PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Jonathan Creek Series 4

 

I finally got the 4th series of Jonathan Creek from the library and it was a nice 2 disc package with 6 hour long episodes. Julia Sawalha returns as Carla Borrego. The 2001 Special ended with the possibility of romance between Jonathan and Carla and it did develope off screen. Sadly it ended before the series started and Carla has moved on and married a tv producer, Brendan Baxter, played by Adrian Edmondson. Brendan produces a crime show that reconstructs unsolved cases. I doubt I would be much interested in that kind of show. I'd rahter see a show like Jonathan Creek. I've already enjoyed the heck out of the first 3 series and had wanted to see the 4th. It's got 6 episodes and the first 3 aired March 2003 and the other 3 hit the airwaves February 2004. It's much nicer to see them all on a couple of dvds. Not such a long wait.

The Coonskin Cap has Jonathan and Carla reunite to work on Brendan's tv show. There's some nice yakking between the pair and it only gets better when Adrian is in the scene. There's a good locked room mystery and some clever tricks by the murderer. 

Angel Hair has plenty of video trickery. The baddies aren't as clever as our Jonathan. Carla is jealous that Jonathan has something going on with the make up lady.

The Tailor's Dummy has Jonathan figuring out why the old guy jumped out of a window. It was murder. Like you wouldn't have guessed that.

The Seer of the Sands was a pretty good episode but I wasn't sure I bought the whole buggy premise.

The Chequered Box has a really clever frame. Jonathan figures it out.

Gorgons Wood has Jonathan figure out how that priceless monk statue diappeared. There's messed up family baggage in this one.

After the series ended there wasn't another. In 2009, 2010 and 2013 there were movie length specials. They're all as enjoyable as the series. I've gotten quite fond of Alan Davies as Jonathan. The mysteries are pretty tightly plotted and the show moves along quite briskly. There's a nice bit of comedy and the locations are all pretty nice. It's fairly benign and rather low key. I think I had mentioned they are rather in the Cozy vein. 

2009 New Year's Day Special - The Grinning Man has Jonathan team up with Sheridan Smith who plays paranormal investigator Joey Ross. People has been disappearing from the attic bedroom in a big old mansion for decades. It's a pretty diabolical trick and Jonathan manages to figure it out just in time.

2010 Easter Day Special - The Judas Tree has Joey call Jonathan to get his help with some odd goings on at another old mansion. Dangerous places, those old mansions. This one has a great bit of trickery.

2013 Easter Monday Special - The Clue of the Savant's Thumb has three great guests: Rik Mayall, Joanna Lumley and Nigel Planer. Jonathan is out of magic, he's a business man of some sort, with a wife. Joey calls him up with a mystery and he jumps right in.

The Wikipedia says that they are filming 3 episodes of the 5th season for airing in 2014. Something to look forward to.

Nerfman

I used to have a Nerfman, back in the 1980's. I found this picture and it made me laugh. I like the intense eyes. He really did fly fairly well. Eventually the stickers fell off but he still flew. I wouldn't want one now but I like having the picture.

Science Fiction Sunday 259

Mike was nice enough to pass along a couple of the newly discovered Doctor Who serials that turned up in Nigeria. The BBC announced them found on Oct 11 and the serials showed up on iTunes that midnight. The Enemy Of The World is the 40th serial and it's a 6 part story. It was the 4th serial of the 5th season and it aired from December 23 1967 to January 27 1968. All but episode 3 had been missing. That episode is on a compilation disc that had a lot of extant episodes from the mostly missing serials. There's a single disc dvd of TEOTW due November 25 but it just has the shows, no extras. I hope to see an extra filled disc in the future but right now I can enjoy Patrick Troughton as the 2nd Doctor, Frazier Hines as Jamie McCrimmon and Deborah Watling as Victoria Waterfield. I like the 2nd Doc more than the rest of the Doctors that I've seen so far and Jamie and Victoria were a pretty good pair of companions. Patrick gets to play two parts in this story, so that's extra fun. When the Tardis gang lands on a beach the Doc strips down to his long johns and jumps into the ocean. Watching a distance away are some soldiers. They mistake the Doctor for Salamander, a powerful man in the world government, and start shooting. Even though Salamander has done much good for the world he isn't liked for his ambitions and there are people who want to kill him. The gang runs off into the dunes and the adventure begins. Set a bit into the Earth's future, it's 2017. The world has changed and Salamander looks like the Doctor. Not much else needed to enjoy the story 

 

That's Patrick as Salamander up on the left. He has an accent, dramatic eyes and combs his hair differently. That's Frazer and and Deborah in the other two pictures. I hope they have some commentaries on the newly found material. I liked their commentaries for the most part. The story moves along fairly well, especially considering it's a 6 part one. I often find those have too much catch and release filler. There's some of that but it still works fairly well. The script was written by David Whitaker and it was directed by Barry Letts. Whitaker wrote 8 serials for the series between 1963 and 1969. He was the script editor 1963-64. He wrote some of the noelizations and died in 1980. Letts would go onto become the series producer. It's a good thing to finally see the whole serial, There were some good plot devices and the story was actually fairly interesting. 

My Science Project

My Science Project is a 1985 movie with John Stockwell. He acted in several movies before he became a director. I like a few of his movies, both in front and behind the camera. Here's he's a high school student who's interested in cars and girls and not the science project he has to turn in. John breaks into a fallout shelter in a little used Air Force base. He finds, and runs off with, a glowing ball. It turns out to be highly dangerous and the world is nearly destroyed. Kids, huh. Dennis Hopper is John's science teacher. He gets sent to someplace when the ball gets really active. Richard Maser plays the sheriff. There are monsters and dinosaurs tossed into John's world by the globe. Eventually things get back to normal and the world is safe. It's not got that much of a budget and the effects are just good enough that you wouldn't laugh. The script is ok but nothing special. The actors do a mostly ok job. I enjoyed it when it was new but the critics kind of panned it. Why am I always on the other side of the critics. It gets a 5.7 on the IMDb and that's about what it should be. You'd be better off getting the dvd or watching it on NetFlix. The YouTube video is only so-so.

Here's a better looking movie, the 2008 movie Ogre is HD 720p, but sadly it's not that great a movie. I noticed it on YouTube while I was looking for full movies. I started watching it because Katherine Isabelle is in it. She's the star of the Canadian werewolf Ginger Snaps movies. After a bit I thought Ogre looked familiar. It was, according to my Watched Movie List I saw it a couple of years ago on the SyFy channel or On Demand. The poster says it's a SciFi Original. I guess that was before the stupid name change. I liked the Ginger Snaps movies much more than Ogre but it's still watchable. Some young travellers open a chained door embedded in the side of a small ridge of dirt. You can guess what's in there. You know, from the title. There's some other stuff going on in the town that keeps the secret of the ogre. John Schneider also co-stars but I'm not much of a fan of that guy so I don't really care. I'm not much of a fan of the orge either. He's not very well illustrated. They didn't spend much of the budget on the CGI. He does his job but barely. If you watch some of the crap on the SyFy channel, and don't feel your wasting your time too much, then you might enjoy this a bit. Not too much though, it's just not that good.

   

You can see the 1998 Angelina Jolie movie Gia on YouTube also. It's not much by way of fun but the younger Angelina gets naked a lot and the movie is a 720p copy which looks good. The story is about a top fashion model that slides into drugs and death. It's based on real dead model's life. For something more fun try Eurotrip Unrated. It's a nice pick me up after the depressing Gia. Unless you just scanned for the naked Angelina which I would understand. A group of high school YA's go to Europe before they go off to college. Michelle Trachenberg plays the only female in the foursome. They have some good times and there's a bit of romance. I enjoyed Eurotrip enough when I saw it in 2004 to get the dvd, now I'm going to dig that out and spin it. I also noticed that YouTube has Armageddon. If you haven't seen it I would recommend it. I know it's oil drillers in space but it's a lot of fun. I'm not going to dig out my dvd of the movie tonight but I should soon. I have the Criterion version. I've always thought that Bay did his best work n his first three films. First was Bad Boys, then The Rock, followed by Armageddon. After that came Pearl Harbor and it all changed. Bad Boys II was fun but not as good as the first. After that it's all Transformers with The Island and Pain and Gain in there. I see that Bay is making Bad Boys 3.

Friday Night Movies 450

Badges Of Fury is a Jet Lee Hong Kong film that came out earlier this year. It's a makes-no-sense kind of action comedy. In fact, both of our movies have that in common. It's kind of reminicient of Scary Movie, or Stephen Chow's films. Jet is a cop and the people on either side of him are his co-workers. The guy's his younger and more inexperienced partner and the woman is his boss. The other two women play sisters. Someone kills four men with the same type of needle shot into their armpits. It's death by acupuncture. The clues point to first one sister and then the other. There's plenty of goofy comedy though some of the jokes might not be as funny to Western tastes there's nothing really offensive. There's a fair bit of romance and the girls are pretty. There's plenty of fighting, running, jumping and shooting as the cops go about their investigations. Some of the action has a bit of digital help, besides the wire removal type work. CGI houses in Asia are coming along really well, their only limitation is the film budget. In a chase Jet Li jumps down a stairwell and floats several stories before touching down in front of the fleeing crook. The CGI didn't look as good there but most of the rest worked well. There's plenty of nice shots of the city and it's buildings. I enjoyed it and laughed out loud once or twice. I might want to see it again. It only scores a 4.4 on the IMDb but I think it should be somewhere between 5 and 6. It's not perfect but for the right eyes it would be entertaining enough to waste the time on it. I don't think I need to buy one. Unless it shows up really cheap.

 

Dasepo Naughty Girls is a 2006 Korean comedy set in a high school. Sperhauk had noticed it on one of the streaming services that he gets with his Roku and thought it had potential. It does. Like I said, it shares the makes-no-sense genre with our first movie. It's also got a heavy touch of the fantastic, one of the students is a cyclops. Of course the other students pick on him. His sister is a dude. One of the boys falls for her then finds out she's got a penis. He's bummed out. There's a lot of high school romance as well as some social commentary about the poor. One of the girls wears a plush human shaped doll on her back. She carries her poverty with her. Pretty allegorical for a goofy comedy, huh. Near the end it climbs off her back and leaves. There's a good bit of nice CGI. It's used to pump up the color to create a more hyper-real image or to create entertaining wipes between scenes. There's animated fantasies of the characters thoughts and cross dressing. The comedy is often broad and there are plenty of sight gags and physical comedy. Often the characters break out into song and dance. There's about as much plot as a variety show and that's what it's like. It moves from little sketches with the charcters to  dance numbers to odd abstract or absurd bits that have little to add to the story. There's always something to look at, the girls are all pretty and some of the guys are nearly as pretty as the girls. The sheer volume of the jokes means there's something for everyone. It's not that edgy or rude, there isn't even any nudity. It's worth a look for the right person.

What I Read In June 2013

Only 6 books last June. Most were ok but ultimately I'll only keep a couple of them. Eventually I'll downsize my living space and there won't be room for everything. Digital will be a great help. You can get hundreds of books on a dvdr and thousands and thousands if you have a spare Terabyte hard drive for that sort of thing. I've been tempted but I rarely go over 400 gigs on the terabyte I have. Mind you I usually backup everything I download onto a disc for storage.

    

Fergus Crane by Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell is another of their entertaining novels. Well written and profusely illustrated with delightful drawings by these two Englishmen who are responsible for The Edge Chronicles. This is a stand alone novel about a young man named Fergus Crane, though it is part of the Far Flung Adventures series. Fergus goes to school on a ship and all his teachers used to be pirates. The one day he's late to school the pirates kidnap his class and sail for treasure. With the help of his inventing uncle, and a mechanical flying horse, Fergus goes after his school chums. He has to work hard to rescue them, he's only 9, and there's a modicum of danger. Those pirates are pretty stupid, so that's in his favor. It only gets 5 star votes from all 18 users on Amazon. Pretty amazing, since there's usually some complainer.

The Fourth Circle Of Heck - Fibble by Dale E Basye has Marlo and Milton in the junior underworld level devoted to liars. I'm starting to get tired of the series with this book. I found I was skimming it more than I did the last one. There's some humor but it goes on way too long.

The Chronicles Of The Imaginarium Geographica Book 3 The Indigo King by James A Owen continues with the adventures of JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis as they travel through time and space to and from the real world and the fantasy worlds of the Archipelago. Normally they would have Charles Williams as the third of the trio but he's off somewhere. The other two join up with Hugo Dyson and the alternate universe version of Charles whose name is Chaz. There's plenty of adventure and action to keep things moving. There's a fair bit of humor and plenty of interesting characters, some human, some animal, some dragon. Chaz accidentally burns down the library of Alexandria. It could happen to anyone, really. The novel is filled with odd places too. I planning to work my way through the series as they pop up but I've switched from buying them used to getting them from the library. I'm betting I don't need to keep them.  

   

Cruel Zinc Melodies by Glen Cook is the 12th book in the Garrett PI series. It came out in May 2008 which was after I stopped working at DreamHaven. Because I didn't go into the store very much I stopped paying attention to the incoming books. A year or so ago I chanced to take a look at Glenn Cook's web page and found he had written this book in 2008. There was another in 2010, and the latest in 2013. I didn't see them all at DreamHaven but I ordered the ones Greg didn't have there. I try not to buy new novels but sometimes I don't want to wait until they come in used somewhere. I was hoping for some good entertainment and mostly I got it. Garrett's getting old so he complains a lot more about his home life than he used to. He lives in a house with The Dead Man, a 400 year old dead Loghyr who communicates telepathically; Pular Singe, a rat woman who has some cleverness; and Dean, his ancient housekeeper and cook. Garrett has been working more security jobs for Max Weider, the rich beer maker and a few other well off clients. Max is building a new theater for his daughter Alyx and her actor pals. Weird things are going on in the unfinished theater with break-ins, ghostly noises and mosnterous sized bugs. The workers are scared and refusing to work. There's some other sub-plots going on. The fantasy town of TunFaire has a lot of interesting citizens and some of them are mighty dangerous. Garrett seems to attract those folk as he pokes into the mystery at the theater. He uncovers the truth behind the giant bugs and some characters don't fair well. It's a tough town, even the cops will kill you if you get in their way. I've got the next 2 books to read and will soon. 

The Fifth Circle Of Heck - Snivel by Dale E Basye is more of the same. I'm getting them from the library so I don't feel bad when I scan just to see how it ends.

The Walton Boys In Rapids Ahead by Hal Burton has the three Walton teens on a canoe trip. They have some camping, some canoeing and some bit of mystery. Not great or anything but fun enough.

Midsomer Murders Series 6

  

The 6th series of Midsomer Murders all aired January 0f 2003. John Nettles is Detective Chief Inspector Thomas "Tom" Geoffrey Barnaby and Daniel Casey is plain old Sgt Gavin Troy. Jane Wymark plays Tom's wife Joyce Barnaby. I find them enjoyable murder mysteries with a couple of coppers digging into the lives of the locals looking for the clue that triggers the capture of a murderer. There are plenty of guest stars, some of whom make it though the whole 90 minute episode. Each week our CID men are in a different town or village and the English country side is often pretty to look at. If you've seen any of the previous episodes you'll find these about the same. I copied the descriptions from the Wikipedia. You can see all the episodes on YouTube though I have to admit they aren't all the best copies.

A Talent for Life January 3 2003

When Barnaby starts a casual investigation into a slap on the face after the Malham Bridge Fly Fishing Club meeting he has no reason to expect it to lead to the double murder of eccentric widow Isobel Hewitt (Honor Blackman) and adulterous doctor Duncan Goff (Richard Durden). Troy soon begins to suspect Isobel's younger "friend", antique dealer Quentin Roka (Philip Franks).

Death and Dreams January 10 2003

Martin Wroth is found shot dead, apparently having committed suicide in an unnecessarily complex fashion. However, in Midsomer, things are never that simple. Then another man is found dead, drowned and strung up on an assault course. He clearly didn't kill himself, so why is the murderer playing games?

Painted in Blood January 17 2003

Ruth Fairfax, an elderly lady whom Joyce Barnaby (Jane Wymark) finds murdered at an art class, turns out to a 30-year-old woman in disguise. Almost as soon as she is identified Barnaby is pulled off the case by the NIS. At first Troy is dazzled by the visiting detectives who take him under their wing, but eventually he becomes disillusioned and helps Barnaby solve the case.

A Tale of Two Hamlets January 24 2003

Arrogant actor Larry Smith is killed when he walks into a summerhouse that subsequently explodes. The director of Smith's new hit film, The House Of Satan, is then electrocuted on his exercise bike. Barnaby and Troy soon discover a century old dispute between the villages of Upper and Lower Warden.

Birds of Prey January 31 2003

When an investor in a millionaire's latest scheme becomes desperate to get his money out, and then is found dead in a lake, it raises the question of whether he killed himself or someone else did it for him. While Barnaby investigates that death, Troy is tramping around the woods with an attractive wildlife liaison officer (Candida Benson) looking into the theft of protected bird eggs. Barnaby's wife is interested in wildlife, too – dreaming of an African safari.

Cyndi Lauper - At Last - Bones Wedding Scene

 

There's a little too much interruption but it's nice to seen Cyndi on Bones occasionally. She plays a psychic not unlike the character that she played in Vibes. If you haven't seen Vibes, I feel sad for you. More sad is the dvd being out of print. Amazon has one for $107 but there's always eBay or you can buy a bootleg from one place or another on-line for under 20 bucks and that's including the shipping. The movie pairs Cyndi with Jeff Goldblum and they're just delightful. Peter Falk co-stars, he's pretty entertaining too. It's got mystery and murder mixed with the paranormal and ancient aliens but it's really a romantic comedy. There's not anything new in the story and the script isn't perfect. It's the interaction between those 2 characters that makes it entertaining. Like I said I find them delightful. I'm perfectly happy to go along with them on their adventure and have a laugh and enjoy a bit of romance. There's plenty of nice scenery in the parts of the movie shot in Ecuador. Extra Bonus: The bad guys got some long overdue and seriously harsh punishment. That was good for a laugh. It was a box office flop and the critics gave it an unbelievable 6% on Rotten Tomatoes. It scores a 56% from the fans on Rotten Tomatoes and a 5.0 on the IMDb. I would give it a 6 on the IMDb. It's certainly rewatchable for the right fan.

Prophets Of Science Fiction

I watched the 8 episodes of Prophets Of Science Fiction that were run on the Science Channel a couple of years ago. It was produced by Ridley Scott and 22 of his other producer friends. The library had dvds of the whole series but you can see them on YouTube. The episodes are 42 minutes long and each one is put out on it's own dvdr. They must not have thought there was enough of a market to bother mastering a real dvd. I don't see them for sale on Amazon, they have the streaming version, and useless to me here, a region 4 dvd of one of the episodes. Weird, huh. I wonder if the dvdr copies I got from the library were strictly for the library market. Maybe for schools too. No mater. Each episode follows a bit of a pattern, there's a few short bits about the featured author's life, some bits about their works and ideas, then a whole lof of bits about the science results of their ideas, mixed in with that are clips from movies that were made from the writers books. All those bits are intercut with talking head segments featuring a good number of scientists, science fiction writers and film makers who comment on the episode's featured writer. Michico Kaku, David Brin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Jerry Pournelle, Paul Verhoven, Akiva Goldsmith, Harrison Ford, Harlan Ellison are the ones that I had heard of and there are several more that I didn't recognize. Sometimes they had something interesting to say. The dramitizations of the author's life which weren't too bad. I found I was less interested in the modern application segments. I wanted more about the writers and their work. As you can see by the crowded episode there just wasn't much time for that. 

I don't think I wasted my time but I did watch them at 1.5 speed. That's kind of like time travel, right. I was thinking I would be done in 42 minutes but it turned out to be only 28 minutes later. Where did that 14 minutes go? I don't know. It's a mystery. Here's the episodes on YouTube. Mary Shelley, Phillip K Dick, HG Wells, Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Jules Verne, Robert Heinlein, and George Lucas. An interesting choice of writers and all of them were writers that I had read some of their books. I was a big Heinlein fan when I was in my late teens and some of my twenties. I still have a stack of his books in the basement that I should dig out and read sometime. See if I still like him. I read almost all of Phil Dick in the early 90's but haven't gotten back to reading him some more. Almost always some new shiny story coming along.

Science Fiction Sunday 258

 

Pyramids Of Mars is the 82nd serial and it was first broadcast October 25 to November 15 1975. Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sleden are the Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith. Something interrupts their flight in the Tardis and they land in a room full of Egyptian Artifacts. It's 1911 and the house belongs to an archologist who's away on a dig. The archologist opens a tomb and gets taken over by Sutekh. The Doctor has a good fight on his hands 'cause that Sutekh is a real evil bastard. He wants to destroy everything but that's how he was made. Because he has these destructive tendencies Sutekh was cursed by Horus and stuck in a tomb. We were safe for thousands of years until the Englishmen came with their shovels and picks.

 

Sarah Jane wears a frilly dress for the whole serial. I still find her to be less interesting than some of the other companions. There were some nice Egyptian props, maybe not accurate, but colorful. The house they used for the archologist's home was owned by Mick Jagger at that time. They blow it up at the end but the model doesn't look that good. They blow up the pyramid launch pad, see below, and that doesn't look that good either. The mummies are really robots. They unwrap a mummy at one point and they have a neat empty wire frame with pipes inside it. The Doc uses the wrappings to sneak a bomb into the white pyramid rocket launch site. He's a tricky guy.

 

That's Sutekh's mummy robots and the evil one himself on the right. Once he gets free from the curse of Horus he's all world destruction, blah, blah, blah. These guys are all the same, huh. The Doctor will eventually kick his ass and things are back to normal. The new normal would see the end of the Doctor working for UNIT. We won't see the Brigadier for 7 years. I thought parts were pretty good but I have to complain that they don't get to Mars until the last episode. The effects were pretty silly looking. Here's the episodes on Dailymotion. Part 1, 2, 3, 4. Here's some of the action figures that turned up when I did a Google search. I enjoyed the multiple Doctors.

 

 

There were the usual featurettes. Director Paddy Russell turns out to be a lady and she talks about her work on the show. She says the BBC still didn't allow a larger budget for the show, they funded it the same as any half hour drama. I liked the Then and Now featurette about the locations. I usually like those. I didn't listen to the commentaries on this one either. I have been busy and they take up a good chunk of time.