| Author | Message | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Someone I know has an abiding interest in Blake 7, a series I have never seen. They like the books; the tv series. That set me off looking at such DVDs for Christmas presents. So I bought UFO for someone, which arrived too late for Christmas; I kept it and watched it myself. Very interesting. So I then bought the first series of the X Files. I never watched any of them before, but a bargain is a bargain: £16. So I then bought The Invaders, a fifties aliens from space series. I already have the first series of Battlestar Galactica (new series). There are striking similarities and differences between them all. Battlestar Gallactica for instance. Invaders again. But how can you have 'gritty realism' in a far flung space fantasy? But you do. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Didn't get further than buying the first series of B7. It was just too depressing. Currently forcing a young lady to watch the TV series of Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy since she was too young to see it when she came out. We were watching the fillum adaption and I kept jumping out of my seat and yelling, "that's not right!" Once I'd plotted a trajectory back through the books and radio series she started to look really scared. We must educate the young. Still haven't seen the new BG in spite of everyone's recommendations. I just don't listen, me. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
It's a wee bit pretentious BG is. I thought the first series pretty good. On initial viewings of the second one I find I am slightly irritated. My preference goes to The Invaders and to UFO because they evoke conceptual strangeness and period so beautifully. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Mm io who is the young lady I wonder? Curious that much of the most durably popular entertainment is science fictional; and that most of that is to do with alien invasion. The X Files is the cleverest of these I think, and very well caste; it has real depth of possibility. More or less anything can happen in it, plugged in to news events, current affairs, government conspiracy and such, but from a folkloric basis. At least in the first season, which I have almost finished viewing, the majority of the episodes are based around The Forest, and primal transformation. Another thing interesting I find about my collection is that it covers each generation, from the fifties up to the present. The Invaders is a kind of Twilight Zone offshoot, right down to the voice-over incantation at the beginning, "David Vincent ... Looking for a short-cut he never found ... A craft from another Galaxy ... The purpose: to make it THEIR world." Cue music and men in big cars and sharp suits. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
As an sidelight on this: I was part of a conversation yesterday with an American girl who had seen Sapphire and Steel roughly when it originally appeared on VHS videos recorded in the UK and posted to the States. The Sapphire and Steel opening sequence still remains derivative and mysterious: a burning fuse from Mission Impossible, a perspective tunnel from Doctor Who, and that strange partially glimpsed Greek helmet. Part of the discussion was about how SF TV from this era, Doctor Who, Blake's 7, etc, had an underwhelming am dram feel about it. Even the sets were basically theatrical sets rather than the immersive experiences that we have come to expect. Sapphire and Steel now seems unintentionally odd and uncanny: the lumpen acting and the slow pace of the scripts give a real sense of alienation. | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Hi MJP, Io: >>I thought the first series pretty good. On initial viewings of the second one I find I am slightly irritated. I really liked most of the first season of BSG too. But it hamstrung itself trying to be politically relevant. I think the show took a nose dive in the second season right after the Pegasus was introduced. Haven't bothered with the third season. The writers can't write to their allotted time, they retcon the hell out of their characters. There was seemed to be no plan to ever take the show beyond the miniseries initially, then popular demand and money got factored in. I'd like to see some X-Files again. Wonder if it'd hold up for me. I had questionable taste in high school when I was quite a fan. I loved that episode with the Loch Ness thing. I just got cable last week. Shame on me, but I needed it for internet in my new apartment and the way those monopolistic utility providing bastards bundle services, it was cheaper to get it than buy just internet and phone. Anyway, I'm struck by the absence of any good SciFi on TV presently. I might get Dr. Who on BBC America now though. Is it any good? Personally, I can't wait for Farscape to come back. God, that was a great show. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
The new Dr Who is pretty good when they do little playful individual episodes. They have some nice ideas and fit a lot into the time slot. A bit like some of the single episode stories in Buffy during the middle series. Where it overreaches itself and gets pretentious and self-referential is where it attempts a larger story arc with all of this boring hand-wringing about being the last of the Timelords and *yawn*. I don't actually have a telly these days. I can pick up cheap DVDs with my groceries at Morrisons on my way home from work and that's quite enough entertainment for me. It all saps time that could be spent wiring up unmentionable sonic monsters to scare the neighbours with. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Hi Dave io: >>>It all saps time I don't have a tv either. You can get most news and current affairs programs online and then there all the tv DVDs; in a way better than films. A season of Danger Man, a series I thought was gone forever. In BG I like the way that Guyus is irredeemably corrupt. Like Dr Zachary Smith in Lost in Space. And in perpetual conversation with a virtual Cylon. They get that sense of the hopeless self-indulgent self-delusional nature of people, me and thee, quite well. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
>>They get that sense of the hopeless self-indulgent self-delusional nature of people, me and thee, quite well. I think I'm quite honest with myself about my self-indulgence. ;-) | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Should get first four episodes of Farscape soon. On Dr Who. It used to terrify me when I was a child. Drab sets, grainy black and white. I think that made it more frightening, the blurry unresolved flickering screen that the creatures on it seemed to possess as a matter of right. It was very eerie. I have only watched one episode of any recent series but that seemed a little overacted. A bit too clear because that depth of resolution - to me anyway - seemed to show up the joins, which are no longer a virtue. | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
TV does definitely sap time. You know, I try to be regimented about the time that I spend watching, but it can sneak up on you. It's kind of messed up, paying for a utility that I don't like and that I'm uneasy using. We'll see, but I don't imagine I'll keep it too long. Do you guys without at TV watch your DVD on your computer? MJP: Farscape starts off on a so-so note, but, by the end of the first season it comes into its own. I think that the third season is my favorite TV ever. That and the second season of Millenium. Ironically enough, I got home from work early today and the X-Files are on. Time...being...sapped. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Dave what you are encountering are the VUGs; huge jelloid beings from who knows where; basic blobs like walking vaselline except that they leave no footprints! Watch out for them. I mostly watch everything on my laptop on a low rung of my new huge bookshelves. A small 14 inch screen with dedicated speakers. It is actually quite neat and cosy. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Yes, I watch DVDs on my little laptop on top of a big wooden harmonium case. Works quite well as my flat is quite small and so am I. Still looking forward to a visit from the TV License people who have been sending me letters since I moved in ten months ago. So incensed at their assumption that televisions are essentially life support equipment that I am determined to waste their time and energy. Morons! Awaiting viewing at iotacism Towers: * Tales of Earthsea * Downfall So it's either Japanese anime of LeGuin or the death of Hitler. Difficult choice. | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
I think I have been visited by the VUGs recently. I need to be more careful. I did okay this weekend. Kept the VUGs at bay with only two hours of TV. I watched an episode of Torchwood on BBC America. Found it to be very blah. I also watched an episode of Survivorman which I love for some reason... | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
The tv licence people are weird. They seem to require alot of convincing. Don't be too polite. | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
Downfall rocks ferociously hard. I used to go out with a girl whose mum was the head lawyer at the license collecting bit at the BBC. They are pretty unstoppable once they get going... yup, best advice is to stand firm. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
"Downfall" is brilliant. I'd also recommend "Angels in America": Emma Thompson apart, it's lapel-grabbing stuff - Pacino doesn't so much scene-steal as scorch most of the cast off-set. TV: now a full decade since I owned one - that's about £2,000 saved, and countless hours put to better use. The detector van crew can call any time they like. I'm looking forward to discussing "Moby Dick" and some finer points of the Zohar. Then we can talk about all the other free time I enjoy. Champagne, anyone? | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
Hmm - wondering about experimentally binning my TV for a bit, I get sucked into it too easily at the mo. Btb, thanks for your email Martin - sorry no reply, just want to check that I don't have an SJ short story collection knocking around before I do (think there's one somewhere...) Mouse infestation in my flat just now, so I'd recommend mouse hunting as a pastime. Leisurely strategic plotting (careful placing of traps, poison, using different baits, covering holes in cupboards) with occasional exciting squeaky climaxes! | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Farscape: Never seen this before. First thought: bit predictable. Second thought: all the aliens are like pets. Third thought: I like the women. Forth thought: hm. | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
I got quite into 'Space: Above and Beyond' for a while back in the 90s. Enjoyable bleak. 'Firefly' is also good, mostly light hearted, fun. Never got into Farscape. All a bit dayglo for me. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Don't be too hasty about binning the telly: "Revival of Minder will set the scene for a new Arthur Daley" http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_an d_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article3365722.ece | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
"That's all we need." http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1465000/images/_1468 764_hancock300.jpg | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
Good grief! Been watching bits of the Minder re-runs on Channel who knows what on Freeview. Huge nostalgia fest - takes me back to staying up late with my Mum and Dad eating cheese and pickle sandwiches watching it, etc. Bit of a cult down our way as it was shot in Richmond / Teddington, near our school, so many thrills spotting locations etc. Watching it now it's amazing how it nails the seediness of Thatcherite enterprise culture, making a quick buck out of anything that isn't nailed down... | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
A gentler version of "Performance," isn't it? The boys darn East just mirror the toffs up West. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
A few years back I spent Christmas at home, with my friend Tim, playing the Minder computer game on a ZX Spectrum emulator on my laptop. It had a horribly tinny 8-bit chip version of the theme music and underneath it all it was basically Elite but without the 3D space battles, and 2001-esque docking procedures, and Douglas Adamsy planet descriptions, and galaxy-wide scale, and... | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
There was a Minder computer game? Wow. Is there a Performance computer game? *turns into Mick Jagger* | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
I think it only came out for the ZX Spectrum. Minder, that is, not Performance. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
"I like that - turn it up!" Not even a complete dvd, I'm afraid - at least one key line's missing off the latest reissue. " 'Ere's to Old England!" Gaming with "Performance," though - that's a very scary thought. "You can stay yesterday until tomorrow ..." | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
You could do a Nic Roeg gaming series. The 'Don't Look Now' would be something special - fail to save your daughter and then lose yourself in Venice until the dwarf gets you - EVERY TIME! The Game Over black gondola crosses the screen once again, and that's it... | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Kinda fancy the Beckett game meself. Godot has a chain-gun, nova grenades and a plasma rifle. Fortunately for the players however: he never turns up. The puzzle stage of trying to hang yrself with yr belt while preventing yr trousers from falling down would be good too. | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
*selects Pozzo and Lucky avatar* *presses play* *waits* Hey, this is fun! | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Not many people tend to start talking about Battlestar Gallactica and then veer off into Waiting for Godot. This board is out there baby. Gotta love it. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
The Godot Game: "Strike It, Lucky." Players can win bonus boots, but have to come back tomorrow to claim them. Losers give birth astride an open grave. You get used to it in the end: "habit is a great deadener." | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
I like it. Let's call Bazalgette and pitch it to him... | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Getting back to highbrow again, I have run out of video. Only one series of Invaders is available but I want something Invadery. I think I am going to go for something anime like School Rumble if I can find it. I don't like Japanese techno anime but School Rumble seems funny and artistic as well as a little salacious. Any ideas for a good cosmic tv sf series - one that does landscapes and the alien with a dry eye? | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
Hmm - well, I've just been reading the amazon reviews for 'Space - Above and Beyond', and it does seem to be as good as I remembered. Of Invader-y stuff... not too much I can think of that isn't cheesy gung ho mayhem, alas. There was that interesting Body Snatchers remake that started off seriously intriguing and then went... nowhere at all. Always wanted to watch my way through Millenium properly (surely it couldn't have been as dull as it seemed?) but never quite got round to it. | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
Oh, and - hi Dave! Sorry not to get in touch in NY in the end, all got a bit hectic... | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Hey Al. No worries about your trip. I figured that was exactly what happened. On a more general note related to traveling in NYC, Gillian and I have moved into a new apartment of our own without room mates recently, so any of the Empty Spacers who happen to be in NYC and need a place to stay, just let me know... >>Always wanted to watch my way through Millenium properly (surely it couldn't have been as dull as it seemed?) but never quite got round to it. Millenium's third season was pretty dull. Maybe downright awful. But the second season was a thing to behold. And produced by the same guys who did Space-Above and Beyond I might add. I don't know what happened to them though: they worked on X-Files, Millenium, and Space all of which were good...then they seemed to cave into the need to make money and produced the Final Destination movies. All 32 of them... | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
Good lord, that is a comedown - tho' isn't Chris Carter producing endless X-Files spin offs of one kind or another? New flat sounds cool - still in the same neighbourhood? | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Starting round about the end of the X-Files series, Chris Carter went into hibernation for a long time. Most of his spinoffs seemed pretty good, but I think he was just spread too thin. Looking back though, his shows set precedents that are stilll being followed by a lot of shows (e.g. Millenium was the first profiler procedural...remove the weird elements and (most of all) attempts at character, and - tada! - you have CSI). The new place is near the old neighborhood, but, given that the corporate overlords have decided to build a fucking NBA stadium in my old hood, I decided to relocate a bit. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
I know what's up next, Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz series, available through Amazon DVD loans. I remember catching glimpses of it on tv and being fascinated. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
I remember that on telly many years back. Can't remember many details but I'd quite like to have another go at it. Watched Tales From Earthsea last week. It was an inspired failure. Studio Ghibli's animations are never less than interesting and through their adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones and other lush juvenile fantasy they seemed like the obvious choice to adapt LeGuin. The first thing to note about this film is that it is a directorial debut for Goro Miyazaki son on Ghibli co-founder Hiyao Miyazaki. It is a loose adaptation of The Farthest Shore from a screenplay adaptation by the senior Miyazaki. Hiyao was actually against his son directing this film, which brings an interesting dimension to Prince Arren's murder of his father at the beginning of the film. Mostly the film looks great, as one would expect from Ghibli. There's that sense of place to it that characterizes their work. What Goro seems to have failed to grasp is his father's sense of pace and stillness. Hiyao Miyazaki in the midst of the movement of character and landscape takes haiku-like pauses where momentary glances at small forces in nature draw the viewer into the world. It can be the movement of water in a stream, trees moving in the wind, a drop of water. Goro attempts to follow his father's nature mysticism in these poetic images but they come out seeming rushed and inadequately observed. If anything seeing the process handled without Hiyao's grace makes us appreciate his father's achievement. All in all, there's a lot that is good in the film, and in although I last read these books a couple of decades ago, it feels like Earthsea and it feels like LeGuin. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
I haven't seen any of these sorts of films. I have Spirited Away on my list. However as I said, School Rumble - it's kind of knicker elastic comedy beautifully drawn is next. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Not "Minder" - just pointless destruction, kids: http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/future-weapons/games/c annon/cannon.html | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
That's disturbingly enjoyable. Spirited Away is lovely. The one I really want to see is 'My Neighbour Totoro' - whenever it's on, the digital fairies stop me from watching it. Have seen about ten minutes of it, it looks hypnotic... | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
I have Tortoro on DVD if you want to borrow it. Incredible film. That's one of Miyazaki's key films for his nature mysticism thing. It's like a Japanese children's Arthur Machen anime. Spirited Away is also very good. Especially the radish spirit. | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
That would be great! Yup, the two major sequences I've seen are one involving the cat-bus, and one where Totoro and friends fertilise some seeds by jumping over them. Hypnotic, even in isolation... Very much with you on Miyazaki's ability to just stop and observe, and fill the observation with meaning. My favourite bit of that in SA is the trains going by - come high water, low water, night, day... | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Maybe we could do a twin cook thing over at Heather's, while you and Ms Wilson drink port and smoke cigars and after dinner we can watch Tortoro? The cat bus is one of the most unlikely things to happen in a film ever. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
ME, I've never heard of the film or the director! But what's new? | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
I seriously recomment it. It's like Lewis Caroll and Arthur Machen wrestling in a japanese girl's bedroom. Without any of the paedophilia that might imply. | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
Aha! Now I understand some of last night's conversations. Yup, that would be fantastic... tho' as H pointed out mildly hamstrung by her lack of TV, tho' I suspect there are ways round this... | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Currently watching my way through series one of The Tomorrow People: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=xez4o1ujOPI Beige slacks, biker thugs, psychic blobs and kids who say "smashing!" a lot. | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Stayed in tonight, feeling a little under the weather. Watched some Dr. Who and Torchwood on BBC America. You know, I kind of liked them both tonight. Thought the latest Dr. Who doesn't seem as cool to me as the guy who was in 28 Days Later. The latest Dr. seems kinda twerpy, not as smooth. For whatever that's worth...I've only seen a few episodes. And Torchwood is kind of kinky and goofy which I appreciate. They were both pretty fun. You guys are probably more familiar with both shows than me. What do you think of them? Io, I might not have seen any of the yawners yet. Either that or you have better taste than me. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Oddly enough the attraction for many of the ladies with the current Herr Who seems to be in his twerpiness. I haven't seen any Torchwood because it appeared comfortably into my post-TV era. And none of the places where I might be exposed to TV consider it essential viewing. Oh, and Dave: don't worry about whether yr taste is worse than mine. Few achieve my standards. Not sure whether that is a standard for good or bad taste. Answers to the usual address. | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Wait, you're saying that chics dig Dr. Who? That's incredible. That's...just wow, man. I'd never have put money on that. Regarding taste, well, I'm trying Io. Good or bad, I now aspire just to have standards. Currently, I still watch Lost occasionally even though I decry it's stupidity every time I do so. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
No idea what it was but while I was at Ms Wilson's abode the other evening, they were watching some incredible trashy soap about a royal family. I got the impression that it was supposed to be the British royal family, although naturally they were all played by handsome young things rather than ugly horsefaced motherfuckers. Can't remember what it was called, and I wouldn't want to waste valuable time investigating, but this is *exactly* where I'd like to draw the line. There are indeed standards. | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
>>they were all played by handsome young things rather than ugly horsefaced motherfuckers. Even method actors won't inbreed for generations as is necessary to accurately portray royalty. ;) My standards are usually well eroded by the time I get home and I just want something other than advanced statistics and being a therapist to occupy my mind for an hour. Terrible as that sounds, 'tis true I'm afraid. | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
Second season of Torchwood is better than the first, so far. *embarrassed to know that* Even more embarassingly, I've got a minor 'Supernatural' addiction going on just now. Last night was a cheerful rip off of 'The Fog', somehow the whole thing is perfect for Sunday nights... | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Supernatural, eh Al? I have little room to talk, but... That show sends me into twitchy fits of anger. My girlfriend won't allow it on the TV because of this. My hatred of the show has something to do with the repugnantly tidy republican family values lurking under the veneer of vampires, eternal five o'clock shadows, sexy scowls intimating lurking and eternal (yet easily vanquished - especially by republican family values) evil that can only be confronted by hunky man-child demon hunters who have reached their shine potential ™ by using just the right shampoo and cosmetics cocktail. Only the CW could produce such a sick mash up of a dim witted soap opera hunk -cum- Gap mannequin -cum- vampire hunter nonsense. I don't like it when someone pisses in my ear and then tells me that it's raining, and that's definitely what 'Supernatural' does (I guess that's what all TV does though). Supernatural says: "You're buying a modern gothic/supernatural thriller" but it really means: "Buy this fucking shampoo you greasy headed piece of shit…then you can escape into a world of easily defined cardboard cut-outs of evil that scaffold your president's rhetoric about being resolute in the face of evildoers." The show doesn't work as background noise or relaxation for me. In fact, it just winds me up... Oh damn! So sorry Al! It happened again. I gotta go read a book or something! | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
Republicans disguised as vampires?! Whooda thunk it? | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
*empathises with your girlfriend* Well, it could be worse... I could have been sucked into 'Most Haunted'...! If you ever make it round to mine for a Sunday roast dinner I'll have the Torchwood / Dr Who DVDs neatly lined up - won't even mention *the other show*... we'll start with the Dr Who episode where you discover exactly where Captain Jack hides his *spare gun*, and then go from there back to some Tom Baker era classics! | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Very gracious of you al. Very gracious indeed.  The Tom Baker era... Ah, man, I have some reeaaallly vivd meories from my early childhood, very snippet-like...sort of like crystal clear snap shots rather than memories: Me on the couch with my dad, Saturday afternoon sunlight pouring through the living room windows. I'd gotten in trouble so I couldn't go outside to play. I was watching TV instead: some curly haired guy with a funny scarf and strange accent being chased by what appeared to be large, talking remote controlled cars on PBS (that weird channel without commercials)... I didn't understand any of it. But I do recall my dad shaking his head saying something like "the Brits have strange taste in sci-fi". I'm sure I just nodded, eyes on the screen, waiting to be old enough for it all to make sense. Ha! Yeah, we should watch those. Wonder if they'd make sense now? In any case, apologies for the rant Al! | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
I remember Baker well - hilarious stuff, closely followed each late '70s Saturday night over here by these guys: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14njUwJUg1I Happy days! | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
>> Me on the couch with my dad I was usually behind it when Doctor Who was on! >> apologies for the rant Al! No worries - in fact, whenever I watch *that show* now I'm going to have you in my head vibrating with rage like one of the monsters from Jacob's Ladder - which I suspect will be far spookier than anything they can come up with! (Republican family values notwithstanding). Oh, and my brother came over the other weekend and I forced him to watch it - he hates it too, so you're in good company... I cycled past Tom Baker the other day - nearly stopped to say hi, but restrained myself. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
I have been watching some more of the 2nd series of Battlestar Galactica. The characterisation of storylines are remarkably well done. This is the kind of series that is so completely of a piece, and so confidently executed, that it really makes you wonder where it came from; or at least it does me. I suppose you could find parallels in Westerns - perhaps. A wagon train over the prairies being chased by Indians. Dovetailed with an awareness of the modern military and (for example) waterboarding; dovetailed with politics and the modern mass media and also with religious feeling, the mystic: all this mixed in to a sidereal cosmic perspective viewed by a touchingly flawed humanity. | ||
| al Username: al Registered: 11-2006 |
Oi Dave! Dammit! You've spoiled 'Supernatural' for me! Tho' have to admit that Sunday's episode was a more than normally dodgy piece of evangelical propaganda about the psychotic evils of paganism and the inadvisability of any sort of historical reading of Christmas that points to it as anything other than an entirely and exclusively Christian festival, celebrated in a particularly Mrrkan way (if you're not careful, you'll get tortured to death on camera by leftover PAGAN gods). | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Franz Beberkopf + Sang his heart full but drank himself empty drank being a German word for drunken in the prosenium a world invented by the mind for when it wanted to be somewhere else | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
That's what it says on the piece of paper I have in front of me, anyway. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Finished watching the last episodes of Berlin Alexanderplatz over the weekend. Marvellous and sad. Next, I have Doblin's book to read. | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Anybody up for a good bit of absurdism might want to check out Romero's latest, Diary of the Dead. It's oh so good and just gleefully nihilistic. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
And this is finally out on dvd: Bowie and Kraftwerk on the soundtrack, Sting actually acting, and an England just before Thatcher, all shadowy neon towns and motorways vacant with expectancy. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Radio-David-Beames/dp/B001 5YY7D6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1212483360&sr= 1-1 | ||
| dan Username: dan Registered: 10-2006 |
I just started a job at the BBC, programming iPlayer and the download manager. They're planning on putting their entire programme archive online eventually. So lots of Blake's Seven and Doctor Who... | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Golly! | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
I'm on Season 3 of Battlestar Gallactica. I think earlier programs like UFO still to a degree are more more penetrating sometimes because they draw more attention to the oddness of the idea that these tiny imaginary worlds - that contain the universe in a nutshell - should be able to exist at all: a quality of questioning ontological didacticism lent them by their persistent implausibility and sheer endearing silliness. | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
I got rid of cable a month or so ago. Was finding that the more burned out I got from work, the more I became a TV Zombie and the less I got done. Plus I was obsessively watching the news and depressing the hell out of myself. ;) That said, I did join Net Flix. It's about $120 cheaper per month and spares me from commercials. Anyway, have any of you tried watching The Wire? I've been Net Flixing it recently. Man, is it good. Much has been made of its "novelistic structure", and, so far, I think it's worth the praise. Structure and writing aside, it's also a keenly observed and compelling depiction of America's dysfunctional social institutions. Check it out if you're looking for something to watch. | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
I love it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI9Hnd-zcA4 | ||
| dan Username: dan Registered: 10-2006 |
Should the BBC be making science fiction? Some thoughts from 1962 with thanks to Aldiss, Amis & Crispin: http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/doctorwho/dr6400_1.sh tml?doc=6400 | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
Is Dr Who science fiction? Science fiction burlesque, perhaps, but not the 'real thing'. | ||
| dan Username: dan Registered: 10-2006 |
Define "the real thing". I'm not keen on over-tight definitions in fields like SF, otherwise you get people coming over all snotty and declaring an independent state of "speculative fiction". To me, Doctor Who is SF. Still, regardless of that there's some interesting stuff in the archive BBC doc on what SF is (or was in 1962), and what genres exist within it. | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
dan, I am not being wholly serious with this. I was thinking back to when I first started reading sf as a teenager, and watching Dr Who also (it used to terrify me). I don't think in the sense of my own views back then that I thought of Dr Who as sf but more as a hybrid somehow. A tv/BBC thing so that it was a BBC-eed sf/horror show. That black and white tv experience was so singular and ugly (the thick lines of the cathode ray transmission) that without any sort of rational process I thought of Dr Who as sui generis. I suppose I still do: just a personal view, therefore. But this idea of a 'real' sf is still interesting ... its ideal in the sense of a dyed in the wool sf writer who originates (Lem-like) *real* sf. Of course there isn't one - but that doesn't stop the mind from producing the appearance of there being a 'real' fiction by real writers that is sf. An enjoyable contradiction. | ||
| dan Username: dan Registered: 10-2006 |
Actually mjp, the archive document confirms your view, with phrases like: 'Audiences - we think - are not yet interested in the mere exploitation of ideas - the "idea as hero" aspect of SF.' ... 'Our field is therefore sharply narrowed' ... 'science fiction drama must be written not by SF writers but by TV dramatists' | ||
| mjp Username: mjp Registered: 10-2006 |
I suppose that working for magazines, and having that sort of audience, and in America predominantly, that had to be quite different from an appeal to a British tv audience not intrinsically interested in the idea of the strangeness of science and what it implied; in that kind of thinking you had clear evidence of what would and wouldn't work for such an audience. Their thinking must have been that the self-selected nature of a science fiction audience could not simply be carried over into tv or taken for granted; at least not in Britain. In America you had programs like The Twilight Zone and The Invaders, or Lost in Space; where space ships and flying saucers and such remained intrinsic to the story line. In Dr Who in contrast, partly for reasons of the paucity of special effects, and partly for reasons of believability, that kind of paraphernalia tended to be by-passed. Instead of the Dr travelling by flying saucer (and I rather wished that he did, given my self-selected identification with sf) he travelled by means of something that looked rather like the back of a television set, all grey mercury and dimly lit bulbs and electronically devised horizons sliding into static. | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Hey all. I've been away for a while. Getting chased by coyotes and whatnot in the Adirondacks. Anyway, I just noticed this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleventh_Doctor They've cast a child mutant as the 11th Doctor. Can anyone explain this? | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
I dunno - I've no tv! But the world is getting stranger. Afrter his conviction, I assumed tv host/dj Jonathon King had quietly sunk out of sight. Not a bit of it. As Wikpedia tells us (and this seems true), he's recently produced an online musical. I'll leave you to find out more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathon_King | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
Hi Martin. I have a TV but no cable. Dr. Who was one of those shows that I'd watch occasionally when I had cable though. It was alright. I was hoping for an old, cranky 11th Dr. A return to form. Or else something totally different... But this seems like a bit of calculated TV-think. Cast a kid to draw a yonger audience etc. Anyway, I thought you guys might have some encouraging news about #11 that only British sci-fi fans have access to. Never heard of King until just now. Seems creepy enough to warrant an expulsion from TV though. Stranger indeed. | ||
| iotar Username: iotar Registered: 6-2006 |
Yeah, I haven't got a telly either. I think the whole of the revival of Dr Who is pretty much a bit of calculated TV-think. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
I don't know King has an exact parallel in US media: very much an industry insider, A&R expert, and songwriter - anyone growing up in the UK during the 70s endured a string of his novelty hits. But he also wrote this, which I think must have "inspired" Bowie to write "Space Oddity" - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuY0ux8So_4&feature =related | ||
| dave Username: dave Registered: 10-2006 |
>>Yeah, I haven't got a telly either. I think the whole of the revival of Dr Who is pretty much a bit of calculated TV-think. I guess you're right Io. Bummer though. Guiltily, I have to admit that, while I had cable, I liked it on weekend afternoons everyonce in a while. As a cheerful sci-fi show that extols the human condition it has its merits. But, inevitably, I'd have to walk out onto the mean streets of Brooklyn afterwards for a reality check. Recently the only good TV I've seen has been written by David Simon. The Wire and Generation Kill are just too good for TV. I don't really understand how they got made. Martin: I can't watch that link at work. I'll have to check it out when I get home. | ||
| martin Username: martin Registered: 10-2006 |
A sweet song, I always thought: ignore the pop-ups for his film, etc. |