PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

What I Read In June 2015

Well, catching up seems to be going at a snail's pace. Still, only 7 months behind, been worse. Only 8 books for the month, not a bad average for the time. In 2016 I've picked up the pace.

 

The Handsome Man's Deluxe Café by Alexander McCall Smith. In the 15th book in the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series Mma Makutsi wants to open a café but her plans get a radical change before the end of the book. Mma Ramotswe helps a lady with no memory. I enjoyed this one like I have enjoyed the previous books. There was one out last year I haven't found used yet.

The New Jimmy Hatlo Book by Jimmy Hatlo. A small collection of newspaper cartoons from 1952. Hatlo had a strip called They'll Do It Every Time. Here's a sample.

   

Awful Auntie by David Walliams. It sure lives up to it's name, that Auntie Alberta is one evil cow. Stella Saxby has lost her parents in a car crash. Auntie Alberta comes to murder Stella and take her mansion and money. Will Stella survive her Auntie? There's a good story and plenty of entertaining characters. I've read three of David's books and all of them are worth reading. I've getting more of them from the UK as they aren't all here yet.

The Saint In New York by Leslie Charteris. Simon Templar is in New York City where he gets hoodwinked into fighting some gangsters. It's pretty entertaining with lots of dirty double dealing and secrets. Plenty of gangsters take their final dirt nap. The book was seen being read in a café in Inglourious Basterds. It features in an episode of Corner Gas and that got written up on the Wikipedia.

A copy of the novel The Saint in New York was featured prominently in an episode of the Canadian sitcom Corner Gas in 2004. In the episode "Comedy Night", the show's lead character, Brent Leroy, attempts to sway a local ladies' reading club away from examining Oprah's Book Club-style titles like The Life of Pi and into adventure fiction such as Don Pendleton's The Executioner and The Saint in New York. Brent compares The Saint in New York's plot with the "fish out of water" plot of The Life of Pi. According to the book Tales from Dog River: The Complete Corner Gas Guide by Michele Sponagle, the show's prop department had to obtain multiple copies of the novel for filming, but found it difficult to do so since it is out of print; they had to order copies from as far away as Florida. (Ultimately, however, only one copy of the book actually appeared on screen, specifically the 1980s reprint edition by Charter Books.)

   

The Wide-Awake Princess by E D Baker. It's a retelling of Sleeping Beauty with a sister Princess that doesn't fall asleep because she's impervious to magic. I've liked all of E D Baker's books so far. They're funny and delightful.

The Courageous Exploits Of Dr Syn by Russell Thorndike. It's the 5th book in the Scarecrow Of Romney Marsh series. I was interested in the novels because I had just seen a second movie that was made from the books. Disney made one in 1963 but before that Hammer put out Captain Clegg. I looked to see if the library had any novels and this one was available. The book was entertaining and I wanted to read the rest of the series but they aren't there. I just ordered the whole 7 books for my Kindle for just under 13 bucks.

 

Unlocking The Spell by E D Baker. More adventures with the Wide-Awake Princess. Very enjoyable. I plan to read Baker's other books again and I'm sure I'll enjoy them again when I do.

Fantastic Saint by Leslie Charteris. The stories have a bit of a science fictional bend. One story is about a guy who has created a race of giant ants. Simon burns his house down with the giant ants in it. And really, who wouldn't. The rest of the stories are all right, most I breezed through.

Not a bad bunch of books, glad I read 'em.

Born In Flames 1983

Born In Flames is a 1983 documentary style sf film by writer director Lizzie Borden. It's got lots of people talking about all the horrible stuff that happens to women. It was sort of interesting but not the kind of story that I like that much. Too much of a reality reminder that the world sucks. I just didn't care for the format. I wouldn't need to see it again.

Hell Baby 2013

 

Hell Baby is a 2013 horror comedy that had me laughin' every once in a while. It's written and directed by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon. They're worked on a lot of films and TV in the last twenty years, both in front and behind the camera. Rob Corddry and Leslie Bibb buy the house of blood in a run down neighborhood in New Orleans. They got it cheap and plan to fix it up. They didn't reckon on Leslie getting possessed. Keegan Michael Key plays the guy who lives in the breezeway, he's been there a while, 15 years, as the house has been empty a long time. Strange supernatural things happen, people occasionally die. There's plenty of jokes and I laughed at a good number of them. Some are pretty gross. I'd watch it again. It was fun enough.

Saint Nick

Saint Nick is the US title of the 2010 Dutch film Sint (Saint). It's written and directed by Dick Mass who had made videos for Golden Earring and several feature films I haven't seen. Sinterklaas is the Saint Nick of the title and he's a right bastard. We meet him at the beginning of the movie, it's December 5 1492 and ex-bishop Nick and his gang of thugs are visiting the town for their usual killing and looting. Some of the villagers get riled up and attack the men. They burn the ex-bishop's ship. He returns any time December 5 has a full moon.

The next time we see Nick it's 1968 and then it jumps to the present day. People don't believe the Saint Nick legend but some of them get pretty fucked up just the same. One teen fights back and there's a huge body count.

It's was pretty entertaining in a monster killing folks kind of way. It was interesting to see Amsterdam in a horror movie. It's kind of gory and definitely not a Christmas movie for kids. In fact Maas had a complaint filed against him. Here's the bit from the Wikipedia.

While children are not permitted to see the film, parental concern arose over the film's poster, seen in the streets and in the lobbies of movie theaters. It shows Sinterklaas with a mutilated face and a malevolent look. Some people were concerned that this could be confusing and frightening for little children that still believe in Sinterklaas. A legal complaint was filed in October 2010, requesting the removal of all posters. In the subsequent court case, director Dick Maas argued that if parents could make their children believe that Sinterklaas existed they could also inform their children that the man on the poster was not the real Sinterklaas. The court ruled in favor of Maas, noting that the mutilated face was not visible enough on the poster, and rejected the complaint.

The Saint Series 1

I was excited to see that Shout! Factory/Timeless Media put out The Saint: The Complete Series about a year ago. It's one of my all time favorite shows and it was nice to see the box set. It's the first time that the complete 118 episodes are available in a US release. The show had 6 series, the first 4 are in black and white and the last two in color. The series was developed by Robert S Baker from the stories of Leslie Charteris. There were dozens of stories and plenty of a good number of novels, many of which were adapted to the show. There are 36 books by Charteris and several more by other authors. I'm only interested in the ones by Leslie. They recently made their way to eBooks and I'm considering buying them.

The complete series had a $200 list price and at first it was usually over $150. I waited. I'd already had all the episodes in various US and UK editions but I wanted the new version because it has more commentaries and featurettes that aren't on the US edition of the color episodes that I had. I could have picked up the color set of the UK release to get them but it would be better to have US DVDs in the long run. When it got to be $89 on a Deal of the Day I picked one up. Today it's going for $130 which is still a pretty good deal for 5,782 minutes of Simon Templar.

Back in the early days of DVD A&E, tops on my list of the worst DVD companies ever, had control of a good number of British series. They put out the programs in expensive DVD sets and in the case of The Saint, and The Champions, they never finished the series. Luckily most of those properties are no longer in their hands.

In 2001 A&E started with the color episodes of series 5 & 6 in 2 disc sets at $45 each. The 47 episodes were packed into 7 sets which totaled $315. They were hard to find cheap and I never bought them. In 2003 the 7 sets were packed into the Megaset which had a $200 list. Eventually I got one for a more reasonable price and I've enjoyed the episodes 3 or 4 times since. There was a separate release of the two part story Vendetta With The Saint that had a commentary by Roger Moore. That commentary wasn't included in the Megaset but it is included in the Shout! Factory release.

A&E put out the 2 sets of The Saint: The Early Years. They were pretty pricey, I don't remember the list but they sold for $45-50 a set. They only collected the first 28 episodes of the 71 B&W episodes. Then they quit. What jerks, huh.

Series 1 had a dozen episodes and they aired in the last quarter of 1962. I watched them when they aired in Canada a short time later. We got a lot of the British shows there and I was immediately interested in the adventures of Simon Templar. I even started reading the books when I was still a teen. Here's the rundown of the episodes. I'm pilfering the synopsis from the IMDb so I don't have to write my own. Then I can look this up and set all the info on a series of posts. The synopsis' were all written by "don @ minifie-1". He's written 11,768 of them. Wow, huh. They are well written and nice and concise. I've put the listings below so the post isn't so long.

Roberto Rossellini's Unofficial War Trilogy

A guy I know mentioned he was watching Robert Rossellini's Unofficial War Trilogy and I got interested enough to get them from the library. There were three films all done at the end of World War II. I'm not a big war movie fan, especially the ones that are more true to life. Still, it's always a good idea to be reminded of what went on in the past.

  

Rome, Open City 1945, Paisan 1946 and Germany, Year Zero 1948. 

In Rome, Open City the Nazi's gun down a pregnant woman who ran out into the street and later they execute a priest in the resistance. Paisan has 6 short segments that deal with the Italian Campaign by the Allied Forces. It's almost light hearted compared to the other two. Germany, Year Zero is about a small boy who poison's his sick father and then falls off a building to his death.

They aren't war films with battles and brave soldiers. It's regular folks dealing with the day to day life of citizens in a war zone. Nothing much good happens to anyone and all you can hope for is a swift death. The people in a warzone will do pretty much anything they can to survive. Sometimes it leads to their deaths. Good films and a good reminder that bombing cities leaves the citizens pretty fucked up. Worth seeing for that.

Hell And Back 2015

Here's another animated movie, of a totally different sort. Kids shouldn't see this movie. Unless they want to laugh. It's not appropriate for them but I know they'd laugh at a lot of the jokes. Hell And Back is a 2015 movie that has characters voiced by Nick Swardson, Jennifer Coolidge, Mila Kunis, Bob Odenkirk, T.J. Miller, Rob Riggle, Susan Sarandon, and Danny McBride. It's about three guys who work at a run down pier carnival. It's a place near death and the people running it, Augie, Remy and Curt, don't have any money to fix it up. Remy gets a book with a weeping Devil from the Fortune Teller and he thinks it might be a good attraction to vamp interest in the Gates Of Hell ride. Before the public can get a look at it, Curt and Remy make a blood oath on the book. Curt breaks the oath and he gets sucked down to hell. Serves him right, he's kind of a nob. The other two go after him and they all have an adventure in hell where they meet the Devil, Bob Odenkirk, and a demon named Deema, Mila Kunis. There's plenty of gags and jokes, some funny and some not, most rude. It's not going to be for everyone. Many mom's wouldn't approve of the male rape jokes but I could be wrong. I got a few laughs. The animation is pretty nice looking with lots of weird lumpy and highly stylized characters. Who knows if you'd like it? Only one way to find out.

Postman Pat: The Movie 2014

I picked up a copy of Postman Pat: The Movie at the library because I saw that Rupert Grint, Stephen Mangan, Jim Broadbent and David Tennant all did voices for the movie. It's a 2014 animated feature based on the long running British TV show. It's a TV show for the wee ones and this movie seems aimed at kids who are a good bit older. Some people on the IMDb said their kids were scared of the robotic Postman Pat and his mechanical kitty. It got mixed reviews from the critics and it only scores a 4.6 on the IMDb.

The story revolves around Pat, Stephen Mangan, wanting to take his lovely wife Sara, Susan Duerden, on a trip to Italy for the honeymoon they never had. He's planning to use his bonus but sadly the Special Delivery Service manager Edwin Carbunkle, Peter Woodward, has taken away the employee bonus. Poor Pat's unhappy and dreads telling Sara she's not going to Italy. Later that evening he sees Simon Cowbell, Robin Atkins Downs, hosting the reality talent show You're The One. The show is coming to their town. One of the show's Grand Prizes is a record contract and a trip to Italy. I know who could use that trip to Italy. Rupert Grint plays one of the contestants and David Tennant plays his manager.

Pat gives Mr Cowbell a Susan Boyle like surprise when he sings and he gets to go to the final in London. Ronan Keating supplies Pat's singing voice. SDS CEO Mr Brown, Jim Broadbent, thinks Pat being on the show is all great. He wants to use Pat in a publicity campaign for the company. While that's going on Carbunkle has put his plan to replace the postmen with robots in action. His first designs were not so friendly but seeing the popularity of Pat on the show he makes all the robots look like Pat. They only thing they deliver is chaos but they look enough like Pat to fool the citizens of the town and poor Pat's standing in the community takes a plunge.

Don't worry it will all come out nicely in the end. I liked the movie a lot, even though it's pretty sappy and a story you know. The animation is ok, nothing outstanding, but quite pretty. There are some musical numbers and Pat and Sara are such a cute couple. You can see some of the TV show on YouTube, if you go look.

Science Fiction Sunday 376

H G Wells' Invisible Man is a 1958 British TV show that I remembered fondly from my youth. There were two series, each with 13 episodes. I'd seen them in 2010 when someone posted them to the Internet Archive. You can buy a set of the 26 episodes here in the US but the set is 60 bucks. With the arrival of my multi region DVD player I bought a much cheaper DVD set from Amazon UK. I paid £12.17 for mine but it's £19.99 right now. At the higher price it's still about half the US cost. You can also play some Region 2 discs with VLC Player on your PC. These work fine on my PC.

Robert Beatty provides the voice of Peter Brady in the pilot episode and Tim Turner in most of the series. They are uncredited as was little person Johnny Scripps who played Brady when he was a clothed but headless body. No one knows who played the bandaged Brady in most of the episodes but Tim Turner played him in some of the later episodes. There's such a variety of actors playing the bandaged man that their differences in body shape and movement stand out.

Lisa Daniely is Peter's widowed sister. Her name was Jane Brady Wilson in the pilot but the series changed her first name to Diane for some reason. Diane's first role was in a 1949 TV movie. Her career would last until 1996 and she was in a lot of TV, most of which I haven't seen. I did see her in an episode of Secret Agent, The Saint, Doctor Who serial The Space Pirates and the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes episode The Crooked Man.

Deborah Watling is Sally Wilson, Peter's cute niece. Some time later she'd appear in Doctor Who where she played Victoria Waterfield, the Second Doctor's companion. Sadly only The Tomb of the Cybermen and The Enemy of the World are the only complete serials in which she appeared to still exist.

Ernest Clark plays Sir Charles Anderson in series 1 and Colonel Ward in series two. He's the government man on the Peter Brady project.

The series was created by Ralph Smart who went onto create Danger Man the year after this program. He'd also wrote, produced and directed on The Buccaneers, The Adventures Of Robin Hood, William Tell and Riptide.

I'm watching the first disc today. It's got the pilot and the first 6 episodes. The pilot never aired but story elements were used in other episodes. I'm putting them below this to make the post shorter.

Friday Night Movies 567

The Golden Cane Warrior was the first film on the agenda. It's a 2014 Indonesian film directed by Ifa Isfansyah. According to the Wikipedia it revives the martial arts film in the country. It's a typical sort of martial arts story. The Guru, or Master, of the Golden Cane School gives the Golden Cane to a young woman Dara. Before the Guru can teach Dara the special movement a spurned student kills his master and takes the Golden Cane. The young girl and a smaller boy run off. He's caught and killed before too long. Dara plans revenge and with the help of Guru's secret son she gets it. It's a bit above average though familiar. It's got some fairly good action and scenery. Part of the enjoyment for me was seeing an Indonesian film. It might be one of the first I've seen. It's expensive by local standards, 2 million US dollars, and it looks pretty good. There's not much CGI in the film and mostly stuff like wire removal.

The White Haired Witch of Lunar Kingdom is a Chinese wuxia-fantasy loosely adapted from Liang Yusheng's novel Baifa Monü Zhuan and directed by Jacob Cheung. There was a 1993 version of the story that is much different. This one has a more elaborate story with all sort of political intrigue and double crossing going on. It kind of overshadows the romance of the main characters, which was more the focus of the original, but there you go. It didn't get too much praise from the critics but I thought it was ok. Not that I needed to buy a copy or anything, I would more like watching the 1993 version.