What are you watching?

[Big Frank]

I've been watching Hysteria! on Peacock.

Follows a struggling high school heavy metal band of outcasts who use the town's sudden interest in the occult to start a reputation as a Satanic metal band, until a strange series of events triggers a witch hunt that leads back to them.

These 3 outcasts in high school have a heavy metal band. When there's a kidnapping and a pentagram is drawn at the scene, everyone thinks it was satanists. They pretend to be satanists just to get people interested in the band and it works. They went from being nobodies to the most popular kids in school. Bruce Campbell plays the sheriff. He's originally from the Detroit area an so is Sam Raimi who made the Evil Dead movies starring Bruce Campbell.

The show takes place in the fictional location of Happy Hollow, Michigan. In one episode a TV station is about to go off air while Bruce Campbell's snoozing in a chair. It says something like this concludes our broadcast day, and the station signing off is WDIV. Before I had cable that's one of the stations I used to watch. It's channel 4 in Detroit. That's W, the same as all TV and radio stations east of the Mississippi, D as in Detroit, and IV, the Roman numeral 4. It's one of those details that adds some realism to the show to people familiar with it.

In the preview at IMDB.com, one boy asks if there's any chance they were using authentic satanic verses. The girl replies that they found them in the public library, not a book bound in human flesh. That's in reference to the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis (Book of the Dead) in the Evil Dead movies, and TV series Ash vs Evil Dead that Bruce Campbell was in.    Nice tidbit for fans of him and the movies. It has 7.1 out of 10 stars and halfway through the season, I like it.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21493708/

[Big Frank]

In last week's episode of Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon a group of people was walking through the Channel Tunnel (Chunnel) heading to England from France. There was lots of bat guano on the floor and they tried to avoid it. One person said that it can cause hallucinations, or psychosis, or whatever they said. Eventually they all started going nuts to one degree or another. They literally went bat$#!t crazy.

[Big Frank]

I'm watching The Expanse on Amazon Prime. I saw the first 3 seasons (36 episodes) on SyFy before they cancelled it, then Amazon picked it up for 3 more seasons (26 episodes). It's based on a series of science fiction novels, related novellas and short stories by James S. A. Corey. That's the joint pen name of authors Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(novel_series)

One of the lead characters is portrayed by Iranian and American actress Shohreh Aghdashloo. She's been n a lot of other TV shows and movies too. IMDb says her trademarks are Often plays well-educated, sophisticated professionals, and Seductive husky voice. To me she always sounded like one of those people who chain-smoked for years, and maybe got throat cancer. Seductive voice? Or repulsive? You be the judge. Would you like your significant other to whisper sweet nothings in your ear sounding like that? 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr5JCRd-ceM


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsoxJXcTX_g


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwKZw9Fxg_Q

[Big Frank]

I just got done watching Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. I can't believe it took 36 years to make a sequel to the original movie. The first one was called Beetlejuice and the second one was Beetlejuice Beetlejuice. If they make a third movie, I think I know what the name will be, but I'm not saying it.

They used the song MacArthur Park in the movie. It was sung by Richard Harris who had the lead role in the 1970 movie A Man Called Horse, and it's sequels The Return of a Man Called Horse (1976) and Triumphs of a Man Called Horse (1983). The Sioux Indians hung Horse by his chesticles, um, chest in the first movie.

"Weird Al" Yankovic had a song called Jurassic Park on his 1993 album Alapalooza. It was a parody song, based on MacArthur Park, of the Jurassic Park movie that came out 4 months earlier.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoZqL9N6Rx4


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=As-vKW4ZboU


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FWnRrRWYoA


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRwYQgk05DY


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh4zvQfDhi0

[alfsauve]

Diplomat w/ Keri Russell is good.
Finished up the last 2 seasons of Great British Baking show, that BBC finally took off pay-for-view, which actually had some down-to-earth contestants.
Started Man on the Inside with Ted Dansen.  Okayish.
And BBC also took off of PFV the last two years of Midsomer Murders so they're now available.

[Sponsor]

[Big Frank]

I forgot to mention I saw a few episodes of Space Precinct (1994-95) as I sorted ammo the other day. It's good to watch when you're looking at something else. It doesn't matter if your attention is divided, just look up when the major action happens. Ted Shackelford stars as a veteran 20 year NYPD detective who works in a different precinct now, the Demeter City police force on the planet Altor in the star system Epsilon Eridani. Don't ask me how he and his family got there. I used to watch that when it was on, and now it's on Amazon Prime. The series was created by Gerry Anderson, who made the Thunderbirds and other TV series using "Supermarionation". The characters were played by electronic marionettes with a moveable lower lip, which opened and closed in time with pre-recorded dialogue by means of a solenoid in the puppet's head or chest. He also made Space: 1999 from 1975 to 1977, starring Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. I remember watching that too, back when I was still in school. It was a good show for its time. Like all of Gerry Anderson's shows, Space Precinct has a lot of special effects consisting of miniature sets being blown up.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072564/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_Space%253A%25201999

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108938/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_Space%2520Precinct

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057790/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_8_nm_0_in_0_q_thunderbirds

[Big Frank]

I just finished The Ipcress File, the TV Mini Series from 2022. Not the 1965 Michael Caine movie. The movie was rated 7.2 stars and the mini series was rated 7.3. I thought it said 7.4 a few minutes ago.  They were both based on Len Deighton's 1962 first novel of the same name. The first of a series of spy novels, several of which were made in movies starring Michael Caine as Harry Palmer.

The assassination weapon in the mini series is a joke. It's a 9mm broom-handle Mauser with a stock for enhanced accuracy. And a 3/4"(?) tube scope in super-tall see-through mounts. You could almost use the scope if you put your chin on the comb of the stock, but not even close with a proper cheek weld. I saw the first part of the mini series before, but this week I got to watch Acorn TV for free and watched all 6 parts.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13636038/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059319/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Len_Deighton

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_TV

[Big Frank]

I just watched Fatman (2020) with Mel Gibson. He looks a lot like Donald Sutherland to me in the movie poster. It's rated 5.9/10 at IMDb, 6.3/10 in the U.S. "A rowdy, unorthodox Santa Claus is fighting to save his declining business. Meanwhile, Billy, a neglected and precocious 12 year old, hires a hit man to kill Santa after receiving a lump of coal in his stocking." If that description and these pics don't make you want to see it, maybe you should anyway. I saw it for free at tubi.com.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10310140/?ref_=ttrt_ov

https://tubitv.com/movies/100032159/fatman

[alfsauve]

Watching House of cards w/ Kevin Spacy and Robin Wright.  Wow. Good. Though they’re using gun control as a sub-plot in a couple of episodes.

Also did Zero Day, 6 episodes, is good.

[Big Frank]

I heard House of Cards was good but never heard of Zero Day. I don't have Nexflix so I can't watch those. I have Xfinity plus Peacock Premium, but no paid premium channels. I pay for Amazon Prime, and Vet TV but that's it. Sometimes I watch free TV and movies at other places like Plex, Vudu, Tubi, and Roku, but not very often. I saw that Tubi has a couple of Matt Rife specials. Everything I've seen of his was really funny, so I'll watch them at some point. I don't think anyone does crowd work as well as he does. He can spend well over an hour interacting with the audience and it's better than most other comedian's best shows that they wrote and stuck to the script. He does use some foul language, so some people will be bothered by that. But it's nothing I haven't already said myself in the past half century, so it doesn't bother me.