3-22-08 The Billy Nayer Show – The Girl with the Vagina Made of Glass

1) Wil Wheaton was in The Secret of NIMH? Wasn’t he, like, two or something when that was made?

2) You’re not the only person who likes Secret of NIMH, Shanoah. The book is excellent, too… and of course it has nothing to do with the movie…

 Aaaaaaaaand noom-bair thah-ree…

Speaking of movies… We had a pretty good movie store in Las Vegas once (and blast me if I can’t remember the name of it) out on Sahara Ave. near the crossroads with Decatur Blvd. It was a big-box store (yeah, I know, boo! hiss!), but it carried a decent selection of foreign-language and independent films and, when I was still into that kind of thing, anime.

It’s a drug store now.

Anyway, one of the movies I picked up there was The American Astronaut, by a band called The Billy Nayer Show. I bought it because I liked the photo on the back of the case: an unshaven man who looked like Wolverine shoving on a big steampunk-quality lever with both hands.

The American Astronaut is probably best described by my friend Mike, who called it “The Billy Nayer Show’s version of The Wall”. It’s in black and white, done on a shoestring (and a pretty thin shoestring at that) and, as Joe Bob Briggs would say, has a lot of plot getting in the way of the story. It’s all just an excuse for BNS to strut their musical stuff, and they strut it quite well, with music that swings from garage rock shouting to demented hoedown music that the “squeal like a pig” hillbillies from Deliverance might like. It’s a wonderful diversion that twists your head up nicely in its strangeness and, if you don’t take it too seriously (and you’re not supposed to, cos otherwise your head would explode), quite enjoyable.

This is one of my favorite songs from the movie, with the unlikely title The Girl with the Vagina Made of Glass. As phlegmuffin puts it in the comments for this song: “Putting the video into context would probably confuse you more, so I won’t bother.”

Oh, and I highly recommend buying the soundtrack and the DVD of The American Astronaut, along with whatever other swag you can snag.

To the Movies

Elmer Gantry, did you say? (Note: some of the books on Project Gutenburg Australia are legal there but not in the US. I think this one violates US copyright law by a few years.)

Anyways, much like the music mashups I’ve covered, many people have taken to doing their own versions of movie trailers. A number of them recut the movie till the trailer may as well have been for a completely different movie. I thought I’d share a few of them with you today.

First, though, I should probably tip my hat to Wil Wheaton, as I realized shortly before posting that I first ran into two out of three of the trailers I was going to post on his blog, back in 2006. I’ve cut one of them, and replaced it, to avoid being too derivative. (As it happens, the one I cut was also the one he acted in. Kudos to anyone who knows which one it was…)

You may know him as the voice of Martin, one of the rats on the Secret of Nimh.[1] No? Skurg, on “Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go!“, then? Or “Aqualad”, from Teen Titans? All right, you probably know him as Wesley Crusher from Star Trek:TNG, then.[2] That’s typecasting for you. These days, though, he’s a writer, and an actor, and definitely a geek, and his blog deserves a look, both old and new.

And he likes steampunk. But then, doesn’t everyone?

“Scary” Mary

All right, this one creeps me out just a bit. When they applied for a nanny, little did they know what they’d get… Mary Poppins would have made a great horror movie, wouldn’t it?

“Shining”

This one just has cracking up every time I see it. The Shining as a romantic comedy. The scary thing is that it works! This also marks the return, yet again, of Peter Gabriel music on this blog (Solsbury hill). Not totally sure how he keeps sneaking in…

Princess Bride

And finally, a recut of The Princess Bride. I love that movie (and book), and knew that a recut would either be horrible, or really good. I like how this one turned out…

[1] Am I the only one who thinks this was a great movie?

[2] And Harry Potter has officially corrupted my brain. I first typed this as “Weasley Crusher”.