TJW-3

I rented the first two episodes from Netflix and was delighted to see them again after 25 years. As others have said, the chemistry between Bob Hoskins (Arnie Cole) and Frances de la Tour (Maud) really powers the show -- some of the subplots are a tad tedious. This was the first thing I ever saw Hoskins in and I've been a fan ever since. De la Tour hasn't been all that visible over the years, though she was also great in the comedy series Rising Damp (another one worth seeing again) and she had a small role in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (where she played the giant visiting French teacher).

Also memorable are Fraser Cains as Llewelyn, Arnie's long-suffering Welsh film projectionist, and Peggy Ann Wood as Maud's feisty Nanny.

Yes, Craig is a hard, lean and mean Bond and had me convinced of his Bondness after a few minutes.

Yes, some of the action scenes are intense.

Yes, the story is closer to Ian Fleming's books and basic concepts.

But ... the labyrinthine plot and occasional brutality was often just not much FUN. Of course, the "traditional" Bond movies are not so much Fleming's stories as spoofs of them -- and their plots were dumbed down to "Bond blows up the Big Bad Guy's Evil World-Threatening Installation with a BIG BOOM and then drills chicks on the beach." Casino Royale is more of a spy movie than a Bond movie -- it's about betrayal, black-white-gray ambiguity, mirrors reflecting mirrors, etc. etc. All that cloak-and-dagger stuff. In other words, it's Fleming's Bond, which isn't what people have been led to expect in the past 40 years of Bond movies.

So I admire the return to the source of the Bond mythos -- but I can't say I really ENJOYED the return. All the earlier Bond movies were essentially soda pop. This one is a very dry martini. Shaken or stirred? At least the Bond in this film gives the best answer yet....

TJW

I saw half of this film over 20 years ago, and only once -- and still many scenes are indelibly imprinted in my mind. Moliere's mother picking lice out of his hair...the cavalry attacking student Mardi Gras revellers...starving beggars eating a horse raw...thick stage makeup flaking off a sweating actor...and all sorts of other real and surreal details of 17th century life.

That this compelling and unique film should have disappeared for a quarter century when so much utter CRAP has appeared on tape and DVD is appalling. I hope rumors of its release on DVD are true. And make it available in the USA, please!

This movie lets Republicans have it between the eyes for their calculated corruption of the political process. But like all good satire, "Bob Roberts" doesn't let anyone off easy. TV journalists are portrayed as as easily manipulated airheads. Democratic politicians (represented here with wonderful dryness by Gore Vidal as Senator Paiste) are portrayed as effete and out-of-touch. And at least some members of the great American public are shown as celebrity-dazed sheep, hungering to surrender their liberties to a charismatic but authoritarian ruler.

What's ironically sad about this hilarious film is -- everything in it has come true and then some. The American political scene has gotten far more rotten than anything envisioned in this decade-old satire. Now in 2003 we have an unelected president that leads us to war with lies, which the corporate-owned media isn't permitted call him on. The entertainment-sotted public can't be bothered, and the Democratic opposition cowers in fear of being labelled "unpatriotic." Jefferson still beckons us to free our minds from tyranny -- and we're still not listening.

Based on Conrad Richter's ambitions trilogy, The Awakening Land is one of the finest TV mini-series ever produced for American television. Set in the Ohio frontier ca. 1790-1820, we see an American community form in the wilderness though the life of Sayward Luckett, a poor, uneducated pioneer woman blessed with great gifts of intelligence and courage. Through her often troubled marriage with Portious Wheeler, an eccentric and ambition New Englander, we see the clash and melding of the receding frontier with advancing "modern" civilization. Elizabeth Montgomery's portrayal of Sayward, a woman simultaneously simple but resourceful and intelligent, is surely the highlight of her rather underrated acting career.

The production has been treated shabbily by its owners since its premier in 1978. After years of silence, it was finally re-run in the early 1990s (I suspect owing to the fame of "Medicine Woman" Jane Seymour, who has a supporting role as Sayward's younger sister in "The Awakening Land") but I don't believe it was ever available to consumers on VHS. If it appeared on DVD I would snap it up in a minute.

Filmed in and around Springfield, Illinois, and the nearby reconstructed frontier village of New Salem, the mini-series is also notable for its setting in a time and place in American history rarely seen in movies or TV: the frontier period in the Midwest. One suspects the production aspired to be another "Roots," but even though it didn't match that show's rating, "The Awakening Land" excelled it in emotional sophistication and often in historical accuracy.