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Post by Nalkarj on Jan 30, 2023 20:39:03 GMT
Last night I watched “Dead Man’s Hand,” the first episode of Rian Johnson’s Peacock streaming show Poker Face.  It’s good—I’d go so far as to say it’s the second-best Rian Johnson movie (and it does play more like a movie than a TV ep) I’ve seen, after Knives Out. It’s interestingly close to Glass Onion, but I think it’s better: Johnson uses a Columbo-style “howcatchem” format here, so he doesn’t have to hide the killer’s identity. (I found the killer’s identity irritatingly obvious in Glass Onion, especially if you know Johnson’s opinions.) He can instead focus on planting clues, which he does well. All in all, “Dead Man’s Hand” just has a well-written script. Johnson skillfully builds incident upon incident, the surprises are small but genuinely surprising, the clues are neat and fair, the dialogue is smooth. The acting is good; Natasha Lyonne’s heroine could have been over-the-top, but she convinced me. Johnson’s directing is movie-quality. But there’s a fly in the ointment. I can’t watch any other episodes of the show because it’s a Peacock streaming exclusive (the platform makes the first episode free). To wit: Streaming sucks. |
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Post by Prime etc. on Feb 4, 2023 7:13:17 GMT
THE INVADERS The Innocent - Dabney Coleman is an air force officer who is to testify at a hearing on the aliens and David Vincent is asked by him to do so also. But then the aliens kidnap Vincent and Michael Rennie, in a clever bit of casting, appears as a good alien who reveals that they have changed their plans and want to help earthlings! But have they?
MANNIX S 4 One For the Lady - Mannix is framed for murder and jewel theft and is asked by a mafia matriarch to be her bodyguard. But it turns out his police trouble was just a ruse so he could get accepted into the organization and find out their crime scheme.
CANNON A Deadly Quiet Town S 1 Cannon has to find out why rich kids are following a Manson-like cult leader who seems to be linked to suspicious deaths. The kids seemed like they escaped from a Hanna-Barbera cartoon such as Scooby Doo or Speed Buggy.
John Larch: You sure rock a boat when you step in it, don't you Cannon.
Cannon: I can't help that. I've been chubby all my life.
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Post by Prime etc. on Feb 5, 2023 6:16:35 GMT
MCCLOUD - The Million Dollar Roundup Premiered February 4, 1973. Diane Muldaur appeared in the last Hec Ramsey episode a week prior and she was back with McCloud after a hiatus. Also, Teri Garr, who appeared in a show from 1970, returns for an extended role. Eric Braeden is a master thief who steals a prized horse statue and various people get killed in double crosses etc. Harry Guardino is a beat cop who was previously shot and finds the horse before losing it to an inner city orphan kid who also steals McCloud's gun. It's rather quaint how no one seems to worry about a kid possessing a gun back then.
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Post by Nalkarj on Feb 6, 2023 17:20:23 GMT
Magpie Murders, 2022, dir. Peter Cattaneo.  I had a feeling this miniseries would be less bizarrely mean-spirited than the Anthony Horowitz book it’s based on, and so it is despite (or because of?) making the asshole victim even more of an asshole. I’m pretty mixed on this one. Horowitz adapted his own book and, unsurprisingly but rightly, kept all the clever plot points and clues. The show is nicely directed and extremely well acted. But it’s way too long—almost five hours altogether! Like so many modern shows, it doesn’t have enough story for its length, so we spend time on the mundane (character gets into car, character gets out of car, character takes a shower, character walks to a restaurant, character sets up laptop) and the ultimately irrelevant (a certain character’s connection to Alan). TV’s tendency towards length unbefitting of material is a major reason why, pace this thread and this board, I prefer movies. As far as mystery plotting goes, the book is trickier with its main red herring—I think more people here will realize it’s not the true solution. But that’s not a major flaw; I think the main solution will still surprise. Funnily enough, I knew the solution from reading the book and still missed some of the clues Horowitz added. While the new ending is happier and more visual than the book’s, it’s also too flip—the experience seems to have had no emotional effect on Susan, and the script doesn’t wrap up the other characters’ stories. I also sorta wish Horowitz had delved into the revelation’s effect on Atticus Pünd, but saying more is a spoiler. (Speaking of Pünd, he’s an Hercule Poirot imitation, so I wish the filmmakers had made the Pünd scenes more of a pastiche of Agatha Christie’s Poirot, which Horowitz wrote for. That would have been a neat tribute.) Oh, and magpies have nothing to do with the story. I know the nursery-rhyme thing is an Agatha Christie homage, but it’s completely pointless. So, yeah, I’m mixed. If only Horowitz and Rian Johnson could collaborate for the next Benoît Blanc film, with Horowitz working on puzzle plot and Johnson on characters and dialogue—now that’d probably make for a good whodunit!
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Post by Prime etc. on Feb 11, 2023 7:02:33 GMT
STAR TREK - The Doomsday Machine -- This is episode I have not watched in a long time but I remember almost every shot in it. I must have seen it dozens of times. As soon as I see William Windom do that gagging reaction when he is trying to describe the weapon--it all comes back. What a great character Dekker is. There's someone they probably could have milked for more episodes. A series about the Constellation? I would have watched it.
Is this the best Scotty/transporter episode? Seems like it. The way he anticipates the need for a phaser bank and gets the ship rigged to explode. Also Spock has so many classic moments--even the fact he suggests to Scotty the way to repair it in the last seconds. And then's Kirk's line "not with my ship, you don't."
The music score in this so good. It's cinematic.
The only negative is that the CGI has not aged well at all. It is pretty distracting with the meteors and I am sorry to say, but I can't stand how the doomsday weapon look compared with the original which kind of looked like ice or something.
Vulcans never bluff.
BANACEK- The 2 Million Clams of Captain Jack (came out 50 years ago this week). Someone stole security deposits from a sealed elevator and Banacek is on the case. As usual he and he alone figures it all out.
HUNTER - Legacy The Godfather on the cheap for a Stephen J Cannell tv show. The humor makes up for deficiencies in story quality.
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Post by Prime etc. on Feb 12, 2023 5:31:36 GMT
COLUMBO - A Stitch in Crime - Leonard Nimoy is a real piece of work in this one. He almost had a body count of three and managed to get Columbo annoyed and uses him to stash evidence. Also, when Columbo is talking to the ex- drug addict he slips out of his usual persona when the guy asks why he would be interested in his drug use. "Don't be foolish, you're an intelligent person." A bit of trivia I read about that episode--Majel Barrett did the voice of the hospital announcer. Premiered 50 years ago today.
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Post by Prime etc. on Feb 18, 2023 7:58:10 GMT
MANNIX S 1 Turn Every Stone - "A crusading newspaper editor is preparing an explosive expose of a state legislator. But a man who supposedly had the documentation has fled just as the story went to press. The editor hires Intertect, which sends Mannix to work on the case. Mannix and Intertect boss Wickersham come to doubt whether the legislator is corrupt. But somebody is responsible for a trail of bodies and Mannix is determined to find out who." John Crawford guest stars as an Intertect employee. It also features Madge Blake and Lloyd Gough who were in Batman and the Green Hornet--and there are a couple of references to collecting old comic books which seemed odd to me--were people collecting rare comic books in 1967? I guess so.
CANNON - S2 Bad Cats and Sudden Death-- Cannon has to help a crusading DA who is framed for the murder of his wife and bust a ring of car thieves.
PETROCELLI s2 episode 1 Death Ride - Ned Beatty is a rodeo clown accused of murder. Pete gets a scene alone again, and Petrocelli is almost run over by a bull. And John Crawford appears again.
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Post by Prime etc. on Feb 19, 2023 7:11:45 GMT
HEC RAMSEY - The Mystery of Chalk Hill - In the pilot for the show Richard Boone had a potential romantic interest -a widow with a young son. She disappeared after that but returned for the final episode of the season. In it, Ramsey plans to move to another town and get married. But she and her son are murdered on a stagecoach en route to their wedding and he begins to suspect the son of his friend is the killer. Darker and more dramatic than the average for these mystery movies, although the theme of it (an implied link between creativity and homicidal inclination) doesn't seem very convincing or flattering. Premiered February 18, 1973.
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Post by Prime etc. on Feb 25, 2023 7:13:05 GMT
CANNON - A Flight of Hawks - Martin Sheen reappears as his limping cop friend and they bust a group of ex-army pilots wanting to overthrow an African government. Cannon takes out one guy holding a gun on him by battering him with his gut.
THE ROCKFORD FILES - Tall Woman in Red Wagon - This series has such good humor.
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Post by Feologild Oakes on Feb 25, 2023 11:00:11 GMT
Season 6 of Arrow
Its not very good.
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Post by gspdude on Feb 25, 2023 15:45:15 GMT
Mad Men- Just finished this and thoroughly enjoyed it. Don Draper was an interesting and complicated character. And what a dog! Had sex with at least 19 different women on the show. But my favorite character was Joan, she was so cool! No matter how much crap was thrown her way it was "I'll handle it!"
Dark Shadows- After watching over 800 episodes, I've taken a break. It was getting a bit monotonous, but I may get back to it some time in the future. Barnabas and Angelique are 2 all time classic horror characters.
Saturday Night Live- I've gotten back into this after slowing down for a while, I'm in Season 5, no Aykroyd or Belushi, think they were making a movie, hope they return, they were their funniest comics. Shows still good though. Week-end Update is always good for a laugh.
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Post by Prime etc. on Feb 26, 2023 7:58:55 GMT
800 episodes! Good god.
IRONSIDE S 2 The Sacrifice - Ricardo Montalban is accused of murder and his old friend Ironside is put on the case. A bit jarring to see abortion as a plot element--the murder victim was an abortionist and Montalban was glad he was dead--but there was a weird exchange between Ironside and Phillip Pine where the latter blames himself for his daughter's death (at the hands of the abortionist) as if they were very subtly broaching the subject of legalizing abortion through some coded dialogue. In 1968, they dare not speak its name.
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Post by Nalkarj on Feb 27, 2023 22:20:35 GMT
The other day some channel had a marathon of Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996-2003) and I watched a few eps (don’t laugh  ).  I liked this show when I was a kid (I still remember that one character, maybe Sabrina herself, had a “date with destiny,” and destiny turned out being a literal person named Destiny. That amused me as a child). I hadn’t seen it since then. The three eps I saw weren’t anything too special, but they were amusing and entertaining enough. I’ve read that the best episodes were written by show creator Nell Scovell; unfortunately, none of the eps I saw was by Scovell. The best of the three was “Terrible Things” (S1:E4), which has a funny part for Scovell’s friend Penn Jillette as the chief witch. (I hadn’t realized before that Jillette popped up on so many ’90s sitcoms. He played a relatively serious part in a good episode of Lois and Clark, and he was great on Friends as the ingratiating encyclopedia salesman who sells Joey Tribbiani on the letter “V.”) Among other things, “Terrible Things” has one pretty darn funny exchange, between Sabrina’s friend Jenny (who has won the class election because of Sabrina’s magic) and the principal (played by Tom McGowan, whom I know best as Frasier’s boss Kenny), that stuck out in my mind:That’s just good, solid comedy writing, tailored so that it gives the actors an attitude to play. Something that baffled me, though, was the laugh track. It kicks in after some jokes, of course—but not after some others. And some of those others are really funny! I was wondering if the laugh track wasn’t a laugh track but instead genuine audience laughter (which Seinfeld, Frasier, and Friends all used, at least in part)—but nope, apparently Sabrina didn’t have a live audience. So what was the point behind including a laugh track but not running it after some jokes? |
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Post by Feologild Oakes on Mar 1, 2023 15:28:51 GMT
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Post by theravenking on Mar 2, 2023 22:32:18 GMT
 They Were Ten (2020) Does anyone remember Harper's Island (2009)? Probably not. It was a modern American re-telling of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None in form of a limited TV series, re-imgaining the tale as a teenage slasher. And no, it wasn't very good. Now the French have done a 6 episode mini-series which relocates the plot of ATTWN to a tropical island resort. They made a few changes. Half of the characters are now women. We have a diverse cast of people from different races and social backgrounds. They also changed the order of deaths around a little bit, so you're not quite sure, who's going to bite the dust next. The killer is presented here as a hooded figure, resembling a villain from a slasher film. But Director Pascal Laugier, who previously helmed the infamous torture flick Martyrs, was clearly demanded by the network to turn in something with a halfway family friendly rating, hence the horror is largely of the milder variety. Logic goes out the window very early on too, so not only do you have to accept the presence of an omniscient killer, which was already an issue in the source material., but also silly things like the murderer having his headquarters in the basement of the hotel which the characters somehow manage to overlook when searching the place. Among the cast there are some recognisable faces like Samuel Le Bihan (Brotherhood of the Wolf) or Mathilda Lutz (Revenge), who can be relied on to deliver convincing performances, but the lesser-known actors do pretty well too, keeping the whole thing afloat even when it threatens to turn into a challenge of who can scream the loudest and longest towards the end. It's not much of a whodunit. Even people unfamiliar with the source material will likely hit on the killer after two episodes. I must say, I found it a weird decision to give all the characters elaborate flashbacks except one: the killer. While I enjoyed the beginning, just as with the recent BBC version, once the story progressed I started losing interest. I think with this type of closed circle mystery it's best to keep the plot tight and short, so audiences won't have the time to think too much about things like plot holes. Six episodes feel almost too long, especially since the show also regularly cuts away to two cops looking for the disappeared party, unnecessarily taking the viewer out of the story. So, this is basically Christie redone as a modern thriller with all the trappings that might imply. This pandering to modern audiences will have purists wrinkling their noses, but it's probably best to accept, that time goes on and it's unlikely, that this will remain the last updating of this classic mystery. 6/10 |
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Post by Prime etc. on Mar 4, 2023 7:17:23 GMT
THE WILD WILD WEST S3 - The Night Dr. Loveless Died -- This one had a couple of good disguise scenes although it wasn't too hard to guess that the episode title was misleading.
MANNIX : s1 Run Sheep, Run - Mannix is hired to protect a witness named Mavis but the first Mavis turns out to be a fake and he has trouble finding the real Mavis as crooked police are seeking to rub her out.
STARSKY AND HUTCH S 1 Texas Longhorn - A tycoon's wife is raped and killed but he is such a good ol boy he doesn't seem too upset until the cops zero in on the culprits and he decides to take them out himself. Written by Michael Mann.
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vrkalak
Sophomore
@vrkalak
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Post by vrkalak on Mar 4, 2023 15:03:28 GMT
THE WILD WILD WEST S3 - The Night Dr. Loveless Died -- This one had a couple of good disguise scenes although it wasn't too hard to guess that the episode title was misleading. MANNIX : s1 Run Sheep, Run - Mannix is hired to protect a witness named Mavis but the first Mavis turns out to be a fake and he has trouble finding the real Mavis as crooked police are seeking to rub her out. STARSKY AND HUTCH S 1 Texas Longhorn - A tycoon's wife is raped and killed but he is such a good ol boy he doesn't seem too upset until the cops zero in on the culprits and he decides to take them out himself. Written by Michael Mann. In TN Dr Loveless Died, we learn the doc’s middle name is Quixote. |
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Post by Prime etc. on Mar 5, 2023 7:56:41 GMT
Mission Impossible "The Emerald." Phelps and the IMF team has to steal a microfilm on the back of a rare jewel by winning it in a poker game--using various cheats of course.
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Post by Prime etc. on Mar 11, 2023 7:06:20 GMT
THE INVADERS - The Ivy Curtain - Jack Warden is a cargo plane pilot who discovers his passengers are aliens since one of them gets a cut arm and doesn't bleed. Instead of killing him, they want to hire him to continue transporting their people to a school they have set up to instruct the aliens how to subvert the public. We see them learning about promoting drugs and criticizing the police in a fake soda bar where alien instructor Murray Matheson appraises their agitprop skills. One thing I wonder, is why doesn't David Vincent carry a knife or gun? Sjnce he knows the aliens are after him and he frequently gets into fights with them--wouldn't it be handy since the aliens disintegrate on contact so he doesn't have to worry about a murder rap. Susan Olivier plays the wife of Warden--I heard somewhere she became an actual pilot for real.
BARETTA - Half a Million Dollar Baby --- Tony has a new girlfriend but when she comes along with him on the job and he busts some counterfeiters, she finds a bag of money and takes it without telling him. Then the robbers come after him and mess up him and his apartment (but Fred is ok).
I also checked out 1972 and 1976 Tonight Show appearances by Blake.
PETROCELLI Mark of Cain -- Now we are talking. This was a dramatic episode. John Saxon comes to town to see his old friend Tony and gets charged with murder. Turns out he works for the mafia and they want him out of the way. They aren't too happy with a public trial so they kidnap Maggie and beat up Pete! Paul Koslo plays one of the kidnappers and Ken Swofford, who had the "Pete" role in the feature film, reappears in a big role as the head cop. Interestingly, his character name in the feature film was different and so was the wife's name. Maybe Petrocelli re-married/ I hope Diane Muldaur shows up so we can get that settled.
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Post by Prime etc. on Mar 12, 2023 7:00:35 GMT
CANNON "The Torch" - An insurance investigator accidentally kills the woman he was going to conspire with to defraud and murder her husband-and uses an arson fire to cover it. The arsonist (Anthony Zerbe) is tracked by Frank Cannon while the insurance man stays close to him and pretends to be helping him solve the case. Cannon takes out a couple of mafia goons by a gut feeling that they are hiding behind a door.
MCMILLAN & WIFE - The Fine Art of Staying Alive - Sally is kidnapped at an art museum and held for ransom--the kidnappers want a Rembrandt painting. Stuart tries to decode a cryptic message in her phone call which allows for various flashbacks to other episodes to save on production costs. Alan Hale Jr shows up for the finale at the docks. Premiered March 11, 1973.
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