Ben Hur (2010 TV series)

Take a well-loved epic movie, with a cast of thousands, even a remake that eclipsed the original in standing, and then remake it again on a fraction of the budget for TV.

It's a complete mystery where these notions come from. How can anyone have thought that success in this endeavour might be achievable? This oft-shown story of a Jewish Roman galley-slave's journey through revenge doesn't even need updating, since the 1959 movie with Charlton Heston hasn't dated at all. After all, it is set 2,000 years ago, you can hardly go replacing all the scrolls with mobile phones.

And yet, a couple of years ago, Canadian TV had a (cough) stab at it anyway.

And you know what? I've never read the book, but I reckon they've done a pretty good job of such an impossible task. Despite the few times that Judah Ben-Hur meets his nemesis Octavius Messala after their rift, that central relationship smoulders, and the way that Judah's bitterness toward his enemy takes him over is realised here, in my opinion, better than in any other version that I can recall. (admittedly I saw the others a few years ago now)

When it comes to the famous chariot race, the adaptors have wisely gone for something of a cross-country course, requiring very few extras at any given point on the circuit. It's more reminiscent of the podrace in The Phantom Menace. When Judah eventually wins in this version, it's in quite an unexpected way, and the look on his face says that even he was trying to pull-up his horses at that moment.

In a subplot, there's another bloke who people are calling the King of the Jews who seems mostly irrelevant to proceedings, although when Judah helps him up with his cross near the end, it's unknown why he doesn't try to help him any further than that.

All in all, an okay telling of the story, but as I say, still a mystery why they didn't just repeat the talkie again, or make something fresh. :)

An American Kiwi In London

Spent the day charging around London with my visiting American buddy from Auckland Rob.

Touristy pictures follow - rollover for commentary! :)

Richmond to Waterloo in 17 minutes

Alright, 17 minutes 11 seconds.

We were sitting at Richmond Station when the announcement suddenly came over that we were now going to travel fast right through to London Waterloo. This is that journey. My phone isn't great quality, but for this route to ignore Clapham Junction (Britain's busiest railway station!) does seem like a rare event. Also sped through are North Sheen, Mortlake, Barnes, Putney, Wandsworth Town, Queenstown Road and Vauxhall.

Shot on my Ideos phone at about 09:50am on 26/10/2012, looking south/west.

Kids and Dads

Wrote a 90-second radio spot about the shifting perception of a father in the eyes of his kids:

You can click the image above to download and listen.

Also available from today at www.scrubcutter.com. :)

The Joy Of Teletext

Whatever else you might say about teletext, it has never looked old-fashioned.

In fact, for quite a while there, it looked accurately futuristic. After all, in the 1980s it looked exactly the same as it would today in 21st-century 2012. It didn't even display a different year.

When I was ten, I used to sit in our dining room watching it on a common household appliance which was in those days known as a "black-and-white television set". I was entranced. In fact, said analogue box couldn't even pick-up this new computerised information service, but every weekday afternoon BBC2 would, to testcard music, present a rotation of pages from it as a programme in its own right, billed as Ceefax In Vision or latterly Pages From Ceefax.


First there would be news.


Then weather.


Then other stuff. Then it would go round back to the beginning and run through the news again. It was a bit like going to the cinema and arriving late… oh, wait, that's another whole way of viewing that we no longer have. Sorry, bad analogy, 2012-ers.

You might remember those days though. Watching, captivated, that rolling three-digit number at the top, snapping quickly through all the other page numbers. Trying to speed-read each page quickly enough to finish it before it was replaced by the next one, and in so doing failing to really take it in. Trying to turn it off but waiting to see the next page first just in case it would be interesting enough to remain viewing after all.

There were also lots of adverts in newspapers and magazines for TV sets that could pick up this cool new service, and these I would duly sit staring at too. Presently the page would still flip over and change, but such interactivity just didn't offer the same passive thrill as watching it on the telly.

In 1984 Russian president Yuri Andropov passed away, and Ceefax actually accompanied this news with a pixelly rendition of his face. I would love to quote that here, but I'm not sure if anyone in the world retains a copy of it now.

The thing is, computers generally looked a lot more fun in those days. Of course they did. They looked a lot more like toys. Everything was made out of simple brightly-coloured shapes, but even better was their promise to us. The future would be full of computers like these ones. Therefore the future would be similarly fun. As fun as toys.

Now this is the point in my post when I would normally proceed to run through a personal account of my teletext viewing alongside how it changed down the years. However teletext didn't change. It stayed the same. So did ITV's Oracle version, and Channel 4's 4-Tel. (I later heard that Channel 5 had something called 5-text, but this seems unlikely as it would have required them to have enough brains to be able to organise something)

Oh all right then…


In the 1990s, Hosko and I would play 4-Tel's Bamboozle quiz game live on my overnight radio show. At Christmas these question were jokes with multiple-choice punchlines. It also quietly came in handy for reading out less-important things on-air like the weather.

In 1999, my dad finally bought a set capable of receiving the proper interactive service (we were colour by then!), so I started playing Bamboozle at home, as well as keeping up with the weekly adventures of Turner The Worm:

Occasionally it even came in useful, such as when my family needed to keep an eye open for when I had a flight landing. Or when Murray Gold took over the music on Doctor Who and we needed subtitles.

Teletext wasn't even restricted to broadcast TV, as similar in-house services sprung-up in my life everywhere from my college (which I would occasionally have messages put up on) to Butlins.

In a nutshell, teletext worked, and since it never broke, no-one at the BBC ever fixed it.

Until today. (well, here in London and the South-East, actually until about six months ago)

Sure, funky interactive digital TV today may be able to use different fonts, show alternative video streams, access the internet, rotate your house so that it's always facing the sun and revive your dead loved ones without their incurring any additional taxes, but at the end of the day, I think they're just discontinuing teletext because it all looks too easy.

Although it made little practical difference to my life, I will miss those words and pictures made up of coloured squares.

When I first discovered teletext, our technological future looked so bright, and absolutely enthralling.

Today's future offers nothing to replace that optimism.

The Dark Knight Rises

Alistair and David watched me taking my shoes off in the cinema, and reaching into my rucksack. Alistair cheekily asked if I was getting out a pair of slippers. I retorted that he shouldn't have such a low opinion of me, before getting out my pair of slippers.

I intended to enjoy this film.

I'd found the two preceding movies in this trilogy to consecutively be fantastic, and, well, below average. Which was I going to opt for regarding The Dark Knight Rises? It could have gone either way.

In the event, there were a number of similarities with the second film, which wasn't necessarily a good thing. It again began with the principle villains having their faces covered for several minutes. The bad guy also kept killing his helpers on a whim, which again made a mockery of the survivors' ongoing loyalty to him. And the perceived inability of the public to cope with hearing the truth? Well, actually Commissioner Gordon seems to have slowly realised what an lousy end that made to the last movie.

At the outset here he's trying to come clean and make a speech admitting to Harvey Dent's succumber to corruption in the preceding film, but in the event he just can't go through with it. What happens instead is that the black-hearted Bane steals the script from him, and proceeds to deliver it himself. Oh, and launch an enormous terrorist attack on Gotham. Well, I can sort of see his point there - I was rather offended by the end of the second movie too.

Goading Bane on is the police department's decision to gather en masse and form an enormous inviting target for him, which disturbingly reminded me of the way I witnessed them lining up at the Olympics this past summer.

It's here that the film really gets teeth though. Again as with the last one, director Christopher Nolan wisely saves up his budget of IMAX shots, and then splurges a lot of them on this mammoth sequence of destruction. Up until this point the many overhead shots of the city in this ratio have been stunningly beautiful. Now however, everywhere you look, the world is going to hell, in galling detail. It's compelling to watch, yet in an appalling way.

In fact, the IMAX has got to be my main praise point of the whole movie. To put it simply, there is no other moving picture format in the world that can better 70mm, and on the biggest screen in Britain too! (20m x 26m) Spectacular.

However the on-off nature of IMAX's 1.43:1 aspect ratio once again makes the whole thing feel unfinished, and is a hard shortcoming to understand when the budget is approaching $2million per minute. One IMAX action sequence towards the end features a single shot in the middle in mere widescreen, which I'm sure the editor must have debated long and hard over whether to use.

But no matter how upfront this movie is in showing us the sheer enormity of the odds that Batman is up against this time, the soundtrack doesn't keep up, and in so doing subtracts from its authenticity.

There is such a thing as recording dialogue too clearly, and while that may sound like a harsh criticism, the fact remains that crowds of people just do not stand there in complete silence while someone else is speaking. In several scenes, there is no footsteps track, which when you can see a character using a flight of stairs really notices. I have a theory that maybe the steps were visible in IMAX, while the sound may have been mixed for the widescreen version which cropped off the characters' feet, but without forking out another twenty quid I now have no way of checking. How great was Alfred's resignation scene, but for how unnaturally isolated his and Bruce's dialogue was?

Overall, I found this a challenging story to follow, although I reckon that I got about 75% of it, which for me tends to be the going rate for movies by the brainy Chris Nolan.

Still, lead actor Christian Bale claims back the series as his own in this one (last time he got mugged of it by Heath Ledger and Aaron Eckhart), not least because it returns to being a movie about Bruce Wayne. For most of this film he is crippled, often limping around with a stick, as he slowly overcomes his increasing age, battle scars and depression to fight the good fight as Batman one last time.

Oversight-wise, there are some common action-movie clichés sprinkled throughout the production (eg. the beeping countdown that can predict to the second when a bomb will detonate due to instability) but none of this damages the film's tone. It's an awesome depiction of what can happen when simple worldviews fail to respect others, and a reminder that everyone's worldview is a similarly simple one.

Including mine and yours.

(available here)
(review of Batman Begins here)
(review of Batman: Gotham Knight here)
(review of The Dark Knight here)

Torchwood: Dark Talk

*** Contains spoilers***

Welcome, truth seekers.

First of all, this Torchwood story doesn't seem to have a name, so Dark Talk is just the title that I have made up for it. It seems like the most likely phrase for others to refer to it by too. Author Phil Ford must himself call it something, surely…

Secondly, it's an eleven-part BBC online computer game which was released episodically in sync with most of season two.


You're a new recruit to Torchwood. Each chapter, there's a video of Ianto giving you your mission for the week - to investigate someone or something, and come back with the word or phrase that they need to progress the case.

To accomplish this task, you have remote access to a Torchwood workstation (above), offering you scans of documents, hacking software, and your colleagues' emails, although they are usually just making oblique references to this (now that) week's episode. At the time, you could register to receive emails from Torchwood flagging when your next mission was ready, but now of course that option is no longer relevant.

While the evidence to be investigated changes each week, the series' constant is Cardiff's pirate paranormal radio phone-in show Dark Talk:


The station has a real website which gives you access to about a billion studio webcams during the show each week. There's even one of the floor! Line one usually features a member of the public affected by that week's TV episode, but line three is your best bet for tips on the case you're following.

But it doesn't stop there. There are a ton of other external websites that you have to surf, glean further clues from, and even hack into, along with a bunch of other less relevant but real ones, like wikipedia. Conrad Fischer even has an account on Flickr!

At one point you have to login into someone's email account. There aren't really any clues as to their password - you just have to laterally ask yourself what sort of word they would probably have picked. Some other tasks are harder.

I'm well impressed that, over four years on, this game is still so fully functional!

Along the way, you also receive video advice from Tosh. Yes, Tosh. I know, you must really be lost if you're asking for help from her.

So, my two cents on each mission then:

Mission 1

The scientist Conrad Fisher has disappeared, so you have to figure out who the last person to see him was. For this you need to check the right CCTV camera at the right time. Fortunately, on the dating website that he's a member of, the only other person with a video clip turns out to be the lady he's meeting - Natalie Blake.

Mission 2

Natalie Blake is now dead, so you have to work out her phone number and hack her voicemail to find out who the last person she spoke to was. I put a London number into the phone hacker tool, and the map still displayed Cardiff. The last person to see Natalie was her twin sister. Hmm.

Mission 3

Really tough one this. Figure out a password to hack into a website. Fortunately, once again the internet has the answer. Someone who's played it before.

Tosh appears visibly distracted, presumably due to her love affair with Tommy that week.

Mission 4

Does Ianto really only have that one suit? Natalie Blake has come back from the dead (that or it was her twin sister Naomi) and murdered Conrad Fischer, on his own vlog no less! She then steals his laptop, making the answer to mission 4 the same as mission 1.

Mission 5

So, Natalie has killed her own twin sister. Now it's time to hack into her email account to deduce where she's currently hiding out. I say, there's a lot of murder going on here. Have I accidentally got the website for ITV? In other news, Dark Talk presenter Abigail Crowe has actually put a few clothes on.

Mission 6

Whaaat? Now Natalie is dead as well??? Well, that's certainly inconvenient. Maybe it's my fault. Maybe I should have just left well alone.

In an unusually long mission, you now have to trawl through her internet browsing history to locate her business website, then decode the alien password, and finally watch the video of her to get the whistleblower's codeword. The evidence also includes a signed letter from Jim Robinson! Wow, what a nice neighbour. Everybody needs those. Next door is only a footstep... oh you know the rest.

Mission 7

Things are really hotting up. The sense of anticipation over the whistleblower's imminent live call into the Dark Talk radio show is huge. What they don't know is that I'm ready and waiting for them. I'm not missing this.

Afterwards, there's one of those minigames that bears little relation to actually solving a real life problem, but hey. You have to listen to and analyse half a dozen snatches of background atmos from the whistlebower's call. In the real world this would position him in six different places at once, but this isn't the real world - it's an online game with a funky swooshy 3D map:


It can take a while to get to this point, unless you click that killjoy 'Low-tech version' option at the bottom:


That's blood? In black and white, I assumed it was spray-paint.

So, yes, now the whistleblower's been murdered too. I'm starting to glance out of my window nervously.

Mission 8

Another minigame requires one to examine a skeleton to find several patients' records hidden in the latest corpse's body. Or again dial-up has the answer. Ultimately though, this proves irrelevant to guessing the password for Fischer's computer, and translating it into English. According to his Flickr account, he recently went to a very thinly-attended reunion.

Oh, and by now in the TV series, Owen has been killed. By Jim Robinson. Eurgh, tough neighbourhood.

Mission 9

So now we know. The world is being invaded via alien DNA, which is being implanted into people's bodies, and lying dormant until receiving the right trigger switch to activate it. But what could such a switch possibly be? Surfing back through earlier evidence, I discovered via a video on the New Eden website that it was 'ultrasonic sound'. Although entering this in the box is indeed the answer that this mission is looking for, according to an earlier player on the internet I could have got away with just typing the word 'ultrasonic'.

Mission 10

Since this is a Torchwood game, I figured it was a given that at some point the plot would suddenly grind to a halt for sex and everyone to say how cool they think Jack is, but surprisingly nothing like this has happened yet. (apart from people saying how cool they think Jack is, obviously) This then is the only episode which delves into crudity, as Dark Talk gets a call from a man who regularly gets 'taken from the back' by allegedly gay aliens. These radio segments are usually quite fun sketches, but here Torchwood seems to be running out of ideas and falling back on smut again. Teenagers! :)

The mission this time is a 'Simple Simon' lights game to reveal where the ultrasonic signal is to be transmitted from. I'm so glad that I was slow enough to be completely surprised by the answer…

Mission 11

What's that? This is the final episode? B-but, I thought that season two of Torchwood had thirteen episodes, surely? Well, as I recall, those last two didn't really leave much room for a second case to be running concurrently, so this is where the game ends.

Having so far had video clips of Ianto and Tosh, plus audio of PC Andy, the reward for making it through to the end is to watch the big confrontation at Dark Talk's studios between DJ Abigail, Ianto, and… Gwen!

I mean let's be honest here, the main reason why anybody plays these things is to watch a bit more Torchwood after the programme has finished, and this showdown, complete with brief fight, really feels like watching an authentic canon clip.

Actually, it's better than that, because there's no music! Oh, there's a signal jammer device that you have to activate midway through when Ianto yells out over the air for you to do so, but I tried running it again afterwards and doing nothing, and it made no difference.

Still, a great payoff for all the effort made so far. We jam the signal, save the world, and get to watch a Torchwood minisode. Hoorah!


Overall, I must admit that I've really enjoyed playing this game. A mid-week repeat in an earlier timeslot meant that this season Torchwood was getting aimed at a younger audience, and for that the game - like the season - is better because it rarely gets sidetracked from the mystery at hand.

While I'm full of praise for its script and programming, the acting is awful, and the direction of the video clips pretty weak too. Despite the high number of different characters videoing themselves, they all use the same style of cutting between medium and longs shots every sentence or so, regardless of whether it is even possible. The number of cameras in that 'radio' studio is insane - there's even one shooting Abigail from her feet!

And please forgive my pointing it out, but it's a bit of a shame that Abigail was recorded on a boom mike rather than that radio one we can see right in front of her mouth throughout.

Once again though, I have to admit that I have enjoyed Torchwood.

And, also once again, I find myself hoping that that was the last one though. I'm really only following it out of loyalty to another series... :)

(At time of writing, still available to play at www.torchwood.org.uk)

NB. While writing this post, and indeed playing the game, I have been indebted to Jeremy Patrick for his concise write-ups on each mission over at www.jhaeman.blogspot.com. Cheers Jeremy! (ῧ)

The Best Possible Taste

The comedian Kenny Everett is a hero of mine.

Not for the content of his humour (I like clean stuff), but his style. Always bursting with enthusiasm, and energy, and fun. Throwing away broadcast conventions by shooting in the control room, pushing the vision-mixer to its limits, and replacing the studio audience with just his sniggering camera crew. When he would rip down and destroy the Thames Television logo at the start of his shows, he meant it.

A week ago I came across this biopic of Kenny Everett when it was already about five minutes in.

This of course is the best time to enter a biopic because, for some reason that I've never understood, they are almost always told in flashback.

So it's now a week later and I've just caught up on what I missed, and I'm so pleased. The opening merrily told me everything that was coming up, without any power to rob me of being told the story.

Not that there really is that much story here. I have to admit that the main reason why I watch biopics of dead funnymen is because I just want to have them back for one more evening. I hate to say it, but The Best Possible Taste doesn't seem entirely sure what its agenda is.

Sure, we get laughs out of Kenny's legacy again, mainly thanks to actor Oliver Lansley. Some of Everett's vocal range may be a bit of a challenge, but he keeps up the barrage of voices and mannerisms pretty well with barely a pause.

But that turns out to be part of the oddness of this revisitation of the Kennyverse. The thing is, that while I do remember many of these characters, when I think of Everett himself, I tend to think more of the DJ who I saw and heard being interviewed on numerous occasions. Clive Bull interviewed him on LBC once about his archive of jingles. He did a sketch on his TV show in which he played himself quite seriously as a set-up to something ridiculous. And then there's that famous clip of him being interviewed the morning that he went public that he was suffering with AIDS. In all these instances he was quite chuckly and good-natured, and normal.

But not in this film though. The picture that emerges is that of a man who could hardly even be himself with his friends, and perpetually hid behind his comedy voices.

Which for me sat awkwardly, because the greater part of this biopic concentrates on his love life. In other words, we get a fairly ordinary story about a man's homosexuality, rather than exploiting the thing that made Kenny's life so different, which was his unique brand of comedy. The ups and downs of his battle to get his maverick humour on air were what I really wanted to cheer on for here, so I guess I just wasn't the right type of audience member for this programme.

And yet, I can't help thinking that all those who wanted to see the serious side of his personal life missed out too. Not just because these scenes were played with so much silliness to hide his true feelings, but also because the movie stops before the diagnosis of his terminal illness. Why sure, of course that is none of our business to pry into, but then neither is much of the rest of what else is covered here. Like I say, I'm not really keen on hearing about his private life to begin with.

The best possible taste? Well obviously that's subjective.

What's never in any doubt here is the respect that the makers have for the man. Kenny is portrayed throughout as a guy who we can both sympathise with and root for, which is refreshing given the character-assasination that so many dead comedians are forced to go through in these retrospectives.

Kenny Everett made the world a much more insane place, in such a great way. It is only a minor shame that he didn't really get to do that again here.

Available here.

Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book (1942 film)

"3:05 FILM Jungle Book ***

Adventure with Joseph Calleia and Sabu.
Director Zoltan Korda (1942, U) (S) (AD) 69413356"

Oh yes, I was looking forward to this Disney cartoon. The well-loved songs, the characterisations, that beautiful classic Disney animation...

However if you know your Jungle Book, then the above Radio Times listing should have left you in no doubt that this was in fact going to be the tale's much earlier live-action version by Alexander Korda Films:


Alas, I did not know my Jungle Book, so I duly taped it off Film4 completely assuming it to be the musical cartoon by Disney.

So, how long do you think it took me until the penny dropped? Really? Well, no, you're wrong, it took me much longer than even that. Start the clock.


So first I'm sitting there, and the credits are rolling, playing all that triumphant Roman music that we associate with old movies.


The screen was displaying the pages of a book being turned, with each page accordingly listing the names of who done what. They were even spelling colour in American. So far so good.

Then at 1 minute 38 seconds the action begins. The Technicolour is gorgeous. A live-action aged Indian fellow is wowing some tourists to his country with the promise of telling them an exciting tale. I know him - he's going to draw us into the cartoon world of the jungle, and then never be mentioned again. A bit like Aladdin, except that that was all animated, instead of just the bulk.


Man on horseback: "Ma'am Sahib refers to the storyteller?"
Storyteller: [POINTING AT ELEPHANTS] "Are these silent monsters at peace with us? It is but a truce they keep with man. But, I, who have seen the tusk stained red with blood, I could tell you a tale of this island once... for a few coppers? Yea, for a bowl of rice? [WOMAN TRIES TO PHOTOGRAPH HIM] What would you do with my image, Ma'am Sahib?"
Woman: "I would keep it, for a memory of India."
Storyteller: "Verily! You would have all India in your picture. Nay, you would have the Book of the Jungle to read in my eyes!"

Yep, stock Disney storyteller, check.

So, with actor Joseph Calleia's eyes blazing with awe, at 3:09 this guy duly begins to introduce us to each of the animals of the jungle, one by one, by narrating footage of them in the wild. For the next few minutes, the movie takes on the appearance of a true life short. There's a bear called Baloo, who I'm thinking later might just have something to impart to us about the bare necessities of life. There's a snake, who I'm expecting to want us to trusssst him. There's a tiger called Khan, whose name I'm vaguely hoping that someone will yell in angst while the overhead perspective spins up and away from them, but that's probably a joke for a more recent post-modern remake.

In fact I'm getting quite impressed at the way these characters are getting set-up here. Boy, when we get into their animated personas shortly, and it really can't be long now, we're gonna already be so clued-up on who each of these singers are.


In fact, the cartoon stuff is already creeping in, as some of this live-action animal-footage has been sneakily sweetened with animated creatures in the distance, such as a flock of birds!

But... we're now twelve minutes in and I'm still watching live-action villagers agonise as they realize that their toddler has just wandered off into the jungle. This is starting to feel like Bedknobs And Broomsticks, which a year ago I learnt actually only had one animated sequence, in the middle. Well, I don't want to go making that mistake again. But all the same, they're running out of running time here.


I'm now supposing that, as the little lost tyke grows older, or maybe just dozes off amongst the wolves in the jungle, he'll soon have a dream in which he perceives all the different creatures as talking to him, and singing…


Well, I suppose it was the eventual leap forward twelve years to Mowgli as a teenager - still with a live-action body (Sabu) and swinging around the jungle like Tarzan - that finally burst my bubble. (and boy can this kid jump!) Unless he was about to start having his own lengthy flashback within this lengthy flashback, then he was now just too darn old to have that charming snake curl up around him.

I looked at the clock. 17 minutes. There was no longer any avoiding the truth. It was time to decide. Do I commit to viewing the rest of this live-action movie that I had not intended to watch, or press rewind and get out my DVD of The Flight Of The Conchords instead?

I kept looking at the clock. For a good nother hour and half. This wasn't a good sign either, although I did stay with it to the end.

In fairness, most (not the evil tiger) of the animals in this did presently get to talk, although none with the expertise of feral child Mowgli. No songs, I concede, but the hissing snake puppet was pretty well spot-on with the Disney incarnation. We even moved into Dr Dolittle territory, as Mowgli goes over from barking to talking with the animals in English, and is still understood by them.

Later on however we segue more into The Gold Rush, as the principal villain and his two comic relief sidekicks start killing each other for the riches that wolf boy has found. Perhaps they should have started with whoever was sabotaging their performances with so much music.

Overall, I'm sorry to report that I found this slow and plodding. Much like Avatar, I just kept on wishing for it to end early without a resolution. The incredible thing was that, unlike Avatar, that's exactly what it eventually did! The situation is left open-ended, and with no sequel of this version ever made, I still conversely find that to be a bit of a shame.

For me though, its greatest moment has got to be the scene when Mahala is showing Mowgli all her father Buldeo's trophy animal heads/skins. That Mowgli keeps recognizing his old friends is partly comical, but also an effective indictment on the small-mindedness of game hunting.

If there were people who actually could talk to the natural world, then many of us might stop treating them quite so carelessly.

In summary, I found this to be a long film to watch, yet in my heart, I still really wanted it to be a lot more more drawn-out.

Available here. I think.