I am becoming a NetFlix addict. Every time I go on their site I find more stuff from my childhood to watch. Currently I am working my way through Jason of Star Command. You mention that title to any one who was a kid in the late seventies and you will get the same reaction, “oh I loved that show when I was a kid!” It was a Saturday morning live action Sci-Fi adventure series that ran for two seasons, a true rarity among seventies kid shows.
An obvious attempt at jumping on the Star Wars bandwagon, it was one of the most expensive shows of it’s day due to the special effects, and followed the adventures of a soldier of fortune out to protect the universe from a self proclaimed dictator, in the usual non violent, no one ever gets hurt kind of way kid’s show were done then, but without the usual life lesson that usually accompanied these shows.
Watching the episodes was enjoyable as I got to relive a fun part of my childhood. The show holds up well today thanks to a talented cast that doesn’t act like they are in something beneath their talent. And it brought back a lot of fond memories of playing Jason with my friends. Though I was alway stuck playing the goofy sidekick Prof Parsifoot instead of cool hero Jason or scary villain Dragos, but that’s the way it goes in childhood.
Well I see Sacha Baron Cohen is coming out with another faux documentary. This time he is doing his character Bruno, a flamboyantly gay Austrian supermodel, and will again chronicle a journey through America. Ummm….yah, I guess. Can’t say I’m all that thrilled, didn’t really get into Borat, so I probably won’t get into Bruno. I don’t really consider Cohen funny, he’’s less a comedian and more of a performance artist, like Andy Kaufman was, only without that sly jokes really on you subtext Kaufman exuded. I wish him luck with his new comedy, but I have my doubts it will score big at the box office. He is putting it out in July amongst some big hitters like Transformers, Harry Potter, and Public Enemies. Of course that could just be good counter programming. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
I’ve been surfing the web looking for any news on the upcoming movie Solomon Kane. The character is one of Robert E. Howard’s less well known creations. In the handful of stories Howard published in the thirties, Kane was a Seventeenth Century Puritan who tracks a murderer from London to Africa, where he encounters witch doctors, vampires, and other nasty supernatural creatures. The movie changes this a bit by having Kane a damned soul fighting evil to atone for his past sins. Originally supposed to have been released in Europe back in March, it is now scheduled for an overseas release in October. No news yet on when a domestic release is scheduled.