Manson, Woodstock, and Altamont ended the 1960s as we knew them. The next several years of the 1970s were a pale reflection of 1964 through 1969 and then Disco ended it all. I watch shows to see how closely they come to the actual time period and I'm invariably disappointed. Man From Uncle tried but got 1962 through 1969 hopelessly muddled. Once Upon A Time did a better job of recreating 1969 but still missed it. It seemed I was watching 2019 people trying to act like it was 1969 and, as they weren't alive then, not getting it. In 1969 the country and indeed the world was being run by people born from 1900 to 1920 and they were still around but not seen in this movie. There were hats, and wide ties from the 50s and narrow ties from the 60s and short sleeve white shirts and black ties with silver tie clasps and there were still 1950s cars on the street. Watch Bullet or some of the other movies from the 60s or even newsreels and you'll see what I mean. It wasn't the nostalgic trip I was hoping for but I'll still see it again. Brad Pitt was great and the rest did just fine also. The ending was pure Tarantino. UPDATE: Saw it again. It's even better the 2nd time because you've had time to digest the ending and can pay more attention to the details before the ending.
Reviews
21 Reviews
Morrisey needed an episode.
10 October 2011
Morrisey gets a girl friend and gets out of the office. We get a chance to see some London, but there is a contrived sub-plot about a Barrister having a heart attack and witness Morrisey needs to be in court a day earlier and can't be found as he's out with a stateless girl from Rhodesia. I would think a heart attack would occasion a delay rather than speed up the proceedings. Morrisey gets a chance to be the lead for a change and Mel Martin was attractive enough as the girl. There is an uncomfortable visit to an underground hippy dance club with drugs but it was obligatory in those days. Lots of angst about the UK's treatment of Rhodesia and Mel is the Unfortunate Innocent caught up in the struggle.
Rioting Kids vs Establishment
10 October 2011
The Occupy Wallstreet crowd will be surprised to learn they aren't the first to protest the Establishment. Usual 1969 hot news with Anarchists wanting to tear down what is existing with no thought as how to replace it with anything better. Best Exchange: Rebellious Student asks Copper Dad why he is a Copper. Dad replies that he goes out there every day and faces the world as THE LAW so his wife is safe in their home behind a small lock. Rebellious Student sneers. Later on, when 2 of the Anarchists corner the Rebellious Student in a phone booth to do him some harm, he sees a stalwart Establishment Bobbie standing near and he goes to him for protection. Show would have been dated last year, but looks pretty topical now.
Political Correctness in 1969
9 October 2011
The first 2 episodes of Special Branch came out swinging hard and managed to snare some interest. This 3rd episode bent over backwards to be politically correct and stress how sympathetic the plight was of the poor downtrodden Pakistanis and how hard they worked to get to England and what good people they were etc., etc. The choosing of the villain here foreshadowed the 1970s brand of bad guy (i.e., bad white person doing this for money) which is why Corporations and Capitalism are viewed so badly nowadays. The Pakistanis' wish to get to a Capitalist country where they could better themselves becomes a black eye to Capitalism because it costs money to get there instead of an indictment of the non-Capitalist systems throughout the world. This show could as easily been about East Germans escaping to the West or Russians escaping to the West or Czechs, or Lituanians, or Algerians, or etc. If Capitalism was so bad, why were people risking their lives to get here? That should have been the story, not what was shown.
Good enough episode....
16 March 2011
Warning: Spoilers
Good enough episode with some curious decisions about Carmen being made by a couple of federal agents at the end. Carmen aided and abetted a kidnapping of the dressmaker and the murder of the old man on the stagecoach, set rattlesnakes on to Jim West (I'd shot her for that alone), and identified Artemus by his ear putting him in peril of his life. Also, John Brown was pretty easily defeated even though he had his asbestos suit on. Karen Sharpe looked fine, though. Artemus looked pretty convincing in his whiskey seller disguise although he grew that beard awfully quickly and what was the deal with him taking the time to clean up and wear a cavalry uniform for the rescue? Still, a bad WWW episode is still worth watching.
My Favorite Tara adventure
17 June 2010
I'll try not to use the word "atmospheric" more than 3 or 4 times here, but atmospheric it is. There are some problems here in the amount of happenings in one night's time, though. How can anyone write a diary in an hour that could be aged enough to fool the President of the Gas Light Ghoul Club? Try that with the Jack The Ripper fans and see......no, wait...that was indeed done with some of the fans wasn't it? Steed's solving of the mystery clue was certainly obscure (fever of living???), his finding a costume shop open late at night was fortuitous, and his fight with the villain wasn't one of his best. Still, this was one of the best episodes of the entire series and had most of the elements that made The Avengers the show that it was. Did I mention this was atmospheric, atmospheric?
Episodes like this...
1 September 2008
...are the reason I Spy is so good. Although Bill Cosby was still feeling his way along as an actor, the writing was good, there was suspense, a twist at the end which was hard to see coming and lots of veteran character actors. This was filmed in Hong Kong while the Vietnam War was heating up so there was some contemporaneous news issues involved. If I heard them correctly, there was $1,000,000 spent on 50,000 guns plus 5,000,000 rounds of ammunition. This seems awfully cheap even by 1965 standards. Laya Raki was married to Ron Randell for many years and she shows to decent advantage here. The inspector was a hoot while Joanne Linville emoted her usual emotions and Walter Burke and James Hong were familiar faces.
Over The Top...
31 August 2008
Warning: Spoilers
..Acting by Jack Kruschen doesn't help this episode. Arthur Batanides is suitably menacing, but his plan to put the country into a war in 2 days seems stupid as he doesn't have the "Magic Scroll" and doesn't even know it exists although it is conveniently hidden in the very room where he tortures people. This is a mundane episode about chasing a "McGuffin" and getting it translated before the bad guys get it. Substitute Napoleon and Illya and Thrush and put up an establishing shot saying "somewhere in North Africa" and you have a Man From Uncle episode. Kelly and Scotty must have ESP to make the leap in logic as to where the bad guys have taken Isaac as I understand Marrakesh to be a large place and their way of figuring out they were being lied to required a slip up of considerable magnitude by one of the bad guys. The fight scenes are nonsensical as some of the bad guys seem to be fighting each other. Look for Norman Fell in disguise.
Actual Spy Episode.
31 August 2008
Warning: Spoilers
Our boys get taken in, and quite understandably so. You can see where the good guys and bad guys can get mixed up in the mundane world of lower level espionage work in a back water. As usual, the on-site filming makes this show a good one. There was a return to the original concept in this one as Bill Cosby seems to be taking more of the lead role in "the stern spy on a mission" aspect. Ruth Roman looks and sounds good for her age and Peter Wyngarde plays a properly conflicted man with 2 masters. Note the casual way our heroes are guarded. In most other episodes they manage to overwhelm the bad guys even when heavily guarded and outnumbered. They seem careless here, but hey, it's just a 60s TV show. The scenery makes you want to visit the area, but I imagine it has changed since the 60s.
Embarrassing, really.
29 August 2008
Warning: Spoilers
One of the worst. The reason for the mission sounds promising but nothing much happens. It's the usual good-hearted, old-fashioned Greek village during a wine festival with a good looking young girl, a young boyfriend, a boisterous father, the possibility of a shotgun wedding, etc., etc. The fights were particularly routine and the bad guys were very bad shots when trying to hit our heroes although one of them was pretty good at shooting a tossed pair of binoculars. In the mid-60s there was a lot of script shopping as the same concept would show up from show to show such as I Spy, Man from Uncle, Star Trek, Wild Wild West and so on. If I were of Greek extraction I might be peeved at the portrayals shown on TV, but I'm not Greek, so I'll just say that this one was played for (few) laughs with Louise Sorel looking My-T-Fine as the obligatory village girl looking for a husband and Kelly Robinson getting caught up in the zany, madcap, hilarious adventures that happen on a regular basis in every small village in the hills.
Drags a bit....
24 August 2008
Warning: Spoilers
....but a bad I Spy show is still better than a lot of other shows' best episodes. Kelly and Scotty seem a bit dim-witted here as it is obvious to the audience that they are being taken for a ride by the villains all along. The scenes seem padded, Victor Jory apparently has been told to stretch his lines, and the wrap-around device with Antoinette Bower is a time-waster. The attempted assassination in a plaza filled with people seems to draw only our heroes' attentions and the obvious trap with a guy with a machete at the end of an alley seems a tad obvious. The 2 attackers chose to attack one at a time so that they could easily be handled. How lucky was that? I'm not sure this comment contains a spoiler as the whole episode is pretty pedestrian, but I'll check mark the box anyway. I presume that they had some unusable location footage and ended up with a 1/2 hour show and had to stretch it out and drag it out and make it longer and longer in order to come up with the amount of time needed to fill the slot much like I am being forced to do now because of some inane rule of IMDb's that we have to have 10 lines or more to make a comment.
Pretty good.
24 August 2008
Warning: Spoilers
Has some good moments. This was probably Roger C. Carmel's finest hour other than possibly as Harcourt Fenton Mudd on Star Trek. Phil Ober from The Ghost and Mr. Chicken was a familiar face, Helen Funai from Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum was a familiar body and George Takai was a familiar Sulu. Trite plot (scientist or politician or teacher wants to defect so bad guys kidnap his or, in this case, someone else's daughter and hold her for an exchange, all the while helped by an insider). Well, you can't always have Shakespearean or even O. Henry plots on weekly scheduled TV programs. A lot of I Spy shows would have been poor except they were filmed on location and the sights and sounds of foreign locales livened up a lot of their shows. Look for a clever and suspenseful scene in an elevator when Scotty first makes contact with another 60's TV staple, John Abbott.
Vantage Point
(2008)
Bourne meets Groundhog Day.
22 February 2008
Warning: Spoilers
This movie has the Standard Jason Bourne Chase In A European City down pat. Refreshing use of flashbacks and restarts demands you pay attention so I guess the young slackers in the audience were forced to play Brickbreaker on their cell phones during the parts with no car chase or explosions. However, the ending was way out of line. A well organized terrorist group carefully plans the coup of the century, coordinates a mammoth conspiracy, carefully orchestrates mayhem, outwits the police and secret services of numerous countries, murders dozens, carries out their plans to clockwork perfection, and as they are getting away MAKES THE STUPIDEST MISTAKE POSSIBLE UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES! The last action is so out of character for a trained killer mastermind, considering what stakes he was playing for, as to begger belief. I would have rated this higher, but the ending ruined it for me. Siqourney Weaver had quite a small role considering her resume, but Dennis Quaid nails his part.
One of my favorites.
18 February 2007
Captured the futuristic aspect of WWW well. Marconi invented radio in the not too distant future from WWW and submarines were being experimented with in the 1870s so it wasn't too horrible of a stretch for some diabolical mastermind to jump the gun a few years. I had a problem with the death ray or whatever guarding the room as that was far too advanced to put in an 1870s show, but if you can accept time travel and teleportation in some of the other shows, you can accept this also. Jocelyn Lane and Robert Conrad never looked better in their lives in this show and John Van Dreelen did fine as a WWI type. Jocelyn, wherever you are, call me.
Secret Agent
(1964–1967)
Fantastic Show
13 September 2006
I recently watched all 47 episodes in a row over a weeks time and I love this show. That said, there are some silly moments and no agent in his right mind would find himself in a situation where virtually every job requires him to depend upon someone walking in at the precise moment to upset the bad guys' plans or have someone make a mistake and let him (Drake) get out of the situation at the very last moment. Note how many fights he is in with 2 guys where one gets shoved and is dazed enough to wait while Drake finishes off the other or how many times a bad guy is merely jostled and fires his weapon in the air allowing Drake to escape or beat up the villain. I wonder how many concussions Drake suffered and how many shots were fired at him at close range by professional killers which happened to conveniently miss? Well, all TV shows and movies are like that, but better writing would be in order here. Love the music, love the plane jetting in, love the scenes all throughout Europe and several other continents, love the old character actors who are mostly dead now, but who gave us all huge amounts of enjoyment in the 60s. Personal favorite episode: "That's Two Of Us Sorry". Great twist at the end.
Good except for....
13 September 2006
"Here be Possible Spoilers". I recently had surgery and had the time to watch all the Danger Man episodes in order. A wonderful series but when you view them all at once rather than one a week as they were broadcast, you notice some repetitious things. I see why Patrick McGoohan decided to leave if this is what the series was becoming. The go-cart sequence was one of the worst few moments ever put on the TV. Drake on a go-cart chases bad guys who have guns and circles one and makes him dizzy? Puh-Leeze! Must have been the campy Batman influence going around about then. Aubrey Morris was funny enough and the locations were convincing enough to be Rome and the atmosphere was gloomy enough, but the go-cart was too much.
Midnight in Saint Petersburg
(1996 TV Movie)
Sadly, a great opportunity was missed.
9 April 2006
What is wrong with movie writers, producers, and directors? There is a sizable market of baby-boomers who would love to see sequels of fondly remembered movies from the 60s, yet it seems that the powers-that-be are deliberately ruining virtually every opportunity to tap into that market. Granted the younger movie-going public has shown they have little or no attention span, but I have to believe that a good movie would appeal to enough of them to make some money. I cite (shudder) The Avengers and (retch) Wild Wild West as 2 of the worst offenders possible and the 2 90s Harry Palmer films aren't far behind them. Directors: WATCH SOME 60S MOVIES AND TRY TO RECAPTURE THE MAGIC. It is tough, if not impossible, to do, but you can do better than you have been doing. Using some of the original stars such as Michael Caine, Robert Vaughn, David McCallum, Robert Conrad or whomever is still this side of the sod would be wonderful, but it still would require a good script. The 2 Harry Palmer movies don't get it. The music is wrong, the car and boat chases are wrong, the ambiance is wrong, the supporting cast is wrong, etc. Do better while there is still time.
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
(1964–1968)
One of the 5 greatest series ever.
23 July 2005
Hollywood has missed a bet by not capitalizing on the fact that Robert Vaughn and David McCallum are still alive. There should be another series or a movie with these two, but it would require some good writing to get a show worth watching. DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKES THAT WERE MADE ON THE AVENGERS MOVIE. I've always maintained that if you wanted to watch a show about the past, you could watch Wild, Wild, West; if you wanted to watch a show about the present, you could watch Man From Uncle; if you wanted to watch a show about the future, you could watch Star Trek; if you wanted a foreign flavored show you could watch The Avengers; and if you wanted to watch a comedy, you could watch Get Smart. MFU started in 1964, WWW and Get Smart in 1965 and Star Trek in 1966. The Avengers with Emma Peel hit here around 1967. You can get by in life just watching these shows. My feeling is that the Sixties started in February 1964 with the Beatles on Ed Sullivan and ended with the Manson murders in August 1969. Those were 5 magical, wonderful years that I wish could be recaptured and relived somehow. Anyway, what made MFU such a hit? There were numerous teen-age baby-boomers who thought the exciting life shown on the show was how life was going to be. Women, travel, women, cool suits, women, weapons, excitement, women, etc,. Did I mention women? Sure beat the work-a-day world our Dads had to live in the 1960s. We were in for a big surprise when we grew up. No UNCLE organization, no space travel, no huge amounts of leisure time. Sigh.
Bold Journey
(1956–1959)
Made you want to travel.
23 July 2005
I saw this as a young child and I swore mighty oaths that I would some day go see these exotic places for myself. I've been to many of them and if I could see the series again, I'd try to go to more of these places. One of the best shows involved Chichen Itza in the Yucatan showing the observatory, the ball court, and the sacrificial pool. I went there in 1995 and remembered the scenes well from seeing them on the show. As I remember it, this show only had maybe 15 episodes which they played over and over. It may have been that the show only lasted for a year, but the local TV station in Dayton, Ohio had the rights to run it for several years as I seem to recall watching it for longer than a year. UPDATE: Apparently IMDb has corrected the dates on this show as it now shows it being on for more than the 1 year they originally said. Makes sense as I remember it being on for several years.
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
(2000)
Coen Bros: Try Huckleberry Finn next.
30 March 2005
I resisted seeing this movie because of George Clooney's political views, but I guess I'll have to learn to separate his movies from his politics. This movie is one of the best I've ever seen. George is great, John Turturro is great, and Tim Blake Nelson delivers a fantastic performance as Delmar. The blind guy at the radio station has his act down pat also. The Coen brothers should tackle a treatment of Huckleberry Finn next. Huck meets a cast of characters in the book who would fit in just fine in a Coen movie and the time and place of the book would give them ample scope to do their magic. I have never cared much for country music, but this movie caused me to buy the CD and I and my family have fallen in love with the music and the movie. Listen to what the KKK is chanting during their drill and see if you don't laugh.
Jack the Ripper
(1973)
This needs to be shown again.
25 November 2004
I rushed home from work every night that this was shown on TV in 1973 and it started an interest in England and Jack the Ripper that continues to this day. I've heard the streets were clear in England while this show was on as everyone was inside watching the telly. I've been on a couple of JTR walks in London and would love to see the 1973 show again. Watt and Barlow (Z-Cars, Softly, Softly) as a duo are a wonderful device to discuss the background of Victorian London and they seem like old friends who have the same interests that the viewing audience has. Their attempts to solve the crime using modern day police methods add a lot to the show considering there are no fingerprints or DNA to use. A huge amount of information on this case has been made public in the 30 some years since this show was made, but as the case has never been satisfactorily resolved some of the proposed solutions and suspects are still as good as any. The old time look of the show lent an air to it that doesn't appear in most of the other JTR shows. UPDATE: 8-13-07. I just got a copy of this show from England. It's as good as I remember, keeping in mind some of the theories have been pretty well discredited over the last 30 some years.
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