PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 367

 

Looking around for something else on NetFlix lead me to Renegade. I hadn't heard heard of it but I rarely read anything about movies until I see them so I rarely know what's coming out. It's always nice to be surprised. It's a 2004 French movie titled Blueberry and it's based on the comic book character of the same name by the recently late Moebius. If you are unfamiliar with him, I'm not surprised, he's mostly popular in Europe. None the less he's an amazing artist and I've read a lot of his stories. Marvel/Epic put out the bulk of the Blueberry series back in 1989-1991. Pretty much nono of them have been in print in the US since. It's a shame but really the American comic fan rarely seems to be interested in foreign comics. Even hugely popular series like Tintin and Asterix are read by very few US comic fans. That's a panel from a Blueberry story above. Looks all dark and moody an shit, huh. That's another scene from a Blueberry story below. The other shot is from the film. It's a pretty trippy scene.

The movie is mostly a real western, typical of it's genre, there's just a large streak of Native American shamanism twisting through the story that you don't find in many movies. When the movie starts we meet Mike Blueberry, the wild cajun son of a New Orleans man, who's been sent to the west to see if his Uncle can straighten his ass out. Mike steals some money from his sleeping uncle and heads into town to visit the local whore house. Michael Madsen plays a tough guy who comes to visit the whore and finds Mike there. Rather than leave like a sensible person Mike starts a fight. The whore is killed and the place burns. Mike's been shot but he grabs his horse and runs off. The local native americans find him lying in the desert and take him to their hidden cave in the sacred mountains. He recovers and because we are in a flashback for most of the movie we move forward several years and Mike is grown up and a deputy in the town. He tries to keep people out of the sacred area but it's hard. The rumor is there's treasure out there, mountains of gold, and Eddie Izzard and Geoffrey Lewis are interested in that. Juliette Lewis plays Geoffrey's daughter and the romantic interest to Mike. She's Geoffrey's real life daughter. Vincent Cassel plays Mike, some of you might have seen him in Crimson Rivers, The Brotherhood Of The Wolf or Oceans 12 & 13. The first two are French movies and well worth checking out. Get the long version of TBOTW if you can. Ernest Borgnine plays the Sheriff and Colm Meaney plays his other deputy. Everything comes to a head when treasure fever tips the scales and Michael Maddsen shows up in town. Lots of people die. Leaving Mike for dead Michael and Eddie head into the desert. Mike follows them to the sacred mountain where he and Michael have a psychedelic battle in their minds. It's pretty wild and a bit long. I wasn't bored for the most part, there was usually something to see, pretty scenery especially, but the movie gets off to a slow start and finishes pretty languidly. It's a Swiss guy who lives in France directing so you know right from the start that it's not going to be what we normally get in the US. He's also a big fan of the Native American shamanistic ceremonies, both North and South Am, where they take peyote and stuff like that. Like LSD the experience looses up the mind and often lets you see what's going on in your head. Replicating that visual experience on film is hard and only with the arrival of cgi can you even make an attempt at it. Mike takes the trip to learn the truth about the death of the whore. There are a lot of snakes and giant centipedes in his visions. It's cool looking and pretty unusual but it goes on a bit too long. I'd still recommend the movie as a pretty good modern western but not everyone's going to care for it.

The 1974 Japanese film School Of The Holy Beast is a nunsploitation film about a young woman named Maya. She joins the Sacred Heart Convent to find out what happened to her mother 18 years before. The mom had been a nun at the same place, gotten pregnant and hung herself. The baby fell out while she was hanging. The nuns covered everything up and now it's payback time. Maya doesn't know what she's getting into when she dons that nuns robe after a naked ceremony but she takes it all with that grim look on her face. The convent is like a torture filled prison with lots of nudity and sex. The girls are doing themselves, each other and Father K. He's a randy old bugger who knocked up Maya's mom and humps the other nuns with some regularity. Maya brings all the corruption to the surface and lots of people die. There's lots of naked torture and rape. Not a good movie for most people. Not something I'd need to see again.

3187 Butterfly Beauty Shop

I picked one of these up and waited to go to the TwinLUG meeting to open and build it. People are still diggin' the bright colors and little accessories. It's a colorful little shop. Evenamongst the pinks and purples the azure pieces really stand out. It wouldn't surprise me if those colors lead to more art deco buildings. It's one of the sets that some people complained about when it was released. You know, girls, beauty shop, sterotypical. That whole hub-bub seems to have died down since then, not that there was much hub or bub. The set is $25 and it's got 221 pieces on the box. They count the small pack of tiny accessories as one unit so that adds a few more pieces to the total piece count. A few of them are big, like those 2 8x16 bright pink baseplates, the 2 1x6x5 trans panels used for side windows and the two nice curved trans panels that make up the entrance archway. Those will come in handy sometime. I like big panels, they speed building. There isn't actually a door, not that it really matters in a shop with no back wall. There are two door size white frames and trans inserts for the front windows. You put stickers with flowers and butterflies on them.

 

That's Sarah in the white dress and Emma holding the lipstick. It's huge, huh. We were talking about it at the meeting. In scale it's bigger than two 12 ounce pop cans stacked one on top of the other. It's as big as her arm, she could do both lips at the same time with one big sweeping motion. I bet The Joker would like a lipstick like that. There's the bunch of bright light orange hair accessories with it's comb, brush, mirror and hairdryer. The mirror has a shiny sticker which also outfits the make up stand that Emma is testing out. There's 8 of those lipsticks, someone has already used them as fingers in a robot. It's an interesting two step process to make them. Mold the lipstick part and then mold the gray bottom next. The lipstick color goes through the core of the base and you can see the same color on the bottom of the base. It's a pretty astounding bit of work. I'd like to see a video of that. The spare hairpiece in black above only appears in this set. It appears in three other Friends sets in dark red. Again I like the new hairpieces from the Friends sets. Mostly I have been happy enough to buy these sets. They add a nice assortment of colored pieces and some odd accessories. A good selection of other random parts can add value to your building stock. I've got my eye on the cafe next. There's a new frying pan in there.

Comedy Kings 50 Movie Pack Disc 12

     

Meet The Mayor is a 1932 movie about a race for mayor in a small town. For some reason local elevator operator, played by Frankie Fay, has some sway with the other locals. I didn't find this one that interesting and didn't care for Frankie. You might like it.

When The Girls Take Over is a 1962 movie that pokes fun at dictators. Honda-Rico is the island that is having some political problems. A dictator is hiding in the jungle and planning an attack on the men in charge. It's one of those goofy comedies that tries to be hip and zany but fail. It's the only movie directed by actor Russell Hayden.

Too Many Women about a guy who's so dumb that he gets engaged to three women. I didn't find it too funny. You can take it for a test drive here.

Flying Wild is a 1941 Bowery Boys movie. Some of the guys are working at an airplane factory and there is some spying going on. It's up to the guys to catch the spy and save the USA. Pretty much average for the Bowery Boys. I had seen it about a year ago and I'm steadily growing tired of Leo Gorcey's character. He's so ignorant and after a while that just isn't funny anymore.

Star Trek S1D3

        

 

What Are Little Girls Made Of was written by Robert Block. Yup, the Psycho guy. Here he's got Kirk and Nurse Chapel transporting  down to Exo III. The man they are going to see is Doctor Korby, who was Nurse Chapel's fiance. He's been missing for 5 years so you know she's all excited. Michael Strong plays Dr Korby (upper right top row pic) and he's kind of creepy, especially in that green and blue outfit. After he doesn't meet Kirk at the beam down point the captain has a couple of security guards join him. A man arrives, it's not Korby, but he is to take them to the doctor. Kirk stations one guard at the beam down point and the party sets off through the underground tunnels of the icy planet. After they move along the guards are killed by a large clocked figure. Korby says he's been working on a great find of ancient technology but secretly he's got some crazy dream to replace human's with androids. Korby has a android making machine and an ancient android to explain it.  He makes a replica of Kirk that gets on board the Enterprise. The android Kirk calls Spock a halfbread. What a dick, huh? Ted Cassidy plays the ancient android. It was a pretty good episode that has a grim ending with only Chapel and Kirk leaving the tunnels alive.

      

 

Miri is the 8th episode and it was broadcast October 27, 1966. I only remember the vaguest images and bits of story from the first time I saw these episodes. I remembered images of the kids from this one. Especially Michael J Pollard, in the green jacket. You might remember him from Bonnie and Clyde or any number of other movies and tv shows. He was 27 at the time and he's supposed to be 12 or 13. TV sure stretched your imagination in the 1960's. Oddly enough in the show Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Yoman Rand and some other red shirts, beam down to a planet with a rundown town that looks exactly like Earth of the 1960's. Or at least the rundown movie studio backlot version of Earth in the 1960's. Appearently the town background has been enhanced by some extra CGI in this remastered episode . No matter, it looks good and rundown. It appears that the place is abandoned until an old man attacks them. Spock stuns him and he dies right there in that picture above. I did my own screen caps right off the dvd using VLC Player, one of the best general all around media players. It's free out there on the internet. Back on the planet the crew finds Miri, played by Kim Darby, who is one of a group of feral children. It does well to remind me that a pack of children left unsupervised long enough turn into a savage gang of monsters. Really, often it only takes a few minutes before someone has an eye out. The crew, except for Vulcan Mr Spock, gets some blue and red spots on their skin. Turns out the people on the planet had a disease that occured when they tried to tried to prolong life. It worked and you only aged a month a year, problem was when you hit puberty you got the disease. It aged you real quick and you didn't live long. They can't go back to the ship and the hospital they find is hardly the place to do any work. They get some help from the ship until the kids steal their communicators. It's touch and go as the clock is ticking down and they need to check the cure on the computer and can't. Yoman Rand gets captured, and while Kirk is trying to talk the kids into helping them, McCoy tries out the untested serum on homself. He'll be ok, he's nearly a regular at this point. The kids are saved and the Enterprise sets off of it's next port of call. A pretty good episode that had a pretty goofy setting. I suspect it was what they could do cheaply that drove the story's location. Setting it in a familiar setting helped make the tragic story that much more jarring.

     

Dagger Of The Mind is the 9th episode broadcast and the 11th episode made. It's directed by Vincent McEveerty who directed Miri and 4 other episodes of Star Trek. He directed a lot of other tv episodes, plus several tv and theatrical movies, in a career that started in 1962 and ended in 2000. During a stop at a penal colony on Tantalus V a prisoner escapes and gets aboard the Enterprise. He tries to hold up the bridge but Spock nerve pinches him. After a bit of examination Spock uses his mind meld for the first time on the show. He discovers that the warden of the prison is crazy and experimenting on the prisoners. Kick soon puts a stop to that. It's a tough old plot device that still works in deep space. Veteran actor James Gregory plays the warden. He was Matt Helm's boss in all the Dean Martin spy spoofs. That's a set worth picking up. Another fairly good and gritty episode with a great preformance by Morgan Woodward as the tormented prisoner.

Comedy Kings 50 Movie Pack Disc 11

   

Three Husbands is a 1951 comedy. A guy passes away and send letters to three of his friends. The letter said he had an affair with their wives. All three marriages get some action but not the naughty kind. The dead guy gets to watch from heaven. It's sort of funny but not one I'd watch too often.

The Villian Still Pursued Her is a really goofy comedy from 1940. Margaret Hamilton, whom some will remember as the Wicked Witch in The Wizard Of Oz, is a widow living in a little cottage with her daughter. The mortgage holder dies and their lawyer, Alan Mowbry, is secretly after the property. He tries to get them out but he's foiled over and over again in this parody of a melodrama movie. There's plenty of jokes and some are good. It's pretty silly and entertaining. There's lots of mugging to the camera and damsels in distress. Worth a look just for the novel treatment of the theme. Buster Keaton shows up in there somewhere. Keep an eye out for him.

A Bride For Henry is a 1937 romantic comedy. A spoilt rich girl forces her lawyer to marry her when her bride groom doesn't show up to the church. She says it's all to keep face and have a wedding but he's been in love with her for years. Things eventually work out while they are on their honeymoon. It's kind of funny but that rich girl is annoying.

We're In The Legion Now is a 1936 comedy about two gangsters who join up in the French Foreign Legion to avoid the trouble they're in. They don't get along but it all works itself out in the end. Not great but watchable. It's only 56 minutes so it goes by pretty quickly. Look out for Vasquez Rocks in the Moroccan desert scenes.

Science Fiction Sunday 175

I'm back to digging in the boxes of dvd's in the spare room, looking for some science fiction movie to watch. Today it's The City Of Lost Children for my first selection. It's a 1995 French movie written and directed by Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Their previous movie was the 1991 film Delicatessen. Jean-Pierre would direct Alien Resurrection a couple of years later. He followed that with Amelie, A Very Long Engagement and Micmacs. I've seen Alien Resurrection and Micmacs, but not the other two, both of which seem to be less of interest to me. Jeunet directed some short films and music videos before going into the feature film business. He's got a visual style that's definitely more European than American and definately more unique than the stuff you normally see. The story is about a crazy scientist who kidnaps children and steals their dreams. He's got some cyborg guys who do the dirty work. Ron Perlman is a simple Russian strongman in a sideshow at a fun fair. His brother is taken and he spends the movie looking for him with the help of a young girl. She's part of a group of orphans who steal for the evil co-jointed twins who head the criminal gang and give them a place to live. The sets are brilliant, all dingy, wet and richly detailed. Here's the trailer to get an idea. It's filled with delightful images and the occasion Rube Goldberg like action scenes. The actors all do a great job in telling the story, it much have been hard work, it's a demanding, often surreal, story. It was fun to watch it again, but it ends well for Ron and the kids and the bad guys get some payback, so you know that I always like that. 

I put Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within on to see if I might want to keep it or let it go. I hadn't seen it since I bought it in 2001. It's a CGI movie based on the video game. It's an alien invasion story, with a heavy fantasy element, that tosses in ghosts and earth spirits. The aliens are ghost connected to the piece of their planet that had been tossed through space when it blew up. Now it's on earth and the ghostly orange monsters have driven the humans into protective walled cities. There are two streams of thought on solving the problem. Blow them up with a space cannon or defeat them with the 8 spirits that live in the earth. There's a lot of running around and people die. The dialog isn't very interesting but the earth does get saved. I don't think I would need to see this again. Going out the door sometime I guess.  

Friday night Movies 366

First up the recent Green Lantern movie with Ryan Reynolds. He's a hot shot test pilot with a bit of a wild streak. He gets fired for screwing up a test. Later that night he's captured by a glowing green ball of energy and taken to the dying pilot of a space craft. Hal's given the ring of Green Lantern Abin Sur and told the ring selected him and he's now got some responsibilities. Bummer, huh. Hal barely escapes before the government gets there and in a second story track we follow the dead alien to a secret lab where he's dissected by Peter Sarsgaard. Peter is the son of powerful Senator Tim Robbins. He's got issues with that but that's why he was selected for the job. During the choppy choppy he gets infected by something yellow and flashy in the body of Abin Sur. That yellow and flashy substance is a little bit of evil alien Paralax, an immortal corrupted by the power of fear, who's escaped his prison. When Paralax attacked Abin Sur he left a bit of himself in the wound. Paralax is now heading to Earth to get some payback on the lantern that attacked him. Ryan goes to the planet of the Green Lanterns and gets a bit of training. He's the first human and some of those lanterns aren't sure of him.Some of them are kind of assholes. Ryan is kind of an asshole himself so you'd think he'd fit in. He's still filled with fear and doubt and he leaves planning to quit. He'll be back slugging when Paralax comes to call on Earth. The story is fairly complex but you can follow along. There's a lot of daddy and romance issues. The effects are fairly good but I didn't care for some of their design. I didn't care for the costume that much. It's a noisy movie with a loud ass score. Someone seems to be crying out every few minutes. It didn't do well at the Box Office and I can see why. It's not totally entertaining and I doubt I would buy this now that I've seen it.

I might pick up The Three Musketeers by Paul W S Anderson. It's not your typical Dumas adaptation, there's plenty of goofy stuff going on in this one. The critics didn't like it much, and it didn't do well at the Box Office either. Quentin Tarantino said it was one of his favorite movies of 2011. I'm somewhere in between. Athos, Porthos and Aramis are on a mission for the King of France when the movie opens. They fail to get the plans for Leonardo Da Vinci's airship. They're bested by the Duke of Buckingham, played by Orlando Bloom, who had some help from Milady de Winter, Athos's double crossign girlfirend. Mila Jovovich plays her and Matthew MacFadyen plays Athos. Ray Stevenson plays Porthos and Luke Evans plays Aramis. When they get back to France Cardinal Richelieu, played by Christoph Waltz, disbands the Musketeers. A year passes and D'Artagnon, the son of a retired mustketeer, leaves for Paris to join up. Guess news doesn't travel well in those days. He gets in trouble with Captain Rocheford, the evil head of Richelieu guards, and nearly dies. He's saved by Milady who while an agent for Buckingham is a spy for Richelieu. D'Artagnon and the three musketeers meet up and get into some trouble. Luckily the King, a foppish teen, is flighty enough that he punishes them with a bag of gold and some new clothes. Buckingham arrives in his airship and we learn of a plot to frame the queen. She's the real power behind the king and Richelieu finds her annoying to say the least. He wants to take over and she needs to go. There's lots of fighting and flying ships and stuff blowing up. It's goofy but for the most part it worked for me. It might be a bit too long but at 111 minutes it isn't bloated like many of the summer blockbuster types. The D'Artagnon romance with the Queen's hand maiden could have been trimmed shorter and he could have been made less of a head strong young man. I've seen that enough of that character type. So generally it was fun, and while not great, I'm not sad to see it. I'd pick one up cheap sometime.

Todd And The Book Of Pure Evil Season 1

 

They have been running episodes of Todd And The Book Of Pure Evil on Comcast's On Demand. Here in the US episodes are running on FearNet which is an online place and a cable channel. The latter is partially owned by Comcast. The show is produced in Canada, in fact it's being filmed in my old home town of Winnipeg, Manitoba. Todd is a stoner high school student in the fictional town of Crowley. The only high school is Crowley High School and most of the show is shot there. He's seems to have one good friend, chubby one-armed Curtis, and the two of them are pretty much interested in getting baked and listening to metal. At least until Todd has his first encounter with the Book of Pure Evil. It turns him into a monster guitar player, a metal god with powers to shred your soul and make blood drip out of your eyes. There's a lot of metal in the show and a lot of blood. I found the metal music more entertaining than most I've heard. It's just short bursts so don't worry too much. Todd battles the school's other good guitar player in the cafeteria during lunch and he beats that guy so badly that blood pours out of the kid's ass. Besides blood, there are a lot of liquids on the show, mostly coming out of one body part or another. The effects are pretty good for the most part and they're fairly ambitious. The effects even get better as the season goes along. That's a giant fat monster below. It's made when a really fat girl finds the book. While she showers, sorry no nudity, her fat falls off and disappears down the drain. Ewwwww! She looks nice now. Of course there's a price to pay and her fat returns and plumps up anyone who touches it. Soon the school is filled with fatty fatty boom batties. The ex-fat gril sacrifices herself by diving into a big deep fat frier. All that is left is her boots sticking up out of the sizzling oil. Damn, that's harsh.

  

Todd is played by Alex House. That's him with the book. The redhead in the blue shirt is Curtis, played by Bill Turnbull. The redheaded girl is Melanie Leishman and she plays Hannah. Maggie Castle plays Jenny and Chris Leavins plays the school guidance councilor. Jenny is the girl that Todd has a crush on. She's way out of his league and she's wrapped up in the disappearance of her father. He went missing a year ago. She knows her father had something to do with the book, she has a picture of him holding it. When she sees that the book has become Todd's guitar she gets tries to get it from him but fails. She teams up with Curtis to stop Todd playing and they save the school. Curtis lights the book on fire to destroy it but the sneaky tome of evil just flies away. Don't worry, it will be back. It's in the title after all and sure enough in the 2nd episode Hannah, the geeky science girl, uses it to create a homunculus for a science project. Of course the book turns that little critter in a killing machine driven by Hannah's subconscious. That's a much better science project than the whorish cheerleader's baking soda volcano. The school guidance councilor is a Satanist who's under the thumb of his evil overlords. They want him to get the Book of Pure Evil and bring it to them. He's got a different idea and plans to keep the book so he can get some vengeance on the leader of the cult.  

 

Each week the book falls into the hand of another sad student. They find just the right page in the book that gives 'em what they want. Of course they get the worst possible version of that when it plays out. When a girl summons her favorite band from the dead they come back as zombies and eat her parents. She saves herself, temporarily, by luring male students home and feeding them to the zombies. A bullied gay student wishes everyone was gay but the book makes him straight and he's killed for that. That book is a bitch, huh. I'd fuckin' run away if it came near me. Sadly the kids in Crowley High haven't seen the show they're in and they start chanting those evil spells. The school bully has a tiny penis and Curtis puts a picture of it on the Internet to shame him. The bully gets the book and wishes for a big penis. He gets a really big cock, yards long, with a mouth filled with lots of sharp teeth. Talks and kills. Todd has to cut it off with a blade from a paper cutter. Ouch, huh. It would be best to stay away from that book, yet people fall for it's charms every week for 13 weeks. Season 1 is running on On Demand right now and season two is just starting. It's already played on the Canadian Space network and you can see it on FearNet. The show has a lot of swearing, rude gags and gore. There are also those afore mentioned bodily fluids and other bits of goo. It certainly wouldn't be something that my mom would like. Horror fans are finding it funny. It scores a 8.3 on the IMDb and it's pretty much deserved. The writing is good and there's plenty of references to pop culture. I liked the characters for the most part and the actors playing them do a good job. I nearly missed mentioning Jason Mewes. He plays the janitor who has to clean up the blood, he has a blood mop and a puke mop, and when he's not knocking back his custodial duties, he's knocking boots with some of the teachers. Todd often comes to him for advice and often it's good advice. Mewes is OK and he's just one of many good extras and secondary characters. I thought the show was well worth seeing but not everyone will take to it.

Space Vehicles

I've been working on some space vehicles for the SpringCon in May. I'm not a big space ship builder but I bang away and once in a while I keep something. I was going for some variety of styles and shapes. That gray and purple thing was inspired by one of the Alien Conquest sets and the big purple column is from the Build A Zurg set. There isn't much variety in purple parts so you are limited in what you can do. The botom gray part is the same parts just upside down. The cow headed guy is the Minotaur from the series 6 Collectible Minifigs. I'll be using some of them in the space port backgrounds.

I saw Crimso Gieger use that old light grey train front piece one on his mocs. It only comes in that color in a Time Twisters set. It's in white in another set and 4 sets have it in black. They haven't made that part since 2001 and that Time Twisters set was from 1996. I picked up a couple so I could make that Time Twister set at some point.

A people mover using the car bottoms from the Fabuland theme. I like dressing up the minifigs with fun costumes and accessories.

 

Maybe you live in a rough area on the planet and landing a flying vehicle isn't practical. You might need a little spider runabout. There a small utility vehicle based on another Crimso design. The little dune buggy is built into a Duplo car.

Another utility vehicle, a hover delivery bike and a small shed. That's a rock barrier behind the vehicles. It's going to have plants and other bits added to it before it shows up on display. I'm going to leave Patrick from Spongebob Squarepants on that hover bike because he fits the sf theme of a space port. The large pile of goods to deliver is inspired by pictures of bicycle delivery guys in Asian countries who carry huge loads on their vehicles.

 

That's a small flatbed used ship mechanic for hauling a ship engine. Here's another shot of the utility vehicle with some tanks on a trailer. I figured he's some sort of matenance man. He's got some tools. I'll be making a bunch more little bits and pieces to add more detail to the place. It's the largest thing I've built. It's 50 inches by 90 inches. That's 160 studs by 288 studs for a total of 46,080 studs. I'm making it all in chunks so it can be transported.

Other folks are working some some larger space ships and some have made some small vehicles too. We should have a nic variety to look at, as well as the big circus tent by Brian, Max's Bacon ship, a new mural by Roy and some new Micropolis buildings by Nathan and Jennifer.

What I Read In February 2012

       

Eric Rex - The Monsters Of Otherness by Kaza Kingsley was hard to get interested in at first. It had been nearly 4 years since I read the first novel and I couldn't remember anything about the characters or the story. Eventually it turned out to be fairly entertaining but not an interesting as the first book in the series. I picked it up used and I had a coupon so it was cheap. There's a third one that I should keep an eye out for.

Creature From the Black Lagoon by Vargo Straton (John Russell Fearn) is a reprint of the movie novelization of the classic monster movie. The original novel was only published in Britian in 1954 and copies are going for crazy huge prices. The new edition is published by DreamHaven Books. The owner and publisher is Greg Ketter. He's one of the guys who comes to Friday Night Movies so you know he's got a movie jones goin' on. The book is nicely produced by Robert Garcia and there's a nice big section of stills from the movie and behind the scenes. Good cover by Bob Eggleton and an intro by David Schow. The novel is ok for the most part but some of the characterization makes the men in the novel more annoying than they were in the movie. There just isn't as much time to be with them in the movie. Occasionally the writing was a bit clunky, making me stop and look around, and wonder what I had just read. I did get through it but might not bother to read it again. I'll keep the book for the nice pictures of from the movie.

Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones on the other hand is a book I'll re-read. It's from 2010 and it's the last novel that she wrote. A professor's grandfather dies and leaves him the house and it's "field of care".  That's a bit of magical responsibilities that the professor knows nothing about, so he had a lot to learn. There is plenty of help from his housekeeper, his gardener and a wealth of interesting locals who come into the professor's new life. There's a bit of romance, a bit of conflict and a lot of fun. There's giants and fairy's and shapeshifters and other magical folk. You really can't go wrong with reading Diana Wynne Jones. I was sad when she passed away last year. Lucky for me she had already written a lot of really fun books to read.

   

The Saint And The People Importers by Leslie Charteris is an adaptation of the story that became the script to an episode of The Saint. Fleming Lee wrote the story and wrote the novel with editorial input from Charteris. It's so late in the series and so different that I didn't care that much for it. Normally I enjoy the series but this one will not get read again. I think the tv episode came out better.

Bran Hambrick - The Farfield Curse by Kaleb Nation is a story about an orphan who is being rasied by a horrible family. Turns out his parents were killed by some evil folk and his mother hid him in a closed bank vault in a town that bans magic. Guess who has some magic? There's a group of evil people looking for the kid and weird things happen before he finds out about the secret magic underground and such. Kaleb was 14 when he started the book and 18 when he sold it. Parts of it were ok but some of it was not to my liking. I doubt I would get the rest of the series when they come out.

Halfway House by Ellery Queen just wasn't that interesting. I picked it up at DreamHaven's old book sale for a buck. Money wasted for the most part, but hey, you never know until you take the plunge. That's a hat trick of non keepers.

   

Walt Disney's Toby Tyler by Carl Memling is a little 64 page movie novel aimed at the kid market. It's barely a novel but it reads fairly well and there are some illustrations. It was only a couple of bucks. 

Peter And The Sword Of Mercy by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson is the fourth book in their prequels to Peter Pan. It's 23 years after the first trilogy and Peter still hasn't grown up. All the kids from the first book have grown up and the evil Lord Ombra has returned. Wendy is the daughter of Molly and George. They go missing and Wendy goes looking for Peter to help out. Neverland is being invaded and lots of other things are going one. I enjoyed this about as much as the first three. There's a 5th book but I haven't picked that up yet. I usually wait until they get remaindered and pick them up for 5 or 6 bucks. Worth a read.

The Case Of The Roving Rolls - A Brain Benton Mystery by George Wyatt is another Whitman series. Nothing special, it was only a buck, and I took a chance. Not a keeper. I thought the cover was ok but again nothing great.