Blog Space Nine, part #4: "Melora"

An officer from a low gravity planet is temporarily assigned to Deep Space Nine. While attempting to find a way to enable her to move about the station without a wheelchair, Dr Bashir begins to romance her as well. Meanwhile, an ex-convict arrives on the station with a plan to murder Quark - whose betrayal put him in prison in the first place.

It's an odd coincidence that shortly after watching Babylon 5's "Believers", an episode with a good basic premise let down by poor execution, I found myself watching Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's "Melora", an episode produced with the best of intentions but let down terribly by very similar pitfalls.

Babble On, part #12: "Believers"

Dr Franklin struggles to treat a young patient whose parents' religious beliefs do not allow him to undergo surgery. Meanwhile, Ivanova manages to take a break from the station by escorting a damaged passenger liner through raider territory.

"Believers" presents me with a dilemma, because of all the episodes of Babylon 5 reviewed so far it is easily the most frustrating. It provides a strong, confrontational story, but it brings with it a horrible inconsistency with the rest of the series as well as (a standard failing of the series) some pretty ripe dialogue. In the end my overall opinion could go either way. This is also an episode I can't review without completely spoiling, so if you haven't seen "Believers" you might want to skip the rest of this entry.

Blue (2009)

I'm not averse to the occasional Bollywood film, when the mood takes me. Culturally speaking, Bollywood is a highly distinctive form of cinema. Genre in American-dominated English-language cinema is generally a set of hard-and-fast rules, where elements are fenced off from one another so that a film can only be one or at best two things: a science fiction film, a horror flick, a romantic drama, a musical, and so on. These definitions are much more fluid in Bollywood cinema. Pretty much everyone knows that it's a form of motion picture where song and dance numbers can be inserted into any story. A film can shift from slapstick comedy to drama to confronting violence without a pause or second thought.

Sadly this old-school Bollywood method of film-making - a sort of "stick everything to the wall and see what happens" approach - is in decline, replaced by new films that increasingly attempt to ape the conventions and appearance of American cinema. This is a shame; I think India is losing something very distinctive and rather wonderful in the process. Blue is a case in point.

Five Films: Lau Ching Wan

I've done a couple of Five Films profiles in the past, and the Mark Hamill entry in particular remains the most popular thing on this blog. Tonight I want to discuss five films starring one of my all-time favourite male actors, and I strongly suspect the majority of you won't have heard of him. He's critically acclaimed, extremely popular in his home town, and a multiple award-winner. His name is Lau Ching Wan, and he's an outstanding actor from Hong Kong.

Running Out of Time (1999)
I'm pretty sure that Running Out of Time is the first film in which I noticed Lau. He started off as a television actor before shifting to motion pictures, where he's been one of the key actors for director Johnnie To. I make no apologies for the fact that three of my five picks are Johnnie To films - no director working in the world today is as consistently good at what they do as To, and Lau is one of the best actors he uses. Here Lau plays Inspector To, a police detective caught in a cat and mouse game with a terminally ill master criminal (Andy Lau). Lau returned the role in a sequel.

My Olympus 2012 Items

I am furthest to the right, at Swancon 2011.

Over Easter I will be attending Olympus 2012 in glamorous Heathrow. If you're likely to be there, and wanted to see/meet/heckle me, I'm scheduled on the following items:

The Art of the Movie Poster: 100 Posters in 50 Minutes
Friday 6 April, 1:00pm (Commonwealth Room)
A presentation I first did at Swancon 2011, slightly rejigged to include some more recent posters and probably a little more orange and teal. Official blurb: "For many moviegoers and film fans, the first glimpse that we see of an upcoming motion picture is the theatrical poster. What goes into the design and layout of these posters? How has poster design changed over the years? How do they attract the eye, inform the viewer and excite a film’s future audience? In a special presentation, film fan Grant Watson demonstrates the design and layout of movie posters with 100 examples squeezed into 50 minutes. Warning: may contain the colours orange and teal."

Songstress Sian Brown goes to Europe

A very talented friend from my undergraduate days is raising money for her European tour. I've just pledged $15 in her direction, which scores me a copy of her upcoming EP. If you're in a mood to support the arts, quality independent music and cool Western Australians, check out her Pozible page and consider pledging yourself.

Babble On, Part #11: "Deathwalker"

An intergalactic war criminal known as "Deathwalker" arrives on Babylon 5, and is immediately almost beaten to death by Narn diplomatic attache Na'Toth. As rumours spread of Deathwalker's presence on the station, the various alien governments begin plans to extradite her for her numerous war crimes. When Deathwalker's latest scientific discovery is revealed - the secret to everlasting life - the diplomatic fray becomes considerable more complicated. Meanwhile, Ambassador Kosh hires telepath Talia Winters to monitor a bizarre business exchange with a mystery man named Abbut.

"Deathwalker" is, sadly another fairly dreadful episode of Babylon 5, although at the outset I must confess it contains one of my all-time favourite lines of dialogue (Kosh's "Then the willows must scuttle carefully"). Sarah Douglas of Conan the Destroyer and Superman II fame plays the titular war criminal, and she's taken it as an excuse to ham it up and generally chew the scenery. With a war criminal so out-and-out villainous, it's difficult for the episode to generate any kind of suspense or moral ambiguity. The episode's final "kicker" - the means by which Deathwalker's miracle drug works - is played like it's a moment of abject horror. Unfortunately it comes out as more than a little trite and melodramatic.

Trailer: Game of Thrones Season 2

HBO's Game of Thrones is the best drama on television at the moment, and this new trailer for its second season - which premieres next month - is an outstanding bit of work