Reviews

SHIN GODZILLA, we're told, (now) translates as "god incarnate." Uh-huh. Too bad we don't get to see enough of this new (shin) "god incarnate" in action to judge for ourselves... Like the lousy ameriKan version of just a couple of years ago, this entry boasts some great but all too brief scenes of destruction; this version also unfortunately bogs down like said ameriKan version in the minutia of government and military behind-the-scenes "readiness." There are at least five minutes of good action in this two-hour debacle. The rest, as they say, is for the f---ing birds...

Two episodes in, and so far I've yet to uncover any secret(s) that I haven't uncovered before (in books OR documentaries). Maybe this one's a revelation to NEWCOMERS to the "world of comics," but it's all old news to those of us who've been paying attention over the years. The production values are good, but what this show lacks (and the same can be said of COMIC BOOK MEN, which is often little more than an advertisement for Kevin Smith's comic shop) is an in-depth ANALYSIS of the very comic books the show is ostensibly ABOUT. What, for instance, makes a Jack Kirby THOR story infinitely superior to anything on the stands Today (or Yesterday, for that matter)? THE SECRET HISTORY OF COMICS feels like just another attempt to bolster waning interest in an art form that motion pictures have been dumbing down as of late. Want to find some interesting comics to read? Check out some of the manga at your local comic shop. Warning: they ain't for Special Needs families. Or, better yet, lay hands of some of the excellent reprints of the aforementioned THOR comics: if you thought the lousy movie versions were good, you'll be knocked out by Kirby's Cosmic Mythology.

Watching the Gulf war unfold (the FIRST one), I had the uneasy feeling that I was witnessing something that I'd seen somewhere before; the sense of deja vu was overwhelming. THE Vietnam WAR (which should've been titled THE AMERIKAN WAR IN Vietnam) brings into sharper focus our current military morass(es). This time around, ameriKan taxpayers are footing the bill for at least a dozen wars around the world- a dozen Vietnams- to the tune of more than a TRILLION DOLLARS a year. We've heard about the Pentagon's inability to account for the recent disappearance of a Billion dollars, yet our "elected" officials (most of whom seem to have jerry-mandered their way into office) still insist on adding yet more fuel to the fire. When will they learn...? THE Vietnam WAR (this documentary) was partially financed by one of the kooky Libertarian Koch brothers and it delves deeper than ever into the incompetence and duplicity- and outright arrogant ignorance- of ameriKan government officials throughout the never-ending 30-year war. What better example of poor leadership than this?

The strength of most of what Stephen King writes- even when he's "re-imagining" classics like Dracula (SALEM'S LOT) or THE MONKEY'S PAW (PET SEMATARY) or OLD YELLER (CUJO) or the old EC Horror comics, etc.- is his CHARACTERS: they almost always Ring True. IT is no exception, and this latest reincarnation boasts excellent performances all around. (One of the more horrifying aspects of the Pennywise personification- that's only very subtly touched on in the movie- is the influence of Real World killer clown, John Wayne Gacy.) (Here in Crack Town, we had an old man nicknamed "Snake" and his wife who were both pedophiles. They were caught a number of times, but never went to trial "to spare the children." When the couple left the neighborhood, the kids they'd assaulted began to sexually assault even younger kids, culminating in the kidnapping of two five-year-olds by a young teen. Once again, the local "authorities" refused to prosecute. And you thought "Derry" was a scary place...) I'm looking forward to the next "chapter" in the on-going saga of IT, but this one will be hard to beat.

Provided the coroner here is correct (and I have no reason to doubt he is), it's a stunning revelation. We've seen, in recent years, the devastating effects of steroids on athletes (in particular, professional wrestlers, whose deaths have made national headlines) and it's truly mind-boggling to think that Bruce Lee himself may have died as a result of steroid injections (my own slipped disc put me in traction for more than a week, and it's an injury that has continued to plague me literally every day of my life since). I'd read about the removal of the sweat glands from his armpits and thought it an odd kind of operation to have (having no idea that it was common among users of steroids). Be all of that as it may, Bruce Lee remains one of my heroes; what I learned from him changed my life for the better.

I saw ERIN BROCKOVICH mere days before I saw Erin Brockovich and, while definitely worthwhile, the movie often focuses too much on the woman behind the case and not quite enough on the particulars of the case itself... much like what happened when she arrived here in wilmington, north carolina, to address 300 concerned citizens regarding Dupont's dumping of carcinogenic chemicals into the Cape Fear River (the source of drinking water for 250,000 north carolinians). Alongside a "water expert" who spouted indecipherable gobbledygook for the better part of an hour and a half, Brockovich said, in essence, that it's all up to US to get things Right (the Mayor of wilmington, who owns a construction company, didn't bother to show up at this Public Meeting- perhaps because he'd gotten wind of something that Brockovich revealed to us that night: that there's a pipeline like the infamous North Dakota Access Pipeline about to begin construction HERE, before long). Like we ain't got enough problems, already... Crack Town- wilmington- has been referred to as "Ground Zero" for the opioid epidemic in this company (the so-called "united" $tate$ of ameriKa), with a reported 13% of wilmingtonians hooked on opioids (my guesstimate is much higher- 40-50%-, based on personal interactions I've had with many of the locals over the past two decades). When I arrived here, the then-governor was in the process of accepting a bribe of half a million dollars from the local Nuclear Regulatory Commission to allow them to dump Nuclear Waste into the Cape Fear River. (There was no follow-up investigation, as far as I know.) I've personally seen men openly armed with handguns in grocery stores, gyms, pawn shops and shopping mall parking lots hereabouts and the sight never fails to give me pause. The "housing" DE-Construction going on to accommodate the projected 65,000 newcomers to Crack Town over the next 10-15 years is causing even worse flooding than ever (my own used bookstore was flooded nearly 20 years ago). The bottom line: the denizens of Crack Town are up S--t Creek, without a paddle... News of some small comfort: Brockovich also told us that all of the water fountains in Washington have DON'T DRINK THE WATER! THE WATER IS POISON! signs on them. At least we're not alone...

Yet again a Giant Monster has been used as a recruitment tool for the Military Industrial Complex. The entire first thirty minutes of KONG: SKULL ISLAND is a love letter to the ameriKan war in Vietnam, with tired old Sam Jackson trying his limited best to sell this stinker. (Glaring at a giant gorilla while standing rooted to the spot amidst the destruction of a fleet of helicopters- with tons of shrapnel whizzing through the air all around him- seems to be Jackson's idea of proving himself "a tough motherf--ker." He's wrong: he simply looks like a f--king FOOL.) The computer-generated Kong is cool, but, like the cg GODZILLA of just a few years ago, he has too little to do; this is (AGAIN) a puff piece for the armed forces of the Military Industrial Complex.

I blame it on my mother: she recited poetry by Edgar Allan Poe to me when I was a kid and told me scary stories when I went to bed each night; I came to treasure the chills that a good Horror story, well told, could invoke. Then came George Romero and NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD. It was a game changer, an uncompromising, brutal depiction of Life in these so-called "united" $tate$. Fright Films had suddenly EVOLVED into something Other than what they had been- and at the helm was Romero, co-writing and directing it all. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, with its documentary look and feel, ventured into uncharted territory (and, ironically considering the number of rip-offs it has inspired, no one else saw Fright Films as an opportunity to comment on The State of Affairs in this country) (not until John Carpenter came along, anyway). Romero became my Hero, and when it was announced that he would be producing a Horror series for television, I began submitting scripts as fast as I could write them. (In my arrogant ignorance, I'd already submitted a script for a sequel to DAWN OF THE DEAD... Two movies made me want to MAKE movies: John Carpenter's HALLOWEEN and George Romero's DAWN OF THE DEAD.) While none of my scripts for TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE were ever used, I WAS lucky enough to get a kindly rejection from Romero himself. I'd sent him three issues of a self-published prose magazine I'd written and illustrated and he wrote back: "Some of the pieces are really fine." Coming from the man who gave us NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and DAWN OF THE DEAD, this was Praise, indeed! My nieces and nephews were weaned on Romero's movies. Just a few hours ago, I read that Romero died yesterday. The shock hit me first, followed by the pain that can only come when a knife has pierced the heart and entered the Soul. I tried to tell my wife, but talking was all but impossible; I went and sat in the car, numb and sick to my stomach, and cried off and on. Romero was a Hero of mine, one of only a handful of people in this life who've inspired me to try harder, to try to do something other than just sit and watch the World pass by; but his passing has taken the wind out of my sails. I'd hoped to finally meet him face to face at a Horror convention later this year. It's hard to believe that I now live in a world WITHOUT George Romero. I'll never get to shake his hand and joke with him. And I'll never again hear my Mother lulling me to sleep with a softly-whispered Tale of Terror.

Damn, what a day.

The parallels between what happened to the Osage "Indians" here in these so-called "united" $tate$ of ameriKa and the Apes in WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES are striking (and conceivably not coincidental): when hounded and murdered for their mineral-rich land(s) by The Ruling Class, the Osage sought surcease by moving to what they thought was safe territory- barren, rocky land that "no one would want." And then a fortune in minerals was discovered just inches below the surface and, well, history repeated itself (and continues to repeat itself on an apparently endless loop to this very day in this company/country). Just a few nights ago, I happened to catch Andy Serkis on THE LATE SHOW WITH STEPHEN COLBERT and was shocked to see just how MUCH of the Actor bleeds through the cgi: we see Serkis, decked out in his cgi points-of-reference rig, reading from the script for WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES as he slowly morphs into Caesar. It's an amazing sequence, and I suggest anyone who questions (as I had) Serkis's contribution(s) check it out, post haste. (At one point, Colbert asked Serkis to read a couple of the infamous "tweets" of The Great Grifter, Don Trump, as Gollum. Hilarious.) For fans of the Apes movies, fear not: WAR FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES isn't just another cgi video game writ Large: it's as dramatic and moving as the previous two entries and promises yet MORE to come (hopefully). The Final Battle has more twists and turns than one might expect, and is ultimately satisfying. There are (history) lessons to be learned here...

A STREET CAT NAMED BOB hits all the right notes (unlike, say, THE SECRET LIVES OF PETS, which could've gone a long way toward bridging the Understanding Gap that exists between Pets and their Persons but DOESN'T). I've seen this kind of thing in Real Life: my wife rarely communicates with other Human Beings, but introduce her to a cat (kittens, especially) and she's a different person; the Change in her character is truly remarkable. I, myself, have learned more than a little about Empathy from a succession of Furry Friends. (In the documentary UNLOCKING THE CAGE, lawyers argue that Animals have some Basic Rights; that they're sentient and have feelings and their own languages- and they're Right: anyone who's ever gotten to know an animal can attest to that.) (Not all animal stories have happy endings: across the street from me lives a 19-year old psychopath who strangled two kittens and buried them in his back yard. The police uncovered the bodies, which he then placed in the middle of the street and set afire. A week later, at 4a.m., he set fire to an automobile in his own back yard, then set my recycling bin on fire. If ever an animal needed to be put in a cage... Another not-so-happy local story: an animal hoarder had 30 kittens on her property. The authorities rounded them all up and promised to "put them down" by this past Monday- yesterday- if they weren't adopted. I haven't seen nor can I find online a follow-up story. I can only assume the worst...) A STREET CAT NAMED BOB is a tale well worth the telling, and a ride definitely worth taking.

POISONED WATER, which looks at lead contamination in the drinking water in both Washington, D.C. and Flint, Michigan, should serve as a wakeup call for the rest of the country. Just a few days ago, as I write this, the toxic chemical GenX (used in the manufacturing of Teflon and various fire-resistant products in a factory north of here), has been discovered in the drinking water right here in Wilmington, North Carolina. An "open and transparent" meeting with local leaders is scheduled for tomorrow morning... BEHIND CLOSED DOORS. A single reporter (without camera or audio recording equipment) will be allowed to attend this "open and transparent" meeting. North Carolinians are always slow to get the gist of things (especially when the local "news" outlets do little more than refer viewers to websites where they can peruse 100% REDACTED documents regarding water contamination), but this one's a no-brainer even WE should be able to see through. How serious might the contamination here be? Erin Brockovich has already weighed in on the issue. THAT, if nothing else, should raise some red flags. Paging MIKE PAPANTONIO...

From the violations at the Indian Point nuclear power plant in New York to the dumping of nuclear waste just above the High Tide water line in San Diego to the radiation-releasing sink-hole in Washington State, the state of nuclear power in this company ain't so good (nor has it EVER been). There ARE some things, it seems, that Man just wasn't meant to f--k around with. COMMAND AND CONTROL is yet another piece of damning evidence: When scientists "testing" Atomic bombs believed that detonating such a device might kill everything on the face of the Earth... "they did the test, anyway." Is it any wonder that the Military is the largest user of fossil fuels (and, hence, the biggest contributor to Global Warming)? According to this documentary, "the only victims (of nuclear power) so far have been Americans." (With the VERY notable exception of the Japanese you-know-when...) The LISTS of accidents we see here are chilling. "The weapons were nowhere near as safe as everyone had assumed." That only a single life was lost in the Arkansas accident is nothing short of a Miracle. And the recent revelation that a HOLE has, in fact, been blown through the outer atmosphere of this planet as a direct result of nuclear "testing" may well foreshadow the Epitaph at the end of BENEATH THE PLANET OF THE APES: "In one of the countless billions of galaxies in the universe lies a medium-sized star- and one of its satellites, a green and insignificant planet, is now Dead..."

In Richard Matheson's short story "THE TEST," an Elderly man prepares himself for an upcoming test to determine if he should live or die. (One can't help but be reminded of another classic Tale of Time's Up, Sorry- Shirley Jackson's "THE LOTTERY.") LOGAN'S RUN takes the essence of that idea and "runs" with it. The result is a Feature film more in keeping with a television show (which it ironically became) than a Big Screen extravaganza. Some of the IDEAS put forth in LOGAN'S RUN are worthy of exploration (and some are NOT), but it's the execution, if you will, that one finds lacking. The movie's just BLAND. With THE HANDMAIDEN'S TALE making a successful comeback (as a cable series, I've heard), maybe it's time to rethink LOGAN'S RUN...

There was a time (for me) when a darkened movie house offered Sanctuary from The Real World and all its attendant Horrors; when refuge could be found in Alternate Realities, from the Old West to the depths of Deep Space. Prior to my discovery of alternatives Cinematic, I found escape in the pages of comic books. One eventually gave way to the other, and these days the two are as One. Sorta. For some reason, however, movies these days tend to be far, far LESSER than the comics that inspired them. An odd dichotomy, especially when one takes into account the basic Visual Nature of both. You know the movie's in trouble when a gun-wielding character called "Deadshot" can't even put a round through one of the eye-holes or even the unprotected lower half of Batman's face-mask. Later, in a totally pointless (not to mention gratuitously extended) scene, we see this "dead-eye Dick" blasting away with an arsenal of firearms. While I'm sure there were weapons enthusiasts who got off on this scene, for the rest of us, there was nothing much going on (a lot of noise, but little else). There are so many such instances throughout this stinker that it's nigh impossible to list them all (so I'm not even going to try). It IS interesting to note that the money-man behind this one was The Foreclosure King himself (Mnuchin the Money Munchkin), whose greatest claim to fame is that he once foreclosed on a 90-year old woman who failed to pay something like 25 CENTS on her mortgage.

With the possible exception of THE TWILIGHT ZONE (The Original Series), no television show managed to capture the SPIRIT of pre-Comics Code Authority Horror Comics like THE OUTER LIMITS- and the episode NIGHTMARE is a perfect example of this: with its dark, minimalist sets and John Anderson as the very bat-like Ebonite interrogator, NIGHTMARE boasts not only one of the SCARIEST-looking Creatures ever featured on the show, but one of the most Literate and Interesting scenarios as well. It's very much an anti-war story, with a twist that you just don't see coming (a twist that those of us living in the Age of "the so-called "united" $tate$ of ameriKa" can certainly appreciate). More than anything else, though, THE OUTER LIMITS owed much of its reason d'etre to the pre-Comics Code Horror comics of the early 1950s.

Much maligned but unjustly so, director Edward Cahn proves with ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU that, given the right tools to work with, he was as capable a director as anyone toiling in the Hollywood vineyards of the 1950s. Allison Hayes as "a feisty broad" shoulders (...) her share of the burden in aid of. The zombies of the title might well have shambled out of WHITE ZOMBIE or even I WALKED WITH A ZOMBIE: they're of the laid back, unhurried variety often found in early Twentieth Century Fright Films (and even manage to "remind" one of the ghosts in John Carpenter's classic Fright Film, THE FOG). ZOMBIES OF MORA TAU is proof positive that Cahn was a very capable filmmaker in his own right and is worth a look by fans of the genre.

Until I saw THE American SCREAM, I had no idea what I wanted to do with the remainder of my Life. Now, I know. No, I don't want to spend whatever time I've got left building haunted houses (as do the stalwarts herein): what I'd like most to do is find a place like Fairhaven and settle down there- near people of a like mind, with the right disposition(s). Halloween has always been far and away my favorite holiday; nothing else even comes close (although there's a lot to be said for Thanksgiving...). To live in a town where Halloween is celebrated every day would be a dream come true, the only way to go; the Most, Daddy-o- with drive-ins and all-night horrorthons every weekend and conventions and weekly get-togethers and... Well, one can DREAM, can't one...?

Perhaps because I'd been reading about this movie for years, I was expecting a lot more than I found. What I found was an uninteresting movie about uninteresting characters based on uninteresting people. If your idea of "interesting" is someone like Starkweather (OR his Real Life gal pal), consider yourself one of the Easily Entertained. Martin Sheen's point-and-shoot performance has all the depth of a target range cutout. The direction is nigh nonexistent: there's not one iota of SUSPENSE in scenes that in Real Life would've no doubt been TENSE and HORRIFYING: here, they're simply presented in a matter-of-fact manner, like a walk-through tour of a museum. (Compare this one to the ZODIAC movie of just a few years ago, or the Korean nail-biter, MEMORIES OF MURDER.) The most interesting thing about BADLANDS is the cinematography.

Metaphorically speaking, KONGO is the tale of The White Man Among the Natives (substitute ANY Native population in ANY country, and it all boils down to what we have here). Our wheelchair-bound protagonist ("Flint") takes that vaunted trip into Joseph Conrad's HEART OF DARKNESS and finds out in the end that it's a one-way trip to Nowhere- the Hard Way... Huston is intense, to put it mildly, and he chews the jungle scenery throughout the movie with a demented determination rarely found in films of this period (or any OTHER period, either). It's an outstanding, always-teetering-on-the-edge performance that makes KONGO worth a look.

Just spent three days at the Mad Monster Party in Rock Hill, South Carolina, meeting some of my heroes and seeing a rough cut of MY UNCLE JOHN IS A ZOMBIE! NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD co-creator John Russo plays the title character and his ghoulish makeup only highlights his matter-of-fact delivery and candidly candid comments and gives his character an almost Groucho Marx-back-from-the-grave quality. It's a truly outstanding performance. Russ Streiner is also in top form as a righteous man o' God who wants to put a stop to all this fornicatin' and necrophelia. (In Real Life, Streiner is hands down the sweetest celebrity I've ever met, quick with a smile and a fast draw with a friendly handshake.) The late George Kosana also has a brief cameo. (For those of you who don't know it, Kosana played the Sheriff in the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, the man who delivered the memorable line, "They're dead... they're all messed up.") My niece told me that she'd seen Judith O'Dea ("Barbara" in the original NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD) at the Convention and that she "hasn't aged a day." I had to see for myself, and, sure enough, it was true. I nabbed her autograph and, following a Q&A session in which she proved to be as quick-witted as Russo and Streiner, I suggested to Mr. Russo that she'd make a good sex therapist/dominatrix in MY UNCLE JOHN IS A ZOMBIE! (I suggested that she could "service" the righteous Streiner after his sermons and, later still, become "Uncle John's" "therapist"). Ms. O'Dea is what they used to call "a classy dame." When I asked Tom Savini if he had any photos from his remake of NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, he crossed his arms and said, "I was too busy directing the movie to take any pictures." Nonetheless, I bought a poster (which he graciously signed) of the original DAWN OF THE DEAD. (At the screening of MY UNCLE JOHN IS A ZOMBIE!, there was someone sitting directly behind me who- no doubt inadvertently- kept making noise. I held my tongue, trying to concentrate on the movie. My niece came in and asked me how long it would be before we could leave; I told her I had no idea and she left. Later, she asked me: "Did you know that Tom Savini was sitting right behind you?" I laughed. And, just for the record: this isn't a criticism of Savini in any way, shape or form; it's just what happened that day.) The only member of the DEAD posse that I didn't get to meet was The Maestro himself, George Romero- but there'll be other conventions, I'm sure...

For me, it's the cinematography by Gordon Willis that makes KLUTE a must-see movie- that, and the understated direction by Pakula; and the low-key performances by Fonda and Sutherland... The most interesting scene in the movie, I think, is the therapy session with Fonda and her shrink, in which Ms. Fonda makes clear just how blurry is the fine line between the world's oldest profession (politics) and the second oldest (prostitution). (That's not her intention, of course: it simply SOUNDS like such an attempt at such a delineation.) Sutherland is so laid back as to come across as nearly comatose: one gets the impression that it might take something as jarring as a claw hammer to the head to get a gut reaction out of him. A measured pace helps highlight Gordon Willis's superb cinematography, and that's a plus.

There was a time, believe it or not, when I thought that the basic premise of WARGAMES was too far beyond the pale: no way, thought I, would the corporate government of THIS company (the "united" $tate$ of ameriKa) allow itself to be made so Vulnerable that a KID could tap into its innermost Darkest Secrets. Well, in DJ Trump's ameriKa, it's not only POSSIBLE, but it may very well have already HAPPENED. The Divider-In-Chief (DIC, for short) has asked the Federal Bureau of Investigation to announce that his alleged ties to Russian cronies was just not so, that his hands were clean; that he hadn't engaged in treasonous activities prior to the recent so-called election; that he isn't (as Bill Maher put it) "Agent Orange" and Putin isn't the REAL president. (ONE thing's for certain: the Electoral College, which, we're told, was meant to PREVENT a Madman from becoming president, instead undermined the will of The People and gave us ol' DJ... whose Madness is open to debate. And, lest we Forget: the democraps HELPED put him in orifice. We've already had a ban on Muslims entering this company, mass deportations of wanna-be immigrants, a $75M aircraft lost in a military mission, and the murder of a dozen or so children in DJ's first authorized drone strike. There's Blood on a LOT of hands these days... The recent disruptions at republican Town Hall Meetings are clear signs of Things To Come. They can PROFITize all they want, it's well past Time for a Reality Check. Check out Keith Olbermann's THE RESISTANCE or Amy Goodman's DEMOCRACY NOW! for the latest Real World news.)

Lacking both the gritty realism and visceral violence of the 1984 version of NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR, this version is the least interesting of the three that I've seen: the costumes and sets are too neat and clean, and everyone appears well-fed and, for the most part, satisfied; there's none of the EMOTIONAL impact of the 1984 version; in short, a typical '50s television view of Life. Donald Pleasance, who had a bit part as Syme in the BBC version, here plays Parsons- a much meatier part, although so much of it's missing that he doesn't have a whole lot to work with. From the book: Parsons was "one of those completely unquestioning, devoted drudges upon whom, more even than on the Thought Police, the stability of the Party depended." "All that was required of them was a primitive patriotism," Orwell wrote. The recent corporate coup by Donald McDonald and the Billionaire Boys Club underscores this. ("It was not the man's brain that was speaking; it was his larynx.") "It was nicknamed Muck House by the people who worked in it." "... stands had to be erected, effigies built, slogans coined, songs written, rumors circulated, photographs faked." Information is trickling out, though. "It was enough to blow the Party to atoms, if in some way it could have been published to the world and its significance made known." "It was important to write something down." ("The rocket bombs which fell daily on London were probably fired by the Government of Oceania itself, just to keep the people frightened.") And frightened they are, here in these "united" $tate$, because the Free Poor are puppets of the Fossil Fool Industry. In time, THEY'LL end up immolated in The Memory Hole... "People are being killed all the time..." and "the dangers inherent in the machine are still there." ("This is business.") ("All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.") ("... an endless catalogue of atrocities, massacres, deportations, lootings, rapings, torture of prisoners, bombing of civilians, lying propaganda, unjust aggressions, broken treaties..." In North Dakota, the Genocide of the Native Peoples continues apace...) "In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it." "The capitalists owned everything in the world, and everyone else was their slave. They owned all the land, all the houses, all the factories, and all the money." "It is necessary for us to know everything." "... if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance... in practice, the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare." "Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to exist." "With the development of television... private life came to an end." "There were bribery, favoritism, and racketeering of every kind..." "Power is not a means; it is an end." "We are the priests of power." Sound even vaguely familiar...? ("It was too great a coincidence.") O'Brien is miscast as Smith, but, otherwise it's not a bad adaptation- for what looks like '50s American television, although "it was a peculiarly beautiful book." And, finally: "The book is indestructible."