The Emperor's new action figures?

From my collection: Two of my favourite action figures:
both are unique, rare versions of The Invisible Woman,
Susan Storm-Richards, from Marvel's "Fantastic Four".


;)

Fantastic!

A work colleague, who knows I like superheroes, slipped this great Mister Fantastic (aka known as Reed Richards of the "Fantastic Four") action figure into my pigeon hole yesterday!


Mister Fantastic

The Fantastic Four and the slippery slope

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer

A super power would have been very useful for my trip to Westfield Penrith Plaza, today, to see "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer". I originally planned to see a different film, but my friend was unavailable, so I saved up "Shrek the Third" and "Pirates 3" for next week and decided to enjoy a solo FF fix.

I took my usual shortcut, realizing only at the last minute that (a) it was probably going to be muddy or flooded at the end of the shortcut, and (b) I was wearing the wrong (white fabric) shoes. As I stood at the muddy, sloping edge of my shortcut, pondering whether to leap, or take a detour through perhaps worse conditions, I felt myself sliding helplessly towards oblivion. Splat!

With both hands, one arm, and one buttock cheek now thickly covered in fresh mud, I continued on to the Plaza. After a quick clean-up in the rest room (which thankfully had both paper towels and full-length mirrors), I secured my cinema ticket and filled in some time - shopping, of course - before the film started.

I really enjoyed the movie. It has received some very mixed reviews but, in my view, if you liked the first film, then this is more of the same. Some great lines, very likable characters, and amazing special effects, especially the Silver Surfer himself, and the Fantasticar. And some clever script seeding - in that the FF's power-swapping phenomenon was put to very good use (giving Michael Chiklis a little screen time as human-looking Ben Grimm), and Doctor Doom was able to be resurrected so easily, as both Doom and Julian McMahon (son of a former Australian Prime Minister, no less).

And it's heaps better than the quickie "Fantastic Four" movie that was made, but never released, in 1994. I once saw a bootleg copy from eBay, something I don't usually condone, but there was no other way to see it and I'd been quite intrigued by the casting - and the costumes, which were the same blue/white ones I'd used when we did "Perfect Botch" (a live convention game show) as the Fantastic Four in the 80s. Mind you, to give the 1994 film its due, in a list of the "50 Top Comic Movies of All Time (...and Some So Bad You've Just Got to See Them)", Wizard magazine ranked this film higher than "Batman & Robin", "Steel", "Virus" and "Red Sonja", all of which did get a theatrical release.


Michael Bailey Smith as The Thing, Rebecca Staab as Invisible Woman, Alex Hyde-White as Mr Fantastic
and the former "Boy Who Could Fly", Jay Underwood, as the Human Torch.

This pic has autographs from Smith, Staab and Joseph Culp, who played Dr Doom. The signatures were collected as a surprise for me from Glenn Ford of The Phantom Zone comic shop, who attended the big US comic convention that promoted the movie, with the actors unaware that there was no intention by the producers, including Roger Corman and Bernd Eichinger, to actually release it.

Here's the trailer Glenn Ford would have seen at the convention:


(The trailer's soundtrack lifts music from "Battle Beyond the Stars".)


So will the real Mr Fantastic please stand up?

Movie overload

"Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer" opened in Sydney today and, although it got panned on ABC's "The Movie Show" last night, the trailers look amazing and I'm still keen to see it.

I guess I'll catch it on the weekend, but I still have "Shrek the Third", "Bridge to Terabithia" and "Pirates of the Caribbean 3", among others, on my list. Sunday might become a lost day, spent traveling from darkened room to darkened room.

Ghosts of Christmases past

The colour shot above recently dropped out of one of my many old photo albums, while I was looking for something else, and I was stunned to realise that it had been taken (at a 1986 ASTREX Star Trek Fan Club Christmas function)... 20 years ago! Sometimes it seems like only yesterday. Actually, I remember the night quite well; it was a "Whodunnit?" murder mystery, held at Sydney's Mortuary Station, back when it had been revived as a pancake restaurant - on a train! That's me, as Mister Fantastic, of the "Fantastic Four", back when I was able to get away with wearing stretch lycra. Interestingly, the signature white in my Reed Richards sideburns was sprayed on, from a can. These days I can do a pretty mean Mister Fantastic impersonation without any hair enhancement whatsoever.

Piggy Claus (Steve Simpson) was a rather gruff and feisty "Star Trek" Tellarite. ("Piiiiigs iiiiiin Spaaaaaace!!!!!") Steve had gone to a lot of trouble to surprise everyone that night. He was supposed to be Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, also of the "Fantastic Four" superhero team, but he turned up a vision in paunchy red and white, with a Tellarite nose pilfered from my Star Trek makeup box, and the obligatory bottle of Saurian brandy.

The photo made me determined to find a much earlier shot. Even though my mother has all the other annual "family w/Santa" pix in a shoebox, this one was lent to me to put into a teachers college media assignment (in 1978), and somehow it stayed in that assignment album. Until a few years ago, when a box of precious stuff narrowly escaped getting permanently saturated in a garage flood. I thought the black and white photo I'd remembered might have been from 1966. But no, it was 1961, making me - only just - three years old! It features me (at far left), wearing a shirt I still remember quite vividly; my younger brother, Keith, on Santa's lap; and my older cousin, Bruce. This was the only Santa photo in which Bruce accompanied us, so I assume my mother and grandmother organised to meet up with my aunt for a rare combined shopping expedition in Bebarfalds' department store, now long gone, of course.

Most of the other old Santa photos we had taken were at various Grace Bros. stores (now Myer), and my brothers and I had a particular preference for the (quite famous) Santa who frequented Grace Bros' old Broadway store, now the site of the Broadway Centre. I once had an amazing deja vu incident when I went to the Guild Teachers College, just around the corner from that Grace Bros. During the rest of the year, it seemed that the same guy we had known as Santa Claus worked on the microphone as the daily store announcer. Each festive season, he'd often receive a lot of television and newspaper publicity: as a trainer of professional Santas. Obviously, even as little kids, we recognised quality! We used to tell ourselves that he was the real Santa, and all the others we saw around the traps were "Helpers".

Ho, ho. ho.

Shop till I drop

You know, I'd often heard about these wacky "shopping trips" - whereby a busload of shoppers are toured around a variety of factory outlet stores one Saturday before Christmas - but I never dreamed I'd ever be on one.

What a hoot. I was saved from being the token male because one woman brought along her husband - and the coach drive was also male - but the rest of the gang were female work colleagues, former work colleagues, and many of their friends and relatives, all armed with huge shopping bags and a purse full of credit cards. most were very experienced. a few had been joining this annual event for at least fifteen years.

The idea, I guess, was to raise funds (through commissions for dollars spent, and raffled prizes) but it was also an great excuse to bond with work colleagues, find some great bargains, enjoy a nice lunch, and have many laughs.

I am also thrilled with my purchases: some large Egyptian cotton bath towels, a glass wine decanter, an electric knife, cool new sneakers, a huge bag of assorted chocolates (based on the results of numerous free taste tests), a Homer Simpson Christmas decoration, an hilarious Batman Christmas stocking, and something I've been searching for, for about eighteen months: the elusive Julian MacMahon "Doctor Doom" action figure from "The Fantastic Four" motion picture! (What is more, he was only $8.95.)

Explaining my excitement for some of these unique finds was... interesting. I've already hung up the Batman stocking in case Santa visits early. Merry Christmas and my bats regards.