V for ventricular thrombosis

As I mentioned before, "V for Vendetta" was one of my rentals this holiday weekend. And as much as I want to make fun of it, I actually couldn't find much wrong with it.

I've never read the graphic novel, but I can see a lot of it's influence, go figure. And overall, it's a warning about the signs of something so simply scary as real facism that could easily take over our way of life. Unfortunately, the entire word "facism" gets completely usurped by those who'd rather paint it as a generic "evil" rather than allow the association to it's true roots of corporatized control and rhetorically-correct fearmongering, replete with muscle and power to subdue those not on-board into compliance.

And the spiffy uniforms. Can't forget the uniforms.

It's fascinating that there's almost a tradition of British fascism-laden-distopian-future films out there. My favorite is the recent retelling of Shakespear's "Richard III", with Sir Richard McKellan as the power-hungry crackpot himself, crying out "A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse" during the final battle when his escaping jeep breaks down on the battlefied. There was quite a fascism-inspired fantasy going on in that retelling, to make it seem that Britain wasn't all that far from falling in that direction back in the 30's themselves.

And from what I read about history, that wasn't far from the truth. Heck, look at what Orwell was coming from. That stuff didn't just appear out of nowhere.

But did "V" actually really rate a deep discussion on the warning signs of fascism and whatnot that I'm drunkenly spinning off into? Naw, not really. It's a bit ham-fisted there. And a bit rushed; probably a longer miniseries would be able to explore some of the nuances. Hmm, I've been saying that a lot...

Oh, and the only other thing I can comment about: Natalie Portman is very, very tiny. I mean, really. She's like a minature figurine in all of this. But I dug the bald & angry look... *ahem*

(edited to remove some truly bizarre drunken nonsense... which had to be really, really seriously nonesense if even *I* didn't want to publish it...)