Rambles on Harry Potter, BTVS DVDs

[shadowkat]

First off - thanks for the feedback on evil fanfic.

Since it's been a snowy week, tv has been abysmal, I've snuggled down with a book. A huge book courtesy of rahael. Been reading Harry Potter and The Order of The Phoenix and I must say I am pleasantly surprised. Interesting book. And really good.

Rowlings' does something interesting in the fifth installment of her series that she didn't really do as much with the earlier novels, which is bit by bit pull back the curtain and reveal another side to everything. You start to understand why Harry's teachers treat him the way they have, the motivations behind Snape, McGonagall, Moody, Dumbledor's actions - however seemingingly unjust are in reality to protect and aid. I just finished a chapter about Snape, where it appears from Harry's point of view that Snape is unjustly singling him out again and being cruel to him, but if you read the chapter carefully - you notice that Harry is the only student who leaves the glass knowing exactly what he did wrong with his potion and what to do right the next time. None of the other students, who equally screwed up, know what they did wrong. Snape picked on the student he wanted to teach and at the same time made it clear that he disliked him, so no one would suspect favoritism or that he'd ever help Harry. Tricky scene to write and carry off.

Another thing Rowlings does in this book is highlight the dangers of "pureblood" prejudice - which is a nice subversive dig at the British classism. Rowlings remember was a welfare mom and now new wealth - she'll never be accepted by the "pure-bloods". She makes lovely little digs at them - one regarding inbreeding in a scene with Sirus - where he describes how you can only be a pureblood if you literally married your cousin or sister, which ahem means inbreeding. The digs remind me a lot of Ronald Dahl. I'm rather enjoying her snide little digs here and there at things in her own society. Bet they go unnoticed by the majority of readers - since most people speed through these books.

At any rate, a pleasurable read. Up to page 230, I think.

BTVS DVD S4 and S5 commentaries.

My friend cjlasky kindly loaned me the BTVS S4 and S5 DVDs, so I've had the opportunity to sample some of the commentaries. Not overwhelmed by Doug Petri's commentries, rapidly losing respect for him as a writer, I'm afraid. Which is sad since I adored Bad Girls, Yoko Factor, This Year's Girl, Beneath You and Fool For Love - but I'm half convinced Whedon wrote most of those episodes anyway - Petrie admits in his Initiative commentary that Whedon rewrites most of what he writes - which contrasts greatly with Espenson and Fury who say Whedon really doesn't rewrite that much of their scripts. Joss Whedon however continues to impress - he states in response to something Seth Green says in the Wild at Heart Commentary, that it is important to understand that villains do *not* see themselves as villains, in their heads they are heroic. He states he's experienced appalling villainous behavior from self-righteous people who believe what they are doing what is best and there is no other way. He states something very similar in the Firefly DVD Commentaries - telling Adam Baldwin not to play Jayne as a bad guy of a big lug, he tells Baldwin, that Jayne thinks of himself as heroic. He's right. The villain doesn't seem himself as the villain, he's the hero inside his head. He has clear reasons for everything he does.

Season 5 BTVS DVD extras are sort of disappointing. No commentary for The Gift, Family, Buffy vs. Dracula (which shocked me because I was positive someone transcribed commentary from B vs. D on atpo, guess I remembered it wrong or maybe it's available on the foreign version? Or it's hidden and I need to double-check?), Crush or Intervention. We do get it for Fool For Love, The Body, Real Me, and I Was Made To Love You (not sure why they did that one, since it's not a fan favorite). Also the outtakes are from Season 3, not 4 or 5 - very odd. We don't have any featurrettes on Spike who was a major focus of that season and one of the few characters they really developed. We do get one on Dawn and the story of Season 5. Lots of original scripts - which I don't understand - since you get them onscreen not as an actual paper script, which means that they expect people to print these off?
Or try to read them on the television screen? I did like the casting couch one - but I'd seen it before somewhere else, also already knew most of it from interviews. Firefly DVD Commentaries and Featurettes were actually much better - you got audition reels,
cast member commentaries, commentaries for at least six of the 13 episodes, outtakes for that season. Also each disc is packaged separately in its own folder.
That said - the BTVS DVD Commentary is *much* easier to access than the Firefly DVD Commentary - I had a horrible time accessing that Firefly commentary, BTVS? No problems at all. DVD's are weird. VHS? Only one way really to package the things. But DVD's? Hundreds apparently.

So here's my ratings so far for Season 5 BTVS DVD:
cover artwork? A+ (I'm a Spike fan, so what did you expect?)
DVD commentaries/featurettes? B- (I'd gotten the chance via another friend to see the DVD commentary for the Body, Fool for Love, Real Me, and some of the featurettes already)
Packaging? C (I hate the fold-out format)
DVD disc menus? A (easy to click on)
Episodes? A (but I'm a fan of Season 5, always was, favorite season along with Season 2)

I'm not a huge fan of Season 4 BTVS, but! the features and commentaries are much better. There's more of them. My problem with Season 4 BTVS is The Initiative Storyline which Whedon admits in the Wild at Heart commentary was lame, due to their lack of budget. I think there were other problems personally - one, the writers were enamored of Marc Blucas as Riley, who ahem just doesn't have the acting muscel to carry off what they were attempting. Poor guy. Instead of playing with the college themes - which started out the season and remain the best episodes, they got into this whole secret agent/James Bond story which just did not work. That said - Season 4 BTVS and Season 6 BTVS are really fascinating seasons of television because they contain some of the most experimental peices of TV I've ever seen. The writers decided to play and watching it was at times a bit like watching trapeze artists fling themselves about without a net.
Some episodes, in both seasons, are brilliant, possibly the best hour of TV I've ever seen and the most innovative - they literally break the barrier and take the artform to a new level. Other episodes, make you wonder if the writers are smoking too much dope or just got sick of the whole thing and wanted to crank something out at the last minute. Because of these extremes it's hard to place Season 4 or Season 6 at the top, but at the same time, it's impossible to ignore them or not want to own some portion of them, since both seasons contain episodes that I honestly would rank within the top ten of the entire series, and I don't think I'm alone in that.

Here's just a few from Season 4:
1. Hush - S4
2. Restless - S4
3. Who Are You - S4
4. Freshman - S4
5. Harsh Light of Day - S4
6. Something Blue - S4
7. Pangs - S4 (hilarous)
8. Yoko Factor - S4 (even with the Initiative bits - the demonstration of how you drift apart is brillaint)

Whenever a writer tries something new, something unpredictable, tries to break a barrier - I'm there.
Give me that any day over a reality show or re-hashed plotline.

Okay...enuf, must get off to bed. Beginning to hate my internet server - I've been disconnected five times while writing this, highly annoying. Haven't lost it. Just have to keep pausing in mid thought to sign myself back in.

Comments

Re: B4 v. B5

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I was discussing this with cjl today, who more or less agrees with you - he's not a fan of Clare Kramer's Glory either - she didn't bug me that much. At any rate, what we both agreed on was that S4 had some very interesting experimental stand-a-lone episodes - some of the best in the series and episodes that worked much better than some of the stand-a-lones in S6 or S7. S5 also had some amazing stand-a-lone's but not nearly as many as S4.

Here's S4 stand-alones, I'm only citing those that if you removed Initiative completely wouldn't matter: (no particular meaning to the order listed)
1. Hush*
2. Harsh Light of Day*
3. Restless*
4. Something Blue*
5. Pangs
6. Wild at Heart
7. This Year's Girl - Who are You*
8. Superstar
9. A New Man
10. Freshman*
11. Fear Itself
12. Where The Wild Things Are
13. Doomed
14. Living Conditions
15. Beer Bad


Here's S5 (Only those where if you removed Glory/Ben completely it doesn't matter)
1. Buffy vs. Dracula
2. The Replacement
3. Out of My Mind
4. Fool for Love*
5. Family (not sure about this one, it could matter)
6. Triangle
7. I Was Made To Love You
8. The Body*
9. Crush
10. Into The Woods
11. Forever
12. The Real Me

S4=15, S5=11. Both seasons of course had a new character who was tied to The villain arc in a way that is difficult to ignore. S5=Dawn, S4=Riley. I prefered Dawn overall to Riley, in some ways.

Of the stand-alones, S4 has at least six that I would consider in top 30 BTVS episodes. I've starred them.
S5 has - 2, possibly 3 (I'm on the fence regarding The Real Me and Crush). So on stand-alone's S4 is stronger.
But arc wise?

S5
1. No Place Like Home
2. Shadow
3. Listening to Fear
4. Checkpoint
5. Blood Ties
6. Intervention
7. Tough Love
8. Spiral
9. Weight of the World
10.The Gift

Of this bunch - I'd say only Shadow, Listening to Fear, and possibly Weight of The World or Spiral are truly weak.
But again Glory didn't bug me - I found her amusing.

S4 (the episodes that you can't understand without the Initiative involved)
1. The Initiative
2. The I in Team
3. Goodbye Iowa
4. New Moon Rising
5. Yoko Factor
6. Primeval


Whoa - almost no true arc here. S5 had more of one. In S4, they really did do more stand-alones, keeping arc in the background. Of this group - I'd say maybe three good strong episodes: the last three - which had Riley in the background, New Moon Rising, Yoko Factor and Primeval.

So it depends on what your looking for, I suppose. Tighter plotting and more of an arc, S5, looser plotting and more experimental stand-a-lone, episodic - S4?
S5 and S4 do have together four of my all time favorite Btvs episodes: Hush, Restless, The Body, Fool For Love - which are in my top five. The fifth being either Innocence, Becoming Part II or Dead Things, depending on my mood.

Buffy Versus Dracula

[rahael.livejournal.com]

You can find some comments about the above ep in the 'Season 5 Overview' - it's worth a look!

Re: Buffy Versus Dracula

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That's where I saw it before...will check that out.

Also, welcome back - I missed your presence online.
Hope the trip and visit went well.