Medium Mashup

Author: Ross Miller

  • Hannibal Season 3 Pt 1 Review

    Hannibal_digestivo_hannibal-and-will

    (The following review contains spoilers for the first half of Hannibal’s third season. It also contains some very grotesque descriptions of events)

    I know that I’ve written about Hannibal a number of times lately, but there’s been a good reason for it. There is not a more beautiful or more grotesque show anywhere on television, and Hannibal’s growing apathy for traditional storytelling and “relatable” characters sets it apart from anything that may otherwise approach its visual prowess. And somehow, at least through the end of the current season, Hannibal airs on network television.

    Even if Hannibal’s ratings weren’t in the toilet, it would be easy to see why NBC finally threw in the towel this year. While previous seasons at least pretended to follow a procedural arc, with a number of case-of-the-week murders, the first half of season three completely dropped any pretenses and became a manhunt for Hannibal Lecter. It also threw any concerns about character relatability to the curb. No longer are Hannibal and the weekly killers the lone madmen in a world ruled by the normal. This year, every single character, from Will to Hannibal to the Vergers to Bedalia to Alana to Chiyo, is insane. Hell, even Jack Crawford, the rock that typically holds everything together, eventually meets up with Will Graham and assists in a completely off-record pursuit of Lecter.

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  • Unknown Hosts 7/22/2015

    This week on Unknown Hosts, we talked about Konami’s continuing feud with Hideo Kojima, Rob McElhenney directing the Minecraft movie, Street Fighter V’s DLC plans, and more!


    Feel free to jump to whatever topic you’d like using the handy timecodes below!

    0:00- Intro
    —4:03- Twitch moving from Flash to HTML5
    —6:48- EVO 2015
    15:35- Good Bad Kappa
    —15:42- Hideo Kojima’s name removed from the cover of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
    —23:10- Rob McElhenney to direct the Minecraft movie
    —27:48- Street Fighter V’s DLC Model
    —32:08- Prototype HD Fails to Impress
    —37:47- Family Sharing Plans with Digital Games
    49:41- Topics from Chat
    57:45- Plugs

    Also, one quick correction: When discussing Steam’s Family Sharing Plans, we stated that you could play a game shared with you as long as that game was not being accessed by the owner at the time. It is actually the WHOLE LIBRARY which must be open for you to play a game. So if you’re playing a shared game from somebody else’s library, and the owner jumps on to play any other game, you still have to quit. Still, it’s a cool feature that a lot of people aren’t aware of.

    Thanks for watching!

  • Trainwreck Review

    trainwreck

    Just last week I had a conversation with my friend Jason (of Jay and Ross Talk Shit) about the “chick flick” genre. My argument was that it was the only genre actually defined by being “bad.” If a film involves a female protagonist finding the man of her dreams, almost losing him, and winning him over at the end, but the characters are awful, it’s a “chick flick.” But if you make the same movie with interesting, funny, and relatable characters, then it’s a “romantic comedy,” but not a “chick flick.”

    Case in point: Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer’s new film, Trainwreck. Despite Schumer’s reputation for progressive and ground-breaking comedy sketches, Trainwreck absolutely follows a standard romantic comedy arc. However, because Schumer’s script always takes care to treat its characters as actual human beings with understandable worldviews, and because it is frequently hilarious, nobody would dare slap it with the dreaded “chick flick” label.

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  • The Nielson System is dead. Long Live Subscription-Based Programming!

    Hannibal S3

    If all your knowledge of television came from internet speculation and hype, Hannibal might seem like one of the most popular shows on TV. There are countless forums, reviews, and think-pieces revolving around the show, an unlikely brilliant re-imagining of a played out franchise (I wrote my piece during season one, which you can find here).

    And yet, if you look at the Nielson ratings, Hannibal is one of the least-popular shows on network television. It has survived for three seasons almost entirely because it is a co-production with international production company Gaumont. However, this year, Hannibal slipped to a 0.4 rating and NBC finally cancelled the series. Shortly after, NBC added insult to injury and, apparently at the request of advertisers, moved the remaining episodes of the show to Saturday where it could do no harm.

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  • Unknown Hosts 7/15/2015

    Our Unknown Hosts show for the week of July 12th-July 18th 2015! This week, we cover several topics in the world of games and comic book adaptations! Topics and timecodes are below, along with links to where you can find the Comic Con trailers online!

    0:17 – RIP Satoru Iwata
    2:45 – The Good, The Bad, and The Kappa
    —2:51 – Performance Enhancing Drugs in E-Sports
    —9:44 – The Witcher 3’s 30 Hours of Expansion Content
    —15:50 – Ben Affleck to Star in, Direct, and Co-Write Stand-Alone Batman Film
    23:21 – Batman: Arkham Knight Video Review
    27:42 – Good Bad Kappa on Comic Con Trailers!
    —28:13 – Fear the Walking Dead (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDxew…)
    —33:33 – Heroes Reborn (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FLHB…)
    —40:40 – Warcraft (http://io9.com/weve-just-seen-the-fir…)
    —45:34 – Ash vs The Evil Dead (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unnLg…)
    —50:06 – Batman v Superman (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WWzg…)
    —1:03:34 – Suicide Squad
    1:21:15 – Plugs