What I have been watching
Sep. 22nd, 2015 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scripsiThis week the autumn TV series start again, but while waiting I have gone through In the Blood with Robson Green. At least the first episodes are adaptations of Val McDermid’s crime novels. I don’t like the books, but I like the series for some reason. Probably because I really like Robson Green.
I watched the latest episode of The Strain yesterday and really feel that season 2 is so much better than the first one. For example, the character Ditch, a female computer hacker, is not in the original books. I haven’t read them, but I know there is a love triangle between Nora, Ephraim and Vassily Fet. in the series dutch is introduced as Fet’s love interest instead. In the first season she mainly felt like eye candy, her main distinction being that she’s bisexual. But now she has been allowed a polyamorous narrative in which she actually loves both her girlfriend and Fet. She also had a really great scene with the evil nazi vampire. Who, in turn, we got to see some background scenes. It really add depths to his character. Just plain evil gets boring, evil which is rooted in a series of bad decisions is something else. I liked the scene when he sees the direct and horrific consequences of his acts and how appalled he is, before he just sneers and leave. Somehow this character feels a lot scarier now.
I continue to dig out obscure stuff just because Anthony Ainley or Roger Delgado is in them. Well, Ainley is so much easier to find and The Land That Time Forgot (1975) is probably not that obscure, it was a bit of a hit when it came. My husband, who was in his teens then, said he loved it!
The plot is pretty simple; it’s WWI and a British ship is sunk by a German submarine. The Hero, the Girl and assorted sailors get on board the submarine and eventually they manage to take command over it. But the submarine is badly damaged and they take refuge on a strange island where several evolutionary stages are at play at the same time. Dinosaurs! Cavemen! They try to repair the submarine, but it succumbs during a volcanic eruption and only the Hero and the Girl survives.
It’s not all bad, the acting is overall good and the dinosaurs are as funny as old animation usually is. But they have made some changes from Burrough’s book, most notably changing the novel’s German captain from a sadistic monster to a gentleman with an interest in science.. He refuse to kill off the shipwrecks in the beginning of the movie, he gallantly lets the Girl, when captured, have his cabin and is so nice that he doesn’t even lock it. Bad move, as the Girl escapes and manage to free her friends. In fact, the German captain is so nice and has such chemistry with the Girl that I was quite surprised by the end and we are supposed to have cheered for the Hero/the Girl all along.
So the evil!German in this story is the second-in-command, Dietz, played by Anthony Ainley.
The problem is that he isn’t very evil. He is an unpleasant person, for sure, he is the one who wants to kill the shipwrecks and he is the first to go for violence when they encounter cavemen. He is also brave and smart and with good instinct. In fact, if he had been listened to when the volcano erupted, everyone would have survived. He is definitely not a good man, though. he has a lot of screen time which he mostly spend smouldering or sneering and a muddy fight scene.
A B-movie for sure, but good fun most of the time.
I watched the latest episode of The Strain yesterday and really feel that season 2 is so much better than the first one. For example, the character Ditch, a female computer hacker, is not in the original books. I haven’t read them, but I know there is a love triangle between Nora, Ephraim and Vassily Fet. in the series dutch is introduced as Fet’s love interest instead. In the first season she mainly felt like eye candy, her main distinction being that she’s bisexual. But now she has been allowed a polyamorous narrative in which she actually loves both her girlfriend and Fet. She also had a really great scene with the evil nazi vampire. Who, in turn, we got to see some background scenes. It really add depths to his character. Just plain evil gets boring, evil which is rooted in a series of bad decisions is something else. I liked the scene when he sees the direct and horrific consequences of his acts and how appalled he is, before he just sneers and leave. Somehow this character feels a lot scarier now.
I continue to dig out obscure stuff just because Anthony Ainley or Roger Delgado is in them. Well, Ainley is so much easier to find and The Land That Time Forgot (1975) is probably not that obscure, it was a bit of a hit when it came. My husband, who was in his teens then, said he loved it!
The plot is pretty simple; it’s WWI and a British ship is sunk by a German submarine. The Hero, the Girl and assorted sailors get on board the submarine and eventually they manage to take command over it. But the submarine is badly damaged and they take refuge on a strange island where several evolutionary stages are at play at the same time. Dinosaurs! Cavemen! They try to repair the submarine, but it succumbs during a volcanic eruption and only the Hero and the Girl survives.
It’s not all bad, the acting is overall good and the dinosaurs are as funny as old animation usually is. But they have made some changes from Burrough’s book, most notably changing the novel’s German captain from a sadistic monster to a gentleman with an interest in science.. He refuse to kill off the shipwrecks in the beginning of the movie, he gallantly lets the Girl, when captured, have his cabin and is so nice that he doesn’t even lock it. Bad move, as the Girl escapes and manage to free her friends. In fact, the German captain is so nice and has such chemistry with the Girl that I was quite surprised by the end and we are supposed to have cheered for the Hero/the Girl all along.
So the evil!German in this story is the second-in-command, Dietz, played by Anthony Ainley.
The problem is that he isn’t very evil. He is an unpleasant person, for sure, he is the one who wants to kill the shipwrecks and he is the first to go for violence when they encounter cavemen. He is also brave and smart and with good instinct. In fact, if he had been listened to when the volcano erupted, everyone would have survived. He is definitely not a good man, though. he has a lot of screen time which he mostly spend smouldering or sneering and a muddy fight scene.
A B-movie for sure, but good fun most of the time.
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no subject
Date: 2015-09-22 03:16 pm (UTC)I suppose it's good the Germans aren't totally evil in TLTTF? Sounds like 'Colditz' the TV series. Even the only evil Nazi character isn't that evil when it comes to on screen evil Nazis. He haz issues.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-22 09:49 pm (UTC)*HUGS*
no subject
Date: 2015-09-23 11:30 am (UTC)Probably. :)
I've actually seen Blood On Satan's Claw. It's horrid. Bad horror ovies can be cheesy bad or awful bad and than one falls squarely into the awful category!
I suppose it's good the Germans aren't totally evil in TLTTF?
Oh yes, I'm not complaining. I liked the submarine captain! :)
no subject
Date: 2015-09-23 11:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-23 02:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-23 06:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-24 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-09-24 02:49 pm (UTC)