So Wed. night I rewatched Airplane!. I’ve seen this movie several times, last time was several years ago at the beach with my nephew. Always funny, and I distinctly remember the first time seeing it in the theater (because I’m old) and never laughing harder at a movie than this one, then or since. When it came out, this movie skewered all the stupid disaster films that were all the rage at the time (the tiresome Airport series, Towering Inferno, Poseidon Adventure – the list went on). All the more reason to tear it down by sending the ‘genre’ up. 🙂

While there’s a few bits now that are a tad bit borderline (this was the ’70s after all) – it’s still funny through and through. And it’s one of those movies that has so many sight gags in it, you have to watch closely (or repeatedly) to catch all of them. To wit, the Peter Graves scene at the magazine rack – can you spot the obvious (and not-so-obvious)? 🙂

And of course the announcers arguing over the PA about the ‘white zone’ and the ‘red zone’ – and the airport cult member smackdown (remember cult people in the airports? Ah, memories….).

What is also hilarious is how many veteran actors are spoofing themselves (Peter Graves, Lloyd Bridges, Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack), especially Lloyd Bridges with all his side comments and ridiculous posturing as a stressed-out airport traffic mgr. I had forgotten the scene where he slams the phone down and leans forward on his desk all intense, and the camera pans out to show an identical picture of him doing the same thing, hanging on the wall behind him – too funny!

And the cameo of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was genius, even if he’s obviously reading off a cue card at one point. And don’t forget Johnny, or the ‘Automatic Pilot’.

here’s a clip montage that only shows the tip of the iceberg – and if you have never seen this movie, get crackin’ and watch it 🙂

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to Gojira’s return! But in the meantime (april 4), it looks like Gina Carano may have to do – what she does so well – kick a**!

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although it is now a month old (doh!) this has to be Anna Minard’s funniest column yet – well DONE, sir!

Never Heard of ‘Em (by Anna Minard) – Nico

including classic words like “I used to hear 30 seconds of a punk song and feel like my ears were going to throw up.” and “This is just all bells and talk-singing and waggling noises and some lady who sounds like she lives in a tree.”

too funny.

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But mark your calendars anyway – June 6-8, 2014, Tacoma Convention Center….

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So the summer movie-going season kind of hit a wall in mid-July due to work and other commitments, sadly. But that’s why the DVD was invented, rightl? 🙂 So I finally saw Pacific Rim this afternoon on DVD. While I’m sure the effect of mecha-robots and kaiju slugging it out was diminished somewhat by watching it at home – it was still entertaining.

Likes: – the way the soundtrack draws you in when the battles intensify (this was done well IMHO in other recent movies, notably The Avengers);

– The robots are pretty cool, even if not that original (we’ve seen them all pretty much a zillion times before if you have seen Transformers or any anime mecha from Gundam onward through Evangelion) although I was a bit disappointed the majority of the battles occur at sea rather than on land – gotta smash up those buildings and stomp the people and cars! One of the mecha uses an actual ship as a bat at one point, so that’s pretty cool, too, even if I think they have a bit of a comparative scale issue on that point;

– The actors are all fairly unknown (to me, at least) save Idris Elba, who seems to be really hitting the big time of late. Charlie Day also resembles Sam Rockwell more than a little bit – I was surprised it wasn’t the latter. I’m glad they did it that way and not just have a bunch of big names who demand more money and more screen time – stories like this are about kaiju and the men/women who waste them with huge robots, first and foremost!

– the fact that the robots didn’t just win the war at first go and that the kaiju kept coming back, meaner and more vicious.

And, then the inevitable gripes and spoilers (alert!)

– it’s been pointed out many times over that building big robots to take out big monsters wouldn’t work. Godzilla proved that with Mechagodzilla, and that was guys in rubber suits (and arguably, both characters were bad guys anyway)! Suffice it to say that with mecha, you just have to disbelieve from the word go, or you can’t enjoy it;

– why, oh why don’t the robots simply RIP OFF THE MONSTERS’ HEADS when they fight them? It’s obvious from the start of every fight that trying to punch them out (especially when half submerged in water) DOES NOT WORK. Nor does throwing them around, on the few times they try it. And when you have pilots trained in martial arts and that have flexible swords mounted in the back of the mecha, using those skills and weapons more than as an afterthought *might* make sense – who knew? Again, a boxing match works best on land, and more likely between guys in rubber suits who don’t have the benefit of CGI weapons. 🙂

– the whole thing of the monster shorting out all the mecha in one of the later battles excepting the Gypsy Danger because they were ‘digital’ and it is ‘analog’ is completely bogus. Do you really think that shorting out wires and hardware depends on whether there’s a CPU? The answer is NO. Fried wires and computers are fried, period, guys. Ask any Cylon, old or new.

– there are a few too many ‘fight to the last man’ cliches here, but at least the movie doesn’t drag them out, so they don’t distract *too* much.

– I don’t care how many helicopters you use – there is no way they could lift a mecha like that? But barring some other plot device (like how the Autobots could fly when the plot suited it), not sure how you resolve that one….?

All in all, an entertaining ride, even if not seen on the big screen. Next up, catching Elysium and Oblivion on DVD to finish out summer movies …. three months late!

A final word – throughout this movie I was constantly saying to myself – Gojira would have kicked ALL their a**es! Thankfully we only have to wait until the start of next summer to see it happen……muhhahhah!

candybowl

candybowl

how many can YOU spot? 🙂

click here for big version (that you can read and scroll around).

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Even *I*, mr fraidy-cat of heights, would likely have to check this out….trip to Dusseldorf, anyone?

Tomás Saraceno
In Orbit, Suspended Installation at K21 Staendehaus by Tomás Saraceno

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