By Jason Apuzzo. As a brief tribute to Steve Jobs and his remarkable legacy, I thought we’d take a look back at Apple’s famous 1984 ad introducing the Macintosh, an ad directed by Ridley Scott. It was this ad, run only once – during 1984’s Super Bowl – that introduced the Macintosh to the world.
The ad is, of course, a succinct and marvelously effective little riff on George Orwell’s original 1984 – although somehow I don’t remember any busty blonde athletes in that novel, do you? (Jobs & Co. really knew how to sell.)
In any case, enjoy it, reminisce, and perhaps even learn something from it. The ad very much captures Jobs’ innovative spirit, which we’ll certainly miss.
By Joe Bendel. As far as Section 20 is concerned, the only good terrorist is a terrorist getting renditioned to within an inch of their lives. As a result, disgraced former U.S. Delta Force soldier Damien Scott finds he fits in rather well in the double-secret British counter-terrorism unit in Strike Back, which has its series debut tonight on Cinemax.
Like 24 in its Surnow heyday, viewers should not get too attached to reoccurring characters, including John Porter (a lead protagonist from Strike Back’s pre-Cinemax first season on British Sky TV). Captured while investigating a large scale operation code-named Project Dawn, Porter has been captured by terrorists loyal to the Islamist mastermind, “Latif.” Aside from Porter, only his former American counterpart from the early days of Iraq can identify the mysterious Latif. That of course would be Scott, whom Section 20’s Sgt. Stonebridge finds drinking, whoring, and pit-fighting his way through a Southeast Asian redlight district.
Naturally, there is major friction between the Yank and the Brit, but they are all business when the bullets start flying. If the first four installments are representative of the entire season, Strike Back’s wider overarching storyline will be advanced by a succession of two episode mini-arcs. On the micro-level, the show is a breath of fresh air, featuring terrorists who are not simply misguided, but horrifically evil. For instance, Scott spends the balance of episode two protecting an innocent young girl from Islamic terrorists (who are explicitly identified as such), only taking occasional breaks to bed the beautiful women of the hotel taken hostage by the terrorist thugs. Seriously, that’s an apt description.
However, on the macro level, Strike Back’s shadowy meta-conspiracy threatens to be a real buzz kill. Supposedly, Scott was unceremoniously mustered out of service because he caught wind of a plan to plant the WMD stockpiles that would “justify” Operation Iraqi Freedom. Those infamous weapons are now at loose ends, doggedly pursued by Latif for his nefarious purposes. This sort of potential demonization of the American military and intelligence services is exactly what we do not need any more of on television.
It would be a shame if Strike Back’s macro themes continue in this direction, because they could spoil some genuinely rip-rousing television entertainment. As Scott, Sullivan Stapleton is an undeniably likable and engaging hard-nosed bad-attitude protagonist. Though the relatively by-the-book Stonebridge is probably not as fun to play, Philip Winchester displays plenty of square jawed action cred. There are also plenty of James Bond worthy women, like Karen David (sort of geek-famous for Scorpion King 2) as the barmaid Scott protects when the terrorists break up their hook-up. Likewise, the villains are truly villainous, such as the workaholic Liam Cunningham (The Guard, Outcasts, etc), chewing the scenery with relish as IRA enforcer turned mercenary Daniel Connolly.
From "Strike Back" on Cinemax.
At least in episodes one through four, the Indian and South African settings are quite cinematic, while the stunt work and effects are all first class. Scott and Stonebridge deliver quite a bit of vicarious satisfaction, administering on the spot justice to Islamist fanatics and their craven accomplices that should be well worth returning for throughout the show’s run. Yet, if it loses sight of who the real bad guys are, sliding into the sort of moral equivalency frequently peddled by Hollywood, the show will alienate its core viewership – while those sharing such a hostile view of American and British military and intelligence personnel will likely be put off by the Jack Bauer tactics gleefully indulged in throughout each episode.
Strike Back could be flat-out great, so let’s hope it minimizes the clichéd conspiracy themes and plays to its strengths. This week, the totally entertaining first episode is definitely recommended when it debuts tonight (8/12) on Cinemax.
By Jason Apuzzo. Last summer we posted about a then-forthcoming web series called The Mercury Men. The Mercury Men (see the trailer above) is a retro-, 1940s-style adventure serial about a lowly government office drone, who finds himself trapped when deadly alien visitors from the planet Mercury seize his office building and use it as a staging ground for a nefarious plot. Aided by a daring aerospace engineer from a mysterious organization known as “The League,” the office drone must stop the invaders and their doomsday device, the Gravity Engine.
The Mercury Men received a fair amount of buzz last year, including an appearance in Sci Fi Magazine (right next to a feature about Libertas Contributor Steve Greaves) and at Comic-Con. I lost track of The Mercury Men, though, until Libertas commenter Vince (to whom I tip my hat) notified me that the series had finally been completed and picked up by The SyFy Channel as a web program. The series is currently 7 episodes in (at about 7 minutes per episode), with 3 more to go – and all episodes will be available on-line at the Syfy Channel website by the end of this week.
Since we’ve been talking a lot here lately about both superheroes and alien invasion sci-fi, this seemed like a good moment to remind everyone about this series.
Dodging an attack by The Mercury Men.
It’s important to keep an eye on the indie/low-budget world, not just because there’s a lot of creativity in that arena – but because tomorrow’s big-time directors are regularly emerging from these humble projects. For example, Joe Cornish, whose debut feature Attack the Block we just reviewed last week, is already getting buzz as the possible next director for the Die Hard series. And Gareth Edwards, director of the low-budget indie sci-fi film Monsters (see our review here), has already been tapped to direct the Godzilla reboot.
As I mentioned previously, I love the creativity of what director Chris Preksta did with The Mercury Men to evoke the atmosphere of the old adventure serials, so many of which were based around a charismatic American hero (Superman, Batman, The Green Hornet, Captain America, etc.) fighting some sort of fascist invader. It’s also quite remarkable how far low-budget VFX have come in terms of their ability to fill out the otherwise constricted universe of indie filmmaking; it’s a classic case of technology freeing up storytellers’ imaginations. Beyond that, though, I like the pizzaz the filmmakers brought to this simple project, and its old-fashioned humanistic spirit – exemplified by the great speech given by ‘Dr. Tomorrow’ in the “Men of Tomorrow” episode. And of course it’s also interesting, once again, to see the ‘invasion of America’ theme recurring, which we’re seeing everywhere these days.
So once again, best wishes to the team behind The Mercury Men, and I hope LFM readers take time to check out this fun little series.
By David Ross. I first heard Bach’s choral prelude Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ (“I call to you, Lord Jesus Christ”) in Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972). It seems to me one of the world’s most beautiful compositions, and Tarkovsky’s scene, in which the piece harmonizes with the camera as it plays over Brueghel’s Hunters in the Snow (1565), seems to me one of the most solemnly lovely scenes in cinema. The camera scrutinizes the details of Brueghel’s painting, at first coldly (as Kris must see it), but then with a certain wistful sorrow, as if in recognition of our hopeless estrangement from the natural life of the old village. The mournful precision of the piece by Bach (see here for Vladimir Horowitz’ transcendently lovely interpretation) underscores that there is only the beautiful sadness of our estrangement and longing. Kris stirs with new humility and humanity, and he and Hari begin to float, ostensibly in a state of zero gravitation, but actually in a state of grace.
Pieter Bruegel the Elder's "The Hunters in the Snow" (1565).
People often speak of Falconetti’s ecstatic expression in Dreyer’s La passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928)as film’s most inspired synecdoche of the religious experience, but Tarkovsky, in my opinion, exceeds Dreyer artistically and spiritually. Tarkovsky seems engaged not in a pastiche of an archaic faith, but in the genuine struggle of modern faith, and his dense, intricately coded scene seems to compress everything integral to Western culture in its modern self-bewilderment and tentative hope.
In a 1986 interview, Laurence Cossé asked Tarkovsky whether he considered his films “acts of love towards the Creator.” Tarkovsky responded “I would like to think so. I’m working in it, in any case. The ideal for would be to make this constant gift, this gift that Bach alone, truly, was able to offer God.”
By Jason Apuzzo. I wanted to put up a movie clip today that would capture my feelings about what happened yesterday in Pakistan. The selection of the clip turned out to be an easy one.
Well done, Mr. President, and bravo to the many American heroes who made this historic victory possible.
By Jason Apuzzo. War photographer and documentarian Tim Hetherington was killed yesterday in Libya, while covering the civil war there. The New York Times reports on the incident here. We extend our condolences to his friends, family and colleagues.
Tim Hetherington.
Hetherington’s extraordinary documentary about the Afghanistan war, Restrepo, was nominated for an Oscar just last year (read Joe Bendel’s Libertas review here). Hetherington was one of the leading photographers and documentarians of his generation, a courageous and poetic soul who studied literature at Oxford and who brought a writer’s sensibility to his work. He will be missed.
I invite Libertas readers to take a few moments and watch what was apparently Hetherington’s last film effort, a short film called Diary which I’ve embedded above. It’s really an astonishing piece of filmmaking – richly suggestive of what a talent Hetherington was, and of the depth of his passion for justice.
