PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

TwinLUG At SpringCon 2013

TwinLUG was at the local comic con this last weekend. We had six tables and several hundred people stopped by to see what was there. Several members of the club brought lots of different things to look at and there was even a game to play. There was some Micropolis, a large castle and forest scene, some houses, some micro moonbase, a mural, and several dioramas. I have some more pictures on my Photostream. I haven't made a set yet. Flickr has changed and it's not very attractive anymore. Max has some more pics on his Flicker photostream.

Doc Martin - The Movies

 

Here's another thing I got from the library. I've become fixated with UK TV for some reason and when I saw the Doc Martin dvd with it's "Thoroughly charming" label I figured I'd checked it out. It's a two disc set that has the two tv movies that Sky Broadcasting produced in 2001 and 2003. There was a 2000 movie called Saving Grace that doesn't seem to be at the library, Amazon or NetFlix. That was the first version of the fish out of water when a London doctor sets up in Cornwall. 

The first of the movies is Doc Martin and Martin Clunes plays the doctor, who's name is Martin Bamford. As the movie opens he joins his three doctor pals at a resturant for lunch. There he learns that they're all shagging his wife. After tossing their table he leaves and confronts his wife. She doesn't seem to care about it but she's an awful person and Martin should be glad to be well rid of her. He takes the train to Cornwall to be on his own. After the cab breaks down he has to hoof it into town on foot, in the rain. He looses his shoes. There's some bad ass shit happening to this guy for much of the movie. There's some comedy mined from his pain. Ha ha. He gets a room in the pub, has some drinks, meets the locals and winds up lobster fishing. He also falls right into the mystery of the jellies. Some unknown person has been making jello and leaving the molded dessert on people's front steps with incriminating evidence inside. Enough people have gotten them that the town is pretty upset and people are blaming each other. Some stuck up old cow is even blaming the doctor but she's a great big busy body asshole so what are you going to do, huh. The Doc makes some friends and comes to like the place. Since the local doctor is unfit he decides to stay, even after his wife comes to take him back. She won't sleep with him, instead she wants to go to couples counciling. Martin wises up and bolts. Who could blame him. 

In Doc Martin And The Legend Of The Cloutie the Doc has settled in somewhat. He tries to buy a property but is cheated by a stuck up rich bitch who wants to tear down the shitty old cottage and turn it into a 2o house estate. The Doc's plan is to scare them away but the locals say he should use a Cloutie. That's a bit of cloth that you tie to a tree. After that you make a wish and when the cloth rots off the tree, you get your wish. There's a price for the magic. Eventually the doc gets his house and the horrible woman is driven off of the farm.

Both were funny, a bit sad, and fairly well told. They were fun to watch but after reading about the changes to the series when it aired a year or so later I'm not so sure that I might want to bother with them. The re-imagined character, now with ITV, is supposed to faint at the site of blood, be somewhat grumpy, socially inept and selfish. That makes him less of a likeable character, so I'm waffling on the other 5 series on dvd. Maybe when I start to run out of better old shows. These I'd watch again but I'm not interesting in buying them.

Vexed Season 1

I saw Vexed at the library and remembered Lucy Punch from the 2009 St Trinians movie which I had just seen a few days earlier. In this short lived 2010 British tv series she plays Detective Inspector Kate Bishop who transfers to London from Bristol. She gets partnered with Detective Inspector Jack Armstrong, played by Toby Stephens. Their both kind of high strung and impulsive. The 2 of them made 3 episodes together and that is the whole 1st season. The show came back for a 6 episode 2nd season in 2012 without Lucy, then it was cancelled. Only the first season is out on dvd so far, the 2nd season is due next month. It got mixed reviews from the critics and I can see why. It's a comedy and there are jokes but they're the kind of jokes that are born from thoughtless actions, stupid words and poor police work. The two of them are pretty much the worst detectives. They do catch the crooks but mostly by accident. I laughed once in a while and it sort of kept me interested but it never got any better than the first episode. The two of them are just such dumb-asses. I'll check the library for the second season in a month or two but I'm not having much hope it will be better.

Science Fiction Sunday 233

 

Terror Of The Autons is the first serial of the 8th season. It's still the 3rd Doctor played by Jon Pertwee. The 4 episodes first aired January 2 1971 and ran through the 23rd of the month. There's a new companion called Jo Grant who is played by Katy Manning. She's not a scientist and the Doc is cranky about that but he can't fire her himself so he lets her stay. Nicholas Courtney returns as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and Roger Delgado makes his first appearance as The Master.

 

The Master arrives on earth in a Tardis disguised as a horsebox. He takes over a circus and steals the Nestene unit left over from an earlier story. He uses a radio telescope to beam out a message to the nestines. The Doctor hears about the thief and the trouble at the radio telescope and suspects something. He wasn't expecting to see the Time Lord that comes to warm him that The Master is on earth. The Master takes over a plastic factory. He starts building Autons and kills some people who don't want to give up their factory. The Doctor chases around sparing with the Master form show to show. Sometimes one or another of the cast gets captured and escapes. Between there's some fightin' by the UNIT team and some science yakkin' from the Doc's lips. The violence got some bad press at the time the show was aired. The Doctor does eventually thwart The Master's plan but the evil one escapes. He'll have to stay on earth for a while, the Doctor stole a part from his Tardis, and according to the featurette on character he will return. It was a pretty good story that moved along better than most of the longer serials.

There's another featurette on the disc and a commentary that I didn't finish but might before the disc goes back to the library. The featurettes were interesting enough. I like that they fill you in on a lot of detail about the show's creation. Terrance Dicks is the script editor and Barry Letts is the producer. They ahve some good comments on their contribution to the series.

Friday Night Movies 425

Manborg is a low budget science fiction film that was made in Canada for about a thousand dollars. Canadian dollars which are usually not worth as much as the US dollar but there you go. The movie really looks better than you might expect for that cash. That total also means no one got paid which is a great cost saving. I'm sure there are plenty of film studio's staying up late trying to figure out how to get more people to work for free. Steven Kostanski is the writer, producer, director and special effects guy. Most of his credits are for special effect work. He directed another movie after this one and 4 shorts. It took him three years to put Manborg together. A year of shooting and two more of postproduction and the movie was released in 2012. The story's about the invasion of Earth by demons from hell. Some soldiers are killed and one body is dragged off screen. We jump several years into a shitty future after the demons, under the control of Count Draculon, have taken over. The body that disappeared wakes as a cyborg, who later dubs himself Manborg, and finds he's the prisoner of the Count. His memory is gone and he doesn't remember that it was the Count who killed him.

 

Manborg is forced to fight in a stadium with the other prisoners against some ugly CGI beasts and guys in rubber suits on hover bikes. There's plenty of yakkin' and fightin' before Manborg and his fellow prisoners, the trio in the picture on the right above, beat the monsters and later, at great cost of life and limb, destroy the Count. The movie doesn't use many practical sets, they shoot on green screen and put stuff in the background. It doesn't always look that good but most scenes are watchable. The acting is all over the place but mostly amateurish and played for laughs. The silly story and enthusiasm almost make it work. It's more for the fan of low budget movies with monsters and shit like that. It will have it's champions because of what it is. Not something I would want to buy now that I have seen it. I might want to watch it once again but I wouldn't need to.

Gangs Of The Dead is a better made movie than our first selection but the story is pretty much what we've seen before and none of hte characters are likeable so it not quite as entertaining as you might hope. It's a 2006 zombie film that takes place in a shitty part of Los Angeles. It's only got a limited amount of CGI and while most of it is about average there's a really nice shot of a meteor crashing into a bridge. I'm guessing that's where most of the effects budget went. That, or they got someone to work for free. The meteor unleashes something that turns the dead into zombies and they attack everyone they encounter. Everyone alive. Two groups of gang members, one black and one hispanic, show up at Reggie Bannister's hideout in a shitty warehouse to do some illegal business. They weren't both supposed to be there at the same time and being motherfuckers they get all bitchy and confrontational. The cops were waiting, tipped of by an informant, and soon enough they come racing to the scene only to be interupted by a swarm of zombie hobos. Reggie is killed by a cop van driven into the warehouse. The gangs are trapped with a couple of cops. None of the cops were as unlikeable as the gang members but they aren't that likeable either. By the end of the movie pretty much everyone is dead. There's nothing exceptional about the movie, it's kind of average, like something you might pass the time with on the SyFy channel. It scores a 3.4 on the IMDb and it's probably a movie that is a bit better than that. I wouldn't need to buy one.

What I Read In January 2013

The Chronicles Of The Imaginatium Geographica 2 The Search For The Red Dragon by James K Owen. Nine years have past since the last book and the trio of JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis and Charles Williams have settled back into their normal lives at the institutions of higher learning they frequent. The granddaughter of Peter Pan, Laura Glue, comes calling and that takes them on a new adventure. I liked Laura Glue. You say her name as one word. There's more trouble in the Archipeligo. Someone is stealing the dragon ships and Peter Pan is being tortured by the villain. The trio returns to the Archipeligo and Richard Burton (not the actor) and HG Wells get involved. There's plenty of running around in a fairly well told story with some interesting places to visit and people to see. It's illustrated but I'm no fan of the illustrations by the author. I do want to find out what happens in the next books and there are 6 out so far with a 7th due in November. I've just added the rest of the series to my library queue. Once I get through some of the other books I'm reading now I'll find out what happens next.    

Murder At Midnight by Avi is the prequel to Midnight Magic. It sets up the relationship between Fabrizio and Magnus that featured in Midnight Magic. Fabrizio was an orphan and he's just come to live at Magnus's house when the plot to kill the King comes to a head. Magnus is a stage magician in a country where real magic is banned by the king. An unkown villain has framed Magnus in an elaborate plot involving a printing press and magic. Since the story is set hundreds of years ago in Italy the printing press is almost unknown. Fabrizio pulls together all the knowledge he has and all the courage he can muster to help save his new master from the noose. Part of it is his own motivated self interest. He's honest in his narration that he'd be back in the street, along with his master's wife, if Magnus was convicted. Fabrizio's other motivation is his love for his new mother figure, Mrs Magnus. She treats him well and she's responsible for his being there in the house. Magnus only reluctantly tries to teach the boy at first. The story eventually cements their friendship and all that bladdy-blah suff. I had read Midnight Magic, which came out in 1999, a while back and liked it but was waffling on keeping it. When I saw the 2009 prequel, and it's neat looking cover, marked down to 2 bucks, I picked it up. It's was a good quick read with a well written story. I have liked most of the Avi fantasy books I have read but I'm not much interested in reading a lot of his other titles. Now I'm thinking I'll keep the pair of them and re-read them again down the road. Then I can decide if I need to keep them.

   

Icefire & Firestar by Chris D'Lacey are a couple of books that have been sitting around for a while. I got the first three books of the series ages ago. I read book 1, The Fire Within, and thought it was so-so. I still had the two books that followed and I wasn't too eager to read them. Some years go by and I figured I'd plow through those two books and put them on the discard heap. I did that. They weren't much to my liking either.

The Books Of Umber 1 Happenstance Found by PW Catanese was highly entertaining. PW is the author of several books that retell fairy tales. The Eye of the Warlock, The Thief and the Beanstalk, The Mirror’s Tale and The Riddle of the Gnome were all pretty entertaining. I didn't have a copy of The Brave Apprentice so I just ordered one. Since I liked those so much I had hopes that this new original story would be fun or interesting to read. It was. Happenstance is a young teen who wakes up in a strange place without any memory of what happened to him before he woke up. Along with Hap we learn about the world he now inhabits, the magical powers that he has and the problems that he faces. Along with Hap's shitload of problems there are plenty of characters to meet, some of whom are helpful, some of whom are not. There's plenty of interesting places to go and stuff to hear about once you get there. There are some good amount of danger and people die pretty regularly. The world is kind of medieval and the man who rescued Hap at the start of the book is leading a cultural and industrial revolution with his new ideas in engineering, music and metallurgy. Turns out he's not from around there. It moved briskly and I was glad to read it. I read the 2nd book in February and have been waiting for the third book to show up used. It hasn't so I bit the bullet and ordered a new copy over at Amazon. The paperback was only $6.29 and that and the copy of The Brave Apprentice and a dvd put me over the $25 limit for free shipping. It'll get put on the top of the reading list when it arrives, it I can reach the top, it's getting pretty high.

That's Quite Interesting Series B

 

Here's the first episode of Qi's B series. That would be the second season and all the titles of the episodes begin with B. There are some dvd's, of the first 3 series, in England but no love for the New World, except on YouTube. If watchthe video on it's YouTube page you can find links to the rest of the season. Stephen Fry, the main reason i would watch the series, hosts the show. He's usually pretty entertaining. His comments are funny and informative. I learned many things. Alan Davies, a comedian and actor, is the permanent panelist. The guest panelists are pretty much the same people as on the first series with a few random others tossed in. Most of the regulars are people like Bill Bailey, Jo Brand, Sean Lock, Rich Hall, Clive Anderson, Phil Jupitus and Jeremy Clarkson. The show is heavy on comedians and I didn't know most of them when I started watching the series but with the help of the internet I learned who they were. There are plenty of jokes and it's a fun show to watch. Plus, the learning is always good.

79109 Colby City Showdown

Not much going on in Colby City from the looks of it. A bank and a sheriff's office. You'd think they would have had the other obvious business. The Undertaker. I guess you have to build your own. It's a better set than most when it comes to price per part. About 8.5 cents for each of the 587 parts in this $50 set. Still a low cost per part isn't much good if those aren't the parts you need. It would be a set I would gravitate too. Heavy on the reddish brown, some amount of the blays, tan and dark green, plus a good bit of black and white. The dark green 1x1 brick has the largest quantity of any of the parts. There are 33 of them, plus 20 of the 1x2. The second largest quantity are the 23 1x1 round black plates. There are 18 of the 1x2 light blay brick brick and 4 of the dark tan version. I was more pleased when I first saw those pieces than I was after I had actually started to try to built something using them. Sadly, they look the best when you stack them and that's not always the most stable way to build. No matter they still have some use in creating texture on a surface. I like the side with the single line dividing the brick in two. That can be used to create different looks too. There are 15 window frames and glass inserts to fill them. A couple of doors and frames can always come in handy. There are a nice mix of accessories: bottle, sack, dynamite, key, even a cannon. This would be a good parts pack for me. It would be a great set to pluck off the clearance shelf.      

 

Stop the bandits from stealing the silver!

Go after the bandits when they rob the town bank in a Colby City Showdown! Fire the cool rooftop cannon as the bandits blow up the vault and try to steal the silver! Take cover and help the Lone Ranger, Tonto and Texas Ranger Dan Reid put the gun-slinging gangsters back behind bars! Includes 5 minifigures with weapons and accessories: the Lone Ranger, Tonto, Texas Ranger Dan Reid and 2 bandits, Ray and Frank.

• Includes 5 minifigures with weapons and accessories: the Lone Ranger, Tonto, Texas Ranger Dan Reid and the 2 bandits, Ray and Frank.
• Includes the sheriff’s office, bank and a small wagon
• Sheriff’s office features opening door, jail with exploding wall function and rooftop cannon
• Bank features opening door and vault
• Weapons include 3 revolvers, 3 rifles and a tomahawk
• Accessories include a sack, 2 bundles of dynamite sticks, bottle, handcuffs, keys, barrel and 2 silver bars
• Take aim with the rooftop cannon!
• Break out the bandits with the exploding prison wall!
• Use the dynamite to break open the vault!
• Wagon measures over 1" (4cm) high, 2" (7cm) long and 1" (5cm) wide
• Sheriff’s office measures over 5" (13cm) high, 6" (17cm) wide and 3" (9cm) deep
• Bank measures over 5" (14cm) high, 6" (17cm) wide and 3" (8cm) deep       

Looks like you can set it up and play with it. Doesn't seem much like a lot of options. Crook or cop. Kind of like CITY, I guess. Of course, you'd should be able to figure out that you can have more fun with a larger town without anyone specifically telling you. I overheard someone one complaining about how LEGO was just plain bricks back in their day. Guys in their 30s who claimed they could have built much better if only they'd have had all the special pieces they have today. Makes me laugh. I've overheard that in the Mall Of America several times in the last 3 or 4 years. The other complaint is that there aren't any alternate models on the boxes anymore. I've had several people at work mention this when they find out I'm a LEGO fan. They usuallly had LEGO sets as kids and now their spawn are tripping the brick fantastic. The back of the box usually promotes the play features and doesn't have any other ideas. I suspect that they discontinued the alternate instructions in sets because they were costly. As the instructions got dumbed down made clearer by increasing the steps, and adding the illustrated parts list to each step, it made sense to cut the extra cost of the added pages be deleting pages. You save on booklet production, paper and ink have only gone up in price over the years. You save something from not having to pay for the extra model building time while your paid designers try to figure out something that isn't quite crap to put on the back of the box. Many of them were pretty awful, nothing good to be said about them. Not missed by me.  

       

The five figures are the Lone Ranger, Tonto, Dan Reid, Frank and Ray. The three on the right have pretty good costumes with a nice selection of hats. Loney and his goofy hatted pal have pretty limited costumes. Not sure I'll bother picking up one of the sets, unless I see it on sale somewhere. I don't need the parts right now.

Science Fiction Sunday 232

Inferno is the 54th Doctor Who serial. It first aired May 9th and the 7 part story ran through June 19 197o. Jon Pertwee is the 3rd Doc and he's joined by the Caroline John as Liz Shaw and Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart. The story isn't aliens this time, it's a mad scientist. That was the 2nd plot device that Terrance Dicks talked about in an interview from another dvd. He said they thought there were only two story lines with the Doctor stuck on Earth without the use of his Tardis and they were aliens and mad scientists. This MS is drilling a deep deep hole into the earth. He's convinced people he's going to find some cheap energy source and they've given him a huge pile of cash to get on with it. He's a smug, "I'm in charge and you do what I tell you,' kind of prick. He won't listen to anyone and he nearly blows up the whole world. The Doctor is using some of the mad scientists nuclear reactor power to run experiments on his Tardis console panel. He does poke his head into the drilling project and gives his two pence on the dangers but MS won't listen to him. The Brigadier is running security on the project and that's a good thing when some of the men working on site turn into hairy monsters. They've come in contact with some green goop that bubbled up through the drilling tubes.

 

That's one of the mutant beasts. Yow, huh! The other pic is from the dvd photo gallery. The Doctor gets the Tardis control panel working. During his test the Mad Scientist cuts off the power and the Doc is trapped in an alternate universe where England is a fascist state. Turns out the MS in that universe is even more far gone and the world is destroyed. Sucks to be there. Luckily for our Time Lord he manages to get his ass back to our world before the lava consumes everyone. Once home the Doctor manages to put a stop to the drilling just in time to save our collective bacon. The serial is the last of the 7th season and the last story that Liz Shaw appears in. New companion next season.

It was an ok serial, though I thought parts were kind of slow moving. There's plenty of running around and an ok villian. The alternate universe was a nice plot device. The hairy mutants were about average for the BBC. Again, another story that would be better as a shorter serial. The episodes are on one disc and the second disc in the set has a couple of making of features. They were ok.

Friday Night Movies 424

   

Ray Harryhausen came up as an option and pretty much unplanned we wound up watching Ray's first movie and his last. The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms came out in 1953 movie and Clash Of The Titans was released in 1981. Ray had worked on several shorts before The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and he was effects technician on Mighty Joe Young in 1949 but the films we watched are the first and last of the 15 films where he was in charge of the visual effects. Ray created the creatures and did all the animation work. I've seen them all, some several times, over the years. Some are better than others but usually they're entertaining and Ray's stop motion animation is fun to watch. Part of the appeal is the monsters or mythical creatures he brings to life. We like monsters in our group and we'll watch pretty much anything with a giant monster in it. We sure see some crap sometimes. Luckily for us, these two aren't at the lower end of the spectrum.

The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms opens with some men in the arctic conducting a nuke test. The explosion uncovers a giant reptile which wakes up and ambles about yelling. I'd be yelling too, especially if my balls were dangling in an iceberg for a 100 million years. A couple of men see it but one dies and the other is thought to have been driven crazy by the strain of arctic life and the death of his friend. We know he's not crazy and as the monster makes some more appearances the rest of the world comes to know it too. The scientists and the military rally around to try to stop it. The monster makes several appearances. We particularily liked the scene with the lighthouse. Lovely silhouette.

   

The monster is eventually tracked and they shoot it with guns of various sizes. Turns out the beast's blood is deadly poison so they need to kill it without making it bleed too much. They figure that out and at the end of the film the critter lies dead in the ruins of a roller coaster. It's sad really, poor monster. It was the first giant creature that was woken up, or created, by nukes in a movie. The film did well, making $5 mill from a $220K cost, and that spured other companies to make more monster movies. Great for us, huh. There's some dodgey science in the movie but it's a movie about a giant pre-historic reptile so you can't expect too much. It's one I've seen a few times and I always enjoy watching it. It's very much of the time and I like science fiction movies from the 1950's. 

Eugène Lourié was mostly an art director during his career which started in 1934 and ended in 1980. The Art Direction Catagorey on his IMDb page lists 52 films and tv series. As a director he made some tv shows and a tv movie but only directed 4 theatrical films: The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1953), The Colossus Of New York (1958), The Giant Behemoth (1959) and Gorgo (1961). He quit directing because he though he was getting typecast as a monster movie director. It's too bad. While I wouldn't say his films are great cinematic art they are good solid monster movies that provide an entertaining story and some mighty monster action. 

 

Clash Of The Titans was directed by Desmond Davis from a script by Beverly Cross who was Maggie Smith's husband until he died in 1998. When the King of Argos tosses his daughter and her son into the sea the gods get involved. The King is mad that the son, Perseus, is the offspring of Zeus. The big guy retaliates by killing the king and having Posideon release the Kraken to destroy Argos. Sucks to live there now. Zeus has the gods help Perseus and his mon, Danae to get to an island and a new life. Perseus grows up into Harry Hamblin and his feathered hairdo. Zues has the gods give him some help. They provide an invisibility helmet, a sword that can cut through marble and a shiny shield. Good thing, there are monsters to fight.

 

I'm not much of a Harry Hamblyn fan but there you go. Judi Bowker plays Andromeda, the daughter of Queen Cassiopeia. The story is fair for a Greek God melodrama. They were some pricks, those Greek gods, with all their dickin' around and screwing over the people they've scared into worshipping them. The people of Argos didn't have anything to do with their King and they paid for that by being crushed by the kraken. Some of the effects don't look as good as you might hope, especially Poseidon releasing the kraken from his undersea prison. Most of Ray's work looks pretty good. There's a nice Pegasus and some scorpions and the shorts of the medusa are what I remember most from the film.

 

That's Ray and Medusa. She'll loose her head soon and that'll screw up the Kraken's snackin' on Perseus's wife. Zeus is impressed with his boy's courage and he forbids the god's to bother them anymore. Like you could trust that lot. Not quite as entertaining as the first movie. It's 118 minute length seems a bit long, I find some of the story a bit dull, but the monsters are much better. Well worth the look.