Month: February 2012

EP0613: Let George Do It: Nothing But The Truth

Bob Bailey
A western legend, “the last honest man”, who is rumored to be rich, hires George after someone kills his seeing eye dog.

Original Air Date: November 27, 1950

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EP0612: Christopher London: The System-A Code for Murder

Glenn Ford

Christopher London travels from New York to the South France to solve the murder of a great musician.

Original Air Date: May 29, 1950

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EP0611: Barrie Craig: Murder by Error

William Gargan

Barrie is hired by a wife who fears her husband is being blackmailed.

Original Air Date: July 13, 1954

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Movie Review: The Adventures of Tintin

Tintin may be one of the most fun characters that most Americans have never heard of.  Tintin was the creation of the Belgian Cartoonist Herge over a period of nearly 50 years. Tintin is a Belgian investigative journalist who travels the world, getting caught up with one adventure after another, along with his faithful dog, Snowy and usually accompanied by his friend, Captain Haddock. The character came to Americavia HBO and later Nickelodeon through the BBC series which has the same name as the 2011 film, The Adventures of Tintin. 

In the Adventures of Tintin, our intrepid hero buys a model boat at an outdoor market. Two separate buyers are desperate to get the boat and offering top dollar, Professor Sakharine and an American named Barnaby. Tintin’s curiosity is aroused by their  and he begins to investigate.  The boat is stolen and Barnaby is murdered on Tintin’s doorstep but he finds the key clue, which is then lost to a pick pocket right under the noses of the ever-incompetent Scotland Yard duo of Thompson and Thomson. Not knowing the clue was lost, Sakharine has Tintin kidnapped and brought on board the SS Karaboudjan and imprisoned in the hold until he’ll reveal the location of the clue. Tintin breaks out of the hold with the help of his intrepid dog,  Snowy and encounters Captain Braddock for the first time. Braddock, an alcoholic who has lost control of his own ship, holds the key to the treasure that Sakharine’s after. Tintin and  Braddock must stay alive, stop Sakharine and find the treasure.

It’s rare that a movie made in 2011 will get a review here, but The Adventures of Tintin has a definite golden age feel to it. Much of the credit for that has to go to Director/C0-Producer Steven Speilberg. Speilberg has a great respect for the golden age of Hollywood and he’s able to tap into that to create works that appeal to modern audiences such as the Indiana Jones movies or Speilberg’s animated programs in the 1990s, such as Animanics.

The Adventures of Tintin could be best described as a new old movie. It’s brand new in it’s stunning performance capture animation, particularly if you were able to watch it in 3D at the theaters as my wife and I did last week.  The movie was a feast of visual effects and stunning animation.

But it also was old in the sense that there was no attempt to update the characters or plot lines. Captain Braddock still starts out as a drunk, Thompson and Thomson are still incompetent, Tintin remains his tough but virtuous self, and through the nearly two hour film, only one woman appears on screen. All this creates a sort of rollicking and bloodless adventure flick that’s become increasingly rare in recent years and was far more common in the 1930s and 40s. The only part of the film that seems more modern is a “believe in yourself” heart to heart between Tintin and Braddock, which was actually pretty well done.

Tintin lacks the rugged looks of Indiana Jones, with a very mild appearance, but he’s plenty tough when the chips are down. In one of my favorite scenes, Braddock and Tintin are caught in the middle of the ocean on the remains of a lifeboat when the villain sends an airplane after them to finish off Tintin and capture Braddock.

Tintin: I’ve got bad news! We’ve got one bullet left!
Haddock: Oh, great. And what’s the good news?
Tintin: We’ve got one bullet left.

Tintin then fires a perfect shot that brings down the airplane.

The Adventures of Tintin is somewhat overlong as the plots for three separate books were combined. This leaves plenty of time for Tintin to show its fantastic action scenes. However, given the films length, it was almost too much of a good thing. Speilberg has stated that  future installments will only be based on two books, so hopefully that will lead to more compact films.

Overall the movie was a lot of fun, a technical marvel, and a showcase of the Talent of Spielberg, and the enduring fun of Herge’s stories.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.

Sleuths of My Youth: Mathnet

Mathnet

Previous in this series: Perry Mason and Ben MatlockBatmanHardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Tom Swift Sherlock Holmes, and Encyclopedia Brown.

“The story you are about to see is a fib, but it’s short. The names are made up, but the problems are real.”

With these words began one of my earliest mystery series, Mathnet. 

Mathnet began as just one sketch on the series, Square One, a PBS educational program designed to teach kids about Math. Other sketches included “Mathman”, the animated adventures of “Dirk Niblick of the Math Brigrade” among others. Infrequent parodies included a couple of Honeymooners parody sketches. Each sketch, song, or story had the goal of teaching about math in an entertaining way.

Mathnet was its Dragnet-style sketch starring Beverly Leech as Kate Monday and Joe Howard as her partner George Frankly. They were crime-solving mathematicians who demonstrated a wide variety of math concepts in solving crimes.

The initial episode of Mathnet, The Case of the Missing Baseball was more parody than anything else with the cameramen playing off of Dragnet’s use of close ups to show a series of rapid close-ups in part one of the Missing Baseball.  The show couldn’t keep that up forever, so it became much of a homage with comic and educational overtones.  The show also changed from its pilot episode in which the two mathematicians weren’t part of the police force, even though they acted like it until they got the criminal.

Leech turned in a solid straight man performance as Officer Monday, but Howard was the one who shined as the goofy, but usually competent partner. Like Ben Alexander (Frank Smith) and Harry Morgan (Bill Gannon), Howard brought comic relief to the cases with dialogue like this when Kate announces they’ve received a call about a missing autographed baseball:

George: I love baseball, Kate. Martha and I we went to Dodger Stadium last night, Kate.

Kate: The Dodgers played in Cincinatti last night, George

George: Yep. No trouble parking. You ought to go with us. Martha and Me to a Dodger game. No trouble parking.

In another episode, Kate Monday asked an apprehended criminal, “Do you agree that crime doesn’t pay?”

He responded, “Yeah, at least not the way I do it.”

The show’s comedy worked. Then, it was merely funny. Today, I see some of the way it copies Dragnet’s success.

The show played homage to Dragnet in other ways that a kid under 10 who hadn’t seen Dragnet wouldn’t have caught on. James Earl Jones appeared as Chief of Detectives Thad Green.  In the original Dragnet, the Chief of Detectives was Thad Brown.

The program was cleverly educational, working math tricks such as estimating,  calculating the angle of refraction, basic geometry,  probability, depreciation, and the effective use of databases and spreadsheets seemlessly into the plot. While Mathnet didn’t provide a comprehensive math education, it taught some great math principles.

For kids, the program also provided solidly plotted mysteries with some fascinating conclusions. The stories were told as five-part serials that would end each episode of Square One and give kids a reason to tune in tomorrow.  Mathnet began as just one sketch of many, it’s first serial averaging about 6 minutes of air time per show. However, due to its popularity, Mathnet took up an ever-increasing share of Square’s One time.

In the middle of the second season, the show was packed up and moved to New York where other Children’s Television Workshop Shows were based.  Their first case in New York, The Case of the Swami Scam aired as a standalone TV movie. In subsequent seasons, Leech was replaced by Toni Di Buono as Pat Tuesday. But by then I was in an area where we didn’t get PBS.

I remember Mathnet fondly for two reasons.  First, it along with the entire show, Square One was successful at making math fun. There are math tricks I use today that I learned from Mathnet and I wasn’t the only one. A reviewer on IMDB notes:

In 6th grade in 1997, on Fridays we would watch Mathnet. It was always fun but plenty educational! As a student math was always the easiest when it was made fun, and that is exactly what this movie did for us. Quite frankly, the Mathnet series actually inspired my class to do our homework, because we weren’t allowed to watch it unless the whole class did their homework. It was always a treat when we got to watch these movies. There aren’t many good math movies (as I know now because I am studying mathematics)so it is amazing that Mathnet is so interesting. When the teacher who used them retired, he took the tapes with him and now Indiana is Mathnetless which it a pity!

If only educational TV was always that effective. It also helped spur a lifelong interest in Dragnet.  When I got older, my love of Mathnet fueled my love of Dragnet and the rest, as they say, is history.

Mathnet with its blend of great comedy, solid math skills, and some great fun with classic mysteries, still brings a smile to my face. My only regret is that the show has not been given its due with a DVD release.

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EP0610s: Nightbeat: A World of His Own

Frank Lovejoy

Randy Stone tries to find out what’s wrong with a punch drunk boxer.

Encore Air Date: April 16, 1950

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EP0610: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The San Antonio Matter

John Lund

Johnny investigates the death of a mobster and meets his enchanting daughter who only  learned who her father was when she learned he died.

Rehearsal of Program that Aired April 28, 1953

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EP0609: Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure Of The Six Napoleons

Statues of Napoleon are being busted. When someone is murdered, Holmes becomes involved.

Original Air Date: March 7, 1948

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EP0608: Let George Do It: Angel’s Grotto

Bob Bailey

Did a man in a wheel chair fall to his death by accident or was he pushed?

Original Air Date: November 13, 1950

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EP0607: Christopher London: The Terrible Price of Sugar

Glenn Ford

Christopher London is hired by a sugar magnate to find out how one of his competitors is massively underselling him. However, London finds the case far more dangerous than he thought.

Original Air Date: February 26, 1950

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EP0606:Barrie Craig: The Tough Guy

William Gargan

Barrie Craig helps a just released ex-con turn over a new leaf has he tries to find the ex-con’s loot.

Original Air Date: July 6, 1954

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Book Review: Trouble in Triplicate

Trouble in Triplicate was the third Nero Wolfe novella collection. It was the first to feature three stories (as the vast majority of Wolfe collections did.) One thing to understand is that oddly enough, the stories were not collected in the chronological order of publication. Usually this wouldn’t make a difference, but the first and third stories are set after World War II and the second is set in the middle of the War. It’s an odd publishing decision. Perhaps, they opted to arrange them in alphabetical order.  This is perhaps the most questionable decision about this collection of three stories with Wolfe and Archie. Two of the stories were dramatized for A Nero Wolfe Mystery and the outcome of none of the cases were a mystery for me.  That didn’t reduce  my enjoyment of the book in the least.

With that said, below are the stories:

Before I Die: In two prior novellas set during World War II, particularly in “Booby Trap,” Archie made a point of Wolfe’s kitchen being free of black market goods. Wolfe was extremely patriotic during the war.

By the time 1947 came around, the war was over but the meat shortages were still going on as the U.S. was trying to feed war-torn Europe. Wolfe had about had it. His hunger for some black market meat leads him to take on a job for a notorious mobster who might help him score some meat.  The mobster had hired a convict from Salt Lake City to pretend to be his daughter in order to protect his real daughter from his rivals. But the fake daughter commences to blackmail him and wants Wolfe to make it stop.

Before Wolfe can do that, Archie is present for the murder of the faux daughter and the mobster.  Wolfe has landed he and Archie in a tight spot. Will Wolfe uncover the identity of the true killer or will his appetite finally be the death of he and Archie?

The characters in the short story are fantastic, particularly the mob boss. With three on-screen shootings in the story, it has more action than the average Nero Wolfe story. “Before I Die” is also fun because Stout manages to take Wolfe out of his comfort zone as he deals with New York mafiosos, but still manages to handle himself surprising well.

Overall I give the story:

Rating: Very Satisfactory

“Help Wanted, Male”

In this last war-time Nero Wolfe story, a man comes to Wolfe for help when someone sends him a letter threatening murder. Wolfe provides his stock response and refuses the case advising him that there’s little that can be done to prevent a murder and suggests he tries hiring someone else.

When the man is murdered, Cramer questions him and Wolfe informs Cramer that he is, “not interested, not involved, and not curious.” However, this all changes when Wolfe receives a letter identical to the one sent to the murdered man.

Archie leaves for Washington on Army business, when he returns to New York, he finds that Wolfe has hired a king-sized decoy at $100 a day until Wolfe is able to identify the real killer.

The story is well-executed a nice variation on the Wolfe formula. If you’ve not seen the TV episode, the identity of the murderer is a great twist as well.

Rating: Very Satisfactory

“Instead of Evidence”: A partner in a novelty company comes to Wolfe convinced that his business partner’s going to kill him. He doesn’t Wolfe to prevent the murder, only to catch the murderer. Wolfe balks at the paltry $5000 offered to him as the bulk of it will be taken by taxes. However, he offers to report what the man has told him to  the police and take whatever action he deems appropriate.

The man is murdered by a potent exploding cigar  and Wolfe reports his visit to the police.  Dealing with people in the novelty industry allows Stout’s humor to run wild as the murder victim’s partner manages to chase Wolfe out of his own office. As usual, Archie is frustrated with the pace of Wolfe’s investigation. But don’t worry, this is one story that ends with a bang.

Rating: Very Satisfactory

Overall collection rating: Very Satisfactory

You can find all the Nero Wolfe books in Kindle, Audiobook, and book form on our Nero Wolfe page.

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Sleuths of My Youth: Perry Mason and Matlock

Previous in this series: BatmanHardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Tom Swift Sherlock Holmes, and Encyclopedia Brown.

Raymond Burr as Perry MasonWhen I was growing up, lawyer shows were a regular part of our family TV viewing. My dad would rarely let us watch cop shows like Dragnet when we were young, but lawyer shows were another story.  Indeed, one day when we were fasting from TV, he made an exception for Perry Mason because “it taught good morals.”

When I was growing up, I didn’t get to see much of the classic Mason programs, as I’d usually be doing something else or watching something else when it aired in the afternoon on TBS.

However, during prime time, Perry Mason mystery movies were regular prime time fare in our home. Raymond Burr made twenty-six Perry Mason movies between 1985-93 with Barbara Hale reprising her role a sDella Street. The first nine installments feature William Katt as Paul Drake, Jr. and the last seventeen starred William Moses as Ken Malansky.

At the same time, with the success of the Perry Mason movies, a quite similar program launched by Fred Silverman, who produced the Mason movies. Television icon Andy Griffith playing the role of Ben Matlock, a wily defense attorney who, just like Mason, represented innocent clients and cleared them through spectacular courtroom showdowns where he revealed the true killer.Andy Griffith as Matlock

Of the two, Matlock was my clear favorite. Partly this was due to the fact that Matlock was a weekly affair while Perry Mason only aired once in a while. But more than that Griffith was simply more fun to watch. His character of Ben Matlock was not Sheriff Andy Taylor. He was charming, hot-headed, smart, and cheap. He loved hot dogs, and wore his trademark gray suit. In addition, Matlock had some fun guests from time to time including Don Knotts and Randy Travis.

When it came to the dénouements where our lawyer heroes faced off with the murderer, Burr was proficient and forceful as Mason, but Griffith’s storytelling ability made his final explanation of the case incredibly satisfying and fun.

The show also featured better investigators in Tyler Hudson (Kene Holliday) and Conrad McMasters (Clarence Gilyard.) While Perry Mason mysteries were longer, which should have left time for more development, it often felt like the movies had to last two hours to the failures of the investigators particularly during the Paul Drake, Jr. era.

Whether it was Mason or Matlock, I loved each series, with its mix of mystery and legal drama. They weren’t realistic portrayals of how courtrooms really operated. They were idealistic portrayals of the legal profession, of lawyers who always found themselves on the side of right and justice, and always got their clients off. Right nearly always won. Each episode was a quiet tribute to the American system of government. These type of shows inspired many people to enter the legal profession including Associate Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Such idealistic program had me even thinking about a career in the law when I was a teenager.

However, by the mid-1990s, it became clear that such idealistic programming couldn’t survive. Court TV had become popular and Americans witnessed several people they believed guilty receive in trials such as the Menendez brothers case, the Rodney King trial, and finally the O.J. Simpson Case. New lawyers heroes tended to be more realistic with more morally ambiguous leads, with some almost being anti-heroes.such as Picket Fences’ Douglas Waumbaugh (Fyvush Finkel) who won eighty percent of his cases with no regard for the guilt, innocence, or sleaziness of his clients.

Raymond Burr, died in 1993, but the Perry Mason franchise continued to fill out contracts for the required movies with Paul Sorvino and Hal Holbrooke playing lawyers filling in for Perry in four more movies.

Matlock was cancelled over NBC at the end of its sixth season, but it was given a second lease on life on ABC.

Unfortunately, te ABC episodes were clearly inferior. One thing you could say for Perry Mason is that the show was established as a package deal with cast and crew developing major chemistry. Matlock’s creators seemed to believe they could do Matlock with any old set of supporting actors. It doesn’t. The final two seasons found Griffith with a poor supporting cast and weak writing.

In addition, the show got away from its roots and seemed to be trying to keep up with modern lawyer shows. Ben’s divorced daughter defends a man for murder, falls in love with him, only to find out he’s guilty. One episode has a couple getting a divorce for the fun of it and hiring Ben to handle the case. Ben takes it reluctantly, though he makes it clear that prefers more pleasant matters such as solving a grisly triple murder. These plot drifts make the episodes seem like pale imitations of both the original Matlock as well as the lawyer shows that Matlock was trying to catch up with.

Ben Matlock would have one last hurrah when Andy Griffith reprised the character for a two part episode of Diagnosis: Murder. This meant that Matlock had appeared on all three major networks as Diagnosis: Murder was on CBS.

I still have fond memories of both shows. It may not be realistic, but with the talents of Andy Griffith and Raymond Burr, they painted a vivid portrait of the ideal lawyer hard at work and fighting for the innocent and justice.

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EP0605: Yours Truly Johnny Dollar: The Dameron Matter

John Lund

Johnny Dollar seeks to recover money stolen from a Savings and Loans and track down the gang that stole it.

Original Air Date: April 21, 1953

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EP0604: Sherlock Holmes: The Case Of King Philip’s Golden Salver

The intended of a British officer accused of stealing a cup from a pompous and overbearing British lord turns to Holmes and Watson for help.

Original Air Date: February 29, 1948

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