I don’t think Apple did a great job of marketing this show. I don’t mean they didn’t do enough to promote it, I certainly saw enough ads for it when it first came out, I mean the campaign itself didn’t entice me to watch. I certainly saw ads for it, but despite the fact that I really like Alexander Skarsgård, it didn’t look interesting to me, I thought it was about… well, a murdering robot, like Dexter set in the future I guess. I heard a lot of positive buzz, but still nothing that really made me think this was for me.
In August I got an e-mail from Humble Bundle that they had a Martha Wells e-book package they were selling called “Murderbot & more” and the only thing I love more than cheap books, is free books (I once called the number on an LDS tv commercial because they said they’d send me a free book). I also love the fact that Humble Bundle lets you choose what percentages of the price you donate goes to the author, the charity and the HB organization. So of course I bought it.
I didn’t read any of the books right away though, because I had other media I was in the process of consuming, then I found myself at the garage a couple weeks ago waiting for them to put my snow tires on and do the required maintenance, so to kill the time, I opened All Systems Red on my phone and started reading. It was sooooo good and not at all what I was expecting. The novel is told from the point of view of a security robot (he only calls himself a Murderbot), who is contracted to protect a group of scientists on a remote planet, but would rather be spending his time watching cheesy soap operas. The story is told via his almost constant internal monologue that has this dry, almost sarcastic tone to it. He reminds me of Commander Data, if you added the personality of Marvin The Paranoid Android from Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and put them in the body of a T-800. I absolutely loved the book and am about a quarter of the way through the second one now.
Given that I had heard the show was well received, I took a chance and convinced my wife to watch it with me. She too likes the wry, dark comedy style of humour in the vein of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, so if the show captured the feeling of the book, I thought we would both enjoy it. Spoiler warning, we did.
Now, the book is fairly short, it’s only about 170 pages, so to convert it to a ten episode tv season, even at only about thirty minutes per episode, they had to stretch things out a bit. We still have the great narration, this time provided by mister Skarsgård, in a wonderfully flat, almost bored tone that perfectly matches how I imagined SecUnit to sound when I was reading the book. It doesn’t stick to just the robot’s POV though, the other characters in the story are given a lot more to do and fleshed out considerably. It doesn’t slow anything down though, and it doesn’t change the story. All the main beats are still there, nothing was really changed, they just add a lot more colour and flesh to everything.
When I look at some of my recent favorite shows, a lot of them come from Apple. Silo, Foundation, Shrinking, Severence, Mythic Quest all are absolutely fantastic and some of the best TV I’ve seen in a long time, but I think their marketing needs to do a better job of explaining the tone of them to potential viewers, or they might overlook something they might enjoy, like I almost did with Murderbot.
Remember how I said Stephen King didn’t like Kubrick’s adaptation of The Shining? Yeah, that’s mild compared to how Allan Moore feels about ALL of the movies based on his works. Given how often people have taken his ideas and characters and stripped all the meaning out of his graphic novels, I’m not surprised by his reaction, and From Hell is no exception, but it is a really good Jack The Ripper story.
This is probably the most beautiful serial killer movie I’ve ever watched, and I mean beautiful in the filthiest way. This film looks, sounds and feels exactly the way I imagine London’s East End did in 1888. It’s obvious how much time and care went into the costuming, set design and all the extras to make Whitechapel look like the densely populated slum it was. It all makes the city look alive and real, but do NOT mistake this tale for historical re-telling of the world most famous serial killer.
This is more of a Hollywood telling of a conspiracy theory than a serious attempt to portray the facts of the killings. A lot is omitted and many ‘facts’ are fabricated entirely. It’s a good story, and is entertaining, but it probably pissed off serious true crime aficionados almost as much as it did Moore. I’m not sure how I feel about that, personally. On the one hand, it’s a movie, it should be looked at purely as fiction, but when it’s told so well, you KNOW there is a significant percentage of the population that is going to believe everything in it is true, like so many people who’s beliefs about the Kennedy assassination were informed entirely by the Oliver Stone movie.
The acting is great. Johnny Depp, Heather Graham, Robbie Coltrane (I always love when he’s in a movie and will not watch anything HP related if he isn’t playing Hagrid), Ian Richardson, Sir Ian Holm (there are scenes were you can see the foreshadowing of a ring influenced Bilbo at the end), the cast is absolutely stacked and everyone does a great job, but Heather Graham is seriously mis-cast. Don’t get me wrong, she did a great job, and I think she’s a wonderful actress, she just didn’t fit the setting and the character. I know why they cast her, when they decided to fabricate a love story between Inspector Abberline and Mary Kelly, they needed an actor as beautiful as Johnny Depp to pair him with, it’s just that she doesn’t blend in with the other victims, or even the city itself. I’ll let the actual Brits comment on how convincing her and Depp’s accents are.
As a movie, I loved it. As someone deeply interested in the Ripper murders, there are more accurate tellings out there. I’m on a Johnny Depp kick, should I watch Sleepy Hollow next? Probably not, I don’t remember enjoying it. Maybe Sweeney Todd? Does a movie from 2007 fit within the time-frame of the challenge? Oh wait, I know the perfect movie…
If you’re not in the mood for movies and have a group of friends over, might I suggest some themed games appropriate for Halloween?
Zombies!
Judging by the number of Walking Dead spinoffs, zombies are still popular (George Romero’s daughter has a zombie movie coming out that I’m looking forward to) and board games are not immune to this.
Dead of Winter – If you’re a fan of The Walking Dead then you’ll love Dead of Winter. It is a cooperative (maybe) game where the players take control of survivors in a zombie apocalypse. In addition to the main objective (which is chosen at random from a stack, so the game is different each time) each of the 2-5 players will be given a secret objective of their own. Some of the secret objectives may be in direct opposition to the main objective, making one or more of the players a secret traitor. The game makes use of Plaid Hat Games Crossroad mechanic, where a story card is drawn after each player’s turn, requiring them to make a choice with good or bad consequences. The random objectives, paranoia inducing hidden traitor and story driven Crossroad cards make this one of my favorite games.
Dead of Winter Flick ’em Up! – It’s Dead of Winter, but it swaps out the dice rolling for combat that has the players actually ‘flicking’ tokens at plastic zombies and barriers to knock them down. You still have random objectives chosen at the start, but no Crossroads cards. Also gone is the hidden traitor, instead the game can be played cooperatively or as teams of opposing factions. It is less story focused and is instead a physical dexterity game. Great for younger players, but keep away any pets that may want to eat a plastic token if it flies off the table.
Tiny Epic Zombies – It’s like Dead of Winter lite. Still a great game, slightly less story as there is no Crossroads system and no hidden traitor. It is faster paced than Dead of Winter and despite the smaller package and lower price-tag, it packs a lot of quality and value in the box, as most of the Tiny Epic line does. Unlike Dead of Winter, this game also has a solo mode if your (up to 5) friends are not available. It can be played cooperatively, free-for-all, or with a player controlling the zombies.
Zombie Labyrinth – Probably the most ‘traditional’ board game on this list, with the players rolling dice and moving tokens around a board. It’s not my favorite, but is great with younger players as the rating is for ages 5 and up.
Zombie Dice – Not pictured here because I can’t find my copy of it, Zombie Dice is super simple. You have a cup of coloured dice that have symbols for feet, brains and shotgun blasts. You are the zombies and you are trying to roll brains without getting blasted by the shotguns. It’s fast and easy to learn, but the rattling dice may drive anyone not playing crazy.
Gamers love Lovecraft
Elder Sign – One of the first games I bought when I started getting into modern board games and still one of my favorites. A museum in Arkham has accumulated so much weird stuff that the gates to beyond are starting to break. You and your team of investigators have to stop the weird and find enough Elder Signs to seal the breach and prevent one of the Ancients Ones from Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos from coming through. If you’ve ever played Yahtzee, you can play Elder Sign. You roll dice to match symbols to cards to earn rewards, using items you collect and your chosen investigator’s unique ability to manipulate the dice.
A Study in Emerald – Based on Neil Gaiman’s fanfic mashup of Lovecraft and Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Emerald is what happens if you LOSE at Elder Sign. Players are given secret identities at the start. Loyalists who are happy with the status quo and Restorationists are those who don’t want to live in a world that has been subjugated by a mad space god. We’d probably call those people ‘woke’ today. It’s a fun combination of worker placement and deck building with one of the oddest point systems I’ve ever played with. It’s almost impossible to tell who’s going to win until it’s all over.
Miskatonic University – Another quick and easy to learn game it’s essentially a card game with set collection that lasts only 5 rounds. Not as fun or thematic as the others on this list, but also not as complicated.
Cthulhu Fluxx – After Zombie Dice, this is probably the smallest and least expensive game in the list, but also one of the most fun. If you’ve never played a Fluxx game, the rules are simple. Draw a card. Play a card. At least that’s how it starts. As you play, both the rules and the win conditions change and keep changing. The Fluxx games are wild and unpredictable and that’s what makes them so fun to play.
Something different
Gloom – If you are a fan of The Addams Family, or Tim Burton’s new show Wednesday, then Gloom is for you. The objective of Gloom is to draw transparent cards from a deck and lay them on top of others to modify them and make your family of characters as miserable as possible, before bumping them off one by one to score points, or use the cards to improve the lives of your opponents. It’s a fun and funny 2-5 player game that is best enjoyed with friends who love telling stories about the tragedies that befall their family members
Ultimate Werewolf – The box says it is good with up to 75 players. It’s perfect for parties because there is no board, no game pieces, no dice to roll and you don’t need to be at a table to play it. Players are villagers, trying to figure out who is a werewolf before they get eaten, or werewolves trying to avoid suspicion so they can eat the villagers, the fun all depends on how into it the players get, and maybe how much alcohol they’ve consumed.
Betrayal at House on the Hill – I love this game so much. You are a group of friends exploring a haunted house, but you build the house as you play, tile by tile, so the layout is never the same twice. At one point in the game, a player will trigger “The Haunt”, which will reveal what is going on in the house, and turning one of the players into the villain. There are 50 scenarios in the book, combined with the randomness of the board creation giving Betrayal HUGE replay value. I have yet to play a game that wasn’t memorable. Just last week, I had people over to play, and the ‘Haunt’ player managed to kill himself the very first turn after the haunt was revealed, but he STILL won the game because our team was split up and our strongest character got lost in the basement (also, I was suffering from the Wil Wheaton curse of terrible dice rolling)
Mysterium – Everybody has played Clue at least once in their life, right? Now imagine one the players gets to be the ghost of the murder victim. That’s Mysterium. Up to 6 people take on the roles of psychic detectives while one player tries to direct them to the who, what, where of their murder, by sending visions in their dreams. It’s so much more fun than Clue.
That’s not all
There are more, many more, some I want but don’t have like Last Night on Earth where you play as survivors in a zombie apocalypse who are just trying to make it out alive, or Fury of Dracula, an asymmetric hunt game where one player is the titular vampire lord and the rest are hunters trying to track him down across Europe. It’s a fantastic game, but I don’t own it because my friend does.
Yeah, this one holds up. I forgot how amazing this movie is. Not the plot or dialog, no I mean the look and atmosphere. There’s a reason they’re still making sequels and why so much of the imagery of this film has stuck with us for so long.
A man named Frank goes looking for the ultimate experience in sensation and is taken to Hell. His brother cuts his hand in the house where it happened and resurrects the damned man. Franks sister in law seduces and murders strangers to rebuild Franks body. Demons from Hell come to bring Frank back along with anyone nearby. That’s the story. It’s pretty simple, I mean the novella it’s based on is only 186 pages long, but it’s not the plot that is memorable, or even the characters (I had forgotten what anyone’s name was until I re-watched it just now) it’s the make-up.
I don’t know how this film didn’t win a ton of awards for make-up and effects when it came out. Well that’s not true, it premiered the same year as Robocop and Lost Boys, that’s why, also, it’s horrifically disgusting. It’s amazing to me how much people’s sensibilities can change in just seven years when you watch Hellraiser and then Friday the 13th and realize the later one is the version you got that was CUT DOWN to avoid an X rating. I mean… everything in Hellraiser makes Pamela’s kills look tame in comparison.
That’s the thing about this movie though, it’s all about making you feel things. Shocked, horrified, disgusted, afraid, it’s a roller-coaster of emotion and the constant ups and downs and changes of direction make you forget that there is no character development and the plot is as thin as single ply toilet paper, but that’s okay because the cinematography and special effects are so well done, your brain isn’t paying attention to anything else. It reminds me of the few H. P. Lovecraft stories I’ve read. Not great literature, but very evocative and emotion driven.
As old as I am, I still would have been too young to see this in the theatre, but the 4k transfer I watched is gorgeous (I can’t think of a better word, even if I am describing a slimy skeleton covered in muscle and cartilage but no skin) and probably as close to seeing this film the way it was meant to be, short of a theatrical re-release. Sometimes an HD copy of a movie can really highlight flaws in the original (like the cops moustache in Sleepaway Camp II) but not this time, it just showed me how wet and gooey the corpses were.
If I’m going to complain about anything it would be that I feel the movie could have been longer. I would have liked for them to spend some time fleshing out the characters and their relationships more. Why did Kristy not get along with her step mom? Just how depraved was Frank before he bought the box? Who the hell was that guy eating the crickets in the pet store? Why did we have to wait until Deep Space Nine for people to appreciate how awesome Andrew Robinson is?
I may or may not watch more from the series this month, I haven’t decided. What’s interesting about them, from what I remember, is that after the second movie, which was very similar to the first, they all take radical different directions, one is even a police murder mystery so it’s not like they keep repeating the same thing over and over. I feel like I’m talking myself into watching them.
I couldn’t find anywhere streaming it for free, but I think this one’s better if you can buy , rent or borrow a 4k version anyway. I mean, unless you really can’t hand the sight of blood.
Late to the party, as usual 