Hardly A Review: Oblivion (2013)

Oblivion is the latest Tom Cruise vehicle which hit cinemas April 10th. The year is 2077 and Earth has been ravaged by war with invading aliens. The majority of remaining humans reside in orbit in a giant space station while a few remain on Earth gathering what little resources are left before the planet is abandoned. Jack Harper (Cruise) is one such person, servicing machinery and protecting it from the alien "Scavs" while haunted by visions of a mysterious woman. When a ship crash lands containing a human trapped in stasis, Harper begins to learn everything is not as it seems, neither for him or the world.

Hardly a Review: H+

I came across this interesting little web series last week, and after devouring the episodes so far I decided to share it with you lovely people, oh aren’t you lucky! H+ is a post-apocalyptic survival crossed with the sort of conspiracy laden drama you’d expect from the likes of J. J. Abrams. The show deals with the concept of post-humanism and the story centres around the H+ implant, which is essentially a smartphone in your head, and the inevitable pitfalls of technology that have been explored by authors dating back to Frankenstein. The show is set at an unspecified time in the future, with the only reference point being how long it has been from or to the day when “it happens.”

The main driving plot element is a computer virus infecting everyone with a H+ implant and killing them instantly, hitherto referred to simply as “the incident,” for simplicities sake, and because calling any event “the incident” just makes it sound infinitely more badass. Only a few survivors survive through the virtue of either being out of wifi range, or being one of the rural poor without an implant (the one time either of these is a good thing). The show then goes on to show the survival of the human race after the incident, and feeds a drip of information as to why and how the incident came about. The method of telling the story however, proves to be almost as inventive as the story itself, being distributed in extremely small chunks, sometimes only two or three minutes long, on a very regular basis. The ordering of the episodes seems very deliberate, however viewers are encouraged to watch the show in any order then like, to see if they can gain an additional understanding of events.

Hardly a Review: Revolution

This week’s going to be a fairly big week for post-apocalyptic reviews, but seeing as we’re in 2012 did you expect any less from tv show writers? I mean they need inspiration... and if it’s not 12 feet in front of their face it doesn’t exist! Yeah, that was a pretty low joke, but let’s face it, the worlds ending in three months, there’s no way they’ll find me in time. Anyways onto a show I’ve been looking forward to for months, and I’ve finally had the chance to catch the first two episodes.

Revolution is a post-apocalyptic adventure story set 15 years after pretty much every invention and major discovery made since 1850 mysteriously stops working. In the intervening decade and a half, the governments of the world have collapsed and been replaced by the militia’s who were sensible enough to grab the guns before the food. Remember citizens, in a survival situation, always go for the guns first. The story follows Charlotte Matheson and her posse as she tries to rescue her imprisoned brother from their feudal overlords and discover the part her father played in the blackout, and how it can be undone.

Hardly a Review: Continuum

I don't make it a secret that I'm not a big fan of Dr. Who. Don't get me wrong, I do watch it on occasion, and I do enjoy it, and every so often I come across a villain I do enjoy, and at the end of the episode I'm reminded of the reason I probably won't watch next week. The basic fact is that Dr. Who is, for me, an example of time travel done wrong. The fact that we jump to a different point in time every week, with a different villain every week, is a real barrier to me, and I honestly can't become immersed in the episode or feel like the Dr. is in any real danger when I know the next time I see these villains will probably be in some monster mash-up at the end of the series. On top of that there's very little continuity in time travel. Spending most of their time in the present or near future, and then darting to random far-off dates, makes it very hard for me to believe the universe the show takes place in has any continuity or is in fact believable. I want to know what the culture and society of the year 4252 is like, I want to know what problems mankind is facing, and I want to know if they're resolved, but what I do know is that after the 45 minutes is up I probably won't see this setting ever again. All it's problems seemingly solved by one fleeting visit by the Dr.. This I can't buy into.

Now I know what you're thinking, that's a pretty big preamble, and the show I'm about to spend the rest of my time writing about is completely different from Dr. Who, to the point where they're basically incomparable. You want to know if I've lost my mind and if I'm going to turn myself in to be tried for crimes against good taste and politeness. Well, dear citizens, it may not all be apparent at first, but sit with me, and like a good Dr. Who episode every single thing will become clear by the end.

Hardly A Review: The Almighty Johnsons

Plain

Ok, so I’m not a writing person. Usually it takes about 8 hours before a deadline until I finally pull my finger out and create something. With this in mind, I am hoping my contributions to Hardly a Review will be of a higher quality than the streaming river of shit that must be flowing from Nosh’s arse after that Chinese food we consumed about two hours ago.

So with a fist full of dictionary, and another fist full of gin, I started to scour the web for a show worthy of my critique. I came across just the show, a low budget sci-fi series produced and set in New Zealand. Perfect, I thought, I should be able to get a few jokes out of that.