A film about Greece, made by an expatriate Greek director, but featuring an all-star French-speaking cast, “Z” is, alongside John Frankenheimer’s “The Manchurian Candidate” and Jean-Luc Godard’s “Weekend,” one of the most important political films of all time. Even if, artistically and in terms of sheer entertainment, it’s not quite on the same level as either of those masterpieces, it had an immediacy those films lacked. Unlike Godard and Frankenheimer, director Costa-Gavris wasn’t only working out of political conviction, he was trying to free his homeland.

Shot and financed in the former French colony of Algeria, “Z” is based on a thinly fictionalized novel by Vasilis Vasilikos detailing the 1963 murder of pacifist leader Gregoris Lambrakis and the investigation that followed. Presaging the John F. Kennedy assassination by several months, the killing helped set the stage for a full-scale fascist military takeover of Greece, which lasted from 1967 to 1974. That, in turn, set the stage for Costa-Gavris, a promising young director hot off the success of his first film, “The Sleeping Car Murders,” to recruit a cast of mostly French stars to participate in a film designed specifically to raise a worldwide alarm. With the tacit acceptance of the U.S. and Western Europe, the world’s cradle of democracy was harboring a totalitarian regime that regularly tortured and murdered dissidents and had banned everything from the Beatles and long hair, to Mark Twain, Dostoyevsky, and a certain letter of the alphabet. With “Z,” Costa-Gavris made sure the world knew that.

READ THE REST AT BULLZ-EYE.COM

*******

An extremely interesting actor and one of the main creative forces behind an early relative of just about everything interesting on your modern TV screen has passed on at age 80. Irish-American by birth and British by upbringing, after turning down the role of James Bond in Dr. No (and he would have been about as great as the bloke who actually agreed to do it) McGoohan made it big on a pair of English spy series, probably today best known in the U.S. as the source of the Johnny Rivers hit, “Secret Agent Man.”

That led to a 1967-1968 non-sequel, The Prisoner, which had McGoohan playing a secret agent (which he always denied was Secret Agent Man John Drake) who tries to quit but instead finds himself in “the Village” — basically the ultimate gated community with just a dash of Gitmo (waterboarding not included), where the not-secret-agent-man is given a number, 6, and his name is really taken away. Despite constant prodding and head games (which get ever more heady as the show progresses), No. 6 fails to cooperate — but just why and what he’s fighting is not a simple matter of something you can quote at an ACLU meeting.

McGoohan appears to have effectively been the showrunner of the series, which for decades was often cited by critics as probably the single best TV series of all time. Though the competition for that title has increased exponentially over the decades, it was without a doubt, a major force in my adolescence, and world geekitude in general, when it was revived on PBS and later on cable and home video. McGoohan went on to a solid movie career as a character actor, usually playing very interesting antagonists/bad guys in movies like Escape from Alcatraz and Silver Streak, but The Prisoner was always the one that people talked about when they talked about McGoohan.

It was for good reason. Like his acting, the show bore an unmistakable stamp of originality and commitment that’s impossible to forget.  His L.A. Times obit includes this quote from Peter Falk, who exposed him as a murderer not once but twice on Columbo.

There are many very, very talented people in this business, but there are only a handful of genuinely original people….I think Patrick McGoohan belongs in that small select group of truly original people.

I think Falk would know.

More from master-compiler David Hudson at his new IFC locale and also from Bullz-Eye’s esteemed TV maven Will Harris.

Be seeing you, Mr. McGoohan…

And now, well, you know I can’t resist. Best. TV show opening. Ever.

I really think so.

UPDATE:  In memory of #6, Jim Emerson has reposted his analysis of the above. Definitely recommended.

AND ANOTHER UPDATE: Via Brian Doan, some words from Glenn Kenny, who also digs up a revealing quote from David Cronenberg about the rough going he experienced with McGoohan on Scanners, a movie I really should be able to handle, now that I’ve got my gorephobia partially under control. Why, I wouldn’t mind seeing it right now (except that I won’t).

AND YET ONE MORE UPDATE: The amazing Kimberly “Cinebeats” Lindbergs has some good stuff up on the subject as well, though I disagree with her that the prospect of a new Prisoner TV show is necessarily depressing. To me, everything is basically a remake of something, admitted or not — it’s just a matter of whether the remaker has something new and worthwhile to bring to the party. On the other hand, after what I’ve been through with Frank Miller’s vile travesty of The Spirit and Neil Labute’s ridiculously clueless and bluntly misogynist The Wicker Man, I can very definitely see her point.

John C. Reilly, Neil Patrick Harris, Jack Black, Alison Janney, director Adam Shenkman and composer Marc Shaiman (Hairspray), and many others (including the great Andy Richter) remind me why I love liberal Hollywood.

Via Steve Benen and Whedonesque

I haven’t formally interviewed all that many people for pieces I’ve written under my own name, but of the two or three people I have, one has just hit the big time in a very significant way.

Back in 2003, I interviewed Dustin Lance Black for his little known, but very good, documentary film about Dr. Donald A. Reed, the late founder of the Academy of Science, Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films and the Count Dracula Society  — who I personally knew as an early teen just coming to terms with my geekitude. You can read my lengthy explanation of all that, plus the actual interview via Film Threat.

Now, if Dustin Lance Black’s name is familiar to it’s because  he is getting a great deal of attention now as the writer and executive producer of Milk, the much buzzed about biopic of on assassinated San Francisco politician and gay icon Harvey Milk, starring Sean Penn directed by Gus Van Sant. Terry Gross interviewed Dustin yesterday and you can read more about Dustin — who could not have been any nicer or more forthcoming when I spoke to him — and listen to his interview here. Kind of exciting.

And here’s the Milk trailer. Looks good.

Because that would have been, you know, a lie. Though I thought we were,  you know, there to oppose the religious extremists. Revolting, sad, infuriating LA Times story. (H/t Bill in Portland Maine of Dkos fame.)

And while I’m talking about democracy, freedom and stuff, just how in the holy hell can the GOP justify apparently wholly frivolous legal maneuvers like this? If this isn’t clear harassment the only goal of which is to discourage early voting in a presumably Democratic-leaning area in a swing state, I’m a monkey’s uncle.

LaSota assured the judge that the elections board staff ensures voters are registered and don’t vote more than once.

When Kavadias-Schneider asked, “What of those who have already voted?” R. Lawrence Steele, a GOP lawyer, replied, “Maybe those votes should be discarded.”

And if I hear one more network anchor try to equate Republican and Democrat party tactics as being equally thuggish, I’ll go Elvis on my TV. Grr. (Big time h/t Josh Marshall…who reminds us of the hopefully foregone conclusion of the case. )