"Brokedown Merry-Go-Round" Show of the Week: Knights of Sidonia, season 1

Every Friday in "'Brokedown Merry-Go-Round' Show of the Week," I discuss the week's best first-run animated series episode I saw. This week, there were a dozen of them instead of just one. "Brokedown Merry-Go-Round," a two-hour block of original score tracks from animated shows or movies, airs weekdays at 2pm Pacific on AFOS.

Knights of Sidonia, a CG-animated adaptation of Tsutomu Nihei's space manga that first aired on Japanese TV in April and was brought to America exclusively by Netflix Instant in both dubbed and subtitled versions on July 4, has been described more than once as "Attack on Titan in space." That's kind of true, but a more accurate shorthand description would be "Ron Moore's Battlestar Galactica for Japanese viewers who thought Galactica didn't include enough harem storylines."

For those who aren't up on their anime subgenres, the harem subgenre is any show where three or more girls fall for the male lead at the same time. It's like the Bogart/Bacall version of The Big Sleep, where every lady throws herself at Bogie, from leggy Martha Vickers as Carmen Sternwood ("She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up") to Dorothy Malone as a bookstore owner who's the world's first sexy librarian. On Knights of Sidonia, female mecha pilots are constantly spitting game to (or inviting to dinner) inexperienced but diligent teen pilot Nagate Tanikaze (Ryōta Ōsaka; former Power Rangers star Johnny Yong Bosch in the American dub), a new recruit in the military who's like a lost puppy dog they all want to take care of.

The corny harem material is the least effective part of Knights of Sidonia--it's the most evident sign that the show is based on a manga for teens--but fortunately, it's only a tiny piece of the show's first cour (a.k.a. season), which can be streamed from start to finish on Netflix. Because when Knights of Sidonia is focused on either space battles or the politics aboard the Sidonia, a giant spaceship where survivors from a destroyed future Earth have rebuilt their old homeworld within the hull and are debating the military's insistence on pouring all the ship's fragile resources into continuing to battle an unstoppable alien menace, the show is on a par with Galactica in terms of gritty and genuinely nail-biting military sci-fi. The world-building on Knights of Sidonia is impressively handled (as are the show's visuals of a lived-in future world), and as long as it doesn't turn one of its pilot heroines into a guardian angel, Knights of Sidonia, which has been renewed for a second cour, is in tip-top shape.

The orphaned and socially awkward Nagate--who spent all his life being raised and taught to pilot mechs by his recently deceased grandfather below the surface of the city in the ship, so at the start of the show, he has no knowledge of the world above ground--works nicely as an audience surrogate into this bizarre and intriguing future world where humans have genetically engineered themselves in order to survive the rigors of space. People can now clone themselves and photosynthesize just like plants, so they don't need to eat as much (it results in my favorite background sight gag that has gone unnoticed by critics and Knights of Sidonia viewers: the dining hall where Nagate, who was born without the ability to photosynthesize, eats his meals is always empty).

But wait, there's more: Nagate's androgynous new best friend Izana Shinatose (Aya Suzaki; Stephanie Sheh in the American dub) is a member of the third gender, which means that when Izana chooses a lover, Izana's genderless body adapts to whatever kind of lovemaking is required. Female Sidonia captain Kobayashi (Sayaka Ohara; Cowboy Bebop's Wendee Lee in the dub), who rescues Nagate from the gutter and upon first meeting him, bizarrely embraces him as if he were her son (for mysterious reasons that are gradually unveiled throughout the season), is one of several veterans on the Sidonia who are hundreds of years old, thanks to scientific advances that somehow don't involve drinking the blood of young virgins. To assert her authority as the highest-ranked officer on the ship, Captain Kobayashi wears a porcelain mask both on duty and in public, rendering her face immobile. Joan Rivers would call Knights of Sidonia the feel-good animated show of the year.

"Feel-good" would be odd to apply to Knights of Sidonia, because a lot of the show is more on the side of feel-bad. I like how a small bit of humor like Nagate's awkward adjustment to his gravity belt early on in the season later takes a turn for the dramatic in the fourth episode, where the ship's death toll becomes shockingly enormous due to inhabitants who were careless about their gravity belts during one of many wartime emergencies. Death affects the ship's inhabitants as early as the first episode, but it isn't until that fourth episode, "Sacrifices"--the best of the 12 episodes--when the show really raises the stakes. The intense "Sacrifices" proves that Knights of Sidonia isn't a kids' show take on war that cowers from depicting the brutality and unpleasantness of war, and fortunately, it doesn't do so in a really forced, "look at me, I'm edgy and all up in your face" kind of way that brings to mind either the worst and most puerile of DC's New 52 relaunch or Torchwood's mostly dreadful first season (although fan service occasionally turns up on Knights of Sidonia in the form of nude female photosynthesizing scenes).

The Gauna, the Lovecraftian alien race that destroyed Earth and resurfaces after a 100-year absence to attack Earth's survivors again, are distinctive for not having any dialogue and remaining non-communicative through the entire season (they don't have a mouthpiece character who speaks for them). All these shape-shifters do during the first season is mimic their human opponents and their Garde mechs to outthink and outgun them, without any mundane explanation or exposition. The lack of dialogue and discernible motive makes the Gauna especially menacing (if you prefer your villains to be a lot talkier, Knights of Sidonia frequently pits Nagate against a jealous rich-kid pilot named Kunato, but he's boring and one-note as an antagonist in comparison to Benisuzume, a Gauna that assumes the form of a dead female pilot's Garde and communicates only in creepy anime giggles). The Gauna bring to mind the Mimics from Edge of Tomorrow, with a little bit of the body horror of the titular menace in John Carpenter's The Thing. Their force-of-nature intensity as an adversary results in Nagate and the military's attempts to defeat them being especially impactful and meaningful in the last couple of episodes (when the show isn't concentrated on its thrilling space battles, the jerky, TV-budget frame rate by the animators at Polygon Pictures, the Japanese studio behind Transformers Prime and Tron: Uprising, is more noticeable).

I'm making Knights of Sidonia sound like it's misery porn a la another Netflix exclusive, the as-unkillable-as-the-Gauna cop show The Killing. But unlike The Killing, humor is occasionally deployed to keep Knights of Sidonia from turning into a complete slog. The aforementioned harem hijinks, which feel out of place on Knights of Sidonia, aren't so effective in injecting levity (by the way, not all the female officers want to bang Nagate; Sasaki, the Gardes' female lead mechanic, is seen giving Nagate a hard time for being allowed to fly the most sophisticated Garde despite his inexperience). Instead, the character I expected to be the most rote form of comic relief fares a little better at comic relief than the harem material, and it's the most Japanese part of the show: Nagate's dorm mother Lala Hiyama (Satomi Arai; Jane Carroll in the dub), an ex-Garde pilot who, without any explanation so far, chose to live forever in the body of a bear.

I never expected this cross between Guinan and Hagrid who's in the form of a talking bear to work at all both comedically and dramatically, but Knights of Sidonia somehow pulls it off. In fact, almost everything else about Knights of Sidonia itself is a risky move too, from the choice of 3D animation, which some Knights of Sidonia viewers have found to be wonky-looking, to writing its alien antagonists as speechless. But like Nagate, the show fights to assert itself and eventually wins you over, but not to the point where you want to make out with it like all the girls who are smitten with Nagate.

A compendium of cool cosplay

Star Trek: The Next Generation cosplay!

Degrassi "Purple Dragon/naked Emma" episode cosplay!

Galactica cosplay!

Sydney Bristow whenever she woke up in a hospital on Alias cosplay!

Beetlejuice cosplay!

Spaceballs henchman cosplay from the waist down!

Eartha Kitt cosplay!

Ennio Morricone cosplay!

Justin Bieber cosplay!

"Hall H," a 10-hour block of original music from shows and movies that are popular at comic or anime cons and are frequently cosplayed at those cons, airs Saturdays and Sundays at 7am Pacific on AFOS.

March Madness March of the Day: "Prelude to War" from Battlestar Galactica by Bear McCreary

A key word in composer Bear McCreary's approach to his original score music on Battlestar Galactica, a gritty and adult take on the '70s human-vs.-robot space opera of the same name, was minimalism. Frequent Galactica episode director Michael Rymer said that he and the show's crew wanted to reinvent "the language of the space opera," so musically, in Galactica's first couple of seasons, McCreary spoke this language through a smaller-than-usual orchestra, sparse strings, taiko drums, gamelans and Middle Eastern chants.

"It was based in reaction to Star Wars and Star Trek, the trumpet bombast that we associate with space operas," said McCreary to TV critic Alan Sepinwall in 2008. "[The producers of the series] told me they wanted no themes, and this is probably because in their minds a theme is a French horn playing Luke Skywalker's theme as he stares at the twin sunset."

Executive producers Ronald D. Moore and David Eick ended up ditching their "no themes" rule and McCreary proceeded to write themes for each character (or character relationship, like the theme that represents the bond between Commander Bill Adama and President Roslin or the Celtic motif for Bill and his son Lee--the Adamas are apparently Irish Latinos, like Martin Sheen). But the composer continued to keep it minimalist during moments where most other composers would opt for bombast, like the memorable "Prelude to War" theme from the second season's nail-biting mid-season cliffhanger (the Galactica and the Pegasus point their nukes at each other).

If you listen closely to "Prelude to War," most of it consists of only strings, a duduk and percussion. Yet McCreary somehow managed to raise our adrenaline with just those elements.

And McCreary did it again with "Prelude to War" in the video below, this time performing the march with just a piano.



"Prelude to War" is also the title of a ballet where McCreary rearranged Galactica themes like "Prelude to War" and "Diaspora Oratorio" for choreographer Ricardo Fernando and the dancers of the Theaterhagen in Hagen, Germany. McCreary detailed the ballet's world premiere on his blog in 2009. (The most interesting part of McCreary's chronicle of the ballet briefly mentions that NBCUniversal placed restrictions on what McCreary was allowed to use from Galactica in his work, which brings to mind how 16 years before, the same corporation claimed certain parts of David Letterman's departing talk show as their "intellectual property." Notice how the dancers aren't dressed like Viper pilots or Cylons.) The "Prelude to War" theme gets the ballet treatment from 0:48 to 2:33 in the footage below.



UPDATE: McCreary himself brought to my attention the ultimate version of "Prelude to War."



All the other "March Madness March of the Day" posts from this week:
"Space March" from You Only Live Twice by John Barry
"Main Title" from The Great Escape by Elmer Bernstein
"The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme)" from The Empire Strikes Back by John Williams
"The Plot" from Mission: Impossible by Lalo Schifrin

Alternate movie posterama

Another alternate movie poster that's nicer-looking than the original: Kevin Wada's retro Dark City poster, which emphasizes the Strangers, the film's creepy adversaries. [Via Super Punch]

The You Offend Me You Offend My Family blog sticks it to Hollywood's tendency to whitewash movies based on source material in which Asians played a central role by whitewashing Better Luck Tomorrow, which starred You Offend Me bloggers Roger Fan and Sung Kang and was directed by their fellow You Offend Me team member Justin Lin. [Via You Offend Me]

A Fark.com "unneeded sequel" entry that imagines a second Dr. T & the Women movie. [Via Super Punch]

Seven Samurai by Grinning-Oni.

Brandon Schaefer's poster for an advance theatrical screening of the made-for-DVD Battlestar Galactica: Razor in 2007.

Predator by Made by Mat. (Wow, that Predators trailer actually doesn't suck. I love how Danny Trejo, Cletus Van Damme and a yakuza are among the human predators. But what's Eric Forman doing in the cast? One of these things is not like the other.) [Via Super Punch]

The Birds by Laz Marquez. [Via /Film]

Favorite curse word substitutes that aren't "frak"

The other morning, the surprisingly not-so-awful 1993 made-for-cable action comedy Taking the Heat surfaced on my TV in the background. It starred the very attractive Lynn Whitfield as a slit-skirted rookie NYPD detective assigned to escort wimpy murder witness and love interest Tony Goldwyn to court while mobsters attempt to bump him off on the hottest day of the summer. (It's too bad Whitfield never became the action movie star that she should have been because in Taking the Heat, she's as fierce as Pam Grier, running around sweltering New York and Toronto locations in heels--and on horseback at one point--and never once taking those heels off.)

The late New York radio DJ Frankie Crocker acts as a Greek chorus during Taking the Heat. I didn't grow up listening to Crocker on the radio, so whenever I hear his voice, I think of "Crocker!"--Prince Paul's way of half-assedly bleeping out the obscenities during the sketches(*) on one of my favorite albums, De La Soul Is Dead.

(*) In an earlier post, I said a skit is "some lame, amateurish thing kids perform at a summer camp or church." It's also a usually unfunny and thankfully short comedy bit that's the most common example of filler on a hip-hop album. The difference between the skits on most hip-hop albums and the skits on De La Soul Is Dead is that the DLSID bits are slightly longer, which makes them qualify as sketches, and genuinely funny.

I hate censorship in any form. (According to Cursebird, I swear like a Scottish comedian.) But when you can't fight the censors, sometimes you have to come up with ingenious ways to depict rough language without attracting the attention of those uptight [Crocker!]s. You can make up your own curse words a la Mork & Mindy, the 1978 Battlestar Galactica, Hill Street Blues, Red Dwarf and motherfrelling Farscape, or you can conceal the curse words in foreign languages like on Firefly and Caprica. For my money, South Park, Archer and TNT's Southland opt for the best method, which is to have the actors utter the obscenities and then bleep out all of them, except for "shit," "goddamn" and "pussy." (Before he died, George Carlin was probably relieved to see that some of the words he once famously put on a pedestal are now safe for basic cable.)

Who's the person who tweeted that nerds should stop adding the rather clunky-sounding "frak" to normal everyday conversations? Buy that person a drink. The masterminds behind the following five euphemisms also deserve a drink because they perfected the art of sneaking in expletives.

"Crocker!" (De La Soul Is Dead)
For some inexplicable reason, the tracks on De La Soul's insult humor-filled second album are uncensored, while most of the sketches are not. They feature Black Sheep member Mista Lawnge as the voice of "Hemroid," a playground bully who steals a cassette copy of DLSID from one of his victims and becomes frustrated by the album's lack of violent lyrics while listening to it ("Van Damme! What happened? What happened to the pimps? What happened to the guns? What happened to the curse words? [Crocker!] That's what rap music is all about, right?"). Prince Paul's intentionally half-assed censorship of the swear words in the sketches is part of what makes them funny. He covered up most of the cursing with a soundbite of someone saying "Crocker!"--a reference to the legendary DJ. "Crocker!" isn't the only curse word substitute during the sketches. There's also the memorable "Put the tape back in, natal wart!"

"melonfarmer" (the syndicated TV version of Repo Man)
Like me and millions of others who hate watching feature films on channels that aren't TCM, IFC or Sundance, Alex Cox considers the practice of redubbing profanity in movies to be ridiculous, so he had some fun with it by taking what could have been a completely unwatchable commercial TV butchering of his cult classic Repo Man and making it somewhat entertaining. The TV cut contained intentionally lame new dialogue like "Flip you, melonfarmer!"

"smeg" (Red Dwarf)
One of the few elements Ronald D. Moore's Galactica unfortunately retained from the inferior 1978 original was the fake swearing, which sounds like a Mormon's idea of how people curse (in fact, that's what it was--Glen A. Larson is a Mormon, so I blame them for the creation of "frak," which the '70s version spelled as "frack," and "felgercarb"). Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, the creators of the sci-fi Britcom Red Dwarf, coined a slightly more inventive swear word 10 years after "frack" by replacing "shit" and "fuck" with a word they claimed they didn't know already existed. (Do not click on the link in the previous sentence if you're enjoying your lunch, smeghead.)

"Ooh la la!" (The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson)
I like how The Late Late Show's way of dealing with Ferguson's French has been to cover it up with a well-placed French flag and his cheesy imitation of a frog. Because of Ferguson's year-long goal to learn Spanish, the flag was recently changed to a Spanish one, and "Ooh la la!" is now "¡Ay caramba!"

"lint-licker" (Orbit Gum ad)
Treme staff writer and Undercover Black Man blogger David Mills is spot-on about the homewrecker lady from his current favorite commercial, whom he refers to as "a cross between Karen Carpenter and a cheap French oil painting." Her way with a euphemism makes the Galactica and Caprica cast members sound like lints.

Let's have some asses wigglin': AFOS August 2009 segment playlists

Starting today at 3pm, these August '09 playlists (intro'd by yours truly, of course) will air Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm, and Saturdays and Sundays at 7am, 9am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm all through August on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel.

This summer marks several anniversaries related to some of my favorite movies or soundtracks: the 25th anniversary of both Ghostbusters and Purple Rain (an example of a movie being outshined by its soundtrack, although I always find myself keeping the channel on Purple Rain whenever it airs on TV) and the 20th anniversary of both Batman (a movie I liked more as a kid than I do now) and Do the Right Thing. So four of this month's segment playlists contain music from those four movies.

"Purify Yourself in the Waters of Lake Minnetonka":
1. Prince and the Revolution, "Computer Blue," Purple Rain, Warner Bros.
2. Prince and the Revolution, "Take Me with U," Purple Rain, Warner Bros.
3. Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, "Take Me with U," Purplish Rain, SPIN Media LLC

"Imitation Spaghetti":
4. Lalo Schifrin, "Quick Draw Kelly," Kelly's Heroes, Film Score Monthly
5. Seatbelts, "Go Go Cactus Man," Cowboy Bebop: Blue, Victor
6. Alan Silvestri, "The Mexican--End Credits Medley," The Mexican, Decca/UMG Soundtracks
7. J.G. Thirlwell, "Spag," The Venture Bros.: The Music of JG Thirlwell, Williams Street

"Five Definitive Star Trek Cues":
8. Gerald Fried, "The Ritual/Ancient Battle/2nd Kroykah" (from the episode "Amok Time"), Star Trek Volume Two, GNP/Crescendo
9. Sol Kaplan, "Kirk Does It Again" (from the episode "The Doomsday Machine"), Star Trek Volume Two, GNP/Crescendo
10. Jerry Goldsmith, "Spock Walk," Star Trek: The Motion Picture: 20th Anniversary Collector's Edition, Columbia/Legacy
11. James Horner, "Battle in the Mutara Nebula," Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, GNP/Crescendo
12. Michael Giacchino, "Enterprising Young Men," Star Trek, Varèse Sarabande

"#followvarèse":
13. Elmer Bernstein, "Library & Title," Ghostbusters: Original Motion Picture Score, Varèse Sarabande
14. Patrick Doyle, "Overture" (from Much Ado About Nothing), Varèse Sarabande: A 25th Anniversary Celebration Volume Two, Varèse Sarabande
15. Royal Scottish National Orchestra, "Trailer" (from Judge Dredd), Hollywood '95, Varèse Sarabande
16. Jerry Goldsmith, "End Titles" (from The 'Burbs), Varèse Sarabande: A 25th Anniversary Celebration Volume Two, Varèse Sarabande
17. Shawn Davey, "Harry Pendel: The Tailor of Panama" (from The Tailor of Panama), Varèse Sarabande: A 25th Anniversary Celebration Volume Two, Varèse Sarabande

"Unstreamed Ghostbusters":
18. Elmer Bernstein, "We Got One!," Ghostbusters: Original Motion Picture Score, Varèse Sarabande
19. Elmer Bernstein, "We Got One! (Alternate)," Ghostbusters: Original Motion Picture Score, Varèse Sarabande

"Always Bet on Brown":
20. Billy Preston, "Slaughter" (from Slaughter), Ultimate Collection: Billy Preston, Hip-O
21. Danny Elfman, "Art's Demise/Chase/Punch Out/Viva Las Vegas," Mars Attacks!, La-La Land
22. Danny Elfman, "Final Address," Mars Attacks!, La-La Land

"Omnia Illa Et Ante Fiebant":
23. Bear McCreary, "Grand Old Lady" (from the episode "Islanded in a Stream of Stars"), Battlestar Galactica: Season 4, La-La Land
24. Bear McCreary featuring Raya Yarbrough, "Assault on the Colony" (from the episode "Daybreak"), Battlestar Galactica: Season 4, La-La Land

"1989, a Number, Another Summer":
25. Danny Elfman, "Batman to the Rescue," Batman: Original Motion Picture Score, Warner Bros.
26. Bill Lee, "Wake Up Suite," Do the Right Thing: Original Score, Columbia

Bonus track:
27. Bear McCreary, "Kara's Coordinates," Battlestar Galactica: Season 4, La-La Land

AFOS "A-to-Z April" playlist

1. American Gigolo: Giorgio Moroder, "Hello Mr. W.A.M. (Finale)," American Gigolo, Polydor
2. Battlestar Galactica: Bear McCreary, "Mandala in the Clouds" (from "Maelstrom"), Battlestar Galactica: Season 3, La-La Land
3. Confessions of a Police Captain: Riz Ortolani, "Il ricordo di Serena" (from Confessione di un commissario di polizia al procuratore della Repubblica), Easy Tempo Vol. 1: A Cinematic Easy Listening Experience, Right Tempo
4. Damage: Zbigniew Preisner, "The Last Time" (from Damage), Varèse Sarabande: A 25th Anniversary Celebration Volume Two, Varèse Sarabande
5. ER: James Newton Howard, "Theme from ER," ER, Atlantic
6. Finishing the Game: Brian Tyler, "Ready or Not," Finishing the Game, Brian Tyler
7. Game of Death: John Barry, "The Big Motorcycle Fight" (from Game of Death), Game of Death/Night Games, Silva Screen
8. The Hunchback of Soho: Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra, "The Hump" (from The Hunchback of Soho), Futuremuzik, Scamp
9. Infamy: DJ Z-Trip and Garron Chang, "Infamy Movie Theme" (from Infamy), djztrip.com
10. Justice League: The New Frontier: Kevin Manthei, "Plan to Action," Justice League: The New Frontier, La-La Land
11. The Knack...And How to Get It: John Barry, "Here Comes Nancy Now!," The Knack...And How to Get It, Rykodisc
12. Lupin the 3rd: You & the Explosion Band, "Theme from Lupin III '78," Lupin the 3rd, Pioneer
13. The Man Who Knew Too Little: Christopher Young, "The Man Who Knew Too Little," Varèse Sarabande: A 25th Anniversary Celebration Volume Two, Varèse Sarabande
14. Northern Exposure: David Schwartz, "Alaskan Nights," Northern Exposure, MCA
15. Ocean's Thirteen: David Holmes, "Snake Eyes," Ocean's Thirteen, Warner Sunset/Warner Bros.
16. The Prisoner: Ron Grainer, "Main Titles," The Prisoner [File #1], Silva Screen
17. Quantum of Solace: Four Tet, "Crawl, End Crawl," Crawl, End Crawl (from the Motion Picture Quantum of Solace), Columbia/MGM
18. Raiders of the Lost Ark: John Williams, "Airplane Fight," Raiders of the Lost Ark, DCC Compact Classics
19. Shaft in Africa: Johnny Pate, "Shaft in Africa (Addis)," Shaft in Africa, Hip-O Select/Geffen
20. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Bear McCreary, "Highway Battle" (from "Queen's Gambit"), Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, La-La Land
21. The Untouchables: Ennio Morricone, "The Strength of the Righteous (Main Title)," The Untouchables, A&M
22. V for Vendetta: Dario Marianelli, "Remember Remember," V for Vendetta, Astralwerks
23. WALL·E: Thomas Newman, "Define Dancing," WALL·E, Walt Disney
24. XXX: Randy Edelman, "Prague Arrival" (from XXX), Varèse Sarabande: A 25th Anniversary Celebration, Varèse Sarabande
25. You Only Live Twice: John Barry, "Fight at Kobe Dock - Helga," You Only Live Twice, EMI/Capitol
26. Zodiac: David Shire, "Graysmith's Theme," Zodiac, Varèse Sarabande
27. John Williams, "Superfeats" (from Superman: The Movie), Superman: The Music, Film Score Monthly
28. John Carpenter and Alan Howarth, "The Siege of Justiceville," They Live: 20th Anniversary Edition, AHI
29. Maurice Jarre, "Building the Barn" (from Witness), Paramount Pictures' 90th Anniversary Memorable Scores, Sony Classical
30. The City of Prague Philharmonic, "Fanfare/'I ain't Captain Walker'" (from Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome), The Essential Maurice Jarre Film Music Collection, Silva Screen
31. Shirley Manson, "Samson and Delilah," Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, La-La Land

The two-hour "A-to-Z April" block repeats Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm, and Saturdays and Sundays at 7am, 9am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm all through April on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel.

AFOS: "All This Has Happened Before" playlist

Airing this week on the Fistful of Soundtracks channel is the 2008 Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series episode "All This Has Happened Before" (WEB93), which features the most memorable season finale cues from Battlestar Galactica, as well as selections from scores to other remakes that outstripped their predecessors like Galactica has (Casino Royale, Buffy). jim.aquino.com is no longer online, as are all the pre-WEB97 playlists I posted there, so I'm reposting each playlist as each pre-WEB97 ep reairs.

1. Bear McCreary, "Passacaglia," Battlestar Galactica: Season One, La-La Land
2. David Arnold, "Blunt Instrument," Casino Royale, Sony Classical
3. David Holmes, "Boobytrapping," Ocean's Eleven, Warner Sunset/Warner Bros.
4. Christophe Beck, "Suite from 'Hush': Silent Night/First Kiss/Enter the Gentlemen/Schism," Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Once More, With Feeling, Rounder
5. Bear McCreary, "Prelude to War," Battlestar Galactica: Season 2, La-La Land
6. Kronos Quartet, "Heat," Heat, Warner Bros.
7. Bear McCreary, "Something Dark Is Coming," Battlestar Galactica: Season 2, La-La Land
8. Marco Beltrami, "Bible Study," 3:10 to Yuma, Lionsgate
9. Bear McCreary featuring Bt4, "All Along the Watchtower," Battlestar Galactica: Season 3, La-La Land

Repeats of A Fistful of Soundtracks: The Series air Monday night at midnight, Tuesday and Thursday at 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm, Wednesday night at midnight, and Saturday and Sunday at 7am, 9am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm and 5pm.

20 favorite TV moments of 2008

Happy New Year. These favorite moments of mine are all from scripted or non-reality TV. Screw reality TV.

(Warning: some spoilers ahead.)

20. Conan, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert try to kick each other's asses to the tune of "Brianstorm" by the Arctic Monkeys (Late Night with Conan O'Brien).

19. Barney, Ted and Lily rock "the Naked Man" (How I Met Your Mother).

18. Rob Riggle gives Code Pink enough rope to hang themselves (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart).

17. Walt blows up Tuco's office (Breaking Bad).

16. Brock battles a French assassin who's obsessed with Silver Age comic books (The Venture Bros.).

15. Michael goes undercover as a wimpy chemist (Burn Notice).

14. "She must prove she loves America, as opposed to Republicans, who everyone knows love America. They just hate half the people living in it" (The Daily Show).

13. The island is visited by the freighties, who include Daniel, a heroic science nerd, and Miles, a wiseass "ghostbuster" and the most interesting and least clichéd Asian American male character to hit network TV in years (Lost).

12. Patterson punches Encino Man (Generation Kill).

11. "Hey John, I got a question! You need a ride to the airport?" (Late Show with David Letterman).

10. Stephen tries--and fails--to hide actual tears during Barack Obama's historic victory (Indecision 2008: America's Choice).

9. Wendy emerges from the water in Ursula Andress' Dr. No bikini (The Middleman).

8. Don tells Peggy to get out of the hospital and move forward (Mad Men).

7. The survivors find Earth (Battlestar Galactica).

6. Katie Couric (Amy Poehler) interviews Sarah Palin (Tina Fey) (Saturday Night Live).

5. Jack crashes Liz's high school reunion (30 Rock).

4. Bubbles is finally invited to the dinner table (The Wire).

3. Vic confesses (The Shield).

2. Joe Biden (Jason Sudeikis) and Sarah Palin (Fey) go head to head (SNL).

1. Iceman's team sings "Teenage Dirtbag" (Generation Kill).

-----

Runners-up:
- The Bawlmer cops sing "The Body of an American" for the final time (The Wire).
- Desmond looks for his constant (Lost).
- "A guaranteed disaster. Like eating a burrito before sex" (30 Rock).
- Samantha Bee tries to get Republican delegates to say the word "choice" (The Daily Show).
- BET fires everyone who can read (The Boondocks).
- 6H turns into Amadeus (30 Rock).
- John Legend sings "The Girl Is Mine" with Stephen (The Colbert Report).
- Will Arnett does his last sex tape (Human Giant).
- Sayid sells his soul (Lost).

New AFOS episode: "All This Has Happened Before"

Because Battlestar Galactica's fourth season is finally in full swing, episode WEB93, "All This Has Happened Before," will feature highlights of Bear McCreary's terrific music from the show, and it will begin streaming Tuesday, April 15 (midnight, 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm). I wish all the tunes on the episode's playlist could be Galactica score cues, but because the Internet radio airplay laws only allow me to put four McCreary tunes on the playlist, I had to pad it with selections from scores to other remakes (Ocean's Eleven, 3:10 to Yuma).

All the Galactica score cues during this ep come from the show's season finales. WEB93 will conclude with McCreary's intriguing cover of "All Along the Watchtower" from last season's stunning cliffhanger, "Crossroads, Part II." (McCreary discusses recording the "Crossroads, Part II" score here.)


During WEB93, I mention that the Galactica producers didn't want the music during their remake to sound like what Stu Phillips wrote for the previous incarnation of Galactica. As Galactica miniseries composer Richard Gibbs said in the liner notes for the miniseries score CD, he avoided typical space opera score elements like a "sweeping, swooping orchestra, strong melodic themes, incredibly detailed flourishes," and it's an approach McCreary emulated when he took over as composer in season 1. What I like most about the music of the current Galactica is that it still manages to sound exciting even without orchestral bombast (example: the powerful taiko and strings combo in the "Prelude to War" theme from "Pegasus"). McCreary seems to understand that minimalism doesn't mean you have to turn the score into musical wallpaper, which is what happened with much of the original music on the Rick Berman Star Trek shows.

McCreary's score for the latest Galactica ep, "Six of One," was really good, particularly during the officers' farewell to Apollo on the port hangar deck. Frak! I wound up with a lump in my throat. (The next Galactica will feature something equally sob-inducing--a naked Dean Stockwell. Great. It's like we're being punished for seeing Grace Park dance around topless this week.)

Also during this AFOS ep about scores from remakes, I snark about Hollywood's creative bankruptcy. Speaking of which, a Ben-Hur miniseries is apparently in the works. I'd rather watch a remake of the SCTV Ben-Hur.

Next AFOS episode: The feature film score music from Galactica's tonal opposite--Star Trek.

Around the Internets: 03/20/08

- A prequel to the original Trainspotting novel is in the works, while the long-planned prequel to Battlestar Galactica has finally been greenlit. Haven't Irvine Welsh and Ronald D. Moore heard Patton Oswalt's brilliant bit in which the comedian/script doctor breaks down what's wrong with prequels like the last three Star Wars movies and imagines an encounter with George Lucas during the time he wrote them ("Well hey, you say you're a Star Wars fan. Do you like Darth Vader? In the first movie, you get to see him as a little kid... and then he gets taken away from his mom and he's very sad...")?

- Composers like Hans Zimmer, Anne Dudley and La Vie en Rose's Christopher Gunning complain that present-day film scores are too bland-sounding in an article for London's The Times. Zimmer asks, "Where is the next Jerry Goldsmith?" Uh, Hans, his name is Michael Giacchino. Zimmer adds, "So many scores sound like nobody really thought about them." Yeah, the likes of Jon Brion, Howard Shore, Alexandre Desplat and Terence Blanchard put very little thought into what they write.

- Awesome! Someone's finally posted "The Huey Freeman Hunger Strike," one of two recently banned episodes of The Boondocks. "Hunger Strike" resurrects one of the old strip's most memorable threads, Huey's gripes with BET's offensive programming.

Word on the street is BET threatened legal action against The Boondocks' distributor, Sony Pictures Television, and Adult Swim if the latter aired the two BET-bashing eps. I guess BET's henchmen didn't act fast enough to stop Canada's Teletoon channel and its Adult Swim-like Detour block from premiering "Hunger Strike" last Sunday (the other BET-bashing ep, "The Ruckus Reality Show," is set to air on Detour this Sunday).

"Hunger Strike" is one of the funniest eps of The Boondocks' second season, despite the series' continuing uncertainty over how to make Huey as dynamic a character as he was in the strip (Huey's intellectual nature played better in the strip than on the animated series, whereas the not-as-cerebral Riley thrives in the animated format--his eps are more fun to watch than the Huey-centric ones).

Huey's stand against BET is overshadowed by the hijinks of Rev. Rollo Goodlove. Cee-Lo does his second Boondocks guest shot as the self-serving Goodlove, and he gets to sing "Go-Go Gadget Gospel" from his first Gnarls Barkley album, during a musical sequence that goes on a bit longer than it should. Scrubs' Donald Faison, who voiced another character in an earlier Boondocks ep, provides the sped-up voice of "Weggie Rudlin," who proposes a BET "ho-ward show" to honor the best video hos. Weggie is the series' jab at its former executive producer, current BET president Reginald Hudlin, whose name still shows up in the Boondocks credits due to contractual obligations. The Boondocks writers also throw in some amusing in-jokes about past BET personalities like Sherry Carter and Tavis Smiley (who voices himself) that will probably sail over white viewers' heads.

The ep's best lines come from the Dr. Evil-like CEO of BET ("You've fired everyone that could read? I love it!") and Uncle Ruckus ("BET forever!! BET boombaya!!") I love how Star Wars fan Aaron McGruder asked 9th Wonder, the series composer, to model Ruckus' theme music after John Williams' tuba theme for Jabba the Hutt from Return of the Jedi.

- I would cringe while listening to many of the train wreck questions fanboys and fangirls would toss at the celebrity speakers during panel discussions at the 2007 WonderCon and the '07 San Diego Comic-Con, so I love this Mark Evanier complaint about the attention whores who abuse the open mic at panels:

One time, I was interviewing Ray Bradbury. The first guy at the mike — who'd been poised there since before Ray and I arrived on stage — just wanted to say how much Ray's work had inspired his own, beginning efforts and he wanted to read aloud a passage from one of those stories to demonstrate this. If I hadn't stopped him, he'd have turned the rest of the hour into a books-on-tape recital.

- Poplicks.com says Obama's stunning speech about race was effective, but they wish he could have done more with it.

- Comics 101 remembers Rocketeer creator Dave Stevens, who passed away March 10. The secret of how the Rocketeer managed to fly around without burning his ass off dies with Stevens.