Reviews

This is exactly what Star Trek is all about, presenting an alien race so strange, so unlike the usual humanoids, where do you start to communicate?

And they seemingly have technology so powerful, do we even dare go in there with phasers blasting?

Or do we figure out some way of talking to them?

But then you remember that there is a time limit, how are you supposed to get any of this done before whole solar systems are gobbled up?

Remember something that Mr. Spock said when a gigantic trashcan was on its way to earth with a dampening field so powerful it sent every starship to the side of the road, and when it got to earth it started "waporizing" The earths oceans?

"I find it unlikely that their intent is hostile".

To which bones replied, "oh, you think that this is its way of saying **hello** to the people of Earth?"

But we never got to see anything about that race, or why that it was interested in the songs sung by humpback whales, and what was inside of that gargantuan trashcan. But interestingly enough, humpback whales had actually gotten trapped in the San Francisco Bay during the time that they were thinking about that film. So, as well as a science fiction story, there is also some kind of contemporary message.

And that message for today is, how do people that are completely diametrically opposed politically ever supposed to communicate with each other and live with each other?

Which seems impossible when you visit any social website, but if you stop visiting the social websites and start walking around your neighborhoods, then you begin to see people as people and communication can begin.

And I believe that this message is working, people that I could not talk to four years ago are talking to me today.

All because Star Trek puts on shows, not just this show, but everything else in their entire franchise which offers us alternate ways of dealing with these issues. By transposing our issues into science fiction issues, and then showing how it could be solved within that framework, it gives us a way to solve it on old mundane earth.

This series and this particular episode also shows us how one obsessed individual could get put into a position of power where he could literally destroy everything, all for selfish personal desires.

We already gave such a person that kind of power and we were very lucky that it was ended, but we face that same threat again this year.

And Discovery is literally providing another storyline, what happens when absolute power gets given to the wrong person or entities? And are we willing to do that again after suffering through it previously?

So the overall purpose of the messaging of Star Trek is for us to start using Grey matter. And, to start making the future happen, now.

But which future do you want? Do you want the Terran empire, or do you want Starfleet? Do you want to live in fear, or in peace? Because it could tip either way.

Once again, we find that Discovery has a bar somewhere on the ship run by a Ferengi officer, ("Red") and that there is an alien sitting on a barstool who is of the same race as Morn.

And what did Quark say about things like this? "The more things change, the more they stay, the same".

Ironically, the president of the Federation is partially Cardassian, partially Bajoran, and partially human. And the president of earth is...

I am utterly dismayed by the shellacking this show suffers, without merit. This was a very excellent 5th season opener, after the awesome 4th season introduction of the 10-C Aliens, which until that point had never even been concieved of by our planets most creative science fiction writers of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The closest we've ever gotten to the 10-C aliens in other franchises are the race from the "Three-Body" and "3 Body Problem shows", Chinese and American respectively. Which we never actually saw outside of a VR Game, ironically. And, imagine a Microscopic Particle that was fired at the Earth, which became Macro and caused the "Universe to Wink?". But in Discovery, whole stellar systems were gobbled up by The 10-C's "mining operation" - And nobody ever guessed that it was something that seemingly mundane. The 4th season took us from the end of "The Burn" through the "DMA" and we got to see some amazing things, also some very familiar things.

Once again, we saw Morn (or at least a person the same race as Morn) being served by a Ferengi bartender. And a card-counting Changling with a blinking tell in a casino hidden in a Dragon Hologram. And airlock jokes, which started in Deep Space Nine's "The Nagus" when Rom threatened to eject Quark, 20 years later the airlock jokes continue. Especially in the Season 3 finale, where we finally got to see it.

Discovery has taken us from a war with Qonos, then unexpectedly to the Mirror Universe, and then to various points in the alpha and beta quadrants chasing a Red Angel who was being pursued by a forerunner of The Borg, namely Leland aka "Control"... Thanks to the Mycelial Network and Discovery's Displacement Activated Spore Drive, which "never ceases to amaze me".

This season starts as an homage to a Next Generation episode from it's 7th season, we knew this even before the big reveal from a busted Soong-Style android's SSD.

And we are introduced to a very irritating new Captain, Rayner. This opens up more possibilities. I'm glad Callum Kieth Rennie was added to the cast this year, he was previously seen as the Cylon who was infatuated with Starbuck in BSG, and ironically, he was also a victim of the airlock in that show.

I eagerly await where this new conundrum will take Discovery, and us. I have enjoyed every episode. My only actual complaint is the dwindling number of episodes per season.

I am recognizing most of the story elements, but where the Chinese show took 30 episodes to tell this complicated story, The Netflix producers are trying to ultra compress it.

The Chinese version had me actually caring about the few characters that it focused upon. This one, instead of focusing on just three basic characters there are several.

The story of Ye Wenjie, and this is the only character where they did not change the gender, nationality, or name of, is told in this first episode, and it matches what we knew from the Chinese show. Of course, Netflix added some extracurricular romance, which did not happen in the original. In the original story, Ye Wenjie was a woman totally unmoved by romantic interests. Originally a victim of the Chinese state and then one of their main operators. The Chinese version shows how she changed from the 60s to the early 2000's.

The other major difference is that the Chinese show was a period piece, occurring during the early 2000's, just prior to the onset of the first iPhones and other personal digital gadgetry. Nokia phones were still popular. This version of the story is completely contemporary, and so everybody is using iPhones instead of pre-Intel MacBooks, in my opinion this damages the story. That was one of the things that made the Chinese show unique is that they replicated how digital was in the early 2000s. This show, destroys that effect. They should have kept to the original period.

One of the other things we recognize is the character played by Benedict Wong, who is the cigarette chomping' cop "Da Shi": In the Chinese, This was "Shi Qiang" played by Hewei Yu.

And then the character of "Wang Miao" Has been deleted and transplanted into "Auggie Salazar" (Elza González)- she is the one that sees the countdown, and is approached by somebody named Tatania, who is supposed to be an analog of the character "Shen Yufei" - who initially appears to be speaking about "God" but in fact, they are talking about "the Lord" or, "Lord". Which I suppose you would have to watch this series in the original Chinese or read the novel to find out what that actually means. And it is not a religious reference, it is something insidious.

What has not been mentioned yet is the organization called "The Frontier Of Science" which Tatania/Shen Yufei and another character named "Pan Han" (whose analog has not yet appeared in this series) appeared to control.

I have only gotten halfway through the first episode, but I recognize these highly compressed story elements and characters based upon the original. What made the Chinese version endearing to me was that everything focused upon a small group of people... in this one, they had to hire a lot of the Game of Thrones stable of actors, and so the story has been shuffled across a deck of about 10 Game of Thrones actors.

Visually, this is done very well, but I don't like this supercompression of the story. The original Chinese Show took place across 30 episodes, and all of that information is crammed into only eight here, but that is the way that TV shows are made on Netflix or America these days. Nobody in America makes a TV show that has 26 episodes per season anymore. It went down from 26 to 16 to 13 and then to 10 and now 8 and 6. Only CW shows, sometimes still have 22 episodes per season.

It's just not enough time to tell a compelling story, 6 one-hour episodes? 8 one-hour episodes? Especially a story as complicated as "three body problem", a hugo award winning book.

And between the Chinese and American shows, these are only the first seasons, there are more books in this story. Which makes me very interested to see how the Chinese television industry does it, and how Netflix will respond...

I don't know if anybody else noticed this, the entire middle section with the kids and the plane, a lot of that was pulled from a book called Riddley Walker.

Mostly, it's the language that they speak that was lifted. It took me a few viewings of this film to understand some of what they were saying.

But they blended it in perfectly with the Road Warrior story.

Between mad max and road warrior, there was a certain level of deterioration of civilization.

Between road warrior and beyond Thunderdome, it has gotten even worse and now we have cities like barter town.

Run as a precarious balance between master blaster and Auntie.

As first we did not really know who to root for... it turned out that those who we thought were the bad guys, were not.

Auntie tries to use the road warrior to try to wrest complete control of the city from the man who set up the entire electrical grid- based upon an old beat up train engine!

A lot of humor was inserted... and also the return of the flyer played by Bruce Spence, who now has a kid who is learning to be just as rotten as his father

The story takes a dramatic change as the road warrior is sent out into the desert as punishment for not living up to a deal he had between himself and auntie

Those kids, the survivors of the plane, actually steal the film more than Tina Turner does.

This was the first movie I ever saw in THX sound, and it sounds just as good now when I watch it in my pro logic system as it did when I saw it in the theater.

The instruments seem to be floating in mid air during the title song.

Tina ended up with two huge hits that came out of this film, and she also used her costume in a couple of her own videos.

I don't get the low IMDb rating because this film got a great reaction back in the early 80s.

A film that shows how resilient the human race can actually be, when the fate of people is put into the hands of somebody like Max.

The ending actually is a message of hope- where people are rediscovering the proper uses of certain pieces of technology. For instance, Record Players...

It was about a year after I saw this film that somebody gave me the book Riddley Walker, I was surprised that it was not mentioned in the credits.

This is the best one, although my favorite before this was Stranger tides... I always thought worlds end was too much.

I was pleased when I saw that the franchise had started back up again with the trip to the fountain of youth... especially the scene with the mermaids singing... they look so beautiful, but you know something horrendous is going to happen. And it does, to Scrumm of all people, and now he becomes a member of the crew that frequently follow Jack or Barbossa around.

This final film has no such trickery, no images of beauty that are representing things evil. We see the evil in all of its rotting glory, and we know what it is. It's one last major dilemma that Captain Jack Sparrah has to face, one he is responsible for, which he exacerbates by making a stupid move involving his magic Compass.

I will let you figure out exactly what that is, though, by watching this.

And once again we get to see Barbossa, although now he is an ally.

What I really like about the Barbossa character is that he had a slight bit of domesticity in Stranger Tides, he liked being served his meals on the deck, he liked being a bourgeois officer and privateer.

We see in this film, this tendency of his has carried on. He surrounds himself with Music and items that he never would have enjoyed as a pirate, when we first see him here, well, I can give you a clue: he is rocking out.

This was a part of Barbossa that we never knew existed... he enjoys good things. Good food, good music. And, the man is a lot more than the apple eating pirate that we have come to love as Jack Sparrow's nemesis, and sometimes pseudo ally.

But that does not make him any less dangerous, as he still has Blackbeards sword... and Barbossa has one last thing he needs to do with that sword.

After that, he has one more thing he has to do. There's one more thing we learn about him that we never expected, we start getting clues in the middle of the film.

But mostly this film focuses upon Henry, the son of Will Turner. And one other person of roughly the same age.

This is also the final ending of the romance between Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann... or is it? There is always a reason to stay in the theater until the very very end of all of the credits, because something else is always brewing, innit?

I feel badly that this was final teaser not pursued, but I hope now that it will be now that Johnny has been sufficiently "pardoned" (much like the character that he always plays- he always gets into a spot of a jam, and then some Governor or King or Lord gives them a "get out of the gallows free card"...)

Much better than the 1st one.

There are a couple of spots that is very much like Harry Potter... at least image wise. I was expecting to see the sorting hat.

There's a much better story going on with this one. And, we delve into Greek mythology. And with Greek mythology, we get to see things that Ray Harryhausen animated come to life in a modern age.

Of course, Billy Batson is still an idiot.

We learn who the smart one is, "the wisdom of Solomon". Uses his wits to beat the daughters of Atlas. Who are mean "ess oh bees". Well, some of them are.

And of course there are references to Game of Thrones, look for a "dead dragon", And Billy calls it's rider "Khalesi". But she's more like a cross between Khalesi and the king of the dead...

It's just fun stuff, mindless entertainment.

In the comic books, Captain Marvel, who is what Billy Batson's actual super hero name is... and you will notice that all during this film he keeps on bringing up the question of his actual super hero name, but not once do they use Captain Marvel...

Well, it was Captain Marvel before Marvel comics had a Captain Marvel, there were even Captain Marvel serials, where they show the origins of this character and it's pretty close to what happens in the first film.

But I suppose there is some legal barrier that prevents DC from using that name.

A good graphic novel to read would be Kingdom Come by Alex Ross, Captain Marvel/Billy Batson plays a major role in that.

And Zack Snyder's DCCU has actually tapped some of that imagery in Man of Steel through Zack Snyder's Justice league... some of it even shows up in "The Flash" so I don't know if any of that will be used in these Shazam films.

But the Power of Shazam gives Captain Marvel (The DC version) his powers just like it did in the serials from the 40s.

This story had to be brought into the 21st-century and well, things are a lot different than they were in the 40s when these characters were first drawn up in comic books.

These two women do not look anything alike. Also, I had never heard that Judy had passed before the episode had even aired. She was rather good in this episode, although not looking like Susan Cummings at all... it's sad.

It all starts with an old car overturning... and Della finds a pair of peacock feathers. Oh yes, and a man on a horse, escaping from a mansion.

What was shocking here is that for 1957, they do show a lot of "Fan Dancer", and Cheri Chi-Chi's body.

But Susan Cummings was still better.

Interesting case, which includes a Japanese sword... so maybe there is a connection to Kill Bill.

You can always tell the episodes based upon Earle Stanley Gardner's books, they are always very complex.

Very enjoyable and intriguing episode, especially where it shows Paul drake using "modern" spy equipment.

Despite stock footage of planes that did not match from scene to scene and shots of Eskimoes from a 1933 film, the film does give us a huge flying Praying Mantis that looks pretty convincing, especially in the skies over Washington DC.

William Hopper is far away from his Hard Boiled Paul Drake persona and takes up the mantle of a learned scientist, which he does well. But all eyes are on Alix Talton, the "Long Legged Model".

This woman sidekick is not attracted to Hopper like she would be, but to the military hero instead.

Which is a lot different than the woman chasing detective Drake would play in Perry Mason, who was often borrowing 50 bucks from Perry so he could take the defendant to dinner.

One thing we do not hafta worry about is CGI: that was a REAL full sized Mantis in the closing scenes. I applaud this film for the amount of sheer effort in making this creature- and giving it life! Other monster movies of the 50's would involve filming regular sized insects and composing a full sized human next to it. Or, like 20 million miles to earth, a considerable amount of stop motion animation!

But they also had to move the mantis head and jaws... and real Ichor was dripping from its mouth.

Compare the final scene of this film to the "Tanker Beetle" scene from Starship Troopers...

This film could use a remake. Too bad William Hopper can't be part of it. He left us, way too young.

This film reunites Paul Drake with his costar from "the deadly mantis"... I did not recognize Alix Tilton at first until I recently watched the deadly mantis.

I agree with some of the other people here, and also with Hamilton Burger... "Mr. Mason wants to get us caught up with all these immaterial guns". In fact, this is not the first case where there were multiple guns, The very first Perry Mason episode involved two identical guns. In that instance, Perry knew that if he handed one gun to a suspect that he would be handed a different gun in return. And in doing that helped him figure out who the murderer was.

But in this case the same thing happens, but nobody had told Perry about it, and it looks bad...

Perry tries to handle this case the same way he handled his first televised case, but where that worked out well for him then, it does not work here.

We have to remember the liturgy of things to not do when you come upon a body:

1) never touch anything

2) never take things from the crime scene

3) never lie to your defending lawyer

And in case after case, the defendants always get tripped up with those three things.

And because the defendant was not exactly honest with him, Perry gets himself into a heck of a lot of hot water with Burger, and he has to crawl out from under it.

It is not the best Perry Mason episode, but it does have some interesting things. The cars for one...

But one of the Reviewers was asking what does this have to do with "long legged models?" This was because some of the women all worked at a certain venue in Las Vegas, where they were all modeling clothing, and at least two of these peripheral characters were employees at that venue.

It's too bad there was not some homage to the deadly mantis in this case... but there is an homage to Dick Tracy.

This tries to be a sequel to the very interesting "the case of a place called midnight", and it fails to be as good as that episode was.

This is your basic Cold War episode where Perry Mason has to go up against the evil "East German Kangaroo Court".

I don't believe that courts even in eastern Germany or communist Russia back then were as depicted in this episode. Because nobody really knew? In America, all we really knew about Russia was what was told us by our own government. When you think about it, there were very few sources of real information about how life actually was in Russia. All that we had access to was Pravda, which gave us the official viewpoint of what Russian life was. Not the actual truthful version. Because no information ever came out of Russia, and usually people who went in to communist countries vanished. I had met people who were prisoners in Russia during that time, but I met them after the fall of the wall. The stories that they told me were not like what we were shown on television at all. We had no diplomacy with any of those countries, so on TV, we had to invent our own illustration of how Russian or East German life would be.

AND... a big AND here... We have to remember this was during the space race and the east Germans and Russia were trying to entice scientists to "come over to their side", and this episode is just one depiction of that process, where in this case it was a form of blackmail.

In fact, we don't really know how Russia or East Germany found people to come to their countries and work on their rockets, which then exploded. Oh, you didn't know? During the moon race, Russia built a rocket equivalent to our Saturn five- which had a gigantic and miraculous explosion, which ended their attempts to go to The Moon. I had watched the footage of that explosion on some documentary, where we had been given rare footage, it might be available on YouTube at this point, but I forget which documentary that was. I think it was referenced in James Michener's "Space", which was some fiction told in documentary style. And there might also have been an actual documentary called "space".

Everybody in the United States was behind the space race, and behind the moon trip, but the moment we get there, everybody loses interest. And without the space race, there really wasn't any more use for the cold war, except for posturing.

Which means that the United States did not necessarily win that little contest, nobody won. But you have to remember the importance of the space race and during this time, we were right in the middle of it.

This was during the most critical point of the space race, and both we the United States and Russia and satellite countries, were trying to get the best scientists to work with them.

And apparently the professor in this episode, was one of those geniuses who could have done a lot of good for either side, depending on where he went.

Granted, he would not have been very happy, going into East Germany- not with the situation that was set up.

This episode is very clever in that it sets up a MacGuffin - we are to follow the subject of a little girl, the professors granddaughter, and we, as we keep our eyes on her, we are missing what happens right in front of us at the very beginning of the episode.

Because the right hand is not telling the left hand what it is doing. And so we don't see what is actually going on at all until the very last moments of the episode. Sorry, I'm not even going to give you 1 inch of a clue you are going to have to watch this.

Starring the girl with the German accent who was also in "the case of a place called midnight"- we are given some pretty good imagery of what could have been east Germany. Also, the use of stock footage gives the illusion more weight.

Although not as good as "the place called midnight", which fools us into actually believing we are in Switzerland... we can believe that we are looking into east Germany.

The east German characters are just as nasty as they would have been in any Alfred Hitchcock Russian spy film.

And a number of other commentators are claiming that this episode was not very well directed. Au Contrare, it was directed very well. And the story was very well written. Because none of us saw what was right in front of us the whole time.

And that is what made Perry Mason great television for nine years.

Just watch how this episode develops we are thinking Perry can use his own cleverness to influence an East German Court. But he can't, and so there is one person, and one person only who can affect the result that we want. But who is that? How?

And then the ending drags us along until the twist becomes crystal clear. This is the case of the twice told twist, except it's the first told twist...

This kind of television writing was not very common, but it had its first examples right here. In Perry Mason episodes, like this. So, when you watch it again, give it a chance, let the story tell itself.

The screenwriter of blade runner.

And he has a major part in this very interesting and relevant Perry Mason episode.

Very relevant to the time it was filmed, in comparison to the real life Kitty Genovese incident in New York.

And very relevant to today's world as well.

This was 1965. The world was rocking and rolling, the Beatles were still around. The Vietnam War was acting up.

And so Perry Mason was the Star Trek of its era. Every season was Rife with episodes steeped in social commentary. Very relevant social commentary which is still relevant to this very day in many cases.

This "case" here, involves the new police Lieutenant Steve Drumm, and his friend David. Played by the guy with the cauliflower ears from the Star Trek episode with the hippies. The guy is actually a brilliant character actor who played nemesis very well, here, he is the defendant, this is one of the first times I ever saw that actor play a nice guy.

This was before he played two evil guys in Star Trek.

But the interesting thing here is the kid "Hamp", would later pen one of the most popular science fiction films of all time and then 40 years later would pen a sequel to that.

Every Perry Mason episode has the defendant, the decedent, and then the actual murderer, which Perry manages to eek a confession out of in most of the cases. As far as I know, there were only three cases where Perry did not manage to reveal the actual murderer.

Perry. Mason scrutinizes every possible "angle", this was back when you were rented an apartment house, you were also renting the furniture and everything else in there. I remember those times, this was very common. This apartment complex was a small community, and as we go through the case and Perry interviews possible murderers, we get to see all kinds of people. In today's world, Hamp would have been a member of a punk rock band. As well as the other guys who were downing "goofballs" aka reds, or downers. And then there were actresses, a book maker, in today's world, this would be a guy with instead of three telephones, he would have three computers serving websites. And then the manager of the apartment who initially is getting around on a wheelchair but then later reveals she can walk just fine, Virginia Gregg, who was in many other perry Mason episodes.

Just like any other normal red blooded American community, heh?

In the end of the episode, Hamp gives us a court room outburst, which rings in our ears: doesn't anybody care? Will not anybody help?

Hopefully this does not happen as much in real life as it used to happen back when this episode was produced.

Because- this not only features "Gideon the Intern", but also popular parapsychology professor Andreas Puharich.

Remember- Perry wants to "scientifically" explore if his client used ESP. So he employs several of Puharich's gadgets in this quest-

But beware! Perry also employs a Faraday Cage!

The instant he mentions this, we knew we were being beautifully tricked! But, how?

The cage features into the solution of this "conundrum", in a very clever way.

Does Perry's client really have ESP? Was Puharich the real deal or a quack?

Judging from the original broadcast date of Octo-Brr 21st, 1961, this unusual episode was that years given HOLLOWEEN entry.

And it's a doozy. All you have to remember is, it's PERRY MASON to the nth degree- just watch for his little smile, which is not as prominent as it usually is.

Look for Kent Smith and Virginia Field- Who usually plays mediums in PM. And the usual cast. Don't remember if Tragg appears, if he does it's his token cameo.

My best friend was dissociative.

Everything about this episode was spot on, The language was a little bit different between then and modern medicine now, but this is exactly how it is.

Maybe this is related to "the three faces of Eve", but here, we only have 2 personalities. We have to remember in the 50s people did not believe in this disorder and it took a long time for medicine to start acknowledging that it exists.

In my friends case, there were dozens, hundreds of personalities.

What was very accurate was that one of the personalities became aware of the other. That is pretty much how this syndrome is dealt with, making each of the personalities aware of each other, and then they can cooperate.

Although in the case of Joyce Martell, she was more interested in playing tricks on her doppelgänger.

I too wanted to know more about that woman's fate after the resolution of murder.

The doctor that was depicted treating the woman had his medical language pretty much exact, including his definition of what dissociative disorder actually means.

And Perry Mason was very considerate when they needed to get the personality to appear.

We are shown a form of hypnosis, this was pretty much how therapists have treated this disease, until the onset of managed care.

My friend used to be admitted to the hospital into a private room, where her therapist along with a medical doctor, would use hypnotism, accompanied by sedatives to get the treatment started.

This is pretty much how the doctor in this episode gets Joyce Martell to appear, sans the hypnotic medication.

I have literally seen my friend reacting to allergies and then not reacting after changing.

This is a good episode to show people who have recently been diagnosed with dissociative disorder...

Another good movie to watch would be the film "identity" with John Cusack.

I am surprised I have never reviewed this episode and to think this is during Perry Mason's first season... I am not sure if this is one of the ones written by Earle Stanley Gardner. But whether it is or not, this episode is swell. It has a good blend of mystery and discovery.

Taika is great, especially as the dude made out of rock, if not a very funny and talented Director and actor.

I particularly welcomed the return of Jane Foster, and I was a little bit surprised at the way that they brought her back. I distinctly remember Mjollnir being back in the possession of Thor and Captain America after Thor stole it from the Dark World timeline... of course, the Asgardians could have scooped up the pieces left over from Ragnarok, but where is that other hammer from Avengers endgame? Maybe it is not really a plot hole, I don't remember where that other Mjollnir got to. Did Steve Rogers return it?

And then it is always great to have the Guardians of the Galaxy involved, this was before Guardians of the Galaxy Vol3 and Nebula's transformation into one of Tony Starks Nanotech projects. I honestly liked her before when she was still partly RadioShack shelf rejects.

And compared to Ragnarok, although there is a lot of humor in this film, it does have some serious drama.

But there are a number of absurd complaints I've read in several dupe "reviews". Let's go over these, shall we?

1) It's FUNNY.

To not like a movie because it is FUNNY? That is the main complaint that I am reading, oh, this is no good because it is FUNNY. Wait, what?

There are some new gimmicks in this film, nothing was wasted. And so Thor assembles a new means of transportation through by Bifrost. Out of... Watch the movie to find out what it is made out of. But it's funny!

2) Nepotism

I also read a number of complaints regarding "nepotism", wait, what! That's a big so what! I don't care who plays what or who, or if they are the son or daughter of some cast or crew member. Yawn. And honestly, I did not know when I was watching the film.

Christian Bale almost reprises his role as the American Psycho. - at first, we believe that this person is irredeemable. But in a major, unexpected twist, well, you will have to watch the film in order to see what I'm talking about.

The film starts getting very serious toward the middle, of course it kind of slightly bothers me that Thor is still a little bit goofy after the events of avengers endgame. But then again, this is also within his character. He was handed a major loss in endgame, and this was his reaction. So, as far as I'm concerned, he is dealing with that loss, which changed him irrevocably.

This is a much different Thor than the person that we met in the first film. And The Avengers. That serious person... Which is totally expected after all the character has gone through.

And these changes were just for films, the comic book numbered in the hundreds, and the character was always ever-changing, even then.

Remember when Thor resided within a geek that had to yell "ODIN" at a hammer which would then turn him into Thor? The character has changed a lot over the course of maybe 40 or 50 years. And then some of his power was siphoned off into another character named Bloodaxe, which was a spinoff title that only lasted a couple of dozen issues- it was related to West Coast Avengers, which then became Force Works.

It's kind of like how the Hulk was always dumb and residing within Bruce Banner. And hulk has gone through a lot of changes. There was a time he was dumb when he was human, but smart when he was "The Gray Hulk"- but back then he went by "Mr. Fixit", he accompanied Wolverine in a few issues. Anybody remember The Hulk versus Thor? It is now called "the return of the Incredible Hulk"- at the time when it was originally broadcast, it was called the Hulk versus Thor, or probably simply Hulk vs Thor. And some of the dialogue from that TV movie found its way into the first Thor film.

3) CGI?

Another complaint was with the amount of CGI, which you can barely tell these days. And this complaint is made by people who don't realize that there are still a lot of practical effects and real, physical locations and objects, even in this film. I'm getting really tired of that old complaint. If we have the ability to make realistic, digital set extensions, then we should use them always. But even with a lot of digital set extensions, a lot of the detail is real physical props, and other real artwork.

I like that this movie focuses a lot on the Asgardian children, and it shows their true potential- including the son of Heimdall.

I like that this film pulls back from the inanity of Ragnarok, although this film includes some of that silliness.

I thought Ragnarok was way over the top, but I did enjoy it. But this film has that same over the top feel at least at the beginning, but it also is balanced with some heartbreaking things.

The final complaint and I see this a lot is about "the writing"

I want to ask the people who wrote those reviews, have you ever written for television? Have you ever written for Broadway or the theater?

You can't just sit down and spew unplanned stream of conscious, everything has to be planned out and mapped out, especially with television.

And it's even more difficult with a film.

And so the question I finally have is: are these reviews taking an extremely long time to post? Because I don't believe I have put anything into these reviews that are anything near as bad as what I have read recently.

Also, the film begins with the twist of an alien culture being suddenly dumped into Los Angeles, and it causes a culture clash.

The newcomers, the aliens, who have been allowed to take new names and work and live with regular people, have some advantages over regular people, but also a few disadvantages.

The first part of the film has a James Caan who is still getting over his partners death, suddenly partnered up with a person he normally would not even associate with- but in fact, he chose that partnership, because it would give him a pathway to investigate who shot his former partner "Tug". But something that he did out of necessity becomes something that gives him an advantage over normal human cop pairs- he understands human criminals, and his partner understands newcomer criminals.

There is a very short honeymoon between the two main characters in the film, eventually they figure out how to work with each other.

After that, we are presented with a conundrum that has to be figured out.

And that's why I say it's the French connection. It's got all of the great things that a good cop movie has, great fight scenes, big guns, great car chases. LA is a pretty good city to use as the background of a car chase, because it has those factory areas over in Long Beach and San Pedro. Also miles and miles of Malibu beaches.

And more miles and miles of scummy, crusty nightclubs like the "Encounters" nightclub in this film- Leslie Bevis, who played the alien freighter captain and occasional Quark girlfriend in deep space nine "Rionoj", is Cassandra, a very kinky newcomer who loves experiencing things with humans. And she did not like what Terence stamp did to her Newcomer boyfriend.

This film should have been longer. It has a lot of culture that can be mined and abused for humor, and in fact, when the film was turned into a television series (and then later several movies), they really got into the newcomer culture. Not to mention the families of "Sam" Francisco and Se-Ike's (AKA Poophead in Newcomer jargon).

This is one of my favorite movies with James Caan, and I had never seen Mandy Patakin before.

There are lots of great things in here, and I'm glad that this movie led to other shows with other things that we eventually learned about the newcomers.

I never had the opportunity to see this in the theater, and in fact, it looks like this film might have been made originally to be a television show pilot, due to the involvement of Rockne S O'Bannon, The creator of Farscape and other great sci-fi shows. But here, he shows that he is just as good making cop movies that have alien twists. And with just a few more added budget-dollars, a TV show pilot becomes a great theatrical release. If, in fact, the film was originally intended as a television show. As a theatrical release, the film was awarded more down to Earth gritty realism.

Or rather, narrates again.

I have to say each time I watch this episode I am more and more impressed, Vic not only plays Captain Kirk, he dabbled with some of the music, and he writes most of these stories.

The fact that he was involved in writing this episode reveals a huge knowledge of Star Trek. He knows details about each of the five women that are clouding Kirks memory in this episode.

Details that we have mostly forgotten... Well, details about one of them are an untold story, because it takes place with a character from one of his earlier ships, The ship from "obsession". And that was another interesting thing to add to this story, it's just another untold story of Kirk. But each of these women have had a profound effect on Kirks psyche.

We forget that Kirk got extremely lucky in "The Paradise Syndrome" with "Miramani"- but he also got lucky with Deela in "wink of an eye"- but it is even more blatant in Paradise. And the level of that is shown in this episode, because we all know that Miramani was carrying Kirk's child.

And this episode is basically built around a character never really born. Of all of the five girls that Kirk has to interact with to get his memory back, the one that has the key to his secret password was the one that never existed as a person.

In reality that is, she does exist in Kirks mind to a very large degree. And the ironic thing here is that he never knew it.

This also brings back memories of another forgotten "woman" Rayna- and she was also "not real" in a certain sense, although to Kirk, she was very real.

This also gives us another look at the original enterprise "Holodeck", which would have been revealed had there ever been a fourth season of the original series. So in effect, this is the first "holodeck episode", unless you count the first episode where Apollo comes back.

The story happening in the background with the planet applying for Federation membership, that's not really the important story here.

Or a Vorlon...

And Julie Warner becomes very aggressive.

This episode is a nice Interlude before best of both worlds. Revealing the Enterprise' exploratory methods.

A mysterious crash survivor is found, and for the first time we get to see Dr. Crusher actually being a doctor, basically reassembling this person.

John was in very bad shape when he was found, but there was something about him that transcended Dr. Crushers' ministrations. It is almost as if he would have reassembled himself.

But he did need help at the beginning. Mark LeMura portrays this crash survivor/amnesiac with relish.

Also, Geordi's relationship with Miss Henshaw takes an unexpected turn- where he suddenly becomes the one being pursued. But Geordi also experiences a sudden increase in his self-esteem, which helps.

We also get to take a look at a suppressive society that allows "no dissent", on pain of death. The enterprise is met by a spaceship from this society, and they dismiss John's recovery, and call reports of John's healing powers "lies". It is almost a prophecy about what was to happen to us during the Covid crisis, so many people did not believe it was any kind of issue, and therefore paid the ultimate price.

Ironically, the spaceship model used for the Zalkonians was the same model as a plague ship from the first season episode "haven".

I don't understand the thrashing this episode seems to be getting, it is a very well written and directed episode, and there is a lot of mystery. And stories like this are basically the heart of Star Trek, where mysteries are portents to wondrous things.

Maltrhazar believes in the "Historical Documents", and that is all he needs. Because of this, he has modeled an entire culture around those "Historical Docuents".

Saris (Robin Sachs) doesn't understand this, and so he takes advantage of the Thermians, but in doing so, makes them better.

It's the best Star Trek parody ever made, the Thermians are us in a way, because we want Star Trek to be real, and so, we make it as real as we can. We learn Klingon, we Cosplay, we buy Phasers and Tricorders, and some Fortunates have even purchased Star Trek Props and Costumes. This film shows to what depths we would take to make our dreams a reality.

Malthazar? He has seen the protector. He has seen the "many rooms" within. He believes in it. And so with every last resource the Thermians had, he created it.

And he does not consider himself a leader. Wrong...

And that is why this is one of the greatest Star Trek films ever made, despite the parody aspects.

I realized this as I was watching it this morning, Mathazar believed so much that he made it all real. I long for the day when we on Earth do the same thing.

It all goes to something from "The Silver Chair" by CS Lewis- When Puddleglum is confronted with his belief in "The Real World" of Narnia, and he is being told that it is all in his mind, his response is "I'll take my fantasy world over your real world any day".

That is us, that is me. I'll take the fantasy of Star Trek over this world any day. And to that end, I will join the numbers of people who work to make Star Trek a reality. Or Galaxy Quest, if you prefer...

Maybe it all boils down to just wanting to make a world diverse and inclusive- for all people, not just a chosen few. There is no such thing, we are all special, anyone who has dreams is special. It makes life better when we are not cardboard cutouts. Remember the Aliens who took Picard for an experiment, and made a FakePicard? They were investigating individuality because they had none. They all looked the same, and thought the same. "Allegiance" was that episode. They failed because they had no individuality. Miserably failed.

But this movie succeeds because of that same individuality. And our belief in the future.

I saw this film in the theatre the day it came out- and it was presented in 4:3 until Tim Allen looks up at the vista of stars ahead... that was when the curtains roll back, revealing the full glory of the scene. It was highly effective and it is too bad that I have not come across any Blu-ray releases that show the film that same way they are mostly all widescreen all the way through... in the theater, it was magnificent.

"... on the palace for me?"

I had forgotten about this movie, I had wanted to see it ever since I heard the name Paul Verhoeven. I saw Spetters in 1980, I saw Blade Runner in 1982. And that was my first dose of Rutger Hauer, it should have been this movie. Even my mother had heard about Hauer, and she heard about this movie too, we used to spend many hours, watching all kinds of obscure or foreign movies.

Rutger Hauer is very young here, one of a group of about five students... A photograph is taken of them, and the only question is which ones will still be alive after the debacle of World War II?

Initially it seems that the Dutch resistance are bumbling, idiotic fools. They do not appear to have embraced the concept of covering their arses.

But Rutger Hauer as Eric and his good friend Guus kind of bumble their way, trying to help, sometimes, getting caught, mostly getting away by the skin of their clever teeth. Until they finally escape to Britain.

They had to develop a way of getting back into the Netherlands, and then back out again, using what looked like "PT boats", PT boat number 102. If it were PT boat number 109, that would have been JFK. I'm just wondering if that was an American PT boat or a British...

Verhoven had access to all kinds of World War II equipment, planes, tanks, personnel carriers, even some amazing cars. When you think about movies today, none of those physical vehicles exist anymore, and so, especially in the case of shows like band of Brothers, they had to actually build German, American, and British tanks. But in 1977, or possibly a year earlier when this film was being made, there were still old war surplus planes and vehicles available.

There are names given to Rutger Hauer's character, the name of an alleged spy for Germany, planted in Britain. But it is not what we, or he, think it is. But the effect is that it sends Eric up to London with a secret mission that only he knows about, but fortunately the target of this mission knew all about what Eric was going to try to do and so thankfully that mistake was never made. That might be giving away a little bit, but I'm not saying exactly what this was, watch it and find out.

It is very interesting to see how the Germans worked, contrary to the intelligence-inept Dutch, they were virtually experts at setting up every encounter. No information was let out that they didn't have complete control over.

And it takes Eric halfway through his war experience to figure this out, turn it around, and use it to his own advantage. And towards the end, he does get very good at this.

The first Verhoven film I actually saw was Spetters, "Spatterings of Grease", in 1980. At the time, a couple of friends mentioned this movie, but for some reason I neglected to see it because I thought Rutger Hauer was portraying a Nazi... I was very wrong with that assessment.

Almost 40 years later, Verhoeven made the bookend film "Zwartboek", aka Black Book, with Clarice "Red Lady" Houten, which showed yet another aspect of the Dutch underground.

And Verhoeven was qualified to write and to make these movies.

I mentioned earlier the Dutch resistance appear to be rather inept, there are a few scenes that were rather disturbing. Especially when Alex and Guus try to volunteer and the recruitment officer keeps telling them to come back in 10 days, come back in 10 days.

There is a reason why that officer appears to be caught in some temporal causality loop... I can't say any more, that scene is near the beginning of the film. Look for it. There is a rather gross and disturbing reason why that officer was acting that way.

And then, as we are shown vignettes from the beginning of the war, the Dutch army was responding to things like April fools practical jokes. And then they are just left on their own by their superiors, with no instruction as the general drives away, leaving them with nothing.

It was kind of as if these five students had to teach themselves how to become useful. Some of them did become useful like Alex and Guus. Others made mistakes like Ian, and the Germans found the exact knife to twist into Robby.

This is one of the best war movies of the 70s and there were not that many, most of the ones made during that time were exceptional: Apocalypse Now which came two years later. Catch 22, Two Mules for Sister Sara, Kelly's Heroes, M*A*SH, Patton, Rio Lobo, Johnny got his Gun, then we had religious-based, like The Hiding Place, Vross of Iron, A Bridge (way) Too Far. Force 10 from Navarone. And of course, the infamous "1941", followed by Hair, and then "More American Graffiti."

But most of those were American movies. Das Boot, the German movie, was made in 1981. Ironically, Soldier of Orange is not even listed in the IMDb topic "Top 50 war movies and TV shows of all Time"... Not a single word about it.

This film put Verhoeven on the map- his next film, Spetters, put him over the top. And then he did RoboCop, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers, which he takes elements from this film to make more effective.

Watching this movie it is hard to tell which direction Verhoven was going to jump, but he actually made excellent movies in every genre that he worked. It took me a long time to find a good release of this, and the aspect ratio is 1280 x 785, a very unusual resolution, and I haven't seen any other films made to that specification.

The first time I saw this, Robert Osborne presented it on TCM, and he spoke very highly of it. When it came down to it, I trusted Robert, whenever I wanted to know something about the movies that interested me I would just watch TCM and eventually he would say something about whatever movie I was watching at the time.

So that the first version of "bride of the atom", which I like to call this film, I could have sworn it was distributed by RKO. But it was a black and white print.

I was highly impressed with Bela Lugosi's performance, of course he was old, but he still had it.

And I was thinking "who is that big lug?" Not realizing I had already seen him already as a cop with actual speaking lines in plan nine!

And I remember actually liking the way Tor Johnson played the police officer- he sounded coherent. He had good diction, and he actually acted. Instead of just grunting and doing wrestling moves on Bela or Lyle Talbot (or whoever the lead actor in this film was, I'm still not sure, and I'm even looking at the cast list)- oh, that was Tony McCoy.

It is ironic that I saw many of the scenes from this film in Tim Burtons "Ed Wood", and they were performed almost verbatim to this film.

And what is kind of humorous there is that Martin Landau's daughter played Loretta King... I didn't realize that until today when I was watching the film.

But also, today I came across a real prize, a colorized version of "bride of the atom." It was partially worked on down here at a film studio in San Diego where I had worked at to do a gaming television show, I got to control a Mechwarrior/Battletech robot with a sidewinder joystick, while other players got to shoot back at me. They filmed the video game play and that got broadcast in the episode. After I did my job, I stayed there and talked to the owner who showed me a bunch of interesting videos he had made where he played musical instruments and filmed himself doing all of the parts.

But whoever worked on this rendition of this film, the color really adds to the story- it helps it make sense.

And I remember the first time I saw this film, Bela goes on his "home" rant, talking about creating a race of Atomic Superman that will rule the world. Which is a pretty famous line as far as Bela Lugosi lines go. This film also has a reprise of Bela's famous hand gestures which he used in "white zombie", he uses them to summon a victim. It may have been a different movie, or maybe the gestures were used in more than one film. Regardless, it was a classic homage to his early work.

And when I saw that first version in black and white, it never occurred to me that when Lobo strapped Bela to the table, he demonstrated that the machine actually worked and Bela had become a Superman.

I apologize if that gives away anything but that aspect of it completely slipped away from me the first time but this time when I watched it in color, the meaning of that whole scene became clear.

So... for the first time the entire ending of this movie made sense, a lot more sense than it did before.

I was very impressed with the way Bela held himself, he delivered his lines beautifully. He is the consummate actor.

It's just that he never was given very many quality acting parts.

But I am also thankful for his friendship with Ed Wood, who gave him the opportunity to perform in a few more movies, as chintzy as they were. You could tell this is something that he loved doing, and he should have been given more opportunities to work before he was taken from us.

And when you think about Ed Wood, if he just had a little bit more money, and a little bit more control, what he would have been able to do. Because even the films that he wrote and directed himself, were interfered with by religious groups, by movie studios, and by dirty film companies.

And this, this was Bela Lugosi's last full movie, and as it exists today, represents a huge sock in the face to big Hollywood, even with the religious interference.

White Vision? Lieutenant Trouble? Darcy? Even Captain Marvel. Well, the last actually does have a reference, but it is not what you think.

But everything that helped make WandaVision practically TV History was missing from this. That was a huge missed opportunity.

Although I did enjoy the alternates and cameos that show up in this, Those fringe characters from WandaVision could have made this great. And so I found the story highlighting The Scarlett Witch slightly disappointing.

But it is a Sam Raimi film with standard Bruce Campbell cameo, and it did include some "evil dead" elements. Not saying what those are, watch it, you'll see.

The way this affects Doctor Strange is also very interesting.

However, the resolution of this story would make any continuation of WandaVision difficult. Which was a story that deserved more.

There was magnificent imagery, and at least two Non-DC references to Starro. There was one Starro reference in Infinity wars toward the end of the fim. And so it was just fitting there were two references here.

So, I am just going to rate it 10, because I did like what was there. Mostly because of Sam Raimi's tendency to give us what we want, but not what we expect.

There were a few mind bending revelations. This film was totally off the rails very early on, and then they even packed up the rails and rolled them away. Which was mostly why I liked it.

I ran across this fanedit several years ago, but the original copy that I had was not the actual fan edit listed here. That one was simply the two original movies joined together, somehow although it did have some of the material that was in the actual bloody affair cut.

I finally found another version of this, The actual version of this IMDb listing. It was exceedingly difficult to find. But now I have the actual film as described in this IMDb entry.

One Reviewer talks about the way that "the clan of the White Lotus" was clipped into the scene where David Carradine as Bill is describing Pei Mei's five point exploding heart technique to Beatrice Kiddo. This is not a negative thing, it actually connects this newer Quentin Tarantino film to the old kung fu movies. It is totally appropriate.

The actor playing Pei Mei was actually the same actor who was the leader of the crazy 88's. And he does look a lot like the original actor from the kung fu film.

In my version, the resolution of the older film was bumped up, so that it's not noticeably degraded from the rest of the Tarantino film in HD. But there are so many versions of this fan, edit that are not quite the right version floating around, which might have had a totally DVD resolution of that scene clipped in, done that way, it would look kind of bogus. But the version that I have is not like that at all, it is 100% high definition all the way through.

There are also many other alternate scenes. I don't know where the fan who edited this acquired those, but they are all very good material.

This is the proper way to watch this film, I saw both films in the theater when they came out and I had to wait an excruciatingly long time between parts one and two.

Now, I can watch both parts in one sitting, and I don't even have to change video files, it's all right there.

Somebody should try to get this cut legally distributed because it is simply too good to be a mysterious and difficult to find much less stream fan edit. Previously, I had come across a version of True Romance that was cut the way Tarantino had written it, it may have been edited by the same person because editing wise you could not tell between a regular movie and the fan edit. But the story of that one was a lot more negative than the theatrical release, it is very difficult to watch, especially the ending. Which was typical of early Tarantino work. When you get all the way back toward reservoir dogs, well, nobody gets out alive. It wasn't until later when he decided to have a couple characters actually escape by the skin of their teeth, he started becoming more popular. Pulp fiction era, possibly. Actually, his latest movies have gone toward the complete opposite extreme, all kinds of people escape.

I can't say its name because that would be a spoiler, but I can say that it was one of Justice league's original nemesis.

I can say that "project starfish" is aptly named.

Look for Yondu, Jai Courtney also returns as Captain Boomerang, in a semi-disappointing manner. And of course Harley Quinn and Rick Flagg.

Will Smith does not reprise his "Deadshot", but we get two in his place, both very good shots. One of them is better than the other, which one?

And then there are a bunch of other surprising meta-humans, rat and weasel people, cat people, even polka-dot people and shark people.

But if they are meta-humans, what can they do? Some of them have extremely disgusting super powers, albeit useful.

As much as I enjoyed the first suicide squad, I liked this one even more. Of course, Peter Gunn made it almost into another Deadpool movie, same exact style of humor.

But the other surprising thing about this is that for the first time ever, we get to see one of the very first DC comic villains, and they are much worse than we could ever imagine.

And although I cannot say the name, I can say that the idea was possibly stolen from the Japanese science fiction movie, "a warning to earth"- even the powers it has.

Look for another Taika Waikiki cameo, maybe two.

"Swords are fun!"

Well. We didn't see any more references to deep space nine, no Pah Wraiths, Dukat or The Sisko. And Jerati was missing completely.

It makes me wonder if that storyline will ever again be referenced, it seemed to be a major part of the final episode of season two. Jurati was to be guarding something. But it never happened, at least not here.

Or maybe this episode, and the previous nine all took place in another alternate universe? No Soji or Elnor. No Jurati. And it seems to me that even with Rios staying in 21st century LA, that his holograms would still be on La Sirena, driving Raffi nuts. But none of them showed up either. Too bad, those characters should have been part of this. And last week the Excelsior was blown up, and isn't that where Elnor was posted? I didn't even think about that until after I watched this.

No, this was a next-generation-only hootenanny. Next generation, and, whatever happens after that. And in that way, as much as I enjoyed this season, it was kind of a disservice to those characters that were part of the first two seasons.

Also, we forget that the first season was loosely based upon the 2008 Comic book mini series, "Countdown". And what else was based upon that? The 2009 Kelvin timeline franchise.

Picard's Romulan housekeeper, that's also where she came from. But she wasn't in this, either.

So maybe it was a good thing that this show put away the countdown timeline, which has dominated Trek films and shows since 2009.

And we got back to honoring the next generation. I don't like the idea of "Easter eggs". I don't think references to earlier shows should be hidden within these new shows. They should be blatant. Any references to best of both worlds should be a blatant reference. Or any references to Data's cat, Spot. Or anything else, Captain Kirk's remains, which were sequestered at that Daytrom institute/Section 31 museum? Of course, along with Picard's bones. Or Professor Moriarity.

We don't need to hide these things as "references", they can be blatant, they can become a part of the story.

So I am still trying to absorb what has happened here. This episode had more of an emotional impact on me than any other kind of impact.

And this is the way any Star Trek show should actually be. It should hit us on an emotional level, to be effective.

This was supposed to be the last episode of Picard. Of Picard, maybe. But Star Trek just keeps going on. And I eagerly await, whatever they are going to be doing after this.

Since I absolutely included no spoilers at all, I am going to go ahead and mark this back to no spoilers. Spoilers are things like plot points, A quote given without context should not spoil anybody's experience. Thank you.