Night of the Comet

So I watched this movie Night of the Comet last night on Netflix. Night of the Comet, I’ve gathered, is one of those cult-classic 1980s films I had never seen. The movie can also be described as a science fiction, horror, zombie apocalypse, comedy film.

I had never seen Night of the Comet before last night, but I can be forgiven I think, since the movie was rated PG-13 and I was less than 13 when it came out in 1984. I was probably instead watching Star Wars on a rented VCR for the thousandth time instead.

The Earth is passing through the tail of a comet, an event which has not occurred in 65 million years, the last time coinciding with the extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs. On the night of the comet’s passage, large crowds gather outside to watch and celebrate.

18 year old Regina “Reggie” Belmont (Catherine Mary Stewart) works at a movie theater in southern California. She is annoyed to find the initials DMK have the highest score on the theater’s arcade game, all the other scores being hers. She stays after the theater closes to become number one again, then later has sex with her boyfriend, the theater projectionist, in the steel-lined projection booth. Meanwhile, Reggie’s 16 year old sister Samantha “Sam” (Kelli Maroney) argues with their stepmother, who punches her in the face.

The next morning, a reddish haze covers everything, and there are no signs of life, only piles of red dust surrounding empty clothes. Unaware that anything strange has happened, Larry goes outside and is killed by a zombie. When Reggie goes looking for Larry, she finds the zombie eating him. She runs away and heads home to find her sister. Sam had spent the night in a metal shed, and was also shielded from the comet’s effects.

(via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_comet)

Night of the Comet is paced like an 80s movie. There are no sudden MTV-style camera changes (hurl). The movie doesn’t begin with anything going “boom”. In fact, the movie opens with the protagonist, Catherine Mary Stewart, playing the arcade game Tempest. Of course I was hooked at this point.

This gives me an excuse to post a photo of Catherine Mary Stewart as Maggie from one of my favorite movies of all time: The Last Starfighter.

Night of the Comet fits in the horror genre, but it isn’t horror-movie scary. The protagonists have hope. You wind up caring for them, these two sisters thrust into this post-apocalyptic world. That’s all I ask of a movie, really. Make me care.

The movie is full on 1980s. It looks 80s. It feels 80s. 80s dialogue. 80s costumes. 80s problems (plus zombies).

This is the type of movie I needed to see after the week we all (humanity) had last week. Apocalypse, I can handle. It’s the worry about that trash can over there exploding on my and my family that keeps me up at night.

What if Star Wars was a 1980s John Hughes movie?

This is great. You really have to click through to see the lovely watercolor paintings. I particularly love the one of Marty McFly as Luke Skywalker, viewing the sunset.

Amazing Italian comic artist Denis Medri is back, with even more beautiful Star Wars art. Last year we featured a collection of his images of Star Wars recast as 1980s teen drama characters, and now he’s back with actual scenes. It’s simply brilliant.

The Tatooine backyard sunset, the Millennium Falcon as a van with a Falcon airbrushed on the side, Darth Vader as the school bully. Someone needs to make this movie right now. Or at the very least drum up a fake trailer, please?

via What if Star Wars was a 1980s John Hughes movie?.

Karate Kid Remake

One of my favorite movies of all time is Karate Kid. Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while know that. As a kid, I used to watch Karate Kid daily on a VHS recording I made of the movie on one of those times we got free HBO for the weekend. Anybody else remember free HBO weekends? They don’t do that anymore, do they?

Anyhow, I used to watch Karate Kid, particularly the ending of the movie where Daniel does the crane kick and wins the All Valley Karate Championship. We used to watch the maneuver in slow motion, noting how Daniel’s foot doesn’t quite reach Johnny’s face, but not really caring that it doesn’t.

My best friend Cory and I used to play Karate Kid all the time. I was always Daniel and he was always Daniel’s best friend, that happened to have the exact same skills as Daniel and looked the same as Daniel. lol We fought many invisible bad guys in those days.

So, Karate Kid is near and dear to my heart. When I heard they were doing a “remake” of Karate Kid I groaned. When I heard that Will Smith’s 9 year old was playing the part of Karate Kid I vomited. I was set against watching this movie on principal alone. Then I saw the trailer.

Not bad. I can get behind Jackie Chan in the “Miyagi” role. I still don’t agree with the choice of such a young “Karate Kid” but I can get beyond that. In fact, if they had called the movie something other than Karate Kid, I’d probably go see this in the theater. Instead, I’ll probably rent it.

Who knows, maybe some kid will see this new movie and become Karate Kid themselves. And just maybe they’ll check out the original and realize what a much more superior film that was. 🙂

Sweep the leg.

Wall-E End Credits (the best part)

There’s the end credits for Wall-E. Definitely worth a look if you haven’t taken the time to watch them before. In fact, I would say the end credits here are better than some of the full movies out there now!

By now, almost everybody has seen the movie Wall-E. Just a beautiful movie, animated or not. We watched it again the other day with our daughter and it was neat to experience it through the eyes of a 2 1/2 year old. We fast forwarded through any of the violent or scary parts, not that there were many of them.

Do you remember the part where Wall-E has a Rubik’s Cube? Well, my daughter picked up on that right away. In fact, she remembered we have a Rubik’s Cube and she even had me bring it to work with me. He he.

Anyhow, that’s my contribution to the web world for today. I’m feeling a bit punchy due to lack of sleep.

Coraline Trailer

The contest at The Clarity of Night is now closed.  There were a mind numbing 125 entries posted.  That’s crazy.  Visions of winning the contest and buying Volume 2 of The Absolute Sandman are now out the window.  I’ll now be happy with an honorable mention.  My entry for the contest is #26.  I’m pretty proud of my writing in that one.  I think I was able to get my vision for the story across pretty well. You can still read it over there or at the top of this blog.  I have “stuck” it to the top and will leave it there for a while.

I mentioned the movie Coraline yesterday.  I came across a trailer for the movie today.  It’s pretty awesome.  Here it is:

Star Wars According to a Three Year Old

What do you do if you are having trouble coming up with a topic to blog about? You post a YouTube video of course.

You all may have seen this already, but I figured I’d post this here just in case. It’s a cute little interview with a 3 year old girl about Star Wars. My favorite part is “but don’t talk back to Darth Vader, he’ll get ya!”. Too cute. Anyhow, enjoy.

Stardust “Tourism Guides”

Neil Gaiman posted on his site the other day four YouTube videos from the International release of Stardust. He says they feel more like the movie than the promotional trailers that were released in the States, and I would agree. Check them all out here. This one was my favorite:

My Thoughts on Stardust (the movie)

My wife and I went and saw Stardust this past Friday, and early anniversary date for us. I convinced her to do the movie portion of our date on Friday because I wanted the movie to do well it’s opening weekend. We left the decently full theater with smiles on our faces and have been talking about the movie since. I will purchase it when it comes out on DVD (which is saying something because I don’t buy DVDs anymore). I would describe Stardust as a sweet movie, one that for a few hours transported me to a different place.  That’s all I ask.

I thought the acting was solidall around. I particularly thought Claire Danes (Yvaine) and Charlie Cox (Tristan), the movie’s two leads, did a particularly good job. My wife and I liked the effects in the movie where Yvaine (the star) lit-up when she was happy.

Deniro’s part was funny, but since I had read about that before I wasn’t overly impressed or unimpressed. The dead princes did add quote a bit of humor to the story, especially in the way they died and how they reacted to their deaths.

There were a few parts that weren’t included in the movie that were in the book. The little hairy man who was in the book, wasn’t in the movie. He is the Tom Bombadil of the story, helping our hero when he first starts on his journey (interesting considering Bombadil wasn’t in the movie adaption of Lord of the Rings either). The movie started Tristan’s journey in a different way.

I would’ve also liked to have seen more in the village of Wall, but I can understand they were trying to move the story along, and this might be superfluous. Oh well.

Mostly, I just want to see this movie again. I spent the first part of the movie compare it to the book. I think I’ll enjoy Stardust even more the second time, having already made these comparisons. As far as reviews go, all you really need to know is that I want to see this movie again. That is very rare for me.

If you haven’t seen the movie, so to the Stardust Movie site, and watch the trailer. They one there is much better than the ones I have seen previously. I suggest you see it soon, though, because with the less than stellar opening weekend it probably won’t be in theaters much longer.

Seeing Stardust Tonight

Well, I’m off for the afternoon.  I’m babysitting my daughter while her mom goes to the dentist.  Tonight we are going to see Stardust (contributing to a big opening weekend, hopefully).  I will tell you how it is.  Have a nice weekend.  If you get a chance, go see the movie.  Down with sequels (except for Indiana Jones, of course)!

Indiana Jones 4 – Karen Allen Returns!

According to this article and various reports from this year’s ComiCon in San Diego, Karen Allen will be returning for the next Indiana Jones movie!  For those of you who don’t know, Karen Allen was the female protagonist in the first Indiana Jones film and has been in other films such as Scrooged with Bill Murray, and of course the classic Animal House.  They have a photo of Karen up at the official Indiana Jones web site, so check it out.

This news just makes me happy. For one, I like Karen Allen in all the movies I have seen her in. Two, I just love when movies like this bring people back from previous movies.  This makes me even more excited to see Indy 4, and it at least appears that this one will be faithful to the other three movies.  Now, if they can just keep George Lucas away from, well everything, I think they’ll be ok.