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so working nights, I have free time where everyone else is asleep, and some of that I'm spending watching movies and TV shows.
Went through the first two seasons of Blake's 7 and that's a show that could have really used some overall world building and, of course, way more of a budget. Half the episodes are generic science-fiction show scripts with B7 copy-pasted into things. The sets and props pull double and triple duty, the costumes are bonkers - maybe everybody else in the future dresses like this, but we never get to see anyone but the main cast and the five people they interact with in any particular week, so who knows? How many planets feature civilizations that have devolved into barbarism? How many of those planets feature underground bunker laboratories? Every planet they ever visit, that's how many. There's enough of a real show there to keep people watching - there's a reason this show became a cult favorite, after all, what with real life looking more and more like a Federation surveillance state patrolled by masked goons - but there's a lot of tedious backlot mist to wander through before you get to the good stuff, for instance the part where the location of Star One gets posthypnotically triggered, that part is the best part of an otherwise by-the-numbers episode.
the Australian Vietnam War movie Siege Of Firebase Gloria is by Brian "Stunt Rock", "BMX Bandits" Trenchard-Smith and stars a weirdly puffy R. Lee Ermey, two years past his Full Metal Jacket star turn but looking years younger and disturbingly like Michael Richards in "UHF." Seriously, once you see it you can't unsee it. The movie is a cartoonish mismash of 'Nam cliches, action movie tropes, and when you get to the part where Trenchard-Smith puts the camera on a dolly so he can imitate the big casualties-spread-out scene from "Gone With The Wind" you will quit watching. Or at least that's when I did.
I was on a panel at Anime North all about the original battleship Yamato contrasted with the cartoon space battleship, and the other panelist suggested the recent Japanese film "The Great War Of Archimedes" to get an idea of what it was like building the real thing. When I saw that movie was on Tubi, I was like, all right! And it's an interesting picture, I guess. It is not about building the Yamato. It is a slobs vs snobs contest between earnest good ol' boys Yamamoto and Nagano, who want to build carriers, vs the snooty establishment admirals, who want to build a super battleship to show the world Japan is Number One. So Yamamoto and Nagano recruit a young math genius to calculate how much it's going to cost to build this super ship and show the Navy that there's no way the admiral's budget is correct. So most of the movie is arrogant math genius and his horrified lieutenant doping out how much it costs to build a Yamato. And in the end they succeed, but then again they really don't. There's a great sequence at the beginning of the film showing the fate of the Yamato, I'll say this; but the rest of the film seems like a bait and switch.
I am halfway through a Kinji Fukusaku yakuza film "Japan Organized Crime Boss" which co-stars future "Lone Wolf And Cub" superstar Tomisaburō Wakayama in a supporting role as a chunky, sunglasses-sporting dope-addled scenery-chewing wild-man yakuza boss who is described as, yes, a "lone wolf." In contrast, Kōji Tsuruta's protagonist Tsukamoto is all low-key restraint and chivalry. Don't tell me how it ends!
Went through the first two seasons of Blake's 7 and that's a show that could have really used some overall world building and, of course, way more of a budget. Half the episodes are generic science-fiction show scripts with B7 copy-pasted into things. The sets and props pull double and triple duty, the costumes are bonkers - maybe everybody else in the future dresses like this, but we never get to see anyone but the main cast and the five people they interact with in any particular week, so who knows? How many planets feature civilizations that have devolved into barbarism? How many of those planets feature underground bunker laboratories? Every planet they ever visit, that's how many. There's enough of a real show there to keep people watching - there's a reason this show became a cult favorite, after all, what with real life looking more and more like a Federation surveillance state patrolled by masked goons - but there's a lot of tedious backlot mist to wander through before you get to the good stuff, for instance the part where the location of Star One gets posthypnotically triggered, that part is the best part of an otherwise by-the-numbers episode.
the Australian Vietnam War movie Siege Of Firebase Gloria is by Brian "Stunt Rock", "BMX Bandits" Trenchard-Smith and stars a weirdly puffy R. Lee Ermey, two years past his Full Metal Jacket star turn but looking years younger and disturbingly like Michael Richards in "UHF." Seriously, once you see it you can't unsee it. The movie is a cartoonish mismash of 'Nam cliches, action movie tropes, and when you get to the part where Trenchard-Smith puts the camera on a dolly so he can imitate the big casualties-spread-out scene from "Gone With The Wind" you will quit watching. Or at least that's when I did.
I was on a panel at Anime North all about the original battleship Yamato contrasted with the cartoon space battleship, and the other panelist suggested the recent Japanese film "The Great War Of Archimedes" to get an idea of what it was like building the real thing. When I saw that movie was on Tubi, I was like, all right! And it's an interesting picture, I guess. It is not about building the Yamato. It is a slobs vs snobs contest between earnest good ol' boys Yamamoto and Nagano, who want to build carriers, vs the snooty establishment admirals, who want to build a super battleship to show the world Japan is Number One. So Yamamoto and Nagano recruit a young math genius to calculate how much it's going to cost to build this super ship and show the Navy that there's no way the admiral's budget is correct. So most of the movie is arrogant math genius and his horrified lieutenant doping out how much it costs to build a Yamato. And in the end they succeed, but then again they really don't. There's a great sequence at the beginning of the film showing the fate of the Yamato, I'll say this; but the rest of the film seems like a bait and switch.
I am halfway through a Kinji Fukusaku yakuza film "Japan Organized Crime Boss" which co-stars future "Lone Wolf And Cub" superstar Tomisaburō Wakayama in a supporting role as a chunky, sunglasses-sporting dope-addled scenery-chewing wild-man yakuza boss who is described as, yes, a "lone wolf." In contrast, Kōji Tsuruta's protagonist Tsukamoto is all low-key restraint and chivalry. Don't tell me how it ends!
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