Jonas Kyratzes

I used to think Thomas Jane was a bad actor. Then I saw The Mist and learned otherwise: he’s excellent. (Also, he must be James Purefoy’s long-lost twin brother.) Unfortunately, The Punisher is anything but excellent. It has some of the right ideas, and a couple of scenes (especially the one of the Punisher being beaten up in his home by a ridiculous-looking but very strong henchman) are really hilarious… but the music sucks, most of the writing is terrible, the casting is way off (except for Thomas Jane), and it just doesn’t work. It seems to be less than the sum of its parts. Shame, since the people making the movie apparently put a lot of effort into it.

Some movies are so bad, they’re hilarious. Some movie are bad and just blah. This falls somewhere inbetween. The plot, while cool on a very basic conceptual level (post-apocalyptic world full of dragons) is so badly thought through that it makes your head hurt. I mean, the whole movie is based on the idea that there is a species which has only got a single male specimen. Not per colony or group, but for the whole damn species! And we’re supposed to believe they’ve survived for millions of years? Give me a bloody break.

It does have some good scenes here and there – people acting out Star Wars as a fairy-tale for kids – and Alexander Siddig (whom we worship) is in it for a while, but it’s just plain old crap. Also, some of the most ridiculous and illogical sets I’ve ever seen… with flames burning in every corner, decades after the dragons have burned everything to cinders.

Hell, not even the dragons are particularly cool, and dragons are innately cool – I mean, giant fire-breathing reptiles, what more can you want? A lot, apparently.

When Sahara is an adventure movie, it’s fun. The actors are all good, the landscapes are great, there’s some nice action scenes, and the writing isn’t half bad. When it tries to do African politics, and tries to appear critical of the United States (for NOT intervening in another country’s politics), it’s quite silly. All in all, have a look if you like adventure movies, but watch for the traps.

Verena and I have been re-watching Battlestar Galactica. Well, it’s re-watching in my case; Verena hasn’t seen it before. Now, as you may know, I am prone to complaining about BSG, my main complaints being its militarism, its confusion of personal issues and responsibilities with politics, its lack of humour, and its attempt to create a serious, edgy atmosphere by making the camera shake a lot.

So which of these complaints are still there? Well, I’ll give you a detailed answer when we’re done re-watchνng everything up to the end of (the first half of) season 4. But for now, here are my first impressions (currently at season 2, episode 13 – “Epiphanies”).

1. I was partly unfair about the humour. I used to say that only the character of Gaius Baltar and the episode “Tigh Me Up, Tigh Me Down” contained any humour. Not so. There are plenty of amusing lines in the first season, though very few (if any) are actually funny, let alone hilarious. Still, this makes the first season a hell of a lot more affecting. Later on things are more grim, but they affect us less – because humour is a vital part of human behaviour, even in the worst situations, and without it the characters seem less real. And on a storytelling level, humour creates a contrast to the tragedy that allows both to shine more clearly. Babylon 5, Firefly and Rome (basically my three favourite series) all achieved this to a great degree – which is part of why they were so affecting. (Galactica is exciting and interesting and touching, but it has never brought tears – of any kind – to our eyes.)
2. The effects are excellent, but the ships are dull. One does feel a certain fondness for the Galactica after a while, but the ship design doesn’t help. I guess it’s just an aircraft carrier, but still… there’s something dull about the look of the CGI. Extremely well-done, but kind of dull.
3. I remember that when I first watched the show, I really liked it until “Epiphanies”. Same effect this time as well. I have the impression that in the middle of the second season, the writers starting pulling their punches, and some really sloppy writing creeps in. “Epiphanies” could’ve been a DS9 episode. (I’m a Trekkie and always will be, but sloppy writing has always plagued Trek. Especially technobabble and out-of-nowhere solutions – like to Roslin’s cancer.)
4. The characters also start making incomprehensible decisions that seem more motivated by the writing team’s desire to do this or that (usually create conflict) than by what would make sense for the character to do according to what we’ve seen. Like everyone suddenly deciding to kill Helo and Boomer’s baby, or Starbuck’s behaviour in the Pegasus episodes. WTF?
5. Personal guilt is not a replacement for political responsibility. When President Roslin makes immoral choices, which result in people’s deaths, she writes it down on a piece of paper – and we’re supposed to admire this. When soldiers shoot civilians, the show’s answer is that the people of the military do not need to be punished because they will feel guilty anyway – and we’re supposed to feel sorry. Furthermore, we constantly see political choices being personal ones – the kind of logic that leads people to assert that the only reason Iraq was invaded was because of Bush’s daddy. This is not how politics work, and perhaps the show’s greatest flaw. (A lot more on this in the longer article that will follow later.)
6. Some of the characters may be despicable, but the acting is excellent and the cast is fantastic. It’s also great that there are so many minor characters who appear regularly and then become more important. It’s a shame, on the other hand, that there are so few black actors in the show. I’m not big on the whole political correctness thing, but it is actually quite noticeable in BSG. Still, in general, there’s plenty of people of various backgrounds, and that’s great.
7. The music is good, except for that heroic Scottish-sounding thing they play in the patriotic scenes, which is awful and makes some of the scenes quite ridiculous. On the whole, though, the show’s music – even when it is not original – does give it a lot of texture.

The most important thing, perhaps – and I may not have appreciated this before – is that this is a serious attempt at telling a good and deep story. It fails in a million ways, but it does try to seriously examine or at least present topics that are important and meaningful. As such, I think it ultimately beats Lost, which started out excellent, and which continues to occasionally have episodes that are very, very good – but which has become more of an attempt to stuff more and more (and less interesting) twists into each episode, and has forgotten that storytelling should be about something.

Here’s the first in a long series of short reviews. I don’t have much time to write these, but I do want to jot down some thoughts. (The way I work, don’t be surprised if some of them turn out a little longer after all.)

Saw Bender’s Big Score yesterday, and loved it. To a geek, I really can’t imagine anything more funny than Futurama. And yes, the Simpsons are funny, but Futurama is brilliant. I love its emphasis on story and character rather than just gag (though there are plenty of those). It makes Futurama more memorable and ultimately also more funny than a lot of other shows. That’s something I’ve always believed – humorous storytelling, whether it’s a panto or an animated movie, is about more than just the momentary joke. Structure and story are still just as important, and emphasising them achieves a lot more than just stringing together a bunch of one-liners. When jokes are repeated or build on each other, they can become considerably more funny than on their own; and good characters who are more than just one-joke setups give the comedy a basis on which it can work, and a reality in which the plot (funny or crazy as it may be) actually means something to us – and is thus a lot more hilarious.

Does that make sense? I think so. Now I have to go, I have a bus to catch. (And the bastards are really slippery.)