It's official. The Day the Earth Stood Still, the remake (1), is a piece of crap. Stick to the original (2), flawed though it may be. I was afraid the remake would turn out bad. The trailer shows a special effects spectacle. That's all that was wanted out of the remake, and that's all there is ( Read more... )

Looks like the folks who predicted that the baton would be passed to Clinton are right. My notion that Giuliani would get the nod is wrong. The voice of the puppetmasters, The New York Times, endorses Clinton and McCain (1 2). A new century of war commences.

( Or not. See link to 'A comment' below )

News via my friends list: RIP Vampira (Maila Nurmi, born Maila Elizabeth Syrjäniemi; died January 10, 2008) (1 2).

I just received my buttons (3). I had to buy a minimum of ten. I gave a couple out at work. I'll be wearing one to the precinct caucus Saturday. Maybe I should have given them out on condition that the recipients vote for Kucinich. Oh ( Read more... )

I don't remember the line, exactly, but it's something like that. After TCM aired the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still a week or so ago, I was hoping to resist the temptation to comment yet again, but I must give in, partly because there is something visibly different about what I saw on TCM compared to other airings. Unless I never paid ( Read more... )

It's a minor curiosity that some of the talent behind The Day the Earth Stood Still (1, 2) later became associated with other movies with muddled or confused messages. Robert Wise directed The Sand Pebbles (3), a movie which never figured out what it was trying to do. Julian Blaustein produced Khartoum (4), which really made a mess of its Vietnam ( Read more... )

A few more good lines from what I remember of The Day the Earth Stood Still after seeing it again Friday night:

"My name is Carpenter. I'm looking for a room." (Ha! The inn is not full ( Read more... )

An intriguing response to the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) comes from Louis Hartz, though I doubt he had this movie in mind, in his book The Founding of New Societies (1964). This is going to be dense (and edited severely and invisibly), but bear with me ( Read more... )