Five nominations for the Best Actor Emmy Award and two wins, plus a whole bunch of SAG and Golden Globe awards... Aaron Paul is not exactly chopped liver.
A show I thought I wouldn't like but enjoyed immensely (until the last few episodes, when the story kind of fell apart).
No, they just had a role they thought was right for him. They already have enough world-class actors to carry this thing. Ed Harris, Evan Rachel Wood and Jeffrey Wright are killing it.
No one can say for sure until we see him in Season 3. But he'd have to really stink to bring down the show.
But it is true. How many of us who are often on the music side of this forum can say they’ve accidentally bought the same album twice? (I’m going to go with “a lot”). We tell the same stories if we are not careful. We have predictable responses, so much so that humankind has debated for thousands of years whether or not “free will” even exists, since there’s little evidence that anyone does anything but what they can be expected to do. That the series takes this position (or at least seems to be on the side of Dolores, who seems to take that position on humanity) is interesting, since most shows promote the idea that we create our own destinies, or variations of that belief. The Esquire piece calls it “underrating the human condition” but it may simply be that it is not hyping or inflating the human condition like most shows with human heroes do.
So I didn't like season 2 as much as season 1, but, nonetheless I just went and bought from ebay the Funko Pops of Dolores, Bernard, and Ford. (They were released last October 2017 or so, so they're all out of production now and can only be bought on ebay and Amazon). I assume I will pose Bernard and Dolores interviewing each other. Or facing each other since they can't actually sit down. Sadly, the license for "real" action figures went unclaimed, so there's no chance of normal human-shaped (or host-shaped) figures with realistic likenesses of the actors. I thought perhaps Dark Horse, which made affordable action-figure-sized statues for HBO's Game of Thrones, would also license Westworld - but they did not. Toy companies evidently feel Westworld is a failure, and I suppose it is when compared to Game of Thrones. But at least we'll get one more season out of it.
The Esquire critic is focusing on only one aspect of a multidimensional story that has many different characters (human and not) with vastly different agendas at different points in time, many of which were very cleverly juxtaposed in season 2. And none of those characters necessarily reflect the views of the show's creators. So who is he criticizing? I don't think he's decided. He hasn't digested the show, clearly. One of the facets is that the show is making the androids more sympathetic than the humans. But that was only true in the park and it seems that season 3 will introduce humans in the real world who have no intention of interacting with the hosts. Will be interesting to see where the show goes then. One of the most interesting aspects of Season 2 was to understand more fully the motivations of the inventors, the investors and the inventions at different points in time. Within that, the Westworld lore explained by the Native American android was really well done. Also seeing Williams narrative fleshed out and reach its conclusion was quite amazing.
Finally catching up with S2. Have one episode left. The scenery in this show is as good as any Western I've ever seen. Just spectacular. I love location filming. What a nice blend of Utah, Arizona and southern California, mixed together seamless with some digital effects. The best episope so far was #8 Kiksuya Maybe even the best in the whole series. It looked fantastic with those amazing Utah Sand Dunes and the indian narration was over the top great! That actor from Longmire did a beautiful job! I got Thin Red Line vibes.
HBO CEO Richard Plepler resigned today. Westworld starts filming season 3 this month. The AT&T executive who is now in charge, John Stankey, said last year that he got hooked on Westworld so it is unlikely he'll order the show into a deep and dreamless slumber just as hundreds of people have arrived to start filming. But the era of HBO being what you subscribe to on the strength of a few impressive, high-budget series is likely over, according to most reporters.
I'm a fan of this series I like tricky plots that play among other things with time lines. There's a thing of Westworld I'm not a fan of and it's its picture quality. I own both seasons on UHD BD and I've watched them on a mid range 49" HDR 4K Samsung set (I sit at around 1.40 meters of it, my space is limited) and played by a Sony UBP X-800 and there's something about its picture quality that for me it's not quite right and it's not because it's shot on film. Sometimes it looks dark (this may be because of my set tone mapping) and some scenes look lack detail. I compared Westworld's picture with Fringe seasons 1-4 that were shot to 35 mm film and I prefer how Fringe looks even on those bit starved Warner Bros. BD's from 10/8 years ago. I know Westworld's picture is an stilistic decission, but I'm not a fan of how it looks.
Diamond Select Toys picked up the realistic action figure license for Westworld. Fall 2019 will see an initial wave of three figures - Dolores with the maze game, Man in Black with scalp and knife, and Dr Ford with his robot dog. All in their original early season 1 outfits. DST Bruce Lee, John Wick, Westworld, Castlevania and Iron Giant Select Figures! - Action Figure Fury Preorders for the first wave should go up from the usual online retailers at the end of March. Preorders determine if they’ll go into production. If they sell through there is a second wave planned, they said on Facebook.
You can often find dog figures at places like Michaels. Maybe not an Italian Greyhound, but similar ones. It is slated to come with Hopkins as Dr Ford. Preorders have started on both BigBadToyStore and ToyWiz, I've noticed.
What in the absolutely F... And yeah, it's 100% real and was shot with the cooperation of both shows.
I really liked season 1 but I got bored during season 2. I'd rather watch a Samurai movie than all this nonsense in Shogun World which did little (if anything at all?) for the story. Maybe I'll bring myself to sit through the rest on some winter evening but I doubt it.
