AMV of the Day: Baby One More Time (Diabolik Lovers)


With the first month of the year nearly over, how about one last amv featuring Britney Spears?

Anime: Diabolik Lovers

Song: …. Baby One More Time (Britney Spears)

Creator: MewMewCore

(As always, please consider subscribing to this creator’s YouTube channel!)

Past AMVs of the Day

Great Moments In Television History #14: The Birth of Dr. Johnny Fever


Today’s great moment comes from the pilot episode of WKRP In Cincinnati.  This first aired on September 18th, 1978 and Johnny Carvaello allowing the spirit of rock and roll to turn him into Dr. Johnny Fever would forever be one of the show’s most famous moments.

Rest in Peace, Howard Hesseman.

Previous Great Moments In Television History:

  1. Planet of the Apes The TV Series
  2. Lonely Water
  3. Ghostwatch Traumatizes The UK
  4. Frasier Meets The Candidate
  5. The Autons Terrify The UK
  6. Freedom’s Last Stand
  7. Bing Crosby and David Bowie Share A Duet
  8. Apaches Traumatizes the UK
  9. Doctor Who Begins Its 100th Serial
  10. First Night 2013 With Jamie Kennedy
  11. Elvis Sings With Sinatra
  12. NBC Airs Their First Football Game
  13. The A-Team Premieres

Great Moments In Comic Book History #18: Goliath Towers Over New York


 

This is one of my favorite Alex Ross images.  I’m not sure if that’s Henry Pym or Clint Barton towering over the city but this painting captures the shock and wonder that would be generated by such a sight.  It’s from the 2nd issue of Marvels and to me, this is what the MCU films should take some times to explore, not just the activities of super-powered heroes but also of all the ordinary people who have to try to live their lives while all of the heroes and the villains fight their petty battles.

Previous Great Moments In Comic Book History:

  1. Winchester Before Winchester: Swamp Thing Vol. 2 #45 “Ghost Dance” 
  2. The Avengers Appear on David Letterman
  3. Crisis on Campus
  4. “Even in Death”
  5. The Debut of Man-Wolf in Amazing Spider-Man
  6. Spider-Man Meets The Monster Maker
  7. Conan The Barbarian Visits Times Square
  8. Dracula Joins The Marvel Universe
  9. The Death of Dr. Druid
  10. To All A Good Night
  11. Zombie!
  12. The First Appearance of Ghost Rider
  13. The First Appearance of Werewolf By Night
  14. Captain America Punches Hitler
  15. Spider-Man No More!
  16. Alex Ross Captures Galactus
  17. Spider-Man And The Dallas Cowboys Battle The Circus of Crime

 

 

Game Review: Locked Door II: Fair Trade (2022, Cody Gaisser)


(SPOILER WARNING)

You’re in a room.  There’s one door.  It’s locked.  Does this seem familiar?  Maybe you played Locked Door, to which this game is the first of many sequels.  Can you figure out how to unlock the door?  In the first game, the key was just sitting in the room.  In this game, the key is not mentioned as being in the room.  Instead, there’s some schlub named Bob and there’s an apple.  Can you figure out what to do?

Like the first game, Locked Door II will be appreciated by people who have played and struggled with games that require them to figure out some sort of complex puzzle in order to open up a door.  Locked Door II does have a puzzle but it’s so simple that it makes a statement about how needlessly complicated some other games can be.

If you get that door unlocked, you’ll get a prize.  Unlike the first game, you’ll have to find prize, though.  Just look in the most obvious place.

So far, there are seven different Locked Door games.  From what I understand, each game gets progressively more complex.  Eventually, I’ll probably end up in a room that I can’t get out of and I’ll have to stop playing.  Will it happen with Locked Door III?  Tune in next week to find out.

Gunfire (1950, directed by William Berke)


Years after the death of his brother Jesse, Frank James (Don “Red” Barry) has settled down in Colorado and is living a peaceful life as a rancher.  He is even friends with the town’s sheriff, John Kelly (Robert Lowery).  Unfortunately, it’s not always so easy to escape the past, especially when you are one of the few surviving members of one of the Old West’s most notorious gangs.  A former member of the James Gang, Mundy (Claude Stroud), shows up at Frank’s cabin and tries to talk Frank into joining up with him, the Ford brothers (Gaylord Pendleton and Roger Anderson), and their new leader, Bat Fenton (Don “Red” Barry, playing a second role).  When Frank refuses and makes clear that he still wants revenge on the Ford brothers for the murder of Jesse James, the gang goes on a crime spree.  Because he and Fenton look exactly alike, the entire town thinks that Frank is responsible.  Can Frank clear his name and avenge the death of his brother?

There were a lot of poverty row B-westerns produced in the early 1950s and most of them are pretty bad.  However, occasionally you come across a diamond in the rough and that’s the case with Gunfire.  Gunfire tells an interesting story, it has exciting gunfights, and it also features not one but two good performances from Don “Red” Barry!  Barry is equally convincing as both the good Frank and the bad Fenton and the movie uses the double plot as a way to illustrate how difficult it is to escape the sins of the past.  Frank has been “born again” but every time he sees Fenton, he sees not only who he used to be but also who many will always believe him to be.  Gunfire is a good western that shows that you don’t need a huge budget to tell an engaging story.

I Watched The 5th Quarter (2010, dir. by Rick Bieber)


The 5th Quarter is the story of the Abbate Brothers.  Luke Abbate (Stefan Guy) is a high school football star who has his entire life ahead of him.  Jon Abbate (Ryan Merriman) is a student at Wake Forest University and is a linebacker on their football team.  When Luke is killed in a horrific car accident, Jon considers dropping out of football but instead, with his parent’s encouragement, he decides to keep playing and to dedicate the season to the memory of his little brother.  Wearing his Luke’s No. 5 jersey, Jon inspires both the team and the fans.

Sometimes you really want to like something but you just can’t.  That’s the way that I felt about The 5th Quarter.  The movie is based on a true story and its heart is in the right place but it’s just too predictable too really work.  It needed more drama and at least a little suspense about whether or not Wake Forest would be able to win all of the games that they won.  I did think that Aidan Quinn and Andie MacDowell (who I thought was Jennifer Garner for most of the movie) were pretty good as Luke and Jon’s parents.  The movie needed more scenes like the one where Andie MacDowell got mad at the woman who asked her how she was doing right after she had buried her youngest son.  Otherwise, The 5th Quarter meant well but it was just too predictable.

Music Video of the Day: London Boy by Tash (2022, dir by Arasmis Duran)


This is a simple song and a fairly simple video but both of them definitely captured a very specific feeling and moment of one’s life.  I think anyone can relate, whether they’ve had a London boy or not.  I don’t have much else to say about this one but sometimes, it’s not necessary to say a lot.

Enjoy!

Lisa Marie’s Week In Television: 1/23/22 — 1/29/22


Another week in January essentially means another week of allergies and sneezing.  I watched quite a few movies this week but I also catched a few shows.  When you’re feeling under the weather, it’s sometimes more fun to watch something that’s only going to require 30 minutes of your attention as opposed to 132 of them.

Allo Allo (Sunday Night, PBS)

The show started with Rene nearly blowing up the cafe while trying to hide the stolen land mines and it ended with Herr Flick and Von Smallhousen trapped on a British airplane flying high over occupied France.  Along the way, Crabtree tried to speak French and the British airmen hid in a barrel.  It was all good fun.  I laughed.

The Amazing Race (Wednesday, CBS)

I wrote about the latest episode of The Amazing Race here!  Switzerland, as I mentioned in my write up, is a beautiful country.  The scenery is gorgeous and the people understand the value of staying on schedule.

The Bachelor (Monday Night, ABC)

This week on The Bachelor, the women went to group therapy and Clayton continued to try to understand and replicate human behavior.  Seriously, they should just call him the Claytonbot.  I keep expecting him to ask someone why humans laughs and cry.

Bar Rescue (Monday Morning, Paramount TV)

Jon Taffer rescued a karaoke bar.  Yay!  A world without music is not a world for any of us.

Football Game: Buccaneers vs. Rams (Sunday Evening, NBC)

If only both teams could have won!  Seriously, from what I’ve seen of it, football is the most depressing sport ever because the players on the team that doesn’t win always end up sitting there and crying while the other team is celebrating.  That sucks.  If I was the coach, I would make sure that every game ended in a tie so that everyone could be a winner.

Full House (Sunday Afternoon, MeTV)

God, this was a bad show.  I watched the first four episodes of the show on Sunday afternoon.  I felt kind of bad about not liking it but it was just so painfully cutesy.  The first episode of the series featured John Stamos and the goofy guy moving in with John Stamos.  The second episode featured John Stamos and his band trying to practice while two of Bob Saget’s daughters danced around.  (The band sounded terrible.)  The third episode featured …. I don’t even remember.  I know it was during the third or the fourth episode that the school year started.  Candace Cameron was upset about being put in a gifted class.  John Stamos hit on a teacher.  I can’t remember what the goofy one did.

From what I understand, the first four episodes are apparently the show’s highpoint so I can’t imagine what the rest of the series must have been like.

King of the Hill (Weekday Afternoons, FXX)

I watched three episodes of this classic on Friday.  Things got started with Grillstravaganza, in which Bobby temporarily fell under the influence of Joe Jack.  This was followed by the episode where Mr. Strickland briefly got involved with Luanne’s pool-based bible study group.  And then the final episode I watched featured Hank taking over the middle school’s organic garden.  Anything that featured Hank trying to motivate the apathetic students at the middle school was always funny.  Hank’s work at the organic garden may have been a success but he was still perturbed when he ended up getting added to the mailing list of a hippie food store called Passages.

Open All Hours (Sunday Night, PBS)

Granville discovered that he had a cousin and she used to be able to communicate with the spirit world.  Unfortunately, Granville’s spirit had already been too thoroughly broken for him to take much comfort in that knowledge.

Parking Wars (Monday Morning, A&E)

On Monday morning, as I watched the parking cops go out of their way to harass the citizens of Philadelphia, it occurred to me that most of these episodes were filmed over ten years ago.  I wonder how many of these people still work for the government and how many have retired.  How many are receiving a pension and how many are still walking the sidewalks and saying, “I’m just doing my job here?”  Hopefully, they’re all retired and collecting a pension.  It has to be kind of a sad existence, though.  How does anyone sleep soundly with the knowledge that they were a part of the system?

Seinfeld (Weekdays, Comedy Central)

I watched two episodes on Friday afternoon.  George and Jerry flew out to Hollywood to see Kramer.  kamer, meanwhile, was arrested for being a serial killer.  The real killer was Clint Howard, who was briefly arrested but who escaped police custody after George and Jerry accidentally left the backdoor of a police car unlocked.  It was all kind of dark, to be honest.

Silk Stalkings (Tubi)

On Monday, I got back to binging my favorite 90s show about attractive detectives investigating half-naked criminals.  The first episode featured Chris falling for a duplicitous skip tracer who, it turned out, was actually just a hitwoman.  Oh, Chris!  Everyone knows you and Rita are in love!  The next episode featured Chris and Rita investigating the murder of a vice cop.  They suspected that it may have been a cop-on-cop killing and, of course, it all linked up to Chris’s past.  It was kind of a dull episode, to be honest.  It wasn’t quite trashy enough.  Oh well!

I didn’t return to the show until Thursday.  The first episode I watched opened with the brutal murder of a wealthy married couple.  At first, Chris and Rita thought that the murders had been committed by the couple’s twin sons but eventually, it was discovered that it was actually the work of the maid and a hitman.  That episode was enjoyably sordid.  The episode that followed was a bit less interesting.  Chris and Rita investigated a gang of jewel thieves, one of whom was played by a youngish Tobin Bell.  It was all a bit bland but the chemistry between Rob Estes and Mitzi Kapture kept things fun.

Sierra Stranger (1957, directed by Lee Sholem)


Sierra Stranger starts with a familiar western situation.  Jess Collins (Howard Duff), a penniless but honorable drifter, comes across two men tying another man to the back of a horse.  The two men claim that Sonny Grover (Ed Kemmer) is an outlaw and a claim jumper and not to be trusted. Sonny says that he’s innocent and the two men are actually the claim jumpers.  Jess does what many a western hero has done.  He sides with the underdog and saves Sonny.  To thank him, Sonny gives Jess a part of his claim.

Jess rides into the nearby town to claim his new property.  He meets and befriends Sonny’s half-brother, Bert (Dick Foran).  He also meets and falls in love with Bert’s fiancée, Meg (Gloria McGeehee).  However, soon after arriving, Jess discovers that he made a mistake and he saved the wrong man.  Sonny really is the dangerous outlaw that everyone says he is.  After Sonny robs a stagecoach and murders the driver, Jess risks his new friendship with Bert by trying to bring Sonny to justice.

Howard Duff appeared in his share of B-westerns in the 50s.  He was always a solid hero, even if he didn’t really have the screen presence of some of the other stars of the genre.  He’s pretty good in Sierra Stranger and the fact that, for once, the town is right while the drifter is wrong is an interesting twist on an otherwise standard story.  This is the rare western where the hero makes a pretty big mistake and then has to spend the rest of the movie trying to make up for it.  If you’re not a western fan, this is not the type of B-movie that’s going to change your mind.  But, for those who do like the genre, it’s an interesting twist on what we’ve been led to naturally expect.