People often blanche at the thought of playing a board game, but that’s because they have only been exposed to the old "classics" that really aren’t worthy of the title due to poor rulesets that promote luck over skill. Here are 15 games that are probably superior to the old standbys like Monopoly, including Last Night on Earth, a zombie thriller:
Last Night on Earth is essentially a survival game. Participants can play as either the “Hero” team or the “Zombie” team. The objective is for one team to complete their “scenario objective”, thus defeating the opposite team. The game is designed to have a horror movie feel, and even comes with it’s own soundtrack!
Thousands of people turned out for an attempt to break the world record for the number of people doing a simultaneous Thriller dance in Mexico City. Organizer Javier Hildago says 12,937 participated on Saturday, which would have been Michel Jackson’s 51st birthday. Officials from the Guinness Book of World Records will take some time to determine whether all those people completed the entire dance routine. The current official record is 242 dancers from the College of William & Mary. Link
Rapleaf, a company that specializes in analyzing trends in social media, has an interesting study on the popularity of four artists, namely The Beatles, Elvis, Madonna, and Michael Jackson, across major social networks. They randomly sampled 1.1 million fans, and found some surprising results (the study was done 2 weeks before Michael Jackson’s death, which explains some things):
* The Beatles’ dominating popularity online — The Beatles’ online celebrity may be bolstered by both their music’s enduring appeal and the success of their recent compilation album 1 released in 2000, which has become one of the best-selling albums of this decade with over 31 million in worldwide sales. While all the artists in this study are period icons, The Beatles’ prominence on social media may suggest their ability to better transcend generations, which is in part evidenced by them having the second-youngest fans.
* Michael Jackson’s lack of internet prominence — This is particularly bewildering given Michael Jackson’s younger – and presumably more tech- and social media-savvy – fans and his status as one of the most influential entertainers and musicians to ever take center stage. His 1982 album Thriller remains the best-selling album of all time with over 100 million sales worldwide (more than twice the second best-selling album).
The dancing inmates of Cebu prison in the Philippines (featured previously at Neatorama) presented a choreographed tribute to Michael Jackson yesterday. 1,500 inmates participated. The best is the middle part, where you’ll see dancing nuns and prisoners doing the Thriller dance to “I’ll Be There”. -via Buzzfeed
Khoda is a short film by Reza Dolatabadi made from 6,000 paintings that he created over a two-year period. It’s a psychological thriller about a prison escape.
His other paintings are also quite stunning and I recommend checking them out.
Ahhh, Shaun of the Dead, the ultimate rom-zom-com. I could watch this over and over and never get bored. If you haven’t seen it, and you a) like zombie movies and b) have a dark sense of humor, you must immediately go rent it. For those of you that have, enjoy the trivia!
• Lots of the actors and crew originally worked on Spaced, a British comedy starring Simon Pegg (Shaun). The carryover includes director Edgar Wright, Pete Serafinowicz (Pete), Nick Frost (Ed) and Jessica Hynes (Yvonne). There are cameos by a lot of other Spaced regulars as well.
• The idea for the movie actually came from Spaced. In one episode, Simon Pegg’s character plays Resident Evil for 24 hours straight, then starts hallucinating that zombies have taken over the world.
• Look closely at all of the extras in the opening credits scene and the scene that shows Shaun walking to work. Nearly all of them will show up later in zombie-form.
• When Shaun is at the convenience store, pay attention to the guy wearing a suit that stands in line behind him. He’ll show up a little bit later as a zombie missing an arm. In real life, the actor is an amputee and had to wear a prosthetic arm for the convenience store scene.
• The smart-aleck kid that mouths off to Shaun at the appliance store is Rafe Spall, Timothy Spall’s son. You know Timothy from his roles as Peter Pettigrew in Harry Potter and the Beadle in Sweeney Todd (among other things). Rafe also shows up in Hot Fuzz, another Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg collaboration.
• Simon Pegg likes to sneak his family members into his movies, and Shaun is no exception. You’ll find his mom in the background of the appliance store and his sister outside of the Winchester pub. She’s in the window when Shaun goes down to check the fuse box and realizes that he was followed by the zombies.
• Obviously George Romero movies were a huge influence, but Edgar Wright cites Invasion of the Body Snatchers as another inspiration.
• Throughout the movie are clever references to horror movie veterans. When Shaun is trying to make a last-minute dinner reservation at Fulci’s, that’s reference to Italian director Lucio Fulci. At the appliance store, Shaun says that the manager and Ash have called in, referencing Ash from The Evil Dead. And the appliance store itself, Foree Appliances, is a reference to Ken Foree, the lead actor in the original Dawn of the Dead. Mary, the supermarket checkout girl zombie, works at Landis Supermarket – a reference to John Landis, director of Thriller and An American Werewolf in London.
• I remember being delighted when I heard Ed tell Shaun’s mom, “We’re coming to get you Barbara!” It’s an homage to Night of the Living Dead. Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg talked to George Romero after the premiere and he loved the movie, so they excitedly asked if he liked the Night reference. Turned out he hadn’t gotten it, but was delighted when they told him about it. He later repaid the favor by letting Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg be zombie extras in the remake of Land of the Dead.
• The character of David is played by Dylan Moran; you might also know him as Gordon from Run Fatboy Run. Shaun was the first thing I had ever seen him in, so to see him as the scraggly, strange, seemingly-on-something Gordon was completely bizarre to me. Turns out, it’s really the other way around. Moran is known for playing characters like Gordon; David was completely out of the norm for him.
• The Winchester scenes were shot at the Duke of Albany pub in New Cross. The pub is now being demolished to make room for flats.
• When Shaun and Ed come home trashed from the Winchester and wake up a very angry Pete, the record they’re listening to is Street Sounds Electro. According to Edgar Wright, this is an essential record for anyone who knows their electro – and Shaun would. Check out the posters in the background of that scene: there’s a poster that refers to Shaun “Smiley” Riley, which tells us Shaun’s last name and also his background: he used to be a DJ, which explains his obsession with techno. This was all explained in a scene that got cut from the movie.
• The guy who plays Pete, Pete Serafinowicz, is the voice of Darth Maul in The Phantom Menace.
• Edgar Wright has used a few personal elements from his own life in the film. His mom calls him Pickle, which is why Shaun’s mom calls him Pickle. And Shaun eats Cornetto as a hangover cure, because that’s what Edgar Wright eats after imbibing a few too many the night before. In fact, Shaun is considered part one of what fans call “The Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy.” In Shaun, red Cornettos are consumed for blood. In the second part, Hot Fuzz, blue Cornettos are consumed to represent the boys in blue. The third is called The World’s End and is so far scheduled to be out in 2010. Wright and Pegg has confirmed that the third one is green (mint), but as to what that means… who knows.
There’s a ton of trivia for this movie – you can listen to film commentary from pretty much all of the main characters, but they didn’t all record it at the same time, so you have to watch the movie a million times to catch them all. And I’m totally fine with that; I just haven’t quite gotten around to it yet. So if you know some trivia I don’t, feel free to share it in the comments. And let me know what movie you’d like to read about! I did Alex’s favorite for the first post and my favorite for the second, I think next time it’s time to move on to your picks.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you all know that Bernie Madoff fleeced his clients out of $50 billion. But where have all that money gone?
Robert Chew of TIME Magazine wrote an intriguing article on the possible ways Madoff had squirrel away his loot:
A guilty conscience, billions to play with and oodles of time is the perfect recipe for massive deception, according to Christopher Reich, best-selling author of financial thrillers such as Number Account and the recent Rules of Deception. “Madoff had decades to prepare for this day, and it’s likely he’s hidden considerable assets,” says Reich. “Numbered accounts in Swiss banks are no good today; the Swiss cooperate too much.” Instead, a white-collar fraudster like Madoff could create multiple phony investment-advisory businesses in foreign countries, similar to legitimate businesses he’s actually working with. Says Reich: “All he has to do is create fake invoices over the years and pay in to those fake companies, then create new phony businesses in other countries, have the monies transferred to them, and then close down the original fake businesses. It’s how the mob does it; the money trail is wiped clean.”
There is no way investigators will ever find all the Madoff money, the author says. Remember, Enron used some 900 foreign accounts to manage its money. “There just isn’t enough manpower to go through all the legal hurdles to track it down,” Reich says. The money is there, hidden away, he says, maybe $40 to $80 million, and you can bet some family member is in on it too.
Psycho - Shower Scene (may not be suitable for younger audience) [YouTube
Link]
Motion picture decency standards in the 1960 didn't allow for things
like nude women being stabbed to death in showers. Consequently, Hitchcock
was forced to create the impression of nudity and violence without actually
showing a breast, a buttock, or a knife puncturing skin. The result is
a terrifying masterpiece of a montage. And even though it's probably the
most analyzed (and parodied) 45 seconds in film history, we're willing
to bet the following tidbits slipped past you.
Forget the bloody corpse in the bathtub: what really got "Psycho"
censors worked up was the toilet. Just before stepping into that
fateful shower, Marion tears up an incriminating note and flushes it.
Hitchcock's close-up of the swirling commode water was the first ever
allowed in an American film.
What looks like blood funneling down the drain is actually Bosco
chocolate syrup. Hitchcock thought it looked more real in black-and-white
than the fake stuff. Tastier, too.
The scene is composed of more than 90 shots seen in 70 different
camera angles. It took Hitchcock and his crew an entire week
to film it. To put that into perspective: The entire film took only six
weeks.
The woman who played Janet Leigh's body double in about half of the shower-scene
shots was named Myra Jones. In a sad case of life imitating art,
Jones was stabbed to death in 1988. Her killer? A mentally disturbed
handyman who targeted older women. He'd murdered at least one other before
her - that police know about.
After the release of "Psycho," Hitchcock received an irate
letter from a man whose daughter had refused to take baths after seeing
the French thriller "Les Diaboliques" (in which a man is drowned
in a tub). After seeing "Psycho," she refused to take showers
as well. Hitchcock's reply? "Send her to the dry cleaners."
Although popular with most audiences, "Psycho" was
reviled by ophthalmologists. Eye doctors everywhere pointed out
that a corpse's pupil dilate, yet - in a stark close-up of her face after
her supposedly deadly shower - Janet Leigh's eyes remain contracted. Ever
the obsessed technician, Hitchcock listened, using dilating eyedrops for
stiffs in all future films.
The article above was written by Ransom Riggs, as part of a longer article
Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho in the Nov-Dec 2006 issue of mental_floss, published
here with permission. Visit mental_floss
for more fun stuff everyday!
James Bond’s gadgets had captivated moviegoers for a looong time! Here’s a 1966 article from Popular Science detailing some of the gadgets featured in 007’s Thunderball:
Because their success has spawned so many imitators, the Bond producers now have to reach for some pretty spectacular devices to keep Bondophiles on the edge of their seats. So they’ve invested about $500,- 000 for the zany gadgets in the newest 007 thriller, Thunderball, starring Sean Connery.
Most of the infernal devices never existed in the original Ian Fleming stories. “Our only excuse for using them” says screenwriter Richard Maibaum, “is that such devices are available and cry out to be buckled onto James Bond’s back.”
Some of the gadgets actually are buckled onto Connery’s famous back. One is the Bell jet-pack flying belt Bond uses in the beginning of the film to escape from a French chateau. Connery has to wear a special Dacron suit whose color won’t bleach out when touched by the belt’s highly concentrated peroxide fuel. The belt provides about 20 seconds of flight, but only 10 seconds is used for the upward flight. It would be disastrous to run out of power a couple of hundred feet up in the air.
Thunderbolts prize piece of gatgetry is a $300,000. 64-foot hydrofoil yacht. It belongs to 007’s enemies—SPECTRE—a sinister gang of international criminals that has hijacked two H-bombs from NATO. They’re holding the bombs for $300 million in ransom. If the Allies don’t pay off, SPECTRE threatens to wipe out two Western cities.
SPECTRE (Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion) is led by Emilio Largo from the hydrofoil floating fortress called the Disco Volante.
Ah, the Disco Volante! I had forgotten about that … Link
Last year, the project Thrill the World brought 1722 people together around the world for a simultaneous Thriller dance. The event was repeated Saturday, with 3960 zombie dancers participating! The largest group was in Austin, Texas, where 881 dancers did the Thriller dance together on the patio at the Long Center. Thrill the World Austin has video and links to many pictures of the event. Link-Thanks, xadrian!
François Macré recorded Thriller using 64 tracks of only his voice! A Babelfish translation from the French description:
Description: Here a resumption of the title “Thriller” which I completely recorded with the voice. I thus imitated each element of the original title (instrumental, vocal, rhythmic elements and sound effects) by using 64 superimposed audio-video tracks (as this clip attests it; -). This recovery is thus a piece of a’ cappella multitrack, comprising only the sound of my voice, without addition of any instrument, sampler, limps for deforming rate/rhythm or purposes (only effects used being of Réverb and light Chorus). Moreover, I used the technique of the loop for the parts which are repeated (like the rhythmic one). Finally, on the whole of the piece (which contains thousands of notes distributed on the whole of the tracks), I transposed 8 notes which were impossible for me to sing in the acute ones.
Perhaps that does not have the air, but this musical project proved to be relatively titanic! At all events, I hope that you will take as much pleasure to listen to this piece than I had of it to record it. Thank you, in advance, to encourage me by your comments. Good listening and in Bientôt.
This is an amazing music video. Think Michael Jackson’s Thriller but with a much smaller budget. It was made by volunteers (Bobby Ciraldo and Andrew Swant) in Milwaukee. And it features guest vocals from Elvira, Mistress of the Dark!
What would happen if you mash up some of literature’s best books? This little gem called "Merged Books" featured at Miss Cellania, for example:
"Machiavelli’s The Little Prince" – Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classic children’s tale as presented by Machiavelli. The whimsy of human nature is embodied in many delightful and intriguing characters, all of whom are executed.
"Where’s Walden?"- Alas, the challenge of locating Henry David Thoreau in each richly-detaile d drawing loses its appeal when it quickly becomes clear that he is always in the woods.
"Lorna Dune" – An English farmer, Paul Atreides, falls for the daughter of a notorious rival clan, the Harkonnens, and pursues a career as a giant worm jockey in order to impress her.
"The Exorstentialist" – Camus psychological thriller about a priest who casts out a demon by convincing it that there’s really no purpose to what it’s doing.
Jenna Wortham has compiled a pretty neat gallery of 13 best robot love stories, from Wall-E to Weird Science, for Wired Magazine. Who remembers this from Blade Runner:
Bounty hunter Rick Deckard (played by Harrison Ford) falls hard for a genetically engineered clone called Rachel in Ridley Scott’s 1982 cyberpunk thriller. Although Deckard’s primary mission is to assassinate rogue "replicants," he finds the charms of an experimental model (Sean Young) difficult to resist.
RoboLove Meter Reading — 5/5: Since all signs indicate that replicant assassin Deckard was likely a clone, too, Blade Runner gets points for cyborg-on-cyborg romance.
Hello Neatoramans! I’ve just finished reading a novel and have got a question for you: what books would you recommend for summer reading?
I’m kind of a light reader, mind you – so no treatises for me. My favorite books have been easy-to-read thriller novels by Frederick Forsyth, the usual NY Times Best Sellers fare like those by Douglas Preston and Lincoln
Child, and so on.
I’ve got a book on order (from the library – yes, that way it’s free!), the latest one by Lee Child called Nothing to Lose, but I’m always interested in learning about new authors.
Remember the "Inmate Thriller" video played out by 1,500 dancing inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center in the Philippines?
Well, after 16 million plus people watched their video on YouTube, they’re now famous … Intelligent Travel has the back story of the Inmate Thriller phenomenon:
Garcia was first brought into the Cebu prison in 2004 to boost morale after a series of riots took place. Under Garcia’s influence, dozens of jail guards were fired for corruption, and a new exercise regimen was implemented. Out of this routine sprung the dance program.
The results have been nothing but beneficial. In addition to putting the inmates on the map, dancing “gives the inmates something to do, something they can be proud they’re part of,” says Pepe Diokno, a University of the Philippines film student, who spent time at the Cebu facility while filming his documentary, “Dancing for Discipline.” The inmates agree that prison conditions have improved, and the amount of attention brought on by their performances doesn’t hurt either. “Because our families have seen us on TV and the Internet, things are better,” says inmate Marfury Barberan. “They don’t worry so much about us and don’t think so much that we have no more hope.”
I’m happy to announce that our VideoSift feature is back on again – here are the top 5 video clips at VideoSift from the past week that you’ve just have to see:
Star Wars Dance Off It’s like Dancing with the Stars, where "Stars" mean characters from Star Wars and "dancing" means geeks flailing their arms about in a physical approximation of dancing.
It’s strange, but fascinating … Link (includes the obligatory Thriller dance … with Darth Vader and the Stormtroopers)
Patrick Stewart "Secrets" Why do people give him a dirty look when he’s out with Rod Stewart? And why is his favorite animal the bald eagle?
Here’s Patrick Stewart spilling his "secrets" on Conan O’Brien in this funny comedy skit: Link
How Not to Shoot a Gun From the first segment: "I’m the only one in this room professional enough, that I know of, to carry this Glock 40," said the Federal Agent lecturing kids on gun safety, right before he shot himself in the leg! (What? Don’t believe me? Here’s the story.)
Some people just shouldn’t handle firearms, and this is why: Link
Where’s the Baseball? One of the strangest things that ever happened in baseball occurred in 1998 when the Chicago White Sox were playing the Houston Astros – check out this play where the ball – literally – "disappeared" from the game: Link
How Exactly Do You Poop in Space? Here’s a NASA video explaining how you go number 1 and number 2 in space …
So we designed a toilet that instead of gravity pulling everything into the toilet it has air flow .. there’s air pulled down into the toilet … sort of windy when you’re sitting there but it pulls everything that comes out of your body…
Adam Buxton of the British TV comedy show "Adam and Joe" showed us why you don’t need a Bollywood song for funny song lyrics subtitle.
Here’s one that he did for Songs of Praise ("translations of popular hymns for the hard of hearing, by the hard of hearing"): Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – Thanks Robert Rezabek!
(Okay, okay, that was just all in good fun. No offense meant and no hate mails, please!)
I’ve always been a fan of horror movies, but in the past couple of years I’ve really gravitated toward, you know, the living dead. Shaun of the Dead is pretty much my favorite movie of all time. George Romero? Can’t get enough. And lately I’ve been delving into zombie lit, or Z-Lit if you will. Max Brooks (son of Mel) has a tongue-in-cheek book out called The Zombie Survival Guide. It’s all those essential things you need to know when Z-Day finally happens. He followed that up with World War Z, which takes place post-zombie apocalypse and talks to people who survived, documentary-style. It’s not funny like the Survival Guide is; it’s dead serious and pretty fascinating.
Now let me backtrack a little bit. Every Thursday night, my husband and I get together with a group of friends to watch Lost. We call this, appropriately if not unoriginally, Lost Night. Even when Lost ends for the summer (or for their mid-season hiatus), we still get together and do something in its absence. Last summer we watched a new Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) every Thursday. This summer, we’ve decided to watch zombie movies. This all started because I DVRed what is possibly one of the worst zombie movies ever made last week and was crying from laughter trying to explain it to our group.
The movie? Return of the Living Dead.
Now, before you all jump on me, let me preface with this: I love zombies, but I am by no means an expert. I am not purporting to have seen every zombie movie ever made or know the names of the Zed extras in Night of the Living Dead. I don’t even know the Thriller Dance. That being said, I thought Return of the Living Dead was George Romero’s sequel to Night of the Living Dead. I only saw the title on the Independent Film Channel; I was not privvy to that outstanding movie cover or a plot or anything. Wow, was I wrong. Turns out George and John Russo, one of the writers of the original movie, were in disagreement with how to follow up their hit movie. They went their separate ways. George ended up coming out with Dawn of the Dead 10 years later; Return of the Living Dead is what Russo came up with in 1985.
It. Is. Bad. Comically bad. Let me try to sum up for you: High school dude, Freddy, has a new job at a medical supply warehouse. On the job, a co-worker informs Freddy that Night of the Living Dead was a true story – a gas was accidentally released that reanimated the dead. Only a few barrels of the gas are still in existence, and, surprise! They’re at the medical supply warehouse. The co-worker shows Freddy the barrel containing the gas and thumps on it to prove its durability, but the gas leaks and the two men are knocked out. Of course, zombies start running amok. Coincidentally, Freddy’s friends are waiting for him to get off work and decide to kill time in the cemetery across the street. Makes sense. Somehow this results in Trash, one of Freddy’s friends, ripping off her clothes and dancing on top of a grave wearing nothing but leg warmers (I’m proud to say the actress, Linnea Quigley, is from Davenport, Iowa). I know you’re wondering, and yes, she does end up as a “seductive”, dancing, naked zombie wearing leg warmers.
The zombies are smarter than you might think – when paramedics arrive on the scene, they are killed by the zombies who then call dispatch and request that they “send more paramedics.” Seriously. The same thing happens when the cops show up. Also, at some point, a zombie is captured and questioned as to why they are feasting on humans. The zombie replies that it hurts to be dead, and eating live brains is the only thing that relieves the pain.
Oh, and although skeletons are rising out of the cemetery – full skeletons, not skin and muscle or anything like that – they still have tongues and eyeballs.
So, after describing this, my friends and I did a little research and discovered that some truly heinous zombie movies are floating around out here. Some that we will be viewing this summer are Redneck Zombies, Zombies on Broadway, Motocross Zombies from Hell, Hard Rock Zombies and the MST3Ked Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies. Oh! And also, Return of the Living Dead: Rave to the Grave (”Dance til you drop… dead”).
So. The point of this long-winded post is to ask you two things:
1. What’s the worst horror movie you’ve ever seen?
2. Do you have any good (read: bad) zombie movie recommendations?
I’m going to Disneyland in two weeks! I’ve been there before; my husband hasn’t. We’re both Disney freaks – especially anything Haunted Mansion-related.
Some Disneyland attractions are classics and have been around forever – Dumbo, for instance, has been around almost since the beginning (the park opened on July 17, 1955 and Dumbo followed about a month later). Peter Pan’s Flight has been around since the beginning, and so has the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party (the teacups!) and Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.
Other rides haven’t really stood up to the test of time, unfortunately, and those are the ones we’re going to take a look at.
You’re probably familiar with the different sections of Disneyland these days – Tomorrowland, Frontierland and Fantasyland, to name a few. But Holidayland? Yep. It opened on June 16, 1957, and was a nine-acre picnic area that was for… well… frolicking, basically. There were playgrounds, horseshoes, a baseball field, volleyball and the “world’s largest candy-striped circus tent” which stood where the Haunted Mansion is today. Pirates of the Caribbean takes up the spot where the baseball field used to be. It only lasted a few years – Holidayland closed in 1961 because it just didn’t fit in with the rest of the park (among other things like lack of shade).
The Viewliner
This miniature train has the dubious honor of being one of the shortest-lived rides to ever exist at Disneyland. It opened in June of 1957 and promptly closed in September 1958 when construction started on the Matterhorn and Submarine Voyage. There were two trains – one for Fantasyland and one for Tomorrowland – and the track ran a figure-eight through both of those areas. The tiny, sleek (for that time) train was supposed to represent the future of train travel. Eventually the monorail filled the void left by the Viewliner.
I love those old ads from the 1950s that show “futuristic” kitchens cooking the meals all by themselves with “space-age” technology. That’s kind of what the Monsanto House of the Future was like. It was in operation from 1957 to 1967 and was a tour of a house in the year 1986. It’s laughable now, but the MIT-built house featured technology such as microwaves, which obviously did end up being invented. Just about everything about the house – including the exterior – was made out of plastic. You can still see the support pillars of Monsanto’s House of the Future in Neptune’s Grotto – they were rated for earthquakes and proved to be so sturdy that they were just about impossible to remove. Monsanto, by the way, is an agricultural biotechnology company (meaning they make herbicides and pesticides and the like).
In the more recent past, we have Captain EO, which I vaguely remember from EPCOT. Captain EO was a 3-D movie starring, of course, Michael Jackson. And if you’re looking for more credentials than that (keep in mind MJ was HUGE at this point in time), it was directed by Francis Ford Coppola and executive produced by George Lucas. They also co-wrote the script with Rusty Lemorande.
Here’s the plot: Captain EO and his team are piloting a spaceship to deliver a gift to the evil Supreme Leader (Anjelica Huston). One of his shipmates is named Hooter, which seems like a huge oversight to me. Hooter is an elephant, not an owl as you might suspect. Well, the Supreme Leader isn’t exactly thrilled with the crew and orders them to be tortured. EO charms the Queen by singing her a song, but as soon as the music stops the spell breaks and she orders the crew to be captured again. EO uses his music to transform the evil guards into dancers who line up to dance behind him Thriller-zombie-style. EO eventually uses his powers to turn the Supreme Leader and her entire planet into things of beauty.
The 17-minute film cost somewhere between $17 and $30 million to make. Sounds like a lot, but when you consider than it ran for more than 10 years at Disneyland (1986 to 1997), maybe it’s not so bad. Then MJ went weird and Disney decided to pull the attraction and replace it with “Honey, I Shrunk the Audience”.
Looking for a collection of animatronic swamp critters singing old Dixieland favorites and old folk tunes? Too bad you missed America Sings! Had you been at Disneyland sometime between June of 1974 and April of 1988, you could have witnessed geese singing “Camptown Races”, a dog singing “Home on the Range” a pink singing “Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey?” and a crane and a rooster singing “Shake, Rattle and Roll”. A decent number of the characters appeared to be either quite intoxicated or at least trying their hardest to get there. It’s one of the few Disney attractions with characters actually drinking alcohol (Pirates of the Caribbean also comes to mind… rum anyone?). The building was used for offices for a while and eventually became home to Innoventions, which I believe is still there today. The swamp creatures, however, befriended Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox and Brer Bear and now reside happily at Splash Mountain.
High school physics students who participated in Hovercraft competitions, this one is for you. Basically, the Flying Saucers ride was Disney’s answer to bumper cars. When the ride starts, air would shoot up under the saucer and lift it up off the floor (just a little… we’re not talking feet here). Riders would have to tilt their bodies the way they wanted the saucer to go and were encouraged to bump into other guests. Alas, the saucers only lasted about five years in the mid 60s.
Those are just a few of the rides that are now defunct – things at all of the Disney parks are always changing. Even the old favorites get little updates every now and then. Do you have a favorite ride that is no longer in operation? I know a lot of people were upset when the Magic Kingdom’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea met its maker.
I have a new addition to Neatorama’s family of Thriller videos to put you in the holiday spirit today, enjoy this version done totally in animated LEGOs LEGO. Don’t forget to check out one of my old favorites, the Bollywood take on Michael Jackson’s classic and you can always click here for the full Neatorama THRILLER run down. Youtube video link
YouTube user buffalax specializes in subtitling foreign music video clips. No, not translating – basically he subtitles the song with what he believes it sounds like in English, in a term he coined as being "buffalaxed."
Like this one: from the treasure trove that is Bollywood Mollywood (Kollywood?), here’s "My loony bun is fine Benny Lava!" Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] | More subtitles by Buffalax – Thanks Skully!
We’ve featured this strange Bollywood Thriller (technically, Telugu cinema) before, but this version is worth the re-post: it’s subtitled based on how the lyrics sound like in English!
"Thrill the World" is a project by Ines Markeljevic to break the Guiness World Record for the Largest Simultaneous Dance of Michael Jackson’s Thriller! It’s scheduled for October 27/28, 2007 – and you, too, can register to join in on the fun.
1,500 plus CPDRC inmates of the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center, Cebu, Philippines at practice! This is not the final routine, and definitely not a punishment! just a teaser.
We had the Thriller wedding dance before on Neato … this one just as awesome: Dirty Dancing First Dance at Julia and James’ wedding. Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] | Julia’s website
This wedding probably had more rehearsal than most! The reception featured a production number that’s unlikely to become a tradition, but they did it well. Push play or go to YouTube. -via Metafilter
Most people are familiar with Michael Jackson’s groundbreaking video for the song Thriller. Lately, we’ve also seen the video in different forms, such as the Thriller in Legos, Thriller in Second Life, and the Bollywood style (although its a different song). But nothing beats a live public recreation! Every October, Mecca Dance Studio and Gallery stages a resurrection of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video in the streets of downtown Lexington, Kentucky. See a video of last year’s performance here, and a Flickr photoset here.
This year’s event is set for October 22nd. Participation is free and open to the public. However, they would like you attend the rehearsals.
ueue, submitted by 
, the ultimate rom-zom-com. I could watch this over and over and never get bored. If you haven’t seen it, and you a) like zombie movies and b) have a dark sense of humor, you must immediately go rent it. For those of you that have, enjoy the trivia!
• When Shaun is at the convenience store, pay attention to the guy wearing a suit that stands in line behind him. He’ll show up a little bit later as a zombie missing an arm. In real life, the actor is an amputee and had to wear a prosthetic arm for the convenience store scene.
• Obviously George Romero movies were a huge influence, but Edgar Wright cites Invasion of the Body Snatchers as another inspiration.
• The character of David is played by Dylan Moran; you might also know him as Gordon from Run Fatboy Run. Shaun was the first thing I had ever seen him in, so to see him as the scraggly, strange, seemingly-on-something Gordon was completely bizarre to me. Turns out, it’s really the other way around. Moran is known for playing characters like Gordon; David was completely out of the norm for him.
• Edgar Wright has used a few personal elements from his own life in the film. His mom calls him Pickle, which is why Shaun’s mom calls him Pickle. And Shaun eats Cornetto as a hangover cure, because that’s what Edgar Wright eats after imbibing a few too many the night before. In fact, Shaun is considered part one of what fans call “The Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy.” In Shaun, red Cornettos are consumed for blood. In the second part, Hot Fuzz, blue Cornettos are consumed to represent the boys in blue. The third is called The World’s End and is so far scheduled to be out in 2010. Wright and Pegg has confirmed that the third one is green (mint), but as to what that means… who knows.
What would happen if you mash up some of literature’s best books? This little gem called "Merged Books" featured at Miss Cellania, for example:
Jenna Wortham has compiled a pretty neat gallery of 13 best robot love stories, from Wall-E to Weird Science, for Wired Magazine. Who remembers this from Blade Runner:
Hello Neatoramans! I’ve just finished reading a novel and have got a question for you: what books would you recommend for summer reading?
Remember the "
-
Your purchase helps support the blog - Thank you!
