So Much for Wise Men: Three Kings

History has not been too kind to this flick. Although it was no doubt originally meant as a subtle attempt to encourage American military involvement in the Balkans back in the late 1990s, this film seems like a sick joke if you interpret it as an equally sincere plea to go back into Iraq and finish what the first Gulf War started. No doubt director David O. Russell and company meant well, but thanks to the Second Gulf War, their good intentions seem kinda questionable nowadays.

Besides, you know what they say about where good intentions lead -- and what kind of roads use them as paving stones.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

ER: “24 Hours (Pilot)”

The oddest thing I noticed about the first episode of the long-running medical series ER?

How young George Clooney looked in the first season.

Granted, he was hardly the first actor to age in a certain role but I've gotten so used to seeing him in older roles that it is shocking to see how young he was when he first started out. It didn't help that he spent the entire first season wearing weird blonde highlights in his hair that lowered his age to the point that he seemed to be auditioning for a reboot of Doogie Howser, M.D.. Of course, once the second season started, he stopped wearing highlights and allowed his hair to take on a more natural color but for a while there, I had to wonder how it was that Clooney's character Doug Ross managed to look younger than almost every other adult male character including Noah Wyle's John Carter character -- who, of course, was an intern.

In any event, the initial episode of the series focused more on Dr. Mark Greene -- the Anthony Edwards character -- than on either Ross or Carter. Apparently, the show was set in a fictional inner-city Chicago hospital and its main purpose was to give the American TV-viewing public some idea of what it was like to be a doctor or a nurse in such a hospital. Of course, as time went by, the show would grow more and more melodramatic to the point that it seemed light-years away from its original intention -- and I'm sure that its having to compete with newer medical shows like Grey's Anatomy and House M.D. didn't help matters.

Just the same, the first episode managed to straddle a believable line between fiction and reality in that the average viewer could actually picture the events of said episode occurring in an actual hospital. The same, unfortunately, could not be said of more recent episodes.

Movie Song of the Week: "Man of Constant Sorrow"

From the 2000 movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?, it is a musical lesson on why it is never wise to try to interfere with the taste of country music fans.