PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 119

 
I watched Zontar The Thing From Venus this morning. It's one of the Larry Buchanan's made for TV movies so you know it's not so good. Buchanan has a deserved reputation for making low-budget films that aren't great but watchable. He has a bit of a fan base. He made a bunch of them for American International Television in the 1960's. This was made in 1966 and stars John Agar. It's a remake of the 1956 Roger Corman film It Conquered The World. That's a much better film in every way. Zontar is a creature from Venus who's come to earth to take over. John Agar is a science guy who's got a satellite in orbit. John's science pal, played by Tony Huston, says he has a pal on Venus that talks to him through a nice big radio. John doesn't believe him, he can't hear anything in the static coming out of the speakers, he thinks Tony is stressed from work. The satellite disappears briefly and an hour later it returns. John brings down the satellite and on it's descent it goes out of control. The thing has secretly been taken over by Zontar and he lands in the desert. Hiding in a cave Zontar sends out ugly flying critters that stick a pointy bit into a human's neck and die. They come right out of Zontar's body. Eww, huh. That pointy bit is a mind control device that mentally connects the victim to Zontar. The alien wants to create a new society on a world filled with remote control slaves. Nice, huh. Some people here would sure like that. Can you guess who they are? I bet you can? Any who, Tony rolls over like a friendly dog and turns on the humans. John fights back, even killing his own wife once she's been taken over. It's a sad movie. Eventually Zontar is beaten and the world is safe - until the next monster shows up. Oh, here he is now.

I time shifted Leviathanfrom the SyFy channel last weekend. It's an 1989 movie I didn't see until 1996. Not sure why. Might be it got poor ratings from people but it seems there's always a good chance to miss something when it first comes out. Not always a bad thing. Used to be, if you missed it, you missed it. Then TV came along and changed that. Now you had more opportunity to see stuff but still stuff never came back. Various recordable media gave you more chance to see something on  tape, laserdiscs, dvd's and now it's changing again with online media sources. Not sure how that's going to shake out but I know we might get to see a lot of new/old stuff. I also know it's going to cost me some money somehow. Peter Weller stars in Leviathan. He the science guy on an underground mining rig. The crew finds a Russian ship near the dig site. It looks like it was sunk on purpose. They find a sealed box and bring that on board. There's a bottle of Vodka in the box and a tape. Turns out that the vodka isn't vodka. It turns people into monsters and the dying starts. It's a very Alien like movie and one of several under the water movies that came out in the late 1980's. Not great but average, watchable but lacking any uniqueness that might set it apart.

Here's a nice picture of John Candy as Zontar in an SCTV episode. Too bad they haven't packaged all the seasons of that show in one box. DVD producers are not your friends, don't ever forget that.

 

Friday Night Movies 312

I was curious to see Red with Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Helen Mirren, and John Malkovich as retired spies. Bruce is living the quiet life in Cleveland when some black ops types show up to slaughter him. They blast the house apart in a hail of bullets but that isn't enough to protect them from the ancient killing machine under Bruce's skin. He drives to Kansas City and kidnaps Mary-Louise Parker. She handles his government pension account and he'd been talking to her a lot over the phone. They even had plans to meet the following week. He's worried that the calls might attract the bad guys to her and he was right. The black ops guys show up at her apartment. He drugs her and ties her up and they escape to New Orleans. Bruce calls on Morgan for a bit of help. Morgan's in a retirement home and dying of cancer. Bummer. Karl Urban is a young up and coming CIA agent who's been charged with killing Bruce. Bad luck for him, huh. His boss is a hard ass bitch you just want to see slapped down. Turns out the plot revolves around a 1981 mission to South America where some guy was extracted out of a mess he'd created. Now that guy is a powerful creep in the government and he sent the CIA to hunt everyone in the mission down and eliminate them. Bruce collects John and Helen along the way and they enlist the help of a Russian spy played by Brian Cox. I always enjoyed his work. Sure is a great cast of actors in the movie, huh. Richard Dreyfuss shows up as a scummy arms dealer. Not a big Richard fan but he plays a great scumbag and certainly a guy you won't shed a tear for when he gets his. The movie moves briskly with only a few lulls. There's a nice bit of comedy which occasionally made me laugh. There's a bit of romance as Mary-Louise and Bruce bond in the excitement. Mostly a pretty entertaining fun run around with a good body count and some laughs. A movie I'll put in my collection when it gets cheaper at Target.

   
I hadn't thought about Megamind since the commercials ran for the theatrical release last year. I hadn't put it on my NetFlix queue but Joe did. It turned out to be pretty much light hearted fun. There's a lot of superhero and supervillian gags and the story pulls some common plot elements into a nice little package. Little Megamind is sent to an earth like planet by his parents. Their world is getting sucked into a black hole and he's the last survivor. That's him as a little baby in the poster on the left. That fish in a ball is Minion his sidekick. Will Ferrel plays Megamind as an adult and David Cross plays Minion. Brad Pitt voices Metro City's superhero Metro Man. He also came to the earth in a little rocket. Lucky for him his rocket pushed Megamind's rocket out of the way and Metro Man landed in the lap of luxury while the blue baby landed in a prison. Tina Fey voices the reporter that Megamind has a thing for and Jonah Hill voices Tina's cameraman. Ben Stiller voices the Metro Man museum curator. After a life of defeat Megamind finally kills Metro Man and our super villian takes over the city. Turns out it's not a much fun as it used to be. Megamind creates a new hero out of Jonah but that guy is a selfish dick who turns evil. It's one set back after another until Megamind finally gets the message that being good is better than being evil. For all his brains he's not that sensible. A common trait, huh. There's a lot of fun bits and pieces but I didn't like the way the character's looked that much. Not a big deal and the entertaining parts of the movie more than make up for it. Something I might pick up for cheap. It's popular enough that it will happen before too long.

Die Nibelungen

 

Sperhauk lent me his copy of the Kino Video dvd of Die Nibelungen. It's a two disc set of the 1924 Fritz Lang silent films adapting the 800 year old poem Nibelungenlied. I hadn't seen it before. I have seen many of Fritz's movies. You might remember his Metropolis, or Fury. I've seen the former several times. Once I even watched a multi-reel 8 mm film version of Metropolis. It was back when I lived in Winnipeg. Mike Hall had a copy, at least I think it was his. I think the place we looked at it was Ed Ackerman's studio. I'm not sure who else was there, Mike, Steve, maybe they remember. Those guys were part of the Winnipeg SF fan group in the 70's. It took a while to watch the movie, stopping to rewind each 8 or so minute reel. We didn't have but the one take up reel. We stopped for burgers at the Salisbury House after watching a fair bit of the movie. I think we spent as much time as it took me to watch the 5 hour long Die Nibelungen. The first movie is Die Nibelungen: Siegfried and the second movie is Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge. They were released about 6 months apart. I liked seeing them in one long sitting. More depressing. I'm joking. It's a comedy. Of death.

Die Nibelungen: Siegfried. The fellow in the title is a young prince of Xanten and he's out to win the hand of the princess of Burgundy. On the way over to her house he runs into a dragon. Wow! You should see that dragon. Look here's a couple of pictures and you can see the scene here on YouTube..

 

So, now I'm thinking Siegfried is a bit of a dick, killin' that dragon for no good reason. I just know what that dragon would say,  "Just quenching my thirst, why you gotta get all stabby on me?", but it's a silent movie and you can't hear what he's sayin'. It's a full size articulated dragon puppet, about 60 feet long. I think it's a bit weak as dragons go but I still like it. The work that went into it must be admired. Siegfried bathes in the dragon's blood and becomes invincible. Well, except for his Archille's Heel. It's not really his heel, it's the spot on his back that got covered by a leaf, his skin didn't get any of that dragon's blood, so it's vulnerable. That will be important later. Siegfried beats up the King of the Dwarfs and gets a net of invisibility.

 
Siegfried arrives at Kriemhild's castle and there's a lot of bad livin' goin' on. It sweeps Siegfried up and carries him off to Iceland where Kriemhild's brother Gunther has to wrestle Brunhild to win her hand in marriage. That's my two ancestors. Germans and Icelanders. I'm not going anywhere with that. Siegfried turns invisible and helps Gunther. That later back fires and Brunhild turns against Siegfried. Hagen, some knight at the court, kills Siegfried on a hunt, after learning of that weak spot. Brunhild kills her self when the plot complicates up a bit and Kriemhild vows revenge for the killing of Siegfried.

 
Die Nibelungen: Kriemhild's Revenge. Kriemhild tries to get her brothers to kill Hagen but they like him better than her and won't go along with her plan. Some knight comes from Attilla the Hun's castle with an offer of marriage from the great warrior. Kriemhild goes to see what's happening, and thinking of revenge, she marries the guy and bares him a son. She invites her brothers for a festival and bribes some of the Huns to attack them. It all goes wrong and Hagen kills Kriemhild and Atilla's son. It gets worse and nearly everyone dies. A rather dire story. That's the whackest Attilla I've ever seen. Not that I've seen many, mind you. He's got a great castle. Great thick high walls, a huge thick doors, topped off by some nice wooden pillars and a thatched roof. Great for burning everyone in there to death. While it may not be the happiest story, it sure has some nice interesting sets and characters. Very stylistic, as you might expect from the director and that period in Germany. Here's a site with some German color postcards from the time the movie was released. that's one of them up on the left. Here's a shot of Kriemhild and Attilla in what I can only describe as "quite the costume."

 

They might dress well but they aren't the people you'd like to spend some time with. The whole movie has this unreal look to it. Fairly interesting even if the story plods along at times. I was glad to see it, though I don't know if I will want to see it again too soon. It's worth checking out for it's unusualness.

Half A Sinner

 

I watched Half A Sinner and it turned out to be a nice surprise. This is the 1940 romantic comedy not the 1934 movie about the preacher con-man. Heather Angel is a school teacher who saves her money, stays in with grandma, and fears a lonely life. I love her spinster hat and glasses. Heather was in several of the Bulldog Drummond movies. You can see a bunch of them over at the Internet Archive.

 

Heather splurges on a new dress and hat and goes out and steals a car. Isn't that awful. I mean that dress. It hangs on her like a crumpled fender. She's certainly got on the thickest bra you could find. The car stealing is not quite as bad as it sounds. Heather had been sitting on a bench in the park, just minding her own business. A car pulls up to the curb and a couple of guys get out. One guy crosses the street to a house, and the other guy starts hitting on Heather. He's pretty much forcing her into the car when she pushes him over a bench and steals his car. Ha ha! Crusing along the highway she picks up John "Dusty" King. He's a handsome guy with a secret. The car has a secret too. There's a dead guy in the back seat, wrapped up in the coat of a crime boss. His stupid henchmen are after the coat.

 

Our couple, and you know they are destined for each other 'cause it's a movie, have a bunch of adventures, all the while under a delusion about who they are and what's going on. They have a nice lunch. Later Heather burns a guy with a cigarette and scalds a guy with hot water. It's ok by me, those guys are some murderous scum who needs some corporal punishment heaped on their asses. Burn guy runs off stage left and scalded guy is down on the floor. Feeling sorry for the guy, Heather butters his back. It's an odd script written by Frederick Jackson from a story by Dalton Trumbo called Lady Takes A Chance. 

 

Constance Collier plays a rich lady who befriends the couple on the sojurn into the country side. She was fun and stole scenes. That's the criminal's lair in the last picture. That looks like a stickey whicket, but don't worry, you can see how it ends at the link for the movie I've hidden in this post. I enjoyed it and will watch it again.

Wanted: Dead Or Alive

Even after 40-50 years I remember a lot of the tv shows that I watched when I was a kid. Not the content but that I had watched them. I don't remember ever watching Steve McQueen in Wanted: Dead Or Alive. Even for me that was pretty early. I was only 5 when it started in 1958, though it might have gone into syndication. My mother remembered it. We all watched a lot of westerns back then. Even in Canada there was a fascination with the American west. That helped, since there wasn't anything else on. Cop shows, westerns and sitcoms. That was your pick of popular genre's on the tv. We didn't have that many channels in Winnipeg until the cable came in the mid-1960's. CBC, CTV, CBC French and the independent in North Dakota that survived by selling ads to Winnipeg businesses. The majority of the station's watchers were in Winnipeg. That got stopped and someone in Winnipeg bought the station gear and moved it to Canada where they opened a new Canadian station. It's still going but I don't watch it.

 Wanted: Dead Or Alive ran from 1958 to 1960. Three seasons with 94 shows total. You can get them all in a single box set for a few bucks. I paid less than 15 for the complete series dvd set but I had a coupon. There are 2378 minutes of show. Wow, no wonder it takes 11 discs. The quality of the shows is pretty good considering there's 8 or 9 shows per disc. There are 5 minor featurettes that discus the show and the rifle that Steve uses. I did like the way Mill Creek Entertainment packaged the discs. Each one in a black paper sleeve and  placed in a holder in a lump. You need to pull them out of the holder to get to each disc but I don't think that's a hardship. It makes the discs more secure for shipping and it also keeps the set thin. I use paper sleeves to hold my dvdr's because they take up less space than jewel cases. It's about 3 paper sleeves to one jewelcase. The cheapest ones I found were at WalMart where the paper sleeves, with a clear window in the front, are 100 for $4.88. The W:DOA box is only an inch and a half wide, just slightly larger than the stack of 11 discs. I don't know about you but some of the multi disc dvd packaging has been buggin' me. Gatefold multi disc sets are akward and then they often place one disc on top of another. The first Babylon 5 dvd sets had 5 thick plastic disc holders with discs on either side that take up as much or more space as the Wanted: Dead Or Alive set.

 

Steve plays a bounty hunter that travels about looking for criminals and helping people. He carries a sawed off Winchester repeating rifle strapped to his leg. The shows have him get involved with some pretty serious guys. There's lots of shooting and a pretty good body count for tv. He had a lot of great guest stars on the show. People like Michael Landon, Warren Oates, James Coburn, DeForest Kelly, Kenneth Tobey, Clu Galager. Lee Van Cleef, Lon Chaney Jr, Diane Cannon, and Mary Tyler Moore. It's similar to Have Gun - Will Travel but I didn't find Steve as likeable a guy as Richard Boone. It was mostly prety good and I was glad to have seen them. I'll watch it again in a few years.

Man With A Camera

I picked up a few episodes of Man With A Camera from The Internet Archive. It's a series that ran from Oct 1958 to Feb 1960. Two short seasons, 29 shows, 14 of which are up on the IA. Charles Bronson stars in this half hour action show. He's a freelance photographer who seems to get into a different hair raising scrape each week, only escaping death with the help of the writers. If I was a criminal I would have shot him sooner but he's the hero and it's tv. Plenty of other people are getting killed, usually one or two per episode. Mostly Bronson hangs out in New York City, even though the show was really filmed with LA standing in for the Big Apple.

Occasionally he leaves the city, in one episode he went all the way to Lisbon to help an old pal, in another just an hour into the New York countryside. That last one is the show where Bronson gets kidnapped by a fame seeking thrill killer and is forced to take pictures of the guy on his robberies. Bronson leaves clues in his photos to help the police catcht the guy. That was a pretty murderous episode and I've never been a fan of the psycho killer genre. Who needs to be reminded about that? There's the occasional lady but they seem to be either the damsel in distress kind or the criminal type. It's the 50's what would you expect. There's the occasional interesting guest star. I saw Grant Williams, Angie Dickenson and Frank Faylen in the first half a dozen episodes I've watched so far. There are only two regulars and they don't appear in every episode. Bronson's father, played by Ludwig Stossel, has a photography store. Bronson drops by, sometimes to visit, and sometimes to get advice. It's a 26 minute show and there isn't much time for visiting. Sometimes Bronson has encounters with the police in the form of James Flavin playing Lieutenant Donovan. It's a tough business being a freelance photographer, especially when you take pictures where you aren't supposed to. I don't think it's that great of a show but it's kind of fun to watch. I've certainly wasted my time watching worse crap than this.

 
I also noticed this Red Skelton Show episode with Peter Lorre on it. Some CBS exec are meeting. They've just signed Peter Lorre to do a new tv show. Peter wants to do a comedy and he wants Red Skelton to help him with the show. Red drops in to Peter's house and Peter has a gorilla for a maid. It's whacky. For some reason, perhaps comedic, I don't know, they decide to do a Honeymooners show with Peter as Ralph, a Vampira look alike as Alice, Red as Norton and some chubby lady as Trixie. Ralph drives a hearse instead of a bus. It's all the Honeymooners jokes and catch phrases. It's pretty silly and worth a gander for the Peter Lorre fan.

Science Fiction Sunday 118

 
Someone had mentioned Ghostbusters recently and it reminded me I hadn't seen those movies for a little while. I probably watch them every year or two and it seemed like time. The first movie came out in 1984 and the sequel came out in 1989. I know I went to see them both in the theaters, more than once, and I had VHS copies of them for ages. I had a laserdisc copy of the first movie. There was a Criterion 2 disc all CAV version but at $100 it was too pricey to buy. I rented it and copied some of the supplimental features onto a vhs tape and eventually transfered that to a dvdr. I bought the official dvd above in, wow, 1999 and it was a pretty good one. Director Ivan Reitman and writer actor Harold Ramis supply a Live Video commentary with a Mystery Science Theater 3000 style silhoutte option. I enjoyed that commentary. There's a lot of effects "making of" footage. The movie looks good though I'm probably going to get the BluRay when I finally bite the bullet on that format.

  
I can't imagine anyone doesn't know what the movies are about. Ghostbusters was the most successful comedy of 1980's and it made a shitload of money. A ghost appears at the New York Public Library and some paranormal scientists from Columbia University come to investigate. It's very exciting for them but when they return to the University they find they are fired and tossed out. I blame Venkman. Setting up a ghostbusting business they wait patiently until all their money runs out. While sitting and eating the last of the petty cash a call comes in that saves their cash-strapped asses. Then the business pours in as the paranormal activity picks up in the city. There's so much business they have to put it in a montage and hire another guy. There's worries that the containment cell in the old firehouse they are using for a headquarters is getting too full.

  
I always loved their car and who wouldn't like to live in an old New York City firehouse with a working pole. Parts of the movie were shot in New York, like the firehouse exterior in Tribeca, and some of the interiors were shot in LA buildings. Here's a site that talks about that. Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis play the scientists. Ernie Hudson plays the newly hired ghostbuster and Annie Potts plays the receptionist. Business stays booming until the EPA comes calling. William Atherton plays the EPA guy, an uptight stick up his ass kind of guy, who is lacking a penis, or so I am told. He lets the ghosts go and tosses the boys into jail. The mayor, at a loss to deal with the choas the city is in, lets the boys out of jail. Sigourney Weaver plays a lady who has a demon portal in her apartment building next to New York City's Central Park. Rick Moranis plays her nerdy neighbor. An evil guy with a great name, Ivo Shandor, built Sigourney's building as a portal to a demon world. He was a Goozer worshiper and wanted to bring Goozer to our world. Ivo died before he could bring "the Destructor" to Central Park West. Goozer finally gets here in the form of a the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. I still remember the delight I had seeing that guy up on the big screen. Now if only had a graham cracker as large as the Lower East Side and a chuck of chocolate the size of the Chrysler Building we'd have a tempting treat. A treat filled with evil, but oh so tasty.

 
In the second movie the guys have fallen on hard times, Ernie and Dan are preforming for kids birthday parties, Bill has a crappy tv show on cable and Harold is working in a lab of some sort. Sigourney has a baby and she's working at a museum doing restorations. A goo seeps through the sidewalk and Sigourney wheels her baby carriage through it. The carriage takes off with the baby and that prompts Sigourney to go see Harold. They discover a river of slime under the city and that river is fueled by emotion. Peter MacNicol is Sigourney's boss at the museum and he's restoring a painting of Vigo the Carpathian when it possesses him. Vigo needs a baby so he can be reborn into the world and Peter knows Sigourney has one. He steals that and the guys have to animate the Statue Of Liberty to break through the hard coating on the museum to save the day. Yay. Not quite as much fun as the first one but still entertaining after repeated viewings. The Statue Of Liberty isn't quite as cool as the giant Stay Puft Marshmallow Man.

Since it was the 1980's some of the effects aren't quite up to the modern work we are so used to but in the end it means little, the fun story and great characters are all that I see. I shouldn't wait so long until I watch these again.

Friday Night Movies 311

We started with Death Race 2, the prequel to Death Race, the 2008 remake of the 1975 Roger Corman produced Death Race 2000. It's directed by Roel Reiné, a Dutch director I hadn't heard of. The 1975 original was directed by the entertaining, and sadly late, Paul Bartel. Death Race 2 is written by Paul W.S. Anderson of the Resident Evil franchise and solo films like Soldier and Event Horizon. He also directed Death Race. I like the guys work pretty much but he's had a pretty rocky career. Soldier did really poor at the box office and was pretty much panned by the critics. Over the years it's gotten a nice cult following and I'm part of that. It's got it's flaws but the overall story and the amazing performance from Kurt Russell are more than enough to push them aside. In Death Race Sean Bean is a criminal kingpin. Luke Goss is his best worker and Sean puts him in charge of the getaway car in a bank robbery that ends with Luke in jail for killing a cop. That's some fucked up shit right there, huh. Gets better, the prison is home to Death Match, the prison fight reality show. Some sleazy bitch, played by Lauren Cohen, hosts the show and Ving Rhanes plays the head of the company producing the show. I always liked that guy, he can play one bad ass motherfucker, to perfection. Danny Trejo, a favorite character actor of mine, plays Goldberg, a prisoner on Terminal Island who becomes friends with Luke. He looks pretty good for 65, huh. He's been in a ton of movies starting with Runaway Train. Joe and Sperhauk both give Danny's Machette a nod but I haven't seen it yet. Waiting to get one cheap on DVD. There's lots of great characters in the prison, lots of fighting and tension. Luke is tricked into fighting on Death Match. He wins with a bit of help from Tanit Phoenix. She's a South African actress playing a female prisoner brought in to hold the round cards during the fight.

Back on the outside Sean has decided that Luke, who didn't turn Sean in for planning the bank heist, has become a danger to his criminal organization. Sean puts out a hit on Luke. That's a bother, though Luke doesn't believe it at first. Tanit convinces Ving to upgrade the show to a race format. Armored cars  and 20,000 rounds of live ammo. Hot damn! Where's that TV nowadays? Somehow it makes popular reality shows like Survivor look like weak ass bitches. Hell, no one even dies on that show. Ving adds freedom after 5 wins as an incentive to drive and the show goes on the air. There's lots of fighting and racing and explosions. Who doesn't like that? My mom, that's who. Luke eventually gets his revenge and after a deadly crash he becomes the Frankenstein of the 2008 movie. David Carradine played the Frankenstein character in the 1975 movie but there isn't much similarity. I enjoyed this about as much as I enjoyed the other two Death Race movies and that's a lot. I'll look to add it to my collection in time.

I already had a copy of the 2005 remake of Assault On Precinct 13. I hadn't seen it since it around June of 2005, when the DVD came out. Joe brought the Blu-ray and we watched that. It looks pretty good but it's not quite as entertaining as the original. The movie opens with Ethan Hawk as an undercover cop. He's posing as a buyer and the deal goes wrong when one of his team is spotted as a cop. They all get blasted and he's the only one who survives. Ethan loses his confidence to lead and hides behind a desk. He's the sergeant at the outdated Precinct 13 which is shutting down that New Years Eve night. It's Detroit in the movie, and it's snowing so hard that the city is nearly shut down. That was the first big problem with the movie. The jail bus driver is having a hard time driving through the heavy snow fall and the streets in the movie are barely covered with an inch or two of snow. Unbelievable! As someone who comes from a place that's had about 5 feet of snow fall this winter it's embarrassing to watch them struggle in that light dusting. And even though the snow falls all night long the accumulation never changes. We blamed the director for not hiring a snow consultant. Lawrence Fishburn is playing Bishop, a heavy duty criminal who's on the jail bus with John Leguizamo and a couple of other criminals, the driver, and a guard. They stop to stay the night at Precinct 13, because of the weather. Some crooked cops, headed by Gabriel Byrne, come gunning for Lawrence, who knows too much about their crooked dealings. Crooked cops are so over done and there's a couple of dozen of them in the movie. Good thing it's snowing so hard, no one is out and they won't see the fire fight. Ethan refuses to give Lawrence up and the siege begins in earnest. There's a heavy body count on both sides, nearly everyone dies. After we were done I pretty much remembered that I didn't enjoy the movie as much as the original. The movie was directed by Jean-François Richet. I don't know anything about him other than he's French. He's made some films I haven't seen.

John Carpenter directed the 1975 Assault On Precinct 13 and his attackers were some LA gang members bound on revenge for the killing of several gang members by cops from Precinct 13. Both movie attackers come heavily armed and start blasting. In Carpenter's movie the main cop in charge of the precinct is named Bishop and he's a black guy. The criminal that helps him out is a white guy. It's reversed in the remake. All the cops are white and all the criminals are black or whatever John is. I hadn't noticed that when I watched the movie, I read that in some blog. Not sure if it means that much and you can't always tell what the film makers are thinking. It could be lazy, or even unintended, stereotyping or Carpenter is just a better film maker. He's certainly more socially conscientious from seeing him talk in interviews and commentaries. Now I want to see the original. Carpenter directed a nice quick moving taut thriller and the remake is more meandering and by the book. I'll probably not bother watching it again and when the big DVD purge comes in a few years it will be slatted for the chop. I'll keep the John Carpenter, that's a much better film.

Collectible Minifigs Series 3

 
Series 3 has been out for a while and I found I haven't bought as many of these figures as I did of the figures in the first two series. Once I got the set I have only randomly picked up the odd figure or two. I bought more of the first series, especially the robots, and less of the second series. This series is packed in a sickly lime green bag. Not my favorite color.

 
There's a whole new batch of characters, some more interesting that others, at least for me anyway. A few are good for multiples and others I didn't feel the need to stock up on. It's harder to find the ones that you want since this series only has small dots on the package that indicate the contents. I found it very hard to read the dots and wound up getting several duplicates before I got a whole set. According to the guys at the LEGO store the next series won't even have the dots on the package. Totally blind packaging.

 

I did want a few of the Hula girl. She's pretty darn cute. That grass skirt is poorly designed, I thought, it leaves a bit of a gap when worn. Don't be lookin' in there, now. Not sure why she has those brown maracas, it's not something that you would find on a real hula girl, far as I know. Would have been nice to have a lai, or a pineapple maybe. Oh well, always wanting the moon. I didn't have an Indian Chief from the earlier Native American themed sets and this one looks pretty good. I like that new two color spear and that headdress is real pretty. The Samurai looks pretty good but his costume is even better without the armour. The floral print on the dark red is really nice. The black hands can be switched out with yellow ones, if need be. I wanted and got 4-5 of those, some of them just be sheer luck. I have a possible use for them down the road. On this series, more than the first two, I occasionally just grabbed a couple of bags when I saw them. The old timey pilot has a nice jacket. That's going into the western themed diorama I'm slowly putting together. I like the faces on this bunch and that pilot has a great mustache.

 

I really liked the fisherman, it's one of my favorite of this series. That green fish is so cool. I wanted to get some from the LEGO LUG Bulk program but they aren't on the list of things we can buy. The fisherman has a great new beard, a new fishing pole, and a new string with a stud on one end and really short rod on the other. That seems like it could come in hand. I have been keeping an eye out for more fishermen and luckily for me the staff at the LEGO store got me three more this week. They use the feel method to find out what the minifig is inside. I have had about the same luck with feeling the bags as I had trying to read the dots. Not great. Still I'll keep the dups, some of them could come in handy in the future. The space villain has that nice new ray gun, and an ok costume. I didn't get too excited over that guy and felt about the same on the lady snowboarder and the racing car driver. Still those last two will be popular with some other folks. One of the ladies at the LEGO store is still looking for a snowboarder. It comes with a nice board.

 

That rapper has a really nice boombox and lucky for us it doesn't make a booming sound. That guy is all about the gold. I don't care for his face much but there you go.  The elf is really nice. I liked the way they worked the ears into the hair piece so you can use any other yellow minifig head. There are plenty of other heads to make yourself a nice gang of stern or grumpy looking elves. I got a couple but I'm not interested in building an army, you'd need a lot. He's got a great printed torso and legs and that shield is super nice. The long bow adds another nice new weapon to the stock. Be nice if they did an elf kingdom theme. The sumo looks pretty great. He got another color, looks like copper, of that little minifig statue. I can't get enough of those. I can get enough of the space alien. I didn't care much for that head, at least he has that nice ray gun and in gold. Bling bling, zap!

 

The mummy looks pretty good. I got a couple or three of those. He comes with a dark red scorpion. The tennis player is cute, with her outfit and racket. I like her determined face and dark orange ponytail. The baseball player looks great but I'm not much interested in putting together a team. Not unless it's the Baseball Furies. I did like the bat, nicely painted on the handle part. I love the guy in the gorilla suit. He even has a sweaty face and a zipper down the back of the suit. I like the way the head piece has holes where the eyes would look out. That's attention to detail.

So, all in all a pretty nice bunch of minifigs. Some will be more useful than others. There's a nice bunch of accessories, some of them new, and I always seem to like having those. There are about a dozen new parts in each series and lots more if you count the new printed parts. Some of those parts are very nice and useful for dressing out the right scene. I didn't care much for the price jumping from $1.99 to $2.99. but I'd rather they made money and continued to make interesting new parts. I think if they jumped to 4 bucks a figure in series 4 or 5 I would quit buying them, especially if I couldn't tell what was in there. For 4 bucks you get a set with a minifig and a lot more parts than what comes in these bags. I've seen pics of series 4 and there look to be some good figures in there. I'm sure I'll go for a set and a few extra.

40016 Valentine Letter Set

 

This set was on clearance at the LEGO Store today. I stopped in at lunch and found them on sale for $2.48. This was a $4.99 set with 41 parts. There are some nice quantities of certain parts that make this set a more interesting buy for the right person. I only bought three but Judy, the LEGO store lady, said she bought 30. Helps that they get a bit of a discount there. Mostly, she says, she got them for the 1x2x3 black panel. They are the new ones, 87544 with side supports. That's the ridge that runs down the edge. I have been hearing some negatives on that piece, because of that ridge. If you have the smooth side pointed out then it doesn't matter but if you want to use the inside area it might not work as well as the old piece did. I figure there are plenty of the old pieces around, and we also have this new version, so make the best of it. There are 16 black macaroni bricks in the set. They are the new style, with the cross braces, and another piece there have been complaints about. My complaint about the old version was their poor clutch power. In some cases they didn't hold together very well. I haven't tried these new ones out much yet so I'll eventually find out if I like them. There are 7 of the black panels and 7 of the red 6x6 plates. Good quantities when you buy multiple sets. Sometimes having something in a larger quantity can give you an idea for building something. I didn't bother putting this set together. I just sorted them out a bit and piled some more baggies in the 'to sort' box. The 'to sort' is a bit of a misnomer, some of the parts currently residing in there have no other home, so sometimes it's just fun to poke around in and see what's there.