Film - The Day of the Killer Tornadoes (B)

Here, in its entirety, is a short documentary film from the Civil Defense Agency that figured very prominently in my childhood. That's primarily because I lived through the Huntsville, Alabama portion of it. The quality of the film is not great (it wasn't even by 1970s standards!) and some of the re-enactments using the acutal participants are unintentionally humorous but the event it records - the 1974 Super Outbreak - was dreadfully serious. 148 tornadoes (the most ever in a single weather event) struck the Ohio and Tennessee River valleys in a single day, killing 330 people.



This next section includes the town of Xenia, Ohio, which was virtuallly erased by an F-5 tornado that day. It concludes with extensive actual footage from the Huntsville area.


The Huntsville material - and the film - concludes here:



More detailed information on the Super Outbreak is available at http://www.publicaffairs.noaa.gov/storms/

TV - Bionic Woman premiere (B-)

Starring Michelle Ryan (Okay, I give in. She's a PBA), Miguel Ferrer, Katee Sackhoff

Now that the pilot has come and gone, how good was it?

First of all, it's manic. It essentially crams a two-hour movie into 43 minutes. The main character, Jamie Sommers, is introduced three minutes into the show, cajoles her sister, goes to work, gets proposed to, survives a devastating crash, is fitted with bionic parts, goes berserk, gets sedated, gets loose and is out on the street - all before the episode is half finished! It never stays in one place or on one emotion more than fifteen seconds.

Jamie spends about ten seconds (I timed it) dealing with the emotional impact of being turned into a cyborg without her consent - then goes back to tending bar. There's also a very serious, life-changing conversation between Jamie and her fiance during a car ride in the opening act that is obviously edited down to the bare bones. All reaction shots and pauses are cut out. It gives you the information you need and moves on. The editor is like Joe Friday with ADD. At any rate, it gives extremely short shrift to the characters.

Apart from that, I thought it still had great potential. Seriously! It has very high production values, good special effects (some very good), and passable acting by most parties. Michelle Ryan (Sommers) holds her own and does some good stunt work, all while keeping her American accent consistent. Keep in mind she's only 23. A pretty scary villain (the prototype bionic woman, who's gone mad) and a good fight sequence with her didn't hurt either. In fact, if they can spread the tension in that scene over more of the show, it could be very interesting indeed.

One thing that bothered me about that battle was a glaring violation of the "Show, don't tell" rule of drama. You should show actions that illustrate the characters' motives, not have them announcing their motives to each other outright. Give the audience credit. In this case the villain, Sara Corvus (played impeccably by scene-stealer Katee Sackhoff), comes right out and says she's gradually replacing her humanity with bionics because "I'm cutting away all the parts of me that are weak." Well, there goes a year's worth of symbolism down the tubes. I'm surprised Jamie didn't respond, "I have abandonment issues. So there!"

I realize it's an action show and they don't want it to get bogged down like Heroes did for a few months last year but I hope that once the audience is hooked the writers will slow down long enough to let these characters breathe. Give them some real back-story beyond having the bullet-point version read by someone in a suit (which is how we find out about most of Jamie's life!)

Watch it yourself at NBC.com.

Final score: B minus

Preview - The War (A+)

If you know much about me, you know I take documentary film fairly seriously. I plan to take this one very seriously.

Director and producer Ken Burns is the gold standard for documentary filmmaking for innumerable reasons. But the greatest, I believe, is his ability to blend the overtly empathetic and endlessly analytical halves of his nature and his approach to history into a balanced whole. It's the reason I admire him (and "admire" is a word I rarely use).

Burns has taken a departure in making this 14-hour film, one that has created much anticipation. The War uses only firsthand participants as interview subjects. There are no professional talking heads, no historians providing Monday morning quarterbacking, and no celebrity generals on-screen. Burns says, "You either had to be fighting in the war or waiting for someone you loved to come home from the war to make it into this film."

Much as he followed the lives of several "regular" people in his The Civil War and sprinkled the film with quotes from their memoirs, Burns here picked four cities from four corners of the U.S. in which to find common folk and highlights the telling of the war with their perspectives. It should be fascinating to see how a handful of American GIs and their loved ones - from Mobile, AL; Luverne, MN; Westbury, CT; and Sacramento, CA - touched every aspect and theater of the war, both at home and afar.

The team behind this film distilled thousands of hours of footage into this product. Most of it has never been seen before. Some of it was kept hidden because it was considered too frightening and graphic in those times and because it didn't portray flawless American prosecution of the fighting. But it conveys a reality that does more to honor the memories of the combatants than any sanitized movie from the 1940s ever did. Virtually all the veterans in this project say that, finally, someone's "got it right."

Here is a half-hour preview/behind-the-scenes featurette from PBS.



Just the concept of the project strikes a chord in me and I've gotten a bit emotional at the thought of it.

Please make every effort to watch The War beginning Sunday, September 23 and ending Tuesday, October 2 on all PBS stations. If you can't make it that week, most markets will be running it again beginning October 3.

Here is the Alabama Public Television schedule for The War.

DVD - Friday Night Lights: Season 1 (A-)

Starring Kyle Chandler, Connie Britton (PBA), Gaius Charles, Zach Gilford, Minka Kelly, Taylor Kitsch, Adrianne Palicki, Scott Porter, Aimee Teegarden

Arguably the best drama on network television. Why are you not watching it? It was - thankfully - renewed for a second season and will actually air on Friday nights this year beginning October 5.

That wasn't an automatic decision: Friday Night Lights has languished in its timeslot. To its credit, NBC really believes in this show. So much so that it has released this complete season DVD set at the unheard of price of $19.99 - with a money-back guarantee if you don't like it. They really want the word to spread and keep it afloat. I do, too.

Many fans of the show admit that they initially avoided it because they thought it was only about football. But it's not about football. It's about life. It's about high school anxieties, high-pressure jobs, modern-day parenting, the fragility of trust, preserving a marriage, conflicting priorities, sexual morality, physical disabilities, dysfunctional families, reaching out to the children of dysfunctional families and a million other things that pull us all in multiple directions at once. As in life, each time a character recovers from one blow another comes right behind it. Fortunately, things are balanced - as in life - with a healthy dash of perspective and humor.



Some parents will object to the fact that most of the older players are sexually active and drink frequently. Realistically, most junior and senior jocks ARE sexually active and drinking frequently. One kid is depicted as an alcoholic but the rest seem to suffer no consequences from their drinking. Sexually, there is no depiction of the act but there is some before and after imagery. There are plenty of emotional and relational consequences to their "hook-ups." And there are some frank, impassioned, positively-portrayed parental stands made on the subject. Of course, that doesn't mean the kids always listen. Here, mother Tami Taylor (Connie Britton) confronts her daughter Julie (Aimee Teegarden) after spotting her boyfriend buying "protection" at the drugstore.



Britton was robbed of an Emmy nomination this year. Just so you know.

On quality points alone, I'd give this series a full-fledged A. But there is one element that bothers me. Two junior students (one guy and one gal, both the troubled black sheep of the show) have dalliances with adults. Neither story has a happy ending but they are not treated as particularly worse than any other liaison, either. It is not addressed on the show but technically it could all be legal since 17 is the age of consent in Texas. The actors playing the teens are 26 and 24, FYI. But it is still rather creepy.

Final score: A minus

Advertising - The Trunk Monkey (A-)

Ad campaign for a car dealership chain in Oregon. Cold, a bit violent, but funny as all get out.

Compilation video:



Final score: A minus

News - 'Bionic Woman' sister recast, healed

Just read an article on the change of actresses and abilities for the role of Becca Sommers on Bionic Woman. She's no longer played by Mae Whitman and she's no longer deaf.

I am not happy about this, for two reasons.

First, could it be any more obvious that they are trying to up the hottie factor? They dropped a short, average-sized, cute-but-punk actress and replaced her with petite, pretty, former tween pop singer Lucy Hale.

And how many beautiful women do they need? Can't anyone on TV be simply average? Michelle Ryan (Jamie Sommers) is very pretty. She's also, in Hollywood parlance, "voluptuous." This means she actually looks like she eats three squares a day and fills out a C naturally. Is that their problem? A little insurance against people who find the bionic woman "fat"?

Secondly (and most egregiously), they took away Becca's deafness. They say it doesn't serve the plot anymore. Since when does deafness have to be a plot device?!?! Is Jamie Sommers' skin color a plot device? Can't she just have a deaf sister and know sign language without it being a special thing? Could they not just communicate that way and nothing be made of it? And if they felt compelled to have it be utilitarian, fine. Make Jamie insist that her bosses give her sister bionic hearing. Have her sister argue with her about the identity aspects of it. Just Google cochlear implants' divisive effect on the deaf community and you've got material for a month. It was not rocket science to think of that. Took me three seconds.

I am SO disappointed about this move. I was looking forward to seeing a disabled character with depth, who wasn't played as a saint and had a giant chip on her shoulder that wasn't related to her disability. Not gonna happen now.

I'll watch Bionic Woman for all the other reasons I said I wanted to earlier: Female empowerment; promising lead actress; great fight scene potential. But I'll be more skeptical about it. They'll have to impress me to keep me coming back. And Lucy Hale had be better be good.

Preview - Back to You (B-)

Starring Kelsey Grammer, Patricia Heaton (PBA)

Back to You features two of the best actors in TV history in a show produced by the creators of the most award-winning comedy of all time. How can it go wrong? It's hard to tell from the available clips (laid end to end here with a few gaps) but I have some notes to share after you watch them:



Heaton comes off fairly well here because she's not automatically likeable and she's in an office setting in a suit. This puts some healthy perceptual distance between her and Debra Barone. But Grammer may be cursed with Frasier Crane till the day he dies. Everything is lose/lose. Put him in a suit and he looks like Frasier. Put him in anything else and he looks like Frasier trying to be a regular guy. The hard edge he's shooting for here is often reminiscent of the voice and posture Frasier would assume when he was trying to impress Marty's pals. Still, Grammer has the skill to make us buy Chuck in time, so I'll give him a chance to pull it off.

The supporting cast is looking shaky at best. The nerd has a cliched appeal but the invisible guy is truly invisible. He has all the presence of an empty cereal box. Hopefully this is impression comes merely from the brief time he has in these clips.

The writing is average in spots, above average in others. I like the falcon line!

All in all, it has some potential and a great pedigree. We'll see if it's allowed to find its footing.

Final preview score: B minus