Category: Film and TV

SDG here. Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings tour de force turned out so brilliantly that one could almost forget how different it could have been. It’s entirely possible that a significant part of the reason the films are as true to the books as they are is due to enormous fan pressure online and elsewhere. (Here’s a link to an article I wrote about the issues and controversy before the release of the first film.)

Now that Walden Media is at work on The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, Narnia fans are understandably wary. For one thing, as well-loved as these books are both inside and outside the church, they don’t have nearly the huge following of the Lord of the Rings books. For another, the Christian themes in Lewis’s books are so much more blatant than those of Tolkien’s books that the risk of Hollywood subversion and the stakes in the event of such subversion are higher.

By the way, recent news from the set of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe includes the recent casting of the four Pevensie children. So, if I need an excuse to be musing about this subject just now, here from the set (courtesy of the New Zealand Herald) are pictures of:

Nine-year-old Georgie Henley, from Yorkshire, as Lucy:

17-year-old William Moseley, from Gloucestershire, as Peter:

15-year-old Anna Popplewell and 12-year-old Skandar Keynes, both of London, as Susan and Edmund:

The big question, of course, is: Do the people in charge of this thing have any idea what they’re doing?

And the answer, so far, is: Hard to say.

On the encouraging side, the people at Walden Media are apparently Christians, and Lewis’s stepson Douglas Gresham, who is co-producing, seems committed to preserving Lewis’s vision. Plus, Walden Media produced Holes, a wonderful — and wonderfully faithful — adaptation of a delightful children’s book. (Of course they also produced the Jackie Chan parody of Around the World in 80 Days, but I choose to believe that doesn’t count as an adaptation at all.)

On the down side, director Andrew Adamson (Shrek, Shrek 2) at the very least hasn’t yet learned like Peter Jackson to talk the talk. Following massive interest by the Christian press and moviegoing public during the phenomenon of the first film, Jackson became trippingly familiar with variations on this theme:

“Of course Professor Tolkien was a very religious man, and his religious ideas did play a part in his novels, and while we have not set out to make a religious film, from the outset we were determined to honor Tolkien’s vision and not to put any of our own baggage into this film. So while we brought no religious intentions to this project, Tolkien’s beliefs did shape the story he told and some of that is evident in our films.”

This respectful and nuanced speech, which I read and heard in various versions from Jackson on a number of occasions, was reassuring to Tolkien’s Christian fans while at the same time not alarming non-Christian Tolkien lovers with worries that they were in for a ten-hour serial sermon.

When it comes to The Chronicles of Narnia, of course, Lewis’s Christian beliefs are even more emphatically important. Unfortunately, published remarks from Adamson so far don’t evince the same kind of respect for the integrity of Lewis’s vision or the same level of awareness of its religious dimension. Instead, Adamson has made such remarks as these:

“I don’t want to make the book as much as my memory of the book.”

and

“So I’ve really tried to make the story about a family which is disenfranchised and disempowered in World War II, that on entering Narnia, through their unity as a family become empowered at the end of the story. It’s really bringing the humanity of the characters into what is effectively a symbolic story.”

Other signs have also been mixed. Early reports indicated that the creature effects for Aslan, Tumnus, and others would be handled by the two companies who did the effects for The Lord of the Rings, Weta (which was responsible for most of the film effects) and RGB XYZ (which did the very best digital creature work in the final film, and was responsible for the oliphants looking so much better in The Return of the King than they did in The Two Towers).

But later reports indicated that in fact creature effects would be handled by a company called Rhythm & Hues, best known for the (hardly awe-inspiring) digital work on Daredevil, Scooby-Doo, The Cat in the Hat, and Garfield. Not encouraging.

Now, a friend of mine, who shall remain nameless but who works in the industry and is a Christian, assures me that the project is in good hands. Regarding Adamson’s off-putting comments, he cites PR concerns and the desire to avoid appearing as if they’re making a religious picture.

That’s fine, I guess. But somehow Peter Jackson managed to let religious fans know that their beloved author’s themes would be respected without coming across like Mel Gibson making The Passion of the Christ. From a PR perspective, there’s no reason why Adamson can’t learn to do the same — assuming he does know what he’s doing and does want to respect Lewis’s themes and intentions.

Walden Media, don’t let us down!

After all the warnings that Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ would cause violence and have a harmful effect on people’s . . . well, morals, presumably, if it was going to cause violence . . . comes this amazing story of a murderer being driven to repentance and confessing his crime after seeing the film.

What this man did is horrendous, but the story shows the power of the story of God’s Son, even via the medium of film, to touch the most hardened hearts.

But on this subject, I do.

Find out why.

The big media conglomerates need to be busted up.

But on this subject, I do.

Find out why.

The big media conglomerates need to be busted up.

Went and saw the remake of The Manchurian Candidate this weekend. It was . . . good. Not as good as the original, 1962 classic version of the film, but still quite good. Worth seeing. (Assuming that you can deal with an R-rated movie that has some violence and a small amount of cussing.)

They changed things around a bit, which they needed to do lest this be a shot-for-shot copy of the original (no pun intended). Since most of the audience knows the basic secret of the film (which I won’t reveal here, just in case you don’t), they reveal it sooner in this version, so the audience isn’t left sitting around going, “Why are they being so coy about this?”

Since we’re no longer in the Cold War, the villains in this version aren’t Communists. In fact, they’re capitalists, though more than that I won’t say.

For the most part, the changes they make are good ones that serve to keep fans of the original version of the film guessing as to what’s going to happen. Several are quite nice.

For example, in the original film there is a character named Rosie, who shows up, instantly falls in love with Frank Sinatra (who is a complete wreck at this point and not a likely prospect for someone to fall in love with), and says bizarrely unintelligible things in a scene with him.

When I first saw this scene, I immediately thought: “She’s working for someone. She’s got Frank Sinatra in some kind of altered mental state and the strangeoid things she’s saying to him are activating post-hypnotic suggestions or something.” Except that they’re not. The original version of the film never follows up on this, and Rosie seems to be just a woman who fell in love with Frank Sinatra. (Making the bizarro dialog scene a flaw in the original film.)

The new version of the film does pick up on this thread and develop it. In the new film the Rosie character is dramatically expanded. She is not activating post-hypnotic suggestions (she just comes across as kind of flighty). But she is working for someone (not who you might think), as Denzel Washington, playing the Frank Sinatra role, quickly finds out.

This is one good change among several in the film. One change in particular toward the end of the film spins things in a welcomely unexpected direction, though not all the changes are good. The climax of the film, and expecially the anticlimax, are not as clear as they should be, but this isn’t enough to ruin the film. It’s still a good thriller.

There are several really funny moments in the film. At one point Denzel Washington is telling some government agents that they need to have doctors examine a particular person to search for an “implant” he is carrying in his body. One of the agents begins to hum/chant the Twilight Zone theme, at which point–without skipping a beat–Denzel says: “They can hum that while searching for it if they want to.”

A concern that I had before the film was the fact that some are reporting it as a highly partisan film. “More partisan than Fahrenheit 9/11,” one reviewer said. That’s nonsense. There are some sly winks to contemporary politics in the film, but not more than that.

And that’s nothing new, anyway. There were sly winks in the original film, as well. In fact, the original film’s Johnny Iselin character was a knock-off of Joseph McCarthy, right down to the fact that he (like McCarthy) keeps changing the number of Communists thought to have infiltrated the government.

This film is not partisan propaganda. It’s a political thriller that draws on contemporary politics for some of its set dressing, just like the original version.

One thing I was interested to see was how Meryl Streep’s character came off. She plays a senator, and many people thought they detected resonances of Hillary Rodham Clinton in her performance. Streep denied this, but the truth is somewhere in the middle. When you see her on screen it is unmistakable that she is made to look like Hillary Clinton visually, and she is an aggressive, self-possessed person. But there the similarity ends. Streep may look like Rodham Clinton, but she doesn’t sound like Rodham Clinton.

The person she sounds like is someone completely different and completely unexpected.

She sounds like Majel Barrett-Roddenberry.

Yes! That’s right! If you imagine Hillary Rodham Clinton telepathically channelling Lwaxana Troi, you have a good idea of Meryl Streep’s character in this film.

And that in itself is a treat to see.

Someone sent me this link describing the reception Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ has had in Malaysia.

It’s not what you might think.

Malaysia is a (largely) Muslim country, which means it ought to permit or prohibit the film the same way other Muslim countries have, right?

Since the most Muslim countries–those in the Middle East–allowed the film, Malaysia should, too, right?

Wrong.

The Middle Eastern countries are focused by their hate for Israel, and since there was an absurdly disproportionate Jewish outcry against the film before it was even released, Middle Eastern Muslim countries are more favorably disposed toward it than one would expect. Though traditional Muslim mores forbid the depiction of any prophet (including Jesus), they were willing to show it in perceived defiance of the Jewish people.

Malaysia is farther East, and isn’t subject to the same passions. Malaysian Muslims still oppose Israel, but not with the same intensity. There also are other, local factors that affect the situation. Though Malaysia is mostly Muslim, it’s not by much. Just over 50% of Malaysians are Muslim, so they have to get along with a whole lot of non-Muslims.

In 1969 the country was convulsed by race/ethnic riots that were principally divided along religious lines. As a result, the whole country was powerfully motivated to avoid a recurrence of such riots, and there are constant efforts to make sure that the races (religions) live together “in harmony.”

One prominent minority is the Christians (10% of the population). They need to be kept satisfied–at least to the point of not rioting–and to do that Muslim film censor clerics can be motivated to approve the release of The Passion–the biggest Christian film ever. But they don’t want to release it to the general population lest Muslims convert or–more likely–Muslims riot against it.

Thus the film gets shown in Malaysia, but only (in theory) to Christians.

The third and last episode in the Star Wars saga now has a title: The Revenge of the Sith.

The title was announced today at the San Diego Comic-Con (which I was attending, though I didn’t go to the Star Wars presentation). It also appears on the official Star Wars website. Also announced was more DVD news.

The long fan guessing game about what title Lucas would go with is now over. The ensuing debate about whether it is a good title now begins.

For my money, this is a good title. Better than the title of Episode II (“Attack of the Clones”), and much better than the hopelessly obscure title of Episode I (“The Phantom Menace”).

The title for Episode III needed to have some reasonance with the title of Episode VI (“The Return of the Jedi”), which it does. The Episode III title also should hopefully do something to clarify the title of Episode VI, which is otherwise obscure. Does “the Jedi” mean an individual Jedi–Luke? Annakin?–or the Jedi as a class? (One friend a few years ago thought the Ep VI title should be parsed to simply mean “Luke’s Back!”). The new title clarifies matters. “The Revenge of the Sith” balances “The Return of the Jedi,” and so by symmetry, it makes “the Jedi” a class.

There are a few other titles I would have been happy with (“Birth of the Empire,” “Return of the Sith,” “Fall of the Republic”), but after the less-than-happymaking titles of Ep I and Ep II, I was concerned Lucas would come up with something smilarly unsatisfying.

Let’s hope the trilogy–and thus the series–ends with a film as strong as its title.

Couple of positive items regarding the media:

1) The panel in the House of Representatives has approved the Family Movie Act, clearing an early obstacle that puts it on the road to become law.

The Family Movie Act, if enacted, would clarify copyright law to protect the right of companies to manufacture devices that will skip offensive content in DVDs, etc. Thus parents could purachase the ClearPlay DVD player for their household so that when kids watch movies, offensive content is blocked (e.g., by dropping the volume level to zero when cuss words are uttered or jumping forward in scenes with nudity).

The Family Movie Act would protect companies that manufacture such devices (at the moment, that’s basically ClearPlay) from lawsuits alleging copyright infringement by Hollywood bigwigs.

No word yet whether the bigwigs will try to sue manufacturers of remote controls that have “Mute” and “Fast Forward” buttons on them.

To become law the Family Movie Act must be approved by the full House and the Senate.

2) MTV has some competition. A new venture known as The U Network (TUN) is scheduled to begin airing on 150 college campuses (compared to 700 campuses for MTV’s college outreach channel).

TUN executive promise to offer college students cleaner, more intelligent, more politically balanced programming compared to the filthy, “dumbed-down,” left-leaning content offered by MTV.

Get the story.

I hope everybody caught the premier of season 8 of Stargate SG-1 last Friday. After a break of several months, it was good to see the series pick up the threads it left hanging and begin weaving them into new braids.

Some of those braids almost ended up on actor Christopher Judge’s head!

It turns out that Judge, who plays stoic extraterrestrial teammember Teal’c, got tired after seven seasons of shaving his head every day and begged the producers to let him grow hair in the new season, which will probably be the last (sniff).

This is not the first time Teal’c has experimented with being hirsute–or at least minimally so. A number of seasons ago he came back through the gate (in a season premier) sporting a blond “soul patch” under his lower lip (in the picture). It was cool looking, but it didn’t last, and soon he was again as bald below his lip as he was above.

Now he’s growing hair up topside (no picture available)–as is made clear from the new opening credits of the show. Originally Judge tried a more dramatic look than the way he currently looks. In between seasons, he grew enough hair to braid cornrows, but the studio didn’t like the result, and so he shaved his hair back to the point that he now has basically a low-cut buzz.

The new hair–unlike the soul patch–also ain’t blond, which is a little disappointing. A black extraterrestrial* with blond hair has a nice, extraterrestrial-ly feel to it–appropriate for a sci-fi show–but keeping hair that short that blond would have required frequent bleachings, and Chris Judge probably would have found those just as unappealing as daily shavings.

So it seems that the character Teal’c’s hair is naturally black and, when he had the soul patch, he bleached it. (Either that or Teal’c, like some terran men, has a beard that is a different color than his hair–which would be cool.)

As with any actor whi dramatically changes his appearance during a series, Judge may not be able to keep his new hair if fans of the series don’t like it, so here’s wishing good luck to him in keeping it after all these years of having to shave his head daily! Let’s hope it’s as successful as . . . Riker’s beard.

————————————

(* I can’t refer to Teal’c as an “African-American extraterrestrial” since–as an extraterrestrial–he is neither African nor American, though that didn’t stop TV Guide from once referring to Star Trek Voyager‘s Tuvok as an “African-American Vulcan” in a fit of political correctness.)

I hope everybody caught the premier of season 8 of Stargate SG-1 last Friday. After a break of several months, it was good to see the series pick up the threads it left hanging and begin weaving them into new braids.

Some of those braids almost ended up on actor Christopher Judge’s head!

It turns out that Judge, who plays stoic extraterrestrial teammember Teal’c, got tired after seven seasons of shaving his head every day and begged the producers to let him grow hair in the new season, which will probably be the last (sniff).

This is not the first time Teal’c has experimented with being hirsute–or at least minimally so. A number of seasons ago he came back through the gate (in a season premier) sporting a blond “soul patch” under his lower lip (in the picture). It was cool looking, but it didn’t last, and soon he was again as bald below his lip as he was above.

Now he’s growing hair up topside (no picture available)–as is made clear from the new opening credits of the show. Originally Judge tried a more dramatic look than the way he currently looks. In between seasons, he grew enough hair to braid cornrows, but the studio didn’t like the result, and so he shaved his hair back to the point that he now has basically a low-cut buzz.

The new hair–unlike the soul patch–also ain’t blond, which is a little disappointing. A black extraterrestrial* with blond hair has a nice, extraterrestrial-ly feel to it–appropriate for a sci-fi show–but keeping hair that short that blond would have required frequent bleachings, and Chris Judge probably would have found those just as unappealing as daily shavings.

So it seems that the character Teal’c’s hair is naturally black and, when he had the soul patch, he bleached it. (Either that or Teal’c, like some terran men, has a beard that is a different color than his hair–which would be cool.)

As with any actor whi dramatically changes his appearance during a series, Judge may not be able to keep his new hair if fans of the series don’t like it, so here’s wishing good luck to him in keeping it after all these years of having to shave his head daily! Let’s hope it’s as successful as . . . Riker’s beard.

————————————

(* I can’t refer to Teal’c as an “African-American extraterrestrial” since–as an extraterrestrial–he is neither African nor American, though that didn’t stop TV Guide from once referring to Star Trek Voyager‘s Tuvok as an “African-American Vulcan” in a fit of political correctness.)