I want to kill Michael Palin — pure­ly out of envy. He gets to trav­el every­where, see the coolest things, and talk to fas­ci­nat­ing peo­ple, and makes a for­tune doing it. Palin was recent­ly ranked num­ber nine in the list of the world’s top ten trav­el­ers of all time by Wan­der­lust Mag­a­zine. It’s been claimed that trav­el agen­cies antic­i­pate sharp spikes in book­ings for any des­ti­na­tion that he vis­its, after an episode of one of his doc­u­men­taries. Himalaya is his best doc­u­men­tary series to date. This one takes him to the North­west Fron­tier states of Pak­istan, to Amrit­sar in the Pun­jab, to Sim­la, to Kash­mir and Ladakh, through Nepal into Tibet, and from thence east­ward to Yun­nan in Chi­na, back through Naga­land and Assam, into Bhutan, and final­ly to the shores of the Bay of Ben­gal. In this spec­tac­u­lar jour­ney, he meets and talks to a vari­ety of peo­ple: an enter­pris­ing den­tist in Peshawar; the Dalai Lama; Namu, a pop singer from the matrilo­cal Mosuo peo­ple of Yun­nan; a South­ern Bap­tist head­hunter in Naga­land; danc­ing monks in Assam. Pal­in’s easy­go­ing affa­bil­i­ty gives every­one he talks to dig­ni­ty, which I think is the secret of his suc­cess. You always get more than just scenery and plat­i­tudes. The series tip­toes around pol­i­tics, but its focus on indi­vid­ual lives and per­son­al­i­ties makes it an impres­sive doc­u­ment. For exam­ple, his vis­it to the Sikh Gold­en Tem­ple does­n’t focus on the splen­dour of the build­ing, but on the vol­un­teers prepar­ing the cus­tom­ary meal, giv­en to any­one who comes to it.

“Pas­tor” Ted Hag­gard in action

Wor­ship­ping George Bush, Jr at Jesus Camp

One of the creepi­est doc­u­men­taries I’ve ever seen. It fol­lows the activ­i­ties of a fun­da­men­tal­ist chil­drens’ camp that employs grotesque brain­wash­ing tech­niques to indoc­tri­nate chil­dren, large­ly for obvi­ous polit­i­cal ends. The orga­niz­er, a mon­strous­ly evil woman, makes you sick with every word she spouts. Also includ­ed are a famous pas­tor, Ted Hag­gard, one of the most influ­en­tial evan­gel­i­cals in the coun­try, preach­ing anti-gay hatred at the chil­dren. Hag­gard was lat­er dis­cov­ered hav­ing sex and doing hard drugs with gay hus­tlers, and resigned. Anoth­er dis­gust­ing scene involves chil­dren bab­bling “in tongues” while wor­ship­ing a card-board cutout of George Bush, Jr. It should be not­ed that the move­men­t’s lead­ers con­sid­ered the doc­u­men­tary to be a fair rep­re­sen­ta­tion of their views.

“sin­ful” chil­dren repent…

.… the irony is painful.

(Chaf­fey / McGoohan 1967) The Pris­on­er: Ep.1 ― Arrival
(Hon­da 1966) The War of the Gar­gan­tuas [ Amer­i­can release ver­sion of Furanken­shutain no
. . . . kai­jû: San­da tai Gaira]
(Cregeen 1999) Mid­Somer Mur­ders: Ep.10 — Death of a Stranger Read more »

Boston Legal has been doing a good job of oppos­ing the sta­tus quo in the Unit­ed States, and is bril­liant­ly fun­ny in the process. My thanks go to Isaac White for draw­ing my atten­tion to this series, and bring­ing over files of it to watch. This par­tic­u­lar episode is the fun­ni­est I’ve seen, and the best exam­ple of stand­ing up to the morons. It not only takes on the Iraq War, but Bush’s idi­ot­ic and destruc­tive edu­ca­tion poli­cies. While all the act­ing is good in this series, the best parts are when James Spad­er and William Shat­ner inter­act. Shat­ner has, over the years, matured into a bril­liant com­ic actor.

My ratio­nale: Some­body went to the trou­ble to get suf­fi­cient­ly stoned to make this movie. I felt that I owed it to them to get suf­fi­cient­ly stoned to watch it.

Ray Steven­son as Titus Pul­lo and Kevin McK­idd as Lucius Vorenus

HBO’s Rome is a superb series. There are some his­tor­i­cal inac­cu­ra­cies: Octa­vian was ship­wrecked in his youth, but nev­er kid­napped, and he was not in Rome when Cae­sar was assas­si­nated. Nei­ther was Cicero. Cae­sar is shown offer­ing to give land in Pan­nonia to the 13th Legion, though Pan­nonia wasn’t in the empire at that time. But as far as pre­sent­ing Roman soci­ety, and the mores and behav­iour of Romans, the series is quite accu­rate. It quite prop­erly shows the casu­al vio­lence and bru­tal­ity of a soci­ety that was not informed by any real eth­i­cal prin­ci­plrs, but mere­ly by cus­tom, caste con­scious­ness, vengeance, and bar­baric con­cepts of “hon­our”. Much of our world remains like that, today, and it is a pro­found dis­tor­tion of his­tory to ignore it, as most his­tor­i­cal film and fic­tion usu­ally does. The real­i­ty of slav­ery and Roman sex­ual prac­tices are shown with rea­son­able accu­racy. The death of Cae­sar is shown as it is in Plutarch’s account, rather than Sue­to­nius. Read more »

(Benedek 1953) The Wild One
(Nicholls 1995) Alien Empires: Hardware
(Nicholls 1995) Alien Empires: Repli­ca­tors Read more »

Oh My Gawd what a hor­ri­ble film! Oil rig­gers equipped with no skill or knowl­edge save the earth from aster­oid impact by fly­ing to the aster­oid in the Space Shut­tle and drilling a hole a mere 800 feet into it (as if this would make a dif­fer­ence?), to plant a nuclear bomb . They and NASA and var­i­ous mil­i­tary types save the Earth by com­pet­ing in how loud­ly they can shout at each oth­er and who can say the tough­est things. A sop­py romance is thrown in — one that makes you cringe when­ever those char­ac­ters show their faces. Annoy­ing act­ing, annoy­ing music, annoy­ing every­thing, and sci­en­tific illit­er­acy so pro­found that NASA uses the film to train astro­nauts. They are required to iden­tify as many of the 167 major vio­la­tions of phys­i­cal laws and prob­a­bil­i­ties as they can. Yes, 167.

I was sat­is­fied with this per­for­mance-cap­ture ani­mat­ed ver­sion of the Beowulf epic. It does­n’t have much to do with the orig­i­nal Anglo-Sax­on epic, but mythol­o­gy is, by its very nature, open to any muta­tion the re-teller cares to make. Who the hell knows what trans­for­ma­tions the sto­ry expe­ri­enced before our “lit­er­ary” ver­sion appeared? No one object­ed when Allan Gard­ner turned the sto­ry on its head in his nov­el “Gren­del”. This ani­mat­ed ver­sion is an even greater depar­ture, but it held my atten­tion and was visu­al­ly pleasing.

Buster Keaton in Out West (1918)…

… and near­ly a half cen­tu­ry lat­er in The Rail­rod­der (1965)

I acknowl­edge Char­lie Chaplin’s genius, but I have to say that his screen per­son­al­ity nev­er appealed to me, and I appre­ci­ate his films with a detached, tech­ni­cal eye. Buster Keaton is anoth­er thing entire­ly, for me. His com­ic genius touch­es me direct­ly. I laugh when I see Keaton’s silent clas­sics. I was first exposed to his work as a child. The last film he made, before his death, was a short pro­mo­tional film for the CNR”s coast-to-coast pas­sen­ger ser­vice across Cana­da. His stone-faced char­ac­ter cross­es the coun­try on a rail­way hand-car. Keaton was as bril­liant in it as in any film he had made a half-cen­tu­ry before. Read more »