Tag Archives: Balladeer’s Blog

A CHRISTMAS CAROL: TALES FROM DICKENS (1959)

Balladeer’s Blog’s Fifteenth Annual Christmas Carol-a-Thon continues! A few days ago I made an encore post about the Susan Lucci version of the Dickens classic.

This time around it’s a Carol version that I’ve never before reviewed.

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1959 christmas carolFREDERIC MARCH PRESENTS TALES FROM DICKENS: A CHRISTMAS CAROL (1959) – Basil Rathbone IS Edgar Winter as Ebenezer Scrooge! Or at least that’s what he looks like with his incredibly long white hair in this television show.

This was one of the 14 episodes of the Frederic March television series in which he hosted dramatizations of assorted stories written by Charles Dickens. The air date of this particular episode was December 27th, 1959. Continue reading

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BEST OF JANUARY 2024

Balladeer’s Blog’s annual end of year retrospective begins with this look at January’s Best.

DICK TURPIN (1925) – My review of this silent movie which starred American cowboy star Tom Mix trading in his rifle and six-guns for a sword and pistols in an exciting film about England’s real-life outlaw Dick Turpin. It’s HERE.

SAM SPADE – I take a look at Dashiell Hammett’s four overlooked 1932 short stories about his hard-boiled detective from The Maltese Falcon. Read it HERE.

SCARFOLK: LIKE MY MILWAUKEE CROSSED WITH LOCAL 58 TV – Richard Littler’s eerie, dark-humored presentations of the lore behind his fictional English town of Scarfolk has been presented as a website and then as a few books. Experience 1984 and Twin Peaks wrapped into one HERE.

SHIRLEY TEMPLE’S STORYBOOK (1958-1961) – This bit of Forgotten Television featured Temple starring alongside some of the biggest celebrities of the day in child-safe dramatizations of classics from children’s literature. Click HERE.

BRITISH-MADE SUPERHEROES OF THE 1940s – My look at forgotten characters like Streamline, Electro-Girl, Captain Magnet, Acromaid, Tiger-Man and over twenty more HERE.

DESERT CRUSADER (1968-1969) – A French tv series about Thibaud (tee-bow), a French knight who has adventures along the road to the Holy Land in between the 1st and 2nd Crusades. My review is HERE.

THE FLASHING BLADE (1967) – A similar French tv series. Dumas meets Sabatini in this swashbuckling tale of Francois, Chevalier de Recci, from 1628-1631. HERE.

ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION: ADVENTURES OF JAMES MASSEY (1714) – A novel about the title character finding an island of giant-sized birds, odd plant-life, bear-sized beavers and strange human beings, both “normal” and ape-like. It’s HERE. Continue reading

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REEL WILD CINEMA: EPISODES ELEVEN TO THIRTEEN

Balladeer’s Blog continues its look at the Forgotten Television item Reel Wild Cinema (1996-1997).

This time around it’s Episodes 11-13.

THE RUNDOWN FOR EPISODE ELEVEN (June 30th, 1996)

Title: Evil Rampaging Monsters

Truncated Films Shown:

return of majinTHE RETURN OF THE GIANT MAJIN (1966) – We fans of oddball cinema have long loved Majin, the often-ignored distant cousin of kaiju favorites like Godzilla and Gamera. Majin is a gigantic samurai statue that comes to life periodically in Japan of a few centuries back.

The setting means that instead of miniatures of tanks and cities filled with skyscrapers for the figure to rampage through, viewers get miniatures of cannons, fishing boats and towns filled with period architecture. But let’s not kid ourselves; the MAIN “So Bad It’s Good” aspect of the Majin movies is the way he literally shoots flames from his crotch for some bizarre reason. I’m not joking. Continue reading

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BALLADEER’S BLOG’S POSTSEASON COLLEGE FOOTBALL RESULTS FROM NOV 30th

NAIA PLAYOFFS

ROUND TWO: GAME ONE – The NORTHWESTERN (IA) COLLEGE RED RAIDERS visited the MONTANA TECH OREDIGGERS. A 6-0 1st Quarter edge for the Red Raiders became a 23-14 advantage by Halftime. After the break, the Orediggers rallied but came up just short as Northwestern College held on for a 32-29 win. 

ROUND TWO: GAME TWO – The BENEDICTINE COLLEGE RAVENS took it on the road against the TEXAS WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY RAMS. The Rams led 14-7 and then 24-14 in the 1st and 2nd Quarters. From there the Ravens came alive and went on top 28-24 in the 3rd before finalizing a 42-33 triumph in the 4th Quarter. Continue reading

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THE ORIGINAL MS. MARVEL: HER 1970s STORIES

This weekend’s escapist, light-hearted superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at the earliest adventures of the original Ms. Marvel – Carol Danvers.

mm 1MS. MARVEL Vol 1 #1 (January 1977)

Title: This Woman, This Warrior

Villain: The Scorpion

NOTE: Ms. Marvel’s secret identity was Carol Danvers, a character that Marvel first introduced in the supporting cast of their original male Captain Marvel series in 1967. Carol was introduced as the head of security at Cape Canaveral, so even before becoming a superheroine she had a very solid role.

Carol made regular appearances alongside Captain Marvel (Kree Captain Mar-Vell) through the cancellation of his first solo series in August 1970. She made a few guest appearances in the pages of The Avengers during the original Kree-Skrull War (1970-1971) and was even impersonated by the Super-Skrull.

Synopsis: Readers are caught up with Carol Danvers’ life via flashbacks. During one of Captain Marvel’s battles with Yon-Rogg she was exposed to Kree technology which accidentally endowed her with super-strength plus the power of flight and a large degree of invulnerability. Continue reading

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SUSAN LUCCI IS EBBIE (1995) AS CHRISTMAS CAROL-A-THON 2024 BEGINS

If it’s the Friday after Thanksgiving, then regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog know it’s the day when I kick off my annual Christmas Carol-A-Thon in which I review several versions of A Christmas Carol. I look at movies, television shows, radio shows and books which adapt the Dickens classic. Every year I present new reviews with a few old classics mixed in since newer readers will have missed them.

ebbieEBBIE (1995) Balladeer’s Blog’s Fifteenth Annual Christmas Carol-A-Thon begins with an encore review of this 1995 telefilm starring soap opera queen Susan Lucci. The eternally-sexy Lucci plays Elizabeth “Ebbie” Scrooge, our regulation “grasping and covetous” business magnate who runs the Dobson’s department store empire. This version of A Christmas Carol is kind of cute and it tries hard.

At its core Ebbie combines the Dickens tale with elements of the Diane Keaton movie Baby Boom. The dialogue self-consciously uses Big Business/ Executive Culture cliches in various exchanges. For example, where Scrooge normally says “Can’t I take them (the Ghosts) all at once and have it over with” Ebbie instead says “Can’t I just Conference Call them all in and have it over with?” Plus Marley’s Ghost refers to Scrooge “taking meetings” with the three Spirits. Sometimes these substitutions are amusing, other times just eye-rolling.   Continue reading

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NJCAA FOOTBALL PLAYOFF TEAMS 2024

With the NAIA, D2, D3 and CCCAA playoffs addressed previously, here are the the teams competing for the title in the NJCAA (National Junior College Athletic Association).

NJCAA DIVISION ONE

The GEORGIA MILITARY COLLEGE BULLDOGS will host the HUTCHINSON COLLEGE BLUE DRAGONS.

Kickoff will be on December 8th at 3:30PM Eastern Time. Continue reading

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HAPPY THANKSGIVING 2024!

happy t givingHAPPY THANKSGIVING! Enjoy this holiday and the hope for peaceful coexistence represented by the possibly mythic meal that it commemorates. The kind of self-righteous killjoys who bash Thanksgiving are the type of sanctimonious idiots that are fun to laugh at since they have no identity outside of their ephemeral political concerns.

Whether you consider the tale of the first Thanksgiving to be literal or aspirational, enjoy yourselves! Be thankful that you’re not one of those heartless people who try to pollute every happy gathering with divisiveness and turn it into a showcase for the simple-minded, ankle-biting political remarks that those people laughably think are Really Deep.

How sad is it that every year they circulate those articles about which brainless talking points they should use to harass the adults at the Thanksgiving Day table?   

PREVIOUS THANKSGIVING DAY POSTS:

A THANKSGIVING STORY FROM THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR HERE. Continue reading

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WOI: EPIC HERO OF LIBERIA

LiberiaBalladeer’s Blog presents another neglected epic myth from around the world. In this case, Liberia’s Woi Epic of the Kpelle people.

The Woi Epic is often studied for its use of music, dance, singing and audience participation to reflect the action in the story. Think of it as a combination opera, ballet, live drama and Rocky Horror Picture Show screening.

The order of the episodes in the epic is not set in stone and a performance may include only a few of the episodes, all of them or just one. The finish of each episode is marked by the performer(s) announcing “Dried millet, wese” to which the audience repeats simply “wese.”  

ONE – Woi, a culture deity and master of ritual magic, and his wife Gelengol are the only living things that exist. After Woi impregnates his wife she eventually gives birth to human beings, chickens, goats, cows, sheep and, after all other life-forms, spiders. (Plenty of African myths feature a female deity giving birth to multiple living creatures and many feature the woman also giving birth to tools and weapons and utensils.)    

TWO – Woi notes that the demonic figure Yele-Walo has stolen one of his bulls by sneaking up on it in the form of a rattan plant. Yele-Walo took the bull with him to his hideaway “behind the sky.” Woi prepares for battle and is aided by squirrel-monkeys, tsetse flies and horse-flies. Yele-Walo also steels himself for the upcoming fight. Continue reading

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REEL WILD CINEMA: EPISODES EIGHT-TEN

In this installment of Balladeer’s Blog’s recurring Forgotten Television segment I continue my look at Reel Wild Cinema (1996-1997). This time around it’s Episodes 8-10.

THE RUNDOWN FOR EPISODE EIGHT (June 9th, 1996)

Title: Kids in Peril

Truncated Films Shown:

untamed furyUNTAMED FURY (1947) – A very early hicksploitation movie. This black & white movie’s stock footage is set in the swamps of the Deep South but everything else takes place on the usual cheap sets we all know and love from Producers Releasing Corporation.

As children, two swamp kids develop a rivalry over a pretty gal and over which one of them is “best” at getting dragged behind their fathers’ boats to lure out alligators for killing. Dubious honor to be fighting for. At any rate, the boy so good that he earns the nickname Gator Bait (yes, like the 1970s Claudia Jennings flick) goes off to college.

When he comes back years later, Gator Bait wants to do improvements to the swamplands to provide a better way of life for the locals. His boyhood rival in luring out alligators is opposed to the idea, as are a few other folks and conflict results. E.G. Marshall’s film debut. I’m NOT joking.      Continue reading

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