PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

3865 City Alarm

There really isn't much of anything too exciting in this game, piece wise at least. As a game it's some sort of chase game. I wouldn't play that. How's it score as a parts pack? It's got 247 pieces for 20 bucks. That's slightly over 8 cents a part before the tax man gets his bit added on. Locally the rate is just over 7%. I got my copy of the set at Target for half price making the parts just under 4.5 cents each with the tax added. The parts are multi-colored, there are 13 colors, not including the trans parts and most of the 79 different parts come in singles and doubles. At the top of the quantity list, there are 40 of the 2x2 jumper tile in light blay. Then it drops down to 13 of the 1x2 green tile with money printed on it and 12 of the 1x2 green plate. There are 2 of the large 6x12 blue wing plates. I find I don't use the irregularily shaped plates for much building so they aren't much use to me but maybe a good trade item. If only there were more people in the local club who want to trade items. Not many do. As I said I wouldn't bother with playing the game. It just doesn't look very interesitng to me. You can read about it from the description from Brickset.

   

Join the chase!

Introducing LEGO® Games, the world’s first collection of games that you build, play and change. With the unique buildable LEGO Dice and changeable rules, the LEGO Games collection is a great way of having fun together with family and friends.

Join the chase in LEGO City! Thieves are on the loose with lots of stolen money! Help the police officers to catch them and lock in jail before they get away! LEGO CITY Alarm is an exciting race game for 2–4 players. Game play is approximately 10–20 minutes.

• 1 buildable LEGO® Dice
• Rules booklet
• 6 LEGO microfigures
• Building instructions
• Chase the robbers through a mini LEGO® City!

I do like the little cityscape. Might get kids making small microcities. Get them thinking out of the box. Recently TwinLUG had a bit of a display at the LEGO store in the Mall of America. We had a variety of items and people would comment to each other on what they were seeing. Many could only see that the figures from a theme were what they were from and not that they were playing different role. Some also couldn't figure out why there were Lord Of The Rings characters mixed in with the Ninja Turtle characters. Is it lack of imagination? I wouldn't expect all kids to have a lack in imagination but I'd think most kids had some. I had noticed this at the Comic Con in May and was looking for it this time. Not sure if there's any more to think about than that. Not without working at it.

So, not a set that I needed to buy, glad I got it for half off. I'll use them for something.

3920 The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

The summer clearance at Target yielded up a couple of The Hobbit game for half price. I figured a couple would be a good addition to the building stock. I wouldn't actually be interested in playing the game. I did read through the game instructions and it seems like it would be boring after a couple of go-arounds. Here's the description.

A memory game with a twist!

A buildable and fun twist on a memory game for 2 to 4 players. The game is all about finding the missing Dwarves who have gotten lost in Hobbiton, using hints left by Gandalf the Grey™ and some Hobbits™ to help you search. If you are up to the challenge you can transform the board during the game, testing your memory skills to the max. Once the board is built it is easy to store and quick to take out to play again.

Contents:
• 1 buildable LEGO Dice
• 4 LEGO micro figures: Gandalf the Grey, Kili the dwarf, Fili the dwarf, Dwalin the dwarf
• 389 LEGO pieces
• Rules booklet
• Building instructions

I certainly was more interested in all the green parts. There are 394 parts in the set, 185 of which are green, and the set normally sells for 35 bucks. That's 8.8 cents a part or 4.4 with half off. A lot of them are small but there are 17 6x6 green plates. That's something that comes in handy when you want to make a large landscape though that 17 would only cover 60% of a baseplate. There's some large quantities of green parts in that 185. The 1x2 green cheese slope has 48 and the 1x2 green brick has the same quantity. There are 32 of the 1x1 round green brick and 16 of the green 2x2 inverted dishes. There's a good but small assortment of reddish brown plates. Not something I need that much, the local LEGO store's Pick-A-Brick has come through with lots of reddish brown plate over the years. The rest of the parts are ones or twos or threes but nothing too exciting and hardly worth mentioning.

         

I did like the printed inverted tiles. There's 34 of them in tan but sadly there are only 6 designs. Bilbo and Thorin are only represented once, the rest 6 or 8 of each. Not sure what to do with all the multiples? Bit of brasso? The map is on a regular tile. I always like map tiles, they come on pretty handy for decoration. Since the rest of the above images are printed on the inverted tiles I still would have to work out how to attach them to something. I got 100 each of the tan and dark blay inverted tiles from TwinLUG's LEGO LUGbulk program. I feel I should have gotten more but there you go. That said I haven't even figured out a use for them. I like the design of the studs, with the lines between them. A bunch of them would look great covering a wall surface. I'd pretty much have to stick them up with double sided tape. Someday I'll figure what to do with them now that I have them.

There are 4 microfigs. They look ok, I guess. Too bad there are only 4 of them and in 4 different colors. I liked the Ramses Pyramid game for it's microfigs. The set had a whole bunch of the white microfigs which made great elements for building buildings. I have been seeing some people use the microfigs in micro vignettes. You can make up your own fantasy story with these guys, they look generic enough.

So, all in all a nice parts pack for me.

There was some talk at the last TCLUG meeting about the LEGO games theme coming to an end. They weren't that many that were good parts packs but occasionally they had some odd parts in them. I found a few on clearance at various stores and wound up with a lot of great stuff for cheap.

Jonathan Creek Series 2

 

I got the second series of Jonathan Creek the other day and watched it over the weekend. I've been enjoying them, maybe even more than the first series. The 2nd series aired from January 24 to February 28 1998. December 24 that same year there was a 90 minute special called Black Canary. The show is still nice and popular with the average episode getting over 9 and a half million viewers.

Alan Davies is Jonathan Creek. He lives in that windmill and designs stage magic illusions for Adam Klaus. Adam is a randy guy that can't keep his pecker in his trousers and starting with this season Stuart Milligan plays him. Caroline Quentin plays Maddie Magellan, a crime writer who loves sticking her nose into other peoples business. She's never shy about breaking into someone's flat, stealing evidence or lying like a sidewalk. She's a short bundle of annoyances which makes me wonder what would be attactive about her to Jonathan. You know, other than a possible shag. Sad that he would be that desperate. The two of them have a few dust ups from hurt feelings and the like.

Danse Macabre has a writer killed by a man in a skeleton costume. Later her head is stolen. That shot of her bloody stump is about as gory as the show ever gets but that's not the main mystery. How did the skeleton guy disappear out of a locked garage. That's the question. Maddie gets involved but Jonathan can't help much as he is working trying to keep Adam out of trouble. Adam picked up a woman from the bar who is now blackmailing him for a role in his show. Peter Davison (Doctor Who) guest stars.

Time Waits For Norman is about a case of mistaken identity. How could a man be seen in a resturant in London when he was seen in New York City at the same time. The wife asks Maddie for help and Jonathan gets pulled into it. He's having a bit of trouble with the tax lady who came to call. They wind up in the sack and Jonathan finds out she's bald. Jonathan isn't as troubled by that as he is of her pushy romantic plans. She invites him to dinner with her parents. A simple observation from Jonathan puts him on the serving trolley which is then ejected out the front door. Jonathan isn't very good at the relationship thing, at least at this stage of his life.

The Scented Room has a costly painting disappear from it's frame. No one was in the room and the door was only closed for 30 seconds. The owner is a critic, and a bit of an asshole, who gave Adam's show a bit of a razz. His wife is a horrible type too. Jonathan won't tell them how it was done. Not even for the 50 thousand pound reward. The wife has connections and she puts a bit of a crimp in getting the permits for a stunt Adam wants to do in a park. No wonder the working man hates the powerful yoiks, huh. Jonathan bows to Adam's presures and shows the critic and wife how it was done and who did it. It's not what they want to hear and Maddie makes sure to rub it in on the way out. Bob Monkhouse plays the rich critic. The only thing I remember about him was he used to have a show in the 1960's that I watched as a kid. I couldn't tell you what it was about, I just remember his name. The most interesting thing about Bob, from his Wikipedia page, is that he was a home video tape enthusiast. He had 36,000 tapes in his collection. It started in 1966 when video recorders were thousands of dollars. The BBC didn't have enough of them.

The Problem at Gallows Gate Part 1 & Part 2 had a man commit suicide after he finds the woman he's in love with in bed with his pal. Later he's seem strangling the woman in her cottage. Adam's sister is the person who saw the killing. She's quite the character. The show has a tendency to exaggerate some of the personalities of the guest star roles. It's good for the comedy.

Mother Redcap has a judge killed by a thin blade in his heart. No one was there but his wife and she says she didn't do it. Jonathan figures it out from a fingernail. Maddie visits a house where they practice nudity.

Black Canary has a woman commit suicide in front of her husband. When the police come they find she had been dead for 4 hours. Rik Mayall plays Detective Inspector Gideon Pryke and he's great. Jonathan nearly scores with a blond lady but Maddie scares her off. She really is a gargoyle. Jonathan pulls it all together when he sees a hobo limp. I know, it's the littlest things that trigger the clue needed in the mystery.

Again they were a nice bunch of interesting and enjoyable stories with entertaining characters in well written scripts with good mysteries. The production values remain high and Adam occasionally gets some stage magic to do. If only he could keep his fly zipped.

Happy Families

 

Here's a British TV program that I hadn't seen until today. Happy Families is another Ben Elton creation. It was a 6 part series that aired October 17 to November 20 1985 and it stars Jennifer Saunders and Adrian Edmonson. Dawn French, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie co-star and some other British tv stars turn up. Ruby Wax, Lenny Henry, Chris Barrie, Jim Broadbent, Tom Wilkinson and Christopher Ryan all appear. Norman Levitt, Holly from Red Dwarf, appears as a ticket agent in the third episode. Nigel Planer and Rik Mayall play Frenchmen.

Jennifer plays the horrible Fuddle women and Adrian plays the twatish Fuddle son. His four sisters left home when he was a boy due to a falling out with the grandmother. When Doctor Stephen says she's got a few months to live she sends Adrian off to find the girls and bring them home. In the middle 4 episodes he finds his sisters and convinces them to come home. The family reunion occurs in the last episode. They are a pretty horrible family and the grandma, the worst of the lot, get her comeuppance.

I thought it was sort of funny but I didn't think it was one of the best things that Ben Elton wrote. He does, so there you go. I found several laughs but they might not be what you'd laugh at. It didn't do well when it was broadcast and it's never been releaased on tape or dvd. At least you can see it for free on YouTube.

Science Fiction Sunday 243

 

The Three Doctors is the 65th serial of the series. It first aired from December 30 1972 and ran through January 20 1973. In the making of featurette Script Supervisor Terrance Dicks and Producer Barry Letts talk about how the idea for The Three Doctors first came from the fans of the show. For years they pooh-poohed the idea of the previous Doctors making return appearances when fans suggested it but when it came time to do something extra special for the opening serial of the 10th season they reconsidered. After asking the previous Doctors if they'd take part, and getting an affirmative, they proceeded with the script.

 

At UNIT HQ The Doctor hears of a strange occurrence and goes off to investigate. A man has disappeared at the site of a balloon crash. Upon returning to the UNIY HQ more strange things start to happen. The Time Lords are having a bit of a problem on their home world. Something is attacking them with a black hole, sucking all their power. They break their code and send the 1st and 2nd Doctors to see the 3rd Doctor. William Hartnell, the 1st Doctor was ill at the time and he appears on film. Second Doc Patrick Troughton and third Doctor Jon Pertwee don't see eye to eye as Doctors, or as actors, but it worked out just fine. The different styles of the two men and Doctors make for a fun addition to the story. Too bad so many of the Patrick Troughton serials are gone, it wouldn have been nice to spend more time with his Doctor. He looks much better in color too.

 

The four part story moves along pretty well. There's lots of travelling about with some okay locations and plenty of time in a quarry. That was one of the things mentioned in the featurette titled Is Doctor Who Rubbish. No, according to some fans who defend the show against the complaints people make about it. You can imagine what the complaints are. Rubber costumes, wobbly sets, poor special effects, bad acting, etc. I've complained about them in these blog posts but I also know they have would have had a hard time to do better with the resources and space they had. Really, the nuts and blots aren't as important as the story. My biggest complaint about the series is the scripts that are uninteresting and the stories that are stretched out with repetitive padding. Even Terrance Dicks mentions the padding problem on one or another of the commentaries.

 

Turns out all the hub-bub is being caused by an ages old Time Lord called Omega. He had created the supernova that gave the Time Lords their powers. He had been trapped in an anti-matter universe and no one came to get him. He doesn't care that the other Time Lords didn't know, he wants his revenge. Hee doesn't care if the Universe gets trashed when he destroys the Time Lords so the three Doctors kill him. It was the sensible thing to do. That guy was a dick. Everything is returned to normal and the Doctors go their separate ways. The Time Lords send the Doctor a vital part for his Tardis and return knowledge on time travel to his noggin. It's all part of Terrance and Barry's plan to get the Doctor into space and time again.

I enjoyed the two guys reacting and working together and wished William Harnell would have been better to do the show in person. He died 3 years later. The story was better than a lot of them and there were lots of extra bits on the two disc set.

Friday Night Movies 434

 

Our first selection was Spring Breakers. It's a 2012 movie by Harmony Korine who's probably best known for writing Kids. He also wrote and directed Gummo. Both are near the top of my list of movies that I wouldn't ever want to watch again. Spring Breakers isn't going to be as high up that list as his other works but I'm pretty sure as I write this I won't be watching it again. The story is simple. Some stupid girls, needing money for their spring break trip, decide to rob a restaurant for needed cash. They get away with it and leave town. In St Petersburg they get into trouble with the law while partying. James Franco is a local rapper and drug dealer gangster. He bails them out and takes them out partying to his fancy house on the water. He's got lots of cash and guns strewn about the place. Of the four girls only one, Selena Gomez, doesn't care too much for the scene. She didn't participate in the robberies either. She leaves and the other girls stay. The local drug lord who really runs things busts a cap or two at James and one of the girls, played by wife of director Rachel Korine, get shot in the arm and she leaves. James and the two girls decide to get all blasty on the drug lord. James is killed right away but the bikini clad killers blast the huge number of bodyguards and drug dealers down. The movie ends with the gals in the drug lord's fancy red Lamborghini driving out of the movie. Sadly all the entertaining crime elements are tainted by crappy melodrama and stupid girls in trouble. There's plenty of topless girls and the like but you can see that sort of thing all over the internet without having to listen to the girls story. I found it a bit depressing but I'm not a fan of the people that would go to spring break for the most part. For a better and more entertaining movie in a similar genre I'd rather re-watch Spun.

I thought I had seen The Sword And The Sorcerer before but once it got going I was pretty sure I hadn't. My Watched Movie List says I haven't and the movie came out after I stated the list so I'm thinking it's correct. This 1982 film is Albert Pyun's first film. He wrote and directed this lowbudget sword and sorcery mess that stars Lee Horsley, Richard Lynch and Richard Moll. Warring factions are fighting for some land. Richard Moll is a demon that gets released by Richard Lynch. In his climb for power he stabs the demon and tosses him off a cliff. There's plenty of crappy fighting and stabbing and poor dialog. The story is weak and the production values poor. Some time passes as the children of the slain king get old enough for revenge. It's all pretty goofy and sort of fun. Certainly it's more upbeat than our previous film. While I'm certainly not going to rush out and try to get a copy of the movie, I might consider watching it again. I kind of doubt it will happen though. There's just too many other things to watch without watching some crap twice.  

The Crystal Cube

 

I like a bit of a laugh. Who wouldn't in this miserable ol' world, eh. Here's the pilot of The Crystal Cube. It's not nut-busting funny but you might get a chuckle or two. Keep an eye out for a young Robbie Coltrane in this 1983 British tv show with Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson. They had just been on a fairly popular show with Ben Elton, Alfresco, on ITV. The BBC wanted to do something with them and Stephen and Hugh wrote a pilot. The Crystal Cube is a fake science program that looks at genetics. Each episode would have covered different topics. It starts off with a clip from a fake old movie and moves to the studio with Emma as the host of the program. It was the first thing written by Hugh and Stephen for themselves. They had done some writing on Alfresco which was mostly written by Ben Elton. I guess the BBC didn't care for it and it never commissioned a series. I thought it didn't ever get really great but it had some fun stuff. Stephen and Hugh would get work at the BBC in the next few years, appearing on The Young Ones, Black Adder and their own more successful attempt with sketch comedy A Bit Of Fry And Laurie. That last show ran 4 series and some of the material is pretty darn funny. It's one of those shows that reminds me of Monty Python at times.

The Ghost Train

 

Here's kind of an interesting British film. The Ghost Train is a 1941 Gainsborough Picture that stars Arthur Askey. I'd seen a few of his films but I wasn't familiar with the rest of the cast. They do alright. I had already seen the movie before I noticed it was on YouTube today. I had downloaded it from the Internet Archive a few years ago and enjoyed it. A bunch of people get stranded at a train station when they miss their connection to the last train of the evening. There won't be another train until the morning. Arthur was the cause of their problem. He sticks his head out the window of the moving train and his hat falls off. He's such a pratt, pulling the Communication Cord, he stops the train. Now everyone's late and they get stuck in the station overnight. Because of that they see the Phantom Train of local legend. There's something else going on, the train is real and filled with bad men. It's kind of slow moving, the bulk of the movie takes place in the station, it's more conversational than sensational. In fact it started out as a play by Arnold Ripley. I hadn't heard of him but I had heard of Val Guest, who's one of the film's writers who's specifically credited with dialog. The characters and story are interesting enough to keep me watching. You can see it on YouTube below. maybe you'll enjoy it enough to get to the end.

 

Highway To Hell

 

After finding Drop Dead Fred I looked for Highway To Hell and there it was on YouTube. It's directed by Ate de Jong and written by Brian Helgeland. Brian wrote LA Confidential, Mystic River and Man On Fire among many other good films. He directed a few films too. Chad Lowe and Kristy Swanson are the main characters. They're eloping to Las Vegas. While driving through the desert they take a wrong turn. Satan's henchman, Hellcop, kidnaps Kristy and Chad follows them to Hell in a hotrod he borrows from an old man at a gas station. Hell looks a lot like Arizona. Chad meets some odd characters along the way. Eventually he rescues his girl and beats Hellcop in a race out of Hell. It's a fun movie and one I have seen 4 or 5 times. Like Drop Dead Fred I wish I had bought the dvd after seeing the movie but they were expensive when they came out. I have home made dvds from cable sources and they are watchable. Now both movies are currently unavailable on dvd in the US. At least you can see them for free on YouTube. Keep a look out for co-stars Richard Farnsworth, Patrick Bergin, Lita Ford, Gilbert Gottfried, Anne Meara, Jerry Stiller, Amy Stiller and Ben Stiller. Kevin Peter Hall, the original Pedator and Harry in Harry And The Hendersons, plays Charon. It's an odd movie and I like it's sense of humor. Maybe you will too.

Drop Dead Fred

 

I was poking around YouTube and found they had a copy of Drop Dead Fred there. It's a 1991 film that's directed by Ate de Jong. He's a Dutch guy and he only directed two movies in America. Drop Dead Fred was the first and Highway To Hell is the second. I like the latter movie more but DDF is still pretty entertaining. Phoebe Cates and Rik Mayall star with Marsha Mason. Tim Matheson, Carrie Fisher and Bridget Fonda. Phoebe is a young woman who's lost her guy, her purse, her car and her job. Marsha is her mom and she a right old domineering cow. She picks Phoebe up and takes her to her home, so she can watch over her. Rik was Phoebe's frantic imaginary friend when she was small and he returns to cheer her up. He's causes some strife in her life but eventually he helps her out of her funk and releases her from her mother's oppression. It didn't do well with the critics. It still scores a 13% on the Rotten Tomatoes site. The regular folks at the IMDb give it a 5.3 which is lower than it deserves. I think the subject matter really polarizes people. The Wikipedia says there's a bit of black comedy, emotional abuse, mental illness, bizarre visual and make up effects, gross out humor, and some profanity. You can see that people might not cotton to those themes. Leonard Maltin called it a putrid mess but this snip from the Wikipedia paints a different picture. Writing for Mystical Movie Guide], Carl J. Schroeder wrote, "The imaginary friend is cavortingly rude for a reason; he served to push the girlchild to do mischief for attention and as a cry for help. Now grown up, the woman has forgotten and is about to lose her soul, so events call for some kind of literal return of her demon to force the exposure of her pain. This psychic crisis is poignantly realistic... The creature who is visible only to the woman is like a poltergeist energy of her repressed self, a problematic ego container into which her powers of assertion and creativity were poured and stored. The movie's resolution is startlingly beautiful..." That should scare away the punters, huh. Check it out if you like. You never know, you might enjoy it. At least it's free.