This Week In Entertainment (6/25/07)

My Pick of the Week is Mystery Science Theater 3000, Volume 11. This includes Ring of Terror, The Indestructable Man, Tormented, and The Horrors of Spider Island. The last episode was my favorite of the last season. I haven't seen Indestructable Man. Ring of Terror featured some of the oldest college kids ever. Tormented featured a girl outacting the rest of the cast.

Also out this week, and would have been my pick if it was any other week, is The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: The Complete Series. Sadly, they seem to have cut out the episode where Princess Toadstool went to a Milli Vanilli concert. I'll have to find that episode at youtube and review it someday.

I've gots to get my hands on this one: Zero Hour! This 1957 movie was the inspiration for Airplane!

Cult Camp Classics 1 - Sci-Fi Thrillers (Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman 1958 / Giant Behemoth / Queen of Outer Space) - Worth it just to see Zsa Zsa Gabor as a Venusian scientist. There's a scene where she pretends to be the Queen of Outer Space, and nobody comments on her accent.

The New Adventures of Batman - No, this isn't the crappy WB cartoons where they needlessly redesigned the bad guys. This was made in 1977 and features the voices of Adam West and Burt Ward. Maybe they'll finally release the tv series.

The New Adventures of Superman - This was made in 1966. It's probably as crappy as the New Adventures of Batman. (Of course, how could you compete with the standard set in the forties?)

Dead Silence is coming out this week. I made fun of it when I first heard of it, but I completely forgot about it until now. If it was anything but a horror movie, I would conclude that it probably didn't do so well.

The Doomsday Machine - If it weren't for the ending, and the fact that Jabootu did a review of it, I wouldn't recommend this movie. Space movies are boring. Still, I would love to see the movie just for the ending.

Check out the comments for Bozo: the World's Most Famous Clown. People are getting into a shouting match over who's local clown was better.

"PYLE!" "SHAZAM!" "PYLE!!" "SHAZAM!!"

For the Chick Heads in your life, it's King James Version Bible on DVD!

Hippy History Month Essay #1

(Note: This essay was originally about someone else, but that will be delayed until next week, hopefully.)

My essay is about Tom Laughlin. He is best known for his dedication to pacifism, but he also has his good poins.

Tom Laughlin was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota and lived in Wisconsin. This traumatic experience obviously shaped his life.

Tom was an actor and got his start on the TV show "Climax!" There is a famous urban legend about this tv show, but it is not true that it's a sex show. He also starred in movies like Gidget and South Pacific, which allowed him to play up his strengths as a beach bum.

In the sixties, this typecasting finally caught up to him. He was forced to star in movies meant to humiliate him. Titles like "The Young Sinner" and "The Born Loser" were thought up first, long before a poster and eventual script were made. However, Tom got the last laugh when they made The Born Loser about an Indian. Tom's native American looks made him perfect for the role as Billy Jack. People are often shocked to find out that he's really a caucasion from the Midwest.

The Born Loser told the story of the a former Green Beret who doesn't wear a hat. Along his way, he meets several bikers and local girls, all who have bad parents. At some poin his pacifism allows him to kick several people. Eventually this straightens everything out, and Billy gets the girl Vicki. Their love was not to last as he dumps her before the credits role after her bizarre lightbulb speech.

The movie was directed by a hat who was always critical of Laughlin. Eventually the two had an offscreen altercation. The hat kept telling Tom that it could do his scenes by itself, and they eventually compromised for the next Billy movie. Billy was still the star, but the hat would appear in every scene. (There are websites dedicated to where the hat is on every frame of the Billy Jack Trilogy.)

The first movie of the seventies trilogy is appropriately, Billy Jack. This movie tells the story of the origin of how Billy Jack's girlfriend Jean gave him the hat. There's also a lot of racist, corrupt town folks, but the hat wins in the end. Tom was also allowed to speak out on half of the Indian community because he looked so much like them.

This movie became a success when Tom was the first to show endless commercials of the movie on television. This revolutionary idea is now how all films are advertised in America. Later in 1971 Laughlin directed Touch of Satan, which defined his views on relationships.

In the middle of the decade Laughlin created The Master Gunfighter, a movie that debunked the idea that cowboys actually used guns instead of the historically correct swords. After this he created his masterpiece, The Trial of Billy Jack. This movie is the first to have scenes where people talk about issues for 15 to 30 minutes straight. The movie is about Billy going to jail for slapping Jesus, but the belly dancing team from his girlfriend's hippy school free him. Eventually some soldier go on their campus and shoots several of them to stop their whining. Billy survives mostly by the awesomeness of his hat.

This film was one of the top moneymakers of 1975, so a sequel was guaranteed. However, he made the tragic mistake in dissing the hat when he decided to do a remake of Mr. Smith Goes To Washington. The film was a flop and destroyed Laughlin's career as a film maker. The hat is now in a museum in Japan somewhere.

Tom Laughlin's later life is defined by his entry into politics. He has entered into several presidential races, and sometimes people even vote for him. In New Hampshire he proved his popularity by receiving 2% of the Democratic Party vote in 1992. He now maintains a website filled with his revolutionary ideas and stuff.

Since Tom Laughlin was a big hippy it is a known fact that while he talked about wanting to save the world, he just smoked pot and smelled bad. However, he does deserve credit for the name of Rowan and Martin's variety show.

Sunday, Lazy Sunday (3/4/07)

Rocky Eye plus Rocky Eye Eye Eye equals Rocky Eye Vee: The Commies Is Coming!

I got my greedy hands on Wii Play today, after not being able to find it for two weeks. It's a quick game, but I now have one more Wii Remote then GameCube Controllers. I wish I had a green remote, though. Come on, Nintendo!

The Maryland Terrapins will be in the NCAA tournament this year after missing the last two. Maybe I should record the games and give my thoughts on them! Of course, I haven't followed the team at all and I'm not really a college basketball fan, but anything that can fill space in my blog will be great!

Seriously, this whole blog is about filling space, my horrible memory, and video games.

Now that February is over, there won't be any more Black History Month essays. Still, you may see something similar in the future.

This Week In Entertainment (2/12/07)

My pick of the week is Wii Play for the Nintendo Wii. I really liked Wii Sports and I'm hoping this game is better then the foreign word of mouth. I hope that at least the billiard games is fun. I'm sure this game will be popular just because it comes with a free Wii Remote.

Also coming out is Police Story 2 (Special Collector's Edition) on dvd. I have no idea which movie this one is, but it has Jackie Chan from 1988, so it should be good. (Even bad Jackie Chan movies at his peak are worth watching. I remember one - it may have been a Police Story in fact - where I realized that I thought the movie was stupid or lame or boring or something. Still, I realized that every single piece of glass was being broken, so I poined it out to my sister, and for the rest of the movie, we were cheering whenever some glass broke. The movie ended with a ton of glass being broke from three different angles.)

Just in time for Valentine's Day, two very frightening movies I'm glad I've never seen. Deadly Weapons/Double Agent 73 (1974) starring Chesty Morgan, two movies that should be seen by no one if this Jabootu review is to be believed.

For Hercules fans, Hercules and the Captive Women/Hercules, Prisoner of Evil (1961).

For fans of crap, Zoom got a perfect 0% rating at Rotten Tomatoes.com.

And for fans of cuss words, they're releasing a movie called F***, which is a documentary of that particular word. Wiki said that the movie used it over 600 times, if my memory serves me correct.

Update: I have just found out that they're finally releasing Kid Icarus to the Wii's virtual console. I've been wanting to get my hands on this game and it'll be my first VC game for that system. It's 500 Wii Poins.