puzzle solving: what the 70s got right

I watched the remake of Flight of the Phoenix again last night -- a movie which, like The Poseidon Adventure and Oceans 11, is inferior to the original if for no other reason than the puzzles in the original are better. I love a movie about a bunch of people stuck in a situation they have to solve with a series of quote-unquote puzzles (Shelley Winters needs to swim a long distance under water! The electrical guy needs to shut off the power to all of Las Vegas! The engineer needs to make sense of ancient schematics! &c &c) and all of these remakes have weak-ass puzzles in exchange for shiny-faced celebs and mood music.

So I watched Flight of the Phoenix last night, mostly because I was having a Hugh Laurie jag, and I totally forgot -- if I ever put it together to begin with -- that Jared Padalecki dies an awesomely gruesome death early on.

But the thing about the remake of FOTP, among others, is that only the plane designer (Giovanni Ribisi, art-directed as what can only be described as a Nazi) gets puzzles, and we don't see him grapple with them; nothing goes wrong with the design of the plane (as it does in the original), no other individuals have to help him design/troubleshoot the plane (as they do in the original) and in fact the only time another individual is singled out is for the very, very, very specious "only the crew's chef can affix this wing to the fuselage! We need you, chef!"

Thus, where the punchline of the original FOTP is "look what we made!" and is about hope in hopelessness and a bunch of people who escaped death by building a crazy sled-plane, the remake is about a bunch of people who, under the orders of a pseudo-Nazi, build a large-scale model of a model plane and fly it away. The punchline therefore being something like, "listen to the Nazi with control issues and you'll be just fine."

Now I need to go watch another 70s disaster movie with good puzzles to cleanse my palate before I can watch any lame-ass remakes again.

What's your favorite 70s teamwork puzzle-solving disaster movie?

them ol' feel-good yuletide reccing blues

I'm re-reccing the ones from my initial post, so I can link to the community, which I forgot to do the first time around, and, anyway, who knows if I'll be organized enough after this first batch to do another one?

Anyway!

Tin Gods and Golden Goddessess was written for me and you can't have it! I requested the Betsy-Tacy series, high school era, and received this masterpiece of Tacypov, because, you know, Betsy left Hill Street for High Street and got to grow up, and Tacy stayed back on Hill Street. And plus, as MHL herself said in the books, many times, "Tacy wasn't interested in boys."

Spy vs. Spy, Love & Rockets. Framed in a hilarious mystery, this is all our favorite Hoppers folk lost-summering it at the mysterious Costigan manor, which seems like a hotbed of corruption but, as it turns out, is just a great place for Maggie and Hopey to spend their days and nights fucking. Oh and by the way, yuletide person, it's about time you wrote one of these. I was getting tired of being a fandom of one! Anyway, when the reveal comes, yuletide person, I will more fervently pounce upon thee. You know who you are.

The Kindly King of Strummings and Hummings, Chronicles of Prydain. Because Fflewddur is just the most marvelous wandering humbug king that ever was, and Eilonwy's the princess with the red-gold hair who always knows which way the wind is blowing. Plus there are dragons! And their colors are running!

Waiting, HIMYM. Robin/Barney, with laser tag, banter, and Canadian Christmas.

Feud, Jeremiah. Speaking of shows that were woefully underrepresented in fandom... it is so awesome to see Jeremiah and Kurdy and the crew of Thunder Mountain again. This is a satisfyingly plotty story, with the texture and desperation of the show itself, and is also a great tribute to Kurdy and Jeremiah's friendship. Plus Markus is well used, and Erin drives! Oh, show!

Four Views of General Jinjur, Baum's Oz series, done in interview style as described by those who knew Jinjur best, from the Munchkin mother that raised her to Ozma herself. Good, good fleshing-out of the woman who de-throned the Scarecrow and was, whether she wanted to admit it or not, instrumental in returning Ozma to her throne. The references to Oz canon throughout are elegant and perfect.

A Kiss is Still a Kiss, more Oz series. Don't let the typo in the summary line scare you off of this fic. This is pure Baumian wonder, with a fannish twist. The Oz books are unique among fairy tales and children's literature in that they are close to purely innocent. No ambiguous evil, nothing terribly scary, no sex, no romance of any kind. (In fact, aside from Aunt Em and Uncle Henry and a couple of other assorted, like, Munchkin families, no one is even married in Oz. And certainly there's no talk of it.) Here, Ozma, the fairy princess of Oz, finds an artifact from that other life of Dorothy's, and goes on a perfectly Ozma-style mission to figure it out. And, without corrupting one single sentence of the Oz series, the Yuletide author brings romance to Oz in the unlikeliest of couples.

See You in the Night, Band of Brothers. Here's what's up. Nixon's been with the intelligence officers while Dick's been on the line, so he has information Dick doesn't. And over the course of one cold evening, their bodies wrapped around each other, Nixon realizes he can't protect Dick any more and has to tell him the truth about the horrors of war. Ow. Oh. It's heartbreaking. Like -- if you'll forgive my diversion -- remember that NCIS ep when Gibbs was in a coma and when he woke up Franks had to tell him about 9/11 all over again? Yeah, like that. But worse, and much more beautiful.

There is no I or You, Frasier. A satisfying quickie; Niles reads Neruda and Daphne is clueless.

I'll Find You in the Morning Sun, Angels in America. Long, plotty, bang-on characterization from a flawed and neurotic Louis to a loyal and defensive Belize to a Prior who wants -- and gets -- more life. The friendship between Prior and Hannah is bittersweet and perfect, and the whole thing feels lifted right out of New York City at the dying end of the 1980s.

Whoops! ETA one more: Plenty of Paper, Battle Royale. I mean, all those kids could use backstories, but here are Yumiko and Yukiko, who hid out for as long as they could together and then were killed holding hands. Both adorable and chilling.

And, yes, okay, you were all exactly right, Out of the Dark, One Fish Two Fish is, yes, just that creepy and just that good. It's like an Asian horror movie with rhyming.

We shouldn't have been in the park that night. Alone, too young, in the dark.

Later, B. blamed me for it. He always did. I did alibis; he did rhymes. That's how it worked. Much later, B. blamed himself for it. He did responsibility; I did comfort. That's also how it worked.


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I'm one of those people who perpetually makes Santa's naughty list every year, so I rarely get presents, and that makes my Yuletide gift doubly sweet; something just for me, and something that says someone was thinking about me this year, just me, and, for a minute, fulfilling my hopes and wishes. And this year -- as, really, every year, I've lucked out -- I got the best present ever. Person, if you're reading this, thank you. All I wanted for Hanukkah was a little bit of Deep Valley this year, and I got it, my very own trip to the rambling Kelly house on the hill, like a warm night in the Ray family parlor, Julia at the piano and the rest of us doing the Merry Widow Waltz across the floor.

Happy holidays, folks.