space heater
Thursday, January 19th, 2012 • Cartoons
Tuesday, January 17th, 2012 • Horrorthon Posts
I’m just curious what everyone thinks. Here’s my take:
Sherlock (Season 2)
Already seen it (all three episodes): it’s fantastic!
Star Wars Episode I The Phantom Menace 3D
I’m more partial to the prequel trilogy than probably anyone else here on Horrorthon. I’d even go so far as to say that The Phantom Menace is kind of comparable to the first few chapters of The Fellowship of the Ring: very little happens, the storytelling isn’t up to par yet, the setting is idyllic, and you’ve got absolutely no idea of the violent, dark wonders to come. (And if Book I of Lord of the Rings had been written/published years after The Return of the King, everybody would be going, “Tom Bombadil? A shortcut to mushrooms? What the hell is this?”) Anyway, as I’ve remarked elsewhere the 3D looks unbelievable, so I’m in.
Mad Men (Season 5)
I think this will be awesome. Season 4 was the best yet, and it left us at a wondrous stopping point. (SPOILER WARNING for Octo, Julie and others who aren’t caught up. NOBODY SAY ANYTHING!)
Titanic 3D
I’m not the biggest fan of this movie to begin with (although I was at the time), but, again, the 3D looks unbelievable (at least in the preview I saw).
The Avengers
I think this will be pretty good but not great. Like, you have a blast and pump your fist during the first hour, but by the next day you kind of forget you saw it, you know? It probably won’t have the surprising emotional depth of Thor.
Prometheus
I have no idea. It could be brilliant and it could be embarassing crap. Ridley Scott is like that.
The Amazing Spider-Man
I think this looks (no pun intended) totally amazing, but I realize that nobody here is going to agree with me, since it’s got two Horrorthon strikes against it: nobody likes reboots (except me) and nobody likes origin stories (except me). But I just saw The Social Network and I think Andrew Garfield is great, and, come on: Emma Stone! Martin Sheen and Sally Field as Uncle Ben and Aunt May!
The Dark Knight Rises
I actually think this is going to be bad. I mean, enough already. I thought Inception was way overrated. I’m tired of Christopher Nolan and what a big deal everything is. Why so serious?
Skyfall
This will kick ass.
The Hobbit
I think this will be the one movie to rule them all, this year.
Comments?
Friday, January 13th, 2012 • Horrorthon Posts
After years of fruitless searching I think I’ve found images of Oscar Goldman’s desk (from The Six Million Dollar Man). When I was a kid, I considered this to be the El Dorado of desks. The only better desk was maybe Commander John Koenig’s desk from Space: 1999, but that was impossible to reproduce since it incorporated an advanced computer terminal, and only NASA personnel would have an actual computer (with a screen and a keyboard!) at their desks, and anyway Koenig’s desk took up way too much room and would have dominated my bedroom in an awkward way. But Oscar Goldman’s desk was perfect and I lusted after it. (Goldman’s office—at the headquarters of the OSI—also had a recessed phone screen hidden behind a map of the world over the couch, and, out the window, a panoramic view of the Capitol dome from an impossible vantage point near the middle of the Mall, because, damn it, this is Washington—it’s all very serious).
Unfortunately images of Oscar Goldman’s office are impossible to come by, largely because the series is tied up in litigation and unavailable on home video. But I think I’ve found the desk! The above images are from the 1978 Columbo episode “Make Me a Perfect Murder.” In the story, this is supposed to be the new office of a television executive (George C. Scott’s wife Trish Van Devere, visible in the pictures). The desk even prompts dialogue: Columbo says, “That’s a very impressive desk, Ma’am. You could run the world from a desk like that.”
Why am I sure this is Oscar Goldman’s desk? Because Columbo and The Six Million Dollar Man were contemporaneous Universal Television productions, which means that the prop could have easily been brought from one set at Universal City Studios to another.
Just look at all that crucial equipment you’ve got lined up in front of you! There’s (as far as I can tell) a cassette tape recorder, an intercom, something else, a phone (with six lines), a calculator (not just “four functions” either; it looks like it’s got memory keys and maybe one or two stat functions), a Dictaphone, and a multiband AM/FM radio. (I can’t identify the leftmost device; the chrome square in the bottom left corner might be a two-axis stick controller like you’d see on a radio-controlled plane’s remote control, but beyond that I’m stumped. Any guesses on this or the mysterious central machine are welcome.) It’s a great setup, and, if she wants to watch television, it’s right there in front of her (Oscar Goldman probably didn’t have time for such trivialities). I can’t tell you how much I wanted this desk when I was a kid. I acknowledged that I would have to put my typewriter somewhere else, but it would have been totally worth it.
ADDENDUM: Kenner Toys did release a playset of “OSI Headquarters” (intended to be used with their “Oscar Goldman” action figure), but, as you can see, it’s not the same:
ADDENDUM II: You’ll note, however, that even the playset version has a slightly less impossible view of the Capitol Building as the TV show, since it’s showing the East façade, which puts the “OSI” in either the Supreme Court building (no) or in the Senate Office Building (no). But at least he’s not sitting at his desk on an enclosed pedestal in the middle of the grassy mall.