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2021 Viewing (Q2)

Continuing what is now a tradition, albeit a month late, and following the previous post back in April (sorry to be gone so long, but I promise there’s a bunch of new posts coming up!), here are the viewings from the second quarter of 2021… some of which were obviously started in Q1 but completed in Q2!

The Rebel (Johnny Yuma) season 2 (DVD)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents season 5 (DVD)
Have Gun Will Travel seasons 1-2 (DVD)
Department S series 1 (Blu-ray)
Star Trek: The Original Series seasons 1-2 (Blu-ray)

Commentary follows…
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2021 Viewing (Q1)

As a follow-up to this post, let’s look at the viewing from the first quarter of this esteemed, classic year we’re currently honoured to be enduring experiencing…

The Loner season 1 (DVD)
The Rebel (Johnny Yuma) season 1 (DVD)
Stoney Burke season 1 (DVD)
Alfred Hitchcock Hour seasons 1-2 (DVD)
Naked City season 1 (DVD)

A bit of commentary…
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2020 Viewing

I may write in more detail about some of the stuff I watched last year—undecided. Meanwhile, here’s a list of all the vintage episodic TV digested during those long 2020 months of deadly viruses and governments placing everyone under house arrest.

(And, of course, there is much vintage episodic TV being digested during the unfolding long 2021 months of deadly viruses and governments placing everyone under house arrest.)

2020 complete viewings…

Hawaii Five-O seasons 1-12 (DVD)
The Twilight Zone seasons 1-5 (Blu-ray)
Night Gallery seasons 1-3 (DVD)
The Outer Limits seasons 1-2 (DVD)
Alfred Hitchcock Presents seasons 1-4 (DVD)
Peaky Blinders series 3 (Blu-ray) (token non-vintage item!)
The Abbott & Costello Show seasons 1-2 (download)
Adventures of Superman seasons 1-4 (DVD)
House of Cards (1990) (Blu-ray)

2020 Viewing

And much less completely…
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The Defiant Ones (1958)

In Brief: this is the write-up of The Defiant Ones prepared for the on-off book on Lon Chaney Jr, Moonlight Shadows. Feedback is very welcome!

The Defiant Ones (1958)

Produced by Stanley Kramer for Lomitas Productions, Inc. Directed by Stanley Kramer. Screenplay by Nedrick Young & Harold Jacob Smith. Music score by Ernest Gold. Cinematography by Sam Leavitt. Edited by Frederic Knudtson. Distributed by United Artists.

Technical: 1.66:1, black and white, Westrex mono. Running time: 96 minutes. Production: late February to early April 1958. Premiere: September 24 1958 (NY).

With Tony Curtis, Sidney Poitier, Theodore Bikel, Charles McGraw, Lon Chaney, King Donovan and Claude Akins.

Two convicts—one white (Tony Curtis), one black (Sidney Poitier)—in a Southern chain gang are being transported in a van when the vehicle crashes. They escape, and what follows is a story of the tensions between the two, being forced to flee cross-country together―mostly through swamplands―until they find a way of breaking the four-foot chain that binds them.
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New Film Project: Triangle

Well, Triangle is the provisional title, at least… maybe we’ll keep it… anyhow, I finished the first draft of the script last night, small extract below. The film, which should run about 20 minutes, is a neo-noir set in Birmingham and we’re gonna do it in glorious black & white!! It’s quite hard-boiled and the ‘second act’ is more than a little Sin City in tone.
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