The stars aligned, the Gods willed it, and suddenly the husband and I found ourselves with a Blue-ray capable Playstation, a young man who could show us how to use it, and a set of Battlestar Galactica Blue-ray DVDs in hand.

We both had vague memories of the nothing-to-brag-about 1970s version of BSG, but neither of us had seen any episodes from the “new” series. So we set out to watch the four (or is it 4.5?) seasons. We finished the series a few nights ago. I’m assuming just about everybody else out there has seen the series, but if not, BE WARNED: there are lots of spoilers after the jump!!

Here are the more memorable comments made as the series progressed:
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The husband wanted to go see a movie; he suggested this one. We watched the trailer. “That’s completely ridiculous,” I said. We went anyway, and am I glad we did. This was an enthralling, very well done movie. So well done that I didn’t spend a moment worrying that the “science” didn’t exactly add up.

If you want to know about the plot, go watch the trailer! 😉 All I’m going to say is that I thought the last couple minutes of the movie weren’t entirely necessary, but then again, they didn’t hurt. Other than that, no complaints.

I just wish there were more movies (and books) on this level.

I wanted to see this movie from the moment I saw the beautiful cinematography in the trailer—and once I decide I’m going to watch a movie, I try to avoid all reviews and opinions so I can come to it fresh. So I didn’t know much about it going in, except that it involved a post-apocalyptic setting and perhaps, a reawakening of religion, probably Christian.

Last night I finally had a chance to watch it, and oh my, was I disappointed. No . . . it was worse than that. This movie left me furious with the usual lament: Why spend so much money, why spend so much talent, and not include more than a snippet of actual story?

* * * WARNING: Everything after the jump is a spoiler * * *
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I enjoyed and admired the movie Inception, and highly recommend it. I also learned a couple interesting things from it, from a writer’s perspective. (I don’t think there are any spoilers in the following, but if you’re like me and want to know as little as possible about a movie once you’ve decided to see it, than come back later . . .)

* The tech doesn’t have to be explained. The script successfully handles lots of tricky concepts, but says not one word (that I can recall) about how the architecture of shared dreams is communicated, and that’s okay. I don’t need to know. I just need the “What if”—what if we could do this. Coming from a hard science fiction background, this was enlightening.

* World building isn’t always necessary. So far as I could tell, the story was set in the present, in the world we live in, except that this dream technology exists. There’s no attempt to extrapolate what the world might look like ten or fifteen years hence when this technology is maturing, or to explore what other effects it might have on society. The story is tightly focused on itself and not at all interested in the world at large, which works great in this movie.

And a minor bonus lesson:

* Titles are tricky. I love one word titles, but “Inception” was hard to get my head around. Exception? Incision? Invictus? What the hell was it again?

If you can remember the title, go see it, and let me know what you think.