The Sci-Fi Channel recently ran all eight hours of Stephen King's The Stand back to back...to back...to back. I wasn't able to watch it at the time, so I recorded it on my DVR.

I recall having watched it back in 1994 when it first aired on ABC, and I enjoyed it at the time. It won a couple of Emmys that year and was nominated for several more, including Outstanding Miniseries. They assembled an impressive cast, including Gary Sinise, Molly Ringworm Ringwald (sorry, old habit), Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Rob Lowe, Miguel Ferrer, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (!), and even Stephen King himself.

But despite all that, as I watched the first two-hour episode, the consistent thought going through my mind was how absolutely awful it was. Not only was the acting from the "unknowns" horrible, I was extremely disappointed in the performances by actors whose abilities I greatly respect, including Sinise, Lowe and Ed Harris. On the other hand, Kathy Bates was very good in her brief appearance.

As a layman uneducated in the intricacies and details of producing a movie or a miniseries, I choose to lay the blame at the feet of the director, Mick Garris. There appeared to me to be many, many bad decisions that Garris made, making the acting look even worse than it was. And don't even get me started on the cornfield where various characters went to meet Mother Abigail in their sleep.

I don't know if I'm going to bother to watch the remaining six hours. It's taking up a lot of space on my DVR, so I may take the expedient (and mind-saving) step of just deleting the rest. We'll see.

It seems as though I've been going to the movies a lot lately. Hmm...must be a phase I'm going through.

Anyway, I went to see Stardust yesterday, and I'm glad I did. It was an interesting story (albeit somewhat predictable), it was well acted, and what red-blooded American man wouldn't enjoy a film with Michelle Pfeiffer, Claire Danes, Kate Magowan and Sienna Miller? And I suppose that after Nathaniel Parker grew into his own, he was a treat for the ladies, too.

I've only got one minor complaint, and I think it wouldn't be an issue for most Americans: the accents. I'm not positive how many of the cast aren't English, but I know that Michelle Pfeiffer and Claire Danes are Americans, and had to learn how to speak "English." I lived for about 16 years hearing at least one English accent every day, and I have to say that on many occasions, these two lovely ladies' English accents were lousy. Also a bit incongruous was that Robert De Niro didn't even try to put on an accent; he just spoke Merkin*.

As an aside, what's up with the IMDB entry for this movie? In the abbreviated cast listing on the main page, they don't include Pfeiffer, Danes or De Niro, but they do include the actors who played, for example, "Grumpy Customer" and "Guard." What's up with that?

At any rate, a thoroughly enjoyable movie. I recommend it to you.

*Note: Merkin is my lame attempt at being cute. It means "American," although there are some other interesting definitions. Google it.

When I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum last night, they showed trailers for a couple of films that really made me want to go see them: Lions for Lambs and The Kingdom.

Lions revolves around a crisis in some typically desolate place in the Middle East (later research indicates it was Afghanistan, but I don't think the trailer indicated that), and the military, political and social (in the guise of a college professor) responses to it. Tom Cruise plays a Senator who appears to support the military response, talking to reporter Meryl Streep. Robert Redford, who also directed the film, plays what appears to be a passivist college professor trying to talk one of his students into sticking with his studies, using the military action as an example of "this is what could happen to you if you quit."

While that premise could easily get into the anti-war preachy mode, the trailer didn't seem to indicate that Redford took that approach. Cruise looked believable as a Senator and didn't appear to fall into the "evil politician" stereotype which is not uncommon in this type of film. So despite the actual personalities involved in this movie, the trailer made me want to go see it. But I'll have to wait until November for it to be released.

Kingdom appears to be a very action-oriented film, starring Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman. In a nutshell, the FBI sends a team to investigate a bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed a bunch of Americans, and then the terrorists that planted the bomb start going after the investigation team. The trailer really impressed me. Oh, and did I mention that Jennifer Garner is hot?!

I only have to wait until the end of September for Kingdom, but I expect this movie to be in my plans when the time comes.

I decided to go see The Bourne Ultimatum last night. All in all, I'm glad I did, but there were a few too many distractions for my taste.

Oh, and don't be worried if you plan to go see this film. I'm not going to reveal any plot spoilers. Unfortunately, there may be a new spoilers of other types, namely, the things that irritated me while watching the movie. Well, not counting the numbskull sitting behind me who bought three packs of Cheetos to munch on. I mean, sheesh, could you make any more noise while you try (barely successfully, based on how long it took) to open the bags to stuff the contents down your throat? And didn't your mama teach you to chew with your mouth closed?

Sorry, I just had to get that off my chest. Back to the movie.

Thrillers based on Ludlum novels are expected to require some degree of suspension of disbelief. While TBU (that's The Bourne Ultimatum, in case that abbreviation escaped you) doesn't require you to hang your disbelief by the neck until dead, it's gets pretty close. But I'll also admit that these instances were brief and passing, and the story itself was good enough to rope me back into it in very short order.

I'll also whine that it's pretty irritating that some of the best scenes are used in the TV commercials for the picture, so they completely lost their impact when I saw them in the movie. Oh, and thanks for the cheese (or Cheetos, maybe?) to go along with my whine.

Probably the most distracting thing about the flick was the over-reliance on the NYPD Blue approach to holding the cameras: portrait shots were usually from handheld cameras at a long-ish distance and a tight zoom, so the character's head keeps bouncing around the screen. Added to that, these shots were often over the shoulder of the second character in the scene, as though the cameraman was peeking over their shoulder, and the back of their head takes up a third or more of the screen. This effect was used liberally at the beginning of the movie, but thankfully diminished as the film progressed.

A fight scene in the middle part of the movie was very well done. I tend to want (irrationally, maybe) to see every move and blow during a movie fight, but this one went too fast and had too much action for that. So while it wasn't done the way I "prefer," I was still impressed by it.

Maybe I'm too picky and literal [No, Boyd, not you!! — Ed.], but please don't attempt to make me believe that the main character is dead 45 minutes into an hour and fifty minute film. Okay, I said I wouldn't reveal any plot spoilers, but, c'mon, would you really buy that?

While this sounds like a gripe session, I enjoyed watching this movie. I'm not sure it gained much from the theater experience, though, so if you're cheap or for other reasons watch a lot of movies after they come out on DVDs, I think this one is a good candidate for the wait. If you're a frequent movie-goer, though, go ahead and spend the nine bucks or whatever to see this in your local cinema. It's intended to entertain, and The Bourne Ultimatum does a good job of entertaining.