It’s been a while since my last post. Sorry for that. I really wish I could spend all my time blogging so there would new posts published more recently. But I have to do my regular job, so I blog as often as I can.
Today I’m writing about a movie that I saw not so long ago, though I remember my friends discussing it some 15-16 years ago. I felt terribly for missing such remarkable movie! And I should - it was a blast then, but even now it is valuable as a classical horror movie.
The summary borrowed from IMDB:
Spoiled socialite and notorious practical joker Melanie Daniels is shopping in a San Francisco pet store when she meets Mitch Brenner. Mitch is looking to buy a pair of love birds for his young sister’s birthday; he recognizes Melanie but pretends to mistake her for an assistant. She decides to get her own back by buying the birds and driving up to the quiet coastal town of Bodega Bay, where Mitch spends his weekends with his sister and mother. Shortly after she arrives, Melanie is attacked by a gull, but this is just the start of a series of attacks by an increasing number of birds.
But that’s not all - here’s some interesting facts about this movie:
Alfred Hitchcock (movie’s director) appears in the movie - he’s a man walking his 2 dogs.
It took 3 years to complete the movie.
Alfred Hitchcock made three opening and closing remarks - in English, French and German. Although he did so for each his movie - to cosy up to his worldwide audience.
Sequels. There was one. Only one, thanks God. In the 1994 Rick Rosenthal directed “The Birds II: Land’s End”. The movie was a disaster and it vanished without leaving any notable mark in the history of cinema like its predecessor did.
Did you know that you can buy this cute Barbie doll made by the image of Melanie - the main character of the movie?
It’s a pity that I can’t embed any scene from the movie, since it’s forbidden (Not the movie - the embedding ). But you can watch it directly on YouTube.
Ok, who doesn’t remember this great anime masterpiece?
This is a cartoon based on Japanese writer Kyoko Mizuki novel and manga series.
The story is about a girl named Candy (real name is “Candice”, I think). She’s lives in an orphanage with her best friend Annie and other children. One day Annie is adopted by some family and friends are separated. Her heart breaks. Candy doesn’t want to be adopted and wants to refuse such proposal, but at age of 12 she is adopted by a rich family and ends up to be a maid at their home. Children of the family - Eliza and Neal - often play cruel pranks on her and delight in tormenting her. Later after many adventures, unpleasant situations with Eliza and Neil, and a tragic love story Candy appears in Saint Paul Academy. The adventures, evil Eliza’s schemes (as she also studies at the same academy) romantic stories continues and Candy outlives many happy and sad moments. But I won’t be telling you anything more. You should watch the cartoon for yourself or at least read the novel or manga (actually I would love to do that myself).
Jetter Mars is one of the greatest anime characters I can remember. Even our mentor used to watch it and discuss it later in a class with us - fifth-grade schoolchildren. Though Mars is often accused of being a lame copy of Astro boy, it’s still IMHO a great cartoon.
When Mars was born, his creators argued if he is ought to be a war machine (after his name) or use his intellect to spread the peace in the world. Though it was decided that he must be a “good boy”, when Mars’es father is captured by criminals, he puts all his effort to find him and teach the evil ones their lesson.
I don’t remember almost any part from this anime, except for these two:
The one with three evil robots which could transform into one big buzz-saw;
And the one when Mars’es friend robot-girl shows her ability to fix any broken thing somehow magically. Just like that - only by waving with her hands over it. I loved the idea - robot having magic powers! Of course, there wasn’t any magic, but since they didn’t gave me any scientific explanation, I understood it in my way.
And for the ending, of course, here is an intro theme:
Smurfs was a great animated series that I used to watch back these days. It’s like a fairy tail. A story is about small bluish people living in a forest, in small mushroom-shaped houses.
Most smurfs look alike - blue skin, white trousers and hat. But they have strong characters that are quite emphasized by their behavior and even by their names. For example, Grouchy Smurf is always grouchy; Hefty Smurf is always doing the hardest work in the village and so on. I also have to mention the evil character Gargamel. He’s an evil sorcerer who’s the only goal is to destroy smurfs. And he’s trying to do so in every part of the series.
Of course, the introducing theme is immortal like of every other animated TV Oldie.
There are many parts of the Smurfs in YouTube. If you have a spare minute, don’t hesitate to watch it! Good luck
P.S. Here’s a good article about Smurfs in Wikipedia.
Ok, enough with the cartoons already! And with foreign ones..
This time I’ll introduce to you something that was created in my country. It’s a movie “Children from hotel America”. It was one of the most memorable movies that I’ve ever seen. It’s about Lithuanian youth living on the times when the Soviet Union started creaking.
The plot: a gang of some teens gathers together in an abandoned hotel “America”. They rebel, listen to the foreign radio stations and dream about seeing those musicians in real life. One day friends take an old creaky car and head to Palanga - Lithuanian summer resort, where secret gathering of youth is taking place. It’s some kind of Lithuanian Woodstock. The trip goes well and gang settles in the lonely glade. They party all night, sing, dream, fall in love. But when the morning dawns they are unpleasantly surprised - their “Woodstock” is surrounded by militia (soviet police). Teens are arrested, beaten, shaved to baldness and then returned to their parents. Some of them are broken; some only grow the anger inside, waiting for the moment to explode.
The ending of the movie is remarkable: the stream, flowing near hotel “America”, which was back-filled and asphalted in the beginning of the movie, breaks through. Concrete walls and blocks can’t stop it. It’s kind of symbolical, you know.
I’m sorry, but I can’t give you any video material, so you’ll have to satisfy with some pictures from Lithuanian movies center:
This is a legend, isn’t it? You must have been ashamed back then if you haven’t seen this movie. But if you did, you still are lucky because it might be that a new release of RoboCop will come in 2010.
The plot: Detroit in the near future is suffering from extremely high crime rate. A newcomer cop Alex J. Murphy is wounded to death on his first shift but doctors succeed to save his brain and it was used when creating a powerful robot. The robot was made with a purpose to help the police to save the town from the criminals. So, the new-born cyborg starts his job and everything goes just fine until his ought-to-be-lost memories arise in his head. Then angry robot decides to revenge his killers, but some important persons don’t want it to happen, since they have close relations with those criminals who killed Murphy.
The movie had its sequel - RoboCop 2, RoboCop 3 and live-action TV series, which had better video effects and was quite interesting but still the movie had more charm as an original story. The post about RoboCop: the Series will appear in TV Oldies later.
). But you can watch it directly on YouTube.
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