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What if Dream Corp, LLC but done by the guy behind True Detective S1 and starring the best parts of Superbad and The Leftovers? Maniac Maniac is an adaptation of a Norwegian show of the same name, directed/screenwritten/produced by Cary Joji Fukunaga, and starring Emma Stone, Jonah Hill, Justin Theroux, Sonoya Mizuno, Gabriel Byrne, and Sally Field. quote:Maniac follows "Annie Landsberg and Owen Milgrim, two strangers drawn to the late stages of a mysterious pharmaceutical trial, each for their own reasons. Annie’s disaffected and aimless, fixated on broken relationships with her mother and her sister; Owen, the fifth son of wealthy New York industrialists, has struggled his whole life with a disputed diagnosis of schizophrenia. Neither of their lives have turned out quite right, and the promise of a new, radical kind of pharmaceutical treatment—a sequence of pills its inventor, Dr. James K. Mantleray, claims can repair anything about the mind, be it mental illness or heartbreak—draws them and ten other strangers to the facilities of Neberdine Pharmaceutical and Biotech for a three-day drug trial that will, they’re assured, with no complications or side-effects whatsoever, solve all of their problems, permanently." Emma Stone - Annie Landsberg She's got complexes about her relationship to her mom and sister. Jonah Hill - Owen Milgram He's got a rich family (dad played by Gabriel Byrne) and he might also be schizophrenic? Justin Theroux - Dr. James K. Mantleray Head of the project Annie/Owen enroll in. Speaks in a lot of technobabble. I've been looking forward to this one since I saw the trailer last month and from the reviews it looks like that excitement is definitely warranted. It's got a retro-futurist aesthetic similar to Legion, and some other absurdist stuff that I can't wait to see: quote:The more interesting part of those early chapters, though, is the world that Somerville and Fukunaga have built, which is simultaneously retro and futuristic. All the technology is out of the early Eighties — dot matrix printers, CRT computer monitors with green-on-black displays — but often re-imagined to mesh with our current lives. Instead of Facebook, there’s Friend Proxy, where you hire someone to play the role of a pal you can’t see in real life for one reason or another. Pop-up ads have been replaced by Ad Buddies, a service where you’re followed around by a person with a briefcase full of ads they’ll read aloud to you for as long is takes to cover your subway fare, rent, etc. The Statue of Liberty has been replaced by the Statue of Extra Liberty, a fierce golden warrior with wings, which one can imagine certain politicians commissioning any day now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6cDDmk-O5A
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# ? Sep 21, 2018 16:40 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 11:10 |
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Excited to dive in when I get home from work!
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# ? Sep 21, 2018 16:44 |
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I just finished this a couple hours ago, and holy poo poo, I loved it. Really just recommend diving in headfirst knowing as little as possible, though the trailers/episode thumbnails (not to mention the actor pictures above) kinda give away a lot of it. I really appreciated that while it's basically a dark comedy + bombastic drama, it never gets nearly as dark as it could, if it truly wanted. The lighter tone makes it so much more palatable than I expected; I really thought it would be a more difficult watch but it ends up very breezy.
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# ? Sep 21, 2018 16:52 |
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I want a Sucktube.
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# ? Sep 21, 2018 20:29 |
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On ep 5; this is reminding me a lot of Legion, which is a good thing.
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# ? Sep 21, 2018 22:32 |
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Just watched the first episode. It's always cool when shows have such great production.
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# ? Sep 21, 2018 23:46 |
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Watching the first episode. The aesthetics of this show are like Blade Runner filtered through Office Space. EDIT: Or maybe it's closer to Brazil. QuoProQuid fucked around with this message at 00:26 on Sep 22, 2018 |
# ? Sep 22, 2018 00:08 |
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Maybe it's the Goon Faceblindness setting in but this skinny, older Jonah Hill looks eerily like a young Ben Stiller.
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# ? Sep 22, 2018 02:34 |
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Will you be my ad buddy? "I have real friends this is just more convenient" is a line I should use often. Despera fucked around with this message at 12:31 on Sep 22, 2018 |
# ? Sep 22, 2018 12:09 |
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Well that was one of the weirdest things I've ever seen
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# ? Sep 22, 2018 16:46 |
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this is very strange but i like it
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# ? Sep 22, 2018 17:20 |
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this show is really loving good and the sets/setting are absolutely amazing
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# ? Sep 22, 2018 20:52 |
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I watched up to episode 5 now. I'm not sure if I actually enjoy this. The show seems to have good production values, but the plot doesn't really touch me so far. I've got the feeling that it's supposed to be something weird and new, but I've seen most of the plot points in some form before. cant cook creole bream fucked around with this message at 20:56 on Sep 22, 2018 |
# ? Sep 22, 2018 20:54 |
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I loving loved it and I wish there was more. For some reason I thought there were only 8 episodes so I was stoked to find out I had two more to watch than I thought.
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# ? Sep 22, 2018 21:30 |
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Finished watching it earlier today. The best parts of this show are the production design and the cinematography. I could really watch Emma Stone and Justin Theroux wander alt!New York and their fantasy dreamscapes forever. I also love the detritus of memory that piles up across episodes. It's a small thing but seeing elements of the "real world" duplicated and remixed in new contexts, whether that be "You're not supposed to be here" or the actors showing up in strange new contexts, is delightful. I kept pausing and rewinding during the seance episode to catch all the little details that had showed up from the previous episodes. I would have loved an anthology series of these characters being remixed into different genres with only a handful of elements tying them together. That said, there's large parts of the show that are only saved by the strength of the performers and the director. The last two dream sequences, the fantasy and the spy thriller, are one note. The former is generic until (E7) Annie remembers who she is and the latter is just (E9) Jonah Hill doing a bad accent, which is not as funny as I think the show intended. I liked when the show got weird but sequences like this didn't get weird enough to be entertaining. I would have liked more of the absurdism of Justin Theroux's sections. I also ended up being disappointed by Jonah Hill. The script doesn't give his real-world character much to do and Hill plays him as bland and sedated. That portrayal might be more realistic and play into his fears but it made it hard to care about his character when everyone around him is more interesting. He ends up seeming seriously miscast. EDIT: I also wish this show could have had the confidence to let the viewer figure things out instead of constantly explaining itself. "In all my dreams, I kept telling Jonah Hill not to trust me," says Emma Stone immediately after two episodes of Emma Stone telling Jonah Hill not to trust her. QuoProQuid fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Sep 22, 2018 |
# ? Sep 22, 2018 21:44 |
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Following this story gave me popcorn problems
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# ? Sep 22, 2018 22:08 |
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QuoProQuid posted:(E9) Jonah Hill doing a bad accent It was pretty funny that Emma Stone blocks his nasal passage to stop him from continuing with the bad accent The show isn't supposed to be deep (at one point I felt like I was watching loss.jpg by Netflix), but it was a pretty fun remix of Matrix/Inception concepts with a sweet aesthetic. The dreams felt like it dragged on once you understood the concept of each of the stages and I wanted to see more of the 'real' world towards end. There was an epilogue of sorts but it felt different to the vibe of the earlier episodes.
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# ? Sep 22, 2018 23:27 |
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Show's at the very least good but I can't decide if I think it's actually great. At the very least some aspects are excellent.
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# ? Sep 23, 2018 03:03 |
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Also thanks to alien isolation I keep looking in each scene for places to hide.
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# ? Sep 23, 2018 04:10 |
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I really liked the whole thing. I did get the vibe from this show (as well as the latest season of Bojack and Disenchantment) that, being a Netflix show, they put way more extra stuff in the background than a typical show would knowing that people are going to either pause a lot or to make rewatching more rewarding to catch stuff you might have missed. It's cool to have a show be dense like that, but it got a little irritating over time. Also, after living in New York the last few years, I got a lot more out of their presentation of the alternate NYC.
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# ? Sep 23, 2018 04:23 |
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Absolutely loved this show. Highlights for me probably the whole '40s pastiche in Episode 5 and the saying goodbye to Ellie scene in Episode 9. One thing I really liked that I think people might be surprised by is that it's not super confusing in the way of, say, Legion or Westworld, where there are whole scenes and plots in which you have no idea what's going on. Especially after the first couple of episodes, it's always pretty clear whose headspace you're in, what every character is trying to do, etc.
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# ? Sep 23, 2018 21:49 |
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I liked it! I don't have much to say other than it successfully struck a number of sentimental chords. Good show.
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# ? Sep 23, 2018 22:10 |
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This show was absolutely amazing. Having just read Freud's, "The Interpretation of Dreams," added a fun spin on watching through it. Edit: In all honesty it appears like a surrealistic depiction of psychoanalysis. Hilario Baldness fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Sep 24, 2018 |
# ? Sep 24, 2018 03:01 |
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I thought this show was very entertaining and loved the aesthetic, but it didn't hit as hard as it seemed like it was building up to, if that makes sense. It seemed heavily inspired by movies like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is one of my all-time favorites, so I'm probably unreasonably expecting that level out of it.
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# ? Sep 24, 2018 03:14 |
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what's up with the CPU heatsinks strapped to their heads, and did anyone recognise the model (it seemed like a downdraft version with direct contact to the copper heatpipes)
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# ? Sep 24, 2018 08:38 |
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This is a hard show to review or even reccomend to people. The best parts are probably the middle couple of episodes after getting through long introductions and then followed by a not-quite great finale. It kind of stumbles at the end. I still enjoyed the ride, but wish it could have been better.
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# ? Sep 24, 2018 13:36 |
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I really enjoyed my time with this show. I think I can't help but compare it to a movie, what with the star-power of Jonah and Emma and the overall high production values. If I had seen this in the theaters, I probably would have left a little disappointed. But having it as a mini-series on Netflix, I was more open to just sitting back and enjoying the weird, dark-comedy. And I mean, come on, who can watch a cholo Jonah Hill and not enjoy themselves?
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# ? Sep 24, 2018 15:16 |
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After finishing the show this weekend I have to say, aesthetically, the people saying it's a love letter to stuff like Office Space and Being John Malkovich are spot on. More specifically I think it's basically just Cary Joji Fukunagi doing his best imitation of Spike Jonze/Charlie Kaufman with some Michael Gondry thrown in, and that's not a bad thing! He does a great job and it was an amazing show.
RedneckwithGuns fucked around with this message at 15:31 on Sep 24, 2018 |
# ? Sep 24, 2018 15:29 |
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I thought this show was at its best when Justin Theroux and Sally Field were on screen together.
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# ? Sep 24, 2018 16:56 |
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Joust posted:I thought this show was at its best when Justin Theroux and Sally Field were on screen together. The bit with the psychosomatic blindness killed. "I've been blinded by my mother's excessive love"
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# ? Sep 24, 2018 17:53 |
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it's 'toxic' not 'excessive'
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# ? Sep 24, 2018 19:06 |
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End: I knew this was going to end with them on the road to Salt Lake City, though I thought there was going to be scene of them stopping for Owen to apologize to Olivia.
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# ? Sep 24, 2018 19:19 |
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RedneckwithGuns posted:The bit with the psychosomatic blindness killed. "I've been blinded by my mother's excessive love" Getting a good “what the gently caress did she just say?” in there by Theroux really filled a hole for me too. Kevin’s various WTFs in the Leftovers never got old. Honestly put Anne Dowd in there somewhere and I’d be one hundred percent sure I have been in a coma the whole time. Instead I’m only 85 or 90 percent sure.
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# ? Sep 24, 2018 22:10 |
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Also it was pretty cool when the guy showed up in the final episode. It was like seeing an old family friend. :3
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# ? Sep 24, 2018 22:29 |
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I liked the show, but I finished it feeling a bit disappointed anyway. I never really got a sense of anything being fantastical or profound, despite dealing with a universe where a sentient computer can literally plug into your mind and manipulate your dreamscape. And the whole 'connection' thing between Jonah Hill and Emma Stone never seemed as significant as it was portrayed either, considering the series literally starts with the whole spiel about 'finding soulmates'. You'd be forgiven, after seeing that, for thinking the series was a love story, but by the end they're just kind of friends. In fact, they've never even kissed. And that's fine, just not what I was expecting. In the end I guess I'm just a bit confused about the tone. Despite how absurd the setting and story is, it struggles to stay... bland? Like it never wants to imply anything too amazing, everything is entirely surface level and as portrayed.
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# ? Sep 24, 2018 22:50 |
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The tone feels off because everything is a reflection of the dark thoughts and scattered memories of multiple people dealing with inner crisis. In my dreams I’m not a super hero, it’s like I’m shopping and a shark is there but it’s my third grade teacher. I don’t think it’s muted so much as frighteningly grounded.
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# ? Sep 24, 2018 22:59 |
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Did Zombie Robert not appear at all after the noir dream?
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# ? Sep 25, 2018 07:07 |
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Just finished this and I liked it a lot. It showed up on my Netflix and I went in without knowing anything. The world building that they did was really nicely done. It kinda felt like it was taken from Man in the High Castle especially with the Japanese being a common everyday language in the US. I kinda enjoyed the parts based on Trump. ___________________. Like in the (episode 1 or 2) “Super Liberty Statue” scene you can not tell me that the Russian tour guide and the red hats and the fact that the statue is called “Super Liberty Statue” isn’t flat out making fun of us in TYOOL2016. And later on in the series the motherfucking peepee tape. _______________________ That “Annie, are you okay?” line was completely unexpected. About the doctors/scientists, I’m really glad that they didn’t turn out to be bad guys. Maybe I’ve watched too many bad movies but I was 100% sure that lady doctor was the big bad. I thought she poisoned the first doctor but no, she and the other one actually genuinely wanted to help people. burexas.irom posted:Also it was pretty cool when the guy showed up in the final episode. It was like seeing an old family friend. :3 What guy? Boris Galerkin fucked around with this message at 23:19 on Sep 25, 2018 |
# ? Sep 25, 2018 22:45 |
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YeaH without the two doctors, especially theroux this show would be nigh unwatchable
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# ? Sep 26, 2018 00:15 |
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# ? Jun 10, 2024 11:10 |
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That would mean the B-dreams were unwatchable, and I don't agree with that at all. A tonal issue I had was that Gertie felt scary during the first 8 episodes, but pathetic in ep 9. And I thought the Rubik's Cube thing was kinda lame, so I wasn't feeling the climax for the most part. Boris Galerkin posted:
Wasn't it just because it was a Japanese pharma company? Lycus fucked around with this message at 00:57 on Sep 26, 2018 |
# ? Sep 26, 2018 00:30 |