PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Ghost Busters 1954

Some guy named whoiseyevan posted a video on YouTube and some bloggers passed it along until I saw it. I'm passing it along to you.  Whoiseyevan made a trailer for a movie that might have existed if Ghost Busters had been made in 1954 with Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope and Fred McMurray. It's pretty silly, but sillier is the route I took tracking it upstream. I spotted this on Bits & Pieces and followed the links. The first link lead to Miss Celinia, then to YesButNoButYes, which linked to the Laughing Squid, and that led me to I09, and that linked to Coilhouse which has no link to anywhere. One site said there are 17 movies used to create the trailer. I don't know what they are but I could believe it. It made me laugh, hope you'll enjoy it.

What I Read In June 2009

Another short stack for the month. One a collection of drawings, three novels and a slim volume of children's stories. I don't remember what I was doing but it sure wasn't reading. Hittin' the bricks too much I guess.

The Wolverton Bible is a collection of drawings that Basil Wolverton did for Herbert Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God. I've been hoping for a collection of these drawings for ages. The only place to get most of them is the 6 volume set of Bible Stories that the Church put out. There are 2 editions that are pretty costly. The first usually runs about $300, if you ever see them. The second edition is a bit cheaper. I wouldn't want to pay that and after waiting for a long while someone at Fantagraphics put the whole shabang out in one 304 page hardcover. And it's only $24.95. What a gret collection. The drawings are nicely printed, very black, on nice white paper. The cover is printed on the book, there's no dust wrapper. The book is sturdy and feels good.

That's got to be Eve hangin' in the garden and a nice shot of the moon, which I think is from God's POV. I've been a fan of Wolverton's art for ages and have always wished more was available. This is a windfall. It's a wonderful additon to any art collection. There are some more Wolverton books out there to be had. He's one of those guys with a unique style that isn't mainstream enough to have made him real popular. Lucky, for me, there are some publishers, and his son Monte, who have worked to keep his work in print much of the time. He's definately worth a look. Here's a page of one of his wonderful science fiction stories, and silly picture of Basil himself.

The Mirror of Merlin by T A Barron is the fourth of the series. Merlin has a bit of a run around and after passing through a magic mirror he meets himself. I don't know if I would like to meet the older me, not being magical and all. I'm still not groovin' on these books but wanted to read them and put them in the trade in bag. That bag is getting really full. I actually need a second bag. If I would have read faster and more often that bag could be even fuller.

Hellboy - The Fire Wolves by Tim Lebbon was pretty entertaining. Hellboy travels to Amalfi Italy and fights some evil demons who appear in the form of a firey wolves. They hide as humans when they aren't being fire wolves. They are rich and evil and Hellboy takes them down after some major damage to people and places. It's a tough world that Hellboy universe, people are getting slaughtered by the handfulls. Big giant handfulls too. It was pretty well told and since I was pretty interested in the story I was breezin' through this one quickly. I can't say that for my next book.

The Strain by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan was an ok thriller but once I found out it was some new version of the vampire tale I kind of checked out. I slogged along and the book would often sit the day without a page being read. Not a good sign. Greg had loaned me the Advanced Reading copy he got at DreamHaven and I finally got to it the same week the actual hardcover came out. I just wasn't too keen on reading it. I'm not a big thriller fan and this is pretty much that formula. Plane lands and just about everyone is dead and drained of blood. Oh, what's that going to lead to? The dead will rise warns the old pawn broker with a complicated backstory involving Nazis and Vampires. Man, this books got everything, you'd expect in a vampire thriller. I've never read any Chuck Hogan but this the sort of book I figured he'd write based on his book's covers and thickness. I'm just not a big fan of the genre. I don't think Del Toro, whom I like as a director and movie story teller, had written any books before. If I get to read the rest of the trilogy, I'll be surprised. Too many other books to read and time is getting short. No matter what's left it's short. I can't count on being turned into a vampire in our "real" world. That's probably for the best, I never liked lying on dirt. There's always some bugs in there.

Mr. Pink-Whistle Has Some Fun by Enid Blyton was really entertaining. It's a collection of short stories about a little guy with magical powers. He turns invisible and helps people out. He usually goes right after the bad kid and makes him do the weirdest things. He's really good at tormenting people into being better. In one story he turns invisible and picks on two bullies in the local elementary school. They get the treatment and soon learn their lesson. Nice. A great book for people who like the get their own back. That's a great British term for revenge. Everybody loves them some revenge. The edition I have squeezes 6 stories out of the two books here. These were stories that had originally run in Sunny Stories for Little Folks or The Enid Blyton Magazine. Enid wrote a bi-weekly magazine from 1926 to 1959, all by herself. Many of the short stories that she wrote got collected in books. Mr. Pink-Whistle was one series, Brer Rabbit was another, and a couple more characters I'll be looking at next month. I love the covers on these old editions. You can read more about Enid Blyton, an amazingly prolific writer at The Enid Blyton Society. It's hard to find her books in the USA, she was never that big here. In Canada we had her books in the libraries and bookstores all the time I was growing up there. That's when I read her Adventure series. I re-read them in the last 5 or 6 years and plan to read them again soon. They are my favorite series by Blyton.

Micropolis - Shino Temple and Grounds

That's the new Micropolis module that I built. It's actually 36 modules or 9 square blocks. 96 by 96 studs on a side, that's 30 inches a side. It breaks into 32 by 32 chunks. I built the temple part a while back and wanted to add some more. It grew in my head and finally got finished. You can see more pictures over at MOCpages.

The Frog King by Erik Smit

That's the latest from Erik Smit. His adaptation of the original version of the Brother's Grimm story. Lots of great stuff to look at in his scenes and a cool story. It's all very pretty to look at. Makes me think Fairy Tale. Perhaps with more of a Disney look than a Brother's Grimm look, but that's ok, I always liked the Disney version of the Fairy Tale.

Science Fiction Funday 42

Poor Fred McMurray is a dog hating mailman with two teenage boys in Disney's 1959 movie The Shaggy Dog. Tommy Kirk plays the older son, a rocket enthusiast, and Kevin Corcoran plays the younger son, a kid. Annette Funicello plays the cute girl. Tim Considine is Tommy's rival for Annette's affection, at least until the even more interesting and foreign Roberta Shore arrives in town with a large shaggy dog in tow. Tommy, while hanging out at the museum run by Cecil Kellaway, tries on a ring that curses him. His curse? Turning into that same shaggy dog. Yeow! It's the movie that jump started Fred McMurray's flagging career and launched a long line of live action comedies for Disney. They would follow TSD with the two Fred McMurray comedies involving Flubber. Maybe you heard of them. While Tommy tries to deal with turning into a dog he discovers that Roberta's uncle is really a spy. Soon Fred gets into the antics. That leads him to the police and getting analyzed by vetran voice actor Paul Frees. I've always been a fan of the man. More running about and the movie is over. The director is Charles Barton who worked with many of the young actors in the movie on the Disney series Spin and Marty. That was a pretty entertaining series that ran in little short episodes on the Mickey Mouse Club Show. There was a dvd out a few years ago but it's probably out of print. The Shaggy Dog was based on story The Hound Of Florence by Felix Slaten, who wrote the novel Bambi.

The 1976 sequel The Shaggy DA has Tommy Kirk all grown up. He's played by Dean Jones now. Dean's married to Suzanne Pleshette and they have a little boy. Keenan Wynne is the town's District Attorney and the bad guy. He played that role in several previous Disney movies. Tim Conway is the comic relief machine, no Othello for that guy, still a meaty part. Tim has the dog that Dean turns into, an ice cream truck with more than 39 flavors, and Jo Anne Worley as his girlfriend. She's in the roller derby. That's a whole movie's worth of running gags right there. Some criminals are working the city pretty hard. The current DA is doing little. After his house is cleaned out Dean decides to run for DA and clean up the town. The crooks steal the ring and it starts working it's mojo while Dean is trying to get his campaign on. Hi-jinks insue. The sequel isn't as charming as the first movie, but it's still ok. Not great but entertaining enough.

Friday Night Movies 230

Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit was our first feature. It's a 2008 Japanese Monster comedy that's based on a 1967 Japanese movie released here in the USA as The X From Outer Space. Looks like some footage from that first movie is in this new movie. Some people mention this in their reviews, I can't be sure without pulling out a copy of the original and hoping I remember what I saw last night. Sometimes it just all goes away. That's a good thing at times. The movie has a rocket bring a spore down to earth. The spore hatches into Guilala and it goes on a rampage through the city. The G8 is meeting and that's where the comedy comes in. All the foreign leaders try their hand at stopping the monster but it's down to some poor villagers to do the trick with their god Take-Majin. They dance up a storm and the defender puts a stop to the monster. It's kind of a low-budget thing and the jokes are stupid at times but occcasionally they make a good one. The accents of the world leaders are pretty awful, but you get the joke well enough. Not for everyone, some Japanese Monster Movie Fans should like it, and they seem to, it gets a 6.4 on the IMDb. It might not score so well for most folks but it's a niche product.

Mike found a copy of Demon Within which is called Gakidama in Japan. It's a 1985 Japanese horror movie. Very short movie, only 54 minutes, perhaps made for tv. The story alternates between sort of creepy and pretty dull. Some photo takin' guys go into the woods to take a picture of a demon. They get possessed and a couple of weeks later birth a demon through their mouth. Yuck! The demon runs off. A guy comes to help but he's more trouble than he's worth. Turns out he likes to eat the little demons. More stuff happens and it was over. I won't need to see that again. The monster is kind of goofy. That's him on the dvd. He sure needs some dental work. Glad he isn't my kid. The acting is ok but I didn't care much for the characters.

After that we watched another episode of The Adventures of Dr.Fu Manchu. We had watched one of these ages ago and now there was an opportunity to see another. We watched the first episode of the series, which is second on the cheapie dvd that Sperhauk found. Only 4 episodes are available. This one has Fu hypnotize a woman into giving a visiting doctor some drug. She's discovered and that leads Nyland Smith and crew to stop the Doctor's plan. It was pretty dull considering the good plot elements. Perhaps a reason that the series only ran 13 episodes. I hadn't noticed it on the box but Mike pointed out that the Chinese characters are all upside down. Typical of these low budget dvd houses.

Buzz goes to NASA by Dave and John Xandegar

That's Dave and John at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. That's their Buzz Aldrin in the case behind them. He's all LEGO and he's there to celebrate the 40th Anniversity of Apollo 11. Some of you might remember the moon landing. A few still don't believe that it really happened. You can see some pictures at D&J's MOCpages page.  Here's D&J's home page over at MOCpages and the post for Buzz.

Santa Clause Kicks by Tyrant Mecha

Jingle Bells, Baby! Santa is coming to town! He know's who's naughty or nice. Or a zombie.

I thought this was funny. I love Santa's gun. I think he must have stole it from The Mask. Those Zombies don't stand a chance up against St. Nick. See more of TM's stuff here.

The Continuing Adventures of TwinLUG - Episode 7-19-09 Black cheese slopes

It was a fairly large meeting, one of our biggest in a while. Besides myself there were Roy, Alice, Max, Max's wife (who's name I forgot), Matt, Tom, Erik, Dean, Dylan, Nathan, Steve, Mark, and Mark's roommate (whose name I also forgot) all crowded into the smallest conference room. Seemed crowded to me. I must get into writing people's names down. Maybe we need a signup sheet.

There was the usual stuff to look at. New built sets like 5972 Space Police - Space Truck Getaway, 8265 Technic - Front Loader, and 7636 City- Farm - Combine Harvester. Some new Micropolis Modules showed up and Max built the K-9 Bot robot dogs from the new Space Police sets. Max used different colors. They are good little doggies. Get along.

Mark, who also works at the LEGO Imagination Center, brought part of his Castle scene which includes girls bathing in pools of blood. I just can't imagine what his minister would think.

Matt and Max took some pictures, once they are posted maybe we can have a link for people to see.

   

Roy brought the trophy for TwinLUG's win for Best Group Build. He was thinking about putting it into a module. Suggestions were made. I can't remember what the final result was. I need me a notebook and a pen. I didn't even have a pen with me that day and I normally have one. Just a bad day, I guess. Not Micropolis Bad. Loosin'a pen bad. Not so bad, huh.

Micropolis modules were returned from BrickWorld. There is a mix up of modules in boxes and there still needs to be some returned. Who got Brian's last two modules? His chrome antenna was found. I think Eric has it. Stuff was happening in several parts of the room one one time or another. Hard to follow all the detail, when you're having one conversation and there are two more, that sound tantilizing, just over your shoulder.

To aid identifing people modules at BrickWorld next year Nathan suggested putting a piece of tape with the owner's name on the bottom of the modules in the future. That might work. Or on the side of the module's base if you don't feel it will survive turning over. I thought about this and it might be a good idea to add a number corresponding to the box the module came out of. Then put a name and number on the box. So far hardly anyones's just had one box to bring anywhere. I was also thinking a picture on the lid of how everything was packed in the box. A little bit of extra work can save the guy packing up a lot of hassle when there is a rush. People liked the labels with big letters for the boxes. We'll make it better next year.

There's more talk of having something going on at Convergence next year but that's a year away. I'm not so interested in Convergence. It's an expensive entrance fee and I doubt they would comp people like the comic con. Not to discourage anyone from going out to the convention and having some geek time. Nathan will be in charge of that.

There is interest from Roy, Alice, Brian and myself in setting up a booth at FallCon, the big local comic con. Still no definite plans. Roy will talk to them.

Steve Demlow reports Stein has still not commited to a hard date for TCBX. I'd encourage others to show some interest and say, "hell, yes, Stein, let's do it again." I have some stuff to bring and so do several others. Big Micropolis is also clammering to get out and show off the city with the worst day in history. It could happen.

We watched The Love of The Brick, a 28 minute documentary on BrickWorld 2008, on the projection system in the conference room. There were several locals featured like Steve Demlow, Stein Settergren, Judy Payne, Dan Siskind and Dylan Mullenberg. Who did I miss? It was an ok documentary, though a little short. The quality is pretty good and it's fairly reasonable at $9.95 plus $5 shipping. Here's the site. You can see a clip there.

More blather to the end of the meeting. Roy complained at BrickWorld that he had missed getting any of the black cheese slopes in the on-site Pick-A-Brick and Nannan gave him a bag that he had bought himself. Matt complained that he was out of ideas for Micropolis but he'd ask his mom for some new ones, as she had supplied him some good ones in the past. Maybe she'd supply some ideas for anyone else who is stuck. I'm savin' my good ideas for myself, but there's always a skid row needed. I assume people went to dinner but I bugged out.

Science Fiction Sunday 41

Someone lent me a couple of the RiffTrax versions of Missile To The Moon and Carnival of Souls. These are dvd's that have the RiffTrax commentary on the same disc as the movie. You can watch the movie with Mike Nelson and crew yakkin' or watch the movie with it's original audio. That's a nice option.  Mike Nelson, whom some of you might know from Mystery Science Theater 3000, is joined by his old MST3K partners Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett. He played Mike Nelson, the human, not one of the robots. Kevin and Bill were the robots. They appear on a lot of the RiffTrax episodes and also appeared with Mike as The Film Crew. They made 4 of that series on dvd and then they stopped. I found them at Half Price Books for $7.50 each, unopened, obviously clearanced. From the Wikipedia article it looks like the guys are doing RiffTrax now and The Film Crew is dead. RiffTrax dvd's are 10 bucks. I don't know that I would buy any myself, maybe if they got cheaper. Same with the audio only stuff they do. It's 4 bucks a movie and you still have to have a copy of the movie to play along with the audio. Not that cheap, when they have a lot of titles, although just today I noticed some of their older tracks have been marked down.

I watched Missile To The Moon first with the guys riffing on the movie. They don't lower the movies soundtrack enough when they're riffing. Occasionally the audio streams collide and it gets hard to hear what was said. I've seen this movie three or four times. It's not great but it's goofy kind of fun. Some punk guys on the lam from john law hide away in a rocket. A science guy pulls a gun on them and forces them into being his crew. Turns out he's a moon man who was sent to earth long ago. He was checking that moon people could live here on earth. He's finally got a rocket so he can report back. He dies when a box falls on his head. Yep, a box sitting on a shelf in a spaceship. It's that level of stupid. The acting is mostly pretty poor and the sets are a laugh. So you see there is quite a bit of stuff to make fun of, and the guys take advantage of that crap. There's some great rock monsters, a giant puppet spider, and the moon is filled with pretty girls. Not much air, which they can't replace anymore. They need the rocket to get off the moon and go to earth. It doesn't end well for the moon ladies. Oh well.  

Carnival of Souls tries pretty hard to be  some sort of psychological sort of horror movie. A young woman survives a car crash, she walks right out of the river, moves to Utah to play the organ for a church, and has some visions of a weird lookin' guy. There might not be much more than that going on in the movie, which was created in 1962 by a guy who made industrial films in Lawrence Kansas. Herk Harvey played the weird lookin' guy in the girls visions and he wrote and directed the film. It was his only feature film. A lot of people like it, it scores a 7.1 on the IMDb and Criterion put it out in a nice dvd 2 disc special edition. There are a lot of editions of Carnival of Souls on dvd. It's in the public domain, as are many of the RiffTrax dvd's, and the movie turns up from all the cheapy dvd producers. I have three copies of the movie, though I shouldn't count the ep copy I have on the end of a MST3K tape I am keeping. I mostly enjoyed the movie, watching it with the guys commenting does help, but it's really more of a story for a short film. It would make a good Twilight Zone episode. At least it tries to be something different. Good on Herk. The guys are mostly pretty funny, occasionally bombing me with a joke.