Shoulda just rode a damn mule…
Stuck in airline travel hell. I’m supposed to be winging across the country to Savannah, Georgia, for a newspaper conference, but have been thwarted by mechanical difficulties. I guess when the nose gear on your plane is malfunctioning, you don’t want to fly for some reason. And when your flight out of a regional airport is cancelled, your options for getting across the country to a non-hub city are few.
I’ll get there… eventually… but it’s looking like a 36-hour travel day.
No worries. I’m entirely Zero Foxtrot. I have half of Speaks the Nightbird yet to go, and plenty of work to do both of the newspaper variety and on the podcast. One task is to clean up some loose ends here at Frontier Partisans.
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Somehow I missed that Taylor Sheridan has settled a limited series on Paramount+ on Bass Reeves.
Here’s the caper reported by The Outsider:
In a recent video posted to the 1883 Instagram page, Taylor Sheridan discusses the upcoming project. “As far as Bass Reeves goes, that’s a parallel world. In the 1880s, Bass Reeves was the first African American marshal west of the Mississippi, policing the entire Oklahoma territories.”
He goes on to talk about his leading man, David Oyelowo, in glowing terms. “When I’m casting, I’m seeking the great actors of our generation, and David Oyelowo is a once-in-a-generation talent.”
Oyelowo is just as excited for the show as its director. He adds, “To look at a character like Bass Reeves – I mean, this is the guy The Lone Ranger was based on, who got whitewashed out of history. I just can’t wait to get on that horse and tell this story.”
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The coming months are a feast of Frontier Partisan and Frontier Partisan-adjacent drama. The Last Kingdom Season 5 drops on Netflix on March 9. This is the final season of the adaptation of Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Chronicles, centering around the war captain Uthred of Bebbanburg, a Saxon captured as a youth and raised as a Dane, who ends up, often reluctantly, serving the Saxon King Alfred the Great.
Uthred is, in Richard Slotkins’ formulation, the mythic “Man Who Knows Indians” — the “savage” frontiersman whose skills and savvy help the “civilized” to prevail in savage warfare.
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Outlander’s sixth season premiers on March 6.
As noted in a previous post, this season really goes full Frontier Partisan as the tensions leading up tp the American Revolution start tearing into the Carolina backcountry.
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In the Frontier Partisans world — backed up by Colin G. Calloway’s assertion that we can think of industrial Manchester, England, as a frontier — Peaky Blinders is a frontier yarn. It’s one of my favorite dramas, and it wraps up (sort of) with Season 6. BBC will air it starting February 27, so it should drop in April.
I say the tale will “sort of” wrap up because creator Steven Knight is also planning a theatrical capper.
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The Northman will also hit theaters in April — on April 22. I might just put aside my growing aversion for movie theaters (more accurately, the people who go to movie theaters and talk and text and …) to see this one.
Mike says
I’m cautiously optimistic on the Bass piece given Taylor’s other work. Here’s hoping they pull off a great one!
JimC says
Yessir!
Quixotic Mainer says
Reeves has needed his spot in the limelight for a long time. I think they spun Denzel Washington’s take on the Yul Brynner role with a little Reeves flavor, but a truer to life account would be fantastic.
I haven’t hit the theater in several years now either, but I think I’m going to break the ice for Peter Dinklage’s take on Cyrano de Bergerac.
Good luck flying the thunderbird!
JimC says
Marilyn is interested in Cyrano, too.
Paul+McNamee says
Serendipity for the won.
Your travel woes + Bass Reeves.
Guess which historical character showed up on episode 7 of AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS Sunday night?
😉
JimC says
Sweet!
lane+batot says
Yeah, it was great, wasn’t it? And the fellow playing Bass was GREAT, I thought! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING like the book or previous film versions of “80 Days”–they definitely decided to “do their own thing” with this series, but I’ve really enjoyed it. This last, American West episode was quite the gritty one, and, sadly, still rather politically correct regarding our country today(sigh….And I say that as a Southerner myself, although those racial sentiments are not just harbored–not by a long shot–by white American Southerners only….). They have changed things up so much, I really am wondering how the show is going to end(last episode this week!). I’m thinking they’ll alter the story’s ending as well–at least to some degree! Damn! I AT LEAST hope Fogg does win the wager!
lane+batot says
….And as for Travel Woes, yer gonna be rather close to my neck of the woods if you end up getting to Georgia–if you want to mosey on up here for a visit, or get marooned somewhere, you’d be more’n welcome, of course! My shack shore ain’t much of a goin’ concern, but the woods are rather decent for midstate N. C. ….
Ugly Hombre says
“As far as Bass Reeves goes, that’s a parallel world.”
Outstanding! Reeves has needed a film forever- when his son went outlaw Bass brought him in and locked him up. Reeves followed the law to the letter. A outstanding American.
“Fearless, knowing no master but duty”
~ from the obituary of U.S. Deputy Marshal Bass Reeves”
https://www.bassreevesgc.com/
Who lives on.
Find some old tarantulas who know how to work the Colt and the Winchester and don’t make this a “America Is bad story.”
https://www.americanrifleman.org/content/frontier-lawman-deputy-u-s-marshal-bass-reeves/
The Bass Reeves saga sure as hell- is not that.
tom says
hey jim, your travel woes might be interrupted with a misbehaving passenger? seems like there is an increase in drama on air flights nowadays? and it is not apparently mask issues, but maybe drama queens need to “scratch the itch” from the pandemic?! terrible when a single person can cause a flight to return………
JimC says
In our case, it was a mechanical issue. The passengers were remarkably calm and collected, considering that all of us were flung completely off the rails with the loooooooonnnnnggg flight delay.