Text 13904, 117 rader
Skriven 2007-04-24 07:01:13 av Vorlonagent (267.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: Attn JMS: The five stages of grief and  "FALLEN SON: THE     DEATH 
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"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:tgri235n6397njcenrenhootvq2ou4dok2@4ax.com...

>>I liked Ender but didn't bond.
>>
>>Nor would I be one to recommend Card's chaarcterization ability.
>
> Guess it's a glass half empty/half full thing . . . I can think of
> many who are better, and (particularly in science fiction) many who
> are worse.

I don't grade on a curve.

Everybody earns their place by passing or failing the same standards.  And 
I'm a tough sell.  I have loopholes for work that doesn't take itself 
seriously or presents itself with originality or style.  I could easily put 
modern BSG on this list.  It made points for originality but chipped away at 
my suspension of disbelief over time.


>>Neither of the G's had it.  Neither of the G's looked like they were 
>>getting
>>it.  They were both bland and flat characters to me.
>
> I think, though, that Galen /had/ to be played like that. I don't know
> how much range he had as an actor, but without spoiling the technomage
> trilogy I can say that there's a reason, that the hard-shelled reserve
> is an accurate depiction of something which wasn't explained in
> Crusade.

Nobody *has* to be played like anything.  There's a lot of ways to play your 
cards close to the vest and still be expressive.  Spock or Kosh to name two 
(three?)

Galen did not come off magical, he came off dull and hackneyed.


> Can't say the same for Gideon, because I don't know what would have
> happened.
>
> Funny, I saw Sinclair as sort of a philosopher. Sheridan was I think
> supposed to be shallow at the start and to gain depth as events
> developed. Delenn, of course, was supposed to be somewhat mysterious
> and alien. And Londo and G'Kar were played by extraordinary actors . .

Sincliar was very philosophical.  He was also very judgemental and 
moralistic.  To excess at times, lending him his wooden delivery. Which 
never came off well until he was Valen in all but name.  He was also played 
with more expression in War Without End.

Gideon inherited all of Sinclair's downside, his stick-up-his-butt moralism 
(a strange characteristic in a man phrased as a "gambler").


> As to poor Byron, I confess I'm the sole and solitary member of his
> fan club. Maybe I should defend Wesley Crusher next . . . Seriously, I
> never thought that Byron was motivated primarily by self-pity: he's an
> idealist who is consumed with guilt over his role in the massacre of
> innocent civilians.

You reckon without Byron's self-destructive side.  The man was looking for a 
cause to die for, not one to live for.  He was stuck in his own guilt and 
self-hatred.  It was all about him, about his mistake and atoning for it. 
Maybe that's not self-pity but it's certainly a depth of self-absorbtion.

dislike the Shadow tech connection.  I'd have preferred they be
>>their own thing.  But there are many details I'm un aware of so it might 
>>not
>>bother me as much if I knew more.
>
> I'm ambivalent, in that I was disappointed to learn about it -- it
> seemed to remove some magic from the world -- but that the premise was
> very well developed, and yielded some good dramatic conflicts.

Maybe, but...why tie everything to the First Ones?  It suggests a small 
minded view of the world.


>>I am perhaps too serious for my own good.  I was caught up in the film in
>>the sense that I emerge sheken.  I was finding it hard to suspend 
>>disbelief
>>before the movie was over on one level yet felt (and shrugged off once my
>>brain kicked in) the full emotional impact.
>
> Maybe it's my unconscious defending me, but when I see excessive gore
> in a chainsaw pic or the like it destroys the suspension of disbelief
> for me, and hence the horror, in the sense of fear and moral
> repugnance both: I just see stage blood and sausage and plastic parts,
> and it reminds me of the spaghetti worm infested "horror houses" we
> made when I was a kid. So a film like Psycho can scare me witless and
> a film like All Quiet on the Western Front can leave me shaken, angry,
> and sad, while their more overt cousins leave me cold or mildly
> amused.

I have a very thin boundary between reality and imagination.  Most movies I 
am there, wherever the movie takes me.  I kind of have to watch what I go to 
see because whatever I do see is happening all around me for two hours.  A 
good film grows stronger as I return to the real world.  Weak films fall 
apart.  SPR dissolved by the time I got to the car, coming off a very 
intense in-theater experience.


-- 
John Trauger,
Vorlonagent

"Methane martini.
Shaken, not stirred."

"Spirituality without science has no mind.

Science without spirituality has no heart."

-Methuselah Jones
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32
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