Television mostly...and ugh Google.
Jan. 28th, 2023 08:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. 2022 wrap-ups, I can't do - it's all a blur. Also, kind of want it to stay that way.
2. Quiet Place - Part II starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, directed by John Kranski. The deaf actress steals the show much like she did in the first film. But Cillian Murphy and Blunt are good in it. I'm making my way through Cillian Murphy films. I may actually brave the two other horror flicks he starred in besides this one, 28 Days Later (directed Danny Boyle) and Red Eye (where he plays the terrorist against Rachel McAdams heroine).
He's an interesting actor - a character actor with a leading man's charisma and good looks, similar to Christian Bale and Robert Downy Jr, also Benedict Cumberbatch in that respect.
I'd never noticed him before - but now, I do.
The film itself isn't quite as good as the first one, partly because it splits the action between Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy/Deaf Daughter, and Emily Blunt's son, which is kind of hard to do seamlessly. Horror films work better if they focus solely on one group of characters and stay there.
If they jump around too much - they lose the tension. Also in the first film, we barely see the creatures - so their menace is in a way more present. The fear of the unknown. Here, we see them and know what they are - so less present. More of a jump scare.
It's not a scary or super violent film, nor really all that gory (in relation to 90% of other horror films).
3. Peaky Blinders S5 is weighed down by the historic villain, Oswald Mosely, who is impossible to get rid of - because he's a real person, who didn't die until the 1980s. Also, he's a fascist, and kind of one-dimensional. The other villains are more interesting - in earlier seasons. He's so despicable - that I looked him up to see how he did die - slowly of Parkinson's disease, at the age of 84. He suffered from it for the second half of his life, and was ill for a good percentage of that time period. In 1940 - his fascist party was disbanded and he was imprisoned along with his wife (or interned) by the British Government. In 1943 - he was released due to ill-health, and he fled to Paris,France, where he lived out the rest of his life.
I don't understand why these folks live to their 80s. Maybe the Universe thinks they can redeem themselves somehow? Maybe he did? God only knows.
Anyhow, I wish they'd chosen a different villain - because it bogs down the season a bit. The unbeatable villain doesn't quite work for this sort of series? Although Oswald does hold a mirror up to Tommy Shelby's sense of justice and code, and his justifications for his abuses of power and ruthless pursuit of it.
I'm still thinking at this point - that the series might have been suited to end with Season 4, but I've not seen S6 yet or the last episode of S5. The episodes are longer than traditional series episodes. About an hour and a half, no commercials. Also there's 6 episodes per season.
Still better than most television series...so there's that. Shame Helen McGory who plays Polly, died off-screen after S5, in 2021. She's a powerhouse, and my second favorite next to Cillian.
Helen McCrory, who has died of cancer aged 52, was already established among the leading stage actors of her generation when she became known as Cherie Blair in Stephen Frears’s movie The Queen (2006), starring Helen Mirren, and with Michael Sheen as Tony; and as the witch Narcissa Malfoy, mother of Draco, in the last three Harry Potter films.
Helen McCrory Obituary
She's died young. I didn't realize she was my age. She looked older than me - or rather older than me in my head. Granted she had cancer - which most likely had something to do with it.
4. Wolf Pack - so I watched the first episode on Paramount +, and it's okay. I'll have to see a few more episodes before I can effectively review it. The teen leads, Everette and Blake are portrayed by good actors. Both look like teens for the most part (granted everyone from the age of 18-25 looks the same to me, so I really couldn't say one way or the other). Also, for a change - both are POC, one is Hispanic, and the other Black. That's a big difference between 2023 programming and 1990s-2010 television programming. Vamp Diaries, Teen Wolf, Supernatural, Buffy, Angel - all of that - had white actors in the leads, here? We have POC in the leads, and white actors as supporting.
I know, I know - Sarah Michelle Gellar is being marketed as the lead, but she's not. That's a huge mislead. She's barely in the first episode, and listed at the end of the credits.
It's not a bad thing that she's not the lead. The two people - whose point of view that we are in and are the main focus of the episode have a touch more screen presence, and are more compelling. Unfortunately no one else is. So, we'll see where this goes. The actors playing the other two teen leads are kind of stiff and have no chemistry with anyone. But, again it's the first episode - it may get better. Buffy took a while to get better - I didn't particularly like most of the first season of Buffy either - half watched it. Nor did I find the first two-three episodes of Vamp Diaries all that compelling.
The older male lead - isn't that compelling either. But, again first episode. First episodes are often clunky.
The other downside? It's a werewolf show. I'm not a fan of the werewolf genre. It's hard to pull off well. Teen Wolf is among the few that did, and mainly by building an interesting world around it, with other supernatural creatures. Of the werewolf shows/films that worked for me?
* Teen Wolf
* American Werewolf in London
* Wolf (Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfieffer and James Spader)
It's a tough genre to pull off.
The setup? It's about two kids who get bitten during a wildfire, and are trying to figure out what the hell happened.
5. Lockwood and Co - Netflix, it's a British Show, or the entire cast is British and it's filmed in London and takes place there. So assuming British. I like it better than Wolf Pack - helped by the fact that all the episodes are available.
Like Wolf Pack - it's also adapted from a series of books or a book. Adapting series from books is actually a good idea, you already have a built in character bible and world. You don't have to do quite as much work. And less likely to screw up on the world-building, it's already laid out for you.
The set-up? There was a cataclysmic event that altered the world. Ghosts for some inexplicable reason now walk among the living. Worse - they can kill you with a touch. Within a few weeks of the event, over 49,000 people died. They discovered that there were "sensitives" among the young or teens, who could hear, see, touch ghosts - and detect them. These gifted youngsters, trained with adult supervision, could fight off the ghosts and exorcise them. Iron, Silver and Salt were the best lines of defense. And ghost hunting agencies training the youngsters were set up. Along with curfews - since the ghosts walked at night and were stronger then. As a result there was an economic crash - because people were wary of walking around outside.
This is all explained in flashes during the front credits. (I thought that was clever.)
Anyhow, Lucy Carlyle is forced by her mother to join Jacobs Ghost Hunting Academy and Agency. Her wages will be sent directly home. And something horrible happens, which sends Lucy running off to London, where she joins Lockwood and Co, a ghost hunting agency run by a teen named Lockwood, and his friend George, both outcasts from a premiere ghost hunting agency in England, and the lead agency. They asked too many questions, apparently.
There's a lot of world-building in the first two episodes, but it's barely noticeable - in that it doesn't drag down the plot at all. The adults in this are all portrayed as antagonists, and a threat to the kids.
Also, there's more than one over-arching mystery here. So, I'd categorize it as teen mystery/supernatural horror?
At any rate - two to three episodes in? It's rather compelling, and each episode ends on a cliff-hanger, effectively making me want to see the next one.
Unlike Wolf Pack - the first episode sucked me in, immediately, and my attention didn't wander at all during it. But, admittedly, I prefer ghosts to werewolves, I find them scarier and more interesting.
6. State of Me or Bleak Saturday
Started out Sunny, then became bleak. The sun disappeared, and the bleak gray skies of woe reappeared.
Been irritable today...I think it's because I slept horribly last night (ached all over - blame it on digestive issues and back issues). Finally took some tynenol, which helped, and spread on some muscle relaxant cream which also helped.
I also think it may have been due to dehydration, and CBD. I've decided not to take any CBD gummies at night any longer. I think they dehydrate me, and raise my blood sugar.
But don't know for certain. Was having lots of hot flashes yesterday, and my skin got red, and kind of burned briefly last night. Then it calmed down.
And bad constipation.
At any rate, feeling better now - less irritable. Day got away from me though as a result of this. I didn't feel like doing anything but vegging in front of the television set and surfing the internet. Didn't even work on my book or my watercolors.
I wish I had more time, so much of my time seems to spent doing things like commuting, and well working.
Ugh Google
Saw an exchange today on my Facebook Timeline - about Google. It annoyed and haunted me, but not for the reasons you might suspect. Perhaps its just me? But are the tech employees kind of spoiled?
A guy was responding to a post a social media friend made about Google on FB. She'd posted a Wired article on the company's founders and how'd they implanted all these perks and a new and more positive means of managing employees and growing employees, until they basically sold out to hedge fund fiancieers, who were now insisting on killing those perks, and reducing head-count (cutting non-essential employees and employees at high salaries) in order to cut expenses and build a better profit margin.
The responder stated that he'd left Google when he discovered that he could no longer take his three-four month sabbaticals for various reasons without a VP signing off on it. It couldn't just be his boss like in the past. And he was being denied these sabbaticals, so he quit.
And I thought...okay, last year, I had to go to my union to get my boss to approve a seven day vacation (which included a paid holiday) to see my recently widowed mother for Christmas. This guy quit over not being able to take three-four months off for a sabbatical? And he was making over $250K a year?
I don't know, sometimes I think life was better when I was blissfully unaware that these folks existed. Thank you social media for making me aware of these things. Truly. I don't know what I would have done without you.
[See? Irritable. My body's off - and it always makes me irritable. Also theater in NY has become insanely expensive. Even the off-Broadway shows are expensive. I need to figure out how to get the bargain prices - they don't appear to be on Plum Benefits.]
7. Google isn't the only one laying folks off in the tech industry...there's been massive layoffs last year and this year, and the year is just beginning..
Tech Layoffs
"More than 58,000 workers in U.S.-based tech companies have been laid off in mass job cuts so far in 2023, according to a Crunchbase News tally, and the year is just getting started. That number includes IBM’s 3,900-person cut and SAP‘s 3,000-person layoff announcements this week.
Last year, more than 140,000 jobs were slashed from public and private tech companies as they were forced to confront rising inflation and a tumultuous stock market. The economy has come to reckon with a culture of overzealous hiring and soaring valuations, and startups are now forced to carry themselves through a frosty market as venture funding becomes barren.
Tech companies as big as Qualtrics, Carta and Verily have slashed jobs this year, citing overhiring during periods of rapid growth. To keep tabs, we’ve compiled a list of U.S.-based tech companies that have laid off employees so far this year."
Alphabets Layoffs Aren't Very Googley - is the article that was posted on FB. Most of it is behind a paywall. But the gist is that Alphabet rudely laid off employees to satisfy a hedge fund investor worried about profit margin and the bottom line.
Shame Greed doesn't kill people, isn't it?
2. Quiet Place - Part II starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, directed by John Kranski. The deaf actress steals the show much like she did in the first film. But Cillian Murphy and Blunt are good in it. I'm making my way through Cillian Murphy films. I may actually brave the two other horror flicks he starred in besides this one, 28 Days Later (directed Danny Boyle) and Red Eye (where he plays the terrorist against Rachel McAdams heroine).
He's an interesting actor - a character actor with a leading man's charisma and good looks, similar to Christian Bale and Robert Downy Jr, also Benedict Cumberbatch in that respect.
I'd never noticed him before - but now, I do.
The film itself isn't quite as good as the first one, partly because it splits the action between Emily Blunt, Cillian Murphy/Deaf Daughter, and Emily Blunt's son, which is kind of hard to do seamlessly. Horror films work better if they focus solely on one group of characters and stay there.
If they jump around too much - they lose the tension. Also in the first film, we barely see the creatures - so their menace is in a way more present. The fear of the unknown. Here, we see them and know what they are - so less present. More of a jump scare.
It's not a scary or super violent film, nor really all that gory (in relation to 90% of other horror films).
3. Peaky Blinders S5 is weighed down by the historic villain, Oswald Mosely, who is impossible to get rid of - because he's a real person, who didn't die until the 1980s. Also, he's a fascist, and kind of one-dimensional. The other villains are more interesting - in earlier seasons. He's so despicable - that I looked him up to see how he did die - slowly of Parkinson's disease, at the age of 84. He suffered from it for the second half of his life, and was ill for a good percentage of that time period. In 1940 - his fascist party was disbanded and he was imprisoned along with his wife (or interned) by the British Government. In 1943 - he was released due to ill-health, and he fled to Paris,France, where he lived out the rest of his life.
I don't understand why these folks live to their 80s. Maybe the Universe thinks they can redeem themselves somehow? Maybe he did? God only knows.
Anyhow, I wish they'd chosen a different villain - because it bogs down the season a bit. The unbeatable villain doesn't quite work for this sort of series? Although Oswald does hold a mirror up to Tommy Shelby's sense of justice and code, and his justifications for his abuses of power and ruthless pursuit of it.
I'm still thinking at this point - that the series might have been suited to end with Season 4, but I've not seen S6 yet or the last episode of S5. The episodes are longer than traditional series episodes. About an hour and a half, no commercials. Also there's 6 episodes per season.
Still better than most television series...so there's that. Shame Helen McGory who plays Polly, died off-screen after S5, in 2021. She's a powerhouse, and my second favorite next to Cillian.
Helen McCrory, who has died of cancer aged 52, was already established among the leading stage actors of her generation when she became known as Cherie Blair in Stephen Frears’s movie The Queen (2006), starring Helen Mirren, and with Michael Sheen as Tony; and as the witch Narcissa Malfoy, mother of Draco, in the last three Harry Potter films.
Helen McCrory Obituary
She's died young. I didn't realize she was my age. She looked older than me - or rather older than me in my head. Granted she had cancer - which most likely had something to do with it.
4. Wolf Pack - so I watched the first episode on Paramount +, and it's okay. I'll have to see a few more episodes before I can effectively review it. The teen leads, Everette and Blake are portrayed by good actors. Both look like teens for the most part (granted everyone from the age of 18-25 looks the same to me, so I really couldn't say one way or the other). Also, for a change - both are POC, one is Hispanic, and the other Black. That's a big difference between 2023 programming and 1990s-2010 television programming. Vamp Diaries, Teen Wolf, Supernatural, Buffy, Angel - all of that - had white actors in the leads, here? We have POC in the leads, and white actors as supporting.
I know, I know - Sarah Michelle Gellar is being marketed as the lead, but she's not. That's a huge mislead. She's barely in the first episode, and listed at the end of the credits.
It's not a bad thing that she's not the lead. The two people - whose point of view that we are in and are the main focus of the episode have a touch more screen presence, and are more compelling. Unfortunately no one else is. So, we'll see where this goes. The actors playing the other two teen leads are kind of stiff and have no chemistry with anyone. But, again it's the first episode - it may get better. Buffy took a while to get better - I didn't particularly like most of the first season of Buffy either - half watched it. Nor did I find the first two-three episodes of Vamp Diaries all that compelling.
The older male lead - isn't that compelling either. But, again first episode. First episodes are often clunky.
The other downside? It's a werewolf show. I'm not a fan of the werewolf genre. It's hard to pull off well. Teen Wolf is among the few that did, and mainly by building an interesting world around it, with other supernatural creatures. Of the werewolf shows/films that worked for me?
* Teen Wolf
* American Werewolf in London
* Wolf (Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfieffer and James Spader)
It's a tough genre to pull off.
The setup? It's about two kids who get bitten during a wildfire, and are trying to figure out what the hell happened.
5. Lockwood and Co - Netflix, it's a British Show, or the entire cast is British and it's filmed in London and takes place there. So assuming British. I like it better than Wolf Pack - helped by the fact that all the episodes are available.
Like Wolf Pack - it's also adapted from a series of books or a book. Adapting series from books is actually a good idea, you already have a built in character bible and world. You don't have to do quite as much work. And less likely to screw up on the world-building, it's already laid out for you.
The set-up? There was a cataclysmic event that altered the world. Ghosts for some inexplicable reason now walk among the living. Worse - they can kill you with a touch. Within a few weeks of the event, over 49,000 people died. They discovered that there were "sensitives" among the young or teens, who could hear, see, touch ghosts - and detect them. These gifted youngsters, trained with adult supervision, could fight off the ghosts and exorcise them. Iron, Silver and Salt were the best lines of defense. And ghost hunting agencies training the youngsters were set up. Along with curfews - since the ghosts walked at night and were stronger then. As a result there was an economic crash - because people were wary of walking around outside.
This is all explained in flashes during the front credits. (I thought that was clever.)
Anyhow, Lucy Carlyle is forced by her mother to join Jacobs Ghost Hunting Academy and Agency. Her wages will be sent directly home. And something horrible happens, which sends Lucy running off to London, where she joins Lockwood and Co, a ghost hunting agency run by a teen named Lockwood, and his friend George, both outcasts from a premiere ghost hunting agency in England, and the lead agency. They asked too many questions, apparently.
There's a lot of world-building in the first two episodes, but it's barely noticeable - in that it doesn't drag down the plot at all. The adults in this are all portrayed as antagonists, and a threat to the kids.
Also, there's more than one over-arching mystery here. So, I'd categorize it as teen mystery/supernatural horror?
At any rate - two to three episodes in? It's rather compelling, and each episode ends on a cliff-hanger, effectively making me want to see the next one.
Unlike Wolf Pack - the first episode sucked me in, immediately, and my attention didn't wander at all during it. But, admittedly, I prefer ghosts to werewolves, I find them scarier and more interesting.
6. State of Me or Bleak Saturday
Started out Sunny, then became bleak. The sun disappeared, and the bleak gray skies of woe reappeared.
Been irritable today...I think it's because I slept horribly last night (ached all over - blame it on digestive issues and back issues). Finally took some tynenol, which helped, and spread on some muscle relaxant cream which also helped.
I also think it may have been due to dehydration, and CBD. I've decided not to take any CBD gummies at night any longer. I think they dehydrate me, and raise my blood sugar.
But don't know for certain. Was having lots of hot flashes yesterday, and my skin got red, and kind of burned briefly last night. Then it calmed down.
And bad constipation.
At any rate, feeling better now - less irritable. Day got away from me though as a result of this. I didn't feel like doing anything but vegging in front of the television set and surfing the internet. Didn't even work on my book or my watercolors.
I wish I had more time, so much of my time seems to spent doing things like commuting, and well working.
Ugh Google
Saw an exchange today on my Facebook Timeline - about Google. It annoyed and haunted me, but not for the reasons you might suspect. Perhaps its just me? But are the tech employees kind of spoiled?
A guy was responding to a post a social media friend made about Google on FB. She'd posted a Wired article on the company's founders and how'd they implanted all these perks and a new and more positive means of managing employees and growing employees, until they basically sold out to hedge fund fiancieers, who were now insisting on killing those perks, and reducing head-count (cutting non-essential employees and employees at high salaries) in order to cut expenses and build a better profit margin.
The responder stated that he'd left Google when he discovered that he could no longer take his three-four month sabbaticals for various reasons without a VP signing off on it. It couldn't just be his boss like in the past. And he was being denied these sabbaticals, so he quit.
And I thought...okay, last year, I had to go to my union to get my boss to approve a seven day vacation (which included a paid holiday) to see my recently widowed mother for Christmas. This guy quit over not being able to take three-four months off for a sabbatical? And he was making over $250K a year?
I don't know, sometimes I think life was better when I was blissfully unaware that these folks existed. Thank you social media for making me aware of these things. Truly. I don't know what I would have done without you.
[See? Irritable. My body's off - and it always makes me irritable. Also theater in NY has become insanely expensive. Even the off-Broadway shows are expensive. I need to figure out how to get the bargain prices - they don't appear to be on Plum Benefits.]
7. Google isn't the only one laying folks off in the tech industry...there's been massive layoffs last year and this year, and the year is just beginning..
Tech Layoffs
"More than 58,000 workers in U.S.-based tech companies have been laid off in mass job cuts so far in 2023, according to a Crunchbase News tally, and the year is just getting started. That number includes IBM’s 3,900-person cut and SAP‘s 3,000-person layoff announcements this week.
Last year, more than 140,000 jobs were slashed from public and private tech companies as they were forced to confront rising inflation and a tumultuous stock market. The economy has come to reckon with a culture of overzealous hiring and soaring valuations, and startups are now forced to carry themselves through a frosty market as venture funding becomes barren.
Tech companies as big as Qualtrics, Carta and Verily have slashed jobs this year, citing overhiring during periods of rapid growth. To keep tabs, we’ve compiled a list of U.S.-based tech companies that have laid off employees so far this year."
Alphabets Layoffs Aren't Very Googley - is the article that was posted on FB. Most of it is behind a paywall. But the gist is that Alphabet rudely laid off employees to satisfy a hedge fund investor worried about profit margin and the bottom line.
Shame Greed doesn't kill people, isn't it?
no subject
Date: 2023-01-29 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-29 10:36 pm (UTC)was a pleasant surprise for me, plot-wise. I'd feared just more of the same but I liked that we discovered a new, relevant thing about the aliens. It made decent enough viewing for a once-through at least.
no subject
Date: 2023-01-29 11:35 pm (UTC)Quiet Place - Part II - I agree was a pleasant surprise, in that they didn't repeat themselves and broadened their world, also provided new relevant details about the monsters.
no subject
Date: 2023-02-01 05:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-30 01:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-30 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-01-30 05:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-02-01 02:47 am (UTC)However, for context, in tech, employees are willing to work crazy hours to make the next great thing. It's like playing the lottery, except instead of paying a $1, you work nights and weekends in the hope that you create Gmail. Kevin (that commenter) did (design) Gmail, Google Calendar, etc. with the crazy hours required to accomplish that.
Something that article hit somewhat on was that many of the perks in tech go into creating work cultures where people are invested in the workplace as a third space where they socialize, and as an identity. For reasons, I've mostly been an outside observer of those perks (and cultures). On the other hand my identity/friends/social space/culture hasn't been taken away the various times I've been laid off. I just, you know, lost a job.
The surprise isn't that there were layoffs in tech. The surprise is that Google, long resistant to layoffs, and with no real reason to have layoffs (they'll hire back the same # of people in 6 months + made a profit) had layoffs at all. That so many of those people laid off were deeply emotionally invested in being Googlers. Alphabet just cracked their own company culture in a fundamental way.
I have to think it's going to both affect what companies give employees and will affect how much employees mentally/physically/emotionally invest in the places they work. Or not. We'll see.
no subject
Date: 2023-02-01 01:53 pm (UTC)Appreciate that.
Yeah, I had a lot of discussions with co-workers and family members after posting this. We'd figured out that the trade-off was they work you to death, with a crazy amount of pressure to create the next big thing. [ Thanks for confirming that.] The perks, etc, are kind of an illusion - in that you have to work 24/7, practically kill yourself, and create this amazing thing, or you are out the door - and in exchange you get that great perk. There's a ton of articles about it. ("The Truth about working for Google" etc...) Moral - the grass always appears to be greener, but you don't know about the grub worms or the ten gardners hired to keep it in shape. There's always a price or trade-off.
Also, those industries are always at risk for layoffs - and the first to go are folks in the "support" functions, not necessarily the "line". It's why I decided it would be a mistake to apply for Microsoft, Apple, Google, etc. (Been laid off numerous times prior to working for a state agency - and seen it happen in five different industries - Health Insurance, Tech (Start Ups are the worst), Publishing, Finance, Utility - Sprint/US Telecom).
I'd been told Salesforce was a wonderful place to work, for example - but it just laid off 5600 people. Both line and support. (IT in tech is usually front line, but can be both...so it may have just been support.)
Today, Paypal added itself to the list.
Sorry to hear that you lost your job - I didn't know that. Also sorry about your friend.
no subject
Date: 2023-02-01 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-02-01 05:39 pm (UTC)I know someone else who was laid-off from Google (Director of the Massage Therapy in NYC).
I'm not sure anyone is safe right now.