SPOILER ALERT - Don’t read unless you have seen movie.

Two Night Stand is a cute romantic comedy starring Miles Teller and Analeigh Tipton. Analeigh’s character Megan gets pressed into hooking up on a dating app after a bad breakup in which her boyfriend cheated and wanted out. She finds Teller’s character Alec on the app and heads over to his place In Brooklyn. They end up getting snowed in and after some up and down moments end up starting to fall for each other. That is until Megan discovers Alec has a live in girlfriend that is away. He explains it by showing her a breakup note that he found that had not been sent to him yet. As you can imagine, that was the boy loses girl moment and through some completely unrealistic set of event he finds her again and wins her back. As a standalone movie it has its moment and is somewhat entertaining. The two main characters pull off chemistry which can be a very challenging thing to do. 

On a social note, this is part of everything wrong with media. Believing that two people can meet this way with recent and current relationships pending is a message that anyone watching would find hopeful. Unfortunately we know that starting something before truly finish something else off doesn’t work both logically and statistically. A

Is the Cinematography in Season 8 Episode 3 too dark. But dark I mean literally dark. Many of the posts have been complaints about being too dark. I have a different take on things. I think cinematographer Miguel Sapochnik made some very brave decisions in the choosing of the color palette and the dark spectrum he chose. Given that it is TV and there is not control over the viewing device, this is even braver. Although digital tv’s come out of the box a bit more calibrated then in the past, they tend to have all kinds of default controls on which affect motion, brightness and scenes that can be too dark. The cinematographers job is too create imagery that supports the visually supports the overall story and the individual scenes. The action sequences were the most criticized, but I believe the palettes aided the frenzied mood of the scenes. Yes, there were times between the winter fog and the dark palette were certain characters were difficult to see in detail, but I could see them. I am so glad a cinematographer is allowed to stretch his visual muscles on high stakes project. Miguel said he took some inspiration from battle scenes in the Lord of the Rings. But he did a great job of taking inspiration while giving it his fresh take. Unlike the Lord of the Rings scenes which were lit day for night (lots of lighting , blue palette),. Miguel tried to give things a more realist view. Sometimes the best of scenes and a frame lie in what we cannot see and what are imagination fills in. Kudos to Mr. Sapochnik. 

Partial review as I have not seen the whole series, I am on to episode 4. Pretty cool series, the premise is what if you died and were placed in a heavin’ish place with a similar life, would you want to live that life again. The show stars Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen of Saturday Night Live fame. Rudolph’s performances through episode  4 have been the most surprising, her character has a subtle depth. Armisen plays a bit of characature, perhaps thats the intent, but I am usually aware I am watching Armisen vs losing track of the actor. This is not the case with Rudolph who works the deeper character. Looking forward to continue to watch, I stumbled on this one a bit, but I am glad I did. 

Spoiler Alert - Review after finishing season 1

Finished up the series which runs thru 8 episodes. This one was a strange one overall. Was a little bored at first, found the middle compelling and was disappointed by the end.  The beginning was a bit uneventful but led to a some interesting reveals in the middle. The end of the series left me a bit underwhelmed. The last few episodes centered around the Maya Rudolph character June decides to take an option to go to Oceanside and leave the Armisen character Oscar. She’s bored with her life and wants to not relive it every day. Oceanside turns out to be a Great Gasby like house with decadent people doing decadent things. They have an annual cleansing which is a page out of Burning Man in which they set on fire all of the items they have gathered over the last year. June discovers that her boring life was a making of her own and ends up going off with Oscar who came to win here back and tell her off at the same time. In summary, an interesting series, but suffers from a weak climax.