I just saw *****, and IMHO ............

[liuv]

Thanks for the heads up. I'm not too worried about it. While I'm no gore aficionado it usually doesn't bother me. I feel like there's obvious potential gore with a platform moving between levels and very hungry people. Especially with Cube mentioned along with it.

[RainMan]

I just saw Hamilton, and IMHO .... meh.

I should say that I generally have a problem with modern musicals. It seems like the actual music isn't as important as I think it should be. I think a musical should have songs that stand on their own as songs. Whenever I say that to people who **loved** some given musical like Les Miserables they respond with, "but the story was so great." If the story was so great, why put it to music if the music doesn't matter as much?

I found the rap portions of the music extremely clever, but I'm definitely in the wrong demographic for that to have any emotional impact on me.

I did think the songs sung by King George were funny and entertaining.

But most of it was the sort of bland musical delivery of prose I see in most modern musicals. I forget those songs as I hear them.

I will admit that my sample size is very small. I haven't seen musicals like Cats, Lion King, Phantom, or Rent. Maybe they're better.

Before you conclude that I'm simply dead inside, here are some musicals I feel have songs which stand on their own as songs:

West Side Story
Oklahoma
The Sound of Music
Mary Poppins
Fiddler on the Roof
HMS Pinafore

I'm sure there are others I'm not thinking of right now.

In each of those I can pick out a song or two that are memorable. To me that's the measure of a good musical. Does it tell a story with good, and not throwaway, music?

Will anybody be singing any songs from Hamilton in 20 years? I doubt it.

Flibbeldy Floo!! Get off my lawn!!

[RainMan]

This is the rap I wish was in Hamilton

[Macheath]

I just watched The Vast of Night on Amazon, and IMHO it was charming, nearly riveting. The first 15 minutes or so are kinda slow, but then it got its hooks into me and I couldn't look away. Everett and Fay are well written, well acted characters, and the movie's overall feel reminded me kinda of Pontypool. At least in terms of presentation; this wasn't horror, more like sci-fi and suspense. Unique and worth a watch!

[Macheath]

I just consumed Genndy Tartakovsky's PRIMAL on Amazon Prime.

It's only 5 episodes, and has an abrupt ending that makes me wonder if there was supposed to be more, but: hyper violent caveman fantasy. Hard fantasy. Don't go into this expecting a deep anthropological examination of prehistoric facts. It's a Genndy Tartakovsky cartoon. With that disclaimer out of the way, though, I loved it. It was brutal, emotionally speaking. Not a word of dialogue, but I felt some serious feelings. Beautiful animation, grunty art, really fun movie-length experience.

[RainMan]

I just finished watching "The Booth On the End" on Amazon Video. What an odd but interesting little show. There are two very short seasons.

The premise is that there's the guy who sits in a booth in a diner who gives people "what they want" for a price. You don't really exactly know who this guy is but people come to him and tell him what they want and he gives them a task they must complete to get what they want. He doesn't make it happen, he just brokers the deal. Just to give you sense of the nature of these deals, one person asked to have her baby, who was born with bad birth defects, be normal. Her task was to find a person with no family or friends and torture them. Part of the deal is that they have to check in every once in a while and give their progress.

You never actually see the tasks being done. The entire thing takes place in the booth, so it's all dialog.

I didn't know what to make of it at first, but it really pulled me in.

[Macheath]

Wow, it was trippy to see George Mason chatting with Nina Myers in the first episode. I wonder who did the casting?

I love The Man's complete indifference to everything people tell him. "Sure, if that's what you think." The people he's making deals with are the vehicle for the storytelling, he's just there to facilitate for the audience. Definitely watching more, neat premise.

[Macheath]

I just watched Coherence on Amazon Prime, and it was pretty good.

Tiny $50k budget, shot in one location, apparently a lot of the dialogue was improvised for a more natural feel. Unfortunately improvisation is a pretty tough method of acting, and not every actor's up to it, so this ended up reminding me of The Man from Earth in that I really liked the movie in spite of the acting being merely "good enough." It's not an acting-driven experience. But the story's good, the twists and turns are good, it ends up being an intriguing, high concept, sci-fi/horror type thing with a satisfying ending. (Really bad science, though.)

Easier to follow than Primer, so that's something.

[Macheath]

I just saw Sicario, and IMHO... in 2020 it reads like a Trumpublican border wall fantasy porno, but if you ignore that aspect (which has aged like milk) it's an amazing film. I wanted to fill some gaps in my Denis Villeneuve catalog before DUNC comes out; I've seen Blade Runner, Prisoners, Arrival, and Enemy, and I'd put Sicario in the top 3 for sure. Damn good movie.

[Macheath]

I saw Archive a couple weeks ago, written/directed/produced by a newbie who had a significant role in the general aesthetic of Moon.

As a first effort, it was pretty compelling sci-fi. It didn't bring anything extremely new to the table for story elements, but it was visually striking and competently assembled. Nice low-pressure watch for people who enjoy "man living in way too much isolation and/or developing relationships with machines" type stories, see also: Ex Machina, The Machine, Automata, and the aforementioned Moon.