Archive | Technology RSS feed for this section

Allan Keyes Challenges! No excuse for this, Glen A. Larson!

15 Jul

July 15, 2013

keyes

Remember the opening to the Six Million Dollar Man? CLASSIC!

We’ll get back to that in a minute.

So the producer of that classic TV show – and many others – was Glen A. Larson. But did you know that Mr. Larson had quite the interesting life and background. For example, did you know that he was a member of a singing group called the  The Four Preps? (Not to be confused with the Five Neat Guys from SCTV.)


The Four Preps were quite successful – they had multiple gold singles and three gold albums, back when a gold album was actually a legit feat and not manipulated by shady record companies.  And remember the theme to The Fall Guy? That was composed in part by Larson as well. So it’s pretty well established that Glen A. Larson has a good ear for music, knows what sounds good, and has a good idea of what resonates with the listening public.

SO CAN SOMEONE EXPLAIN HOW THIS STEAMING PILE OF SIHT CAME TO BE??


That’s real folks – that’s the original theme to the Six Million Dollar Man. And why yes – that is indeed Dusty Springfield singing that ode to…..something.

Let’s just go over just how epic fail this piece of crap is:

–          The logo. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…..is that serious? I can do better, see?

                       61 

Go ahead, tell me how this is demonstrably worse!

 –          The opening to a show about a bionic man…..doesn’t show anything bionic about him. Oh yeah, he’s sort of bopping along at a fast run on the left side of the screen at one point but that could just as easily be dancing or epilepsy.  And I guess he dropkicks a dungeon door open but it’s not very clear without repeat viewings *(and rest assured, I’ve watched this obsessively since I discovered it) *If you didn’t know better, you’d think this was just the generic spy of the week show, like To Catch a Thief (also a Glen A. Larson joint, and also with dreadful opening issues – Mr. B can explain further).  It cost Six Million Dollars for Steve Austin to wear a tux and cavort with a mediocre looking blonde on a yacht? Meh. And they want me to tune into that? Double meh! If I had my way, the opening would’ve had Steve Austin punching a puma in the nuts and then beating up Sasquatch with a giant redwood. RATINGS GOLD BABY!

–          The tone of the opening is just weirdly disjointed and at odds with the subject matter. This is an astronaut who was mangled in service to our country, and is rebuilt literally sparing no expense, and all he rates is some cheesy pop riff? It’s like if your ipod went from Vangelis (Chariots of Fire) to Biz Markee.

–          The lyrics. “He’s theeeeeee man” – UGH.  And this is an immortal line: “Catch him if you can, beat him if you can, love him if you can……because he’s the man”.  *SHUDDER*

62

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My Review of Man of Steel (AKA Superman 2013)

9 Jul

July 9, 2013

The important thing to remember about Man of Steel, the latest Superman movie, is that it was a reboot. This means that you can totally forget about the last film, Superman Returns. Luckily, that movie was easily forgotten. You may have forgotten about it already. And the guy who played Superman, Brando Nutcase or whatever his name was? I think he pumped my gas last week.

Indian Superman

Anyway, Man of Steel is another retelling of the familiar Superman origin story told in such a way as to be unfamiliar. Oh, the broad strokes are still there- Krypton is doomed, and Jor-El for some reason can only build an infant-sized rocket instead of one to hold his wife and himself. This is so unbelievable. Realistically, the rocket should be big enough to hold his wife too, so Jor-El could rocket her off-planet and spend the rest of Krypton’s remaining time playing poker and smoking cigars.

Man of Steel begins with a sequence on Krypton that is half Star Wars, a third Star Trek, and wait, I have to do some math (one half  equals three sixths, and one-third equals two sixths, so that makes five sixths) leaving one sixth for Russell Crowe’s beard.

Krypton is doomed, General Zod leads a coup- a very badly-timed coup given that Krypton barely has time to watch two episodes of The Walking Dead- and Jor-El shoots his son to Earth. For some reason Joe-El has implanted the Krypton Codex in his son. This is some sort of skull that holds the genetic code of every Krytponian yet to be born. Does he bother to tell his son this important bit of information? No.

Superman-Dariya-Dil

As you’ve seen in the Christopher Reeve version, Zod and Company (which is also the name of a high-end fashion house in NYC) end up in the Phantom Zone, where, luckily for them, they survive the destruction of Krypton. Was that a spoiler? No, we all know the story. And if you saw Star Wars episode 2 you saw the Krypton chase scene and if you saw the first Star Trek reboot you already saw the special effect where Nero’s ship Zod’s prison goes into the Phantom Zone.

And one last note about Krypton before I finally get along with this review. You would think that such an advanced society as Krypton would develop more comfortable clothes. Sheesh, everyone here wears clothes that take huge machines to put on or take off. No t-shirts here, even the old folks on the ruling council, all of whom are at least 270 years old, wear headdresses that would make Pocahontas laugh with their delicate complexity. If any of those ancients ever nod off the weight of their head ornaments would decapitate them.

So baby Superman arrives on Earth, yada yada yada, and we get a lot of flashbacks, which I will put in chronological order for those of you with logical, ordered minds like me.

  • Clark gets bullied in grade school
  • Clark gets bullied in high school
  • Clark’s father dies in a tornado
  • Clark feels sad

Clark goes off on a journey (of discovery? Who knows?) around the USA, taking odd jobs along the way. In Alaska he becomes a crab fisherman and rescues some guys from an exploding oil rig. In the Mid-West he becomes a busboy where he protects a waitress from being harassed by a trucker. In New York he becomes yet another illegal alien hot dog vendor, where he protects his customers from salmonella by making sure the franks are properly boiled. In Alaska, he becomes part of a construction crew working with the government to uncover an ancient alien spaceship trapped deep in the ice.

e233_1

All of these things he does so totally inconspicuously that Lois Lane tracks him down and figures out his secret identity on her lunch break.

From here on, Clark:

  • Fights Zod and destroys most of Smallville
  • Fights Zod and destroys all of Metropolis
  • Fights Zod and destroys every truck, building, and IHOP in sight
  • No one seems to mind or even notice

Zod has got a mad on for Kal-El because he is a pretty stuffy guy and he wants the codex to being back Krypton, even if it means destroying the Earth.

On the other hand, Christopher Meloni shows up as a solider and Laurence Fishburne gets a paycheck as Perry White. (See what I did there? I didn’t do a black White joke. Good for me.)

It is a good film and if you are one of those guys who thinks that Superman should never kill, well I won’t spoil it for you, but in the climax, Superman kills a certain Kryptonian general whom I will not name so this cannot be called a spoiler.

Unlike just about every other Superman film ever filmed, there was no Lex Luthor in this film, and that’s a good thing. Aren’t we all tired of seeing the same old thing in every Superman film? One thing about this film, it was not the same old thing. Jimmy Olsen? No. Steve Lombard? Yes. Kryptonite? No. Kryponian atmosphere weakness? Yes.

And one last note- The Lone Ranger sucked.

 hqdefault

 

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →