Month: April 2019

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 11 – Still Valley

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I guess this would be called historical fantasy.

Sergeant Joseph Paradine is a confederate scout near the front in the Civil War, probably in and around northern Maryland.  While investigating troop movements he discovers that a whole column of Union soldiers is frozen in place on the main street of a small town.  The men are frozen in mid stride and some are even frozen in the act of drinking from a canteen or lifting a heavy weight.  They are as still as statues and nothing happening around them wakes them from this state.

While trying to figure what was going on, Paradine hears a noise coming from a house on the street and discovers a crazy old man named Teague who claims he is responsible for the frozen Yankee soldiers.  Asked how he did it he informs Paradine that he is the seventh son of the seventh son of a seventh son.  His family has been full of warlocks for generations and he has a book of spells that can freeze the whole Union Army.  When asked why he doesn’t he tells Paradine that he is about to die.  So, he tells the sergeant to take the book and do it for him.  But before he dies, he explicitly tells Paradine that when he casts the spells, he is invoking the Devil.

Back at the camp of Paradine’s outfit he returns and tells the tale of what he saw and what can be accomplished with the power of the book.  His commanding officer thinks Paradine is suffering from delusions.  But a company returns from an area where Paradine has tested the power of the book and attests that a frozen column of Yankee soldiers is indeed right over the ridge from their camp for all to see.

Now the soldiers are beginning to become excited by the prospect of snatching a Confederate victory out of the jaws of defeat.  But as Paradine starts to read the spell he realizes that it explicitly renounces God.  Now, even though his CO is urging him to read the spell, Paradine explains that if he reads the spell then instead of Damn Yankees it will be the Confederacy that will be damned.  His comrades beg him to remember that if he doesn’t do it the Confederacy is dead.  Paradine replies that if the Confederacy must die then at least it will be buried in hallowed ground.  And saying this he throws the book into the camp fire.  In the epilogue, Serling says that the troop headed north the next day and ended up in a town called Gettysburg.  The tone at the end is a little too solemn and righteous for a fantasy but it seemed well meaning.

Gary Merrill played Paradine and did an admirable job.  Teague was played by an actor named Vaughn Taylor that I am unfamiliar with but he was very amusingly over the top.

This is a minor tale but it gets the job done.  Tastes will vary on this one but I’ll stake it to a solid B.

How Exactly Can Joe Biden Run for President?

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It’s not that his trademark sidle-up and grapple technique is exactly groping.  It’s too weird to be exactly that.  It’s some kind of Vulcan Mind Meld with a side order of Abortive Creepy Uncle Fondle Maneuver.  It’s too bizarre to ignore but too confused to easily categorize.

But how in the wide wonderful world we live in can Joe Biden lead the #MeToo party?

At last count there are at least seven separate women, most of them Democratic party operatives, who have declared themselves creeped out by Creepy Uncle Joe.  What percentage of women have to defect in order to swamp the USS Joe Biden?  It can’t be that many.

But was all this just a feint?  Is this supposed to allow the party faithful to be relieved when Joe slinks back into the retirement home and the real heavyweight jumps into the fray?  Is that Beto?  Is he neutered enough to allow the women to cast a sigh of relief at not having to vote for the shoulder rubber?  Or do we need to go all the way to Buttigieg to have a male Democrat that women won’t be nervous around?

Only time will tell.  But I have to say, the #MeToo movement is the gift that keeps on giving.  Trump tweeted that video of Biden explaining his grabbiness while in the background another Biden is employing the patented shoulder grab and hair sniff.  Of course, Plugs Biden really doesn’t have enough hair to sniff but the video is amusing.

And what’s next?  Will it be another Democrat senator or maybe the head of another stalking horse like the SPLC?  Or are there any news big shots left that haven’t been put on the spot?

What this might mean is that, as advertised by the dissident right, we may already have seen the last straight white male Democratic presidential candidate.  That honor may now belong to John Kerry.  Of course, a correction may set in if 2020 doesn’t go according to plan and Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg or Cory Booker goes down in a flaming landslide.  At that point it may be necessary for the Dems to rethink (or at least postpone) the white replacement strategy.  But it’s very interesting to see how the identity politics of the Democrats seems to be running into the fault lines that exist between the various components of the alliance that makes up the Democratic voting bloc.

And all this is happening in the foreground of the Mueller Report dud.  With President Trump crowing about his vindication and making veiled comments about counter-investigations and with the economy humming along it has to be worrying a lot of very important people in Washington that they may be about to see Donald Trump re-elected and possibly stuck with a Republican House that won’t be led by Paul Ryan.

Of course, this is all early speculation but I think the interesting thing to see is how the Democrats’ own radicalization of their constituency is shutting off candidates that have the widest appeal among the swing voters that they so desperately want to attract away from Trump.  Thank you, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, thank you, Ilhan Omar.  You are the gifts that keep on giving.  May you never successfully hide your crazy.

Sorry Creepy Uncle Joe.  Your turn is over.  I hope you enjoyed the ride.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 3 Episode 10 – The Midnight Sun

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When we meet Norma and her neighbor Mrs. Bronson, they are just becoming the last two people living in their Manhattan apartment building.  Their other neighbors, the Shusters are leaving town to head north to the Finger Lakes to escape the deadly heat associated with the death spiral of the Earth into the Sun.  Apparently, the temperature at midnight (when by the way the sun is still high in the sky) is 110◦F and in only a day or two survival will become impossible.  So, the cause of the change in Earth’s orbit is unexplained but we soldier on.

Norma is an artist and seems to specialize in landscapes featuring gigantic suns with hills and buildings in the foreground.  The women agonize over their fate and cry a lot.  In the next scene Norma has shed her dress and is stylishly sweating in her underwear which is actually a great improvement to the show.  It distracts from the lack of action.  When Norma goes to the store, she gets some fruit juice they open a can and cry some more.  Later on, a man breaks into the building and forces his way into Norma’s apartment and drinks all her water.  Then he tells us his wife and baby have died and he’s at the end of his rope.  He leaves and the women cry some more.  Then Norma paints a picture of a cool blue water fall and Mrs. Bronson goes crazy and wants to swim in the picture but luckily, she dies before she can try and Norma cries some more.

In the next scene it’s a 120◦F and the thermometer explodes and the liquid leaks out and the paint drips down from Norma’s paintings and she screams and falls down.

In the next scene it’s really, really dark and cold and Mrs. Bronson is alive again and we find out that Norma was having a fever dream about the heat and actually the Earth is flying away from the Sun and in a day or two survival will become impossible.  But at least nobody is crying at the moment.

Okay, I’m being a little sarcastic.  It’s not awful but it’s kinda slow.  The actresses are sympathetic and the acting isn’t terrible but let’s say my attention wavered.  The actress playing Norma is quite attractive and I’ll even give a half point for the surprise ending but honestly this is a C+ at best.

The Highwaymen – A Movie Review

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Camera Girl rarely requests a movie so when she does, I try to meet her halfway.  She told me she saw an interview with Kevin Costner on one of her girlie morning shows and he was talking about a Netflix movie he was in called “The Highwaymen.”  We both liked Costner in “Open Range,” so I was willing to give this a shot.  I’m glad I did.

Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson play two retired Texas Rangers (actually the Rangers had been disbanded by a woman Texas governor named Ma Ferguson (played by Kathy Bates) who are called out of retirement out of desperation because Bonnie and Clyde were on a murder and robbery spree that even the FBI couldn’t stop.  Costner and Harrelson are (respectively) Frank Hamer and Maney Gault.  Although most of the time Maney calls Frank, Pancho.  The two old lawmen discover that they’ve lost more than a step and after testing out their current accuracy with pistols they decide to invest heavily in machine guns to try and even up the fight with the Barrow gang.

Every few days the Barrows murder a few more police and always in a brutal and sadistic way.  When one particular shooting is recorded to have involved a thousand rounds of ammunition Maney questions if he and Pancho are even sane for contemplating a confrontation with these trigger-happy killers.  And in fact, the FBI is also dead set against the old pair getting involved in the manhunt once the two rangers leave Texas soil.  They taunt them for their old-fashioned methods and flaunt their access to wire-tapping information and coordinated roadblocks across the Mid-West.

But what the old men do possess is an understanding of how these desperados think and operate.  Hamer anticipates the ways that the gang avoids the police and why they will end up down in Louisiana where they will face their reckoning.

And of course, since this is the story of Bonnie and Clyde, we see a torrent of lead, riddle the gangsters’ car and bodies with bullets.  It is a sobering sight.

During the manhunt we learn a little about Maney and Frank and how they developed the reputation as mankillers.  We see that Gault is a man filled with remorse for some of the excesses that were forced on him in his days shooting it out with bandits.  And we find out that Hamer is the ruthless opponent he is because of his personal knowledge of how dangerous and unhesitating their opponents really are.

Although the movie shows just how popular Bonnie and Clyde were for the young and poor people in the Mid-West it in no way portrays them as victims.  Bonnie is especially shown to take a sadistic delight in terrifying her victims at the moment of death.  The one really touching scene is when Hamer comes face to face with Clyde Barrow’s father.  You see the opposite points of view on what caused Clyde’s fate but he learns that the man has come to terms with the action that he knows Hamer must perform, kill his son.  He needs it done to put an end to his family’s agony.

Costner and Harrelson are an odd couple and Costner is the straight man to Harrelson’s slightly eccentric character.  They do a good and generally understated job of showing us the story of how Bonnie and Clyde were finally stopped.

It’s a good crime drama and well worth the time spent.  Well done, Camera Girl, well done.