One if by land. Two if by sea. Three if by Alien Mothership.
So I watched the premiere of “Falling Skies” and it’s not bad.
But.
It takes place in Boston and the outlying suburbs and not *one* character has anything even resembling a Boston accent. Oh what I wouldn’t give to have heard one of the cast say something like: “Them aliens is wicked retahded.” And how can they play the “revolution started here” card and not have the right Yankee inflection.
They’re all toting AK-47′s and M-16′s instead of shotguns and hunting rifles – which is wrong for the ‘burbs. Once you get out around 495, at least a third of the homes have at least a .22 “plinking” rifle or pistol for pest control. And through the first two episodes there’s no use of home-made explosives. No Molotov Cocktails. Nothing. Come on. Ever heard of “Yankee Ingenuity”? At the very least someone would have thought to throw…
Thank goodness for Hulu, I can catch up on TV when I’m working late. The new Fall season started last month and as usual there’s a whole new assortment of cop and crime shows to wade through. Some good. Some not so good. It’s kind of hard to believe that with so many shows and so many weeks of air time to fill they’re still able to write scripts which aren’t just clones of each other. I haven’t had time to see them all, but for those I have, but here’s some capsule reviews for Hawaii Five-O, Detroit 1-8-7, Blue Bloods, and Law and Order : Los Angeles.
Someone posted a link to this video on Twitter recently. I saw it when it first came out back in the ’70′s. Powerful stuff.
The movie “The Wave” is based on a novel by Morton Rhue and is based on a true story that happend in 1967 at Gordon High School in Palo Alto. The teacher starts an experiment with his students trying to show them how the Nazi regime was able to invluence so many people and why no one stopped them.
He created his own symbol (the wave), a dressing code, behaviour rules and a motto:
“Strength through discipline, Strength through community, Strength through action.”
The message is simple – what happened back in the 1930′s and 1940′s wasn’t so “unique” to Germany or to that era. It’s part of the human condition.
Watch it here.
Or here:
The Starz network put together a really nice biography on Hunter S. Thompson this year. It wasn’t as much of a bio as a memorial, a remembrance. All of the people he worked with and knew, all the celebrities and personalities who’s lives he touched getting together on film to remember Hunter.
Everyone from Gary Busey to George McGovern was there. Reflecting on Thompson, his life, and his work. Including Johnny Depp and Bill Murray, both of whom played Thompson in feature films.
There were some interesting revelations. For instance, the man who coined the term “Gonzo” and lived his life almost perpetually in motion needed his “home base.” His farm in Woody Creek, CO. He needed to feel tethered to some thing. Some place. He needed that sanctuary from The Weirdness. One would expect someone who lived in a state of excess like Thompson to be completely unrooted and ungrounded, but quite the opposite was the case.
Another aspect…
SciFi Channel’s new show “Eureka” is simply one of the best things to get on TV in years. It’s been a while since there’s been an hour-long show which I made sure I watched every week. USA’s “Monk” would be the most recent case.
“Eureka” is about a town in the Pacific Northwest which was set up as a living think tank after World War 2. They gathered all the best and brightest, built a town around them, and let them dream up cool stuff … that could be turned into weapons. The whole operation is run under the thumb of a company called “Global Dynamics” so there’s the expected “science for science’s sake” arguments, but it’s not overblown.
It’s a great premise. The show is smart without being strident. The writing is very good and the acting is even better. The cast includes Matt Frewer who is easy to recognize from his Max Headroom days. The rest of the…
