Hidden Gems of Amazon Prime instant videos

Hanna us fun but I have one complaint.

Spoiler:

Let's start double tapping fools and stop assuming people are dead.

To be fair this bugs me in all films in this genre. Possible spoilers for season 2?

Saiorse Ronan would never forget the double-tap. Amateurs.

Just finished Upload. I genuinely enjoyed it, but Spoilers ahoy for my big wall of texts on thoughts/frustrations.

Spoiler:

I am very interested in the murder mystery/conspiracy of what happened to Nathan. I'm more interested in that than almost anything else in the show, but it was basically a "B" story line that didn't get nearly enough traction.
I mean, seriously, there's a BOMB detonated in a server room, and that gets no further follow up or information? What the f*ck was even the point of the bomb when literally nothing seems to have changed or taken place because of it?
Fran is murdered in literally the same way as Nathan, a self driving car accident (which are supposed to be nearly impossible to occur), and it gets no follow up? Not even Nathan's family mentions to him at any point that Fran is dead?
For that matter, Fran knows at that point that Nathan was likely murdered in a self driving car, but she takes a ride in one anyway? Seriously?
We also start to see the introduction of "Freeyond" which is a new digital afterlife service that Ingrid's dad is basically launching thanks to Nathan's stolen code, but we get zero follow up or real information about that.
What the f*ck is going on with "Beyond", Nathan's old company that is now being run by his remaining business partner? They clearly wanted to make it look like Jamie was the bad guy, but it turns out he's just a bad friend because he slept with Ingrid? It's not even clear when that happened. Was it after Nathan was dead? Before?
For that matter can I get more info on all the other digital afterlife options that are available? They have a "Disney Infinity" afterlife? What's the cost of that one?! Since "Beyond" was clearly supposed to be the revolutionary "Free to Play" type of existence that looks like it would have been ad supported or micro-transaction supported, where are the other competitors in this space?
I was able to suspend my disbelief in a lot of the technical wizardry of the show for the vast majority of the run. EXCEPT for the last episode when Nathan is in the 2gig zone, Ingrid adds a gig of bandwidth, and he burns it in half a second by having an emotional reaction. Clearly, an emotional reaction by a simulated person would burn compute power, not burn bandwidth. This isn't about how much data is being sent/received, it's about the processing of the program that is Nathan.
Also, how is it that Nathan can effectively interact with the real world in a life/death/fight/flight situation to save the woman he loves for a solid 15 real minutes and burn nearly 2gigs, but an emotional reaction staying in one place with no graphics to display burns a gig in a second?!
Even further, now that we know that every upload is effectively self-contained on a portable processing/storage unit, that compute power should be completely separate from the server space the user is in. BUT, Horizen has basically crippled that and forced compute power resources of the uploaded user to be limited. Real dick move, and them calling that CPU restriction "bandwidth" did not make me happy and blew my "suspended disbelief" in their reality.
Which goes back to my issue with "Beyond" and other models of digital afterlife. If the "upload" self is actually existing on that self-contained portable processing unit, why wouldn't you just setup a home server for yourself to live in?
I f*cking hate Ingrid. I know that's the intent of her character, but it made every time she was on screen difficult. Ingrid's best moment is when she has the sleepover with the niece and actually acts like a decent human being for all of 2 on screen minutes.
The social implications of having to pay to digitally extend your life, being charged for everything in that digital afterlife, but not being allowed to work to pay for your existence is huge. The entire show could literally be about that and I'd be happy. If you choose to upload, you're effectively damning your future generations to debt and cost for the rest of your existence. The very fact that a living "account holder" has complete control of your digital afterlife is crazy, and shows that these "uploads" are not being granted fair civil rights. Every digital upload is effectively a slave owned by a living person.
What happens if you upload with no living relatives willing to foot your bill? I think it can be assumed that such a person can digitally live as long as they still have money IRL, but once that money is gone, you're likely to be deleted, right? Well, a greedy corporation could literally just take all your money and delete you anyway. There's no one alive to come after them, and you're a dead upload, so you have no rights, anyway.
Which makes me wonder what's going on with Luke, the veteran living there in Horizen. He makes it clear that he has no living family, and he's basically put his military pension into his Horizen account to sustain him in the afterlife and chose to "suic-upload". Effectively, he just killed himself to live a better life digitally than deal with his real life as an amputee. How does that work? How does your military pension or retirement fund work when you're dead, and the funds are used to support your afterlife? Is it all transferred over to the afterlife account? Do you get to maintain your separate finances and bank account when you've uploaded? If you're not allowed to work, are you allowed to manage your money and make investments? I would think that would not be allowed as your activities could still drive changes in the market.
The system is clearly very broken, and like I said, I'm more interested in diving into that broken system and understanding the social implications and hierarchy that's been hinted at than the love triangle of Ingrid, Nathan and Nora.
Honestly, if the world they built in this show didn't have that fascinating back-story, and the murder mystery wasn't there, this might be a better show. Because then you can actually focus on that love triangle story and the people of the story.
But, since the setting and back-story and murder are present, those things are just more interesting to me and I am craving more of them.

In talking about this show with my wife her big question was "Would you upload?" Based on the perceived financial impact alone, I had to say "No." But man, if that financial piece wasn't there, or a home supported option where you could build your own digital afterlife was available...then that's a solid maybe.

if Uploading was a thing, its not a tough leap to think that you could also generate value while uploaded, which changes everything about the financial situation. You couldnt create anything physical but you could do anything that is 100% digital or can be simulated. The show treats it 100% as retirement but there's no reason it has to be. You could:

Make games
Make movies
Make music
Code
Make engineering designs and perform simulations, testing on them
Do anything that benefits from simulation and thoughtful, guided testing (data analysis and processing)
Given how connected the world is, you could perform any feat that benefits from a virtual presence. Museum curator, personal assistance, probably real world or virtual world real estate.
Teach

That's off the top of my head. So if you could generate value as an uploaded person I think the question would become "do you want to live longer, choose when to stop existing?" in which case I'd say 'probably!' as a 40 year old. If I hit 70+ my opinion might change.

You don't need to just limit the value creation of uploads to intangible work. You could have them operate machinery IRL. Hell, all those self-driving cars could actually be being driven by enslaved uploads. Or copies of a single upload for that matter.

Which is actually the more realistic corporatized version of what you'd do with that technology. Effectively free labor! Suck it, Mechanical Turk!

And an ever growing labor pool!

Right! It was fascinating to me that they had a clear law preventing uploads from working. They even mentioned in the show that this was specifically so that they wouldn't compete with the living. But, if they can't work to earn money, they have no way to continue to support themselves, thus all the cost of their existence is either on the living account holder, or on your own savings that you're now extending your life off of.

And cost of living in the digital afterlife is clearly an issue here. Realistically the cost of digital after-living should be fractions of what we pay in the real world. Yet it's made clear in the show that the digital afterlife seems even more expensive!

Spoiler:

When Nathan gets that loan from Jamie for $30k, he indicates that will cover him for only a couple of months on the 2gig plan!

A real divide exists between the haves and have-nots over who can afford an afterlife, and it even seems that some people are choosing to pay digital afterlife bills rather than pay ongoing medical bills. Given where we are today with medical costs, that's totally believable to me.

I loved Guns Akimbo, start to finish.

I think Upload's meta-commentary on DLC was spot on.

fangblackbone wrote:

I loved Guns Akimbo, start to finish.

I had been avoiding it after the director proved himself a misogynistic douche, but am softening to watching it entirely because of the cast.

I did not know about the misogynist douchery. I was drawn to it because of Daniel Radcliffe and Samara Weaving. They did not disappoint.

Finally got access to profiles on our account, but as of yesterday it wasn't on Roku.

That may reduce my recommendations for serial crime shows and romcoms a bit.

fangblackbone wrote:

I did not know about the misogynist douchery. I was drawn to it because of Daniel Radcliffe and Samara Weaving. They did not disappoint.

I'll spoiler it but put it out there for anyone that cares.

Spoiler:

He started targeted harassment of a group of women in films press after they called out an editor for using racist slurs and a bunch of her staff quit in response.

The editor attempted suicide and ended up in the hospital, and said director made it his crusade to "punish" everyone else involved, except he conspicuously didn't even mention the men who quit/called her out at all. He sifted through the list, picked the women out, and then posted their names and pictures on his twitter.

When he eventually got suspended or banned from twitter, he then continued the harassment from the Guns Akimbo official film account.

So that's what my head associates with that movie. I'm sure there's more details but I can't be bothered to google it again. I read enough of it the first time around.

Finished rewatching BSG. Sometimes I went for my blu-ray collection (either to watch the extended versions of some episodes or razor) and by the end I just kept with it. The video and audio quality on Amazon just seems kind of bad.

I didn't find the series a masterpiece, like my nostalgia was trying to convince me of, but I still loved it. The characters are just so good. That Baltar is a riot. A pity I haven't seen that actor in other stuff (I think he's Alucard in Castlevania). In the first seasons, it's weird to see characters be front and centre for a couple of episodes and then completely disappear for long stretches. This becomes less of problem at the latter seasons.
Season 2 is still he highlight to me, especially the Pegasus storyline.
Like the first time I watched it, I actually had no real problems with the ending like most people do.

The second season of Hanna is just, weird and bad. Its some Sisyphean repetitive cyle of escape/capture/repeat and characters continually making dumb choices just to keep the weak plot slowly moving. I'm at Ep 6 and, honestly at this point I don't give a sh*t about a single character in this show, I just continue to watch with this kind of clinical robotic detachment since I have no other shows going right now.

Finished season two of Homecoming. It was substantially better than season one. Had more low key humour and a tighter storyline. Didn’t feel like it was stretching out the story to fill 10 episodes like the first season did. Had some interesting things to say as well I thought.

Neat. I enjoyed the first season of Homecoming and hadnt decided whether to try the 2nd yet. We're not watching much serious tv these days but might make an exception.

polypusher wrote:

Neat. I enjoyed the first season of Homecoming and hadnt decided whether to try the 2nd yet. We're not watching much serious tv these days but might make an exception.

If you kind of liked the first season but wanted it to be bit more satirical and a bit less dramatic then you’ll probably find the second season hits the spot.

Preacher is just nuts. But highly entertaining

Sorbicol wrote:

Preacher is just nuts. But highly entertaining

Are you a fan of the comic?

Truth Seekers

Truth Seekers is a supernatural comedy drama series featuring Nick Frost, Samson Kayo, Simon Pegg, and Emma D'Arcy. A group of part-time paranormal investigators team up to uncover a deadly conspiracy.

Oh lawd, squeeeeee! A coworker and I had a geeked-out lunch discussion today about how Shaun of the Dead is the undisputed, greatest zombie movie ever made... talk about timing!

Fedaykin98 wrote:
Sorbicol wrote:

Preacher is just nuts. But highly entertaining

Are you a fan of the comic?

It's....... based on a comic? That actually makes a hell of a lot more sense!

Sorbicol wrote:
Fedaykin98 wrote:
Sorbicol wrote:

Preacher is just nuts. But highly entertaining

Are you a fan of the comic?

It's....... based on a comic? That actually makes a hell of a lot more sense!

Yes, Preacher makes every reputable list of best comics ever. It's exceedingly irreverent, dirty, even, but it's got heart.

farley3k wrote:

Truth Seekers

I'm going to be cautious with my optimism as the last time Pegg and Frost worked on something without Edgar Wright involved we ended up with Paul.

kuddles wrote:
farley3k wrote:

Truth Seekers

I'm going to be cautious with my optimism as the last time Pegg and Frost worked on something without Edgar Wright involved we ended up with Paul.

Ah, Paul. What a funny, super enjoyable movie that was!

Mario_Alba wrote:
kuddles wrote:
farley3k wrote:

Truth Seekers

I'm going to be cautious with my optimism as the last time Pegg and Frost worked on something without Edgar Wright involved we ended up with Paul.

Ah, Paul. What a funny, super enjoyable movie that was!

I can't tell if you're being serious. I liked Paul.

Mario likes everything, so probably being serious.

HAHAHA!

LeapingGnome is, of course, right. I do tend to like pretty much everything, or at least find enough to enjoy in things I don't much care for. So yes --I definitely, honestly enjoyed Paul when I saw it.

EvilDolphin wrote:

Finished season two of Homecoming. It was substantially better than season one. Had more low key humour and a tighter storyline. Didn’t feel like it was stretching out the story to fill 10 episodes like the first season did. Had some interesting things to say as well I thought.

Thanks for reminding me about this, finished up S2 tonight and really enjoyed it.