11. Strange Voyage: the Taurus, the first ship to take commercial passengers to the moon is boarded by Lucky Louie, a criminal. Astro follows him and he and four other people, plus a little girl named Marble, end up on an asteroid.
the names abound here- Mona D' Jour, Stark Raven (a newscaster), Margo Poco. it's amazing how many different and funny names the writers came up with over and over. the ships are really cool looking.
12. The Artificial Sun: Helio Delio, and former science fiction movie producers, uses and artificial sun to blackmail states and nations. Shylock Holmes is called in to crack the case. he and Astro end up on Firepot Island.
the Chief of Police is Irish, and Shylock is ever so English. the sun is a cool looking invention. "HD" has two henchmen, Jekyll and Hyde, who talk in rhyme (they remind me of Tom and Tab, the jackals from Kimba). some very non-PC natives are featured here, as well as a deer getting covered by lava!
13. The Deep Freeze: Mr. Pompous and Astro head to the North Pole. they visit Dr. Tic Tac Toe (I think there was a similar named Dr in Gigantor). a gang that hates robots attacks the center and Astro sends them packing. they have to stop Sharkey and retrieve the stolen loot.
lots of Dr. Moustache- I mean, Mr. Pompous here. the old "I hate robots because they killed my (mom)" is used here, though I bet in 1963 or 1964 it was pretty surprising.
This is a great series. well, so far, 3 episodes in it is, anyway. it's a remake of the original series, known as Gigantor in this part of the world.
I love Gigantor, and am leery of remakes and the overused and ridiculously termed "re-imaginings". However, this one is brings a whole slew of things to the table the original would not have been able to at the time. it's more mature, and has a lot of talk about Japan's role after the war, and Gig- er, Tetsujin's part in the war is also discussed at length in the first episode. as we all know, the first chunk of episodes of Gigantor were not ever adapted in this country.
the animation is quite fabulous for a tv show, and the characters look good. I like that they don't look like most current Japanese animation people, more of the nifty "retro" look which suits the feel of the show well.
we even get to see a "Frankenstein" creature as well *(he was also in the original toon).
at some point I'll talk about Gigantor, but I still want to watch the rest of that original series as well. it really does boast on of the best themes ever!
since this DVD came out in May of 2002 I won't be talking too much about the actual movie, aside to say it's easily one of the best that Universal made in the 50s. the print looks great and the sound is good. buy it here.
mostly I want to talk about the extras, starting with movie historian Tom Weaver's excellent commentary. I rarely listen to commentary tracks, since most of them are not that informative (maybe I've listened to the wrong ones, hello GIANT BEHEMOTH) but Tom does an exemplary job at talking about every part of the movie, from Ray Bradbury's two treatments for the scripts to the actors, directors, effects and locations used for filming. he also had a good sense of humor about some things but never treated any of the subject matter as a joke.
the other great extra is (I believe) a TCM produced documentary called "The Universe According to Universal" and it talks about many of the classic 50s sci-fi movies and aliens. not too long and not too short.
of course, the DVD itself has one glaring problem- that cover! while it's a cool looking alien, nothing like that appears in the movie at all. ever. did the moron who designed THE VALLEY OF GWANGI make this cover as well?
and for the record, I am glad they showed the xenomorphs in all their one eyed glory.
watched two today!
9. Hullabaloo Land- Princess Lollipop escapes from "the happiest place on Earth" and ends up at Astro's place. Baron Hoodwink shows up and takes her back. Astro and Elefun visit Hullabaloo Land and Astro ends up freeing all the robots.
Firesnout the robot dragon was cool. Astro really doesn't do too much, the imp-robot is the real star of this episode. as always, there are some fun sight gags, and lots of references to various folk tales from all over the world (Snow White, Peter Pan, etc).
10. The Spirit Machine: Rudolph Hazard kidnaps Dr. Elefun to help make his "Spirit Machine" which will give him eternal life. naturally Astro flies after him to the rescue. he also topples Hazard's dictatorship while he is at it.
Tom Speed is the driver of the Silver Comet. his sister is Twin Tails (huge pony tails). badguys want to destroy the Comet so he can't win the World Wide Race. they call Dr. Elefun to help out. Astro allows them to put his brain into the Comet.
"Yodelbug" lots of nifty sight gags here, and the English writers came up with some clever names for the cars.
I should just write down the names of the villains, like Tex Tamale. he drives the "Black Vulcan".
of course there's a secret about the car, but if you are paying attention you can figure it out pretty easily. the animation is improving already. these last two episodes have had the most damage that I have seen so far. it's almost like watching it on tv with some splices here and there.
this is a fun adventure episode.
Dr. Isaac Nuttin invents Zero, an invisible robot. Fearless Freddie Fink bankrolled him, and is now using Zero to commit crimes. Zero doesn't know right from wrong, and Astro Boy has to intervene.
Lots of visual gags here, mostly to do with the invisible robot. Freddie is a no good crook, who apparently bought off the judge. I would be surprised if many kids got all that was going on in this episode, including the rather downbeat ending.
no spoilers, but it involves Zero and a time bomb set to go off right at 10 PM.
there are a few name gags, with Dr. Nuttin and Sing Sung Prison as well.
been watching this cool show, am up to episode #15 or so. it's not really a "Kamen Rider" show, it's like they used the name at the last moment for commercial value (imagine that).
it's about a battle of Oni (the good guys) vs the Makamo (the bad guys). both are demons of a kind, but the Makamo tend to make meals out of humans.
the gimmick here is that the Makamo can only be defeated by the use of "pure sound" so our heroes use drums, horns and guitars to defeat both the human sized monsters and the giant ones that show up.
I really enjoy the musical aspect of the show. it's novel and very cool. the human aspect is also interesting, to a degree. it'll be fun seeing how it evolves. there's lots of good action in this show, without relying on effects too much. there's also some controversy about the series, as shown on Wiki here.
Hibiki returned in Kamen Rider Decade, mostly recast, but not bad.
called "The Preying Mantis". There's been tons of talk about this new GH movie (starring *ugh* Seth Rogen, though the pics don't look bad, actually) and it made me want to watch some of the tv series.this happens to be one of the better known episodes, since GH and Kato take on a tong in a protection racket scheme. so there's a Chinese Connection (sorry, couldn't resist) here as well, which had to be something pretty rare on US tv back in the mid 60s, don'tcha think?
anyway, the new evil leader of the Tong is none other than Mako, who would later become a sidekick for Conan. he actually gets the drop on Kato and dumps our hero into a trashcan. now that's going all out for the story!
his style is the Mantis Fist, which is an actual kung fu style. I wonder if Bruce coached him, as he gets the hand position to looded like it should. there are a few more martial arts battles in this episode, including some with the traditional weapons. which is ironic, since Bruce's style (at the time), wing chun, only has the staff as it's main weapon.
here's almost the end result of the last battle, though you know our hero is the victor. it's a pretty brief skirmish, though
I once saw a stripped version of the episode which left out the entire battle leading up to this. sometimes editors baffle me. still, it's a fun episode to watch, as are all of them, since they only had 26 in the series.
here's hoping that what almost promises to be a fiasco of a new movie coming out that someone gets the rights to this cleared up and out on legit DVD.
however, not much of the fighting actually looks like tai chi. Tai chi can be a devastating martial art, but here, without the expert guidance of master choreographer Lau Kar Leung, all of our participants and just throwing punches, blocks and kicks without any regard to the style.
good thing in this movie one really doesn't need much more than that, as it's a story of an evil boss exploiting his workers and then our heroes go out for revenge when they've had all they can take and can't takes no more!
I did not recognize any of the actors, other than the lovely Shih Szu. but they all do a fine enough job here, including the hero Ku Ting, played by Wo-fu Chen. while they may not have had any particular training, they all throw themselves into the fight scenes with gusto, and I am sure more than one of them had injuries. some of the actors did have better style than the others, but at this time it was just not that important to look good, just be tough. for my money, no one looks very good doing the "basher" style of kung fu except Jimmy Wang Yu.
too bad it doesn't have an English dubbed track, but the picture looks great. definitely worth a look to see an internal martial arts style at work. sort of.
finally finished the entire series of Juken Sentai Gekiranger, and it was lots of fun. the villains were defeated, Mele and Rio turned out not so bad after all, which probably annoys the "villains are always cooler than the heroes" fans and there were lots of fights that were not always aided by CGI or flashy effects.
and I know it'll never happen, but I so wish the toys, er, "mecha" didn't have to be so prominent in almost every freakin' episode. and so frickin' many of them, I couldn't keep track of all the thousands of forms and names. one or two giant robots are cool, and if used sparingly would be a special thing instead being turned into the cliche.
this is also the first super sentai I have ever followed start to finish (thank the gods for fansubs) so I am sure there are many similarities between this and in the series from the last 21 years. wouldn't surprise me a bit. now let's have someone fansub GoRanger. JAQK is supposed to be done, but so far it has not gotten past the first episode.
