froghawk on 8/4/2019 at 15:51
Hmm, I hope you're right about that. I always felt Inception was the film where Nolan started to get a bit messy, and I haven't loved anything he's done since the same way I enjoyed his earlier films (they become very cool sensory experiences with unsatisfying scripts) Inception struck me as a less appealing live action version of Satoshi Kon's Paprika, mainly because the dreams themselves were far too action movie oriented and I find Nolan's attempts at emotional stories to be less than emotional. But if it is actually operating on the levels you're proposing instead of just being a bit sloppy, I'm going to have to re-evaluate it.
henke on 14/4/2019 at 20:31
I watched Manchester by the Sea, Swiss Army Man, Triple Frontier, Lady Bird, and Castle Freak.
All good.
Thirith on 15/4/2019 at 11:03
We recently got started on the third and final season of The Leftovers. Now, I imagine it's a series that some people find grating for a number of reasons, but for me it's one of the best things I've ever seen. I love the actors, the characters and their flaws, anxieties and coping mechanisms, I love the series' themes and how it deals with them, I love how it can go from sardonic and even surreal comedy to harrowing drama, I love how it has an utterly WTF premise but uses this to tell stories about people that I find utterly relatable. And Carrie Coon as Nora may just be among my favourite characters ever in any medium. The series ticks some of the same boxes for me as Six Feet Under did, but while SFU will always have a very special place in my heart, I think that in some ways that I cannot yet fully express The Leftovers will end up affecting me as much if not more.
Sulphur on 15/4/2019 at 11:37
You know, watching S1 felt like I was tapping into the same morbid curiosity you feel when watching a train crash in slow motion. Couldn't like what I saw, couldn't look away. It's a phenomenally depressing season of drama leavened only by Lindelof's mystery box format, something I usually can't engage with because it seems like a cheap way to avoid dealing with the functional underpinnings of plot development.
Having said that, I kept watching, because there was a core of human fallibility and empathy beneath its concentrated sadness overload. (A thing exacerbated yet heightened by the score, courtesy of Max Richter and his talent for swelling chords). And miracle of miracles, season 2 focused on storytelling and character while deploying the sadcore element with admirable restraint, and even managed to find a consistent sense of (gallows) humour. It's an incredible turnaround.
Season 3 takes that and wraps it up with a fucking bow. It's the best conclusion to a series I've seen since, coincidentally, Six Feet Under. (And well, Breaking Bad.) It's the exhale to the first season's inhale. I'm kind of taken aback at how much I loved a Lindelof show, but there you have it: in collaborating with the right person and multiplying your strengths instead of your weaknesses, you just might end up making something beautiful.
SubJeff on 15/4/2019 at 12:46
So you're saying I should watch The Leftovers then?
Thirith on 15/4/2019 at 12:53
Damn it, Sulphur, sometimes I read one of your posts and swear that you're me. Except a more expressive me. With a cooler accent.
Sulphur on 16/4/2019 at 06:24
Well, if it's any consolation, you've got access to more Toblerone at will than I could possibly ever get my hands on, which tilts the equation way in your favour in my book.
Thirith on 16/4/2019 at 06:46
Heh. The university building where I studied and worked used to be the factory where they originally produced Toblerone. After a while you forgot, but on long Saturday afternoons in the library poring over books you'd occasionally catch a whiff of the ghost of a chocolate bar.
@SubJeff: Even though it's one of my favourite TV series, I find it difficult to recommend it to people whose tastes I don't know all that well. (I remember you hating some things that I liked a lot, though I couldn't tell you what they were.) There's also the thing Sulphur mentioned: the first season errs on the side of being deeply depressing and featuring a cast of characters few of which are particularly likeable. They're flawed and sometimes damaged, they're neurotic and resentful. In that respect I think Six Feet Under wouldn't be a bad comparison: if you were okay with spending time with the Fishers & Co, you should be okay. I love The Leftovers, but I can easily see people being turned off or even hating it. Then there's also the theme itself, which touches on issues such as faith. It's by no means a religious series (in the sense that it would espouse a belief in God), but its premise is a Rapture-like event, and various characters struggle with trying to make metaphysical as much as emotional sense of it all.
Tocky on 19/4/2019 at 05:05
I have been hooked on Youtube's Dust sci fi shorts lately. There are some seriously imaginative stories done with excellent acting here. Rarely a dog. I get lost in hours of watching these ten or fifteen minute vignettes. They are seriously engrossing. It's like watching a cross between Twilight Zone and a Science Fiction Hall of Fame collection. The production values are excellent though the casts are usually minimal. Anyone else watch these?
Most make you think, some are disturbing, but some are amusing like this one-
[video=youtube_share;rv8kOzRZK8g]https://youtu.be/rv8kOzRZK8g[/video]
Harvester on 19/4/2019 at 07:11
Thanks for the recommendation, those seem like fun things to watch when I have like 15 minutes to kill.