PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 400

Another 6 pack of SF films from Amazon Prime today. Nothing much good, though one is slightly better than the others.

Battle For Terra is a 2007 animated SF story about a peaceful planet named Terra that gets invaded by the last of the human race. They colonized Mars and Venus then the three planets fought and destroyed themselves. They have little left to keep them going in their generation ship and Terra is their last hope. Rather than ask for a place to stay they survey the city, and kidnap the citizens, to study for weaknesses. A soldier crashes and is saved by a young girl alien. They learn from each other and put a stop to the war so the human's and aliens can live side by side. It's pretty heavy handed and unoriginal. I wouldn't need to see it again.

Earthrise is a 2014 film about three people in a ship headed from Mars to Eath. The Earth was made uninhabitable and the human's are all living on Mars. They send 3 people each year to Earth to help with the restoration of the planet. The trio on the ship blather incessantly and then start to have some hallucinations that nearly wreck the mission. Sadly the movie isn't much good and I was bored for much of it. Another failure to deliver that great low budget movie to me. Well, there's always more crap, huh.

Shockwave Darkside is a 2014 movie about a group of troopers that get stranded on the darkside of the moon. It's a way into the future and the human's have broken into two warring groups that have some vague religious myths. During a battle a ship goes down and the troops try to get to a base. They find out that the Moon was bombed 3.5 billion years ago and that breaks a religious myth all apart. It might end the war. There might have been a better movie if the material had been handled better, mostly I found it boring. It's just soldiers running around in the dark for nearly 90 minutes. 

Extracted is a 2012 movie about an investigation into a man's mind. I saw it had Sasha Roiz in it. I know him in Grimm where he plays the police Captain . Sasha has a machine that lets him into people's brains. He goes into a murder's brain to see if he killed his girlfriend and then gets stuck there for a while. The guy escapes custody and Sasha is trapped. He eventually unravels the murder and gets out before the man dies. It's the best of the lot today and it's only about average.

Dark Planet is a 1997 movie that features another dying Earth. The two factions that fight decide to send some people through a wormhole to another planet that might be good to inhabit. The send some of each faction and a guy named Hawk who had made the trip already. One side hides some men to take over the ship when they get there but they are discovered and die in the battle. It gets a 3.3 on the IMDb and that's a bit high for me. Still failing to find that gem.

Dragon Fury is a US martial arts film that is released by Troma. It's about their usual standard of quality, which is as poor as that poster. Some warriors come from the future to do something. Some baddies follow them and they all run around 1995 Los Angeles fighting with each other and anyone who gets in the way is slaughtered. I'm not ever going to want to watch that again and wouldn't recommend it to anyone. 

Another week gone and 6 more movies on the list. Maybe I'll have better luck next week.

Friday Night Movies 591

Godzilla Battle Royale is a 2014 fan film and it sure looks like it. It's the work of Billy DeBose and it's a sad job to behold. He does have a lot of monsters on the screen but the movie is one long battle with little story to support the fighting. I got bored after a while and it was hard to keep from falling asleep. The monster suits are all fan made and some are better than others. Still they're mostly better than the amateur actors. The crew behind the camera are pretty poor. You can see how poor, the movie is posted on YouTube and I've provided a link to it.

The Curse 2: They Bite was our second feature. It's 1989 movie that I'm told isn't really a sequel to The Curse. I saw it and rated it as Crap on my watched movie list. There were a 3rd and 4th Curse films that also had nothing to do with the others. A young man and woman are traveling in New Mexico when they stop for gas. The attendant warns them not to take the short cut but the guy, an idiot, decides he knows better and off they go. They get a flat and while the guy is changing the tire a snake gets into the car. There's a super short scene at the beginning of the movie that hints of radiation tainted snakes. Later the guy gets bit and he starts to get sicker and sicker. The girl tries to get him to a hospital but he won't hear of it. Jamie Farr makes an appearance as a traveling salesman. He gives the bitten guy an snake bite antidote but it doesn't help. Eventually the guy gets a snake growing out of his hand and then the killing starts. Bo Swenson makes an appearance as a cop. It's pretty much below average and kind of familiar. It's only 98 minutes but kind of dull at times, we were getting restless near the end of the movie. You can see it at the link above but you probably don't need to bother. There are so many better movies to watch.

The Doctor Blake Mysteries Series 1

I saw the library had The Doctor Blake Mysteries in their forthcoming DVD section, and even though I didn't know anything about it, I put my order in to see a copy. Eventually the list got to me and I picked up the 2 disc set on Tuesday. I watched the whole series over the last three days and enjoyed them enough to continue to the end. The series has 10 episodes and they aired February to April in 2013.

It's an Australian series set in late 1950s Ballarat. Doctor Lucien Blake is the main character. He returns home to Ballarat after 33 years to take over his late father's practice. He left town when he was in his 20's to study medicine in Scotland and practice in London. He joined the war effort in WWII as a medical officer and got assigned to the  Far East where he would marry a Chinese woman and have a daughter. They disappeared in the fall of Singapore. He then spent some time in the Thailand Ban Pong POW camp.He has some trouble interacting with people. He often speaks his mind and gets into trouble for not thinking it through.

In Ballarat he also serves as the police surgeon. Blake is a hard man to deal with at times but he proves his worth as a murder investigator. The cases are pretty varied and the murders mix social commentary into the mix. One's about the murder of the first woman doctor in Ballarat, another killed because of a TV game show, stolen gold fuels another murder and a lucrative flower festival drives a greedy man to kill.

As I said I enjoyed them. I liked most of the characters and there's some nice cars and buildings to look at. I'm not sure I would ever need to buy the DVDs. Maybe if they were dirt cheap.

Top Gear Series 19

Top Gear Series 19 first aired January to March 2013 and there were 5 regular episodes and a 2 part Africa Special. The format of the show is pretty much the same, some car testing, some news, more cars, a Star In a Reasonably Priced Car segment, more car blather. James May, Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond host the show.

There was a fun segment where the guys design a car for old people then get some older ladies to go along for the ride. They had the car painted the color of a hearing aid, very beige, and the ladies liked it quite a bit. The guys have replaced the back seats with comfy chairs and that seemed like a great idea. The big bit sticking out of the from of the car is a foam block that acts like a bumper. If you hit another car it isn't visible. Jeremy builds that tiny white car above and takes it on a trip around London. It's awful but he tries to get the Dragons Den people to invest in it. They think he's crackers and he gets no money.

There's plenty of travel, Richard Hammond visits Wales for a Rally in the first episode and then the trio visits Nevada and California to play around with supercars. The 3rd episode has the guys in a race from London to Italy for a football ticket. Richard visits Mexico to review their first supercar in the 4th episode. In the last regular episode Jeremy is in Nevada to race a military remote controlled truck with a Land Rover.

In the two part special the trio head to Africa to find the source of the Nile. They drive and drive and drive and the views get spectacular at times. Nice to see that, I'll never go there.

The Stars in the Stars In The Reasonably Priced Car were Damian Lewis, Mick Fleetwood, Amy Macdonald, Lewis Hamilton and James McAvoy.

Here's a picture of The Stig. He's the show's tame racing car driver and he does the test laps of the fancy cars on the Top Gear track. He also gives driving lessons for the test track to the Stars who come to drive as fast as they can.

All told a nice bunch of episodes.

Rosemary & Thyme Series 2

More murders in lovely settings in Rosemary & Thyme Series 2. Pam Ferris and Felicity Kendall are back for 8 episodes. They work as gardeners for hire and they wind up in some lovely gardens in England, France and Italy. One of the creators of this show, Clive Exton, wrote 10 of the scripts. He also wrote 20 episodes of Agatha Christie's Poirot  with David Suchet and all of Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry Jeeves and Wooster series. The stories continue to be entertaining and I enjoyed watching the whole season in one big gulp. Besides the nice gardens that they feature there are always some nice big old houses to look over. There's another series to come and then they stopped making them.

Carry On ChristmasTV Specials

I picked up a DVD of the Carry On Christmas TV Specials. Unusual, at least for a rather more obscure British program, is that the DVD is produced in the US by Image. There must be a small gang of Carry On fans out there but I haven't ever meet anyone who even knows much about the film series except for Neil Gaiman. I grew up with the Carry On films in Canada. The movies were in the theaters and on TV. I went to see some of them in the theater in the 1970s. The DVD has all four of the Christmas Specials which first aired in 1969, 1970, 1972 and 1973.

Peter Rogers was the producer of the Carry On film series and he produced these TV specials for Thames Television. Early in his career he was the producer of the Roger Moore Ivanhoe TV series. Before that Peter produced 20 films and one of the later ones was Carry On Sergeant. After that hit he produced 30 more Carry On films and some related TV. He still managed to produce many other non Carry On films over the years. Peter appears at the start of each Special with a short intro. The DVD also has a nice 45 minute Q & A with him. It was filmed at Pinewood Studios in 1999 and he brought his dog. The other extra is Carry On Christmas Memories and it's got Peter reminiscing about the Christmas Specials.

Carry on Christmas 1969

The first special was produced after Carry On Up The Jungle and it's pretty much the same cast. It's script is by Talbot Rothwell who wrote a lot of the Carry On films. The TV special is based on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. It's got Sid James as Scrooge and Charles Hawtrey as the Ghost of Christmas Present. I'm a big fan of both Sid and Charles. I'll watch just about anything with them in it. The rest of the cast play multiple characters. When the ghosts come to tell Scrooge what problems his villainous ways cause they show him dreams that are way different than the ones in the Dicken's story.

In the Christmas Past segment Dr Frank N Stein was looking to Scrooge for a loan to finish his monster. Barbara Windsor plays the monster and Bernard Bresslaw her mate.

In Christmas Present Robert Browning wanted a loan from Scrooge to elope with Elizabeth Barrett. Frankie Howerd plays Robert Browning and Hattie Jacques plays Elizabeth Barrett. I like Frankie a whole lot but I understand he's not to everyone's taste. I recently bought several British DVDs to continue enjoying his work.

Christmas Future tells the story of Cinderella. Barbara Windsor plays Cinderella, Frankie Howerd plays the fairy godmother, and Charles Hawtrey plays Buttons.

It's pretty much panto on TV and gaudy costumes are part of panto. You can see some panto on YouTube though much of it amateur. Here's a professional Cinderella Panto with Frank Skinner as Buttons. Peter Rogers is pretty much unashamed about the type of comedy that fueled the Carry On films and the long term popularity seems to indicate that people, other than me, like it too.

Carry on Again Christmas 1970

The second special was written by Sid Colin and Dave Freeman. Sid had co-written Carry On Spying with Talbot Rothwell and Dave would go on to script Carry On Behind and several episodes of the Carry On Laughing TV series plus the 1992 film Carry On Columbus.

The special is loosely based on Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island with Sid James as Long John Sil, Barbara Windsor as Jim Hawkins, Charles Hawtrey as Old Blind Pew and Terry Scott as Squire Treyhornay.

The special was shot in color but broadcast in black and white because of a technician strike at Thames Television. It resulted in the broadcast of all their Christmas shows that year in black and white. Sadly no one thought to keep the color version.

Carry on Christmas or Carry On Stuffing 1972

Talbot Rothwell started the script for the 3rd special, but got ill, and Dave Freeman was brought in to complete it. There's no Sid James this special and Charles Hawtrey thought he might get top billing. Peter Rogers didn't see that  and Charles pulled out of the production.

The setting is an 18th century dinner party where the guests tell stories to entertain each other. One of the stories is an Adam and Eve thing with Barbara Windsor. There were a couple of madrigals.

There's a haunted house story with Hattie Jacques and Joan Sims. The last story is a weird version of Aladdin set in Peking with Barbara Windsor as Aladdin.

Carry On Christmas 1973

Talbot Rothwell was back with the script for the last of the Christmas Specials. Sid James returns as a department store Father Christmas who has fantasies while on the job. 

One's set in 2001 BC, another in some Elizabethan time, and a third in WWI.

There's some ballet and a sketch about Robin Hood. Sid finally finishes his day only to get a ticket for illegally parking his sled and reindeer. 

All the shows are pretty silly, the first two are my favorites of the lot.

In 1983 there was a special called Carry On Laughing's Christmas Classics with Kenneth Williams and Barbara Windsor as hosts. They introduce some funniest moments from the later Carry On films. It's not on this DVD.

Lake Placid: The Final Chapter

The 4th Lake Placid movie is the 2012 TV movie Lake Placid: The Final Chapter. It's directed by Don Michael Paul and the screenplay is by David Reed. David wrote Lake Placid 3, it was his first filmed script. I've only seen one other movie by Don, Tremors 5: Bloodlines, which I thought was decent but not as good as the sequels or the TV series It was still watchable. He's in post-production on Death Race 4.

Elisabeth Rohm plays the sheriff and Yancy Butler, who was the poacher in the 3rd Lake Placid film, is now an EPA agent. She works to keep the crocs in the newly installed electric fence. Robert England is a shady character who leads some men into the fenced off area to get rich from stealing croc eggs. They get slaughtered and the gate gets left open.  Elizabeth's daughter goes camping with some friends. The motor coach driver ignores the warning signs and drives through the gate and into croc territory. They camp down by the lake where, as you'd expect, we get some croc chomping action. There's plenty of standard running and screaming. I liked the Yancy Butler character but thought the movie was bit below average. It might be a 5, but I gave it a 4 because of the poor CGI. It gets 3.7 on average, but I wouldn't give it a 3, it's better than that. I was OK seeing it but glad I didn't buy a copy.

Lake Placid Vs Anaconda

I had the last two Lake Placid movies to watch today. They came from Netflix and need to go back tomorrow. Lake Placid Vs Anaconda is a 2015 TV movie and the 5th in the franchise. It's directed by A B Stone and written by Berkeley Anderson. I watched it first with out noticing I had them out of order. No matter.

Yancy Butler and Corin Nemec are the two leads in the movie. Yancy is now the local sheriff and Corin's a Government wildlife guy. They team up to find his daughter and her sorority sisters. Robert Englund leads some shady science guys into the secure area where the crocs are kept. It's a big chunk of forest with an electric fence to secure the crocs from the nearby town. The shady scientists want the DNA of a croc so they can inject it into an anaconda. They sedate a croc and bring it on board their science trailer. Of course the croc wakes up, just after the snake gets injected, and gets all chompy chompy. The mighty beast's thrashing about in the trailer causes the snake to get out. Robert and the hunter who hired him manage to escape. They try ramming the truck through the gate. The gate's destroyed in the panic and the big critters get out and go looking for some water and food. Teen college girls are a nice light snack. The anaconda gets so big it can crush an SUV. Corin finds his daughter and some of her classmates. The rest got eaten. A lot of people get eaten when giant crocs come chomping. The snake and the croc often fight and both critters can be killed by small arms fire.

It's got a bit of a sense of humor and I liked Yancy Butler as the no nonsense sheriff. The script is pretty much run, scream, chomp with a bit of boiler plate character development. It's diverting but not something I would need to see again. It gets a 3.4 on the IMDb, I'd give it a 4 because it's better than a 3.

Science Fiction Sunday 399

I decided to watch some Science Fiction movies off of Amazon Prime so I can feel that I'm getting some value from my annual subscription. I'd been complaining that I couldn't find anything good to watch in the free movie section. I picked several movies to watch since I started the service and almost all have been stinkers. Today I had better luck, one of the films was actually quite entertaining and worth watching, and another was fairly good.

Enigma has two things wrong with it, it's not very good and it's too short to be a feature film. It's a 2009 film by writer-director's Jason and Matt Shumway. It's only 42 minutes and it's completely filled with cliched story ideas and cheap ass CGI. It's the future and the Earth is at war with some race of aliens. The military has a dangerous alien warrior that they want to transfer from one planet to a moon so they put it on a broken down freighter and send that off. The ship is found later with everyone dead. A team is sent to investigate and they can't figure it out. The General heading the team bitches at them but later we find out he's just a creep in charge of  a secret black ops program that uses an alien pet to take over people's minds and make them kill on command. I hate that secret government organization doing some dirty work. I'm so tired of it. Not a movie I would have needed to see, let alone watch again. I gave it a two on the IMDb where it has thirty-six 10 votes, out of 185, and 5.2 rating. That's vote loading, for sure, hopefully some more people will see the movie and help take it down a peg or two.

Tympanum is about a family that move into an apartment with a portal in the closet. The little girl is the first to see something come out of the portal. It messes up the kitchen. Then the daughter goes through the portal. She comes back all disturbed and wet. Rather than run away the husband takes it into his head to go through and see what's there. He does and while there he turns off a big ray beam device. Some aliens see him and say his turning off the beam would have returned him home, now he's stranded there. What an idiot. The wife follows the husband when his tether is cut. He finds her dead on the beach and the movie ends. What a waste of my time. It moves so slow telling it's story that the film's 70 odd minutes take ages to get through. Give it a miss.

Frequently Asked Questions About Time Travel turned out to be the gem of the afternoon. The first sign of hope that I might like the movie was seeing Chris O'Dowd's credit on the description page, the other was the BBC logo when the movie started. You might remember Chris from The IT Crowd. He's the guy who isn't Moss. I'm a big fan of that show and Chris in general. FAQATT a time travel laced romantic comedy. Chris and his two buddies, Toby and Pete, go to the pub after work. While there they encounter a break in the time continuum in the Gents. Anna Faris is a time traveler, she's been sent to fix the problem, but it doesn't go so well at first. The guys jump around in time, mostly in the pub, and nearly die. The story is fairly complicated but it works well enough. It's all pretty goofy and I had a great time watching it. I'd watch it again and I want to get a copy for my collection.

The movie was the last work for director Gareth Carrivick, he died the year after this came out. He's worked on a good bit of British TV inducing episodes of The Vicar Of Dibley and Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps. The movie was the first script from Jamie Mathieson who has gone onto write episodes of Doctor Who, Being Human and Dirk Gently.

Senn had an interesting idea, the story is set on a corporate owned planet called Pyom. It's been stripped of it's resources and the locals have an uncertain future. The Company can dump Pyom and sell the locals to a new owner or just let them die. We meet Senn and his girlfriend Kana. An alien intelligence arrives to deliver him to the Polychronom. It's a old planet size device that the alien's have been investigating for a long time. The alien's have found that Senn has a link to the machine. He makes contact and the movie is pretty much done. The awakening of the Polychronom changes the way the people who live on Pyom will be treated. It was interesting to look at but pretty pokey moving. I wouldn't need to see it again but once was OK.

Earthbound is another film that was worth seeing once. It's a 2012 goofy romantic SF comedy that was made in Ireland. It's written and directed by Alan Brennan. Rafe Spall plays a guy who has come to adulthood believing a story his father told him. His father claims he was an alien and he took his son to Earth to save themselves from their political enemies. His father dies when he's young. When he grows up he meets a young woman and falls for her. They eventually move in together and he tells her his story. She thinks he's crazy and goes to her sisters. He can't prove his story, none of his alien devices seem to work now. Things get odder and odder, the guy winds up in a mental hospital briefly, then things take a turn for the better. I enjoyed the movie and would watch it again sometime,

Magnetic was another waste of time. I found myself pushing the movie forward pretty regularly so I could get to the end. I found it dull and uninteresting. I should have given it a miss.

Friday Night Movies 590

First up was the Blu-ray of Deadpool. Lot's of violence and swearing, laced with some Rap and constant chatter. Director Tim Miller is mostly been a special effects guy, this is his first film. He does a pretty good job on the stuff that isn't effects and he does a great job on those. The screenplay is by Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. The two of them previously wrote a bit of TV and the screenplay for Zombieland. Rhett wrote the script for GI Joe: Retaliation. The two of them have written scripts for Zombieland 2 and Deadpool 2. Ryan Reynolds is the guy who becomes Deadpool. Except for TJ Miller I didn't really recognize anyone else in the cast from other movies and TV. Leslie Uggams plays an old blind lady. I only learned that from the credits on the IMDb. There's plenty of action and huge set pieces that fill in the origin story. I liked it and would want to see it again someday. I'd buy a copy if I saw it really cheap.

I'd definitely want to watch our second feature over again. Shorts: The Adventure Of The Wishing Rock is a 2009 comedy family film written and directed by Robert Rodriguez. He also wrote some music, did the cinematography, supervised the special effects, was co-editor and co-producer.  A kid finds a rainbow wishing rock and chaos ensues. The story jumps back and forth as our hero, Toby Thompson, narrates the action. The rock changes hands and various people all wish for something. Some of the wishes aren't good ones, one kid gets really big, another is turned into a dung beetle, you get the idea. Toby's parents, Leslie Mann and Jon Cryer, get stuck together as a half man and half woman. William H Macy, James Spader, Kat Dennings and all five of Robert's kids are in the movie. There's plenty of silly things going on and they made me laugh. I liked the kids quite a bit, most of them do a great job, and I especially liked Jolie Vanier as Tobi's nemesis Helvetica Black, and the kid who played Loogie. You can see the trailer here, to see what's going on.