I’ve finally had some time where I could sit down and catch-up with TV. I took a sabbatical from a very active parenting forum I’m on, to catch up with web-work and in between times when I was giving my arm a rest from typing. I would have some TV shows playing on the computer while munchkin and I cleaned and played.So, I’m up to date with ‘Battlestar Galactica’ now, and I’ve also been able to watch all of ‘Star Trek: Voyager’…I skipped a lot of the early episodes until I got to the fifth season. I did watch all of the First Season though because I wanted to see where everyone came from. I think the finale was a bit of a let-down. I mean, I know the journey was the point, they hammered that home enough in the last episode, but I would have liked to see how they did in settling in. I don’t know if I’m the only one or not.
BSG continues to grab me though I have a hard time describing it. I think it’s the fact that it’s so gritty. There have been some cliche parts, and I think those are what my husband latches on to when I describe it to him so he doesn’t want to watch it. He was a fan of the original BSG, and so has some purist issues with the new version, but he and share an appreciation for Caprica/Six.
Last night after munchkin went to bed, thankfully easily (we’ve been having some crib-fear issues of late) I watched ‘The Descent’ which is an amazing movie. I found it interesting that there are two different endings UK(Uncut) and the US. We always go for Uncut/Extended versions of movies if we’re actually going to buy them, so we got the extended/original ending, which I did like. To me the shorter ending is a bit well lame and cliche. I know I keep saying cliche, but it’s the peril of having studied writing, whenever you’re going for action and events in a story you have to try and do something different and well, not cliche, boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy regrets it, girl hooks up with someone else, someone else is a douche and boy rescues girl and they live happily ever after = CLICHE!! Granted it sells a billion and one romance novels, but still it’s overdone and over used.
In the case of a horror movie, protagonist escaping from evil and surviving is really cliche, but it apparently tests well here in the States.
I say again that I’ve been ruined by watching a lot of foreign cinema. I prefer the less cliche more realistic endings, or the ones that are really good story wise. I find it so hard to be scared by US horror movies any more having watched so much Takashi Miike and other Japanese horror directors things.
Maybe that’s another reason why I was disappointed in Star Trek, and am prefering BSG, there’s a lot of shock and brutal humanity in BSG which you just don’t get with the Squeaky Clean Federation. For all Janeway ‘kicks ass’ you’re not going to see her sharpen a knife and ram it through the Borg queens’ throat like Starbuck did with one of the Cylons. At least there was mental fallout from that, which I also like, anything the characters do you see the repurcussions on their psyche, they don’t just bounce back the next day and seem as though everything’s fine, and their issues are not always resolved in 45 minutes either.
For all that though I do like the new Doctor Who. Such a kick back to my childhood and Sylvestor McCoy playing the good doctor. Roll on next month and Season 3!
