So I rewatched Dollhouse's finale, hoping that I would find it  redeeming qualities and that I'd like it better this time...

( Epitaph Two: The Return )

Caprica does have flaws, still trying to find its pace and vibe, but I'm hooked.

( Caprica 1x3 )

 

I'm still processing the double episode of this last season of Lost.
I guess I need to rewatch if I want to post something articulate, but I have  a lot of work and I'm invigilating a three hour essay tomorrow afternoon so I won't be able to rewatch it before a while. And there's a new episode of Caprica tomorrow evening!

Sometimes I think that I should be paid to watch tv and review my favourite shows...

( Anyway here are my first reactions about LAX part 1 and 2 )

Firt off,  I must say that I enjoyed "Rebirth" much more than I expected to.
I liked the pilot but I was a bit worried about the series. I was wrong. Caprica is nothing but a show with a lot of ambition and talent. Besides the title sequence is frakking cool!


( My thoughts on the episode...spoilerish )

The last trailer for Caprica had the famous BSG line "It happened before and it will happen again" in it, which made me think of BSG and...Lost whose finale season will premiere soon and whose reruns I still follow on the French cable(yesterday it was season 2 finale which I loved because Desmond was back and Desmond and Penny are one of the most romantic pairings ever portrayed on tv).

Suddenly  a few things struck me. It seems to me that BSGverse(and Caprica is part of it) has been playing around/struggling with the opposite concepts of Fate and Providence for a while. And so has Lost, to a certain extent, especially at the end of season 5.

Fate is a concept we inherited from Greek/Roman antiquity while Providence is a Christian notion that St Augustine and, above all, Thomas of Aquinas developed in their work. In this western world, that's our cultural legacy  so no wonder that the concepts are still floating around, even on tv shows.

( The concept of Fate on both shows )( When Providence comes out )

( Once more with Blade Runner ) 

Have you seen the new trailer for Caprica?


There's also an interesting interview with Eric Stoltz.

I'm getting excited! I look forward to seeing the series. I hope we'll have many Daniel/Joseph scenes.

Also I'm getting worried about Dollhouse finale. I know it's silly...I blame Joss for making me care.

ETA: And here is another interesting interview, this time with composer Bear McReary, about his work on Crapica. I love what he said about the themes he composed for Daniel and Joseph, and how there's even forshadowing stuff concerning the characters in the Caprica's score !!!!

First off, gentle flisters, I bring you "Bohemian Rhapsody" revisited, BSG-style, for a night at the opera-house.

</div></div>

Not sure Freddie would have liked that, but it made me smile especially the bits about Lee and donuts.
The singing is terrible but the lyrics are funny and include many winks to several fandoms!


Secondly here's something that has been around for a while, I guess (fraidycatx3  posted about it last week), so I can't find the original link anymore...basically it's about Lost characters making a sandwich.

Now I shall go back to Marking Hell.

The last episode of Dollhouse , "The Hollow Men", was probably one of the weakest we have seen in two seasons. It had good ideas(Joss' I assume) but it was rushed, poorly written, poorly executed; it looked cheap, the editing was bad and the acting was uneven, off even...

I'm sure I'm in the minority here but:

( Read more... )

Someone has watched too much Battlestar Galactica ! Tim Minear and Joss gave us a twist-fest yesterday with the 11th episode of Dollhouse.

( My reaction to Getting Closer...spoilers behind the cut )


ETA: I forgot to post the link explaining the origins of the name Rossum. In the episode Clyde mentioned that it came from a play and here it is. It's probably old news for many viewers but I hadn't googled the Rossum name until today!

So, as you may have guessed from my previous entry,I really enjoyed both "Public Eye" and "The Left Hand". It was Dollhouse at its finest, just like "La Belle Chose" and "Belonging", pure Whedonesque tv even though Joss didn't write the episodes himself.

( Spoilerish thoughts behind the cut )

Now I'm off for I'm going to the cinema to see The Road.

I don't care about the ratings, Dollhouse currently offers the best minutes of television you can find, period. Season 2 rocks! It's smart, it's daring, it's layered, it's twisty, it's winky and it's funny. More than ever it has become a hall of mirrors and a cavern filled with echoes.

But looks like, as we say over here, that "c'est donner de la confiture aux cochons".

Also Enver Gjokaj is the shining star of the show, and one of the best actors around. I can't wait to see him in that film starring Edward Norton and De Niro!

Mr Whedon does have some nose when it comes to actors but I really wonder whether Joss realised how fabulous guys like Chiwetel Ejiofor and Enver Gjokaj were when he hired them...

PS: I will try to gather my thoughts and post an elaborate review of "Public Eye" and the "Left Hand" later.

Being fond of tv series, I've been following several shows that are enjoyable and entertaining but I miss the excitement of following a tv show that makes you really care about the characters and think and speculate like crazy. I miss Lost, I miss the BSG'verse, I miss the Life On Mars/Ashes to ashes ' verse, and above all I miss Buffy. So it's nice to have Dollhouse back, even if it is for a short time before the finale in January, and I can't wait to see the new episodes.

Also I came across ( these interesting pictures from SyFy Caprica website ) My first reaction was about Eric's hair that looks blondish rather than red on the picture; my second reaction was about his glasses (I love Daniel Graystone's glasses!) and finally I realised what Daniel was probably doing on the second pic...
( Speculation )
On the one hand I want to be in January so I can watch Caprica, on the other hand I don't want to say goodbye to Dollhouse. No matter the flaws that Dollhouse may have still, a tv-land sans Whedon is a less clever place to be.
And I can't think of any other tv actor that is as impressive as Enver Gjokaj these days. Watching him perform on screen in Dollhouse is like watching a Russian ballet dancer doing things that defy the laws of physics as if they were the most natural things in the world.

I was a bad girl. I went to the movies instead of marking papers. Perhaps I should have marked papers...

So I went and saw 2012...just because Chiwetel Ejiofor had a major role in it. I'm sure he'd manage to act his way through the crappiest movies and yet would remain somehow untarnished because he's just a classy talented actor, and I hope this big movie would help his career but it's probably the worst film he has played in.

Don't get me wrong I like me some disaster movies from time to time– for example I actually enjoyed The Day After Tomorrow despite a certain formulaic storyline (the brave daddy turned into a hero!)– but in this case the suspension of disbelief was really really impossible and I didn't think it was possible to write more clichés and more predictable scenes!

When I see a big Hollywood crap like that on the silver screen I love my tv shows even more.

Now it's Rugby time, we're playing South Africa for a test match!

ETA: They did it! They ruled the game and beat the world champions 20-13!

As usual it's a fact that we can beat any team during a test match but we can't do it when it's the world cup. Go figure.

ETA 2: I am not alone! via whedonesqueI found this article! I can't help quoting the ending:

"The movie's most spectacular special effect is an actor. As far as I can recall, Ejiofor has never given a bad performance, although near the end of "2012" Emmerich, surely unwittingly, challenges that record by saddling him with an overwrought and overwritten speech about how necessary it is for human beings to treat one another with kindness and compassion -- otherwise, why save the human race at all? Ejiofor delivers this tin-can dialogue, which probably took Emmerich all of 12 minutes to write between bites of sandwich and phone calls to his agent, as if it were the St. Crispin's Day speech: With his perfect and yet wholly human enunciation, he turns a few dumb words into a tone poem of deep emotion and conviction. I leaned forward in my seat, gladly buying every syllable of this godforsaken baloney and then, when it was over, wishing there were more. The Rockies may tumble, Gibraltar may crumble, but Ejiofor, thank God, is here to stay."

BUGGER!

Yesterday I saw Das Weisse Band , Le Ruban Blanc, which got La Palme d'Or in Cannes this year. I usually don't like Haneke's films for I think that, since Funny Games, he has just made films for the shock-value, to hurt the audience, to punch them in the face with the unbearable violence showed on screen, as if the film and the actors were just a tool used to cause a reaction. I don't mind violence and shocking scenes in movies as long as they mean something, and make sense story-wise, even if what it means is that some time violence is meaningless and just happens in the most cruel, uggly and gratuitous way, but Haneke always made me think that he didn't care much about his work, or at least cared less about it than about the uneasiness it caused. I'm sure it did it with the best intentions, to educate the viewers, just like the parents showed in Das Weisse Band.  

So I used to consider Michael Haneke a perverse film-maker rather than a film-maker interested in perversity; I found his films gratuitous and unhealthy, especially La Pianiste which I hated.

However this film is different, and for the first time, I saw a movie that has a true aesthetic side, and I saw Haneke examine the mechanism of perversity rather than being perverse himself. In a way, I could write now a review that would draw a parallel between what happens on screen in this movie and what Haneke used to do with his previous films (well I already kind of did above).

In Das Weisse Band the cinematography is great (white and black movies always are), the kids are fantastic, the atmosphere is heavy as it should be. Haneke took care over his film.




( Read more... )
 

I mean the BSG writing team, not the cylons...

Because I've just watched "The Plan", that BSG movie that was supposed to reveal a lot of things thanks to the Cylons' point of view. Well...I feel underwhelmed, to say the least. I didn't have high expectations, but since I had been pleasantly surpised by the pilot of Caprica I thought that maybe "The Plan" was worth watching.

Alas, this movie was disappointing and unnecessary. It hardly added stuff to what we knew. It's the first time I'm so negative about BSG but this tv movie didn't live up to the series. Compared to "The Plan", even "Razor" was a masterpiece.

( Read more... )

Watching yesterday's episode of Dollhouse, "Belonging", I kept thinking:

- the actors are great but Enver is fabulous. How cute Victor is!!!!
- where's Tahmoh? Do handlers get a day off when their dolls don't have any engagement?
- if Joss Whedon is not God, he is really an unconscious Catholic! Well, sort of.

Because now we know that, no matter how paradise-like the place may look and how painful the engagement may turn, the dollhouse is neither Heaven nor Hell, it's just a Purgatory. Yes, after the palimpsest on Chaucer's tales, now the show plays on Dante's territory. Once and again, it's all about the journey.

( Belonging )

First off, may I have a marking doll, please?

I should be marking instead of posting about Dollhouse but I have to write down some thoughts before I forget them. I usually use my Paul Ballard icon for such posts but my Medieval Demons icon seems to fit in today, since Tim Minear's script could be read as a palimpsest from The Canterbury Tales.

( La Belle Chose )

I will write about "La Belle Chose" later but I saw it and I needed to squee right now!

Victor-Chaucer-Paul is the best trio in my book. I've been saying for a year that Enver Gjokaj is an acting wonder and he was again fantastic! That man is a gem. What an amazing versatile actor! Tahmoh was also VERY good in the episode (he got the chance to show his skills at last), and extremely handsome. And tall!

Enver and Tahmoh are a great team, they both owned the episode.

After that one, I'm still torn between being a Paul/Adelle 'shipper or a Paul/Victor supporter. Perhaps Paul/Victor/Adelle is actually the right combination(and Adelle can watch, just like in my favourite scene from "La Belle Chose"!).

Joss, what you do to me!