(Örnek 2003) The Hittites
(Park­er 1999) South Park: Ep.39 ― Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub
(Young 1990) Jeeves and Woost­er: Ep.1 ― In Court After the Boat Race Read more »

Some old friends took me out to the sub­urbs to see the first show­ing of Avatar on an Imax screen. We were over­whelmed. The motion-cap­ture and 3D tech­nolo­gies were employed intel­li­gent­ly, to tell a com­pelling sto­ry, and to cre­ate a kind of Max­field Par­rish beau­ty that under­lined its theme.  Read more »

A fea­ture length doc­u­men­tary on the Hit­tites, nar­rat­ed by Jere­my Irons! I find it dif­fi­cult to believe that there’s a com­mer­cial mar­ket for this. I always liked the Hit­tites, and read what lit­tle was avail­able about them when I was a kid. But the name of this ancient civ­i­liza­tion usu­al­ly draws a blank stare, even among well-edu­cat­ed peo­ple.  Read more »

(Chaf­fey / McGoohan 1967) The Pris­on­er: Arrival [6of1 order #1; orig­i­nal order #1]
(Mar­cus 2001) Mur­der Rooms: The White Knight Stratagem
(Fick­man 2009) Race to Witch Moun­tain Read more »

This 1959 low bud­get sci­ence fic­tion film fea­tures aliens (accom­pa­nied by a mon­ster that appears to be made of shag car­pet­ing) attack­ing a Sami vil­lage in Swedish Lap­land! The film drags bor­ing­ly for the first two thirds of it’s length, fill­ing time with a lame romance, and lots of scenes of ice skat­ing and ski­ing. But when the aliens and mon­ster final­ly appear, there’s lots of fun to be had. The shag car­pet mon­ster knocks over tents, and fright­ens the rein­deer, and does the least amount of dam­age por­trayed in any cin­e­mat­ic alien inva­sion. Some of the cam­era shots are sur­pris­ing­ly good, as if Svend Nykvist took a day off from Bergman to work for Roger Cor­man. If you’ve nev­er heard the agglu­ti­na­tive Sami lan­guage spo­ken, you can do so in the one scene where an old man answers ques­tions in it.

Sami-Nor­we­gian adven­tur­er Lars Mors­en trav­els from Alas­ka to Labrador by dog sled, canoe, skis, and on foot. The route he takes cross­es noth­ing but tun­dra, taiga, and bore­al for­est. That kind of adven­ture is known as “thru-hik­ing”, and this is one of the most extreme exam­ples of it. The jour­ney took two years and sev­en months. There are occa­sion­al stops in out­posts like Arc­tic Red Riv­er, Churchill, and Mis­tassi­ni along the way, but most­ly he is alone with his dogs. He films him­self with a hand­held, and talks to him­self and the dogs (and the occa­sion­al bear), in untrans­lat­ed Nor­we­gian, but if you’ve spent any time in this kind of envi­ron­ment, you nev­er have trou­ble guess­ing what he’s say­ing. This long doc­u­men­tary (280 min­utes — it was split up into episodes for tv broad­cast in Nor­way) won’t be every­one’s cup of tea, but I found it enter­tain­ing. But I was enter­tained by ani­mal behav­iour, his bush savvy, and dif­fer­ences in land­scape and veg­e­ta­tion that oth­ers might not notice or care about. If you like see­ing the nit­ty-grit­ty of being in the bush, with­out any extra­ne­ous nar­ra­tion, then give it a try.