I saw MONGOL again and Phillip got to see it, too!

Last December at Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9, the annual film festival in Austin, Texas, the big breakout hit of the entire show was easily Mongol. Sergei Bodrov directed, co-wrote and co-produced, and collaborated with a crew from over forty countries to produce this vast epic about the early life of Temujin... who history would remember as Genghis Khan.

Even before I had left Texas, my good friend Phillip Arthur had expressed some envy that I got to see Mongol waaaaay before its wide release. Well, ever since then I've been keeping an eye out for that, 'cuz I vowed that I'd see Mongol again and that next time it would be with Phillip. Last week it finally came out in Greensboro (at the Grande at Friendly Center). I shot Phillip an e-mail about it and we quickly made plans to see it the next evening. That's what we did on Thursday night and now that he's posted his review of it I'll add some more thoughts about Mongol.

The first thing you'll notice about Mongol is the photography. Shot in Mongolia, China and Kazakhstan, the vast steppes of twelfth-century Asia are some of the most beautiful images in modern cinema. This is the turbulent landscape that we find the young Khan - spelled "Temudjin" in the subtitles - who from the moment his father dies is beaten and forged by fate and tradition into the one who would unite the Mongols into the largest empire of world history. Indeed, the geography of Mongol is as much a character as those who dwell on it, and Bodrov is sumptuous with his treatment of the land and its climate.

Genghis Khan's name is one that to this day has provoked fear and dread. But his portrayal by Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano is perhaps one of the most noble of any recent biography. The Temudjin of Mongol is not the bloodthirsty tyrant who eventually brought despair to the frontier of Russia, but is instead an honorable and decent man. He is a loving husband and father to his children, who by birth and circumstance has had a destiny thrust upon him. Phillip and I talked after the movie about how Bodrov's treatment of Temudjin is almost like a combination of William Wallace from Braveheart and Conan the Barbarian. And then toward the end of the movie, when Temudjin sets out to impose law and discipline on a people run amok, he become very much like a Moses figure.

The battles are intense, well-choreographed and unrelentingly brutal so far as graphic depictions go. Tuomas Kantelinen's score is amazingly beautiful and haunting: I don't know if this soundtrack is available, but I'm bound and determined to find a copy somewhere. All of this and more supplements the fine acting from the cast, which at times moves the viewer to laughter and tears and everything in between. I don't know why, but I have to say that I enjoyed Mongol even more the second time than I did the first... and I loved it already the first time. It's easily among the top five new movies that I've watched this past year.

Mongol comes out on DVD this September. But if you can possibly do so, you really should watch this movie the way it deserves to be seen: on a big wide screen in a darkened theater, with hopefully lots of other people to discover the majesty of Mongol with.

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Mark Rich: WALL-E for President

Mark Rich of The New York Times has a good write-up of the new Disney/Pixar movie WALL-E, and how it might serve as a mirror of the times we live in...

The “Wall-E” crowds were primed by the track record of its creator, Pixar Animation Studios, and the ecstatic reviews. But if anything, this movie may exceed its audience’s expectations. It did mine.

As it happened, “Wall-E” opened the same summer weekend as the hot-button movie of the 2004 campaign year, Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11.” Ah, the good old days. Oil was $38 a barrel, our fatalities in Iraq had not hit 900, and only 57 percent of Americans thought their country was on the wrong track. (Now more than 80 percent do.) “Wall-E,” a fictional film playing to a far larger audience, may touch a more universal chord in this far gloomier time.

Indeed, sitting among rapt children mostly under 12, I felt as if I’d stepped through a looking glass. This movie seemed more realistically in touch with what troubles America this year than either the substance or the players of the political food fight beyond the multiplex’s walls.

While the real-life grown-ups on TV were again rebooting Vietnam, the kids at “Wall-E” were in deep contemplation of a world in peril — and of the future that is theirs to make what they will of it. Compare any 10 minutes of the movie with 10 minutes of any cable-news channel, and you’ll soon be asking: Exactly who are the adults in our country and who are the cartoon characters?

More good thoughts from Rich at the link above. Between what he's writing here and a lot of other positive reaction to WALL-E, it reminds me a lot about when Forrest Gump came out in 1994.

Good stories, both of 'em. And a lot of others too. Maybe someday we'll start to take some of their messages to heart.

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Just watched "Journey's End", the DOCTOR WHO Season 4 finale

Now THAT was epic!

If not the best Doctor Who episode ever, "Journey's End" will certainly be among the top ten. Maybe even the top five.

I screamed, laughed and cried so many times during this.

Full review coming soon. This needs plenty of time to digest and absorb.

EDIT 07:19 p.m. EST 07/06/2008: Here's the full review!

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Japanese prank videos

Those fun-loving Japanese are at it again. Check out these hilarious prank videos!

Thanks to my good buddy "bmovies" for finding 'em :-)

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Great Britain in grip of fever over tonight's DOCTOR WHO

Proportionally it's a much a bigger event than a season finale of Lost, or the series finale of The Sopranos. In the annals of television history it's set to rank up there with the revelation of who shot J.R., or the very last episode of M*A*S*H...

At least ten million people in Great Britain tonight are expected to watch "Journey's End", the season finale of Doctor Who. Last week's episode "The Stolen Earth" ended with the biggest cliffhanger in the show's nearly half-century of history: The Doctor (currently played by David Tennant) was shot clean through the chest by a Dalek. And then, with Donna and Rose and Captain Jack watching, he began to regenerate.

If Tennant is leaving the show and another actor is about to take his place as The Doctor - a very big deal and something that has happened 9 times already since the show began in 1963 - then it will go down as one of the greatest coups of recent times, and nothing short of a marvel that the BBC was able to keep it under such tight wraps.

All week, it's been the biggest topic of discussion among our Brittish brethren. Major betting houses have been taking wagers and laying odds on what happens tonight: does The Doctor regenerate into a new form? If so, who will be the new actor... or even actress... to take the role? Robert Carlyle and James Nesbitt have been huge favorites but Bill Nighy (Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies) is said to be in the running also, along with Hugh Grant.

Of course, that's all subject to David Tennant's Doctor fully regenerating into a new body, and this all not being one of current showrunner Russell T. Davies's famous tricks. But if it is, it's a darned good one.

Fellow Doctor Who fan Mark Goodacre spots a treasure trove of media madness about tonight's episode, and offers his perspective as a British fan living abroad (here in North Carolina, even). Worth checking out.

And I suspect that around 2:30 p.m. this afternoon, the Internet is going to melt down from all the American fans trying to download "Journey's End" :-P

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LOST reruns on Sci-Fi Channel in September

If you've always wanted to check out Lost but felt daunted by how far along the story is (production on Season 5 begins next month) and you don't want to chuck good money on DVD sets just yet, you're in luck. Starting on Monday, September 15th the Sci-Fi Channel will be rerunning Lost. It'll be four solid hours of Lost every Monday night, from the crash of Oceanic Flight 815 in the pilot episode on through the insane events of "There's No Place Like Home", the Season 4 finale. Plenty enough time to catch-up new viewers on things like the Others, the DHARMA Initiative, the Tailies, and all the other stuff they should know before Season 5 premieres in January 2009.

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How the BBC resurrected Davros for DOCTOR WHO

Before this past week, the last time that Davros had been seen was the 1988 Doctor Who story "Remembrance of the Daleks". Two decades later and the BBC decided that fiction's most murderous villain ever deserved an upgrade for the revived series.

The Telegraph in London has an in-depth feature on how Davros was brought back to life. In addition to several conceptual drawings of both Davros and the new red Supreme Dalek, it also talks to the BBC's artists and engineering team members, who decided early on that Davros's new look should draw from how the character first appeared in 1975, when Michael Wisher was in the role. From the design of the chair to the sculpting of the prosthetics (which can only be worn once) that Julian Bleach wears for the two-part finale, the BBC staff held nothing back from intentionally making Davros "bigger and scarier" than ever. A very interesting read for anyone who's interested in film and television production.

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Jesse Helms has passed away

It's being reported at this hour that Jesse Helms, who served in the United States Senate longer than any other North Carolinian, has passed away at the age of 86.

Let's go ahead and get it out of the way: yes, Helms did some things in his day that to current sensibilities were very callous, even downright crude. The "white hands" television ad that he ran against Harvey Gantt in 1990 was one of the first things that really made me take notice at how dirty the political process had become (that alone was enough to make me vow, even back then, that I'd never run a negative ad aimed against a person if I were to enter politics). And then there was his early career at WRAL in Raleigh, which some people will quickly ascribe some nastier connotations to.

But I still voted for Helms in the 1996 election. And if he were able to run again, I'd vote for him once more. Because disagree with him on some things though I did (and still do), I could not doubt his sincerity in doing what he believed was in the best interest of the people he was sworn to serve... and that's a quality that is hard to find anymore.

Whatever else could be said about the man, it cannot be denied that Jesse Helms was a product of his time, and to that he did hold faithful and true. Whatever your political stripe, he's owed a measure of respect for that. And I think that when the books are finally written on his life, he's going to emerge as one of the most influential - if not also among the most enigmatic - figures of American politics in the past half-century. I will even go so far to say that in the greater scheme of things Helms did far more good than any harm attributed to him... and the full appreciation for that is still to come.

Rest in peace, Senator Helms.

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Best way I know of to celebrate this Independence Day

Go to Best Buy or FYE or wherever, and get the DVD box set of HBO's recent John Adams miniseries (came out last month, we got ours a couple of weeks ago). And watch the whole thing while waiting to go out and eat hot dogs and see fireworks this evening.

If you read this blog during the time HBO was running it, you know fully well that I thought this was one of the most masterful and poignant miniseries to have graced the medium in a very long time.

Watch John Adams, and then think about the America that Adams and Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin and George Washington and all those other guys worked and fought to give us... compared to the America that we have today.

"Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it."

And after the movie that I watched with a friend last night there's more that I probably could say about it... but I'd already seen Mongol (back in December at Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9 in Austin, Texas) and I promised Phillip that I wouldn't write anymore about it 'til he did. Suffice it to say, it's ironic that such a beautiful foreign-made film could evoke so much thought about our own state of affairs.

Let's put it this way: when you see Temudjin (better known as Genghis Khan) in this movie, you'll quietly wish that we had someone like him running for President!

For what it's worth, Happy Fourth of July, my fellow Americans.

And I hope we get to celebrate many more of them.

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The first trailer for the remake of THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL

We do not need this movie. It's like remaking Gone With The Wind, or 2001: A Space Odyssey.

(Or maybe my mouth still has a bad taste in it from the mess that was I Am Legend.)

Keanu Reeves as Klaatu is intriguing though. And at least they seem to have kept the classic look for Gort...

Blast here for the first trailer (in Quicktime format) for The Day the Earth Stood Still.

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Judge orders YouTube to surrender ALL user history to Viacom

A judge has ordered YouTube to hand over ALL the history of its users - including videos watched and IP addresses - to Viacom, as part of Viacom's "infringement" lawsuit against YouTube and its owner Google.

I first found the story on Slashdot, which is reflecting a lot of outrage at the judge's ruling.

Since it's already been established that Viacom has STOLEN video from ME, perhaps I should sue and have a judge also give me YouTube's user history so that I can see how many times Viacom watched my own videos...?

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Found at last: The FULL print of Fritz Lang's METROPOLIS!

In 1927, Austrian-German filmmaker Fritz Lang released Metropolis, considered by many to be the zenith of the silent movie era. Unfortunately the various versions of Metropolis that we have had for most of the 81 years since have been around 118 minutes long: drastically shortened from the film's original running time of 210 minutes (did those guys think big back then, or what?). For all this time finding a complete, uncut copy of Metropolis has been one of the most prized goals of die-hard movie buffs, and most had given up hope that Lang's original vision might never be seen again.

Tonight, Ain't It Cool News is broadcasting the word far and wide that a complete print of Fritz Lang's Metropolis has been located in Buenos Ares, Argentina!

I've only seen Metropolis once, years ago in college. I'll admit: some of the dialogue is... odd... and maybe even a bit pretentious. But you know what? I don't care. People will be saying the same about the Star Wars movies someday (a series whose look was greatly inspired by Metropolis). Whatever faults it may have with the story and writing, those do nothing to diminish the staggering achievement that Metropolis was in its day. Movies like that and King Kong, filmmakers back then did some amazing stuff with so little. "Ya gotta appreciate a movie in the context of the time that it was made in", has been my argument for a long time now. And in that regard, Metropolis is still one of the biggest achievements in motion picture history.

And now we're getting a whole wazoo-more of it!

Now all we need is to find a full print (or any print at all) of London After Midnight, and for Jerry Lewis to finally complete The Day the Clown Cried, and for Disney to finally release Song of the South on DVD, and for all 108 missing episodes of Doctor Who to be found... and then I'll be happy :-)

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The final scenes of "The Stolen Earth" on DOCTOR WHO

Right now it's the Internet's most hotly-debated moment of television: the ending of "The Stolen Earth" on Doctor Who. And if you want to know what the buzz is about, here it is. Everything from The Doctor and Rose running toward each other, to that final scene which nobody saw coming...

And here is the BBC's official trailer for "Journey's End", the season finale which premieres this weekend...

If you ever wanted to know why I've always been a Doctor Who fan, then now is as good a time as any to find out. "The Stolen Earth" airs in a few weeks on Sci-Fi Channel here in America, if you haven't seen it yet.

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Review of WALL-E

This past December during Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9 in Austin, Texas (read my full report here) two people from Pixar Animation came and showed us some footage from WALL-E. And I remember telling someone at the time that if any movie deserves to be the first to make a billion dollars at the box office, WALL-E would be it. Even then, it looked that amazing.

I wasn't able to catch it opening day ('cuz I was busy all weekend with our local Theatre Guild's production of Children of Eden) but yesterday Lisa and I went to the new Four Seasons Station 18 in Greensboro, and I finally got to watch WALL-E.

So what did I think of it?

Best. Pixar. Movie. Ever.

And if it's not the best movie that Disney has ever done, it certainly ranks up there somewhere along with The Lion King and Aladdin (those are my personal favorites anyway). It's so good that I want to see WALL-E... at least six more times while it's still playing at the cinema!

But you know what? The day after, and I can't put my finger on any one reason why WALL-E is so good. This is a movie of very utter extremes: one one hand, this is the finest work that has ever been done for a computer animated film. WALL-E looks real. The cockroach looks real. Those huge pylons of trash that dot the landscape look real. The only thing that doesn't look realistic are the humans aboard the Axiom, and when you follow the story you can understand why that might be, anyway. But at the same time, for all the raw rendering power that got poured into WALL-E, this is a story so simple and accessible that for most of the movie there is not any dialogue at all. And I think that is going to be one of the reasons why WALL-E will appear on many others' lists as Pixar's best effort to date. It is Pixar at its purest... but it's also a movie that dares do something the animation house has never done before: implement footage of real humans (clips of Hello Dolly and Fred Willard's role as the President of Buy 'n Large are the most prominent).

The movie is about WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth class), the last robot still functioning on an Earth buried beneath wasteful consumption gone amok. A few hundred years in our future a Wal-Martish corporation called Buy 'n Large has come to provide for every material human desire and is now the world government. Unfortunately all that needless purchasing has made Earth unfit for human habitation. So all the people leave on starships for a few years while Buy 'n Large dispatches millions of robots to clean up the place.

Seven centuries later, WALL-E is the only one still operational and following his directive. He wakes up every morning, recharges via solar power, then spends the day cleaning up the garbage and collecting the odd treasure like lighters, videotapes and brassieres. Then he retreats back to his "home" for the night, with a cockroach to keep him company.

Sounds like the movie I Am Legend, doesn't it? Well, whatever went wrong with that film, WALL-E succeeds so far as impressing us with a character that not only has a soul, but also with the sense that he is lonely. All without a single spoken word of dialogue.

And then, one day, a ship lands near WALL-E's home. It dispatches EVE, a sleek, slim "female" robot. Immediately, WALL-E is smitten with affection for her. What happens from there eventually catapults WALL-E off the Earth and into space to discover what happened to humanity: now a race of morbidly obese, perpetually lazy blobs of flesh (is this the future of America? I cringe to think that it's possible) that are constantly barraged with advertisements to buy and spend and eat and play. It's like THX-1138 as conceived by Pixar. And I'm gonna kick myself if I don't mention my favorite line of the whole movie: the Captain of the Axiom comes to his senses and declares that "I don't want to survive! I want to live!" I can't remember when so much truth was said with so few words. The human race almost a thousand years in the future not only needs a purpose, it needs a savior... and this squat little droid that looks like a cross between E.T. and Johnny 5 might be it.

That's all I dare say about the plot of WALL-E, 'cuz I went in pretty unawares about the movie's story and everyone else deserves the same pleasure, too.

WALL-E might be the best movie that I've seen so far in 2008. For years I've heard a lot of people complain that the problem with computer animation is that it can't adequately express emotion like live action or even traditional animation. If Pixar hadn't erased those doubts already with recent films like Finding Nemo, then it certainly does with WALL-E. And if WALL-E represents Pixar's fine tradition of continually raising the bar from its previous work, then I cannot begin to imagine what wonder and delight the studio has in store for us over the next few years (Pixar has four or five big movies that they are working on at any moment and at the time of Butt-Numb-A-Thon 9 their slate was filled with projects going all the way to 2012). In fact, I would even say that if WALL-E is any indication, that Pixar might someday soon give us a film that is in every way as believable as any live-action science-fiction epic. Dare I say it? Pixar going back to its Lucasfilm roots to give us Star Wars Episode VII? As doubtful as I am about the upcoming Star Wars: The Clone Wars computer-animated feature, I would gladly buy a ticket for one by Pixar.

I can't say enough how good WALL-E is, folks. You really do owe it to yourself to check it out in theaters. And along with WALL-E you can also enjoy Pixar's new funny short Presto.

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All kinds of DC Comics video goodness hits iTunes!

In the words of Geoff Gentry who first passed along word of this: "Get your debit card ready."

iTunes has just added the DC Comics Collection to its vast video library. You can now purchase and download the first several episodes of Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond and Superman: The Animated Series. It's also got Max Fleischer's animated Superman shorts from the 1940s, the first season of The Adventures of Superman starring George Reeve, the first season of Super Friends and the complete 2008 Aquaman series. Geoff adds that hopefully iTunes will soon add Justice League and I heartily concur.

But in the meantime, if you've never watched "Heart of Ice", the episode that first hurtled Batman: The Animated Series to critical acclaim, you can now enjoy it for two bucks via iTunes. And as soon as they make "Apokolips... Now!" Parts 1 and 2 from Superman: The Animated Series available, I'm gonna be acquiring those, too!

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"The Stolen Earth": First part of DOCTOR WHO season finale one of television's most intense and cataclysmic episodes EVER!

Sometime this past year, the head accountant at the BBC's headquarters in London must have looked at Russell T. Davies' budget request for the episodes of this season's Doctor Who, especially the two-part finale beginning with "The Stolen Earth", then broke out in laughter before incredulously asking Davies "ARE YOU NUTS?!?"

This single episode was probably one-third of the entire season's funding. And there's still the conclusion next week.

But first, a look at "The Stolen Earth", beginning with the standard screencap and select quotes...

"Martha, look at the sky. Just look at the sky!"

"You get back inside Sylvia. They always want the women."

"Do you like my gun?"

"I'm receiving a communication from the Earth-bound ships. They have a message for the human race."

"There's nothing I can do. I'm sorry. We're dead."

"Soon the Crucible will be complete."

"Clom... Clom's gone?! Who’d want Clom?"

"He is coming... the three-fold man... THE DOCTOR IS COMING!"

"My vision is NOT impaired!"

"I came here when I was just a kid. Ninety years old."

"You never give up!"

"Captain Jack Harkness shame on you! Now stand to attention sir!"

"She won't let me. She said they're naughty."

"Mister Smith, make that call!"

"You know nothing of any human. And that will be your downfall."

"WHERE THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN?!?"

"It's like an outer space Facebook!"

"Welcome to my new empire, Doctor."

"Why don't you ask her yourself?"

"It's starting..."

If you're waiting to see it when it airs here in the states on the Sci-Fi Channel in a few weeks, let me assure you that nothing that I could write about "The Stolen Earth" can prepare you for this episode. It starts out hot on the heels of last week's "Turn Left" (reviewed here). The Doctor (David Tennant) and Donna (Catherine Tate) arrive back on Earth on a Saturday, with nothing particularly amiss. But with barely a minute into the episode, the TARDIS is rattled and The Doctor is shocked to discover why: Earth - as in the entire planet beneath them - has vanished.

Cut back to Earth, wherever it is: Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) at Torchwood, Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) in New York City and Sarah-Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) in England all try to summon The Doctor for help. But someone else has arrived: Rose Tyler (Billie Piper), back from the parallel universe and toting the biggest personal firearm in the entire four decades-plus run of Doctor Who. Her return marks the first of many "money shots" for this episode: Rose looking up from the street and gazing with the rest of humanity at the twenty-six planets that now fill almost every point of the sky.

And then, things start to go bad.

Just about every good guy (and gal) from the pantheon of Davies's four-year term as Doctor Who's helmsman - including characters from Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures - is thrown into the thick of a massive attack on Earth by the Daleks. This is the last story that Davies will do before Steven Moffatt takes over, and the man went for broke in every conceivable way and some you wouldn't possibly conceive. This is absolutely the most terrifying that the Daleks have ever been in the entire 45-year history of the show, from their repeated transmission of "EXTERMINATE!" to the humans, to their devastating attack on New York City: depicted with such horror that had this aired a few years earlier the BBC would have been slammed as being "insensitive".

And of course, there is the return of Davros, who has not been seen since 1988's "Remembrance of the Daleks".

This is the character considered by many to be the greatest villain in all of fiction. And it's hard to argue with that, considering that he is the creator of the Daleks, that his single useable hand is stained with the blood of trillions of innocent lives scattered throughout the universe, and that his goal is nothing less than to become God.

This time it's Julian Bleach in the chair, and his performance as Davros is nothing short of magnificent. Bleach's portrayal definitely hearkens back to Michael Wisher, who was the first to play Davros in "Genesis of the Daleks" in 1975, but there is also a bit of Terry Molloy's Davros here (which I've always liked). But after one episode, and I think that Bleach's take on Davros might be fast coming my all-time favorite. The scene where he shows The Doctor just how far he has gone to care for his "children" may go down as one of the all-time most iconic moments of Doctor Who: if that didn't send little kiddies scurrying behind the sofa, nothing would.

A lot of stuff that's been hinted at and mentioned during this past season (and a bit before) is addressed here, like the Shadow Proclamation and the mystery of the bees, and we finally get to see what the Medusa Cascade is. Dalek Caan, who was last seen in "Evolution of the Daleks", is also back... in body if not in mind. Wilfred and Sylvia also reappear, and I for one can not get enough of Bernard Cribbins as Wilfred! This guy is one of the most endearingly fun things about Doctor Who lately, and he and Jacqueline King's Sylvia have some great scenes... including one that is already a classic involving a Dalek. Harriet Jones (again played by Penelope Wilton) returns, and it might be a good idea to rewatch "The Christmas Invasion" if you can because refreshing yourself on the last time we saw Jones will certainly lend toward appreciation for her in "The Stolen Earth".

Yes, it is a lot to shoehorn into a single episode of any television series. But nothing in "The Stolen Earth" comes across as just "tacked-on" or mere cameo. Everyone has an important part to play in the story. This could have turned into a very clumsy story, and instead it's one of the most elegant dances that I've seen attempted on a story of this magnitude.

Then there is the ending.

The next few days might be the most maddening wait in the history of Doctor Who. "The Stolen Earth" ends on a cliffhanger of... heck forget Lost proportions, we're now talking territory rarely seen since The Empire Strikes Back. I actually screamed twice in those last few minutes of watching "The Stolen Earth"... and I'm not gonna dare spill the beans to anyone who hasn't watched it yet but if you have, you know what I'm talking about.

I swear, the past few months have given us better television than we possibly deserve. First there was the entire fourth season of Lost. Then there's all the amazing things I've been hearing about Battlestar Galactica. Now this. It's almost enough to make you believe that after sixty-some years, the medium has finally begun to grow up. Little wonder that The Wall Street Journal just sang the praises of Doctor Who and compared the show to its two American colleagues.

"The Stolen Earth" gets the full Five Sonic Screwdrivers!

Next week: if you thought that a lot transpired in 45 minutes with "The Stolen Earth", what could possibly happen with sixty-five full minutes of Doctor Who?! It's The Doctor and his faithful friends versus Davros and millions of Daleks for the fate of reality itself. "Journey's End" begins this Saturday on BBC One in Great Britain, on Sci-Fi Channel in the States in a few weeks, and anywhere you want it on the Internet in between! :-)

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Don S. Davis has entered the White Lodge

Wondering how many people will get the reference. If you did, buy yourself a cherry pie...

Ain't It Cool News is passing along the sad word that Don S. Davis, who had a real-life military career before turning to acting and becoming one of the best-known character actors of the past twenty years, has passed away at the age of 65.

A lot of folks will remember Davis as Dana Scully's father on The X-Files. About the same time in the Nineties, Davis played Major General George Hammond on Stargate SG-1, a role he would have for the duration of the show. His repertoire included mostly "authority" types like principals and judges and doctors, although he could also be spotted in other roles... like the driver of the car that Pinball's body crashes onto in the movie Con Air.

I will most remember Davis, however, for the role that may have started it all in terms of his success: United States Air Force Major Garland Briggs on the ABC television series Twin Peaks. And had that show gone into a third season, I've no doubt that we would have really seen Davis shine. It was obvious throughout Season 2 that there was some very heavy stuff being set up for Briggs, and that this most kind and honorable man was being revealed as a Gandalf-type "elder soldier" in the spiritual warfare against the Black Lodge. That's kind of the direction I thought the show was going into, anyway. Too bad we'll never know for sure. But regardless of what happened to the show, Davis's moments on Twin Peaks were amazing. The scene with son Bobby in the first episode of Season 2, where he shares his dream... okay, 'nuff said. Even as a high school student, I thought that was an especially powerful scene.

Very sad to see him go. We don't seem blessed with many actors of his caliber anymore.

EDIT 2:10 p.m. July 2nd 2008: Here is Major Briggs's "vision speech" to son Bobby from Twin Peaks second season premiere...

"A vision, I had in my sleep last night. As distinguished from a dream, which is a mere sorting and cataloging of the days events by the subconscious; a vision fresh and clear as a mountain stream, the mind revealing itself to itself. In my vision I was on the veranda of vast estate, a palazzo of some fantastic proportion. There seemed to emanate from it, a light from within this gleaming, radiant marble. I had known this place. I had, in fact, been born and raised there and this was my first return, a reunion with the deepest well-springs of my being. As I wondered about I noticed happily that the house has been immaculately maintained and there had been added to it a number of additional rooms, but in a way that blended so seamlessly with its original construction that one would not detect any difference. Returning to the house's grand foyer, there came a knock on the door. I opened it, and my son was standing there. He was happy and carefree, clearly living a life of deep harmony and joy. We embraced, a warm and loving embrace, nothing withheld. We we're, in this moment, one. My vision ended, and I awoke with an overwhelming feeling of optimism and confidence in you, and your future. That was my vision Bobby, it was you."

That was one of the most powerfully delivered monologues in television history. I think even Dana Ashbrook, who played Bobby, was floored by it. And only Don S. Davis could have done it with such power and gentleness.

Here is the scene itself...

Very incredible stuff. And once again I am regretting that Twin Peaks never made it past its second season. But on the other hand it definitely paved the way for Lost and Battlestar Galactica. Those would never have had a chance at success had Twin Peaks not first shown the way.

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