The Adjustment Bureau

This science fiction thriller stars Matt Damon and Emily Blunt in a film based on a short-story by Philip K. Dick. The characters live in a time when lives are pre-planned.  When an individual deviates from their prescribed life plan, agents of the Adjustment Bureau are sent to make corrections.  It's a good story of  a programed life versus free-will in the life of a politician (Damon) whose life is going smooth until he meets a dancer (Blunt) who is not a part of his life plan.  This is an action movie but Matt Damon is no Jason Bourne in this film. The plot was very simple once you understand the basic primace.  I liked it.  In some ways it was like the other films based on Dick's novels or short stories which include Blade Runner, Minority Report, and A Scanner Darkley to name a few. Dick was a good friend of Timothy Leary, the college professor and LSD advocate.

More information at:

• Philip K. Dick
• The Adjustment Bureau
• Matt Damon

The Best of the Best

Should we be considered anglophiles because we like British television crime dramas? Perhaps not. Although my mate and I do seem to have in insatiable appetite for crime dramas with a British accent. We first became acquainted with them through that government subsidized entertainment source, the Public Broadcasting Service. MYSTERY from WGBH, the Boston PBS station would bring us these impeccable British mystery dramas. There were quite a few, Morse, Lynley, Dalgliesh and others. We loved them all but especially Morse.  Inspector Morse is author Colin Dexter's best character and John Thaw brings him to life.

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An excerpt taken from the book, MYSTERY!: A Celebration, by Ron Miller (published by KQED Books) from the PBS website. 

For anyone raised on a steady diet of American prime-time detective shows, the arrival of Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse on Mystery! was certain to be a shock. "I'm a quite different kettle of fish," Morse (John Thaw) tells his new aide, Sergeant Lewis (Kevin Whately), in that first program.

It is a fair warning. Morse is often morose and cranky and, when he is, he'd rather stare at the bubbles in his beer than engage in casual conversation. His lack of normal social graces is so profound that Lewis looks positively dumbfounded when Morse asks him, in the Twilight of the Gods episode, how the wife and kids are doing. It is the first time in seven seasons that Morse has shown any interest whatever in Lewis' family.

Morse is definitely not a demographically correct sort of television detective. He's middle-aged with white hair, not the macho young stud favored by American advertisers. But then Barnaby Jones was an older guy with white hair, too, and he had a pretty long run. There's a big difference, though: you'd never catch Barnaby rushing off to choir practice right after cuffing a criminal, as Morse does in his very first television case, The Dead of Jericho.

Like Columbo and Spenser, Morse refuses to acknowledge his first name because it's so awful. If his nickname is any indication -- in the Deceived by Flight episode, we learn the boys at school used to call him "Pagan" -- one can hardly blame him.

The clip below is from the episode Deadly Slumber.



I don't think we are anglophiles, although there is nothing wrong with it.

Britcoms

We've become fond of British television comedies. We call them: "Britcoms". Our favorite is Doc Martin staring Martin Clunes. I think he may have been the forerunner ofHouse. Martin Clunes stars as Dr. Martin Ellingham, a London surgeon who develops a reaction to blood. He leaves the city to become the general practitioner in a tiny village in Cornwall. Not only does Doc Martin has to deal with culture shock, he is totally lacking in people skills. Whereas House is aware of his lack of people skills and doesn't care, Doc Martin is childishly unaware and surprised at others reaction.

Below is a brief clip. The compleat series is available from Netflix and some episodes are on YouTube.

Just another puzzle

Where Have All The Cowboys Gone?

Just the other day I was having lunch with a friend and he was lament about his grandsons. 

He said,'They don't even know what a cowboy is!" I thought about and said that i wasn't surprised. How many kids nowadays know what a cowboy is? 

When I was a boy every one of my buddies wanted to be a cowboy. Not just any cowboy either.  We wanted to be Hoppy, Gene, or Roy.  Or maybe the little more adventurous would want to be Lash LaRue or maybe the Cisco Kid, or Lone Ranger. We would catch robbers and fight Indians just like our heroes.

I can still recall my Mama calling me at 5:30 on a weekday, "Tony, it's time for the Lone Ranger" I'd get real close to that old radio and hear those words: "Out of the west comes the thundering hooves of the great horse Silver..." For the next half hour my ear was glued to that radio.  I was with the Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian companion, Tonto.  And, yes, the next time were at the grocery I'd beg Mama to buy Merita bread--it was the kind the Lone Ranger ate. Of course the next day we'd discuss the episode during recess at the schoolhouse. And then there were the movies I went to see with my grandmother.  In glorious black and white our heroes would right all the wrongs of the old west.

I'm not sure what happened to our western heroes. They never drank, smoked, cursed and never beat up a guy that didn't have it coming. And they treated all women folk with courtesy and respect.

I guess my look back on those heroes of yesterday can best be described in this song by Mason Williams.   Cowboy Buckaroo

I was raised on matinees on Saturday afternoons,

lookin' up at Hoppy, Gene and Roy... oh boy!

And I grew up a-thinkin', "the best a man could do

is be a rootin'-tootin' straight-shootin' cowboy buckaroo."

(chorus)

Spurs a-janglin', whoopi-ti-yi-yay.

Just a-wranglin' to every single day.

Yo-da-lida-ladi, yo-da-lida-ladi,

yo-da-lida-ladi, ooooooooooo....

A man should be a rootin'-tootin' straight-shootin'

cowboy buckaroo.

A buckaroo's a cowboy who believes in what is good.

A buckaroo wouldn't hurt you if he could... if he could.

I ain't afraid to say it 'cause I ain't afraid of you.

I'm a rootin'-tootin', straight-shootin' cowboy buckaroo.

(repeat chorus)

Should we be the way we are, or be how we could be?

Could illusion become reality?

I've got to ask the question, 'cause the answer is overdue...

why can't we all ride together and be cowboy buckaroos?

(repeat chorus)

(tag)

Why can't we all ride together and be cowboy buckaroos?

You reckon they'll make a song about the Power Rangers?