PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

Friday Night Movies 354

Eric Bana is an ex-CIA guy who is hiding in the woods somewhere in Finland and he's raising a 17 year old killing machine. Hanna is the name of both the movie and the girl who is played by Saoirse Ronan. I didn't recognize her but I had seen her in City Of Ember where she played the main character Lina. She did a lot of running in that movie too. Much less killing though. Eric was involved with a secret program, he recruited pregnant women from abortion centers so the CIA could experiment on their unborn babies. Nice, huh. They were trying to making a super soldier. We know how that kind of program goes, huh. The program was shut down and all the candidates were killed by The Wicked Witch Of The West Cate Blanchette. She's a right horrible cow and it was frustrating to have to wait for the whole 111 minute film to play out to see her get hers. Eric ran off with one of the ladies and her 2 year old. The woman was killed and Eric had been training Hanna ever since. She's finally strong enough to take him down.  She lets the CIA know where they are and Eric takes off. It's all part of his plan to kill Cate using his daughter as a weapon. He's hoping with Cate gone no one will be looking for him. At least until  the sequel. Hanna gets taken in and Cate is a bit leary of going to talk to her. Her shredness pays off as Hanna kills the agent pretending to be Cate. Hanna kills some more agents and escapes. The chase is on. Eric pops up and kills some cops. Interest spikes in him. Hanna involves a family by travelling with them and Cate brings a few psychopaths to the table. We never find out if the family survived after they were kidnapped by Cate and her evil henchmen. Hanna and Cate and Eric tramp around and more people get killed. I liked some of the movie but not all of it. I didn't like some of the script choices which tossed me out of the movie way to often. There wasn't anyone for me to root for except Hanna who was brainwashed, poorly educated, and dangerous by association. Eric was a creep who convinced women to give up their babies for illegal research, and Cate is a cold hearted baby killin' bitch. I sure didn't like the score much either, the music was right in your face at times, noisey for no good reason, and occasionally very annoying. Some of the shots in the movie were also annoying and not fun to watch. Some folks might like it better than me. It doesn't make me want to see it again. 

We watched the BluRay of Fire and Ice. It's a 1983 film by Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta. It's a sword and scorcery cartoon about a pair of waring kingdoms. The evil King Nekron of the ice kingdom is herding icebergs against the fire kingdom. They creak and groan, rise up and crash down to the ground, reminding me of the Monolith Monsters. Nekron sends some creepy subhumans to steal the fire king's daughter. Nekron's mom thinks he needs a bride. The girl runs away. There are some fighting, chasing, dragons, icebergs, lava, and lot's of odd colorful locations. Frank Frazetta's iconic paintings get worked into the movie. I think I spotted most of them. James Gurney of the Dinotopia series was one of the movies background painters. The backgrounds are very cool at times. They rotoscoped the characters. That's where they film the actors doing the movements and draw that. Some of the animation isn't very good but it all watchable. The music wasn't great either but it was more fun than the previous movie. It's a movie that was fun to watch and part of that enjoyment is from spotting the goofy things in the movie. You can't tell from the pictures here but that princess spends most of the movie with her ass facing the camera. Not a movie that I might buy but one I can watch again with the free copy I got from Sperhauk. He got the BluRay and didn't need the dvd copy.

The Avengers '68 - Series Six

When Diana Rigg left The Avengers at the end of series 5 the people in charge at the studio decided to make the series more realistic even though the rather silly fantasy stories had proven to be so popular. Why is that you think? It seems to happen so often in the tv industry. You'd think with the plethora of disasterous results, so lovingly documented in the entertainment media, that people would have learned that lesson. No lookin' back, I suspect. They got rid of the current producers and hired the producer of some of the Honor Blackman episodes, John Bryce. He hired Linda Thorson to play the new leading lady and Patrick Macnee returned as John Steed. Linda hadn't acted before and it shows. There's a story out on the internet that says she was Bryce's girlfriend. There was trouble with the production and the studio fired Bryce after he turned in the rough cuts of the first three shows. The old producers, Brian Clemens and Albert Fennell, returned. They binned that realism crap and turned in some whacky episodes, some of which were fun to watch. They did 30 new episodes and re-edited the 3 that Bryce did. I thought they had a weak start but improved as the series progressed.

I never found Tara King as entertaining as Diana Rigg but those were some stylish ass kickin' boots to fill. Linda Thorson is pretty raw as an actress and her fighting skills are poor, though slightly aided by her having been a dancer. There seems to be a bit more romantic interest between Tara and Steed but nothing ever happens. The stories were the usual goofyness that people had come to expect with a mite more slapstick than the previous series. Some of the scripts were better than others but you have to expect that with a 33 show season. Our agents get their orders from Mother. He's a wheelchair bound man who seems to have his office in the oddest places. He's always on the move, especially when his office was the top floor of a double decker bus. Sometimes the absurd jokes worked and others they seemed forced. There were a lot of references to other movies, or tv shows like Mission Impossible. There weren't many big guest stars that I recognized but I knew who Christopher Lee and John Cleese were. Poor John plays a guy who is documenting the faces of the clowns of England. They are painted on eggs, raw eggs, placed on flimsy shelves. When he's murdered his eggs get broken. It's sad but there's a lesson to be learned here. I enjoyed most of it but was glad that I NetFlix'd them and hadn't bought them.

Science Fiction Sunday 162

 

The 23rd Godzilla film came out in 1999 in Japan as Godzilla 2000: Millennium. It came out in the US as Godzilla 2000. I'm watching the US version first on a TriStar dvd that came out in 2000. It's a bit shorter, at 99 minutes, than the Japanese release that ran 107 minutes. I have a copy Hong Kong dvd that has subtitles and runs the original length. G2000 was released in the theaters in the US. TriStar spent $300,000 dubbing the film, more than $10,000,000 promoting the release, and had a box office of about $4,000,000. They never released any Godzilla films in US theaters since then. Toho spent just over $8,000,000 making the movie and they took in about double that in it's Japanese release. The movie restarts the story again. This Godzilla is smaller than the previous few films but larger than the orginal G-monster. See Chart above.

 

The guy in the car is a Godzilla chaser; the other two are his daughter and a reporter looking for a story. Dad started the G-spotting club and they have a lot of high tech gear to keep an eye out for him. They have a close encounter with the big guy at the opening of the movie. They are so close that his breath clouds their windshield. That would make me poop my pants! They all escape, as does the poor lighthouse keeper who has a metal tower dropped on him Buster Keaton style. The movie plot falls back on the alien invasion theme. A huge meteorite is found in the ocean. It's been there for 60 million years. They try to bring it to the surface but it takes off on it's own. Godzilla shows up again and they shoot him with missiles while he's tossing some buildings around. The meteor takes off, files to where Godzilla is and attacks him. G fights back but is knocked into the ocean. The rock surface is broken and the spaceship within is revealed. Oh oh! The ship clamps onto the top of a building and starts drawing all sorts of data about Godzilla from the network. The ship looks fairly good but at times the CGI shows. The military tries to blow it up but that doesn't work. Godzilla and the ship battle again, G gets knocked down and sampled. Dad guesses that the aliens are trying to use Godzilla's regenerative powers to re-create their bodies. Sometimes I think that the characters make such accurate guesses based on little knowledge that it makes me think they had read the script. Things don't go well in the genetics department and the big monster the ship made turns into the monster battling Godzilla in that picture above. Orga only appears in the one film. He gets trampled after a bit and things go back to normal. Not the best of the lot that's for sure but a watchable film with a fairly solid story. The Japanese version is a bit better story wise, the US translation isn't my favorite. It's a matter of taste, Toho liked it enough they didn't release their English dubbed version.

Godzilla returns in 2000 with the 24th film Godzilla Vs Megaguirus. It too looks to the 1954 Godzillaas it's start. The movie shows us a montage of appearances culled from older films. There is a group devoted to destroying Godzilla, the G-Graspers. Terrible name, huh? Their scientists have created a black hole weapon that they hope to capture Godzilla with. A test opens a worm hole to the past and a prehistoric dragonfly pops out to deposit an egg before returning to it's own time. How convenient. As convenient as the stupid kid who picks up the egg and delivers it to Tokyo. It starts oozing goo and the kid tosses it into the sewer. It hatches into a plethora of murderous bug critters. They grow to larger than human size and flood the city. Inspecting the flooded area the G-Graspers find more eggs. They soon hatch and cause great problems. Godzilla destroys some and the G-Graspers attack him with the black hole but they miss. The big guy is pissed and follows the remaining bug critters to the city. The bugs have a giant queen named Megaguirus. It soon starts battling with Godzilla and that results in some nice collateral damage. The G-Graspers have smaller ships than the previous G-Force. Gone are the ponderous flying vehicles, they are replaced with nimble VTOL fighters. Of course they don't work any better and the monsters are free to rampage around for a time. Godzilla toasts Megaguirus with his super atomic breath and then gets blasted by the black hole device for all his trouble. He's gone but don't worry his roar is heard off camera in the epilogue. Even if the audience that saw this in the theatre suspected there would be some more Godzilla films I know for sure there are 4 more coming. Most of the CGI looks ok or better. there's a lot on the screen for the $8.3 million they spent. It didn't do as well in the Japanese release as the previous film, only grossing $10 million. The suits are pretty darn good and mostly the movie is entertaining.

Friday Night Movies 353

Sperhauk ordered up the BluRay of Chocolate, a 2008 Thai film about an autistic girl, named Zen, who learns martial arts from watching them on tv. It's directed by Prachya Pinkaew who previously directed Ong Bak and Tom Yum Goong. Both are great action packed martial arts pictures that really step up the punching and kicking. In Chocolate the story starts before Zen was born. Her mother Zin was in love with Yakuza boss Masashi. Zin's Thai gangster boss, and old boyfriend, No. 8 is jealous and demands Zin choose between the two men. She picks the guy with the name and No. 8 gets all pouty and shoots himself in the foot. He swears that if they hook up, they're dead. What a dick, huh? The couple separate, Masashi goes back to Japan, and Zin has the child she didn't tell him about. Years later, the kid is still a preteen, Zin writes to tell Masashi he has a daughter. Ever watching, the evil No. 8 finds out she contacted Masashi. No. 8 takes his incredibly ugly and highly evil hench woman over to beat Zin. He cuts off her toe to keep her in her place. Time passes and Zin gets cancer. In order to raise some money Moom, an orphan boy Zin found in the street, and a now older Zen preform in public for cash. She can catch a ball without even looking. They don't earn enough money for regular Chemo drugs and when Moom finds an old account book that Zin had he goes after the money that she had lent to these business men. They are reluctant to pay their old debts and each of them has his men attack the kids. Zen's kungfu osmosis and kicking practice pay off and she puts the men on their asses with kicks and punches. Things get darker and many die. There are some bone crunching fights and spectacular stunts, most of which looked painful. In the end credits we see some of the aftermath of the stunts that went wrong. Actors and stuntmen did get hurt and wind up in the hospital. It's about a 90 minute movie, the first 30 move along pretty slowly, after that it picks up the pace. The villains are pretty awful and you can't help but feel better that they are rubbed out. Zen and her dad are reunited and poor Moom disappears out of the story. The movie did pretty well and there was talk of a sequel but nothing so far. It's the first movie for Yanin Vismitananda. She does a great job as fighting Zen. She's in Raging Phoenix, a 2009 Thai movie I'll have to keep an eye out for, and is supposed to be in the forthcoming Tom Yum Goong 2with Tony Jaa. Worth a look for those that like this sort of thing.

 

Not sure if I'd recommend Priest as readily. It's a 2011 film based on a Korean comic book. It's an alternate universe story that has had humans and vampires waring for so long they have killed nearly everyone and ruined the planet. Most of the human's live in walled cities under a heavy handed Church state. Some folks live out in the wilderness away from the Church. The vampires were pushed onto reservations after the last war and there hasn't been any fighting between the two in years. Paul Bettany is a soldier priest who's been marginalized since the war's end, people shun him, and where he lives everything is a sucky steel blue color. The whole movie is heavily processed and washed out. Paul's brother lives out in the wilderness. His family is attacked and the daughter stolen. The local sheriff asks Paul to come help him track down the girl. Paul asks and Christopher Plummer tells him no go, stay here and forget about it. That doesn't sit to well and Paul heads out to the wilderness. Madchen Amick plays Paul's ex-girlfriend and the brother's wife. She dies before her husband, who manages to hold on until Paul gets there. Turns out they were attacked by vampires and the vampires were lead by Karl Urban. He often plays this sort of roll, tough, gritty talkin' and murderous. You might have seen him as Ceasar in Xena Warrior Princess or Eomer in The Lord Of The Rings. He was also in The Chronicles of Riddick, The Bourne Supremacy & Pathfinder. In Priest Karl had disappeared into the hands of the vamps in a raid that went bad. The head lady vampire had fed him her blood and turned him into a human vampire that can walk in the sun. The vampires in this movie are more creatures than people. They get killed by the sun like our regular vampires. Karl has a plan to attack the city with a train full of vampires and it's up to Paul to stop them. He's got some help from some Priests who followed to bring him back. Maggie Q is one of them and she's the only one of her bunch to survive. There's a lot of action and fire and shooting and some stuff blows up but the over bearing style bothered even me. It didn't get well recieved and I could see why. It's bombastic and pretty darn pretentious for something that is pretty darn average. Some of the music by Christopher Young gets pretty excited and starts yelling over very little. The director is Scott Stewart who also directed Legion which I have not seen. He lifts so many elements from other movies we started noticing out loud. It had a cool train but that isn't quite enough. I wouldn't want to spend money on this one now that I've laid eyes on it. If I need to see it again I'll toss it on my NetFlix queue.

The Man From UNCLE Season 1

I remember watching The Man From UNCLE as a kid and really liking it. I was ten years old when it started in 1964. It ran for three full seasons and was cancelled in the middle of the fourth. The first exciting season has 29 episodes and they were in black and white. Leo G Carroll plays the head spy Mr. Waverly, Robert Vaughn is Napoleon Solo and David McCallum is Illya Kuryakin. Originally the show was to be about Napoleon and be titled Solo. The Illya character had a smaller part until he proved popular with the fans. James Bond creator James Fleming worked on the early version of the show but creation/development credit go to Sam Rolfe and Norman Felton. Richard Donner directed several episodes in the early part of the season but is was the only name I recognized.

 

From it's secret headquarters, behind the tiny tailor shop, Mr Waverly sends Napoleon and Illya  on missions of national importance and great danger. Sometimes they are in the US and other weeks they are in some foreign country. Mostly the guys are battling Thrush, a secret villianous organization that operates all over the world. That's why UNCLE was created and has people from around the world working for it. Each week the backlot at MGM Studios in Culver City filled in for some place from around the world. They use a lot of stock footage for the location shots and  you see some of the same sets and props in several episodes. It didn't quite look as bad as these Aurora models. I remember having them as a kid. I had a bunch of those tv and movie character model kits. I eventually blew them up in the alley with firecrackers. It's two separate models that fit together to form a larger scene. There were several model sets like that. Even as a kid I liked dioramas.

The show is packed with all sorts of wonderful character actors. Fritz Weaver and Patricia Crowley guest in the first show. Patricia was a frequent guest pretty lady on many tv shows in the 1950's and 1960's and starred on the 1965 sitcom Please Don't Eat The Daises which is based on the Pegg Kerr novel and the Doris Day movie. Fritz often plays villains and here is no exception. You'll probably have seen him in some show or another in the 40 years he'd been acting. Many of the plots have Napoleon and Illya involve some poor citizen to help them in their spying activities. Luckily they usually survive but the bad guys don't. Lots of them get gunned down every week. There's usually a pretty gal that turns up each week. Like Barbara Feldon, Anne Francis, Jill Ireland or Batgirl Yvonne Craig. Some of the actors that turned up in the first season were  Robert Culp, who's building a nuclear ark for when the holocaust comes, a very young Kurt Russell, former football star Roosevelt Grier, Eddie Albert, Ceasar Romero and George Sanders. William Shattner and Leonard Nimoy starred together in an episode a couple of years before they did Star Trek and Elsa Lanchester plays a naughty old lady.

 

The episodes were more serious when the show started, there was a bit of humor, and a body count. It was still a 60's tv show and that seems pretty tame compared to today's cable programming. There's the usual spy on spy action each week, with a lot of sneakin' about and trickery, but occasionally they get a little more wacky with the schemes. One of the episodes had a group trying to re-animate the body of Adolf Hitler and another had Eddie Albert as a Thrush evangelist, Brother Love, who is constructing a nuclear spaceship. With that many episodes you'd guess that there might be some that aren't the best, and you'd be right, but on average they're pretty watchable. Not as bleak as Danger Man. That's the Patrick McGoohan series that started in 1960 and ran for 4 series in England. I saw those as a teen and again a few years ago and was surprised to see how many ended angrily, regretfully or sadly. The Man From Uncle is a bit more light hearted and usually ends with the villian vanquished and the guys off with some ladies.  I haven't put the rest of the 3 seasonson my NetFlix queue yet and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want to spend the money on a real set. The complete 4 seasons are still over 100 bucks in a box set. That's just over a buck a show but still pricey. I'll be happy with NetFlix for now.

A LEGO Christmas Special from Monsieur Caron

 

Marc Andre Caron posted a link in a comment in a post of mine and I watched his Christmas short about Santa's sleigh troubles and thought it was fun. You can watch it and be the judge. It's so easy to embed a video, just cut and paste, I don't know why I don't do it more often. Check out Marc's other videos on his YouTube page. Have a Merry Christmas too. If you don't celebrate Christmas, enjoy the days off for the holidays, if you're working. I know I've got two four day weekends coming up and there's a ton of stuff to watch on my shelf. I hope to get some of that watched as well as get some serious lazing about done.

Weeds Season 5

Black Friday yielded up the next two seasons of Weedsthat I needed to complete the set. I was watching them online but switched when I got the dvds. Season 5 has Nancy deeply intertwined with Estaban, the suave murderous Mexican drug lord and politician. He's her baby daddy. Celia is visiting her older daughter in Mexico. The daughter drugs her, ties her up and threatens to kill her unless someone coughs up some ransom money. Andy takes Shane to visit Nancy's sister and Shane uses his phone to record Andy and her having a romp in the sack. Kids and their technology, huh. They grow up so fast. Estaban turns out to be a controlling sort of guy who turns out to be controlled by a bitch named Pilar. I didn't like her and was glad to see her get murdered later in the season. Silas tries to get into the medical weed field with Doug, who turns out to be as much of a problem as the cop who's shaking them down. When the Internal Affairs busts the cop on the take they take all the store's stock. The woes just keep piling on. I did not enjoy this season as much as the previous. It just wasn't as funny and it got overly dark at times. There wasn't always anyone you wanted to watch, they were all so miserable. I like my drugies to be havin' some fun. At least there were some fun guest stars like Alanis Morissette, who plays an abortion doctor that gets involved with Andy, and Jennifer Jason Leigh who plays Nancy's sister. I'm off to watch something else. I'll check out season 6 of Weeds after a bit.

Science Fiction Sunday 161

 

Godzilla Vs SpaceGodzilla is the 21st Godzilla film. It came out in 1994 and you can get it in two versions in the USA. The 2000 Columbia TriStar dvd comes in a double disc set, with the second movie I watched today, and it runs 106 minutes. The tv version, which I had snagged of off Fear Net on cable, has a two minute scene that was cut from the dvd. The tv version isn't letterboxed like the dvd. I also have a widescreen bootleg from Video Daikiaju that runs the 108 minute length but it doesn't look as good. The US versions are English dubbed and the VD version is in Japanese with fan subs. Humans are on an island with BabyGodzilla and they are setting a trap for Godzilla. The Cosmos, the tiny Mothra ladies, appear and warn of a giant space monster headed for Earth. We see it, flying through space, and it looks like Godzilla with giant crystals growing out of it. Back on the island the humans try to implant a device that would control Godzilla but it didn't work. G-Force sends Mogeura, made out of MechaGodzilla from the last movie, to battle SpaceGodzilla in space. Mogeura get's beat down. SpaceG continues to Earth, landing right on the island where BabyG and Godzilla are rockin' with the humans. Godzilla gets defeated and BabyG gets trapped in some crystals. Scientists speculate that SpaceG was created when cells from Godzilla, knocked off in a fight with another monster, travelled into space, fell into a blackhole, merged with some crystals and returned to earth as SpaceGodzilla. I know that was my first guess. Some gangsters capture the psychic girl but she escapes. Mogeura tries to battle SpaceG again but fails. Godzilla finally kicks SpaceG to the ground and even G-Force has to acknowledge the critter is the King Of The Monsters. Like several of the movies in G-movies of the 90's the monster battles and the effects are A-OK but the script is only so-so. It was still fun to watch.

I watched the 22nd Godzilla film, Godzilla Vs Destroyah, and enjoyed that about the same as the previous movie. It's a 1995 film that ends the current series. Godzilla goes after Hong Kong right at the start of the movie. His body is covered with lava like glowing skin. Scientist's figure out the big guy is going into some sort of nuclear meltdown. If his core temp gets to 1200 degrees he'll blow and firestorm will destroy the planet. Well, that can't be good, huh. Some soil samples from the island in the previous movie yield up a new critter, a prehistoric one that was exposed to the oxygen destroyer in the 50's and exposed to radiation in the 90's. It mutates quickly and grows large. First fish are the victims but soon it starts attacking the humans. Godzilla Junior is called by the psychic girl and he gets beat by Destroyah who has grown to Godzilla size by then. Godzilla comes and battles the new monster. Godzilla revives Jr with some atomic breath and finishes off Destroyah. The Super X3 freezes the big guy and the earth is saved. As Godzilla melts away Jr assumes the throne as K of the Ms. Again the effects are pretty good and the story is a bit better than last time. It was a good spot to leave the series. There was supposed to be a ten year hiatus until the 50th anniversary of Godzilla in 2004. The US Godzilla was supposed to fill in with a trilogy of films. The first movie did well opening weekend and it made lots of money at the Box Office but it failed with the critics and fans. No more were made and Toho returned to reimagine the character in 2000. There are plans for a 2012 US Godzilla but I don't know anything much about it.

Friday Night Movies 352

We had a couple of discs from NetFlix. Joe brought Conan The Barbarian and we watched that first. It's directed by Marcus Nispel who directed Pathfinder, which I've seen and thought was ok. I've also seen his tv movie re-imagine of Frankenstein. Not great but watchable. I haven't seen his 2003 remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which I wouldn't bother with, or the 2009 remake of Friday The 13th. He's working on the remake of The Fly due out next year. His Conan isn't quite a remake, it looks back to the Robert E Howard stories, and doesn't resemble the Arnold movie. It's a darker story, most everyone dies, that starts with Conan's birth on the battle field. His mom is stabbed in a raid and Conan's dad, played by Ron Pearlman, has to slit open her belly and pull out the baby so she can see her kid before she dies. The rest of the movie is less funny. Years pass and Conan grows up. The village is attacked by an evil powermad warlord searching for a fancy ancient magical mask. The village falls and Conan and Ron are chained together under a pot filled with red hot molten metal. It doesn't go well for Ron and Conan lives to continue growing up but with a need for vengeance. Of course that warlord is still running about years later and Rose McGowan plays his sorcerous daughter. Soon their paths cross and the stabbing and chopping commences. Jason Momoa does a pretty good job looking like the Conan, he's all muscles and dark eyes. It was mostly entertaining and worth a look. It is pretty gorey and not everyone would like that.

Sperhauk found Ashura at NetFlix too. It's a 2005 Japanese fantasy movie. Some demon lady wants to bring back Ashura the Demon Queen. Then the demons could take over Edo and snack on the humans. There's a group of demon hunters to keep them in check. Izumo has a bad time and quits the group. He turns to acting in Kabuki plays. He sees a masked thief unmasked and catches her hair pin when it falls. His interest in the woman leads him to the demon lady and soon enough he's fighting for his life. It's a fairly interesting looking movie with pretty good special effects. There are a lot of nice sets and locations. The story is pretty average and the dialog nothing too odd but for some reason it put nearly all of us to sleep. It's 119 minutes long and it would be better to be shorter. Not for everyone, that's for sure. i don't care to see it again anymre. That's ok, lots more to watch.

Get Crazy

I was checking out what was new on On Demand this morning and noticed Get Crazy was listed. It's one of those rare movies that hasn't had a real release on dvd. I bought the Prerecorded vhs tape that came out in the 80's. I made a dvdr so I wouldn't have to play the tape. Since the tape wasn't that great a transfer, and it was so heavily copyguarded, the dvdr image sucked some. When I saw Get Crazy listed I immediately got out a dvdr and burned me a new copy with a better picture. The Wikipedia said it was released open matte full screen on the vhs and this cable version looks like that. The movie would have been cropped a bit on the top and bottom for the theatrical release. I also read that the reason that it hasn't come out on dvd is for the music rights. No matter, you can get bootlegs at any of the web sites that sell dvds of movies that still haven't had a legitimate release, and most of them will sell you a copy for $10-15. It's a movie worth seeing, especially for the rock 'n' roll comedy movie fan. The director is Allan Arkush who might be better known for his better known rock 'n' roll movie Rock 'n' Roll High School. That's a highly entertaining movie in the same style as Get Crazy and as worthy of a look. He also directed Deathsport and Caddyshack II before moving into televison where he still works today. The cast is full of great actors that you should know, like Daniel Stern, Malcolm McDowell, Ed Begley Jr, Robert Picardo, Paul Bartel and Mary Woronov. There are a few that you might not know, but should, like Bill Henderson, Franklyn Ajaye, Miles Chapin, Clint Howard, Dick Miller and Allan Garfield. There are a ton of great musicians like Lou Reed, John Densmore, Lori Eastside, Lee Ving and Howard Kaylan. The songs, the ones holding up the dvd, are a good bunch. Here's one now and here's a bit of Reggie Wanker. There are lots of sight gags and weird bits of humor that continue to entertain me after many viewings and I know I've seen this movie more than a dozen times. I know it was one of our favorites to show people back the late 80's.