PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Comedy Kings 50 Movie Pack Disc 1

I picked up this 50 movie pack for $3 at HPB and I had a 15% off coupon on top of that. Even with tx it's just over 5 cents a movie. That's a good price to pay for some of these movies, 'cause even though some of the movies star some of the Kings of Comedy, some of these movies aren't the greatest and I bet you never heard of the stars. I'd already seen a lot of these movies, I downloaded them from the Internet Archive at some time or another in the recent past. In fact only the first movie on this disc is one I hadn't seen before.

Colonel Effingham's Raid is a 1945 movie with Charles Coburn. He's a war vetran and it's 1945. He's retired to his home town in Georgia. The locals aren't very prideful of hteir town and the Mayor and his cronies are running the town to their own benifit. There are a lot of movies that have corrupt business men and their minions. Of course back before WWII you couldn't swing a cat and not hit a corrupt politician or a businesmen. There's a romantic subplot and a guy decides to enlist to show his pride. The Guard unit he joins gets shipped off at the end of the movie. Not a bad little movie but nothing too new.

Country Gentlemen is a 1936 movie with Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson. They were a couple of vaudville guys who went into the movies. In this movie they play a couple of con artists who are trying to sell some worthless oil stock. It goes all wrong and they get rich. There's a kid and a large dog that were fun to watch. Ole and Chic were ok but nothing too special there. There's a bit of a romance.

Freckles Comes Home is a 1942 moie about a young man who comes back home to his home town after being away at collecge. The gawky teen gal he left has grown into a pretty young lady. A gangster is on the run and he meets the young man on a bus. After hearing what an out of the way town the young man is returning to the gangster decides to lay low there. He can't just sit still and enjoy the town, he calls a pal and they plan to rob the bank. Someone kills the gangster and the local hick cop just can't figure it out. Mantan Moreland works at the hotel and he provides some comic relief. He was in 131 movies. Not too shabby, huh.

Goodbye Love is a 1933 Charles Ruggles film. Charles has marriage troubles and he's the valet of a guy who has marriage troubles. In fact all the men in the movie have marriage troubles. There was an alimony jail in those days. Most of the men come off as nice in the movie while most of the women are portraited as money grubbing monsters. I wonder what that was all about. Messy divorce in the homes of the writer? Who knows. Some of it was funny and some kind of sad. Charles and his boss come up with a plan to get their own back and kick those golddiggers to the floor.

Not too bad a start. I'll spin more of these discs as I get the time and report on them You can watch all of them at the links in the titles. You might like them, at least they won't be the same old thing your currently used to.

Psych Season 4

I've been getting back logged with all the tv show dvd's piling up. It's hard to pick the one to watch next sometimes, they're all clamoring for my attention. I picked Psych season 4 and had a hoot watching that the last few days. That was the last of the 4 sets that I picked up after the last Black Friday for 8 bucks each. Can't beat that price, huh. James Roday and Dule Hill are back as the fake psychic detective and his funky partner. I've grown accustomed to their entertaining banter and quirky personalities. James Roday's character is still too much of a wild card for personal contact but he's entertaining on TV in nice little 45 minute doses, especially with such great co-stars like Maggie Lawson, Timothy Omundson, Corbin Bernsen and Kristen Nelson. These are all great actors who have brought life to some fun characters. Steve Franks, the show creator, is back as show runner for the 16 episode season which ran on USA from Aug 2009 to March 2010. It looks like they do half the season and take a 2 month break before returning with the rest of the episodes. Steve also wrote and directed some of those episodes. James Roday continues to write, working on three episodes and he takes a shot at directing the season finale. The level of guest stars just continues to rise with Cary Elwes appearing in the first episode. He's a debonair thief that Tim has been after for years. They all run up to Vancouver to try to catch him. The show is set in Santa Barbara but it's really filmed in British Columbia. On the audio commmentaries the cast and crew joke about the amount of Canadian stuff that sneaks into the background of the show.

Rachel Leigh Cook is back as a potential girlfriend for James. In real life James and Maggie Lawson have been together for the last 5 years. In Psych season 5 they start their relationship on the show. Back in season 4 James and Rachel date for a while, then she leaves for a few months, returning later in the season. James Brolin stars as the sheriff at a wild west theme park Tim has been part of for several years. There's something goofy going on and Tim asks the guys to help figure out who's sabotaging the park. Ray Wise asks Gus and Shaun to help him with a girl who seems possessed. You can't beat Ray in nearly any role. He's the best. Jaleel White and Kenan Thompson were a couple of the singers in Dule's a cappella singing group. He hadn't seen them in a while and when the fourth member is found dead they find themselves in a mystery. The dead guyleft a clue in a piece of music. Jaleel used to play Steve Urkel on Family Matters and Kenan was onNickelodeon's All That & Kenan and Kel shows. Michael Rooker and John Hawks kidnap James and he gets shot while they are holding him. Police lessons from Corbin help him get clues out to everyone while he's trapped in the trunk of the car. Arnold Vosloo is a convicted murder that James helps out to save Maggie's old flame. Ali Sheedy returns as Mr Yang in the season finale. Turn out the evil psycho killer had a partner and that creep kidnaps both Maggie and Rachel. James has to try to save both of them before time runs out. Don't worry he saves them but Rachel has had enough and leaves. The final episode had a lot of Hitchcock references in it. I know I didn't get them all since I have never been a very serious Hitchcock fan.

I love that picture above. The shows look and style seem to click with me. The series continues to make me laugh and I plan to pick up season 5 when it gets cheaper. I'll want to watch these again down the road.

3932 Andrea's Stage

 

Here's another set that I actually built after picking up. It's a little stage area and piano. I was toying with using the figure and the piano in the Space Port I'm working on for the SpringCon but so far it's not coming together. There's a good bit of medium lavender and magenta in this set, some amount of black and a lot of ones and twos and threes. There are 4 of the black telescope parts. Those are something one needs in a large quantity. Lucky they turn up in a lot of sets. Three of the black skeleton legs could come in handy. More useful but common bits and pieces make up the rest of the set. Like all the other sets I'll part this one out and turn the parts into something else. Once I think of it. It's a nice little piano but I've seen better built by fans. The little figure is cute too. Not much reason to buy more than one. Not much buzz on the internet about the theme anymore. It's blowing over I guess and the masses are moving along to the next thing. I know I am.

Stephen Fry reads Harry Potter

Unless you're as rich as J K Rowling you probably can't afford to hire Stephen Fry to read Harry Potter to you. I know, I'm sad too.  Lucky for us JK's already hired Stephen to do that and for a pitance you can enjoy him on cd. I had been waiting for the British Audio Book of the 7th book in the series to get cheaper. I have the other audio books which I picked up at Amazon UK for about half price. I kept checking there and either I was broke when they were on sale or they weren't on sale when I had the money. The 7th book has 20 discs and it's typically about 75 Brit pounds which is about $115. Add some postage and you know that says expensive. A couple of saturdays ago I was at the Half Price Bookstore to get another of their calendars. HPB puts one out each year before Christmas and they have 5 15% off your entire purchase coupons in them. They give them out free if you spend 30 bucks on stuff there or you can pay $3 for one. I like the coupons and try to get 2 or 3 calendars. Usually they run out of calendars before the holidays are over. They had some left over and Sperhauk emailed me to tell me they were giving out one with any purchase. I buzzed on over and while on the look out for something to use the 15% coupon I already had in my wallet on I stumbled on a copy of the very thing I wasn't looking for. What it was doing in a store in St Paul I can't imagine but I grabbed it and with that coupon it was only $45. I've been listening to it off and on for the last week and it's been great. I much prefer Stephen Fry reading Harry Potter over Jim Dale who appears on the US versions. Normally I'm not too keen on audio books but I've really enjoyed the Harry Potter books the couple of time I have gone through them.

Science Fiction Sunday 169

I got up early and put on the 5th series of Red Dwarf. It originally aired in February 1992 which was about a year after the previous series. It's got the usual 6 episodes and the usual gang of idiots with Chris Barrie, Craig Charles, Danny John-Jules, Robert Llewllyn and Hattie Hayridge all returning. Rod Grant and Doug Naylor are still writing the series. It's about the same in quality and joke making as the previous series. The guys are still cruising about the galaxy when they encounter a holoship of super intelligent holograms. Rimmer tries to get a berth in the ship and actually gets laid. Jane Harrocks is the gal that did the job. Some of you might have seen her on Absolutely Fabulous where she plays Jennifer Saunder's scatterbrained assistant. Rimmer does the right thing and resigns when he learns that Jane will be erased to make room for him on the holoship. In episode 2 the guys come across the Inquisitor. He judges them and finds Lister and Kryten wanting. They get out of that with trickery and time travel. Handy tools, huh? I can't wait for the future, though I know I am going to be disappointed. Rimmer lands on a psi-moon and it terrorforms itself into his worst nightmares. It's pretty goofy that one. In the fourth episode the guys try to rescue a doctor hologram from an abandoned ship. Turns out to be a mad doctor who infects them with a virus. Rimmer goes crazy from it and takes over the ship. He locks the rest of them in quarantine for three months. It'll all work itself out in the end when they guys get the upper hand and punish Rimmer. Kryten makes a device that makes two copies of an object. One copy has the best of the original and the other has the worst features. The machine destroys the Red Dwarf but creates two copies at the same time. They have adventures on each of the two ships before they go back in time to before the Red Dwarf blows up. In the last episode they find a ship with a crew that all committed suicide. They find out the cause of the problem is the dispair squid when it attacks them and crashes the Starbug. Then the guys wake up attached to a video game system. Timothy Sprall pops up and explains that the guys were just playing a game and that they didn't do very well. They completely missed the planet of the nymphos. The guys try to adjust to their new reality which also turns out to be a lie. It was the dispair squid. Holly has to blow it up before they get back to normal.

The 2 disc dvd has all the episodes on one disc with commentaries for all episodes by the main cast. There are some fan commentaries. There are the usual bunch of interviews and featurettes on the extras disc. I'm pretty much feeling that having the complete Red Dwarf in your science fiction collection is the way to go here.

Friday Night Movies 360

Joe NetFlix'd Fast Five and we watched the BluRay of that. It looked nice. There's lots of noise and action with Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Jordana Brewster and Dwayne Johnson blowing shit up in Rio de Janeiro. It's the fifth movie in the series and while it continues on from events in the 4th film it changes gear to more of a revenge fueled heist plot. There's still a lot of cars, driving real fast, crashing into stuff. Paul and Jordana break Vin out of the prison bound bus and later they all get involved with a car heist in Brazil. It goes badly and they regroup to get their revenge on Joaquim de Almeida who's the biggest bad guy in Brazil. He's a real creep who has his finger in all the evil stinky pies. Our gang has a chip Joaquim wants. It has the location of the safe houses where he's got his bales of cash. Paul and Vin lead an assault on one of the cash houses, burn all the cash, and leave the crew with the message that this is just the start. Joaquim has all his money transferred to a Police Station with a giant safe.

Now Vin and crew have to figure how to get that cash out of there while Dwayne is chasing after them. He's a US Marshall who leads a team that tracks down the highly dangerous types out there. Vin and Paul popped up on the list of people he needs to catch. He drops right into the middle of their heist and catches the guys. Damn, that Dwayne is bad ass. He has a great fight with Vin before he cuffs the lot. Joaquim ambushes the shit out of Dwayne's crew while they are moving the gangs and his men all die. He's saved by Vin and Paul so he teams up with them for some vengence. There are plenty of cool action scenes, especially one with a huge safe that involves an exciting chase through downtown Rio. One of the nice things about these action films set in foreign locations is the chance to see some beautiful places I probably would never visit. Part of the movie is set in the slums of Rio and that's cool to see. Word being see. Some of it was actually filmed in Rio but mostly it's Puetro Rico filling in for the slums. Brazil was a bit too dangerous and uncontrollable. Still it's a lush looking movie and there are lots of pretty places to crash a car. Or toss a safe.

 

Our second movie, Twilight People, was filmed in the Philippines by Eddie Romero in 1973. Most of the movies in this 12 movie set are directed by him. Luckily it's a cheapie, these are not great movies by any measure, you wouldn't want to pay much to have to watch them. The interesting thing about this movie is it's partly based on H G Wells The Island Of Dr Moreau and partly on Richard Connell's The Most Dangerous Game. I doubt that Eddie read those stories, most likely he saw the movies that have come before and copied those. It's a low budget film and one of several that John Ashley made in the Philippines back in the 1970's. He was in some 60's beach movies with Frankie and Annette but never made it very far in the biz. In Twilight People he's scuba diving when he's kidnapped by some blonde haired guy on a boat. John's drugged and taken to a big mansion where a mad scientist is making manimals with the help of his daughter. We've got several, including a goat-man, a bat-man, a dog-girl, and a monkey-man. None of them look very good, you can see that it's makeup so readily. The bat-man is very silly and made us laugh.

 
John leads a revolt and escapes with the mad scientist's daughter. She's had a change of heart when she fell for John. That's John with goat-man and dog-girl with the mad scientist's daughter. You can see why a guy would want to save her but could you trust her? Hard to tell, there's no sequel. Pam Grier plays a leopard-woman who slaughters several people when the shit hits the fan. She has no lines, her make-up is crap. It's a pretty dumb character but it made me laugh. Pam was in another of Eddie's Phillippines productions. where she got to act some. The big old mansion is kind of nice and some of the sets are better than you'd expect for the type of movie it is. So it's pretty of dumb, cliched, and totally unoriginal, but it's entertaining in it's way. It being a short movie and the late hour helped. 

LEGO Valentines

I was at Target and saw these LEGO Valentines. I couldn't see spending 5 bucks on the two different packages so I took a picture. I've taken a lot of pictures inside Target and they don't seem to be inquisitive, at least so far. It probably happens a lot. People sending pics of stuff home to see if that's what they're supposed to be picking up. Both sets have 32 cards for $2.50 which seems to be the average amount of cards in many of the different themed boxes. There are all sorts of movie tie ins, Nascar, Barbie, trying to cover all the kids in a classroom I guess. I wonder if that 32 cards is what someone figured would cover an average classroom size? I have no idea. If I cared I'd go look on the internet but it doesn't matter. The kid will just have to go buy two boxes if he's got a huge class to cover, or skip that stinky kid no one likes. If he wants the fancier cards like wiggle pictures or the shiny foil prisim cards that kisds will have to cough up some more cold hard cash. Those seem to be 16 in a package. I'm pretty sure I hadn't noticed any LEGO labeled Valentines in the past. I'm curious to see the cards but not enough to want to plunk down some cold cash. You can see samples of the front of the cards on the back of the package,and to be honest, they just kind of suck. So much of this kind of extraneous material just gets tossed a brief glimpse and then it goes into the atticwith all the other stacks of paper with pretty pictures on them. Who knows how long that will sit there. Snapping a picture, or collecting one online, and storing it on your hard drive is the best. I burn images and files to a dvd and store that. You can get a lot of crap on a dvd and that's still better than buying the box.

     

The Adventures Of Pete & Pete - Season 1

I'm in the camp of people that think that The Adventures Of Pete and Pete is one of the greatest children's shows ever made. It should be in any top ten list of best kid's shows ever. The show started as a series of 26 one minute shorts that appeared on Nickilodeon starting in 1989. There were 5 specials, each a half hour long, that aired before the first season started in 1993. That first season lasted 8 episodes. A couple of the shorts, 4 of the specials, and the 8 episodes are on the first two disc set. I don't have most of the shorts from the early days and wish I did. I had all the single episodes and specials on tape from when they were broadcast. I had kept them because the dvds stopped before they put the third season out. Paramount, one of the worst dvd producers, had merged with Dreamworks and the new company stopped putting out a lot of stuff. We can only hope that someday they might release a set of the whole complete series. I haven't looked but there are probably people putting out bootlegs of episodes that haven't had a legit release. I wouldn't mind one of the shorts.

The show is about two brothers names Pete. They live in Wellsville in an unnamed state that might be New York. The brothers, again both named Pete, have a mom and a dad. Mom has a metal plate in her head. Big Pete's best friend is Ellen, who's a girl friend but not a girlfriend. Artie, the strongest man in the world, is Little Pete's personal super hero. The rest of the town is filled with great characters and as the show progresses we meet many of them. The guest list is pretty unbelievable. Syd Straw is so delightfully gawky as math teacher Miss Fingerwood, in Valentine's Day Massacre,that I can't imagine anyone not falling in love with her. Nothing stopped Big Pete nor Mr Beverly that's for sure. Pete's developed a friendship with the grounds keeper who also takes care of the school mascot, a squid called Edna. Pete accidentally kills her and in working through that he helps connect Miss Fingerwood with Mr Beverly. Pete and Ellen's friendship is strained in Apocolypse Pete which has Steve Buscemi appearing as Ellen's dad. Martin Donovan appears as a crossing guard that helps Ellen and Pete stay in contact. That's Steve and Ellen below.

 

In What We Did On Our Summer Vacation Peter and Pete and Ellen alienate the ice cream vendor when they try to make friends. He comes back at the end of the episode. Michael Stipe (R.E.M.) and Kate Pierson (The B-52's) appear in small parts. Mr Tastee who wears a plastic ice cream come head so you never see his face is palyed by Toby Huss who was also playing Artie, the stongest man in the world. Most episodes are narrated by Big Pete but in New Year's Pete it's Little Pete who reflects on his failure to keep last New Year's resolution. He wanted to change the world. What a dope, huh. Debbie Harry and Vincent Pastore guest. That's Debbie up on the lefIf you don't know who some of these people are look them up. That's four of the specials. There's a fifth one that's on season two.

In King Of The Road the family goes on a long car vacation to the Hoover Dam. They get into a race with another family which gets pretty silly, what with the nakedness and the roof stacking. I'm some what glad I never spend that much time in the car on vacation. In Day Of The Dot Big Pete gets jealous that Ellen is spending more time with another guy. Little Pete works to get his school bus driver back with his girlfriend. That bus driver is almost as bad as Otto in the Simpson's. Sadly the copy on the Paramount tape has a big line running through a couple of minutes. It's from a damaged tape. Like they couldn't find a better version of that part and splice it in? They just suck at Paramount. I thought they did a pretty poor job with Have Gun - Will Travel when they put those ouf on dvd. I'm glad to have them but man they could have been so much better with just a little work. Little Pete stays up 11 nights in The Nightcrawlers. He's angry he has to got to bed at 9 pm and his mother. tired of his compaining, trys to trick him and it backfires. Really what did she expect when you offer a kid like Little Pete a chance to stay up all night. Of course LP takes it one farther when he recruits several other kids like Clem, Wayne, Monica, Libby and Pinkeye and they stay up for 11 nights straight. They slowly fall asleep until it's only Little Pete left. When he finally says he's tired Mom says he can stay up a bit later. Usually things come to a nice resolution in a Pete and Pete episode. You learn something and you have a laugh or two. What could be better? Big Pete gets a part time job for the summer in Rangeboy. He's working for his Dad as his Dad's Putting Range. He dresses up as a bear and drives the ball collecting machine.

In Tool and Die BP learns some valuable lessons from shop class teacher Mr Slurm. Mr Slurm scares Pete as much as the power tools do. I never had the hesitation that Big Pete has with shop. I couldn't wait to get my hands on tools. t's one of the more entertaining appearance by Endless Mike Hellstrom played by Rick Gomez. He's one of those thorns in Big Pete's side. Some might remember him from Band Of Brothers. Don't Tread On Pete has Big Pete trying to study for a test and Little Pete playing a deadly game of dodgeball. I'm with him, dodgeball sucks ass. The inventor of that game should be beaten with sticks, big ones, hard. The brothers collide over a bowling ball in When Pete's Collide. They unit in the end, with laughter. William Hickey plays the boy's grandfather. Little Pete hears a song by a garage band and when they disappear he puts his own band together to recreate the song. Syd Staw, returning as Miss Fingerwood, rocks out on bass, and meter reader Marshall Crenshaw pitches in. Polaris plays the garage band. They also play the opening theme song Hey Sandy as well as some other incidental music. Most of it's on one of the dvd's or an other as an extra. Once you click on the link in the song title you can also see some episodes of the show. That'll give you an idea of what the series is like. I'll be on season 2 before you know it.

What I Read in January 2012

Kind of a slow start with only 5 books this month, and only two novels in the bunch. The Howard collection has about 500 pages of stories and I had been reading it by my bed for more than a couple of months. The LEGO book is heavily illustrated.

 

Operation Storm City by Joshua Mowll is the third book in that series. It has the brother and sister team running about 1920's Asia on a quest in search of their parents. It's another book presented in MoleSkiene notebook style that is heavily illustrated by the writer. I was recently disappointed to find that the Moleskiene books aren't actually covered with moleskin. It's always something. Operation Storm City didn't disappoint, there's lots of action, some comedy and big explosions.  

The Cult Of LEGO by John Baichtal and Joe Meno is a big illustrated book about the hobby and the fans. It's a fairly shallow study of it with short chapters and lots of pictures that's already heavily dated. It's more for the starting fan or the curious. I'm not a fan of the design of the book. The cover is nice but the page layouts often don't appeal to me. Others might not care or find it pleasing, you never know. There are more than a couple of annoying bits in the writing but I'll keep the book anyway. Mostly for the pictures and it's place in the mythology it's helping to create.   

    

The Secret Of Shadow Ranch by Carolyn Keene is another of the Applewood reprints of the original novels. Nancy goes with several girlfriends to a failing ranch in Arizona. She solves a mystery or two and rides a horse. Nancy even carries a gun and kills a mountain lion. Better than the others I have read in the Nancy Drew series.

The Horror Stories Of Robert E Howard is a collection of Howard's horror stories. Duh, huh. It's part of a larger series of Howard reprints. Sadly they reprint some of the stories from those other collections. There's a Conan story and a Solomon Kane story. I don't find these stories very horrible or anything. I was reading them at bed time and they didn't keep me awake at night. Some of them were better than others and there are some nice illustrations in the book. It would be a good sampling of the types of horror stories that Howard wrote. I'm planning to plow my way through the Howard books I have but I got a few new books that are going to the top of the pile. Funny how that can change at a moment's notice.

Writing Magic by Gail Carson Levine is a writing guide for kids. It's pretty slight and might have some good advice. I like most of Levine's books but this just isn't that interesting to me. I kind of started skimming about the last quarter.

Science Fiction Sunday 168

Series 4 started broadcasting in Jan 1991 just over a year from the end of series 3. Doug Naylor and Rob Grant are back writing and producing the series of 6 episodes. Craig Charles, Chris Barrie, Danny John-Jules, Robert Llewllyn and Hattie Heyridge all return. The guys encounted a pleasure guelph in the first episode which is heavily inpired by Casablanca. The pleasure guelph is a gooey green glob that can change it's shape to appeal to the person it's with. All the guys see the guelph as a different desirable woman, except for the cat who sees himself. In episode 2 the guys come across an empty alien spaceship with a DNA changing device. Lister gets turned into a chicken and Robocop. Kryten is turned into a human and Lister's lunch gets turned into a monster. After landing on a Space Prison Rimmer gets charged with murdering the crew of the Red Dwarf. Kryton gets Rimmer off by proving he's a lame-brained incompetent smeg head. Episode 4 has the ship affected by a white dwarf and Lister has to play pool with planets to destroy it. Ace Rimmer is the cool hero version of Rimmer. He's from a parallel dimension and he's test piloting a dimensional jump ship. He helps save the guys while they are on a fishing holiday in episode 5. In the last episode Kryton finished a matter transporter device he found in one of the labs. They use it to visit a planet that they thought had human life on it. Unfortunately the people are wax droids of famous humans in an abandoned theme park. They've broken their programming and are at war. It's pretty goofy and absurd. I like that sort of thing so I'm good. Most of the shows have a good number of jokes and some of them make me laugh. Once in a while out loud. The dvd set has the usual extras like interviews and pictures. The commentaries on the episodes with the whole cast are still a mixed bag but mostly entertaining. Another set worth having in your science fiction film and television library.