I’ve looked high and low for the DVD of this performance and I found it while I was on vacation back East. IMHO, this version is far superior to the original 1976 track on “Hotel California.” From “Hell Freezes Over”...The Eagles’ live rendition of “The Last Resort”:

Call some place Paradise, kiss it goodbye.

Tonight, as I’m winging my way for a much-needed holiday vacation back east, I decided to do something a little bit different....

Sorry, that isn’t Alan Colmes behind that mask!

According to the Beeb, Steven Spielberg is listening:

“Only if you want more. That’s why we made this Indiana Jones. We’ll certainly have our ear to the ground to hear what happens. That’ll decide were we go from here.”

At least the Crystal Skull film got a standing ovation at Cannes, so that’s a start.

I don’t seem to recall publicly writing about how I call a certain national pizza chain by a slightly different name. In any case, here’s the song from thirty years ago which prompted the moniker, from Elvis Costello:

Note to Self: Next time you go to a movie, make sure it isn’t the late show! That’s because I got back at 0130 hours this morning and I crashed afterward. The Official Roommate also went along, and I hope he didn’t stay up too late because he had laundry to do. But I digress.
If I were to describe Speed Racer in just three words, it would be these: Live Action Cartoon. Yep, the Wachowski Brothers strike again and literally interpret the original Japanimation series from the 1960’s. It isn’t a film where the producers lift everyone from the small screen and set them onto the “regular world” of the silver screen, it really is a cartoon which happens to use live actors and (what else but) the chop-chop-chop-chop sound FX whenever Speed engaged the Mach Five’s jump jacks. The race scenes moved just like the cartoon; in particular, the fight scene with Togokhan aboard the bad guy’s truck as it swerved all over the torad, prompted me to think “OK, when’s the Mammoth Truck gonna show up?” The Togokhan team logo, when the signature dragon was taken away, screamed Ferrari. And the closeup/background perspective also screamed cartoon from way back when. I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
This movie wasn’t without controversy; PETA complained about the use of the chimpanzees in the film (so what else is new?); and there was also that overblown story about one chimpanzees copping a feel of Christina Ricci on the set.
Speed Racer is rated PG for sequences of action, some violence and language. Great matinee movie occasion, and a relatively clean movie as far as today’s standards go.My rating: 7.5

My coworkers wonder why I mutter under my breath from time to time California über alles. Now they can see for themselves. From the Dead Kennedys:

There’s a team here in Phoenix. But will my girlfriend let me go?

If you’ve ever wondered where Frank Miller got the inspiration to do 300, both the graphic novel and the motion picture, then look no further than The 300 Spartans, a 1962 classic motion picture depiction of the Battle of Thermopylae. It was filmed on location with the full cooperation of the Greek Government.
Granted, the style of movies made over forty years ago is quite different; part of the ingredients of a successful film involved a young couple in love, there was NO nudity allowed, and Ephialtes (the traitor who betrayed the Spartans to Xerxes) was a goat farmer who was rebuffed by the Young Woman in Love who accompanied her fiance to Thermopylae (in the modern version, he was a deformed, hunchbacked outcast). Another major difference was that Xerxes was portrayed as what I would term “kingly,” and definitely not metrosexual; oh, and no Battle Burqas either.
The 300 Spartans was filmed before the MPAA rating system was created; therefore, it is Not Rated. In today’s parlance, given the content, it would most likely be rated PG. Definitely a retro movie with the same message that Free Men must stand to oppose Tyranny. My rating: 7

My Back Pages by The Byrds. I’m younger than that now. Watch the spinning 45....

Here’s a song which is sure to piss off all the Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, and other various and sundry International Labor and ‘Immigrant’ groups all over the planet which marched today...Boney M’s Rasputin, from 1978!

I said DANCE, Comrades!

HAT TIP: BabbaZee

Now here’s a kick-a** song from the halcyon early days of Queen. Liar is from their first self-titled album, and I listened to it a lot when I was in high school. I really should buy this album again. Anyway, without further ado:

Here I am watching ”The One” on FX, and a scene ensues between Jet Li’s Bad Guy character from another universe, Yu-Law, vs. a hapless LAPD Cop from a universe which isn’t quite ours (where President Bush proposes Universal Health Care)...and the Cop tells Yu-Law, ”I SAID FREEZE TRASHHOLE!” I proceeded to laugh my a** off.
The actual line is: ”I SAID FREEZE A**HOLE!”
This brought back quite a few memories of edited lines from TV movies over the last thirty years. Another which sticks in my mind is the late Jackie Gleason in ”Smokey and The Bandit” where, as Sheriff Buford T. Justice, he always called The Bandit (Burt Reynolds) “Sumbitch”...which turned into “scumbum” on TV!
What crazy lines have been edited from your favorite movies? Share here.

Some very interesting minutiae I’ve picked up while going through the DVD set:

• Gabrielle Drake, who played Lieutenant Ellis, is the brother of the late musician Nick Drake, whose Pink Moon track was used on a Volkswagen TV commercial earlier this decade in North America.
• Lois Maxwell, who pleyed Miss Moneypenny for many years in the James Bond film series, also did a short stint on UFO as...Miss Holland! A secretary, no less. Imagine that.
• An unfilmed episode, ”The Patriot,” was heavily influenced by events at the time in Rhodesia, which was what Zimbabwe was known as before Robert Mugabe and his DFCs took it over. When you read it, you’ll understand why it wasn’t filmed.

Good thing too. Stuff like this just makes it more interesting to watch nowadays, in retrospect to everything that’s happened since this series originally aired.

Live from the 60s! Laugh, Laugh by Beau Brummels:

Movie prices these days are sky-high. The next time I go to the theatre it’ll be 10 bucks just to get in. But with these three flicks, I won’t mind paying;

HAROLD & KUMAR: After finally sitting down last week and seeing their escapades just to get to White Castle, I have to admit this will be my ‘Guilty Pleasure’ movie!

IRON MAN: Marvel superheroes seem to lend themselves better to the silver screen than DC heroes do.

INDIANA JONES: He fought Nazism! He saved the cradle of civilization! He fought Nazism! Again! Now he’s gonna take on the Communists! Where’s my popcorn??