January 2013 Book Round-Up

1: SF: Star Wars: Scoundrels – Timothy Zahn

2: TH: This Is Bishkek Baby(ebook) – Fogarty Wells

3: SF: Star Wars: Winner Lose All(ebook) – Timothy Zahn

4: WE: Holt County Law(ebook) – Richard Prosch

5: WE: The First Mountain Man: Preacher’s Massacre – William W. Johnstone with J. A. Johnstone

6: TH: Repairman Jack: The Early Years: Cold City – F. Paul Wilson

7: WE: Judas Gun – Gordon D. Shirreffs

8: SF: Reclaiming The Angel’s Share(ebook) – Chris Fitzgerald

9: SF: To See Blue Skies(ebook) – Chris Fitzgerald

10: CH: Umm…Mommy, I Think I Flushed My Brother Down The Toilet(ebook) – Jeff Rivera

11: CH: Umm…Mommy, I Think I Flushed My Brother Down The Toilet, Again(Return to Yuck Kingdom)(ebook) – Jeff Rivera

12: TH: Scream Cruise – Jim DeLorey

13: CR: Mr. Monk Gets Even – Lee Goldberg

14: AD: The Ape Man’s Brother(ebook) – Joe R. Lansdale

15: WE: Deadlock(Judge Earl Stark)(ebook) – James Reasoner

16: CR: Everybody’s Watching Me(ebook) – Mickey Spillane

17: AD: Legacy: Forgotten Son(ebook) – Warren Murphy & Gerald Welch

18: WE: Blood of The Breed – T.V Olsen

19: WE: Killing Melvin Badthunder(ebook) – Peter Brandvold

20: UF: Royal Flush(ebook) – James Mullaney

21: WE: Outlaw(ebook) – Matthew Pizzolato

22: CR: About The Murder of The Circus Queen – Anthony Abbot

23: CR: The Blacklin County Files(ebook) – Bill Crider

24: TH: Key Death – Jude Hardin

25: CR: Smoking on Mount Rushmore(ebook) – Ed Lynskey

26: AD: Created The Destroyer(ebook) – Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

27: WE: Packing Iron – Steve Hayes

28: CR: Tough As Leather: The Noah Milano Collection(ebook) – Jochem Van der Steen

29: WE: Thunder Gorge – Ben Bridges

30: SF: The Human Division # 1: The B-Team(ebook) – John Scalzi

31: SF: The Human Division # 2: Walk The Plank(ebook) – John Scalzi

32: SF: The Human Division # 3 : We Only Need The Heads(ebooks) – John Scalzi

33: TH: The Blood Gospel – James Rollins & Rebecca Cantrell

January 2013 Movie Round-Up

The Circus Queen Murder(1933)

Red Light(1949)

Trooper Hook(1957)

The Dirty Outlaws(1967)

Vengeance(1968)

No Room To Die(1969)

Deaf Smith & Johnny Ears(1973)

Taken 2(2012)

Kingdom Come

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Forgotten Music, Kingdom Come

I remember when I first bought this album. A vinyl copy, audiocassettes were still going strong and CDs, if they were around then, were this new thing that was still a bit high-priced. One description of this set of songs was that it was Led Zeppelin turned upside down and played backwards. I lent the record to a friend to make a recording and he told me his wife asked if that was a new Led Zeppelin. When he said no, she asked if it was a new Robert Plant.

Against all odds, it worked. Lenny Wolf was the singer and his voice did at times bear a resemblance to Plant. They were suddenly all the rage on MTV and radio. Then their second album came out and it was just as bad as this one was good. I lost interest then and was surprised to learn a few years ago, the band was still making music and putting out CDs. Have no idea how the music sounds and mostly it was Lenny Wolf with a revolving cast of musicians. None of the alignment of this album, with the exception of Wolf, plays with the band and hasn’t in many years.

This first album was their bestselling and most critically reviewed to date. Maybe that says something.

The line-up of songs is, as follows:

1: LIVING OUT OF TOUCH

2: PUSHIN’ HARD

3: WHAT LOVE CAN BE

4: 17

5: THE SHUFFLE

6: GET IT ON

7: NOW FOREVER AFTER

8: HIDEAWAY

9: LOVING YOU

10: SHOUT IT OUT

A great set of tunes. Here are my favorites off the album

Today’s Humor: Star Trek Via Robot Chicken

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Robot Chicken, Star Trek

My nephew sent me this length. Made me think of that old joke. What’s in Kirk’s toilet? The Captain’s log. These Robot Chicken guys are hilarious.

Overlooked Movies: The Third Man(1949)

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Bernard Lee, Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles, Overlooked Movies, Trevor Howard

THE THIRD MAN had a lot of heavyweights involved in it’s production. Produced by Alexander Korda, David O. Selznick, and an uncredited Carol Reed, the script was written by Graham Greene from an unpublished novella written first, then released after. Carol Reed directed.

The cast had Joseph Cotten as Holly Martins, an out of work pulp western writer who comes to post-war Vienna at the invitation of his childhood friend Harry Lime(Orson Welles) for a job writing for his medical charity. Trevor Howard is a policeman, Major Calloway, and Alida Valli is Anna Schmidt, the lover of Lime. A very young Bernard Lee(M in eleven Bond films) is police Sgt. Paine.

Post-war Vienna is divided into four sectors ruled by the four Allies: The United States, Great Britain, France, and Russia. Each is tightly controlled. No walls are up like in Berlin, but access is hard.

Holly Martins arrives in Vienna just in time to learn his friend harry has died, the victim of a car hitting him. He just makes it to the cemetery in time for the close of the services where he sees Anna Schmidt walk away and is accosted by Calloway and Sgt. Paine(Bernard Lee) for some questioning.

Everyone seems to want him out of the country as soon as possible until he meets a gentleman from a group starved for culture in this former German controlled city. though he’s never heard of him, Paine reveals he’s a writer from the States(Paine loves his westerns). They agree to put him up so that he can do a talk and answer questions.

It’s the excuse Holly needs. Something doesn’t smell right. Calloway had intimated that Harry Lime was a racketeer, which Holly didn’t buy though he hadn’t seen Harry since 1939. As he starts asking questions and getting approached by people, conflicting stories emerge. Harry’s doctor just happened to be on the scene, the driver who hit Harry was his own driver. The pair of them carried him over to the side of the road and the doctor says Harry talked glowingly of him before he died, mentioning that he, the doctor, take care of him when he arrives. The hotel porter says he didn’t see the accident, but heard the brakes squeal and looked out the window to see three men carrying Harry over to the curb. He couldn’t see the third man who kept his head down. It was dark anyway with shadows from the street lights.

Who was this third man?

Calloway finally shows proof that Holly’s friend harry was a hood. And a deadly one at that. His organization stole penicillin form an army base, actually sold to them by an orderly, now missing, watered down, and sold on the black market. It was used by a group of patients and man died, the lucky ones, others left disfigured.

Holly keeps investigating and when he goes to speak to the porter again finds him murdered. The neighbors think he did it and the police have to hustle him off. He’s convinced to leave finally. He wants to help Anna Schmidt though, who he’s sort of fallen for when he’s visited her a few times. She’s in trouble for a forged passport that Harry gave her and is to be deported to the Russian sector.

Then Holly discovers who that third man is and everything is turned upside down. The explosive climax in the sewers of Vienna and the completely unexpected ending made for a fine film noir piece. Other places call it a classic and I quite agree.

Filimg was done in Vienna and that old world look gave it a better feel than sound stages in Hollywood.

A bit on Graham Greene. He wrote the novella to get a feel for Vienna. It was never intended then to be put out for public consumption. The narrator in the novella was Major Calloway. The emphasis was different and the ending was more what I thought the film might be. Boy was I fooled.

And finally the music score. Carol Reed didn’t want heavily orchestrated pieces and happened to be in a small club one night when he heard Anton Karas playing his zither. It sounded right and he got the job.

As always. check out Todd Mason for other movies and related stuff.

New In The House

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New In The House

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1: Thunder of Time – James F. David: the middle book of this thriller set with dinosaurs, time warps, and other weirdness. If I can just find the time.

2: Key Death(ARC) – Jude Hardin: a new Nicholas Colt thriller due out this June. Already read this one. Pretty good.

3: Proverbial Aesop(ARC) – Chandler A. Phillips, M.D., P.E.: a new translation of the fables with commentary.

and the ebook:

4: The Human Division: Part 2: Walking The Plank: part two of thirteen weekly episodes of Scalzi’s new novel due after the finish of the weekly parts.

Has The Zorro Experiment Ended?

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Zorro

One wonders if the new Zorro enterprise has ended. Their website won’t come up when I click on the link and their presence on Facebook has backed up considerably from what it was. I had problems with getting the first book and the attitude of the guy in charge, he seemed to think I had a personal grudge against him(his words). I don’t even remember his name.

Has anybody heard anything?

update: the site loads now. Who knows what’s up with those folks? Had so much trouble i don’t think I’ll try whenever, if, the next book arrives.

The Dirty Outlaws(El desperado)1967

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spaghetti western

This 1967 spaghetti didn’t get an American release until 1971 as THE DIRTY OUTLAWS(alt. title THE BIG RIPOFF). It starred Andrea Giordano(billed as Chip Gorman) as Steve, an outlaw pure and simple. As the film opens, he’s being beaten around and about to be hung as a horse thief. He’s rescued by an old friend who’s posing as a preacher and has a small gun in the carved out pages of his bible.

The pair part when a Confederate troop stops them and asks the reverend to give comfort to some of their dying men. We soon see Steve at a creek splashing water on his face. Steve is the typical spaghetti hero, scraggly beard, lean build, dark hair. He’s accosted by a dying Confederate officer wanting his horse. When he collapses, he babbles, begging Steve to take his gun back to his father, a blind gunsmith who made it. The dying man’s name is Bill and Steve really has no interest until money is mentioned. He’d salted away as much of his pay as he could with his father to buy a ranch. He gives Steve directions to the town, some seenty-five miles away.

Steve gets the idea to go get the money.

He arrives to find a ghost town. We learn it was abandoned recently amid a cholera epidemic. All that’s left is the old man, Sam(Piero Lulli) and his helper Katy(Rosemary Dexter), a beautiful young woman. She’s never met Bill, but has heard many stories about him from Sam. It’s been years since Sam saw his son and Steve slips quite easily into the role, putting changes in himself off to the war. After all, he has the gun Sam made, quite recognizable to the old man by feel.

For a ghost town, it’s about to get a lot of traffic. A pair of Confederate soldiers arrive amid a heavy thunderstorm. They are there to rendezvous with a wagon carrying the payroll for their troop and swap their horses for the wagon. There’s also a band of outlaws coming that had gotten wind of the payroll wagon and wanted it. it’s led by a couple, Lucy(Dana Ghia) and Asher(Franco Giornelli). They grab the two soldiers and soon spot Steve. When they grab him, believing him with the soldiers, Lucy laughs. She knows him, having partnered with him before, and knows he’s not military.

Steve is suddenly part of the deal and Asher doesn’t like it. The two alpha males soon get into a pissing match with a knife before Lucy calms them down.

things work out nicely for the hand-off of the payroll and one of the deliverers whispers to Steve, the officer, that plans were changed and the payroll was in the horses’ feed sack instead of the two coffins with bodies in the wagon. After the coffins are unloaded, Steve “volunteers” to get rid of the wagon and is off with the bags of cartwheels before they can get the coffins open.

Unfortunately for Steve, Asher knows the country better than him and the gang soon cuts him off, Asher shooting down his horse. They take great delight in beating him around a bit before the kill and when old Sam tries to help, the inevitable happens. Against his will, whatever decent feelings still lay in Steve comes to the fore, and he tries to help the old man. Doesn’t work. Hidden feelings aren’t just in Steve. Lucy begs Asher to let her kill her former partner and she works a con that makes them ride off after she appears to shoot Steve.

The film then becomes a revenge piece with Steve hunting down the killers, ably aided by his mysterious friend now posing as a judge. The gang is got out of the way and Asher maneuvered on a stage back to the ghost town for the final showdown.

The ending also quite surprised me.

Worth looking up. It was directed by Franco Rossetti, who also co-wrote the script. Andrea Giordano was a better actor than a lot that appeared in this genre and the supporting cast was decent as well. Quentin Tarantino, who has his own homage to the spaghetti genre out now, DJANGO UNCHAINED, rates it in his top twenty favorite spaghettis.

Kids Explain The Cloud(As In Internet)

http://bit.ly/kidsexplainthecloud

Created The Destroyer – Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

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Richard Sapir, The Destroyer, Warren Murphy

I first read this book over forty years ago. I became a fan almost instantly, from the time I picked the book off a spinner rack, read the back cover, and thought this sounds good. Haven’t missed a book since.

His name was Remo is arguably the best known chapter opening in adventure fiction. It introduces the title character(despite what Chiun might think) in every entry of the long running Destroyer series.

Consistently excellent from the beginning, the books reflect whatever period they first appeared, a humorous look satirically skewering pretentious folks in all walks of life. Oh, there have been a few missteps along the way. Books 108-110 were by writers unfamiliar with the character other than a general look and 134-145 were an inexcorable mess disavowed by the creators. But after Murphy & Sapir, Will Murray and James Mullaney did some very fine novels. New writers, notably Donna Courtois and Gerald Welch, are pushing the Sinanju universe forward to new heights. Remo and Chiun and their world look secure.

CREATED THE DESTROYER gives us Remo’s beginning and how he ended up with CURE, his early training with Chiun, long before they thought of each other as Little Father and pale piece of pig’s ear(but affectionately). We meet Smith, the lemony faced man who heads up the secret organization that protects the Constitution by whatever means necessary. And one character I was always sorry to see leave so early: Conn MacCleary, the one handed man(a hook replacing the missing piece) who first recruited Remo.

If one has’t read THE DESTROYER, the first book is a good place to start. If you have, get reacquainted with his beginning. Available here.