Friday, March 21, 2008
Friday night amuse me blogging.
Since last week’s was such fun, I thought we should do it all over again. So the following in the comments, if you please.
1) Favourite zombie/virus/unexplained rage movie — serious and/or satire.
2) Favourite retro TV show.
3) Author that you like that no one else seems to — or at least won’t admit to liking.
Me first.
1) Zombie satire ... no question Shaun of the Dead. Just truly hilarious, bent Brit humour from the brilliant mind of Simon Pegg. Rage virus would have to be Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later. Scared the hell outta me.
2) Hmmm, definitely a toss-up between Get Smart and the Carol Burnett Show. In my opinion, they're both outstanding examples of TV that was ahead of its time. I’ve seen all the episodes more times than I can count and I’ll still watch any time some channel picks them up in repeats.
3) Stephen King. And no, I don’t care if people think he’s a hack. Any author who can consistently turn out books with characters that I can honestly care about and plots that are so scary they screw with my sleep patterns has some serious writing chops.
Your turn.
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7 comments:
1. I'm going all retro here. The Andromeda Strain - when I was a kid that scared the crap out of me. And The Omega Man with Charlton "gunsgunsguns" Heston, when zombies were kind of pale and had contact lenses. And wore robes. The cult of zombie. An entirely different sort of cheese than the Will Smith joint, I Am Legend.
2. Laugh In and the Monkees for campy counter-cultural comedy with a bit of the rock'n'roll aesthetic. Laugh In was revolutionary and totally rewrote the rules of what comedy could be on the tube. And it gave the world Lily Tomlin and Goldie Hawn. You bet your bippy!
3. Not so much an author as a genre. I adore early science fiction with all the crazy, disproven, speculative science. The antiquated social mores projected into the future and robots powered by atomics. Pulp era sci-fi is a fascinating peek at the fears and aspirations of another age.
Children Shouldn't play with dead things.
Really bad. Really funny. Hell its a laugh fest to see even the trousers the actors are wearing in this movie...
Children Shouldn't play with dead things
I own a copy. Im looking for a Redneck Zombies....heh. I have the poster to that one...
Dick Van Dyke. Dunno, don't care, I like it.
Jill Churchhill.....Mysteries. Titles like, War and Peas, Farewell to yarns.
And Nancy Pickard's Jenny Cain series. Again, mysteries....
.
1. Outbreak - but only because I like Dustin Hoffman.
2. Green Acres - my favourite episode was when he went to get the electricity hooked up. There's nobody waiting, but the county worker tells him to take a number and it's like 99. Then she starts calling out numbers from 20 or 30 and he has to wait through all of the numbers. Priceless.
3. Clive Barker - I was hooked by Weaveworld.
1)Return of the Living Dead (mainly for the 45 Grave tune "Party Time"
2)Tie - "Gunsmoke" and "Sanford and Son"
3)Jodi Picoult. I know her stuff is a bit bookclubbish, but every time I've picked up one of her novels I can't put it down.
1)1Favourite zombie/virus/unexplained rage movie — serious and/or satire.
The Stuff (starring Michael Moriarty!)
2) Favourite retro TV show.
Moonlighting -- I had such an enourmous teen-crush on Bruce Willis
3) Author that you like that no one else seems to — or at least won’t admit to liking
Stephen King... I have my husband and my best friend in the world who HATE Stephen King, but he's probably the top of my list of guilty pleasures reading. Why? I keep waiting to be annoyed by the latest book, but it never happens. He is immensly readable. And as far as I'm concerned he's never jumped the shark
1) Shaun of the Dead for inspired hilarity although I’m not much of a fan of the whole zombie genre of movies.
2) The Avengers for its absurdity and endearing quirkiness.
3) Colin Wilson, although he’s all over the map, from serious works on existentialism and philosophy to crackpot parapsychology and the occult. A Criminal History of Mankind, although an incoherent jumble as a book, is a wonderful omnibus of atrocities and human depravity through time.
Zombie/rage:
Shaun of the dead for brilliance; Fido for Canadian content; the original Night of the Living Dead for being so revolutionary on a shoestring.
Retro TV:
Ernie Kovacs, now virtually unknown, recently collected in a two DVD collection. The first comedian who actually figured out what "television" was all about, and played with the medium itself.
Guilty reading pleasure:
Since Stephen King and Clive Barker are already taken, I'll add: pulp fiction SF writers from the 1950s. Not the greats like Henlein, Bradbury and Clarke - I mean the second string guys like Kuttner, CL Moore and Brown. (Hey, RT, LOVE Colin Wilson, except when he tries to get scientific with the paranormal. One of the last of those quirky British polymath eccentrics.)
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