Dune-Scifi Channel, You Held So Much Promise At One Point. Exhibit A

Franchises beg for adaptation.  Especially ones with the staying power of the Dune saga, Frank Herbert's monumental work about royal intrigue, power politics, mysticism, environmentalism and other big questions as only classic science fiction can deliver.  There have been other adaptations in the works and others that have been made.  This one was the product of the Scifi Channel in 2000, and for me, surprisingly, it did quite a job.

David Lynch's Dune suffered from the director's propensity towards the strange, the abstract and the metaphysical.  On the surface, they would be a perfect match, but Lynch could not refrain from being weird for weird's sake.  But for all it's flaws, Lynch's Dune was poetic, meditative and for the most part, captured Herbert's universe recognizably.

For a Scifi Channel production, their Dune mini-series, starring William Hurt as Duke Leto Atredeis, had more time to adapt Herbert's sprawling novel.  And it took advantage of that.  Characters that got short changed in Lynch's version, most notably Feyd, got their just deserts in Skiffy's production.  They also kept the abilities of the Bene Gesserite, especially The Voice, more on the lines of what the book actually depicted, rather than some Weirding Way elements that Lynch pulled out of his backside for his version.

Also, in this version, the Fremen seemed like actual desert people in their look and manners, rather than Europeans. Stilgar and Chani especially were much better rendered.  The actress who played Chani, btw, Barbora Kodetova, a Czech, really pulled off her character well (and was quite lovely topless). 

Pleasantville-Does the Tea Party See in Black and White?

Ok, that title may seem  cheap shot-ish and maybe a bit on the nose for our times.  However, I've been of the opinion that fundamentalists of all sorts view the world in terms of both black and white (this is how we see the world, anyone else who differs is plain wrong and possibly dangerous) and also dreams of some mythical halcyon days were things were "better", if not ideal.  I'm not sure if the producers of Pleasantville were going for overt political or sociological statements in their magical fantasy dramedy about two high school siblings from the late 90s being transported into the world of a 50s family sit-com, but intentional or not, that is just what they achieved. 

In the TV show Pleasantville, you have a typical suburban family as realized by TV in that era, complete with homemaker Mom, breadwinner Dad, well behaved kids dealing with very tame problems easily resolved in an hour, and the world as defined by the city limits and everyone just playing their roles, no questions asked.  It is a perfect little equilibrium that finds itself punctured by people from "outside".  And when the people from outside begin bringing outside perspectives, thoughts and viewpoints, that changes the pallet of what is and what is known and it begins to become something...else. Naturally, some don't react to that very well.

In many ways, that is what I see happening writ large nowadays.  We are surrounded by change.  Change is inevitable.  You can't stop it.  You can guide it, somewhat, and choose for yourself what you want and don't want, usualy.  But there is no such thing as stasis.  And as long as you live in a universe of choice and where variables come and go, change comes.

Rather than fight it, a world is better served by examiningit, accepting the good, dealing intelligently with the bad and quit being such scaredy cats.

Yeah, big with the metaphor, probably more for our times than for it's own, methinks.

The Silent City-A Low Budget, High Hopes Apocalypse...

The internet has it's flaws, sure, as does the easy to use modern media.  But when lamenting the moron parade, be sure you don't miss signal due to noise.  Web series are one of the positive sides of our modern day.  Conventional TV storytelling is hard to break into, but the route of web series allows those with ideas and a dream to put their ideas forth to a global audience.  Sure, you still have to break through, but there are those who certainly deserve to.

The Silent City is such a web series.  Filmed on a series of actual locations to suggest a world in ruin, it opens with a young man alone in this setting, scavenging to live.  Particularly, he comes across what looks to be a treasure trove.  But what looks to be a stash of canned goods turns out to be a cache of cash.  He ends up using the wads of dollars as fuel for a fire.  We never find out his name in the first season, though we do find out he is a determined survivor, that he is lonely, and though he is a formidable fighter, he is not a killer.  He is a former submariner who has fallen away from his  crew and has been wandering the landscape alone.

Something happened to this world.  His ship dove deep on orders.  Six months later, they came up to the world as it is now.

The survivor is played by an East Coast actor named Eric Stafford, who actually is a Navy vet who no doubt brought an aspect of that to this role.

Check it out.

http://silentcityseries.com/

Iron Man 3-It isn't just about A Man In A Can. Man.

Shane Black.  I'll be honest, I completely forgot he directed the original Lethal Weapon, which is one of the best, most iconic action movies of the 80s.   And if it is one thing that movie did well, was give it's action heart and soul and even some brains, through its well drawn out characters who drew you in.  If you wanted something more than a bullet ballet, which I always do, Lethal Weapon   gave that to you in it's mismatched buddy cops, one an ageing street warrior looking forward to retirement, the other a mental basket case, a ticking time bomb full of trauma just waiting for the right spark to explode all over everyone and everything.

Shane Black gets the human element, how it is important to show the toll of events in an action adventure story, that they have lasting repercussions beyond the end of the events themselves.  That they wear at the body and soul, and that the human element has it's limits and to be pushed beyond it introduced a new crisis to overcome. 

This is what has happened to Tony Stark as a result of the events in The Avengers.  He has come through some incredible events and has met some extraordinary people that have shaken his world to the core.  He now knows the full scale of the truth of things in his world and he is having trouble dealing with it.  To reconnect to what is human in his life would be the better therapy, but instead, he is going in reverse, building more barriers, especially in his new armor designs.  So when a particular mistake out of his past reasserts itself and a man called The Mandarin comes calling, he is thrown out into the cold and must reconnect with the essentials.

Now, this film did some amazing things.  From the prologue monologue from the jump (which worked VERY well in the post credits scene) to the superspy feel much of the rest had, most excellent.  The kid was not nearly as annoying and as precious as he could have been, and I think that it is because Black knows what makes kid characters work without being all sentimental and gushy about it, kind of like how Stephen King writes Jake in the Gunslinger  books.  And yes, seeing Tony Stark operate a great amount without his armor was awesome to me.  It has happened in the books and it worked very well here, showing he has skills, talents and guts not dependent on the suit.

Oh yes, great to see Pepper getting in on the action and rocking both armor and a black sports bra.

The one big negative in my book?  The way the Mandarin was portrayed.  I grow so tired of hearing about how the comic version is a stereotype.  There are all kinds of ways to go with his Asian origins without retreating to the Fu Manchu tropes.  All kinds of ways, that is, if you have a little imagination and don't get all PC'ed out. 

And that's how good I thought IM3 was.  Not many superhero movies could fou

Perfect Sense...At the End of the World...At the Edge of One's Senses

Perfect Sense is another film in the apocalypse science fiction category, sub-category biological contagion outbreak.   We see this story unfold through the eyes of Michael (Ewan MacGregory), a master chef and dedicated hedonist who lives his life totally dedicated to in physical senses and perceptions, allowing his interaction with the world to go no deeper than that.  We also meet Susan (Eva Green), a dedicated scientist, an epidemiologist whose work is one of the early clues as to the coming disaster.  She is absolutely dedicated to her work, but has nothing else in her life, just data, labwork and experiments.  These two unlikely souls find themselves falling into each other's orbits when the wave begins cresting upon the world and the effects of the disease began to be felt.  Slowly, surely, the people around them find their senses being taken away from them by the biological attack.  This is especially tragic for these two, as just when the world is allowing them to begin to perceive the world beyond their limited horizons, their ability to experience it begins to be stripped away.

We take our senses for granted.  And we also give them much more credence than perhaps they warrant. We don't think much about what they do tell us and we often forget there is more to the world than what they can tell us.

But as the song says, you don't know what you've got, til it's gone. 

The human side of the end of the world, probably the best side through which to experience it.

For Your Eyes Only...Not All the Roger Moore Bonds Sucked

Ok, I will admit from the jump, I'm not the biggest Roger Moore fan.  In my opinion, he became the Adam West of the series, taking a dark, grim character of purpose and turning him into a clown.  Too much winking, asides, double takes and slapstick, with jokester folley artists out of control at times.  But sometimes, sometimes, we still got a good 007 adventure out of him.  Now, I don't blame this on him, as this tendency began to appear with the last Sean Connery film.  Diamonds Are Forever is a wretched movie. 

This, however, is not.  This story features 007 being put on the trail of trying to locate and reacquire a piece of British naval communications technology before it falls in the wrong hands.  At first, he is on the trail of a hitman, but then finds himself in the path and the arms of a beautiful Greek archaeologist out for revenge.

This film does have all the Bond trademarks, with beautiful women, gadgets, locals and cool set pieces, like an underwater battle sequence.  There is some winking and nodding, but thankfully, it is kept to a minimum and we do have a worthy adventure with the name Bond.

I like the Sheena Easton song, too.

Word Pictures...The Spoken Word Is Still Alive

I've made the decision to leave the US Army before I got to twenty years.  Six years shy of that.  The reason for that are many, but one of the key reasons is this.  For years now, I've felt a parting of the ways coming with me and the Army.  My vocation in the service is as a broadcaster, trained in radio television skills.  By far my strongest is the ability to perform with the spoken word (I also am not a bad writer).   But as I have gone up in rank, the Army's tendency is to pull me away from my core skills, to the point where I feel less like a key contributor and more like just a number.  Honestly, I think the Army institutionally prefers things this way.  I have realized, however, that I don't.  I am leaving the service, continuing my schooling and pursuing in earnest my chosen arts, writing, performing, radio broadcasting, the spoken word.

Word Pictures is a DVD which celebrates the art of the speken word.  Featuring a storyteller named Mark W. Lewis and a musician named Craig Coulter, the two of them stand on a stage in front of a crowd of three hundred and with mere words, bring to life tales of magic, mystery, heroism and whimsy.  No CGI, no complicated production...mere words.

In the beginning was the word, y'all.  The word is how we announce we are on the scene.  Even when born, our cries are the equivalent of our first words, announcing to the word that we have something to say.

And really, that is all a story is, an expression of the journey.  Sometimes, to take that journey, all you need is a voice.

That is what Word Pictures celebrates.

The Sound of My Voice...Needing to Believe and Strange Things Among Us in a Cynical Age

Sound of My Voice is a strange film that starts out with a couple, a school teacher named Peter and an aspiring writer named Maggie who want to try to be documentary filmmakers.  Their target, a cult, led by an attractive, charismatic woman named Lorna.  She holds court in a non-descript L.A. suburb house and leads her charges in apparently seeking to "reach inside" and find who they truly are, clearing away all those inner obstacles that prevent them from being honest with themselves.  Lorna has done her homework on Peter and Maggie and knows who they are, and to prove their loyalty to the cult, asks Peter to kidnap for her a particular girl who is a student of his.  She does not say why.  But already, we know strange things about her.  Not only does she seem to posess extraordineary insight about people (not that unusual with a cult leader), she also...claims to be a time traveler.  From the future.

Is she? 

We live in a cynical age, but it is a cynicism not true, in that many of the faux cynics do not truly have a bleak view of existence.  They are a combination of fearful, feeling that extraordinary things lurk at the edges but don't wish to embrace, out of fear of looking foolish or being disappointed.  Or there is lazy cynicism, that to accept the idea of something extraordinary means bucking the trend, going against the grain, and even perhaps being put in a position to have to defend such a stance.  Many people don't want to bother and fall into some kind of orthodoxy or other out of sheer unwillingness to confront.

Then, there are the strange things, the strange people.  Is it all lunacy and delusion?  Or do some thing truly define paradigms?

Keep in mind our paradigms are constantly changing.  When some authority or other tells you that they've got it 99 percent figured out...turn the page.

This movie doesn't figure out things for you.  It is up to you.

Best kind of science fiction.