Michael_Jonathan_Dowswell
Joined May 2005
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Michael_Jonathan_Dowswell's rating
I've just tonight watched this for the second time...the first time was when it premiered in 2005...I really liked it a lot then and always wanted to see it again....six years later and I can safely report that it's still great.
Ferdinand Fairfax is one of these great directors who I can definitely say is one of my favorites. He understands about shots...about how to stay wide and stay back...and also about shot length...ASL...Average Shot Length...(which is incredibly important to me). This is a man who also directed some meticulously detailed stuff...Danger UXB, Jeeves and Wooster and The Last Place on Earth. He gets the detail spot on again here in this Egypt series, of which he directed all six parts!
My only criticisms about it are that 1) The American was clearly a brit actor playing a American. 2) The flash backs looking like 50% of of the colour has been taken out.
But anyway...this is great and I believe it to be one of the last great BBC productions.
Ferdinand Fairfax is one of these great directors who I can definitely say is one of my favorites. He understands about shots...about how to stay wide and stay back...and also about shot length...ASL...Average Shot Length...(which is incredibly important to me). This is a man who also directed some meticulously detailed stuff...Danger UXB, Jeeves and Wooster and The Last Place on Earth. He gets the detail spot on again here in this Egypt series, of which he directed all six parts!
My only criticisms about it are that 1) The American was clearly a brit actor playing a American. 2) The flash backs looking like 50% of of the colour has been taken out.
But anyway...this is great and I believe it to be one of the last great BBC productions.
It was a great surprise to be sat there in front of the TV and have no memory of about forty five percent of this film...I mean completely no memory at all...so this was like a first screening in a way. Maybe I've never actually seen the first 45% I remember the rest very well though. It goes straight into my all time favourite sci-fi films...which are Forbidden Planet, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Alien, 2001: A Space Odyssey, John Carpenter's The Thing, The Time Machine (1960), Westworld, Predator and Planet of the Apes (1968).
CONS: On the DVD they have done what they ought not to have done...they have cropped this film into a 16:9 shape...It's a horrible thing to do that to somebody's work...the director Joseph M. Newman died at age ninety seven in 2006, and I think this DVD was released in 2008. But this is just wrong and any film deserves respect...and this is not respectful treatment to a classic .yes, a classic.
PROS: Beautifully made, I mean seriously beautifully made. Very meticulous film-making going on here. The choice of colours and the design work for all the props, interiors is neurotic perfectionist flawless. It's also a talky film which I love....but balanced with just the right amount of talking so we have great structure and great pacing going on too...some genuine great intelligent writing lines like "the truth is never flattering" and lots of genuinely funny lines like "My mind is my own, and nobody's going to change it! I'm not going into that room!"
Exeter played by Jeff Morrow is of course a great character and is really entertaining to watch...he has a cheeky face and honestly looks a LOT like Robin Williams.
CONS: On the DVD they have done what they ought not to have done...they have cropped this film into a 16:9 shape...It's a horrible thing to do that to somebody's work...the director Joseph M. Newman died at age ninety seven in 2006, and I think this DVD was released in 2008. But this is just wrong and any film deserves respect...and this is not respectful treatment to a classic .yes, a classic.
PROS: Beautifully made, I mean seriously beautifully made. Very meticulous film-making going on here. The choice of colours and the design work for all the props, interiors is neurotic perfectionist flawless. It's also a talky film which I love....but balanced with just the right amount of talking so we have great structure and great pacing going on too...some genuine great intelligent writing lines like "the truth is never flattering" and lots of genuinely funny lines like "My mind is my own, and nobody's going to change it! I'm not going into that room!"
Exeter played by Jeff Morrow is of course a great character and is really entertaining to watch...he has a cheeky face and honestly looks a LOT like Robin Williams.
V: The Final Battle is in three parts.
Part one is about the mission to pull the face off the Visitor leader and the girl facing the fact that her babies father is a lizard. I really like this part one a lot...the build up on the mission to expose the Visitor leader on live television is really well paced and the structure is really very good...in fact, it is excellent. The girl having to go to the hospital is also really suspenseful. I think they did a very, very good job of this part one.
Now, when you get onto part two...I feel that it is unfortunately really baggy in places...the momentum at times is really lost...the torturing for example is quite lengthy and not all that gripping. It's like extra padding to make sure you increase the runtime...bulking it up. Don't get me wrong I love bits of it a lot...I love the giant water pipe sequence where they arrive to take a look at it.
The skydiving scene near the start of part three is a lot of fun...and the two babies story (to a point) I really like too...but I don't think I like what they eventually did with the girl sparkling / glittering at the end. I don't think that was necessary. The gun battles onboard the mothership are terrific and really well made / edited.
Ultimately, this is a extremely problematic mini series...but it's one that gets off to a great start (I highly recommend part one)...once you get into part two and three this is where I have some major problems but still feel it has great bits sprinkled into it throughout.
Part one is about the mission to pull the face off the Visitor leader and the girl facing the fact that her babies father is a lizard. I really like this part one a lot...the build up on the mission to expose the Visitor leader on live television is really well paced and the structure is really very good...in fact, it is excellent. The girl having to go to the hospital is also really suspenseful. I think they did a very, very good job of this part one.
Now, when you get onto part two...I feel that it is unfortunately really baggy in places...the momentum at times is really lost...the torturing for example is quite lengthy and not all that gripping. It's like extra padding to make sure you increase the runtime...bulking it up. Don't get me wrong I love bits of it a lot...I love the giant water pipe sequence where they arrive to take a look at it.
The skydiving scene near the start of part three is a lot of fun...and the two babies story (to a point) I really like too...but I don't think I like what they eventually did with the girl sparkling / glittering at the end. I don't think that was necessary. The gun battles onboard the mothership are terrific and really well made / edited.
Ultimately, this is a extremely problematic mini series...but it's one that gets off to a great start (I highly recommend part one)...once you get into part two and three this is where I have some major problems but still feel it has great bits sprinkled into it throughout.