Movies and TV

HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOW PART 2 (2011) is, of course, the big finish wherein Harry & Co. continue their hunt for the horcruxes, Voldemort explains Snape has to die for the Greater Evil, Harry learns Snape’s complicated backstory and we catch up with everyone 19 years later. A solid finish, with the obvious advantage of being more action-packed than Part One. “When have our plans ever worked?”
CAREFREE (1938) may be more comical than most of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals, with Astaire a psychoanalyst whom best buddy Ralph Bellamy (as usual, the ill-fated third point on a triangle) asks to analyze Ginger Rogers to learn why she refuses to marry Bellamy. Needless to say, romance between the leads, not to mention hypnosis, ensues. Rogers does a great, funny performance but otherwise this is one of the weaker pairings of the duo. “What was that about doing two things at once?”
TARGETS (1968) is what happened when Roger Corman told Peter Bogdanovich to make a movie out of 20 minutes of the just-completed The Terror, 20 minutes of new Karloff footage and 20 minutes of new other footage (though as it turned out he got to use less Terror and more Karloff) the result being an oddball but absorbing character study as horror legend Karloff proclaims his career over (“They call my movies camp.”) while a young Texan goes on a shooting spree (patterned on a then-current random act of violence). What amounts is two neat little stories that tie together at the end, plus Karloff is quite chilling reading “Appointment in Samarrah.” A perfect capstone to Karloff’s career, but unfortunately he followed it up with several grade-z entries. “I’m going to shoot some pigs.”
Finally caught up on the 2009-10 season of BIG BANG THEORY, wherein Leonard gets and loses Penny, Will Wheaton and Sheldon go to war and Sheldon gets a girlfriend (I’m looking forward to seeing how that plays out when I Netflix the next season). Always a fun show.
THE FLASH was a 1990 TV series that regrettably lasted one season alone. Probably the first live-action series since Batman to use supervillains rather than straight criminals, including Captain Cold, Mirror Master and Trickster (Mark Hamill, in what looks like a precursor to his vocal turn as the Joker on the Dini/Timm Batman)—though only the Trickster actually gets into costume. Good special effects and a solid cast (John Wesley Shipp as Barry Allen and Amanda Pays as scientist sidekick Tina McGee), it’s a shame it had such a short run (I interviewed one of the cast once, and he said CBS took the blame, saying they had no real idea how to jarket it).