Post-Weekend Open Thread (10/08/10)…

Man, I didn’t really do much of anything this weekend, even for me. (I did confirm that my house trailer is listing, so I had the guy out, and he also found some other stuff–of course–so zap, there goes two grand. At least I had it in the bank. I hate debt and debt financing.)

Other than that…let’s see. I watched the third season–albeit that’s six episodes–of the Brit show Pie in the Sky, about a semi-retired detective also running a restaurant on the side. It’s rather more a drama than you’d think, and I really don’t like it as much as Jonathan Creek, with the latter’s entirely fun emphasis on impossible crimes. (Too bad he never teamed up with Banacek.) Still, it small doses it’s a decent enough show. I suppose when the next six episodes trundles out, I’ll watch those too.

I also watched another story arc of Naruto. I like that show quite a bit, but I agree the storylines go on a bit too long. However, this is the first time I remember when Narurto and his comrades where just out to kill their opponents, so that was fun. Ah, our little ninjas are growing up.

And…that’s about it on the TV front. I read David Drake’s What Distant Deeps, the latest in his Daniel Leary series. Good, although a smaller adventure, no doubt as a breather between the big major war stuff. When I stopped in Walgreens to get a spare key made, the key guy recognized the author (yes, I carried the book inside; what if I had to wait in line five minutes with nothing to do), and we talked about Drake and David Webber and Johnny Ringo and so on. It’s rare to run across another reader, so that was cool.

So what did you guys watch? Read? Spill.

  • P Stroud

    The latest version of “Metropolis” was on AMC last night. Even more powerful than ever. Likely the most influential movie ever filmed.

  • Heli

    I watched Monster Squad for the first time in many years. Still pretty awesome. And I could appreciate the homages now (at least most of them).

    I tried watching Pie in the Sky, but it never quite caught on for me. My recent British TV find was Doc Martin, which I describe as “Northern Exposure if they’d gotten House instead of Joel Fleishman.” I’m up to season 3, and it’s still keeping me entertained. (Bonus: it’s on Netflix streaming.)

  • Ugh, on AMC? Did they cram it full of commercial breaks. But yeah, I need to watch this. I’m sure several libraries in my system bought the DVD.

  • Yeah, again, if Pie in the Sky didn’t come out in such small lots, I’d probably start skipping it. I might actually, anyway. But whereas I always wished the Jonathan Creek seasons were longer, with PitS, not so much. And the broad comedy and the show’s reverse snobbery is starting to wear a bit.

  • The Rev.

    IFC ran the first episode of “The Walking Dead,” so I got to see it without commercials. I then programmed the DVR to record the series so I don’t forget a miss an episode, because that is damn good stuff. The negatives are few and far between; they’ve got me hooked but good.

    “Elvira’s Movie Macabre” played The Werewolf of Washington this weekend. I’d never heard of it. I haven’t finished it yet, but it appears to be a completely shameless rip-off of The Wolf Man (first werewolf beaten to death with a silver-headed cane, pentagram appearing on victims’ palms) but with political talk in between the killings and Dean Stockwell in the Lon Chaney Jr. role.

    I don’t know if Sandy watches “South Park,” but he’d probably be interested to know that the current story arc took a very Lovecraftian bent. BP drilled a hole into another dimension and released horrific monsters. Immediately I commented on how they looked like the aliens from “At the Mountains of Madness” but with big wings, as well as what could have been a shoggoth. My hunch was confirmed when Cthulhu himself rose (albeit from the Gulf of Mexico) and cultists everywhere started chanting “Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fthagn!!” and praising His name. I am hoping the finale sees Cthulhu fight MechaStreisand (who, in a touch I damn near nerded out for, went from looking like the original MechaGodzilla in her first appearance to looking like Kiryu the last time we saw her.)

  • I watched some of “Hard Times” with Charles Bronson and “Identity”, which was pretty cool.

  • BeckoningChasm

    I slept a lot, did some good painting work, watched nothing of consequence. I think I win the Underachiever Award for the weekend. Go me!

  • Toby Clark

    Toy Story 1 and 2 on Saturday night. Never gets old, and never fails to make me cry when Jessie’s flashback starts.
    The Big Sleep on Sunday afternoon. Still can’t figure out who killed Owen Taylor.

  • Blake – Love Hard Times! If I ever continue doing Movies I Love pieces, one of my first subjects.

  • “Still can’t figure out who killed Owen Taylor.”

    Well, the people who made the film didn’t know either, so that’s no surprise. “During filming, allegedly neither the director nor the screenwriters knew whether chauffeur Owen Taylor was murdered or had killed himself. They sent a cable to Chandler, who told a friend in a later letter: “They sent me a wire … asking me, and dammit I didn’t know either“.

  • Rock Baker

    I spent the weekend getting familiar with a new scanner I got for my birthday (I needed one so I don’t have to waste time sending pages I’ve drawn via regular mail when deadlines are ticking away), and praying for warmer weather until I can get my gas tank filled.

    On the movie front, well, let’s see….

    Slam Dunk Ernest (1994, I knew one of them came out that year!) – And just why did it take seven Ernest movies before Jim Varney got around to making a sports comedy? (Even stranger, why didn’t they make a service comedy before the ninth?) True, the previous Ernest Goes To School had a big football game as the climax, but this is the first film of the series built around Worrell tackling a new sport. Ernest this time is a doofus on the court until God gives him a pair of living sneakers that make him a titan of the hoops, and role model for his team captain’s son. Plenty of heart, some good laughs, and bringing Ernest to an urban setting is a nice bit of change. But the movie doesn’t feel right, I think for a lack of familiar elements. No regular actors from previous films, no alter ego characters, and TV movie production values all work against the film. Varney comes through, though, and there are a few really good laughs to be had here. But Ernest Saves Christmas seems so far away by this point.

    Raid on Rommel (1971) – There was an unwritten agreement held by studios and audiences between 1950 and 1980, which was basically “If you pretend that Patton tank with the Iron Cross on it is a Panzer, we’ll make up for it with plenty of grand scale action.” Among the films to make this agreement with patrons were To Hell and Back, Patton, and “Combat!” on the small screen.
    Richard Burton, a commando, and a medical unit take over a German convoy and head for Tobruk to take out the shore guns there. Along the way, they run into Rommel and blow up a fuel depot.

    The Great Escape (1963) – Really, what can I add? Just a great motion picture with an incredible cast!

    A Bridge Too Far (1977) – A cast possibly even more impressive than the one assembled for The Great Escape relates the story behind Operation Market Garden, one of the most tragic misfires in WW2 history. Big, big movie may have the best recreation of war I’ve ever seen. Not pretty stuff, but I really enjoyed this film.

    Lost Boys: The Thirst (2010) – I only saw The Lost Boys a few months ago because A) I usually don’t like modern vampire films, and B) I had no idea it was a vampire film. From the title I thought it was about youths in a correction camp. I did enjoy it once I saw it though.
    This sequel (I’m told it is actually the third in the series) has Edgar Frog out to take down the Alpha vampire and prevent a rave drug from turning multitudes of losers into an army of the undead. Corey Feldman is the best grunter since Eastwood. Sharp script, and the best vampire dispatch since Scars of Dracula. This one is pure camp, but its the good kind of camp.

  • Bruce Probst

    >Immediately I commented on how they looked like the aliens from “At the Mountains of Madness” but with big wings

    The Elder Things do have big wings.

    From Wikipedia:

    “Description of a partial body:

    “Six feet end to end, three and five-tenths feet central diameter, tapering to one foot at each end. Like a barrel with five bulging ridges in place of staves. Lateral breakages, as of thinnish stalks, are at equator in middle of these ridges. In furrows between ridges are curious growths – combs or wings that fold up and spread out like fans. . . which gives almost seven-foot wing spread. Arrangement reminds one of certain monsters of primal myth, especially fabled Elder Things in [the] Necronomicon.”
    —H.P. Lovecraft, At the Mountains of Madness

    A search for “elder things” in Google Images brings up many cool artistic interpretations.

  • tim

    I caught the first episode of the walking dead. I thought it was good. my main problem is I don’t find the type of zombies presented there as a threat. slow moving zombies dispatched with a bullet to the brain would be mowed down by any organized military force. once past the initial “holy shit, they’re zombies!” stage, there’s no way they’d be able to cause the kind of widespread devastation shown in the series.

  • Jimmy

    Watched-

    The Social Network. aka. The Facebook movie Surprisingly entertaining given the potentially dry subject matter.
    Infestation- a fun bug movie. It doesn’t do anything exceptional but I wish more low budget monster movies were like this.
    True Blood Season 2. Enjoying it more than the first series as more divergent supernatural elements are introduced and the characters are getting more likable.

    Read-

    Judas Unchained- the second in the Commonwealth series by Peter F. Hamilton. Enthralluing epic sci-fi.
    The Goon- Volume 1. One of the funniest comic series I have read.

  • The Rev.

    Bruce: Wow, it’s been so long since I looked at my CoC book…you’re right, they do have wings. All I could remember was the drawing in the book, which wasn’t showing the wings.

    Well, there you go then.

    Of course, no one else in the household’s ever read Lovecraft, so they aren’t going to know any differently. :)

    tim: I understand the feeling; I’m willing to give them suspension of disbelief on this, since I enjoyed it so much. They may very well end up showing a way they could take over so quickly that no one could stop them. If all the dead rose at once, for example, it might be overwhelming. We’ll see.

    Of course, as a huge zombie movie fan, I’m pretty much able to let the whole notion of how the shamblers overwhelmed society slide at this point. I’ve seen it happen so many times I just go with it.

  • Marsden

    Has anybody watched the new Avengers cartoon? I have been, it’s pretty good. It’s on Disney’s DXD channel.
    They just found Captain America last week.

  • according to Lovecraftian canon, the Elder Things not only have wings, they have FIVE wings. Artist Tom Sullivan figured out that the wings must be hinged down a central strut, kind of like a palm leaf, and that they fly by pumping the wings forwards (towards the head) with the flaps closed, then pushing down as the flaps open. I bet they spiral in flight too.

  • Reed

    I always figured Joe Brody killed Owen. He says that he sapped him down but didn’t kill him, but I like to think that he was lying. Brody was that kind of guy. The other plausible explanation is that the gambler (I can’t believe I’ve forgotten his name) had Canino bump Owen off. Either explanation more or less makes sense.

    New Avengers cartoon? I’m on it!

    The thing that makes the slow walking dead a threat is the breakdown of social order and the fact that in most modern stories they turn people into zombies with a single bite. While the police are trying to decide if it’s OK to shoot them (most of America would be zombie chow before an order was given to roll out the National Guard, and it would take a literal act of Congress to bring out the regular forces), and in that time frame someone gets bit. You would have a lot of zombies before you knew what was going on. The same fate would befall many people who are sleeping, not paying attention, or unarmed. Oh sure, maybe they “kill” the attacking zombie, but it only takes one bite. Then there are the people who get overconfident because the zombies are so slow…

    No, I find slow zombies terrifying and think it’s very believable that things would break down before there was a real military clean-up.

    I’ve been watching all of the MST3K episodes that you can stream on Netflix. They are a mixed bag, and I find that MST3K quickly wears out its welcome for me, but they are good for a chuckle now and then. I’ve also been playing a lot of Civ 4 on my computer. Never have upgraded to Civ 5.