Did stay up for the late night TCM showing in Friday, and scratched Gamma People off my list. Pretty mild sci-fi fare, and the lack of the monster is probably why this got so little play over the years. GP is about two Anglo types, a two-fisted American (upper middle aged, you don’t see that much anymore) and his suaver Brit compatriot, who end up in a Iron Curtain-type Euro police state–think of the sort of generic countries from the old Mission: Impossible show–run by a mad scientist. He’s turning people either into geniuses (supposedly) or imbecile goons for vague, nefarious purposes.
Not a lot here, and things move awful slow, although the girls were pretty. There’s one ‘genius’ kid clearly meant to be a Nazi Youth-type, etc. The weirdest aspect is that much of the film, including it’s lengthy set-up, seems to be being played for comedy. It’s not really a comic horror film, though. It’s more like a fish out of water comedy that they decided wasn’t working so they cut in 20 minutes of rather tame ‘horror’ stuff.
Mostly I spent the weekend watching the first season of Game of Thrones on DVD. I wanted to finish it so I could return it to the library; we have a long waiting list on it. Really good and *very* gritty medieval fantasy stuff, with a great cast. The season doesn’t end so much as pauses, in the midst of a civil war in which neither side realizes that twin outside dangers are approaching from either side of the map. Now I just have to wait a year to find out what happens next. Please, no spoilers on season two, or even season one, for those who haven’t seen the show.
One thing that struck me, especially after watching Boardwalk Empire season one just last week, is that HBO is *still* pursuing one programming gimmick tracing back to the Hitchhiker days; lots and lots of quite explicit sex and (mostly female) nudity. HBO used to do this to separate themselves from network TV. Now, however, you seldom find such stuff in movies either, so they are standing out from either.
Another big difference from the silver screen is that both series (like a whole lot of TV today) are much, much better written than films generally are now. Writers have pride of place in TV shows now, often being the very people running them, while in movies they remain about the least important of the creative types.
Didn’t get much reading done, and since Amazing Race started about an hour late do to the Masters telecast, I missed the first episode of All-Star Chopped last night. However, it replays tomorrow night at 10, so I’ll probably see it then. It featured four Iron Chefs facing off against each other, and was clearly filmed before the already telecast Next Iron Chef, since Geoffrey Zekarian was one of the people judging them, and contestant Marc Forgione identified himself as the “freshman” Iron Chef, a mantle Zekarian has since assumed.
By the way, I think the producers of Chopped are very cagey in that they never spend more prize money for their big events; the winners get $50,000, but there’s a five episode winnowing process, so it still breaks down to the normal $10,000 an episode. Smart.
What did you guys do?
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