I searched your site to see if you had a list of suggested books.
I didn't find one though.
So, I was wondering if you would suggest some of your favorite books. I would be really interested in your top 10 fictions books, but also your top 10 books on apologetics/Catholic thought.
Thank you for working on your blog.
God bless
P.s. If you like, I can send you my lists as well.
I'd be happy to provide some book recommendations, only I don't know that I can provide a proper "top 10" list. So instead let me give "ten top" books (i.e., ten books that I like a lot, even if I can't rank them from 1 to 10 and even though there are others I'm not thinking of that I might put on the same level.
Let's do fiction in this post, and I'll follow up with theology/apologetics.
And I invite the correspondent, and other readers, to share ten of their top fiction picks in the combox!
A few years ago, when the first season of LOST came out on DVD, I watched a few episodes and concluded several things:
1) This is a really good show.
2) This is a really demanding show.
3) This is a show I really don't have time to watch right now.
So I decided that I'd wait until it was all done and watch it all on DVD (or download, or whatever). That's what I'm planning to do now.
And I know that when I'm done with it, I'll want to hear about what everyone thought of he finale.
Trouble is . . . everyone wants to talk about the finale right now, not when I'm done with it and everyone's memories are dim and the excitement about talking about it isn't there.
On the other hand, I don't want to read others comments on the end now, because I don't want to be spoiled!
Fortunately, Mother Technology provides a solution . . . this blog post!
I'd like to invite Losties to opine in the combox about what they thought of the finale. That way, you get to have your say here on the blog now, while it's fresh in your mind and you're all excited and/or full of loathing, and I get to read your comments later on, without being spoiled before I've seen the show. (I'll also let you know what I thought once I've finished it.)
Sound like a fair deal?
I hope so. It's better than waiting a year for a Battlestar Galactica finale review, anyway.
So I hope you'll become a willing co-conspirator in this plan.
Longtime readers of the blog know that I have interests in technology and economics and in how the former is impacting the latter.
One of the ways it is doing so is changing the world of entertainment. In times past, as it has been said, freedom of the press belonged to those who owned a press–presses being expensive things that most people didn't have. But with the Internet, everyone can have the equivalent of a press if they want it, and the blogosphere is radically changing things.
So are electronic publishing and print-on-demand services.
Something similar is happening in the world of film. Now ordinary folks can make films on the cheap and distribute them in ways that would never have been possible before. Like the fan-produced film I blogged last year, The Hunt For Gollum.
New technology is also affecting the world of animation. Not only is traditional animation being impacted by computer generated animation at the studio level, it's also being impacted as the level of ordinary folks, with people using machinima to produce series like Red vs. Blue.
Machinima (a Japanese-esque variation on the word "machine") commonly involves taking the cgi-producing graphics engine of a video game and re-purposing it to serve as the cgi-engine for the user's own videos. In other words, you're hijacking a game's graphics capabilities to make your own movies.
The premier example of this is the afore-mentioned Red vs. Blue, which is often hilarious but which also often involves bad language (so be warned).
Machinima typically involves using a technology in a way other than what it was designed for, but that's not the only way technology is impacting animation by ordinary people.
"So what does all this have to do with Kara Thrace?" you are asking.
Well, we are now at the dawn of text-to-animation services, such as those offered by XtraNormal.Com, where their slogan is, "If you can type, you can make movies."
With their service, you type in a script, with stage directions that their software can make sense of, and it produces a short CGI movie that you can upload to YouTube or whatever.
I've been tempted to try it myself, but . . . y'know . . . stuff.
And the technology is still at a primitive stage. . . . So Far. (Expect this to change radically and rapidly. Y'know, within our lifetimes type stuff.)
This hasn't stopped YouTube user HighlandsTechno (or people connected to him) from using the service to produce a series of Galactica-related videos.
Some of these involve people from their web board (wherever it is), who ask questions of Ron Moore in the wake of the Galactica finale (which makes this a surprise bonus post on the finale, yay!)
For some reason (not quite sure why, but not trying too hard to guess, either), Ron Moore is depicted in these videos as a clown. Go figure.
(BTW, "Ron"'s responses aren't authentic, either. They're what the creators suppose his responses might be–commedically.)
One video is by ChamallaExtract/Mo, who asks "Ron" some questions regarding Kara Thrace.
I find myself much in agreement with him. Like him, I don't need a technical explanation of how everything that happened with her, but I would like a little more clarity regarding what happened.
Specifically: I don't mind her suddenly disappearing after her angelic nature had been revealed (angels do things like that), but when did she actually become an angel?
Was it when her ship blew up over the gas giant? If so, why did we find her body (which should have been blown into itty-bitty pieces) on Old Earth? Was it when she returned from the dead and met Lee in the season 3 finale? Had she always been angel, the whole time we knew the character? Was she an angel appearing in the form of a pigeon to Lee in the series finale flashbacks? What about her apparent human (Colonial marine) mother and apparent angelic (struggling musician) father?
And how shocking is it that Baltar would find Kara's blood on her dog tags when Kara herself provided those dog tags to Baltar? What does that prove?
I'm not looking for full, detailed explanations but for . . . something Moore.
In this post we’ll look at the third and last hour of the Galactica finale, Daybreak (summary here: Act 6 to Act 10).
The first act of this hour–Act 6–is the climax of the entire series. These ten minutes are where it all comes to a head. After this, it’s a comfortable downhill ride (so we’re going to have more to say about it than anything else).
When we last saw our heroes, a tentative truce had just been worked out and everybody stood down from active combat.
The basis of the truce was the Final Five’s offer to Cavil resurrection technology if he would release Hera, who he was holding hostage.
In this post we'll look at the second hour of the Galactica finale, Daybreak (summary here: Act 1 to Act 5).
The hour opens with flashbacks to Caprica before the Fall illustrating why Caprica deserved to fall (the Tigh/Ellen/Adama club scene; ick).
Across town, Kara is having dinner with Lee and Zak,and Roslin is becoming . . . uh . . . involved with one of her former students.
We get small moments of illumination into these characters, but . . . none are as interesting as the already resolved flashback story involving Baltar and his father.
Speaking of Baltar, meanwhile back in the future, Baltar's cult is preparing to leave Galactica, and expecting him to go with it, but Head Six appears and tells Baltar to trust God's plan.
So the Fringe season 2 finale has aired, and I really liked it.
I'm still planning on doing an intro post to the series to invite people who want to try out the show so that they can catch up over the summer before season 3 starts this September (yes! it has been renewed!), so I'm not going to spoil anything in this post (please likewise don't in the combox).
At least, I'm not going to spoil anything significant. Just a minor moment that deals with something never even explicitly mentioned by the characters.
It displays the kind of creativity and subtlety that the show regularly displays. Unlike many shows, the creators of Fringe regularly load the show with easter eggs that will delight the sharp-eyed, attentive viewers–like the mysterious man who rarely has any dialog but who appears in every single episode, usually just walking through the shot or standing around in a crowd scene, allowing in-the-know viewers to have a live action version of Where's Waldo? every episode (and yes, this character does have a crucial role in the overall series arc).
Another easter egg appeared in the in the finale, where at one point we are in a hotel room in an alternate universe and the wall is decorated with framed comic book covers, which can be seen only out-of-focus in the background.
As I watched the scene, I said, "Hey, that's the cover of the first issue of the revived Justice League from the 1980s. I have that comic! And that one's The Dark Knight Returns #1! And on a show like this they've got to have a cover from Crisis on Infinite Earths. Do they? They do! Woo-hoo! I've got all of these!"
Except that I don't.
As became apparent when one of the covers came just enough into focus to make it recognizable as a famous Green Lantern/Green Arrow cover. Not that I don't have that issue (I think I've got it in a trade paperback edition), but because this is an alternate universe and it's actually a cover of Red Lantern/Red Arrow!
So now I knew that all of the covers were "alternate" in some way.
But what ways?
By happenstance, I found good-resolution versions of all of them on DC's blog.
DC made them up for the producers of Fringe, and they're all versions of comic covers that were famous in one way or another–in our universe.
I love the re-casting of Guy Gardner from the original cover as Jonah Hex! That works!
Also, the DC blog post is newbie-safe if you don't want to be spoiled on Fringe and just want to see the covers. They don't spoil anything in the blog post (I can't vouch for the comments because, y'know, always in motion the future is).
Now if I can just find a good-res version of the alternate map of the United States from the show.
I'm given to understand that Texas is two different states, and I want to see which one I (or the alternate me) was born in. (Since I was born in Corpus Christi, right down at the bottom of the point of Texas, I'm pretty sure I'm from South Texas, but I want to be see for myself.)
Yesterday I said I'd continue this series by talking first about the things I liked and then the things I didn't, but after further thought I decided to go hour-by-hour and talk about both. So here are my thoughts on the first hour of Daybreak.
The episode started with flashbacks to the main characters lives before the fall of the Twelve Colonies.
Fine. Good move. Nice to tie back to the beginning now that we're arriving at the end. Nice to have a little extra insight on where these characters came from.
In principle.
Of course, it's the execution that counts.
I like the flashback with Baltar's dad the most. Roslin's family members' deaths was also interesting. The Starbuck/Lee/Zak thread that starts in this hour is much less interesting (and finishes poorly in later), and the William Adama "I don't want to do some unspecified thing" eventually pays off okay kinda but isn't that interesting here.
Meanwhile, back in the future, Roslin is dying and Lee is stripping Galactica of spare parts, and everyone is getting ready to ship things over to the rebel base star to serve as the new capitol ship after Galactica (which I think is a really cool idea).
Back at the Colony, though, Cavil is preparing to do horrible medical experiments on Hera to find out how she was created so that the cylons can replicate the process now that the resurrection system is shot. Nice creepy stuff, here.
And after a chance encounter with Hotdog, Adama decides to conduct a rescue mission to get Hera back.
This is a point where I think the writing stumbles. I don't mind them rescuing Hera. They need to do that to make the overall arc of the series pay off (the Opera House scenes, the commercials from season 2 indicating that Hera would "change everything"). That's fine. But I don't think they set it up right.
As the balance of the episode reveals, this is a high-risk mission. Adama bluntly says that it is likely one-way, and that it's volunteer-only, with even the former conspirators from the recent mutiny/coup getting a pardon for their participation (nice touch! and a good way to get Racetrack and Skulls back in the action). All this is fine, too.
But there's a mismatch: They didn't do enough to establish Adama's motive for undertaking such a risky mission (that could wipe out a significant chunk of surviving humanity) to save Hera.
Perhaps Roslin should have made an impassioned plea based on her visions of the Opera House. Or perhaps someone should have pointed out that if the cylons kept Hera then they might find out how to reproduce and overrun humanity.
Or something.
But it should have been something.
A moment of sentiment looking at a picture of Hera is not enough to risk a large portion of humanity on a likely one-way rescue mission.
Let's do the math: How many lives are they trying to save? One. How many lives are likely to be lost in an assault on the cylon stronghold? Waaaay more than one. This mission is a Guaranteed Net Loss to the human race in terms of number of lives, and at a point where there are fewer humans alive now than at any point in the series. Therefore, there needs to be something powerfully important about Hera to justify the mission.
But eventually we get the dramatic "Will you go on the mission?" scene on the hangar deck. The build up to this was quite nice, and Admiral Eddie was definitely emoting the heck out of his part, but I think he failed to adequately sell the case for going on the rescue.
It's interesting that less than half the people agree to go. On the podcast, Ron Moore says that's deliberate: That everyone would want to think they'd sign up for this kind of mission, but in reality many people will think, in essence, "I've got a wife, a kid, my own life to think about, so I'm staying."
I think that's true, and I like having many people stay. That's a realistic dramatic choice. Too often we see unanimous "Lock and load; we're all with you, Captain!" scenes, and having more realism to people's choices is good. But I think that in this case Admiral Adama completely fails to make the case why anybody should go on this mission.
I don't have a problem with the idea of likely one-way missions, but a sacrifice of that nature requires a clear and compelling motive, and the most Adama gives us is "This is a decision I have made for myself."
To my mind, "It's a personal choice" + "This is likely a one-way mission" = "Good luck to you, buddy!"
But then we're not dealing with reality here but the final act of an opera–a space opera–and there can be some operatic license here.
So even though I thought the big dramatic volunteering scene needed a more clear and compelling motive, we finally get to the mission itself, which we the viewers know is important.
So. Racetrack and Skulls jump to the Colony to scout things over, we've got battle plans drawn up and explained to us, and everybody cowboys up for what's about to happen in . . . Hour 2.
So. I am finally getting around to re-writing the Galactica finale review that got eaten by the mist monsters of cyberspace.
Thanks to those who have waited patiently . . . and to the reader who keeps sending emails that just say “bsg finale analysis?” Polite. Succinct. I like that.
So here goes . . .
The reimagined series of Battlestar Galactica ended with a 3-hour finale called Daybreak. In case you’ve forgotten what happened in it,
For those who (still) haven’t seen it, I’ll put the spoilers below the fold. But let’s answer the first, more general question here: Love it or hate it?
Mmmmmmmm . . . neither.
I certainly didn’t hate it, but I didn’t find myself thinking it was the best possible ending, either. I put it in the “Basically liked it but had some stupid parts” category.
So I wasn’t disappointed. I wanted to come out basically liking the ending, and I did. I don’t expect shows to wow me in the final episode with a “Best. Episode. Evah!” experience. That’s too much to ask. The Best Episode Evah is statistically far more likely to come before the series finale, so I don’t go into the ending with my hopes set too high.
I just want them to tell an engaging story that answers the series’ major questions, ties up the major loose ends, and gives me a sense of closure and satisfaction.
I thought the BGS finale did that, with a few blemishes that I’ll talk about.
To give you a sense of how I think this finale compared to other sci-fi finales, I guess I’d rank them this way (series that got cancelled and didn’t have a proper finale, I won’t cover):
Star Trek: Deep Space 9: * * * * of 5 stars (fire cave sequence needed to be better and Sisko should have become a prophet, per the plan)
Babylon 5: * * * 1/2 (nice closure, but not the series’ best/most exciting, which wasn’t what I was looking for; get to see the main characters 20 years later in their lives; Sheridan’s final goodbye to Delenn, etc.)
Battlestar Galactica: * * * 1/2 (better than B5 in some ways, but also marred by stupid stuff, making them about equal)
Star Trek: Next Generation: * * * (okay; didn’t wow me; didn’t deserve the Hugo it got; felt like an ordinaryish 2-hour episode; drama hampered by the fact that there was no overarching series goal to be resolved, so they had to come up with the fakey “you’re still on trial” thing in an attempt to provide one; it’s such a pity that–although there was still a lot of good Next Gen to come–the series technically jumped the shark with “the best of both worlds” (2nd3rd season cliffhanger (thanks for the correction!); Picard becomes a borg); that really should have been one of the feature films)
Star Trek: Voyager: * * (no post-climax cooling off period; very important for this kind of story; we need to see the returnees starting their new lives and enjoying (or not) the home they’ve struggled so long to get to, not just sighting the planet in the distance; also BTW, this is where the bottom of the barrel starts; if your series finale scored lower than this, you really have something to be ashamed of, no matter how good it was in its heyday–or even one episode before)
Stargate SG-1: * 1/2 (ihh. that was an ending? sit around for a long time and hit the reset button? it wasn’t unending, it was uninteresting as a finale)
Star Trek: Enterprise: * (horrible! abominable! never do this! the holodeck thing was bad enough, but the worthless death of a major character was insane! this episode was so bad that the producers deserve to be doomed to a sisyphean ordeal of constantly struggling to get new sci-fi shows on the air only to have them swiftly cancelled and . . . oh, wait.)
The X-Files: * (gaaahhh! unbelievably bad writing in the final episode! the whole mulder-on-trial thing was a disaster! and that franchise-killing movie you followed it up with was horrible, too! LISTEN, CHRIS CARTER!: BEG, BORROW, OR STEAL WHAT YOU NEED TO DO A THIRD MOVIE IN 2012, TELL US THE STORY OF THE ALIEN INVASION THE SERIES WAS LEADING UP TO, AND THEN PUT THE FRANCHISE DOWN AND BACK AWAY SLOWLY, KEEPING YOUR HANDS IN SIGHT AT ALL TIMES!)
Hrm.
Okay, I have more on this to say than will make a comfortably sized post, so up next will be things I liked about the finale, then things I didn’t like.
In the mean time, why don’t y’all argue about the relative merits of series finales like the ones above? (That’s the whole point of rankings–to quantify an opinion for purposes of discussion, after all.)
I’ve been meaning to blog about the TV show Fringe in a little over a week, after the season finale, so that if anyone is interested in trying out the show they’d have the summer to catch up (rather than being exposed to all the season-finale spoilers that are about to be broadcast), but I just discovered this nifty share thingie on hulu, and since the episodes are available there for a limited time, I thought I’d share this one particular moment with you.
The moment features Dr. Walter Bishop, one of the lead characters, and the who often gets the best, or at least the funniest, character moments on the show.
Here’s what you need to know for the clip, and below the fold I’ll tell you what I like about it.
Walter is a brilliant scientist.
Years ago he arrogantly conducted nature-defying experiments that led to tragedy and resulted in him being put in a mental hospital.
Back then, when he was playing God, he didn’t believe in God. Now he does.
He is a humbled man trying to make amends for his past, despite the fact that he often can’t remember the details of what he has done.
Most of the time he is sweet, childlike, humorous, and caring. He also is in need of constant adult supervision.
In this clip we find him trying to cope with the real world–on his own–for the first time in twenty years.
NOTE: This doesn’t seem to work for people outside the U.S. due to copyright issues.
