Ten Things to Know About Battlestar Galactica's Razor
Note from Kristin: When a coworker receives a copy of Battlestar Galactica: Razor and shrieks as if she's won the lottery and that John Krasinski delivered the check, shirtless, you gotta let her be the first to see it, right? Such is the case with WWK's resident cult TV expert Jennifer Godwin, who devoured the two-hour movie (I'm guessing more than once), and has this to report back…
Thank gods! Battlestar is back!
Battlestar Galactica: Razor, a two-hour TV movie premiering Nov. 24 on Sci Fi, is meant to tide us over until Battlestar Galactica the series returns in February 2008, and it absolutely delivers the BSG glories we've come to expect, with a little streak of Alien and Terminator 2 thrown in for good measure.
Preview copies were distributed to the press last week, and while we're not at liberty to disclose the entire story, I did feel it was my duty as a fellow fan to check it out and share what I could.
So, for your previewing pleasure, I've distilled Razor down to a list of the top 10 things you need to know. Enjoy!
- Setting: Razor switches back and forth in time between Lee Adama's leadership of the Battlestar Pegasus and Admiral Helena Cain's (Michelle Forbes) leadership of the Pegasus immediately following the original Cylon attack.
- Winks at the Audience: Gina's (Pegasus Six) last name is Inviere. Inviere is Old Gemenese for resurrection. Oh, those wacky Cylons and their name games.
- Characters: Stephanie Chaves-Jacobsen—who plays the heroine of our story, Kendra Shaw—is a star of tomorrow. Casting directors, have your phones at the ready.
- Mythology: DNA is sooo cool. Just like on Heroes these days, everything is about missing links, evolutionary dead ends and hybrids. Also, maybe a few zombies.
- Cast: Razor features lots of Lee, Kara, Adama and Gina/Pegasus Six; a smattering of Roslin; Tigh and Sharon in passing; and no Baltar, Tyrol or Helo.
- Pacing: The first 15 minutes are unforgivably slow.
- Quote to Remember: "All this has happened before and will happen again."
- Foreshadowing: Kara Thrace gets another prophecy. Girl's the most heralded thing since Buffy, I'll swear.
- Themes: Cain, for all her robust leadership, is best understood as a "Don't."
- Effects: Here's to the creation of the 12 humanoid Cylons for the reimagined series. It was an inspired choice, because as Razor reminds us, the original-recipe toasters really are kind of clunky and dumb.
Feel free to weigh in with your thoughts on Razor below, and send any BSG-related questions. So say we all!
Sex and the City Review: A Man’s Perspective
The following review comes from our east coast correspondent Zach Lawrence:
Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Jungle of the Swinging Shia, The Chronicles of Narnia; the last few weeks, my girlfriend has been a hardcore trooper. So what does a man do? He owes. He owes her one, and my fellow fan boys and movie geeks, listen closely, this information could save your life.
I was never a huge “Sex” fan, but I learned to appreciate the culture value of the four girls tearing up New York with their cosmopolitans and gabby sex chat turning an entire generation of regular girls into the equivalent of metro sexual males. This movie runs from nowhere and from what I remember, pretty much picks up where we last left the girls. When I say “runs from nowhere” I mean, there is no harbinger to kick off this highly anticipated film besides everyone’s contentment. Now this is where the genius kicks in, after beginning with everyone having settled into their lives, each in their own way individually and as a collective, they are almost immediately torn down to basically nullify what the whole series built up to.
Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda each have their own set of problems which tie in nicely with well placed and well paced dialogue over conveniently set up lunch dates and dinners. Carrie at the start of the movie is jilted by Big at the wedding alter and falls apart, while her girlfriends rally for support, Miranda’s husband cheats on her, Charlotte is still psychotically happy and (get ready) Samantha is the funniest part of the film. She, in my masculine opinion, was the most entertaining part of the show and still dominates on film. Sadly though that’s kind of it, things of course tie up here and there but this is still just Sex and the City, just a two and half hour (I repeat 2 ½ hours) long episode.
I was in a sold out, maximum capacity audience and was, I think, one out five men in attendance. The women laughed it up. Every unfunny dry joke of Carrie’s or ditsy move of Charlotte (literally shitting her pants), or Samantha foaming at the mouth for her hot neighbor, got a screaming response from all the cougars in the audience as well as the little girls who want to be like the characters. Also as a side note, this seems to be the year of full frontal male nudity, so men beware, there is more wang and man ass in this film then naked girls.
Now I’m not contradicting myself. This was not a bad film, it just wasn’t good. It was somewhere in that gray area of “ok” where you get lost in your decision on whether or not you liked it. At the end, the movie got a bigger applause then Indiana Jones which rocked me to the core in a disturbing way, and left you with no real answers. It ended in the same way the series ended. Thank god Pete didn’t see this film, it would have hurt his skull, I just have a larger capacity for girly things, I.E. shopping, hair and nails and boy talk. What I mean by that is I frequently get asked advice on wedding dress shopping which was a large part of this film as well as hair and nails and purses and shoes.
I think I may have lost a bet in the way that I believed Crystal Skull would still hold the #1 spot after its huge haul last week but after the movie let out last night I was dumbstruck. I have never seen a cinema more run amok with women that I fear for Indy’s spot. I may very well be eating my words that people have forgotten about Sex and the City, because my friends, about once a year a movie is released targeting a 100% female audience, and man oh man, they came in droves. It was like a sluttier Rocky Horror Picture Show with everyone dressing skanky like the girls in the movie; with the 18 to 60 year old demographic this movie is a gold mine for a single man to pick up girls. . . . . You will NEVER hear me say that again about a movie theatre, so get in while the gettings good!