Friday, February 24, 2006

Anderson Cooper, my hero

All I've got to say is: I'm looking at CNN.com and stumble across Anderson Cooper's so-called 'Blog'... emblazoned with his narrow, earnest ("I'm so J. Peterman") mug and these sage words across the masthead:


"Be honest about what you see, get out of the way and let the story reveal
itself." Anderson Cooper
He's so humble, that Anderson. He even quotes himself.

Sunday, February 19, 2006

More Battlestar Commentary

Again... more from my ongoing email conversation about Battlestar Galactica with a buddy from grad school..

Finally watched the latest Battlestar on TIVO last night... "The Captain's Hand"...
And egads! Are we rushing Lee's character along at this point, or what??

I HATED that opening scene with Dualla.. with all it's "while you were away" exposition thrown in there..
I realized during that scene that my problem here is that I have NO idea what the trajectories of these characters are...
I feel like they did a pretty good job milking some of Starbucks development earlier in the season... but now it feels like we're just rushing the characters along. Starbuck is drinking herself to death infront of projector screens full of young pilots getting waxed (remember a few eps ago) while Lee sleeps with (quite literally) every woman he encounters (except the president and the terrorist leader) and jumps from CAG to Pegasus Commander in a matter of weeks...

That said, it felt like this episode kind of found itself somewhere about 2/3's of the way through... around the time when I was REALLY ready to give up (as I was thinking to myself "is there even one single competent officer ANYWHERE on Pegasus?")... as what's-his-name Pegasus idiot took himself down to the engine room and the battle ensued with the Cylons, it's like they were able to capture some of the original tension and pacing of the early episodes.

And just when I was ready to feel better about the show.. then Baltar announces himself for President...
And I realized that so much of what's been missing these last few episodes has been Baltar. He really has been terribly underused recently.
But to use him this way, was really more like abuse than anything. I didn't care for it... this all just feels really very ham-handed.
Did I come to expect too much from the first season and the first half of this second? What the hell is going on here?

All the same, this ep does give me a small glimmer of hope.
They are going to have to figure out how to write a subtle Pegasus character, though... and having Lee running the ship over there gives them some opportunity to do that, I suppose...

Preview makes it look like the next episode will be another character-sketch... this time on the Cylon side... could be interesting.. but I just feel like these previous character-excursion episodes they sent us on somehow caused them to lose the thread on the larger story... so I'm concerned about how or if they'll ever get back on track...

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Sacrifice

A little Battlestar Galactica commentary after watching this week's episode:
Okay... after watching the latest BG over the weekend.. I'm honestly now starting to feel like I'm watching these episodes out of sequence.

What's the deal with Billy? you know, an episode or two ago, I remember wondering where he'd gotten off to.. even thought he might have been killed and I'd just not noticed it... and is it just me or did this little romance between Apollo and Dualla just spring up virtually out of nowhere? I do recall them setting it up a bit a few weeks ago, but even then I was wondering: What the hell happened to Billy? And my but isn't Apollo having a go of it lately-- that hooker on Cloud 9 he was keeping under wraps, a near tussle with Starbuck, and now Dualla.... geez-louise!

Makes it hard to believe Rosalyn when she's getting all weepy over Billy-- I mean, I'm talking to the TV: Geez, lady, you haven't seen the kid in like 2 months.. comes back on the scene, he's about 2 inches taller, got a new haircut, and he's clearly been working out at the gym... anyone care to wonder where he's been. Did his re-appearance not have "I'm back for one day's worth of shooting so they can kill my character and I can move on and work on my new pilot" written all over it??

Other questions: where's the good Doctor and Ms Tricia Helfer? Are they on vacation??
Has anyone seen the Chief since he and Helo were released?? (They were released, right? See, I can't even remember)..

All this adding to the ongoing drama of "What the hell happened to Pegasus?" I know, I know, they've made a couple of mentions of the ship, but who's at the helm of the freaking boat??

This ep was generally better than the last one, I thought, and loads better than 'Black Market'. More tension, a few good lines (Adama: "Cut the line."). But I'm starting to feel like Moore and the gang are either a) starting to feel a little too bullet-proof with their writing; or b) these were just filler episodes they figured they could shoot in any sequence and drop into the lineup when they needed some time to work on some larger story-arcs. I wonder.. from the preview, it looks like we're finally getting back to the Pegasus...

Let's hope so. After the last three or four episodes, this show is gradually starting to lose its grip...

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Congratulations, Jerome!

Steelers win Super Bowl 40 tonight, 21-10.... and Jerome Bettis gets his first (and only) Ring.
Well done. Well deserved.
He announced, in the post-game, "the bus has made its last stop in Detroit!"

Happy Retirement, Jerome!

The best coach...

Tom Brady says Charlie Weis i the best coach he's ever been around:

On Sirius radio, Brady acknowledged this was a trying season, especially after losing offensive coordinator Charlie Weis to Notre Dame and defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel to Cleveland.
“From the start of the year, the word coach (Bill) Belichick used was truth,” Brady said. “He was going to tell us the truth where we were at every single week as a team. We weren’t looking at the past. We had quite a bit of changes. We lost Charlie, who’s the best coach I’ve ever been around. We lost our defensive coordinator, who’s a head coach in the NFL. We lost some key players, had some tough injuries, and even through all that, were very competitive at the end of the year and had a shot to host the AFC Championship.”

Saturday, February 04, 2006

Scar! and Serenity

Clip from an email I sent a friend regarding BattleStar and Firefly:

Just watched this week's BSG on TIVo--
Scar"-- and I've got to say.. I think it may be the most uneven episode I've seen (in a while at least)...
Since when did Cat become such a hot-shot? Maybe I haven't been paying proper attention...
Also seems like they introduced a lot of new pilot characters.. or at least the camera gave them special emphasis we haven't seen before..

This plus the overwhelming emphasis on Starbuck's drinking... and I've also lost track of who's CAG on which boat.... is Starbuck no longer attached to Pegasus..

Just weird.
I still loved the episode, but I just found myself scratching my head when it was over....

Also finished watching Firefly and Serenity this week.. and I'm totally IN LOVE!
Read a rumor somewhere along the line that the DVD sales of the show and movie are good enough that Joss may try to make the case for a return to TV for the show... that would, I think, be best... as good as the film was, I just think the pace of the writing and the style of the show lends itself best to the weekly TV format...

Random things you notice when you're kids are watching Toy Story non-stop for a week-- Joss Whedon got top writing credit for the first Toy Story screenplay.. not sure I realized he worked at Disney or Pixar... wild.