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Anyway, BSG is up there with the best telly of the last 20 years, if you ask me.

I couldn't agree more. I just watched the one with Lee and the prostitute and it was like, you had to rearrange all your ideas about him, but it also made total sense as well. Really great TV. Poor angsty Lee, I do love him.

Wyatt Earp wrote:

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I seen it reviewed, but only in That Paper, who of course loved it. Have the Mail and that lot had a go at it yet? Whenever there's an Ireland film in which it's suggested that Britain's role may not have been wholly benign, the right-wing press tend to strike attitudes all over the place.

The Mail didn't need to bother, that paper have done it for them:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2008/nov/03/hunger-bobby-sands

david cox is plainly trying to provoke with his talk of how he wished the prisoners were "properly tortured" (what we see in the film is pretty bad). we could sit here all day saying i'll see your birmingham bombing and raise you a set of penal laws, but like DC, we would be missing the point.

the film is not meant to finally settle the question of who was right and who was wrong during the troubles. neither is it meant to "heroise" the republicans, as he says (though i can see why he thinks that: there is lots of brutality towards the prisoners, but only one IRA killing, and the victim in that case is a guard we have seen presiding over some terrible beatings).

the film is about the prison and how it systematically strips both prisoners and guards of their humanity and eventually their lives.

at least twice we see a prison guard grimace while he soaks in water the fists that are bleeding from beating men up. the bleeding fists are a metaphor for these guards who have the terrible job of administering the violence that is the ultimate logic of british state policy towards the prisoners. we keep hearing the voice of margaret thatcher on the radio saying things like "crime is crime is crime". we see the prisoners refuse to wear their "clown suits", we see the guards respond with brutal beatings. in this system of state-sanctioned violence the guards are the fist; the violence cuts them up too. the closing credits remind us that 10 men died on hunger strike, and 18 guards were assassinated by paramilitaries between 1976 and 1981.

Nicely put, garce.

I went to see it last night. Very impressive.

More than can be said for my colleague who arrived trailing her teenage son, and THEIR TEA IN A TUPPERWARE (spaghetti of some sort)!

I think they gave up eating around the time the maggots started crawling.

Spaghetti-flavored tea? That sounds revolting.

'Tea' as in evening meal. But you probably knew that.

I didn't think you could have spaghetti for tea. I thought it was more of a snack a few hours before supper.

You're a very rigid man, Reed. What time of the day do you have tea?

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I just watched the one with Lee and the prostitute and it was like, you had to rearrange all your ideas about him, but it also made total sense as well.

Yeah, they do that sort of thing quite a lot as the series goes on, and it really makes you appreciate the quality of the writing and characterisation.

I've just been reading about Dollhouse. Because of Helo being in it. It sounds amazing. And Helo and Faith! What a great combination.

I'm also getting obsessed with the parallels between Galactica and Sarah Connor chronicles. Because they both have essentially the exact same plot. I think it took the Terminator series (films included) a while to start addressing the 'why' of it all whereas Galactica had it down from the start with all the God's plan/new life stuff. And TTSCC seems to be coming to the same conclusions, with the increasing religious talk. Because the machines do need to have the same existential problems we do otherwise, what's the point? This is why I never really understood stuff like Tolkein and his many copiers, where all the dark side wants to do is kill and lay waste to stuff - what is the point of fighting to gain ultimate power when having it means having power over nothing very much? It's still a religious fight - ie presented in terms of good v evil - but evil that believes it's *morally* right is the only way to make it make sense. And I think the Terminator people have really realised that machines that are supposed to be more intelligent than people doing nothing but revelling in sheer destruction don't make much dramatic sense.

Next thing we know, Cameron will reveal that she can have babies...

I'm not sure the parallels are quite that strong (and in recent episodes the focus has shifted away from philosophical questions about AI to the psychodrama between Sarah and John), but they are interesting nonetheless. I think I prefer Galactica's approach in that the show (as opposed to the Colonials) more or less assumes that the Cylons have meaningful and complex inner lives - a soul if you will - and then explores what that implies in various contexts. Whereas TtSCC seems to start from a default position that they don't, before hinting that maybe they do. As someone who finds the philosophical zombie argument almost nonsensical, the BSG route makes much more sense to me. Of course Cameron has a soul. Just get on with it and show it to us!

Well, I mean, parallels in basic terms eg humans create AIs that then cause a nuclear holocaust to try to wipe humans out, the surviving humans have to fight a war with them, they are infiltrated by machines looking like people with their own agendas (happening more now in s2 of TTSCC - Shirley bloody Manson, for heaven's sake!) and all stuff about how interesting is it that the machines seem to want to mix human/robot either in "cybernetic organisms" or actually in a new hybrid species; do the machines think of themselves as doing what humans did to the world ie make it extremely hostile to other species, etc, etc.

But yeah, I was trying to say the same thing essentially about Galactica doing it in a more satisfying way.

Spoiler for TTSCC s2e4


Perhaps Cameron's soul is going to be Alison's in some way?

The latest beautiful people American comedy TV series that I've watched is Chuck. Any fans here? There's plenty of cracking one-liners from Casey and gorgeous people to ogle for both sexes. Pretty much zero thought required but I've been entertained by the first season.

I thought the premise was too stupid. Comedy bits not funny enough, action bits not exciting enough, whole thing really unwieldy.

I wouldn't argue too strongly with you. It didn't help that episode 2 was the weakest episode in the season. They realised quickly that the action bits weren't good enough and made them more comic based.