David A. Harding
Tuesday, 01 Mar 2005
My goal in this, my first vacation, is to relax as much as possible. What better way to shut off the brain than to watch movies? So Sunday night I headed down to Blockbuster and browsed their selection for about an hour. I came away with four film-like objects.
The first I watched was `Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars'. Before I go further I should note that I quit watching TV several years ago because of one signifigent event: The abrubt cancellation of the Farscape TV series.
This miniseries is, aparently, billed by the production studio as episodes 4.23-26. What is interesting about this is Farscape was cancelled at episode 4.22; so this TV miniseries picks up right where they left off. Ok, MINOR SPOILER WARNING: This miniseries also concludes the series, which I appreciate—though not enough to begin watching TV again END SPOILER. It was as good as a regular Farscape episode (which is really good) just longer. If you're a Farscape fan I suggest watching it, if you've never watched Farscape this isn't for you.
Next I watched `Stargate' (the movie), which I hadn't seen in a long time but sounded like fun. This was the ``Director's Cut'' but I didn't note any signifigant changes, just a few more scenes (isn't that refreshing!).
Now to the more interesting DVDs I picked up, the first being `Led Zepplin: The Song Remains the Same'. This was good-to-great, I've always wanted to see Zep in concert and this was my best chance: it contains video from their 1973 Madison Square Garden performance. My only peeve: Just put the damn camera three or four rows back and give me a wide shot! No more cutting to different cameras! I want to pretend I'm in the damn audience!
My final film sounded rather, well, dull: `Startup .com'. Yet it turned out to be the best of the lot. In fact it is probably the best documentary I have ever seen in my life. It's about two High School friends who start a .com with tons (20+ million) of venture capital money. They fail within 18 months, shortly after the .com stock market crash. The buisness is the setting, these two's friendship through this is the story. It is potent because I could see doing something remarkablly similar with one of my friends.