A big lumbering steampunk battle monstrosity; the first thing I attempted, naturally
It's mind blowing, in so many ways, and also... limited.
Imagine an idiot savant who's capable of astonishing levels of sophistication, but doesn't understand fundamentals.
Far as I can tell, the software is 'kit bashing' together thousands of source photos, with greater and lesser degrees of understanding. But beneath the slather of detail it pumps out, there's no real structure. A cynical view would be that it's a brittle egg over nothingness.
And yet, what an egg!
You can produce images with a text prompt and the click of a button! In any style you want, with whatever lighting or mood you choose to specify.
Just /imagine.
The result doesn't always stand up to close inspection. Yet when you look at them in passing, out of the corner of your eye, they can be dazzling.
Patterns, simple objects, jewelry can be examined directly and I doubt I'd know it was a MidJourney creation.
Some images are just flat out astonishing.
Is that big thing balanced on a bicycle?
There's something of an art to the AI prompts. Badly written ones will yield unintended or poor results. As you begin to understand the program better, you channel your efforts towards what it does well, and learn work arounds for areas it can't handle. Or leverage the happy accidents.
Animals and people, for example. Most animals are rendered as hideous deformed monstrosities, like they'd been passed through a Star Trek transporter and come back with a leg sticking out of an ear.
Once you know things like that, you can adapt.
Midjourney does awesome wreckage
It would take me years, literally YEARS, to produce what I have with MidJourney in the space of a week. I've realized scenes, while not exactly what I'd imagined, are pretty damn close.
It's like Creative Crack.
The Great Library: wonderfully wonky and atmospheric
Another software program, Stable Diffusion, is on the verge of being released to the public, and from what I can see, it DOES have structure behind the images. Joints, logical shadows, hands, feet, etcetera. Rather than starting at the surface and working down, it seems to builds up from a solid structure. No doubt it too has limitations, but it can do some things MidJourney can't.
I did not think these software programs would be taking away jobs from artists at first. The lack of structure and the difficulty in getting a specific result mean artists will still be needed to bring the job home.
But MidJourney excels at kickstarting concept art, finding a mood, initial play and exploration. Unexpected results can spark story ideas. If only I had the time to tell them!
It's great for aspiring writers who don't have money or contacts to make decent covers. MidJourney can pump out a generic retro 1970s sci-fi cover easily. Book publishers will use family vacation photos or whatever generic, unrelated sci-fi painting the editor can find. I've bought many sci-fi books where the cover was totally unrelated to the story.
MidJourney can do better.
A futuristic garden space
There are copyright and ethical issues. It is training on living artist work, so using it commercially may raise a mess of copyright issues. From what I understand, while you can use images generated with MidJourney (provided credit is provided to MidJourney), so can anyone else. Which means you can't stop someone else from using whatever you came up with.
I've modified a good number of images I've pumped out. I tried like the devil to get images close to Theo Paxstone, but nothing was quite right. I simply cannot get the rendering engine to produce steam mechs the way I'd imagined them.
Ah well.
But as a playground, it's a lot of fun!
Now if you will excuse me, I have more renders to ponder.
Went back to the studio for some post-Covid life drawing. First time in over 2 years! I'm definitely rusty. I decided to try out ProCreate brushes I don't often use.
It's always a struggle, for me, trying to figure out the best way to employ a brush I'm not familiar with.
I also wanted to explore abstraction, which I've done in the past, but never digitally. Digital is infinitely forgiving, which is great considering the number of mistakes I make and all the options I want to try.
Of course I can't remember what brush this was.
Or this one. It's part of the default set; it has some nice texture to it, but not as much as the pastels do.
I have been playing around with MidJourney, making images for Theo Paxstone. You can see the first set I generated, of gargantuan mechs strolling through green woods, here.
The AI renderer pumps out some pretty impressive imagery, especially if you look at it out of the corner of your eye. If you look directly, you can notice all sorts of things that are amiss. There's got to be some skill in crafting the ideal text prompt, which will return the best result.
These are all from the same prompt (I think). You can then guide the exploration by picking one of the four options, and iterate.
It's fun to play with, and incredibly addictive...!
The people around the mech are a little dodgy, but could be edited in ProCreate...
Love the jet of smoke in the upper left one
What wonderful variety of shapes! Makes me think of Transformers, all the meaningless detail
You can go in a black and white direction
I did some full sized renderings from these, I'll post them later
Like an armoured centaur
As you can see, I went a little bananas.
Once you've settled on some you like, you can do an enhanced render. I'll post some of those, from this set, in the next few days.
I made these images with tools from @midjourney, you can sign up for their private beta here http://bit.ly/3J2NNVs
This article is an especially appropriate follow up to my last post about Exposure Crypto Currency.
It details the exploitation of artists at VFX houses. What's happening is appalling and unsustainable for any one set of people. Like the gaming industry, it depends on a constant stream of new artists coming in to replace the ones they burn out and throw away.
I experienced burnout in 2013-14 (in an entirely different industry) and it takes a long time to recover.
David describes Guardians of the Galaxy as being one of the favorite projectsthat he’s ever worked on. But even he agrees that Marvel’s process is inconsistent. “The worst was when Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame were coming out. They actually bumped up that release by a month but they hadn’t told us. I remember being on the floor with my team and one of my artists comes to me and says, ‘Hey, you see this?’ and he shows me the article saying Marvel bumped the release date up a month.”
Yikes.
Another artist quote:
“I didn’t have a day off for five weeks. And those were not eight-hour days. They were ten-plus-hour days,” recalled Sam, speaking about his experience working on a Marvel show. “And that was because they did a reshoot a month before the show was due. So we literally got shots in at the end of December for a show that was due at the end of January.”
...Sources also stated that this constant vision shift feels driven by the egomaniacal ability to demand changes and see them acquiesced to, rather than considering the kind of changes that will actually affect the story. “Nobody is holding Marvel accountable,” H said. “So they don’t care. They’re like, ‘Fuck you guys. We can make as many changes as we want and you just have to deliver it.’” These changes can be major: Sam described an incident where an actor was filmed in a practical suit and the studio decided it was the wrong suit. “And you have to replace their entire body and just leave their head in every shot.”
It sounds like a gruelling industry.
Give it a read.
Claiming it is all the fault of the VFX houses for entering into such contracts seems like a facile response to me. Marvel may posture as being socially responsible, but how they treat their subcontractors says something.
And while it may sound like there is an easy breezy solution ("Just pay them more!"), I don't think it will be.
No money to pay creative people? No worries! Announcing Exposure Crypto Currency, specially designed for creative people.
A common request for art, sans moolah
Here's the gist:
Don't use cash to hire photographers, painters, illustrators, designers, actors or writers. Having money just makes creatives go crazy and spend it all on drugs, Vegas and food stamps.
Save them from being capitalist stooges!
There's a better way: a currency designed specifically for artists and their special needs.
Exposure comes in unlimited denominations, as each Exposure bill is worth as much as you say it is.
I mocked up a faux Exposure website for the heck of it a few years ago, but never finished. It fell by the way side. Didn't get enough Exposure to complete it I guess. Heh.
It started out fairly conservative looking:
The usual photography route
Initial array of logo explorations, ending in a jester cap matched with a sun
But then I thought, why not go Full Obnoxious?
Here's the logo taken to the max:
I think this is pretty self-explanatory
Here's a bill variant:
Is this bill worth a different amount of Exposure than the other? Who knows? You decide!
In fact, multiple bill variants are not strictly necessary, as Exposure Crypto Currency is flexible in value... just like Crypto! It's very important to provide people with options.
Here's the non-existent never built homepage:
And what would Exposure be without rewards? How do you get the cash out of the crypto? Often people pour money into crypto and get bupkiss back. But we have a way you can get value for both your investments and payments.
Meet Exposure Rewards:
Exchange your hard earned Exposure for things like authentic amateur poetry, or beautiful snow white Zoom backgrounds. The rewards are only limited to... well two. That's pretty much it at the moment, but soon, thanks to the power of paying in Exposure, we'll have limitless art works you can turn in your own exposure for.
Exposure harnesses the power of subjectivity, relativity and flexibility to allow you, the savvy investor, to buy billions for mere pennies.
Invest your money today, and start paying your favourite artist, nephew, or influencer the savvy way: with Exposure!
ADDENDUM: Looks like the 4 (5?) years since I did this stuff up someone else has built an Exposure Crypto Currency site. Crap. Now there is no point in bothering, I might as well give up the URL and show the work that went into my aborted effort.
Don't think, just do! Use the Force, Tom! Which movie am I watching again?
Top Gun: Maverick is a template driven popcorn blockbuster, but it's a hoot nevertheless.
It starts with our eponymous hero, Maverick, working as a test pilot on a secret Air Force project that's about to be terminated... spoil sport general (Ed Harris) is on his way! Mav has to steal the plane and push it to Mach 10 to avoid the program being cancelled! The jobs of his comrades (who look sad) are on the line, and only Mav can save them (as if the Air Force wouldn't reassign them elsewhere).
He flies over the general as he takes off, blasting Ed Harris with a huge gust of wind. The script is not subtle.
Maverick being Maverick (show character!), he pushes the plane beyond its limits, causing the experimental craft to break up in mid air. Oh noes! Is Mav dead in the first five minutes, like Seagal in that nineties flick? Surprise! Mav ejects safely and winds up at a diner for a comedy beat.
The program he was trying to save is not so fortunate, as their billion dollar plane is now toast.
Whoops.
Fortunately, Mav is immediately reassigned (they do that!) to Top Gun again, to train young hotshots for the most difficult target imaginable. And I mean that: the mission comes across as wildly contrived and artificial, a mix of Star Wars trench run, test material (every challenge thrown into one scenario) and video game. As if the screenwriters asked pilots what would be the most ridiculously difficult mission to fly and cooked this up.
Obvisously it has to be flown by pilots, not programmed drones or missiles.
To avoid offending foreign markets, it's against an unnamed enemy. The target's an uranium enrichment plant; Russia and China already have plenty of nukes and enrichment plants. North Korea also already has nukes. The enemy nation also has fifth generation fighters, which I don't think Iran or North Korea have. They're flying over snow covered forests, somewhere in the north... the only choice is North Korea, but even that doesn't really make sense.
Whatever. Don't think, just do! That's the film's mantra. It's something Yoda might say.
Before sending Tom off, General Party Poop had told Tom pilots were no longer necessary. Unfortunately, I think Harris is right. Before long, planes will either be piloted by machine or remotely.
But that'd make for a short movie though.
The mission is so Death Star trench run it's funny (I laughed out loud a couple of times), but that's the tone of the film: bonkers and high octane silliness.
The action scenes, however, rock. They didn't use (much?) CGI; a lot is actual planes pulling crazy stunt maneuvers. That gives scenes a verisimilitude and kinetic energy that's nothing short of enrapturing. You get a sense of the thrill (and horror) of being a fighter pilot.
Wow!
Harrowing yet magnificent flying scenes
Sometimes it's difficult to understand where exactly the planes are in relation to each other, but given the limitation of using actual footage, they do a pretty good job.
There's an emotional aspect to the film, with a peripheral love story and strained relations between Mav and Goose's son. You care about the characters just enough to feel involved in the action sequences (well, Mav and Rooster).
Tom Cruise fits in a running scene (must be in his contract) and the ending piles on the ridiculousness.
If you're looking for a grounded, gritty, realistic fighter pilot flick, this isn't it. It's gung ho action and wahoo fun, with (barely, just barely) enough emotional connection to keep you interested.
The best thing I can say (given my jaded tastes) is that I was engaged during the action sequences and finale.
There are a good number of other big budget bonanzas where I was bored stiff during the spectacular CGI climax.
Cardboard characters surrounded by explosion bling just isn't enough anymore.
For a fun diversion excursion, I'd recommend Maverick (with the caveat you should leave your brain at home).
I had never heard about The Way Back until I saw it on Netflix. It’s Peter Weir’s last film, starring Jim Sturgess, Ed Harris and Colin Farrell, and (apparently) was a failure at the box office. Which is a shame, because it’s very well done, and Weir’s a fabulous film maker. The Year of Living Dangerously, Witness, Gallipoli, Dead Poets Society, The Truman Show and Fearless are all modern classics.
From a certain point of view, The Way Back is a horror film.
But instead of someone in a hockey mask jumping out from behind a tree with a machete, you have the Soviet Gulag Archipelago and 4,000 harrowing miles of rugged, inhospitable landscape between the characters and freedom.
Based loosely on the memoir of former Polish prisoner of war Slawomir Rawicz, our heroes are a rag tag group of Eastern Europeans, plus (oddly) an American. The Latvians and Poles were screwed over by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact between the Nazis and the Soviets in 1939. The American fell victim to idealism. Now they must pass across frozen wastes and scorching hot deserts, with little food or water, all the while in mortal fear that they will be apprehended by the authorities.
That’s scary.
Millions toiled away in 30,000 camps in the Archipelago at it's height, all disposable slave labourers, powering the Soviet Union's resource extraction and economy. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is a compelling account of life in a Soviet labour camp in the 1950s, if you're looking to dive deeper. Some 1.6 million perished in the gulag system, although reliable numbers are difficult to come by.
Doubts have been raised about how true Rawicz’s tale is as well, but numerous stories of people escaping Siberia have floated around for some time. A British officer, Captain Rupert Mayne, interviewed three men who claimed to have escaped from Siberia in 1942. The BBC did an investigation and came across a man named Witold Glinski who claims to have made the same walk. So who knows?
The ending, the very ending, is what got me. It ties in beautifully to the beginning. It's speaks to the power and perseverance of the individual in the face of towering, implacable institutional inhumanity.
There is no need monsters in this world, not really: we have people.
I am so glad I did not live in The Bloodlands (although I recommend the book), where people had a choice between two murderous tyrants. What is more 1984? Between Stalin and Hitler, over 30 million people lost their lives.
Conventionally speaking, The Way Back is an survival film with an underlying anti-communist angle. It was a bit of a slog for my goldfish short attention span; it’s a very, very long trek to India. And yet, the ending would not work if the film did not feel long; it adds to the emotional impact.
Definitely worth a watch if you have the time. It deserves more attention than it got on release. At the same time, I found the picture deeply upsetting. Which, I suppose, is a sign that it is very well done. Movies are emotion generation machines, after all.
In the BBC article, Weir said, ""It's about the struggle that all of us have to survive every day. This is on an epic scale, but survival is at the heart of it, and what keeps you going with all the difficulties and pain of life and the bad luck."
Amen to that.
And may God (or the universe, if you prefer) bless.
Comparing two properties, even very different ones, as they unfold can be really instructive in terms of understanding what works and what doesn't; I tried it before with Peacemaker and The Book of Boba Fett.
(I get the impression that Star Wars is spiralling down into itself, with story after story endlessly revisiting old characters. Pre-teen Palpatine and Chewie's Wookie Cub Playhouse can't be far behind.)
Both Kenobi and The Boys are action / adventure. Kenobi, however, is quite obviously aimed at kids, while The Boys is very adult. VERY very adult. Trust me, you do NOT want your children watching it. Which reminds me they made an Alien monster toy, back in the day, for kids... for an R-rated film they should not have been able to see.
I think this is the 1978 version, but it may be a reissue. I never noticed there was a human like skull contained within the Alien's head.
The Boys is more my cup of tea. It's filled with scathing social commentary, pushes boundaries (this is a two sided sword, as vulgarity, obscenity and gratuitous violence can be both needlessly unpleasant and shock value can become a crutch), has well developed and motivated characters, and the villain, Antony Starr, is phenomenal and brings much needed nuance to Homelander.
In fact, everyone on The Boys is fantastic. There's not a weak link among them. Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Erin Moriarty, Karen Fukhuara, Tomer Kapon, Laz Alonso... they're all absolutely fabulous, although arguably Moriarty hasn't had as much material this season (so far). It's got to be difficult juggling such a large cast of characters. And yet, they are all much more rounded than the characters in Kenobi.
This may be a function of the audience the show is aimed at. Kenobi is simpler, more direct narratively if not technically (it looks astonishingly good). It is very 'cute': Leia Lulu is chased in one episode by bounty hunters who are obviously going slowly, to not catch her, like parents faux chasing their kids. It's so obvious it took me out of the narrative. For children, however, that may not be a bug, but a feature.
I greatly prefer the staging in The Boys. Kenobi fights feel more like what you'd see with little kids playing: henchmen running onto the stage to be immediately gunned down, like ten pins.
On the other hand, The Boys can be gratuitously gruesome. To me, this makes violence more horrific and impactful. Kenobi sanitizes killing. There's no blood at all.
Which is better? Which is worse?
There is a tremendous amount of violence in our TV and film productions, with heroes like John Wick mowing down hundreds of nameless disposable drones in every outing. It does give me pause. Arguments swirl around whether it encourages mass shootings. Virtual carnage in video games has not impacted rates of violence and, despite being counterintuitive, could actually be reducing them. I've been recommended the book Moral Combat by psychologists Patrick M. Markey and Christopher J. Ferguson, but not read it yet. Too much to read!
Strange things that happen in Kenobi: our eponymous hero makes mistakes you'd think he'd be far too smart and experienced to commit (such as blurt out Leia's name in front of stormtroopers, or immediately surrendering when faced with three troopers, after just easily killing three plus a deadly probe droid). And is it not a continuity issue for Kenobi to have a space phone in his cave? Why didn't Leia just ring him up in A New Hope?
The emotional beats in The Boys are more impactful, whereas Kenobi's feels forced (heh). Again, this could very well be because it is aimed at children. On the other hand, when I was a kid, I never liked it when a show talked down to me.
Writing for kids is such a challenging juggling act.
I don't mean to imply I could do better. Criticism is easy; it's creating that's hard.
Writing for Disney, especially on such a massively important, high profile and EXPENSIVE property must be an exercise in pressure management. Trying to integrate all the disparate corporate voices and interests (and, let's face it, merchandising) into a really compelling script... that's insanely challenging.
Time to celebrate: I've had this blog for exactly ten years, as of today. My first post was a review of Prometheus. The scary thing: it doesn't even feel like that long ago.
After deep, soul wrenching contemplation, what have I learned from blogging?
1) I don't edit enough.
2) It is impossible to reach the point where I no longer feel the itch to edit.
I am in an eternal struggle against filler words and pointless phrases, which regularly slip into my prose, seemingly unbidden, forever frustrated by smooth flowing sentences that remain out of reach. Also, purple prose.
But it's been good exercise.
I've written numerous movie and TV reviews; not what I set out to do, but I fell into anyway. And then mostly fell out of: my opinion isn't relevant, I'm (usually) not the target audience, and there's enough negativity out there without me griping. I've consumed so much television and film, especially over the Covid lockdown (Toronto had one of the longest in the world) that I'm now unquestionably spoiled and jaded in my TV tastes. It would be better to focus strictly on material I still find inspiring.
On the other hand, that would require mental energy.
In addition to Cutting Edge Conformity, I created a number of 'sub-blogs', for specific properties, such as Theo Paxstone, Rebel Angels and Max Zing. There's even a blog for Nil, which I posted in a grand total of once.
And then there's the blog for jtillustrationwhich... honestly, I'd completely forgotten about.
Social media has long overtaken the blogosphere, but I don't mind posting, from time to time, in my happy little backwater.
Here's to another 10 years!
Heh. Maybe not. It may be time to pack it in.
Everthing changes.
Maybe this combo image is more appropriate: it conveys endless self-indulgent annihilation. Has he even put the glass down since 1997? I mean, that's a lot of alcohol...
Homelander is the best, in the most awful, horrible, nightmarish way possible, villain on TV.
Hands down.
(And yes I know the others are mostly movie villains, but they're streaming now)
They've been building up this malignant narcissist for 2 seasons, and now he's blooming into his full, monstrous self. The training wheels are off, and he's being his best worst self.
Emperor Palpatine, as great as Ian McDiarmid is at chewing the scenery, is a mere vaudeville villain, a moustache twirling trope by comparison. There's no motivation behind Ol' Palpy's desire to be evil and rule the galaxy.
Homelander? He wants to be admired. He needs it. That's the only thing between him and lasering millions. And you get the character. He comes across as a fully realized monster, his deep rooted insecurities and egomania driving the plot like an Indie 500 pro.
From the chilling scene, back in season one, where he refuses to save even one child passenger from a doomed passenger plane because it'd ruin his f*cking image, to his recent shenanigans to seize power at Vought, his evolution is frighteningly believable.
Antony Starr's performance has been consistently amazing, across all three seasons. He sells insane rage behind a big, bright and fake smile. You believe this is a guy on the edge, ready to slip into obscene violence at any moment, at the slightest provocation.
The world of The Boys walks on egg shells around Homelander. He's like that super powered psycho kid in the famous Twilight Zone episode, the one with the powers of a God and the impulses of an angry eight year old.
Only Homelander is smart. Deranged, but smart.
What's particularly good about Starr's portrayal, and the writing team's material, is that people defend Homelander, and argue he isn't a real villain, just, essentially, misunderstood.
Wow.
The Boys continues to mine the superhero metaphor to comment on power structures, society and cynical facades.
Season 3 wasn't quite doing it for me until Episode 4: Glorious Five Year Plan. That was some seriously disturbing television, and I'm dying to see where the writers take it next.
I imagine the title pertains to the NEP, the Soviet five year economic plans. The second one, from 1933-37, pushed collectivization and resulted in the deaths of millions of Ukrainians. Perhaps it refers to the Soviet habit of back stabbing; Stalin frequently triangulated against his rivals (a list that dwindled over time as they wound up shot or with an ice pick in their brain).
Over the last two years I've craved escapist entertainment.
Go figure.
I don't read as much since getting tinnitus, so during The Great Covid Lockdown I consumed copious amounts of noisy TV, and subscribed to multiple content platforms. Too many. There's a mind blowing amount of material to choose from.
Even if 90% of everything is crap, as the maxim goes, there's just so, so much, we can drown in the fabulous.
And there's no question: the work of all these talented creators, writers, actors, directors and crew helped millions get through the pandemic.
Praise be to the arts!
On the other hand, I have become thoroughly spoiled and jaded thanks to a surfeit of lavishly produced entertainment.
These are the shows that got me through:
Law & Order (Original flavour, SVU and Criminal Intent) This long running procedural (20 plus years) has literally thousands of hours of content. Amazon Prime carries half the seasons of each iteration. The shows predictable format was comforting, in a weird way, during the early pandemic, and it's an easy show to just leave on in the background while you draw. Solid time waster, but gets weaker as the seasons stretch on.
Deep Space Nine * Watched the whole thing, start to finish, every episode except for a couple Quark focused ones which were too cringe inducing. I’d never seen it all before, and there were holes in my understanding of the grand arc of the later seasons. At 126 hours of content, it took almost 4 months to get through. Great characters, built up over time and then thrown into a grand Dominion War arc. Lots of well grounded character humour which doesn't undermine the dramatic aspects. Worf, Odo and Garak are especially good. O'Brien must suffer! More here.
Voyager Watched a good chunk, but not all. Skipped many episodes from the first 2 seasons; I hate the Kazon, they’re both annoying and boring. Voyager (like Next Generation and DS9) gets seriously good starting in season 3.
Enterprise Decent Trek, but not a favourite. The characters aren't as a colourful or compelling as on DS9. There are season long story arcs I’d never seen; lockdown presented the time to do so. Overall, satisfying.
The Expanse * Insanely good, compelling, gritty sci-fi. The Expanse is as close to realistic as any sci-fi epic has ever gotten. It also complex and demands focus from it's audience. Not easy to get into, but well worth it. The only down side: it's based on a series of books, and they aren't going to adapt the final three. Also, it was filmed in Toronto, my home town, and some scenes were shot near where I live.
Fort York in the future (The Expanse): it moves to Baltimore?
The Boys * Think superheroes as sports team franchises. Scathing satirical fun. Also gratuitously gory and vulgar. I loved it. Shot in Toronto, too, so there's the added joy of spotting familiar locations. The Boys dives into the sickness and corruption of a celebrity culture run amuck. Unbound and egotistical (anti-)superheroes behave as badly as you'd expect Greek gods to.
Invincible * If you need more subversive, satirical superhero fare (and who doesn't?), Invincible deconstructs what's left. Didn't expect much from this show, and came away seriously impressed.
Better Call Saul * Dark, angsty and depressing, yet I couldn’t stop watching. The characters are nuanced, incredibly well realized, and drive the drama. A show worth studying.
Barry * Twisted tale of a contract killer who decides he wants to become an actor. Dark and sardonic. The show manages to get you to actually root for a mass murdering sociopath. He's also frequently cringe inducing; think Larry David... if he was an amoral serial killer.
Raised by Wolves * I still can't believe this mind blowing, batshit insane series was ever given the green light in the first place. People spent a serious amount of money on this, and it shows: it's gorgeous and eerie and possibly the weirdest show ever made. I love it: it's got atheists vs. Mithraic fundamentalists, climate apocalypse, android weapons of mass destruction that do double duty as nannies, flying snake babies and people turning unexpectedly into trees. A must see. Of course, it's been cancelled. This makes me sad.
The Queen’s Gambit * Surprisingly interesting tale of a comely chess nerd, backed by solid emotional wallops. The lead actress is phenomenal.
Tales from the Loop * Another gem, especially the finale directed by Jodi Foster. Contemplative sci-fi without an explosion anywhere to be seen. Based on a series of paintings. More about it here.
Bojack Horseman * Pretty much defines dark, depressing humour. Harsh but painfully funny. Couldn't finish it. Will revisit.
The Witcher * A monosyllabic Henry Cavill slices and dices weird monsters in a time jumbled tale that’ll have you scratching your head. Addictive, with incredible fight choreography.
Russian Doll (first season) * Takes awhile to get into, but the payoff was worth it and the show has something to say.
Dirk Gently (first season) Zany and idiosyncratic, this show's bonkers fun.
Squid Game * This show takes no prisoners. First it gets you to connect and empathize with the characters, then puts them through sheer, unrelenting hell. Brutal and unsparing in its commentary on class conflict. Something I've learned to expect from Korean dramas.
All of us are dead More Korean class conflict, this time through the metaphor of a zombie plague outbreak at a posh high school.
Archive 81 Creepy, atmospheric, and full of foreboding, the spell is only broken when a CGI demon shows up. First season ends on a cliff hanger, and it's been cancelled. So...
Cobra Kai * A wonderful, guilty pleasure. Think teen soap opera meets musical, except instead of musical numbers breaking out, karate fights do. I'm amazed the kids (and more than a few adults) aren't all in prison. Has better fight sequences than those in Matrix Resurrections. A lot of humour is mined from the nature of the characters, without undermining the dramatic aspects of the show. Oh what am I saying: it's increasingly ridiculous but damnit I love it.
Black Summer * A harrowing fast zombie apocalypse that's almost, almost, an anthology series. Characters intersect, then spin out into their own stand alone episodes. The survivors also make plenty of mistakes and have appalling fire control, resulting in (naturally) more zombies.
To the Lake The zombie apocalyspe, Russian style. Bleak and cynical, especially regarding the behaviour of the authorities. Also a family drama. D'aw!
Devs * Stylish in the extreme, it's an unexpected gem on Disney+ that I'd never heard of before. Some may find it almost pompous, but I thought it was fascinating. Fantastic, striking art direction, unlike anything else I've seen, extremely moody and carefully paced. Give it a watch, you won't be sorry.
The Mandalorian * A simple story about a bounty hunter and a little green troll baby. The most mind blowing thing about it is The Volume, or Stagecraft, or whatever they call it now: an almost 360 degree video wall enclosure on which you can run full motion backgrounds using a video game engine. Allows actors to see (and react to) the imaginary environment, as opposed to big blank green screens. Also speeds up the production process and casts the actors in convincing natural light.
Book of Boba Fett A simple story about a bounty hunter who decides he wants to be a benevolent, kid show friendly crime lord. You know, extort, blackmail and murder people, just with respect. Veers off the rails and gets taken over by The Mandalorian for two episodes. Unparalleled production values, but the characters are thinner than cardboard and there's not a motivation to be seen.
Peacemaker * Smart, satirical superhero deconstruction, it has everything Boba lacks: characters, character arcs, character motivation, sharp humour and heart. Also two sociopaths and a psychopath. Watch it. I yammer on more about it here.
Wandavision Starts out strong with an intriguing concept and lots of mystery flying around. I was hooked! Unfortunately, the resolution was disappointing CGI stuff.
Loki * Loved the absurdist humour and ultra-powerful TVA, a dysfunctional bureaucracy that manages time itself. Very stylish, with catchy music, graphics and quirky characters. Owen Wilson and his jet ski ambitions were especially endearing. The finale felt a little flat to me, and there are some creepy aspects to multi-Loki romance, but overall it was a ton of fun.
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier The action sequences are right out of a Jack Kirby comic book, but the story was confusing. I didn't get the motivation of the villains.
Punisher (season 1) Revenge porn (the other kind), but with an anti-hero-quasi-superhero. Rather grim, and I'm not inclined to watch season 2. One sequence that intercuts intimacy with torture is especially bizarre.
Greatest events of WWII in colour World War II documentary, easy to watch in small chunks.
I did watch a few other documentaries sporadically, but I can't remember specifically. Some true crime, economics, cryptocurrency, yada yada.
I went very heavy on sci-fi and superheroes.
Overall, the list feels short for 2+ years.
Law & Order alone, however, has a massive amount of programming. I remember thinking early on in the pandemic that I might make it all the way to the first vaccine roll out with just Law & Order alone.
"Be it resolved, ending the world's worst geopolitical crisis in a generation starts with acknowledging Russia's security interests."
An interesting match, pitting Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt against Radoslaw Sikorski (former Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs) and Michael McFaul (former US ambassador to Ukraine).
It starts out with Radoslaw acknowledging that, in Poland (as in Russia and China), Mearsheimer is seen as the master of realpolitik theory.
Mearsheimer predicted the war in Ukraine, and back in the 1990s advised the Ukrainians not to give up their nuclear arsenal. Mind you, even I would have given them that advice. Ukraine isn't in the most stable neighbourhood.
The two sides were often talking past each other, ignoring inconvenient questions.
Mearsheimer made the claim, for example, that the US orchestrated a coup in Ukraine in 2014 (he makes the same assertion in Great Delusions, but is light on the details), which McFaul strenuously denies (of course he does). McFaul demands proof, which Mearsheimer does not offer.
I'd like to know what Mearsheimer knows, if he knows, if you know what I mean.
A disturbing point is made that Russian military doctrine is to escalate until victory. Nuclear weapons are seen as just another weapon, and if Putin feels like he is losing in Ukraine, he'll use them. Such a loss would be an existential threat to him, and thus Russia (as an extension of the Czar).
That’s probably the biggest fear: that World War III has already started, we just don’t know it yet.
McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia, frequently lets passion undermine his position.
