Monday, August 1, 2016

2015 & 2016 TV show reviews

May 25, 2016 Fear the Walking Dead: I saw the first season (6 episodes) that came out in 2015.  It got a second season, but I decided not to watch it.  I wasn't really that interested in it.

Pros:

1. I find it to be good writing with all the suspense, conflict, tension and drama.  Though the audience is ahead of the characters because we know the zombies have to be killed, we still want to know how it all started. 

There is very realistic writing about how it happens.

2. The actor Frank Dillane who plays the drug addict Nick is the one who stood out to me the most.  Kim Dickens who plays his mom Madison is good as she struggles to control him.  Cliff Curtis is good playing Madison's boyfriend and raising his own family.

Ruben Blades who plays Daniel is the smart and tough one to deal with this dangerous situation.

Cons: None.

My opinion: If you like The Walking Dead, watch this.  I would tell all of you to watch the pilot.


Jun. 9, 2016 Into the Badlands: I saw the pilot on AMC on Nov. 15, 2015.  The promos looked so good with the fight scenes that are martial arts.   However I read that it was produced and created by , .  They are the TV producers of the bad show Smallville.  I lowered my expectations.  It got a second season that will come out in 2017.  I don't know if I will watch it.  I saw the whole first season (6 episodes).


"A mighty warrior and a young boy search for enlightenment in a ruthless territory controlled by feudal barons."

Pros:

1. The best part was the fight scenes.  They were so good.  I so impressed by them. It was like watching old school kung fu movies.

2. The characters Sunny, MK, Tilda, and Veil are likable and you can root for.

3. They have created their own world and how it runs.

Cons: None really.  Do you want to count that fight scenes overshadowed the story and characters?

My opinion: You should watch the pilot.



Jul. 21, 2016 Secrets and Lies: This show came out on Mar. 2015.  I watched the whole first season. 


"A man finds the body of a young neighbor while out jogging and soon becomes the prime suspect in the boy's murder, putting his marriage, his children, his reputation, and his sanity at stake."

Pros:

1. First and foremost Ryan Phillipe was the star of it.  I like him as an actor in I Know What You did Last Summer, Cruel Intentions, MacGruber (he was the only reason I watched it).

2. The actors- they were all good.

3. Good writing and mystery.  They showed the first two episodes back to back called "The Trail" and "The Father."  I had all these questions I wanted answered:

Who killed the 5 yr old boy Tom?

And why?

Did Ben kill him and was so drunk and he couldn't remember it? 

I was rereading my notes and when they told at the pilot's ending, I was like: "Oh my god!"

There are a lot of suspects in this neighborhood.

There is a lot of drama, conflict, and tension.  Ben's life is in danger.

4. There is a little comedy thrown in with the friend Dave.  He is the funny sidekick.  He goes and talks to the TV news crew.

Dave: I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

It is 2015 and people are still making fun of Bill Clinton.

There was a flashback of the night Ben got so drunk and he is saying things like:

Ben: Did you know that marriage was invented in a time when our life expectancy was 40?

Tracy: Yeah.

Cons: None.



My opinion: Now the show finally got to show the second season with old detective Cornell (Juliette Lewis) and a new mystery.  I will probably watch the first episode and then record all the episodes and watch it in one week.


Jul. 22, 2016 Humans: This show came out in Jun. 2015 on AMC.  I watched it and really liked it.  I read 2 articles about it and I had to check it out.

"In a parallel present where the latest must-have gadget for any busy family is a 'Synth' - a highly-developed robotic servant that's so similar to a real human it's transforming the way we live. "

Pros:

1. Good concept of having robotic humans help us and live with us.  It's going to happen in the future.

- They could be housekeepers, or aides for seniors, or prostitutes.

2. Good characters of a British family that buys a robot Anita (Gemma Chan) to work and live with them.  There are also robots with consciousness and I love the acting.

3. Anita is with other synths in the pilot before she was split up.  There is a good story if she is able to reunite with them.  Leo (Colin Morgan) is the one who is mainly working to reunite all of them together.

3.  I like George (William Hurt) and his aide Odi (Will Tudor).

4. The law and robots.  There was a scene where Odi accidentally hits a woman.  A special police unit is called in to deal with this.

5. The education and robots. The teen daughter Mattie (Lucy Carless) says to mom Laura (Katherine Parkinson).


Mattie: I can be a doctor, but a Synth can be a brain surgeon in 7 seconds.
Laura: We want you to do your best.
Mattie: The best isn't worth anything.

6. Sex and robots. Leo and his Synth friend Max (Ivanno Jeremiah) go to this building.  There was neon lights of a heart and these gears in it.  As soon I saw that, I was like: Brothel.  The Synth Niska (Emily Berrington) was a prostitute there.

7. Humans and robots. The family is watching TV news and asks questions of: "How do these machines devalue human existence?"

Slave labor in China, Bangladesh are working in mines.  That's in the past.

"Doesn't work give you a sense of self worth?"  

"What is love?  Is it something that we're born with or can it be learned?"

8. There was also good ethnic diversity on this show.

Cons: None.

My opinion: I watched the whole first season of 8 episodes.



The show got a second season and will air in 2017.  I will watch the second season.



I wrote the above in the morning.  Now it's at night and I would have to say, the only con may be that it reminds me of how robots and automation will replace our jobs.

Jul. 23, 2016 Preacher: I saw this show on AMC on May 2016. 

"After a supernatural event at his church, a preacher enlists the help of a vampire to find God."

Pros:

1. I like the fight scenes.

Tulip (Ruth Negga) is fighting a guy in the back of a car as it is driving through a field.

Cassidy (Joseph Gilgun) fights a bunch of guys in an airplane.

Jesse (Dominic Cooper) is a priest/ lead character who fights a bunch of guys in a bar.  I love the good classic bar fight scene.

2. Dark humor.

3. There are lots of surprises, things I have never seen before like people's spontaneous combustion.

There is Arseface (Ian Coletti) whose mouth is sucked in.  Here is a pic of his face:


4. The likable character of Jesse who he really wants to help people.

5. I did like the line where Jesse says: "The man's heart plans his way, if the Lord directs his steps."


Cons: None.

My opinion: I saw the pilot and I never watched it again.  I couldn't really get into it.

I did have the question: Why was Jesse's dad killed? 

But I wasn't that intrigued enough to watch more.

You can check out the pilot if you want.




Game of Silence: I saw the show when it came out on Apr. 2016.


"A rising attorney finds his perfectly crafted life threatened when his long-lost childhood friends threaten to expose a dark secret from their past."

Pros:

1. The characters of the 4 guy friends and girl who have known each other since they were kids.  I do like the friendships.  They are likeable characters.  They have gotten into a car accident.  Jessie was a kid and her mom was drunk and was going to drive.  Jackson, Gil, Shawn and Boots and Jessie then get in the car and drive off.

They then hit another car and hurt a woman driver.   Jessie was told to run away, and the 4 boys go to juvenile hall for about a year.

2. Good acting.  The only one I recognize was Michael Raymond- James (Neil from Once Upon a Time.)

Boots (crying): I snapped.  I had it coming.

Later:

Jackson: The past is the past.  I'm not going to throw my marriage away.
Gil: Forget that!  What they did to us in that prison!  We're talking about justice!

3. The dialogue:

"The past is never the past.  If it were, there would be no tragedy."

I'm going to put that in my quotes.

Cons:

It can be really hard, intense, and sad to watch.  The child abuse that goes on in the juvenile detention centre was hard to watch.  The kids are beating each other up, and the guards let it happen.  Then the guards get the kids to fight each other for entertainment.

The show got cancelled.

I watched the pilot and then I never watched it again.



Nightmare at the End of the Hall: I saw this TV movie on Jul. 13, 2013.  It was raining outside.  I did go to work, and finished reading the newspaper.  I decided to watch it because there was nothing else to do and it did seem kind of interesting.  I had to really think about this: But I hardly ever watch TV movies, unless it's for an actor I really like or story line.


"A writer teaching at the school she attended encounters a student who seems to be the reincarnation of her dead classmate."

I didn't recognize the lead actress Sara Rue at first, probably because she lost so much weight.  She was on the old TV show Popular in 1999 and she had weight on her.  Now she's so skinny.  I was going through her credits and these are the only 2 things I have seen her in.  I have seen her on a Jenny Craig commercial. 



Story: Now to the actual story.  Courtney (Sara Rue) finds her friend Jane hung herself in a room at the end of the hall.  10 yrs later, Courtney wrote a book called My Dead Friend.  She didn't write anything after that and is offered a job to be a writing teacher at the private school she attended.

Jane's boyfriend Ian is the Headmaster's son, and is still in the small town as a carpenter.

Courtney then meets a young woman and student named Laurel who looks just like her old friend Jane.

There are flashbacks through out it and how Courtney is close with Jane and Jane's boyfriend Brett.

There is drama, conflict, and tension as Courtney did stop taking her anti- anxiety medication.

Courtney talks to Jane's parents and her parents didn't like how Courtney made money off her book about Jane.

It was a good plot twist towards the end.

Spoiler alert of the ending: Don't read if you don't want to know:

It turns out Jane left to go to a writing program for a year, but she really didn't.  She got pregnant with Brett's baby and left to have the baby.  Brett's dad Ian  who is the Headmaster killed Jane and made it look like a suicide.  Laurel found the journal that Jane had all these years.  It mentioned the baby.

There is a fight and Ian is arrested.

Courtney introduced Laurel to her dad Brett.  They hug.

Brett: You look so much like your mother.

My opinion: Would I watch this TV movie again?  A low chance unless I'm showing it to one of my friends. It was average at best, and mediocre at worst.



Quantico: I wrote a little bit about this show.  I watched the whole first season.  I mainly watched it for the actor Jake McLaughlin (TV show Believe), but it was good overall.

"A look at the lives of young FBI recruits training at the Quantico base in Virginia when one of them is suspected of being a sleeper terrorist."

Pros:

1. The writing is really good with the storylines and characters.  There were lots of flash forwards to the present and the past when the recruits were training at Quantico.

The characters can go really deep on why they want be in FBI. 

Shelby is there because her parents died on Sept.11.

Alex had shot and killed her dad in self- defense.

2. The questions: Alex is being framed for this terrorist attack in NYC.  Who is the real terrorist among the recruits and why this person did it?  If you watch the whole season, there is suspicion thrown at each person.

3. Lot of surprises and twists in the whole season.  There were a couple in the pilot I will tell you about (spoiler alert):

Caleb interviews Eric, and Eric snapped.  Eric shoots a woman agent and then points gun at Caleb.  Caleb is freaking out and saying he was bluffing about knowing something about Eric.

Eric then shoots himself in the head.

It turns out Eric went to Malawi and got a 14 yr old girl pregnant and she got a legal abortion.  She died during the process.

Miranda: Eric Parker was not honest with himself.  Think about who you are and why you are here.  

Nimah has a single room because she is Muslim.  Then it turns out she has a twin sister.

Tracy: Oh my God!  Great twist.  It kind of reminded me of the reality TV show Big Brother back when I used to watch it.  They had 1 woman and she had a twin sister.  They switched places here and there.

Will someone find out there are twins?

Why are they there?

It is funny.  There was an ep called "Drive" and Nimah and sister Raina are switching places and talking to Garnett (Eric Morris) and is later revealed there were 2 of them.

Garnett: Oh, so that's why you only made eye contact with me half the time.

lol.

End of spoilers.

I thought the actor Eric Morris who played Garnett was kind of cute:


Cons: None.

I did talk to this guy F at my Filmmakers Meetup and he did question if that's how Quantico really is.  At least on the show, the character Drew did point out about it.

Drew: Maybe this could be another prison experiment kind of test.

If you watch the show, there does seem to be some prison experiment on them sometimes.

My opinion: I do recommend you watch the pilot to see if the show is for you.



Jul. 31, 2016 Cell phone: Today I went to work and then I got to the bus stop and noticed my small pocket in my back pack was unzipped.  I see that my cell phone wasn't there.  Well it could be in my bedroom or it could have fallen out on my walk to the stop.

I went home after work and looked at my bedroom and inside my back pack.  Then I went outside and started looking at the ground.  It fell onto my neighbor's lawn which is a few steps from my door step.  So that's good that I found it so fast. 

Also at the time, my cell phone was off so it would have been harder to find.  You can't call it or trace it.  Or maybe you can.

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"Everyone is a photographer nowadays"

Mar. 28, 2016 "Everyone is a photographer nowadays": I cut out this article by Jeanne Beker in the Globe and Mail on Jun. 6, 2015.  This is about a fashion photographer Victor Demarchelier.Inline image  It was kind of a job article because it's about him following his career.  I cut it out because of this one line in it, which I will put in my inspirational quotes:


What is one of the biggest lessons he taught you?

He always says do what you love and you’ll be happy and successful in life. And even if the success doesn’t come, you’ll still be happy.

Here's the article:

At 30, New York born-and-raised Victor Demarchelier is living up to his family name. The youngest son of legendary fashion photographer Patrick Demarchelier is quickly becoming one of the hottest young photographers in the business. Featured editorially on the pages of international Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, GQ and Interview magazines, to name a few, Demarchelier is sought after for his commercial work as well and was recently commissioned by Toronto’s Oxford Properties to shoot the new campaign for Yorkdale Shopping Centre.

Perhaps the secret is all in the breeding: The senior Demarchelier has always been the epitome of relaxed cool. Known for his exquisite lighting and his ability to connect with his subjects, he revealed to me in 2008, at a retrospective of his work at the Petit Palais Museum in Paris, that whether he was photographing models or actors, he always wanted people to “explain themselves” when he took their portraits. “They have to be very relaxed. If they’re relaxed and cool, they explain themselves more,” he said. Patrick Demarchelier’s calm demeanour and gentle nature have always been key to winning the trust of his subjects. And it’s those qualities that he has passed along to his son.

A student of economics and fine art at Vassar College, the younger Demarchelier first focused on printmaking, and began working on shoots with his father after graduation. Eventually, it was the experimentation with his own personal prints in his father’s darkroom that led him to pursue the art of photography. But the seeds of his future success were planted long ago, when as a child, on a British Vogue shoot in St. Barths, his dad asked him to jump in the model’s lap. The whimsical shot that was captured in that moment landed on the magazine’s cover.
I met with Victor on a recent visit to Toronto, and there, on a bench at Yorkdale mall, we talked about his photographic roots and what his famous father has taught him.

It wasn’t even your intention to be a photographer initially. You wanted to be an architect.

Yes, I kind of fell into photography. I just always liked creating things, and I loved working with my hands, too. I was in fact going to be an architect. And then afterward I was a bit of a furniture designer and maker. I love the idea of working with wood. Then I made a lot of prints and started working in the darkroom. That was a way to get my hands on the pictures. But after that, you want to shoot your own pictures. So it was all kind of thrown together.

Was it your dad who gave you your first camera?

The first cameras my dad gave me were Polaroid cameras. We’d get little Polaroid every Christmas. But back then it was just a kind of game. We’d run around shooting our brothers and our family. And I would go through the film so fast! I remember he’d give us four or five boxes and they were gone in one day, and then we would forget about it, and next year we would get another camera. I don’t think he ever thought of any of us becoming photographers or working in fashion. It just kind of happened.

So he wasn’t ever really trying to encourage you to take up photography?

No, he was the opposite. I was a pretty good student in school, so he would always say, “Why don’t you be a lawyer?” That was his dream: to have one of us become a lawyer. I just think every parent wants their kid to be a doctor or an architect or a lawyer. But when I realized I wanted to do photography and I started working with him, he was even happier, I think.

What is one of the biggest lessons he taught you?

He always says do what you love and you’ll be happy and successful in life. And even if the success doesn’t come, you’ll still be happy.

It’s one thing to want to be a photographer and love the art and craft of photography, but fashion is something that you’re really turned on by, too.

The thing is, I love still arts. I started doing that and that’s kind of how you experiment with the camera and with the lighting. But then you get a little lonely. What’s exciting about fashion is the people. It’s all about the people you choose – the team. And I think that’s what keeps it fresh, fun and exciting.

I once asked your dad who was his favourite subject to shoot, and he said it was the family’s pet dachshund, Puffy.

Well, I love it when I’m shooting my friends or someone who is really close to me. That’s nice. I don’t do it enough and when you do it, you really feel special.

In this digital age, photography is something that’s been embraced by everyone.

Yeah, everyone is a photographer nowadays.

How do you feel about that? Are you a bit of a snob?

No, no – I love it! It’s cool to see all these pictures, even on Instagram. Especially if you’re a photographer, your friends like to show you what they did. They like to show off their pictures. And it feels like even more people appreciate your work. It used to be more of a niche thing and now I think everyone likes photography and everyone in the street has a camera.

What were your first impressions of being on a fashion set? It was probably with your dad before you were ever hired to do a gig.

When I was young my dad would take me on trips and out to sets. I think the first time was in St. Barths. And sometimes, he would even photograph me. It seemed so effortless and easy. That’s part of his style, too. But it didn’t feel like it was work. It felt like more of a good time, and I think that’s why the girls are so beautiful in the pictures. That’s the biggest thing I try to keep in mind when I shoot now – that feeling that I always had on his sets.



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"The case for making the documentary Canada's official art form"

Dec. 28, 2015 "The case for making the documentary Canada's official art form": I cut out this article by Kevin McMahon in the National Post on May 5, 2012.  I'm interested in TV production and filmmaking so of course I had to cut it out.  Now that I reread it now, it does seem kind of deep.

I have seen Michael Moore's films Bowling for Columbine and Fahrenheit 9/11.  Those were good films.

The last few weeks were bad for documentary filmmakers in Canada, what with the federal government slicing the budgets of the CBC, Telefilm and the NFB. My colleagues in Montreal were so distressed they staged a sit-in outside the Board’s office. In English Canada, we mostly expressed our outrage by whining under our breath (though there was a brief protest in Toronto on Friday).

But this week has been another story. We’re gathered in Toronto to feel great about documentaries because Hot Docs is on and, this year, in its new home, the dazzlingly refurbished Bloor Cinema.


Every year the documentary festival sets new attendance records, proving Toronto is a city that loves docs. In fact, all Canadians do. How do we know? Because (being doc makers) we checked: A 2011 report by the Documentary Organization of Canada found that we consume many thousands of hours of docs every year on television, the majority of them Canadian productions. In the couple of years since the NFB put its films online, more than three million people have viewed them. Since 2007, attendance at documentary festivals — Hot Docs and its cousins Doxa in Vancouver and Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal — has risen an incredible 77%.

I’d argue that documentary is such a cherished cultural form here that the government ought to take the long overdue step of designating the documentary Canada’s Official Art.


Just as the beaver, the colour red and the Maple Leaf tartan have Parliamentary sanction as our official animal, hue and textile, so should documentary be designated our particularly Canadian cultural form. Before the ballerinas and water colorists flip out, let me add that I’m not arguing for anything exclusive. Lacrosse is Canada’s official summer sport, but people still play soccer. This is about highlighting national excellence. In the cultural realm, there is nothing so Canadian as drawing images from reality and hewing them into a meaningful shape.

Documentary is uniquely ours by both history and nature, and we are (I’m sorry to boast) the best in the world at it. Nanook of the North, made by Robert Flaherty in 1922 near Inukjuak, Quebec, was the world’s first real documentary — though it was not then called that. The term “documentary” was coined a few years later by John Grierson, father of the National Film Board of Canada. Grierson launched the NFB in 1939, as Fascism was rising, arguing that portraying reality was essential to saving democracy.

Unlike the cynical geniuses of Hollywood, documentary makers don’t want to beguile you. We want to be an accurate mirror. If you look fat in those jeans, we’ll tell you so. Which makes us neither rich nor popular, just useful. Late in life, Grierson recalled that “it was the public purpose within [documentary] which commanded government and other backing … and kept its own people together.” In other words, it’s art as civil service. Like, how Canadian is that?

These days everyone carries a fully equipped television station in their pocket. We can all record reality, just as most of us can read and write. But the unique skill of documentarians is to find meaning in that reality. Canada has produced legions of non-fiction filmmakers who see profundity in the seemingly mundane: Donald Brittain on the comic totalitarianism of bureaucracy; Alan King on the fluidity of marriage; Mark Achbar on the inherent psychopathology of corporatism. Yung Chang looked at flooding caused by the Three Gorges Dam and saw not just the environmental story that everyone saw, but the essence of the East/West relationship. His penetrating NFB-assisted Up the Yangtze played in Canadian movie theatres for 27 weeks, confirming not only his documentary vision, but our appetite for it.

Regardless of your home region, no Canadian ever really feels at the centre of things; we all view the world around us through a prism of contrasting needs and desires layered with fabulous complexity — which also happens to be the lens of a good documentarian. Marshall McLuhan, father of media study, said Canadians were inherently good observers: “When you are out of the main swim, as it were, you have a much better opportunity of seeing what’s going on.”

Documentary, as a form, has no fixed identity. It can include candid actuality, text, dramatic recreation, news footage, metaphorical images and animation — all wrapped in conventional stories, lectures, travelogues, biopics, experimental videos or all of the above. These days, we also have reality TV and “factual entertainment” (factutainment, as we insiders call it) — which add elements from game shows, practical jokes and porn. People argue, of course, about what constitutes “legitimate” documentary. They always have. Some judged Nanook to be sensational factutainment; the Jersey Shore of its day. Some of the most fascinating NFB documentaries these days are essentially elaborate websites. So no one can say what a true documentary is. Ahem. Who does that remind you of?

And there is this Canadian aspect to docs: their inquisitiveness makes the form inherently multicultural. Hot Docs — the world’s most important documentary festival — has films this year from 51 countries and hosts seven official international delegations. But what’s really fascinating is the global reach of the Canadian docs, including ones filmed in Guyana, Tajikistan, Iceland, Thailand and Chile. As ever: Flaherty was an American living here and Grierson was a Scot.

Surely that tells us that, beyond their infinite range of content, something in the very nature of documentary speaks to our sense of who we are … and who we are endlessly becoming. And that last part is very Canadian indeed.

–Kevin McMahon is a Toronto documentary maker. His recent work includes directing the feature Waterlife and co-producing the music, film and TV series The National Parks Project.



"Movie crew hitting the ice in Edmonton for hockey flick": I cut out this article by Victoria Handysides in the Metro on Jan. 19, 2010.  I can't find the article on the internet, but it was about filming the movie Sure Shot Dombrowski 2: The Coaching Years in the Edmonton Rexal Place.

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