Perry Twins....The Empire!

twisted moon said:
the hobbit movies were a travesty, however.
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I remember going with my kids when they were little to see the first movie over xmas, left disappointed. Went to the 2nd movie next Xmas and walked out halfway thru.

There are unlicensed copies floating around that De-shite'ify the 3 horrible movies into 1 decent 4 hour movie. Various version either have or don't have the fight at Dol Goldur (which tolkien only hinted at), Gandalf's visit to the tombs of Angmar (which is actually pretty cool), and other additions that people like or not. All of them remove the Universally despised Tauriel-Kili Dwarf love story, the awful Barrrel fight, the awful extended Smaug fight and other cheap grabs for movie-goer ticket dollars.

Obviously Jackson or WETA is ok with this as the copies have been up for years for download. Although it would be nice if they released an official De-shite'ified version.
 
Eric said:
Cool. I've never seen those, dang something to be on the hunt for now!
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that Dwarf stretcher bearers was one i needed for one my future "must-do" projects and it was very hard to get. You'll spend 10 pounds on just one of the pieces, and the fragile stretcher, being Lead, is usually broken.
Imagine my shock and glee when i won a full set from ebay, unpainted, complete, delivered from UK for 17 pounds.
Happy day
This is a one-off (in terms of companies copying each others ideas) . No one else made a Dwarf stretcher part that i could find, and i looked hard. closest is a couple of Dwarves carrying a rack of cannon-balls, but i don't like modifying old models (on purely ethical grounds) unless they're broken or incomplete
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ManicMan said:
Ohh.. you got the dwarf casualty/corpse!
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i got lucky, but the poor guys in pain. .
I actually have other wounded or dead Dwarves, but none like this model.

The other ones are metal copies of resin prints, which is even weird to think about.
and it took me a long time to figure out what they are . Evidently copies from Ukraine.
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Michael Stockin said:
Temple of Doom does have a man's beating heart ripped from his chest and hold aloft though...
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Cartoonishly ripped, yes. I'm a bit skeptical that your average death priest could simply reach out and touch the average sacrificial organ without some kind of mechanical aid. Even as a kid I felt that was . . . cheesy. (He didn't have deinonychus claws.) I also quite disliked that he broke the carefully established gruesome just a little while later when it would have been . . . inconvenient . . . for Indy need to reinstall the pump after he rescued its owner from the fryer. The actual cartoon had considerably more verisimilitude, both in terms of plot and in terms of effects. So the danger felt more frightening. (At least to me.)
 
Brother Meredith said:
Oh, didn’t realise you were a fellow Salopian?
The Black Cauldron was my scary childhood fantasy film experience. 😅
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I've still never seen this (some forty odd years after it came out). I can remember the Panini sticker album which my brother had which looked jolly scary (I had the Back to the Future album 8-)). I mostly remember it from the little plastic figures you got in Kelloggs cereal at the time.

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ManicMan said:
It was a kids film? I thought it was an all age film, like the novel. Often mistaken for being a kids film cause it's animated and stuff but... never a kids film.

I prefer Bright eyes as sung by the composer, Mike Batt. Much better ^_^
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Hmmm... I've no idea what the original intention was, but it was widely regarded as a children's film at the time of release especially by parents, especially as the concept of animation for adults hadn't really taken off then. I certainly saw (and cried my eyes out) when I was very young. That isn't to say I don't love the film which is beautifully done and very powerful. I still have difficulty watching the final scene (spoiler alert) when Hazel goes to join the Black Rabbit.

I did see When The Wind Blows (as an adult) which is based on a Raymond Briggs book and is basically Threads filmed in the same animated style as The Snowman and Father Christmas.

There is a fantastic book and podcast series called Scarred for Life which deals with media aimed at or available to children during the 70s and 80s. One of the authors, Stephen Brotherstone was and is a keen roleplayer and talks about things like roleplaying games in the context of his book series on The Grognard Files podcast.
 
Got one of the Horned King in my odd bits & pieces bag. 😉 The Pannini sticker book was also one from my childhood, not sure if we ever managed to complete it despite sending off for missing stickers…

Wouldn’t say When The Wind Blows is quite as in your face as Threads, but certainly in the same genre!

Scared For Life is an interesting analysis of pop culture, I wonder what children from this generation will look back on in horror?
 
@Brother Meredith I think what I found so affecting about When The Wind Blows is the visual dissonance between the animated style which is pretty much identical to the much loved family classics The Snowman and Father Christmas and the plot which deals with an elderly couple slowly declining into sickness and death in the aftermath of a nuclear attack.

Much like other properties at the time (notably The Young Ones) it points out the obvious nonsense implicit in the official government advice of the time like using household furniture/doors etc to build a nuclear blast shelter. It is properly upsetting to see a normal set in their ways British couple sitting there firmly sticking to the official guidance in the vain hope that things will turn out all right. Mainly because that's how we now know people will behave in real life (see 2020-21).
 
Oh, Adult animation was kind there at the start. most of the original animations were all age and not for kids. moving into the 'golden age' of animation of the 40s to 60s again, animation was often all age more then 'for kids'. It was kinda moving into the mid 60s that animation started to be more seen as 'for kids' (which is why all age animated sitcom 'The Flintstones' dropped the sponsorship from Winston cigarettes. sure there were animations more for kids, but it was still all age (Flintstones was meant to be as all age sitcom but more geared towards adults, like alot of live action sitcoms. It wasn't until the third series that it became more geared towards kids).

History of animation and people's attuites is really interesting. While not quite cartoon animation, I think this really deals with the point:
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also, while still done in Raymond Brigg's drawing style, and being a sequel to a more kid friendly work, the animated version of when the wind blows is a quite different animation style. For example, while the characters are drawn, the building and stuff is model work. quite different from how other works of his have been adapted.
 
Don’t get me wrong, not claiming it isn’t a devastating commentary on the futility of the nuclear war preparations pumped out by the government, but its a little more subtle and down to earth compared to the savagery of societal breakdown that Threads presents.
 
Brother Meredith said:
Don’t get me wrong, not claiming it isn’t a devastating commentary on the futility of the nuclear war preparations pumped out by the government, but its a little more subtle and down to earth compared to the savagery of societal breakdown that Threads presents.
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Still get shakes thinking about the 'Threads' ending (esp. having been at births of each my own 3x kids). Remember in the 80's cold war at peak, at school we were made to watch when the wind blows in our English lesson, also made to read 'Z for Zachiriah' at age of 11. Truly post nuclear dystopian & psychologically disturbing stuff. Our chemistry teacher used to tell us he was a card carrier for entry to the bunker under county hall. Real eye opener for societal stratification. Not only that but after Chernobyl, the rad cloud went right over us here in Cumbria, it rained and we were still made to go out and do PE, in the rain. They put market restrictions on sale of some livestock on some valley farms for decades, until 2012. But, heyho, Govt/Education Dept said OK for kids to go out in it... Interesting. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-17472698

It was a horror fest in the 70s & 80s! I remember watching a graphically acted ministry film, in school, on public safety in the countryside which involved kids playing (& dying/mortally injuring themselves) in various ways in and around farms. One crushed by five bar gates, one by a tractor, etc etc. Getting wound up by Watership down?! There was a lot worse going on, sign of the times. No one mentioning Tarka the Otter/Ring of Bright water. Lovely ending... :(
 
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O/T: Just to ring any painful memories for those kids out there same age as me, the Ministry Film, 28minutes long, was called 'Apaches' (1977) and the BFI have it online, with obvious warnings though! Why they (the Schools educational board) thought it was appropriate, ever?!? Shock tactics?
 
Ah yes, I know Apaches.. there were a bunch of other such films they made which are fun.. like the kids getting killed one by one in the farm, or the kids throwing bricks at the train before walking into the tunnel with the train going towards them with then the dead bodies etc.. ah, just like popping to the local butchers shop.
 
willlucv said:
It went off topic about seven posts in on the first page, might be easier to rename the thread.
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I confess. I'm an accomplice in this crime. So . . . uh . . . the Perry Twins? They sculpt Empire, stuff, right? Like Storm Troopers? And Spehz Maroons? The only way I can fail to derail this thread is to shut up completely. So I'll bow out now. Unless anyone wants to rename this thread something like "Off Topic Extravaganza." (We all need an extra vaganza. Whatever a vaganza is. A couch? I could use another couch.)

Back to Empire miniatures and the Perry Twins, then. A semi-serious question related to Empire miniatures and maybe the Perrys. Who brought in the giant feathers? And how far back do they go?
 
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