“Back To The Future” I & II Comparison.

Cinematic trivia utterly fascinates me. It’s mostly what I use the internet for and this little nugget from “Back To The Future: Part II” always impressed me:

“Claudia Wells (Jennifer in “Back To The Future“) was unable to reprise her role as she had stopped acting because her mother had been diagnosed with cancer. Elisabeth Shue was then cast as Jennifer, and all the closing shots of “Back To The Future” were re-shot for the beginning of this film.”

“Back To The Future” and “Back To The Future: Part II” were shot roughly 4 years apart and Michael J. Fox visibly aged a little.

Folks, we didn’t have Youtube while I was growing up but I’m glad we do now because…

You May Also Be Interested In…
* “Back To The Future” Concept Art
* “The Godfather”: Robert DeNiro’s Audition Tape
* On The Set: The Movie Filming Locations Channel

Horror Effects Hosted By Tom Savini.

One of these days, whenever I manage to sit down and completely gather all of my thoughts, I’ll tell you all about my friend Mark Liengie. He was a talented feller and when we were kids we used to draw together. We had this weekly competition going on where we’d try to out-gross the other by drawing the most fucked up images our young minds could conjure up and comparing them at weekends. Unfortunately I don’t know what happened to any of these pictures.

My friend Mark was a genius. A real one.

Before he died he was just about to make his…mark on the special effects industry. I believe he had a hand in creating the dead baby scene in “Trainspotting” as well as making a full dead body for an episode of “Taggart“.

On one of the last occasions I saw Mark he was outside his parents’ house with two fake human torsos on poles that each had wires and cables and string running from them. “Watch this!” he said, and with the push of a button on a handmade controller, the torsos EXPLODED with an amazing bang and instantly, a large part of the garden was drenched in the buckets of fake blood he’d filled the dummys with! Amazing.

Growing up, we’d quite easily watch the likes of “Creepshow”, “Dawn of The Dead” and “An American Werewolf In London” over and over again. We’d pause the tape on special effects shots and quickly draw exactly what we saw so that we could discuss how the effect was achieved later. It was a real learning process for me and really improved my drawing skills but Mark took things a lot further than I ever could. He’d regularly turn up on my parents’ doorstep with animal hearts and parts he’d got from the butcher and we’d cut them open. We’d both draw them but Mark would then go away and build an exact model replica out of all kinds of materials!

It’s amazing to think that he was only 9 or ten years old then but like I said, I’ll tell you all about him and his work another day.

Yesterday, I found a documentary film on Youtube hosted by our childhood hero, Tom Savini. As kids, Mark and I would have killed our nearest and dearest to have seen something like this…

You May Also Be Interested In…
* Blood test: Behind Al Cook’s “Necropolis”
* Graham Humphreys: “Zombie Flesh Eaters” Artwork
* When Barbie Goes Psycho

Home Taping Is Killing Music And It’s Illegal.

I found this on the back of a recently bought vinyl copy of “Before The Flood” by Bob (The most bootleged artist in history) Dylan & The Band. I don’t think it appears on the backs of any of the other LPs I own…

I seem to remember similar ads in the 1980′s which threatened JAIL TIME if you taped music from the radio! When I go to the cinema these days and they run an anti-piracy advert before the film, it only serves to remind me of the films that I need to illegally download because they’re not commercially available to buy. If they are available, they’re watered down cuts of the film or edited for violence or something silly like that.

Bob Dylan & The Band’s “Before The Flood” is a live recording from 1974 and it really is amazing! A great companion piece to the record would either be the 1974 bootleg soundboard recordings “Paint the Daytime Black” or “Oakland Flood”, but if you want those you’ll have to download them in an illegal fashion. Here’s the artwork so you know what you’re looking for…

…And from Wikipedia, here’s a copy and paste job (A theft if you will) about “Home Taping Is Killing Music”…

“Home Taping Is Killing Music” was the slogan of a 1980s anti-copyright infringement campaign by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), a British music industry trade group. With the rise in cassette recorder popularity, the BPI feared that people being able to record music from the radio onto cassettes would cause a decline in record sales. The logo, consisting of a Jolly Roger formed from the silhouette of a compact cassette, also included the words And It’s Illegal.

The campaign has in recent years had its revival, as the Norwegian branch of IFPI launched a new campaign named Piracy Kills Music. The campaign has exactly the same message, same name and even very similar logos. The campaign won the Norwegian 2008 Gulltaggen award for “Best Internet Strategy” with much controversy.

An early ‘proponent’ of home taping was Malcolm McLaren who was at the time managing the British band Bow Wow Wow. In 1980 the band released their cassette single ”C30, C60, C90 Go” on a cassette that featured a blank other side that the buyer could record their own music on. The band’s record label, EMI, dropped the group shortly afterwards because the single allegedly promoted home taping.

Some Drawings By The 13 Year Old Me…

My Mum unearthed some long lost drawings I did at school when I was 13 and gave them to me today.

Although they’re not very good at all, I remember getting really pissed off at the teacher for writing score marks on the actual drawing itself! Even the thought of it gets to me now and I’m 31! Ha Ha!

 

 

Dumb Ways To Die.

Got kids?
Why don’t you take a day off from plastering photos of their spaghetti smeared faces on Facebook, sit them down and show them this:

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* How To Cope With Death
* Stop-Motion Animation …On A Vinyl Record!
* Dot. The World’s Smallest Stop-Motion Animation Character