Wednesday's Interesting Things
Check out some cool stuff today
Apologies for no post on Monday; life happens occasionally.
What to Watch
I sat through Netflix’s Untamed…
It was fine.
It of course did the thing that every show seems to do these days. And to speak to that I will have to dive into some spoilers. But first, a broad overview: Eric Bana is good if saddled with heavy baggage that doesn’t allow him to move much past stoic. The story is convoluted and dragged out to fill the hours, and the shooting on digital sometimes looks fake and off putting. But if you like Yosemite National Park, it’s gorgeous to look at and has some fun focusing on what goes on in those big huge parks.
Ok, now some spoilers… so skip on down if you’ve got Untamed on your watch list:
Sam Neil plays the mentor/father figure to Eric Bana, and so yeah, going into this he was immediately my prime suspect number one. It’s just the way these shows are. I assume bigger, “name” actors taking these roles won’t really flock to them unless they have some of this villainous, complicated meat to them but it’s almost becoming a cliche at how telescoped these plot points are.
And it’s the convolution of everything all at once having to connect back to the main character that is getting rather heavy handed with shows these days. I was really hoping Untamed would end with a straight up story of drug runners in the park, and really, it almost did, until we got a packaged, tacked on final 30 minutes that we didn’t really need that dropped a dud of a bomb and soured the wrapped up ending. And yup, it gave Sam Neil a chance to flex a bit of acting, so for his sake, great but… I’m not saying adding layers of complexity to storytelling should be abolished, but sometimes bad guys are just bad guys and the good guys stop them and that’s a good enough ending.
Anyway, if you like sullen Eric Bana riding a horse and solving national park crimes, this is the show for you.
What Else to Watch
Osgood Perkins - or his marketing department - got me good with Longlegs. The campaign leading up to it was a masterpiece, but then I had to watch the actual movie and… well I know some people like it but I thought it was terrible. So yeah, this trailer for Keeper, looks eerie, gory, interesting and kinda terrifying, giving nothing away and it piques my curiosity but then I also remember this.
Sigh. There’s a new trailer for Predator: Badlands. And it fleshes out some more detail about the movie:
Look, I get that the Predator universe is a fun, cosmic sandbox to play in, but I also don’t need a lot of backstory on the Predator race, and I am not sure I need a Predator protagonist. I didn’t particularly enjoy Predator: Killer of Killers but I thought it was a fine offshoot that pushed the Predator concept into places that were at least interesting.
Predator: Badlands seems to be pushing much farther from even that, nitro charging the hunter/hunted into… well it’s the same thing but just changing the chess pieces. But… do I really want a sympathetic, heroic predator after plenty of movies highlighting their evilness, callousness and thirst for human blood?
Not really.
This movie feels like a high concept that is very hard to pull off. This is a dorm room stoner plot (What if the predator was hunted?) that is cool to imagine but less cool realized. Even the human is an android! Yeah, from the Alien universe, which is starting to make this movie feel more like a reddit thread fever dream come to life.
What to Read
I’m not going to pretend to understand what the image above is representing, other than to say some scientists’ current understanding of the universe includes theorizing about a cosmic web of dark matter that connects… stuff. The image is that web. You can read a lot more about it here.
I guess a virtual Lighthouse of Alexandria is better than no Lighthouse of Alexandria. Actually this is a pretty cool project trying to recreate one of the original seven wonders of the world.
What to Listen To/Jam of the Day
Yeah, we’re merging these two things together today for a special treat, because this is a rare concert from Sly and the Family Stone, recorded in 1967… months before their debut album. You can read more about that here.