Don sequiturs

Movie rambling: Five

Years ago, the TNT Network (back when it ran the classic films now shown on TCM, which didn't exist then) showed the 1951 post-apocalypse movie Five, and I was impressed enough to include it on my list of top 100 films.  I hadn't seen it in years, it's never run on TV anymore, and I couldn't find it on DVD.  Recently, however, I picked up a DVD copy at a fairly reasonable price on the eBays.  It came in a suspiciously generic-looking case, but the print of the film used for the transfer to disc doesn't seem that bad, considering. 

A second viewing demonstrated that my top 100 ranking was maybe a little too generous, but it is better than most other atom war survivor movies.  The film starts in the immediate aftermath of a nuclear war that has seemingly killed nearly everyone on earth, although who was fighting who over what is never discussed -- a nice touch actually. Five survivors gradually converge on a remote house (conveniently, it's writer/ director Arch Oboler's own Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house).  The plot concentrates on the human element, rather than any possible science fiction aspects. The pace is slow at times, and it's a little on the talky side (Oboler's background was in radio) but the performances are superb, and some of the imagery stayed with me days after I watched it.  (I'm becoming more inclined to view "imagery staying with me" as one of the more important criteria for evaluating a movie.  I didn't think much, for instance, of the Japanese horror movies Ju-On and Dark Water when I first saw them a few months ago, but they both gave me nightmares afterwards, so as horror flicks they must've done something right.)  There's a grim, gritty tone about Five that is unusual in a 50s American film; someone on the internet speculated that the look and feel of Five might have inspired that of George Romero's original Night of the Living Dead, and I can also see the similarities.  I'd recommend this one to any movie buff if the opportunity to see it presents itself.

It's a confusing and pointless list, yet I can't look away

This list (here and here) of the "10 most dangerous flims" seems to change its criteria for "dangerous" for each item on the list (unlucky, cursed, financially unsuccessful, tragic -- it's all over the place, although I definitely expected The Conqueror to be on the list), but it still collects some interesting, if dark, tidbits of movie history.  Via Pop Candy.

Not warming to the idea

It's hard to keep up with all the anti-warming warning material;  while the global warming hysteria of Al Gore, Jupiter Pluvius, has the support of the Hollywood elite -- the stupidest rich people in the world, not counting certain members of the British royal family -- Gore has lost John Hinderaker of Powerline, who, like me, is old enough to remember the global colding threat of the 70s.  Iowahawk is also cool, so to speak, to the hot new idea of buying carbon indulgences.  Aussie Tim Blair meanwhile continues to document the bizarre phenomenon of the Gore coldening effect (which seems to have a better empirical basis than carbon emission-created global warming).  I'd rather be on Powerline's, and Blair, and Iowahawk's side than Hollywood's any day, so I have to say that's a pleasing development to me.  Anyway, Gore should concentrate on getting rid of the carbon emissions by the Martians, who have their own global warming issues.

Of course this is somehow George Bush's fault

Signs of the apocalypse: it was dogs and cats living together in Ghostbusters, now its cows eating chickens in real life (taking their own advice I suppose).

Message: they care

I liked this guy's comment (via Powerline) suggesting the Democrats switch to supporting the other side for a change, since, by throwing their, ahem, support to the other side, they actually might help our cause more. I especially liked it because a week or so ago I made a simllar comment to a friend who made a sarcastic comment about the French.  I said, "you must be a supporter of the French, under the Democrats' definition of support: you put them down to your friends, you oppose everything they stand for, and you're critical of their actions and motives. "