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Monthly Archives: February 2011

Overlooked Movies: Belle of The Yukon(1945)

28 Monday Feb 2011

Posted by Randy Johnson in movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Gypsy Rose Lee, Overlooked Movies, Randolph Scott

When this movie started, directly after the credits had rolled, these words appeared on screen and a very serious voice spoke them:

If it’s Blood you want,

and Cold you want,

And the Call of the Klondike Nights,

if it’s Mud you want,

and Gold you want,

or what Robert Service would write,

Those lines disappeared from the screen, then, same voice and this line,

You’re in the wrong Theatre, brother!

I knew then I wasn’t watching what I thought I would be. With Randolph Scott, I figured on a western. An -er- western is what I got, though not quite as I’d supposed.

Randolph Scott is Honest John Calhoun(aka Gentleman Jack), a man who owns a saloon named after him up in Alaska during the Canadian gold rush in the late eighteen hundreds. He’s a con man that had fled Seattle just ahead of the law and Belle Da Valle(Gypsy Rose Lee), a dancer he’d romanced. Dinah Shore is along as Lettie Candless, a singer, and Charles Winnegar is her father, Pop Candless, the Emporium manager.

The two men are working a long range scam, based on predicting the weather(they have a man pretending to be a scientist who wants his report on weather patterns safely stored until it can be got off to the government. Honest John has been playing it straight to build his reputation and, when the local gambler pays Pop to see the report, then sets up betting with miners, he suggests a bank be set up to hold the gold dust until the winter freeze hits, the subject of the betting, and an honest man be the banker, knowing all the time he’d be the one. The plan is to take the dust and bail on the riverboat coming through a few days later.

The previous boat had dropped off Belle da Valle and her dancers, she finds Honest John(though she knew him as Gentleman Jack in Seattle), and rekindles their relationship, albeit with a suspicious eye on him.

Things don’t go as planned, with a variety of cross and double cross, all done with a bit of humor.

This was called a musical by one review(a really bad one), but it doesn’t come across as one. I always pictured musicals as having people break out in song and dance in the street, at home, wherever. Dinah Shore sings several songs and Gypsy Rose does a couple of song and dance numbers with her troupe. But all are done in the framework of a show on the Emporium stage.

Not nearly as bad as the review painted it, nevertheless an, at times, slightly silly movie. Randolph Scott did much better in numerous other films.

February 2011 Book Round-Up

28 Monday Feb 2011

Posted by Randy Johnson in Books

≈ 1 Comment

20: CR: Nolan: Hush Money – Max (Allan) Collins

21: WE: The Loner: Trail of Blood – J. A. Johnstone

22: HR: Jack: Secret Vengeance – F. Paul Wilson

23: SF: The Red Tape War – Jack L. Chalker, Mike Resnick, & George Alec Effinger

24: WE: Matt Jensen, The Last Mountain Man: Dakota Ambush – William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

25: WE: Longarm and The Panamint Panic – Tabor Evans

26: CR: Nolan: Hard Cash – Max (Allan) Collins

27: SF: Mayenne – E. C. Tubb

28: WE: The Snake Den(e-book) – Chuck Tyrell

29: CR: The Dead Man: Face of Evil(e-book) – Lee Goldberg & William Rabkin

30: FA: Maximum Ride: Angel – James Patterson

31: CR: Nolan: Mourn The Living – Max Allan Collins

32: CR: Nolan: Spree – Max Allan Collins

33: CR: Final Notice – Jonathan Valins

34: CR: Kiss Her Goodbye – Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins

35: CR: Antiques Knock-off – Barbara Allan

36: SF: Box of Oxen(e-book) – Alan Dean Foster

37: SF: Cap Kennedy: The Genetic Buccaneer – Gregory Kern(E. C. Tubb)

38: CR: Lawyers, Guns, and Money(e-book) – J. D. Rhoades

February 2011 Movie Round-Up

28 Monday Feb 2011

Posted by Randy Johnson in movies

≈ 1 Comment

Belle of The Yukon(1945)

Marty(1955)

New In The House

28 Monday Feb 2011

Posted by Randy Johnson in Books

≈ 3 Comments

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New In The House



1: Gideon’s Sword – Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child: the latest from the bestselling thriller writers. A new character, Gideon Crew, a young man who saw his father declared a traitor and shot down at twelve. At twenty-four, his dying mother reveals he was framed and wants him to find the culprit and claim vengeance. Another group has an eye on him and his skills.

2: Kiss Her Goodbye – Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins: the latest collaboration between the two writers. Collins finishes his third Mike Hammer novel from an uncompleted manuscript by the late Spillane. Due in May.

3: Antiques Knock-Off – Barbara Allan: the fifth Trash ‘N’ Treasures novel from the writing team of Barbara Collins and her husband, Max.

4: Nolan: Bait Money – Max Allan Collins: the first book in Collins’ Parker homage series.

5: No One Will Hear You – Max Allan Collins & Matthew Clemens: the second novel in the pair’s J. C. Harrow “Killer TV” series.

6: Five Complete Novels – P. G. Wodehouse: omnibus containing five Bertie & Jeeves novels.

Antiques Knock-Off – Barbara Allan

27 Sunday Feb 2011

Posted by Randy Johnson in Books

≈ 2 Comments

In my youth, as I was starting to read anything I could get my hands on, I devoured a lot of cozies. Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Ruth Rendell, and the like. So many more that I can’t remember them all. Didn’t know they were called cozies either(I’m not sure when that title became in vogue to describe slice of the mystery field), I just liked them. In the intervening years, i got away from that type of tale as all my favorites were pretty much completed and any new ones I just left alone. Just to much out there to read.

I think I’ve found a new “author” to catch up on. Barbara Allan is, of course, Barbara Collins and her husband, Max, and ANTIQUES KNOCK-OFF is the latest entry in their Trash ‘N’ Treasures mystery series. When I started this one, I wasn’t sure whether i would like it, to be honest. I was needlessly worried.

As I got into this, the fifth in the series, the authors got up to speed fast. Brandy Borne lives in the Midwestern town of Borne with her eccentric Mother. Seven months pregnant, she’s the surrogate mother of her best friend and dates the Police chief on the sly. The pair buy and sell antiques and investigate murders on the side. And there’s the older “Sis,” who married up and seems at times embarrassed by her family. The bipolar Mother, who often avoids her meds, seems always in the middle of something or other and I quite often found myself grinning or laughing out loud at her antics.

When the town busybody, Connie Grimes, is found murdered, by Brandy, a knife sticking from her chest, Brandy wonders if she will be a suspect. You see, she has a restraining order against her taken out by Grimes because of a past shouting match. She’d gone by, at Grimes’ invitation, to try to smooth out an incident where Mother had shoved the woman in the clock repair shop over some “anonymous” letters sent by Grimes.

Things get really dicey, though, when the Police chief arrests Mother for the murder, her fingerprints having been found all over the knife handle. Mother had somewhat of a reputation around town, enthusiastically diving into all sorts of things sufficient to get her arrested now and then, so her fingerprints were on file.

Of course, the idea that Mother could murder anyone was ridiculous. However, there were those fingerprints. And of course, she immediately confesses and insists on forgoing trial.

Brandy sets out to find the real murderer and why Mother has confessed. There are plenty of suspects, no one really liked the woman it seems, to go around, and our heroine starts learning things which puts the woman in a worse light. never mind maybe widening the suspect pool to include more people than she thought.

Max Collins is offering free downloads of the first book in the series, ANTIQUES ROADKILL, and the first J. C. Harrow “Killer TV” novel, YOU CAN’T STOP ME, March first through the third, which is his birthday, at all e-book relailers. I have the Harrow novel and I may end up just buying the Trash ‘N’ treasure novel, as well as the others. But if yu’re not familiar with there writers’ work, these are a good place to start.

Recommended

Box of Oxen – Alan Dean Foster

26 Saturday Feb 2011

Posted by Randy Johnson in Books

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Alan Dean Foster, Science Fiction

BOX OF OXEN is a near future science fiction novella that was originally sold to the revived Argosy, but, as Alan Dean Foster recounts on his website, the magazine folded again before the tale saw publication. Novellas are a hard sell in the regular SF magazines(multiple short stories are preferred) and this one had languished a while. Then the e-book revolution exploded on the scene and he decided to give it a try. Kindle offers it for sale at $2.99.

Both the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority received letters simultaneously claiming a thirty kiloton nuclear bomb had been hidden in Jerusalem. One and a half times the size of the Hiroshima bomb, it was constructed with weapons grade uranium stolen in Russia and detonation was promised in thirty days unless both sides signed a legitimate peace treaty, one comprehensive and fair to both sides.

It was immediately dismissed by politicians on both sides as a hoax. Each thought the other wanted the half of Jerusalem they didn’t control evacuated so that it could be taken by the other. Once that happened, it would be hard to dislodge the opposing faction. Two weeks later, each side got a package that, when appropriate safety measures had been taken, revealed another letter and a vial that contained a minute amount of that weapons grade uranium.

The truth still wasn’t believed, although each side decided to set up meetings merely to look good to the world at large. And just on the off chance that it was real, the Palestinians wanted that bomb found for their on use. Of course it wasn’t real though. Absurd! the very idea!

Finally, the day before the date, the Russians learned it was all very real. Some of their own people, one a forty year scientist in their own nuclear program, was part of it.

The hunt was own! Forced to work together, both sides have a slim idea of the area it’s hidden.

But two children, a boy and a girl, a Palestinian and an Israeli, friends playing together, have found the bomb and are trapped with it as their hideaway has collapsed from the efforts of bulldozers used to find the bomb. Time is ticking away.

I enjoyed this story. It highlights the idiocy that has been going on in the Middle East for thousands of years and shows no sign of ever stopping. If both sides had only put in half the effort of solving their problems that they do to keep the BS going, life for folks over there would be so much better. There are reasonable people on both sides, just as there are hawks who don’t want peace. The innocent continue to suffer because some can’t let go of old hates.

End of rant.

Kiss Her Goodbye – Mickey Spillane & Max Allan Collins

25 Friday Feb 2011

Posted by Randy Johnson in Books

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Max Allan Collins, Mickey Spillane, Mike Hammer

It was with a lot of glee that I opened the pages of this book for my first look. It is the latest collaboration between Mickey Spillane and his friend Max Allan Collins. It’s been told that Mickey told his wife to give Max everything after he was gone. “Max will know what to do.” After this fourth book completed from manuscripts left(the third Hammer), it’s safe to say they are in good hands. I’m prejudiced, I suppose, as I’m a long time admirer of both writers’ work.

Mike Hammer returns to New York after a year of convalescence in Florida, recovering from the wounds of a gun battle with a hood(though not completely healed) to attend the funeral of an old friend and mentor that had committed suicide before his cancer reduced him to something less than a man. The thing was Hammer didn’t buy it. He knew his old friend to well and the whole thing smelled of something more.

So the trip was more than just a funeral. He intended to look into it and return to Florida. The city wasn’t the same anymore. It’s the seventies, disco is king, hedonistic thrills reign, and Velda is gone. Just not the same.

Hammer is the only one who doesn’t buy the suicide verdict. It does seem a solid conclusion. Even Pat Chambers thinks it so. That old Hammer nose tells him otherwise and he’s not back in town but a day when bodies start turning up and an attempt is made on his life. The tale winds down to a ferocious climax and an ending that brought back memories of that first blush with Mr. Spillane’s work.

I liked this novel, the best one yet between the two collaborators, and look forward to more. Mr. Collins has a few more partial manuscripts to finish and I couldn’t be more pleased. The book is due out in May and I would suggest one order it now if you’re interested. The more successful these books are, the more likely they will continue.

FFB: Final Notice – Jonathan Valin

24 Thursday Feb 2011

Posted by Randy Johnson in Books

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Forgotten Books, Jonathan Lavin

FINAL NOTICE from 1980 was the second novel to feature P. I. Harry Stoner. The first was covered HERE by Rob Kitchin.

It seemed a fairly simple case to Harry. Someone was defacing art books at the Hyde Park Library and the head librarian wanted it stopped. It cost a lot of money to replace them and he didn’t have a lot of faith in the young woman that was the head of security. Kate Davis was an intelligent young woman that had a naive faith in her brown belt in karate to keep her safe. When Harry was shown the actual defacement, he realized that this was no ordinary vandal and more was going on here. Someone had used a very sharp knife to cut out the breasts, genitals, eyes, and mouths in all the photos of statues and paintings.

With the help of a little old lady, one of the librarians, and the very liberated Kate Davis who objected to his more traditional placement of the female, he starts the hunt. When they uncover a two year old murder of a young woman, an art student, in an eerily similar fashion, Harry knows the psychopath is getting ready to kill again and he determines he will find him before that happens.

A fast moving read, I enjoyed this one even though I figured out what where it was headed about three quarters through. That may have been the author’s intention as he started revealing things piece by piece such that I knew.

Worth a look.

Forgotten Music: The Cult

24 Thursday Feb 2011

Posted by Randy Johnson in music

≈ 5 Comments

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The Cult

The British band THE CULT formed in 1983, but earlier versions were called The Southern Death Cult, a reference to an early Native American religion. Lead singer Ian Astbury and guitarist Billy Duff formed Death Cult, later settling on The Cult. Their music made some inroads on the pop charts, but was more of a polished metal sound, if that makes any sense. I remember first spotting them on MTV(yes, I’ll admit to watching it way back then) with this first clip:

But these songs from Sonic Temple really cemented my love of this band. They’re still around today, like a lot of the older bands. They just have been replaced by the young folks with their own music. Mustn’t listen to what the old folks do! Heh!

A Little Music Mash-Up

24 Thursday Feb 2011

Posted by Randy Johnson in music

≈ 2 Comments

http://wimp.com/musicmashup

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