Another Miniature Movie Review: Finally caught the third Harry Potter flick.  Though all three were amaaazing movies that have probably shaped more childhoods that they’re given credit for (Let’s face it, not everyone reads books.), I still think the second was the best of the lot.   The third, I dunno…kinda feels like this particular story read better than it played out onscreen.  Don’t want to nitpick since they’re all great movies, and anything that makes me see Robbie Coltrane for more than his cameo role in the Haim-driven Oh, What I Night is a gooood thing.

Another Miniature Movie Review:  I take it back: Friday the 13th Part V wasn’t that bad.  Definitely not the worst in the series, at least.  The Michael Jackson wannabe sharing a duet with his girlfriend while shitting in the outhouse is worth the price of admission alone.  “Damn those enchiladas?”  Plus, I’m pretty sure that said wannabe’s younger brother was played by none other than “Dudley” of Diff’rent Strokes fame.  I’m sure he’d love to be referred to only as “Dudley.”  There’s even a Tina Yothers look-a-like with punkish black streaks in her hair who robot dances for like six hours straight before the fake Jason finally wanders in and kills her.  These are strong points for a film even devoted F13 fans seem to hate by and large.

Another Miniature Movie Review:  The more foreign-based Trekkies 2 wasn’t nearly as fun as the original, but revisiting some of the chief fanatics from the first documentary makes it a worthy watch.  Gabe, the mulleted kid from the original, turned out a-okay and was probably an uplifting object for thousands of other nerdy-types wondering if they’d ever get their freak off.

If you're around my age and a girl, you probably collected tons of small, plastic charms throughout childhood.  Usually clipped onto and worn on pastel chain-link necklaces, the charms covered everything from tiny whistles to soda bottles, little cars, boats, hearts, dolls and beyond.  Though no one company held a majority share in this market, there was definitely a big difference between "good charms" and "bad charms."  Good charms were well crafted, nicely painted, fairly large and plenty durable.  Bad charms came from one-point Chuck E. Cheese prize bins and dentists' offices.  Good charms had little silver bells attached.  Bad charms only spoke if you chewed them.

Generally, guys weren't allowed to take part in the craze.  At least, not to the degree of collecting and wearing the charms — that was a fast ticket to recess punches.  Still, I admit to have had a small affinity for all of the charms based on some real life commercial item — like the tiny Pepsi bottles and whatnot.  The stupid things sell for tons nowadays.  In 1985, they did not.  In 1985, they were cheap.  And sometimes they came on headbands.

Yes, it's the official "Charmies" head band, a high fashion artifact with four different brightly colored charms.  Originally retailing for 98 cents, they narrowly beat out twenty-five cent charm vending machines in the bargain department, and at least with these, you knew what you were getting yourself into.  Charm-filled vending machines could shit out anything from good charms to CHARMS FROM HELL.  If you liked what you saw in the Charmies assortment, this was a no-risk situation.  As an added bonus, the Charmies/hip teen combo logo could easily be cut out and glued onto marble notebooks for what we in the biz call "extra cool in school."

There's a whistle, a bicycle, an I-think-it's-a-calculator, and a toilet with flip-up lid and seat.  The toilet's kind of a strange choice considering the target demo, but any boys lucky enough to land themselves a girly Charmies headband at least gained an impressive commode for their Battle Beasts.  My hunch is that the bootleg company that made these knew that the headband was a worthless bonus — kids who bought this just ripped off the charms to add to their big ass necklace, discarding the headband as they would any soda six-pack plastic connector.  Remember to break them before trashing, or many fish will die.  The End.
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I finally caught Open Water the other night, which was more or less inevitable because I must see every shark-related movie created or I'll get really sick and die.  I don't want to come down too hard on it, for a few reasons — they did a lot on a shoestring, they did it without the CG nonsense and they did it without manifesting the shark as some kind of villain character with intentions that go well beyond that of any actual shark.  As I've been telling random people on the streets, Open Water is a perfectly acceptable film…if you watch it on mute.  Seriously, you'll get everything you need from it, and you won't have to hear that damn bad dialogue.

I can appreciate how tough it must be to write a movie-length script for two characters floating in the ocean, but man, it really hurt the impact here.  For me, the idea of being trapped in the water is scary enough.  I tend to think most everyone else on the planet would agree.  In Open Water, the characters only seem legitimately, hardcore concerned when the sharks are like, six inches from their heads.  They're pissed and worried, but they're not frantic.  They're bickering at each other, they're throwing in some jokes, they're talking about bullshit stuff — NO NO NO.  NOBODY WOULD DO THIS.  I'm not sure how it could've been corrected, because in reality, the situation the characters were in isn't exactly conducive to talking at all.  When I saw Open Water, I wasn't scared, but I sure was wondering why the characters onscreen weren't.

Plus, I was so grossed out by the woman puking in the water during the first half of the film that I just couldn't wrap my head around the rest.  I spent half the movie being disgusted at the idea of them floating around in her puke chunks.  When I locate the Infinity Gems and affix them to my left-hand Freezy Freakie, the first thing I'll do is ban vomit from cinema altogether.

Wait, I just remembered something else and IT NEEDS TO BE SAID.

Minor spoiler alert, but nothing major — stop reading if you need a clean slate for your first viewing.  Okay?  Okay.  So, you may be wondering how the lovebirds get stuck in the ocean.  While vacationing, they go on a diving expedition, and a misfired headcount by one of the boat people sends the rest of the divers back to shore while our star characters pet a big eel underwater.  This actually plays out fine — it doesn't feel too incidental or whatever.  Still, there was one thing that totally bugged me.  There were like a dozen divers on the expedition, mostly male.  While they're on the boat heading to the proper sea area, the heroine's twirling around her hair while her tits plop out of her suit — exactly what you're seeing in that pic there.  Now, here's my issue: on the boat ride home, you're telling me that none of the other divers were going to be looking for that girl, hoping to catch another "oopsie" glimpse?  C'mon.  Somebody would've noticed that she wasn't there.  Boob humor isn't my strong suit — I'm not saying this to be hysterical.  Watch Open Water, and tell me you didn't notice this.

X-E reader "Darren" wrote in with a copy/paste from a Gremlins fansite, wanting to have the statements validated — here they be:

"In addition to the movie trailers there are two more tv commercials. The first one is the Gremlins cereal commercial. It's a short clip which shows Gizmo eating some cereal while a background voice says the typical slogan.  The other one is a commercial against drugs. I don't know if this last one really exists, I read about it on a website a few time ago. It showed the old Mr. Wing telling Gizmo how bad drugs can be. Then some gremlins were shown smoking crack and after that, they died. Both commercials are very old (they are based on the first movie) and it's very hard to find more information about them."

Both commercials did exist, though not exactly as they're described here.  The Gremlins Cereal commercial — and you can expect a Gremlins Cereal tribute as soon as I find it, because I've got other materials waiting — had a cartoon version Gizmo and a great theme song.  It was cute, but I don't want to comment too much as memories are sketchy on it and I haven't seen it since childhood….hopefully soon again.

I remember the other commercial much better, and there's probably no other old ad out there I'm more on the hunt for — save for, maybe, the Ninja Turtle Pies commercial.  Anyway, the spot-in-question was kind of a PSA, using new footage of Mr. Wing and Gizmo talking about drunk driving and such and such, juxtaposed with movie clips of the Gremlins drinking at the bar Kate worked at, crashing cars, and basically looking cracked out and drunk.  For whatever reason, the PSA made the Gremlins seem 1000x more frightening than they actually were in the film.

I picked up this decades-old Johnson Smith catalog a while back, and it's absolutely great.  I don't know what year it's from, but the prices are so low that even saying "the `60s" seems way off base.  Wouldn't be surprised if it's much, much older than that — after all, Johnson Smith has been around for a long time and still continues throwing fun crappy stuff at the world regardless of whatever company name they're going by nowadays.  There's so much in here worth showing you, from the ten-buck semi-automatics to Camel cigarettes at two dollars a carton, but we'll start with this and save the rest for a rainy day:

Oh man…ILLEGAL PETS!  Rules on animal ownage have changed quite a bit over the decades, but even if you were able to snag any of the four shown on that page, I really doubt it'd be from the same place you pick up joy buzzers.  Faux chameleons and horned toads aren't too out of the ordinary, but the baby turtles!  Oh how I've longed!  Ever since that kid had one in My Blue Heaven!  Seared with salmonella, pet stores are strictly forbidden to hock 'em here.  Rumors persist that they're available from any number of street vendors in Chinatown, but hey, who wants to carry around a baby turtle for six hours afterwards?  They're not packs of gum, or sugar gliders.

The real killer is the baby-alligators-for-sale thing.  God I'd rip the manhood off right now, fry it, eat it and throw it up on any of your grandmothers to land myself a baby freakin' alligator.  A buck fifty.  For a baby alligator.  That I could grow to immense sizes and sic on people who offend me.  Holy yes.

Here's a big one, full of junk.  It's a smorgasbord of Star Wars crap, ranging from figural erasers to wallets, night lights to keychains and watches to more watches, all from the early `80s and all opened from their packages specifically for this article, and thus, C10 minty fresh.  Thirty different items are featured, and at least five or six of the reviews are worth reading.  Seeeee you later.

When I was wee ladding, I had a Smurfs "bop bag" featuring none other than Gargamel himself.  I guess the thinking was, since kids were going to be beating the holy fuck out of the bop bag, the company might as well have based it on a villain character.  I loved that stupid thing so much.  Me being the youngest and weakest of seven brothers and sisters, it was the only thing in the house outside of Sandy the unloved dog that I could successfully pin for the Intercontinental title.  Gargamel always came back for more of my patented body blows, Bull Charges and Tiger Punches, because that's what any good bop bag does.

Bop bags came in all colors and sizes, and sometimes bop bags were full of surprises.  In the very odd case shown above, the technology was bestowed upon the popular but not that popular Madballs franchise, run by those who were convinced that such classic characters as "Wolf Breath" were destined to become more than mere foam rubber balls, even if every attempt to move 'em into new territory blew up in their bankrupt faces.  I don't know how many Madballs bop bags were produced, but I'll put the bank on the fact that less than five were sold.  EVER.  Not that it isn't an object of supreme excellence — it is, but kids who were heavily into Madballs had probably grown older than "bop bag age."  Three-year-olds weren't allowed to have balls with devil faces on them.

God, that was a bitch to blow up.  I need to stop smoking and start nebulizing.

After blowing it up forever, the end results were pretty cool.  "Aargh" and "Dust Brain" are the chosen representatives, conspiring to forge an "3-D" effect against a clear plastic background.  There's nothing absurdly 3-D about it, but the box is convinced otherwise.  For more information on Madballs, don't click here, click here.