Not Something You See Every Day

This, from robotech.com:

In honor of the United Nations' 60th anniversary this year, the United Nations (UN) will debut a special Public Service Announcement (PSA) at MIP TV 2005. The 60-second spot, produced by Harmony Gold, is part of a broader effort to increase awareness of the work of the UN during this special period culminating with the 60th opening session of the UN General Assembly in the Fall.

All grumbling about the UN aside, this PSA is something I'll be taking a look at when I can get it downloaded.

"[The UN] feel[s] this is a unique way of contributing to the UN's message of peace at a time when the world really needs it", said Harmony Gold (owners of the Robotech franchise) Chairman & CEO Frank Agrama. Somewhere in there is Irony with a capital I. Being lectured on peace by the wardens of a series where approximately six to seven billion people are slaughtered in a few seconds and a thirty-year interstellar war pretty much blowtorches Earth is going to be interesting.

On the other hand, the Robotech franchise (or more properly, the early Macross line) has an odd relationship with the UN, as does other mecha-centric anime from the late 1970s and early 1980s. A common thread running through the backdrop of several series is the unification of Earth's government, be it under the "Earth Federation" of Mobile Suit Gundam or the United Earth Government/United Earth Defense Council of Robotech. Something that you're likely to see pop on a not-intermittent basis is the phrase "UN SPACY".

What does that mean, you ask? I had to learn it from a Gundam type, who made it pretty simple:

U.S. Navy
U.N. Spacy

It's a contraction of sorts, for United Nations Space Navy. A lot of Gundam stuff for the Earth Federation sports this decoration, especially that by Kunio Okawara. More or less enthusiasm for the UN (or its general concept) and (in the case of the early Gundam series) a deep loathing of militarism would appear to be a common thread in a lot of the late 1970s/early 1980s stuff I tended to watch. One can understand both of them, because Japanese people were writing the scripts. I suppose these folks weren't too happy about having been hit with atomic bombs, and they were likewise unhappy with the glorification of the military, which I suppose led to the militarist party of Tojo et al being put into power. That, of course, wound up in 1945 with two wee little events in the skies over a pair of Japanese cities. Why Japanese nationals would be inclined to like the idea of a singular global government is beyond me, but then again, I'm in Virginia, which is close to half a world away from Japan, in more ways than one.¹

Go figure. I've got a frame of this thing downloaded, and it appears that the initial characters are going to be something I've not seen before, apparently from this Shadow Chronicles project that's supposed to be the latest entry in the Robotech universe. Me, I'll stick with the Macross Saga, 'cause it has Lisa Hayes.

¹ On the other hand, the Gundam universe seemed to establish, at least indirectly, that the Earth Federation wasn't exactly the nicest government either, at least by objective standards. Forced deportations from Earth were reportedly a facet of its social policy.

UPDATE: I've now seen the ad. Here goes:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

TITLE CARD: "ROBOTECH salutes the work and people of the United Nations on its 60th anniversary".

We see a seemingly ethereal woman drift down from the heavens while your average anime fighter PILOT stares up, goggle-eyed. He is standing next to a Veritech Alpha fighter in Guardian configuration.

PILOT: Ariel! This world is not safe for you. Many humans will still have to be convinced that we can all live together in peace.

ARIEL: Peace. It's amazing how beautiful this world can be when it is at peace.

PILOT: Yes, and how violent it is when it is at war.

As these last two lines are spoken, the camera pans from a green mountain range with pine trees and the like, to a shattered urban landscape, covered by reddish clouds in the sky. ARIEL turns her head back towards the PILOT, placing her right hand on the left side of the PILOT's head. The camera zooms into the PILOT's face as he closes his eyes.

ARIEL: Humanity has the greatest potential in itself, to educate, to heal, to provide. Together, you can do this. Together, you can succeed. Together, we will survive. There are many voices, but it is all one world, a world where there is a need for peace now. And in the future.

As ARIEL speaks, the scene transitions to a sepia-toned static illustration of a classroom with children being instructed from a chalkboard. A UNICEF sign hangs prominently over the chalkboard. Transition to a medical tent, where a WHO logo adorns a tent pole as a man sporting a blue "UN" armband treats a patient. Transition to an airfield(?), where men in what appear to be blue ballistic vests carry blue boxes, apparently food. One of the men is handing a blue box to an individual. The ballistic vests sport a wreathed insignia---half of the UN logo---surrounding an unidentified emblem. The letters "WFP" appear above the emblem.

The static illustrations switch back to the PILOT's eyes as ARIEL begins the "Together" part of her speech. The camera cuts to ARIEL's eyes, which are a shade of purple as are her hair and eyebrows. The camera then cuts to an external view, sweeping past two mounds---potentially the final resting places of SDF-1, SDF-2, and Commander Khyron Kravsher's vessel?---to ARIEL and the PILOT, who is now sitting on the foot of his Alpha.

Two forward-swept wing transport land in VTOL fashion in the background and the camera pans upward to a trio of the same aircraft flying in a vee formation. Camera continues panning until the blue sky turns to black.

The black sky then displays a color illustration of the planet Earth, wreathed in the UN leaves. The caption reads, "UNITED NATIONS IT'S OUR FUTURE.", along with www.un.org

END TRANSCRIPT. All intellectual property rights remain with the holder, ostensibly Harmony Gold. No claim is made against those rights. The use of names and other indicia from other Harmony Gold properties is solely for identification purposes and does not constitute a claim of right against the holder of the property.

OK, now that the ersatz legal disclaimer is out of the way---don't sue me---a bit of response. I don't get this ad. Harmony Gold's intent was to reach children with this message, but I am not convinced that it succeeds. Do children these days know what UNICEF is, and are they going to catch it in the illustration? Ditto the World Health Organization and the World Food Program. The images are kind of quickly displayed, and obvious to me only because I have the luxury of starting and stopping the PSA with QuickTime. Of course, the closing message is absolutely unmistakable, but it's sort of presented as a definitive conclusion, without a whole lot of support.

Of course, I don't know how a kid thinks, and they'll probably catch up on what the message wants them to get pretty easily: UN gooooood. (Napster baaaad!)

If I were a UN officer, I would appreciate the thought, but I'd also thank my lucky stars that the organization didn't (apparently) pay for it.

A quick bit of surfing confirmed a suspicion I had, and provided some additional information: The pilot made me think of The New Generation's Lieutenant Scott Bernard, for some reason. That stands to reason, because a source I've found says that it is a "redesigned" Lieutenant Bernard, and that the woman is Ariel, also redesigned from The New Generation. Of course she looked a little strange; she's an Invid---evil alien race---given human form. (The Invid can do that. Considering that their leaders are apparently able to, sort of like the later Zerg of StarCraft fame, able to warp space and time to travel around across interstellar distances simply by thinking about it, reshaping mere flesh and blood wouldn't be too hard.) Also, The Shadow Chronicles takes place after the end of the "Third Robotech War", wherein Earth is liberated from Invid subjugation. If I understand things right, the series will cover Lieutenant Bernard's search for the Robotech Expeditionary Force, a powerful group dispatched some twenty-five years earlier on a mission of armed diplomacy.

See here and scroll down for a description of the effort; whoever's writing that site is not amused. Me, I'm just looking forward to seeing Admiral Lisa Hayes again.

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Movie-Going Humor

I'm guilty of laughing at several points during Revenge of the Sith, usually when laughter was appropriate. I like the interactive audience experience, except for the guy who keeps talking how he saw this or that on the web when he was surfing around in search of Star Wars porn. Ew.

Anyways.

I found a list of things to do in order to disrupt the movie-going experience, similar to the list of things to do while watching Return of the King.

Here you go. I just about spewed soda on my laptop while reading several of these, and I was nearly reduced to tears of laughter amidst near-continuous sniggering. I highly approve.

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Uncomfortable Analysis

That cursed Ith! She notes today the Revenge of the Sith review by Orson Scott Card, of Ender's Game fame.

Mr. Card's review is both brutally honest and a welcome read; catch it and let me know what you think.

Ith also says something that lands close to home: "So I'll redo "Revenge of the Sith" in my head, pretty it up, and then I'll go see it again and mesh the two together."

That's interesting, now that I know that other people do it. For the sake of discussion, I'll call it "compression". Defined, it's the process by which one takes a movie and selectively edits it in memory so that only the good---as defined by the individual---parts are retained. To personalize this:

Star Wars does not suffer from compression. The whole thing's an enjoyable ride, from "There'll be no escape for the princess this time" to "Great shot, kid! That was one in a million!" This was amply demonstrated to me over the weekend; I saw this movie in its original VHS release cut with a friend and his wife. She derived great amusement with the fact that she caught me either mouthing or mumbling lines throughout the entire movie.

The Empire Strikes Back operates much the same way, with only a little fudging around the Dagobah sequences. I've never placed any faith in Yoda; I don't like the cut of that fuzzy little hunchback's jib.

To inject other examples, The Hunt for Red October is almost compression-free. From chunks of Marko Ramius' discussion with Borodin to "Welcome to the New World, Captain", I remember this movie. Ditto RoboCop; I've only seen it a few times in eighteen years, but I still pretty much remember large chunks of the film. Admittedly, the dialogue isn't supremely complex, and much of it can be handled with random expletives and "I'd buy that for a dollar!", but that Dutch degenerate Verhoeven managed to make an impression.

I haven't had to redo the first three movies in the Star Wars series, and I haven't had to redo HFRO in my head, either. This is, in my viewpoint, an example of good film-making.

Not so The Lord of the Rings and the Matrix series. FOTR is the least compression-free movie of the bunch to me, but even it can be cut down to whatever happens in Lothlorien. That, and perhaps Boromir's demise, 'cause I really liked that character. Subsequent movies in the series have failed to make much of an impression on me. Note to future directors: If you wish to do so, then I suggest using Cate Blanchett in white.

The Matrix films worked the same way. The first one had some rather memorable moments, and I've fumblingly tried to normalize use of snippets out of that movie into routine conversation. Unfortunately for the Wachowski Twins, they failed in their efforts for more memorable scenes in later films. Reloaded's been cut to a single sequence or two, mostly involving Agent Smith. Revolutions got cut to the Bane v. Neo/Trinity sequence, Trinity's little tantrum in the S&M club, and Neo's disgusted exclamation while in the subway tunnel. Considering that I made those cuts pretty much an hour or two after seeing the movie, that's pretty bad. Of course, I was disgusted with the whole thing, but never mind.

So where does Revenge of The Sith fall? I don't expect to remember enough of it to start reeling out chunks of dialogue, but it's certainly a pleasant memory across several scenes, unlike The Phantom Menace.

Ugh. I really need to get busy with the work of the day.

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A Bit of Issue with the Senate

The Republic Senate, that is. I had been surprised to discover that Kenner had released an action figure of Senator Mon Mothma, of Chandrila.¹ Naturally, I decided that I had to find her in the current picture. That, as they say, didn't work. I had two sets of eyes watching the movie several times in total, and we saw nothing of the Chandrilan senator.

Being thwarted in our collective efforts, we turned to the wisdom of the Internet Movie Database, which confirmed the presence of the character in the movie, played by an actress named Genevieve O'Reilly. Ms. O'Reilly was also noted as having played "Officer Wirtz" in the latter two of the Matrix pictures. None of this helped, and we were a bit stumped. Nobody remembered an Officer Wirtz from Zion or the Matrix itself, so we figured that Mon Mothma was another one of these "If you look at the left side of the screen whilst occluding your eye to the seventh house of Jupiter, you will see her shadow for approximately 0.75 seconds during the sequence where Senator Skywalker makes her observation about thunderous applause" kinds of characters.

However, trust the Internet to bail out the semi-obssessive fanboy in need of a fix. The IMDB message board for Ms. O'Reilly saved the day, telling us two things:

1. The scenes with Senator Mothma (no relation to Senator Mothra, from the island planet of Toho) were cut.

2. Officer Wirtz was in the Zion scenes, with spoken dialogue in Revolutions, asking "What are they doing?" in response to an action taken by the sentinel horde.

A quote, relayed second hand or so, from Rick McCallum (Mr. "George Doesn't Think the Technology's There So That's Why We're Still With VHS" Producer dude in the blue denim shirt a couple of years back) suggests that there'll be deleted scenes on the forthcoming DVD release. I certainly hope so; it seems a waste for Ms. O'Reilly's character to not make the screen.

At any rate, now that that mystery's solved, off to less profitable things. I'm just glad I wasn't somehow missing a giant chunk of the film. See here for one more-or-less authoritative fan source of information WRT the character. The Star Wars website offers The O'Reilly Factor and the 'Databank' entry for Senator Mothma.

I'd vote for her.

¹ We do not recognize the new regime in place. So far as this publication is concerned, Kenner is still making the Star Wars toy line. Hasbro, on the other hand, manufactures the G.I. Joe and Transformers toy lines. Your correspondent is, if nothing else, not about to change terminology simply because twenty-odd years of corporate mergers have intervened.

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More Star Wars

Enough? Never! I'm finally around and coherent for the ending of a movie series that has been present in my entertainment world since the Carter Administration, and there's no way that it'll ever be rivalled. Four out of six were solid pictures, and I could, during a moment of weakness, find something nice to say about Attack of the Clones, pushing the ratio to 5:6. That's got the original Star Trek cast beat, and that's sayin' a lot.

Besides, I'd rather write about Star Wars than Senate nuclear options or Social Security reform, because lots of other people whose lives revolve around Karl Rove's checklists are doing that for fun, profit, and traffic. Revenge of the Sith beats Republicans led by Frist any day, if you will.

Having perused a list of the little action figures from the current movie, I saw that Hasbro Kenner's released Governor Tarkin. Yeeeeeeee haw. A buddy of mine invited me over to his house to watch a VHS copy of the original Star Wars cut, and I was reminded of just how cool Wilhuf Tarkin is. We could use him against the Islamists. Of course, I'll have to get one or two of 'em for the collection.

Ith over at Absinthe & Cookies is reminiscing about Splinter of the Mind's Eye, the very first Star Wars novel other than the one penned by Lucas himself as part of the Star Wars marketing effort. It was written by Alan Dean Foster, a 1970s sci-fi heavyweight, and was reportedly so poorly received that it took Lucas another twelve years or so to greenlight another Star Wars novel. (That novel would be Heir to the Empire, which was written by a guy whose jacket photo had him in a Colonial warrior's jacket from Battlestar Galactica. Sweet.)

I found a copy of it several years ago in a flea market, and didn't share in the majority opinion. If I remember correctly, the novel was clearly a product of the post-Star Wars, pre-Empire universe, so things weren't so fleshed out that Foster couldn't maneuver a bit. I do seem to recall a bit of Luke trying to figure out how best to score points with Leia, which at the time made all the sense in the world. The novel certainly wasn't high literature, but from Foster, what could you expect? He had a style all his own, and I remember the thing reading similarly to his novelization of The Black Hole, which would have been published about the same time.

And yes, our resident Dark Lord of the Sith, Darth Vader, was a right monster in it. None of this touchy feely compassionate stuff about him; this was the Vader fully on His Majesty's Sith Service, and thus at least one or two all-out slaughters ensued. In summation, it was a decent novel that, while not being on par with Timothy Zahn's work in Heir to the Empire, was a good read for a trip or something. I doubt it deserves the whole part of opprobrium that's dumped upon it nowadays. I dare the modern fans to stand it against The Courtship of Princess Leia and tell me that Splinter is bad writing. That particular work, in my opinion, started the long slide that Star Wars books have been in for quite some time. The first batch of "academy" novels by K.J. Anderson didn't help much either---except for Admiral Daala, huh huh huh---and the X-Wing series was too uneven to really sustain a lasting interest. Tremendous savings on my part, though.

In related news, a recent purchase---support the war economy!---was the current model of Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber. Wal-Mart (boo hiss!) had them for fifteen bucks, so I couldn't refuse. It's a solid low-cost toy, with color-changing blades. That little feature sold me on it over a Kenobi saber, but now I've still got to get one of those, too.

I'm not entirely sure why I'm so fond of the Anakin Skywalker model. It's probably because the thing was the first 'saber I ever saw, and so I've had an attraction to it as a result. Conversely, I've never really been fond of the one made by his son; the thing looks too fragile. Qui-Gon Jinn's was also pretty nifty, but it seems like you could lose it pretty easily. Darth Vader's is just unwieldly, in my opinion. However, the ones made in the late 1990s, prior to the release of Phantom Menace, were superior; they were scaled more for people of my age group, as opposed to children. Nowadays, the lightsabers are made for kids, not fully-grown adults. (There's something uncomplimentary in there, but I'm not going to say any more.) What I need is an adult-scale lightsaber that can be fiddled around with, instead of costing $500 or so. Suggestions are, of course, welcome.

Thus ends yet another long post in the blogging world on Star Wars. Now, where's my statute of Admiral Piett?

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The Evening Outrage

John Podhoretz continues to dig himself a hole in my viewpoint. Didn't notice the "airport terminal", and I don't care that the Old Republic didn't have ultrasound. There's probably a logical fallacy somewhere around Podhoretz's assumption that just because we have ultrasound that the OR would as well.

But of course, it's John Podhoretz, so obviously his criticism is dead-on accurate, and he stands in the ranks of film criticism right beside Pauline Kael. Note to the so-called "J-Pod": When in a hole, stop digging.

Next, we have the marginally funny Warren Bell commenting the following:

I deliberately avoided the political overtones of Revenge of the Sith. Enough has been made of it already.

The so-called political overtones are not there. I discussed this with Boy of heterophobic (Caution; journal not necessarily work safe) and we agree that the people reading modern politics into the picture see it because they want to see it. I suppose that it's a desire to feel persecuted or rebellious against evil Hollywood; rise up, man the barricades, and demand that Senator Frist exercise the nuclear option! (Which, incidentally, I can't care a whit about.)

Mr. Bell continues:

Heroes on both sides? Utter nonsense. If there are heroes on the Separatist/Droid side, we never see them. The notion that there are heroes on both sides sounds an awful lot like "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter," and it's indicative of the grade level of Lucas's political sophistication.

He is right about one thing: We never see any heroic figures in the separatist army. As best as I can remember, we get some wheezing Montgomery Burns of a droid with a biological heart in General Grievous, and then a lot of so-stupid-it's-implausible droids who serve as 'saber fodder for our heroes.

That is, unfortunately, the first and last time that Mr. Bell is accurate about anything in his post. It's not much of an intellectual effort to realize that on any side of a conflict, you're going to find soldiers who do things that would be considered heroic. In World War II, Audie Murphy performed actions that we in the United States would consider heroic. I doubt the officers and men of the Wehrmacht would see it in the same light, but there you have it. Murphy was a war hero, and I do not dispute it.

On the other side, consider the actions of Günther Prien, commander of U-47. On 14 October 1939, Prien led his ship into the Royal Navy anchorage at Scapa Flow. While there, he was able to torpedo the battleship HMS Royal Oak, and then return to the German submarine base at Kiel. This was no small action; Scapa Flow was one of the most, if not the most, important Royal Navy bases. It constituted a major victory on a variety of levels for the Germans, and won Prien tremendous fame. He was hailed as a public hero when he returned to Germany, and reportedly remained Admiral Karl Doenitz's favorite commander until the loss of U-47 in mid-1941. (For a good account of the Scapa Flow action, see here.)

Setting aside for the moment the fact that Prien sailed for National Socialism, a question for Mr. Bell: Do you not think that Prien's actions were heroic? Merriam-Webster includes in its definition for hero the following: "an illustrious warrior, a man admired for his achievements and noble qualities, one that shows great courage"

I don't know anything about the noble qualities---or not---of Prien, but sneaking into the British equivalent of Naval Station Norfolk and sinking a capital ship sounds rather courageous and like an achievement worthy of praise. And then of course grit your teeth, clench a fist, and curse the man for his success.

Enh. Perhaps J-Pod is blinkered to the point where everything comes to him through an ideological lens. He reportedly wrote a book that hailed George W. Bush as the greatest Presidential speaker since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, so that may be some indication that Podhoretz is overly sensitive to perceived criticism of the sitting President. As for Warren Bell, I'm not sure what to think. It's rather juvenile I would think to believe that only one side's soldiers are capable of heroic deeds.

Oh well. My new Revenge of the Sith litmus test is humming along just fine, and more names are being added to the list of those who get ignored. Warren Bell, you just wrote yourself on there. Mr. Podhoretz, you've inscribed your name not only in blood, but with hammer and chisel.

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Trailer Review

Four trailers stuck out in my mind:

Mr. and Mrs. Smith - Neither Brad Pitt nor Angelina Jolie make my list of preferred actors & actresses. Although I liked the latter's performance as Francesca Cook in Sky Captain, she's just never caught my fancy. Until now. Er, right. She's right attractive, as a matter of fact. Gratuitous gunplay with a gorgeous woman can always catch my eye. Consider both of them caught. According to some IMDB reports, Nicole Kidman was going to be in the Angelina Jolie role. Curses.

Bewitched - It has Nicole Kidman. 'nuff said. That being said, I used to like watching the original series on television in various re-runs, and I was rather interested in seeing how well Miss Kidman would compare to Elizabeth Montgomery, who was arguably one of the best-looking women on television during the original broadcast run of the series.

One of Australia's finest---alongside Cate Blanchett, of course---does very well, thank you. She'll go very far in covering up for that blathering idiot Will Ferrell. Michael Caine's presence ought to add to the success. Did I mention that Nicole Kidman's a babe in this? Combine it with a touch of white magic, and well, hellllloooooooo nurse, to quote one of the Warner Brothers.

War of the Worlds - This might be good. I really enjoyed---and was often scared by---the late 1980s Paramount syndicated show of the same name. I'm not much of a Tom Cruise fan---any man who'd leave Nicole Kidman---but this might actually be good. I'm sort of hopeful about this, even though I doubt I'll ever get to hear that creepy "To life immortal!" again.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe - I have high hopes for this, and it looks to be done well. I'm eager to see how this one plays out, with special curiosity as to the way Lewis' Christian themes and imagery survive the Hollywood process. I just wish Jadis had gone to one of my favorite Australian actresses. Tee hee. Hopefully this will be well done and do well; I'd like to see The Voyage of the Dawn Treader put to film.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention one other picture's trailer.

Fantastic Four - I barely understand this particular Marvel franchise. Most of the comic books I read when I was younger were moldering back issues of the Marvel Battlestar Galactica book, Transformers, and the various Robotech series. At any rate, Jessica Alba is miscast as Susan Storm Richards. From a visual perspective, Jessica Alba doesn't match what I've found to be the more or less image of Mrs. Richards; the color scheme seen in the movie doesn't work. Oh well.

Johnny Storm looks interesting, and Reed Richards looks like Reed Richards should. Ben Grimm will be weird to watch on screen. Nevertheless, I'll probably shell out for this flick as well. I can't remember the last time all the trailers to a movie came away with me thinking "I'll go and see it". Interesting.

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Revenge of the Sith

Just got back from the midnight show at the local theater. First in line, first in theater, and all that. Yee haw. That'll be something to tell the grandkids, assuming that I ever have any.

Revenge of the Sith is easily the best of the three new pictures, and compares well with the first three. The Empire Strikes Back it ain't, but that's OK. I won't spoil anything for the hordes of people who haven't yet seen it, so don't look for plot details just yet. I'll say this, however: Anyone trying to link either Darth Vader or Chancellor Palpatine to George W. Bush will have an impossible task; Junior's not capable of the kinds of things that we see these two get up to. It's nice to shatter a meme in the making, after all.

This movie pretty much seals Darth Vader's claim to be the ultimate [redacted], state of the [redacted] art, with apologies to Private W. Hudson, USCM.

John Podhoretz, you may be all that and the proverbial bag of chips in writing for magazines, but you, sir, fail miserably as a critic of the Star Wars saga. For once, I wasn't rolling my eyes and averting my gaze at an awful picture, so by that (admittedly vague) test, Revenge of the Sith wins. Mr. Podhoretz joins Stephen Moore in the column of National Review columnists who I won't be paying attention to.

I had several vocal cheers, several exclamations of surprise (or laughter) and was generally impressed with the film. It took Lucas twenty-eight years, but he finally managed to hold my attention from the director's chair once again. The one thing that stuck out at me was that certain headgear for a particular officer class looked inaccurate, but I'll leave it to the people who keep close track of these things. Setting that aside, I was impressed by several recognizable homage shots, and a touch or two of Spielberg in a particular action sequence. I also appreciated the way the movie managed to illustrate a tremendous amount of activity spanning nigh-on twenty years in just a few minutes. More testimony to the power of the moving picture, I suppose.

Gimme a black cape and similar robes any day. Just have Miss Portman waiting in the wings...

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