Silicon Valley Redneck

One more unto Mongo, dear friends...

Another afternoon home with a cold, another serial!

Having previously watched this and this, I now proceed to Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe.

Not having allowed two years to elapse, I promptly Notice Stuff.

Like, Dale's hair has completed its journey to the Dark Side (and is now being worn by a different actress).  Aura's hair, meanwhile, has gotten several shades lighter.

And, as I thought I remembered, Barin is indeed very much younger and thinner in this one.

Further, there's some new back-story that we missed seeing.  Apparently Flash and Dale had spent some time hanging out in Arborea a while back, and Flash had left his fancy duds and sword there.  When did this happen?

Les Preludes is back, in its full glory, in notable contrast to the Lisztless incidental music of Trip to Mars.

The minions are dumber than ever.  When guarding the evil overlord's laboratory to keep the slave scientists from escaping: (1) guard only the front door, not the side door, and (2) pay no attention to the departure, through the front door, of any mysterious hooded civilian you didn't see going in.  Yeah, that's good security for you.  These guys are probably working for Microsoft now.

Oh, and speaking of dumb?  They didn't have so much opportunity for it in this series, but I don't think the heroes ever learned not to leave unsecured enemies at their backs.

At last, we learn Ming's secret: not only is he an Earth Firster, he also uses solar power!

At the very end, Flash blows up a one tower, very selectively, by crashing a spaceship into it - a spaceship loaded with enough Solarite to destroy the Earth.  These Ultimate Weapons don't really make very big explosions, do they?

I didn't remember the titles, but now that I see this again... think George Lucas ever saw this, maybe?

And did Ed Wood borrow the Solarite, with an extra syllable to make it even more ultimate?

Well, that's enough trashy skiffy for now.  Joy brought over the leftover floral stuff from her daughter's wedding, including a couple of big metal urns.  I'm thinking those urns belong on a rocket ship....

Mars is so far ahead of us...

Seventy years ago, they already had Powerpoint rangers!

No wonder we can't find any trace of their mighty civilization.

Yes, Friday was the day for me to watch Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars.  This one didn't look very familiar either, but I know I must have seen it way back when, or how would I have known about Nitron?

Anyway, Nitron.  Apparently it's some constituent of Earth's atmosphere, without which the Earth would be destroyed, or at least lifeless.  The total quantity in the atmosphere, when extracted, seems to be on the order of gallons.  If extraction is stopped, it'll regenerate quickly*.

Nitron - especially nitron which has been made radioactive by being dragged across interplanetary space - can be used to make a variety of Ultimate Weapons, from ray guns that have effects on the order of a large firecracker or small grenade, to bombs that have effects on the order of a large grenade, to paralyzing-ray guns!  And the great thing is, these various ray guns can be fired, oh, maybe a  dozen times before you need to strip-mine the atmosphere of another planet to reload!

As the story begins, Earth is under attack.  Obviously, it has to be Ming.  But, Flash says, we saw him die in the flames!  No, Flash, we the audience saw him go into the flames.  You came along a moment later and believed the crazy high priest when he told you Ming was dead.

So, naturally, Flash, Zarkov, Dale, and the new comic sidekick set off for Mongo, but end up on Mars, which after all is right next to it, at least in the alphabetical listing, if you skip Mercury.  (Apparently Mars and Mongo have some common heritage, as Mars also has Forest People of whom Barin is somehow the rightful ruler, though it seems they didn't get the word.)

Action ensues, involving much stock footage of electrical activity.  I lost count of how many times they used the clip of the Shark Men's blazing circuit breaker from the previous series.

In this series, they cheat on some of the cliffhangers!  Not as badly as in some other serials, but here's the deal: a proper cliffhanger shows the hero certainly doomed, and the next week's recap shows exactly the same sequence of events, and then shows what happens in the next second to save him.  In Trip to Mars, some of the recaps introduce new material a few seconds before the end, which is decidedly cheating, though it's not as bad as changing the events which had been shown the previous week.

Ming is a bit out of character in this one.  He comes across as less of an evil overlord, and more of a mischievous, slightly nutty grandpa.  Villains should not chuckle!

It's only been a few hours, and already most of the specifics are fading from my memory.  Well, I guess that explains how they could get away with cheating on the cliffhangers, what with there normally being a week to forget the fine details.  It might also explain why I was recognizing hardly anything, thirty years after having seen it.

Flash does lift the curse from the Clay People, though.  He gets possession of both the Black Sapphire and the White Sapphire, destruction of both of which will undo Azura's wicked works.  How to destroy them?  Hit them with a hammer?  Zap them with a ray gun?  No worries - the Clay Men have a purpose-built Electric Black And White Sapphire Destroying Machine ready for use!

Speaking of Azura, how is it that when she teleports, she disappears suddenly in a puff of smoke, but arrives gradually, preceded by the generic "mysterious apparatus in use" sound?

Oh, yes: at the end, Ming is revealed to be an Earth Firster!  Lemme just pop the DVD into the drive here, and look it up exactly:

"It is written that the planets shall all be destroyed but one!  And the Earth shall be first!"

Now that's the Ming we know and love to hate!

Today - what with me still having the creeping crud, and being unlikely to do much useful - it'll be time for the third and final installment, in which Ming sabotages Earth's microelectronics by causing corrosion at the junctions between gold bonding wires and aluminum die attach points.

* As will the buildings that crumbled when extraction started.  When extraction resumes, the exact same buildings will crumble again.

Eat hot photons, laser breath!

It's been a day for being useless... I seem to be coming down with the cold that's going around, starting with the sore throat (about 3 this morning) and headache.

This sounds like an occasion for some mindless entertainment, right?  Like some old B movies?

Luckily, I'd just bought a three-pack of Flash Gordon serials.  I hadn't seen those since... well, since Bob Wilkins showed them on Creature Feature.

So, I watched the first one.  It looked remarkably unfamiliar.  As in, I guess I hadn't in fact seen that one at all.

The hopelessly unconvincing special effects were all there.  (Remember, kids, this was originally meant for the big screen, not the teevee.)  The incidental music has hints of Les Preludes, as well as (I wouldn't have noticed this when I was a kid) snippets of Parsifal, and, unless I was imagining it, something by Sibelius that I couldn't quite place.  The costumes are as ludicrous as one would expect.  But don't I recall Barin being younger and thinner in a sequel?  (Guess I'll find out when I get around to watching the sequels.)

Those Mongonians sure have a lot of sacred beasties and gongs and whatnot, don't they?

And, speaking of sacred beasties, what is it with these places that have rocks, and sand, and an assortment of large predators, and no sign of the sort of ecosystem it takes to support large predators?

Oh, and the people.  There are Lion Men (they have long hair, and their prince has a beard), and Shark Men (they have tinfoil swim caps), and Hawk Men (they have immobile wings on their backs, and wear equally useless wings on their helmets).

And... the plot!  The dialog!  The tactics!  The way Flash holds a dagger!  The expendable minions!  (There must be an expendable minion training center somewhere, for Ming's palace guards, Imperial storm troopers, and suchlike.*)

And why does a technologically advanced society need slaves to shovel radium into the atomic furnaces, anyway?  Don't they have electric motors?  And how does the radium get delivered to the piles whence it gets shoveled?  And what's the point of whipping slaves who are working to a pace set by the guy who turns the big dial to make the furnace doors open and close?  And....

Well, it is better done than Radar Men From the Moon.  But, arguably, so was Plan 9 From Outer Space.

Next up, Ming tries to steal our nonvolatile memory!

(Sorry, no link for that one.  Once upon a time, there was a company called Nitron that made nonvolatile memory.  This was back in the days when chips still died of Purple Plague.  Update: patent, datasheet.)

*Afterthought: Suppose you were a minion, and an invisible Earthman was strangling your Emperor.  Would you: (a) stand around helplessly because you couldn't see the enemy, or (b) start waving your sword everywhere the Emperor (or any other visible person or object) wasn't?  If you answered (b), report to the disintegration chamber; you have too much initiative for a minion.

Han shot first!

...and now, it seems, that will be available on DVD.  Slashdot links to this report that Star Wars Classic (episodes IV-VI) will be released on a limited-edition DVD set this fall, along with the remastered versions.

The remastered versions have greatly improved special effects (the critters don't look so cardboard-cutoutish), but having Greedo shoot first has got to be one of the dumbest plot changes ever - not only does it misguidedly clean up Han's character, but it requires that Greedo be one of the worst marksmen of all time - some bounty hunter!

Update: I notice that the article is dated yesterday.  Today, of course, is Star Wars Day.  May the Fourth be with you!

Now I'm worried...

OK, so last night I finally got around to seeing Highlander.
(A movie set in Scotland, with Sean Connery playing a Spaniard, or maybe an Egyptian with a Spanish name.  This makes lots of sense.)

Anyway, part of the reason for seeing the movie was a suspicion that this recent Slashdot story was on somewhat of a wrong track.  Now, if you combine that story with (as noted) this one, and with this, then you truly have a fearless, immortal mouse, with awesome powers of regeneration, capable of recovering from just about anything except destruction of its brain.

Would this be a Highlander Hybrid Mouse?

The possibilities are mind-boggling:

"The same thing we do every night, Pinky.  Try to take the heads of all the other Immortals."

"Actually, I'm a mouse who's been made Immortal by an experiment in genetic engineering."

"I think so, Brain, but why would the Japanese smith mark the sword '600 BC'?"

Odd music in cartoons

'Tooning out this evening with a bit of Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2... through the familiar material, and into real oldies... like "Old Glory."  Hard to imagine that one coming out of a mainstream studio these days.
Lotsa familiar patriotic American tunes, and an anomaly.  As Uncle Sam tells what the colonists found - OPPRESSION - UNFAIR TAXES - hey, that tune sounds familiar, er... um... don't tell me...
The wedding march from Götterdämmerung???

I note also that, having been made back in MCMXXXIX, it has the canonical version of the Pledge, with no "under God" in it.

"Floop," suggested the tar pit.

Just watched LOTR:ROTK/EE.  Not sharing the Blue-Eyed Infidel's Eomer obsession (but agreeing with her regarding Foul Ol' Sauron's Creepy Lawyer), I offer a few observations of my own here:
First, as one would expect from the first two films, it's a great movie if you haven't read the book.  If you're a Tolkien geek, the plot and character changes are horribly distracting.
For one thing, The Scouring of the Shire is missing.  That's an important part of the story!  The hobbits need to learn that they can stand up for themselves, without the help of wizards and kings!  There are a lot of hobbits in the world today who need to learn this!
OK, so (1) that chapter maybe didn't fit in the theater version, and (2) it's precluded by having Wormtongue kill Saruman at Orthanc.  However, (1') the extended edition could have had room for it, and (2') as I understand it, Saruman wasn't in the theater edition anyway, so there wasn't an existing scene that would have needed rewriting.
With Frodo all webbed up, it sure looks like Sam didn't take the Ring.  Yes, having the audience, as well as Frodo, think the Ring was lost is good drama, but we miss The Last Temptation of Samwise, and showing Frodo still so webbed up that Sam couldn't have taken the Ring is cheating.
Gandalf speaks to Pippin of what is beyond death.  Eh?  Even the Valar don't know what becomes of Mortals after they die; I would presume this to be true of Hobbits as well as Men.
I guess Sauron's Lawyer must be an undead, as must the Nazgul King of Angmar's flying beastie: neither bleeds much when his/its head is lopped off.  (Yeah, I suppose it just wouldn't do to have fountains of blood from the villains when the heroes kill them.  Untidy.)
Character changes... Denethor seems crazier than I remember from the book.  The whole Arwin/Elrond Aragorn-antipathy complex is weird and unnecessary.  Also, after establishing Arwen as a strong character, by substituting her for Glorfindel at the beginning, why then make her so weak for the rest of the story?
The special effects were, as expected, spectacular and well integrated, and nothing struck me as out of place or overdone (in contrast to the notably overdone FX for Galadriel in FOTR).
Hint for Aragorn: sheathe your sword before running on a pile of tumbling skulls.  You'll trip and put somebody's eye out with that thing.
So maybe I'm in a picky mood today.

(Foo faddle.  I found a link to "Nazgul King of Angmar" (tune of "Bastard King of England"), but it's 404.  I think I have hardcopy around somewhere, but that's not hyperlinkable.)

Update: serious nitpickery here.