 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 | 🎙️ EPISODE 272: 06.21.20 "I'm crystal and exact. I have no preconceptions. Illusions fed, lo and behold, my mind is free forever. I burn with fire and ice, and then I melt. My thoughts die in the reflection. But more than anything, I know - the moment's final terror." Skinny Pete from Breaking Bad–Charles Baker, who has a face which ages him somewhere between 25 and 75–alongside a brooding Michael Ironside, who has acted in so many movies that this one isn’t even listed on his Wikipedia filmography (below)... |
I honestly can't tell if it has "dumb smart guy" or "smart dumb guy" vibes, but it certainly has VIBES. One of it's movie posters (left) featuring the two leads with handguns makes it look like some kind of time-traveling buddy cop flick (also: pretty sure neither character ever touches a gun in the actual movie?). Bookended by a Shakespeare quote and an odd dedication (below) which seem diametrically opposed on the surface; how did we get from point A to point B1?
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| This is how Alterscape (2018) begins and ends |
Alterscape was written and directed by Serge Levin, whose IMDb bio reads:
Serge Levin2? is an award winning American film actor, writer and director. He is known for Stranger Things (2016), Alterscape (2018), War on War, The Americans (2013), Superstrata, Welcome to Willits (2016). He's the founder of Isle Empire Pictures, a media production company, and a music band Rain4Sale.(Also of note, the two factoids accompanying said bio: "Serge Levin studied finance and political science in San Diego. Worked as a financial analyst with Salomon Brothers and Bear Stearns. He also held the position of Chief Executive Officer of a construction and retail conglomerate in Europe" and, simply "Practices Kyokushin karate.")
This is all code/cover for me to admit: I have no idea who this guy is or how this movie ended up on my radar; it's a mystery to me. The cosmos wanted me to see Alterscape and who am I to argue with that?
With a visual style best described as the lovechild of a Zack Snyder student film and a rejected Syfy pilot that's constantly tip-toeing the line between endearing and embarrassing (I vote the former, mostly)–in both the realms of the digital...
...and the practical...
–a cast of really bad actors (minus our two serviceable "name brand" leads)...
and a script/"plot" that is so half-baked it could secretly be genius...
...Alterscape finds itself in something of a netherworld: it's not necessarily a "good bad movie" but it's also not nearly good enough to be anything else. It's an intrigue. Could be your dime a dozen, your diamond in the rough, or your pile of dogshit. I honestly don't know what it3? is to me, and that's a weird place to find myself searching.
FOOTNOTES:
1. Listen to the show to hear me try to make sense of the plot. [BACK]
2. Leading with Stranger Things is, obviously, presumptuous; Levin played a small point in a single episode: a Russian goon in S03E05. [BACK]
3. Which is to say, I'm not pining for Alterscape 2: Electric Boogaloo but I also would definitely watch that it ever came to be. In the meantime, there are three 'written & directed by' Serge Levin feature films in the works, and they all have movie posters (below)4! [BACK]
4. In fact, Herbert West: Reanimator has a one-sentence plot summary that sorta reads like Alterscape 2: "Pursued by the police, an ambitious neuroscientist uses a neutrino impulse to bring his dead wife back to life, unintentionally unlocking within her dormant powers that threaten the existence of everyone he knows." Yes please.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ EPISODE 271 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 273 ⫸
⫷ EPISODE 271 - (YOU ARE HERE) - EPISODE 273 ⫸
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