Testy Area 51 (5 Viewers)

[Ruz-El]

I hope no one in the filmmaking business is pondering to do a readaptation of L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz soon. Why? I for one would consider it a dream project to take on were I ever to be a director. The quite inaccurate 1939 musical shall be left alone and my take on it would be a far more accurate adaptation of the story in the style of Return to Oz.

Sorry! I started my new animated version of the "wizard Of Oz". It's going to be an all girl affair, in the hentai/japanation style.
I never got laser discs because they were just so crap. Actually, I'm just bitter. I could never afford them. :Z
Your really looking forward to "The Punisher 2" ?? really?? REALLY??? The first one lost me when the dude tried to escape the mob hit at the start via catamaran. The fact that it got worse from there. boy. wow.

 

[Steve Christou]

"Oh for the love of God it burns!"
We just watched a silly comedy called She's the Man which I think came out earlier this year, the usual teenage hijinks with a twist - When her big brother decides to ditch for a couple weeks in London, Viola heads over to his elite boarding school, disguises herself as him, and proceeds to fall for one of her soccer teammates. - A pleasant enough timepasser, one scene has our crossdressing heroine playing soccer with the boys, and inevitably someone kicks the ball into her crotch, she hesitates for a moment before realising she should be reacting to this, grabs her 'balls' and yells out that line I quoted above..
Well it made me laugh.
Tonight's late night movie is a real curio - Red Planet Mars (1952) - An American scientist contacts Mars by radio and receives information that Mars is a utopia and that Earth's people can be saved if they return to the worship of God. Revolution sweeps the Earth, including the Soviet Union. But there remains doubt about the messages being genuine, as an ex-Nazi claims he was duping the Americans.
Hmmm and here's an IMDB review:

Seeing it now, fifty years after it's theatrical release back in 1952 "Red Planet Mars" comes across as one of the most extreme pieces of propaganda that Hollywood ever made.
The way it depicts the USSR and those in league with it is so outrageous that whatever it wanted to accomplish by showing Communist Russia as the "Evil Empire" that it was called by president Reagan years later falls flat on it's face. Not that the USSR was a country not to be feared and defended against back then, the movie was made at the hight of the Cold as well as the Korean War, but to use a highly religious theme that God is on our side was something that the Soviets or even the Nazis never used in their propaganda against capitalism or the United States.

Not sure if I should bother, I wanted to see Martians not Hollywood propaganda! [bites fist] What else have I got here [rummage rummage] aaah what's this? The Colossus of New York (1958) - A brilliant surgeon encases his dead son's brain in a large robot body, with unintended results...
Hmmm [Mr.Burns voice] Excellent!
Russell, I'd watch an all girl hentai Wizard of Oz. Not sure about Ray though.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

Sorry! I started my new animated version of the "wizard Of Oz". It's going to be an all girl affair, in the hentai/japanation style.

Clearly you've never seen the CLAMP "Alice in Wonderland" adaptation. all I can say is, you're not the first to have that idea!
As far as 4:3 video, if it were pillarboxed into a 16:9 frame on DVD, there would be less resolution available, since the pixel count of DVD is stuck at 480×720. Moreover, on the still-very-common 4:3 display it would be presented at reduced resolution in a small window with bars all around. This seems like a large price to pay, simply to stop careless people from "zooming in" on their widescreen TVs so that the image fills the full width and cuts off top and bottom. I've never had a problem showing Academy Ratio material on a wide TV.
I guess I care less about side-flipping than most people, because most of my discs are single-side or one episode per side. As a result, I often have to use the "play single side only" function on my double-side player! It's only AC-3 audio — not regular digital audio, which is PCM — that needs the special decoder, and I've had no trouble getting those ; I've had more trouble finding AC-3 anime discs, actually, as they were few and far-between. I have been collecting them, because they interest me. I'm not going to get into the "digital is better! no, analog is better!" fight, except to mention that the digital signal's biggest virtue is that it is easier for other digital devices to work with.

 

[RickER]

Thanks for your thoughts on Frankenstein Russell. Steve, Red Planet Mars is unwatchable now IMO. I owned it in an LD boxset. It was the worst of the lot, and only watched that flick once. However, another movie from that old LD set was Monster that Challenged the World. That is a guilty pleasure of mine. I dont own the LD set anymore but i bought Monster on DVD about 5 years ago. If you have to watch a Mars flick, how about Angry Red Planet? Thats a fun one!

 

[Ruz-El]

Actually I was just teasing. It was this recent purchase that inspired me:
http://www.amazon.com/Lost-Girls-Col...e=UTF8&s=books

 

[ChristopherDAC]

Interesting. The comics retailers around here, the ones who are carrying it at all, won't sell to anyone they haven't known for years. Everybody's afraid of police "sting" operations — the cops love headlines like "Comic Book Perverts Arrested".
I'm surprised it could even get into Canada, considering the kind of obscenity statutes which have come out of Ottowa lately.
That's Miyuki-chan in Wonderland, by the way. There's something else by them titled, I think, "Alice in CLAMP-land", but I don't know quite what that is. CLAMP, by the way, is the name of an all-female manga-writing collective.

 

[Ruz-El]

I ordered the book through Amazon.ca. I didn't trust my comic guy to get it, I had one of their shippments held at the border over a title I ordered. (for the record, it wasn't a porn book like the above, but a low brow comedy book by Bill Wry called "Big Blown Baby".) so anything remotely adult tends not to show up. My real concern was that the book was going to get banned for copyright infringement on the "wendy" (Peter Pan") character being used before I could get my hands on it. Apparantly the right holders of Peter Pan were none to pleased to have their character co-opted by a dirty old man into his personal porn book. (pretty much Alan Moores own words.)
It's also nice to see that our wonderful PM is making headline with his wonderful policies. :z It's getting retarded again North of the border, bits that politics and I don't want to get a tsk tsk from our beloved mods.
I read a CLAMP book a while back that was serialized in "Animerica Extra", but I dropped the mag and can't for the life of me remember the title. I didn't know they did a porno alice book though, the only porno Alice in Wonderland I know is published by FantaGraphics EROS line, and I can't remember the title of it either.
I had to get Lost Girls though. Alan Moore is one of my favorite writers, and this looks like it well probably cap his career as he seems to be retiring from comics. It's been about 13 years in the making. I haven't had a chance to read it yet, maybe this weekend I'll take a break from the Scary Movie Challenge and take a crack at it.
I better drop all this comics talk before Steve has a coniption about us talking about naughty childrens books.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

I read a CLAMP book a while back that was serialized in "Animerica Extra", but I dropped the mag and can't for the life of me remember the title. I didn't know they did a porno alice book though

Hmm, I've never paid much attention to ANIMERICA myself, or really any of those publications, truth be known. Miyuki-chan is strictly soft-core, and would probably be called a gag-anime if not for the nature of the illustrations. It's composed of two episodes (corresponding, roughly, to Wonderland and Looking-Glass) and totals just half an hour. Maybe the first of the "strictly-fanservice" anime, but it seems never to have been meant as more than a joke between CLAMP and their fans.

 

[Ruz-El]

I never really rad animerica either. A series I used to collect by Viz (not the Viz Steve ) got cancled before the "Banana Fish" was completed. Anerica extra continued the serial. i didn't care for any of the other manga in it though (other then "Video Girl Ai") so I dropped the mag and decided to wait for the collected Banana Fish books. It hasn't been till last year or so that they started publishing stuff from past when I dropped the mag like 5-6 years ago. Stupid manga.

 

[Steve Christou]

Russell I admit that in the past I've been a nasty. they weren't kidding when they called me, well, a witch. But you'll find that nowadays I've mended all my ways, repented, seen the light, and made a switch, to this. And I fortunately know a little magic. It's a talent that I always have possessed. And dear Russell, please don't laugh I use it on behalf of the miserable, the lonely, and depressed (pathetic)
Poor unfortunate souls
In pain, in need
This one longing to be thinner
That one wants to get the girl
And do I help them?
Yes, indeed
Those poor unfortunate souls
So sad, so true
They come flocking to my cauldron
Crying, "Spells, Steve, please!"
And I help them!
Yes I do
Now it's happened once or twice someone couldn't pay the price, and I'm afraid I had to rake 'em 'cross the coals. Yes I've had the odd complaint but on the whole I've been a saint, to those poor unfortunate souls!

The last comics I read were The Savage Sword of Conan about 25 years ago, loved the artwork and for the most part they were very faithful to Robert E. Howards classic Conan stories. I went thru a voracious REH fanboy phase then, devouring anything to do with Conan, Kull, Solomon Kane, Bran Mak Morn whether it be hardbacks, paperbacks, magazines, comics, poster artwork etc Than later I got stuck into other heroic fantasy writers like Michael Moorcock and David Gemmell.
Rick, I put off watching Red Planet Mars last night wasn't in the mood for Hollywood propaganda.
The Angry Red Planet? I'm sure I have that somewhere, I'll give it a spin. I don't think I've ever seen The Monster that Challenged the World. I'll see if it's available.

 

[Ruz-El]

LOL, Sorry Steve, I was just trying to pre-empt the gibes I was sure I was going to get for bringing up comic books AGAIN.

I went thru a voracious REH fanboy phase then,

I'm going through a bit of that now, after finding and reading the complete soloman Kane stories. then it was Bran, now I got 3 books of Conan on the shelves awaiting me and Kull on order. Really good stuff, insanely ballsy for lack of a better word.

 

[Ruz-El]

Thanks for your thoughts on Frankenstein Russell.

My pleasure. I don't know if you were planning on getting Dracula or not, but without doing an A/B on it, I think it looks worse then the other 2 releases. It has a lot of print damage on it, weird stuff like water stains that I don't remember on the others. So even though it's clearer and seems more defined like FRankenstien, it really brought out the flaws in the source material so it's kind of a catch 22. I didn't think the audio was as bad as others are letting on. there is hiss but you can still hear all the dialog clearly. I've never heard it without some kind of hiss.
Tonight I'll watch all the bonus features from the 2 releases and let you all know if your interested.

 

[Steve Christou]

That reminds me The Legends of Horror set should be out soon -

6 classic horror flicks for £18, now thats good value for money, plus I don't have any of them on dvd, 5 of them recorded ages ago on vhs.
Universal's Frankenstein and Dracula I've already bought a couple of years ago on dvd along with their sequels and very nice sets they were too, commentaries and featurettes included. So next time I buy these again will probably be on a different format, microdot sized dvds probably, one sneeze and your entire collections gone.

 

[Ruz-El]

What happened to everybody?? no posts all day??? I need testy for my afternoons entertainment at work. I guess everyones eating turkey in Canada, fox hunting in the UK, or doing whatever the Americans do???
Another movie package arrived! Yippeee! Here's what I got, feel free to discuss, ohh and awe and ridicule:
Boris Karloff Legacy Collection
Inner Sanctum Mysteries Legacy Collection
Beast From 20,000 Fathoms/Them! double feature
Lady Vengeance
Masters Of Horror : Dance Of the Dead
YAAAHHHNNNN
I guess I'll go home now...

 

[RickER]

I was off today. Mowed the lawn, read some HTF, and looked at some YouTube stuff. Excitement.

Tonight its Galactica, and Doctor Who on Sci-Fi for me. I dont know how i will hold up with 3 hours of pop-up ads and commercials. DVD spoils me, but i do really like both of these shows. My woman works til 11PM so its me, the dog and TV. Excitement again.

 

[RickER]

i have a pic i wish i could use as a sig. But i cant get the dang thing small enough!

 

[Steve Christou]

Guys... guys, it's all psychological. You yell barracuda, everybody says, "Huh? What?" You yell shark, we've got a panic on our hands on the Fourth of July!
My excuse is I usually wait until someone's posted something before I post again, usually not always.

It's Halloween month so when I finish off my 50's sci-fi season I'll start on horror and the supernatural, as much as I can cram into the next 3 or 4 weeks, the good thing is she-who-must-be-obeyed likes horror a lot more than she likes sci-fi, so I don't have to limit my season of horror to the midnight hour.

 

[Steve Christou]

Rick I can shrink that pic to sig size if you want, let me know.
Time I changed my signature, been a couple of weeks now.

 

[RickER]

Damn Steve! Its almost 1 AM where you are. Id love to have that pic resized. I know your a great help to Mary. My photo editing junk on my computer wont do it unless i upgrade...or some such nonsense. Id love the help. Put a Blade Runner up for now. But its zoomed in. Dose not do the film justice.
Time for Doctor Who, be back during the ads!

 

[Steve Christou]

No problemo here it is -