THE WIRE!! RAZOR UNRATED!! IMAGINATIONLAND!! SNL!! JUSTICE LEAGUE: NEW FRONTIER!! HercVault!!

I am – Hercules!!

The “Battlestar Galactica: Razor” movie aired on the SciFi Channel a week and a half ago -- so what do you get with the extended, unrated version released today on DVD? The Extended Unrated Version (1:43:29) comes with about 15 minutes of reintegrated footage stripped out of the SciFi version, including: * Kendra Shaw hanging out in a Caprica “coffee tent” across the room from Lee Adama just before the start of Cylon War II. She mentions an ironic ambition. * A bit more time with Helena Cain’s original first officer. * A bit more with prisoner Sharon talking about the old-school Cylons. * The famous flashback with teen Helena on Tauron, fleeing deadly robots on the last day of Cylon War I. * Gaius Baltar chatting up Imaginary Six on the subject of the old-school Cylons. * The rest of the Felix Alcala-directed minisode footage. * Depictions of old-school Cylons slicing open humans in lab experiments. * A lot more dialog with the old Cylon hybrid yammering on about what’s going to happen in season four. Sample dialog: “And then they will join the promised land, gathered on the wings of an angel. Not an end, but a beginning.” * More Cylon base ship footage generally, with more Cylon ceiling fans (perhaps so the old man spouting poetry would remind us more of Brando in “Apocalypse Now”?). * Perhaps other bits I’m failing to remember or notice. Audio commentary. This was apparently recorded by series mastermind Ron Moore and “Razor” writer Michael Taylor shortly after “Galactica” won its visual-effects Emmy on Sept. 16. Learn that the structure of “Razor” changed radically between the end of principal photography and the final edit; Originally the whole thing was supposed to be set with Kara and Kendra on the old-school Cylon base ship as Kendra kept flashing back to her days serving Cain. Learn that the movie was once to open with a long “Apocalypse Now”-inspired sequence rolling over the remnants of a battlefield, perhaps as a version of The Doors’ “The End” wafted over the scene. Learn that the Young Adama and Young Cain sequences were originally supposed to start the flashbacks. Learn that a TV monitor in the coffee tent was to feature Baltar and Six watching Anders in a Pyramid match in something akin to a Caprican Staples Center. Learn that the Pegasus had to be rebuilt on a different stage miles distant from the regular “Galactica” stages because its old stage was already occupied. Learn that there was a lot more “Passion of the Six” footage of Thorne whipping the Cylon bloody in slow motion. Learn that bad blood with the union local on the adjacent “Bionic Woman” set almost screwed up Cain’s “so say we all” scene. Learn that Moore fretted about revealing an evil character as the series first identifiable homosexual. Learn that Moore fretted about putting video of a dead Six in the Pegasus CIC, fearful that video screens might remind people too much of the viewscreens on all the “Star Trek” bridges. Learn that season three originally began with a D’Anna Biers-produced propoganda film. Learn that Stephanie Jacobsen, while born in Hong Kong, was raised in either Australia or New Zealand, and uses her real accent in “Razor.” Learn that Moore was originally startled by Marina Sirtis’ real accent. Learn that the original vocoder was brought in from the ‘70s series for the Cylon voices. And more. Deleted Scenes (3:38). There are three, none of which boast optional commentary: 1) Lee is in a different part of the coffee tent and talks about quitting the fleet just before Cylon War II. “I am not my dad,” he explains. 2) Kendra and Kara spend a few extra seconds together. 3) Lee and Kara get drunk watching footage of Lee destroying the space-liner so central to the plot of the first episode of the first season. The Look of Battlestar Galactica (7:59). Ron Moore discusses the naturalistic environment created for the series. Learn that all four stages are filled wall to wall. Learn that a lot of the props on the show are from real World War II craft. The documentary look evolved in terms of cinematography. My Favorite Episode So Far (10:27). Moore and Mary McDonnell pick 1.1: “33.” David Eick picks 1.4: “Act of Contrition.” Katee Sackhoff picks “Maelstrom.” Jamie Bamber picks “Crossroads Part II,” the season-three finale. Tricia Helfer picks the Pegasus episodes from season two. Grace Park picks the episode in which Helo uses a gun to send Sharon to the resurrection ship to rescue Hera. Olmos says he thinks his favorite episode is going to the last episode of the series. All explain why. Season Four Sneak Peak (2:33). Footage we’ve seen is mixed with the cast and crew talking about season four. “People are going to be surprised by what they learn about Kara Thrace,” we’re told by Eick. “The boundries will become further blurred between Cylons and human,” allows Jamie Bamber. I found out that there’s a new clone of my character going to be introduced in season four called ‘Natalie,’ reveals Tricia Helfer. “Are we evolving together, the humans and the Cylons,” asks Mary McDonnell, “and then do we find Earth together?” Season Four Trailer (:49). Actual footage from season four, including Katee Sackhoff on her back, screaming, whets our appetite for spring. The Minisodes (19:17). All seven strung together. And though I’d seen all seven at least twice before, I happily watched them again. The end credits tell us that “Razor” director Felix Alcala didn’t direct the first two minisodes.

Saturday Night Live: The Complete Second Season is an amazing document of SNL racing toward its creative zenith. If you think I like “Saturday Night Live” now, you should have seen me when I was a kid. I practically peed myself every time news came down that Steve Martin would join Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Dan Aykroyd, Michael O’Donoghue and/or Bill Murray for a new show. The show’s second season was titanic in terms of zeitgeist. The new DVD demonstrates the show was still known as “NBC’s Saturday Night” in those days. Belushi was the seasonal store employee who needed the “Santi-Wrap” and the Pennsylvania Dutch cop named Churn. Dan Aykroyd introduced unsafe toymaker Irwin Mainway and screamed in a hilarious manner when he stuck the Epifix syringe into his upper gums and reprised Tomorrow Show host Tom Snyder. Frank Zappa stood in Christmas tree line-up and jiggles his ornaments. Candice Bergen invited American to adopt a cigarette-sucking Belushi for Christmas. Mr. Bill made his second appearance during the Karen Black show as part of the show’s soon-aborted “home movie” series. Steve Martin unleashed “Excuuuuuuuuuuuuse ME!!!” upon a zillion 1976 junior-high lunchrooms. Michael O’Donoghue was still head writer, and contributed all four of “Mr. Mike’s Least Loved Bedtime Tales” during the second season. Current Senate candidate Al Franken was wandering around sporting a giant Jewfro. Chevy Chase only participated in the second season’s first nine shows (two of which he literally phoned in due to an infamous podium injury). During the four shows for which he showed up live Chase impersonated Mr. Ed and the land-shark and the president. He did an amazing commercial for milk. Chase was shockingly funny in those days. Bill Murray, for my money the best thing ever to come out of SNL, hired on with the first show of 1977, hosted by Ralph Nader. Murray wasn’t billed among the Not Ready For Primetime Players in the opening credits. In Murray’s first SNL sketch he played a bitter, neglected grandfather in a parody of phone company commercial. That same show introduced extraterrestrials Beldar, Prymatt and Connie Conehead, who adorn the cover of the DVD. The season’s first Buck Henry show featured “The Ointment,” an elaborate “Omen” parody with Dan Aykroyd lurching around with a streetlamp sticking out of his abdomen. The Band played four songs during that Buck Henry show just days before Martin Scorsese filmed its final concert. Let’s talk for a second about the first Steve Martin show of the second season, the comic’s second SNL. Martin did two two looooong monologues to open and close the show, full of the very comedy-supergenius jokes that would be filling stadiums within a year. There’s an “American Graffiti”-esque coda to the beatnicks sketch I didn’t remember. There’s at least one sketch I don’t remember at all: Martin hawking a digital watchdog called the Fidoflex (the only dog you can wear underwater)! Everyone wears “Star Trek” uniforms and grey Afro wigs on “Jeopardy 1999.” “What is babykilling” eased overpopulation in 1983. A Rhesus Monkey Torture Kit is a consolation prize. Unlike the first SNL season set, this one includes a few substantial extras with its 22 episodes: The Mardi Gras Special (1:15) A fascinating and extra-hilarious Feb. 20, 1977 primetime “NBC Big Event” telecast from the future K-Ville explains a lot about why SNL never left New York subsequent to 1977. Randy Newman, Buck Henry, Eric Idle, Penny Marshall, Cindy Williams, Henry Winkler all participated. Newman and a giant orchestra perform “Sail Away,” “Marie,” “Louisiana 1927,” a sad yet completely wonderful song about flooding trying to make New Orleans disappear 80 years ago. Belushi dodged bricks as Al Hirt and beads as Benito Mussolini and annoyed neighbors as Stanley Kowalski. Jane Curtain served up Quarry Cereal. Murray, Belushi and Aykroyd played bee-bikers picking up Marshall, Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman. A pre-“Caddyshack” version of Carl Spackler comps Dan Aykroyd’s Tom Snyder a hurricane served by a ridiculously sexy Cindy Williams. Dress Sketch 1 Audio (8:46) “The Farbers: New Kid.” Wow! Aykroyd, Belushi and Murray break character and fight to be the one who does a romantic scene with Sissy Spacek cut from 2.15! Very much like listening to the old National Lampoon Radio Hour! Dress Sketch 2 Audio (5:16) “Susie & Shari.” Lily Tomlin and Laraine Newman put together two of their signature characters in a piece about Miss America contestants cut from 2.1. Andy Kaufman Screentest (4:18) Another fascinating bit of business. Kaufman recites the Richard Harris hit “MacArthur Park” twice, and makes some woman laugh every time he says “Oh no.” He then recites the prologue from TV’s “The Adventures of Superman” in a think Mississippi accent. No Might Mouse lipsynch or “foreign man.” Trailers (1:05) Plugs for the second season of “30 Rock” and “Chuck & Larry,” the Adam Sandler movie about firefighting faux homosexuals.

Some words about season four of "The Wire": Genius comedian Patton Oswalt says:

This is my favorite show on TV and, I think, the best show ever on television. I own the first three seasons on DVD, and I've watched each of them several times. It's the closest thing I've ever seen on television to a big, thick, compelling novel, the kind you can't stop reading. Like The Stand, or Freedomland, or Blood Meridian. I’m flat-out begging you, all of you, to watch this season. PLEASE. In fact, even if you DON’T watch it, could you tune your TV to HBO at 10pm Sunday night? Just for an hour? Just to give this show the ratings? Yes, I’m asking you to do this for selfish reasons. I want to see season 5. And I promise you, if you go back and watch the first three seasons (only 13 episodes each!) you’ll want this to go five seasons. … I’ll say this: The Wire is one of the few times you’ll watch TV and not feel like the people making TV think you’re a fucking idiot.

Variety says:

When television history is written, little else will rival "The Wire," a series of such extraordinary depth and ambition that it is, perhaps inevitably, savored only by an appreciative few. Layering each season upon the previous ones, creator David Simon conveys the decaying infrastructure of his hometown Baltimore in searing and sobering fashion -- constructing a show that's surely as impenetrable to the uninitiated as it is intoxicating to the faithful. In its fourth year, the program adds the school system to cops, drugs, unions, the ailing middle class, and big-city politics. Prepare to be depressed and dazzled.

USA Today gives it four (out of four) stars and says:

The worst terrors are the ones we breed at home. Brilliant, scathing, sprawling, The Wire has turned our indifference to urban decay into a TV achievement of the highest order. The show's impact doesn't always register fully in individual episodes, wonderful as most are. But taken as a whole — not just over this premiering fourth season but over the entire run of the series —The Wire triumphs both as art and indictment.

The Philadephia Daily News says:

While gritty and complex is usually critic shorthand for smart and daring television that doesn't talk down to its audience, it too often translates to readers as "Eat your vegetables." "The Wire," though, isn't vegetables or fiber or any other part of a balanced diet. If it were, I wouldn't have gobbled down all 13 of this season's episodes in a few short days. What "The Wire" is, is the best show on television, and perhaps surprisingly for a series whose focus is often on casual corruption and its not-so-casual consequences, one of the most entertaining.

The Seattle Times says:

"The Wire" isn't just impressive TV, it's impressive art, and it shows just how far the medium has come — and where, one hopes, it's going. If someone liked a television show back in the day, they'd say, a little embarrassed, "It's as good as a movie!" These days, you'd be hard-pressed to find anything at the multiplex as thoughtful as what's on HBO. Their writers can take advantage of 100-plus hours of run-time to craft sprawling, season-spanning plot arcs, impressively subtle character development and multiple narrative threads. As an art form, the long-format TV drama comes a lot closer to literature than to film. In the case of "The Wire," the best analogy might be the serialized 19th-century novel, the kind of thing that kept Dickens fans lined up at newsstands in anticipation of the next installment. Like Dickens' London, the Baltimore depicted in "The Wire" lives and breathes, as rich, textured and immediate as the world outside our door. Now, if we can just get some more people to watch it.

The San Francisco Chronicle says:

Over the course of its first three seasons, "The Wire" on HBO has been one of the great achievements in television artistry, a novelistic approach to storytelling in a medium that rewards quick, decisive and clear storytelling. It has never flinched from ambition - dissecting a troubled American city, Baltimore, as well as and certainly more truly than any history book could have. It has tackled the drug war in this country as it simultaneously explores race, poverty and "the death of the American working class," the failure of political systems to help the people they serve and the tyranny of lost hope. Few series in the history of television have explored the plight of inner-city African Americans and none - not one - has done it as well. On the off chance that you need to be reminded, this is not "Desperate Housewives."

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