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Comment by raffael_de | Hacker News Reader

I have Lee Pace on the radar since Singh's The Fall.

Your assessment of movie magic is only partially correct. Obviously, a character has to be convincing by himself but the heavy lifting of the illusion is done by the peer characters acting as if they believe the role he plays.

"The king is always played by the others"

Not sure who is to credit for this quote but in my opinion it is one of the most important insights to understand how movies work and also why movie characters are never relevant role models.

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He's also extraordinary in Apple's Foundation, some say he carries the show. I treasure The Fall and every frame of it, in this he's uniquely blended with other great actors and images.

Apparently part of The Fall's magic stems from the fact that the girl playing Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) somehow didn't really understand that she was playing in a movie. The director, as well as Pace, received some criticism for this manipulation. She also didn't really continue acting afterwards.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1942458/

IMO the plot of Apple's "The Foundation" is an infuriating insult to the original series. However, the production is great and Lee Pace is awesome as usual.

I think it's best appreciated as an original space opera that just happens to have the same name, especially given that so much of the show is genuinely original.

I kind of love it when movies/TV don't follow the books too closely. It means more content in a world I enjoy without repeating too much.

I generally agree, and also that it's impossible to take a book to video without change. I tend to try to think of it like this, imagine Bob and Jim watched a battle scene, but one from the west, the other from the east side. Bob wrote the book, Jim the movie.

Naturally, although it was the same battle, they'll have seen different things up close, and have different views on the battle overall.

Having said that...

It's like someone wrote the Foundation movie three generations after the book was written, turned into a play, and then told over the campfire for decades.

It literally has no more connection with Asimov's works, than Star Wars is like Star Trek. All of the technology is different, the size of the Empire is wildly different, literally almost nothing maps.

Is it good? Yes, sorta. But it's not Foundation, by any stretch. It's not even remotely in the same "world".

My problem is that the show essentially "says" the opposite of the novels.

For compelling TV you need recurring characters for the audience to become invested in. But the whole point of Foundation was that the individuals don't matter (mostly).

The show had to jump through all these hoops to keep the same actors around and make them heroes. And it expanded/emphasized the metaphysical element in a way that undermined the psychohistory. And IMO makes/will make (honestly don't know where they're at now) the series ending reveal far less interesting and thought provoking.

Last season's Brother Dude was awesome. I really felt sad for him. I have to say, however, my tolerance for manipulative sociopaths is very low - I'd totally punch McMillen in the face.

I was only aware of The Fall for its brilliant photography.

The Fall is a great movie but still more style than substance imo.

It's forgivable, as long as it has A LOT of style.

Even though Pushing Daisies ended too abruptly, I thought he was GREAT in that series as well.

Yeah, someone saw a love struck pie maker and thought: Ronan the Accuser.

He has range!

Check out Wonderfalls, his first series.

Often in movies you have the scrappy character that rises to the occasion by making a great speech, winning everybody over. I used to love those scenes.

Now, I've realized, in real life they wouldn't have let them finish their first sentence.

stuff like this. if i enjoy a movie but the script simply doesn't check out from a rational perspective (plot holes, implausible behavior, inconsistencies etc.) then i sometimes decide to switch to a fairy tale mental mode where those issues are excused magically. only works with some movies. kingdom of heaven comes to mind.

Project: Hail Mary, a fantasy world where geopolitics are trivially simple and every state in the world collectively agrees how great it would be to cede power and work together. (And therefore enable a genuinely fun and amazing science story which was the actual focus of the book to begin with, 10/10).

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