So, being a huge fan of The Prisoner, I thought it might be interesting to watch some other Patrick McGoohan movies to see a) what else he did in his long (but sometimes obscure) film career, and b) how those movies stack up.

So, in jumping around timewise, the first is/was 1995′s Braveheart, PMcG’s last major film appearance. The first few times I’ve seen this movie I didn’t know who he was (it was in the sad, ignorant days before I had watched The Prisoner ) but man is he evil in this movie as the English King Edward Longshanks, the primary villain trying to corrupt and eradicate (or at best hopelessly cripple) any possibility of Scottish freedom. This is simply a great movie, great performances all around, but P McG has to be considered among the best here, definitely. I’m slated to re-watch this in the coming weeks, so i’ll update more comments in a later post.

Next up was 1968′s Ice Station Zebra, a Cold War submarine flick P McG did with Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine and football star Jim Brown during the waning days of filming The Prisoner in the late 60′s. P McG plays an elusive English spy (big surprise) on an American sub charged with investigating some troubling reports from an Arctic base that sent out emergency broadcasts and then went silent. With all apologies to Howard Hughes, this movie is BOR-ING. Roger Ebert is completely right on – I couldn’t finish it, gave up after the first hour. If you want a great sub movie, watch the over a decade-earlier Disney classic 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea; if you want a great cerebral special effects extravaganza, watch 2001: A Space Odyssey of the same year (which holds up well 40+ years later – that alone tells it all). Either of those movies are far more interesting and better in nearly every way. Sorry, P McG.

Next up – The Three Lives of Thomasina from 1964. This was an early 60′s movie he made (weird career choice IMHO vs his typical fare of the time – the complete opposite of spy thrillers and high drama) that is set in a Scottish village in 1912. He plays a stern, small-town veterinarian who is widowed with a small daughter and a cat, Thomasina. Controversy ensues, some harrowing things happen to the cat, but happiness results by the end (of course) and life lessons were learned by all, most notably by P McG. I had seen at least part of this movie when I was a kid, remembering the very weird ‘dream sequence’ narrated by the cat (gotta love 60′s movies and the obvious drug culture influences that often substitute for special effects or hallucinations). There are a number of moments that are outright funny, or simply bad acting by the kids in the movie – one of them looks like the ‘Scottish Peter Brady‘ – and according to kerewin, the youngest two of them were later ‘recycled’ in Mary Poppins as brother and sister. It’s not an action flick, but it does have a certain charm about it – and of course, P McG provides a few choice quotes, yelled in the shrill, increasing-anger voice he perfected later in The Prisoner – such as ‘That Cat has Tetanus!’. After watching this movie, I promised our cats I’d never take them to ‘Dr. McDhui’ – because P McG spends half the movie simply ‘putting down’ the animals he is too self-centered to otherwise care for and save. Ah, but that’s the tough life in turn-of-the-century Scotland, I guess

candybowl

After a long series of ISP hassles a couple months ago I won’t bore you with, the home network/site situation has been looking (back) up. And as part of this hopefully continued success, the Amiga server is back in the pink, too after some overdue tweaks and maintenance. What is an Amiga, you say?

Click here for a fairly concise and accurate history of one of the coolest computers ever made. As I drift back towards Amiga-land, including using an actual modern Amiga (my server is getting near 20 years old, I am not making that up!) it will mean reacquainting myself with an old friend, and a computer that’s actually FUN to use.

I guess that’s my main beef with most computer systems these days. Windows is about as subtle as a power drill and even less fun to use. I don’t use it for games, barring say Solitaire, Mahjong or FreeCell and the less time I spend using it excepting certain programs, the better. And living in Seattle means (still) enduring people who never used anything else and think Micro$oft invented everything to do with computers. Those sad, sad people….Thankfully M$’s arrogance, ineptitude (Vista, anyone?) and the resurgence of the Mac and Linux have quieted them down considerably (plus many have since ‘retired’ as wealthy stock barons since anyway).

Yes, the Mac is more ‘elegant’ (whatever that means) and isn’t near as hacky, crash-prone or virus-ridden. But again, barring usage of certain programs, it’s ‘meh’ to use for me. It can do many cool things and had I never used an Amiga, I’d probably prefer it above all others.

FreeBSD, the *nix I regularly use on my ThinkPad (soon to be FreeBSD 8.0 in a couple of days) is secure and stable, but still has a way to go on the user-friendliness aspect. But it’s getting there, just like the various types of Linux i’ve used in the past. The interesting thing about Unix/Linux is that despite many users’ strong and continued efforts to mold it into a Windows-killer – there is just as much interest in NOT EVER DOING THAT. Because Unix (and to a somewhat lesser degree Linux) is a geek’s OS, first and foremost – and wasn’t developed originally to be anything different. The windowing systems (X11 and beyond) and GUI elements that came much later were in part a reaction to systems like the Mac, and many users still *like* being ‘in the know’ – without the rest joining the ‘cool kids club’ of Unix users. In other words, if you want to use Unix, earn your stripes, Marine.

Which brings me to the Amiga – as I get back into hopefully using it regularly again, I’m sure i’ll run across things I now take for granted elsewhere that got left behind in the Amiga’s comparative years in the wilderness since 1994 – but the 4.x versions are a promising re-start and there’s ample cause to be optimistic given the nutty lawsuits are now over (hopefully for GOOD). I will leave it to the reader to review the history materials linked above, but here’s to my happy reconversion back

candybowl

PS – the Amiga site is here: http://www.amigau.com – it is hosted on a vintage 1989 A2000 68060/50mhz machine with 64mb RAM. For an original-spec Amiga, this is a comparative powerhouse machine (not by modern standards of course – but how many ‘modern’ computers are still running almost 20 years later after debut, either?) And yes, I know there are many dead links on that site – i’m working on it