Showing posts with label Back to the Future. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Back to the Future. Show all posts

Thursday, January 15, 2015

Escape Artists: November & December 2014

Greetings, Hatchlings! Every month we round up all the stories we can find about fun movie events like marathons, special screenings, and conventions and miscellaneous film-life stuff like food and games. Let’s see what went down in the world of escapism and pop culture shenanigans in November and December of 2014!



Hooh boy! This is very late again. Apologies. Would you believe that I had a massive problem at my house that required me to move into a hotel for two weeks? And then I went on a cruise for my 30th birthday where I got a really bad sinus infection and was bed-ridden for a few days? Yeah, it's been a weird couple months. And then the holidays happened!

Anyway, here's a new installment of Escape Artists, complete with an Escapist of the Month(s) which is...



...the Reservoir Geeks! Back in July they held their annual "Lovely Soiree at the Bottlerocket Motel", an event at the hotel featured in Wes Anderson's Bottlerocket that celebrates the director and his films. I finally got a look at the festivities after they recently posted a recap of the event. It looks like it was a blast, complete with a "Wes Dressed" costume contest and a screening of the movie. Check out their site to see photos from the event.

Reservoir Geeks

Other Escapism
  • Wait, we're not done with Wes Anderson! Any interest in going to his proposed theme park? - Wired via Dazed Digital
  • Here's why - in actual (theoretical) scientific terms - only Thor can pick up his hammer. - Wired via the A.V. Club
  • Someone made a Predator themed house and they want you to buy it. - Bloody Disgusting via GeekTyrant
  • Has the mystery of the Hellraiser V/H/S/bustop weirdness been solved? - BBC Radio via Bloody Disgusting
  • The mansion from The Godfather is for sale! - The New York Post via Criterion
  • Who else wants "that" coffee mug from The Cabin in the Woods? - io9 via the A.V. Club
  • There's a Paramount London resort coming, complete with a Star Trek attraction. - Star Trek
  • Ready for more escapist theme park news? Disney's developing a Toy Story themed hotel for Disney Shanghai. - Disney Insider via GeekTyrant
Disney Insider

  • Be the coolest dog owner on LV-426 with an Alien facehugger inspired leash. - Storenvy via Bloody Disgusting
  • Burgers that taste like human flesh? What is The Walking Dead doing to us??? - the A.V. Club
  • Make Worf proud and buy some Klingon Bloodwine! - Time
  • Some LARPers have made their own wizardry school in Poland and it doesn't look like it's infringing on any copyrights or anything. - Rollespils Fabrikken via Popsugar
  • Watch Tony Hawk goof around on a hoverboard (for real this time). - Kickstarter via GeekTyrant 
  • So, while we're on the subject of Back to the Future, I have a very important mission for all you Escape Artists and Hatchlings out there. There's a petition on whitehouse.gov (via Nerdist) calling for October 21, 2015 to be made National Back to the Future Day! This must happen! Please visit the petition and sign your name. The future is in your hands. In the words of Doc Brown: "Your future is whatever you make it." So make it a good one by making October 21, 205 Back to the Future Day!
Do you go to fun escapist events like movie marathons, festivals, movie-themed parties, or concerts? Are you planning on checking out any fun movie fan destinations? Have you seen any cool pop culture themed games or food anywhere? Let us know in the comments or by emailing us at totheescapehatch(at)gmail(dot)com.
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Friday, January 2, 2015

Favorite Scene Friday! Back to the Future Part II: "Where we're going we don't need roads."

So here's the deal, gang. It's 2015. It's the future.

I don't know about you, but I've been waiting for this for a long time thanks to a little movie called Back to the Future Part II, the film in the BTTF franchise where Marty (Michael J. Fox) and Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) visit the wondrous, futuristic year known as 2015. 

Laurent Durieux via GeekTyrant

Our scene today (which kicks off Escape-athon 2015 by the way) is the film's opening sequence (which is also a recreation of the first film's ending...Elisabeth Shue had to replace Claudia Wells in the role of Jennifer). It begins with Marty opening the garage door to find his new truck - the one he wanted so much in the first film - waiting for him. As if his dream ride wasn't enough, his dream girl - Jennifer (Shue) - shows up, asking for a ride. Marty's life is, for all intents and purposes, perfect. And then Doc shows up.


I don't care how you feel about the Back to the Future series, Doc hurriedly stuffing garbage into the Delorean's Mr. Fusion while telling Marty and Jennifer that something's gotta be done about their kids is awesome and if you're not excited about the movie after that you're dead inside. My only problem with this scene is the fact that, yes, we still need roads. Inescapable traffic problems aside, hopefully we can all muster the same amount of excitement for 2015 as one feels when watching our heroes race off into the sky. Happy future, everyone!

What's your favorite scene from Back to the Future Part II? 

And what are you most excited about for 2015? I've gotta go with pizza hydration.
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Friday, November 14, 2014

Escape Artists: September & October 2014

Greetings, Hatchlings!

Every month we round up all the stories we can find about fun movie events like marathons, special screenings, and conventions and miscellaneous film-life stuff like food and games. Let’s see what went down in the world of escapism and pop culture shenanigans in September and October of 2014!

Apologies that this is so galdurn late! I had every intention of posting a September Escape Artists but it just didn't happen. But now I've got a supersized post for September and October. Not only that, but I have an awesome Escapist of the Month for you guys. Our Escapist(s) of the Month(s) are...



...the French Toast Sunday crew members for all the shit they got up to these past two months, including, but not limited to, the Toronto International Film Festival, their local Comic-Con, and visiting lil' ol' me here in Jacksonville for my annual Halloween party!

The gang is awesome at the whole traveling thing, and it looks like they had a lot of fun at TIFF. You can read more about that trip here.



A few members of the crew went to the Baltimore Comic Con again this year. Check out their coverage here.



Of course, a highlight for me was their visit to Jacksonville...

Lindsay and me enjoying some breakfast at Maple Street Biscuit Company.
FTS Grand Poobah Lindsay and her boyfriend Jason got into town the night before the party. The next morning we checked out one of my favorite breakfast places, Maple Street Biscuit Company. After that we did some party shopping.

Speaking of, the party was awesome!

Hangin' at Aardwolf. Yes, I shaved off my beard, and yes I regret it every day.
We did a bunch of rando' stuff the day after the party. One of our activities was dropping by Aardwolf, one of Jax's local breweries. We followed that up with a donut run to Edgewood Bakery and finished the night with dinner and...a movie. What else are movie bloggers gonna do? 

So thanks for visiting, guys, and thanks for being awesome escape artists!

Top Stories!

 The Shawshank Tour

Have you ever wanted to go to prison? My neither, unless it's one of those fancy Danish ones. Anyway, my point is, you will soon be able to tour the Shawshank Redemption prison. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (via Film School Rejects and Cinema Blend) reports that they'll be open for tours next year. So get busy livin' or get busy visitin' this prison.

Dismember the Alamo

The Alamo did an awesome thing called Dismember the Alamo! It was basically a crazy horror marathon throughout October at all of their locations. Oh, and guess who attended that as well? Head to Badass Digest to read more.

Lebowski Wedding

There was a The Big Lebowski themed wedding, dudes! Read all about it over at Omaha.com (via Lebowski Fest's Facebook).

 Other Links


Escape via Food





Did I miss anything? What fun movie or pop culture stuff did you do in September and October? What are you doing this month? Lemme know!

 Do you go to fun escapist events like movie marathons, festivals, movie-themed parties, or concerts? Are you planning on checking out any fun movie fan destinations? Have you seen any cool pop culture themed games or food anywhere? Let us know in the comments or by emailing us at totheescapehatch(at)gmail(dot)com.
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Thursday, July 31, 2014

Escape Artists: July 2014

Greetings, Hatchlings!
Every month we round up all the stories we can find about fun movie events like marathons, special screenings, and conventions and miscellaneous stuff like food and games. Let’s see what went down in the world of escapism and pop culture shenanigans in July 2014!









Our Escapist of the Month is Sun-Ray Cinema and all the lovely folks that turned out for their screening of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre with Gunnar Hansen!

Sun-Ray Cinema

I attended the screening and it was another one of Sun-Ray's really fun events. Leatherface himself (as in, a guy dressed as Leatherface, not Gunnar Hansen) greeted patrons at the door. The theater cooked up some really delicious Texas BBQ sliders, pictured below. Gunnar eventually introduced the film. It was the first time I'd heard him talk and he's somewhat soft-spoken. One of the funnier anecdotes he shared about the film was that the house that they filmed at had two acres of pot growing out back. He recounted being stoned out of his head one day after eating some pot brownies. Someone apparently found him on the house's porch muttering "Time has no meaning." When they started the film, Gunnar briefly sat next to me for a few minutes (there were a few empty seats in between us but, whatevs), which was kind of cool.


The film looks really great in all of its restored glory. Those Texas skies are so blue and really contrast with the ugly acts in the film. I ended up rewatching the Michael Bay produced remake recently and they got it really wrong. Gone are the blue skies, replaced with foggy woods (even in the daytime, for some reason). Jessica Biel is still as bouncy as I recall her, however, so it's not all bad.

I bought one of the posters that Sun-Ray produced for the screening. I already had the creepy candles.

After the screening Gunar stayed for a Q&A. I asked him if he preferred writing or acting, and he said he preferred the former because "acting is social". The only thing that kind of dampened the evening was the fact that Gunnar wanted $30 for autographs, which I think sort of miffed everyone involved. But it was still a fun experience!

Top Stories!

Speaking of Sun-Ray, they're set for their Twin Peaks marathon (yes, they're screening the entire series) on August 22nd! Ticket revenue will be going to the Hubbard House too.

society6

 LAMB Meetup

 Earlier this month, the LAMB descended on Chicago, Illinois for the 3rd annual meetup. I couldn't go (FROWNY FACE) but quite a few folks turned out for the shindig. If you went to the meetup and did a write up, feel free to share it in the comments! I've already included a few just below.




Other Links


  • Last month it was the Money Pit house, now Lara Palmer's house from Twin Peaks is up for grabs. - via The AV Club
  • There are some pretty cool Jaws easter eggs in the new Harry Potter attractions at Universal Studios Orlando! - via Nerdist
  • The birth locations of various Marvel characters mapped out. - via The AV Club
  • Someone stole a bench from The Fault in our Stars. - via The AV Club
  • Marty McFly's hoverboard is up for sale! - via BuzzFeed
  • Speaking of Back to the Future, you can charge your phone in your car with a Flux Capacitor now! - via Geek Tyrant
  • The French Toast Sunday crew went to a fun looking Wayne's World screening.

  • The 4th Annual Lovely Soiree at the Bottle Rocket Motel, a celebration of Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket, went down on Saturday the 26th! Regular readers here should be familiar with this event, as we've been reporting on it ever since the motel was in danger of closing back in 2011. I'm hoping to report more on this year's soiree in next month's Escape Artists.



  • Better Call Saul billboard with working phone number pops up in Albuquerque. - via The AV Club
  • Chicagoland event coverage: Terror in the Aisles presents Short Cuts. - via The Nightmare Gallery
  • Last month we reported that Robert Englund will be wearing the Freddy makeup one last time at Flashback Weekend. It still hasn't happened yet, but now you can see them prepping his makeup. - via Bloody Disgusting
  • Justin Gott from Man I Love Films went to Comic-Con! Check out his photo essay here.
  • There's a Firefly online game coming and there's a trailer for it! - via The AV Club

Escape via Food 

  • A model named Christine McConnell bakes stuff like the facehugger cookie below. - via BuzzFeed

  • They're building an actual Krusty Krab...in Palestine. - via BuzzFeed
  • Do you want to eat BBQ ribs with Kevin Spacey on the set of House of Cards? Sure ya do. - via The AV Club
  • Game of Thrones wine! - via Nerdist

  • The beer from Jaws has made a return! - via Nerdist

Special shout-out to Lindsay from French Toast Sunday for making our sweet new Escapist of the Month graphic pictured above!!! Thanks for reading, everyone!

Do you go to fun escapist events like movie marathons, festivals, movie-themed parties, or concerts? Are you planning on checking out any fun movie fan destinations? Have you seen any cool pop culture themed games or food anywhere? Let us know in the comments or by emailing us at totheescapehatch(at)gmail(dot)com.
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Friday, June 29, 2012

Favorite Scene Friday! Back to the Future: Hill Valley Chase Scenes

This is our 50th Favorite Scene Friday! Doing the honors for us today is CT from the Nerd Lunch blog and podcast. If you're a regular reader here you should be familiar with Nerd Lunch - we teamed up recently for a series of posts that lead up to The Avengers and I've made a few appearances on the Nerd Lunch Podcast. 

 CT loves the classic TV show Quantum Leap, and that makes him okay in my book. He also blogs about food, like the Burger King Bacon Sundae. That's food, right?

You can find the Nerd Lunch Podcast on iTunes and other purveyors of fine audio. You can also find CT on Twitter (@nerdlunch).

Nerd Lunch

I am a huge fan of the Back to the Future franchise. At the Nerd Lunch Podcast, we devoted an entire episode to the three movies. While there might be a few flaws throughout, it's the closest thing we got to a perfect trilogy for a long time.

When Robert asked me to contribute to Favorite Scene Friday, I kept coming back to this series. The movies are jam-packed with great, classic scenes due to exciting direction and vibrant characters. There is nothing wasted in the movies and in true Chekov's gun form, everything introduced early in the movies is paid off by the end. There are also such subtleties in the shots. One of my favorite parts about this scene is when Marty sizes Biff up before doling out a punch. The eye roll move is brilliant.

Marty's skateboarding was set up early in the movie but after going back to 1955, he didn't get much of a chance to use it until he had to interfere in the diner and chase Biff and his goons away from George McFly. With a simple wooden plank and some wheels, Marty evades serious injury or even death at Biff's hands. This scene goes to further set up Lorraine's fascination with Marty, but also Biff's vendetta against him that's carried out later in the movie and to an even greater extent in Part II.




But let me cheat a little bit and actually use this favorite scene to talk about two other favorite scenes. One of the things I love about the Back to the Future series is the symmetry in certain sequences throughout all three movies. The filmmakers are able to bypass certain need for foreshadowing by building on audience expectations from a previous film and turning it into something that advances the story for that film. Each film has it's own Hill Valley chase sequence with similarities.

In Back to the Future Part II, Marty, posing as his son, must evade Biff's grandson Griff and his goons. Unfortunately, the clip below cuts out some of my favorite moments. Griff had told Marty, Jr. to never go in that cafe (that part is cut out of this clip), Marty also sizes Griff up with the same eye roll. With that, the scene seems to be playing out the same, with Marty doing the same "Hey what's that?!" trick and throwing a punch at Griff. That's where the divergence begins, though. Instead of showing us the exact same scene, but in the future, Griff catches the punch and the sequence suddenly carries with it a bit more seriousness. Marty is out of his league and the suspense is heightened. Able to get away, Marty makes his way outside and the classic Hoverboard chase begins.



Again, a similar scene makes its way into the second sequel. Buford walks into a bar where Marty is hanging out. Mistaking him for his ancestor, Tannen opens with the same line, "McFly, I thought I told you never to come in here!" However, other than being a bit of a chase around down town Hill Valley, the similarities stop there. Marty had been in complete control in 1955 and in some degree of control in 2015. However, in 1885, he is completely out of his league. And in showing the audience that, we see at the end of the sequence that this movie is not as much about Marty, but a true passing of the hero baton to Doc, with the third movie becoming more about him.





Very clever ways of playing on similar themes, but each scene serves a different purpose.

And if you're in the mood for a change of pace, there exists an a capella version of the first movie's Hill Valley chase scene that's pretty fun to watch.

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Monday, September 12, 2011

Batch o’ Hatch: BTTF Shoes, Advance Screening of Drive, and The LAMB

“Power laces, all right!”

Howdy, Hatcheroos. You’ve most likely heard the hullabaloo at this point about the “Power Laces” Nikes from Back to the Future Part II. They’re now a reality, and by reality I mean “close approximation.” You see, the shoes don’t actually self-lace, like the pair from the film seen in the clip below.


I was naturally peeved about this – Nike was gonna make these shoes and charge a ton of money for them and they don’t even have the courtesy of actually making them properly? Then I learned that the proceeds from the shoes, which are being sold on eBay, are going towards finding a cure for Parkinson’s disease, via The Michael J. Fox Foundation. I can’t be mad at Marty McFly. 

From the Nike Press Release:

“We wanted to translate the excitement people have for the ‘greatest shoe never made’ and for the Back to the Future into positive action,” said Mark Parker, Nike CEO, who was on the Back to the Future II set in 1988 when Fox donned the original NIKE MAG shoes. “But the long-term objective is to raise awareness so the Foundation can achieve their goal of eradicating Parkinson’s disease.”

And I guess I can’t blame Nike for not going all out, since actual self-lacing shoes won’t be a reality until we can master nano-technology or something – anything else would just be too bulky due to a necessary power source – see below.



I’m still a little upset, but I guess it’s because of failed expectations. Here we are, four years from 2015 and hover boards, Mr. Fusion, pizza hydration, and all of the other awesome technology BTTF 2 promised us and we can’t even get the shoes right. All they really do is light up. I had a pair of those when I was 10.



What do you think, readers? I know Tiff would love a pair. Would you fork over money for these?

Advance Screening of Drive

We’ll be at an advance screening of Drive tonight. I’ve got high hopes for this film – it’s holding at 92% on Rotten Tomatoes and the cast looks great. 

I’m excited to see Bryan Cranston in something other than Breaking Bad. I haven’t been thrilled with this season, especially last night’s episode.

I haven’t seen Bronson or Valhalla Rising, two of Drive director Nicolas Winding Refn’s other films, so I don’t know what I’m getting myself into. Here’s hoping the film delivers.

The LAMB

Large Association of Movie Blogs


The blog is now officially a member of The Large Association of Movie Blogs. Excited to contribute. Hopefully it doesn’t turn out to be a cult or the front for a secret society or something.
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