And now for some things very different. I cannot remember if I have seen one of the Ice Age movies from start to finish in one sitting, but since they had been shown on television I had seen the most if not all the three films todate at various sittings. The overall theme is that of a buddy movie of very different and unlikely characters. Each film covers the adventures of Scrat a sabre-toothed squirrel and his struggle to find and keep prized acorns. In the first film Scrat has various adventures trying to find somewhere to bury and hide an acorn, including an incident which starts an avalanche which he tries to flee from, is struck by lightening so that the acorn becomes a kernel of pop corn. He is frozen into an ice cube which on reaching a tropical island thaws but the acorn is washed out to sea. He then thinks coconut is a giant acorn which he tries to bury causing a volcanic eruption.
In the third film of the series Scrat has a romantic liaison with a female called Scrattie and which causes various conflicts of interest giving up opportunities to have an acorn rather than lose his beloved. However as the film ends the two fight for possession and in the final scene he escapes to the surface leaving Scrattie trapped underground only to then lose the acorn to her.
The main characters are all pre historic creatures with Manfred, a wholly Mammoth, and he appears in all three films, believing he is the last creature of his size in existence until he meets Elle, a female Mammoth voiced by Queen Laifah in the second film Ice Age: the Melt Down. When an infant she was separated from her parents and the herd and comes across two opossums named Crash and Eddie, along with their mother. She forgets her origins and thinks she is also an opossum which includes sleeping upside down by their tails. During the meltdown they come across the herd which Elle having adjusted to being a Mammoth needs to rejoin while Manfred remain loyal to the rest of the gang, until reminded as what is important by the others and goes off to join Elle, but they both return deciding that they do not want to eave the gang. In the third Ice Age: Age of the Dinosaurs, Elle is left behind at one point in a precarious position and when they return they find that she has given birth to their daughter who is called Peaches!
It is only in the second film that we meet Crash and Eddie twin opossums whose mother saved Elle and the three are raised as siblings which creates conflicts of loyalty when Elle is found by Manfred and two pair off. They are competitive and playful rascals who have a love hate relationship with Sid, a giant ground sloth shown in all three films as one of the main characters. He is clumsy and fast-talking and longs to be loved. He also develops the ability to create fire which proves useful
Diego is a sabre Toothed tiger who is the joint leader of the gang who makes sarcastic comments without being malicious and by the third film begins to worry that he is losing his predatory abilities and considered staying in the underground world of the dinosaurs. There are other characters who appear in one of the films or who have roles outside the group.
In the first Ice age a human child is found with his mother who dies pleading with Manny to save her child. Diego’s role is duplicitous at first leading into an ambush but later helps them to overcome and kill the leader of the sabre toothed tigers and they are then able go off in search of a warmer environment.
In the second film the plot is described in the title as the gang have to escape the melting down of the ice. The new character is a Fast Tony a con artist spiv with the voice of Jay Leno.
In their efforts to escape the flood they are required to move across water and Diego refuses to admit his fear until challenged that if fear is for prey the he is the prey of water and overcomes his fear.
Sid is captured by a large tribe of mini-sloths who treat him like a God repeating every word he says and every movement. Sid finds this wonderful given his experiences with the gang to date but then learns that he is to be sacrificed to a volcano in an effort to stop the world being flooded by the meting ice. The others do not believe him until they are confronted by the tribe who want Sid to be their leader because they believe he has saved them from the flood. It is at this point Diego tells Sid how important he is to the group and persuades him to stay with them. There is a joyous moment at the end of the second film as Scrat falls into a fissure in the giant wall of ice that has formed a dam and finds himself in a heaven full of acorns. He is about to start enjoying this new existence when he is pulled away having been found near death by Sid who has resuscitated him.
In the third film, with another planned for next year, Sid is taken by a female Tyrannosaurs after taking her eggs and enters a subterranean tropical lost world. Sid finds and looks after the three eggs which hatch and becomes part of the family.
The show stealer is a weasel, “missing his right eye and wears a leaf as an impromptu eyepatch, and seems slightly insane (he claims that he woke up one day, married to an ugly pineapple, but he still loved it, and Manny calls him a "deranged hermit"). According to the official website, Buck is one-eyed and relentless in his hunting for dinosaurs. Buck's archenemy is a large albino Baryonyx he calls Rudy, who gouged out Buck's eye and whose tooth he later sharpened into a knife that he carries with him. In fact, Buck is the only inhabitant of the dinosaurs' world who does not fear Rudy in the slightest, though he possesses a deep respect for him. Due to living underground for so long, he has an extensive knowledge of the dangers of the dinosaur world.
After Rudy's potential death, Buck, having lost his purpose in life, decides to join the herd and live on the surface. Upon hearing a distant familiar roar that tells him that Rudy survived their battle, he chooses to stay and causes a cave-in that seals off the path between the surface and the underground jungle, trapping him inside and everyone else on the surface. He and Rudy proceed to continue their battle
While the films are aimed at young children with their families, as with all such films there are sad moments and scenes which will disturb some however unintentional.
In complete contrast I watched in disbelief a new mini series called Spartacus from Sky 1. The story is Spartacus has become film through the Kirk Douglas film and he famous Chariot race first released in 1960 but still shown regularly on various TV channels. He was a real person who led an uprising of slaves against the Roman Empire between 110 years and 70 BC.
There is uncertainty over his background before becoming a slave and gladiator with sources saying he belonged to a nomadic tribe Thracian tribe, south west of Bulgaria and that his wife a prophetess was also enslaved with him.
In the Mini series he is portrayed as a great warrior who agrees to help the Roman fights against local forces who are enemies of his people. The local Roman Commander has taken the appointment arranged by the father of his wife, an important Roman politician, who had hoped the man would quickly distinguish himself. To do this he needs to fight more important enemies so he goes back on his word and demands the tribes’ men join him in the new fight which leaves their families and homes at the mercy of their advancing enemies. He kills a party led by the Roman commander demanding they join the new fight but makes the mistake of leaving the commander without checking that he too is dead rather than unconscious. The consequence is that his wife is captured and turned into slave dancer and whore and he with the other rebels is also captured and brought to Rome die in the arena. However he overcomes those set against him and gains his life, but is passed to a trainer of gladiators.
So far so good in that this broadly follows the film and story. The difference is the extent of violence with comic book splashes of blood and guts in colourful close up, There is also full frontal female nudity and lots of soft porn sex. In the real story, Spartacus plotted with other trained gladiators to rebel and defeated a small army sent to defeat their comparatively small band of 70. The group elected Spartacus and two others to be their leaders and take action from their well defended positions around the Volcanic Mount Vesuvius in the south of Italy, several days journey on foot from Rome.
So with this additional knowledge I came to the second episode of the TV mini series sub titled Blood and Sand. The episode opens with Spartacus having a nightmare in which he is making passionate love with his wife who then slaughtered with much blood.
We then learn about his new owner: Quintus Lentus Batiatus played by the established actor John Hannah, a man who ha inherited his Gladiator school from his grandfather and who is ambitious for more power and wealth beyond the capacity of his business and with an equally ambitious wife. We are then entertained as the couple have great sex after each being stimulated by slaves, both female. Quintus is out to impress Gaius Claudius Glaber, the Commander responsible for the enslavement of Spartacus who is to visit with his wife Ilithya.
Before this Spartacus first refuses to fight and then is shown his lack of skill and comparative lack of body building strength especially by one Crixus who comes from Gaul and is regarded as the champion Gladiator. Glaber humiliates and enrages Spartacus by giving him the piece of cloth which Spartacus gave to his wife and which she tied around one of her legs until her return. He tells Spartacus that his wife and then gave her to his men who use her before she is sold to someone else. When Quintus finds this out he uses the piece of cloth a symbol to get Spartacus to train and fight for him with the promise he will find the wife and reunite her with her husband. Spartacus believes him and beat Crixus in a test to determine if he is worth training to should be sold off to work in the mines, or be killed. Quintus has to stop Spartacus killing Crixus in the test.
The influential and wicked wife of Glaber has never visited a gladiator school before and is immediately attracted by the virility of the men which is noted by the wife of Quintus and the two women strike up an immediate bond and it is evident that this is a relationship which will have future significance.
I watched the second episode of Vera on Sunday and this is what I now remember. A young woman imprisoned for x years for the murder of the 14 year old daughter of her lover escapes while being transferred between prisons and returns to the home of her father who rejects her and in despair she falls under an approaching bus. Throughout she claimed innocence adn Vera has to be persuaded to made further enquiries which take off when the son of a neighbour to the family of the dead girl returns home after being away for three years and is hen found murdered by his mother a few feet away from the car of his sister. Unravelling the tale takes two hours including innumerable advertising breaks.
This is my recollection of the story. The dead girl was handful who became even stroppy when father takes in a young woman only a few years older than himself as his lover. The two did have a major row but it emerges that the young woman had gone to London for the day and could not have been guilty. Someone rings up with this information who left the country at the time but did phone in some information before doing so which was not followed up and then contacted again when learning of the girl’s suicide.
There are red herrings to be mentioned. The first is the suggestion that the daughter was having an affair and this suspect becomes the son until his murder although the suggestion that he had climbed down out of his room on seeing the girl with someone is squashed because of practicalities. We do see him dig someone thing out of a nearby wood and the police amazing find the places where he made several digs for the object. He is then murdered by use of the same spade. The item he digs up with the spade is later found in the piano in the home of the girl’s father who is knocked unconscious by the intruder. This is a scarf which is identified and proved to be the murder weapons. The girl was strangled.
The married daughter of the neighbour who as a young woman found the body of her front is in a terrible state and has been and at one point her husband attempts to take her away to the continent with their small daughter on what appears to be a ferry or cargo vessel. The mother in the family also appears to be in a state even more her son is murdered
The father of the young woman convicted of the murder cannot figure her because of what the publicity did to his wife who aged and died and the impact on him. He effectively was responsible for the death of his child who was innocent as she claimed.
There were also issues in relation the immediate predecessor of Vera who failed to undertake a proper investigation at the time and just not to show prejudice the individual is female and black.
Now here is the rub, the father is the household of the neighbour is a probation officer who was assigned to undertake court reports at the time of the conviction and maintained contact because he said she had no one visiting. He is supposed to have helped her to seek an appeal although it emerges he played around with her audio video tapes in such a way that not appeal was granted. The reasons given why he would have been allowed to have been involved in the case given that he was the neighbour who family had found the girl was given but remains unconvincing. He eventually admits to the killing although we have long since worked out he was not the murderer. This was his wife who had been seen by her son and buried the evidence. The father had been seduced by the girl leading to the wife killing the girl. This was one of those programmes where no one was particularly convincing and one cared little if anything for participants other than of course the three victims, The dead girl, the wrongly convicted potential step mother and the son murdered by his father to protect his mother. I will continue to watch because of the North East scenes.
Blue Bloods was again without redeeming features. Commissioner Regan is shot and the Detective son is not allowed to take charge of the investigation because the number two hopes to be number permanently although this aspect quickly disappears and a surprise detective son investigate after with the help of grand day they work out the assassin is likely to be the son of a criminal with long term grudge. When this son is shot any joy quickly evaporates because from something a nurse says the detective realises the assassin was the good son and what better occasion to take revenge is the special ceremony to make the death of the eldest son attend by all the family. Fortunately Danni with the help of the younger brother foil the attempt with the other son is dressed as a priest. The Commissioner goes to see the old criminal dying in hospital and bring along his friend the Bishop to hear the man’s confession.
In the third film of the series Scrat has a romantic liaison with a female called Scrattie and which causes various conflicts of interest giving up opportunities to have an acorn rather than lose his beloved. However as the film ends the two fight for possession and in the final scene he escapes to the surface leaving Scrattie trapped underground only to then lose the acorn to her.
The main characters are all pre historic creatures with Manfred, a wholly Mammoth, and he appears in all three films, believing he is the last creature of his size in existence until he meets Elle, a female Mammoth voiced by Queen Laifah in the second film Ice Age: the Melt Down. When an infant she was separated from her parents and the herd and comes across two opossums named Crash and Eddie, along with their mother. She forgets her origins and thinks she is also an opossum which includes sleeping upside down by their tails. During the meltdown they come across the herd which Elle having adjusted to being a Mammoth needs to rejoin while Manfred remain loyal to the rest of the gang, until reminded as what is important by the others and goes off to join Elle, but they both return deciding that they do not want to eave the gang. In the third Ice Age: Age of the Dinosaurs, Elle is left behind at one point in a precarious position and when they return they find that she has given birth to their daughter who is called Peaches!
It is only in the second film that we meet Crash and Eddie twin opossums whose mother saved Elle and the three are raised as siblings which creates conflicts of loyalty when Elle is found by Manfred and two pair off. They are competitive and playful rascals who have a love hate relationship with Sid, a giant ground sloth shown in all three films as one of the main characters. He is clumsy and fast-talking and longs to be loved. He also develops the ability to create fire which proves useful
Diego is a sabre Toothed tiger who is the joint leader of the gang who makes sarcastic comments without being malicious and by the third film begins to worry that he is losing his predatory abilities and considered staying in the underground world of the dinosaurs. There are other characters who appear in one of the films or who have roles outside the group.
In the first Ice age a human child is found with his mother who dies pleading with Manny to save her child. Diego’s role is duplicitous at first leading into an ambush but later helps them to overcome and kill the leader of the sabre toothed tigers and they are then able go off in search of a warmer environment.
In the second film the plot is described in the title as the gang have to escape the melting down of the ice. The new character is a Fast Tony a con artist spiv with the voice of Jay Leno.
In their efforts to escape the flood they are required to move across water and Diego refuses to admit his fear until challenged that if fear is for prey the he is the prey of water and overcomes his fear.
Sid is captured by a large tribe of mini-sloths who treat him like a God repeating every word he says and every movement. Sid finds this wonderful given his experiences with the gang to date but then learns that he is to be sacrificed to a volcano in an effort to stop the world being flooded by the meting ice. The others do not believe him until they are confronted by the tribe who want Sid to be their leader because they believe he has saved them from the flood. It is at this point Diego tells Sid how important he is to the group and persuades him to stay with them. There is a joyous moment at the end of the second film as Scrat falls into a fissure in the giant wall of ice that has formed a dam and finds himself in a heaven full of acorns. He is about to start enjoying this new existence when he is pulled away having been found near death by Sid who has resuscitated him.
In the third film, with another planned for next year, Sid is taken by a female Tyrannosaurs after taking her eggs and enters a subterranean tropical lost world. Sid finds and looks after the three eggs which hatch and becomes part of the family.
The show stealer is a weasel, “missing his right eye and wears a leaf as an impromptu eyepatch, and seems slightly insane (he claims that he woke up one day, married to an ugly pineapple, but he still loved it, and Manny calls him a "deranged hermit"). According to the official website, Buck is one-eyed and relentless in his hunting for dinosaurs. Buck's archenemy is a large albino Baryonyx he calls Rudy, who gouged out Buck's eye and whose tooth he later sharpened into a knife that he carries with him. In fact, Buck is the only inhabitant of the dinosaurs' world who does not fear Rudy in the slightest, though he possesses a deep respect for him. Due to living underground for so long, he has an extensive knowledge of the dangers of the dinosaur world.
After Rudy's potential death, Buck, having lost his purpose in life, decides to join the herd and live on the surface. Upon hearing a distant familiar roar that tells him that Rudy survived their battle, he chooses to stay and causes a cave-in that seals off the path between the surface and the underground jungle, trapping him inside and everyone else on the surface. He and Rudy proceed to continue their battle
While the films are aimed at young children with their families, as with all such films there are sad moments and scenes which will disturb some however unintentional.
In complete contrast I watched in disbelief a new mini series called Spartacus from Sky 1. The story is Spartacus has become film through the Kirk Douglas film and he famous Chariot race first released in 1960 but still shown regularly on various TV channels. He was a real person who led an uprising of slaves against the Roman Empire between 110 years and 70 BC.
There is uncertainty over his background before becoming a slave and gladiator with sources saying he belonged to a nomadic tribe Thracian tribe, south west of Bulgaria and that his wife a prophetess was also enslaved with him.
In the Mini series he is portrayed as a great warrior who agrees to help the Roman fights against local forces who are enemies of his people. The local Roman Commander has taken the appointment arranged by the father of his wife, an important Roman politician, who had hoped the man would quickly distinguish himself. To do this he needs to fight more important enemies so he goes back on his word and demands the tribes’ men join him in the new fight which leaves their families and homes at the mercy of their advancing enemies. He kills a party led by the Roman commander demanding they join the new fight but makes the mistake of leaving the commander without checking that he too is dead rather than unconscious. The consequence is that his wife is captured and turned into slave dancer and whore and he with the other rebels is also captured and brought to Rome die in the arena. However he overcomes those set against him and gains his life, but is passed to a trainer of gladiators.
So far so good in that this broadly follows the film and story. The difference is the extent of violence with comic book splashes of blood and guts in colourful close up, There is also full frontal female nudity and lots of soft porn sex. In the real story, Spartacus plotted with other trained gladiators to rebel and defeated a small army sent to defeat their comparatively small band of 70. The group elected Spartacus and two others to be their leaders and take action from their well defended positions around the Volcanic Mount Vesuvius in the south of Italy, several days journey on foot from Rome.
So with this additional knowledge I came to the second episode of the TV mini series sub titled Blood and Sand. The episode opens with Spartacus having a nightmare in which he is making passionate love with his wife who then slaughtered with much blood.
We then learn about his new owner: Quintus Lentus Batiatus played by the established actor John Hannah, a man who ha inherited his Gladiator school from his grandfather and who is ambitious for more power and wealth beyond the capacity of his business and with an equally ambitious wife. We are then entertained as the couple have great sex after each being stimulated by slaves, both female. Quintus is out to impress Gaius Claudius Glaber, the Commander responsible for the enslavement of Spartacus who is to visit with his wife Ilithya.
Before this Spartacus first refuses to fight and then is shown his lack of skill and comparative lack of body building strength especially by one Crixus who comes from Gaul and is regarded as the champion Gladiator. Glaber humiliates and enrages Spartacus by giving him the piece of cloth which Spartacus gave to his wife and which she tied around one of her legs until her return. He tells Spartacus that his wife and then gave her to his men who use her before she is sold to someone else. When Quintus finds this out he uses the piece of cloth a symbol to get Spartacus to train and fight for him with the promise he will find the wife and reunite her with her husband. Spartacus believes him and beat Crixus in a test to determine if he is worth training to should be sold off to work in the mines, or be killed. Quintus has to stop Spartacus killing Crixus in the test.
The influential and wicked wife of Glaber has never visited a gladiator school before and is immediately attracted by the virility of the men which is noted by the wife of Quintus and the two women strike up an immediate bond and it is evident that this is a relationship which will have future significance.
I watched the second episode of Vera on Sunday and this is what I now remember. A young woman imprisoned for x years for the murder of the 14 year old daughter of her lover escapes while being transferred between prisons and returns to the home of her father who rejects her and in despair she falls under an approaching bus. Throughout she claimed innocence adn Vera has to be persuaded to made further enquiries which take off when the son of a neighbour to the family of the dead girl returns home after being away for three years and is hen found murdered by his mother a few feet away from the car of his sister. Unravelling the tale takes two hours including innumerable advertising breaks.
This is my recollection of the story. The dead girl was handful who became even stroppy when father takes in a young woman only a few years older than himself as his lover. The two did have a major row but it emerges that the young woman had gone to London for the day and could not have been guilty. Someone rings up with this information who left the country at the time but did phone in some information before doing so which was not followed up and then contacted again when learning of the girl’s suicide.
There are red herrings to be mentioned. The first is the suggestion that the daughter was having an affair and this suspect becomes the son until his murder although the suggestion that he had climbed down out of his room on seeing the girl with someone is squashed because of practicalities. We do see him dig someone thing out of a nearby wood and the police amazing find the places where he made several digs for the object. He is then murdered by use of the same spade. The item he digs up with the spade is later found in the piano in the home of the girl’s father who is knocked unconscious by the intruder. This is a scarf which is identified and proved to be the murder weapons. The girl was strangled.
The married daughter of the neighbour who as a young woman found the body of her front is in a terrible state and has been and at one point her husband attempts to take her away to the continent with their small daughter on what appears to be a ferry or cargo vessel. The mother in the family also appears to be in a state even more her son is murdered
The father of the young woman convicted of the murder cannot figure her because of what the publicity did to his wife who aged and died and the impact on him. He effectively was responsible for the death of his child who was innocent as she claimed.
There were also issues in relation the immediate predecessor of Vera who failed to undertake a proper investigation at the time and just not to show prejudice the individual is female and black.
Now here is the rub, the father is the household of the neighbour is a probation officer who was assigned to undertake court reports at the time of the conviction and maintained contact because he said she had no one visiting. He is supposed to have helped her to seek an appeal although it emerges he played around with her audio video tapes in such a way that not appeal was granted. The reasons given why he would have been allowed to have been involved in the case given that he was the neighbour who family had found the girl was given but remains unconvincing. He eventually admits to the killing although we have long since worked out he was not the murderer. This was his wife who had been seen by her son and buried the evidence. The father had been seduced by the girl leading to the wife killing the girl. This was one of those programmes where no one was particularly convincing and one cared little if anything for participants other than of course the three victims, The dead girl, the wrongly convicted potential step mother and the son murdered by his father to protect his mother. I will continue to watch because of the North East scenes.
Blue Bloods was again without redeeming features. Commissioner Regan is shot and the Detective son is not allowed to take charge of the investigation because the number two hopes to be number permanently although this aspect quickly disappears and a surprise detective son investigate after with the help of grand day they work out the assassin is likely to be the son of a criminal with long term grudge. When this son is shot any joy quickly evaporates because from something a nurse says the detective realises the assassin was the good son and what better occasion to take revenge is the special ceremony to make the death of the eldest son attend by all the family. Fortunately Danni with the help of the younger brother foil the attempt with the other son is dressed as a priest. The Commissioner goes to see the old criminal dying in hospital and bring along his friend the Bishop to hear the man’s confession.
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