PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Zatoichi 6 - Zatoichi And The Chest Of Gold

The 6th film in the series came out March 14 1964 and it's the 1st of 4 films that year, all starring Shintaro Katsu as Zatoichi the blind swordsman. Zaotichi And The Chest Of Gold is written by Shozaburo Asai, Akikazu Ota and Kan Shimozawa (story). It's a good story, evil overlord, trod upon peasants, brave warrior setting it right, even if it's pretty familiar. I could easily see that story translated to an American western or a modern crime drama that could play out nearly anyway.

It's directed by Kazuo Ikehiro who would go on to direct some other very good samurai films. He directed 3 Sleepy Eyes Of Death films as well as 2 more Zatoichi movies. Here he does a great job, there are so many nice shots, I can't even count them, and the action is filmed really well. There some nice optical effects that add a lot. I'm watching the new Criterion release and it looks great.

Zatoichi is travelling to visit the grave of a man he had killed a couple of years earlier. The local magistrate is a corrupt jerk who has the local tax payment stolen. He hires three ronin to do the job. The leader Jushiro is played by Tomisaburo Wakayama who, in a few years, would play Ogami Ittō, another iconic Japanese film figure, in the Lone Wolf And Cub series. That's Tomisaburo on the left there. I really should get those dvds out and watch them again soon. I had the luck to see that 6 film series in the theater back in the 1980s. I think it was at the old Uptown theater during one of their occasional Japanese film series. The LWAC series was produced by Tomisaburo's real life brother Shintaro Katsu.

Zatoichi gets thrown into the middle of everything when the locals think he had something to do with the robbery. He sets out to clear his name and his efforts lead him to the magistrate and the three ronin. The magistrate tries to kill Zatoichi more than once but the men he sends fail miserably. Zatoichi learns where the gold is hidden and recovers it. That magistrate doesn't know what he stirred up when he underestimated the blind man but Tomisburo does when he uses his whip to drag Zatoichi behind his horse. Even a horse is no match for our hero. Well, at least that guy died with a big sword in him.

Another nice offering in the series that I enjoyed quite a lot. You can watch a so-so copy on YouTube. It's better watched in a smaller window and not full screen on a larger monitor.

Friday Night with Jonathan Ross - JK Rowling

 

I noticed that someone had recorded Jonathan Ross on The Eisner Awards At 2014 San Diego Comic Con and that lead me to this JK Rowling appearance on Friday Night with JR. It's episode S12E15 and it aired July 7 2007. That was just before the last novel came out on July 21. I found it an entertaining interview and Jonathan seems to really like the series. It reminds me I should watch the films again.

10 O'Clock Live Series 1

10 O'Clock Live is another British TV show. It's a comedy news show that rips on news and politics with humor like you'd find on The Daily Show or that Channel 4 Live Election night coverage that I mentioned in an earlier post. Like that one shot live program this live program is hosted by Charlie Brooker, Jimmy Carr, Lauren Laverne and David Mitchell. Their election coverage proved to be popular enough that someone at Channel 4 thought they should try a series. The first series started airing in January 20 2011 and the 15 episodes ran though April 28. 

It's not all jokes, occasionally there's a bit of serious interview or discussion, then it's back to the gags. Not all of them are great but they're on to another before you know it. I did like Jimmy talking about recent news stories in his irreverent way. There's a mix of commentary, round table discussion, sketches and stand up. I learned about problems in Britain, much of which I hadn't heard anything about, and I got a few laughs too. I think fans of The Daily Show would enjoy it. It has the same kind of sensability and satirical humor. The swearing on the British show isn't bleeped so if that turns you off, don't tune in.

I've watched the first 6 episodes and I found them funny enough that I plan to go through the rest as I get the time. Occasionally I like to listen to some humous prattle without having to spend my mental energy on keeping up with a fictional story. It's the prefect thing to watch while taking apart some LEGO MOCS and sorting out the parts for reuse. There has been a second and third series that I read had some changes to the format. I haven't looked at them yet. There's nothing on the Wikipedia about a 4th series being made or the whole series being cancelled. Oh, well. I don't mind if programs have an end. In fact I kind of like it. It gives the person watching a program a finite goal to achieve. There's also no waiting for the next series to show up, only to find it sucks. You can read up on the series and know if you should go for it. When a series ends there can be a nice complete dvd box set. I kind of doubt there would be a dvd setof this show but I can snag it off of YouTube and keep that on a disc to rewatch sometime.

Channel 4 Alternative Election Night UK May 6 2010

While looking for stuff on Youtube I found this 2010 Election Night Live program hosted by Charlie Brooker, Jimmy Carr, Lauren Laverne and David Mitchell. Both Jummy and David are favorites of mine and since it seemed like it might be funny I watched the whole nearly 4 hour long program. I did find it very funny at times and informative at others. There were guests I knew and liked; Brian Cox, Robert Webb, Rich Hall and some I didn't know. I found it very much like when The Daily Show did live election coverage except they were on for hours and after the watershed there was a shitload more swearing. The airwaves were filled with fucks and cunts. That's a win-win in my book but I like a bit of swearing.

The Twilight Zone S2S2

The second disc of the second season has 6 episodes on it. Only one of them is up on YouTube. I did find a radio drama and a couple of scores. I'm still quite pleased to have purchased the dvd set even if I'm not rushing to watch the shows. It's sort of like seeing an old friend once in a while. There's some good episodes in this lot.

Nick of Time  November 18 1960

 

Richard Matheson wrote the episode and Richard L Bare did the directing. Bare had written and directed the Joe McDoakes films for Warner Brothers during the war and after TTZ he would direct nearly the whole Green Acres series. I vividly remember this episode of The Twilight Zone when I saw it as a boy. William Shatner and his new wife Patricia Breslin are stuck in a small town while their car is being repaired. They have lunch at a small cafe and William gets hooked on the fortune telling machine with the bobble headed Satan on top. All the answers seem to tell his future and he becomes obsessed with it. Patricia is the voice of reason and she talks him out of his craziness. They leave the cafe to get their car and another couple come in to ask bobble head satan if they can leave the town soon. The future looks grim. As you probably know it's become one of the big iconic shows from the series. I enjoyed it back when I first saw it, and as much when I saw it today, even if I couldn't relate to someone being so superstitious.

The Lateness of the Hour  December 2 1960

 

Rob wrote this one and Jack Smight directed it. It's got Inger Stevens, John Hoyt and Irene Tedrow stuck in a house with some robot servants. They never go out and Inger is becoming stir crazy. She tells him he should get rid of the robots. That doesn't turn out too well for her. I didn't remember it at all. It's about average, nothing too unusual or anything. There's a TZ Radio Drama and a clip of the production slate.

The Trouble with Templeton  December 9 1960

 

The writer is E Jack Neuman and the director is Buzz Kulik. Brian Aherne is an older man with a young wife. She's a bit of a tramp but there you go. Dave Wilcox plays Brian's assistant. Sydney Pollack is the replacement director of a play that Brian is in. During a conflict Brian runs out of the theater into the past. He's reunited with his late wife, played by Pippa Scott, but she's not too interested in him. Brian returns to his present and his life. Another one I don't remember seeing before. There's a interview with Buzz Kulik and an isolated score by Jeff Alexander.

A Most Unusual Camera  December 16 1960

 

Rod is the writer and John Rich is the director. Fred Clark and Jean Carter are husband and wife crooks. Marcel Hillaire is a crooked waiter. The couple steal some useless stuff from a shop and amongst the goods is a camera that tells the future. It prints out a picture of what will happen in 5 minutes. They figure out how to make a bunch of money at the race track and then find out that the camera has an inscription that allows 10 pictures per owner. Things don't go well for criminals in TTZ and they all fall out a window. It's one of those patly ironic stories that Rod likes. It was entertaining to me. There's an isolated score.

Night of the Meek  December 23 1960

 

Rod wrote this one and Jack Smight is the director. Art Carney is a department store Santa who wonders why there is no real Santa. He's getting drunk in a bar when we meet him. He shows up at the store with a bit of a snootful and gets yelled at by his boss who's played by John Fiedler. Art gets fired and then finds a magical bag that produces an near unending supply of presents. He hands them out to everyone he meets. He gets in trouble but skates through that only to become the new Santa. Pretty sentimental but that's Rod for you. I didn't remember this one but I did enjoy it. I like a bit of Christmas sentiment once in a while. There's one of those clips of the slate being used as the extra.

Dust  January 6, 1961

 

Written by Rod and directed by Douglas Heyes. It's the old west and there's a guy in jail who's getting hanged that day. He'd been drunk and racing his wagon down the street he killed a little girl. A creepy peddler sells the condemned man's father some magic dust that will make things better. Since we're you know where we see things turn around for the doomed guy. It's an ok story that I don't remember. There's an interview with Douglas Heyes and an isolated score by Jerry Goldsmith.

Science Fiction Sunday 295

Castrovalva is the first serial of the 19th season and it first aired January 4 to 12 1982. It's the 117th serial and the first full appearance of the new Doctor. Peter Davison starts his three year cycle on the show. He's got three pals in the Tardis, Matthew Waterhouse as Adric, Sarah Sutton as Nyssa and Janet Fielding as Tegan Jovanka. Janet is an Australian who producer John Nathan-Turner thought would help get a larger Aussie audience. Christopher H Bidmead had quit as script editor but he did provide the script for this serial. The new script editor would be Eric Saward for the first part of the season followed by Antony Root. The show moved a twice-weekly schedule on Monday and Tuesday. This serial was the fourth Peter Davison did but it aired first. It was directed by Fiona Cumming.

 

The story picks up from where it left off the last season. The Doctor falls off the radio telescope tower and is so damaged he has to regenerate. The security men show up, grab everyone, and load the Doctor into an ambulance. Tegan steals it with Nyssa in the passenger seat. They get the Doc into the Tardis but poor Adric is still in the hands of the security men. The Master shows up, blasts the security men and leaves. Tegan and Nyssa grab the stunned Adric and the 3 companions take off in the Doctor's Tardis. The Doctor has some trouble with the regeneration.

 

We get to see a lot of the Tardis and learn more about it's working. There's a zero room that seems just the thing for the Doc's recuperation. Adric gets trapped by The Master who sets the Tardis to travel back in time to the Big Bang. There's some blather and smoke before the gals get the Doctor to help. He figures out that they can save power by jettisoning some mass. Sadly the zero room was part of that mass. The computer files tell them that they should take the Doctor to Castrovalva where he can recover.

 

They arrive on the planet and get separated, the Doc is picked up by the city guards while the gals get into the city by climbing up a hill. They get some help from the elderly Portreeve. There are some nice sets and costumes. Not so nice is that Castrovalva is really a construct that the Master controls. No one likes being tricked by a bully and the Doctor, now feeling better, soon kicks the Master's ass. Adric is rescued and the new Tardis gang leave for their next adventure.

 

I enjoyed this more than I had enjoyed the last of the Tom Baker episodes. Peter Davison does an ok job as the new Doctor. At the least, he brings some new energy to the production. The story was good enough and it moved along fairly well. The commentary has Peter Davison, Janet Fielding, Christopher H Bidmead and Fiona Cummings. They have a nice time and tell a few stories. I was amused. The extras lead off with a Peter Davison appearance on Swap Shop with Noel Edmunds and a visit to the Blue Peter show. There a short interview with Fiona Cummings on directing the serial, one with Peter Davison on his becoming the new Doctor and another on the large number of companions. The first series started with 4 companions but by the time Tom Baker took over it was down to 1 most of the time. There's some deleted scenes, some continuities and trailers, info text, theme music video, photo gallery, Radio Times Listings and the 1982 Doctor Who Annual. The easter egg is a Doctor Who float in a parade.

There's a bit of an MC Escher connection in this serial. I had an interest in Escher many years ago. I had a couple of books on him back in the 1970's but got rid of them in one purge or another. I haven't really looked at his drawings in a long time. Occasionally you see his work in the world, while you're out and about. Here's a bit from the Wikipedia about connection between the show and the artist:

Castrovalva is the name of an early lithograph by the Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher, and the design of the city in this serial reflects the impossible nature of many of Escher's later works. The story centres on the mathematical principle of recursion, a concept portrayed in much of Escher's artwork. Escher's lithograph depicts a town in Italy atop a steep slope, a setting similar to that of The Curse of Peladon, but there is nothing in the print itself to suggest the paradoxes of this story.

Friday Night Movies 486

The Monkey King is a 2014 Chinese fantasy film with Donnie Yen as The Monkey King, Aaron Kwok as Bull Demon King and Chow Yun-fat as the Jade Emperor. It's based on part of the centuries old novel Journey To The West. The story has been adapted to tv and film repeatedly. The first film listed on the Wikipedia page of adaptations is the 1927 silent film The Cave Of The Silken Web. Keep that in mind.

 

After a battle in heaven between the heavenly deities and the demon hordes of the Bull Demon King the buildings were all smashed. The Bull Demon King was banished to his fiery kingdom. A noble deity gives her life to repair everything, she turns into magical crystals that cement the buildings together. One of the crystals falls to a mountain where it turns into a stone egg. Eventually the Monkey King bursts out and became the leader of a tribe of monkeys.

 

The Monkey King is more than just a monkey, he's a deity, and he makes his way to heaven. He's rebuffed but busts in anyway. The Jade Emperor likes him and encourages his education. The Monkey King is a bit of a trickster and he doesn't act properly. Like Gods of other cultures the gods in the Chinese heaven are just as petty and vain and capricious as the human's they rule. The Bull Demon King is plotting to attack heaven again and he uses the dissatisfaction of one of the heavenly guards as a way in. They trick the Monkey King into turning against heaven by killing his tribe of monkeys and telling him that the gods did it. The Monkey King attacks heaven and it's destroyed again. The Jade Emperor calls on Buddha to stick the Monkey King under a mountain until he gets his act together.

That's where the movie ends. The Monkey King will be sitting under that mountain for 500 years before he's freed to help the Monk on his journey to the west to collect the sutras that bring Buddhism to China. I read online that there are supposed to be two more sequels and the second is already under way. The movie will be released in the US in September 2014. Joe ordered the Asian BluRay so we got to see it ahead of time.

The movie got panned by critics but it smashed several box office records in China. It's $82 million cost was repaid by a $175 million box office. It's supposed to be a family friendly movie and it is. The CGI is a mixed bag, most of it works well, occasionally there are spectacular bits and occaionally there are some weak bits. CGI is still a fledgling industry in China and they do fine. I could see why some people wouldn't care for it but I enjoyed it a lot. It scores an unusually low 4.8 on the IMDb but that might be because a lot of people haven't seen it yet. It's certainly not your typical Chinese action film but it's not supposed to be. It's a magical story filled with color and movement, plenty of entertaining action, wildly imaginative scenery and characters who are bigger than life. In fact I can't remember seeing any human's in the story and I didn't miss them. I certainly would recommend it to those that might like a fun fantasy story. I'll be keeping an eye out for the sequels.

Our second film is the 1967 Shaw Brothers film The Cave Of The Silken Web. It's based on another section of the Journey To The West novel. The Shaw Brothers made a series of four films based on JTTW in the later half of the 1960's and TCOTSW is the 3rd. The 1st is the 1966 Monkey Goes West, the 2nd is Princess Iron Fan, also from 1966, and the last is The Land of Many Perfumes which arrived in 1968. Unfortunately NetFlix doesn't have the other three films and I haven't looked to see what they would cost from an Asian DVD vendor. In this movie the Monkey King has already been released from his prison under the mountain. He's traveling with the monk Xuanzang on his trip to India. They're joined by Pigsy and Sandy on the journey, you know, to the west.

Unbeknownst to them the spider ladies of the silken cave have a plan to kidnap the monk and snack on him. Not only is he tasty, his flesh will give you immortality. In the novel there are a long series of adventures in which the monk is caught by one monster after another. All these villains are wanting a bit of his immortality inducing flesh. Heck, I might be tempted myself. The Monkey King joins with Pigsy and Sandy to try to get the monk out of captivity before he's tossed into the giant pot of boiling water. Two or three people could easily bath in that pot. It's a huge prop in a huge set.

 

The Shaw Brothers often have great sets in their films and this is no different. It's typical of the time. They shot a good bit of the movie outside and there's some nice scenery. The acting is ok, nothing bad or great, and it's a musical on top of that. The spider ladies all like a bit of singing and dancing. The IMDb gives this movie a 6.8 and while it's not anywhere near as entertaining as the first, it's still fun to watch.

More Jouney To The West adaptations:

Here's a 2011 Tv Adaptation of Journey To The West in 66 episodes. I'm planning to watch them over the next while. Here's a 2010 tv version on YouTube but only the first 3 of the 45 episodes are posted. There's a 1941 animated film called Princess Iron Fan. It's not great but it's kind of interesting. You can watch it on YouTube or download it at the Internet Archive. There's still more stuff to watch on Youtube but I haven't time today.

Fans - 3 Speed Electric

One of my favorite pictures of me. That's Steve George on the right. The photo is by the late Mike Hall. It got used in a fanzine back in the 1970's.

Two's Company Series 1

I hadn't heard of Two's Company before but when I saw it on the shelf at the library I picked it up. It was first produced in 1975 by London Weekend Television for the ITV Network. It was created and written by Bill MacIlwraith who hasn't done anything much I recognize as having seen. It stars Elaine Stritch and Donald Sinden, neither of whom has been in much that I've seen. Elaine was in a few movies I've seen and that certainly more stuff than I've seen Donald in. Elaine plays an American mystery thriller writer living in London and Donald is a butler. He shows up in the first episode and gets hired. The situations are pretty typical for sitcoms of the time. The electrician Elaine hires, against Donald's advice, turns out to be a goof and does a shitty job. In another Donald's annoying mother comes to visit. The two of them are pretty much opposites and there's plenty of friction based humor. The show gets an overall rating of 7.9 on the IMDb but I wouldn't go that high. I still got a few laughs and I put the 3 additional series on my library queue.

Midsomer Murders Series 9

Here's the series 9 episodes of Midsomer Murders. I'm using the listings from Wikipedia. John Nettles is the hard working DCI Tom Barnaby and this season he's joined by DC Ben Jones who's played by Jason Hughes. The writing still continues to be good, the cast entertaining and the locations fabulous. There's usually a clever mystery and some good detecting. Compared to A Touch Of Frost this series is almost pastorial. Of course under the skin of the beautiful countryside lurks some evil creeps who murder people for sex or money or land or power. Glad I don't have most of those things so no one bothers me too much.

The House in the Woods October 9 2005 DC Ben Jones appears for the first time. He's a local lad and he's got an interesting first case. A couple of house hunters are found garroted outside a deserted house.

Dead Letters February 26 2006 There's a dead woman in a stream. How'd she get there? Tom will find out. Simon Callow is the guest star.

Vixen's Run March 5 2006  A big old fat rich guy drops dead at a gathering with his three ex-wives. It wasn't murder but his dead lawyer was killed by someone.

Down Among the Dead Men March 12 2006 Blackmail followed by murder keep the guys busy this week. Somehow Tom's wife Joyce and daughter Cully get involved. Julia McKenzie is the guest star.

Four Funerals and a Wedding September 24 2006 A reverend is shot and a lady is poisoned.

Country Matters September 10 2006 There's s supermarket planned and some of the locals aren't liking it. Soon a guy is dead.

Death in Chorus September 3 2006 Why was a choir member and a bird watcher murdered? You'd have to watch to find out. I can't remember. Peter Capaldi is the guest star. You know, the new Doctor Who.

Last Year's Model September 17 2006 Tom and Ben investigate the case against a woman who's in court for murder. Ben gets his Detective Sergeant badge.

Hope you like them. I sure did.