The Road Warrior

  Just watched "Mad Max' and "The Road Warrior" this afternoon- GOD, what classic movies! When I was a senior in High School, Mad Max and its sequel were two of my favorite movies, and even today they're still in my top 40 movies of all time! Though I first taped it off the Television, I soon owned copies of it on Beta, later VHS, and later even Laserdisc, luckily for my viewing pleasure, I've now got both of 'em on DVD!
   I'd actually seen The Road Warrior BEFORE Mad Max- It was shown on Television one night, and as a high school student who had recently become a huge fan of the Sci-Fi Fantasy magazine HEAVY METAL, this Post-Apocalyptic  Masterpiece seemed liked  the epics storylines I was reading coming straight to life in vibrant, bloody, gory colors! 

This epic battle between the white-robed “good guys” (looking like Bethlehemic devout worshippers):

 ...and the “bad guys” (looking like Zulu steampunk tribesmen) over the gasoline of the world was like seeing "Star Wars" again for the first time- this imaginative take of the dystopian future of our society  rocked my world! 

I mean, crap, the visuals ALONE could have been taken straight out of the Science Fiction  stories I read- (just look at how picturesque and stimulating these scenes are!) -Add together the story of Max's rise out of the ashes to a more heroic redemption through helping those in need, and you've got a movie of EPIC proportions!

The Road Warrior's look was reminiscent of the cult classic David Carradine movie Deathrace2000, artistic and mysterious "cars of death" figure strongly in BOTH flicks, and they both even featured cult fave Mary “Eating Raoul” Woronov as super-cool warrior chicks! 

The climax of the movie is, of course, the famous scene where Max drives the gasoline tanker out of the city and is set upon by the punk Vultures who have to stop him at any cost, and my GOSH, did this BLOW ME AWAY! One of the most visually dynamic and engaging scenes EVER, I was on the edge of my seat and holding my breath til it was all over! When I ended I remember looking around the living room screaming HOLY CRAP THAT WAS AWESOME!!!!

I was fortunate to have had the VHS recorder running on that one, so I was able to watch it over and over, and the more I watched and rewatched that movie, the more intrigued I became to see the "origin" of Max, and so off to the Video Rental store I went, to FINALLY see the original MAD MAX movie! 
  I thought Mad Max would be as bizarre and abstract as Road Warrior, but what I got was a more down-to-earth toned film, with the family man Max living his life with wife and child, caring workmates and best friends.  

Though I'd already heard the story from the opening of "Road Warrior", I was fascinated to realize that this humble, soft spoken man:

...would become this dusty, detached loner in subsequent flicks:

But as you watched the movie, you saw how this man named Max, working for the futuristic MFP force, clashed with the motorcycle soldiers of "the Toecutter" til they took everything of joy he had, leaving him with nothing but a burning desire for vengeance. 

By the time he's hunted down and killed all the gang members, you see that the man known as Max Rockatansky is gone, transformed forever into the Road Warrior we now know!

 In the mid-2000's, they finally got around to releasing both of those classics on DVD, and here's where the confusing times came for me- 
  ONE: Mad Max was recorded with the ORIGINAL Australian voices, so for the first time, the dialog coming out of the characters' mouths were really "matching" and sounded a lot less "robotic" and more warm! But I gotta say, after 15+ years of watching the movie dubbed, it was JARRING to watch, and quite frankly when I watch it even today, in my head I still hear the "Hollywood" dubbed version! Perhaps I'll never get used to it!
  TWO: The opening dialog for The Road Warrior, with an aged "Feral Kid" croaking out the narration, was SO DIFFERENT from the television dubbed copy I had! The timing and flavor was SO weird...truthfully, I REALLY don't like the version on the DVD and WISH I could get a copy with the Television Version dialog!!!
 Ah, so much problems with the Post-Apocalytic Society going digital, I tell ya....

Dreadstar Revisited

Back in Intermediate School, I had a friend who was a BIG fan of the Jim Starlin strip "Metamorphosis Odyssey" in EPIC Magazine, and through him I learned the basics of the anti-hero Vanth Dreadstar and his mystical sword of power. When Epic decided to branch off into a comics line and one of the flagship titles was going to be new adventures starrring Dreadstar, I jumped at the opportunity to get in at a "jumping off point"!

 Well, I LOVED that comic throughout all my years in High School, (being a bi-monthly book, it had only reached 26 issues by the time I graduated) but by the time Dreadstar moved onto FIRST comics (after Epic Comics shuttered its doors)  with its first issue numbered at "27" to continue the Epic Comics storyline, I had largely moved onto other things. New writers and strips filled my time, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Los Bros Hernandez were all things I was more into, so my Dreadstar collection got put away, only to be visited from time to time when I felt nostalgic.

 Well, one of those nostalgic times came this past month, I took out all 27 of my beloved Dreadstar  issues and re-read them again from start to finish. Man, they still hold up after all this time, and in fact, looking at it as an adult I can see how much the storylines and artwork have influenced MY storytelling style and art!  Amazing, they're still as good as I remember them!
In fact, I made me curious as to how the FIRST Comic line did. Like I said, I only bought issue #27 (since it was the conclusion to a story started in the Epic Line) but didn't venture further.  I remember reading that Jim Starlin passed off his writing and art duties to others anyway, so there wasn't much reason to check it out.. but how many fo those issues DID he do before handing ove rthe reins?
Going online and doing a bit of research, i was stunned to find dthat Starlin had done a  good 11+ more issues- these were issues I NOW wanted to read very badly!
 I made a quick trip to online comic store sellers Lone Star Comics, and was happy to see they had ALL the Starlin penned issues I was missing, issues 28 all the way to 38 (though not the final issues of the last story, issues 39 and 40, which Starlin wrote, but didn't illustrate) so I didn't waste time sending in that order!
  Just today, my shipment arrived, and I have to tell you, it's pretty freaking exciting seeing all these "new" Jim Starlin illustrated Dreadstar covers! Can't wait to read them and catch up on the years I'd been away! along with my order, i'd also picked up a new collection  of Dreadstar collection ALL of his old  Metamorphosis Odyssey stories form Epic Magazine so I'm Totally gonna be in Dreadstar Heaven this weekend!
  After reading al of these, who knows? I may even be excited enough to check out the issues that came AFTER Jim Starlin's departure- Peter David scribed those issues, and I DO love his work on X-Factor and that classic run on the HULK- so best to never say never!!

Wait Until Dark

  

Just finished watching the 1969 Movie “Wait Until Dark” again, and MAN! I’d forgotten how GOOD it was! Audrey Hepburn is one of my very favorite actresses, and this was the very FIRST movie I’d ever seen her in! I had no idea how much I would come to love her later when seeing her in movies like “Breakfast At Tiffany’s”, “Roman Holiday” or “Love In The Afternoon”, but it was her role as blind Susy Hendrix where I first discovered how awesome she was and prompted me to seek out all her other movies!

Audrey Hepburn as Susy Hendrix in Wait Until Dark

  I had been talking to a friend about Audrey (having just recently rewatched the aforementioned “Breakfast at Tiffany’s’) and he mentioned Wait Until Dark. “You Know”, I sheepishly admitted, “though I love Audrey and have quite a few of her movies, Wait Until Dark is one the that I didn’t own on DVD! I did own a VHS copy of the movie  I dubbed off TV years ago, but my VHS player has seen some better days, and I’m not even sure the tape would have played at this point! I decided right then that I HAD to get a proper copy of this classic movie!

  Good old Amazon- not only did I find a seller who was selling it for a very reasonable price, the shipping was free and arrived at my doorstep within the week! As SOON as I got that package in the mail, I immediately popped it in my DVD player and sat down to catch up on the movie! Like I said, I was blown away by how good it was even after all this time,  Audrey as perfect as ever, and one other element I’d forgotten about was how freakin’ awesome ALAN ARKIN was in this movie, playing the role of the oily and VERY sinister Roat!

Alan Arkin as Roat

  I’m so used to seeing Arkin as this old curmudgeonish guy, I forgot how slick and deadly he could be! With only her sweet sensibilities to guide her, poor Audrey is put through the wringer with the ruthless killer, as he tries to track down a doll with a hidden cache of heroin in it!

 Audrey didn’t make all that many movies after this one, but what a way to go out! Not only was this Terence Stamp (he of James Bond fame) directed movie as good as any Hitchcock flick, they even got Audrey’s music scorer Henry Mancini from Breakfast at Tiffany’s back to do the music for this chiller! VERY COOL!

Samantha Jones as Lisa

PS, Who’s this Samantha Jones actress they got playing the role of doomed drug trafficker Lisa anyway? So VERY pretty in that groovy swinging sixties kind of way, but I don’t think she appeared in anything after that!

PPS: Happy Birthday, Audrey!!

My Favorite Artists Of All Time! Pt.1: Growing Up in the Seventies

I'll be writing a little bit about the artists that have meant the most to me throughout my life, at first I was gonna just blog about a favorite artist at random, but then I thought it might be fun to list them in the actual order that I first fell in love with them! So if we're going back to the beginnings of a life full of musical appreciation, we've got to start back in the 1970's, where I first fell in love with records, though back then it was more about 45's than LPs, so though I'll later focus more on Favorite Albums, for the 70's we're going back to when the Single was the mighty media of choice!

  Ever since I first heard the epic single "Band On The Run" as a wee lad back in 1973, Paul McCartney (or, rather, Paul McCartney and Wings. as the unit was called then) has been one of my very favorite artists,  every subsequent single released was met with awe and affection, from the other Band On the Run singles like Jet to the singles from albums "Venus and Mars". "At The Speed Of Sound", "London Town" and "Back To The Egg", me and my siblings bought them all!

 Paul McCartney and Wings gave me my first experience of having a "Favorite" artist, where you knew you were going to buy his newest 45 even if you hadn't heard one second of it! Simply the fact that it was PAUL MCCARTNEY was reason enough to get it, and I have to say that I've NEVER been disappointed! When I got older I would eventually venture into his amazing LP catalog, but as a young kid on a limited budget, collecting his singles was really the way to go!

They say music is the soundtrack of your life, and as far as these McCartney songs go, they're absolutely spot-on! Even listening to them now the songs remind me of specific moments in my life:

Band On The Run reminds me of my father's Workplace (and playing Kikaida with friends)...

Listen What The Man Said reminds me of swimming at Alal Moana beach Park (truthfully, many songs from the 70's do, since there was always a radio blastin' the tunes at the picnics...)

Silly Love Songs reminds me of crabbing with my Dad and little brother down at Waipahu Canal (is that place still even there, I wonder?)

Let Em In reminds me of catching butterflies at Liliokalani Elementary in Kaimuki... etc, etc! SO many memories...

 Funny that all the time growing up, it didn't matter to me that this guy was part of the world renown supergroup the Beatles, and in fact all that registered to me was that this Beatles group was just the group he had been in BEFORE creating Wings!! LOLOL

Another group that Me and my siblings really loved growing up was the Bee Gees, I guess MOST kids in the 70's did, or at least had a couple of their singles, right? But this was yet another group that whenever a new single came out, SOMEBODY in the family would come home with the 45 that week! As for me, the first song I really loved from them was "Nights On Broadway" and "Jive Talking", then when "You Should be Dancing" came out, I think that's when we realized we liked everything those Gibb Brothers were doing! In fact, the Bee Gees were one of the few groups (along with the aforementioned Paul McCartney) where we'd listen to the B sides as well, and I remember one of our favorite tracks was the B-side to You Should Be Dancing called "Subway", man we just loved this song!!!

Back in the earlier 70's the eclectic Jeff Lynne Group ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA was more my brother's favorite group than mine, he was the one who brought home their earlier singles like "Evil Woman", "Living Thing" and "Strange Magic", but when they released the pop-perfect "Sweet Talkin' Woman" , that's when the fandom switched over to me, I became SUCH a fan of their singles  after that, with songs like "Turn To Stone". Shine a Little Love" and "Last Train To London", heck even down to their later wackier projects like the XANADU releases and beyond! In fact, this is the ONE group that my childhood friends still associate with ME whenever they hear a song from them on the radio, I was THAT into them! 

Finally Checking Out "Game Of Thrones"

Well, I've been putting this off for a LONG time, but when my friend bought all three seasons of HBO's wildly popular drama Game Of Thrones and then, after watching them ALL in a few weeks, asked me if I wanted to borrow the discs, I said HELL YEAH!
  I have to say that I actually didn't know much about the show except that Sean Bean (Boromir in Lord Of The Rings) and Peter Dinklage (Station Agent as well as Bolivar Trask in the upcoming X-Men Movie) were in it. Oh, and the child king Joffrey Lannister was a spoiled, evil douchebag. Yeah, even I'D heard about HIM!
Anyway, I cautiously began watching it and HOLY HELL was it GOOD! Such awesome characters, great plots and storylines, there's just TOO MUCH going on to EVER get boring! In just THREE weeks, I'd finished watching all three seasons, and now, the sad tragic WAITING game begins! Will I try to find a way to watch Season Four online, or can I wait 'til the Season comes out on DVD? We'll see!
edit: Well, looks like I couldn't wait and so far I've been watching the Season Four episodes streaming online, LOL. Now as great quality as watching it on my Home entertainment system  on DVD, but you do what you have to when you're addicted!

Black Adder Complete DVD set!

  Most of the people in my generation remember Rowan Atkinson more for his portrayal of awesome Sir Edmund BlackAdder more than his turn as Mr Bean or as Zazu in Lion King. Man, did we love this show- all of us had these crude copies taped off the television on mouldering old VHS tapes, dreadful, dreadful quality, but much-watched and remembered.
 So I was THRILLED when I saw a BRAND NEW, spiffy BOX SET containing ALL of the Black Adder shows, specials and sequels all in one awesome set! I snatched it up, and have been re-watchign them all week. MAN, what a great show, so funny, and yet, at times very sad and touching, too. truly an original series.
 LOL, I've been reminiscing about the show to my friend, and now he wants to borrow the Box Set and watch 'em all over again, as well! looks like we'll be talking more about it soon...!

Tackling Breaking Bad

   There's been so much raves and praise for the TV series "Breaking Bad", but when my friend Jas told me that this was a drama I just HAD to see, well , that was all the recommendation i needed! As the entire series had just ended and was all available for purchase, this was the right time to get off my duff and grab 'em! Costco was selling the DVD box set containing all Six Seasons for about 180.00, but when I realized I could buy the individual Seasons on DVD on ebay for about 13.00 apiece, I knew that that was the way to go! In just a few weeks, I had all the DVDs at my disposal, and the viewing began!
   Some have said that the show was "glorifying Drugs" while others claimed the show "silly and unrealistic", but for me, Breaking Bad, from the GET GO, seemed more like a really cool Graphic Novel in the vein of  "Road To Perdition"or "V for Vendetta". In that context, the fantastic seems believable, the evil acceptable and the violence the razzle dazzle! MAN, what an awesome piece of WORK this show was!!! 
 I don;t know HOW they did it, but this story of a Mild-mannered Science Teacher, who, when he finds out he has cancer, falls to a life of crime to support the expensive payments and to make sure his family is taken care of, was written and executed with such singular vision from the first episode of Season one all the way down to the explosive final episode in Season Six! Really, Breaking bad was like an EPIC Six-Chaptered mega-moive for the masses!

Favorite Albums: Betty Boo / Boomania

Way back in the early 90’s, my friend made me a mixed cassette tape opening with an extremely dancey pop song which he’d culled off of the Career Opportunities soundtrack which he’d recently picked up. This song was called Where Are You Baby, by a mysterious singer named Betty Boo, and I loved it so much, I needed to hear MORE from this artist!

Happily, my brother owned a copy of Betty Boo’s new release Boomania, an album which featured Where Are You Baby as its opening track, and my GOSH, all it took was one spin and I fell in love with almost every track! One after the other, the songs coming at me were sooo, sooo rocking and catchy, I just HAD to pick the album up for myself!

Back in the days before Wikipedia and such, there was really nowhere to learn more about Betty Boo- where did she come from? What was her “Deal”? Of course, now I know quite a bit about the former Ms. Alison Clarkson, but at the time, all I knew was what was provided in the CD liner notes. In fact, it wasn’t until months later that I even saw any videoclips of Betty, and I have to say it was quite something seeing her performing “Hey DJ/I Can’t Dance To that Music” for the first time- complete with 1960’s James Bond Secret Agent kitsch- what a conundrum she was!

Of all the songs, the stand out tracks for me are Doing The Do, Hey DJ (I Can’t Dance To That Music You’re Playing, Boo’s Booming, 24 Hours, Don’t Know What To Do (dreamy synth pop here) and of course Where are You Baby, the song that started it all! Though Betty Boo’s music is decidedly more on the Rap/R&B side, there is something about its that makes it seem more like alternative music than soul- at the time I reflected that her sound sounded a lot like Dance Pop Trio Dee-Light, with their song Groove is in the Heart…

Betty followed Boomania with  a quirky album called “Grrr! It’s Betty Boo”, but after that, I didn’t hear much more from her. No matter, it’s Boomania that will stand the test of time, and in the years since its come out, I’ve introduced the album to many, MANY new fans and they all agree that Boomania is a snappy little masterpiece!

Favorite Artists: Nick Drake

I was introduced to Nick Drake in the coolest way- A co-worker who shared similar interests with me came in one day with a copy of Nick Drake's biography by Patrick Humphries  and ALSO Nick Drake's compilation CD "Way To Blue".  Handing me both, he said,  "Here's something I think you'll enjoy reading!" This guy Jim has introduced me to so many cool artists and lent me quite a few good books, too (among them the Al Kooper and Neil Young biographies), so I knew I was in for something interesting!

  Sure enough, the life of Nick Drake was a captivating read, such a talented and yet introverted artist,  reading the book and listening to the haunting music in between, you could feel the desperation and loneliness between the notes.  Soon, I fell in love with everything on that Nick Drake compilation, and eventually I had to go out and get all the other albums from this incredible artist: "Five Leaves Left", "Pink Moon", "Bryter Lyter", even the awesome "Time Of No Reply", each album had so many great songs!!! 
  His songs are so moody and melancholy, perfect for sunset/evening walks especially in autumn, in fact, I've been listening to them a LOT recently, perfect Halloween music (especially ones like "Poor Boy", which give me such a lonely vibe!) One Christmas, I gave THREE friends the "Way To Blue" CD compilation , I thought it was such a great introduction to the man and his music, two of the friends didn't appreciate it much, but the third friend told me she and her husband loved it so much, it became their "go-to" morning music CD!

Some of my favorite Nick Drake tracks~ 

Love and Rockets, Vol.6

Back To Palomar once again with Los Bros Hernandez....