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May 31, 2007
What? Another Script? CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARL!
If he isn’t putting out outline after outline, that Carl Binder is just writing script after script after script. And when I bring them into the other producers’ offices they whine… oh boy do they whine… Because Carl just keeps on writing… But you know, while Carl has been doing all of this writing, he’s been falling behind on his other tasks as co-executive producer. For example, he hasn’t finished reading War and Peace (still on his desk, unread, a gift from an adoring assistant). And he still hasn’t calculated the show’s carbon footprint, a job he was charged to do earlier in the season. Maybe he should just relax on the script-writing and get to work saving our environment for goodness sake!
Okay, enough nonsense. Shooting for the second Stargate movie, “Continuum”, began this week and it’s going strong. Martin Wood is directing this one, and Brad Wright has been on set almost everyday making sure everything is just how he likes it. Also Peter Woeste is the DOP (he was also the DOP for “The Ark of Truth”) and this guy is truly a talented photographer. We watched some dailies and I have to say, shooting those movies on film is going to make them look incredibly cool. Now I’m a film purist – ever since film school. I love the depth of field film creates, the contrasts between light and dark, and how forgiving film is in making the actors look… well, wunderbar… But no one can deny that HD is now the dominant medium for television. We’ve been shooting Stargate and Atlantis on HD for the last couple years, and the results have been great.
Friday night you’ll get to see two great episodes… “Talion” on SG-1 and “Sunday” on Atlantis.
Back when Damian Kindler turned in his first draft of the outline for “Talion,” he was worried nobody would understand the title so he included a definition. “Talion. Def. A punishment identical to the offense, as the death penalty for murder.” And it’s a good title, and it stuck, but some of the other writers had a good laugh over it. Joe Mallozzi flipped open the dictionary, picked a word at random and entitled his next outline: “Futtock. Def. One of a ship’s middle timbers between floor and top timbers.” But this is a great episode, which digs into Teal’c’s backstory and a dangerous old enemy named Arkad. I recall Rob and the gang calling it Teal’c’s “Sateda.” It’s the closest Stargate ever gets to an “arena” episode. And who doesn’t love arena episodes?
On the Atlantis side, “Sunday” is a story Martin Gero had been pitching for a long time about a “day off” on Atlantis. Well they finally found the right time for it last season. One of the influences for this script, which in my opinion is one of Martin’s best, was the feature film “Elephant” by Gus Van Sant. Okay, so by now, if you’re a film fan or an Atlantis fan at all, you probably know that this is a show in which one of the characters dies. No I’m not going to tell you which, and even if you know already, “Sunday” is an excellent episode and well worth watching…
So enjoy the episodes.
ATL
Posted by Alex Levine at May 31, 2007 09:57 PM
