Location: Blinding You With Library Science! Gender:
Posted:
Jul 10, 2020 - 7:33am
kcar wrote:
"City on a Hill" with Kevin Bacon and Aldis Hodge about crime and justice in early 90s Boston. Bacon is a sleazy FBI agent and townie who wants to ride out his career doing as little as possible. Hodge is a DA from Brooklyn who as black man has to eat a lot of crap from Boston cops. But he wants "to rip out the f$&ked-up machinery in this bull$4it city" and intends to start by prosecuting townies from Charlestown who keep robbing armored trucks.
I grew up in the Boston 'burbsâa completely different worldâand worked for a while in Boston during the early 90s. The first episode feels very, very real and makes me glad I didn't stay in Boston. Back then it was run by men just as corrupt, racist, and run-down as the city. But the show is very good; one reviewer compared it to "The Wire" and that might be spot-on. At times, Bacon is a bit hammy and seems to be channeling James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano in a "hey how you doin" mood, but he's the shifty star. Hodge smiles through the racist crap casually tossed his way but he's quietly determined to shake up the town.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and Barry Levinson are some of the executive producers. Damon AFAICT grew up in Wellesley, a rich Boston western suburb and likely never had a lot of first-hand experience with the city's gritty ugliness. Affleck grew up closer in townâmostly in Cambridge which has a lot of scruffiness beyond MIT and Harvard. You could tell Affleck had experience with the local blue-collar areas from his work as director and co-screenwriter on the great movie "Gone Baby Gone." I mention Levinson because he was executive producer and I think one of the driving forces behind the brilliant series "Homicide: Life on Streets." That series and this one put in a lot of work on developing character and feel.
Flip it. Damon was born and grew up in Cambridge; Affleck was actually born in California, but his family moved to Falmouth (near Cape Cod) before settling in Cambridge, which is where they met.
"City on a Hill" with Kevin Bacon and Aldis Hodge about crime and justice in early 90s Boston. Bacon is a sleazy FBI agent and townie who wants to ride out his career doing as little as possible. Hodge is a DA from Brooklyn who as black man has to eat a lot of crap from Boston cops. But he wants "to rip out the f$&ked-up machinery in this bull$4it city" and intends to start by prosecuting townies from Charlestown who keep robbing armored trucks.
I grew up in the Boston 'burbs—a completely different world—and worked for a while in Boston during the early 90s. The first episode feels very, very real and makes me glad I didn't stay in Boston. Back then it was run by men just as corrupt, racist, and run-down as the city. But the show is very good; one reviewer compared it to "The Wire" and that might be spot-on. At times, Bacon is a bit hammy and seems to be channeling James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano in a "hey how you doin" mood, but he's the shifty star. Hodge smiles through the racist crap casually tossed his way but he's quietly determined to shake up the town.
Ben Affleck and Matt Damon and Barry Levinson are some of the executive producers. Damon AFAICT grew up in Wellesley, a rich Boston western suburb and likely never had a lot of first-hand experience with the city's gritty ugliness. Affleck grew up closer in town—mostly in Cambridge which has a lot of scruffiness beyond MIT and Harvard. You could tell Affleck had experience with the local blue-collar areas from his work as director and co-screenwriter on the great movie "Gone Baby Gone." I mention Levinson because he was executive producer and I think one of the driving forces behind the brilliant series "Homicide: Life on Streets." That series and this one put in a lot of work on developing character and feel.
the police thank you for your help in catching your criminal relatives
i'm not too worried or paranoid about it
i'm more concerned about my mobile phone and web footprint ;-)
it's a trade off i voluntarily participate in
as i understand it, 23&me can use/sell your data anonymously for science and/or research (they own some rights, but you can delete your if you so choose)
nebula genomics on the other hand gives you the option up front what to do with your data (you pay and they give you results and you can decide whether or not to sell your data to others for compensation)
I would probably do the sequences the way you describe but I don't really mind the pacing the way they do it - it doesn't bore me. I imagine they want to have the different phases and conclusions to compare close to one another, so I see why they do it that way. What often frustrates me about historical narration (on that show and elsewhere) is when they continually speak of the past in present tense (aka "historical present"). "..so it's a frosty October morning in 1066, and King Harold II is in a hurry and forgets to pack his safety goggles before he marches his army to meet William the Conqueror at Hastings..." It is often distracting and sounds pretentious to me, but it's not done to extremes on that show and seems a little more appropriate when they do it.
i really enjoy the show
probably because i'm fascinated by the science and history involved
after seeing the first episode, i knew i had to get sequenced and start my journey to find out the particulars
as much as possible or about as much as they could be sussed out
i've done 23&me (sort of a broader take tilted toward your family tree)
next i did nebula genomics/george church's lab (way more detailed science)
i've since done viome (both tests) haven't gotten any results back yet on this
It's interesting....but it always feels like a 20 minute show expanded to an hour by repeating everything 3 times. I wish they'd follow one story and run it from end to start (because it's always going backward in time). Finish one...move on. The constant switching of stories is frustrating and boring.
I would probably do the sequences the way you describe but I don't really mind the pacing the way they do it - it doesn't bore me. I imagine they want to have the different phases and conclusions to compare close to one another, so I see why they do it that way. What often frustrates me about historical narration (on that show and elsewhere) is when they continually speak of the past in present tense (aka "historical present"). "..so it's a frosty October morning in 1066, and King Harold II is in a hurry and forgets to pack his safety goggles before he marches his army to meet William the Conqueror at Hastings..." It is often distracting and sounds pretentious to me, but it's not done to extremes on that show and seems a little more appropriate when they do it. Apparently I'm not alone in that opinion.
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey is a 2014 American science documentary television series. The show is a follow-up to the 1980 television seriesCosmos: A Personal Voyage, which was presented by Carl Sagan on the Public Broadcasting Service and is considered a milestone for scientific documentaries. It is available online (viewing and download)here.
It's interesting....but it always feels like a 20 minute show expanded to an hour by repeating everything 3 times. I wish they'd follow one story and run it from end to start (because it's always going backward in time). Finish one...move on. The constant switching of stories is frustrating and boring.
