After delving into Life On The Border and immersing myself in such a wonderful story I began to ponder the Urban Fantasy genre a bit more seriously, after all it has been years since this fantasy niche showed up and now its burning up the readers charts.
Your weekly dose of Stargate Universe recap is a little late this week. There was some unpleasantness on Friday night involving Christmas intoxicants. I won’t elaborate. Late Friday night has ceased to exist in my buffer. But, thanks to the miracle that is the internet, I have just finished viewing the best episode of SGU thus far, an episode called “Justice”.
I’m a fan of revisiting quality books from days gone by. Sometimes I do it just because I loved the story so much that I want to reconnect with the characters again and other times I revisit to see if the story holds up. This week I was reminded of the Borderland Series by Terri Windling, a friend of mine had stumbled upon Life on the Border and wouldn’t stop talking about it. This of course prompted me to go dig it out and read it again.
Bruce Willis’ “Surrogates” may have had a good idea going in, but the result is … middling. To be sure, as with any big-budget sci-fi film, it’s enjoyable enough on a base level, but this isn’t a movie that people will be using to salute Bruce Willis when the “Die Hard” star signs off to visit that Big Hollywood Sky. It’s a vanilla effort, disappointingly so given all the talent (not to mention money) involved. Jonathan Mostow is a good director with a knack for action, but his work here feels restrained and muted. I’m not sure how much of the idea survived from the script by Michael Ferris and John D. Bracato, or from the original source material, a comic book by Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele, but what’s left is average at best, not-even-trying at worst.
So I was going to review another movie this week but a friend of mine suggested doing something new and different, he suggested I try reviewing something that didn’t have pictures. I gave it a momentary thought and said ‘Sure! I don’t need art to be able to read’ so he went into his bathroom and came out with Beggars in Spain. I smiled and said ‘cool’ and he said ‘good luck genius ’. Hey now, I’m no ‘pure read’ slacker! I can read with the best of them- I’ve got the William Gibson library, the Neal Stephenson criticals and ALL the Rudy Rucker’s and I know the answer to Do Androids Dream of Electric sheep? So don’t go taunting me with a Nancy Kress novel. No sir, I will read this book and lay to waste all reviewers that have come before me.
What would you actually do all day if you were marooned on a million year old starship, bound for who the hell knows and stuck with a motley band of cranky (or homicidal) crew? The ninth episode of SGU attempts to realistically explain this and also how to tastefully (maybe too tastefully) handle the sticky problem of space lesbians.
It’s a brave new world in America, as Anna and the Visitors prepare to establish official diplomatic ties with the Government, thanks in part to a willing media led by the very bias reporting of Chad Decker (Scott Wolf). Meanwhile, the Resistance of Two – aka FBI Agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell) and Father Jack (Joel Gretsch) — continue their quest to find strength in numbers. Step one: find everyone who was at the warehouse that fateful night, including the AWOL Georgie (David Richmond-Peck). For his part, former V sleeper soldier turned human sympathizer Ryan (Morris Chestnut) goes in search of the remaining members of the V Fifth Column, a group of V rebels now scattered to the wind. As we learn toward the end of tonight’s episode, “A Bright New Day”, you just never know when those spunky Fifth Columns will show up next. While last week’s episode was a paranoid, tightly-wound continuation of the pilot, “A Brave New Day” opens up and takes a giant leap in story.
Ever since it was announced that “Lost” was going to the great DVR in the sky, viewers have been seeking a successor to the science fiction/mystery/drama/paranormal series. So far, “V”, “Flash Forward”, and thanks to the bizarre antics of judge Bruno Tonioli, “Dancing With The Stars”, have all arrived to try to give viewers their weekly fix of the strange and unexplainable. Now AMC throws their hat in the ring, with a brooding re-imagining of “The Prisoner”, and it just may be one of the season’s best yet.
Despite the inconsistent beginning to Stargate Universe, I’m beginning to think, after last nights planetary bombardment of wicked called “Time”, that we may really have a Sci-Fi show that wants to be something good. “Time” had some of the classic elements of a really memorable episode for any Sci-Fi show. Let’s review.
Oh, so I had an idea, I’ll rent one of the worst movies I can find.
Nobody ever says that on the way to get a movie right? It’ll be an EXPERIMENT!
