A Silent Moment

This is an unofficial continuation of Wednesday's post. Please join me in a moment of silence.
















Thank you.

Sunday: Memorial

This week more than ever I hate the human race. And let me just go out of the way to assure you that there is nothing sarcastic, satirical, or even vaguely funny about this post. I know it's out of character to be serious, but considering what's just happened I think it's necessary.

From the morning to the night of Sunday, November 30, eight people were killed in Washington state (eight that we know of) for reasons that can absolutely not be excused or tolerated.

The first took place in the Tacoma suburb of Parkland, in the morning, when four Lakewood police officers were viciously gunned down for no reason other than the fact that they were police. These men-&-woman were ruthlessly ambushed, in a place where they should have been absolutely safe. This has made national news for a few reasons, one of which is obvious, another of which is the fact that the suspect, the now-deceased Maurice Clemmons, had a 90+ year prison sentence commuted by Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee. But I won't talk about this, because he was also released on bail from a prison sentence incurred by child rape, right here in Washington.

Clemmons is now dead because a patrol officer in Seattle saw him in a stolen car. Clemmons appeared to be reaching for a weapon, after the officer told him to put his hands up and hold still, and so in self-defense the officer shot. He wouldn't have survived anyway with the belly wound he received from the Lakewood officer who fought back. I know that Clemmons' death doesn't balance out the four lives he took. Even so-- while I'm not exactly dancing a jig about it-- it gives me a little relief, as I'm sure it does to a lot of people around here, to know that this sick _____ won't ever ambush cops again. Or any of the other stuff his warped _____ mind is capable of.

But the man had accomplices-- people who tended to his stomach wound, gave him money, gave him a place to hide after he killed valued, cherished members of the law enforcement community! These people are perhaps even a little sicker than he, and I hope they receive a punishment as befits a cop killer in the flesh. This isn't just mob-mentality bloodlust here; they need to know that they're all guilty of more than just a "crime."

The other four deaths occurred with no premeditation, and many miles north, in Marysville. Two couples were killed in a horrific car accident because someone was driving with eight beers in their system (that made their blood alcohol level 1.5 times over the legal limit).

Seven of the deceased I didn't know at all.

One, a victim of the car wreck, was Brad Agerup, a physical education/health/sports medicine teacher at my old high school. I even had him for a semester, Individual Sports (a PE credit). I've had problems with PE teachers in the past because if you're out of shape (like myself), most of them seem to think that you're not expending any effort. Mr. Agerup was different. He could tell when students were falling short but actually trying. This acknowledgment, which he vocalized to myself and others on numerous occasions, always made me and, I suspect, everybody else feel better about our limited capabilities, which is what teachers are supposed to do: encourage improvement and respect when someone is trying to improve.

But I understand there was more to his life than that. He helped countless athletes with sports medicine and coaching. He taught resuscitation techniques, which he used to save at least one life. And who knows how many other people's lives were saved by those he instructed? That's not the life of a guy who didn't do anything useful with the gift of animation. And while I didn't know him well (I never had him as a teacher after that semester), it still feels shocking to me that he's gone, and gone for such a pitiful reason as that some drunken idiot whose blood was saturated with hooch thought he was alright to drive.

As was to be expected, the drunken driver escaped with minor injuries. But to the Agerups' two teenage daughters, both parents are gone because of him.

I know few people read this, but I'm writing like everyone in the world can see it because I'm sick of seeing good people being killed. Period. People should only die when they reach the natural end of their lives. Not when a child-raping slime ball wants to leave an impression. Not when someone has failed to hide a drunk's car keys.

If you've ever driven with alcohol in your blood, I'm a little ashamed of you right now. But I also know there's a lesson you can take from this. And I sincerely hope you do.

In memory of Tina Griswold (Lakewood PD), Ronald Owens (LPD), Mark Renninger (LPD), Greg Richards (LPD), Hilda Woods, Tom Woods, Melissa Agerup, Brad Agerup

Xander's Film Registry Admittance

Good news, everyone! You'll be making a suicide run to the Popcorn Planet!

Sorry, I got in a Futurama mode for a second. Ahem. Moving on....

The real "good news" is that Xander's Film Registry, consisting right now of sixty films you must see before you die, is becoming a permanent thing. New films will be admitted on a regular basis (well... not new new, necessarily), under the qualification that they are either movie essentials, wonderful things to show your children/grandchildren/nieces/nephews, or utter and complete garbage that you should never see without being prepared to throw yourself off an unduly high balcony. Today, a few members of the first two categories.

Exodus (1960)
(See review in earlier post)

Flower Drum Song (1961)
The first movie to cast people of Asian ancestry as serious, legitimate, three-dimensional characters, this long-lost Rodgers/Hammerstein musical features some hilarious songs, including the outrageous early-60s household fantasy "Sunday," the irony-riddled "The Other Generation," and the preposterously funny "Gliding Through My Memoree." It also includes very little of the songwriting duo's famous maudlin-ness: with the exception of the operatic "Love, Look Away," it's pure comedy.

Pete's Dragon (1977)
Despite the presence of the obnoxious Helen Reddy, this heavy-on-the-charm Disney musical pits a witty orphan and his selectively-invisible dragon pal, Elliot, against the confusing moral issues of acceptance, friendship, and child slavery. And it's rated G!

Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009)
It has only been hours since I saw this movie, but I can't let it pass without comment. It is without a doubt one of the funniest, most offbeat and most enjoyable animated comedies ever to emerge from the human imagination. In terms of serious credibility/urgency, it's no Exodus. In terms of sustained comedy, it's no Flower Drum Song. But it is probably one of the best films of the year, and I love it, love it, love it. Go see it at once!

A Few Thoughts on the Past Week

I hope you all survived Thanksgiving and (especially) Black Friday. Hopefully nobody was killed by a greedy, moronic mob this year.

But speaking of greedy moronic mobs, there are a few news stories from the previous week that amused me so much I had to comment on them: stories of greed, idiocy, and angry mobs. I mean that last word in the "Frankenstein" sense, more than the "Godfather."

Adam Lambert's Performance Shocks the World
Come on, people. If he were a woman, you wouldn't care. Well, you would, but not in the same way....

Wannabe Reality Stars Crash Obama's Party
I wouldn't have commented on this. I'm trying not to give these lunatic freaks the attention they want, but our wonderful American news media did that when they printed the flipping story. The trick with wackos like this is to ignore them. Remember that next time you read a story about a boy in a balloon.

Black Friday Sales Start the Night Before
Twas the night before Friday and all through the mall, not a creature was stirring-- but bargain freaks all. Seriously, peeps. If the sales matter so much to you, at least go out decked in armor plating and armed with a broom. If you're lucky, the half-crazed shoppers will mistake it for a machine gun.

"New Moon" Opens
This is the eleventh Biblical plague-- the one God promised to Ramses, but canceled after seeing how much devastation he wrought with the locusts and scourge.

To much less fanfare...
"Fantastic Mr. Fox" Opens
Okay, for a second I had to make sure I was still on planet Earth. But, luckily, I am! You know how I know? 'Cause the brilliant, inventive, clever, and, ya know, entertaining "Mr. Fox" seems to be bombing while millions upon millions flock to see the pop culture crack that is "The Twilight Saga."

10 Great Thanksgiving Moments from Film & Television

If you ignore the uncomfortable overtones to the Thanksgiving holiday (the entire Mayflower/Indians backstory), it really is a great time of year. One day out of 365 we get to stuff ourselves with food (woo-hoo!) and reminisce about all the things for which we're grateful. In a dreadful year like this, such a holiday is necessary.

And there's been no shortage of fictional Turkey Day festivities. If you're like me, you love to watch movies and TV episodes for special occasions (I'm tempted to look up Israeli Independence Day just to have a specified date every year to watch Exodus). But you don't want to make the season drag on, right? Like... ahem, Christmas? So how do you choose a small pantheon of Thanksgiving classics that'll only take you through about a week to watch?

Never you fear. Xander's blog is here! Here is a countdown of the ten undisputed greatest moments this bizarrest of holidays has in the pop culture ouevre.

10) Drunken Santa at the Parade, Miracle on 34th Street.
Okay, so the movie itself is about Christmas, but the fan-freaking-tastic opening sequence takes place at Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, when the man (Edmund Gwenn) who claims he's Santa has a hilariously hostile run-in with a giddily inebriated, fake St. Nick. Just make sure you stick to the 1947 original.

9) Where's Grandma? "Thanksgiving," season 1, That 70s Show.
The Forman family settles down to a nice turkey dinner, but matriarch Kitty just can't help the gnawing feeling that she's forgotten something... but what? As the phone rings, the stark terror of the realization dawns on her: she's forgotten Red's abrasive, oblivious mother!

8) Dinner, Across the Universe.
It is on this lovely occasion that slacker Max (Joe Anderson) decides to tell his parents he's dropping out of college. Right in front of his aunts, uncles... and English newcomer Jude (Jim Sturgess), who watches in a sense of bewilderment fully befitting a character in a Beatles musical.

7) "A rather tender subject," The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Logically speaking, I'm sure it was Thanksgiving: the narrator placed the time of Brad and Janet's adventure in late November, and alien host Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry) served his guests up quite a feast: Eddie, played (ironically) by Meatloaf. Particularly great is the segment when we see Columbia run screaming from the room, then a cut to see Furter carelessly dumping ketchup on his disobedient entree.

6) End-of-the-summer pageant, Addams Family Values.
With the obnoxious, popular snobs all cast as pilgrims, Wednesday and her fellow outcasts as the Chippewa, and Pugsley as the turkey, the stage is set for a spectacular confrontation between perky and tolerable.

5) Dinner is popped, A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.
The thing that really irks me about this 1973 special is Peppermint Patty: she invites herself to a Thanksgiving feast Chuck never intended to have, and then has the nerve to complain about the results. But it's certainly one of the most intriguing T-Day dinners ever conceived: popcorn and toast.

4) Thanksgiving, Bing style, "The One Where Underdog Gets Away," Friends.
Poor Chandler reveals the reason why he doesn't celebrate this harvest holiday in a hilariously un-hilarious monologue about his parents' decision to reveal their divorce during the feast. As he points out, Thanksgiving dinner no longer holds any thrill for him: he's already seen the re-runs.

3) Biblical quotation, "The Little Atheist," All in the Family.
Concerned when Mike and Gloria reveal their baby will be allowed to choose his own religion, ignorant father figure Archie reads from the Bible: Romans 13, two dots 23.

2) Archie's conspiracy, "The Little Atheist."
Two list-worthy moments from the same episode? Fully deserved. Archie tells Edith they'll ensure the baby is a Christian if they have to break every commandment to do it. And when telling Mike he's won this battle, he lifts his head to Heaven, winking at God.

Drumroll, please....

Okay, seriously, stop now.

1) Alien mating dance, "Gobble Gobble Dick Dick," 3rd Rock from the Sun.
After the Solomons' first Thanksgiving on Earth, Harry (French Stewart) and the sultry Vicki Dubcek (Jan Hooks) clean up the leftovers in Mrs. Dubcek's kitchen. In the most bizarre (and laugh-out-loud funny) seduction in television history, Harry dons the turkey carcass like a hat, gives himself a gravy mustache, and throws Vicki down on the table.

Well, there you have it. The Thanksgiving best, whether heartwarming or... just plain disturbing.

Now please wait until after Thursday's dinner to start your Christmas celebrations. You'll be doing yourself a favor.

A Couple Candid Messages

Dear Mrs. Palin,

You are ruining our flipping country by your very presence! Please leaaavve and trouble someone else with your wacko views for a change! You are a hypocrite of the worst kind, you have absolutely no clue what's going on in your own country, and you are misinterpreting everyone's morbid curiosity in your demented doings to be signs of love and respect! Please go away now!


Dear Stephenie Meyer,

Your books are trash, the movies adapted from them are even worse, and they're making the world unsafe for those of us who want to tell vampire or werewolf stories in the future... from now on, anything with either of these mythological creatures will be berated as a ripoff! A ripoff of what?! Words on pages that smell like the scent of the decay of American literature! I am not even kidding! Enough already!


Dear Makers of Chia Pets,

A Chia Obama? Really?! What the frack were you thinking?!?!


Ahhh. Felt good to get that out in the open.

But a little clarification on that last one: It doesn't specifically refer to the Obama pet. It refers to everything they've ever made.

And consider that first bit a plug for Palin's new book. As in, accept it as a gift, then catapult it into the air and shoot it mid-arc. I'm sure Miss Moose Hunter 2009 will appreciate the irony.

Watch This Movie. Like NOW.

It has been noted by many cynical (and ignorant) people that the suffering of the Jewish people has been a gold mine in Hollywood for decades. Actually, on the surface, the statement is not entirely untrue. Films depicting the repression and bullying of an entire race/religion (often with horrifying, genocidal consequences) have frequently been big moneymakers. But what makes a movie with this subject matter good is that you can tell it's not done for money, but a genuine belief in the depth and validity of the content.

One such film is Schindler's List (1993), an utterly fascinating and well-made but (to me) unwatchably brutal film by Steven Spielberg. Another is Fiddler on the Roof (1971), which balances Jewish oppression with the familiar conventions of the musical dramedy.

Still another is Otto Preminger's incomparable 1960 masterpiece, Exodus, a film I only recently discovered, and shall now review for the pages of Xander Candor.

Exodus is, despite what the title may suggest, not taken at all from the pages of the Bible. It's actually based on a twentieth-century story from a novel by Leon Uris. Set in the days immediately following World War II, it is the story of a group of people who survive the Holocaust only to be corraled in a "safe area"-- basically a British-run holding pen on the island of Cyprus. They're stuck there because they have no place to go-- in the 40s, there was no Jewish homeland. Fed up with this fact, cynical hero Ari Ben Canaan (played phenomenally by the late Paul Newman) poses as a Gentile British officer to rescue hundreds of the refugees and break through a blockade to bring them where their people rightfully belong: Palestine.

Of course, the trouble is only beginning when Ben Canaan and the others-- accompanied by a young American widow named Kitty Freemont (Eva Marie Saint)-- make it to Palestine. The Arab government wants nothing to do with the Jewish survivors, and threatens violence if the UN's vote to partition the region passes. One passenger, Dov Landau (an excellent performance by Sal Mineo) joins the Irgun, a freedom-fighting group that resorts to blowing up buildings to get the message across. This is bad news for Karen Hansen (Jill Haworth), a young refugee from Denmark, who loves Dov and wonders why he has such an intrinsic hatred and distrust of anyone who isn't Jewish. And Kitty, who has tried to adopt Karen, finds herself falling not only in love with Ben Canaan, but into the middle of a fight that isn't her own.

At over 200 minutes, Exodus feels not a second over 120. Preminger brings a visceral you're-actually-there quality that mingles pleasingly dissonantly with the faraway mysticism of the content and photography. The editing is ahead of its time, and Ernest Gold's unbelievable music score is one of the best-- even when it sounds suspiciously like the work Miklos Rozsa did for 1959's Ben-Hur.

The script is by Dalton Trumbo, who had been blacklisted in Hollywood during the McCarthy era for his "Communist affiliations." In 1960, Exodus was one of two films-- along with Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus-- that utilized his raw and dignified scribe talents in open defiance of the blacklist. The American Legion even sent letters to all its posts across the nation urging members not to see the movies.

Obviously, it didn't work. These films are with us to stay. And for good reason.

Very rarely does a film resonate this much. Usually, at least in my case as a critic, only certain scenes do-- the "Trial Before Pilate" in Jesus Christ Superstar, the out-the-window climax of The Exorcist, and Spartacus' tearful, stand-up-and-cheer finale with the cross. But from the moment the credits are ignited (literally) against the auditory background of Gold's powerful music to the unforgettable dual funeral at the film's ambiguous conclusion, Exodus is one triumphant moment after another. I can't remember seeing a film like that since... well, a long, long, long time. Watching Exodus is legitimately the best thing you can do with three and a half hours of free TV time.

No, even better.

Plan Your Halloween Fun & Fright

It's coming, folks. My favorite time of the year. That wonderful day when the barrier is broken between the living and the dead and ferocious carnage ensues to prey on the innocent....

You know, Election Day.

But before that, it's my favorite day of the year: Halloween. And if you're like me, you wanna make sure your Halloween celebration goes as planned to maximize your enjoyment of the most spiritual and mythological of all the holidays. That being said, the good folks here at XC (well... it's pretty much "folk," singular) have created a small list of things you can do to have a happy, appropriately haunting Halloween. Just follow this daily schedule.

Midnight
For maximum scare factor, now is when you watch that everlasting cult masterpiece The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the definitive midnight movie. I mean, if Tim Curry in that get-up doesn't scare you, for crying out loud, what will?! If you live in a fairly isolated locale (as in, a house with a good two or three hundred yards between neighbors), you can crank up the volume and participate as you so choose. But if you're going to do that, you are required by law to do the Time Warp, if nothing else. That's right. Look it up in the Constitution. If you never pause the movie, it will be over at...

1:40 am
Go to bed. It may be Halloween, but you still need your sleep. Otherwise the Great Pumpkin won't come.

Noonish
After lunch, bake all your Halloween treats. Recipes for these will be located in several newspaper sections for the past month and a half. Take this opportunity to get your trick-or-treat stuff ready. If you're handing out candy, put it in the bowl, put the bowl by the door. If you're going out, secure your costume and make sure your flashlights (stress: plural) have plenty of fresh batteries. I know it's tempting with all the paranoia about H1N1, but avoid SARS masks at all costs (unless they're part of your costume). They have to be changed, like, every twenty minutes to be effective.

1:00
Read that immortal, chilling masterpiece: The Raven, by Edgar Allan Poe. If preferable, listen to it read aloud. But if you live alone, I don't want to encourage that sort of behavior....

1:30
Take this opportunity to watch a good, lighthearted horror flick. Nothing with severe scream value-- it's broad daylight, after all-- but something comic. My recommendations? Shock Treatment (the sequel to Rocky Horror), Young Frankenstein, Beetle Juice, The Nightmare Before Christmas, or the best Halloween specials & episodes of serial TV: Peanuts, Garfield, That '70s Show, 3rd Rock from the Sun, etc.

6:00
Expect the first trick-or-treaters, if you're staying at home. If you're going out, leave around this time. If you see a guy in the bushes with a William Shatner mask and a knife, do not talk to him! His name is Michael Myers, and he's... well, he's a bad man.

9:00
The tail end of trick-or-treating. If you're out, come in. If you're in, check for toilet paper and egg innards on the outside of your house. Then lock the door.

10:00
Now's your chance to see something really scary. Conventional classics for this occasion include the Halloween series, but nothing scares me like a good religious chiller: particularly The Exorcist. Rule of thumb: the higher the numeral in a series like Halloween, the worse it probably is. Stick with the 1978 original.

And that concludes our Halloween. Now to Thanksgiving. You thought Michael Myers was scary, wait until you see Aunt Phyllis & Uncle Wally stuffing themselves with turkey and cranberry sauce. You'll run the other way.

71 DP's Led the Big Parade....

We in Washington state need to APPROVE REF. 71.

In recent weeks, I've voted for the first time. It's an awesome feeling, really. But this is also the window of time in which I have heard some of the most blatantly stupid campaigning of all time, done by opponents of Washington state's domestic partnership law, most recently the bill made notorious by the addition of the moniker "Everything But Marriage."

One of these blunders is a radio ad telling people to reject the bill by voting "Reject" on R-71 on the ballot. The ad features two women chatting. One tells the other that the bill should be rejected because it's not the right time. People, she contends, are losing their jobs and homes, and that's really what lawmakers need to be focusing on. She insists that anyone for this is basically encouraging our legislature to be out of touch with the public.

How ignorant can you get?!

People are losing their jobs and homes right now, and that is one of the chief reasons why this bill must be passed! These are horrendously uncertain times (ah, yes, that old cliche), and people need a little certainty. We're not talking about people who are out to destroy everything traditional in this country. We're not talking about people who don't have feelings, for crying out loud.

And we're not talking about people asking to get married! This bill is not about gay marriage, and it would be criminal if the measure was defeated solely because that's what people fear. Key word: fear.

The measure isn't even about gay people, specifically. Domestic partnerships also apply to couples with one person over a certain age (I think it's 62) who can't get married because they'll lose job or health benefits.

Let's take a look at what we're examining here.

If marriage really is a religious institution, then it has no business being a federal institution. We in America have a right to worship God as we please-- but God/Allah/Buddha/Jehovah/whoever don't belong in our capitol buildings and our courthouses. This is not a theocracy. This is a Republican democracy based simply on governmental principles that have absolutely nothing to do with religion. Ergo, religion must be kept separate from the powers of the state.

I know for a fact that marriage is not a religious institution, however. I know this because heterosexual "civil ceremonies" are legally recognized as marriages.

Marriage is not a legal contract to produce children. If it were, sterile couples would not be allowed to get married. Nor would elderly couples or couples who make it clear they never want children-- these are not the case.

For those reasons, I believe gay marriage should be legalized in every state in this great-although-massively-wrong-in-the-head nation.

But for the zillionth time, the word "marriage" is never once mentioned in this bill. Domestic partnerships merely allow people who want to spend their lives together to do so with some semblance of that traditional bond.

As for the people who fear that even domestic partnerships will ruin the meaning of their marriage, I have a simple question for you: have you (or anyone you know) ever been married in Vegas?

I don't even consider the fact that one of the law's chief opponents is a known wifebeater and divorcee. Some marriages don't work out.

But it seems to be fairly common knowledge that relationships aren't perfect. The reason for these partnerships is security and love. From what I've witnessed, gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender people deserve the one and are more than capable of the other.

Don't hold centuries-old, wrongly-translated religious dogma against them.

Vote "Approve" on Referendum 71.

This message was paid for by that little nerve in my head that goes off every time stupid people in authority decide to wave that abused authority in the face of anyone who's different.

Because Hitler died 64 years ago.

From Vinyl to Celluloid, Please!

In recent weeks, I've found myself listening to the soundtrack to that eternally stench-ridden 1978 dud, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, a movie based on an album of the same name by the overrated Beatles. It's not much, but the music itself is pretty... not bad, even when chewed up and digested through the Robert Stigwood machine.

It really got me to thinking. Why was Sgt. Pepper such a lousy movie? It's from the same producer (Stigwood) who made two great films from successful rock albums-- Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) and Tommy (1975). Like Tommy, it uses contemporary figures from the music industry (Aerosmith, Earth Wind & Fire, Peter Frampton, and the depressing Bee Gees) as well as well-known actors (Donald Pleasence) and living legends (George Burns, for whom Las Vegas was shut down following his death). And, as I've said, the music wasn't bad. Taken without the pictures, it provides some good listening, actually.

Aha! "Taken without the pictures." That explains it. The film is tacky, overproduced, nauseatingly gaudy, dreadfully miscast... and when it comes to story, I don't think anybody gave it much thought. With Tommy and Superstar, the story was built right into the album, so there was no concern over what it should be about. Also, neither of those films had singing robots, Frankie Howerd, or a character named-- yep, you're reading this right-- Strawberry Fields.

So who decides what albums would make good movies? I think it's obvious we can't trust Stigwood anymore. So I actually came up with a few suggestions. They might not work nowadays, but it's fun to imagine what they would have been like back in the golden days.

2112 by Rush
The actual suite "2112" is about twenty minutes long. You'd need serious embellishment, or other Rush music, but it could be done. Also, it probably wouldn't work as a musical. Have the music performed by a real-life band (and don't give them a stupid name like "Future Villain Band"!), and cast great actors to deliver dialogue in between the anthems.

Cassadaga by Bright Eyes
Love them or hate them, you have to admit Bright Eyes doesn't lack intelligence (although that name is eerily reminiscent of Charlton Heston's ape-given nickname in Planet of the Apes). And the 60 minutes of music on this modern classic of theirs all fits together really nicely, almost like a full-fledged (if a tad episodic) storyline. Film it as a musical, set in the Florida town of the title-- a place filled with mediums and other psychically-inclined individuals. And use the same mysticism of production design and cinematography found in the album's artwork.

Quadrophenia by The Who
All right, so this already is a movie. A good one, actually. But for a movie based on an album by The Who, it relies too heavily on the music of other bands-- all from the mid-60s-- and, of course, it's a nonmusical. The story of Jimmy-- a rebellious young Mod who has four competing personalities in his head-- needs to be told with the same operatic narrative style that worked for Tommy. Maybe a cameo by Twisted Sister's Dee Snider, singing the "he man drag" verse of "5:15"?

Other advice for filmmakers out to succeed with these projects? Just don't do anything like Sgt. Pepper. Worst of all, don't end it with that film's lame, irritating, infuriating magic-wand ending that renders the past two hours' viewing pointless. And Bob... you might want to sit this one out.

Guess Who Just Found Roman Polanski?

I'm in something of a good mood right now. Two and a half months ago, I placed a hold at my library for the DVD of Rosemary's Baby, the 1968 paranoia piece about the woman who may be carrying Satan's child. Well, someone kept it way past its due date, so I canceled the hold after two months of frustration. But today, here I sit in the library, at the computer, and I know that in about 25 minutes, when I sign off the internet, I can go and pick it up at the counter-- it's finally here!

This may be a little ironic, considering what's happened this week.

You may-- or may not-- be aware that its director, Roman Polanski, one of the most gory directors in history, was recently arrested at an airport in Switzerland in connection with a statutory rape case extending back through time into that rather regrettable period known as the seventies. And that there are protestors (I almost typed "protestants..." whoops!) in practically every corner of the celluloid-viewing globe demanding he be released.

Well, I ain't one of them. What he did was absolutely wrong, and not only wrong, but illegal to boot. It's right that he should be punished after thirty years in "exile."

But this is yet another example of a media frenzy over something that has long since past its importance. In interviews, the girl he broke the law with-- at Jack Nicholson's house, no less-- has said that while what he did to her was disgusting, it wasn't him, but rather the media, that destroyed her life.

And what's so objectionable about that interpretation? The media is a notorious swarm of vultures, swooping in and carrying off the carrion of human existence. Polanski had absolutely no legitimate excuse for behaving the way he did, but it was thirty years ago and most of the world has changed. Conservative columnists-- excepting, among others, Charles Krauthammer, but I've got my eye on that loon-- are already pouncing on yet another opportunity to admonish him for laying his wandering hands on an innocent young girl.

Hasn't the opportunity for such admonishment long since passed? He may have a spotty personal life, but I've seen his Macbeth and some of his other work, and I can safely say the man is a creative genius. Why can't we view creative geniuses for the work they produce instead of the shady underpinnings of their personal lives? The only time, to my mind, that such underpinning shadiness has been wholly reflected in work is in the 1960s affair between Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor... because her swooning girl-crush nearly ruined the second half of Cleopatra.

But, for those buzzards who will pounce anyway, if you must view his career in the context of his sick crime, pounce on this, and put this in context. In 1969, his (I can't remember which she was) wife or girlfriend, Sharon Tate-- who was eight+ months pregnant-- was viciously stabbed to death by members of the Manson Family. That's nowhere near an excuse for child rape, but the man has enough demons in the past without drumming up new ones through incessant, vulture-esque criticism.

Just let him answer for the crime in the way our society intended: legally, through the system of the courts. If you must boycott his films, do it out of an objection to the content therein and not the man behind the camera. And for crying out loud, never forget the first law of vulture/human coexistence.

Be overtly stupid and you become the carrion.

Now, on to the tale of the Woodhouses and that weird night with the neighbors....

Alms for the Poor!: A Story About the News

Well, The Seattle Times, the last remaining daily newspaper in Seattle, has just been diagnosed with a potentially fatal illness. If it dies, the world as we know it will probably come to a sudden screeching halt. At least in this corner of the globe.

Nowadays, people like to get all their information from the web (I sincerely hope you're not relying on blog like this one for all your news). Well, that's just not right. One big, widespread network virus and nobody will have any idea what's going on anymore. Except those of us who actually read the paper. Imagine! A convenient bundle of funky paper that gets delivered to your house every day (with subscription) and contains everything you could possibly need to know, from sports scores and celebrity blunders (and Michael Jackson's death, of course) to political and economic news! Seriously, these things exist!

A really big complaint is that people believe all newspapers have a liberal bias. If that's your concern, go watch Fox News-- it's got a conservative bias! But the fact is that no news outlet is unbiased because the news is written by human beings. And the funny thing about us humans, we have opinions. Crazy, right?

Yeah. So whether you turn to the radio, the web, the TV, or the paper, you won't be getting the whole truth unless you witness everything for yourself. And that ain't gonna happen. Don't fear the media bias: embrace it! Embrace the fact that you're smart enough to tell what's the bias and what's the truth! That, my friends, is the beautiful thing about it.

But I defend newspapers because it's a real, kinetic way to observe what's happening in the world: you can see it, feel the smoothly rough paper, and smell the weird newsprint. And while it's a pain in the insert-choice-body-part-here to wash said newsprint off your hands when you're done, it's still the way man was originally meant to get news. That's right. For hundreds of years, it's been done by paper. And while some traditions (i.e., bigotry, censorship, brutal psychological repression) should die, letting the newspaper industry die is akin to murder. Heck, we already lost the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to it!

The irony of writing this plea on the internet is not lost on me.

Slow News Day in Xanderville

Do you ever think that newspaper publishers or TV news teams, when there are no real stories to report, get together and manufacture some ridiculous ones just to stave off boredom? Well, I do. And that theory has never, in my mind, been more justifiable than in recent weeks. All-star coverage goes to President Obama calling Kanye West a... well, a certain mule-like expletive? People are analyzing its "fallout" and saying they'll never forgive him again! For crying out loud, Kanye West did a stupid, idiotic, attention-mongering thing at whatever awards ceremony that was (you know the one I mean; it's all over the news). And if anyone but the President of the United States had said that about him, it would be immediately overlooked... possibly even laughed with.

That's a manufactured story if ever there was one.

Well, here's the thing: I want my turn. I don't always have something interesting to blog about, so when do I get to manufacture some stories just for laughs? Today is that day. To begin with, we'll take the same genre for $200, please.

Kanye West to Star in Remake of Major Broadway Musical
That's right-- the ill-tempered hip hop star will appear as Tony in director Kevin Federline's remake of the classic West Side Story (absolutely no pun intended). Taylor Swift will appear as Maria, and, instead of "Killer! Killer!," will pound on Tony's chest screaming, "Heckler! Heckler!" The songs "Maria," "Somewhere," and "Tonight" will be replaced with various incarnations and reprises of "Gold Digger," and "America" will now feature an 8-minute rap interlude featuring seventy cameos. On awards night in March, the picture will receive 12 nominations. Each one it doesn't win, West will personally steal the trophy from the actual winners and fly to Florida.

George Washington's Original Teeth Found
According to Washington descendant Celia Washington-McCarthy, they were "in the glass by the bed, right where he left them."

Cryptographers Discover Hidden Message on Back of Declaration of Independence
Working off a tip from National Treasure, these crack scientists have, indeed, decoded the phrase, "Just kidding! -Tom Jefferson."

Swine Flu Comes to Life
Reportedly, it manifests itself as a giant amoeba-like thing eerily reminiscent of something out of a Ray Harryhausen film. It says to the world, "Stop #*%@ing talking about me for five seconds and take some action!" Then it went back into the petri dish.

Michael Jackson's Bones to Fashion Fine China for the Uber-Rich
Wait a minute... how did a real story get mixed up in here?

Missing Al Gore Votes Found
According to his press associate Regine Ulberssen, they were "in the glass next to his bed, just where he left them."

American Idol Reaches Into Fictional World for Fifth Judge
He is none other than Dilbert's Zimbu the Monkey.

The Mentalist Creators Admit They Ripped Off Psych
In other news, pigs also flew, the ambien temperature in Hell was reported as -456 degrees F, and the writers at Entertainment Weekly also admitted they are unqualified to judge what classifies as "entertainment."

Now to the real question... why CAN'T the Mentalist creators own up to their misdeed already, for crying out loud? Next thing, they'll be saying Mission to Mars didn't steal from every good sci-fi movie of the last century!

Okay, world... slow day's over now! Either print some real stories or start selling your rags on the tabloid racks!

Welcome to the World of Tomorrow! Xander's Film Registry, Part VI

*The 2000s*- Okay, so we haven't sent a manned mission to Jupiter yet. The Cold War is long over. And if I'm not very much mistaken, we don't all live in flying saucers and transport by teleportation. But it's still the 21st Century, baby! And the dawn decade has given us many wonderful, and not-so-wonderful, things. Since 2000, we have seen the cancellations-- and resurrections-- of Futurama, Family Guy, and Firefly/Serenity. Boy bands have died out (can I get a hallelujah?!) Not to mention America's first black President. And Al Gore is so much more popular than when he had power. Sure, this decade doesn't have the same kind of spirit that past ones have had, but it is awfully cool knowing that we survived Y2K, 2008, and the two-headed beast from beyond known as McCain/Palin. Read on to see what movies I have selected as the must-watches of the decade. Keep in mind: I'm very doubtful that anything really great will happen for the rest of the year on the big screen. Just another identical Final Destination sequel (yawn).

O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)- Okay, admit it. The Odyssey was the most boring thing you've ever been forced to read, with the possible exceptions of Romeo and Juliet and Lord of the Flies. That's precisely why O Brother is such a hilarious film! Starring George Clooney as a Depression-era prisoner trying to run back home to his wife after years on a chain gang-- also trying to survive the assaulting stupidity of his two fellow prisoners-- it does what you'd think should be absolutely impossible: finds color and humor in the most colorless, humorless, banal, vanilla "epic" ever written. There is a one-eyed Bible thumper (John Goodman in one of his best performances), zillions of double-crosses, a flour-peddling governor named Menelaus "Pappy" O'Daniel, and, most hilariously, the dimwitted Delmar (he thought you was a toad!) And, as the blind prophet on the railroad promises, many wonderful things. Like a cow on the roof of a cotton house. It will always be perfect!

Titan A.E. (2000)- Something to remember: when this movie came out, the most grown-up an animated movie could ever hope to be was Prince of Egypt. So Don Bluth (a former Disney animator of such classics as Robin Hood, and in the 80s and 90s director of travesties like FernGully and The Land Before Time) decided to make a witty, PG-rated (which used to be like R for cartoons), action-packed sci-fi spectacle without any flesh-and-blood on the screen. The story of downtrodden, nearly-extinct humans looking for a home "after Earth," Titan still looks incredible, sounds fantastic, and can always bring a few chuckles to the most stoic sci-fi fans. And the message is more important than ever: at the rate we're going, we won't need an evil alien race to blow the planet to smithereens. We're doing it ourselves.

Wonder Boys (2000)- In how many movies has Michael Douglas played a hardened artistic mentor? A Chorus Line, Wonder Boys.... there are tons more, but I kinda got distracted. Wonder Boys is, as I promised, something everybody should see, and for very good reasons. It shows us how authors deal with crises, and the answer is pretty humorous. there are great performances from Tobey Maguire and Robert Downey Jr. The only bad performance is by Katie Holmes, but, surprisingly, she's got no natural talent anyway. Luckily, it doesn't stand in the way of these hilarious situations or any of the great impact of the way they're staged.

Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001)- Hedwig, a German rock starlet who had to give up a certain part of himself to leave Communist East Berlin, is a survivor. I know you can probably find quite a few things wrong with that sentence, but don't bother. It's a classic movie, a hilarious comedy, a powerful thinker, and an intelligent pseudo-musical (I don't think it's really a musical-- only the title band does the singing). Covering every subject from child abuse to freedom to acceptance to artistic betrayal, it is by far one of the five best movies of the last ten years. Great pacing, editing, staging, cinematography, and even set/costume design. And the best part is the punk anthem/ballad "Wig in a Box." And by the way, if there were any justice in the universe, those foam Hedwig hairpieces would be a fricking collector's item by now.

Spider-Man (2002)- Truthfully, X-Men (2000) was a little better, but if it weren't for Spider-Man, the Marvel Movie Boom probably wouldn't have lasted this long, and this is still a great movie anyway. Ignoring the fact that Kirsten Dunst is nearly as annoying as Godfather III's Sofia Coppola, the Sam Raimi-helmed adaptation of one of the most recognizable Marvel characters' exploits is a great example of what a comic-book movie should be: nicely balanced between pure showy camp and serious, believable human drama. And as the sinister Green Goblin, Willem Dafoe is clearly having the time of his life. It's always so good to watch actors enjoying themselves while playing villains-- Ernst Blofeld, Dr. Evil, and now the Green Goblin. Attach at least the first sequel to this one and you have the pop entertainment event of the decade-- possibly the century.

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)- If Ben-Hur's record of 11 little gold guys had to be broken (after it was humiliatingly matched by Titanic), I'm glad it was matched by the conclusion to the definitive fantasy saga of all time. Sure, people joke about the movie being boring, overly long, and emotionally overwraught... but what did you expect? The non-extended version runs 200 minutes, and for all the cheese and gush, it's worth every single one (even though there's probably, like, twenty minutes of credits). Basically, every generation has a film that defines it. But unlike Star Wars, LotR is a 110-percent satisfying one from a 100-percent excellent complete franchise.

X2 (2003)- The original X-Men introduced us to the comic book movie as we know it today. Then, Spider-Man pushed that envelope while still giving great homages to the way the genre used to be. In 2003, the first sequel to X-Men proved that movies evolve even faster than mutants. Never before had such fantastic performances been utilized for a movie of this kind, not to mention the incredible special effects and action that will cause your jaw to knock a hole in the floor. A word to the wise, about that: sit with your head forward, out over your lap. Ya know, to avoid the crushing pain.

Batman Begins (2005)- Okay, I get it, enough with the superheroes. But everything said for X2 and Spider-Man holds true for this incredible, dark action-adventure as well. Also, the thing I said about Katie Holmes in the Wonder Boys blurb. And even though The Dark Knight is considered a superior movie, it's too depressing and drags a little on. Begins will depress you a little, but even at 140 minutes it never once feels too long. And Christian Bale is a superhero worthy of Christopher Reeve. Too bad Superman Returns was nowhere near this good.

Charlie Bartlett (2007)- In 1973, a doctor prescribed Ritalin towards the beginning of The Exorcist, hoping it would help the possessed girl with what he thought was a nervous disorder. 34 years later, we knew it was doing more harm than good (and not just when you've got an ancient evil demon up in your grill), and children were still taking it-- even to this day! Charlie Bartlett, therefore, is a hilarious but often disturbing cautionary tale about the punch prescriptions pack. It also teaches us that adults aren't always right, kids aren't always behaviorally challenged morons, and there's more to every story than you could ever imagine.

Wall-E (2008)- Except for the fact that the title robot displays clips from Hello Dolly (which still makes me shudder to think of), Wall-E is the best thing to come out of the animation genre since... well, quite frankly, since Fantasia. Another thought-provoker, it works as entertainment for kids that adults can get just as much-- probably even more-- out of watching. And it is kind of cerebral, but so is the best sci-fi movie of all time (2001, of course). So really, no complaints. If only people could see it as more than a cartoon, but for what it is: a great message that, for the umpteenth time, needs to be heeded. I mean, come on. An Inconvenient Truth is more effective a sleeping pill than The Odyssey. Who'd listen to that? But Wall-E, on the other hand....

And that's it! Sixty movies, six posts, at least four movies with Charlton Heston, probably a zillion with Jerry Goldsmith music, and, unfortunately, no talking ducks from outer space or 3000-year-old mummies.

Next time, we return to serious matters.

Ya know, for at least one post.

Central Perk Days: Xander's Film Registry, Part V

*The 1990s*- So no one told you the nineties were gonna be this way. This decade, we saw the meteoric rise (and subsequent shocking death) of Kurt Cobain, the dawn of Must-See TV, grunge, coffee culture, and modern punk. These years-- my very first decade-- also saw some pretty important movies rise up: the first full-length films in both computer-generated animation and stop-motion animation (Toy Story and The Nightmare Before Christmas, respectively), as well as the dawn of mindless, pointless violence in a genre besides horror (Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction). So grab your five friends and order a capuccino (I may be misspelling that, I've never had one) for the ten films of the nineties.

PS-- Belated honorable mentions for the 60s, since I only recently saw these: The Innocents (1961), a chilling horror story that put The King & I's Deborah Kerr back in a hoopskirt; and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967), a hilarious workplace musical that taught us why a secretary is not a toy.

The Godfather, Part III (1990)- If Sofia Coppola's horrible, obnoxious, whiny performance is removed from the movie, what you get is a classic on par with the original Francis Ford Coppola masterpieces. Al Pacino's Michael Corleone is trying desperately to get out of the infamous business, but a whiny (seeing a pattern?) Joe Mantegna and an unpredictable Andy Garcia are just making it too flipping impossible. The film also has some incredible dramatic scenes, with Michael confessing his ultimate sins to the future Pope John Paul I, Michael consulting with his old protector Don Tommasino, and Talia Shire's Connie-- her one good performance, this film, isn't even always enjoyable!-- in a scene involving poison cannoli and Eli Wallach as her godfather. Still a better sequel than most give it credit for.

The Doors (1991)- One of Oliver Stone's best movies, this heavily inaccurate biography of Doors frontman Jim Morrison (played perfectly by Val Kilmer) is mostly impressive for the fact that a wild, pulled-from-the-freaking-sky cast manages perfection nearly every time: Michael Madsen, Meg Ryan, Kevin Dillon, Kyle MacLachlan, Kathleen Quinlan, and even Billy Idol. Robert Richardson's cinematography captures the wild nature of the sixties combined with the absolute awe of the musical performances, and Kilmer, singing as Morrison, really does sound freakishly like him. The film's one horrific blunder-- combining a bunch of women in Morrison's life into the role of the real-life Patricia Kennealy, which made Kennealy feel betrayed-- is not diverting. All in all, it's a fantastic experience for anyone, regardless of preferences in film or music.

Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)- Thank every star in the sky William Shatner's Kirk saw his last starring role! Oh, wait-- he came back in the next one. Anyway, Nicholas Meyer's fantastic sixth installment in one of the galaxy's most uneven franchises was supposed to be the last big-screen adventure for the original Enterprise crew, and it's Cold War allegory all the way. Even though the wall had been down for a couple years by the time this movie was released, the impact of its message is not lost, and it serves as a reminder of a time when the idea of peace was new and nerve-wracking. The film also has some ironies, considering the allegory: the penal colony of Rura Penthe, described as a "gulag," is introduced to a band of prisoners including Kirk and Bones by a Klingon guard who has-- a Russian accent!

Jurassic Park (1993)- Steven "Jaws" Spielberg turned out two films in 1993-- this and the award-winning Schindler's List. However, Jurassic Park is more enjoyable. Spielberg and his team actually managed to take a fairly uninteresting book and turn it into one of the masterpieces of American cinema. With all due respect to Michael Crichton, the book is, after all, quite meticulously paced (read: yawn-inducing). But with the extraneous characters deleted, the plot devices sped up-- but not recklessly so-- and the dinosaurs themselves in our full explicit view, the prehistoric thriller works a lot better as a film than a novel. And one of the best things about the movie, John Williams' world-famous score, should never be forgotten. And will never be. Turn the light off, Lex!

Robin Hood: Men In Tights (1993)- Mel Brooks doesn't get enough credit for the comic genius he is. The reason for this, quite simply, is that most of his films (History of the World: Part I, High Anxiety, and even the more-liked Silent Movie) were flops. But in Men in Tights, he pays delightful homage to himself in a way that is neither smug nor arrogant. All of his most famous jokes (including the immortal "walk this way") are re-used; Cary Elwes and the entire cast are spot-on; and the film's WTF musical numbers add to, instead of detract from, the hilarity. Today's so-called "funny men"-- Judd Apatow comes to mind-- could use a lesson from Brooks and his entire maddeningly funny, often self-deprecating ouevre.

The Lion King (1994)- Perhaps the most unlikely inspiration for a G-rated Disney musical 'toon was William Shakespeare's Hamlet, a dark, depressing story in which a rather insane young man seeks revenge on his father's murderer. Nevertheless, The Lion King works on so many levels. The songs are, more often than not, fun, but the real attractions are the animation (still top-quality to this day) and the impressive voice talent (Matthew Broderick, James Earl Jones, Nathan Lane, Jeremy Irons, and I could have sworn I heard Madge Sinclair, but that's unverified). You just can't wait to see King.

Toy Story (1995)- A movie this famous and successful must be overrated, right? Wrong. Actually, with CGI cartoons frequently popping up in theatres-- and most inspiring less than enthusiastic reactions-- the joys of the original Toy Story are nowadays, if anything, underrated. Every kid imagines that their toys are alive-- but wouldn't it be awesome if they actually were? And despite the obnoxious Randy Newman music, this remains a classic that should be on every DVD shelf in America. With backup.

Star Trek: First Contact (1996)- If you want to make a successful Star Trek film, use time travel as your central plot point. It worked for Assignment: Earth. It worked for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. And for Picard and company's first big-screen voyage without the hideous presence of Captain Kirk, it works better than ever. When the Borg travel back in time to assimilate the entire population of Earth (horror of horrors!-- seriously, it's no picnic), only one crew can stop them. On the way, they have to help a drunken scientist make first contact with the Vulcans, get him to fly his innovative warp ship, and dance to the dulcet tones of Steppenwolf and Roy Orbison. It also saw the franchise's first PG-13 rating. This, in the words of Zefram Cochran, is the good stuff.

The Sixth Sense (1999)- I hope M. Night's films get better. Lady in the Water was good, but it was panned by just about everyone else in the world, and I just couldn't muster any interest whatsoever in The Happening. They're not always bad, but they're never as good as the one that started it all: the penultimate ghost story, The Sixth Sense. Haley Joel Osment is effectively creepy as the young boy who sees dead people; Bruce Willis is fantastic as the psychiatrist who tries to help him, and the only thing missing from the movie is his big opportunity to kick rear and take names.

Titus (1999)- Centuries before Sweeney Todd baked his victims into pies, revenge also tasted unnaturally sweet (wink-wink) in William Shakespeare's most universally despised tragedy, Titus Andronicus. Written early in his career, it reflects his early need for tutelage and refinement before such accepted classics as Hamlet and The M-Word were written. It must absolutely suck as a play-- but the film, directed by Julie Taymor (of Broadway's Lion King), is a masterpiece. Like some of the greatest movies in history, what we're looking at isn't always what we're really looking at, and the anachronisms-- as opposed to Baz Luhrmann's disgusting Romeo + Juliet-- are not overdone and actually enhance the storyline. The really bloody tragedy includes outstanding performances from Anthony Hopkins, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Harry Lennix, and Laura Fraser as the tortured Lavinia. In the end, you will feel every emotion you can possibly fathom.

Next time on Xander Candor, the Film Registry draws to a close with the last ten films, taken from the first decade of the twenty-first century. You'll see superheroes, gender-bending rock stars, great animation, and friendly robots. And do my eyes detect a cow on the roof of a cotton house?

It Wasn't Quite Orwell: Xander's Film Registry, Part IV

*The 1980s*-- One of the weirdest decades. The years that brought us Muppets on Broadway, Indiana Jones against the Nazis, Reagan in the White House (better than Nixon, at any rate), and, of course, Tim Burton. I'd like to take this opportunity to remember John Hughes. Even though none of his films made it onto the list (the list was established quite a while ago anyway), it's important to remember his contribution to Hollywood in the era at hand.

A sidenote: Gandhi almost made it onto this list. But if you have any sense of social responsibility, you'll probably end up watching Gandhi sometime anyway.

Reds (1981)- The Academy chose to give the top honors this particular year to Chariots of Fire. Boo! The music alone should have disqualified it from winning any awards, much like Rocky in '76. But Warren Beatty's biography of American journalist John Reed (who happened to be a socialist) is by far superior. Astoundingly, the movie achieved some level of success in the United States near the height of the Cold War, and the central character is buried in the Kremlin. It's not a reverent film whose goal is to convert people to the Marxist left, but it doesn't exactly blast Reed and his colleagues for their "Red" views. Dramatized scenes about Reed's life are woven together with interviews with Reed's real-life contemporaries, and that's the distinction that makes it a great film. They act as narrators and, as the main titles denote, Witnesses to history, and they were writer/producer/director/star Beatty's method of avoiding boring historical exposition. But they serve another purpose: they make the film, with its at-times over-the-top drama, seem real.

The Final Conflict (1981)- This third (and what should have been the last) chapter in The Omen saga isn't exactly a Godfather or a Ben-Hur. As sequels go, it's not even a Godfather Part II or an Empire Strikes Back. But there is a very specific reason why this film belongs on this list. Warning-- I have to give away the ending. Richard Donner's original Omen set new standards. Damien: Omen II was, well, the No Child Left Behind of the film world, making us sit through an hour and 45 minutes of crap interspersed with mindless scenes of gore. The Final Conflict provides smarter, more accomplished entertainment and builds to what could have been one of the most ridiculous finales in movie history: the killing of the wicked Antichrist by the reborn Jesus. Sam Neill gives a fantastic performance as a grown-up Damien, but the real high point of the film is, expectedly, Jerry Goldsmith's awe-inspiring score, which is strong, fulfilling, and entirely appropriate for each scene. It does a fantastic job in a truly thrilling scene where a group of teary-eyed Catholic priests watch the alignment of stars that signifies the Second Coming. Though it flopped, in a just world, this would be a Godfather II or an Empire.

Poltergeist (1982)- Ah, more horror, this one lighter and rated PG. Twenty-seven years later, they're still heeeeere. And still, this movie remains an enticing and relentlessly entertaining cautionary tale about builders' disrespect for the dead and, of course, letting your child watch TV after sunset. The story of a family tormented by the titular psychokinetic spectres, the Steven Spielberg-produced, Jerry Goldsmith-accompanied experience is something special: a horror movie that can bring families closer together. And kudos to Craig T. Nelson for his performance as the dad. And and a shout-out to the memory of Heather O'Rourke, who played little Carol Anne.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982)- I happened to like Star Trek: The Motion Picture... ya know, in an it-may-be-bad-but-it's-still-Star Trek kind of way. But I still have to admit that Nicholas Meyer's darker, less grandiose, and better-acted follow-up is, well, better. The film managed to take the most boring villain in the history of Trek-- the poetic, genetically engineered Khan-- and make him interesting. It introduced us to Kirk's illegitimate son. It introduced us to Kirstie Alley. And most importantly, it showed the world that Star Wars didn't have a monopoly on superior sci-fi sequels (in an era when The Empire Strikes Back was the pinnacle of its genre). Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan! Khaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan!

Return of the Jedi (1983)- Okay, last minute correction, folks. I couldn't let this list pass by without at least cursorily mentioning the cultural impact of Star Wars. And although it is often lambasted for annoying audiences with Ewoks (three words, people-- Jar Jar Binks!), Return of the Jedi, in my opinion, is equally as good as The Empire Strikes Back. If for nothing else, then the fact that Luke Skywalker has finally stopped whining like a little girl who just got her Barbies taken away. But I also would like to recognize John Williams' score, Alan Hume's cinematography (a close second to Peter Suschitzky's job on Empire), and Richard Marquand's direction. This film proves more conclusively than any other movie that George Lucas belongs not in the director's chair, but in the executive producer's... office?

2010 (1984)- How good could a sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey be, you ask? Pretty freaking good, I answer. 32 minutes shorter and with at least a good hour more dialogue, the less-cerebral sequel is a great showcase of raw eighties talent-- Roy Scheider, Helen Mirren, and John Lithgow! It also provides a good Cold War message. Of course, in the film, the Cold War would still be going in 2010, but wouldn't that have been sad? It shows the need for people to cooperate and be wary of engaging in conflicts on a world that really doesn't belong to us. And the return of Douglas Rain as the way-too-placid voice of Hal is pure gravy.

Amadeus (1984)- The 70s saw some pretty bad film versions of famous plays. Heck, the 1977 version of A Little Night Music is so allegedly bad that the producers let the prints deteriorate over three decades! Fortunately, the 80s saw them rebound. And what better example than the award-winning translation of Peter Shaffer's smash hit Amadeus? The story of Antonio Salieri and his bitter rivalry with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the film actually does something miraculous. Its two main characters have absolutely no likeable traits, and yet, we still watch them battle. Willingly. We still end up kind of rooting for Salieri... until he becomes a cackling mental patient reminiscing about his plot to kill Mozart and steal his music. But the tragic, funny film is either 160 (the theatrical version) or 180 (the richer Director's Cut) minutes of entertainment of a caliber you couldn't get today. The moment you hear that horrible Mozart laugh, you'll know you can't escape. And you won't want to.

Beverly Hills Cop (1984)- Not much to say about this movie, really. But the day I can't see Eddie Murphy going massively, humiliatingly undercover to catch his best friend's killers in Beverly Hills is the day I stop caring about life.

Spaceballs (1987)- After all this time, I still want Spaceballs: The Flamethrower. Mel Brooks' best comedy of the 80s is more than a Star Wars spoof. There are also hints of Planet of the Apes, Alien, and general sci-fi missteps. And Rick Moranis as Dark Helmet? Unforgettable. I even like Joan Rivers in the movie-- of course, it's only her voice. Although the copper-plated fembot she vocalizes looks more real than she ever did. The Schwartz will be with this film through all eternity.

The Abyss (1989)- Sure, James Cameron directed Terminator 2 and Aliens and eventually revoked his license to be taken seriously in Hollywood with the abomination that was Titanic. (Is it me, or does everyone but the Academy despise that movie?) But for a glimpse into his real genius, watch the Special Edition of The Abyss. A film where the aliens don't even show up until there's only like an hour and a half left of the movie (and it's a three-hour movie). A film where Ed Harris gives the performance of a lifetime. And a film that showed us the special loves between a man and his loathed ex-wife, a man and his sub... and a man and his pet rat.

Next time, we don our flannel and start singing "I'll Be There for You" for a recap of the 90s. We'll hear lions roar, Star Trek twice will soar, and Oliver Stone will bore.

That 70s List: Xander's Film Registry, Part III

*The 1970s*- No other decade contained such a broad spectrum of cultural transformation. The seventies saw the tail end of the counterculture movement, a Hollywood-spawned upswing in Christianity practice thanks to religious scare-fests like The Omen, and the very velvety rise of disco. This decade, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Star Trek, Han Solo, and great white sharks swarmed movie screens around the world; some people wore hideous outfits; All in the Family served as the televised ambassador of old-fashioned conservativism's clash with newfangled liberalism; and more hideous outfits.

MASH (1970)- Zanier, raunchier, and more genuinely funny (as in, actually funny) than its TV spinoff, Robert Altman's somewhat neglected war comedy is probably the only film that is both seen as a masterpiece and rejected in the mainstream. It's certainly the only good one. Filmed entirely with zoom lenses (that sounds headache-inducing, but it's really not) with a gargantuan cast (including Donald Sutherland, Sally Kellerman, Robert Duvall, and, 23 years before he became Odo on Deep Space Nine, Rene Auberjonois), MASH is an outrageous example of finding humor in the darkest of circumstances. And the top-quality script has "Revenge of the Blacklisted" written all over it.

The Godfather (1972)- Remember, kids. When you're going out to whack the rat in your crime family, don't forget to pick up the cannolis from the bakery on your way home. Francis Ford Coppola's epic masterpiece (adapted from Mario Puzo's... well, piece, at the very least) is refreshingly entertaining. And paradoxical, too: it simultaneously condones and condemns the life of the mobster. And as the raspy-voiced patriarch of the Corleone family, Marlon Brando reminds us that his ridiculously high paychecks were always worth it. Like MASH, it is also a cross-section of Hollywood's past and future best and brightest: Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, James Caan, Robert Duvall, Abe Vigoda, Morgana King, Sterling Hayden.... There will never be another crime drama that even comes close. It breaks my heart.

American Graffiti (1973)- All American Graffiti is legitimately remembered for in most circles is having the best soundtrack of the 70s, with every major Johnny & Sue Era hit from "Barbara Anne" to "Johnny B. Goode." Unfortunately, people don't recognize that, as a director, it is George Lucas' supreme accomplishment. Star Wars was great, but the series suffered in any of the four films he helmed (the true greats in the series are Return of the Jedi and The Empire Strikes Back). Only for this nostalgic story about friends leaving for college does his chalkboard-clapping genius come through. The ensemble cast is at their peak. The pervasive music underscores, but never outshines. And best of all is the where-are-they-now ending, both funny in its out-of-this-era comfort and chilling in its icy predictions.

The Exorcist (1973)- Whew, speaking of icy and chilling! The Exorcist is often cast aside as un-scary in this modern time-- although I'm sorry, but a digital lava monster just isn't scary-- or loathed for its depiction of absolute evil coming in through the bathroom window and terrorizing the innocent. Of course, those people fail to see the film for what it is: a stern condemnation of unchained evil. And when the elderly Father Merrin (now one of my favorite characters in film history) arrives at the Georgetown doorstep of single mother/movie star Chris MacNeill, you can't resist the urge to jump up and shout, "Ha, evil! Sucks to be you!" And then there's Regan, the 12-year-old girl tormented by the evil demon Pazuzu (not, in fact, Satan, as the common misconception goes), physically acted brilliantly by Linda Blair and voiced in her altered state by the (I admit it) sub-par Mercedes McCambridge. Brutal, lewd, and profane, it's still a masterpiece. And every second of brutal, profane lewdness has its purpose. Unlike the movies of today.

Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)- The same year that The Exorcist showed off the grim side of spirituality, David Greene (Godspell) and Norman Jewison (Superstar) directed G-rated Biblical musicals that anachronize (I officially declare that a word if it isn't already) the Gospels. Superstar is the better of the two. Jewison, who also directed Fiddler on the Roof, brought the entire production to the beautiful Holy Land itself, showcased in crumbling ruins and fantastic caves. But at the center of it all are the performances. There is no dialogue that isn't sung or accompanied, and no one handles rock opera like Carl Anderson, who should have won a little golden guy for his tortured, vocally demanding portrayal of Judas. Douglas Slocombe's unspeakably bewitching cinematography should have gotten one as well. One of those masterpieces that doesn't really get recognition. It is a well-loved film... by the twenty people who have seen it.

Tommy (1975)- The other big rock opera of the sixties, Tommy, got another big promotion to the silver screen. This one, though, is decidedly less... well, for lack of a better word, divine. It's a masterpiece, true-- but while Superstar aspired to show a more glorious side of human nature, Tommy is pure dregs. Most of the characters (the psychotic Cousin Kevin, perverted Uncle Ernie, the murderous stepfather Frank, and even Tommy's sometimes-saintly mother, Nora) belong behind bars, and so does the director for that matter. The movie-- which, for the record, missed the mark of the original opera's message by about a zillion miles-- shows everything from the virtues of faith to the dangers of cultism to the bitter, evil side of human nature. Tommy's parents get all the money their deaf/dumb/blind son makes at pinball. And in the end, when Tommy-- cured-- tries to tell his newfound followers that they don't need to live in fear, they kill his family and leave him for dead. Not uplifting in the slightest, but brilliantly acted, well-sung (mostly), and stunningly staged.

The Omen (1976)- There's so much more to this undervalued Richard Donner classic than 666, Damien, and prophetic mumbo-jumbo. The really scary things about it are two: one, Jerry Goldsmith's haunting score comprised mainly of Latin chants; two, the fact that everything that happens within the movie, every tragedy, has a legitimate possible explanation. The cheaply conceived, expensively realized 2006 remake lacked the element of mystery-- in fact, it openly defied it by altering one of the film's climactic demises. But in this brilliant original, for all we know, the people who try to reveal Damien's identity as the Antichrist could be insane. The child never says more than a very short sentence that any five-year-old might say, and even the superbly performed role of nanny Mrs. Baylock may not be the Satanic guardian we're inclined to believe she is; it's all suggestive. And brilliantly, that's what works. Sidenote: the money Fox made off this movie went partially towards paying for Star Wars.

Superman (1978)- Another great Richard Donner film, this campy but somehow believable film defined the modern superhero genre for Hollywood. For taking over the role played so perfectly by real-life hero Christopher Reeve, 21st-century tabloid-fodder poser Brandon Routh should be jailed for the rest of his life. Other top-notch talent fills the movie from start to finish, from Marlon Brando as Superman's Kryptonian father to Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor, whose initially ridiculous sounding real-estate scheme turns into one of the biggest, most believable apocalyptic nightmares ever conceived for a comic-book picture. Speaking of nightmares, Margot Kidder is terrible as Lois Lane, but you can't have everything. And with John Williams' nearly incomparable score, the eye-popping special effects, and Geoffrey Unsworth's tragically final round of cinematographic genius, Superman comes close to filling that unattainable quota.

Hair (1979)- 11 years after the play shook the world, Milos Forman (Amadeus) directed a thoroughly different two-hour movie with the same character names and songs, but a continuous story in the place of the play's famous book-that-isn't-really-a-book. A great cross-section of the 1960s hippie movement, the film version of Hair is a mostly brilliant beginning and middle thrown together with an ending that is at first jarring, but eventually can be recognized as a brilliant work of cinema. You'll walk away singing "Manchester England," "Donna," "3500," "I Got Life," and "Easy to Be Hard," and just about every other song herein. As far as movie musicals go, it's not perfect. But it's pretty close.

The Muppet Movie (1979)- I firmly believe that every child should see this movie before the age of two. In the same year that Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock made their big-screen debut, the better story and star treatments went to the TV-to-film transition of Kermit and Fozzie. From the Hollywood prologue to the swamp-bound prelude of "The Rainbow Connection" to the uproarious conclusion, The Muppet Movie is one childish spectacle that adults shouldn't have to put aside. And kids won't get the numerous celebrity cameos, but that just means they get to focus on the magic of Jim Henson at work-- a genius that has never, and will never, be equaled.

Next up, we tackle the 1980s. For all you XC readers out there, that means everything from powdered wigs to fuzzy Russian hats to pointy Vulcan ears.

Make Bad Spy Movies, Not War: Xander's Film Registry, Part II

*The 1960s*-- the flower power era. The decade we landed on the moon ('cause we really did, people, get used to it!), developed mainstream cynicism, and sat by while at least three of the greatest men in American history were viciously murdered. The era celebrated in Hair, and reproached in just about every movie made about it. These ten movies reflect the shifting priorities of viewers in the English-speaking world, as well as the counterculture movement in its brief life.

Dr. No (1962)- The film that introduced us to 007 wasn't even an adequate preview of the franchise that lay in store. For one thing, it could be taken 100 percent seriously. Also, in his series-founding performance, Sean Connery proves that, whatever the title of his 1967 adventure might suggest, you really only live once. Connery had three great Bond movies in him, and that's it. This first one has him trying to save the space program from the most believable villain in the entire series-- the titular Dr. No. Ursula Andress co-stars.

Lawrence of Arabia (1962)- David Lean's epic war drama should inspire a lot of gratitude in us as moviegoers. Peter O'Toole's first starring role; the best performance of Alec Guinness' career (oo, another blow at Star Wars, sorry); the best battle scenes ever to show up on screen until Return of the King. The story of World War I officer T.E. Lawrence, LoA is 227 minutes of pure cinema. What more can be said?

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)- It's astounding that Stanley Kubrick gets more recognition for the wrenchingly horrible A Clockwork Orange than this black-and-white apocalypse comedy. The film that showed us why you can't fight in the War Room, Strangelove is an all-star spoof of early Cold War paranoia that seems to phase back into relevance every two decades: the arms race of the 80s, our modern fear of self-destruction.... And, of course, in the title role is Peter Sellers' pinnacle performance: an ex-Nazi scientist who advocates a post-apocalyptic underground society in which intelligent, rich men have the eternal companionship of plenty of babes. Ya know, to further the human race. A definite classic!

My Fair Lady (1964)- No, Eliza, don't get him his slippers! By far the funniest musical in history, My Fair Lady is a story of transformation as "guttersnipe" Eliza Doolittle becomes the most beautiful woman in England. Rex Harrison-- just like he did in Cleopatra-- makes the movie as Henry Higgins, the bossy, chauvinistic, sometimes cruel professor whose experiment is Eliza. The rest of the picture is hilariously cluttered with Eliza's alcoholic, bone-lazy father, the verbose Freddy, and Higgins' hilarious mother.

Our Man Flint (1966)- Without Our Man Flint and In Like Flint (1967), there would have been no Austin Powers. We probably wouldn't know who James Coburn is, either. His star-making role as ridiculous superspy Derek Flint in Daniel Mann's action-comedy remains one of the most tamely-yet-outrageously-funny characters in history. Equally funny is Lee J. Cobb as Flint's bamboozled boss. The bad guys aren't particularly threatening, but it's still first-class escapist adventure. Spy's eye activity: try to find the part when a supposedly thick "steel wall" buckles under Flint's gentle push, and the enormous foam "boulder" hitting the head of an actress on the way off a self-destructing island.

Doctor Dolittle (1967)- By this time, musicals were no longer what people wanted to see, and the ones that were made-- this, Camelot, Star-- were huge flops. Even so, this one happens to be pretty great. For one thing, with a giant pink snail and a two-headed dancing llama thingy, this was as close as kids of the day were getting to the psychedelic movement. And for another, there's Rex Harrison, one of the best actors in history, kicking Eddie Murphy's butt, quite frankly. One of the films every kid should see.

The Jungle Book (1967)- Another movie every kid should see. The last Disney movie supervised by Walt himself, this classic is still solidly entertaining for viewers of any age. In other words, if your kid wants to watch TV, put this in before Hannah Montana or Dora kill your brain cells. Great Disney songs, Disney animation that still looks impressive... but Disney's trademark hackery is nowhere in sight. Whew.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)- The only Kubrick movie better than Dr. Strangelove! This very-cerebral, still-visually-gripping sci-fi event is the standard by which all sci-fi movies since have been measured... and found wanting. From the haunting entreaties of the lethally malfunctioning computer Hal (he's afraid, Dave) to the first-rate design to the jaw-dropping climax as Dave Bowman enters the monolith (and we spend ages seeing multicolored, astounding sights I can't describe here-- it's still the sixties, after all), 2001, though obviously a false futurism, is anything but a false promise.

Planet of the Apes (1968)- It's no 2001, but it's a very close second. And if you're keeping score, that's four Charlton Heston movies so far on the registry. In this loose adaptation of a French sci-fi novel, symbolism, irony, paradox, and primates are everywhere. And it inspired a series that sustained itself not in a linear, but a cyclical, narrative-- something very rare in Hollywood history. Not to mention the first human-chimpanzee kiss on screen (in your face, Scott Bakula!). Often disturbing, always a masterpiece.

Medium Cool (1969)- It's not really a documentary, not really a drama, and certainly not a docudrama. Haskell Wexler's interpretation of the events around the 1968 Democratic National Convention is one thing for sure, though-- required viewing. Full of hope for the future of Bobby Kennedy-- and, hauntingly, released a year after his assassination-- and somewhat nonlinear, it's probably the only successful eyewitness account of American history that isn't hideously boring. Great performances by Harold Blankenship and Verna Bloom as a mother and son befriended by a desensitized Chicago newsman.

Next time: the style-less seventies, from MASH to Muppets.

When Johnny Met Mary Sue: Xander's Film Registry, Part I

Welcome to a six-part series bearing witness to CX's true love of the motion picture. In the next six posts, I will cover 10 films each from six decades-- films that everyone, in my sincere opinion, everyone should see, for many reasons which will be made clear. After all, what do I know better than movies?

... nothing.

*The 1950s*-- the era romanticized in Grease, lamented in the modern world, and packed with malt shops, psychological repression, and ill-fated teenage rebellion. (Ah, if we could only go back.) A decade wherein movie audiences were lured back to movie theatres (after abandoning them for the more comfortable, in-your-own-home convenience of TV) with blockbuster movie spectacles featuring big names and colossal budgets. The infancy of widescreen. These ten films represent, not necessarily the best of the fifties, but the absolute must-sees. Don't ask me why the two aren't mutually exclusive.

FYI-- the movies in this series will be listed in chronological order... mostly.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)- Recently remade as a Keanu Reeves vehicle (there should have been a freaking mourning period when they greenlit that movie!!), Robert Wise's original black-and-white classic still possesses supreme power. One of the most emotionally legitimate and technically impressive films ever made (despite the clunky 50s special effects-- it wasn't a DeMille movie, for crying out loud), Earth was really the first film to use an ambassador from outer space to explain to us why we need to stop killing each other and ourselves. The idea of there being aliens out there who actually want to see us... ya know, not self-destruct, is one of the most awe-inspiring thoughts the human mind can produce. Not to mention strong performances and good dialogue. Buy a copy on DVD, then shatter a copy of the remake... I recommend a sledgehammer.

The Greatest Show on Earth (1952)- Okay, so it's more like the Most Melodramatic Movie on Earth-- or it was, before Titanic. But some scenes in Cecil B. DeMille's circus drama are actually amazing. Example: there's a trick where a girl lays down under an elephant's foot with the help of a trainer, but when the trainer gets jealous that the girl has found a new love... well, there's a close call. They don't make 'em like this anymore... because if they did, no one would ever go to the movies ever again. Nevertheless, it's a good reminder that the overblown, big-budget films of today could have been so much better with the right direction from a bygone age, and performances from Charlton Heston and James Stewart definitely don't hurt.

The Robe (1953)- I called the 1950s the infancy of widescreen. Well, labor began with Abel Gance's 1920s Napoleon, but the bundle of joy didn't finally arrive until The Robe, the Richard Burton vehicle that introduced the world to one of the widest of widescreen camera techniques. The drama is a little sparse, and it does sometimes feel preachy and sanctimonious (it's a story about Jesus and Pilate), but, again, it really makes you wish Transformers could have been handled with class like this.

Guys and Dolls (1955)- What do you get when Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, and director Joseph Mankiewicz team up? An absorbing gambling dramedy with a great jazzy score! Don't worry, that wasn't an attempt at a joke. It's the truth. You have an illegal floating crap game (that desperately needs a new place to play), a comically obnoxious woman who seems to be permanently engaged to Sinatra's character (that'd be Adelaide), and an attempt by Brando to woo and win a Salvation Army bell-ringer, played by Jean Simmons (no, not Gene). Some of the messages may be a little dated (the that's-so-offensive crowd might even consider them "politically incorrect"), but it's still a pretty good way to spend two and a half hours.

Daddy Long Legs (1955)- One of the lesser-remembered widescreen musicals in Fox's library, this Fred Astaire comedy sees him sponsor an 18-year-old (or something like that) French girl while the world questions the appropriateness of such an act. Thin on story, morbidly obese on showmanship, but absolutely memorable one way or another. Particularly great is a scene at a French orphanage in which one of the little guys declares that he wants a hamburger with chocolate sauce.

The King & I (1956)- What more needs to be said? Great humor, a believable story (because it really happened, duh), two impossibly high-caliber leading performances, and legendary show music. A real milestone!

Carousel (1956)- Cut out the preachy, far-fetched scenes in "Heaven" and you've got a great story, taken from a European drama with a way-more tragic, way-less uplifting finale. Its message is essentially that it's not how you spend your life that defines you-- it's the basic goodness in your life, and your devotion to those close to you. Criticized widely as a film that glorifies the deadbeat lifestyle and cuts too much out of the story (namely a lot of songs that really don't do much to further said story), Carousel is still funny and sad, and definitely gets a response.

The Ten Commandments (1956)- Apart from its technical innovations, I really can't find anything good to say for Cecil B. DeMille's 1923 silent version of The Ten Commandments. It's dull, boring, confusing, and it feels waaaaay too much like a Sunday school lesson to have any legitimate entertainment value. But when he went back and re-did the movie, taking out the original story's 20th-century segments and fleshing out a story of unbridled scope and focus, he atoned for his sins (no pun intended). It's not the grand master of Biblical epics (read a little further down), but the gaudiness of the sets and costumes and the absolute camp of the performances somehow combine to make a thrilling movie experience that both betrays its director's obvious bias and also overcomes it to produce universally accessible entertainment. And Yul Brynner rocks.

Gigi (1958)- This is what we in the business like to refer to as a "total chick flick," but it's the rare chick flick that anyone can get into. It includes hilariously overt talk about sex, at least for 1958, and a hilarious performance from French legend Maurice Chevalier. There's nothing that comes across quite as well as his singing "I'm Glad I'm Not Young Anymore" and reminiscing about a past relationship while being told by the ex that everything he says is absolutely not true in "I Remember It Well." Oh, and some girl falls in love.

Ben-Hur (1959)- This is the grand master of Biblical epics. It does the impossible at every opportunity: depicts Jesus without being overly operatic or holier-than-thou; shows mammoth spectacle without losing sight once of the human characters; and features a score that even ranks above John Williams' Star Wars as the best in movie history. Winner of 11 little gold action figures in 1960, William Wyler's supreme drama of the ancient world remains one of the most amazing achievements ever. And for the last time, people, no one actually died in the chariot race! All the victims look like dummies, respond like dummies, and are, in fact, dummies!

Tune in next time as we here at XC examine the swingin' sixties, from Lawrence of Arabia to Medium Cool.

What Utter Gar-Bage!

I know it's a cartoon, but I maintain that one of the best science fiction TV shows in recent memory is Matt Groening's "Futurama." That show was five seasons of great voice-work, movie-quality animation, butt-kicking humor, and timely, relevant stories (even if it was set in the 31st century).

One of my all-time favorite episodes of "Futurama" (although I can't remember the title) was the one in which we learn that all of Earth's trash was, in the past, gathered into a big ball and shot off the planet. In the episode, the enormous ball of garbage was coming back to Earth, threatening the planet with total and unbearably smelly annihilation, as if a bunch of disgruntled sanitation workers were fans of the movie Armageddon.

Then, in yesterday's newspaper, I saw a story that made me gasp so hard I nearly asphyxiated.

In the Pacific Ocean, there is a swirling mass of plastic waste twice the size of the state of Texas!

Still not quite believing mankind is irresponsible?

This story wouldn't have had nearly the impact it had were it not for the sheer size of this thing. It is now a mobile, naturally artificial island cutting a polluted swath through an ocean that has long been associated with pristine water.

Granted, we do not live in a DVD of South Pacific, but it's still too much to believe.

The city of Seattle is proposing a charge of 20 cents every time you leave the supermarket with disposable plastic bags. If anyone reading this is eligible to vote in the city of Seattle, I implore you to vote the measure in! I'm sure a substantial percentage of that giant piece of crud is made up of plastic bags! Who knows how many fish and other oceanic life forms are dying cruel, horrible deaths because people don't give a crap what happens to their crap?

Today, once again, I am not proud to be a member of the human race.

P.S. You should check out that "Futurama" episode.

I Am Alive and Writing

Candid Xander is back... briefly.

I haven't much time to write today, so I devote this blog to explain the one-month absence of new XC posts because I just know you can't live without them. :)> Over the past month, I have been in the fruitless process of seeking gainful employment. This has eaten up virtually all of my internet time. (By the way, I highly recommend snagajob.com to anyone looking for work.)

On those rare occasions when I had time left over in my 55-minute internet time slots at my local library, I was actually reviewing movies on another great website-- IMDb. Because I really love movies. You know how it is.

Furthermore, I take all the sad, strange things happening in the world as the almighty's blog. They are supernatural cutting remarks about the sad, sad state of the human race. Since I've last written, Michael Jackson has died, Farrah Fawcett and Johnny Carson were given far less notice for performing the same inauspicious feat, bad things have happened in Iran, and, in case you didn't hear, Michael Jackson is dead.

A Train Wreck Revisited

With the world in the horrifying state it's in at the moment, I shall devote this week's blogging energy to a story about a movie-- and they're ain't a thing anybody can do about it.

First of all, a word of acknowledgment to my 10th-grade history teacher. His long, curriculum-preventing tangential discussions in our class rekindled an old flame of mine: hideously boring epic movies of the 50s and 60s. It is with that in mind that I now write about 1963's Cleopatra.

One of the most costly movies of all time, Cleopatra is frequently regarded (even to this day, when it is considered a kind of classic) as a huge mistake, a monumental punchline, and the beast responsible for the obnoxious, adulterous affair between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Our question then is this: is it worth giving four hours of your life?

I have always answered that question as a yes. Overall, the film never sinks below a 7 or low-8 out of 10 in quality (at least, not for more than one scene at a time), and it tells an intriguing story rather well. You can take comfort in the fact that its enormous cost ensured a higher degree of realism in sets and special effects than was possible in most films of its day.

All that aside, there is a degree of truth in people's criticisms of the film, especially in Elizabeth Taylor's performance as Queen Cleopatra, which is always horrid. If it were only her, the movie would be, quite possibly, as bad as James Cameron's Titanic. Luckily, Rex Harrison (Julius Caesar here before Professor 'Enry 'Iggins of My Fair Lady) carries the first 110 minutes of the film, with some truly great dialogue, most of which is criticizing either Cleopatra (he asks if the "young lady" has "broken out of" her nursery "to irritate the adults") or someone else. But then he dies. I know that's a bit of a spoiler, but if you don't know Julius Caesar was assassinated, you probably aren't the sort of person who'd watch a movie like this anyway. Fess up.

After Caesar's stabbing (ironically a high point in the film's quality), Richard Burton takes over the romantic story with Cleopatra, and when the intermission is over, the movie never re-attains its former quality. There are some great monologues by Burton and some first-rate villainy from a surreally young, blazingly blond Roddy McDowall (for those only familiar with his work in the 80s or Planet of the Apes, his scalp may well blind you). And the climax in which the Queen of the Nile makes a colossal asp of herself (I had to) redeems the previous two hours in their entirety.

All in all, it's worth a look on a rainy day. If you're not as big a movie fanatic as I am, it'll have to be a torrential downpour when you never want to leave your house again, but it's still enjoyable.

So why am I writing about a movie? 1) I can. 2) It's what I know best. 3) What else would I blog about this week? David Carradine's death? Octomom's reality show? How much bin Laden hates America?

Saving the world, one movie at a time.

America is Having a Cold Flash... a Cold War Flashback, That is

In Warren Beatty's "Reds," socialists from all over the world tromp through the wintry streets of Moscow belting out a Soviet hymn. In "2010," feuding Russian and American watercraft confront each other in Central America. In "Rocky IV," Soviet/American tension is played out in each violent blow of the fight between Sylvester Stallone's Rocky and Dolph Lundgren's Drago.

What do all these movies have in common?

All produced during the Cold War, they share a common fear about the deteriorating state of relations between the two empires. And in the end, there is always some kind of reconciliation between the inhabitants of both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Needfully enough, the Cold War ended before I was born. Russia and America haven't exactly been the staunchest of allies since then, but things didn't start to get this bad until last summer, when Russia placed former Soviet republic Georgia under its thumb once again.

And this morning, I read in the newspaper that the same government (in Moscow) that allows skinheads to march down their streets unassailed has arrested every gay-rights activist for holding a march... even the ones that weren't marching! The city's mayor has called such marches "satanic" and a threat to fundamental morals.

Since when was it satanic to insist common human protection and fairness? Russia isn't a Soviet nation anymore; Communism, that elaborate and undignified political system that only works if you take out the human beings, is now at home only in places like China and Cuba. Yet the country is clearly reverting to what, in "Reds," Emma Goldman called a militaristic prison, a nightmarish police states where dissent and equality are slaves to the establishment.

Isn't there anyone to speak out against such a horrendous squashing of the human voice? Why does a government protect the rights of those who persecute others so arbitrarily, while calling decent people satanic and immoral?

It's sick.

It looks like the Cold War is making a comeback, and this time, it's even worse. The 1984 movie "2010," a sequel to "2001: A Space Odyssey," is very rarely taken seriously (despite its vibrant, valid message) because its central premise-- Russians and Americans overcoming their differences to cooperate on a dangerous space mission-- revolves around the Cold War still being an issue in the years 2010-2015. It looks like they still can. But the danger is greater this time around. There are more nuclear powers on the world stage than there were 20 years ago... and more confrontational ones at that. Nobody will be safe unless people can realize that, being put upon this planet, we were given the responsibilities to safeguard our brothers and sisters, as well as our common, spherical home.

In "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace," the Man of Steel rallies to disarm the nuclear world. If it takes a fictional guy in a bright cape and tights to point out violent, arrogant human stupidity, then, quite frankly, we're doomed-- and not just the humans.