shicovianista

I really miss this series. I keep looking at the TV schedules to see if somebody, Sci-Fi, US, Spike, anybody, has picked it up. The cliff- hanger ending, with a Class 9 hurricane soon to hit the southern coast was going to be a wowser, if they'd decided to make Season Two. I loved the little critter and the human characters, generally, far more than the slow-moving, icy-tempered near-monosyllabic people on Invasion.

The first season was offering almost as many questions to drive a person crazy as Lost did.

It's too bad. I guess the cost of making it was too much for the smaller channels, although I hoped that Sci-Fi might see the wisdom of picking up a series that was actually GOOD, as opposed to making another batch of badly written, crummy movies. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that both of these excellent series did not get renewed. VR-5 went the way of good series in 1995, I think.

I'll have to put this series on my shelf for lost pearls, beside VR-5, another series with a bang-up last episode that never came back. Sydney, where are you?

Among that genre of film that is now almost extinct. Television, especially Public Television does this sort of thing as mini-series and sometimes to the detriment of the subject because the story is abnormally drawn out to cover a certain number of episodes. Khrartum is the best role Charleton Heston ever had, with the possible exception of Will Penny, and I actually liked Laurence Olivier for the first time in years, as the Mahdhi. His mannered acting method almost never allowed me to forget that he was Olivier, but here, the Mahdhi is such an extreme character that I almost forgot it was Olivier playing him. It nearly took away my dislike of him after his weird Othello. This film is a bit on the slow side, but the story went along well, the scenery was fabulously golden and dry, and Heston's Scottish accent was believable. I always enjoy Richard Johnson in anything and here he was, once again the noble 'Horacio' type to Heston's hero, as he was in that Heston directed Julius Caesar that was spoiled by Jason Robard's strange, dead performance. But I wander. This movie is worth finding, and I hope they put in on DVD someday.

I've watched it a number of times now, and the things I loved first I still find wonderful: the backstage sets, scenes, and people, the lighting, the costumes, the sets, the gorgeous look of all of it, and the actors, really one of my all time favorite movies now. Emmy Rossum seems more mature than sixteen, her face will be her fortune, no matter how sweet a voice she had. Patrick Wilson, a smooth, pure tenor, a man who is beautiful as the young Raoul, and really remarkable as the old Count de Chagny. Gerard Butler, an exciting, heart-breaking Phantom. His voice is just right for a movie soundtrack; he can do head voice, voice mixe, and belt it out, too. A full time belter isn't appropriate for a movie when the image is so large now and so close to the audience. I couldn't have asked for or hoped for better than all that was in this marvelous Gothic fairy tale of a movie.