Ok, here's your dose of castor oil!
:thumbdwn:
Review from the Chicago Tribune...
Here's the link and the review:
http://metromix.chicagotribune.com/r...x-critics_heds
'Galactica' intriguing, but needs more episodes
By Maureen Ryan
Tribune staff reporter
The makers of the new "Battlestar Galactica" mini-series are certainly ambitious.
According to the show's press kit, the creators of the SciFi Channel epic wanted not just to reimagine the short-lived '70s TV series, but to use it as a means to reinvent the outer-space genre on television.
"Even in features, the genre has become big and glossy and romantic," says executive producer and writer Ronald D. Moore. "I was eager to write . . . a story with real characters."
You can't fault Moore, a writer for "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and HBO's "Carnivale," for that lofty goal. It's just too bad that the mini-series ends just as the fates of those characters starts to get interesting.
The two-night movie, which airs at 8 p.m. Monday and Tuesday on the SciFi Channel, comes across as the setup for a television series we'll probably never get to see. That's a shame, because despite the fact that this "Galactica" is uneven and poorly directed, I would have liked to see what happened next.
Apparently some fans of the original TV show are upset that Moore and executive producer David Eick tinkered with elements of the first "Galactica": In this version, which takes place 40 years after an all-out war between the evil Cylons and human colonists, hotshot pilot "Starbuck" is a woman and the Cylons have an entirely different look. These changes struck me as a smart updating of the old series, though purists may disagree.
Edward James Olmos gives a solid performance as Commander Adama, the leader of the "Galactica" spaceship, which is being turned into a floating museum when the long-dormant Cylons attack. Mary McDonnell is similarly understated as Laura Roslin, the cabinet member who inherits the presidency when the rest of the government goes up in smoke.
Though this "Galactica" outing isn't quite as free from cliche as the producers promised, it's a reasonably intriguing effort, and worth the time of sci-fi aficionados. Though if the show does return as a series, let's hope it's without inept director Michael Rymer, whose biggest previous credit was the critically savaged "Queen of the Damned" and whose fondness for swooping and jittery camera moves gets mighty irritating. There are many excellent directors working in TV today, but he's not one of them.
Review: 'Galactica' intriguing, but needs more episodes
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