Category: Reviews

Reviews of books, movies, tv shows and other items

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 2 Episode 28 – Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?

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This is, I suppose, a science fiction episode but I always look at it as a comedy.

Two state police officers are investigating a flying saucer sighting somewhere in the snow-covered New England countryside.  They observe a hole in the ice on a small pond and also footprints coming out of the water.  They follow the prints back to a diner where they find that a bus is stopped and its passengers are waiting for a small bridge to be declared safe.  The troopers begin interrogating the diner patrons to determine who was on the bus and who entered separately.  In addition to the cook, there is a bus driver and seven people who claim to be bus passengers.  Unfortunately, the bus driver is absolutely adamant that there were only six passengers.  The alleged passengers include a businessman heading for a Boston business meeting, a blonde exotic dancer, a crazy old man played by character actor Jack Elam and two married couples, one older and one younger.

The Boston businessman and the old coot start accusing each other of being the intruder and even the two couples start looking suspiciously at their mates.  The only one who the driver remembers is the good looking blonde for obvious reasons.  While the interrogation is stalled out with bickering the juke box mysteriously starts on its own and everyone panics thinking the hidden Martian is messing with them.  As the businessman continues to complain about missing his meeting the bus driver warns him that he doesn’t trust that bridge and unless the state inspector gives it the all clear the bus won’t be crossing on it.  Once again, the juke box flares up and then all the sugar dispensers on the tables explode.  Eventually, a call comes in from the inspector certifying that the bridge is safe.  The troopers decide to give the bus an escort over the bridge and all the patrons settle their restaurant bills and depart.

In the next scene, the businessman walks back into the diner and asks the cook for a cup of black coffee.  The cook asks the businessman what happened after he left.  The businessman says that both the bus and police cruiser were on the bridge when it collapsed and no one got out.  The cook said, “no one but you.”  But then he notes, “but you’re not even wet.”  The businessman asks, “What’s wet.”  After they sort that out the businessman explains that his dry appearance is an illusion.  And then he makes the juke box start and the phone ring.  Now we see that the businessman has three arms and he tells the cook with great satisfaction that he’s the Martian and he’s waiting for his fellow colonists to invade Earth.

Well, the cook tells the businessman that there are colonists coming but they’re not Martians but Venusians (or Venerians if you like Latin) who had the same idea a few years earlier and have intercepted the businessman’s friends.  Then the cook takes off his cap and we see he has a third eye.  Now the cook is laughing but the businessman is not.

I love this episode.  Jack Elam is great as a crazy coot and each of the passengers and the cook and the troopers do a great job of providing the atmosphere for this goofy sci-fi tale.  I love how Elam analyzes the mystery and declares, “It’s a regular Ray Bradbury.  That’s what it is!”  A+

Hat Tip to Vox Day for Finding This Excellent Critique of Max Boot

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Vox reads a lot of stuff.  This was a very good choice to link to.

Here’s a direct link to the article itself.

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/04/giving-the-boot

Max Boot is one of the most contemptible of the NeverTrumpers.  This review of him and his book is also extremely clear about why the NeverTrumpers are anything but conservatives.

A Nice Fake Science Expose – The Science of Climate Change is Anything But Settled – Washington Times

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The Climate Alarmists are getting scared.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2019/mar/13/what-are-the-opponents-of-donald-trumps-climate-re/

“On March 5, 58 senior military and national security leaders sent a letter to President Trump denouncing his plan to form a National Security Council panel to take a critical look at the science underpinning climate change claims. Their objections to such a Red Team effort were basically that the “science is settled.”

But if the science is settled, what are they afraid of? Wouldn’t a review of the science come to the same conclusion as the supposed consensus of climate scientists?”

I liked this little dig at the end

“In 1931, after being informed a book had been published titled “100 Authors against Einstein,” Albert Einstein responded, “Why 100 authors? If I were wrong, then one would have been enough!” As Michael Crichton once said, “There is no such thing as consensus science. If it’s consensus, it isn’t science. If it’s science, it isn’t consensus. Period.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 2 Episode 27 – The Mind and the Matter

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This one is a pure comedy.

Archibald Beechcroft (played by comedian Shelley Berman) is a misanthropic New Yorker who hates his fellow man because he jostles Archie in the subway, steps on his toes in the elevator and spills coffee on him in the office.  When his boss, Mr. Rogers, finds Archie in the bathroom washing up after a particularly aggravating commute and asks him what’s the matter, Archie says people are the matter and they need to disappear and be decimated.  Later on, when the office errand boy Henry spills coffee on Archie’s jacket he is fit to be tied.  At lunch Henry tries to make amends by holding a seat for Archie and then presents Archie with a book called, “The Mind and the Matter,” which he claims allows people to use willpower to control the world around them.  Naturally, Henry spills some more coffee on Archie before he departs but despite himself Archie starts reading the book.  And he must be interested in the contents because we see him reading it on the subway even while he is jostled back and forth on the subway car.  Later on, we see him reading the book in his apartment and when he finishes, he declares definitively that concentration is the most underrated power in the world.  He is convinced that he can change his environment using only his concentration and will power.  His first application appears almost immediately.  Outside his apartment door the landlady is repetitively and annoyingly knocking on the door and haranguing him that his rent is due and he must pay it now.  Archie wishes her out of existence and sure enough, she disappears!  Opening the door and finding her indeed gone he declares today the landlady, tomorrow the world.

The next day as he is standing at the top of the subway staircase, being pushed and shoved by everyone hurrying by him, he stops and closes his eyes and concentrates.  And when next we see him, he is entering an empty subway station and even though the trains are somehow still running they are empty of people.

He reaches his office building which is also empty and heads up the elevator which is also running without the usual operator.  Now he sits down at his desk and fills out the insurance paperwork which is his normal occupation.  But of course, there really isn’t much point in filling out insurance forms if there aren’t any people to care.  After finishing off the day by flying some paper airplanes across the office he ends up talking to himself in the mirror but unfortunately, his reflection is very dissatisfied with Archie’s current situation.  He berates himself for not realizing that no people is even worse than annoying people.  His reflection continues this discussion with Archie back at his apartment and after admitting that the present situation is worse Archie informs his reflection that he will populate the world with the only people he can stand, people just like himself.

The next morning, he fights his way through the subway, the street, the building lobby, the elevator and his office.  All around him are men and women who all look remarkably like him and are if anything even more misanthropic than himself.  After a few hours of this he admits to his reflection that the original situation was better than the all Archibald Beechcroft version of the population.

When next we see Archie, he is sitting at lunchtime at a table and sure enough Henry spills coffee on him.  But Archie, while not very much sunnier in his disposition seems reasonably content with the normal annoyances of his normal environment.  When Henry asks him what he thought of the book he says it wasn’t believable.

You all know I like the comedies best.  Well, this is no exception.  It’s a goofy episode but I find it very entertaining.  Berman does an excellent job.  A.

American Nations – A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America – by Colin Woodard – A Book Review – Part 1

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This book has several faults.  One is that the author is an enormous progressive bigot.  He allows his sympathies with the progressive areas of the country to shade almost every aspect of the descriptive and critical content of the book.  Another fault is that he has subsumed the work of earlier authors and glossed over any ideas that don’t fit his world view.  But despite these ugly qualities the book provides a lot of very important information that can be valuable if carefully interpreted.

The thesis of the book is that the foundational cultures that colonized North America along with the remaining older cultures (Native American and Hispanic) account for the regional differences that still determine how people think, live and vote.  And that I think is a remarkable fact and taken along with an understanding of the motivations and psychology of these regional groups provides us with a better understanding of why things are happening the way they are and what best to do to influence the outcome of political and social struggles.

The clearest way to start thinking of what this book can tell us is to look at a map that divides most of North America by how it was colonized.  https://www.twincities.com/2013/11/16/which-of-this-writers-11-american-nations-do-you-live-in/

As a list, the Nations of the title are

  • Yankeedom
  • New Netherland
  • The Midlands
  • Tidewater
  • Deep South
  • New France
  • Greater Appalachia
  • El Norte
  • The Far West
  • The Left Coast
  • First Nation

What you’ll see is that the original Massachusetts colony has spread into an area that encompasses New England, New York, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, parts of the surrounding states like Illinois (Yankeedom).  And to a slightly smaller degree Washington, Oregon and Northern California were its result (The Left Coast).  And the founding of Pennsylvania produced a discernible legacy that extends from the Atlantic in a relatively narrow band through Ohio, Indiana and Illinois, then spreads into a larger area that includes virtually all of Iowa, northern Missouri, and large parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and both Dakotas.  And in fact, the strip then hooks around to include the majority of non-French eastern Canada.  All of this is denoted as the Midlands.

And in a similar way we can also see the results of the Virginia colonies (Tidewater) and the Deep South spread.  Because of the intervention of outside factors Virginia was prevented from spreading west, whereas the Carolinas went on to extend their way of life all the way down the Gulf coast to eastern Texas.

New Netherland is the Dutch founding in what is now New York City.  It is hemmed in by its neighbors to the North and South but is an extremely densely populated area with enormous commercial and financial clout.

A little less familiar is the origins of the Appalachian region.  This area was settled by lowland Scots, northern Britons and the Scots-Irish who fled poverty, oppression and civil strife in their homelands and spread out mostly from the Pennsylvanian, Virginian and Carolinian colonies to find freedom and autonomy in the mountains and forests of Appalachia and later go on to populate a wide band from western Virginia and the Carolinas to Northern Texas.  The states of West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and most of Illinois, Indiana and half of Oklahoma Missouri and Arkansas are the area called on this map Greater Appalachia.  More or less directly, the Appalachians, by cutting off access to the west, were responsible for the fact that the Virginia colonies never gained as much widespread power as its neighbors.

In a similar way the book goes to describe the founding and spread of the other “nations.”  New France and “El Norte” (the Mexican colonies in the southwest) are the most unfamiliar to most American readers but the information is easily digested and the way that these areas developed is relatively clear.

The Far West is the mountainous and high plains areas between the mid-west and the Left Coast that were populated in the wake of the railroads.  This area is defined by its relation to the federal government and its improvement programs.

First Nation describes the area in the north of Canada and Alaska and Greenland that are inhabited by the Inuit and other aboriginal peoples of the region.

In the next installment of this review I’ll discuss how the characteristics and ways of life of these different foundations set them in motion and how they collided with the outside world and each other over the course of several hundred years.

 

(The second part of this review is found here.)

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 2 Episode 26 – Shadow Play 

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Dennis Weaver plays a man named Adam Grant.  The first scene shows Adam sitting in a courtroom where he is the defendant in a murder trial.  The jury declares him guilty and the judge sentences Adam to death by electrocution.  Adam reacts by running toward the bench and telling the judge he can’t make him die again.  He is restrained by the court officers and removed from the room.

In the next scene Adam is on death row and he is interacting with his fellow prisoners.  One of them is particularly amused that Adam believes that the whole situation is actually a recurring nightmare that Adam has every night.  Adam even points out some inconsistencies that wouldn’t actually occur in real life but were playing out here.  For instance, the execution was about to occur directly following the trial and the fact that the inmate has a wristwatch which wouldn’t be allowed in a real prison.  When questioned what electrocution is like he describes the sequence in painstaking detail.

Next, we are in a suburban home where the District Attorney and his wife are about to have a steak dinner when the newspaper reporter who is covering the trial and who also happens to be their friend shows up drunk and begins trying to convince the DA to get a stay of execution.  He goes through Adam’s story and also points out some inconsistencies.  He convinces the DA to go down to the prison to at least talk to Adam.

When the DA meets with Adam, he hears the story direct from Adam and amusingly Adam is able to not only complete the DA’s sentences but also begin them.  This unnerves the DA but he is still skeptical.  And while this is going on Adam is trying to remember where in his real life all the characters of his dream came from.  He recognizes the prison chaplain as a priest in his parish who had died years ago.  He mentions to the DA how he knew him and then remembered what other parts in the drama he had played on previous nights.  Apparently, the dreams differed subtly and allowed characters to switch roles.

When the DA returns home he is very confused but at the very last minute before midnight the reporter convinces him to call the governor for a stay.  But just as he reaches him the current goes through Adam and one of the characters disappears from the room and then everything goes black.

Next, we see Adam back in the courtroom and this time one of the inmates is the judge and reporter is the DA this time.

There is a little bit of yelling at walls and it is a very down beat episode but it’s pretty well done so I’ll go for a B-.

The Twilight Zone – Complete Series Review – Season 2 Episode 25 – The Silence

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The episode takes place in an upper-class gentleman’s club where old money and just plain old Archie Taylor is angrily listening as younger brasher member Jamie Tennyson babbles on and on about some investment scheme or other while all the other members attempt to duck out on Tennyson before he can put the bite on them.  Finally, Taylor has the club butler walk over to Tennyson and hand him a note from Taylor.

The note is a wager.  Taylor is betting $500,000 that Tennyson can’t keep absolutely silent for one year.  The details require that Tennyson inhabit a walled fish bowl area in the club’s basement that is wired for sound and always available for observation by the membership.  When Tennyson asks him why he is making such an odd bet, Taylor says that Tennyson’s speech is so distasteful to him that he’ll do anything to give himself peace.  In addition, Taylor tells Tennyson that he knows he won’t lose the bet because Tennyson is congenitally incapable of shutting up for that long.

Taylor knows that Tennyson is desperate for money.  He has a spend-thrift wife who buys jewelry like it was going out of style.  Because of this Taylor believes that Tennyson will accept the bet and also lose and therefore be forced to resign from the club in disgrace.

Tennyson agrees but demands that Taylor put the money in escrow pending the outcome.  Taylor declines saying that his name and credit are all that’s needed to assure the wager.  Tennyson reluctantly agrees and the year is set to begin the next night.

In the next scene it’s nine weeks later, Tennyson is residing in the clear plastic walled enclosure and Taylor is amazed that Tennyson has been able to control himself so long.  But Taylor is merrily assuring his friends and associates that Tennyson won’t last much longer.

In the following scene it’s nine months into the year and Taylor seems to be getting worried.  He tells Tennyson that he feels sorry for him and offers him a thousand dollars to call the bet off and release him from his prison.  Tennyson refuses and writes on a pad “three months to go.”

Now Taylor starts using psychological warfare on Tennyson.  He hints to Tennyson that people have begun to see Tennyson’s wife going about town with other men.  He mentions over and over that Tennyson could lose his wife if he doesn’t leave right away and get her back.  This tactic is shown several times in the following scenes.  But although obviously tortured by the by the warnings he resists the temptation to quit.

Finally, it’s the last hour of the bet and Taylor’s friend and attorney George Alfred confronts Taylor with the knowledge that not only will Tennyson win the bet but Taylor will be exposed as a fraud and bankrupt.

The year is complete and Tennyson emerges from his isolation booth.  He walks over to Taylor and extends his hand to him palm up waiting for his check.  Taylor admits to the fact that he has no money, that Tennyson is the better man and that Taylor will resign from the club in disgrace.  But instead of verbally abusing Taylor and crowing over his victory Tennyson says nothing.

The other members are astounded and ask Tennyson to speak and tell them his side of the story.  But instead he takes a pad of paper and writes something and hands it to the members.  What it says is that before the contest Tennyson realized that he could not stay silent for a year so before he entered the room, he had the nerves to his vocal cords surgically severed.  Tennyson then removes the scarf that he has been wearing throughout the contest and we see the scars from the surgery.

I remember as a kid this one creeped me out.  The horror of a man maiming himself to win money still bothers me viscerally.  But I will admit the story is rather well done.  Liam Sullivan who plays Tennyson is actually quite a sympathetic character.  Taylor is played by Franchot Tone who was a pretty big star back in the day and is convincingly venal.  And Jonathan Harris (of “Lost in Space” fame) is an able voice of conscience as George Alfred.  I’m not speechless with amazement but let’s say B+.

Michael Anton Introduces Us to John Marini

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Back in 2016 when Michael Anton was Publius Decius Mus on the Journal of American Greatness, John Marini’s pseudonym was Cato the Elder.  Anton admits that Marini’s posts were the most unpopular possibly because they were the most intellectually challenging.  Marini’s field of expertise is the metastatic cancer that is the Administrative State, also known as the “Swamp.”  Anton here tells us that Marini has a book called, “Unmasking the Administrative State.”  Marini is a big brain so without a doubt this will be a heavy slog for the man on the street.  Rather than recommending reading this book, which I’m not even sure I’ll read, read Anton’s article about it.  He is always a worthwhile read and is a good way to see the bigger picture that’s behind the latest outrage that the Swamp is perpetrating on us on any particular day.

https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/draining-the-swamp1/

 

 

Mafia Rubouts Aren’t Showing Proper Respect

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Back when I was a kid in Brooklyn the Mafia was a much more pervasive phenomenon.  But since the FBI put John Gotti away it seems NY Mafia activity has been in a coma.  But now news arrives that the head of the moribund Gambino crime family has been rubbed out in front of his Staten Island home.  He was run over and shot six or seven times.  But, at least in the NYC papers the most important aspect of the rubout was the disrespect shown by doing it in front of his house where his family had to see it.

We have fallen on hard times indeed.  Apparently, a crime boss’s home is no longer a safe space.  Perhaps the Left can work on that.  After all hurt feelings are real.

https://nypost.com/2019/03/13/gambino-crime-boss-frank-cali-shot-dead-outside-staten-island-home/