Sit beside the breakfast table
Think about your troubles
Pour yourself a cup of tea
Then think about the bubbles
You can take your teardrops
And drop them in a teacup
Take them down to the riverside
And throw them over the side
The use of Trinity in the title may have created some false expectations: this is most certainly not a comedy. In spite of the traditional storyline it's a rather dark movie. Martin is still the archetypical western hero of the peaceful man who's forced to take up his gun again, but he's also a psychologically tormented, unstable person who is haunted by his violent past in a series of red-tinted flashbacks. The action scenes are rather sudden; they're well-handled...
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| photo of Philip K. Dick from Wikipedia |
Listen to the Librivox recording here.The claws were bad enough in the first place -nasty, crawling little death-robots. But when they began to imitate their creators, it was time for the human race to make peace -if it could!
The Russian soldier made his way nervously up the ragged side of the hill, holding his gun ready. He glanced around him, licking his dry lips, his face set. From time to time he reached up a gloved hand and wiped perspiration from his neck, pushing down his coat collar.
Eric turned to Corporal Leone. “Want him? Or can I have him?” He adjusted the view sight so the Russian’s features squarely filled the glass, the lines cutting across his hard, somber features.
Leone considered. The Russian was close, moving rapidly, almost running. “Don’t fire. Wait.” Leone tensed. “I don’t think we’re needed.”
The Russian increased his pace, kicking ash and piles of debris out of his way. He reached the top of the hill and stopped, panting, staring around him. The sky was overcast, drifting clouds of gray particles. Bare trunks of trees jutted up occasionally; the ground was level and bare, rubble-strewn, with the ruins of buildings standing out here and there like yellowing skulls.
The Russian was uneasy. He knew something was wrong. He started down the hill. Now he was only a few paces from the bunker. Eric was getting fidgety. He played with his pistol, glancing at Leone.
“Don’t worry,” Leone said. “He won’t get here. They’ll take care of him.”
“Are you sure? He’s got damn far.”
“They hang around close to the bunker. He’s getting into the bad part. Get set!”
The Russian began to hurry, sliding down the hill, his boots sinking into the heaps of gray ash, trying to keep his gun up. He stopped for a moment, lifting his fieldglasses to his face.
“He’s looking right at us,” Eric said.
The Russian came on. They could see his eyes, like two blue stones. His mouth was open a little. He needed a shave; his chin was stubbled. On one bony cheek was a square of tape, showing blue at the edge. A fungoid spot. His coat was muddy and torn. One glove was missing. As he ran his belt counter bounced up and down against him.
Leone touched Eric’s arm. “Here one comes.”
Across the ground something small and metallic came, flashing in the dull sunlight of mid-day. A metal sphere. It raced up the hill after the Russian, its treads flying. It was small, one of the baby ones. Its claws were out, two razor projections spinning in a blur of white steel. The Russian heard it. He turned instantly, firing. The sphere dissolved into particles. But already a second had emerged and was following the first. The Russian fired again.
A third sphere leaped up the Russian’s leg, clicking and whirring. It jumped to the shoulder. The spinning blades disappeared into the Russian’s throat.
Eric relaxed. “Well, that’s that. God, those damn things give me the creeps. Sometimes I think we were better off before.”
“If we hadn’t invented them, they would have.” Leone lit a cigarette shakily. “I wonder why a Russian would come all this way alone. I didn’t see anyone covering him.”
Lt. Scott came slipping up the tunnel, into the bunker. “What happened? Something entered the screen.”
“An Ivan.”
“Just one?”
Eric brought the view screen around. Scott peered into it. Now there were numerous metal spheres crawling over the prostrate body, dull metal globes clicking and whirring, sawing up the Russian into small parts to be carried away.
“What a lot of claws,” Scott murmured.
“They come like flies. Not much game for them any more.”
Scott pushed the sight away, disgusted. “Like flies. I wonder why he was out there. They know we have claws all around.”
A larger robot had joined the smaller spheres. It was directing operations, a long blunt tube with projecting eyepieces. There was not much left of the soldier. What remained was being brought down the hillside by the host of claws.
“Sir,” Leone said. “If it’s all right, I’d like to go out there and take a look at him.”
“Why?”
“Maybe he came with something.”
Scott considered. He shrugged. “All right. But be careful.”
“I have my tab.” Leone patted the metal band at his wrist. “I’ll be out of bounds.”
He picked up his rifle and stepped carefully up to the mouth of the bunker, making his way between blocks of concrete and steel prongs, twisted and bent. The air was cold at the top. He crossed over the ground toward the remains of the soldier, striding across the soft ash. A wind blew around him, swirling gray particles up in his face. He squinted and pushed on.
The claws retreated as he came close, some of them stiffening into immobility. He touched his tab. The Ivan would have given something for that! Short hard radiation emitted from the tab neutralized the claws, put them out of commission. Even the big robot with its two waving eyestalks retreated respectfully as he approached.
He bent down over the remains of the soldier. The gloved hand was closed tightly. There was something in it. Leone pried the fingers apart. A sealed container, aluminum. Still shiny.
He put it in his pocket and made his way back to the bunker. Behind him the claws came back to life, moving into operation again. The procession resumed, metal spheres moving through the gray ash with their loads. He could hear their treads scrabbling against the ground. He shuddered.
Scott watched intently as he brought the shiny tube out of his pocket. “He had that?”
“In his hand.” Leone unscrewed the top. “Maybe you should look at it, sir.”
Scott took it. He emptied the contents out in the palm of his hand. A small piece of silk paper, carefully folded. He sat down by the light and unfolded it.
“What’s it say, sir?” Eric said. Several officers came up the tunnel. Major Hendricks appeared.
“Major,” Scott said. “Look at this.”
Hendricks read the slip. “This just come?”
“A single runner. Just now.”
“Where is he?” Hendricks asked sharply.
“The claws got him.”
Major Hendricks grunted. “Here.” He passed it to his companions. “I think this is what we’ve been waiting for. They certainly took their time about it.”
“So they want to talk terms,” Scott said. “Are we going along with them?”
“That’s not for us to decide.” Hendricks sat down. “Where’s the communications officer? I want the Moon Base.”
Leone pondered as the communications officer raised the outside antenna cautiously, scanning the sky above the bunker for any sign of a watching Russian ship.
“Sir,” Scott said to Hendricks. “It’s sure strange they suddenly came around. We’ve been using the claws for almost a year. Now all of a sudden they start to fold.”
“Maybe claws have been getting down in their bunkers.”
“One of the big ones, the kind with stalks, got into an Ivan bunker last week,” Eric said. “It got a whole platoon of them before they got their lid shut.”
“How do you know?”
“A buddy told me. The thing came back with—with remains.”
“Moon Base, sir,” the communications officer said.
On the screen the face of the lunar monitor appeared. His crisp uniform contrasted to the uniforms in the bunker. And he was clean shaven. “Moon Base.”
“This is forward command L-Whistle. On Terra. Let me have General Thompson.”
The monitor faded. Presently General Thompson’s heavy features came into focus. “What is it, Major?”
“Our claws got a single Russian runner with a message. We don’t know whether to act on it—there have been tricks like this in the past.”
“What’s the message?”
“The Russians want us to send a single officer on policy level over to their lines. For a conference. They don’t state the nature of the conference. They say that matters of—” He consulted the slip. “—Matters of grave urgency make it advisable that discussion be opened between a representative of the UN forces and themselves.”
He held the message up to the screen for the general to scan. Thompson’s eyes moved.
“What should we do?” Hendricks said.
“Send a man out.”
“You don’t think it’s a trap?”
“It might be. But the location they give for their forward command is correct. It’s worth a try, at any rate.”
The Winter's Tale (1910) from Ned Thanhouser on Vimeo.
AND THEN THERE WAS ONE...
Between Mars and Jupiter a pair of asteroids orbited. In better times three self-contained space colonies were planned to accompany them: Sancho Panza, Don Quixote, and Rosinante.
But, after the crash of 2039, Project Sancho Panza was cancelled, and Mundito Don Quixote was trashed by unpaid union workers left holding a grudge. Then, just when it seemed Mundito Rosinante would survive a few years at least, someone launched an unstoppable missile t it from near-Earth orbit!
This was the third hostile act aimed at Rosinante. To save his home and his people, Charles Cantrell -governor of the newly independent colony- would hve to discover whose hit list they were on. And why.
A brutal blacksmith tortures a demon he blames for his misery, unaware a trespassing orphan is about to change everything. Based on Basque folklore.from Wikipedia:
It tells the story of a blacksmith who holds a demon in captivity, and as a revenge for his troubles is torturing it. Later, an orphan girl releases the demon from its enclosure.trailer:
When Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, the chief of police in Paris's seventh arrondissement, is called to the scene of a ghastley and highly unusual murder, he thinks it can't have anything to do with the nine pairs of shoes and severed feet discovered outside of London's Highgate Cemetery just a few days earlier. With the help of the murdered man's gifted physician, Adamsberg delves into the victim's psyche and unexpectedly finds himself on a path that takes him deep into the haunted past of Eastern Europe, where a centuries-old horror has come to life. This is an investigation unlike any that Adamsberg has undertaken before - and one that someone on the inside is ready to stop at any cost.I've also read: #7 This Night's Foul Work
Life ain't nothing but a blending up of all the ups and downs
Dammit Elvis, don't you know
You made your Mama so proud
Before you ever made that record, before there ever was a Sun
Before you ever lost that Cadillac that Carl Perkins won
"The riots and storming of the Capitol have been described as insurrection, sedition, and domestic terrorism. Some sources have labeled it as an attempted coup d'état. The incident was the first time the Capitol had been overrun since the 1814 burning of Washington by the British during the War of 1812."My heart hurts. I'm in shock. If I can gather my thoughts I may post again later today.
Three young boys are given the responsibility of carrying Christmas gifts to the mission church in the costumes of the Three Wise Men. When they ride through the poorest section of the village, the boys decide to give the presents to the ragged children instead, causing a crisis in conscience in the community.
The admirable thing about the movie is its devotion to real life. These are the kind of people, we feel, who must really have inhabited the West: common, direct, painfully shy in social situations and very honest. "Shane" was a cowboy movie of this type. So was "Hud," although in a modern setting. And Kirk Douglas' unrecognized masterpiece, "Lonely Are the Brave," was in the same class.Rotten Tomatoes has a critics consensus rating of 85%.
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