PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Corner Gas Animated Season 4

Corner Gas Animated Season 4 Created by Brent Butt, written by Jennifer Siddle, Meredith Hambrock, Brent Butt, Andrew Carr, Dylan Wertz, Erica Sigurdson and Kyah Green, directed by Stephen Evans, Sean Janisse and Nathan Carey. This is the last season of the show, the 13 episodes aired July through November 2021.

There's  quite a bit going on in the episodes, usually several things are happening around the town as characters interact with each other. I enjoy their silly activities and I'll miss new stories. I guess I can watch the live show and animated show all over again. That'll have to do.

The Kids In The Hall Season 6 2022

The Kids In The Hall Season 6 2022 The Kids return to TV in a new 8 episode series for Amazon Prime. It's created and written by the Kids: Dave Foley, Bruce McCulloch, Kevin McDonald, Mark McKinney and Scott Thompson. They have some other writers: Garry Campbell, Mike Watts and Jennifer Goodhue. Mike and Jennifer join the Kids in front of the camera in some sketches. The episodes were directed by Kelly Makin and Aleysa Young. I'd just seen one of Kelly's first films, Tiger Claws, just the other night.

Many of the sketches are callbacks to past characters: The Hotel Rut with Francesca Fiore and Bruno Puntz Jones, the headcrusher, Gavin, Gordon and Fran, the Eradicator, the Police Department with a totally naked Dave and Kevin, willies a wavin'. It might be the time to get out your crushing fingers. I was pleased to see the return of Bellini in his towel, Buddy Cole, and Kathie and Cathy with their fax machine. I was quite pleased not to have seen The Chicken Lady, I watched each episode with a slight sense of dread. The sketch from the old series that introduced that character is excruciating to watch. I feel so for her unsuspecting blind date.

There are some new characters, like the restaurant staff in the Foodies sketches, Super Drunk, The Patrol, Friends of Kids In The Hall, the Doctor with the low drop average, the Doomsday DJ and more.

The guest cast includes quite a few people I recognize: Colin Mochrie, Kenneth Welsh, Mark Hammill, Jay Baruchel, Eddie Izzard, Fred Armisen, Martin Kaye, Will Forte, Kenan Thompson, Samantha Bee, Catherine O'Hara and Paul Sun-Hyung Lee.

The Kids have managed to recapture the feel of the original series fairly well. The old series always had a nice level of surrealness to it and so does the new show. Some sketches are quite funny, some are quite weird. I laughed when it was funny, occasionally out loud, and waited for something funny when it wasn't. I'll try to watch it again. If they put out a DVD I'll get one. I kind of doubt that's going to happen but you never know.

The Return Of Tommy Tricker 1994

The Return Of Tommy Tricker 1994 Written and directed by Michael Rubbo. Sequel to the 1988 film Tommy Tricker And The Stamp Traveller. Both are part of the Films For All series. This is the last of 4 kids films that Michael made for the series, the other two were The Peanut Butter Solution and Vincent & Me. I haven't seen the latter film. Stopped making films, bar two documentaries, after this came out.

Sadly the sequel is much less appealing when compared to the first film. Tommy Tricker takes center stage for most of it and he's even more of a douche bag than he was in the first film. He lies and cheats and steals all the time. Really disliked having to look at his smug face. The kid who played Tommy Tricker in the first film didn't get to play Tommy, he got a small part, don't know why. There are a lot of changes in the characters and situation from the first film, hard to believe when it's supposed to be set immediately after the first film.

The main plot is about trying to rescue Charles from the Bluenose stamp. The attempt brings a young girl from the past and she starts to age. They pack up and go to the south seas to try to find a cure. None of it makes much sense but the scenery of New Zealand and the Cook Islands was very nice. Disappointing in the end. Doubt I'd bother watching it again.

The Peanut Butter Solution 1985

The Peanut Butter Solution 1985 Written by Vojtěch Jasný, Andrée Pelletier, Louise Pelletier and Michael Rubbio, directed by Michael Rubbio. Severin has a kid's line, this is their first kid film.

Michael is the director of Tommy Tricker And The Stamp Traveler. I saw that not long ago, when I looked him up I saw he'd also directed this film. I had already purchased it, based on a guy's recommendation, but I hadn't seen it yet. I had no Blu-ray for a while and I'm not keen on watching them in the summer anyway. The old Plasma TV I have is rather hot, nice for this time of the year when it's bloody cold, not so nice when it fights the air conditioner in the summer.

The kid in the movie is called Michael, on the way home with his friend Connie he stops to sneak into a recently burnt mansion to look around. He gets a big fright and all his hair falls out. The man and woman who died in the fire were homeless, it's their ghosts that scared him, and it's their ghosts that give him a magical formula to regrow his hair. Michael doesn't deal with his baldness very well and he doesn't deal with his new hair very well either. He's got more reason to complain on the backside, his magical hair grows way too well, inches an hour, all day. It's annoying enough that the school kicks him out. It was Michael's own fault, he added too much peanut butter.

Michael's art teacher is a bully and a kidnapper. He kidnaps Michael for his magical hair and he kidnaps 20 other kids to make paintbrushes from Michael's hair. Connie and Michael's sister Suzie do some investigating but before they get too far Connie gets kidnapped too. Eventually Suzie figures out where they are and brings her dad and the police. Michael's hair growth is arrested and everything gets back to normal when Michael's mom returns from Australia.

It was alright though I didn't care for Michael that much. I liked Suzie and his pal Connie. The boy who played Connie is Siluck Saysanasy, he was born in Laos and moved to Canada. This was his first film, he next role was as Yick in 64 episodes of Degrassi High. He didn't act a lot after that but he did become an assistant director working on Degrassi: The Next Generation and some interesting films like Hairspray, Resident Evil: Afterlife, RED, The Thing, Pacific Rim and Robocop.

Glad I bought the movie, I'll want to watch it again sometime.

Murdoch Mysteries Season 14

Murdoch Mysteries Season 14 aired January to March 2021 and there are only 11 episodes this season. There were no Halloween or Christmas episodes this year.

The character's typically complicated lives get a real workout this season. Murdoch finds out he has a son, the Inspector finds his younger son is in big trouble, the black lady coroner dates a white man in a very racist society, Constable Higgins brother in law creates his own sovereign nation in Pimlico, people find out about the Inspector's black daughter, Detective Watt's is revealed to be gay at a time when it's illegal, Constable Crabtree loses his girlfriend, again.

Murdoch, Dr Ogden, the Inspector and Constable Crabtree get tricked into a deadly escape room by an insane woman who was manipulated by another of Murdoch's enemies. There seems to be a steady stream of returning characters this season. Mostly a pretty good season. I'll have to wait for the 15th season to hit Blu-ray this summer, hopefully, I've no streaming service that has it. The incomplete season is up on YouTube but the image is often too poor to watch.

Murdoch Mysteries Season 13

Murdoch Mysteries Season 13 aired at the end of 2019 and into 2020, the show is currently near the end of broadcasting the 15th Season. I got the Season 13 Blu-ray some time ago and finally got around to watching it. Like the previous Blu-ray sets the picture is fine. There's little by way of extras, a short Q&A with Yannick Bisson and Daniel Maslany, that was recorded from a live stream by Acorn TV. Nice enough but nothing special there really.

There are 18 episodes and they still maintain a high quality of writing, there's some good amount of mystery in the murders, some humor, some serious personal drama, scads of social commentary and a good bit of delightful wackiness.

Detective Murdoch and Doctor Ogden get stalked by a monster in the Halloween episode, George Crabtree has his new book published and goes on a book tour, Doctor Ogden gets arrested for murder, the Inspector goes on a fox hunt that starts with a dead body and Murdoch gets arrested for murder. Some of those stories deal with morality but it's not heavy handed enough to be bothersome. I enjoyed the episodes, especially the more humorous ones. I look forward to Season 14, that's up next. It's a show that I can binge several episodes in a day.

The Silent Partner 1978

The Silent Partner 1978 Based on the novel Think Of A Number by Anders Bodelsen, screenplay by Curtis Hanson, directed by Daryl Duke. A Canadian movie shot and set in Toronto.

Elliott Gould is a bank teller who discovers a hold up note on a deposit slip. He suspects someone is going to rob the bank and got scared away. Turns out he was right, Christopher Plummer, working as a mall Santa, has the plan. It works too, he gets a bag of money from Elliot and gets away. Christopher is really pissed when he finds that Elliott has glommed onto a large chuck of cash and blamed it on him. A big part of the movie that follows is devoted to Christopher trying to convince Elliott to part with the cash. Elliott refuses and things get ugly, Chris turns out to be a violent psychopath. After hearing the cash info on the news Christopher beats up a young woman for no reason.

Another chunk of the movie is devoted to Elliot's love life and the goings on among the bank staff. Many of the characters are morally ambivalent, there's a lot of cheating going on in their lives. Soon the two streams mix and people start to die. It becomes a fight to the finish. The cast was fairly good, Susannah York does alright as Elliott's main romantic interest, John Candy has a tiny part, as does another SCTV alum, Tony Rosato. The script was fairly decent in moving all the characters around but I found some of their personal melodrama to be a bit tedious. The film plods along using 106 mins to tell the story. It does pick up in the last act. My lack of interest in the characters only makes it slightly above average for me. It might have been a more effective thriller in 1978 though I don't think it's better than Marathon Man which came out a couple of years before. That's a much more tense thriller. I bought the Blu-ray and I might want to watch it again someday. 

Saskdutch Kid

I've been enjoying the farm videos of Saskdutch Kid. He's Jan Kielstra and his family have been farming near Saskatoon Saskatchewan since 1996. You can read more about Jan here and see his YouTube videos here. The woman in the picture is Jan's sister Neline, she works on the farm and has her own YouTube Channel. Between them you can learn a lot about dairy farming.

Friday Night Movies 841

Possessor 2020 Written and directed by Brandon Cronenberg

Andrea Risenborough works as an assassin, Jennifer Jason Leigh is her handler. They have a process, they kidnap people, put a chip in their brains, Andrea takes over the host body and uses it to kill her target. After the hit is done all she has to do is kill the loaner body and jump back into her body. It seems an inefficient process, the kidnapping business and killing two for the price of one, but it does eliminate the assassin making a mistake and leaving a trace of evidence on the scene.

As the movie open Andrea is on the job and rather than shoot the target she knifes the man and stabs him repeatedly. Then she can't kill the host, instead letting the police shoot her down. Jennifer is a bit worried on that but there's a big job in the offing and she wants Andrea to do it. Andrea's having some mental issues from from being inside those other heads so much and Jennifer would really like to see her disassociate herself from her husband and son.

The hit on the rich guy and his daughter starts with the kidnapping of the daughter's fiance. He works for the father who really doesn't care for him. The remote controlled fiance starts a short program of odd activity with the family which might explain why he cracked and killed father and daughter. Andrea gets through some of the day to day pretty well and does the hit. The daughter dies but daddy is in a comma. To top that fail, Andrea can't force her host to kill himself.

The fiance's personality becomes aware of her presence and disables the chip, now she's trapped in his head. The fiance battles with Andrea for control and things get worse and worse. Jennifer sends a guy to help but the fiance kills him. Andrea's family suffers the same fate when the fiance visits them. The fiance kills the husband and Jennifer uses the process to take over Andrea's son and uses him to stab the fiance, the son is killed before the fiance dies. Now Jennifer's got her main assassin free of that pesky family stone around her neck.

It's a fairly good movie about some really horrible people. My only complaint is the evil corp, not a fan of that overused plot element. I'm not going to rush out to buy the Blu-ray, I'm unlikely to ever want to watch it again. I'd be more likely to order our second movie.

Uncle Peckerhead 2020 I watched this last December on Amazon Prime and posted about it here. Other's hadn't seen it and they enjoyed it as much as I did seeing it again. I've got the Blu-ray on my Amazon Wish List and hope to see the price fall a bit.

Friday Night Movies 839

VFW 2019 Screenplay by Max Braillier and Matthew McArdle, directed by Joe Begos.

Stephen Lang is the bartender at the VFW post, William Sadler, Fred Williamson, Martin Kove, David Patrick Kelly and George Wendt are his old Army pals. They come to the bar to drink and hang out. It's nothing special but it's a place for them. That all gets interrupted by the arrival of a young girl, she's stolen a big bag of drugs from a psychopath drug dealer. He sees her run off with the stash and sends his younger brother and a few henchmen to get her back.

The thugs rush the bar and David Patrick Kelly goes down with an axe in the shoulder, nearly all the thugs are killed including the psychopath's little brother. The psychopath sends an small horde of fucked up drug addicts to kill them. There's plenty of action, oodles of body parts hacked and sent flying. It's a battle to the end and hardly anyone comes out alive at the end.

I enjoyed it, a good solid action film with a great cast. It had a nice, dark sense of humor, good gore, and a great score. My only complaint is the action was in the fast jump cutting style and I'm not as big a fan of that. I'd still watch it again. Worth a look for the fans of that sort of thing.

Psycho Goreman 2020 I watched it a month or so ago and posted about it on FNM. It's still funny and Mimi is still an asshole.