T
his Week: Human Nature again, Uganda Child Sacrifices, Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, Roman Polanski’s The Ghostwriter, Starz “Spartacus: Blood and Sand”, and more…

Smokey Robinson Presents Australia’s Human Nature—The Ultimate Celebration of Motown. In June, 2009 I went to the VIP opening of Human Nature. Last week John and I returned thanks to an invitation by Ivett Havasi of SPI Entertainment. Along with friends Nikki Artale and Sebastian Sanzera, we sat at a front and center booth and once again loved the show!

As I said then, this is the reason to go to Imperial Palace! (Don’t you hate IP’s self-parking garage? You need IP’s playbook to find your car!)

The members of Human Nature are Toby Allen, Phil Burton, Andrew Tierney and Michael Tierney and a fantastic 6-man band. They have 23 platinum records and five No. 1 albums and deliver a high energy, explosive, brilliant show.

After I saw them the first time, I said: I want to go back!

Human Nature is phenomenal! These guys can sing Motown. There is not one song that you do not know and love. The audience went nuts! Human Nature has made IP a destination site on The Strip.

The Imperial Palace’s 653-seat showroom has been remodeled. Though it still has that antiquated long-form tables from the Sinatra-era, the room boasts a magnificent new sound system, while the stage has a new set and lighting designs. All 4 members signed their CD “Get Ready” (for $20!). (Photos by Nikki Artale of VegasCommunityOnline.com)

Uganda Child Sacrifices. Has there ever been a time when human sacrifice was not practiced? It is still widespread. Makes one wonder.

Since I have been to Uganda, and found it a gorgeous and undiscovered paradise by Westerners, I am very interested in stories about Uganda. ABC’s 20/20 recently ran a story on Uganda’s rampant child sacrifices. The Ugandan government admits that human sacrifice is on the increase, and according to the head of the country’s Anti-Human Sacrifice and Trafficking Taskforce (having such a taskforce tells you a lot!), the crime is directly linked to rising levels of development and prosperity, and an increasing belief that witchcraft can help people get rich quickly.

I tried desperately to find a witch-doctor in Uganda. Finally, after much nagging, it was arranged. We were to be taken by car 2 hours away deep in the country to the witch-doctor’s home. The cost would be $150. Our tour guides expressed concern and told us not to go. We decided against going off without protection.

I might have been sacrificed for my fair skin and green eyes!

A BBC report says:

Clients come to witch-doctors in search of wealth. A witch-doctor said: “They capture other people’s children. They bring the heart and the blood directly here to take to the spirits. They bring them in small tins and they place these objects under the tree from which the voices of the spirits are coming.”

Asked how often clients brought blood and body parts, the witch-doctor said they came “on average three times a week—with all that the spirits demand from them.”

The witch-doctor denied any direct involvement in murder or incitement to murder, saying his spirits spoke directly to his clients. He said he was paid 500,000 Ugandan shillings ($260) for a consultation, but that most of that money was handed over to his “boss” in a nationwide network of witch-doctors.

Head of the Anti-Human Sacrifice and Trafficking Task Force, assistant commissioner Moses Binoga of the Ugandan police, said he knew of the boss referred to—involved in one of five or six witch-doctor protection rackets operating in the country.

Former witch-doctor turned anti-sacrifice campaigner Polino Angela says he has persuaded 2,400 other witch-doctors to give up the trade since he himself repented in 1990.

Mr. Angela, who admitted to killing 70 people, said he had first been initiated as a witch-doctor at a ceremony in neighboring Kenya, where a boy of about 13 was sacrificed.

“The child was cut with a knife on the neck and the entire length from the neck down was ripped open, and then the open part was put on me,” he said.

When he returned to Uganda he says he was told by those who had initiated him to kill his own son, aged 10. “I deceived my wife and made sure that everyone else had gone away and I was with my child alone. Once he was placed down on the ground, I used a big knife and brought it down like a guillotine.” (Photos from Uganda: The Equator, Kampala shopping, our transportation vehicle “George,” and our Uganda campsite).

Movies This Week. I saw three movies this week: “Brooklyn’s Finest” (YES: Director Antoine Fuqua knows how to create unbearable tension. Read my review on reelrave.com/review/440), “Alice in Wonderland” (YES: Brilliant interpretation) and “The Ghost Writer” (YES: Clever, taut, drenched in Hitchcockian dread, and very well done.)

The Ghost Writer. Former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan) is “vacationing” in a concentration-camp gray estate on Martha’s Vineyard in the dead of winter. Perhaps it reminds Lang of windy, raw Scotland. Lang is pampered by his astute counsel, his wife Ruth (Olivia Williams), a personal assistant/mistress Amelia (Kim Cattrall), MI6 secret agents, and various secretaries.

Lang has chosen Purgatory-by-the-ocean to write his memoirs. Problems arise when Lang’s ghostwriter drowns in the ocean and his publisher wants another writer to doll up his autobiography.

With a 4-week, $250,000 assignment waved in his reluctant face, the nameless “Ghost” (Ewan MacGregor) agrees to do the job.

The gloomy fortress aside, the Ghost is puzzled by the apparent Top Secret shenanigans regarding Lang’s autobiographical draft. What does it hold? The map to the Ark of the Covenant? The name of the man who really shot JFK?

With elections in Britain coming up, Lang’s arch rival calls for charges to be brought against Lang asserting he is a war criminal. The Hague gets involved.

Lang is accused of handing over suspected terrorists to the CIA for torture. It is only when the Ghost finds some hidden papers stashed by his predecessor that he becomes embroiled in the scandal.

Based on the novel “The Ghost” by Robert Harris, the screenplay, attributed to Harris and director Roman Polanski, is intelligent and retains several appreciated witticisms. Ghost worries he is being set up like “a tethered goat.”

Polanski is 76 years old and in top form. The kind of privileged misery on display in THE GHOST WRITER suits him. The setting is perfect and the soundtrack wonderfully intense.

Brosnan has been around powerful people for so long he’s got the arrogant casual, political power vibe down pat. And this is finally a performance McGregor can be proud of (and he keeps his modesty!). Cattrall has a role she can show her range and Williams is dynamic as the dissatisfied, but powerful, wife.

The supporting cast is perfect, especially James Belushi (who has embraced his look to great effect here), Timothy Hutton, Eli Wallach, and the always remarkable Tom Wilkinson.

I recall reading (but unable to find it online) a major magazine phone interview with Roman Polanski specifically for THE PIANIST. Polanski was rude and downright nasty. He was insulted that, as an artist, he had to sell his movie! He showed himself, and he is not a nice man. Even someone as great as Michelangelo had to be nice to Pope Julius ll! Michelangelo probably was a bastard to his workmen, but he had to be at least polite to the Medicis.

Nothing Roman Polanski does can be regarded without acknowledging his infamous history. It informs his artistry. I’m not fond of Polanski’s belief in his entitlement. Did surviving the Holocaust bestow a special privilege on Polanski? Did it free him from morality? He has a daughter who has now, I pray, passed the age of 13 without being drugged and anally raped by an older man.

The Los Angeles Times reported that on October 3, 2009 court filings indicated that Roman Polanski agreed to pay the victim in his child-sex case at least $500,000 as part of a civil settlement, but then failed to live up to the terms of the agreement.

The documents leave open the question of whether the fugitive filmmaker has ever paid the money he promised in the confidential 1993 settlement with Samantha Geimer, but a change in her approach to Polanski in subsequent years suggests they may have resolved the issue. (Photo: Samantha Geimer at age 13)

I recently read the 2002 book, “The Shadow over Santa Susana: Black Magic, Mind Control & the Manson Family Mythos” by Adam Gorightly after hearing the author on Coast to Coast AM radio show. There is much more to the Tate/La Bianca Murder victims and the Manson Family! Rosemary and Leno La Bianca were not random spree killer victims. And then there was the weird connection to the Process Church of the Final Judgment!

Starz: “Spartacus: Blood and Sand.” My God! This is fantastic! I swear I saw a naked, erect penis in the ludus! The series has been called “soft-core pornography.”

Not that there is anything wrong with that.

It’s got ultra-violence in the style of the great film “300” and everybody is naked. It has beautiful Andy Whitfield as Spartacus. Starring alongside Whitfield is John Hannah as his owner Batiatus and Lucy Lawless as his wife Lucretia. They both have sex with their slaves. It’s expected—it’s called “the help” isn’t it? Lawless’ husband is the producer and our Zena, Warrior Princess, if often topless. All the slaves are either topless or naked. Some gladiators have sex with young men. It’s okay with everybody. It has already been renewed for a second 13-episode season, so, since Nip/Tuck has ended its horny reign on F/X, there is more Spartacus to come. I guess at the end of the first season, Spartacus doesn’t die on a Roman cross. www.starz.com