nikola-borissov

Hm. A tiny bit of a necessary (personal but excusable) preamble is in order: I do worship William Gibson. Vocally, blindly, unquestionably, unfalteringly, half of my worldview is inspired by his oeuvre (quite irrelevantly the other half is mostly Sartre, Camus, Schopenhauer and, of course, Pratchett). "Neuromancer" is my nihilist transhuman bible, literally. A man of simple, honest tastes, salt of the earth etc.

So when I randomly came upon the little something called "Pantheon", I just.... Well, undergarments had to be changed.

This is... *extremely* good. Provided the necessary bandwidth and persuasion, of course. And to think I had absolutely no idea it existed.

10 little 👻 out of 10.

Now. Good cinema is, well, good. Memorable, impressive, solid, the works. Great cinema, however, is, in my humble amateurish opinion, *subtle*. That's the keyword, subtle. Everything is in the right place, in the right amount, everything is juuust right. No more, no less. No flashy stuff. No director going all "look Ma, no hands". No overzealousness from actors, DP, anyone. No showing off. Nonchalant restraint is the greatest form of pure mastery of any craft, including cinema. (With St. Wong Kar-wai obviously being the living proof. I said *obviously*.)

And this, ladies and gentleman, is what we have the rare opportunity of contemplating here. I wish I had appreciated it as much the first time.

Flawlessness.

I was looking forward to seeing this, and I tried, I really did. I endured a couple of episodes. And I would have watched all of it, probably even enjoyed it too, but I just couldn't stand watching Nicole Kidman's botched face. It looks completely unnatural, weird, revolting, *obviously* the result of decades of multiple plastic surgeries. It's basically what a Donatella Versace doll at Madame Tussaud's would look like. Not to mention her complete inability of *any* facial movement or expression, it's extremely unnerving. It's such a pity, I've always liked her elegant and classy beauty. Which is no more - instead of aging with grace, she preferred to look like a real-life plastic doll. The funny thing is that next to her Hugh Grant looks like a walnut, proudly sporting a ton of wrinkles, like a normal human being. Why do women do that?? It's easy to blame society for the pressure, but is that really the case? Also: wtf were the producers thinking? That we *will not* notice? That it looks okay? IT DOESN'T. And you, producers, should feel ashamed of yourselves, because you are contributing to making this deviated horrible cyborg look the new "normal".