⭐️ Battle Star Galactica
⭐️ The Expanse
⭐️ Star Trek: The Next Generation
⭐️ Raised by Wolves
⭐️ Foundation
⭐️ Star Wars: The Mandalorian
⭐️ Star Wars: Andor
⭐️ Star Wars: Obi-Wan Kenobi
⭐️ Star Wars: The Book of Boba Fett
Now onboard:
⭐️ Star Trek: Deep Space 9
⭐️ For all Mankind
I decided to summarize the #book year, and here's my nomination for the Best cover of 2023🏆.
🥇The entire The Inheritance Games #series win for me, especially the upcoming The Grandest Game. I love when an image makes you want to look closer and has lots of catchy details.
In🥈and 🥉place are the Fourth Wing festive edition & Iron Flame. Despite misprints here and there, the design with gold casting really encourage readers to buy.
@vdvestelle@bookstadon The Inheritance Games series - yes. The Grandest Game will be released next year, and Fourth Wing/Iron Flame I've read through my wife's eyes😅 She likes romance stories more than me. In her opinion, Fourth Wing is much better than Iron Flame. It's too repetitive and not well edited. Anyway, it's a huge success for Rebecca Yarros and I'm genuinely happy for her and the genre fans!
I did it again, pausing two #series on Prime Video, right in the middle, halfway through my viewing: #ThePeripheral and #TheExorcist.
"Middle" and "halfway" here doesn't mean running time but number of episodes, so that's 4 out of 8 episodes of The Peripheral and 5 out of 10 episodes of The Exorcist.
I'm a long-time fan of William Gibson, including his published work and his "social media persona," but The Peripheral is one of the few novels of his I haven't read yet.
Oddly, although I'm really enjoying the series, it's also making me want to postpone reading the book, just so I don't end up comparing one to the other unfavourably.
The Peripheral took some effort getting into. Episode lengths especially are challenging, with the first three episodes running for more than an hour each. Characters have depth (though not the "villains," but more on them later), relationship dynamics are complicated, and tech is presented with little context. These are such effective worldbuilding techniques though that careful attention meant that I became accustomed to its storytelling rhythm and mode by episode 2. It's such a shock when episode 4 happens and explanations are given about a world-altering event and the "realpolitik" (word actually used) that emerged after.
Most characters in the show are complicated but eventually likeable. Unlike previous work by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy on Westworld (which to me has one of the best first seasons and one of the worst second seasons), my focus is directed on characters first before world and plot. Although there won't be a second season of The Peripheral, I think this would have fared better than the other series.
(One hiccup I encountered was the opening of Episode 1, which seemed like gestures at world-building without yet the characterisation needed to provide the real substance. Thankfully, it's brief and has good special effects, but it's not really very enticing until we meet the Fishers.)
One final remark, and this may seem like a back-handed compliment, although I don't intend it to be: the villains here seem irredeemably evil, almost mustache-twirling. It's a bit off-putting, given how seriously flawed protagonists grow in likeability, that the villains are so obviously villainous with far less nuance. However, they have so much charm. I mentioned one character using the word "realpolitik," and the way they say it sooooo beautiful. 😅 Two other villains I'm thinking of also function that way: written like canned meat but performed like a steak. (Sorry, stupid metaphor.)
Thankfully, the protagonists are richly written and beautifully portrayed, warts and all. I hear this series ends in a cliffhanger, but I don't mind, as long as it maintains the same level of storytelling quality. I do think a season 2 could be just as good, unlike Westworld, but if it's safer as an incomplete story in one season, I'll gladly take it.
As for the TV series of The Exorcist, the funny thing is that I've seen these five episodes before, when they first aired, more than half a decade ago. I stopped then, got busy and failed to get back to the series.
My impressions then was that it felt sort of post-Hannibal: artful TV horror that thankfully wasn't quite elevated horror but also not as comic-book fun like, say, Supernatural or even the at-time campy Hannibal.
I felt that the lofty themes of faith and community matched with body secretions of all sorts was a better callback to the 1977 #film, rather than some other little moments and bits of dialogue. I wasn't sure at first what to think about the lore it was introducing (Church conspiracies, new twists to its demonology), but I did grow to like that. I also thought that--and this may offend purists--but the use of Chicago as a setting is better than the use of DC in the film.
Because of the smart way it was (as the credits state) "inspired by the William Peter Blatty novel," episode 5 was quite a turning point for me. Part of the reason I stopped then AND now is that I'm not sure what to think about what just happened.
Much of the great build-up in the first four episodes reaches a climax here, and it's mostly effective and feels like a mid-season cliffhanger. Again though and even more than the halfway point of The Peripheral, it's such a different approach that I literally had to stop and take stock.
Atmosphere and implication were pretty much the norm in the first few episodes alongside character building, and even several cliche but effective startles and funny/eerie nightmare scenes don't detract from the subtlety and sophistication.
Episode 5 directly confronts us with plot events and revelations. The former generally work well, although one makes me roll my eyeballs and isn't very convincing, except as an attempt to be shocking about the secret lives of priests that doesn't quite fly. The revelation, however, is a major plot twist. It's one that's executed extremely well, ESPECIALLY once the viewer realises what's coming. It's textbook perfection dramatic irony, as the characters wait for the unfolding of what viewers already know.
Like all such plot twists, it forces you to rethink everything you've seen so far and also makes you think about how they'll follow it up. I don't have too much of a problem with the former, since the plot twist remains plausible. However, it's a plot twist that they could have chosen not to use, and so that makes me worry about where the series will go from here. And it could turn out to be a really bad decision, and I'll need to prepare myself for that possibility, in case the series squanders what greatness it had in its first four and most of the fifth episodes.
BTW, I grew up Catholic and am now "almost-lapsed," but the first film always stays the prime example of pop culture theology. I never read the book though and have never felt, er, compelled to do so.
P.S. Just to write this to appeal to @cinephile folks, here's what I want to say about The Exorcist#movies:
I generally don't prefer "the version you've never seen," because of how much I've seen of Friedkin's theatrical version of his #film.
The Boorman sequel is poorly executed, though it could have worked, I think, with more refined ideas and better craft and performances.
The third film is great despite some flaws, similar in quality to Paul Schrader's prequel despite fundamentally being very different. Renny Harlin's prequel is more bland than bad, though it's not very good.
I'm definitely watching the upcoming David Gordon Green movie, but its trailer doesn't attract me the way the one for DGG's first Halloween did. (It might also be because, although I like his first Halloween a lot and also enjoyed its sequels, there is a clear series of diminishing returns with DGG's approach to the Halloween story.)