Red Tails (2012)

    If ever there was a movie that simultaneously showcased the trademark Lucasian tone-deaf dialogue delivered in a monotone with the kind of direction that makes Flyboys (2006) look like Memphis Belle (1990), and Memphis Belle look like Twelve O'Clock High (1949) in comparison, then that movie would be Red Tails (2012).  Feeling the need to abandon any of the compelling real-life stories from the heroic Tuskegee Airmen, John Ridley and Aaron McGruder instead throw as many stereotypes at the audience as possible, never bothering to form any kind of coherent bond between scenes of characters.  This is problematic in a film where the filler material – everything that is not thrilling aerial combat – dominates the screen time.
     Most troubling to me was the choice to soft peddle the American racism towards the titular Red Tails, and black soldiers in general.  Brian Cranston has a few scenes to respectfully express his dim view of the colored in uniform, but there is no feel of institutional weight behind his prejudice.  Worse, it never seems that Cranston's Colonel Mortamus believes his lines.  He is the worst incarnation of the paper villain, one that is in place for Terrence Howard's Colonel Bullard to give a mild repudiation.  If this is Lucas' vision of addressing the racism of the era, then he never should have been allowed to contribute more to the film than money.
     There are plenty of other failings, and some that may or may not be failings.  In the latter category fall the following – the "brand new 109s" in 1945, presumably Bf-109s (arguably the best looking single engine fighter plane in the war) that would have been supplanted by a variety of other fighters; the P-40s that look less like the planes that the Flying Tigers made famous and more like modified P-35s; the timing of when the first escorted daylight bombing runs of Berlin occurred.  The obvious failings had more to do with character development, but there were a surprising number of technical issues as well.  The air combat was surprisingly dull and lifeless.  It managed to be somehow too crisp to pass for authentic and too slow to serve as exciting segments.  Add to that the inclusion of a recurring enemy pilot (who speaks Duetsch so slowly that even I didn't need a translation) who serves as a very old-school kind of villain is the only sense that the Nazis are the ones who the Americans are really fighting, and you have a movie that just doesn't have any conception of the setting it adopted as its own.
     I feel somewhat bad for the actors involves in this project, who likely signed on thinking that there was going to be a serious attempt to depict the heroism of the real life aviators.  Sure, most of them couldn't figure out how to give a reading and move at the same time (I am quite serious in that criticism; most of the actors had to stand perfectly still to give anything more than a wooden recitation of their lines).  David Oyelowo manages to bring some life to his character (Joe "Lightning" Little) away from the action, and that may have been a better movie than what was put together.  This has all the marks of a project that went into shooting without a finished script.  Instead, it seems that the decision was made to make a movie with some WWII air combat and there wasn't much consideration given to the audience's eventual concern for a compelling story within the movie.

Inglorious Basterds (2009)

     I don't think Quentin Tarantino is a genius filmmaker.  Not even a little.  He made a good – especially given budgetary constraints é adaptation of City on Fire (1987) with Reservoir Dogs (1992), making it his own in the process.  That was 20 years ago.  Okay, it was less than that when he was making Inglorious Basterds (2009), but it was still a long time.  Since then he has made a series of overloved films that, when divorced from the adulation people seem to need to heap upon Tarantino, look like the trainwrecks I've taken them to be.  Okay, maybe they are fine films and I dislike them because I find Tarantino to be habitually unfocused and too in-love with extraneous bullshit to be bothered with telling an actual story.
     Inglorious Basterds is a little different.  It is loaded down with too many elements that don't seem to have any needful relation to the central story.  This would be fine in a novel (if well written), but there is a reason why movies need to be leaner than books.  Tarantino devotes a twenty minute scene to introducing a character and then kills that same character off in the following scene.  And neither scene plays particularly well because they all feel like they have no real relation to the heart of the story.  But Tarantino isn't interested in more than the loose framework of a coherent central plot.  It wouldn't allow him to indulge in various strange side characters, or to kill them off at the drop of a Nazi scalp.
     This is an odd war fantasy, but more than that, it is a movie that has no love of the actors in it.  Michael Fassbender (Lt. Wilcox) and Mélanie Laurent (Shosanna Dreyfus) try to rise above the mediocrity Tarantino wants to enforce in the cast, but there isn't enough of them or their characters to salvage the film.  Yes, I'm aware that many people (critics included) had praise for Christoph Waltz as Colonel Landa.  I have no idea what they were watching.  Other than Tarantino wanting Nazi officers to have some occult supernatural ability to spot imposters or weakness in their enemies (it isn't just Landa who gets this), the character is an unfunny joke.
     I had originally intended to give a better accounting of my thoughts on the film.  Why bother though?  Those who needed to see it did so when it came out.  Tarantino fans undoubtedly love it and cannot be swayed to think otherwise.  All I can do is hope that Brad Pitt never gives a performance as bad ever again.

There be Dragons (2011)

     It takes a fair amount of work to set out to tell four different stories and effectively illuminate none of them.  That is exactly what happens in Roland Joffé's There be Dragons (2011).  The audience gains no insight into the works and history of Opus Dei, the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), the Spanish aspect of the Terrible Triangle, or the relationship between the two central characters in the film.  Indeed, there is no rational reason for the characters to be linked.
     In what feels like the ultimate cheat, there is almost no definition given to the sides or conflict of the civil war.  Joffé, I assume, was going for a sense of confusion on the part of those living through the events, but those characters certainly would have had much more insight than what the film allows them.  Then there is the possibility that Josemaría Escrivá's (Charlie Cox) siblings may have died because of the flu pandemic of 1918, but no reason is given for their deaths.  Like the rest of the film, it feels both ill-informed and halfhearted. 
     Essentially, this should be the story of how a man spent his adult life trying to come to terms with the actions he took during the Spanish Civil War, which he relates to his estranged son.  For some reason, this story is mixed with a priest-on-the-run tale, and it is nowhere near as interesting as the real story must be.  Giving no character enough room to develop, There be Dragons moves ever onward towards the reveal that has nothing to do with the priest or Opus Dei.
     I found myself actively upset that this film was not done with a Spanish cast; I cannot explain why, except to say that it would have felt less artificial if the actors were at least Spanish or even speaking Spanish.  The budget seems to have been spent on a few set-pieces and not on making the scant war scenes look authentic (though I was very excited to see a Lancia IZM in action, that was ruined for me with the independent movement on the turret-mounted machine-guns).  The English speaking cast gives no urgency to the material, and they seem caught somewhere between a dull period piece and an ironic anti-war movie.
     This is a prime example of where bad reviews are a great indication that a film should be avoided.  It is largely a waste of time.  Read a book about Opus Dei or one written by its founder, like The Way.  Read about the Spanish Civil War.  But don't expect any insight into life, the Church, Opus Dei, or the Spanish Civil War from There be Dragons.  All you will get is some half-formed notions that don't develop into anything coherent.

TV Shows That Didn't Change the World

      There is a lot of pretension that comes when people evaluate the TV shows and movies they like.  Many insist that their favorite shows somehow changed the world. Some people have (quite incredibly) made that claim about Firefly (2002), a show that was entertaining but flawed enough that FOX couldn't attract any viewers even with constant promotion (fans who discovered the show on DVD make the claim that FOX killed the show by airing episodes out of order or insisting on a pilot episode that would entice people to want to see more of the show, but as they didn't watch it when it was on I ignore their ill-informed repetitions of other people's opinions).  Likewise, people have made the claim about The Cosby Show (1984-1992) – a show that may have changed Middle America's attitude about black families – but seeing as how I watched about 80% of the first four seasons and all I can remember is that Theo tried listening to MacBeth on a record and Ridy had a friend named Bud, I am not going to treat it as a game changer.
      I would dare say that most of the shows that I spent my time watching were so much fluff that I couldn't ask anyone to believe that they have had any kind of lasting impact or deeper meaning.  Such is the fate of anyone who has dedicated entirely too much time plopped in front of the tube, effectively doing nothing.  But there are some shows of which I am quite fond that never really seemed to get their due.  None of them were high art, ratings darlings, or critically acclaimed.  Still, these shows – all of which aired at some point in the 1990s – that didn't change the world deserve a few words. 

5) Tour of Duty (1987-1990)

     No doubt put on television in an attempt to cash in on the success of Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986), Tour of Duty (1987-1990) started off as a promising in the bush combat show, one that would allow for something beyond the allegory Stone employed.  Unfortunately, cast changes – some due to character death – and altering the tone to allow for soapy romantic interplays (not really necessary in a TV show about how the men of Bravo Company endure the war) robbed the show of its distinctive feel.  Moving the filming location from Hawaii to a Hollywood backlot also made it feel less authentic.
     Still, there is something raw (for the era) about Tour of Duty.  It addresses racial inequity and tension, and not in some kind of enlightened way.  Lt. Goldman (Stephen Caffrey) and SSgt. Anderson (Terrence Knox) may have great affection for their black soldiers, but they take almost no action to limit the racism of the white soldiers; it is the late 1960s and they don't have the answers.  This is a show that aired before "nigger" became the n-word, as is evidenced by it being used on multiple occasions (including in the pilot).
     Sadly, for all the good of Tour of Duty – it has good production values for its era, the action (especially in the first season) is compelling, the characters feel real – it simply feels lifeless once the period appropriate music is removed from it.  So much of the mood is killed that it makes the show seem second rate.  That, and the knowledge that the producers felt a need to compete with ABC's China Beach (1988-1991) for female viewers (not a battle they were going to win) by making it less of a combat-focused show keep it from being an all-time favorite.  But there are more than enough great episodes (mostly from Season One) to keep this show in mind when it comes to thinking about a time when the networks didn't have cable competition and were still willing to take chances.
     I have actually met and had brief conversations with series regular Miguel A. Nuñez, Jr. and guest star Tim Thomerson ("They Good, the Bad, and the Dead", 1987). Both felt that Tour of Duty never got its proper due from critics but that fans – especially those who have served in the military – have continued to be enthusiastic about it even 20 years after its cancellation.  I cannot speak for the critics of the era, but I do know that Tour of Duty started off as a show that was willing to let the soldiers be afraid of the threat of combat and desiring little more than making it through the day in one piece.  It wasn't the rah-rah piece that Combat (1962-67) or Baa Baa Black Sheep (1976-78) were, but it fell short of giving the audience a real feel of the dangers of war (I blame the era) while striving to be more realistic.
     I say give Season One a chance.  Forget that it doesn't have the period music and concentrate on the relationships between the characters or how nothing is ever as simple as a TV show of the time should have had it.

4) The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (1993-94)

     Back before Bruce Campbell got fat or producer Carlton Cuse found success with Nash Bridges (1996-2001) and Lost (2004-10), there was a show on FOX with cowboys, rockets, and prostitutes.  And it wasn't Firefly.  Sure, The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. (1993-94) had some issues balancing the campy humor with western action, but Campbell was perfect as the Harvard educated lawyer who turned bounty hunter to avenge his murdered father.  There were elements of the supernatural and science fiction, but the show mostly existed to give a humorous take on the dime novel stories of cowboys and villains.
     The cast – limited as it was – could not have been better.  Campbell knows how to play charming, bordering on (but stopping short of becoming) smarmy.  Fit and young, he plays the role like a Han Solo in the fading days of the Wild West who is unburdened by a Luke Skywalker.  Filling in the Chewbacca role was Julius Carry's Lord Bowler, though Bowler begins the series as a friendly adversary of Brisco.  Christian Clemenson rounded out the regulars as the uptight lawyer for the Westerfield Club, Socrates Poole.  All seemed to luxuriate in their roles without crossing the line into self-involvement.  Recurring characters like Dixie Cousins (Kelly Rutherford), Professor Wiskwire (John Astin), Whip Morgan (Jeff Philips), Pete Hutter (John Pyper-Ferguson, perhaps the ultimate TV guest star of the 1990s-present), and John Bly (Billy Drago) provided a sense of continuity and always matched the main cast in terms of tenor and tone.
     Brisco County was like the Deadlands RPG without the need for giant monsters or a Southerner's fantasy about the CSA enduring. It debuted in the same season as The X-Files (1993-2002) – and served as the latter's lead-in – and was actually the more enjoyable show of the two.  What The X-Files had was a monster-of-the-week formula it could through in to break up the alien mythology episodes, and that was wholly lacking on television at the time.  Brisco County had the additional burden of people thinking that it was a Western – a genre that draws less interest on television than mild sci-fi – and that kept some people at bay.  I would assume that anyone looking for a traditional Western would have been downright angry at the mix that Brisco County offered.
     I think there are only three or four dud episodes in the single season of Brisco County.  It was on its way to building a much more accessible and compelling mythology than The X-Files or Lost (2004-2010) with the "device" that set most of the events in motion, but Cuse has made public comments about how he imagined a second season of Brisco County would have moved in a different direction, so maybe it is for the best that it is all contained in the 27 episodes.  I only wish that TNT had produced a TV movie for the last adventure of Brisco and Bowler.

3) Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995-99)

     I remember when I was watching the first run of Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (1995-99) that it was rather silly stuff.  And it still is.  But Hercules is much more fun and consistent than its spawn, Xena: Warrior Princess (1996-2000).  Kevin Sorbo was a more likeable lead than Lucy Lawless (at least at that point in her career) and his Hercules didn't need to spend endless episodes making up for his past misdeeds. One can argue that the Action Pack telefilms and Season One offer little reason to invest in Hercules.  Maybe.  But the show does go on to get better.
     It is never high art.  I don't think anyone ever had any illusions that it was supposed to be.  Sorbo and semi-regular Michael Hurst (as Iolaus) do their best to not let the humor undercut the dramatic tension.  Both managed to make the choreographed combats look interesting (if not realistic in any way).  Recurring guests Robert Trebor (as Salmoneus), Bruce Campbell (as Autolycus, King of Thieves), Alexandra Tydings (as Aphrodite), and the late Kevin Smith (as Ares) managed to match the energy and tone of the regulars in such a way that it was surprising to think that they were not always present.
     Given the limited production budget – somewhat maximized from shooting in New Zealand – it is amazing how good most of the episodes look.  Okay, maybe not some of the costuming, and definitely not the wigs and beards that look like they came out of a high school drama department's stash, but the overall photography and set design are well above average.
     Sorbo went on the make the vastly inferior Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda (2000-2005) and is apparently in the process of making a television show that seems eerily similar to My Name is Bruce (2007).  However, he will likely forever be thought of as Hercules.  And with good reason.  It was a fun show that relied almost entirely on the charisma of its star, and to good effect. 

2) Farscape (1999-2003)

     Nobody makes a soft Southern accent in space sexier than Ben Browder, and not in any intentional way.  Browder's John Crichton character is an RPG player's wet dream – the guy who gets to live the adventure and make constant pop-culture references and in-jokes during the action without breaking the mood.  He is the All-American hero, a Ph.D. and Astronaut who is good looking and (on Earth, at least) suave.
     Sure, Farscape (1999-2003) could have used a much larger production budget and less puppetry, but it endures as a quality show nonetheless. Creator Rockne S. O'Bannon and producers Richard Manning, David Kemper, and Robert Halmi, Jr. were never afraid to throw some darkness into the adventures of the earthling cast out amongst an alien universe.  At the same time, there was always a fair amount of humor to be found.
     The only bad things I have to say about Farscape are that there are four or five episodes that do nothing to drive the story forward or develop the characters and that the wrap-up film, Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars (2004) is too compressed to allow for the character interplay that made the show one of the best programs on during its run.  Browder, Claudia Black, Anthony Simcoe, Gigi Edgely, Virginia Hey, Lani John Tupu, Tammy McIntosh, Raelee Hill, Jonathan Hardy (voice), and Wayne Pygram all seem to find something deeper in the characters than what is on the page. 
     I have never been happier to own a series on DVD than I am with Farscape.  I cannot figure out how it was not picked up for a fifth season (the show's producers and the Sci-Fi Channel – now SyFy – could not come to terms on the production costs), yet Stargate SG-1 (1997-2007) ran for ten seasons.  Maybe having a movie tie-in and an established TV star like Richard Dean Anderson makes all the difference in the world.  But Farscape remains one of the better shows that cable television had to offer at the time, and it didn't need to use frequent swearing or gratuitous nudity and sex scenes to impress critics.

1) Friday the 13th: The Series (1987-1990)

     Sure, there is a pale imitation of Friday the 13th: The Series (1987-1990) on the SyFy channel called Warehouse 13 (2009-present), but the latter has a much lighter, comedic tone.  This is not to say that there wasn't humor in the old Friday the 13th: The Series, but not all of it was intentional.  No, Friday the 13th: The Series was about as close to a horror film as one could sell on American television in the late 1980s.
     The set-up is wholly implausible in every regard.  Antique shop owner Louis Vendredi (R.G. Armstrong) makes a deal with the Devil to sell cursed objects that both wreak havoc in the world and deliver the souls of those who use them to, you guessed it, the Devil.  For some reason, Louis decides he doesn't want to do this anymore and that doesn't want sit well wit Satan.  That sets it up for his distant relatives – this is never clearly established and how they are related changes over the course of the series – Micki (Louise Robey) and Ryan (John D. LeMay) to inherit his shop.  They meet former magician/item procurer/WWII hero Jack Marshak (Chris Wiggins) and find out that they have just unleashed a flood of cursed items into the market.
     The rest of the series is supposed to be an effort to limit the damage these relics can cause, recover them and lock them away.  Louis reappears from beyond the grave a few times to menace the trio, but the show focuses much more frequently on the discovery of one of the items sold well before Micki and Ryan took over the shop.  Ryan exits after a two-part episode that is much more evocative of The Omen (1976) than slasher horror, making room for Johnny Ventura (Steven Monarque).
     While Ryan was really the heart of the series, Season Three has some of the best written episodes and the Johnny character may have developed into a compelling one given more time.  Instead, Paramount shut down production when they had enough material to sell the show in half hour installments overseas (under the name "Friday's Curse").  It would have been nice for Friday the 13th: The Series to have come to a proper conclusion, but that wouldn't be fitting for the horror genre.
     The effects may be cheesy.  The stories may use too many shortcuts that seemed obvious even in the era.  But there is something compelling and fun in the show.  It is one that could use a revisit, provided the right casting and respect of the characters as originally written.  Until then, we are left with the homage on SyFy.

The Red Badge of Courage (1895)

     I remember giving The Red Badge of Courage (1895) a try sometime in the fall of 1994.  This was a bad time in my life, but I thought I could make some kind of general progress if I could get to reading all of the books I had either sidestepped or outright neglected from junior high on.  I know I didn't make it past the second chapter before I put the book back on the shelf and decided that I didn't need to read it.  It didn't seem to be well written and the purposefully inarticulate dialogue grated on me.  Why would anyone think this was a worthwhile book?
     Now, much older and free of almost all of that egotistical arrogance, I found myself wanting to take up a short book between non-fiction titles (or, more correctly, as a break from the second non-fiction book I was reading).  I had purchased a Dover Thrift Editions copy of The Red Badge of Courage over a year prior, and thought I may as well just power through it.  The DTE copy has only 100 pages, so it practically invites anyone serious about reading to spend a day or two with it.  It also helped that I had long ago abandoned the idea that licensed genre fiction should be considered on par with literature.  That was a barrier that was too long to come down.
     One of the things I learned during my hated tenure as a wage slave was that there are far too many people who believe that the things we are to learn in school – including the books we should have read – are useless in a life that demands little more than remembering to smile, say thank you, and show up to work (though not necessarily on time, and with no subsequent demand to perform work while being paid).  There is a persistent belief that getting by is good enough and aspiring for me is foolish.  These are the people who could not name the capital of Missouri (they being located one state east) or convert easy fractions like 3/4 to decimals.  I detested these qualities in my co-workers, felt diminished in being associated with them in having the same basic job.  If I were to forever avoid the literature that is supposed to help inform my understanding of the human condition, I would be just like them.
     Where Stephen Crane's Henry Fleming must come to terms with what it means to be a man – what the true nature of courage is – I found myself struggling with what kind of person I wanted to be.  The are many glib answers to my question; I don't have the din of battle or the press of fellow soldiers to help me find the line.  I do know that on some level I want to feel as though I am educated, and that an education is not something that someone suffers through.  It is not something to be purchased as a means to the better career and looking like a worthwhile mate.  It is something that needs to be internalized and exercised as a person, as a citizen.
     Sure, Henry gets to discover what it means to be a man just past his youth.  Lots of people do that.  Crane presents the various men in the book who cannot come to terms with what value they have, but they are neither to be pitied or scorned.  They simply are.  That is not what any of us aspire to.  I know that I want more than to be (though let's not rule out how important existence is for everything else).  When I started my first self-imposed reading project in the August of 2010, I wanted to get in the habit of reading important books.  I think that I may have neglected the number of fun reads so far in year two (two licensed fiction novels and a handful of short stories seems light) that help balance out the more serious titles.  Unlike the battle scenes in The Red Badge of Courage, the serious and respected titles do not necessarily inspire a sense of urgency or vigor – school inspired/required reading always has an external structure to add importance to anything read.
     I think I would have been much more appreciative of Crane's novel had I read it when I was supposed to, which is to say at some point in high school.  It would have held a different personal meaning for me back then, sure, but it would have borne the benefits of a more in-depth exploration of the text.  Not that I ever enjoyed the ideal of manufacturing found symbolism in order to prove to our teachers that we really read and understood the assigned book.  There is something liberating in reading the classics that does not come with the genre fiction I once aspired to write.  Not that I have entirely given up on that dream; I have just slightly modified it to hope that I may one day write something that has a more human and truthful element.  That is where The Red Badge of Courage succeeds.

The Hellenistic Age (2007)

     There is a real and marked difference between history books written for the mass market – and I don't necessarily mean those titles that are dumbed down to be appealing to the pseudo-intellectuals – and those written for historians.  What author Peter Green, who penned one of my favorite books [The Greco-Persian Wars (1996)], assumes is at an introductory level may be for those who are dedicated to proper academic historiography is a dense and ultimately unfulfilling read.  While The Hellenistic Age (2007) does have much information about the royal lines and personages that vied for control of the disparate parts of Alexander the Great's empire, the general information about the age is mostly hidden and comes out in anecdotes and asides. 
     It is understandable that Green does not dwell long on how Alexander came to power or how he conquered multiple empires.  He has written on the topic of Alexander before and is not merely searching for a way to rehash material.  Ultimately, Alexander III of Macedon ("the Great") is important to the age because his conquest and empire define its beginning.  The cities founded by him and subsequently ruled by Macedonians (largely) loyal to him became important centers.  What information is given about the life and times of Alexander helps frame the intrigues that follow; it seems that much like "nobody out-crazies Ophelia" (thank you, Lisa Simpson), few lines in the whole of human history could even aspire to be regarded as competing with the Seleucids, Ptolemies, or competing Macedonian and Thracian lines for various thrones and lands.
     The Ptolemies in particular are a subject that cannot be correctly handled in this brief text.  Putting aside that every daughter from the line over a 100 year period seems to be named Cleopatra, the scheming is fascinating.  Sons murder mothers, mothers murder sons and daughters, people are summoned but flee – only to be executed in a place they presumed to be a safe-haven – or are married off to rivals and raise an army against the person who married them off.  Their rule in Egypt is just part of the story, one that is certainly more widely known to American schoolchildren than the Seleucid Empire.  Indeed, there is no escaping the interconnectedness of the fragmented and warring empires until they fall, one by one.
     The odd fascination with creating a dynastic line – something that is relatively new to the eastern Mediterranean – is contradicted by the willingness to kill of certain family members (or turn against the family altogether) to speed immediate political aims.  Culturally if not ethnically Greek, the Hellenistic kingdoms find themselves in a constant state of war.  Part of this, Green argues, stems from the motivation of Alexander's conquest in the first place – to make money.  Because modern war is so obviously a cost-generating endeavor, it takes a little mental gymnastics to order the mind to accept the reality of ancient conquests being about returning gold, silver, and slaves to the conquering nation and with little to no regard for the (not enslaved) population won in the battles.
     Green does not present a clear case for how Rome came to conquer the Hellenistic kingdoms other than to say that not even the Macedonian phalanx could stand up to the Roman legions.  Fine.  The question that I had – and really more related to Rome than the Hellenistic kingdoms – was: from where did Rome get all of her soldiers?  Rome conquers the Macedonians with help from rebellious Greek city-states, but these are too weak to resist Rome in any meaningful manner – even when banded together in "leagues".  But Rome does this during the Second Punic War (or so is my understanding from the text).  Lots of soldiers, more than one would think a city-state Republic (which Rome really is at the time) could be expected to muster for just one theater of the war.
     Rome gets involved in the way the Classical Greeks used to get involved – somebody came and asked for them to get in the fight.  The psychology of modern politics makes this seem like a ridiculous way to handle foreign relations, but it was the status quo in the Mediterranean for a good long time.  Indeed, it seems that the only things Rome wanted more than money (in the form of tribute or from direct conquest) and art (looted by the legions) was slaves.  The Hellenistic Age apparently operated – largely – on a slave economy, the kind that made it legal to go out and capture people in any conceivable manner so they could be sold for profit or ransomed back to their people.
     Green makes some comparison to the dominance of the slave trade to oil dependency, but he is not aggressive enough in this to please me.  The lesson learned – from various slave rebellions (where the rebellion was not over the fact that there were slaves or that slaves were treated poorly, but rather that some of the educated or aristocratic person who had been enslaved felt that they were suffering in an inappropriate position) – was to always keep the slaves busy.  That meant that rather than fostering efficiency – siege weaponry excepted – the Hellenistic Greeks turned to intellectual pursuits.  They became like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory (2007-present), looking down on the practical application of science (see Howard being an engineer who actually designs real, functional things) in favor of the theoretical.  There was likewise a turning from public works and service to more selfish pursuits, including book reading.
     The Hellenistic Age is a good book, but it is not a quick read (despite its low page count).  Green does not seem as focused as he was with The Greco-Persian Wars, and cannot find a comfortable in-between his desire to write a text that is an introductory and accessible piece yet still fitting for one looking for a springboard into more serious, academic works.  Had I not taken the time to refresh myself with the age and its preceding (more glorious) Classical Age, I think I would have been both lost and frustrated, so I would caution any potential readers to have some recent familiarity with the material covered.

     What were a few of the passages that jumped out at me?

"It has often been pointed out that ancient inventors were familiar with steam power (indeed, produced a model) and could make effective pistons yet never combined their knowledge to build a steam-engine. Water-driven mills were known but not used. The same applied ti the compound pulley, which enormously reduced the energy needed to shift a given mass. The reason should now be clear. Any device that left the servile labor force with spare energy was seen as a direct stimulus to revolution." – p 77

     Yes, it bothers me that the slave economy delayed the implementation of the steam engine by close to 2000 years.  More than that, it offends me that the human race was doubled diminished because it ignored the drive to advance the (practical) knowledge of the species in favor of keeping others bound in service and robbed of any sense of freedom.  This endured for quite some time, and it is a sad legacy of the Hellenistic Age.  Seriously, that amount of human trafficking boggles the mind.

"As in the case with oil, there was a great deal of money to be made from the slave-trade by the unscrupulous. Any human being, rich or poor, high- or lowborn, of whatever nation, if seized in war or by pirates could be legitimately deprived of freedom, turned into a mere commodity. ...Like the oil-cartels, [the slave trade], in a very literal sense, kept the wheels turning." – p 77 

     See the note above.  Green doesn't develop this point further, but he is an historian and not a political scientist.  The implied warning is more alarming than the danger the traditions internal combustion engine and its fuel on the planet or the scarcity of petroleum.  The reliance – and profitability – of oil has kept new technologies from being fully developed.  Will we, as a species, find ourselves 200 years behind the scientific curve because our focus was on tinkering with an existing technology and fuel rather than properly exploring and developing alternatives?

Ptolemy IX Lathyros, who himself had be married to two of his sisters.

"On Lathyros' death in 81/0, [Sulla] sent out Ptolemy X's son as the successor. The youth (Ptomley XI) was required to marry Lathyros' daughter Cleopatra Berenice, his stepmother or, possibly, his mother. After the honeymoon, he murdered her and was duly lynched by the Alexandrian mob. Sulla (in this typically Roman) took no further steps to implement the will but washed his hands of the whole business." – p 121

     Here, we have Roman interference (Sulla) in Ptolemaic matters combined with the insanities that were the marriages in the royal line.  Part of the problem may have been the belief that it was a good idea to marry son to step-mother, or to sister, or mother, or to marry a daughter to successive brothers (to keep the power in the hands of the family).  The will in question was over who was to be in charge and whether or not Rome had any claim to Egypt.

Lucius Cornelius Sulla, a Roman who had great success mucking around with the Hellenistic Kingdoms.

"Berenice, with ambitions of her own and aware that Rome disliked petticoat governments, looked around desperately for a passable husband. A soi-distant Seleucid nicknamed, from his oafish manners, Kybiosaktes ("the Salt-Fish Hawker") proved so revolting that after a few days of marital intimacy, [Cleopatra Berenice (IV)] had him strangled." – p 125

      By this point in the story, it is a little hard to believe that anyone in their right mind would marry into any of the ruling families.  On the other hand, this type of behavior had become normative and is remarkable to us because it relates to the lineage of the ruling houses.  The way that Green brings all of this salaciousness to light, it is hard to believe that there is no premium cable series in the works for the Ptolemies.  Much more interesting (and more material with which to work) than the Tudors.

Cleopatra VII – the one that was married to two of her brothers, had a child by Julius Cesar and twins by Marc Anthony, and was just not dainty or demure.

"[T]he moviemakers' femme fatale is, in essence, Cleopatra as Horace and Propertius painted her." – p 129

     The Cleopatra in question is Cleopatra VII, the one that everyone knows.  I just liked this line because it is great writing.  It takes the interactions that seem so deviant and alien to modern sensibilities and places it in an easily accessible frame.  More than that, it makes the whole thing more human by showing that the propagandists of the time presented her in a manner that we could both recognize and understand.

"Yet in the end – and if there is a moral to be drawn from the Hellenistic age, this is surely it – the essential condition of the common people, from mountain tribesmen to fellahin and, a foriori, slaves, had changed little between the coming of Alexander and the death of Cleopatra; nor would it, until the advent of the Industrial Revolution meant that they were no longer the near-exclusive and stringently controlled source of the world's energy and could break free, at last, from that imprisoning and repetitive cycle." – p 130

     Here, Green makes a brief statement about how it didn't much matter to the peasantry who was in charge after the end of the Classical Age.  The overlords were often distant, almost exclusively foreign, and they were forced to labor for a mere subsistence existence.  Unfortunately, Green did not dedicate the focus of this book to the plight of the slave and how that did not change for nearly twenty centuries.

The various regions and peoples of the Hellenistic Age.

Greece, or as they undoubtedly thought of it, a hundred little realms of disparate people who share a common base language (and speak of form of Attic Greek to allow for trade).  We get a good (and true) story of how Rhodes came to have the funds to build the Colossus.

The Macedonian/Thracian Lineage.

The Selecuids.

The Ptolemies.  Take a look and see if you can figure out where it all went wrong.

Restrepo (2010)

    Restrepo (2010) could best be described as footage in search of a point.  Not so much a glance into the real war in Afghanistan as a jumbled, but rather somehow emotionally distant collection of on-site footage and post deployment interviews.  Right or wrong, Restrepo makes the American soldiers appear to unworldly, albeit well-trained (if not supported) for combat, pawns in a political strategy that has no clear method of succeeding.
     I cannot fault the combat camera work; were people shooting anywhere near me, I would not at all be concerned where my camera was pointing (even if those were the shots which I was endeavoring to capture).  Yet it is the lack of kinetic impact that makes this seem listless and without urgency.  Instead of giving the viewer a better understanding of who Juan "Doc" Restrepo was (or even how his name came to be chosen for the outpost), he is simply the most mentioned of the early casualties of Battle Company.  This decision leaves the project without any emotional weight -- absent what the viewer may bring to it based upon feeling about the war in Afghanistan or war in general -- and can leave the audience asking the unfortunate question: "Why do I care about these people?".  That question is wholly in mind as the death a Staff Sergeant is supposed to bring some emotional weight but instead makes one particular soldier appear to be unable to endure the stress of combat and the loss of his NCO while the rest of the men continue to do their jobs.  To me -- and I am shocked at my response -- I found this affected soldier to be weak, to be a detriment to those around him for losing his shit before the fighting was done.  It had the wrong kind of emotional impact.
     While there is no doubt that much of the tension these men are experiencing lies in waiting for someone to attack them, that doesn't translate in this film.  The most evocative and effective footage of the film shows up at the two and half minutes in and is not only never matched, but not even approximated in the remaining hour and a half.  The roughhousing and crude camaraderie of the men plays as juvenile.  The interactions between the locals (shuras) showcase the lack of understanding and cooperation on both sides, which is undoubtedly accurate but without any further insight to what this actually means for the stated goal of the mission in the Korengal Valley.
     In watching Restrepo, I felt neither emotionally invested nor intellectually satisfied that I had achieved a better understanding of what these men had gone through.  I didn't feel the weight of time on these men as they lived for over a year with daily attacks on their OPs and even more on their patrols.  I felt I was left with an immature, semi-professional assemblage of footage and added (and much needed) follow-up interviews that simply didn't contribute a better understanding of the men or the mission.  I know this film has received a lot of love, but my advice would be to find a better documentary or seek out one of the better books written about the war in Afghanistan (to date).