Category: Film and TV

I recently saw the movie Van Helsing, which is basically a two hour car chase disguised as a monster movie (and which doesn’t have a PG-13 rating for nothing). There are many religious elements of the movie, which might be boiled down to the summary: “Catholics = Good; Monsters = Bad.” Despite the non-stop action and the film’s other flaws (including a cleric who is implied to break his promise of chastity), it was kind of refreshing to see a movie where the heroes unashamedly pray to God for help–and get it.

I won’t do a full review now, but I thought I would point out that some folks in the world still take monsters very seriously, including vampires.

Consider this recent story from Romania about how locals are angry that the police are trying to stop them from slaying vampires.

Or consider this story from last year about enraged villagers in Malawi who staged riots and attacked a government official (as well as three Catholic priests) on the belief that their government was consorting with vampires.

Kind of makes you glad you’re living in America, doesn’t it?

On the other hand, who wouldn’t be upset if they thought their government leaders were consorting with vampires? Sounds like a case for Mulder and Scully to look into.

Finally! Johnny Quest is on DVD!

If you’re of the right age, you know without me even telling you that Johnny Quest used to be the coolest thing going on Saturday morning–by far!

In case you aren’t lucky enough to remember Johnny Quest, the series was a thirty minute action/adventure cartoon that started airing back in 1964. It instantly became a classic, and it has remained famous for the last forty years. The main cast includes:

• Dr. Benton Quest–a SCIENTIST (not specializing in any particular kind of
  science, just whatever the episode was about that week) who globetrots, solving
  mysteries for the U.S. intelligence community.
• Johnny Quest–his intelligent, irrepressible son who is drawn into the
  adventures by his father’s globetrotting.
• Roger "Race" Bannon–a government agent assigned to protect Johnny to keep
  him from being kidnapped and used to blackmail his father.
• Hadji–Johnny’s best friend, an orphaned boy from India, and
• Bandit–Johnny’s irrepressible, comic-relief dog.

Man, Johnny Quest was cool! The series was drawn on a limited, 1964 TV animation budget, so it used limited animation techniques in order to avoid breaking the budget, but it used the animation in creative and striking ways that make it far more interesting to look at than typical TV animation. It features the intriguing, stylistic designs of animator Alex Toth (who also designed Space Ghost and other classic animation series of the period) and detailed backgrounds that are covered with detail. The series’ premise takes the characters to exotic locations around the globe and confronts them with powerful, sometimes supernatural threats–further adding to the visual dynamism of the series.

Also outstanding is the writing. The scripts are intelligent and (despite the fantastic premise of the series) far more realistic than most animated series. Some of the stuff in the scripts would never make it onto Saturday morning TV today. Consider:

In one episode, Johnny, Hadji, and Race are in a South American jungle when they counter a panther who is about to kill a native man. Race has only a second to act, so to save the man he SHOOTS THE PANTHER. Notice that I didn’t say “stuns the panther with a sonic disruptor pistol.” He SHOOTS IT WITH A RIFLE. Then, rather than letting the boys approach the native, who has the panther laying at his feet, Race tells them to stay where they are and then he SHOOTS THE PANTHER AGAIN to make SURE it’s dead. (Remember: There’s nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal.)

Yes! That’s what you’re SUPPOSED to do in that situation! Save human life and keep it safe, even if it means killing an animal–a valuable lesson in life (one that everybody used to learn) that you’d NEVER see on a modern, politically correct, eco-friendly, Captain Planet-y cartoon.

What a breath of fresh air a show like Johnny Quest is after years of agenda-driven pablum in animated form. It’s striking, intelligent, focused–and even delightfully scary at times for a boy of a certain age. It stresses virtues like loyalty, determination, inventiveness, and facing one’s fears–and it does so without preaching at the audience. The heroes display these virtues naturally while the series stays focused on the STORY instead of wallowing in introspection and self-doubt before finally summoning up the courage to do the right thing.

The current DVD set includes ALL the original Johnny Quest episodes (despite the misleading “Complete First Season” label; the manufacturer apparently is treating a 1986 sequel series as the “second season”), so when you buy this you’ll be getting all the favorite episodes you remember from childhood.

Whether you want to revive memories of Johnny Quest from your own childhood, want to share it with your own, appropriately-aged children, or appreciate it for the first time, hop on board the hovercraft and watch Johnny and the gang face a truckload of evil scientists, enemy agents, and wicked cool monsters.

BUY IT!

Finally! Johnny Quest is on DVD!

If you’re of the right age, you know without me even telling you that Johnny Quest used to be the coolest thing going on Saturday morning–by far!

In case you aren’t lucky enough to remember Johnny Quest, the series was a thirty minute action/adventure cartoon that started airing back in 1964. It instantly became a classic, and it has remained famous for the last forty years. The main cast includes:

• Dr. Benton Quest–a SCIENTIST (not specializing in any particular kind of

  science, just whatever the episode was about that week) who globetrots, solving

  mysteries for the U.S. intelligence community.

• Johnny Quest–his intelligent, irrepressible son who is drawn into the

  adventures by his father’s globetrotting.

• Roger "Race" Bannon–a government agent assigned to protect Johnny to keep

  him from being kidnapped and used to blackmail his father.

• Hadji–Johnny’s best friend, an orphaned boy from India, and
• Bandit–Johnny’s irrepressible, comic-relief dog.

Man, Johnny Quest was cool! The series was drawn on a limited, 1964 TV animation budget, so it used limited animation techniques in order to avoid breaking the budget, but it used the animation in creative and striking ways that make it far more interesting to look at than typical TV animation. It features the intriguing, stylistic designs of animator Alex Toth (who also designed Space Ghost and other classic animation series of the period) and detailed backgrounds that are covered with detail. The series’ premise takes the characters to exotic locations around the globe and confronts them with powerful, sometimes supernatural threats–further adding to the visual dynamism of the series.

Also outstanding is the writing. The scripts are intelligent and (despite the fantastic premise of the series) far more realistic than most animated series. Some of the stuff in the scripts would never make it onto Saturday morning TV today. Consider:

In one episode, Johnny, Hadji, and Race are in a South American jungle when they counter a panther who is about to kill a native man. Race has only a second to act, so to save the man he SHOOTS THE PANTHER. Notice that I didn’t say “stuns the panther with a sonic disruptor pistol.” He SHOOTS IT WITH A RIFLE. Then, rather than letting the boys approach the native, who has the panther laying at his feet, Race tells them to stay where they are and then he SHOOTS THE PANTHER AGAIN to make SURE it’s dead. (Remember: There’s nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal.)

Yes! That’s what you’re SUPPOSED to do in that situation! Save human life and keep it safe, even if it means killing an animal–a valuable lesson in life (one that everybody used to learn) that you’d NEVER see on a modern, politically correct, eco-friendly, Captain Planet-y cartoon.

What a breath of fresh air a show like Johnny Quest is after years of agenda-driven pablum in animated form. It’s striking, intelligent, focused–and even delightfully scary at times for a boy of a certain age. It stresses virtues like loyalty, determination, inventiveness, and facing one’s fears–and it does so without preaching at the audience. The heroes display these virtues naturally while the series stays focused on the STORY instead of wallowing in introspection and self-doubt before finally summoning up the courage to do the right thing.

The current DVD set includes ALL the original Johnny Quest episodes (despite the misleading “Complete First Season” label; the manufacturer apparently is treating a 1986 sequel series as the “second season”), so when you buy this you’ll be getting all the favorite episodes you remember from childhood.

Whether you want to revive memories of Johnny Quest from your own childhood, want to share it with your own, appropriately-aged children, or appreciate it for the first time, hop on board the hovercraft and watch Johnny and the gang face a truckload of evil scientists, enemy agents, and wicked cool monsters.

BUY IT!

Y’all may remember the film The Magdalene Sisters that came out a couple of years ago. It was a horrible film that viciously exploted a horrible scandal. The sisters that ran the Magdalene homes had already issued a partial apology when a previous documentary about the situation had aired. Now they have issued a fuller apology.

“The Passion of the Christ”, Mel Gibson’s Masterful Epic Chronicling the Last 12 Hours in the Life of Jesus Christ, Makes Its Highly Anticipated DVD and VHS Debut

Yee-HAH!

Now why isn’t The Return of the King out already?

Something I am hoping is NOT on the DVD release.

. . . though the “There’s something in my eye” part was funny.

My review of the new movie The Alamo is up at DecentFilms.Com. I expected the movie to be too hokey to be enjoyable, but it actually was pretty good. It was more psychologically complex than one would expect, and the audience I saw the film with actually applauded at the end.

My review of the new remake of Walking Tall is up at DecentFilms.Com.

Just turned in my review of the new movie Hidalgo to The Decent Films Guide. The film stars Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings) as a cowboy named Frank Hopkins who goes to Arabia to compete in a long-distance horse race.

You can read what I thought about the movie in the review, but here are a couple of technical notes that really don’t belong in a review:

1) Since we’ve been talking about other languages in movies, I might mention that a good bit of this one is in a Native American language (Lakhota, I believe) and in Arabic. I don’t know Lakhota, but since 9/11 I’ve been studying Arabic. (I wanted to be able to read enough of the Qur’an in the original to refute the claims of Muslim apologists).

The story in Hidalgo takes the viewer to Yemen and Arabia, but the Arabic being spoken in the film doesn’t sound quite like Arabian Arabic to me. It sounds more like Syrian Arabic (though my ear isn’t good enough yet to be sure). Syrian Arabic is more "musical," like the Arabic in the film, while Arabian Arabic is more harsh and guttural.

I also noticed in the film that the subtitles when the characters are speaking Arabic aren’t giving a strictly literal translation of what is being said. That, however, was true of The Passion as well: The subtitles in it weren’t strictly literal, either.

2) The horsemanship in Hidalgo is pretty good. Viggo Mortensen really does know how to ride. In fact, I was stunned at one of the things he did in The Two Towers.

You know the scene where Aragorn has washed up on the shore and we see a horse step into the foreground, placing its hoof right next to his head and then putting its lips over Viggo’s nose? I was stunned when I saw this. In real life letting a horse do that would be incredibly reckless. Since we didn’t see it’s whole body, I thought for sure it was an animatronic (mechanical) "horse" that the filmmakers used, but no, it was a real one. Viggo apparently slept with it in its stall for a few nights to let it get comfortable enough with him. Still, I would have never done that.

In Hidalgo, Viggo rides well (for the most part) and uses realistic audible cues to tell the horse what he wants it to do (people often don’t realize how important audible cues are to riding–not just "whoa" and "giddyup," but sucking/clicking sounds that you make with your mouth; different horses are trained to respond to different cues).

Given the horse realism the filmmakers seemed to be trying for, I was a little surprised that Viggo didn’t talk to the horse more during scenes in which something that would be very frightening to a horse was taking place (e.g., a sandstorm). Horses are very timid and easily-frightened animals that need to be reassured that their riders know what is going on and are in control of the situation. Talking to the horse plays an important role in keeping him calm when something frightening happens. Otherwise he may run off in fear, carrying the rider with him (which is a Really Not Good Thing in a sandstorm).

I also was a little surprised at a couple of points in the movie when immediately after hard exercise horses were ordered to be bathed in cold water or run directly into the ocean surf.  Body heat management is not easy for horses, and they need to be cooled down by slow walking before you get them wet. If they get too much cold water in their hair when they’re still hot it can cause the shivers and even get them sick. One would think that the problem would be exacerbated in the heat of Arabia, but then maybe the cold water there isn’t all that cold by our standards.

A reader writes concerning Wednesday’s blog:

I was wondering why the reviews are either extremely positive or extremely negative. I hardly read of any reviews in between.   Do you think that reason why most people either love or hate The Passion of the Christ is because it is a high-context movie? Gibson’s desired effect seems to presuppose the viewer’s preexisting devotion towards Christ.

I think that you’ve got it right. When you run across a "love it or hate it" movie, it’s because there is some kind of context to the movie that is needed to appreciate it, meaning that critics who lack that context just don’t "get it."

This movie is "high context" in the sense that it requires some knowledge of what the issues surrounding Jesus were. If someone who knows nothing at all about Jesus were to see it, he’d likely wonder why Jesus is being treated the way he is. Although in theory you could piece this together from what gets said in the film, the overall experience would be confusing.

The movie also requires, if not a preexisting devotion toward Christ, at least openness to the Christian message and to the movie itself. Here is where some critics don’t "get it." They may have a basic knowledge of the issues (at least enough to comprehend the movie intellectually), but they aren’t open to looking at the movie through Christian eyes.

My compadre Steve Greydanus tells me that there are even accounts of critics in some places snoring through the movie. This is simply incomprehensible to me. Even if a person didn’t know anything about Jesus and found himself confused by the movie, it’s so intense that it’s hard for me to imagine anyone dozing off from boredom. Only a person who was completely unengaged with the movie on an intellectual and a human level could do that. Yet some critics, because of their lack of appreciation for the gospel story or because of their anti-Christian (or anti-this-movie) agenda, are unwilling to engage it.