Category: television

TV Review – Black Mirror: Hang the D.J.

Black Mirror: Hang the D.J. (2017)
Written by Charlie Brooker
Directed by Tim Van Patten

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Amy and George live inside The System, a walled-off community of singles who are paired off by an artificial intelligence known as Coach. The pairings are used to gather data on a person’s preferences in a partner so that they can one day be given their perfect match. The length of the pairings is seemingly random, with some lasting a couple days to others going on for an entire year. Amy and George are each other’s first date in the System, and they are only together for 12 hours. However, even after being paired up with other people, they feel a pull towards each other.

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TV Review – Black Mirror: Crocodile

Black Mirror: Crocodile (2017)
Written by Charlie Brooker
Directed by John Hillcoat

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Fifteen years ago, on their way home from a club, Rob and Mia hit a cyclist and proceed to toss his body and bike into a lake. Now, Mia is a successful architect who is on a business trip in the city. While she is there, Mia commits a second heinous act and appears to cover this one up as well. However, Shazia an insurance claims investigator is traveling down a path that will come colliding with Mia’s. Shazia uses a new form of technology that uses sensory input to create video images of people’s memories. This way the insurance company has a more accurate gauge of the events that happened. An accident occurs outside Mia’s hotel window the night she makes a decision out of desperation, and she ends up on the list of witnesses to interview.

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TV Review – Black Mirror: Arkangel

Black Mirror: Arkangel (2017)
Written by Charlie Brooker
Directed by Jodie Foster

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Marie is a very protective mother, having almost lost her daughter Sara at birth. Years later, Sara wanders off at a park sparking these feelings of terror again. An experimental new service, Arkangel appears to provide the answer. Arkangel involves injecting a small neural implant into three-year-old Sara and outfits Marie with a tablet computer that allows her to monitor her child 24 hours a day. Sara is also instructed that she can turn on a filter that will pixelate anything Sara sees that sets off her biological stress responses. This block remains as Sara gets into upper elementary and begins to cause problems. It’s also revealed the Arkangel service was banned by the U.S. government and Marie has let her tablet gather dust in the attic. That is until Sara begins to break the rules in adolescence.

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TV Review – Black Mirror: USS Callister

Black Mirror: USS Callister (Netflix)
Written by William Bridges & Charlie Brooker
Directed by Toby Haynes

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Robert Daly is the successful Chief Technical Officer of his own gaming company that produces a popular online game called Infinity. Daly is a fan of Space Fleet, an obvious nod to the original Star Trek. He spends his evenings after work in his own offline mod of Infinity where he takes on the Captain Kirk role, and the crew members are subservient replicas of the coworkers he feels slight him on a daily basis. It’s when Nannette joins the company that we learn the creepy secret behind Robert’s game. The other characters are created from the DNA of their originals, and they continue all the memories and personality of their real selves. Robert has placed them in a digital hell where he is a god, and they must serve him.

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My Most Anticipated Television of 2018

 

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Today we’ll wrap things up with a look at the television programs coming to our screen in 2018. Anthologies continue to grow in popularity and the caliber of creator and actor on the small screen is almost outshining cinema.

Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams (January 12th, Amazon)

It’s pretty obvious one of the key reasons Electric Dreams was developed was due to the success of Black Mirror. Though the two shows are not analogs, they both deal in the realm of speculative, human-centered science fiction. Electric Dreams looks to have some more overtly large scale science fiction one-offs as opposed to Black Mirror’s traditionally grounded approach. There are some talented names attached this project, but with any anthology there are bound to be some episodes that are better in quality than others. My hope is that we come away with at least a couple stories that have an impact and raise some interesting questions.

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Favorites of 2017 – Television & Music

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My Favorite Television & Music of 2017

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Twin Peaks: The Return

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There’s no question for me that Twin Peaks: The Return is my favorite media experience of 2017. Out of all the books, movies, music, etc. of the year, nothing affected me and meant as much to me as this revival. David Lynch delivered the most surprising piece of art I have seen in many years. I was continually shocked, awed, and frustrated in all the best ways. I wept at the opening titles of Part 1 and found myself sitting in dazed silence and wonder at the close of Part 18. While some people talk about wanting a Season 4, I believe this was the perfect place to end the series. I first watched Twin Peaks when I was nine years old so to be able to return to this world at the age of 36 will always remain one of the most profound honors of my life.

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TV Review – Search Party Season 2

Search Party Season 2 (TBS)
Written by Sarah-Violet Bliss & Charles Rogers, Jordan Firstman, Starlee Kine, Anthony King, Christina Lee, Andrew Fleming, and Matt Kriete.
Directed by Sarah-Violet Bliss & Charles Rogers, Lilly Burns, and Michael Showalter.

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The first season of Search Party ends with the central mystery solved but a much more significant problem on the hands of the four main characters: they murdered someone. The second season picks up right where the first let off and becomes an entirely new animal. Dory is wracked with guilt, knowing that her actions led to this murder. Her ex-boyfriend Drew continues to distance himself from her and is now joined by their friends Elliott and Portia. Each of them is dealing with their part in the murder and cover-up in very different ways, yet all destructive and sloppy in some manner. Whereas the first season was a mix of comedy and mystery, this round is still funny but much more psychological and darker in where it goes.

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Book Review – Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier

Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier
Flatiron Books, 2017
Written by Mark Frost

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The final piece of Twin Peaks, for the time being, has been released. This comes in the form of co-creator Mark Frost’s meta-novel The Final Dossier. The Final Dossier continues the investigation of Tamara Preston from The Secret History of Twin Peaks. In the previous volume, she is pouring through an archive of documents about events in the Twin Peaks area dating back to the time of Lewis and Clark. In The Final Dossier, she has remained behind in the town after the events of the finale to debrief Director Gordon Cole on what has become of the townspeople and her own thoughts on what exactly happened. Beneath the surface, I read this as co-creator Mark Frost’s personal interpretation of the series. David Lynch is known for creating incredibly enigmatic art that he wants everyone involved from the actors to the viewers to interpret for themselves. It’s not too big of a jump to assume even though Frost contributed to The Return he may have different readings of what happened in the show.

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Small Screen Scares: American Horror Story, Tim and Eric’s Bedtime Stories, and Channel Zero

Small Screen Scares: Horror on Television – American Horror Story, Tim and Eric’s Bedtime Stories, and Channel Zero

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In the last few years, horror on the small screen has seen a boost in popularity. There have always been some representations of the genre on television (Tales from the Crypt, Night Gallery, Masters of Horror) but I have personally found the real sense of horror in these productions to be rare. Tales of the Crypt was often a blend of horror and comedy, and Masters of Horror was a very mixed bag when it came to writing. The horror currently gracing our screens is not always top notch either, but there have been some programs or episodes that have surprised me with how dark and existential they are in their exploration of the genre. We’ll be taking a look at American Horror Story, Tim and Eric’s Bedtime Stories, and Channel Zero: No-End House.

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TV Review – Stranger Things 2

Stranger Things 2 (Netflix)
Written by Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer, Justin Doble, Jessie Nickson-Lopez, Paul Dichter, Jessica Mecklenburg, Alison Tatlock, and Kate Trefry
Directed by Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer, Shawn Levy, Andrew Stanton, and Rebecca Thomas

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It’s almost been a year since the events of Season One that took place in Hawkins, Indiana. Will Byers is settling back into routine everyday kid life with one caveat, he routinely visits with a doctor working at the Hawkins Laboratory. This is part of the agreement Sheriff Hopper made with the lab offscreen at the end of the last season. Hopper also has a significant secret he’s keeping from everyone else. For the last few months, he has been the caretaker of Eleven. After she destroyed the Demogorgon, Eleven found herself in the Upside Down but managed to quickly breach one of the membranes between worlds and return. Hopper eventually finds her, and she becomes a surrogate daughter for the one he lost years ago. In the background of all of this looms a potent threat the dwells in the Upside Down. This many-tentacled shadow entity is moving closer and closer to opening the gate and doing to Hawkins what he has done to the other world.

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