Sights and Sounds

If you are looking for an action-packed, extremely violent, two-and-a-half hour movie filled with lots of amazing martial arts acrobatics and weapons used in ways that you would never wish on your worst enemy, you should try this out (in either the provided English dubbed or subtitled Indonesian versions). I wouldn't ever recommend watching a sequel before the original, but you don't really have to see the first one (which is almost half as long, but just as good); This one basically starts over where it left off.

Cocoanuts was the first feature film starring the four Marx Brothers: Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo.  It may also have the distinction of being the first true movie musical, that is, a movie where the musical numbers were meant to be part of the story telling process rather than a performance for audience within the movie. It wasn’t that the studio didn’t plan to have a band playing with the musical scenes.  A “band” was hired for the first day of shooting.  Apparently they were to follow the actors around ready to play whenever someone was tempted to burst into song, but the director soon realized there was no reason to have them around and that they would distract from the plot of the movie; something that the Marx Brothers were already managing to do pretty well on their own.

Opening - Season One: It was the dawn of the third age of mankind, ten years after the Earth-Minbari War. The Babylon Project was a dream given form. Its goal: to prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call, home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanderers. Humans and aliens wrapped in two million, five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night. It can be a dangerous place, but it's our last, best hope for peace. This is the story of the last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2258. The name of the place is Babylon 5.

Babylon 5, created by J. Michael Straczynski, came to our Televisions in the early 1990’s, about the same time as Star Trek’s Deep Space Nine.  The two are often compared.  Fans of each have called one a “rip-off” of the other.  The truth is they were both developed and planned independently of each other.  Babylon 5 did something that was amazing at the time; it got Trekkers and Trekkies alike talking about a new show.  Some of them even thought this new series was better than Star Trek. 

“Wanted:  Someone to go back in time with me.  This is not a joke.  You’ll get paid after we get back.  Must bring your own weapons.  I have only done this once before.  SAFTEY NOT GUARANTEED.” 

The above classified advertisement along with a contact PO Box address that appeared in a local paper near Seattle Washington sets the stage for Safety Not Guaranteed.  The ad intrigues a reporter for a Seattle based magazine. Is the man who placed it crazy, disturbed or legit? For reasons of his own he sells his editor on the idea of checking it out as a human interest story.   He takes along two interns: one of whom, Darius, ends up applying for the position in order to get the story behind the ad.