I wasn't alive back then but I was always fascinated by the Space Race. Read many books and watched countless documentaries. I love the movie they made. So, this was very high on my list. And it is utterly dissapointing.
The story of the Space Race is dramatic on it's own. It's a story about what mankind can achieve if they put all their efforts behind it. Even if it was started out of political agendas to prove which system was superior. I think those men, on both sides, achieved remarkable things and I have the highest respect for them.
Based on this series alone, how the astronauts are portrayed, I would have wished them all to blow up and die. They are equally unlikeable, everyone for it's own reasons. I am not against adding some drama, in the end this is a TV show and not a documentary. But this was just too much. You see close to nothing about the training and technical side. Mostly them chasing after women, drinking, and chest pumping contests about who is the alpha male. Maybe some of this did happen, but even than you should find more balance in your story.
Since the first season is subtitled "Project Mercury" I fear there will be more seasons coming about the follow-up programs.
Not with me, though.
So I finished Part One and had a few hours to think about it. The show is definitely interesting. It’s not perfect but I see it setting-up to something bigger in Part Two. The first few episode are a bit off, not horrible or unwatchable but, does have some questionable pacing, lack of music, and some of the more direct jokes aren’t as funny as I would like them. A lot of the “good” jokes seem to be sprinkled in the background or hidden inside of other dialog, I wouldn’t be surprised picking-up on new jokes on a second re-watch. That said episodes 1-5 would be a 5-6/10. Normally a weaker opening to a series would lean me more towards dropping, however...
The reason I say the show is interesting is that the trailer and promo material advertises the show as a comedy first with some adventure on the side, however, it’s very much a slice of life series with hints of adventure down the line in Part Two. I wasn’t expecting this and I actually like this angle more. In fact I wouldn’t be surprised if Part Two was exclusively adventure focused. Most of the episodes in Part One are about the daily life of the disobedient princess and falling into situations, all the while adding a LOT of world building. Part One seems very focused on familiarizing you with the world, people, concepts, etc... While this is taking place we get short cutaways to an unknown group of wizards/sorceress monitoring the situation in Dreamland, the main location in Part One, suggesting something bigger going on.
I wont spoil anything at the end of Part One but the world building and hints towards a grandeur story definitely make this series interesting and I want to learn more. Obviously these are just promises for the moment but the care put into the world and the slower pace at the start to familiarize the characters gives me hope that this series will offer more. For now it’s a 6/10, good but until we see the rest I wouldn’t put much into the rating.
Also the 2D animation is very good. CGI blending is better than most shows and a surprising amount of the scenes have a lot of animation in areas you wouldn't expect it. Casual walks in the city treat you to scenes with plenty of bystanders moving and interacting with each others in 2D (some are 3D). Lots of other shows would offer stills & pans so this gives this show's world a lot of life.
[5.0/10] There’s times I think we forget how hard it is to make a movie. When you’re a slave to franchise filmmaking like I am, you end up sitting through a fair amount of well-heeled crud, like the The Phantom Menace, or X-Men Origins: Wolverine, or even Star Trek Beyond, and you wonder how so many talented people could produce something so bad.
But we’re also inured to a certain baseline of quality, in the writing, editing, filming, and performances, that a certain budget can all but assure, that we take those things for granted. That’s why something like The Room is so funny. It breaks all the rules, while still spending a good chunk of change, and guarantees basically none of that baseline.
But when you enter the muddy waters of a fan film, you start to understand and appreciate that baseline a little more. A film can absolutely have its heart in the right place, can care (arguably too much) about its characters and about pleasing its audience, and yet if it can’t get the basics right, it can feel undeniably lacking.
That’s the case with Star Trek: Of Gods and Men, the ascended bit of cinematic fan fiction that came out in 2007, after Star Trek: Nemesis ended the Next Generation’s cast’s filmic adventures with a thud, after Enterprise went of the air, but before J.J. Abrams’ 2009 reboot rejuvenated the franchise on the silver screen.
Surprisingly, Of Gods and Men foresees at least some of the basic ideas of the 2009 Star Trek film and even a bit of its sequel. The fan film features an antagonist who goes back in time to try to chop down Kirk’s family tree, and spends the bulk of its runtime in a different, darker timeline where the Federation has gone violent and malicious, and reframes (at least some) of the original cast members as different individuals impacted by the change.
That mostly comes down to Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and Chekov (Walter Koenig) who were, full disclosure, the reason I watched this film. The film features Tim Russ (who reprises his role as Tuvok from Voyager and also directs the movie) and Garrett Wang (formerly Harry Kim, but playing a different character here), and so allows for a bit of intergenerational Star Trek crossover. In that, it nicely completes the roster of crewmembers from The Original Series getting to interact with their latter-day counterparts, alongside Kirk (Star Trek: Generations), Spock (TNG’s “Unification”), Bones (TNG’s “Encounter at Farpoint Station”), Scotty (TNG’s “Relics”), and Sulu (Voyager’s “Flashback).
In contrast to the original series and subsequent films, Of Gods and Men gives Uhura and Chekov plenty to do, as they are the protagonists of a film whose perspective and point of view is frequently jumbled. The change in timeline sees Uhura become some kind of elder stateswoman on Vulcan, and Chekov turn into some manner of rough-hewn rebel fighting against a version of Starfleet that’s more akin to The Empire. Koenig can’t quite pull of grizzled revolutionary, and Nichols goes a little over the top with the gravitas, but if you can say nothing else for Of Gods and Men, it sees fit to give these oft-neglected actors and characters a chance to have the spotlight.
But it’s a muddled, messy film, with several problems on a very basic level. First and foremost, it’s set after the events of Star Trek VI (as well as after the opening scene of Generations), but looks and feels as though it’s set in the time period of the 1960s show, creating an immediate dissonance that persists throughout the film. The set is clearly a recreation of the one from the TOS era show, and while the movie handwaves this to some degree, it’s still strange to see a film that wants to embrace all the events of the prior forty years of Star Trek and crafts its story and characters accordingly, nevertheless hew to the vibe of the franchise’s earliest years.
It’s also just a listless, logy film, despite numerous attempts to inject action into the proceedings as much as possible. One of the most underrated aspects of what makes a film great is editing (and relatedly, pacing). The scenes in Of Gods and Men take forever, and simply bleed into one another. There is little sense of progress of structure as the film wears on, instead giving us one giant jumble of an adventure that characters drift in and out of as the movie continues. There are events, and even sort of beats in the film, but they rarely build on one another or give a sense of cohesion or propulsion to what’s happening.
The acting is also spotty at best. Tim Russ, pulling double duty as both director and actor, fares the best of anyone, recreating Tuvok with aplomb. But even in a production with professional actors like Nichols, Koenig, and Alan Ruck (reprising his role from Generations), this still feels like amateur hour. Emotional moments are overwrought, character interactions are unconvincing, and villains have all the subtlety and believability of an episode of Power Rangers. The film is full of talented people who’ve shown off their chops elsewhere, which suggests time, money, or both hampered the ability for all involved to get this right.
But one thing is clear -- Of Gods and Men is clearly a labor of love, and that’s the only reason I’d feel comfortable about recommending it others (even if I’d only recommend it to the most devoted of Star Trek fans). It’s clear how much affection those behind the scenes have for these characters and this world. That may lead them to indulge in fanservice a little too much, or throw out cameos for the sake of cameos, or deliver the underdeveloped broad strokes of the franchise without nailing down its substance, but in every frame and moment, you can see and feel how much Star Trek means to the people who created this film, and that gives it something.
Sure, the story is the peak of fan fiction, in addition to creating the “last ride” vibe for Uhura and Chekov, the crux of Of Gods and Men features a showdown between Charlie X and Gary Mitchell, from the earliest episodes of The Original Series. It also features extended, ham-fisted ruminations on freedom or power or some other trite encapsulation of Star Trek’s themes. And most forgivably, the graphics are roughly at the level of ReBoot, a 1994 series that famed Trek scribe Dorothy Fontana wrote for briefly. Of Gods and Men is, in all honesty, a chore to sit through at times.
And yet it’s also the clear expression of those who admire these characters and yearn to remix and imitate their past adventures. The well-meaning folks behind Of Gods and Monsters may not have the resources or the talent to pull it off at the level of those they’re imitating, but that affection comes through loud and clear, to where even a flat line delivery, or out-of-nowhere story turn, or bit of stilted exposition can make you smile. It’s not a professional film, and no amount of professionals involved can seem to overcome the Great Fan Film Barrier, but it’s one made with absolute passion for the material, which is more than many of even the most successful blockbuster films can say.
I have been watching the big bang Theory ever since it first aired. Being an IT student at the time, the uncomfortable social situations and nerdy jokes spoke to me. However, much has changed throughout the seasons, more about that later.
We start out with our four nerdy main characters. There is the recognizable fact of the three people with higher degrees (PHD holding Sheldon, Leonard and Raj) who make fun and feel themselves better than "simple" engineer Howard. There is the desperate search for love coming from both Howard and Raj, and the differentiation between the confident yet single Howard and the timid, uncertain just-as-single Raj. Sheldon is the one who has no sense of what's going on around him, and is only interested in his own world. Leonard is the humble cute guy who manages to get a date from time to time, an inspiration to Howard and Raj, although his on/off fling with Leslie gives us the impression that he isn't really that successful after all.
Then we have the obvious babe, Penny, the complete opposite of our four nerds. She makes something stir in all three of them, but follows the cliché of going out with the "wrong" men, being dumb, and ignoring their advances.
Even though these are all cliche’s, the inside jokes and the disarming clumsiness of the four guys made the first seasons well worth watching. Gradually however, as the show became more popular, the writers started to abandon what once made it so.
With the introduction of Bernadette and Amy the female characters are drastically expanded, but they don't add any real value to the show. Bernadette is the caricature of Howards mother, where as Amy is an attempt to make Sheldon look more human. At the same time, we go from a show with it's own flair to a one-in-a-dozen sitcom. The laughing tape went from being an accessory to being the main engine of the show. The characters became aware they were going to make a pun and started smiling like idiots before they said it, and laughing like people high on weed after someone made it. The longer this series continues, the more painful it becomes to watch. The lines that are supposed to be jokes are simply not funny. The acting and stereotyping are more bearable in a highschool play. And, as stated in another review made before this one, the show changes from laughing with the characters to laughing at the characters. From a nerdy show to a show about nerds.
Conclusion: if you're looking for some nerdy fun, watch the first three or four seasons. After that, it gets the same illness so many American shows suffer from, namely that it becomes a cash cow for the producers and starts a long, painfully slow, continuously prolonged process of dying a silent dead.They never seem to know when to end something great instead of going on to make it something mediocre.
This was, for me, the best show of the year so far. It is for Netflix this year what Stranger Things was for last year. A real surprise, far better than it looks. I watched the special, and I don't usually do that. I picked up the book and started reading it, and young adult fiction isn't a genre I usually look at. Hollywood hasn't cast it in a very nice light with things like Twilight; even less cringey films like Divergent and The Maze Runner give the YA genre a two-dimensional feel, a feel of shallowness that is easy to take in but doesn't really get inside your head much. Just a one-and-done kind of thing. And this isn't that. It's so much better. I went in thinking this was a show for middle and high school kids, and it really isn't. Especially after the 9th and 12th episodes. Not to mention the finale. Spoilers follow.
After watching — I finished it just 24 hours ago — I went back and forth on whether the suicide was justified or not. Actually for a while I thought they might pull a twist ending and reveal that she didn't actually go through with it, but made it look like she did to raise awareness. There was a program that ran in high schools in Northern California (where this takes place) where they had a guy dressed up like the Grim Reaper take the popular jocks out of school. They were put up in a resort while the rest of the school was told they died. And then they put on this play where they were killed by drunk driving. It sounds silly now, but it was serious then. And it happened at my school (Santa Rosa, Montgomery High, Class of 1998) and I was smart enough to see that it was fiction, but it still young enough for it to affect me. (Sure enough, never drank and drove. Actually don't drink anymore, so I can drive those who can't.) So I thought this series might be doing that, and that they could, and still be impactful. Spoiler: [spoiler]It's not, and the suicide is shown in the finale.[/spoiler]
As for justifications, that's harder. It's important to note here that nobody is perfect, including the adults. It's also important to note that nobody is purely good or evil. Even the one character everyone hates by the end ([spoiler]Bryce{/spoiler]), probably has some good in him. It's just outside the scope of this show to humanize him. We can guess. [spoiler]He was rich, and lived a life free of consequences. His parents were never around, and he was able to buy beer underage because he was a successful athlete and town hero. He literally stated that there was nothing wrong with raping girls. And he believed it because he had never been denied anything.[/spoiler] The big problem I have with the suicide is not that the events leading up to it did or didn't justify suicide. It's that she spent hours calmly laying out everything that was wrong, in a cool and methodical way, on those tapes, after making the decision, and yet she still did it. The planning of the tapes, the recording, setting up distribution, [spoiler]getting Tony to manage the backups and watching people,[/spoiler], I think she could have backed down. I think she was smart enough to by that point and could have gotten help. No tapes, no planning? Sure. Impulse decision. After all that, though? I don't really see it.
I'd also like to get into the school counselor, Mr Porter. School counselors are psychologists only in the same sense that security guards are police officers, i.e. they're not. You could say they're failed psychologists, and maybe some are, but they may not all be. He wasn't an exceptionally bad one. He might have even been above average. I think a big difference between school counselors and psychologists are that school counselors work for the school. They aren't truly advocates for the individuals they try to help. I think he needed to go the extra mile and coach her, and tell her that she needs to declare [spoiler]that she was raped, and that she said no, and that she tried to make him stop, even if she really didn't exactly. There was no deception on her part, or seduction, the guy had raped before, and in her presence no less, and she clearly did not want to have sex, and he knew it[/spoiler]. Yes, I think he should have coached her to embellish the truth a little for the greater good, for the sake of the next victim. Would it have been dishonest? I don't think so. No more spoilers.
But I'm getting off-track. Was it a good series? In no uncertain terms, yes it was. You should absolutely watch it, and then you absolutely should reach out to a niece or a nephew or the child of a family friend and let them know that you are there for them. It doesn't really help as much coming from parents, because parents are always judging. They kind of have to. Kids need an external resource they can count on. Someone they trust won't look down on them because they tried drugs or experimented with sex. Someone who won't add to their problems. Someone who generally makes them feel better when they're down. Even popular kids need it, but the nerds, the emo kids, the losers, those kids need it especially because they have such little support from their peers. And yes it's a bit rude to use those labels, but they exist, those kids exist, and we can't let them slip through the cracks. And one photo, one tweet, one rumor can make the most popular kid in school join those unfortunate groups. And then that kid can go on fooling their parents into thinking they're still on top of the social ladder, when inside they're dying, and we see that in the show with one of the characters.
5 September 2019 - I really try to give a series a chance to prove itself, but I'm abandoning 13 REASONS WHY after S3 E4. It is scrapping the barrel of all things potentially hurtful, damaging and downright dangerous in teen living. The prescriptive warnings by the cast to seek help if you are in the situations depicted in their drama do not excuse the series reinjuring those in peril for the sake of further episodes/seasons. This series no longer has a cathartic benefit. I will no longer be watching it (despite a new bright light in the cast). As I prophetically wrote in 2017 - This series has sucked the life out of its premise. I leave the series with a rating of 5 (meh) out of 10. [Teenage Drama].
I've left the previous reviews here so you can see how it fell out of my favour.
3 April 2017 - I'm just three episodes deep into this Netfilx series and I'm enjoying the characters and the suspense. This is a good premise, the acting is strong, and I can't wait to find out what happened, as we see the story from the varying points of view. Looking good - so I'm giving it a preliminary 8 (great) out of 10.
8 April 2017 - I'm sorry to say that the series didn't live up to the premise. I think it was meant to be a cautionary tale, but the writing was uneven, the characters' emotional arches poorly drawn, and some episodes were just a downright mess. The acting was good because the casting was strong. Even though the scripts were disappointing the series will resonate with those who have been shamed, bullied, emotionally or physically abused. Unfortunately, these are now adolescent realities, so people will see their experiences reflected here. But the writers sewed these components together poorly, interrupting the build of suspense, artificially inflating the emotional environment which in turn compromised the trueness of the characters and leaving the audience disappointed, or in some cases, lost (I almost quit after the very poor episode - S1 E7) and a general degradation of the quality of the series). Although there were some 7 (good) episodes, there were also 6s (fair) and even 4 (poor), so I'm giving the whole series a 5.5 (failed potential) out of 10. I'd love to see these performers again, but the series has sucked the life out of it's premise.
