Category: Film and TV

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?

It’s true!

GET THE STORY!

NOTE: Fortunately, it seems to be white kryptonite, which is only deadly to plants, so our planet’s Kryptonian defender seems to be safe. . . . for the moment!

Every few years one network or another has a period when they’re doing really entertaining cartoons. Back in the ’90s, Nickelodeon had such a run when they were first doing Rugrats (before they got stale) and Doug. Then it was kind of slim pickins until they came up with SpongeBob SquarePants and The Fairly Oddparents (though Hey, Arnold! and The Wild Thornberrys could be good).

Kids WB (back when they were around) also had such a run with Animaniacs, Pinky & the Brain, Freakazoid, and Earthworm Jim.

And Cartoon Network had one with Johnny Bravo, Dexter’s Lab, Powerpuff Girls, Courage the Cowardly Dog, and Ed, Edd, n Eddy.

I don’t know what it is, but these runs of good cartoons always seem to peter out after a couple three years and then you just have to wait until someone else starts doing good TV animation again.

Filling the gap between such little golden ages is, of course, why God created DVDs, but man hasn’t been doing his part up to now: The vast majority of these cartoons have never been released on DVD! (Yet another crime against the humanities!)

I was delighted to learn, therefore, that though it’s not yet out on DVD the first season of Johnny Bravo has been released on iTunes!

WOO-HOO!

I downloaded it immediately.

My guess is that they’re testing the waters to see how well it does before possibly putting it out on DVD–or at least expanding the number of whole-season releases of Cartoon Network’s classic toons.

For those who may not know, Johnny Bravo is the biggest, dumbest, most narcissistic, body-building blond Elvis-clone that the world has ever seen.

The first season of the show also includes the immortal episode "Bravo Doobie Doo," in which Johnny meets the Mystery Inc. gang from Scooby Doo, and we get a double-franchise satire.

There are some really funny bits in that one.

A favorite moment: Velma’s glasses are knocked off in a chase scene, and she’s groping around on the floor for them saying, "My glasses! My glasses! I CAN’T SEE without my glasses!" then the camera pans over and we see that Johnny’s ever-present shades have been knocked off, too, and he’s crying, "My glasses! My glasses! I CAN’T BE SEEN without my glasses!"

Classic!

Amazing what you can do with the passive voice.

I just hope they release the rest of the series.

I can’t wait to watch the episode where Johnny runs for mayor against a ham sandwich and the ham sandwich is ahead in the polls.

A reader writes:

I wanted to share this
movie I made. Its a family film, 5 minutes in length and was my first
attempt for "On The lot" by Steven Spielberg. My oldest son loved filming
it, so if you have a chance take a look. Its a general audience film. Thanks
again and God Bless.

I did indeed take a look at the fim, and thought folks (especially parents!) would get a big kick out of it. I’d love to embed it here on the blog, but unfortunately Mr. Spielberg doesn’t seem to have gotten with the YouTube generation yet, so . . .

 

HERE’S THE LINK.

There are a couple of spoiler-containing interviews with Ron Moore that folks interested in a look at what season 4 of BSG and the interim movie will contain might want to take a look at.

HERE’S THE FIRST.

HERE’S THE SECOND.

Note that the second contains a single bad word. (And no, it’s not *rak.)

WDYT?

(Spoiler zone in the combox!)

This weekend I went back to see INTO GREAT SILENCE a second time at the one venue it is currently playing, NYC’s Film Forum Theater.

I went with my 12-year-old daughter Sarah, who watched Papa’s two-minute plug for the film on EWTN’s "Life on the Rock" this past Thursday, and wanted to see it.

The screening was sold out.

Luckily I had bought tickets online, or we wouldn’t have got in. After an hour getting to the theater, turning around and going home would have been no fun. There weren’t two seats to be had together; I had to ask another patron if he would change seats so that I could sit with Sarah. (She loved the film, BTW.)

Apparently, that sold-out screening was indicative of a strong opening weekend; a contact at Zeitgeist tells me the film did very well in NYC (I don’t have numbers yet). So, this is good news for all of you who are hoping that the film will come to a theater near you, since art-house theater owners look to the NY opening of a film like this when deciding whether to book the film.

A number of readers have asked what they can do if the movie isn’t currently scheduled to play near them. Answer: Contact your local art-house/alternative theater owner(s) and ask them to book the film! The more interested patrons theater owners hear from, the more likely they are to book the film. And if it does come anywhere near you, make sure people who would enjoy it know about it.

Of course if you truly live in the sticks where there isn’t an art-house theater for three hours, you’re probably out of luck, but then you already knew that anyway.

P.S. Chicago-area readers: Note that the Music Box Theatre has moved up the film’s week-long run by a week, from a start date of April 6 to a start date of March 30!

WHERE AND WHEN (slightly updated!)

Over at Catholic Exchange, Terry Mattingly tells us about a new graphic novel / movie project from the creator of Earthworm Jim (left), Doug TenNapel.

Along with exploring the creative process that TenNapel employs, Mattingly describes how Creature Tech moved from a picture story on paper to a real , fer-sure Hollywood movie;

"The key moment came when the blogger called "Moriarty" posted the following at the Ain’t It Cool (aintitcool.com) site for film insiders:  "There’s no doubt. It’s weird . . . It’s also very funny, profoundly sweet and heartfelt, touching in a strange way, and serious about concepts like faith and family without being in any way preachy or corny.

"Simply put, Creature Tech is the best American animated film since The Iron Giant . . . Better than anything from any studio . . . It’s a movie that just happens to be in print."

Within minutes, studios started calling his agent. Regency Enterprises and 20th Century Fox won the bidding war and early work began on a live-action movie"

I want to see it already, just based on the sketchy (heh) description in Mattingly’s article. TenNapel deals with the creative problems that face Christian artists in an apparently organic, sensible and honest way. Of the current state of the entertainment biz from a Christian perspective, he states;

"People want a quick fix. Christians are going to have to learn that art isn’t automatically good if it’s made by Christians. And Hollywood will have to learn that art isn’t automatically bad if it’s made by Christians."

I did not grow up reading comics much, and am not that familiar with the graphic novel genre, but I hope to read Creature Tech before the movie comes out. Any graphic novel fans out there who might be able to give me some confirmation on the worthiness of this one? It sounds tasty.

GET THE STORY.

CHT to the reader who e-mailed

THIS STORY.

EXCERPTS:

A third television series in the hit Stargate franchise is now in development, GateWorld has learned.

A production source informs GateWorld that the new series is in the concept phase, and is being actively worked on by the Vancouver creatives behind Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. No concept for the show has yet been revealed.

The third TV series is also not likely to be rushed into production for a 2007 premiere in order to replace SG-1, which takes its final bow with 10 new episodes this spring. Instead, a premiere in 2008 or later is more likely at this point.

Meanwhile, SG-1 will continue with two movies, presumably direct-to-DVD, currently aiming for a fall 2007 release.

MORE ON THE SG-1 MOVIES HERE. (SPOILERS)

AND HERE. (THIS ONE IS ALSO SPOILER-LITE.)

In the gap between Battlestar Galactica seasons 2 and 3, I wrote:

One of my favorite things to do when watching or reading a story is
to predict where it’s going and then seeing if I’m right or not.

So let’s see how I do with my predictions for BSG season 3. . . .

The predictions I made concerned the first half of season 3, and now that episode 311 (the half-way episode in the 20 episode season) has aired, I thought it’d be appropriate to evaluate my plot prognostications. Let’s divide them into predictions that have been CONFIRMED, PARTIALLY CONFIRMED, UNCONFIRMED, and DISCONFIRMED.

(Post continues in the down-below part of this post)

SPOILER WARNING!

Continue reading “BSG Predictions Scorecard”