PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

The Avengers - Series 4

 

I watched the next batch of The Avengers and series 4 really changed things for the show. It's the show that I remember seeing as a teen. Then, as now, I watched a shitload of tv, memories of most of it were lost over the years, but occasional scenes, music and sounds, still stick in my head. The swooshing sound the cybernauts made when they attack is one. Some of those Emma Peel jumpsuits were imprinted on my 13 or 14 year old brain. Here are a couple of costume pics from the show. Isn't Steed dressed nice, not that I would wear what he's wearing, I don't think  a bowler would suit me to well. Just not much of a hat man.

 

The production switched to film for the 26 episodes of which were aired from Oct 1965 to March 1966. That sure made the shows look much better and the editing and sound were more movie like than the previous series which was shot on early, and crude, videotape on sets in the studio. Steed and his new partner now had the chance to go outside to different locations. There were still plenty of studio sets, but the outdoors added so much, even if it was shot without sound. The soundtrack would be added in post production. Very common practice. The budget was 56,000 British pounds and episode which was pretty high for the time. A&E put out series 4 in four 2 disc sets that don't have any extras other than some stills. The picture and sound look pretty good and it's enjoyable to watch them.

 

The stories in this series were even more outrageous and goofy. There's an episode with remote control robot hit men, one about some crooks running a department store, one about a secret organization that uses old ladies as assassins armed with knitting needles, another about some crazy old men in a home for retired railway men. There's some goofy stuff in that episode with Emma being tied to a railroad track and nearly run over by a little miniature train. Not a show to take itself to seriously the stories are still approached seriously. It's nothing too weird to have a man eating plant or some telepathic bit of business in that universe. Sometimes there's a bit more normal spy work or almost normal criminal activity. Mind you I don't mind the goofiness at all. That's what attracted me to the series when I was a young lad, it wasn't just a copy of James Bond and that sort of thing. I have Dangerman for serious spy stories. A bit of light hearted levity and action is just the ticket at times.

 
The 4th series has a wealth of great Brit actors like Michael Gough, Nigel Davenport, Ron Moody, Kenneth Cope, Charlotte Rampling, Christopher Lee, Jon Pertwee, Andrew Keir, Brian Blessed, Donald Sutherland, Yootha Joyce, Paul Eddington, Peter Cushing, Roy Kinnear, Carol Cleveland and Peter Wyngarde. Those are the ones who's names I know, there were many I only know by their faces. For the most part an enjoyable bunch of shows, ones that I have seen more than a couple of times and ones that I will watch some more in the future.

Science Fiction Sunday 145

Back to watching Star Trek. I got the next four 2 disc dvds from a guy who upgraded to BluRay. Star Trek: Generations has the focus turn to Jean-Luc Piccard as the Captain of the Enterprise. The 7th movie came out in 1994 and I know I went to see it in the theater. The series had just ended it's 7 year run but I wasn't much of a fan. I don't think I watched more than a few shows of the first season. I just didn't connect with the series for some reason. The movie opens in the past with Captain Kirk. He's retired but by chance he's on the brand new Enterprise-B when the call comes in that there's trouble somewhere. Scotty and Chekov are with him. The ship and crew rescue some people but the weird space anomaly damages the Enterprise and James T is lost to an explosion. We jump 78 years into the future and Jean-Luc and the gang are in charge of the Enterprise-D. They are trekkin' out amongst the stars somewhere, doing something, when some guys have a problem. Nothing ever changes in that universe, always some damn thing or another. Malcolm McDowell plays the bad guy. He wants to get back to the Nexis, the timeless void that fills you with happiness and joy, and he'll kill everyone he has to. He's a real creep, he causes Captain Kirk to die again. I wasn't too happy seeing the old boy die. I never like killing off the hero but that's me. I watched all the featurettes and they were mostly ok.

I had gone to see Star Trek: First Contact in the theatre when it came out in 1996. I'm pretty sure I'd seen it since, but it was ages ago, probably when this dvd came out in 2005. ST:FC was one of the first ten DVDs that Paramount put out in 1998. It was on VHS and Laserdisc too. I didn't buy either when they came out even though I thought the movie was ok. Too many other things that were on the to of the list. As the movie starts Jean-Luc has been having Borg dreams and sure enough they show up at the edge of Federation Space. The Federation takes them on, after telling Jean-Luc to stay home. High command thinks that his past Brogness might be a problem. He races to help anyway and near Earth they blow up that Borg cube. The queen escapes into the past and the Enterprise follows them. The Borg takes over part of the Enterprise. Alice Krieg is a pretty creepy and weird queen. She comes on to Data and with his new emotion chip he sure has a weird time. James Cromwell plays the guy who invented warp drive. Worf, Gordie and Riker all help change the past by getting highly involved. It's fun for the most part but I'm still not that interested in getting to know the tv shows. I did put the original Star Trek series on my NetFlix queue. We'll see how I like them in 3 or 4 months when they finally rise to the top and they start showing up in my mailbox.

Friday Night Movies 337

Hobo With A Shotgun was our first movie and it was something else. Canadian. It's got Rutger Hauer in the title role of the hobo with a shotgun. He wanted a lawnmower to start a grass cutting business but the corrupt town of Scumville made him buy a shotgun and start cutting down criminals. He goes head to head with the crime family that runs the place. Most everyone dies. It's a pretty brutal film with a pitch black sense of humour. You can see a lot of that nastyness, and some of the humour, on YouTube in a unrated trailer. It's a pretty chaotic movie with lots of characters and stuff going on. Rutger is joined by the proverbial hooker with the heart of gold. She befriends him and patches him up. He tries to get her a better life when he kills the cop who's raping her. In a humourous way, mind you. It's the first film for Jesse Eisener and it looks pretty interesting.  They do a lot with blood and paint. It's so over the top and unreal looking that you can only laugh. Even so it's rather unpleasent at times and not everyone would like it. I'm not as inclined to buy it now that I have seen it. It's just not something I want to see that often.

Akira Kurosawa's 虎の尾を踏む男達 or The Men Who Tread On The Tiger's Tail is a short 59 minute film from 1945. It's Kurosawa's 7th film as a director and he wrote it too. It's based on a Kabuki play that's based on a Noh play. In fact there are several songs in the movie and some dancing. There's been a falling out between rival groups and one bunch is on the run disguised as priests. They have a goofy, continuously mugging porter who is guiding them along the route to safety. They come to a barrier in the road and they have to trick the guards into letting them pass. There's lots of talking and sitting before the commander lets them pass. He sends them saki later. It all could mean more than it does or less. I have no idea. It's an interesting bit of cinema and something that I hadn't seen before. Turns out I have a copy but hadn't even gotten around to watching it. They ran it on TCM a year or more ago with several other early Kurosawa films. I slapped them on a disc to watch later and later never came until today. Joe Netflix'd the Criterion disc. It looked pretty good. Probably better than the dvdr I have. Not that I'm going to want to watch this movie that often. There's nothing overly special about the movie but it's an interesting bit of Japanese movie history. For those that don't know Kurosawa would go onto direct The Seven Samurai, Rashoman, Yojimbo and several other very interesting films. Watching those would be the best idea.

The Avengers - Series 3

I thought I would watch The Avengers again. I don't have the whole series and probably won't pick up anymore than I have; though I am thinking about putting the 6th series on my NetFlix queue. The show had 6 series in it's run from 1961 to 1969. In the first series the BBC made 26 episodes that were broadcast from January to December 1961. Ian Hendry was a medical doctor that meets Steed in the first episode. The two of them team up to avenge the murder of the doctor's fiancee by a drug gang. They worked together for the rest of the series. Before the second series was started there was a strike and Ian took off to work in movies. Only two and a half of the shows from the first series exist and I don't have them. I don't think I am missing too much if I don't see them. I don't have the second season either. I wasn't that hot on the Honor Blackman character and I waited to find those cheap before I picked them up and never found the 1962 set that had 14 episodes of the second series cheap enough. Now it's pricey on Amazon. Typically A&E never bothered to release the other half of series 2. With Ian moved on Steed takes over as our main character and he's helped by a couple of gals and another doctor. Honor Blackman and Julie Stevens played the gals in alternating shows with the new doctor. Stevens would leave near the end of the series, once she started baking that bun in her oven, and the doctor was only in 3 or 4 episodes. I guess he wasn't that popular.

 

A&E put out the series 3 dvd's in four different 2 disc sets that at cheap prices were still about 25 bucks a set. Those are the covers, if you haven't guessed. They only put 25 of the 26 episodes on the 8 dvds. They left out the very first episode of the season and I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because A&E just out and out sucks as a dvd producer. I can't say much good about them, too bad someone else didn't get their hands on the BBC catalog of tv programming. Am I wrong but didn't their network used to have some good programing on it? Now it's filled with shows like Hoarders, Billy the Exterminator and Storage Wars. There might be some entertainment but not much art anymore. I understand, there's no money in art.

 

The shows were shot on video in studios for the most part. There were occasional filmed segments shot outdoors which were cut into the video when they were broadcast. A film camera would be set to record the show on film if they thought it was something they should bother with. They weren't thinking much of the future back then. They used those films to make the dvds and they look pretty darn grainy and low res but watchable for the most part. The sound isn't that great either. They would switch to shooting the show on film, and editing that, in the 4th season. The sound improves too. Finally in the 5th season they'd switch to color film. Watching a tv show in black and white isn't something that bothers me any. The dvds don't have any extras for the most part. Some production stills, whoopee! The British dvd is packaged by series and they are complete and have a great bunch of commentaries and extra features. Did I say anything about A&E sucking. 

The episodes are mostly pretty standard tv fare, someone's in trouble, Steed and Mrs Gale have to figure out what's going on and solve the puzzle. It was the same with The Saint, or Dangerman - Secret Agent, or any number of similar British action shows. They always catch the bad guy by the end of the episode. There's a certain level of goofiness in some episodes but it's pretty much serious, nothing like it would get in the later series. The plots of the episodes are varied while still keeping the formula intact. There's an episode about a missing Nuke, one about a company that's bootlegging cosmetics to sell in the Middle East, one about some crooked sailors, one about a gang of undertaker hit-men, and one where everyone dresses up as ancient Romans. There are some fun characters in the series and the dialog is often entertaining. The fights aren't much, kind of typical for the time, and there aren't a lot of them. They use a lot of obvious stunt doubles in the series.

I'm not sure if I saw these when I was younger. They probably would have been broadcast in Canada when they were new, much of British tv, mostly dramas and sitcoms, were sold to the CBC. I know I watched the Emma Peel episodes back then and in reruns but these just don't ring a bell. If you had to choose between these and the Emma Peel episodes go for the later. More on John and Emma in a following post. I have to finish the 5th series first.

Science Fiction Sunday 144

  

Before and after the TwinLUG meeting I watched The Gamera Trilogy which came out in the last half of the 1990's. Gamera, Guardian of the Universe was the first in 1995. It's a retelling of the story with Shusuke Kaneko directing. He'd direct the rest of the trilogy and in 2001 direct Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack. In the new Gamera series a ship with a cargo of plutionium bumps into a floating island. Everyone freaks but they are ok. The island is moving so some scientists come to investigate the island. They find a bunch of odd comma shaped stones and a tablet buried in the rocks of the island. It's got writing on it with a message from some ancient men telling them that this is the last hope against Gyaos. That's the ancient name of the giant flying birds that start attacking people on another island. Gamera breaks free of his rock shell and starts kickin' some Gyaos ass. The Japanese Military was fighting with Gyaos and they toss some of the same at Gamera. They all fight off and on all through the rest of the movie and Gamera wins. There's a pretty good amount of collateral damage as the monsters go at it. There a good amount of chatter amongst all the charactrers as they figure out what's going on. Most of the effects are ok and there's a much greater human toll than the previous series of mutant turtle films from the 1960's. Gamera still has some sort of affinity with the children but it's not so childlike. Mostly pretty entertaining. I went and bought the dvd's back 7-8 years ago, even after I had seen all the films.

 

Our flying turtle has pretty much recovered when he returns in 1996's Gamera 2: Attack Of Legion. Some bug like critters start showing up before Gamera appears. They like chomping on people. There's lots of running about and collateral damage before Gamera saves the humans once again. At least by this movie the army is starting to help him when he battling the other monsters. It's about the same in Gamera 3: Awakening Of Irys which came out in 1999. Irys is another monster that some stupid kid lets out and tries to raise. There's always that dumbass, huh. The monster raising doesn't go well and Irys grows up to be larger than a sperm whale, but with tentacles. She wrecks some stuff and sucks the girl who was her friend into the goopy center of her chest. Gamera gets her back and luckily for us a lot of stuff gets damaged in the fight. There's too much melodrama in this one but the effects are about the same. So for the most part a pretty entertaining trilogy of films. Worth seeing if you like the giant monsters and i sure do.

Friday Night Movies 336

I found Kill! on NetFlix in the Criterion DVD listings. I hadn't heard of this 1968 Japanese samurai film before but was curious when I read about it. Here's the description from Criterion's webpage.

SYNOPSIS:In this pitch-black action comedy by Kihachi Okamoto, a pair of down-on-their-luck swordsmen arrive in a dusty, windblown town, where they become involved in a local clan dispute. One, previously a farmer, longs to become a noble samurai. The other, a former samurai haunted by his past, prefers living anonymously with gangsters. But when both men discover the wrongdoings of the nefarious clan leader, they side with a band of rebels who are under siege at a remote mountain cabin. Based on the same source novel as Akira Kurosawa’s Sanjuro, Kill! playfully tweaks samurai film convention, borrowing elements from established chanbara classics and seasoning them with a little Italian western.

It turned out to be an entertaining movie with a nice sense of humor. The reluctant samurai is played by Tatsuya Nakadai, whom some might remember from Yojimbo where he played the sadistic gun toting son of one of the gangster clans. He's pretty entertaining here as is his co-star Elsushi Takahashi who plays the farmer with aspirations. That's the two of them in the little picture on the right. Some people get helped and some people wind up face down in the mud. It's a sad old world in ancient Japan but it might be worse in our next feature.

I had completely forgotten anything I might have picked up about Season Of The Witch, which came out Jan 7 2011, including that it stared Nick Cage and Ron Perlman. They are Crusaders who have gotten tired of killing people in the name of God. After a montague of a whole series of battles Nick kills a lady and he gets all bummed out. Joe pointed out that they would have been killing men women and children by the scores in every battle. Nick and Ron run away from the army and a month later they get caught and tossed in prison. Before they are hung for desertion the local priest enlists them to transport a witch to a monastery 6 days away. There's a plague going on and the people believe it's a curse. They think the witch might know something and want to have her brought to the Monks for interrogation. It's a tough journey through beautiful spooky forests and mountains. It doesn't go so well and people start dying. There's a lot of great settings, much of the movie filmed in Austria, Hungary and Croatia, but the story is nothing special. Monster, trip, dead people. You've seen it all before. The director Dominic Sena also directed the recent remake Gone In 60 Seconds and the John Travolta picture Swordfish. Both of them watchable entertainments that have more style than story sense. And I like the style packed funflicks well enough. Some of the effects in Season Of The Witch are pretty good but some of the supernatural beasts are only fair to middling. The witch calls to some wolves to help her and the film makers can't hold off with wolves they have to make them werebeasts of some sort, adding a layer of so-so cgi to the beasts. What was wrong with wolves, they're scary enough, not everything has to be ramped up. Oh, well, that's movie makin'. I read a fun piece over at What Would Tyler Durden Do about Indian Werewolves in the new Disney movie The Lone Ranger with Johnny Depp. I don't think I would bother buying SOTW but I'm not sorry that I saw it.

What I Read In May 2011

 

Freddy And The Dragon by Walter R Brooks is the last book in the series. Brooks had been pretty sick while he was writing this book and he passed away a couple of months before the book came out in 1958. There's a crime wave in the area and people and animals have see a headless horseman. Freddy gets busy on the case. Mrs Wiggins father Percy, who's a bit of a jerk and a thief, is captured. He was part of the headless horseman's gang. Freddy and a mole teach him some manners and refined ways so he can give up his criminal life and rejoin society. Sadly the dragon is fake, but it's a nice dragon, bleches black smoke, from burning bits of tire, and shoots flames, from a built in flame thrower. Freddy lives an exciting life, if not a dangerous one. It's probably not as good a book as the best of the series but it still was enjoyable. I'll always recommend the series, they are good entertainment, there are good values and lessons to learn from the stories and the characters actions. On top of that they are often funny.

  

A Girl Named Disaster by Nancy Farmer was something that I picked up because I liked her other books so much. It had been sitting on the shelf waiting to get read for ages. It finally surfaced and it was pretty entertaining. It's not a fantasy but it has some spiritual elements. An 11 year old girl in Mozambique is betrothed to an older icky guy so she steals a boat, some food, and follows the river to Zimbabwe. Her father is there but she hasn't seen in him several years. Her ill equipt journey doesn't go so well and she has to try to survive the best she can with the skills she has. She eats bugs! And likes it? There are encounters with baboons and hippos. I don't even like to see a stray dog in the neighborhood so this book just reinforces the notion that I wouldn't want to live in Africa with the skills and issues I have. That bug eating just creeps me out. Our heroine nearly dies on the journey but finally finds her way. She's befriended by some scientists and finally introduced to her father's family. That's not going much better than the jungle. Mostly it turns out rather well for our gal and she gets to go to school. Did I mention that she actually likes eating bugs! Farmer spent a lot of time in Africa and some of her fiction is set there. She's a darn good writer, and perhaps a bug eater, but her books are well worth reading. So far everything I have read was worth the read. She occasionally wins the Newberry Medal. I'm sure to re-read some of her books in the future.

Stravaganza - City Of Masks by Mary Hoffman is the first of a series of books about some kids who travel to another place that's like 17th century Italy but with some bit of magic. I'm not diggin' them and they are taking a while to get through. I bought them when I had all that nudie magazne credit. I'm not going to keep them.

Bloodtide by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson is the third book in the Never Land series. The mermaids get crazy when their water is poisoned by red particles in the water. The kids have to figure out what's going on and fix it. Hook and the Pirates find some gun powder and plan to blow up part of the island. They have to be stopped and things set back to normal. Boom! All better. Fun book, slight but still

Another month with only four novels. It was that City of Masks, just slowed me right down. It doesn't get much better for the next couple of months either. I got to find some thinner books.

What I Read In April 2011

 

I didn't get to very many books back in April. Just four, that's pretty sad, huh. Partly it was the books I was reading, like Shatterglass by Tamora Pierce. It's another in The Circle Opens series. I'm not such a fan, I read through it anyway, and it was taking a while. This is about a mage with glass blowing magic abilities. There's a living glass dragon that gets created, a guy that needs some magical help, and some awful people that need to be caught and punished. I've forgotten mostly what happened it's been so long since I read it. It's definately going on the getting rid of pile. I will keep and re-read Barnaby Grimes - Legion of the Dead by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell. This is the third adventure for young Barnaby. He's a Tik-tock lad who delivers messages around the city of London is some past time. In the first book Barnaby shared the roof tops with a werewolf. This time the supernatural menace is zombies. There's a wealth of interesting characters all cleverly illustrated. It moves along at a brisk pace, it entertaining, and it's fun to read. What more could you ask for.

 

Pure Dead Wicked by Debi Glori is the second book in the series. The Strega-Borgia's are forced out of their house when the roof gets damaged. There's a secret plot to get the house by a local builder. The family moves to a hotel and they hardly fit in. Things happen and the family does get back into the family estate. There are some funny things going on and the writing's ok. I picked it up on clearance. There are 4 more books in the series but I haven't seen them in the used bookstores yet. I don't mind waiting, I can't keep up with the stack of stuff to read that I still have on my shelf right now. The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde is the second of the Jack Spratt mysteries. They are comic and weird and fairly entertaining, though I think I like the Thursday Next series better. Jack is a cop who works on Nursery related crimes. Someone died on his last case and he's under suspension. He continues to work with Detective Sergeant Mary Mary on the Goldilocks case. Things get pretty messy with plenty of murders and bears. There's also a secret porridge smuggling ring going on too. Things work out mostly ok for Jack and Mary and their alien co-worker. He gets a quick view of Mary's boobs but he's an alien who isn't interested in them. Isn't that always the way? I will save this along with the other Fforde books I have. I do want to re-read them someday.

Science Fiction Sunday 143

  

I thought it might be a nice idea to watch Galaxy Quest. I did go to see it in the theater when it came out in 1999. I picked up the dvd and it's been a while since I watched it last. I'm normally not a fan of Tim Allen, I grew tired of his comedy grunts right quick. Same with his tv show, that character he played was real annoying. Here he's pretty good and he's got a nice bunch of actors to back him up. Tim, Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman, Tony Shalhoub and Daryl Mitchell play the main crew of the ship in the tv show. Sam Rockwell plays a red shirt that got killed in an episode. He was happy to be on the show and it gets him gigs at conventions. Enrico Colantoni plays the head of the aliens that come looking for help. They appear human with the help of image generators. Robin Sachs plays the evil alien. Tim blunders around, the aliens are nearly saved, and the series gets renewed after a huge near disaster. There's a lot of jokes and most of htem are pretty funny. I shouldn't wait so long to getting around to seeing it again.

The Wikipedia says that Gappa, a 1967 Japanese giant monster movie, was intended to be a parody of the genre. I don't know that I got that from the Video Dakaiju fan-subbed bootleg that I have. There's a  dvd of the Japanese version that you can get from Amazon and you can see the US dubbed version, Monster From a Prehistoric Planet at the Internet Archive. Some rich business man goes with a boat load of people to a south Pacific island. He wants to build a resort there and the natives are ready for the commerce. They tell him not to go to the forbidden area and just like a kid drawn tothe forbidden candy jar, off he goes. He breaks the candy jar and a giant lizard like bird critter comes poppin' out of hte giant egg. The natives want them to leave the critter but nope, they bolt back to japan. Death and destruciton are reigned down on the village as the parents of the cirtter burst out of their subterranian lake home. They fly to Japan to get their destructive search on. Buildings crash and the army can't stop them. Finally the business man gives up the kid and the critter family returns home to the island of the dead. It's not a favorite but it's an ok movie. I enjoyed watching it again. The effects aren't as good as the earlier giant monster movies but there you go.

30023 Mini Lighthouse

I only picked up one of these lighthouses. Mostly just for fun. The parts aren't ones that I use that often. It's was at the TRU and might be a US exclusive. It was $3.99 for 25 pieces. The most useful thing are the 8 macaroni bricks in red. Of course it would be better to have more than 8 but that's all you get in the set. It's a nice looking model and the three black cheese slopes and the two trans yellow 2x2 round bricks can come in handy some day. It was easy to build as you might guess, mostly stackin'. I should go look for some more red macaroni bricks on BrickLink. I bet I could use a few more.