Buckle Up, Buttercup: Jack Burton & The Crew Are Coming To Pop! Vinyl....

"Tall guys, weird clothes...  First you see him, then you don't"... Yup, good old Jack Burton. One of the bets characters in one of the best movies you never expected to be great. So much fun, John Carpenter's 'Big Trouble In Little China' is a really great Sci-Fi/Horror/Action romp that has carved out a niche in the movie world that lots of people love. So when I hear that Funko Pop vinyl toys is bringing out 6 figures this February honoring some of the characters, I was head over heels... and here is why! Even 25+ years later, the movie finds a home through the characters. I am also currently reading the comic series from Boom! Studios that continues the movies story, and the reason I am really happy for this line is that after they get these main characters out of the way they can come out with a series 2 featuring all the freaky monsters of the film! You hear me Funko.... get cracking, I need that wild bear monster now! Check out which five characters  joined Jack on the Pork Chop Express from Funko, a perfect post Christmas gift for any Carpenter fanatic....



You can find these guys for Pre-Order for 9.99 each (a good price) by clicking here. 

Now This Is A Remake Of THE THING I Can Get Behind

Forget that abortion of a pseudo remake/prequel from last year, this is the goods. A stop motion recreation of  John Carpenter's 1982 classic, acted out by the penguin characters from the similarly Antarctic set, Swedish children's show Pingu. Click after the jump for the video...




 

"You gotta be fucking kidding"

Lost John Carpenter Student Film Found

In some very cool news, a short film by legendary horror director John Carpenter has been unearthed in the USC archives. From the Hollywood Reporter...

Just in time for Halloween, the first student film from famed horror director John Carpenter has been found in the archives at the University of Southern California and will be restored with the help of a grant from the National Film Preservation Foundation.

Click after the jump for the rest of the story...

Carpenter wrote and directed Captain Voyeur for an introductory film class at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts in 1969. About eight minutes long, the black and white film has visual and thematic ties to the writer-director’s 1978 classic Halloween, according to Dino Everett, the archivist who discovered the preprint materials in a negative at USC’s Hugh M. Hefner Moving Image Archive.

Captain Voyeur follows a man at a boring computer job who eyes a woman at work and follows her home. He dons a mask and attempts to kill her but is shot by his co-worker.
Everett told The Hollywood Reporter that at one point, the voyeur puts on a pair of glasses over his mask, much in the manner that Michael Myers wore glasses over the bedsheet covering his head in the Halloween prologue. Like the 1978 film, much of Captain Voyeur is shot from the point of view of the attacker, and the woman being stalked “could have been a young Jamie Lee Curtis,” she resembled the Halloween victim so strongly, Everett noted.

On the job for only a year, Everett said he heard rumors that Carpenter has “stolen his films” from the school, which owns the works. “I didn’t believe that,” he said.
Everett pulled a negative -- “thankfully, it was in great shape” -- and in the middle of the film up popped a hand-written credit that says “Written and directed by John Carpenter.” USC has not yet told Carpenter about the discovery.

The Hefner archive will handle the restoration using the grant of $1,000 from the NFPF, which targets for preservation newsreels, silent-era films, documentaries, culturally important home movies, avant-garde films and endangered independent productions that fall under the radar of commercial preservation programs.

Captain Voyeur would have been done before The Resurrection of Broncho Billy (1970), which Carpenter co-wrote, edited and composed the music as part of a team at USC. That film won an Academy Award for best live action short film.

 
How cool is that? It's always a thrill to see a Director's early beginning and try to connect the dots backwards. For someone as iconic as Carpenter it's pretty amazing to find something this rare for the first time at this stage of his career. Can't wait to see it.

'The Thing' Prequel Is Starting To Shape Up Nicely

Last October at the 2010 NYC Comic Con was the first time any official word on The Thing prequel being released came out. It was scheduled for a spring release, then was immediately pushed back to fall 2011. In my eyes I would rather the company take a little time and get it right, so the push back didn't bother me any. Plus, the movie had the lovely and extremely sexy Mary Elizabeth Winstead (Ramona in Scott Pilgrim and a fave of mine) in the lead... so given how much I like her, I was always rooting for it to be a success. After seeing this weeks official poster release and the first trailer, I'd say things shaped up rather well. See for yourself:

***Please click Read more below to see the trailer for The Thing***

Now that looks pretty bad ass!!! Mr. Eko from Lost (that dudes name is IMPOSSIBLE to spell) just makes the cast even more appealing, and I am really eager to see Winstead in a lead. I know people have been highly critical with the abundance of reboot/remake/reimagining of properties lately, but in my eyes this is a good way to do it. We all have seen Carpenter's original, and there is a story before the story. Let's hope this film adds something to the original film in the series and does Carpenter some justice. And lets hope Winstead's shirt accidentally gets ripped from her body for an extended period of time. One can hope can't he?

The Thing opens in October 2011. Are you going to check this one out? Let us know in the comment section below!!!