PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 196

Best Buy had some dvd's on sale for Black Friday. Joe picked up a bag full and Mike picked Mr. & Mrs. Smith with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Joe was the only one who had been to the theater to see it. None of the rest of us goes much. Brad and Angelina are married. They have fake jobs to cover up their secret lives as international assassins. They don't tell anyone, not even their spouses. Their marriage is in one of those rocky places. We meet them talking to a counsellor. We see bits and pieces of their life's as they sneak around. Each gets an assignment to take out a guy and on that hit they cross paths without realizing who the other hitman is. The secret organizations that they work for put a hit out on the other shooter. Now they are after each other. Yi-yi-yi! There's a lots of action and explosions. At one point they blow up a whole house. What must the neighbors think. The movie is directed by Doug Limon. You might have seem some his other movies. I like Go and The Bourne Identity. I didn't like Swingers but mostly for the two main characters. Limon works in tv a lot. I haven't seen any of those shows. Lack of interest. Most of M&MS was pretty interesting. Especially for 5 bucks. I don't know if I need to buy one. I can always borrow Joe's if I need to see it again, but it was fun for the evening.

 

Thanks to a sale at DVDPlanet Sperhauk picked up a copy of the Kekko Kamen Live 4 disc set. It's a Japanese film series based on a Go Nagi Manga. It was also made into some Anime. Kekko Kamen is a super hero that doesn't wear any underwear. There's nothing to wear it under, her costume is that head covering and scarf. Oh, and those boots. Maybe she wears socks. That would be sensible. There's some reason behind the costume but I can't imagine caring. The box has the 4 films made in 2004, there are 6 other live action movies, three from the early 90's and three from 2007. In this series we follow the trials and tribulations of the young ladies at a school for tv announcers. The staff likes to hand out some weird punishments in a special cage down in the basement of the rather cool school building. You can see a bit of it here in this trailer at YouTube. Watch out there's many naked breasts there.  More pictures here. More of that nudity. The girls are cute and that helps because there isn't much good to report on the movie. There isn't much story or such. Most of the action follows around a gal who isn't doing that well at the school. She's the first to be punished. She's tied to a merry go round horse in her underwear and smacked with a riding crop. Soon Kekko shows up and knocks all the teacher's out. The mysterious boss watches on close circuit tv and laments the return of Kekko into his naughty life. She ruined his other school with her naked girl savin'. It's a short movie but unusual. Not for most. Hopefully the rest of the series will be as fun. And it was fun some of the time, childish at others, and unbelievable at others. The good guys do win and Kekko is pretty cute. Not our usual fare and we're all the better for it.

City Of Ember

I am betting they didn't have Thanksgiving in the City of Ember. Since neither Joe nor I had any family in the area, he suggested we go out to eat. Knowing how fussy i am he let me pick the place to go. Perkins was open. And they weren't crowded at 1pm. I had the ham and cheese omlet, with hash browns and pancakes. Joe had the Country Fried Steak. I sort of wish I had ordered that but I do like the Perkins Omlet. It's been the same for 30 years. Is that good or what?

Joe also suggested going to a movie after we ate. He brought the newpaper and it said that City of Ember was playing over at the Riverview. I do like that theater. And it's only $2 for the early shows, and a buck more after 6pm. It's pretty much in my neighborhood. They keep a steady flow of people into the place by running different movies during the day. Today they ran five different features.

City Of Ember is based on a series of books that I don't know. The cover is sort of familiar. They've been around for a while. I'm not sure I would read them. I will look for the first when I'm at the used book stores I frequent. There's a bunch of people who seal off 200 people in an underground city. The surface world is torn apart by war. There's a device that will open in 200 years. It will show the Emberites how to get back to the surface. It was supposed to be handed down from mayor to mayor but the chain was bust when the mayor died. The box got shoved under a bed and forgotten. The 200 years pass and the box opens unnoticed. About 50 more years pass and things really start to fall apart. Bill Murray is the mayor who is hording food. Amazing that those can goods lasted a quarter of a millenia. A couple of teens are ready for Assignment Day. That's the day you graduate to being an apprentice to some trade. Our lady hero gets to be a messanger and her friend gets to be a pipe worker. He hopes to figure out what is wrong with the generator. The city's power structure, and everything else, is falling apart. They find the device and figure out how to get to the surface. The movie is ok but nothing very exciting. Nice looking sets, filmed in the former ship hanger, now the world's largerest soundstage,  in Northern Ireland where they built the Titanic. It bombed rather well at the box office. I can't recommend it highly but it's entertaining for the most part. Worth a couple of bucks to see in the theater, over paying for a dvd for sure.

Science Fiction Sunday 22

I watched some of the movies that ran on the SciFi Channel yesterday. Boy, that was a crappy day for programming. I taped these movies and now I can scan through the commercials and skip through some of the boring parts of the movie. I actually watched the start of The Beast Of Bray Road on saturday. It's set in Wisconsin, the state next door to mine, but it was filmed in Topanga Canyon in California. There's a werewolf killing people and animals. Some cops have to go up against it. It might be based on this story from the newspapers. There's also a book by Linda Godfrey, the reporter who investigated the original story. Still, being based on a book doesn't make the movie any much better. It gets a 2.8 on the IMDb, and doesn't deserve much more. Leigh Scott is also directing his version of The Dunwich Horror with Jeffrey Combs and Dean Stockwell. Based on this movie, and another later in the day, that doesn't bode well.

Hybrid was another monster movie. It's science based. Justine Batemann creates a process to transplant wolf eyes to humans. What? You've seen that idea before, but with a criminal's eyes. Hey, this is no Laura Mars, let me tell you. It's wolf eyes. In a guy. Guess what? The guy starts having visions of the wold pack and he gets more violent and reacts weirdly. Who didn't see that coming? Justine Batemann, that's who. She should have had some wolf eyes, you can see some amazing shit with those eyes. There's a military aspect that is so cliche'd you just want to slap someone. There's a Native American element that isn't too bad. The story is set and filmed in my old home town. Winnipeg Manitoba Canada. I didn't recognize anything until we were a while into the film. I looked it up on the IMDb, where it gets a sad but deserved 3.5, and sure enough it was filmed in Winnipeg. That city has been used for location shooting on a regular basis but rarely is it the setting of a film. Most people wouldn't even know where it is. It's certainly not enough reason to see this movie. Better to go there and eat at the Salisbury House. I always liked there Cheese Nips. It's a hamburger with cheese. Add some fries with gravy. Yummm!

Next up a movie about ravens that have eaten some cattle that were sickened by Mad Cow Disease. Caw has some Minenites who cover up their beef having MCD. Some ravens eat that dead cow and they get crazy aggressive. They start killing people and animals. Scan scan. It's another stinker that eventually is over. Next I watched Lost City Raiders. It's more science fiction with the world being covered by water. James Brolin and his two sons are underwater salvage guys. Dad is looking for some items for the New Vatican. The old Vatican is under water, which keeps on rising. There's a special septer that Moses had that can control the water level. Some other guy is after it too, but he wants to rule the world. He's being helped by a Cardinal who thinks it's God's retribution. Poor James is killed by the bad writing and his sons take over the quest. They pick up a couple of gals on the way. The group finds a centuries old chamber that has a bomb in it. Once ignited it opens the way for water to be drained off the surface. It'll save the world. It's another one that I won't need to see again. The former has no listing on the IMDb and the latter gets a 4.3. That's the highest rated moviie of the bunch. That's not saying much.

King of the Lost World is also in that group of movies that I'll mostly likely not see again. It's directed by the guy who directed The Beast of Bray Road and it gets a nice round 2.0 at the IMDb where it's also #48 on that websites  Bottom 100 list. Nice. A plane goes down and some of the survivors are seperated by a good size hill. There are giant flying critters, giant spiders, and a giant ape. A lot of people get eaten. Bruce Boxleitner plays a guy who planned to travel to the area to find and disarm a small nuke that went down in a different plane. That'll come in handy later. It's a bad area that a lot of planes have fallen into. Sort of a land bound Bermuda Triangle all wrapped up with a bit of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World. Later we'll see some planes attacking the giant ape. The pilots can't control their planes. They crash. The effects made me laugh. The survivors get captured by some people who have gone native. The savages are going to turn some of the survivors into fellow villagers and feed the rest to the flying critters. Not a good day for the survivors. Or the savages. Or the fake looking giant ape. Especially after they nuke the place. Luckily the last survivors were just the right distance away and they get to live.

There are giant beetles in Caved In: Prehistoric Terror. It starts in 1948 when some miners find a cave filled with emeralds. Some giant man-size bugs come out and attack them. Years later, his son, now a creep, murders his way onto the property where the mine is. He gathers a group together with lies and coercion to enter the mine and find the riches. It all goes badly from there. There's nothing much to recommend with this movie. It's just more filler and some actors get some work. Surprisingly it gets 3.5 on the IMDb. Someone must have liked it a bit.

Renee O'Conner looks so sad in that picture from Monster Ark. Maybe she feels trapped in this movie. Her last few films have put her on the SciFi Channel pretty regularily and that's nothing to brag about. At least it's work. She's a science gal who believes in God. He ex-husband does not. They broke up a while ago and here they are working together in a high stress situation. Oh, oh. Their anger is still near the surface. It''s not something I need to see, and it turns up way too often in movies for my liking. They get involved in a dig that unleashes an ancient monster from pre-Noah days. There were two arks, one for this monster and one for all the rest of the animals. Tiny Lister plays the solder that is trying to kill the monster. It's a mixed up bastard step child of a movie, stealing something from here and something from there. Eventually they get the monster back in the box and I can watch 100 Million BC. That was pretty bad too. It's got dinosaurs. Some soldiers are recruited to go into the past to find the guys who disappeared in the 1941 Philadelphia Experiment. Back in the past they get attacked by dinos. They find the men they lost and get them back to LA. They accidently bring a big dino into the present. It tramps about until they send it back into the past. This movie is another amalgam of many movies, but yielding no useful metal. Monster Ark scores a 4.0 on the IMDb and 100 Million BC gets a sad 2.8.

  

I recorded a copy of Monster A Go-Go and The Giant Spider Invasion from Turner Classic Movies last friday after midnight. TCM runs some odd things early saturday morning and these were a couple of slight interest. They appear as episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 but I didn't have copies of the movies to watch without the assistance of Joel, or Mike, and the 'bots. MAG-G scores a 2.6 on the IMDb and that sure is some indication of why it doesn't hold my attention. An astronaut crashes on earth, disappears, and a monster appears. Is it that guy? Who cares! The monster is awful, the dialog boring and the story nothing new. You can read more about it over on the Wikipedia. That poster is from there. TGSI scores a 3.0 and is the work of director Bill Rebane, who also directed MAG-G and several other poor films. I think it might be more than .04 better. It helps that it's in color. The characters are pretty awful and the dialog laughable, so there's that. The giant spider isn't too bad, from a distance, and the rest of the physical effects could be worse. Better to watch these two on MST3K and enjoy the company of the inhabitants of the Satellite of Love.

Friday Night Movies 195

Sometimes our films for the evening have a connection. It could be anything. Tonight it's rival gangs fighting, although for different reasons. First up was the Takashi Miike movie Sukiyaki Western Django. I'm normally not a Miiki fan. I did not care for Ichi The Killer when I saw it. I'm not sure why and not sure that I want to spend the time to see it again to find out. I did like Miiki's The Great Yoki Wars. That was fun. This turned out to be fun also. It's sort of based on Sergio Corbucci's 1966 Spaghetti Western, Django. The opening scene has Quentin Tarantino explaining the backstory. He starts talking in a psuedo western drawl which becomes more affected as he talks. The movie has it's affectations too. Tarantino tells how the two rival gangs got to where they are today, hold up in a small town, in the middle of nowhere, with a legendary pile of treasure lurkin' in the background. The colors of the flashback backstory are vibrant, almost dayglow, greens, yellows and reds. You can see bits and pieces of the movie along with the trailer at Amazon. Most of the rest of the movie is shot like a spagetti western. The people all are Japanese but they speak like they are in a western. Their phonetic English is none to good. The costumes are movie western but Japanese influenced. They use guns and swords. The village is Japanese but western influenced. If you woke up there you'd think you were dreaming. A lone gunman rides into town. If you haven't seen Django, it's very Yojimbo like, which is also like A Fistful of Dollars or Last Man Standing. Town in decay from conflict, a stranger plays the sides against each other, there is much death. SWD has the extra layer of sadness and misery that I have come to expect from Japanese film. All of these are entertaining films, violent and stylized in their own way. SWD is violent, I think nearly everyone dies, but it's more cartoon like than it's ancestors. And that doesn't make it any less entertaining.

Greg brought a copy of The Pink Angels. It sounded like it might be interesting. Maybe interesting is the wrong word. It has two rival motorcycle gangs at odds with each other. The first group we meet are 6 guys riding 3 motorcycles with sidecars. Turns out they are a gang of cross dressers who are swishing their way down the coast to LA to be in a big drag ball. They have a flamboyant condiment fight at the A&W and scare off their hitchhiker. Next they stop in at a bar to wet their whistles. The bar has some excited b-girls who scare them away. Some real bikers find our faux bikers while camping out. I know, but they really were camping out. The real bikers demand the women. Of course, they don't exist. The sissy bikers send one of their number back to the bar. He loads the B-girls into a truck. Inside the back of a big box truck. None of them has a car? It's just one of the little bits and pieces that make this such a great movie. The girls are a hit with the real bikers. There's lots of booze and slow motion photography. Some of the girls get topless. One of the real bikers is played by Dan "Grizzly Adams" Haggerty. Dan's topless too. I never watched his show when it was on. Why would you? That's what I want to know. Cut with the scenes of the bikers are some scenes set in an office with some guy called The General. He barks into the phone occasionally and his secretary with the big hair comes in once in a while. The real bikers wake up the next morning and find that while passed out drunk the sidecar gang has made them up and put bows in their hair. All the real and imaginary girls are gone. At first it makes the real bikers laugh but soon the leader is crying revenge. The hop on their bikes and head out. The cross dressers make it the hotel and get changed after a shopping trip for new dresses. They look hideous. There's no way to soft pedal that. The real bikers find them in the hotel bar and try to pick them up. I can't even imagine. Eventually all the bikers arrive for a visit with The General. Out of the blue he has them hung. That's the end of the movie. Twelve bikers hanging in a tree. Unbelievable. This 1971 film came out a couple of years after Easy Rider. I make no connection. Here's a trailer for The Pink Angels.  It has some of the best moments in the film. Greg picked this up in an 8 movie dvd set. It's only 10 bucks at most places. What a great bargin and each movie gets it's own side of a disc. That's the box on the left. Most of the movies will be bad but occasionally one is so bad it pays for the rest in entertainment value. The Pink Angels is that movie. I sure laughed alot. And I saw things I had never seen before.

What I read In October 2008

Cinderellis and the the Glass Hill by Gail Carson Levine.

What a fun book. Short too. Helps keep the numbers up. Remember reading isn't about quality. It's about quantity. You can brag to your friends about reading a book over lunch. Make them think you are a speed reader. I remember hearing about Speed Reading back in the 70's. Evelyn Wood coined the name and taught a method. I understand the principle and use it occasionally when I want to blast through a book that I'm not caring that much about. This Levine book I liked. It is a short fun book that retells the Cinderella story with a whole bunch of other characters tossed it in to make it even more entertaining. Oh, and Cinderella is a boy. He's got two dimwitted brothers and some magical powers. There's a princess and a glass mountain that the seekers of her hand in marriage must climb. Some magical horses and stuff like that. Made me laugh. I've become a fan of GCL. She's on my keeper list. And this book is wicked short. 104 pages. Cool.

Five Get Into A Fix by Enid Blyton.

In this book the four kids and the dog get into a fix in Wales when they find some secret goin's on deep down in the bowls of the earth. There's snow covered mountains, crazy people and evil people and good people, a super loud yellin' Welshman and his seven dogs, lots of food, skiiing and sleding, and a near feral child with her lamb and her dog. The kids have been sick and mom decides to send them to Wales so they can recover in the mountain air. They get into an adventure and save an old woman. Too bad she's potty. A good quick page turner and while not up to the high expectations that I hold from reading Blyton's Adventure series, it's pretty good. Still not sure if I'll keep all Blyton's books, but for now they are going on the reread pile. They are short quick reads with pretty good characters. I think this series is better than the Secret Seven series. Those are aimed at a younger audience than the Five or Adventure series books are.

The Princess Test by Gail Carson Levine.

Another 100 pager with a retelling of the Princess and the Pea. It's fun as we follow around the blacksmith's daughter on her journey to become the wife of the local Prince. She's a looker and that helps. Sometimes it seems that's all she's got going for her, she's also kind of annoying. There's a bunch of jokes and funny stuff going on, so you don't mind as much.  There's a third book in The Princess Tales series but they did not have it when I used my credit for two of them over at Sixth Chamber Books several months ago. I picked up Levine's Dave at Night at the same time. Trading in some non-keepers. This will go on the keeper pile. So far I have enjoyed all of her books. There are still a few more I have not found yet and she's still writing. Yahoo!

 

The Thief and The Beanstalk by P. W. Catanese. 

I really enjoyed this "sequel" to Jack and the Beanstalk. It's 50 years after Jack has climbed the beanstalk and there's a plague on the land. People are dying and this kid, Nick, gets orphaned. He tries stealing to eat but he's not so good at that. Some thieves are casing this big old white castle that they think is the home of Jack of the Beanstalk story and his magical, golden egg laying, goose. They trick Nick into climbing the ivy up to a really high window. He's to open the door for them so the thieves can steal into the place for some skullduggery. Nick meets Jack and the whole caper goes out the window. More beans are tossed down and the stalk rises anew. Nick heads for the clouds and battles the two sons of the giant that Jack killed. As you might guess those two giants don't fair so well. And the poor giant's wife locked up for all these years. How sad. An interesting take on an old story with some good readable writing and interesting characters. Even the bad guys are complex creeps. Most of them die some horrible death. Sadly the golden goose had passed away before Nick got there. Jack had her stuffed and put on display. Weird. Kind of like Roy Rogers stuffing Trigger. I see The Roy Rogers Museum moved from California to Branson Missouri. That makes some sort of sense. Catanese wrote another "Further Tales Adventure" The Brave Apprentice. I have not seen a copy used yet.

Hellboy II: The Golden Army by Robert Greenberger.

This is the novelization of the movie. I don't know if I have ever run across Robert Greenberger before. Here's his review of the movie he adapted. There's usually a difference between what you see on the screen and what you read on the page. The writer usually gets an early draft of the script and he works from that. Greenberger said he got two versions of the script and things were still changed after that. Sometimes the movie has changed so dramaticily that the two are nothing alike. This adaptation is pretty close. Lot more internal yakkity yak in the book. Greenberger is an ok writer and this is an ok book. Still he's no Christopher Golden. His Hellboy books are much better.

 

Sinners and Shrouds by Jonathan Latimer.

Here's another guy you probably haven't heard of. I have read most of his eleven books and found all of them to be entertaining. His books aren't much in print but you can find them, especially now a days with internet sources like ABEBooks, which says it has 110 million books. Well, that's certainly more than I have. Here's a bit of history on Latimer who wrote mysteries and screen plays from 1935 to the mid sixties. His books were populated with interesting hard drinking characters. They often had a pretty good sense of humor, especially the Bill Crane series. In this book, with not quite so much humor, a reporter wakes up with a dead blonde. They are in seperate beds and they are naked. Wow. Glad that hasn't happened to me. He conks the maid on the head and hi-tails it out of the woman's apartment. As he finds out who she is, a writer at his newspaper, he uncovers the story behind the murder. Who was it framed him? Can he keep ahead of the cops who keep finding clues that point to him? Our reporter quickly reveals a sad blackmail game that nearly kills him. Maybe jail would be safer. It's a narrated books and the dialog is great. I have that book. It's a first printing and it was released September 1956. It has 4- penciled on the first page, so I must have paid $4 for it.

The Edge Chronicles 7 - Freeglader by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell

This is the third book in the Rook Barkwater trilogy. I have always liked the names of the characters in this series. Deadbolt Vulpoon, Quintinius Verginix, Cowlquape Pentephraxis, Hestera Spikesap. Hard to say and colorfull, what's not to like in a name. It's the story of the survivors of Undertown and New Sanctaphrax and their journey to the Free Glades. It's a dangerous place out in the wilderness of The Edge Lands. There are revenge seeking Shrikes and Goblins to fight off. There are dangerous creatures to attack the group. It's a pretty bloody book with lots of conflict that turns out pretty good in the end. Rook and his friend Xanth face a lot of hardships in the personal journeys and emerge alive but battered. I like these characters. This book came out in 2004 and there are two more that finish the Quint Trilogy. I haven't found them cheap yet, but there's time, and I can wait. I have so many other books to get through. Oh, here's one.

The Mystery Of Tally Ho Cottage by Enid Blyton.

I didn't for the life of me guess that this book is part of the Five Find-Outers series until I went looking at The Enid Blyton Society. I thought it might be part of the Mystery series, 'cause of the title. There are a few pages in the back of the book that list more titles in the series and the little blurbs alternately call the series The Mystery series then the Find-Outers. Blyton wrote 15 books in the series between 1943 and 1961. I enjoyed this better than the Secret Seven and Famous Five books but still not as interesting to me as The Adventure Series. This group of kids has a definite leader in Frederick "Fatty" Algernon Trotteville. He's a plump boy with a plump name. He supplies the dog in the series, and a lot of the humor. He's clever, he really digs playing detective, and he's good at it. The other group of kids enjoys his company, and his garden shed. They help him solve a crime. This time a painting is stolen from a neighbor and some 4th rate film actors are the suspects. The local comic relief machine policeman is Mr. Goon. His nephew Ern comes to visit and he helps out too. A fun book that makes me want to keep an eye out for the rest of the series. I think I'll have to seek these out. Blyton did not get good distribution in United States for some reason. I can find them in Winnipeg when I'm there in the future and there's always on-line. There are some illustrations in this book that came from the first edition. You can see them here along with a review/synopsis of the book.

Say It With Bullets by Richard Powell.

Bill Wayne is taking a bus tour across the USA. He's got another reason than sightseeing to take a trip with a bus load of strangers. His old army pals are trying to kill him. He's using the bus to hide in plain sight while he travels to the cities of his old pal's to see what's going on. Soon as he gets there one of 'em gets killed. Who keeps doin' that? There's a girl involved. She's the bus tour guide. There's some bad guys and a cowboy cop that keeps turnin' up. The story unfolds as he gets to each town and it's a pretty good one, packed with betrayal and murder. Powell is no Jonathan Latimer but once in a while he turns in a pretty good bit of dialog. A good fun read, but not great. What is great is the cover. I do like these old 50's covers.

Gregor and the Code of the Claw by Suzanne Collins.

This is the fifth and last book in the series and it's the one that finally turned me off. I enjoyed the first book quite a bit but the series turned into one long battle with less and less interesting going on. I didn't even like the cover of the last one. After reading it I figured that I wouldn't bother with the series again. This happens often enough. Not all books are worth re-reading. Friday I took a stack of books, including Gregor into the used books stores. I got some money and got rid of two grocery bags full of books. I bought more LEGO with that money. We had a parts draw at the TwinLUG meeting last sunday and for $15 I got 504 parts. 2.976 cents a part. Nice. Just talkin' to fill up the space here. I'm trying a new layout with all the pictures of the books down the left side. Kind of hard filling in the space when you don't have too much to say about a book.

Kindling by Mick Farren.

I first read some Mick Farren books back in the mid 70's. The DNA Cowboys trilogy, 1976 - 1977,  was some of that psychedelic science fiction that was turning up back then. Some books were like the brown acid at Woodstock. "That's some bad shit, man." Some were a bit better. I don't know where The DNA Cowboys sits. I haven't read those books since then. I think I'd be less impressed if I read them today. I might still have a copy of them. I haven't looked for them in years. I just don't seem to care to read them again. Farren's first book was The Texts Of Festival. You are introduced to a new character every 1 to 3 pages, then that character is killed. There's not much other than dozens and dozens of deaths. I never finished it. It seemed so pointless. From 1978 to 1989 I read all Farren's science fiction then lost interest. He kept writing but I wasn't reading. Joe lent me a copy of Kindling. I planned to read it but somehow it got buried on the dining room table and twice I dug it out and recovered it. You'd think I didn't want to read it. The book is set in a steampunk kind of alternate universe, with demons and monsters. Here's Mick talking a bit about his book. I didn't care for the story very much. Then on the last page that annoying...To Be Continued. And I won't bother to read the next one. Unless Joe gets one and leaves it with me for a couple of decades years.

My Teacher Is An Alien by Bruce Coville.

I had always wanted to read one of Bruce Coville's books. I'd see them in the used bookstores all the time. He's written about a hundred books so far. I picked this one up at Half Price Books for a quarter. It has a cover by Steve Fastner. He's a local artist who I occasionally bump into. He does comic art and book covers out a studio he and Rich Larson run. There are many collections of their cute girl art. Very pulp like with a modern spin. The Coville book was ok. Worth the quarter. Don't know if I would run out and buy anymore. Maybe if they were a quarter. You don't feel bad when you just spent two bits on some reading matter and it's not up to snuff. And at that price you can make kindling out of them. Hey, I'm talkin' about recycling them. I wouldn't burn my books, unless it was so cold I had to do it to save my life. Hope that doesn't happen.

Science Fiction Sunday 21

For some reason I always seem to like the movies that all the internet movie pundits don't seem to care for. I liked The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen the first time I watched it in the theater and I've liked it on repeated viewings on dvd. It might have ended director Steve Norrington's career, he hasn't directed anything since this came out in 2003. He was an artist who did special effects for Aliens, Hardware and Alien3 amongst some other lesser known films. He directed the first Blade movie and a couple others. I haven't seen The Last Minute but I do have a copy of his first movie Death Machine. It's ok. Robots trying to kill you story from what I remember. TLOEG has a more complex story that is based on a comic by Allan Moore. He's the writer. I don't know who did the art. I didn't like the comic very much. Mostly for the art. That's mostly differing from the masses again. The comic was really popular. I didn't like Watchmen either, but that's a whole 'nuther story. We have no time for that. We have to stop that masked monster, the Fantom, who's the reason that they create the League of the EG. I did like the way that Moore tossed all the fictional characters together. It's a rip-roarin', gun-blazin', back-stabbin', globe-trottin' punch up. There's great sets and wonderful props. Nemo's submarine is the best, and his car is pretty darn good too. The story is a mixed bag, mostly it propels the movie along just fine, but the character's all have some excess baggage that I could do without. Let's get to the blowin' stuff up. They blow up a lot of stuff in this movie. It's a good steampunk type movie. Lots of fancy gadgets and nice hats. The movie looks great and there's all those explosions. Nice.

There's a lot of explosions in my second feature. The Last Starfighter is mostly famous for being the first movie to use CGI for much of the movies special effects. All the space ships are CGI. Some of it looks pretty good and other things not. The astroids have less detail than a modern movies animatic. The movie was directed by Nick Castle who wrote Escape From New York. He went on to direct a bunch of films, none of them really outstanding. I think TLS is the best of what I have seen. From his IMDb page it looks like he's trying to remake it, but there aren't enough details to be sure of that. A kid named Alex leads a crappy and unexciting life in a California trailer park. He plays a video game and the night after getting a record score a guy shows up claiming to be from the video game company. He wants the kid to come with him. To another planet. To be a spaceship pilot fighting some aliens who want to rule the galaxy. It's just like in the game. There are some balding aliens, both the men and the women, who are leading the fight against the invading horde. There are two comic relief machines. Rovert Preston as the starfighter recruiter and Dan O'Herlihy as an alien sidekick. There are space battles that look too much like video games and some pretty cheesy dialog. There's a bit of romance and a bunch of gags. But the good guys win out in the end and Alex returns to earth and takes his girlfriend to the stars. I always like that part. I'd be happy if my princess in shining armour would carry me down to the Taco Bell. Or she could get take out. I'd be worried about space food. Those aliens may look like us but I bet they eat scarier food than they do in Hong Kong. I'd be scared to go both places. Luckily I can stay home and watch the movie on tv and eat some safe food.

Friday Night Movies 194

Hellboy II: The Golden Army

was up first. Two hours of Hellboy. I liked it. It's a beautiful looking movie that I'm almost sorry I didn't make a trip to the theater to see it. The sets, the props, the costumes. It all looks great. I bought the 3 disc Special Edition, for some movies I really want the background material, and Del Toro usually delivers a nice package. One disc is the movie with it's own fun extras, the second has more making of extras, including a 2 hour and 34 minute documentary, and the third has a digital copy of the movie which I can't see ever bothering with. There's a nice wiggle picture on the front of the box. Hellboy changes from the movie version seen here to the drawn version. Very nice.

It seems the elves have a golden mechanical army that you can control with a magical crown. The crown has been broken up into three parts. Then the elves and humans agreed to live apart. That was long ago. In the modern world there's a lot happening. Hellboy, Liz Sherman and Abe Sapien are joined by a new team leader. Johann Krass is a guy who's been reduced to ectoplasm. He has a mechanical suit. I prefer the rounder bubble head of Johann's suit in the comics. He's not such a stick-up-his-ass-type guy in print either. Hellboy has an aversion to German's, what with the whole Nazi gang bringing him from hell and the repeated run-in's with ancient dead Nazi's who try to destroy the world. Won't they ever stop those zombie nazi's? Let's hope not.

There's a great bad guy in Price Nuada. He sets man eating tooth fairies on some people at an auction house. That's where the first part of the magical crown turns up. He wants to resurrect the Golden Army and crush the humans. He's not happy playing second fiddle to the humans. He kills his dad and takes the second piece. His sister has the last piece. She runs, right into the arms of Abe Sapien and the BPRD. This happens in the Troll Market, just one of many greats sets that we get to see. There's a rich life going on under the human's noses. Everyone on the squad gets cool crystal glasses to see beneath the glamor that magical creatures use to hide amongst the humans. One of those monsters leads the group to the entrance of the Troll Market. It's packed with all sorts of critters and an amazing amount of texture. There's lots of fighting and some introspection as Hellboy deals with his place in the scheme of things. The director, Guillermo Del Toro, spends  a lot of the commentay track discussing Hellboy's struggle. Does he belong in the human world or the demon world. It's a tragic movie in many ways but that's Hellboy's lot in life. At least he has his friends. Oh, and a big gun.

Bender's Game is pretty funny. I enjoyed it for the second time, third if you count the commentary. There's lots of little bits and pieces to the story. Dark Matter, the spaceship fuel, has become very expensive. Stopping at a space gas station, Leela gets into an argument with some space garbage men, which leads to her entering the Planet Express space ship into a demolition derby. That leads to her getting a shock collar put on her neck. It's to try to keep her anger in check. Something she has in common with the Hellboy character. Their anger leads them into trouble. Luckily both of of them can cash the checks their mouth's write. Bender learns he has no imagination while playing a dungeon and drgaons like game with the kids who hang around Planet Express. That leads to trouble. The last third of the movie takes place in a fantasy movie of Bender's creation. There's lots of joke, some better than others. Still, I had a fun time.

Science Fiction Sunday 20

After I got back from laundry and returning a crappy lamp to Target I watched a couple of movies while sorting some LEGO. I'm finally getting organized in the living room. I need more boxes to put things in.

Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius

is pretty much as fun as a movie can be. It was the movie that spawned the tv series. Jimmy lives with his mother and father. I like them. He has a robot dog named Goddard and a couple of friends named Carl and Sheen. I like those guys too. He has an underground lab with an entrance in the shed out back of the house. Some egg like critters come from another galaxy. They found the toaster Jimmy blasted into space, and because he put his address on it, the aliens came to visit. They stole all the kid's parents, who are going to be used as a sacrifice to their giant chicken god. After the kids have their orgy of candy and freedom, they're tired, their tummies are sick, and they want their mommies. Jimmy figures out where the parents are and using his superior technological abilities he turns some carnival rides into space ships. Seeing those colorful lit up space ships swooshing through space is a joy indeed. The kids have a pretty good adventure and save the day. I like the kids and the parents. They make me laugh. It's also very colorful, imaginative and has a high level of sillyness. I liked watching the series when I caught them. 

Since it was near Jimmy in the box I watched Judge Dredd next. It's pretty silly but in a different way. More stuff blows up and there's more wholesale slaughter going on. There are some fun fights and action scenes, so I enjoyed it. I enjoy Sylvester Stallone in a good handful of movies and this is one. He's often fun to watch, like in Spy Kids III, Tango & Cash or Demolition Man. I wouldn't watch some of his movies, either again or for the first time. Guess what they are. I did like Cop Land, a movie that proves he can act. It's a good crime drama with a great cast that includes Janeane Garofalo. It's well worth watching. Stallone works well in the comicbook based reality of JD and Rob Schneider is fun as the comic relief machine. Armand Assante plays the crazy villian. He's pretty much your typical wild man who likes to kill everything. His best friend is a robot that also likes killing. Where do types like this meet? I like these blowy-uppy movies quite a bit. There's a pretty good looking grim type future on screen. The poor ran rampant in the streets. Lots of crime and violence in that future. Judges are judge jury and executioner in this grim reality. There's a secret plot to take over that puts Judge Dredd behind bars and Armand building an army of clones that will kill for him. You'd think he'd want to do that himself. Guess he wants to kill so many he needs help. Rob and Dredd have a series of action scenes and eventually save the day. Diane Lane is pretty as Judge Hershey. Still fun.

Friday Night Movies 193

It was just me and Joe over at my house. Good excuse to clean up a bit. Ever since TCBX I've had lots of LEGO to re-sort into my collection. It's been piling up in the living room, crying out to get put away. It was a Herculian job or perhaps one for Superman, who's apparently back in Superman Returns. I didn't even know he was gone. Five years had past since Superman had left to investigate Krypton, the planet of his birth. It's been blown up in any number of comics and movies. Anyway, Superman is back and Lois Lane is mad at him because he didn't say goodbye. Lex Luthor is happy because Superman went away. Lex is actually out of prison from his last capture because Superman hadn't shown up for a court date. He finds the Man of Steel's Fortress of Solitude and steals some pointy crystals. He's got a diabolical plan that we'll hear about later. Kills billions but that's okay with Lex, he's got some wacky stuff goin' on in his bald dome. I just read something on MSNBC about bullies getting a hit of pleasure in that part of their brain when they bully people. I think this Lex seems to be just like that, always smiling when he's up to no good. Joe and I were discussing that we'd not be too unhappy if Lex accidently got killed in his capture. "Oops. He got right in the way of my x-ray vision and his head got all roasted." But, this is a well meaning and good Superman. Joe and I wouldn't make such good Supermen. We'd use our x-ray vision to peeek through corners for a chance to see some naughty naughty. We didn't like the guy playing Superman that much. He kind of grew on me after a while but I still think he is kind of underdeveloped in the upper torso. I grew up with the Superman of the late 50's and 60's and he's a different look and the stories were short, uncomplicated and often fun. This movie has some fun stuff and some more serious stuff. It looks great and director Brian Singer did a good job on moving everyone about. There's lots of danger and collateral damage. Good rescues by Superman and a bit more soap opera than I might care for. Great sets and CGI. Joe picked single disc movie dvd at Target for 5 bucks and we thought that certainly was a good price and worth way more in entertainment value. I should go over and see if they have anymore. I'd watch this again.

Joe wanted to watch Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. I had been thinking of watching it just the other day so I readily agreed. I dug it out of the boxes that all my dvd's got put into when I moved stuff about. I haven't put everything back on shelves because I got rid of the old shelves and haven't found new ones that I wanted to buy. I can still get to everything and the dvd's get less dusty. I hadn't seen the 2004 movie for two or three years. I really enjoyed it the last time and this time it still was great fun. And that music is to die for. I used to play that soundtrack all the time. Haven't for a bit. It's a really delightful addition to any music collection. The movie is well worth having too. I got the special edition with two discs and a copy of the book with a movie picture dustjacket. The books don't have normally have dustjackets but rather printed hardboard covers. I was reading them a while back but stopped after number 8. I read them pretty close together and maybe it was too much. I got tired of the repetitive material and round about way to the end of the story. I thought you could make a nice 200 page condensed version of the series, which I hope to finish so I can find out what happens. I have had a rather general lack of enthusiasm to get started. Oh, well, it'll come or it won't. The movie is great. It condenses the first three books and ties it up enough that you really don't need to revisit the series. The actors playing the parts are all great, especially the kids and Timothy Sprall as Mr. Poe the banker. I really like Sunny and her biting. The scene where she's hanging off the table by her teeth always cracks me up. The sets are a wonder to see and it's so beautiful to look at. Everytime I see the movie I see some new detail. Maybe I won't wait so long between now and the next time to find something new.

What I Read In September 2008

Not as good a month for the reading, only 6 books, although none of them are small thin childrens books.

The Edge Chronicles 6 - Vox by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddel. This is the second of the Rook Barkwater trilogy. His flying thing is knocked out of the sky. He has a bit of a dangerous time getting back to the underground headquarters of the Librarian Knights. First he's rescued by the enstranged son of the Most High Academe. Then he's captured and sold into slavery. He's bought and now serves the evil Vox Verlix. The evil guy has a plan to wipe out the Shrykes and the Goblins. Rook lends a hand and there's plenty of death handed out. Most of Undertown is wiped out, along with the secret underground library. Luckily the book scrolls are rescued and the Librarian Knights join the masses fleeing the city. They want a new life in the Freeglades. Well, who wouldn't. Less killin' goin' on there. At least you'd think so, but it's a tough universe for our hero Rook. I've been enjoying these quite a bit but only have through number seven. Two more have been published in the USA but I haven't turned up them up used yet.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by JK Rowling. I think if I read this one more time I will have read the series all the same number of times. I might be wrong. I'm too lazy to dig out my list of readings. And lazy is what's keeping me from making a big spread sheet with all the books I have read and updating the movie list I started and abandoned about 2001. All that typing, oh, my poor fingers. Better I should read a book. There's a nice new editon of the first Harry Potter book out for it's 10th Anniversary. Has a new cover and a nice new color plate inside by that wonderful artist Mary Grandpre.

Masterpiece In Murder (False Colors) by Richard Powell. Some books spend many years waiting, waiting to be read, read by me. I bet I picked this up in the early 90's, back when I worked at Uncle Edgar's Mystery Bookstore. Good thing they are patient companions. Not like the gal in this book. She's a firecracker but her red hot fuse doesn't stop small time art dealer Pete Meadows from following her burning ash right along into an art forgery plot and murder. And he knew better. Men, skirt crazy. It'd be a crime if there were room in our jails, but then we wouldn't have some fun stories. Powell is a pretty good writer, but I usually don't keep his books for the long haul. He tells a good tight mystery, rich with detail of the time. Occasionally he makes me roll my eyes, or snort. You can't think too much about what you read, it'll spoil the mood. I'd still recommend his books, they tell a good story. This ones's got a bit of entertaining dialog, some interesting characters, a smattering of strangling, and a bit of romance. There's something for everyone who likes a good crime novel.

Five Children and It by E. Nesbit. I did not find this book as much fun as I had the other's by Nesbit. even the cover is not so interesting. The kids find the Psammead for the first time and have some odd adventures revolving around the wishes he grants. There are two sequels and I have read The Story Of The Amulet which was number 3. I liked the last book best so far. I have a copy of the Phoenix and the Carpet and hope to get to it soon.

Ruler of the Realm by Herbie Brennan. This is the third book in the series. I didn't like it as much as the first or second book. Mostly from some of the story elements. Just not on the same page. I'll probably dump the series, trade them in for something else.

Dave by Night by Gail Carson Levine. This turned out to be a great book. Dave is an orphan. His father dies at the beginning of the book and his step-mother says she can't take care of him and his brother. The brother goes to live with an Uncle in Chicago but poor Dave is sent to the Hebrew Home for Boys in Harlem. Typically, it's not a nice place and the staff is none to friendly to the boys. Why is that? How could such a great country treat it's orphan's so poorly. Dave is ready to bolt but the Superintendant of the school has stolen a wood carving of the Ark that his father made. He needs to get it back. On a late night excursion out of the school Dave meets an odd old man who takes him to a rent party. That's a party poor people used to throw to help raise the rent. People still might be doing them. The old man tells fortunes to help get by. Dave meets a nice young girl who eventually leads him to the help he needs to fix his life. It's a wonderful story set in the Harlem of 1926. Dave discovers jazz and good friends to replace the family he has lost. Levine is a good writer. I'd already read Ella Enchanted and Fairest, both of which I would recommend. I'd recommend this too.