When the seventh episode of Hulu’s Castle Rock – titled “The Queen” – immediately felt very familiar, we shouldn’t have been too surprised that it drew not from Stephen King but from a famously excellent episode of another TV show whose DNA had been plainly evident in this one. And then from a great movie.
In taking down Christopher Nolan’s Inception, Jim Emerson writes: “[W]hat this movie’s facilely conceived CGI environments have to do with dreaming, as human beings experience dreams, I don’t know. … [T]he movie’s concept of dreams as architectural labyrinths – stable and persistent science-fiction action-movie sets that can be blown up with explosives or shaken with earthquake-like tremors, but that are firmly resistant to shifting or morphing into anything else – is mystifying to me.” The complaint is fair enough, given that Inception regularly refers to “dreams.” But what’s going on is only marginally related to how “human beings experience dreams.” The movie’s plot concerns espionage that uses as its tool a shared, drug-induced dream-like state with environments created by external “architects.” And if one does a little thinking, one realizes that the technique of the premise is effective only if scientists and practitioners can exercise control over the dreaming – that is, if they eliminate the inherent fluidity, randomness, and chaos.
Finished Battlestar Galactica. Can I sue Ronald D. Moore to get 3,234 minutes back? Loved the conception and arc; often hated the execution.
The sci-fi of ‘Moon’ is philosophical, humane, rigorous, and austere, and I adore the robot’s hopeful emoticon expressions; that feels right
‘BSG S3’ starts bracingly and ends depressingly shittily. New Caprica gave me hope; ‘Watchtower’ felt like 6 hours of agony. Vexingly uneven
The consensus apex of the Star Trek films, ‘Khan’ opens as slowly as its forebear and only eclipses it when the Genesis and Spock plots meet
Once you get past the torpid first hour, 1979’s ‘Star Trek’ is shockingly compelling – a leisurely puzzle that presages ‘BSG’ and its themes
‘Star Trek’ – Brisk, elegant, and thin, Abrams’ reboot draws its gravity from Leonard Nimoy, funny and illogically emotional. Pegg is a hoot
‘Lost’ S5 finale: Josh Holloway proves himself the worst among many bad actors; the suspense is less “What happens next?!” than “Where now?”
‘Battlestar Galactica S1’ – After the brisk miniseries, this was a long haul with an admittedly superior cliffhanger. Tigh must die — now.
