So Battlestar Galactica returns for season four tonight. Now, I think BSG jumped the shark towards the end of season two, and that the season two finale was a travesty. As evidence I'll offer that they spent most of season three meticulously undoing everything that had happened in the finale, and the rest of the time was spent on new stupid stuff.
At any rate, the last season starts tonight and heck, what else am I gonna watch? Lost is on hiatus anyway. Here's a fantastic 8:18 recap video if you need some refreshing on what the frak is going on.
Has anybody seen anything official on the speculation that this season will be split into two halves due to the writers strike? And when do we get to call bullshit on that? If 10 episodes air in 2008 and 10 more air in 2009, that's two 10 episode seasons damnit. A four-six week "hiatus" I'll accept. If it's longer than that then it's two seasons.
Read moreI'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski
Pulling a lighter book from the "to be reviewed" pile we have I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski. This is a "fan book" by the people who sort of fell-backward into the task of organizing the "Lebowski Fest" which has now happened several times at various locales across the country. The book hast interviews with various cast members, trivia, and just generally silly stuff (like the Little Larry flipbook down in the corner - he stonewalls with the same face on every page).
If you're a fan of the movie, this book is a pretty entertaining read. They track down a lot of the influences on the movie and interview a ton of different people. For instance, the scene with Little Larry staring down Walter and the Dude is based on a real event. I don't think I've ever watched the movie on network television (I've had it on DVD for years), but apparently the overdubbing is horrendous. "This is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass" becomes "This is what happens when you meet a stranger in the Alps", which is oddly fitting really. It's the sort of thing that Walter might say. Walter is a gestalt character based on several different people the Coen brothers met (and the authors interview these people), and the Dude is based off one particular guy (also interviewed in the book).
The section at the end about the Fests trails off a bit, because it shades a little bit into obsessive fandom. Look, it's a great movie and all, but people making major life changes based on a movie about aging hippies, Nam vets, and bowling? That's a touch questionable in my book. But it's not the bulk of the book, and it's not a terrible section by any means, just a bit of a quality drop from the main text.
In the final analysis this book is one part a book about the movie, and one part a book about the fans of the movie. It's not high literature, and it doesn't pretend to be. But it's an entertaining read, and it keeps enough of a stream of interesting tidbits flowing that I enjoyed the read-through. It'll make you want to watch the movie again, but y'know, that's not a bad thing. It really is one of those movies that gets better on repeat viewings.
Read moreResistance is futile!
It really was inevitable
Read moreCatch-22
Books, books, books. Gotta get the "to review" pile whittled down.
Today's book is Catch-22 by Joseph Heller. I read this back in November, due to a strange confluence of events. What I meant to read was Slaughterhouse-Five and I had an odd conversation with Karin where she was talking about Catch-22 and I was talking about the Vonnegut book. Then when I went to buy Slaughterhouse-Five from Amazon did the "Buy it with" trick for Catch-22 and I said what the heck. For whatever reason I encountered neither book in high school or college so they were both new to me, although I understand they are pretty common assigned reading.
Unfortunately, I'm not going to be keeping Catch-22. I wanted to like it, I really did. There were large parts I did like but ultimately the pacing and general downer nature of the anti-war message did me in.
The pacing is the first issue and it takes a long time to get the rhythm of the book flowing. Everything in the book is circular and Heller takes a long time just starting up all the circles and spinning them. You're introduced to tons of characters and also some rather maddening things that aren't explained very quickly. There's a character that is always referred to as Major -- de Coverley, and this is eventually explained as a joke that nobody knows his first name. But when I say "eventually" I mean over halfway through the novel. The first time I encountered the character I kept leafing back trying to see if I missed something. It was rather maddening to have no real choice but to keep reading and hope that it made more sense before I got hopelessly lost. There are things in this novel that make no sense because they just don't make sense, and there are things that make no sense because this is the first go-round of a particular circle and it won't be explained until the third or fourth revolution. This leads to a lot of tension - there are many open questions on first reading and it's never clear which are ones for concern and which are just examples of military foolishness and can be safely ignored.
After a while things start to hang together and you can dig into the meat of the piece: the absurdities of war and particularly of the modern military organizations. This middle section I liked the best and had a couple of moments of clear humor, as opposed the bleak sarcasm of the main story. There was a section of the book where I really thought I was going to end up liking it.
The last section suddenly takes this hard left turn into extreme darkness. Yes, it's been a war all along and there's been some deaths, but for the most part it was played for laughs. Then suddenly there's several chapters of just relentless slaughter and rape. I realize it's an anti-war book and so at some point it has to address the horrors of the situation but I really felt the end section is a far different and unpleasant tone from the bulk of the book. This is what really tore it for me. I really didn't like being drug through the violence that climaxes the story. If you ask me it weakens the book, because the mordant humor had been very effective at highlighting the dire straits the main character found himself in. Suddenly changing tacks and drenching him in gore had an odd effect of making me sympathize less with him than I had before.
There are several neat little bits of story embedded throughout. Overall I'm glad I read it, but I don't think I'd ever read it again and I'd be reluctant to recommend it to most people. While there are sections I'd like to read again I know that I'd be dreading the dark part near the end, enough so that I think it would color the whole experience. Of course, now that I've told you this you'll have the same experience-coloring without even having read through the book the first time.
Read moreSpeechless
I'll just quote a post from Joss Whedon's blog and let it speak for itself:
Read moreSo..... The bag is catless. During the strike I started writing a musical intended as a limited internet series, 3 episodes of approximately 10 minutes each. Writing with me was my brother Jed, his fiancee Maurissa, and my other brother Zack. To my shock and surprise, we finished it. To my greater shock and surprise, we managed (with the help of many people I'll be praising at length soon) to drag it into preproduction (yes, just as DOLLHOUSE was given a start date two months away and all my comics were due.) And today, after a grueling week of writing everything ever while trying to be a producer, I got to start shooting. A musical. This much I will say: It's the story of a low-rent super-villain, the hero who keeps beating him up, and the cute girl from the laundromat he's too shy to talk to. And I'm having the time of my life. "DOCTOR HORRIBLE'S SING-ALONG BLOG" Neil Patrick Harris.....as Dr. Horrible Nathan Fillion..........as Captain Hammer Felicia Day.............as Penny And a cast of Dozens! Coming soon.