Matt’s Week in Dork! (12/4-12/10)

    Well, at least I got some socializing done.  And some sleep.  Considering I started Son of Frankenstein on Friday night (these reviews are in order of viewing), you can see the week was a bit wonky.  Still Saturday was nice and restful.  Even got some reading done. 


Muppet Treasure Island:  The gang is all here for this fun adaptation of the classic story.  The songs aren’t great, and the humor doesn’t always work.  But, overall, it’s a good watch, and quite enjoyable for Muppet fans. 

Bride of Frankenstein:  A surprisingly good follow-up, this time we find another crazy scientist trying to unlock the secret of life.  He hopes to exploit the monster and his creator in a quest to make a female. Nice sets and some very cool bits.  The end is shockingly abrupt, though.

Mystery Science Theater 3000: I Accuse My Parents:  What feels like an extra long educational short, or what in the 80s would be an After School Special, this cheesy 50s movie is all about the evils of non-traditional parents.  Mom has interests outside the home?  Evil.  Dad doesn’t spend all day at his 9 to 5?  Evil.  Oh, sure, they make the parents genuinely bad.  Mom’s a drunk, and Dad’s a …well, an A-hole.  But, it doesn’t seem to actually be what’s at the root of our heroic sociopath’s problems.  And when all is said and done, I don’t feel bad for him at all.  Joel and the bots give the film the treatment, and with good cause.  A good, but not great episode.

Son of Frankenstein:  This third film in Universal’s Frankenstein series is surprisingly good.  While the Dracula films became extremely formulaic and kind of dull, these films actually do interesting things.  The cast for Son of Frankenstein is fantastic, but the real stand out is Lionel Atwill playing the one armed inspector, Krogh.  He starts off as an almost surreal, perhaps humorous character, but becomes something much more as the movie goes on.  And Bela Lugosi, creates quite the villainous cur as Ygor.  A good addition to the series, for sure.

The Gost of Frankenstein:  Though not as good as Son, this fourth movie in Universal’s series is still pretty good.  The vile Ygor is up to his old dirty deeds again.  Will the descendant of Frankenstein be able to redeem his family name?  Or will snooping Ralph Bellamy ruin everything?  The climax is pretty crazy.

House of Frankenstein:  Another surprisingly good film in the Frankenstein series.  This series is far better than the Dracula films.  The combination of the various monsters is again obviously a gimmick, but somehow it all works fairly well. 

Stargate SG1: Season 10:  Another overall excellent season.  The last few years of this show are certainly the best.  One odd thing, though.  As the show gets closer to the end, it seems less and less concerned with all the major issues.  Most of the final episodes don’t even involve much about the Ori or the Goa’uld.  And those that do, fell somewhat restrained.  I’m not sure if this is because the movies were already in the works (I have yet to see them, at the time of this writing), and the big finale was planned for that.  I’m not sure.  So, while a good season, it’s end is something of a let down.  Not that it’s bad.  It simply isn’t the grand ending a ten year series demands.  Perhaps I’ll feel different after watching The Ark of Truth and Continuum. 

Stargate: The Ark of Truth:  OK, so this is the finale the series didn’t have.  Finally wrapping up the major arc of the last couple seasons, it also feels generally like a solid send-off for the show.  I could have dealt without the return of a certain old menace, but I guess it worked for the story.  I was simply never a fan of said menace in the first place.  The images of Teal’c rising up to go kill himself some more gods were pretty cool.  That guy is a brutal fist of reason.  Anyhow, if you’ve watched the regular run of the show, check this out for a proper conclusion. 

Teal'c The God-Killer

Stargate: Continuum:  Kind of a second send-off for the SG-1 team, this movie is a great deal of fun, largely thanks to the awesomeness of Ba’al, my favorite of all the Goa’uld from the series.  His final master plan kicks some serious butt and puts not only SG-1, but everything they’ve ever accomplished on the line.  Where The Ark of Truth capped the final few seasons of the show, Continuum sort of takes the early seasons, and fully resolves some of those left over issues. 

    In between, I watched a few episodes of the fourth season of The Sarah Jane Adventures.  These feel a bit more poignant, especially the stories that deal with loss (like Death of the Doctor), now that she’s gone.   The show remains a great deal of fun, and I’m glad Elizabeth Sladen had this show to bow out on.  She certainly left us wanting more. 

    I also started Ken Burns’ series on Prohibition.  So far, so good.  Kind of interesting seeing the various movements that came together at such a key time in American history to create such a misguided moral misadventure.  And it’s interesting to see similar trends in today’s world.  There are certainly parallels between the religious minded moral crusaders who think they know best about not only how we as Americans should live, but who really counts as American in the first place. 

    I’ve been reading a bunch, but haven’t finished anything this week.  Still stuck in this classic science fiction kick, which is OK by me.  And it’s nice reading a bunch of fiction.  I’d kind of drifted away from novels for the last couple of years and it’s fun to read some again. 

    That said, all this classic science fiction, and some of the other reading I’ve been doing has gotten me to thinking about how my whole ‘return to gaming’ kind of got sidetracked.  I mean, the big issue remains scheduling.  In this day and age, with the kinds of hours people work, doing something like a weekly game seems almost impossible.  But, I’m not beat.  This will happen. 

-Matt

Matt’s Week in Dork! (11/13/11-11/19/11)

    Considering how crazy busy I’ve been this week, I really don’t know how the heck I got so much viewing and even reading lately.  My day job is taking up more of my time these days.  We’ll see how dorky I can make next week. 


The Mummy:  “Had to!  Science you know.”  The classic horror movie may be a touch old timey for many modern viewers, with its almost 20s style and sometimes stiff acting, but it’s got some pretty cool sequences and great lines.

Doctor Who: Colony in Space:  The Doctor finally gets free of Earth for an adventure, taking Jo on her first offworld jaunt.  And what they find is a pretty interesting situation, with colonists and a mining corporation at odds over a planet, and some natives creeping about.  The problem, as with so many Pertwee era stories is that it’s too long.  There’s a bout a four part story here, but it’s a six part arc.  This sadly invites the writers to bring in the extremely over-used and one note Master, for no good reason.  The final episode kind of breaks down a bit with his dastardly doings.  Still, it’s a fairly cool story overall, even with the faults.  The costumes on the natives look terrible, but the rest of it is pretty good.

The Ides of March:  Clooney sure knows how to direct a film.  He makes good movies, and each one is very different from the last.  Unfortunately, this one is kind of a misfire.  The cast is good and the movie looks great.  However, it’s simply not all that interesting.  It’s not bad.  It’s timely.  But, it’s not exciting at all.  And I don’t just mean because there’s no action.  I mean that it’s really not very interesting.  Ah well, his previous work as director is plenty strong enough for me to look forward to his next.

The Mummy’s Hand:  A kind of goofy misadventure, this film finds two luckless guys hanging out in North Africa, looking to find their fortunes.  When they team up with a stage magician and his lovely daughter, they may be in far over their head.  It’s an OK, light hearted mummy movie this time around.

The Mummy’s Tomb:  All the lightheartedness of the previous film is extinguished rather quickly with a brutal murder.  The tone is totally different as the horror is brought to America and people start getting picked off rather quickly.  As with the previous entry in the series, it’s OK, but not great.  It’s certainly more violent.  And there is something oddly fun about torch bearing peasants in suburban America.

Bellflower:  Argh!  A cast of absolutely infuriating jerk-offs doing lots of stupid crap.  But don’t worry, they take forever to do it.  Hipster crap.  Infuriating hipster crap.  I felt like screaming in rage for most of the film (at the film).

The Mummy’s Ghost:  The Mummy is back, and still (un)living in the States.  Not especially interesting, though it does play out in an interesting way during the very finale.  Life in the swamp, man.

The Mummy’s Curse:  I think the problem with the last three Mummy movies is that they’re pretty much the same movie with some slight variations and cast changes.  Well, that, and if you pay attention to the time that’s supposed to have past between each film, Curse should be taking place in the latter days of the 20th century, but things still look pretty 40s to me.  Like the previous film, it’s OK, but forgettable.

Doctor Who: The Mawdryn Undead:  This episode really uses the time travel aspects of the show a bit more than usual, with events playing out in parallel timelines.  It’s an interesting episode, one of the better Davison I’ve seen.  It’s always good to see the Brigadier, too.

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Touch of Satan:  “This is where the fish lives.”  An extremely crappy Satan based horror movie from the 70s is typically blah.  However, Mike and the lads are quite funny.  A good episode, with thankfully little (no) Pearl.

Bunraku:  Extremely stylistic, with lots and lots of fun little homages to various classic genre films (especially Westerns and Martial Arts movies), this could have very easily been a total mess.  However, though it drags a bit in the third act, it’s actually quite entertaining.  Not for everyone, surely.  But, for those who want a little fun with their action, give this one a look.  Probably Hartnett’s best work to date.

Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Unearthly:  A boring Dr. Frankenstein type story is made more watchable by Joel and the Bots.  And this episode features two shorts.  The one about posture is extremely awkward and creepy.  Good stuff.

Doctor Who: Terror of the Autons:  The introduction of two characters I’m not especially fond of, Jo and The Master.  And it’s squarely set in the era when the Doctor was stuck on Earth, battling alien invasion after alien invasion.  All that aside, it’s not a bad story.  Jon Pertwee sure has grown on me on my re-watching of the classic episodes.  But, man, I wish he had more interesting stories and better companions/villains.

    On Sunday, Ben and I watched some more episodes of From the Earth to the Moon, which continues to be an excellent series.  I also caught another batch of Fringe episodes, which is continuing to be very cool, occasionally funny, and is making me curious to see where it goes.  And I decided to finally pick Stargate SG-1 back up.  I got side-tracked last holiday season at the halfway point of season 10.  So close to the end.  So, I watched a few episodes of that.  The show has its flaws, but is surprisingly good more often than not.

    And the Clone Wars series continues to impress.  It’s so, so, so much better than the prequel trilogy.  It does so much to remind me of all the things I loved about the originals.  It’s classic space opera, high science fantasy, and rip-roaring fun.

     I read volume two of the comic Orbital, which finished up the first story.  The art is excellent and the setting quite cool.  The writing isn’t amazing, but it’s passable.  I’m enjoying it enough to be excited about reading the next volume.

    And on cineAWESOME! this week, I took a look at some of my favorite movie chases. 

-Matt