Blog
2 October 2010
I first watched Back to the Future when it aired on TV, complete with terrible dubbing over the “bad” language, which I recorded to VHS and watched practically daily. I had the pleasure of seeing Part II and Part III at the cinema. My mother then bought me a VHS rental copy of Part II from a friend that owned a video rental store – ssshh! – and I watched that until the tape was nearly worn out. When the VHS trilogy box set was eventually released, I asked for it one Christmas and watched that regularly, having a strict rule that I would always watch each film all the way through so that the tape wouldn’t unevenly worn in places.
When the DVD box set came out, I got that for another Christmas and was disappointed to see that it suffered from being framed incorrectly (known as the BTTF DVD Framing Fiasco) and got two replacements discs delivered from Universal. When the “Ultimate Edition” DVD box set was released a few years later, I couldn’t resist getting that one as it included even more bonus material and previously unseen footage.
I also made my own plywood Hoverboards and other replica props from the trilogy when I was younger, filmed some scenes out of the film with friends when I was in my school’s Film Club, bought the soundtrack and original score on cassette and CD, own several model DeLoreans, and more recently dressed up as Doc Brown for a friend’s 80s party.
I guess you could say that I’m a fan; a fan that had never seen the original movie at the cinema. So imagine how excited I was to hear that Universal was re-releasing Back to the Future in UK cinemas to show the original movie in all its digital glory following the remastering they’d done for the 25th Anniversary Blu-ray release.
Last night, I joined a queue of other fans waiting to watch the movie on the big screen, most of them probably for the first time like myself. You could sense the excitement in the air and hear people arguing about which film in the trilogy was the best or worst while others quoted their favourite lines. When we eventually got seated and the film started, there was a spontaneous round of applause and cheering followed by complete silence as everyone watched the opening scene. (Kudos goes to the guy taking a photo of the opening logo with the iPhone and not getting thrown out!)
After watching the film on TV, VHS and DVD dozens and dozens of times over the years, was it any better on the big screen after its digital remastering? Of course it was!
I’m not sure whether it was due to the remastering or simply the size of the screen, but the level of detail was amazing, for better or worse. A great example being the DeLorean, which actually looked like it had been built by a crazy scientist, with all the welding, rivets, screws and imperfections clearly visible. On the other hand, you could really see the effort the make-up department had gone to in order to age the actors playing Doc Brown, Biff Tannen, Lorraine and George McFly by thirty years for the 1985 scenes, but it unfortunately looked a bit too much like latex at times.
But what I enjoyed most about watching the movie at the cinema was the audience reactions to all the classic lines, which made me hear some of them with a new perspective, like when the Doc says, “There’s a rhythmic ceremonial ritual coming up.” I hadn’t really appreciated how funny that actually sounded before. I also only really realised for the first time quite how sinister Biff is being when he’s trying to force himself on Lorraine in the car outside the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance before George comes to save her. I generally just felt more emotionally attached to the characters and totally immersed in the action. When the credits started to roll and the audience was clapping and cheering again, I honestly felt a bit overwhelmed. And I can now finally say that I’ve enjoyed watching Back to the Future at the cinema.
As a final thought, I hope that this re-release proves to the film production companies that they don’t need to remake old films in order to bring them to a new audience and rake in the money from the theatrical release. If it’s a truly great film, all they need to do is re-release the original. There’s even no need for any extra effects to be added either. It should also reinforce the theory that film-lovers will still pay (what seem to be extortionate amounts these days) to visit the cinema and watch a great film despite having already watched it many times in their homes, sometimes even from poor quality copies. In fact, it might even persuade people that they need to see the film on the big screen to fully appreciate and enjoy it. Things have changed a lot over the last twenty-five years with the widespread adoption of the Internet and the movie industry needs to change too.
Labels: bttf, film, personal
20 January 2009
According to Google Analytics, people still seem to end up on my website when searching for Lego DeLoreans. Here’s a list of the search phrases which led people here just this month:
- how to build a lego delorean
- lego delorean
- lego deloreans for sell
- build a lego delorean
- buy lego deloreans
- delorean building lego
- how to build the lego delorean
- lego delorean instructions
- lego deloreane
Well since that’s what you people must want, how about this one?
You might also want to check out this old post of mine back in 2004 which links to some less impressive ones...
[Via Boing Boing Gadgets.]
Labels: bttf, film, gadgets, links
22 July 2008
I was invited to an “80s Movies” themed fancy dress party last month. After a quick brainstorming session at work, I decided to go as Dr. Emmett Brown from the classic 1985 movie Back To The Future. Just in case anybody out there ever wants to do the same, here’s what I did for my costume...
Wig
I struggled to find a good white wig that looked like Doc Brown’s hair and eventually took my chances with a Smiffy’s Madman Wig. For some reason, this wig has ridiculous black frown-lines implanted in the forehead which I decided to cut off, meaning I had to wear the wig a little further forward than it was intended to be worn. But given that Doc’s not that bald anyway, this looked much better.
Suit
Although I wanted to go dressed as Doc at the end of the first BTTF movie – where he’s just returned from the year 2015 – finding the bits and pieces for that costume would have been a nightmare. Instead, I opted for the costume that we first see Doc wearing when he introduces Marty to the DeLorean.
For the radiation suit, I bought a ‘coverall’ disposable boiler suit and made some alterations to it. After cutting off the hood, I created the radiation symbol, broke it into parts (PDF download) and printed it onto an iron-on transfer.
Warning: Disposable overalls melt at fairly low temperatures – I learned this the hard way – so make sure you use a piece of greaseproof paper and put your iron on its lowest setting!
I also removed the elastic from the ankles to make it flow a bit more like the original costume, added the various bits of detail using a pink highlighter pen and made a slit for the top pocket so that I could attach a pen and a piece of paper with a bulldog clip. The Doc can also be seen to be wearing a wrist watch on each arm, so I did the same!
If you watch the film closely, you’ll see that the Doc is wearing a green shirt over a long sleeved cream t-shirt or vest, with the sleeves on his radiation suit rolled up. I couldn’t find the right type of shirt or vest, so reversed this and just wore a green t-shirt under a cream v-neck jumper.
Gloves
For the gloves, I got some yellow rubber washing up gloves and cut them off at the wrists and made a small template to draw the radiation symbols on the back of each hand.
Props
I couldn’t find an old-fashioned square stopwatch like either of the ones used in the movie, so I unfortunately went without. But for the belt, I bought a tool pouch and threaded it onto an old leather belt, along with my camera case (for practical reasons) and a small portable speaker set so that I could play the BTTF theme from my iPod on entrance!
A while ago, I managed to “acquire” some fluorescent plastic test-tubes from a bar which was serving shots in them. These would become my plutonium rods. I tried to push one inside an old plastic bath gel bottle filled with water but it was too wide, so I ended up cutting it off short. I then filled the test-tube with some watered-down tomato ketchup. I tried some fruit cordial but it wasn’t red enough. For anyone who doesn’t remember the film too well, this does the trick!
To complete the costume, I downloaded and printed some of these paper props from the excellently obsessive BTTF Stuff website, including the Save The Clock Tower flyer, the letter from Marty and the drawing of the Flux Capacitor.
And there you have it – a complete Doc Brown costume from the brilliant Back To The Future movie. Now, before all the hardcore BTTF fans start telling me about all the inaccuracies, I’d like to point out that I know it’s not an exact replica of the original costume, but I tried my best given the small about of time and money I had to put it together. It was definitely good enough for everyone to know who I was supposed to be though and that’s the main thing!
Thanks must go to Travis Goodwin whose site I found via The Project Vixen DMCNews Mailing List Archive and was the only good example I found of somebody else trying to make a Doc Brown costume! During my research, I also stumbled across the fantastic BTTF Blog, an excellent blog for everything related to Back To The Future to which I’m now subscribed.
Labels: bttf, film, personal
3 August 2007
No, the TARDIS isn’t going into mass production just yet. I’m talking about the other time machine.
The DeLorean
Soon we’ll all be driving around at 88 MPH pretending we’re the Doc!
Gizmodo is reporting that the DeLorean Motor Company in Houston, Texas is going to start rolling new DeLoreans off the production line in 2008.
The company currently charges $42,500 (around £21,000) for what they call a “remanufactured” DeLorean, so I expect they’re going to be charging quite a bit more for a completely new one – especially since they’ll only be producing around 20 each year.
I just hope they’ll make a Back To The Future special edition with a flux capacitor, Mr Fusion and flying capabilities that’s within my price range!
Labels: bttf, film, gadgets, personal
22 February 2006
Chris Riley’s brain was working overtime a few weeks ago. You could almost hear those rusty cogs turning! He was thinking about how he could use Amazon Web Services to power a cool new website. After throwing a few ideas around the office, he someone (probably the other Chris) finally came up with the concept for Judge A Book By Its Cover.co.uk.
The idea’s a simple one: view the covers of books, CDs or DVDs and rate them from one to five stars based purely on how they look. Once you’ve submitted your rating, compare what you and others thought about the cover to the Amazon rating to see if it really is that unreasonable to judge a book by its cover. If you want to see for yourself whether you judged correctly, you can easily click-through to Amazon to buy the book, CD or DVD and make your own mind up.
I prefer the Head to Head! version of the game. It’s much easier to compare two covers and choose which you think is best than it is to rate a cover from one to five. (Sometimes, you’ll be faced with two covers that are so similar that you can’t decide which one gets your vote – but don’t worry, you can always call a draw if that happens!)
There’s more to read in the About & FAQs section of the site and you can keep up to date with the latest news on the site’s blog.
Get judging!
Labels: books, film, links, music
8 June 2005
My mate Dave (yes, that’s right – the one Papa Lazarou always talks about) introduced to me to The League of Gentlemen (not literally) when I was in my 3rd year of uni. Their 2nd series was airing on BBC2 and I’ve been hooked on their work ever since. In January 2001, I visited Hadfield to take a tour around the real life Royston Vasey. When you walk around Hadfield, you really do feel like you’re in Royston Vasey; the local butcher even sells special stuff sausages...
Earlier this year I came across The League of Gentlemen Scripts and That book, which was released ages ago but wasn’t really very well promoted. I bought it Dave for his birthday hoping that he’d already have a copy so that I could keep it. (He didn’t have it, so I had to buy it again for myself.) It contains all the scripts from the series, biographies of each character, and loads of pictures. It’s an ultra-heavy hardback book that every TLOG fan should own.
At the moment, The League seem to be pulling out all the stops. Not only have they just released their first motion picture, but they’ve also released The Complete Collection DVD Box Set (all three TV series and that disturbing Christmas Special) and a new special edition of their Live At Drury Lane DVD, featuring five minutes of new footage from their hugely popular "Local Show for Local People". They’ve also got another live show planned for later this year titled "The League of Gentlemen Are Behind You" which I’ve just booked some tickets to see at Llandudno’s North Wales Theatre.
Until very recently, they didn’t have an official website (there were, of course, hundreds of "unofficial" fan-sites popping up all over the Internet) but with The League now moving from cult to mainstream, it’s not surprising to see official sites starting to appear. For anyone that hasn’t managed to track them down, here are the ones I’ve found:
And in case you’ve never been to any of the unofficial sites before, here are some of the better ones that have managed to survive:
Labels: books, film, links, personal, photos, theatre, tv
15 October 2004
Recently, people seem to be searching the web for instructions on how to build a DeLorean out of Lego and they end up finding my site. Since I didn’t have a link to anything like this, I thought I’d add one. It doesn’t tell you how to build it, but at least you can see what it should look like! Also, here are some examples of some not-so-good ones: [1] [2] (Now... where did I put my big bucket of Lego?)
Labels: bttf, film, gadgets, links
6 May 2004
http://www.bttfdelorean.com/
Need a BTTF Car by next week? This guy’s selling one and all the bits on eBay. If only I had £12k or so, I’d buy it myself. His website’s worth looking at whether you’ve got the cash or not. His replicas are spot on! And on a related note, check out The Back to the Future Tour – the most comprehensive guide to Back to the Future filming locations on the Internet.
Labels: bttf, film, links
