David Simpson On TV

November 2003

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New Channels

Two offices, four new channels and (a little lower down the page) a couple of blockbusters. Multichoice has opened an office at Manda Hill so Lusaka residents now have a choice of offices at which to pay, or to pick up that Dish magazine which didn't arrive by post.
The new channels include "Go" (84) for teenagers, and the educational "Active" channel (82) which fills an important gap. TV is an ideal learning medium. There are also Animal Planet (67) and News 24 (59), the latter two available only on Pas 7. You need an appropriate decoder in order to access the interactive services.
As for the blockbusters, maybe that's overstating it but the two movies I comment on here are certainly of interest. In "Being John Malkovich", puppeteer Craig Schwartz gets a job at Lestercorp, on floor 7½ of a New York office block. He drops a file behind a cabinet, and discovers a portal which leads by some fantastic transport into the head of John Malkovich for 15 minutes, after which it dumps the visitor on the New Jersey turnpike. Schwartz decides to charge visitors US$200 a time for the privilege of being thus transported. This leads to several fantastic complications, when, for example, Craig's wife and even John Malkovich himself take the trip.
Why floor 7½? Lestercorp is half a floor high, and is accessed by pressing the right button in the elevator at just the right time, to stop the elevator half way between floors, after which you have to crowbar the doors open and climb out. How did it get to be half a floor high with five-foot ceilings? An amusing explanation is offered - fantastic as one would expect. In simple terms, it's "low overheads"!
However the director doesn't try to explain the transportation mechanism. That is just left to the audience's imagination. This crazy movie has a star cast. It is great fun and deserves to become a classic.
Less fun, and rather more cautionary, is "Pay it Forward". A schoolmaster (Kevin Spacey) invites his class to think of a way of creating a better world. Trevor (Haley Joel Osment) proposes a scheme whereby, instead of "paying other people back" for their transgressions, we pay people forward by doing them a good turn which is then spread, like a chain letter, to three other recipients, and so on.
Could it work? In theory it could, without any of the supernatural elements we are used to in today's movies. But would it? Can we learn something of value from such a movie?
Inviting a homeless man into your home (as Trevor does) is likely to turn out disastrously, rather then leading to a worldwide movement.
And one wonders about the opening scene in which a driver whose vehicle has just been smashed up is confronted by an unidentified character who says "Take my Mercedes". Is this supposed to be a flash forward to a time when the scheme has taken off? Or is it some supernatural character (after all), implanting the seed of an idea? In any case one's reaction is likely to be incredulity and distrust - is the car stolen and is my "benefactor" trying to set me up, or is he a random bomber who will push a remote button as soon as I drive away. These unworthy thoughts seem bound to arise. Is it really possible to imagine a time in the future when they would not?