Fracture's Compound » Nostalgia

Retrohensible

Frac — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:28:19 +0000

It’s staggering what you can find digging through YouTube. I’ve written in the past about some of the old shows I remember from my youth. I grew up in a small town with three television stations. Well, two and a half. One of them was only on for a few hours a day before it switched to French.

When something was on, we watched it. If it was awful, it didn’t matter. There was simply nothing else on. These are some of the awful things I remember from that time. Each one lovingly archived and restored. At least I think they’re restored. Reception was really bad back then.

If memory serves; CBC was really “mostly CBC” with a shimmering background of “TKTV” distinctly visible. “TKTV”, on the other hand, had a wavering backdrop of “CBC” with the ghostly bleed through of French audio from CBC Radio Canada (French CBC, so pronounce it “say-BAY-say RAHdeeoh caNAdah“).

Here we have Automan. I clearly remember thinking it was awful at the time, but I was 16. Perhaps if I was younger? Not likely. It was a blatant attempt to grab some of the Tron crowd. It stole the look, and “Bit”, almost without modification. I have no idea how it made it to 12 episodes.

A running gag was when Automan would take a corner, at full speed, as perfect right angle. You can see that in the video clip. The side-kick would slap his face against his side window and say, “I wish you wouldn’t do that.”

Holmes and Yo-yo aired in 1976. I have a vague recollection that I may have liked this one a bit. I also remember being very unimpressed when the robots chest popped open (frequently) to reveal a computer that was clearly a couple of pocket calculators.

You may recognise John Schuck as the robot. For some reason, this show didn’t ruin his career. It looks like he’s worked pretty steadily.

This one was scientifically accurate. I mean, obviously. Who hasn’t seen a cement truck roll by on the highway and thought “Space Ship!”. Me too. I’m too lazy, but Andy Griffith pulled it off. Motivated by the desire to fly to the Moon and salvage all the space junk, he built a flying cement mixer called Salvage 1.

They milked it for 18 episodes.

I don’t remember any episodes of this, but I think I may have watched it fairly regularly. B.J. and the Bear was about a trucker, B.J. McKay, and his pet monkey, Bear. Wikipedia says it lasted 3 seasons for 48 episodes.

Already in 1979 we were starting to wonder if they invented shows pulling from a hat of nouns and verbs.

Ok, this one isn’t a T.V. serial, but I was suffered to watch it enough that it’s valid to include.

Le martien de Noël (The Christmas Martian) was a French-Canadian movie poorly dubbed into English. The schools would drag it out every year and make us watch it. I’m guessing an educational “Canadian Content” mandate of some sort.

It’s a bizarre and rather creepy movie of a UFO that lands in a small town in Québec. The Martian pilot starts out bleeding green slime, as I recall. He ends up befriending the local kids, skiing down a hill holding road flares and making it rain Smarties. Either that, or something completely different. I didn’t pay much attention back then, and had a rather odd imagination.

Retrohensible is from Fracture's Compound and licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA (details)

Call Me Snake

Frac — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 06:56:44 +0000

Like I said, I had fun piecing together the Logan’s Run goofs list. I thought I’d do another one. This time around, it’s “Escape From New York” with Kurt Russell. Just as I typed that sentence, something popped into mind. I’m betting “Big Trouble in Little China” will be next on my list for this little exercise. Back to this one, though.

Here, there be spoilers. If that comes as a surprise to you, given the purpose of this article, you deserve to have your enjoyment of a middling 29-year-old movie slightly marred.

We’re only a few minutes in when we see the exterior of Airforce One. The computer simulation used as the plane crashes is of a different configuration. Notice the engines have moved from the tail to under the wings.

Not only can this amazing plane move its engines, but it’s a Tardis. It’s a widebody on the inside, but not on the outside. You can really tell the difference when they show the wreckage.

Not to be outdone by a mere aeroplane, this man in the main control room demonstrates he has similar control over time and space. At least where it relates to his jacket. He takes it off several times over the course of a minute or two.

Perhaps Snake caught that episode of MythBusters showing that pirates may have used patches to preserve night vision in one eye. Either way, Snake, you’re busted. That eyeball looks fine from here. If a name like Snake and a tattoo of a cobra slinking out of your shorts doesn’t get you the girls, a phoney eye-patch doesn’t have a chance.

IMDB calls this scene out. Adrien Barboobs (I mean “Maggie”), Snake and Cabby (Earnest Borg-9) enter the house. The camera switches to an interior shot and they’ve really changed locations. I’m letting this one slide. Maggie didn’t have a torch in her hand when she answered the door. It just looks to me like she took a moment to get one.

This one is pretty obvious once you’re told. It’s an audio goof, so the picture is just to set the scene. Duke is taking pot-shots at Mr. Pres. The loud blasts are echoing through the building, but that’s Snakes snazzy silenced Uzi. They’ve got completely the wrong sound effect. It does add drama, though.

I’m not sure exactly what’s going on here. There is a mysterious hand poking out from behind a post giving “get up” stage direction to some unseen entity. Look just above the head of the guy sitting on the left. This scene is just prior to the fight-to-the-death.

Alright, this fight scene has the goofs flying more furiously than the bats. Once they switch to spiked bats, it’s quickly clear just how rubbery the “nails” are. That’s nothing compared to the bat that lands the killing blow. It starts stuck to the giant guys head, but is gone when he slumps over the ropes. The camera angle changes, and Snake accidentally knocks the club off the guys head (wait, how did that get back on there?) and it clearly drops to the floor. Another change in camera angle, and there’s that damn bat stuck in his head again.

This last one is on IMDB as well. How do I know? I put it on there myself years ago. The team revisits the roof only to discover the glider has just been trashed. Oh, well. They return to the elevator. When the doors close, look to the right. The hand of the person pushing the doors closed has let their fingers show. Never mind. They’re still using that particular technology on the Enterprise.

And that, as they say, is that. They beat Logan’s Run if you’re scoring by the numbers, but some of these were real doozies. No harm done, though. Nobody went to this movie expecting “Waiting for Godot”. It’s a blast. Particularly if you’ve got a few beers in you. It’s definitely earned its status as a minor cult classic.

Call Me Snake is from Fracture's Compound and licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA (details)

Run, Runner!

Frac — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 20:30:08 +0000

In my last post, I mentioned “Logan’s Run” as a favourite movie of mine. I’ve watched it dozens of times, and that mere mention motivated me to watch it yet again. I wanted to work it into a blog entry, but reviewing a movie from 1976 didn’t seem all that useful. I looked on IMDB at the goofs, and have decided instead to capture some of them for all to see. There will be spoilers, obviously.

Unlike many movies with stratospheric budgets and lazy editors, the goofs in Logan’s Run are all pretty easily dismissed. By the time I was done, I was more impressed by the movie than when I started.

You can click any of these images to see a larger version. That will take you to an image page showing a medium sized screen shot. You can click the image again to see the full-sized version.

The first goof is the funniest. It’s so obvious that I can only assume it was left in as a laugh. As people settle in to view Carousel, we cut to two extras. One decides to cup her hand and whisper to the other just as she decides to turn and talk back. What we end up with is one punching the other in the nose.

We see here that the robes dropped by the Carousel participants disappear between shots. There is plenty of on-screen time for some unseen Carousel attendants to have removed them. I bet they sell pretty well on Space eBay™.

The next few are not goofs, but the result of filming on location in an active mall (the “Apparel Mart” in Dallas Texas). Here we see that a sign has been covered with a white rectangle.

The board used to protect the floor from the heat of these pyrotechnics is impossible to miss.

A fall from the second floor isn’t very exciting, so the directors were hoping you wouldn’t notice that the Runner climbed on to the second floor, but fell from the third.

I’m not sure how anyone even spotted this, but take a look. The amount of Space Koolaid™ in Logan’s glass is different when he sits down than when he stands up moments later. Perhaps it’s just really volatile?

This one is pretty obvious. When Logan makes his fateful visit to the computer, the light over his head is off for the shots of his face and on for the shots of his back.

Doc’s machine apparently has a life of its own. The handles start in the down position. After a really quick cut to Logan and back, they’re in the up position.

I’ve seen this goof mentioned in a few places. Jessica enters New You with her bracelet (that she made a point of retrieving from the cub at Cathedral Plaza), but leaves without it. The DVD commentary acknowledges the continuity error meant reshooting “a few scenes”, but the bracelet never does appear again. I found it sitting on the floor, dropped in the scuffle. It started as a goof, but there are three or four frames that resolve it.

There is mention that the light-grey strip on Logan’s shirt disappears. The grey strip is actually on a separate tunic that we can see Logan removing here. Oh, I seem to have zoomed in on the wrong portion of this shot. How did that happen?

Cover a significant character in mirrors and roll him around a film set and you’re going to get reflections. There are a few places where there seems to be film crew visible. It’s more evident at full speed than frame by frame. It must have been a challenge to film Box, and they did a good job.

When Logan shoots box, the upper pyro fires when he aims low and vice versa. It’s pretty obvious once you know, but watching normally you’d probably miss it.

Tired and thirsty, unable to find water, Jessica-6 still manages to find time to stop and do a bit of laundry. The hem of her dress is noticeably cleaner in this one shot. I’m guessing they were just shot in a different sequence than they were shown.

After Logan’s interrogation by his surrogates, he shoots his way out of the computer hall. It’s hard to miss this stuntman and his pyrotechnics mask. Give the guy a little credit. His whole head explodes in a shower of sparks when he’s shot. It’s not a dummy, either. There is clearly a guy standing inside the fireball.

The city falling down around them, everyone leaves via the stairs. This one guy decides he’ll save time belly-flopping from the second floor onto a flower bed. As he does, you can see an exit sign behind him. Again, they are filming in the mall. They missed this one sign. And anyway, they don’t have exits in the future? They may not be allowed out of the city, but I’m sure they let them out of the buildings.

And finally the famous Vulcan greeting at the very end of the film. I’ve watched it many times. My opinion is that it’s just a random hand gesture. The arm seems to belong to a girl (though I may be wrong). If so, she could be a Star Trek geek but I think it lends support to my argument that her hand just happens to be in this position.

There were other “goofs” not shown above. Wires visible in Carousel, for example. The Carousel scene was filmed on, arguably, the most complex custom wire harness system created. At least in 1976. Yes, there are some harnesses and wires visible, but it’s not too bad.

After the runner is killed, you can also see the shadow of wires on the wall as the guy from the clean-up crew flies in. They’re noticeable because they’re moving. Frame by frame, there is no suitable image to capture.

IMDB says Jessica’s green tights appear and disappear. Not when I look. There are shots where they’re difficult to see because of lighting, but she seems to wear them consistently until she removes them during the Box scene. They also say Logan’s hair gets shorter when he returns to the city. He may have had a trim, but I couldn’t tell.

When Francis jumps from the balcony, we cut to a different angle and he does clearly land far from where he should have. It’s really obvious, and there’s nothing interesting to screen shot for that one. Similarly, the falling Styrofoam boulder that stops rolling when it touches a guy is clear, but not in a static screen shot.

So, there we have it. The goofs are all easy enough to find if you know about them in advance. They’re all quite trivial, and few of them would be seen by someone just watching the movie normally. It was fun finding them, though. I may just try this sort of thing again on another movie.

Run, Runner! is from Fracture's Compound and licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA (details)

Vintage

Frac — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 05:02:04 +0000

As I get older, I start to notice more of the cool things I had as a kid are now being called “vintage”. It’s a bit of a shock, but I can’t fight it. I’ve been waxing nostalgic about those times. There. That’s an example right there. Do you think the phrase “waxing nostalgic” has ever been typed in to a text message by someone using only their thumbs? Thinking back, though, I still like a lot of that vintage stuff. Some of it, not so much.

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Wines. A rant about vintage things can really only start at one place. Well, don’t be thinking 1925 Bordeaux now. I’m not that old. A notable vintage wine of my era would be Lonesome Charlie. Yes, a fine sparkling wine flavoured beverage best served very cold. Very, very cold. Tongue numbingly cold. It’s crisp acidity will cut through the greasiest of semi-rancid pizza meats and meat by-products.

Note that they’ve used the finest gold coloured aluminium screw cap. Stare in awe over the unique melted-strawberry-jello colour. Be taken aback by the shocking aroma. Ok, you can’t do that last one. Consider yourself lucky.

I went through cases of this stuff growing up. For nostalgia it scores high, but for vintage it scores low. Best left as a memory.

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michaelsphotos

Movies. Now we’re talking. Hollywood is crap nowadays. Let’s looks back a little and see what we’ve got. Starting strong with Star Wars. They’ve turned it into crap now, but I was in the line-ups for the original! What else? Logan’s Run! Ok, losing momentum here. I loved the movie then, and I still do now, but only because I loved it so much then.

Recover from the stumble… “Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone”! Crap. I panicked. It did have Molly Ringwald. That must count for something. Ok, maybe not. I guess she’s “vintage” now, too. I have to pull this out of the fire… “Battle Beyond the Stars”. Fumble.

Ah! Alien, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and the slightly fresher vintage of Terminator. Yes. Pulls it back from the brink.

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Video Games. This one is clearly a win for my generation.

I know we started with Pong, but even that has to be given a nod for being the cornerstone of a great foundation. Space Invaders, Donkey Kong, Pac Man, Asteroids, Zaxxon, Bubble Bobble, Joust, Moon Patrol, Astroblaster, Defender, Robotron 2049, the list is so long. Yes, there were a few duds, but the creativity has never been matched. Video games are nicer now, but not better. You have to have grown up in a real, thriving video arcade to know what I mean.

That’s a vintage memory that will never be equalled. You’ve got X-Box now because we showed the world how much money we were willing to pump into an Atari 2600. You’re welcome.

Magazines. Another point to vintage. Sorry, the past wins over the present in this category as well. We had Mad, Cracked, Crazy, CarToons, and National Lampoon. We also had Oui, Penthouse and Playboy back when that meant something. We had to work for our porn back then, and we appreciated it. One point goes to the present for improved grooming. Hadn’t anyone ever heard of a Lady Bic back then?

For the more cerebral, there were Time, and Life in their heyday. For the science fiction movie fans, there was Starlog and others like it.

I was going to say that magazines today are all derivative. I can’t do that after just lauding Mad, Cracked and Crazy. So we were derivative back then too, but our magazines were still way better.

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Television. Where to start with this one. Television is crap now, but it was crap then. I still love all the old TV shows. I horde DVD TV series like gold doubloons. I’m not deluded into thinking they’re treasured relics of the past worthy of hallowed praise. Not at all. I love them all because they were all so awful. I think I even knew how crappy they were when I was a kid, but it didn’t matter. I loved them.

“Six Million Dollar Man” & “The Bionic Woman” (Lindsay Wagner is doing bed commercials now. What’s my sleep number? Back then it would have been 69 for you Jaime Sommers!) . “Knight Rider”. “B.J. and the Bear” (a truck driver with his pet monkey. Hey, those nights get cold and lonely). Emergency One (paramedics). CHiPs (staring Erik Estrada’s teeth). Space 1999 (really awful, but there has yet to be another space ship as cool as an Eagle). Battlestar Galactica (Starbuck was a guy, and the Cylons were not sex-bots).

So where does that leave us. Is vintage better than what we have now. In a lot of ways, yes. Media has been going down hill. Much of it is well deserved and well earned. Big media has caused every cataclysm they cry about through hard work and an unwavering hatred of their customers. Boy, is that a topic for another post. Anyway, there are plenty of things I wouldn’t return to. I’ll admit that much of what I like about the past is that it’s the past. Fond memories. I’m just glad I can still enjoy much of it digging around the Internet and on DVDs. Every awful second of it brings delight.

Vintage is from Fracture's Compound and licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA (details)