I've been looking for a decent, affordable, Blade Runner Spinner model for years! either they're vewwwwy expensive, or impossible to find - or both. And that's on a GOOD day!
But this custom-made lego version (found here)got me drooling. Great likeness, very detailed, great colors... As close to perfect as you are going to get using legos!
Check this page for an entire gallery of stuff made by this person called Kaitimar.
One of the persistent controversies surrounding Blade Runner has always been the matter of Ridley Scott's hints that Deckard himself is the very thing he is hunting -a replicant. It is a religious discussiuon; people are very passionate about how they feel about it. Some will deny to the bitter, bloody, gory end that this is nonsense, even if the director himself has been telling us over and over that he is.
In a world where movies need trailers to inform the public, one man can make a difference...
You know him as the Movie Trailer Guy, the Voice of God, The King of Voice-overs! This is a short documentary/interview with the man himself. Check it out.
This is one series I fondly remember seeing on the BBC in the early 80's. Based on an old Chinese story, and no doubt very familiar for all the Dragon Ball fans out there...
The recent Final Cut version of Blade Runner was shown at several film festivals all over the world, including the Jules Verne Adventures Film Festival. Unfortunately director Ridley Scott couldn't be present, but he recorded a little introduction speech for the audience. So check it out, and oh, make sure you watch it until the very end...
Not many people know this, but the space race was started by the French in the late 19th century!
At one point in his career, writer/inventor/pro kickboxer Jules Verne commissioned Alexandre Gustave Eiffel and his army of mutant spiders to build him a rocket that, if finished, would have put the French on the moon. Which would have made them impossible to live with. Wait - they're already impossible to live with! Well, never mind.
But anyway, the project was ultimately abandoned due to financial reasons, and the Eiffel tower ended up as the landing beacon for aliens, as we now know it to be.
No, really!
Soooo... who thought this would be a good idea?
Still, there's some morbid pleasure to be had watching it - a bit like watching a train wreck.
This reminds me of a funny thing that happened to me! (Aren't you glad?)
I once got invited by my local branch of the Flemish Public Employment Service to what eventually turned out to be a recruitment movie for the Belgian army.
Apart from footage showing off the raw mechanized death power that is the Belgian army, it featured some obnoxious kid rapping away, that all but caused spontaneous spastic seazures with half of the unsuspecting people who turned up.
Strangely, I didn't sign up.
Anyway, just to have something non-depressing to include in this post, here's the final moments from the final episode of the IMO rather excellent TV series.
In the early nineties, inspired by the success of Katsuhiro Otomo's mindblowing Akira, a wave of anime releases started being released in the West. One of the companies involved was Manga Video, nowadays known as Manga Entertainment.
In around 1993 they realeased a line of anime titles including Akira, Fist of The North Star, Project A-Ko and a hilarious OVA ("Original Video Animation") called Dominion Tank Police, based on a manga by Masamune Shirow, of Ghost In The Shell fame.
Dominion Tank Police was a funny series about a police force that used tanks as patrol vehicles, usually causing more damage than any bad guys could ever hope to. What's more, the English adaptation had a great cast of voice actors that made the series even more fun.
In the clip you see the adrenaline-pumping intro Manga Video animation, followed by the English intro for Dominion.
For the 2 people reading this blog - possibly counting me & myself - it should be clear by now that I'm into anime. A LOT!
Here's the French intro of UFO Robot Grendizer AKA Goldorak.
For an alternative intro check here! Or here for a more recent version. (I know, confusing, huh?)
This one has been out for a while, but I wanted to mention it anyway. Inspired by the romantic comedy "Shakespeare In Love", this is a fictional dramatization of George Lucas' days as a struggling college student, and about the things that would inspire him to later make Star Wars... and this movie about a talking alien duck.
Running at about 8 minutes, this parody is great fun, chock full of inside jokes and references. Check it out!
Oh... And make sure you keep watching while the end credits roll... There's a bonus scene.
Here's a short "making of" featurette. Unfortunately it's in Italian without any subs, but it's still pretty cool to watch.
I have a pretty varied taste in music - from specific pop songs over film music , electronic and new age to classical music.
This one has been a favorite over the years. Based on Erik Satie's "Gymnopédies" series of music, this song is absolutely drop-dead beautiful.
I've been a big fan of the Diablo games ever since early 1997. Check out this great commercial made for the release of Diablo II.
One guy decides to take up the fight against this company - just talking to them apparently doesn't help - and becomes a sort of eco-terrorist/vigilante, trying to bring them to their senses and do something about the pollution. To keep his real identity secret, he calls himself The Cat, and wears a superhero-like outfit with a stylized cat mask. Think Batman, but without the cape. Or Robin! Uhm, anyway...
This was a pretty popular series on Flemish TV, of of several penned by writer/screenwriter Lode De Groof, and through reruns over the years, generations of people grew up with it.
This series was ahead of its time! Environmentalism, making people aware of the problems and dangers of industrial pollution, and the search for solutions, making life better for everyone.
To its credit, the baddies weren't cardboard 2-dimensional. (Well, not all of them anyway, but I'll get back to that.)
The initial bad guy of the story, the company's boss, a man called Oskar Dias, is initally very much opposed to The Cat and everything he fights for. However, as the series progresses he is forced to re-evaluate his views, and eventually reluctantly makes peace with The Cat and his growing group of merry rebels, after first his niece - and later on his own wife -willingly join them.
Unfortunately the series is dumbed down somewhat by the inclusion of Dias' Bumbling Henchmen(tm). While originally conceived by the series' writer as the company's strong-arm squad, some of these thugs are pure comic relief, and often seem barely able to tie their own shoe laces, let alone catch any intruders. Only on accasion do they shown signs of actual intelligence, and actually manage to accomplish their objectives.
Although the series supposedly took place in this nondescript Flemish rural town, in reality it was filmed on location somewhere in the sunny south of France. So what you see in the series is a Flanders that never existed, lending an almost surreal quality to the series.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0231882/
