IMDb meta-data is runtime of 2h and 1m, rated 6.4 by 14638 cinematizens.
Genre: Adventure
DNA: Fred Ward.
Verdict: More Fred.
Tagline: It’s Fred again.
Yep, it’s all about a revivicus Fred Ward aka Remo Williams and his vigilante rescue of Captain Janeway. The cast of stereotypes include a mystical Chinese (played by a European in the best tradition of Charlie Chan), a corrupt inheritor who reminded me of the current news, a bought off general who…ditto, and others. Wilfred Brimley elevates the tone, as always, from behind his moustache.
Remo’s training is most of the fun in the first half, thereafter it drags through the stereotypes: The corporate corruption is routine and most of the action then is limp, apart from the statue of Lady Liberty. WOW!
Captain Janeway has little to do but be a victim. But as always Fred nails it. You may not believe in Remo, viewer, but by Jupiter Fred does!
Japanese anime (1978-9) 52 half-hour TV episodes rated 7.9 by 1,700 cineastes. These were also screened throughout Europe at the time, as witnessed by the German and Spanish reviews on the IMDb.
Genre: SyFy.
DNA: Japan.
Verdict: More, please.
Tagline: Holy Jupiter!
Between 1940 and 1951 Captain Future policed the nine planets in radio plays, pulp magazines, and even pulpier paperback books in the United States. There were further adaptations, like the Japanese series noted above.
Seventeen of his 45-minute adventures were available from Radio Archives the last time I looked. Recommended to all SyFy nerdlngs. These radio plays were written by Edmond Hamilton and voiced by Milton Bagby who does a marvellous job.
Captain Future is Curtis Newton who is the most scientific of all scientists in the Solar System, where all nine planets, some moons, and a few asteroids and a comet or two are inhabited, and even some pinheads, mostly by humanoids, along with the required monsters for Curtis to tame, bamboozle, trap, or slay.
In his mission of mayhem he is aided by a living brain in a self-propelled glass box with waldos, being the last of Dr Simon Wright whose science is second only to that of Curtis; Grag the giant metal manling; Otho the rubber android, and assorted others. See the Wikipedia entry for details.
Nothing stops Captain Future: when villains maroon him on an uninhabited asteroid in a space suit with two hours of air, using the metals of the asteroid and his handy sonic screwdriver borrowed from Dr Who, he promptly builds a nuclear reactor to turn the rock itself into a space ship. Likewise the dreaded demons who dwell in the Great Red Fire Sea on Jupiter are no match for this wizard of science.
Sorting out the Solar System is a big job, to be sure, but Curt is an even bigger sort-outer than that, and in the later stories he extends his crusade against wrongdoers to time travel as well as interstellar and intermolecular space. This crusader needs no cape when he has science on his side.
Edmond Hamilton
I heard some of these stories as a child, syndicated to a local radio station, and now I listen to them on my daily walks as a holiday from the unrelieved idiocy of contemporary events.
Good Reads meta-data is 213 pages rated 4.15 by 2,354 litizens.
Genre: Methodology.
DNA: Data.
Verdict: Close the barn door.
Tagline: Down with Power Point.
Edward Tufte has authored many excellent and creative books on presenting and analysing data, becoming a one-man industry. He made famous Charles Minard’s (1869) graphic of Le Grand armée of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. Tufte nominates this image as one of the very best visual displays of information. Many readers will have seen a version of it even if the names Minard and Tufts are unknown.
Power Point (PP), launched in 1990, was in its adolescence when Tufte wrote this chapter, but now PP is a fully grown adult with ubiquitous grandchildren. Its lineage has become so dominant that its cognitive stye has been assimilated by most of us without being conscious of what it is. In fact most who have been indoctrinated into PP do not even know it.
Tufte’s master narrative is that PP, like all cultural artefacts, reflects the social structure of the environment in which it was created, and it promotes these structures in its diffusion. (He doesn’t say it quite this way, but I gave it a Mary Douglas spin with some Michel Foucault seasoning. It was generated in a giant corporation called Microsoft, and it mirrors the features of such a large rent-seeking organisation in being hierarchical, linear, simple, and bureaucratic. Its first purpose was to be a tool for salesmen to sell advertising campaigns to other large corporations marketing products, it is well to remember, and it still bears that birthmark.
The convergence of these characteristics produces superficiality. Tufte demonstrates this shallowness repeatedly. The simplest example of the many he presents is this: four sheets of A4 paper can hold enough information (words or data) to fill 200 PP slides.
An audience can read the text or data on a PP screen three times faster than a presenter reading it out loud, but many presenters still insist on doing that. It is something we have all endured, a nervous presenter who makes a joke about PP overkill and then proceeds to do that with forty-five slides in a 10-minute presentation. The audience was lost right after the joke. At best, Tufte allows, PP is a useful crutch for the poorest 10% of presenter such as the preceding example. For the rest it is a hinderance.
Let it be clear, the Cognitive Style is inherent in PP, not brought to it by the presenter. However it is now true that the cognitive style of Power Point has permeated the culture and practice of presentations and one hardly dares not use it – either the style or the application or both – for fear of being beyond the pale. It has become the norm. We audience members have been primed to expect it as the lingua franca of presentations at seminars, lectures, workshops, conferences, hearings, and everywhere. Indeed many innocents have never seen a presentation that wasn’t PPed, even if PP itself wasn’t used, its style was. Like a virus the cognitive style has been contagious and has infected other hosts. What is this style?
Edward Tufte
It forces a presenter to shun comparisons since they cannot be shown. To presume the reality is linear even when it may be reflexive. And it resolves things to the dozen words that go on even a text heavy slide in a font that can be read by the audience.
What is the alternative? In some cases PP should not be used at all, indeed, front of the room presentation should not be used. For engineering, conventional written reports are far superior, and they should be read not presented, and then discussed. In the main Tufte recommends a very serviceable alternative: sentences. Discussion in short.
If it is put on the screen, the audience reads it and does not attend to what is said. Sight beats sound more often than not, for example music videos use sights to distract from the ostensible music.
Moreover, the slides endure, posted on web sites, distributed by email, printed on paper. What is said about each slide evaporates into the air.
I know I have railed about PP in 2021, but here I am at it again.
Good Reads meta-data is 203 pages, rated 4.22 by 2403 litizens.
Genre: Krimi; Species: Holmes.
DNA: Edwardian England.
Verdict: Poof!
Tagline: Now you see him, now you don’t.
Erik Weisz (1874-1926) of Appleton Wisconsin is wrongly accused of murder, melée, and mayhem but Sherlock comes to the rescue as only he can, his Boswell at hand. You know Erik, that is, Harry Houdini stunt performer, illusionist, and escapologist extraordinaire.
With a few of the tricks of his trade, Houdini assists Sherlock in identifying and apprehending the villain. Most amusing is Watson’s first airplane ride. Indeed. Of course there is no end to Sherlock’s wiles and the conclusion is foregone, though there are some nice and neat twists and turns along the way that confirm his nostrum: when all possibilities have been eliminated the impossible remains, or something like that.
No trade secrets are revealed and I never did find out how Harry got through that wall.
***
The lengthy entry on Erik in Wikipedia makes for good reading. There I note that after World War I he devoted a great deal of his time, effort, and reputation to debunking fraudulent spiritualists. He became a member of the editorial board of the Scientific American as a result.
This is a title in the series The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, which books, mostly reprints, are by a different authors. In this one there are several typos, e.g., ‘wanned’ for ‘warmed’ and some formatting errors. I expect the text was converted to digital for the Kindle by an A.I. that couldn’t read.
IMDb meta-data is a runtime of 1h and 44m, rated 5.4 by 36,000 cinematizens.
Genre: Dystopia; Subspecies: Post Apocalyptic.
DNA: Comic book.
Verdict: Smaller doses, please.
Tagline: Shazam!
The title character injects energy, colour, and confusion into every scene she is in and she is in nearly every scene. On the few occasions when she takes a break, Malcolm McDowell plays… Malcolm McDowell. That sneer hasn’t changed since Clockwork Orange (1971).
While the story and characters are derived from a comic book series, the film lacks the subtlety and finesse of that original! It is all ‘Slam! Bam! Wham!’ and repeat for its runtime.
There is no story just action and reaction. There are no characters just a blur of movement. But there is plenty of that. I watched it with one eye while doing crossword puzzles. It didn’t distract me. Although I admit I enjoyed some of Tank Girl’s antics.
Good Reads meta-data is 192 pages, rated 4.08 by 695 litizens.
Genre: krimi; Species: Holmes.
Verdict: Stilted.
Tagline: Bully!
What chance do villains have when a young Sherlock Holmes is on the case? Even less when he is abetted and assisted by a young Theodore Roosevelt.
Holmes is in a company of British actors touring the USA so he can learn the tricks of the thespian trade: make-up, disguise, voice changes, posture, accents, and costumery. A brash Roosevelt had written him a fan letter after reading one of his early monographs on ash or something and they meet in New York City. No sooner than they do, than a man is shot and off they go in pursuit, this dynamic duo.
To the police this is a mugging gone wrong, but in it Holmes sees an ocean or more exactly a political assassination in the making.
Thanks to the intervention of Holmes, President Rutherford Hayes is not assassinated. His one-time Democratic rival Samuel Tilden figures in the investigation, as does a later Vice-President, Chester Arthur, and an elusive Charles Guiteau. A student of US presidential history will see in this list a connect the dots picture. In a corrupt election Hayes defeated Tilden, who, to his credit, accepted the result for the sake and peace and quiet. Later, Guiteau shot President Garfield, while proclaiming he was a Stalwart, the name of a political sect. The result was that Arthur, likewise a Stalwart, became president. Hmmm. The rug of history has been pulled over this for centuries.
Until the current incumbent caused the question of corruption to be reopened, historians had regarded Arthur to be the most venal president. He will now have to cede that title to the Felon-in-Chief.
Footnote: Guiteau had a brush with utopianism in that he joined Noyes’s Oneida Community for several years, but was banished. The details are salacious. The brief biography of his miserable specimen reminded me of many holders of high office in the news today.
I said ‘stilted’ above because it is written as if it were from Roosevelt’s diary and so imitates his laboured styled. And I guess it is successful in that imitation because it certainly is laboured.
***
Stimulated by this reading I once again sought a biography of Tilden. No recent one exists, as I discovered the last time I tried to find one about ten years ago. There is a gap in the literature then, but this time I did find one published in 1939 and will acquire and read that as the world turns.
I formed a very high opinion of Theodore Roosevelt in reading Edmund Morris’s three volume biography of the man some years ago. Highly recommend to biographistas.
This book is a volume in the series of more than thirty reprints as ‘The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.’ I have read several others, each by a different author.
Good Reads meta-data is 380 pages, rated 4.16 by 6029 cinematizens.
Genre: SciFi; Species: Hard.
DNA: NASA.
Verdict: SETI, indeed.
Tagline: Less can be more.
Dr Bored missed a place among the astronauts and now monitors satellite data from distant and demoted Pluto, when…. Something happens that makes no sense. The titular object appears and does not behave according to the laws of physics legislated by the Solar System. Are the Plutocrats up to something? Someone is going to have pull it over and give it a traffic citation. Who better than the first to see it.
That narrative is interrupted, deflected, and slowed by backstories, sidestories, understories, and overstories, which all too often crowd out the front story. On the plus side, there are no cardboard villains gumming up the works as plot devices. Those who are unenthusiastic about Dr Bored’s mission have reasons which are fully explored.
There is a lot of trip and then the Arrival. Remember Encounter at Farpoint?
Joshua Calvert
P.S. ‘Hard’ means lots of STEM-speak. Lots. None of it contributes to plot or character and all of it was lost on me. One has been warned.
Good Reads meta-data is 30 pages, rated 3.61 by 324 litizens.
Genre: Sy Fy.
DNA: A.I.
Verdict: Singular indeed.
Tagline: Take that, Electoral College!
In distant 2008 political campaigns remain, but…the electorate is different. The omnipotent computer HAL in each presidential election identifies THE representative voter and that is the only one who votes on the day. In this story that is one Mr Norman Muller whose mundane work and home life is disrupted by having this responsibility thrust upon him, but, well, he answers the call of this civic duty, or rather the questions about the price of eggs, how often he mows the lawn, what his favourite colour is, how much he spends on gasoline, and a battery of other questions for three hours, and HAL then decides which of the two candidates best fits Muller’s answers to these questions.
Oops, that is a spoiler I guess.
THE elector does not vote for a candidate but answers a host of questions about anything and everything, and then A.I. does the rest.
***
If ye search you will find the text online. I did.
Good Reads meta-data is 262 pages, rated 3.89 by 815 litizens.
Genre: Krimi, Species: Sherlock.
DNA: Holmes.
Verdict: More please.
Tagline: The impossible takes a little longer.
By hook and crook, Holmes and Watson find themselves in Egypt pursuing a wayward Duke at the behest of Mrs Duke. Much colourful to’ing and fro’ing in 1904 Egypt in company of Howard Carter follows. Yes, that Howard Carter.
No adventure in Egypt is completed without a sandstorm and so…. Then there is the Valley of the Kings…. Oops don’t forget the bent pyramid. We also have the relief of the Nile, and a luxury hotel.
Good Reads meta-data is 290 pages, rated 3.75 by 921 litizens.
Genre: Krimi; Species: Sherlock.
DNA: Holmes.
Verdict: I ate it with a spoon.
Tagline: ‘He’s back!’
There is a subtitle: Sherlock Holmes 1942 because this is a tribute to Basil Rathbone’s embodiment of Sherlock in the 1942 film The Voice of Terror. For those whose first Holmes was Rathbone, he remains the standard against whom all others are measured.
During London wartime blackouts, four disconnected women have been murdered and mutilated. Baffled, as usual, the plod calls in the ageless Sherlock with his Boswell, this Watson is not the avuncular buffoon of Nigel Bruce’s portrayal, but still none too bright. While the war explains the blackout it does not figure in the story in any other way. Except…well, it turns out to be the key to the plot. Nicely done that.
There are many red herrings and blue cods, while the least likely is per genre the villain.
***
I bought a paper copy of this book at Abbey’s while we were on a staycation at that art deco palace, the Grace Hotel. I read it in a single rainy day there, and a rainy night, to be sure. Very diverting.
