Fred and Loathing on The Internet

Integers Are Pointless

2023-Oct-20

A content only update. New comic in /comics. Huzzah!

Let’s get down to brass tacks. Reviews, and the thinly veiled windows into my tastes they are.

On the spooky season theme, we have the 1970s sci-fi Hollywood production of The Omega Man, very prominently starring a glistening Charlton Heston. I had vacantly seen the Will Smith starring version over the course of several cut-for-cable-TV viewings of a few minutes here and there over years. I was impressed with the film, expecting to find my only enjoyment from this film reveling in Charlton Heston delivering dramatic lines. The movie opens on the last man on earth speeding around LA in a convertible, firing of a submachine gun every now and then at barely seen threats from afar. I found out the dude who directed this film came from TV. I thought he got this movie rolling with a grand cinematic feel pushed way out of the limits of 70s TV.

There are cheap tricks to the movie's production that stop it from being a movie masterpiece. The villains are kinda silly. In concept and delivery. What really impressed me enough for this movie to leave a mark on my mind was Charlton Heston’s upright American protagonist having a torrid on-screen romance with a black woman (with a good eyeful of full body nudity on her part!) and an ending that is rather bleak for a big budget movie of its time with such an iconic actor. Perhaps if I didn’t have such expectations for schlock this movie would not have landed on me so well. But it did.

The other review front is on the TV show Broad City. I was lured into this show by promos for the first season that advertised what looked like girls my age acting like guys my age. This is something I noticed in reaction to watching glimpses of episodes from the early seasons of the HBO series Girls. That series on occasion provided something that I wanted to see more off because of the familiarity of the subject matter. Quickly that wore off with every chance for the four main characters to reveal themselves.

Broad City immediately made me laugh. After a few episodes of meeting the two stars and their support cast of garish hipsters types showed me this is the answer to the promise Girls was trying to tell me. Abby and Illana were girls I could very realistically see, even though it’s a far wackier show than Girls! And even if they weren’t and I was fooled, I felt so much warmer about almost every single regular cast member.

I watched the series from start to finish on a streaming site recently. I only really watched the first season when it premiered in 2014 and tapered off in my interest. They made it to five solidly enjoyable seasons into 2019. They grew up, and changed, and stayed wacky! The last episode really felt moving. They even made me feel something for Bevers deep down inside. Damn that’s some good writing. Great last shot too. The last episode was the hat trick of TV series finales.