Not all films make it to Las Vegas theaters. So, I have to supplement my theater-going with at-home viewing. I decided to go with an IFC Films marathon. IFC Films has a fabulous lineup.

First up, THE RED RIDING TRILOGY. This fascinating series of films, which were made for British television’s Channel 4, begins with RED RIDING: 1974 and stars Andrew Garfield, soon to be lionized as our new Spider-Man in the reboot currently filming. Garfield had a sensational year with his outstanding co-starring roles in THE SOCIAL NETWORK and NEVER LET ME GO.

In RED RIDING: 1974 Garfield plays the central role as young newspaper crime reporter Eddie Dunford. Eddie works for the Yorkshire Post and he wants to investigate the murders of little girls. His editor and fellow reporters are all jaded, disinterested pension-holders. And the police seem flummoxed and then annoyed by Eddie’s constant prodding. Eddie keeps getting warned, beaten up, and having sex. The director, Julian Jarrold, frames the story in harsh, bitter cold terrain and unfriendly lighting. 1974 was an ugly year.

THE RED RIDING TRILOGY is based on books written by David Peace, who drew on England’s most famous recent crimes to frame his characters. “1974″ uses the 1963-1965 murders of five children, which were known as the “Moors Murders”.

The second film, RED RIDING: 1980 has the same police detectives investigating the murder of thirteen women. The serial killer was known as The Yorkshire Ripper. I read Wicked Beyond Belief: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper by Michael Bilton after trekking through East Africa with a UK group. One of the women worked in the fingerprint department of the West Yorkshire Metropolitan Police and told me something that has never been revealed about how they finally targeted Peter William Sutcliffe – the Yorkshire Ripper. “1980″ stars Paddy Considine as Peter Hunter, an inspector from Manchester. He’s been sent to find the Yorkshire Ripper and look into unsettling rumors about corruption in the police department. The director, James Marsh, builds up a lot of tension between the tough, dirty detectives and Hunter.

RED RIDING: 1983 focuses on Stefan Kiszko, a young man who was railroaded by police into confessing to killing a little girl. He served sixteen years for the murder. David Morrissey plays Maurice Jobson and “1983″ centers on him. Directed by Anand Tucker, another child goes missing and is similar to past murders of girls. Mark Addy plays a neighborhood slob lawyer, John Piggott, who is approached to appeal the wrongly convicted man. He becomes entangled with the police, who forced the confession, hiding their own crimes.

Several characters are featured in all three films. Beautifully integrated, all the pieces fit together. The West Yorkshire police are in bed with a ruthless real-estate developer, John Dawson (Sean Bean), who has his own psychopathic predilections. The brutality of the police interrogations is hard to watch. A highly enjoyable film series and I want more.

What about Fred and Rose West?

VALHALLA RISING. In a word, since One-Eye doesn’t speak, VALHALLA RISING is amazing. Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn, who directed and co-wrote (with Brock Norman Brock) 2008′s BRONSON (starring the now highly-desired Tom Hardy from 2010′s INCEPTION), creates a mesmerizing feat – reimagining the savage year of 1000 AD. VALHALLA RISING is hypnotic and dazzling in its commitment to harsh reality and unwavering violence. One-Eye (Mads Mikkelsen) is captured by a Norse chieftain. After viciously killing opponents in matches set up for the chieftain’s amusement – as well as killing all the spectators including the chief – One-Eye escapes followed by a boy slave, Are. One-Eye, in my opinion, is not mute but prefers not to speak. Are does the talking for him.

They board a Viking vessel, but the ship is soon crippled by fog. The fog takes them into an unknown land, the New World. What a stunning piece of filmmaking. Refn is a masterful director with a vision like none other. There are no compromises in VALHALLA RISING. The strange, boldness of the film is intoxicating. I’m now ordering Rehn’s PUSHER series on NetFlix!

CARLOS. You have probably heard of this three-film epic rendering of the life of the infamous terrorist, Carlos. French director Olivier Assayas brilliantly exposes the complicated life of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, (Carlos “the Jackal” – this moniker is never used in the films). I watched the full five and a half hours (3 DVDs) during a 3-day marathon. Edgar Ramirez stars as Carlos and there is gratuitous, but appreciated, full frontal nudity by Ramirez (before Carlos goes fat during a forced expulsion from terrorist activity). Venezuelan Carlos – after Reich SS leaders – was the most hunted criminal in the world. Now it’s you-know-who.

Yet Carlos, who founded a worldwide terrorist organization and was a wanted man, traveled all over the Africa and the Middle East with impunity! CARLOS PART 1 begins with his idealist origins and values. As envisioned by Ramirez and Assayas, Carlos is charismatic and, yes, I know the implications, sympathetic.

Ramirez is fantastic (pictured).

Carlos is not interested in money, possessions, or opposition to his dedication to armed revolution. He is highly intelligent, educated, a savvy political player, and a ruthless killer.

Carlos international notoriety begins with a daring, bloody raid on the 1975 OPEC meeting. Carlos main ideological thrust was the Palestinian/anti-Zionism cause and justice and equality for the people. We are told in the beginning of each film that some events depicted must be viewed as fiction – I assume Sanchez, now serving life in a French prison, refused to participate in the film. Regardless, the film is dazzling in its details. Carlos was protected and used by several countries to do their dirty work, until he was, by degrees, deemed too difficult to manage. He was eventually refused safe haven. His means of terrorism and collapse of his organization made him a troublesome burden. He got expensive to keep. Carlos’s wife was his ally and political slave. After a botched attack, his wife spent a few years in prison. Carlos’s very explicit sex life is richly shown. Finally, the Cold War ended and Carlos was betrayed.

My husband knows Billy Waugh – a legend in Special Forces – who wrote (with Tim Keown), Hunting the Jackal: A Special Forces and CIA Ground Soldier’s Fifty Year Career Hunting America’s Enemies. This fascinating book is a must read that explains the hunt for The Jackal – with photos taken by Waugh of Carlos lounging in the Sudan before his arrest.

On August 1, 1935 Alfred Hitchcock’s masterwork, THE 39 STEPS, hit the movie screens. An enormous international success, this fast-paced thriller with chases, murders, laughs, mysterious spies and romance placed Hitchcock as England’s top film director, and as the worldwide master of cinema suspense.

Most film thrillers up until THE 39 STEPS were stage-bound, usually set in only one or two rooms, and highly dependent on dialog. That’s because most of these films were based on stage plays. Hitchcock used the film medium and the soundtrack to full tilt here. THE 39 STEPS is rich in quick cutting, carefully crafted point of view shots, location photography and effects work that often make the film’s hero, Richard Hannay, played by the great Robert Donat, seem so real.

The plot, very quickly, finds Hannay, an ordinary traveler, falsely accused of murdering a stranger, a beautiful woman he invited to his London apartment. Before she died, she told Hannay she was a spy, pursuing foreign agents bent on endangering England. Now both the spies and the police are pursuing Hannay!

In future films like SABOTEUR and NORTH BY NORTHWEST, Hitchcock would return to this theme of the double chase, and set his ‘wrong man’ theme in elaborate places like The Statue of Liberty and Mount Rushmore. Twice, other directors remade this still popular film, first in 1959 with Kenneth More, and again in 1979 with Robert Powell. Screenwriter (CHINATOWN) Director (PERSONAL BEST) Robert Towne is set to direct a third remake, due out in 2011. So, how can this story of speed and action work as a stage play? Well, it works amazingly well, and it keeps audiences gasping and laughing non-stop.

The play is an almost word-for-word, chase-for-chase recreation of the 1935 film. You’ll love how four stage-bound actors pull off, with minimal props, a mad pursuit inside, and on top of a speeding train, or how Hannay, and his unwilling accomplice, Pamela, duck under a waterfall and cross a stream. Hitchcock always seasoned his films with eccentric supporting characters, harmless oddballs on the brink of total madness, such as the two cricket fanatics in THE LADY VANISHES, or the bird expert in THE BIRDS. In all of Hitchcock’s films, from his first suspense thriller, THE LODGER in 1926, to his last film, 1976′s FAMILY PLOT, supporting characters who are paired together usually move in exact unison. You see this with both detectives and bad guys. It’s part of Hitchcock’s design. The cast of THE 39 STEPS picked up on this and has a field day.

Sean Mahon does a great Richard Hanney, never trying to channel Robert Donat, but making it his own creation. Jill Paice is the three female leads, including the love interest Pamela, originally played by Madeleine Carroll, whom Paice resembles very closely. Arnie Burton and Jeffrey Kuhn take on every other role in the film, and all the eccentric qualities of these roles (such as Mr. Memory, or the nervous ticks of the crofter who helps and double crosses Hannay, and even the folksy Scottish couple who run the inn where Hannay hides.) Just watch the glorious field day they have. I wish I could have been in the room when these four talented people (with their gifted director, Maria Aitken) watched the film and picked up the quirks Hitchcock placed there 70 years ago.

The stage version of The 39 Steps first opened in England’s West Yorkshire Playhouse in 2005 and made its Broadway debut in January 2008. As of September 2009, this two-time Tony Award play is the only non-musical Broadway play enjoying an open-ended run.

Hey Kids! The Mad Doctor of Blood Island invites you to join him in taking the oath of Green Blood!

Doesn’t that tagline make you want to watch THE MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND? This wild and fun horror classic comes to us from The Philippines. Now, the Philippines isn’t just Ferdinand Marcos or some hard to reach place. It’s the proud home of a unique film industry with stars like Weng Weng (a 2 foot 9 ass kickin’ super spy), exciting action packed horror films, and their own Batman movies (complete with a rock and rollin’ Penguin!) The Philippines has a film production industry that began in 1919, where Filipino film-makers put great care into everything they shoot and release.

This is evident in the Soundtrack CD for THE MAD DOCTOR OF BLOOD ISLAND, one of that country’s wildest horror classics. Produced by Elysee Productions and Tim Ferrante, the MAD DOC CD presents 34 tracks of gripping musical pieces from this 1968 film about the wild, insane Dr. Lorca and his legion of zombies. While “grindhouse” horror film-makers in the states were content with re-using cheap library music, MAD DOC’s directors Gerardo De Leon and Eddie Romero employed the FAMAS award- winning musician Tito Arevalo to give the film an individual score. (FAMAS, or the Filipino Academy of Movie Arts and Sciences is the Filipino equal to the Oscar) With its full orchestral sound, eerie choral accompaniments, and pounding, almost jungle rhythms, Arevalo’s dramatic score is reminiscent of Japan’s music master Akira Ifukube who, like Arevalo, gave each of the Toho sci-fi films it’s own score. The CD has the primary score, and some fun Easter eggs. In the informative liner notes included in the CD, we learn that the first twenty tracks make up what is believed to be the primary score. Tracks 21, 22 and 23 are some different takes, cue variants and some studio chatter and warming up of instruments. The liner notes also tell of the wild promotional gimmicks the film’s American distributor, Hemisphere, dreamed up under the guiding hand of Samuel M. Sherman. (These promotion gimmicks, long gone in the Multiplex days, are as fun as the gimmicks indie theatre owners once used, such as the “Cute Witch Beauty Contest” for BLACK SUNDAY, or dressing the theatre staff as serial killers for THE THRILL KILLERS.)

So, it’s a CD full of rich bold music that brings you to Dr. Lorca’s zombie island. Start listenin’!

Ever since I was a child, I’ve wanted to go to Mother’s, the fictional jazz club in Blake Edwards’ late 50′s tv series, PETER GUNN. Situated off a dark alley and packed to the gills with cigarette smoking, tuxedoed patrons, Mother’s seemed like the ultimate in tawdry, romantic glamour. The music played by the house combo, a mix of smart-ass brass and loungey Mancini melodies with a syncopated twist, didn’t hurt either. So when I read that saxophonist Ted Nash, the son of trombonist Dick Nash (one of the dominant voices in Mancini film scores from the 50′s through the 80′s), was leading a quartet at New York’s Jazz Standard to celebrate the release of a new CD entitled “The Mancini Project”, I rushed right down there. The only thing missing was a smoke-filled room and Hershel Bernardi’s Lt. Jacobi (a continuing character on the tv series).

As the lights went down, Ted Nash asked how many people in the audience had seen THE NIGHT VISITOR. No one raised their hands, including, I’m ashamed to say, your reviewer. (THE NIGHT VISITOR is a psycho thriller from 1970 starring Max Von Sydow and directed by Laslo Benedek.) Mancini’s main title music is a twisty minor-key melody with a middle-eastern feel. It sounds a little like “Barbara’s Theme” by Johnny Mandel from I WANT TO LIVE, but more unsettling. The music started with a repetitive pizzicato bass figure against rumbling cymbals, and then Ted Nash began to play this deep yet supple tenor, keening upward into a whispering cry, a sound so beautiful that tears came to my eyes.

While Ted Nash’s playing is beautiful on its own, through the medium of these compulsively listenable compositions (many of which haven’t been heard in public since the films were released), it’s impossible not to be moved. For me, it’s deeply satisfying to hear this music within the framework of a jazz quartet. The specificity of the film cues are preserved so that you can almost see the original images flicker across your mind’s eye, while expanding the context of the music exponentially.

Recently, I found a cache of Henry Mancini Living Stereo LPs at a Salvation Army, including “Peter Gunn” which contains “Dreamsville”, a moody wee small hours ballad with a poignant touch and “Mr. Lucky Goes Latin” which has “Lujon”, an exotic tune using the arabic scale which is one of the most perfect melodies ever written for a saxophone. I’ve been playing these tunes, gorgeously inventive and impossible to forget, for the past few months, and hearing them live, enhanced by Ted Nash’s subtle improvisations, was enthralling. (They also comprise two of the best performances on the CD.)

Between the sets, Mr. Nash talked about his first encounter with Henry Mancini. “I was sixteen and practicing at home on my sax when the phone rang. It was my dad, who needed his bass horn for a recording session. So I got into my beat-up VW bug and drove to LA. When I got there, these guys in grey suits stopped me, and asked all these questions. Finally, they went into a conference, and the tallest one said, ‘It’s ok. The kid can go in.’ So I went into the studio even through the red light was on. After all, they told me to go in. There was Henry Mancini waving his arms above his head for the downbeat, his face twisting into a cross between a grimace and a grin when he saw me. I tried to run out, but first my dad grabbed his horn.”

Ted Nash changed a mouthpiece and put his sax back on its stand, grinning a little sheepishly. “This is a very personal project for me,” he said. “Not just because my father, and uncle, also named Ted Nash, played many of the original solo parts on these compositions. But this music, both objectively and emotionally, was an important part of my childhood and sense of self.”

One doesn’t really think of Henry Mancini as a jazz composer. Instead, the limpid, effervescent quality of Mancini’s music seems forever linked with Audrey Hepburn raising a martini glass in an ironic toast or Peter Sellers cha-cha-ing the night away in search of the Pink Panther. There’s something cooly nostalgic yet deeply personal about the manner of these themes, in both their melodies and methods (bringing in all kinds of dissonance and strange rhythmic textures) mirroring the equally innovative style of Blake Edwards, the director for whom most of these scores were composed. (PETER GUNN was the first television series to feature a jazz combo, as well as the first to have an original score written specifically for each episode.)

While not improvisational, there is a strong jazz feeling in Mancini’s music, of swing and lyrical sang-froid, not to mention spontaneity and rhythmic complexity. I think Mancini listened long and hard to Duke Ellington’s “Koko” from 1940, the first jazz composition to be based on a rhythmic motif repeated by the brass and saxes as if the entire orchestra was a drum. (You can hear a similar use of the horns in the middle section of the “Peter Gunn Theme”, with the trumpets and saxes used for punctuation around a riff stated by the piano, bass and drums.) Mancini’s experiments with percussion as counter-melodies (“Theme from Hatari”) or even breaking into and altering the melody (“Experiment In Terror”) opened the door to such work as John Barry’s “007″ and Lalo Schifrin’s “Theme from Mission Impossible”, not to mention the spaghetti western themes of Ennio Morricone.

Mancini came out of big band jazz – he was an arranger for the Glenn Miller Orchestra under Tex Beneke in the late 40′s – and employed many of the best west coast players: trumpeters Conte and Pete Condoli, drummers Larry Bunker and Shelley Manne, and on at least one occasion, the legendary Art Pepper. These players had such an individual sound, they imparted a very personal aspect to Mancini’s work, one that identified timbre and articulation with melody and emotion. There’s a particularly lovely passage on the aforementioned “Dreamsville”, where over the echoey vibes of Larry Bunker, Ted Nash’s uncle Ted creates this glissando of sliding saxophone lyricism and crystalline tone. (The younger Ted Nash recalled hearing this passage after a hiatus of many years as the impetus to recording an album’s worth of Mancini.)

In Mr. Nash’s improvisations, he remains true not only to Mancini’s melodic statements, but also in his paraphrases and passing notes, manages to create sound pictures of the films the original themes were composed for. In “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, for example, which is performed with only bass and drums (here Rufus Reid, one of the best bass players of his generation, really comes into his own), there is only a basic statement of the theme before Mr. Nash engages in pure invention. Still, the loping rhythm and melody fragments easily form an image of Holly Golightly wandering about midtown Fifth Avenue at dawn.

Other selections present Mancini’s music in a manner that’s more straightforward. On “Something for Nash” from Blake Edward’s BLIND DATE (1981), a composition that was originally a feature for Dick Nash’s romantic burr of a trombone, Ted Nash plays the melody on alto flute, simply and unadorned. It’s both a tribute to his father and the resurrection of a work that still speaks to us over the years.

There are many pleasures to be found on this CD. Especially, there’s luscious ballad statements of Mancini’s loveliest melodies, such as “Soldier in the Rain”, lithe, pungent and entrancing (it’s a tune that should be a standard but isn’t), and an extended version of “Two For the Road”, shifting through many moods and tempos. According to the liner notes, “Two For the Road” was Mancini’s favorite composition, which he dedicated to his wife. In Ted Nash’s quiet yet deeply penetrating tone, one can discern a delicate sense of romantic abandon.

My favorite selection is “Experiment in Terror”, from the Blake Edwards film of the same name, a mysterioso theme with stabbing, spooky sounds that segues into a heartbreakingly lovely melody, forming an extraordinary effusion of feeling. Ted Nash has combined the Mancini composition with the “Invocation” from John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”, creating a muscular and evocative music of great passion and longing. (When I asked Ted Nash about the Coltrane influence, he said it was inherent in Mancini’s music.)

During his piano solo on “Experiment in Terror” at the Jazz Standard, Matt Kimbrough unleashed a flurry of percussive, minor key notes that ended with a sudden romantic coda, his hands on the keyboard in unison forming a kind of sound Horowitz might have used for Chopin at Carnegie Hall. Matt Wilson can be a volcanic drummer when he chooses, but the sounds he created during this number were always complimentary and innately musical. (Throughout the set, he leaned over the drum kit listening to the rest of the band with a cherubic smile on his face.)

The Mancini Project, while being exploratory, doesn’t ever lose the thread of these fabulous compositions, making for an exciting and satisfying listen. Watching the band at the Jazz Standard, I couldn’t help but imagine Henry Mancini sitting behind me, with his face suffused with an all-encompassing grin. Highly Recommended.

The Summer of 1981- RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, the collaborative effort of Hollywood’s Hottest Film-makers – Director Steven Spielberg and Producer George Lucas – wows the world with cliffhanger perils and gripping, exciting death-defying adventures. Indiana Jones, the film’s pure-hearted, fearless hero becomes a cinema icon, mostly thanks to a perfecto performance by hunky Harrison Ford.

Many American boys wished they could be the whip-cracking Dr. Jones, but there were a handful of boys who wanted to be Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford. Eleven-year-old Eric Zala of Gulfport, Mississippi loved the film so much, he got his young friends together to produce a feature length shot-for-shot remake of the Spielberg smash-hit. They used whatever funds were available to this handful of pre-teens (Weekly allowances, etc.) to bankroll this film shot on consumer video equipment. (This was over a decade before digital video came out, so we are talking about those big old cameras that would shoot on VHS.)

Home Video was just beginning to enter America’s living rooms at this time, and it would take nearly a decade for Paramount to finally release RAIDERS to home video. How were Zala and gang going to copy a film that they could only rarely see? “We got everything Raiders that we could get our hands on – magazines, photos, the published screenplay (Zala and the boys made sure RAIDERS screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan got proper screen credit), storybooks, making of publications, action figures, and an illicit recording of the soundtrack from smuggling a tape recorder into movie theatres showing RAIDERS. With the amassed material, and by memory of watching RAIDERS in the theatre, we cobbled together a composite reconstruction of the film, shot-by-shot. I hand-drew 602 individual detailed storyboards that became our blueprint.”

Next came the special effects and the props. The most famous is the more than man-size rolling boulder out to crush a running Indiana Jones (Sidenote: In 1982, European filmmakers influenced by Spielberg had a rolling boulder chase the stars of their sexy, but not very faithful Biblical adventure, ADAM AND EVE VS. THE CANNIBALS.)

For their boulder, Eric and his buddies first made a giant bamboo cardboard and duct tape monster that they could not get out of co-producer and star Chris Strompolos’ bedroom. Later attempts at the ball included a chicken wire prop that blew away in a hurricane and an experiment with a weather balloon.

“Fiberglass was our last boulder.” Eric remembers. “We dug a three foot hole in the backyard, used a plump line, measured and dug it with a hand tool until we had a perfect hemisphere. We did this twice, joined the two half circles together, and voila, at last we had our boulder!”

Another impressive moment in the film is their reproduction of the scene where Indy rides the jackal statue out of the sealed up tomb. “The giant jackal statute was made from an old hot water heater, from the same basement room that we converted into the set for the Well of Souls. Its upraised arms were two black logs, suspended from the ceiling by black cords. Finally, the jackal head was constructed from an overturned flower-pot. I nailed on the eyes, ears and open jaws, lined with rows of little nails. I fit cut pieces of white Styrofoam onto each nail, to complete the teeth, 48 in all.”

These were some of the complications about building a set for a RAIDERS remake. What about location shooting? Zala had a few of those heart-stopping moments that come to any film crew shooting without a permit the moment a police car pulls up. “We only had a few run-ins with local police, surprisingly. For locations such as the Cairo Street Fight Scene, we chose to shoot guerilla-style in the back alleys of the Gulfport, Mississippi business district on a Sunday, when all businesses are closed and the place is like a ghost town. That did nearly back-fire one time, when the owner of a diner wandered into the alley and discovered all these kids setting up Arab merchant stands and a wheelbarrow full of hay… somehow, he got it in his mind that we were shooting a porno film, and promptly called the authorities. I still remember sitting on the curb with Chris, waiting for Gulfport’s Finest to arrive and take us away. Then, as we sat there, the owner of the business on the other side of the alley came out his back door, and asked what we were doing. As we explained, we got a bright idea: We asked him if we could have his permission to shoot the scene in his half of the alley. He said sure. So by the time the Gulfport police arrived, we had moved everything over to that side of the alley, and we could legitimately claim to have permission to be there. The shoot was saved.”

Even on a big budget film starring adult actors, a kissing scene can bring about some tension. But what if your smooching actor is a teen experiencing his first ever kiss. One can imagine what went through Chris Strompolos’ (as Indy) head when he had to rescue and kiss his leading lady. “While I don’t recall Chris letting on at the time, I know now he was nervous as hell. He was later to name this as the scariest scene to shoot– not dragging underneath a moving truck, nor riding a giant jackal statue through a breakaway wall. Kissing a girl! For the first time! In front of a crew, videotaping it all!” recalls Eric. “Still, it was one of the first scenes with our new actress playing Marion (Angela Rodriguez), which was something that Chris asked for. To make our actors more comfortable, I insisted on a “closed set”. Meaning I kicked my little brother Kurt out of the room. As Harrison did in the scene, Chris had to play the scene shirtless, which further heightened anxiety at that ultra-self-conscious age. Angela was about three years older, and more confident it seemed. After a few set-ups, the time for the kissing shot had come. No rehearsals, we went into it. The tension helped their energy, I think, building up to the release of the actual kiss. They kept the lip-lock after I called cut. So I’d call it a success, on more than one level.”

After seven years of on and off production, Zala’s RAIDERS was completed. (At about the time he and his friends were entering college.) It got some local showings, but one thread leads to another and finally, the big man himself, Steven Spielberg, found out about the remake, and was able to catch up to a copy of the film.

Spielberg was pleased with the film, even taking the opportunity to meet up with Eric Zala and chat film talk. To date it is not known if Spielberg’s cast (Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, etc.) have seen it. “We hear through a friend who knew Alfred Molina (a Spielberg cast member) that he really wanted to see it.”

I told Eric Zala his film actually has some improvements over the Spielberg original. At times, it seemed more focused on characters than setting (Settings cost money, and they need to be plastered on the screen) I asked Eric if he felt his film has improvements over Spielberg‘s.

“Oh geez, I couldn’t say. I can’t be objective about my own work. And I’ve admired the original RAIDERS from such a young age that in all likelihood I can’t be objective about that film either. As an adult now, I’m able to perceive flaws in films that I absolutely love — but not the original RAIDERS. My awe at its craftsmanship is too hard-wired.”

Spielberg often copies shots from other directors (we all do!) as he did in RAIDERS (For example, Indy’s first on-camera appearance is identical to the first shot of Toshiro Mifune in Akira Kurosawa’s YOJIMBO. Indiana Jones’ youthful sidekick, Short Round, in the sequel INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM (1984) shares the same name as a young boy in Samuel Fuller’s THE STEEL HELMET (1951). I asked Eric if doing a RAIDERS remake make him want to seek out the films that influenced Spielberg?

“Definitely. We were invited to screen our RAIDERS at the George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, in Rochester, New York. They kindly offered to allow us private screenings of any film in their considerable collection. We chose THE SECRET OF THE INCAS (A 1954 action thriller starring Charlton Heston), which more than any other single film, Spielberg and Lucas drew upon for inspiration, to the point of screening it for the RAIDERS crew during pre-production. It’s completely out of print, not available on DVD, VHS or laserdisc, impossible to find. So we could scarcely contain our excitement when we were told that they had a 16mm print. While it lacks the kinetic action of RAIDERS, the template for Indiana Jones and the Peruvian sequence is clearly there. It’s fascinating seeing the origins of things.”

As for the future of Zala’s film career. “We never did shoot the Airplane Fight Scene in Raiders, so maybe we’ll have to get together again and finally do this right. No, seriously, I’ve given up trying to book-end this. We continue to receive invitations to screen by independent cinema owners and film festival programmers who succeed in tracking us down (We don’t advertise). So I expect we’ll have the good fortune to continue our travels across the country with our little film under our arm, and meet more amazing people. (A continually updated list of confirmed screenings can be found at an Indiana Jones fan-site: http://www.theraider.net/films/raiders_adaptation/screenings.php “The interest level will probably reach its crescendo with the release of a major-budgeted Scott Rudin movie about our childhood remaking RAIDERS.”

Zala left his corporate job to form an independent film production company based in Mississippi, called (appropriately enough) “Rolling Boulder Films”. “Chris and I have been working full-time on new film projects. Our first one out of the gate is an original script, a southern gothic action-adventure, WHAT THE RIVER TAKES. We plan to shoot it in our home state of Mississippi, reprising our roles on RAIDERS: Chris producing, myself directing. We’ve just begun pitching it around Los Angeles, and so far, the response has been great. So it’s a very interesting time.”

Airs on the American Experience, PBS, Monday, February 19, Tuesday, February 20, and Wednesday, February 21.

This moody and evocative program examines the life and times of the Great Emancipator and his wife, the first (so named) “First Lady” of the land. Through diary entries, old photographs, period objects, portraits, and historians’ musings, the personalities, difficulties, great griefs and triumphs of the couple are brought to life. Although the producers have not used actors to reconstruct historical scenes, they often rely on the motion of things to keep the film alive. Horses hooves clip through the frame and stop suddenly, as the narrator speaks of a dangerous carriage ride. Rain falls heavily onto hundreds of umbrellas (lots of weather in this picture) as Lincoln bids farewell to the citizens of Springfield. The wheels of a train roll forward on the tracks as Lincoln makes his triumphant journey to Washington, and his sad journey home. When the narrator recalls Mary’s one confidant in Washington, the seamstress and former slave Elizabeth Keckly, the camera focuses on hands patiently stitching, while a woman hums soothingly in the background.

The first two parts of the program (to be shown on President’s Day), tell of the early lives of the two–she a charming southern belle, and he, a poor, illiterate farmer’s son. To me, this was the least interesting part of the series, because it involved a lot of historians making educated guesses about the psychological make-up and childhood scars of its characters. However, I did learn of the extreme ambivalence (on Lincoln’s part) with which their partnership began, and also that lawyers in Illinois used to sleep five to a bed!

The second and third sections of the film, though, were thoroughly engrossing. Here Lincoln’s presidency–the Civil War–is explored. In spite of the controversy that surrounded his choices, his lack of experience, his own depression and self-doubts, Lincoln was transformed by the War, from an untried leader who was just trying to patch up a divided country, to a commander in chief, who ultimately felt that the War was God’s just retribution upon the citizen’s–both Southern and Northern–for having allowed slavery to continue for 250 years. Mary, whose grief and isolation grew, as her husband became more and more the country’s leader, and less and less her companion and caretaker, found what little solace she could in mediums and furious shopping.

Although this program focuses on the twin biographies of the Lincolns’, Lincoln’s key position in the most troubled time in this country’s existence (600,000 dead) means that many events and people from the era are brought to life. Frederick Douglas, General George McClelland, the bloody battles, the political campaigns, the plight of freed African-Americans, and many, many more all enrich the story.

The production has an elegant and somber look, due to the cinematography of James Callanan, enhanced by the mostly melancholy music by Michael Bacon. In addition, PBS has terrific supplemental material on its Web site (www.pbs.org). Do a search for “Abraham and Mary Lincoln” and you will encounter transcripts for all episodes, interviews with Grubin and Callanan, lists of sources, documents about slavery and the place of women in the 1860s, essays about the decisive battles, and a teacher’s guide.

Credits:
Produced and co-written (with Geoff Ward) by David Grubin Cinematography by James Callanan
Music by Michael Bacon
Edited by Seth Bomse.

Cast:
Narrated by David McCullogh.
Voice of Lincoln: David Morse.
Voice of Mary: Holly Hunter.

(Showtime)

Thank goodness HBO’s “Sex and the City” is over! It indeed paved the highway for female characters liberally indulging in sex without guilt, but now comes its worthy successor racing around the track: Showtime’s “The L Word.” While “Sex” was primarily about clothes and shoes and then sex, “The L Word” celebrates lesbian sex first and foremost. There are no clotheshorses in the cast. Everyone takes their clothes off.

“The L Word” is about gay love in Los Angeles. Nothing else. Be prepared. This is raunchy material expertly produced and starring famous actresses hungry for each other. It might well be about lesbians, but it is certainly about lust.

Bette Porter (Jennifer Beals) is a sophisticated art curator of a small Los Angeles museum. Bette and her partner of seven years, Tina Kennard (Laurel Holloman), want to have a child together. They are looking for a sperm donor. Their close knit group of friends include Shane McCutcheon (Katherine Moennig) who, everyone grudgingly admits, is an ambivalent sex magnet; Dana Fairbanks (Erin Daniels) is a professional tennis player “in the closet” and looking for love; bisexual journalist Alice Pieszecki (Leisha Hailey) is also a failure at relationships; and Bette’s half-sister Kit Porter (Pam Grier), a recovering alcoholic and musician. Jenny Schecter (Mia Kirshner) is a young writer who comes to Los Angeles to live with her boyfriend Tim Haspel (Eric Mabius) who happens to live next door to Bette and Tina.

Who knew there were so many lesbians in Los Angeles?

The two-hour pilot introduces all these characters as they have sex and then talk about it. Jenny becomes infatuated with the lesbian lifestyle especially when she meets the devastatingly sexy café owner Marina (Karina Lombard). Marina goes for Jenny like a wolf hunting prey. Jenny is like a deer caught in the headlights of overpowering sexual magnetism. She cannot resist. Karina Lombard, who made such a sensual debut in “Wide Sargasso Sea,” is breathtaking here. She looks at Jenny with such absolute desire and passion that you wonder why directors have not exploited her raw, seductive appeal. What has she been doing?

The people behind “The L Word” know something about casting. Unlikely as she may be as a sex symbol, Katherine Moennig as Shane McCutcheon is a real standout among an interesting cast. You might want to be seduced by Marina, but Shane is the one you will want to hang out with. Shane has a peculiar androgynous attraction that is compelling. McCutcheon will likely be “The L Word’s” breakout star and her appeal will confound everybody.

The pilot guest stars Melissa Etheridge’s new wife, Tammy Lynn Michaels, as a spurned ex-lover of Shane’s. The pilot starts off with an all too familiar storyline that reminded me of the “Queer As Folks” lesbian couple having a baby together. And my least favorite character is Bette’s “half-sister” Kit. She really is the “half sister” of that horrible, foulmouthed character on “Queer As Folks” played by Sharon Gless. Bette and Kit share a proud black father played by Ossie Davis (in the February 15th episode titled “Lawfully”). Bette’s father Mel finds the idea of her child with Tina being his grandchild ridiculous. He’s appalled by the notion.

The January 25th episode, “Let’s Do It,” guest stars the fascinating Guinevere Turner (we haven’t forgotten her smart-assed role in “American Psycho,” which she also co-wrote). Once again, her presence as a conniving, selfish bitch is delicious.

The special guest stars are imaginatively cast: Holland Taylor as a wealthy art patron who was gay for a year back in the 60s (“Longing” airing February 1st) and Anne Archer as Alice’s mother who has a brief sexual encounter with Shane (in the February 8th episode titled “Lies, Lies, Lies”).

For those of us who are fascinated by lesbian sex but do not have the nerve to actually rent porn because we want drama, story, terrific acting, and well-directed and well-lit sex, “The L Word” is now here to satisfy our needs. The camera does not fade to black.

“The L Word” series premiere is scheduled for January 18th at 10:00 PM. Don’t miss it!

(Showtime)

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
Ever since Olivier Martinez threw Diane Lane against a stairway, I’ve been following his career. A former boxer, Martinez was principally known as Mira Sorvino’s gorgeous boyfriend. Sorvino complained to Movieline Magazine that everybody is angry because she isn’t beautiful enough to be living with him. Now he’s in a very public love affair with an Australian pop star. Shunted aside completely when the “Unfaithful” PR juggernaut hit Oscar time (was Lane acting alone?), Martinez has the masculine beauty and depth of personality that makes Ben Affleck’s superstardom a confounding, enduring mystery right alongside “P versus NAP,” “The Hodge Conjecture,” and the “Yang-Mills Existence and Mass Gap.” (If you have an answer to any of these mathematical conundrums, The Clay Mathematics Institute in Paris wants to hear from you. The Institute’s international number is +1 617 868-8277.)

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone was first published in book form in 1950 and the material, thankfully, has not been updated. However, haven’t rich old ladies always had young men as sexual escorts if they wanted them? (Ivana Trump’s new boyfriend is 27 years old). Big money (best acquired through inheritance or divorce) bestows social aristocracy, blind acceptance of foibles, and cheery good will, especially if one is generous. In Williams’ story, rich women are preyed upon by degenerate gigolos. It’s shameful to have a paid-for young lover.

I wonder if Williams collected field research on this subject.

When Karen Stone (Helen Mirren), a wealthy, respected Broadway star, loses her adoring, but impotent husband, she decides to settle in Rome. Her stardom doesn’t cross over and her only friend is Contessa (Anne Bancroft), an old woman who pimps out young studs to wealthy widows for a percentage of the bounty. The Contessa’s prized bull is Count Paolo di Leo (Martinez). After an introduction, Karen and Paolo begin a passionate affair. Paolo properly ridicules Karen’s fear that she is too old. Meanwhile, a beautiful, but homeless, young man (Rodrigo Santoro) stalks Karen.

But Paolo is temperamental and inconsiderate. He asks for money to help a destitute friend and stupidly flirts with young women. Karen gets jealous. They have a volatile breakup. You know what happens. It’s creepy, but delicious. Mirren brings a wry, deep understanding of Karen’s sexual needs and her complicated relationship with Paolo. She is fearless, sexy, and bold in this performance. Her clothes come flying off. Wearing her age regally, she lounges around naked. The sexual chemistry between her and Martinez is explosive. And, since Mirren disrobes, Bancroft, no competitive slouch, chews up the scenery every chance she gets. Damn! She wants to be naked and seduced by Paolo! Brancoft leaves no room for subtlety in her characterization as an avarice-seeking parasite. It’s an unfretted, bewigged hoot!
And, because I am a big Martinez fan, I’m looking forward to his scenes with Colin Farrell in the upcoming “S.W.A.T.” Could this be the hot sizzling cinematic coupling of the year, or are we still panting for Jen and Ben’s movie?

Soldier’s Girl
Jane Fonda’s son Troy Garity has found his star-making vehicle. “Soldier’s Girl” is based on the true story of Barry Winchell (Garity), a 21-year-old Private First Class soldier stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky in 1999. Winchell fell in love with Calpernia Addams (Lee Pace) a Nashville transgendered nightclub performer. Their affair was well known among Barry’s fellow soldiers, some of them also frequenting the gay nightclub. Eventually, on Fourth of July weekend, as Calpernia was winning Miss Tennessee Entertainer of the Year, Barry’s roommate Justin Fisher (Shawn Hatosy) goaded a young soldier into brutally murdering Barry with a baseball bat.

Soldier’s Girl is fascinating because it’s honest, confrontational, and psychologically compelling. All the characters’ emotional flaws are carefully and richly drawn. No one gets off easy and there is not much left to one’s imagination regarding the sexual intimacy Winchell and Calpernia shared. The frank depiction of their relationship and the actors’ understanding of these characters elevates “Soldier’s Girl” to first-rate entertainment.

The genesis for the movie was the trial that centered on the military’s policy of “don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue.” Apparently, the soldiers were frequent visitors to the gay nightclub. However, the press material notes that Winchell was not gay. He just fell in love with a pre-operative transsexual – a transgendered-gendered woman. Okay, but…

Fisher is the most complicated character because of the obvious homoerotic subtext. Held legally responsible for provoking the murder of Winchell, he is a fully realized, gravely complicated character. Hatosy allows all the sexual doubts and anger to openly seethe throughout his performance. Garity is totally engaging and believable in this very difficult role and Lee Pace, who wears false breasts, buttocks and hips, shows various dimensions. After all, Calpernia spent four years in the Navy in Desert Storm. The ending, with the characters talking to the camera about the aftermath of the murder, is riveting.

Dead Like Me
If the pilot is any indication of what “Dead Like Me” will be on a weekly basis, this is a jewel of a clever series.

Bored and totally sullen eighteen year-old Georgia (George) Lass (Ellen Muth) just quit college and returned home. One day, during her lunch break from her job as a file clerk, a hurling bit of space debris from MIR’s toilet seat suddenly kills her. Instead of going to Heaven or Hell, Georgia finds out that things are not that simple. Unfortunately, there is still work to be done in the Afterlife and her job title is now “grim reaper.” Her “boss” is Rube (Mandy Patinkin). Grim Reapers are assigned to pluck the soul of the living immediately upon sudden death (George’s specialty will be accident, murder and suicide) and escort them to their eternal reward – whatever it might be. It’s not their business to know that, just the name, date, and time of death of subject.

George joins Rube’s “undead” group: Mason (Callum Blue), Roxy (Jasmine Guy) and Betty (Rebecca Gayheart). Compounding the laws of this Afterlife, there are beings known as “gravelings” – shadowy figures who actually deliver the accidental death. Each grim reaper has an “unknown” quota of souls to collect before his or her own soul can move on. George was someone’s last soul, so now she must take his place. And one more thing, George will be completely “human” but will appear as another person. No one who knew her will recognize her and, unlike her previous life, she has to do her own laundry, find a place to live, and make her own money. There is no pay for “Grim Reapers” or understanding parents.

In the pilot, George, after learning all the rules, is given the task of taking her first soul. It happens to be that of a five year-old girl sitting alone on a train.

Muth’s face is divinely suited for George. She burns with fey contempt and complete and absolute disinterest. Which means she’s perfectly suited to play eighteen years old. Jasmine Guy has aged, but casting her here is brilliant. Her angular face and steely gaze gives her character such a commanding presence that just sitting in a scene keeps your attention focused on her. She’s got no-nonsense down pat and is delightful here. Perhaps Gayheart is still trying to figure out if she’s the hot star of “Dead Like Me” or an ensemble comedic player. The pilot, written by Bryan Fuller, offers so much irony and cleverness that it is destined to be one of Showtime’s most talked-about new shows.

2002

Due to it’s “home-grown” look, a digital feature or short needs to grab its audience in the first seconds. A strong visual is usually best. Canadian film-maker Joseph E. DeLeo wisely sticks to this rule with the opening scene of his digital video short FISH’N CHICKS. We see a beautiful young brunette begin to unhook her bra. Okay, this plays to the lowest common denominator, but he has our attention.

Two lifelong friends, George (Mike Dufays) and Arnold (Mark Tyler), both twenty-something and girl hungry, go on a fishing trip in a canoe on a secluded Canadian lake. As they wait for some big-mouthed bass to come for the bait, they compare stories of recent sexual conquests. Often we flashback to bars and bedrooms (two easy-to-obtain locations for the low budget film-maker) where these guys “reel in the line” catching the hot chick for the night.

The tensions on the little boat build. As these guys let these stories heat up anger, we wonder, are we going to see a re-enactment of A PLACE IN THE SUN? There’s a twist. For its 30 minutes running time, FISH’N CHICKS kept me amused. Some of the dialog is crisp (“For 12 hours what these girls did to me, I wouldn’t do to a farm animal.”) I often wish low-budget film-makers (especially when working in Digital) would shy away from the notion that they have to use only one key setting, but DeLeo lets his almost single set (the rowboat) work.

Having worked in the digital field myself, the biggest technical problem in this type of film-making is the sound. FISH N’CHICKS, with its changes in background noise, proves a lake is a nightmare location for a sound man.

Credits:
Produced, Written and Directed by Joseph E. DeLeo

Cast:
Simone Mendes, Mike Dufays, Mark Tyler, Nicola Basile

I just finished a video marathon, courtesy of a friend’s taping, of THE SOPRANOS, Season Two. THE SOPRANOS is brilliant. I sure wish I had HBO.

Consider this: The human brain is divided into three parts: the reptilian (or R-complex), the limbic system, and evolution’s newest addition, the neocortex. The oldest brain, the reptilian, plays an important role in aggressive behavior, territoriality, ritual, and the establishment of social hierarchies.

THE SOPRANOS is the celebration of man’s evolutionary prerogative: his reptilian brain. This is the real reason why THE SOPRANOS is hailed as the best show on TV. We recognize, on an unconscious level, that the show venerates the Reptilian Brain that we all possess, and suppress. Let’s face it – THE SOPRANOS is about a group of “cold-blooded killers.”

I love THE SOPRANOS for one concrete reason: every character (even secondary characters like Carmela’s parents) is angry.

Every character operates purely from the Reptilian Brain: “I want, I want, I want. I want NOW! I want what I think is important to me.” All the characters function on this level. This is precisely what enthralls us: here are people who do exactly what they want. There are no consequences for their actions. If someone annoys you – kill him. In Season One Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) thinks his mother Livia set him up to be “whacked,” so he decides to suffocate her. Like Season One, Season Two has killings for all sorts of infractions: Tony’s sister Janice (Aida Turturro) is punched in the face by her fiancé (who has already shown us his vicious nature). She immediately gets a gun and kills him. An episode from Season Three (we were lucky to get a hotel room in D.C. with HBO) had a stripper spit in the face of her gangster boyfriend Ralphie. He brutally beats her to death. There are no consequences. According to Freud, they all have “infantile amnesia.” If characters are not dealing drugs, they are taking them. Every episode is centered around eating. All the men drink and have sex with their mistresses or strippers (and even – as in the animal kingdom- publicly, i.e., in the back room of “The Bing”).

Eat, have sex, and kill.

It’s the glorification – and the recognition – of the Reptilian Brain. I don’t particularly like Dr Melfi (Lorraine Bracco). For me she slows down the show. That said, I do like that the writers have revealed her true self: she’s angry too! She’s bitter, and is furious with the stupidity of her patients. She lashes out, and uses the “F word,” with her own therapist (so far, he’s not angry, but give him time. After all, he’s played by Peter Bogdonovich). Though Melfi is totally professional with Tony, his alpha male sensibility sees right through her. He knows she’s attracted to him because of his ruthlessness. He psychically sees the real, foul-mouthed, angry Dr. Melfi. Her estranged husband is also angry and bitter. And Melfi is in some sort of conflict with her son.

Why does Tony Soprano have our compassion? Freud explained the whole dynamic success of THE SOPRANOS in his classic work TOTEM AND TABOO. Tony Soprano is the strong male of the whole horde, which, in Sopranospeak is called in a semi-religious fervor, “the family.” But all the other weaker males want Tony’s dominant position. He is constantly in fear of losing his horde to aggressive, younger males. These are, metaphorically, his “sons.” The world of Tony Soprano – like the primitive man’s, and in the animal kingdom – is highly structured. While Tony is the acting boss, he’s got lots of organizational headaches. Everyone around him functions in infantile rage. There’s Junior Soprano, his uncle and presumptive head of the family. Junior is old and angry. (In Season Three he found out he has cancer and he’s really furious about it. No prayer group for Uncle Junior. Giving him cancer is brilliant. He’s truly dangerous now). Tony has his captains who run crews of young guys trying to make it up the ranks. Tony doesn’t so much tell his guys what to do as tell them “Never do that again.” What they all really want is to get rid of Tony and take his place. THE SOPRANOS is Freud’s primeval drama set in modern day times.

Another prominent theme (and seductive element for male viewers) is that all the men have secret lives. They are free to come and go as they please. Women come with price tags they can easily afford. They don’t communicate with their wives or each other. They greet each other with insults. They say what they want and leave. They never explain themselves. They don’t talk things out. Their gratification must be immediate.

My favorite character is Paulie Walnuts (Tony Sirico). I just love the way he holds his hands in a form of mobster benediction. While I like how Tony’s son A.J. is coming along (brooding and silent, which way will he go?), I’m surprised the kids never enjoy the power of being Tony Soprano’s children – like real life mob princess Victoria Gotti.

By the way, in Freud’s telling of the primeval drama, the brothers join together, kill the father, and eat him.