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UPDATED: ABC’s V Back Tonight + New Morena Baccarin Interview with Details About the Show’s Future

annavwide — Morena Baccarin as the alien queen, Anna.

By Jason Apuzzo. I just wanted to remind those of you who are enjoying ABC’s V that the show is back tonight, in what promises to be an interesting episode. Previews for the show (albeit not the one below) have shown a suicide bombing taking place during this episode; plus, the colorful Jane Badler – who played the alien leader in the old series – returns in this episode, something teased in the season premiere.

Also today there’s a new interview out with actress Morena Baccarin, who plays the Visitor queen, Anna. SPOILER WARNING: Baccarin reveals some tantalizing details about how the show’s storyline will be developing – including what cast members from the original series will be returning, and in what capacity; and, furthermore, it’s revealed that the producers have planned-out the storyline of the series through a hypothetical third season, a season which may or may not happen depending on ratings.

Click on over to Collider for more details. I’ve also embedded a preview for tonight’s show below.

[UPDATE: Having now seen the episode, I was not happy with it at all – and my earlier fears about the ‘suicide bomber’ subplot were validated, alas. Although there were aspects of the show I liked – particularly the speculative elements about the human soul, and Jane Badler’s juicy performance as the alien queen’s mother – I was very disappointed by the overall arc and purpose of the suicide bomber subplot. Its purpose seems to be to show that ‘desperate people in desperate circumstances’ will turn to terrorism, even – as we learn – an ex-Israeli Mossad agent. Memo to ABC: the Mossad fights terrorism, and doesn’t practice it. Had the leader of this rogue, suicide-bombing branch of the show’s ‘Fifth Column’ been a Chechen or a Russian, I think it would’ve been much more believable. As it stands, however, having its leader be ex-Mossad feels like a cheap shot toward the Israelis. Also: having the actual suicide bomber himself be a Catholic parishioner who is ‘inspired’ by Father Jack’s words was in extremely poor taste. What a disappointment. Two shows in, and my enthusiasm has already cooled.]

Posted on January 11th, 2011 at 2:26pm.

LFM Review: Stalin Thought of You at The New York Jewish Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Attention to detail and a long memory might be all well and good for office drones, but they are not so hot in dictators. Stalin was a case in point. He always remembered the little people he encountered—much to their woe. However, the tyrant saw a potential usefulness in one political cartoonist that proved to be his salvation. Indeed, the late Boris Efimov would outlive Stalin and his successors, surviving well past his centennial. It is a telling episode in Soviet history, even if Efimov himself was somewhat ambiguous about his relationship with his brother’s murderer in Stalin Thought of You (trailer above), Kevin McNeer’s documentary profile of the Communist caricaturist, which screens on the opening day of the 2011 New York Jewish Film Festival, co-presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Jewish Museum.

Efimov and his brother Mikhail Koltsov were both ardent Communists who had permanently adopted their revolutionary nom de plumes. Koltsov was the more outgoing sibling, rocketing up the ladder of the Soviet journalism establishment while secretly working for the NKVD. He is widely accepted to have been the inspiration for the Karkov character in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. Despite (or more likely because) of his prominence, he was executed during Stalin’s Great Purge, although he recanted his forced confession.

Obviously, this put Efimov in a difficult position as the brother of a declared class enemy, but it was Stalin himself who threw the struggling artist a lifeline with a personal request for a very specific cartoon supposedly well suited to his talents. While it was only during Khrushchev’s anti-Stalin campaign that Efimov was fully rehabilitated, his lingering sense of indebtedness to the fearsome dictator is evident all through Thought.

To his credit, McNeer presents an unvarnished portrait of Efimov, often challenging him on his loyal service to the Communist system that murdered his brother. He also often broached the subject of Efimov’s Jewish identity, but the centenarian shut him down each time. While he might simply be ambivalent, McNeer shrewdly includes footage of old Soviet newscasts using Efimov’s Jewish heritage as cover for the virulently “anti-Zionist” cartoons he was required to produce.

If not an explicitly hostile witness, it is clear Efimov was not entirely forthcoming with McNeer. Yet, rather than papering over his evasiveness, McNeer wisely exploits it to make larger points. Frankly, one comes away from Thought with a much higher regard for Koltsov than its ostensive subject.

Throughout Thought, McNeer consistently asks the right questions and provides the necessary context to fully understand the propaganda under discussion. The resulting film offers fresh insights into a dark time in human history fueled by a poisonous ideology. Selections of the New York Jewish Film Festival frequently play at subsequent regional Jewish themed film festivals, so viewers outside the City should definitely keep an eye out for it. For New Yorkers, Thought screens this Wednesday (1/12), both in the afternoon and evening, as the 2011 NYJFF kicks off at the Walter Reade Theater.

Posted on January 10th, 2011 at 2:19pm.

UPDATED: Kennedy Series Pulled by History Channel Due to Network’s ‘Rigorous Standards’; Ancient Aliens Apparently OK

By Jason Apuzzo. According to The Hollywood Reporter, 24 creator Joel Surnow’s 8-part miniseries The Kennedys has apparently been cancelled by The History Channel after the show “was not considered historically accurate enough for the network’s rigorous standards.” The series stars Greg Kinnear, Katie Holmes and Tom Wilkinson.

I’m laughing at this, because just the other day while channel surfing I happened to notice that The History Channel is still running its rigorously accurate series Ancient Aliens, featuring theories on extraterrestrial visitations to our planet – theories explained by such noted, credible scholars as Erich von Däniken.

KinnearHolmesJFK — Greg Kinnear & Katie Holmes in "The Kennedys."

What a farce this decision is.

For the record, Govindini and I know Joel and are certain that he and his team have put together a show that more than merits a showing on a network that currently includes on its schedule such scrupulously accurate series as MonsterQuest, The Bible Code: Predicting Armageddon, Nostradamus Effect, The Real Face of Jesus?, Stan Lee’s Superhumans and UFO Hunters.

We’ve embedded the trailer for Joel’s series above, and frankly it looks great. It also appears to be pointed and opinionated on the subject of the Kennedys – but nothing out of bounds, from what I’ve thus far seen.

After all, don’t we already know that image and reality were often quite different with respect to the Kennedys? God forbid that discrepancy would actually be dramatized in a television series.

As a side note, The History Channel has just guaranteed a few more ratings points for this series when it eventually airs on another network (possibly Showtime, according to reports) – which it inevitably will.

[UPDATE: Thanks to Michelle Malkin’s Hot Air for linking to this post. Welcome to our Hot Air readers.]

[UPDATE #2: It now appears that The History Channel pulled the show due to lobbying on behalf of Caroline Kennedy, and also Maria Shriver according to The Hollywood Reporter. As the story goes, the History Channel is co-owned by Disney – and Kennedy herself has a book deal with Disney – and she was planning to appear on (Disney’s) ABC network to do some exclusive promotion of the book. So it seems that Disney received an ‘either/or’ choice from the Kennedys, and ultimately decided to drop the show – and concoct this ludicrous story about the show ‘not being up to network standards.’ And so the farce goes on.]

Posted on January 8th, 2011 at 5:15pm.

New Trailer for John Milius’ Homefront; Game Debuts March 18th

By Jason Apuzzo. For you Libertas readers who are currently digging ABC’s V, I wanted to mention to you folks that something quite similar (at least in terms of being a futuristic invasion scenario) – namely, John Milius’ video game Homefront – is debuting March 18th and has a new trailer out which you can see above.

Homefront is set in 2027. The idea is that North Korea has by then become a mini-expansionist empire, invigorated by a young new leader, and that this empire grows to consume both South Korea and Japan. Meanwhile, the United States’ economic and military profiles continue to weaken.

It’s at this point that the North Koreans launch some kind of advanced electronic pulse weapon that cripples our defense systems – and subsequently invade the American homeland. A patriotic American ‘insurgency’ ensues.

The video below develops in great detail the thinking behind the game, and I recommend that you give it a look – even if you don’t like video games, or have no plans to buy this one – because it will encourage you to know that what a refuge the video game world has become for Cold Warriors.

Enjoy, and best wishes to John and the Homefront team. If Call of Duty‘s success is any indication, this game may become a major hit.

Posted on January 7th, 2011 at 3:02pm.

Escaping The Soviet Gulag: Peter Weir’s The Way Back

By Joe Bendel. They endured harrowing extremes, including Siberian winters, blistering deserts, and utopian ideologies. In 1940, a Polish POW and six assorted political prisoners walked away from their gulag. Their ultimate destination was India. A harrowing tale of physical and spiritual survival adapted from Slavomir Rawicz’s novelistic memoir, Peter Weir’s The Way Back briefly opens an award qualifying engagement this week in Los Angeles, in advance of its regular January theatrical run.

1940 was a bad year to be a Pole in Russia. It was also pretty miserable being a Russian in Russia, unless your name was Stalin. Janusz, a Polish Cavalry officer, was fighting the invading Nazis from the West. The Russians invading from the East branded him a spy (using his “contact” with the Germans as a staggeringly hypocritical pretense) and imprisoned him in a Siberian work camp. Here he meets a broad cross-section of Soviet society swept up in Stalin’s purges.

Janusz quickly befriends Khabarov, a Russian actor sentenced for his overly sympathetic portrayal of an aristocrat. He also comes to respect Mr. Smith, an American engineer lured to Russia during the Great Depression with promises of work, but he is instinctively distrustful of Valka, one of the “Urki” (a.k.a. “Thieves By Law”), the career criminals who run the camps at the barracks level. However, they let the thug to join their escape attempt because of the knife he brings to the party. Along the way they also reluctantly allow a girl to join their ranks: Irena, an orphan of the purges. Though Smith fears she will slow them down, she seems to be the only one able to draw the men out of their prison-hardened shells.

The plan was simple—head towards Lake Baikal with the only rags they had on their backs and then improvise from there. Of course, there were plenty of complications, like food and shelter. It is hard to imagine a more daunting landscape than the one they faced, including the Ghobi desert and the Himalayas – and this long trek was not the original idea. Yet, when they realized Mongolia had also succumbed to the ideology of Communism, they had no choice but to press on.

While Way works very well as a man against nature film, it also captures the realities of the Stalinist era quite forthrightly. For instance, we see the abandoned remnants of Buddhist monasteries razed by the Communists, which echoes the experiences of Voss, a Latvian Orthodox priest, whose soul was essentially destroyed along with his church.

With its forbidding vistas and scorching sunlight, Way is a perfect vehicle for director Weir’s visual sensibilities. The audience really does feel like it is seeing remote corners of the globe never previously trodden by human feet. Yet the film also features some considerable performances. Although Jim Sturgess has appeared in some high profile screen projects in the past, none of his previous work has been of this caliber. It is hard to be the “good guy” among an ensemble cast, but he actually makes Janusz the most memorable of the escapees, effectively establishing the deeper motivations fueling his superhuman drive. Ed Harris is also well cast as Smith, nicely expressing his guilt, resentment, and fundamental decency. Really, nearly the entire cast becomes one with their characters, blending seamlessly into this epic story of average people – except for Colin Farrell, who stands out a bit awkwardly as Valka.

Way might be a story of rugged survival among the elements, but it is really part of a larger man-made tragedy. Weir nicely drives that point home with his evocative final payoff. A finely executed, emotionally engaging human drama absolutely worthy of award consideration, Way begins a highly limited LA run this week at the AMC Covina.

Posted on December 30th, 2010 at 11:06am.

Afghanistan’s Black Tulip Screens in Los Angeles for Oscar Consideration, 12/30-1/5

By Jason Apuzzo. Recently Libertas’ Joe Bendel wrote an important piece about Black Tulip (see the trailer above), Afghanistan’s official submission for the Best Foreign Language Film award at this year’s Oscars.

Despite the recent controversy over whether the film qualifies for the Best Foreign Language Film category, I was happy to learn recently from Black Tulip co-producer Chris Cole that the film is indeed still in contention for that award (see here), and is also having a limited one-week theatrical release here in Los Angeles starting this Thursday, December 30th at the the Laemmle Sunset 5 (on the corner of Sunset and N. Crescent Heights). According to Chris, this limited theatrical run is intended to qualify the film for Best Score, Best Original Song (from Natalie Cole) and Best Cinematography consideration.

We want to encourage everyone in the Los Angeles area to turn out and give this film the buzz and support it needs heading into awards season. Imagine for a moment what it would mean to the people of Afghanistan to have a film in the running for an award on Oscar night – at a time when the Taliban and their allies are still trying to snuff out free speech in that country.

Screening times for the film in Los Angeles are as follows:

Laemmle Sunset 5

Thursday, December 30th at 7:30pm
Friday, December 31st through Wednesday, January 5th at 1:00pm

We want to congratulate director Sonia Nassery Cole and co-producer Chris Cole on their courage in overcoming extraordinary obstacles in getting this film made and out to the public. Their example is one that I wish more filmmakers here in America would follow, and we wish them every success with this important film.

Posted on December 29th, 2010 at 3:01pm.