Skip to main content

Altered Carbon Season 1

Trying to figure out why Altered Carbon is so good, why the first season is great and the second one isn't so much.

The nudity is part of why it's good. Sprinkle lots of nubidy into a show and you have a guaranteed hit. Extended nudity. Frequent nudity. Gorgeous nudity. I'd add in some more nudity with imperfect people if I were doing the movie.

The idea of a man weighed down by memories is appealing to me. 

I can't really get into the action, you know in the movie that he's going to survive. Movies don't just suddenly end with the hero dying in the middle of it. And there are tells that it is fake. 

The narrative of the sexy hispanic cop is attractive. Her protective partner. Her wanting to protect the sleeve of her former lover. Her family is catholic and believes in RD or real death. 

The future technology is surprising, interesting, well crafted, unique.

The revealing and the carrot of what is hidden is deftly handled. The mind yearns to understand what is going on.

The abysmal filthy rich. Their moral corruption. Their horny lifestyles. Illegal activity. Financing whims. Indulging in fetishes. 

The layers, there's the sister, the cop, the filthy rich, the retro technology, the new technology, the past training in terrorist fighting. Like a good food recipe, they combine well. 

There is an edge, a kind of Noir feeling. People are on edge, wary of people trying to get over on them. They seem to really know a few things, but not a whole lot of other things. An interesting combination of haunting, confidence, and curiosity. Part of the noir appeal is the Camus question of why not kill yourself. What is the meaning of existence if you can't do enough of what you want to do? Other carry missions and heavy goals, but you hold it all lightly.

The show is visually rich. I read the book after, but I doubt I would have been that inventive, the novel didn't really include many visual details. The show has rich visual after rich visual after rich visual.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Manet and Degas

  Brilliant video explaining the exhibit. Go to the Met and see the exhibit! It's really quite special.  In the last gallery the painting this sketch is based off of, of the execution of a Mexican president. The painting has been cut into sections, and the surviving Degas has reassembled them. NY Times review

Character list of Inherent Vice the novel

Fay "Shasta" Hepworth played by Katherine Waterston in the 2014 movie Larry "Doc" Sportello: Our hero, gumsandal.  Shasta Fay Hepworth: Former beautiful love interest. Mickey Wolfmann: Real estate tycoon, Shasta's sugar daddy, paying for apartment in Hancock Park. Mrs. Sloane Wolfmann: wife. Has her own side piece Mr. Riggs Warbling Deputy DA Penny Kimball: lawyer from district attorney office, who fooled around with Doc for a time. Works next to Rhus Frothingham (female book, male in movie).  Aunt Reet: Aunt in real estate. "Bigfoot" Christian Bjornsen: Hollywood detective and actor. Married to Chastity. Spoiler: His partner Vincent Indelicato is wacked by Adrian Prussia, but Puck did the actual job. Mrs. Chastity Bjornsen: Gets on the phone on page 260 of the paperback to defend Bigfoot's day off from work. Calls Doc Mr. Moral Turpitude, accuses him of running up Bigfoot's mental health bills.  Denis: friend who he goes and gets a pizza with...

AOC

Dark Brandon meet Dark Alex. I see her advising the republicans to stick to their guns and never compromise. They don’t want to do anything, only obstruct. So they don’t actually need to be unified. Chaos isn’t organized. This is fine. Read all about it from Heather Cox Richardson , a historian who covers current events. "As their policies threatened to lose voters by concentrating wealth upward and hollowing out the middle class, Republicans increasingly warned that minority voters wanted socialism and were destroying the nation to get it. Trump rode that narrative to power, and now tearing down the current government is the idea that drives the Republican base." While we're at it, here's another funny photo from the Onion: And then: I listened to the Times podcast about George Santos . He basically lied about, I don't know, 80% of his resume, and has a mysterious $700k in his "corporation" which has no clients. So he's a Russian or Chinese plant, o...