magazine

hello there

i would imagine that there will be a point where people are required to enter, as a kind of visit, my lodgings in my place of exile. this could be because i am no longer around, look you see, for reasons of disappearance or similar. as and when this happens i shall take it as a given that i will be declared one of them "hoarder" types, although "collector" would be more polite. 

yet still i purchase things, quite aware of the above yet vaguely not really caring. mostly acquisitions are of an impulsive nature, buying stuff which is less need more "ooh that looks quite class". like, for instance (or example) a 41 year old film magazine i saw down the market. 

can't say i recall ever seeing this edition of this magazine (or any other volume of it, for that matter) at the time. pretty sure that in the 80s i bought some film magazines other than Fangoria, although if i recall correctly it was only towards the end of that magnificent decade that Empire came into being. 

quite likely that the draw (or appeal) of this edition is somewhat obvious. you have the double whammy of Arnie in the second (and fairly decent) Conan film, plus the at the time up and coming singer Prince making an unexpected film debut. plus there's a bit on The Natural, which was a class film, and the De Niro reference is to Once Upon A Time In America, which i was likely far too young to have watched when i did. certification, it turns out, exists for a reason. 

no i am not, despite having a smart flat bed scanner, sitting and scanning the whole magazine in. but yes i have selected a few pages to share here for reasons of and why not. like the one below which, other than the somewhat saucy film advert, tells you much of the time of the 80s and where we are now. 

that left hand side thing features news "snippets" curated and curtailed to fit a rather strict space limitation. print was valuable. i suppose it is not so that the man named as the "dream man" would be winning that accolade no more. as for the other news, well, the only way you could really find out stuff like that back then (if you wished to) was by purchasing and reading magazines. i guess that illustrates to you why we are in the "information age". stories like those are constantly streaming around, with anyone able to pick them up at any stage with no purchase needed beyond the one of whatever device it is you look at such on. 

over on the right and there's a different world. renting videos (actual, presumably VHS) by post, no less. imagine a time when we (the UK) had a postal service that was both reliable enough to do this by and was affordable enough to do so too. now we pay ludicrous prices for effectively little to no actual service. my suspicion would be that the "adult, etc" section of mail order video rental was considerably more popular than others on offer. 

competition time, then. no, not an actual competition here on this blog. although (now that i think about it) i am no stopping you from saving and printing out the below, finishing off the answers and posting it to the address provided. they might be tolerant of late entries. to help it would seem that who(m)ever bought this magazine in 1984 had a provisional go at the answers. 

prizes for second, third and fourth (forth?) place are a sign of the times, are they not? this was a mere 41 years ago, which in the grand scheme of things is not that long. i promise you a video camera, a computer (even an Acorn) and a camera (with a massive lens) were very big deals, helpfully stressed by the values of them presented. right now it is highly likely that the device you are using to read this (or just look at the pictures) can do all three things what those prizes can to a vastly superior level. and the device likely weighs not all that much more than the whole magazine this was in. hard to comprehend where technology such as this will be in 41 years from now. 

for the actual "articles" in the magazine, well, the pictures do all the lifting really. no, i am not one to speak with my lack of skills, but the writing is both generally and really poor. once again, then, this was a different time. we would buy magazines just to see images of films or film stars, for there was no other practical way to do so. there was no such thing as an "internet", and if you wanted to see a pictures and images on your computer you had to "draw" them yourself. 

going to the two "main" articles, as in the ones pictured on the cover, and mostly they are reworded press releases or syndicated quotes off of general press junkets. unfortunately the claim by Arnie that he would do "many more Conan films" turned out to be bullsh!t, for i think we have to accept that we are not going to get so much as one more of them. the bit on Prince is interesting, for this captures him at a time when his star was ascending but he was not, at least in England (or the UK) a huge star yet. 

modern technology makes it possible (unfortunately) for absolutely anyone to present their warped, deranged views to the entire world, all with the entitled sense that everyone must agree with them. back then you had to physically write such on paper, place it in an envelope, address it (the envelope), put a stamp on it, post it and somehow hope that the editor of a publication would go "yes that is worth printing" and duly publish it. like the above examples of letters, featuring views on how films should be made and presented "square" so to be like television, and how soap operas are destroying modern cinema. 

elsewhere in the magazine one finds "in production" reports, featuring casting and directing details for films that either did or did not end up being made. a quite interesting snippet, as it happens, on how Martin Scorsese had "given up" on getting the go ahead for The Last Temptation Of  Christ, so went off to make After Hours instead. there's also a bit on how Mr Sinatra was very much "back" after appearing in Cannonball Run II, and was lined up to appear in at least one (1) film that would see him be awarded an Oscar. not to be, and Cannonball Run II turned out to be his last movie appearance. 

how about another competition? one where you had to cut it out and post it, for you could not email or text back then. sorry, no clues for this one, for it would seem that the person who(m) bought this magazine at the time wasn't interested in winning an A-Team record. 

just done a quick check on ebay and today that The A Team album, featuring the image you see above but in glorious colour, would cost you around £30 second hand. so it would totes have been worth winning and holding on to so as to sell 40 odd years later. no, again, i am not stopping you from saving and printing the above, then filling it in and sending it off. you never know, someone in whatever office or similar that address now is may well send you a copy of the record. or they might not. 

if i was able to get any magazines from the 80s at all it wouldn't be this one, or Fangoria for that matter. no, there was a quite class one called Video World, which featured some 80 pages of regular film and video news, and then the last 12 - 16 pages were all filthy, adult only videos with loads of pictures of nudies. which parents never worked out, and nor did staff at WH Smith or similar selling it like a regular magazine to teenage me. 

last of the scanned pages coming up below (as it were) and no, i most certainly did not manage to scan it straight. 

astronomy was a massive deal in the 80s, with most (western) governments using astronomers to guide policy and economic decisions. worked too, quite often at least, except for those times when it did not. i don't rightly now how much a horoscope from around the last week (or so) of November 1984 is to you at whatever stage in history you are reading this, but it may have some relevance. 

right, that's that for what i have scanned in. there were a few other interesting things in the magazine, such as an obituary for Richard Burton. other things i considered scanning it were the many adverts for movie soundtracks and some classified ads for fan groups. i think i would have droned on and got boring about the soundtracks, whereas the fan groups were from a more innocent time and so feature actual, real addresses. still, hope what was here held some interest.

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