Since the moment I finished watching the DVD of REEFER MADNESS: THE MOVIE MUSICAL (Showtime, 2005, $26.95, Tuesday, November 8, 2005), I've been racking my brains to come up with another great old bad movie that would merit revival as a musical. I was so excited, thrilled, pleased by the movie that I wanted to make something like it myself. The qualifications are simple: a source film that takes itself way too seriously; that also lends itself to numerous musical and dance opportunities (including the de rigueur S&M sequence); that has priceless name recognition; that is a tale of faux peril and yearning; and is a film indicative of the earlier, repressive times. Titles that spring to mind only after undue strain include PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE, SANTA CONQUERS THE MARTIANS, BIG JIM MCLAIN, THE TERROR OF TINY TOWN, AIRPORT 75, and THE NEXT VOICE YOU HEAR.

REEFER MADNESS had these qualities in spades. You would think that success in such an endeavor would only go the other way, that is. From stage to screen, not screen to stage (then to screen), but there is a vital if slim tradition of dramatic or comic movies becoming musicals. The most famous examples are PROMISES PROMISES, which started out as Billy Wilder's THE APARTMENT, and A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC, which started life as Bergman's SMILES OF THE SUMMER NIGHT. But with LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS the theater descended to the gutter to render jewels of musical theater (Hey, BUCKET OF BLOOD could make a musical, too!).

HAIR was the first rock musical, followed quickly by such Webber-Rice productions as JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR and JOSEPH AND THE AMAZING TECHNICOLOR DREAMCOAT; GREASE set the tone for all subsequent rock musicals based on bad movies, even though it was technically not based on a specific movie, including a simple plot and catchy tunes. At the very least, what the rock musical did was revived a moribund, static, highly conservative genre of American theater.

Imagine REEFER MADNESS as a blend of ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW and GREASE. The story that we know as REEFER MADNESS is in fact the film within this film, screened under its original title, TELL YOUR CHILDREN. The film is presented, in a gesture of fealty to long ago reality, by a touring specialist, known only as The Lecturer (Alan Cumming). A combo of the host in CABARET and ROCKY HORROR's occasional lecturer, and with suspect motivations, the Lecturer is presenting the film to a group of concerned adults, but in the 1950s rather than the 1930s. In a reversal of the usual expectations, the "real" sequences are in black and white and the "movie" is in color. The Lecturer also appears in the color film, as everything from a mailman to FDR.

The story proper concerns the budding love of high school students Jimmy Harper and Mary Lane. Played by Christian Campbell (who has always played the role, on stage, Broadway, and now tube), and Kristen Bell, with a ferocious energy, their love is foiled by the evils of marijuana, proffered by the insidious Jack Stone (Peter Weber), whose associate Mae Coleman (SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE's Ana Gasteyer) runs a disorderly house for the sole purpose of enslaving youth to the weed. First Jimmy, then Mary succumb to the lure of Mary Jane.

REEFER MADNESS: THE MOVIE MUSICAL is like an all singing, all dancing audio commentary track to the original. All the songs are funny, bitingly satirical, but also just plain catchy. The dance numbers are superb, choreographed by Mary Ann Kellogg, and they make you wish to see the film on the big screen. A love duet between Mary and Jimmy is great, as is a jungle fantasy of Jimmy's. A tango between Weber and Neve Campbell as a soda fountain waitress is hot, especially when Weber lights a match off her shoe. When the pot house nut, Ralph (John Kassir), turns on Mary, her deep hidden fantasies of being a dominatrix play out in her mind and in Mae's living room simultaneously, in a masterpiece of editing. If you've ever had fantasies of Veronica Mars, in thigh boots and whip, making you behave, this disc's Chapter 10 is for you. And who would have guessed that such a powerful voice could come out of such a small package.

Showtime's widescreen presentation (1.78:1, enhanced) is perhaps not quite as winning as it could be, but at least is workmanlike and without noticeable flaws. Sound comes in both DD 5.1, and Stereo, English (with closed captions).

Extras kick off with a crowed yak track featuring director Andy Fickman, producer-writers Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney and Christian Campbell with Amy Spanger, who plays Mae's house slut. Several times one of them is going to make what promises to be an interesting point and then is interrupted into silence by the others. I hate (unedited) commentary tracks with more than two people. "Grass Roots: Behind the Scenes" is a highly informative making of that gives the whole history of the play, not to mention the source movie. And speaking of which, the original 1936 film itself (in black and white), is also available. In addition, there are text cast bios of Bell, Campbell, his sister Neve, Cumming, Gasteyer, Kassir, Amy Spanger, Robert Torti (who plays a toothy Vegas Jesus), and Weber, plus a photo gallery, and trailers for other Showtime productions, OUR FATHERS, THE L WORD SEASON 2, EASY SEX, SEXUAL LIFE, and QUEER AS FOLK SEASON 5. The animated, musical menu offers 14-chapter scene selection. The disc comes in a brown keep case that upon opening shoots at you what smells to me like the aroma of chocolate, though what I think they meant was a hint of pot.

Since first viewing CRONICAS (Palm Pictures, 2004, $24.99, Tuesday, November 8, 2005) I've been going back and forth on it. Most other reviewers esteemed it, for its critical stance on the sins of the media, but frankly that was my least favorite part. And I was glad to see that an obvious ending was jettisoned in favor of a more ambiguous, tragic conclusion. Yet at the same time the film was powerfully acted by John Leguizamo as TV reporter Manolo Bonilla, Leonor Watling as his producer, and Damian Alcazar as the imprisoned reckless driver and traveling bible salesman who hints to Bonilla that he knows the identity of a serial killer who has raped and murdered over 150 kids in Equator (Alfred Molina has a cameo as the producer's husband and the show's anchor, whom we only see on video).

Sebastian Cordero and his crew do a fantastic job of capturing the gritty, muddy feel of a small village, roiled by a thirst for vengeance. Frustrated with the police department's inability to capture the serial killer, they want to lynch the bible salesman, who accidentally ran over a kid in the street. But as often happens in the hunt for a serial killer, the cops may already have their man. He reveals to Bonilla details that only the killer could know. But the killer is crafty and seductive, a Hannibal Lecter who favors Dos Equis and lima beans. He manipulates Bonilla for his freedom. Bonilla ends up making his reputation on the story that actually airs, but shortchanges humanity by possibly helping a murderer escape.

The morality of the movie is more complex than the story allows. Or maybe the reverse is true. The morality is simple, but the movie strives to make it more complex and impactful than it really is. That's what I mean. I go back and forth and can't make up my mind. The attractiveness of the stars — Leguizamo, who is quietly brilliant and authoritative in the role as an ambitious TV face, and Watling, who is my new crush, and about to inspire a riffling of old DVDs for past performances — win one over when the film itself wobbles.

Palm Pictures's transfer (1.85:1, enhanced) is good, with good DD 5.1 audio: 5.1, along with Dolby stereo, and both English and Spanish subtitles. Cordero's commentary is informative. Bonus features include a nearly hour long doc, "The Making of CRONICAS," which is much more intimate than most making ofs. There is also an alternate ending, in which Bonilla is lynched, and a deleted scene, in which the bible salesman recounts another murder to Bonilla from behind bars. There is also an alternate version of the film's opening lynching scene, something called "Soledad Jam Session," which is edited clips of Cordero talking about the film, and trailers for the film (the US theatrical trailer, the Ecuadorian theatrical trailer, an Ecuadorian TV spot, and the Cannes film festival trailer. Finally, there is a photo gallery, with images that look more like snaps the director took that spruced up publicity stills, and trailers for other Palm pictures. The animated, musical menu offers 16-chapter scene selection.

Should Robert Bresson have been making movies? Wouldn't he have been happier, say, as a sculpturer? Or perhaps an architect? That is, if he even wanted to be an artist. Perhaps a career as a night security guard in a bank or high-rise, or a gravel raker in a Japanese garden would have quenched his thirst for order and solitude, and quieted his soul.

As it happens, he did make films, and so antithetical are they to what mass consumers ordinarily seek out in commercial cinema that you wonder what strange imp of the perverse drove him to undermine audience expectations and pursue his theological obsessions into incomprehensibility. It may well be that Bresson, at an early point in his career of 13 movies over 50 years, realized that he could make his thematic points more vividly if the spectator were jarred right from the start and kept off balance for the rest of the film.

It's hard to say because Bresson was charmingly open, like the equally obscure Antonioni, in interviews. He makes his films seem simple and direct. His collection of aphorisms, NOTES ON CINEMATOGRAPHY, is equally direct, with only a hint of the cryptic Zen koan about them. Note, however, that in the title he calls movie making "cinematography," that is picture making, just as in the book itself he refers to his cast members as "models" rather than actors. He liked to break down his "models"' hidebound, repetitive response to things, and render them anew, like a marine DI. "Nine-tenths of our movements obey habit and automatism. It is anti-nature to subordinate them to will and to thought," is a typical aperçu, forged from Bresson's desire to get back to the real, despite a method that made his films seem artificial.

But what does the viewer get out of a whole cinema that places more importance on the sound of creaking gate than the clear, verbal explication of a character's situation in life? I think one thing is that the spectator learns to watch a movie. Bresson is like a Zen film instructor, teaching the world how to watch movies through making them, which is less to listen to the dialogue than to attend to the sound effects, which Bresson orchestrated like a composer, and absorb the images in succession.

Most people watch movies the way they read comic books. They concentrate on the words, and glance at the images. The pictures demand "rush," while the words contain all the important information. Notice how irked a spectator gets if he misses a line of dialogue, but has no problem glancing away from the screen. Movie reviewers don't help with their absolute concentration on stories and words. The worst charge against a movie is that its story doesn't make sense; that its dialogue is unreal or old hat. Commercial cinema and daily newspaper readership expectations make it difficult for a reviewer, if one even existed, to concentrate on a film's visuals as its real conveyer of meaning.

Take DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST (The Criterion Collection, No. 222, 1951, $39.95, Tuesday, February 3, 2004). Bresson's third feature as a director has a story, a narrative; it has dialogue and incidents. But you feel that the real deal is being shrouded from you, that you are invited to work for it rather than have it do all the work for you.

Famously based on a novel by Georges Bernanos, the film follows the activities of the priest (Claude Laydu) of a small town called Ambricourt over what eventually turns out to be the last days of his life. The villagers of all social classes hate him, a vixenish girl teases him, his bosses are unhelpful, and, it turns out, he has stomach cancer. But in the end he finds a form of peace, after he gives the last rites to a countess, takes a small trip, and essentially accepts death.

The most telling shot in the film, and the most cinematic, is of priest looking like Joan of Arc (at 00:1:46), a subject of a later Bresson film, but also of an earlier film by the equally severe Dreyer. Bresson and Dreyer are often linked in the critical mind, even before Paul Schrader wrote his book on transcendental cinema. Bresson's image of the suffering, Christ-like priest harks back to the many close-ups of Falconetti in Dreyer's film (later also beloved of Godard), and forward to his even more austere version of the story. Here, the image provides the palpable "state of grace" that the troubled priest has finally achieved.

Of course, we are all instantly suspicious of priest movies, due to recent events wherein the church intersects with the courts. But PRIEST is more like Bergman's WINTER LIGHT, in portraying a small rural town at odds with faith and its minister. Both are death-haunted films, and the overriding metaphor for Bresson is that his priest is more or less in a prison, as are several of his characters literally in other films.

Criterion offers PRIEST in a fine black and white full frame transfer (1.33:1), with optional English subtitles an adequate Dolby Digital Mono. The main supplement is an audio commentary track by Criterion regular Peter Cowie, who gives his usual efficient, informative chronicle of the film and its reception. The most surprising thing he points out is that Bresson was an agnostic, contrary to his reputation, given the content of his films. There is also the original theatrical trailer. The musical menu offers 26-chapter scene selection. Finally there is an eight-page folding insert, with cast and crew, chapter titles, transfer info, stills, and an essay about the film. Keep-case.

Bresson strips down the "affect" of his lead even further in PICKPOCKET (The Criterion Collection, No. 314, 1959, $39.95, Tuesday, November 8, 2005). Here, Uruguayan non-professional Martin LaSalle, a cross between Montgomery Clift and Daniel Day Lewis, plays the pickpocket in training, and he's not very good. He's a character from a middle class family who elects to go la bas, as so many beatnik types did in the 1950s, in a life of crime. The only problem is that he usually ends up in prison, as he does at both the beginning and end of the book. Loosely based on Dostoyevsky's CRIME AND PUNISHMENT, the film concentrates on the character's self-realization or revelation. Yet Bresson doesn't stint on realistic local detail, such as the fact that pickpockets tend to specialize in racetracks, if Pinkerton books and David Maurer's WHIZ MOB (College and University Press, 1964), a guide to the argot of the lifting trade, is any indication.

Bresson's hero has no illness or other compelling reason for confronting himself. It is his whole lifestyle, which he lives ineptly. You can see the influence of the film on Melville's later LE SAMOURAI, which Criterion has also just released on DVD. He is a loner, living in a bare apartment, dressed always the same, and in the end finds a form of redemption through a woman. The difference between the two films is the difference between Melville's Asian inflected existential dignity and Bresson's ascetic statuary approach. The goal of his films is to reach that point where the central figure is stripped and frozen in their moments of realization. In his quiet way, Bresson is quite the drama queen.

PICKPOCKET comes in another fine black and white full frame transfer (1.33:1), with good DD mono. For extras, there is both a very informative 15-minute color intro by Paul Schrader (like James Mangold, he could have a career in academia if he wanted it), and an equally informed audio commentary track by James Quandt, who edited ROBERT BRESSON, the catalog to accompany a retrospective of the director's work in Toronto in 1998, featuring important essays by Jonathan Rosenbaum, Susan Sontag, Donald Richie, Kristin Thompson, and others, and including an interview between Bresson and Paul Schrader. There is more on this disc than PRIEST. Also included are the hour-long "The Models of PICKPOCKET," consisting of interviews with stars Pierre Leymarie, Marika Green, and Martin LaSalle, a six-minute interview with Bresson from the French TV show CINEPANORAMA, "Q&A on PICKPOCKET" with Green and filmmakers Paul Vecchiali and Jean-Piere Ameris, and "Kassagi," a profile of the film's light fingered technical advisor. Finally, there is the theatrical trailer, and for packaging, there is an eight-page folding insert, with cast and crew, chapter titles, transfer info, stills, and an essay about the film by James Quandt.

Now we come to AU HASARD BALTHAZAR (The Criterion Collection, No. 237, 1966, $29.95, Tuesday, June 14, 2005), the third of Criterion's Bresson package, but released between the other two. Here I must make a confession. I hate animal movies. Not because I am against them, but because I get too emotionally wrapped up in them. I've been this way since I was a kid and saw a Disney film about the friendship between a dog and a bear, and they had to part company in the end (I can't even remember the title). I was shattered. Depressed for days. I was terrified at the thought of reviewing UMBERTO D a while back (fortunately, the guy ends up back with his dog at the end), and have never seen a host of animal movies because I don't want to get depressed, titles such as OLD YELLER, BAMBI, and so forth. I've never even seen THAT DARN CAT, not because it is presumably shit, but because it might go south on me without warning. Killing people in fictional movies is fine, because you know the actor isn't really dead; but even though animals in most feature films also aren't really killed, animal murder is a much more common occurrence in real life, making fake animal demises in films much more powerful to the viewer.

So it was a real struggle to get through Bresson's story of a Candide-like donkey who drifts from one abusive owner to another. If you are a sucker for animal movies than BALTHAZAR is heartbreaking. In fact, Bresson show so much sympathy for the donkey that it is clear he should have gone to Hollywood and made animal movies like LASSIE and MY FRIEND FLICKA, except that in his hands they would be more depressing, because more real, than the usual studio product.

Anyway, the good thing about BALTHAZAR is that, though Bresson shows profound sympathy with the donkey and indeed other animals, in the film, it's not really about animals. It is really about Marie (Anne Wiazemsky), a quasi-owner of the donkey, and her relationship with the cruel hoodlum Gerald (François Lafarge). Here, Bresson explores how people, you might say, conduct themselves, lead their lives, like animals, but without the grace and dignity. It's sort of Bresson's version of WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO GOOD PEOPLE (AND ANIMALS). As timeless as his earlier films, BALTHAZAR is a film that no one but Bresson could have made.

As with the other two Bresson films, Criterion's disc comes in a fine black and white full frame transfer (1.33:1), with DD mono, and optional English subtitles. There is no commentary track but a lengthy (color) video interview with Donald Richie. Usually a specialist in Japanese film, like James Quandt, who provides an essay here and the yak track for PICKPOCKET, Richie is a powerful advocate of Bresson and of BALTHAZAR in particular. In his recently published diaries, Richie describes the effect of watching a Bresson film as being "in that reasoned world where there is no imposed moral values, just verities, a world that is black and white even when the film is in color. I am returned to this universe, beautiful in its severity, which is my true home."

Also on hand are "Un Metteur En Ordre: Robert Bresson," a 1966 French television show about the film, with Bresson, Jean-Luc Godard, Louis Malle, and various cast members, the theatrical trailer. Finally there is an eight-page folding insert, with cast and crew, chapter titles, transfer info, stills, plus an essay about the film by Gary Indiana; and a folding eight-page CC catalog dated 2006, and taking the list of films through spine number 325, KIND HEARTS AND CORONETS. The animated, musical menu offers 23-chapter scene selection.

While we are on the topic, why must great art be unhappy? At the risk of sounding like some freckle-faced optimist, some crisis-denying Pollyanna, I wonder aloud if great art must make us sad? Not just sad, but morose. Suicidal. Coming out of a Tarkovsky movie is like being released from Scared Straight program. You don't leave the theater after a Noe film, you flee. Bergman has the knack for making you as gloomily Swedish as he is but without the tasty Scandinavian submissive nookie he so abundantly enjoyed.

I'm not saying that great art has to plaster a layer of happy faces over its subject matter, be it the Holocaust or the existential crisis of a priest. But can't a movie climax with something bittersweet, like Tolstoy's ANNA KARENINA? On the other hand, one does not want to dictate content or tone to artists. Yet it is clear that either most great film directors are depressive pessimists or inflected with an unalterable tragic view of life.

Take, for example, Ugetsu (The Criterion Collection, No. 309, 1953, two discs plus booklet, $39.95, Tuesday, November 8, 2005), now out in a new two-platter set from Criterion. Kenji Mizoguchi's tale is one premised on a world in which good is long-suffering and then killed, or easily seduced and then stricken with unhappiness, while at the same time evil, greed and cowardice, is rewarded. Flaubert's MADAME BOVARY is a light comedy compared to this (in fact, Flaubert's MADAME BOVARY is a light comedy, but that's another story).

Though not conventionally considered so, perhaps as a form of critical omerta, UGETSU is essentially a ghost story, although because it is set during a war the film has greater weight. The central character (Masuyaki Mori) of one of the film's two stories, encounters some ghosts. First there is an alluring specter (Machiko Kyo) who lures him off the path he is taking back to his wife after selling his pottery at market. When he realizes that he has been ensorcelled by a ghost, he flees, only to find his wife (Kinuyo Tanaka) now also spectral, having died in a meaningless byproduct of the war ravaging the land.

Meanwhile, two enterprising louts manage to profit from the warfare. A farmer (Sakae Ozawa) has the ambition of becoming a war hero, but his cowardice and other impediments intervene, until he capitalizes on the routine suicide of an opponent. His wife, meanwhile, has descended into prostitution. They reunite after he has been awarded glory by a suspicious but still compliant warlord.

Sure, it is a great film, beautiful and powerful, but it is so damn depressing. You don't know what the do with yourself at the end. I wanted to tear out my teeth, I didn't know what I wanted. Yes, Mizoguchi's effort here is all for the good, as he weaves a pair of tales that lacerate the warmongering of the recent past and its real consequence on family. I'd like to reveal that I'm being facetious, but a part of me really does worry about the intentionality of filmmakers. They can surprise us with what they care about but also depress us with what they fixate on.

Still, it is a film that should be in everyone's library. UGETSU comes in a luminous black and white full frame transfer (1.33:1) with Dolby Digital 1.0 and optional English titles. Supplements begin on the first of the two discs with an audio commentary track by Asian film specialist Tony Rayns. In measured tones, Rayns summarizes the movie's main threads of creation, from Mizoguchi's interest in so-called "tendency" films and his later interest in formalism, blended here for UGETSU.

This is followed by a trio of new or recent video interviews. The first is with director Masahiro Shinoda (DOUBLE SUICIDE), who speaks in generalizations about the director who influenced him. More informative is the second interview, with Mizoguchi's assistant director Tokuzo Tanaka, who tells a few tales out of school, such as one Mizoguchi's crush on his star. The third interview is with cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa, and comes from the Criterion laser disc. Disc Two consists solely of KENJI MIZOGUCHI: THE LIFE OF A FILMMAKER, a feature-length documentary by Kaneto Shindo (ONIBABA) from 1975. It's an unusual film, and should strike most viewers as off beat and most habitues of supplementary EPKs as a relief. It also provides numerous clips of otherwise hard to see Mizoguchi films.

Finally there is an 72-page booklet, with cast and crew, transfer info, stills, an essay about the film by Philip Lopate, and three of the stories that inspired the film: Akinari Ueda's "The House in the Thicket" and "A Serpent's Lust," and Guy de Maupassant's "How He Got the Legion of Honor."

Media Notes From All Over

If you want to know more about Mizoguchi and UGETSU, I can make no higher recommendation than Mark Le Fanu's MIZOGUCHI AND JAPAN (BFI Publishing, via the University of California Press, 218 pages, $24.95, ISBN 1 84457 057 6). Le Fanu, who teaches at the European Film College in Denmark and has contributed to SIGHT AND SOUND over the years, does something rather remarkable in this volume. Though an academic, he doesn't use jargon. Instead, he writes in an engaged, interested, knowledgeable manner full of digressions — my favorite kind of film writing. Thus, on page 149, what starts out as a discussion of the Japanese acting style, with its prostrations and ululations, evolves through a meditation on the kimono as a determinant of cinematic movement style, a thumbnail history of chambara and its evolution, to the innovations Kurosawa imposed on the genre.

The book begins with an engaging acknowledgements, a detailed chronology of Mizoguchi's life, a simple list of Mizoguchi's surviving films, and after eight chapters ends with an appendix on French film criticism's role in Mizoguchi's world wide reputation, another on geishas, and a third on Mizoguchi's attitude toward war. The book closes with an annotated filmography and a descriptive bibliography. In between, Le Fanu covers Mizoguchi's working methods, the evolution of his aesthetic, and his political and personal beliefs (the bulk of the book's thoughts on UGETSU occur on pages 55 - 62). There is something in Le Fanu's style that reminds me of the early Robin Wood, a blend of ease and intelligence that makes the polemics all the more vivid and memorable.

Le Fanu begins with a consideration of why Mizoguchi remains relevant to us today (he died in 1956). Part of the answer is Mizoguchi's spirituality and liberalism, but also his use of the tracking shot. And here, Le Fanu expounds with a useful and intriguing history of the tracking shot and its practitioners, among them Welles and Angelopoulos (he doesn't mention Van Sant, though, a recent member of the club). This culminates, on page 4 - 5 on why Haneke's THE PIANO TEACHER is better than EYES WIDE SHUT. See? Digressions. (He also mentions in passing during yet another digression within the first few pages that the film Q&A is not available on DVD, but it is, at least in Region 1.)

But are these really digressions? I think not, and in any case, Le Fanu's writing is well-structured; he moves logically from topic to seemingly unconnected topic. This is logical because, after all, in cinema writing, to talk about one thing is to talk about everything. MIZOGUCHI AND JAPAN, then, ends up inevitably casting its net wider, making it surely one of the best film books of the year.

Letters

From Dave Brown:

"I watched ALIAS for four years. I just stopped at the start of this season when I realized that none of these characters were motivated beyond anything other than plot — and I'm not looking for Abrams to provide concrete answers, but I have a hard time believing that the Rambaldi prophecies involved a giant red ball and zombies. The show started off with a great concept, but tried too hard to create an intricate mythology which ended up leading nowhere. I think that ALIAS hit its peak in the second season, and it has been downhill from there: formulaic (Syd goes into disguise to steal a MacGuffin) and unsatisfying. I've actually started watching SMALLVILLE in place of ALIAS, and am finding it quite fun — not spectacular, but fun."

From Shawn McGuan:

"I haven't picked up the 4th season DVDs yet, but I remember enjoying the season as it was winding down and thinking it was being unfairly bashed, particularly in the middle of the inspired Joel Grey as Evil Sloane run. This current season isn't connecting with me quite yet, but as I've learned in the past, I gotta give it a little time. And I agree with your other response on how you find it funny that "LOST is praised for the very things ALIAS is blamed for doing." I was watching an early episode on syndication last night and was struck by how much the show has changed form it's initial SD-6/Rambaldi plotlines. It does feel like ALIAS was a guinea pig for the LOST formula. But I have to think that Damon Lindelof is, and has always been, the man behind the curtains on LOST. The formula came from ALIAS, but it took someone beside J.J. Abrams to perfect it. (Well, it remains to be seen if it is in fact "perfect")."

From Michael Hovnanian:

"Regarding REVENGE OF THE SITH: it was refreshing for someone to finally acknowledge the real world response to the movie rather than the loud-mouthed message-board-haters response. First, I must admit that I am an unabashed STAR WARS fan. I think the prequels, especially Episodes II and III, are amazing films that show a depth of metaphor rarely seen in American cinema. I think the STAR WARS films are simply great movies. I mention this because, as a lifelong STAR WARS fan since I first saw the original STAR WARS in theaters in 1977, I went into Episode III figuring there was a pretty good chance I would like it. And I wasn't disappointed. Nor were my friends who were science fiction fans. What really surprised me was how much everyone else I talked to liked it. My 68-year-old Catholic housewife mother though it was great. My 17-year-old cheerleader cousin saw it twice opening weekend. My 75-year-old liberal father thought it was an important parable and said something to the effect of "they don't make movies like that anymore." Acquaintances who had poked quite a bit of fun at me for liking ATTACK OF THE CLONES so much actually took the time to tell me that SITH was so good that it made them rethink their attitudes towards the other prequels. In the real world almost everyone who saw it seems to range from liking REVENGE OF THE SITH to loving it. The only people who seem to have a problem with it are the VERY vocal message-board/"fanboy"/haters crowd. And honestly, I really don't think those people like anything. Their hobbies aren't moves, or comics, or whatever; their hobby is hating. And that is fine. It just sucks that these people, few in number as they may be, seem to be able to shape the perceived attitudes regarding a movie, TV show, or what have you. In the end, it is important to acknowledge that that this doesn't reflect the real world attitudes or reactions towards these movies, etc. Episode III was a HUGE success by any standard, and a very popular and well-received film. As for those who went into SITH with their minds already set on hating it (just as, it would seem, with everything else), well, surprise, they didn't like it. If these people hate science fiction movies so much, maybe they need to move on and find an interest or hobby that they DO like. Geekdom should get back to being about people who enjoy things and support them. The point of a hobby isn't tearing everything down, but rather celebrating the things you like. Anyway, that's my two cents on something that has been bothering me for a long while."

And incidentally, if you are interested in KILL BILL, you might find my new book, KILL BILL: AN UNOFFICIAL CASEBOOK useful. It is now available in fine bookstores everywhere, or from Amazon.

Not only that, I've got a new book coming out in October or November (fingers crossed) on an aspect of film noir I call film soleil, titled simply FILM SOLEIL. It is sure to alter film criticism as we know it to its very core. Order it now!

And if you are interested in what I sound like, I can be heard on KBOO radio (90.7 FM) the second and the fourth Wednesday of the month, at 9 AM in the morning (Pacific Standard Time) on Ed Goldberg's show MOVIE TALK along with Dawn Taylor. It's available via streaming audio (in 20 Kbps Stereo). The next broadcast is Wednesday, November 9, at 9 AM.

COMING SOON:SAW II, the 3rd Annual DVD Tray of Terror, FLIGHTPLAN and REDEYE, DEAD AND BREAKFAST, REMINGTON STEEL and other TV mystery shows, many STAR TREKS, and more!

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