movies | Cavalcade of Awesome

Archive for movies

Girding my loins for Twilight 4. It’s coming…

Posted in books, movies, pop culture, Twilight with tags books, movies, pop culture, trailers, Twilight on June 9, 2011 by Paxton

The Twilight series and I have a…complicated history. I think of us as adversaries, coldly staring at each other over the battlefield of pop culture. We’ve each taken (and given) our wounds, but we rise up to fight again. And again.

And again.

I first tried to stop the EMO-ification of badass vampires in the first Twilight movie here.

Not content with completely ruining vampires, Twilight: New Moon set it’s sights on raping awesome werewolves. See that here.

Twilight: Eclipse at least promised a vampire vs werewolf war, but instead ripped off our sack and stomped it into the pavement. You can read that loveliness here.

Now, the long road is coming to an end. There is only one more book left in the saga. And to make it last as long as f**king possible, Summit Films is splitting the last book into TWO movies (a la Harry Potter).

And we finally have an official trailer for Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part I.

Now, if you’ll pardon me, I have until November 18 to prepare for battle.

2 Comments »

Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire released 20 years ago

Posted in books, movies, pop culture, Star Wars with tags anniversary, Book Report, books, movies, pop culture, Star Wars on June 1, 2011 by Paxton

Timothy Zahn’s Heir to the Empire was released at the end of May 1991 which makes it 20 years old. Heir to the Empire was the first “expanded universe” Star Wars novel since the Lando Calrissian solo novels in the 80s. It would become immensely popular and spark an avalanche of Star Wars novels that continues to this day.

The next two books in Zahn’s “Thrawn Trilogy”, Dark Force Rising and The Last Command, were released in 1992 and 1993 respectively.

The characters Zahn created in his trilogy became extremely popular and would be used by other authors for years afterward. Grand Admiral Thrawn, the Empire’s strategic military genius, would be one of the more popular. However Thrawn as a character would not really be written by anyone other than Zahn. Mara Jade would be used by many authors up until the current day. She would go on to marry Luke and have his children. Talon Karrde, smuggler extraordinaire would also prove popular and show up in novels from time to time, as would the New Republic’s military strategist, General Garm Bel Iblis. Zahn’s three books would also popularize the idea of clones in the Star Wars Universe as well as be the first to use the formal name of the Imperial homeworld (and current Republic homeworld); Coruscant.

Continue reading →

1 Comment »

Vincentennial: 10 Vintage Vincent Price movie ads

Posted in advertising, movies, pop culture, Vincent Price with tags advertising, Held Over, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, vintage on May 27, 2011 by Paxton

It’s the Vincentennial! Vincent Price would be 100 years old this year, so people all over the net are celebrating the films of the godfather of horror. Strange Kids Club has been having Price-centric articles all week. I wrote one about Vincent Price and the origin of the Michael Jackson song Thriller. Today, I thought I’d continue the celebration with a look at some awesome and vintage movie ads for some of Vincent Price’s films.

Some of these movies are his most popular (The Fly, Masque of the Red Death) and some may surprise you (Beach Party?). Regardless, they are an awesome bit of marketing and movie history. So without further ado, here are 10 vintage ads for movies starring Vincent Price. I’ve put them in chronological order.

The Fly (1958) – One of his most famous. And a suitably creepy movie on its own.

Return of the Fly (1959) – Rushed sequel that can’t really live up.

The Bat
The Bat (1959) – A serial killer called The Bat terrorizes the residents of a creepy mansion.

Beach Party (1963) – Yes, Vincent Price played Big Daddy in this Annette Funicello-Frankie Avalon beach comedy. I love the art and how busy this ad looks. The ad itself is huge, so click the image to see it FULL SIZE.

Continue reading →

3 Comments »

Video Games in movies that I totally thought were fake…but aren’t

Posted in Atari, movies, nostalgia, pop culture, video games with tags Cavalcade Arcade, movies, pop culture, video games on May 18, 2011 by Paxton

So, the other day, I was watching one of my favorite movies, Midnight Madness.

In case you didn’t know, it’s about a group of college kids that take part in a city-wide game of chase. They are given clues that lead to specific destinations which eventually end up at the finish line. It’s a great movie and is one of Michael J Fox’s earliest roles. Anyway, about 3/4 of the way through the movie there is a great scene that takes place in a video arcade. It’s always been one of my favorite scenes, especially now, because you can see a bunch of old school video games as the camera changes perspective.

So, after arriving at the video arcade (which is run by a young Paul Reubens in a cowboy costume), the players discover they must play the game Star Fire, and beat it, in order to get the final clue. They gather around the machine with like a million quarters and start playing.

Star Fire 1 Star Fire 2

For years, I thought this game was a creation of the movie. The logo was obviously a rip off of Star Wars and the game play was disjointed and just looked manufactured. You could even see images of TIE Fighters in the game.

Star Fire 3 Star Fire 4

How could this crappy ass game be real? Am I right? However, just recently, while searching around the Internet I discovered that Star Fire was an actual video game. It was manufactured in 1980 by a company called Exidy. The graphics, game play and cabinet were slightly altered in the movie for the purposes of the script (which explains why it felt fake), but the game was most definitely real. Not only that, it is considered a ground breaking shoot ’em up. It was the first arcade game to use the sit down cockpit (however the movie used the stand up version) and was also the first game to keep track of player initials and high scores. Here’s a flyer from 1979 advertising the Star Fire arcade game.

(Via the Arcade Flyer Archive)

I was blown away. I couldn’t believe this was real. I’d seen Midnight Madness thousands of times and I just assumed Star Fire was fake. For me, this is nearly akin to finding out Mattel actually made hoverboards back in 1989. Earth. Shattering. I’ll have to see if I can download an emulator ROM for it.

This got me thinking about other movies with awesome video game machines that I assumed were fake but are, in fact, real.

Continue reading →

6 Comments »

Looking at some movie branded food stuffs

Posted in advertising, Ghostbusters, movies, pop culture, Twilight with tags advertising, Ghostbusters, Indiana Jones, movies, pop culture, Transformers, Twilight on May 12, 2011 by Paxton

If you read this blog you know I love both movies and promotional food stuffs like new soda flavors and candies. I love it even more when they are combined.

Here are some candies, pastries, etc that were re-branded to promote a movie. I’m going to exclude the Star Wars saga from this article because, honestly, I could do a series of articles on Star Wars and food branding. Images are from my own Flickr stream unless otherwise noted. See all images BIGGER by clicking on them.

King Kong Hostess pastries – Back in 2005, Hostess did a big promotion for Peter Jackson’s King Kong remake. They added banana to several of their products. In the pics you can see Banana Twinkies as well as Banana Walnut mini muffins. Interestingly enough, Twinkies’ original flavor was, in fact, banana.

(Via Jason Liebig)
Hulk Sour Lime Life-Savers – A Hulk branded Sour Lime flavor promoting the 2003 Ang Lee Hulk movie. I don’t actually remember these at all, I just saw the wrapper pop up on my buddy Jason Liebig’s Flickr stream. Jason states that it may have been a Canadian only product. I like this much better than I liked Ang Lee’s movie, and I haven’t even tried these.

Hostess Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Pies – From 1991. This was sort of a dual promotion. The packaging used artwork from the cartoon, but it was released around the time of the second live-action movie. You can even see a movie promotion on the packaging. Matt from X-Entertainment did a great write up of this product. The pies were green and filled with vanilla pudding. There were four package designs each featuring a different Ninja Turtle.

(Via Jason Liebig)
Hostess Hulk Cakes – From 2008 to promote the Incredible Hulk reboot with Edward Norton. These were a Scary Cakes promotion for Halloween that featured green frosting and sprinkles on top. Hostess also added the Hulk to their regular cup cakes, donuts and Twinkies products, but left the actual cakes unchanged. There was also an Incredible Hulk branded Air Heads candy.