House of Cards Kills

After listening to Arturo's such positive comments about the brand new Netflix series "House of Cards", I decided I'd give the first episode a try and see if they held true. 12 episodes later... I concurred that Arturo was right.

House of Cards proved to be a very intelligently written political drama that kept you on the edge of your seat throughout. It was extremely difficult to stop watching once I got started, with the ending of each episode leaving you on even more of a cliffhanger than the last. In addition to the excellent storytelling, the acting was absolutely superb. Kevin Spacey delivers an immaculate performance as Francis Underwood, the ruthless Majority Whip whose hellbent on scheming his way to the Presidency, and not letting anyone get in his way. However he still doesn't outshine his co-stars, with Robin Wright, Kate Mara, and Corey Stoll bringing their A game as well.

This is the second original series Netflix has put out, and this one really knocked it out of the park. Whether or not the show is a success hinges on how many of Netflix's subscribers decided to watch the show and keep watching once they got started. Netflix hasn't released any numbers yet, but the hope is that releasing an entire season all at once will keep viewers hooked given the accessibility of the next episode, as opposed to releasing each one weekly. Essentially, Netflix hopes their original series inspires the "binge watching" in which many customers end up using the service for (especially college students). After my experience, I have no doubt that it will.

How Comedies Can Make an Important Case

So after my last post about animation and, by extension, comedy, I received a response saying that comedy is not only used in kids movies and animations, but can also be used to get across some really serious points  that make the audience think. The first movie I thought when considering this was one of the more recent films I've watched, The Invention of Lying. This movie was honestly hysterical, but at the end of the movie my roommate at the time and myself sat down and just stared at the screen when it was done. After a few awkward more moments of silence I turned to her and said,

"What if life was really like that, where nobody lied?"

And just now it's hitting me, that's the purpose of the film. To make people stop and think about if the world actually could not lie. And it's a valid point. People say all the time, "I wish people just didn't lie." And this movie is pretty spot on about portraying that. But it raises another question, if it was socially accepted to not lie, rather, if lying did not exist at all, would we even care about the horrible bluntness of harsh statements?

So I guess I've been shown an important point, Even comedies have the capability to present deep thought-provoking topics to the general public, that not only makes them laugh, but also makes them think.