Media/Pop Updates

Hi all, it’s been a while since my last media update, so here goes. Two recently canceled, two-season sci-fi action series with some tough women lead characters, and some hatin’ on James Cameron.

Dollhouse. We skipped season two, but watched the series finale; that is, we went from “Epitaph 1″ to “Epitaph 2,” and I liked the jump into the dystopic future. It was interesting to see how use and misuse/abuse of the technology, as well as each of the characters developed/unfolded. My major criticism with the first season (or the show in general) was that Echo was never the most interesting character to me. I think this has to do with Eliza Dushku’s acting; all I kept seeing was Faith Lehane, or slight variations on her with each assignment Echo took. I am still unconvinced that Joss Whedon is a feminist. He’s more of an exploit the girl for purposes of plot development kind of writer.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. We’re watching this on Blu-Ray. Much more feminism apparent here, comparable to BSG’s layered and serious ass-kicking women, in which we see how plausible are the dangers the women characters face. In this series, the male characters, even John Connor, take a step back, and we see how well or not well the women deal, how they make decisions and live with these (or not). We have four more episodes in the series, and I’ve been sold since the first couple of episodes. We’d recently revisited Terminator 2, and apart from James Cameron’s super crappy dialogue writing skills (which, by the way, are also quite apparent in Avatar; yo, with such an astronomic budget, surely you could afford a real writer), especially with Sarah’s dialogue, I dug her character much. I think this is all Linda Hamilton, however embarrassingly cliché her lines.

But back to the TV series. I loved Lena Headey as Sarah, for really inhabiting the tension between hard and vulnerable and exhausted; she is paranoid and maybe insane, and then she is convincing as a mother protecting her boy. Summer Glau as Cameron is effective and enigmatic, not quite robotic but borderline social disorder, as opposed to Shirley Manson as Catherine Weaver. That she’s a T-1000 is supposed to explain why her acting is so robotic, but I just think she doesn’t act. As for the male characters: I do like Thomas Dekker as John Connor; so much happens just in his face, that it’s OK for him not to be the most articulate thing. He’s a teenage boy after all. Actually, the scene between him and Jesse (Stephanie Jacobsen; Look! An Asian!) may be the most articulate I’ve seen him, and there you see how much he’s grown and hardened over these two seasons. I liked Dean Winter as Charlie, Sarah’s former fiance. He’s not stereotypically fatherly but stable and normal, humanizing for the series, protective and then ineffectual. Brian Austin Green has been surprising in a good way, if only because I’ve never seen him as anything but his 90210 character. Ellison (Richard T. Jones) I am still trying to figure out. You know who’s awesome in this series? Garret Dillahunt, first as the methodical and menacing T-888 Cromartie, now as the childlike, and kind of creepy AI John Henry.

Oh, and since I mentioned James Cameron, I just have to say that not only am I glad he did not win Best Feature Film Director from the Directors’ Guild of America. I am very happy that Kathryn Bigelow won instead, not only because she is the first woman to do so, but also because the morally and ethically blurry The Hurt Locker deserves so much more praise than cram the politically correct message down our throats Avatar does.