Quick Ones

Erik The Viking--This showed up on Hulu list of recently added movies last week and it's streaming rights already expire at the end of the month. This is a pity since I really enjoy this film. It's the tale of Erik who goes on a quest to Valhalla to get the gods to end the age of Ragnarok. Written and directed by Terry Jones, the film is Pythonesque in that it works more as funny bits strung together than as an overall story. Mickey Rooney plays Tim Robbins father which is a great sight gag since Rooney only comes up to Robbins' waist. John Cleese is a warlord calmly killing everyone in his best bureaucrat's voice. Tim McInnerny is a Berserk with father issues. My favorite character is the Christian missionary who can't see a dragon or the gods in Valhalla because he doesn't believe it exists. It's a shame Jones didn't direct more films.

Skippy--A while ago I read Jackie Cooper's autobiography entitled Please Don't Shoot My Dog. The title comes from this 1931 film. Cooper plays Skippy, a young lad who befriends a kid named Sooky from the wrong side of the tracks. The friend is played by Jackie Coogan's brother Robert who is clearly reciting lines. The film is quite good despite that fact. the plot revolves around the boys' efforts to save Sooky's unlicensed dog from being killed in the pound and Skippy's efforts to keep his health officer father from tearing down the shantytown Sooky lives in. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture and Cooper got a nod as Best Actor at age 9 (he is quite good but lost to the great Lionel Barrymore). About the dog, it gets killed in the film and Cooper had to do a crying scene. In order to get him to cry, the director Norman Taurog (who was also Cooper's uncle) had an assistant take the dog out of sight and fire a blank shot to make Cooper think they'd actually shot the dog. For this, Taurog got an Oscar as Best Director.

Dodsworth--1936 film based on a Sinclair Lewis novel. Walter Huston is a retired auto executive who goes to Europe with his younger wife. On the ship over, she gets in over her head flirting with David Niven and overreacts when he tries to take her up on her implied offer. Soon she's cheating on Dodsworth who's a decent guy who doesn't quite know how to deal with the disintegration of his marriage. Eventually, he finds companionship with Mary Astor only to have his wife want to take him back. The performances are all excellent and the characters are compelling. This is available for Hulu for another few months.

Alias Jesse James--Bob hope is an insurance agent who accidentally issues a policy to Jesse James. The film is rather pointless, but the last 15 minutes are good. Hope's in a gunfight and thinks he is hitting his target. After each hit, the camera cuts to a famous Western star who actually took the shot. Cameos include Gary Cooper, Fess Parker, Roy Rogers, James Arness, and Jay Silverheels amongst others. It's on Hulu for a limited time and is worth at least checking out the end.

Moby Dick--John Huston directs, Ray Bradbury wrote the screenplay, and Gregory Peck stars. Despite this and a cameo by Orson Welles, the film got poor reviews mostly because Peck was too young for Ahab and no one wanted to see him play a villain. It's worth watching for the beautiful cinematography and good special effects. The Nantucket sleigh ride scenes are fabulous.

The Night of the Hunter--You have until March 2 to see this on Hulu. This is one of those films everyone should see not just because it's damn good but because it has had a major impact on later films. I could watch this film over and over again just for Robert Mitchum's performance. It is such a shame the film got bad reviews when it came out so Charles Laughton never directed another film. He shot one of the most beautiful dead body scenes ever.

Pernell Roberts

Boy, the celebrities seem to be dropping like flies again this week. Today comes word that Pernell Roberts died on Sunday.

Bonanza is my favorite Western TV show. Even when the show declined and they added Candy, it managed to still be pretty enjoyable. Hoss is my favorite character, and Michael Landon was mighty fine looking back when he played Little Joe. Landon and Dan Blocker had a great chemistry together which made the show for me. Of course, the best seasons were the first ones before Pernell Roberts left the show. Good natured Hoss and fun loving Little Joe needed their pragmatic older brother Adam to provide balance. The best episodes were when the younger brothers got up to some scheme and Adam made it clear they were idiots. Good stuff.

I've always loved the reason why Roberts left the show. Here he was on the number one show on television and he walked away because he no longer wanted to wear a toupee. Okay, I know that wasn't his only or biggest complaint, but you have to respect a man who is comfortable with his hair loss.

Crusoe

I was intrigued by Crusoe when it premiered in 2008. It looked like it would be good but wouldn't draw enough of an audience to stick around. Sure enough, it was cancelled. However, Hulu is showing it until Sept. 7 of this year, and at twelve episodes I figured I could knock off the entire series over the course of a few days.

The show is obviously based on the classic novel Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. I've never read the book, but based on what is in the Wikipedia entry, Crusoe tries to incorporate some elements of the novel. Friday is shown more as an equal to Crusoe since attitudes have changed since 1719 when the book was published. Still, many of the characters including Crusoe look down on and underestimate Friday.

The show does not start with an origin episode. Crusoe has been stranded for six years, has made friends with Friday, and has built a tree house that the Swiss Family Robinson would enjoy. His past and the reasons that led to his shipwreck are played out in flashbacks over the course of the season. The show is well written with a strong story arc. It's one of those shows that I think really benefits from watching in a short space of time. Sam Neil is excellent as Crusoe's benefactor. The ending is somewhat ambiguous but satisfying. Overall, it's a good way to waste twelve hours of your life.

The Hitchhiker

I have vague memories of watching The Hitchhiker back in the day on HBO (as in I remember the the Hitchhiker walking through the desert and little else). I like anthologies, The Hitchhiker is on Hulu, I decided to give it a shot.

The stories are mostly along the lines of love gone wrong. This is to accommodate the main purpose of the show which was providing soft-core porn. Remember this was filmed in the 1980's before porn became mainstream and cable existed in part to provide smut (this was also the time of Skinemax and USA's Up All Night). It almost makes me feel bad for the kids today who can get porn whenever they want and thus have no idea it was once taboo. I was surprised that Hulu doesn't provide a mature audience warning since they're usually pretty good about that (curiously the only episode I've seen with a warning had no nudity). It's nice to see natural beauty since this was also before the plastic surgery explosion when most actors started looking fake, and one has to appreciate the ridiculousness of 1980's lingerie (lace and garter belts for everyone!). On the other hand, the early episodes are so focused on nudity that the stories really suffered. I skipped ahead to some episodes in later seasons and am pleased to say they focus more on story and less on nudity. I'd advise skipping the first few seasons unless you're really hard up.

When Books Collide

I'm on vacation this week and am thus doing a good deal of reading. Yesterday's book was an Ed McBain 87th Precinct novel called Lady, Lady I Did It. It's 1961, Bert Kling's fiancee is brutally gunned down in a bookstore, and the search for the killer turns up heroin and an illegal abortion. I followed that up with Mary Robert Rinehart's The Street of the Seven Stars which tells the story of poor young Americans living in Vienna in 1914. It's a rather sentimental romance although a bit more realistic than such things usually all (one character confesses a mistress to a prospective fiancee, and I rather liked the Bulgarian spy). I was having a hard time getting into the book and figured it was because it is rather dated after 96 years. Then I realized it was a problem of names.

The man in charge of the detective squad in the 87th Precinct is Lt. Peter Byrnes. I have a very clear mental image of him--middle-aged, just on the wrong side of fit, average height, greying dark hair cut short. It might not match McBain's description perfectly, but that's how I see him. The main male character in Seven Stars is named Peter Byrne. I was about 50 pages in before I realized that when I read Byrne's name, I was picturing Byrnes instead. A cop from the 1960's has no place in pre-WWI Vienna. I found it much easier to get enjoy the story after I went back and reread the description of Byrne. Once I fixed him in my mind as a young, skinny Tom Baker the book was much easier to read.

Robert B. Parker

Robert B. Parker died today. Bit of a shock since I had no idea he was almost 80 (he did not look his age). Of the prolific authors I follow, he was probably the most inconsistent. The Jesse Stone and Sunny Randall novels were usually very good, but the Spenser books varied widely in quality. I didn't mind the variation in quality so much with him since his books were written in a simple, clean style that made them nice fast reads. I'm going to miss he's two or three new books every year.

Bad day for authors. Just saw Erich Segal died as well. I like Love Story, and have a copy amongst the permanent collection on my book shelves. That being said, I will always hate Segal for the sequel he wrote called Oliver's Story. In Love Story , Oliver gives up a life of privilege for the woman he loves. Hokey, sure, but it's a good little romance. In Oliver's Story, Oliver finds love with an heiress and basically embraces the life he would have had had he never gotten involved with his first wife. I don't condone the burning of books, but if anyone wanted to make a bonfire of every copy of Oliver's Story and every copy of Ira Levin's Son of Rosemary, I'd gladly supply the matches. It is wrong to write a sequel to a well loved book just to repudiate everything that was good about the original to begin with.

Three Comedies

Black Books. My sister recommended this Britcom. It's the story of an alcholic misanthrope who owns a book store. He's got a hapless loser as an assistant and a female best friend who is almost as pathetic as he is. It's a rare thing for a show to have a main character who has absolutely no redeeming qualities, but it works. The best episodes for me are the more surreal ones. I particularly liked "A Nice Change" where the group goes on vacation and tries to get the cheapest airfare. They end up spending weeks on travelling and about five hours at their destination.

Better Off Ted. This was recommended by my best friend. Ted works in research and development for an evil company (example of evilness: encouraging employees to date based on genetic compatibility so the company would have lower health care costs if children came of the unions). Ted's boss is played by Portia de Rossi who is awesome as always. She agrees to some extent with Ted that they should not contribute too much to the company's evil, but they both know paychecks are as important as principles. My favorite two characters are the scientists, Lem and Phil. They have brilliant minds and no social skills. The show is fast paced and quite funny. I'm enjoying it enough that I'm sure it won't get picked up for another season.

Mystery Science Theater 3000. Hulu has five episodes streaming until the beginning of February. I'm not sure if they'll put up more episodes after that. The premise is a geek and his robots are trapped on a satellite and forced to watch bad movies. The jokes are a bit hit or miss, but if you don't like one joke another will be along in a few seconds. It's a great show for pop culture junkies since a lot of the jokes only work if you know pop culture.