THURSDAY’S GAME (1972, 1974) – Completed in 1972 and intended for theaters, this film sat on the shelf and was ultimately reedited as a made for tv movie complete with those fades to black going into commercial breaks. Thursday’s Game isn’t bad, but it will work best for viewers of a certain age or young trivia buffs who will appreciate all the incredible tv stars from the time period.
James Brooks, producer and co-creator of The Mary Tyler Moore Show wrote the screenplay, which is not meant for belly laughs but for broad smiles, occasional out-loud laughter and introspective humor regarding marriages and careerism in 1970s New York. Think of this telefilm as a combination of a typical James Brooks sitcom and a half-baked imitation of Neil Simon plays from back then.
Gene Wilder and Bob Newhart star as Harry Evers and Marvin Ellison, respectively. Harry is the producer of a poorly rated daytime gameshow, while Marvin is a clothier needing a hot new fashion idea to save his company.
When the Thursday Night poker game they’ve been attending for a few years falls apart over welching on debts, Harry and Marvin decide to keep getting together every Thursday, just the two of them, but they tell their wives they’re still going out to the poker game. Continue reading
INDIANA WANTS THEM – The INDIANA FEVER (3-9) took it on the road against the WASHINGTON MYSTICS (0-11).
This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at licensed I.P. Rom the Spaceknight’s crossovers with Marvel Comics characters. 
ROM Vol 1 #5 (April 1980) 
PART FOUR – We pick up this time with Trader Horn’s reflection on how the British and German firms in Africa dominated the European trade in ivory and rubber, while France was a distant third. There were whispers that the French (whom Horn referred to far more insultingly than he ever referred to the indigenous Africans) were strategizing about using their Colonial Governments to limit the success of Great Britain and the German Empire wherever they could. 
These two works were written by Lucian, the Greek philosopher and satirist who lived in the 2nd century A.D. Lucian was noted not just for his philosophical observations but also for two works that defied definition by his contemporaries but would easily fall into the category of science fiction today. Both works are from roughly 150 A.D. and feature trips to the moon by pseudo-scientific means. 
He discovered that the moon (on which he could breathe just like on Earth) was populated by the souls of the deceased (roughly twelve hundred years before Dante’s Paradiso). From the moon Menippus made the astonishing observation that the Earth was round and not flat, in a wry addition to the then-ongoing philosophical debate about the subject. 
THE MANCHU EAGLE MURDER CAPER MYSTERY (1973, 1975) – This film was made in 1973 but not released until 1975. Where to begin with this bizarre detective “comedy” that starred Gabriel Dell long after his days with the Dead-End Kids/ Bowery Boys/ Little Tough Guys. For starters, fans of that series of films that ran from the 1930s onward will enjoy the fact that Dell gets to share a few scenes with his fellow veteran of those movies – Huntz Hall. 
Previously I examined Joel Chandler Harris’ 1902 story Flingin’ Jim And His Fool-Killer, set in Georgia in October of 1872, plus Ridgway Hill’s Facts for the Fool-Killer, set in and around Buffalo, NY in 1909. 
(Oh, and never forget that anti-Trump fascists acted like forcing Trump to release years of his tax returns was so important, yet the returns revealed he had done nothing wrong. Our corrupt elected officials then declined to have any other politicians reveal several years of their tax returns. It has only – and ever – been about “getting” the outsider Trump.) 
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