February 13, 2004

• Last night I rented a bunch of movies at Scarecrow. 'Equilibrium,' 'Spellbound,' and the Bill Maher HBO comedy special, 'Victory Begins At Home.'

  'Equilibrium' was better than I expected, but also pretty darn slow in places. It looks like an 'Outer Limits' episode stretched to 90 minutes. Still, the idea of a dystopian future where everyone takes a drug (called 'Prozium') in order to abolish emotions is pretty ripe for meaning. The gun katas were pretty cool, too, which makes for an interesting dichotomy: We assume violence comes from emotion, but it can also come from a purely rational need to control. Also, the casting is brilliant; Christian Bale, from 'American Psycho,' as an emotionless elite whose job it is to destroy the feeling-rebels.

  'Spellbound' made me very happy, because it's a bunch of geeky kids and their obsessive parents, and who can't resist that story? It's a documentary following the lives of a half-dozen kids as they prepare for, and participate in, the national spelling bee in DC. Worth seeing.

  'Victory Begins At Home' was attractive for the same reason Al Franken's book is attractive: It tries to approach our current political situation as if it were funny. Neither Maher nor Franken are joke-tellers, they're humorists, so the material itself (terrorism, Bush administration, 9/11, war in Iraq) maintains its gravity, but the observations are hilarious. For instance: Half of Americans think Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11. Well, let me tell you: Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden are both bad guys, but the Joker is still not the same guy as the Riddler.

  • 4:58 pm
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