Babylon 5 - DVD Movie Collection thread

[CRONAN]

Whoops, it looks like I was mistakin....

Apparently, I didn't loose my B5 stuff after all, IT WAS IN MY BACK PACK THE WHOLE FREAKING TIME!!!!!!

....and for some reason the black on black coloring had me completely fooled! Boy does my black pack work in mysterious ways. Talk about a pit black bottomless hole. Anyhoo, I'll definately be sure to be more careful in the future....

::ducks and runs::

[Ranger1]

Originally posted by WalkingEagle
I don't get into the commentaries while watching an episode unless there is some inforamtion I am looking for. As for the movies, I will stay away from the commentaries because I don't want it to color how I feel about the story while I'm watching.

I love the commentaries on all the Babylon 5 dvd's,the one i didn't liked so much was ACTA commentary,too technical,but im sure people out there dig that kinda stuff.

[FuryPilot]

Originally posted by CRONAN
Whoops, it looks like I was mistakin....

Apparently, I didn't loose my B5 stuff after all, IT WAS IN MY BACK PACK THE WHOLE FREAKING TIME!!!!!!

::ducks and runs::

Good idea. Might want to lay low for a while.

And watch DVDs.

FP

[WalkingEagle]

Originally posted by Ranger1
I love the commentaries on all the Babylon 5 dvd's,the one i didn't liked so much was ACTA commentary,too technical,but im sure people out there dig that kinda stuff.

Yeah... there is something in there for everybody. This weekend I will finish watching the movies for the first time. So far I am thoroughly enjoying them.

Anybody have any idea what THE MEMORY OF SHADOWS will be about or is JMS really locking the door on this information?

[Joseph DeMartino]

Anybody have any idea what THE MEMORY OF SHADOWS will be about or is JMS really locking the door on this information?

[Kosh]Yes[/Kosh]



Joe

[Joseph DeMartino]

CRONAN:

Hmmm. I believe that still leaves you without S4 and S5, right? Reply to PM

Joe

[Joseph DeMartino]

Well, I'm burning through the set. I recently restarted watching the series in chronological order again ("A Voice in the Wilderness" in S1, which I interupted to check out the movies), so I'm well up on ItB and TG. I went straight to the commentaries on that one. Then I skipped to The River of Souls sort of on the theory that you should eat your broccoli first and get it out of the way, so you'll enjoy your entree and desert more. (Although nowadays I'm quite fond of broccoli.) Anyway, when it debuted I didn't like the film, and have never really watched it since. I thought it the poorest of the lot, and if I happened to stumble across it in progress I might leave it on as "background music" (and to wait for the holo-Lochley scenes to come on) but didn't pay it much attention.

I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. It is really a much better film than I remembered. Martin Sheen's performance seems much less mannered and odd to me now, especially once his character starts to get a handle on English, I enjoyed the humor and the whole thing seemed better paced. I liked it even better when I watched it again tonight, this time with the subtitles and the commentary track. I'm really looking forward to Thirdspace now, since I had previously ranked that much better than TRoS but behind A Call to Arms.

Regards,

Joe

[vacantlook]

Although nowadays I'm quite fond of broccoli.

Feel no shame, for I also find broccoli to be an tasty and fullfilling food!

[CRONAN]

Yeah sometimes you just have to loosen up your standards, relax, sit back, and mellow out to enjoy these things. And try not to be cynical.

Otherwise, you get all tense and cranky to the point where its more a painful than pleasant experience.

As for me, Im holding out on S4 until I can make it back to the US. Its not easy, but if its the last thing Ill ever do, I'll watch B5 S4!!!!

[jcbatz]

You know, I agree with the re-evaluation of River of Souls. I wasn't looking forward to seeing it again, too. I seem to remember it being a lot worse than it actually was.
Maybe the knowledge that Sheen WANTED to play the Soul Hunter instead of the archeologist changed my outlook. I saw Sheen's mannerisms as intentional instead of "phoned in."

I'd almost say I enjoyed RoS more than Thirdspace. Almost.

Could this mean that Legend of the Rangers isn't as bad as I remember?

[Joseph DeMartino]

Could this mean that Legend of the Rangers isn't as bad as I remember?

Stranger things have happened. You'll probably know by the end of the year.

I think expectations color our experience of these things a lot more than we realize. With S5 we knew it was the last season, people were still ticked off (and deeply divided) about Claudia leaving (half the fans blaming her, the other half blaming JMS) and everyone wanted to get to the conclusion of the show, Londo's destiny and whatever was going to happen in "Sleeping in Light". At the same time we were catching up or rewatching the earlier seasons - for the first time in a five day a week "strip", which made even the subtle arc moments that we'd lose track of from week to week very clear - and finding they looked even better in retrospect. So the "slow" start of the season, the week's wait between shows, the breaks for basketball all tended to frustrate us and to make the telepath arc (which was only featured, mostly not as the "A" story, in about 8 episodes) seem interminable.

The fact that Claudia's departure genuinely did weaken the story, that Byron was (by design) rather full of himself and annoying, and that Lochley didn't really have a chance to define her character until "Day of the Dead" were real problems that fan frustration magnified until it seemed to many that the whole season - or at least the first half - were painful and boring. (Oh, add the universally-derided "teep song" to the list of genuinely bad things about the season - I don't care if JMS did write it.)

But on reviewing the season on DVD (and watching two or three episodes a night ) a lot of fans who had previously hated S5 suddenly found it much better than they remembered. (I had much the same reaction watching it Monday through Friday the first time when it joined the re-run rotation on TNT. Stripped of my expectations about what JMS would or should be doing in S5 and without the long breaks between episodes I found it to be much more enjoyable.

People who haven't watched Rangers since its debut may well find it a better film than they remembered. I never thought it was that bad. "We live for the One..." was repeated too often. The last minute compromise weapons system was a mistake. So were Delenn's magic rings in the B5 pilot - they went away, so would the weapons system. Geez, folks, that's what a pilot is for - to try things out. To see what (and who) works or not. So that the series can be better. As for "The Hand" and the "we've already seen this" "did JMS forget is own future history, how can they be older than the Shadows" critiques. Listen to the B5 commentaries. Read the current thread about The Amazing Spiderman on that comic book newsgroup. No, I don't think JMS had lost the ability to write by Rangers, and I don't think he had amnesia, or that the character did. I think he was setting something up and all the seeming inconsistencies would have been dealt with in the series - just as in all his other projects.

Regards,

Joe

[AmyG]

(Oh, add the universally-derided "teep song" to the list of genuinely bad things about the season - I don't care if JMS did write it.)

All together now - and a one, and a two, and a...

"And we will all come together in a better place, a better place than this..."

Ugh. I think I need to ram a bleach-soaked Q-tip in my brain now!

Aisling

[NotKosh]

Originally posted by AislingGrey
All together now - and a one, and a two, and a...

"And we will all come together in a better place, a better place than this..."

Ugh. I think I need to ram a bleach-soaked Q-tip in my brain now!

Aisling

So how many people enjoyed seeing Byron take himself and a few other teeps out in a conflagaration in Phoenix Rising?

[NotKosh]

Watching A Call To Arms I had forgotten the initial newscast. It puts the Telepath "Crisis" as ending recently by 2278. To me that would mean around 6 months...

[Joseph DeMartino]

Watching A Call To Arms I had forgotten the initial newscast. It puts the Telepath "Crisis" as ending recently by 2278. To me that would mean around 6 months...

Sorry, wrong on both counts. ACtA takes place in late 2266, not 2278 (that's the framing story from In the Beginning), and the Teep War is "recent" in a slightly broader sense like "the recently started war on terror" which is nearly three years old but is certainly more recent than, say, Vietnam or Korea, or even the Cold War as a whole.

JMS has already said that the Teep War ended in 2265 - which still counts as recent to most people over the age of 30 or so. It is a year or so later and they're getting ready to dedicate the memorial, which sounds about right. Don't forget, the news anchor doesn't refer to a Telepath War but "the Telepath Crisis" As JMS is fond of saying, the duration can be a lot longer than the war.

The fightiing may only have lasted a few months, beginning in 2224 (when Lyta told Garibaldi she'd be back and the date by which her army was to be ready) and ending in 2265. But the rebuilding, the disbanding of Psi Corps, the creation of the new Metasensory Division, the drafting of new laws governing telepaths and the war crimes trials - all the things either not resolved by the war or created by it - would take months or years to settle. At the time of ACtA the "crisis" might not only justly be called recent, it could as easily be called "on going".

Regards,

Joe