Category: Sci-Fi

Chameleon Actor

Stephen Colbert chatted with Robert Duvall recently. Colbert asked Duvall about working with Brando, which is where this clip comes in.

A very different interview with Duvall would focus on his Science Fiction work, including THX-1138.

Years before THX-1138, Duvall appeared in The Twilight Zone. A while ago I watched as many episodes of the original The Outer Limits as I could before it was yanked from Amazon Prime. The series was good at stretching what could have been half-hour episodes into full hours. Duvall worked well with the deliberately slow pacing, as seen in “The Chameleon.”

Square Songs

The extent of my awareness of SpongeBob SquarePants is pretty much limited to knowing what it is. That changed just a bit when I heard this song on one of my favorite SiriusXM shows, Drew Carey’s Friday Night Freak-out.

It sounds like a song-writing collaboration between Brian Wilson and Margo Guryan. That turns out to not be surprising, because the song was written by former Brian Wilson producer Andy Paley.

How about another square song for kids? As featured in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Hmmm… that album cover looks square.

It Takes a Village

The summer of ’68, my last summer living in Connecticut, I was glued to a particular show on the family’s 1-year-old 23″ RCA color console TV. It was exactly like the set, apparently broken, seen in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

What is it with Quentin Tarantino and feet?

The show that captivated me was The Prisoner, a British 17-episode limited series that aired Saturday nights on CBS. I’m in the middle of reacquainting myself with the series, which is currently available for free on Amazon IMDB TV. The first episode is on YouTube.

Sound Trek

For over two-and-a-half years, following a couple of hellish surgeries for a detached retina, I was essentially blind in my left eye. How essentially? I could read something only if it was literally touching my eyelashes.

I’ve always enjoyed listening to radio (heck, I used to work at a radio station) including old-time radio shows, and I did a lot of that during the worst few months of my recovery, while confined to my bedroom. That experience gave me a deeper sympathy for people who are permanently visually impaired.

Sci-Fi Old Time Radio is deserving of special recognition for their TV soundtracks with descriptive narration. The shows were originally available on the now-defunct BlindyTV service, and they include the original Star Trek series and Doctor Who.

Click to go to Sci-Fi OTR

Listening to these programs reminds me of when I was a kid, holding the mic of my little tape recorder near the TV speaker to capture bits of Trek. I’d listen to them after bedtime with an earphone (see two posts ago).

Who Binge Watches the Watchmen?

One thing I didn’t need was another streaming video service, but I got talked into giving HBOmax a try. Over the past three days I’ve watched the nine episodes of HBO’s Watchmen sequel.

The series pushes hard on culture war issues. The presentation owes a lot to the stylistic influence of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul. Some hardcore Watchmen fans have complained the series doesn’t remain true to Alan Moore’s original vision, but it carried me through from one episode to the next. HBO has made the soundtrack available on YouTube, and it’s worth scrolling through the playlist for tracks that may be of interest.