PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Emma Peel Wear

These are pages from TV Guid back in June 1967. The text claims that the jumpsuit will be on sale in the US soon. I might have seen that TV guide, we used to buy them. I wouldn't have looked for those jumpsuits so I don't know if they ever did appear. Nice pictures.

What I Read In June 2014

I keep reminding myself I'm getting further and further behind in posting what I read in 2014 on my blog but I find I don't listen to myself very well. And really, why would I listen to someone telling me to do some more work. Luckily I'm still watching Never Mind The Buzzcocks and that's a show that I can watch while blogging. It's a good one for building too. Most of the fun stuff is in the noise not the image. I just need to glance up once in a while to get all the info I need.

I got through 9 books for June and 8 of them were novels. One was a volume of images and few words. A third of the books came from the library and that was nice. I like that the cost of the book is nil and somehow it seems much easier to return a book to the library than it does getting rid of a book that I had bought.

  

The Sisters Grimm 6 - Tales From The Hood by Michael Buckley finds Mr Canis being arrested for the past crimes of the Big Bad Wolf. That was him earlier in his life. He is having trouble controlling his inner wolfy. The Grimm sisters and their grandmother Remelda try to mount a defense but the Mayor and the Queen Of Hearts have stacked the deck in their favor. Pucks off somewhere causing trouble with his new pals. It's a nice quick read. I'm still liking the series and have the rest of the series on my library request list.

The Sisters Grimm 7 - The Everafter War by Michael Buckley finds things have fallen apart in Ferryport Landing. The only humans left in the town are all Grimms. War has broken out between the two groups of Everafters. Sabrina has a confrontation with the Master. Things are more serious but still enjoyable.

Tik-Tok Of Oz by L Frank Baum is the 8th book set in the world of Oz. A Queen from a country near the edge of Oz decides to conquer the rest of the magical kingdom. A huge cast of characters have an adventure when they go to stop her. It was fun enough.

  

Ghoul Strike by Andrew Newbound is pretty much an Artimus Fowl clone. I got it for 50 cents at a library sale so I didn't waste much on it. It wasn't awful or anything and there's a story to follow along but it's rather like so many other books and kind of dull to boot. Not a book I should have read but there you go. You never know until read them. What I do know is, I won't be keeping it.

Erec Rex 4 - The Three Furies by Kaza Kingsley is the book that started to lose me for this series. I found I was kind of skipping paragraphs from time to time. I liked the first three books but something wasn't working for me in this one. I looked the series up on the Wikipedia and found out there's a 5th book and a 6th to follow. I'm still curious about what happens to the characters so I decided to put a request in for #5. Nice thing about the library is I don't have to spend any money to be disappointed.

Tintin & Snowy 1 is a slim hardcover filled with bits and pieces from the books about Snowy and Tintin. I got it cheap and read quickly through it. There's nothing of value here for anyone who has read the comics.

  

Wyrme Weald 1 - Returner's Wealth by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell is a new series about a dry place and dangerous place filled with weird characters and beasts. A 17 year old guy gets in trouble on his job so he heads out into the wastelands to steal a Wyrme egg and get rich. It doesn't go so well. Luckily he meets up with an old guy who teaches him a bunch of interesting things. I found it harder to poke my nose into than some of the guys other series. I really liked most of their books. This was the only one that sort of disappointed. I found I was skimming once in a while.

Beverly Gray's Assignment by Clair Blank is a pretty tame story about a young woman reporter and her adventures. There's a bit of detecting and running about. There's nothing much to recommend about but it was a quick read and cost less than a buck. I got a couple more of them and will read them down the way.

The Magikeepers 1 by The Eternal Hourglass by Erica Kirov has a young guy named Nick find out magic is real. He lives in Las Vegas where is dad does a magic act, not a real magic show of course. Nick gets apprenticed to a big name stage magician who introduces him to the world of real magic. There's a danger and mystery attached to the new life and people die. It's not bad but not great. I got it cheap at a library sale and won't bother keeping it. I'll go look for others in the series at the library sometime.

Nothing really outstanding but the Grimm books. I did buy them but I might as they turn up in the used book shops. They've been scarce so far. The rest are going or already gone.

Babylon 5 S3D4

 

J. Michael Straczynski wrote all 4 of the episodes on this disc and they are a good lot of stories. The Shadow War is going to get some people killed, we meet some old friends, and learn some secrets.

A Late Delivery From Avalon  April 22 1996

Written by JMS and directed by Michael Vejar

Micheal  York shows up at the station claiming to be Arthur, King Of The Britains. He really isn't. He really was one of the gunnery men in the Earthforce battle ship that fired the first shots in the Earth-Minbari war. He's been carrying the guilt around for 10 years and it turned him into King Arthur.

He wanders the ship at first. Finding an old woman in down below that had been robbed by some scum bags he sets out to get her gold frame with the picture of her dead husband in it. He makes short work of the villains but they have pals. G'Kar had come along in the middle of the fight and he jumps in when the pals show up. Together they defeat their foes and share a drink.

Dr Franklin confronts Arthur with the truth and things don't go so well. Delenn becomes the Lady In The Lake and takes the sword from Arthur freeing him from his guilt. He leaves the station and joins the Narn resistance. It's a beautiful story and one of my favorites. It's a nice part for Michael York and he was really good in the role. It's episodes like this that make the series so good.

Ship Of Tears  April 29 1996

Written by JMS and directed by Michael Vejar

 

Bester returns to the station and Ivanova slaps him one across the face. It draws blood. Bester asks Sheridan for help. Bester's lover is a telepath and she's been given to the Shadows by the PsiCorp. He wants to get her back. Sheridan takes Bester in the Whitestar to attack the ship. They find a ship full of telepaths that have been augmented by Shadow technology. They are going to be installed in Shadow ships. They will blocked the pilots from being blocked by telepaths in attacking ships. Dr Franklin wakes one of them up and it turns out to be a bad thing. He can't undo the damage so he has them frozen. Bester isn't happy when he leaves. He's a bastard that guy. Near the end of the episode the Shadows start attacking openly. I like this episode a lot too, not as much as the previous, but it's a nice bit of background on the Shadows and their style.

Interludes And Examinations  May 6 1996

Written by JMS and Jesus Trevino

Dr Franklin comes to realize he's addicted to stims after Mr Garibaldi observes the doc acting outint he Medlab. Londo is expecting his old girlfriend Adira and he's ignoring Mr Mordon. Mordon has her killed and Londo suspects Lord Refa.

Sheridan argues that the Vorlon's should get involved in the war but Kosh disagrees. Sheridan pushes him and the Vorlon strikes back, slashing his face. The Vorlon agrees to start fighting. After the Vorlons help the Brakiri fight off the attacking Shadow ships Mordon and some Shadows attack and kill Kosh.

Mr Mordon gets Londo back in his clutches again. Sadly some of my favorite characters make such tragic and fatal flaws. Another really good episode, lots of nice dialog and some action. There's a good advance to the Shadow war and the loss of an interesting but troublesome character. The new Kosh will not be as nice.

War Without End Part One  May 13 1996

Written by JMS and directed by Michael Vejar

On Minbar Ranger One gets a letter from Valen from 900 years ago. It's been in storage for all that time, waiting to be delivered to him on that certain date. Ranger One is Jeffrey Sinclair who is played by Michael O'Hare. He reads the letter and heads to Babylon 5 where he joins with Invova, Delenn and Sheridan. They stop off at Epsilon 3, the planet near the station, and pick up a Zathrus and some gear.

They travel to Sector 14 where they encounter Babylon 4. It's the same story told in the episode Babylon Squared but told from a different angle. On route to Sector 14 Delenn tells them that they are going to steal the station and send it back in time to the previous Shadow war nearly a thousand years in the past. Passing through the time rift, held open by the Great Machine on Epsilon 3, the Whitestar goes back in time 6 years and kicks the ass of the Shadow ships sent to blow it up. Sheridan has some time travel adventures. I always have liked that this story is connected to a story that happened 2 years ago. JMS does well with the time travel part of the story. It was nice to see Jeffrey Sinclair back, though only briefly.

Another good disc of stories. That will tide me over until I get to the next disc.

40140 Flower Cart

 

When you buy $75 at the LEGO store this January you get this little set for free. I was picking up the current batch of Collectible Minifigs and got to the magic number. I rarely get the freebie set at the store, maybe 2 or 3 times a year, as I don't buy much stuff in one go there. The current batch of new sets have little interest to me so I doubt that I would wind up with another.

It's a Creator set called 40140 Flower Cart. It's got 71 parts and probably would sell for a 5'er. Here's the description where they hint you can use it with the new Detective Office.

Buy flowers and more at the charming Flower Wagon!

Meet the happy flower man at his charming Flower Wagon, featuring a yellow and white awning, large wrought-iron-look wheels, broom, shovel, bucket and a hidden wooden-like barrel containing 2 cookie elements. This delightful model will give an added dimension to any of the Creator Expert modular sets, especially the 10246 Detective’s Office! Brighten up your day with a colorful bouquet of flowers! Includes a flower man minifigure with accessories.

• Includes a flower man minifigure with accessories
• Features a yellow and white awning, flowers, large wrought-iron-look wheels and a hidden wooden-like barrel with 2 cookie elements
• Accessories include broom, bucket and shovel elements
• Meet the happy flower man!
• Buy a colorful bouquet!
• Check out the hidden barrel!
• Combine with the 10246 Detective’s Office and other LEGO® Creator Expert modular building sets
• Flower Wagon measures over 2” (6cm) high, 3” (8cm) long and 1” (5cm) wide

I didn't bother to build it, instead I packed it away with the other small sets that I might sell off later on. There's nothing in it I need.

Science Fiction Sunday 320

The Mysterious Planet is the first part of a season long story that makes up the 23rd series. It first aired September 6-27 1986. It's been about a year and half since the last season finished broadcast. Colin Baker is still the 6th Doctor and Nicola Bryant is Peri Brown. It's the last season for Colin and the 2nd last serial for Peri. Eric Saward is the Script Editor and John Nathan-Turner is the Producer. Robert Holmes wrote the script and Nicolas Mallett directed.

The Tardis is pulled into a space station in the first computer aided tracking shot at the BBC. Colin Baker said the shot cost a fortune and in the making of featurette they show the cost from a production report. It was about £8,000 and while it's a good shot the money could have been better spent.

The Doctor exits the Tardis and finds himself amongst some Time Lords. They tell him he's on trial for being his interfering self. The prosecutor shows footage, collected from the Tardis's magical technology, of the Doctor and Peri on the planet Ravolox. The Doctor and Peri find the place very Earth like and it turns out that they are right. It is the Earth, somehow moved 2 light years from where it should be. Peri is upset and the Doctor reminds her that it's a couple of million years into the future so anything could have happened.

The society on Ravalox is divided into two groups. One lives above ground in a rather primitive state. Joan Sims plays the Queen of that group. Some of you might know Joan from the Carry On films. I recently got the boxed set of the series of 30 films and the 13 episodes of the TV series Carry On Laughing. I need to get cracking on that one soon. I've seen all the films at one time or another but this lot has commentaries and other odd bits.

The other group lives in the underground tubes of the left over London Subways system. They are guided by a robot that they call the Immortal. Some criminals have come to Ravalox to steal and they get caught up in the goings on. Things get blown up, people die and the robot is defeated. Between the clips from the Matrix the Doctor comments on the proceedings, objecting when he thinks he should. I thought the story was about average and that's about what I would say about the extras. You can see a list of them on the cover above. 

31019 Forest Animals

Here's the description of 31019 Forest Animals from the LEGO site (I actually copied it from Brickset since I was there for the pictures.) When I saw the sets title I thought that the forest animals weren't from any forest around here.

Play with the 3-in-1 forest monkey with his banana and toucan friend!

This cheeky forest monkey demands attention! Pose his arms, legs and tail into all sorts of positions and adjust his eyes, eyebrows and opening mouth to change his expression. Grab a tasty banana and play games together with the colorful toucan. Then rebuild the forest monkey into a choice of 2 crazy new models – a super-cute teddy bear or a very naughty squirrel!

• 3-in-1 model: rebuilds into a teddy bear or squirrel
• Features an opening mouth, adjustable eyebrows, turning eyes, poseable arms, legs and a curling tail
• Toucan features a multicolored beak, moveable tail and wings
• Adjust the eyes, eyebrows and mouth to create loads of funny expressions
• Let the monkey hang off anything with its gangly arms
• Grab a tasty banana!
• Monkey measures over 5” (14cm) high, 5” (13cm) long and 9” (25cm) wide
• Toucan measures over 5” (6cm) high, 3” (10cm) long and 2” (6cm) wide
• Squirrel measures over 5” (14cm) high, 4” (12cm) long, 2” (7cm) and wide 
• Teddy bear measures over 4” (11cm) high, 1” (3cm) long and 2” (7cm) wide

I lucked out and found a whole bunch of the set for half price. Normally the 272 piece set sells for 20 bucks. With half off that brings the price per part to about 3.7¢ and that's always pleasant, especially when most of the parts are small. There's some good bits; 17 tiles: 8 tan, 4 red, 5 reddish brown; 8 cheese slopes, and 14 reddish brown robot arms. The tiles and cheese slopes are always good to have but I'm not sure what I'm going to do with those 150 plus robot arms. The rest of the mix are all good to average useable parts. Since a good number of the parts are reddish brown and tan I kept buying the sets as I came across them. It's hard to find sets at half price anymore, not since the toy became the #1 in the world.

There are 14 of the first tan curved brick and 2 of the next one. They could come in handy sometime. I always like getting bricks with a stud on the side. I don't think you could have enough of them. I was talking about that sort of thing with a fellow from the local club. No matter how much you plan your project, and how many you mass of a part, it seems that as soon as you get working on that build you run out of them sooner than you thought you would. Of course careful planning would eliminate that but it's not how I build. It's more figure it out on the fly from a vague idea and some random pencil markings on graph paper. There's an occasional need to tear down and re-build.

All in all not a bad set, even at full price, made better with the discount. I'd have picked up more at that price, you know, if I had seen them.

Friday Night Movies 511

We watched Machete Kills as our first film. It's the 2013 sequel to the 2010 Machete and it's written and directed by Austin Texas film maker Robert Rodriguez. There's quite the cast as you can see from this chunk copied from the Wikipedia: Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, Tom Savini, Billy Blair, Electra and Elise Avellan, Felix Sabates and Jessica Alba reprise their roles from the first film, as well as being joined by series newcomers Mel Gibson, Demián Bichir, Amber Heard, Sofía Vergara, Lady Gaga, Antonio Banderas, Cuba Gooding Jr., Vanessa Hudgens, Alexa Vega, William Sadler, Marko Zaror and Charlie Sheen (credited by his real name of Carlos Estévez).

Danny plays Machete, an ex Mexican Federali, who is asked by the President to go after a crazy guy named Mendez who stole a nuke. He's a drug kingpin and revolutionary wants to drop his new bomb on Washington DC. The Prez wants to put a stop to that and he offers Machete citizenship if he goes in and do what he does best. Kill. Machete is reluctant but he goes along with the plan. He heads to St Antonio and a meet up with another agent, blond and beautiful Amber Heard, who leads him to Vanessa Hudgens. Vanessa's a hooker in a brothel run by her mother, who's played by Sofía Vergara. They have a connection to Mendez.

That's Sofia with her machine gun bra up front and Alexa Vega on the right. They were in such a hurry to chase after Machete that they forgot to change out of their working clothes. Some of you might remember Alexa from the Spy Kids movies. Machete makes it to Mendez who has Vanessa killed for bringing Machete to him. Sofia is pissed when she finds out and she brings whores and guns and bullets for vengeance. Several more people get involved with the chase around Mexico as Machete tries to get Mendez back to the US. Mendez is suffering from a split personality and the craziest one has hooked a trigger for the bomb to his heart. If he dies the rocket launches sending the nuke to the heart of DC. If he's kidnapped his men have orders to offer a 10 million dollar reward for his death.

Michelle pops in and give Machete some support. There are plenty of gun battles, heads getting chopped off, and fist fights. It just gets more and more over the top as the story plays out. At one point Machete is hanging off a wire attached to the spinning blade of a helicopter and while he's rotating in the air his machete is hacking off the heads of the villain's henchmen. There's lot of violence aimed toward helicopters and pretty much anything that gets in the way of a bullet or a sharp edge takes a hit or a stab. Luckily for us, and the US, Machete is pretty much unkillable and he slaughters onward. Eventually the bomb prob leads Machete to Mel Gibson, who plays the nut job head of a large corporation. He had a vision of the world's end and he wants to be off planet, hiding in his space station, when the shit storm comes. Like the recently watched Snowpiercer it reminds me that rich business men should not be making decisions that affect pretty much anyone. All the elements of the story lead us to the end of the movie where it leaves us with a huge cliffhanger that could be solved in the sequel. There's a trailer for Machete Kills Again ...In Space. I hope they make that one. Machete Kills was a fun enough movie, it passed the time and there were some pretty ladies kicking people's asses. It seems less people liked it and a lot of the critics gave it a poor rating. Not sure why, it isn't much worse or better than Machete. I'd watch both of them again.

We watched the BluRay of Maleficent next. It's the Disney re-imagining of the Snow White story that somehow took 15 versions of the script to retell. It's written by Linda Woolverton and directed by Robert Stromberg. She's written all sorts of Disney movies I don't care for and this is the first film from a guy who's been a special effects designer on almost 100 films including Avatar and the recent Disney Alice In Wonderland.

The movie changes the story to make Maleficent a wronged fairy who has her wings stolen by the upwardly mobile Stefan. He meets Maleficent when they were kids. He wants to live in the castle and when he gets there he forgets her. The King wants to conquer the moors where the fairy folk live but the adult Maleficent is too powerful for his army. The dying King offers anyone who kills Maleficent the keys to the kingdom. Stefan turns creep and uses his old relationship to get close to Maleficent. He drugs her and cuts off her wings but he's too weak to kill her. Stefan takes over the kingdom and has a child called Aurora. Maleficent turns up and puts the curse on her. In order to keep Aurora safe the king has all the spinning wheels collected, broken up and stored in a dungeon in the castle. This forces everyone in the kingdom to get all their cloth from another kingdom. Stefan repeatedly makes all the wong choices and things get worse and worse in the kingdom. Another film with a rich guy who can't lead worth shit.

Three annoying fairies take Aurora to a small house in the woods were Maleficent keeps an eye on her. I really disliked the new version of the three fairies. Over time Maleficent grows to love the little girl and befriends her. Aurora thinks she's her fairy godmother and she's not really wrong. What I thought was wrong was the idea of making Maleficent the hero. By the end of the movie she's kissed Aurora awake and Stefan is dead.

All these changes didn't work that well for me. It took me ages to get interested in the film. I did read that they chopped 15 minutes out of the start of the film in order to shorten it. They worked the remaining scenes with re-shoots which didn't make it better. I think they spent too much time on the look of the film. I wouldn't need to see it again. 

Dick Turpin Series 1

 

I watched the 13 episodes of the first series of Dick Turpin with Richard O'Sullivan as the famous highwayman. Some might know Robin from the 1973 - 1976 series Man About The House. I'm guessing most American's don't know it but it ran in Winnipeg when I lived there. I enjoyed it, it made me laugh and there was Sally Thomsett with her bikinis and over bite. We got a lot of the British shows and I watched a lot of their stuff in the 1960s and 1970s. Man About The House got remade in the US as Three's Company. You might have seen that. I did and I haven't wanted to see it again despite Suzanne Somers and her bikinis. I have a slight interest in seeing Man About The House again and I have a DVD set on my Amazon UK Want List. I just haven't made the jump to ordering it yet. I have so much piling up to watch that I'm not in much of a hurry.

Dick Turpin was created by Richard Carpenter, Paul Knight and Sydney Cole. Don't really know much about them or the work I see listed on their Wikipedia pages. Carpenter joined John Kane, Charles Crichton and Paul Wheeler as writers on the series. It aired between 1979 and 1982 and there were 26 half hour episodes and one feature length episode. It was filmed on location at Maidenhead in Berkshire, England. There's some ok scenery in the film but nothing too exciting.

Dick is a highwayman who has adventures fighting the tyranny of the local Lord. He's a big cruel git and he's got an even worse henchman. Dick steals from the rich and gives to the poor and downtrodden with the help of a young sidekick named Swiftnick. Sounds like Robin Hood, doesn't it. It's much like a lot of the historical adventure series from the 1950s and 1960s. Plenty of running about, stealing things, getting chased, being caught and escaping. Sounds like Doctor Who. My favorite adventure show of the time is the Richard Greene series The Adventures Of Robin Hood. It started in 1959 and ran 4 series. Luckily that's available as a cheap box set from Mill Creek. I got the 4 season set of 143 episodes for about 15 bucks.

Dick Turpin isn't that good. It is in color and you can see the 13 episodes on YouTube in the link above. The quality of the video is mixed, some much better than others. I'm happy to have seen this on YouTube. It saves me some money by not ordering it from Amazon UK and finding out it's just ok. I'd rather re-watch the Robin Hood set. I did order a set of Sir Frances Drake from England a while back. I'll be watching that sometime soon I hope.

The 39 Steps 1935

I don't think I had seen the 1935 British film The 39 Steps since the 1980s. I know I saw the 1959 version with Kenneth Moore in the 1960s but it's been a while since I've seen that one too. I have it coming from Netflix sometime in the future. Don't know when, maybe it will be a surprise. The 1939 film was directed by Alfred Hitchcock and written by Charles Bennett and Ian Hay. It's adapted from the 1915 John Buchan novel of the same name. It's quite popular, the British Film Institute ranked it the fourth best British film of the 20th century back in 1999.

Robert Donat stars in the 1939 film as a man who gets caught up in a deadly mystery. While he's watching Mr Memory on the music hall stage some shots are fired. A frightened woman jumps into his arms and talks him into giving her a place to stay. She tells him she's a spy and she's being chased by enemy agents. He takes her to his apartment and lets her sleep there. She gets murdered later that night. He finds a map clutched in her hand and that leads him to what might have been his doom. Luckily he's fairly smart and resourceful. He figures that he can solve the mystery and clear himself of the murder. He travels to Scotland on the train and he nearly gets caught by the police. There's plenty of running about and getting chased. He meets a woman on the train who doesn't believe him at first. They run about and nearly get killed a time or two. It's exciting and there's some good bit of humor. The villain is a pretty creepy guy. He's part of the 39 steps.

There's some nice scenery, a big part of the film is shot in Scotland, both in Edinburgh and Glen Coe in the Highlands. Many movies have filmed in the area. Monty Python And The Holy Grail and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban to name a couple that I like. Rob Roy for those that like that. Part of the studio work was filmed in the Lime Grove Studio. Nice to know Hitchcock worked in the same studio as Doctor Who. All in all a nice entertaining film. One to watch once in a while. I hope I don't wait another 20 or 30 years before I see it again. 

Night Train To Munich 1940

I tried watching Night Train To Munich a couple of weeks ago but the copy from the library was so bad that it stopped about a third of the way through. I quit and ordered it up from Netflix. It's a 1940 British film directed by Carol Reed. It was based on a novel, Report on a Fugitive, by Gordon Wellesley and the screenplay is by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder. You might remember that they were the guys behind the St Trinian's movies. They also wrote the screenplays for The Lady Vanishes, Ghost Train and Green For Danger.

James Harcourt plays a Hungarian scientist who escapes the German invasion of Prague. Margaret Lockwood is his daughter. She's arrested and tossed into a concentration camp. Rex Harrison plays a British spy who goes under cover to help get her out of the clutches of the Nazis. There's plenty of sneaking around and chases and getting caught and escaping. The movie spends a good amount of time on a train as you might imagine from the title. I like trains in movies.

It's a good spy film with some good actors, both the leads and the supporting cast. The script is pretty good and there's some nice sets and the like. It's all filmed in London at the Gaumont-British Studios, Lime Grove, Shepherd's Bush. It's the same studio where they shot the first few series of Doctor Who. The studio was first opened in 1915, closed in 1991, and demolished 2 years later. A lot of the commentaries and making of featurettes on the DW DVDs have complaints about Lime Grove being way too small, hot and poorly equiped.

That's Basil Radford as Charters and Naunton Wayne as Caldicott. According to the IMDb: The second of four cinematic appearances by Charters and Caldicott. They first appeared in The Lady Vanishes (1938), also written by Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder. They later appeared in Crok's Tour (1941), and in Millions Like Us (1943), which was also written by Gilliat and Lauder. They are pretty good characters and they add a nice bit of humor and nationalism.