TV And Films

The shows and movies I like (or don’t).

Enterprise

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Over the past couple weeks, I noticed something interesting during my wanderings through the ‘net. During my near-obsessive investigation into Battlestar Galactica, discussion threads would often end up contrasting the new series to Enterprise, and I kept seeing people openly admitting that the first few seasons of Enterprise were dreck, but then going on to claim that their current season was actually quite watchable.

While reading some of the reports about the current fan-driven campaign to rescue Enterprise from cancellation, the same general comments kept popping up. Then I got into a conversation with a customer at work, and he ended up saying much the same thing.

Unconvinced but intrigued, I decided to see what I could find, and ended up downloading all of the episodes to date of Season Four of Enterprise and watching them over the past few days.

While I wouldn’t exactly say that I’m impressed, I do have to admit that I found this season to be far more bearable than what I had seen during the first season. It’s still by far my least favorite incarnation of Trek (out of TOS, TNG and DS9, at least, I’ve yet to see more than a few random episodes of VOY), but the overall feeling I got was that someone on the Enterprise team got their head out of their ass started actually listening to the fans and tried to turn the show around.

First step in the right direction was spending the first two episodes wrapping up the “temporal cold war” storyline. I thought that was a bad idea when it first popped up, and nothing I’d seen or read since then had convinced me any differently. Now that that’s over and done with, things seem to be improving.

They’ve also spent a few episodes working on the Vulcan culture, trying to explain why they’re presented so differently in this series than they ever have been before. It all came off as a little far-fetched, but at least they’re trying.

The storyline touching on the Eugenics Wars and augmented humans wasn’t bad (though I do wish that they’d used some other scientist as the antagonist — as much as I like Brent Spiner, how old must Soong have been by the time he died?), and it allowed them to finally create an explanation for the differences in appearance between the Klingons of the original series and those we’ve seen ever since The Motion Picture. A pity the second half of that two-part story became so muddled, as the first part was fairly strong, and the general premise is at least bearable (and no worse than some of the other convoluted explanations that have had to be created over the years to explain away various goofs).

So, I’ll admit that they’ve gotten better, and the current season of Enterprise is at least watchable. I still don’t think that there’s any great need for it to continue, though — let it die, and let the Trek universe have a few years to settle and regroup before trying to fire up the Paramount marketing machine yet again.

And please, please, please — no more bad ballads over the opening credits in any future incarnations of Trek. Someone (other than the people sitting through it week after week) really needs to suffer for that.

Saw

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Rick brought over Saw last night for me to watch. It’s a film that aspires to be a psychological/horror film along the lines of Seven…and fails miserably.

The premise starts interestingly enough: two men wake up chained on opposite sides of a room, prisoners of a psychopath who manages never to actually kill his victims. Instead, he puts them into situations where they have to kill themselves or others in their attempts to stay alive.

Unfortunately, Saw is burdened by two major flaws: a script that has a number of goofs, from plot holes to unrealistically stupid actions by the characters; and Cary Elwes, who continues to completely unimpress me as an actor. By the end of the film, the violence had gotten to the point where I nearly turned it off, and neither of the final two surprises surrounding the identity of the psychopath were surprising in the least.

I think the premise had promise, but the execution was so flawed that I ended up finding the entire film a waste of my time.

iTunes “Two Telephone Calls and an Air Raid” by Imrei, Shaun from the album Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997, 4:43).

Battlestar Galactica Season 1…done!

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Up until this week, I never got the whole thing with people downloading and watching shows on their computer. I’ve got such a low opinion of the majority of TV shows that I just couldn’t see spending the time and resources on such a project.

Then I got bit by the Battlestar bug.

Suddenly, I can see the appeal. Three days ago, I got curious enough about the currently-running Battlestar Galactica series to ask for help on finding the episodes so that I could watch them. Now, as of just a few minutes ago, I’ve watched all that there is — and, amusingly enough, I’ve actually watched more than has been broadcast here in the US. All thirteen episodes were broadcast in Britain a few months ago, and those are the copies available on the ‘net. So, while the broadcasts on the Sci-Fi Network are only up through episode eight, I’ve just finished off the entire season.

End result? This is really good stuff. They’ve done an incredible job of re-imagining the show, and even better, have managed to keep up an extremely high level of quality throughout the show. Since the broadcasts here in the US still have another five weeks to go before they hit the season finale, I won’t go into any details or spoilers, but those of you who might be watching the show as its broadcast are in for quite a treat.

The DVD of the miniseries is now very high on my “to buy” list, and I’ll be picking up the DVD set for the miniseries as soon as it comes out — while I’ll admit that the quality of the shows I downloaded was far better than I expected, it still won’t compare to full DVD resolution and (I hope) full 5.1 surround. Battlestar may not be getting any ratings points from me during its broadcast run (though they wouldn’t in any case, as I don’t subscribe to cable), but they’ll definitely be getting my money for the DVDs. Hopefully they’re gathering enough eyeballs during their broadcast run to keep the show on the air and at its current level of excellence for a good long time to come.

(Yes, I know that this is a sticky situation legally, and in all honesty, if I did subscribe to cable, I probably would have been quite content watching the episodes as they broadcast and contributing to the ratings. However, I continue to hold fast to my belief that cable television is, on the whole, an incredible waste of money. As stated above, though, once the DVD sets are available, they’re going into my collection.)

iTunes “Track 06” by Grover from the album One With the Universe (1998, 7:00).

Halle Berry wins Razzie…and respect

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Kudos to Halle Berry for actually showing up to accept her Razzie award for Catwoman!

Halle Berry staged an Oscar-worthy parody of her Academy Awards meltdown at last night’s 25th annual Razzie awards in Los Angeles. Breaking with tradition, the Catwoman star showed up in person to collect her award as the worst actress of 2004.

Explaining her decision to attend the event, Berry said: “My mother told me that if you couldn’t be a good loser then there’s no way you could be a good winner.”

Berry famously broke down at the podium upon winning the 2002 best actress Oscar for her role in Monster’s Ball. She mimicked that moment again last night, faking sobs on stage for a full minute while clutching her Academy Award in one hand and her Razzie (actually a spray-painted golf ball) in the other.

But her speech, when it finally came, went out of its way to spread the blame for Catwoman’s failure. “I want to thank Warner Brothers for casting me in this piece of shit,” she announced to tumultuous laughter. She added: “I’d like to thank the rest of the cast. To give a really bad performance like mine you need to have really bad actors.”

I’m impressed. Good for her!

iTunes “Feel the Fury” by Merlin from the album Just Say Anything (1991, 4:44).

You Ashcroft!

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Too. Damn. Funny.

You’re an Ashcroft! No, you’re the Ashcroft!

Imagine hearing that exchange in a movie — you’d think that Hollywood had come up with a crazy new insult. Well, it turns out that some airline passengers watching the Oscar-nominated film “Sideways” on foreign flights are, in fact, hearing “Ashcroft” as a substitute for a certain seven-letter epithet commonly used to denote a human orifice.

The Post’s Monte Reel, based in Buenos Aires, tells us he heard the former attorney general’s name substituted at least twice in “Sideways” dialogue when he watched the film earlier this week on an Aerolineas Argentinas flight to Lima, Peru. The movie was shown in English and the dubbing was done “in the actual voices of the actors,” Reel reports. Star Thomas Haden Church utters the A-word.

(via MeFi)

iTunes “Time for Me” by Fiction 8 from the album Cyberl@b (1998, 3:59).

Yeah, I’m clueless about these things…

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Okay. So.

Theoretically speaking…

Suppose there was a certain science fiction television show that I was interested in watching (ahem). Also suppose that not only do I not presently subscribe to cable, but I have no intention of doing so, as the amount of time I’d spend watching television in no way justifies the cost.

Now, in theory, it’s supposed to be possible for me to go out onto the ‘net somewhere to find digitized copies of the episodes that I could download and then watch on my computer.

How in the world would I go about this? Where would I look?

Would I need any special software (Mac OS X software, please)?

Any and all advice, hints, or pointers would be greatly appreciated.

iTunes “Skin (Keith Litman)” by Charlotte from the album DJ Mix 2000 (1998, 4:00).

Battlestar Galactica Episode 1

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This is incredibly cool: The Sci-Fi Channel has posted the first episode of Battlestar Galactica season one (not the miniseries that’s currently available on DVD, but the currently-running TV series) on their website, free, uncut, and without commercials.

Just go to the Battlestar Galactica site and click on the banner at the top of the page. You’ll need RealPlayer, unfortunately, but that’s the only downside I can see.

I know what I’m watching when I get home from work tonight.

(via /.)

iTunes “Black Flys pres. Club Flys 1 (full mix)” by Various Artists from the album Black Flys pres. Club Flys 1 (full mix) (1997, 1:13:16).

Hunter S. Thompson

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Seeing all the many varied reports of Hunter S. Thompson‘s unfortunate demise reminds me that I’ve actually never read any of his work.

I’m a big fan of the Terry Gilliam/Johnny Depp film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and I also have a great 3 of the book. I even used to have a hardbound copy of Fear and Loathing — unfortunately, the only times I opened it were during one ill-considered period where it was a convenient (and seemingly appropriate) place to hide the sheet of acid I was in the process of selling. I may still have the book buried somewhere in my boxes, but I’m not entirely sure.

So, then, a question for those more familiar with Thompson’s work than I am: while Fear and Loathing seems to be practically the only book that ever gets mentioned when eulogizing Thompson, I’m sure he wrote more than that one tome. Any recommendations? Should I pick Fear and Loathing up (or dig through my boxes to see if I can find it), or are there other books that I should search out instead/in addition to that one?

iTunes “Say Hello” by Anderson, Laurie from the album United States Live (1984, 5:01).