Mixed-Media Reviews
Aug. 30th, 2016 04:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroThe Book of Mormon - It’s interesting in that when Jethrien and I see a play that’s terrible, we can pick it apart for hours, but this one left us without much to say. It was fun, it had some clever bits, it is, as I noted at intermission, “exactly what I should have expected.” It’s thought-provoking only if you’ve never had your ideas about religion or your white privilege ever challenged before, and it does both in a very soft way. Despite the toilet humor and cursing, this is as family-friendly as it gets—they want to get middle America to think about what religion means without scaring them, and that succeeds wildly. (Heck, the Mormons themselves apparently ran ads in the programs for a while.) I’m glad I saw it, I had fun; but I see no reason to buy the album and I’ll probably forget most of the details within a month.
The Tomorrow People (2014 TV Series) - It’s interesting to watch this following Sense8, because it’s a very similar premise (people with telepathic superpowers are hidden among normal humanity, watch these characters discover that they aren’t normal), but where Sense8 reveled in breaking episodic TV tropes, this plays them entirely by the book. White boy “chosen one” with daddy issues turns out to be more powerful than everybody else and saves them all, but decides to try working for the villains to hunt down the truth about his missing father. I made it two episodes before deciding that, although I thought the overall concept was cool, I didn’t care about the characters or the actual events.
The Girl With All the Gifts by M. R. Carey - While this is arguably a “thriller”, I’d really put it more in the thoughtful sci-fi category. We get a variety of viewpoints about a post-apocalyptic world and the people who live in it, most notably that of the brilliant-but-weirdly-sheltered Melanie. (It’s a zombie story, and I’m frankly sick of zombie stories, but it’s a wonderful take on the genre.) I devoured it in two days; and I totally recommend it.
The Tomorrow People (2014 TV Series) - It’s interesting to watch this following Sense8, because it’s a very similar premise (people with telepathic superpowers are hidden among normal humanity, watch these characters discover that they aren’t normal), but where Sense8 reveled in breaking episodic TV tropes, this plays them entirely by the book. White boy “chosen one” with daddy issues turns out to be more powerful than everybody else and saves them all, but decides to try working for the villains to hunt down the truth about his missing father. I made it two episodes before deciding that, although I thought the overall concept was cool, I didn’t care about the characters or the actual events.
The Girl With All the Gifts by M. R. Carey - While this is arguably a “thriller”, I’d really put it more in the thoughtful sci-fi category. We get a variety of viewpoints about a post-apocalyptic world and the people who live in it, most notably that of the brilliant-but-weirdly-sheltered Melanie. (It’s a zombie story, and I’m frankly sick of zombie stories, but it’s a wonderful take on the genre.) I devoured it in two days; and I totally recommend it.
