Astute (or extremely activity-challenged) readers will remember I watched 1973′s Westworld again back in July. This evening I saw its later (and lamer) sequel, Futureworld, circa 1976.

So – before I ‘review’ this movie I’m just going to say – I’m not worried about any of you going to rent it (turns out even the Mecca of Movies only had it on VHS) so all plot points (as may exist – and there aren’t many) will be spoiled herein.

So – basically fast forward several years from the events in Westworld – Delos has been rebuilt, bigger and better than ever. Now they have Roman World, Medieval World, Spa World and FutureWorld – no more WestWorld – although they visit its remains in this movie. Given the tragedy of before, Delos needs better PR to encourage people to come back, so they enlist a TV reporter (Blythe Danner) and the newspaper reporter who broke the story the first time around (Peter Fonda). But prior to heading out to Delos, Peter Fonda gets a clue from an informant (who is killed just before PF meets him to discuss the scoop) that something is still very ‘wrong’ at Delos this time around, too.

So they go there, and far too much time is taken up showing all the high-tech stuff, people walking here, people walking there, and there are two bit-characters (a Russian General + wife, and a famous Japanese person, probably a politician) who get some minor screen time. Very little of this advances the plot, save some (seemingly) random sequences showing people very interested in computer recordings and simulations of the main four characters.

It develops that Delos is making (effectively – they don’t name it directly) clones of world leaders and politicians because they don’t trust humans to keep from blowing themselves up. The visitors come to Delos, and the clones are sent out into the world to replace them, under Delos’ control. The movie never says if the robots hatched this plot on their own (one of the major Delos characters, Duffy, turns out to be one) or if they have mad-scientist backers (it is never revealed whether Dr. Schneider is human, robot, or something else) working with them.

At any rate, PF and BD find a (still-human) mechanic named Harry who helps them discover the truth, and then there is more running around with guns until the end, where they both escape Delos and (presumably) tell the world. Yul Brynner is wasted in a weird dream sequence with BD as a fantasy lover – I’m sure I was impressed by this back in 1976 (as a nine-year old) but it’s pretty silly now.

So….without dwelling on what the movie does wrong (mostly far too much tedium in advancing the meager plot) – i’d rather mention a few things that could have made it MUCH more interesting by contrast.

1) Futureworld never explains how the robots figured out how humans always want to destroy themselves (and thus hatched a plot to stop it and save themselves from our stupidity). By way of comparison, the recent BSG remake trickled this info out over the entire length of the series – of course to keep you coming back until the end, but partially because it kept you guessing and interested and inventing your own ideas about where the plot was going, then to watch it and confirm (or see where they went instead).

It might have been very interesting to see the ‘between’ story explained in more detail with more motives and the ‘how’. FW talks about the ’700 series’ robots as being far more advanced than those in the prior movie/robot generation, but it’s only a few lines of spoken dialog at best and nothing beyond that.

2) Just like in the previous movie, the big ‘seller’ behind the concept of Delos is ‘sex with robots’ – but at $1200/day – would that really do it? And I would think more stuff (even Disneyland has Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Haunted Mansion) than just the Middle Ages or Roman times would be required to get people there (the lack of showers and actual cooking comes to mind, but I digress ). Westworld itself might have had some attraction, I agree – but even in 1976 I’d think more would be needed (and Disney had both POTC and THM back THEN, too).

3) It would have been interesting also to see robots who didn’t ‘agree’ with the crazy clone strategy to take over the world, and if they helped PF and BD succeed to blow the story open. Here, BSG did this in various ways and various characters – creating a mosaic of character motives (if done well) can really serve to spice things up, no?

4) finally – what if Delos had actually ‘won’? What if they largely succeeded and THEN a reporter came back say, 20-30 years in the future and found out what had happened? And here comes the broken record, because now that I think of it (literally) BSG did this too – in a way – with the whole idea of Cylons being all-but human in appearance, etc. But they limited its scope by keeping it a limited number of models – in FW’s case, it might have been *many* world leaders over time – what if the clones ushered in a time of peace and world achievement, and then we found out we had all been tricked for 20-30 years? What then? I can’t help thinking of Kent Brockman saying “And I, for one, welcome our new ant overlords” with the paper sign on the wall behind him – too funny.

Anyway, if you find the book of this movie on a seedy bookshelf somewhere, and you are killing time on the beach, read it. Otherwise, just rent BSG and get the same thing only done far, far better. They should have quit while they were ahead with Westworld.

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(Re)watched the ancient sci-fi classic WestWorld late last night. It was shorter than I remember (in other words gets to the killing spree/chase scenes/etc. faster than I remembered), but definitely some classic performances in there, most notably Yul Brynner in the title role as The Gunslinger.

Since this is an old movie, even for me (in 1973, I was 6) let’s recap – a very expensive ($1,000/day), exotic resort (Delos) opens up in a distant desert (they never say where, but looks like the American Southwest), where there are three distinct ‘worlds’ people can visit – Roman World, Medieval World, and West(ern) World – each is tailored to fulfull guest fantasies based on advanced robots to cater to their every whim, within the theme of each ‘world’. In an early part of the film, an announcer talks about enjoying the ‘relaxed morality of earlier Roman times’ (meaning guilt-free sex with lifelike robots, let’s be clear here ) And this is consistent with the other ‘worlds’ – the main two characters (james Brolin and Richard Benjamin) visit WestWorld (and at least one brothel therein). Then, things subtly start to go wrong, and mayhem ensues in a variety of ways.

So, this is a pioneering and influential sci-fi film in many ways. It is very well made for its time, obviously a bigger budget than some of its contemporaries (yeah, Omega Man, i’m talking to you). The decor, sets and computers/effects are spartan, but still look decent, and unlike many sci-fi movies, don’t get in the way of the plot. Not on the level of the earlier 2001: A Space Odyssey – but almost NO movies (sci-fi or otherwise) compare to that one even now.

WW has to be considered one of the first ‘relentless, unyielding stalking killer’ movies – Yul Brynner’s Gunslinger – used to great effect many times later in countless horror movies but also every Terminator movie ever made, elements of The Matrix movies, etc. Even Javier Bardem in No Country for Old Men is reminiscent of this theme (and also very scary). In WW, this may be considered more remarkable because The Gunslinger stalks Richard Benjamin throughout the day – never at night – so his power over the intended victim grows not through cheap special effects or misdirection, but ultimately on the strong, almost silent performance of Yul Brynner (who hardly has more than maybe 3-4 sentences of dialog in the whole movie).

WW’s story also builds one of the earliest ‘no matter how perfect our technology gets, it will get us in the end’ themes – and does it about as subtly as the 16-ton weight from the classic Monty Python sketch. But the early ’70s was definitely a time of ‘man is doomed’ themed-sci-fi movies (Soylent Green, the earlier Omega Man, Silent Running, etc.) so not really surprising in hindsight.

Another thing that struck me this time around has to be the interaction between the resort guests and the robots who serve them. At one point after a barroom shootout, James Brolin remarks about ‘the beauty of the place is you never know if it’s real’ (or words to that effect). The guests feel free to just shoot the place up, start bar brawls, have sword battles (in effect act like a pillaging pirate – no Pirate World? ) etc. – and let someone else pick up the pieces. I guess at $1,000/day, i’d expect the same – but it’s interesting how easily they just slot into it and tear it up with no consequences (well, that was the Delos sales pitch anyway). Given that the director/screenwriter was Michael Crichton – author of this theme many times over (The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, etc.) again, not a big surprise.

Stepping back (to a soapbox) it’s also interesting here is that despite continually warning us of the dangers of technology and how we overreach ourselves far too often in his books and films – MC was one of the biggest global warming deniers on the planet, right up there with Big Oil and James Inhofe! Like Mel Gibson of recent past, MC shows that many times in Hollywood – appearances can be VERY deceiving. Was he having fun at our expense on either side of the issue? I’ll have to look around to see if anyone ever asked him that question – he’s dead now (2008) so we may never know. End soapbox.

All symbolism and soapboxes aside – WestWorld is still an entertaining movie despite being now almost 40 years old. Yul Brynner makes the movie for me – without him, i don’t think WW would have been near as effective – his Gunslinger really is a Hollywood icon, sci-fi or otherwise.

candybowl

Well, it’s over for another year. And it was a big success (again). Not only did we have more games on the video side – we had several more vendors on the pinball side, a great series of seminars, and seemingly lots more word of mouth (definitely more social media and related online promotion/podcasts/etc. too).

Here’s some of the results – take a gander!

Video from the show floor;

Additional video walk-thru’s during the show;

Review from the ‘Seattlest‘ blog;

The Stranger’s SLOG review;

Seattle Weekly slideshow;

Seattle Times article;

Seattle Times show video;

Online photo galleries: here and here;

Dave Okert’s SMAC photo gallery (mostly video side of show);

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The 3rd annual NW Pinball Show is next weekend, June 11-13, in the NW corner of The Seattle Center in Seattle, WA (by Key Arena). All machines and seminars are included with paid daily admission. All-weekend passes are available too.

Schedule and Seminars/Speakers;

Online Ticket sales available through Monday, June 7;

Recent Podcast about the show on The Mixtape;

Bottom Line? Come on out and PLAY.

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Given the ending years’ of Genesis’ pop-based output, many people may not know their early sound was WAY different, with several more auteurs in the group (Steve Hackett and Peter Gabriel most notably). One of the great (albeit probably copyright un-friendly) things about YouTube is the persistence of five bazillion music videos of all types and stripes. So of late I’ve been checking out a few ancient (early 70s) Genesis videos up there, specifically The Knife, Dancing with the Moonlit Knight, and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway (not long after this, Peter G. left the band, a couple albums later SH did, and Genesis morphed into a pop-outfit not long after that).

Historically I was really into Yes and King Crimson, two progressive rock peers of Genesis at the time – although both of them stayed ‘progressive’ arguably far longer. Each has a pretty different sound, although all of them (and others such as ELP) pushed the boundaries of what a rock song could be, including the scope, ambition and in some cases, pretentiousness of the music in the end – ELP ‘enjoyed’ probably the most slagging on this point during the punk era, pretty bad. But what’s interesting is to listen to other so-called ‘modern’ progressive bands since – I have been checking out Transatlantic on YouTube also – I like it, but I’m not sure if it ‘progresses’ beyond the 70s stuff – it almost sounds like they are largely paying homage to it in most cases, instead of trying to stretch the boundaries? As if I can tell anyway! With Transatlantic specifically, the keyboards sound a lot like ELP or the big hammond organs of the time, if not played near as crazily or akin to classical music as the likes of Keith Emerson.

This music is definitely an acquired taste in many cases, but I’m definitely on the way to listening to more early Genesis to start – I already had nearly all the Peter G. stuff and/or Yes/King Crimson, so this will be a cool (old) new band to explore…..

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So a lifelong friend and I connected for some old-school gaming this weekend. And when i say ‘old school’ while not quite as old as say, Frisbee, Monopoly, or Go – these were still pretty old videogames. He has an extensive collection of old (mostly 70s-80s but a few are even older) videogame consoles – the same ones we used to play on the big ol’ 25″ tv in his basement back in the day. We actually had an Atari ‘flashback’ console for those – it has a ton of games built into it instead of plugging cartridges in and out all day – and it even has a few previously-unreleased and prototype Atari 2600 games as a bonus, which is pretty cool (and I’m sure doesn’t hurt sales ).

So after some Atari, we hauled out the Bally Arcade, then sidetracked to a couple (real) arcade games – we both have several of these – a couple of mine are at his house) – then off for pizza. Then back for more Atari, followed by Colecovision (played through nearly all the cart’s he had, although the controllers on that system haven’t stood the test of time well – they were all but impossible to use) and then back to Atari with a brief sojourn in C64-land. We also surveyed several other systems he has around, but ultimately forgot to get around to hooking them up.

Then of course the required pilgrimage to Fry’s in Wilsonville, followed by a quick dinner and then to Ground Kontrol (an actual arcade in Oldtown Portland with 80s-90s videogames and about 20 pinballs – great stuff!).

We got done around 945 pm. And the good thing is, there are plenty more games for NEXT time We need to get back to more C64 – and then some older PC and Amiga games we used to play for hours on end.

Ah, memories…..

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Came across an amusing article on Salon the other day – “Why it’s OK to love Styx” – Hmmm.

So for me, this band hit it big about the time I was attending Cub Scout Camp around 6th grade – we were all ‘Renegades‘ that summer to be sure – there were of course the obligatory older Boy Scouts around with at least a few boom boxes blasting this out nonstop (along with Queen and the rest – what would American junior high schools have been without ‘We Will Rock You‘? I submit – unsuccessful at most sports! And to think, all those conservative hicks were cheering a song written by THE most flamboyant – in every sense of the word – rock singer of all time – Fredde Mercury – the man who wrote the book on ‘mustache‘ – life works in strange ways, no? )

Anyway, back to Styx. This article uses too many big words (zeitgeist? This is STYX, for pete’s sake) to get across a great point – F the people who criticize your music taste! And AS one of those critics for nearly all of the time I’ve loved music (ask Kerewin about the never-ending slagging of Huey Lewis and Oasis – the latter being no-talent poseur turds who really DESERVE slagging) I certainly have no room to judge. There were some rocking Styx tunes, although later stuff like the attempted apocalyptic/Orwellian Mr. Roboto was done far better, later, by Queensryche and others – Styx was simply too cheesy.

Every so often one of their songs comes up though – semi-regularly over in K-Land where a local cover band plays at least ‘Come Sail Away’ every night I’ve seen them – and plays it well, despite lack of keyboards. I’m convinced ‘Suite Madame Blue‘ is a Judas Priest ripoff but whatevs. Steal from the masters, not from losers, I always say.

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