The Wrong Box (1966) Review

Featuring an impressive group of actors, this dark farce manages to be both satirical and whimsical at the same time. Set in the Victorian era, it is a classic comedy of errors involving a corpse, a box, and an eccentric family by the name of Finsbury. Expect bizarre situations, innocent romance, scheming relatives,  bird eggs, and the best butler ever in this very amusing movie resurrected through Warner Bros. Archive’s made on demand DVD service.

Every family has at least one film that somehow becomes a tradition to watch. In my family’s case, one of those films is The Wrong Box, an unfairly obscure comedy from the 1960’s. Long before I ever had a chance to see the movie, I had heard all about it and memorized quotes from it. It would not be until the 1980’s before I got to see it on cable TV. Thankfully, it lived up to the hype from the family!

For years I had looked for it on DVD to no avail. But thanks to Warner Bros., I now have the movie and it is worth the premium price I paid for it. It was a pittance to bring back some cherished family memories. Popping the DVD into the Blu-ray player, I wondered what the quality of the picture would be. To my delight, the very 60’s animated opening credits looked great as John Barry’s whimsical score started and so I settled in to watch this deeply, wrongly funny movie.

Wikipedia, Minecraft, Craigslist, and Reddit Go Black Tomorrow

While it is only the English language version of Wikipedia going black to protest SOPA and PIPA, it will not go ignored by millions of users there and at the other sites participating. WARNING: the link will have a video start up automatically, but the text also covers the details.

It will be interesting to see how much this affects things. I have to say that Dick Costolo of Twitter has it very wrong from reading that quote in the article. Of course, Hollywood types live and die by Twitter these days, so I am not surprised by his stance. I do not have a way of blacking out my blog so that will not happening here. Instead I'll let my posts opposing SOPA and other IP "protections" speak for themselves.

Ding Dong, the SOPA Bill Is Dead

Some good news that Eric Cantor has killed the bill in the House after a weekend where the author, Lamar Smith, started backing away from it and the White House came out in opposition. The latter shows what use an election year can be for activists to derail unpopular legislation. I highly doubt this positive outcome would have happened otherwise.

I hope the Senate version dies as well.

Health 1-16-2012

Burned out from the weekend, which means it was a good weekend. It is odd living a life that seems to play out as a reverse of most people’s. Most await the weekend to recover from the week and I await the week to recover from the weekend.

Crossword puzzle was longer than my usual, but within acceptable limits. Audiosurf, however, did not go well. Simply cannot concentrate properly and actually had problems keeping my eyes open. Today is also not a good pain day.

For the past week I have moved to using my left thumb to control the game on my Xbox 360 controller in an effort to strengthen it. Since late summer, the thumb has been stiffening and snapping, not just popping and alternates between a dull ache and sharp pain. So far, so good in strengthening it but have miles to go yet. Pain and discomfort have lessoned after seven days with flexibility starting to return.

Winter Pays a Visit and Blog Renovations

Crystalized water keeps falling from the sky, blown about in the well chilled air. Between that and the cold water to the bathroom repeatedly freezing, I have to surmise Old Man Winter has decided to pay us a visit. Now if I could only find the adapter I need to plug in the space heater fan to aim down the crawlspace! It has been a mild winter so far and it is no surprise that we are not getting off scot free.

I have been tweaking the layout and features of the blog again. Certain gadgets have recently become available that I think will help people navigate and explore the posts. At least, I hope that is the end result. After over five years of blogging here, I only just discovered how to insert breaks in long posts. Yeah, the feeling of being a real genius completely avoids describing how that made me feel.

Check out the top visited posts on the right hand sidebar. Also now there are a list of the most used tags on my posts. If you want to share a post somewhere else, check out the bottom of each one. Linking it to your Facebook, Twitter, or blog account should be easy now.

Meanwhile, things have moved ahead somewhat on the car. We’ve scraped up enough money to buy it back from the insurance company and now have to figure out how to get it back home since it is now over one hundred miles away. Having depleted all our money on this, it will be a long time before we can buy the needed parts for it and it will be many months before it runs again. But it is the only way we can afford a vehicle, I am sorry to say.

An unexpected movie will be the subject of my next review thanks to a make on demand service that will also be part of the essay. It is one near and dear to the immediate family alive and dead. That last sentence sounds awkward, doesn’t it? It happens when you have a very small family.

Regaining Some Momentum

Yesterday the last couple of weeks finally caught up to me with a vengeance. The night before I started shutting down physically and Monday I was not up for doing a thing. This is actually a good thing, because of how much I did before hitting the wall and how long it took to do so. Very encouraging, in fact.

At least I got my first Area 88 review up tonight, though it took multiple days to write. It and hopefully another series will be added to my rotation of filler reviews in-between movies and more serious matters. I’m starting to feel like I am getting my feet back under me for the first time since visiting Indiana between Christmas and New Years. That is more than can be said for the GOP presidential contenders not named Romney.

Finally caught the new Sherlock Holmes film featuring Robert Downey, Jr. Well, it is new to me. It was a pleasant surprise and played like an alternate history version of the characters. Nothing brilliant but very entertaining. One odd issue I had with the Netflix DVD was that it was in 16:9 format, not 1.85:1. Flipping through all the TV picture modes and the Blu-ray player settings verified this. Is there a new version of “pan and scan” aka fullscreen on some DVD’s now?

Before the holidays took over, I had started watching Stargate: Atlantis from the pilot on. Only tonight did I remember that and resumed watching my DVDs. It is like watching it for the first time again due to the new HDTV. I found myself marveling at the sets due to the hugely increased picture size. Hard to believe it debuted in 2004 because it has held up very well.

Things are not going well on the car front. Not well at all. The likelihood of getting the Subaru back and attempting to repair it is dwindling, though my father refuses to give up hope. With it being in a salvage yard in Madison, the odds are against it. Not being able to afford getting a used car is just another complication.

Not exactly an auspicious start to the year. Something has to go right eventually.

Area 88 (2004) Target: 01 Treacherous Skies, Ep. 1: Sky Blue

Adapted from one of the first manga’s to be imported into the United States, this somber and contemplative anime about mercenary pilots fighting in a civil war is not your usual cartoon. While filled with many action sequences, character development dominates the story when a mysterious photo journalist comes to airbase Area 88 within the war torn country of Aslan. Dogfights and death rule the sky while men’s souls are broken under a pitiless sun.

Years ago, Netlix suggested this series to me when I was investigating anime in an attempt to understand some of the teens at my church. It looked silly, but I thought “Hey, why not?” and added it to my queue. When it arrived, I cannot say I was eager to watch it, but there was nothing else to watch so into the DVD player it went.

Opening sequences and themes usually set the mood for an anime series (or live action for that matter) and the techno remix of a Bach fugue that opens this promised a lot of action and excitement. Mission (Fuga) by angels is the name of it and it is pretty good for that kind of thing. Pieces of action flew by in rapid succession and so I expected a Top Gun style series without much depth. Boy was I wrong about that. Very wrong.