Tag: metacrone

Altered Carbon Episodes 1-3 Review: Out of the Past, Fallen Angel, In a Lonely Place

~ Metacrone ~ 2 Comments

AC101CityView

Browse Altered Carbon Episode Recaps Here.

Altered Carbon is my new guilty pleasure. Do we still have guilty pleasures? I don’t care, that’s what it is. It may or may not make the cut for prestige television when the critics are done deciding, but, after watching 3 episodes, I’ve decided I’m just going to have fun with it. It’s not the best, or the worst, or the first, or the most, of anything. But it is a hardcore, pulpy, scifi cyberpunk neo-noir murder mystery with a detective who’s both completely futuristic and a total throwback. This show is not taking itself too seriously while still including all of the essentials of its genre(s). That means that we can all relax and enjoy the ride.

Altered Carbon is based on the 2003 novel by Richard Morgan. It stars Joel Kinnaman (The Killing) as Takeshi Kovacs, a former mercenary and legendary rebel soldier who fought against the Protectorate, the universal government of the future that’s run by the wealthy. He was caught and imprisoned 250 years ago.

Continue reading “Altered Carbon Episodes 1-3 Review: Out of the Past, Fallen Angel, In a Lonely Place” →

Humans Season 1 Episode 5 Recap

~ Metacrone

Hum105Leo&Mia

This episode is full of lost souls and mistaken identities. Mattie takes Anita to visit Leo, but Leo is unable to break through the Anita persona to find Mia. Leo becomes inconsolable and wants to give up on his family altogether. Mattie looks through the diagnostics log and discovers that Anita’s adult function has been used. She assumes it was Toby and yells at him for being gross and rapey. Toby tries to protect the family by accepting responsibility. Odi is found in the woods, then lost again. Niska stays with George, and they debate what kind of being she is with Vera. Niska doesn’t trust George at first, but slowly they begin to become friends. Pete continues to take in arguments for and against synths as he wanders through his day.

Niska races away from the smash club and meets Leo and Max at their usual rendezvous spot. Leo tells her about the program that David Elster hid in their root code. Niska is excited about it, and wants to get going on putting it all together. Leo says that she has to stay in hiding for now, since she’s wanted for murder, and sends her to George Millican’s house. He tells her to be nice. Niska says, “I am nice.”

Continue reading “Humans Season 1 Episode 5 Recap” →

Humans Season 1 Episode 4 Recap

~ Metacrone

Hum104NiskaCharges

Everyone develops complicated feelings in this episode, as the lines between humans and synths continue to blur. Pete finds a temporary new home, but it’s not as synth-free as he thinks. Niska takes on a fight club for anti-synth bigots and almost gets caught by Hobb. Leo and Max make a discovery after examining Mia’s root code, but don’t seem much closer to getting her back. They do meet up with Mattie and George, bringing all of the plot strands together for the first time. The Hawkins explore the realities of synth rights and feelings, with mixed results. Joe takes his primary user status with Anita to the next level, and immediately regrets it. I don’t actually think his experience with Anita was good for any of us, including, maybe especially, her.

Pete starts his morning in fine form, snapping at Jill when she asks him to join her for breakfast and ignoring her in favor of calling Karen at the office.

Mattie checks in with Anita to make sure that she’s okay after the hacking session the other night. Anita doesn’t remember the session, and says all of her systems are running fine. Mattie is surprised that Anita doesn’t remember what happened, after she was so upset. Anita goes back to her chores, saying hello to Laura, who was eavesdropping out of sight, as she goes.

Continue reading “Humans Season 1 Episode 4 Recap” →

Counterpart Season 1 Episodes 1 & 2: The Crossing & Birds of a Feather- Review

~ Metacrone

Counterpart1

Counterpart is a new scifi/spy/thriller series from STARZ starring JK Simmons as two very different men who live in two different versions of the same world. The worlds are connected by a secret passage in Berlin that’s heavily guarded and controlled by the two world’s governments. Up until 30 years ago, there was one world, but then scientists caused it to split into two branching realities. The politics of each world spill over into the other world, causing friction and intrigue.

Each person has an “other” in the alternate reality, a duplicate self who may be nothing like themselves. The other self frequently becomes a target of political plots originated on the opposite side. Since the alternate realities have been kept a secret from the general public on both sides, this can cause some confusion.

Continue reading “Counterpart Season 1 Episodes 1 & 2: The Crossing & Birds of a Feather- Review” →

Humans Season 1 Episode 3 Recap

~ Metacrone

Hum103Laura&AnitaCar

The game of lost and found continues in episode 3, as Leo and the conscious synths continue their complicated lives together and apart, the Hawkins family searches for answers to the mysteries surrounding Anita, and George and Odi become separated on an outing. The death at the brothel is officially ruled an accident, sending Pete into an anti-synth tirade.

Hobb wakes Fred up. Fred refuses to speak during the entire scene, but he does subtly try to break the straps binding his wrists to the lab chair he’s in. Hobb says that he’ll do all of the talking for now, and spills everything he’s figured out about the conscious synths.

He believes there are five synths. One of them is the female the lab isolated from Fred’s memory of swimming (holds up a picture of Anita/Mia). Hobb thinks they were made by David Elster, who kept them a secret. When Elster died, they ran away and hid, but then they got separated, allowing him to capture Fred. Fred turns his head all the way to the right. The lab tech says that he’s hiding his thoughts from them. The screens that have been showing his memories go dark, then show only Hobb.

Continue reading “Humans Season 1 Episode 3 Recap” →

Humans Season 1 Episode 2 Recap

~ Metacrone

Hum102Odi

We get to know the Hawkins family and the rest of the characters a little better in episode 2. We also learn more about synths, the effects they’ve had on society, and the effects humans are having on them. It’s complicated, with the synths ranging from harmless to helpful to sinister. And that’s just the ones in George Millican’s house.

Laura wakes up in bed the morning after episode 1 ended. She’s had a hair, make up and wardrobe upgrade since the pilot was shot. Nothing like a little competition from a young synth to up your game. Or the increased budget from a season long episode order.

She senses something’s wrong and goes to check on Sophie, discovering that Sophie is wearing different pajamas. The ones she went to bed in are wet and in the hamper. Sophie doesn’t know why they’re wet or who changed her clothes. Laura is confused.

Continue reading “Humans Season 1 Episode 2 Recap” →

Agents of Shield Season 5 Episode 9: Best Laid Plans Recap

~ Metacrone

AOS509May&Coulson

Agents of SHIELD gives us another ambitious episode this week, with more clarifying information about this pod’s mythology, a human rebellion, a callback to Tahiti, the answer to the question “Just what is Enoch?”, a daring escape from what’s left of Planet Earth, and a Daisy-Sinara rematch. Deke also sentenced Voss to his fate, and there was some ominous foreshadowing to end the episode. And nearly everyone on the Zephyr suffered from some form of existential angst. You can never forget about the existential angst on Agents of SHIELD.

We begin with an atmospheric shot of two Kree soldiers emerging from a misty red background to try to put down the human rebellion. They’re being lured toward Mack and Elena, who easily kill them. That makes eight Kree that the humans have killed so far.

The rebels are putting Fitz’ weapons cache to good use. Elena tells Mack that she finds his rebel-peacemaker side sexy, but before they can do anything about it, Flint comes down the hall, all business. Having kids ruins your love life, it’s true. He tells them that the entire floor has been secured for the humans.

Continue reading “Agents of Shield Season 5 Episode 9: Best Laid Plans Recap” →

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Season 3 Episode 10: Oh Nathaniel, It’s On!

~ Metacrone

Oh Nathaniel, It's On!

This week, Rebecca is determined to save the little guy, with a little help from her friends and acquaintances. In Rebecca’s mind, saving the little guy means taking the law firm back from Nathaniel after he refuses to let her have her job back. She’s also going forward with her plan to donate an egg to Darryl. Meanwhile, Heather has new career opportunities with Home Base corporate, and new life opportunities with Hector. She also volunteers to do a surprising favor for her friends.

Heather is still trying to figure out who she is, and what she wants to do with her life. She appears on Hector’s podcast, and says that she’s many things, including a chewer of gum, but none of these things define her. Hector would like to define them more clearly as a couple and take their relationship to the next level. Heather isn’t sure she can do that until she figures out who she is.

Continue reading “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend Season 3 Episode 10: Oh Nathaniel, It’s On!” →

Humans Season 1 Episode 1 Recap

~ Metacrone
Hum101MiaStartup
Joe Hawkins activates the family’s new domestic synth, Anita.

Humans is a joint production of Channel 4 in Britain and AMC in the US that focusses on humanlike robots called “synths”, some of whom have become self-aware like Real Humans, which just happens to be the name of the original Swedish version of the show that this remake is based on. The first two seasons are currently available for streaming on Amazon Prime.

Season 1 follows a human family, the Hawkins of London, who acquire a synth when the dad, Joe, becomes overwhelmed with trying to keep up with the house and kids while his wife travels frequently for work. The family mom, Laura, and oldest daughter, Mattie, are suspicious of the new synth from the start, with the mom bordering on paranoid.

Their new synth, Anita/Mia, does turn out to have a past and a family of her own, which has been wiped from her memories. She is a self-aware, conscious synth, made by synth creator David Elster in his later years when he’d become a recluse. Elster made at least four conscious synths, who have become separated and are trying to find each other again, along with Elster’s son/their brother, Leo. Besides the Hawkins, the show follows the conscious synths, the people who help them, and the police who are chasing them.

Episode 1, with catchy title of Episode 1, begins in a room full of deactivated synths, clad only in underpants. One is wheeled out of the room, sealed in packaging. The lights are turned off, the door is closed, and the synths are alone. They do not start chanting “one of us, one of us” because the writers are stronger people than I. One synth, who will go on to become Anita/Mia, does look up through a conveniently placed skylight at the moon. She doesn’t sing “Somewhere Out There” to her lost brothers and sister, so pop culture references are clearly lost on synths, which is a terrible, terrible waste, and may require a return to the factory.

Continue reading “Humans Season 1 Episode 1 Recap” →

Movie Review: Mudbound

~ Metacrone

MudboundPoster

 

Mudbound * 2017 * Rated R * 2 Hours 15 Minutes

😸😸😸😸😸 Rated 5/5 happy lap cats

Spoiler Free:

Mudbound is a family saga of life in the 1940s Mississippi Delta for two farming families. One family is made up of hereditary black sharecroppers descended from former slaves. The other is a white family of former landowners and slaveowners who’ve fallen on hard times. They’ve bought land in Mississippi hoping to reestablish their wealth. The families become intertwined as their lives intersect and affect each other over the years, until a tragedy changes everything.

Mudbound was directed by Dee Rees, who also wrote the script with Virgil Williams, adapted from the book of the same name by Hillary Jordan. It’s been nominated for four Academy Awards: Best Adapted Screenplay; Best Original Song for Mighty River, sung over the closing credits by Mary J Blige; Best Supporting Actress for Mary J Blige, who plays Florence Jackson, wife and mother of the Jackson family; and Best Cinematography for Rachel Morrison, the first woman to ever be nominated for this award.

Continue reading “Movie Review: Mudbound” →