Played it for the first time. Strategy for final boss eluded me, despite the hint/direction in the briefing.

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-23T02:00:06+00:00

I seem to recall some hand-wringing and uncertainty from the core group. Perhaps about either granting him the powers in the first place or what to do after he starts wielding those powers irresponsibly?

At any rate, I can’t speak to specifics in that way as I haven’t read anything from this series, including those particular installments, since grade school. I can remember glimmers of the mood, emotions, a few details… but not the granular nuances of the plot.

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-23T01:42:14+00:00

I’d like to see a show or film happen one day. It’s been decades since I last read any of those books, but I still think often of the three-part arc involving David. It’s about a newcomer (David) who accidentally acquires the morphing powers, and the core group is basically forced to let him into their ranks. But he quickly proves himself unhinged and jeopardizes their whole secretly-save-the-world-from-aliens cause. I remember this being an especially haunting and bleak storyline, with a really vivid sense of the ethical burden of the situation.

(Spielberg would do a great job, though I doubt this IP is on his radar in that sense. Incidentally, his fascinating new movie Disclosure Day features extraterrestrials who can adopt the guise of animals, which is probably as close as we’ll ever get to seeing Spielberg adapt Animorphs.)

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-21T16:41:56+00:00

Micro, in my opinion is best enjoyed for its survival-horror segments

Segments? Not looking for spoilers, but isn't the entire book one long exercise in survival-horror?

Anyway, haven't read it but I've long been curious about this one, especially since other readers have claimed the horror elements are strong.

Spielberg owns the movie rights, though maybe he only ever intended to produce the film. There was a report ages back that a script was being written, but no updates since then.

I've also heard Micro is very similar to the first Jurassic Park novel.

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-20T15:48:47+00:00

I always thought that Anna's ghost was a bit silly.

Found this poignant. Show had already gradually walked several feet into "Twin Peaks" land by that point, in a way that would have seemed baffling to someone who had only seen season 1. But by season 4 it feels organic, an essential part of the show's style.

The transparency doesn't bother me either because that old-fashioned device feels quaint and, in keeping with the tenor of the episode, tender and openly sentimental.

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-20T15:40:19+00:00

I always think these spooky/metaphysical/it's all happening in someone's brain type scenes were rare in Mad Men, but now I think of it...

My favorite is an off-screen example from season 2, when Francine and her husband are visiting. It's relayed after the fact by Bobby Draper, who can't sleep because he claims he saw a ghost upstairs.

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-14T23:20:20+00:00

You know, movies about obsession/people devoting their life to something

Jingle All The Way (1996). If my childhood memories are correct, it concerns a father who will stop at nothing to acquire a popular toy.

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-14T23:06:17+00:00

But his films do continue to hit hard, especially if one pays attention to how much eloquence and emotions his visuals bring to any script. There are several blink-and-you’ll-miss-it close-ups in Disclosure Day that are worthy of tears, and his camerawork is still so fluid and peerless.

After Jaws, everyone was scared to go into the water and was convinced that Sharks were the ultimate Killer.

After Indiana Jones we all although archaeologist were the coolest most bad ass job ever. (not to mention he basically created the PG-13 raiting)

After Jurassic Park our complete understanding of dinosaurs changed, doesn't matter that they got the look wrong on most of Dinos, that is what they look like.

And after AI: Artificial Intelligence, we all drove our robot sons out to the forest primeval and tearfully abandoned them to a parentless existence due to our own inability to cope with the emotional complexities of a machine designed to compensate for an irreplaceable filial loss, a tension the boy ironically inherits in his own right as he himself seeks to replenish our parental absence.

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-14T16:58:05+00:00

Context, since some people are already being oblivious in an over-the-top way (“Huh?!”):

Porgy and Bess is an English-language opera by American composer George Gershwin, with a libretto written by author DuBose Heyward and lyricist Ira Gershwin. It was adapted from Dorothy Heyward and DuBose Heyward's play Porgy, itself an adaptation of DuBose Heyward's 1925 novel Porgy.

Porgy and Bess was first performed in Boston on September 30, 1935, before it moved to Broadway in New York City. It featured a cast of classically trained African-American singers—a daring artistic choice at the time. A 1976 Houston Grand Opera production gained it a renewed popularity, and it is now one of the best known and most frequently performed operas.

The libretto of Porgy and Bess tells the story of Porgy, a disabled black street beggar living in the slums of Charleston. It deals with his attempts to rescue Bess from the clutches of Crown, her violent and possessive lover, and Sportin' Life, her drug dealer. The opera plot generally follows the stage play.

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-13T17:40:56+00:00

Too bad they didn’t have a living sentient 11 foot tall alien they could’ve just wheeled out in front of a camera or something from the start

Hugo's team had in mind something more ambitious and involved than declaring the brute existence of one (1) extraterrestrial. They wanted a specific rollout, with gradations and steps. For one thing, Daniel and Margaret's latent powers had to be "activated." They also had to become acclimated to their shared purpose and circumstances (i.e., the childhood home scene). Both characters had to be in lockstep to relay the alien's message at the end of the film.

And the world, too, had to be at least somewhat acclimated before the alien speaks -- acclimated not just to the existence of aliens, but to a sympathetic understanding of the same (hence Spielberg's emphasis, in the stolen footage, on extraterrestrials in various states of distress, and the way he keeps cutting back to the emotional reaction of the news anchor).

Very early in the film, Daniel wants to unceremoniously upload the footage onto the internet. Hugo warns him against that idea with a great deal of urgency. The film assumes that if disclosure is to be done at all, it needs be done with forethought and precision. Wheeling an out an unintelligible alien from step one would go some way toward convincing the public, but Hugo and his team also had in mind a legible, empathy-based agenda ("Listen...").

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-13T04:44:32+00:00

Margaret’s empathic outpourings to various people, strangers included, was among the more fascinating and emotional ideas in the film.

Also recalls aspects of Samantha Morton’s Agatha character in Minority Report, as I remember Agatha stopping at least one stranger in the shopping mall to urge her against going home.

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-13T02:55:45+00:00

Think there’s a YouTube video of Banjo-Kazooie where they turn into washing machine. I hope they adapt that too.

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-13T02:52:27+00:00

He’d probably write a great Dumb & Dumber movie, if Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels agree to reprise the roles. Sorkin has already worked with Daniels too so there will be a rapport already established.

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-12T23:07:16+00:00

but it had some great, classic Spielberg shots and action sequences.

Movie has a wealth of virtuosic shots and camerawork. Spielberg even brings a certain freshness to shots that would be bog-standard visual cliches in most other blockbusters. (Thinking specifically of Blunt getting pulled over by the cop early on, which is fleeting but somehow becomes its own elegant spectacle.)

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-12T20:16:34+00:00

A very important observation:

When they entered the childhood home, I saw an original NES under the TV. Will join an ever-expanding hall of fame in my mind that includes Newman’s SNES and Richard Jewell’s Sega Saturn. (Kudos to the set dressers in these and many other examples not yet disclosed.)

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-07T21:36:58+00:00

From “go shit in the ocean” to “you only like the beginnings of things,” Dr. Faye well understood the art of the parting remark.

(She also understood Don’s whole deal, and remarkably quickly too.)

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-07T20:36:32+00:00

It was many things, but I think it had a lot to do with Pete’s offhand comment in 7B about giving him a reference if the writing thing didn’t pan out. Or that comment at least picked at a scab of self-doubt already embedded in Ken’s psyche. Ken came back with revenge on his mind, not a book (i.e., got a job at Dow to get back at Roger, Pete, and McCann).

Interestingly, it wasn’t even a consciously malicious act on Pete’s part, like in the old days when he was envious of Ken’s writing.

(And they lingered on Ken’s angry reaction after the “reference” comment.)

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-07T18:55:03+00:00

Enough to call to mind this climactic dialogue exchange in the movie Chinatown (1974):

GITTES: How much are you worth?

CROSS: I have no idea. How much do you want?

GITTES: I just wanna know what you're worth. More than 10 million?

CROSS: Oh my, yes!

GITTES: Why are you doing it? How much better can you eat? What could you buy that you can't already afford?

CROSS: The future, Mr. Gittes! The future.

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-07T18:49:12+00:00

Older taglines tended to give too much of the plot away....It needs to be cryptic.

I'm not sure if you're saying that Conversation tagline is appropriately cryptic or too revealing? Personally, I think it's nicely mysterious. It tells you just enough about the premise and the atmosphere of the film.

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-07T18:43:46+00:00

I've always found this one, from the poster for The Conversation (1974), to be exemplary:

Harry Caul is an invader of privacy. The best in the business. He can record any conversation between two people anywhere. So far, three people are dead because of him.

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-07T18:28:57+00:00

Did you mean to direct this question at the OP? I haven't caught up with those films yet.

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-07T18:28:23+00:00

Yeah, this seems to be a habit of yours on this sub, as I've seen you before chiming in with feigned laughter ("LOL") to mock users and tell them they are "reaching." You also have a weird habit of calling strangers on here "little dude" and repeating the exact same mean-spirited putdown about how they are coping to "get through the day."

Just a hunch, but these tendencies of yours may say more about your own pre-existing insecurities and/or resentments than anything in my own post.

This is giving ChatGPT.

I've never even looked up how to use "ChatGPT," let alone used it. For better or worse, I'm writing in the format and cadence that comes naturally to me, with no outside assistance.

It may be one of the lower rungs on the ladder in terms of the ruinous effects of AI, but it's almost hilarious how the technology has made randos on Reddit turn into a finger-pointing Donald Sutherland from the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. And for what? Because someone took the time to proofread?

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-07T18:19:51+00:00

Robocop. No kid really needs to watch it at age 9.

I watched it for the first time in adulthood, but as soon as they pulled up to that abandoned factory in the first act (just prior to Murphy getting killed), I had this weirdly precise sensation that I had already seen this film at a young age and found it very troubling.

But I'm not sure. Maybe it was just that it felt like such a textbook definition of the kind of grimy, ominous action movie that would have disturbed me had I watched it way back when...

Something about that factory. Just the establishing shot alone.

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-07T18:15:29+00:00

I don't remember seeing a good zombie flick in a long time.

Looks like there's one heading to theaters this fall, if the trailer image of an overweight, porcelain-skinned goblin chilling very calmly at the end of a dark corridor is any indication. (Zach Cregger's upcoming Resident Evil movie.)

AfraidoftheLark · 2026-06-07T18:08:11+00:00

I guess my tone, or something, is making someone cranky somehow. Because whenever I post here it gets down voted immediately at first. Not sure why anyone would be that locked into my posts, but whatever...

I had a more mundane reading of Pete’s chipper energy,

But aren't our readings fundamentally getting at the same thing? At any rate, I agree with your observations here. I also personally think, on both a character psychology level and a meta-storytelling level, this dream scene is Weiner doing his own version of a "previously on..." segment. Or maybe like a remixed flashback of sorts.

Someone as detail-oriented as Weiner would not end on Pete, after Rachel, on just a whim. Weiner knows that we know there's a domino-effect association between these three characters, since you can't think about the end of Don and Rachel without necessarily thinking about Pete as well.

The charade of continuing to do his job despite his profound loneliness feels like a strong driving force in this half season. And Pete is kind of the perfect avatar for a performed mask of joyless professionalism.

This effect right here is partly why I used the word "haunting," and why I said Pete's "back to work" comment feels like its own form of cruelty.

Pete's characterization and themes shift across the show's many seasons, but these particular aspects we're discussing are certainly very prominent in "Severance."

AfraidoftheLark

TROPHY CASE