Since we're still waiting for the next Bond film

 

[VIDEO] Remember Sam Neill from Jurassic Park or better yet another one of my favorite roles that he played was on The Hunt for Red October with the late Sean Connery playing a Soviet submarine Captain and Neil played his first officer. Well imagine him as James Bond 007.

Well he'd be in the camp of George Lazenby who's from Australia and Pierce Brosnan who's Irish. Neill is actually from New Zealand. And I think I would've liked his portrayal he almost looked like his former co-star Connery who was the first James Bond in this screen test recorded in 1986.

However, in time for 1987 The Living Daylights he lost out to Timothy Dalton.

Simply Railway and the brand new Amtrak Viewliner sleepers

 

[VIDEO] In 2019 I took my only trip so far aboard a Viewliner Sleeper car by Amtrak. Traveling with my mother we did one leg in a handicapped bedroom. Then on another leg we were in a Viewliner Roomette which has a toilet.

I'm glad to see the new cars in the roomettes no longer have a toilet. Utterly no privacy if you have to use the bathroom and especially if you have a roommate. And of course the next question is, if you have to use the bathroom in your roomette where do you go. 

If I wanted privacy in my roomette and have a roommate then I'd have to go to the coach car on the train to do my business at least in the old model Viewliner sleepers. Probably a hell of a trek if you really need to use it bad.

I hope you enjoy this as while I don't think I took the Silver Meteor on one leg, my trip in 2019 took us to Jacksonville, Florida at that time.

I hope you enjoy this half-hour plus video from Simply Railway.

YouTuuba: A Walk Through the original series Star Trek Set Tour

 

[VIDEO] Don't let the date you see to this fool you. This tour occurred in 2018 as part of YouTuuba's Train Odysseys remember those?

Anyway he's in Ticonderoga, New York to go on a tour of the original series Star Trek sets. We see him drive to a building and then a slideshow which he narrates on what he sees during this tour. It's very cool that he had a chance to sit in Capt. Kirk's chair.

This exhibit is actually located in Ticonderoga, N.Y. and you can learn more about this at startrektour.com. This is one place I would like to visit.

Oh and I didn't know this but according to that website this exhibit was created by James Cawley who played Capt. James T. Kirk in fan produced videos that were designed as a continuation of the original Star Trek. According to this Cawley's wiki page the sets here were actually seen on an episode of Star Trek: Enterprise called "In a Mirror, Darkly"

Two other Movie Cabinet posts published here

When I first published this review of Batman: Mask of the Phantasm Roger Ebert hadn't passed away although his longtime partner on TV Gene Siskel had by the time I shared that video. Ebert passed away after a very debilitating illness in 2013 his face unfortunately forever disfigured still had a friendly and approachable personality. They both loved this animated Batman film released in 1993.

• Siskel & Ebert Review Batman Mask of The Phantasm

Also there's this old long ago newsreel from Paramount News about the life of one Huey Long from Louisiana. He was a populist not much different than a Bernie Sanders or a Donald Trump although ideologically he probably was closer to a Bernie Sanders. He was a very powerful and popular Governor of Louisiana and was elected to the U.S. Senator. He developed a very powerful machine that at the time of his assassination in Louisiana he was still largely in control of. 

• Newsreel: Sen. Huey Long

The Movie Cabinet

 

Do any of you remember The Movie Cabinet? It was a blog I had long stopped publishing back in 2009, I've uploaded the archives here and if you click in the archives hierarchy in the sidebar you will see the first three movies I reviewed there.

You might have seen some of those movies

• The American President
• Boyz N the Hood
• Mississippi Burning

What other old movies will you see discussed here. Alas I will keep then as archived from when I posted them originally, however, I promise to share with you all those posts once I've done editing and proofreading them.

A lot of them have missing images or since deleted video previews, etc. Got to work on them a bit.

Either way what I wrote there is what you will also see here at "the Beta"

Enjoy! 

Mid-Atlantic Gateway

 Well since this was really ahead of my time and only got some inkling of this through the internet, it's great to see the Mid Atlantic Championship Wrestling TV get its due especially for wrestling fans through the MidAtlanticGateway.com. You may have seen such wrestlers as Roddy Piper, Ric Flair, and others on this program that aired in the Carolinas.

I feel as if I seen this site before in a different iteration in the past. Either way great to see it's still going strong and you can catch the old episodes of Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling on the WWE Network. Although the theme has been overdubbed on the network - doggone corporate concerns over licensing - you can check out the original open to the program [VIDEO]

I do have some sad news from this week, the promoters of the aforementioned Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling a man by the name of Jim Crockett who owned Jim Crockett Promotions passed away during the week. I had just became aware of an interview which one has to purchase that Crockett had with one Conrad Thompson. Certainly it's one of those shoot style interviews and it would be cool to watch a promoter who tried to go toe-to-toe with Vince McMahon during the initial pro-wrestling boom of the 1980s.

However by 1989 or so Crockett had sold JCP to Turner Broadcasting and thus programs such as Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling had been folded into the new entity known as World Championship Wrestling.