PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Wodehouse Playhouse Series 2

I plowed through the second series in an evening. The shows are about a half an hour each and they have John Alderton and Pauline Collins playing various characters from the stories of PG Wodehouse. There are only 6 episodes and I had a good time watching them. They're about the same quality as the first season, not great, but still  good and enjoyable in that dry Brit way. They were made at a different time about a different time and that might not work for some. Some are going to find them somewhat slow and droll, though they are a bit slapsticky. The dialog is reminiscent of Wodehouse even though the stories have to rely on visuals over the wonderful prose that Wodehouse described things with. One of my favorite opening lines in story is: "A sudden cat shot into the room."  Says so much. Still those what liked season 1 might have a go at the second lot. Again, here's your chance to watch the series for free on YouTube. 

Series 2

Anselm Gets His Chance

Mr. Potter Takes a Rest Cure

Strychnine in the Soup

Feet of Clay

The Nodder

The Code of the Mulliners

 

Psych Season 2

Turns out the 8 dollar investment I made purhasing second season of Psych is paying off great dividends in giggles and outright gaffaws. All our cast are back. James Roday, Dule Hill, Corbin Bernsen, Maggie Lawson, Timothy Omundson and Kristen Nelson. There were 16 episodes in the season that was broadcast from July 2007 to Feb 2008. The dvd came out that same summer. I'm sure it was more than 8 bucks, huh. James, playing Shaun the fake psychic, has solved quite a number of cases for the Santa Barbara Police Department, so they keep hiring him back. Kristen plays the Chief and she gets a credit in the open titles. Tim and Maggie are the detectives. Tim's Detective Lassiter, or Lassie as Shaun calls him, is not so happy with Shaun most of the time. Maggie and Shaun get along together most of the time. There's always that chance they will hook up and the scripts play to that theme a bit. In real life Maggie and James hook up but in the series they don't start dating this season. The first show starts off with Tim Curry guesting as the judge on an American Idol like talent show which has come to the area looking for new talent. Did one of those spurned talents think Tim deserved to die for his nasty ways. Someone's been trying but they've failed so far. The Chief asks Shaun and Gus to help keep someone from succeeding. Gina Gershon also appears in the episode. Was she someone? The second episode has a dead guy turn up with weird slashes on his body and Shaun, in full psychic mode, draws the killer on a large pad of paper. Damn, it's a T-Rex! No one believes him, he's scorned, still he's right. How's that work then? You'll have to catch the episode if you want to find out. Lou Diamond Phillips guests in an episode where he plays an FBI agent. He has an FBI psychic along with him. She's a hottie and Shaun falls for her. Somehow I don't think she'll still want to go out with him after he's had her arrested. John Amos appears as a visiting Uncle. Kevin Sorbo appears in an episode as a Dawg style bounty hunter. Corbin has always looked down at the profession but Shaun and Gus were impressed with the guy 20 years ago. They've got a different attitude after they go up against him. They're all after an escaped prisoner played by W. Earl Brown. Phylicia Rashad and Ernie Hudson play Gus's parents and both of them are suspects in a murder case. Shaun helps Gus deal with that over the Christmas holidays. Shaun becomes a tv star on a locally produced Spanish Language tv soap opera. He was there to investigate a murder and things just fall into place. Amanda Pays, Corbin's real life wife, plays his blind date in an episode. The cast is fun and the scripts have funny things for them to do. All the characters have subplots that work around the main theme of the episode. Some of them are pretty silly and that's one of the things that I like about the show. It's not serious and there are goofy things that happen. From the flashbacks to the interesting effects shots it all works well. It's not over the top like Pushing Daisies but it's stylish enough to create a nice look. Flashy graphics and camera tricks won't make up for a sad script lacking laughs. I found them to be filled with yuks. Yay, for me! The show continues to feature a pineapple in each episode. John Landis and John Badham both directed episodes this season. The shows are still being shot in Canada. That's where the studio work is done and for the outdoor locations BC fills in for Santa Barbara well enough. They don't seem to worry when a bus goes by with a Canadian flag on it or that Gus drives a car only available in Canada. Oh well, that setting is less important than the characters, the murders are really subservient to the character development. Not that there's much growth, Shaun still runs wild, people still let him get away with plenty. I'm still enjoying his antics and will enjoy visiting with him and Gus when I get around to season 3 and 4. The dvd's have a few extras like commentaries on some episodes. There were a couple of featurettes. Some were fairly entertaining.   

Science Fiction Sunday 164

I'm finally getting to the end of the Godzilla series. I was thinking tackling the rest of the Japanese monster movies after that but I'm taking a break and going back to other genre's of SF movies. Godzilla: Tokyo S.O.S.is the 27th movie and it was released 12-13-2003. It continues from the previous movie. The government is repairing Kiryu while wondering if there is a reason to continue with the expense. Kiryu is the Mechagodzilla built over the real Godzilla's bones. The Mothra girls come to an old guy they had meet before and tell him to warn the government that they need to chuck the dead Godzilla's bones in the sea. The bones are attracting the big guy will keep coming back for them. Mothra will turn against the human's if they continue on this path. A giant dead sea turtle washes on shore. Looks rather Gamera like. We see the slashes on his next from some giant claws. Ooohhh, huh. The humans are kind of annoying, all noisy, and they don't listen to Mothra. Godzilla does show up and the old man and his grandson call Mothra for some help. It's a nice looking CGI Mothra that show sup. Looks really great. MechaGodzilla shows up and there's more fighting. The huge battle eats up a lot of the movie but is pretty entertaining. MechaG takes over it's own control and grabs Godzilla. They drop into the sea and the movie closes, after some human nattering, with a shot of a secret store of monster DNA. Oh, oh. The movie is more entertaining that the story it tells. The people don't have a lot to do and you've seen it all before. The effects in general are pretty nice and the soundtrack doesn't bother me any. There's a US edition from Columbia TriStar. It's letterboxed, looks pretty good, and has both Japanese audio with English subs and an English Dub version. I don't care for the dubbing very much. I've also got a Video Daikaiju bootleg dvd that is fan subbed that's pretty close to the US version. Worth a gander for the monster fa. The weak story line is bouyed up by the great battle scenes which make it better than average.

The 28th and currently last Godzilla film, Godzilla: Final Wars, came out in 2004. Ryuhei Kitamura is the director. I wouldn't have guessed he'd be directing a Godzilla movie, he does a fairly good job, expecially with the monster action. His script isn't anything special, back to the invading alien theme. Monsters seem to be popping out of the ground all over the world. They are trashing lots of stuff and the earth looks to be in trouble. Some aliens appear, they collect the attacking monsters, saving the earth. It's too good to be true of course and soon enough the aliens are outed. They are inhuman critters, in men suits, out to get their munch on. People are one of the alien's main food groups. Damn, that's some payback for being an animal eater, huh. It's slightly in the future of the rest of the series and it turns out that this Godzilla universe has mutants with special powers. They were rounded up and are now working for the Earth Defense Organization. That will be important in the fight to get rid of the aliens. There's a good bit of action and that was fun enough. I watched the bootleg dvd I had and part of the English Dub I got off of On Demand. There's a US version I hadn't picked up yet. I'm not in a big rush.

Friday Night Movies 355

Wake Wood is one of those movies that has stupid people doing all the wrong things and people get slaughtered. A little girl is killed by a rabid dog that is in the care of her veterinarian dad. She's was stupid,opened the door, and entered the cage. Some kids have no sense and they die. Sad, huh. Move on. The parents move to Wake Wood, a small town, where the mom opens a pharmacy and the dad goes to work for Timothy Spall. Mom's still having trouble moving on. dad gets into his work and there are some gorey animal surgery scenes. Yuck! Poor cow. It's one of those towns that looks good on the surface but the town has a secret pet cemetery supernatural trick that revives the dead. There's limit to the magic, the person only returns for three days, then they go back. It requires a ritual and a spare dead body to act as the vessel for the returning person. The person to be revived has to be dead less than a year or there will be consequences. Timothy Spall tells them that. Of course,our couple doesn't give a rip and they lie. Lucky for them a farmer gets crushed by a giant ram soon after they make pact. They get their daughter back but their lie comes back to haunt them ASAP. The cute little girl starts killing critters before moving up to people. The movie is damned slow at first and we were yakkin' for a bit of it. It picks up in the latter half but they still are stupid people that I don't care for. There's nothing much new here but the film looks pretty good. It's a solid middle of the road offering that could be missed and not one that I would need to watch again. There are better movies like it, watch those.

John Carpenter's The Ward was a better film than our previous selection. It's one of those movies that have a secret twist at the end and I won't let the cat out of the bag. Amber Heard, whom I'd seen in Zombieland and Pineapple Express, is found by the cops burning down a farm house. They take her to a mental institution and stick her in a ward with some other girls. There's some interaction between characters as Amber tries to settle in. The doctor is trying to help her, she resists, the nurse is in full on Nurse Ratchet mode and the main orderly is off putting. Amber is disturbed about her lack of memory of her life before the fire. That's a clue. After a bit of hospital life some sort of supernatural beastie starts popping up. We see it in the dark hallway, in a mirror, in the shower. Finally it starts killing and the girls start disappearing. The movie is well shot and mostly entertaining. The actors are doing a good job, the story is clever enough, and we were mostly paying attention, only yakkin' a bit. I'm not sure that I would need to buy one but I'm glad I saw it. We all agreed it would have been better without that one last startle at the end. It's one of those gotchas just to make you jump one last time. I'm tired of those.

3930 Stephanie's Outdoor Bakery

I picked up a few of the new LEGO Friends sets. They're the new line of sets that are designed to appeal to little girls in the 5-12 year old range. There are new figures but the rest of the parts are the same old pieces. Of course some of them are in pretty new colors and shades and that's the appeal for many builders. Some of my favorite colors are the softer colors, the pastel colors, like sand green, dark tan, medium blue and medium flesh. I also use a lot of tan, red, black, green  and reddish brown. I don't use the pinks, oranges and purples very much, and I could do without more lime green, but now I can easily add some colors to my collection and have new choices for color combinations.

     

There are 12 colors, including white, plus 2 types of clear pieces in the set. It says 45 pieces on the box but there are 49 including the extra bits. The price is $5.99 at the LEGO Store. They were the same price in Target which has them away from the LEGO aisle in the girl's section. There are 14 sets in the first wave. I might get them all eventually but I'm cherry picking the ones that have the most interesting bits and pieces first. I do like that medium blue 1x1 brick used for the milk carton but I like props and accessories for the minifigs. There are some pink bits and pieces that might come in handy but there aren't enough of them to be anything but accents as this point. Really, what am I going to do with a couple of azure blue wall panels? Who knows, someday a need might pop up, and I'll be ready to rock that azure blue.

Why they call it an outdoor bakery? I guess I don't know. Are there no health codes in Heartlake City, no winter? The LEGO website describes it as a garden party so who knows what that's about. I'm probably not looking at the set from a little girl's POV anyway. They're less concerned with walls at that age and more about what people are doing. Little kids like playing with figures, making little stories for them to play out, and the props and accessories help flesh out the roll playing. All the characters in the sets seem to have an activity or job like most boy sets do but I think they have a bit more of a backstory. I was given a 12 page brochure about the series when I was at the LEGO store a couple of weeks ago. It talks about the girls and their town Heartlake City. You can read more about them at the LEGO site. Unlike the boy geared sets there are a lot less cars, only 2 of the 14 sets have vehicles, something that would be reversed if they were aimed at boys. As someone who has far too many tires, that's a good thing.

In 3930 Stephanie has her bakery. That's a nice simple cake design with the 2x2 round brick with the grills and the purple ring on the white umbrella is kind of nice. I think the little girl figures are cute. They are taller than a minifig but not any taller than a standard minifig in a dress. The hands and feet connect the same ways a minifigs would. The heads have wigs that are interchangeable with the minifig accessories but the neck is thinner and the hole in the bottom of the head would not take the pin from the torso of the standard minifig. All told this set is pretty much the same as a small set in an established theme. A figure with a few props and accessories.

There's a certain, I think, small amount of hating going on for the sets and the figures, both in the media and fan sites. Nannan mentions the new pastel colors in a piece on The Brothers Brick and some of the comments are fairly interesting and varied and mostly positive. Here are some  comments on the "pink is for girls" color theme. and some of them are negative. Here's a blog post that I think misses the point on the sets, some of the comments reflect other views. Here's Geek Dad from Wired. He's got a more balanced look at the sets. This post has some of the most common sense writing about the theme that I have found so far. Wait, here's another good piece from BrickShow.

I think it's pretty likely that there are plenty of little girls who like the pink frilly stuff  and there are less of the little girls who like more boy accented stuff to play with. Then there's that whole Princess phase that seems to consume them. I only know one little 5 year old girl, she loves pink things, and I don't think she's atypical. Everyone I have talked to about them in person has seemed to like the sets but they are all adults who are interested in the variety and potential of interesting colors.From hanging out at Brickmania and GMLTC on several weekends I can see there just aren't as many girls that come to the open houses. Look at the adult community. Hardly any gals there. LEGO's past attempts to appeal to girls, Belville most recently, have not been so popular. If you hang out at the LEGO store enough you just don't see a lot of little girls buying LEGO. The staff there corroborates that. I don't think there are easy answers here , everyone will have some opinion, but I think the sets are innocuous. Hell they're down right cute. If the sets sell well that might indicate some girls like them and if they do poorly I can get some stuff on clearance. We shall see, huh.

Wodehouse Playhouse Series 1

I've been a fan of PG Wodehouse since some time in the 1980's. My old girlfriend Karen turned me on to his work. If you haven't read any, and you do read, you should. It's some of the best writing, ever. The stories might not appeal to everyone, they are set in an older England, before the second World War. Light comedies, with bits of romance, lots of odd characters, silly situations and amazingly clever words strung together in delightful patterns that are a joy to read. Wodehouse wrote from the 1890's to 1975 and there are close to 100 books of stories and novels. There's a bit of non-fiction and song related material out there too. His work has been adapted pretty much regularily since he started writing. The BBC has done a lot of it and this 1975 program was one of htem.

John Alderton and Pauline Collins are the two main actors in the first series. They play different characters in each episode. I remember John from Zardoz, where he played Friend, and from the British Sitcom Please Sir! where he played a teacher to a class of misfits. Kind of like Welcome Back Kotter but 7 years earlier and with English accents. John was in plenty of British TV including Upstairs, Downstairs. I didn't watch that when it was new and I still am not interested. I couldn't remember seeing Pauline in anything, she was un Upstairs Downstairs too, but I see from her IMDb page that she was in an episode of The Saint in 1966. I vaguely remember her but it's been a couple of years since I saw that episode. They both do a good job on the acting stuff and they are joined by a fine lot of character actors. The shows were fun for me to watch but I recognized the stories they were taken from. Others might not like them as well. Here's your chance to find out for free. The seven episodes are all available on YouTube as I write this. They look fine. See if you like them. I'm going to go read a book before I hit the hay.

1. "The Truth About George"
2. "Romance at Droitgate"
3. "Portrait of a Disciplinarian"
4. "Unpleasantness at Bludleigh Court"
5. "The Rise of Minna Nordstrom"
6. "Rodney Fails to Qualify"
7. "A Voice From the Past"

Psych Season 1

I had such a good time watching the first season of Psych that I could hardly stop watching. Usually I like to be doing something else when watching tv, blogging, sorting parts, etc. How much I get done depends on how wrapped up in the show I get. I found I didn't get much done while watching them. At the core of the show it's just a detective using his special skills to catch crooks but there's a nice sense of humor that makes me laugh. The show's tag line is All The Law. None Of The Order. The series is the brain child of Steve Franks who's previous credit was the story for the Adam Sandler movie Big Daddy. Franks wrote several of the shows first scripts and that one of the things that really attracted me to the show. They are fun, there are lots of popular media references, plenty of good jokes, some suspense and a bit of heart. James Roday plays Shaun Spencer, a free spirit, fairly smart, excellent memory and highly observant. His police officer father, Corbin Bernsen, had trained his observational skills since he was young, drilled him on police procedures, all furthering the goal of the lad following in his footsteps. The episodes open with a scene of young Shaun and Corbin and lessons in life and detecting. Many of these are scenes of young Shaun getting caught doing something wrong and having some punishment. The guy in the nice gray suit is Dulé Hill. He was a regular on West Wing which I hadn't seen. He was the onion man in Holes which I had seen and really enjoyed. In Psych he's Shaun's best friend Burton Guster. Nearly everyone calls him Gus and he's a bit of a whimp, smart though. He has a good taste, sells pills to doctors for a living, and he's got knowledge that Shaun doesn't. The two of them together are fun to watch. Shaun is pretty much a party guy and not one to stay in a job for long. All his past experiences come in handy in his psychic sluthing. 

In the opening episode Shaun calls in a tip for a crime he sees covered on the news. It wasn't the first time he'd done this and the local officers have become suspicious about all his knowledge. If he doesn't spill the beans about how he knows all this stuff they'll toss him in the slammer. To save his ass Shaun lies and claims to be psychic. Using his powers of keen observation he tricks them into thinking it might be true. The end result is the crimes are solved. This turns into a job for Shaun and his sidekick Gus. Timothy Omundson plays Detective Carlson Lassiter and Maggie Lawson plays Detective Juliet O'Hara. Kirsten Nelson plays Chief Vick. All are good characters and the actors play them well. There are a slew of goofy characters that come in for an episode or two and a few semi-regulars. Usually there's a murder but they aren't gorey or gruesome. Sometimes there's a second subplot that occasionally ties in with the main investigation. The second show has Shaun and Gus at a spelling bee contest where a man is murdered. There's a robbery that turns into murder, a murder during a Cival War reenactment, then a ghost tries to kill a guy which is followed by an episode with Shaun and Gus at a Science Fiction convention with George Takei in a  goofy guest spot. Richard Kind, Frank Whaley and Kurtwood Smith turn up in other episodes. There were 15 episodes in the 4 discs set. It was on sale at Target Black Friday weekend with seasons 2-4 for 8 bucks each. It was cheap enough to take a chance and I certainly feel I got my money's worth with this series. I'll be watching the rest of the discs eventually.

Science Fiction Sunday 163

The 25th Godzilla film reboots the series again. Godzilla, Mothra and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack pretends the other films hadn't happened and Godzilla returns after 50 years. A nuclear sub goes missing. There's a strange earthquake with a moving epicenter. Other strange things are happening and Yuri, a pretty TV gal, is covering them. She has a strange encounter with an old man. He warns Godzilla will return and fills her in on the Guardian Monsters. Yuri's dad is high up in the military. He tells her about the first Godzilla visit back in 1954. He was there and saw the destruction first hand. He has always wanted to destroy Godzilla. Soon he'll get his chance. First Barugon, one of three Guardian Monsters, who wasn't good enough to get named int he title, makes an appearance just before the big guy makes a big smash when he comes ashore. Godzilla trashes some cityscape's and scares some people before killing them. His nuclear breath is very powerful and leaves a mushroom cloud over the blast site. It's flash is visible for miles. He's definately not the hero in this movie. I don't care for this Godzilla's costume very much especially around the head area. Barugon is the first giant beast to have a battle with Godzilla. They battle in a park near Hakone and the fight is pretty darn good. Baragon takes a beating before he falls. The other Guardian Monsters, Mothra and Ghidorah, make their first appearance soon after. The Japanese military is powerless as the monsters duke it out.There are some good battles with lots of monster on monster action. The Japanese defence force makes a brief appearance before they are toasted by G's atom breath. It's what takes Mothra down. Her spirit goes into Ghidorah unleashing the King inside. Their battles light up the night like the sun. Godzilla is knocked into the water but the fight continues. Sadly even King G is no match for the mighty mutant. When he falls the spirits of the Guardian Monsters are unleashed and they sink Godzilla into the water. Yuki's dad gets the chance to plant a bomb in Godzilla's wound and does so. That finally takes the big guy down. Yuri survives and so does her dad. They honor the fallen Guardian Monsters and as we pan down into the bay we see Godzilla's beating heart and know that he'll be back.I have the Columbian TriStar dvd and it's pretty nice. The uncut movie is widescreen and has a Japanese soundtrack and English subs. It's one of the better of the recent films and a lot of fun to watch.

The 26th Godzilla film looks back to other previous films in the series and cherry picks hooks from them to hang its story on. Godzilla Against MechaGodzilla starts in 1999 and Akane is the gunner on a mazer. The gun fails to kill Godzilla. Moving the maser in retreat she accidentally knocks a military car off the hill and the big guy steps on it. Akane is demoted to a desk job to suffer her guilt alone. Scientists use the original Godzilla's bones to build bio-robot and we all know how transplants go in movies and this is no different. Akane harbors her hatred of Godzilla down in the library. There's a little girl, the daughter of one of the scientists, who figures in the story. Akane gets to be the pilot of MechaGodzilla so she's happy to be able to get some revenge. Yuki meets the scientist and the little girl. The girl tries to get a hook up going. After all the human drama we finally see some monster action. During a test of the MechaGodzilla the real thing is spotted at sea. Big VTOL planes carry MechaG to the big guy who's come ashore to break things. The bio-bot goes out of control after the bones hear the Godzilla roar and trashes the city with missiles and laser blasts. Black eye for the military, huh. they fix that and there are more battles and a bit of human drama. I found it entertaining after having seen it several times. The Columbia TriStar dvd has a nice widescreen copy with Japanese language track and subtitles. There's an English dub track but it's not so good. I like the Godzilla costume in this one better than the last movie. It did well enough at the box office that the series continued. Check back next week for the last two in the series.