'Let It Snow'

Just a quick bit of self-advertising: I wrote a Christmassy Tekken fanfic about, of course, the Williams sisters, and you can read it here if you fancy.

And if I don't post again before the date comes, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone.

Quick Review - BATTLESTAR GALACTICA: BLOOD AND CHROME

Lens flare alert!

Get your JJ Abrams the hell away from this franchise!

I love the noughties remake of Battlestar Galactica.  Like, firstborn-son love it.  I don't necessarily revisit individual episodes as often as I do with Doctor Who or Supernatural, but that's mainly down to being incapable of leaving it at one; if I watch 'Pegasus', you better believe I'm watching the rest of season 2 marathon-style.  And if I'm not working tomorrow, season 3 as well.

There's not any one thing that really makes or breaks the show; it's the simple fact that every single creative element behind it gave 110% and found a common path upon which they could push themselves as workers whilst still committing to the same singular goal.  The writers shake things up so hard so frequently it's a wonder anyone can stand up on the Galactica without falling over.  The directors pull you from one end of the show's world to the other fast enough to lose your breath and yet still make every scene, every development, crystal clear.  The cast give career-best performances all around, and I have never cared for an ensemble in any form of fiction as much as I did for these assorted officers, pilots, politicians, sawbones, religious nuts, kooky lawyers and meat robots.  The production design team crafted fleets of spacecraft of all shapes and sizes, built interiors where no space is wasted and every single element has a purpose, AND decided that wasn't enough and invented the most eerily-minimalist interiors they could for the Cylon baseships and their computers controlled by puddles of water because God magic.  Bear McCreary's musical cues brought me to the verge of tears repeatedly, from the haunting Six theme to the big jungle percussion for space dogfights and his sparing, selective use of the '70s Galactica title music.  AND AND, Tricia Helfer was in it and...ah...Tri...

triciaaaaaaaa aaaa

:D

wat

...What?  Oh.  Um, yeah, so, it's the best TV show ever, and at least one person at the Network Formerly Known As Sci-Fi Channel recognises that, as ever since the show ended (happily on its own terms), they've been trying to continue it via spin-offs.  First came Caprica, which was intelligent and well-acted and often dramatic and absolutely not at all what I wanted to see, sadly.  Whilst I applaud Ronald D. Moore and company for trying something markedly different, the show we wound up with was so far removed from Galactica that the only thing connecting the two was that one robot Cylon with the girl's mind in its head.  Everything else was all corporate espionage and stuff from The Sopranos with more pronounced class warfare.  Though I wish it had lasted longer so that it could have organically found the time to complete its many long-running plotlines, I wasn't surprised by its cancellation.

Then came Blood & Chrome...except it didn't.  Well, not really, but...it's complicated.

TEKKEN BLOOD VENGEANCE vs. TEKKEN MOVIE 2010 Comparison

This has been a long time coming.

Back in my Tekken Tag 2 Endings post, I fleetingly mentioned my disdain for the animated Blood Vengeance movie, something which - after rewatching it - I feel should not need explanation.  However, there are still many, too many, ostensible Tekken fans out there who not only cling to BV as a good interpretation of the series' themes and values, but also as a superior feature to the much-maligned live action Tekken film produced by Crystal Sky, which I'm here referring to as Tekken 2010 even though I'm fairly sure I first saw it in '09...and it didn't reach the US 'til 2011...but, y'know, IMDB says 2010 so we'll just go with that.

Anyways, this pisses me off for a whole mess of reasons, not the least of which is that I legitimately LIKE Tekken 2010 despite some issues with it, and consider it one of the few acceptable game-to-film adaptations yet made (the others are Silent Hill, DOA and Resident Evil Extinction, fyi).  So to explain and hopefully settle things, I'm going to break down both films into their constituent parts before comparing and contrasting their performances.  Some of these factors will pertain to how faithful they are to the source material, others are based more on simple filmmaking qualities/decisions, but all are important.

And I'm not covering Tekken: The Motion Picture because it is a movie based on a fighting game that does not contain any worthwhile fighting so its failure should be obvious to everyone.