What was coming up next on my film list was Nanook of the North, with Sands Films. They have a decent selection, lately, and this is a silent film from 1922, about the Inuit community. I decided to give that a shot today.
Well, I watched enough of it to be able to tell you to jump to about 9:45 in - that's when the feed actually starts. But as I was waiting for it to buffer - I tend to have that problem with Sands Films, on my mother's laptop - I got another advertising email from Amazon Prime. And they had some interesting options. :-) So.. I had a peek at Upload, a comedy sci-fi series about a world, not too far in the future, where people's memories, personalities etc. can be uploaded to a program they subscribe to, so that they can have - essentially - the afterlife of their choice, which they can experience as themselves, in simulated bodies.
First impressions - man, this is clever! We follow the story of a young man (Robbie Amell, doing a good impression of a young Tom Cruise), whose life is cut tragically short in a freak accident. However, he doesn't die straight away - and his high-maintenance, upper-crust girlfriend has a pretty high-class subscription to the upload service, where all her family plan to spend the afterlife. So she badgers him into being uploaded, on her subscription, so they can (eventually) spend the afterlife together, in genteel luxury.
The tech in it is all recognisable - just one step up from what's currently available. Expect to see 3-D printing, new and interesting communication devices - oh, and controversially, his death is caused by an (impossible!) accident in a driverless car, which completely ignores the obstacle in front of it. Google is referenced, too - we're really not that far away from this version of reality. Except, perhaps, for the central premise.
Loads and loads of cute little touches - in the afterlife, for example, he passes someone uploading a review of the setting, remarking how the repeating gif for the light sparkling on the lake water is a bit repetitive. He also points out how the large numbers accessing that scene lead to a bad frame rate (and we see it freezing). Oh, and don't forget the regular little annoyances of a posh hotel retreat - breakfast finishing at 10am?! Drat. Or the guy continually trying to give people free gum samples. Even in the afterlife, you can't escape these things. But what sustains the story into a second season is that there's some suspicion over our hero's death - after all, driverless cars don't crash, right? And in Episode 2, we learn why we might start to think that foul play was involved.
Excellent stuff - looking forward to Episode 4, and beyond..
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