PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

LEGO Scary Monsters

Back in 2002 there were 4 new sets in the Studio theme. Each had the LEGO minifig spin on a classic movie monster. Frankenstein, Dracula, The Wolfman and The Mummy each have their own set. There's a hunchback, a gent, a damsel and some crew thrown in to help flesh out the living characters. Skeletons appear in some sets, representin' for the undead. I picked up the sets because of my interest in the subject matter. Seemed like a good day to take a look at the four pack of sets while waiting for the little demons to come get some.

1380 Werewolf Ambush

 

The werewolf set came with 110 parts for $10. There's not much to it. A so-so jeep and a tree. That's kind of weird tree with that control panel and those eyes. Oh, well, movie magic, I guess. That was the whole idea with the Studio series. Each set in the series is supposed to be part of a movie set. I picked up one when they came out and one later when they were on clearance at LEGO.com. It's a good set to get more than one of, mostly for the figures. There are three figures, the guy who turns into a werewolf, a red headed gal and a serious lookin' gent. The wolfman comes with a ripped shirt for the after transformation. The gal can look scared and the gent has a nice tan suit.

 

I liked the werewolf head. You also get a human head and a hat to dress up the poor sap that has the curse of lycanthropy. I liked the costume on the lady but would have preferred a slope for a dress instead of legs. Easily fixed. The lady's face is a bit simpery but she has on ok scared face and a nice read hair piece. The gent in his nice suit has a pretty good grimace on the other side of his frowny face.. Not a bad little set, there are some good brown pieces in that tree and a few useful things in the jeep.

1381 Vampire's Crypt

 

Here's a nice vampire and coffin in a set with 176 pieces for $20. This is more like the movie set style the series is striving for, and that sure doesn't amount to much, it seems like it's pretty low budget. Drac comes with a place for his coffin, a wall with two backgrounds, and a moving floor that lowers his coffin to the waiting cart. Then the hunchback can carry it off some where. Most of the parts are gray, light and dark, and black. There are four pillars and a few sand blue parts and other than that nothing stands out as too special except for the 2x2 white tile with the garlic printed on it. I like that piece of art and have used it in several mocs.  

There are four figure in this set too, a vampire, an Igor type, the gent in that nice tan suit and a grip in a bat shirt and blue hat. This is another I got a pair of, one when it came out and one on clearance, mostly for that vampire costume. His face is a bit goofy but sometimes that can come in handy too. The hunchback has that great tooth sticking up and a brown hood. One can always use another D basket. Nothing to special about the set but one worth having for the figures and additions to the building stock.

1382 Scary Laboratory

 

This is the largest set with 493 pieces for $50. None of them are too exciting but still useful. There are a couple of those printed tiles that create a nice electrical arc when paired. It's got a mad scientist, and his nature harnessing gear, creating his own man-made-man in his three story laboratory. There's an array of electric devices, a platform that ascends to the ceiling to access the life giving lightning, and a gate outside for the villagers to burst storm. The back of the box shows off the gate with a tower on each side. Plenty of places to throw things at the torch brandishing villagers as they come to call. It's a hard life being a mad scientist. Sadly there are no villagers in the set. They must be in another scene. There's a lot of the gray colors and most of them add to the building stock quite well.

  

There's Frankie, he's kind of silly lookin' but still an entertaining character. I like his zippers and he's got a nice jacket. The gal looks great in the dress and who doesn't love that mad scientist with his manic grin. He's got a great costume, that flat top hair piece, and the back of his head has another great goofy face.

There's that gent in the tan suit again. That's the third set in a row he's been in, he must be in all the scenes in the movie. You get a director, who sort of looks like Steven Spielberg, and a skeleton. There's a ghost part that is set on a stand pretending to be a costume in the movie world of the minifigs. I always like that glow in the dark ghost. There would be a good torso on the director except for the big clapboard on his back. I guess you can always remove it or cover it up if you need to. So for the most part a good parts pack. I kept a copy of this set, and the other three, together for a while, building and tearing them down a couple of times. In the end I just parted them out and used the pieces to build other things. I have a limited amount of the old grey bricks and run out quickly unless I take things apart.

1383 Curse Of The Pharaoh

 

The last set is the smallest one, only 51 parts for $4. There's a bit of action as the skeleton pops out of the tomb. I guess he was keeping it warm until the Mummy got back from shambling around. Not enough parts to get excited for. It would have been a good one to get several of because you can always use skeletons and who doesn't like their mummy. I found that display picture and the gray looks very brown. There's always some weird shit out on the internet, huh. At least some of it makes me laugh. These sets did. They are just the right bit of goofy to make them appealing to me. The concept is better than the parts that made it up, except for those special few that I mentioned. They were good sets to pick up when they were new. The minifigs are some of my favorites. There are a couple of Technic ideas in the instructions that I can use for something I want to build.

Science Fiction Sunday 154

 

Number 7 in the Godzilla series is Godzilla, Ebirah, Mothra: Big Duel in the South Seas or Godzilla Vs The Sea Monster as it was released here in the US. It's a 1966 movie that was directed by Jun Fukuda. He had directed many movies before he got his first crack at the Godzilla series. He would direct 4 more Godzilla movies before the long break in the series. He does an ok job, the movie moves along pretty briskly, things happen and there's danger and excitement even before the monsters appear. The first half of the movie seems more like crime or spy genre. Ebirah appears briefly but the big G doesn't show up until the 45 minute mark. He's sleeping in a cave and they still have to wake his ass up with a bolt of lightning before he starts rampaging around. Sadly, being as they are on an island, there are hardly any buildings for him to trash. I miss the buildings going down and bursting into flames. I have the Sony/Columbia TriStar DVD of the uncut Toho International version from 2005. It's got a nice letterboxed picture and it's in Japanese with English subtitles. Or you can listen to the fairly typical English dub track which changes tiny bits of the dialog. The pan and scan version of the movie hosted on Mystery Science Theatre 3000 is 4 minutes shorter than the 87 minutes of the Sony DVD and that version has a different dub of the movie. I also have a Video Daikaiju bootleg that came to me on vhs tape. It has some slightly different subtitles. The picture is letter boxed, and the movie is uncut, but it doesn't look nearly as good. Some guy's brother disappears at sea and an old lady who talks to the spirits of the dead tells him that his brother is still alive. He steals a boat with the help of a couple of tired marathon dancers and a thief with a brief case full of stolen cash. Everyone has a story, huh. Their new combined story gets worse as a storm strands them on a deserted island that isn't so deserted. It contains a secret lab run by the Red Bamboo. They are a bunch of crazies who have captured the islanders from Infant Island and are making them work as slaves in their heavy water factory. The stranded guys team up with an islander woman to wake Godzilla and set him against the giant crab Ebirah. The islanders call up Mothra for added fire power. The island is destroyed and the good people mostly escape. The effects had a different guy working them and they are pretty entertaining but there just aren't enough monsters. Godzilla doesn't finally appear until the 55 minute mark. There is a giant condor tossed in to take a turn against Godzilla but he's soon roasted. Originally the script was written for a King Kong movie but it was changed to Godzilla without enough rewrites. That's Toho for ya. It's not a bad movie, fun in fact, but the movies start changing here under new leadership, becoming more kid friendly.

 

You can really see that change in Son Of Godzilla a 1967 movie again directed by Jan Fukuda. Titled Monster Island's Decisive Battle: Godzilla's Son in Japan the movie opens with some reporter washing up on a small south seas island where some science guys are conducting a weather experiment. There are several large critters on the island and a pretty girl. The giant praying mantis, the pretty girl, and the giant spider are entertaining but baby Godzilla, man o' man, a face only a mother would love! Minilla looks pretty poorly sculpted and people complain about the character all the time. I like enough of the other parts of the movie that this small bit doesn't bother me much. The boy and the big guy have some touching moments as Godzilla teaches junior to use his atomic breath. The human story is mostly ok, the scientists are having their problems, especially after the first big test. The giant praying mantis gets larger and there are three of them now. The people are in jeopardy, as is Minilla, lucky for him his cries attract Godzilla. He raises up from the sea and tramples the science camp with a quick dash to junior. He blasts the bugs, the condor and the giant spider before the scientist's weather controller buries the island in ice and snow. Godzilla and son settle down for a snooze until they ware thawed out next year to appear in Godzilla's Revenge or All Monsters Attack.  SOG isn't a bad movie by any stretch of the imagination, I've seen so many worse, it's just not great but that's ok. Mostly something is happening and it kept my interest, even for the umpteenth time. The music, by Masaru Sato,  is pretty good. He did the movie score for Godzilla Vs The Sea Monster and they are fine. These movies are more for the fan of the genre, most people just wouldn't care to see them, but I'm still enjoyin' them.

Friday Night Movies 345

 

We watched the Criterion BluRay of Harakiri first. It's a 1962 Japanese movie directed by Masaki Kobayashi. He also directed Samurai Rebellion and Kwaidan. Harakiri is set in 1620 and the Shogunate has defeated many smaller warlords and broken up their kingdoms. There's peace in the land and thousands of samurai are out of work. They throng to Edo to look for jobs or a handout. The poor samurai have been showing up at rich people's houses saying they want to commit harakiri and need a nice place to do it. Rather than let them disembowel themselves the rich dole out a bit of cash and offer up a hearty "buck up" to the starving ronin before pushing them out the door. The main character is this poor Ronin, played by Tatsuya Nakadai, who shows up at the Iyi clan house. Tatsuya is a good actor, with haunting eyes, who is in a lot of really great movies; Kill!, Yojimbo, Sanjuro, High and Low, Sword Of Doom, Ran,the list goes on. Most of them I haven't seen, usually it's only the better films, or the more unusual films, that show up here in the US. Someone has to figure they can make some money and people in the US rarely watch foreign films, especially if it's only got subtitles. Our little group watchs way more on average than most people but we actively seek them out. Harakiri is not a happy film, much of the sad on sad story is told in a flashback when Tatsuya is sitting on that mat waiting to slice open his belly, and it doesn't end well for anyone. Tatsuya is at this lord's house for a reason, he doesn't just want to commit suicide and have a bit of help getting along to the other side, he's got vengence in mind. The story unfolds and damn that's some harsh shit. Harakiri is heavily ritualized. There are certain clothes to wear, people to attend, ways to slice yourself open and an important role for the second who slices off your head after you've done the slice and dice. It's not overly gorey though much blood flows and people die in awful ways. It's a great looking movie with nice sets and great cinematography. It isn't your typical samurai movie; it's a harsh look at the fuedal period of Japan and the way of the samurai. That was sure a sucky time when a poor person's safety net was dying quickly. Well worth seeing though not everyone's cup of tea I'm sure.

 

Captain America: The First Avenger was up next. It's a 2011 film by Joe Johnston. He directed The Rocketeer, Jumanji, and Juassic Park III, among others. I like some of his movies better than others. Chris Evans head gets stuck on a smaller actor's body to play the scrawny Steve Rogers who later becomes Captain America. He gets picked to go into the army because he is so slight. He's a brave stand up guy, just the opposite of Hugo Weaving's Red Skull. Both of them have been injected with Stanley Tucci's serum and they both are stronger and tougher than the average guy. The Red Skull got the first try at the serum, before it quite ready, and he got a bit of a rash all over his head. So now he's all crabby and he's going to take over the world 'cause Hitler isn't going to get the job done right. It's an odd retelling of the Captain America story with a lot of stuff tossed in. Tony "Ironman" Starks' father Howard turns up. He's just like Howard Hughes. Sargent Fury's Howling Commandos turn up in the Red Skulls prison but Fury is still in the future being played by Sam Jackson. Captain America starts his war effort appearing on stage promoting war bonds. He'd just caught a spy and saved a kid. He appears in movies too before going on the USO tour that lets him join the real fight against the Nazi scum. There's a lot of fancy gear and big explosions. The Red Skull has some great high tech weapons and lairs. They all blow up pretty nicely. Mostly pretty entertaining, the acting's good, the script and dialog mostly enjoyable. I might pick this up when it gets cheap. NetFlix will do for now.

Bones Season 1

Brian lent me his copies of the first four seasons of the Bones series. I hadn't seen any of them before. I might have watched one at some guy's house but it wouldn't have been a whole show. You never get to see a whole episode of anything at that guy's house  It's annoying but what are you going to do. I normally don't watch this sort of CSI like crime show but I liked David Boreanaz in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel and was curious. David plays an FBI agent who works with Emily Deschanel. She's the "Bones" in the show. She's a forensic anthropologist who extracts all sorts of things from bones. She's a real smartie with little or no social skills. She works for the Jeffersonian Institute where they have a nice fancy lab with some assistants who specialize in some mighty fine science. They have all sorts of smarts and high tech equipment. There's a guy who works with bugs and dirt, a gal who does computer modeling and body reconstruction, and the nerdy lab assistant. Their boss is a former archologist who only lasts the one season. There's a high level of gore with all the body parts and corpses being in various stages of decomposition but it isn't about that. There's a cold clinical side to everything and there's a good amount of humor. Sometimes it's kind of sad but that's the way they roll. The deaths are colorful and often based on some bit of recent news. The series is based on the crime novels by Kathy Reichs which are based on her real life as one of the less than 100 certified forensic anthropologists in the country. In the series Emily writes novels based on her life and her character is named Kathy Reichs. The real books by Kathy Reichs and the show are appearently somewhat different but I don't know from reading them. I might watch a crime show like this on tv but it's going to be the last thing I'd pick to read. I tend to favor a different sort of crime novel. Not that I've been reading those of late. I might not like all the elements in the tv show so far but for the most part they are entertaining in a hour long character driven crime drama kind of way. I like the characters enough to follow along though some of the coincidences and personal melodrama are a bit much. I like borrowing or Netflixing stuff like this since I wouldn't normally buy them or watch them on tv. I like watching tv shows like a lion on the veldt eats his kill, devouring it in big chunks. Chomp. One down and three to go.

What I Read In August 2011

Only three books for the month. Even though two of them were really good that sure sucks. I'll do better in September.

 

The Bone Magician by F E Higgins is set in the same universe as The Black Book Of Secrets. She calls the series Tales From The Sinister City and that's a better name than many. This novel takes place parallel to the first book and some of the characters from that appear briefly here. Like the first book the story opens in Urbs Umida but this novel stays put in the city. It's a kind of 19th century London, cobblestone stone streets and gaslights, with a bit of a more European city blended in. Pin's father, his only parent, has run off and people think Dad murdered a guy. Pin gets a job in a mortuary watching bodies. That leads him to the bone magician and the young woman who works with him. They raise the dead for people to have one last visit. Is it real? Pin doesn't know but he's driven to find out. His curiosity nearly kills him. There are a lot of characters and some of them are pretty nasty. There's a big hairy freak caged for show in the basement of a pub. There's an unusually ugly guy who writes sour bitter commentaries on the city for the newspaper. There's the Silver Apple Killer who bashes his victims and tossed them to drown in the sludge of the vile river that runs through the city. Very entertaining and a good reason to look for the 3rd and 4th books in the series. The book looks nice too, all dull browns and beige, very fitting of it's content.

The Amulet of Samarkind - The Bartimaeus Trilogy 1 by Jonathan Stroud had been sitting on my shelves for ages. For some reason lost to me now I waited until I got all three before I even thought about reading them, I don't always do that. I got the trilogy together then they sat for a couple more years. The books are set in a modern London in an alternate universe kind of place where magicians run the government. There's a whole big page about the magic in the series over at the Wikipedia. Most of the story is told in a narrative by Bartimaeus. He's a demon that Nathaniel calls up. The magicians use demons a lot, summoning them from The Other Place, binding them to their will, and then making them do what even tasks they need doing. The demons are in pain from being on earth, or touching iron, and would like to leave but they are stuck, bound to the magician and his spells. There's little love between the two groups. Nathaniel is 12 and an apprentice to an older magician. He isn't supposed to be summoning Bartimaeus and even though he does all the spells right things don't go his way and Bartimaeus learns his birth name. That gives the demon power over the boy. While these two are sorting out their personal problems there's also a big conspiracy plot brewing. There's an anti-magical revolt going on to add to the troubles. Kitty is part of that group and Nathaniel takes an interest in her. He's not much of a nice kid, thinking he's so much better than everyone, and he's quick to hate and seek revenge. His plans often don't go his way and there are death's. The few people he felt some affection for died from the mistaken actions he takes. They are thick books with lots of detail and character development. Bartimaeus is one of the more interesting characters I've come across in a while. The writing is really enjoyable and the story complex. Worth the read, unlike the following.

Stravaganza - City Of Flowers by Mary Hoffman is the third book in the series. I read it and it took way too long. That really screwed up the total of read books for the month. They certainly aren't for me. There are more in the series and I sure ain't going to get them. They had rather nice covers but that means little when the book inside isn't working. Good enough of a reason not to buy the rest of the series. I'll read something good after this.

Weeds Season 1

 

On a whim I picked up the first four seasons of Weeds. Target was getting rid of a lot of dvd tv sets after Christmas nearly two years ago and I picked up a few things including these for about 10 bucks apiece. They finally surfaced in the house and I've started to watch them. Its often like that around here. The goods churn, eventually something shiny winds up near the top, and I watch it. Mary Louise Parker plays a lady who's husband has just died. They live in a nice swanky suburb of Los Angeles and she needs a pile of cash to keep her and the kids living there. She has two boys, Shane played by Alexander Gould who is about 10-11 when the series starts, and Silas who is played by Hunter Parrish who is about 16-17. Mary louise decides to sell some weed to pay the bills. She starts off with her friends but in order to increase the cash flow she branches out and moves into other territories. That causes some trouble and things occasionally get a bit scary. As a type of show it lies somewhere between The Sopranos and Arrested Development. It's not quite as serious as the first and not quite as funny as the second. It's on Showtime so they can have some nudity, swearing, and humping. There's a lot of swearing, which I like, and the nudity picks up as the series continues. You can watch all 7 seasons here. That's Mary Louise over on the left and Hunter on the right. Below from left to right we've got Elizabeth, Alexander Gould and Justin Kirk with Kevin Nealon and Romany Malco below. Their photos are mosly tagged with their names. Most of these people aren't actors I normally see. Mostly they were entertaining.

There were only 10 episodes in the first season. Nancy is starting out pretty green in the business, learning as she goes, making some mistakes. She buys her weed from a black lady who lives in Los Angeles. Tonye Patano plays Heylia James and she's a great character. Romany Malco plays Conrad, Heylia's nephew. He works for her and two of them show Mary Louise some of the tricks of the trade. Elizabeth Perkins plays Mary Louise's sort of friend. She's a real bitch who, like most everyone on the show, makes one bad decision after another. She treats her husband and daughter really awful and is punished greatly for it. Most everyone has some sort of bad thing happen to them pretty regularily. Good things happen too, it is a comedy, but a dark one with the occasional dead guy. Justin Kirk plays Mary Louise's brother in-law Andy. He's a fuck up. Pure and simple. Kevin Nealon is highly entertaining as the local crooked councilman and accountant. His fall through the series turns him from a somewhat likeable pothead to a dark bitter creep. The show keeps pushing the trouble people get into higher and higher; like when Mary Louise finds a nice guy and it turns out that he's in the DEA. The season moves Mary Louise deeper and deeper into the culture and the series moves her further and further up the ladder in the drug chain. Not a place you want to go, better to watch the glamorized version on the tv. The scripts are brisk and tight paced, the profanity laced dialog entertaining, and the production values pretty darn good. There's lots of social commentary and plenty of personal drama. The characters are mostly entertaining but they do make some of the stupidist decisions sometimes. Of course we can relish their pain. I enjoyed watching the shows and look forward to season 2.

Science Fiction Sunday 153

 

Back to watching Godzilla movies. I'm sticking to the chronological order of the series so Ghidorah, The Three Headed Monster up up first. The Japanese title is 三大怪獣　地球最大の決戦, the literal translation is, Three Giant Monsters: Earth's Greatest Battle, which is kind of weird since there are 4 monsters. It's the fifth film with Godzilla and it came out in 1964. The big G is joined by Rodan, the Mothra Larva and the new threat to Japanese architecture, King Ghidorah. Luckily for the towns of Japan some of this movie takes place in the countryside; only some small houses get smashed. I'm watching the Classic Media dvd which has the original 92 minute Japanese version and the 7 minute shorter English dub version. They changed a few things and you can read about it on the Wikipedia. Before the critters start their destruction a princess from a made up country is stolen from her airplane by a ball of light. Then the plane blows up. Her mind is controlled by some space aliens, Venus in the Japan version and Mars in the US, and she's dropped down in the city where she warns the people in a park. No one cares, they all laugh when some goof tells her to take off her clothes. Men, they're just the same all over the world, they all want to see a naked lady. First we get a glimpse of the Mothra Larve on Infant Island then assassins are dispatched to check if the alien lady is really the princess. If so they have to kill her. Rodan shows up, followed by Godzilla. The alien princess warns the earth people about King Ghidorah. He had previously destroyed Mars and now he's on earth. People don't believe her until the giant meteor, that fell in an earlier part of the movie, bursts open to reveal the three headed monster. His lightning bolts destroy stuff as he flies over the city. All the monsters show up and battle. The assassins keep trying to kill the princess but they are crushed by rocks falling on them. The princess is hurt and regains her memory and Godzilla chases Ghidorah back into space. The movie is directed by Inoshiro Honda and it's pretty much fun in either version. The movie marks the point where Godzilla changes from a threat to the people and becomes more of a friend. I know he's the kind of friend who knocks over buildings but who doesn't have a friend like that. Even though it's a bit goofier than the previous entry it's still enjoyable and fun to watch.

 

Invasion Of The Astro Monster is the 6th Godzilla film and it came out in 1965. Toho doubled it's monster movie production over the next few years and some of them got pretty silly as they aimed the series at a younger and younger crowd. Like the previous movie IOTAM shows signs of that new trend but it's still fun enough, and has enough entertaining elements, that I still enjoy watching it. The US release was called Monster Zero or Godzilla Vs Monster Zero. I'm watching the Classic Media dvd and while they are nice packages, with Japanese and American versions of the film, the dvd's are annoying. It takes forever to get to the main menu and you're forced to watch the trailers first, or skip through them, before you get to the menu. Each dvd has a commentary and a short featurette so that helps make up for the bad formatting. IOTAM is another alien invasion movie, and unlike the first movie, this one has the aliens make an appearance. Check the Controller and his henchmen below.

 

I love the costumes of the men from Planet X and their woman is pretty cute. All their women look the same which makes sense for this computer controlled male dominant society. Some earth astronauts are visiting Planet X, hidden behind Jupiter, when they encounter the people living below the surface. The subterranean dwellers reveal that King Ghidorah, or Monster Zero, is the cause of the devastation on the surface. They ask the earth people to allow them to capture Godzilla and Rodan so they can be used to attack King Ghidorah. They get their wish and remove the monsters only to put controls on them and use them to threaten the earth with destruction unless they knuckle under to the Controller of Planet X. What a dick, huh. Oh, well, trying to control monsters never works and the plan is foiled. Earth will be ok, at least for a while. American actor Nick Adams has a main part in the movie as one of the astronauts. He made several films in Japan near the end of his short movie career. He died of a drug overdose at 36 years old in 1968. Sad but it happened ages ago and we can enjoy him here. The rest of the cast are equally entertaining, especially that controller. 

Harry Potter - 2011 Bagged Sets

There are three new poly bagged sets in the Harry Potter theme. I picked up the first one at Toysrus last week and hope to pick the others up off BrickLink. Gotta keep the Harry Potter collection as complete as possible.

30110 Trolley

I picked up a couple, thought it's rather pricey, 5 bucks for 22 pieces. There's one of the new white owls, a trunk, Harry and not much else. Still, you can smash it along the wall and play Harry can't get through the invisible barrier to Playform 9 3/4's. I was just glad to get a couple more of those owls and that dark blue jacket that Harry wears is pretty nice.

30111 The Lab

Here's a set with 34 pieces. It's Harry and a bit of furniture with bottles on it. I haven't seen it anywhere other than BrickLink so far.

40028 Mini Hogwarts Express

 

You can get the Hogwarts mini set for buying a copy of Diagon Alley or you can spend a few bucks, over 13 of them, and pick one up on BL. The only part that isn't pretty common are those wheels. They appear in a Cars 2 set and on this train. It's annoying when they sell sets that are exclusives or of limited availability. Ain't that the way of the world.

The LEGO store is clearancing these magnets right now. They are $7.48 or half price. The set is the only magnet set still available that hasn't had the minifigs glued to the base. I complained about that and the clerk said the sales have dropped off since they did that. I can see why.

Friday Night Movies 344

Joe brought Scream 4 and we watched that first. It's been ten years since Ghostface last chased Neve Campbell, David Arquette and Courtney Cox around whatever crappy murderer filled town they come from. People need to get the fuck out of that place, it just ain't safe. Neve's got a book out and she's returned to the town to pitch it on the last stop on her book tour. She's staying with her cousin, played by Emma Roberts, daughter of Eric Roberts, and the cousin's mom, played by Mary McDonnell. The movie opens with some clips from the film within the film,  Stab 6 & 7, and like the previous trio of films we've got some bigger stars doing a death scene cameo. There are references to horror movies through out the film and soon enough Ghostface shows up for some stabbin'. Mostly it was ok but I'm still not much of a slasher film fan, even one loaded with sarcasm. I'm not sorry I saw it but I'm not rushing out to buy one either. I have the other three but I don't watch them very often. I should have the fourth, you know, to finish the set. Who knows maybe there's a good commentary by Craven. I liked his previous ones for the most part. It'll be cheap in the future.

Let The Bullets Fly was something Joe ordered of the Internet. It's a 2010 Chinese action comedy with  Wen Jiang, Chow Yun-fat and Go You. That's them left to right on the poster. Wen is also the writer and director of the film. We just saw Wen as Cao Cao in The Lost Bladesman a few weeks ago, here he's the bandit Pocky Zhang, Chow is the local Godfather of Goose Town, and Go You plays the guy who is the real Governor. After a nice train wreck Wen is offered the opportunity to become the Governor of the town and he goes up against Chow in a fight that offers up much slaughter. The movie is set in 1920 China and they do a fair job of recreating that. The train looks a bit unreal at times but it sure flies through the air real nice. The town is small, mostly a square, but it looks cool. It's a comedy, but a rather dark one, with a high body count. Things play out and bad stuff happens. Eventually it has a near happy ending. Some people get to peddle off on their bicycles. I sure thought it was entertaining and it made me laugh out loud. It pulled in $111 million becoming the second highest grossing movie in China. I'd recommend it but I know not everyone will like it. Worth checking out for those inclined.

LEGO Fright Knights Gear

That's a flyer for the theme. The kind that would be folded up small and stuffed in a box. They don't do those anymore and while I kind of miss them it's just one less thing to bother with. I have whole box of that crap up in the attic and it needs a sorting badly.

   

I've always liked the shields that LEGO makes, some of them are little works of art. These aren't the top of the heap but they are A-ok. There wasn't much by way of gear listed in on BrickLink, a card game, a trading card and a sticker. That's the sticker third from the left up above. I wish I had a better sample, I could make my own stickers. Not that I need them. I wouldn't stick them onto anything. Sometimes it would be preferable to have a digital image. Less glue.

That was a card that the LEGO Builders Club got for some unknown reason. I am uncertain if the club members got individual cards or the whole 6 on one sheet. Not much on BrickLink, or anywhere else on the Internet for that matter. Just not that loved a theme, people just arne't chattering much about it. It was short lived and kind of hokey. You can see they call the witch Hubble Bubble, which I still feel someone should be punished for, and that she has some other poorly named companions. Big Chief Rattlesnake isn't the best name, someone took a few seconds to come up with that, but naming a skeleton Boney is so lazy a sleeping dog could come up with a better name than that. Out of it's ass. Diver Dan is pretty unimaginative, unless they were making a reference to the 1050's tv show Diver Dan. Somehow, I doubt it. I feel the same way about Sheriff Duke being a reference to John Wayne it's probably not, more likely it's a reference to the Dukes Of Hazzard but I doubt that too. X-Commander is a much better name for that Spce UFO guy than some of the names they could have come up with. I can imagine there was probably some meetings involving a lot of K's and X's and Z's thrown together into made up words that hurt your throat to say.

    

That's the deck of cards. Pretty simple. Nothing special to look at.

  

That's Willa The Witch from the LEGO Racers Video Game. Basil the Bat Lord and Willa made an appearance in Circuit 3. I never played the game so I don't know anything about it. It's not much of an incentive to go pick on up either.

   
There was one of those accessory packs available. It's listed under Castle but it has the Bat shields and Bat Lords Helmet which indicates some vague connection. Of course it could be one of those sets that are made up of left over elements in order to get rid of them. Still 34 pieces for $3 isn't too bad, especially since it comes with a complete skeleton minifig. One not named Boney, let me tell you, or Skelly, if you know what's good for you. There are 4 bats, 4 helmets, and lots of weapons, including a chrome silver sword. I liked the accessory pack in it's day but it's been obsoleted in the growth of the online community. So, a mixed bag of stuff. Some good minifigs, some good parts, some good critters but a theme lacking something in the set design. I didn't buy many back when they were new and I doubt I would buy many of them if they were a current Castle theme. If there weren't Harry Potter sets I'd pick up a few. To end with a bit of sillyness, a custom Bat Lord by Armothe.