8-Bit Cinema

Stolen from Deviant Art. How's THAT for deviancy?

Ever wish you could see your favorite movie or TV series remade into an old school Nintendo-style video game? Well now you can with CineFix's 8-Bit Cinema series on YouTube.  A partial list of their remakes includes Jurassic Park, Big Lebowski, Terminator 2, Happy Gilmore, The Shining, Frozen (for the kiddies) and even The Walking Dead. While a more anally-retentive nit-picker would point out that some of their productions tend to lean closer to the 16/32-bit era art-style, I won't do that here.

Whoops, sorry.

So enjoy the videos and check out the links below for even more CineFix craziness. Sorry for the pre-roll ads, Google are greedy bastards.



CLICK HERE FOR MORE 8-BIT CINEMA

CLICK HERE TO VISIT CINEFIX

80s Kids Show Themes

Because laziness.

Captain Nicole Janeway

Nicole vs. Kathryn

You may know her as the powerful inmate Galina "Red" Reznikov on the Netflix original series, Orange is the New Black, but to me, Kate Mulgrew will always be Captain Kathryn Janeway, the bold and decisive intra-galactic spacefarer from Star Trek: Voyager (and also that evil bitch from Throw Momma From the Train). Mulgrew made headlines at the time of Voyager's premiere as the first female captain to head a Star Trek series. But it almost wasn't so. Despite the fact that Kate nailed the part in her audition and subsequently went on to become a fan-favorite, the part had originally been cast with another actress, Geneviève Bujold, as Captain Nicole Janeway.  However, the Canadian actress best known for her portrayal of Anne Boleyn in the film Anne of the Thousand Days (1969), was not up to the rigorous production schedule of a weekly television series, and promptly left the show after shooting only a handful of scenes for the first episode. Lucky for us, Kate was waiting in the wings to take the helm, literally, and the rest is Trek history. Thanks to the tireless video-editing efforts of a fan known only as "aobadge," we can now get a glimpse of how Geneviève might have performed in the lead role had she chosen to stay on board with the crew of the Voyager back in 1994. Check out the video below for a look at what might have been, at the time, the future of Star Trek.

BONUS VIDEOS: NICOLE JANEWAY VS. KATHRYN JANEWAY - PARTS 1 & 2

Today in Music: June 1984

From left: Joe Jackson, Culture Club, Phil McKraken, Two of the Pointer Sisters and of course, Sirhan Sirhan

Quick! Can you name all 20 of Billboard's hottest singles for June…of 1984?! Don't know? Don't care? Weren't aware that time goes back further than 1992? Well check out today's video for a little refresher, courtesy of Billboard Magazine!

Retro Round-Up

Lordy have we got a lot of retro-geekin' news for you on this lovely Tuesday! Today's Retro Round-Up includes Amiga computers, acquitted murderers, new Star Wars and old Star Trek, what more could you ask for? Check out the links below before you get any older, gramps.

Lando Calrissian Returns in Star Wars: Rebels Animated Series
Dissed by Abrams but still loved by Disney, our favorite space-scoundrel-turned-malt-liquor-pimp strikes back!




The City on the Edge of Forever #1 Out This Wednesday
The classic Harlan Ellison-penned original series Star Trek episode gets its own graphic novel this week.




Turn Your Old Mac Into a New Amiga
Got some old Amiga software? Got a PowerPC computer you're not using? Well then, you're probably the only person you know who'll enjoy this.




It Was 20 Years Ago Today: The OJ. Chase
Relive the excitement of television's first combination live celebrity car chase and Ford Bronco commercial!

People We'll Miss: Harold Ramis

Harold Ramis 1944-2014

Comedian, actor, writer, director and producer Harold Ramis died yesterday, February 24, 2014. He has left an enormous legacy behind him having worked on countless films, television shows and even radio shows, where he got his start on National Lampoon's Radio Hour. You can read all about Harold's achievements on the web as he was an active force even up until his final days, but I won't go into any of that here. Suffice it to say that while he was alive he made many, many people laugh either directly or indirectly. So in tribute to this comedy legend, I present to you one of my favorite scenes from one of my all-time favorite sci-fi movies, Heavy Metal (1981), in which Harold starred along with some his fellow SCTV alums, including John Candy, Eugene Levy and Joe Flaherty.

Star Trek Continues

Star Trek: The Re-Reboot

Who needs big budget reboots when you've got fans? While J.J. Abrams' 2009 reboot of the original Star Trek breathed new life into this venerable 60s television property, fan remakes, created with arguably more authenticity and unquestionably more love, have have been circulating the internet for years now. For hardcore Trekkers and casual fans alike, these independent remakes, such as Starship Exeter and Star Trek: New Voyages (later renamed Star Trek: Phase II), have provided new windows into creator Gene Roddenberry's futuristic world, which franchise-owner, Paramount Studios, would never consider producing due to their potentially limited appeal. The more successful of these fan-made series nearly always hark back to the original 1960s incarnation of the show, closely mimicking its style by employing more subtle special effects and exploring social, political and philosophical themes.

The latest entry into this sci-fi sub-genre is titled Star Trek Continues, an off-Hollywood but fairly professional attempt to continue the original five-year mission of the starship Enterprise and her loyal crew. Featuring one of James Doohan's own sons, Christopher, reprising his father's role as Scotty, the ship's hard-drinking, fist-throwing engineer, Star Trek Continues does an admirable job of emulating the Crayola-color lighting, the oddball camera angles and the quirky TV dialogue of those late-1960s Desilu productions and even manages to make you forget you're watching a fan-flick, most of the time. Although I'd say the casting could use some tweaking, and some of the acting is, well, bad, the impressive attention to detail and the bonus inclusion of original series guest star, Michael Forest, who played Apollo in the episode Who Mourns for Adonais?, makes the whole affair a worthy homage to an American science fiction classic. Check the video below for a look at the very first episode, Pilgrim of Eternity -- and to you mega-geeks out there, make sure to watch (and listen) for some quick but notable cameos by some space-opera royalty including Marina Sirtis from Star Trek: The Next Generation. Go ahead, watch it. What else you doing on a cold-ass Saturday afternoon?

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE HOME OF STAR TREK CONTINUES


Star Trek Continues E01 "Pilgrim of Eternity" from Star Trek Continues on Vimeo.

1984 Revisited

Not as confusing as Prometheus

On January 22nd, 1984, Apple Computer ran, what was at the time, the most expensive 1-minute television commercial ever produced, titled "1984." The $900,000 ad, directed by Ridley Scott, was shown only once during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII and it was immediately recognized as something special and unique, winning several awards and helping to kickstart the tradition of producing elaborate, over-the-top commercials for the Super Bowl. Apple's purpose behind the ad was to whip up enthusiasm for the company's next big product at the time, the Macintosh. As you may or may not know, the Macintosh computer introduced the concepts of the mouse and icon-driven computing environments in 1984 to a market who had been, up until then, operating their computers by typing in cryptic codes and commands via keyboard. After shaking up the advertising world with its innovative commercial, Apple successfully shook up the computer world with the introduction of its radical new machine two days later on January 24th, 1984.

Do you prefer brand X over brand Y?

Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the commercial's original public broadcast and tomorrow will be the 30th anniversary of the introduction of Macintosh itself. When you get a chance, take a minute or two to watch Apple's little micro-epic and consider how much our world has changed in the years between 1984 and 2014. Thirty years may seem like a long time, but as the great philosopher, Ferris Bueller once said: life moves pretty fast, if you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.

Lost: The Sitcom

Believe it or not, this year (2014) will mark the 10th anniversary of the hugely influential and often divisive supernatural television drama, Lost. Yup, it's been a decade since viewers first witnessed all those pretty young people crash their Boeing 747 onto the beautiful beaches of Hawaii, um,  I mean a strange and mysterious island somewhere in the South Pacific. But what if that island hadn't been so strange and mysterious? What if our beloved Losties were able to just kick back and enjoy an extended vacation in that sun-drenched paradise without the threat of polar bears or magical smoke monsters? Well, it may have looked something like this:

Star Wars on the Small Screen

Star Wars on your TV? No way!

Within the Grand Geekdom of Star Wars, it seems that the producers of said saga have always relished in the scapegoating of the now infamous television one-off, The Star Wars Holiday Special, which has long been regarded as the "red-headed stepchild" of the entire pew-pew franchise. This funky two-hour special was originally broadcast in 1978 and featured musical numbers by Jefferson Starship, comedy skits with Harvey Korman and Bea Arthur, and the public's first introduction to space-opera's greatest bounty hunter and general badass, Boba Fett. But I think it's a bit unfair for Lucas and company to shrug off this classic 70's variety show as if it were their only foray into total goofiness, because I recall more than a few odd appearances by Luke Skywalker and his galactic buddies on the small screen during that quiet period between the first two films, which, although I didn't realize at the time, mostly served to keep the giant Star Wars publicity machine rolling until the next flick was released. After all, you gotta keep selling action figures during down time, right?

So in order to support my ongoing quest to prove that I'm right about everything, I present to you one of my favorite retro moments featuring disco, droids and Jedi in hopes that you'll all come to see that George Lucas has, perhaps, a few more skeletons in his closet than he'd like to admit to. Enjoy.

YOU SAY YOU'VE SEEN DANCING STORMTROOPERS? NOT UNTIL YOU'VE SEEN THIS.

BONUS VIDEO:
MUPPETS MEET STAR WARS…AND 30 YEARS LATER DISNEY BUYS THEM BOTH.

Merry Christmas, If That's OK

Happy Holidays from the Bots

This is one of my favorite TV show Christmas songs. It comes to us from way back in 1993, that's 20 years ago to you and me, and was featured on the obscure geek extravaganza known as MST3000. At the time this video was originally broadcast, cultural awareness and political correctness were quickly becoming the hot topics of the day. This little Xmas ditty hit the nail on the head and actually might be even more relevant today in 2013, when perhaps our collective level of cultural sensitivity has spiralled so far out of control, that everyone on the planet is afraid of saying anything to anyone. The song, entitled Merry Christmas, If That's OK, does contain a positive message of tolerance, although the performers quite obviously have their tongues firmly planted in their cheeks. Happy birthday, Jesus, don't let the bastards get you down.

Nobody Expects the...

…Spanish Inquisition. 

Can a parakeet repeat this famous Monty Python line? Yes. Yes it can. BTW if you're wondering, it's completely real. Odd that they didn't teach it the "parrot sketch" though.

BetaMaXmas 2013

Disturbingly representative of my childhood

Here it is, December of 2013 and so far, where I live, it's been a pretty mild winter with almost zero precipitation. But back when I was a little kid in Wisconsin, my family were afforded no such meteorological reprieves. We may just as well have been living at the North Pole for all the snow, ice and sleet we had to endure, and that was just in the springtime. So after a typical day of trudging through knee-deep snow in my moon-boots trying to keep the snot from freezing up in my nose, I would find that there was no better way to warm back up than to snag one of the less creaky spots on our old pull-out sofa in the basement and zone out in front of a toasty Zenith while I crawled under Grandma's old quilt and watched and waited for that little kid to get his tongue stuck on the pole in A Christmas Story. And if I was extra lucky, mom would let me eat dinner right there in front of the TV -- it's the little things in life, you know?
It's now a whole bunch of years later, but I still miss that shabby little basement with the faux wood panelling and the Suzanne Somers poster hanging next to the baseball-themed dartboard. I miss all three static-filled channels that endlessly streamed the same holiday drivel every year until we'd all had our fill of Alf, He-Man and Smurfs Christmas Specials. And I miss the TV Guide, dammit.
So as fate would have it, a few years ago I discovered a way to relive those warm and fuzzy memories without having to steal a Tardis and, even better, without having to go back to Wisconsin.
The site is called BetaMaXmas.com and basically it's a virtual recreation of the childhood memory I just described, lo-fi and complete with wood paneling. Upon entering the site, you'll be greeted with a couch and an old TV that loops 80s commercials and holiday specials from YouTube ad infinitum. Appropriately, the boob-tube sits atop an 8-Track player and Betamax machine whose clock keeps flashing 12:00. The experience is pretty complete: Don't like the channel? Use the clicker. Too much snow on the screen? Adjust the rabbit ears. Wanna know what else is on? Check out the TV Guide (if anyone under 35 is reading this, their head is probably exploding right now).
Over time, BetaMaXmas become a regular tradition for me and nowadays we turn it on around the Holidays and leave it running for hours at a time. And now that I have kids, I've found that it serves as an excellent historical pop-culture tool I can use to teach them about the time-honored tradition of commercializing Christmas, retro-style.

CLICK HERE TO ENTER BETAMAXMAS.COM

Hobbit Your Way

Harry Potter

With part two of Peter Jackson's The Hobbit trilogy on its way into theaters next month, I got to thinking about my first exposure to J.R.R. Tolkien's fantastical world of magic and mystery via the small screen way back in 1977. The works of TV moguls Rankin and Bass had already been familiar to me as a child and each holiday season I eagerly looked forward to their stop motion and cartoon productions of Rudolph, Frosty and, you know, that one with the Heat Miser. But it was one of their animated tales, that seemed for the first time to not be based upon anything I had already heard about in story or song, that really made an impression on me. So instead of the usual stories about what might happen if Christmas never came or how elves all really wanted to be orthopedic surgeons, that particular Sunday in November of '77 I sat and watched a mezmerizing tale of wizards and halflings, dwarves and goblins and of course, dungeons and dragons (or perhaps more accurately, tunnels and trolls) and it was pure awesome. The artwork, while a bit clunky by today's standards, had a warm and funky 70s watercolor style I hadn't ever witnessed before in the works of Mr. Disney or Messieurs Hanna and Barbera. The music and sound production, too, were on the quirky side of odd and the whole thing seemed to reek of a production company being forced to work under a tighter budget than was probably required (although in actuality they spent about $3,000,000 but I'm guessing most of that went to the voice talent and licensing the story). Due at least in part to the fact that there were only three channels available on television at the time, the show became an instant hit, not only with kids but it also gained some critical acclaim when it nearly beat out Star Wars for a Hugo sci-fi/fantasy award (the fact that it lost to Lucas' highly derivative saga is ironic in too many ways to count!) So while I enjoyed Peter Jackson's adaptation of the first part of The Hobbit (Martin Freeman blows Elijah Wood out of the water, whilst Sean Astin just blows Elijah - sorry, had to go there) I think the Rankin/Bass production still holds up well, especially within the context of being a children's film, and deserves to be celebrated along with all of the various incarnations of Tolkien's tales of Middle-Earth. So if you haven't seen it before, and especially if you plan on going to see The Desolation of Smaug in December, grab your cloak and pipe and check out the video below for a look at the original 1977 Rankin/Bass production of The Hobbit. Enjoy. Sorry about the French subtitles - unless of course you only speak French, in which case Je vous en prie.

Groovy Magic

It's Thursday and that means it's time for a Doug Henning video. Yes Doug Henning, the greatest Canadian magician that ever lived in the 1970s. You can forget about Criss Angel and that masked dude with all their modern "dark and brooding" Batman shit shtuff they got going on. I'm talking roller-skates, rainbows and cheesy mustaches, man. I'm talking the 70s! Dig it and be groovy!!

Starcade on the Web

"And the question is "what is Pong?" Alex"

Hey, remember the 80s? No? Well let me tell you all about them. There was Reaganomics, John Hughes, a little kid trapped in a well, Def Leppard and of course, video games. Notice I didn't say internet? And that sad fact right there is what made us 80s kids get up off of our lazy butts, stand up on our own two feet with pride and conviction, and walk over to the TV to turn it on and leave it on. And what did we watch on our Zeniths and Sanyos? Shows about video games, of course! And the best video game show of all (that was tragically cut short by a dramatic drop-off in interest fueled in no small part by the Video Game Crash of 1983) was a game show called Starcade. On Starcade, contestants we're challenged with topical video game trivia questions and got to play the hottest, newest video arcade machines of the time in order to win thousands of dollars in fabulous prizes! Aside from the Price is Right and maybe Family Feud, it was the only game show I cared about. And now, you can too. So quit trying to catch up on Breaking Bad and click/tap/lick the link below to head on over to Starcade.tv where you can feast upon over 60 classic episodes of this 80s retro sweetness!

WATCH STARCADE ON THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY

Something, Something, Something in Cincinnati

Unemployed people.

Way back in the year nineteen-hundred-and-seventy-eight, an awesome little TV show about a rock and roll radio station in Cincinnati hit the airwaves and subsequently made me want to be a DJ when I grew up. Until I found out what they got paid. WKRP in Cincinnati ran for only four seasons but it garnered a lot of respect and attention due to its excellent ensemble cast and hilarious writing, and also because of it use of real rock music within the narrative of the show which, at the time, was unprecedented. It's even been said that the exposure Blondie's music received by being played on the show helped propel the song, Heart of Glass, to the top of the charts. In fact, a gold record given to the producers of the show by Blondie as a thank you can be seen hanging on the wall of one of the sets. Even the catchy title track, co-written by series creator, Hugh Wilson, became a major hit on the radio in 1981.

But what about that song they played over the closing credits? Have you ever really listened to the lyrics? Well try as you might it's nigh impossible to make out what's being said, even with all of our modern technology, and that's because the lyrics are mostly nonsense. Apparently the original demo of the song contained improvised gibberish by the song's performer, Jim Ellis, which was to eventually be replaced with a saxophone line, as his singing on the recording was actually just the product of his joking around in the studio. However when Wilson heard the track, he immediately loved it and decided to keep the garbled words for the final cut, partly because it satirized the often unintelligible lyrics of rock and roll songs, but also because he knew few people would even be able to make the words out due to the common practice of having a station announcer speak over the end credits. Thus much like Louie, Louie before it, the lyrics of WKRP's closing theme became the subject of much speculation and misinterpretation over the years, although most viewers never realized that there was no definitive lyric sheet for the hard-driving rocker. Check out the videos for a few of the of the funnier attempts at deciphering Jim Ellis' mumbo-jumbo.

BONUS VIDEO: THE ALL-STAR FAMILY FEUD SPECIAL - WKRP VS. THE LOVE BOAT

Is That A Sega In Your Pocket Or...?

Severed hand not included.

Time to get your Sega on with these awesome little pocket consoles from oddball Japanese retro-games-maker, AtGames. Just plug the Nano Arcade into your TV like any other game system and choose from 10 different classic Sega Genesis/Mega-Drive games to play. Officially, there are seven unique versions, each with its own set of games, however in the U.S., there are only 3 currently available. Our friends over at ThinkGeek have the Virtua Fighter edition (Virtua Fighter 2, Shinobi III, Golden Axe, Golden Axe III, Alien Storm, Snake, Spider, Bottle Tops Race, Bomber, Hexagons) and the Columns edition (Columns, Columns III, Flicky, Arrow Flash, Dr. Robotnik’s, Cross the Road, Plumbing Contest, Maze 2010, Jewel Magic, Fish Tank Live) for a measly $12.99 while Amazon adds a third option to their lineup with the Sonic the Hedgehog edition (Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic the Hedgehog Spinball, Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle, Sonic 3D: Flickies' Island, Air Hockey, Cannon, Checker, Fight or Lose, Naval Power) starting at a whopping $49.99. Yikes! These things are getting hard to find so if you want one, you'd better get on it. Check out this crazy Russian video for more info. Why's it in Russian? Because it was the only review on YouTube that wasn't 40 frickin' minutes long, that's why! And for the love of God, people, turn down your microphones when you record!!!

SEGA NANO ARCADE AT THINKGEEK

SEGA NANO ARCADE AT AMAZON

Doctor Who Found in Africa

Patrick Troughton as The Second Doctor.

The BBC just announced that nine missing episodes of the classic British Sci-Fi series, Doctor Who starring Patrick Troughton, have been discovered in Africa and have been made available to the public for the first time since their original airing in 1967 and 1968. The episodes have been made available via iTunes.

READ THE FULL STORY AT CBSNEWS

CLICK HERE TO BE PREVIEW "THE ENEMY OF THE WORLD" IN ITUNES

CLICK HERE TO PREVIEW "THE WEB OF FEAR" IN ITUNES

Mazes and Monsters

Splash. No, wait. Bachelor Party. Yes, I'd say Bachelor Party has always been my favorite film starring the great American actor, Tom Hanks. Replete with exotic dancers, pill-popping donkeys and of course Tawny Kitaen, Bachelor Party has easily got to be the finest showcase ever created for the Gump-talking, Oscar-winning, A-list superstar. That is, until I remembered this little gem of a turd called Mazes and Monsters.

Crap.

You see, a long, long time ago, studying at MSU, there was a 16 year-old, drug-addicted, clinically depressed, child prodigy named James Dallas Egbert III who, in 1979, decided to take his own life in the steam tunnels under his school. When the suicide didn't take, the kid flipped out and fled the campus, ultimately making his way to Louisiana, after which he attempted to kill himself a second time before succeeding on the third. I'm not going to retell the entire story as you can just read that here: James Dallas Egbert III on Wikipedia, however suffice it to say that the kid's apparent disappearance was never adequately explained to the public and instead, a theory put forth by an investigator was erroneously recirculated by the press which eventually became the de facto answer to the mystery. The theory held that since James had played Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) back in high school, he must have entered the school's steam tunnels during a live-action version of the game and somehow gotten lost. In fact, the investigator later discovered James living in New Orleans but as a favor to him, promised he would never reveal his true fate, and thus everyone would go on to believe that the boy was just an unfortunate casualty of an evil, evil game.

Now, never let it be said that Americans can't find great opportunity in a terrible tragedy because a couple of years after the incident in the MSU steam tunnels, novelist Rona Jaffe decided to set pen to paper and create a story based upon the theories and myths that had sprung up around James' disappearance, not knowing, of course, the boy's true fate. Her book was called Mazes and Monsters, in reference to the game that was supposedly to blame, and it garnered her a bit of attention in the wake of the moral panic over role-playing games that was beginning to take hold in the U.S. in the early 1980s.

One year after Jaffe's book was published, the inevitable cheese-ball TV adaptation (starring a budding young actor named Tom "Houston, we have a problem" Hanks) was produced by CBS, and served as a further warning to nervous parents everywhere about the unknown dangers of these twisted and demonic fantasy games. Ironically, CBS would go on to produce the successful Dungeons & Dragons children's cartoon series one year later.

Since I hadn't seen the original flick since its first airing in '82, I decided to rewatch as much of it as I could stomach, and folks, I'm delighted to say that it is gloriously bad. Like Refer Madness bad. Keep on scrolling to watch a clip of Tom Hanks have a psychological freak-out in the face of an imaginary Gorn-like creature deep in the bowels of a paper maché cave, or you can watch the entire movie if you like. Pick your poison!

TOM HANKS FREAKS OUT

MONSTERS AND MAZES FULL MOVIE