11FEB2019 – Photo of the Day
Month: February 2019
The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 29 – Nightmare as a Child
Helen Foley is a grade school teacher who returns home from school anxious and confused. She saw a man in a car who brought up troubling memories from her past. When she gets to her apartment door there is a little girl sitting on the staircase with a very solemn expression on her face and apparently wants to talk to Helen. She invites the girl in and learns the girl’s name is Markie. Markie seems to know a great deal about Helen and she reminds Helen of things in her past that had been forgotten after some tragedy in the past.
Later that day a man named Peter Seldon arrives and Markie beats a hasty retreat before he enters the apartment. Seldon questions Helen about her past. She seems to remember him and he fills in her memory by telling her that he had worked for her mother long ago. When Helen seems to hear Markie singing outside and Seldon doesn’t she describes Markie to him. He informs her that when she was a little girl she was called Markie. He shows her a picture of herself as a little girl that he has kept all these years. The picture looks exactly like the girl Markie that Helen had met that day.
When Seldon leaves, Markie returns and reveals that she is indeed Helen as a girl. She now forces Helen to remember that Seldon was the man who murdered her mother all those years ago. Just then Seldon returns and attempts to kill Helen but she resists and he accidentally falls down the stairs to his death. And Helen lives happily ever after.
Well, not too bad, but definitely not top notch. C+
11FEB2019 – Quote of the Day
“I was sitting in my office when someone called to tell me two light planes had collided with the World Trade Centre. I turned on my television, before long there was this procession of people of all kinds, walking up the street. What I remember most was the silence of that crowd; there was no sound.”
Tom Wolfe
10FEB2019 – Photo of the Day
10FEB2019 – Quote of the Day
The surest cure for vanity is loneliness.
Tom Wolfe
The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 28 – A Nice Place to Visit
Rocky Valentine is a career criminal who as we view him initially is burglarizing a pawn shop. The cops arrive and Rocky runs down an alley and jumps onto a wall to escape. The police order him to halt. He fires a few shots at them and they hit him with several bullets at which point he falls off the wall. Next we see him lying unconscious on the ground when a portly bearded man named Pip (played by Sebastian Cabot) approaches him and calls to him to wake up. Rocky gets to his feet and immediately attempts to rob Pip who casually hands him seven hundred dollars and asks him if he’d like more. When Rocky wants to know who Pip is, he replies that he is Rocky’s guide. Pip brings Rocky to a spacious apartment decorated in the taste that we imagine Rocky would appreciate. Large paintings of voluptuously shaped women and gold colored trappings adorn the deluxe suite. Pip provides him with expensive new clothing, gourmet food and even an attractive interested woman for company. When Rocky becomes suspicious of this set-up Pip reveals that Rocky died when the police shot him and this was the after-life. Later on, he brings Rocky to a gambling club where he is surrounded by appreciative attractive women and games of chance where he never loses. Afterwards he drives home in a luxury convertible with his bevy of girls.
A month later we see him at the club still winning every spin of the roulette wheel and every pull of the slot machine handle. He’s even bored of the women. He calls up Pip and begs him to relieve the boredom. Pip, ever agreeable, asks if he’d like to lose occasionally. But Rocky says it wouldn’t help. He asks if he could get back to thievery and Pip recommends a bank around the corner. But when Rocky asks if it is possible that he’ll get caught Pip’s smile reveals the futility of his idea. Desperate to understand his predicament he asks why he is so miserable in heaven. Pip laughs and says, “You think you’re in heaven?” And the show concludes with Pip laughing on and on and Rocky in despair.
I guess the regulars here know I have a soft spot for comedy. This is a very silly episode and I like it a lot. A jolly devil and a despicable thug from Brooklyn. How can we go wrong? B+
The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 1 Episode 27 – The Big Tall Wish
This is the story of a Bolie Jackson a broken-down boxer who lives in an apartment building where a little kid named Henry befriends him and tells Bolie that he will make a “big tall wish” that Bolie wins his fight that night. Henry’s mother tells Bolie that the last time Henry made a big tall wish it came true.
Bolie hurts his hand before the fight and he is being pummeled in the ring. Henry sees this on tv and wishes for Bolie to win. We see Bolie hit the canvas and is ten counted out but when the referee holds up the winner’s hand it’s Bolie standing and his opponent on the canvas. Bolie is confused because he remembers himself being knocked down but somehow, he won. Everyone saw him win and no one saw him knocked down and now even his hand isn’t injured anymore.
When he gets home, Henry tries to tell Bolie that he won through the big tall wish. But Bolie explodes in exasperation telling Henry that there is no such thing as magic. But Henry begs Bolie to believe in magic. Suddenly the scene returns to the boxing ring and this time Bolie ends up knocked out. The ending voice over by Serling says something about magic, something, something.
This was certainly a swing and a miss. The acting wasn’t bad but the story was too thin and the whole thing was a sort of jumbled mish mash. I’ll just say D+.
09FEB2019 – Photo of the Day
09FEB2019 – Quote of the Day
This goes for everything in art, music, cinema and literature too, all a sham.
The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art is merely romantic fiction. The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.
Tom Wolfe
08FEB2019 – Screen Actor Albert Finney Died
I always considered Finney an enjoyable actor to watch, always fun. Miller’s Crossing and The Dresser are the two roles I liked him in best. He was also good in Scrooge and Annie (both musical comedies which I rarely can enjoy). Rest in Peace.