Filed under: Golfist Cinema, Golfist Wintertime Diversions | Tags: Baltar, battlestar galactica, Cylon Plan, Kara Thrace, Ronald D. Moore, Six, starbuck, The Final Five Cylons, The Plan, Tricia Helfer
One of the greatest television shows ever created was Battlestar Galactica as reimagined by Ronald D. Moore. The Mini-Series brought the core of the show, a story about a nuclear holocaust and the travails of the survivors, and brought it into the present with an examination of our culture at war without and within. It showed the best of humanity and its worst, and showed the Cylons to be far more complex than an army of Terminators. The whole show ended earlier this year with a very memorable and complex finale that capped an opus that stands up there with the best storytelling. So it was with a bit of trepidation that I downloaded and watched Battlestar Galactica: The Plan. Some people panned it as an editors’ cheap trick, a kind of über fan-film of the kind you watch and cringe at on Youtube.
I disagree. It filled several plot holes that never made sense in the original series, such as the appearance and disappearance of the Librarian Six, known as Shelley Godfrey. I enjoyed this because it fills these plot holes. But like the filler that is used to repair actual pot holes, the patch work is noticeable. The scenes visually jump around and older original footage runs into obviously freshly shot footage that tries very hard to look seemless but isn’t. They also left you with a final plot hole -the whereabouts of a dark haired 6.
That said, it is a fitting coda to a great series. They really should stop now. I only hope they don’t try to make a movie. There is a spinoff, a prequel, called Caprica that looks at the origins of Cylons, but it rates only about 6 out of 10 where the original miniseries was an 11.
Filed under: Golfist Cinema, Golfist Wintertime Diversions, golf culture, golf philosophy | Tags: censorship, cultural decay, elitism, fox, fox news, idiocracy, movie, news corporation, rupert murdoch
I just picked up Idiocracy from Amazon (link), finding this gem for all $4.99. It can be found on Youtube in bits and pieces. It is a brilliant indictment of our cultural decay. After it was made, it was released in only 7 cities and then conveniently buried. Rupert Murdoch, owner of the News Corporation, Fox, Fox News, 20th Century Fox, and much of the pro-Bush media likely had a hand in killing this movie which savages the corporate supported dumbassification of the land.
It can be interpreted as elitist, but elitist in the sense that smart people monopolize intelligence in an unfair way. The genius of this movie is that if you’re really stupid, you will laugh your ass off.
Nobelist Paul Krugman (they hand out those things to everyone these days) and NY Times columnist and Princeton Economics professor discusses the demise of American public education in his column today (link). Education was once celebrated. A generation ago, The Paper Chase was popular. Today, it’s variations on Jackass.
Filed under: Golfist Cinema, Naturalism, golf food | Tags: cannibal, Cormac McCarthy, The Road, The Road Movie, Top Ten, top ten recipes from the road, Weinstein, zombie
The Road is an important book, a big book, an Oprah book. It is now a Weinstein production, and soon we’ll be inundated with The Road publicity. As much as I like the book, I dread the movie. All reports are that it takes a book so hard to read into a movie that is miserably difficult to watch. Then again, it could be a great big fail and turn out to be just another zombie movie.
Thinking about this, I twittered my top ten recipes from The Road:
- Lady Fingers
- Hush Babies
- Mock Roast Turkey
- Nice Piece of Ass
- Babyback Ribs
- UnMystery Meat
- Chewy Tubes Cormac n Cheese
- Really Sloppy Joe
- Meat and No Potatoes
- Roadkill Haggis
I saw a movie with the family last night -it featured two of my favorites -Ramen and Brittany Murphy. Ramen is not just the dried cup noodles which are taste like hot water poured on nacho chips. It is an art form and the Japanese rightly elevate it to something akin to martial arts and artisanal cheese making. The secret recipes are closely held family jewels and Brittany Murphy shows up asking for them. She is largely overlooked currently, but I think she is one of the most important actresses of our times and would like to see more of her in cinema. Clearly, the director didn’t know how to use her potent dramatic range, but she gave it all she could. I give the ramen 4 stars out of 5, Brittany 3, and the movie a solid 3 stars.
Filed under: Golfist Cinema, Golfist Wintertime Diversions, Video | Tags: Nero, Romulan Empire, Star Trek, Trailer, Trek Trivia, USS Enterprise, USS Kelvin
There is no golf in science fiction that I know of. This doesn’t keep me from enjoying science fiction immensely. The new Star Trek movie is coming out and looks to be a huge bangup. Among Star Trek fans, there are two factions. Those who prefer Big Action are offered up episodes and movies involving wars with Klingons, Borgs, and Khan, and even thrown a planet eating monster that looks like a giant doobie. Those who prefer Big Ideas are given time travel stories (including one involving a sarcastic, cloacal time portal), moral dilemma recapitulating the issues of the 20th century, and anything involving empaths (people who can sense the emotional state of others -WTF!???!?!?). Then you have tribbles and fembots.
JJ Adams takes a turn at the old wheel, coming off his Cloverfield and Lost successes, and the preview shows a definite red state Big Action tilt. You see a mavericky kid and young adult Kirk speeding along in various fossil-fueled vehicles. The bi-specied Spock is seen trying to bludgeon a crewmate in this preview. (J’ever notice that Obama may actually have some Vulcan in him as well?). And that’s the thing, when the quintessential blue stater Spock is kii-yaa-ing and hacking at people, you know where the movie is going.
The Star Trek vehicle needs reinvigoration after spending many years in the Big Idea doldrums. I tried
watching the first season of Enterprise but just couldn’t get over the show being stupefyingly boring. Reimaginations of “classic” shows inevitably have to incorporate the mood and tempo of the contemporary audiences.The remade Battlestar Galactica is the greatest television show ever, and you should have heard the shrieking about Starbuck being a girl in certain geek quarters. The best science fiction balances the Big Ideas with Big Action. Ridley Scott is a master of this with Blade Runner and Alien.
There are elements of homage in the preview. There is a Dreadnought class starship getting blown up -this is a reference from the Star Fleet technical manual. This kind of detail shows that JJ Adams and the writers are shockingly incredible Trek geeks. This would seem to me that they took their custodial duties with regard to the Star Trek canon seriously. Or it may just be a random teaser designed to draw in the middle aged Trekkies along with all the teens and twenty somethings who know nothing about Trek. I’m holding judgement and praying it’s not Star Trek Kids.
The missing Dreadnought, inspiration for many pages of spiral notebook art
Addendum: The ship in the HD preview (much clearer) is clearly not a Dreadnought, but rather a some kind of modification of either the Scout or Destroyer Class starship called the USS Kelvin with a topside crew/engineering pod in the picture shown from the back below:
Warp Nacelle on Bottom? or Blinding LED Rear Light
Riverside, Iowa
Addendum: Prequel is available on iTunes as an iPhone App. Engaging comic book about the Romulan Apocalypse and time travel. Time travel is the sci fi equivalent of the dream sequence -it’s usually a sign of unimaginative thinking. It does allow for drastic changes to canon -after all -we are on another time line. The linearity of the timeline is something established by HG Wells, who avoided the going back in time to blow up your parents conundrum. The Planet of the Apes movies dealt with a non-linear timeline, and most recently, The Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles basically acknowledges that there is a fifth dimension -a history of time -meaning that linear views of history and causality can change so that the totality and end results are different over time. Kind of like seeing a full circle on the kaleidoscope rather than just a ray on the kaleidoscope. In this kind of world, there is no canon and JJ Adams can do what he wants. This is far more pleasing than the stupid negative universe where everything is opposite.
Addendum 5/14/2009: I saw it last weekend, took my seven year old and wife on Mother’s Day. The movie knocked my socks off. Everything makes intrinsic sense now. They needed to fluff up the old shaggy franchise, and they hit it out of the park. It was very entertaining. Iowa is elevated to the status of planet with cut scenes between Vulcan and Iowa. Also, it is clear to me that the canyon seen in the trailer is in fact a quarry used to deliver matter to be transformed Trek-style into starship plating. The Enterprise is made of Iowa dirt! Watching the movie in a theater in Des Moines was very special. My son who had been watching classic trek on the iPod Touch now thinks Star Trek is almost as good as his Clone Wars.
Filed under: Golf and Computers, Golfist Cinema | Tags: Apple TV, broadband, cable, digital TV, DirecTV, high speed internet, Hulu, iTunes, Mac Mini, Netflix, satellite TV, video on demand, Youtube
This is a 17 inch Dell behemoth that weights about ten pounds and is useful for checking email. It also offers connection to Youtube, Hulu, iTunes, and Netflix, and offers more entertainment than my 42 inch DLP TV in the basement with a DirecTV HD account. On screen is the 2-3pm episode from the current season of 24.
Broadcast television was supplanted by cable. Cable television and its prettier sister, satellite television, are headed for the attic of dead technology by video on demand over the internet. This was presaged by TIVO and the ability to time-shift programs. But Youtube and Hulu, iTunes, and Netflix, and shows available on the networks sites all presage a time when you don’t have to watch what is available, but rather you choose exactly when and where to watch what you want.
Currently, with the offerings of Youtube, Hulu, iTunes, and Netflix, I can
watch pretty much whatever I want whenever I want. If a program isn’t available in fact, I usually couldn’t care less. This is an important threshold -if something of critical value weren’t available -I would feel compelled to pay extra for it. This one quality that is keeping the satellite subscription alive is high definition programming. It is just valuable enough to keep it around for the sake of viewing on a large screen, but the fact of the matter is that a 50 inch widescreen TV at 10 feet is the same as watching a 10 inch screen at 2 feet (yes, I did the math -proof above). That means, streaming hi-definition images to a 10 inch netbook gives you the same images relative size as watching a 50 inch screen from a couch.
We are about to cancel our DirecTV connection in favor of our home stable of laptops and iPod touches. The video time that we have as a family is spent in bed with a laptop watching one of 12,000 movies available over the ‘net on Netflix with a $10/month account, or downloaded to an iPod for 1.99/episode, or on DVD, again on a laptop. The large screen is okay for viewing sports, but time is short, and the networks are available over the airwaves in HD. Fact is, I prefer watching sports with other people at a sports bar.
The purchase I am considering next is a small computer capable of streaming Netflix and running iTunes, with double duty as a email checking station. The cable company gets to stay in the house only for the internet -until fiberoptic broadband becomes available then goodbye cable. In fact, I am waiting to see what Apple does with AppleTV versus the Mac Mini.
What I discovered more recently is this: it is more fun to make TV than it is to watch it. Check out my friend Victor’s channel on Youtube (link).
The TV is dead. It is now just a monitor.
This movie has it all -ultraviolence, haute-cuisine, a hot Helen Mirren, and cannibalism. It most closely matches (especially visually) the tenor and mood of my nightmares (see earlier posts about the golfing revelations). It is an allegory about how we treat the earth and ourselves. The final scene is so unpleasant that you will never look at glazed ham the same way again. Makes you think about the cannibalism in your life.
Mongol which was released last year is available on iTunes, and is a beautiful movie about one of my personal heroes, Genghis Khan. Filmed and produced in Kazakhstan, one of the countries peopled by Genghis Khan’s descendants (along with most of Central Asia), it has eye popping battle scenes filmed with thousands of real extras with no use of CGI. It also is a domestic movie about Genghis’ home life -you have to watch the movie to believe what his poor wife has to go through to keep the family together -it is a pretty decent date movie compared to the Lord of the Ring movies.
Twelve Monkeys is a genius movie of frightening possibilities. The natural end of the green point of view is that people are the problem, and environmentalism is at its heart anti-people-ism.
There, three movies to ponder this winter of golf discontent.
