It started 300 million years ago... OK, it really started in August of 2008 when the British television series Primeval arrived on the scene. It was a combination Stargate and Jurassic Park. Professor Nick Carter (Henshall) became obsessed with a natural phenomenon he coined anomalies. These sparkling electro-magnetic disturbances were doorways to eras of the past, and later discovered, the future. His wife had disappeared into one several years earlier, and he ended up heading a government team called A.R.C. (Anomaly Research Center) to deal with the beasts that get through to our side. They needed to be returned in one piece. It turns out that killing even a prehistoric bug could generate time ripples that might change the present. Carter found out the hard way, and for five seasons Primeval dealt with the likes of errant dinosaurs and conspiracies from the future. The show ended in June of 2011... or did it?

Enter Primeval: New World. This one-season wonder picked up where the British series ended. This time it was set in Canada. The new Nick Carter was Alex Cross, played by Niall Matter. Cross is a rich industrialist. Like Carter, he had lost his wife years ago. His loss was much more permanent. A dinosaur ate her in front of him. A strange man in an ARC uniform just barely saved his life at the cost of his own. He keeps the body of his mysterious stranger in a cryogenic freeze. He dedicates his efforts and company resources to learning everything he can about the anomalies. He ends up using technology from the future to build the tech we already saw in the original series. Cross puts together a team to begin doing pretty much what Carter's team did in the original. They would track down the anomalies and attempt to deal with the various prehistoric nasties that made their way through them to our time.

Joel and Ethan Coen have been churning out hits for decades.  From Raising Arizona to Fargo and No Country For Old Men as well as many cult hits in between, the Coen brothers have a unique voice that has led to their long success in the Hollywood system.  With their new release, the Coens delve into the Greenwich Village Folk scene in the winter of 1961.  It’s a time that most audiences (myself included) may not be very knowledgeable about. The Coens take on this niche genre of music and present an engaging tale about a struggling musician and his journey to find success in an industry that at the time had a deaf ear to Folk.

Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) is a guitar playing folksinger, his act recently going solo after his partner dies.  When we first meet Llewyn he’s playing at The Gaslight, a club filled with musical acts on the rise.  After his set Llewyn is told by the club’s owner that there is friend waiting for him outside; as it would turn out the so-called “friend” has a grudge to settle with Llewyn.

Long before Clint Eastwood was making our day as Dirty Harry or even roaming the badlands without a name for Sergio Leone, he was working the cattle drive on Rawhide. Rawhide was created to take advantage of the huge Western film and television wave that Hollywood had been riding for nearly a decade. With huge ratings for Gunsmoke and Bonanza among others, Rawhide was a bit of an unlikely success. Here the show explored the West on an endless cattle drive to get a few thousand steer to market. Along the way the crew would find themselves involved in someone else’s troubles or meet trouble head on themselves. The cattle drive theme would rely on the changing landscape to distinguish the show from other more sedentary westerns. More like Wagon Train, the constant movement always gave a sense of action even when there wasn’t much. Of course, there was a large number of changing support players along on the drive. Every operation needs cooks, ropers, and red shirts.

A very young Clint Eastwood played Rowdy Yates. Unlike any cowboy you ever saw, Rowdy had slicked up hair and looked more like a biker than a cowhand. He was the greenhorn in the bunch, usually finding each experience a learning opportunity. He had an almost naïve charm that made him popular. Eric Fleming was Gil, the trail boss. The third main character was Pete Nolan, played by Sheb Wooley. Sheb formed a good relationship with Eastwood that would be rewarded years later when Eastwood created a role for him in The Outlaw Josey Wales. I didn’t really watch the show even in its limited syndication run, so knew most of it by reputation only. Of course, I knew the Frankie Laine theme that has been used for everything from selling cars to western spoofs. The tune was also a moderate radio and record hit in the day.