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Media Stuff
Jul. 31st, 2016 08:35 pmI bought myself a Fire TV stick during Amazon's Prime Day, given it was reduced to £20. Technically it isn't letting me do anything I couldn't already do with the Kindle Fire and its TV dongle, but I rarely have the Kindle in the same room as the TV, so that hasn't been working out and I invested in Prime largely to have the extra programme choice it offers.
it's very well put together, remote about the size of an iPod, while the stick itself is about the size of a Mars Bar (note it does need a power socket). I've mostly been using it to play my Amazon-purchased music through the TV's sound system, which is the only decent one in the house, or ogling the absolutely gorgeous screensaver landscapes, but last night I finally got some time to watch stuff.
Content Warning: Here Be Spoilers
First up was the Tom Cruise vehicle Live. Die. Repeat aka Edge of Tomorrow
I did have a problem with the picture here, it was offset down and to the right, though I couldn't work out how much by, I did manage to sort it later (see below).
I wanted to see Edge of Tomorrow when it was at the cinema, but didn't get around to it. The scenario is Earth has been invaded by aliens, the mimics (thought they don't seem to actually mimic anything) who have taken control of Western and Central Europe, but have been stopped at the Channel in the west, and by Russian and Chinese forces to the east. Now equipped with powered exoskeletons, the allies need to launch a cross-Channel invasion. (A nice historical touch is that the invasion is codenamed Downfall; Downfall was the code name for the planned invasion of Japan in WWII)
Cruise is Captain Bill Cage, the proverbial REMF, an officer whose talent is for marketing, not fighting, responsible for producing recruitment ads.
When informed by the commanding general of the allies (Brendan Gleeson, looking perfectly at home in British battledress) that he'll be playing combat cameraman in the first assault wave, Cage tries to talk his way out of it, and ultimately tries to blackmail the general, as it becomes clear he's a complete coward. The blackmail attempt ends with Cage resisting arrest and getting himself tased. He wakes up at Forward Operating Base Heathrow, rebranded as a private impersonating an officer and guilty of desertion. He's promptly assigned to the mixed British-American J Squad, who are ordered to beat him 'until he can't pee standing up' if he tries anything, and the next morning he's fitted out with an exoskeleton and dragged out to the aerial armada headed for France.
The special effects are fantastic. The main part of the invasion force is in CGI created quad tillt-rotor 'dropships', and one shot shows Heathrow covered with them, and with exoskeleton clad infantry filing aboard, but flying among them are real Chinooks and V-22s and you need to know your aircraft to tell which is which. Unfortunately for the allies, what the effects show are the invasion force getting completely hammered. The aliens were waiting for them.
Cage makes it down to the beach, only to immediately see one of his squadmates crushed by a falling dropship. He tries to save a female soldier (Emily Blunt), but fails and spends most of the battle trying to work out how to disengage the safety catch on his guns. Finally reunited with J squad, he's just in time to see them wiped out by a mimic that was buried in the sand. Our first good look at a mimic shows us they're vaguely octopus like, but in motion they're like a thrashing propeller blade. Moments before the mimic kills him too, Cage triggers the claymore mine on one of the dead trooper's armour, killing them both.
He wakes up at Forward Operating Base Heathrow, rebranded as a private impersonating an officer and guilty of desertion. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Each time through the battle, Cage gets a little more competent, and eventually manages to save the female soldier, who turns out to be Sergeant Rita Vrataski, the famous 'Angel of Verdun,' who killed hundreds of mimics in her first battle. You can tell she's hardcore because she's wearing a black exoskeleton and using a cut-down helicopter rotor blade as a sword. When he explains how he managed to save her she tells him "Find me when you wake up". Then they die.
Back at Heathrow, Cage has to escape J Squad. This takes several attempts. Eventually he does manage to find Rita, and convince her of who he is. Rita reveals that she became the Angel of Verdun because she was like him, repeating the same day time after time, learning the sequence of moves that would let her survive, until eventually she lost the ability. But she and a scientist did figure out that the ability she had was acquired from the blood of an atypical mimic she killed, and that it ultimately came from the alien's central commander, the Omega, who had the ability to reset to the previous day anytime it sensed it was losing. Only no one ever believed them. Now Cage has the ability, and Rita needs to train him so that he can get her off the beach so that she can kill the Omega.
Cue a sequence of Cage being repeatedly mangled by the mimic simulators, which are a bunch of thrashing propeller blades. Eventually he gets good enough that he and Rita can make it off the beach and head off in pursuit of the the Omega, but time and again Rita is killed. Succumbing to combat fatigue, Cage absconds into London, and learns that the beach isn't the only human defeat, the aliens counter-invade while the focus is elsewhere and London falls.
In desperation Cage tries a tactic Rita has warned him about, because it always leads to 'psych wards, or dissection', and she's right, but it does eventually give them a shot at the Omega. But there's a hitch. (Of course there's a hitch!)
I liked Edge of Tomorrow, though I'll admit a certain amount of the pleasure comes from seeing Tom Cruise die repeatedly and horribly. I'm planning to watch it again now I've sorted out the picture problems.
I followed Edge of Tomorrow with the first three episodes of Constantine, the series based on the John Constantine: Hellblazer comics, previously the vehicle for a Keanu Reaves film. The opening shot is the gates to the 'Ravenscar Home for the Mentally Deranged', which was so far off centre I went to get the Kindle Fire to check where it should be. It should actually have been dead centre, but for some reason linking in the Kindle solved the problem and the picture has stayed centred since then.
Pilot, Non Est Asylum
Constantine's business card says "Exorcist , demonologist, and master of the dark arts", though as the pilot opens he notes he's thinking of getting it changed to "dabbler in the dark arts." He screwed up an exorcism, condemning a 9yo girl to Hell, and himself along with her. He's taking refuge in an asylum in Northumberland, hoping they can persuade him demons don't exist. That they aren't succeeding is demonstrated when one of the residents becomes possessed. Exorcising her reveals a cryptic message "Liv Die" Fortunately for the story's continuity Constantine knows who Liv is.
Cut to Atlanta. Where Liv Aberdine is headed home from work, or would be, if her car's electrics weren't misbehaving, shortly followed by her car falling into a gaping pit. Enter Constantine, exit Liv, convinced he's a creep. That night Liv's next door neighbour is murdered, later the murdered corpse tries to drive the mortuary van through Liv's office. This doesn't convince Liv to listen to Constantine, but seeing the ghost of her grandmother does. Constantine explains he used to work with her father, who could see ghosts and scry for problems, and that Liv is developing the same powers. Constantine meanwhile has encountered an angel, Manny, who wants him to commit himself to the Good Fight, which he hints might save Constantine's soul.
Constantine uses Liv to lure the demon stalking her into a trap. Problem solved.
He's an exorcist, she's a seer, they hunt demons!
Sorry, no. In a blatantly added-on coda, we're informed that Liv has lit out for the West Coast, but not before bleeding all over a map of the States with scryed troublespots. Meanwhile a female figure is frantically drawing images of Constantine
2, The Darkness Beneath
Liv's map takes Constantine to Heddwich, PA, a Welsh-settled mining town, where there are knockers in the mine and one of the bosses just burned to death in his shower. Within minutes of arriving he literally walks into our mysterious artist, who turns out to be Zed Martin. Despite the name, Zed is Hispanic, and desperate to know who Constantine is. Constantine claims she's trying to scam him and slips away, but not before Zed relieves him of his wallet. Resourceful lady. Finding her in his hotel room, Constantine relents for long enough to show her that she is what he calls a clairsentient, able to scry by touch. Then he gives her the slip again. It doesn't last.
After following a series of false leads, Constantine finally tracks down the cause of the problem. Someone is driving the Coblynau, the friendly mine spirits, to murder. And this is where the narrative lost me, badly. I'd already gone 'Oh, hell, no,' when a character was introduced, and I was right. The gypsy did it, and not only did the the gypsy do it, but she came onto Constantine at her husband's funeral, compounding which we have Constantine stating "There's nothing darker than Romany magic". Talk about demonising a minority!
Nor is that the only piece of poor writing. There's a claim from Constantine (who admittedly is spinning a line at the time), that he 'grew up among the pits of Liverpool' or something like that. What pits of Liverpool? The idiocy is that Matt Ryan, who plays Constantine, is Welsh and could easily have claimed to be from the Welsh Valleys, which have a far stronger mining history, spinning a link with the town's Welsh heritage (the name, a Welsh flag in the pub and the Coblynau in the mine seem to be the extent of it). There's also a line about the mine having dug too deep, when we see it it's a drift mine, by definition shallow.
3 The Devil's Vinyl.
Zed shows up at Constantine's fortress of solitude, and as Constantine needs a lift to Chicago for a maguffin hunt, she's in. The maguffin is 'the acetate', raw recording from an old sound studio that caught the moment the Devil came to take the soul of a legendary Bluesman who had sold his soul for his voice. The maguffin turns out to be a bargaining chip in someone else's deal with the Devil, with enough extenuating circumstances for Constantine to help.The problem is an old rival of Constantine's, unscrupulous voodoo priest Papa Midnite, who also wants the acetate. And when two of Papa's minions get their hands on it, things go from bad to worse as the problem with minions is they're always succeptible to someone doing their thinking for them, even if in this case it's a 60yo record.
I did love the scene where John charges to the rescue with the Sex Pistols' Anarchy in the UK blazing through his earbuds, but that doesn't outweigh the problematic portrayal of voodoo.
It's annoying, I can sense there's a good series fighting to get out, but it keeps being strangled by poor writing and low production values. When Matt Ryan plays Constantine performing an exorcism, you get a sense he really is engaged in a desperate struggle against a powerful foe, and that's what Constantine should be, but it doesn't make up for cliched and borderline racist portrayals of Voodoo and the Romany.
it's very well put together, remote about the size of an iPod, while the stick itself is about the size of a Mars Bar (note it does need a power socket). I've mostly been using it to play my Amazon-purchased music through the TV's sound system, which is the only decent one in the house, or ogling the absolutely gorgeous screensaver landscapes, but last night I finally got some time to watch stuff.
Content Warning: Here Be Spoilers
First up was the Tom Cruise vehicle Live. Die. Repeat aka Edge of Tomorrow
I did have a problem with the picture here, it was offset down and to the right, though I couldn't work out how much by, I did manage to sort it later (see below).
I wanted to see Edge of Tomorrow when it was at the cinema, but didn't get around to it. The scenario is Earth has been invaded by aliens, the mimics (thought they don't seem to actually mimic anything) who have taken control of Western and Central Europe, but have been stopped at the Channel in the west, and by Russian and Chinese forces to the east. Now equipped with powered exoskeletons, the allies need to launch a cross-Channel invasion. (A nice historical touch is that the invasion is codenamed Downfall; Downfall was the code name for the planned invasion of Japan in WWII)
Cruise is Captain Bill Cage, the proverbial REMF, an officer whose talent is for marketing, not fighting, responsible for producing recruitment ads.
When informed by the commanding general of the allies (Brendan Gleeson, looking perfectly at home in British battledress) that he'll be playing combat cameraman in the first assault wave, Cage tries to talk his way out of it, and ultimately tries to blackmail the general, as it becomes clear he's a complete coward. The blackmail attempt ends with Cage resisting arrest and getting himself tased. He wakes up at Forward Operating Base Heathrow, rebranded as a private impersonating an officer and guilty of desertion. He's promptly assigned to the mixed British-American J Squad, who are ordered to beat him 'until he can't pee standing up' if he tries anything, and the next morning he's fitted out with an exoskeleton and dragged out to the aerial armada headed for France.
The special effects are fantastic. The main part of the invasion force is in CGI created quad tillt-rotor 'dropships', and one shot shows Heathrow covered with them, and with exoskeleton clad infantry filing aboard, but flying among them are real Chinooks and V-22s and you need to know your aircraft to tell which is which. Unfortunately for the allies, what the effects show are the invasion force getting completely hammered. The aliens were waiting for them.
Cage makes it down to the beach, only to immediately see one of his squadmates crushed by a falling dropship. He tries to save a female soldier (Emily Blunt), but fails and spends most of the battle trying to work out how to disengage the safety catch on his guns. Finally reunited with J squad, he's just in time to see them wiped out by a mimic that was buried in the sand. Our first good look at a mimic shows us they're vaguely octopus like, but in motion they're like a thrashing propeller blade. Moments before the mimic kills him too, Cage triggers the claymore mine on one of the dead trooper's armour, killing them both.
He wakes up at Forward Operating Base Heathrow, rebranded as a private impersonating an officer and guilty of desertion. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Each time through the battle, Cage gets a little more competent, and eventually manages to save the female soldier, who turns out to be Sergeant Rita Vrataski, the famous 'Angel of Verdun,' who killed hundreds of mimics in her first battle. You can tell she's hardcore because she's wearing a black exoskeleton and using a cut-down helicopter rotor blade as a sword. When he explains how he managed to save her she tells him "Find me when you wake up". Then they die.
Back at Heathrow, Cage has to escape J Squad. This takes several attempts. Eventually he does manage to find Rita, and convince her of who he is. Rita reveals that she became the Angel of Verdun because she was like him, repeating the same day time after time, learning the sequence of moves that would let her survive, until eventually she lost the ability. But she and a scientist did figure out that the ability she had was acquired from the blood of an atypical mimic she killed, and that it ultimately came from the alien's central commander, the Omega, who had the ability to reset to the previous day anytime it sensed it was losing. Only no one ever believed them. Now Cage has the ability, and Rita needs to train him so that he can get her off the beach so that she can kill the Omega.
Cue a sequence of Cage being repeatedly mangled by the mimic simulators, which are a bunch of thrashing propeller blades. Eventually he gets good enough that he and Rita can make it off the beach and head off in pursuit of the the Omega, but time and again Rita is killed. Succumbing to combat fatigue, Cage absconds into London, and learns that the beach isn't the only human defeat, the aliens counter-invade while the focus is elsewhere and London falls.
In desperation Cage tries a tactic Rita has warned him about, because it always leads to 'psych wards, or dissection', and she's right, but it does eventually give them a shot at the Omega. But there's a hitch. (Of course there's a hitch!)
I liked Edge of Tomorrow, though I'll admit a certain amount of the pleasure comes from seeing Tom Cruise die repeatedly and horribly. I'm planning to watch it again now I've sorted out the picture problems.
I followed Edge of Tomorrow with the first three episodes of Constantine, the series based on the John Constantine: Hellblazer comics, previously the vehicle for a Keanu Reaves film. The opening shot is the gates to the 'Ravenscar Home for the Mentally Deranged', which was so far off centre I went to get the Kindle Fire to check where it should be. It should actually have been dead centre, but for some reason linking in the Kindle solved the problem and the picture has stayed centred since then.
Pilot, Non Est Asylum
Constantine's business card says "Exorcist , demonologist, and master of the dark arts", though as the pilot opens he notes he's thinking of getting it changed to "dabbler in the dark arts." He screwed up an exorcism, condemning a 9yo girl to Hell, and himself along with her. He's taking refuge in an asylum in Northumberland, hoping they can persuade him demons don't exist. That they aren't succeeding is demonstrated when one of the residents becomes possessed. Exorcising her reveals a cryptic message "Liv Die" Fortunately for the story's continuity Constantine knows who Liv is.
Cut to Atlanta. Where Liv Aberdine is headed home from work, or would be, if her car's electrics weren't misbehaving, shortly followed by her car falling into a gaping pit. Enter Constantine, exit Liv, convinced he's a creep. That night Liv's next door neighbour is murdered, later the murdered corpse tries to drive the mortuary van through Liv's office. This doesn't convince Liv to listen to Constantine, but seeing the ghost of her grandmother does. Constantine explains he used to work with her father, who could see ghosts and scry for problems, and that Liv is developing the same powers. Constantine meanwhile has encountered an angel, Manny, who wants him to commit himself to the Good Fight, which he hints might save Constantine's soul.
Constantine uses Liv to lure the demon stalking her into a trap. Problem solved.
He's an exorcist, she's a seer, they hunt demons!
Sorry, no. In a blatantly added-on coda, we're informed that Liv has lit out for the West Coast, but not before bleeding all over a map of the States with scryed troublespots. Meanwhile a female figure is frantically drawing images of Constantine
2, The Darkness Beneath
Liv's map takes Constantine to Heddwich, PA, a Welsh-settled mining town, where there are knockers in the mine and one of the bosses just burned to death in his shower. Within minutes of arriving he literally walks into our mysterious artist, who turns out to be Zed Martin. Despite the name, Zed is Hispanic, and desperate to know who Constantine is. Constantine claims she's trying to scam him and slips away, but not before Zed relieves him of his wallet. Resourceful lady. Finding her in his hotel room, Constantine relents for long enough to show her that she is what he calls a clairsentient, able to scry by touch. Then he gives her the slip again. It doesn't last.
After following a series of false leads, Constantine finally tracks down the cause of the problem. Someone is driving the Coblynau, the friendly mine spirits, to murder. And this is where the narrative lost me, badly. I'd already gone 'Oh, hell, no,' when a character was introduced, and I was right. The gypsy did it, and not only did the the gypsy do it, but she came onto Constantine at her husband's funeral, compounding which we have Constantine stating "There's nothing darker than Romany magic". Talk about demonising a minority!
Nor is that the only piece of poor writing. There's a claim from Constantine (who admittedly is spinning a line at the time), that he 'grew up among the pits of Liverpool' or something like that. What pits of Liverpool? The idiocy is that Matt Ryan, who plays Constantine, is Welsh and could easily have claimed to be from the Welsh Valleys, which have a far stronger mining history, spinning a link with the town's Welsh heritage (the name, a Welsh flag in the pub and the Coblynau in the mine seem to be the extent of it). There's also a line about the mine having dug too deep, when we see it it's a drift mine, by definition shallow.
3 The Devil's Vinyl.
Zed shows up at Constantine's fortress of solitude, and as Constantine needs a lift to Chicago for a maguffin hunt, she's in. The maguffin is 'the acetate', raw recording from an old sound studio that caught the moment the Devil came to take the soul of a legendary Bluesman who had sold his soul for his voice. The maguffin turns out to be a bargaining chip in someone else's deal with the Devil, with enough extenuating circumstances for Constantine to help.The problem is an old rival of Constantine's, unscrupulous voodoo priest Papa Midnite, who also wants the acetate. And when two of Papa's minions get their hands on it, things go from bad to worse as the problem with minions is they're always succeptible to someone doing their thinking for them, even if in this case it's a 60yo record.
I did love the scene where John charges to the rescue with the Sex Pistols' Anarchy in the UK blazing through his earbuds, but that doesn't outweigh the problematic portrayal of voodoo.
It's annoying, I can sense there's a good series fighting to get out, but it keeps being strangled by poor writing and low production values. When Matt Ryan plays Constantine performing an exorcism, you get a sense he really is engaged in a desperate struggle against a powerful foe, and that's what Constantine should be, but it doesn't make up for cliched and borderline racist portrayals of Voodoo and the Romany.
