Gabrielle's Friendship Day: movies

Showing posts with label movies. Show all posts

An atavistic "Avatar"

Been there, done that

You may have heard of this legendary computer-animated film in which the protagonist finds himself in a drastically resized body and falls into the hands of those whom he was originally trying to destroy. Once among his erstwhile enemies, he is taught their ways by a winsome lass who wins his sympathy and inspires him to switch sides.

The movie is The Ant Bully and it came out in 2006.

Oh, did you think I was talking about Avatar? I guess I could be.

James Cameron's Avatar is currently raking in box office receipts and capturing the imagination of the movie-viewing public. Cameron got a few bucks from me earlier today. I have to admit that Avatar is very pretty and serves as an excellent example of the state of computer-generated graphics. In that sense, Avatar is a tour de force.

In every other sense, it fails.

Perhaps I was inoculated against truly enjoying Avatar by the premature hype and over-the-top expectations. I was irked when the characters of Bones were drooling with anticipation over seeing the movie. To me, product placement is an irritant and a distraction. Aggressive marketing predisposes me to dislike the product, whatever it may be. It does not whet my appetite.

Nevertheless, I wanted to see Avatar and give the movie an opportunity to entertain me. The visuals are very nice, with spectacularly imaginative flora and fauna for Pandora, the planet on which the action occurs. The gigantic blue natives, the Na'vi, are rather excessively humaniform, but that's okay. Rapacious Earthlings want to mine Pandora for its motherlode of “unobtanium,” which has antigravitational properties. A little trite, yes, and scientifically absurd, but I can suspend my disbelief that much. I sense, however, that I'm getting just a little overextended.

Our hero, a marine named Jake, gets lost in the Pandoran wilds and is rescued by a lovely native named Neytiri. She turns out to be the daughter of her tribe's chieftain. (Of course.) Her mother is the tribe's spiritual leader (naturally) and it is she who decides that Neytiri will be responsible for teaching our hero the ways of the Na'vi tribe. (Wouldn't you know it?) This will cause some trouble with the heir-designate to the leadership of the tribe, Tsu'Tey, a great warrior who is also Neytiri's betrothed. (Oh, please.)

I was instantly bored and restless. Nothing surprised me. Will our hero learn the ways of the tribe? Of course. (At least they spared us a montage.) Will he win grudging respect from the people? Damn right. Will Tsu'Tey continue to resent him and hope he dies? You bet! Does Jake make mistakes that put him in dire straits but still recover and win through? Every time!

I'll grant you that it would be unfortunate for the hero to be put out of commission too early in the movie, but it would be nice if something provided a modicum of suspense. When Jake and Neytiri barely escape an attack from a Leonopteryx, a flying monster the Na'vi refer to as the “Last Shadow” (because its shadow is the last thing you'll ever see), she tells him that her legendary grandfather was the last member of the Na'vi ever to tame one sufficiently to fly upon it. Instantly, you know without a particle of doubt that Jake will be flying one before the movie ends. And, of course, he'll displace Tsu'Tey as Neytiri's fiancé.

At least, I assume so. I walked out right after Neytiri's story about her ancestor and the Last Shadow. I was afraid of dislocating my jaw.

Oh, Lord, make me good!

But not yet

It's really embarrassing when they make it so easy, but that's not a reason to spare them. Today's e-mail brings one of Bill Donohue's hectoring messages from the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights (or Donohue's Drop-of-a-Hat Rant Machine, if truth-in-labeling laws applied). As usual, Bill is going hammer and tongs after the enemies (real and imagined) of Catholicism without ever suspecting that he is himself one of Rome's festering boils. If so mean-spirited and nasty a man as Donohue can prop himself up as a spokesman for Roman Catholic values, just how hollow must the Church be? During a rant about the supposed war on Christmas, Donohue famously referred to the putative founder of his church by saying “I've never met him.”

No wonder he never turns the other cheek.

In his latest electronic missive, Donohue waxes indignant over historical mistakes in a movie based on Dan Brown's Angels and Demons. Apparently Brown's work of fiction (it's fiction, Bill!) takes liberties with the historical record by pretending that the Illuminati have harbored a grudge against the Catholic Church since the days of Galileo's persecution for his defense of heliocentricity. Since the Illuminati were actually founded more than a hundred years too late to be involved in the Galileo affair, Brown's plot device is a historical solecism. It's shocking, of course, that a fiction writer would do such a thing and that a major movie studio would permit history to be similarly distorted in the movie version.

The tag team of Dan Brown and Ron Howard would have the public believe that Galileo was a member of a secret society, the Illuminati, and that the group seeks revenge against the Vatican today because of the Catholic Church’s anti-science history. All of which is nonsense.

Clearly Dan Brown and Ron Howard are in league with the devil. Or something like that.

So why do they lie? Because their goal is to paint the Catholic Church as the enemy of science, and what better poster boy to trot out than their favorite martyr, Galileo? The ultimate victim, Galileo’s alleged persecution is cited as proof of the Church’s war on reason.

Is that what Brown and Howard are doing, unfairly depicting the Church as reason's enemy?

The record clearly demonstrates that the Roman Catholic Church is not exactly reason's best friend. It makes a fetish of fecundity, thinks a fertilized egg is already a human being, and recoils in horror at the specter of pregnancy prevention. While Rome is not as brain-dead over evolution as many Protestant sects, it cannot help but make goo-goo eyes at the intelligent design crowd. The Church regards science with suspicion.

But Donohue is adamant:

Had it not been for the Catholic Church, the universities would have died during the Middle Ages. Had it not been for the Catholic Church, the Scientific Revolution would never have happened. After all, science did not take root in South America, Africa, the Middle East or Asia. In took place in Christian Europe.

He's right, of course. Science flourished in Europe (especially during that Enlightenment period in which God was shunted aside as a historical curiosity) and Europeans might not like to be reminded of the role of Muslim intellectuals in preserving the works of Greek scholars during the Dark Ages (thus making it possible for them to be rediscovered during the Renaissance) and adding their own contributions. (Perhaps Bill has never heard that algebra and algorithm are based, respectively, on al-jabr and Al-Khwarizmi. And does he know why the title of Ptolemy's Almagest is in Arabic, although it was originally written in Greek?)

Despite what Donohue thinks (or merely feels), Brown and Howard are not conspirators against the Catholic Church. They traffic in entertainment, the former in vapid bestselling novels and the latter in blockbuster movies. Their thrillers need bad guys. Brown has tapped into a lucrative vein in this period of popularity for New Age nonsense and mysticism. And when it comes to religion-themed mysteries, who better to set up as the heavy than the 800-pound gorilla known as the Vatican? Or—to be less kind—who better to set up as the villain than a 2000-year-old mystery cult which has lost its moral authority with the recent exposure of decades of profound corruption?

It's not as though Nazis (already used Raiders of the Lost Ark) or communists (exploited in dozens of Bond movies) or drug cartels (defeated by Harrison Ford as Jack Ryan) or international terrorists (blah, blah, blah, Jack Bauer) are the right bad guys for a modern religion-based novel. What, the Mormons? Jehovah's Witnesses? You've got to be kidding! The Catholic Church can rest assured of its primacy.

Donohue offers this parting shot, still irked at the mention of Galileo as an example of the Vatican's excesses:

Galileo was never imprisoned or tortured. His confinement to house arrest, though unwarranted, was more a function of his arrogance than his ideas: he persisted in presenting his ideas (taken from Copernicus, a Catholic scientist who was never punished) as scientifically accurate, something which scientists of his day scoffed at.

Nice one, Bill! There's nothing like a humorous exit line to leave your audience in a good mood. If you didn't catch it—Bill is being uncharacteristically subtle here—perhaps it will help if I mention that Copernicus withheld publication of his earth-shattering book, De revolutionibus, until he was lingering on his death bed. The Church placed De revolutionibus on its Index of Forbidden Books, but it never punished Copernicus. He was dead.

Conventional wisdom

Fact may follow fiction

I started paying attention to presidential elections in 1960, when my parents let me stay up late until the networks called the race for John F. Kennedy. In 1968 I started watching the political conventions, too, which in those days had gavel-to-gavel coverage on the three national networks. News anchors like Walter Cronkite even managed to shut up during most of the speeches, assuming that viewers wanted to hear the speakers rather than the babbling nabobs in the broadcast booth.

That seems strange today, when the commentators insist on commenting before the speeches are even over—or commenting instead of covering the speeches at all. It's an odd political universe. I seldom watch conventions on TV anymore. For one thing, they're more scripted than ever and most of the drama has been leached out of them before the opening gavel is struck. The old conventions were different. In 1968, for example, we really didn't know who would get the GOP nomination until the ballots were cast. (I was predicting Nelson Rockefeller on the fifth ballot, but it never got that far. Instead we ended up with the doleful political resurrection of Richard Nixon.)

The old-fashioned chaotic conventions of the past have provided the backdrop for several political thrillers, The Manchurian Candidate probably being the best known. In a review of classic political movies in last Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle, Ruthe Stein cited 1964's melodrama about a closely fought contest for a presidential nomination, The Best Man. Henry Fonda plays the noble William Russell, who has fought ruthless rival Joe Cantwell (Cliff Robertson) to a standstill. Each candidate has potentially devastating information about the other, if only he were willing to use it. In Gore Vidal's script, the two men have been pushed to the brink and Russell has to make a fateful decision. (See the clip below.)

In Stein's newspaper article, she singles out an especially pertinent quote from Vidal's screenplay. He gives these lines to a former Democratic president:

“Someday we're going to have a Negro president. After that we're going to do something for that other minority and elect a woman.”

I do believe he's right on both counts, and it looks like he even got the order of precedence correct, too. Back in 1964.

CPE1704TKS

Thermonuclear war

If you recognized the title of this post, congratulations. You are a true übernerd, a geek among geeks. It's the launch code from the movie WarGames, which Boing Boing reminds me was the greatest geek movie ever and was originally released twenty-five years ago. Did you miss the silver anniversary celebrations in May? So did I, but Wired magazine offers a nostalgic retrospective for all of us who miss the days of 300-baud dial-up modems and 8-inch diskettes.

WarGames was a cautionary tale about artificial intelligence and human stupidity. The sermon was a timely one, albeit delivered in a candy coating of teen angst, love, and adventure with lead roles played by Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy. In 1983 the president of the United States actually believed it was possible that Bible prophecy might require him to play a leading role in the battle of Armageddon. Certainly launching a nuclear war would be an excellent way to set off the Apocalypse—in accordance with God's divine plan (and love and mercy and all that). We tended to avoid thinking about it too much back then because it was difficult to function if you were shuddering all day.

I didn't own my own computer yet when WarGames came out, but I already knew about modems and punch cards (almost—but not quite—obsolete then) and computer terminals. The local university had a connection to the ARPAnet, the Internet precursor sponsored by the Defense Department, and my nerdiest friends were on it daily. Although I had my doubts about WOPR (War Operation Plan Response), the computer that could control the entire United States nuclear arsenal, the scenario seemed realistic enough. Yes, it was science fiction, but not beyond the limits of credulity. Suspension of disbelief was all too easy.

That is, until the grand finale. That's the scene in the command bunker where WOPR begins to crack the secret ten-character launch code so that it can follow a teenager's inadvertent command to play out a thermonuclear war. Fortunately for the dramatic impact of the movie, WOPR flashed its progress in code-breaking on the large screens in the command center. Ten-character alphanumeric strings flashed past the eyes as WOPR searched for the launch key. The audience in the movie theater was rapt.

I, however, got a sinking feeling in my stomach. Damn!

WOPR was being allowed to riffle through the ten-character strings without any limitations. There was no one-attempt-per-second rule. No three-tries-and-you're-out. WOPR was jamming through the ten-character strings without hindrance. With 26 characters in the alphabet (uppercase only it seemed) and 10 numerals, WOPR has 36¹⁰ possibilities to check. That's between three and four quadrillion. WOPR was presumably a state-of-the-art military supercomputer capable of sophisticated war game simulation. I imagine it would have had massively parallel computing architecture. If it could crunch billions of possible codes per second, WOPR would crack the launch security barrier within perhaps a year or so by simple brute force. If it could crunch trillions per second, then perhaps hours or minutes. Not very secure.

Even back in 1983 the IBM Personal Computer boasted a microprocessor clocked at 4.77 MHz. Sure, that was just a microchip, but it indicated the low end of the computing power of the day. Yes, I was mildly disgruntled at the ease with which WOPR would be able to crack the code. Not very reassuring or realistic.

But then things got worse. Dramatically worse. Suddenly the first character of the launch code was frozen on the display screen: C. WOPR had figured out the first character. People in the command room were horrified. Then: P. Oh, no! WOPR was getting closer!

Now I was really disgusted. If you were allowed to figure out the code one character at a time, then I could do it myself, in a couple of minutes, without any massively parallel computing power. It's boring, but it's easy. You do it like this, beginning with the first character:

“Is it an A?”
“Is it a B?”
“Is it a C?”

Bingo!

Then on to the second character:

“Is it an A?”
“Is it a B?”
“Is it a C?”

Yes, this one would take longer. If you make it all the way through the alphabet, then rattle off the ten numerals, one after the other.

In a few minutes you'd have the whole thing. Thermonuclear war. Boom!

No, it didn't actually ruin the movie for me, but I was rather disgruntled. To make matters worse, none of my friends cared. Sure, the nerdy ones merely agreed that it was a dumb mistake—but what did you expect from Hollywood, anyway? The less nerdy ones simply pointed out that it made the ending more exciting. Yeah, I got that.

It was probably only the math geeks like me that were really irritated. But we don't count.

Lots of first black presidents

Obama's secret weapon?

Five years before he became the voice of Darth Vader, James Earl Jones became the first black president of the United States. In the 1972 film version of Irving Wallace's novel The Man, Douglass Dilman (Jones) is a U.S. senator serving as the upper chamber's president pro tempore when the President and Speaker of the House are killed in a freak accident. Dilman is next in line of succession when an ailing Vice President (Lew Ayres) refuses to take the oath of office. Dilman is sworn in and takes charge. Not everyone is happy about it. As the movie's promotional material advertised: “First They Swore Him In. Then They Swore to Get Him.” The scowling Senator Watson (Burgess Meredith) drawls to a colleague, “Tonight the White House ain't near white enough for me.” Despite the forces of racism and political opportunism (and sexual intrigue) arrayed against him, President Dilman weathers the siege and the movie ends on a triumphant note as his party's political convention nominates him for a new term in his own right.

The Man is all but forgotten today, but it pioneered the notion that the nation might one day be grown up enough to accept an African-American as chief executive. In some ways, Hollywood has been preparing the ground for the ascendancy of Barack Obama. The possibility of his presidency is not unthinkable. It could be next year's mundane reality. His fictional predecessors have been increasingly visible and decreasingly controversial. While The Man was all about the shock waves attendant on the president's unprecedented race, later fictional works treated it as incidental.

In Deep Impact (1998), President Tom Beck (Morgan Freeman) organized the nation's response to the threat of a major comet strike. The planet is faced with a possible “extinction-level event.” If humanity survives at all, it could be in the form of the hobbit-like future offspring of the Elijah Wood character and his teenage girlfriend. (Did I mention it's a horror film?) No one bothered to include any lines in the script where one actor turned to another and said, “Um, did you notice that the president is, um, black?” If there was any special message in Freeman's portrayal of the president, it was implicit: Here's a leader trying to save us from extinction. If his plans don't work, we're all going to die. Does anything else matter?

Beginning in 2001, Dennis Haysbert portrayed President David Palmer in 79 episodes of 24 during the first five seasons of Kiefer Sutherland's hit television drama. Week after week, month after month, American viewers saw a U.S. president who was black. It was not played for shock value (although many other things in the show were). The trials and tribulations of President Dilman were decades in the past and President Palmer paid more attention to the problems of terrorism than those of residual racism.

By the time 2003 rolls around, Chris Rock is playing the notion of the first black president of the United States for laughs in Head of State. (“The only thing white is the house.”) His portrayal of D.C. alderman Mays Gilliam as an accidental candidate for president did not set a new standard for profiles in leadership (nor, unfortunately, for comedy either), but in the span from President Dilman to President Gilliam we have run the gamut from melodrama to farce. We have now seen every kind of “first black president” that the entertainment industry has to offer. What more is there to do?

Elect a real one.

Expelling hot air

Plenty more where that came from!

The marketing people for Expelled are hard at work warming up the academic audience for their agitprop film. The following bit of e-mail hype was forwarded to my attention and I have to say I am gobsmacked with anticipation. Expelled must be the most exciting film since Birth of a Nation (and just as historically accurate!). The provocative message is being spread to educators (both real and imagined) across the country.

Subject: Has your student group been Expelled??
From: Dairek Morgan <dairek@motivemarketing.biz>

Hey guys,
So, we’re at 2 months and counting. Film release date is APRIL 18th. The time is NOW to plan your group initiatives. If you haven’t already, check out www.getexpelled.com to download and order a lot of really cool FREE resources (stuff should be ready for shipping on Thursday).

You’ve all signed up online to be involved in the film and I’m really thankful to have you. As a former youth pastor from Nashville, TN, the reason I took this job and am so passionate about this project is because I saw one too many of my students go off to college and be indoctrinated with a belief system that said their faith was antiquated and foolish. Ever heard of The Blasphemy Challenge?? THIS IS WHERE THIS TEACHING LEADS—AND HOW ITS AFFECTING STUDENTS RIGHT NOW!! (www.blasphemychallenge.com) Seeing that was all I needed to know that I would throw my whole being into this project. Abe Lincoln said that “the philosophy in the schoolroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next.” Ideas have consequences. Our students are being deceived, and I know this film can help shed some light on the conversation. Faith and science are not incompatible and I believe this film will go a long way in allowing the two room to stand together in the cultural conversation.

While the Lincoln quote is bogus (at least according to the Duke University Law Review), this is undoubtedly only a small blip in the otherwise fact-based work of the purveyors of intelligent design creationism.

Since the message is aimed at teachers, it's not surprising to see that it has a kind of lesson plan in it. I suppose it would be unkind to complain about redundancies and other infelicities in it:

Here’s what you can do to get the word out about this film to the students.

Here’s some things I’m asking you to do:
Post an Expelled banner on your website/myspace: http://getexpelled.com/downloads_webbanners.php
Tell your students about the film (send an ecard or just start an email chain).
Organize an evening on OPENING week-end to take your students to see the film. Why not do a 7:00 showing and then an open forum discussion over ice cream afterwards?? We can send you a FREE resource kit to help advertise your event. Coming soon on www.getexpelled.com.
Get your students to participate in some of our initiatives. We’ve got all kinds of contests and other ways to help them get involved in the discussion. Www.getexpelled.com
Educate your students on the issue. Www.intelligentdesign.org is a great starting place to learn more on the topics.
And if you’re REALLY up for the challenge, help your students host an EXPELLED DEBATE. More info here: http://www.getexpelled.com/debate.php
Amazing SYNERGY can happen when we all do a little. This film has the potential to change the cultural conversation in our country. I appreciate your participation.

Blessings,

Dairek

P.S. Please feel free to reply to this email and let me know what your youth/group is doing to get involved. It’s always good to know what’s happening at the “ground level”!

Dairek Morgan
Motive Entertainment
dairek@motivemarketing.biz

Dairek ends his message with some celebrity endorsements for the message of Expelled. They pretty much speak for themselves—and demonstrate the company that the Expelled crew keeps. One shudders.

Don't forget to count how many distinguished scientists are in this distinguished crowd of Expelled supporters!

“I recommend the film enthusiastically! Ben Stein’s film exposes an entrenched and aggressive Darwinist establishment in academia that suffocates all competing points of view. What Ben Stein discovers in this riveting documentary is incredibly enlightening.” —James C. Dobson, Ph.D., Chairman of the Board, Focus on the Family

“What Ben Stein is doing in this film is extremely important by opening up an honest debate in the public square where people can hear reasoned arguments on both sides and make their own conclusions. I love Ben Stein” — Chuck Colson, Radio Commentator, Founder of Prison Fellowship

“This is an enormously important project and I am so proud of the fact that Ben Stein, who is a national treasure, is part of it. People know that there is a dictatorial impulse at work in the land to shut down even the most elementary questioning of this unquestionable belief in random evolution” —Michael Medved, nationally syndicated radio host

“We highly recommend the movie to anybody. It is not only informative and challenging—it is fun to watch. Ben Stein’s interviews with avowed atheists, is well done as he elicits responses that leave grave doubt regarding their position of absolute disbelief in a creator and/or God”. —Ken Smitherman, President, Association of Christian Schools International

“EXPELLED is an engaging film. Ben Stein has given us a powerful documentary about the widespread repression of faith-friendly scientific scholarship. Along the way, he also makes a strong case for a return to civil discourse in a time when political correctness often overshadows the search for truth”. —Ronald D. Ellis, Ph.D., President, California Baptist University

“We are seeing the consequences of locking matters of faith out of our classrooms. We applaud Ben Stein for casting light on today's challenges to academic freedom.” —Luis Palau, President, Luis Palau Association

“Propaganda molds minds in a very direct way and that is the logjam in this situation, which the Ben Stein movie, EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed, seeks to break through. I wish it well – I hope under God it will have a great effect just at that point.”. —Dr J.I. Packer, theologian

“Expelled blows the lid off the heavy-handed tactics within the scientific community to crush dissenters who dare to question Darwinism. This entertaining yet sobering documentary reveals why civilized societies cannot progress if held captive by Darwinian philosophy, and will decline from moral and just societies to brutal oppression.” —Wendy Wright, President, Concerned Women for America

“The movie is powerful...shocking....intense....humorous at times....well worth seeing. This message must be given to the next generation or else....” —Jack Brown, CEO, Capitol Prayer

“If the Ben Stein movie is asking these questions and if somebody is keeping us from finding out the great answers to the great questions - then maybe they are more than just questions. Maybe they are questions with eternal consequences.” —Peter Furler, lead singer, The Newsboys

“This movie only samples the tip of the iceberg of academic and intellectual persecution in the land of “freedom” and may trigger a cultural revolution as more people are emboldened to tell their story and make a stand. It is rare to find a movie that is entertaining, educational and motivational, but that is exactly what you get with Ben Stein’s documentary, EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed” —Dennis Wagner, Executive Director, Access Research Network

“Finally, someone has exposed the head-in-the-sand reaction of mainstream academia when it comes to intellectual honesty and the theological implications of modern science. This film is a wonderfully crafted gift to this needy culture.” —Ed Flanagan, Manitou Motion Picture Company, Ltd.

"If you seek intellectual integrity, see Expelled. If you enjoy thought-provoking conversation, bring a friend. If you value free speech, tell everyone you know to meet you at the movies and spend an alarming evening with Ben Stein. Expelled could easily be one of the most important movies of the year." —Denny Rydberg, President, Young Life

“Honest people have no fear of the truth. Expelled is a great first step in tearing down the wall and bringing honest, vigorous debate back to the academies. I want to thank you for your film, EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed.” —Curtis Martin, President-Fellowship of Catholic University Students

“As a media literacy education specialist and film/television reviewer, I encourage critical thinking. If this film respects every human person's ability to think and to question, thereby promoting our search for truth and meaning, it will renew the debate about academic freedom by initiating a dialogue that inherently respects the dignity, freedom, beliefs and opinions of all those who sit around the table—and beyond it.” —Sister Rose Pacatte, FSP Director, Pauline Center for Media Studies

“As chairman of the Mission America Coalition, I highly recommend Ben Stein’s upcoming film “Expelled”. We have personally met with Ben and have screened Expelled, and we found it to be compelling, insightful and entertaining. I encourage you to see the film when it hits America’s movie theaters in April and to invite others to join you.” —Rev. Paul Cedar, Chairman, Mission America Coalition

“EXPELLED: No Intelligence Allowed is earthshaking. I was absolutely blown away. Ben Stein boldly shines a light of honest inquiry revealing that evolution’s emperor has no clothes.” —J. Matt Barber, Director for Cultural Issues, Concerned Women for America

Indiana Jones and the Long Goodbye

Not the retiring sort

I was browsing the Interweb, as I often do, picking through the multiplex that is ScienceBlogs. One of the regular stops on my circuit is Orac's Respectful Insolence, which this weekend informed me of the release of a teaser-trailer for the long-awaited Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. (See what you can learn on ScienceBlogs?)

Can you believe that it's been nearly twenty years since the last Indiana Jones movie, 1989's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? That's a long time for a successful franchise to sit on the shelf, especially since none of the earlier films were bombs. The serials involving Superman and Batman have gone in fits and starts, retooling after various box office disappointments and cast changes (and others, like Alec Baldwin's The Shadow—which I enjoyed—and Bruce Willis's Hudson Hawk—which I didn't bother to see—crashed and burned after only one outing). By contrast, the Indiana Jones franchise was robust. However, the principals—Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford—never lacked for projects and the years kept clicking by without a sequel to Last Crusade.

The trailer has Jones quipping “Not as easy as it used to be,” so Harrison Ford's age (and that of the character he portrays) is likely to be a running gag in the new movie. This will presumably be the last outing of Professor Jones, but who knows? Over at Orac's site I suggested that plans might already be under way for Indiana Jones and the Wheelchair-Accessible Caverns of Despair. Sound too far-fetched? Here are some other possibilities:

Indiana Jones and the Avengers of the Assisted-Living Community

Indiana Jones and the Shared Office Space of the Professors Emeriti

Indiana Jones and the Marauders of Medicare Part D

I have a problem with that last one, since American audiences are likely to ask about the missing episodes concerning Parts A, B, and C. You know, like when The Madness of King George III was released in the United States without the Roman numerals for fear that we simple colonists would skip it, on account of not having seen I and II.

Anyway, what do you think are good titles for future Indiana Jones adventures? I'd love to hear them!

On watching The Golden Compass

Twice so far

Although last weekend was officially dedicated to the debut of Will Smith's I Am Legend: A Zombie Christmas, I chose instead to take in a second viewing of The Golden Compass. While it's fun to poke a finger in the eye of Bill Donohue and his boycott of the movie, I had some purer motives as well. Despite a mixed bag of reviews, I found it extremely enjoyable and simply wanted to see it again.

Many of the less enthusiastic reviewers found the movie disjointed and confusing. Was it really necessary to have read Philip Pullman's book first? If so, then the movie does not stand on its own and fails as an independent cinematic experience. I had read the books of His Dark Materials and thought everything in the movie fell into place rather well. On seeing it a second time, I made a point of watching more critically, and I think I have a clue why some people find it bewildering.

Although The Golden Compass is carefully crafted to hang together, it's the kind of movie that requires us to pay a little attention. Perhaps more than people are wont to give these days. The viewers most likely to fall into confusion are those who neither read the book nor gave the movie their full attention. Things move quickly most of the time. If a movie is mostly an opportunity to munch popcorn and gossip with friends, then it helps to choose a movie whose entertainment value is spectacle driven and not plot dependent. While it has its spectacular episodes, The Golden Compass is not a popcorn-chewing movie.

The opening narration jump-starts the movie by making it clear we're on an alternate Earth where people's souls exist outside their bodies in the form of animal companions called daemons. While playing at war with her companions, Lyra scornfully cites touching another's daemon with bare hands as an uncouth violation, at which all the children recoil in horror. Soon thereafter, while rooting about in the retiring room, Pantalaimon reminds Lyra that he fears she'll be caught and smacked, in which case he'll also feel the pain. No one has any cause to be confused or surprised when Lyra passes out during the scene in Bolvanger as the Gobblers seize her daemon, or when Mrs. Coulter wrings her hand in pain in the earlier scene where Lyra slams a window down on the hand of Coulter's monkey daemon.

The major threads of Lyra's world are reinforced in unforced repetition. Other items, interesting but not key to the plot, are passed over without comment. The power supplies that drive Mrs. Coulter's dirigible and Mr. Scoresby's aerostat are rendered in effective CGI, but no one comments on them. They don't drive the narrative and no time is spent discussing them. In fact, there are relatively few lectures in The Golden Compass, despite several opportunities for characters to prate at each other for our benefit about things that all the characters already know. Even Lord Asriel's discourse on dust at Jordan College is mercifully terse, and Mrs. Coulter's explanation to Lyra of the Magisterium's function is wonderfully straightforward in its saccharine simplicity (“they tell people what to do”).

Nicole Kidman is the ideal Marisa Coulter. Sleek and icy in her portrayal of Pullman's archvillainess, Kidman lets slip Coulter's thin veneer of sprightly affability whenever the target of Coulter's regard needs to see the dangerous steel that lurks just below the surface. No wonder Pullman begged her to take the role.

I've seen it said that the movie's plot is threadbare, but what is wrong with the theme of resistance against a despotic authority? This is a most timely message. In the character of Mrs. Coulter we also get to see the hypocrisy and internal inconsistency of authoritarian regimes: obedience of the rules and conformity to the standards are for others, not for those in charge. Mrs. Coulter is as impulsive and willful as she wants others not to be.

The world depicted in The Golden Compass has heft and solidity. It projects an alternate reality. Is it Pullman's reality? Many aficionados of the novels are dismayed that the cinematic incarnation of the first book has been toned down—even perhaps, bereft of its soul by a kind of literary intercision. The churchly aspects of the Magisterium are played down, making the movie less anticlerical than the books. Only one of the children victimized by the Gobblers is depicted after his intercision, and even in that case his friends and family insist they will find a way to restore him (although in the books such children pine away hopelessly and we see one die).

These things don't really matter. If Philip Pullman can endure them, so can I. The Golden Compass is a treat and worthy of one's attention, but only one's attention can make it the experience it should be.

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