ANNOUNCEMENT: I'm now a candidate for public office

Readers of my blog are the first people from the general public that are going to hear about this. The official announcement is going to come early next week: I'm still trying to figure out where I should hold the press conference.

I filed late yesterday morning. I am now officially on the ballot this coming November as a candidate for an at-large seat on the Rockingham County Board of Education. This is the first time that I've ever run for public office (Lord only knows if it'll be the last time too, but I'm gonna try for this).

You can find a complete list of filed candidates here. I'll be writing more about this in the next few days or so, including why I chose to run, what my beliefs are in regards to public education, and maybe a little about what to expect from my campaign committee (there's no real committee... it's just me but by law I have to have a campaign committee for the paperwork).

Awright, any questions? :-)

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Something I'm watching with considerable interest

According to the Israeli news service Haaretz, Muslims in Jerusalem are demanding that Jewish groups be kept off the Temple Mount today, the Ninth of Av on the Hebrew calendar.

What they're really trying to do is prevent the Temple Mount Faithful from coming anywhere near the Al Aqsa mosque - i.e. the "Dome of the Rock" - and do what they've set out to do for the past several years now: set about rebuilding the Jewish Temple.

Some years ago when I was a reporter I interviewed Gershon Salomon, the founder and leader of the Temple Mount Faithful. Ever since then I've kept my ears open to anything pertaining to him and the Temple Mount Faithful, especially when it comes to their attempts to approach the Temple Mount. Every time over the years when they've tried to come to the Mount to set the cornerstone of the temple, they have been foiled by their own government. This time the Supreme Court of Israel has ruled that anyone can visit the Mount on the Ninth of Av. I can see Salomon - by far one of the most extraordinary men I've ever met - girding up now with his fellow believers to make one more go at it.

You may want to watch this in the next few days, especially with what's going on right now between Israel and Hezbollah. Particularly with Ehud Olmert at the helm in Israel. Who knows... but this may finally be the year when the Temple Mount Faithful are able to begin rebuilding the temple.

All hell will break loose like Jerusalem hasn't seen before if they try to do it.

I say, let 'em build. It's their land anyway. The Muslims didn't even care that much for the site until Israel was established in 1948 anyway, then it became "sacred" to them.

By the way, Gershon Salomon obliged me with an autograph. Would be neat to know someday that I have the signature of the man who led the effort to build the third Jewish temple.

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KWerky Production update at the front end of August

Well, we tried. Honestly, we did. But in the end there was no way we could really get The Charles Schulz Code done. The biggest obstacle was that we couldn't find anyplace suitable to be where we would shoot the art gallery scenes, which were crucial (and demanded some unique specifications). The real hurdle though was how bad The Da Vinci Code bombed at the box office, at least in terms of all the hype that it had generated before it even came out. This was supposed to be a $300 million monster blockbuster right out the gate - something like the newest Pirates of the Caribbean - when instead it creaked its way toward, I think it's something around $200 million after all these months, or maybe less. And general interest in the whole Da Vinci Code thing is finally beginning to wane bigtime. A few years from now a lot of people who bought this book will be asking themselves why did they even bother to pick it up in the first place. However it is, it ended up just not being that good a material for a satire like I was aiming for. Maybe I'll post the script for it sometime though, to let anyone who might be interested see what was going to happen.

Meanwhile, work continues on other projects. And I'll post more about those as they develop.

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What I think about the whole Israel/Lebanon mess

Tonight I was on the phone with a friend, and he asked me what I thought about what's going on right now between Israel and the Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. It was the first time that I gave some ventilation to what's been going through my head about this ever since it started... what... three weeks ago?

In the past month or so I haven't posted that much "serious" stuff on this blog. Not like I usually do. There's a lot of reasons for that. I've been thinking deeply on a lot of subjects lately and rather than blab about them on the fly here, I've been letting them percolate more. In the meantime this blog seems to have become about nothing else other than entertainment and minor trivia. Now it's starting to shift back to "real world" stuff.

So, what do I think about this mess in Lebanon right now? I don't believe the United States should become involved in it whatsoever, because this has become a conflict with bad guys but no real good guys either. Yes, Israel has the right to defend itself against those that have actively been trying to destroy her... but that does not mean that Israel has to stoop to the level of killing innocent civilians wholesale in order to get to those bad guys. So of course our "brilliant" leadership is practically giving its blessing to Israel to keep putting innocent Lebanese in the line of fire.

Think about it: would the United States government be in the right, at all, if it supported Great Britain if that country began to carelessly slaughter Irish women and children just to get back at a handful of IRA members?

And this may mark me as a strange Christian, but I can't honestly say that I support the state of Israel as many of my brethren do. Yes, we are instructed in the Bible to honor our Jewish forefathers and to pray for the peace of Jerusalem... but nowhere is it written that we are to thoughtlessly acquiesce to whatever the government of Israel chooses to do. There is a difference between the Jewish people and the government of the Jewish people in their own homeland, just as there is a difference between the American people and the government of the United States: one is not necessarily representative of the other.

So no, I don't completely support the Israeli government in this. And I believe that too many Christians should reconsider why it is that they are blindly supporting that government. No government is that perfect and let's face it: the Old Testament is 60% - or more - about times where the then-Israeli government botched things up. Why should we expect any greater from its present-day incarnation?

So chalk me up as someone who thinks that Hezbollah should be ended as a threat... but also thinks that Israel is fast destroying - if it hasn't completely done so already - its moral credibility in this matter.

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Iraq war vets suffering mentally, study finds

This is what I've feared most during the past three years: the long-term effects of the war in Iraq on our returning military personnel. According to the results of a new study, veterans of Iraq suffer feelings of confusion and even mental lapses at a rather common rate.

I'm afraid to say this, but I expect the suicide rate among those returning from this ill-conceived conflict will rise markedly in the years to come. Especially after President Bush leaves office and whoever is next finally starts to withdraw our soldiers... then it'll finally start to be asked by practically everyone just what were we doing there in the first place. Realizing that one fought in and suffered for a meaningless war is going to pack an emotional whallop, no doubt.

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From the creative mind of George Lucas...

George Lucas really hasn't released that many movies over the years when you think about it. So when one of his greatest triumphs ever reaches a milestone it's a fitting thing to commemorate it. It was twenty years ago today - August 1st, 1986 - that Howard the Duck was hatched in theaters. Yes the summer of 1986 gave us many great cinema classics - Aliens, Transformers: The Movie, etc. - but Howard the Duck certainly stands out as... well, something. Anyway, happy 20th birthday Howard!

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Only twelve posts for the month of July

Must have been a slow month or something.

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I kept waiting for somebody to slap her good

Last week I did something that, in all my thirty-some years of being a southerner, I'd never done before: watched the entire movie Gone With The Wind.

What did I think of it? I thought it was one of the best period pieces I've ever seen. But it got to the point where I was just waiting for somebody, anybody, to slap the heck out of Scarlett O'Hara. She was way too hung up on Ashley Wilkes for her own good and it cost her everything: in the end she's this poor delusioned woman clinging to vague hope that it'll all be somehow better. In a way I can kind of empathize with her though: she didn't want to be alone in this world... but to resolve that she tried to have something that wasn't meant to be hers at all.

Anyway, it's a pretty good movie, even if it's soooooo long. I don't know if I'd ever watch it again but at least now I've cinematically lived up to my southern heritage.

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Weird Al's coming STRAIGHT OUTTA LYNWOOD on September 26

After a week of tantalizing teasers, yesterday "Weird Al" Yankovic revealed the title and full cover artwork for his newest album. Straight Outta Lynwood arrives in stores on September 26th. Here's what it'll look like:Maybe it's just me, but this title and cover seems to be a lot more "serious" than the typical Al album. Guess I was expecting something along the lines of the covers for Bad Hair Day or Running With Scissors. But whatever it is he's got on this new album, you can be sure that I will be buying it on September 26th!

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Four years ago today...

...I became the happiest man on the face of the earth.

Happy Anniversary, my dear Lisa :-)

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"Game over man, game over!"

A little bit of cinema history: it was twenty years ago today - July 18th, 1986 - that the movie Aliens debuted.

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PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST review

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is one of those movies that just gets better and better the more I think about it, now four days after Lisa and I watched it at a theater in Newport News, Virginia. It was a really neat movie experience to wrap up what was a terrific - if completely unplanned - vacation. Now with some time behind me that was spent on "digesting it all in, I feel like commenting on it.

Let me go ahead and state something that everyone else seems to be saying: this movie is a lot like The Empire Strikes Back (Philip Arthur makes note of many similarities in his review of Dead Man's Chest). But it's like a lot of other movies too. I thought the ending seemed very much like The Matrix Reloaded and maybe I'm the only one seeing this but the East India Trading Company as its depicted in Dead Man's Chest seems an awful lot like Weyland-Yutani - otherwise just known as "the Company" - from the Alien movies. But there's nothing wrong with any of that. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is a smart amalgam of plenty of classic elements and story devices... and as the first half of a two-part story, it's just about perfect.

When we last saw young Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann (Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley, respectively) had just helped pull off an escape for Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp). Dead Man's Chest opens with the repercussions of their aiding and abetting the scoundrel, as they are arrested - on their wedding day no less - on orders from Lord Cutler Beckett (Tom Hollander), who represents the East India Trading Company (and who it's strongly implied had a run-in of some kind with Captain Sparrow years earlier). Beckett is willing to cut a deal with Will: steal Sparrow's seemingly-broken compass and he'll let them go free... but fail to get the compass and Elizabeth will "dance the Tyburn jig" from the hangman's gallows.

It's around this time that Captain Jack Sparrow - the hub around which everything else revolves around in this movie in one way or another - is brought into the picture. Remember how Sparrow makes his first appearance in The Curse of the Black Pearl? Well, his first moments of screentime in Dead Man's Chest are just as memorable and perfectly true to his outrageous character. Onboard the Black Pearl Sparrow has a spectral visitor: Bootstrap Bill Turner (Stellan Skarsgård) has come to tell Sparrow that it's almost time to make good on a debt he owess to none other than Davy Jones. So it is that the events are set up: Will Turner is going after Sparrow, while Sparrow is desperately trying to escape his fate, and it's not long afterward that Elizabeth is going after both of them. And above it all lurks the tragic story of the devil-of-the-sea himself, Davy Jones (Bill Nighy) and the mysterious chest that is about to become sought by all.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is foremost a movie intended to give fans of the first film what they've wanted most: more Captain Jack Sparrow! From beginning to end, everything that happens in this movie does so as a ripple from the presence of Sparrow landing in the pool. Johnny Depp is obviously having fun with this character. This may be the portrayal that he'll forever be known for, as much as Sylvester Stallone is known as Rocky or Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker. I'm of the mind that Captain Jack Sparrow is one of the few wholeheartedly original characters that movies have given us in the past several years. If you enjoyed him in The Curse of the Black Pearl you'll love him even more here and if you've already seen Dead Man's Chest, it's only another ten months before we arrive at World's End and get more.

Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley are fine in this movie, as are the others that have returned from the first movie (including Pintel and one-eyed Ragetti, who is trying to study-up on the Bible since he's now mortal). We are also introduced to several new characters, including the Voodoo priestess Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris).

But the real standout of this movie, apart from Depp's Captain Jack, is Davy Jones and everything associated with him: his ship, his crew of the damned, and the man/thing himself. Jones is a completely computer-generated character and for the first time in five years, at least since before WETA ran away with the artform with Gollum and the rest of their stuff in The Lord of the Rings, Industrial Light and Magic are back on the ball with digital animation. My biggest complaint with ILM's CGI work has been that their stuff has looked too "shiny and new". In Dead Man's Chest they've finally learned to get away from that look. Davy Jones looks frickin' real, in a way that ILM has never done anything before. WETA's Gollum set the benchmark for what's to be expected from CGI and now ILM has more than surpassed that goal. As for the Kraken... well, the least said about it to the uninitiated, the better.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is pure fun with a bag of popcorn and hopefully someone to share the experience with. It's not a completely perfect movie (there seems to be too long a lull in the action in the second half, but remember this is just part one of a two-part story) but it's a great summer flick that from the start of the closing credits will have you hungering for the next installment. Highly recommendable.

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Pictures from our Hampton/Virginia Beach/Norfolk/Newport News excursion

Lisa took a lot more pictures with her film camera that I'll probably be adding on to these eventually, but here's a look at some of the stuff we did this past week after arriving in Hampton, Virginia:
U.S. Navy aircraft carriers docked at Norfolk

Another Navy ship berthed in Norfolk (we caught this pic on our way back home.)

Tuesday I got to do something that I've been wanting to do for years: drive the length of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel. We paid $12 at the southern entrance in Virginia Beach and entered the 19-mile long (17 miles of it over and under the water) causeway:On the bridge-tunnel's south artifial island we stopped at the gift shop and I got to take a very special picture of Lisa: I've been on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel twice before, in 1984 and 1992, and both times I had my picture taken at the northern-most point you can get on the island. Well, a few days ago I took this photo of Lisa at the exact same spot:Here's the reason why the Chesapeake Bay Bridge has two tunnels: so that boat traffic (like Navy ships such as this one out of Norfolk) can glide across the bay and into the open waters of the Atlantic unimpeded:Driving through the first Chesapeake tunnel:We drove a few miles on Virginia's eastern shore and then turned back around for the return trip to the mainland (since we were returning within a 24 hour period from our initial crossing it only cost us $5 for the return drive).

Here's Lisa later that night, on the "boardwalk" of a beach in Hampton:

The next day we visited Yorktown, where British forces under General Cornwallis surrendered to George Washington, thus ending major fighting in the Revolutionary War. Here I am standing with the victory monument in the background:

And also at Yorktown, here is the "Poor Potter's" kiln and earthworks... which actually turns out to have been the first major pottery operation of its kind in colonial America (linked image is larger so you can see the detail of the archeological work done at the site):

The next day (Thursday) we visited the Virginia Air and Space Museum (which also has an IMAX screen showing Superman Returns in 3D, but we didn't watch that again). Here's me standing in front of the command module from the Apollo 12 lunar mission:

After we finished there we returned to our hotel for awhile, then went to the mall nearby where I bought the latest Mad Magazine, and then came back and rested a bit before heading out to eat dinner and seeing Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest at a theater in Newport News.

And, that's basically our trip in a nutshell. We had such a great time that we're planning on going back in the fall when its cooler, and then take in such sites as Colonial Williamsburg and the Jamestown settlement.

Look for pics from Lisa either here or on her own blog soon :-)

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Return from the land of a thousand 7-Elevens

Lisa and I pulled back into home about 2:30 this afternoon, four days after taking off with no idea whatsoever where we were headed. All we knew was that we were going to head out of town and we didn't care where that put us. And I think the original plan was to try and make it at least as far as New Jersey and maybe take a quick jaunt into New York City. But in the end, Monday evening saw us marginally lost in Virginia Beach, headed up I-64 to Hampton, where we stayed until leaving this morning. And given our lack of planning, we had a heck of a trip! Tuesday I got to do something that I've wanted to do for years: drive across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge-Tunnel, all 17+ miles of it over and under water then turned around and made the return trip (cost seventeen bucks to do it but I thought it was worth it). Lisa and I got to play in the surf at Hampton and Virginia Beach (finally using the boogie board we bought at the Outer Banks three years ago) and on Wednesday visited the site of the Battle of Yorktown, then took Colonial Parkway past Colonial Williamsburg and the site of the Jamestown settlement (will have pics of those up soon hopefully). Then yesterday made a visit to the Virginia Air and Space Museum and caught Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest at a theater in Newport News.

Yeah, darned good trip! But what I can't figure out for the life of me is why are there so many 7-Elevens in the Virginia Beach/Norfolk/Hampton area? I swear, there were three located within about two blocks of each other at one spot in Virginia Beach. We didn't visit any but they were plenty ubiquitous enough.

Anyhoo, that's where we were for the past several days. We may visit the area again sometime this fall.

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Eye-MAXed out on SUPERMAN RETURNS

At the behest of Darth Larry (who wrote a report last week after seeing it) and because we felt like a short trip was in order, Lisa and I ordered tickets this past Monday night for Superman Returns in IMAX 3D at the only IMAX screen (of two) in North Carolina that was showing it. The showtime was at 7:45 and when I told my friend Chad about it he ordered him up a ticket too. So we hooked up at his pad, went to dinner at a Mexican restaurant not far from the Exploris Museum (where Raleigh's IMAX is located) and then went on to the Exploris. We picked up our tickets and, per Darth Larry's recommendation got in line about an hour before the show, which was a good thing 'cuz the lineup was fast lengthening.

So we show them the tickets, they gave us these funky 3D glasses with some kind of polarized lenses (not the blue/red 3D that were big in the Fifties) and we got some good seats for the show. After a short intro about what IMAX is (the screen at Exploris is about five stories tall, with 44 speakers pumping out 12,000 watts of sound) and how to use the glasses (put them on when the green glasses flash at the bottom of the screen, take them off when the flashing glasses are red) and then some trailers - all in 3D - for movies like The Ant Bully and Happy Feet (why couldn't there have been a 3D trailer for Spider-Man 3?) the show started.

And it was terrific! This was the second feature film that I'd seen in IMAX (the first was The Matrix Reloaded three years ago) and it was nothing short of spectacular. Not every movie can have the honor of being IMAXed, but the epic scale of Superman Returns absolutely demands it. I've written my review of the movie after watching it a week ago so I won't go much into the movie itself, but seeing the movie THAT big no doubt maxed-out the irises of everyone looking at the screen.

Yes, Superman Returns in IMAX 3D was a beautiful thing to behold... but only 20 minutes of the movie is in 3D! Those include Clark's remembering when he first learned he could fly, the rescue of the space shuttle and the 777 jetliner, some of when Lex is "growing" his new continent (STILL the dumbest criminal plot in a movie ever) and the final scenes showing Superman flying toward the sunrise (like how Christopher Reeve did it in his movies). There were PLENTY of other scenes that could have been 3D-ized, like Superman and Lois's first reunion, the part where Luthor enters the Fortress of Solitude, even Superman's return to Earth... THAT would have been spectacular! But I guess it must have been too expensive to convert the entire film over to 3D... and IMAX 3D at that. Still, Lisa and I both had the same sentiment: that we wished there had been more of it in the movie.

But anyway, all around it was a fine evening. Am glad we were able to catch it and fairly close by to where we live, too. Well worth the higher cost over that of a regular movie ticket to see at least once.

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In 1996 we celebrated our INDEPENDENCE DAY

Today marks a pretty funny anniversary for me. You see, it was ten years ago yesterday – July 3rd, 1996 – that Independence Day premiered. Some theaters jumped the gun and had showings on the night of the 2nd, which is the date in the movie that all the action starts happening, but most people started seeing it on the 3rd and 4th. It was on July 4th that I saw it for the first time...

...and I liked it so much that I saw it six more times before the summer was out! Yeah, 1996 will forever be "the year that I saw Independence Day seven times in the theater" to me. The only other movies I saw that season were Twister (caught it three times) and A Time To Kill (just once). I've no idea why such madness overtook me in those lazy, hazy, crazy days ten years ago. It was a personal record that stood until I saw Star Wars Episode I nine times three years later. But it was still enough to merit making a post about it here in commemoration.

Ten years ago in 1996 my ebullient comrade "Weird" Ed was taking summer classes at Elon, and I was working a summer job at a bindery near Greensboro. We'd been given the 4th and 5th off – a Thursday and Friday – so I was gonna get a four-day weekend. Well, after work let out about 4 p.m. on the 3rd I drove to the Elon campus, picked up Ed and we made a quick stop at my Burlington apartment (I was living with my parents during the week that summer but staying at the apartment on weekends) where I got cleaned up and changed shirts. We then drove to my parents' house, dropped off Ed's gear there (and he became one of the very few people that our cocker spaniel Bridget never barked at... which shows how neat a guy Ed is 'cuz Bridget barked at just about EVERY stranger who came into the house) and then headed to King's Inn Pizza in Eden 'cuz I'd been telling Ed they have some of the best pizza anywhere. We stopped off at Wal-Mart (the original Eden one) on the way home and ogled some Star Wars figures and fireworks before heading back to the house and playing around on the Internet for the next three hours. See, Ed was spending the night at our place so we could be sure to get an early start on catching Independence Day before the theaters all got sold out the next day. Well, the next morning we woke up and got ready and headed out the door a little after 11 and went to the Janus Theater (which is no longer there) in Greensboro. We got tickets for a showing a little after 1 p.m. And we wound up getting pretty good seats too. And then the show started...

I think it's safe to say that we were "blown away" by Independence Day (often contracted to just ID4). We'd been stoked for this movie ever since the commercial that ran during Super Bowl XXX and all the trailers and television spots that had aired since. Well, Independence Day did not disappoint. It was everything a summer movie was supposed to be: a lot of cornball hokey fun blowing up stuff real good with a multi-million dollar special effects budget.

Don't fire your guns at flying saucers: you could trigger an interstellar war.

Well, we liked it so much that we decided to see it again a few days later on Sunday. Then I saw it again a week later with a friend from out-of-country. And I kept seeing it again and again and again. Here's how the final tally broke down:

Thursday, July 4th 1996 – 1st time, saw it with Ed at Janus Theater in Greensboro

Sunday, July 7th 1996 – 2nd time, saw it with Ed at Brassfield Theater in Greensboro

Sunday, July 14th 1996 – 3rd time, saw it with Benny – my good friend from Belgium – at the movie theater in Sylva, North Carolina

Saturday, July 20th 1996 – 4th time, saw it with Johnny Yow (who's been on me awhile now for not mentioning him on this blog so now I get to make that right with him) at Brassfield Theater in Greensboro, right after he told me that night that he'd proposed to his girlfriend/now-wife Della

Saturday, July 27th 1996 – 5th time, the only time that I went alone to see Independence Day in the theater, at the theater that used to be in Burlington, North Carolina before it was demolished to make way for a Lowe's hardware store

Saturday, August 10th 1996 – 6th time, saw it with Ed at the Brassfield (again)

Wednesday, August 21st 2006 – 7th and last time I saw Independence Day in the theater, with Ed and Gary, once again at the Janus

Well, my now-apparent obsession about Independence Day soon manifested itself for all the world to see. A few nights after seeing it for the second time I started work on an Independence Day webpage. HTML was something I'd started picking up about nine months earlier and I was eager to stretch my newfound skills to the limit. It began with a single crude black page with a graphic I made in Paint Shop Pro (this was all being done on a 486/25mhz machine running Windows 3.1 and using a 14.4 modem to upload to my web account on my college's server, mind ya). And it fast spiralled completely out of my control. I spent the next few nights after coming home from work scouring the Internet for new Independence Day graphics, sounds, anything I could cram onto my 170 MB hard drive. The page became two, then three and ultimately eight different pages on what was by that point a full-bore website. And thus, Chris Knight's Unofficial ID4 Homepage came into being. And my Independence Day homepage almost brought down Elon's web server because (a) in short order it became the biggest website hosted on Elon's server - larger than the school's official site even - growing to an unconscionable over sixty megabytes in size: most of those were all the sound files (in bulky WAV format, remember this was before the advent of MP3). And (b) it started racking up hits out the wazoo. It had received something well over 120,000 visits by the time I was forced to take it down about a year later.

They blew up Congress!

But even today, I'm still proud of my humble lil' ID4 homepage. It was the first thing I ever did online that garnered a lot of popularity, apparently. My site was linked to by just about all the other big fan-made sites (and I was more than glad to link to them in kind) and a lot of really sweet e-mails came in from all over the world. A few weeks after the site first went online I got the ultimate nod courtesy of an e-mail from none other than Independence Day producer Dean Devlin himself, congratulating me on having a great website about his movie (I've still got that e-mail somewhere too). And that was my first real contact with someone from the entertainment world that came about because of something I did in cyberspace. There've been many since then, but that e-mail from Devlin about the ID4 site I'd put up... well, there's not been anything quite like that since.

"And what the hell is that smell?!? AAAAAAAAAAGHHHHHHH... I could have been at a BARBECUE!!"

Today, looking back, I've no idea how come I went so mad for Independence Day that summer. Maybe it had something to do with how starved I was for good sci-fi escapism. Maybe it was because this was the first movie in a long time for me that honestly felt like a summer blockbuster: the last summer film of this kind of scale that I'd seen, Jurassic Park, really left me feeling wanting. Independence Day satiated my desire for a fun summer flick like nothing had in too long a while. Or maybe it was that for the first time in my life, I really let myself go to be overwhelmed by the hype of a blockbuster movie. That was the first time, and there haven't been many times since (I'm pretty pragmatic when it comes to accepting entertainment... or anything else for that matter) that I've found myself caught up in the hooplah (for the record, I still don't "get" all the fuss about Snakes On A Plane). Independence Day was mindless good fun and just for once it felt great to join in the revelry without caring about whether or not this movie made any sense at all.

"You don't actually think they spend twenty thousand dollars on a hammer, thirty thousand dollars on a toilet seat, do you?"

Yes, let's talk about making sense, 'cuz Independence Day just plum doesn't. The mistakes abound in this film (the very first time I saw it, I caught the error in the first scene of how the Apollo 11 plaque is planted amid some rocks when it was actually attached to the base of the lunar module). There are geographical gaffes all over (like putting the Empire State Building in the wrong part of New York City). The producers played fast and loose with real military protocol (a U.S. ballistic submarine doesn't usually operate in the Persian Gulf). There are fallacies upon fallacies in Independence Day... and at the top of the heap is how it is that an Apple Powerbook is somehow able to interface with alien technology and upload a computer virus into the mothership. Look, we're only now able to get Windows machines to talk to Macs with any sense of coherence... and they expect us to believe that a laptop computer is going to feed bogus data into the mainframe of an alien spaceship the size of a small moon?

"Die. Diiiiiieeeeeee..."

"Is that glass bullet-proof?!"

And, let's face it: the past ten years have made Independence Day a somewhat dated movie. The World Trade Center was destroyed, but it wasn't by the aliens. There is no more Republican Guard to be so desperately driven as to hook up with Israeli fighter pilots somewhere in the Iraqi desert. When production began on Independence Day the Internet was just then coming into its own: it would certainly figure into the scheme of things if a real-life alien invasion took place today. There're probably a dozen or more things in this movie that firmly establish it as a product of the mid-Nineties, instead of enhancing its quality as a timeless classic...

President Whitmore delivers The Speech.

...but even then, that is part of the appeal of Independence Day, I think. This is a movie that, at its heart, is about an America - and a world - that never was, but could have been... and might still be someday. At the time it came out I wrote somewhere that Independence Day was the most politically-incorrect big-budget movie to come out in quite some time. When I wrote that I did so with what was then a very limited perspective of ideologies. In my mind back then, Independence Day was a movie that reflected a damned good light on the United States military (something taboo to "liberals", I understood then) but even back then I realized something about this film: that Independence Day is a movie where average people come together to do the impossible. And they're not divided up along racial or class lines either. Fercryingoutloud, that's Steve and David who fly up together into that mothership to save the world... and not once does anyone bring up that they happen to be a black man and a Jew. In too many other movies that would be something that would be harped upon somehow... but it never comes up in Independence Day.

Why can't real life be like that? Why can't we just STOP MEASURING EACH OTHER BY WHATEVER THE HELL IS CONVENIENT and just accept EACH OTHER as being someone special... without trying to exploit the hell out of them? You see, that is what's so wrong with the world - and especially America - these days. We've stopped seeing individuals and started seeing "potential assets". In Independence Day, everyone in the story had humongous value: as a character in the story and as a person worth considering. In this story of survival, we all really were in it together. And there was no "class structure" or elitism in place that kept some from pulling their fair share of the load.

Think about it: if the story of Independence Day was to really happen, today, does anyone seriously think that President George W. Bush would jump into a flightsuit, walk toward an F-16 and tell someone that "I'm a combat pilot... I belong in the air"? Hell, Bush would never have let himself mingle that close with common folks who were living in a flotilla of mobile homes. If a real alien invasion was to happen, he would send some other poor saps up to do the fighting while swaggering his arms and telling the aliens to "Bring it on."

Good lord, if only we could have a real President like Thomas J. Whitmore in the White House: someone who actually did care enough about his fellow Americans to fight alongside with them, without hiding from them. Whitmore in Independence Day is the ultimate ideal President of the United States, in my book anyway. And that's also part of why I love this movie so much: like Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, it shows us, maybe not what we have realistically, but it does show us what we can and should be looking for in those who ask to be entrusted with so much power. Whitmore, I could trust with being President if he were a real person... not so much with just about any stripe of politician in Washington today (with the exceptions of maybe Tom Tancredo and Ron Paul).

The Jolly Roger

Could we still have an America like that today? I like to think so... and I like to also think that it won't take anything like an alien invasion to make it happen either. And I think that Independence Day touched a lot on what it will mean to make that come about. F'rinstance, consider Jasmine, played by Vivaca A. Fox...

Jasmine at the wheel
Jasmine is like that guy in New Orleans who stole the schoolbus after Katrina hit and brought dozens of refugees to Houston, out of harm's way. Nobody told Jabbar Gibson to do that and no one told Jasmine to commandeer that city truck and look for survivors of the aliens' attack on Los Angeles either... she just did it! You see, that is why America has failed so much and it was apparent even in the wake of 9/11: we let our government decide the course of action we take, instead of just damn doing it ourselves with the minds God gave us. If Independence Day happened in real-life America, in this era of neo-conservative dominated politics, absolutely nothing of substance would be done to alleviate the suffering of those hit by the attacks... at least not without "compassionate government" trying to "help". The ironic thing is, Independence Day came out at the height of the Clinton presidency... which was accused of trying to do to America what the current administration has attempted to do from day one!

The short of it is: get the hell out of our way, United States Government. Real men and women know exactly what to do when the need arises, thank you very much.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...!!!"

Well, what else can I say about Independence Day that hasn't already been said? Yeah, it's a movie with all the depth of the typical Irwin Allen disaster flick... with a vastly magnified budget. It's hokey good fun. And maybe I've over-analyzed it over the years but I think despite its flaws and even some frustrations with the plot and dialogue, and for however past-ripe the story is in contrast to our current times, I believe that Independence Day is a movie with a lot of solid merit to it.

I've probably said enough, but there's one thing about Independence Day that I just have to let loose one final rant about. There's something that's been bugging me ever since I first saw this movie, ten years ago to the day. It's this scene:

Here's Judd Hirsch's character Julius talking to David's ex-wife about love and all that. Look at that woman sitting to his right. She shows up quite a bit in this movie. I don't know what her name is or who plays her, but look at what she's doing...

SHE'S READING A FRICKIN' MAGAZINE!!! I just can't believe this: here's this presidential aide sitting on Air Force One, having just escaped the biggest calamity in recorded history... and she's sitting there reading, it could be Southern Living or Redbook for all we know. WHY THE %@&* IS SHE READING at a time like this?!? Why is she so calm?! I've never understood this and it's bugged me to no end.

Okay, just couldn't write a piece about Independence Day and not mention that one pet peeve I have with this movie :-)

So, to Dean Devlin, Roland Emmerich and everyone who worked on Independence Day all those years ago: Happy Tenth Anniversary! You gave us a really good time back in the summer of '96, and it's meant quite a bit to a lot of us in the years since. Thanks for giving us a movie that was not only a lot of fun, but pointed us to what is best about the real America... and real human nature for that matter.

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Ain't It Cool News is ten years old!

Ten years ago today, an Austin, Texas cinephile named Harry Knowles officially launched Ain't It Cool News. Say what you will of that site be you fan or detractor, it has more than made its mark on popular culture in the past deci-century. From the very beginning - heck I was there when Harry posted those pics from the Star Wars Special Editions on a plain blank page in March of '96 - this has been one of my very most visited websites. Spend some time on AICN and you not only learn a lot about the movies, but you learn how they are really made, with all the plots and intricacies that go on behind the scenes. In some ways Knowles and his gang have been the best film school you could possibly find for the price they're offering. Anyways, happy birthday Ain't It Cool News, and many happy returns!!

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