All the Secrets of the Universe and Some Really Important Stuff Too!
Reviews of books, movies, tv shows and other items
This is the second article over at Mad Genius Club that I found today that I really liked. Peter Grant starts out talking about different trends in book publishing which is interesting enough but at the end he has a quote from a soldier’s memoir. It’s a fellow named George MacDonald Fraser who served in a a Scottish regiment in Burma during World War II. He describes a Scottish sergeant of limited education’s reaction to reading some of Shakespeare’s Henry V. Very interesting.
I reviewed Chernobyl a few months back. It’s a very interesting series. I’m reading Brad’s take on it and thought some of you might enjoy his thoughts on it. I’ve linked the episodes he’s written so far.
I had completely forgotten how truly awful this episode is.
An alien spacecraft using ion drive approaches the Enterprise. A go-go dancer complete with big hair, go-go boots, micro-dress and vinyl bustier beams aboard the Enterprise bridge knocks out the crew and micro-surgically removes Spock’s brain and takes it away. You would think that would be enough, but there’s more.
McCoy somehow manages to put Spock’s brainless body on life support but warns Kirk that he can only survive for 24 hours without his brain. The Enterprise follows the ion trail to a planet that is covered by Ice Age glaciation but has some kind of energy source below the surface. On the surface are largish humanoid Neolithic men who attack the Enterprise landing party. A captured man of the tribe who call themselves the Morg warns the crew of the Eymorg, the “givers of pain and delight.” We find out that the Eymorg are the women who live below the surface and have energy weapons that they use to torture the surface-dwelling men if they don’t take out the garbage and perform their more delightful husbandly duties on schedule.
Kirk, McCoy, Scotty and Spock’s body proceed to the Underground Kingdom of the Go-Go Dancers. Spock’s body is controlled by McCoy using some kind of Nintendo joystick device. Once there, Kirk and company battle it out with the go-go dancers and eventually get the upper hand. It seems Spock’s Brain is being used as a sort of thermostat to control the climate control in the underground lair. The head go-go dancer refuses to put Spock’s brain back in his body so McCoy has to use the “educator” helmet to learn how to perform the surgery. But halfway through the operation McCoy begins to forget how to do it so they reattach Spock’s vocal cords and he coaches McCoy through the rest of the surgery. Kirk tells the head go-go dancer that without Spock’s brain they will have to return to the surface and learn to control their men through the more conventional method of nagging them.
Watching this episode has really depressed me. I have to watch the rest of season three before I can end this task and this episode has hammered home just how bad it will be. There is nothing good about this episode. The script is beyond poor. They even forgot some of the conventions of their “technology.” They referred to the ion drive of the aliens as highly advanced whereas ion drive is the much less sophisticated and slower impulse power that the Enterprise uses when its warp engines are unavailable. The dialog between Kirk and the bridge crew when they are debating which planet is likely to be the one they are looking for sounds like a family trying to decide which restaurant to stop at during a long trip, “Wendy’s or Dairy Queen?”
The tribesmen on the planet have the worst wigs and beards I’ve ever seen on this or any show. The go-go dancers don’t have any meaningful dialog beyond saying, “I don’t understand.” And McCoy tries so hard to project horror at the removal of Spock’s brain that his facial expression looks more like someone suffering a stroke. In general, all the actors look confused and dispirited. Even Shatner looks sullen. I don’t think he really wanted the brain back. He just wanted his paycheck and maybe the head go-go dancer’s phone number.
This episode is awful on all levels so I will award it a 1 // 2.
Larry’s got a mil-sf book in the running for a Dragon Award and he talks a little about the nominees that he’s familiar with. If you’re voting in the Dragon Awards take a look at his comments. And Larry’s a good guy so if you’re looking for good sf&f books I’d give authors he likes a look see.
I’m sure there are movie critics who have their own takes on this question. I’ve never thought much about who the “real” movie stars were because what I was interested in was which were the good movies. But recently I’ve been watching some old movies that were not in the top 100 movies of all time. In fact, some of them were pretty bad. The plots were hackneyed and the scripts were poorly written and some of the actors and actresses were pretty awful.
You might ask why I would do this. It’s a combination of things. Firstly, they were on Turner Classic Movies and I get that channel on my cable television subscription. But the other reason is that I’ve just seen the good movies so often I need a break. Even a great movie can be worn out by too frequent viewing. So, I’ve been watching some stinkers.
I recorded a couple of movies with William Powell that I’d never heard of. One was called “Lawyer Man” that also starred Joan Blondell. It’s an early film from 1932 and the plot includes all kinds of stereotypical plot elements, dialog and characters that fairly scream “B” movie. I wouldn’t recommend this movie highly although it was amusing because of the leads.
But what was obvious to me was that William Powell was a movie star. And what that means is that regardless of the role or movie William Powell is in, he’s William Powell. Whether he’s a lawyer or a private detective or a doctor or a stockbroker or a down on his luck everyman, he’s, unmistakably, the same person. The persona that Powell had created is what the producers and directors wanted from him in all his films. In one film he might be a hobo, in another a rich nobleman but in both cases, these were just the vicissitudes of life and they didn’t change his character.
This differs from a real actor like Lawrence Olivier. When he plays Henry V, he’s a gallant hero. When he plays Richard III, he’s a heartless monster. And when he’s Hamlet he’s a lost soul. Olivier becomes what the part requires. But when we’re looking to spend an hour with a witty, pleasant, intelligent man we’d rather have William Powell. He’ll work his way through the plot and whenever he’s on the screen we’ll be pleased. The character William Powell plays is the man you’d wish was sitting next to you on a long train ride. He’ll have stories to tell and probably has a deck of cards in his coat pocket and when his wife or girlfriend shows up, she’ll be a smart cute funny dame. And if an armed robber shows up in the railway car Powell will manage to knock him out and tie him up with no apparent effort.
The movie stars I can think of were all of the sort that produced a character. Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant always played the same part with slight differences to align with the plot and character details. But they almost never were cast against type. Of course, these were the pictures they made once they had reached star status. As journeymen they had to take whatever roles they were given. You can see this transition in someone like Humphrey Bogart. When he started out, he had to play a lot of vicious gangsters and there was very little nuance in these roles. But once he had done the Maltese Falcon, he was allowed to find his “type.” He became the tough guy with a brain. And at that point audiences knew what to expect from Bogey.
As I said, I generally am looking for a movie with a good plot and decent acting. But there is something to be said for trying to match a movie to a mood. If I need to relax and enjoy a reuben sandwich and a cold drink I’ll probably want a Western with John Wayne or Gary Cooper. And If I need my spirits lifted, I’ll watch a Jimmy Stewart film or a W.C. Fields farce. But if I’m ever homesick for the New York City that used to exist, I’ll look for a William Powell movie. And maybe it never really existed but with William Powell to walk you through it will feel like home. At least to me.
“The Shop Around the Corner” is an MGM movie starring Jimmy Stewart that combines elements of comedy, drama and romance to tell the story of a retail store in Budapest, Hungary called Matuschek and Company. Mr. Matuschek, played by Frank Morgan is the owner of a leather goods store that is struggling to survive at the end of the Great Depression. Matuschek is enthusiastic, self-important and comically hot-headed.
His lead salesman is Alfred Kralik, played by Stewart. Kralik is intelligent, earnest and falling in love with a woman he’s never met. He’s in an anonymous pen-pal relationship with a woman that he knows simply as “dear friend.” As it turns out dear friend also happens to be his co-worker Klara Novak, played by Margaret Sullavan. But in their real life Kralik and Klara detest each other. In addition to this comedy of errors love/hate relationship, there are other characters and other sub-plots. Kralik’s closest friend at the shop is Mr. Pirovitch played in a wonderfully comic turn by Felix Bressart. Pirovitch is Mr. Matuschek’s favorite whipping boy. His favorite statement is “Pirovitch you’re an idiot.” To which the meek Pirovitch replies, “Yes, Mr. Matuschek, I’m an idiot.”
There is Ferencz Vadas, another of the sales clerks, played with enormous pomposity and self-regard by Joseph Schildkraut. And finally, there is the errand boy Pepi Katona who snipes sarcastically at all his superiors and ends up as the hero of the second plot line. For along with the romance there is a drama. Mr. Matuschek has become aware of the fact that his wife is having an affair and he believes it is with one of his employees. And since Kralik has had the most opportunity to meet Mrs. Matuschek he is the prime suspect. So, whereas formerly Matuschek treated Kralik almost as a son now he hates and distrusts him. After goading Kralik into anger, Matuschek discharges him. But when the private detectives finish their investigation, they name Mr. Vadas as Matuschek’s rival. With his life in shambles Matuschek attempts to end it all with a pistol. But in the nick of time Pepi breaks in on his suicide and hands Matuschek over to the hospital for psychiatric observation.
Meanwhile Kralik discovers that on top of being fired his “dear friend” is Klara Novak. He finds this out when he is supposed to be meeting her at a café with each of them wearing a carnation. Spying Klara’s carnation from outside he throws away his carnation and pretends that he was just stopping at the café to meet Pirovitch. Klara accuses him of trying to spoil her prospective date, insults him and finishes by calling him an insignificant clerk. After this he leaves in complete dejection and misery.
But in the next act Matuschek calls Kralik to his hospital bed to apologize for his terrible treatment and to beg him to come back and manage the store while Matuschek recuperates from his nervous breakdown. Even Pepi is rewarded for saving Mr. Matuschek by becoming a salesman. Now with roles reversed Klara is dejected because her date never showed up and on top of that she finds that the man she insulted is now her boss. But all ends well. Kralik fires the despicable Vadas in royal fashion. The store has a stellar Christmas sales total and Mr. Matuschek returns in time to give everyone a wonderful bonus. And finally, the lovers are re-united. But first Kralik has some fun with Klara by pretending that he had met her “dear friend” and he was fat, bald, old, and a greedy fraud. When Klara finally discovers that Kralik is her “dear friend” she is relieved and happy.
This is a relatively silly story. But the dialogue and the acting are remarkably good. Even the minor parts are played skillfully and with great comic verve. There is great heart here. And the humanity of all the characters, even the villainous Vadas feels very real. You believe the story. There is a Dickensian feel to the production. I highly recommend this story to everyone. It’s a gem.
I’ve been washing venetian blinds all morning and am still only half done! I’ve calculated that there are 450 individual slats to clean by hand one at a time. Camera Girl is a harsh mistress. Pardon my absence. I will catch up as soon as I am released from bondage.
As a quick note I listened to ZMan’s Friday podcast and it was on “The Book of Five Rings.” The book’s author was a 17th century Japanese swordsman named Miyamoto Musashi. The book is ostensibly on the strategy of sword fighting but is actually a meditation on the philosophy of living in the real world. I thought his podcast was extremely interesting and I’ll have to read book soon. I wish the podcast was much longer it took my mind off the drudgery I am enduring.
Stay tuned.
And he shows cuts from Biden’s recent CNN Town Hall as evidence. Wait for the clips of Biden. They’re pretty convincing evidence that Dementia Joe is an accurate nickname. If Kamala is looking for proof to allow her to use the 25th Amendment to yank Biden out of the White House this should do nicely.
I say bring on Animatronic Biden. He’s clean and articulate.
This guy Jones is hilarious when he is ripping into Biden’s incomprehensible search for a sentence. Come on Joe, give us a noun, give us a verb.
This the last episode of season 2. We are told at the beginning of the episode that the Enterprise has been sent back in time to 1968 by means of blah, blah, blah. They are there to do research. By a remarkable coincidence they intercept an enormously powerful transporter beam coming from 1,000 light years away. The beam deposits a seemingly human man holding a black cat.
The man identifies himself as Gary Seven (played by Robert Lansing), a human agent of a far off highly advanced race that he claims maintains a population of humans to visit Earth and influence human history in a way that limits the possibility of self-destruction. Gary tries to convince Kirk to let him continue on to Earth to fulfill his mission which is to harmlessly but frighteningly destroy a nuclear weapon during a launch into orbit. Kirk is unsure of Seven’s story and refuses to release him without proof of the truth of his story. He fears that Seven is an alien enemy trying to destroy Earth by triggering WW III.
Seven manages to escape from detention on the Enterprise and proceeds to his base in New York City. There he finds out that the agents meant to sabotage the orbital rocket have died in a car crash. He must go himself to the Florida rocket launch and program the rocket to explode 100 miles above Russia thus convincing the Americans and their enemies that keeping H-bombs orbiting the Earth is a very bad idea.
At this point a woman hired by his two late associates to be their receptionist, Roberta Lincoln (played by a very young Teri Garr in a miniskirt) shows up and further confuses Gary Seven’s mission. Meanwhile the Enterprise has identified the destination Seven transported to and sends Kirk and Spock dressed in mid-century American clothes. They get into an altercation with Roberta and she manages to send for the police. Gary Seven transports to the rocket launch location before Kirk and Spock reach him. Meanwhile the NYPD shows up and Kirk has Scotty beam the two policemen and himself and Spock to the Enterprise. The two policemen are stunned by their transportation. Kirk and Spock exit the transporter and Scotty returns the officers to Earth before they can recover their wits.
Kirk now knows that Gary Seven has reached the rocket base and he and Spock decide to go there to stop Seven’s plan. They are immediately arrested by the base’s armed guards and hauled off to, of all places, the mission control location. Gary Seven is now on the gantry next to the rocket and has begun reprogramming the rocket. At this point back on the Enterprise Scotty locates Gary Seven on the side of the rocket and attempts to beam him aboard the Enterprise. But as Seven begins to materialize in the Enterprise transporter Roberta Lincoln fiddles aimlessly with the controls of the transporter in New York and the machine finds Gary Seven and brings him to New York. How’s that for ridiculous!
After that we have Roberta Lincoln realizing that Seven can’t be from the CIA and knocking him out with a metal box. Then Kirk and Spock, who in the interim have been rescued from detention by Scotty, show up and use up all but a few seconds of time needed to detonate the bomb in the upper atmosphere. Shatner uses his confused face to let us know he isn’t sure whether he should do the only reasonable thing and let Seven prevent the nuke from reaching Earth. Spock has to bless his decision by saying there is no information to make a logical decision so Kirk’s human intuition is the only choice. Kirk says, “Do it!” And the show comes to a blessed ending in the glare of a thermonuclear explosion at exactly 104 miles above the ground.
In the epilogue we learn that history had recorded that the bomb did go off at that altitude and was the impetus for nuclear negotiations between the United States and Russia. And Spock informs Seven and Lincoln that they will have interesting adventures together in the near future. We then see that Seven’s cat Isis can also transform herself into a scantily clad and buxom woman and when Roberta questions Gary about this female rival, “Who’s that?” She transforms back into a cat in time for Gary to tell Roberta, “That’s my cat.”
Okay, let’s go over this a little bit. This episode was a sort of pilot for a spin-off starring Lansing and Garr that never happened. And I will say that these two were definitely a notch above the caliber of most of the guest stars. They both had good presence, some comedic timing and decent acting skills. The script although filled with improbabilities piled on ridiculous coincidences moved along quickly and reached a satisfying climax without Shatner breaking out too much of his classic emoting. In fact, having Lansing and Garr dominate the air time was extremely refreshing. And this is one of the few episodes I can think of where Dr. McCoy has almost no time on screen. So, it’s a real win/win.
I would say this in one of the good episodes. As mentioned above Shatner doesn’t get to use much of his bag of painful tricks so the Shatner mockery value will be sort of low. Let’s call this an 8 // 3.
Victor Orban is the Prime Minister of Hungary and a staunch Hungarian nationalist. He is trying his best to push his country back in a direction that aligns with Family, God and Country. And because of this he is despised by his EU neighbors. The openly gay EU leaders have been triggered by his recent passing of a law that forbids proselytizing the LGBTQ lifestyles to minors. But he is indifferent to their hysteria. The fact that Hungary elected this man four times speaks volumes about their superiority to our own with respect to survival instinct
Recently he was interviewed by a religious publication from Croatia. Here are some excepts. Note: This is a machine translation from a Croat publication and therefore not particularly polished.
How much does it cost you to swim against the dominant European political current?
Whoever swims with the multicultural fashion of this time loses everything that matters in life. True, everyone who goes against the current causes themselves a lot of problems. We pay a high price. Hungary pays a high price for not signing the Istanbul Convention, then refusing to support any Cold War policy; we pay a high price for not kicking the Russian president every day together with Westerners, but giving him the respect he deserves as president; we pay a high price for protecting the Christian model of the family; that LGBT madness has no place here; then we pay a high price for our position on migration and we pay a high price for not accepting the Brussels bureaucracy, but first and foremost as a counterweight to building Central European cooperation. So, we really pay a high price. But if we don’t pay that price, and if we don’t represent our interests, we may live more comfortably, but we will end up losing a lot more. We do better if we fight. I think Zrinski would understand that too.
How strong are the influences of pre-democratic structures in Hungary today?
In the Hungarian soul there is generally a desire for what is more important than personal life, which transcends it. Hungarians usually look for it in three directions: in the direction of family, nation and God. Usually, conversion also occurs when these three worlds are connected. It is a process that is progressing and I would not say that we are hindered by pre-democratic structures, no one else is responsible, it is our responsibility. Clearly, there are atheists in Hungary as well, there are opponents of the Church, there are liberals who do everything to stop the spread of Christian values. They have their own media, they are organized, they have strong civic associations. However, we have them on the conservative side as well – there are at least as many Christian media as there are anti-Christian ones, our civil associations are at least as strong as theirs, maybe even stronger; and we hold political positions because we have a Christian government. Therefore, the lack of spiritual renewal cannot be attributed to our opponents. The fault is not in others, but in ourselves.
You mention the soul of Europe, the spiritual struggle. Is the current political struggle actually the materialization of a spiritual struggle waged in the background?
Politics takes place on three levels simultaneously. The first level is practical: it deals with issues related to power, the acceptance of the budget, the appointment of persons, the maintenance of order. I would call the second level a vision, because all national communities must have a vision. What will happen to the Hungarians, not tomorrow morning, but in five, 10, 20 years? However, behind everything there is another broader dimension, the world of transcendence. We live in that dimension as well, and it is a part of life. In Hungarian political thought, this is called the problem of majority and truth. It could be said like this: if someone has a majority, but does not strive for the truth with that majority, what will the majority do for him? It’s just profanation. If, on the other hand, one advocates the truth but cannot move the majority, how will he act in the interest of that truth? It is a key challenge of Christian politics that emerges in democratic conditions. To simplify, we no longer have sacral kings anointed by God, so we must exist in a democracy, connecting the majority and the truth. It is not easy, but it is possible. Demo-Christian politics also has its mandate in relation to Christian culture. Christianity, first of all, created a free man. Therefore, we must first and foremost protect human dignity. Then, Christianity created a Christian family. We must protect the concept of the Christian family. Furthermore, Christianity has created nations in this part of the world. If we, the Hungarians, had not followed Christianity for a thousand years, we would have disappeared, so we must also protect the nation. But we must also protect religious communities and the Church. To summarize, our task is not to protect theological principles, it is the mission of the Church, but the great Christian achievements of civilization. And when I protect them, I fight not only with the sword, I use not only power, but also arguments.