Mansfield Park, The Barchester Chronicles, & The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear

Mansfield Park is the 1983 BBC miniseries version. As such, it luxuriates in the time period, and in an extended running time. And it has a bunch of actors who are extremely recognizable if you've seen enough British miniseries made around the same time. I didn't really like Sylvestra Le Touzel's performance of Fanny Price, and as a whole, I am not really that big a fan of Mansfield Park, but it is the most accurate version of it (plus it doesn't have frickin' Billie Piper in it or basically messing with everything in it like the 1999 version, which I really liked anyway). So, um, see it if you really want to see the most faithful version of Mansfield Park?

The Barchester Chronicles has an amazingly good cast: Donald Pleasence, Nigel Hawthorne, Alan Rickman, Phyllida Law, Geraldine McEwan, and Clive Swift, among many others, all give great performances. Alan Rickman, in particular, is perfect as the extremely slimy Rev. Obadiah Slope. Anything where he gets to be remotely slimy is extremely worth watching, and this has him at his slimiest. Really, he is pitch perfect. I've never read Anthony Trollope, but I don't feel like I ever will now. Even with the long running time, and far too easy of an ending, it's definitely worth it, especially if you don't mind the BBC video filming, which, along with the aforementioned Mansfield Park, suffers greatly from blurring whenever there's a camera move outside.

The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear is a 2004 documentary that's all about how the neocons and al Qaeda basically use the same tactics to get what they want. This, unfortunately for its arguments, makes the claim that al Qaeda was a made up organization that was created in 2001 by the US Government to prosecute terrorists under organized crime laws. This is insane. And pisses me off. Otherwise, it's an ok version of events important to current international relations, but it's also three hours long, and spaced over three DVDs. What the hell? It could have very easily fit on one DVD. Why on three? I don't know. Basically, it was frustrating because it could have been so much better.