Black Dynamite

black

Black Dynamite is a 2009 American blaxploitation action comedy film starring Michael Jai White, Tommy Davidson, and Salli Richardson. The film was directed by Scott Sanders and co-written by White, Sanders, and Byron Minns, who also co-stars.
The plot centers on former CIA agent Black Dynamite, who must avenge his brother’s death while cleaning the streets of a new drug that is ravaging the community. The film, which is a parody of the blaxploitation genre, had a trailer and funding even before a script was written. Black Dynamite was shot in 20 days in Super 16 format. The film was released in the United States on 16 October 2009 for only two weeks (with an ‘official’ premiere at the Toronto After Dark film festival) and was well received by critics. It was released on home video on February 16, 2010.

Some funny scenes. This movie has some side-splitting laughs.

Black Dynamite fights Richard Nixon

Prometheus Film Included Stunning Landscapes of Iceland

Exterior shots of the alien world were shot in Iceland, where filming occurred for two weeks. It commenced on July 11, 2011, at the base of Hekla, an active volcano in southern Iceland. Speaking about working at the volcano, Scott said, “If one is afraid of nature in this profession then it would be best to find a different job”. Filming also took place at Dettifoss, one of the most powerful waterfalls in Europe.

Scott said that the filming in Iceland comprised approximately fifteen minutes of footage for the film, and that the area represented the beginning of time. Morocco had been chosen as a location for these scenes, but the 2010 Arab Spring protests forced the change of venue. Alternatives including the Mojave Desert had been considered, but Scott explained that Iceland was ultimately chosen because “here it is so rough and ‘Jurassic-like’ and that proved decisive”.

Dettifoss Waterfall used in the opening scene

pprometheus dettifloss

From the film, an ‘Engineer’ on the edge of the Falls.

prometheus1

prometheus2

Aerial shot from an early sequence in the film

prometheus-img05

This background landscape is actually Jordan. I had to include it because it is so cool. Other geographical locations included Scotland and Spain.

Amazing Iceland landscapes

promo

promo1

promo2

promo3

promo4

promo5

Northern Lights

promo6

Seclusion

promo7

promo8

promo9

promo10

A Night to Dismember

Brief list of bad horror flicks.  I thought the Amityville Horror franchise flicks were really bad.  But these appear to be a heck of a lot worse according to the reviewers.

Basket Case

In Basket Case, a baby is born with a parasitic twin. A small, evil parasitic twin the size of a basket ball. It grows out of the boy’s shoulder. The boys parents decide to save the “normal” twin by having the parasitic twin surgically removed.

Fast forward a few years and now the twins are all grown up. And like all siamese twins separated at birth, in which one twin was brutally removed from the other and thrown into the garbage to die, they dream of nothing else than revenge against the surgical team that separated them.  Murderous mayhem ensues.

Frankenhooker

“She’s hot. She’s Sexy. And she’s sutured to please.” When a mad scientist loses his girlfriend to a freak lawn mower accident he decides that the best way to get a new girlfriend is to chop up some prostitutes and make a new one out of spare parts. Stupid mysogynistic trash masquerading as a horror comedy.

Cannibal Ferox (a.k.a Make Them Die Slowly)

The subtitle of this movie is “make them die slowly” and the movie certainly lives up to its name. The mindless plot involves some Americans captured by cannibals in the Amazon. There is not much plot except a series of mutilations, eye removals, and gory torture.

Eaten Alive

This is yet another Italian horror movie with a cannibal theme. Americans venture into the jungle where they encounter cannibals. Eating ensues.

 

Erotic Nights of the Living Dead (1979)

A sleazy zombie cheesefest with horrible dubbing of English over the original Italian dialogue. The mouths are out of synch with the sound which adds to the fun.

A classic in the Euro-Horror zombie genre. Gratuitous sex and horrible acting. So bad its almost good.

 

A Night to Dismember

A female murderer is released from an insane assylum, suposedly cured. Then the body count begins. The film is dreadful on almost every level: the sound is awful (where are the foley artists when you need them?), the cinematography is lousy, the plot and acting are D-grade. The whole mess doesn’t make sense, so the director added a narrator that valiantly tries to make sense of the movie and explain the plot to you. The movie must be seen in order to appreciate just how brilliantly awful it is.

Night of the Bloody Apes

It’s the night of the Bloody Apes – well, actually, only one bloody ape. And he’s not really all ape, either.

You see, it seems that a mad scientist had a son with a heart defect. So he gives his son a heart from an ape, which naturally turns his meek, weakling son into a ferocious, murdering, sex crazed monkey man. What else would you expect? 🙂

 

Cannibal! The Musical
You may think that the title says it all. But no, there’s more.

The movie tells the fictionalized story of Alfred Packer, a real life 1890s pioneer who got lost in the Colorado wilderness and ended up eating his fellow expedition members. The story shifts incongruously from schmaltzy musical numbers to gory scenes of human hors d’oeuvres. One reviewer described the movie as “The Musical is Oklahoma meets Bloodsucking Freaks.”

Gingerdread Man

The ashes from an excuted killer are mixed into some cookie dough and naturally the killer comes back as a huge knife wielding murdering Ginger Bread Man. Awesome schlock, made even “better” by the fact that Gary Busey plays the part of the Gingerbread Man. Just try to picture it. The horror, the horror.

Santa’s Slay

It seems that truly bad horror movies always try to be clever by using an obvious pun in their title. For example: Gingerdread Man, or the awful Santa’s Slay, about a murderous Santa Claus.

What’s even funnier is that the killer Santa is played by talented actor and former wrestling star Bill Goldberg. Need I say more?

That’s all folks!

James Bond’s Coolest Cars

#1

1963 Aston Martin DB5

Mary Evans / Ronald Grant-Everett Collection

The ne plus ultra of James Bond’s automobiles, the Aston Martin DB5 was introduced in 1964’s Goldfinger, and came equipped with all the extras a spy could ask for—including rotating license plates, machine guns, a radarscope, and of course, an ejector seat. To show how far product placement in the movies has come, Aston Martin owner David Brown (the “DB” in DB5) originally asked the film’s producers to pay to use the car because he didn’t want to damage a £4,500 vehicle. Though destroyed in Goldfinger, the car lived more than once in Bond films—it most recently made a cheeky cameo in Casino Royale, when Daniel Craig’s 007 wins a 1963 Aston Martin DB5 in a poker game. The classic car also reportedly will appear in the 23rd Bond movie, Skyfall, opening in December.

#2

1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1

beaulieu.co.uk

In a classic chase scene from Diamonds Are Forever, Sean Connery’s Bond gets behind the wheel of Tiffany Case’s 1971 Ford Mustang Mach 1, and the two evade police in Las Vegas—until he heads down a dead end. Thinking fast, they lean over, and then the car defies several laws of physics by driving down a narrow alley on two wheels. The iconic scene also contains a major Bond blooper—when they enter the alley, the Mustang is on its right tires, when they exit safely on Fremont Street, it’s driving on its left side.

 

#3

1974 AMC Hornet X Hatchback

Mary Evans / Ronald Grant-Everett Collection

Though not nearly elegant enough to be issued to Bond by Q branch, the AMC Hornet was practical enough to steal when Roger Moore needed to chase Scaramanga through Thailand in The Man With the Golden Gun. The comical scene also features a return cameo for Southern Sheriff J.W. Pepper (from Live and Let Die), who rides shotgun with 007 for the most dramatic moment: when the car does a 360-degree mid-air corkscrew.

 

#4

1999 BMW Z8

BMW

Bond is notoriously hard on his cars, but no 007 vehicle met quite as painful an end as the BMW Z8 Pierce Brosnan drove in The World Is Not Enough. It was sliced in half by a helicopter equipped with a tree-cutting saw. When the blade meets the car, Bond quips, “Q’s not going to like this.”

 

#5

1969 Mercury Cougar XR7

Everett Collection

James Bond loves cars almost as much as he enjoys women, so it is fitting that the only love he marries—Diana Rigg’s Tracy Draco in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service—has a superb set of wheels. Tracy first drives the red Mercury Cougar XR7 onto a beach in Portugal before attempting suicide at the beginning of the movie, and it’s used later in the film when 007 is trying to escape Blofeld. Mr. and Mrs. Bond drive off in a different car, however, following their wedding—naively believing they have all the time in the world.

 

#6

2002 Aston Martin V12 Vanquish

Dave Hogan / Getty Images

After a three-picture deal with BMW, Pierce Brosnan’s James Bond went back to an Aston Martin in 2002’s Die Another Day. And while the V12 Vanquish was equipped with some classic refinements—machine guns, rocket launchers, an ejector seat, and retractable spikes in the tires for driving on ice—it was car’s “adaptive camouflage” system that went a bit too far, even for a Bond film. The car disappears with push of a button, which is why the Vanquish’s MI6 codename is the “Vanish.”

 

#7

Bentley Mark IV

In three of Ian Fleming’s novels, James Bond drove a 1933 Bentley “blower” convertible, equipped with a 4.5-liter engine and an Amherst-Villiers supercharger. (It also happened to be the very car Fleming himself drove—and posed with for the cover of Life magazine in October 1966.) But the Bentley only makes one appearance in the Bond film canon—when 007 takes Sylvia Trench on a picnic it’s in a Bentley Mark IV, a model that Fleming made up. And it’s equipped with a truly futuristic gadget for 1963: a car phone.

 

#8

1937 Rolls Royce Phantom III

beaulieu.co.uk

Strictly speaking, this is not James Bond’s car—it belonged to Auric Goldfinger—but the 1937 Rolls Royce Phantom III is one of the most beautiful vehicles ever to appear in a Bond film, and it plays an important role in the movie’s plot. The car’s bodywork is made of 18-karat gold, allowing Goldfinger to melt it down and smuggle his favorite substance across borders without suspicion.

 

#9

Aston Martin DB

beaulieu.co.uk

S V12What was intended to be a Ford GT for the opening chase scene in Quantum of Solace, evolved into an Aston Martin DBS, the same car Daniel Craig’s Bond drove in Casino Royale. It was a costly choice. Three Aston Martins—valued at $300,000 each—were destroyed during the filming of Casino Royale and six more reportedly were killed during the making of Quantum of Solace.

car4

 

#10

1976 Lotus Esprit S1

After the Aston Martin DB5, no Bond car had more imaginative modifications than the Lotus Esprit S1 from The Spy Who Loved Me. When Roger Moore’s 007 drives the Lotus off a pier while being chased, the white sports car instantly transforms into a submarine, equipped with fins, a periscope, and a surface-to-air-missile. In 2008, “Wet Nellie” sold at auction for £111,500.

Spaceball One: An Amazing Spaceship

Spaceballs is a 1987 American science fiction parody film co-written, produced and directed by Mel Brooks. Starring Brooks, Bill Pullman, John Candy, and Rick Moranis, the film also features Daphne Zuniga, Dick Van Patten, and the voice of Joan Rivers. In addition to Brooks in a supporting role, the film also features Brooks regulars Dom DeLuise and Rudy De Luca in cameo appearances.

002_spaceballs_blu-ray

Lord Dark Helmet

The film was released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer on June 24, 1987, and was met with a mixed reception. It has since become a cult classic on video and one of Brooks’s most popular films. Its setting and characters parody the original Star Wars trilogy, as well as other sci-fi franchises including Star Trek, Alien, and the Planet of the Apes films.

One of the best parts of this movie is Spaceball One. A giant spaceship attack platform. It’s big, very big.

specbell

11,000 meters long

spaceball_one_ortho_by_unusualsuspex-d73mfg8

The original model.

­

This item is the massive 17 ft version model of the Spaceball One ship created for the 1987 Mel Brooks’ Star Wars comedy spoof Spaceballs. The model is constructed of styrene and resin, and detailed with kit bashed model parts. It features fiber optic lighting throughout. Spaceballs spoofs much of the design of Star Wars, and this ship is a spoof based of the Empire Star Destroyer. The effects work was done by Apogee Inc., company headed by John Dykstra that split off from ILM in 1978. Thus, Spaceballs marked the first time since Star Wars that the two units shared work on a single project, as Industrial Light and Magic was hired to create the puppet of the chest-burster for Spaceballs. On this movie the Chief Model Makers were Grant McCune, Chris Ross, David Beasley, Cory Faucher, Jay Roth, John Eaves, Tom Pahk, David Sosalla, Suzy Schneider, and Smokey Stover. The Model Department Special Design was run by Rae Burkland, Ron Thornton.

spaceballs

spaceball_845x485p