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5 Awesome pop culture vehicles I’d love to drive in real life

Posted in Back to the Future, movies, pop culture with tags Back to the Future, cars, Knight Rider, movies, nostalgia, pop culture on May 2, 2012 by Paxton

New assignment for the League this week. This week Brian wants to hear what pop culture vehicles do you personally want to drive?

Right off the bat, Brian took the Batmobile off the table, so I can’t include it here. For grins and giggles, though, my favorite version of the Batmobile? The one from Burton’s Batman and Batman Returns. However, it wouldn’t have been my #1 pick, but it would have made the top 5. Possibly even top 3.

So let’s take a look at the 5 pop culture vehicles I’d personally like to own and drive. And yes, these are in order of preference.

BTTF Delorean
BTTF time traveling Delorean – Hands down, this is my number one. And that should be obvious if you’ve read my blog for longer than 15 minutes. Not only does it look bad ass but it TRAVELS THROUGH TIME. And obviously I want the one from the end of the first movie with the Mr Fusion (so I don’t need Plutonium) and the 2015 hover conversion (so the thing can FLY).

KITT
KITT – KITT is a very close second. Why is it second to the Delorean? Because it doesn’t come with the ability to TRAVEL THROUGH TIME. Time Travel trumps pretty much anything else. However, having a talking bad ass car that can almost fly is pretty awesome, so I would want it next. Btw, I want the classic Pontiac Trans-Am version, not the crappy Ford Mustang version.

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Nerd Lunch Episode 35: When Real Life Ruins the Stuff We Love

Posted in movies, pop culture with tags movies, Nerd Lunch Podcast, podcast, podcasts, pop culture on May 1, 2012 by Paxton

Episode 35 has gone live. And yes, it is the triumphant return of CT! This week we are also joined again by Robert Zerbe from To The Escape Hatch. This week, we talk about when “real life” ruins the stuff we love.

(Via Oprah.com)

We talk about actor meltdowns like Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson and Alec Baldwin. We also discuss movie trailers and movie promotions and if studios put too much information out there for big tent pole movies like The Avengers as well as some of our worst experiences in a theater due to disrespectful jack-holes. It’s a lot of info plus CT’s return from his spirit walk.

Download this episode from iTunes or listen to it on Feedburner. And yes, we are still on the Zune Marketplace.

Review of The Woggle-Bug Book by L Frank Baum (1905)

Posted in books, movies, pop culture, reviews, Wizard of Oz with tags Baumalong, books, Frank Baum, movies, Oz books readthru, pop culture, reviews, Wizard of Oz on April 30, 2012 by Paxton

Baum wrote a short book published in 1905 right before the third Oz book; Ozma of Oz. It featured a character that was introduced in the Marvelous Land of Oz, the Woggle-Bug. It’s not an “official” Oz book, however, since L Frank Baum wrote it and it features a character from the Oz series, I’m going to include it as part of my ancillary Oz materials reviews. It was called The Woggle-Bug Book.

“Sire, I am a Woggle-Bug, highly magnified and thoroughly educated. It is no exaggeration to say I am the greatest Woggle-Bug on Earth” – HM Woggle-Bug, TE

The book takes the Woggle-Bug character out of Oz and transplants him into a nameless city in America. We aren’t told how he got there and not too many people seem distressed that a giant talking bug in a top hat is walking around the city streets in broad daylight. The bug falls in love with this crazy colored plaid dress, follows it around as it’s passed from person to person and falls in love with whomever has the dress at the time he sees them. After falling in love with a Chinaman wearing the dress as a Chinese robe, the Woggle-Bug mistakenly gets onto a balloon that carries him to Africa where he barely escapes vicious Arabs that want to kill him. He then wanders into a hidden forest with talking animals that feel more like an Oz book than the events in the rest of the book. This hidden animal kingdom is guarded by a group of bears with guns that are awesomely called a “bearicade”. The story really is weird. It’s funny and strange in some ways, but overall, it’s weird. Plus, there’s a lot of ethnic humor which, I guess, was popular at the time. However, it’s rather jarring today.

This book evolved from a series of Oz comic strips called The Queer Visitors from Oz that were used to promote the second Oz book (I’m trying to get a hold of a copy of these strips for review). The strips took popular Oz characters and transplanted them into America for various adventures. Those strips were popular enough that Baum thought that formula would work again. It wasn’t completely out of left field, the Woggle-Bug had become sort of a national fad at the time. There were Woggle-Bug postcards and board games (today, he even has his own Facebook page). Also at this time, Baum was trying to mount a stage musical about the Woggle-Bug to recreate the smash hit 1902 stage version of Wizard of Oz. This book was adapted from that stage play. Unfortunately, the fad died and the Woggle-Bug play and book flopped.

Now, this book is sort of a one-off curiosity. It is not considered Oz canon.

Countdown to Avengers: A look at The Avengers collectible soda cans

Posted in comic books, Dr Pepper, Mountain Dew, movies, soda with tags Dr Pepper, Marvel Comics, Mountain Dew, movies, pop culture, soda, sodapalooza, The Avengers on April 25, 2012 by Paxton

Countdown to Avengers is a blog crossover between Nerd Lunch, To The Escape Hatch and the Cavalcade of Awesome. Together we are reviewing all of the solo Avengers movies as well as some of the comics and cartoons. It’s all leading up to the release of The Avengers on May 4 where we will all review the new movie.

So, by this point we have talked about our thoughts on most, if not all, of the movies that lead up to The Avengers. Now, I want to look at some of the ancillary promotions for The Avengers. I’m “the soda guy” of the group so I’m a complete sucker for any big pop culture movie/soda promotion (see my write ups on Star Wars soda promotions here, here and here). So today, I’m going to discuss the big Marvel soda promotions that have happened from all of the Marvel movies including Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America and the upcoming The Avengers. Unfortunately, there were no soda promotions for the original Iron Man or The Incredible Hulk in 2008. So, let’s start with the current Avengers promotion going on with Dr Pepper.

Currently, Dr Pepper has a promotion called “Assemble the Team”. The promotional packaging is starting to show up en mass at retail locations everywhere. The promotion consists of 8 collector cans featuring the principles of The Avengers (Nick Fury, Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, Hawkeye, Black Widow and Hulk) as well as one can featuring the film’s villain (Loki). Here’s an official picture of the set.

The promotion is spread among the four main Dr Pepper brands. The character/brand breakdown (as shown in the right image above, click to make bigger) looks like this:

Dr Pepper – Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor
Diet Dr Pepper – Hawkeye, Black Widow
Dr Pepper Cherry – Nick Fury
Diet Dr Pepper Cherry – Loki

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Review of Return to Oz (1984)

Posted in movies, pop culture, Wizard of Oz with tags books, movies, Oz books readthru, pop culture, reviews, Wizard of Oz on April 20, 2012 by Paxton

In my article about adaptations of The Marvelous Land of Oz, I mentioned that the 1984 movie Return to Oz was an adaptation of two of the Baum Oz books. Specifically, it’s a combination of Oz books 2 (Marvelous Land of Oz) and 3 (Ozma of Oz).

After finishing Book 3, I decided to re-watch Return to Oz the other night for the first time in maybe 10 years. Since it’s sort of a cult, underground hit, I thought I would give it a quick review for you guys.

So, WOW, the first twenty minutes of this movie are DEPRESSING. This movie starts a few months after Dorothy has returned to Kansas. The farm is destroyed from the twister. I mean, everything is in shambles. Uncle Henry and Auntie Em are trying to rebuild everything. Uncle Henry broke his leg and now just sits around drinking all day doing nothing. Em is stuck doing all the work. Everytime Dorothy brings up her trip to Oz, Em just shuts her down. No one believes Dorothy’s trips were real. She’s starting to believe they weren’t real. Em takes Dorothy to a “mental hospital” to have a psychiatrist take a look at her. The psychiatrist actually intends to hook Dorothy up to a machine for shock treatments. SHOCK TREATMENTS. This movie was actually showing Dorothy in this creepy old asylum about to have her head lobotomized. I didn’t remember any of this and started to question whether I actually wanted to finish the movie.

So I continued on, Dorothy is saved by a mysterious girl and runs out of the asylum into a thunderstorm. Dorothy is knocked out and wakes up back in Oz. The movie essentially takes the framework for the third book, Ozma of Oz, and adds the characters from the second book, Marvelous Land of Oz. The main changes to the story in Ozma for the movie were to remove everything having to do with the fairy Land of Ev. All of the events in the movie happen in Oz. And not just Oz, but a dilapidated, ghost town of Oz. Also, while they appear on the poster, the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion are relegated to cameos at the end. The other 15 characters in the poster above were given all the screen time. Another change is that Mombi is the main villain (and the current ruler of Oz which is why it’s so run down). We do get to see the awesome Nome King from Book 3, however he looks like Ice Man from the pilot of Misfits of Science. And although he’s the King of the Nomes, you really don’t see any other Nomes. He’s a king of one, I guess. He’s the one telling Mombi what to do.

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