Friday, March 6, 2009

The new Star Trek XI trailer looks frakking awesome!!!

The new Harry Potter 6 Trailer seems to confirm it's greatness... :-0)

Less than 10 hours until the penultimate BSG begins. Though there are 2 more installments after tonight they tell a combined story ("Daybreak") over 3 hours of television. This makes me wonder how tonight's episode will end? I'm hoping it leaves us breathless for the finale to this series which has come to mean a great deal to me.

In other such news, Knight Rider has thankfully been cancelled. I'd like to say that this is what you get when you take a bisexual character from the pilot, which sold the series in the first place, and then desexualize her, and then write her out of the series... but I'm not certain that had anything to do with it. I do know that it pissed of a lot of LGBT fans who were interested in the project. I had considered watching it when I heard about this character, and then decided not to bother when I heard what was done to her.

Heroes has sadly not been cancelled. It's actually been renewed for a 4th season of 18-20 episodes. I don't get that decision at all. Maybe they have some brilliant idea that will end the series in style? That would be too much to hope for at this point, though perhaps if they went this route I'd force myself to watch the rest of the series. Which would be a difficult as I can't even bring myself to watch it as it airs now, but acccording to Mark (who does continue to watch) it hasn't improved. The more I think on it, the more I feel it should have had a better ending in the first season, and just ended there. Why can't we have popular shows end when they're ahead like they do in the UK?

The band Daft Punk will be creating the music for Tron 2 (or is it Tr2n?). Hmmmm.

Roger Ebert gave (the decidedly mixed review movie) Watchmen a 4 star review. I want to see this movie. I do. But I want to see the extra extended cut that's planned for release on DVD this fall. I find it distracting to see multiple versions of a film, and would rather just have the full extended cut. My memory makes it harder to except extended cuts if I enjoy the shorter versions. For instance, I'm still haunted by the original music cues from the theatrical version of "The Fellowship of the Ring" when I watch the improved, extended cut of the film. Scenes that made me weep the first time around and ruined to an extent because my mind can't accept the new music for the same scenes. But I know this about myself, so I can preclude that from happening by waiting for the extended cuts when I know about them in advance.

I watched another episode of Nip/Tuck after the last entry. I still have 4 more episodes to catch up on, though someone ruined a bit of the finale for me already.

Going back to BSG for the rest of this post (feel free to skip it if this bores you). For most shows I enjoy, I can fairly easily give you a top 10 list of episodes that I love. I found out the other day that I find it nearly impossible to limit my choices to just 10 or even 15 episodes of BSG, which is saying something as BSG has fewer episodes than the other shows that I would compare it too. DS9 for instance has 176 episodes, but only 9 episodes stand out as truly exceptional in my mind, after which there are many others that I enjoy a great deal, but aren't quite in the same league. Where as BSG (to my way of thinking) has an episode count of 78 episodes total (including the upcoming movie "The Plan").

There are, however, 2 episodes that I loathe, and 3 others that I strongly dislike. There's one more that I would have added to this list, but some of what has been revealed in the final episodes has softened my view of that episode (even though one such episode is 1 of the 2 that I loathe). Ironicially, the final season has also improved my outlook on another of the episodes I dislike, though not by much. The five episodes in question are listed from 'best' to 'worst', and are each followed by the Season and episode #, again, to my way of thinking:

05 Exodus, Part 1 (3x04)
04 The Woman King (3x15)
03 A Day in the Life (3x16)
02 Hero (3x09)
01 Deadlock (4x17)

Many people dislike Season Two's "Black Market" episode, but it has never botherered me. "Exodus, Part 1" isn't a terrible episode, but has the misfortune of being a mediocre episode wedged into a 4 (or more) episode arc in which all the other installments are fantastic. Many others consider the introduction of Ellen Tigh in Season One's "Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down" to be the worst episode of Season 1 and I would agree, but later plot revelations tied to this episode make it quite an important episode indeed, and being the worst episode of the excellent first season does not a terrible episode make. "The Woman King" was meant to be part of a much larger arc that was dropped from the series, leaving it to stand on it's own, when it was never meant to. "A Day in the Life" grates on the nerves, though the fate of a minor character introduced in the episode slightly raises my appreciation of the episode. "Hero" was for the longest time the show's one unmitigated disaster. Almost nothing works in that episode, and I've tried to block it from my mind - and the writers seem to have as well, as the events therin are seldom if ever referenced. "Deadlock", while a slightly better episode than "Hero" is the other disaster of an episode, but it's harder to ignore as it's part of the final arc of the series - and does contain some wonderful scenes, which are disappointingly undercut by sloppy writing (from usually reliable Jane Espenson) and a terrible edit. And again, the episode feels worse for being wedged between 2 excellent episodes, and (to my way of thinking) is the least enjoyable episode after a string of 22 installments without a loser among them. The episode also left me wondering if the finale of BSG was doomed to failure which haunted me for a week until the next installment had aired and everything felt like it was back on track. Hopefully none of the remaining episodes will be added to this list.

Having not seen the final installments, which I hope will be added to this list of winners, I can't list only 5 or 10, and can barely cut it off at 15. So here are my top 15 episodes of BSG:

15 Maelstrom (3x18)
14 Blood on the Scales (4x15)
13 Kobol's Last Gleaming, Part 2 (1x13)
12 Crossroads, Part 2 (3x21)
11 Guess What's Coming to Dinner (4x07)
10 Battlestar Galactica (Miniseries)
09 Sometimes a Great Notion (4x11)
08 Act of Contrition (1x04)
07 No Exit (4x16)
06 BSG: Razor (2x19)
05 Resurrection Ship, Part 2 (2x12)
04 Resurrection Ship, Part 1 (2x11)
03 Pegasus [Extended Cut] (2x10)
02 Unfinished Business [Extended Cut] (3x10)
01 Downloaded (2x18)

So many more I'd like to add. Most people seem to rate the episode "33" very high on their lists, and while I love the episode and feel that it's 1 excellent episode in a series of excellent episodes, I connected more to other episodes in the season.

I have to get Mark out of bed soon.

   posted by Bald Jason at 12:16 PM
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