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Review of the TV movie The Dreamer of Oz (1990)

Posted in movies, pop culture, TV shows, Wizard of Oz with tags movies, Oz books readthru, pop culture, reviews, TV shows, Wizard of Oz on May 16, 2013 by Paxton

I’m going to continue with my reviews of all things Oz with a TV movie that NBC aired in 1990 called The Dreamer of Oz.

Dreamer_of_Oz_title

The movie was a fictionalized biography of the adult life of L Frank Baum and how he was inspired to write The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. I remember watching much of this when it originally aired. My family had no desire to watch it so I was vetoed during commercials and had to switch back and forth, sometimes missing chunks of the story. However, I remember it fondly and I wanted to revisit it for my Oz series.

In the movie, L Frank Baum was played by John Ritter.

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Baum’s wife, Maud, was played by Annette O’Toole. Maud’s mother, Mathilda Gage, was played by Rue McClanahan.

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Also of note, Ritter’s real life son, Jason, played one of his sons in the movie which I thought was a nice touch.

The movie is actually book ended by scenes at Grauman’s Chinese Theater (aka, TCL Chinese Theater in Hollywood) in 1939 during the world premier of the MGM musical version of The Wizard of Oz. A reporter takes an elderly Maud Baum aside and asks her about her husband Frank and how he came to write the book.

The rest of the story is told in flashback and begins about the time Maud meets Frank during a party thrown by one of Frank’s sisters. We see the courtship of the couple and the many lean years in which Frank tries to do different jobs and make ends meet. We see him start to tell his children and the children of the neighborhood pieces of a larger story about what he calls “The Magical Land”. The ideas are developed over the years and we see some of the inspirations for characters along the way. Eventually Baum meets WW Denslow while writing the book Father Goose which would go on to be a big hit. Baum gambles the royalties of that book to sell what is now called “The Land of Oz” book. And, obviously, it hits. Big time.

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Nerd Lunch Episode 82: 90s sitcoms

Posted in podcast, pop culture, TV shows with tags Nerd Lunch Podcast, nostalgia, podcast, pop culture, TV shows on April 23, 2013 by Paxton

You have arrived at Episode 82 of the Nerd Lunch podcast. Unfortunately, Jeeg went on a bender the other night and is sleeping it off so we are joined by two guests. The first is my co-host from the Cult Film Club podcast, Jaime Hood. Also in the guest seat is the return of our good friend, William Bruce West.

Urkel

This week the four of us discuss sitcoms from the 1990s. We talk about our favorites, our not so favorites, some of the ones we thought were overrated and some of the ones we thought were canceled too soon. Surprisingly there are a couple shows that show up on all of those lists. It’s a fun time talking about TV shows from the 90s, so join us, won’t you?

Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner.

Or listen to it online here.

Nerd Lunch Episode 79: Drilldown on Firefly

Posted in Firefly, podcast, pop culture, TV shows with tags Firefly, Nerd Lunch Podcast, podcast, pop culture, TV shows on April 2, 2013 by Paxton

Only 21 episodes to go before we hit the big 100. This week we are joined again by the always awesome Mark Dury, the unofficial fifth Atomic Geek. We brought Mark in to finally discuss a subject that I am frankly shocked we haven’t really discussed yet. We get nerdy and drill down on one of the Geek Sci-Fi Holy Grails, Joss Whedon’s Firefly.

We talk about our own experiences with the show. We see if any of us saw the very short Fox run or if we saw the movie. We even discuss if we would like to see Firefly return in some form or another. It’s all pretty geeky. Come check it out.

Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner.

Or listen to it online here.

Bionic Review: Dynamite Comics’ The Bionic Man (2011)

Posted in Bionic Man, comic books, movies, pop culture, TV shows with tags Bionic Man, Bionic Review, comic books, movies, pop culture, reviews, Six Million Dollar Man, SMDM Comic, TV shows on March 29, 2013 by Paxton

Richard Anderson, the man who played Oscar Goldman in The Six Million Dollar Man TV series tried for years to get a Bionic Man movie off the ground. Many different writers took a stab at a script. In the mid-90s, Kevin Smith famously wrote a script for a Bionic Man movie that was a reboot of the TV series. I was very excited about this prospect as, at the time, I was a big fan of Kevin Smith and loved the idea of him re-imagining the Steve Austin universe (of which I was a big fan). Unfortunately, nothing ever happened on that project. It just disappeared. Then, in March 2011, Kevin Smith announced that his unproduced script would be re-adapted into a comic book series for Dynamite comics. The comic’s script would be written by Phil Hester and be based on Smith’s movie script. The book’s interiors would be drawn by Jonathan Lau, it would have Alex Ross variant covers and the name would be Kevin Smith’s The Bionic Man. The first issue would be released in August 2011.

Up to this point I have read the first 14 issues of Dynamite’s The Bionic Man. The first 10 issues contain the story arc that is taken directly from Kevin Smith’s unproduced script.

Essential Plot: It starts off very similar to the original TV show/novel. The events have been updated a bit and a few things changed. We actually start off, not with Steve Austin, but with a break in at a government laboratory. An unknown assailant kills all the scientists and steals what looks like a bionic arm. Then we cut to Steve Austin at home. He’s still a test pilot. He’s engaged to Jaime Sommers. Austin is about to retire as a test pilot and marry Jaime. He just has one more test flight to make. And what happens is exactly what you expect. Something goes wrong with the flight, Austin crashes and loses both of his legs, his right arm and his left eye. In this story he’s good friends with a younger version of Oscar Goldman. They convince Steve to become a part of their bionics experiment, so the government pronounces him dead and begin the operations to graft on the bionic limbs. There are several issues devoted to Steve’s recovery and coming to grips with the fact that he’s now part machine. In issue #7 Jaime returns as Steve unexpectedly finds himself at her house and reveals to her that he’s not, in fact, dead. In this issue we also discover that the earlier mysterious assailant from issue #1 has ties to Austin and the bionic program, so the rest of the story arc is discovering information about this assailant and Steve going after him to put a stop to his plans.

The next issue after the Smith arc, #11, was a standalone issue. Steve goes back to his parents’ ranch for some soul searching. We meet his parents and see that his father is dying.

Issue #12 begins the first new wholly original story arc. It’s written by Phil Hester and Aaron Gillespie and drawn by Ed Tadeo. This story introduces the fan favorite bionic Bigfoot from the TV show into the new bionic universe. Austin discovers some unscrupulous people are attaching bionic parts to Bigfoot creatures so he teams up with one of them to help.

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Bionic Review: Cyborg IV by Martin Caidin (1975)

Posted in Bionic Man, books, Six Million Dollar Man, TV shows with tags Bionic Review, book, Book Report, pop culture, Six Million Dollar Man, SMDM Book, TV shows on March 4, 2013 by Paxton

Martin Caidin wrote his fourth and final Steve Austin novel in 1975. It was called Cyborg IV.

Cyborg IV

By this point, Caidin’s character had spun off into the famous Six Million Dollar Man TV show. However, Caidin continued his novels as if the TV show didn’t exist. The continuity within the novels did not overlap with the show. Despite this fact, this particular book was included as #6 in the Six Million Dollar Man book series. Which is confusing (is it Book #6 or Book #4?). The Six Million Dollar Man book series were paperback translations of episodes of the TV show in which authors like Mike Jahn and Jay Barbree novelized episodes like Pilot Error, Rescue of Athena One and Solid Gold Kidnapping. Caidin’s third Cyborg novel, High Crystal, was also confusingly included in this series. The first two Cyborg books were not included.

For this last novel, Caidin takes the idea of “man working in tandem with machines” to a new level. Steve is introduced to a new project within the Army in which an advanced fighter jet/spaceship is directly connected to a human pilot so that ship and man are one and the same. This setup requires that the human pilot have interface ports surgically added to his body, but since Steve already has most of that done, Oscar thinks he’s the perfect test pilot for the project.

The idea that Caidin introduces here is pretty cool. When directly connected to the ship, Steve would “feel” and “see” what happens to that ship as if it were a part of his body. Instead of having gauges and digital readouts tell him about the telemetry of the ship, it would be fed directly into his body and he’d know it just as he knows that it’s cold outside or that he’s hungry. It’s a pretty crazy idea and for some reason it immediately made me think of the Clint Eastwood movie Firefox. And the first time they test Steve and the plane, they have to dial back the connection to 30%, otherwise, Austin may lose all of his individual identity and become “one” with the ship. The way it’s written in the book is actually pretty cool.

The problem? Caidin is his own worst enemy. We spend the first 1/3-2/3 of the book learning about the project and then training Steve on the equipment. The final action of the book is really just the very first outer space flight test for the plane/cyborg hybrid. There is a small conflict with the Russians in that they are destroying US spy satellites, but other than that, the book is just training and a few test flights of the new ship. And the book essentially just ends not giving you any indication about the future of the project or where Steve will go next.

So, again, I’m a little frustrated reading these Caidin Cyborg books because the author has really good ideas but the written execution of the novel is seriously lacking. And considering the books are short, (< 200pgs) Caidin still manages to drone on WAY too long about the most mundane things. So while I’d recommend this more than Operation Nuke it’s not as good as High Crystal or the original Cybog novel.

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