Mars. National Geographic Series by Ron Howard.

The series "Mars" created by Ron Howard, a Hollywood whale, cannot be that bad, neither in concept, nor in execution. Model-class beauty as a crew commander also helps. Quadcopter-type drone flying on the surface of Mars is an absurdity. In full compliance with current media censorship code, the red stars of the Russian VVS were digitally retouched from the rescue helos in the documentary part. Series are heavily influenced by Stephen Petranek, Elon Musk's PR man and master plagiarist.

http://mars2044.blogspot.com/2014/07/sketches-of-space-habitats-i.html

http://mars2044.blogspot.com/2014/07/sketch-of-habitat-ii.html

They also freely borrow from Andy Weir and his "Martian" but he was co-author of a script and must be familiar with the Byzantine corridors of Hollywood. I suppose his copyright lawyers already worked out a fat settlement out of R. H.

Declassified - CNN.com

"Documentary" spy series mostly consists of interviews with retired CIA/NSA/FBIetc. spooks. It is produced by Mike Rogers, former Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee who was probably hired by CNN--with enormous remuneration, obviously--to protect Christiana Amanpour&Friends from uneasy questions by FBI/IRS about her friendship with Gulf regimes and their security and media services. Has all complexity and depth of McCarthy era propaganda leaflets.

Lobster

Snobbish nonsense. Film critics who gave it 90% approval on rottentomatoes cannot distinguish between intellectual depth and intellectual pretense. This is a result of a generation of LA trust fund babies who do not have any life experiences outside of the internet and film school. Old Hollywood, at least, was sometimes a haven for people with completely different live paths.

Johnny was modern days Gary Cooper

All he did and did not was just super;

But his bliss came to naught

For he blindly forgot

To beware a Hollywood hooker.

A. S. Bliokh(C)

Sokurov. Frankofonia.

A nasty propaganda rag contrasting the "civilized" French who complied with German occupation and thus saved French cultural treasures and the "barbaric" Russians who resisted and lost priceless art and immense lives. Cheesy scene of a German soldier running after a French girl, but she refuses and he abandons the pursuit. The contemporary story of the Dutch captain and his sinking ship imposed quite incoherently. By the way, the treasures of the Louvre are portrayed quite sketchily and with little artistic insight.

P.S. Did he know that the infamous Vel d'Hiv is in less than an hour's walk from the Louvre? Probably, yes.

Hail, Caesar! By Coen brothers.

Series of amusing sketches--Frances McDormand's film editor and Communists in fishermen garb rowing as the Apostles over Sea of Galilee are especially memorable--connected by uneven and infirm storyline. Brothers Coen lost their groove (see also Inside Llewyn Davis).

Vinyl.

Scorsese's scriptwriters obviously think that the only reason Tolstoy (an artillery commander of ex-serf soldiers during a siege of Sebastopol) and Chekhov (a doctor in Sakhalin penal colony) did not use these words is because they were not sufficiently familiar with them. The uninhibited use of f-word to express virtually everything except record industry jargon replaced quality writing in a modern TV. This is a boring vanity project bankrolled by Jagger to force his numerous offspring to do something useful.

Anomalisa.

A typical Kaufman film--a minute exposition of the inner life of egocentric personage eliciting no sympathy or emotion from the audience.

His previous, a much more ambitious exercise in the genre, "Synechdoche" compared with a very similar disquisition on a nature of time "A Curious Story of Benjamin Button", also suffered from the same inimical defect--his protagonist was not a wee bit likable or particularly interesting, or even intriguing (such, e.g. as Bride and Bill in Tarantino's masterpiece). This movie is a fair subject of discussion in a philosophy or film class and interesting to watch, but in the end a dry construct of a spotless--I do not mean it as a compliment--mind.

Quentin Tarantino. The Hateful Eight.

Would be an excellent parlor detective in the spirit of Agatha Christie and John Priestley, if Quentin Tarantino did not put his corny social context (a House United after the Civil War, military valor of the Confederate bandit and a black major transcending their differences, Lincoln letter etc. etc.) ahead of his cinematic mastery. Acting ensemble is superb.