Stories by Sabias que... on Medium

23 de Enero de 2026, Día Mundial de la Libertad

Sabias que... — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 10:22:39 GMT

https://medium.com/media/cb1fbb781a5e6ea12b96ac40facb09aa/href

23 de Enero de 2026, Día Mundial de la Libertad

Original article: 23 de Enero de 2026, Día Mundial de la Libertad

Por qué uno de los participantes de Gran Hermano subió 150.000 seguidores en menos de 24 horas

Sabias que... — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 09:58:23 GMT

En tanto los fanáticos de Gran Hermano se empiezan a familiarizar con los participantes de la nueva edición, el público fiel del formato comienza paralelamente a seguir o stalkear las cuentas personales de cada uno de los concursantes a fin de conocerlos aún más y, de paso, hacerles el aguante a medida que vayan tomando partido por alguno de ellos.

Y fue así que, a menos de 24 horas de que Santiago del Moro haya dado la bienvenida a los integrantes de la casa ubicada en zona norte y dentro de los estudios de Telefe llamó la atención la cantidad de seguidores, por sobre el resto, que subió uno de los hermanitos.

Se trata de Luca Figurelli, uno de los más chicos de la casa quien, tal como arrojan los datos, pasó en un día de tener 9.800 seguidores a 183 mil.

Y si bien él no está al tanto de este gran salto en su cuenta fuera mucho se ha hablado y especulado al respecto.

El participante de 18 años oriundo de Berazategui, que aspiraba a ser futbolista profesional, contó antes de entrar al reality que ahora su pasión va por el lado del mundo de la moda y el streaming.

Pero, cuando se entere de cómo acaparó en tan poco tiempo la atención del público, sin dudas, también podrá explotar su flamante faceta de influencer.

Y si bien no se sabe a ciencia cierta qué fue lo que lo llevó a crecer tanto en su comunidad virtual fue en PPZ Stream que sacaron sus propias conclusiones al vincularlo con otro tema latente en el mundo del espectáculo.

Como una especie de carpetazo… Luca terminó relacionado, nada más y nada menos que, con Eugenia Suárez.

Es que a poco de haber empezado el juego se viralizó en Twitter una fake news que mostraba a la China siguiendo a Figurelli por Instagram.

En medio de opiniones y comentarios cruzados en la X, inevitablemente, los internautas terminaron cayendo en dar like y seguir al hermanito en cuestión a fin de ver de qué se trataba ese matcheo.

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Original article: Por qué uno de los participantes de Gran Hermano subió 150.000 seguidores en menos de 24 horas

El inicio de los implantes neuronales

Sabias que... — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 10:26:35 GMT

No cabe duda, ese día está cada vez más cercano. El inicio de los implantes neuronales está a punto de ser una realidad. La empresa Neuralink comenzará a reclutar voluntarios para hacer pruebas. El fin de esto es implantar en el cerebro de personas una computadora. Les permitiría controlar otros dispositivos solo con sus pensamientos. Así lo informó la empresa este martes en un comunicado.

«Nos complace anunciarlo. Ya recibimos la aprobación de la junta de revisión institucional independiente y de nuestro primer hospital. Ahora podemos iniciar el reclutamiento para nuestro primer ensayo clínico en humanos», afirmó la compañía del magnate Elon Musk.

Neuralink, la empresa del magnate Elon Musk, está detrás del proyecto.

Neurotecnología

Se trata del estudio llamado PRIME (Precise Robotically Implanted Brain-Computer Interface). Eventualmente permitiría a las personas con parálisis controlar dispositivos externos con sus pensamientos. Según el comunicado de Neuralik, durante el estudio, se utilizará un robot (R1) para colocar quirúrgicamente hilos ultrafinos y flexibles de un implante (N1). Lo hará en una región del cerebro que controla la intención de movimiento.

«Una vez colocado, el implante N1 es cosméticamente invisible. Está destinado a registrar y transmitir señales cerebrales de forma inalámbrica. Las transmite a una aplicación que decodifica la intención de movimiento», señaló la empresa de neurotecnología. «¿Cuál es el objetivo inicial de nuestra BCI? Otorgar a las personas la capacidad de controlar el cursor o el teclado de un ordenador utilizando únicamente sus pensamientos», explicó.

El inicio de los implantes neuronales está muy pronto.

Candidatos

La empresa especializada dio más detalles del estudio PRIME. Ya tiene autorización de la Administración de Alimentos y Medicamentos (FDA, por sus siglas en inglés). Es la autoridad regulatoria del gobierno de Estados Unidos. «Representa un paso importante en nuestra misión. Queremos crear una interfaz cerebral generalizada. Esperamos devolver la autonomía a quienes tienen necesidades médicas no cubiertas», dijo Neuralink en su comunicado.

¿Qué tipo de personas podrían ser candidatos? Aquellas con tetraplejia por lesión de la médula espinal cervical. O con esclerosis lateral amiotrófica (ELA), señaló la empresa. El inicio de los implantes neuronales inaugura un tiempo nuevo.

Neuralink, la empresa del magnate Elon Musk, está detrás del proyecto. Neurotecnología

El inicio de los implantes neuronales está muy pronto. Candidatos

Original article: El inicio de los implantes neuronales

Alien hunter Review and Opinion

Sabias que... — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 10:01:02 GMT

Alien Hunter (2003)
Director: Ron Krauss

review by Rob MarshallSpoiler alert!Julian Rome is a languages teacher and former cryptologist. He receives a call from NASA for help, after a GM research project in Antarctica detects signals coming from an object buried in the ice. Flying south through a blizzard, Julian is left stranded by stormy weather near the South Pole and out of touch with the authorities in Washington. Then, working alongside other scientists in an underground lab, he soon discovers the frozen object is a genuine extraterrestrial sealed inside a capsule. Can he decode the signal’s message before the potentially hostile creature thaws out?
Blatantly, this rips off several genre classics, including The Thing (1982), Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977), and The Andromeda Strain (1971). There are frequent references to SETI, as if the filmmakers were striving to place this in the same subgenre as superior drama Contact (1997), yet the ramshackle plot’s beginnings in postwar Roswell, and a government conspiracy to suppress the truth about a crashed UFO, only serve to make this another wearisome straggler in the parade of uninspired X-Files cash-ins. James Spader is well cast as Julian Rome. It’s the same type of role — a scientific misfit at odds with the establishment — he played in Stargate (1994). He’s one of those rare actors (Jeff Golblum is another) who can handle science fictional dialogue about theory and technology without obvious embarrassment, so that we may accept the intellectual brilliance of his gifted yet likeable character at face value. However, the relative blandness of the entire supporting cast, playing out their drearily stereotyped roles, is unforgivable and the exploitative screenplay by J.S. Cardone (the writer of Shadowzone, and The Forsaken) shamelessly cribs all its notable plot elements from infinitely better works. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Keir Dullea is wasted here in a nothing part as a US Defence Secretary, making the fateful choice about whether or not to dispatch a Russian submarine to nuke the Antarctic base in order to halt the spread of an alien virus…
The packaging blurb promises \’pulse-pounding\’ terror and thrills, but the only way this is likely to affect your heart rate is if you become extremely irritated by the sheer predictability of every single new development. The monster is suitably gruesome, and its supposedly benign intentions remain intriguingly ambiguous, despite the fact that it causes numerous deaths. But the inevitable stalking sequence has no suspense and gracelessly lapses into the risk-free unreality of a cheesy videogame, while the mixed group of scientists exhibit the expected range of stock reactions (from hysterical denial and suspicious paranoia to grave reflection), once it’s revealed their alien discovery is not a hoax (nobody mentions that infamous autopsy video, but your eyes will be rolling heavenwards as this obvious touchstone of UFOlogy lore springs immediately to mind). These scientists, with their persistent doubts and blind recklessness, talk to one another only to relate backstory details and explain the film’s plot to SF illiterate viewers. In such a hopelessly unsophisticated arena of as this, even an intelligent trouper like Spader cannot save director Krauss’ project from categorisation as stale B-movie fodder.
Little more than a hodgepodge of sci-fi tropes and borrowings, Alien Hunter is a wholly dated and unimaginative production. Its only points of interest being an easily anticipated twist on Cocoon (1985), some design concepts filched from The Abyss (1989), and the filmmakers’ cunningly ‘practical’ rationale (yeah, whatever works guys!) for getting their attractive leading lady (Janine Eser) into a swimsuit. With nothing to offer fans that have already seen all the films cited above, I would strongly recommend ignoring this one, if you can.

Original article: Alien hunter Review and Opinion

Alsiso project Review and Opinion

Sabias que... — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 09:47:35 GMT

The Alsiso Project
editor: Andrew Hook
Elastic Press paperback £6

review by Christopher Geary

An anthology with a difference, this intriguingly titled volume is not centred on a single genre trope or particular theme, it’s a bundle of short fiction that’s all inspired by a typo! Yes, the nonsense-word ‘alsiso’ (attributed to Marion Arnott), is used here by 23 writers as the springboard for a variety of science fiction mysteries, horror shockers, weird tales, and contemporary fictions. Literary giants such as Stanislaw Lem and Kurt Vonnegut have played similar games of bookish conceit and, while I’m not suggesting that any of the contributors to this volume are in their league (yet?), several offerings from The Alsiso Project are excellent stories, and their imaginary-word connection is happily irrelevant to the quality of writing.

The opener from K.J. Bishop almost gives the kaleidoscopic game away completely, with a run-through of numerous possibilities of the meaning of ‘alsiso’. Justina Robson is the first to overcome the lure of sophistry with compelling reportage of disturbing, repeated failures to establish a human colony on an alien world due to the problems encountered when investigating the indigenous life forms. Marie O’Regan’s story might be a variation on the serial killer psychodrama, but the narrative is unfortunately more confusing than genuinely mysterious. For Andrew Humphery, Alsiso is an obscure artist’s signature on a painting, but the subsequent, intriguing character studies of a widow and her prodigal brother are sufficiently entertaining that a lack of follow-up on the artist or the painting is not a fault in the storytelling.

Alasdair Stuart’s ‘lecture notes’ for a slideshow presentation return us briefly to the curious, Fortean realms of Bishop’s entry, and Allen Ashley continues the ersatz reality thread in his amusing piece about a countercultural, possibly subversive, rock band — viewed from opposite sides of the official/social/generation gap. To noted crime writer Antony Mann, it’s a car registration number ALS 150 that, by weird coincidence or predestination, leads to a road accident of distinctly tragicomic nature. Not wanting to be excluded from this book’s game plan, editor Andrew Hook wades into the fray with a noir-ish sketch about political corruption, familial secrets and revenge — in which a bunch of engagingly familiar icons (dominatrix, hitman, crook) go through the wittily inevitable motions of an ironic drama.

Matt Dinniman’s tale is subtitled The Sociology Of The Unpopped Masses, and deals, in suitably gruesome fashion, with the end of the world, as we know it, when people using a certain ‘magic’ word eventually explode — yes, literally. Tamar Yellin’s AlSiSo continues this apocalyptic vein with a story that’s as weird and unsettling, as Dinniman’s is darkly comical. John Grant’s AlsisO supposes that one man’s dream-life becomes a nightmare reality when his connection to another dimension isn’t broken upon waking. David Allen Lambert’s story is arguably the best of those here that lack any easily identifiable genre elements, but it more than makes up for this with its likable characters and wry sense of humour. Brian Howell’s take on what Alsiso means is Japanese, mixing specific cultural identity with an unnervingly subtle weirdness, as a salaryman’s family are ‘accepted’ by their strange neighbours after moving into a new home.

Conrad Williams’ story fits the bill as ‘classic’ trad sci-fi. A mysterious, beautiful woman gives a scrap metal merchant some hi-tech material resulting in the man’s discovery of a secret from his father’s past. Although the scene setting is exemplary, the payoff here is botched and unravels the eerie mood too swiftly and much too easily, undermining this story’s carefully wrought oddness, in a clumsily abrupt way, as if the ending was cut down for length. Following the welter of invention in some of these fictions, Marion Arnott’s closing story is a straightforward fantasy yarn, but nonetheless refreshing and enjoyable for its contrast to others’ work. The other contributors include Christopher Kenworthy, Nick Jackson, Gary Couzens, Kay Green, Steve Savile, Lisa Pearson, Nicholas Royle, and Kaaron Warrenï¿½ some of whom are responsible for the irritating abundance of ‘literary’ postmodern pretensions in this book. Thankfully, however, the unappealing mulch of their stuff does not detract from the overall worth of this offbeat anthology.

Original article: Alsiso project Review and Opinion

Shamanspace by steve aylett Review and Opinion

Sabias que... — Tue, 26 Nov 2024 12:00:03 GMT

Shamanspace
Steve Aylett
Codex paperback £6.99 / $12.95

review by Amy Harlib

Steve Aylett, a leading light of the British avant-garde speculative fiction scene, known for his novels and story collections set in highly satirical future milieus, takes a slightly different turn in his recent book Shamanspace. Packed into a short length of 121 pages, Shamanspace displays Aylett’s developing powers as a prose stylist, for the gorgeously poetic text conveys a wealth of information with its skilfully crafted phrasing. The story eschews the gonzo humour one usually expects from Aylett (in Atom, or Slaughtermatic — for examples), in favour of a darker, more emotionally intense and distinctly metaphysical tone.
Shamanspace’s future setting controversially posits that God actually exists and contending groups of occult assassins, the Internecine, race to annihilate the creator in revenge for the miseries of mortal mundanity. Youthful adept Alix possesses a degree of mastery of the esoteric abilities needed to penetrate the higher dimensional planes such as ‘sidespace’ that must be traversed to accomplish this seemingly impossible task, skill that makes him the leading contender. Narrated by the protagonist, his account of his audacious adventure communicates the psychedelically trippy aspects of multi-dimensional manipulation with cascades of metaphors and neologisms in writing that effectively communicates the bizarre mutability of physical objects that results when they are perceived from higher space/time continua. Rudy Rucker, representing another genre author (from the USA), who consistently explores outré geometries in his work, doesn’t match the wildly experimental expression of these ideas with exquisitely effective imagery in Aylett’s Shamanspace.
Amidst all the phantasmagoria, Aylett’s principal characters distinctly emerge, engaging the reader’s interest through Alix’s voice: the hero’s lover and helpmeet, Melody, Casolaro, the head of Prevail, the antagonistic organisation and his cunning henchmen Quinas and Lockhart. How these highly-endowed folk succeed, or not, in their daring endeavour is handled in Aylett’s clever, elusive and sardonic way, leaving the reader to ponder the provocative philosophical implications of the concepts of Shamanspace.
This book, a truly mind-blowing experience — a drug-free high, a splendid speculation — adds further food for thought in a fascinating appendix: A Brief History Of The Internecine. Shamanspace must not be missed for its consciousness-expanding, dazzling depiction of decidedly non-ordinary realities.

Original article: Shamanspace by steve aylett Review and Opinion

Dossier by stepan chapman Review and Opinion

Sabias que... — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 01:00:03 GMT

Dossier: A Collection of Short Stories
Stepan Chapman
Creative Arts paperback $13.95

review by Ian Shutter

Inspirational, and boasting an extraordinary level of creativity and imagination, Stepan Chapman’s first collection of short fiction includes 17 stories of curious mythical affect with many amazing surprises, that form a compelling body of evidence of this writer’s remarkable narrative wit. In Dossier, you will find mercenary rainmakers, dreams of microscopes, the wisdom of wizard hermits, island boy heroes, a shock to the psyche, cosmic tragicomedy, reclusive aristocrats, cybernetic bikers, spells of delusion, the subversion of ethnic traditions, robot moths, falling decadent empires, multicultural wrangling, unexpectedly benign apocalypse, and alternative Russian history.
The bold authorial conceits of Chapman’s fantasy worldviews are like the captivatingly wondrous folklore tales of Hans Christian Andersen and the brothers Grimm. Yet these stories are not insubstantial escapist works of daydreamer fancy. Some have the authority of grail myths and biblical proverbs, or the weightiness of millennial epiphany. Chapman quietly roams the unspoilt wilderness zone between the familiar genre neighbourhoods of science fiction, supernatural horror and magic realism. He tracks down and gathers up all the available marvellous concepts, bizarre twists, and delightfully wry angles of attack on conventional storytelling, leaving no touchstone unturned. Then, after skimming off the crusty layers of the fatuous and the trite, he confidently presents his outrageously weird findings, and refreshingly multifaceted characters — larger than life and death together — with phenomenal writing skill, and an astonishing truthful touch.
Chapman’s debut novel, The Troika (published by the Ministry of Whimsy), won the prestigious Philip K. Dick memorial award. I have no doubt that this volume will draw equal acclaim. Here’s modern literary fantasy at its very best!

Related pages:
tZ Hidden Hearts — short fiction by Stepan Chapman, published in The ZONE #8

Original article: Dossier by stepan chapman Review and Opinion

Idiocracy Review and Opinion

Sabias que... — Sat, 23 Nov 2024 23:00:02 GMT

Idiocracy (2006)
Director: Mike Judge

review by Christopher Geary
Spoiler Alert!’Average’ Joe (Luke Wilson) is a regular American soldier just biding his time with office duties, until his latest assignment finds him being used as a scientific test subject in the military’s top-secret hibernation project. But the government buries this experiment and the perfectly preserved Joe doesn’t wake up until 2505, when a combination of runaway consumerism, downmarket media programming, and several generations of falling educational standards have resulted in a future where the bewildered Joe is now the smartest man alive, and therefore obviously destined to become the next US President…

This scenario must be Buck Rogers’ worst nightmare. Going much further down the slippery slope of genre spoofing than Woody Allen’s classic Sleeper (1973), the gentle moral schooling of W.D. Richter’s criminally overlooked Late For Dinner (1991), or Rob Grant’s bureaucracy lampooning novel Incompetence (2003), this film is actually so scathing in its attack on the state of US politics, and American culture and society, that studio 20th Century Fox clearly had no idea how they could sell the finished product to dead-eyed cinema audiences that are the main target of its deliberately unsubtle jokes. Idiocracy hurls a ferocious broadside against the real world’s increasingly malign trivialisation of ‘free speech’ in the western democracies, where empty rhetoric has superseded freethinking imagination, rigorous criticism of religious piety is frowned upon to the very point of intolerance, and the murmuring sound of intellectual debate is simply condemned or rejected as secular elitism.

Not unlike Sam Lowry, in Terry Gilliam’s magnificent Brazil (1985), the ordinary Joe of Idiocracy is very much an everyman struggling to make sense of a world that both needs him — desperately — and yet, ironically, can find no place for him (at first) in the grand scheme of things. The fact is that, like much postmodern and supposedly prophetic sci-fi, the 500-years-hence ‘future’ extrapolated for Idiocracy is perilously close to the present, quite terrifyingly familiar, state of things. Am I ranting or exaggerating here? Well, probably… However, before the socio-political message of Idiocracy is dismissed outright as scare mongering lunacy, we should be willing to ask the hard question: how much longer can other industrially developed nations tolerate a super-power America (and its satellite pawns like the UK) that really is blatantly fostering a society of imbeciles permitted to believe — amongst other idiocies — that our planet is no more than a few thousand years old (a ridiculous belief maintained by religious preaching despite over a century’s accumulated scientific evidence to the contrary)? Must we have the ‘Scopes monkey trial’ all over again?

What’s particularly depressing about Idiocracy is that it’s a satirical farce suggesting its warning message can only be delivered if hidden beneath the safe and comforting guise of raucous comedy. This particular observation hints at the underlying tragedy of Idiocracy. Belly laughs aside, it’s a genuinely cheerless and despairingly sad little story. Rather more so than the anti-censorship tirade lurking behind the likes of the ‘politically correct’ US dystopia of Demolition Man (1993), where Sylvester Stallone’s resurrected police-brute is repeatedly and automatically fined for swearing in public, Idiocracy gleefully trashes each and every knuckle-dragging level and Mickey Mouse section of American society, most tellingly represented in Mike Judge’s movie by moronic lawyer Frito (Dax Sheperd), nestled happily in the comicbook styled, eternal infancy of the armchair-toilet facing his giant TV screens. After the grimly hilarious climax, Joe and Frito have a dialogue scene to show neither of them comprehends, except vaguely, the science fictional concept of time-travel paradox. The film is saying: identify with these characters at your peril!

Yes, of course, we can snigger knowingly at Idiocracy for its astute lambasting of the swaggering cult of personality that seems to have run White House policy ever since the prematurely senile Ronald Reagan took office. We can point and chuckle at lame-brained hero Joe’s struggling attempts to survive compulsory ‘rehab’ punishment in the gladiatorial arena — in vehicular combat against ‘Beef Supreme’ (Andrew Wilson, Luke’s older brother). There’s even some limited amusement to be derived from the film’s lacklustre happy ending, as honest yet clueless Joe (a fusion of Clark Kent and Forrest Gump?) saves everyone — from the likelihood of starvation — by proving that plants need water to grow. But, honestly, the real world situation is far beyond a joke now. Much as I like having a good chinwag and putting the world to rights, I haven’t got the answers, and I suspect they won’t be found easily. What’s abundantly clear, though, is that any solutions to the world’s numerous problems will, as Idiocracy asserts, have something to do with education, education, education…

Original article: Idiocracy Review and Opinion

Special unit 2 Review and Opinion

Sabias que... — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 17:00:03 GMT

Special Unit 2 (2000)
Created and produced by Evan Katz

review by Daniel G. Jennings

This show works because it doesn’t try to take itself too seriously. It tries to entertain and amuse us and succeeds admirably. The plot is simple — in an alternate reality a wide variety of mythical monsters such as trolls, gnomes, dragons, gargoyles, gremlins, etc. are real. These creatures are links to other intelligent races that evolved on Earth and now live secretly.
Unfortunately many of these links like to eat people. Since these links are a major menace to public safety and property values, Mayor Daley of Chicago has taken notice of them and formed an elite task force of the Chicago police department called Special Unit 2 which is charged with hunting down and exterminating the links. (Obviously the links aren’t smart enough to vote.) Special Unit 2’s headquarters is in a secret base underneath a dry cleaning store near the Chicago loop and the elite unit has weapons that are far more powerful and technologically advanced than the military’s.
Like Men In Black, Special Unit 2 is a lot of fun, and is successful because it doesn’t make any political statements. The characters have cool looking weapons to blow up the links with and there are lots of entertaining subplots. The show supposedly focuses on two detectives which, naturally, makes for every tired old cop show cliché you could think of but since both the actors and writers know tongue in cheek humour is the show’s objective, it works. Michael Landees plays the cynical veteran detective who wants to blow everything away, and his performance works but it might work better if he was a little more over the top or out of control.
Alexandra Lee plays his partner, and she steals the show. Lee is a really beautiful woman and a good actress who knows how to make her beauty part of the show. She has a wonderful look on her face that tells the audience, yeah it’s all a big joke and I’m in on it so let’s laugh together. Fortunately both actors know the show is supposed to be fun and look like their having fun playing with the neat weapons, driving the cool car and clowning around. Both are cocky and tough and there’s none of the overbearing angst that sometimes infects Buffy and Angel. Nor do we get any of often dreary and redundant cynicism that often makes The X-Files and Le Femme Nikita boring.
Although Lee and Landees are supposed to be Special Unit 2’s focus. Two very talented character actors in supporting roles often steal the show from them. Danny Woodburn, plays a criminal informant who is also a gnome, he’s a sleazy money-grubbing crook who is also a neat freak. Woodburn plays the role perfectly and gets a lot of laughs out of it. Fortunately the writers know exactly how to use this talented little actor.
Veteran American TV actor Richard Gant, plays Special Unit 2’s gruff no-nonsense commanding officer. Gant avoids the impulse to do too much comedy and instead makes the character stiff and tough. This plays perfectly off of the sillier supporting characters like Woodburn and the field officers. It also helps push the humour along.
There are a few weaknesses, I wish they’d show more of the Windy City, one of Americaï¿½s most colourful environs and try to give us some flavour of the place in the way that Angel shows us around Los Angeles and does a pretty good job of spotlighting the older areas of that great city. Lots of comic moments could come from that.
Lee and Landes work perfectly together but I just hope the writers can keep avoiding the old TV cop show cliché of conflicting partners and make them friends, say a pair of merry pranksters who love their job and know how to fun doing it. Like the surgeons on M*A*S*H rather than Cagney and Lacey.
The only real problem I see with Special Unit 2 is that sooner or later the humour will run out and it’ll get old after awhile. Then it will become just another repetitive mess of TV and sci-fi clichés like Hercules and Xena did towards the end. Hopefully, the producers will know when to pull the plug on this show. In conclusion, Special Unit 2 is good light entertainment that avoids deep issues and just tries to amuse us. I just wish more TV shows would learn how to emphasise humou and absurdity like this one does.

Original article: Special unit 2 Review and Opinion

Dogma Review and Opinion

Sabias que... — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 12:00:02 GMT

Dogma (1999)
Director: Kevin Smith

review by Steven Hampton

Certainly one of the most generically mixed up films I have ever seen, this lamely whimsical comedy fantasy is too confused to satisfy even the most undemanding viewer. It fails miserably as biblical apocalypse, road movie, counterculture satire and — whatever! The familiar characters of Jay and silent Bob from this director’s earlier slacker movies like Clerks (1994), which I have not seen, and Mallrats (1995) which I did see, and found wanting — seem wholly out of place here, consigned to merely non-participant spectatorship at worst, clumsy interlopers in the main, earnestly theological action, at best.
A potentially great cast are largely wasted as they stand firm spouting the vacuous dialogue (Alan Rickman is only amusing as the ‘voice of God’ until we realise he isn’t going to go away), or go running scared of ridiculous juvenilia, like the smelly and almost invulnerable shit monster. If you can bear the thought of Ben Affleck as a fallen angel, American comedian Chris Rock as a 13th apostle, Matt Damon as Loki (did I mention how confused Dogma is?), and a mercy killing as the act that saves the world — oh, irony! — this film is for you. But if it is, I think you need psychiatric help.
The women in the film, Linda Fiorentino and Salma Hayek, are given important, pivotal roles in the plot. Yet, Hayek’s muse is discovered performing in a strip club, and Fiorentino suffers the indignity of a wet t-shirt scene that undermines any dramatic value she tries to invest in her character’s protests against God (finally revealed as Alanis Morissette, ho-hum). So, pretty much a clear case of a project that was in need of a script doctor, and a competent director, too.previously published online, VideoVista #15

Dogma (1999)
Director: Kevin Smith

review by Debbie Moon

After many years satirising American life, movies, and corner stores, Kevin Smith obviously decided it was time for something on a larger scale — a positively cosmic scale, in fact. Two angels cast out of heaven have just discovered a loophole in Catholic dogma that will let them back in. Unfortunately, that would reverse the will of God, and the universe would cease to exist. God has gone AWOL on a visit to Earth, so the world is in the hands of a lapsed Catholic, the 13th apostle, a muse, and, erm, Jay and Silent Bob. We’re in big trouble…
Far from the blasphemous horror some have made it out to be, this is an agreeable, warm-hearted film. That just happens to contain mass murder, excrement demons, and Alanis Morissette. You may disagree with some of Smith’s criticisms, or indeed, with the film’s woolly ‘doesn’t matter what you believe as long as you believe’ philosophy, but its heart is in the right place. The performances are all excellent, with Alan Rickman’s world-weary Voice of God a particular delight, and the Ben Affleck and Matt Damon double-act on top form as the mismatched rebels. It’s a taut, well-constructed comedy that topples your preconceptions with gusto, and might even make you think now and then.previously published online, VideoVista #23

Original article: Dogma Review and Opinion