The 8bits Of Christmas

November 17, 2008 | Leave a Comment

One of my best-loved/most-linked music collectives has just decked it’s halls with glorious nostalgic lovin. 8bitpeoples.com (who you may remember from our post) has just released a Christmas Album!!! If you ever wondered what “The First Noel” would sound like played through an Atari ST system, wonder no-more… Where’s my Egg Nog?

Posted by Nostalgiaholic | Filed Under Quickies

The Avengers Movie Assembles!

November 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Unless you’ve suffered a Triffids-related spurt of blindness recently (along with deafness and general anti-social-er-ness) you’ve probably noticed that comic book superheroes have taken over our movie theaters. Every couple of months another movie hits the big screens featuring characters and stories from Marvel comics, DC, or whatever else was around after my childhood ended. And people (myself included) are eating it up! Some are even getting that not-quite-margarine stuff from the snack bar on top and then eating it up!

It’s becoming the biggest and most lucrative genre in film, attracting big name actors and actresses in leading roles, and generating massive cash in ticket sales, merchandise and DVD sales. More money means sequels, hell, every successful comic movie HAS to have at least three movie installments. The Blade series was cool and made lots of money. The Spiderman series was cooler and flashier and made more money. The Dark Knight was so cool and made such mad money that dollar bills are actually being put into circulation with Batman’s face on ‘em.

I for one think it’s freakin cool too see our childhood heroes and villains come to big shiny life. Well, they did kinda screw up the Fantastic Four…. but they were so vanilla, no-body liked ‘em anyway. Now there is always a twitch of doubt in me that the super-genre will become so bloated and convoluted (much like the early 90s DC Multiverse) that it’s heart and sense of fun will collapse under it’s own weight like old Elvis did on the can.

Take for example the phenomenon that is now, right now, taking place in the Marvel super hero movie franchise. The last two flicks, Iron Man and the Hulk were fantastically entertaining, very high quality movies, and yep, they made enough money to buy Stan Lee the whole Southern Hemisphere. A bald, eye-patched Samuel L. Jackson raps a brief skit with Robert Downey Jr. after the credits of Iron Man roll, and informs him that he (Nick Fury) and S.H.I.E.L.D. needs his armour-plated help. Then, Downey Jr. crashes the last scene of the Hulk movie to indicate that he and his associates are “putting a team together” and they are interested in getting some pumped-up, possibly green, backup.

By Krom I thought, they’re trying to fuse Marvel’s Blockbuster movie universes into one giant SUPER MOVIE !!!

So it didn’t take more than a couple seconds of fanboy hyperventilation to pass before I had checked the movie blog scene and sure enough, everyone seemed to be thinking the same damn thing : The Avengers.

Time to nerd out : The Avengers are a team of superheroes that started in the Golden Age of the early 60s under the moniker of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes”. The team has included such legendary comic heroes as Captain America, Iron Man, the Hulk, Spiderman, Thor and have made appearances in pretty much every single Marvel comic series at one time or another. This army of super-people have spend 40 years recruiting, beating-up, or encountering literally every single character in the Marvel universe and beyond. And now Hollywood is gonna give us the whole cosmic burrito on the big screen to devour in an hour and a half ? Now you can see where I’m a little skeptical… But don’t lose heart true believers, let’s examine the facts.

Avengers Movie Facts Assemble !

The stage had been set for The Avengers after the conclusion of both Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk movies. Both Robert Downey Jr. and Edward Norton are looking good for sequels, and the rumours of an Avenger’s movie starts taking shape.
Marvel comics have made a deal with Paramount Studios to distribute their next five flicks, and hot dang ! They are moving fast to fill the Avengers roster! Check the Article HERE.
A Thor movie is set for release July 16th 2010.
Captain America follows May 6th 2011, there is no word on casting for either movie.
Screenwriter Zak Penn is hired to write the script for an Avengers movie, which looks to be released in the far distant future of July 2011. Jon Favreau (director of Iron Man) will be executive producer.
Director Joe Johnston (I can’t believe that’s his real name) has been chosen to direct what is now being called The First Avenger: Captain America.

So we know that the Avengers movie lineup will include the dufey-yet-lovable American Icon as leader (hopefully played by Will Smith please?), the billionaire industrialist as devil’s advocate, a Norse Playgirl model with a magic hammer, and according to IGN’s Article the Hulk as their meditationaly-impaired nemesis. Who else will join the team ? Ant Man and The Wasp were the other original members when they first battled the Hulk and Loki waaaaaaaaaay back in issue Numba 1 (Sept. 1963). The Falcon maybe ? How about The Scarlet Witch ? She was pretty cool. Gawd I hope they don’t use Hawkeye… I always thought he was kind of silly.

So yeah, do you think this movie will rock or what…?

It seems like a no-brainer for a summer cash cow: Take at least three HUGE names in Hollywood, let ‘em play out some Nostalgic banter for the fanboys, arm them with the latest CGI and let ‘em loose on each other for an hour and a half of completely mindless awesome. Yeah like I said, the only thing that bugs me is that with such a short time to build story in-between massive special effects battles, that our beloved heroes may not get the development they deserve. I dunno, however it may go, I’m gonna be obsessively collecting the bits of info that dribble from the keyboards of movie blog nerds, and counting down the days till I can watch my childhood heroes scream “Avengers Assemble” on the big screen.

Five Characters I Wanna See In The Avengers Movie

Numba 5 - Loki (played by Cillian Murphy)

Thor’s trouble-making half brother will undoubtedly make an appearance in the Thor movie, but I hope he sticks around to cause more chaos after being beaten by Asgardian beefcake. He was always a classic Avengers villain (taking part in their first adventure), and would be a perfectly scheming foil for the overly-physical group of superheroes. Cillian Murphy (who played the Scarecrow in Batman Begins) has got the perfect evil, twitchy, and enigmatic personality to bring this mischief God to life.

Numba 4 - The Vision (played by Doug Jones and voiced by Hugo Weaving)

The Vision is one of the most prominent Avengers to come out of the 70s, though originally he was a pre-Marvel character that was resurrected and given a face lift. He’s an android who has the ability to fly, shoot beams of Gee-Wiz from his forehead and re-configure the molecules of his body so he can move through walls and people’s vital organs. I always had this idea in my head that this classic Avengers member would be a cross between Christopher Reeve and C3P0 from Star Wars… Really smart, eloquent, Nimble and sporting a bit of an accent.

Numba 3 - She-Hulk (played by Eva Mendez)

Many of the Golden Age heroes are dudes, so the movie has the potential to turn into a complete sausage-fest. What we need a little (or should I say BIG) heroine presence on-screen. Bruce Banner’s cousin Jen gets a transfusion (like just about every character in the Incredible Hulk movie) and turns into a green-skinned female version of the Hulk. Eva’s got the look and the attitude to pull off this wise-cracking ass-kicking amazon, with a little help from some creative camera angles and some green body paint. Watch out Captain Kirk… Rawwwwr.

Numba 2 - The Black Panther (played by Djimon Hounsou)

Also, with so much cosmic this and gamma rays that filling up the roster, it’d be nice to have a couple of people who’s super power is to just plain kick ass. The Black Panther stalked into the Avengers comics around about the same time the Vision did, and became just as integral a character. The king of a fictional African nation, T’Challa is a brilliant humanitarian by day, and a stealthy heroic assassin by night. Hounsou is totally ripped enough to be an action hero, and has that effortless intensity that’ll do justice to one of my favorite superheroes.

Besides, can you imagine how hilarious it’d be when Robert Downey Jr.’s smart ass Iron Man asks ‘Panther to point to his country on a map and all he gets back is a cold stare… Classic.

Numba 1 - Ultron (all CGI baby, voiced by Jeremy Irons)

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I truly believe that Ultron is THE villain to use in The Avengers movie. He’s got the classic villain bio, and a back-story that’ll easily fit into a feature film (robot goes nuts, wants to kill humans, done). As an added bonus he’s intimately tied to the lives of many of the Avengers already like Ant Man, and The Vision. Jeremy Irons could pass his pure-evil baritone voice through a synthesizer to give it just enough Daft Punk crackle ‘n pop, and you’ve got one intimidating reason why humans shouldn’t play God.

Much love.

Posted by Nostalgiaholic | Filed Under Comics, Film & TV

Remembering Armistice Day

November 11, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Kurt Vonnegut from Breakfast of Champions (1973):

“I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day.

When I was a boy… all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another.

I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ Day is not.
So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things…”

Posted by Toni | Filed Under Quickies

On The Road With Missouri Jeff

November 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment

I’ve always wanted to ride the boxcars…

Just like Marcus Carl Franklin did in that new Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There (fantastic movie, must see). I’d Hang my legs out in the wind, chew on dried straw, and watch the dust of rural America sparkle in the sun like fool’s gold. God, I can almost taste the grits and hear the harmonica moaning in the autumn twilight.

Okay, maybe it’s a tad unrealistic for this day ‘an age, but it’s been a dream of mine all the same. Ever since I read Jack Kerouac’s opus On The Road, or maybe it was my first real meal over an open fire…. either way, this fantasy stuck in my mind like shredded rubber on hot asphalt.

The “Beats” or “Beatniks” lived the dream in the early 50s, bumming around the continent with nothing but a joint and a prayer, going from one town to the next in backseats and buses. Guys like Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Ken Kesey, and the mercurial Neal Cassady brought the road to life in story, paint and verse, chronicling their adventures in America’s underbelly. These guys would go on to inspire the great artists of the sixties with their “halfway between beat-down and beaterific” point of view and effortless road-worn cool. Bob Dylan, The Band, and Jazz musicians like Lester Young and countless others used the Beat’s stories of the road to form the soundtrack to the great early-American counterculture… But we’re getting pretty far out here, lets get back on the road with a guy named Missouri Jeff.

Missouri Jeff is not a person I know personally, I’ve never met him, in fact, for all I know he may very well have passed on years ago. What little I know of him, I know from speaking with Crystal’s dad Jim (who could easily write his own On The Road with all the stories he’s picked up hitchhiking and grifting around the 60s ‘n 70s). Jim’s innate talent for finding the most “off the map” bars , and infallible gift for gab have led him to some interesting late night, whiskey-soaked encounters with people who always, and I mean always have a great story to tell. One such person was Missouri Jeff.

Here’s the story Verbatim :

“Missouri Jeff was a guy I met in California back in the seventies. Big beard, scarecrow hat and walking stick, really dug the whole “Bohemian pilgrim” thing. He’d left his wife and kids in a Gaugin-style sabbatical to the southern states ten years ago in search of crossroad revelations, and it ended up he couldn’t play guitar worth a damn. So this guy couldn’t busk, he just shined money off suckers in little towns and lived off baked beans and God-knows-what on the edges of the highways. Never slept in a bed, never ate a real meal, just did his business in town long enough to buy a few beers at the pub and made his way out into the dark. Sometimes he’d leave for a couple months on end… he’d follow the mushrooms north or ’somethin. Town to town just like that… He would always come back though, Jeff was addicted to his chosen lifestyle. He’d done it for so long that he’d forgotten what 9-5 life was like… That was Jeff.”

When Jim told me this story, he was holding a walking stick that he later gave to me as a Birthday present. Of course, this walking stick once belonged to the aforementioned Missouri Jeff, I know ’cause his name is carved into it, and it bears his trademark partridge feather tied to it with leather cord.

I’m holding this stick now as I type. I think about the Beats and their freedom, their loneliness, and their legacy as harbingers of of the Flower Generation. I wonder what Jeff thought about while he ate his tin beans out under the stars by some abandoned one-day-might-be-strip mall on the edge of town. Was he humming Charlie Parker and reading Nietzsche by firelight, dreaming of Mexican summers and revolution…? Or was he just cold and lonely…? I hope the road cared for him like it did for Bob Dylan and me in my dream.

Everything on the Beat Generation you ever needed to know can be found at The Beat Generation Archives.

Much love.

Five Books On the Beat Generation You Have to Dig

Jack Kerouac : On The Raod The great granddaddy of all road literature! Take the ride with Sal Paradise through America’s heartland.

Jack Kerouac : The Darmha Bums I loved Naked Lunch (by fellow Beat William Burroughs)as much as the next guy, but The Darmha Bums‘ focus on road life and philosophy completes my vision of the beat lifestyle better than Burrough’s black Opium trip.

Alan Ginsberg : Howl The essential Beat poetry masterpiece, have a read of the complete poem HERE.

Aldous Huxley : The Doors Of Perception Cited as a great inspiration for the late 50s Beat poets and musicians, mainly for it’s early psychedelic imagery.

Tom Wolfe : The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Written a decade later than the rest, this epic drug-fueled chronicle of years on the road with Ken Kesey’s “Merry Pranksters” showcases the end result of the Beat’s social revolution. It also acts as a smoldering epitaph for the legendary Neal Cassady.

Five Songs about Life on The Road

Bob Dylan : Tangled Up In Blue A brilliant song that plays out like chapters from Kerouac’s books, but it’s all Dylan’s patented wordplay.

The Grateful Dead : Truckin The perfect soundtrack to an Acid-Test, y’know why ? ‘Cause they were there man… they were there.

Tom Waits : Jack and Neil Yep, Tom’s a huge On The Road fan.

CCR : Proud Mary Years after the Beats hug up their worn loafers, their spirit and stories inspired generations of ‘travelin bands like CCR (who were actually from San Fran, contrary to their Bayou sound) who beat their way down the Mississippi.

JJ Cale : Just about any song he’s ever recorded…

Posted by Nostalgiaholic | Filed Under Culture, Uncategorized

Top Ten Cheesy Halloween Horror Movies

November 3, 2008 | Leave a Comment

I know I just popped off a top ten movie list, but with “Trick or Treaters” practically on our doorstep, I figured it’s time to address a serious (and yet not-so-serious) problem I, and I imagine many other people deal with on Halloween night. So here we go…

Does this sound familiar ? It’s Halloween night, way past 11pm. All the costumed kids and their bored-yet-doting parents have retired for the night to pick through their pillow cases full of foil wrapped sugar bits and mini candy bars. You’ve been out at a Halloween Costume party (congratulations on first place btw), and now that the novelty of seeing all your co-workers dressed like other people has worn off and no amount of Pumpkin-Coladas is gonna make ‘em more interesting. So, your heading home early this year and just as you pass the Midnight Movie Barn you have an epiphany !

“It’s Halloween right !!??? Why don’t I rent some scary movies and settle down to some popcorn and beer?”
Great idea ! There’s only one problem… Everyone in town had that idea three days ago, and the entire “Horror” section has been picked clean. No Shining, no Rosemary’s Baby… Poltergeist ? Nope. What about Friday the 13th or one of the Nightmare on Elm Street flicks ? Nada. All the big names in true horror are AWOL and all that’s left is the scraps, the sequels and the silliness.

Don’t panic! You don’t need to go home empty-handed, and you certainly don’t need to cruise the “New Arrivals” section for this year’s batch of slick-up MTV grossness, cheap “gotcha”-horror and torture films. This Halloween you’re gonna un-earth a bunch of gems amidst the rotting corpses of Hollywood’s horror past. That’s right, dare to rent the stupid, the weird, and the so completely un-necessary-that-they’re-amazingly-hilarious films that we’re puked out between the 70s and late 80s. They may not be the scariest bunch of monsters to prowl our subconscious, but they may just be the most entertaining, and nostalgic.

So lets see what’s left on the racks tonight…

Numba 10 - Halloween 3 : Season Of the Witch (1982)

Having absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the Michael Myers-Halloween movies will probably assure that this is the only disc left on the shelves, and for good reason. The plot centers around a conspiracy of evil Irish people trying to murder children on Halloween night with explosive mystical masks (St. Patrick trying to eliminate holiday competition perhaps?), so if it doesn’t scare you, it’ll at least get you in a festive frame of mind. Don’t expect a coherent ending though, I was 16 or something when I saw it originally and I’m still trying to figure out what happened.

Numba 9 - Once Bitten (1985)

Oh my God is that Jim Carrey!!!???
Yeah, this one is pretty 80s-’tacular and wears it’s teen-romance influences on it’s day-glo sleeve. Jim Carrey (sorry I don’t remember his character’s name, I was too blown away that it was him) runs around the 80s acting like Ferris Bueller, infiltrating ancient vampiric cults, indulging in bad slapstick, and tries desperately to get laid. He gets lucky with the wrong 80s-esque Beverley Hills blond Vampire and spends the rest of his high school graduation having nightmares that he’s Bela Lagosi. Imagine if National Lampoon did The Hunger and you’ve kinda got the gist of this nutball horror/comedy…. And oh yeah, be prepared for both a hilariously bad dance and chase scene.

Numba 8 - Munchies (1987)

If you can find this one then you are either very lucky or very desperate, because no-body I know ever heard of it, let alone watched it as I did at age ten. If you liked Gremlins, then… errr, well this is kinda like that, but with more burp and fart jokes. These little monsters with mohawks that reproduce when they’re cut in half go on a rampage around an 80s desert town, doing 80s things, and killing 80s people in unusual and funny ways. A whole lot of pop-culture referencing, beer and cheetos-consuming, and kitchen-equipment-mutilating ensues. Oh, and there’s a great pool table sketch that rivals the Steven Segal scene in Hard To Kill for pure bad-assness.

Numba 7 - Creepshow (1982)

For those of us with pathetically short attention spans, this movie is actually five separate little episodes connected by a theme of 50s pulp-inspired animated weidness, and get this, directed and masterminded by Horror Icons George A. Romero and Steven King. The budget for this flick may have been small, but the acting and storytelling is spot on, and the result is actually really entertaining! I particularly liked the first, second and last stories. Bugs, blood and alien grass, what more do ya want ? The sequel is equally classic and entertaining.

Numba 6 - Sugar Hill (1974

No, not the 90s Gangsta flick starring Wesley “receivership blows” Snipes, I’m talking about the original 70s Blaxsploitation-Zombie flick starring some Pam Grier knockoff with the tag line : “She’s sweet as sugar… with a voodoo army of the undead!“. That bit alone is gold.
If you are fortunate (or un-fortunate) enough to actually find this one (or others of the Hilariously-titled 70s Black-Horror genre like: Blackula, Blackenstein, or Dr. Black and Brother Hyde) on the rental shelves, snatch the sucka up and get it home. Get your ass on that couch and press play… What will follow may very well be the single most ridiculously inspiring or painful night of your life. Sugar Hill is fittingly populated by all the classic Blaxploitation characters like pimps, ho’s, ‘workin men, beebops, etc. plus a crew of buggy-eyed zombie bothas ‘n sistahs to give it a more Halloween-like atmosphere. What really made it Numba 6 for me though, was Don Pedro Colley’s performance as the whacked-out, top-hatted Voodoo death God, Baron Samedi.

Numba 5 - Dawn of The Dead (1978)

More zombies…? You betcha ! Nothing says Halloween to me more than hordes of dead-eyed shuffling corpses with bad makeup and a ravenous hunger for intestines.

My personal favorite of the original George A. Romero zombie series of movies, Dawn… takes place after the first flick when zombies have become an epidemic that even the military cannot control. A handful of survivors hide out in an abandoned shopping mall and learn to live amongst the walking dead, bikers, each other, and that tinny soft jazz that’s always playing at the food court…. God I hate that.
Awesomest Zombie Ever!

Dawn… is definitely the cheesiest of the first series, utilizing a washed-out cartoony 70s colour palate, some bad dialogue, and way too much plot-time running around a mall pushing over mobility-imparied undead people. As a laugh bonus, this flim includes the silliest zombie character in all of cinema: The Hare Krishna Zombie! I could watch this guy try to shuffle up a fire escape all day, but I’m afraid I’d rupture a kidney from laughing so hard.

Numba 4 - The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)

This movie has absolutely none of the focused psychological intensity of the first Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I think Leatherface lost it all in a poker game with Freddy Kruger. What he did retain was the brutal gore that goes along with using a chainsaw as a murder implement, and strangely, a new found sense of humor and even… fun? Yep, this time around the Cannibal clan kills in the name of a good ‘ol fashioned sense of adventure and black comedy, dispacting their victims in ironically gruesome fashions (catch phrase in tow) to provoke a groan of mirth as much as horror. Everything Rob Zombie knows about directing horror movies, he got from this flick.
Anyway, enough about plot, all you need to know about this movie is this… Denis Hopper fights Leatherface in a two-fisted chainsaw dual. Yeeeeehah ! Now go rent it !

Numba 3 - Slumber Party Massacre 2 (1987)

First two Zombie movies, then two sequels with “Massacre” in the title… Weird.
The first Slumber Party Massacre was never really more than a chance to splatter blood all over some T&A, and this flick proudly carries on that tradition as well as adding a sense of surreal “I can’t believe they just did that” fun (much like movie Numba 4, what is it with sequels ?). The stupid, kitschy fun is personified by the movie’s antagonist, the hilariously named “Driller Killer”. Not a guy content to just kill his victims, he intends to entertain them (and us) by singing like Buddy Holly, dancing like a heavily medicated John Travolta, and weilding a giant Gene Simmons-esque guitar with a huge drill attached to the neck. Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n Roll !!!

Numba 2 -They Live (1988)

If you thought the bit about Dennis Hopper back in Numba 4 was keen, get this: They Live stars ancient kilt-wearing and beer drinking WWF wrestler Roddy Piper as a vigilante bent on saving the world from zombie aliens with the help of his magic sunglasses. There’s an almost- ten minute fight scene for no reason at all!!! And just when you think this flick can’t get any stranger, Piper busts into a bank full of bad guys and bystanders, with a shotgun, in broad daylight to utter the most magnificent line in action movie history:

“I have come here to chew bubblegum, and kick ass !!! And I’m all out of bubblegum.”

What can beat that you ask…? How about some sweet transvestite Transylvanian lovin…?

Numba 1 - The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975)

The Rocky Horror picture Show is by far the most recognized midnight matinee movie of all time, and a tradition for everyone I know on Halloween (My buddy Matt did the Time Warp, true story). Sure it’s a musical (and I HATE musicals), sure it’s got a storyline only perverts and emo kids understand, and sure you have to watch Tim Curry’s junk bounce about in a garter belt, but damnitt there is just something infectiously fun lurking in the guts of this bizarre cult masterpiece!

I won’t even bother explaining the plot, there aren’t many people in the English speaking world that haven’t seen it on late night TV, or been dragged to one of the worldwide Satanic midnight gatherings to see, and dance and sing with it on the big screen. This movie differs from all the others on the list because it not only parodies horror films, but understands them, and presents them in such a way that we accept every atrocity… murder, re-animation, tranvestitism, Meat Loaf as an actor, as simply a part of a hedonistic theatrical experience. This movie is like David bowie on crack, the ultimate costume cocktail party, the quintessential monster movie, but campy, stupid and fun… In short, the perfect cheesy Halloween horror movie.
Happy Halloween, and Much Love.

Posted by Nostalgiaholic | Filed Under Film & TV