Red Planet
Well if this don't just beat all. I just got back from an emergency consulting gig in Broward County, Florida, and while I'm as dumbstruck as the rest of you at the goings-on with the election results in the Sunshine State, I can't say I'm really all that surprised. I mean c'mon, doesn't it stand to reason that after more than a year of hyper-Y-chromosomal party-loyal corner marking, that it should end up as a couple of red-faced cases of Premature Inauguration and Electile Dysfunction? This atmosphere will likely continue for the next four years, regardless of outcome. Anyone that expects things to settle down - ever - is living in a fantasy world. The highest priority for our great nation right now should be litigation allowing me to welsh on a few key presidential election wagers with a couple of close, but hard core political friends who think that my failure to predict the outcome of one of the closest elections in history should require me to go see Adam Sandler in "Little Nicky". Keep those briefs a flyin' babes, there's a lot at stake.
Oh well, you can always do what I do when I'm stuck in a fantasy world. No, I meant moovies, kids, moovies. Lots of moovies.
Today we dip our little cloven hooves in the sands of Mars for "Red Planet", with Val kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Carrie-Anne Moss, Benjamin Bratt, Simon Baker and Terence Stamp. Written (ha!) by Chuck Pfarrer and Jonathan Lemkin, directed by Antony Hoffman, MPAA rating PG13, run time undetermined, I walked.
Mars. The Red Planet. Barsoom. For millenia the specter of Mars as the possible home of LGM (Little Green Men) with flying war machines or maybe the site for a long-dead civilization has hung over the Earth like a next door neighboor with a machine gun on the widow's walk. After dozens of unmanned Mars probes dug, photographed and sifted the butterscotch sands on the Martian surface, it became fairly obvious that Mars was a desolate neighbor, and that if life ever did exist there, it was probably not much more than a collection of microbes. How those little critters built all those faces and pyramids and dug the Martian canals is beyond me.
Mars is also getting a reputation for crappy moovies. I thought I had seen the worst possible Mars moovie last March in "Mission To Mars", wherein Gary Sinise wears more makeup than Tammy Faye and delivers his lines with the robotic zeal of a high school production of "Pajama Game" where all the seniors have the flu and the freshman stagehands take over.
"Red Planet" makes "Mission to Mars" look like "Citizen Caine". Bad science, soulless acting, a thin, boring predictable plot and a sense that it really doesn't matter what happens to any of the characters keep "Red Planet" from ever even beginning to get off the ground, so to speak. At one point in this moovie an impact-crazed robotic thing-run-amock, affectionally named AMEE, tries to pick off the stranded crew members of a Mars terraforming expedition one by one. I was really rooting for the bot, hoping that an early end to Val Kilmer and company would just get me out the door that much sooner. As it turns out, I walked out anyway.
I'll admit I often hold science fiction to a higher standard than some other moovie genres, only because a writer of good science fiction can invent worlds, expand our vision and show us how to teach our dreams to fly. If Mars is your thing, skip "Red Planet", go pick up a paperback copy of Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles" and let Bradbury show you what the real Martians look like.
"Red Planet" is desolate and devoid of atmosphere, and thus, also necessarily devoid of cows.
Oh well, you can always do what I do when I'm stuck in a fantasy world. No, I meant moovies, kids, moovies. Lots of moovies.
Today we dip our little cloven hooves in the sands of Mars for "Red Planet", with Val kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Carrie-Anne Moss, Benjamin Bratt, Simon Baker and Terence Stamp. Written (ha!) by Chuck Pfarrer and Jonathan Lemkin, directed by Antony Hoffman, MPAA rating PG13, run time undetermined, I walked.
Mars. The Red Planet. Barsoom. For millenia the specter of Mars as the possible home of LGM (Little Green Men) with flying war machines or maybe the site for a long-dead civilization has hung over the Earth like a next door neighboor with a machine gun on the widow's walk. After dozens of unmanned Mars probes dug, photographed and sifted the butterscotch sands on the Martian surface, it became fairly obvious that Mars was a desolate neighbor, and that if life ever did exist there, it was probably not much more than a collection of microbes. How those little critters built all those faces and pyramids and dug the Martian canals is beyond me.
Mars is also getting a reputation for crappy moovies. I thought I had seen the worst possible Mars moovie last March in "Mission To Mars", wherein Gary Sinise wears more makeup than Tammy Faye and delivers his lines with the robotic zeal of a high school production of "Pajama Game" where all the seniors have the flu and the freshman stagehands take over.
"Red Planet" makes "Mission to Mars" look like "Citizen Caine". Bad science, soulless acting, a thin, boring predictable plot and a sense that it really doesn't matter what happens to any of the characters keep "Red Planet" from ever even beginning to get off the ground, so to speak. At one point in this moovie an impact-crazed robotic thing-run-amock, affectionally named AMEE, tries to pick off the stranded crew members of a Mars terraforming expedition one by one. I was really rooting for the bot, hoping that an early end to Val Kilmer and company would just get me out the door that much sooner. As it turns out, I walked out anyway.
I'll admit I often hold science fiction to a higher standard than some other moovie genres, only because a writer of good science fiction can invent worlds, expand our vision and show us how to teach our dreams to fly. If Mars is your thing, skip "Red Planet", go pick up a paperback copy of Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles" and let Bradbury show you what the real Martians look like.
"Red Planet" is desolate and devoid of atmosphere, and thus, also necessarily devoid of cows.