Trakt for iOS
Works on iPhone and iPad.
This was supposedly based on the Foundation novels by Isaac Asimov. Those novels were a retelling of "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" by Edward Gibbon - with an SF setting.
However, this adaption has little or nothing in common with those novels.
You can basically split the series into two main threads. It's almost as if these two threads are written by different people - they differ so much in quality.
The Empire story actually works. The creators of the show added an new section about a genetic dynasty of clones ... it actually works. The segments about the empire and its decline are quite watchable. Machinations of power etc. The Emperors are well-acted, compelling even.
The Foundation story is awful. I mean really badly written and shockingly badly acted. It's also laced with woke drivel. I don't know how better to express how bad these parts are written and acted than to say... I actually ended up laughing at some of the lines and how they were delivered. It ditches the idea of psychohistory (or rather it pays it lip service) and in its place is a kind of silly story about uploaded consciousness and coin tosses.
But the main takeaway is this: the series has virtually nothing in common with the books. It's completely and utterly missing the grandeur and shocks of the original Foundation novels. This is mega-budgeted nonsense.
The entire industry of film and TV seems to have plumbed the dregs to fill up the acres of space needed for content these days. It's embarrassing.
Detailed, obsessively. dedicated to the book.
If you haven't read the book (and I had not) then this series will need a second watch before it starts to make sense.
There is such a lot to take in, and it's told in a flashbacks jumping across time.
When I watched it the first time I missed so much detail - and still enjoyed most of it. Watching it again after a few months and so much slots into place this time.
It's well-acted (except for the western parts) and well-written... but it really does show that adapting a book for the screen does involve making changes. The written word allows you to go into more detail, slowly. The screen batters you with information at the same pace for all.
So either, read the books first or be prepared to watch the series again to get the full enjoyment of it.
As for its faults - it does feel like the timing is off. The series is very slow-paced until the 20+ episode and then seems to race for the finished.
Nevertheless it is worth the effort. They truly made the effort to pack everything in from the book (30 episodes of it).
The Offer is one of the best TV series I've seen for years.
It's a dramatisation of how The Godfather (1972) got made, told from Albert Ruddy's point of view. Ruddy starts out as a bored employee of Rand Corp and somehow gets himself a job as a producer after a pitching a highly successful TV show (Hogan's Heroes) and then through sheer cheek turns this into a shot as a film producer on a prospective book - The Godfather.
It grabbed me from the first few moments and held my attention through the entire 10 episode run. By episode 5 I was genuinely beginning to feel sad because I was now on the last half of the show - and it was coming to end. Not kidding.
It manages to be enthralling, scary and touching while dealing with gangsters, and even worse - Hollywood people. Outstanding moments include the odd couple bond between Coppola and Puzo. Puzo wrote the novel and worked with Coppola to turn it into a script. Ruddy putting them up in a house to work intensively on the script together is a source of genuine laugh-out-loud moments. It's no spoiler to say the film gets made, but all the twists and turns along the way might be.
It's a fabulous series and seems to have slipped under many people's radar too.
If you haven't seen it yet, I can highly recommend it.
