| Submitted by: Mark R. LeeperUnited States |
| Submission Date: 15 February 2005 |
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We got to the movie a little early and talked to some teenagers in the theater. One of them even called me 'sir,' which stung for a second, but I got over it. I was impressed that they were fairly savvy about film. What I found as strange is they chose to sit right behind us in an empty theater. They didn't want to sit anywhere in front of us for fear of being in our way. They told us that Mimic was actually getting good reviews and knew what Siskel and Ebert had rated it. Is it possible that you get a more intelligent class of teens in Texas than in New Jersey? Friendly, polite, and knowledgeable is a hard combination to beat. What is not hard to beat is the film Event Horizon.
Capsule: A good cast, good special effects, and an intriguing title all go to make a really exciting-looking coming attraction. The film itself has nearly nothing of value that was not in the trailer. This is not so much set in the universe of modern physics as in Clive Barker's horror universe. This film is a loser. Rating: -1 (-4 to +4) 3 (0 to 10)
New York Critics: 2 positive, 2 negative, 7 mixed
I have heard it observed that any film that starts out with an aerial view of a city is not a film worth seeing. That may be helpful on cable, but not for films in a movie theater. I guess I would claim that any film whose publicity uses the word 'terror' is a film well worth avoiding. I saw a coming attraction for Event Horizon and thought that it looked pretty good. I looked up some information about this interesting looking film on the web and saw the word 'terror' in the ad. I realized it had to be a bad film and I knew that only on the basis of seeing that one word. Psycho is one film that could be said to produce terror, but the ads did not use the word. Hitchcock never claimed to be a master of terror, William Castle made that claim. As a rule of thumb, if you are terrified by a William Castle film you should wait five or six years until you hit puberty and try it again.
Event Horizon is essentially a haunted house film in space that rather artfully uses scenes and touches from a lot of different films to tell a new story. There is a lot of Alien and a lot of Hellraiser with bits of The Haunting, Forbidden Planet, 2001, Star Trek VI, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, This Island Earth, and probably others I missed.
These days too many films tend to have a great look but not very much content. It is the music video aesthetic. This is a film with great visual images, but the plot is really basically the haunted house film in space. The film shovels images at the viewer so fast that it is difficult to interpret just what has been seen, and really it may not matter. When you find out what is really going on, it is a real letdown. This has to be one of the least intriguing concepts possible for a film. I will not give it away, but this is more a Clive Barker sort of horror film in a science fiction setting than it is a science fiction film. The title is the most intriguing thing about the film, but 'Event Horizon' is just the name of a spacecraft, and there is no internal evidence that anyone involved in the production knew even what the term meant.
This film is really a good cast wasted. Sam Neill and Laurence Fishburne are, of course, major actors. I suspect they will take the money and run. But what makes the casting particularly unusual is the inclusion of Kathleen Quinlin of I Never Promised You a Rose Garden. She is an actress who always added a certain fragility to her roles. She is sort of the anti-Bette-Davis. Here that quality is not just ignored, it is plastered over and she is nearly unrecognizable. She is cast against type and brings nothing special that is usable to her role.
This is a film that needed a writer with vision, but instead had one with a high concept. I would rate this letdown a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale.
The film being over we just had to get gas. We were both dehydrated from the day. On the very nozzle of the gas pump was an ad that said a 64-ounce drink for 99 cents at their indoor fountain. Well, we were both still thirsty and it sounded good. I guess we fall prey to the American propensity for getting what ounce-by-ounce is a good deal. Well the drink we decided on was Pepsi and they were out of 64-ounce cups, we got 44 ounces and paid the 99 cents plus tax. We got 44 ounces of Pepsi-Cola. I think I am glad we didn't get the 64. Do you have any idea what drinking even 44 ounces means? That is 44 ounces of liquid speed. Who drinks 64 ounces of Pepsi? That will kill you. I think if you get 64 ounces, the idea is you stick a spigot in the bottom and serve it to a road crew. 64 ounces is only eight ounces short of a six-pack. As it was I probably drank two cans worth of liquid uppers. I was falling asleep on the movie, but it probably was a good thing. That may be the last rest I get.
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08/23/97--Dallas, Texas: Museums:
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I awoke to at about 6 AM to the realization that our room had been invaded by Tinkerbell. There was a light spot that would flash on the walls every few seconds. It was above the TV but seemed to float around on the wall. Sometimes higher, sometimes lower. And it was bright in the darkened room. I looked at it for a little while trying to understand what I was seeing. What was coming in from the window at a strange angle? Was it something fixed on the wall and was its apparent movement an effect of the darkened room? After about five minutes I put on my glasses and saw it was really two lights a few inches apart that floated around the wall. Finally I reached for my flashlight. It was a smoke detector with one light. When it appeared to be two lights, it was just my eyes being unable to bring the two images they were seeing to a single image. I should have thought of that and tried closing one eye. But the eye does funny things when starved of information in a darkened room.
Breakfast was at Grandy's, a chain that I remembered from years ago had good cinnamon rolls. I don't know if I thought they were good, but they sure were big. If we go again, we will get one and share it. Two is too much.
Since Memphis I think we are out of the Bible Belt. We are still seeing religious people but is not as fervent as it seemed in Virginia and parts of Tennessee.
It is a fair drive out to the Silent Wings Museum in Terrell. The museum is an adjunct to a small municipal airport. It is a museum dedicated to one single kind of plane, the Waco CG-4A. During World War II when you had too much to drop from the air to use a parachute, what you would use would be a glider. These things had a ten-to-one glide ratio. This means they weren't in the air for very long once you let them go. They are sort of elevators to the ground. They were used on about eight missions including Normandy, Southern France, Market Garden (Holland as in A Bridge Too Far), The Battle of the Bulge, the Rhine River crossing, and Luzon in the Philippines. Always to drop things behind enemy lines.
They showed a short film on the gliders. A plane could tow two of them. I had a question. How did a plane tow two of them without them getting tangled? Well, one tow rope is a lot longer than the other. I figured that. How do you keep the plane on the short tow rope from getting tangled in the other plane's tow rope? Well, you fly so the plane on the short tow rope doesn't get tangled in the other plane's tow rope. Oh, okay. Second question: If you pilot a glider once you are done you are on the ground behind enemy lines and your ride has just been grounded. How are you expected to get back to your own lines, I asked. You go back to your own lines. On foot? Unless you can get a ride.
They didn't actually know of any glider pilots getting killed getting back home. I'm actually a little surprised since it sounds dangerous.
They have a hangar-like building with a completely restored CG-A4, some war dioramas, handguns, plane models, photos, uniforms, the works.
From there we went to the Frontiers of Flight Museum out at the local airport Love Field. This is a museum in one large room chronicling the history of air flight. It is broken into ten sub-exhibits: Early Concepts of Flight, World War I, The Golden Age of Air Exploration, The Airship, Women in Aviation, World War II, The Jet Era, Air Transport, Business Aviation, and Space Exploration.
The exhibit on the Hindenberg talks about how it is still a mystery what happened and why the famous Zeppelin caught fire and exploded. Was it an accident? Was it sabotage by the Americans? Was it sabotaged by the Germans? Let me give you my theory. It is against the law to smoke in a movie theater where I live. And people generally comply for fear of getting involved in an incident and perhaps being thrown out. When the movie is over they line up to get out the exits and you frequently see one or two people light up. They figure they can't be thrown out because they are leaving anyway. Okay, there is some little chance of a fire, but how likely is that? Why would the attitude be any different with airship passengers? The crew of the Hindenberg was probably pretty well trained. You had to be pretty smart to serve on the Hindenberg. To be a passenger you only had to have money. You did not have to be smart. I think some jerk lit a cigarette as he was leaving and kaboom!
But they had all sorts of interesting artifacts. From the airship days they had ice cream and chocolate molds to make treats in the shape of airships. And there were descriptions of stunt pilots. I like dogs so I was interested to read the history of Black Dog, a sort of mascot to flight mechanics. There were models of interesting planes. The later stuff on passenger and business flight was not as interesting, but we all want to fly, I think. Okay, wacky theory time again. Why do we all get into flying one way or another? If we don't actually fly we get fascinated with birds or kites or paper airplanes. Perhaps not everybody, but a lot of people feel it would be natural to glide on our own. Most of our impulses are to stay away from snakes and spiders and dangerous things. But it somehow would seem natural to us and not scary to fly. We dream about flying. Can it be that at one time in our evolution we did fly? After a fashion.
We are the only primate that does not have fur. We are the most intelligent primate. Mammals without fur tend to be dolphins, whales, and other aquatic beasties. There are those, I think Desmond Morris is one, who think that we were aquatic apes at one time. It would explain a lot about us. But what does this have to do with flying? Ask a dolphin. Dolphins don't walk around on the bottom of the sea. A dolphin glides by line of sight. Dreams of flight are just dreams of living in a denser medium that supports out weight. An aquatic ape might well find flight in its own medium perfectly natural. But that leaves a question of why would we still want to fly. If we ever were aquatic apes, we sure are not now. Well there are apparently behaviors that are linked to genes. I recently saw a documentary on dog behavior that said that if you want to punish a Border Collie you don't give him any sheep to herd. Retrievers one and all think that it is the greatest thing in the world to run and get something that has fallen from the sky and bring it to the master. Sled dogs have an innate urge to pull. They will be frustrated and somehow not feel whole if they are not pulling something. An aquatic ape will adapt to land, but will still feel the urge to glide effortlessly. When we dream of flying, we are really dreaming of gliding underwater.
The Biblical Arts Center is devoted just to religious art. Entrance to the museum itself is free. The museum is a bit of a disappointment. |
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