Well, it's certainly been a long journey tracking down The Naughty Nineties: A Saucy Pop Up Book for Adults Only; it's been fun though – I rediscovered The Curious Sofa and Peter Seymour's other saucy pop up about the 1920's.
This is the real deal though – theses are the boobs I remember seeing in the bathtub as a young girl. I've posted images over at RC.
While Billy Idol's self titled debut is peppered with undying, beloved radio hits like Dancin With Myself and White Wedding (still excellent despite their being overplayed), but the lesser known songs are a worthy listen that evokes images of teen 80s movies.
Hot in the City could role over the credits as a great spring break comes to an end with a beach side party, Dead on Arrival: played over a gang of suburban best friends in the big city for the day – most likely with a sun roof to pop their exuberant heads out of, Nobody's Business But My Own, again over credits – this time an outsider has triumphed over a douche bag and won the girl – they share a kiss someplace far from the prom she left the douche bag behind at, and So Cruel is a mid movie heartbreak montage – he is in a jean jacket, gazing into a body of water with perfect pompadour hair, she is throwing a stuffed animal aside that he had previously in the film won for her at an arcade.
You get the picture. It makes for fun daytime daydreaming listening.
Undoubtedly, the images I posted over on RC are going to make Hardbodies look like a lot more fun than it is. The film is no B-movie delight like Joysticks, mostly because of an overwhelming grossness factor.
The plot concerns a homeless surfer named Scotty Palmer who gains employment as a sort of pimp to three “sex geezers”- old men who have moved in together to a summer beach house to get laid. Scotty's best friend is a horny monster face of a kid named Rags who has beef on the beach with a roaming gang of sexual predators (see man in the “Boogie Til You Puke” tee).
Watching said men get mesmerized by boobs and suffer from nauseating blue balls (see after the jump) is perhaps less exciting than it sounds. But on the other hand, there is an all girl band called Vixen who rocks my world in leg warmers with a song called “Computer Madness”, there are performing bodybuilders, there is a car water bed sex palace, and there are numerous fake breast antics that you just can't find in comedies anymore.
Oh, and some photos after the jump are not safe for work – and one in particular (which includes a feather boa) is likely to give you nightmares. I apologize.
John Boorman's grave take on the Arthurian legend, Excalibur, almost never was. The meticulous sets and sweeping wide shot locations were originally intended for an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, but rights could not be obtained. Fans of sword and sorcery and the epic legends of King Arthur should rejoice, as the movie is often beautiful and one of the best films made of its kind.
It lacks the modern technical flair of say, Peter Jackson's Ring trilogy, but here it is a good thing. After seeing so much of it, and so much of it not used in the great ways Jackson did, CGI has become boring. It 's interesting to see actors actually fighting while encumbered by heavy armor.
The movie is close to three hours long and sometimes suffers from it's deliberate pacing and it can take a short while to become accustomed to the strange tone and casting. While seeing a young Helen Mirren (as a mysterious and erotic Morgana Le Fay), Gabriel Byrne and Liam Neeson is great, the casting of Nigel Terry, who resembles a village idiot as the young Arthur is perplexing.
Still, for all it's flaws is it a must see for fans of the genre and lovers of lush cinematography. I love that the film takes itself seriously and it was both a critical and popular hit when it was released in 1981. You can watch it on demand with Netflix.
If you don't know how much I adore the work of Jack Vance, you obviously just have not been listening to me! The Demon Princes, two volumes collecting five novellas written between 1964 and 1981, are my favorites second only to the middle books collected in Tales of the Dying Earth (the absolutely phenomenal Eyes of the Overworld and Cugel's Saga). I've only been holding off on recommending them here, on Brix Picks, until I had a chance to re-read them and write while their fresh in my mind, but over the years they've been passed around to all my friends and I just haven't had the chance.
The four novellas chronicling the vengeful exploits of Kirth Gersen as he seeks to destroy a cabal of high powered, shadowy, inter-planetary criminals known only as the Demon Princes in the wake of the massacre of his home planet match up so perfectly with this week's vengeance-based extreme movie, Oldboy, that I'm positive the authors of the Manga Park Chan-wook's film was based on were heavily influenced by Vance's stories.
Over the course of 850 action-packed pages, Gersen manages to find (and attempts to kill) each one of the gangsters on his hit list in exponentially brilliant ways that involve, among other things, a high school reunion, a planet that's turned kidnapping into a safe and reliable business, weirdo art parties on old Earth, rare and possibly deadly culinary delicacies, and a maniacal plan involving the restructuring of a moon… And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
To give away too much of the plot would be totally unfair as the real thrill of any Vance work is watching the intricate and often extremely surprising plots rapidly unfold and reveling in his witty and wildly imaginative brand of speculative social engineering. Just writing about this series is making me really want to read it again – this is one of my all-time favorites.
Sigh. There are few songs that can evoke such deep and romantic emotions as If You Were Here by the Thompson Twins. Of course the impact of the song comes from it's inclusion in the iconic, most sigh inducing scene probably ever put to screen for girls that love to kiss cute boys. My little girl dreams were never the same after it.
Make a wish? It already came true. Thanks John Hughes!
A little while back, I mentioned a naughty little pop up book that I have fond memories of as a child. I believed, through the wonders of the internets, that I had found it in a book called The Roaring Twenties: A Spicy Pop-Up Book for Adults Only. But wait! Upon further searches while writing this, I believe the one I am truly remembering is author Peter Seymour's other book: Naughty 90's Pop-up. Oh what a fun journey this search has taken me and I will soon have three excellent new books to enjoy because of it (including The Curious Sofa).
I've posted images of the 1920's book over on Rotating Corpse and promise to follow up with the 1890's one just as soon as it is delivered.
Seymour, it may interest you to know, did not make his living entirely on revealing ladies knickers. His other titles include The Pop-Up Book of Big Trucks, Learn About Safety, and Learn About Wheels.
I recently found a really bizarre TV movie also made in Canada starring most of the same cast (minus Christine “Moose” and Lisa, the girl everyone made fun of). It's apparently called “UFO Kidnapped” and why it wasn't an instant children's classic, I am not sure. Perhaps its scenes like this one with Alasdair and inappropriate alien touching (which happens on several occasions, check out 3:12 in the video).
The Canadian accents are super strong there eh. and the special effects might be described as Lost In Space meets Barbarella divided by Doctor Who with a pinch of Land of the Lost thrown in (in other words AWESOME). I've attached some screen shots of some of the best. To watch the full video, check out Canadiantalentshines on YouTube.
The basic plot (if you can call it that) is that two brothers and their dog are “UFO Kidnapped” (ie kidnapped by a ufo). On the spaceship, they meet a weird Victorian girl, a group of of fuzzy ewok/carebear like things called Loolis (that are too like to grope anyone), a cat burglar (the same guy who played “Barf”), two midget aliens, some cyclopes, a primitive boy, and a bunch of other things that don't make that much sense. Watch and enjoy!
In 1980 Playboy model Dorothy Stratten was brutally murdered by her husband who then shot himself. It is the kind of tragic and salacious story that has spawned recreations in the true crime television genre of today, but surprisingly, it was Bob Fosse, fresh off his fame of All That Jazz that originally took up the story for a feature film called Star 80.
I'd seen the Muriel Hemingway VHS cover in video stores for years but, perhaps like you, had never heard so much about the film itself and wondered if that boded poorly for it. While it is not a pleasant movie, it's actually quite an ugly little story, I have to say i was surprised that it was such a good one.
A few dated directing techniques get in the way, but the very unglamorized story is well told and two phenomenal performances that really make the film worth watching. Hemingway is excellent as a very naive and sweet girl who is taken advantage by an insane man.
I don't know what it was that got Eric Roberts so off the fast track to stardom he was on (I'm going to guess drugs?) but it certainly wasn't a lack of talent that derailed him. Here he is complex, brutal, weak, scary, and pathetic all at once. It's a terrifying and realistic portrayal that even Hugh Hefner, friend of Dorothy's who was adamantly against the fictionalizing of her story praised the performance.
In a move that is usually reserved for angry fourteen year old boys in the mid 80's, I have only recently, as a thirty year old woman who draws butterflies for a living, gotten really into the thrash metal stylings of Slayer. Heavier than even Metallica because of its lack of polish and devotion to evil in their lyrics, their second studio album Hell Awaits is a wall of extreme metal. It's noted as one of the most influential albums in metal, even though it never chartered and was too dark and heavy to get any air play.
The first two tracks, Hell Awaits and Kill Again are my personal favorites (Join us!). Fans may enjoy watching the band acting young dumb and full of cum on the Combat live Tour – The Ultimate Revenge for the album along with Exodus and Venom.