I saw the “Tom Cruise” version of ‘War of the Worlds’ last night. Not too bad. It probably would have been scarier and more dramatic without the five minutes of commercials for every ten minutes of film, but it got the job done. I especially enjoyed the fact that the Martians, or aliens, or whatever they were supposed to be, communicate by playing sousaphone. This essential fact is overlooked in most documentaries.
So, which riff on this theme did you like best?
The original book? The Orson Wells radio show? The movie from the sixties or whenever it was with the alien ships that have weapons that look like the lights on the New Jersey Turnpike? Or the Tom Cruise version? Or something else?
I liked ‘Signs’, which I consider a kissing-cousin of these, although I accept that most people think that it is a terrible movie. To them, I say “swing away”
I saw a bit of ‘Buckaroo Banzai’ the other day. It contains sort of an alternative history of the WotW, centered around Orson Welles’s radio broadcast, which, it turns out, was not a hoax but actually a real newscast. But then the aliens convinced everyone (including Orson Welles), via careful trickery, that it was all a hoax. And then the aliens settled down and have been living in New Jersey ever since. Presumably they picked New Jersey as a good place, where they wouldn’t stand out.
I thought this movie was pretty neat when I was a kid. It has not aged well. Another precious memory ruined.
As another aside, I grew up in New Jersey, not far from Princeton. At one point I was dating a girl who lived in West Windsor (no jokes, please) and once when I was trying to take a shortcut to her house I got royally lost and ended up driving past an enormous barn with “Grovers Mills” shingled on the roof. There really is a Grovers Mills, and I’ve been there. But the resemblance ends there, more or less.
