TV Series

What’s My What?!!!

Posted by Johnny C on November 14, 2012
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For the last few months I’ve been having very casual group movie nights on Sundays.  As Elaine’s character on Seinfeld once remarked, “I need my Sunday night wind down.”  These nights are usually not planned and I’ll show either a randomly picked film noir from Netflix streaming or something that I normally wouldn’t show to a big group.  However, we always watch an episode of What’s My Line? (1950-1967).  A staple of Sunday nights on CBS for nearly two decades, this show is a perfect, quiet way to end the weekend.  Arlene Francis, Bennett Cerf, Dorothy Kilgallen, and host John Charles Daly are at their most genteel with manners that you never see anymore.

There are some great moments on these shows:  the regular nervous contestants who try to stump the panel with their occupations; guest panelists Steve Allen who coined the phrase “bigger than a breadbox”; and Steve Lawrence, Alan King, Tony Randal, and Woody Allen are a delight to see.  My favorite mystery guest has to be  Groucho Marx appearance.  He plays them like a cat with a mouse.

One of my regular guests on Sunday is the famous Cynthia Plaster Caster. Cynthia is a rock and roll icon who is known for being one of the original groupies who made plaster casts of rock stars penises. It’s always great to have her over to hear her comments about the people she’s met throughout her life, some of whom are in the movies and television shows we are watching.

I bring her up because of the episode of  What’s My Line? we watched this Sunday.  Per the usual, John Daly introduced the panel and then the first guest.  The dowdy lady who came out wrote her name… Miss Falik!   And her occupation? She makes water pistols.  I thought Cynthia’s head was going to explode.  Miss Falik!  Water pistols!  From then on the panel’s questions were all ‘phallic’ in nature:   Can this give pleasure to both men and women?   Would this have to be visible to give pleasure?  Dorothy Kilgallen asks, “Is this manipulated by hand… ?

And that’s just the start…  You never know what you are going  to find on a Sunday night…!!!

’60s “Thriller” Series Is Haunting for Halloween

Posted by Gloria on October 24, 2012
Posted in: Movies, Online Streaming, Reviews, TV Series. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

The THRILLER television series (1960 – 1962) is an under-appreciated treasure trove for your Halloween watch list. The expertly crafted episodes feature compelling tales with twists and turns and startling, dark images that can be much more disturbing than big blobs of blood, guts, and over-the-top gore.

Boris Karloff hosted this 67-episode tv series, featuring stories by some of the best writers of the thriller genre, including Robert Bloch of PSYCHO fame. Production quality is top  notch from the spot-on, spine-tingling music to the lineup of directors, including Ida Lupino, actress and one of the first female film directors.

These stories scared me when I was young, and they still have staying power. A few of my favorite episodes are “The Grim Reaper,” starring William Shatner, who shows off his best Shanter-esque acting chops in the closing sequence. Invite your friends and ghouls over to hunker down for the “The Grim Reaper” episode, along with “A Wig for Miss Devore, “The Hungry Glass,” and “La Strega.”

They may want to leave the lights on when it’s time for bed. 

 

Gloria Bowman is a writer, storyteller, blogger, movie lover, freelance editor,
and author of the novel, Human Slices.
Access her blog at www.gloriabowman.com; on Twitter @GloriaBow

Ab Fab’s Eddy and Patsy Celebrate with New Special Release

Posted by Gloria on September 23, 2012
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To celebrate their 20-years of hilarious success, the ABSOLUTELY FABULOUS gals have created three specials recently released to the U.S. market after airing to rave reviews on BBC. If you love Ab Fab, you need this in your stash of tv treasures.

Edina (Eddy), ditzy public relations agent, continues to struggle with aging;  Patsy, her ever-stoned sidekick, continues to be confused. And Saffron (better known as Saffy) continues to be exasperated with the adults in her life.

For more information, go to http://www.bbcamerica.com/absolutely-fabulous/photos/20th-anniversary-special-3/#422

Book Clubs Get All the Love — Why Not Movie Watching Clubs?

Posted by Gloria on September 20, 2012
Posted in: Movies, Themed Events, TV Series. Tagged: , , , , , . 3 Comments

Book Clubs continue to thrive. People gather face-to-face and around the world via the Web to connect over the written word.

Why don’t Movie Watching Clubs get the same love and respect as Book Clubs do?

It was a smart move when booksellers started to leverage the concept of the Book Club to promote their wares. (And Book Clubs that champion reading are good things, of course. There was a time when booksellers promoted the installation of built-in book cases in new housing construction so people would buy more books. Never mind the reading part.)

But maybe booksellers are a little hungrier. There are less than 1 trillion books sold every year. In contrast, almost 3.5 trillion videos will be viewed through on-line streaming alone this year.  The movie industry doesn’t really need to create and nurture an audience. The audience is already there, willing, ready, and able, remote control in hand.

Movie Watching Clubs are simple to organize, especially with the help of online tools like Facebook, where you can easily create an event notice and a group to facilitate communication. All a movie watching club needs is a host who enjoys selecting the programming and creating the event. It doesn’t matter if the movies are shown on a plain old tv or in a high-end home theater. The key element is the shared human experience. (Cue the Home Projectionist credo: It’s More Than a Movie.)

Johnny C., fellow Home Projectionist blogger, hosted his first group watching experience on his big-screen television back in the day when a big screen tv weighed about the same as a refrigerator. The night was a hit. “Let’s face it: SHOWGIRLS is an absolutely bust if you ever watched in the theater or on tv. But when I watched with a group, it was absolutely fabulous.”

He hosted a Sunday Dark Shadows group, which was featured on NPR’s This American Life.  Listen Here:  Dark Shadows

“Once I bought my first LCD projector and installed a 10-foot screen, I would just say ‘I’m watching this tonight and if anyone wants to come over….’ And it turned into a situation where a lot of people would come over.”

Fast forward, and the group of John’s movie-watching friends institutionalized their group with the name (courtesy of club member Daniel Starr), the “The ‘Bleeping’ Ravenswood Manor Film Society,” also affectionately known as the TBRMFS.

The first season of the Film Society featured only made-for-tv movies from ABC’s Friday Night at the Movies because, according to John, “They were only 72 minutes a piece. We could show more than one on a week night and it wouldn’t always turn into a late, late evening. But then again, we did watch SECRET OF HARVEST HOME, clocking in at three hours long, which was crazy.”

In those early days, the TBRMFS crew convened to watch a number of eighties’ treasures like DAWN: PORTRAIT OF A TEENAGE RUNAWAY followed up with THE OTHER SIDE OF DAWN; SAVAGES; DUEL; PRAY FOR THE WILDCATS ; THE LEGEND OF LIZZIE BORDEN; TRAPPED; SATAN SCHOOL FOR GIRLS; DYING ROOM ONLY; and CURSE OF THE BLACK WIDOW.

In its current iteration, the TBRMFS features Random Noir Nights for smaller groups and Saturday Night Themed Double Features such as “Women in Trouble Night” featuring Doris Day in JULIE and Barbara Stanwyck in JEOPARDY.

We humans are social animals who have a need to share collective experiences. Movie Watching Clubs deserve a little more attention and a little more love.

Gloria Bowman is a writer, storyteller, blogger, movie lover, freelance editor,
and author of the novel, Human Slices.
Access her blog at www.gloriabowman.com; on Twitter @GloriaBow

Pub-D-Hub – Finder of Lost Treasures

Posted by Johnny C on September 10, 2012
Posted in: Reviews, TV Series. Tagged: , . 1 Comment

One of the problems with having a projection system is that if the video isn’t in high definition it can look pretty dingy.    However, sometimes visual quality doesn’t matter.   I use a Roku to stream my video to my projector.  I love the wide array of channels, many for free.  The best of the lot is a channel called Pub-D-Hub.

Pub-D-Hub specializes in all things Public Domain.  From movies to radio and television shows, and even industrial/school films such as ‘How to Date’…   A lot of these films are available on YouTube and Archive.com, but Pub-D-Hub categorizes them and makes them easy to scroll through.

This Saturday I ventured into their Television section.  Along with old episodes of The Andy Griffith Show and Beverly Hillbillies were a bunch of shows that I’d never heard of… some for good reason.   I had a few people over, so I decided to play ‘let’s watch a random television show’.  First Dan saw a show he hadn’t watched since he was a child in the 1960’s.  “Sky King“.

This show goes by the premise that you can make a cowboy show, except instead of a horse our hero flies a plane. “Songbird”. The one we watched moved quickly and was about a couple of vicious but inept highway robbers. High jinx ensues with our Sky King having to fly Songbird through a valley of mountains with no gas. “Look out for that mountain…’ Sky King’s sidekick warns.  Video quality: C-minus; Crowd pleasing scale: B-minus. Although it is entertaining, its still a routine cowboy show.

We then watched Ding Dong School.

Ding Dong School was the ‘nursery school of the air’. One of the first children shows of its kind that tried to teach as well as entertain. The school’s head teacher Miss Francis shows how to blow bubbles, make rabbits out of handkerchiefs, and most of all tells us that we need to tell our Mommies to buy us Kix cereal for breakfast. Fellow viewer Dean was not a good student and thought it was horrifying. I but I was transfixed by the complete calmness of Miss Francis who really seemed to want to teach children how to blow bubbles.

Video Quality: B+. Crowd Pleasing Scale: C-minus. Historically interesting, but at 30 full minutes you can only hear about how good Kix is for so long. The commercials were at least one-third of the show.

We then watched Stump the Stars. One of the most frustrating game shows I’ve ever seen.

In this show, Jeanne Crain and Ed Begley were the guest stars with regulars, Beverly Garland, Hans Conried, Ross Martin, Ruta Lee, Sebastian Cabot. Viewers write in a charade phrase that the stars have to guess in 120 seconds. This is Olympic style charades. The have to figure out not just the name of a book or play, but riddles, puns, parodies, and even a viewers address. The game moves so fast that I found it unbelievable that anyone could have gotten anything right. But how many chances to get to see Ruta Lee play charades with Hans Conried.

Video Quality: B. Crowd Pleasing Scale: B-minus. It was interesting for about ten minutes, then it just became exhausting. It just comes down to that charades is not fun to watch.

But I urge you if have a Roku to check this station out. Lots of fun video to dig through.

Binging Bad

Posted by Dave on August 14, 2012
Posted in: Netflix Streaming, Reviews, TV Series. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

You can’t always trust first impressions.

So there’s this show. It’s apparently about drugs. Dwelling on the drug culture, watching shiftless, troubled kids get high. Violence, death. Sounds depressing. My impressions led me to say, this isn’t quite like the way I’d want to spend an hour at 9 p.m. on a Sunday night. MAD MEN, yes, absolutely. But not this. And so I never tuned-in to BREAKING BAD.

Meanwhile, friends would recommend various shows to me. DEXTER, THE WIRE, ROME, HOMELAND, BOARDWALK EMPIRE. I tried but couldn’t get into BOARDWALK EMPIRE. The others, particularly HOMELAND, I definitely will be checking out.

As BREAKING BAD was available via Netflix Instant, I broke down and gave Season 1, episode 1 a try. And so there was this desperate-looking, middle-aged guy in his underwear, standing in a desert next to a beige RV. Well, I don’t know. But by the end of the show, I was a little bit intrigued. At the conclusion of episode 2, I was hooked forever.

That was about seven weeks and 40 episodes ago. Last night I watched episode 6 of season 4 (seasons 1-4 are available on Netflix and elsewhere; season 5 is currently running on AMC, and will be the show’s last ).

I can’t imagine having one-week interludes between new installments, let alone waiting nearly a year for a new season. Well, actually I don’t have to imagine that, because it is actually what I’m currently doing with the aforementioned MAD MEN.

Actor Bryan Cranston, who plays Walter White (aka “Heisenberg”, the lead character in BREAKING BAD) is truly terrific. Basically just a regular guy, his deadpan, slightly annoyed-and-perturbed, slow-boil style is a hilarious and tense contrast to his angry young partner Jesse (Aaron Paul). It gets even better with Walt’s son (RJ Mitte, who, like his character, Walt, Jr., has mild cerebral palsy), Walt’s wife (Anna Gunn) and a great supporting cast.

Like with Norman Bates or Tony Soprano, it’s amazing how the human mind can often feel sympathy for a person who is doing bad things, if we know their life story and their motives. The disturbed Norman, of course, loved his mother to the point where he’d kill on her behalf. Tony was a real family guy, but he was raised to see murder and mayhem as the cost of doing business in Jersey. In Walter White’s case, his overriding desire is to provide for his wife and son.

At a dead-end, part-time job at a car wash, and in a thankless role teaching bored high school students chemistry, Walt finds an opening to use his skills to finally make something people really want. At the same time, Walt, like some spreading disease, has caused a chain reaction that affects many people–not always in good ways–and he has learned how to lie, to everyone. And to lie on top of lies. He is finally getting respect, and he’s making something of himself at last. But what is that “something”? I’m on my way to finding out. 

Without spoiling anything, a clip from the show; a glimpse into the premise and tongue-in-cheek style of BREAKING BAD: