Mill Creek Entertainment * Amazon

Do remember when CBS cranked out one Larry McMurtry miniseries after another?

While I do recall the Lonesome Dove miniseries and its sequels/prequels, I have never seen any of them. And I have never read any of the books they are adapted from. The only Larry McMurtry novels I have ever read are the four books in The Berrybender Narratives.

Mill Creek Entertainment recently released Buffalo Girls (NR; 182 minutes; $14.98) to DVD + Digital, which is a 1995 two-part miniseries based on the 1990 novel of the same name by Larry McMurtry. Directed by Rod Hardy, the miniseries starred Anjelica Houston, Melanie Griffith, Sam Elliott, Gabriel Byrne, and Reba McEntire.

Buffalo Girls is the fictionalized story based on the real-life Calamity Jane (played by Anjelica Houston), a woman who dressed, talked, and acted liked a cowboy. She's most famous for being "linked" to Wild Bill Hickok (played by Sam Elliott in the miniseries). In McMurtry's version, Calamity gave birth to a daughter after Hickok was murdered and later gave the child to a British couple.

Part One of the miniseries centers around Calamity, who regrets giving up her daughter, and Dora DuFran (played by Melanie Griffith), a madam of a brothel/hotel in Deadwood, who has an on-again off-again relationship with Ted Blue (played by Gabriel Byrne). Part Two mostly centers around Calamity joining  Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, which takes her, along with her friends Bartle Bone (played by Jack Palance) and Jim Ragg (played by Tracey Walter), to England, where she gets to visit her young daughter.

Final Thoughts

At the heart of any DCC station is the command center. Many people who are new to this technology may not know the facts behind these devices so this article will be a basic breakdown. A throttle command sends signals which are relayed to the main device. The device then proceeds to process the signals and then after this, they create a standardized packet of DCC information that is then sent to the decoders on the main unit. The DCC command center does not do any of the actual work, they are more or less there to direct traffic.

When DCC was first created, the devices were of a standalone nature. There were two pieces that were essential to the technology and the success of the device. These were the command center and the booster. Connected to the command station was the throttle network. The booster connected itself to the command station output. The output that the booster put forth was connected to the DCC track. However, in the early 1990s, there was a new invention in that the two separate units were combined into one single device. By blending them into one single device, the cost of the technology was actually reduced by about 20%. The nickname of the command station was used in conjunction with this new integrated device and subsequently stuck.

The only drawback was that the nce DCC command station needed a booster to actually operate. This when a further integrated unit, one which combined the booster into the command center, was invented. This new technology went a long way toward maximizing power.

Welcome to my Tuesday Picks! post, where I'll be picking out my favorite books and movies that are being released this week.

Books

 

What Am I Currently Reading?

I just started reading the eBook Lizzie Borden, Zombie Hunter 2: The Axe Will Fall by C.A. Verstraete.

I'm still reading American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell by Deborah Soloman. I'm currently on page 50.

What am I reading next?

312 pages; $14.99; Amazon

I've only read a handful of science fiction novels during my lifetime. While I don't mind watching a good science fiction movie, I'm just not really into the reading books set in the genre, except for the occasional anthology, like the recently released 18 Wheels of Science Fiction.

Published by Big Time Books and edited by Eric Miller, 18 Wheels of Science Fiction features 18 short stories about futuristic truck driving.

Here's the official blurb from the back cover:

An alien fuel additive shows just how fast a big rig can go... A disembodied driver wages war on self-driving trucks... A haul through time takes an unexpected turn... Reality shatters for a trucker using an experimental delivery device... Stargazing gives an overweight driver a new lease on life... A young girl risks her life to hitch a ride out of an apocalyptic wasteland...

Take a trip through the imaginations of 18 visionary writers as they explore the future of trucking in these speculative tales. The highways of the universe will never be the same.

The short stories are:

The Wreckers 

by John DeChancie

Speed Trap 

by Jeff Seeman

Thin Ice

by Bond Elam

Q-Bits

by Lucio Rodriguez

I, Truck

by Gary Phillips

Over Flat Mountain

by Terry Bisson

Wheels Of Wrath

by Janet Joyce Holden

Shotgun Seat

by Paul Carlson

Job No. 34264

by Lisa Morton

Essential Oils

by Michael Bailey

Big Rig, Big Rip

by Alvaro Zinos-Armaro

A Flicker of Bright Light

by Del Howison

Hit/Run

by Edward M. Erdelac

Everything Looks So Small

by Carla Robinson

Silent Passenger

by Kate Jonez

Indica Asterion & The Wizard Of Ozymandias

by Sean Patrick Traver

Human, Trafficking

by Michael Paul Gonzalez

Drive

by Eric Miller

Final Thoughts

Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly @  Caffeinated Book Reviewer!

Good Evening, Everyone!

My Current Reads!

Last week was an extremely busy week for me. Between running errands, taking care of my grandmother's issues, my television dying, and planning Thanksgiving dinner, I decided to redesign this blog, which took me 36+ hours to complete. Since I didn't have any free time, I made the decision to delay last week's reading schedule.

Books on my agenda this week are: Lizzie Borden, Zombie Hunter 2:The Axe Will Fall by C.A. Verstraete, Elevation by Stephen King, and Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan.

I had planned on reading Lizzie Borden 2 and Elevation last week, but those were the two main books I shoved aside in order to work on the blog's redesign. 

 

Last Week's Reviews

Her Fear by Shelley Shepard Gray

(book)

Black Sails: The Complete Series

(Blu-ray)

Blood, Sweat and Terrors

(DVD)

Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis

(Blu-ray Steelbook)

 

In The Mail

Not Rated; 98 minutes; Amazon

Blood, Sweat and Terrors arrived on DVD from RLJ Entertainment last week. Based on the art cover and the synopsis (which you can read in the next paragraph), I believed the movie would be a fun, low-budget, 90's-like action film.

There's no running from this fight. A lethal dose of gangsters, hit men, crooked cops and guerilla fighters are headed for the ultimate showdown...with more non-stop, bare-fisted action than one movie can handle. The hardcore double crosses, desperate missions and cold-blooded revenge are loaded into every minute won't end until the last bullet is fired. It will take more than courage to survive, and even the best will fall.

I have no idea who wrote the the synopsis for the DVD, but it has almost nothing to do with the movie.  Actually, calling this a movie is a big stretch. The film is nothing more than 9 random short films edited into one movie.

The short films are:

Empire of Dirt 

Directed by Adam Mason, this is the weirdest short in the collection. It's less action and more of a Clive Barker horror tale featuring graphic nudity.

Awesome Runaway

Directed by Benjamin De Los Santos, an over the top action tale about a kidnapped victim hallucinating his escape.

Jacob's Wrath 

Directed by Alexandre Carriere, this tale involves a man's quest to kill his daughter's killer. The short switches back and forth from our world (reality) to a hallucinated apocalyptic world.

Flow

Directed by Shelagh Rowan-Legg, this happens to be dumbest tale of the bunch. It involves two female guerilla fighters bickering over the last Tampax. Yes, this is the real plot of the short!

Express Delivery

Directed by Beau Fowler, all this short is is one long fight scene between "The Postman" and a guy named "Swifty" (played by Beau Flower). Fun to watch, but pointless.

Turncoat

Directed by Will Gilbey, "Turncoat" is about two crooked cops who invade a man's home. It's very boring!

Get Some

Directed by Adam Horton and Joe Horton, this tale is set in a zombie-infested world, where Hunter Smith (played by Warren Brown) hunts down the "outsiders" during his reality series "Get Some." For this episode, Hunter has brought along Dr. James Borans (played by John Hannah), an "outsider" activist, to go hunting with him in an English forest.

Olga

Directed by Olaf Svenson, this subtitled foreign short tells the story of a young woman's quest to avenge her parents' death by the hands of a mob boss.

Fetch

Directed by Daniel Bernhardt, "Fetch" is a boring tale about a private detective's journey to retrieve a missing dog.

Final Thoughts

Mill Creek Entertainment * Amazon

Now available on a Blu-ray + DVD Steelbook from Mill Creek Entertainment is the 2001 anime classic Osamu Tezuka's Metropolis (PG-13; 108 minutes; $34.98).

Based on the 1949 manga by the late Osamu Tezuka (Astro Boy) and loosely inspired by the 1927 German silent film "Metropolis," the anime film is set in a futuristic city where humans and robots, but not in harmony. Robots are classified by levels and if they leave their levels, then they'll be destroyed.

A powerful industrial leader, Duke Red, is creating an oversized skyscraper called the Ziggurat, which is supposed to give off a massive amount of power across the entire planet. Duke had hired a mad scientist, Dr. Laughton, to create a super human robot in the likeness of his deceased daughter, Tima. He wants Tima to be the leader of the Ziggurat.

Duke's adopted son, Rock, is the leader of the Marduk Party, a anti-robot group who will do anything to destroy all robots. Rock believes that Tima will lead to the death of his father and he vowed to kill her, along with any humans or robots that gets in his way.

A private detective Shunsaku Ban travels to Metropolis with his nephew Kenich. He's there to arrest Dr. Laughton, who is wanted for organ trafficking. Unfortunately, by the time Shunsaku locates Dr. Laughton, Rock had already left the doctor mortally wounded. The attack upon the the doctor's lab leads to Tima being activated. Eventually, Kenich befriends Tima, who doesn't know she's a robot, and becomes sort of a father figure for her.

Lost in the city, Kenich takes the responsibility of protecting Timam from Rock's wrath.

 

Special Features include:

• Amazing High-Definition Prestation
• English DTS-HD Master Audio and uncompressed Japanese audio
• English SDH subtitles
• The Making of Metropolis featurette
• Filmmaker Interviews
• Animation Comparisons
• Concept Art Gallery

Final Thoughts

Grab a book, any book.
Turn to page 56 or 56% in your eReader.
Find any sentence, (or few, just don't spoil it).
Post it.
 Add your (url) post below in the Linky at: www.fredasvoice.com
Add the post url, not your blog url.

They couldn't pare down the tucks, which had their own electronic and computer systems, but they could limit the complexity of interacting with the human elements.

18 Wheels Of Science Fiction, page 56 - "Q-Bits" by Lucio Rodriguez

  My Thoughts