Rectify is... really damn good.

Apparently the Sundance channel is in on the shockingly good original series game. Something that just seems to be happening a lot lately. Outlander is getting some good press, it's production value is excellent, it's story is fun, it's cast uniformly excellent... but I don't know. In two episodes there have been at least 4 sultry "nurse the charming soldier back to health" scenes. They've been well done, but I know when I'm not the target audience, and that's ok.

It's really slow, too. Agonizingly slow.

But Rectify! That's what I'm here to talk about.  Remember Labor Day? That face-palmingly awful Jason Reitman movie where an escaped conflict is Jesus Christ? Rectify is like that if it was almost 100X more believable. And enjoyable.

Daniel has served 19 years on death row, sentenced when he was 18 to a Georgia prison. The tireless efforts of his sister have turned up inconclusive DNA evidence and released him from his cell. Though the local State senator made his career on the Holden case and he will be damned if it's overturned. It's pretty good stuff so far, but sprinkle in a stepfather that Daniel's mother married 9 years into his sentence, a teenage half brother, and the fact that you don't know if he's really innocent, and this becomes something far greater than the sum of it's parts.

It's no masterpiece... yet. But brother, it's the best southern drama I've seen in a good long while.

Netflix!!!!!!!!!!

Five Nights at Freddy's: Creepy-Pizza.

Why does a duck need any teeth, let alone two sets?! One of them looks awfully human...

There's something about age that can somehow make horror games... scarier. I think that's why Silent Hill 2 is still the de-facto masterpiece it is today. You can't make out much on the polygon count of 2002 era monsters and that's a good thing.

Five Night's at Freddy's looks like cheap, pre-rendered, shovelware from the late 90's and it's a pretty brilliant design choice, if you ask me. If you want to sell "cheap" and "other worldly" this art style nails it in spades. But what the hell is this game anyway? It's kind of a resource management affair. You can control a few light switches and two reinforced steel doors... but why would you need to control lights and two reinfroced steel doors? I'm getting to that.

You've been hired as a night watchman at a hellish Chuck e. Cheese rip off. You're are paid $120 a night to watch a bunch of animatronic animals on closed circuit tv...

You can see where this is going:

I think it looks great; if playing "weeping angels" with the inbreed homunculus offspring of everyone's favorite cheese eating rat sounds like it's worth $5 to you, I say pounce.

I'm Officially a Professional Journalist!

After a bit of a wait, I've finally been compensated for my work at Durham's Herald Sun. For the very first time, my English degree has produced tangible results! It does not suck, this feeling.

It does not suck.

Clockwork Empires is on Early Access.

Fish People!!!!

It may be buggy, it may crash every 15 minutes, I may not be able to save it yet, but it's so fuggin' charming I don't care. This game makes cult related cannibalism charming.  I'll let that sink in.

Metal Gear Solid V is coming to PC... wait, REALLY?! What the hell?

Kojima! What is this? What are you doing? ...Explain yourself.

And to STEAM no less. This is... stunning. Like Uncharted 4 showing up on my rig's doorstep next year. After the blow of the next Tomb Raider's timed XBOX exclusivity, I did not see this sh*t coming.

This was... is SONY's bread and butter. The '98 original put the PlayStation on the map and the 4th was the PS3's first killer app (sorry Resistance). Making it multi-platform was one thing, companies like Square have been hedging their bets like that since 2009. This IP isn't an unproven property, this is a console kingmaker. While I've always had a good chuckle at the bi-annual  "pc gaming is dead" articles, I had no idea the wind had turned so fiercely in it's favor.

In fact, this news sounds more like a nail in the coffin of the console wars than anything else. Or maybe this game was so ludicrously expensive (see Mr. Sutherland above) that hitting all AAA platforms at once is the only conceivable way of turning a profit.

That's actually really unsettling. I was hoping it was because Hideo really liked Half-Life.

Cosmos is on Netflix. You no longer have any excuse.

Did you know he was a wrestler? Like, a seriously bad ass college level wrestler?

Why is it that I can get through Blue Valentine and Schindler's List without a twitch of my eyelid, but Tyson's Cosmos has me all weepy? There's something deeply poetic about they way this mini series just... explains science that gives me what has to be a religious experience. While the last 5 episodes are a little dryer than the rest, what comes before is (in no uncertain terms) the most awe inspiring documentary I've ever seen.

I'd better stop now before this devolves into diatribe.

NETFLIX, HO!

The Knick Review: Artist in Residency

If there was one thing I truly loved about FX's Nip/Tuck it was the aggressively realistic portrayal of plastic surgery. A better depiction of the self destruction of vanity there has never been.  The only problem was, oh I don't know... the cartoonish hyper reality of everything else. It had me going for a while though, right up until the penis-less serial killer and his incestuous twin sister... you know what? I'm boring you. I'll move on.

Ever since then; I have waited for a show to seize the potential in the bloody reality of practicing medicine, and Cinemax's  "The Knick" has taken up the mantle with a coked up bewilderment that almost approaches a Gilliam joint. But yet it still remains rooted in it's 1900's reality, aggressively 80's synth soundtrack or no. The best thing I can say about the soundtrack is that it didn't annoy me and that's the highest praise I can give synth. But I'm getting sidetracked agian, what the hell is the Knick?

It's the Knickerbocker Hospital in New York and the show is centered around Clive Owen's Dr. Thackery as he tries in vain to advance medical knowledge to the point where people have a better chance in a ward than on the street. Something that has only started happening very recently. Thank god Thackery's got anesthetic, or else the opening (sorry) c-section scene would have been exponentially harder to watch. And this is hard to watch... but in the best way possible. There is real tension and horror in these sequences and they are of some of the best TV I've seen this year and I include The Leftovers in that pile. I should do a Leftovers review come to think of it...

But it wouldn't be a 2000's golden age drama without an anti-hero angle. So don't worry, Thackery isn't just a brilliant (artisanal) medical mind, he's also a coke addict who's closed almost every vein in his body. I'm thankfull we've already gotten the "fall from grace" angle out of the way already, but it would be nice to see a genius on TV or film that didn't have some crippling character flaw for the sake of it.

Either way, Owen's up to the task and towers over the rest of the cast. They're good, Andre Holland and Chris Sullivan, particularly. But no one is frankly well written enough to steal focus. At least not yet, anyway.

But I'd put up with miscasting for a look into this New York. Child labor, patient poaching, health inspector bribery, visual progress metaphors via the electrification of the hospital, it's the details that this period piece spends a majority of it's energy. It's time and resources well spent. Don't believe me? You can watch the pilot right now and then tell me off in the comments.

Move along people, no dramatic potential here...