NY
Well, crap, I’m going next week … for work.
I guess making the best out of this situation would be the mature way to handle it. So, I will try to be mature. What a drag.
CARGO
The Swiss just made their first big Scifi and it’s called Cargo. Apparently the trailer doesn’t do it justice, nor does the synopsis. That’s what people tell me. I think that the trailer makes the movie look and feel exactly like Pandorum. It’s weird. I am curious to see what the Swiss are capable of.
[more TV stuff again. It's the season]
SGU
Yeah, our baby is back! Despite the low ratings and the lack of gossip going around about the show, I know a lot of “normal” people who are not obsessive about Stargate or even Scifi in general … And they like SGU. And guess what? I like it too. I just can’t believe how much money they are getting to produce this series and it makes me think that Atlantis would have been a million times better if they only had been given access to the same budget. The amount of “corner cutting” that was going on with Atlantis was insane. I guess we were always proud of the guys for managing it and finding inventive solutions to compensate for the shortcomings caused by the lack of money. But I personally was starting to get tired of the whole thing.
I was so nervous about SGU that I kept taping the episodes without watching them. Keeping it for later, and later, and later. In the end, the second half of the season is starting soon and I still have to watch Earth, Time, Life and Justice. I am savoring each episode, even if I still have some issues with the endless character development [thank you BG.] But it looks so good, I am willing to let it unfold slowly.
FRINGE
Looking forward to the return of one of the most underrated series this season. It’s good but has a tinge of old school X-File-ish vibe and at the same time, it’s definitely related to Lost in the may that the story is told. Do I care? Just a little bit. As I said before, Lost worked for me during the first season. I taped the whole second season before watching it because I couldn’t stand the wait between episode, thinking the whole time that there were not many answers and too many questions on top of questions. Frustrating as hell. I then taped the third season and watched it all at once but this time I actually did a lot of fast forwarding which didn’t really help. After that, I stopped watching it all together while asking friends and relatives for a synopsis of each week’s episode. I did stop asking after a while. For the final season, I make sure to stay away, just in case I want to get into it again later. What a mess.
Anyway, Fringe is good fun and entertaining. We get to learn more about Bishop and son next week and that’s always a good thing.
FLASHFORWARD
I don’t know, I am not really watching it anymore. What happened?
HOUSEWIVES: NYC
Those chicks are insane. Sometimes I really wonder if we have just lost all perspective on life and humanity in general. Can people be so shallow, annoying, stupid, wasteful and fake? Yes, I guess they can. Over and over again.
AX MEN – DEADLIEST CATCH
None of those shows are chick show and yet, I really enjoy it so much. It’s funny and so very interesting. Anyway, after DC’s Captain Phil died, things were looking pretty bleak. But this week, the crews are coming back strong. Anticipation is high. Great.
24
Blah blah blah … blah. I am so disgusted with this show now, I don’t even know why. While I was watching it, at 4am lat night, I was thinking about it, trying to figure out why this show is no longer something I can stand. I think Keif’ is the problem. There are some obvious physical aspects of the guy that I am having difficulties with. One, it looks like he is getting smaller but his skin is the same. So now he is starting to look like a sharp ei. A man-sharpei is not so attractive. Two, the breathing! OMG the heavy, sniffly breathing is driving me nuts. I can’t take him seriously. Three, he has such a limited range that he is starting to repeat himself. I caught several expressions/sentences he’s already uttered a few million times since 24 started. For example: Leaning over some guy who is dying, blood all over the place, Keif’ says “Stay with me! Stay with me!”. We, the audience already know the guys is going to die [BTW: this guy is obviously the equivalent of the STAR TREK red shirt dead man walking] So the drama really doesn’t work that much anymore when we already know who’s going to die. And that’s the thing about all those “End of the world” shows, how can you top yourself over and over again? How can you make the situation/peril worst than last season? Pretty tall order I imagine. Bu then again, it just got canceled so they won’t need to come up with the next world annihilation scenario.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
043 Catch up
Working Girl
All the drama we thought was behind us is back, bigger than ever. But guess what? I am not annoyed. No, I am actually able to stand back and let the drama unfold.
The Zen way.
They need me in Los Angeles, no question about it. The “unrealistically ginormous” deadline -one of many- is on May 10th. They made the mistake of lending me “and my skills” to another project for a couple of weeks and now that the other project is moving to New York, they want me to go with them for a month. Someone is going to have to either give in completely or compromise [the more reasonable option]. Tough little game here. Everyone [but me] is frustrated, angry and I noticed there is a lot of posturing back and forth.
The key, I have learned, is that you have to just shut it and observe. Let everyone around you go through the motions, because in the end, they will just end up doing the predictable thing. I know these people, I work with them all the time, I understand the dynamics of the relationships, I can predict "group behavior" most of the time.
We will know soon enough who is going to loose ... My bet? I stay in LA.
We just lost another competition. Our own fault of course. I doesn’t change the fact that it sucks and we’re all pissed off about it. The controversy is all over the papers. Millions of dollars, just out of reach.
Cry Baby
It’s hot as hell in LA right now and I live near the beach, I can’t even imagine what’s going on inland [that's what they call the areas way away from the water]. I rarely complain when it’s cold or when it rains which is a small miracle in itself. But when the temperature starts to rise and won’t go down for weeks at a time, when the sun is shinning and the sky is constantly blue, we all get cranky.
I want it!
I just ordered a netbook even though I already have the top of the line, hardcore laptop with all the fancy programs in it, I feel I need the netbook just for writing. Maybe it’ll help me get stuff done faster and better. I can’t wait, I’m just like a kid in an candy store. I’ll just have to make sure I don’t leave for New York before the thing gets delivered.
I’ve picked up the screenplay and I have started the final rewrite. I am thinking about continuing the story, making this thing more episodic. It might make the next screenplay easier to develop if I already have a solid base/core to work with. I just don’t know if it is going to be enough but with the new netbook and all the fancy hardware and tools I should be able to write a masterpiece [jooooking of course].
I started to model the ship in Maya. It's just not looking like I want it to and the renderings look too plastic-y, this is turning out to be way more complicated than I first thought. No matter, it will get done.
The Light Box
Nothing new or interesting on TV, so I am watching Star Trek: TNG. A friend of mine went to China and bought a box set of all seasons. The whole thing is obviously not “kosher”, so not, that a bunch of the episodes are cut off before the end. But it’s still cool. I am up to season 2 and enjoying every minute of it. What a freaking nerd! Seriously.
I forget to mention that there is still the issue of Caprica that I can’t get away from. I just don’t like it and it is frustrating. That’s another show I won’t be able to add to my entertainment lineup. Although I am still taping and still watching every episode, I just can’t get into it. The season finally is coming up fast and I am bored already. Why can't they just do it right? Like SGU.
Sweet Revenge
My neighbor finally got the message. She stopped blasting her damn music all over the neighborhood. I was going out of my mind. I did manage to exert some revenge on the B. Just flushed the toilet while she was taking a shower. I heard the scream and the expletive, I smiled, it was just soooo good.
All the drama we thought was behind us is back, bigger than ever. But guess what? I am not annoyed. No, I am actually able to stand back and let the drama unfold.
The Zen way.
They need me in Los Angeles, no question about it. The “unrealistically ginormous” deadline -one of many- is on May 10th. They made the mistake of lending me “and my skills” to another project for a couple of weeks and now that the other project is moving to New York, they want me to go with them for a month. Someone is going to have to either give in completely or compromise [the more reasonable option]. Tough little game here. Everyone [but me] is frustrated, angry and I noticed there is a lot of posturing back and forth.
The key, I have learned, is that you have to just shut it and observe. Let everyone around you go through the motions, because in the end, they will just end up doing the predictable thing. I know these people, I work with them all the time, I understand the dynamics of the relationships, I can predict "group behavior" most of the time.
We will know soon enough who is going to loose ... My bet? I stay in LA.
We just lost another competition. Our own fault of course. I doesn’t change the fact that it sucks and we’re all pissed off about it. The controversy is all over the papers. Millions of dollars, just out of reach.
Cry Baby
It’s hot as hell in LA right now and I live near the beach, I can’t even imagine what’s going on inland [that's what they call the areas way away from the water]. I rarely complain when it’s cold or when it rains which is a small miracle in itself. But when the temperature starts to rise and won’t go down for weeks at a time, when the sun is shinning and the sky is constantly blue, we all get cranky.
I want it!
I just ordered a netbook even though I already have the top of the line, hardcore laptop with all the fancy programs in it, I feel I need the netbook just for writing. Maybe it’ll help me get stuff done faster and better. I can’t wait, I’m just like a kid in an candy store. I’ll just have to make sure I don’t leave for New York before the thing gets delivered.
I’ve picked up the screenplay and I have started the final rewrite. I am thinking about continuing the story, making this thing more episodic. It might make the next screenplay easier to develop if I already have a solid base/core to work with. I just don’t know if it is going to be enough but with the new netbook and all the fancy hardware and tools I should be able to write a masterpiece [jooooking of course].
I started to model the ship in Maya. It's just not looking like I want it to and the renderings look too plastic-y, this is turning out to be way more complicated than I first thought. No matter, it will get done.
The Light Box
Nothing new or interesting on TV, so I am watching Star Trek: TNG. A friend of mine went to China and bought a box set of all seasons. The whole thing is obviously not “kosher”, so not, that a bunch of the episodes are cut off before the end. But it’s still cool. I am up to season 2 and enjoying every minute of it. What a freaking nerd! Seriously.
I forget to mention that there is still the issue of Caprica that I can’t get away from. I just don’t like it and it is frustrating. That’s another show I won’t be able to add to my entertainment lineup. Although I am still taping and still watching every episode, I just can’t get into it. The season finally is coming up fast and I am bored already. Why can't they just do it right? Like SGU.
Sweet Revenge
My neighbor finally got the message. She stopped blasting her damn music all over the neighborhood. I was going out of my mind. I did manage to exert some revenge on the B. Just flushed the toilet while she was taking a shower. I heard the scream and the expletive, I smiled, it was just soooo good.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
042 Ancient Futures
I almost fainted this weekend. I was running on the treadmill, doing very well and thinking the whole time that I should just go ahead and run the whole 5k, when all of a sudden, I had to stop and I tell my trainer “I need to sit down, right now.”
For the next five minutes I kept thinking that I didn’t want to be taken out of there in an ambulance [fool] and just hoped everything would be alright. It took me a few minutes but eventually I felt much better and told the trainer I was ready to start the workout. I knew I wasn’t back to 100% because the whole time I had this ring of fragmented light around my left pupil, following me everywhere. That lasted about another two hours and then it disappeared [and I never heard from it again…] I feel very old.
Pandorum
Last weekend I finally go the opportunity to watch Pandorum. I am annoyed it took me some time especially since I knew about the movie the moment it went into production, so it’s not like I didn’t anticipate the thing. Strangely, I don’t have much to say about it. The first mistake I made was to watch it while I was doing other things and so in the end, I got confused on some of the story premises and missed some key explanations.
Overall:
First, I have to say, they got a sick poster.
Second, the whole premise of a sci-fi horror such as this one, you know, the “OMG I’m stuck on this ship in the middle of nowhere and there is a monster after me,” I think works in this movie. It is entertaining even if the formula is pretty standard. I do wonder about the end. We find out the ship at reached its destination a very long time ago and that it had been resting at the bottom of the ocean all this time. So they were not lost in space after all. Although it was pretty creepy when they look out the ship and saw what they thought was space but without stars, just blackness … Really creepy.
We get a Hollywood ending! The last two people to survive being awake on the ship manage to trigger the release of the “life pods” [don’t remember if that’s how they called it] there is nothing ambiguous about the ending, everybody is supposed to wake up floating in this alien ocean, ready to restart the human race, Yeah! After all that stress and darkness, we get all this light and happiness.
Eden [the ship]:
What a lame ass name for a ship. I mean, it’s not like we haven’t heard this one a thousand times …
The only thing I can say about it is that we have a ship that looks and feels old but in the “future" and that's always cool. It feels claustrophobic and [paradoxically] gigantic at the same time.
The characters:
Other than Dennis Quaid, everybody else was pretty much “standard” and expected. Dennis was the creepy one. Although the “mutants” were not bad either, I wasn’t very impressed, just disgusted and when we find out that they are actually reproducing, I almost vomited right then and there.
The existential questions:
The only think that really hooked me up and made me actually have a conversation or two about the subject was the issue of humanity as a concept. What makes us human? Or to be more precise, what gives us our humanity?
Are we born with it? Or what makes us who we are, “human” is our environment and the context that gives us boundaries onto which we develop consciousness. When Dennis Quaid finds himself confronted with a reality where he is alone on a ship, lost in some weird black-space, with no hope, he becomes his own god, boundless and omnipotent. I just found that notion intriguing. Of course, it always ends badly.
Two days after watching this movie, I saw an episode of Star Trek:TNG called "Homeward" (season 1.) Not a very good season, but in this episode, they violated the first directive and revealed themselves to a man who lived on an isolated planet where they didn’t even have electricity. Of course Beverleyyyy cannot erase his memory because of his unique physiology [it always happens like that of course] and Picard cannot send him back without risking even more disruption. Anyway, in the end, the man tells Picard that he has lost everything that defines him. He’s lost all that gave him an identity and the Picard and eventually he kills himself because he can’t adapt.
Weird.
For the next five minutes I kept thinking that I didn’t want to be taken out of there in an ambulance [fool] and just hoped everything would be alright. It took me a few minutes but eventually I felt much better and told the trainer I was ready to start the workout. I knew I wasn’t back to 100% because the whole time I had this ring of fragmented light around my left pupil, following me everywhere. That lasted about another two hours and then it disappeared [and I never heard from it again…] I feel very old.
Pandorum
Overall:
First, I have to say, they got a sick poster.
Second, the whole premise of a sci-fi horror such as this one, you know, the “OMG I’m stuck on this ship in the middle of nowhere and there is a monster after me,” I think works in this movie. It is entertaining even if the formula is pretty standard. I do wonder about the end. We find out the ship at reached its destination a very long time ago and that it had been resting at the bottom of the ocean all this time. So they were not lost in space after all. Although it was pretty creepy when they look out the ship and saw what they thought was space but without stars, just blackness … Really creepy.
We get a Hollywood ending! The last two people to survive being awake on the ship manage to trigger the release of the “life pods” [don’t remember if that’s how they called it] there is nothing ambiguous about the ending, everybody is supposed to wake up floating in this alien ocean, ready to restart the human race, Yeah! After all that stress and darkness, we get all this light and happiness.
Eden [the ship]:
What a lame ass name for a ship. I mean, it’s not like we haven’t heard this one a thousand times …
The only thing I can say about it is that we have a ship that looks and feels old but in the “future" and that's always cool. It feels claustrophobic and [paradoxically] gigantic at the same time.
The characters:
Other than Dennis Quaid, everybody else was pretty much “standard” and expected. Dennis was the creepy one. Although the “mutants” were not bad either, I wasn’t very impressed, just disgusted and when we find out that they are actually reproducing, I almost vomited right then and there.
The existential questions:
The only think that really hooked me up and made me actually have a conversation or two about the subject was the issue of humanity as a concept. What makes us human? Or to be more precise, what gives us our humanity?
Are we born with it? Or what makes us who we are, “human” is our environment and the context that gives us boundaries onto which we develop consciousness. When Dennis Quaid finds himself confronted with a reality where he is alone on a ship, lost in some weird black-space, with no hope, he becomes his own god, boundless and omnipotent. I just found that notion intriguing. Of course, it always ends badly.
Two days after watching this movie, I saw an episode of Star Trek:TNG called "Homeward" (season 1.) Not a very good season, but in this episode, they violated the first directive and revealed themselves to a man who lived on an isolated planet where they didn’t even have electricity. Of course Beverleyyyy cannot erase his memory because of his unique physiology [it always happens like that of course] and Picard cannot send him back without risking even more disruption. Anyway, in the end, the man tells Picard that he has lost everything that defines him. He’s lost all that gave him an identity and the Picard and eventually he kills himself because he can’t adapt.
Weird.
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