tiredIf you keep in mind hoppie's mantra, "This is not x. It's a similiarly titled work with similarly named characters," this isn't a bad work. It's significantly better than most Scifi Channel movies. My comments:
- Starbuck could have been a lot less shrill. The woman thing doesn't bother me nearly as much as the fact that you could cut glass with her voice.
- I was a bit alarmed by how much, Edward James Olmos, Commander Adama, sounded like Bruce Boxleitner when you weren't looking directly at him.
- And while we're on the subject of Babylon 5. I recognized a lot of elements that seemed to be ripped from other scifi stories. Bab5 just being one of many, also Andromeda, Star Wars and probably others I've forgotten already.
- I liked the president probably more than she deserved because she was compassionate where she could be, and preservation oriented when she had to be. Of course, the whole cancer thing was pointless unless they do develop it into a show, which I very much doubt.
- How the hell did Gaius figure the outsider for a Cylon? I mean, I know he was just guessing, but I wonder if his Cylon test actually worked. I assumed he'd made up the reports and sent him off just to cya. But at the end I wondered if his relationship with the cyclon made him able to recognize the difference.
So those are my comments.
I liked this better than the last one, so that's something.
- Jada Pinkett's lover/commander is still a jackass and a self-righteous, pompous prick.
- I might be alone in this, but I liked the 16 year old ammunition runner (aka: cannon fodder). Rocker and hoppie thought it improbable that he'd be the one to make the announcement, but now that I'm fourteen, I know how irrepressable youth is. It strikes me as quite reasonable that he'd run off screaming.
- The entire movie shut down for me at Trinity's death scene. It was:
- boring.
- insipid. Even Smith commented on this and didn't even have to sit through it.
- way too freaking long.
- pointless. It made no strides to advance the plot. It didn't turn Neo forward or backward. It did not change his intent. It didn't even sacrifice more people since they were at a lull in the fighting at Zion (not that he would have known that, for all he knew, every second he spent crying over Trinity and listening to her death agonies and kissing her could have been paid for in human lives.). When she asked him to kiss her one more time, I leaned over and said breathlessly to hoppie, "Please! Let me die with your manhood inside me!" which tells you how gripping the scene was. Normally I have slightly more reverence for the dying.
- I'm still on the fence about Neo's yerida l'tzorech aliaya (descent to rise), if I may reduce to such basic terms. I do like the idea that you have to absorb your enemy to overcome him, and the nullification of spirit that it requires is very core to religions in general, and mythos such as the Matrix aspires to be in particular, but I haven't decided if it totally works for me.
- We also wondered if the machines, even through the peace would keep the humans down, or allow them to ascend to the heavens and see the sun again. I think the ending implied that it was coming. The guys didn't think so.
So that's that.
So I broke and finished it. I got almost to chapter 30 though. That's significantly better than last book. Unfortunately I read it so quickly I wasn't able to assimilate the nuances as I did with previous chapters. Details blurred into many other things. So just some small observations:
- I like centaurs.
- Does Dumbledore has a plan for controlling resentment on the part of the Slytherin DE kids. That's going to be a real problem.
- Who is guarding Azkaban?
- Did Rita Skeeter write any of the articles (beyond the obvious Harry Potter interview exclusive.
- Why did reading about the Azkaban jailbreak remind me of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?" I think we should have a Harry Potter varient. "Where in the World is Lord Voldemort." And you're Harry Potter the auror and you're tracking globe-trotting death eaters. This has real potential!
- Where can I get one of those awesome lightposts with the wanted poster of Sirius Black? I want it.
Oh, I should probably talk about the doctor's visit. She said it's probably diet related and my body will adjust. "Stay the course." "Thousand points of light." blah blah. Which doesn't thrill me. She suggested adjusting my inderal dose to 1 tablet twice a day instead of 2 once a day, but I was still dizzy yesterday and then I forgot to take the next pill, so screw that. I'm clearly not cut out for it. Meanwhile, I'm still premenstrual, and I probably will be for life. I pretty much hate everyone.