Dark Knight, Sheds Light

There is a very interesting discussion of the film The Dark Knight Rises at The Commentator that is well worth a read. It is, as the piece indicates, the norm for Hollywood to (in effect) promote the idea of wealth-making as a positive thing, even though that is how the world of human society works best.

Indeed, it's the only way society actually can work, as other models have shown through their own failure.

This reminds me of one of the paradoxes of life on Earth: Hollywood is dominated by Jews: producers, directors, executives, purse-string holders. Jews tend to support the political Left (hence Hollywood's general slant, for one obvious effect of this) yet it is the Left who support their enemies, especially the Palestinians, while rather obviously paying mere lip-service to 'friendship' with Israel, the Jewish State. Indeed, our own BBC is so slanted (as has been reported on several issues in the last week or so alone) that it really is a mystery why that Left-supporting situation still exists.

Anyway, that's where we are; and perhaps it is sign of change, of the Hollywood bosses finally waking up to reality in at least one (probably two) direction(s), resulting in a shift toward more realistic scene-setting in the dramas they produce. The writer of The Commentator's article is described as a "researcher at a pro-Israel education organisation", making this all the more intriguing.

It is about time that, especially in this era of special effects-laden superhero (and similar) fantasy, some real-world factual basis to stories being told came into the movies. We in Britain were always so good at this, years ago; and the likes of The Ipcress File and its sequels, Get Carter, The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and others from around that era carried a lot of factual and (especially in hindsight) contextually obvious material within them. One could learn a lot, and get a feel for how and why things operated thus.

Anyway, I shall now have to seriously consider going to this new movie myself, to appraise its message validity personally; but by the sounds of it the job has been done well, so I might just wait for it to appear on television as is my usual practice. We shall see...

Stay out of trouble!

That was Robocop's standard advice to the public; and with news of a remake (yes, yet another remake!) currently in the pipeline it could be interesting to take a quick peek at it.

The cast includes big names such as Gary Oldman and Samuel L Jackson, along with our own 'House' export to Hollywood, Hugh Laurie, while Murphy/Robocop is being played by an unknown to me: Joel Kinnaman.

As usual with these things, I cannot as yet see the point in re-working something that worked so well (if somewhat violently) in its first incarnation – but shall reserve judgement until it's released. Most but not all 're-imaginings' (as they are often termed these days) have been relatively poor, and the originals have usually worked better.

Sometimes the new version stands on its own as merely a different take on the same theme, without either invalidating or being overshadowed by the original work. The newer Battlestar Galactica series, flawed though it was, is one such. The new V series is also very good, despite some variable-quality scripting and acting,  and can co-exist with the original – which has been shown again only this month on one of the Cable/satellite channels.

In the current case, there are several memorable aspects of the original that will no doubt be impossible to substitute, let alone replicate, including the top-notch performances from the likes of Miguel Ferrer and Ronny Cox, and certainly the outstanding performance of Kurtwood Smith as Clive Bonniker. That's out of reach, I'd suggest...

Music – The Ecstasy of Gold

For some reason, it seems to me at least that a work such as this is even more powerful and stirring in live performance with orchestra, chorus and soprano (Susanna Rigacci, I think) with the master himself conducting...

Music – The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

A longish piece, this, lasting a little over ten minutes. After the opening minute or so, there's some mildly discordant stuff – deliberately setting the tone.

This is followed by a section that, at four minutes or so in, includes a motif that Morricone re-used many years later in the lovely film Mission to Mars. If you've seen that movie you'll spot it here straight away, I promise! (Think: Gary Sinise going up the tube at the end.)

 There are a few of the well-known themes from this movie, though, in the second half of this piece, culimnating in that most famous theme of all from these so-called "Spaghetti movies"...