Especially since a lot of these Silver Age western comic were written by Gardner Fox so I´m killing two birds with one stone. Now in past entries I have mentioned that Marvel´s cowboy hero Ghost Rider had his name changed into Night Rider so that readers wouldn´t confuse him with the motorcycle riding horror hero Ghost Rider. The only problem was that soon afterwards a certain television show with David Hasselhoff debuted that was called Knight Rider so the name was changed once again to Phantom Rider. But for a time he went under the name of Night Rider.
Now I don´t want to say who took which cover as an inspiration here.
Gil Kane really worked on a lot of different western comic books.
There sure is an awful lot of kids running around in the old West. I wonder if this was the reason why the comic were so popular with young readers.
It seems Gil Kane is " trending " lately as the kids say so it´s no wonder that you can find a whole plethora of Gil Kane posts over at DIVERSIONS OF THE GROOVY KIND about the western stories Death Deals The Cards from ALL - STAR WESTERN 3 and Death Duel With Dack Derringer from GIANT - SIZE KID COLT 3 but also some sword and sorcery adventure courtesy of Hour Of The Dragon - chapter 1 from GIANT - SIZE CONAN 1 and Conan Bound from GIANT - SIZE CONAN 3. There´s also another post where you can feast your eyes on Gil Kane´s WARLOCK splash pages .
Today we have a rather large birthday / video section although I will try to shorten it a bit later. We start with canadian / american singer Alanis Morisette, who celebrates her 42nd birthday Today which is a good excuse for me to post a video from SAT1´s german edition of The Voice Kids.
And we´re staying in Germany with supermodel Heidi Klum who turns 43. Yep, she really does age like normal people. Well, not really since she gets older in years but doesn´t really seem to age. I already posted her Jessica Rabbit cosplay in this post so here are some kisses for you from Heidi.
But " Heidi " and " Germany " are the keywords for our cartoon video. Like many kids in Germany my youth was full of cartoons from Japan which I sometimes knew and other times was blissfully unaware of like with Heidi. What I also didn´t know was that in other countries the title song was different. Some longtime readers may recall my post about the spanish versions of the cartoon intros and while making the post I came across the spanish Heidi intro which is based on the original intro music.
Now I tried to watch the spanish version but I guess I´m just accustomed to the german music and the german voices. If I ever buy this it will have to be in the german version which for me is THE definitive version. I do not know if it is because this was the first version of the story by Johanna Spyri or if it´s really superior to all the other movies I have seen. I just recently re - watched some episodes and was surprised how good it still holds up. There are some tough topics in the story, Heidi is absolutely adorable and the Ziegenpeter is really thick like you wouldn´t believe.
And we´re making the jump from kids entertainment to more adult viewing with PLAYBOY´s Playmate of the Month for May 1994, Shae Marks. This hot mix of cherokee, irish and french heritage which is 44 years old can be seen on shows like Baywatch and Married with Children.
She also appeared in Renegade, Viper, Black Scorpion and Andy Sidaris´ Day of the Warrior and Return to Savage Beach. I remember that I thought The Dallas Connection was his last movie only to discover that there are two left for me to watch. I can´t tell you how excited I was to see the movies and especially Ms. Shae Marks whom I didn´t recognize right away because she had gotten some enhancements since her PLAYBOY pictorial.
Today australian actor Jason Donovan celebrates his 48th anniversary and the only reason that I even know who he is is that he had this duet with Kylie Minogue called Especially For You that was playing all the time.
Another playmate celebrates her 51st birthday, India Allen, Playmate of the Month in December 1987 and later Playmate of the Year in 1988. She appeared in the erotic movie Wild Cactus and I have to apologize for the poor quality but the only video I had to work with was apparently the copy of a vhs cassette ( ask you parents or grandparents what those are ).
John M Jackson turns 66 and he´s best known for his role of Rear Admiral A. J. Chegwidden although I have to say I only watched JAG because of sexbomb Catherine Bell and her bits like her famous blue bikini scene. Now I´m mentioning her - okay, so I can post another GIF of her - but also because she was in the Jim Carey movie Bruce Almighty with Morgan Freeman in the role of God. And he celebrates his 79th birthday Today.
It´s one of the few movies where I didn´t find Jennifer Aniston annoying.
Most people know Johnathan Pryce who just turned 69 as High Sparrow on the mega hit show Games of Thrones but he also played the bad guy in the Pirates Of The Carribbean movies, the G. I. Joe movies and in the Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies opposite mega MILF Teri Hatcher.
Speaking of movie bad guys Brian Cox celebrates his 70 anniversary and he has played the anthagonist in movies like Troy, Bourne Identity and X - Men 2 where he played the role of William Stryker. If you only know the X - Men from the movies please do yourself a favor and get the graphic novel ( and this is a real graphic novel, they didn´t just slap this label on it to sell more copies ) God Loves, Man Kills by Chris Claremont and Brent Anderson on which the movie is based. I promise you won´t regret it.
Rene Auberjonois has his 76th birthday and he played security chief Odo in THE best Star Trek series after Star Trek : The Next Generation, Star Trek Deep Space 9. The fans debate who was the eyecatcher on that show but for me it was without a doubt Nana Visitor who played senior bajoran Militia Officer Kira Nerys. She and Odo were the best part of the show.
Nana Visitor also was in a SPIRIT tv movie that I haven´t seen yet but it can´t have been worse than Frank Miller´s SPIRIT, A lot of people were disappointed with the movie but I think it was mainly because they went in with the wrong expectations. Frank Miller was hired to do his version of the SPIRIT so naturally he took all the ingredients he liked and threw them in the SIN CITY mixer. And that is what you get in the movie.
The only redeeming quality of Frank Miller´s THE SPIRIT is that you get to see Eva Mendes´ naked bum which IS worth the price of admission.
Speaking about ultimate screen sexbombs, on the other side of Rene Auberjonois´ acting spectrum was the villain he played in Police Academy 5 - Assignment : Miami Beach with massitas Leslie Easterbrook and Janet Jones. This was probably a job he did for the money but I would have taken the job just for the chance to get Leslie Easterbrook drunk enough.
I don´t get to post enough about THE SPIRIT and since we have talked so much about the 1987 movie here are some scenes. Did I mention that Flash Gordon himself, Mister Sam Jones plays Danny Colt / The Spirit ?
This may be a re - post but just in case it isn´t here´s the first part ( curse you YouTube ! ) of the Prisoners of Gravity episode with Will Eisner.
Our first dearly departed candidate is Frank Morgan who played the title character ( and the gatekeeper and Professor Marvel ) in 1939´s The Wizard of Oz with the great Judy Garland. She was really a movie STAR.
This is a clip I have saved forever and a day from Ziegfeld´s Follies which I didn´t watch when it was on tv ( I think we even had it on a vhs cassette at some point ) and I have regretted it ever since. Because every time I see a clip from the movie it looks like this movie was made for me. Anyway, here Judy Garland shows her versatility which gives me the nagging suspicion that I haven´t watched nearly enough movies with her.
Speaking of unforgettable Hollywood screen icons I just mentioned Marilyn Monroe a few posts ago and now it is her anniversary. She has played in dozens of movies, most of them considered classics by now but my all time favorite Marilyn Monroe movie is Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
It has one of the best known - and sexiest - dance numbers by Marilyn Monroe which was copied by Madonna in her music video Material Girl.
Another reason why Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is my favorite Marilyn Monroe movie is that you get two sexbombs for the price of one as the extremely buxom Jane Russell plays Lorelei Lee´s bosom buddy ( with a big emphasis on the bosom part ) raven haired beauty Dorothy Shaw.
The movie gave me the first inkling that I may not be a gentlemen because I much prefer Jane Russell over Marilyn Monroe which became very obvious to me in the parts where she poses as Marilyn´s character and really kills it. Jane Russell has just much more Ooooomph ! for me.
Okay, time to wrap things up. You can find more quality pictures and GIFs at the MY LOVE FOR JANE tumblr and before coming to the last video I wanted to mention the birthdays of Andy Griffith who you may know from The Andy Griffith Show ( D´ uh ! ) but most definitely as Matlock, and Dante Alighieri who was the first one to map out the christian underworld in his book Divine Comedy which was published around 1300. People have used his groundwork as a springboard for their imagination ever since.
I have a few western movies bookmarked but I think with Today´s topic of wild west heroes The Lone Ranger movie from 1956 fits the best.
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2 comments:
The Spirit TV movie is great fun. Nearer to the Eisner comic than you might think!
Yeah, I suspected as much. Now I only have to find it somewhere....sigh !
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