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Those are 8 inch high minifig flashlights. I saw them on Amazon. They are 20 bucks. More than I'd spend. There's a third light and a keychain light.
There seems to be some amount of LEGO merchandise of late. A camera, an MP3 player, some other things like this radio and MP3 Player. I'm not much interested in buying any of it sadly. Sometimes a picture is just fine. They are cute though.
I noticed Panic In Year Zero on Turner last night. I didn't have a copy and hadn't seen it in several years. Seemed like a natural to time shift for this morning. It's a 1962 American International film about the nukes falling on the USA. Ray Milliand stars, and directs, as the dad leading his vacationing family into the mountains near their hometown of Los Angeles. On a stop to check the windows of their trailer they hear a boom and see a mushroom cloud form over LA. Things turn bad pretty quickly as Ray and son Frankie Avalon stock up on gas, food, and guns. They swiftly go from paying for stuff with money to robbin' with guns. They don't like to but Ray is making sure his family survives. There's a mom and daughter but they take a while to come to terms with their new life style of livin' in a cave. They hid out there for a while, occasionally fighting off the villians who always range the countryside when society breaks down. They rescue a girl, then Frankie gets shot. They go looking for a doctor and meet up with some soldiers who direct them to help. Society is reforming. It's a pretty good movie. It's well enough made for a low budget film and the story moves along pretty briskly. The actors do a good job with a good script. Worth seeing, one of the better post apocalypse films.
I was digging through the R box looking for something to go along with the first movie. Here's one I haven't seen in a while. The Running Man. It's set in a post collapse world slightly into our future, or even the future of the first film. Military governnments have sprung up. The people are downtrodden and kept off the streets by force and violent tv. Arnold Schwarzenegger stars in this 1987 movie directed by Paul Michael Glazer. Some of you might remember Glazer as Starsky in the TV series Starsky and Hutch. He wasn't the blond guy. TRM is probably the most famous of his directorial work. After Kazam, which Glazer wrote, directed, and produced, he took a 6 year break and then switched to directing tv shows. Not surprizing, putting Shaq into a movie is just plain stupid. TRM has some stupid stuff in it too, but it works pretty well. Arnold was a military guy who wouldn't shoot the citizens during a food riot. He's framed and tossed into a work camp. He escapses with a couple of his pals. They all get caught and wind up on The Running Man tv show. It's one of the shows that keep the population at home glued to the tv. If our gang survive being hunted down they get a paid vacation in Paradise along with a pardon for their crimes. Secretly the winners just get shot down like rabid dogs. Richard Dawson, of Family Fued and Hogan's Heroes is the host of the show. He wanted Arnold on the show and he got him. It's, of course, his down fall. Not only does Arnold bring down the show, he sends Richard to his firey death, and helps blacken the eye of the government. It's undecided as to what happens as the movie ends. Do the people rise up and continue the fight? Probably not. I'm sure we are doomed as the citizen's turn back to Climbing For Dollars. Escaped convits try to climb a booby trapped rope, snatching cash as rabid dobermans jump and try to pull them down. That's entertainment.
Our two movies had something in common tonight. Both of them had traitors in their midst. Joe brought a copy of China Seas he'd gotten from NetFlix. It's a 1935 film starring Clark Gable. He's the Captain of a steamer that plies the China Seas. C Aubry Smith is a guy with a huge pile of gold that Clark hids in a steamroller. Wallace Beery is a loud boisterious shady guy who's a pal of Clark's. Jean Harlow is the trampy blonde that has been having a fling with Clark. Rosalind Russell is the proper British lady who had a relationship with Clark. Her arrival puts a crimp in Jean's going's on when Clark tells her it's over. Jean takes up with Wallace. There's a bunch of passengers including Robert Benchley as a continiously drunken American writer, Lillian Bond as a ditzy brunette, Edward Brophy as her not so bright husband, and Akim Tamiroff as the sleazy guy with the pencil thin mustache. I like a lot of the secondary characters, though I have never been a big Gable, Harlow or Russell fan. There's a nice mix of melodrama, action and comedy, topped off with some pirates. There's even a torture scene when the pirates turn loose the "boot" on Clark. Who would have thought. He doesn't crack and the pirates leave only to be blown up. Ha ha, silly pirates, all blown up. The traitor gets caught and Clark gets the girl. Oh, which one? You'll have to watch it to see. An entertaining movie. I'll have to keep an eye out for it on TCM. It's out on DVD in a multi movie pack of Clark Gable films.
Zombie Hunter Rika is a Japanese zombie school girl movie from 2008. Rika and her friend skip school to go visit Rika's grandfather. He lives in a small countryside town and Rika hasn't seen him for a couple of years. Turns out his town is filled with zombies. It's why I don't travel much anymore. The girls encounter zombies and hook up with a guy. He's also looking for grampa's house. We meet the three stooges of Japan, who provide the comic relief, and more zombies. The girls and the guy find grampa's house and his young wife. Grampa is catatonic and his wife is sleazy. She can't wait to get her top off for the guy. He's her secret lover. He brings her poison to get rid of grampa. They are a sleazy couple. The zombies attack the house. Rika is bit and grampa comes out of his coma. He cuts off Rika's arm and sews on the magical arm of Zombie Hunter. Grampa was a champion swordsman and skilled surgeon when he was younger. The Zombie Hunter, and his severed arm, is a whole part of the movie that makes little sense. We just go with it, though we all comment on the poor quality of the makeup effect. We meet a zombie who wants to help the humans. He can talk fine and has a mouth guard to keep him from biting. He turns out to be the turncoat. He just wants to feed them to the super zombie out in the woods. Turns out that super zombie can be killed and everything will go back to normal. Low and behold it does. The dead live again, Rika has her arm back. So it's a dumb magical journey that has a few good scenes and some draggy bits. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone but the hard core fan of zombie movies.
Here's another of the centerpieces that I made for the department potluck at work. I used that couch and chair and coffee table in another moc before. I liked them so I kept them. You can see more pictures of the fella's ice fishin' over at Flickr.
I haven't even finished posting the winter themed centerpieces that I did for work a couple of weeks ago and here it is the night before Christmas. Where does the time go. There's not much stirring about here. It's been snowing and things have slowed down outside. I had the day off and puttered about the house. I didn't even get dressed to go out. I read some, finished two books, nearly done a third. I usually have a couple or three books started at anytime. I downloaded some old time radio shows off of the Internet Archive and burned them onto a DVDR. You can get all sort of odd things over there. I looked at some of the new creations on MOCpages. Some of the Christmas ones were fun.
That's Chickens "n" Snakes by Rusty S. It doesn't look very Christmasy but Rusty says it's an ornament for a contest so I believe him. I like the chickens and the red cardinal. There's a bit of story about a snake in the grass.
I really liked the fireplace in Jason Corlett's Merry Christmas. It's much larger than minifig scale. That can make for nice added detail. The small vig on the right is A Strange Christmas by Jason Hawke.
Ed Petria makes his holiday message digital in Merry Christmocs. Jibby Fluff makes a nice brick built Santa.
That's a Christmas Vignette by Casey McCoy. Pretty cute, huh. That's just a few from the first 3 or 4 pages into the currect newly arrived mocs. Have a good holiday.
Here's another of the department potluck centerpieces that I made. I was running out of time and had to recycle a bit from other creations. The christmas tree is a real LEGO set. Man, it's already been over a week since the potluck, and I still seem full. Tis the season I guess. You can see a couple more pictures at MOCpages.
At our last Friday Night Movie night Mike passed along a set of LaQ pieces to me. I'd never heard of them before. Mike had gotten it as a gift a few years ago and was passing it along for whatever reason. I often do the same. One can have too much stuff. I certainly know about that. The set has a 2005 date on it and the LaQ website still has it listed for 2300 yen. You get instructions to make the T-Rex above and a couple of other guys. There's a 5000 piece set that sells for 32,000 yen.
If you get the second Dino set you can combine them to make the large pterradon. There are only 7 types of pieces so you can see the obvious limitations that can come from a product like that. Still I thought they were interesting and will eventually fiddle about with them sometime. The first thing that popped into my head was using them to create textured backgrounds in some LEGO builds. The purists probably wouldn't like that but that's just too bad. You can see more products here. There's even an art festival with fan built models like that fish there. You can order them from this USA company.
We had 11 with Mark, Tom, Roy, Alice, Erik, Judy, Steve, Max, Nathan, Matt and me. We snacked on cookies that Steve and I brought. Steve's were homemade. I'm not so domestic. I brought all the centerpieces that I had made for the department potluck, Tom brought the newest revision of his fragile rotating building, Steve brought the new LEGO town car set that looks like a Smart Car, Nathan brought some educational LEGO but I steadfastly refused to learn anything. I think Nathan also brought the finished Atlantis set with the shark guy. I love that shark guy but the ship sucks. That's the ship there below. I really think the unfinished technic part looks like crap and the motor flipping feature isn't all that interesting. Shark guy has some potential, those technic pieces are going into a box. I think the top part of the ship looks pretty nice, especially that green canopy.
We all brought wrapped gifts for the Dirty Brickster. The idea is to bring a wrapped gift in the $20 range and put them in a pile. We drew numbers and #1 picks. The second person can steal the gift that the first person got or pick a wrapped gift. Gifts can be stolen three times, no more, and the game ends when the last gift is unwrapped. There was more stealing than last year and luckily this year no one got stabbed. I brought a copy of set 6477 Fire Fighter's Lift Truck and wound up with a copy of Indiana Jones Jungle Cutter set. We had three or four sets get stolen three times, which means they are out of play. There was a nice combo from Judy that had Galidor action figures stinkin' covering up the four smallest Atlantis sets, all packed in a nice large blue LEGO box. Those Atlantis sets have some neat stuff in them. The Jungle Cutter made it out of the game as did the Millenium Flacon mini set. I think the Pirates Hideout set was stolen thrice too. We yakked for a while and a few of us went to Pizza Luce.
I got up pretty darn early, 4:30AM, couldn't sleep. Had some tea and Cheerios. Toasty little O's. I had been thinking of the first film in today's double header after watching Goemon a couple of weeks ago. Sky Captain and the World Of Tomorrow is another movie which relies on CGI to supply the surroundings for the actors. Not a big hit when it came out in 2004. I bucked the trend and liked it. I still like it, but I don't mind style over substance sometimes. There is a story, some bad guy is sending giant robots to steal from the people of the world. Jude Law is Sky. He'll save the day with the help of the pretty blonde reporter lady and his scientist pal. It seems a movie people love or hate. I like it's moody atmospheric lack of color. I also like the giant robots, clanking through the streets of the city. Here comes Sky to the rescue! There's plenty of action as Sky tries to figure out who's sending those pesky robots. He'll blow some stuff up and kiss the pretty reporter lady. A day well spent for our hero. I'd find it hard to recommend this movie, what with it lookin' all weird and such, but wouldn't have any problem with my second choice.
I hadn't watched Sky High in a while. It sure is entertaining and it's got a giant robot attacking the city. Who doesn't like giant robots attacking the city. Buildings, that's who. Ha ha for buildings, getting all crushed and all. The Strong family are real estate agents by day and the world's greatest superhero team by, well, by day too. Kurt Russell is super stong and his wife, Kelly Preston, can fly. They have a son and he's just starting at Sky High, the high school for superhero children. He hasn't gotten his super power yet so he's assigned to the sidekicks track at school. There's some snobbery at the school. Hero's don't hang with sidekicks. Can't kids just get along. It gets worst when the son's super powers kick him into the hero track. Old friends sad, new friends mean. There's a evil villian plot line well played by Royal Pain, lookin' all shiney. School saved, happy ending. Very fun. Now for a nap.
It's horror with an international flavor tonight. Both Joe and Sperhauk had scored foreign films from NetFlix. Our first feature is the 2005 Greek film To Kako which was marketed here in the USA as Evil. It's a zombie film, appearantly their first, in the 28 Days Later vein. Rather than a virus like the British movie it's some sort of possession by a dark evil force that turns the citizens of Athens into flesh eating monsters. Some city workers find a hole in the ground. There's a cave below. They pop right down and evil pops right into them. Later that night they all go nuts and start killing anyone around them. The bitee's turn instantly and start attacking faster than Fast Actin' Tinactin. A group of people band up and fight back. That's pretty much the whole movie. We get some bit of info about the group while they run about. Some get picked off along the way. There's a fair bit of humor. That made the ending seem kind of a downer as the camera pulls up into the sky leaving our gang about to be buried in a horde of the undead or whatever they are. There's a bit of CGI and plenty of gore. Entertaining and presented fairly well but not much more than a rehash of what you'd seen before. The film uses lots of editing tricks, split screens and jump cuts to speed up the action. Maybe too many, I was starting to notice them. There's an interesting score with real varied types of music. Definitely for the fan of the genre, especially if they have NetFlix. You can see a bunch of clips over at YouTube.
Our second feature is a 2008 French film called Les dents de la nuit, which is French for Dentists of the Night or something. It's sold here in the USA as Vampire Party. Some pretty blonde gal gets invited to a legendary party. Nice tie-in with the title, huh. Her friends are jealous of her ticket. If only our heroine and her friends could have seen the US title of the movie. They'd know better than to rush off to a legendary party, when it's filled with vampires! Since there'd be no movie one of the friends steals two more tickets and the trio take the helicopter trip to the isolated castle. We meet people and vampires. The vampire master, played by a long haired Tcheky Karyo, wants to take over the world. Good luck with that, huh. Tonight they just want to chow down on the unsuspecting party people. Finally a good use for them, party people. The blurb on NetFlix claimed the movie to be a cross between Airplane and Shaun of the Dead. For once they were pretty close with their evaluation. Based on reading other NetFlix blurbs, which I have found to be less than actuate on a regular basis, I bet they copied it from somewhere. The pretty blonde gal sure does her darndest to create a character in the best Leslie Nielsen way. There is a lot of comedy and goofy antics, some amount of gore and burning vampires. Not great, but great fun, well worth a look see for the fan.