Apocalyptic retro-futurism, laid back pixel packing, and a trip to Delta City is some of what's been setting the tone of my March and April of 2024...
Click "READ MORE" below to see this month's looks, sounds, vibes & flavours...
LOOKS:
The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live - created by Scott M. Gimple, Danai Gurira, and Andrew Lincoln, this six episode mini-series finally resolves the lingering issue of Rick and Michonne's exits from the main show. It's a brief run of episodes, so resolution is guaranteed, but it sometimes feels a little rushed in the earlier portions of the story. It's also disappointing that there are certain moments that require great big dollops of suspended disbelief (when a simple few shots or lines of dialogue could paper over the cracks quite easily). Naturally, the conclusion doesn't give you everything you want just because of the basic restrictions and practicalities of actor and location availabilities, budget, and so on, but all said and done it was satisfying (if a bit messy). TWD: Daryl Dixon still remains the clear winner of every single TWD spin-off there has ever been, so hopefully the upcoming second season of that will maintain the quality.
Masters of the Air - the last few episodes rally themselves for a fairly satisfying and generally more coherent close to the mini-series, but it's nevertheless a clear failing of storytelling for it to take this long for the viewer to gain any real attachment to the main protagonists. There are still certain wobbles, such as the brisk, sloppy, and pretty uninformative introduction of the Tuskegee Airmen in the penultimate episode - an important part of the wider story to include, but such a late appearance in the narrative proves awkward, made worse by how little they figure into the final episode. This can also be said of the quite speculative character of Sandra Westgate (appearing with increasing brevity in episodes 6 through 8), whose inclusion ultimately leads nowhere while revealing almost nothing at all story wise, and proves to be a considerably unsatisfying use of screen time.
Decided and varied flaws aside (plus an apparent raft of historical fabrications, alterations, and untruths), Masters of the Air still manages some moments of brilliance as the tides of the war shift towards the inevitable conclusion. However, this mini-series seriously fails when it comes to storytelling and characterisation, and also suffers xenophobic levels of dismissal of the rest of the Allied nations. It ultimately falls far short of The Pacific and is simply nowhere near the league of Band of Brothers; the comparison with the latter is like night and day, leaving Masters of the Air as a great missed opportunity infested with clumsy writing and numerous other flaws. The fleeting elements that do work only render these major problems that much more frustrating.
The Gentlemen: Season 1 - Guy Ritchie's spin-off from his 2019 film. A thoroughly entertaining crime caper with a great central conceit (asset rich but cash poor landed gentry renting out quiet corners of their vast estates to criminal enterprises). I'd certainly watch a second season.
The Program: Cults, Cons, and Kidnapping - Netflix documentary from Katherine Kubler that sheds a damning light upon the 'behaviour modification' industry in teenage schooling. Frankly, it's stunning that it hasn't become a worldwide scandal with a globe-spanning criminal investigation into those behind it. It may lack some investigative depth (very few of those involved in the organisation are interviewed), but it's as fascinating as it is truly shocking.
RoboDoc: The Making of RoboCop - an incredibly extensive examination of the making of the 1987 sci-fi action classic with insightful and revealing interviews with a wide assortment of the surviving players and glimpses behind the scenes. A must-see for any fan of the movie, no doubt about it. Superb!
True Detective: Season 1 - after watching the ultimately underwhelming "Night Country" I was inspired to go back to the start, and the sheer difference in the quality of the storytelling, the unfurling criminal conspiracy, and the complex characterisation is stark. No following season was able to recapture that lightning in a bottle, although season three came commendably close (season two was notoriously rushed, for which HBO even publicly apologised).
Fallout: Season 1 - created by Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet. Sure, there's areas to nitpick at, some plot or logic holes here or there if you go seeking them out, but you could level that kind of criticism at practically anything from any form of creative media. It's been interesting to see some reactions online to it from those of the rabidly anti-woke mindset, content to paint themselves into a Mary Whitehouse coloured corner (she infamously said she didn't need to see a video nasty to know what was in it) because they've now become the flipside of the rabidly woke coin, so wrapped-up in 'seeing woke everywhere' that they're much the same as those wretched individuals who are intent on segregating people and pitching them against each other.
The truth of the matter is that Fallout is a great videogame adaptation that boasts complex characters who have flaws and shifting morals. It's also true that Fallout respects the source material and, clearly, actively admires it (i.e. no destructive Witcher-like disrespecting of the foundational text). There's no pandering identity politics hellbent on lecturing western audiences while censoring it for specific foreign markets, with the show instead focusing on world-building and having fun in that sandbox environment. A second season will be forthcoming, which is good news, as this turned out to be a real treat.
The Deuce: Season 1 - going back for a re-watch of this HBO series, which I absolutely adored during its original three-season run from 2017 to 2019.
SOUNDS:
Chromatics "Closer To Grey" (album)
Ahti "Yoton Yo"
Jaimes "Wide Awake"
Jean Castel "Lost At Sea"
Motorhead "Brotherhood of Man"
The Black Angels "El Jardin", "Empires Falling", "Firefly", "History of the Future", "Without A Trace"
Stefano Mainetti "Finale (Instrumental Mix)"
VIBES & FLAVOURS:
"The Stanley Kubrick Archives" edited by Alison Castle
Alan Wake 2 (Xbox Series S) - it may have taken me three months to play the whole thing, but after a thirteen year wait for a sequel to my favourite game of 2010, I'm thoroughly impressed with what we were finally given. Now, there was one line of dialogue in the closing chapter of the game in which Saga Anderson refers to being told what to do by another "white asshole", which certainly had the whiff of an outside consultancy firm about it. It's a very rare, bizarre, and mercifully brief slip in the staggering quality that otherwise exemplifies every facet of Alan Wake 2. The comment is also thoroughly out-of-place for Saga, unintentionally making her come off as momentarily racist, particularly as at no point in the game did her own race ever come up as being an issue.
Anyway, enough of all that sort of stuff. Without spoiling the ending, I'd certainly say that it was absolutely NOT a "nothingburger", especially in the New Game+ extended version of the ending (which I watched on YouTube). Now, I will say that I don't like the idea of being forced to play the game all over again (or find it online) in order to see the full version of the conclusion to the story. While I understand its part in giving returning players something a little more, I simply don't agree with it on principle. But that's just a small issue against the giant canvas of everything that Remedy masterfully achieved with this game, with it's gorgeous visual and aural presentation, its rich storytelling, its sense of humour, as well as its chilling sense of tension and lurking dangers (especially in the Dark Place). I loved it and will see about playing the DLC chapters when they come around.
"Concrete Island" by J.G. Ballard
Dead Island 2 (Xbox Series S) - I took a trial of Game Pass and gave this one a whirl. While I love me some zombie slaying action, I'm just not quite suited for this particular game in terms of difficulty. What the hell is wrong with good old fashioned Easy/Normal/Difficult/Nightmare settings? Some folks just want to relax, play their game, and not be blocked from content they've paid for; you don't get that with movies or books, so why videogames? The choice should be up to the individual gamer. I got as far as I could, and enjoyed what I did get through, but I just had to give up on it at a certain point, which is decidedly rare for me.
Unpacking (Xbox Series S) - I wouldn't normally play a game like this, but because of the aforementioned Game Pass access I decided to give it a go (after a disastrously embarrassing sojourn into the online multiplayer Texas Chainsaw Massacre game, to which I was most assuredly not suited). It's a very simple bit of fun, just unpacking moving boxes and putting things in their correct place, but along the way you gain little details about the person's life according to their possessions and the homes you're moving into. It's a cute little pixel art type of thing, and quite a difference from my usual gaming diet of snarling sports cars and gunning down bloodthirsty beasts and baddies.
"Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" by Hunter S. Thompson
RoboCop: Rogue City (Xbox Series S) - sure, it's a bit rough around the edges (e.g. dialogue, character animation, staging of cutscenes, some bugs) and obviously has some budgetary limitations compared to other games, but this isn't a AAA release to be fair. But what's not to love about getting to become RoboCop, stomping around Delta City investigating crimes and taking down bad guys with the famous Auto-9?
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