Harry @ AICN

dvo47p

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I don’t often write about Television, ainly because I just would rather dedicate my energies into talking about film, but today when a group of DVD screeners arrived… all of which were for TV stuff, I decided to go ahead, put em in the machine and give em a whir.


First up was a 2 DVD screener of Sci-Fi Channel’s BATTLESTAR GALACTICA miniseries’ first two nights. I’m not entirely sure why Sci-Fi Channel would be sending the show out in this state. With incomplete visual effects, and incomplete sound and score. What I saw was absolutely unredeemable BORING!


It starts off with a lame set up where the screen tells us that humans created the Cylons, that they were initially our servants, then our military, then they turned on us. Then there was a huge war, then there was peace and there was little PO-dunk space station set up in the middle of nowhere, as a place for Cylons and Men to meet to discuss their problems.

THEN – after like 39 years of not showing up, the Cylons finally show up. Then two cg Cylons walk through a door followed by a blonde… She goes over to the human representative, asks if he’s alive… begins Frenching him with extra tongue (no kidding) then as the guy is about to , this Cylon Star Base thingee sends a missile to destroy the space station.
That’s right… Cylons have developed femme bots! And we see her all over the place


Now, lest you think it’s just Cylons that are sex crazed. There’s sex all over the Battlestar Galactica. First off, this blonde they have playing Starbuck looks like some crazed Dirk Benedict breeding experiment gone wrong. Chomping a cigar, she has all the charisma of the typical PRICE IS RIGHT contestant. That may, in fact, be totally unfair to her. She’s got these big expressive eyes and this SMILEX smile, but she’s given utter dreck to speak… and has nobody to interact with.

The actor they have playing Apollo makes Richard Hatch look like the most expressive actor of all time. Jamie plays Apollo like a sore-loser with a major stick up his butt. He doesn’t really have any friends, doesn’t like or respect his father and doesn’t have that lone wolf kinda cool with which to pull that sort of loner existence off. Instead he’s played as cardboard.


There’s a history between him and Starbuck, as… according to a locker room photo, Starbuck apparently was Apollo’s dead brother's girlfriend. There’s a beginning of attraction between these two, but you only really know that because she stares after him and the camera holds on her as if to say… “She Cares! She’s Human! She needs Love!â€


Gotta love the discipline on this BATTLESTAR! I mean, this is a MILITARY SHIP. On a MILITARY SHIP there would be sexual tension, but it would be held back for LEAVE situations, not for intra-ship corridor sex. Felt like everytime you’d turn your head, there’d be some character pushing some character up against a wall to devour.

Mary McDonnell is playing her scenes like a dried up shrew. She’s got cancer and wants computers on the ship. She sits down with little kids on straggler ships and gives them comfort before abandoning them to Cylon missile attacks, which… oh btw, they’re just gonna cut to a WHITE SCREEN and not show the explosions, the terror, the fear. Matter of fact, you won’t even see the impacts…

Ultimately, you’ll see more tongue wagging than space battles in these first two episodes.

I’m sure the visual effects will look good when they’re done, at this point, they’re very rough, but the sounds are limp, of course they’re temps, and the soundtrack is temped with atonal ****.

If you watch the space stuff and start whistling the original music, you might… for a second or two fool yourself into thinking this **** don’t stink… but then you’re back to characters that don’t work, badly lit interior sets that look and feel cheap, costumes that are flat and unappealing, and zero atmosphere.

Everything about this show is about emphasizing the “sexual†nature of the show, as opposed to the desperation of their situation, the tragedy that befell their world, there really is nothing to communicate the cool rag-tag vibe you got from the original show.

Also, this thing is drab and lifeless. When they sit around and play cards, it’s on a tiny set… no singing, no bar, no real size to it. Feels like they took the actors and a card table to a back office and shot it as an insert. Hell, Starbuck’s cigar isn’t even lit.

OH… and that’s another thing, the jargon on this show is just all sorts of ****** up. In Night 2, when Adama is looking for weapons on a space station in the middle of some nebula that's with Cylon circuitry…

As they dock, Adama tells his crew to get on that station and get him some “BULLETS!†Bullets? Yeah, Bullets. More like Baloney to me.

Oh and that’s another thing… This show also seems to relish cussing anytime they get a chance. So watching Starbuck talk about higher ranked ***holes… well if that floats your boat, you’ll probably love this trash!

What about Edward James Olmos? I love this actor, but here… here he’s sleepwalking. Of course he’s surrounded by substandard acting and ludicrous dialogue.

The “poignant†scenes between his son and him just play like bad Day-Time Soap Opera filler **** you’re stuck watching in a hospital room while a doctor probes for nodules where nodules sometimes grow.


I will tell ya what though… This show did do one thing for me. It made me instantly buy that big ol box set of the originals.

In the format that I saw it, there was absolutely not a single redeemable feature. The effects were not done, so I can™t say… “well it looked cool†and the sound effects were lame and unfinished, so I can’t say… “well it sounded cool†and the score is claimed to be temp… so that atonal ****e definitely wasn’t doing anything for me. BORING
A complete waste of time.
 
Sounds like Harry hates it more than the Battlestar Galactica fans.

I was surprised to hear that Edward James Olmos gave a flat performance.

I hope career doesn't suffer because of it. I really do have respect for the man.
 
STATICX Doo Doo on a paper plate

Originally posted by STATICX
Sounds like Harry hates it more than the Battlestar Galactica fans.

I was surprised to hear that Edward James Olmos gave a flat performance.

I hope career doesn't suffer because of it. I really do have respect for the man.

I have seen this just today, alas Harry was right, it was the script, EJO was IT. The rest of the cast is not up to EJO.

EJO hopes this might become a series, if Ronald D. Moore is to belived, just who made off with leftover of the 11 to 15 million Scifi budgeted?

This makes B:5 The Legend of the Rangers look like Star Wars: The Empire Stikes Back.

STATICX Good News: Glen Larson & Tom DeSanto (executive produer X-Men1, 2 & 3) Yes, Larson that Buck Rodgers guy also Magnum P.I. owns the Movie the rights, to 'a' Battlestar Galactica, that Sonny Bono law. Tom wants to do this, indeed he was @ The Galaticon with Richard 'Apollo' Hatch, Dirk 'Starbuck' Benedick John Dykstra & Larson it has been 25 years.

Universal was dumbstruck by Battlestar Galactica: The Complete Epic Series on DVD indeed it hit # 10 on Amazon, go figure?
 
Rowan

Hello my dear,
I hope your cold is getting better, ole Harry Knoles will hop-up otta his wheelchair& kill me.

XOXOX,
dvo47p
 

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