Charlie Brooker's "Black Mirror"

Started by wilder, January 26, 2012, 09:15:01 PM

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cronopio 2

i had forgotten about The Waldo Moment. i stand corrected.


polkablues

The first season is great, all three of them. The second season is spotty: "Be Right Back" is fantastic, probably my second favorite episode overall, "White Bear" is interesting, ugly, and dark as fuck, and "The Waldo Moment" is pretty much terrible. I haven't seen the Christmas special yet for some reason.
My house, my rules, my coffee

Jeremy Blackman

Good to hear. I'll watch all of them for sure.

Watched "The Entire History of You" tonight. (SPOILERS) It's a lot smarter than it seems in the first 15 minutes, so much groundwork is being laid constantly. The rest of the episode is this sort of mindblowing meticulous construction of a deconstruction. Also I found myself switching sides back and forth through the whole thing... that was so carefully and cleverly done.

I'd like to see what they could do with a feature film, say 2 1/2 hours and a very large budget.

Garam

Peaked with the first episode IMO, though the Christmas Special was pretty good.

Jeremy Blackman

I just watched "White Bear" and my brain has been burnt to a crisp. This is not only my favorite episode of the show, but one of the most brilliant things I've ever seen. :shock:

VAGUE SPOILERS

I haven't even fully absorbed the intended emotion of the episode yet, because I was so delighted and overstimulated by everything. This is definitely one I'll be re-watching.

Jeremy Blackman

I'm still obsessing about "White Bear" the next day. I am giddy every time I think about it. This and "15 Million Merits" are among the only things I've watched on TV that have approached the effect of a LVT or Lynch film... that feeling of being assaulted and delighted that lingers for days.

Here's what Charlie Brooker wrote about "White Bear" for an interview. Moderate spoilers:


http://www.channel4.com/programmes/black-mirror/articles/all/charlie-brooker-interview

The first series of Black Mirror featured three stories which were pretty much different genres (political thriller / dystopian sci-fi / relationship crisis), although they all shared a similar tone and sensibility. We're doing that again this year. If Be Right Back is a romance (of sorts), then White Bear is an apocalyptic thriller.

A young woman wakes up, apparently following some kind of suicide attempt, unable to remember her own name. She stumbles outside looking for help, but no-one will even speak to her. Instead they all stand around filming her on their mobiles. Then a man with a shotgun appears and gives chase - and the crowd continues to film, as if idly watching a sporting event.

I was thinking of the ubiquity of camera phones here. The audience at any gig is a sea of little blue lights. During the riots over student fees, there were scenes on the news where you'd have one person smashing in the window of a bank while 50 people filmed it on their phones. During the Libyan uprising you could see people walking around filming the aftermath of attacks, almost like tourists. When Gaddafi's body lay on display for a couple of days, people crowded round it with their phones out. It all looked pretty nightmarish. Almost like a zombie movie, I thought.

And then I thought, what if rather than a zombie movie, you had a story in which 90% of the population just became emotionless voyeurs. They'd just film whatever was happening in front of them, especially if it was horrible. What would happen to the remaining 10%? Some of them would go nuts and start doing terrible things to amuse the 'audience'. White Bear explores that nightmare -- and then hopefully creates a new one.

Jeremy Blackman

I recommended this to my dad, since he's a big Twilight Zone fan and is generally dystopian-minded. He texted me this: "Watching Black Mirror. You're right. It's amazing."

I told him not to watch more than one per day. His response: "Sorry, I can't help it."

Moral of the story, everyone recommend this to your dads.

Jeremy Blackman

After some thought, here's my ranking...

1. White Bear
2. Fifteen Million Merits
3. The National Anthem
4. The Entire History of You
5. Be Right Back
6. White Christmas
7. The Waldo Moment


"White Bear" and "Fifteen Million Merits" are unmitigated masterpieces, and I will return to them for years to come. The next four I loved. I'm sure my various affection levels for them will shift slightly upon rewatch, but they're all great.

It's probably best that we don't talk about "Waldo." But I guess I will, for a moment (with spoilers). It's sufficiently poignant and depressing, with a suitably painful ending, but it's still so profoundly ill-conceived. There's a moment when Jamie is embarrassed by Waldo's political rant and regrets not having been funny, but the problem is, Waldo was never funny at any point. To muddle things further, Jamie, and I think the script itself, acknowledge that Waldo is kind of dumb and terrible in general. So what's the point? This story has no idea where it's going. There are arcs and straight lines that lead nowhere and just kind of collide into sad mush.

SEVERE SPOILERS for White Christmas

Really liked White Christmas...

I think I predicted the girl's suicide wish and the confession way earlier than I was supposed to. I rarely predict things like that... Either my Black Mirror sense was activated, or those twists were overly telegraphed. However, the Asian twist was absolutely brilliant and came out of nowhere for me.

There were a bunch of other fun little reveals, like the fact that John Hamm was omitting details of the botched date not really to hide them from his supposed co-worker, but because he was embarrassed to repeat them to the people in the room.

And then, in true Black Mirror fashion, in turns out that all tangents were 100% relevant and would come into play in delightful and surprising ways. If only more movies and TV shows cared as much.

I didn't buy that a "cookie" could replicate one's consciousness, for many reasons. I just kind of had to go with it.

As Garam said, the imagery of being blocked was probably the highlight of the episode. Reminds you just how visual this show is. The things that linger and haunt me from each episode tend to be visual.

Quote from: Garam on December 30, 2014, 07:40:20 PMI thought the plothole was the kid. I didn't get why she was unblocked when the ex died, but maybe I missed a bit of dialogue explaining it.

They say a block "extends to offspring." It extends the wife's block to her daughter, but doesn't duplicate it. So when that (single) block is nullified, so is the extension. It's software logic, which I absolutely buy in this universe.


Jeremy Blackman

*gasp*

See, my belated interest was actually a premonition!

I would like at least 7 more episodes please.

Garam

Quote from: Jeremy Blackman on September 08, 2015, 11:50:53 PM
*gasp*

See, my belated interest was actually a premonition!

I would like at least 7 more episodes please.

You've got your wish, plus an extra 5 on top. Cool, hope it doesn't get too Americanised in the process.



oh and did I mention that DAVID CAMERON FUCKED A DEAD PIG

Jeremy Blackman

Sweet Jesus, 12 episodes? TWELVE? I honestly thought 7 was asking for too much. This is insane. :bravo:

Quote from: Garam on September 25, 2015, 12:19:27 PMoh and did I mention that DAVID CAMERON FUCKED A DEAD PIG

I did look it up when you posted that. It's a rumor in a book... I want it to be true, though.

Jeremy Blackman

"It's all very exciting — a whole new bunch of Black Mirror episodes on the most fitting platform imaginable," said Brooker. "Netflix connects us with a global audience so that we can create bigger, stranger, more international and diverse stories than before, whilst maintaining that 'Black Mirror' feel. I just hope none of these new story ideas come true."

source

Jeremy Blackman

"White Christmas" is now on Netflix.

Jeremy Blackman

'10 Cloverfield Lane' Director Dan Trachtenberg To Helm 'Black Mirror' Ep For Netflix

http://deadline.com/2016/04/netflix-10-cloverfield-lane-dan-trachtenberg-black-mirror-1201733648/

EXCLUSIVE: 10 Cloverfield Lane director Dan Trachtenberg is set to helm an episode of Netflix's Black Mirror reboot. He joins an increasingly high profile list of directors and filmmaking talent that includes Joe Wright and Jakob Verbruggen.

Created and written by Charlie Brooker, Black Mirror taps into our collective unease with the modern world and each stand-alone episode is a suspenseful tale exploring themes of contemporary techno-paranoia. The series, which premiered on Channel 4 in 2011 and aired for two seasons, has received an international Emmy Award, a Peabody Award, a Rose D'Or and been nominated for a BAFTA.

Netflix is assembling a top class talent pool for the new series. Deadline previously broke the news that Bryce Dallas Howard, Malachi Kirby and Alice Eve were set to star in episodes of the new series. It was announced last year that Netflix would be ordering 12 new episodes of the acclaimed series from Brooker's House of Tomorrow. Brooker and Annabel Jones, who exec produced the first seven episodes of the series, will continue to serve in that capacity as well as be showrunners for the new shows, which Brooker has written. House of Tomorrow is a part of the Endemol Shine Group.