{"id":2779,"date":"2011-04-29T01:45:53","date_gmt":"2011-04-29T05:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=2779"},"modified":"2011-04-29T01:45:53","modified_gmt":"2011-04-29T05:45:53","slug":"film-without-warning-1994","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/?p=2779","title":{"rendered":"Film: Without Warning (1994)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Return to: <\/strong>Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> \/ <\/em>V to Z<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>Film: Very Good\/ DVD Transfer: n\/a \/ DVD Extras: n\/a<\/p>\n

Label: Madacy\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: October 22, 2004<\/p>\n

Genre: Science-Fictition \/ Drama \/ Mockumentary<\/p>\n

Synopsis: H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” is redone as a live TV feed, where network news anchors quickly discovers Earth is being pelted by alien spacecrafts.<\/p>\n

Special Features: n\/a<\/p>\n

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Review:<\/p>\n

To mark the anniversary of Orson Welles\u2019 Halloween prank of broadcasting a \u2018live\u2019 report of Martians invading Earth in 1938 \u2013 a clever adaptation of H.G. Wells\u2019 War of the Worlds<\/strong> novel for radio \u2013 CBS, the network that aired the original drama aired this similarly \u2018live\u2019 TV broadcast of aliens making lethal contact with humanity, with similarly dire circumstances for the news reporters and planet as a whole.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to dismiss this effort as some kind of disposable anniversary production, but Without Warning was produced by Mark & David Wolper and bears the same meticulous research as done for their company\u2019s best-known historical productions \u2013 Roots<\/strong> (1977), The Thorn Birds<\/strong> (1983), and North and South<\/strong> (1985).<\/p>\n

That isn\u2019t to assume the teleplay\u2019s strong sense of reality stemmed from the Wolpers, but there\u2019s a great integration of contemporary and historical facts woven into a 2 hour newscast that essentially has real-life CNN news anchor Sander Vanocur and actress Jane Kaczmarek (Malcolm in the Middle<\/strong>) covering aliens pelting our planet with meteors.<\/p>\n

The script by Peter Lance (who shares story credit with Walon Green and Jeremy Thorn) almost manages to pull off a fake newscast \u2013 as a radio show, it would be near perfect. Its structure is sound in that a freak news item \u2013 three meteor hits over three continents \u2013 becomes a possible alien contact event, which the government denies to the end, while facts from a pair of survivors suggest some strange influence is at hand. Both the French skier and a traumatized young child mutter only gibberish, and later in the drama a town\u2019s inhabitants have completely vanished (an eerie event recalling the Biblical premise of \u2018vanished\u2019 souls and perplexed survivors in 2001\u2019s Left Behind<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

Unlike Wells\u2019 novel and Welles\u2019 radio drama, the aliens are never seen by any humans; what occurs are a trio of peculiar impacts in the U.S., France, and the Gobi Desert with geometric correlating geometric paths which eggheads analyze using prior histories of meteor impacts, and NASA\u2019s own efforts to contact alien life.<\/p>\n

Brought into the mix is novelist Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey<\/strong>) who in a \u2018live\u2019 interview weighs the aliens vs. conspiracy nonsense quandary the newscasters are constantly analyzing, as well as \u2018live\u2019 reports from Washington, Moscow, Beijing, and the charred field in Wyoming, where the first meteor landed, and the little babble-mouthed girl was rescued by real-life reporter Bree Walker (trapped in a severely bad hair day) and her helicopter team.<\/p>\n

Director Iscove also intercuts stock news footage to lend a sense of verisimilitude, but the clips are kept short and often ping-pong through no more than 3 international locations before we\u2019re redirected back to the news desk. The drama also fades in and out using standard wide angle crane shots of the news set with bumper music, and the real ad breaks we viewers experienced give the teleplay further fake credibility. (After the first hour of \u2018crisis reportage\u2019 the ad bumpers are given a logo \u2013 \u201cAsteroid: Fire from the Sky\u201d \u2013 an animated branding idiocy pioneered by CNN, and now standard with national and whiny local stations today.)<\/p>\n

Perhaps learning from the Welles\u2019 broadcast which only alerted audiences of the show\u2019s fictional nature at the beginning and near the end of the broadcast time slot, the first two moments where Vanocur delivers the newscast have superimposed \u201cThis is not an actual newscast. This is a fictional movie\u201d warnings, and every return to the drama is preceded with a more sly warning (\u201cWithout Warning<\/em> is a realistic depiction o fictional events\u201d) \u2013 which is kind of a shame, since the producers, writers, editors, and cinematographer went to great trouble in evoking a real newscast.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s unsurprising for contemporary viewers is how the format of crisis reportage hasn\u2019t changed: experts are dragged into studios or cornered on location for consult, and officials are hounded by questions in media scrums. Where the production errs is by giving the expert interviews filmic intros \u2013 the camera pans from \u2018the reporter\u2019 to clearly prepped \u2018experts waiting for their visual or aural cues \u2013 and by having some reporters address leading governmental figures by their first name. (Who does that to a military figure?<\/em>)<\/p>\n

Also affecting the reality veneer is a constant sense the news items and transitions are too concise (live TV tends to be rougher, with reporters often babbling newsy verbiage to fill time before the next ad break), and the imbalance that\u2019s occasional visible when actors pretend to be reporters for too long onscreen, adding pregnant pauses or deep though moments, and real reporters trying to act humane when their job is to restrain and just deliver facts. The latter is a problem with Bree Walker\u2019s touchy-feely meeting with the little girl\u2019s mother, and Vanocur\u2019s own \u2018deep thought\u2019 moments, including a Big One that has him inexplicably figuring out the aliens\u2019 true intentions in the drama\u2019s last few minutes. (There\u2019s also the greasy makeup on actor Dwier Brown meant to evoke a sweaty, panicking reporter, but now we\u2019re just being petty here.)<\/p>\n

Even with its faults, Without Warning<\/strong> is a very clever production that\u2019s meant to poke fun and satirize the way we transmit news to the masses, and how we eat up the packaged drama. On surface, Iscove plays it straight, even keeping any visual effects to their bare essentials, but there are plenty of in-jokes.<\/p>\n

Whereas Welles\u2019 cut back and forth between reporters and live ballroom music programming in the first act, Iscove keeps it isolated to a few minutes, using footage of a fake a TV movie (featuring a cameo by Loni Anderson, surprised \u2018without warning\u2019 by a stalker) whose broadcast is repeatedly interrupted by Vanocur, describing incoming details from Grover\u2019s Mill \u2013 the same location of the first outer space impact in the Welles radio drama.<\/p>\n

And the in-jokes go beyond Welles references and the odd character name play:<\/p>\n

– The two other places where the meteors collide are the Gobi Desert, where Steven Spielberg had Bedouins discover a ship reported missing in the Bermuda Triangle in Close Encounters of the Third Kind<\/strong> (1977); and Lourdes, France, where a peasant girl had immaculate visions (and her story was dramatized in the 1943 film The Song of Bernadette<\/strong>).<\/p>\n

– The little girl found by the reporters at Grover\u2019s Mill also echoes the traumatized girl found in the wrecked remains of her family\u2019s camper in Them!<\/strong> (1954), and whose initial silence (and later scream of the film\u2019s title) ignite a drama of \u2018otherworldly\u2019 creatures whose destruction of humanity is also rooted in Man\u2019s violent actions.<\/p>\n

Although once available on DVD, Without Warning<\/strong> actually works better when there are commercials (or at least a sampling of some) to convey the sense of a real broadcast the way Orson Welles managed to pull off 56 years before on radio. (Another ‘live’ news teleplay, Special Bulletin<\/strong>, also benefitted from ad breaks in 1983.)<\/p>\n

Dramatizations of the 1938 radio broadcast and the paranoiacs who believes Martians had arrived include the 1957 live teleplay for Studio One<\/strong>, The Night America Trembled<\/strong>, and the 1975 TV movie The Night That Panicked America<\/strong>. A more recent effort to capture a fly-on-the-wall feel during the \u201938 performance was dramatized in Andrew Burashko\u2019s 2011 play version of Welles\u2019 War of the Worlds<\/strong>, using Howard Koch\u2019s original script (see end interview link for further info).<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 2011 Mark R. Hasan<\/p>\n

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Related links:<\/em><\/p>\n

DVD \/ Film: \u00a0Studio One: \u00a0Sentence of Death (1953) \/ Night America Trembled, The<\/strong><\/a> (1957)<\/p>\n

Interview: director Andrew Burashko<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Related external links (MAIN SITE):<\/em><\/p>\n

DVD \/ Film: \u00a0Song of Bernadette, The<\/a> (1943) — Them!<\/a><\/strong> (1954) —\u00a0Thorn Birds, The<\/a> <\/strong><\/strong>(1983)<\/p>\n

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External References<\/em>:<\/p>\n

IMDB <\/a>— Wikipedia Entry<\/a> —\u00a0Composer Filmography<\/a><\/p>\n

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Buy from:<\/em><\/p>\n

Amazon.com<\/strong> \u2013\u00a0Without Warning<\/a><\/p>\n

Amazon.ca<\/strong> –\u00a0Without Warning<\/a><\/p>\n

Amazon.co.uk <\/strong> –\u00a0Without Warning [DVD] [1994] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]<\/a><\/p>\n

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Return to<\/strong>:\u00a0Home <\/a>\/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews<\/a> <\/em><\/em><\/em>\/\u00a0V to Z<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Return to: Home \/\u00a0Blu-ray, DVD, Film Reviews \/ V to Z . Film: Very Good\/ DVD Transfer: n\/a \/ DVD Extras: n\/a Label: Madacy\/ Region: 1 (NTSC) \/\u00a0Released: October 22, 2004 Genre: Science-Fictition \/ Drama \/ Mockumentary Synopsis: H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” is redone as a live TV feed, where network news anchors […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[18],"tags":[432,433,431],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nuyW-IP","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2779"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2779"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2797,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2779\/revisions\/2797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kqek.com\/mobile\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}