Month: February 2019

The Passage Season 1 Episode 7: You Are Like the Sun Recap

~ Metacrone

The Passage 107 Jonas Holds Liz' Hand

The title of The Passage, season 1, episode 7 is a deceptive one. In the universe of The Passage, the metaphor You Are Like the Sun can mean that you are the life-giving center of my universe or that you are like a deadly poison. Since the sun itself is both life-giving and deadly, so it is also a metaphorical stand-in for the virus.

The focus in this episode is on the main characters’ important relationships and tragic backstories. Amy, in particular, needs to face her past so that Fanning can’t use it against her, the way he’s used their past against so many others. It’s also time for Brad, Lila and Clark to unravel their complicated history in regard to Eva’s death.

Fanning is focused on Elizabeth as the potential replacement 12th viral and someone he can win from Jonas, while Jonas is fighting the loss of his beloved wife with everything he’s got. Elizabeth needs to make the same choice we saw Carter make, between life as a viral in Fanning’s “family” or death as the person she’s always been. Though presented quietly, with dignity, her scenes in this episode are among the most powerful and moving of the series.

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Always a Witch Season 1 Episode 1: A Leap in Time Recap

~ Metacrone

Always a Witch Carmen with Christobal & Esteban

This is a recap. My review of Always a Witch S1 is HERE.

Always a Witch is the story of an enslaved, time-traveling young witch who escapes the danger she faces in Cartagena, Colombia in 1646 by jumping to the Cartagena of 2019. In the present day, Carmen Eguiluz, the young witch, must perform a mission for the wizard who helped her time travel. Then she can go back to her own time to save the man she loves from being shot and killed when he attempts to defend her, and stop her own execution as a witch by burning at the stake. But once she gets to 2019, completing her mission is more complicated than she expected. She makes friends and enemies as she navigates the future, and it takes teamwork to achieve her goal.

Recap

The episode begins with a seaside vista of sailing ships anchored off the Caribbean coast of Cartagena, Columbia, in 1646. On the shore, a young, dark-skinned woman is chained to a cart, pulled by soldiers. She is being brought to her execution in a coastal fort made from local stone. Soon, the woman, Carmen Eguiluz, is tied to a stake, with a pyre beneath her feet, ready to be burned as a witch.

The Inquisidor reads a heavy-handed list of charges against her:

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Always a Witch (Siempre Bruja) Season 1 Review

~ Metacrone ~ 1 Comment

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Always a Witch, or Siempre Bruja, is a Netflix Original from Colombia. This Spanish language show (with English subtitles and dubbing) is a time travel fantasy about a young 17th century slave named Carmen who is also a witch. She uses magic to escape execution and travel to the present day. Much like the series Outlander, she travels between the two time periods, fights evil foes in both, tries to save the man she loves, must adjust to her new time period, and works to make life better for the people of the past.

Always a Witch is a fresh take on the time traveling witch concept, with a young cast and storytelling that’s grounded in Latin American culture. This show avoids the graphic nature of Outlander, keeping its content more suited to younger audiences, while still addressing the harshness of Carmen’s life as a slave, and the realities of the modern world.

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Season 2 Cast Announced for Altered Carbon

~ Metacrone

AC S2 Kovacs Psychasec Screen

While Altered Carbon still has no official release date, Netflix has released a teaser video to announce the main season 2 cast. As previously announced, Anthony Mackie replaces Joel Kinnaman as the main character, mercenary for hire Takeshi Kovacs. As expected, most of the season 1 cast is missing from the list, but 2 fan favorites are returning. And Simone Missick, a fan favorite from the now defunct Netflix Marvel universe, joins the cast.

Here is the teaser video, with Netflix’s character descriptions and my comments to follow.

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Dark Season 1 Episode 3: Past and Present Recap

~ Metacrone

Dark 103 Mikkel in 1986 Driveway.

Episode 3 picks up moments after episode 2 left off, with Mikkel having time traveled back from 2019 to 1986. He’s gone back to his family home, where his teenage parents brushed him off the same way his present day siblings do. They left the door to the house ajar, so now he wanders in, looking at the house that is and isn’t his home.

He finds Jana, his grandmother and Ulrich’s mother, lying on the couch. For a moment, they each confuse the other with the family members they’ve lost. Jana hopes he’s Mads, and Mikkel hopes she’s his mother. Jana goes to Mikkel and begs him to give her some kind of news about Mads. She becomes emotional, and scares Mikkel. He runs out of the house.

Nurse Ines Kahnwald works in the community hospital. Since she’s a single woman with no family obligations, the other nurses often ask her to take over their shifts when their schedules become inconvenient. Patient and good-natured, she doesn’t mind the extra work at all.

Young Charlotte Doppler finds a dead bird on the road as she rides her bike to school. She puts it in her bag to examine later.

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The Passage Season 1 Episode 6: I Want to Know What You Taste Like Recap

~ Metacrone

The Passage 106 Brad & Amy Outside

In episode 6 of The Passage, I Want to Know What You Taste Like, Winston escapes and tastes quite a few people. Amy learns to use her telepathy and family connection well enough to track him.

It turns out to be Richards who was bold enough to have Lila kidnapped while she was praying in church. Since he’s having her brought to the compound, she joins the team that’s hunting for Winston. She’s just in time, because Brad is not okay with his replacement little girl growing up so quickly and working with the dark side, meaning Horace Guilder. Lila becomes Brad’s new/old handler, in order to help keep the peace.

Jonas and Elizabeth have a loving reunion, but also face the truth about her condition. Sykes remembers the friendship she and Babcock developed before Babcock turned into a semicomatose vampire without the ability to speak. Babcock resents that Sykes didn’t maintain their friendship after it appeared that Babcock was braindead.

It seems to me that etiquette would require the one with the telepathy to make the first move in that situation.

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Amazon Cancels The Man in the High Castle: Season 4 Will Be Series Finale

~ Metacrone

Plus Official Season 4 Teaser Trailer

Another one bites the dust.

As the title of the post says, the upcoming season 4 of Amazon Prime’s The Man in the High Castle, which will be released in the Fall of 2019, will be its last. Many suspected that this would be the case when the show was given an early renewal for season 4, after it had taken so long for season 3 to be released. Another high quality show lost to Jeff Bezos’ short attention span.

But, despite my sadness over the loss, I feel there’s some good news here as well.

For one thing, look at this amazing poster! For another, a teaser video was also released today. And, in an interview with Deadline, the executive producers of the show, Isa Dick Hackett and David Zucker, strongly hinted about the possibility of a sequel series or film.

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Movie Review: The Breaker Upperers

~ Metacrone

The Breaker Upperers Poster

The Breaker Upperers * 2018 * Not Rated- Probably PG-13 for Language, Nudity and Adult Situations * 82 Minutes 

😸😸😸😸🌑  Rated 4/5 Happy Lap Cats

Spoiler-Free Review:

As the poster above says, 6 different times, The Breaker Upperers is hilarious. It is, first and foremost, a wacky comedy that’s not afraid to go for the laugh in whatever situation it finds itself in, whether that’s with a newly pregnant woman becoming nauseated while sharing the news with a friend, or engaging in drunken karaoke on a party bus.

Actually, those situations are likely to end the same way, so maybe that wasn’t the example of opposites I was looking for.

The great thing about this film is that, while it’s a wacky, screwball, sort of romantic, sort of musical, sort of dark, comedy, it’s also real. It’s the kind of female-oriented film I’ve been looking for on Netflix, as I’ve watched their romantic comedies pile up over the last year, almost all so laden with stereotypes and misogyny that I can barely manage to finish one viewing. The two female characters at the center of this film are just people, living their lives, not heroes, not villains, not stereotypes, and not trying to be any of those things. So are the rest of the characters.

The Breaker Upperers was written, directed by and stars Madeleine Sami and Jackie van Beek, two multi-talented women from New Zealand, who have been friends for many years in real life. In the film, they play Mel and Jen, who have also been friends for many years. Mel and Jen own and operate their own business, the titular Breaker Upperers, who clients hire to do the dirty work of ending a relationship when they can’t or don’t want to do it themselves.

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Dark Season 1 Episode 2: Lies Recap

~ Metacrone

Dark 102 Young Jonas with Treasure Map

Dark, episode 2, Lies, picks up 9 hours after Mikkel’s disappearance. There’s still no sign of him. Large search parties fan out over the area, methodically covering every inch of the countryside.

The hooded man who exited the cave in episode 1 stands on a hillside and watches one of the search parties. He’s covered in dirt and grime, still wearing his hood, and carries a battered suitcase and a backpack. He looks down and notices a dead bird on the ground at his feet. He doesn’t seem surprised by the bird, but he is interested, and bends down to examine it.

Jonas startles awake in bed. He sits up and realizes that blood is running out of his right ear (or possibly an oily black substance?). When he gets up to look at his ear in the mirror, a man whispers his name. Jonas turns toward the mirror, and sees his father’s reflection. Michael looks the same as he did when Jonas saw him the night before in the woods- covered in blood or something else that’s dripping and black.

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Roswell, New Mexico Season 1 Episode 5: Don’t Speak Recap

~ Metacrone

Roswell, NM 105 Max & Liz

This week’s installment of Roswell, New Mexico, episode 5 of the season, titled Don’t Speak, features some major revelations, the death of a minor character, and Isobel running around the desert in her little black nightgown and knee-high tube socks, without shoes.

I really need to start a regular Isobel fashion watch section. Her clothing just keeps getting more fun, though I don’t know how they can top this week.

For now, let’s move on to the recap, and discuss fashion and all of the other exciting events of the week as they arise. The writers have outdone themselves with giving us juicy, juicy tidbits to chew on.

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