Catching Up Some More

Catching Up With The Times part 2: Battlestar Galactica Season 3, episodes 5-7

You go, Ron Moore! You go, David Eick! Episodes 5-7 continue season 3's trend of improved writing and less heavy-handedness with a balanced and frank discussion of the ethics of biological warfare and genocide, GREAT interplay between the skinjobs in all 3 episodes which, really, focus on them, and...all around goodness. I'm thrilled to own this collection - seeing these episodes for the first time is a pleasure, and any show with good subtexts is even better the second time around.


Catching Up With The Times part 3: Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith

The saddest part is, what I really wanted to watch last night was John Carpenter's The Thing - tied with Alien as the best sci-fi horror ever made. Plus, I was jonesin' for a little Kurt Russell. Alas, someone else in this town has great taste, because it was rented out. After not finding a suitable substitute (I just didn't feel like watching Alien, and anyways, there's no substitute for Kurt), I went with the "what the hell" option. I've never seen Revenge of the Sith, and it had recently come up in conversation as my father-in-law was also watching it for the first time. And Corey had said it was better than the other two. It must be said that the only reason I watched all of Episode 1 was because I was in the theater, and have never been to make it through all of Episode 2 because it wasn't good enough to be so bad it's good.

Alas, I was, unfortunately, not surprised - though props for re-hiring Ian McDarmid, who played Palpatine in the original trilogy, and the one thing I have appreciated about this new series in Ewan MacGregor's portrayal of Obi-Wan. But aside from that, I would only show this film to someone if I wanted to teach them about the pitfalls of megalomania - and I'm not talking about Palpatine and Anakin.

Almost 30 years, and George Lucas doesn't bother to learn how to write a scene of dialog more than 60 seconds long? Let's not even talk about the pacing of this film; it doesn't deserve the effort. And it wasn't until I got home with the rental that I remembered what awful actors Christensen and Portman are. Then, there's the outright robbing of the audience by making the final fight the only one that makes good use of Jedi skills. Then, there's the absolutely frakked-up decision to make the whole film PG, and then at the end not turn the camera away as Anakin gets his legs burnt off and has his entire body succumb to third-degree burns, which is absolutely not PG.

And then, there's Lucas' continuing belief that "anything you can do, I can do better". What I mean is, the biggest reason I couldn't make it through all of Episode 2 was because of how blatantly he gave the finger to all the writers who had previously been commissioned to build the mythology of the Clone Wars. He continued it in Episode 3 even in little nit-picky things. And what really stuns and pisses me off is that, in the changing of things for the worse, he especially gave the finger to Hugo Award-Timothy Zahn, widely regarded as having written the best Star Wars novels there are (as well as several comics, magazine articles, short stories...). Hugo Award. I.e., the prize given annually to the best writers of science-fiction. And Lucas thinks he can do better? Turns out he was very wrong.


At this year's Oscars, the lifetime achievement award went to a cinematographer in his 90s. And I can't remember his name, but I remember his speech, because he spoke with disappointment about how, these days, filmmakers who have enough money can really do whatever they want on screen - and that lack of restraint has rarely been proven a good thing. Hello, George!