NP - Black Mirror Season 3

[John Bailey]

Watched the first two episodes of season 3. Nosedive was a 10-minute
short stretched out to an hour and not a great short at that.
Playtest was enjoyable, if not profound. I liked the main character
who is fully aware of the tropes of horror and predicts what's going
to happen to him next. There are heaps of video game easter eggs in
there too (referencing Bioshock and Resident Evil and other horror
games) but frankly that stuff tends to pull you out of the suspense
rather than amplifying it.

On Thu, Nov 3, 2016 at 12:11 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
> "Hated by the Nation" even calls itself a morality tale, but at least it
> wasn't a cudgel.  It touched on the moral issues of social media shaming and
> State info invasion and unintended weaponizing of technology.  It did not
> drag.
>
> David Morris
>
> On Tuesday, November 1, 2016, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> "San Junipero" pleasantly unfolded as a future fantasy Heaven, and wasn't
>> plagued by bad pacing, but it was nothing more than that.
>>
>> "Men Against Fire" was the best so far.  Brave New World plus 1984 via
>> tech implants.
>>
>> Both are warnings (or blessings) of possible future tech.  Neither
>> dragged.  But neither was deep.  Just well produced.
>>
>> David Morris
>>
>> On Monday, October 31, 2016, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> It dawned on me that this kind of writing is very, very similar to
>>> Pynchon's self-disparaged Mercy and Mortality in Venice.  Very immature
>>> morality scold masked in potentially deeper concerns.  Maybe called Satire
>>> because it has a mix of a "funny but dark" punchline ending.  There is a
>>> very good reason that Pynchon renounced MMIV.
>>>
>>> I much prefer the funny/dark of Flannery O'Conner... And GR.
>>>
>>> David Morris
>>>
>>> On Monday, October 31, 2016, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Once again "Shut Up and Dance" a massively ham-fisted morality scold
>>>> that DRAGS one painfully, slowly through its predictable paces in barely
>>>> believable scenarios.  At most, it should have been cut in length by half.
>>>> I HAD to fast forward past about half of it.  Do you really call this good?
>>>>
>>>> David Morris
>>>>
>>>> On Monday, October 24, 2016, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> No Black Mirror episodes wear well, except maybe the pig-fuck one. All
>>>>> are essentially morality scolds masquerading as insight.  But what really
>>>>> kills them for me is that they are all half-hour stories stretched to a full
>>>>> hour, making them extremely predictable and very boring.
>>>>>
>>>>> David Morris, constantly fighting fast forward urge.
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l