Hats off. Not only is he a fine screenwriter and one of my favorite playwrights, he’s got a lot of guts.
Month: December 2005
December Short Takes
‘Aeon Flux’ is not as much fun as it should be. The action sequences are OK, but it takes itself far too seriously, and I’m getting tired of these “dangers of cloning” movies. ‘The Island’ was bad enough, but this one also tries to sell the joys of nature, in all its wildness and unpredictability. It ends with the leads turning their backs on eternal life and heading out into the forbidden forest to live “only once, but for real.” Didn’t these people watch the Harry Potter movies? Anyway, this movie is a waste of CGI and real actors. Frances McDormand has a thankless part. And Pete Postlethwaite has an absolutely horrible cameo. He must be desperate for ‘Usual Suspects II.’
The preview for ‘Underworld II: The Evolution’ on the other hand, looks super. Kate Beckinsale wears skin-tight leather far better than Charlize Theron. And Derek Jacobi is in it. ‘I, Claudius II’ must also be in production.
Galactica
I posted some time ago about the new Sci-Fi network miniseries, but we just started watching season one of Battlestar Galactica, and it holds up to my cautious excitement. The third episode: as the fleet scurries to escape Cylon pursuit, the President (Mary McDonnell, playing a minor political functionary who becomes Pres because everyone higher up died in the massive destruction of humanity) and military commander Adama (Edward James Olmos) begin to fight behind the scenes for control; Cylons have infiltrated the ships disguised as humans–and have begun a series of terrorist attacks on the ships, including venting most of the fleet’s water supply to space; an insurrection on a prison ship opens up problems about who to call a ‘citizen’ of the fleet, how to envision the future of democracy during wartime, etc….
You get a small sense of the picture: it’s a by-god sociopolitical soap opera, with fascinating foci on issues of how actually to “run” a community with scarce resources, limited cohesion, attackers on all sides (and within). The allegorical connections to America’s current situation are not hyperbolically shouted, but hell they don’t need to be.
It’s amazing, but I think this is the most interesting “post-9/11” fiction I’ve yet seen. And it ranks up there with the best television science fiction. So far. But I am very hopeful….
Egomania
From Yahoo news….in which we learn 1.) maybe just maybe a spielberg film of uplift will transform the middle east; 2.) spielberg condemns the mass murder of athletes 3.) having a family makes someone a nuanced “individual” and 4.) killing a person up close is “excruciating” (who did spielberg kill? I hear he lunged at Phyllis Diller with a steakknife at Morton’s). spielberg, as a one man hollywood blitzkrieg, has taken on world war 2, the holocaust, prehistory, outer space….and now international terrorism! can’t the guy just do something about a couple of people sitting in a room? however, I do look forward to Tom Hanks playing Arafat.
Grizzly Man
Finally I’m getting around to writing something about Herzog’s latest film. I’ll say first of all that I was surprised at the number of good reviews for this film, and that it seemed to do well on the art-house circuit. Having seen the film, I’m even more surprised.
Herzog has been cranking out decent documentaries for years now on all manner of obscure topics, and no one has taken much notice. His last feature film had been the disturbing Cobra Verde in ’87, though he did make a feature film a few years ago; the sweet Nazi-circus drama Invincible with Tim Roth. I’ll stop adding “which you should see” b/c this is Herzog, and it should go without saying you should see it. Continue reading Grizzly Man