Black Mirror Season 4!

..and why not?
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bobzilla77
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Black Mirror Season 4!

Postby bobzilla77 » 04 Jan 2018, 21:07

Well that was a nice surprise! I knew we were getting more episodes eventually but somehow missed word of the date until they had already showed up on Netflix.

I've only watched the second and third eps to completion - started watching the first with my wife, which she found too "unpleasant" to continue, so I'll have to go back to that one later.

But having seen eps 2 and 3 so far, I'm impressed. It's not quite as giddy with the technology, the devices are simple enough to understand. And boy is it fucking dark. I kind of hope there is another fun, somewhat hopeful episode or two in this bunch. Because it is really interesting and well done, but so well done, that the sad episodes can REALLY bum me out in real life.
Jimbo wrote:I guess I am over Graham Nash's politics. Hopelessly naive by the standards I've molded for myself these days.

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Penk!
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Re: Black Mirror Season 4!

Postby Penk! » 06 Jan 2018, 22:59

I just started, at the start, with episode 1 (I see why you'd hop back and forth, though: I came a bit late to the series and just watched episodes from the earlier seasons at random based on which ones appealed at the particular time I logged into Netflix).

I really enjoyed it as a standalone TV episode: well-paced, tense, and unpredictable, with the usual impressive acting (Jimmy Simpson was particularly good, I thought) and set design Daly’s apartment was very Blade Runner 2049, I thought). The switch of focus from the initially sympathetic Daly character to his victims was effective, and I liked that the ending felt genuinely impossible to guess, playing on the usual expectations of a dark and unhappy finish with the knowledge that the last series, with 'San Junipero', showed that the show has other directions too. It was nice to go away without feeling too tarnished and shaken afterwards, although of course there were some very dark and cynical moments in there.

I felt, though, that as an episode of Black Mirror specifically it was a little weaker, as it retrod familiar ground (VR gaming from 'Playtest' last time, digital cloning from the Christmas one, online behaviour from the 'Hated in the Nation' police one and didn't really add much new apart from some slightly muddled comment on how the Internet and technology give losers and creeps power and a voice and perhaps some menacing suggestions about workplace activities. I'd also have liked an episode that really was set in space: it'd be really interesting to see what the show did with that kind of further-future situation.
fange wrote:One of the things i really dislike in this life is people raising their voices in German.

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Tactful Cactus
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Re: Black Mirror Season 4!

Postby Tactful Cactus » 07 Jan 2018, 11:57

I've seen the first three now. Episode 1 was really well done, a funny sarcastic twist on the Trekky genre

The parental guidance episode was poor. It was like a cheap parental awareness video. Jodie Foster directed and I think she just got the tone wrong.

Then episode Crocodile was brilliant. Loved it. The stark scenery (was it Scotland? Was it Canada?), retro-futurist tech, the dark path it takes. Brilliant.

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echolalia
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Re: Black Mirror Season 4!

Postby echolalia » 08 Jan 2018, 00:06

I’ve only just discovered Black Mirror and have been gobbling up the episodes at a rate of one or two a day. So I’ll get to season 4 in a few days’ time. I like that each episode is a self-contained story.

White Bear is my favourite episode so far. That was grievously fucked up and disturbing. All those smartphone zombies who are filming and therefore not acting. It could easily come true, that scenario, with today’s populist politics and the possibilities technology offers for “spectacular” justice.

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bobzilla77
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Re: Black Mirror Season 4!

Postby bobzilla77 » 10 Jan 2018, 19:43

My all time favorite ep is 15 Million Merits from Season 1. It is possibly the most plausible horrifying future society I've ever seen depicted, one where most the planet wakes up every day and rides stationary bikes as long as possible, in order to generate electricity for the rich elites who have enslaved them.

I'll say this - it is not a good show for binge watching, as many of the themes are so dark, I can't go from one to the next immediately. This show might have benefitted from a more traditional release schedule of one episode a week.
Jimbo wrote:I guess I am over Graham Nash's politics. Hopelessly naive by the standards I've molded for myself these days.

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Darkness_Fish
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Re: Black Mirror Season 4!

Postby Darkness_Fish » 12 Jan 2018, 09:29

Charlie Brooker was on Desert Island Discs this morning, btw. I only heard enough to be disappointed by him picking a Beatles track as his opener (admittedly, a good 'un, "Tomorrow Never Knows").

*Edit - He appears to have annoyed a lot of people by picking the Robocop theme on the GameBoy, and Denim's "New Potatoes".
Like fast-moving clouds casting shadows against a hillside, the melody-loop shuddered with a sense of the sublime, the awful unknowable majesty of the world.

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Penk!
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Re: Black Mirror Season 4!

Postby Penk! » 16 Jan 2018, 21:33

Tactful Cactus wrote:Then episode Crocodile was brilliant. Loved it. The stark scenery (was it Scotland? Was it Canada?), retro-futurist tech, the dark path it takes. Brilliant.


Just watched that one and really disliked it. The scenery (Iceland apparently) and acting were excellent and it was tensely and chillingly directed, but the idea was, again, taken from an earlier episode (the excellent 'Entire History of You') and the bleakness and darkness were overdone to the point of being quite disturbing and unpleasant. The gag ending was particularly distasteful.

And while the show can sometimes be a little too blunt or obvious in its satire and critiques, this one didn't really seem to have much of a point to make. Maybe it's about how surveillance can be too intrusive but, well, it's all very muddled. I was also not really sure about the reference points to earlier episodes (the music and porn channel from '15 Million Merits') as they didn't otherwise fit. A lame injoke, perhaps.

Poor.
fange wrote:One of the things i really dislike in this life is people raising their voices in German.


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