PRIMITIVE SCREWHEADS

4438 Robbers' Hideout

I wasn't going to pick this set up but TwinLUG didn't get the ok to order bears on this years LEGO LUGbulk order. No animals at all and I would have liked some chickens and hedgehogs. I wanted a bear so I picked up this set. I could have bought the bear on Bricklink but the cheapest ones I saw were 17-18 bucks a piece, add some shipping and that puts it over $20 easy. That's half the cost of the 317 piece set. You can only get the bear in two sets, 4438 Robbers' Hideout and 4440 Forest Police Station. The latter is an $80 set and I'm not planning on picking one of those up. 4438 is only available through LEGO and TRU so you know where I bought mine.

There were other selling points in getting the set over the just the bear on Bricklink. There's a 3 wheeler which I think are just great looking vehicle. It's so cute. I have a red, white and blue one and I need to order a yellow one. I haven't used them for much of anything. I just like having them. There are 4 minifigs in the set. They depict the eternal struggle of G vs E in the form of a pair of forest police chasing down a couple of hillbillies. The forest police have nicer hats. The set builds the hideout and a couple of vehicles. I didn't build the hideout, which is sadly just a garage. There is a place to park the car inside and a bench to sit on outside. Stupid criminals, I guess they plan to sleep in the car. Or maybe they were sleeping outside and that's why the one guy is on top of the hideout. It's all a mystery. There's a pile of rock and a scrawny tree that uses that round 2x2 plate with 4 hooks sticking out of it. I built the cars and then took them apart. The little hot rod is kind of nice but the police car is the same old kind of thing I just don't care for. The hot rod has a new part for the back of the car that might come in handy.

The bear looks pretty good.  His head moves up and down. His back feet move so he can stand and try to get at the robber on the roof of the hideout. Glad to add the bear to the zoo. The rest of the parts are ones I would use. Black roof slopes, a 16x16 green plate, about 20 reddish brown log pieces, a clear minifig head, lots of dark blay, some of those brick bricks in medium dark flesh and many other useful bits and pieces. I wouldn't have bought this set but for the bear. A lot of animals do not get produced again. I'm glad to get one. I don't buy that many sets in the City theme . Occasionally they have some odd part in them that makes them more attractive. I bought some Farm sets when they were around, you know for the cows, then the LUGbulk got cows, cows and more cows. So an ok set that's more of a parts pack for me.

Science Fiction Sunday 180

I hadn't watched Killer Klowns From Outer Space in a while. It's an alien invasion that's heavy on comedy and murderous clowns, or killer klowns as The Chiodo Brothers wrote in the title. The brothers are artists and effects guys and this is their only movie. They still work doing special effects for films. Stephen Chiodo directed the movie in 1988 and on the 2001 dvd the brothers says they are going to do a sequel in 2013. That's coming up, less than a year, wonder if they will do it. If you haven't seen KKFOS it's a nice mix of horror, comedy and science fiction all colored up in a rainbow of colors. It starts like a teen comedy with couples parking in the woods to make out. That's where we meet our hero couple Grant Cramer and Suzanne Snyder who are making out in the back of his SUV. After a brief comic interuption from a pair of ice cream selling comic relief machines a big fiery ball shoots across the sky. Grant and Suzanne think it's a meteor and decide to go check it out. Royal Dano is a farmer who's sitting on his porch with his dog when the meteor falls near. Royal and the bloodhound go check it out. They find a colorful circus tent with lights and music. It turns out to be a spaceship. Royal's brief encounter with the klowns leaves him pretty much dead and wrapped up in a pink lightbulb shaped cotton candy blob. The Klowns head into town to blast citizens with their rayguns turning them into cotton candy. Our hero couple show up at the tent and we get to seen the inside of the ship. It's pretty entertaining with colored lights, pipes all over, flashing control panels and a giant popcorn popper. We find out that the aliens are canning humans.

 

That's some of our klowns. They pie a guy so hard he becomes a smoking mound of goo. The pistol is nice, huh. John Vernon plays the local cop, a gruff old fart of a guy, who thinks the citizens calling about the klowns are pranking him. Jokes on him. Soon enough one of the klowns shoves his hand up John's ass and works him like a puppet. Haha, indeed. Our hero couple enlist the aid of the deputy and they fight back. Eventually the world is safe. Except if there's that sequel. Even after many viewings it still makes me laugh.

Not so Lost In Space, the 1998 movie based on the 1965 tv series. It's directed by Stephen Hopkins who's only directed one other movie I like. Predators 2. LIS is filled with great noisey special effects that look good but the story just isn't there. It's pretty much the same story as the tv show just all jazzed up by Akiva Goldsman. I don't care for many of his movies. William Hurt plays Mr Robinson and Mimi Rogers plays Mrs Robinson. Gary Oldman plays the evil Dr Smith, Matt LeBlanc plays the pilot, Heather Graham plays Judy Robinson, Lacy Chabert plays Penny Robinson and Jack Johnson plays Will Robinson. The evil doctor sabotages the ship and after plunging into the sun they warp somewhere. They encounter a large earth spaceship and investigate. They are attacked by critters and while escaping they blow up the other ship's engines. They are too close and the explosion makes them crash on the planet below. Lots of stuff happens but I just wasn't that interested.  There's a sort of happy ending but by then I was almost sorry to have bought the dvd. I guess that one should go on the get rid of pile.

I also watched The Last Broadcast this morning. It's not science fiction but I hadn't seen it in a while and thought I would throw it on the dvd player. It's a movie that cost $900 to make, and that's 1998 dollars, so that must be closer to a grand today. According to the Wikipedia it did about $12,000 business at the box office. It's a documentary about a death of the cast and crew of a paranormal cable tv show. The 4 guys go out to the woods to look for the Jersey Devil and only one of them comes back alive. Two are found dead near the camp and the other man's body never shows up again. The live guy is hooked for the murders and sent to prison where he dies mysteriously while the film maker is making this documentary. There's a bit of a twist ending so I won't give that away. It's not great or anything but it's interesting enough. I found it more entertaining than that othe movie about the Jersey Devil The Blair Witch Project. I sold the dvd to TBWP soon after I saw it. I wouldn't watch TLB very often. You can watch the while thing here. You might like it. 

Burn 'Em Up Barnes - a Mascot Serial in 12 Chapters

 

I watched Burn 'em Up Barnes today and it turned out to be pretty entertaining. You can see it at the Internet Archive. It's got Jack Mulhall as a race car driver who feels guilty when his cameraman friend was killed during a race. He let the guy sneak into a restricted area on the track with a dangerous curve and a car went right through the camera. Before dying the friend asks Jack to take care of his kid brother who is played by Frankie Darro. Lola Lane plays the pretty lady with the school bus company that's barely holding on to solvency. A chance meeting puts her and Barnes together right when he's looking for a new enterprise. He's adamant about staying out of the race business. That doesn't last long before he's back behind the wheel again. Edwin Maxwell, Jason Robards, and Francis McDonald all play the villains. Robards is the father of Jason Robards Jr. Maxwell, a rich car company guy, wants Lola's land because he knows there is oil on it and she don't. He can make millions for $5000, if only he can get her to sell. It's touch and go, she nearly signs off several times before he finally scares her into selling the land. Lucky for her Jack and Frankie, with the aid of comic relief machine Julian Rivero, keep battling back until they finally beat down the criminals. Happy ending. Yay! The story is ok, there's a bit of romance, and the action is typical of the time.

 

One stand out is Frankie Darro who has some interesting action bits. He climbs up walls and jumps into cars windows just like Jackie Chan would do 40 years later. In one nice sequence in Chapter 12 he gets chased on foot. He jumps up and grabs a small pipe (above left) then he uses that to get him to the large pipe which leads to the fire escape and several open windows. It's a nice bit of work, with great timing, that Jackie would have enjoyed. I know Jackie has great respect for the silent actors who did their own stunts. Darro worked in pictures for 51 years. He started in 1924 at age 6 and 9 years before the end of his career he did a couple of episodes of Batman in 1966. He's said to be inside Robbie the Robot in Forbidden Planet in 1956. I've seen him in several movies from the 1930's. Most of them are on the IA. The rest of the cast does a good job and there's plenty of stuff to do. A fun bit of entertainment that is worth taking a look at.

Typepad jsut added a nice feature to the blog. It automatically collects links to names and gives you a menu of choices. Click and the name is automatically linked. Sweet.

Friday NIght Movies 371

Helldriver is a 2010 Japanese film about an alien invasion that turns half of Japans population into flesh eating zombies. It's an everything and 2 kitchen sinks kind of movie. Sponge like it's pulls in so many bits and pieces from all sort of genre movies that I wouldn't want to list them. It's gorey and over the top but sadly not a great movie. The director, writer, editor, makeup artist and character designer Yoshihiro Nishimura is pretty indulgent. He did makeup and special effects on The Machine Girl, Tokyo Gore Police and Samurai Princess amongst others. He directed TGP and SP and ten more films most of which I haven't seen. A meteor punches a hole through Hara's mom, a really evil bitch, and mom rips Hara's heart out of her chest. She's the embodiment of the entitled. Somehow she fuses Hara's heart in her chest, perhaps by magical evil will power. There isn't much reality in this cartoon like movie. A goo covers both women. A fountain of black particles come pouring out of mom. They infect the population and mom becomes Queen of the zombies. Hara, somehow still living but in a coma, gets a mechanical heart and a chainsaw sword as part of a government project. She wakes up after several months to find the world is a really fucked up place. She gets in trouble and in jail she's given the chance to join a group going into zombie territory to attack the queen. She's got it in for mom and she goes on the trip. It's one battle after another with lots of goo and blood and limbs flying. We did see some things that we hadn't seen before, like a giant human shaped mound of zombies that grab a couple of missiles so it can fly or a car made from the body parts of zombies. It seems like a lot of the movie was shot on green screen and backgrounds added. It doesn't look good at times. It's not much better than average but it sure packs in a lot of stuff in it's 117 minutes. It doesn't drag so much as suffer from too much repetition and over long scenes. The director likes huge fountains of blood pouring out of chopped off arms and heads, like there's a firehouse inside the body, after you see that several times it starts to tire. It's mostly comic but occasionally it gets too much like torture porn for me and that's sure not going to make everyone happy who sees it. Here's the trailer. It might be all you need.

 

Sperhauk had a copy of Werewolves on Wheels. You can watch it on YouTube above. It's a 1971 biker movie with hardly enough werewolves for my taste. We follow some bikers, played by some real bikers mixed in with actors, as they drive around the US southwest doin' their biker thing. It's pretty darn dull, except for a funny encounter with a weird guy at an isolated gas station. Nice hat, dude. The guys stop in near a monastery and the monks give them bread and wine. The guys give them some trouble and they get cursed by Severn Darden. The gang members start getting attacked in the night. We only see a shadow of a beast and some growls. The werewolves don't appear until near the end and it's shot in the dark so we don't see much. Not totally horrible, kind of draggy, but a bit of an oddity. It is a biker werewolf movie and here's a chance to see it without spending any money.

30160 Batman Jetski

I had a coupon for TRU, $5 off of a $25 purchase, and I used it to pick up some poly bag sets that I hadn't been seeing other places. Everyone likes an exclusive, except the goddamn customer. Who likes traipsing all over hill and dale looking for that one set that each store has just run out of? Not this guy. Lucky for me a TRU and the LEGO store are just minutes away from work. Equally lucky for me is I don't feel I need all the polybag sets. The LEGO store rarely gets the same polybag sets as the chain stores so I occasionally pop into TRU to see if anything has turned up. Today I crammed my sandwich in my pie hole and ran out at lunch. I came back with the Batman Jetski and a couple of other sets. There's not much to this one, a simple vehicle and Bats. The pieces are ones I don't use a lot but once you have a bunch they might come in handy. The only nice thing? It's got no wheels. It does have 40 pieces but for a whacking 5 bucks. Sure not a bargain, but TRU isn't cheap, which makes it less likely for me to shop there. Same goes with Target, though they aren't over suggested retail at all the stores. I don't usually buy sets at full price at either place but I do look for a sale or a nice clearance. LEGO rarely has a sale at their store so it's nice to get even a 20% discount. I wanted a Batman figure. I don't need it, it's so specialized a costume that it won't be good for much, but it's nice to have one. Maybe I'll make another Batman MOC someday. He looks pretty good and he's got a face with printing on both sides. I don't care for that grinny face much. Who makes a face like that? I don't know. There is a good control panel I can add to my collection. Good costume on the Batman and it's printed both sides. Not a bad set but not a very exciting one. Kids might like using the flick missles but I didn't care enough to bother building the set. Can't build them all, just not enough time. If you just need a Batman this is a good set to get since it's fairly cheap. The same figure is in two other larger sets that requirer a larger investment.

Star Trek S1D7

   

Tomorrow Is Yesterday has the Enterprise go back in time to the 1960's. The 19th episode aired Jan 26 1967. The Enterprise gets spotted by a pilot that they bring on board via the transporter. What to do with him now he's seen the future? First Kirk wants to take him back to the future but Spock does some research and the pilot needs to stay in his own time. Soon enough Kirk is down on Earth stealing the film from the planes cameras. He gets caught by security. Don't worry he's rescued. They figure that they can get home by slingshotting around the sun and when they get to the right time they can teleport the pilot back to his plane before he sees the Enterprise. It's dangerous but we all know the season is still in production, so they're going to be fine. There's a little of that shaken, not stirred, camera action as everyone leans left and right while the ship fights hard against the sun's gravity. This episode was written by DC Fontana and it was a pretty good one. I think it would be cool to be kidnapped by your decedents and brought to the future. Unless it's that whole Terminator future, or the one with the monkeys. I wouldn't like that so much.

   

Court Martial has Kirk on trial for the death of a crewman. They are at Starbase 11 for repairs and the Commodore investigates the accident. He charges Kirk because the computer said it was a yellow alert not red like Kirk insists. The computer has some damming evidence, a movie showing Kirk giving a command while the light is yellow. Spock also says it was red alert. Was the captain negligent? Of course not but it's touch and go there until the truth comes out. Spock figures that the computer has been tampered with when he can beat the machine at chess. Since he programmed the machine their games should have come to a draw. They figure it out and Kirk is back in command. In one scene Kirk has to go in the Jefferies Tube. I learned that it was made from one of those large cardboard tubes they use to mold concrete footings and such. What you can do with a lick of paint and some wires and lights.

    

The Return Of The Archons has Kirk, Spock, McCoy and some crew members down on the planet Beta III where the USS Archon had stopped 100 years ago. Nothing had been heard of the ship since. Kirk and crew find humanoid people who live like it's late 1800's America and have odd customs. Turns out they are all connected to some force they call The Body. Crew members get connected and abondon the Enterprise for planetfall. Kirk and Spock get tossed into jail. It's up to them to figure out that it's a rogue computer controlling the people. Kirk convinces it that it's failed it mission to help the people and the computer blows itself up. That would suck, huh, having your whole belief system tossed in the garbage. Poor computer. Hopefully the advisors Kirk leaves on the planet will help the citizens get all futuristic. We'll never know as the Enterprise blows town off on a new adventure.

So a group of fine episodes with some interesting ideas and the like. I find I'm liking the series more than I thought I would. For extras there's a 20 minute intereview with Billy Blackburn. He was often at the helm controls before Walter Koenig came onboard. He also played several aliens and landing party members. He shot a lot of color silent film on the stages and locations while they were making the series. Some of the bits and pieces are pretty entertaining to watch. Nice of them to put it in there. None of the episodes is having a commentary which is too bad. I'm not compaining much but they might have been entertaining.

What I Read In March 2012

    

The Saint - The Brighter Buccaneer by Leslie Charteris is a 1933 collection of 15 stories about one of my favorite rogues. I first became a fan of The Saint on tv back in the 1960's and eventually I found the books in the library. The stories in TBB are too short for much to be happening. The Saint comes along some criminal and/or rich person who needs to be robbed as punishment for their wrong doing. It's done quickly and some money or jewels get added to The Saint's retirement fund. Occasionally some wronged person gets helped out and The Saint moves on. The stories were mostly ok but I find I prefer the longer novella or novel length stories. I have a newer paperback not that nice British edition. I have a few other books with that cover style. I just don't find them all that often or cheap.

The Wizard Test by Hilari Bell was a kid's book that I got on clearance. The story is about a kid who wants to be a soldier but has magical powers. He's given into the charge of an unruly drunken wizard who takes him on a spying mission. The kid does some growing up and he's got to make some hard choices. It was a quick read, it's somewhat short, and it was enjoyable. It's not a keeper.

Walt Disney's Toby Tyler by Dorothea S Snow is one of those Whitman books aimed at the younger crowd. It's actually adapted from the original novel which you can read in the link above. I picked up a few Walt Disney movie adaptations and have started reading those. It's got lots of illustrations so the thing reads quickly. Toby runs away from his broke ass farmer uncle and aunt to join the circus. He thinks they don't need him and he's being a burden. At the circus he makes friends with a monkey and a gruff old man. He learns to ride a horse and becomes a star in the circus. Then at the end he's reunited with his aunt and uncle.

   

Pure Dead Brilliant by Debi Gliori is the third novel in Pure Dead trilogy. I keep finding her books in the clearance section of Half Price Books for a dollar or two. The family Mansion is filled with guests this summer as Mrs Strega-Borgia has her fellow classmates from magic school in for a visit. The older two kids are fighting and the baby starts doing magic. There's an evil bitch in the class who's in league with the devil. The housekeeper helps out and things get back to normal. It's a fun read with some goofy things going on.

The Raven League - Sherlock Holmes Is Missing by Alex Simmons and Bill McCay is set in Holmes era London and the Raven League is like the Baker Street Irregulars. Holmes is missing and the kids have to put aside their internal differences and band together to find him. It's ok but not something that I'd bother re-reading. I sure don't like that cover drawing very much.

The Orge Of Oglefort by Eva Ibbotson is from 2010 which is sadly the year that she passed away. There are a couple of books out since then but I haven't picked them up yet. TOOO is a story of an orphan boy who becomes the familiar of a Hag. They travel to rescue a princess from an orge and wind up helping a whole lot of people. It's a delightful book which made me happy to read it. It's a keeper as all of her books have been. I have 4 of her earlier young adult novels to read yet and most of her other books to re-read. She's well worth reading and while she never wrote that many books all the ones I have read have been really good.

 

I missed logging this book into my list in February and only remembered it later. The Moor Desolaat By Oliver Ducaat by Tim Uhl is a fantasy novel for the young and old. It's a nicely illustrated story about a young man's travel to various places in his world. He lives on an island. He has an entertaining adventure and gets the thing he needed the most. Tim is a guy I used to see at Dreamhaven when I worked at the Dinkytown store. He left me a copy of the book at Dreamhaven and I read it then. You can pick up a copy online at Amazon.

The VIP Guy

   

That big red guy is about 2 feet tall and he's at the LEGO Store in the Mall Of America. He's promoting the VIP program that they have. It's a card that gives you a point for every dollar you spend. For every 100 points you get a 5 dollar credit you can use on you next purchase. They can accumulate. That would be a nice thing to have.

LEGO Friends Displays

The Toysrus had these purple roofed display stands in the store since the sets started coming out early this year. A month or so ago I noticed that they added some more signs to the display. New!

That is one purple stand. The same store has a smaller shelf display. LEGO makes a lot of those types of displays. It puts the sets right out where people can see them. I like seeing them and often partisipate in the action feature, at least for the first couple of times I see them. Sometimes they are broken. The Ninjago ones were often broken and occasionally I'd see some small child spinning the figure insanely perhaps hoping that the ninja would fly off the spinner. I'd rather buy Friends sets than Ninjago sets. The animals are cuter.

 

LEGO Ninjago Displays

That's a display that I saw at Target. I wouldn't buy any of those vehicles at full price but I would use some of the odd parts if I had them. The series is pretty popular among the boys who like beating their toys with other toys, especially ones with wheels.

 

Here's a big display at the LEGO Store. It's gone now, replaced with a less interesting Star Wars display. I like the old ninja guy with his wide hat. I got a bunch of those hats on TwinLUG's LUGBULK order. Someday I should make something with them. I have some more pictures on my Flickr page.

  

Here's the display in the front window of the LEGO store. I'd sure like one of those big snakes, until I needed to store it.