(Par­rish 1969) Jour­ney to the Far Side of the Sun
(Boor­man 1974) Zardoz
(Lieber­man 2004) Earthsea
(Hard­ing 2006) Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Ep.55 ― Cards on the Table
(del Toro 2004) Hellboy
(Zeisler 1936) The Amaz­ing Quest of Ernest Bliss [as Amaz­ing Adventure]
(Stevens 1941) Pen­ny Serenade
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I’m far too irri­tat­ed by this sil­ly doc­u­men­tary to ana­lyze it dis­pas­sion­ate­ly. It fool­ish­ly roman­ti­cizes the Weath­er Under­ground. Those pompous, arro­gant ass­holes were typ­i­cal exam­ples of spoiled-brat rich kids align­ing them­selves with evil and mas­querad­ing as “oppo­nents” of the Viet­nam War. These were NOT rad­i­cals in any sense. Their ide­ol­o­gy was ultra-ortho­dox, ultra-con­ser­v­a­tive, pro-slav­ery, and total­i­tar­i­an. Today, part­ly because of the activ­i­ties of these fake “rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies”, the tru­ly evil nature of the Viet­nam War has been suc­cess­ful­ly obfus­cat­ed by its per­pe­tra­tors. These clowns were NOT the oppo­si­tion to that evil war. Far from it. As the six­ties say­ing went, you are either part of the prob­lem or you’re part of the solu­tion. Hyp­o­crit­i­cal poseurs like the Weath­er­men were part of the prob­lem. They should be firm­ly clas­si­fied where they belong: sym­bi­ot­ic part­ners with the mon­sters who pro­mot­ed and exe­cut­ed the Viet­nam War. Mean­while, all the courage of the gen­uine oppo­nents of the war has been for­got­ten. Let us hear no more non­sense about these pho­ny creeps.

Natal­ie Port­man plays a chin cush­ion in Revenge of the Sith.

Final­ly got around to see­ing this, albeit only on the small screen. I nev­er knew there could be any­thing more tedious than Par­si­fal. I notice now that the female char­ac­ters in the Star Wars movies have got­ten pro­gres­sive­ly more inac­tive and orna­men­tal. Remem­ber Princess Leah? She was expect­ed to do some fight­ing and solve prob­lems. But that was the 1970s. This episode’s Pad­mé has all the dynamism of a hydro­gen atom at the end of the uni­verse. Not even spec­tac­u­lar CG bat­tles could keep my eye on the screen. I’m not very demand­ing when it comes to space opera. A few nice visu­als, maybe a clever line or two is all it takes to keep me hap­py. But I would have been pissed off if I had paid the­atre prices to see this.

Giant Ice­lander Peter Ron­son, and Gertrude the Eider­duck, the real stars of Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of the Earth

I’m very fond of this absurd 1950s Hol­ly­wood ver­sion of the Jules Verne clas­sic. My broth­er tells me that my child­hood fas­ci­na­tion with pale­on­tol­ogy can be traced to being ter­ri­fied by the “dinosaurs” of the film ― small gar­den lizards with rub­ber fins glued to them, mat­ted into the film. Believe it or not, this was top-of-the-line spe­cial effects when the film was made, the only oth­er option being clay­ma­tion. Oth­er unin­ten­tion­al­ly humor­ous ele­ments of the film include the cast­ing of Pat Boone (yes, Pat Boone!) as a young geol­o­gy stu­dent spout­ing the most pathet­ic attempt at a Scot­tish accent in his­to­ry, and a scene where the adven­tur­ers reach “a place with a mag­net­ic field that snatch­es gold away, the junc­tion of the north and south mag­net­ic fields, the CENTER OF THE EARTH!”, which appears to be a whirlpool in an under­ground ocean. The con­cep­tu­al con­fu­sion in the scene tran­scends any­thing you have ever seen in any oth­er movie. Even Ed Wood had a bet­ter grasp of physics. Jules Verne’s nov­el is quaint, today, but it fit rea­son­ably well into the sci­ence of its time. Some­how, the screen­writ­ers man­aged to push the film’s sci­en­tif­ic under­stand­ing to about two thou­sand years ear­li­er than Verne.

James Mason and Arlene Dahl are the lead actors in the film. It had a big bud­get, a lush score com­posed by Bernard Her­mann, and was part­ly filmed in Carls­bad Cav­erns, though that nat­ur­al won­der appears to be filled with cheap junk jew­el­ery and papi­er maché boul­ders. Mason does a won­der­ful job of keep­ing a straight face as they encounter dinosaurs, giant mush­rooms, and the lost city of Atlantis. A vil­lain fol­lows them, played by Thay­er David, and he gets to utter one of the most won­der­ful bad lines in film his­to­ry: “I nev­er sleep… I hate those lit­tle slices of death.” But despite all that high-pow­ered hami­ness, the film is stolen by Peter Ron­son, an Ice­landic olympic ath­lete who got the part because he was the only Ice­landic-speak­ing giant, mus­cu­lar man avail­able in Hol­ly­wood. His char­ac­ter, Hans, seems to have an unhealthy pas­sion for a pet eider­duck, and the duck accom­pa­nies them to the cen­ter of the earth, meet­ing a trag­ic end when the vil­lain gets hun­gry. Hans’ remorse­less march of vengeance is the most won­der­ful part of the film. Peter Ron­son died, last year. This was his only appear­ance in a film.