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christafford
Reviews
The Last Kingdom (2015)
Not bad but where's the humor?
This is not a bad show by any means. The actors are fine, though why Uthred couldn't be blonde like a Dane is beyond me. That was a major point in the books. The production is bit limited and the story skips a lot of the material, but it's a good show and worth watching. But the one thing missing is the humor. The books had me laughing out loud, and Uthred's wry internal comments were so much fun. That's just totally missing from the show. Everything is dark and serious, with a brooding soundtrack. It's still an 8 star show but I would have used a very different flavor with the material. Also, speaking of the soundtrack... it's pretty bad. Keyboards and middle eastern chanting. Nothing like music of 9th century England would have sounded like.
Amazon (1997)
amazing footage, terrible production
The Amazon basin and the mysterious Indian tribes that live within its rainforests are subjects that are very near and dear to me. I studied this a bit in college, and I'm always a sucker for a documentary that purports to have new footage of the Amazon interior.
I paid four bucks last night to watch "Amazon" via on-demand cable. It was a huge let-down.
Actually, the film footage was actually very impressive. There were the obligatory machu picchu shots, sure, but also some great shots of the "amazon jungle railroad" which I was thrilled to finally see, great shots of the enormous headwater canyons in Peru, and some crazy Indian tribe footage where they had what looked like four foot rafters embedded in their chins. Also there were piranha, white-handed gibbons, pink dolphins, and electric eels. Plus shots of the rain forest canopy, which is not something you see very often. The IMAX team simply got some amazing footage out of this. I can't rate it highly enough - I'm sure it wasn't easy to get either.
But the production! I can't believe that somebody didn't put their foot down, and fire the director. The music made me want to watch the thing on "mute". 90 minutes of Synth-Pan-Flute ensembles... ugggh. The story was both retarded and offensive. They tried to make the Medicine Man Indian into some kind of modern explorer or something, but he never had a single intelligent thing to say. The narrator was not the worst part, but she wasn't very good either.
I'm just really angry that such amazing footage was ruined by such a stupid script and then completely trashed by *constant* and extremely annoying background music.
I hope someday someone buys the rights to this film and repackages it into a good documentary.