Monthly Archives: February 2010
10 Brief Notes on Caprica
1. You really should be watching this.
2. The nature of the show is such that each episode is not as self-contained as episodes of BSG. I will do a more comprehensive post when the mid-season break hits in mid-March.
3. This week episode was quite cyberpunky. Until now, it had mostly been family drama, with no action. But Admiral Adama has an all powerful Neo-esque sister avatar walking around Caprican cyberspace, kicking trash and taking names. Makes for an interesting tonal shift in the episodes, but it works.
4. The Adamas are “Tauron” which apparently means Jewish-Italian-Arab-Greek-Hispanic.
5. The actor playing Daniel Greystone has gotten a lot better since the pilot.
6. No wonder the Cylons wanted to destroy humans. The Zoe avatar inside the first Cylon was forced to watch her parents have sex. And she was ordered to rip her own arm off. The Zoe avatar is also quite selfish and too willing to manipulate the best friend of the real Zoe.
7. The Soldiers of the one practice bi-sexual group marriage. Interesting.
8. Ron Moore wants to include more gay characters in his shows. That is fine. Now, if he could just stop making them of a certain type. So far, we have: Cylon Saboteurs and mentally insane Admirals (see BSG: Razor), mutineers (Gaeta), cold-blooded Mafia-esque hitmen (here in Caprica, one of the Adama clan), and cold-blooded fanatical terrorists (Soldiers of the One in Caprica).
9 Either way, this is a lot better than expected. Nothing as good as the first two seasons of BSG, but loads better than the last two seasons.
10. So go watch the frakking show.
A Brief Book Review: The Battlestar Galactica Trilogy.
Actually, this isn’t a true “trilogy.” It’s more like “Omnibus edition of the only three licensed books that were ever released.”
I needed a BSG fix, and someone got me this for my birthday, so I read through it. Interesting, but hardly essential. The three books in this omnibus edition are:
* The Cylons’ Secret, by Craig Shaw Gardner
* Sagittarius Is Bleeding, by Peter David
* Unity, by Steven Harper
Movie Review: THE CRAZIES
Meh.
Don’t get me wrong … this remake of George A. Romero’s 1973 flick of the same name (which I haven’t seen) is actually pretty good. By which I mean, I enjoyed myself well enough while watching it. No unforgiveably crappy dialogue, no egregious plot flaws, no interminable stretches of boredom, punctuated by zombie attacks. And best of all, there is plenty of suspense, a good helping of crazed zombie attacks, and lots of genuine scares. I actually put my hands to my eyes a couple times, which is embarrassing to admit, but usually a sign that the film is working as intended. And there are some pretty memorable gore scenes — the attack at the carwash is decent, the pitchfork attack in the hospital is quite well-done, and I felt like I hadn’t seen these scenes 1,000 times before. The film is gory at times, but it isn’t going to set any records, and I appreciated both of these facts.
That said, my problem with the film is that it seems entirely derivative of other zombie movies. This was 28 Days Later in a lot of ways, with a hefty dose of Outbreak for good measure. It wasn’t horribly dark like Evil Dead, nor was it rip-roaringly funny like Shaun of the Dead or Zombieland or Evil Dead II, but it does have its comedic moments. With few exceptions, you won’t see anything new, and you’ll find yourself saying “This is like X, but not quite as memorable.” Also, the zombies themselves aren’t that interesting. But that’s OK. The film still mostly works, as it does what it needs to do competently and effectively.
If you need a zombie fix this weekend, you won’t go wrong if you catch this flick. But when your friends ask you next month what you thought of the movie, you won’t remember, and you’ll have to tell them that. You’ll still be thinking about 28 Days Later, or Zombieland.
American Idol: top 24
What’d everyone think of the top 12 girls? I haven’t quite watched them all, but from what I’ve seen, it looks like a pretty disappointing group.
Except for Chrystal Bowersox, who completely rules. She sounded like a combination of Linda Perry and Ani DiFranco last night. I don’t think she sounded like Alanis, do you?
LOST: “Lighthouse”
Another week, another new episode of Lost. Jack is back.
Spoilers and more below the fold.
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Dumbass Winter Olympic Events
1. Curling. If that’s a sport then so is shuffleboard.
2. Short Track Speedskating. WTF? That’s like the summer olympics having the same track events on two separate size tracks! What is short track for, munchkins? We have a different track for short people? I say get rid of short bus speedskating and make everyone skate on the big track, like grown-ups.
3. Luge. Come on, man, those lugers aren’t doing anything except laying on a cafeteria tray like meatloaf. They can’t even see where they’re going! And that goes double for doubles luge. Any event you can do laying on top of someone else in your sock feet must go.
4. Biathlon. Since when do guns have anything to do with winter sports? You can shoot guns at targets any time of the year, in combination with any aerobic activity. So why is cross country skiing so special? Get rid of the shooting and just ski.
LOST: “The Substitute”
As I noted last week, Kate episodes tend toward mediocrity. But Locke episodes tend to be awesome, and tonight’s was no exception (even if, technically, it was only half Locke-centric).
Spoilers from tonight’s episode and more after the jump.
The Other Shows
OK, I know a new Lost post will be up tonight. And this isn’t the ideal time to do this. (And yes I’ll be chiming in on BTD Greg’s always excellent summaries that seem to contain more information than I thought possible) That said Lost isn’t the only show in the universe, even if it is among the best. So here’s our irregular commentary on other shows going on. Feel free to chime in with comments on other shows I missed.
First up 24.
What? 24? Didn’t you stop watching that last year? Yes. Last season started with a bang with a purportedly more realistic style but by the time the Africans attacked the White House FROM THE RIVER the show was so stupid I didn’t think anything could save it. So I stopped watching. Then a couple of weeks ago I decided to rent the remaining episodes from Netflix. (Oddly it wasn’t on streaming) What a surprise. The second half of the season was actually quite good. It kind of lost it and got a tad silly the last two episodes, but overall I was pretty happy. Happy enough to start watching this season.
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