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Didn't Patrick McGoohan play three or four different villains, as well as directing?
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Sep 26, 2020 07:45
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 20:59 |
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MrBling posted:Columbo is trying to get rid of the new raincoat his wife got him because it's too tight and he can't get rid of it. Only problem is that one of the other police officers keep finding it and bringing it back to him.
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Mar 20, 2021 20:13
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Rollie Fingers posted:Also that it was supposed to be set in London yet 90% of it is filmed in California and they did an incredibly lazy job of making California look like London. As a Brit, American TV pretending to be set here is endlessly amusing. I always remember an episode of Magnum with a caption saying "Leeds, England" while showing a Cotswold village. Nnnnnnope! Not even 24: Live Another Day (which was filmed in England) was immune - a character got from London to their remarkably Cotswold-y home in Yorkshire within one episode, or under an hour. Yeah, if they were picked up by a Harrier, maybe.
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Jun 26, 2021 08:00
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What I always find funny about McGoohan is that for a full decade, he was an upright, intense hero on British TV (first Danger Man, then The Prisoner). Then he moved to Hollywood and found a new career on TV and in film playing cocky rear end in a top hat villains who aren't quite as smart as they think.
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Dec 10, 2021 19:12
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Kicking myself for not picking up the 'cigar box' complete DVD set on eBay when I saw one as a £30 buy-it-now a few days ago. Now having to endure the tedium of bidding and watching the price rise like omicron infections just before the deadline.
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Dec 20, 2021 09:21
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He did a late 80s/early 90s network sitcom where he was a quirky teacher, IIRC.
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Dec 20, 2021 22:05
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Just got my complete DVD collection.  Sadly not the original 'cigar box' set with individual season cases but a newer one where multiple discs are stacked on a single spindle and the one you want is always at the bottom, but for £30 I can't complain too much.Was going to start with a Patrick McGoohan, but as there's no index in the box (!) I didn't realise there are only two episodes per disc and not three. Never mind, I see Donald Pleasence is the villain in one of these so I'll go with him instead!
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Jan 10, 2022 22:03
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So far watched the Donald Pleasence and first Patrick McGoohan episodes, and loving the chill vibes of the whole thing. No rush, no gunplay, no montages of people peering into microscopes or CGI bullet-entry flashbacks, just Columbo ambling about pestering people and gradually whittling down the killer's story before snapping shut the trap at the end. I'm also enjoying the past-shock of a show that started half a century ago. Smoking everywhere. No seatbelts. Rotary phones, and people laboriously dialling numbers. Calling an operator. Cheques. Huge boat-like cars. No DNA evidence. Hardly any forensic analysis. Columbo just picks up pieces of key physical evidence with his bare hands and puts them in his pockets!
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Jan 12, 2022 10:15
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Less than a minute into the second McGoohan episode, 'Identity Crisis', and I already can't take it seriously because the soon-to-be-victim (judging from his "special appearance by" credit) is Frank Drebin.
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Jan 12, 2022 22:31
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Reached 'Agenda for Murder', the third McGoohan episode. Have to admit, I did not see the gotcha coming the cheese. It's so much fun watching Falk and McGoohan repeatedly square off against each other. You can tell both actors are having a great time. The moment when Columbo thrusts the arrest warrant in Finch's face after he thinks he's delivered a perfect 'gently caress you' is pure deadpan comedy. The jump from McGoohan appearances in season 4 to 9 and Columbo now having to pay attention to things like forensics is pretty amusing too. As is the laboured explanation for the older audience of what the hell this new-fangled gadget the "fax machine" is, which has now gone the other way to be necessary for younger viewers. (Reminds me of when 1960s shows Mission: Impossible and Department S both had episodes revolving around wire recordings, which were dated then but now might as well be clay tablets.)
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Jan 16, 2022 01:06
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That was the Donald Pleasence episode! Yeah, I found it odd the way not only how Columbo came to like him, but lots of reviewers say he was a sympathetic villain. Maybe it's because Pleasence has a long history of playing villains (he was Blofeld, for chrissakes!), but he attacks his - admittedly kind of an rear end in a top hat - brother in a fit of rage which is clearly always not far beneath the surface ("Liquid FILTH!") and then immediately works out an elaborate and utterly cold-blooded way to kill him and dispose of the body that makes it look like an accident. Carsini might be a good boss, but he never comes across as a pleasant  person.
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Jan 18, 2022 09:35
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I Love Loosies posted:Wait a minute do we know Columbos first name? I liked the bit in the McGoohan-as-murderous-lawyer ep where Columbo asks for the politician's autograph for his wife and the guy asks who he should sign it to. "Mrs Columbo."
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Jan 20, 2022 18:42
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Reached the last McGoohan episode. drat, Eric Prince (lol at that name in hindsight) was the most dickish of his four killers. The actual murder was an understandable crime of necessity, but he just had to be a prick to Columbo about it, which made his inevitable downfall all the more satisfying. Really, they could probably have done the entire show as a two-handed play with McGoohan playing a different murderer every week and Falk grinding him into defeat each time. But I'm glad they didn't because, since I misread the Wikipedia episode guide and watched 'Murder With Too Many Notes' (which McGoohan directed) first, I would have been denied Billy Connolly as the most frustrated Glaswegian murderer not to be caught by Taggart. The scenes where he's following Columbo home were a thing of beauty as he gets more and more pissed off until Columbo is literally in his car winding him up. Actually, the scene in 'Ashes To Ashes' where Falk is quizzing McGoohan and Sally Kellerman on exactly what his "grief counselling" entailed was also great - full-on "master of my domain" 90s euphemisms all the way. I never appreciated just how funny the show was when I was younger. I guess now I've done all the McGoohans, I'll have to go back to disc 1 with this promising young tyro director. Wonder what will become of him?
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Jan 24, 2022 00:57
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Went back to the start. Say, this Spielberg kid's pretty talented! Actually, not kidding. That opening shot might have some rough edges, but turning what seems like a helicopter shot into a long interior tracking shot is pretty impressive, especially for the time. And he has great fun in the scenes with the shopkeeper-turned-blackmailer, like the ping-ponging camera as she and the killer clink glasses back and forth. Any chance to liven things up visually, he took. Falk nailed Columbo from the start. Apart from the black hair, he could have been dropped into the final season and played things the same. I did enjoy the later scene with the victim's wife, though - he's still polite and genial, but the rambling and absent-mindedness is gone and he's 100% focused on coaxing more info from her to nail the killer. That's an aspect that was missing in the later episodes I've seen outside of the moment when he traps the bad guy. Weirdly, the actual murder plot felt a little strained, probably because of having almost 50 years of quirky murder mysteries following it. A definite case where if the killer had just followed modern-day common sense and not volunteered a single word to the cops, he would have got away with it. But no, he had to jump in and tell them all the decoy avenues they should be looking at instead of him. Dumbass. Like having to remember to dial an area code rather than use the operator, it was a different time. Also, Spielberg as director, Steven Bochco as writer. drat, that's an A-list pairing!
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Jan 28, 2022 23:57
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Bobbin Threadbare posted:That's the whole point of Columbo's schtick. He presents himself as a bumbling cop who just so happens to have some evidence that could point to the culprit, and thus he makes the culprit think that if they can just come up with some story that makes sense of the evidence then this cop will nod along and go away. Everyone has a right to remain silent, but Columbo tricks people into thinking that speaking up will get them into less trouble.
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Jan 29, 2022 17:17
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The Spielberg first episode? Good, but like a dry run for the Robert Culp story that followed. Absolute perfection.  So many great moments (Columbo having nailed the golf pro before even saying a word to him and intimidating the poo poo out of a guy a full head taller stood out, with his golf swing the capper), and the noose getting tighter and tighter around Culp's neck played out so well. It was written by the two guys who basically made Mission: Impossible a success, so the writing being precision engineered wasn't a surprise.
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Jan 29, 2022 22:35
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Tunicate posted:On set Peter Falk said "this kid's too good for Columbo"
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Jan 30, 2022 12:52
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Trip report: 'Dead Weight' - the weakest of the episodes I've seen so far in terms of the story and the gotcha, but the killer was such a creepy gaslighting old gently caress, his downfall partially compensated. 'Suitable For Framing' - on the other hand, the gotcha in this was brilliant. The killer was a pompous, obnoxious toad even before he murdered his accomplice, and it seemed like he had a counter to every possible thing Columbo could hit him with. Until literally the last five seconds, where with an apologetic shrug Columbo utterly obliterates him. Fantastic. (The unspoken subtext was great as well: don't try to go over Columbo's head, because his superiors know how good he is, and will tell him.) Also, earlier I got my episode writers mixed up because I'm an idiot. Mea culpa.
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Feb 6, 2022 23:31
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'Lady In Waiting': solid enough, if nothing especially outstanding about the howcatchum aspects. The most interesting thing was the show's first female killer [EDIT: that I've seen; the two pilots aren't in the supposedly 'Complete' DVD set, annoyingly], and the way she was initially presented as unfairly downtrodden to catch the audience's sympathies... only for her to gradually make them go "wait, maybe her family had a point, she's an unstable rear end in a top hat." (This was also the first time a suspect finally cracked and told Columbo to gently caress off with his harassment, if not in those exact words.) Only a few episodes in, and Columbo's "personable bumbler (which is 50% an act, but you don't know which 50%)" shtick is now solidified. It's amazing how quickly both Falk and the writers found a character who not only lasted for decades, but is arguably timeless. Also: Oscar Goldman as the victim! Drebin again! drat, did Leslie Neilsen always look 67 years old even when he was playing a dashing young corporate up-and-comer? Edit: I genuinely thought the gotcha would be "you have two servants in the house, but your fingerprints are on the light bulb", but early 70s Columbo ain't CSI. Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Feb 12, 2022 |
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Feb 12, 2022 00:55
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I'm peeved because the first season 2 disc in the boxset I bought second-hand is so scratched it won't play for more than a minute without skipping and I can't even get Handbrake to read enough of it to rip a backup copy, so it's wrecked my plan to watch the entire show in order. I know the order doesn't matter (and I've already seen a bunch of later stories), but still. 
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May 25, 2022 22:37
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El Fideo posted:The entire show is on Tubi to watch for free.  [Columbo voice]: Ah, gee, a - a "virtual private network"? You mean you can be in one country and the computer will think you're in another? [Touches forehead] That's something, that's, wow. Now my wife, she's an expert at the cyber-surfing thing, but me, I only just got the hang of the fax machine... Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 07:45 on May 26, 2022 |
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May 26, 2022 07:35
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I got over my annoyance at not being able to watch the show in order and moved on to 'The Most Crucial Game'. Yay, Culp's back! Shame the story wasn't as perfectly written as his first appearance, but it was enjoyable all the same. It feels like the writers now had a handle on the formula and were so busy planting red herrings (the other hot dog vendor! The girl who wanted an ice cream! The footprints!) to disguise the real gotcha the chiming clock that they didn't make the case against Culp airtight. A decent lawyer could surely have put plenty of doubt in a jury's mind about it. But hey, that's not what the show's about.
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Jun 4, 2022 08:00
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Sound and fuuuury, signifying... NOTHING! Yes, I just watched the London/Macbeth episode. I kid; it wasn't that bad. It wasn't good either, but as a Brit I treated it like whenever any US show has a Very Special Episode set in Britain and considered it a comedy. Looked at like that it's pretty watchable, as Honour Blackman (who I last watched as Cathy Gale in The Avengers) and [Gypsy voice] Richard Basehart! Richard Basehart! ham it up to the max as the overly theatrical thespianic couple who accidentally kill their meal ticket and then spiral their criminal activities outwards until they become cold-blooded murderers. They're great fun as a pair of bitchy, brittle, co-dependent egotists, to the point that they almost outshine Columbo in his own show. Almost. Whenever American TV comes to Britain (either in the Austin Powers "It's remarkable how England in no way resembles Southern California" way, or the rarer type here where they actually shot on location in the UK) you can always expect to see the following: aristocrats, stuffy and pompous public-school (a very different meaning over here) officials, black cabs, red buses, Big Ben, fish and chips, cringing Cockney proles and the visiting American at first seeming browbeaten by those clarssy arccents before showing them what's what, what. And 'Dagger of the Mind' hits all the marks. It was actually a surprise to see the episode turn up so early in the show's run - I would have expected the foreign travel gimmick to come much later. (It was kind of funny spotting the switches between genuine London footage - with grey, lovely weather - and the bright, warm sunlight of LA, though.)
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Jun 4, 2022 23:34
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I Am Fowl posted:Yeah, I just hate how he catches them in this one.
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Jun 5, 2022 16:30
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For anyone who hasn't seen this yet: https://twitter.com/joechoui/status/1582419562242273290?s=46&t=XFMWlPcXgLza1kqvYqoAzQ It captures both shows perfectly - I especially challenge you not to hear Frasier and Niles' dialogue in their voices. Small Strange Bird fucked around with this message at 13:24 on Nov 5, 2022 |
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Nov 5, 2022 13:11
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 20:59 |
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knox posted:I always thought the Commodore episode was extremely funny, the final scene with all of them gathered together could've been done a little better writing wise though (" tisn't "). Non-Irish Detective Mac, the 4 of them squeezed into the Peugeot, the screaming, the mizzen-boom jive.
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May 16, 2023 14:23
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