Tuesday, March 27, 2007
ROME
I've treated the subject of the series Rome on HBO a few times on my Funny Pages. In fact, if you'd like to see the latest (and last, I imagine) of those treatments, click here. It will be the last because the series ended this week. Sunday the last episode, titled (in Latin, which on the blog I won't bother you with) About Your Father. I've been fascinated by Rome ever since an article in National Geographic when I was thirteen or so. There are other funny things about Rome which I've written on the Funny Pages as well, so my interest isn't new. Not that I'd want to visit that country in those days. The Romans were crude and violent, even by the standards of the worst of Old West Lynch Law. I'm not kidding about that, and if you want to see some examples of just how awful those people were, check out the series Rome.
Sure, the series just ended, but for those who have it, you can still catch all of it on HBO on Demand. The first season, that is, the first twelve episodes, is for sale here. Also, Netflix, and I'm sure other rental agencies, have season one available right now. Season two will be available directly, I'm sure, as soon as HBO on demand gets done with it. So you can still watch this truly fine drama. I must warn you, though, that it isn't family fare, as I usually hear it defined. It's crude, violent, sexual, and fascinating. With that introduction, here's a brief, and non-wiseguy, review of the entire series.
Rome opens with Caesar just having defeated Virgintorix, a Gallic king. In Caesar's camp, locked up in the brig for some sort of insubordination, is Titus Pullo, a centurion. His friend Lucius Varenus, another Centurion, springs him for a special assignment involving recovering Caesar's stolen Eagle emblem. They succeed, rescuing in the process Caesar's nephew Octavian, who you may remember better as Augustus, but all that comes much later. Caesar learns quickly that "the gods favor these two", which serves the two friends well over the years. We see the great sweep of events between the conquest of Gaul and the beginning of the empire just like you might remember it from a history book. Caesar crosses the Rubicon with our protagonists at his side. Pullo winks at an amazed kid fishing in the river as the huge army trundles by. Caesar wins Rome; Caesar gets killed. There is a triumvirate which breaks up into another civil war. Octavian joins with Marc Antony in defeating Brutus and they form another triumvirate. Marc Antony goes off to Egypt, falls for Cleopatra, and pretty much everybody knows how that comes out. Octavian defeats Antony, Cleopatra kills herself, Octavius Caesar becomes Emperor, although all he'll accept is the title of "first citizen." That you know.
What you can't know, of course, because it's fiction, is how all of this affected and involved Pullo and Varenus. I don't want to scoop any plot surprises, but it's comedic, it's tragic, it's redeeming, it's violent, and in the end it's just getting by as best you can in a big and dangerous world. The first person we get to know in the series has the last line, which is also the title of the last episode. It's a great ending, and I wish I could know how Pullo's life worked out after that, but then again, he was just one of millions of ordinary people who called themselves Romans. To say that the Republic and Empire of Rome continue to influence our society today is a great understatement. It's also an understatement to say that the retelling of a crucial part of Roman History that's done in the HBO series is one hell of a fine drama.
Sure, the series just ended, but for those who have it, you can still catch all of it on HBO on Demand. The first season, that is, the first twelve episodes, is for sale here. Also, Netflix, and I'm sure other rental agencies, have season one available right now. Season two will be available directly, I'm sure, as soon as HBO on demand gets done with it. So you can still watch this truly fine drama. I must warn you, though, that it isn't family fare, as I usually hear it defined. It's crude, violent, sexual, and fascinating. With that introduction, here's a brief, and non-wiseguy, review of the entire series.
Rome opens with Caesar just having defeated Virgintorix, a Gallic king. In Caesar's camp, locked up in the brig for some sort of insubordination, is Titus Pullo, a centurion. His friend Lucius Varenus, another Centurion, springs him for a special assignment involving recovering Caesar's stolen Eagle emblem. They succeed, rescuing in the process Caesar's nephew Octavian, who you may remember better as Augustus, but all that comes much later. Caesar learns quickly that "the gods favor these two", which serves the two friends well over the years. We see the great sweep of events between the conquest of Gaul and the beginning of the empire just like you might remember it from a history book. Caesar crosses the Rubicon with our protagonists at his side. Pullo winks at an amazed kid fishing in the river as the huge army trundles by. Caesar wins Rome; Caesar gets killed. There is a triumvirate which breaks up into another civil war. Octavian joins with Marc Antony in defeating Brutus and they form another triumvirate. Marc Antony goes off to Egypt, falls for Cleopatra, and pretty much everybody knows how that comes out. Octavian defeats Antony, Cleopatra kills herself, Octavius Caesar becomes Emperor, although all he'll accept is the title of "first citizen." That you know.
What you can't know, of course, because it's fiction, is how all of this affected and involved Pullo and Varenus. I don't want to scoop any plot surprises, but it's comedic, it's tragic, it's redeeming, it's violent, and in the end it's just getting by as best you can in a big and dangerous world. The first person we get to know in the series has the last line, which is also the title of the last episode. It's a great ending, and I wish I could know how Pullo's life worked out after that, but then again, he was just one of millions of ordinary people who called themselves Romans. To say that the Republic and Empire of Rome continue to influence our society today is a great understatement. It's also an understatement to say that the retelling of a crucial part of Roman History that's done in the HBO series is one hell of a fine drama.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
A Review of Premonition
Sandra Bullock's movie Premonition has more loose ends than the collective mind of the audience at a Grateful Dead concert.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
My Review of Wild Hogs
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Global Warming
Among other things I don’t understand is the knee-jerk reaction against the idea, promulgated by a large group of actual scientists, to the idea that global warming is a serious threat to which humans are contributing, and to which humans have a chance to apply some sort of amelioration before it’s too late. Okay, it’s not a pleasant thing to contemplate losing cities like London, New York, Singapore, and Miami, but the point of the warning is that the process can be slowed to the point where it will all happen slowly enough that we can do something about it. Already in Holland there is some famous below sea level land under cultivation. No little kid has to keep his finger in the dike, either, by the way. So, the best case scenario is that we’ll have time to deal with the inevitable changes, and probably make quite a few bucks off of a number of new, or newly energized industries into the bargain. That just doesn’t sound all that bad.
Maybe it’s because the people screaming in opposition tend to be of a type that seems, to me at least, to be guilty of something anyway. Like the Halliburtons of thw world, or Ann Coulter, who is probably the biggest fool ever to put pen to paper in this country (and I even include present company.) People who seem to think that they’ll be punished for doing something wrong. A corollary to that position is that these folks don’t seem to imagine any reason to behave properly other than that they’ll get punished. And yet we elect some of them to high office. That’s something else I don’t understand, but that’s for another day.
The only bad thing about the global warming scenario is that we’ll have to change. Whereas, of course, if it’s false, we’ll never have to change at all. We’ll have cheap oil forever, even. Huh?
The thing is, we don’t need automobiles, we need good, low cost, reliable and convenient transportation. We need to ship goods around the world quickly and efficiently. We need to be able to communicate instantly at any distance if we want to avoid blowing each other up. Those are things we need. Cars, petroleum, telephones, the Internet are things we use to get the things we need. Even if we keep cars just as they are, we don’t have to power them with petroleum. We don’t have to power them with internal combustion engines. We don’t have to generate electricity from burning coal and oil, or even from nuclear power. We don’t even need electricity, we just need power to run all the stuff we need to run to get the good transportation and communication and agriculture that we do need. Maybe you see where I’m going here by now?
The real story of the people screaming that global warming is a scam, except maybe for Ms. Coulter, who is apparently just a crazy bitch, is that most of them have a vested interest in keeping the economy just like it is, because they can’t see any other way for themselves to keep raking in the coin. Oddly, that’s the same sort of attitude that produced a huge opposition to horseless carriages a hundred and ten years ago. The descendants of those buggy makers, of course, are now the ones screaming because their oil/automobile/electrical utility stocks will nosedive if we start to take care of global warming.
As Mr. Gore points out in his slide show/lecture as presented in An Inconvenient Truth, it’s tough to get someone to understand something when his living depends on his not understanding it. Know what? Those opponents are acting out of their fear, instead of simply taking stock of the situation and taking advantage of it. How about investing in some alternative means of getting around town conveniently and quickly? Robot driven cars that run on hydrogen fuel cells? Well, it might work. Transporters, as on Star Trek? Believe it or not, that also might work (I’m not kidding.) Finding a way to store hydrogen so that it could be used directly as fuel? There’s zero carbon emission when you burn hydrogen, after all, so why not give it a try? There’s money to be made in the research, money to be made in the product introductions, and lots and lots of money to be made in manufacturing and maintaining whatever we come up with. Why be frightened of making piles of money?
Because they already have piles of money, and they’re afraid that they’ll lose them. Too bad for them, history shows that those who try to hold on rather than change with the environment lose their money and their place both. Ah, well, huh?
As for the rest of us, it’s worth noting that in fact there have been exactly zero articles published in peer-review journals (the only kind that count in scientific research) which are critical of the idea of global warming. Those studying the idea the most closely put the likelihood that humans are major contributors at ninety-eight percent. That’s one chance in fifty that we’re not major contributors. I live in Vegas, and I know that those are not good odds to bet on.
And finally, consider that if we’re wrong to be concerned but do what we’d need to do anyway, we create entire new industries, jobs and wealth and we may never know if it was our actions or nature that saved us. But, if we’re right to be concerned and do nothing, we destroy civilization as we know it. Go ahead, take as long as you need to make up your mind about that one.
Maybe it’s because the people screaming in opposition tend to be of a type that seems, to me at least, to be guilty of something anyway. Like the Halliburtons of thw world, or Ann Coulter, who is probably the biggest fool ever to put pen to paper in this country (and I even include present company.) People who seem to think that they’ll be punished for doing something wrong. A corollary to that position is that these folks don’t seem to imagine any reason to behave properly other than that they’ll get punished. And yet we elect some of them to high office. That’s something else I don’t understand, but that’s for another day.
The only bad thing about the global warming scenario is that we’ll have to change. Whereas, of course, if it’s false, we’ll never have to change at all. We’ll have cheap oil forever, even. Huh?
The thing is, we don’t need automobiles, we need good, low cost, reliable and convenient transportation. We need to ship goods around the world quickly and efficiently. We need to be able to communicate instantly at any distance if we want to avoid blowing each other up. Those are things we need. Cars, petroleum, telephones, the Internet are things we use to get the things we need. Even if we keep cars just as they are, we don’t have to power them with petroleum. We don’t have to power them with internal combustion engines. We don’t have to generate electricity from burning coal and oil, or even from nuclear power. We don’t even need electricity, we just need power to run all the stuff we need to run to get the good transportation and communication and agriculture that we do need. Maybe you see where I’m going here by now?
The real story of the people screaming that global warming is a scam, except maybe for Ms. Coulter, who is apparently just a crazy bitch, is that most of them have a vested interest in keeping the economy just like it is, because they can’t see any other way for themselves to keep raking in the coin. Oddly, that’s the same sort of attitude that produced a huge opposition to horseless carriages a hundred and ten years ago. The descendants of those buggy makers, of course, are now the ones screaming because their oil/automobile/electrical utility stocks will nosedive if we start to take care of global warming.
As Mr. Gore points out in his slide show/lecture as presented in An Inconvenient Truth, it’s tough to get someone to understand something when his living depends on his not understanding it. Know what? Those opponents are acting out of their fear, instead of simply taking stock of the situation and taking advantage of it. How about investing in some alternative means of getting around town conveniently and quickly? Robot driven cars that run on hydrogen fuel cells? Well, it might work. Transporters, as on Star Trek? Believe it or not, that also might work (I’m not kidding.) Finding a way to store hydrogen so that it could be used directly as fuel? There’s zero carbon emission when you burn hydrogen, after all, so why not give it a try? There’s money to be made in the research, money to be made in the product introductions, and lots and lots of money to be made in manufacturing and maintaining whatever we come up with. Why be frightened of making piles of money?
Because they already have piles of money, and they’re afraid that they’ll lose them. Too bad for them, history shows that those who try to hold on rather than change with the environment lose their money and their place both. Ah, well, huh?
As for the rest of us, it’s worth noting that in fact there have been exactly zero articles published in peer-review journals (the only kind that count in scientific research) which are critical of the idea of global warming. Those studying the idea the most closely put the likelihood that humans are major contributors at ninety-eight percent. That’s one chance in fifty that we’re not major contributors. I live in Vegas, and I know that those are not good odds to bet on.
And finally, consider that if we’re wrong to be concerned but do what we’d need to do anyway, we create entire new industries, jobs and wealth and we may never know if it was our actions or nature that saved us. But, if we’re right to be concerned and do nothing, we destroy civilization as we know it. Go ahead, take as long as you need to make up your mind about that one.
Labels: Politics, Social Commentary
Sunday, March 11, 2007
An Ode to Christopher Guest
Hellllooooooooooo Cleveland!
You may remember that line from the famous movie “This is Spinal Tap.” “Spinal Tap” wasn’t a Christopher Guest movie, but he was one of the band. Since then, he’s gone on to make a bunch of further movies that purport to be documentaries about various groups of fictional characters. If you’ve never seen any of them, even “Spinal Tap”, then you’re in for a treat if you rent one of these films. I first ignored “Spinal Tap” until somebody gave me a copy for Christmas the year I announced that I was going into the comedy production business. It’s one funny, funny movie, although you need to keep at watching it for a while before you catch on to the humor. But, this is about Christopher Guest movies, so on with the show!
He was in one of my favorite movies, “The Princess Bride”, playing the chief blue meanie of the piece, Prince Rugen. But it was the series of films he’s made subsequent to his Spinal Tap appearance that I most like. The first of them was about a small town’s theater production. It’s called “Waiting for Guffman.” Guffman is a New York producer who supposedly will be seeing the locally written and produced musical and perhaps moving it to Broadway. Hoo-boy, the hilarity ensues. But not because of any slapstick or overt funny stuff. The comedy arises from within the characters, all of whom are odd in one way or another, but all of whom are also treated with the utmost respect. His films are often called “mocumentaries” because they are mock documentaries, but they never mock the characters, which is an amazing feat when you consider how eminently mock-able most of them are. He uses some regulars, among them Fred Williard, Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, himself (and the entire “Spinal Tap” band), Michael McKean, Eugene Levy and others. He gives them the scene set-up, then lets them improvise. This technique has produced some of the most amazing comedic moments I’ve ever watched.
In 2003 he released “A Mighty Wind”, which is about a reunion concert of a bunch of once star-quality folk singers who relive for one night their former glory. The music, much of which he wrote, sounds just like the real thing from those good old days of the late fifties and early sixties. But as you listen, it sounds more and more weird. For instance, the tag line for the movie goes “A mighty wind is blowing, it’s blowing equality. A mighty wind is blowing, it’s blowing you and me.” Think about that for a minute.
Maybe the funniest of the bunch is “Best in Show” which is about, well, frankly, the National Dog Show in New York, although they don’t use that name. I saw an actual documentary about how they made the fake documentary, and amazingly, it was based entirely on fact. That is, the characters in the real dog shows they attended weren’t that much odder than the ones portrayed in the movie. In what may be Parker Posey’s finest screen hour, she nearly eviscerates a poor pet shop owner because he doesn’t have an exact copy of the chew toy her dog is used to. Ouch!
So, this isn’t a rant, it’s a rave. Sorry, world, but sometimes I just feel positive. I have been listening to the soundtrack for “A Mighty Wind” while writing this. One song, not in the movie, that you really should hear, is the folk arrangement of “Start Me Up” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Wowzers!
You may remember that line from the famous movie “This is Spinal Tap.” “Spinal Tap” wasn’t a Christopher Guest movie, but he was one of the band. Since then, he’s gone on to make a bunch of further movies that purport to be documentaries about various groups of fictional characters. If you’ve never seen any of them, even “Spinal Tap”, then you’re in for a treat if you rent one of these films. I first ignored “Spinal Tap” until somebody gave me a copy for Christmas the year I announced that I was going into the comedy production business. It’s one funny, funny movie, although you need to keep at watching it for a while before you catch on to the humor. But, this is about Christopher Guest movies, so on with the show!
He was in one of my favorite movies, “The Princess Bride”, playing the chief blue meanie of the piece, Prince Rugen. But it was the series of films he’s made subsequent to his Spinal Tap appearance that I most like. The first of them was about a small town’s theater production. It’s called “Waiting for Guffman.” Guffman is a New York producer who supposedly will be seeing the locally written and produced musical and perhaps moving it to Broadway. Hoo-boy, the hilarity ensues. But not because of any slapstick or overt funny stuff. The comedy arises from within the characters, all of whom are odd in one way or another, but all of whom are also treated with the utmost respect. His films are often called “mocumentaries” because they are mock documentaries, but they never mock the characters, which is an amazing feat when you consider how eminently mock-able most of them are. He uses some regulars, among them Fred Williard, Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, himself (and the entire “Spinal Tap” band), Michael McKean, Eugene Levy and others. He gives them the scene set-up, then lets them improvise. This technique has produced some of the most amazing comedic moments I’ve ever watched.
In 2003 he released “A Mighty Wind”, which is about a reunion concert of a bunch of once star-quality folk singers who relive for one night their former glory. The music, much of which he wrote, sounds just like the real thing from those good old days of the late fifties and early sixties. But as you listen, it sounds more and more weird. For instance, the tag line for the movie goes “A mighty wind is blowing, it’s blowing equality. A mighty wind is blowing, it’s blowing you and me.” Think about that for a minute.
Maybe the funniest of the bunch is “Best in Show” which is about, well, frankly, the National Dog Show in New York, although they don’t use that name. I saw an actual documentary about how they made the fake documentary, and amazingly, it was based entirely on fact. That is, the characters in the real dog shows they attended weren’t that much odder than the ones portrayed in the movie. In what may be Parker Posey’s finest screen hour, she nearly eviscerates a poor pet shop owner because he doesn’t have an exact copy of the chew toy her dog is used to. Ouch!
So, this isn’t a rant, it’s a rave. Sorry, world, but sometimes I just feel positive. I have been listening to the soundtrack for “A Mighty Wind” while writing this. One song, not in the movie, that you really should hear, is the folk arrangement of “Start Me Up” by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Wowzers!
Sunday, March 04, 2007
The Pointy-Haired Bosses Strike Again!
Daniel G. Bogden was named the top Federal Prosecutor in Nevada in 2001. He’s the prosecutor responsible for several of our corrupt former officials now spending time on the public dole, in prison that is. Last week was his last day, because he was fired. He was told that “There is a window of opportunity to put candidates into an office like mine,” Mr. Bogden said, recalling the conversation. “They were attempting to open a slot and bring someone else in.” (That’s from an article in the New York Times today, but also from several articles in the Las Vegas Review Journal over the past month or so.) Now, here is a quote from the New York Times article, of the same date as this posting:
The ouster of Mr. Bogden and seven other United States attorneys has set off a furor in Washington that took the Bush administration by surprise.
Okay, then, there’s the problem. As if I needed further proof, here we see that the current administration is composed primarily of dolts and idiots. How could they ever believe, for a moment, that people wouldn’t be upset by the idea that they fired top-notch prosecutors just to give résumé space to young friends? When that’s done in private industry it’s called nepotism, and frowned upon by any board of directors worth it’s salt. So, really, guys there in the West Wing, you’ve gotta figure that people won’t like it any better when you do it, even if you do fancy yourselves as ‘the government.”
Tell me, who elected these bozos, anyway?
The ouster of Mr. Bogden and seven other United States attorneys has set off a furor in Washington that took the Bush administration by surprise.
Okay, then, there’s the problem. As if I needed further proof, here we see that the current administration is composed primarily of dolts and idiots. How could they ever believe, for a moment, that people wouldn’t be upset by the idea that they fired top-notch prosecutors just to give résumé space to young friends? When that’s done in private industry it’s called nepotism, and frowned upon by any board of directors worth it’s salt. So, really, guys there in the West Wing, you’ve gotta figure that people won’t like it any better when you do it, even if you do fancy yourselves as ‘the government.”
Tell me, who elected these bozos, anyway?
Labels: Politics
