have helped? 

Everything about this movie is horror-lite. The horrific zombie-scenes are scant, the wormy depictions are minor (wiggly worms coming out of ears & eyes), and the horde of chasing infected is relegated to one scene. Mostly the movie is about the love between two sisters, but even that is on the lite side. So, for our last night of Lack of Attention Span, it was a fine choice.

I Saw This!! The unfinished TV seasons of the COVID years (pt2)

(part 1 here)

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent or Toasty 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 about it cuz that would be bad.. like bad, bad, not good bad: 

---

The show/season: Superman and Lois Season 1 - cw/ctv scifi

Episodes Watched: 12 of 15 

Why I no finish?:  I've talked before of my CW DC superhero fatigue, and while I felt that Superman and Lois really distinguished itself and distance itself from the "Arrowverse" of the past, it still got bogged down in CW-ness.  I liked the show quite a bit.  I liked that Superman and Lois had an established and committed marriage full of love and respect, and I liked that the show just jumped right into the kids being teenagers.  One of the twins having superpowers (the awkward, anxious one) and the other (the popular jock) not, could have been a big point of contention, but the show seems to remember they are twins and that they support each other in a way non-twin siblings wouldn't understand. While I think the move to Smallville affords the show a lot of interesting opportunities for commentary on, well, what is happening to American small towns, we've already done Smallville and it's kind of my least favourite Superman setting.  The show seemed to run it's course by the 10th episode with some spinning wheels in between. It's a problem all CW shows have, filling episode orders rather than fitting a season to a story line. 

Will I return to it?: I would like to but I feel exhausted just thinking about it.

---

The show/season: Y: The Last Man season 1- Showcase

Episodes Watched: 3 of 10

Why I no finish?: I loved the comic book of Y: The Last Man.  It's one of my favourite Vertigo books ever.  It's adaptation to film or TV has been circling in development hell for well over a decade.  I was once really excited to see it, but as I've gotten a lot of distance from the comic (a re-read is probably necessary at some point) my excitement to see it come to any screen has certainly lessened.  And frankly, it's probably a victim of seriously unfortunate timing, debuting in the midst of a pandemic.  Not an ideal time for a show that's about a pandemic that wiped out all of the genetically male population on the planet, save one man and one monkey.  I was engaged with the show, and I thought it wonderful that it incorporated transgendered persons into the story as well, but I just wasn't in the mindset for it, and I think the masses felt the same.  It was not renewed for a second season.

Will I return to it?: Seeing as the series will not finish its story, there's not really any point in going back to it.  However, I may decide to give it a go again if I'm extra curious following a reread of the comics.

---

The show/season: Star Wars Visions - Disney+

Episodes Watched: 4 of 9

Why I no finish?: It's Star Wars.  I love Star Wars.  But I don't love Star Wars blindly.  There's Star Wars I don't like (Rise of Skywalker, Resistance), and there's Star Wars I just won't watch (Freemaker Adventures). And then there's this: an anthology of non-continuity, anime-influence Star Wars shorts.  

I'm not an anime guy. Paging Dr. Wenowdis. But I thought I would try it anyway, because the love for Star Wars, though not blind, is strong.  The first "episode" is titled "The Duel" and is animated in a style that I can only think to describe as 1980's manga.  It's mostly black and white, in a very line-heavy, scratchy illustrated style, with little pops of monochromatic colour throughout.  It's set in a Star Wars reality that resembles feudal Japan, and it's all really quite gorgeous and exciting.  It's one of my favourite things to happen to Star Wars ever, just so striking and bold, taking Star Wars back to its western and, moreso, samurai roots (just two of many influencing forces on George Lucas).  I would love to side-step out of regular Star Wars continuity for a while and just live in this one.

And then there's the rest of the shorts, of the three I've seen, they're the usual mess of flash and strobe and big heads and eyes and gaping mouths and yelling and just a style I do not connect with at all.  "The Ninth Jedi" is pretty but way more anime than Star Wars.  "The Twins" is an even bigger mess that distorts Star Wars in a way that nauseated me.  Disney+ tells me I watched "Akakiri" but I don't even remember the slightest bit about it (and a quick scrub through it revealed only the slightest recognition). I started "Tattoine Rhapsody" and got about 2 minutes in before I had a "hard nope" out of it.

Will I return to it?: It's possible I may get bored one Sunday afternoon and watch the rest. I'll definitely be going back to "The Duel" with some frequencey.

---

The show/season: Star Trek: Prodigy season 1, CTV SciFI

Episodes Watched: 2 of 10

Why I no finish?: I like Star Trek. I love Star Wars. Star Trek: Prodigy feels like a Star Trek version of The Clone Wars cartoon, and it's like mixing milk and orange juice.  I think the animation was good and the design and story was good, but it didn't all fit together for me, and didn't feel recognisably like Star Trek.  It's not something I disliked, but I wasn't enjoying it, so I just didn't continue.

Will I return to it?: Nope.

---

The show/season: Yasuke season 1 - netflix

Episodes Watched: 5 of 6

Why I no finish?: On my friend GAK's radio show, he played the soundtrack to Yasuke and I fell in love with it.  It's such a bold sound, blending beats with traditional Japanese sounds and heavy synthetic textures, one of the best soundtracks in a long time. Musician/Producer/Artist Flying Lotus also shares the "story by" credit on the show with creator (and animator/writer/director/designer) LeSean Thomas, bringing to Netflix this anime (it's a very American-styled anime, about the same aesthetic as the recent Masters of the Universe: Revelations) about an African samurai in 16th century Japan.  The show is full of great character designs and intensely violent action, as well as some meat for the characters, specifically for Yasuke who can't hide being an outsider.  I did find the injection of fantastical technology into the show presented a bit of a disconnect from the era, but a few bold fight sequences later and I came to accept it.  Frankly I binged 5 of the 6 in one afternoon and just didnt' get back to that last episode

Will I return to it?: For sure. Eventually.  But I feel I need to start back at the beginning again.

---

The show/season: The Great season 2 - amazonprime

Episodes Watched: 2 of 10

Why I no finish?: I got through season 1, that was enough of a triumph for me.  As I said in my brief writeup, I struggled with it. For season 2, it remains a very funny, tremendously well acted, gorgeously shot, staged and costumed satire, but it also remains so dark.  And I just hit a point where I didn't like any of what I was confronted with.  I've reached a state of awareness of the horrors of humanity that I don't need to be reminded of them even with the sharpest and most cutting of humour backing it up.  But what got me the most was that I wasn't really rooting for anyone...at a certain point ambition for power and the desire to lead just becomes distasteful, and so everyone in this show has become unsympathetic.  Watching an underdog triumph over a despised adversary, only to become a comparatively unlikeable figure isn't fun for me. So I stopped

Will I return to it?: No.

---

The show/season: Landscapers - HBO

Episodes Watched: 2 of 4

Why I no finish?: Even at only 4 episodes this true crime drama felt overlong and draggy 2 episodes in.  I love Olivia Coleman, and great as she is, she wasn't compelling enough for me to care about finishing this story of two late-stage middle-aged lovers who may or may not have murdered people and buried them in their back yard.  The way the story was told, as well, seemed kind of the dullest avenue possible, just slowly and methodically.  There's only a tinge of humour where I think it really wanted to play it up, while also being respectful.  The characters though, are just kind of dour and sad.

Will I return to it?: No

---

The show/season: Saturday Morning All-Stars Hits! season 1 - Netflix

Episodes Watched: 2 of 8

Why I no finish?: SNL's Kyle Moony put a lot of love into this retro spoof on 90's Saturday Morning cartoon blocks, the type that just don't exist anymore, where a youthful host (or two) present cartoons to kids for three hours.  In this case the 3 hour block is condensed into 25 minutes making the cartoons about 6-7 minutes long each.  And the cartoons of course spoof some of both the hits and weaker sauce offerings of the era.  Here there's a "radical dinosaur" who now lives and goes to high school in the modern age but is just kind of depressed all the time.  There's an Alvin and the Chipmunks-meet-Alf-meet-Care Bares thing where the art-making creatures live in secret in the dude's garage where they hang out and get high.  The Strongimals are space animals fighting a valiant war against their nemeses (Thundercats style) only to come to modern-day (90's) Earth to be very confused by mundane reality, like sandwich shops.  The hosted scenes feature twins Skip and Treybor (both played by Mooney) who have a energetically antagonistic attitude towards each other that seems to solely be worked out on screen rather than in private.  It's conceptually funny, the kind of shit I loved 15 years ago with Wonder Showzen and the like...I just don't have a lot of time for stuff like this today.  But I like it.

Will I return to it?: Probably in fits and starts.  I mean, I get what its doing immediately and I worry that it's just running the joke into the ground further each episode, but I also want to watch just it case it does go somewhere gloriously weird.

---

The show/season: Macgruber season 1 - Showcase

Episodes Watched: 2 of 8

Why I no finish?: I like Will Forte a lot of the time, but not all the time, and Macgruber the movie didn't do much for me.  A lot of people seem to think the film was hilarious but I recall it being a rather flaccid comedy that forgot the jokes.  And now it's a TV series, bringing back Ryan Philippe and Kristin Wiig from the movie, adding Billy Zane and Laurence fucking Fishburne.  It's funnier than the movie, from the two episodes that I watched, but Macgruber, as a character, is exhausting. Forte likes to play comedic protagonists who intentionally keep you at arms length with their selfishness, but add in Mac's cowardice and idiotic belief in his own (sorely lacking) capabilities, and I'm not always sure who the joke is on.

Will I return to it?: Not likely.  I tried. This character's just not for me.

---

3+1 Short Paragraphs: I Think We're Alone Now

 2018, Reed Morano (The Rhythm Section) -- download

This one has been sitting in my downloads folder for ages, at least two years. It was constantly skipped over, in favour of the latest Big & Shiny, or a rewatch of something easily digested. I could probably do a '31 Days of...' of the rewatches I have consumed in 2020-21 in favour of seeing something new, or more importantly, something more challenging for my brain to consume. I should have, but we both know I won't, at least used the rewatches to make posts for movies I had not yet posted here. But is this blog about completism or just about writing when the whim hits. There are arguments in favour of both.

Even during these Plague Years, I am still drawn to plague fiction. Surprisingly, not much more (or less) than I am during non-Plague Years, as I was always drawn to plague fiction, especially, the apocalyptic kind. I Think We're Alone Now picks up after a world ending plague has stripped Del's (Peter Dinklage, Game of Thrones) small town of life. But likely in order to do more than just survive, Del has given himself a mission, a routine, an activity that keeps him sane (?). He goes from house to house, wrapping and gathering the dead, cleaning their houses and collecting the pictures of their happy family lives. Eventually he buries the remains in a mass grave at he edge of town. He then returns to the library where he lives, heats a meal, opens a bottle of wine and eats in front of the large windows with a lovely view. A routine centered around finding a peace of sorts, I would think.

And then he finds Grace (Elle Fanning, Maleficent). Her car has crashed in(to) his small town. Not only is someone else alive, but someone from somewhere else, who has ended up in his small town. Unlikely, and not easily trusted. And she breaks his routine. At first Del is upset she is around, and then he learns to be upset that she might not be around. And then the movie derailed itself, using that oft suggested aspect of the third act, where you make things go wrong for the main character(s) and then you make things go REALLY wrong.

Grace is from a community on the west coast that gathered many who survived, and not being satisfied with being a pleasant, powered, thriving place of post-apocalyptic peace, they decided to mess with people's brains, so as to never return to the world that was all but destroyed. Its this wonky, out of place, stretch of the imagination danger for Del to deal with, so he can rescue Grace and the two can return to his small town. To do what? We don't know, but I imagine it has to do with cleaning more houses. Once the introspection of being the last man (and woman) on Earth was dispensed with, I had no idea, nor any desire to know where it was going to go.