Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Power Rangers

Things that I love. Super Heroes, giant robots, martial arts movies and Saved by the Bell type shlocky teen sitcoms. So Power Rangers was a show that was almost custom made for me. Back in February I started watching the show from the first episode. Its been a wild ride of brain washings, kidnappings, and cast firings. So lets catch up first.

The show has a pretty simple premise. Five (or six) teen transform into a squad of super heroes called Power Rangers. Evil villain (usually on the moon) creates a monster to attack the earth. The monster sometimes has a gimmick that relates to a problem one of the teens is dealing with.
Big fight with the monster using martial arts and various weapons. Moon villian turns monster giant. Rangers call five robots called zords and they combine into a megazord. They then blow up the monster. Moon villain is angry and vows to get them next time. Mix and match, rinse and repeat for sixty episodes. Before I get to individual episodes. Lets cover stuff thats been watched.


Season One: The pre Green With Evil stuff is really rough. Even if you love this stuff. You can see its a work in progress. I can actually remember when I first watched an episode. It was a sneak preview after X-MEn on Saturday morning. Or in place of X-Men I can't remember. It was the Pudgy Pig episode and I can remember my reaction being "This shit will never be popular, not in a million years!!" It was a weird episode to use as a sneak preview. There was little fighting and no giant monster and no megazord. Anyway these episodes are all shoddily edited together. I know anyone reading this is scoffing at the idea "Oh but they are all shoddily edited." Trust me seeing these there is a big difference and you can see why these were never in reruns too often.

You get to Green With Evil and a lot of the same problems exist but it really clicks. You have a bunch of great looking fights in the sentai footage and you have Jason fighting Goldar in what was a really cool fight. With a villain attempting to stab somebody on a kids show. Every episode ending on a big cliff hanger.

Of course true to the shows formula at this point in time, in the last part the Green Ranger loses because its his time to lose and we have a six member team.

Now we are in the first Green Ranger run on the show. The show is put together better than the first 18 episodes and the zord fights are edited together better. One running gag is is Tommy being taken out each episode because there was not enough footage of Dragon Ranger fighting the monsters. It usually involves him being captured by putties or for whatever reason leaving his communicator in his bag. Zordan made it a wrist watch for a reason. In Island of Illusion its a funny moment when the only non evil moment he had was fighting some putties near the youth center.

But these episodes have great monster/zord fights. Sometimes taking up more than half an episode. I can watch a robot Dragon fight a giant spider/samurai/Goldar all day long.

Now they move on to the Green Candle episodes where green is killed off. Or depowered which is like being killed off in their world. These episodes have the formula figured out at this point. Til the two parter Doomsday which is the end of the Zyuranger (the original show they cannibalized the footage from.) So they contact the Japanese company Toei to make brand new episodes.

One of the first orders of business was to bring back the Green Ranger. I guess they told them to add things like making Blue smart and Green and Pink a couple. Now if you enjoy this stuff, its almost perfect. they have the formula perfected now. They get this close again a few times. But firings and changing the footage at the wrong times prevents that. But for this period its a great show. That is if you like this sort of stuff. If you don't, why have you kept reading. This run also has my all time favorite episode Mighty Morphin Mutants. Rita creates evil rangers!!!!!! This happned a bunch in the first season. The putties get morphers and turn into black booted rangers with a lobster replacing red as leader. I could watch it on loop forever. More later intertwined with Zeo stuff.

Power Rangers Zeo Golden Revelations and a Golden Homecoming

This will be a regular thing.

Going to do a catch up post later. Previously the Gold Ranger was introduced and it has been a big mystery who he is. So far the red herrigs have been Billy, Tommy's brother David Trueheart and even Skull. If only the producers had the guts to do something that awesome.

Now we are at the start of the first of two parts. Gold Ranger is being hounded by this race of bounty hunters who are trying to kill him. We get a big chase scene with bounty hunter ships going after Gold Ranger's big flying pyramid called Pyramidas. The show attempting cgi effects for the first time. All things considered.it looks better than the movie CGI Megazord.

Gold Ranger ends up landing on Aquitar home of the despised fish rangers. Gold Ranger finally unmorphs and splits into three people. The guy from VR Troopers. Only so many triplets who are models and not terrible actors I guess. Like that Charles In Charge episode when Buddy and Charles appear to be dating the same girl but its triplets. Its obvious it has to be triplets because Buddy and Charles could get way hotter girls.

Anyway Gold Ranger is injured and if he does not give somebody the gold powers soon, they are gone forever. Zordan wants to teleport him to earth but King Mondo will have none of that and sets up some inteference field.

King Mondo is the big bad this season who drove off Zedd and Rita in the first episode. Mondo looks like somebody made a Jackie Gleason robot and dressed him like a king.

Speaking of Zedd and Rita they finally return here giving Goldar and Rito their memories back. Which is cool for them but makes he Bulk and Skull part of the show harder to watch.

They end up teleporting Gold Ranger to the Command Center but Billy can't cant tke the power because he ansorbed negative energy hen Goldar blew up the Command Center in the season 3 finale. But Tommy has just the guy.

In a Golden Homecoming its revealed to be Jason The original red ranger ho was wroe out of the show two years before (along with the Black and Yellow rangers) because they wanted more money.

One thing I like on tv shows is watching old characters return after a long absense. Its like in real life where you come home afte a year and things are not quie the same. Lots of little changes and one or two big ones. Favorite one on a tv show was Florida coming back for the last season of Good Times. In that time she was gone the other characters had changed. With Willona becoming the mother while each of the kid shifted their role. The last season was interesting watching Willona refusing to go back to the character of the sidekick.


Oh where was I? Oh yeah so Jason is back. Before he left he was the leader and the top dog. Watching those episodes, you can see a power struggle between Tommy and Jason. Tommy mania is running wild and Jason is the only character with equal popularity. Its mostly even except for Tommy gaining some poochie like qualities. The struggle ended when Austin St John (Jason) an the other two were fired.

So now Jason is back and the roles have been reversed with Tommy. He is the guy with the cool new suit and powers and Tommy is the Red Ranger and defacto top guy. Its weird seeing him interact with Rocky and Adam (the two remaining replacements) in scenes. But now its clearly on path to being the Jason and Tommy with four multi colored suits show again.

This episode Goldar and Rito get their memories back fully.With Goldar dreaming of his season 1 glory tearing shit up. They wake up with heir swords and Goldar's wings back. Later they take Bulk and Skulls motorcycle and Goldar tries to kill them ih a fire ball.

Meanwhile King Mondo has created his robots with some super metal. Mondo has grown on me since the first episode. Him his wife and Junior along with underling Clank are different enough.

Also new zords this episode with the super zeo zords. Each one looking like a different shape. If Zeo had taken place the last decade it would of been Power Rangers Shape Thunder.

Show closes with Tommy and Jason having a heart to heart with the peace conferences being mentioned. Jason telling him he does not want to go back to how things were though he probably does.

In cornclusion. The last run of episodes have been good. Close to the level they were at before the firings. That is if you like this stuff.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Police Academy

Last night I watched Police Academy. One of my favorite movies. Not something I watch all the time. But I will catch it on cable or like Saturday pop in the dvd and its good for a lot of laughs. I remember the first time I saw it. It was 1990, I was 9 years old and I was living in Guntersville. My mama had borrowed some tapes from somebody. In Guntersville if you did not have cable you were out of luck with tv. Because local stations were near impossible to pick up.

Well on one of the tapes was Police Academy. I think I watched it at least ten or twelve times over the course of the next month or two. I was only nine so some of the jokes went over my head. One being I had no idea what that prostitute was doing to Lassard under that podium. Harris getting his head stuck in a horses ass horrified me, Actually it still does. Police Academy was probably the second time I saw tits in a movie. The first being i swear to god Total Recall.

Now I realize these movies are not liked by everybody. But I find what I like (and im guessing others) are what others hate. Like the jokes having obvious punch lines. To me thats a part of the fun. Its the anticipation of the punch line. When you see that old lady ask Tackleberry to help get her cat out of the tree you know what is going to happen. Tackleberry is going to shoot the cat.

The characters

Carey Mahoney: Your typical 80s scheming, charming conniving asshole. Played by Steve Gutenberg. The scene where he puts a hooker under a podium to give Cmnt Lassard a blow job is one of the greatest scenes ever. Also I can be honest I was touched how by the end of the movie he actually wants to be a cop.

Eugene Tackleberry: Tackleberry is the gun nut. A lot of the time its the same joke over and over. One of the small things I noticed was the party scene where is playing the saxophone. I like seeing the side interest of really fanatical people. Like a guy who is obsessed with weapons also liking jazz seems interesting to me. Or that the party scene played into the second movie where it was revealed he was a virgin. Im sure it was not intentional but its cool how things like that work out. One of my favorite scenes in the movie is at the end when he is banging his head on a car. When asked what was wrong Barbara explained "There was gun play and he missed it."

Leslie Barbara: The heavy set wimp recruit. He was thrown off a bridge inside a photo hut. Another of my favorite scenes was him beating up the guys who threw him off the bridge. This is his first and last appearance.

George Martin: Speaking of characters with one appearance. George Martin is a fake Latino heart throb. Sneaking over to the ladies barracks in drag. I liked the part when he is limping the next day after being sexually mauled by Calahan. I guess they did not need a fake Mexican Mahoney.

Moses Hightower: Played by Bubba Smith. He is the scary looking giant. I always wondered why he was not allowed to be a cop sooner. I get the fat guy, the women and the gun nut. But why would you not want Hightower as a cop?

Copeland: Sure are a lot of spades here.(Turns and sees Hightower staring down at him) And thats a good thing.

Copeland and Blanks: The two bad guy cadets. The only main characters with no real redeeming qualities. Copeland appears to be a racist. While Blanks is a dickhead.


Hooks: "Don't move Dirtbag!!!!" Also the scene where she is role playing at stopping a burglar with Lt.Harris, cracked me up. "Freeze this is a stick up."

Larvell Jones: That guy that does the sound effects. zap, pow , door open, horse sopund, sqeaky wheel. My favorite scene with him is Harris looking bewildered seeing him playing a video game with no tv.

Lt. Harris: The main antagonist. The crusty old dean. This is the only movie in the series where he seems like he actually cares about being a good cop. He actually has grounds for disliking some of them. That the goof offs are keeping him from training some good cops. He plays off everybody perfectly. From hating Mahoney to fearing Hightower to trying to get Hooks to speak up to making Barbara run to keeping Tackleberry from killing somebody.

Fackler: The clumsy guy who was always injuring people. He started a riot by chucking an apple out a window then bought a swank plaid sports coat and fedora during the riot.

Cmmt.Lassard: The head of the academy. Does not seem to care about the new recruits one way or another. Was in the best scenes in the movie that I have already mentioned. Was also in a few others like explaining to Mahoney the virtues of quitting.

What am I thinking I got this far without mentioning the Blue Oyster bar. The gay bar Copeland and Blanks were tricked into visiting. The bar is inhabited by a gang called the Archies, who force them to dance for hours. Copeland develops Stockholm syndrome.



Its a running joke in all the movies and gets funnier each time. In fact the movies are just filler between Blue oyster Bar jokes.


Okay this thing has went way too long. Every Police Academy movie has the final act with the real crime. The first one is still the best with Fackler starting a riot b chunking an apple at a gang member.

Cmmt Lassard sends the cadets to the actual riot zone. Copeland and Blank make things worse by giving up their revolvers to some psycho. I don't think he even had a name but he looked like a scary guy. Meanwhile Copeland and Blanks hide in a familar place.




The movie has one of my favorite endings with a call back to a earlier joke.

Man I went way too long here. In conclusion I really do love this movie. Its not for everybody, but what is?

I have to go now. i'll just go in this door without reading the sign above it.