Ford Models

WWZ

Halloween again. So I watched World War Z the other night.
This was my first thought:

True Skin

Shot entirely in Bangkok and set in a future where human augmentation is the norm. “Naturals” are  being phased out in favour of more cutting-edge models.

Warner Bros has picked up the option for a full length feature.
Here's the official website: True Skin Film by N1ON.

Back To The 2015

I've already met people who dress like that.

2015 is round the corner, bet you can't wait to get one of these HUVr boards.

 

http://huvrtech.com/

 

 

Kill Potter

Harry and the Bikini Bandits by Basil Heatter.

Many years after defeating Voldemort, Harry Potter left England and moved to the Caribbean where he became a local small arms dealer.  After working on his tan, he then attempted to model himself on David Carradine role in his favourite Quentin Tarantino film, Kill Bill. Using the powers of his magical throbbing wand, Harry attracted a trio of kick arse, action women to complete his outfit.  Sadly, Potter never truly achieved anything but local notoriety on his tiny island due to developing an addiction to coconut cocktails, eventually losing his fortune and becoming a homeless alcoholic that slept in the park and made outrageous claims to strangers about being a wizard.

 

 

Santa Slay

Santa kicks arse!

 

Santa Claws is Coming to Town by Alice Cooper with scenes form the movie Santa Slay.  If you feel the need to know more about Santa and his gang of evil helpers you can read a previous years blog post on the subject here.

Pulp Valentines

The Dark Side of the Rainbow

The Wizard of Oz:  A girl named Dorothy is transported to a magical land where she kills the first person she encounters.  She teams up with three other outcasts to kill again.  The court case would be: Exhibit A, one farmhouse.  Exhibit B, one bucket of water....  Dorothys' gang consisted of:  a heartless, ax-wielding android;  A deceitful, bipedal, sentient lion; a mentally unsound, rag-faced, shambling horror; and Dorothy herself, a foreigner intent on impressing her beliefs through violence on the local communities.

 

Then there's Glinda the Narcissistic Witch of the North. She floats in near the beginning of the adventure all smiles, and magic superpowers and insisting on wearing a crown.  But one wonders where was she during all the bad stuff?  Was she floating around in the clouds watching the whole series of unfortunate events? Dorothy had the slippers to take her home form the beginning, did Glinda make her go through all that trouble for her own amusement?  Or was she just to inconsiderate to bother telling her anything useful about them right away?
 

 

Glinda is not quite the good witch she paints herself to be, at best she's self-involved and inconsiderate of others. At worst she's a sadist who enjoys watching others suffering until she decides to come in and save the day, so she can bask in their adoration.

The hanging munchkinsdebacle.

One of the legends of The Wizard of Oz film is that one of the munchkins hanged himself on the set and his body can bee seen  at the end of the scene where the Tin man joins Dorothy and the Scarecrow.  Other versions of this story involve a stage hand or the daughter of one of the producers.  The other side of the story is that many exotic birds were borrowed from the LA zoo for filming and were everywhere throughout the set causing unexpected background movements.

 

There's various footage all over you tube (including some faked dead munchkin footage), the most recent addition to the story is that the DVD has had the munchkin digitally edited and replaced with a bird so only the VHS version from the mid 80's has the dead munchkin in it, making it all a big cover up by the studio.

 

The thing here is, that as much as I would like there to be a dead munchkin swaying back and forth while Judy Garland and her companions sing and dance by, I actually remember seeing the bird when I watched it as a kid.  It seems crazy but at times I seem to have a disturbingly good long term memory.  The Wizard of OZ was on every year when I was young, my school music teachers would tell us to watch it and I remember the bird spreading its wings. I think we're talking 1979, 1980 and 1981 here, which pre-dates the distribution of the movie on VHS where all the brujha began.

One of the things that keeps this story circulating (aside from some people believing absolutely anything) is that many workers were losing their jobs at the studio at that time, and there was a make-up artist who committed suicide and is believed to have worked on the film. But  this was not in the middle of the studio and was after the close of production.

 

Aside form any pendulums made of dead munchkins, if you really feel like a head spin, try playing Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album with the movie and seeing how the songs seem to match up with the scenes.   It really works, it gives the whole thing a very unsettling vibe.  Despite the rainbow on the cover of the album, various members of Pink Floyd have denied that they wrote the album while watching The Wizard of Oz or that they were inspired by the movie at all. But eerily it does match up...  Here's the how to: start the album at the third lion’s roar in the MGM movie title right before the film starts. Alternatively if you don’t want to try it old school yourself at home, here’s the you tube version. You'll be surprised at how suspiciously the songs match up with what's happening in the coinciding scene. Go on try it.

 

 

At risk of being a spoil sport, here's what is actually happening: your brain is designed to seek associations between various stimulus, so you automatically hone in on, and identify, any coincidental similarities between the music and the visual.  It just so happens that The Dark Side of the Moon and The Wizard of Oz have an extraordinary number of these coinciding similarities.

 

 

Predator’s Coming Out

 Oddly the story of Predator starts with Silvester Stallone. Following the release of Rocky IV, a joke was making rounds in Hollywood that since Rocky Balboa had run out of earthly opponents, he would have to fight an alien if a fifth instalment. Screenwriters Jim and John Thomas wrote the Predator screenplay based on the joke, originally with Stallone in mind for the part. Originally titled Hunter, it featured one commando facing off against the alien, taking inspiration from both Rocky and Rambo.  It was picked up by 20th Century Fox in 1985, and turned over Joel Silver and Lawrence Gordon to produce.

 

Silver and Gordon approached Arnold Schwarzenegger for the lead role.  Schwarzenegger liked the combination of action/sci-fi/horror but felt the script would be more believable if it was a team of commandos, so the script was re-written.  Jean-Claude Van Damme was originally cast as the alien, however, on the set Van Damme behaved like a whiny little bitch, constantly complaining that the costume was too clumsy and too hot and he was going to pass out. He also repeatedly winged about not be appearing on camera without the suit. Van Damme was removed from the film and replaced by Kevin Peter Hall.

 

Regardless of how much you liked the movie or not, it is one revelation that will change your whole perspective on the Predator movie and that it: The Predator movie is a gay coming out movie. The alien in the movie represents the characters latent feelings and getting killed by it is a metaphor for coming out of the closet.  I'm not even going to get into how all the guns are handled and fired from the hip.  The Predator symbolises the spectre of the company of mens suppressed homosexual feelings, which is lurking there unseen, waiting to emerge when they are away from their masculine peers.  Arnies character spends the most time with the only woman in the film and consequently is the only one who doesn't get killed by the alien and metaphorically come out of the closet. Covering himself in mud to mask his body heat and hide from the alien he symbolically conceals his true feelings by conforming to match his environment.

 

 

Now try watching it again with that idea stuck in your head.

 

Chewbacca Gets Dissed

I've got mixed feelings about the recent news of Disney buying Lucas Films and planning a seventh Star Wars Film.  The good news is there will be another Star Wars film, the bad news is the risk that it gets disneyfied.  On the other hand Disney already owns Marvel and they are doing an OK job and not dumbing down that too much. I'm just hoping we don't end up being delivered a movie like Jar Jar Prince of the Galaxy with ewoks flying X-wings or something just as tragic.

Anyway I realised something about the medal ceremony at the end of the original A New Hope.  At the ceremony Luke and Han get awarded medals and Chewbacca is standing there getting nothing.

See even in the free republic wookiees are still classed as pets, just a notch above droids.  At least Darth Vaders plan included freeing all people in slavery.

Liam Neeson Can't Win

Butchs Shining Axe

There's something distinctly Charles Manson cultish about the LP cover Swing That Gospel Axe by Butch Yelton and Upbound.

The Closer you look the creepier their smiles get.  Brings to mind The Shining movie based on Stephen Kings novel of the same name.

A film which was also the inspiration for this cuckoo clock by Chris Dimino.

Each hour the Jack Nicholson doll bursts through the door accompanied by his line "Here's Johnny" and the screams of Shelly Duvall.

Too bad it's a one off piece, I want one of those.  Here's Chris Diminos web site if you'd like to see what other arty things he has done.

Carry On Card Games

I have no idea what this LP is called nor who sings on it.  But it's awesome.

 

The kid reminds me of that old camp English comic actor Kenneth Williams.

Kenneth Williams had an impressive career consisting of 41 films, 22 televison programs, 17 stage plays, 13 radio shows, 6 books and 2 music albums.  Williams became good friends with playwright Joe Orton and had holidays with both Orton and Kenneth Halliwell in Morocco untill the day after he sold Halliwell a hammer.

Xmas Movie

I think said mostly everything I wanted to about Santa in last years post.  Except that Santa gives more and better presents to rich kids than he does to poor kids.

Here's something you can think about when you sit down to eat your Christmas pudding:

That's what the sequel should be.

My Little Skeletor

Mari Kasurienen is an artist who predominantly sculpts my little ponies, but good ones.

It was the My Little Skeletor that caught my eye first and I must say, I quite like it. She sculpts all sorts of Little Ponies (as well as other works) taking her inspiration from just about any pop culture image that takes her fancy at the time.

Here's her website:
www.marikasurinen.com

Zombie Alert Meter

This groundbreaking Zombie Alert Meter from OMFGzombies is designed to give you accurate information about current worldwide zombie infection levels.

Stay alert with the OMFGZOMBIES Zombie Alert Meter (ZAM). Currently it updates every 1/2 an hour, ensuring you can take appropriate precautions when leaving the safety of your home.

Lacking the sensual enthral of the vampire or the animal sex-appeal of the werewolf, zombies are very much the unwanted aged pensioners of the supernatural world.  The true zombie tradition originated in the Congo and was brought to Haiti by slaves.

Creating a zombie follows a process where a voodoo houngan creates a special powdery toxin that contains large amounts of tetrodotoxin from puffer fish.  The toxin in this powder is absorbed through touch contact.  After the victim is declared dead and buried, the houngan unearths the victim a few days later in ritual involving a second powder of hallucinogens. Between the brain damage from the first drug, being buried alive, then ritualistically dragged from the grave and the effects of the second drug, the victim was more or less stripped of their intellect and self-will.  Doomed to more or less behave like an undesirable aged pensioner.

The first ever zombie movie was White Zombie in 1932 staring Bela Lugosi and was a film interpretation of a stage play.  But it was George Romero's 1968 classic Night of the Living Dead that spawned the zombie film genre.  A genre which has lead to such great titles as: Chopper Chicks in Zombie Town, Nudist Colony of the Dead, Space Zombie Bingo, Zombie Ninja Gangbangers, Zombie vs. Mardi Gras, Psycho Zombie Love Butcher and not forgetting The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies.

A complete list of every zombie movie ever made (and some upcoming ones) is at The Zombie Reporting Centre.