The Simpsons Movie

well, most of the people i know are very excited about the idea of a movie version of The Simpsons. i tend to reserve judgement - i wasn't expecting all that much from either Beavis and Butthead or South Park when they got their big screen gigs, yet both films turned out OK.

anyway, here are some images from the film. i think these more or less all feature in the trailer for it.



not exactly a new Simpsons image, i have lost count of the times Homer has been attached to a demolition ball. or i have seen the same episode again and again.



Homer has not been overly aggressive to Bart since the first few series of the show. note the word "overly" - the first series was borderline homicidal! oh well, it looks like that kind of relationship returns here!



so, who is the Quasimodo or Elephant Man type figure they are seeking with the lit torches?


nothing too inspiring there, but then again these images just look like stills that could be from the TV show. i suspect it will all make sense and be better as and when the film is released - July 2007, i believe.

i trust that my regular readers liked the pics, and if you have visited my site after searching for "Simpsons Movie", enjoy!!

be excellent to each other!!!!!

James and the Palace of Balls

hey everyone

James, as regular visitors to this site will recall, loves these colourful plastic balls designed for kids to play with. Many a happy hour can be spent by the young one throwing them all over the place. In accordance with this, Auntie Maria and Uncle Sinbad got him this most excellent gift :



nice one!! Daddy can fit inside it with him, but struggles to get out somewhat! With some luck, i will get some pictures of him messing about with the class train from "Uncle" Spiros and Auntie Linda, not to mention the inflatable Submarine ball thingie from Grandma Monica!!

be most excellent to each other!!

more of Lyla Joline!!

hey everyone


here's some more pics of Lyla Joline!! Richard and Erika must have done something right to get such a beautiful daughter!!



thanks to Richard, Erika and everyone else for the excellent party for her yesterday. driving to Middelburg 3 times this week has been rather hectic, but all worthwhile!
James and Lyla seemed to take a shine to each other. well, James likes Lyla, Lyla was asleep!



there is a video of the two of them on the way to family around the world soon, once it has been made into a DVD!!!

be excellent to each other!!!!

hey, LYLA!

hey everyone

sorry for the lack of updates - we have had mental electrical storms here, meaning that i have struggled to connect from home, and the network at verk is starting to not like me uploading pics very much.

enough of my yakking - here is Lyla Joline Ricketts, lovely daughter born today to proud parents Richard and Erika!!



she was born at 9:45am this morning, weighing in at 2.9kgs!



be excellent to each other!!!

victory at the castle........

hey everyone

i am busy listening to the tape of the soundtrack of Starstruck as i type this. victory!!

thank you very much Mrs R for investing in it for me, and thank you to the chap in the USA who sold it to me off amazon.com

why on earth this has never ever had a proper CD release i do not know. my mate in Denver is currently upset that i sent him the DVD of the film, but i am confident once he has watched it he will calm down a bit.

anyway, i am off to listen to more Starstruck, watch the last episode of Season 2 of House, and then probably bed!!

be very excellent to each other, i say, deep within the realms of my odyssey into the world of early 80's new wave Australian music.

this looks really bad

sadly, this masterpiece of cinema would appear to be unavailable anywhere on DVD or tape. by all means follow the link above to read about this one, but do not expect any grand celebrations of this.

i would be interested to hear from anyone who has seen or owns this one, the poster gives every indication of it being so very bad that it is fun to watch!

boredom - accidentally published

hey everyone

this is from last week, but there you go, published in 2007 :



i was flicking through You magazine, a rather popular thing here. i took offence at their review of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre : The Beginning, and fired off a lengthy email to them. i was not expecting it to be published, but there you go. my grammar has been slaughtered, and my long list of most excellent chainsaw films has been removed, but i think my point was made.

the letter below it, from Ruby i believe, is the usual type of thing which gets published in this You magazine.

feel free to follow the link and fire off an email - i am guessing they will print pretty much anything sent to them.

be excellent to each other!!!!

The Alternative Fantastic Four

on TV over the weekend we had the 2005 version of The Fantastic Four. it seemed better than i remembered the first time around (scour previous posts for my review if you wish), and so i had a search around on the great oracle that is the internet for some info. well, verk has been quite quiet thus far in 2007. imagine my surprise to discover another, unreleased version of the film from the 90's!


infamous director Roger Corman was responsible for this one, apparently. it seems that the 1994 version of The Fantastic Four was never actually intended to be released. some company or other held the rights to the film, rights which were to expire and rights which Marvel were not going to renew. so, for about $1.5 million (that is about 10% if what you would pay to get Arnie or Brucie to just consider being in your film), a version was made quick to retain the rights.

it has never had an official release as such, but like other infamous unreleased films (The Rolling Stones ********er Blues springs to mind), copies have leaked around the world for enthusiasts, fans and the curious. these pictures, i believe, are a mix of official stills and screenshots from the rarely seen trailer for it.

i am led to believe that, whilst lacking in special effects (not that the 2005 Fantastic Four was dazzling here - Mr Stretchy, or whatever he is called, is really bad in some close-up shots), it does have a much better, coherent plot structure. i am (ahem) trying to obtain this film, mostly for the curiosity factor. there is a link in the title if you wish to obtain this film - it looks like a good opportunity to make a worthwhile donation to a good cause to get it.

if you have seen this one, feel free to post your comments and views on it. on that note, thank you to all who have linked to my site. i was having some trouble accessing Blogger earlier today, and thus searched for my site to check that it was still in one piece. not being too keen on vanity, i have never searched for it before, and was equally humbled and surprised to see the amount of references i have earned!!

be excellent to each other!!!!

message to Mike / stupid Australian news story

Mike

you managed to phone when the numbnuts telephone company here, Telkom, managed to accidentally disconnect our phone for the weekend! sorry man, never know which phone number to use for you or where you are in the world. looking forward to a yarn, as you suggested, soon.

meanwhile, i really hope that this story was published with a joke being the intention.




my view on Peter Jackson is that he is a good film-maker, so long as he does not cast the awful Jack Black in anything ever again.

be excellent to each other!!!!

twenty years ago today, frankie say.......

hey everyone

well, i suspect that on 9 January 1987 i did not sleep very much. why not? the excitement of 10 January 1987 and seeing :




yep, i will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of my first ever gig, and what a gig to see - my beloved Frankie Goes To Hollywood in the flesh, as it were. Manchester G-Mex. Berlin, of all people, were the support act. but never mind them.

Frankie burst onto stage with Warriors Of The Wasteland, then went on to one of my faves, Only Star In Heaven. what came next is a bit of a blur, but it was all Frankie. Relax (in 1987!) was referred to by Holly as a "blast from the past", and Ped had some ace red light sticks on the drums for the opening of Lunar Bay



The encore was Born To Run followed by Two Tribes with massive flamethrowers on the go with the beats. well, they were massive to an almost 14 year old Frankie Fan.

i, and the world, miss Frankie. what they had to say was so very, very cool. they were about having fun, and they were fun. Frankie made you feel part of the world. no one these days seems very interested in fun anymore, which is sad.

thanks to Michele's ace Christmas present, i was able to once again enjoy the b-side of the Power Of Love 12", with an extra special Christmas wish from the Frankie boys on it. no band today has enough humour to do the same thing.

be excellent to each other!! relax!!!

Rocky Balboa

there was a time, twenty or so years ago, when the world by and large believed in America. we believed in dreams being fulfilled, we dreamed in anything being possible, or at least nothing being impossible. then that all went away, for reasons that could fill one thousand websites with theories and debates as to why.

Rocky Balboa, wide open to a whole range of lazy, cynical reviews, is a friendly reminder of when we thought America was the only place to be in the world.

The plot more or less takes the form of an ingenious remake of the first, superb Rocky. No need to rehash it here, then. Performance-wise, all the lead actors do the job assigned - Stallone clearly respects Balboa and this is conveyed in the performance, and extra applause must go to the actor playing Balboa jnr - a fine job well done.



a striking feature of the film is how well in captures the sorry state of world heavyweight boxing in the modern day. it used to be glitzy, glamorous and prestigious. now it seems to be all but a minor sport these days, bereft of characters and general interest. boxing to some may be barbaric, primordal and whatnot, but one cannot argue with the headline status it used to have. that's all gone now, it seems, as we all seem to have stopped paying attention to the simple, fun things in life.

if you loved the character, drama-driven nature of the first two Rocky films like i did, then this is the film for you. not that it is bereft of boxing action, of course - but do not expect some mental Clubber Lang type beltings!!

going on what Stallone has done with revising the Rocky Balboa character, Rambo returning to the screens in the next year or so is all of a sudden a promising prospect.......


be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!