“Scientific” parapsychology really had its heyday in the ‘60s — that’s what the Vulcan “mind meld” grew out of. It was a little past its sell-by date by 1979, but it was at least still a familiar sci-fi trope. It pretty much died out in the ‘80s, except in the more mystico-philosophical form of Star Wars’ “Force”.

He was pretty damn prolific, so he did a few. Check out the 1967 film It!, which is sort of like Willard, but with the folkloric Golem instead of rats.

I built the gigantic (over 2' long) Cygnus plastic model, which was also fairly cheap, but gorgeous, and later made an iconic prop for a tabletop RPG I was running.

The science behind the gigantic rocket engines pushing the Earth and why they don’t incidentally strip off the atmosphere of the planet in the process (though a lot of that gets burned off in the major plot complication anyway), as well as how the subterranean population is fed, is all very much hand-waved, though it…

I saw this in the theater during its brief US run, and enjoyed it both for its earnest Big Dumb Disaster Movie spectacle, and its creepy paternalist/collectivist undertones (the escape plan involves precipitating natural disasters that apparently kill off over a billion people as a “necessary sacrifice”). The…

Middle name: “Birchard” <snicker>

I’ve noted elsewhere that I think this could be Jack Black’s best role — as much a function of casting as acting ability. “Crazy-eyed man child” is kind of a perfect fit for Carl Denham. And there’s a real sense that amid all the soap opera and carnage going on, he’s constantly on his own narrative wavelength.

Obviously shooting for that Barton Fink feeling.

You think people weren’t pursuing happiness by getting drunk in 1776? I say two out of three.

Some sort of ability to sense damage would indeed make sense, but the haphazard way that evolved in living organisms, with associated trauma and emotional/psychological baggage, and lack of proportion to actual harm, seems like poor engineering that would undermine their functioning.

I vaguely recall that too, and I’m pretty sure there’s a Kong poster in there, because I just Googled up the Seinfeld Set Replica page, which has a copyright notice for Kong. Unfortunately, I can’t for the life of me find the actual poster in the model.

That’s the rare monster poster where the kaiju might actually be too small.

Of course, the whole “Colossus” pose with Kong on the towers ignored scale — it was actually a minor plot point that the distance between the towers was a really formidable leap even for a giant ape. And I think earlier versions of the poster featured attacking jet fighters instead of the helicopters of the actual…

I always thought the whole concept of a “droid torture chamber” was more absurd than disturbing — the issues of sentience and sapience of Star Wars droids were always legitimate questions, which made their treatment by the protagonists of the series pretty “problematic”. Conscious or not, though, the idea of…

Trying to preserve that logic (as well as his inherent geekery) is probably part of why Jackson chose to do his version as a period piece. Updated versions have to deal with the dramatically different sensibilities of later eras. If you discovered Skull Island today, you’d just cover the place with webcams.

Satie’s Gymnopedie No. 1 is what I, and I think most people, remember about it musically.

A little bit of Mothra in my life...

So “molasses in January” is not only not slow, it’s been clocked at 35 MPH.

Merry Christmas!

Given what we glimpsed of Williams’ body hair in other films, he could easily have been filmed stark naked without any NC-17-worthy parts being visible.