So there’s some Internet buzz about the new comic book X-Men team being made up of all women.
And here’s Storm, leader of the group.
Nobody ever said comic book superheroes and superheroines were realistically drawn. And i enjoy some fanboy objectification as much as the next geek.
But really.
So I think we know this Storm’s mutant power: An extra strong spine to deal with that figure.
Besides the featured cast of the original “Star Trek” series, even beyond such recurring performers as Grace Lee Whitney as Janice Rand, there’s a familiar face in the background of most episodes of the series.
If you’ve watched many episodes, you’ve noticed actor Eddie Paskey, usually in a red shirt, a bad sign for “Star Trek” crew members.
Yet Paskey appeared in 57 episodes of the original “Star Trek” series. He often played crewman and security officer Mr. Leslie, and the “Star Trek” wiki Memory Alpha says he appeared more often than Sulu or Chekov.
Paskey even died in one episode – true to his “red shirt” status – although he was alive and well in the next.
Paskey, now 73, left the series in its third season due to bad headaches from a medical condition complicated by the bright lights of the set. He operated his family’s auto-detailing shop and makes occasional “Star Trek”-related convention appearances.
Although Paskey is a familiar face from his many background appearances on the show, I didn’t know until I looked him up online that he had another pivotal role in the series: He was the driver of the truck that struck and killed Edith Keeler (Joan Collins) in the series’ greatest episode, “City on the Edge of Forever.”
And he was the hand double on the show for James (Scotty) Doohan, who was missing a finger.
If that’s not enough to guarantee a lifetime of appearances on “Star Trek” convention stages, I don’t know what would be.
So what do you get for the Man of Steel who has everything?
A new logo, apparently.
DC Comics has released a new Superman logo for its comics to coincide with the 75th anniversary of the first “Superman” story.
Created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the last son of Krypton has been an enduring icon for three-quarters of a century. The new “Man of Steel” movie comes out June 14.
So how do we feel about the logo? It’s okay, I guess.
The cape’s too short.
The hair is funky.
But it’s nice to see Big Blue get a nod.
As a fan of Craig Johnson’s series of crime novels about Wyoming Sheriff Walt Longmire, I was a little disappointed with the first season of the TV series version that aired on A&E.
You can catch up with what I thought here, but it boiled down to: Not enough of Johnson’s trademark mix of tall, dark and quiet heroes and quirky plots.
Last night’s second-season debut, though, was closer to the target. The episode was based in part on a Craig Johnson book, “Hell is Empty,” which puts the sheriff in harm’s way as he transports a series of prisoners – including a man who killed a child several years ago – through his county and over a mountain … just in time for a blizzard.
The single hour of television couldn’t begin to capture all of Johnson’s straightforward plot and rich characters. But it came closer than any first-season episode.
The series is also coming closer to hitting the mark in the way it portrays Johnson’s characters. I’ve got to say I’m enjoying the heck out of Robert Taylor as Longmire, for whom “less is more” truly describes his spare speaking habit. Really, the less the writers give the sheriff to say the better – and not because Taylor’s not a good actor. He’s good, but he’s perfect with a long stare and grumble
I loved “Battlestar Galactica” vet Katee Sackhoff as Walt’s deputy – and is very tentative love interest the right way to describe her? – Vic Moretti from the moment she was cast and I’m still enjoying her.
Bailey Chase and Cassidy Freeman are quite good as Walt’s ambitious deputy and daughter, respectively.
I’m growing to like the terrific Lou Diamond Phillips as Henry Standing Bear, Walt’s longtime friend and confidant. Phillips is making questionable casting palatable.
One big plus for me with last night’s episode was an injection of the Native American mythos and mysticism that marks Johnson’s books. As Walt trudged through snow to track the prisoners, Henry and other figures – including an impressive owl – appeared to him. Thanks in part to Henry, spirit guides and the connection between the Wyoming characters and the earth are present throughout the books.
I’m still not convinced I’m buying the subplot about the death, before the show started, of Walt’s wife. She died from cancer in the books and, while her passing has left a huge shadow across Walt, it isn’t the stuff of an ongoing mystery.
I wasn’t sure I was going to check out “Longmire” this second season. The season premiere definitely encouraged me to come back for more.
I love “Dragnet.” Really.
The classic Jack Webb series – which ran in the 1950s and in the 1960s, although I’m really only familiar with the latter show – has long since become a touchstone for parody with Webb’s “just the facts, ma’am” writing, direction, casting and performances. But the show has a lot of virtues.
I’ve written about it as a LA travelogue before, for example.
Each half-hour episode quickly and concisely tells a story of crime and punishment in Los Angeles. Sure the show is ripe with silly hippie portrayals and overreaches in it’s messages. But Webb was master of the 30-minute (minus commercials) drama like no one since Rod Serling – and maybe no one since.
Still, it can be more than a little unintentionally funny.
I was watching an episode today – “The Badge Racket,” from September 1967 – in which Gannon (Harry Morgan) goes undercover at an LA hotel to catch a threesome blackmailing out-of-town businessmen. A bimbo barges into the businessman’s hotel room and then two guys, posing as cops, shake him down for money in lieu of telling the folks back home in Nebraska or Iowa or wherever.
As Gannon leaves the hotel with the crooks, Friday follows in a “loose” tail.
When they get to police headquarters – it’s all part of the crooks’ plan, so just go with it – Friday tightens that “loose” tail and is seen riding the elevator with them in a “don’t mind me, folks” moment.
The scene very nearly made me fall out of my chair laughing. I looked around online and was able to find a screen cap on the wonderful site dragnetstyle.blogspot.com.
Love it.
Owen Laukkanen is just a couple of years into life as a published author of crime novels, but he’s already created one of the most enjoyable series in bookstores.
His two books – so far – about FBI agent Carla Windermere and Minnesota police investigator Kirk Stevens are immensely readable stories of cops and crooks.
The first, “The Professionals,” would seem to be in the vanguard of books inspired by the Great Recession. Its criminal foursome are young people fresh out of school and unable to get hired. They decide to become professional kidnappers. Their modus operandi? Kidnap well-off but low-profile targets and ask $60,000 on the assumption that the kidnap victim’s family will easily be able to pay that small an amount. It works for a while but goes awry when they stumble upon the wrong target: A businessman connected to the mob.
In “Criminal Enterprise,” the central bad guy is Carter Tomlin, an accountant with a wife and kids who gets in over his head, financially, and decides to make money the old fashioned way: Bank robbery. Tomlin’s a different case than the four somewhat sympathetic anti-heroes of “The Professionals,” however: He not only enjoys the influx of cash from his robberies but gets off on the violence, particularly when committed in the company of his alterna-girl assistant and fellow robber.
Into the mix in both cases come Windermere, young and tough and an outsider in the FBI, and Stevens, happily married and settled into middle age and a long career in the Minnesota state police’s criminal investigations bureau.
The two cops, who end up working together by happenstance, are a good fit. Stevens balances out Windermere’s fiery demeanor with his cool calm.
Laukkanen doesn’t dip into the criminal world quite the way Elmore Leonard does, but his bad guys are compelling and relatable. Windermere and Stevens are the anchors of these books but Tomlin in the second book and the four kidnappers in the first book are absorbing characters. The author is working on the third book in the series, which is good news for fans of contemporary crime thrillers.
Today, May 26, was the 100th anniversary of the birth of British actor Peter Cushing – best known in some quarters as Imperial Gov. Tarkin, who holds Darth Vader’s leash rather loosely in the 1977 classic “Star Wars” – so I marked the date by watching one of his later horror films, “Madhouse.”
It isn’t a great role for Cushing, who died in 1994 after a long, distinguished and beloved career. He’s a supporting player to Vincent Price, who stars as Paul Toombes, an aging actor lured out of retirement to reprise his role as Dr. Death, anti-hero of a series of horror thrillers.
Released in 1974, “Madhouse” had the distinction of being the last movie Price made for American International Pictures, home of the classic adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe in which Price starred in the 1960s. The movie business was changing even by then and AIP was looking to replace Price with Robert Quarry, who was the third male lead here. Quarry had made a little splash as Count Yorga, a modern-day vampire, and it’s said AIP and producer Samuel Arkoff thought he, rather than Price, was the future.
But horror movies were about to see a huge change. Long the province of a particular breed of actor, like Price and Cushing, and director, like Roger Corman, and producer, like Arkoff, horror films were proven to be worthy of mainstream attention in 1973 when “The Exorcist” was a huge hit. Low-budget horror movies were still drive-in theater fare and would be for several years to come, but by the time “Madhouse” rolled around, people were looking for the new, the young and the shocking in their horror films.
“Madhouse” also held the distinction of being able to evoke the nostalgia, perhaps the last of its kind for its type of film, for earlier horror films. It could do this because of Price’s long-running screen presence. At various points, Cushing and Quarry screen some of Toombes’ earlier horror films, and they show scenes from some of Price’s films, particularly the Poe pictures conveniently (and inexpensively) owned by Arkoff and AIP. The presence of those clips led director Jim Clark to acknowledge former Price co-stars Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff in the opening credits. It’s a nice gesture but also makes me wonder: Did Clark and Arkoff think the presence of those old-school names would add to the luster of “Madhouse?”
Cushing, whose role as Toombes’ longtime friend is so obviously an attempt to mislead that the final shot has someone referring to a red herring, might be a familiar face to legions of filmgoers from “Star Wars” but is best known to his many fans for his roles in British horror films made by Hammer studios beginning in the 1950s.
Cushing – whose fan club I belonged to in the 1970s and 1980s – sometimes played Dracula nemesis Van Helsing and sometimes played monster maker Dr. Frankenstein in the Hammer outings. He and cohort Christopher Lee always added a touch of class to every movie in which they appeared.
Happy birthday, Peter.
This photo has been out for a couple of days but I wanted to acknowledge that, yes, the new season of “The Walking Dead” is only – what – five months away?
Rick and his pal (above) will be there. I’m guessing you and I will too.
The show returns on AMC in October.
Longtime TV fans remember actor Steve Forrest as Hondo in the 1975 series “SWAT.” But I fondly remember Forrest from a later role in “Dallas.”
The 1986 season of “Dallas” was one of the oddest during the show’s original run on CBS. In the previous season, Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy) was written out of the show … only to return in a season-ending cliffhanger. Bobby’s disappearance was explained as “only a dream” of Pamela.
In the season that followed, Forrest joined the cast as Southfork Ranch foreman Wes Parmalee, a grizzled good ole boy who took a liking to Miss Ellie.
In time, Ellie came to believe that Wes was actually her husband, Jock, a character written out of the show when actor Jim Davis died.
Eventually, the Ewing boys proved that Parmalee was not Jock and Parmalee confessed and wandered into the sunset.
It was a fun storyline, however, and Forrest was good in it.
Forrest died in the Los Angeles area at age 87.
If you’ve seen “Star Trek Into Darkness,” you know that a lot of the plot revolves around events told, in a different manner, in an earlier “Star Trek” movie, “Wrath of Khan.”
I won’t go into that here – I touch on it in my review – but there’s more in the way of easter eggs than just those remake references.
Daystrom. The meeting of Starfleet captains and admirals that’s interrupted by the attack by villain John Harrison (Benedict Cumberbatch) is to be held, Chris Pike tells Jim Kirk, at “Daystrom,” possibly a reference to the often-referenced Daystrom Institute. Richard Daystrom, as played by William Marshall, appeared in the original series episode “The Ultimate Computer” as the inventor of the title character, which (briefly) displaces Kirk in command of the Enterprise.
Mudd. There’s a throw-away reference to “the Mudd Incident,” undoubtedly a reference to Harry Mudd, the galactic con artist played by Roger C. Carmel who appears in two episodes of the original series.
Tribbles. There’s a tribble – the furry, prolific fan favorite creatures from the original series – that plays an important role in the movie. They’re from the original series episode “The Trouble with Tribbles.” Although the one in the movie looked even more sluggish than you might expect an ill tribble to look.
Christine Chapel. Carol, the blonde Starfleet officer played by Alice Eve, tells Kirk he’s gained a reputation with women and cites Christine Chapel, a nurse she knew. It’s obvious Kirk bedded her and doesn’t remember her. In the original series and movies, of course, Chapel is Dr. McCoy’s nurse and is played by Majel Barrett Roddenberry, wife of “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry.
Section 31. In the later TV series, Section 31 is a top-secret division of Starfleet that handles investigations and special missions. It is name-dropped in “Into Darkness.”
There’s probably more that didn’t have to do with the new movie’s basis in “Wrath of Khan.” Spot any that I missed?
