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Spielberg's Taken
A few people submitted asking for an open discussion for Spielberg's Taken miniseries that premiered last night on SciFi
last night. I watched it, and I gotta say I dug it, and set Tivo up to snag the rest of it. I wish that they were spacing it out a bit more (in terms of scheduling, not in terms of leaving the Earth's atmosphere ;) What do folks think?
...that the character dynamics and dialogue seemed cliche. I wouldn't expect a ton of originality from Spielberg, his claim to fame is the lowest common denominator, but this was so slow and predictable, it was a feat to even pay attention.
The casting was adequate, but not spectacular. The special effects were on par with any other TV miniseries. I perhaps just expected more from Spielberg, perhaps he could have thrown some more cash into some eye candy to keep me interested.
The plot itself was reminiscent of an archetypal heaven-hell scenario. Nothing new, but a tried and true storyline if told correctly.
All in all I'd give this maybe 4 stars out of 10, but I'll reserve final judgement until after the miniseries is complete.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Too many characters doing almost nothing. Notice that most characters weren't even named! They were just "that redhead" showing up and doing boring everyday stuff. No distinct characters (were there any blacks, asians, etc in the forties? - btw I am a white male), so you could barely tell people apart. Okay, so the aliens are kind of cool. They only showed about seven seconds of aliens in the first hour of boring crap, so I turned it off. I was VASTLY disappointed. So you want to make a miniseries - if you don't have DRAMA no is going to watch 20 hours!
I watched both the 9-11 and 11-1am showing and I thought it was pretty interesting. I have always been intrigued and felt a sense of strangeness while watching it. Especially scenes like the plane going down and the lights engulfing it.
One scene that stood out was when the woman was walking through the ship wreckage and discovers the alien metal. I was waiting for something to either jump out and attack her or she was going to discover a body. Instead we see her walk off and the camera zooms in on the tree revealing an alien. That was eerie.
The rest of the episode was brief flashbacks and intricate character developement. I also noticed they tried to keep with the Area 51 crash and weather balloon coverup, these were blended into the story quite well. Dont forget the bits with the alien drivebys and cars/electrical equipment shutting off.
I will be tuning in the check out more....
I second that motion. I used to be excited about Taken but after the Farscape fiasco, I decided no more Sci-Fi channel for me. In fact, I moved shortly after Farscape when on hiatus so I didn't even bother blowing the $50/mo on cable after that. Sure, I may only get 3 channels with my crappy antenna but I get Enterprise and Simpsons... not much else on that I care to watch :)
Anyone else notice that in the related links: bar? advertising slowly engulfs slashdot...
"In conclusion, SCIFI is trading Farscape for John Edwards and in the process losing its soul. Instead of watching a particular show, I would watch "SCIFI" - I don't do that anymore, I pick and choose from a rapidly shrinking pool of shows I want to see. And the shows that do remain could be as easily shown on many other, less distinct, channels. I'm sure "The Dream Team" would do just as well on VH1. So sad to see you go SCIFI, it was fun while it lasted."
/.ers consider real Sci Fi doesn't sell to the masses unless its action-packed. Actioned-Packed Sci fi is expensive... too expensive for TV.
Of course it is, this is the nature of all cabel channels. They do really well in the beginning but then they just skew to their audience to get better ratings and settle into a funk of turning out crap.
Every year a cable channel is remaking itself into one thing, something that can make money. Several years ago it was The Learning Channel which no longer teaches anyone anything but is mostly melodrama about emergency rooms, police chases, and weird medical sob stories. Recently they got back to their roots by actually putting something on during prime time that educates about science or history, but I have the history channel now so pffffffft (God how I long for Connections:2).
Last year it was "The new TNN!" and their revamp around Star Trek:TNG, Baywatch, and Wrestling, from a country and western style station (If you weren't enough of a redneck to know before, it used to be the Nashville Network, now its The National Network).
This year its the Sci-Fi channel, and I'm surprised it didn't come before. What most
John Edwards is cheap, and he pulls in ratings.
I don't see this as a death, just the natural order of that evil thing called cable.
If I want sci-fi, I'll tape Adult swim on Saturday night on Cartoon Network (mmmmmmmmm Cowboy Bebop *incessant drooling*)
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
then Speilberg looked it over and tried to alter it ever so slightly IN THE POST PRODUCTION!
/.'ers may not be aware of is that for three months before Taken aired, SciFi mailed thousands of brochures and pamphlets to high schools. My wife is a teacher, so of course we ordered everything offered. They sent us lesson plans, videos, handouts, etc... An unbelievable amount of information for free... and none of it had one bit of commercialism attached (other than a couple of SciFi channel promotions). Pretty dame good stuff I must say.
And thank god he did. When I first heard about this mini-series I was afraid that it would be another "Dinotopia" fiasco. I am so relieved that 1) Speilberg is obviously in control and 2) one of the 3 primary netowrks is not showing it.
Something that most
Lastly, one of the brochures stated that if your students did not have access to the SciFi channel, they would send copies of the mini-series to show in class (of course it is not the entire 20 hour series, but an abridged version) for free.
Tom Hanks did the same thing (not quite as much material) with From The Earth to The Moon.