Merry Christmas, ya filthy animals!

Compliments of the season to y' all. May you do more mulling of wine than mulling of the story decisions in NTTD.

love it! hope you all have a great Christmas and new year :)

No Time to Pie?

Merry Christmas, one and all.

The Pie Who Loved Me? Really? Not The Spy Who Loved Pie?

Merry Christmas all!

Right back at ya', ya' bludgers. May every one of your stockings contain a lovely Blofeld compact.

A merry Christmas Jones to all, and to all a Mary Goodnight!

Since it’s Dec 25 here in Oz, I thought I’d resend my well wishes to you all.

Hope the day begins with gossip about the extended family...


...That you enjoy the moments before you open your dud presents...


...And you enjoy a Christmas turkey.


Merry Christmas!

Happy Holidays and may all your allergies be swiftly cured.

My only series-related present was the 'Wit And Wisdom Of James Bond' book.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

My only series-related present was the 'Wit And Wisdom Of James Bond' book.

I didn't get sweet Fatty Arbuckle in that regard. However, on Christmas Eve I did manage to procure NTTD on DVD and watched it that night.

We had a QUATERMASS (and the Pit) XMAS. It was either that or RAGTIME, those were the surprises I got from my wife. Busted me up to see that one of the background guys who unearths the thing at the start of Quatermass is Gareth, the actor who was the lead in BLAKE'S 7 about a dozen years later. Only Bond tie-in is Julian Glover as the jackass military guy -- there's a very freewheeling 1/2 hr interview with Glover on the disc that must have been done in just the last few years.

There was a plan to remake this QUATERMASS in the 90s but Disney perverted it into MISSION TO MARS. The one draft I read of the movie -- draft number 43! -- was only about half of what was in the finished film, so god knows how many more drafts they went through.

QATP is brilliant. Shook me up a bit when I saw it on the telly at the age of 16 back in '84. I've had it on DVD for quite some time now and watch it with some frequency. Ambler, the noteworthy and notorious ci-devant poster, was also a fan.

The BBC QATP serial that the film was based on has a pretty decent Bond link - Cec Linder, GF's Felix Leiter.

Perilagu Khan wrote:

QATP is brilliant. Shook me up a bit when I saw it on the telly at the age of 16 back in '84. I've had it on DVD for quite some time now and watch it with some frequency. Ambler, the noteworthy and notorious ci-devant poster, was also a fan.

I am a fan too though I only discovered the film through Ambler's recommendation. Which must now be almost fifteen years ago, I suppose!

I imagine the original PIT serial must have a lot more meat on it, given its length (on the blu-ray extras, which are really loaded with interviews and commentaries, SFX guy Brian Johnson admits preferring the serial to the film!) The only tape I ever found for the serial had resolution so bad it was totally unwatchable, even on a small TV, and I'm wondering if there is either a decent copy or maybe even a script floating around on it someplace. Idea-wise, the movie is just a wonder, arriving ahead of Kubrick's 2001.

I saw it at a revival house around 1978 on a triple bill -- I think it played after FORBIDDEN PLANET and before THE INCREDIBLE SHRINKING MAN. Except for the mind-TV views of life on Mars, which triggered off riotous laughter from an audience that had gotten its effects levels recently elevated from STAR WARS and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, everybody seemed very hooked on the film, it wasn't just me.

Speaking of low-budget fx, have started rewatching BLAKE'S SEVEN on Britbox. Image quality is better than I recall from when the show ran on PBS in the mid-80s, but that just kind of makes the poor production values even more obvious. So far, a lot of the eps feel like 1/2 hr shows padded to an hour, but so long as there is the snappy dialog from the Avon character, I think I'll make it through the run in time before the 99centspermonth rate goes up.

My wife sometimes hears me watching it from the kitchen, and I can tell she just loves the dialog, but anytime she comes in to watch, it's like when I tried to show her DARK STAR ... the production values just kill it for her. (she saw BLADE RUNNER first-run when she was 12, so I think it was like 2001 was for me, when I saw it at 7-1/2, kind of ruined me for less than stellar effects.)

ten minutes with my dad's side of the family and I felt like Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia

Sarai wrote:

ten minutes with my dad's side of the family and I felt like Kirsten Dunst in Melancholia

Salomé wrote:

Perilagu Khan wrote:

QATP is brilliant. Shook me up a bit when I saw it on the telly at the age of 16 back in '84. I've had it on DVD for quite some time now and watch it with some frequency. Ambler, the noteworthy and notorious ci-devant poster, was also a fan.

I am a fan too though I only discovered the film through Ambler's recommendation. Which must now be almost fifteen years ago, I suppose!

God only knows what he's up to these days. I've got his email address, but contacting him might not be a good idea.

Dare I ask why, or would the question be indiscreet?

I think things got out of hand on Baker Street (irregularities in the books etc.) and he's now living under an alias in the former Yugoslavia.

So, as Col. Mortimer once remarked, while the question is not indiscreet, the answer might be. Nuf said.

Irregularities in the books also proved to be the undoing for our one (seemingly) good friend up here in Oregon. Thought at first he was set up by his co-worker (who seemed -- and was -- too dumb to be that cunning), but it turns out Terry was totally scamming the college he and my wife worked at, processing refunds for nonexistent returns to the tune of high five-figure amounts yearly.

Don't know which was most galling, that they didn't bother to even try to prosecute him or get any money back, or that he actually attempted to use my wife and I as references for a new school job in NorCal a couple years later. Guy really liked Ridley Scot movies, but I've made an effort to blank just about everything else about him.

Was a bit o' tongue in cheek on my part, Trev. I actually have no idea what happened to Ambler, but recall he did make a point of deleting all his posts one by one.

I seem to remember him saying he'd got work with an employer who forbade any sort of social media 'presence' ... hence the disappearing from here and post deletion. Didn't quite ring true to me, but hey ho.

Not to speak ill of the deleted, but Ambler was a bit--shall we say--mercurial. And that's about as daintily as I can put it. Clever and funny guy, though.

Ambler was an enigma wrapped around a Helga.