Messages

"Hitch. Hitch? You're alive. I've seen you."
"Oh am I? Thanks Sir."
"NO JOKERS PLEASE."

"Do you think the Welsh can't do better than that, Owen?"
"Well, they've got a very good bass section, mind, but no top tenors that's for sure."

[Alien Vs Predator]

So next up of course I had to put myself through Alien Vs Predator. I had no real desire to, but it was there and I was on a run, so what the heck I thought, maybe I'll have some fresh awakening about this one too.

I didn't.

Its dumb. Its like someone took all the dumb, threw it in a dumb bag and stuck it up until the dumb was all shaken and confused and made less sense. Then it tossed the confused and silly dumb out on the table in a confused and silly dumb mess.

The smartest thing it does is make sure you do don't have time to realise how dumb any one bit of the film is by throwing the next bit of dumb at you so quickly you haven't had time to digest the previous dumb.

Then cool alien vs predator fight in the middle. I mean damn that is really, really well done.

Then straight back to the dumbfest.

I don't hate the film, you can't hate the film. I just pity it.

But you know the dumbest thing of all. Yep you guessed it. I'm watching Alien Vs Predator Requirm next anyway... now that is dumb!

Dumb-dumb-dumb!

Its a movie where the highlight is the gratuitous butt-shot ... take what you will from that!

[Kelly's Heroes]

Next up,  A Friday the 13th where Jason isn't the murderer?  It's so unprecedented!

Now that film is utter shite. As if F13 aren't B movies already, but this one looks like a C movie, full of cringe and creepy characters.

Kelly's Heroes

Mildly entertaining war caper. I like to imagine it as a movie that inspired to write The Adventures in the Rifle Brigade. Humor is so-so, and it mostly comes from Don Rickles and Telly Savalas character. Donald Sutherland is often off the mark, thanks for his pre-hippy antics and Clint Eastwood is... Clint Eastwood. For my money, the weakest link in the chain. There are some well made set-pieces, despite the plot being preposterous. The assault on the village takes too long to set-up, and the runtime could've been a little trimmed down. At least by 20 minutes.

Ultra Nerdy History Buffs like to point out how much Oddball looks like Germany's leading Panzer Ace Kurt Knispel

The attraction of Scotland and then New Zealand was to have Middle Earth-suitable landscapes within fairly easy access of your studio base.

London and Oxford, not so much there.

(Outlander, filmed at a studio base just outside Glasgow, barely has to go an afternoon's drive away to find all those Highland glens, lochs, forests and castles it needs.)

It depends The Shire is supposed to be Middle England, and Oxford is as far as you can get from water.

Ah, my lack of surprise is almost matched by my lack of surprise

Not for the budget. Eisenhorn on the other hand is basically a detective story in space. You can kinda cheat there.

Good point! Caiphas Cain is basically a greatest-hits tour of the most expensive slavering hordes WH40K has to offer.

We would have to hope for a Game of Thrones level production budget.

I agree that Caiphas Cain would be better for a series, if only because it could be made slightly lighter and mainstream.

For a movie Storm of Iron would probably be the best for an adaption.

[Die Hard]

It wouldn't be the Christmas season if I didn't watch the most classic Christmas film of all time, Die Hard.

Ah but Christmas isn't Christmas without The Great Escape!

A show with the acronym STD has something called The Burn!?

The internet is not going to be kind to this.

[Gunga Din.]

Gunga Din.

A film that inspired Bertold Brecht, Steven Spielberg, John Sturges, Rian Johnson, Peter Sellers, The Beatles, and William Goldman.

For everyone who misunderstands Kipling ....

You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!

[/i]

I thought the jew-hating painter was going to turn out to be Hitler until the bit about running for president...

Hitler's paintings, though fairly dull, were pretty decent.

Here's one of the other lad's.

https://www.google.com/search?q=dermot+mulqueen+painting&oq=dermot+mulqueen+pa&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j69i60j35i39.9228j0j7&client=tablet-android-samsung&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8#imgrc=JFXvHrjeCk542M:

Churchill was a painter as well ...
https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/https%3A%2F%2Fs3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com%2Fhtsi-ez-prod%2Fez%2Fimages%2F0%2F0%2F0%2F9%2F1499000-1-eng-GB%2F02-17468.jpg?width=620&dpr=1&format=jpg&source=htsi

Listen very carefully. I shall zay zis aunly wonce.

Funny accents aside I did enjoy the episode, for the most part, especially Jeri Ryan's updated Seven. And Dr. Juarti just became very interesting.

Can't we have a series where Picard and Seven team up solving the Federation's problems? Add Worf and Quark and we can have a new A-Team.

Okay so that makes Picard Hannibal, Worf BA, Quark Face, and Seven Murdoch?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MVonyVSQoM

Did everyone hear about The Great Orange One claiming that America invented the wheel
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/01/trump-makes-bizarre-statement-about-protecting-the-inventor-of-the-wheel-in-rambling-interview/
Are you telling me he isn't completely senile!?

Air ambulance is even worse: there's a flood of air ambulance private companies: too many copters and not enough patients.  The upshot of this is that if you take a ride in an air ambulance they're going to try and extract the cost of running the entire business from you. Because it's the land of the free (*cough* *drool*), there's no regulation on what they charge you.

Air ambulance == bankruptcy.

(Of course, if you need one, then you have no choice but to take it. Or, I dunno, attempt to crawl to hospital. You'll die, but at least you'll still have money in the bank.)

If you want to feel really bad my local Air Ambulance is a Registered Charity.

Next week we are meeting Iorek Byrnison and Lee Scoresby, and they have to get them right!
(Scoresby is being played by the guy from Hamilton.)