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ConfusedUs posted:Her "Why not?" in Severed Dreams is my favorite Delenn line. The rest of the speech is fine, but that "why not?" has just the perfect degree of dismissal. I thought it was a cool line but delenn's delivery was flat, much like her character overall.
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Jun 29, 2017 21:35
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ConfusedUs posted:Ivanova owns in that episodes and it's hilarious watching her deal with those Darwinist assholes. Her solution was pretty amazing, admittedly. I'm glad these nerds never show up again.
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Jun 29, 2017 21:44
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The Unlife Aquatic posted:Honestly I'm disappointed this man hasn't been in more. He has such an excellent voice, like a rough-hewn knife - sharp yet earthy and rough. Every time I see Sheridan with a beard I think it was a criminal waste that Boxleitner was never cast as General Ulysses S. Grant.
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Jun 29, 2017 21:53
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Every time I see Sheridan with a beard I think it was a criminal waste that Boxleitner was never cast as General Ulysses S. Grant. Would watch a film or TV series about the Grant administrations with him as Grant.
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Jun 29, 2017 21:53
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Or even as Bill Clinton.
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Jun 29, 2017 22:06
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:Every time I see Sheridan with a beard I think it was a criminal waste that Boxleitner was never cast as General Ulysses S. Grant. He did play Longstreet in gods and generals but that movie is trash
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Jun 29, 2017 22:49
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Panzeh posted:I thought it was a cool line but delenn's delivery was flat, much like her character overall. The rest of the line, yeah. But "Why not?" was so perfect when delivered somewhat flat. Like the Earth ships were just beneath her (as they indeed were), the same way you'd talk to a 10-year-old you caught trying to break into your car as he tries to order you not to call the cops, or else. Flat, disdainful, and slightly amused, because you're really going to enjoy the schadenfreude whether he backs down in shame, or earns some good old-fashioned comeuppance.
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Jun 29, 2017 23:03
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This show is so loving awesome, I loved it when it was on. I've been rewatching it with my wife who knew nothing about it beyond "folks on a space station" and it's really grown on her. It's great to see someone experiencing G'Kar/Londo/Kosh/everything for the first time.  I also have to say, upon re-watch the first season is....not as rough as I was expecting it to be? The episode with the Quake II Strogg trooper that was unstoppable was cool, and none of them were particularly awful. We're just past the episode where Sheridan loses it and tries to hold Mr. Morden indefinitely but then he sees that the Shadows have been around the whole time and because he's awesome instead of being worried he just makes a quick speech to Kosh about he's loving going to their home personally to stop them.  I know people have mixed opinions of JMS' writing but Bruce Boxleitner delivering that stuff is always perfect. It's also been cool seeing it again and seeing how well established everything gets in the first season. You really get a great feel for how stuff runs on Babylon 5 very quickly. I think having it be a military station first and foremost made that easier for them to pull off. I know in theory it's supposed to be like NYC with the UN in space but in execution they put a lot of realistic feeling butting heads regarding who has jurisdiction over certain situations, what insitution's codes are supposed to be followed when dealing with ____, even this early on it's visibly way more thought out. I know more serialized TV is commonplace today but Babylon 5, The X-Files and Twin Peaks were all very experimental not just with their subject matter but with them being the first shows to really attempt and stick to that, and it's awesome how cool all three of them still are (even if The X-Files ran way longer than it needed to). Also LOL I forgot about Lennier being a master kickboxer and him and Garibaldi becoming motorcycle-building bros. Alas, I actually have a copy of the pilot movie, The Gathering but didn't find it until after we started watching. It's sort of loving awesome and horrible at the same time, but I love it. The thrust of the show is totally different like it's almost more a police procedural murder mystery kind of thing. And it was released a year before the show started so the costumes are cheaper/not quite there design-wise, Delenn has magic rings like the Mandarin, some weird stuff going on in it. They kind of remade it with that In the Beginning movie but built around the way the show actually works anyway. How is there not already on the internet a gif of the super cheap sportscaster talking, then the camera slowly panning over to the giant neon Zima sign.  Was that The Lost Tales movie they did in like 2007 any good? So, Claudia Christian, Marc Alaimo (Gul Dukat), and Armin Shimerman (Quark) were in a Full Moon Productions movie in 1989 called Arena. It's loving awesome and is basically the martial arts/boxing tournament underdog episode of Babylon 5 but a two hour movie. It's goofy and super fun please watch it if you ever have a chance. It's usually on YouTube since no one cares about it but you can buy it on DVD for like $2. It's also amazing because it's a few years before DS9 but Alaimo and Shimerman are basically playing the season one takes of their DS9 characters. Christian plays the good guy's manager, Dukat is the evil corrupt manager and is basically dressed like space dracula. It owns and there's some other really cool makeup/creature effects in it.Also the costumes and designs are all basically "what if Babylon 5 was made in 1988:" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHKnU-YkOE4 Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Jun 29, 2017 |
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Jun 29, 2017 23:40
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I saw Arena while drinking on Netflix at least 4 or 5 years ago; it's an amazing movie for shooting the poo poo with friends about. If I recall correctly they were hoping it would take off and become a new Star Wars-type success.
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Jun 29, 2017 23:58
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Party Plane Jones posted:If I recall correctly they were hoping it would take off and become a new Star Wars-type success. I love the movie but literally have no idea what possible chain of events made them think this would happen.
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Jun 30, 2017 00:17
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Neo Rasa posted:Was that The Lost Tales movie they did in like 2007 any good? No, it's Bruce running around in front of ugly blue-screen sets like the BSG movies.
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Jun 30, 2017 01:39
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Panzeh posted:I thought it was a cool line but delenn's delivery was flat, much like her character overall. The religious caste all play affectless for the most part. Furlan's delivery is deliberately flat, with increasing exceptions later in the series, usually either associated with anguish or with anger or with her relationship to Sheridan. You might look up Furlan's voicework as Silver Sable for one of the Spider-Man cartoons to get a sense of the specific performance choices she's making and of her range. Greater dynamism isn't built in to the character. If you think that doesn't work, it's on JMS for writing her that way, not Furlan for playing her as she was written. If Furlan takes a hit here it's that she may have been overly deferential to JMS' vision of the character; OTOH, she appears to have generally been letter perfect on her lines where some of her castmates were, shall we say, sometime casual with what was written for them. Neo Rasa posted:Was that The Lost Tales movie they did in like 2007 any good? Not especially. It isn't entirely irredeemable but it screams "we didn't have a budget." There's an extra feature with JMS discussing how they're going to stage the whole thing with puppet performers against greenscreen; evidently this is a bit of an inside joke as he complained to Warner Brothers that the budget they were offering him was so small that he'd have to use puppets instead of actors. I keep wondering when the Warner Bros executive who hates B5 is going to retire... not that they'd restart the franchise then, either.
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Jun 30, 2017 01:44
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Neo Rasa posted:Was that The Lost Tales movie they did in like 2007 any good? Not really. As Narsham says, it's so obvious the budget was not even shoestring. It is nice to see Sheridan again, and to see more updated/modern B5 sets, but it's just not great as a whole. I do like the two stories, though. One about finding a literal demon that deals with faith in the face of space opera stuff and the other that is basically 'Would you kill Hitler if you had the chance?' It had a very nice intro sequence, though.
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Jun 30, 2017 02:28
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I've always loved that the punchline to the prophecy of Babylon 5 ending in a grizzly explosion turns out to be from them decomissioning the station after it's outlived its purpose. Instead of whatever mess Babylon Prime would've been.
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Jun 30, 2017 02:46
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Panzeh posted:I thought it was a cool line but delenn's delivery was flat, much like her character overall. I have NEVER seen a more wrong opinion on this ENTIRE WEBSITE.
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Jun 30, 2017 03:36
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Neo Rasa posted:I also have to say, upon re-watch the first season is....not as rough as I was expecting it to be? This is what I've always said. It gets a bad rap on the internet, and it's finding its legs for sure, but even very early on it's got inklings of greatness, and by about the last quarter of the season it's really coming together. Early to mid season 2 is when the quality starts rocketing up as it fully hits its stride, but I wouldn't ever want to watch it without season 1.
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Jun 30, 2017 04:04
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Season 1 has some funny-rear end episodes too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22m3YR1tZ7k
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Jun 30, 2017 04:20
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turn left hillary!! noo posted:This is what I've always said. It gets a bad rap on the internet, and it's finding its legs for sure, but even very early on it's got inklings of greatness, and by about the last quarter of the season it's really coming together. Early to mid season 2 is when the quality starts rocketing up as it fully hits its stride, but I wouldn't ever want to watch it without season 1. "Infection" is like a miniature version of one of the main plotlines. "Soul Hunter" is remarkable and really unusual and challenging intellectually, especially if you're not rewatching, because why trust a Minbari's opinion over that of the Soul Hunter, or Franklin? There's something in those floaty ball-things, but who can prove that they're souls? Feed in the possibility that some viewers will believe souls actually exist and some won't, as well as Minbari-soul-related stuff that becomes important later on, and it's an interesting story quite apart from plot and performance. W. Morgan Sheppard gets to play a crazy alien who is different crazy from the rest of his people. There's some horror-not just the "painless death" rig but the strange non-violent violence of the Hunter's death. And the coda, where Delenn smashes globes with an odd expression of pleasure on her face, is downright chilling, because either she's freeing trapped souls to go on to where they should go, or she's releasing duplicates of dead people, or she's sending actual preserved life force into oblivion, or some permutation of those. Sure, she is absolutely convinced she's doing good, and maybe the show is, too, on balance, but as presented the situation is chillingly ambiguous. It is certain that Delenn never consulted these souls before releasing them. Maybe some of the earlier souls weren't forcefully taken and wouldn't want to be released.
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Jun 30, 2017 05:10
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Pick posted:Season 1 has some funny-rear end episodes too. My favorite scene from that episode is when Sheridan thinks that he's about to get chewed by Londo for being about to kiss one of his wives' hands, and then Londo takes him aside and basically says "woah, dude, watch out, she's bad fuckin' news." That "we'll talk later" at the end slays me.
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Jun 30, 2017 05:43
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The Unlife Aquatic posted:Her solution was pretty amazing, admittedly. I'm glad these nerds never show up again. They sort of do. There's a scene a few episodes later where Delenn is sending a report back to Minbar and says "There have been ... difficulties ... in concluding a trade agreement with the Lumati." It's a throwaway gag, but great fun if you spot it.
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Jun 30, 2017 07:49
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Jedit posted:They sort of do. There's a scene a few episodes later where Delenn is sending a report back to Minbar and says "There have been ... difficulties ... in concluding a trade agreement with the Lumati." It's a throwaway gag, but great fun if you spot it. JMS never forgets.
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Jun 30, 2017 08:20
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Pick posted:JMS never forgets. Unless he decides to make a deal with the devil or go on a long boring pointless walk across america, and then quits halfway through
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Jun 30, 2017 08:25
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bobkatt013 posted:Unless he decides to make a deal with the devil or go on a long boring pointless walk across america, and then quits halfway through He finished Midnight Nation, though. 
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Jun 30, 2017 09:12
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I liked Rising Stars a lot but haven't read it since it was new.
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Jun 30, 2017 14:40
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Neo Rasa posted:I liked Rising Stars a lot but haven't read it since it was new. Volumes one and two hold up reasonably well (largely on the art style which I was always fond of), but I only got maybe 10 pages into volume three and just....couldn't. I can't imagine finding anything upon a repeat reading that would make volume three not terrible.
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Jun 30, 2017 16:32
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Pick posted:I have NEVER seen a more wrong opinion on this ENTIRE WEBSITE. As the show goes on, they focus more on Delenn and Sheridan and put her more and more forward and it sucks because other characters who are less monotone get sidelined for her. I had absolutely no problem with Lennier who also kinda had that thing going on. I also thought the Rangers were pretty dumb and a bit on the nose for what JMS was going for.
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Jun 30, 2017 16:52
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The Rangers always confused me, and I still don't see how Marcus is supposed to work, he's supposed to be helping run a secret underground network of soldiers and scouts, but he's so loud and flamboyant in mannerism that he sticks out like a sore thumb.
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Jul 1, 2017 23:00
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Baka-nin posted:The Rangers always confused me, and I still don't see how Marcus is supposed to work, he's supposed to be helping run a secret underground network of soldiers and scouts, but he's so loud and flamboyant in mannerism that he sticks out like a sore thumb. I'm pretty sure he's JMS's AD&D character.
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Jul 1, 2017 23:24
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Baka-nin posted:The Rangers always confused me, and I still don't see how Marcus is supposed to work, he's supposed to be helping run a secret underground network of soldiers and scouts, but he's so loud and flamboyant in mannerism that he sticks out like a sore thumb. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf_Y4MbUCLY
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Jul 2, 2017 00:22
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You wouldn't believe the kinds of places the Spanish Inquisition turns up.  It's in the Patlabor TV series. Baka-nin posted:The Rangers always confused me, and I still don't see how Marcus is supposed to work, he's supposed to be helping run a secret underground network of soldiers and scouts, but he's so loud and flamboyant in mannerism that he sticks out like a sore thumb. The general idea is that most of them do not act like Marcus, and have little more than the badge on them while they just hang around acting like normal people whilst listening for any good rumours. They only wear the robes when they're in more visible roles and need to show The Rangers are coming to gently caress someone up.
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Jul 2, 2017 04:00
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Neddy Seagoon posted:You wouldn't believe the kinds of places the Spanish Inquisition turns up. What is Torgo doing there?
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Jul 2, 2017 05:19
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monster on a stick posted:What is Torgo doing there? gotta have something to do when the master's not away
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Jul 2, 2017 06:22
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monster on a stick posted:What is Torgo doing there? NnnnooO Bo-Body expECTS Torr-GO.
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Jul 2, 2017 06:41
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Neddy Seagoon posted:The general idea is that most of them do not act like Marcus, and have little more than the badge on them while they just hang around acting like normal people whilst listening for any good rumours. They only wear the robes when they're in more visible roles and need to show The Rangers are coming to gently caress someone up. Plus Marcus is pretty low key when he first gets on board and chastises Lennier/etc. for not realizing they should order a drink while in a bar to appear like they're just there to drink and stuff like that, but afterwards we only really see him when he's directly interacting with people who know what's up so it's not like he's compromising anything.
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Jul 3, 2017 01:43
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Marcus gets the best one liner in the series. "Who knew they were French."
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Jul 3, 2017 03:42
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And there's this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03bOrvlAyeQ Marcus was a pretty cool guy!
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Jul 3, 2017 10:20
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Neo Rasa posted:Plus Marcus is pretty low key when he first gets on board and chastises Lennier/etc. for not realizing they should order a drink while in a bar to appear like they're just there to drink and stuff like that, but afterwards we only really see him when he's directly interacting with people who know what's up so it's not like he's compromising anything. Marcus was so over the top it's hard to believe he was supposed to be a secret agent. He was always wearing the elaborate Minbari robes like a space weeaboo and waxing poetically whenever he got the chance. It would make more sense if he was so bad at spycraft they just made him the main face of the group to handling the face to face stuff with the B5 crew.
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Jul 3, 2017 21:03
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Panzeh posted:I thought it was a cool line but delenn's delivery was flat, much like her character overall. Eh, it's a cool line if you watch it with the mentality of a 15-year-old. Straczynski was relatively good at plotting (although how militant he gets when people call him out for cribbing from other sources is rather distasteful), but he sucks at dialogue.
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Jul 3, 2017 21:32
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pentyne posted:Marcus was so over the top it's hard to believe he was supposed to be a secret agent. He was always wearing the elaborate Minbari robes like a space weeaboo and waxing poetically whenever he got the chance. It would make more sense if he was so bad at spycraft they just made him the main face of the group to handling the face to face stuff with the B5 crew. My copy of To Dream In The City of Sorrows is not to hand, but as I recall it's more that Marcus was super driven and angry because of guilt over his brother's death. He joins the Rangers to kick rear end and get revenge, not to skulk about, and that's always buried away behind the flippant veneer.
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Jul 3, 2017 21:47
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Timby posted:Eh, it's a cool line if you watch it with the mentality of a 15-year-old. Straczynski was relatively good at plotting (although how militant he gets when people call him out for cribbing from other sources is rather distasteful), but he sucks at dialogue. Yeah, I've recommended B5 to a bunch of people and I always feel like I have to warn them that the terrible dialogue is just something you have to accept. It always throws me for a bit of a loop when someone comes back and says that they didn't think it was all that bad, because despite B5 being easily one of my top ten favorite shows of all time I absolutely cringe at most of the dialogue that's supposed to sound poignant or badass. I think what bugs me the most is that the content of the dialogue is generally good, but the phrasing just tends to be awkward and unnatural.
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Jul 3, 2017 22:47
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