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Connor Sheffield (293 KP) rated Gotham - Season 1 in TV

Jun 20, 2018  
Gotham - Season 1
Gotham - Season 1
2014 | Drama
10
7.9 (20 Ratings)
TV Season Rating Watch
Cast (5 more)
Character development
Characters
Setting
Great Drama
Gripping storyline
Some of the more extreme comic book costumes (2 more)
Some of the characters
Certain plot elements that take away the drama (mostly if you've read or seen what happens next)
Imagine a Gotham without Batman....
Contains spoilers, click to show
When I first watched it when it first aired, I was sceptical and yet excited and then I felt let down. Gotham at first was a great cop show but what annoyed me was the fact that all these things that we knew to happen when Batman was around, were happening when Bruce Wayne was still a child and my brain couldn't wrap around the idea let alone get behind it, but at the same time I didn't know what I was expecting. Still I watched the first two seasons because I wanted to see some of my favourite villains and characters brought to life and I love Ben McKenzie as James Gordon!

However upon recently returning to watching Gotham I have come to see it in a new light and adore the show to pieces as I should have from the start. Gotham isn't about Batman, it's not about Bruce Wayne (not fully anyways). I see now that Gotham is a concept of a question:

 "What if these villains we're here before Batman? Leaving only the police to deal with the extremity of Gotham most famous rogues!"

What makes this show so good is that we see a young, reckless and a little out of character Jim Gordon, who is even willing to bend the law to the point of breaking to get Justice. The drama is intense and you never can tell when Jim goes off on one, if he'll restrain himself to the law and doing things by the book. In a way there's a lot of Batman within Jim Gordon himself which makes the show even better.

Some of the characters annoy me at times. I liked Fish Mooney at first because she was dangerous and twisted, but when you bring a character back so many times you just lose interest and they're no longer a threat to the drama of their character development because you leave yourself with the only two viable questions: "will she ever stay dead?" And "when will she die for good?" I just don't seem to be concerned for her anymore like I did in the first season when she was double crossing Falcone. When everything was fresh and you didn't know if a stray bullet might hit her finally or if an Assassin was in her midst at all times waiting to strike. The drama for me didn't vanish but certainly lessened in later seasons.

The character development of characters like Bruce Wayne, Jim Gordon, Edward Nigma and Oswald Cobblepot are brilliantly written. With Bruce becoming a stronger minded young man in season two and Oswald's rise to power. I particularly loved Nigmas transformation into a killer because of the way it was set out, with the first murder being slightly on purpose, the second a complete accident, the third being to protect himself against discovery and the rest being a complete turn around into someone who discovers he enjoys the task of killing someone. The writers are excellent when it comes to development of characters and plot.

Can't wait for the new season and I hope they go out with a bang!
  
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Mark @ Carstairs Considers (2623 KP) rated Murder Most Fermented in Books

May 23, 2020  
Murder Most Fermented
Murder Most Fermented
Christine E. Blum | 2018 | Mystery
6
6.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Halsey Discovers Where the Bodies are Buried
Annie “Halsey” Hall is enjoying her new life in Mar Vista, California, although she’s not so sure about her birthday present from the women in the Rose Avenue Wine Club – a plot of dirt in the community garden. She’s hoping to turn it into a small vineyard, but her first day digging in it turns up the body of a missing elderly neighbor. With the police again looking at Halsey as a suspect, she and her friends begin to try to find the killer. Will they succeed?

I had a mixed reaction to the first book in the series when I read it last year, but since I already had book two, I decided to give this one a chance. The plotting is better and more focused here with sub-plots that stay in the background. I enjoyed the story and trying to figure out what was going on, although one part of the plot was dropped. The rest reached a logical conclusion. Once again, the story takes place over several weeks, but I was expecting that, so I wasn’t nearly as confused by the timeline. Unfortunately, the characters are still thin outside of Halsey and one or two others. I love the Southern California setting; those always appeal to me. If you enjoy wine, you’ll enjoy the wine list and pairings at the end of the book. I wanted to like this book more than I did, although there were definitely things that appealed to me, and it does show the author is improving.
  
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Jesters_folly (230 KP) rated Pontypool (2009) in Movies

Jun 7, 2020  
Pontypool (2009)
Pontypool (2009)
2009 | International, Horror
10
7.3 (8 Ratings)
Movie Rating
Shock Jock Grant Mazzy starts a new job as the morning DJ for the small-town radio station of Pontypool in Ontario, Canada. Struggling with the change of pace Grant and the rest of the stations staff are unprepared for the reports of rioting that start to flood into the show.
Pontypool takes ‘Outbreak’ and ‘Zombie’ movies and adds a nice little twist. The majority of the movie is set in the confines of a small radio station and the three leads are fed information via phone calls and police broadcasts which means that they and therefore the viewer doesn’t see what is happening in the town. The film handles this restricted setting well, slowly building up the atmosphere and tension felt by the three main cast members and playing on Grant’s lack of ‘Small town experience’.
Unlike a lot of zombie movies, Pontypool doesn’t have a lot of visible blood and gore, having most of the violence described instead of shown. This makes the one or two violent scenes even more meaningful as they aren’t just there for the sake of the gore but do actually add something to the atmosphere and story, this is also helped by the fact that we don’t knowingly see a zombie until past the half way point.
Pontypool is an interesting, atmospheric film that relies on story over the need for effect, not only due to any budget restrictions but also because that is what the type of story it is trying to tell.