Category: Film and TV

The Tripods are Coming

Tripods
Kewl! The Tripods,
the science fiction trilogy by John Christopher (real name Samuel
Youd), is one of the stories well known and oft quoted in our
household. My son even named his cat Ozzy, after the character
Ozymandias. We read the books and watched the BBC TV series until the
venerable VHS tape finally gave up the ghost a few years ago. We hadn’t
given it much thought for a while, until my son found some video clips
on YouTube. It was fun rediscovering the series and covering old,
familiar ground. I’ll have to look around and see if the series may be
found on DVD.

It occurred to me, after reading some comments on YouTube (always an
intellectual treat) that the themes of the book could be interpreted as
a slam at religion. I’d considered the idea before, but dismissed it, however…
that was before Hitchens, Dawkins and Pullman labored to make the world
safe for anti-religious bigotry, dragged it out of the closet and onto
the New York Times Bestseller list.

For those unfamiliar with the story, the world has been conquered
completely by aliens who travel around in gigantic tripods (okay, not
terribly original, but consider it flattery to H.G. Wells) and the
population are kept in line through the use of an electronic wire mesh
"cap" that is stamped onto their cranium around the age of 16 (when
young folk typically begin having serious rebellious thoughts) and that
makes them content, docile and obedient to the tripods. The cap keeps
them from thinking in certain ways, eliminates violent and deceitful
thoughts, but also wonder and inventiveness. Human kind is restricted
to about an 18th century level of technology. The heroes run away as
their "capping day" draws near, in search of a secret enclave of human
resistance,  based on nothing but a rumor and a map picked up from a
"vagrant" (a human whose capping has gone wrong, they are considered
insane).

I never interpreted the story as anti-religious, and in fact saw the
cap in much broader terms as the common tendency for the Spirit of the
Age (any age) to become tyrannical and oppressive, or the readiness of
people to give up thinking for themselves in exchange for the promise
of peace and safety. These are human themes into which religion of one
kind or another might figure… or not.

If the story was meant as a veiled anti-religious screed, it’s
odd that an unabashed religionist like myself would find so much in the
story to relate to and delight in. To me, the Map could just as well
represent Holy Scripture, the Resistance the Church, and the Cap
atheistic materialism. I always assumed that once a person was capped,
religious impulses would be the first thing to go.

I Googled around a bit  and couldn’t find any blatantly anti-religious sentiments attributable to to Mr. Youd (aka John Christopher), but I’d be interested to hear from someone who may know more.

Visit Tim Jones’ blog, "Old World Swine"

The Kind of Story that Vatican TV Really Should Not Do

Popefire_2Okay, so they were having a bonfire in Poland on April 2 (which happens to be the anniversary of JP2’s death) and a guy snapped pictures of the flames and later, after looking at the pictures back home, decided that one looks like John Paul II and must be some kind of manifestation from beyond the grave and Vatican TV does a story on it, complete with an endorsement from a Polish priest saying that’s what it is.

This is the kind of story that Vatican TV really shouldn’t do.

Even if they ran the story with all kinds of disclaimers, those disclaimers won’t make it through into the popular media. The mere fact that Vatican News Service is carrying this story will be taken as indicating that the Vatican supports this interpretation of the bondfire image.

This is bad because it strains credulity enough to have saintly images appearing in tortillas an pieces of toast and on the sides of buildings. Finding one in an image of something as dynamic and as constantly-changing-in-shape as fire is completely beyond the bounds. If you take enough pictures of any bonfire, you’ll be able to find such images in it.

And then there is the fact that fire isn’t exactly the most . . . er . . . traditional symbol of what it’s like in heaven. I mean, if you want a message that JP2 is in heaven rather than . . . one of the hotter regions . . . is a bonfire the best place for such a message?

This is just superstition, and the Vatican News Service abetted it, wittingly or unwittingly.

GET THE STORY.

(CHT to the reader who e-mailed.)

The Nattering Nabobs of Know-Nothingism

TheviewcurrentI have never seen an episode of ABC TV’s The View.

Until Rosie O’Donnell got in trouble on it, I hadn’t even heard of the program, though it’s apparently been on for more than ten years.

From reading about the show and seeing clips of it, I have, however, come to hold a very low opinion of it.

What I have seen and read about the show leads me to the conclusion that it is shallow and bubble-headed and frequently shameful, embarrassing, and even disgusting. In other words, it swings between the two extremes of insipid, inconsequential fluff, often with prurient undertones, to completely idiotic attempts to take on serious subjects by a group of commentators who don’t have the first clue what they’re talking about.

Since the commentators are also all women, the show is clearly aimed at a female audience, and if I were a woman, I’d be insulted that ABC thinks this is the kind of junk that I’d be interested in.

The show also seems to deliberately stir up controversy in order to attract ratings by hiring sick puppies like Rosie O’Donnell and Whoopi Goldberg (note that it’s Barbara Walters in the clip who first introduces a disgusting suggestion, which Goldberg then amplifies and makes even worse; there’s plenty of sick puppyism to go around on this show).

So it comes as no surprise that, if this pack of intellectual mendicants (not in the good sense, in which Dominicans are intellectual mendicants) were to choose to take on the subject of Archbishop Raymond Burke’s statement that he would deny Rudy Giuliani Holy Communion that they’d make more errors than you could shake a stick at.

And they did.

Reading the following transcript of part of yesterday’s show (which sure sounds authentic, though I haven’t been able to verify that yet, so caveat emptor,though I have partial confirmation from another source) is like playing one of those "How many things can you find wrong in this picture?" games.

Man, is it painful!

ABC–and its owner, the Disney corporation–should be ashamed of itself that it’s putting out this kind of offensive and brainless twaddle.

Since the hosts of The View obviously don’t have a clue, ABC should get one and cancel the show.

Transcript below the fold (CHT to the reader who e-mailed).

Continue reading “The Nattering Nabobs of Know-Nothingism”

Babylon 5: The Lost Tales

Btlosttales
In the mail today (well, yesterday by when you read this), I got the direct-to-DVD movie Babylon 5: The Lost Tales, which is the first in a planned series of new Babylon 5 stories on DVD.

It’s 72 minutes long and consists of two stories that occur simultaneously and interlock to some degree.

I won’t give major spoilers here, but here are a few brief comments.

Both stories are set in 2271, ten years after the events of the first Babylon 5 TV series finished. The first story focuses on Captain Lochley, who is still in command of Babylon 5,and the second focuses on John Sheridan, who is still president of the Interstellar Alliance. Also skulking around is Galen the technomage, but these three are the only regular characters featured in the movie (other past cast members are planned to appear in future DVDs).

The CGI in the video is much improved over where it was ten years ago, when B5 was on the air (basically, CGI was at the stage that video games are now; this DVD may give you an idea of where video games will be in a few years).

The two stories are focused on questions (which is normal for how Joe Straczynski writes). The Lochley story focuses on a theological question, and the Sheridan story focuses on a moral one. (Actually, they both have moral questions, but the first is predicated on a theological question in addition.)

Br. Theo and the other Dominicans apparently aren’t on Babylon 5 any more, so they aren’t there to help Lochley wrestle with the theological issue that is thrust forward. (Oh, BTW, the pope is a man again.) Early on in this story there is a conversation which, when I heard it, I thought, "Joe’s atheism is showing through." I thought it was an interesting conversation, but I was still disappointed. I did suspect, though, that he might be setting us up for a larger issue, and that was true in spades!  I won’t say where this goes, but this has to be the most intensely theological thing that Straczynski has done on the show, and it ends in a way that is definitely respectful of religion.

The moral question at the heart of the Sheridan story is a variant of one that has been hashed over quite a number of times in science fiction, but it’s still a well-told tale with a nice resolution.

There are weak spots in the writing (e.g., the climax of the Lochley story is too talky and Sheridan says some things to an ISN reporter that no president trying to foster interplanetary relations would say to a reporter in a million years–BTW the reporter is Teryl Rothery or "Dr. Janet Frazier" from SG-1), as there often are with JMS’s writing, but the overall is interesting, entertaining, and it will definitely please the majority of B5 fans. (You can never please all fans, of any series, no matter what you do.)

There are also a lot of nice individual lines (JMS specializes in those), and a number of nice little touches that will please fans who know the background of the series.

GET THE STORIES.

NOTE: Please do not give significant spoilers in the combox (or I’ll delete them). In the future, after folks have had a chance to watch the DVD, I may come back to this and discuss the theological and moral questions the stories pose.

P.S. The featurettes are very nice. The memorial tributes to Andreas Katsulas and Richard Biggs are touching, and the Straczynski Diaries are hilarious.

Michael & Us

“The U.S. health care system ranks last compared with five other nations on measures of quality, access, efficiency, equity, and outcomes,” the non-profit group, which studies health care issues, said in a statement.
Canada rates second worst out of the six overall. Germany scored highest, followed by Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
“The United States is not getting value for the money that is spent on health care,” Commonwealth Fund president Karen Davis said in a telephone interview.
The group has consistently found that the United States, the only one of the six nations that does not provide universal health care, scores more poorly than the others on many measures of health care.
Link:
Report: U.S. health care expensive, inefficient: America ranks last among six countries on key measures, group finds

Michael Moore is, well, not my favorite person.

BUT I WAS STUNNED TO READ THIS ACCOUNT OF HOW HE GOES ABOUT HIS FILMMAKING.

Where Are the Anti-Communist Movies?

Abortions, pornography and contraceptives will be banned in the new Florida town of Ave Maria, which has begun to take shape on former vegetable farms 90 miles northwest of Miami.
Tom Monaghan, the founder of the Domino’s Pizza chain, has stirred protests from civil rights activists by declaring that Ave Maria’s pharmacies will not be allowed to sell condoms or birth control pills. The town’s cable television network will carry no X-rated channels.
The town will be centred around a 100-foot tall oratory and the first Catholic university to be built in America for 40 years. The university’s president, Nicholas J Healy, has said future students should “help rebuild the city of God” in a country suffering from “catastrophic cultural collapse.”

That’s the question being asked by David Boaz over at TCS Daily.

He notes that there have, actually, been some anti-Communist movies, but not nearly as many as there have been anti-Nazi movies, and the Communists killed far more people than the Nazis, thus creating innumerable dramatic human situations that could be illuminated through film.

I’ve got two thoughts on why there haven’t been as many anti-Communist movies:

1) Hollywood tends to the left of the political spectrum. It’s cultural/political ethos is socialistic to begin with, and there is less of a desire on filmmakers’ parts to go after Communists than people (like Nazis) that they perceive to be on the opposite end of the political spectrum (though, in actuality, the Nazi party was the National Socialist party).

2) The Cold War never got hot. What made Naziism so riveting and enduring an evil in film is the fact that a whole generation of Americans went off to fight it. Communism was a looming menace, but since we and the Russians (or the Chinese) never squared off in an actual world war, that looming menace never turned into the generation-defining experience that World War II was. If Stalin massacred more civilians than Hitler did (let’s suppose; I haven’t checked the numbers), we never had to fight Stalin, and that kept him from becoming an archtypal villain equivalent to Hitler in cultural stature. (Though he has clearly been the first runner-up in that category.)

So those are my theories.

What’re yours?