seanyliu Reviews

Three-Body (2023– )

Keep an open mind

[8/10 · 16 January 2023]

One difficulty of book adaptations is it will never play out perfectly as it would in each reader's mind. Of course the show won't live up to the masterpiece that is Three Body Problem. That kind of scifi epic only happens ever so often; one's that can be adapted to a show even rarer. However, the show stays true to "show, don't tell", and despite some negligible flawed, eager ensemble acting, as well as a few examples of over-exaggerated editing here and there, it incorporates much of the content from the books while adding much non-cgi visually impressive elements to enrich the shows format as a visual medium. One aspect I especially enjoyed was the main cast. The casting for major characters also reflects the books surprisingly well, and the acting of major characters deserve to be applauded.

Overall, watch this show. It's engaging, aesthetically pleasing, and retains most of Liu Cixin's psychological mind-bending science fiction masterpiece.

Nova: Building Chernobyl's Mega Tomb (2016) Season 44, Episode 8

Interesting Subject, Horrible Execution

[1/10 · 15 October 2019]

Like other reviewers I watched this on Netflix. The main flaw of this film is its soundtrack. The CSI: Miami inspired soundtrack is loud, repetitive, and obnoxious. The information it provides is interesting, but the soundtrack is far too distracting for anyone to be able to focus on the subject matter. This entire film feels like a overdone conspiracy theory episode instead of an enlightening documentary about how humanity tries to solve the worst nuclear disaster in history.

This documentary can be summarized as follows. The first 30 minutes is a summary of what happened, and the next 30 minutes is the actual construction of the Tomb as well as next steps. If you are watching this after the HBO Chernobyl miniseries, a smart suggestion is to stay away.