20130629, samedi--8 mini reviews

20130629, samedi

A. (hulu+)  Programming the Nation?

1. Documentary, 2011, 111 minutes
2. Concerns subliminal advertising and related advertising methods.
3. Main areas of interest are rock music, movies, television advertising, billboard advertising, and political ad campaigns via radio and television.
4. Lots of interesting historical clips and interviews plus discussions of techniques and their efficacy.
5. This is well worth watching, five stars of five.

B. (hulu+) Orgasm, Inc

1. Documentary, 2011, 78 minutes
2. Concerns 'female sexual disfunction' (FSD), a disease created by pharmaceutical marketers to drive the need for a 'female viagra' so that billions of dollars of pills can be sold.
3. This is a trenchant and funny look into the movers and shakers in advertising, marketing, FDA approvals, definitions of disease, and huge masses of misinformation.
4. Great film; five of five stars.

C.  (hulu+) Friends (with Benefits)

1. Movie, fiction, 2009, comedy, romance, 94 minutes.
2. This is much more about Sturm und Drang than about comedy.  Be prepared.
3. Compared to the the 2011 movie with Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis, or the 2011 television series, this work is dark and lifeless.  I found the characters to be either uninteresting or mildly repulsive.  The plot was next to non-existent.  What there was of plot was not engaging.
4. IMDB rates it at 5.5 of 10.0.
5. I gave it two stars of five.

D. (hulu+) Primeval: New World: Fear of Flying

1. Episodic television, season 1, episode 3; 44 minutes, science fiction.
2. As light entertainment, I like this series one quite a bit.
3. I rated this one four stars of five.

E. (hulu+) Jack Hunter and the Star of Heaven

1. Film, action and adventure,  98 minutes, third installment of a trilogy.
2. Jack Hunter is an archaeologist who does some of the bidding for the NSA to find objects of power.  The Star of Heaven is one of those.  The 'other side' is also searching for the Star, and so arises conflict and chases.  I saw the first of the trilogy on the Syfy channel, and have decided to skip the middle installment.
3. A bit predictable; could have used better writing.  I gave this one two of five stars.

F. (hulu+) Dead Space: Aftermath

1. Animation, 2011, 85 minutes, fiction, horror on spaceships.  Allied to the FPS video games, Dead Space, Dead Space 2, and Dead Space 3.
2. Sequel to Dead Space: Downfall (2008).  Aftermath makes more sense after viewing the first film.
3. There are too many flashbacks in this work.   I would have much preferred a straight timeline from after Downfall ended.  To make this worse, the flashbacks have varying styles and quality levels.  I found that discordant, and the mark of poor planning.
4. While less gory than the first, the art problems are worse, and the derivative nature of the story (Alien) is clearer.  I gave this one three stars of five.

G. (hulu+) Exit

1. Film, 90 minutes, fiction, 2011, shot in colour, but feels like black and white, for the dreariness, depression, and lack of optimism.  IMDB labels it 'psychological drama.'
2. Hulu says, 'A group of people believe the city is a maze and are obsessively searching for the lost exit.'
3. Hmph.  I watched the whole thing, unfortunately, but at least I found the end of the film.
4. That was good enough, since the plot was somewhere between Gordian knot and 'who cares?'
5. One star of five, and that was way too positive a rating.

H. (hulu+) Avalon

1. Live action, mostly.  Sepia, mostly.  Boring as hell, mostly.
2. VRMMORPG gone wrong.  Ah, who cares?
3. 106 minutes, released in 2001, from those who made the animated series Ghost in the Shell.
4. In retrospect, GITS seems positively open and clear and transparent compared to this work.
5. Dissipation, pointlessness, inaction, game-induced permanent illnesses, lack of direction, out-of-focus closeups of low-tech food preparation, such as potatoe-cabbage-rice stew.  People with eastern European accents checking out old books written in Japanese.  Who could ask for more?
6. Saw this through to the flat cluster-cliche of an ending.  Two stars of five.