Recently, when President Obama was asked about the Top Kill Project, the plan to plug the oil spill in the gulf of Mexico, he declared, “If it’s successful, and there are no guarantees, it should greatly reduce or eliminate the flow of oil streaming into the Gulf from the sea floor, but if it’s not, there are other approaches that may be viable.” Never-the-less, this situation has focused attention on the necessity for seeking alternative fuel sources even though it will cause a great deal of pain from the costly changes in lifestyle required to kick the dependence on oil.

One way to resolve the global reliance on fossil fuels was suggested in a popular 1951 novel by British writer John Wyndhum who was relatively unknown until The Day Of The Triffids catapulted him from literary obscurity and established him as a major fiction writer. The public saw the book as a science fiction post apocalyptic satire about cultural dependence on the products of the industrial revolution while others contended it to be a play about how karma unfolds for those who did not open there eyes to see what was approaching.

The Triffids, a fictional creation of Wyndhum are described as large venomous plants genetically manipulated by industry controlled farms as a substitute for petroleum. “They can communicate through sound and have three feet which allows them mobility with poisonous tentacles that kill their prey and consume its flesh.”

The pivotal event that occurs is a dazzling display of lights in the sky from a passing comet that destroys the optic nerve and renders anyone who views them blind. Only a few on the planet are unaffected as the horrific consequences lead to the escape and proliferation of the triffids that seek humans as a source of food and display a remarkable ability for enhancing their intelligence with each successive generation by sharpening their predatory nature as ruthless hunters.

The first film adaption of the novel was in 1963 and starred Howard Keel, most known as the lead actor in a long string of MGM musicals of the 1950′s including Showboat and Kiss Me Kate, and who went on to television notoriety playing the second husband of Miss Ellie, matriarch of the Ewing clan on Dallas. This version was considered more of a horror movie that brought the triffid spores to Earth from the meteor shower much like the pods in The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956). “Triffids are portrayed as aliens, and come from outer space, depicted as carnivorous monsters, evil in nature.” But few elements of the  original novel were in the script which had a happy ending when it was discovered that seawater turned the triffids into mush. The salvation of the human race presented in narrative form is similar to the microbes that miraculously ended The martian invasion in The War Of The Worlds (1953).

In December 2009 the BBC aired a made for TV miniseries which was never shown in the United States. This production  is  much more faithful to the 1951 book. It lays responsibility for the creation of the triffids on scientists and oil companies too quick to hail the discovery of triffid oil as the silver bullet to the crisis while doing nothing to change consumer consciousness except by transferring the dependence from fossil fuel to triffid oil, also regulated by the oil industry.

In this version as in the original novel, the plants did not come from outer space, nor are they monsters, but rather a species that comply  with the same biology that bacteria and virus’s have   evolved based on the scientific principle of adaptation. All this as a blind human race succumbs to the cattle call of their triffid predators reminiscent of the morlocks in H. G. Wells, The Time Machine.

The 2009 made for TV film stars two members of the Redgrave family, Jolie Richardson and her mother Vanessa Redgrave in a small but pivotal role as a mother superior who claims to hear the word of God and delivers blind people to the triffids as a human sacrifice to prevent the carnivores from overrunning the abbey she heads. Redgrave, considered by many as the foremost English speaking actress of the twentieth century is also well known for her controversial political and social activism which plays well in this role.

The breakdown of society, its moral foundations and the lines of good and evil are drawn differently in this intelligent production, with superb action and special effects, although the climax does not end as happily as it did for the 1961 film. The population of the planet is consumed and only a small community of sighted people survive on the Isle of White as reality deals a blow to those blinded by the consequences of corporate greed , cultural addiction and disregard for ecological balance.

“I entered the forest here and a hare appeared, then did many more everywhere in a prolific dance, prancing into a murky world of green and blue, a haze of dark colors ablaze dripping morning dew hidden beneath the roof of tree’s shelter as insects flew and fungus grew. I waited in the pond, ankle deep, address of blue silk pattern in hand to avoid getting it wet, an arrow on it pointing the way which kept changing as I moved. My thoughts were adrift absorbing the visual play seeing images all around me reflected off the pond’s surface. After a conversation with a flying squirrel who had spoken to me about the rocky, bumpy hole with the hare, I jumped into this whole, over there, traveling to an another place to attend a tea party with all sorts of strange talking creatures, going through keyholes and eating mushrooms along the way.”

This excerpt, hand-written in Yiddish, was found in the diaries of German Baroness Gertrude Von Ludwig Dodgson, reportedly the second cousin once removed of Charles Lutwig Dodgson, known by the pseudonym, Lewis Carroll, noted British author and master of Literary nonsense. His most popular works include “Jabberwocky”, “The Hunting Of The Snark” and the complete works of “Alice in Wonderland”.

Disney studios brought it to the screen as a beloved 1951 epic animated fantasy, an interpretive adaptation of colors and epic symbols about the girl with golden hair seeing a talking hare, holding watch, nervously observing the direction as thyme grew late for a clue that would help him find his lost hole, running, claiming to be late for a very important date, a gathering with some questionable characters hosted by a loonytoon with attitude and a hat. Now, Tim Burton has created a 3D version starring Johnny Depp.

Dodgson never met his cousin who had been committed to the Bavarian Sanitarium For Anthropomorphic Research when she was observed talking to birds, squirrels and vampire bats migrating from Romania. After her death caused by an attack from a hive of bumble bee’s and spawning salmon, her vast estate including a crypt of secret documents and diaries from some of the most illustrious royal families of Europe, were left to her closest living relative then known by the name Lewis Carroll.

These quotes are believed to be the basis of his most popular books, Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland and its sequel, Through The Looking Glass And What Alice Found There. Many parallels can be found between his novel nonsense and the stories in her most recent diaries.

Since imagination is a place where living or inanimate objects can have human qualities, it’s sensible to conclude that animals, imaginary people, and even cartoon characters we know can’t   exist, can also act with human traits in a place where everything makes scents despite having no logical sense.

“Even a man who is pure in heart

And says his prayers by night

May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms

And the autumn moon is bright”

Among Europe’s most popular legends are the Strigoi, known as the tortured souls that rise from the dead with the ability to transform themselves into animals, drain energy from their victims and make themselves invisible. Some scholars argue that they can be living beings with supernatural instincts instilled with the power to move objects, control the passage of time and possess special insight to foretell the future.

There are many stories about what lurks in the forests of Europe where the Strigoi dwell as human sized predatory creatures with unusual speed. A ripe subject for literature, cinema and television. They tell the common tale of chronic dissatisfaction with life, cursed while trapped within a fear of change. The only other way to attain immortality is by seeing though the illusion of life’s addiction and ascend, aware only of movement since direction is subjective. But even to do that, one still has to suffer as does the tortured souls most feared in myths in an ironic twist of fate.

Although he never refers to the undead, Woody Allen has included some witty dialogue about chronic dissatisfaction in his 2008 film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, “Life is short, life is dull and full of pain and this is a chance for something special.” Some of the directors words also seem to explain why love stories between humans and the Strigoi are so compelling, “Only unfulfilled love can be romantic,”  as images of Edward and Bella, Angel and Buffy are evoked.

Most of the claims about the Strigoi have been dismissed as hallucinations, fables usually attributed to a curse using breadcrumbs to lure an audience as a common ploy of witches who live in candy houses somewhere in the woods of the Carpathian mountains where beasts prey upon lost souls who only know what they don’t want, effectively becoming yet another victim of chronic dissatisfaction.

Sixty years earlier the film Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) took a comical look at the undead. A respected horror film that is considered by the American Film Institute (AFI) among the top 100 films of American cinema. The plot is set in Florida and surrounds four different kind of Strigoi as Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster are smuggled out of eastern Europe as wax dummies pursued by the man who turns into the werewolf while the invisible man makes a cameo appearance at the end of the film. Even though he cannot be seen a voice is heard, “allow me to introduce myself, I’m the invisible man.”

Although none of them appear in a Woody Allen film, all of them were effected by chronic dissatisfaction and madness.

Around the time of Socrates a lesser known philosopher wrote, “perspective is the ability to visualize two points on any horizontal line with a third point elevated in the distance allowing parallel lines to be drawn intersecting at the ‘vanishing point’ beyond which nothing is seen.”

An example of this occurs when vision is focused on a point along the horizon driving an automobile on a flat desert highway with cactus and sand on either side. Then, its noticed that the road in the distance disappears and becomes a dot. If the path has been traveled before, familiarity with what one expects to find is reinforced with confidence about what still lies hidden as memory saturates the event.

Artists of all sorts such as painters, sculpture’s and architects write using perspective in various ways to stimulate imagination  suggesting, “what lies beyond can be perceived with a little bit of flexibility surrounded by rational thought reflecting that which  is not visible,” recognizing it as a place where the hypothetical becomes tangible.

If the gaze is fixed and the horizon moves, a cause could be myodeopsia, a condition characterized by the appearance of spider’s web thread like spots moving as the field of vision shifts. Floaters as they are known in ophthalmology are small pieces of hardening vitreous structures that break off within the eye and move freely in the fluid causing shadows to be cast on the retina.

Even though they are common and considered more an  annoyance than anything seriously wrong with one’s visual capabilities, an exam by an ophthalmologist once a year is advisable.

Floaters are often a result of aging, a corneal abrasion or an infection. Some think they are  optical illusions  which are perceptual effects that arise from interpretations of an image by the brain rather then an entoptic phenomenon. Others may consider them a figment of science fiction but only those who have them know for sure.

In Hinduism, Avatar is a  Sanskrit word referring to the conscious descent of a deity from heaven to earth often translated into English as “incarnation,” but a  more appropriate term is “manifestation.” Its meaning is the basis of James Cameron’s visual epic that took fourteen years to complete depicting native life of Pandora, a planet that takes several years to reach in suspended animation. The film is an artistically stunning adventure in 3D worth seeing  even if the story, written in two weeks, is a bit derivative with a  screenplay that borrows heavily from some of the directors previous work and brings to mind too many similarities to Dances With Wolves.

The military look of the film is so reminiscent of  Aliens that it distracted me from  becoming immersed in the film. Aliens is the 1986 classic that Cameron directed about the bugs that gestate in the chest of its living host and have acid for blood. As in Aliens, the company or corporation features prominently as the prime antagonist of evil instigating  the invasion force that plans to drain Pandora’s natural resources for the benefit of Earth. Our planet is now an ecologically depleted waste land, a victim of economic greed that Weavers character, Dr. Grace Augustine, a Bio-Anthropologist opposes as passionately as she did as Ellen Ripley in Aliens.

The feel of the film’s technology including a cargo loader machine similar to the one Ripley uses to defeat the queen bug at the end of Aliens is featured in facsimile in a major battle scene at the end of Avatar. This similarity is an annoying element of this new film which was written, directed and produced by Cameron with a running time of 2 hours and 40 minutes.

Although the 3D nature of the films construction is groundbreaking, the plot is predictable and the characters are too two dimensional drawing  heavily from other science fiction/ fantasy films. The premise that all living things emanate a common energy also known as “the force”  fills everything in the universe is perhaps a reference to the  Star Wars universe , not that there is anything wrong with imitation, but even the forests of Pandora,  a magical place  with luminescent creatures and large revered trees  evokes the image of Lothlorien the mystical home  of the elves of Middle Earth. Add to all this the notion of cloning a personal avatar and a neural link, then  Alien Resurrection and The Matrix comes  to mind. But despite all its flaws, Avatar is worth seeing if only to make one realize that Star Trek (2009) is a much better film.