Thursday, January 28, 2010

SEEING RED: My intergalactic pride in being a citizen of Earth and also my Netflix queue are derived from the movie sections of 30 year old newspapers

I was thinking the other day about how television signals propagate through space for all eternity and somewhere there are aliens two billion light years away just now tuning in to the first few episodes of Challenge of the GoBots. But with the recent changeover to digital broadcasting those aliens only have about 20 good years of over-the-airwaves TV left before they'll have to get cable. Boy are they going to be pissed when they can't watch Big Bang Theory anymore or get the last season of LOST. And when the angry alien ABC fans invade the earth looking for digital signal converters that they won't be able to buy because their digital converter box waiver coupons expired two billion years earlier it will be a scene not unlike this movie poster I found from December of 1980 for a movie called INFRA-MAN. I'd never heard of it before but holy hell does it not sound like the greatest movie ever. It's a Chinese sci-fi superhero action flick and I thought its Wikipedia article was vandalized because it seemed so outrageous. As it turns out everything you will ever read on the internet about INFRA-MAN is true. So when reviewers tell you the main bad guy in this movie is named Princess Dragon Mom and she's got an army of terrorist Godzillas trying to take over Hong Kong in a plot that's essentially Ultraman meets Super Mario Brothers, just believe it without question. Believe all of it, for it is true.

WE DO NOT NEED UFOS WE HAVE NETFLIX

I thought about how in a way I am like those space aliens from two billion light years away, learning about bygone earth culture from my viewings of 30 year old microfilm reels. Even with all the cultural connectivity that is the internet I still hadn't heard of INRA-MAN until I saw its poster on the microfilm machine. I wonder if I'm the first case of someone finding out about a movie from a 30 year old newspaper ad. It must really suck to be an alien turned on to a movie from the trailers airing on over the air Earth television only to realize you'll never be able to see it unless one of the Earth networks showed it years later. Even then it would be edited for content to fit in the time allotted and formatted to fit their alien screens. Maybe UFOs are just martians coming down here hoping to catch INFRA-MAN at the drive in theater. Fortunately for me I need not build faster than light spaceships to travel great distances so I can go see INFRA-MAN. This is why Netflix is superior to even UFO alien technology. Netflix is why being an Earthling rules!

6 comments:

agentmorris said...

It fills me with an unquantifiable joy that not only is Inframan available on DVD, but from NETFLIX AS WELL.

I love you teh interwebz. I LOVE YOU LOTZ.

Evil King Macrocranios said...

Netflix is obviously alien technology reverse engineered from the 1947 Roswell UFO crash.

Nightowl said...

Ah to not be poor and have a netflixs account again :(

Rob said...

This actually looks better than GoBots: War of the Rock Lords.

Evil King Macrocranios said...

I am going to interpret that comment as a reflection of your undying love for GoBots vs. Rocklords and the disbelief you have that INFRA-MAN has surpassed that cinematic milestone.

Jack said...

Inframan is one of those examples of the chinese looking at an entertainment genre, in this case Sentai, and creating a superior version. I have video documentation of me saying this was my favorite movie when I was wee, and it still embodies what I want to accomplish as a video maker.

 

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