Jurassic World Trailer! Oh, and Strange Magic, too.

With my main focus for the summer blockbusters of 2015 being on Avengers: Age of Ultron, and a new Star Wars and a new James Bond, I keep forgetting that we're also returning to Jurassic Park.

Even though the third one kind of underwhelmed way back in 2001, rumours of a fourth film have persisted for years.  And, a couple years ago, Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment and Universal Studios finally got their stuff together to make it happen.  Spielberg's just producing, though.  For our director, we have relative newcomer Colin Trevorrow, who gave us the 2012 indie time travel film Safety Not Guaranteed.

Back on Sunday night, we got a 15-second preview of the trailer.  I don't know why, but that 15 second preview gave me goosebumps.  I've never been able to put my finger on why, but I just love the Jurassic Park franchise.  It's dinosaurs!  Who doesn't love dinosaurs?  And in that 15-second clip, to hear the classic Jurassic Park theme played slowly and hauntingly on a piano...beautiful.

The trailer was supposed to come out on Thursday, but got bumped up to Tuesday.  I think the move-up in the time table had to do with the announcement that we're getting our first Star Wars: The Force Awakens trailer on Friday, and that'll soon be the new king of Trailer Town.

Well, without further ado, are you ready to return to Jurassic Park?




First up, I totally geeked out at the end when we saw our hero riding the dirt bike in the middle of the herd of velociraptors.  I read Michael Crichton's literary sequel, The Lost World, as soon as it came out back in the mid-1990s.  There was a motorcycle/velociraptor chase in the book's climax, and I was upset it didn't make it to the movie.  So it looks like we're finally seeing that on the big screen!

And I also liked the bit with feeding the great white shark to the giant aquatic dinosaur.  No doubt a tip of the hat to Spielberg's legendary hit Jaws.

The trailer kind of confirms the plot that's been circulating online for a while now.  It's 22 years since the original incident at Jurassic Park.  InGen, the company that actually cloned the dinosaurs, was bought out, and under new management, John Hammond's dream finally became a reality.  But, tickets sales are starting to slump, and the novelty of actual, living dinosaurs is wearing off.  So, to create a bigger star attraction, those wacky geneticists start combining dinosaur DNA to create a bigger, badder, Franken-saurus.  And, because it's a Jurassic Park movie, it escapes and starts eating people.  

Chris Pratt, fresh from saving the universe as Star Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy, is here as Owen, the game warden at the park who gets nervous at the thought of this Franken-saurus.  Bryce Dallas Howard is Claire, the park's manager.  The only returning character from the earlier films is B.D. Wong as Dr. Henry Wu, the geneticist who actually clones the dinosaurs.

My only complaint is that some of the CGI of the park itself looks a little too generic "future city."  But that being said, I'm actually kind of jazzed.

Jurassic World hits theatres on June 12.

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And while I'm talking trailers, here's one that came out about a week ago that wasn't on a lot of people's radars, but it caught my eye.  It might very well be George Lucas's final movie.  And that's Strange Magic.

About 5 or 6 years ago, I read a blurb that Lucas was developing an animated film about fairies.  At the time, the rumoured director was Kevin Murnoe, fresh off directing the CGI TMNT film (which, IMHO, is the best Ninja Turtles movie).  And that was all I heard, until the trailer came out last week.

The director, in the end, is Gary Rydstrom, who'd been circling directing an animated feature for some time.  Rydstrom started his career as a legendary sound designer at Lucas's Industrial Light and Magic, where he won Oscars for creating the sound effects for Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Titanic and Saving Private Ryan.  He started getting involved in animation when he did the sound design for Pixar's first crop of films, including the first two Toy Stories and Monsters, Inc.  From there, he directed the Pixar shorts Lifted and Toy Story Toons: Hawaiian Vacation.  He also directed the English dubs of the last crop of Studio Ghibli films, including The Secret World of Arietty and Miyazaki's swan song The Wind Rises.

The official plot description is a little strange, describing it as a jukebox musical (that means it's a musical where all the songs are familiar pop songs) loosely based on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, as various fairies, goblins, elves and imps do battle over a magic potion.  George Lucas himself gets a "story by..." credit, and that's why I'm saying this could very well be his final film, as now that he's sold Lucasfilm to Disney, he's probably chillin' on a pile of money and not doing much filmmaking anymore.

The voice cast includes Alan Cumming, Evan Rachel Wood, Kristen Chenowith, and Maya Rudolph.  The animation studio that actually did the animation was Lucas's Lucasfilm Animation Singapore (which Lucas formed to do the animation for Star Wars: The Clone Wars) and Lucas's legendary special effects house Industrial Light and Magic (whose only other animated film is 2011's Rango).  So while the voice cast sounds great, and the animation looks gorgeous, the entire trailer has me going, "I don't know about this...."

I just may go when it comes out, because I am mildly curious.  Strange Magic hits theatres on January 23.

Netflix Nonsense - Rocky V

Continuing my voyage through the Rocky franchise, we come to the one I'd been dreading to watch, Rocky V. 

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Aliens

Here we are again on Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly viewing of a movie I own.  Apparently, I broke a co-workers heart with last week's entry on Alien.  He read that, and then came to me the next day, "Dude, does that mean you're watching Aliens tonight?  I love Aliens!  Can I come over and watch it, too?"  That's when I had to break it to him.

For those just joining us, when doing Fishing in the Discount Bin, I'm working about six months ahead.  I watched this movie and jotted down this entry about six months ago.  That's why, in these intros, I always put down the date I originally watched the film and wrote my rant.  It was primarily to explain why you'd be reading entries about Christmas movies in July.

So, to my co-worker, I'm sorry you missed my Alien binge-watch by, wow, 10 months.  I'm working 10 months ahead now.  Anywho, time to continue the journey with Aliens.  I watched Aliens and wrote this ramble on January 19, 2014. 

Netflix Nonsense - Rocky IV

So I'm finally scratching the Rocky franchise off my cinematic bucket list, and now we get to one of the most beloved and most memorable of the series, Rocky IV.

Fear

Maybe it's my old age.  Maybe it's a shade of PTSD from when I hit that deer almost 2 years ago.  Maybe it's because the first real cold spell of the year always brought out a raft of car problems in my old Dodge Neon that I could barely afford to fix.  But for the past few years, whenever that first snowfall comes, I start to get really, really, really nervous about driving.  Especially driving into the city.  What if I break down on the side of the road when it's -40 out?  What if I slide through an intersection into oncoming traffic?  With everything that can go wrong when you drive in the winter, most winter days I feel more like just hunkering down on the couch rather than going out.

But I like to watch movies.  And movie theatres are in the city.  Suck it up, soldier.

And so, this past Saturday, with a bundle of nerves as my co-pilot, I headed into Edmonton.  There were a few things I needed, and a movie to be seen, so I was off.  I recently had the tires rotated and some leaky tires patched up on my car, and ever since then, the acoustics have been off.  My car just doesn't sound right.  I'm certain everything is fine, and it's just because the tires are different now, but it's enough to drive up my paranoia.

But I just turn up the music to drown out the sounds of the road, and just keep moving forward.  Having been binge-watching the Rocky franchise on Netflix, I spent the 99¢ to get Gonna Fly Now on iTunes.  A good, inspirational tune for when things are rough.  Yeah, it's cliched, but cliches become cliches because they work.




I've said before that I tend not to fret about spending too much money in the city if I buy at least one thing I genuinely need.  Lucky for me, this was a day of mostly things I need.  Now that winter is here, and I'm sliding off the boots and switching them out for shoes more and more, the socks wear out quicker.  So I bought some new socks.  And then some pants I liked were on sale, and some shirts I liked were on sale, and I just kind of lost myself.

From there, did a quick browse through Best Buy.  I always feel kind of sad when I walk out empty-handed, but there's really not much on my Blu-Ray shopping list right now.  From there, it was a hop, skip, and a jump to my beloved West Edmonton Mall.

The Mall is currently undergoing some renovations, and there's nothing wrong with that, although it does throw off my routine somewhat.  Down in the food court, they got rid of the fountain that used to be there, replacing it with a sunken seating area.  I decided to eat my lunch down there in order to take in the new ambiance, and I quickly had kudos for the Mall as to what they have down there.  They have cellphone charging stations.  Electrical outlets that also have USB ports built in, so you can plug in your wireless devices and charge them up.  Now that's a public service in this day and age.

Browsed through the Mall for a bit.  I decided I may as well start working Phase I of my Christmas shopping into the day.  As I blogged in the past, I tend do my Christmas shopping in 2 phases.  Phase I is just browsing and window shopping, getting ideas as to what to get people.  Phase II is when I've got that stuff figured out and actually buy the stuff.  Lots of others must have that idea, as the Mall is starting to fill up with the holiday shoppers.  I think I saw the ad somewhere that yesterday was when Santa made his big arrival at the Mall.  We may roll our eyes, but the Christmas shopping season is here.

Finishing my browse, I glanced at my watch and saw my movie was about to start.  I usually don't eat at the movies anymore.  With my preferences for matinees, I just find that I'm full from lunch.  However, now that I'm all bundled up in winter gear, I found that browsing in the Mall dehydrated me somewhat, so I hit the snack bar to grab a frosty beverage and some Twizzlers.

So what film was I heading off to see?  Well, with my love of Disney and superhero movies, you just know that Big Hero 6 was on my radar for this holiday movie season.

When Disney bought Marvel Comics about 5 years ago, everyone started wondering if this meant we'd get some Disney animated films based on classic Marvel characters.  Everyone was surprised when Disney animation dove into the Marvel archives and surfaced with Big Hero 6, a barely-remembered mini-series from the 2000s.  That was a time when anime was starting to dominated cartoon line-ups, so Big Hero 6 wound up being Marvel's interpretation of many of the superhero tropes from Japanese pop culture.  There was a guy who turned into a Godzilla-like monster, a boy and his robot, a Sailor Moon-esque "magical girl," and such-forth.  So what did Disney do with this?

In the city of San Fransokyo (a mash-up of Tokyo and San Francisco), we're introduced to Hiro Hamada, a science prodigy who finished high school at 13.  Fascinated with robotics, he now makes his money hustling in back-alley robot fights.  One day, he visits his equally-prodigious brother Tadashi at the university lab where he works.  This really sparks Hiro's imagination, and he begins applying himself to get into the university.  He makes it with his invention of microbots...tiny thought-controlled robots that can do pretty much anything you imagine.  The project gets Hiro in...but there's a fire in the lab which destroys his microbots and kills Tadashi.  A few months later, a villain appears, using Hiro's microbots.  Hiro deduces that someone stole his tech and started the fire to cover it up.  Accompanied by his brother's greatest invention - a health care robot named Baymax - Hiro convinces the rest of Tadashi's friends to weaponize their projects and become a superhero team to bring Tadashi's killer to justice.

This is just a fun movie, if it does fall into some of the regular cliches of the superhero genre.  But it's so fun.  And I love the characters that make up our 6 heroes.  It really does make me long for the days of when Disney's latest animated epic spawns a Saturday morning cartoon, because we barely get to know any of the other heroes outside Hiro and Baymax, and I would have liked to see them developed more.  And, even though the connection to Marvel has been really downplayed (much to the anger and annoyance of some Marvel fans), they still manage to work in some of Marvel Cinematic Universe hallmarks such as a gratuitous Stan Lee cameo. 

Yup.  It was just fun.  I give it 3 out of 4 Nibs.  A complete review is up over on the ol' website.

Oh, and as has become Disney tradition now, it starts off with a new animated short film.  This one is called Feast.  It's a relationship as told from the point of view of a puppy and the table scraps he gets fed.  It is unbearably cute.

With the movie done and my artistic soul fulfilled, it was time to head home.  But not before one last stop was made.  I was getting the warning lights on my printer, so it was time for that most valuable commodity of all:  printer ink.  $70 for the ink cartridges for my printer.  But, since I bought my printer brand new back in January, and only now is it running low on ink, $70 for a year's worth of ink is a pretty good deal.  Besides, I'll be sending out Christmas cards soon.  I've got mailing labels I'll be printing up this year, so my wrist will be thankful for that.

I returned home, once again able to drown out the different sounds of my car with the Nerdist podcast.  And when I made it home, I sat down to watch something very special.  Back on Tuesday, the 1966 Batman TV series was finally released on home video.  I don't own it yet, because it's a $200 set (if you're thinking about a Christmas present for me), however a friend did buy it, and he was kind enough to give me the code for the digital copy.  So while I don't have the discs, I can watch it streaming from the cloud.  With this in hand, it was finally time for closure.



One of my earliest conscious memories of television is watching a rerun of Batman  on the old Sunday morning TV show Switchback.  There was one cliffhanger that haunted me to this very day.  In this episode, the Penguin attempts to go straight, but Batman and Robin suspect it's a charade.  The Penguin is holding a carnival to raise money for charity, and Batman and Robin begin snooping around.  But, the Penguin gets the drop on the Dynamic Duo!  The Penguin strings up Batman and Robin behind the shooting gallery and then, out front, makes a friendly wager with Commissioner Gordon and Chief O'Hara.  If they can hit the bulls-eye, the Penguin will make a generous donation to charity.  But, behind the targets, are the tied up and helpless Batman and Robin.

Yup, that's the deathtrap in this one:  the Penguin is going to trick Commissioner Gordon into shooting Batman!

That cliffhanger haunted me for years.  Probably because the unconscious Batman and Robin, strung up behind the shooting gallery, their feet gently swaying, looking as though they'd been hanged, was such a haunting image.

So, after seeing this episode of Batman at the tender age of 4 or 5, I finally got my closure.  How did Batman and Robin get out of this one?  Well, even though they looked it, they weren't unconscious.  They were able to lift their feet in the air, and deflect the bullets with their steel-toed boots.  The impact dislodged the Batknife that Batman kept concealed in his glove, which he was then able to use to cut himself and Robin free.

Closure.  The end.  Batman got out of his jam, and I survived a wintry trip to the city.  It's a fear I'm going to have to get over soon, as the winter blockbuster season is here, and holiday shopping needs to get done.  I'm thinking about taking the first week in December off to focus on that stuff.  Thanks to proper planning, careful incorporation of stat holidays, and just a plain ol' workaholic nature, the Company tells me I've used only three days of my three weeks of vacation time in 2014, and they'd like me to get more off the books before the year's end.  The fear of snowy roads and wintry city streets is something I'll continue to face before things are done.

Fear, for the most part, is a good thing.  It keeps us awake.  It keeps us alert.  It keeps us from doing stupid things.  But you know what they say about good things:  you can have too much. 

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Alien

Here on Fishing in the Discount Bin, it's time to power my way through another franchise!  This time, I'm doing a franchise that I've always been pretty blasé about, the Alien films.  Let's start with the first one, Alien.  This is in my notes at January 18, 2014.  

Netflix Nonsense - Rocky III

I'm continuing to scratch the Rocky franchise off my cinematic bucket list, and my quest to do so brings me up to Rocky III.

Fishing in the Discount Bin - The Lone Ranger

Welcome back to Fishing in the Discount Bin, where I indulge in my favourite downtime activity:  watching movies.  Today, it's one of the biggest flops of the summer of 2013, but I actually kind of liked it.  And that's Disney's re-imagining of The Lone Ranger.  This originally popped up in my notes at January 12, 2014. 

Netflix Nonsense - Rocky II

Well, here I am, plowing my way through the Rocky franchise on Netflix.  Time to tackle the one that I was most curious about, Rocky II.

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Kick-Ass 2

Here we are once again, Fishing in the Discount Bin.  My obsession with superhero franchises continues as I watch the most-pirated film of 2013, Kick-Ass 2.  Don't worry, I'm watching the film on my legally-purchased Blu-Ray.  This shows up in my notes on January 11, 2014.

Netflix Nonsense - Rocky

So, a few months ago, I took to Facebook to publicly roll my eyes at the prospect of yet another Rocky movie in development.  I was taken aback slightly by one of my Facebook friends who saw that as a challenge and began defending the entire Rocky franchise.  It did get me thinking, though, that for such a famous and notable film series, I've only ever seen the first one once, and the last one once.  So, upon noticing that all the Rocky films are on Netflix, I decided to start working my way through the franchise.  Let's get this blog series started, shall we?  Let's take a look at the film that started it all, Rocky.

The Avengers: Age of Ultron trailer

Probably the most anticipated superhero film of next year, now that Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice got pushed back to 2016.  The culmination of Marvel's "Phase II," that began with Iron Man 3 just over a year ago.  Once again, the Marvel Cinematic Universe comes crashing together to face a threat that no hero can face alone.

The trailer was originally supposed to premiere next Tuesday, during Marvel's TV incarnation Agents of SHIELD.  However, when the trailer got leaked on Wednesday evening, Marvel shrugged and said, "Well, I guess we may as well release the trailer early."

The entire gang is back from the first film and most of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.  Chris Hemsworth returns as Thor, Chris Evans is back as Captain America, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye, Scarlett Johannson as Black Widow, and Mark Rufalo as Bruce Banner/The Hulk.  Also joining the Avengers this time out is Don Cheadle as War Machine.

We get some new heroes joining the team, too.  Aaron-Taylor Johnson, last seen battling Godzilla in Godzilla, is Quicksilver, and Elizabeth Olsen, last seen playing Johnson's wife in Godzilla, is his brother The Scarlett Witch.

Now, you may be thinking, "Wait a minute.  I saw Quicksilver in X-Men: Days of Future Past, so isn't Quicksilver an X-Men character, meaning Marvel can't use him?"  Well, yes.  But Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch have always been more widely known as Avengers and not Magneto's offspring.  So, Marvel and Fox made a handshake arrangement.  Marvel can use Quicksilver and Scarlett Witch as long as

a)  Marvel doesn't mention they're mutants
b)  Marvel doesn't mention that Magneto's their father.

Based on their first appearance in the post-credits sequence for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the speculation is, rather than mutants, their powers will be the results of HYDRA experiments. 

Also joining the team is Paul Bettany as the android Avenger the Vision.  Since Paul Bettany has done the voice of JARVIS, Tony Stark's AI, in all the Iron Man films and the previous Avengers, the speculation is that Vision's movie origin will turn him into an android built by Tony Stark and given life by some new upgrade of JARVIS.

And what villain is so mighty that the Avengers are almost destroyed doing battle with him?  Well, that would be the killer android Ultron, played by James Spader through the miracle of performance capture.  In the original comics, Ultron was a creation of Ant-Man, before turning evil.  For the Marvel Cinematic Universe, it looks like Ultron will be a creation of Tony Stark's.

The plot, as I've cobbled together online over the past few months, is thus.  Following the dissolution of SHIELD in the wake of Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the Avengers have been working overtime to fill the void.  With SHIELD no more, the Avengers are now bankrolled by Stark Enterprises.  In order to help out, Stark builds an android army he calls "the Iron Legion."  Of course, it's just a matter of time before this android army grows sentient and becomes Ultron.  Then, in pure killer robot fashion. Ultron figures the best way to save the world is to destroy it and remake it in his own image. 



Wow.  The first Avengers looked pretty darn big, but this actually looks bigger. 

We don't get much of a glimpse of Quicksilver or Scarlet Witch and their abilities.  I'm really curious about how Quicksilver is portrayed, and how they differentiate him from the Quicksilver we saw in X-Men: Days of Future Past. 

And I'm still geeking out about the Hulkbuster armor.  For those who don't know, the Hulkbuster is Iron Man's armor that makes him as big as and as strong as the Hulk for they ever have to battle.  And dude, it looks like they do battle.

Everyone's raving about how the background music is a creepy version of I've Got Not Strings from Pinocchio, making folks wonder how this is going to be some kind of creepy Pinocchio tale. 

Everything about this just looks good.  Joss Whedon is back writing and directing, and it looks like he's going to knock it out of the park again.

The Avengers:  Age of Ultron hits theatres on May 1, 2015. 

Fishing in the Discount Bin -- Godzilla: Tokyo SOS

Here we are, once again, with Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly watch of a movie I own, and blogging about it, because "content creator" is as good a hobby as any.  Today, we journey into the wonderful world of Godzilla with 2003's daikaiju epic, Godzilla:  Tokyo SOS.  I originally scrawled this in my notes on January 1, 2014.

Fishing in the Discount Bin - The X-Files: Fight the Future

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Fishing in the Discount Bin - The Blues Brothers

Here we are, once again, with another edition of Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly gaze upon my movie library and I begin saying, "I haven't watched that one in a while."  Today, we get to the 1980 comedy classic The Blues Brothers.  This originally appeared in my notes at December 28, 2013.

Two Trailers: Inside Out and Big Eyes

Hey!

There's a couple of trailers I've been wanting to sit and blog about for a while, but tonight, I finally have a chance to sit down and do so!

First up, let's take a look at Pixar's latest, Inside Out.  Let's be honest, Pixar's been in kind of a slump lately.  We had the abysmal Cars 2, the disappointing Brave, and the "eh, it could've been worse" Monsters University.  The slump caught up with them, as this year's originally scheduled film, The Good Dinosaur, ran into production delays and got pushed back to next November.

So, fingers crossed that Inside Out is a return to form.  Returning to the director's chair is Pete Docter, the writer and director of the Pixar classics Monsters, Inc. and Up.  When we first told of the project back in 2011, all we were told was that it takes place inside a little girl's mind.  As time goes on, we're told that it takes place inside the mind of a little girl named Emily, who's coping with her family's big move to San Fransisco.  And it's told from the point of view of the personifications of her emotions, who guide her through this journey.  Those emotions are:

• Joy, voiced by Amy Poehler
• Anger, voiced Lewis Black, the stand up comic whose made anger an art form
• Disgust, voiced by The Mindy Project star Mindy Kaling
• Sadness, voiced by Phyllis Smith; probably best remembered as Phyllis on The Office
• and Fear, voiced by SNL alum Bill Hader

Roll clip!




Honestly, I'm not quite sure what to make of it yet, as we see precious little of the film.  It reminds me a lot of the first trailer for Wall-E, because that one also relied heavily on clips from other Pixar films.  It looks bright, it looks colourful and...yeah.  All I can do is get mildly excited and remain cautiously optimistic.

Inside Out comes out on June 19.  

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Next up,we have Big Eyes, the latest from one of my favourite directors, Tim Burton.  Burton is another guy who seems to have been in a slump lately, as he seems to be stuck in this cycle of big screen reboots and adaptations starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter.  So I'm glad to see that Big Eyes looks to be Burton scaling things down a bit, and doing away with his safety net of Depp and Carter.

Burton re-teams with his old Ed Wood screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski to bring us another biography of quirky American individuals, Margaret and Walter Keene.  Margaret Keene is the painter who gave us those infamous paintings of children with really big eyes.  Thanks to the marketing savvy of her husband Walter, the paintings became a pop culture phenomenon in the 1960s.  However, Walter began taking credit for the paintings himself, much to the chagrin of Margaret.  The question of the true authorship of the paintings became an intrinsic part of their bitter divorce.

Amy Adams plays Margaret Keene, and Cristoph Waltz plays Walter.




This looks interesting.  Given the timing of the release and the subject matter, it's definitely Oscar bait.  I'm really enjoying Burton scaling things down and doing something smaller than his recent work.  It think it's worth a look-see.

Big Eyes comes out on Christmas Day. 

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Doctor Who: Series 7

It's time again for Fishing in the Discount Bin, where I watch something and blog about it because, not being a sports guy, what else am I going to watch on Sunday afternoons?  It's time to tackle the current #1 sci-fi franchise in the world as I revisit Doctor Who: Series 7.  This appears in my notes at December 15, 2013.

 

Fishing in the Discount Bin - The Wolverine

Welcome back to Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly ramble about one of the movies I own on some form of home media format.  This time out, we take a look at everyone's favourite mutant, The Wolverine.  This shows up in my notes at December 14, 2013.

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III

Here we are again, Fishing in the Discount Bin.  I watch a movie and blog about it.  It's just that simple.  Today, we round out the live action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles trilogy with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III.  This is in my notes at December 7, 2013.

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze

Here we are again with Fishing in the Discount Bin, where I try to turn my lazy Sundays on the couch watching DVDs into something productive.  I'm working my way through the live-action Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and today we get to the second installment, The Secret of the Ooze.  This pops up in my notes at December 1, 2013.  

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

It's that time again!  Fishing in the Discount Bin, where I watch and blog about one of the movies I own, because I have shockingly little to do on Saturday nights.  Today, we start tackling the TMNT trilogy from my junior high years with installment #1, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  This pops up in my notes at November 23, 2013.

Batman: Assault on Arkham Review

Well, it's that time again.  DC has given us another straight-to-DVD animated movie, and with my recent trip into the city, you know I just had to pick it up.  So let's take a look at....

Batman: Assault on Arkham

Directed by Jay Olivia and Ethan Spaulding

Starring the voices of Kevin Conroy, Neal McDonough, Hynden Walch, Matthew Gray Gubler, Troy Baker, CCH Pounder, Greg Ellis, Giancarlo Esposito, and Jennifer Hale.

Backstory:  I think I've mentioned I'm really starting to get bored with DC Universe straight-to-video movies.  It always seems to be the same ol' Batman stories or the same ol' Superman stories.  Shine the spotlight on some of the other heroes for once!  So I like how they're trying to sneak in other heroes right now.  Like this latest one, Batman: Assault on Arkham.  Despite the name "Batman" appearing in the title, and the promise that it's based on the best-selling series of Batman: Arkham video games, it's actually a Suicide Squad movie.  The Suicide Squad was originally explained to me as the Dirty Dozen of the DCU.  Supervillains, blackmailed by the government into going on black ops missions in exchange for time off their sentences.  So how does the Suicide Squad fare in their adaptation to animation?

Plot:  The Riddler has hacked into Amanda Waller's private files, and downloaded all of Waller's data on every dirty mission the Suicide Squad has ever done.  But, before Waller's elite commandos can take down the Riddler, Batman busts in, captures the Riddler and sends him back to Arkham Asylum.  Waller is left no choice, and recruits the latest incarnation of the Suicide Squad, consisting of Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Captain Boomerang, Killer Frost, Black Spider, and King Shark.  Their mission:  break into Arkham Asylum and recover the information from the Riddler.  But once they penetrate the walls of the Asylum, it becomes clear that many members of the team have their own agenda.  What is Killer Frost's secret mission?  Does Harley Quinn really seek to bust out her old flame the Joker?  And can they accomplish everything without raising the attention of Batman?

What I Liked:  It's great to finally see someone else take the lead.  Deadshot makes a surprisingly capable leader as he takes command of the Suicide Squad and does his best to fulfill the mission.  Harley Quinn is nice and crazy, and it's interesting to see her use her feminine wiles.  It's also neat to see Batman and the Joker's latest battle literally reduced to a subplot.  And the opening sequence is pretty good, too, as we see the members of the Squad getting "recruited." 

What I Didn't Like:  Not much, actually.  The action was good, but you still can't shake the "Been there, done that" feeling that's hanging over a lot of these.  And out of all these movies, this one definitely  has the most nudity, as Harley Quinn and Killer Frost seem to be taking their tops off a lot. 

Final Verdict:  A surprisingly good entry in the franchise.

3 Nibs

Bonus Features:  For bonus features, you get a running commentary from the filmmakers, a featurette on the origins and evolution of Harley Quinn, a featurette on the origins and evolution of Arkham Asylum, 4 bonus cartoons from the various DC animation projects, and a sneak peak at the next film, Justice League: Throne of Atlantis, which looks to be how they're giving us an Aquaman film. 

Hollow Pursuits

Well, it's here.  The end of August.  As I've mentioned, August was a super-busy time at work, but now that the month is done, things are slowing down again to a more normal pace, and as such, I finally have a little breathing room to pursue some of my outside interests...like brilliant-but-cancelled TV series.

I was tickled the other day when my DVD release of Now and Again finally arrived from Amazon!




On my wish list of "brilliant but cancelled TV shows that need to be released on DVD," Now and Again was always at the top of that list.  In fact, reviewing that list and going through my DVD library, I'm pretty sure it's the last one on that list.  It premiered in the fall of 1999 and only lasted one season.  Had a great pedigree, too, as it was created by Glenn Gordon Caron, who brought us the legendary 1980s TV series Moonlighting.

Now and Again followed the life of Michael Wiseman.  An insurance salesman working in a big Manhattan office.  He loves his wife and teenage daughter.  It's a pretty good life.  But then, he's killed in a freak subway accident, and he wakes up as a brain in a jar.  Here, a shadowy government scientist offers Michael choice:  get his brain implanted in a bio-engineered perfect body and become a super-soldier, or die.  Oh, and one condition:  his family and everyone he knew in his previous life must remain convinced that he is dead.  So, Michael wakes up in his new body, and sets about to become, well, Captain America pretty much.  But the heart and soul of the show was watching Micheal's wife, daughter, and best friend grieve and rebuild their lives, as Michael always finds himself drawn back to them, and how everyone's new lives intertwine in interesting ways.

Fantastic cast as well.  Eric Close, who went on to star in the detective series Without a Trace and is now on Nashville, played Michael Wiseman.  Dennis Haysbert, before he shot to fame as the President on 24, played Dr. Theodore Morris, the shadowy scientist in charge of the program and Michael's handler.  Margaret Colin, best known at that point as Jeff Goldblum's wife in Independence Day, plays Michael's wife Lisa, and Heather Matrazzo, star of the 1990s indie classic Welcome to the Dollhouse, played Michael's daughter Heather.

I'm really looking forward to revisiting this series, and seeing if it's still as good as I remember.  And also, the bonus features.  One of the features is a roundtable discussion with the writers as they mention what they had planned for Season 2.  Which is great, because Now and Again is one of the most frustrating things ever:  a TV series that ends with a cliffhanger.  In our cliffhanger, a series of mis-understandings leads Michael to believe that Dr. Morris has become convinced that Michael's family has learned of the secret, and as such, Michael and his family are going to be killed.  So the series ends with Michael going rogue, snatching his wife and daughter from their house, with Dr. Morris and a team of commandos a literal 2 steps behind them.  Meanwhile, a terrorist known as "The Egg Man" (so named because he distributes nerve gas by injecting it into eggs), escapes from prison, bent on revenge against Michael for capturing him, and accompanied by a new sidekick played by wrestling superstar Mick Foley, doing a variation on his Mankind character. 

So, yeah.  I hope these interviews with the writers can finally give me some closure. 

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And of course, with free time means I can finally go see a movie.  Having grown up with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, I was mildly curious about the new, Michael Bay-produced reboot  now in theatres.

For the last TMNT movie, the 2007 animated one, I was genuinely excited for it, but this one, I just couldn't muster any kind of excitement for it.  The Turtles looked too big and hulking.  There was that leaked early script where the Turtles were changed from teenage mutants to aliens.  Unlike the rest of the TMNT fans, though, I was actually pretty OK with Megan Fox as April O'Neil.

After seeing it, it's not bad, it's just bland.  It's a pretty phoned-in, by-the-numbers, superhero tale.  We've got a fairly standard "destroy the city" plot at play.  Shredder is pretty much wasted, and the other villain, our billionaire industrialist Eric Sachs, turns into a fairly routine villain pretty quick.  Megan Fox winds up being a pretty bland April O'Neil, and Will Arnett, who's usually a pretty funny guy, is also bland as April's sidekick and cameraman Vernon.

They did make a few tweaks to the Turtles' origins that I was OK with.  (SPOILER WARNING:  April's father was a scientist running experiments with the ooze and the Turtles and Splinter were his test animals.)  It seems like in every Turtles adaptation, they make a few tweaks to the Turtles' origins, so extra tweaks don't bug me.  The one tweak that did seem lame was Splinter.  Now, instead of being (a) ninja master Hamato Yoshi turned into a rat by the mutagen or (b) Hamato Yoshi's pet rat who learned ninjutsu by watching his master, and then made humanoid by the mutagen, Splinter is now just a plain ol' rat who figures they're going to need some way to defend themselves, so he starts teaching the Turtles the art of ninjutsu from some books he found in the sewers.  

At least they got the Turtles right.  When you get over their new, hulking designs, they pretty much act like the Turtles we all know and love.

So, yeah.  At the end, I didn't find it bad.  Just bland.  2 Nibs.

I've got the complete review posted up at my website. 

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And of course, being in the city to do some frivilous shopping, I lost my mind when I popped in at one of my favourite collectables shop and they had a whole ton of those ReAction Figures that are out, so of course I had to snatch up the Back to the Future ones. 



I thought I blogged about these when I managed to find my Rocketeer ReAction figure a few months ago, but it looks like I didn't.  Here's the story about these figures and why they're awesome.

It all started with Alien.  Back in 1979, 20th Century Fox and Kenner sought to duplicate the success of the Star Wars action figures with a line of action figures for Alien.  The first toy from the toyline -- an 18" version of the titular Alien creature, perfect for menacing your G.I. Joes -- hit store shelves, and parents groups lost their freakin' minds.  How DARE they make a line of action figures based on an R-rated horror movies, especially when the monster is so grotesque and phallic!  So, Kenner scrapped the plans for the rest the toyline...a series of 3.75" figures of the film's characters.

Flash forward to the present day.  Toy and collectable company Funko heard of the legends of the lost Alien action figure line, and managed to find the lost prototypes and packaging mock-ups deep within the Hasbro archives (Hasbro having bought out Kenner in the mid-1990s).  Funko decided to finally produce those Alien action figures, and were inspired to created a new line of collectables called ReAction Figures:  action figures for cult classic movies, done in the style of the quickly made and cheaply produced tie-in figures of the 1980s.

When I posted that picture to Facebook the other night, a friend commented, "Did you get the Alien figures, too?"  No, but I was tempted.  For next to these Back to the Future figures were the Alien ones, and the Firefly ones, and the Pulp Fiction ones, and the Goonies ones, and the Terminator ones, and Snake Plissken from Escape from New York.  Needless to say, in order to keep my bank balance healthy, some tough decisions had to be made.  

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And before I wrap this up, I have to share some recent developments among movie geeks that made me sad.  Leonard Maltin has announced that the 2015 edition of his famous Movie Guide will be the last.  Maltin says the main reason why it's coming to an end is that there's so many websites and apps these days that offer the same service, that sales have really taken a hit in the past few years.  And besides, with an entire generation now trained to get information online, a reference book is starting to seem...antiquated.  People want their wealth of movie reviews the day it comes out, not six months later. 

It's interesting reading the history of Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide.  Maltin began his career as a film critic and historian when he began running a movie fanzine in high school.  His fanzine impressed people with its professionalism, and at the ripe old age of 17, he was soon meeting with a publisher about launching a Movie Guide.  The first edition of Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide hit bookstore shelves in 1969, with an update 5 years later.  In 1978, he started updating it every 2 years.  And in 1986, he started updating it annually.  It started getting so thick, that starting in 2005, he split it into two volumes:  the "Classic Movie Guide" for movies before 1960, and the regular "Movie Guide" for films after. 

I first discovered Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide back in junior high, in my school's library.  I recognized Maltin as "that movie guy from Entertainment Tonight."  I started leafing through it, and my mind was blown.  I had no other way to describe it than "a dictionary for movies."  I'd check it out of library for weeks on end, just to have it at home and leaf through it.  It was something that did not go unnoticed, as my sister gave me the latest version for Christmas that year.  And thus began a holiday tradition, with my sister giving me the latest edition for Christmas, and me spending Christmas afternoon running around to the family members going, "Name a movie!" so I could see what Leonard Maltin had to say about it. 

It's a tradition that lasted until 2005.  I know it ended in 2005 because the 2006 edition is on my shelf.  As I'm sure you've figured out by reading this blog over the years, I can be a real asshole sometimes, and such a moment came on Christmas morning 2005, when I opened up my present from my sister and went, "Oh, gee...Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide."  And after getting Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide from her for more than a decade, I began teasing her and mocking her relentlessly for her lack of originality when it came to picking Christmas presents.  I genuinely upset her, and I apologized, but she vowed then and there to never get me Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide for Christmas ever again. 

I can tell it's still a sore spot with her because when I shared the new on Facebook along with a sarcastic, "Gee, now what's my sister going to get me for Christmas?" she responded with hearty "Go to Hell."  Part of me hopes she'll give it to me for Christmas this year, you know, because it's the last time she'll ever be able to do it, but I know I upset her so much that day that it'll never, ever happen. 

So Jeanette, once again, I'm very sorry for the things I said on that Christmas morning. 

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Man of Steel

Here we are again on Fishing in the Discount Bin, where I blog about one of the many movies I own.  This time out, we tackled 2013's big reboot of the Superman mythology, Man of Steel.  This arises in my notes at November 17, 2013.

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Monsters University

Here we are again with Fishing in the Discount Bin, where I watch a movie I own and blog about it because why not?  I'm a little distressed that we're not getting a Pixar movie this year, so it seems like a good opportunity to revisit their animated hit from last year, Monsters University.  This appears in my notes at November 16, 2013.

 

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Pacific Rim

Welcome back to Fishing in the Discount Bin, my weekly viewing of some Blu-Ray I own, and then blogging about it, because blogging.  This week's entry may be a little controversial as I tackled that newly-beloved geek classic Pacific Rim.  This is originally dated in my notes at November 3, 2013.

Podfodder

Well, my podcast is still on its summer hiatus, but I've got a lot of musings about pop culture brewing inside me, and I feel like it's time to get them down on paper and share them with the world!  So share I will.

My heart is already turning to September...and fretting about how much it's going to cost me.  It's that time of year when all the summer blockbusters will start hitting Blu-Ray.  So, of course, as soon as they come out, I'll be picking up Godzilla and Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  Also coming out is the new 30th anniversary box set of Ghostbusters 1&2.  I'm actually looking forward to picking up that set just for Ghostbusters 2.  In addition to be remastered in hi-def, we're going to get a round-table discussion with co-writer Dan Aykroyd and director Ivan Reitman, plus some long-lost deleted scenes.  Ghosbusters 2 has grown to be so hated when compared to its predecessor, that it makes me more and more curious about its making. 

But the one that gives me the most pause is an boxed set called The Star Trek Compendium.  This is a new box set of the Star Trek reboot and its sequel, Into Darkness.  I already have both on Blu-Ray, why double-dip?

Well, when Star Trek Into Darkness hit Blu-Ray, it caused some controversy.  In the name of retail exclusives, all the bonus features were spread across multiple versions.  For example, if you wanted to see the deleted scenes, you had to buy it from Best Buy.  If you wanted to hear the director's running commentary, you had to buy the iTunes download.  If you wanted to see the "making-of" features, you had to buy it from Target, and for different "making-of" featurettes, you had to buy it from Wal-Mart.  It was nuts.  But, in this Star Trek Compendium boxed set, all of the bonus features will finally be in one set.

And that's not all.  Following the lead of films like The Dark Knight, Into Darkness had some of its major action sequences filmed in IMAX.  The Star Trek Compendium release will finally feature Into Darkness's IMAX sequences in their proper aspect ratio.

Plus, when I upgraded Star Trek to Blu-Ray, I got the "movie-only" version of the disc.  In this set, I'll finally get all of Star Trek's bonus features upgraded to hi-def.

Wow, it really sounds like I'm talking myself into it, aren't I?  We'll have to see what the price is when it comes out.

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So what's going on with the Spider-Man franchise?  Sony's really starting to beat that rented mule.

The original plan was Amazing Spider-Man 2 this year, Amazing Spider-Man 3 in 2016, Amazing Spider-Man 4 in 2018, and then a couple of spin-offs featuring Venom and the Sinister Six.  Even though Amazing Spider-Man 2 made $700 million at the box office, that makes it the lowest-grossing Spider-Man film, causing Sony to rethink their plans.

Now, we're going to be getting the Sinister Six spinoff in 2016, the Venom spinoff and a new spinoff about a TBA female character (rumoured to be either the Black Cat, Silver Sable, or Spider-Woman) both in 2017, and Amazing Spider-Man 3 in 2018.

I'd be on board with a lot of this if it looked like Sony had a plan.  But it doesn't.  Instead, it seems like Sony is just being reactionary to Marvel.

"So, you like big, shared continuity universes, eh?  Well, look at all these Spider-Man spinoffs we're planning!"

"So, based on all the money Avengers made, you like seeing massive team-ups.  BOOM!  Sinister Six, baby!"

The #1 question that Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige was being asked during the press for Guardians of the Galaxy was, "So...when's Marvel going to do one with a female lead?"  And Sony said, "Us!  We're doing it first!  See?  Spinoff with a female character!"

See?  It looks like Sony is just trying to do what Marvel's doing.  There's no overreaching plan, they're just emulating.

Add my voice to the chorus crying for Spider-Man to be returned to Marvel, so he can be in the Marvel cinematic universe.  But, Sony won't give him back until the films stop making money, so I don't think it'll be happening anytime soon.

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Had a dentist appointment the other day, and afterwards, I went to HMV to buy myself a treat.  Was finally able to upgrade to CD two classic film soundtracks from my youth:  Ghostbusters and Back to the Future.  Thanks to the resurgence of vinyl, HMV actually had Ghostbusters on vinyl, and I was tempted to get it, but no, went digital. 

When it comes to these soundtracks, Back to the Future was always my jam.  When I was a kid, my first paying job was as a paperboy, and I spent many an early morning, roaming the streets of Entwistle, delivering papers, and listening to The Power of Love on my Walkman.



Now that I have these two soundtracks, it's time for my grand plan.  Because I've discovered those record labels where I can get obscure film scores, I also own the complete, uncut scores for Back to the Future and Ghostbusters.  So the goal now, with each of those films, is to create a playlist that plays each and every note of music in the exact order it appears in the film.

Doing that with Ghostbusters will be interesting, as the complete uncut score features a lot of music that was ultimately unused, as they producers replaced it with the pop songs you find on the soundtrack.  With Back to the Future, it could be complicated.  How exacting do I want to be?  There are songs used in the film that don't appear on the soundtrack album...do I buy those odd songs on iTunes in the name of completeness?

Or do I go as hardcore as my friend?  He did this exercise with The Transformers: The Movie, only he edited the songs so they are the exact length and sound exactly as they do in the movie.

But in the short term, at least I've got a lot of great, nostalgia-inducing music.

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I'm not much of a gamer, but this announcement came down the other day and it caught my eye.

Activision announced that they're relaunching the Sierra label, and even bringing back one of Sierra's most famous franchises, King's Quest.

Sierra pretty much invented the 3D, puzzle-solving-based, adventure game back in the 1980s, and it was a genre they dominated until the mid-1990s.  With the tech boom and the dot-com bubble, they were bought out, and traded hands many times over the past few years, becoming a shell of their former self.  Activision acquired the brand in the early 2000s, and quietly shut it down in 2008.

But with the recent announcement, sounds like Activision is planning to bring them back in a big way.  As one pundit put it, it sounds like Activision wants to make Sierra their label for indie and mid-budget games.  And as part of their first offerings, Sierra has contracted game studio The Odd Gentlemen to give us the first King's Quest since 1998.  It sounds like this new King's Quest will even be in continuity with the original games, with our hero, King Graham, now a grandfather, and his granddaughter Gwendolyn being the main character.

I am kind of excited about this.  Being a computer geek born in the 1980s, Sierra was THE name in PC games back then.  The first PC games I remember owning was a 3-pack of Mixed Up Mother Goose, King's Quest II, and Space Quest.  And then of course, junior high came along, and it was all immature giggling at Leisure Suit Larry.

I hope this new Sierra does the name proud.

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And just so I have a picture when I post this to the social networks, here's that awesome Ant-Man poster from the San Diego Comic Con.

Based on all the rumours floating around, it looks like Marvel's Phase III is going to give us:

• Ant-Man
• Captain America 3
• Dr. Strange
• The Inhumans

Fishing In the Discount Bin - The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Treasure of the Peacock's Eye

Here we are again with Fishing in the Discount Bin, where I watch a movie I own and blog about it, because I really don't have much of a life.  Before I wrap up my journey through the Indiana Jones franchise, I thought I'd take a quick look at The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles with Treasure of the Peacock's Eye.  This pops up in my notes at November 2, 2013.

Trying to Get Out More

Well, a long weekend has passed.  Two whole days of fun and frivolity!  I say "two days" is a long weekend for me, because we're into the super-busy time at work.  I'm going to be live on location just about every Saturday from now until the middle of September.  So with two free days upon me, I knew I should try to get out and have some fun.  I know so, because a co-worker told me to do that on Friday afternoon. 

This is where co-workers can be helpful for more than just work.  For example, after work on Saturday, one said, "Hey, me and my wife are going to see Guardians of the Galaxy.  Are you in?"

Hells, yeah.

I was freaking out slightly on the drive to the theatre.  I've fallen into the habit of getting to the theatre at least a half-hour before showtime, to ensure getting good seats and all.  We only arrived about 5 minutes before showtime.  But, lucky for me, my co-worker had thought ahead and bought the tickets online, and in the fancy UltraAVX theatre with assigned seating and everything.  So good seats were assured.  (And I've got to pay him back for my ticket at work on Tuesday.)

So when Marvel first announced their "Phase II" of films, Guardians of the Galaxy was the real curve ball.  A largely obscure superhero team.  Rather new in comics, too, as this incarnation was a gritty reboot that came about in 2008.  The decision to make a Guardians of the Galaxy film left a lot of people scratching their heads.  But still, there was hope.  Space opera has been a mainstay of comic books and superheroes, going all the way back to the early days with the characters like Buck Rogers.  We haven't gotten a really good adaptation of a comic book space opera.  It could have been Green Lantern.  It should have been Green Lantern.  So all our hopes fell to Guardians of the Galaxy.

Wow.  This film is crazy.  And I mean in that in the good way.  The music.  Ye gods, the music.  The mesh of outer space action and classic pop hits from the 1960s through the 1980s just works.  Maybe hearing classic rock as spaceships zoom by just bring back memories of my teen years and watching Heavy Metal on basic cable late at night.  The humour.  It is incredibly funny.  Rocket Raccoon and Groot steal the show.  They are definitely the Han Solo and Chewbacca of these interplanetary outlaws.  And kudos to Vin Diesel, who's able to inject so much emotion and intonation in the constant repetition of "I am Groot." 

And our villains.  Lee Pace surprised me as Ronan the Accuser.  He's come a long way from being Ned the Piemaker on Pushing Daisies.

But of course, there are some flaws.  So many characters, some are bound to get short shrift.  I felt we could have spent a little more time with Gamora and her story.  And at this point, Marvel's got a winning formula, so they don't deviate too far from it.

I found myself getting quite a bit distracted during the film, and I can thank my friend for that.  On the way into the theatre, he was like, "My buddies saw this last night, and they say Nathan Fillion's cameo is really hard to spot!"  So with that in my head, I spent far too much time playing "Where's Nathan Fillion?"  

But it was an incredibly fun and entertaining movie.  I give it 3.5 our of 4 nibs.  The complete review is on the website.

That was Saturday.  Sunday I mostly spent on the couch.  I'm paying $8 for that Netflix, I may as well get my money's worth.

Then on Sunday, I did have a bit of a plan in place.  Last time I went to the city, you may remember me blogging about the arrival of the American burger chain Carl's Jr arriving in the Edmonton area.  I also blogged that I was able to fully sample their offerings because I went on a full stomach.  So, on my holiday Monday, after eating nothing but a piece of toast for breakfast, I went down to Spruce Grove to again try Carl's Jr.

Got there just after 11AM, so it was nice and quiet as the lunch rush hadn't quite began yet.  Now that I was good and hungry, I went for their Portebello Mushroom Thickburger.  The way I understand it, the Thickburger is Carl's Jr's answer to burgers like A&W's Uncle Burger or McDonald's Angus Third Pounder.  And biting into that Thickburger, I ran into the same problem that I have with those other burgers:  it is so thick, I find it physically uncomfortable to eat.  I can't open my jaw that wide.

But I made it through, and as Swiss mushroom burgers go, it was pretty good.  It was a very sharp Swiss cheese they used, and you could really taste it.  I know an advertising feature of Carl's Jr burgers is that they are messy, and this Thickburger lived up to that reputation, with bits constantly oozing out the back.

The fries were good.  Also nice and thick, just enough of a crunchy outside and soft insides, and not too much salt.

But so far, Carl's Jr hasn't really wowed me.  Wendy's is still my favourite.  But still, more research is required.  Meaning I'll probably eat there a few more times before I make a final judgement.

It was very filling though.  I'm typing this up at 10:30PM, and I'm still full from it.

After that, I started browsing around that power centre that now fills the east end of Spruce Grove.  I constantly marvel at how it's built up over the past few years.  I saw they have a Michael's now, so I stopped in to get a frame.  I figured it was time to frame my autographed poster of Dick Assman.



For those who don't remember, way back in the late-1990s, David Letterman was doing this own version of Jay Leno's Headlines bit.  He'd point out and make fun of some of the...eccentric things that one would find in their local newspapers.  Letterman got this newspaper from Regina, and in it was an ad for a Petro-Canada, the owner and proprietor of it was named "Dick Assman."  Needless to say, Letterman took great delight in the name, and Dick Assman soon became a running gag on the show.  Dick Assman was everywhere.  Once the bit had run its course, Letterman ended it by having Dick Assman on the show.  You had to listen very carefully to hear Letterman and Assman's final words to each other over the music.

Letterman:  So how exactly do you pronounce your last name?

Assman:  "Ozman." 

So, at the height of "Dick Assmania," my brother, an electrician, was working on a job in Regina.  He was heading back to his hotel one night, saw that he needed gas, and was passing by a Petro-Canada with a sign out front saying, "The Home of Dick Assman."  "No way," said my brother.  So, he stopped in for gas, and sure enough, Mr. Dick Assman was working behind the counter that night.  Of course, there was now a selection of Dick Assman merchandise on sale, so my brother picked me up a poster and asked Mr. Assman to sign it, which he gladly did.  My fellow denizens of Moi Hall were pretty impressed when I hung that up in my dorm room.

Anywho, flash forward to the present day.  I have a friend who's a huge fan of Letterman, and upon Letterman's recent announcement of retirement, he dropped everything to head down to New York City and see a taping while he still could.  I highly suggest you listen to his podcast describing the experience.  After hearing his tale, I started wondering about my unique piece of Letterman merchandise and wondering if I still had it.  And sure enough, in back of my closet, in an old mailing tube full of old poster, I found it.  So I figured it was time to bring it out, nicely frame it, and re-hang it.

So those first two steps are done.  Have to figure out that third step now. 

And that was my long weekend.  Like the man said:  Something good...something bad...a little of both.

PS  I just noticed this is my 2500th blog entry.  Wow.

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Welcome back to Fishing in the Discount Bin!  I've been taking a journey through the Indiana Jones franchise, and today we get to the much-reviled Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.  This shows up in my notes at November 2, 2013.

The Good Ol' Days of Weird Al Videos

With Mandatory Fun being his first #1 album on the Billboard charts, and his recent "8 Videos in 8 Days" campaign causing a viral sensation, there's no doubt that it's a good time to be a Weird Al fan.  And the good news just keeps coming, with the news this morning that UHF is finally getting a Blu-Ray release this November!

It's kind of funny...a year ago, I read an interview with Weird Al where he'd been told by the studio that owns UHF that they had no plans to release it on Blu-Ray because everything's going to streaming video now.  What a difference a #1 album on the Billboard charts makes!  Well, to be fair, the studio that owns UHF -- MGM -- isn't putting out the Blu-Ray.  It's being put out by Shout! Factory, which has really done a good job putting out cult classic films on Blu-Ray recently.  And they are Weird Al friendly, having put out The Weird Al Show: The Complete Series a few years ago.

But that's not all!  Shout! Factory also announced they'll be releasing The Compleat Al on DVD at the same time.  The Compleat Al was a TV movie that Weird Al starred in in the mid-80s.  It was a mockumentary, chronicling his rise to fame.  Weird Al has used clips of it in his Al Music specials, and I've seen bits and pieces on YouTube, but I've never seen the whole thing.  So the Weird Al completest in me is glad that this is finally coming to DVD.  It was released on VHS back in the day, but it's been out of print since the early 1990s. 

But all this Weird Al video goodness has me spoiled.  Thanks to YouTube and other streaming video services, every "Weird Al" Yankovic music video ever made is now at my fingertips.  Not like the good ol' days, when you'd have to watch Much Music for hours on end, just praying that they might show one of his videos.  But if you were lucky, one of Weird Al's TV specials might come along, and you could tape it, and finally have all the Weird Al videos for your very own.  Going through my old shoebox of VHS tapes, I see that I have several such specials recorded.

The first one I find is The "Weird Al" Yankovic Music Video Collection.  This was a 1-hour TV special that Weird Al did for MuchMusic in 1999, to promote the release of Running With Scissors.  For this hour, they played nothing but Weird Al's videos, and new comedy sketches of him making mischief in and around Toronto.  At his official website at the time, Weird Al explained why he did this instead of another Al Music special.  Turns out MuchMusic was starting to get nervous about the Al Music specials.  With Weird Al's trademark fake interviews, and mocking commentaries of music videos, MuchMusic started worrying that they'd get in trouble with one of the artists.  So, the "Weird Al" Yankovic Music Video Collection was the compromise that Weird Al and MuchMusic came up with.

But then, there were the Al Music specials.  Those were pure gold.  Weird Al did three in the 1990s:  in 1992 to promote Off the Deep End, in '93 for Alapaloza, and '96 with Bad Hair Day.  It was pure magic when I saw that first one.  It was the spring of 1992.  It was Track & Field Day at school, so, the gym-hating, nonathletic kid that I was, I was "sick at home."  I was flipping around the channels, stumbled upon Much, and there was Weird Al!  And...he was like a VJ!  And...he was making fun of the videos!  Of course I wound up watching the whole thing.  I wish I still had that one on VHS.  He did a bit on the differences between the USA and Canada.  Back in the 1990s, the exchange rate between Canadian and American money was pretty consistent:  $1 CAD = $0.70 USD.  So, while outlining the differences, he holds up a loonie and says, "In the USA, a loonie is only worth 70 cents.  But here in Canada, it's a whole dollar!" 

I do, however, have the second one, Al Music 2.  A co-worker gave a copy a few years ago.  With Jurassic Park being Weird Al's lead single, and the Dinosaur World Tour having just stopped in Toronto, about the last half-hour of the special was Weird Al messing about at the Dinosaur World Tour.  For those who don't remember, the Dinosaur World Tour was this massive traveling dinosaur museum that showcased a bunch of new fossil finds from China and the Canadian Arctic.  It opened in the summer of 1993, and Edmonton was its first stop.  I went.  I loved it.  And that was the extra fun of Al Music 2, as I watched Weird Al mess around with exhibits that I myself had seen just a few months earlier!

And then a fun little blip was, in the late-1990s, MuchMusic did a couple of specials called Laff-a-Thon.  As we know, it's become custom for a stand-up comic to add a song to their comedy albums to get some airplay, and then a music video to get some exposure on the music video shows.  So, MuchMusic did the Laff-a-Thon where they had a marathon of all these comedic music videos.  For the first one, there was controversy.  They kept hyping that they were going to play a Weird Al video.  Weird Al came on to introduce it, but the bit was, they then did not play a Weird Al video.  Annoyed, Weird Al introduced a second video, promising that this time it would be one of his.  But it wasn't.  For the third time, a very angry Weird Al introduced the video, and it was finally one of his.  However, the fans weren't happy with this.  And later in the special, a very downbeat VJ came on and said, "Because of all the complaints just got over playing just one Weird Al video, here now are 3 Weird Al videos back-to-back."  When they did the second Laff-a-Thon a year later, they dedicated an hour in the middle of it to nothin' but Weird Al.

But for me, it all began way before any of this.  For those who may not recall, back when MuchMusic still played music videos, one of their daily programs was called Spotlight, where, for a half-hour straight, they'd play nothing but Weird Al videos.  When my family first got cable, it seemed to be on everyday just as I got home from school.  One snowy spring day in 1990, I came home from school, flopped down on the couch, started leafing through the TV guide, and I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.  Today's Spotlight artist was..."Weird Al" Yankovic.  But damn it!  I missed the first 10 minutes!  But that was OK.  Back then, I quickly discovered that MuchMusic repeated a lot of their programming 4 hours later.  So, 4 hours later, after supper and my homework was done, I took control of the TV, popped a blank tape in the VCR, and hit "record" when Spotlight began.

I'll never forget the first line of VJ Dan Gallagher's introduction:  "'Weird Al' Yankovic!  The man has made a living...looking like George Fox."  For those who don't know, George Fox is a Canadian country music singer who was big in the late-1980s.  At around this time, he had just done a big TV special on CBC and...yeah.  When George Fox wore glasses, he was the spitting image of 1980s Weird Al.  I remember seeing George Fox's picture on the cover of TV Guide and thinking, "Is George Fox Weird Al's real name?"

Anyway, I taped that episode of Spotlight and damn near wore out the tape watching it over and over and over again.  And now, for you, I will recreate the line-up of that episode Spotlight.  After Mr. Gallagher's introduction, we got...

I Love Rocky Road



Eat It



Like a Surgeon



Living With a Hernia



Fat



An old interview clip of Weird Al in the MuchMusic studios plugging UHF, thus ending the show with....

UHF

     

"Tomorrow on Spotlight...10,000 Maniacs."  

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Time once again to go Fishing in the Discount Bin!  I've been working my way through the Indiana Jones franchise, and today we get to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  This appears in my notes at October 27, 2013.

Fishing in the Discount Bin - Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

Here we go again, with Fishing in the Discount Bin, as I blog about a movie I happen to own.  I'm marching through the Indiana Jones franchise right now, which brings us to the second the series (but first chronologically), Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  This is originally in my notes at October 20, 2013.