Matt McIrvin's Freaky Alternate Reality

An evening of two disappointments, and one old favorite:

1. Gladiator is a remarkably slow and padded movie for something supposedly about a gladiator. I found it hard to pay attention to.
2. The recent A&E adaptation of Ursula Le Guin's The Lathe of Heaven starts out with a quite faithful adaptation of the novel's set-up, then apparently tries to make the story more palatable to the unimaginative by taking out everything cool and instead focusing on the novel's sketchy romantic subplot. Come on—if you've got a guy who can retroactively change all of reality by dreaming, weird things should happen! Lukas Haas and James Caan are actually perfect as poor George Orr and manipulative SOB Dr. Faber, but casting Lisa Bonet as Heather Lalache was a terrible mistake. She's supposed to start out tough as nails, not lost in sleepy-eyed detachment. And I want to see the turtle men from Aldebaran. I get the impression that the old made-for-PBS adaptation (which I haven't seen) was much more faithful; it stayed in limbo for years because of problems with the music rights for "With A Little Help From My Friends."
3. So, speaking of the Beatles, we watched Yellow Submarine again. I never get tired of that one. It caused me permanent brain modifications when I was a small child, especially "When I'm Sixty-Four" and the Sea of Holes.