Some movies are pure entertainment designed entirely for escapism, and others attempt to send a message to the audience about something important, be it political, personal, or societal.  In the tradition of Traffic and Syriana, the film of Eric Schlosser’s non-fiction exposé Fast Food Nation, adapted by himself and director Richard Linklater, is definitely the latter but it is a message, I believe, the audience isn’t willing to stomach.

In these types of films you have to review two different sides.  You have to critique it as a piece of art and entertainment and then separately on its ability to communicate its message.  First I’ll tackle Fast Food Nation as a film.  The challenge for Linklater was to adapt a best-selling, non-fiction, investigative book about the meatpacking and fast food industries — showing the realities of how a Big Mac becomes your lunch. In doing this he created a bevy of different characters, some with long arcs and others simply representing a “type” of person within these industries.  I believe he concocted some credible storylines that act as a conduit to showing us the rather down-and-dirty means to which hamburgers are made and distributed.  But I think he tried to be too ambitious and created too many characters that preclude enough time to get a full sense of their essence — we simply don’t get inside their heads, and this results in us not really caring too much about them.  

Standouts are the marketing director for Mickey’s, a rather obvious stand-in for McDonald’s, played by Greg Kinnear (As Good As It Gets) in an understated but effective performance.  His character represents the everyman seeking answers and not finding them, or at least not to his satisfaction or finding them and ignoring them, however you want to interpret his actions.  Wilmer Valderrama (That ’70s Show) also gives an excellent performance as a Mexican illegal trying to make the system work for his survival.

Unfortunately, it is with the female characters that the film falls apart.  Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria Full of Grace) and Ashley Johnson (Growing Pains) give credible performances, but the script doesn’t allow them to fully explore their characters’ psychological and emotional sides.  

As for the message, Linklater successfully paints a bloody picture of the process with which beef gets to our tables, and it ain’t pretty.  But I was left with more questions than answers by the end of the film. While I appreciate films that pose questions to inspire dialogue, I was more perplexed by what should be done, if anything, rather than wanting to stand up and fight the big corporate baddies.  Films like Silkwood and The China Syndrome did a much better job in that regard and also worked better as entertainment than Fast Food Nation because they focused on one set of characters and one “bad guy.”  Fortunately, nuclear power is a less accessible villain than the local burger joint — and more easily hated.

Fast Food Nation isn’t for the squeamish or for those who prefer their entertainment on the lite side.  Some of the scenes are worthy of the best slasher films, and the effect does accomplish its mission, but unlike China Syndrome — which made me scared to death of nuclear power plants, especially after Three Mile Island confirmed its message — Fast Food Nation didn’t preclude me one bit from stopping by the nearest Burger King after the screening for a Whopper with cheese.  Whether that’s a testament to our society’s dependency on eating at fast food restaurants or to a film that doesn’t quite stir up the crowd enough to cause a revolution, I don’t really know.  And that’s how I left the screening room.  I just don’t know.

Distributed by Fox Searchlight, Fast Food Nation is playing nationwide in select theaters.

Rich Burlingham

This may sound strange, but I have reasons to mention that Lithuania, the small Baltic country that gained back independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, finally got a nomination in the Foreign Film category from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, better known as the people who give out the Oscars every February or March.

The 46-year-old Lithuanian filmmaker Arunas Matelis’ film, Before Flying Back to Earth, will compete with 60 other films in next year’s 79th edition of the Academy Awards.  The film is a 52-minute documentary about kids with cancer, how they cope while stuck in a hospital, and their feelings and relationships with each other.  It has won the top prizes at last year’s Leipzig and Amsterdam film festivals.  Matelis is a graduate of the theater and TV division of the Lithuanian Academy of Music, and he set up the Nominum Film Production Company in 1992, just a year after the country gained independence.  He has directed more than ten documentaries and around 20 features.  In response to the nomination, he told AFP, “I am very happy with the nomination.  It is the first time for Lithuania, the first time for the Baltic countries and, as far as I know, the first time a documentary will compete against other movies.”

Now the reason why this is important to me is the fact that I’m half Lithuanian.  My mother recently traveled to the country for the first time in her life, finally visiting where her parents were born and meeting many cousins she has never seen in person before.  It makes me feel good that such a small and downtrodden country can emerge from years of oppression, start to pull themselves out of such a quagmire, and begin to become significant contributors to the global society. They continue to build upon their sport heritage with ever-increasing competitive athletes in many sports.  I applaud their efforts and, if I was an Academy member, you know where I’d place my vote. Gero pasisekimo, or good luck.

Rich Burlingham

George Miller, the director who made us believe that pigs could talk in the 1995 hit, Babe, is at it again with the 3D-animated Happy Feet and, from the 17 minutes of footage I saw at a press event, it looks like it’s going to take the holidays by storm.  

Happy Feet stars the voice of Elijah Wood as an Emperor penguin named Mumble, who can’t sing a heart song, the ditty that all Emperor penguins sing to find their true love.  Brittany Murphy is Gloria, the love Mumble wants to woo but can’t get because his talents lie in dancing, not singing.  When he’s finally cast out of the community by the stern Noah the Elder (Hugo Weaving), he runs into a posse of decidedly un-Emperor-like penguins called the Adelie Amigos who have a Latin bent to them and use dancing as their romantic lure.  With the help of these friends, headed by the Sinatra-singing Ramon — Robin Williams doing his best Fernando Lamas impression — Mumble tries to win his love back with a little Cyrano trick, but it backfires.  Without seeing the ending, I’m guessing that Mumbles finally wins his love by proving that you don’t have to be able to sing to be lovable. But whether the ending is predictable or not, it’s Mumbles’ fun journey finding himself that makes Happy Feet joyous.

From the footage I saw, I believe that this will be the smash hit of the holidays. The humor, especially from the perfect-pitch Williams playing two parts (he also plays a Barry White-type penguin leader named Lovelace), will make kids and adults laugh out loud, and the marvelous renditions of songs will also please all audiences.  The action sequences also appear to be fantastic and will no doubt spawn a merchandising frenzy.  

The rest of the cast is platinum as well, with Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, and Mumbles’ dancing performed by Savion Glover, using the same motion capture techniques used to bring Gollum to life in The Lord of the Rings films.  Also credited is the voice of Steve Irwin, the Australian TV star and animal environmentalist who was killed recently by a stingray off the Great Barrier Reef.  The film also features a new song by Prince and others by Yolanda Adams, American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino, Chrissie Hynde, Patti LaBelle, kd lang, Pink, and more.

I give credit to everyone working on the film, from the writers to the animators.  A lot of times, they put all the good stuff into trailers and, when you go see the movie, it’s a bomb. But even if the rest of the film is slightly worse than the 17 minutes that I saw, I still think it will be a great family film you can’t miss.  My five-year-old daughter who joined me at the screening can attest to my claim.

George Miller claims this film was in production before The March of the Penguins came out of the blue to become one of the most successful documentaries of all time, but it certainly can’t hurt the prospects of this film.  Happy Feet I’m sure will be around through the holidays.  I think the buzz is growing because, over a month out, the studio is starting to run ads on television.  I think they know they have a big hit on their hands and they want to make sure everyone else knows that, too.  I’m doing my part to help them out.

Happy Feet is released by Warner Bros. Pictures and Village Roadshow Pictures and opens November 17 in theaters everywhere.

Rich Burlingham

I’ve been a fan of Project Greenlight since its inception a few years ago, spearheaded by Live Planet, a company created by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, and Chris Moore.  If you don’t know, PG is an Internet contest for inspiring filmmakers and allows the winners of both a screenplay and directing contest to make their own movie, low budget of course.  To finance the contest, Live Planet sells the rights to air a reality show that follows the making of the film — full of drama as the novice filmmakers are pressured to perform in front of millions of viewers.  

The first two films that came out of Project Greenlight weren’t big successes and only moderately well received by critics.  The third installment of the contest/TV series gave us a unique director in the form of John Gulager, a schlep of a guy, 40-something, introverted but with a great visual eye.  He comes from a family of show people, with an acting father whose credits seem to include almost every show on television during the 60s and 70s.  Gulager won the contest because of his talent, certainly not because of his personality (Matt Damon was his champion).  But it was his stubborn, family-oriented, and determined qualities that not only made him interesting to watch and root for during the airing of the TV series but allowed him to work within the confines of the mini-studio system to make a great film in an oversaturated genre.

The winning script, Feast, was written by the team of Patrick Melton and Marcus Dustan as a big tent pole, horror action picture that would have cost on the high side of $40 million if changes were not made from the original winning script.  Dimension Films (part of the Weinstein Company) only gave them a few million and they picked up some more cash from Vegas hotel magnates the Maloof Brothers, but even so, the script had to be pared down tremendously for this production.  The writers did an excellent job, and I can’t see how throwing more money at it would have made the film better.  The low budget made the writers and director Gulager use more Hitchcockian techniques that create more tension from what you don’t see than from anything very graphic. Though, the faint of heart are advised to stay away from this film because there is plenty of gore, blood, and guts flying every which way you can imagine.

Feast isn’t a remarkable film and has many flaws, but considering it was made with a bunch of cameras capturing all the scrapes, scuffles, and tiffs that go on during the production of any movie, the filmmaking team did a fine job.  The film depicts a night in the middle of the desert as a clan of cannibalistic creatures of unknown origin descends to have dinner at a run-down roadhouse.  The only thing is, they have a penchant for human flesh.  It’s up to the low-lives, drifters, and wayward drunks to try to stay alive, barricaded inside the bar as the creatures try every means to get inside and eat them. Gulager smartly doesn’t take any of this quite seriously and, though the characters are serious, the tone of the film winks at us in the audience to let us know it’s okay to chuckle.  Those who love the thrill ride of such horror slasher films as this won’t be disappointed for there are plenty of scary moments that make you jump out of your seat.

Having watched the TV series, then the film, and finally interviewed the director, John Gulager, I am more impressed with the film than I thought I would be.  I am certainly not a big fan of gore-fest horror films but, because this one has fun while the blood splatters, that makes it okay to watch.  I had some problems with the editing and flow of the scenes, but knowing how they needed to cut here and change there from direction of the studio and the test audience reactions, it’s understandable that a low-budget film would have such problems.  If you like horror films and gory ones at that, then Feast is the perfect date night film (if you’re trying to get your girlfriend to grab on to you or hide her face in your chest).

Feast will be released as a midnight movie on September 22 and 23 across the nation.  It’s scheduled to come out on DVD on October 17 just in time for Halloween.  The film stars Balthazar Getty (Alias), Henry Rollins (The Henry Rollins Show), Jenny Wade (8 Simple Rules), Krista Allen (Paycheck), Judah Friedlander (Zoolander), and Clu Gulager (Wagon Train, The Gambler) with a cameo by Eric Dane (X-Men, Grey’s Anatomy).  I urge you to go to the theater to watch the film in support of Project Greenlight.  Maybe a strong showing at the box office will help keep PG going in the future.  The film is rated R for obvious reasons.

Rich Burlingham

The TV season has begun as Fox gets out of the box first with the new serial drama Vanished.  It’s a little bit CSI, with a pinch of Without a Trace and a dash of 24.  The gist of the Monday night show revolves around the disappearance of the second wife of a prominent Georgia Senator who turns out not to be who she’s pretending to be.  The pilot purposely gives out clues that seem to implicate everyone who is close to the beautiful woman named Sara, including the Senator, his kids, and even the ex-wife, who has yet to be revealed on screen.  

The stock characters include an angst-ridden FBI agent named Kelton, played by Gale Harold (Deadwood), who is trying to cope with a past botched kidnapping retrieval situation that caused the death of a young boy.  His reliable partner Lin Mei, the always-sharp Ming-Na (ER), is leaded with the task of keeping Kelton grounded.  Near the end of the pilot episode it’s revealed that Kelton had written a memo to his bosses that he was against the tactic used in the attempted retrieval of the kidnapped boy that ended in tragedy.  In a cheesy bit of dialogue, the Senator, who unleashes this information, tells the agent that he doesn’t want him to write any memos, just do what he thinks will find his wife.

Vanished was created by a veteran of CSI, Josh Berman, and partially executive-produced by feature director Mimi Leder (The Peacemaker, Deep Impact), who also directed the pilot and seems to try too hard to grab the audience with clichéd plot introductions instead of building with interesting characters we haven’t seen before.  Shows become hits when the audience becomes enamored by the characters and invites them into their homes week after week, such as with other Fox dramas like the already mentioned 24, House, and the surprise hit Prison Break, which proceeds Vanished on Fox’s primetime schedule.  

Not to poo poo on the casting director, but none of the actors stand out, at least not yet.  The most intriguing character is the kidnapped victim herself, played by Joanne Kelly, in a quietly subdued but compelling performance.  The only problem is Sara vanishes during the first half-hour of the pilot and only reappears in flashbacks or snippets of imagery.  It is my hope that in subsequent episodes, she isn’t relegated to a ghost character, much like Laura Palmer, the victim at the central core of the bizarre, early 90s, David Lynch series Twin Peaks.  She needs to be front and center and a key figure in the dramatic action.

Plot wise, they have concocted enough twists to rival the real-life JonBenet Ramsey murder case.  Whether they can sustain this form of storytelling without becoming maudlin, trite, or repetitive, like ABC’s Lost has successfully done over the last two seasons, is yet to be determined.  They were successful in keeping my attention for the full hour and making me want to return next week to see how the case is moving, though Twin Peaks was able to string out Who Killed Laura Palmer for a whole season (but the weirdness factor wore off by season two and the show died a slow, ugly death).  I also hope the producers and Fox execs aren’t just trying to duplicate 24’s success by trying to force us to fall in love with the FBI agent character, à la Jack Bauer, so that we will continue year after year to tune into his out-of-the-box ways of finding missing persons.  I call it the MacGyver Factor, where you love a character no matter how convoluted the situations are that they get themselves mixed up in.  It has been critical to hit shows of the past such as The Fugitive, The X Files, and of course, the namesake MacGyver, always getting himself out of trouble with a stick of gum and a paperclip.  

Vanished is well-written, well-produced, and warrants at least a sampling for a few episodes.  You’ll either get bored quickly or the show will draw you in each week with anticipation.  Given that it takes 24’s timeslot for the fall, what do you have to lose as you’re already used to watching something at this time anyway?  So take a chance on Vanished until Jack is back in January.

Vanished, Mondays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on Fox (check local listings).

Rich Burlingham

If, after a fun day at the beach or pool, you just don’t feel like relaxing on the veranda and sipping a piña colada, there are some new major network shows peppered amongst all the reruns — but your time may be better spent among the fireflies and mosquitoes.  

Struggling at the bottom of the broadcast network ratings game, NBC has decided that originality isn’t a solution to building an audience — but ripping off successful concepts from other networks is an easier way to spin Nielsen gold this summer.  They must have thrown a lot of money at American Idol’s Simon Cowell in order to get him to produce the Idol-like America’s Got Talent, hosted by the legendary Regis Philbin, who himself was involved with a summer blockbuster many years ago called Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?.  In this latest incarnation of the variety talent show that began back on radio, called The Original Amateur Hour, producers scoured the nation for talent, but being that they were more interested in the kind that frequented the 1970’s syndicated The Gong Show than real, honest-to-good entertainers, you’re really witnessing more of a show that should be called America’s Got Issues.  Where American Idol and The Amateur Hour are and were serious ventures where winners actually do become recording stars (Frank Sinatra, Pat Boone, Kelly Clarkson, Clay Aiken), America’s Got Talent seems to be Simon Cowell trying to exploit his power and influence and adding one more reality show that we really don’t need.  

Like with Cowell’s American Inventor series on ABC, which was a terrific turn on the concept and was quite entertaining and moving — though ratings-challenged — Cowell wisely stays away from the judging bench (probably only because of a contractual limitation with Fox) but decides to bring in the B team to take his place and that of his Idol cohorts.  Playing judge on America’s Got Talent is TV and European recording star David Hasselhoff, who, I’m guessing being a producer himself, has the cred to judge others’ talent, though if you’ve ever watched an episode of Baywatch, you may wonder about that.  Sitting next to Hasselhoff is the now-grown-up teen singing sensation and TV’s Moesha, Brandy Norwood, who is a poor man’s Paula Abdul, and that’s saying a lot, considering Abdul’s place in the grand hall of entertainment is somewhere on the first few floors.  Simon’s alter ego in the designated British-only chair is another infamous acerbic Englishman, Piers Morgan, a former editor at the London Daily Mirror and, I’m guessing, an authority on American entertainment.  In this incarnation, the judges collectively can stop a performance when all three hit their buzzers, a la The Gong Show.  I’m guessing that the producers believe that American audiences won’t sit through a show unless there’s tension between judges and odd, talentless, bizarre individuals making fools of themselves on national television.  Perhaps they’re right, but I have more faith in the general public.  Regis is underutilized here and the judges overused.  I believe that America has oodles of talent, but only a sliver is presented on this show — purposely.  If you’re in need of some talent-oriented TV this summer, stick with the other Freemantle show on Fox, So You Think You Can Dance?, which sticks to Idol’s serious tone and shows very talented young dancers in a straight but entertaining competition.

With Treasure Hunters, NBC looked at CBS’s successful The Amazing Race and thought they needed their own travel log competition series, so they went to Brian Grazer and Ron Howard’s company, Imagine Television (Arrested Development), for assistance.  The beauty of The Amazing Race is its simplicity and its focus on spotlighting countries around the world.  Treasure Hunters expands on the challenges that Amazing Race uses to help even the competition by making the hunt for treasure the focus of the show — teams of three, who also have a previous relationship, must figure out clues and solve puzzles which will ultimately lead to a key that will open a million-dollar treasure chest somewhere hidden in the world.  Like Amazing Race, they must travel from one location to another and go through both physical and mental challenges.  So far they’ve stayed within U.S. borders and, unless they venture to exotic spots in the world, Treasure Hunters may lose audience attention, which Amazing Race discovered when they tried a family edition that, for the most part, kept teams U.S.-bound.

Being an Amazing Race fan, I was not expecting much from Treasure Hunters, but after watching the first few episodes, it has grown on me and I’m beginning to root for certain teams — a key to the success of these types of shows.  The producers have rightly decided not to linger too much on the clues, but what they do show of the teams working together to figure them out is just enough to be interesting without being tedious.  If the show travels around the globe and the hunt remains slightly interactive — allowing the audience a chance to figure out the clues themselves — then I think Treasure Hunters may become appointment television.  My only big negative comment is with the host, Laird Macintosh, a bland, soap opera-type who just doesn’t add anything to the table. Here, the host appears on cell phones to relay information, but without the interaction that Amazing Race’s Phil Keoghan or Survivor’s Jeff Probst have with competitors, Macintosh comes across as some digitized, computer-generated “hostitron.” If he didn’t appear with the contestants at least during some portions, he might as well have been a pixel-only host.  I say put the axe to America’s Got Talent, and give Regis a visa to go Treasure Hunting around the globe.  Better yet, why doesn’t NBC just give us viewers the money spent on these shows and let us go travel around the world ourselves?  It would be a whole lot more fun.

For your summer dose of reality television, I say check out Treasure Hunters and So You Think You Can Dance?, but skip America’s Got Talent.  See local listings for times and channels.

Rich Burlingham

For the first time in its 79-year history, the final rounds of the Scripps National Spelling Bee were televised live during primetime on ABC television.  What does this say either about our culture or about the state of network television?  Let me spell it out.

It took two hours and ten minutes of primetime to deliver a champion, Katherine “Kerry” Close of Spring Lake, New Jersey, and I must admit that even though the broadcast followed a typical live sports script, it was compelling television that included kids with unique and quirky personalities and a building tension as one by one each contestant is eliminated.  It is obvious that the success of American Idol, which follows a similar format, made the powers-at-be at ABC/Disney look at the Bee as a possible primetime special.  The event’s second day has been televised on sister cable station ESPN since 1994, so it was an easy change to move the finals to the bigger stage.  As reality TV becomes part of our culture’s zeitgeist and these types of programs remain cheap to produce, the big broadcast networks will gravitate to them as their share of audience declines — the bottom line comes first.

But even if the bee was given a green light because of business reasons it is still deserving of its prime network spot, and after 79 years has become a competitive institution embedded in American culture, not unlike the Westminster Dog Show or the Kentucky Derby.  Thursday evening’s competition delivered all the essential elements needed in a top television show, including a sports-like image when the finalists spontaneously gathered in a huddle and chanted “One-two-three-spell!”  (It should be noted that the previous moment happened during a commercial break and had to be recreated by the kids for the live feed.)  

It’s my contention that if the bee ran for a whole season, audience members would most likely become attached to both the format and the contestants, just like they have with other reality-based shows.  I wouldn’t be surprised if next year you see a show called American Speller or even Celebrity Speller, where each week a different has-been celebrity is eliminated after trying to spell a series of odd words, most likely with a sexual connotation.  The only problem is trying to find how to incorporate the viewing audience — the key to Idol’s giant success.

The live show on ABC was hosted by Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts, with accompanying analysis by former bee finalist (1990) Paul A. Loeffler and sideline interviews from ABC News correspondent Chris Connelly. What I liked about ABC’s coverage was that it wasn’t too exploitative and kept mainly to the live drama, only peppering with Wide World of Sports-type, up-close-and-personal segments that took viewers to some of the finalists’ hometowns to find out just how they became spellaholics.  These well-edited mini-bios were just the right length to show not only how dedicated and studious these kids really are, but also the nuances of their personalities that drive them to compete.  One 13-year-old home-schooled boy from Scottsdale, Arizona, Jonathan Horton, even purported that if he spent the same amount of time at practicing basketball as he did studying words, he could be as good as Steve Nash or Michael Jordan.  With attitudes like that, these kids will no doubt succeed in whatever avenue they choose (except in Mr. Horton’s case, I hope he stays off the court).

Champion Kerry Close may not become a household name like American Idol Taylor Hicks, but at least her win doesn’t lock her into a multi-year spelling contract.  She’ll return to her schooling, though she says she may come back next year and try for back-to-back wins, never before accomplished at the bee.

Now that spelling bees have become popular (as subjects of movies, Broadway musicals, and documentaries), I hope that ABC continues to run the finals of the bee in primetime and keeps it as an annual event without exploiting the concept and turning it into something more than it is — a simple spelling contest.  It is nice to see something on television where kids can see other kids working hard and achieving greatness.  So much of television is filled with shallowness, violence, and a perception of kids as either little adults — participating in activities beyond their age — or as shiny, assembly-line boys and girls who seem to be manufactured in some warehouse in the San Fernando Valley (see Disney Channel).  If you missed Thursday night’s broadcast but want a glimpse into the world of spelling bees, you can always go see the new film Akeelah and the Bee, still in some theaters, or rent the compelling Oscar-nominated documentary Spellbound or Bee Season, starring Richard Gere and out on DVD. Also, there’s the touring company of the two-time Tony award-winning Broadway musical The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.  All I know is I couldn’t spell most of the words given to the contestants during the finals, so I hope they are given the respect and awe we give to star athletes who, as a culture, we worship everyday.  If the ratings prove right, The Scripps National Spelling Bee will truly be a revenge of the nerds.

Rich Burlingham

It’s been in theaters for a few weeks, but I thought the first dramatic film to take on the daunting task of grappling with what happened on September 11th, 2001, United 93, warranted a critique because I believe it is a film everyone should see and not forget.  For those few of you who may be unfamiliar with what happened that day, the film focuses on the doomed airliner scheduled to fly to San Francisco from Newark that was highjacked by al-Qaeda operatives who intended to run it into the United States Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.  If not for the heroic interference by the passengers aboard, who took it upon themselves to try to take back control of the plane, the highjackers probably would have achieved their objective.

The film is superbly written and directed by Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday & The Bourne Supremacy), who skillfully employs both unknown actors and the actual people involved playing themselves.  Even with the film taking a dramatic turn, as opposed to the docu-drama that appeared on cable a few months back, United 93 doesn’t glorify or over-dramatize any of the events that day, unlike a typical action movie such as Air Force One, to use a film with a somewhat similar plot.  For the viewer, the knowledge that what appears on screen actually happened is enough drama for one sitting. Greengrass uses a simple visual style and pacing to follow the events of that day without tricks or creative storytelling techniques.  He begins with the highjackers preparing for their day and other passengers arriving at the airport and going through security. Watching the security check now gives one chills as we witness the ease with which the Muslim operatives get the necessary equipment to overtake the airplane without a hitch.

Greengrass is also quite adept at introducing all of the characters, from the highjackers to the passengers to the air traffic controllers, with efficiency and is able to highlight a few players with just enough small bits of human interest to make them three-dimensional figures, such as the co-pilot’s description of his family.  The best-drawn character happens to be one played by himself, Ben Sliney, the National Operations Manager who fatefully experienced his first day on the job in a rather dismal baptism.  Many others also played themselves, such as several Air Force personnel, and each were more than adequate.  Sliney comes across as the only human on Earth who took the responsibility upon himself to try to keep the country safe and secure and cursed the military for not being more proactive.  He was also the first to figure out that the first plane to hit the first World Trade Center tower was not a small plane as initially reported by CNN but one the size of an airliner.  His order to shut down the air transportation system over the U.S. was both gutsy and heroic.  

I have to admit that I got pretty emotional watching the film, especially as the passengers on board call their loved ones to wish them goodbye.  I was living in Manhattan that day, and I was as stunned as anyone watching the second plane hit the second tower and even more horrified when the towers collapsed.  The strongest memories for me were in the weeks that followed when the posters and signs with pictures of the missing hung on practically every light pole in the city and by memorials set up in gathering places like Union Square or the streets adjacent to Ground Zero with more candles and flowers than I’ve ever seen anywhere before or since.

United 93 only depicts the particulars of one of the four planes to wreak havoc that day.  Of course, we’ll never really know what actually occurred or the thoughts that went through the minds of passengers, crew, and highjackers, but as a piece of visual history, this film is so craftily made that it should be considered one of the pieces of entertainment regarding the events of 9/11 that acts as an official remembrance.  I’m not sure how much Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center or any of the others now being prepared for release will be a cathartic experience, but I know the experience of sitting in a dark theater watching United 93 will stay with you forever.  In the end, the film will wind up doing two things: help release the pent-up anger, fear, and despair that still lingers even after almost five years and act as a vivid reminder of what happened that day for those who may soon forget.  In order to keep the same violent acts from happening again on our soil, we must all be aware that those who died on September 11th, 2001 are not only heroes but also bookmarks to remind us to turn back the pages of history and reread a grievous and sobering chapter in the history of our great country.

United 93 is still being shown in select theaters.  Running time: 111 minutes. Released through Universal Pictures.  Rated R and may not be appropriate for kids under thirteen, but if they can stand the troubling nature of the film, it may do them a lot of good in the long run (if accompanied by an appropriate adult).  For everyone else, it’s a must-see.

Rich Burlingham

On Sunday NBC’s The West Wing ends its run after seven up and down years of both glorifying and criticizing politics and the individuals who take it upon themselves to run our government.  Created by Aaron Sorkin (An American President, A Few Good Men, Sports Night), The West Wing’s first three years were some of the best television you could find anywhere.  Its trademark was sharp, intelligent dialogue, complex subjects simplified, and characters who actually had things to say that were important and relevant to what was happening in society.  It became a hit and one of those water cooler shows that didn’t just mirror what was happening in the country at the time but created almost a utopian administration where many viewers actually wished President Bartlett (a.k.a. Martin Sheen) actually occupied the White House.

The best thing about The West Wing in its heyday was that it not only shed light on the inner workings of the White House and the day-to-day chaos that is the federal government, but it also helped viewers understand the complexities of running a super power.  But a television show can only show so much, and the reality is it’s even harder and far more stressful and difficult to be a staff member of the administration in power than an actor playing one on TV.  If Leo McGarry makes a mistake, perhaps viewers are cheated a bit, but if a “Scooter” Libby makes a mistake, the country suffers.

Like so many acclaimed ratings winners on television, they hit snags and riffs and the quality goes down, or they lose their way due to network interference, tired creative staff, or simple boredom by both producers and viewers.  In The West Wing’s case, the jump-the-shark moment involved the leaving of two key people which caused the show to shift focus and turn more into a soap opera than an intelligent dramatic tutorial on the inner-workings of a fictional White House.  First was the departure of star Rob Lowe, who played deputy communications director Sam Seaborn and, who like Noah Wiley’s John Carter on another NBC show ER, was the heart and soul of the show — the character with idealism who reminds the rest of the characters why they do what they do and without many pats on the back.  Who knows the real reason — money probably or a shift towards highlighting Martin Sheen’s President Bartlett — but when Rob Lowe left, he took away the one character who was the surrogate viewer, the character to which we placed ourselves into the show to ask the key philosophical questions about the rights and wrongs of serving the public.  The next change was more significant when creator, executive producer, and chief writer Aaron Sorkin was booted out, which always happens when a show’s ratings dip and the network gets nervous.  They ask for changes and when they get resistance, it’s the guy in charge who gets axed.  They brought in a very capable producer to take over the reins in John Wells, proven on ER, but it was just good enough to keep the show on the air — the magic was lost as the show just got boring, to say the least, and viewers decided there was something better to watch.

But in true fighting spirit, this past season some of the old vigor was resurrected and somebody on the show was channeling Aaron Sorkin (I wouldn’t be surprised if it wasn’t the man himself) to return to the show’s original intent of showing the frenzied behind-the-scenes look at politics — this time a presidential campaign between republican Arnold Vinick (Alan Alda) and Democrat John Santos (Jimmy Smits).  The many fresh faces, plus some old reliables, made the show watchable again, and you began to care about the characters and what happens to them — key to any great show (see Lost, 24 and American Idol).  The trouble was that it was too much, too late and the puny ratings, plus the death of actor John Spencer in December 2005, helped justify to NBC that pulling the plug on The West Wing was for the best.  But it’s fitting that as the Bartlett administration bows out, the show does the same.  I enjoyed The West Wing in the beginning and have enjoyed it here at the end. As the last episode plays out Sunday, I must say I enjoyed getting to know Josh, C.J., Sam, Charlie, Donna, Tobey, Leo, and Jed, and I probably would have watched another season if the writing stayed vibrant and the stories interesting.  But we’ll just have to imagine what a Santos administration will be like and if happiness comes to those who served seven years for the good of the country and Nielsen households.

The series finale of The West Wing airs Sunday at 9 p.m. ET, May 14th on NBC, preceded by the pilot episode, so you can see where it all began and how different the actors look after seven years.

Rich Burlingham

Either John F. Kennedy is rolling his eyes or he’s laughing his head off at all the fuss Americans have given to his assassination over the years.  Even before he was laid to rest, the conspiracy theories began and have continued throughout the years in print, in the movies, and on television.  The best-known filmed account is Oliver Stone’s personal theory (though based on the account of New Orleans’s DA Jim Garrison) JFK, which has lost a lot of steam since it first hit theaters back in 1991.  Since then several biographical accounts of the late president’s personal life have painted a rather less flattering picture of the man who many people consider one of the greatest presidents of the 20th Century.

Now more controversy regarding JFK is resurrected on cable this Thursday, May 11th as the Discovery Channel presents an NBC-produced special called Conspiracy Files: JFK Assassination, which shows for the first time on TV declassified CIA files about a top secret plan by John and Robert Kennedy to stage a coup against Castro by invading Cuba on December 1, 1963, just ten days after JFK was shot in Dallas.

The special details the secret coup plan, code named AMWORLD by the CIA, which was withheld from the Warren Commission and later Congressional investigation committees.  Even as these files are being opened to the public, over a million JFK assassination files remain under lock and key, including other documents pertaining to the secret coup plan.

But to fill an hour’s worth of programming, there has to be more, so also included is information also withheld from the Warren Commission and Congress regarding a Mafia plot to kill JFK in Tampa, Florida on November 18, 1963, just four days before Dallas.  President Kennedy was informed of the threat before his motorcade was to roll, but he continued anyway, which in hindsight seems a bit eerie, especially when they show rare footage showing a tall building along the motorcade route that was a concern to law enforcement.

Another interesting part of the special, though a little too Dateline-ish for this reviewer, is an interview with Abraham Bolden, who was the first black presidential Secret Service agent.  According to Bolden, he was framed by the Mafia and arrested on the day he was going to testify to the Warren Commission about the Tampa assassination threat.  He spent six years in prison and has been trying to clear his name ever since.

Much of the special is based upon material in the book, Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba and the Murder of JFK, by progressive national radio host Thom Hartman and Lamar Waldron, who interviewed dozens of Kennedy insiders and perused over thousands of recently declassified files from the National Archives.

It seems every few years, another special or movie drudges up the JFK assassination and theories that purport that Lee Harvey Oswald wasn’t the only one involved.  I don’t think any of this new information will settle anything because those who believe in conspiracies will only tell you about another conspiracy when the truth is unveiled.  Yet, specials such as this do make interesting television and, for at least entertainment purposes, deserve a look-see.

The special airs on the Discovery Channel on May 11th at 9 p.m. (Eastern; repeated later than night at 1 a.m.).

Rich Burlingham

Both in political and film appreciation circles it seems that conservative groups, or those marketing to them, have been far more successful in attracting large amounts of people to gather in one place, usually a church setting, to hear candidates or watch movies that appeal to their sensibilities. The film The Passion of the Christ was a great example of niche movie marketing that drove box office of the Mel Gibson-directed film, one entirely in Aramaic and Latin, off the charts.  Not to be outshined, the Southpaws of politics have decided that perhaps those Righties know what they’re doing and have decided to duplicate their successes.  The national organization, Ironweed Films, is such a progressive group that is trying to bring like-minded people together in non-traditional ways to rally around political issues, and movie screenings seem to be an easy method to test.

Next week, voters around the country – from D.C. and Decatur to St. Petersburg to Seattle — will gather in homes, halls, dorms, and theaters for the first-ever “Progressive Movie Night Week” (April 23-30).  The events will showcase the 2006 Oscar-nominated film, Street Fight, about the hard-fought 2002 Newark, NJ mayoral race. Following the screenings, guests will discuss the film with neighbors and local progressive candidates at the federal and local level, and their hope is that they will be as successful as conservative groups with a similar strategy.  

Ironweed Films founder Adam Werbach made history as the youngest-ever elected president of the Sierra Club at age 23 and is now heading up this effort.  Similar liberal-leaning media efforts, such as Air America radio, haven’t been too successful, but if it worked for Mel, it can work for others, no matter which way they hold a bat.  If you’d like to be part of a gathering, go to Ironweed Films’ website to see about participating in next week’s gatherings.

Rich Burlingham

On Wednesday the big headline all over the media landscape was that Katie Couric finally decided to move her perky but serious persona to CBS News to host their evening national newscast.  Is this big news?  Will this change the way we all govern our lives? Ten or twenty years ago it would have been the story of the year, but today, I’m not so sure.  The proliferation of cable, satellite, and the Internet has either leveled the playing field or decimated traditional information outlets, depending on if you’re old or new media.

If you break the current media landscape down to two main sources, you have television on one side and the Web on the other, with each having good and bad qualities.  Overall, you have to say that the Web is probably the best tool ever invented to efficiently and conveniently spread information out to the most people, but it has no human personality — just plain old information.  Oh, yes, certain websites have a certain look to them and you can play videos and have conference calls, but it’s more like the telephone — a means to an end.

Television, on the other hand, is an end to a means.  It has lots of personality — actually, it is mostly all personality, especially now that there are a gazillion channels from which to choose.  By this definition, television is more human, but it lacks the ability to communicate information effectively and conveniently for the best interests of the viewer.  Getting back to Katie Couric, she works on television because she is all personality — you watch because you like her, not because you’re trying to get information from her.  You sit at your computer and click to CNN.com or a number of other news websites to strictly get news and information.  Even the so-called cable news channels have switched to the all-personality method.  CNN did start 25 years ago almost like a website, delivering the headlines over and over, to which you simply tuned in for a few minutes until they would begin repeating themselves.  Then the first Gulf War showed them that people would stay and watch longer when certain interesting news personalities were on the air, such as Bernard Shaw, Peter Arnett, Wolf Blitzer, and the Scud Stud, Arthur Kent, the dashing correspondent that wooed a lot of women to watch the first TV war.  

Now all news on TV is entertainment to some degree, whether it’s Bill O’Reilly or Billy Bush.  The Web is still strictly a no-nonsense, fact-finding, information-tool kind of media where each website pretty much is interchangeable and the difference is more of how it is delivered than how it emotionally connects to people.  What is the future?  Television cannot continue strictly as entertainment and be as powerful as it has since the 1950s.  The Web won’t just stay the way it is because people will begin to demand more personality.  The result will be the merging of the two media, which is slowly beginning to happen as we speak.  I think in the not-so-distant future, all homes will have one information portal, whether through one or a combination of technologies, i.e., cable, wireless, telephony.  You may certainly have multiple screens in various rooms, but through these screens you will communicate with others (picture and voice), watch entertainment, obtain news and information, and monitor your home’s systems.  It will be a combination television, computer, telephone, stereo, and appliance.  And you’ll be able to take it all with you on a handheld duplicate version, all geared to your personal specifications.  Your spouse, kids, roommates, and in-laws would all have their own versions programmed to their own tastes and needs.  

So when Katie Couric announces that she’s leaving the Today show and switching to the CBS Evening News, don’t believe it’s going to change America.  That’s more a job for Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and the clever person who came up with podcasting (Adam Curry).

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Rich Burlingham