p e n g u i n d e v i l

First off, for anyone who has been troubled by the warnings of the “media of fear” (man, remember the Anthrax scare?) or swept in by the fancy pictures and car-dealer salemanship of Mister Gore’s campaign strategy… I have two things to recommend. One is a not-yet-published book called Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years and it was written by S. Fred Singer, the founding Dean of the School of Environmental and Planetary Sciences at the University of Miami. The book has the boring, yet realistic, premise of “global temperatures have been rising mostly or entirely because of a natural cycle. Unstoppable Global Warming explains why we’re warming, why it’s not very dangerous, and why we can’t stop it anyway.”… Yeah no one will win elections with that kind of non-fear kind talk!

Also, here is a great article at the Center for Global Food Issues!

And now, Excalibur.

Yes, as we all know, possibly the finest of the swords and sorcery films (points are lost for the usage of armor that postdates Arthur by a thousand years, though it is such nice looking armor). They really haven’t ever made another epic like this. Sadly, to my knowledge, there is just this one cheapo DVD edition from 1999, a Special Edition as gratuitous as the film is sorely needed for this classic!

Grand in its scope and its cinematography and sets, and well-using its nearly 2.5 hour length to cover the key elements of the tales thoroughly and to build the characters well, it is a great film. Great casting in some parts: Nicol Williamson, as always, is inspired and brilliant and the heart of the film. His domination of the plot is complete and is a joy to behold! Helen Mirrim and Gabriel Byrne are also quite good… The others though: Terry is hit and miss (though his voice can be strangely effective), Clay and Lunghi aren’t too compelling and Katrine Boorman tragically overdoes her role in an bad way but who cares… The movie is a grand and wonderful thing!

But as I touched upon before, it looks rather shoddy in this DVD edition and even the brilliant scenes are lacking the glory they should have… Fear not though, the film is still rife with: courageous battles

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and a great and foggy final battle, though I won’t show any give-away scenes…


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and the music of course, the famous usage of O Fortuna blended with the dramatic filming and the scenery will continue to make the “renewal” scene one of the greatest dramatic epic scenes in film, though they can seem minor and repetetitive, there is an over-yet-under-stated beauty and drama to these scenes…

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And then Thunderball. My old favorite, well at least since I turned away from The Spy who Loved Me and Roger Moore. Maybe it’s not as good as I remembered, maybe the jetpack scene and the underwater battles are a bit too much, and there is something disturbing about Tom Jones singing Thunderball… maybe they should have hired a woman for that one. But what’s good? You’ve got Spectre with the hidden cat petter “Number one”, really great music, M’s enormous meeting room off his little office, and again, back to the islands and another new Felix Leiter.