The Random Thread

[TJ4ever]

B5? Bring it on! I'm here, too. I loved that series. Bruce Boxleitner - GREAT! I watched the first B5 movie in London together with Bruce and Jerry in the cinema. (Well, not with them alone , but they were there!) It was a special showing and I was lucky to get a ticket.
Simone.

[Lorenith]

Sorry Lore!
Youtube tells me: 'This video is not available in your country' .

Say what?

That has never, ever happened to me before on youtube. I didn't even know it could!

That is odd I picked the one on youtube instead of Hulu specifically cause I thought it'd be viewable to anyone here, sorry it doesn't work for you.

See if this one works, it took a lot of looking, but it's the best one I could find.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFnmH9a2RkE

It has some audio artifacts unfortunately, I'll keep looking around to see if I can find one better though! There's a lot of other parts of the movie, and a few that are different recordings of the same song, but poorly balanced (which really weakens the impact of the song).

I'm not sure what to say about Firefly, except that the Reevers are probably one of the most effective baddies I have ever seen in a story, the whole concept just creeps me out.

And about B5, my burning question for you all, did you think the guy that played the part of Sinclair was a bad actor?

I have had people tell me, that they think he is a very wooden actor...but, I dunno, maybe he is wooden, maybe not but either way it suited the character perfectly so it's not really a bad thing in this case is it?

[Ellen]

Sorry Lore!
Youtube tells me: 'This video is not available in your country' .

Say what?

That has never, ever happened to me before on youtube. I didn't even know it could!

It happens a lot now on youtube. especially with music videos, it basically means that they are not allowed or willing to show this video anymore for unknown reasons. It's pretty rubbish but hey, what can we do?

x

[ThyneAlone]

Ah right *light dawns* this is the first time I have been to try a music vid on youtube since that big crackdown when they took thousands of music videos off. Well, got it minus pictures, Lore, and much to my surprise (that'll teach me to prejudge!) I find it rather effective, in the same way that, say, Karl Jenkins makes fairly tedious repetition mean something... mind you I don't know whether I'd've felt mesmerised or bored on listening further!

[Lorenith]

Yeah, some of his songs drag on really bad. I'm thinking mainly of grid...it's a 19 minute song...that is...blahhhhararajgla;gf

That's about what your brain starts to do cause it's just so..tedious waiting for the end!

[ThyneAlone]

Lore, it's you who's into anime, am I right? Do me a favour, just take a glance at this. It's one of my alltime favourite songs and someone has put it with an absolutely beautiful piece of animation that fits it perfectly. I'd really like to know where the animation is from and what the story is behind it (if, of course, it's viewable where you are!)!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rYOFiyGbag

[Lorenith]

Hmm, I can't say I recognize the anime, but I'm not that knowledgeable of it, but culturally speaking, that's to be expected as Anime in Japan is in a way synonymous with TV in America. (Also I'm extremely picky about anything I watch anime or otherwise).

I can say though, after looking up some of the tags from that video, I ended at something called "Air".

According to the wiki article Air has several forms. It was originally an Adult Game, a type of game that seems to only really exist in Japan. It is basically a story driven dating SIM with wonderfully rendered graphics. That said it also has hentai in it, so I would use caution when looking for anime or manga. (Viewer discretion advised at any rate).

The style looks pretty shoujou, so if you like it and are looking for other anime with a similar style I would suggest stuff like by CLAMP, such as Card Captors Sakura or Magic Knight Rayearth.

Sailor Moon is good too, as long as you can sit through the train wreck that is season 1. Of course it being a train wreck means it might be hard to take your eyes off it.

[skftex]

Hey Lore,

I don't think Michael O'Hare (Captain Sinclair) is a bad actor at all. I do think that because he is mainly a stage actor, that sometimes his acting didn't translate too well to the TV format though. And sometimes of course the type of character he was also made him come off as a bit wooden. Sometimes he was fabulous, sometimes not. I do think if you want to see his best stuff to me it was Babylon Squared and War Without End (both of them of course).

[Lorenith]

Babylon squared is the one where they find the station that just sort of vanished right? (Is it the first one or the second one where Sinclair makes a guest appearance?)

His acting was never bad enough to leave me unconvinced, then again the only thing I am sensitive to in acting is inflection in the voice cause I'm a social retard at reading body language!

[skftex]

Babylon Squared was the one in the first season, so Sinclair was still the main character then. Babylon 4 does keep appearing and reappearing, its the first time we hear about B4. War without End 1 & 2 are actually the episodes you are talking about, where Sinclair comes back to help them "steal" Babylon 4. Easily confused because they both deal with the same sort of story. And one of my favorite characters shows up in all three of these, Zathras! "Can not say. Saying, I would know. Do not know, so can not say."

[Lorenith]

Zathras is Zathras!

Ok I remember which one now, I should probably rewatch it all sometime. I kind of sped through all 5 seasons in a little over a month last summer.

I really liked Kosh, er, the original Kosh, the way he talked was...gooood. XD

[skftex]

Yeah, Zathras, he was so good. Of course he shows up in all three of those plus one of the later ones, taking care of the machine where the Keeper is... I think I last watched a B5 episode 2 years ago, really haven't had the time lately. But I have them all, the only series I own every single episode. I don't have all the movies, but have all 5 seasons! I really really got into B5! I liked the way the little things in the first two seasons, things you may or may not have really noticed, led to some really WHOA moments later on in the series. Maybe when I finish school in May I'll do a marathon!

Kosh-the original Kosh was also one of my favorites. I also LOVED G'Kar. Sadly Andreas Katsulas who played G'Kar died a couple of years ago. So did the actor that played the doctor on B5.

[Lorenith]

I didn't know there was movies for B5, although I heard there's another series. I'll have to harass my guy about this we watched all of B5 over the summer, if I'd known there was a movie...is it any good? I know there's another series, but apparently it's bad.

My guy sometimes watchs B5 in the background, although other times he pops in futurama or firefly.

Ahh poor firefly...we hardly knew ye!

[skftex]

Five movies yes, but they were made for TV movies. It is possible that you saw them and thought they were just episodes, even though they were two hours long.
The Gathering-the pilot movie
In the Beginning-which tells about the Earth/Minbari war
River of Souls-brings back the Soul Hunters and is pretty much a stand alone story
Thirdspace-about after the Shadow War
A Call To Arms-the story fits in between the last two season 5 episodes, Objects at Rest and Sleeping in Light (LOVE LOVE LOVE Sleeping in Light!) but it really set things up for the second series, Crusade. I guess that is the series you are talking about not being very good. I think it just didn't have enough of what people who were B5 fans were looking for, though I loved Galen.
There is also a straight to DVD thing called Babylon 5 The Lost Tales, the plan was to have several of them but the only one I've heard about has Bruce Boxleitner in it-I haven't seen it though-plan on buying all of these when I get a chance to round out my collection.

Probably more than you ever wanted to know about the B5 movies! HA HA HA I did say I love B5 though didn't I???

[Lorenith]

You're talking to someone that watched all of B5 in a little over a month!

Unfortunately I can't really remember the titles of episodes too well so there's no telling if I saw them without noticing or not, and my memory is so poor by this point I only remember the overarching plots for each season and some of the more amusing or powerful moments. (Such as the speech Sheridan gave before they retook Earth, or various things about the Centari).

When I get into something I really get into it though even if I may not remember it all too well later.

Watching Bones is a different sort of experience for me, because it's one of the first tv shows I've watched that isn't already complete. So I get to go crazy on a weekly basis wondering what comes up next cause I always want more.

[ThyneAlone]

Woo! See, Lore? I knew absolutely none of that, never having seen B5, though I have read about it in sci-fi magazines etc. For me those last 8 posts or so were totally bewildering, but who cares - I'm learning!

Thanks for the detail on that Youtube vid btw and for your investigation; interesting. The song itself is by indie pop band Ooberman. It tells the story of a girl who runs away from home because of excessive parental pressure and ends up selling seashells in an obscure seaside town, where one night she is lured into the sea by sirens. Ambivalent whether or not she drowns. But the pictures really fit it well.

[Lorenith]

Oh I should also add that the things I suggested do not have any "adult" content. I don't watch things that have that sort of adult in them.

[ThyneAlone]

Yeah, absolutely, not my area of interest either. Though Japanese culture, such a paradoxical thing. Delicacy, rigid etiquette/codes of conduct, sophistication, elegance, skill, technologically advanced - I love the theatre, the art - and yet there seems to be real violence, cruelty and 'adult content' in a lot of the media. I'd be intrigued to know more, Japanese members!

Sailor Moon has a definite Buffy flavour in its storyline. In the sense of school students discovering hidden superpowers with which to battle dark forces. And there seems to be a character in there very like Willow - the shy one. Fascinating. Maybe there are even at this level mythic elements which are common to all cultures.

[Lorenith]

Oh Sailor Moon is absolutely dripping with references to all sorts of western mythology, there isn't as much in the way of Japanese mythology though, not as many references as a lot of other anime make.

I'd talk about some things in it that are common themes in Japanese story telling though, but it would be lots of giant spoilers.

[Sinkwriter72]

Sailor Moon. *giggles* Ah, memories. I had never seen any sort of anime before, so my friend brought over Sailor Moon. We sat in our pj's, watching the show and eating chocolate cereal, like we were kids again (and my parents almost never let us have sugary cereals when I was a kid so that was an indulgence as it was, LOL). It was hilarious and really fun.

Anyone who has never seen Firefly... I highly recommend it. Start in order the way they're presented on the DVDs, though. FOX aired the episodes out of order when the show was still on, and that really messed up the continuity, understanding and appreciation of the program (for me, anyway). The lead character, played by Nathan Fillion, is a bit of an anti-hero, so he's got some fascinating dark and light layers. And Alan Tudyk is so funny. I adore his character, Wash. And you can't go wrong with his wife, the very kick-ass warrior Zoe, played by actress Gina Torres (who recently guested on Bones, by the way). In fact, it's one of those shows (like Bones) where all of the characters are interesting in their own ways.

Lore, do you and your guy have a favorite episode?