Annihilation (2018) -- Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Oscar Isaac, Tessa Thompson, dir. Alex Garland, based on Jeff VanderMeer's book

I preferred Borne to the Southern Reach books. Seemed like he was having more fun

def seemed like he was having more fun but also like the pages evaporated as you read them... left absolutely no impression

sanpaku you may have misunderstood the bechtel test, considering portman's only apparent motivation is figuring out what happened to her man

dykes to watch out fort

sic did u make it to Fun Home the musical when it went up here? I saw it on Broadway and liked it quite a bit

ehhh, I think Portman's character goes on the expedition as a sort of penance. Not strictly for her infidelity, but there's something inherently broken with her life. not that I'm pulling that out of thin air, it's pretty much spelled out

I appreciated this a lot more than others here, but perhaps because the openness in the plot worked for me -- it's a group that's looking for answers and the area they go into seems purpose-made to dissect the sense of self

I assume you mean Funt Home, the bioplay about the loveable Candid Camera creator

xp: The Bechtel test criterion, as I understand it, is is simply that two women talk about something other than a man. That so few movies pass even this minimal test is an indictment of the film industry.

Whether Portman's character is motivated by the disappearance of Issac's character doesn't really enter into it.

it’s called the bechdel test, folks

Is this the test to determine whether a particular movie has the right ratio of white roux and milk?

Sorry, not the most important "bechXel" in my life experience. Also, I'll blame muscle memory for all my sins.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/88/Bechtel_logo.svg/440px-Bechtel_logo.svg.png

I believe thats the color the company wants to leave the seas with...

Fun Home is great but left me a bawling mess

oh yeah sorry too many nights studying at (the same) bechtel hall

haven't read books

really liked this, would happily fight most of ye about it tomorrow.

ito ex machina, arrival, this comparisons they were all good-to-great tbh

thought themes/metaphors were obvious and done very plainly, but more than reasonably deftly. maybe a long time since i found a 'do u see' message within a psychological/fantasy refreshing and resonant as opposed to being a showy frustrating reveal

portman is a bad actress tho this is true

good book that was screaming to be turned into a movie.

now that I've read the book I find this sentiment baffling. Like Naked Lunch or Crash or The Story of Your Life, I feel the opposite - that it's screaming *not* to be made into a movie. so much internalized narrative, with a fixation on the inaccuracy of perceptions/senses, and the non-linear structure (ok I guess you could just jump-cut between a lot of flashbacks but...)

The book is way better, obviously.

I just watched this yesterday since I really liked the books. I wish someone had pushed the novel into the hands of David Lynch, as I feel he would have accurately translated what I liked about the novel: identities slipping away, the detached tone of the narration, the increasing strangeness of Area X (not just visually, but the off-ness of even the mundane parts of the environment). Maybe would have been better as a high budget tv series, where it could linger awhile.

I just don't think film is the ideal medium for unreliable-narrator-syndrome type narratives

I'm trying to think of film examples where it's done successfully but usually they involve dumb gotcha/reveal endings (Usual Suspects, Fight Club, etc.)

Not a huge Vandermeer fan, but I was pleased by this today:

Wow. Nice one, Dan Simmons. What a jerk. pic.twitter.com/6VKCFPvU6a

— Jeff VanderMeer (@jeffvandermeer) September 25, 2019

Our generation of speculative fiction fans really need to view past generations of right-wing anti-environment sci-fi authors with a critical eye.

didn't realize simmons was a right wing loon. that's ok though because i could barely finish Hyperion and it's sequel and decided he is not for me.

apparently he’s always personally been an asshole but was of many who ramped it up and took it public after 2001

Loved Hyperion/Endymion and some of his other books even though he's a right wing loon.

Flashback however is fucking abysmal and the one where his shitty views are on prominent display.

Needing some distraction from the news, so I'm watching Annihilation again...geez, why does it start out like Arrival, fer fuck's sake...?!?

— Jeff VanderMeer (@jeffvandermeer) January 4, 2020

Personally, I think the director had things he wanted to address that included Stalker and my book was just a convenient vehicle for that. Which created complications for me, given my book is not at all influenced by Stalker/Roadside Picnic.

— Jeff VanderMeer (@jeffvandermeer) January 4, 2020

that first tweet is a thread

not sure if serious

no, it’s definitely a thread

New show from Alex Garland. Pretty sure I'll be watching this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoNloYTsH0Y&feature=youtu.be

"(Playback ID: 7MsQp_v670f9y-sv)" is an episode of Mr Robot iirc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8klax373ds

interesting cast. dunno about longform fiction from this guy tho'.

maybe it's fine in context but characters who say "nothing ever happens without a reason" (more usually "everything happens for a reason") and writers who write those characters can, unless the character is obviously meant to be a grade A idiot, fuck right off.

the next line "everything is determined by something prior" - reasons are not causes.

any talk about his new show Devs? just starting it

“ my book is not at all influenced by Stalker/Roadside Picnic.”

sure brah

yeah, the cancer without radiation is taken directly from roadside picnic.

Devs is getting a little more interesting. It feels like a cross between Ex Machina and a few others, with a slow roll-out

I’m really digging Devs. The camera work is gorgeous, and I think some of it is shot at UCSC. Don’t want to spoil anything though.

We just binge watched the first 5 episodes of Devs, and it's pretty good, yeah. Some of the themes feel maybe a bit too well-trodden in sci-fi, but the look and sound of the show is consistently great, Salisbury and Barrow have done as great a job with the music as with Annihilation. And some of the visual details they've put into creating an eccentric tech geek's paradise are neat, love those ring lights around the trees, and the Dev team headquarters look amazing.

no idea what Devs is but maybe it should have its own spoilers thread so ppl idly scrolling thru here don't get them...

I’d be down for a thread

It’s a new show on FX/Hulu from Alex Garland fyi

Devs is an eight-part miniseries created, written and directed by Garland, currently airing weekly, that I'd intended to start until the spoilers above.

xpost

Sorry about that, though the stuff we discussed happens in the second episode, and it's not really a big spoiler regarding the main plot... Like I said, this is not really a mystery show, they show they cards almost right from the start.

I'll start a new thread and ask the mods to delete the spoiler posts.

A thread for Devs, the new Alex Garland show on FX/HBO (with SPOILERS)

Saw Men tonight. Good build-up for the first half, some beautiful shots, and a final 30 minutes that was insane and felt twice as long. Between this, I'm Thinking of Ending Things, and her weird turn in Fargo, Jessie Buckley seems to be the default actress for--I'm not sure how to describe whatever it is.

she's in The Lost Daughter too, although a bit less - whatever it is

I like a lot of Alex Garland, writer and director, but I'm really not sure what could convince me to see the new one. When I was last in the theatre and saw the trailer, even this little old lady in the back piped up "Why would I want to see that?"

You talking about the civil war movie?

Yeah. Not sure I really need it.