PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 49

I had been enjoying The Coneheads on the Saturday Night Live dvd's and decided to dig out my copy of the feature they did back in 1993. Dan Akyroyd and Jane Curtin re-create their roles as Beldar and Prymatt but Laraine Newman is reduced to a guest spot on the homeworld. It gathers the mythology of the tv series and repackages it in a quick paced and fairly funny movie. Beldar and Prymatt do arrive in a spaceship, a cone shaped spaceship, which gets shot down. They settle in New Jersey where their daughter is born. Beldar has a series of jobs, first as an appliance repairman, then a cab driver and finally opening his own diving school. There are all the odd alien things they did in the series, done better with CGI in the movie. I always enjoy Beldar inhaling that roll of toilet paper like he's sucking up a long spagetti strand. It's all very silly and enjoyable. I don't even mind seeing David Spade there, at least after several years have gone by and I have gotten used to him. There's a ton of other comedy stars in small roles. Keeping an eye out for them is part of the fun of the movie. It goes by quickly and the end is pretty fun.

There isn't much fun in Creatures The World Forgot. I had forgotten what it was. It's not really science fiction. Fantasy perhaps. No matter, I'm not going to find another movie when I have Robin Hood to watch. CTWF is a Hammer film from 1971. They had made a couple of caveman features, One Million Years BC and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth, but this isn't as much fun as those. No dinosaurs. Just cavemen. They have a hard life and many of them die. You'd think just the high mortality rate of living in the raw would cause man to band together for protection but nope. Soon as they get together it's stab stab stab. Looks like this movie isn't out on dvd in the USA for some reason. I have a tape copy that I snagged off of TNT back in the early 90's. I put it on DVDR and got rid of the tape. It doesn't look too bad and the nudity is there for some reason. Run late on TNT I think. I doubt that I would go out and buy a copy if it comes out. It's just not a movie I would repeatedly want to watch. It has it's moments of interest but they are few and the rest of the movie just plods along. Hopefully down the road I will remember not to watch it and watch something better.

The Adventures of Robin Hood has come out in a complete series DVD package. It's got 143 shows on 11 dvd's. I had gotten the first season as a single 3 disc set set back in July. I watched it and enjoyed the show. The first season starts with Robin's arrival back in England from the Crusades. He discovers he's been cheated out of his land. He joins up with the forest men and after the leader is killed he takes over. The show uses the standard Robin Hood elements from the legend and works them in to series. Seasons 2 & 3 were out when I saw the first. I was waiting for the 4th season to come out before I figured I would order them. I forgot about it for a couple of months and yesterday I remembered to look. The fourth season is out. The first season has been marked down to $6.49, seasons 2 & 3 are $12.99 and season four is $10.49. The first three seasons are 39 episodes and the 4th only 26. The fourth season had only been out a short while and Mill Creek Entertainment had already repackaged the whole 4 seasons into a one unit package. It was $24.95 at  Amazon. I almost ordered it, figuring it was cheaper than the other three seasons. Luckily I didn't. Later that day I went over to Half Price Books and they had it for 19.99 and I had a 15% off coupon. Glad I waited. Now I can watch the rest of the series. I'm going through the first three discs of season one, just to make sure that they are ok before I get rid of the the first season set I had.  

Friday Night Movies 239

I really enjoyed Taken but I like a movie where the bad guys get vengeance rained down upon them, delivered by the wrathful hands of a concerned citizen. Liam Neeson plays the avenging dad who comes to the rescue of his kidnapped daughter. She was spotted, and played, by a guy at the airport in Paris. He, so easily, finds out where the daughter and her friend are staying all by their lonesome. Within an hour of landing their Paris vacation slams into the wall and all that's left is a bloody lock of hair and a smashed cellphone. Due to the U shaped layout of the apartment the girls are staying in the daughter sees the kidnappers grab her friend while she's talking to dad. Liam is a retired spy who moved to California to be near his 17 year old daughter. Him and the wife, played by Famke Janssen, have done a split and he's sort of left out in the cold. Liam listens to the cell phone call and sifts through the audio for clues. He gets some help from another ex-operative who's gone into the protection business. Some pop star figures slightly into the story. Liam heads to Paris and starts punchin' and killin' the bad guys. Even though they're just Albanian gangsters and no one would miss them, his old pal, part of the French Intelligence Community, is a bit miffed and wants to send him home. Liam resists of course and kills a whole building full of bad guys. He's one determined dude. He's gonna get his daughter back or die trying. He's totally ruthless, even shooting his old pal's wife in the arm as an object lesson. She'll be ok and Liam did ask his old pal to say he was sorry. He was in a hurry, there are more Albanian gangsters to slaughter. And those guys did need to get slaughtered. They kidnap girls, dope them up, and turn them into hookers. Some, like the daughter's friend, don't make it too far down the pipeline before they expire. The hotter looking ones get sold to rich guys that like to screw drugged up, kidnapped girls. There's some more guys in need of a visit from The Dark Man. Some of you might remember that Sam Raimi film. Liam as the damaged doctor bent on revenge. I'm sure the film makers are totally aware of that little gem. Just a step or two behind his daughter Liam digs deeper into the world of the slave traders. Most of them lie dead where he was digging. There's lots of good fighting and some fun driving stunts. There's lots of Paris to see, from the nice part of town to the shitholes where the Albanians ply their trade. It's got a script co-written by Luc Besson and directed by another French guy called Pierre Morel. This 2008 movie is his second, he also directed the 2004 film District 13. That was a cool movie too. Taken is well worth a look if you like the action packed slaughterfest sort of thriller it is. I always like the see the bad guys get theirs.

Our second feature is the 1968 Hammer film The Devil Rides Out. It's based on a 1934 Dennis Wheatley novel. Christopher Lee plays the Duc de Richleau. He's an expert on the occult who's trying to save his friend Simon from the hands of a devil worshipping coven. He's got the help of his pal Rex. Good boy. They need to get Simon away from the cult before he's initiated and his soul is lost forever. Charles Gray is the leader of the cult. You might remember him as Blofeld in Diamonds Are Forever, or as the narrator in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. "It's just a jump to the left." Gray is a formidable opponent, he's got the devil for a master. The devil does make an appearance in the movie but he's easily dispelled by tossing a crucifix at him. What a pussy. There's a lot of running around and the old cars are nice. It's set in the sort of 30's you get when you have a small budget. People still seem to like it. It gets an amazing 7.2 on the IMDb and Christopher Lee said it was his favorite film. Perhaps because it was one of the few that feature him as the hero. More were planned but the first wasn't too good a draw at the box office and they were never made. I thought it was ok but a tad boring at times. I don't see what others are crazy about in these films  but I've never been a staunch Hammer supporter. They made cheesey low-budget horror films and some are more interesting than others. Not sad I saw it but it's another that I don't need to run out and buy.  

Chauchilla Cemetary Battle - Indiana Jones set 7196

I picked up a copy of the new Indiana Jones set. I was curious about the motorcycle to be honest. It looked like a different fairing that had printing on it. It does and it looks A-OK on the bike frame. I bet that bike turns up in many mocs once it gets some market penetration. There were a new dark brown torso for the native warriors who hide in the cemetary, as well as a new two sided head. Indy has the same brown jacket and pants as many sets and he has the open mouthed grin that he has in the mine ride set. I haven't bought that yet. Not sure if I will, other than through some neurotic need to collect all the sets. The Mutt minifig is the same as the other sets. Still he's got that great hair piece and that nice black jacket. The minifig  has the potential to be cooler than the actor. I actually built this set and brought it to the TwinLUG meeting so people could take a look see. It has a bit of stonework around the tombs, which have some moving parts, and there is a crystal skull and a skeleton. A nice mix of blay and tan pieces, as well as a couple of large reddish brown plates. Some plants and a few minifig accessories. There's only 187 parts in this 20 dollar set. I guess they are compensating for the nice new motorcycle. Certainly not a disappointment in any way. I just parted it out last night and the two new Indy sets and the SpongeBob set I got for half price added a nice bit to my building stock. Now what to build next?

TwinLUG meeting Sept 20, 2009

There were 9 of us today, besides me. There were Max, Tom, Gary, Conner, Roy, Erik, Dean, Peter and Brian. I brought a couple of the newer Indiana Jones sets for people to look at. I reviewed the Vienna Canal Chase a few posts back and I want to review the other one set in a cemetary before too long. I also brought those Power Miner Impulse sets that I got at Target but they were still in pieces. Roy, Max and I brought our MocComparisons, based on a Chas Irish idea, and Max picked out the next month's build. It's the Spaceship Yamamoto from a Japanese cartoon. We'll see if anyone builds that, especially with all the other stuff going on. Brian brought his Minifig displays. There are about 700 minifigs on three long stands. Sorted by theme. You can see some pictures here. Gary, who will miss October's meeting while he is galavanting about Germany, brought his lighthouse. He's thinking of adding the little mermaid to his module for the Danish Conference. Oh, what Danish conference?

Looks like there will be a Micropolis display at The Danish American Heritage Societies Conference this Oct 1-3. From the looks of it it's not a cheap conference to join at $138. Members get some dinner or something but I don't think we are invited to that. I wish they would pay our parking, since the event is down town and there is little or no free or cheap parking in the area. Roy is working out the details. If anyone who wasn't at the meeting is interested in contributing some Micropolis material and/or some time to watch it, let us know through the Yahoo Group emails. There is also a drive on to build some modules that show off Danish monuments or buildings. I've been looking and haven't seen anything I would want to build yet. We'll be set up between the Victor Borge display and the Teak wood display.

Roy is also firming up the table at the FallCon Comic convention the following week. The show runs Oct 10-11 at the State Fair grounds in the Grandstand building. I an interested in that, as were some others, partly for the free food and partly for the free membership in the convention. It was fun last year. I ran into all sorts of people that I knew and got to meet Don Rosa. We're planning two displays for that. Micropolis and a 1930's street scene. I better get crackin' on some more stuff for that.

There was the usual blattering and snack eating, Gary brought home made cookies and cupcakes. Just a few of us went to eat at Pizza Luce. On the way home I stopped at my local Target, Lake and Minneahaha, and they had one lonely SpongeBob LEGO set, the Krusty Krab, on clearance for $9.48. I looked all over and didn't see any more.

Science Fiction Sunday 48

I can't remember seeing The Man From Planet X before. It's certainly not on my movie list so I might have seen it as a kid on tv. Turner Classic Movies was running it and the 1959 Hammer film The Hound of the Baskervilles last night. I watched The Hound of the Baskervilles first and there is no science fiction in there. Not a bad film version of the story, glad to see it. The Man From Planet X is a 1951 low-budget science fiction film by Edgar G. Ulmer. Made in 6 days for under $60,000 it was shot on some of the sets of Joan of Arc. They use lots of smoke for fog and it's hard to see them. It set in Scotland, on an island. A spaceship lands there and the man from Planet X is a weird looking guy. That's him in a bubble on the cover. He can't communicate with the earth people but he has a hypnoray to put them under his control. He's found by a science guy's beautiful daughter, who is played by Margaret Field, Sally Field's mother. The science guy brings the alien into his house so they can communicate with him. There's a reporter, played by Robert Clarke. William Schallert plays the assistant who wants to use the alien for his own dreams of glory and power. It doesn't go to well for him or the man from Planet X, especially after the authorities show up. The man from Planet X shows his true colors and they learn he's the first of an invasion force. He's got to call home at midnight to start the invasion. Will they blow him up in time? Sure. It's the 1950's and a nogood alien isn't gonna take over our planet Earth.

It's the same with robots that go out of control, they get smashed down. That's the sad story of The Colossus of New York. It's a low-budget film from 1958 directed by Eugène Lourié. He did not direct many films, he mostly worked as a production designer or art director. His directorial debut was 1953's The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms which is based on a Ray Bradbury story. I like it, it's fun to watch, and Ray Harryhausen worked on the stop motion beast. Lourié would go on to direct The Giant Behemoth and Gorgo would be his last directed film in 1961.In TCONY Ross Martin is a brilliant doctor. He's the son of another brilliant doctor played by Otto Kruger. Ross is hit by a truck and dies. Oh, no. His dad saves the brain. Good idea? I don't think so but the deed is done. The dead doctor's brother is a mechanical genius and he works with dad to put the brain in a robot body. Much as I might like to get my brain put into a robot body so I could take over the word, I would not want to be in this hulking behemoth. He's huge. Well, as you might image things get worse and worse for everyone and robot man has to be destroyed. Seen that coming. Don't put brains into robots I guess. It hardly ever seems to work out well. 

Friday Night Movies 238

First, and only for me, is the film Crank 2 High Voltage. Jason Statham picks up where we left off in Crank. He's just fallen from a helicopter, smashed into a car, and bounced into the street. Is he dead? You'd think so, but just at the last moment his eyes open and the screen goes blank. When we start the second movie he's whisked away by some bad guys who want his heart for an old Chinese guy, who is played by David Carradine. He's pretty funny and the movie is one goofy, bombastic scene after another. Amy Smart returns as his girlfriend and Dwight Yoakam is the doc that's going to help our anti-hero out. Jason's got a battery operated heart that is keeping him going. It won't last long and it needs a jolt of electricty now and again. There's a lot of ways to get that jolt and they pick as many goofy ones as they can, including public sex and high voltage wires. There's lots of destruction and death with a huge slab of mayhem on the side. On top of that there's as much nudity as gore, and there's a lot of gore. Look for porn stars in there too. I spotted Ron Jeremy but wasn't sure of the names of some of the others. There's a great mix of character actors you might have seen in other movies. The story is fast paced and the edits are often accompanied by words and pictures that relate to the scene, or not. It's definately got a sense of humor. One that's going to turn some people off. Looks like it ends with a door to a sequel, but really, who's left to kill. I thought most everyone is dead.

I missed the second movie as I felt poorly and went home. They turned Wind and Cloud - The Storm Riders off at the 48 minute mark and watched a couple of the Riff Track Shorts. Joe picked it up on Netflix, so at least he didn't buy it, and it was supposed to be a sequel to the 1998 Hong Kong movie The Storm Riders. Not a bad movie that one. Unfortunately this dvd wasn't even a movie. It was cobbled together from a 2004 tv series. The story is all choppy and the CGI was poor tv quality. Give it a big miss. Watch a good Hong Kong movie like Peking Opera Blues or Zu, Warrors from the Magic Mountain. That's a good idea, maybe I'll stick POB in the dvd player after the TwinLUG meeting tomorrow. It's an 1986 Tsui Hark film. Well worth seeing. You might have to look for it in the right place since it seems there isn't a current US release. Plenty of places to get Hong Kong films online.

 

Castle Bank

I wanted to make a bank for an upcoming ganster project. I wanted the bank to reflect the period of the 1920's and the type of buildings that architect's made with the elements that were available from the manufacturers of decorative stone and concrete work. There were plenty of them and all sorts of pieces that builders could buy. If you look in small towns or the older parts of cities you will find the same pieces on all sorts of buildings. Not unlike LEGO. You can see some more pictures on my MOCpages page.

Power Miners Impulse sets

Target has a couple of Power Miners Sets in their Halloween Section. They usually have some impulse sets for the season holidays. I usually wait until they go on clearance and check to see if they have any left. It's often the $3.49 priced sets that you see at the LEGO store or in their catalog. Sometimes I have lucked out and found some at 50% off. I figured to get a couple of these right now just for the fun of it. They aren't too exciting, but they are only 3 bucks each. The miner set says it have 29 parts but the one I got had over 30 parts. The rock monster set had 12 on the bag and 12 in the bag. I guess you have to pay a premium for the rock monster. I like the small rock monsters. They are kind of cute. Lots of people have been using them for all sorts of silly things. Someday some idea will come to me and they can come out of their bin and get to work.

Thirst for Blood - Yummm!

Greg loaned me his copy of Thirst. It would normally be something that we might watch as a group but he'd just seen it and there's only room for two movies a week. It's a 1979  Australian film. We had just seen Patrick, another Aussie flick that was no winner, but you've gotta take a chance once in a while. A guy could condemn a whole country's film industry for over one film, and I know I could cause some films can stink up a whole country, but you shouldn't. Greg said it had vampires in it and that could go either way. It turned out to be some lame ass vampires. They don't have any vampire powers, and they have to put fake vampire teeth in their mouths to get their bite on. Some gal turns out to be a modern relation to Elizabeth Bathory. The vampire cult has a prophecy about the gal. They need her to get with the program, gulp some red stuff, and marry their leader. To encourage her they kidnap her and freak her out with their insane plan. They have a compound where they keep humans who have been drugged and brainwashed to docily go to the pumps to be harvested of their blood. Some occasionally die but the vamp gang sees that as their bit of fun. It doesn't go well with our heroine, so head doc, played by David Hemmings, dopes her up and locks her in a room. Things go from bad to worse and most of the top people in the group come to a nasty end. It's directed by Rod Hardy who, besides having a great porn name, has directed some tv that most of you would have seen. This is one of the few movies that he directed. He's also on the commentary track with the producer Antony I. Ginnane. They do a fair dinkum job chattin' about the movie and their careers. Not a great movie but certainly watchable.  A fair twist from the typical vampire story. Brian May does the score, which is also on the dvd as an isolated track. He was the Australian composer who did the scores to the first two Mad Max movies. He died in 1997 leaving a small but interesting body of work.

Indiana Jones - 7197 - Venice Canal Chase

I picked up a copy of 7197 Venice Canal Chase and actually built the whole thing. There's a TwinLUG meeting coming up this coming weekend and I can bring it to that. I don't have too much built to bring. I don't even remember the scene with the boats from the movie. I guess that means that I should watch it again. It's been a couple of years or more since I watched the first three. Now I can watch all 4 of them in a row.

   

I liked the set for the figures. I'm working on something that needs some older style suits. This will help a lot. The Elsa figure has a nice torso and the hair is great but that face is kind of creepy. Maybe it's the eyes. The grail guardian and Kazim are much better looking minifigs, and I really want their suits. The fez's are cool but not for what I'm working on. Something will turn up. There are a lot of good pieces in the set in some good colors. Once I dismantle the boats I'll sort them into my stock.

The boats are kind of neat. Both have some sort of action. One boat breaks in two and the other take a "hit" and the motor explodes blowing off the top of the boat. There's a third bit of action as part of the dock flies into the air. Fun for someone. Me? I'm just going to take them apart before they collect so much dust they aren't recognizable. I'll put those minifigs to work.