rolling tv thread

[IdleRich]

With Jan Hammer I dunno if he had then many tunes though. Kinda mood setting, great for watching them rolling down the freeway with the top down etc but I think with all that gear he could have come up with a few more killers. I mean it's quite tricky to do I suppose cos he would have to pull off this trick of being effortlessly smooth and yet somehow still hooky and punchy enough to keep me happy. Maybe I'm missing the point or it can't be done. I don't know many Jan Hammer fans though.

 

[craner]

I agree, the one I posted is good, but most of the others are piss-poor. I guess 'Crockett's Theme' is the big one., but wasn't it used in a NatWest TV ad in the early 90s or something? Something like that ruined it. The actual Miami Vice theme is a tuneless racket of clattery drum pads and squally guitars, just horrible and a wasted opportunity for a great visual montage.

 

[entertainment]

Sorrentino's thing doesn't work in the series format does it? The Young Pope is very boring.

 

[version]

 

[version]

Hammer's on this too,

 

[IdleRich]

Also - I forgot to say - I learned from Don Johnson's wikipedia article that in 1988 he was world power boat racing champion.

 

[IdleRich]

What We Do In The Shadows is one of the few genuinely funny films I've seen so I guess it's fair enough that it has generated two spin-off series; the solid enough but perhaps slightly uninspired series with the same name and premise but featuring a load of British comedians playing old world vampires in MY, and the far superior Wellington Paranormal which chooses to follow the two useless police who featured briefly in thge film a couple of times. It's much more low-fi and sort of wonky but also much funnier. Watched the second series over the last few days and it's as good as the first.

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

I really enjoyed Devs
It's on iPlayer and running on bbc2 this week
A decent attempt at tackling determinism, many world's, quantum computation, dot-coms. You could pick holes in it, but I decided to enjoy it instead. Alex Garland makes some good stuff, I loved Annihilation too.

 

[Corpsey]

I loved Ex Machina but I found Devs unbearably slow and on-the-nose. Didn't make it past the first two episodes, so maybe it gets better?

I think Ex Machina had a similar tendency for its characters to monologue about the film's themes but the concept seemed much more credible (than SPOILER ALERT going back to the exact time and place of Jesus's crucifixion?!!!!) and perhaps the length of the film curbed Garland's self-indulgence.

I am still intrigued as to how it plays out so maybe I'll overcome my qualms and try episode 3 at some point.

 

[IdleRich]

I really enjoyed Devs
It's on iPlayer and running on bbc2 this week
A decent attempt at tackling determinism, many world's, quantum computation, dot-coms. You could pick holes in it,

Yeah that's exactly what I did in the synchronicity thread. I really wanted to like it but it was stupid and slow. I wish they'd used some of the time they wasted on shitty montages to go properly into some of the issues they raised but didn't really interrogate properly. Felt like a badly missed opportunity to me.

 

[catalog]

What is ex machina? Is it a series? Is it good?

 

[IdleRich]

It's a film about artificial intelligence from Alex Garland who wrote and/or directed The Beach and Devs... it also features the main woman from Devs in a supporting (well, almost a walk-on) role. The main antagonist (arguably) in both is a tech entrepreneur genius type billionaire type guy but I'd agree that Ex Machina is much more successful as a whole and also in the way it represents said tech billionaire.

 

[catalog]

Might check it out, although the beach was pretty crap from what I remember

 

[IdleRich]

Yeah it was. To be honest, from the above I can't remember which he wrote, which he directed and which were ones where he did both.

 

[Corpsey]

There was a bit in Ex Machina where the nerdy guy says to the billionaire "that's not the history of man... that's the history of Gods!"

And I dunno whether it's supposed to be ridiculous - highlighting the tech billionaire's ego and the nerd's naivety, or if it was just bad dialogue delivered awkwardly.

The dance sequence suggests there's a lot more humour than there seems to be at times in that film. 🤷

 

[woops]

by coincidence i watched annihilation last night, maybe i wasn't giving it my full attention, but it was boring

 

[Corpsey]

His stuff is sort of stultified and lifeless. Perhaps its a deliberate choice to create a sort of unnatural, claustrophobic atmosphere.

I thought the dialogue in Annihiliation was occasionally risible but there were some unforgettable, uncanny images — the high point being the lighthouse, which somehow captured the feeling of a nightmare more than anything else I've seen in a movie/tv show.

 

[IdleRich]

And I dunno whether it's supposed to be ridiculous - highlighting the tech billionaire's ego and the nerd's naivety, or if it was just bad dialogue delivered awkwardly.

I'd give him the benefit of the doubt on that one cos of the way they return to it twice and the tech bro mangles it more each time to kinda massage his ego even more and the nerdy guy is too weak to properly correct him.

 

[Corpsey]

I think it would be fair to say he's more interested in ideas than people — or at least more successful at portraying one than the other.

I think this is true of 'Black Mirror', too, which Garland's stuff definitely reminds me of. The characters in it (or so I recall) are slightly wooden, either because the show is really more interested in concepts than characters, or because the show runners are simply not that good at portraying believable people.

(Incidentally, this stuff applies to Kubrick — an incomparably more skilled director — and Fincher — ditto, though less so.)

 

[IdleRich]

Certainly Black Mirror is about a new idea (concept I'm sure he calls it) each time. I guess it must be hard to keep thinking of new ones within the parameters he's set himself... the later ones got really bad though, probably for that reason, I was surprised to find that I couldn't be bothered to watch it after a certain point, despite enjoying the earlier ones so much.