Harry Potter died for your sins!
No, I don't have any insight into the ending of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows, which you may have heard is due out this month. It's just my last chance to use the phrase, as after July 21 it'll either be redundant or irrelevant. Yes, I've followed the antics of Mr. Potter from Book One on; a bit of a departure for me, as I primarily read non-fiction. Fiction I read to relax, the way other folks watch sitcoms. The fifth film in the series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, also arrives this month, amongst other blockbusters. I'll take the books over the films any day though, as I find J.K. Rowling's descriptions of the wizarding world more intriguing than its straightforward visual depiction in the movies.
Michael Moore
Wizards take care of their own too; they even have their own hospital (St. Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies). And as the Potter stories are set in Britain, there's undoubtedly some kind of National Health Care scheme at work. Which means they fare better than us poor suckers in the states, as chronicled in Michael Moore's latest, Sicko, a look at the sad, sorry state of our health-care system. I've felt nervous about not having insurance, but the message in Sicko is that it doesn't necessarily matter if you do-you can be paying those premiums and not get coverage when you need it anyway!
Moore is less of an in-your-face rabble rouser than in his previous films; the only Moore-ish stunt is when he takes a group of 9/11 rescue workers to Guantanamo Bay in the hopes of getting them some of the free health care the "enemy combatants" detained there enjoy. Denied that privilege, the group checks out the local hospital and pharmacy; one woman, on paying three and a half pesos for her medication, bursts into tears on realizing the difference in what she pays for the same drug in America-$120. Such is the compassion of our "Christian Nation."
For me, that's the underlying strength of this film. Most people in this country have some awareness that our health care system is in serious need of a major overhauling, but they rarely stop to think about it until it affects them personally. These are the very people Moore talks to, such as a woman who watched her husband die because the hospital she worked for wouldn't give him a bone marrow transplant (it was deemed "experimental"). Or the mother who lost her daughter because her insurance company wouldn't cover emergency care at the nearest hospital; by the time they arrived at the appropriate one, the little girl had died. Or, to cite a less fraught scenario, the couple who are forced to move back in with their adult children (to their offspring's chagrin) because their medical bills have driven them into bankruptcy.
And these were all folks who had insurance! Moore also compares and contrasts
our health care system with that in other countries. Some have complained he doesn't
point out the 
faults of those systems, which is true, but neither do they seem to generate the horror stories that ours does. The film is put together the usual finesse and great music cues of Moore's other work, so it's fun as well as entertaining. Though I noted the closing song is the same Cat Stevens number that plays over the opening credits of Harold & Maude, that classic black comedy about suicide. Hope there's nothing we're meant to read into that.
Was thrilled to receive Vol. 1 in Warner Home Video's new "Cult Camp Classics" sets (there's a total of four), and have been having great fun with it ever since. The set features the redundantly-titled The Giant Behemoth, by the same directorial hand that brought you The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, and a truly cautionary tale it is too, in these days of increasing environmental concerns (once again, improperly disposed radiation wreaks havoc with nature). There's also Attack of the 50-Foot Woman, where a close encounter with a giant humanoid alien makes our hapless heroine inexplicably grow to the same size. And what does she do once she settles into her new body? Why, stomp across the desert to get at her cheating louse of a husband, what else? The third, and campiest, film in the set is Queen of Outer Space. It boasts the best production values of the three, though in all honesty that isn't saying much. It's also tailor-made for a feminist critique, as the plot concerns a group of male astronauts who arrive on Venus and are shocked to find it's run by women ("Even if they could build a rocket, they'd never be able to aim it!"). Fear not, by the film's end, the natural order is restored, when the leader, Zsa Zsa Gabor, declares "Men cannot live vizout vimmin!" And she should know.
