WAS JET JAGUAR THERE?

PLEASE TELL ME HE WAS.

Just watched Joe Kidd.

Pretty good film. Ending was weird though.

Double Person 'o' Interest...Which was properly awesome!!...

Agents of SHIELD...Which was actually not bad at all, really...

NCIS...Always brilliant...Well...These last two have been mostly brilliant...It's been the backdoor pilot for NCIS:New Orleans these last couple...Scott Bakula gets another job!!...And about time too!!...It shows much promise though...Am looking forward to the series when it hits later in the year...

For those old enough to remember it...It also stars a chap that once played a boy called Caleb in a series called American Gothic, starring Gary Cole...I think Caleb was the son of the devil or something...Anyways, he's all growned up and everything now... ...Where the hell did the time go?... ...

And then...We watched....


STAR WARS!!!...Nope...Not, Episode IV - A New Hope...'Cause I'm old enough to remember it NOT being numbered and subtitled...

Bloody STAR WARS!!!...

Yeah, I know...If it's the re-graphic-ed and remastered '97 (or whatever it was) version then it has to be the numbered one...But still...

Bloody STAR WARS!!!... ...

It was much fun!!!...Ooooh, I've just thought of a point to make...Somewhere...

AAaaaanyways...Proper loved watching it again... ...I have missed the Falcon... ...

Community is awesome.

I watched 11 episodes in a row.

McB - Awesome that you watch STAR WARS! It´s a very good movie wouldn´t you say?

I have the blu-ray set of the Star Wars films. Every once and a while I pull them out and do a Star-a-thon with them too. I still love the first movie as well.

Last night I watched Hell and High Water, with Richard Widmark. I was very unimpressed. So today I broke out Ice Station Zebra, a true masterpiece of Cold War spy action with a submarine. Being an Alistair MacLean story, directed by John Sturges, no wonder. Next up I might give Hunt For Red October another whirl.

Sorry, no Jet Jaguar in this one.

I also went to see The Grand Budapest Hotel and The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

I took a little nap during Spider-Man 2, but the parts I was awake for were not very good. The electrical effects looked neat. They didn’t seem to know what to do with the characters, though, and most of the movie made so little sense it would have worked as a parody.

I loved The Grand Budapest Hotel. It was a gorgeous, energetic comedy with moments of true nobility and an undertone of sadness. There was really no character development, but the main characters had layers revealed throughout. The whole thing was a story within a story. I thought the stylized approach worked for that very well.

Ice Station Zebra was the first spy thriller I ever saw. I watched it when it came on TV. It will always be a favorite.

Ah, well at least it wasn't just the McDaughter and I then... ...Shame that...Should have been much better...

I put Grand Budapest in my Netflix queue. It looks interesting, and F Murry Abraham!

Good stories do not really need character development, though it is certainly nice when it happens. It all depends on where in the MICE quotient the story focuses most upon. There are basically 4 things one can focus on: Milieu, Idea, Character, Event. Every story has some measure of all 4, but typically one is central.

Milieu stories focus on the setting itself, making it come alive in as a real, living, breathing place. The characters are basically there to move through the world and show it off to us as they discover it themselves.

Idea stories are mysteries, and the story is spent trying to solve the mystery. Typically the main character is a detective of some sort, who rarely actually evolves or develops as a character. Instead they are often full of interesting quirks or layers to their personality, which are revealed to the reader as the story progresses. Or not. Ice Station Zebra is that kind of story, as it is all about finding the missing film.

Character stories obviously depend upon character development!

Finally Event stories are about showing some large or small event taking place, and the characters are basically witnesses. Typically there is some problem with the world, and it needs to be fixed. An asteroid is going to crash into it, the Nazis are going to take over, etc... Often there are multiple view point characters in order to see the events from every point of view. The movie Midway is a good example. There is a little bit of character development as Chuck Heston's character grapples with the fact that his estranged-son is in love with a half-Japanese girl, we see him making the attempt to move beyond it, even intercede with the FBI, and mend fences with The Boy. But in the end the film is all about the battle itself and Chuck is just there so we can see it unfold through his eyes. The movie World War Z is another good example, as it is about stopping the zombie menace, and the main character himself does not grow or change as a person. Instead he jets around the world, showing us the effects of the zombie apocalypse all over the place, and finally helps discover a way to protect people from the zombies.

Hawaii, NCIS:LA, Man vs Weird, Ripping Yarns, Warehouse 13 and Doctor Who - Doomsday, the last one with Billie Piper being a regular...Ended with Catherine Tate ( ) on the TARDIS in a wedding dress...

Kidnap and Ransom- one episode in, but impressed so far.

MI5 (which went by "Spooks" in the UK)- also one episode in and considerably LESS impressed.

Will soon be getting the first disc of season 2 of Person of Interest- looking forward to that very much.

And let's see.... Season 5? of The Closer. I am sometimes not sure who annoys me more- the tunnel-vision Brenda Lee Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick) or the no-affect Captain Raydor (Mary McDonnell). Still- it does keep us watching.

Did not know that Spooks had a name change as it travelled over!...Never watched it personally...Too many characters getting offed through the series...

Person of Interest is just awesome though... ...

From the little I watched I really liked Spooks.

Tried to watch Return of the Jedi this afternoon, but the video's starting to go, so I had to abort

Watched Kelly's Heroes this evening, damn funny film that.

Twelve Years a Slave. Very good movie, tragic but good. And based on a true story.

That was such a fun movie! I loved how when they couldn't get past that last Tiger tank at the end, they just told them what was inside the bank!


I saw that a few weeks ago. It was painful to watch, because of the casual cruelty. But an outstanding movie.

Watching Cocaine Cowboys: Reloaded. It is pretty much the same as Cocaine Cowboys - which I watched yesterday, but goes into more depth. It is about how Miami became the cocaine capital of the US in the early 80s, told by an actual smuggler, distributor, and cartel assassin.

It is just mind-blowing how rich these guys got. They literally did not have room to store all the cash. They had to buy houses to keep it, give it to their neighbors to store it, bury it in the yards, and so on. Eventually it all got into the banks, and they didn't have enough space for the money either. They were not making millions, they were making billions of dollars. So they shipped it to the Federal Reserve. The Florida Federal Reserve Bank had more money in it than all the other Federal Reserves in the country combined.

The smuggler Mickey was a pilot, he bought a plane for nearly a million dollars to run the drugs, in cash. He lost it the first trip, and just wrote it off as an expense of doing business. No big deal. The same guy had already bought land near Lakeland and built two airstrips there. After it came in, he would load the cocaine onto an old car. Then he would have a tow truck come in (he owned the entire towing company) to tow it away. This way the driver would not know what was in the car, and if he was pulled over he could honestly say he had no clue he was a drug mule. But to keep that from even happening, the smuggler mixed in a little cocaine with water and some other stuff, put it in an atomizer, and sprayed things like the tow truck crane with it. The idea was the drug sniffing dogs would alert to things that obviously could not have drugs in it. So that would make the dogs useless.

Later he moved to flying the drugs up off of the Bahamas, where it was tossed into the water. They had radio transmitters attached to each bag, which people in small pleasure boats would home in on to pick up the drugs. Then they would just drive it into Miami. He paid a girl to live in an apartment that had a panoramic view of the harbor entrance, and she acted as a spotter for him. He had other people on boats spread out along the harbor to also watch for police. Finally, he even had a guy out on a boat called the burner. The idea was that if there was a problem this guy would set his boat on fire, and call for help saying that there were children on board. This way the cops would have to go rescue him, instead of busting the boats bringing in the drugs.

As cool as some of this sounds, the flip side is just horrific. Not just murders, but mass murders skyrocketed. The murder rate quintupled. The Cubans and Colombians were at it with one another to start with, because the Colombians decided to cut the Cubans out of it and try to run it all. Then of course it was Columbians vs. other Colombians. The Cubans of course were the boat people that Castro sent to the US, everyone from Cuba's prisons, mental institutes, and so on. These guys would get into an argument and kill each other. If they needed to kill a guy sitting at a table and there were six other people sitting there, they would just kill all seven of them with automatic weapons. The assassin said that he made a trip to New York once as part of a gang war and killed 11 people in one night.

...

I'm just gonna...Not do that then... ...



Person 'o' Interest, two part finale for season 2...Well, that was seven shades of awesome...Proper loved it!...

If they were Mexican a lot more chainsaws would be involved.

Actually, chainsaws and machetes were involved. The Godmother - Griselda Blanco - who ran things in Miami for the Medellin Cartel liked to chop people up and put the parts into boxes. The assassin recounted that when he first joined up. His first big job was to find a guy that the Godmother wanted dead. He kidnapped him and turned him over. The next day she came to see him at his house, and sat down to eat dinner with him, his wife, and kids. While they ate, she told him how they had chopped the guy up, put him in a box with bow tie around it, and dropped it off by the side of the expressway a few miles away.

Thankfully she is dead now. She ticked off the Cartel, and they put a price on her head. She was assassinated just a few years ago in fact.

Sounds like the cartels alright.

Ermmm...We saw a pair of Magnum P.I. last night...One with T.C.'s daughter getting kidnapped...Co-written by Roger E. Mosely...Which was nice...Actually, an excellent episode...Then another one, this one more Rick orientated with his friend Ice-Pick being set up for a murder...And some other stuff involving a crooked judge and Magnum's friend Carol...


Er...Oh yeah!!...Saw Empire the other night!!...No, not Star Wars, Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back, but Empire!!...See?...Star Wars, Empire, Jedi...That's how it works...Then The Farty Man-arse, Attack of The Clowns and Revenge of The Sith...No, it doesn't even get changed...I dunno why...I just can't think of anything funny for it...*Le Shrug*...

Aaaamywho...Saw Empire, and even the kids were mightily impressed with it...They both agreed that it was a much better film than Star Wars...Thoroughly enjoyed that...



We also saw this new X-Men film...It was good, awesome even...But I came away feeling less than I should have...

Everyone involved was brilliant...The writing was brilliant...The story made sense...Every hero in it had their moment to shine, definitely...No wasted talents at all...

McAvoy and Fassbender were thoroughly awesome...Hugh Jackman's effort was probably his best yet...Stewart and McKellern were on top form, as usual...But...I still came away thinking..."Yeah...But..."...

Dunno...An excellent film...So definitely worth watching...Can't say that enough...But...

National Geographic. I needed some inspiration from wildlife to write certain parts of my fanfic.

A Wild Dog's tale is a documentary about a female Painted(Wild) Dog that was running around solo before forming her own pack . . . composed of jackals and hyenas. Yeah, the predators who are typically enemies somehow banded together to hunt prey in the wild. Very interesting.

It's finale season so we just had the one for Agents of SHIELD...That wasn't bad actually...It was nice to see Sam Jackson again!... ...And on proper heroic form too...

Bill Paxton had another fun turn in his usual acting turn - dying... ...

Ermmmm...I'm sure there was other stuff...Probably NCIS:LA, Hawaii...Oh!...Finale of Warehouse 13...*Sniffs*...Oh yeah, there was that...I got a tad...Sad...I'll miss that show...

Erm...Penny Dreadful...That as well...Fun...Odd, but fun...

Castle is always good...

Yeah, the finale of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't bad, though they could've given Samuel L. Jackson something a little more significant to do...

And I'm working my way through Cowboy bebop again

JEDI!!!!!!...

No, not Star Wars Episode VI: Return of The Jedi...

But, JEDI!!!!...Aw yeah!!...And, something strange happened...I'm quite happy to say that Jedi may be my fave of the originals...

No, put the rocks down a sec!!!!... ...

I cannot stand the Ewoks and will never like them...I just can't...Plus, all the traps they built to take out the AT-STs...How quickly did they build them?...And if they'd already built them, why hadn't...Oh nevermind...

Anways, it really is a fun movie...The whole Jabba's Palace thing was a blast and funny too...Then the whole alliance fleet thing is proper awesome...

That battle at the end is brilliant...Yes, the whole Luke vs Vader thing is light years away from Obi Wan vs Maul...But still... ...I really did come away thinking that I'd enjoyed watching it far more than I ever have before...

I must be getting old... ...

Louis Theroux: Thai Brides

this old man is making me uncomfortable

Game of Thrones in five minutes!

I went to see Maleficent today. I really enjoyed it.

Prince Oberyn(Red Viper) Vs Gregor(The Mountain) Clegane! Yuss please!

Edit: I knew it was going to happen but seeing on screen . . . yikes.



Sansa Stark just added herself as a new player in the Game. Being taught by the master manipulator that started it all, I can't wait to see where this takes her.

My least favorite part of Game Of Thrones is the whole thing because I can't watch it

I mean I could just watch it online in incognito but I don't wanna, maybe I just feel I should be truthful to my parents.

Fortunately most of the programmes have finished now...But there's still the Penny Dreadful/Almost human/NCIS:LA/Hawaii/Castle/TOTP things going on...Which has been a blast to try and fit in, I tell ya... ...

I started watching Veronica Mars this week, and am enjoying it immensely.


What about Magnum PI!

...Probably sunday night now...We've abandoned the silage due to the likely torrential thunderstorms tomorrow...So boss has gone away for a break...As he does...Therefore I'm also busy all weekend until the early evenings...But there's a decent chance of watching Magnum on sunday...Tune in here for the exciting conclusion to this saga... ...

Did I mention we saw the one where Higgins was stuck on an island with three young offenders?...One of which shot the prison probation officer (or whatever he was)...And then Higgins had to rely on his wartime experience etc...

I really enjoyed that one...

Ooooh, I also caught the start of an old NCIS episode that was called...

Wait for it...

"Sub Rosa"... ...

I didn't get chance to see what it was all about - apart from it being an investigation on a submarine, hence the title methinks - but I thought the title made it a...Proper Awesome™ episode... ...

I loved that Higgns with the three probies episode too. It was like the good old days when Higgy, Corky Bostwick, Binky Farmbush, and Inky Gilbert were taking on Rommel in North Africa!

That is a great name for an episode! There was a supplement for an RPG named Sub Rosa too (forget the game), and there is even a computer game called it too! They must be Proper Awesome all!

We liked Veronica Mars quite a bit. Enough so that we got the "10 Years After" movie from Amazon Instant...

The cast was good at being complex and real and humorous... the interactions between Kristen Bell and Enrico Colantoni were always excellent.

I watched the first 3 episodes of Firefly!

Awesome show!

One of the greatest shows ever made.

I watched Blood Diamond yesterday. Good movie, really highlighting the 'Resource Curse' of Africa.


The clever banter between characters hearkens me back to Buffy. I wish I had even half of Veronica's brass! Especially when she comes home from a date to find Daddy waiting in the living room. I also like the deeper mystery of who really killed her best friend, and why, that I can see will take an entire season to unfold, if not longer. Which is fine by me, it gives us an intriguing mega-mystery to hang the rest of the one-episode mysteries between.

This is the film where I started seeing Leo DiCaprio as more than just "a pretty face." I really liked him in this movie. I also loved Djimon Hounsou in this - he played his role with such strength and quiet emotional power that I was just blown away.

TBH, I don't think DiCapricorn has qualified as a pretty face for a while now...

I have been a fan of Djimon Hounsou for a long time. I really liked him in Push, and he's been good in a lot of other films too, like Gladiator and Constantine.

And oh look, we finally got some female superheros in a Marvel film...

I love that show. Enjoy!

Not much to add. I'm just sad that Firefly was cancelled. I wish I'd been a millionaire and known about the show's financial issues. I'd have dropped a couple million on them as an investment, the show wasn't allowed to achieve the popularity it could have IMO.

Been watching lots of Dino documentaries lately. Dinosaur Revolution was ok, but got a bit silly in parts.

Prehistoric was interesting. They took one city in North America, and went back to different points in time to show what the landscape was like, and what dinos were living there. But with six episodes, the fauna got pretty repetitive. A mammoth in New York is not really much different from one in Denver after all. Really the most interesting thing was seeing just how dramatically the geology of the continent changed over the millions of years, with places going from extremes of oceans, to forests, to covered in glaciers.

Dinosaur Hunters: Secrets of the Gobi Desert was rather dull. The most interesting thing were the two paleontologist partners, who I had the distinct impression were 'partners' in another sense as well. Seriously, my gaydar pinging was the most interesting part of that one.

Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia, has stunning vistas of modern day Patagonia. It is an IMAX movie, so eye-popping visuals are to be expected. Not a whole lot of dinosaurs, but a lot about paleontology. The best parts are Patagonia (which is just plain gorgeous), and Donald Sutherland's narration. Worth it just for those two things. The rest is just bonus win.

I saw the first episode of Dinosaurs Unearthed. It is an interesting look at the discovery of a hadrosaur mummy. Not a just a skeleton, but a fossil with the skin, flesh, muscle and so on. Sadly, they were not able to recover any viable proteins from the fossil. Otherwise in another decade we might have had cloned duck-bill dinosaurs roaming the great plains of North America. Move over hamburger, I want some hadroburgers!

I also made a diversion with Did God Create The Universe? A very well done docu by Stephen Hawking, narrated by Benedict Cumberbun, about the Big Bang and creation of the universe.

Now since I have been doing so much dinoing, I think Jurassic Park is up next.

Documentry about atheism by Stephen Hawking and Benedict Cummberbatch?

R.I.P tumblr, cause of death explosion of edginess

Nothing that dramatic. It just explains how the big bang happened, and how none of it required an invisible person in the sky orchestrating affairs.

I just saw Days of Future Past. Lots of fun. Perhaps the best part is that it fixes the mess made by X-Men 3. Oh, and I am now also officially in love with Bingbing Fan. Though she still has to compete with Ellen Page and Jennifer Lawrence.

I had to google Bingbing Fan. She's a cutie! She looks very much like one of your TES or FO characters.

I just watched Now You See Me.

Easily one of the best films I've ever seen.

It's a masterpiece.

@SubRosa: Does it fix the mess they made with X-Men First Class?

Or is that expecting too much

careful now ( also Deists exist, I was one)

Just got around to watching Return of the Jedi.

Now I just have to remember when I watch it in future to stop after Luke lights Anakin's pyre.

That way I don't have to watch the galaxy celebrating crap, and that git from the prequels crashing the Jedi spirit scene