Change Your Image
stephen740
Reviews
Batwoman: What Happened to Kate Kane? (2021)
Poorly written, staged and acted
I really wanted to like this show, but its just awful. The plot is terrible; the dialog endlessly clumsily, nose-on, and many times, close to a voice-over; and may of the action sequences are embarrassing. I just can't imagine what they think they are doing. Is there no quality control by the folks in charge? It desperately needs a lead who can maintain a vigilante's edge and at least in the S2E1, Javicia Leslie was not up to the task. But then again with the current the plot, dialog and directing, I'm not sure anyone could. I still love the show's premise, but my advice is to do a complete reboot and start over with a new team of writers and directors.
Next: FILE #4 (2020)
Preposterous and irritating
The show continues what I feel is a downward spiral using typical clichés rather than imagination. Paul LeBlanc continues to be unable to express simple thoughts without being vague and/or oblique and endlessly hysterical all at the same time. Then to ratchet up the tension, the writers employ ridiculous situations like a mob attack on a FBI facility that the police pull back from. The most painful part of all of this is that NEXT's master plan is completely flawed. I won't say why so no spoilers here, but a few seconds of thought reveal that it will lead to its own destruction. I get the feeling that the writers are watching reruns of Lost, Twin Peaks and 24 Hours, with the goal of topping the worst ideas from those shows.
To put it clearly (Non-LeBlanc communication), the things a super intelligent AI computer needs to worry about are (1) redundancy, so its not killed off by hardware/power failures, (2) internal errors, where a self-created and tested code upgrade causes an unexpected fatal failure (3) attacks from other emerging Super AI's, (4) destruction by natural or man-made disasters, and (5) destruction by humans who fear it. All of this has been in scientific literature on AI's for years. As a result, a super AI would know them to even if it could not think them up itself. At the very least, a malevolent AI would fake being helpful until it could be assured that the first 4 conditions were no longer threats. It other words, it would use humans as trainable dogs (faithful and obedient when treated properly), rather than trying to kill them. Unfortunately, the writers seem to be the ones who are ignorant of 1 through 4 here. I will probably watch a few more episodes, not out because I expect the series to improve, but to see what bad ideas the writers use NEXT.
Next (2020)
OK start, depends on where it goes...
Next is about man vs. our creation, the computer, and who will be the dominant species on the planet in the future. Overall, the production values are good and I never felt I was watching a grade B Sci-Fi show. It does an OK job of defining the potential threat poised by an AGI (Artificial General Intelligence), or a machine as capable at solving non-structured problems as a person, but then stumbles after that. If the show keeps going in the direction they've started, it will be something like 24 with the AI replacing the terrorists. I'm sure it will be suspenseful, but it won't be breaking any new ground (e.g. The Wire, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, etc.)
Spoilers from here on...
The initial question taken by any AI move/show is what has been created. NEXT chose to make their AI Dr. Frankenstein's dangerous monster. The show starts with Paul LeBlanc (Slattery), a disenfranchised billionaire, warning about AI's threat. It then follows him as he discovers that an AI project he tried to kill was restarted, has escaped and is now trying to cover its tracks through homicide. The problem with this is that the machine's tactics are soooo heavy handed and attention grabbing that you begin to doubt its a hyper-intelligent system. More like it binged watched "The Untouchables" and decided Al Capone, Dutch Schultz and Mad Dog Coll were the perfect roll models for hidden power.
The problem with this gaff is that it shows the writing team has not really thought about the issues raised by AGIs. Without going into all of the possible variations, imagine Game of Thrones where all of the subordinates are capable of saving the day in one second and then betraying you in the next because they've made an error rewriting their code. Who could you trust and for how long? If you killed your underlings before they became a threat, who would protect you from everyone else? If you were an AI system and knew this is how humans viewed you, what would you do?
In S1E1, the system erases all of the files on an internal FBI server to get the FBI agent on its tail in trouble with her boss and potentially fired (report due on Friday, no excuses!!!!!!!!) If this actually occurs in S1E2, it will indicate that abject stupidity is one of the main plot devices and the show is in a graveyard spiral for a short run. However, the writers may yet surprise us, and these gaffs were simply faints to mislead the viewer with standard clichés. I certainly hope so. Stay tuned.
Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story (2017)
Amazing story about an amazing woman
A look at the amazing life of Heady Lamarr through the eyes of her children, the few left who know her, and 4 tapes of a conversation a writer made in 1990 when she wanted to sell her story to Ted Turner. Her story reads like a Hollywood screenplay. Truly amazing! The documentary does have several maddening shortcomings. There is no explanation as to why only one attempt was made to tell the armed forces (Navy) about her frequency hopping invention. For example, why didn't she to Howard Hughes, who she'd been both good friends and a lover with? Many aspects of her personal life are also left out, buy adding them would have expanded the documentary to two hours. Still, this is a star vehicle, and as always, Hedy carries the day.
I was impressed by Alexandra Dean's detective work piecing together how Hedy probably thought up the idea. And for those who sniffed at the graphics, they reflected the style of her drawings, and not a superhero movie. One small technical point that was missed is that frequency hopping is also the basis of multi-spectrum quiescent radar and sensors. As a result, the value of the market that uses her basic idea is far larger than the $30 billion listed at the end of the documentary. I highly recommend it, especially her reciting of the Kent M. Keith's "The Paradoxical Commandments" at the end. Considering her life, it's hard not to tear up.
Collapse: Based on the Book by Jared Diamond (2010)
Muddled mess made of Diamond's masterpiece book
Based on the book by Jared Diamond, produced by National Geographic, and with a who's who of environmental heavy weights, this should be killer documentary. Unfortunately, I have to report that the National Geographic production, while expensive with very good production values, has made a muddled mess of Diamond's masterpiece. For those who don't know the book, Diamond with amazing detail and careful logic, traces the rise and fall of a number of ancient civilizations. He then uses the lessons learned from them as a yardstick to see if we will fall victim to some of the same problems.
The problem faced by the NG producers was how to turn Diamond's 600 page book in into a 100 minute documentary and have it still make sense (The unabridged audio version runs 22 CD's long.) The show's producers tackled this daunting task by using the device of a mystery.
The film starts out in the year 2210 and a team of archaeologists in a dune buggy are trying to determine why our civilization today failed. We see them diving on submerged ruins, trekking across the desert to explore half-buried cities (global warming at work), while using iPad like devices with ground penetrating radar to analyze vehicles, houses, skyscrapers, freeways, and other crumbling structures. The problem with all of this is that it wastes time and it's not credible that our civilization would disappear in under 150 years, to be replaced by a new, higher-tech civilization that has no idea that we used swimming pools for recreation rather than drought storage or that maybe one billion cars used too much oil.
Unfortunately, rather than carefully building the case for sustainability, the documentary fritters away its time showing the future archaeologists unearth cars, solar power plants, and other things they have, but seem to be completely ignorant of what we used them for. As a result, many of the apocalyptic pronouncements from Jared and other experts seem to drop in from nowhere. Add the End of the World effects, a needlessly overwrought and intrusive soundtrack, and after awhile, you find yourself looking around for the remote. In the end, it suffers from the same problems The 11th Hour, An Inconvenient Truth, and other similar environmental documentaries do. Dire warnings from experts just don't convenience many people that don't already believe there is a problem. The frustrating part of all of this is that his book is so elegantly written, they didn't need the silly plot device and the special effects to make a compelling documentary. They just needed to effectively frame the material from the book.
If you are knowledgeable in the field sustainability, you will find yourself frustrated by the lost opportunity for someone to clearly explain the problems we face. If you are a novice, you'll find yourself more concerned, but unable to effectively put the pieces together, and if you are a skeptic, it will seem like just another documentary from overwrought environmentalists who shouldn't be allowed near video equipment without adult supervision.
What would have been far better was to start with the issues we face and the basic positions of the opposing camps (everything is OK vs. it's not). Then using some of Diamond's examples from the south pacific, Greenland and South America to illustrate what can go wrong, give both sides an unbiased hearing, and then provide some tools so that the viewer can honestly evaluate both positions. I hope someone tries this again, because the subject (sustainability) and Diamond's book are too important to let this be the last word. However, it will really require a multi-part miniseries, rather than just 1 ½ hours of overwrought pronouncements.