Braced for singularity |
THE FIFTH ELEMENT Turns 27 27 Years! Can you believe I saw this movie in the same year I launched this website? ...Yes, I'm that old. Shut yer f*ckin' piehole! Anyway, it's a SciFi Action Thriller, not Science Fiction and by that I mean FLASH GORDON comic book-style Space Opera over hardcore Science Fiction like FORBIDDEN PLANET, 2001, ALIEN, or John Carpenter's THE THING. This is why THE FIFTH ELEMENT is such fun! And - May is Mummy Month THE MUMMY is 25 Universal Pictures decided it was high time they relaunched their Monsters that put them on the map in the first place and remains their most recognized calling card (Monsters remain to Universal Pictures what a rodent remains to Disney World). Actually, it had been "high-time" for some time but Universal was looking for the right director for way too much time. They'd already attached and detached Joe Dante, Clive Barker, and George A. Romero. Wes Craven was offered the job but didn't jump. Disney Director, Stephen Sommer, did so well with 1994's live action Jungle Book that the mouse let him direct a Horror movie he wrote called Tentacle, through their Hollywood Pictures appendage. Before it hit the screens as DEEP RISING, word was getting out that this would be both a fun and scary ride. And word was getting out a lot because Disney kept cutting the budget (We can't get Harrison Ford? Cut the budget! Jim Carrey isn't replacing Ford? Cut it some more!) which contributed to a longer, not shorter, production schedule. So when Stephen mentioned in passing that he'd love to take on the famous Universal Mummy Monster franchise, UP sat up and took notice. Once DEEP RISING made fat profit, despite playing in theaters against James Cameron's box office gigantic TITANIC, there was no going back on Stephen Sommers THE MUMMY. Plus - May is Marvel Movie Month IRON MAN 2 is 14 Stan Lee and Marvel Productions couldn't afford to do the standard knee-jerk crap sequel. The only way to support Stan's vision of an MCU was to make each sequel better than the preceding movie. It didn't get to have a lower budget, cheaper writers and directors and run off opening weekend fumes as it crawled to its trilogy disc pack and faded from memory. It had to rock! So this is what happened with IRON MAN 2. Also - HAPPY HORROR THRILLER BIRTHDAYS TO - Actor Carrie Henn (ALIENS, THUNDER ISLAND) is 47.
PERPETUAL BULLET Now Available in Special Hardcover Edition Author E.C. McMullen Jr., creator of Feo Amante's Horror Thriller, found getting his short stories published in mags and anthos was great at first. Then, after years of this, he realized his stories were spread out everywhere in limited magazine runs and their availability vanished over time, lost to any readers who would look. Even worse was his life being wasted on glacial response from publishers even when eventually accepted! This despite the fact that his stories often received critical acclaim time and again. PERPETUAL BULLET is his collection of previously published shorts plus a few bonuses. Available in a new Special Edition Hardcover, Paperback, and Kindle now! And - INSANE LIKE ME gets a June 4 VOD / Digital Release
Plus - BLACK SABBATH Turns 62 Yes, this is the movie that legendary musician and Boris Karloff fan, Tony Iommi, chose to name his new band after. That's right, the band that launched the career of Ozzy Osbourne. The band that introduced Stan Lee's Marvel comics IRON MAN movie and the MCU to the world with Black Sabbath playing their hit, Iron Man.
And yes, the same Mario Bava whose movies stylistically, in both design and story, heavily influenced everything from STAR TREK (TOS) to ALIEN to FRIDAY THE 13th and who knows what else? When it comes to modern Horror and Heavily Metal, there is a falling domino line from Mario Bava to the present, making him, if not the father, then at least the Godfather of it all. And that all began about 60 years ago with BLACK SABBATH. Also - PHANTASM III Turns 30 The ball was back and so was a cheer from the Phans when a grown-up A. Michael Baldwin returned to play his character Mike (PHANTASM, PHANTASM IV) in PHANTASM III: Lord Of The Dead. Finale - HAPPY HORROR THRILLER BIRTHDAYS TO - Writer Nancy Kilpatrick (THE VAMPIRE STORIES OF NANCY KILPATRICK, THE GOTH BIBLE, ETERNAL CITY, POWER OF THE BLOODWORLD series, BLOOD LOVER, EVOLVE: VAMPIRE STORIES OF THE NEW UNDEAD) is 63 or something. SUNDAY - Actor John Rhys-Davies (SPHINX, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, WAXWORK, THE LOST WORLD, THE UNAMEABLE II, THE LORD OF THE RINGS, CHUPACABRA TERROR, TAINTED LOVE, ANACONDA 3, ANACONDA 4, 31 NORTH 62 EAST, FEROCIOUS PLANET, MEDIUM RAW: NIGHT OF THE WOLF, FEROCIOUS PLANET, ESCAPE, 100 DEGREES BELOW ZERO, PRISONERS OF THE SUN, TIME LAPSE [2014], AUX, AQUAMAN, G-LOC, THE GATES, over 270 movies and TV episodes in all!) is 79. SATURDAY - Actor Nicholas Hamilton (STRANGERLAND, THE DARK TOWER, IT [2017], IT: CHAPTER 2, ENDLESS, GEN V) is 23. THE MUMMY RETURNS is 23 Aw man! It was great to see the fun cast togther again! And The Rock was at his prime and he was going to be... The Scorpion King (we had no idea but it sounded cool and we were there for it!). What a great movie! All building up to the appearance of the Scorpion King! Then... we saw it, and that utterly changed the direction of THE MUMMY RETURNS. May Is Marvel Month SPIDER-MAN 3 is 17 There could have been many more SPIDER-MAN movies with the Sam Raimi cast. Unfortunately the only actor who got out of it unscathed was J.K. Simmons. My first watch was pure geek giddiness. But some movies cannot withstand repeated viewings and that's what happened with most of us who saw SPIDER-MAN 3.
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FEO'S BRAGGADOCIO |
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Some people think I'm more important than you (I don't, but they do. You know how they are) and this is their (HA!) evidence. INTERVIEWS Matt Jarbo's interview with Feo Amante at The Zurvivalist. James Cheetham's Q&A with Feo Amante at Unconventional Interviews *. Megan Scudellari interviews Feo Amante and Kelly Parks (of THE SCIENCE MOMENT) in The Scientist Magazine. Check out our interview at The-Scientist.com. REFERENCES Researcher David Waldron, references my review of UNDERWORLD in the Spring 2005, Journal of Religion and Popular Culture entry, Role-Playing Games and the Christian Right: Community Formation in Response to a Moral Panic (downloadable pdf). E.C. McMullen Jr.
*Linked to archive.org |
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