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The Road Warrior, a review by Antares

The Road Warrior





Year: 1981
Film Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures, Kennedy Miller Entertainment
Genre: Action, Science-Fiction, Adventure
Length: 95 Min.

Director
George Miller (1945)

Writing
Terry Hayes (1951)...Written By
George Miller (1945)...Written By
Brian Hannant (1940)...Written By

Producer
Byron Kennedy (1952)

Cinematographer
Dean Semler (1943)

Music
Brian May (1934)...Composer

Stars
Mel Gibson (1956) as Max
Bruce Spence (1945) as The Gyro Captain
Michael Preston (1938) as Pappagallo
Max Phipps (1939) as The Toadie
Vernon Wells (1945) as Wez
Kjell Nilsson (1949) as The Humungus
Emil Minty (1972) as The Feral Kid
Virginia Hey (1952) as Warrior Woman

Review
       Thanks to the advent of Cable television and pay movie channels like HBO, obscure films from around the world would be given an audience that most movies of previous years could never attain. As the quantity of channels increased, so too did the demand for quality programming to fill the schedules of these new networks. At the time, the Big three networks had a strangle hold on the American viewing public, and also on the second run broadcasts of the hit movies of the time. But the Walls of Jericho would soon start to crumble, as HBO, Showtime and Cinemax would offer Americans something that CBS, NBC and ABC could only dream of; Uncut and un-censored films. American television audiences would follow the dangling carrot of nudity, profanity and non-commercial interruptions, which had been removed for their welfare and well being, to the new promised land of pay-per-view programming.
   
       One obscure Australian film would set the path for many other foreign and independent films to follow, as repeated telecasts on these pay services would launch it into cult status and make a star out of Mel Gibson. The Road Warrior was the sequel to a small successful film in Australia called Mad Max, about a cop in the Australian outback whose family is murdered by a roving band of belligerent bikers, and whom he subsequently seeks revenge upon. While Mad MaxAliens, The Terminator I & II and Die HardThe Road Warrior and see how a great action film is made.


Review Criterion4 Stars - Historically important film, considered a classic.

(From The Road Warrior (1981) on May 12th, 2010)

Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan, a review by GSyren

Title	Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan
Year	2011
Director	Gilles Penso
Stars	Ray Harryhausen, Randy Cook, Peter Jackson, Nick Park, Phil Tippett and many others
Overview
My thoughts	If you don't know who Ray Harryhausen is, you need to buy this title. If you do know who Ray Harryhausen is you need to buy this title. Ok, maybe that's a bit extreme, but the fact is that Ray Harryhausen is an extraordinary person who has had a HUGE impact on visual effects. If you are the least bit interested in visual effects you should learn about Ray Harryhausen. Today most effects are created with computer imagery, and there are often hundreds of people involved. Ray did it all himself. He was a one man visual effects studio. He was mainly a stop motion animator, and truly a great stop motion animator. His films inspired generations of stop motion animators. Without Ray we may never have seen Wallace and Gromit, Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline and ParaNorman. But he also inspired lots of other visual effects people. You can hear them tell how Ray's work was the thing that inspired them to go into the business. Ray Harryhausen is one of the very few technicians who has been elevated to a position above the directors of the films they worked on. If you ask people who made The 7th Voyage of Sinbad or Jason and the Argonauts, they'll most likely say Ray Harryhausen, not Nathan Juran or Don Chaffey. Me, I'm a long standing Harryhausen fan. I've got all his films on DVD (and some now on BD), almost all books published about him, and still I learned new stuff from this film. Unfortunately, this title seems to be region locked to region B. Sorry Achim! ;-) It's available from Amazon UK on DVD as well, but the DVD is actually more expensive than the BD.
Rating

(From Reviews and ramblings by Gunnar on March 28th, 2013)

"Stargate SG-1" Marathon, a review by DJ Doena

Synopsis: BC-303 (BC stands for Battle Cruiser) was finally salvaged after they transfered the hyperlight engine from an Al'kesh to it. But on the way home the Prometheus is attacked and when Sam re-awakens, she is alone on the ship.

My Opinion: Although they've used the known plot element that different characters portray different aspects of a person's personality, I liked this episode. Especially because the character traits of Sam were well presented.

Synopsis: As it turns out, the Naqahdriah on Jonas's home planet is also not of natural origin. It was transformed out of normal Naquadah. By detonating the Naqahdriah bomb they've started the transformation of Naquadah into Naqahdriah in a very deep vein. If they can't stop it the Naqahdriah will explode and destroy the planet.

My Opinion: Unfortunately this is the only reunion with Jonas Quinn. And while I did not watch The Core, the plots sound similar. The relation between Jonas and Kianna was interesting, especially because - as Kianna pointed out - Jonas actually never met the host, only the Goa'uld.

Synopsis: Daniel has been dreaming of the time he met Sarah (Osiris's host) for a couple of nights now. Sarah shows him a tablet of the Ancients and with this he might be able to find the Lost City. It is possible that his subconscious recalls knowledge from the time where he was ascended.

My Opinion: Regarding love relationships none of the four members of SG-1 had much luck. This time they made it look like another of these short romances. But luckily Pete did survive and with David DeLuise the third of the DeLuise brothers and the fourth DeLuise in total (Dom and his sons Peter, Michel and David) has made a guest appearance on the show.
It was a bit hard to believe that Sam actually told Pete what she was doing when she hasn't even told this to her father until he became a Tok'ra. But that's no reason to not to like the episode.

Synopsis: The Alpha Site has been attacked by a Kull warrior and was nearly completely destroyed. Somehow the information about this place and the weapon they've developed there have gotten into Anubis's hands. The Kull warrior is in pursuit of Sam to destroy the weapon that poses a threat to him. In the meantime General Hammond tries to find out how Anubis could have known about the secret base.

My Opinion: "The Fellowship of the Ring has broken" - whoops, wrong universe. I noticed in this episode that they seem to have problems to find film locations. After the Alpha Site has become a huge crater the place looks exactly like the place where the Stargate on Chulak resides - just from another angle.
Apart from that I had the feeling that the break-up is more a disservice to the Tok'ra and the Jaffa than to the Humans, but they tried to keep it together. It was a bit sad.

(From "Stargate SG-1" Marathon on April 19th, 2008)