Political Animals (miniseries) Puns

First off, if you missed it and want to watch, it is available on Hulu.

If you haven't seen any trailers or heard anything about it, it's a political drama that uses the Clintons as a base for the main characters. The main focus is on Elaine Barrish (Sigourney Weaver), a former First Lady who ran for President, lost in the primaries to the eventual President, and is now the Secretary of State. (Sound familiar?) Her husband was a very popular President despite at least one sex scandal. They have (fraternal?) twin boys, one of whom is the first openly gay child of a President.

The story really starts 2 years into Elaine's tenure as Secretary of State as her son (the straight one) is about to get married and a reporter Elaine has butted heads with in the past has forced her way into doing a piece on Elaine by following her for a week. The diplomatic, political, and personal issues take it from there.

I think this show's major strength is its cast. Sigourney Weaver is Sigourney Weaver, I'm not sure much needs to be said there. A couple of the supporting cast has some good experience in similar roles. Sebastian Stan (Bucky Barnes in Captain America) plays the gay son, and he had a very similar role in Kings, as the closeted Prince. Also taking on a similar role from Kings is Dylan Baker, who played the King's brother-in-law and a close advisor, and now takes on the role of Vice President. Adrian Pasdar (Nathan Petrelli on Heroes) plays the current President.

I don't want to get too much into what happens and start giving stuff away, but I think the show has already found a good balance between the characters' personal and professional lives and how they intersect, and I'm really looking forward to the rest of the miniseries.

Lots of mechanics in Animal Crossing NH are quite mysterious, but I wanna talk about villagers houses and personalities.

It's really hard to see that stuff just from playing, but if you watch every furniture set-up from every type of animal species in ACNH it's really striking to see how patterns and styles tell some crazy stories about these animals, like a FENG-SHUI language, or paintings from old masters.

Every species has a dark economic reason that underlies their existence. Maybe we can think that villagers in ACNH are refugees from opressions.

There's at least one hidden narrative in every species, and it usually has to do with how these animals are exploited by humans or exploit others in real life.

Their personalities are not only game-mechanics, but reflect social classes, and how these classes profit or are exploited by this key economic reason.

The villagers who live in crazy houses that look like business give insight in what this exploitation is based. Ex: Frogs being sold by Cousteau or used by Doctors.

Examples:

1. Sheeps of snooty personality have interest in fashion, and exploit lower sheeps who doesn't seem to like fashion. The two business houses of sheeps are a laundry with 8 machines (and a conscience-struck sheep in it) and a clothes-repair shop. Sheeps also have crazy SM vibes, like Cashmere, who has like a gigantic torture old cotton machine. Sheeps seems to have suffered some kind of genocide.
2. Dogs get crazy if don't get a house and stability. They are the keepers of human language, seen thru their books colletions, and like food more than others. They mostly don't have bathrooms. They seem really eager to live the Tom Nook way and normal dogs are really thriving.
3. Cats kill other animals and lots of their homes, specially snooty, seem to have been stolen from snooty ducks. Normal cats doesn't kill and are sad and lonely. Most cats doesn't have beds or more than one bench, and most deal with megalomania issues.
4. Gorillas have a secret super-hero team going on, and like most of the time, sisterly characters reveal the whole deep truth about an animal group thru feng-shui metaphors.
5. All rats are thieves and their homes are made by whole decorative ideas from other animals
6. Horses are successful in their alliance with humans, and most smugs and snotty are breeders with double beds and have horses images in their houses. The dark side is that they are killed when they lose their use.

And it totally holds up. I hadn’t seen it in many years. For a 20 year old TV production, even the fx are still surprisingly decent. And the art design is a nice middle ground between Lynch’s baroque maximalism and Villeneuve’s brutalist minimalism.

The story really benefits from having 4.5 hours to tell it, which gives time to show Paul transition from a boy to a Fremen, from a Fremen to a naib, and from a naib to a jihadist messiah.

The intrigue subplot with Irulan and the Harkonnens is also quite good and the actress that plays her is excellent. The actor who plays Feyd isn’t quite as talented though.

I also wish they had devoted a little more time explaining mentats and why computers were outlawed. I find that to be such an essential aspect of Dune, but almost none of the live action adaptions address it directly.

All in all, though, when I decided to rewatch it, I expected it to have aged much less well than it did. Definitely worth a watch, especially if you haven’t seen it before.

For good reason we’ll never get it, we probably shouldn’t, what the man did is unforgivable and any conversation around him gets rightfully derailed…but man do I wish we could live in an alternate universe where Polanski never committed that assault so we could get Podsmary’s Casty. So many interesting films in there even beyond the obvious masterpieces.

Does anyone else have a series they wish was in the cards but isn’t due to the filmmaker’s horrible actions or personal controversies?

My personal preference would be the Horus Heresy series, I'm currently on the flight of the Eisenstein and so far I see really good potential to draw people in who haven't heard of 40k before. A guy you look up to in the first and second season (Horus was really forward thinking before he was corrupted) you get to see his rise and fall from different characters viewpoints. The feelings of shock and betrayal from the astartes characters. Just a lot of makings for a badass sci-fi action drama right here.

I just finished watching Steve Jobs (2015) for the first time after all the Walk Talk about it and...oh my god. Perhaps Fassbender’s best performance ever? I didn’t expect Boyle’s style to work so unbelievably well with Sorkin’s dialogue. (Which was how I felt about Miller & Moneyball...another masterpiece).

All that said, this just cemented my desire for a Boyle mini so much more. He feels like a perfect director for the pod. Working in a myriad of genres. Plenty of clears. A few big bounces. An incredibly bizarre sequel to an indie film made 20 years prior about drug addicts. Nevermind the fact we’d probably get a b-b-b-bonus ep for the London Olympics opening ceremony (ding dong). Perhaps his time will come in March Madness...????

Long story short: Steve Jobs? Great! Danny Boyle? Interesting career!