“33” is an inner-circle episode in the sci-fi TV hall of fame.
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Grace Park was actually one of my least favorite actors on the show, especially in the miniseries. She and Tahmoh Penikett were the weakest actors of the main cast, IMO.
Tricia Helfer was a model who had only recently transitioned into acting, but she held her own with some great actors from the start. Listening to the official BSG podcast that she cohosted, she said that she was constantly absorbing tips and techniques from the directors and other actors on the show. She put in a ton of work, and it showed.
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By statement was not really about acting chops.
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Park and Penikett definitely improved during the show’s run. By Season 4, they both are excellent.
Hats off to Park and Helfer for playing different versions of the same model, sometimes in the same scene. The male “skin jobs” were always the same character (and never had to slop around naked in the resurrection goop).
I felt like all of the Eights were painted with the same broad strokes. The Sixes were sometimes drastically different, with different mannerisms and even different accents. That makes it even more impressive that she was not already a seasoned actor.
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Joss Whedon was never known for his eye for acting talent, but I figured a lot of it in the Buffy/Andel era was just lack of budget. Hearing him say he watched BSG and decided he absolutely HAD to have Tahmoh Penikett for his next show (which ended up being Dollhouse) revealed that no, it was in fact his shitty eye for acting talent the whole time.
Also not Sci-Fi, per se, but the final season of ‘Attack on Titan’ dropped last night. Visually beautiful and spectacular, it stayed true to the manga, which was/is not a good thing, honestly, as the story line becomes a blur (the post-credits scene’s ending makes this clear).
Wow. I won’t bore you with a list of movies I’m glad for you that you did not see (‘Return of the Jedi’, …). My boys and I watch every sci-fi movie where the plot blurb shows any life and this easily met the bar. I liked what they tried to do with the plot (incl. the biological weapon) and the c-section scene was well-acted. Yes, it was also convoluted. But, during a writers’ strike, it was fine.
Prometheus is gorgeously filmed - which is true of every RidleyScott film, even the clunkers - but the premise is horrible. Trying to connect the Engineers and the xenomorphs to our own evolution is just a disaster. It’s a cop out when making a movie about how the big chair dude on LV-426 came to be there and how he met his end would be hella expensive.
But the biggest problem I have with Prometheus is that, for a bunch of hand picked scientists, every character is one of the dumbest motherfuckers ever put on screen. The bad choices they pull out of their asses are legendary.
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If you think Prometheus is a better movie than ROTJ, we simply lack a common language to discuss film.
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Oh, one other movie we’d completely missed and think is very watchable is Cloverfield (2008, sorry!).
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Cloverfield is good, although it suffers from the overuse of the found-footage style that followed it.
10 Cloverfield Lane is only loosely connected, but it’s very good too.
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The “Loki” finale was entertaining. Although I’m not sure where that leaves us.
Spoilers
I thought that killing everyone and then bringing them all back at the beginning of the very next episode was a bit of season-filling, but overall the arc was good. The conversation with Mobius about being burdened one way or the other, the only thing to do is choose which burden to carry, was very well done.
So Loki’s “glorious purpose” is to be the opposite bookend to He Who Remains. But what now? Is Loki doomed to spend the rest of eternity on the throne at the beginning of time, holding the branches together?
Loki and GOTG3 are the only good things to come out of Marvel/Disney since Endgame. Sad really. I tried to watch Thor: Love and Thunder the other day, and it’s almost entirely dogshit. Even the Korg exposition was dreadfully unfunny and, speaking of exposition, don’t get me started on Michael Peña being omitted from Ant-Man 3!
Perhaps the worst thing to happen to Marvel - and James Gunn - was the success of GOTG. It convinced them all that they could make money hit movies out of any random piece of shit IP. They caught lightning in a bottle with GOTG and have face-planted on trying to recapture it elsewhere ever since.
Gunn’s “The Suicide Squad” came close, but all it was able to spawn was the seemingly one-and-done Peacemaker streaming show.
That was DC
Yep. It was part of my overarching point about the hubris of thinking that Gunn can make a silk purse out of any sows ear. Even he couldn’t save DC from being DC.
I love Thor: Love and Thunder & Dr. Strange 2. It’s 5 stars in my book for best movies of all time. (I’ve seen 513 five stars movies and I’ve seen 6,500 movies at present. #1 Casablanca, #2 Blade Runner, #3 The Shawshank Redemption, #4 It’s a Wonderful Life, #5 The Sound of Music, #6 The Godfather, #7 Star Wars, #8 Good Will Hunting, #9 American Beauty, #10 Groundhog Day, #11 Jesus Christ Superstar.)
Loki was 3 stars. It’s a series, though. GotG3 was 5 stars, and Avengers: Endgame is 5 stars.
The best series (in my mind):
- Mad Men
- Halt and Catch Fire
- The Wire
- Stranger Things
- The Queen’s Gambit
- True Detective (S1, but not S2, it’s 1 star. S3 is 3 stars.)
I love books, too! Number one is Dune (Frank Herbert), #2 is Stranger in a Strange Land (Robert Heinlein), #3 is Neuromancer (William Gibson), #4 is Schismatrix (Bruce Sterling), and #5 is The Secret History (Donna Tartt).
Your movies and my movies - it’s complicated.
I know this isn’t what you’re focused on, but I absolutely loved Werewolf By Night, I wish they’d do more fun one-off stuff like that, though the further adventures of him and Man Thing would be an excellent sequel.
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Good God, man.
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I find it hard to believe anybody would rank those ahead of, say, Lawrence of Arabia.
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I wouldn’t rank American Beauty ahead of “Ow, My Balls!”
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