PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

41053 Cinderella's Dream Carriage

I picked up this set the day I went to The LEGO Movie. There were a few parts I was interested in. I built the set and brought it to the TwinLUG meeting. It's a $29.99 set with 274 pieces. That makes each part just over 11 cents each. Not too bad. Some of the parts are kind of nice and worth that extra little bit. Most of the parts are white, some are common and less interesting and some are pretty good, like the dozen 1x1 bricks with a stud on the side or the 4 macaroni bricks. I always like keeping a good stock of macaroni bricks around and I use more of the bricks with studs on their sides all the time. There's some nice bit of pearl gold and a fair number of medium blue parts. I'm a big fan of both colors and don't mind having more parts. I particularly like that new decoration part in the upper left picture. It comes in three other colors: metallic silver, reddish brown and pinkish. It's a great addition the architecture stock or an ice cream stand. The little decoration for the horse's head is kind of interesting. You get two of them in the set.

You get a carriage and a horse, a fountain and a little romantic seating area. The carriage was ok but not great. I thought there were a few spots that could have been improved with a part or two. It does capture the pumpkin shape and I do like the medium blue color. It was those 1x4 slopes with the silver printing on the face of them are quite nice. I'm not sure what I want to do with them yet but now I have 16 of them to play around with. There are 4 of the same slope but they have no printing on them. There's a bit of a darker purple color and some pinkish shade that Brickset calls light purple.

Here's the description of the set from Brickset.

Lead Cinderella on an enchanted carriage ride to the royal castle ball!

It’s the night of the grand ball at the castle! A pumpkin has been magically transformed into a carriage by Cinderella’s fairy godmother who has left behind her magic wand. Open the door, unfold the steps and help Cinderella into the beautiful carriage. Be sure to remember the invitation! Watch the golden wheels turn as the white horse leads the carriage past the pretty fountain on the way to meet the Prince. Includes Cinderella mini-doll figure and a white horse.

• Includes Cinderella mini-doll figure and a white horse
• Features turning golden wheels, opening doors, unfolding steps and a removable roof
• Includes a flower gazebo with pumpkin patch and a fountain with translucent water element
• Accessories include an invitation to the ball, magic wand, broom, flowers and a golden head decoration for the horse
• Open the carriage door and unfold the steps for Cinderella
• Dress up Cinderella’s horse with the head decoration
• Detach the horse from the carriage and set it free for its own adventures
• Remove the roof of the coach for easy play
• Cinderella’s Dream Carriage measures over 3” (10cm) high, 7” (19cm) long and 1” (5cm) wide

All in all a nice bit of stuff to add to the pile. I doubt I would need to buy another. Maybe if I see one marked down. You never know.

Carnival Of Souls

 

I watched the Rifftraxx of Carnival Of Souls. It's a 1962 film written and directed by Herk Harvey. The movie is considered a cult classic. I'm not a big fan of the movie. I find it rather dull and yet I've seen it several times. It's a public domain film and it's on a lot of those cheap multi-movie packs. The film makers didn't put the copyright on the film when they printed it up. Dumb, huh.

The story is about a woman named Mary. She's in a car with two other women and they race a car with a couple of guys. The gals car falls off a bridge and Mary is the only one to walk out of the river. She leaves town for a job in Utah. She see's a strange man on the road and in the town. He scares her somehow. She gets the job as a church organist and a room in a boarding house. The sleazy guy who rooms there hits on her but she's not having any of it. It goes on for a while and things happen. The strange man appears again. He's played by the Herk Harvey. Eventually we find out what it's all about. The Rifftraxx guys have a fun time yakking over the movie and occasionally they make a joke or two. You can make up your own mind about the movie, there's a link above that will take you to the movie and the Rifftraxx version too.  

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

I noticed a couple of films at the library, one I had heard of and the other I hadn't. I sort of remember the commercials for The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. While I like Steve Carell I didn't go to the theater to see the movie and I didn't buy the dvd. On the dvd side I have bought more than my share of movies, sight unseen, and lived to regret it. When they turn up at the library I can take a chance and it won't cost me anything but my time. Not that time isn't of value but I'm going to watch something anyway, so why not watch something new and for free. I watched it and now I'm glad that I didn't buy it when it came out. It's not that it's bad or anything, it's funny, there's a nice cast and the script has some jokes and weird gags but it's not that funny that I would want to re-watch it enough to want to buy it. John Francis Daly co-wrote the script with Jonathan Goldstein, they also wrote Cloudy With Meatballs 2 and Horrible Bosses 1 & 2. I haven't seen 'em. Fans of Freaks & Geeks or Bones will recognize John Francis Daly. He's one of my favorite actors on both of those shows.

It's a familiar kind of story, one where pals have a big falling out, have a bit of growth, then get back together again. This time it's set in the world of stage magic. Steve Carell and Steve Buscemi are Burt Wonderstone and Anton Marvelton. In 1982 they were in school together. Burt got a magic kit for his birthday and their love of magic brought the two of them together. They grew up and became big time Las Vegas showmen. At their peak they get hired at Bally's and have their own theater. Ten years later it's modern day and they aren't so popular anymore. They've been doing the same show for ten years, they're stale and they've fallen out of love, with each other and with magic. Burt is a pretty big asshole who hasn't grown much as an adult. He'll have to do the down and out thing to get his life lesson.

Jim Carrey plays an illusionist Steve Grey who's a bit like David Blaine or Criss Angel. Steve Grey has a tv show where he does outlandish tricks that physically damage his body. He films his segments out on the street among random people. In one stunt Jim gets a guy to sign a card and then has the guy punch his face. He cuts the bruise with a knife and pulls the signed card out of the cut. At first I thought it was a trick but he really cut himself. His other tricks just get progressively crazier and more damaging. Carrey steals every scene he's in. He's pretty entertaining to watch. His preformance kind of reminds me of some of his earlier movies. I liked those for the most part but haven't seen any of them in years.

The contrast between the traditional stage magician and the new street guys runs throughout the movie. I'm not much a fan of the street magic guy but then again I'm not much a fan of stage magic any more. Mostly I've liked acts like Ricky Jay or Penn & Teller over acts like David Copperfield. Back in Burt's world he gets his groove back and things turn out ok. I did laugh, out loud, at the big trick at the end but that was the only time. It's too illogical but it's that kind of movie and there were some pretty funny visuals. All in all not a great comedy but one with some laughs.

Wind Blast is a 2010 Chinese action film that's mostly filmed in Dunhuang, Gansu, China. It looks a lot like that picture above. It's in quite the location. I put a map at the end of the post. The movie is marketed as a western type film but it's pretty much a police story at heart. Some cops from the city are chasing an assassin and his girlfriend through this sparsely populated area. There are other assassins hindering the chase and some local cops helping out. There's one chase after another and plenty of gun play. Lots of people get blasted and many of them die. Sadly I found the scenery to be more entertaining than some of the film. I started fast forwarding the long fight scenes, so I could get to the scenery. There are better and more interesting Chinese action films out there. I did like the soundtrack but it's not any reason to get the movie. 

Blue Murder Series 1 & 2

 

I'd seen the first disc of Blue Murder at the library and recognized Caroline Quentin on the cover. She's DCI Janine Lewis in this Manchester based police drama from ITV. I'd just seen Caroline in the first 3 series of Jonathan Creek. Here her character is less annoying, not totally, but less. She's smarter too. It's kind of a typical modern police drama in a city setting. The writing is ok, it's no Midsomer Murders or New Tricks but they all can't be. It's a solid cop drama with plenty of Manchester streets and houses. Not a place that I see on TV a lot. The first series was a 2 part story and the second series had 4 standalone episodes. Well, standalone if you take out the on-going family story arc. They ran in 90 minutes slots with commercials.

Series 1 - May 2003

Cry Me a River Part 1 & 2 - Janine finds her hubby in bed humpin' another woman. They have three kids, the oldest is 16 or 17 years old, she's pregnant with another. At work she's got a murder case that's  so complicated it's going to take two episodes to figure out who did it. Her boss is an uptight kind of guy and he's given her 48 hours to finish the investigation. Or else! Then the kids start having issues.

The dead guy is a head master at a school and he's been gutted open in his allotment. Janine gathers her team and they come up with three suspects right from the get-go. They do some digging, drive about, talk to people. It's all very standard police procedure kind of stuff. Janine's right hand man is DI Richard Mayne who is played by Ian Kelsey. He's alright, as are most of the supporting cast. They narrow the field down and that one guy nearly kills Janine. Don't worry, she'll be back for 4 more series. Here's another now.

Series 2 - September 2004

Hit and Run - Janine is back from maternity leave. She has to juggle her family needs and her job needs. She not as good at it as she had hoped. She dumps the kids on others so she can work. Murder isn't a 9-5 job but that's a pretty common theme in cop shows. A lap-dancer was killed. They figure out who did it.

Up In Smoke - Janine investigate a suicide that is anything but. There's missing bodies and a crematorium. You can see where that's going.

Fragile Relations - Janine and the gang investigate when a mullah is killed in an arson attack. It's a tense situation with Muslims on one side and racists on the other. Turns out it was greed and political ambition behind the murder, nothing else. That's often the case with people who's moral compass points to the $ or the politician who will sleep with his enemy to get what he wants. The young Muslim cop joins the team. I liked that guy.

Lonely - The babysitter of a 12 year old autistic boy is killed and Janine comes calling. Her husband asks for a divorce but later holds off. DI Mayne nearly applies for a job in London but he holds off too. I looked ahead and he's still on the show for the next 3 series. I liked his character.

I have the other series on my library queue and should have the 3rd and 4th series right away. For some reason there's a few people ahead of me on the 5th series. I could use less of the family drama but people seem to like that in a cop show. Makes them more human I guess. Here the drama is prety standard married couple stuff. Not a series I might want to buy and I can't imagine I will want to watch them again.

Psych Season 6

 

I found a used copy of the 6th season of Psych at the same cd store where I found those Rifftraxx discs. It was only 11 bucks and it's about that double on Amazon right now. The set came out in Oct 2012 and I like to wait for the dvd sets that I want to drop in price. It's not like I'm in a hurry, I'd already seen season 6, 7 and part of 8 on cable. When the dvds get cheap I'll buy 'em because I want to see the series again. Plus there are some extras on the discs, outtakes, commentaries and featurettes of one kind or another. The shows still make me laugh even after repeated viewing. The 8th season is going to be the last one and that's fine. It's had a great run with 121 shows to re-watch.

James Roday is Shawn Spencer, Dulé Hill is Shawn's best bud Burton Guster, Timothy Omundson is Detective Carlson Lassiter, Maggie Lawson is Detective Juliet O'Hara, Corbin Bernsen is Shawn's dad Henry and Kirsten Nelson is Chief Karen Vick. Sage Brocklebank returns in a small role as Officer McNab. Kurt Fuller gets better and better as Woody the Coroner. All the writers want to write for his character. He's a gem and he fits in with Shawn and Gus so well.

There were 16 episodes in the season. They have had some great guest stars on the series in the past and this season is no exception. The guest stars all do a great job in their parts. The people on the commentaries seem filled with joy at having them there.

 

In the 1st episode Malcolm McDowell plays a British Ambassador. Someone gets murdered in his house. Shawn is disappointed that he doesn't get diplomatic immunity when he gets hired to investigate. In the 2nd Shawn, Gus, Carlton and Woody wake up after a night of partying. They find Henry, with no pants, in a trashed motel room.

 

Kristy Swanson guests in the 3rd episode. Someone is draining people of their blood and Shawn and Carlton think it's a vampire. Shawn and Gus dress up as Lestadt and Blacula to go to a vampire themed club. Carlton falls for Kristy, who will return to the show in the future. This episode was directed by James Roday. The 4th episode is heavily influenced by comic books. The Mantis is catching crooks around town. Shawn and Gus dress up as Tap-Man and The Catch.

  

Danny Glover guests in the 5th episode as minor league baseball manager. Shawn and Gus go under cover to investigate the death of the team's hitting manager. One of my favorite actors, Brad Dourif, plays a rich guy who might have killed someone. He's in a mental institution where Shawn and Gus go undercover in the 6th episode. William Shatner pops in for the 7th episode where he plays Juliet's con man father. He's got a scheme going on while trying to reconnect to Juliet. She does not approve of him and she lets him know. Shawn and Gus are charmed by him. Shatner was great, as always. Diedrich Bader plays the head of a cult in the 8th episode. Gus gets close to a hippy chick but it doesn't work out. John Badham directed this episode.

   

Jason Priestly and Jennifer Finnigan play a charming couple of thieves in the 9th episode. They rob Shawn and Juliet while they are on their first vacation together. Cary Elwes returns as art thief Pierre Despereaux in episode 10. I always enjoy his stories. There's an art heist and a hunt for secret hidden art. In the 11th Carlton buys a haunted condo. It's heavily influenced by The Shining and directed by James Roday. Lindsay Sloane guests as the woman who has to pick the winner on one of those hook up with a bachelor reality shows in episode 12. Shawn and Gus go undercover after one of the bachelors is murdered.

 

Cheech Marin, Jaleel White and Mekhi Phifer are guests on episode 13 which was directed by Jay Chandrasekhar. The guys track down the guy who tried to kill Cheech. Shawn gets to sing in the a cappella group that Gus and his friends used to have. Woody makes a mistake on an autopsy and gets called on the carpet by Chief Vick in the 14th episode. It's directed by Jennifer Lynch. French Stewart guests as a mystery genre expert who joins the guys on their investigation. Anthony Anderson guests in the 15th episode as a guy who was wrongfully jailed. He's out and he hires Shawn and Gus to find who got him locked up. In the last episode of the season an old case of Henry's comes back to haunt him. It has a trouble some cliff hanger but he's ok when the the 7th season starts. I'm no fan of the cliff hanger.

I think it's a show you need to watch over again and again and I can't recommend the whole series enough. It's got clever writing and it's got a great sense of humor. The acting is wonderful, you just don't see anyone doing less than a great job, even in the smallest parts. It's filmed in British Columbia and the scenery is always beautiful. There's so much going on all the time that I usually miss some small bit of business, like a little bit of scene stealing or some nice activity in the background, and they are worth catching. I always forget to look for that pineapple. All in all a pretty solid season which provided me a good source of giggles, laughs and snorts. Everybody needs them some vitamin funny. The series would be a great addition to anyone's comedy collection.

Rifftrax - Night Of The Living Dead

Here's another of the Rifftrax dvds that I picked up for so cheap. That's always good. Mike, Kevin and Bill watch Night Of The Living Dead and I watched that. It's the 1968 George Romero movie. I didn't find the jokes to be as funny as I might normally, the movie is better than most of their usual fare and I thought some of their gags fell flat. You can't have a winner all the time.

Science Fiction Sunday 273

The Sun Makers is the 95th serial. The first episode of the 4 part serial started airing on November 26 1977. It was written by Robert Holmes and directed by Pennant Roberts. Tom Baker and Louise Jameson are the Doctor and Leela. K-9 is their robot dog. K-9 does get up to much in this story. He does shoot a guy at one point.

 

The Tardis sets down on top of a 1000 meter tall building where they observe a man, Cordo, about to jump to his death. The Doctor stops him with a jelly baby. Turns out they're on Pluto way far into the future. The humans have moved there after they pooped up the Earth. Some aliens help with the move and now the humans are their drugged slaves forced to work in the alien factories.

  

That's the Gatherer and his assistant Marn. He collects the taxes. When we meet him the first time he's collecting death taxes from Cordo. His dad has just died and he can't pay the newly increased death duties and extra surcharges. The Gatherer tells him he needs to work extra shifts but he's already working 21 hours a day. The company games the system so the workers are always under their thumbs. They used to do that a lot in human history. Look it up, it's pretty heinous. I'm sure it still goes on in one form or another.

 

There's an underground society living in the sub-basements of the city. Cordo leads the Doc and Leela to the rebels where William Simons is the head guy Mandrel. That's him looking at that candle. I had just seen him in Cribbs a couple of weeks back. The Doctor, Leela and Cordo join the rebels and that's really the start of the revolution. There's the usual running about and getting captured.

   

You can see Leela stuck up on the wall and the Doc trussed up on a table in the Correction Center. Louise says in the making of featurette that they left her up on the wall while the company went to tea. Everyone seems to have one of those stories. Of course they escape over and over again. The revolution moves along and the Gatherer eventually gets tossed off a 1000 meter building. He was a dick. They shot all the roof stuff on a big factory in Bristol. It was cold there. Louise said in the featurette that between takes Tom would wrap her up like a mummy with in his scarf. After the workers take over the city the Doc, Leela and K-9 bugger off. It was a fairly entertaining story even though they were preaching to the choir here. "Down With The Company." Louise Jameson says it's her favorite serial but she had a lot of scenes on her own in this one and she and Tom Baker still didn't quite get along in those days.

  

That's some set stills from the Photo Gallery. Nice to see the sets without the actors in the way. Top left is the Gatherer's office and the other is the rebels HQ. 

  

The Correction Center is on the left above and the other is a sub-basement set. Most of the other sets are plain hallways and the like.

  

The commentary with Tom Baker, Louise Jameson, Pennant Roberts and Michael Keating was ok. There's a good making of featurette with several cast and crew. The featurette on composer Dudley Simpson was interesting. He got sacked from a long run at Doctor Who in 1980. The new producer was "cleaning house". Over the years Dudley did plenty of work for the BBC. There's a nice photo gallery with black and white pictures from the production and some nice color set stills. There's some outtakes, a trailer, info track and Radio Times listings.

The Simpsons Replica House

Back in 1997 The Simpsons house got built for real near Las Vegas. Here's the Wikipedia entry for the contest.

A replica of the house at 742 Evergreen Terrace, known as "The Simpsons House", was constructed in 1997 by California-based Kaufman and Broad homebuilders at 712 Red Bark Lane in Henderson, Nevada. The house was designed to closely mimic the design of the house in the series.

The $120,000 house was constructed for use as the grand prize in a contest known as "The Simpsons House Give Away", sponsored by Pepsi, Fox, and the homebuilder The contest was announced on July 10, 1997. The rules of the contest stipulated that the winner either accept the house or a $75,000 cash payment. In addition, the winner of the house, if they chose to occupy it, was contractually obligated to repaint the exterior in accordance with local homeowner's association rules. Contest entries were included on various Pepsi products and 15 million were submitted nationally. The winner was Barbara Howard from Richmond, Kentucky. Howard chose not to accept the house, instead taking a cash payment per the contest rules. In 2001, after most of the details relating to the television series were removed, the house was sold by the builder to another owner.

The house, located in a subdivision that was permanently named "Springfield South Valley Ranch", took 49 days to build and was unveiled to the public on August 1, 1997. Construction on the house was nearly complete by July 1997, and by September 1997 thousands of people were lining up to see the finished product.During the time it was open to the public in August and September 1997, more than 30,000 people visited the house, including The Simpsons creator Matt Groening.

 

The house looks pretty good but I can see not taking it. I wouldn't be much interested in living in that area. Plus you have to pay all the taxes on it.

   

It some point they added a fence and then took it away.

 

At a couple of different points people were dressed up as the family. No idea where these pics came from and what they are about.

      

Fireplace, dining room and stairwell.

     

The kitchen is pretty fun, huh.

 

I like the couch and the picture on the wall.

  

Matt Groening came to see the house.

     

     

Lots of great props in the rooms.

   

Sadly, after the hosue was shown to the public it was renovated into a dull gray piece of shit. That's some sad shit, huh. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.

Rifftrax - Reefer Madness

  

I've seen the film Reefer Madness many times. It's not a great film, really, from any point of view other than making fun of. The anti-drug message is pretty stupid and un-realistic but the 1930's audience was pretty ignorant about such things. The 1936 film that was originally made as Tell Your Children. Promoter Dwain Esper bought the movie soon after it was made and ran it around the exploitation circuit under several other names: The Burning Question, Dope Addict, Doped Youth and Love Madness. Those exploitation film promoters used to do that a lot, re-title a film and then show it to the same unsuspecting audiences over and over. No wonder people hate business men, huh. So many of them suck. It's a goofy film, adult looking teens get involved with some drug dealers until one of them dies. The Rifftrax guys make some ok jokes about the movie. As usual some are better than others.

Rifftrax - Wide World Of Shorts

I lucked out, thanks to a tip from Sperhauk, and found 15 of the Rifftrax dvd's at a used cd shop in St Paul for $2.95 each. They're $9.95 on the Rifftrax site and cheaper on Amazon. I'd borrowed a few of them a couple of years ago and watched those without posting anything. Those ex-MST3K guys, Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, watch public domain shorts on Wide World Of Shorts. They make jokes about whatever pops up on the screen. There's a lot of jokes and they're a mixed bag. Not everyone is a gem but generally they're entertaining. They do a lot of these Rifftrax, most sold online at their site, and you can't always have quality with quantity. I've listened to some of the guys trax on the Harry Potter movies and just didn't think they were that funny.

The shorts on Wide World Of Shorts are all over the place in topic. I find the shorts almost as entertaining as the guys comments. Here's the ones I could find on YouTube. Maybe you'll get a laugh out of them.

Snap Out of It!
Alcohol Trigger Films
Carnivorous Plants
Aqua Frolics
Why Vandalism?
Self-Conscious Guy
As We Like It
Toward Emotional Maturity
The Terrible Truth
Good Eating Habits