Finally got around to watching Return of the Jedi. No issues as far as I could tell. I completely forgot this one had the pan&scan comparisons at the end of side 5. Interesting stuff and actually made me want the p&s versions as well, but I'm sure I'll change my mind about that once it comes to actually having to pay for them.

Just viewed The Tale of Zatoichi 1962 - [DLZ-0144] - the original blind Samurai ronin on glorious Japanese LaserDisc.
B & W w/ Japanese dialogue.

One of my ALL TIME fav's .... Hai !

Nice, how's your Japanese? I've decided to finally learn it properly. After years of university lessons, a year on exchange and years working there I still can't watch a show without subtitles. Pathetic. My weakness is vocab (and laziness). I've started studying JLPT vocab daily with an app and my 1-2 year goal is to watch the entirity of my UC Gundam laserdiscs which span the movies to the 0083 OVAs..right now rewatching the subbed SDF Macross on DVD and picking out and noting SF and military vocab as I go. Should help with Gundam and the stuff I'll watch before that (Zambot 3, Heavy Metal L-Gaim). Basically want to own the LDs and watch every Sunrise show in my lifetime, pretty much the same dream I had since I was 15 years old...

Envious of your ability - Congrats on applying yourself and learning it properly.
I understand very few words is all I can claim. Would love to fulfill a dream and immerse myself in that culture and learn daily through that method.
A very unique culture. Your not too far away Down Under !
Enjoy Macross and all your old movies forper ! Live your dreams brother !

Cheers !

Yeah thanks, I squandered my chance of immersion by hanging out with Yanks, Poms and a German my first year there. I love you guys tho.

My third time there was for a long time, immersed but didn't study, just chased girls and products..so stupid..my listening and speaking got really good and natural but I never studied so my vocab still sucks. I can hear every sound and transcribe any speaker easy tho, I just don't know what they're saying...anyway hopefully that will change..

Speaking of Macross, I just watched episode 15..."Chinatown" and noticed some things lost from my memory..the 3 spies get drunk and shirk duty at the festival on the deck of the Prometheus.. cool. but then Claudia pays Fokker a visit in his quarters, a topless pinup adorns his wall, and then Fokker plays grab a** with Claudia before presumably getting some...extremely cool.

Some controversial themes for American kids in the '80s (Of which I was effectively one) tho..

So I brought up the same Robotech episode on Youtube. Seems the spies now get "charged" on "punch" and pretend to enjoy the festival to maintain their cover instead of actually getting into it (Japanese version). But to my surpise when Claudia visits Fokker it's all intact, the topless pinup on the wall, the grab a**, (but not the prolonged kissing scene that follows),.!

Really? The busty pinup on Fokker's wall in panties and nothing else got past US censors???!!! I find that hard to believe and don't remember it from when I was a kid , but there it is in the RT version on Youtube.

Watched Incident At Blood Pass tonight.

Solid Samurai flick. Good characters with Mifune reprising his role as Yojimbo for the last time. I do wish there would have been a sword fight between Mifune and Katsu though. Seems like a waste to have them in the same movie and not do that.

Robotech was sold to non-network affiliated UHF stations here. There is no such thing as “US censors” honestly. In a situation like that it would have been totally up to whatever junior league program manager the station had. I’ve heard stories of stations choosing to not air the kissing between Claudia and Roy in the south for obvious reasons but that’s it (ie: in 80s Alabama in a 9” b/w TV you can’t even see the pinup but an interracial kiss is demonic to them). The only process that exists to take something like that off the air is if citizens complain to the FCC and they decide to contact the station about it. There is no list of seven dirty words in Washington DC, it’s totally a complaint based system. Any decent sized network of course has a hugely complex list of things that they will and won’t do based on corporate legal policy (which is why they think it’s so hilarious to write jokes that barely stay within the confines of that) which is determined by lawyers and past experience but not really the law except for kiddie pron and whatever falls under the anti-sedition act.

I’m a DJ for a college radio station. I can’t say “sh!t” on the air because it’s the policy of the station that no DJs will swear. My music can say it all show long as long as the show is between 10:00pm and 6:00am but since I’m in Ann Arbor the basically reality is that few people who listen to a station that low powered do so in order to have something to complain about. If I said something disparaging to a specific group of people based on age, race, sexual orientation, disability, etc you can be SURE there would be a complaint but the occasional f-bomb drops at noon and I don’t think anyone has complained in decades.

I have been watching 'night, mother and ordinary people. Really interesting stories about epilepsy and about a suicide in the family. I love drama movies anyone has some recommendations for me?

Just viewed LEON : THE INTEGRAL VERSION by Luc Besson.
Wow, extra footage really added to the emotion and story all around.
So glad Luc Besson took the time to release this version. NOTHING like the feeling you get from the original release of the Professional here in the states.

Jean Reno played a stand up role in a "John Wick" of the past ...

If interested, do yourself a favor and check it out !

Cheers to the membership ....

JCA

Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Thank you G&JRarities.

Great post, thanks for the info. Yeah the US is great, I constantly admire your relative freedom. In Australia we historically have a lot of censorship, banned movies etc, but people find a way around it if they want to. I admire how stuff can come out unrated in the US, we HAVE to have stupid intrusive and ugly ratings on the artwork of DVDs and Blurays here. But a lot of people just import anyway.

I lived in the USA (Virginia) in the '80s and I remember the local swimming pool. It was a private club and there were just no black people there. None were ever nominated for membership, and none were probably interested in joining an all white club. it was like segregation by choice. I remember a white American woman saying seriously how she'd never let a black man look at her in a bikini.

We're much more laid back about race but don't have any history of black slavery either..

I love my country Australia, it has some good in it, a history of people seeking freedom, but right now we are boxed in by Euro style elites. America is a phenomenon I reckon, the greatest civilisation that's ever been, a very unique and exemplary nation.

Just watched Transformers the Movie. Great film for what its worth.

In a DVD mood recently as I'm still setting up my LDs to watch movies.

M:I6 Fallout was actually very good. It nails all the must haves for a good action flick.

Kill some of the good guys
Kill all of the bad guys
Tom climbs rocks
Tom rides a speed bike
Tom flies a helicopter
Tom rams into another helicopter
Tom jumps from an airplane (into a storm)
Car chases
Espionage
Good guy turns sides (spoiler)
Impersonating masks with voice match
This message self destructs in 5 seconds

What else ? Right

a far, FAR better film than many have historically given it credit for.
the T.V. series simply cannot compare...

Want to see MI 6, will need to check on the library for that one.

Yes TF the movie was the pinnacle of US anime in my opinion, they tried with the GI Joe movie but it just fell short.
After watching the movie then going to the TV series its just unwatchable, I tried years ago when it was streaming on NFlx but I couldn't watch it.

Did watch Batman Begins a few days ago and about two weeks ago watched Ken Russel's Mahler.

I agree. I will go to bat for this trashy toy ad till the day I die. I’ve never been so satisfied with a movie. I was %100 happy with that thing as a kid. Ebert and I can’t agree on everything.

Ever heard of Retroblasting? That guy is still salty about Optimus Prime dying.

Haven't heard of him but I feel it was fitting for the film, but then they did revive him for other stuff so a good robot never really dies

Yeah, but it's kind of pathetic. Like good lord, it's been like 30 years already, get over it!

I might be biased of course, but out of all the 80's cartoons I've watched over the years as an adult, I think the original Transformers is one of the few that still stands up reasonably well. He in the other hand seems to hold OP's death against the entire franchise, which in a way makes it even worse because he still likes shows like MASK which are actually terrible.

Anyone who was shattered by the death of Prime would spontaneously combust if they just heard a compressed plot line of Gundam at the same time. Camile is brain dead at the end of Zeta Gundam. About half the mains and 3/4 of the sub chara are dead by then. It’s the death of Ryo in the OG series that hits the hardest since there was actually time for the cast to going into morning before they got shot at some more. The weeping lasts for what feels like a solid 5 minutes. I don’t mean silent tears and some music I mean a dozen people are crying at once, many are small children, one is the main character.

In Hathaway’s Flash Bright gives the order of death by firing squad to, unknowingly, his own son, who was using an alias, and didn’t know until it was too late.

Prime dying was the best thing that ever happened to that series apart from Takara of course. The movie is unique because while totally commercial it’s filled to the rafters with uncredited talent pushing the boundaries in several directions. Nobody working on the GI Joe movie gave a crap about it. That’s the main difference between those two. When you call your show “Real American Hero” and then send it overseas to be animated don’t expect miraculous enthusiasm. We’re lucky they didn’t hide genitalia in the explosions or something.