Love Death + Robots (Netflix series)

[MinionZombie]

Likewise I finished them off the other day, although my overall opinion of the series is higher than shoot's. I enjoyed the vast majority of the shorts quite a bit. "Beyond the Aquila Rift" - again, great CGI animation and design. Not a hugely original type of story, but then again it's so rare to come up with something unique these days (if at all possible). A solid little sci-fi tale. "Good Hunting" - initially I wasn't so much into this one, but it gradually pulled me in and I found it quite interesting as it segued into a steampunk version of Hong Kong under British rule. Not for the easily offended, though. "Shape-Shifters" - I really enjoyed this one. Kinda takes the term "dog soldiers" literally in the setting of the Afghanistan war. Again, great CGI animation and design, good amount of action, and generally quite enjoyable. "Fish Night" - it's got that kind of cell shaded style of animation and initially I wasn't so keen on it, but then the animation got really beautiful. However, it just ends rather suddenly and there doesn't seem to be much point to it.

[Neil]

Finished out these. The vast majority are mediocre to poor, but there's a few good ones in there. Some surprisingly dull voiceover work though in more than a couple of episodes, I thought. Shame... My summary was a couple were mediocre and the rest were different degrees of enjoyable. Definately looking forwards to a season 2...

[blind2d]

Shame... My summary was a couple were mediocre and the rest were different degrees of enjoyable. Definately looking forwards to a season 2... After watching them all with one of my girlfriends, I agree with Neil.

[shootemindehead]

Shame... My summary was a couple were mediocre and the rest were different degrees of enjoyable. Definately looking forwards to a season 2... It's an interesting idea, but they really need to tighten things up a lot and characters need to be written much better. The most entertaining of all of the episodes was 'Three Robots', which worked well, apart from the cat ending which was kinda meh. But, the major problem with each episode was that they all ran out of steam very quickly, even though they're all under 15 minutes long.

[MinionZombie]

Sometimes it's a struggle to get enough character into a short film when you've also got to wrestle an entire plot from start to finish inside a tight running time. That said, it's not impossible, and yeah, some needed a bit more work in terms of characterisation. I see that many were based on short stories that were then adapted by the same dude ... perhaps if the adaptations had been split 50/50 with another screenwriter there would have been more time left over to work on the finer details? Still, though, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Only a couple of weak links IMHO.

[shootemindehead]

Sometimes it's a struggle to get enough character into a short film True, but I'm not talking about "enough" character, as it were. I'm talking more about tropes. What I mean is that they (and they're not alone in this) litter the stories with hip arseholes, whose idea of good dialogue is badly written kwel yap that's drenched in quips and unfunny attempts at humour. The writers think that's what the kids want to hear and they think they're oh so gas, but it just makes everyone sound like a prick. I'm so sick of it and it infects nearly everything these days.

[Neil]

Season 2 out on Netflix

[MinionZombie]

Season 2 out on Netflix Only 8 episodes this time around, but good quality and I blasted all eight on Friday. "Automated Customer Service" was really good fun, but I wasn't so fussed with "Ice" personally (just felt like it didn't really go anywhere). I really dug the look and feel of "Pop Squad" and "Snow In The Desert", while "The Tall Grass" had a really interesting visual style and moved along nicely. "All Through The House" had an almost stop motion look to it and was quite enjoyable and very brisk, while "Life Hutch" had some amazingly almost photo-real CGI (similar to "Snow In The Desert" in that regard even though they were by different animations studios), and finally "The Drowned Giant" was a weird but enjoyable piece with some striking imagery. Obviously they must be splitting the episode order over two years and two volumes - the first volume was eighteen shorts, but this is only eight and so the overall running time is naturally much shorter than beforehand. It does also feel like they took fright at the negative initial reviews of volume one (which, once you actually looked at them, were all based on clickbaity churnos getting their knickers in a twist having only reviewed six-out-of-eighteen shorts!!!, morons who were looking to cram their wokeness down their readers' throats and wring their hands like some pious tosspot) ... and so this selection of shorts is almost entirely devoid of sexuality, unlike the more daring first volume. I wonder if Miller and Fincher were trying to be a bit more esoteric with this selection. It has moments of violence (e.g. "Life Hutch" and "Snow In The Desert" with gloopy headshots and crushed body parts), but that too is softer by comparison. The first volume had a really broad range of stories and styles and feels, while this second volume feels a bit more limited in range (but again, it's eight shorts vs eighteen).

[MinionZombie]

So "All Through The House" was stop motion animation after all! I knew it had the look, and wondering if it could be, but just assumed they'd somehow made CGI look like stop motion.