A while ago I wrote a post about "unofficial" Star Trek series and movies, made by fans for the fans. Some quite awful, to my chagrin, but some quite engaging and with good production values. But I have to say that Star Trek New Voyages is just wonderful. Yet another series continuing the original, with captain Kirk at the helm of the Enterprise, it has some of the best Star Trek scripts I have ever seen and the acting is not bad, considering they are all amateurs, and the production values are good, considering that it is made by German studios (in English with American actors, have no fear!)

When I fell in love with Star Trek I did it in the time of Jean Luc Picard and The Next Generation. As much as it irks me to admit it, I liked it for the same reason my father liked it: the stories! The sci-fi was great, but it only enhanced what was already there: great stories about real people in real situations, focusing on positive traits like friendship, loyalty, love, intelligence, skill, courage, happiness, passion. With Star Trek, people have found that there is a higher ideal that they can aspire to.

Well, New Voyages has all of that: dedicated people doing the series out of passion, having the courage to get together and do something out of friendship and loyalty, but with intelligence, skill and soul. I present to you a team of people actually living their dream, and making the fans dreams come true as well. Just great stuff! And if it isn't enough, all the episodes are free to watch on their website, in high definition and with subtitles in several languages. And just in case you were wondering, original actors from the original series like George Takei (Sulu) and Walter Koenig (Chekov) are helping out.

Just watch it, it's just fantastic! I leave you with one of the best episodes (so far): World Enough and Time

In this post I want to talk to you about new stuff that links to the good old stuff of our own youth. You probably know what Kickstarter is, but just as an introduction, it is a place where people ask for money for future work. It's like a crowdsourced financing scheme for your public elevator pitch (just imagine a planet-sized elevator, though). And when I say Kickstarter, I mean the actual site and all the other similar things out there. Like... Kickstarter-like, like it?

First stop: Underworld Ascendant. The team that made Ultima Underworld, one of my all time favourite games, is doing a new one. As you can see on the Kickstarter page, it is two weeks from completing. If you loved the Ultima Underworld games (NOT the Ultima games), you could consider pitching in.

Second stop: Hero-U. Remember Quest for Glory? It was made by Sierra Games and the entire series was awesome! However the designers of the game are the Coles. They have been working on Hero-U, a modern version of the QG universe. They planned to release in the spring of 2014, but scope creep and public feedback turned the game from a simple little game to a complex and interesting concept that is planned for release in the autumn of 2015 and it is well on schedule. Check it out! They are at their second Kickstarter round.

Turning to movies and series, this time works made by and for Star Trek fans. And I am not even talking about random people doing really weird and low quality stuff, I mean real movie business people doing great stuff. Check out Star Trek Continues, a continuation of the original Star Trek series, as well as Star Trek Axanar, which seems to become a really cool movie! I can't wait for it to get out.

Update June 27th 2016:
The Axanar story has become a poster for corporate greed and stupidity. Soon after the trailers for Axanar were released, Paramount and CBS - the corporations owning the Star Trek franchise - sued the producers on copyright infringement. Funny enough, they did this before anything real was released. Their problem? The production was too big.

Having received more than 1.2 million US dollars from Kickstarter, the show was actually starting to look great. Top production qualities, professional actors, good CGI and - most of all - passionate people. Paramount and CBS alleged that this was already a commercial venture, having such budget, even if it was released freely on the Internet after production. To me, it feels as if Hollywood started to feel the heat. They realized that if this production and distribution model catches on, they will be left trying to combat piracy and hiring armies of lawyers to arrange and check distribution contracts when "the opposition" will just release free on the Internet once the budget for production is met. Consider the implications! This would be huge.

It felt like entrapment. First you let legions of people use the Star Trek moniker and universe, then you jump with a lawsuit on the people that make the most money. So the studios started to try to deflect the anger and consternation of fans and independent producers with dirty tricks like instructing J.J.Abrams to say in an interview that the lawsuit would go away, only for it to continue anyway and finally, with a set of guidelines for independent productions to which the studios would not object. The terms are ridiculous and pretty much break the entire concept of serialized Star Trek. More here, check this out: “The fan production must … not exceed 30 minutes total, with no additional seasons, episodes, parts, sequels or remakes.”


A long time ago I wrote a post about Vodo, what I thought was the future of cool little indie movies and series. Vodo didn't quite live to my expectations, but Kickstarter has taken its place and, since it is not only about movies, but all kinds of projects, it has a larger chance of surviving and changing the way the world works. Not all is rosy, though. There are voices that say that the Kickstarter ecosystem is more about promises than about delivery. Also some governmental and commercial agencies are really displeased with the way money are exchanged directly between customers and producers, bypassing borders, intermediaries like banks and tax collectors and so on. If you combine this with Bitcoin type currency, their job of overseeing all commercial transactions and taking their cut does become more difficult. I sympathise... not really.

I leave you with some videos of the projects above. Think about looking for others that are working on something you want to sponsor. You might be surprised not only by the ingenious ideas that are out there, but also about how it would make you feel to support people with the same passions as yourself.

Underworld Ascendant trailer:


Game play for Hero-U:


The full first episode of Star Trek Continues from the creators themselves:


Prelude to Axanar, a small mockumentary about the events that will be the context of Axanar:

As you know, I have been watching a lot of TV series, some of them good, some of them bad, most of them complete waste of time. As a New Year resolution (yeah, I know, lame) I have decided to create a slot system for TV series. Thus, from now on soon I will switch to a 7/3 method, meaning that I will watch only seven TV shows regularly and reserve three slots for new series, just in order to determine if they are more worth watching than the current ones. If I find a series that needs to go into the magical seven, I have to bump out another. Thus, this is the last post about TV series in this format.



So here is what I have been watching lately:

• The Legend of Korra - The fourth and final season ended recently. It was a nice ending of an otherwise boring or annoying series. I maintain my opinion that The Last Airbender series was levels of magnitude better.
• The Good Wife - The story of the legal troubles of Cary Agos is in the foreground, while Alicia's juggling of family, politics and job reaches ridiculous levels. Some interesting moral conundrums are created, but for me this season is kind of unfulfilling.
• Homeland - The fourth season is focusing on an Afghani terrorist who, with the help of Pakistani intelligence, is wreaking havoc for the Americans. Some interesting dynamics, but far away from the edge of the seat feeling you got from sergeant Brody's story arch.
• Gotham - I really expected this show to suck. Instead we get solid performances and more or less believable plots. It is acceptably dark for events happening in Gotham, as well. The girlfriend part is really annoying me, but the rest is good.
• The Honourable Woman - The show is really dark and depressing. So much, in fact, that I couldn't watch it as much as I probably should. I always have issues with stories that show indomitable and incorruptible heroes, but the alternative extreme, where everything is gloomy and hopeless, is not much better. Just as too much fantasy, if you can't affect reality, then it is just as unengaging.
• The Witches of East End - The series was cancelled before a third season, leaving everything in limbo, with no closure. I think this kind of behavior should be made illegal. No matter how small, the investment of the viewer in a story needs to be repaid. What would you do if you went at the cinema, watched a movie, and it suddenly stopped before the ending, saying that the producers didn't have the money to finish it? Wouldn't you ask for your money back?
• Tyrant - Weird story, kind of hard to swallow, but interesting in many respects. The show has been renewed for a second season.
• Extant - The series will get a second season, but I will not watch it. The show is a clumsy cocktail of sci-fi cliches, all thrown together while expecting Halle Berry to hold them together.
• The Bridge - The series has been cancelled after the second season, while I am still waiting to watch it. I love Diane Kruger, so I probably will watch it someday.
• Ghost in the Shell - Arise - Solid reboot. Too bad it has only four episodes which pretty much retell the same story. Meanwhile, a GiTS movie is in the works, starring Scarlet Johansson
• The Strain - the show is pretty good. I kind of dislike the main character, while I totally love Kevin Durand. The series has been renewed for a second season.
• Longmire - Loved the first seasons, the last was kind of over the top and it showed. The show was cancelled.
• The Lottery - I've decided, more or less by not feeling like watching it at any time, to stop watching it. I haven't really watched enough of it to make a rational impression, but the pilot totally threw me off. Besides, this show was also cancelled.
• Manhattan - The show has been renewed for a second season. I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand I like the story, but at the same time I am a bit put off by the fact that is complete fabrication.
• Legends - The show's concept is a lot cooler than it's implementation. I like Sean Bean's interpretation, but the story is very similar to a zillion cop/government agency shows. They need to focus more on his character, rather than on pointless villains. The show has been renewed for a second season.
• Outlander - They cancelled it! Good actors, wonderful scenery, an interesting story. A great shame.
• The Divide - I've stopped watching it after a while, but I can't tell you why, exactly. I will remove it from my watch list. It had been cancelled, anyway.
• The Knick - Renewed for a second season, this show is great. Good acting, nice depiction of the times, unapologetic critique of pharmaceutical companies and human nature in general. I love it!
• Doctor Who - What are you doing, Capaldi?! I think this season of Doctor Who was the most boring and pointless of them all. Even the Christmas Special was bad. Something has to be done, if it goes like this, Doctor Who will take another decadal hiatus.
• Forever - It is difficult to reject this series outright, because I really like the actors. However the story itself is completely boring. Other than this quirk of the main character that he cannot die, the show is a standard cop thing. You know who else cannot die? Deadpool! Isn't that slightly more interesting? Also the show is likely to get cancelled.
• Hysteria and Hand of God - I love Ron Perlman, but that doesn't mean I liked the Hand of God pilot more than the one from Hysteria. Unfortunately Hand of God will probably get picked up for a series, while Hysteria does not.
• Haven - It becomes increasingly difficult to give up series as you watch them for more and more time. Unfortunately for Haven, which was never good to begin with, the time has come for the "mother of Audrey/Mara" to appear. When family members appear in a story, it usually means they've run out of ideas. The fifth season will get some extra episodes in order to give viewers closure, afterwards it will probably get cancelled. See? This is how you do it when you know you are cancelling a show!
• Z Nation - This SyFy clone of The Walking Dead should have sucked ass. Instead, it is a low budget yet fun show, with a lot of tongue in cheek and also original ideas. Who would have thought SyFy could do something entertaining? If you divide entertainment value to the show budget, Z Nation clearly wins over The Walking Dead.
• Madam Secretary - Oh, the level of obnoxious American propaganda and overall stupidity of this show is off the charts. I refuse to watch this filth. And it appears it will get renewed as well. Ugh!
• Sleepy Hollow - The second season has just started. This show will never be good, just admit it. Its value is purely guilty pleasure.
• The Driver - A BBC One miniseries about a cab driver recruited by the mob, starring David Morrissey and Colm Meaney. The story is not new, the acting is good, but the show... just doesn't do it for me. Sorry.
• Arrow - Oh, Marvel is doing something interesting. Their "phase 3" operation involves spamming the big and small screens with series and films about Marvel superheroes. Now, Arrow is not a great show, and everybody knows it, however they started doing crossover episodes with another new show, The Flash, and probably some of the story ideas will be found or hinted about in the films. Already some things that happened in Captain America movies are found and expanded upon in Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D and Marvel's Agent Carter series. Standalone, Arrow went in the "friends and family" direction, which I despise and personally think it means they lack any original ideas. I know that there are some comics that need to be taken into consideration when creating the scripts, but still.
• South Park - South Park sputtered lately, going from meh! to really funny from episode to episode. The Fremium episode, for example, was really cool. I remain a fan.
• Stalker - Another police procedural with a twist. I kind of like it, but I wouldn't recommend it, if you know what I mean. The show focuses on stalkers, with the small twist that the main character (and member of the task force that fights them) seems to be one himself. Too bad that they broke the tension on that one. I think I like it because of the lead actors.
• Marvel's Agents of Shield - Yes, I know it's an acronym, but I am tired of typing S.H.I.E.L.D. all the time. The show is pretty good! It does go into the whole "dad and mom" territory, but not too much. I will continue watching it.
• Marvel's Agent Carter - Another Marvel TV show, this time about agent Carter, the girlfriend of Captain America. Set in the 1940's, it also has to deal with the sexism of the period. Sexy actress, some interesting characters, this shows promise.
• Our Girl - This is an interesting series, concerning a young girl that joins the British army. She has to deal with a stupid and petty but well meaning family, fighting in the Middle East and also a love triangle (what else when a woman is concerned?). No, seriously, it's better than Twilight.
• Tim and Eric's Bedtime Stories - In an era where big budget horror TV series abound, here is this minimalist standalone episode show. And it is fucking scary! The episodes are very short and involve usually similar worlds to ours. No special effects, monsters or whatever, but the subjects are really unsettling and powerful. A must see!
• Black Dynamite - The second season doesn't seem as funny as the first, but still a lot of fun and makes me learn many things about the American 70's
• The 100 - I couldn't make myself watch the second season. That probably means that I feel it sucks. However I still might watch it...
• Constantine - A series based on the Constantine comics and film. Keanu Reeves has been replaced by a skinny British wanker with illusions of grandeur. Actually, the character is a bit more layered than that, but not by much. I had high hopes for the show, but I have to admit that it is subpar and I don't like it.
• Star Wars Rebels - At first I really hated this animated series. I thought it was too childish. Then I realized that the entire Star Wars franchise is made for little children. Really, this settles the Star Wars/Trek debate for me: the intended audience ages are slightly different, in the sense that Star Trek contains elements that have meaning for adults, as well >:-D.
• Ripper Street - Ripper Street got cancelled, then got revived by Amazon Prime, and it is now at season 3. I have to admit that the direction of the show feels strained right now. I hope it picks up pace, because I really loved the first two seasons
• State of Affairs - Another series that tries to be apologetical to the US foreign policy, it portrays romantic comedy star Katherine Heigl as a CIA executive, married to the son of the US president, who is a black woman, and that has dark secrets threatening to get revealed. I couldn't watch more than two episodes. It is just as surreal as her romantic films: all nice and pink, unless it's about non-Americans. They are bad!
• The Shadow Line - Dark British police/political thriller, it is a miniseries, meaning it ends without having "seasons" and it is pretty amazing. Good acting, interesting story. It came highly recommended and it didn't disappoint.
• Babylon - The series had an interesting pilot a while ago. I liked it, now it got picked up as a series. I want to watch it, but I haven't started yet.
• Marco Polo - a series about the explorer Marco Polo, left by his father at the court of Kublai Khan. I like the actors and the show. The story is also interesting, showing the Mongols as more than invading horseriding barbarians, instead a nation covering half of China and with expansion intentions covering the entire known world.
• The Newsroom - The third season was short and it was meant to give some sort of closure to the ending of the show. However is was so horribly weak, especially the last episode which was made out of fragments of the first two seasons episodes, that I ended up hating it more than I was already hating it. Good riddance!
• The Librarians - Horrible show, trying to serialize an obscure film that wasn't that good to begin with. Don't watch it!
• Scorpion - Leaving aside the alleged basis in reality that the show has, it is another cop show, with "geniuses" helping the FBI. Unlike Numb3rs, which had the same idea, this show is not very good at all. Characters are difficult to empathize with and the whole "normal mom helping the helpers" thing is just... offensive.
• The Musketeers - You will close your browser window in anger for wasting you the time to read so far, but... I like this show. It is silly, has little to do with Dumas' creation, but I enjoy watching it. It probably has to do with the generously endowed beauties that seem all to like D'Artagnan
• Elementary - I really like both Lucy Liu and Johhny Lee Miller, but this show has gone to shit. Having nothing to do with deductive skills now, it turned into yet another police procedural, with brilliant people helping the police.
• Broadchurch - Haven't yet started watching the second season - yes! there is a second season. One that is not the Gracepoint American redo starring David Tennant. I believe Tennant has to feel a bit Doctor Whoish when he is starring in both the American remake and the second season of the original... BTW, Gracepoint got cancelled!
• Ascension - A SyFy miniseries, in the sense that it has only three episodes per season, it involves a ship that was clandestinely sent to another solar system by Kennedy! At first I was all "what?! How can anyone even think of it?", but then the reason for it all got revealed. It also features a *really annoying* little girl that has mental superpowers and, what else?, a government conspiracy. Once you get the hang of it, it is pretty nice and the human branching from a 1950's United States is a nice twist. I am awaiting the second season. Tricia Helfer is almost as cool as in BSG
• Banshee - The third season started and it is just as satisfying as the first two. I don't know what sort of human button this show pushes, but I love it and have absolutely no idea why.

Now all I have to do is choose 7 series out of this list and implement my resolution. This list alone contains 50 series and I haven't been including new series that I haven't started watching and shows that continue in the summer season. It will be difficult, but necessary. If we consider an average of 10 episodes per season, one hour each, that means I use up around 10 hours of my time each season per series. If I remove 40 from my list, that means a staggering 400 hours of time freed per year, more than an hour per day. Of course, I will use this time to watch movies, which don't have an upper bound :) Let's see how it goes.

Last year there were three very good US political shows: Homeland, of course, then The Americans, which presents two KBG agents pretending to be US citizens as the main protagonists, as well as The Assets, which was not that good, but was about Aldrich Ames, the infamous American CIA agent who sold secrets to the Russians. All of these shows were presenting various intelligence services doing their best, and in good conscience, to further the interests of their countries. Motivated people, some you might love, some you might hate, but all doing things for the right reasons. Unfortunately, this year seems to be plagued by disgustingly propagandistic shows like Madam Secretary and State of Affairs, bent on showing the US as the spotless white knights and their enemies as faceless evil villains.

Both seemingly wanting to put forward strong female characters with real power and responsibility, they do it in a sledgehammer way that makes me want to cringe. Madam Secretary is about an ex-CIA, now political university intellectual, woman who gets to become the US Foreign Secretary after an unforeseen accident to the real secretary. Interpreted by the beautiful Téa Leoni, it presents the entire US administration as a bunch of do-gooders, plagued by the moral consequences of using their power and having to often sidestep their conscience in order to save the world from the boogie man. Not only a powerful woman at work, she is also a mother, having to take care of her daughter and solve family problems together with her teacher husband. The entire image portrayed by the series is so artificial that you actually see all the pink dripping from where it was forcefully painted over all the black bits.

State of Affairs just started. The lead of the series is Grey's Anatomy star Katherine Heigl, also a CIA woman with a direct professional and personal connection with the US president, who is a black woman. Her fiance was killed right in front of her by terrorists. He was none other than the president's son. In the first three episodes she has to make decisions to thwart the efforts of: Arab terrorists abducting American doctors and threatening them with decapitation, Russian submarines that steal American secrets by tapping undersea fiber optics and Boko Haram terrorists kidnapping school girls. Meanwhile she is being torn by the fact that the guy who killed her fiance was a former asset of hers. She doesn't tell the president because... she would break her oaths to the CIA. The show has some darkness in it, but it also artificial, as some hidden entity has some proof that would incriminate her and a shady character who might be good or bad or both is circling like a vulture. Soon enough we'll discover her father is somehow involved and her fiance is not dead and he is actually her brother or something.

To their benefit, after exhausting the original material, Homeland is not necessarily worst. Also there is another show which I cannot yet say if I like or not, called The Honourable Woman. Great cast: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Stephen Rea (who is not a werewolf in this one... yet :D ) and others. It is an US/UK coproduction, really atmospheric, really dark, but also a bit slow and obtuse. I may have had my brain affected by the previous shows so I can't yet appreciate the value of this one. It seems to mix real politics with some really heavy stuff like assassinations, the economic battlefront between Israel and Palestine, arms smuggling, etc.

The reason why I wrote this post is because sometimes I feel like the media shows are following too closely the politics of the moment, so close in fact that many a time they seem to be slightly ahead of it. The bad guys are entities that are not yet enemies of the US or that behave in worst ways than their real life counterparts, the people in charge often have to bend the rules in order to remain the good guys, even if officially in reality those people have not (yet) bent those rules, etc. Unlike war movies that try to erase or at least erode the moral debt of nations and people involved in past wars, I feel now there are films and series that inject the apology before the act has even been committed. In a period when the US intelligence apparatus is being attacked from all sides by news reports of their activities, here they are, all these stories about the good ole CIA, ran by intellectual and beautiful women of power who maintain their morality like the good mothers of the nation that they are. Am I paranoid here?

The autumn season for TV shows is beginning, so I am here again to discuss the ones that I have been watching lately.

• The Legend of Korra - This third season was better than others, but we still have to contend with Korra's helplessness. Also I have this nagging feeling that her not being able to do anything and having to be saved by her friends repeatedly has less to do with what people can accomplish together and more with the fact that she is female and therefore must be perceived as in distress. And before you ask me when did I become a feminist, just read on and see what are the shows with female lead characters and what happens to them. The magnificent four villains also were ridiculously strong for people living in solitary confinement for years.
• The Good Wife - Interesting new dynamic of the show. I am quite fascinated by how they achieve this dynamic equilibrium: giving people what they want, but always changing things one way or another, moving characters around, keeping things interesting. If nothing else, this is a brilliantly constructed TV show.
• Homeland - Homeland will have a fourth season, which is to begin soon. They released a sort of recap of what happened so far, but I believe you should skip it as I think it contains spoilers for the upcoming season. Also it conveys nothing of the quality of the first three seasons. This is a good show, you should watch it, even if the lead female character is bipolar and prone to do crazy things in the name of love. See what I mean?
• Gotham - A new superhero series will being shortly. Hurray! This time is about Gotham where every supervillain and superhero is young, at the beginning of their "careers". Why are you throwing an adolescent tantrum, Bruce? Because I'm Batman!
• Ressurection - I've decided not to watch it anymore. It is a pale copy of the original.
• Vikings - I love this show, however it is beginning to change. It started with eager actors doing a cool project, so they all gave their best and the focus was on the way of the Viking. But now, after a while, the actors are acting more like themselves and the focus of the story shifted towards feudal intrigue.
• Suits - The fourth season just ended with Mike back at the law firm and the comic relief guy, Louis Litt, leaving the company. I thought the actor got tired of playing a ridiculous man that doesn't seem to do anything right, but the ending of the season goes a different direction.
• Black Box - As expected, the show was cancelled.
• Halt and Catch Fire - A lot of emotion, a lot of tension, a lot of drama. Of course it got renewed for the second season, even if it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
• Under the Dome - I kept watching and watching and watching until I realized this is the new Lost! Every episode something happens that is completely implausible and unrelated to anything in the previous episodes. I will not watch it anymore.
• Crossbones - This is a well done show, with good acting and high production values. However it relates to pirates and not even the fun ones. Imagine watching a TV show about drug lords and instead of high powered automatic rifle fights you would see the accountants doing the job of inventorying the proceeds. Black Sails is like that and then they insert some artificial personal drama to spice it up.
• The Honourable Woman - Described as "The daughter of an assassinated Zionist arms dealer seeks to legitimise the family business while righting the wrongs done to them in the past.", it is a strange little show. I started watching it, but then I stopped. It is heavy, well acted, good production values. I wasn't in the mood for it for a long time, though. The premise is nothing if not brave.
• The Leftovers - I just couldn't watch it anymore. The entire show was about people feeling depressed and/or suicidal because they were not among the 2% of people who magically vanished. Depressing and pointless.
• The Witches of East End - I guess it's like The Originals with witches instead of vampires. I keep watching it, though, even if I don't know why. Probably someone placed a spell on me.
• Tyrant - Speaking of brave TV show premises, this is a show about an Arab-American, who left his birth country because his father was an ass - and the country's tyrannical ruler - who returns there after his father dies. I like the acting and the premise. What I don't like is the condescending viewpoint of the script: the smart educated moral good looking American comes and teaches his older brother how to rule the country based on American principles. But the ending of the first season implies that this is not what it is going to happen at all. Could it be that it will be the series to show Americans that all tyrants are manufactured, more or less, by circumstances? Check out this quote: "CIA guy: The US is not in the business of regime change. Al Fayed: Say that again with a straight face"
• Taxi Brooklyn - A weird premise for a show that doesn't know what it wants to be: a comedy, a car thing or a police procedural. The idea is that a police detective (female and hot, but with daddy issues, of course) loses her right to drive. Instead, she coopts a French immigrant taxi driver to move her around. He serves as the comic relief most of the time, but also, probably, as the male reason why anything gets done. Decided not to watch it anymore for several reason: the premise, the scripting and the acting being at least three of them.
• Extant - Female astronaut returns after a solo mission of more than nine months. And she is pregnant. Wonderful premise, however it has several things that are not going for the show: the main actress is Halle Berry, who I completely dislike. Then there is the electronic boy story arch (her husband and she have an artificial son that the husband created) which is either a good subject for another series or completely out of place here. And finally, the "corporate conspiracy" arch, where the guy from Helix is the bad guy. I don't know, imagine Gothica in space, with a little of AI sprinkled over for fun. Ugh!
• The Bridge - Haven't watched any of the second season episodes, waiting for the wife to see it with me. I will wait for a long time more, I believe.
• Tokyo Ghoul - I usually make separate blog posts with anime, but this one was nothing that deserves too much attention. Hybrid man and ghoul (something like a vampire that also likes to eat the flesh), the main character is a whinny boy who gets stepped on by just about everybody. In the end he is captured and tortured a lot, which makes him more aggressive and less whinny. But still it's nothing too interesting.
• Ghost in the Shell - Arise - the modern reboot of GITS, it is not bad. Unfortunately there are only four OVA episodes, each one released months from the previous one. Still waiting for the fourth one. I like the show a lot, but then I am biased, since I love anything related to the Ghost in the Shell universe.
• The Strain - Guillermo del Toro wrote a horror book with vampires and now he is creating the TV show based on the book. So far I like the series, although I've already read the book and a lot of the surprise is gone. It's brutal, with vampires that are neither sexy nor romantic, but just want to drink all your blood and answer unconditionally to their Master. The Master is even scarier. It is not brilliant, but certainly beats The Living Dead.
• Blood Lad - Horribly stupid anime. This guy who is a prince in the magical world of demons accidentally meets a human girl who then gets killed. He pledges his support to help her ghost find a body again. Just boring.
• Longmire - The second season is a lot darker, but for all the wrong reasons, if you ask me. The things I liked in Longmire were to see him being uncompromisingly moral, even if he appears lonely and withdrawn to everybody around him. This season everybody connected to him has to face a metaphorical demon or ten, including Longmire himself. It felt pushed too far, I think.
• The Lottery - Just like Extant, The Lottery is a sci-fi series centered around a woman. Naturally, the only things she can possibly do is worry about children. You see, for some reason no one is able to sire children anymore. A scientist manages to impregnate 100 embryos and there will be a lottery to give the children to 100 couples. Lots of government conspiracies and child protecting going around. I may watch the rest of the episodes, but the pilot didn't convince me at all.
• Manhattan - A show about the development of the first atomic bomb. Its take is interesting, focusing on the personal quirks, on the politically incorrect, on the compromises and mistakes, on scientists, military and their spouses alike. What I found fascinating is showing how the obnoxious arrogance of someone truly driven and brilliant is almost forced, as a defense mechanism against getting pulled down by the mediocre. Don't get me wrong, it is not another show about brilliant assholes a la Dr House and does not apologize gratuitous arrogance. Instead it shows how vital it is in the way to success. Given that, the character of Winter is so bloody annoying that I wonder why anyone would put up with such a guy and not kick his ass or just shoot him directly. Perhaps that is another strength of the show: describing how close to failure for some many different reasons the Manhattan Project truly was. It was a government project after all.
• The Assets - The series ended with episode 8. In that sense, it is actually a miniseries, as the entire premise of the show comes to an end with the final episode. I wrote before that it got cancelled really soon and I believe that the reason is that all characters are really unlikable. Also, since it is based on a book that describes a real event that a lot of Americans know how it went down, the interest was probably small. Also, at the end of the show you realise something: spies are really boring.
• Legends - A TV series for the sole purpose of keeping Sean Bean alive! :) Sean Bean is this deep undercover agent with a lot of prefabricated "legends", or fake lives, that he uses to infiltrate criminal or terrorist organizations. This leads him to have identity crises, even questioning if any of his lives, including the real one, are actually real. Sexy Ali Larter is his "handler", which can't hurt.
• Outlander - Is this an attempt at a romantic Yankee in King Arthur's Court? A 1945 nurse is thrown back in time in 1743 Scotland. Her healing skills are helping her join this band of rebellious Scots and experience the life there. The synopsis of the show didn't give me much hope for it, but after watching all the episodes so far it got me hooked. The acting is good and the script is well written. I hope it doesn't deteriorate on the way. It is also intriguing that she has 200 years of extra knowledge, but she doesn't suddenly share antibiotics with the world or try to improve muskets or whatever. Being a woman in a sort of prisoner situation serves to explain that, but how long can it go on like that?
• The Divide - About a woman that works for an organization that tries to help the wrongly accused in the US justice system. There is a coverup, a conspiracy, White men wrongly accused of killing a Black family, politics, etc. It started as intriguing, but outside the twist that is probably looming, I don't think there is anything really interesting to me in the show. Too political, I guess.
• The Knick - This is one of the good ones. A look at the professional and personal lives of the staff at New York's Knickerbocker Hospital during the early part of the twentieth century, it is directed by Soderbergh, starring Clive Owen and it is both brutal and truthful. A must see for all the new age assholes that like to think medicine was better at that time.
• Doctor Who - Season 8 with Capaldi is both interesting and dull. It was supposed to be darker, more intense, but it isn't really. What it is is confusing, though. I didn't like the pilot, but I enjoyed the second and third episodes. I don't know, let's see.
• Forever - Another "special" person helping the police. Why?! Oh, why?!! This time it's about a guy who cannot die. Every time he dies, he appears somewhere in water, naked. A single, sexy, female police detective partners with him in order to solve crime. I like the actor, though, even if the script is eerily similar to any of the shows in the genre out there. Let's see how it goes.
• Intruders - "Jack Whelan is a former LAPD officer who is asked to investigate some strange occurrences. He tries to find answers, but he's stonewalled at every turn. Baffled, he continues until he starts to concentrate his search around a secret society that chases immortality by seeking refuge in the bodies of others." The cast seems good. I still have to actually watch it, though.
• Hysteria - It concerns the idea that people can get afflictions from social media. A perfect reason for Internet control! :) Anyway, the title is perfect as it seems the cause of the problem is hysteria, while the reaction of the people is mass hysteria. The Hannibal Lecter beginning, though, may either be the sign of bad writing or of some ingenious plot device. Wait and see.
• Hand of God - Ron Perlman? Sign me up! I've seen the pilot though and it's kind of weird. You get this judge who's son just killed himself. He did it because someone raped his wife and made him watch. And so the judge gets born again in a shady church by a preacher who is an ex actor and a con artist. Then the judge starts hearing the voice of God. Some things clearly get lost in translation, because He is always putting Ron Perlman in the situation to be a total ass who everybody thinks is insane. Oh, except the insane people, who think he is the new Solomon. But is he? Weird, huh?

Well, a la prossima!

BBC's show The Sky at Night did a coverage of the Rosetta mission, called How to Catch a Comet. It is the standard popular science show, with a lot of fake enthusiasm from the reporters and simple language and explanations, but for people who read this blog entry and wonder what the hell Rosetta is, it does the job. The fat black reporter is really annoying, and not because she's black, but because she feels completely fake whenever she says anything. Other than that the show is decent.

You get to learn about comet 67P, the Rosetta probe features and mission, walk around ESA, talk to scientists and even see a how-to about photographing comets - it was funny to see a shooting star in the night sky while the guy was preparing his camera and talking in the video. Of course, for me the show stopped just when it was getting interesting. I know you can't do much in 29 minutes, but still. I hope they do follow-up shows on Rosetta and I can't wait for November when the lander module will try to grapple the comet and land.

Just in case I've stirred your interest, here are some links that can cover the subject in a lot more detail:
ESA Euronews: Comet Hunters: Rosetta's race to map 67P - 8 minutes and a half of Euronews report from 11 August.
ESAHangout: How do we journey to a comet? - Google Hangout from ESA explaining the mission. It's one hour long and it dates from the 26th of June. Many other videos about Rosetta can be found on the ESA channel.
A playlist about Rosetta from Mars Underground. The most interesting is this video, published on 11 Aug 2014. It lasts an hour and a half and shows the first mission images and science results.
Comets - A wonder to Behold, A continuing Stream of Surprises - The Beauty and the Danger, not about Rosetta, but one hour and a half about comets. The documentary is trying to justify a controversial theory about the electric nature of comets. It is well done with a lot of proof, but I know too little about the theory so I can't recommend it. Interesting, though.

The summer season is fast approaching and there have been a lot of changes in the TV series arena. As usual, the red indicates shows that I don't recommend and green the ones that I recommend.

• Elementary - I was correct, there was an entire arch of the story regarding the brother of Sherlock, French mafia, MI6, moles, etc. It lacked subtlety and it was mostly boring. How come normal murders are so much more interesting than archvillain trickery?
• The Tomorrow People (2013) - the show was cancelled in May. I can't say I am sorry, though. It was typical young adolescent idiocy.
• The Originals - I am however completely not happy for NOT cancelling this crap.
• Marvel's agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - Yay! Hail Shield! Good guys win again. And also Samuel L. Jackson appears in the end season, bringing with him what appear to be Shield agent clones? Did he steal them from Star Wars?
• Ripper Street - Filming for the Amazon online channel was supposed to begin in May. I think it has.
• Babylon - No news yet, but there are certainly no news of cancellation, so I guess we will see the next episodes being released later this year.
• Banshee - Third season confirmed.
• Bitten - Another show that was renewed for a second season for no apparent reason. It is just awful.
• Black Sails - Renewed for a second season, I partly like it. It is at least well done, with decent acting and an eye for detail.
• From Dusk Till Dawn - As a funny commenter observed: in an incredible moves the owners of the El Rey network renew the show produced by El Rey for a second season. I understand the difficulty of translating a movie into a series... wait, there is a sequel, too? Wait, there is a From Dusk Till Dawn third part? I've never heard of them before. Nevermind.
• Helix - I think I got it now. When a show makes an effort to really suck ass, they renew it. It's like an executive learned behaviour to promote ass sucking. Renewed for a second season, Helix is the poster child of bad movie making.
• House of Cards - It's good that I had to write this review, because it reminded me to watch the second season. Still haven't done it, though, which indicates either a problem with me or with the show. Probably me. Again, Kevin Spacey can't go wrong.
• Intelligence - Amazingly enough, a show that I sort of enjoyed, without liking it too much, was cancelled. Very *intelligent* move...
• Ressurection - I really tried to make myself watch this show, but I just procrastinated for a really long time. It says something about my feelings for this show. I was really waiting for the second season of the French one and the American remake doesn't do it for me.
• Star Crossed - Teenage sci fi show about alien romance? Really beautiful actors, incredibly stupid script and acting. I just can't believe it was cancelled. It ruins my theory, because it trully sucked ass.
• The 100 - The show started really well, predictably degenerated in artificial drama that had no place in the series, while going soft on the problems that someone would meet in that exact situation. Suddenly 100 teenagers from space have a functional colony, fight "grounders" for no good reason and keep alternating between screwing, screwing over and screwing up. Typical teenager, one might say, but their parents on "The Ark" are even worse. The show was renewed for a second season. The season finale, though, didn't give me much hope. They added two (and a half, one might say) human factions to the mix in just the one episode
• The After - The pilot got positive reviews to they ordered it to series. I am not holding my breath.
• The Americans - I liked the second season, although the arch with the American mole that turns homicidal and discovers the entire KGB operation by himself was really ridiculous. It was a nice touch about the murder of the KGB agents, also what happened to Nina and the reactions of the people. However the Moscow verdict makes no sense.
• The Red Road - Ah, maybe exceptions just confirm a rule. Another crappy show that gets renewed for a second season.
• True Detective - The first season was great, so there will be new seasons. New actors and new stories, though, for each season.
• Vikings - Politics keep interfering with nice raiding and pillaging. That is the moment in history when things started going downwards and global warming started. True fact!
• Suits - The fourth season just started. They try to keep it exciting, but the feel is gone.
• Continuum - The third season went all over the place. The season finale has Cameron cooling it off with a new boyfriend from (yet) another timeline, then another mysterious traveler from a very far future that seems to have started the Freelancer cult, Liber8 split off after realizing they do more harm than good (while each character in the group starts to get a "nice" shine on them) and finally the Freelancers getting mowed down. But then, they never really die, do they?
• Crisis - For me the scene when a stupid kid sees Francis killing a kid and then tells all of the others that the kidnappers made him do it has done it for me! Oh, or the one when he forces a Chinese spy to unleash a virus that effectively destroys the Internet in order to gain time. Where do you get this idiocy from? BTW, it was cancelled.
• Da Vinci's Demons - Enemies get together, they eventually run into Mayas on America and, of course, traces of DaVinci's parents, then they return just in time to stave off the invasion of Italy by the Turkish navy which just appeared out of nowhere. Not only will this be renewed, but it won prizes! It is a guilty pleasure that I like it, most of the time, I have to admit.
• Turn - Interesting show. It lacks something, probably sympathetic characters. I really don't see myself liking any of them, including the generously bosomed women who have casual sex all the time. That is saying something.
• The Crimson Field - Was it cancelled because it featured female main characters? Or because it was well acted? I just don't know.
• Silicon Valley - Elon Musk accused the show of showing the wrong weirdness of Silicon Valley. I don't know how things are there, but to me it feels like he probably is right. A lot of crap about sex, race, manhood, geekiness seen as emasculating, random genius, etc. For me the scene when in one night the guy develops what his entire team failed to in five months has done it for me. I like parts of the show, but I don't think I liked the show overall.
• Bad Teacher - I could stand literally 2 minutes of it. Then I stopped and deleted everything. It is the type of ha ha ha sitcom that brings nothing.
• Black Box - A movie about a brilliant woman psychiatrist. Of course she is very sexually active, a bit insane and a sexy redhead. It's basically Doctor House meets Unforgettable. I bet it will be cancelled because she is a crazy broad and only male characters are allowed to be brilliant. Plus she is annoying. Nice ass, though.
• Californication - The seventh season will be the last, thank you! They butchered a lovely idea that was fantastic in the first two seasons and let it die in agony for the last five, blood and guts pouring out of it until nothing but a boring husk remained. Duchovny was my god at the beginning of the show.
• Deadbeat - comedy about a deadbeat seeing ghosts and solving their problems. I actually commented on Imdb (I usually don't for TV series) to warn people off it. It is offensively boring and formulaic and completely not funny.
• Dracula - It was a weird reinvention of Dracula, but one that I kind of liked. Guess what! They cancelled it! Perhaps the trick is to not like anything that I like and like everything that I dislike. In this way they will renew the shows that I hate to love, rather than the ones that I love to hate. Yes, that's a good plan.
• Game of Thrones - Thank God for Peter Dinklage! One realizes how tedious the books are when they watch this well done series that compresses whole books in half a day of video and you still feel nothing happens. And then someone dies and the episode ends.
• Halt and Catch Fire - Imagine Mad Men, but with a real psychopath as the main character, the field changed from advertising to personal computer manufacturing and a clone of Angelina Jolie's persona from the movie Hackers as the "tech genius". So, in other words, with more Mad, and less Men. I really dislike the main character and I don't see where this is going. Hardware is not glamorous, software is! *cough* *cough*
• In the Flesh - I really liked the first season, but I waited to see episodes from the new one as well. Somehow I can't bring myself to start watching it again. I will, though, soon.
• Penny Dreadful - Ok, it is a horror series that mixes in all the Victorian themes like Jack the Ripper, vampires, werewolves, tuberculosis, Frankenstein, Dorian Gray, etc. But it's well done and it has a nice cast: Eva Green, Timothy Dalton, Billie Piper, Josh Hartnett and others.
• Prey - John Simm is a detective in this British drama, and he is framed for the murder of his wife and son by a mysterious man. He is a... fugitive from the law trying to solve his own case. Kind of bland and hard to believe in this day and age. The Fugitive was much more credible because not only movies were silly at that time, but also most people. Now we have evolved quite a lot *cough* *I should stop with these asterisks everywhere* *cough*
• Quirke - Gabriel Byrne is the lead in this British miniseries, playing a doctor that somehow is connected to everyone in the city and where the problems usually stem from one member of his extended family or another. Feels like In Treatment set in the past and in which Byrne is both doctor and patient. I think it could have been more. As such, it's a little bit annoying and slow.
• Salem - It is still the season of the witch. Salem is a new show, but I haven't started watching it. The premise seemed a little bit forced.
• The Wil Wheaton Project - Wesley from Star Trek is hosting a show that is not a TV series. It is a humorous take on the latest sci-fi news. You might not know it, but Wheaton is very active online in all kind of geeky indie shows, together with his friend Felicia Day (The Guild). I found it a little too satirical, but I liked it.
• Under the Dome - the boring and annoying show has been renewed for a second season that will air at the end of the month.
• Crossbones - Pirates! Again! This time starring John Malkovich. Haven't started watching yet.
• Fargo - Based on a Coen brothers movie with the same name, it stars Billy Bob Thornton and has the brothers as executive producers. Haven't started watching yet.
• From There to Here - British drama covering life from the Manchester bombing up to 2000. Haven't started watching yet.

That's about it so far.

Time for another TV series watch list. Let's see what has changed in the last four months!

• The Good Wife - This is a show that I watch with my wife, so I had to wait for her to watch it with me, but, after a short break, The Good Wife is back again. Pardon the pun, couldn't help myself. Towards the end of the season we see a very important character die off. I don't want to spoil it, but it is interesting to see how it will continue from here.
• The Walking Dead - The new formula of the show is that, after running from the other group of humans and a lot of zombies, the group has split. So each episode we see what stupid people do when they are all alone. Well, stupid things, of course. They did go for the shock value with one of the characters going all psychotic and killing another, but it is still stupid. How can they maintain the idea of the zombie threat, when they are just slow, moaning corpses, that walk in small groups? What happened with the migrating hordes? The end of the season finds everyone reunited, but facing another threat.
• Arrow - Manu Bennet's character comes to the foreground, as well as a lot of others, that are less interesting. I really like Manu Bennet, but his character lacks consistency.
• Elementary - After defeating Moriarty and making a complete ass out of inspector Lestrade and after they showed the human side of Sherlock, it's kind of hard to distinguish Elementary from all the other police procedurals out there. They are trying to let Lucy Liu's character get more of the spotlight, which goes to further erode the mythos that makes Sherlock... well, Sherlock! A mysterious story arch regarding his brother seems to be looming, too, which probably means that when we will see Sherlock's dad appear, we will know the show is close to an end.
• The Tomorrow People (2013) - after a direct confrontation between the main character and his evil uncle, right after finding out his mother also has superpowers, we get to see The Founder in a different light, only for him to suddenly assert control and play the nice guy. A lot of melodrama in this show about people with superpowers who can't seem to be able to leave their country and live happily in a tropical island somewhere.
• The Originals - Out of boredom I continue to watch this on fast forward. Petty feudal schemes and plots, brotherly love and infighting, a lot of posturing. Each episode has about 5 minutes of interesting material, if you discount the beautiful girls, and that is what I am watching.
• Marvel's agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - They finally find the secret of agent Coulson's survival and start a new arch of searching for the origin of the alien corpse with magical blood. Meanwhile, they save Sky by using the same procedure. I can't wait for her to turn blue or something. The Hydra enters the equation and we find the identity of The Clairvoyant, while a member of the team is suddenly revealed to be a sleeper agent.
• Killer Women - Last blog entry I wrote about this suggested the show would quickly be cancelled, because Hollywood doesn't know how to make non pornographic shows around female characters. I also think the public (especially in the US) doesn't really like women in positions of power in their fantasies. I was right. The show is gone.
• Ripper Street - The show might still have a chance. According to news, the series might be continued on Amazon.
• Sherlock - I don't really know what this show is about anymore. Sherlock is unhinged, probably psychotic, his friend has some real issues being friends with this guy and Sherlock's brother is probably the worse of them all, including Moriarty. Who, BTW, didn't die either.
• Babylon - A new British series, codirected and produced by Danny Boyle, about a woman PR person trying to direct and improve communication from the police department to the public. The premise is not that great, but I really like the main actress, Brit Marling, and the show could become a lot more.
• Banshee - A new season with a lot of people dying. Lots! The show continues to keep one viscerally on the edge, even if what happens doesn't make a lot of sense. It's like the Smells Like Teen Spirit of TV shows. I love it, I just don't know why. Funny enough, my father, the man who is always making fun of my choice of entertainment, also likes it!
• Bitten - The incredibly beautiful Laura Vandervoort is a werewolf. Unfortunately, she is not the only one. She is part of a pack of pompous asses who are being harassed by a pack of psychopath werewolves. I mean that literally: someone turns psychopaths into werewolves in order to exact their revenge on said pack. The series is incredibly boring. Not even Laura's naked shots can't save this show. Wooden acting, bad premise, inconsistencies at every step. Ugh!
• Black Sails - It's pirate season! A show about pirates that has some very interesting characters and some cool ideas, not with cliched drunkards spouting "Arghh" every sentence. Unfortunately it really drags on. It might pick up the pace soon, though. Without the need for additional artificial drama, hopefully.
• Dilbert - I watched the Dilbert animated cartoons until I couldn't anymore. Some episodes are really funny, but I don't think the show makes justice to the comic strip. But if you are an engineer in some corporation, it should be very therapeutic :)
• Fat Tony and Co - An Australian drama about a real drug lord that the police tried to catch. It is kind of boring, though. The guy is just a businessman who happens to deal in drugs. Other than that he is a normal bloke. His family and mates are the same. The police people are normal people, too. It kind of makes them all alike and their conflict meaningless.
• Flemming, the Man Who Would Be Bond - A four episode British miniseries about the life of Ian Flemming, the writer of the James Bond books. Charismatic characters and a good show. You should see it, especially if you liked the James Bond books and/or movies.
• From Dusk Till Dawn - Yes! The series version of the film with the same name has finally come to life. A vampiric cult of people believing in strange gods, bank robbers on the run, a disillusioned priest on a journey of rediscovery with his annoying adolescent kids, an angry ranger set on revenge, there are a lot of interesting characters. The story, though, kind of drags on, with no relief in sight. This might have worked for a movie, but for a series, you have to give something in every episode, you can't just finalize every story arch at the end of a season
• Helix - Oh, man! How can you make a show about viral outbreaks in an Antarctic station and mess it up so completely?! To borrow a page from the Romanian comic Pidjin, I think SyFy are hard at work making science-fiction fiction. I can't think of anything good about this show, except the Japanese actor, Hiroyuki Sanada, who is always good, but who I think made a horrible career move agreeing to play in this shit.
• Hinterland - Welsh police procedural. Dark, centered around small communities and their secrets. A kind of desolate cross between Midsommer Murders and Broadchurch. I like it.
• House of Cards - Season 2 is out. Haven't watched it yet, as this is also a show that I watch with my wife, but I can't imagine Kevin Spacey messing up.
• Intelligence - Another US government agency is saving the world. This time is Cyber Command. They implanted a chip in the head of the only guy from Lost who wasn't too annoying and now he can hack things instantly, connect to databases, etc., while also keeping his Special Forces skills and macho charm. I like the show, even if it is kind of stupid, mostly because of the charisma of the main actor, Josh Holloway, and that of John Billingsley, who plays the scientist. The condescending bitch that is the partner and protector of the headchip guy, a good looking girl who acts like a log, is subtracting points out of it all, no matter how tight her pants are.
• Looking - A show about gay men who was touted as being not stereotypical and actually showing real gay life. I watched the first episode and, if that is real gay life then it is really... errr.. gay! As in boring. Imagine trying to be interested in Sex in the City starring hairy men. Ugh! Also, it looked really filled with gay clichees to me. But maybe I just don't know what I am talking about. I didn't like the show at all.
• Ressurection - Remember when I recommended you a nice French series about dead people suddenly appearing live and well in their hometown? The Americans cloned Les Revenants into their own version. The script is not exactly the same, though, it's a real adaptation. All I can say is that what made me feel curious and connected to the characters in Les Revenants is missing in Ressurection. And why did they have to center it all around an FBI agent? Not enough cop shows? It may be too early to tell if the show is going to get better or not, so I will keep the watch.
• Star Crossed - Oooh, another sci-fi show! This one is about an alien race that crashlands on Earth and we decide to keep them all in a concentration camp while haters roam free and try to kill them. Then an integration program is born, where Atrian teenagers are accepted into a human high school. Then it turns into a sort of Twilight meets Defiance via the Black liberation movement. It's not horrible, but it is certainly bad.
• The 100 - Yet another sci-fi show about adolescents. But this one started nice enough. People live in a giant space station because they nuked the Earth. The series starts with 100 teenager death row convicts sent to the planet to ascertain if it is survivable. Lord of the Flies meets Elysium, maybe? The first episodes are intriguing, even if they already showed crass leaps in logic. I hope this one will be good, although I remember hoping the same about Lost and look how it turned out.
• The After - And another sci-fi. Or so I thought. Something bad happens and some people get trapped in a building parking. They manage to escape and reach the house of one of them. Then it gets freaky when they realize they are all born on the seven of March and meet a demon like creature with a tatooed body that encompasses the individual tattoos of all of the people in the group. Also the prostitute said something about the book of Revelations, so I think it is actually a bad religious apocalypse show. Let's see where it goes.
• The Assets - I first thought it was an alternative to The Americans, a show about the CIA agent Aldrich Ames, who willingly became a double agent for the KGB. The show was nice, no special effects, no artificial drama, but from the beginning it didn't seem like the TV network wanted the show to begin with. After just two episodes they cancelled it. I can't say I loved it, but it was certainly better than a lot of crap that keeps sticking to the TV screens these days.
• The Americans - The second season had begun. I like the show a lot. Both main characters are fantastic in their roles and make it all believable. Their annoying daughter started to suspect things and someone just killed some undercover KGB agents and no one knows who. Keri Russell does a very good job jumping from Felicity to KGB agent, while Matthew Rhys comes out very well as a chameleon capable of impersonating just about anyone.
• The Musketeers - You can't have pirates and not have musketeers. Loosely based on the Dumas books, this is a show about D'Artagnan being the coolest guy that ever lived and everybody taking an interest in him. Peter Capaldi is cardinal Richelieu. Strange choice, considering he is also Doctor Who, but very befitting the role. The show is not bad, but it feels so incredibly fake. I hope it will get better soon.
• The Red Road - Jason Momoa plays in this as a bad ass native American who blackmails a cop in order to maintain his drug running operation. He plays well the role, looking all angry and violent and remorseless, but the movie subject is terribly boring. It feels like the type of show that gets cancelled and I personally have decided not to watch it anymore.
• True Detective - An HBO project that features Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey as cops in a God forsaken region of the US where religious fanatics and child rapists (sometimes the same person) roam free. Complex characters, eight episode seasons, very good acting and an interesting story make this one of the best shows around. It's not all rosy, though. In the first season more than three quarters was suspense and exposition. You always feel something will be going on, but it takes entire episodes before something does. It will be interesting to see if they continue with other seasons and, if they do, will they retain the same actors. The story arch has pretty much ended with the last episode of the first season.
• Vikings - Season 2 has begun. Political intrigue, a new wife, backstabbing and a king of Britain who doesn't run with his tail between his legs at the sight of vikings. This season certainly keeps things interesting.
• Suits - The series has never been about the law, not really, but about ritual. It was fun for a while, but every ritual, no matter how bizarre or exaggerated for dramatic purposes, can maintain outside interest only for so long. And the few law related references that made it interesting to me now are almost gone, together with the cowboyish feel of the show that made it seem less serious and more fun. Perhaps because all male characters in the series got hitched and their wings properly clipped off.
• Continuum - Weird new direction of the third season of the series, with collapsing timelines, people meeting themselves and "the freelancers" being a cult like do gooder agency that protects time. I don't know yet if I like it, but it feels more confusing and less fun and sci-fi.
• Crisis - A bunch of rich kids, including the son of the US president, are taken hostage by a shadowy mastermind who has thought of all possible outcomes before long before the actual execution and then uses the parents to achieve his goals, including more kidnapping of kids, I guess. Then there is this ex-cop Secret Service rookie black man who is set on finding the kids. So it's a kind of Die Hard, if you think about it. However the shadowy mastermind seems to have some moral agenda, revealing the evils of CIA, while the poor investigative agents are torn between their duty, their sympathy for the kids and their parents and the incredible stupid decisions people take in the name of their kids. I know Americans have this cult of parenthood and the need to do anything for your children, but too much is too much!
• Da Vinci's Demons - The Pazzi's are trying to wrestle control of Florence from the Medici's, with Rome's involvement. That leads to some deaths, rearranging of loyalties and now both Da Vinci and Reario are heading towards the Americas on different ships, using a map of the location, only 40 years before Columbus blindly went to find the continent and with the help of none other than Amerigo Vespucci, who wasn't born yet. Nor was Da Vinci's friend, Nicolo Machiavelli, for that matter. Confusing? Only if you try to align the series with history.
• Turn - This is a show about the first American spy ring, during the Revolutionary War. The first episode was rather slow, but it needed to set up the story and it showed good production values. Due to the actual nationality of the first Americans, most of the actors are British or Scottish, even if it is an AMC series. British acting with American money sounds good to me.
• The Crimson Field - A six episode British miniseries about nurses in the war. The main action happens in a field hospital where four new volunteer nurses came to help out. It seems pretty decent and I already eagerly await the second episode.
• Silicon Valley - An American sitcom about Silicon Valley, created by Mike Judge. Six programmers live in the same house when one of them invents an ingenious algorithm. Being an HBO series, with only eight episodes in the first season and created by Judge, I have high expectations from it.

I've reached the last of the animes in the Studio Ghibli series that I wanted to watch (again) and it was nice that this one got to be the final one. You see, before that I had watched The Cat Returns and I rated it mediocre, so unlike the beautiful movies from the same collection. Whisper of the Heart seems to be the film designed to redeem it.

The story is that of a young girl who likes to read a lot of books. She notices that most of the books that she borrowed from the library had the same name on their library cards, a boy that she didn't know. Coincidentally she follows a fat cat, apparently named Muta, to the shop of an old man who has a beautiful doll of a cat in a suit: the Baron of Gikkingen. You guessed it, two characters from The Cat Returns. And behold, the old man is the grandfather of the boy that kept borrowing the same books.

Whisper of the Heart seems to just take beautiful elements from other Ghibli animes and bring them all together in a wonderful union. The windy hills of Tokyo, which still has beauty despite the expansion of the city. The young girl who is not only smart and sensible, but also ambitious and kind. The family who is sometimes annoying and overbearing, but that in the end is the source of support for the development of the child it nurtures. The indolent fat cat :)

And then the love story, something that springs from common interests and a karmic connection between two people who seem to have been meant for each other. But there is more. They don't just click and that's it; they get motivated and energized to be the best of what they can be in order to honor the relationship in which they enter. In a way, it is a continuation of the warm and supporting family model from which both protagonists come.

One of the scenes in the anime was so funny to my wife that she spoke the Japanese words from it for a week. What a wonderful thing to have a film that not only makes me want to be a better man, but that already does make me be so by connecting me stronger to the one I love. And I watched it on Valentine's day, too! How can I rate it any less than with a perfect 10?

Returning to The Cat Returns, it somehow felt to me that the story linked to it also from the perspective of the ever aspiring artist; the rough and unpolished plot there sounds a lot like the story Shizuku writes, her first but one in many, the stone that will allow her to get to the skill and experience to do this story, which is so much better and complete. It does seem that way to me, since I watched The Cat Returns first, but chronologically Whisper of the Heart was made seven years earlier.

Now I don't know exactly in which proportion is Hayao Miyazaki responsible for the great quality of this film and story and how much Hiiragi Aoi, the writer of the original manga, but I heartily recommend the end result. I may be exaggerating, but this could be the best anime Studio Ghibli ever did, and that is saying much.

I can't say that Neko no ongaeshi had a great effect on me. The animation was OK, the story was like a fairy tale, but it lacked something, a special feeling that I was expecting to have.

The plot is that a young girl saves a cat from death and finds herself uncomfortably rewarded by the entire hidden nation of cats with a trip to their kingdom, a marriage to their prince and a free transformation into a feline. She doesn't want this, but helped by new friends, she manages to escape. I am not really spoiling anything here. It wasn't like at any moment I felt that she might be in real danger, which I think was the biggest flaw of the story. Another anime from Studio Ghibli, Spirited Away, features a much more beautiful and scary foray in a magical world and one of the novels of Clive Barker, The Thief of Always, brings the required tension and fear that is missing in this film.

Another issue I had with this is that, other than eat mice and fish, the cats behaved exactly like humans, missing entire opportunities to delight the viewer with so many catty things. They don't use their claws, they don't do acrobatics, they live in a feudal community and are loyal to each other. The whole concept of a feline kingdom passed right by the creators of the anime.

My conclusion is that this is a film for very little children or a lazily made one. It's not that I didn't enjoy watching it, but was completely bland, devoid of any inspiration that would make it rise above average.

I always liked animes from Studio Ghibli., but until now I didn't quite get why. It is because they have calm. Everything today has to be over the top, flashy, fast. Ghibli stories take their time, they feature normal people with normal desires and rhythms. behaving normally.

The Ocean Waves is about a cute girl moving from Tokyo to a provincial highschool in Kochi. Everybody is curious about her, but she is a loner and quite rude. Two friends are both interacting with her, but it's never clear what's in their hearts. Slowly, but surely, we start to understand each of the actors and the story comes full circle after graduation, at the first highschool reunion.

I've learned so much about Japanese culture from animes, but the ones from Ghibli make me understand the people. The stories often have what is missing in not only animation, but real actor movies as well: people that you can empathise with, because they are like you (or rather, like you would like to be, but not in infantile fantasies, but in your hopeful dreams).

Really nice movie, it certainly worth seeing.

When I first started watching the movie and I saw the way it was drawn - colored pencil style, I thought it is some sort of children thing and I would not like it. But the minimalistic animation works very well for this film, which shows the everyday life of a Japanese family. They are not very smart, good looking or have anything special. They are forgetful, self centered and lazy. But they have each other and they are happy. That's a beautiful message in a world dominated by heroes, celebrity and egotism.

One might not like one thing, that the story is merely descriptive. There is no "end" to it, just a funny enumeration of family moments. I enjoyed it, though. The speech at the beginning, from the woman advising the newly weds what life is and how they should spend it together is both funny, mostly true and descriptive of the rest of the film. The part with "life is hard when you are alone, but even two losers can go through life if they are together" cracked me up, as well as the part with "have children, it will help you appreciate your parents; they will come and take care of them for you from time to time".

The bottom line is that this is a movie that families should watch together. It would relieve the pressure of never appearing to make mistakes, trying to be a perfect whatever and missing the joy of life. Now, it's too late for my family, but this film may be a way to screw up your children less.

So, while this would not be for everyone, The Yamadas is one of those Studio Ghibli. animes that makes you have warm feelings.

A lot of people nowadays are born in the city or a large town somewhere; nature and animal life is something you see on TV. Few older people, though, may remember what life used to be mere decades ago, when wild nature was what awaited you when you got out of your yard and people were three times fewer.

Pom Poko is a movie about the changes urban development brings to the land, as seen from the perspective of a playful and intelligent race of racoons, magically endowed with the ability to shapeshift into anything they choose. Worried, scared and finally enraged by the destruction of their home forests by the expansion of Tokyo, they decide to fight back. Alas, their efforts are in vain, there is no stopping the humans.

A beautiful anime, nicely drawn, very imaginative, it is almost impossible to dislike. The only problem I see is the rapid shift from the playfulness of the raccoons to their grief and despair and then back again. Sometimes I didn't know if to feel sad or to laugh; sometimes I could not stop myself doing both at the same time. And that is saying much: I am city born and bred and can't stand nature much, so it was an inspiring movie.

Watch this, it is another animation gem from Studio Ghibli.

I've read Legends of Earthsea and so I knew a little bit who the characters were and what the story was supposed to be. And still I got confused on what exactly had Tales from Earthsea in common with the books I remember. First of all it is a loose adaptation of the third book, so if you don't know who Sparrowhawk or Tenar are, you are out of luck. Also the Nipponification of the characters makes things a bit lame; for example Tenar is a kind and spirited woman, but completely helpless and always in need of a male to come rescue her. Even Sparrowhawk, the greatest mage in existence, is easily captured or fooled. Then there is the repetition of the same bullshit that without death there can be no life, the reason that Cob needs to be defeated. It's such a Japanese way of accepting fate that has nothing to do with the Le Guin books.

Basically Goro Miyazaki turned this beautiful fantasy into a moralizing piece of crap, where the biggest sin is that one wants to avoid death. The anime is missing the point of the books, it's completely unintelligible without reading those books, and finally does nothing for the viewer. Just read the books and enjoy the story. Or at least see the mini series ecranization of the first three books, with Shawn Ashmore as Sparrowhawk and the beautiful Kristin Kreuk as Tenar. This anime, unfortunately, had nothing working for it except the excellent animation.

Just to understand how bad this film is, I went to Imdb to rate it and I noticed that I had already rated it before. So I have seen it already, but forgotten about it. That's how unmemorable it is.

I can't emphasize enough how cool the video courses from The Teaching CompanyThe Great Courses are. They are in the format of a university course, but no one is there to take notes so the pace of presentation is natural, it is all recorded on video. No black or white boards, either, as the visualizations of what the presenter is saying are added later via computer. Most courses have from 10 to 40 lectures, all in an easy to understand language, but no trace of the ridiculous tricks and populist stupidities in TV documentaries.

This course - Mysteries of the Microscopic World, presented by Bruce E. Fleury - in particular is very interesting, as it discusses microorganisms in relation to human culture. Especially interesting are lectures 11 to 13, discussing the hideous pandemic of 1918, of which nobody seems to be talking or making heroic movies about or even remember, even if it killed from 50 to 100 million people. In comparison, first world war killed a measly 8.5 million. Why is that? Is it as Dr. Fleury suggests, that the pandemic was a horrible and completely unstoppable phenomenon from which no one felt they had escaped or in face of which there were no heroes? I find this almost as disgusting as the disease itself, that people would only want to document their triumphs.

Anyway, for an old guy, Bruce is a funny man. He is very eloquent and not at all boring, despite his fears. The course goes from explaining what microorganisms are, how they evolved, the perpetual arms race against other organisms, including us, how they influenced history and even how they were used in biological warfare, AIDS and even allergies, all in 24 lectures. I think a lot of information in this course is something unlikely for you to have accidentally overheard or to have been exposed to, therefore of high quality.

As an additional bonus, you get to understand not only the evolution of medicine, but of all the quack snake oil ideas that are periodically emerging in "naive populations", truly epidemics in their own right, and even the source of some of the most common sayings and symbols. For example the symbol of medicine has little to do with the wisdom of snakes, but more with the procedure to remove nematode worms from someone's flesh by wrapping them slowly around a stick.

All in all a wonderful course, created and presented by a guy who is clearly adverse to bullshit and who has read and has worked quite a bit to make it. Give it a try!