Steven Spielberg’s latest TV show is a big-budget cross between Jurassic Park (dinosaurs and action adventure), Lost (wilderness survival, mysteries, long story arc) and a typical family drama (pick any, like Brothers & Sisters). It mostly delivers as a family action adventure show, and is quite watchable, but falls short of greatness. When watching, I’ve mostly been thinking, “gee, they should adapt Julian May’s Saga of Pliocene Exile, that would make a brilliant TV or film series.”
Tag Archives: Battlestar Galactica
Terra Nova (2011 TV series): mindless, big-budget fun for the family
Harry Potter and the Deathy Hallows Part 2 (2011, dir. David Yates): among the superior HP films, themselves better than the books, but that’s a low bar
The fanboys (and girls) will likely be satisfied, and those others of us who trudged through the rest of the movies will find it a more entertaining and quicker-paced conclusion (certainly compared with the insufferably slow Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), and the interminably boring Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 (2010)). Things come to an end, but because I didn’t much care about the characters, it really wasn’t very dramatic or triumphant or even sad. Truth be told, I did feel a twinge of regret that the vast resources of money and filmic talent could not have been put toward adapting more worthy material!
Space Battleship Yamato (2010, dir. Takashi Yamazaki): fun, streamlined, Japanese take on the reimagined Battlestar Galactica
Fun, live action anime adaptation that screams streamlined, Japanese version of Battlestar Galactica (Ronald Moore’s reimagined series, that is): immersive space action and desperate, human drama – even romance – set against an apocalyptic backdrop. The original cartoon series (released in US and Australia as “Star Blazers”) predates both the original BSG and Star Wars, but many of the familiar military SF tropes clearly have been cross-pollinated and honed back and forth across the Pacific over the decades.
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