Filmography
May. 29th, 2011 05:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyBattlestar Galactica, Season One
We picked this up as the new Silly Television option, and it's actually pleasantly surprised us. The strengths seem to be in very close character studies, which may not be particularly complex but are well-realised. They also refrain from using Overexiting Background Theme Music, and let tension speak for itself without a daft soundtrack to signal whether we're supposed to be getting worried, which I will admit is rather refreshing.
Of course, this all falls to horrible pieces in the last two episodes of the season, where the writers for some reason try to cram in FAR too many subplots, including a romantic jealousy angle and a military coup, and the need to Get Things In means that the carefully crafted character integrity gets shot to pieces. Which is a real bloody shame. They made an art out of doing sci fi in small, focused glimpses which acknowledged a wider world around what we got to see, and basically sacrifice all they've built in order to set up season two. G thinks that they suddenly discovered they had fewer episodes left than they were expecting.
Oh, for those of you who haven't seen it, the plot is basically robots kill humans, last surviving humans run from robots in space fleet, try to rebuild government and generally keep civilisation together whilst continuing to outrun robots, robots can incidentally look like humans as well as like toasters. It's not terribly original as far as plots go. It doesn't have to be. The characterisation is what keeps it together.
There's also some faintly intriguing classical reception stuff in there, which essentially involves nicking the Olympian pantheon, but I have to say that Judeo-Christian narrative tropes seem to speak far louder in this particular season.
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
Alright, chaps and chapesses. I don't have to explain myself. But I'm going to.
Little owls.
Little owls in helmets.
The fact that the animation is crackingly good and that there's a bit of scary nuance and deep themes in there makes up for the rather thin plot. Not to mention the little owls in helmets.
...look, I have a deep-seated fondness for owls, and this means that I am going to see every single film that this franchise produces, because it contains little owls.
(Oh, and also, it was very cool to hear a hero with an Australian accent who wasn't Crocodile Dundee.)
We picked this up as the new Silly Television option, and it's actually pleasantly surprised us. The strengths seem to be in very close character studies, which may not be particularly complex but are well-realised. They also refrain from using Overexiting Background Theme Music, and let tension speak for itself without a daft soundtrack to signal whether we're supposed to be getting worried, which I will admit is rather refreshing.
Of course, this all falls to horrible pieces in the last two episodes of the season, where the writers for some reason try to cram in FAR too many subplots, including a romantic jealousy angle and a military coup, and the need to Get Things In means that the carefully crafted character integrity gets shot to pieces. Which is a real bloody shame. They made an art out of doing sci fi in small, focused glimpses which acknowledged a wider world around what we got to see, and basically sacrifice all they've built in order to set up season two. G thinks that they suddenly discovered they had fewer episodes left than they were expecting.
Oh, for those of you who haven't seen it, the plot is basically robots kill humans, last surviving humans run from robots in space fleet, try to rebuild government and generally keep civilisation together whilst continuing to outrun robots, robots can incidentally look like humans as well as like toasters. It's not terribly original as far as plots go. It doesn't have to be. The characterisation is what keeps it together.
There's also some faintly intriguing classical reception stuff in there, which essentially involves nicking the Olympian pantheon, but I have to say that Judeo-Christian narrative tropes seem to speak far louder in this particular season.
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
Alright, chaps and chapesses. I don't have to explain myself. But I'm going to.
Little owls.
Little owls in helmets.
The fact that the animation is crackingly good and that there's a bit of scary nuance and deep themes in there makes up for the rather thin plot. Not to mention the little owls in helmets.
...look, I have a deep-seated fondness for owls, and this means that I am going to see every single film that this franchise produces, because it contains little owls.
(Oh, and also, it was very cool to hear a hero with an Australian accent who wasn't Crocodile Dundee.)
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no subject
Date: 2011-05-30 04:35 am (UTC)It's not terribly original as far as plots go.
To be fair, this is a remake of a TV show from 1978!
Unlike you, I thought the flash-forward at the very end of season 1 was absolutely brilliant. It didn't feel at all to me like the military coup plot was hastily crammed in. On the contrary -- it felt like a very deliberate move designed to disorient and horrify the viewer. Juuuuuust when you think you know how this history is going to play out (more running and hiding, more chasing, eventually the humans win), we fast-forward into the atrocities of an internment camp and you realize that things can, and do, get much worse. I think shows like this tend to be coy about 'contact' between the bad guys and the good guys, like, oh, there they are on the radar! oh, they're gone now! I guess we're not going to see them again until the big boss battle at the end! Instead of relying on that to create tension, the creators of BSG said, OH HAI, THE CYLONS CATCH UP, AND HOW.
It's hard to put across, all these years later, how much of an emotional wallop the season finale packed for those of us who'd been watching all season in real-time, especially since my friends and I had all grown up with the goofy original and were utterly hypnotized by the grim drama of the remake. I can see why that might not have as much of an effect on someone who's coming to it fresh in 2011, but I still think it's not entirely fair to characterize it as sloppiness on the part of the writers.
I think flash-forwards can be really powerful if they're done right. The one at the end of season 3 of Lost is one of my favourite moments in television history. Lost jumped the shark in a big way very soon afterward and (sorry to tell you) BSG will too, but flash-forwards aren't what killed those shows IMO.
no subject
Date: 2011-05-30 11:21 pm (UTC)I think the military coup could have worked, but it felt very much as if what pushed it over the edge wasn't quite big enough. I get your point that this is part of the 'people living on the edge and losing it under pressure' thing, but Adama didn't feel as if he'd got to that point, which was where they lost me. I totally bought the shooting, that element of 'hai, Cylons are here!' was perfectly believable, it was just... everything else crammed in, I think.
I don't think the speeding up of the narrative kills the show, but I was quite sad to see the things I'd been really impressed by at the start of the season sort of fall by the wayside in the interests of speedy action.