MOVIE REVIEW: The Happening (2008)

I think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray...
-Alfred Joyce Kilmer

Who would have guessed that the world would end (sort of...) with a whimper instead of a bang? At least if we consider the "revenge of nature" story depicted in the new film, The Happening. In this film, man's destruction is carried like a whisper on the wind.

Of this, however, I do know for certain: the cinematic works of writer/director M. Night Shyamalan tend to fiercely divide modern film-goers. Some of the smartest, most film centric people I know despise his work deeply. And they have their reasons. I've heard them, and I respect them.

Others - of equally good taste, I hasten to add - find the director's work fascinating and love with a passion every film he's crafted. His titles, in case you've forgotten include: The Sixth Sense (1999), Unbreakable (2001), Signs (2002), The Village (2004), Lady in the Water (2006) and this summer's The Happening (2008).

Personally, I enjoy Shyamalan's work very much. I admire a few of his films with reservations (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable), love a few of them with admittedly irrational exuberance (Signs, The Village) and am deeply, irrevocably conflicted about one (Lady in the Water). As for The Happening...the good news is that it's far better than Lady in the Water.

But the reason I consistently appreciate M. Night Shyamalan as a filmmaker is that he -- like John Carpenter, Mira Nair or even Rob Zombie -- makes films that are uniquely his own. They come straight from his soul; from his heart and you ALWAYS know when you are watching one of his efforts. It is impossible to mistake his work for that of any other director. That fact alone certainly doesn't mean his films are always perfect (any more than every Carpenter or Zombie film is perfect...) but in today's suffocating climate of cookie-cutter blockbusters, Shyamalan's work stands apart as that of a true individual; a true artist. Love him or hate him, you can't deny that his films represent the consistent oeuvre of one (sometimes flawed) storyteller. I find his individuality refreshing and commendable, and when people are bashing him, what they are really saying, I think, is: that's not my thing. He's not my guy.
Okay, well that's not always the case either...but that's what I sense when I hear intelligent people complain about his work. Like I said, they have their reasons and those reasons are valid...it's sort of just how you weigh those flaws against other facets of his work, I guess, that results in your binary decision of "thumbs up" or "thumbs down."

The most ill-founded criticism of Shyamalan comes from my own peeps, alas -- film critics taking pot shots at his films over "the twist" ending scenarios portrayed in his features. Pick-up any mainstream review of a Shymalan film in a newspaper and you'll find critics who are complaining that the twist either works (meaning they didn't see it coming...) or that it doesn't (meaning they saw it coming and guessed it correctly). Sometimes different critics report different problems with the same twist ending, which shows you just how hard it is to please people.

For example, the reviews I've read about The Happening tend to be disappointed because there is no twist ending. So now Shyamalan is being reviewed on the basis of what's not in his film? Nice. I think this really stinks; and is brutally unfair to the artist: to reduce a director's work to whether or not there is a twist ending and whether or not it subjectively works. If Rod Serling were making The Twilight Zone today, I bet he'd get the same wrong-headed notices. Why do I say they are wrong headed? Well, in my experience you can't judge an entire film on whether or not you were successfully tricked...that's just poor movie reviewing.

Secondly, after watching all of Shyamalan's films several times (save for The Happening, which I've seen just once), I would argue that the director doesn't make films with twist endings at all. Critics just misperceive them that way.

On the contrary, Shyamalan makes films that reveal more than one perspective. We are watching them from one perspective, only to learn -- often in the last act -- that our perception, our perspective was wrong to begin with. We often learn this fact right beside the main characters, which makes the characters sometimes tragic; sometimes all the more human. Technically, this approach isn't a twist: rather this is a clever director dramatizing for us a story from a variety of angles. If he cheats all the way through, there's reason to be angry, I suppose. If he's consistent and we're surprised or touched, I suggest we have reason to feel satisfied. How many films even have one perspective to begin with? In M. Night Shyamalan's work we are fortunate enough to have a filmmaker who can see that his story has shades; and more to the point -- reveal to us those shades. That takes talent, and no small amount of subtlety. We think we're seeing one thing; but we're actually seeing something else all together.

Tell me: the second time you watch The Sixth Sense, what's the "twist?" Ditto Unbreakable? And heck, what's the twist the first time you watch Signs?
See? Critics have pigeonholed Shyamalan as a "twist" director and so they all review every one of his films based on that viewpoint. And, if you'll forgive the pun -- given the subject matter of The Happening - they've missed the forest for the trees in the process.

Again, I'm not saying you'll like every film this guy makes. I'm just saying that he makes distinctive, individual films (a good thing, no?) and that it is wrong for critics to judge him entirely on the misperception that his films must feature a twist ending. And on top of that, a GREAT twist ending.

Now, I've made the claim that M. Night Shyamalan's films are unique and individual, and so I need to back up that assertion by mentioning a few of his consistent conceits (besides the multiple perception bit). In all of Shyamalan's films (save for Lady in the Water), for example, we see strongly the director's sense of morality. Not his moralizing, mind you, but his morality. And by that, I mean simply that he presents a moral universe where a family unit of some type is forced to countenance with...a happening, for lack of a better word. Sometimes the family unit is "unofficial" (not biological); but there's always a parental figure and a child (or young person) involved in some capacity. In the course of the film, and often because of the "happening," the family learns to move past tragedy and grow closer. You could even argue that the family in Lady in the Water is actually a community - a larger family, I suppose. Regardless, Shyamalan clearly has an affinity for blending regular family life with the unreal and super-real (whether ghosts, an alien invasion, superheroes, mermaids, or a deadly plague).

But what separates Shyamalan from another family-oriented director (like, say, Spielberg), is that he genuflects to the reality of unhappy endings in life. A mother is killed in Signs. A small girl loses both her biological parents in The Happening, and so forth. There's a shocking scene in this film when two young boys are shot in cold blood. In these tragedies, the survivors don't merely learn to grow closer, they somehow express a dawning sense of spirituality; and an acknowledgment of their interconnectedness. This is not religiosity (which is totally different), but true spirituality. Things like fate (in who survives and who doesn't) and belief and synchronicity are examined in the director's films in the most oblique and often wonderful ways.

I believe that these twin ideas of synchronicity and spirituality are the most important factor in Shyamalan's films, and that's why he often sets his climaxes in small, unspectacular settings. A swimming pool (Unbreakable, Lady in the Water), or basements (Signs, The Happening). It's an unconventional choice - and an uncommercial one as well, but perfectly in keeping with Shyamalan's storytelling ethos. His stories aren't about the alien invasions, superheroes, ghosts or deadly happenings, but rather our simple, emotional, grasping, human response to them.

I am perfectly willing to admit this is my bias but I love that idea. When so many films are satisfied with the lowest common denominator, I welcome the lens of Shyamalan's world view. He may occasionally talk down to us; but he universally comes from a place of intelligence, morality and heart, and frankly those qualities are often missing from today's blockbusters. There is nothing canned or phoned-in lurking in Shyamalan's vision, and even if his vision is occasionally schmaltzy, I dig it. A lot. Mea culpa.

So The Happening? Honestly, It boasts in roughly the same percentages the same strengths and the same flaws as Shyamalan's other films. It is long on heart and short on spectacle. It is long on humanity but short, occasionally, on plot. Like much of his work, it straddles the line between being absolutely inspired and absolutely derivative. At times it stretches for brilliance and achieves it, and at other times it retracts to basic truisms and hackneyed explanations that leave you cursing at their banality.

The film's storyline involves a science teacher Elliott Moore (Mark Wahlberg) who is estranged from his wife, Alma (Zooey Deschanel). One day, this couple (and dozens of other citizens...) flee Philadelphia when what appears to be a terrorist nerve gas attack is responsible for the (gruesome) deaths of many New Yorkers. The attack begins in Central Park, but before long, it seems to be following the Moores to rural Pennsylvania. They continue to flee, in ever smaller population circles, as the entire North East is decimated by an attack that seems to be carried on the wind, but which originates not with foreign fighters...but with Mother Nature.

As I wrote above, this is "Revenge of Nature" film like Frogs (1972), Kingdom of the Spiders (1977) and Day of the Animals (1977). You know the meme:-- man's pollution causes nature to go haywire in response and self-correction. Only The Happening takes a vegetarian slant on the threat, an idea that has been explored in the sci-fi genre for generations (notably in One Step Beyond's "Moment of Hate" and Space:1999's "The Troubled Spirit.") But perhaps the closest antecedent for The Happening is Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece, The Birds (1963). There, as you will recall, a swarm of birds suddenly and inexplicably went on the attack and nearly took out an entire town. There was no explanation for the battle and the bird assault ended as mysteriously as it began. Same deal here, save for an entirely unnecessary explanatory coda (more like Psycho than The Birds), in which a talking-head on a cable news show makes an entirely too heavy-handed environmental point. I liked the the message and the metaphor (that by destroying nature we are killing ourselves), but I didn't need the spoon-feeding.

Still, The Happening carries a commendable aura of impending, escalating doom. Put simply, the movie is never less than utterly spellbinding. The characters also grow on you considerably, and viewers will find themselves invested in their survival. John Leguizamo plays a character who sees his end coming from a distance, and his performance is haunting and memorable. The Happening also forges a unique threat unlike any seen before, and makes it clear that this threat is inescapable. Most importantly, the film focuses on the ties that bind us (and the reasons they bind us...) and finds humanity at both his most noble and his most ugly (depending on the person) in a time of crisis.

So sue me: I really, really liked this movie. Yet I have a creeping suspicion I will be one of the few (along with Roger Ebert). Some of you may not like The Happening at all. If you go, try to see it with your mind and heart open and the "twist" you may find at film's end is that there's a lot to inspire you here.

Battlestar Galactica & Philosophy: An Interview With Editors Josef Steiff and Tristan D. Tamplin

Several months ago, I was contacted by editors Josef Steiff and Tristan D. Tamplin to contribute an article (or maybe two?) to the latest entry in Open Court's Popular Culture and Philosophy line. Open Court has published such popular treatises as The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh of Homer (2001), The Matrix and Philosophy: Welcome to the Desert of the Real (2002), and even James Bond and Philosophy: Questions are Forever. For the 33rd volume of this series, the subject was going to be...Battlestar Galactica.

To my delight, the editors were not only asking me to contribute to their book, but they were going to focus on the entire Battlestar Galactica franchise going back to the Glen Larson original of 1978, not merely the current RDM re-imagination on the Sci-Fi Channel.

In other words, this was an offer I simply couldn't refuse. And as I began to craft my work, in particular an article that gazes at the original Battlestar Galactica in the historical context of the Cold War ("SALTed Popcorn," it's called...) I quickly found Josef and Tristan to be amongst the most thorough and supportive editors I've had the good fortune to work with during my ten year writing career. They pushed me as a thinker, made me re-consider and validate my arguments and all the while made it seem as though I had come up with the re-edits and improvements myself. Must be Cylons...

Anyway, Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy: Mission Accomplished or Mission Frakked Up? is now in print and I felt this would be a good opportunity to interview Josef and Tristan about their fine work, about the nature of the book, and about Battlestar Galactica in general.

JKM: How did you both come to this project?

JOSEF STEIFF: At about the same time that Open Court had been hearing about the show and was starting to wonder if it might be a good fit for their Popular Culture and Philosophy Series, I was talking with Series Editor George A. Reisch about a couple of possible science fiction-related book topics I was interested in editing. Though I am a big fan of Battlestar Galactica, I assumed the topic was already taken. When I found out that no one was editing a Battlestar book for Open Court, I immediately asked to do it. Because my background is primarily in film (theory and production), I thought it would be good to have a philosopher co-edit the book, and I asked my friend Tristan.

TRISTAN D. TAMPLIN: Even though I'd left academic philosophy, the project was intriguing to me, both with regard to the aims of the Popular Culture and Philosophy Series in general as well as the specific focus of the book. I'd taught a course called "Philosophy and Film," and I enjoyed the experience immensely. It allowed for philosophic engagement by focusing on something that the students were already interested in, and this book appealed to me in much the same way. Philosophy is always the most interesting to me when it engages our day to day lives and our actual experiences of the world around us.

JKM: Were you already admirers of Battlestar Galactica, or was there a steep learning curve as you solicited participation and began editing the collection?

JS: We were both big fans; it seemed the perfect first book for us to co-edit for that reason. We could now talk incessantly about Battlestar Galactica and rightfully tell people, “we're working.”

TT: That's right. And, moreover, it was obvious from the very start that the show was rife with opportunities for philosophic inquiry.

JKM: Can you provide our readers with a general idea of what kind of analyses they'll find in the book, and who, specifically, is involved in the writing of them? Did you seek out a certain "model" (to coin a series phrase) when deciding on the content of the book, (for instance film studies experts, philosophy experts, whathaveyou)?

TT: We never did an open call; we began by contacting people we knew personally who we thought were well-credentialed but also had a prior interest in the show. We didn't really have a model in mind for contributors as much as we did for the approach we wanted them to take. We thought that it would make the book much more interesting if it involved people from a range of backgrounds engaging the show philosophically.

JS: And our approach was that first and foremost, the book was to be about the show. Philosophy and theory were to be the tools used to more fully analyze and understand the ideas within the show, not the other way around. As we were reading the first drafts of chapters, I heard about the first BSG academic conference held in England. At first I was bumming because I couldn't go, but I contacted the organizer, Ewan Kirkland, who ultimately contributed the chapter about Galactica being "A Dangerous Place for Women," and he sent me the conference abstracts. From there we invited several presenters to contribute chapters to our book. A few people like Louis Melancon and Isabel Pinedo contacted us after hearing about the book on Open Court's site or through friends. And then, near the end, when we saw that there were several areas that might be interesting to round out the collection, we sent out a small call for very specific topics.

JKM: This is a book about TV and philosophy, with an accent on making certain philosophical concepts are discussed accurately and fully. While writing for the book, I found your editorial suggestions and standards excellent, but also quite rigorous. It was a rewarding experience for me to be involved in it. So can you tell us a bit about how you encouraged the shaping of a piece from start to finish for this Open Court series? How tough was it for you to corral all these writers like me? How many drafts did the typical article go through?

TT: While we had some sense of the kinds of issues that BSG would give rise to (for instance, personal identity), we never really had a laundry list of topics we wanted to see covered. Instead, we initially let the process be driven in large part by the particular interests of the contributors, and primarily concerned ourselves with guiding them to develop and pursue the sort of approach that the Popular Culture and Philosophy Series generally strives for.

JS: If we had told people from the start, “these are the topics we want you to write about,” the book wouldn’t be nearly as good as it is. Though we didn't do an open call, word gradually got around that we were editing this book, and the number of people who contacted us wanting to contribute was so many that we had to turn people away. Clearly, we fans have lots to say about this show, and our contributors suggested areas that neither Tristan nor I could have anticipated. So reading the proposals and submissions was inspiring and fun. The authors worked incredibly hard and took our suggestions to heart, and we were all working towards the same goal, to make this an exceptional book about an exceptional television show.

TT: And because BSG itself involves such philosophically rich material, we always sought to make sure that the contributors stayed focused on the show during the course of their analyses, so that their chapters didn't end up simply shoe-horning some issue or concept into a discussion of the show.

JS: I have to say that for me, one of the most enjoyable aspects of the process was our email exchanges with contributors during the rewriting process -- discussing various aspects of the shows, speculating about future developments and talking about their chapters. Everyone who contributed to the book loves the show. As we began reading early drafts by individual writers, we began to see ways in which certain chapters might link or reflect different facets of a similar topic. And sometimes a writer would mention something that we knew no one else was tackling, so we’d encourage them to develop that idea more fully. Or if two chapters were too similar, we’d ask the writers to take different stances on the topic. As a result, many of the chapters went through several drafts.

JKM: As an admirer of the original BSG, I was quite gratified to see that this book gazes at all facets, incarnations and generations of the franchise. This alone grants it distinction amongst other scholarly works on the series, in my opinion. How did you arrive at the decision to be all-inclusive, and did this distinction make your job, as editors easier, or more difficult? Were you familiar with the original Galactica too? Galactica 1980?

JS: I remember watching the original Battlestar Galactica at my cousin Howard's house. I loved it. I did see a couple of episodes of Galactica 1980, but that series did not register as much in my memory. In fact, I came to appreciate it more after reading your book. Part of my original pitch for editing this book was that it should include all three TV series and as many of the other versions as possible. I love that we have chapters that deal with the video games, comics and novels as well as the movie Razor. Of course, our main reference point and focus is the new series, but in the same way that the series builds on the idea that "all this has come before," it seemed that an analysis of the re-imagined series would be even more interesting when we look at all the different versions of the story, regardless of their format or era.

TT: I actually was a fan of the original Galactica as well, and often intoned "Cylon Raiders: Attack!" as I rode my BMX down a particularly steep hill.

JKM. I always appreciate it when form reflects content, and Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy takes an interesting form in that five (mystery!) article writers are actually designated "Cylons." Can you more fully describe this conceit for the readers? How did you come up with this novel idea? How difficult was it to execute? Have you had any feedback on this? Are people accosting you with guesses on Cylon identities yet?

JS: Our series editor, George Reisch, encouraged us to be creative, to think about ways in which the actual experience of reading the book could be like watching the show.

TT: We talked about a variety of methods, including the idea of "intrusions" into the text much like Number Six intrudes in Baltar's head. And while, in the end, we didn't represent those intrusions graphically, most of the footnotes in the book operate in that way, providing counterpoint, sidebars, digressions or additional ideas.

JS: One of our favorite ideas was too expensive to actually do – cutting the corners of the pages like the books in the show – so instead we used the modified octagon shape as a border on our divider pages. Even calling the different divisions within the book "models" rather than sections reflects the series. So the idea of a Final Five was an early decision and grew out of this freedom to fully express our love and admiration for the show and its conventions or elements.

JKM: Let's go over some of the chapters in the book. In broad terms, tell me about Model One ("Some Are Programmed to Think They Are Human..."), and the kind of articles included there...?

TT: As I mentioned before, because issues of personal identity are such a central theme to BSG, Dan Milsky's essay seemed a good place to start our philosophic journey because it engages the reader in a very real way, and raises issues that we can't pawn off on the characters in the show because they actually implicate us.

JS: As the book progresses, the chapters lead us more and more fully into the world of the TV series, until we come full circle in the final Model (or section) and look back at the show as a TV show.

JKM: Model Two ("They Look Like Us Now?")

TT: Where the focus of the first section is on more subjective aspects of personal identity, this section shifts the focus to the body in particular, thereby raising somewhat more objective issues regarding our identity and self-conceptions.

JS: Model Two is also where we first encounter a bonus chapter available as a podcast. There's an easter egg in the book letting readers know about bonus materials available for download at iTunes and Open Court's website at http://www.opencourtbooks.com/. Drawing on the physical body, emotions and memory, Caroline Ruddell addresses the difficulties in differentiating humans from the new Cylons in her podcast, "What Lies Beneath? Distinguishing Humans from Skin Jobs."

JKM: Model Three ("We Became What We Beheld?")

TT: The scope of inquiry becomes much broader here – we’re no longer looking just at our own conception of self, but at how we interact with one another. Questions of ethics, morality, and social organization come into play and are addressed to Cylon and human culture alike.

JS: And like the previous model, Model Three has a bonus chapter podcast, in this case, a comparison of the Galactica with the Pegasus, and in particular, Adama with Cain, that is written by Thomas Fahy (and like Ruddell’s, is available on iTunes and Open Court's websites). Fahy’s chapter is titled "'By Your Command:' Leadership, Civilization and the Limits of Violence."

JKM: Model Four ("Battlestar Iraqtica")?

JS: When we first asked for proposals for the book, Dan Dinello submitted one that alluded to and actually used the term “Battlestar Iraqtica.” We loved it, though at that time, we debated how much to examine the resonances between Battlestar Galactica and world events, and whether such an analysis should be a single chapter or a section. But as the book kept evolving, this seemed to be an important part of the discussion and analysis of Moore's vision, worthy of an entire section. The perfect cap for that section was to go back and look at the original series in much the same way, to see if it was as resonant with the world events of its day as the current series is in ours. And I think you [John Muir] make that point convincingly.

TT: Like issues of personal identity, the analogy between the occupation of New Caprica and the situation in Iraq seemed almost a mandatory component of the book. The show and its creators are explicitly invested in these themes, so a discussion of them felt nearly required.

JKM: Model Five ("Finding Purpose in the Void?")

TT: While much of the show is focused on crisis situations both chronic and acute, this section looks at issues of day-to-day life under truly unique circumstances. Sure, we need to avoid the annihilation of our species, but we still need to cook dinner and do the laundry. Trudy Millburn and Jean-Paul Martinon and the other authors in this section address issues of how we manage to go on with the business of living in the absence of much of what formerly gave value and meaning to our lives.

JKM: Model Six ("Near the End of Our Journey?")

JS: "Nearing the End of Our Journey" actually comes from the opening narration of Galactica 1980 and it seemed fitting for the final section. As a final section, we're sending our readers back out into the world around them, and it made sense that these chapters should address issues of the show itself as a phenomenon.

TT: This section completes a philosophic journey that parallels the narrative journey of BSG. We started by looking at issues raised by the show and how they implicate us, then immersed ourselves in the show itself and critically analyzed various characters and situations in the universe it creates, and now we've returned to the perspective of our own world and look back and consider the show as a show.

JS: For example, Richard Berger tackles head on the question of whether the new Battlestar Galactica is GINO or not, and even if you aren’t persuaded to share his viewpoint, what’s clear is that there’s more to say on all of these topics, and that’s part of our goal, to keep the conversation going. In that sense, our final chapter is the perfect re-entry back into the world around us: what’s important are the things Battlestar Galactica makes us think about and want to talk about.

TT: And, as a final send off, we have an interesting array of appendices, where you can find clues as to the identity of the book’s Final Five but also learn more about various aspects of the BSG universe.

JS: Andrew Dowd did a great job researching and compiling the appendices, with some great suggestions and information by several of our contributors.

JKM: The schedule for Battlestar's fourth season changed radically during the preparation for this text. When the end now comes, and all the secrets are revealed (or not revealed), will it necessitate an update of this text? Just as a side-note -- how do you think the series will resolve? Any guesses?

TT: I'd love it if they pulled of the same sort of thing that "Newhart" did in relation to the earlier "Bob Newhart Show." That second series ended with Bob Newhart waking up in bed with his wife from the original series and describing the strange dream he had. So I'm hoping that after we find out that Starbuck really is a Cylon and really does somehow lead mankind to it's destruction, she wakes up in her bunk with an apparent hangover and stumbles into the bathroom to see the face of Dirk Benedict staring back at her from the mirror.

JS: I think our contributors did an amazing job of anticipating certain developments in the fourth season, for example, Hal Shipman’s “Some Cylons Are More Equal Than Others,” but obviously there were some things we didn’t know when the book went to press. So who knows? Maybe we’ll have to publish a second volume. My fantasy is that the Final Cylon is one of the Sixes. Just think -- we’ve been witnessing the identity crises of four characters who thought they were human only to discover they’re this unique type of Cylon, and they’re having a tough time of it. Imagine what would happen if a Six found out she wasn’t just one of thousands (or millions) but rather unique and different – imagine what her identity crisis would be like!

JKM: Tell us a little bit about your next projects...

JS: I am about to start shooting a short film of my own, and then I hope to dive back into editing another Open Court book.

TT: I'm thinking about maybe trying to figure out how to use my oven.

JKM: Finally, let my readers know where they can order the book...

JS: Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy: Mission Accomplished or Mission Frakked Up? is at major book retailers like Barnes & Noble and Borders throughout the USA and Canada now, and it will be available on the shelves in Europe, late June.

TT: You can also order the book directly from Open Court http://www.opencourtbooks.com/ or from any of online book stores like Amazon.

JKM: Thanks, guys.

JS: Thank you! Great questions. We have had a great time watching the show, working on this book and meeting contributors just as enthusiastic as we are (if not more so). And we get to keep talking about Battlestar Galactica – what could be better?

And The Nominees Are...

I reported yesterday that episode 2.1 ("Returned") of The House Between has been officially nominated as "Best Web Production" for the 2008 Sy Fy Genre Awards.

Today, the announcement video (featuring all the award categories and nominees...) is available for your viewing here. Also, Editor-in-chief Michael Hinman writes about this year's awards at Sy Fy Portal, here.

The nominees in our "Best Web Production" category are:

"...Iliad" from "Star Trek: Odyssey," "Returned" from "The House Between," "Star Trek: Of Gods and Men," "Webisode VIII" from "Sanctuary," and the "Star Trek: New Voyages" episode "World Enough and Time."

I would just like to say what a tremendous honor and thrill it is to see our super low-budget independent series, The House Between nominated in this category alongside such competitors.

If someone had told me a year ago that our dramatic program would be nominated alongside such ventures as those starring Original Series actors George Takei and Walter Koenig, with franchise names associated with popular shows such as Stargate and Star Trek, I would have said it wasn't likely! Thus today is a happy day for me and everyone involved, and I want to congratulate the cast & crew of The House Between for all they've done to make today's nomination a reality. And my appreciation extends not just to my team, but to the dedicated viewers and fans who have continued to watch the show, talk about the show, and who have fallen in love with the characters and stories as much as I have.

My deepest gratitude to all of you...and a sincere congratulations to all the nominees.

The House Between Nominated for Best Web Production!

Sy Fy Radio last night announced the nominees for the 2008 Sy Fy Portal Genre Awards. Among the nominees for "Best Web Production" was my independent series, The House Between. In particular, our season two premiere, "Returned" was named as a nominee (one among five).

Fans will be allowed to vote in this, and all other categories, so if you like The House Between, please vote for it (once a day is allowed!!!) More information to come as I learn it. The nominees will be presented in writing at Sy Fy Portal tomorrow (Friday). Expect an update...

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: House on Haunted Hill (1959)

This classic (but low-budget) William Castle horror film introduces viewers to a haunted house (actually the Ennis Brown House in Los Angeles); a supposedly "authentic" locale where seven people have already died gruesome deaths.

As the film opens, wealthy and oft-married business Frederick Loren (Vincent Price) sets up the movie's premise in his narration. Specifically, he and his (fourth) wife, Annabelle (gorgeous Carol Ohmart) throw a "ghost" party at the haunted house. They invite five guests (who arrive at the house in a caravan of "funeral cars") and offer them $10,000 a piece if they can survive twelve hours locked inside the house. The doors and windows are locked and barred. The party favors inside the house? Loaded pistols ensconced in tiny black coffins.

The five guests include a cold-fish psychiatrist working on a theory about hysteria and fear, Dr. David Trent (Alan Marshal); Nora Manning (Carolyn Craig), a modest working-girl who needs the money to support her family; Ruth Bridgers (Julie Mitchum), a bitchy gossip columnist with a bad gambling habit; dashing test pilot Lance Schroeder (Richard Long); and the twitchy Watson Pritchard (Elisha Cook), who has already survived one harrowing night in the house on haunted hill and claims his brother was murdered there. Furthermore, he claims that there are two severed heads laying about on the premises. He's either stark raving bonkers or the only person who knows what's coming.

"There's a been a murder in almost every room in this house," warns Pritchard as viewers are escorted on a tour of the premises. Undoubtedly the creepiest room is the vast wine cellar. There, underneath a trap door, is a vat of boiling acid. Note to visitors: avoid it all costs. The acid destroys everything with hair and flesh and is thus the perfect medium for a murder.

House on Haunted Hill's premise is brilliantly and cleverly set-up by both director Castle and writer Robb White. And the film itself is a study in economy: just a handful of interesting and diverse characters in a mostly empty house (I've used that one myself...). But what makes House on Haunted Hill so much fun is the central conceit: that -- when frightened -- people are unsure of what they've seen and can be manipulated into believing and doing things that seem against their character. In our society today - a fear-based society if ever there was one - this psychological aspect of the film holds up remarkably well.

The 1950s represented a time in American society wherein psychology was growing especially popular and broadly acknowledged; especially in the middle class. As a rational movement, psychology was "invading" the culture at all turns and this is especially true of the horror films of the day. The Bad Seed (1954) asked viewers to contemplate psychology's nature vs. nurture argument. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) assessed psychology and determined that it could be manipulated to explain away uncomfortable truths (like alien invaders or ideological witch hunts). And then there was House on Haunted Hill, examining the fear response, and the manipulation of fear. You'll see, by the way, if you watch them, that all three films feature a psychiatrist/psychologist and usually in a villainous capacity; perhaps expressing the population's distrust of "shrinks." Don't tell Kathryn.

The game of fear in House on Haunted Hill is being waged against the background of a bad marriage. Namely that of Frederick and Annabelle Loren. Annabelle claims to fear for her life since Frederick's last two wives died of heart attacks (at age 28), and Frederick is certain Annabelle has already attempted to kill him once (a poisoning). The ghosts and the guests are just chess pieces to be moved around in this couple's battle for supremacy, domination and survival. Given this depiction of marriage as a competition, the film offers some exceptionally fine (if cruel) marital banter. My favorite is Annabelle's comment to Frederick that "Darling, the only ghoul in this house is you."
That comment also ties into the film's flirtation with the supernatural. Pritchard is convinced ghosts exist ("only the ghosts in this house are happy we're here," he states), but the evidence of the supernatural in House on Haunted Hill is ambiguous to say the least. Chandeliers shake and fall; blood drips from a ceiling (and always on the gossip columnist); and a severed head or two shows up to terrorize Nora-- but we never actually see a ghost. I rather like this approach, especially since the film's "game of murder" focuses on human nature rather than the paranormal. What we are seeing in the house is a psychological game, and the only ghosts are the ones generated by fear. And the skinny one on a pulley...

That stated, the film's one supreme (and still totally efficient) jolt involves a bit of a cheat. Alone in a small-room off the wine cellar, Nora backs into a frightening white-haired lady who appears in the frame suddenly. She not only appears monstrous (with a wild mane of white hair and dead eyes...), she sort of levitates/glides across the wine cellar floor. This seems to me to indicate that she is of supernatural origin, but Vincent Price's character, Loren, explains her away as being a caretaker of the house. Then how does she glide like that? Well, her name is Mrs. Slydes (slides...).

Anyway...

Despite that bit of cheating, House on Haunted Hill remains a terrific and economical horror classic from a bygone age. Vincent Price is front-and-center here just the way you want to remember him: charismatic, eloquent, charming, arrogant, clever, larger-than-life and with a mean-streak indicative of the future Dr. Phibes. And despite some creaky effects, the film is still suspenseful enough to keep you engaged with the characters and their situation all the way through the denouement.

There was a terrible remake of the film in 1999, one that discarded the film's psychological veneer and sense of ambiguity about the supernatural, so it's still this House that's worth seeing. Even fifty years later. True, we can no longer see this effort in the glory of William Castle's Emergo (a technique which levitated a skeleton through theater auditoriums...), but with the story's focus on the human psychology, there are quite enough skeletons in the closet (and haunted house) on hand.

CULT TV FLASHBACK # 51: The Invaders (Season One; 1967)

Available on DVD at last is the first season of the 1967-1969 Quinn Martin genre classic, The Invaders (in gorgeous, vibrant color). For those who don't quite remember it, The Invaders is the grandfather of paranoia and horror television series; amongst the first such ventures to posit that "THEY" are amongst us: alien invaders (hidden in human form save for a pinky finger that juts out at an odd angle...), bent on our destruction.

Pre-dating The X-Files by 25 years and the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica by 35 years (to to mention other similarly-themed series such as Invasion and Threshold...), these alien invaders in human bodies "have a plan" - to coin a phrase - to occupy and dominate the Earth. Accordingly, much of The Invaders' suffocating aura of paranoia arises from the fact that it is difficult to distinguish between human beings and extra-terrestrials. And worse, the aliens have already infiltrated every level of American (possibly global...) infrastructure. Yes, it's pretty much the path Ron Moore has tread with the Cylons on the new Battlestar Galactica; more evidence that everything old gets plundered to be new again.

The Invaders commences with one of the finest, most exquisitely-directed pilots I've ever seen. The episode is entitled "Beachhead" and in this inaugural program, audiences are introduced to dashing architect David Vincent (Roy Thinnes). Thinnes is a perfect leading man for this venture and this era -- the late 1960s -- and this Alpha Male shares the belligerent but virile yin/yang of that era's other leading men like Sean Connery, Patrick McGoohan, Robert Vaughn, William Shatner and Charlton Heston. Which means he's attractive and arrogant at the same time; both entitled and enticing. It's a master-stroke to put the beautiful but bellicose Thinnes into this particular situation (facing an alien invasion alone), because audiences expect this American paragon to win and, shockingly - he doesn't; or at least not usually. Remember, only Nixon could go to China...

But let's not jump the gun. In "Beachhead," David Vincent is out on a road trip alone, driving by blackest night when takes a wrong turn (literally and figuratively). We see his car run roughshod over a sign reading "road closed" but it might as well have read "dead end." Vincent navigates his car through a thick mist and then parks near an abandoned roadside eatery, Bud's Diner. As a voice-over narrator asks viewers the question "how does a nightmare begin?" we see the answer for ourselves: Vincent awakens from his late-night highway-hypnosis to see an impressive alien saucer land in the field just feet beyond his car. Vincent's face lit in pulsating hues of alien crimson, we watch as emotions like wonder, amazement and fear cross Vincent's face (in extreme close-up). This moment is a watershed: an awakening for the character in more ways than one.

After Vincent's encounter with the alien saucer, things are never the same for this man, and since Larry Cohen (of It's Alive fame) is the creator of the series, that means we're in for something clever and even a bit subversive just beneath The Fugitive-like tableau of the series. In this case, the series depicts a WASP-ish figure of the establishment (David Vincent) suddenly introduced to the new America of the mid-to-late 1960s; the subculture or emerging counter-culture. Through his "radical" belief in an alien invasion, Vincent finds himself shunned by figures of the American ruling class (co-workers, government officials and so forth) and even hunted by them (particularly the police force). These individuals now view Vincent with disdain because he has forsaken his safe "role" in white, middle-class American society for that of a prophet...a doomsayer warning of planetary emergency.

In one episode, "Nightmare," a group of white rednecks in rural Kansas beat-up David at a diner called "The Lunch Counter" and it is impossible not to be reminded of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and how - literally - there was no seat at the table (or lunch counter) for those outside Nixon's "silent" and (mostly white) majority. David is pulled off a lunch stool while minding his own business, beat up, dragged away by the police and jailed...with no charges leveled. The Invaders, in depicting an outcast member of the silent majority searching desperately for legitimacy, says much about the America of the day and the fears of that time about speaking out; about dissent.

Making David Vincent's claims of alien invasion that much harder to prove, some Invaders have "evolved" and no longer bear the telltale finger anomaly (which is oddly similar to a corrupted "peace" gesture from the 1960s). Even more dramatically, when destroyed in battle, the Invaders disintegrate in red flame, leaving behind no evidence of their presence. The end result is that Vincent just looks like a kook again and again, unable to co-opt others into his paranoid fantasy.

The Invaders begins as a superb paranoia trip, and the second episode "The Experiment" ratchets up the fear-factor to an incredible degree for the 1960s. Here, the Invaders appear as archetypal men-in-black. These menacing figures in black fedoras and trench coats systematically kill enemies who have witnessed their plots. They do so with small black disks which - when applied to the nape of the human neck - cause cerebral hemorrhage and mimic a natural death. The Invaders also arrange for a plane crash in this episode, hoping to murder a prominent scientist who is about to reveal the alien plan to a conference in New York. The scientist is ultimately killed, betrayed by his son, (played by a young Roddy McDowall). This war of the generations (then known as "the generation gap"), with young Roddy decrying his father as an "enemy," is, not coincidentally, controlled by the Invaders. They keep the son in line with brainwashing drugs; another commentary on the 1960s, only this time the drug culture of the day.

Each episode of The Invaders finds David Vincent moving from locale to locale in hopes of providing evidence of the alien menace. He finds an abandoned town whose economy has been destroyed by Big Business (again - aliens!) in "Beachhead." In "The Mutation" (January 24, 1967) he travels to Mexico and meets a female Invader (Suzanne Pleshette), one who is indistinguishable from humans because she has developed emotions (unlike the others). Again, this particular plot is the well-spring for many episodes and concepts on the new Galactica.

In "Genesis," (February 7, 1967) Vincent learns that the Invaders have taken over a sea lab in hopes of resurrecting a dead leader. In "Nightmare," (February 21, 1967) the American farmland is targeted by the Invaders as the aliens deploy a weapon that causes locusts to swarm and attack. The photography in this episode alone makes it a worthwhile entry to the canon: there are an abundance of beautiful shots of in a wide open cornfield, Vincent outrunning the locusts like he's Cary Grant in North by Northwest (1960).

Each episode of The Invaders is fifty minutes long. The series aired before commercials had eaten into the broadcast hour (which today is 42 minutes). As a result, these episodes do tend to move more slowly than modern audiences might prefer. In addition, Thinnes is asked to carry much of the series without much aid from the writers. What I mean by that is that the screenplays do not delve - at all - into Vincent's background or even his human psychology. How does he keep fighting? Is he tired? Angry? Remorseful? Lonely? In his singular focus, Thinnes is almost an immortal James Bondian figure here: facing down the enemy and consistently winning battles but losing the war (sounds like Vietnam, no?) There are no large story-arcs; no serialized stories on The Invaders and today that too feels like a serious deficit. Instead, the episodes are stand-alones and you are left wanting to know more about Vincent.

Were the series to be remade today, I suspect we'd get much more information about this hero as a human being - as a fallible man -- and a lot less of his Invader-smashing. As it stands, one episode after the other features Vincent stopping the alien plan of the day, only to move on and do the same thing again. That does get tiring, and truth be told, a little boring, but The Invaders is photographed so beautifully, and the social subtext of the series (going into the transitional year of 1968) makes the series much more than the sum of its occasionally inadequate parts. In time, the black trench coats and fedoras give way to streamlined blue jumpsuits (blue seems to be the color of the alien technology too), a format change that makes the aliens less scary, more like agents of SMERSH or something. But the first several episodes of The Invaders are hardcore horror. You almost can't believe how dark and sinister they are. They also remind me of The Prisoner with Vincent a scorned man alone facing conspiracies, corrupt authority and multiple brain-washing techniques (including, inevitably, alien leeches).

The best way to enjoy The Invaders, in my opinion, is to view it as a product of its time (the late 60s) -- and also, perhaps, as a product significantly ahead of its time (since there have been so many imitators). However in 2008 -- more than forty years after the premiere - the production values have aged and so - importantly - has the manner in which these tales are vetted on TV. So now The Invaders seems old, I suppose. But if it's old, it is also colorful, strange and remarkably intelligent. If that kind of thing floats your flying saucer, this series is a powerhouse of paranoia.

Theme Song of the Week # 17: The Green Hornet

CULT MOVIE REVIEW: The Road Warrior (1982)

I first viewed The Road Warrior on a double bill with Superman III at the Castle Theater in Irvington, New Jersey. I was thirteen or fourteen years-old at the time and saw the movie(s) with my (patient) father. Alas, my showing of The Road Warrior was interrupted three times by police incursions into the auditorium (the Castle was that kind of theater in the 1980s...) but somehow the danger in the theater only added to the aura of danger, anxiety and uncertainty generated by George Miller's landmark, startling film.

At that young age, I had rarely "experienced" an action film as intense or cut-throat as The Road Warrior, but now that I've screened the film a dozen times over the years, I recognize that it wasn't merely the experience of seeing it at the Castle during a drug bust or three; it's the film itself, which remains of the ten great action films of the last thirty years. More than that -- and discounting Planet of the Apes -- it's one of the cinema's most effective and brilliantly-shot post-apocalyptic efforts.

The Road Warrior opens with an evocative and tightly-edited black-and-white montage. A voice-over narration accompanies the fleeting but memorable documentary images (stock footage), which depict our twentieth-century "oil culture" as two "mighty warrior tribes" go to war to control the dwindling resource. The montage reveals vast war machines at sea and on land, and then endless, stagnating debate among world leaders on how to control the limited reserves. After this debate, the montage reveals, the thundering war machines of technological man "sputtered and stopped." Furthermore, world civilization itself "crumbled." Cities exploded in a whirlwind of looting, and man "began to feed on man." Nomad gangs took over the highways, dominating them and making them treacherous, murderous passages. It is here, via stock footage of 1979's Mad Max that we are introduced to the personal story of Max [Mel Gibson], an ex-policeman who lost everything; only to wander the wasteland as a "burned-out" desolate sentinel.

In terms of narrative, the voice over device and stock-footage montage in unison frame this tale as though it occurred in the distant, murky past. In part this is because of the grainy stock footage, which looks to be drawn from the early part of the twentieth century, but the sense of an "old story" also arises from the voice of the narrator, which suggests wisdom and age, among other qualities. The war is history to the adult "teller" of the tale; and our civilization itself is pre-history. This remote time frame thus lands the post-apocalyptic "future" of Mad Max into the realm of origin myth, or heroic legend. The teller could be speaking of the Achilles and the Trojan War, or perhaps more aptly, the Old West, in his discussion of the manner in which a new civilization was founded from the ashes of the old.

The Old West metaphor also works to the film's advantage because in - some very critical ways - The Road Warrior is not unlike a Spaghetti Western of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Witness these facts: it is filmed in a location that could be the American West (here, the Australian Outback); the camera work is highly fluid (like the work of Leone); and the production is distinctly, but not alarmingly, low-budget. Similarly, much like many Italian Westerns, the film also actively sets about to deconstruct or de-mythologize its world, focusing on such horrible human behaviors as rape and murder. To put it politely, The Road Warrior is not a romantic vision of human nature. Even the treatment of a child - the Feral Child - is realistic rather than romanticized.

After the opening exposition, which plays like the visual equivalent of a dusty history book...it's on! Miller's kinetic camera swoops down (apparently from a helicopter) at near-warp speed towards an endless highway. The asphalt flies by the camera and immediately the audience feels a sense of momentum. Suddenly we're enmeshed in colorful, full-speed chase, as loner Max is pursued by the motorcycle-riding thugs of a warlord called Humongous (also known as "the ayatollah of rock-and-rollah..."). From this first moment, the film never lets up, never stops, never really slows down. It is a race from start to finish, a maelstrom of flipping vehicles, high-speed pursuits and bloody confrontations.

The cinema has provided us all manner of "end of the world" scenarios before, from nuclear war (Planet of the Apes) to germ-created vampires (Last Man on Earth), to melting ice caps, even (Waterworld), but The Road Warrior today seems to offer the most plausible (or at least relevant) scenario as it explicitly concerns a war over limited resources, in this case oil. In 1982, America had not yet fought two wars for oil in the Middle East, and so didn't seem quite so prophetic. But now? It's positively timely.

The bulk of the film involves Max's interactions with a post-apocalyptic frontier town, a society that has sprung up around a functional oil refinery (perhaps the last...). The people who live there boast resources to squander, and don't want to share it. Instead, they dream wistfully of a paradise by the beach where they can live in peace with their drums of black gold tucked safely away. Before long, Max is dealing not only with these inhabitants of the refinery (who feel they have a rightful claim to the oil), but with the occupying, invading army of Humongous. The Warlord, who admonishes the peaceful refinery people to "just walk away", needs the oil to keep his mechanical war machine running. Without it, one realizes, even his loose society of scavengers and marauders would likely fall into total chaos.

The story of fallen mankind fighting over the scraps of civilization (like "angry ants," as one character notes), is buoyed by Miller's directorial sense of invention and also his understanding of framing and mise-en-scene. For instance, in the scene in which Max is confronted by an auto-gyro pilot (Bruce Spence), notice how Gibson is almost always positioned in the center of the frame, He deals with snakes and an armed assailant yet those threats still "orbit" Max, not vice versa. This is important because the framing makes us believe in Max as immovable object - tower of strength - early in the film (witness his handling of the snake...), a notion which is undercut significantly later in The Road Warrior when he is bruised and beaten after one encounter with the scavengers. The idea, I suppose, is to open with Max as figure of strength, and then - as the events of the film overcome him - figuratively cut off his legs, so that the audience grows more involved with his survival. He starts out as a loner, but by the end of the film, Max needs the others to survive. This is an important element of his growth; of his redemption and return to the human race.

The stakes are high in Max's world, and George Miller doesn't shy away from revealing how bad things are there. There is a scene, for instance, in which Max sits on the rim of a mountain eating dog food, and acts as though it is the best thing he's ever tasted. More explicitly, Miller dramatizes a failed escape attempt with horrific results. A man and a woman flee the refinery and are set on by the marauders. The moment, filmed voyeuristically through the lens of a telescope, culminates in a double murder. The auto gyro pilot watches this event lasciviously at first, because the female escapee is stripped (we see her breasts...), but his desire turns to horror as she is brutally raped and murdered. This is what mankind has come to, and it's only hope is Max, a man whom the screenplay describes as "a parasite." Max is no hero; the people of the refinery are no saints (they resort to duplicity with Max, for one thing...);but Max and the town people are better than the utter immorality and monstrosity represented by Humongous and his gang. Here - as in many cases - it is a choice between the lesser of two evils.

So much of The Road Warrior is unromantic and blunt. For instance, a main character is a beautiful, Amazonian warrior (Virginia Hey). She protects the refinery and is portrayed as heroic and courageous. In most Westerns or genre films, a romance might blossom between this gorgeous, strong character and Max. Not so here. Instead, she is brutally murdered in the film's final chase scene. She is shot and left to dangle off a truck turret. The message: this is a world that makes no distinction between male and female; between movie "hero" and movie "fodder."

Likewise Humongous's version of Baghdad Bob, who loses his fingers to a boomerang in one scene, and Miller indelicately cuts to an insert shot of those fingertips flying through the air. Even more tellingly, it was the Feral Kid - a warrior, himself - who throws that boomerang. A child! And how do Baghdad Bob's "friends" and associates react when he loses his fingers? They cheer and guffaw. In this world, pain is a source of laughter; even if the person hurting is on your side. The message is again that society is gone, and that we - as viewers - can't expect decorum from this film if we simultaneously expect it to be "true" to what such a world would look and feel like.

The murder of a dog (or dingo) is depicted slightly less bluntly, but there are other harrowing moments here, when arrows are yanked out of human skin on screen, for instance. And examine Max's demeanor too. In the film, he demonstrates no compassion or human consideration for anyone, including the pilot, until he himself requires help. All of this focus on human ugliness makes The Road Warrior a nihilistic action film, but one of remarkable imagery and power. With civilization goes decorum; with decorum goes decency; with decency goes humanity.

The central portion of The Road Warrior involves Humongous's Alamo-like siege on the refinery (and there is a brilliantly-staged, almost De Palma-esque tracking shot featured here as Miller's camera pursues a rabbit hopping madly through the compound as an attack gathers nearby...), yet it is the final third of the film that leaves one breathless and walloped. The last act of The Road Warrior is a sixty-mile-an-hour chase scene, a non-stop demolition derby involving a weaving tanker truck, buzzing cars, roaring motorcycles and the swooping auto-gyro. Characters leap from speeding vehicle to speeding vehicle; characters swing chains, fire arrows, and drive for their lives. It's a go-for-the-gusto finale that tops everything else in the picture, and to this day still tops most action movie denouements. I should add, it was all countenanced on a low budget, with real vehicles (no CGI!) and absolutely rousing stunt work. Coupled with Brian May's pulse-pounding soundtrack, the action climax of The Road Warrior is a burst of sustained adrenaline, injected right into the heart.

A superb and clever addition to the post-apocalyptic film pantheon, The Road Warrior is artistically crafted, and it pauses its relentless drive to the climax only long enough to offer a little homage. In a scene involving a music box and a corpse falling out of a truck cab, Miller's film momentarily pays tribute to a quieter moment in Romero's Night of the Living Dead. It does so, I submit, because Miller recognizes Night as a spiritual antecedent. Both films are distinctively unromantic portraits of humanity; both films are about a change (or degradation...) in the social order, and both films are blunt in their portrayals of violence. The only significant difference is that Night of the Living Dead is so bleak that it kills Ben (the film's hero), whereas the device of the montage/voice-over leaves room in The Road Warrior for the possibility that man - in a better iteration, hopefully - will go on to thrive in a new world; one where the violence we see here is but a misty memory; just like that warrior of the wasteland, Max.

May the Force be with Him...

Well, now we know which presidential contender has the highest midichlorian count, don't we?

AFP is reporting this morning that Star Wars creator George Lucas has virtually endorsed Presidential candidate Barack Obama. In part the article reads:

"We have a hero in the making back in the United States today because we have a new candidate for president of the United States, Barack Obama." Lucas said when asked who his childhood heroes were.

Obama, "for all of us that have dreams and hope, is a hero," Lucas said.

I couldn't agree more. Obama's ascent has filled me with hope for the first time in a long while. Not everyone feels similarly, obviously. Still, I remember the cynicism with which young outsider Luke Skywalker was met among the rebel alliance fighter pilots in the last act of Star Wars. Alone among his peers, he could see how destroying the Death Star was within the realm of the possible. “It’s not impossible," he argued. "I used to bulls eye wamp rats in my T-16 back home, they’re not much bigger than 2 meters."

Well, Luke did destroy the Death Star with the audacity of hope and belief, and with a little help from a friend. Now Obama just needs a Han Solo at his side (Ron Paul?). But if Luke hadn't believed that the universe could be changed by his actions, by his belief, the Emperor would still be ruling a galaxy far, far away. As Obama might say, we are the change we've been waiting for.

Still, there's a big bantha skeleton in Obama's closet. He's actually a Star Trek fan, according to a report from The Chicago Tribune: "I grew up on Star Trek," Obama said. "I believe in the final frontier."

How long before Sean Hannity picks up on this schism, I wonder?

Still, I think the Star Wars/Star Trek Obama debate misses the real point. By defeating the all-powerful, two-headed, supremely-funded Clinton establishment, we should think of Obama not as a Jedi Knight nor as a starship captain...

...but as a DRAGONSLAYER!

RETRO TOY FLASHBACK # 76: E.T. The Extra Terrestrial Talking Figure (LJN; 1982)

The summer of 1982 was a great one for genre movies, perhaps the greatest in my lifetime. It was the summer of Firefox, Tron, John Carpenter's The Thing, Swamp Thing, The Road Warrior, Blade Runner, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Poltergeist and another little number from director, Steven Spielberg, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial.

At the time, I was much more into Star Trek than E.T., but many of my friends got into "collecting" mode over the blockbuster and sentimental film about a boy named Elliott (a young Henry Thomas) and his homesick alien pal.

LJN produced a line of E.T. action figures to spur the toy craze. Among the items available were an E.T. Pop-Up Spaceship, an E.T. & Elliott Powered Bicycle, an E.T. Wind-Up Walking Figure, E.T. and Spaceship Launcher, an E.T. Stunt Spaceship, and E.T. 3&3/4 inch action figures.

One of the most popular E.T. toys was this talking figure. Designed for ages 3 and up, this action figure stands approximately eight inches tall, features a painted red heart, and can utter such words as "home," "ouch" and "Elliott." The talking figure could also say his own name. three times: "E.T. E.T. E.T." All you had to do to activate the little guy was pull the string on his back.

Just this weekend, my parents found this particular collectible on a yard sale excursion with my son Joel (his first), and bought it for three dollars. As you can see, it's in pretty good condition for a twenty-five year old toy. Personally, I think it'll make a good book-end with my LJN Gremlins action figure...

Muir Pages Are Like Dog Years...

Well, we completed filming the majority of the third season of The House Between on Saturday night, after a fashion anyway. We had a pretty grueling week, environmentally-speaking (no air conditioning, and lots of noise in the area: planes, trains and automobiles...not to mention line-dancers and drunks...).

As a result of these difficulties, we had to re-tool our fifth story, "Exposed" and combine it with the finale, "Resolved." We lost about twenty pages of "Exposed" that we just couldn't get to, because we couldn't make up the time. Which led to Tony Mercer's amusing observation that "Muir pages are like Dog Years," meaning that they take a long time to learn and film.

So now we have four regular episodes, and a long final episode. As for me, I learned to live on four hours of sleep a night for a week, and "found my voice," as Hillary Clinton might say -- my inner dictator -- to help push us past the finish line (with some help from my friend, Rob Floyd, whom I empowered on the last day to serve as the production "enforcer.") Rob kept his cell-phone clock in plain view, and kept us from going off-track or losing time. Thanks, Rob!!! We wouldn't have made it without you!!!

As I expected, the cast and crew were wonderful despite all the hardships. The actors embraced the material and did a terrific job, even amidst 18-hour days and extreme heat. Nobody had a big temper flare-up on set, and nobody tried to kill me. At least that I know of. Behind the scenes, Rick Coulter, and Bobby Schweizer wrangled the lights and cameras, and kept us moving ahead.

Today, I'm incredibly sleepy - and yet still missing the cast and crew, and the characters. We have some big treats in store for viewers this year, including one surreal horror episode about a killer clown, and another great episode about a body switch.

Now, I have hundreds of hours of footage to sift through as the editing process begins.

But first...a nap.