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© 2004-2008 by John Varley; all rights reserved

Hairspray (2007) This is the best 2007 film I’ve seen so far, and it’s late July. Of course, there are many current films I haven’t seen yet, and many more to come, including the “Oscar contenders” bunched up as they always are late in the year, but this will do for Best Picture for now, until something better comes along. (Possibly the much-awaited Sweeney Todd?) There is only one reason I can think of for someone not to love this movie, and that is if you hate, just simply hate, musicals. I know there are such creatures, and I feel sorry for you. What do you do for fun? This movie rocks. It rocks and rocks and rocks, and then it rocks some more. The story is totally unbelievable, and who cares? That’s what musicals are about, they’re fantasies. Wouldn’t it be nice if fat girls could win dance contests? Wouldn’t it be nice if black and white could come together over the music we all love? I will buy the DVD, and these days that’s a pretty high compliment. IMDb.com

Hamlet (1990) Mel Gibson kicks the shit out of Shakespeare. IMDb.com

Hannibal (2001) One of the all-time great let-downs, both book and movie. IMDb.com

Happy Endings (2005) I have to put this movie on my list of things I've seen because I try to be complete. But I can't review it. Professional reviewers aren't supposed to admit stuff like this, but I'm just a guy who writes what he thinks about movies, and I'm going to admit that when we saw this last night I was feeling exhausted and a bit depressed and I'd had a mild headache for two days. I kept thinking I should be liking the movie more than I was, that it just wasn't coming together for me though all the elements were there. That could be because the movie wasn't assembling it all well, or it could be because I was just feeling lousy. I'm not going to bad-mouth a movie I saw under those circumstances, so take this as an entirely neutral and useless "review." (I will say that I found the auctorial asides revealing future events and the screenwriters' opinions seemed lame, and a distraction.) Maybe Lee will have something to add. She seemed to be enjoying it. It wasn't THAT bad. The characters weren't very engaging, except for Jude, played by the always amazing Maggie Gyllenhaal. We talked about her a lot afterward. IMDb.com

Happily Ever After (Ils se marièrent et eurent beaucoup d'enfants) (French, 2004) A completely humdrum French adultery comedy. They used to do these things a lot better than this. There seemed no point to anything, just some people I didn’t like very much either cheating on their spouses or thinking about it. A waste of time. IMDb.com

Happy New Year (1987) ... is a remake of La bonne année, a 1973 film by Claude Lelouch that is, by all accounts, a lot better than this one. But since I haven't seen that one, I came to this one unprejudiced, and I have to say I enjoyed it quite a bit. It begins as a simple heist movie, which isn't bad at all, but in the middle it turns into something quite different, and that's even better. It's a showcase for the talents of Peter Falk, and who doesn't like Peter Falk? I loved him as Columbo, and the funny thing is, I have never seen an episode of "Columbo" in its entirety. Imagine that, learning to love a character through simply glimpsing little bits of business here and there while the TV happens to be on. If you haven't seen it already, check him out playing himself in Wim Wenders's brilliant Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin). There is also Charles Durning, one of my favorite character actors, and Wendy Hughes, a cool Grace Kelly type who should have been better known by now. IMDb.com

Hard Candy (2005) There's a lot I'd like to say about this film, but I can't get started without a small

SPOILER WARNING!!!

I say small, because I think just about everybody knows about the twist that occurs about 15 minutes into the film. Hell, it's given away even by the picture on the DVD box. Which leads me to muse ... in these days when so many more people are paying so much more attention to movies many months or even years before their release, is it still possible to spring a real surprise on the audience? I guess it is, but it's a lot harder, and you almost have to close your ears to be unaware. And the studios even help you out, with things like the box cover. I mean, I get the feeling that if Psycho were released today, instead of saying "Do not reveal the ending! No one will be seated during the last half hour!" the posters would say "Janet Leigh dies halfway through!" And "Tony Perkins is really his dead mom!" When was the last time I was really surprised in a major way, not just little plot twists? Well, there's been a couple of times. I didn't know in The Usual Suspects that Kevin Spacey was really Keyser Söze (oops! Hope you didn't know that already!). And I also say small because the surprise really comes early, so the movie is not spoiled by knowing that she is stalking him rather than the other way around. But it would have been nice not to know ...

This is a real thought-provoker. There are so many things to think about here, from gut reaction to intellectual exercise. Is it really believable that a 14-year-old girl could be as smart and cunning as portrayed here? Not really, but hey, 99% of criminal masterminds in the movies are way smarter than just about anybody in real life. I can accept it as a fictional device.

What are your thoughts about torture? I'm agin it ... except in those very, very, very rare instances when it might become absolutely necessary to get some information very, very, very fast in order to save a life. The sort of situation in the original Dirty Harry movie, for instance, where a woman is buried alive and only one asshole knows where she is. I'd have gutted the sonofabitch slowly and fed his intestines to him ... and I would have expected to be fired and probably indicted for it later, as would be only proper. Or the sort of once-in-a-lifetime situation Jack Bauer apparently encounters at least once every hour in the TV series "24." (I've never seen it, but that's what I hear.) Or for being Iraqi and living in Baghdad ... wait a minute, that's Dick Cheney's standard for legitimizing torture, not mine. Most people I know are solidly against torture, usually without even the above exceptions ... except in one case.

Pedophiles. Child rapists and murderers. I have lost track of the number of times I've heard otherwise peaceful, loving people—the majority of them women—recommend cutting their fucking dicks off and/or castrating them, with or without anesthetic.

This movie makes you confront that ethic. It grabs you by the nape of the neck and thrusts you face-first right into the scrotum and let's you watch ... though there isn't a speck of gore in it. There doesn't have to be. Showing Patrick Wilson's face as he is subjected to the procedure (or is he?) is graphic enough. Still want to castrate 'em? Hell, I still do, but is Ellen Page as the 14-year-old surgeon having maybe a little too much fun as she cuts? Is she enjoying it as much as the baby-raper enjoyed his underage sweeties?

As if all this weren't disturbing enough, there is another creepy thing going on, as Roger Ebert pointed out. Some men like being tied up and hurt. Do you think they might get their rocks off on this film? Personally, I doubt it. Bondage is playing-acting, usually, and the guys who like it want to be screamed at, dominated by an older woman with whips and chains and leather, not toyed with by a barely-pubescent girl. And yes, there are guys who are turned on by castration, and not even the fantasy of it but the real deal (there are actual websites devoted to this, believe it or not), but that's a very small and very sick minority.

One review said this is one of the movies that when you leave it, you'll be talking about it with your friends for a long time, and you probably won't come to any easy answers. I agree. It challenges you, again and again and again, as you learn more about the pedophile (and, at first, you aren't even sure if he's a pedophile or just a slightly creepy voyeur) and more about the girl. I'll say no more about that. See it and decide.

There is only one flaw in the pic. The movie is a verbal and physical duel between two people, and it should have been left at that. There are two other people who appear briefly, and they were entirely superfluous to the relentless thrust of the story of the two. It was a waste of screen time and a distraction to bring in the outer world. The only world that existed, for these two, for a short while, was the house and their anger and fear and the past that was dragged out like a bloody testicle or a monster baby, kicking and screaming. Patrick Wilson is very, very good here. He is called on to do some suffering most men don't even want to imagine, and do it for long periods of time. But he is totally eclipsed by Ellen Page, who was 17 at the time but looks 14. She makes Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction look like Glinda the Good Witch, and she never has to scream and froth at the mouth to do it. There's not even a hint of insanity. She knows exactly what she's doing, and why, and she stays three steps ahead of her quarry most of the time. Even when he seems to gain a momentary advantage, she turns out to have been one step ahead of him. This has got to be one of the most empowering roles ever for a woman. IMDb.com

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle (2004) H & K smoke some really good dope, get a gigantic case of the munchies, and nothing will do but that they consume mass quantities of sliders at the grease palace we don’t have out here on the Left Coast. It becomes a quest, which takes them through Princeton University, jail, and a ride on a wild cheetah which they turn on to some dope they’ve stolen from the police. That’s right, a cheetah, in New Jersey, and it’s not explained, it’s just there.

There’s a certain kind of stoner-type movie that I usually don’t like. I think it’s because the stars are usually not only stoned, but dumb as rocks even then they’re straight. There are exceptions, like Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, where the guys are stupid, but so endearing and basically good-hearted that I don’t mind it, and the script was smart. Harold and Kumar are pretty bright guys who just like to get really baked on the weekends. They are very different, but alike in one crucial way: they are neither white, nor black, nor Hispanic. They are the neglected minority, guys from overachieving cultures: Korean and Indian. This provides a base for the looniness that follows. You’re not expected to believe any of this, and yet you can like the characters and laugh at their ridiculous adventures. Some of it didn’t work, but enough of it did that I had some good laughs. Recommend you skip the movie and go directly to The Art of the Fart (see below), the ONLY good thing about HAKGTWC. Watching Varley having a major laugh attack for ten minutes was pretty funny, too. IMDb.com

The Art of the Fart (2004) I was about to put the disk back in the box when I noticed this. What the heck. Ten minutes later I was hurting from laughing so hard. It’s funnier than the movie! There is a gross-out farting / diarrhea scene in the film, and this is a short that purports to be the story of the sound engineer and the director and how they struggled, artistically, to get the sounds just right. It is solemn and self-important, just like most of these DVD “extras,” and it actually had me fooled for maybe a minute and a half, as my jaw kept dropping lower and lower. Okay, maybe two minutes. Then I realized just how hard they were pulling my leg, and I was off on a giggle spree. DON’T MISS THIS!

Harry Potter and the ... (2001/2002/2004) #1, excellent. #2, good. #3, the best of the bunch. Hermione is particular is a delight, she’s much smarter than Harry, and really controls the action. It is a delight to see expensive CGI put to use making magic rather than violence. IMDb.com / IMDb.com / IMDb.com

FIRST FEATURE: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) This is that rarity, a series that gets better as it goes along. Even The Lord of the Rings didn’t do that; though none of them are bad, I felt the first was the best. For what it’s worth, here’s my own personal ranking of the four Harry Potters to date, best to least best:

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (4)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (3)
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2)

Not exactly a linear progression, but close. There have been three directors so far, and a fourth one is at work on Order of the Phoenix. It’s a little confusing, with four movies and six books out. Watching this one, if you’ve read the next two you know a lot more than the people in the film do. But it doesn’t affect your enjoyment.

Anyway, it’s certainly not a matter of the directors that makes these films so good. And it’s not the special effects, which started out excellent and just gets better all the time. And it’s not the acting, though all the children are competent and the supporting cast is a who’s who of the English cinema. No, it’s JK Rowling, who has made a long, long, long story that hangs together, that matters, oddly enough, even in this obviously fantastical universe. All of us remember being children, and remember the particular horror of adolescence, and that really comes into play in this movie. Sure, there’s all the dragons and death eaters and other adult games, but there’s the awful stress of your first big dance. There is true horror! Harry and Ron Weasley both flub it badly, and Ron behaves like a real asshole. Just like I was at that age. Only Hermione handles herself well, as usual. IMDb.com

SECOND FEATURE: Zathura (2005) Based on an illustrated children’s book by Chris van Allsburg, author of Jumanji, which was only a so-so fantasy film, and The Polar Express, which was a damn good one. I’ve never seen any of these books, so I don’t know how faithful the movie versions are. I didn’t realize it, but this is a sequel to Jumanji.

There is a central problem with this film, at least for me and Lee. Two brothers are seriously pissed off at their parents for divorcing, and behave even more like assholes than boys their age typically act. For more than half of the movie, as their house crumbles around them when they play this mysterious game that leaves them floating in some outer space universe with breathable air, they bicker, they shout, they whine, they rail at each other. Obviously the lesson will be that they have to learn to work together to survive ... but in the meantime, they are as obnoxious a pair of little pricks as I’ve ever seen in a movie. I worked up such a serious dislike for these rugrats that it was hard to try to like them when they began to learn the lesson. But it did perk up a bit toward the end. Look for the arrival of the “stranded astronaut” for things to start to look up. If you can make it that far. For us, it was a close thing. IMDb.com

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) First feature at the drive in. IMDb.com

The Haunted Mansion (2003) Not funny, not scary, not imaginative. Three for three. The ride at Disneyland is actually funnier and scarier, and much shorter. Which ride is next? Big Thunder mountain railroad? The whirling teacups? The Main Street streetcar? IMDb.com

He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not (French, 2002) Telling too much about this one would spoil the surprise, and it’s a big surprise, and very well done. Jaw-dropping, with Audrey Tautou playing completely against the type she established in Amelie. Very highly recommended. IMDb.com

Head in the Clouds (2004) I was left wondering why this film got made. It cost $43 million, and made back less than half a million. One weekend gross was listed as $72. Not thousand dollars. Dollars! All I can figure is that Charlize Theron wanted to make another film with her boyfriend, who co-stars. But did she have that kind of clout when this pic was lensed, as they say in Variety? Whatever. It’s a routine steamy romance set in pre-WWII Europe and the war itself, which serves mostly as background. Theron’s character is fascinating but not anything we haven’t seen before. The rest is oddly lifeless. The outdoor city sets are awkwardly lit and as unconvincing (purposely?) as, say Irma la Douce or An American in Paris. Old-fashioned Technicolor palette, harsh artificial light coming from all the wrong directions. Streets end in poorly painted panoramic backdrops. Charlize gets to wear some really great clothes, and is stunning in all ways, as always. If it hadn’t been for goggling at her, though, I’d have been bored mindless. IMDb.com

The Healer (Australian, 2002) Got off to an interesting start, but quickly became very soapy, overwritten and overacted. When it began to look like a Christian thing, a tale of a woman who regains her faith through a miracle, we bailed out. Maybe we were being unfair, but the fact is we just weren’t that interested. Don't you think there should be a separate section for faith-based movies? Or at least a warning label? IMDb.com

The Heartbreak Kid (2007) First feature at the drive in with The Brave One. IMDb.com

Heights (2004) Lee pretty much summed it up: Forgettable. I just know that if you ask me about this movie a month from now, I won't have a clue what it was about. It's based on a play by Amy Fox, a first-time playwright, and some of the cast are great. Glenn Close (no surprise) and Elizabeth Banks are very good. It's nice to see George Segal again ... whatever happened to him? (I heard coke.) Isabella Rossellini makes an appearance for about sixty seconds. The rest of the cast all look like generic New York male models, I had a hard time telling one from another. The plot was some ho-hum business about a man trying to deny his homosexuality. Sorry, my gay friends, this situation has been done to death, and Ms. Fox has nothing new to say about it. IMDb.com

Hellboy (2004) Seems to me there’s entirely too many comic book movies lately. Maybe because that’s I’m not a fan of comic books. However, if you’re going to make one, it seems best to have reasonably good source material, and this is superior. Hellboy is a troubled and witty and flawed hero, his origin is imaginative, and the movie is well-executed. Nothing is going to make this seem like a serious movie, or even a great action movie, but of its type it’s not bad. Good for a brainless evening. IMDb.com

Hero (Ying xiong) (China, 2002) It is not possible to debate the incredible beauty of this film. It is one of the most gorgeous things I’ve ever seen. Scene follows scene of awesome beauty, color, movement, incredible landscapes. It is not possible to debate the grandeur of it, either. There are scenes with many thousands, and not all of it is a CGI crowd, though some of it is certainly augmented that way. It is not possible to fault the ... choreography, is the only good word for it. People fly through the air, climb walls, walk on water, all in balletic splendor. I’m sure every martial arts fan who sees it will leave in a state of ecstasy.

I’m not a martial arts fan. To me, it’s a lot of sound and fury, signifying crap. A genius director like Quentin Tarantino and, here, Yimou Zhang, can keep me watching it right to the end ... but I get up feeling I’ve just watched a lot of nothing much. There is almost no blood in this movie, unlike Kill Bill, but it is just too much to swallow. I try to look on the story and the action as mythic, like some of the best American westerns where people shoot better than anybody can really shoot, but it doesn’t work. Watching people run on water is pretty and interesting, but just doesn’t do it for me. There is a cultural thing at work here that I just don’t get. I don’t understand the connection between swordsmanship and calligraphy, don’t see the point of a roomful of calligraphers sitting and working as a solid wall of arrows kill them.

Frankly, I don’t understand any of it. If you do, don’t try to explain it to me. Just enjoy yourself. IMDb.com

Heroes (2006) Over the last five years or so I have managed to get my regular television viewing down to approximately 0 (zero) hours per week. By that I mean sitting down on the couch on Sunday at 9, for instance, to see a regularly scheduled show. (Lee has the TV on all day to a news station, or sometimes a movie, but I don’t watch or listen … and actually, neither does she. She likes it in the background. And she often watches Jon Stewart or Bill Maher, but I hardly ever do.) I mean, what’s the point? I cannot abide commercials anymore, so if I decided I did want to see something, I’d tape it (don’t have TIVO) and time shift so I can FF. But I don’t even do that anymore. These days, anything that has any quality at all will be showing up on DVD within a year. By renting them, we can watch a whole season in a few nights and not have to wait a week to have cliffhangers resolved. Everything stays fresh in your mind. I really doubt that I will ever watch another TV show the way I used to watch “Hill Street Blues.” And I do not miss it one bit. I don’t have an office water cooler to hang around and discuss last night’s episode of whatever; I don’t care if I’m a year behind the times. Thus, we have not yet seen “The Wire,” and several other shows that might be worthy of our attention. We’ll get to them, there’s no hurry.

So, I had heard from several sources that “Heroes” was a good one. This week we started renting them, and have now zipped through all of the first season. My verdict: Tightly written, very imaginative, inventive, mostly intelligent, with appealing characters and great pacing. Insanely complicated plot lines, which is another reason I’m glad we viewed them one right after the other.

I have only one problem with the series (granting them the license to create any damn improbable/impossible “power” they want to dream up), which is, unfortunately, at the very center of the concept, and that is its view of evolution. It’s no wonder that so many people have bailed out on the whole idea of evolution and taken refuge in that idiot’s delight, “creationism,” or even worse, “creation science,” when you get crazy takes like this on evolution. Much is made here of concepts like “the evolutionary imperative,” as if it is a process with a goal, and “the next step up the ladder,” as if the billions of years of evolution life on Earth has undergone has resulted in organisms that are somehow “superior” to those that went before, and that the future holds more advances.

Not true, my friends. Evolution does not have a purpose any more than gravity does. Gravity does not have a “goal” of attracting other objects; it is merely a property of matter that leads to the formation of stars and planets. Evolution is merely the result of chemical reactions that produced what we call “life,” and the endless variations the environment works on those chemicals. Some are better suited to their environment than others, and those survive. Changes are always happening. 999,999 times out of a million, those changes are disastrous for the individual; it dies, and the species is strengthened. Once out of a million times a change is beneficial, and sometimes, if it is beneficial enough, it spreads though a species, which is now marginally better adapted to its environment. Add many millions of these changes together over many millions of generations, and new plants and animals are created in a very, very, very slow process.

It is true that complexity has increased as evolution moved from proto-life to single-celled and then to multi-cellular animals, but complexity is not, in and of itself, necessarily a survival characteristic. Right now there are literally thousands of very complex species that are on the brink of extinction because they have been unable to cope with an environment in which humans control the entire planet. But most bacterial species are not in any danger. We tend to view humans as somehow at the apex of a process, and it just ain’t true. We are no more complex than, say, a gerbil, we just have a more versatile brain. Whether that brain will turn out to be a positive thing is still very much in question. Ask me again in 100,000 years. (My current guess? On good days I see humanity spreading to the stars. On bad days, I see a scorched, radioactive Earth, or one where all humans died of a plague caused by our tampering with DNA. And you know what? The well-adapted species, like the cockroach, the alligator, and the shark, will still be there, and evolving to fill the environmental niches left empty by our brief but disastrous reign as kings of the planet.)

So, I have to ignore all the twaddle about how these mutated people, these “heroes,” are the “next step up the ladder.” There is no ladder. But it’s not hard to do, because the writing and the plots and the acting and the characters are sufficiently well-wrought that I can enjoy the rest of the show without worrying too much about the New Agey bullshit. In short, one of the best new TV series I’ve seen in a long time. I’m looking forward to Season Two, the one cut short by the writer’s strike. I understand Season Three will start in September … and I’ll wait a year for the DVD. IMDb.com

Hidalgo (2004) ... is a horse. He is way more intelligent than any real horse, also much tougher and stronger. Yet, if you don’t worry too much about that, it’s not a bad movie. But I am, frankly, surprised it got made. It is a supremely old-fashioned adventure movie: a cowboy and his mustang racing across the Arabian desert (the same Empty Quarter that almost killed Peter O’Toole; we even have Omar Sharif in the cast) against the finest Arabian bluebloods. No special effects to speak of, except a dust storm and a plague of locusts. Only one real over-the-top action sequence, with lots of ridin’ and shootin’ in some nameless Casbah with lots of ayrabs getting knifed and shot. Still, though this is not really a recommendation, I have to say I was happy to see it. Compare it to the ridiculously overblown crap that passes for action adventure these days, and you find it’s mostly honest, except of course the sprint for the finish line at the end. You probably need to be in the right mood to appreciate it. IMDb.com

Hide and Seek (2005) Double feature with Coach Carter.

High School Musical (2006) I first heard of this when the buzz started building for the sequel, and I learned that it had been a monster hit on TV, sold a zillion DVDs, and spawned a best-selling album, a theatrical tour and an ice show, for chrissake! It has millions of devoted teenage fans. As a lover of musicals, I had to see what it was all about.

The bad news is … it’s not much. The music is undistinguished, and there’s not enough of it. (Oh, right, I hear you say: “The food here is terrible!” “Yes, and such small portions!”) What I mean, smart-ass, is that if you’re going to make a musical, you need more numbers than are on display here. The dancing is only so-so, and again, not enough. The plot:

Zac Efron is a jock, Vanessa Anne Hudgens is a brainiac, two well-known high school slots that one dares not transgress. But they both reluctantly discover that they like to sing and dance, and defy tradition by trying out for the yearly musical production, against long-time song and dance king and queen, Lucas Grabeel and his sister, Ashley Tisdale, the class bitch. Naturally Z&V win the parts, the championship b-ball game, and the college bowl. Ta-da!

Aside from the above problems, the film has a glaring flaw: Ashley and Lucas are much, much better singers and dancers than Zac and Vanessa. Their characters are solidly grounded in Broadway traditions. It appears they actually rehearse! (What a concept, you’re supposed to just let it all hang out, I mean, really!) In fact, Ashley is by far the brightest, funniest, most talented person in sight. The bad girl always get the good lines.

So okay, this is Broadway 101, right? And that’s not all bad. In fact, I see a couple silver linings, for lovers of musicals. (Musicals always have a silver lining, right? Well, except for Sweeney Todd …) The message of this piece is to break out of your limitations, not run with the herd, to go for your dreams. Will this change the rigid caste system of the horror show that is known as “high school?” No … but it can’t hurt. And beyond that, this is probably the first exposure a million teens have had to a story where the characters can suddenly break into song to express their feelings, except for Disney animated features like The Little Mermaid. I see that as a good thing, too. Maybe their next exposure will be to West Side Story, and after that, maybe Romeo and Juliet. And then, who knows? La Boheme? … naw, you’re right, probably not. But maybe Chicago. IMDb.com

The Hills Have Eyes II (2007) Double feature at the drive in with Grindhouse. IMDb.com

Himalaya (2004) The six comic geniuses of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (1969-1974) transformed television and then moved on to other careers, though they got back together to make three films: Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), and Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983).

John Cleese is probably the best known. He's had a big career as an actor in movies and on TV. He helped create one of the best situation comedies of all time: Fawlty Towers. He also made a series of video shorts "designed to teach management and trainees how to handle stress and unusual situations." They are supposed to be very funny and I'd love to see them. (For a while, he inserted a made-up film title - "The Bonar Law Story" (1971), "Abbott & Costello Meet Sir Michael Swann" (1972), "The Young Anthony Barber" (1973) and "Confessions of a Programme Planner" (1974) - in every new edition of Who's Who, just to see if anyone would notice. Apparently no one did.)

Terry Gilliam made a series of fantastic movies, including Time Bandits (1981), Brazil (1985), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988), Twelve Monkeys (1995), and The Fisher King (1991), usually after great travail.

Terry Jones is probably the least visible ex-Python, but it's mostly because he's been behind the scenes. He's worked a lot.

Eric Idle turned Monty Python and the Holy Grail into the Broadway smash hit Spamalot.

Graham Chapman has, of course, been kept pretty well occupied with the business of being dead.

Michael Palin has acted, as well, but his chief job since Python seems to have been ... traveling around a bit. It all began in 1989 with Around the World in 80 Days, in which he attempted to duplicate the feat of Phileas Fogg. Could one circumnavigate the globe in 80 days, without flying? So far as was possible he followed Fogg's route, and it was a close thing; he arrived back at London's Reform Club in the middle of the night of the 79th day, only to find it closed. This was an absolutely fascinating series, I loved every crazy minute of it.

Then the BBC challenged him again, and he made Pole to Pole in 1992, again flying as little as possible, trying to stay close to one line of longitude, which took him through Eastern Europe and Africa, into some very dodgy places.

You'd think that might be enough travel for anyone, but in 1997 he did an even longer journey in Full Circle with Michael Palin, where he circumnavigated the hard way, starting at the Bering Strait and encircling the entire Pacific Ocean. I'd love to see this, but it's not available on DVD yet. What's the deal, BBC?

Shortly after that he did a more personal one. His favorite author was Ernest Hemingway, and thus: Hemingway Adventure (1999. I haven't seen it (are you listening, Beeb? Where's the DVD?), but he visits all the important places in Hemingway's life.

Next, Sahara (2002), in which he encircled the desert of the same name. It's coming out on 4/18/06, and it's at the top of my Netflix queue.

So, on to Himalaya. Thought I'd never get to it, didn't you? Well, in a sense this is a review of all the Palin series I've seen, and they can be summed up like this: You can't go wrong with Michael Palin. Whether the road is easy or hard, his charm and good humor guarantee that you'll have a good time. You may be oozing sympathy as he oozes something else during a spectacular attack of diarrhea aboard an Arabian dhow, where the only solution is to hang your butt over the side, or gasping for breath as he battles altitude sickness at 18,000 feet, at the foot of Everest, and he'll still keep you amused. More often, he will show you the world and its wonders. He will take you into the planet's odd corners and meet some very nice people along the way.

I mean, can you beat it? Could anyone who likes to travel not be envious? Going to Tibet and Nepal and India can be fun, and it can be full of hardships (as I found out during 4 days in Bombay), but it wouldn't hurt to have a retinue of lackeys to carry your stuff, book all your flights and hotels (even if the hotel is a shack on the slopes of Annapurna), and set up appointments with local movie stars. His team locates wonderful guides, and there is always time to pop by and have a nice little chat and tea with folks like the Dalai Lama and the King of Nepal.

The humor is gentle. He never pokes fun at the locals, and he's willing to try any trek and sample any food. Oh, he does little comic bits here and there, but they are never the point of the show. He doesn't play much on having been a Python; the only time I can remember it is when he sings "I'm a Lumberjack and I'm Okay!" to a Bhutanese poet, who seems to like it. At the utterly bizarre flag-lowering ceremony on the border between Pakistan and India (and honestly, it has to be seen to be believed, you would NOT believe me if I described it) he passes up a perfectly good chance to make a reference to the Ministry of Silly Walks. No, he's just a traveler ... albeit one who trails a film crew of from six to a dozen, and who spends a certain amount of time setting up shots.

Michael Palin has a wonderful website that covers all these trips in great detail, with maps and pictures and all sorts of extra stuff. It's called Palin's Travels. What a lucky, lucky man, to have a job like that. IMDb.com

His Girl Friday (1940) See Top 25 Favorite Movies. IMDb.com

A History of Britain (2000) Our tour guide in this series, one Simon Schama, is not known to me, though he's apparently written a number of popularized history books and is well-known on the BBC. He insisted it be called "A" History of Britain, not "The," and that was wise of him. Though it runs 18 hours, you can only say so much on television, particularly when a fair amount of time is devoted to things like shots of falcons, deer, water crashing on rocks, and the white cliffs of Dover. (While I think this stuff could have been dispensed with, I realize you have to fill in the blanks with something; a man talking through an entire hour would be too much like a lecture, and would turn viewers off. It's necessary, and handled reasonable well.)

Schama is a slightly disheveled fellow who looks the part of an Cambridge don; you wonder where he misplaced his mortarboard and robe. Maybe it's because he had professorships for a long time at Harvard and Columbia. Though he appears frequently in the settings he's describing, as is standard in these sorts of series, and he doesn't have the loopy enthusiasm of our old friend Sir David Attenborough or the polish of Sir Kenneth Clark, I find he's growing on me. This is a personal take on England, and he has some insightful and funny things to say. IMDb.com

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Volume Five:

A History of Violence (2005) This has to be one of the best movies of the year. How rare to see a thrilling movie that doesn't exploit its violence, that doesn't follow the tired old formulas. Tired? Hell, most of the shoot-'em-ups we see these days are so phony, so predictable, so paint-by-numbers that I'm amazed they have the energy to stumble into the last, stupid reel with any pulse at all. In fact, most are brain-dead on arrival at the screen.

Not this one. There are four violent scenes, and each of them is over in less than a minute. (I'm not counting the masterful, horrific opening scene, the most disturbing in the movie, where the bloodletting happens entirely off-screen.) Do you know how much courage that takes in these days of 20-minute shoot-outs? When the violence comes it is quick, brutal, no-quarter, deadly, heart-stoppingly fast. David Cronenberg doesn't slaver over it, he never gives us slow-motion, multi-angle hails of bullets, or any of the nauseating auteuristic show-off clichés of recent action movies. Nor does he stint on the blood. A bullet enters a guy's head, it's going to make a mess coming out, and this is shown unflinchingly.

I can't go much farther without letting a whole lot of kitties out of the bag, so ...

SPOILER WARNING!

... though if you follow movies at all you will know that the mild-mannered diner owner (Tom Stall AKA Joey played by Viggo Mortensen) is living a 20-year lie, that he used to be a mob killer and he was very, very good at what he did. But if you came to it totally blind, it wouldn't be until more than halfway through before you were sure about what his wife and kids are so desperate to find out: Who is my husband/dad?

This movie works on so many levels. First, the aforesaid depiction of violence. I am not a violent man, but I'm not a pacifist. I don't believe that "violence never solved anything." Violence has solved a lot of things, throughout human history, but never without a price, as it so often does in the movies. Because I am not a violent man I know a hundred ways of avoiding violence, from simply submitting to a bully, as the son does in this movie, to running away as fast as you can. But when you can't run away from it, when you see that all alternatives have been exhausted, you must strike. You must fight dirty. If it is worth fighting about at all (and I'm talking personal or familial life or death, not politics or warfare) then it is worth fighting dirty for. You always hit below the belt, in the soft, vulnerable places. Stomp on a man's throat while he's down, and I guarantee he will not get up and attack you again. (He won't get up again, ever, which must be your goal. We see this done in this movie, and it's over in three seconds.) If you have a gun, you shoot to kill, not wound, and you keep shooting until you're sure. If you have to cut, don't stop cutting until the head comes clean off. Tom/Joey knows all these things, and when he has to fight, you don't want to be in his way because he won't hesitate.

Second, the effects on Tom's family are believable, they ring true. The son is tormented by bullies of the type we all knew in high school, and he submits to them. His girlfriend is right: they are Neanderthals, and not worth his time and skinned knuckles. But after his dad kills two would-be robber/rapists, he suddenly finds himself capable of absolutely destroying the two meanest junkyard dog assholes in the hallway. If he hadn't been pulled away, he would have killed them both with his fists. This is profoundly satisfying (unless you are a true pacifist) ... and also profoundly disturbing. We don't like to think about it, but this level of violence resides in all of us.

Maria Bello plays it letter-perfect as the wife. At first she does all the expected, futile, law-abiding things. Calls the police chief, a friend. Gets a restraining order. But when she realizes killers may be coming to her home, she doesn't hesitate, she breaks out the double-barrel streetsweeper and gets ready to blow some heads off. Then when she realizes her whole life has been based on her husband's lie ... she is pissed. Who wouldn't be? And yet she supports him. She lies, and hates herself for it. She fights off the husband's desperate attempts to hold on to her ... and then she responds, in spite of herself, and they have violent sex on the stairs. (Both actors became pretty bruised filming this scene. It isn't tender, it isn't loving, but seldom have I seen such passion on the screen.) There is something primal going on here, and Cronenberg shows it to us, and all the conflicts it brings to our "civilized" minds.

Third, the movie never goes where we have become conditioned to expect it to go. It opens with two extremely creepy guys, takes its time to establish their utter ruthlessness. Any other movie, these are the guys who would take part in the final, epic shootout through the abandoned factory/hero's home/freeway chase. But these guys are eliminated with shocking speed. Next we get the loathsome Ed Harris and his brutal crew. Surely he'll be around for the climax, he'll be the second-to-last to die in horrible vengeance, just before Mr. Big, the man behind all the evil. And yet, before we know it ... but I'm telling too much, even with a spoiler warning. And if you're expecting a Mexican standoff with Mr. Big, and then a twenty-minute fight with bullets spraying and fists flying in a pouring rain, a la Lethal Weapon ... forget about it! The violence is economical and instantaneous, and real.

If this movie reminds me of anything else, it is Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs. In that one Dustin Hoffman was a mild-mannered mathematician forced to defend his wife, himself, and his home against a bunch of yahoos. Against all odds, he finds these depths of violence in himself to prevail. Tom/Joey is different in that he already knows all the tricks, but on the other hand Joey is so deeply buried that Tom doesn't really know who he is, either, and Joey's sudden appearance when he's needed is almost as big a shock to him as it is to his wife.

I was very nervous as we came to the end. This is where so many pictures blow it. You figure the good guy will prevail, but will the movie lose all credibility in the process? No, it will not. It strikes just the right note, the perfect note, by not spoon-feeding us a "message," by not having things suddenly be "all right." Things will never again be all right, or at least not much like they were before. More v