Preview Review
Speaking of film reviews... I got a chance before I flew out to see an advance copy of an episode of Showtime's Masters of Horror series, and I want to recommend it to all fans of the horror genre, fans of black comedy and fans of evil, right-wing turds in high places getting their just comeuppance.
The episode is called Homecoming; it is directed by Joe Dante (The Howling, Gremlins, Amazon Women On the Moon) and written by Sam Hamm (Never Cry Wolf, Batman, Batman Returns). The storyline involves soldiers from the war in Iraq returning to life and coming back to America as the undead with a specific and perhaps not entirely predictable mission. I hesitate to give away any more than that, but urge all of you who get Showtime to watch it when it airs this Friday, December 2nd.
The thing that struck me the most about this little vignette is how much the national mood has changed in the past year. Had this particular episode aired a year or even six months ago, I don't think it would have been very well received at all. Not only would the fringe, radical wingnuts have screamed and howled about their (actually pretty dead-on) representation as heartless, Machiavellian spinmeisters willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to continue their stranglehold on power, but the corporate (or "mainstream") press at the time would have echoed their protestations. The public at large probably would have agreed. But now, now that the numbers have changed, now that the American people have grown tired of the Preznit Who Cried Wolf and the Little Administration That Couldn't, I have a feeling that this episode will be accepted quite well in the living rooms of the heartland. The conventional wisdom has changed so much and so fast that people in Ohio and Michigan and Colorado and Missouri will nod their heads in grim, knowing amusement (and disgust) at the thinly-disguised members of the current cabal in DC carrying out their evil machinations. They will understand and agree with the point being made by the people who created this episode. This is now the conventional wisdom; it's a sea change made in an incredibly short time, and try as they might, those previously-mentioned turds in high places can't change it back.
Sure, it's cartoonish, but it makes a hell of a point. And the time is right -- finally! -- for that point to echo and resonate among the masses of television viewers for whom politics is something they only think about once every four years, if then.
That by itself was reason enough to enjoy watching that episode. I urge all of you to check it out if you can. Again, that's Homecoming on Masters of Horror, Friday night, December 2nd, on Showtime.
The episode is called Homecoming; it is directed by Joe Dante (The Howling, Gremlins, Amazon Women On the Moon) and written by Sam Hamm (Never Cry Wolf, Batman, Batman Returns). The storyline involves soldiers from the war in Iraq returning to life and coming back to America as the undead with a specific and perhaps not entirely predictable mission. I hesitate to give away any more than that, but urge all of you who get Showtime to watch it when it airs this Friday, December 2nd.
The thing that struck me the most about this little vignette is how much the national mood has changed in the past year. Had this particular episode aired a year or even six months ago, I don't think it would have been very well received at all. Not only would the fringe, radical wingnuts have screamed and howled about their (actually pretty dead-on) representation as heartless, Machiavellian spinmeisters willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to continue their stranglehold on power, but the corporate (or "mainstream") press at the time would have echoed their protestations. The public at large probably would have agreed. But now, now that the numbers have changed, now that the American people have grown tired of the Preznit Who Cried Wolf and the Little Administration That Couldn't, I have a feeling that this episode will be accepted quite well in the living rooms of the heartland. The conventional wisdom has changed so much and so fast that people in Ohio and Michigan and Colorado and Missouri will nod their heads in grim, knowing amusement (and disgust) at the thinly-disguised members of the current cabal in DC carrying out their evil machinations. They will understand and agree with the point being made by the people who created this episode. This is now the conventional wisdom; it's a sea change made in an incredibly short time, and try as they might, those previously-mentioned turds in high places can't change it back.
Sure, it's cartoonish, but it makes a hell of a point. And the time is right -- finally! -- for that point to echo and resonate among the masses of television viewers for whom politics is something they only think about once every four years, if then.
That by itself was reason enough to enjoy watching that episode. I urge all of you to check it out if you can. Again, that's Homecoming on Masters of Horror, Friday night, December 2nd, on Showtime.
posted by Generik at 8:00 PM
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