Turambar-3

I'm sure there are some people who will be convinced this movie contains some sort of hidden truths, but I'm not. There's almost no plot, not much dialogue and we learn very little about the characters - worse, we don't care about any of them anyway.

What little plot there is, as it turns out, ends up with several big holes in it. The ending takes place in the last 5 minutes, because the writer obviously just ran out of ideas (or paper). It's trudge, trudge, trudge for 75 minutes, then a disappointing ending so devoid of anything useful that the viewer just ends up with nothing. If someone had suggested to me that this movie might end this way, I'd think he was kidding.

This movie was showing on HBO one Sunday against all of the infomercials, and I got curious. I thought it might be a fun little action flick, but an old Jackie Chan movie would have been a hundred times more entertaining.

The first things I noticed about this series, of course, were the good acting and great CG effects. Then the funny stuff started happening - contemporary clothing and cars over forty years in the future, astronauts who wouldn't have made it past a preliminary interview, trite dialogue, made-up technical details like faster-than-light instant communication from Venus, and General-Hospital plots.

I feel badly for everybody involved with this series other than James Parriott. The people and the sets are very pretty. The music cues us to laugh when the comic relief arrives. We get long music videos twice an episode. For the most part sexual innuendo is completely skipped because it's too subtle - the characters talk constantly about sex because the writers don't know what else astronauts would talk about. The editors gave us lots of long, pregnant moments to give us time to consider the incredible implications of every emotionally charged moment. We're even given lots of "Let's do this" and "when you do this thing that we do" dialogue to remind us that we're watching true heroes, in case we've forgotten. And every episode ends with an honest-to-god "You see, Timmy..." eternal lifetruth.

Admittedly, the plot holes are sometimes pretty large, but that's normal for TV, right?

The whole problem here is that audiences are sometimes too smart. This series should be a rich emotional and philosophical stew but it's really a bowl of thin watery gruel. The "Grey's Anatomy" female demographic doesn't get enough to satisfy, and the sci-fi crowd gets what's left over after the bowl has been licked clean. Without women and sci-fi fans there weren't enough people left to watch this series, and that's too bad for everybody. It's especially bad for anybody who wants to make a sci-fi series for a major network in the near future, because this one will make it tough.

There's a quote from James Parriott that I think is worth including here. "I was reading in The New Yorker how stock market swings follow Pi, the fractal equation. And that's sort of a scary thing, that it just moves. You can plot the right dips and curves that it does indeed move fractally, and that just blows me away. There's just tons of stuff we don't know."

This quote explained loads to me. The problem is that Parriott didn't understand what he was reading, and he got it completely garbled, *and then, being a TV guy, he based a new TV series on his garbled version of what he thought he'd read.* Oh no.

Now, for those who haven't seen Parriott's reveal of where the series would have gone next season, I'll summarize (and no, I'm not making this up):

• Nadia turns into a man. - Donner's vasectomy reverses itself for the second time, so does Zoe's hysterectomy, and he gets her pregnant. - Wassenfelder becomes autistic, making him extra, extra smart, because everybody knows autistic guys are extra, extra smart. - Arnel loses his leg in training, forcing them(?) to recall Zoe. - Jen is forced to kill her bunny in order to have the guilt necessary to see the "fractal objects". - Eve realizes she's supposed to be on the ship, so they put her on a "resupply mission". - Rollie goes to jail again, but when it's necessary to get Eve to Mars Rollie leaves town in a big way. - Goss realizes the "fractal objects" made him a bad guy. - We never find out what the "fractal objects" are, or in fact, what makes them "fractal objects", because frankly, I'm a math guy, and I didn't see no "fractal objects". - Sharon and Walker may still be alive on Mars, but that wasn't completely decided.

There's some good news about all of this that means a lot to me, even though it probably won't mean much to most people. This series has cured me of television for a while. And, as the script writers say, that's a Good Thing.

The premise of this show, just the idea of a 70's cop show, has huge potential. It's one of those ideas that a bunch of people in Hollywood will come up with all at once in a wave, just because the 70's are such low-hanging TV fruit. Unfortunately, the idea that was chosen is a lame one to begin with, "I woke up in the 1970's! Not sure why!" "Life On Mars" also has some very good actors. That's why it's painful watching them, as I write this comment, woodenly coughing out really, truly terrible, formulaic, banal, boring and predictable lines to a raucous backdrop of equally-formulaic 70's-era hits and flame-filled non-sensical explosions. For the past hour Sam has roamed the episode constantly dropping clever bon mots from 2008 and modern-style cop puns so that we won't forget even for a second that he's from the superior future. The writers don't miss a single moment to cram it down our throats that we're in the 70's now. I've seen every LOM so far; I held on and hoped for the best, but tonight I finally reached my disgust threshold.

"Life On Mars" has everything it needs going for it except sufficient cleverness. "Lost", the show that comes on (for me) before it, is so well-written that one can suspend disbelief while an entire island (replete with ghosts, no less) disappears and skips around the Indian Ocean. "Life On Mars" has a far more down-to-Earth plot, but it needs a miracle at least as big as Lost's sapient island to make it work.

Adam Sandler plays a Philadelphia 9/11 widow and Don Cheadle plays his former college roommate and would-be psychological savior in a movie that should have been a great but instead fails for lack of focus.

In the film, Adam Sandler plays a former dentist who has withdrawn into a sort of psychological stupor, spending his life playing video games and collecting records. We're never allowed to see Sandler playing a character with depth, such as the father he plays so well in "Spanglish", because he's stuck back in his usual role of overgrown teenager. In this case, the part is tired, simple and somewhat implausible, providing virtually no glimpse of the man Sandler supposedly was before his family was killed. When the standard Hollywood ending arrives, it's merciful.

I felt this movie could have succeeded with editing. The large ensemble cast plays the many unnecessary characters very well, but almost all the extraneous plot lines should have been eliminated to focus on the real point of the movie, a human being in total crisis. For a much better movie with a highly similar theme, check out "The Fisher King", in which Robin Williams plays a far more complex and interesting character than Sandler has been allowed in this blurry and pointless film.

"Must Love Dogs" has a cast that shines only dimly through a murky and formulaic script. The lines themselves are smart and humorous, the actors (with the exception of Mr. Mulrooney) are engaging, but somehow not one character in this movie achieves any depth or likability. I found the main character, Sarah, to be highly shallow and undeserving of anyone's faith, much less the continued faith that Jake (John Cusack) shows in her. The hero and heroine barely interact with one another, but we're asked to later stretch our imaginations to believe that they fall desperately in love with one another.

In all, the acting was professional, the characters were shallow, the writing was shallow, and the plot line was shallow. I found myself wishing that Jake could find someone better than Sarah. You, however, can easily find films than "Must Love Dogs".

The original Dukes of Hazzard had a dirty little secret: it was a smart story with intelligent actors disguised as a couple of good old boys from the countryside.

The protagonists always outsmarted their enemies, who weren't that intelligent, and Cousin Daisy may have been the smartest of them all (and the most ironic). Even the bad guys were played by actors who were smart enough to play not-so-smart people in a disarming way.

The new Dukes of Hazzard has only one thing in common with the original series (besides the names of the characters): it doesn't take itself seriously. Beyond that, the characters are not-very-bright ridiculous country bumpkins who whoop and bumble their way through to a happy ending for everybody.

The car stunts are great and worth watching, and the movie has its funny moments. Bo, played by Stiffler, played by Williams, is about as bright as a coal mine in a power outage. Uncle Jesse (Willie Nelson again playing himself), stripped of his original abundant common sense, now spends a fair portion of the movie getting high.

If you enjoyed the original series, watch this movie for the General Lee and Jessica Simpson and try to forget the rest. If you haven't seen the original series but love to watch Jackass, you'll feel like you've been Called Home. If you haven't seen the original series but you think Jackass is awful, go hunt up the original series on iTunes or whatever video site turns you on. It wasn't genius, but it entertained and the characters were pleasantly smart.

The attraction of the original Avengers series was that it is always entertaining to watch intelligent people having a lot of fun with intelligent material.

The opposite holds true, as well; it is always excruciating to watch not-very-smart people torturing themselves with really dumb material.

"The Avengers" movie, unfortunately, fits this second description.

Fiennes was the most successful major player in this film, if only because he managed to convey the impression that his terrible lines were somehow beneath him. The other actors, with the notable exception of Eileen Atkins, actually managed to act well below their dialogue, a feat I would have thought impossible before witnessing it. The confusion of Uma Thurman and Sean Connery attempting to cough out words like "proton" and simultaneously nod comprehension must have been somewhat akin to that of the writer, Don MacPherson, while copying words at random from the old middle school science book he'd never read. I came to the conclusion later on that Mr. MacPherson had never played chess, either, so he typed in the only word from the game he knew. "Checkmate."

Chess is one of those games that film writers use to make the actors seem, you know, smart.

What kind of blackmail, I wonder, did he hold over the producers that they allowed him to make this expensive proof that the stars don't make the movie?

Watching "The Avengers" is like watching ten-year-old girls play dress-up, have a tea party, and try to talk like adults. It's cute for the first few minutes, but you'll reach your limits very quickly. If you must see it, get drunk first. At least then it will seem funny.

Mirelle's film "The Constant Gardener" is, in many ways, a brilliancy.

The direction, cinematography, casting, scoring and acting are all superb, and no performance is less than masterful. Many moments of this film would stand by themselves as cinematographic essays: the flock of birds over Lake Turkhana in the beginning, the roadside debris in the end, the AIDS players in their costumes, the single Masai crunching across the dry Turkhana lake bed, the brilliantly-colored montages of African third-world shantytowns. Visually, this film is a feast.

Likewise, the acting is virtually flawless. The film's characters are fleshy, three-dimensional, flawed human beings; Quayle's struggle to overcome his stifling diplomatic tact is portrayed against the backdrop of his wife's struggle to overcome her self-righteous temper. Similarly each of the movie's other characters suffers from fatal human flaws: cowardice, cunning, greed, callousness, rationalization...each time a flaw is presented so, too, are its victims.

If the film itself has flaws one is that it has a subtlety that, as with the book, many might not comprehend. We discover Tessa Quayle's character as Justin discovers her, and like Justin we are unsure at the beginning or even by the middle of the movie whether we trust her or not. It is only after duplicating her journey that Justin completely knows and loves his wife and in so doing discovers himself. And it is only after witnessing their journey that we are allowed to know them both. Unlike with most American cinema, until that point arrives we are left guessing.

Other flaws include a slight preoccupation with cinematography over plot development, and an occasional excess of preaching that threatens the film-making. This film is, however, in most respects a masterpiece, and many of its lyrical scenes will stay vivid in your mind long after the credits are gone. "The Constant Gardener" is a feast for those who are hungry for something more than typical cinematic monotone.

This was a lovely script, and I was surprised I hadn't heard much about this movie before I caught it on HBO. I turned it on to keep myself company while working and ended up glued to the screen. I really enjoyed it.

The movie is a series of vignettes about several different people that seemingly have no connection to one another, although by the end the connections are finally all present and accounted for. There's a fair amount of subtle satire and a generous portion of irony; the characters are quite human and often don't do the right thing. I was caught off-guard by the incredibly successful results of the trip to America, but I laughed pretty hard and decided I wouldn't have written the script any other way. Not everyone ends up getting what they want, but then again that's love, er, actually. Nice little film.

If you have a sense of humor and are over the age of 30 you'll probably understand and love this film as much as I did.

It'd be hard to beat the quality of the cast unless one was filming a movie about American football or Kabuki theatre, and the script lives up to their quality.

Gabriel Byrne is excellent as a hard-working Polish father who finds refuge from his family in his bakery. Lena Olin is perfect as the beautiful mother with five children who makes one last desperate and menopausal escape attempt from what she sees as her Catholic prison sentence. Claire Danes is their funny, chaotic, excessively hormonal and headstrong daughter who sets out to lose her virginity just as she is selected to lead the community's Catholic procession as the Virgin Mary. The rest of the cast has earned accolades in other works and they're equally credible here. All of the characters somehow succeed in winning the viewer's affection, and all of them are human.

There's a pleasant craft about this film along with a pleasing and sardonic sense of humor. I've seen it three times now over several years, and it always draws me in.

For season-to-season plot consistency, overall script quality and production values Stargate SG-1 sets a high mark as one of the best sci-fi TV series ever made, and absolutely the best of its genre. It ranks just below X-Files in script quality, but the characters are a little more human and (slightly) more developed. Complicated words aren't ever mispronounced, which is nice, and the physics and archaeological consulting seems decent. Miracle cures for impossible problems aren't used one week and forgotten the next. Cinematography and direction are consistently good. The series doesn't take itself nearly so seriously and in fact the actors joke that they're never sure that it isn't a comedy. And unlike any of the Star Trek series other than the original, it even has a soundtrack! Overall, at this writing (Battlestar Galactica hasn't emerged as a series yet), Stargate SG-1 is one of the most highly enjoyable sci-fi television shows yet produced.

It's always easy to make fun of other people's efforts, and the huge amount of work that went into this production deserves to be acknowledged. The sets are beautiful, the costuming is lavish, and...well, at least it's so much better than David Lynch's effort.

That said, some of that money and effort would have been better spent on casting, writing and direction. One striking aspect of Frank Herbert's characters is that they are all so intelligent. It's painful to listen to the movie's Paul Atreides, who supposedly speaks many languages fluently, woodenly mispronounce his lines ("ek cetera, ek cetera"), or the equally "intelligent" Princess Alia stumble over hers with echoes of a decidedly non-royal accent ("Who's gunna tell me...Who's gunna...gunna, gunna, gunna"). The actors themselves seem not to have read the books or understood them, and they often seem not to have a sense for what's taking place. So much for the tightly-controlled characters and "plots within plots" of the books; the emotions of these actors are painted in loud obnoxious colors all over their dumbstruck faces, and the paint's still wet from acting school. Some have English accents, some have American accents, some have stage accents; no one knows why.

In this strange and wonderous universe, the 9-year-old twins are constantly referred to as "the children" even though, strangely enough, they have the bodies of 20-year-olds. No dark skins here; these lean, desert-dwelling people are very well-fed and strikingly white. In fact, none of the characters seem to have had a day of sun in their lives. And you'd better not mention the Fremen expression "water fat". Stilgar and Gurney, both lean and battle-hardened men, have decidedly unhardened potbellies, and Irulan, a woman trained in the disciplined ways of the Bene Gesserit...well, we'll just say that she's put her problems behind her. Susan Sarandon does a creditable job as Wensicia, although whiny and truculent. Alice Krige, at least, is well-cast as Lady Jessica and she does an excellent job.

Many of these problems might have been helped by good direction and scripting, but both are absent. The whole cast, even the minor one-liners, delivers their lines slowly and with lots of non-sequitur hand gestures. One trick often used to convey a sense of intelligent characters is dense dialogue, but there's no danger of that in this series. Dialogue comes slowly, with generous pauses. The actors unwittingly attempt to speak volumes with their faces, but given that these characters, always scheming, are known for hiding their thoughts, their faces speak more of money poorly-spent.

Again, clever writing might have helped. But the writer, too, seems not to have spent much time understanding what made the books so good. Where context might have served, the writer instead relies heavily on expository explanations to explain what's happening. The twins, closely intertwined, sharp and complex, and struggling to contain thousands of years of human memories, are instead portrayed as distant, confused and simple. As an example, in the book, the twins deduce the assassination plot and cunningly use it to move their own schemes ahead. They pick the time and the place and even guess that there will be large predatory animals. Contrast that with our large movie twins, who happen to be out wandering the sand one day and suddenly stop, dumbfounded, when they hear the loud snarl of a hunting cat who, inexplicably, wants to warn its prey. "That's not a worm!" says Ghanima, her eyes perfectly round.

The overall effect is one akin to watching community theatre. People wander the stage, scream their lines, drip emotion, and wave their arms around. The lines make no sense, the actors earnestly try to impress, and at the end of the day...well, it's only been a few minutes. A long journey, this series, and hours to go before they sleep.

I rank the makers of this movie right down there with the people who allege that the holocaust is all a big hoax. Garbage like this relies on the ignorance of its viewers to convince them of something that is so patently and hideously false that one wonders from what kind of acute character disorder the makers are afflicted. Tens of thousands of people worked on the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo programs, several thousand worked in the immediate vicinity of the launch stands at Kennedy Space Center, and at least a hundred worked in the launch control complex monitoring the telemetry as it came in from Apollo.

So many people dedicated their entire lives to making these achievements take place that those who have never achieved anything other to tear down the work of others might indeed see the Apollo Program as a target. Nonetheless it's one thing to imagine that it might happen, and another thing entirely to see it actually take place.

There are those who would argue that good journalism sometimes present controversial points of view. But unbalanced journalism, based on a deliberate misunderstanding of logic and science, serves no purpose other than to create confusion and distrust.

There remains one question for the criminal idiots who made this film. At what point did the conspiracy take place? It's easily provable that the rockets themselves went to the Moon and back. Several hundred people watched the astronauts walk to the gantry and get in the elevator. From down below the launch gantry one can watch people get into the spacecraft. There is only one elevator. So if people in spacesuits got into giant rockets that then themselves went to the Moon and performed their mission in a very visible way, at what point would these conspirators have gotten out? At what point did this conspiracy with thousands of members manage to pluck those would-be actors (never mind that not a one of them would consent to do it) out of the spacecraft and bring them back home to a sound stage?

It stands as testimony to the achievements of those who worked so hard and so long to put mankind on the Moon that there are some who see those hard fought goals as unachievable. One would hope instead that a completely different message might be taken from our few short trips to the Moon, that humanity in concert can achieve huge and wonderful things, and that those who, in their smallness, might only rise by making others fall can never compare to those who would work hard to educate themselves and combine their talents for something great.

I can only pray that if I am some day able to help achieve something great, some tiny-minded idiot will not immediately claim we didn't do it and, in so doing, feel somehow superior.

Although it is a better film than its shallow predecessor, "Attack of the Clones" still strangely lacks the brilliant direction and strong characterization of George Lucas' work of old. It succeeds better not because of a tighter plot (it isn't) or better acting (it's not), but probably because of the arrival and added depth of a more mature Anakin Skywalker. Although slightly wooden, the older Hayden Christensen brings somewhat more to the role than the much younger Jake Lloyd in "Phantom Menace".

More adult characters aside, the plot and dialogue are almost as formulaic and workaday as those of Episode I. George Lucas was once a master of the accidental hero, a common element of virtually all his previous works. "Attack of the Clones" is a tragically-missed opportunity to tell the story of a very human character, seemingly destined for greatness, who instead falls victim to circumstance and expectations, an potential hero gone astray. The story of his downfall could have been rich and complex and captivating. The feeling instead is that none of the characters were particularly inspired by the work they were doing. These normally fine actors read their lines as if they and the director could all hardly wait to get to something else. They are painfully uninspired by either script or direction.

The special effects in this film are somewhat improved after "Phantom Menace". Jar Jar makes an unfortunate return to the silver screen, but his and the other computer-animated characters are much more sophisticated this time around. It's a pleasure to see Yoda drop his cane to pick up his light saber and give one of the villains a strong education. Many of the other special effects are quite brilliant.

Only one film remains as a chance for redemption of the Star Wars epic and George Lucas' reputation as an excellent character director. As Yoda put it a long time ago in a simple-but-inspiring movie far, far away, "There is another."

For several months now I've waited with great anticipation for the release of "Lord of the Rings", and now I have to say that the previews were the best part.

Yes, I'm one of those people who knows the books backward and forward, but that wasn't what made me want to walk out of this film after the first hour. I actually liked the addition of Arwen (Liv Tyler) as a strong female character. No, what finally made me hate it was poor direction and needless plot changes that detracted from the script and showed a distinct lack of creativity on the part of the screenwriter. What we wanted was the greatest fantasy epic of all time. What we got was "Dragonheart II".

Some characters were changed illogically and beyond almost all recognition. Saruman the White, the greatest of the council of wizards and the wisest for many thousands of years, is depicted here as a petty street fakir ("Now you shall feel pain!"). Elrond's council seemed to have no direction or particular point to it, Moria became a predictable side trip ("But we CANNOT go to Moria, and therefore we MUST go to Moria!"), and the hobbit town of Bree is turned to the human town of Bree for no reason that I could discern. Why is it that Bilbo can wear the ring without any ill effects while Frodo must think he's swimming in ashes? There were so many ill-conceived and gratuitous changes in the storyline that actually created big holes in a previously tight plot. In the end I concluded that Fran Walsh is a famous typist.

Casting and acting were wonderful. But when every one of the actors delivers his lines veeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrryyyy slllllllloooooooooooowwwwly and with great drama, you have to believe Peter Jackson is at fault. Fully 30 minutes of pregnant pauses could have been edited out of the film without touching the dialogue, and a full hour might have been saved for better use had the dialogue been delivered without stentorian drama. I might have liked to see more of Cate Blanchett's wonderful Galadriel or the development of Gimli and Legolas' friendship instead of having to wait through seemingly hours of near-silence.

The mark of good special effects and computer animation lies in their subtlety. This movie's CGI certainly doesn't fit that bill. Whoever did the post-production went positively hog wild with them, adding them in at every opportunity to the grave detriment of much of the film.

Cinematography was mediocre. Camera angles for real scenery and CGI shots alike were uncreative, static and managed to make great things look unassuming. Some of it was just plain mistaken, such as the close-up shots on Gandalf's beard that revealed the snow to be...something else. Direction and cinematography have come a long way in the last thirty years, but you couldn't tell that from this film.

Summary: Casting - Wonderful, Acting - Great, especially considering the circumstances, Direction - Amateurish and clumsy, Cinematography - Mediocre, Script - Mediocre, Overall - Mediocre

"Lord of the Rings" is a disappointing loose adaptation of a wonderful book, even for those who haven't read it.

This film is absolutely one of the most beautiful I've seen in quite a long time. The characters are well-crafted, the plot will mean many different things to many people, the cinematography is top-notch, and the choreography is often breathtaking. At the end of the film I was poised perfectly between satiation derived from the richness of the plot and deep craving for more. Hours afterward, now, I am deeply satisfied, and my mind has been working through the film's layers, discovering new meanings with each successive consideration. When I stop considering the various other aspects of this film I'll simply remember the scenery.

I predict anyone who sees this film will enjoy it.