The Contemporary Night Owl

One of the most quintessential movie series for late-night movie viewing is the Mad Max trilogy (soon to be quadrilogy when Mad Max: Fury Road hits the big screen this May). This movie series is one of the most popular action movie franchises of the late '70s-'80s and is the series that propelled Mel Gibson into stardom. What's lesser known is that a little B-rated movie called The Chain Reaction is directly connected to this franchise.

In The Chain Reaction, a nuclear waste storage site/state-owned enterprise named WALDO (Western Atomic Longterm Dumping Organisation) has been badly damaged by an earthquake and is leaking radioactive waste into the water table of the local countryside. Afterwards, the administrators of WALDO have decide to cover up the accident rather than inform the public. Heinrich Schmidt (Ross Thompson), a German nuclear scientist who works at WALDO, has been badly burned after being doused with radioactive waste leaking from a pipe at the facility. He knows the local population is in grave danger, but due to his severe injuries and his detention by the administrators, he cannot speak to the media and get word out.

Not willing to jeopardize the lives of thousands of people, Schmidt decides to escape and warn anyone who will listen. He successfully escapes from WALDO and makes his way to a nearby town, where he loses his consciousness and his memory. He wanders around the countryside with amnesia and stumbles upon Larry Stilson (Steve Bisley, or  Max's partner "Goose" from Mad Max ), a mechanic who is vacationing with his wife Carmel (Arna-Maria Winchester) at a country home. The Stilsons take him in and try their best to help him heal, but little do they know that some very shadowy forces are looking for Schmidt. And the Stilsons end up being targeted by these same forces as a result of harboring Schmidt.....

The Chain Reaction is famous for not only being one of the all-time classics of the B-rated "Ozploitation" movies that came from Down Under back in the 1970s-80s, but also a movie coming from the same cast and crew who were responsible for the Mad Max movies. It was released in the cinemas in 1980, the year after Mad Max became a smash hit worldwide. It even features some short cameos from Hugh Keays-Byrne, who played The Toecutter, and Mad Max himself: Mel Gibson! Here in the US, The Chain Reaction seems to have had very limited distribution on VHS and DVD over the past several decades since its release.

Like its bigger-budgeted cousins, this flick contains some very intense car chase sequences, which were all directed by Mad Max director George Miller. Even if movies such as this aren't exactly your cup of tea, the chase sequences alone make it worth watching!

Judging from the comments about this movie at IMDB, there are some who feel that The Chain Reaction could be considered a prequel of Mad Max. Given the storyline concerning a nuclear catastrophe affecting the environment, the car chases, and the cast and crew involved, it could certainly tie in to the post-apocalyptic storyline of the Mad Max series.

If you're a fan of B-rated action movies or are a Mad Max aficionado, this is a movie you'll definitely want to add to your to-see midnight movie list! If you're in North America, consider yourself in privileged company if you manage to find it!

Was visiting the CNN website this morning and stumbled across an article about the top 10 nightlife cities from across the world. These cities were rated on a scale from 1-10 on the quality of the clubs and pubs, their hours, the music, the price of drinks, and other criteria.

Some might say the list was a little on the predictable side, with well-known and established nightlife hotspots such as London, Bangkok, and Vegas making the list. Others find it a little hard to disagree with this list since these cities have decades-old reputations as being the "party central" of their country.

What do you guys think? Are you as fond of these cities as the author is for partying hard all night? Or are there other cities you think are better choices (i.e. Seoul, New Orleans, Shanghai, etc.) that should've made the list?

The article can be found here:

http://edition.cnn.com/2014/09/22/travel/best-nightlife-cities/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

A "Space Invader" mosaic created by the French artist Invader in Shoreditch, London, UK circa July 2007. (Edward Betts/Wikimedia Commons)

Of all the video games that premiered to the world during the 1970s, none became as iconic as Space Invaders. The game became an instant worldwide hit after it premiered in Japan in 1978 and over the past 36 years, the little pixellated Space Invaders alien has seeped out of the arcade machine and into the real world, where it has cemented its place in pop culture.

Outside mainstream media and merchandise, there has been one part of pop culture the Space Invaders alien has invaded in particular and that is the world of urban art. Its minimalistic yet iconic appearance have made it a somewhat common catch in street graffiti or in urban artwork over the past several decades. Since it's also one of the great video game icons, its place in "geekdom" and "geek art" is also cemented.

Here's a look at some of the artists who have brought the alien from the acrade game screen to the streets:

1.) Invader's Mosaics. In cities across the world, mosaics of Space Invaders (and characters from other 1970s-1980s 8-bit arcade/video games) have popped up on the sides of buildings. These mosaics have been created by the mysterious French urban artist Invader.

Like his fellow urban artist Banksy, Invader's true identity is unknown, but he has built up a fan following worldwide. His mosaics of Space Invaders, Pacman ghosts, Mario and Luigi, and other video game characters - as well as reinterpretations of notorious historical figures and famous works of art - have become highly-acclaimed works of art.

Invader's SI alien mosaics have popped up in cities such as London (see above) and Manchester, UK, Paris, Monaco, Rome, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, and many other cities around the world. As a matter of fact, his first ever mosaic was an alien mosaic which turned up in a Parisian alley in 1998 when he "activated" his first "Space Invaders program"!

Since then, he has made over 1,000 other mosaics, with his largest "invasion" being in Hong Kong, where he has created over 70 mosaics since 2000. In July 2011, he organized a show of his works in Paris titled "Invader 1000"  which featured hundreds of his works. Many of these were Space Invader-themed. In fact, one wall was completely filled with SI alien tiles!

To many, these mosaics - and most other forms of street art for that matter - are an eyesore. To others, they are cute and liven up an otherwise dull street corner or apartment building. And to hardcore fans of the game, waking up one morning and finding one of these mosaics hanging on the side of their building would be a Godsend!

2.) P183's Moscow Mosaic. One day in April 2012, police in Moscow, Russia were alarmed when a mysterious Space Invader mosaic turned up under a bridge at an industrial park in the city. The sculpture shot lasers at cars passing by, which gave the police even more cause for concern given the past history of terrorist attacks in the city. The area was cordoned off and the bomb squad was called in.

As it turned out, the mosaic was placed there by the anonymous street artist P183, who is Russia's equivalent of Invader or Banksy. The mosaic was placed there as part of his "Traffic Jam Blaster" project. The lasers being emitted from the mosaic were bouncing off cars just like the laser cannons in the game and no harm whatsoever was intended.

3.) 3D Street Art Project. This year, an amazing street project by famed chalk artist Leon Keer was launched in Lausanne, Switzerland. This project was devoted to none other than Space Invaders!

The exhibit featured a girl in a pit playing the game while being hoisted by a crane. The aliens seems to be descending through the air onto the sidewalk below.

It's worth mentioning that this exhibit came several years after Invader came to town and peppered Lausanne with Space Invader mosaics!

4.) Statues and Sculptures. Some residents of a neighborhood in Los Angeles will never forget the morning they woke up and found an army of Space Invaders in their street! Actually this alien army was a series of wooden sculptures created by artist Jason Torchinsky for the IndieCade festival for independent games held in LA in October of 2011.

These giant aliens were 12 feet (3.6 meters) tall and 8 feet (2.43 meters) wide. As you can probably guess by looking at pics of them, the original alien pixels from the game were used as a template.

Oh, and since the game's release in 1978, many other artistic game fans have tried making their own alien statues and sculptures. Some of these aliens have been spotted in living rooms, gardens, and in art exhibits all around the world!

5.) The Space Invaders of Varanasi. In the city of Varanasi in India's Uttar Pradesh province, graffiti art - as well as a mosaic or two - of the Space Invaders alien can be found on buildings across the city. Who the mystery artist is behind these drawings noone knows for sure, but s/he is widely speculated to be Invader. He has mentioned visiting Varanasi in the past. However, according to themissadventures.com, as of late 2009 he had made no mention of leaving his "calling cards" there. So could it be a local artist who sprayed these aliens onto the wall? Or a foreign artist or tourist who wanted to be the next Invader or Banksy? Who knows.

6.) Snow Sculptures. While it's not exactly street art, this does qualify as "geek art"! In 2008, a large snow sculpture of a Space Invader turned up at that year's Sapporo Snow Festival in Hokkaido, Japan on the eve of the game's 30th anniversary. This snow sculpture was a powerful testament to how much SI has infiltrated not only pop culture, but mainstream art culture as well.

And finally......

7.) Anonymous artists. As mentioned above, the Space Invader has been depicted in all kinds of art forms over the past several decades by artists around the world. Many of these works of art have only gotten marginal attention. Others, such as the "Obey" mosaic based on Shepard Fairey's famous Andre the Giant Has a Posse painting, have become Internet hits. And others graffiti paintings are nowhere near as famous as the works of street artists such as Invader, but are without a doubt seen by hundreds of passers-by everyday on the sides of buildings, walls, and other public buildings. There's no telling how many countless Space Invaders have been painted over by the building owners or have just faded away to the elements over the decades.....


The Space Invader has become a pop icon and a symbol of urban art over the nearly four decades since the first Space Invaders arcade machine was unveiled to the world. In what other art forms will this invader from another world manifest itself? And will a Space Invader come to a neighborhood near you? We'll just have to wait and see!

If you want to read more about these "alien sightings", here are some more links for you:
-http://makezine.com/2011/10/07/how-to-build-giant-space-invaders-as-public-art/ (Interview with Jason Torchinsky about his Space Invaders statues.)
-http://www.blastr.com/2012/04/russians_mistake_street_a.php (Article about P183's Moscow mosaic.)
-http://www.tentimesone.com/space-invaders-found-in-varanasi/ (A blog entry about the Space Invaders of Varanasi. Includes plenty of pics!)
-https://www.facebook.com/spaceinvadersintheworld (A FB group dedicated to sightings of Space Invaders mosaics around the world.)

(LEGAL DISCLAIMER: The Space Invaders game is a copyright of the Taito Corporation and Square Enix Holdings Co, Ltd. Neither this blog or the blog post are in any way associated with or endorsed by either of these two entities.) 

Another new feature I'd like to introduce to this blog is the "Late Night TV Report". Every once in a while, I'll write a little about what's new on late-night TV around the world. I'll discuss new shows, interesting bits of info from around the globe, and much more. So without further adieu, here's my first Late Night TV Report:

Well, it's official. At the time of this writing, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers are dominating the late night prime-time TV here in the US. According to some articles published last week, both Late Night with Seth Meyers and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon are now the #1 late night variety shows airing on prime-time US television. And furthermore, Fallon is earning more than two of the previous TV hosts, David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel, combined! Will they keep up the momentum during this season? We shall see!

While it's not necessarily late-night TV, one highly popular TV show is being moved to a time slot that could be considered late for a show of its caliber. In the UK, the classic sci-fi TV show Dr. Who was moved to a fairly late Saturday night time slot for the first time in its 51 year history. This move was made by the BBC in order to accomodate the hit show Strictly Come Dancing on Wednesday evenings.  Those in the UK who want to see the latest adventures of the Doctor will now have to tune in at 8:30 pm on Saturday evenings. This new time slot could be problematic for young people, who are either out partying on Sat. nights or who will have to hit the bed by the time the show wraps up at 9:15 pm! Once upon a time back in the 1970s-1990s, we Dr. Who fans here in the US had no choice but to watch old reruns of the show on Saturday nights via our local PBS affiliates. Maybe UK fans can now find out why so many diehard American Dr.Who fans spent so many Saturday nights sitting at home???:-D

In India, TV viewers have defintiely been complaining about the 11 pm time slot for the hit Star TV soap opera Yeh Hai Mohabbatein. As a result, the execs are also airing it at 7:30 in place of the former hit soap Saraswatichandra, which has fallen in ratings in recent months. Now prime time TV viewers as well as night owls can enjoy this soap that's becoming a hit show in India!

Finally, outspoken Irish TV personality Kate Hopkins is making a comeback to the Late Late Show, which airs late Friday night on Irish national broadcaster RTE. Only this time around, she's coming back with a little extra weight deliberately gained for the show.

Ok, so that's it for this edition of the Late Night TV Report! This first edition is not the best, but it's my hope that future Late Night TV Reports will get better and better over time!

Well gang, as of today I'm going to start something new on this blog. I want to start reviewing movies that are perfect for watching on a sleepless night, and I want to focus on some of the more obscure movies in particular. There are plenty of articles and blog posts out there that list quintessential midnight classics such as Night of the Living Dead, Rocky Horror Picture Show, etc. While those lists are good to check out for a good movie to watch and I may blog a little about the more well-known movies from time to time, I'll stick with the obscure and (mostly) B-rated movies for my Midnight Movie Reviews.

The first movie I'm going to review is the 1972 movie Embassy starring Richard Roundtree (of Shaft fame), Max von Sydow, Ray Milland, Broderick Crawford, and The Rifleman himself, Chuck Connors. Von Sydow plays Gorenko, a diplomat working in the Soviet Ministry of Defence who possesses some highly-classified knowledge of Soviet defenses along the Chinese border. His son has just been arrested by the KGB and shipped off to the gulag. As a result, Gorenko decides to defect to the US vis a vis the US Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon. Connors plays "Col. Kesten", a psycopathic KGB killer who infiltrates the embassy disguised as a US Air Force colonel to take out Gorenko. Roundtree is Dick Shannon, the young peacenik US diplomat working on Gorenko's case who is disillusioned with the state of US foreign policy in South Vietnam and elsewhere in the world. Milland is the steely US ambassador who is highly skeptical of Gorenko's claims and would rather wash his hands of the whole affair. All are working overtime in the midst of anti-US protests in Beirut and protesters have surrounded the embassy.

When word comes back from Washington that Gorenko is the real-deal, the Ambassdor, Shannon, and Dunniger (Crawford) must work together to protect Gorenko from the KGB and do whatever it takes to ship him out of Lebanon and straight to the US. But getting him past the cordon of anti-American protesters and back to the airport safely plus protecting him from the wrath of Kesten is going to be a major challenge.

Ok, I'll admit it. As far as espionage or political thrillers go, Embassy is a little on the talkative side. However, it has a lot of elements that other thrillers in these two genres just don't have. For one, Embassy was filmed in a real-life global hotspot that would become of importance to US foreign policy in another few years up the road. Also, it has a storyline that is a lot more realistic than what you'll find in a James Bond movie or maybe even in an episode of 24. Finally, it has a funky theme song performed by Carl Douglas, the man who gave us the hit song Kung-Fu Fighting several years later! Also in this movie, Richard Roundtree - who had just had a big hit in the US with the first Shaft movie - gets to transfer some of Shaft's finesse and coolness to this one. Von Sydow is highly convincing in the role of Gorenko and plays the role of the scared diplomat very well.

Ultimately, the most memorable performance in this movie has to be Chuck Connors'. He is brilliant as the psycopathic KGB assassin who goes bezerk on the embassy personnel and has his mind on one objective: killing Gorenko!

All in all, if you don't mind the talking and like a spy or political thriller that's more realistic than most, Embassy might be a movie you'll want to watch sometime!

Also known as: Target: Embassy (alternate English title), El caso Gorenko (Spain), Baraka à Beyrouth (France), Shannon - armoton agentti (Finland), Shannon (Italy), Der Killer in der Botschaft (West Germany) 

The Lipton's Tea sign that adorned Stockholm's Stureplan square for decades. This pic was taken when it was built in 1960. (Ruben Morne/Wikimedia Commons)

As those of you who have read this blog and my others are no doubt aware, one of my favorite subjects to blog about is neon signs. In fact, no blog about the nighttime world would be complete without at least a few posts about the neon signs that light up the sky of many a city at night!

Also as many of you already know, many of these neon signs have stood in their location for decades and have become famous historical landmarks in their own right. One famous neon sign I never heard of until this morning is the famous Lipton (or as it was called in the sign, 'Lipton's') Tea sign that once illuminated the night sky in Stockholm, Sweden.

From 1960 until sometime in the late 1980s, the Lipton's Tea sign stood in Stockholm's Stureplan square, which is its equivalent of New York City's Times Square. Passers-by who went past Kungsgatan and, later on after a relocation of the sign, Norrslandgatan, could see this brilliant sign beckoning them to have a cup of Lipton Tea. The clock was an actual moving clock that told the time and the slogan "alltid tid för Lipton's té", which translates to "Always Time For Lipton's Tea" in English, said it all!

This sign was designed and constructed by Graham Neon, which was a subsidiary of the Graham Bros. elevator firm.

Sadly enough, most of the neon signs that adorned Stureplan were torn down during the late 1980s when the square underwent renovation. The Lipton's Tea sign was one of them. And thus the giant multi-colored tea kettle that became a city icon was no more.....

Just like its cousins the Bond Clothing Co. sign that once hung over Times Square and the Glico Man that still hangs in Osaka, Japan, the Lipton's Tea neon sign was a Stockholm icon and was literally a sign of its time. Even though it hangs in Stureplan no more, it gave a lot of people some very warm memories and still keeps on pouring cups of tea in the hearts of those lucky people.


References:
-http://www.avblixten.info/e/esnas31sap751uzx.html (Swedish language article about the signs of Stockholm.)
-http://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipton%27s_t%C3%A9 (Swedish Wikipedia entry about the Lipton Tea sign.)

Graffiti painting of an alien on a wall in Vittoria, Spain.