E.R. Torre's Blog, page 29

Tanya Roberts… Whew!

Wrote the below and then word came that… well, read on…

The shocking news that actor Tanya Roberts passed away at the very young age of 65 made the news yesterday (you can read about that here). She apparently walked her dogs and when she returned to her home collapsed and was rushed to the hospital, where she would pass away.

Most of the obituaries I’ve read concerning Ms. Roberts note she was Stacey Sutton, the “Bond girl” in Roger Moore’s final James Bond film, 1985’s A View To A Kill (Tanya Roberts first appears at the 1:33 mark of the below trailer)…

She was certainly an 80’s figure, with her other two big roles, in the 1982 film Beastmaster…

…and in 1984 she would star as Sheena:

Later on she would make her mark in That 70’s Show as Midge Pinciotti…

I think its fair to say that her earlier works, now cult classics to some, nostalgia trips to others, weren’t all that good. It’s fair to say that A View To A Kill is the worst of the Roger Moore Bond films and among the worst of the Bond films, period. Few, too, would say Sheena is some lost classic while there are those who feel Beastmaster is a deserving Cult classic.

I say this not to put down Ms. Roberts, but quite the contrary. There’s something about the presence alone of Ms. Roberts in those films that make them memorable. One could point out the obvious: She is one beautiful woman, and the roles in both Sheena and Beastmaster in particular allowed her ample opportunity to show off that beauty.

In fact, when the news of her passing came, I instantly thought back to her roles in these films as well as The 70’s Show and my memories of her, frankly, were positive.

Yeah, maybe the 80’s material wasn’t always very strong and the film’s makers wanted a beautiful female in nearly no clothing running around, but there have been plenty of films like that made whose star isn’t quite as well remembered as Ms. Roberts, which suggests there was indeed more to her than just the proverbial pretty face.

As one gets older, the people in the arts one grows up with also grow older and, eventually, pass away.

Tanya Roberts’ passing at 65 is shocking as when I think about her my memories of her transport me back to that beautiful, athletic woman she was back in the 1980’s.

I hope she had a terrific life.

I may have to give A View To A Kill another whirl, for old time’s sake.

POSTSCRIPT:

Now there’s news that… Tanya Roberts in not dead?!

This is according to TMZ:

Tanya Roberts still alive… Despite her Rep saying she’s dead

Very weird, but concerning for Ms. Roberts nonetheless. She’s been hospitalized for over a week. I hope she recovers… assuming this second story is accurate!

POSTSCRIPT 2:

Now more news sources are confirming that Tanya Roberts is indeed alive, something which might explain my confused (and not totally sure!) original Postscript.

What a weird, weird story, though I have to admit I’m glad to hear that she’s not passed away. Still, what I said in that Postscript applies: Clearly she’s in some kind of major distress as she’s been hospitalized for over a week now.

Still, best wishes to her!

Welcome 2021…!

Woke up to a sunny morning and silence outside.

No cars moving -at least not yet- and all seems pretty calm.

Yesterday I wrote about the end of 2020 and today I’ll try to focus on the future.

In the immediate future, we still have 20 days left of Donald Trump and his “presidency”. I don’t want to keep harping on this but on January 6th the election results will be announced in the Senate/House of Representatives and, according to CNN, there may be as many as 140 Republicans in the House, and at least 1 in the Senate, who will object to the results and slow down, likely only for a few hours, the official results of Joe Biden’s win.

These people, it can’t be emphasized enough, are borderline seditious in their actions. Biden won by a lot, some 7 million more votes and more than enough electoral votes and every single attempt by Trump and his cronies to try to negate this election has been swiftly struck down. If memory serves, only one of their lawsuits, involving a technical issue which didn’t change even a single vote, was “won” by them.

Worse for them, so far the only voting fraud exposed -and its been just a couple of cases- involved people trying to vote for Trump.

Ah well!

Regardless, I suspect the next 20 days will be quite the rollercoaster ride because of this.

Meanwhile in Georgia, we have the run off election for 2 Senate seats. Bluntly, if the Democrats win both seats, then the Democrats will have control over all three branches of power and will then get to push their agenda much more freely.

If they don’t, then Republicans, and Mitch McConnell, will remain in control over the Senate and things will slow down considerably.

We’ll see about that as well.

In near term, its my hope that as soon as Biden does take control over the Presidency he and his team work extra hard on getting the vaccination program going properly.

This is the key to getting back to some kind of “normalcy” and the fact that we’ve had only some 2 million vaccinations in December versus the hoped for 20 million further proves, to my mind, that Trump and his team simply ordered the vaccines in bulk but had no plan as to how to do the actual vaccinations.

Sheesh.

*****

On a personal front, I’ve been working here and there as I can -and it is difficult during these days!- on my new novel which doesn’t have anything to do with the Corrosive Knights series.

This is a standalone story which I will hopefully get finished off, at least the first draft, in the next couple of months. I’m already some 50+ pages into it, of a quarter of the way there going by my usual 200 or so pages (10 point, single spaced), but I do have to work out several elements, including the story’s conclusion. I have some idea of how it will end, mind you, but I’ve always wanted to make sure all my books end strong and I’m not quite there with this book yet.

*****

So here we are, at the start of 2021 hoping for the best.

Let’s see where we are a year from now!

2020 Almost In The Rear View Mirror…

What a year.

Seriously. What a year.

I’ve been around a very long time now and truly, there’s almost nothing that compares to what we’ve been through this year and, for the most part, it revolves around one thing: COVID-19.

This was the year of the pandemic and because of it, also the year where we saw the limits and ineffectiveness of the body politic, especially when its being buffeted by misinformation, conspiracy theories, and general stupidity and laziness.

There have been serious outbreaks throughout the world but there have been places where proper cautions have resulted in control over this virus. Specifically, we’re talking about Japan and New Zealand, where the rate of COVID-19 is almost negligible and the people there -who took the virus very seriously- have managed to get on with their lives while so many other countries -our included- are still wallowing in denial, neglect, and (here’s that word again) stupidity.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel in the form of vaccines, but so far there have been a little more than 2 million people who have gotten it and we were promised by the current administration we’d have some 20 million vaccinated by now.

Yeah. We’re only 18 million short.

It’s been noted that if we keep this pace (I doubt we will) it will take 10 years to vaccinate enough people to create the desired herd immunity which will allow us to return to our more normal lives.

Next week we have the certification of Joe Biden’s election and we have one Republican in the Senate, Josh Howley of Missouri, will join the firebrands in the House of Representatives to protest the certification which will lead to some delay but ultimately no results for Trump.

Yet Trump, if nothing else and while damaging the Republic, keeps charging this particular hill. Like the spoiled child he is, he cannot accept that he was defeated in the election (twice if you count the votes he lost by to Hilary Clinton!) and, I very strongly suspect, he realizes that once he’s out of power the legal floodgates open wide against him.

It wouldn’t surprise me if the rest of his life is spend in one litigation after another and his fortune suddenly looking very shaky.

Meanwhile, however, his administration is botching the vaccinations and he’s devoting no energy toward issues regarding COVID or the bombing in Nashville (its rather startling he hasn’t mentioned this at all so far!), instead continuing his infantile and seditious attempts to overturn a legitimate election while playing golf at his resorts.

January 20th can’t come soon enough.

But enough about that.

One great thing about the New Year is that mentally many of us feel like we’re starting fresh, with another 365 days ahead of us to do better for ourselves and others.

I’m optimistic about the New Year, partially because it seems like we may -at least toward the middle of the year- finally make great strides against this virus and perhaps… maybe… hopefully reclaim the life we’ve had before.

It’s been a crappy year but there’s no reason to think things might not get better.

A lot better.

Let’s hope it does and, even more importantly, let’s work to make it so.

Have a Happy New Years!

We’ll see each other again in 2021!

The Snowman (2017) A (Mildly) Belated Review

I vaguely recall there was some excitement regarding the 2017 release of the film The Snowman.

Based on a novel by popular mystery/thriller writer Jo Nesbø, the film featured Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, J. K. Simmons, and Val Kilmer. The movie was produced by Martin Scorsese and directed by Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In; Tinker, Tailer, Soldier, Spy).

And yet, when the film was released, it was met with almost universal scorn from critics and Mr. Alfredson stated that because of budget cuts, he was unable to film some 10% of the script (!) and admitted the film was a failure.

The film, needless to say, didn’t do too well at the box-office and was soon gone, if not forgotten.

I was intrigued with the stories regarding the film. It isn’t often that you get what should have been a very high profile -and good- “A” film which turns out to be -if the critics are to be believed- a near complete disaster.

Yeah, I was curious to see this film. I had to see for myself.

I’ll start with the good, which I think is pretty apparent from the above trailer: The film looks gorgeous. The snowy Norwegian setting is both beautiful and, when needed, creepy.

And that’s about all that’s good about this film.

This is a fragmented film whose story is at times difficult to follow because we have things happening here and there and a pervasive feeling that we’re missing many scenes pervades the entire feature. We have well known and/or at least recognizable actors appear then quite literally disappear, their characters meaning almost nothing to the story. Perhaps one of the most head scratching is what amounts to a very small cameo appearance by Chloë Sevigny, who plays twins (!) that made almost no sense at all in the three or so minutes she appeared in the film.

Perhaps the saddest thing to see in the film is Val Kilmer, who at the time was dealing with throat cancer and who looked, to be blunt, pretty sickly. His dialogue was dubbed, quite badly, in all his scenes.

Michael Fassbender, a usually reliably good actor, is not terrible but relegated to playing a one note character, your morose, brilliant, yet alcoholic protagonist. His alcoholism has him on the outs with the police department but he latches on to a promising young detective (Rebecca Ferguson) who has secrets of her own and is involved in what may be a case involving a serial killer.

Of course, it turns out that they are indeed dealing with a clever serial killer, one with mysterious motives and possibly years of hidden activity.

Yes, the movie is a mess, but in the end one understands enough of the plot to know what’s going on and… the story presented was underwhelming, to be honest.

We have plenty of characters, as I noted before, and I suspect in the novel this movie was based on they probably mattered a lot more than they do here. The serial killer turns out to be pretty much who we thought it would be by the end, and afterwards we wonder why he bothered with many of the actions he took.

As I said before, based on the stories I read about The Snowman, I couldn’t not see it. The curiosity alone made it irresistible.

But the movie is every bit as disjointed and disappointing as the critics said, with the only redeeming element being the wonderful cinematography and winter setting.

Too bad.

The Equalizer 2 (2018) a (Mildly) Belated Review

Back in 2014 Denzel Washington starred in a remake/reworking of The Equalizer TV show starring Edward Woodward which ran from 1985 through 1989. Here’s a bit of the TV show, for those unfamiliar with it…

I was a fan of the original TV series which was basically a clever variation on James Bond… had the venerable agent grown older and retired to New York and decided to continue helping people who needed his “unique” skills.

When the Denzel Washington film came out, I reviewed it (you can read my review of it here) and I thought it was an “ok” film. Not terrible by any stretch of the imagination but neither did I feel it was particularly memorable.

I also questioned why the film was made as a remake of that particular show. To wit: Why take away the one thing that made the TV show so unique, the idea of an elderly James Bond type in New York, and get rid of that completely by having Denzel Washington play an agent who others thought was dead but, through the course of this original movie, ends up where the Edward Woodward show began, with him offering his “unique” services to those in need. Only he wasn’t a “fish out of water” James Bond in a New York milieu.

When The Equalizer 2, the sequel to this film, was released in 2018, I didn’t really care to see it. Again, I didn’t hate the original movie but I was leery of the changes made to the original concept and didn’t feel particularly compelled to go watch the sequel.

A couple years passed and the film showed up on a cable channel and, for the heck of it, I DVRed it. It sat there for a few months and yesterday, for the heck of it, I decided to give it a try.

Though my expectations were low, I found the opening hour or so of the film quite interesting: It took its time to establish the various characters and their situation(s), drawing me as a viewer in to the world of Robert McCall (Denzel Washington, natch) and the machinations that ultimately lead to him having to deal with a group of killers… a group of which he was once a part of.

I don’t want to get into SPOILERS and I won’t, but it was refreshing to see this opening and to see director Antoine Fuqua, who directed the original film, take his time showing us the various characters who play a role in the story to come.

However, as good as it was in the early going, it felt like this went on a little longer than it should have. Still, once the pieces were set and the action really started, it was interesting and tense, even if I would also say it wasn’t necessarily spectacular.

The best part of the film, IMHO, was the way it presented the idea of a hurricane -yes, the weather system- slowly coming in, scene by scene. I really like the way that the weather deteriorates subtly as the movie goes along, symbolically showing the fury of McCall building. Once we reach the climax, the hurricane -and McCall’s fury- is quite literally all around us. We see McCall at his deadliest against the bad guys as the full force of the hurricane buffets them.

…but…

The bad guys, like in the original film, are unfortunately once again not all that well defined. I practically moaned when their leader explained his evil actions with the cliched “we worked for X so and so number of years and then they just put us out to pasture… we’re not going to let them!”

…but still…

Despite this I enjoyed this movie. In fact, I’d say it was far better than the original Equalizer. While it may not be the best action/adventure film evah, its kinda nice to see one with a lot of thought behind its story and structure and a not insignificant amount of heart.

While The Equalizer 2 does not reinvent the wheel and I’m still not sold on the idea of re-doing a TV show while removing almost everything that made it unique, if you’ve got a free evening with nothing much to do, spending a bit of time with The Equalizer 2 is far from the worst thing you could do.

Recommended.

Coronavirus Diaries 25…

…Christmas edition…!

Our family usually does our Christmas gift giving on the 24th but this year, over an abundance of caution, we’re not meeting up in too large a group and doing one visit to family yesterday, with today being the other visit.

In both cases we’re talking about 10 people max and we know what we’ve been doing/where we’ve been and we’ve all been very careful whenever going out so while we probably shouldn’t have the get togethers, we’re reasonably sure we’re all clear…

,,,well…

My sister-in-law, who is a nurse who works with terminally ill patients, called to let us know yesterday that she tested positive for COVID-19. She is usually very careful, wearing masks and washing her hands frequently. Because of the nature of her job, she is also frequently tested for the virus. She took three tests in the past two weeks and the first two were negative but the last one, taken two days ago, came back positive.

She’ll test herself again to verify if indeed it is a positive result and not a false negative. However, she says she has felt a sore throat, which indicates she has something, but is otherwise -thankfully!- so far fine.

Nonetheless, that ended our family visit intended for today. We’ll likely not see that side of the family for at least a week or two, depending on what the subsequent test results indicate and until my sister-in-law tests negative.

Over on my side of the family, my father had an appointment with his doctor earlier in the week and he did a blood test and, wouldn’t you know it, he came back positive for COVID-19 anti-bodies.

Which means he had the virus.

I’ve written before how I suspected several people -including myself- in our family business contracted the virus in mid-late January, early-mid February.

At that point in time, COVID-19 was something which was supposedly only in China’s Wuhan province. It wasn’t yet thought to be in the U.S. and it wasn’t until March, nearly a month later, that we began to realize it was indeed with the United States. And it was in March, the second week or so, that many businesses in our area were forced to shut down to contain a possible spread.

It’s incredibly scary to realize that my father’s illness way back then, which lingered some two weeks, was more than likely COVID-19. Thankfully, he recovered fine. He was the one, of the three or four of us who were sick at the same time, who had it the worst and everyone subsequently recovered. I myself had two or so weeks where I was so exhausted at the end of each day, beyond the normal exhaustion of a busy week, and practically collapsed on my bed afterwards.

Yet I too have had blood test, the last one quite recently, and there has been no indication of COVID-19 anti-bodies within me. Having said that I don’t know if I was indeed checked for that.

Regardless, my wife, who works in the care field, has an appointment to get the COVID-19 vaccine this Saturday. She will be the first person in our family -and extended family- to get it and, unfortunately, neither my daughters nor myself can get it until its available to the general population.

As I’ve noted before, I’ll be getting it as soon as I can, but its a relief that at least one of us will have the first half of the vaccine and therefore, will half the chances of her getting this terrible virus.

I’m hopeful with the incoming administration there will be a stronger push to get the vaccine not only out there, but to have people get it.

If you can, please do so.

Hopefully one day very soon, we’ll return to something of a normal life.

Merry Christmas…!

Now, enjoy this article by Aletha Adu and found on thesun.co.uk…

GHOST OF XMAS PAST: Creepy Santas pictured hunchbacked, skinny, and with the Devil in vintage cards from the 19th Century

Weird stuff and shows how certain concepts -such as Jolly Old St. Nick!- change over time. Not all of them are super creepy, but some certainly are!

Here’s one of my favorites in that respect, from the article…

Saint Nick looks like he’s had a reaaaaallllyyyy long night!

Coronavirus Diaries 24

Another weekend nears its end.

Not just any weekend, but the second to the last weekend of the year 2020. Next weekend will be the last one of December and the following weekend will be the first of 2021.

It shouldn’t come as any big surprise that people will very likely, in looking back at this year, call it one of the very worst ever and the reason is obvious.

COVID-19 likely began sometime in 2019, toward the end of the year, and most likely in China. It spread from there, the first cases believed to have made it to the United States sometime in December of 2019 and by March of 2020 it was clear we had a big problem, worldwide, with this virus.

There were worries, certainly, early in the year. There was plenty of downplaying by the Trump administration of the seriousness of the virus and, even today and even after Trump himself -and many, many in his cabinet- contracted the disease, they continue to try to minimize the situation.

Won’t matter all that much in another month as Trump, and the nightmare of his administration, is out on January 20th.

That’s the other big thing that happened this year: The election.

Despite the many protests issued, Trump clearly lost the election and it wasn’t even close.

While I welcome the end of the Trump administration and the beginning of the Biden administration and am certain it will restore a sense of normalcy that for many of us is desperately needed, let’s be clear: a change in power won’t suddenly make everything “right”.

Meanwhile, in the past couple of weeks we’ve had two COVID-19 vaccines approved, first the one created by Pfizer and on Friday the one created by Moderna. My understanding is that there’s a third vaccine in the pipeline ready to be considered for approval and, further to that, vaccines have already been administered.

However, in a typical Trump dysfunctional pattern, there is word that Pfizer hasn’t been told where to distribute some of the vaccines.

Sheesh.

Still, I’m hopeful each day that passes we’re going to get more and more people being vaccinated and, in time, we’ll finally move on from those who are “high priority” to get the vaccine to regular folk.

I’ve read that when some 70% of the population gets the vaccine, we’ll have effectively reached the level of “herd immunity” and should return to a more normal time, where we no longer have to keep our distance from people and wear masks and wash our hands.

The estimates are that we could get there by late Spring and/or early Summer.

It’s still a ways away, some six months maybe, but at least we have a target and that’s something we haven’t had for way too long.

I’ve written before that I believe I and several people in my family and employees in my family business had COVID-19 way back in late January and/or early February of 2020.

Even if I did, I will get the vaccine as soon as I can.

If indeed things “go back to normal” by the middle or so of next year, I have a strong suspicion the world, as a whole, will erupt.

In a great way.

I suspect we’ll see the economies of many countries -maybe all!- will have a sudden burst. Hopefully, jobs will quickly return and businesses, those who survive these harsh months, will have an incredible rebound.

I hope so.

2020’s been a hell of a bad year.

Maybe 2021 will be far better.

We deserve that much.

Oh, This Isn’t Worrisome… Not At All…

Just stumbled upon this article by Kevin Liptak and Pamela Brown and presented on CNN.com…

Heated Oval Office meeting included talk of special counsel, martial law as Trump advisers clash

Yeah, we’re getting political again, so if that’s not for you, move along.

For everyone else, here’s the story’s first paragraph:

President Donald Trump convened a heated meeting in the Oval Office on Friday, including lawyer Sidney Powell and her client, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, two people familiar with the matter said, describing a session that began as an impromptu gathering but devolved and eventually broke out into screaming matches at certain points as some of Trump’s aides pushed back on Powell and Flynn’s more outrageous suggestions about overturning the election.

For those who aren’t familiar with Michael Flynn, he is a former Army Lieutenant general who advised Trump a brief time before leaving the office. He eventually pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI and, before he was sentenced, Trump gave him a controversial pardon. Lately, he’s been stating -alarmingly- that Trump should invoke martial law to retain his presidency and negate the results of the election.

Welp, it seems he brought this idea of martial law craziness into the Oval Office and its alarming as hell that Trump appeared willing to listen to this.

I get this mental image of a wild animal that knows the walls are closing in on him and is looking for any way to remain in power.

Given this article, it worries me what other sorts of craziness he may try from today to January 20th to preserve his power.

The irony is that since the election, Trump no longer seems to be engaged in any sort of actual governing, instead going on twitter and claiming all kinds of conspiracies involving the election and repeating, ad nauseum, that somehow Biden and his campaign “cheated” in its win.

By seven million more votes? And, if the Biden folks did manage such a massive voting cheat, how come they were ineffective in getting rid of the likes of Mitch McConnell?

Still, this article worries me.

January 20th, as I’ve noted before, can’t come soon enough.

Getting Serious? Cyberpunk 2077, Redux

A few days ago I wrote about Projekt Red, the company behind the magnificent Witcher 3, problems with the release of their next game, Cyberpunk 2077. (You can read about that here)

I noted that the game, which has been in development for some seven years and which was heavily promoted and anticipated, was released last week and… things weren’t all that pretty.

My understanding is that the game works well on high/medium high level PCs and is pretty good on the XBox One X (which I have) but with “lower end” gaming machines like the Playstation 4 and XBox One it has a lot of problems.

While these issues are worrisome and one can’t help but think the company ultimately released the game to try to take advantage of the holiday season, I feel like many of the bugs and glitches will eventually be dealt with over the next few weeks/months and the game will stabilize.

However, due to all those problems, Sony has pulled Cyberpunk 2077 from their download store and offered refunds to those who bought it…

Sony Removes Cyberpunk 2077 From PlayStation Store After Complaints

I’ve heard that Projekt Red has also offered refunds and, frankly, the whole situation has moved from one of anticipation and hope for a game that is great to frustration with the company -though not in all parts- with releasing a game that clearly wasn’t ready yet.

As the saying goes, you have one chance to make a good first impression and Cyberpunk 2077 seems to not be doing this.

At all.

But as I said in my original post, I feel like the annoying -and often hilarious- glitches and bugs in the game will get smoothed over in time.

What worries me more are people who say the game itself isn’t all that great to begin with. Even those I’ve read in various posts here and there over the internet who haven’t experienced many glitches and have positive feelings regarding the game seem to agree that the game itself isn’t all that incredible, that it feels like what was promised was more than what was delivered.

As I said before, on the basis of Witcher 3, I had no problem pre-ordering Cyberpunk 2077 and have it already installed -but have yet to play it- in my machine.

I’m in no hurry to play it so maybe I’ll wait until more patches are released and the game’s bugs are better dealt with.

At this point, though, my hopes for the game have been considerably tampered.

A true shame.