PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Science Fiction Sunday 141

Star Trek III: The Search For Spock was up first this morning. It's another one that I saw in the theater when it came out in 1984. I haven't seen it since it came out on dvd in 2002. I didn't get one until recently and that prompted me to watching the first half dozen all in a row. If you remember where the second movie left off Spock had died and they sent his body down to the Genesis Planet in a pod. The Genesis effect works and the planet grows lots of life really fast. Spock's dead body gets caught up in the effect and he gets life a new. Kirk finds out Spock's non-physical being is in Doctor McCoy. When asking the Federation for help doesn't work Kirk gets the gang together and they steal the still somewhat crippled Enterprise. At the Genesis planet they blow up the Enterprise, rescue Spock and Lt Savik, and then steal a Klingon Bird of Prey just after pushing Christopher Lloyd into a fiery pit. He played a Klingon who was a real asshole. Kirk loses his son to the murderous Klingons and returns Spock to his father. They put his memory back into Spock's head and things are almost back to normal again. I enjoyed watching it again. It was directed by Leonard Nimoy and it looks pretty good for a guy's first movie. The effects look good for the time and the dialog had improved over the previous movie. It would have made a good episode of the tv show.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home came out in 1986 and I went to the theater to see it. I used to see all sorts of movies in the theater, now I rarely go. This movie picks up just after the last one ends. Kirk is in the Klingon Bird Of Prey. The Klingon's are accusing Kirk of stealing the ship and killing the crew. There's a lot of yelling from Klingon Ambassador John Schuck. Kirk and the crew are up on charges from Star Fleet and are returning to face them. When they get to Earth they find a space probe is killing the planet. It's always something in that Star Trek Universe, huh. They figure out what to do, take the BOP back into the Earth's past, collect some whales, a whale scientist, and return to save the planet. The defense rests, your honor. Nimoy returns to direct. He would direct four more movies and not get behind the camera after 1994. I don't have any of his other, non Star Trek movies and I have seen the only one that got fairly big numbers, Three Men And A  Baby. I enjoyed the STIV:TVH the most of the first four movies. Maybe I'm just getting used to them or maybe it just was fun to watch as they solved a puzzle and played havoc with time, authority, and the prime directive. They left a phaser, showed a guy how to make transparent aluminium, and brought a lady to her future. This Kirk seems more like the version of the character that I liked from the original tv show. I enjoyed his humor and his rule breaking. Sort of makes me interested in seeing the original series all over again. I liked that version of Star Trek the best but never got into rewatching them much. Always the future to see them again. As long as you're in it you'll need something to fill up your day.

Friday Night Movies 333

We watched the 2011 movie Battle Los Angeles first. It's a 116 minute ad for the Marines pretending to be an alien invasion movie. Aaron Eckhardt is a Marine sergent who saves the world from some tall skinny guys. They drop out of the sky and take over Los Angeles with genetically modified soldiers and robot planes. The marines have to get some people out of a police station before the Air Force bomb the aliens. It doesn't go well when their fresh out of the academy Lieutenant leads them into the firefight of their lives. We spend most of the movie watching the marines running and hiding and shooting guns and blowing up everything they see. Aliens and humans die in great numbers and it's all really loud and bombastic. Way too long too. I started to get tired fidgety and restless but there you go. The movie gets a lot of negative buzz for it being pretty much what you've seen before but it proved to be a money maker. Not having an original story doesn't bother me, it's the relentless edge they try to put on the thing that pushed me away. They shake the camera, throw everything, including the kitchen sink, into the air and before it falls to the ground they blow some of it up. While that firey metal storm is hailing down around you they crank the sound effects up to 11, and top that off with Brian Tyler's big ass score. I have liked several of his scores in the past but this one is just not my cup of tea. More like a big tumbler of PowerAid with a shot of 5 Hour Energy floating in it. Then the effect doesn't stop for nearly 2 hours. Lucky for the human race Aaron is able to figure out the flaw that the aliens have in their armour and then they nuke that subterranean deathstar and head for home. Now that I have seen it I doubt that I need to see it again anytime soon. Not one I'd go out and pick up that's for sure.

We watched a 1985 Mexican zombie movie called Cemetery of Terror next. It's also known as Zombie Apocalypse but it doesn't live up that name so we won't mention it again. Devlin, a mass murder, is killed and the family of one of his victims wants the authorities to burn the body because there is a demonic side to the guy. Before Devlin is torched some stupid teen boys steal the corpse to use to scare their girlfriends. They have a plan to frighten the girls into their arms by showing them the dead guy. Their previous plan was to tell the ladies that they were going to a jet-set party and then take them to a deserted house in the woods where they would try to have sex with them by acting all macho. Nice to see that the Mexican movie teens are as stupid as the movie teens here in the USA. That first plan doesn't go so well and the girls put an end to the romantic activity. The guys second plan kicks in and they go get the body. They convince the girls to go with them to the cemetery. The leader of the trio of idiots preforms a Satanic ritual that actually revives the mass murder. Unfortunately they also revive several of the locals who pop out of the ground and start shambling around looking to bite the living. The stupid teens get slaughtered pretty quickly and the heroes of the movie turn out to be some children out for a bit of trick or treating. There's a lot of screaming and running about in this super low budget bit of silliness from south of the border. The production values are low, the acting is not the best but I've seen a lot worse in my time. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone but the serious horror fan who wants to see it all. It's not one I think I would need to buy but I enjoyed it better than our previous choice.

Pirates Of The Caribbean 4193 The London Escape

 

During the clearance action at the Target's this last couple of weeks I found a couple of the larger Pirates Of The Caribbean sets at 30% off. The stores have been cleaning out the sets that aren't selling well to make room for the new sets and each store has a slightly different mix of sets on mark down. Most of them seem to have a lot of the 7598 Pizza Planet Truck Rescue and 7949 Prison Carriage Rescue. I got a couple of the latter but just didn't see any parts I really wanted in the Toy Story set. I'd buy some of the 7504 Woody's Roundup! but I haven't seen any of those. Most of the POTC sets haven't been on sale. The Target on University in Saint Paul had a lof of the 4192 Fountain of Youth set at 30% off. I already had one but I got second copy of that set anyway. The costumes are really nice on the minifigs and there are some nice parts. I guess it didn't do well at that Target. Problem with buying all the POTC sets is you wind up with a lof of Captain Jack. At least this minifig has a hat on, all the rest came with bandana's on their heads and really, you can only use so many of those. All the sets come with a poster and a trading card. They aren't anything very exciting.

     

4193 The London Escape is a $49.95 set with 463 parts. There are three main builds in 4193, a bit of London in the form of a pub called The Captain's Daughter, a coach, and a wagon that has a special revolving segment that puts fire in what might be a wagon of coal. I haven't seen the movie so who knows what's going on. I'll see it eventually when the dvd comes out. It wasn't a set that I was particularly interested in but I actually built it to see how they made the connections on the coach's front wheels. There is a pivot point under  the driver's seat, using a 2x2 turntable, and the axel turns on that. You can see the huge arch under the coach, the wheels go right under that when you turn the couch. It's a fairly nice design but the scale is odd. I think it's too thin, 6 wide would be better than 4, and when you open the coach door the bottom step is level with a minifig's shoulder. That's one hell of a step up, huh. There might be a hinged ladder that swings out of the couch, or a stepping stool, that people would use in the real world but it lacking here. I think a person could improve on that vehicle and get that bottom step about waist high or lower. The building is ok, nothing special, but it's barely there as a pub. I does have a secret moving bit that Jack can use to escape. There's lots of nice blay and reddish brown parts plus some good accessories. There are some nice printed parts, a sign and a painting, plus a couple of Captain Jack's magic compass. If I get enough of those I can use them for decoration in a building I've got in mind. The coach has a bit of dark green but the odd thing is the 1x1 brick with the clip on the side is a slightly different shade of green, definitely not the same as the other bricks. It's always something with LEGO, huh.

 

That's the five guys you get with the set. Captain Jack, a coachman, Joshamee Gibbs and a couple of soldiers. Some good costumes, one good hair piece and a nice assortment of accessories which include a couple of whips, 3 swords, a couple of flintlock muskets and a pistol, one of those new scabards in white, a sexton, a shovel, three barrels, a trunk, some new flames, three dark brown telescopes, a bottle, a pair of handcuffs and a new bucket with handle. There are a couple of horses, a rat, and a spider. There are some of the new pearl gold coins and that new gold brick. I think I could use several of those for a Micropolis building. Yay! for BrickLink. A good bunch of parts and some figures made a better deal for the 30% markdown.

Alien Conquest Display - LEGO STORE MOA

Kind of a nice space ship, saucer style, with blinking lights about the edges. It's part of a new display at the LEGO STORE in the Mall Of America. It's very yellow in that store, isn't it. I hadn't been that interested in the Alien Conquest theme, too many Technic parts in the sets, but I liked the display.

 

It's a bit modular, all the printed faces around the base, and it seems it can be mixed and matched. I have more pics on my Flickr photostream. There's a different display in the front windows. Here's part of it.

New LEGO Boxes

 
I had read recently on The Brothers Brick about the new boxes for LEGO sets. Here's a sample of them that I found at WalMart. The shorter box is about 1.5 times thicker than the taller box. I didn't pick one of the shorter boxes up since I already had a couple of the set and that sucker is 60 bucks. No way I would buy it at anywhere other than the LEGO store, I want the VIP points, unless it's on a nice deep discount. For the last couple of weeks many sets have been on 30-50% discount at Target. Got to make room for the new July sets time to clear out the old.

Science Fiction Sunday 140

I'm not a great Star Trek fan for some reason. Never have been. I only have a copy of the first movie and that's the director's cut from 2001. I have seen all the films but mostly only once or twice. Now I had a chance to see the first half dozen on dvd and figured that would be a nice way to block out some SFS posts for the next three weeks. I went to see Star Trek The Motion Picture in the theatre in 1979. It was fairly entertaining the first time, everyone was excited to see it, but now I find the thing too slow as I watch it on dvd. Especially the flyby around the Enterprise, then it takes a while to get going, more time to get there, and then when you finally arrive at the giant dangerous thing there's an annoying robot at it's heart. It was a flashier version of a story used in an episode of the show. The effects are mostly pretty good but there isn't much story to fill in the blanks. Director Robert Wise directed a couple of other science fiction films, The Andromedia Strain and The Day The Earth Stood Still. I like TDTEST more than either of his other sf films. The two disc dvd has lots of featurettes and a couple of commentaries including one from Wise. All in all a film I just don't watch that often.

I had seen Star Trek: The Wrath Of Kahn in the theater when it came out in 1982. I never bought the movie on video but I had seen Nicholas Meyer's 2002 version of the film when Sperhauk got the director's edition dvd ages ago. I borrowed that same dvd to watch it again. That Ricardo Mantalban is sure handsome. huh. His hair sure looks nice for some guy stuck on a planet of dust for 15 years. Kirk's takes over the Enterprise again and poor Spock gives up his life and has be reborn in the next film. It's a better bit of story with some conflict as Kirk battles Kahn for the Genesis Device. It's a magical terriforming bomb. I'm not too happy with the costumes in either movie. They just look awful at times, especially the white uniforms. Meyers said something in one of the interviews that he wanted to get a more Navy feel and look to the show. It does have that feel but it doesn't work for me. Mostly it was fun enough to watch, certainly more so than the first movie. I had forgotten most of the details in both movies so that helped.

DINOBLOKS

 
Jayson, one of the guys at work, is having a garage sale and this was going to go in for 5 bucks. It's a 1992 MegaBloks Dinobloks set 9701 with 740 pieces. Not sure what it sold for new. I wouldn't have bought it new. I saw a picture of the bronto online and expressed an interest, especially at $5. He gave it to me for free, 'cause I had given his kids a whole bunch of MegaBlocks Planetoids and some other Duplo that I wasn't interested in, and I took it home and built it.

 
There are three colors of brick, a dark green, a dark blue and a dark ochre like color. The dark green is quite nice, very military, and so is that ochre underbelly color. The bricks don't stick together very well and they use a lot of 2x2, some 2x4, and quite a few 1x2 bricks to build the thing. That limited number of types of parts mean you can't do a lot with them. They would make good accent colors in the right place. There's a lot of stacking and no longer pieces to hold everything together. No plates at all. It exploded once while building it and parts were all over the place. I was interested in that weird molded base. I had one that came with some other Ritvik set in a space theme. I think it was from the same mold. It was silvery gray and Jayson's kids got it ages ago. The palm trees are 1x1 round bricks with set of three palm leaf parts. They look rather good.

 

The box is huge, about 18 inches on a side and 4 inches deep, with a lid that flips up. There's a picture above on the left of the inside of the lid. The other picture on the right above is the back of the box. Those kids sure look happy to have those dinos running around their places. Wait till they pick them up to play with, that will wipe the smile off their faces. The inner box has a cutout with plastic to show the bags of parts; the bronto head and two of the feet are mounted in a tray with the color changing crocodille. It's a pretty goofy line and none too attractive. Those molded heads and feet are pretty silly. The only good thing about the line is the interesting colors, too bad they don't stick together very well. I'll hang onto it for the colors but probably won't build it again.

Friday Night Movies 332

Jason Statham is The Mechanic in this 2011 remake of the original 1972 Lee Marvin film of the same name. He's a contract killer for some organization and Tony Goldwyn is his boss. Donald Southerland is Jason's mentor. He's stuck in a wheelchair from being in a dangerous business. It looks like he's turned against the organization and Jason gets talked into hitting the guy. Ben Foster is Donald's troubled son. He's a heavy drinker and a violent guy on top of that. Turns out Jason was set up and Donald was really innocent. He was going to blow the whistle on a cover up and that meant he had to go. Jason trains Ben up for some vengence. Things don't go too well for much of anyone. There's a lot of shooting and lots of people bite the big one. Simon West directed this movie and he did a pretty good job. He also directed the highly entertaining, and I think much better, Con Air. It was his first movie, back in 1997, and that was followed by The General's Daughter and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. Both fairly solid films. After that he drifted into tv and I haven't see much of what he's done. This is the first of his films that I have seen in years. He's got a Nic Cage action film coming out next year as well as The Expendibles 2. There should be lots of explosions and shooting in those films. The Mechanic isn't super great or anything, it's mostly just above average. I was glad to see it but it's not something that I would rush out to buy. I have so many hitman films that I don't get around to very often so I won't miss one more too much. Once again these films prove the value of NetFlix.

I wouldn't bother picking up a copy of the 2010 Japanese film Gothic and Lolita Psycho either. It's a fighty revenege film in which Yuki, dressed in the gothic lolita style, uses fancy weapon embedded umbrellas to kill the people who attacked her family, killed her mother and crippled her father. There isn't much to it other than the revenge fights. The people who killed her mom are demon hunters and they are really annoying types. Turns out mom was a demon and Yuki has some of that demon blood in her but she doesn't seem to know about it. The characters back story is told mostly through visions in Yuki's head. Not a very satisfying movie or story. The fights drag on and they are pretty cartoony with lots of flying body parts and goofy activity. There are better Japanese demon fighting movies than this but I can't remember any of their names right now. The gal that plays Yuki, Rina Akiyama, is really pretty and I thought I had seen her before. Looking at her film list I don't recognize anything. She looks nice in a  swimsuit.

   

Muppets rock the house.

I thought this was a hoot. Muppets rocking out to Sure Shot by The Beatie Boys.

Elvira saves my day

Once you've seen most of the good films out there you have to face up to the possibility that you are going to see some the crap if you watch what's left.

Stanley Tucci directed, co-wrote, starred in and produced, the 2008 film Blind Date. Unlike the less than successful, but sort of fun, Bruce Willis movie of the same name this is a drama based on a sad foreign film. Stanley is a stage magician and Patricia Clarkson is his wife. The narrator says they have some issues and they play at fake blind dates to keep their marriage alive. It turns out they had a car accident some years before and it killed their daughter. Since then they can barely cope and drift through life until the end of the movie when they kill themselves. Who would want to watch this sort of story. I should have known better but I sure do like that Patricia Clarkson and Stanley's now slouch either. Some of his drama pictures are better than this, that's for sure. Absolutely no reason to watch this again. I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone, not unless you like some sad depressing shit on your tv.

I actually had seen the 1985 movie Howling II  ... Your Sister Is A Werewolf back in 1989. Sadly I had forgotten how awful it is so I took a look On Demand. It was pretty poor and kind of dumb. If I had looked the IMDb would have told me it scored a 2.8 and even that artificially pumped up score would have told me the movie was a stinker. There were 190 of 2672 users that gave the movie a ten. That's 7.1% and 33% of the voters gave it a 1, so you know that's some skewed votin'. There isn't much good about the movie except Christopher Lee and he's not that good here. His house is a Frank Lloyd Wright house and that was enough reason to see it but only if you're a "FLW in the Movies" fan. I like looking for his houses in films but that's hardly a good excuse for everyone to subject themselves to the movie. Most people don't even know who Frank is. Sybil Danning flashes some boob but they aren't the greatest  boobs. What is great is her costume. Not in a good way, more of a WTF way. Take a look. That's some wacky shit, huh. There is a werewolf orgy but it's pretty tame. The band was pretty crappy but really who would play at a werewolf orgy but some crappy band. The effects and werewolf costumes are a mixed bag, mostly average or below average, but some of the sets are fairly good. Too bad there's nothing much good playing in them. I probably would have given this a miss if I had remembered just how little good there was up on the screen but there you go.

I took a look at Hoodlums. It's something that Vinnie Rattolle had up on his blog. He posts movies and other bits of music and television that you can't find in the usual places. You can download them. If you need a player for them, I would recommend the VLC player, it's free and plays just about everything. Hoodlum is pretty awful. I just about every sense and on top of that it's a sad story hardly anyone would want to watch.. Read more about the movie and the star Nai Bonet on Vinnie's blog. There are some other things on the site that might be of interest to the video fan. Certainly some better things than Hoodlum. Hoodlums isn't on dvd and that's about the only interesting thing about the movie. It being hard to find really isn't much reason to watch the movie. Nai Bonet's story is more interesting than the movie. Buried somewhere in Vinnie's site is another Nai produced movie and that one might even be worse. It's a disco vampire comedy called Nocturna.

Another thing of interest on Vinnie's blog? Something for the Elvira fan, a 90 minute compilation from the Attack Of The Killer B Movies tv special. After the crap I have just seen it's nice to get a bit of something nice and fun. Elvira and some teen tv stars watch some cheesy movies and do shtick between the reels of film. I haven't watched it all but it looks like dumb jokes and Elvira. Who doesn't like that? I understand that her stuff doesn't appeal to everyone but I like it. Same with the show Elvira is doing. Elvira Movie Macabre is packed with dumb jokes and silly sketches and lame movies and it works well for me but I'm a fan. Look for it in your area. Maybe you'll be one too. Her first feature film, Elvira Mistress Of The Dark, is entertainingly silly. It's got a good cast and a fun script. Her jokes are often dumb but she's got such a great character that it doesn't matter. Elvira is really Cassandra Peterson, and she's a knockout. Here's a nice pic from the Wikipedia.