I am currently watching television programmes

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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby justdrew » Tue Feb 26, 2013 5:48 am

AhabsOtherLeg wrote:Did anybody else see the Black Mirror episode "White Bear"?

I thought it was pretty good, but I usually do like Charlie Brooker's stuff. Just realised I have nothing at all to say about it though. It was pretty good.


It seems like the sort of punishment program that would appeal to angry folks looking for justice, possibly after a period of heightened awareness (verging on or perhaps fully into neo-PTSD) about the quantity of senseless violence in society, but that no one could actually have the nerve to start.

but then, COPS is now in it's 25th season. so what do I know about what's acceptable?

It all hinges on the very conveniently selective memory eraser device, yet it didn't make clear that they ALSO had to erase the criminals memory of having heard about, seen, etc the very punishment program they've been put into. You'd think early on she'd be like, "oh wait, this must be that thing, I must have committed a terrible crime. While I think it's plausible to remove say, the last 48 hours of memory, I don't think anything would ever be able to make a person completely forget about as complex and interlinked a memory as say, ones 24 years of experience with the existence of COPS. March 11th will mark it's 24th year of continuous production. I never see it, haven't in over a decade, kinda had forgot about it in a way :P

but that quibble aside, it was a well made "speculative fiction" story in the grand tradition.

Well done Charlie Brooker. (he's doing another weekly wipe series too)

I didn't much care for the 1st ep of this 2nd season, but so it goes. 3rd looks good.
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby AhabsOtherLeg » Fri Mar 01, 2013 11:49 pm

justdrew wrote:It seems like the sort of punishment program that would appeal to angry folks looking for justice, possibly after a period of heightened awareness (verging on or perhaps fully into neo-PTSD) about the quantity of senseless violence in society, but that no one could actually have the nerve to start.

but then, COPS is now in it's 25th season. so what do I know about what's acceptable?


Yeah, I didn't find the concept very convincing, but the style was just surreal enough to carry it, and I have to admit that real life becomes less believable every day.

justdrew wrote:It all hinges on the very conveniently selective memory eraser device, yet it didn't make clear that they ALSO had to erase the criminals memory of having heard about, seen, etc the very punishment program they've been put into.


I think the White Bear Park was unique, rather than being a part of a larger justice system programme, but the episode itself gave me no reason to think this. I just do. There's no doubt that the larger justice system was complicit though, or Victoria (the criminal) would never have been handed over to them.

It seems to have been set up not by the government, or the standard greedy media corporation, but by the friends and family of the little girl herself. Perhaps the money for it was raised through charitable contributions from the outraged British public, until it became a going concern in it's own right. It might be a peculiarly British thing - or a peculiarly me thing - but I was reminded of the McCanns, and their (to me) inexplicable political power after the abduction of Madeleine. All of a sudden Gerry was appearing at the Edinburgh TV festival, they were lecturing the European Parliament, and planning a concert with Elton John, all the while calling for massive changes in the law all over the continent. The public, the press, and the Brit police seemed fully behind them every step of the way.

If an abductor had been caught in the early, frenzied days of that case, I don't think there is much that would've prevented "Team McCann" from setting up a White Bear Park equivalent.

Well, okay, yeah, there are things that would've stopped it, but I think Brooker caught the atmosphere of self-exonerating and self-aggrandising hysteria very well. And in the quieter moments you could see that the family and staff of White Bear Park were devastated by their involvement too - worn out, tired, heartbroken.

The real evil people - in both the murder and it's punishment - were those who just stood and filmed it all on their phones. "They also serve who only stand and wait."

Since Victoria's memory was wiped each night, turning her into a blank slate, those people were technically more guilty than she was - watching and filming the torture of a person who was every bit as innocent (in her own mind) as the original child victim. And weren't we watching it too? Ah, Charlie Brooker, you devil you!

Also, Lenora Crichlow is hot. Not so much in White Bear, I admit, where she spends the whole runtime screaming and traumatised with snot all over her face. But in a general sense. Which nobody can deny.
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby elfismiles » Fri Mar 29, 2013 9:39 pm

MK-Ultra episode of Tony & Ridley Scott's show NUMB3RS...

Numb3rs - Season 3, Episode 10
Brutus
(24 Nov. 2006)

The assassination of a California senator leads the team to questionable experimentation on prisoners, the CIA, and a man bent on revenge. Elsewhere, Larry makes an announcement that shakes Charlie.

...

A California State Senator and a psychiatrist--neither have much in common with the other except for one thing...they both turn up dead on Don's watch. While the circumstances of their deaths are different, Don thinks the two murders are related, and tries to prove his hunch right. What he finds may bring to light a deep secret the government has been hiding for years.less



Episode of ARCHER which references Gladio...

Archer - Season 3, Episode 8
Lo Scandalo
(16 Feb. 2012)

Malory turns to Archer and Lana for help when she finds herself in a compromising situation with the Italian prime minister.
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby FourthBase » Tue Apr 02, 2013 5:26 pm

Okay, who else is watching "Touch"? I can't be the only one.
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Re: Hollywood Scripting

Postby MinM » Thu Apr 18, 2013 10:41 pm

Luther Blissett wrote:I have to admit that I've really been enjoying "House of Cards," the Netflix-produced series released en masse on the service. The machinations behind party politics are explored, but major events like bills passing and elections are not the plot points - they are only relegated to parts of the larger narratives about plutocracy, assassinations, smears and leaks. If there's an overt manipulation it's to promote the omnipotence of behind-the-scenes power players, making us fear them. So far, though, I've been finding it to be very realistic. In a scene about the vetting process for selecting a new VP candidate to replace an outbound incumbent, I thought to myself, "there's no way it would be left up to this skeleton crew of rag-tag, middle-level players." I was soon proven wrong when the hidden hand is revealed, showing just one of the individuals controlling the process. Highly recommended so far.

It's been developed by Beau Willimon and based on a British novel by Michael Dobbs, two shady resumés (especially Dobbs, but if there's anyone who'd know the material it seems he'd be a good fit). Dobbs:

Michael Dobbs was born on 14 November 1948 in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, the son of nurseryman Eric and Eileen Dobbs. He was educated at Hertford Grammar School and Christ Church, Oxford University. After graduating in 1971 he moved to the United States. He attended the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, funded by a job as feature writer for the Boston Globe, and graduated in 1975 with an M.A., M.A.L.D., and PhD in nuclear defence studies. His doctoral thesis was published as SALT on the Dragon's Tail. He worked on The Boston Globe as an editorial assistant and political feature writer from 1971 to 1975. In 2007, Dobbs gave the Alumni Salutation at Tufts.

Politics
After getting his PhD in 1975, Dobbs returned to England and began working in London for the Conservative Party. He was an advisor to Margaret Thatcher, who was then leader of the Opposition, from 1977 to 1979. From 1979 to 1981 he was a Conservative MP speechwriter. He served as a Government Special Advisor from 1981 to 1986. He was the Conservative Party Chief of Staff from 1986 to 1987. He survived the Brighton Bombing in 1984 at the Conservative Party Conference. Considered a masterful political operator, he was called "Westminster’s baby-faced hit man", by The Guardian in 1987. In the John Major government, he served as Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party from 1994 to 1995.
Dobbs was created a life peer on 18 December 2010, as Baron Dobbs of Wylye, in the County of Wiltshire.[1] He sits on the Conservative benches in the House of Lords.

Business activities
Dobbs began working at Saatchi & Saatchi as Deputy Advertising Chairman from 1983 to 1986. He was Director of Worldwide Corporate Communications from 1987 to 1988. He was Deputy Chairman, working directly under Maurice Saatchi from 1988 to 1991. From 1991 to 1998 he was a columnist for The Mail on Sunday. From 1998 to 2001 he hosted the current affairs program Despatch Box on BBC.


Willimon:

Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Willimon received his BA from Columbia University in 1999, and MFA in Playwriting from Columbia's School of the Arts in 2003. [1]
Concurrent to and following his time at Columbia, Willimon also was active politically, serving initially as volunteer, then campaign aide to a number of prominent politicians, including Charles Schumer, Hillary Clinton, Bill Bradley, and Howard Dean. [2]

The Clooney-directed screen adaptation of Farragut North, retitled The Ides of March, premiered in October of 2011.
Co-scripted by Clooney and producing partner Grant Heslov, the film starred Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Evan Rachel Wood, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Paul Giamatti, Marisa Tomei, and Jeffrey Wright.
It received an 2012 Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay, and four Golden Globe nominations, including Best Picture - Drama and Best Screenplay.

viewtopic.php?p=492782#p492782


Currently watching the original 1990 BBC version of "House of Cards" .. One thing that immediately stands out is how contemporary the 23-year old program feels. Right down to a false-flag bombing in the streets of London to rally the citizens behind the government.
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Sat Apr 20, 2013 8:09 am

FU is just brilliant.
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby justdrew » Sun Apr 21, 2013 9:49 pm

looks to be fairly decent...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Vinci%27s_Demons

gamers familiar with Assassin's Creed series may find it familiar, but there's no connection.
(I haven't played it myself, don't care for the control system, etc)
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby justdrew » Mon Apr 29, 2013 6:52 pm

3 eps in and yes... Da Vincis Demons is well worth checking out! :thumbsup :thumbsup

justdrew wrote:looks to be fairly decent...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Vinci%27s_Demons

gamers familiar with Assassin's Creed series may find it familiar, but there's no connection.
(I haven't played it myself, don't care for the control system, etc)
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby FourthBase » Thu May 02, 2013 9:39 pm

Person of Interest is better than you think. I think.
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby MinM » Thu May 16, 2013 3:52 pm


My daughters watched this when they were little.

http://www.npr.org/2013/05/15/180847785 ... y-together
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby DrEvil » Thu May 16, 2013 4:02 pm

Just finished the "other" Netflix exclusive - Hemlock Grove. I liked it well enough to watch the whole thing, but I was a little disappointed when it was finished. They could have done a lot more with it, and the actors were very hit and miss.

Utopia was amazing on the other hand. Best rigint-style series I have seen in a long time.
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby MinM » Thu Jun 27, 2013 10:00 pm

FourthBase » Thu May 02, 2013 8:39 pm wrote:Person of Interest is better than you think. I think.

CBS replayed an episode tonight that used a Michael Hastings scenario...
Image
Person of Interest
Episode: One Percent
S02, E14
(First Aired: Feb. 07, 2013)

Finch and Reese meet their match: a tech billionaire whose curiosity and endless resources could expose their identities and ruin their efforts to save his life.

* HD
* CC
* TV-14 (V)

9:01 - 10:01 PM WWMTDT (3.1)

(car hacking) pre-Michael Hastings.
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby justdrew » Tue Jul 09, 2013 3:23 am

now a second group is doing classic Trek, and they open with quite a ep!

(perfect Scotty too, wait til you see the actors name )

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Re: Dark Skies

Postby MinM » Tue Aug 06, 2013 9:33 am

Image @MiamiHerald: RT @glenngarvin: Bummer. Magic City, TV's only show about Castro, the CIA, the Mafia and lots of naked girls, has been canceled. :offair:

'Magic City' Canceled: Starz Drama Will End Its Run After Season 2 Finale

Starz's "Magic City" has been canceled, the network confirmed Monday. The August 9 Season 2 finale will now serve as the series finale.

Created by Mitch Glazer, "Magic City" starred Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Ike Evans, the owner of the glamorous Miramar Playa hotel in Miami. Set against the political backdrop of 1959, with Fidel Castro taking control of Cuba, the show explored a web of mobsters, law enforcement officials and hotel staff through the lens of the Evans family.

“'Magic City’ will be concluding its two-season run on Starz with Friday's series finale. We are tremendously proud of the series and everyone involved,” Starz said in a statement. “From the writers, to the cast and crew, it has been an incredible collaboration. This was a story born from Mitch Glazer’s singular vision of Miami, the Magic City of his childhood, and we are grateful to him for bringing it to life on Starz. The season’s story arc will allow us to deliver a satisfying conclusion to the series, and we thank all the fans who checked in to the Miramar Playa.”

Although the show boasted a high-profile guest turn by James Caan in Season 2 and earned Danny Huston a Golden Globe nomination for his turn as the villainous Ben Diamond in Season 1, it failed to catch on with viewers or critics.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/0 ... lp00000003


MinM » Fri Jun 15, 2012 7:48 pm wrote:
sunny wrote:Mad Men.

Twice in a row this season--5.05, 'Signal 30', and 5.06, 'Far Away Places'-- a walk on actress has passed through a scene wearing a pink suit and pillbox hat. It's 1966 in MM universe, so I'm thinking the Jackie doppelgangers are foreshadowing some interesting discussions on Mark Lane's Rush to Judgement, published in '66. Should be very good, considering how well the show handled the assassination itself.

Dark Skies covered in one season about the same time period Mad Men has in it's run. Although in Dark Skies these historical events were used as plot devices central to the overall storyline. All of this set against a backdrop of an ongoing alien invasion stemming from the 1947 Roswell Crash.

This tidbit from the Educational Forum in a thread about Danny Casolaro of all things prompted me to check out the Dark Skies dvd...
St. Louis Magazine, August 2008

Stalking the Octopus


For 20 years Kenn Thomas of Steamshovel Press has been tracking the oily tentacles of world conspiracy — and shaking readers out of their reality tunnel

by Stefene Russell

Recent history is a vast record of a vast conspiracy to impose one level of mechanical consciousness on mankind. –Allen Ginsberg

...Thomas even wonders out loud if he and fellow conspiracy newsletter publishers Greg Bishop, editor of the now-defunct Excluded Middle, and Jim Martin of Flatland were perhaps the inspiration for The X-Files' Lone Gunmen; in fact, he saw smatterings of Steamshovel in Mel Gibson's Conspiracy Theory, too.

"Everything in there, everything this cab driver guy spots, is right out of Steamshovel Press," Thomas says. "There are two anthologies, basically back issues of Steamshovel. Brian Helgeland, the screenwriter, bought both of those books [Popular Alienation and Popular Paranoia] from Jim Martin at Flatland Press." Thomas says he's also seen material from the Steamshovel website show up on TV: "There was a show called Dark Skies on the SciFi channel that mixed in real historical figures with this whole alien story. I did some research one week on Dorothy Kilgallen; the next week, Dorothy Kilgallen was a character on the show. So I write a column about Carl Sagan—in the '60s Sagan presented a paper to all these rocket scientists on aliens—and the next week, Carl Sagan was a character on the show. So they're cribbing off the website." Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. "I've been told many times that I need to go to Hollywood and exploit this," Thomas laughs. "The thing about living in St. Louis is, for $200 you can go to any city in this country, and L.A.-centered stuff, New York–centered stuff—that's part of the conspiracy. It's part of the homogenizing of the world. I don't want to be part of that. I want a bigger picture. And you have to work harder to live in L.A. I think I've stumbled upon the perfect place." ...

viewtopic.php?p=465448#p465448

Unfortunately, as with some other slightly subversive (by U.S. Network standards) shows of that time (Nowhere Man and VR.5) and more recent examples (Rubicon and Alcatraz)...
Simulist wrote:There are only two television shows we keep up with on broadcast TV: Modern Family and Fringe (and, starting in January, Alcatraz of course). I totally love JJ Abrams' stuff, propagandistic though it may be (and, sometimes, surely is).

But we've also been having lots of fun on Netflix lately, watching The Tudors. (If Henry Cavill is in something, all he really has to do is just stand there, okay? He doesn't even have to speak! — although movement is greatly appreciated, and he really is quite a fine actor — and there'd be a good chance I'd want to watch it. Hey, I admit to being frivolous and superficial — but, remember, my superficiality only goes so deep!)

But that's about it with us for television. For me, reading is really where it's at.

Image
This week Alcatraz had a scene right out of the brainwashing montage in the Parallax View. :offair:

'Alcatraz': The Only Innocent Man On The Rock Isn't So Innocent Anymore (VIDEO)

rigorousintuition.ca :: "Pharmacologic Waterboarding" at Guantanamo

rigorousintuition.ca :: Mind Kontrol Themes on TeleVision

viewtopic.php?p=452920#p452920

the show only lasted one season. :offair:
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Re: I am currently watching television programmes

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Aug 06, 2013 11:05 am

Drunk History


Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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