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Post by blindness on Sept 4, 2022 14:49:49 GMT -8
Alrighty, I've finally gone through both series (when Mrs puts her name on the watch party list, things tend to slow down a little). As of now, we don't know if either show will be renewed. Sandman has done really well in Netflix rankings and is still going on strong, but Netflix is Neflix. Their base is shrinking and Sandman is an expensive show and the stakes are high for them, which is a pity. I think with a little nurturing, this show could be their answer to Game of Thrones, easily.
What am I basing this on?
The material for the first season is based on the two two weakest, roughest volumes in the series. That is the product of a young writer (Gaiman) still trying to find his voice, trying to decide where to go with these characters and he was still working through the horror blueprint on those. What comes after this is a few major story arcs that are spectacular in scope, diving into a dissection of mythology (my favorite, Seasons of Mist), a "through the rabbit hole" kind of fantasy quest (A Game of You) a weird road trip (Brief Lives) and the magnum opus in scope and complexity that brings the story home (The Kindly Ones). Interspersed between these arcs are series of stories, and given how the creators of the show handled the series, Netflix would have to be irreparably dumb to let this one go.
So, yeah, I am pretty big on Sandman the series. It was everything I was hoping for. There were a few clunky dialogues here and there, language that looked better in writing that did not work that well spoken, I'd say, but I can overlook that easily. Episodes 6 and 11 (the bonus one) were stories that were fully independent, and both were two parters, the bonus episode overtly, episode 6, covertly (it includes the story that introduces Hob Gadling, the man who decides he's not gonna die). The adaptation was very close to the source material with minor changes.
The casting was brilliant, especially Dream, Death, John D (whatever the name of the Thewlis character is), Gilbert, even Rose Walker, whose characterization was a little more naive than the RW in the books. All's good though. I am happy. The Corinthian and Lucien were more interesting in the Netflix show than they were in the books. All I am going to say is we need to see more Mervin the Pumpkinhead.
Casting was absolutely brilliant on Paper Girls. The four girls look like they came straight out of artist Cliff Chiang's lines in the original series. Dead on. And they were more than the likeness of the characters, the actors were good at tapping into each character very nicely. As part of the 4 kids on a bike in the '80s genre, Paper Girls (Image Comics) the comics actually predates Stranger Things. (To which, my son responded stating that "4 kids on a bike" is a common trope that goes back at least as far as ET, to which my wife responded by mentioning some '60s black and white show which I probably would have known if I had grown up here.)
Anyway, this series takes quite a bit of liberty with the storyline and deviates from the books, but thus far it looks like they keep all the elements but reshuffle the deck especially with respect to how and where the girls find out certain things, but not what they find out. I am not worried so much about these changes because (a) the story flows very nicely, (b) the girls are so well cast and I find them compelling characters, and (c) the writer Bryan K Vaughan and the artist Cliff Chiang are executive producers on the show: Image comics lets creators keep the rights to the series creative teams bring, which is why a lot of teams bring their best work to them. Walking Dead was Image, and so were some others that I can't think of right now.
So anyway, I said I would post my reaction after I watch both, and so that was that.
I still need to go back to the Umbrella Academy, check out Sweet Tooth and DMZ, etc. The life of a comics fan is complicated.
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 5, 2022 7:46:26 GMT -8
If you’ve watched the Netflix show The Sandman, based on the DC Comics series by Neil Gaiman, then you realize the show is a treat. Well-acted, with deliberate, thoughtful pacing and brilliant imaging that is sometimes lifted directly from the pages of those comics, if you haven’t watched it, and you have access to Netflix, give it a try. But even if you have watched, you may not realize that the epidemic mentioned in the first episode of the show, where over 1 million people were affected by a strange sickness, was a real thing. In the show, that disease was a side effect caused by taking Morpheus, the lord of dreams, captive. In the real world, the disease didn’t strike overnight, The first cases were diagnosed in 1917 and the peak of cases seems to have been in the early 1920s. While most sources mark the end of this smaller pandemic around 1926, the disease has continued to appear, here and there, mostly as individual cases. Whatever drove it to become an epidemic, or perhaps the epidemic form of the disease itself, appears to be gone. Maybe Morpheus escaped. Truthfully, we don’t have a much better answer. What we do know is that as many as 500,000 people died from this disease. But dying wasn’t what really marked the strangeness of the disease. What it’s known for is … sleep. A strange, forgotten pandemic of the past may hold clues for what's coming in our future |
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Post by mhbruin on Sept 5, 2022 7:51:28 GMT -8
Previous Guy Loves the Purge
Former President Donald Trump tore into Fox News on Sunday, accusing the network of amplifying a Democratic agenda and going harder on Republicans than Democrats.
While criticizing Fox News on Sunday, Trump also said that if the network's cable-news competitor CNN adopted a conservative approach, he would support it.
"If 'low ratings' CNN ever went Conservative, they would be an absolute gold mine, and I would help them to do so!" Trump said.
........................
‘Is there a purge?’: John Harwood’s CNN exit viewed as strategy shift
The veteran White House correspondent’s parting words were a defense of an outspoken kind of journalism that CNN insiders think has fallen out of favor under a new boss.
Several current and former CNN employees who spoke with The Washington Post — most of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly — are interpreting the sudden exodus as evidence that Licht, who joined the network as chairman and CEO in May, is starting his tenure by casting out voices that had often been critical of former president Donald Trump and his allies, in an effort to present a new, more ideologically neutral CNN. That aligns with a vision repeatedly expressed by David Zaslav, the chief executive of Warner Bros. Discovery.
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Post by blindness on Sept 5, 2022 9:03:07 GMT -8
But even if you have watched, you may not realize that the epidemic mentioned in the first episode of the show, where over 1 million people were affected by a strange sickness, was a real thing. In the show, that disease was a side effect caused by taking Morpheus, the lord of dreams, captive. In the real world, the disease didn’t strike overnight, The first cases were diagnosed in 1917 and the peak of cases seems to have been in the early 1920s. While most sources mark the end of this smaller pandemic around 1926, the disease has continued to appear, here and there, mostly as individual cases. Whatever drove it to become an epidemic, or perhaps the epidemic form of the disease itself, appears to be gone. Maybe Morpheus escaped. Truthfully, we don’t have a much better answer. Yeah, that was apparently a thing. I did not know about that until I read the comics. Some kind of encephalitis, at least that is what the claim was when I looked that up.
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Post by gainsborough on Sept 5, 2022 11:20:41 GMT -8
Thanks for the heads-up regarding the encephalitis outbreak. I was not aware of it, whereas the history books are all over the Spanish Flu.
As for the Sandman series on Netflix: I liked it a lot. The visuals were great, the storylines were engaging, and Tom Sturridge was terrific. The rest of the cast was also very good. I am not familiar with the graphic novels, so everything was new to me. I hope Netflix brings us more.
I think every streaming service is looking for the next blockbuster series, so I assume the Neil Gaiman oeuvre should be a goldmine for Netflix (otoh, did American Gods under-perform?).
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