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I like Utopia, but if it were filmed in a bog-standard thriller sort of way I'd have turned it off at the torture scene. But the uncanny music and the direction and the sheer beautiful weirdness of the colour palette is keeping me hooked. Also beautiful is the filming from space of a 1000 km wide dust storm raging across the Sahara desert in Africa tonight. Marvellous stuff. (Also, naked mole rats, which are more horrible than anything Utopia could come up with, eeurgh.)
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Jan 30, 2013 22:12
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Naked mole rats are loving amazing and objectively better than cakes.
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Jan 30, 2013 22:20
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goatface posted:Naked mole rats are loving amazing and objectively better than cakes. Nooo....because, you see, cakes are delicious and covered in icing sugar and chocolate and other lovely things. Naked mole rats look like sad little penises with teeth and claws attached and their queen is a screaming pink horror who is perpetually pregnant and pissed off about it. No good can come of mole rats, you know.
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Jan 30, 2013 22:34
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You know what pissed me off about Utopia? The approximately 800 focus pulls per episode. Why is it that every single time something is put in the frame to become important later, the only way to draw attention to it is by pulling focus?
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Jan 31, 2013 00:13
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Irisi posted:Also beautiful is the filming from space of a 1000 km wide dust storm raging across the Sahara desert in Africa tonight. Marvellous stuff. (Also, naked mole rats, which are more horrible than anything Utopia could come up with, eeurgh.) Speaking of this, and I feel a little silly asking, those sweeping from-orbit shots of the continent in the title sequence and scattered throughout the programme - those are CGI and not actual satellite images right?
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Jan 31, 2013 01:20
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Captain Mediocre posted:Speaking of this, and I feel a little silly asking, those sweeping from-orbit shots of the continent in the title sequence and scattered throughout the programme - those are CGI and not actual satellite images right? See, I'd say 'yes that is a silly question' but then I remembered it was a BBC natural history unit production so I figure, hey, all bets are off.
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Jan 31, 2013 01:21
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Probably both. They're most likely CGI composites developed from images taken by the multitude of different satellites operating at a variety of altitudes and with varying tightness of focus.
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Jan 31, 2013 01:32
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Irisi posted:No good can come of mole rats, you know. Naked mole rats are actually studied in great detail because of how amazing they are. They can live for ~25 years, mammals of similar size normally live for ~3. They don't get cancer, it just doesn't happen to them. They have metabolisms that can slow to allow them to survive food shortages that would kill any comparable creature. They are AWESOME.
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Jan 31, 2013 01:45
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goatface posted:Probably both. This is the correct answer.
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Jan 31, 2013 02:05
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Xachariah posted:Why an earth is the direction for her character apparently "bland, emotionless, boring place-holder"? It works for the assassin character, but it doesn't really draw me into the narrative when the person opposing the assassin is a carbon copy of him. I got the impression that they are sort-of brother and sister, both have been genetically engineered to be that way. That would make sense of the way that she acts and the way they were with each other.
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Jan 31, 2013 02:40
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I watched all of Utopia this evening after the talk in the thread. I liked The Shadow Line and Red Riding a lot better as it felt as if the stakes were a bit higher as I cared about the characters, though I get the impression with this show that it will happily kill anybody off at any moment for shock purposes I don't really tend to get too attached. I like the cinematography and music, and the general atmosphere that it brings up (especially the journalist's office that had about three lights on even though the office was huge), though I dislike how blase they treat murder and the characters aren't really all there. I feel the parts with the civil servant are most engaging, though they haven't really gone too far with any of the violence so I feel as if the characters are less cartoonish. I'm also wondering what the point in certain scenes are besides to kind of set a marker for what the show is willing to do, but once you've got to a certain point nothing will necessarily top ground previously tread. I'm also sick to death of shows having characters walk out into a road and being hit by a truck or bus coming from off screen. It was shocking when I saw it in Mean Girls, but not so much in every single drama that has been made in the last ten years. I'd like to see the point of view of the drivers of these trucks, what are they doing all the time that these people decide to stand in the middle of the road with no traffic around, preferably whilst talking to somebody standing on the pavement? Really grinds my gears. As much as I can't be arsed with utopia I'll probably watch the last episode. Probably some guff about how the government needs to kill of a certain amount of the population so that there are more resources to go around yadda yadda. Probably end on another shocking moment where one of the main characters kills another then pushes the button to release some virus before shockingly killing themselves whilst the system continues as if nothing happened, except some smug kid will look up from a comic at the end and wink.
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Jan 31, 2013 02:48
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Akuma posted:Have you seen all of the first episode? It's kind of "worse" in episode 3 but not in a visceral, "oh god that's gross" way. Yeah, I've seen the first episode now. I wrote my last comment during the chili/sand/bleach scene. I don't consider myself particularly squeamish, but that managed to go a bit too far from me. Apart from that I'm intrigued and will continue to watch. The show reminds me a bit of all those mystery/conspiracy shows that started after Lost turned out to be a hit. I hope it's a bit better than, well, ANY of those.
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Jan 31, 2013 13:14
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Leyburn posted:I could maybe stand Brian Cox if he didn't speak like he was grooming a young child all the time. Being a massive nonce does seem to be the easiest way to get ahead at the BBC 
sex pervert fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Jan 31, 2013 |
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Jan 31, 2013 14:03
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goatface posted:Naked mole rats are actually studied in great detail because of how amazing they are. They can live for ~25 years, mammals of similar size normally live for ~3. They don't get cancer, it just doesn't happen to them. They have metabolisms that can slow to allow them to survive food shortages that would kill any comparable creature. After reading "Railsea" by China Mievelle I'm also terrified of them!
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Jan 31, 2013 14:25
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I'm not going to talk about what "does/doesn't work" with the writing in Utopia, purely because that kind of discussion is always mind-numbingly boring, but I am enjoying it a lot. Its just so weird compared to everything else on TV. Even the characters are just a little bit off. It looks gorgeous too, its like they had a look at how many TV shows and movies are trying to remove every bit of colour from the screen and just went in the complete opposite direction.
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Jan 31, 2013 16:00
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I think the best thing about Africa last night was that moment when they started talking about that lizard with the shiny scales to reflect heat I immediately mentally pondered, "Why hasn't nature made something silvery coloured to reflect heat?". Cue motherfucking silver ants. Mind. Blown.
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Jan 31, 2013 16:53
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They did leave an 86 year old national treasure in the middle of the desert at the end, though.
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Jan 31, 2013 17:39
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Tsaedje posted:They did leave an 86 year old national treasure in the middle of the desert at the end, though. S'all good, David Attenborough will just get his animal friends to lead him to a shady spot, where they will sing a stirring song and then the giant eagles will carry him to safety. Wait, no. That was Gandalf, sorry. (But we all secretly know David is a wizard, right?)
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Jan 31, 2013 19:47
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Charlie Brooker's Weekly Wipe starts tonight on BBC 2 at 10pm, good news for all the Doug Stanhope fans here.
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Jan 31, 2013 20:59
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It doesn't look like the normal Wipe format. Looks more like You Have Been Watching. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, so we'll see. edit: Guess I was wrong completely.. honeymustard fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Jan 31, 2013 |
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Jan 31, 2013 21:45
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Tried Utopia because of this thread. It's awful.
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Jan 31, 2013 22:00
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WastedJoker posted:Tried Utopia because of this thread. Given that we've been wanking ourselves silly over it for a while now could you elaborate a bit?
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Jan 31, 2013 22:03
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Strom Cuzewon posted:Given that we've been wanking ourselves silly over it for a while now could you elaborate a bit? The acting is bad. No way do those two Network guys convince ANYONE that they're cops. It swaps between focuses too much. It's just so....stereotype. It's like it was conceived using a focus group, ffs. "Edgy council estate" kid. "Wacky" geek hacker. "Out there" sweary northern bird. Wait..it's like The Misfits. The only decent performance is by the civil servant guy from Thick of It.
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Jan 31, 2013 22:14
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Disagree, most entertaining thing on for ages. Although 'trinity from the matrix' (couldn't find her name easily) is really annoying. I get her background story makes her all hosed up or whatever but the actress doesnt pull it off. The psycho bad guy I find genuinely menacing.
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Jan 31, 2013 22:26
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WastedJoker posted:The acting is bad. I agree with you on certain points - the characters are very stereotyped (possibly intentionally, given it's debt to Morrisons' The Invisibles), and the actress playing Jessica is desperately irritating. But I really would love to see the focus group that decided it would be an awesome idea to start episode 3 with a school shooting and end it with the killing of a mother in front of a 10 year old child. And at least it's trying to do something different. If producers don't at least try then we end up with every channel showing "Britains Best Loved Dogs", or whatever the crap it is that's currently showing on ITV.
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Jan 31, 2013 22:30
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WastedJoker posted:"Out there" sweary northern bird. Wales is considered Northern now?
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Jan 31, 2013 22:43
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Barry Shitpeas is in the Weekly Wipe, I'm happy.Loonytoad Quack posted:Wales is considered Northern now? Not SE England = Northern
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Jan 31, 2013 23:13
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Irisi posted:I agree with you on certain points - the characters are very stereotyped (possibly intentionally, given it's debt to Morrisons' The Invisibles), and the actress playing Jessica is desperately irritating. But I really would love to see the focus group that decided it would be an awesome idea to start episode 3 with a school shooting and end it with the killing of a mother in front of a 10 year old child. I had to go and check in the credits to see if the sweary skinhead was Morrison doing a cameo. It wasn't.
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Jan 31, 2013 23:17
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Not really digging this film review bit on Charlie brooker. Bit uncomfortable.
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Jan 31, 2013 23:27
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Irisi posted:I agree with you on certain points - the characters are very stereotyped (possibly intentionally, given it's debt to Morrisons' The Invisibles), and the actress playing Jessica is desperately irritating. But I really would love to see the focus group that decided it would be an awesome idea to start episode 3 with a school shooting and end it with the killing of a mother in front of a 10 year old child. Feels more Warren Ellis/Mark Millar than Grant Morrison by this point, with the horrible violence and the sweary kids and all. Though the possibility of it going off into acid trip fantasy land is what's convincing me to give it another try, along with the visuals being genuinely striking rather than just extremely confident as in the shadow line. That CGI forest they were camped out in during the latest episode was breathtaking.
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Jan 31, 2013 23:30
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WastedJoker posted:The acting is bad. Eh, can't really disagree with much of that. Maybe the acting, Arby and onoflalks give enough good bits for me. It's definitely a style-over-substance type show, I'm just happy enjoying the style.
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Jan 31, 2013 23:30
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The Perfect Element posted:Not really digging this film review bit on Charlie brooker. Bit uncomfortable. It felt a bit 10 O'Clock Live-y. Not a fan of it.
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Jan 31, 2013 23:31
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onoflalks posted:It felt a bit 10 O'Clock Live-y. Not a fan of it. Agreed. Charlie Brooker definitely works better when he's either monologuing or not on camera at all (i.e. writing).
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Jan 31, 2013 23:37
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I've always got time for Barry Shitpeas and ignorant MailOnline comments, though.
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Jan 31, 2013 23:40
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so I could say that I finally figured out what this god damned cube is doing. Get well Lowtax.
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This is the best Barry Shitpeas ever. Mrs Barry Shitpeas is awesome too. Charlie Brooker finds the best mental American telly. Wasn't expecting a Django Unchained segment. That film kicked rear end.
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Feb 1, 2013 00:25
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I thought it wasn't that great really. Doug Stanhope sucked a lot more than normal, and the whole thing just felt rushed and incomplete. The best bits were the throw away lines like Barack Obama's boring drone that kills everyone in the village.
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Feb 1, 2013 00:45
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WastedJoker posted:The acting is bad. Don't necessarily disagree with your points but please tell me you're from Cardiff/Swansea or I might despair.
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Feb 1, 2013 01:09
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Weekly Wipe was so terrible I won't be watching again even if there's nothing else to occupy my time next Thursday. Kinda sad, really.
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Feb 1, 2013 01:33
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I thought it was fine. I was doing other things while watching it though, but that's how I watch almost all TV these days.
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Feb 1, 2013 01:34
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Captain Mediocre posted:Don't necessarily disagree with your points but please tell me you're from Cardiff/Swansea or I might despair. I'm from Durham and she sounds like a Geordie to me....I'm mildly freaked out now. Edit: Just watched a few bits oft he 1st ep again and seriously, she sounds like a weird Sheffield/Geordie mix to me. I think I've had a stroke. WastedJoker fucked around with this message at 02:06 on Feb 1, 2013 |
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Feb 1, 2013 01:57
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