Chuck Todd interviews me about alternate histories
Showing posts with label Day of the Triffids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Day of the Triffids. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Bones 9.18: Meets Day of the Triffids

Sweets says something about Invasion of the Body Snatchers early in Bones 1.18, but the scientific part of this funny episode of Bones has more in common with Day of the Triffids, in which plants gone wild, either genetically engineered (or whatever they called that back in the 1950s) or of alien origin, come close to destroying humanity.   In Bones, it's kudzu, which certainly has jeopardized many a garden, and in this case is growing at a feverish rate around a corpse.

Meanwhile, speaking of corpses, Dr. Edison has made like Bones and has written a forensic murder mystery, except in Edison's case the book is apparently awful.  I saw "apparently", because I have to go by Cam's, Angela's, and Hodgins' words for it, having not read the novel myself.  The sentences they did read aloud did sound terrible - but they could have been taken out of context.  Turns out, indeed, that the joke's on them in the end, because a publisher gives Edison a contract for the book.  Why would a publisher do that, for such a bad book?   To cash in on Bones' reputation as a forensic anthropologist and a best-selling author?  Perhaps, but no publisher I know would do that, so I'm guessing that Edison's book just ain't that bad.

There is another thing, though, that rings untrue about this whole book affair.  What is Edison doing lugging around his novel in a binder - did he get the idea from Mitt Romney?  Nowadays, wouldn't Edison have offered to send his novel to his colleagues via email, in a pdf?  Given that Twitter figured so prominently in this episode, a little digital savvy in book bestowing would have been just the thing.

There was a silver lining, not in the book part, but in the episode, with a great conversation between Bones and her father Max.   After all these years, we still don't know exactly why Max lived the life that he did.   He says again that he can't tell Bones because there are people out there whose lives would still be in danger if word got out about him and them.   In previous years, Max has said that Bones' life would also be in danger.   I have a vague sense that Booth may know more, and Max swore him to secrecy, but I can't quite recall when Max did this.   In any case, it was good to see this new conversation, and its reminder that there's still a piece of big mystery to be revealed in the Bones story.

Hey, happy birthday Christine!  Would be great to see a book by you in some distant future episode.

See also Bones 9.1: The Sweet Misery of Love ... Bones 9.2: Bobcat, Identity Theft, and Sweets ... Bones 9.3 and NCIS 11.2: Sweets and Ziva ... Bones 9.4: Metaphysics of Death in a Television Series ... Bones 9.5: Val and Deep Blue ... Bones 9.6: The Wedding ... Bones 9.7: Watch Out, Buenos Aires ...Bones 9.8: The Bug in the Neck ... Bones 9.9: Friday Night Bones in the Courtroom ... Bones 9.10: Horse Pucky ... Bones 9.11: Angels in Equations ... Bones 9.12: Fingernails ... Bones 9.13: Meets Nashville, and Wendell ... Bones 9.14: "You Cannot Drink Your Glass Away" ... Bones 9.15: Hodgins' Brother and the Ripped Off Toe ... Bones 9.16: Lampreys, Professors, and Insurance Companies ... Bones 9.17: Spartacus in the Kitchen

And see also Bones 8.1: Walk Like an Egyptian ... Bones 8.2 of Contention ... Bones 8.3: Not Rotting Behind a Desk  ... Bones 8.4: Slashing Tiger and Donald Trump ... Bones 8.5: Applesauce on Election Eve ... Bones 8.6: Election Day ... Bones 8.7: Dollops in the Sky with Diamonds ...Bones 8.8: The Talking Remains ... Bones 8.9: I Am A Camera ... Bones 8.10-11: Double Bones ...Bones 8.12: Face of Enigmatic Evil ... Bones 8.13: Two for the Price of One ... Bones 8.14: Real Life ... Bones 8.15: The Magic Bullet and the Be-Spontaneous Paradox ... Bones 8.16: Bitter-Sweet Sweets and Honest Finn ... Bones 8.17: "Not Time Share, Time Travel" ... Bones 8.18: Couples ... Bones 8.19: The Head in the Toilet ... Bones 8.20: On Camera ... Bones 8.21: Christine, Hot Sauce, and the Judge ... Bones 8.22: Musical-Chair Parents ... Bones 8.23: The Bluff ... Bones Season 8 Finale: Can't Buy the Last Few Minutes

And see also Bones 7.1: Almost Home Sweet Home ... Bones 7.2: The New Kid and the Fluke ...Bones 7.3: Lance Bond and Prince Charmington ... Bones 7.4: The Tush on the Xerox ... Bones 7.5: Sexy Vehicle ... Bones 7.6: The Reassembler ... Bones 7.7: Baby! ... Bones 7.8: Parents ...Bones 7.9: Tabitha's Salon ... Bones 7.10: Mobile ... Bones 7.11: Truffles and Max ... Bones 7.12: The Corpse is Hanson ... Bones Season 7 Finale: Suspect Bones

And see also Bones 6.1: The Linchpin ... Bones 6.2: Hannah and her Prospects ... Bones 6.3 at the Jersey Shore, Yo, and Plymouth Rock ... Bones 6.4 Sans Hannah ... Bones 6.5: Shot and Pretty ... Bones 6.6: Accidental Relations ... Bones 6.7:  Newman and "Death by Chocolate" ...Bones 6.8: Melted Bones ... Bones 6.9: Adelbert Ames, Jr. ... Bones 6.10: Reflections ... Bones 6.11: The End and the Beginning of a Mystery ... Bones 6.12 Meets Big Love ... Bones 6.13: The Marrying Kind ... Bones 6.14: Bones' Acting Ability ... Bones 6.15: "Lunch for the Palin Family" ...Bones 6.16: Stuck in an Elevator, Stuck in Times ... Bones 6.17: The 8th Pair of Feet ... Bones 6.18: The Wile E. Chupacabra ... Bones 6.19 Test Runs The Finder ... Bones 6.20: This Very Statement is a Lie ... Bones 6.21: Sensitive Bones ... Bones 6.22: Phoenix Love ... Bones Season 6 Finale: Beautiful

And see also Bones: Hilarity and Crime and Bones is Back For Season 5: What Is Love? and 5.2: Anonymous Donors and Pipes and 5.3: Bones in Amish Country and 5.4: Bones Meets Peyton Place and Desperate Housewives and Ancient Bones 5.5 and Bones 5.6: A Chicken in Every Viewer's Pot and Psychological Bones 5.7 and Bones 5.8: Booth's "Pops" and Bones 5.9 Meets Avatar and Videogamers ... Bad Santa, Heart-Warming Bones 5.10 ... Bones 5.11: Of UFOs, Bloggers, and Triangles ... Bones 5.12: A Famous Skeleton and Angela's Baby ... Love with Teeth on Bones 5.13 ... Faith vs. Science vs. Psychology in Bones 5.14 ... Page 187 in Bones 5.15 ...Bones 100: Two Deep Kisses and One Wild Relationship ... Bones 5.17: The Deadly Stars ...Bones Under Water in 5.18 ... Bones 5.19: Ergo Together ...  Bones 5.20: Ergo Together ... Bones 5.21: The Rarity of Happy Endings ... Bones Season 5 Finale: Eye and Evolution


Not kudzu, silk worms ... in The Silk Code

#SFWApro

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Watch for Flood on Ion Television!

I realized the Brits had an eye for the human-scale disaster movie when I was pretty young - in 1962, when I saw Day of the Triffids. It's still one of the best horror-disaster movies ever made.

Triffids is about plants gone wild. Flood is about bad weather - hurricanes causing devastating floods, in particular.

Flood was first released in the UK in August. It will be shown here in the U.S. on Ion Television - a digital television network - as a four-hour mini-series debuting on December 16.

Don't miss it.

Flood
starts, at first, as an unsurprising post-Katrina movie, with maybe a little Jack Bauer mixed in. The establishment meteorologist misses the monstrosity of an approaching storm. An older scientist who predicted it could happen - or, if it did, that the precautions built to make sure it didn't wipe out London were insufficient - has been ignored, and is on the outs with his son, a marine engineer. Life's not the greatest for the son, either, insofar as he and his beautiful Canadian wife, heading up the Thames Barrier operation - designed to prevent flooding - are divorced.

But then the movie takes off - in two top-notch ways. First, Tom Courtenay (who starred in the classic Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner), puts in a superb performance as the father scientist, Leonard Morrison. Courtenay projects a perfect, quiet power rarely seen on television or in the movies. Joanne Whalley also puts in a powerful performance as the Metro Police Commissioner in London, as does David Suchet (Casino Royale!) as Deputy Prime Minster. Robert Carlyle - who was excellent in The Full Monty - is excellent as Leonard's son Rob, and Jessalyn Gilsig (Heroes' Meredith!) is fine as Rob's ex-wife and Thames Barrier chief, too.

And, a shout-out for Ralph Brown and Tom Hardy of Meadowlands. It was good to see them again in Flood.

So the acting is excellent - and better, in fact, than what we usually see in mini-series.

And the story of Flood is better than the usual disaster movie, too. The personal relationships really start to count as the movie proceeds, and the final half-hour had me fixed to my chair, hoping that ...

Well, I don't want to give any of it away. But I can tell you the scenes of London flooded are excellent, the action taut, and the mini-series all together satisfying.

Except - ok, there was one thing. Stuck about 2/3rds into the movie is a scene in which the Deputy Prime Minister is speaking to some American financial honcho with a German accent (Henry Kissinger?). The British DPM is saying the pound is taking a beating because of the flood, and can he count on the Americans to help. And the American creep with the German accent says, no, we can't, we have to make sure the dollar stays strong...

Two things wrong with that scene. One, who the cares about pounds and dollars at a time like this? And second, here's clue for you Brits: don't take gratuitous potshots at Americans, and portray us with German accents, and expect us to like it ... :)

Otherwise - I highly recommend Flood. Keep yours eyes out for it.






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