Category: Film and TV

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.)

No, I’m not talking about Bill Clinton.

It occurred to me while reading this editorial about Michael Moore’s Bush-bash Fahrenheit 9/11 that something explains the boxoffice success that the film has enjoyed.

It’s no secret that American society today is quite polarized–the whole “red state/blue state” thing–with one group of folks standing for traditional American and Christian values and the other group standing for–well, hatred of traditional American and Christian values.

The first group of folks earlier this year made the incredibly moving film The Passion of the Christ a runaway boxoffice success. Following a pre-release controversy that was a marketing bonanza for Mel Gibson, its core audience was fully alerted to the film’s existence and, since the film was extremely well-made and a celebration of their faith, the audience turned out in droves.

That left a lot of the other folks feeling left out, though.

But they’re not left out any longer. Following a pre-release controversy that was a marketing bonanza for Michael Moore, the core audience for Fahrenheit 9/11 was fully alerted to the film’s existence and, since the film is apparently well-made and is a celebration of its audience’s faith, they are now turning out in droves.

In other words, Fahrenheit 9/11 is the blue states’ The Passion.

Of course, despite the fact that it’s more in line with Hollywood’s blue-state value system won’t mean that it’ll do the same boxoffice as The Passion. It won’t even be close.

In cinematic terms, casting Jim Caviezel as the Christ is far more interesting than casting George W. Bush as the Antichrist.

One of the all-time GREAT Saturday morning shows is The Land of the Lost, which aired back in the mid-1970s. For me, as for countless other boys and girls of my generation, Land of the Lost was the EPITOME of cool.

And deservedly so! Just look at what the show had going for it:

1. First and foremost, it had DINOSAURS! Lots of them! You can’t get cooler than that!

2. It had a likable family living in a world filled with groovy science fiction concepts.

3. It had A-list science fiction authors (like Larry Niven, Theodore Sturgeon, Norman Spinrad, Ben Bova, David Gerrold, and D. C. Fontanta) doing the scripts.

4. It had the semi-insectoid, semi-reptilian Sleestak, the barbaric descendants of the Land of the Lost’s original builders.

5. It had the short, ape-like Pakuni

6. It had guest stars from the past of our world (like Jefferson Davis Collie III–a loney Confederate veteran convinced that “The South will rise again”) and from the future of our world (like Beauregard Jackson of Ft. Worth, Texas–an astronaut plucked from flying a hypersonic glider over Ecuador) and the main cast themselves as guest stars from their own futures or alternate universes–as well as other guest stars too bizarre to classify.

7. It had spray-painted chickens, giant carrots, turnips, and strawberries, glowing power crystals, lost cities, abandoned temples, circular rivers leading nowhere, peril-infested swamps, earthquakes, talking skulls, and everything else that makes for coolness.

What a show!

It’s probably the most intelligent show ever to appear on Saturday morning. It wasn’t dumbed down and didn’t patronize the children in the audience. How many Saturday morning shows that expect kids to understand–and succeed in communicating to them–that the series is set in a parallel universe so small that you can stand on the top of a hill and see the back of your head with binoculars because its space-time is curved. Not only that, but it is an *artificial* universe built by a once noble race that has now fallen into barbarity. It is a universe still being run by an automated control system that the characters must interact with. It is a universe connected to any point in our world’s history–and countless other worlds–via time doorways.

Some favorite lines following a dinosaur attack:

BEAUREGARD JACKSON: Hey, I sure am happy to see you kids. . . . Where am I? And, uh, what in the heck was that?

WILL MARSHALL: Aw, that’s only a coelophysis. It’s omnivorous.

JACKSON: Don’t much care where it goes to church. It sure has got bad manners.

The series also had an evolving storyline, in which the characters progressively learned more and more about their new universe and how it worked, with concepts building over time, enabling the stories to to grow more complex, with the characters getting ever closer to figuring out how to return home to Earth. This was not a series where everything gets reset to just the way it was at the beginning of the episode.

The characters also are more realistic than on most childrens’ series. The kids do not function as grownups in miniature. They make mistakes and do juvenile things, and the series underscores the need for them to hang together and obey their father in order for the family to survive. Even though the family members may squabble, the genuinely love and depend on each other. The kids also grow and mature over time.

You may be of the impression that Star Trek’s Klingon was the first TV sci-fi language to be developed to the point that people could actually speak it, but you’d be wrong. The Land of the Lost’s ape-like Pakuni spoke a language that had hundreds of words and its own grammar and phonology–designed by a professional linguist (as with Klingon).

The show also had all the delicious scare-factor one could want. The Sleestaks in particular provided the satisfying chills every young boy was longing for as a way of testing his courage. I can’t tell you how many nights I lay awake, convinced by the shadows in my bedroom that there was a Sleestak standing in my closet door–yet I wouldn’t have missed Land of the Lost for anything!

Now, at last, Land of the Lost comes to DVD. The first season (of three seasons) came out yesterday in an affordable edition that contains the foundational episodes of the series, which set up the key concepts that come into play later. Watching them now, the child-like aspects of the series are more noticeble to me than they were when I was nine, but it’s still AMAZING how different, more mature, and more sophisticated the series is than ANYTHING else ever made for Saturday morning TV.

I must admit that I am a huge fan of Land of the Lost. In fact, I pre-ordered the DVDs, so they arrived early, and I’ve just taken the DVD bonus materials quiz on the show and scored 100% (on 13 questions with four options each), so I’m very proud of myself.

For those who saw the series when it was first on, it will be an unbelievable nostalgia fest, and for those who missed out on it the first time, you’ll WISH you’d seen it as kids back in the 1970s. It’ll also provide an unending delight for your own children.

BUY IT!!! BUY IT NOW!!!

One of the all-time GREAT Saturday morning shows is The Land of the Lost, which aired back in the mid-1970s. For me, as for countless other boys and girls of my generation, Land of the Lost was the EPITOME of cool.

And deservedly so! Just look at what the show had going for it:

1. First and foremost, it had DINOSAURS! Lots of them! You can’t get cooler than that!

2. It had a likable family living in a world filled with groovy science fiction concepts.

3. It had A-list science fiction authors (like Larry Niven, Theodore Sturgeon, Norman Spinrad, Ben Bova, David Gerrold, and D. C. Fontanta) doing the scripts.

4. It had the semi-insectoid, semi-reptilian Sleestak, the barbaric descendants of the Land of the Lost’s original builders.

5. It had the short, ape-like Pakuni

6. It had guest stars from the past of our world (like Jefferson Davis Collie III–a loney Confederate veteran convinced that “The South will rise again”) and from the future of our world (like Beauregard Jackson of Ft. Worth, Texas–an astronaut plucked from flying a hypersonic glider over Ecuador) and the main cast themselves as guest stars from their own futures or alternate universes–as well as other guest stars too bizarre to classify.

7. It had spray-painted chickens, giant carrots, turnips, and strawberries, glowing power crystals, lost cities, abandoned temples, circular rivers leading nowhere, peril-infested swamps, earthquakes, talking skulls, and everything else that makes for coolness.

What a show!

It’s probably the most intelligent show ever to appear on Saturday morning. It wasn’t dumbed down and didn’t patronize the children in the audience. How many Saturday morning shows that expect kids to understand–and succeed in communicating to them–that the series is set in a parallel universe so small that you can stand on the top of a hill and see the back of your head with binoculars because its space-time is curved. Not only that, but it is an *artificial* universe built by a once noble race that has now fallen into barbarity. It is a universe still being run by an automated control system that the characters must interact with. It is a universe connected to any point in our world’s history–and countless other worlds–via time doorways.

Some favorite lines following a dinosaur attack:

BEAUREGARD JACKSON: Hey, I sure am happy to see you kids. . . . Where am I? And, uh, what in the heck was that?

WILL MARSHALL: Aw, that’s only a coelophysis. It’s omnivorous.

JACKSON: Don’t much care where it goes to church. It sure has got bad manners.

The series also had an evolving storyline, in which the characters progressively learned more and more about their new universe and how it worked, with concepts building over time, enabling the stories to to grow more complex, with the characters getting ever closer to figuring out how to return home to Earth. This was not a series where everything gets reset to just the way it was at the beginning of the episode.

The characters also are more realistic than on most childrens’ series. The kids do not function as grownups in miniature. They make mistakes and do juvenile things, and the series underscores the need for them to hang together and obey their father in order for the family to survive. Even though the family members may squabble, the genuinely love and depend on each other. The kids also grow and mature over time.

You may be of the impression that Star Trek’s Klingon was the first TV sci-fi language to be developed to the point that people could actually speak it, but you’d be wrong. The Land of the Lost’s ape-like Pakuni spoke a language that had hundreds of words and its own grammar and phonology–designed by a professional linguist (as with Klingon).

The show also had all the delicious scare-factor one could want. The Sleestaks in particular provided the satisfying chills every young boy was longing for as a way of testing his courage. I can’t tell you how many nights I lay awake, convinced by the shadows in my bedroom that there was a Sleestak standing in my closet door–yet I wouldn’t have missed Land of the Lost for anything!

Now, at last, Land of the Lost comes to DVD. The first season (of three seasons) came out yesterday in an affordable edition that contains the foundational episodes of the series, which set up the key concepts that come into play later. Watching them now, the child-like aspects of the series are more noticeble to me than they were when I was nine, but it’s still AMAZING how different, more mature, and more sophisticated the series is than ANYTHING else ever made for Saturday morning TV.

I must admit that I am a huge fan of Land of the Lost. In fact, I pre-ordered the DVDs, so they arrived early, and I’ve just taken the DVD bonus materials quiz on the show and scored 100% (on 13 questions with four options each), so I’m very proud of myself.

For those who saw the series when it was first on, it will be an unbelievable nostalgia fest, and for those who missed out on it the first time, you’ll WISH you’d seen it as kids back in the 1970s. It’ll also provide an unending delight for your own children.

BUY IT!!! BUY IT NOW!!!

In an ironic move, privacy expert Lauren Weinstein has exposed MTV’s private plans to do a fraudulent debate show whose purpose is to humiliate its guests.

Weinstein, who was invited on the show, did some checking before accepting. Here is what he found:

Not really a debate at all, the show is actually a program for Comedy Central (yes, an MTV/Viacom network) called “Crossballs” — and its sole purpose is the embarrassment and humiliation of the expert guests who are brought on expecting a legitimate discussion program.

Crossballs is a rigged “reality” show, where real guests, who have been kept in the dark about the show’s real format, are paired off against actors (playing the debate opponents) for the amusement of the live audience. The stories I read from persons recently on the show included descriptions of crude, sexually-oriented verbal attacks (and worse, like being handed various sexual “apparatus”) and concerns that their reputations would be ruined once the shows aired [source].

While we can all agree that this is a shameful abuse of the talk-show format, what I want to know is: How is this any different (except in degree) from regular news shows?

I’ve done enough TV interviews to know that guests are regularly set up by news organizations for purposes of humiliating them and ridiculing their points of view.

(WARNING: I found the Weinstein story through another site that only linked the relevant page, which I have linked, but I wouldn’t go poking around on the site unless you want to see lots of disturbing Iraq prisoner abuse photos elsewhere on it.)