Meanwhile…
I’ve been meaning to post these two links for ages, but this week and the next are terribly crowded for me.
Star Trek: Discovery : Level Up : wonderful vid capturing all the joy and love this show offers in three seasons. Definitely the one to show to people who didn’t watch more than first few episodes and keep calling the series “grimdark” when it really isn’t.
Renaissance History : The Body Politic (School Days) : a day in the life of teenage Cesare Borgia, studying at Pisa with the likes of Giovanni de’ Medici, Alessandro Farnese and, of course, his future henchman-in-chief Micheletto. (Not based on either of the Borgia tv shows.)
Also, I’ve been watching Midnight Mass at Netflix. I’d liked Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House (except for the ending), and been mildly interested but in the end not really touched by his take on The Turn of the Screw, aka The Haunting of Bly Manor. Midnight Mass, by contrast, isn’t inspired by literary origins, though some characters do feel as if they could be from a Stephen King novel. (Bev in particular, though in a different way Riley, too.) Here, I was captured from the get go and thought the story had the right (for it) ending. All the characters of its ensemble come alive, and the self indulgent parts - my lord, does Mike Flanagan love his monologues! - don’t detract, they somehow fit with the people who say them.
(Not solely the priest who has a professional excuse to monologue.)
What’s most appealing, though, is that Flanagan uses his basic premise - using the similarities between the vampire myth and the Catholic mass if you take it literally - for more than a gimmick, and while the series certainly offers its share of meta and Watsonian critique on religion, it doesn’t do so via cheap shots, but shows the good side of faith as well. You have characters who exploit it, and you have characters who draw their strength from it. The small community on an island where the story is set feels real. (With the one caveat that clearly this entire series takes place in a universe where no vampire novel was ever written, or if written then never filmed, and vampires don’t exist in pop culture.). The way relationships between the characters are complicated and often intense provided emotional hooks for me to follow the story. Lastl, I admired that Flanagan had the guts to put his big horror/action climax two episodes before the ending, and devoted the last two episodes to the fallout. The emotional consequences for everyone. It’s the kind of thing often missing when something as momentous as what happenes in said episode does. There is also the very humane conviction at play that as a human being, you do not lose your capacity to regret and to act on it, even if you have done terrible things. Doesn’t mean everyone use it it (as opposed to clinging to self justification or denial). But in this series, a surprising number of characters do. This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1462263.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Star Trek: Discovery : Level Up : wonderful vid capturing all the joy and love this show offers in three seasons. Definitely the one to show to people who didn’t watch more than first few episodes and keep calling the series “grimdark” when it really isn’t.
Renaissance History : The Body Politic (School Days) : a day in the life of teenage Cesare Borgia, studying at Pisa with the likes of Giovanni de’ Medici, Alessandro Farnese and, of course, his future henchman-in-chief Micheletto. (Not based on either of the Borgia tv shows.)
Also, I’ve been watching Midnight Mass at Netflix. I’d liked Mike Flanagan’s The Haunting of Hill House (except for the ending), and been mildly interested but in the end not really touched by his take on The Turn of the Screw, aka The Haunting of Bly Manor. Midnight Mass, by contrast, isn’t inspired by literary origins, though some characters do feel as if they could be from a Stephen King novel. (Bev in particular, though in a different way Riley, too.) Here, I was captured from the get go and thought the story had the right (for it) ending. All the characters of its ensemble come alive, and the self indulgent parts - my lord, does Mike Flanagan love his monologues! - don’t detract, they somehow fit with the people who say them.
(Not solely the priest who has a professional excuse to monologue.)
What’s most appealing, though, is that Flanagan uses his basic premise - using the similarities between the vampire myth and the Catholic mass if you take it literally - for more than a gimmick, and while the series certainly offers its share of meta and Watsonian critique on religion, it doesn’t do so via cheap shots, but shows the good side of faith as well. You have characters who exploit it, and you have characters who draw their strength from it. The small community on an island where the story is set feels real. (With the one caveat that clearly this entire series takes place in a universe where no vampire novel was ever written, or if written then never filmed, and vampires don’t exist in pop culture.). The way relationships between the characters are complicated and often intense provided emotional hooks for me to follow the story. Lastl, I admired that Flanagan had the guts to put his big horror/action climax two episodes before the ending, and devoted the last two episodes to the fallout. The emotional consequences for everyone. It’s the kind of thing often missing when something as momentous as what happenes in said episode does. There is also the very humane conviction at play that as a human being, you do not lose your capacity to regret and to act on it, even if you have done terrible things. Doesn’t mean everyone use it it (as opposed to clinging to self justification or denial). But in this series, a surprising number of characters do. This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1462263.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.