Category: Film and TV

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ communications department has released a web site responding to the claims made in The Da Vinci Code.

The site–www.jesusdecoded.com–contains articles by various people on various aspects of the book, as well as the upcoming film. Amy Welborn is one of the folks contributing it.

The site doesn’t have an overabundance of info at this point, but it is a good effort that should help a lot of people. It also may grow substantially over time. There is a Q & A section where readers can submit questions and get answers.

There is also a "Jesus Decoded" TV special that will be available on DVD next month.

GET THE STORY.

VISIT THE SITE.

Given what folks have said in the comboxes, I’m sure many are jazzed about tonight’s season finale for Battlestar Galactica.

It’s apparently got so much story in it that the show’s creators convinced the network to allow them to break out of the hour-long format and do a 90-minute finale (airing from 10-11:30 Eastern & Pacific).

I’m expecting a major clifffhanger at the end–if not a major rolling cliffhanger (that is, multiple cliffhangars involving different plot lines, piled on top of each other).

Last season we got a cliffhanger involving the sudden self-outing of Sharon as a Cylon in an out-of-the-blue act of extreme violence.

This year the cliffhanger may be even more intense. (The show’s creators like to top themselves.)

But it appears we’ll have to wait even longer to find out what happens on the other side of it.

And we may not find out on the Sci-Fi Channel at all.

Huh?

Here’s what’s going on: Normally Sci-Fi’s shows run 20 episode seasons, divided into two blocks of ten. The first 10 episodes air as a "summer season" and the second 10 episodes air as a winter season, starting in January. That’s the way SG-1 and Atlantis work, and it’s the way BGS has . . . until now.

Word is that Galactica will skip the "summer season" and will not start showing new episodes again UNTIL OCTOBER.

I am majorly unhappy about this.

I also wonder what it’ll do to the ratings of Sci-Fi’s Friday night lineup. Despite being last in the lineup of shows for that night, Galactica pulls higher ratings than SG-1 and Atlantis. That’s the OPPOSITE of what normally happens on a network: The lead-in shows get higher ratings, which then fall off as the evening wears on.

Galactica has been so good that it’s done the reverse. I’m sure that SG-1 and Atlantis have benefitted from this, with viewers deciding to tune in early since they’re committed to be there to see Galactica. But without Galactica in that 10 p.m. slot, the ratings for SG-1 and Atlantis may suffer, with viewers having less motivation to tune in.

(I know I’ll be less motivated to rush home after Friday night square dancing and tune in, meaning that I may not stay up for the replays of the Stargates and may instead just wait to see them on DVD.)

Why would Sci-Fi do this?

I don’t know. They may be trying to bring Galactica in line with the way TV series normally air their new shows, which have a fall premier and then play through spring, with a summer hiatus.

But there may be more to it than that.

SY-FY PORTAL IS REPORTING THAT NBC UNIVERSAL, WHICH OWNS SCI-FI, MAY BE MULLING WHETHER IT WANTS TO YANK GALACTICA OFF SCI-FI AND PUT IT ON NBC.
(CHT to the reader who e-mailed.)

That’s a prospect that makes me distinctly . . . nervous.

Many have called BSG the best show on television, and I certainly think it stands up against the junk normally airing on the Big 3 networks (none of which I tune in to watch).

It’d be nice to see Galactica get the mainstream success that its quality merits.

But.

You need much bigger ratings to stay on the air on a major network than on a cable channel, and if Galactica’s ratings don’t take off fast, NBC could decide to pull the plug on the show . . . whereas it could have stayed on Sci-Fi for years and years and years. (Like SG-1.)

Also: NBC network executives could "take more of an interest" in BSG if it were promoted to the bigtime, meaning more interference with the way Ron Moore and his team have been running the show.

And since the suits at NBC don’t understand science fiction the way the suits at Sci-Fi presumably do, that could mean a lot of idiotic, ham-fisted interferences in the show . . . like the ones that killed Crusade.

So I’m nervous, and we’ll have to wait to see what happens.

Looks like there’s more than one Galactica-related cliffhanger afoot.

A reader writes:

I have a massive quandry…  I am having a problem rooting for the colonials in Battlestar Galactica due to the fact they are polytheists.  The cylons are Monotheists.

What did you think of [last week’s episode] Downloaded??!!!  <SPOILER DELETED> is great.

Okay, second question first. I thought that "Downloaded" totally rocked. Having an episode from the cylons’ viewpoint was totally great, and I can’t way to see how they play out the implications of this episode in the two-part season finale that starts this week.

I also thought that <SPOILER DELETED> was really, REALLY great. (For those who have seen the episode, <SPOILER DELETED> is the revelation that Caprica 6 has as soon as she wakes up in the rebirth tank–the one that "could cause a problem" for her with the other cylons. DO NOT spoil this in the combox for those who haven’t seen the episode. Just refer to it as "<SPOILER DELETED>".)

It was also nice to have numbers assigned to some of the other cylon models–to know that Sharon/Boomer is an 8, that the Lucy Lawless character is a 3, and that that TV-reporter-male-cylon guy is a 5.

Now to the main question: the monotheism/polytheism question.

In principle, I don’t have a problem watching a drama in which the good guys are polytheists and the bad guys are monotheist, because in reality some polytheists are good and some monotheists are bad.

For example: Suppose Battlestar Galactica got re-envisioned as an earth-based drama occuring in Kashmir.

Instead of the twelve colonies, we’ve got twelve Hindu villages–which are then wiped out by an invading hord of Taliban that have been skulking around Pakistan after their defeat several years ago in Afghanistan. The surviving Kashmiri villagers then are forced to flee for their lives to the lost, thirteenth village–called Earthstan–while constantly being persecuted by the Taliban hordes.

In watching such a series, I wouldn’t have any problem at all rooting for the villagers over the Taliban. It doesn’t matter that the villagers are Hindu and thus polytheists, while the Taliban are Muslim and thus monotheist.

Being a monotheist is not enough to get you on the side of right in my book. If you’re a monotheist who persecutes innocent polytheists, you’re a bad guy in my book, and I’ll root for the polytheists against you.

Now let’s apply this to the complexities we actually see in the series.

Yes, it’s true: The human culture presented in the series is largely polytheistic. But it’s not entirely polytheistic. There are atheists in the population (like Baltar) and agnostics (like Adama).

And there even seem to be human monotheists. If you watch the original mini-series, you’ll notice that the cylon they find at Ragnar Anchorage is walking around with Adama and talking about God (singular) and what he wants and Adama talks back to him about God (singular) and the conversation plays naturally. The fact that the guy is a monotheist isn’t a dead giveaway that he’s a cylon (something else gives him away, but not that), so there seem to be human monotheists out there somewhere.

So human culture isn’t monolithically polytheistic. (I guess it’s polylithically theistic.)

The cylons, by contrast, do seem to be solidly monotheistic, except for lone individuals who have "gone human," like the original Galactica Boomer (who is now on Caprica).

So what are we to make of this? Are we to approve or disapprove of polytheism?

I don’t think that the series means for us to do either. The polytheism of the main humans in the series is something of a relic of the original Galactica, with its Mormon-Egyptian-Greco-Roman themes. (They even visited the tomb of one of their gods of Kobol in the original series.) What’s new is that they’ve made the cylons monotheists.

Since our native sympathies are with the humans rather than the cylons, this could be read as an endorsement of polytheism over monotheism, but that doesn’t seem to be what the producers are doing.

Watching the show carefully, it seems that they’re trying to explore the viewpoints of both sides and not establish either side’s religion as right or wrong. It’s certainly true that the cylons were wrong to wipe out human civilization, but that doesn’t make their monotheism wrong in the eyes of the show.

Thus there are episodes in season 1 in which Galactica 6 stresses to Baltar that one of God’s main commands is procreation (true) and in which she tells him God loves him (true) and wants to redeem him from his sins (true) and that he needs to open himself to the will of God (true) and that he can thereby become an instrument of God (true)–which he then does BY HELPING THE HUMANS BLOW UP A CYLON BASE.

6 also tells Baltar that God doesn’t take sides in this conflict–that he transcends our conflicts and is not to be viewed as a tribal deity who always endorses the wars of one side over the other. Instead, God wants the love of all. This is certainly a rather enlightened view of God that doesn’t square with a monotheism=evil interpretation.

We also have the cylons distinctly calling into question the deity of the colonists gods, suggesting that they were mortal beings (like Athena, who lept to her death on Kobol) and calling them "idols"–which we from time to time see the colonists actually using. The monotheist perspective is thus allowed to critique the polytheist one in a way that does not happen in reverse. The polytheists on the show never attack the monotheistic view. They may attack the cylon’s beliefs about what God is like, but they don’t mock the notion that there might be a single, supreme God.

Except for occasional expletives like "gods d*mn it!" or "oh my gods!" or an occasional prayer for the soul of a dead person, the polytheism of the humans really doesn’t come into the plot that much. (The tomb of Athena story on Kobol was an exception.)

For the most part, there is much more exploration of monotheism and the monotheist viewpoint. Monotheism is where the action is on the show.

And it’s not clear that God is pleased with either society we see in the series. The cylons, for example, can’t reproduce on their own and are thus unable to fulfill what they acknowlege to be one of God’s commands. This is apparently because they lack love (which also allowed them to destroy human civilization). Those cylons who have learned to love from humans (Caprica 6 and the two Boomers) immediately start questioning whether it was right for their people to wipe out ours. In the most recent episode, two of these characters are forced to conclude that the cylon invasion was just wrong and that they must work to atone for it.

Similarly, the humans (particularly Adama) have been driven to recognize the sins of humanity and to question–at least in the abstract–whether human civilization deserved to survive, what with having enslaved the cylons and (one might add) having permitted abortion. This isn’t to say that the cylons were right to invade, but it points to significant sins for which humanity deserved a comeuppance.

Of course, when the series first premiered, I was quite nervous about the polytheism/monotheism thing and where the series creators were going to take it, but as the show has unfolded, it’s become clear that they aren’t making a statement about whether polytheism or monotheism or atheism is true. They’re simply exploring the dramatic tensions that are latent in these worldviews.

That’s okay. In fact, that’s something I’d do if I were writing the series. Drama is all about tension and unease, and if you can make the viewer tense and uneasy then you’re creating drama–you’re hooking into the emotions that will bring him back for more.

If someone handed me a series about a bunch of polytheistic humans pitted against a bunch of robots and asked me to re-envision it (essentially what Sci-Fi did for exec producer Ron Moore), I might very well make the robots monotheists. That’s a good move dramatically, because it forces the viewers to not view this as a simple good vs. evil battle.

Nobody in a drama should ever be purely good or purely evil, because nobody in real life is purely good or purely evil (except for Jesus and Mary being purely good, but it is so hard to write dialogue for them).

Purely good and purely evil characters are what you may find in fairy tales, but in works written for adults they make the drama flat and uninteresting. If the creators of Battlestar Galactica flipped the religions of the two groups, making the humans
monotheists and the cylons polytheists (or atheists) then the series
would be a lot less interesting than it is.

The viewer’s native emotions will be on the side of the persecuted humans (because, well, they’re humans), but if you want the villains to be anything other than the Evil Walking Toasters that they were in the first series, you need to give them some good points–and a religion that the viewers sympathize with is a good way to do that.

The viewer thus feels tense–uneasy. He’s torn between sympathizing with the humans because they’re humans and sympathizing with the cylons because they’re monotheists. We know, ultimately, that the cylons were wrong to wipe out human civilization, but as long as you can keep that tension going–as long as you don’t resolve it by endorsing one religious view over another–you’re doing drama, which is what you’re here to do.

Over at the InsightScoop, Carl Olson has just outed himself regarding the fact that he watches TV, including which particular shows he watches.

He did so because Mark Brumley dared him.

Then Mark e-mailed me and dared (well, suggested) me to do the same.

Now they have a blogstorm going of bloggers and other Catholic notables outing themselves as TV watchers and naming their favorite shows.

GET THE SHOCKING TV CONFESSIONS OF CARL OLSON, MARK BRUMLEY, DOM BETTINELLI, JULIE D, SANDRA MIESEL–AND OTHERS!

Now, per Mark’s daresuggestion, here is my own:

Since I never use my blog to talk about anything other than apologetics, it may come as a shock to readers that I, too, watch television.

Unfortunately, I have to admit that I’m a bit out of the loop when it comes to some of the shows that they’re talking about over at InsightScoop. I mean, I’ve heard of them, but I can’t actually tune in to them due to the fact that I’m out square dancing much of the time–at least when the shows are on.

As a result, there is really only one current show that I’m guaranteed to tune in for every week, other shows that I’ll watch if I’m still awake, and other shows that I plan to watch when they’re released on DVD (allowing me to skip the annoying and offensive commercials, as well as the annoying and offensive waits until next week’s show).

So here’s my list, divided by subcategory:

WHAT I ACTUALLY TUNE IN FOR

• Battlestar Galactica (I get home just in time from square dancing to watch this one)

WHAT I’LL WATCH IF I’M STILL AWAKE

• The repeat of Stargate SG-1 immediately after Battlestar Galactica
• The repeat of Stargate Atlantis immediately after the repeat of Stargate SG-1

SHOWS I’LL WATCH ON DVD ASAP AFTER THEY’RE RELEASED

• Monk (I’d watch it live, but it’s on at the same time as Battlestar Galactica)
• Stargate SG-1
• Stargate Atlantis

SHOWS I’LL GET AROUND TO WATCHING ON DVD

• Lost
• 24
• The Simpsons
• The 4400

SHOWS I HAVEN’T ACTUALLY SEEN BUT MAY WATCH ON DVD

• Deadwood
• Sleeper Cell
• CSI

SHOWS I WON’T WATCH ON TV OR ON DVD

• The latest lame Sci-Fi channel original movie (unless it has Bruce Campbell in it)

So how about you? What’s your list?

Battlestar Galactica has recently addressed the issue of abortion–twice–and they’ve done it well both times.

The first time it happened was when the question of aborting Boomer’s human-cylon baby came up.

For those who don’t know, the cylons are artificial entities (who seem more biological than not) that wiped out human civilization in a distant star system. (The survivors are now fleeing the cylons and trying to find the lost colony called Earth.)

Boomer (left) is a cylon who was able to mate successfully with a human, and now she’s pregnant. In view of what her people did to ours, though, there are a lot of folks who want her and her hybrid baby dead, and the question of forcing an abortion upon her was floated on the show.

Ultimately, there was no abortion. This was good not only from a moral perspective (violence was done neither to the baby nor the mother) but also from a dramatic perspective. (Killing Boomer’s child would deprive the show of a huge amount of dramatic possibilities as well as completely turn off the audience.)

They also had the saving of the child result (via a kind of stem cell-like thing) in curing the terminal cancer of President Laura Roslin (below), who was the chief one wanting the baby dead. So even before the child was born, it saved a life.

Abortion then came up a few weeks later, when a girl from a pro-life colony tried get an abortion from the doctor aboard the Galactica.

This episode established that abortion had been legal before the cylon attack, and so it was still legal. Further, President Roslin was very much a pro-abort. Yet she was also regarded as a religious figure by the pro-life colony, and she needs their political support to stay in office and keep the ragtag fleet of survivors safe.

As we know from the opening credits of the show every week, there are only 40-something thousand humans who survived the cylon attack, and more are getting picked off each week.

As Roslin herself said in the immediate wake of the attack, human civilization is doomed if they don’t get away from their home solar system " . . . And. Start. Having. Babies."

So the episode pits her pro-abortion ideology against the fact that humanity is facing extinction, and in this episode she’s told that unless demographic trends change (the trends including new cylon attacks on a regular basis) that the human race will be dead in less than 18 years.

Dramatically, this is very good. We’ve got internal conflict in the character. Laura Roslin is in the process of being mugged by reality.

And so in the end she issues an executive order that criminalizes abortion and makes anyone who would interfere with the birth of a child–whether mother or doctor (fathers don’t get mentioned explicitly for some reason)–subject to criminal penalties.

Two points for BSG!

But only two, because the writers throw a bone to the pro-aborts in the audience by letting the girl from the pro-life colony have the abortion before the executive order is issued–possibly costing President Roslin the support of the pro-life colonials in the upcoming election.

This also may not be the last time the subject comes up, because Roslin–who is now a "personally-in-favor-of-abortion-BUT" candidate (how’s that for a switch!) is pitted against a true pro-abort.

Interesting stuff.

Part of what I find interesting is that the writers of the show seem to be quite liberal (as you learn if you listen to the podcast commentary), but they’re telling a story that regularly forces them into having to take conservative positions on the show, because the conservative positions are the ones that are required for the survival of mankind.

"Liberalism is a luxury we can’t afford" is the message that keeps coming out.

Watching the characters from a pampered civilization get mugged by reality and have to shed their former illusions may not be one of the reasons that TV Guide called this "The best show on television," but it could have been.

A reader writes:

You’ve helped answer a question or two in the past about Stargate physics, but now, it’s personnel. Life has really acted up for me – in a good way – where I can’t plant myself down on Sci-Fi on Monday’s to catch several episodes of SG, so I haven’t seen this. But, how did they "transfer" Jonah when Daniel came back the first time from being dead/evolved. Is there a synapsis site I can go to?

First the answer to the specific question; then more general info on how to catch up on what you missed in an episodic TV show.

Daniel was expelled from the commuity of the Ascended and returned to our plane of existence when he broke the Ancients’ non-interference directive in an attempt to defeat Anubis. This happened at the end of season 6.

At the beginning of season 7 Daniel was found back in physical form and suffering from amnesia. His memory started to return over the next couple of episodes, when he fought alongside Jonah and the rest of SG-1 as they continue the struggle against Anubis, who was threatening Jonah’s homeworld of Kelowna.

By the end of the second episode, Daniel is functional enough to resume his place on the team, and Jonah returned to his own people on Kelowna.

If you want a mini-synopsis of each episode of the series, check out THIS ONE AT GATEWORLD.

Also, TV.COM has epsiode guides for an amazing number of shows.

In fact. TV.com is usually the first place I look when seeking an episode guide for a show.

WIKIPEDIA also usually has info on individual characters in shows, as well as the shows themselves.

And if all else fails you can GOOGLE the name of the show together with "episode guide" (in quotes) and turn up something.

This works not just for SG-1, but Lost, 24, Battlestar Galactica, and even shows you dimly remember from your childhood.

Andreas Katsulas, best known for his depiction of the character G’Kar on Babylon 5, has died.

He was 59.

The cause of death was lung cancer.

MORE HERE.

May he rest in peace, and may perpetual light shine upon him.

(Katsulas is the second member of the Babylon 5 family to die. The first was Richard Biggs, who played Dr. Franklin and who died unexpectedly from a tear in his aorta.)

I must say that my views on Katsulas changed over the course of time. Originally, I didn’t like him. I first became aware of him when he was playing the Romulan character Tomalak on Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I thought he played the part in an unpleasing, cartoon-of-a-villain way.

When B5 started, this view was confirmed, because originally G’Kar was an even more over-the-top cartoon of a villain than Tomalak ever dreamed of being.

But this was a fakeout on JMS’s part, and he always meant G’Kar to evolve from villain to spiritual leader, and Andreas Katsulas has the range as an actor to be able to make that amazing transformation.

I know that Joe must have told him to play G’Kar in the pilot and much of the first season as a swaggering stereotype, and knowledge of his true range leads me to think that maybe as Tomalak he just got bad direction. Star Trek has always had a lot of wooden, cartoonish acting, and maybe that just what the directors told him to give them.

I’m glad I got a chance to see what he was really capable of.

Katsulas also was one of the few actors in Hollywood to regularly work under massive amounts of prosthetic make-up. (And one of the few willing to do so.) Though he did have parts in which he didn’t have latex glued all over his face, most fans know him only through his sci-fi appearances, and his true visage is not often seen.

So in honor of his passing, let’s look at the man without the make-up.

I always thought The Addams Family was more creative and less stereotypical, but it is with great sadness that I report that Al "Grandpa Munster" Lewis has died.

He was 95.

Maybe.

Actually, his age was unclear, which is as it should be with a member of the undead.

GET THE STORY.

BIO FROM WIKIPEDIA.

Rest in peace.

Until we see you again.

Which may be sooner rather than later given the whole undead thing.

In other vampire news,

FEMINIST AUTHOR BETTY FRIEDAN HAS DIED, TOO.

May she also rest in peace.

And may eternal light shine upon them.

I like Steve Martin, I really do. I was in high school when he broke big on the scene in the mid-seventies. I bought the albums, saw The Jerk in the theater, owned two copies of King Tut. I intentionally bumped into my friends in the hallway, just so I could say "Excu–u-u-u-u-use Me-e-e-e-e-e!!!".

Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid is still one of my favorite guilty pleasures when I just feel like wasting some time and giggling. Steve Martin may be one of the few people on the planet who could make the act of brewing coffee genuinely roll-on-the-floor-with-tears-in-your-eyes funny.

Kevin Kline is also a great comic talent. Who can forget his deranged, Nietzche-quoting, Ugly American criminal mastermind wannabe in A Fish Called Wanda? Funny stuff!

And now, they are doing a movie together!

So, why do I have this feeling of dull foreboding? Why do I find even short trailers for the new Pink Panther movie sort of painful to watch? It’s like this movie is radiating it’s badness right through my television.

I haven’t seen the film, so I admit I could be 180 degrees wrong.

I hope I am.

But how often do you need to re-make a classic film? Anyone seen the remake of Gone With The Wind? How about Citizen Kane or A Day at the Races? Good grief… remember The Wiz?

Steve Martin has had enough moments of celluloid brilliance to warrant great respect, but what made him think of taking on Peter Sellers in his most memorable role? Martin is great, but if you look up the phrase "comic genius" in a dictionary, you’ll see a picture of Peter Sellers. He is Clousseau, and Clousseau is Peter Sellers.

I just don’t know if I can bear to watch this new Pink Panther.

This is a job for the Decent Films Guide!

Surely Steven Greydanus will post and tell me that I really am not being fair to the film (not having seen it yet), and that it really can’t be that bad.

Say it ain’t so, Steve!

Everyone whispers these days. On TV, there’s The Ghost Whisperer (love that show!); in the bookstore, there’s The Baby Whisperer (for getting your infant to sleep) and even The House Whisperer (for organizing your home). Now enter "The Dog Whisperer":

"Meet Princess Cujo, an cute Maltese owned by high-ranking Los Angeles Lakers executive Jeanie Buss and given to fits of ankle-biting, eye-rolling fury.

"Exasperated, Buss — the daughter of Lakers owner Jerry Buss — has turned to ‘dog whisperer’ Cesar Millan, who offers cryptic wisdom as the cameras roll for his TV show.

"’A dog is a window to see the person from the inside out,’ says Millan, who has become canine psychologist to the stars and a celebrity himself. The Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan began its second season on the National Geographic Network this month.

"Millan, who grew up surrounded by animals on a farm in Mexico, tells his human clients it’s essential to project a calm and assertive energy while setting rules and boundaries for their wayward dogs. As he puts it: ‘I rehabilitate dogs; I train people.’"

GET THE STORY.

Just the other night I happened to be talking with a couple of dog-owner friends who have heard some of Millan’s advice and think that he may have some worthwhile wisdom to share for handling dogs. So, if you have a problem pooch, it might be worth checking out his show. But frankly I’ll be glad when the fad of titling experts as Whisperers fades.