Toy Story / Toy Story 2 / Toy Story 3

So, is there anyone who doesn't like Toy Story?

I first came across it in January 1996, on a VHS cassette while working at the BBC. The comp tape contained about an hour of trailers for all the upcoming movies that would be released throughout that year, and Toy Story grabbed me immediately. (NB. The tape had come free with Empire magazine)

That was a definitive example of advertising doing its job on me. I duly went to see the film at the cinema, loved every single frame of it, and like so many other 25-year-olds (or thereabouts) bought the full-length VHS of it for my mum at Christmas.


She loved it too.

For me, the one and only fly in the ointment of that first movie was Tim Allen as Buzz Lightyear. Not to subtract anything from Mr Allen's achievements, but he spent the entire film doing an impression of William Shatner. If that's what the director wanted, then surely a better choice would have been William Shatner?

(Allen continued this career-path in Galaxy Quest and Buzz Lightyear Of Star Command, which even included Shatner himself singing!)

In 1999 Toy Story 2 came out, and I was determined to make sure that I saw it properly. I think I'm right in saying that it was the first full-length movie to be wholly realised on computer. By this I mean that even the version I had watched of Toy Story 1 had been projected from a film print, but 2 was actually showing in the first and then only UK cinema to have a digital projector. The big one in Leicester Square, London.


It was a funny peculiar thing - I knew that there could be no possible blemish anywhere in the image, so obviously I just had to look for it anyway.

Since all my friends knew what a love I had of the film medium, it was with some irony that I had to admit afterwards that the crisp digital motion picture had actually drawn a tear from me, although I think that was more down to Disney. Jessie's previous owner - so sad.

Ten years on, in a country full of cinemas with digital projectors, I was similarly determined to experience Toy Story 3 in 3D. I was gutted to have missed the 3D re-releases of the first two, but kept checking the IMAX listings just to make sure that I hadn't missed out on seeing the threequel in the best possible version.

Well, I wound up leaving it too late for that as well.

On 16th October last year I bumped into Perry on the last train home. After disembarking, I told him that I was going to see Toy Story 3 that week. He asked me why I - a 39-year-old - was going to see a kids’ film. I said that it was actually a family film. He said that that was what the film-makers wanted me to think. I said “Getting older should enable you to do more things, not less. You should never lose the ability to enjoy a Disney movie.” He acquiesced. I never saw him again.

Two days later I sat in a theatre in Wandsworth, alone but for two small families somewhere behind me, and settled down to enjoy what I'd been waiting a decade for - another crazy adventure with Woody, Buzz and the rest.

It was everything I'd hoped for, and it was a long time before I got around to starting on my snacks. It amazes me that they can command moments of such powerful drama using a story about plastic toys, approximated on a computer.


Early this year we watched it again on my mum's latest DVD, and I still loved every moment of it, including the elements that had passed me by in the cinema, like their all getting to be played with by Andy one last time.

Let's be honest here, in different hands this trilogy could all have been so bland and unimaginative. How easy would it have been last century to knock off a script about toys simply going to work, getting married and having kids? Such shallow fables were not for Pixar in this instance, who instead sat down and worked out three comedy-dramas based around the specific issues encountered by being a toy. Nothing patronising to anyone here. Just original stories which everyone can believe in.

After all the last decade's advances in technology, this evening I found myself standing in HMV watching 3's start all over again, but this time on Blu-Ray. Not that it should really have noticed, given that some of the opening is a home video sequence, featuring cameos from Weezy and Bo Peep! There's a lot of detail in Dr Porkshops' spaceship. Not so sure about the jittery background whenever the 'camera' moves though.

I hope that Pixar do one day perfect a film called Toy Story 4, and if we're really lucky, maybe this time it'll all be in 16k Showscan.

Available here.

New Zealand - Kiwi Country (VHS)

This afternoon I watched the above hour-long tourist VHS which belongs to one of my many good friends called David.

Since he's been to NZ three times while I've been five, we spent most of this crowing "been there" in a joint attempt to between us nail the entire travelogue. However, once I started falling back on "watched a home video of there" (Rotorua), "seen a poster of there" (Milford Sound), "left a message on the church's answerphone there" (Picton), I knew that for me it had all gone south.

We did quite well, quite well, but I guess that when you live somewhere, you never really get to visit it.

The Sarah Jane Adventures - season 4 overview

I think this has been quite an even season.

I haven't found any of the stories to be particularly good this year, however the really bad plots have at least had some redeeming features to them. Death Of The Doctor was a pig of a story, but great fun. Lost In Time made no effort over plotting, and had little else going for it, but at least its other aspects weren't as bad.

There has, at long last, been a move away from zombie-led stories this season. Hopefully next series this trend will continue, and some of the incessant music will go too.

The final story - Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith - suffers from the same problem that last year's Wedding Of Sarah Jane Smith did, specifically that Ruby needed to have been introduced a few stories earlier for her reveal to mean anything. It's a missed opportunity that the absence of Luke (and K9) this series have actually left a spare role for another character to fill, which could have been ideal for Ruby. Mind you, I've also found the trio of Sarah, Clyde and Rani to make the show more focussed too.

Individual episode reviews:

The Nightmare Man
The Vault Of Secrets
Death Of The Doctor
The Empty Planet
Lost In Time
Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith

Another generic title, which could refer to pretty well any SJA story.

Sarah: "What are you doing here?"

Ruby: "Saving the world! All a day's work. Goodbye!"

Sarah: "No wait! Who are you?"

Clyde: "She's exactly like you."

Yes, Clyde actually does have just the one sentence from Ruby upon which to base this analysis.

Okay, so there's also a small explosion following which he sees her drive off, but it's still a pretty big leap if you ask me.

After such quick plot-setting, this story then looks to be a plodding instalment in which Ruby hilariously turns out to be just like Sarah, and indeed much of part one is accordingly slow. As Ruby's successes escalate, Sarah's mental condition does the opposite. By the cliffhanger Ruby even has Sarah's house, friends and vocation. It's identity theft to the nth degree.

Nice to see the word "Auckland" getting a mention too.

Part two is a much more complex web, with Luke, Clyde, Rani, Mr Smith and K9 all working together to spring Sarah and defeat the villain.

As is the sort of thing that happens rather a lot in modern Who, everyone on the entire planet, including you, gets attacked by holographic falling meteors. It's a ruse to make them all terrified and overload the villains' plan, just like in Death Of The Doctor three weeks earlier. Hopefully all the people with heart conditions were indoors. (I do wish they'd think these throwaway notions through a bit)

Overall, I didn't find the plot to be anything special, but compared with the usual chaos, any story which roughly holds together in SJA is guaranteed to stand out. A shame they couldn't quite figure out what to do about Sarah's son Luke.

If The Sarah Jane Adventures was this well written every week, it'd be just about okay. Not anything special, just okay.

Today's celebrity Bible-reader is... Jack Harkness

I will still be the same
when you are old and grey

- Isaiah 46:4a (CEV)

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Lost In Time

While putting together these reviews, two of my angles are always:

a) to be honest, and

b) to be positive.

This story is a real challenge though. To be honest, I found the script relentlessly lazy throughout. To be positive, I have to find something that I thought was at the very least above-average.

I'm sincerely sorry, I got nothing.

So what do I do - say how wonderful it all is, and lie? Or admit how terrible I think it is, rant, and become an agent of misery in the world? Even striking a balance is going to be ugly.

Maybe I should just say nothing? Well that's running away from it. All right, I'll cite a few quick examples of why none of it worked for me and then I'll get me coat.

Where shall I start? Well, right in the opening shot the story scores it first own-goal.


That doesn't look anything like a shop. Flats or offices maybe.

At the top of the building is a very old sign which reads "Smalley And Co. Antiques". Who 'Mr Smalley' is is never even explained, let alone what he's doing apparently owning an antique shop for maybe 100 years, which he appears to abandon to squatters when he simply dematerialises and leaves at the end, again without any explanations.


"The shopkeeper" is a well-spoken, enigmatic, eccentric English Doctor Who stereotype, who'd work well played by Tom Baker. He even already knows who Sarah Jane is. He's gone to all the trouble of faking the above news article in order to get her and her friends into his flat shop instead of, say, maybe just phoning them up.

Anyway, here he is in a rare moment of being candid.

Shopkeeper: "I need your help to save the world. Time itself is under threat."

Sarah: "From what?"

Shopkeeper: "Chronosteen - a metal forged within the time vortex with the power to reshape destiny. Three pieces of it moulded into different objects are lodged at key points in the Earth's history. They must be recovered."

We never find out who did this, or why, or how its non-recovery means that "time itself is under threat", even though this threat drives the entire story. Even the threat to present-day Earth in part two is something he causes, rather than averts.

Rani: "What objects? Where in history?"

Shopkeeper: "Could be anything, anywhere."

Wrong.


At the end of the story the shopkeeper reveals that he has all along had a flight-case containing perfect moulds for the items to sit within, specifically a hammer, a dagger and a key.

As for being "anywhere" in history, they turn out to all be in the last 600 years, in England.

Sarah: "Well, good luck with that."

Shopkeeper: "But you are the only ones who can do this! You're the Earth's last hope."

Sarah: "Well even if I believe you, how can we possibly find this chronosteen?"

Shopkeeper opens an apathetically-named time-window.

Shopkeeper: "This is a time-window, Sarah Jane, it will take you close to the objects."

Clyde: "If you can create that, why can't you go yourself?"

Shopkeeper: "It is forbidden for me to travel through time, but you can."

He never tells us who he is, who has forbidden him, why or how.

After this the Shopkeeper forces them through the time-window and back into history, before turning over a sand-glass and replying to his parrot...

Shopkeeper: "That's right Captain, they have until the sands run out, or this world is doomed."

Now don't you think that the Shopkeeper really should have told this little detail to the agents who he was sending back in time to do his bidding? Sarah, Clyde and Rani have no idea that they even have a deadline. They don't even know how to recognise the chronosteen, let alone have any idea how to use them to travel back to the present.

The next thing that happens is the opening credits to part one.

My problems with this 'story' are that intensive.

The rest of this Into The Labyrinth remake features each of our heroes materialising in recent English history, narrating their internal monologue out loud, and having very little care to whom they reveal that they've come from the future.


Shopkeeper: "...and the sands have almost run through!" (No they haven't - look at it!) "If Sarah Jane and her friends do not return soon, they'll be trapped in the past... forever!"

Funny, I thought that "time itself" was somehow "under threat".

Clyde and Rani's segments both pit them against murderers taking over England. In Clyde's case this means Nazis, but they are just a metaphor for Daleks.

Sarah on the other hand, despite what the Shopkeeper said above, misses the object by about a century, and instead meets a ghost hunter called Emily investigating dying ghost-children from the future who have it.

Now this idea does sound promising, just as it did in Torchwood: To The Last Man.

However, Emily's mother happens to have died in "exactly" the same way nine weeks earlier, so in order to interact with the ghosts and save their lives, all she has to do is focus on that common fear.

Eventually they save the kids' lives and congratulate themselves on a job well done, despite having still doomed the kids' house and contents. Neither Sarah nor Emily remember that they have the power to speak to the ghosts and run the haunting at will, due to having earlier committed the cardinal time-travel sin of rewinding time by moving a clock's hands backwards. (clocks are machines which have nothing to do with time)

Even the recap at the start of part two is so rushed that it's unintelligible.

This is what I call "an annual story". Not because they churn one out a year, but it smacks of those terrible stories in TV-tie-in annuals when I was a kid, which usually betrayed little knowledge of the series it was based on, and even less love for it.

With such generic elements, few explanations, and shallow dialogue, this filled the required 50 minutes, but offered no reason for spending them by watching this. Even the throwaway title Lost In Time could be an episode of anything.

Well, I've been honest for long enough, so now it's time to muster just a brief paragraph of being positive.

After all, without trying to sound snide, failings by definition reveal room for improvement, so this must have tons of potential.

For example, just who was the Shopkeeper and/or Mr Smalley? What exactly was he trying to save Earth from, and why? Why has he been forbidden to travel in time, and by who?

Most inspiring of all, just who on Earth is his parrot?

I'd genuinely love to know, and so I think would most of the kids who watched this.

Sarah: "Well, good luck with that."

Today's celebrity Bible-reader is… Marvin The Paranoid Android

I feel awful,

terribly miserable.

- Isaiah 24:16b (CEV)

Today's celebrity Bible-reader is... Professor Zaroff

No one can stop me now!

- Isaiah 14:27b (CEV)

Tron: Legacy

If CGI technology had been around in 1982, then this is probably the film that would have got made.

Tron: Legacy shuns the very notion of pandering to a modern-day audience, and shamelessly goes straight for 1980s fashions, icons, music and even TV aspect-ratios.

Oh, and if you've never seen or don't remember the original, then don't worry because that made very little sense either.

For those of us who grew up in that era, Tron: Legacy is an absolutely gorgeous way to spend two hours. I turned my brain off at the start, and positively wallowed in the cool laser effects, synthesised soundtrack and early two-tone computer graphics. It didn't just look great - it sounded great too! This was how, as a teenager, I believed the future of computers was actually going to look and sound - everything multiplied except for the level of definition.

I mean okay so all the virtual computer systems speak with stunted dialogue while the virtual people don't. All right so they have guns and bombs but still fight by throwing discs at each other. And I don't even want to ask why Kevin had that power to attract his enemy and destroy everything for all these years but never used it.

(I could go on. And on. And on...)

Basically a deeper script here could have ruined everything.

Sam: "You went in?"
Kevin: "That's right. I got in."

Just imagine if they'd handed this over to someone like The Matrix's Wachowski brothers for the final draft. Just how ponderous, miserable and cynical could these 127 minutes of joy have instead been?

Neo: "You went in?"
Oracle: "Oh honey, what are in and out but abstract concepts which limit our understanding of ourselves and the version of reality in which each of us chooses to believe?"
Neo: "Whoa, totally far out, Oracklees-babe."

That said, I liked the idea of life emerging from lifelessness against all our heroes' expectations to the contrary, but this was mainly because I think that aspect of the theory of evolution is science-fiction anyway.

Like its predecessor, Tron: Legacy may lack substance, but is once again definitely a movie with style.

Available here.

The Searchers (film)

Ethan (John Wayne) and Martin (Jeffrey Hunter) spend years searching the desert for a young relative who's been kidnapped by the Comanche Indians who also murdered her family.

Although Ethan knows their enemies' ways inside out, he's hampered by his disastrous people skills, which combined with the appalling nature of the atrocity made me hate him all the way through. The result was two hours that had me riveted right to the end, even despite the film's vague timeframes, theatrical acting and occasional studio set of the great outdoors.

There are also some farcical tendencies that increasingly creep in, such as Martin's giving away a rug and accidentally getting married, however even she shortly suffers a bloody fate.

I'm not quite sure why The Searchers is regarded as such a classic. It has strong themes, an unusually mean lead-character and breathtaking locations, but nothing that I found to be especially great film-making. Maybe the fact that we really do get to go on the journey with those two antagonistic leads has alot to do with it.

Available here.

The Leather Nun and Other Incredibly Strange Comics by Paul Gravett & Peter Stanbury

If there's one thing that enthusiasts of any subject will get frustrated by, then it's got to be the simplicity with which the rest of the world perceives their subject.

Comicbooks are a pretty good example. I might be wrong myself, but I think most people who are not into comics mistake its superhero subset for the entire genre.

This might just be the book to buy those people.

Across these 127 pages, Paul Gravett and Peter Stanbury trawl the history of the format to dig up the weirdest, wildest and most literally incredible comicbooks that over the years have bucked popularity and done their own thing.

There are the groundbreaking ones, such as Canadian Shane Simmons' The Long And Unlearned Life Of Roland Gethers, which for its entire 80 pages presents all the characters as tiny black dots in the distance.

There are the foreign mutations, such as Italy's version of Superman Nembo Kid, who jogs everywhere and sports a patch of yellow on his chest where his 'S' has been necessarily removed.

And then there are those officially-licensed one-shots advertising a particular message, such as Popeye and Olive Oil extolling the virtues of beginning a career in hairdressing.

Perhaps inevitably though, the majority of the publications featured here seem to be sexual fantasies from the comicbook underworld. Many of these were intentionally made for fun, and perhaps therefore shouldn't qualify as 'strange'. On the other hand, Justin Green's 1972 Binky Brown Meets The Holy Virgin Mary seems to be a personal confession of the author's traumatic OCD while growing up in a particularly strict catholic school.

This reference work only goes into a little detail regarding each of the publications that it covers, generally presenting the cover artwork opposite a panel, a quote and a brief write-up on the facing page.

There are some references in the back detailing where a few of these gems can now be tracked down today, but on the whole it's only a good idea to read this book if you're happy to never hear any more about these lost oddities.

After all, much of the joy of coming across 'new' comics is selecting which ones to then read.

(available under another title here)
(with thanks to Herschel)

Mary Poppins (film) / The Cat Who Looked At A King

Boom: "How are things in the world of finance?"

Banks: "Never better. Money's sound, credit rates are moving up-up-up, and the British pound is the admiration of the world."

Give that man an offensively large bonus!

As far as most of the world is concerned, Disney's 1964 studio-bound effects movie Mary Poppins starred the lovely Julie Andrews.

In the UK however, everyone considers it to have starred Dick Van Dyke.

This is not due to any perceived shortcoming on Ms Andrews' part. Rather, it's because Mr Van Dyke's performance contains a shortcoming so unavoidable that it overshadows the entire 139 minutes.

Ask anyone from the UK what this is, and they'll all tell you the same thing: it's his English accent.

For Dick cockernies 'is way through the 'ole pickcha, guv, but never once cams ennywhere close tah spoutin' Queen Vic's bloomin' Inglish, see? (Gawd blesser)

In fact, so prolific is his astounding misuse of the dialect, that he has actually added to the language the phrase "a Dick Van Dyke accent", which denotes a terrible approximation of the English dialect, usually by an American.

Dick Van Dyke himself has never lived this down. Even last year, appearing on National Public Radio on October 23rd, the American presenter still charged him to explain himself.

Interviewer: "What is your defence sir?"

Dick Van Dyke: "They got me a coach who was Irish."

Having sat down and watched the movie last Monday morning, the whole reputation is, I feel, unwarranted. The reason why I say this is because if Dick Van Dyke does not do a credible English accent anywhere in the film, then his character therefore cannot be from England.

Quite where this incarnation of 'Bert' does hail from is then anyone's guess, as said accent doesn't sound like any other one that I have ever come across either. It's definitely not the exaggerated cockerney that I suggested three paragraphs ago though, which is a shame.

Anyway, in case you think that this highly enjoyable aspect of the film is the only one that stood out to me, you're right. After all, amongst all the spell-binding visual effects (opticals still wipe the floor with CGI) and catchy songs, what is less well-celebrated is that Dick Van Dyke actually plays a dual role.

Seriously - he's the head of the bank in tons of old make-up too. You can tell it's him by the way he walks. He's just itching to slip up and knock things over. The man can't help but exude entertainment, and it's tragic that this hilarious old fool never gets to meet his doppelgänger, but instead dies towards the end of the story. (personally, I diagnose murder)

However, watching the film purely to enjoy the actors' multiple personalities (actually several of the cast double-up) is a, heh-heh, double-edged sword, for Mary Poppins has a little-known sequel, which Julie Andrews returned for, but without her joyously enunciating co-star.

The Cat Who Looked At A King is a curious 10-minute short produced for the 2004 release of the original on DVD. (NB. "DVD" stands for "Digital Versatile Disc", not "Dick Van Dyke") This features Poppins returning to Bert's chalk drawings with a couple of new kids and presenting the wraparounds to a cartoon therein about a cat outsmarting a king.


With computer effects, much cheaper animation and a fairly bland storyline, it hardly matches the quality of the original film. However the biggest disappointment is that the cat really seems to be playing Bert's role in events, voiced by actual Brit Tracey Ullman. (maybe Dick was embarrassed about acting opposite the queen - Sarah Ferguson)

For all that, it's appropriately magical that such an oddity exists, and a charming homage to a film that is quite rightly regarded as an absolute classic.

Maybe there's still more to come though. In three years' time the film will be 50.

So whadda ya rickon, gav'ner?

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind

Lately I've been watching quite a few movies off of DVD and VHS. It affords me the luxury of pausing, rewinding, and rewatching bits that I want to check a second time. This morning however I decided to watch one 'live' as it was broadcast on Channel 4.

This was so not the film to do that with.

Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind spends the bulk of its 103-minute running time jumping back and forth between real life and the protagonist's dreams. These dreams are also set within the individual in question's memories, ie. the past. However that's still too simple, so the whole story is even told in non-chronological order, to the point of running the 'opening credits' after a mere twenty minutes.

When, towards the end of the film, we witness some scenes from earlier on getting repeated, it's definitely time to hit rewind and check if what we're watching is consistent. Or at least pause for a cuppa. Well now I'm just whinging - Channel 4 had thoughtfully laid on ad breaks for that.

In a nutshell, the yarn revolves around a couple who break up so absolutely that they even visit a clinic to have their memories of each other wiped. With Jim Carrey as the guy, plenty of comedy ought to ensue, but it's not that kind of a Carrey vehicle.

Instead this is one of those grim, cynical SF dramas that invite us to really believe in the concept and ponder the idea of everyday life becoming so warped.

Indeed, ponder is a verb which applies to this film extremely well, as the story itself is very simple. Once Joel Barish (Carrey) realises that his memories are being deleted in reverse while he dreams, the penny also drops that there isn't much he can do about it, and for a while the whole show slows down.

Not that that's a bad thing. The blessing of a slow script is the real opportunity to explore the situation. It's a bit of a shame then, that while we continue to experience the background to Joel and Clementine's problems, the exciting potential of memory wiping is something which this movie fairly ignores.

The ramifications for everyday life of such a technology are never explored, as isn't the legal and social fragility of such a patient's new life. For example, just how was Joel going to deal with all the people who he couldn't ask to stop mentioning Clementine to him?

Instead this gap in the subject matter gets filled by the mystifying inclusion of Kirsten Dunst as the Doctor's receptionist. When she turns out to have had a memory wipe too, the revelation cannot contain any punch, partly because we already know of the procedure's existence, but mostly because she has only been presented to us as a sloppy receptionist, rather than as a human being.

A much more interesting dynamic would have been to present the scientific team as honest guys doing the job that their customer has entrusted them to do, prompting the ethical dilemma of which of Joel's contradictory wishes they should really be more loyal to.

It's all a fun ride anyway, and as I say the story's brevity gives it real room to breathe. Jim Carrey is on good form playing an introverted misfit straight, and writer/director Michel Gondry keeps the visuals interesting throughout, without ever going too grand or cartoonish.

Definitely a film to watch off of a copy that can be rewound and reexamined though. Was it day during that nighttime scene between Patrick and Clementine? I can't clearly remember. I'd check back on the VHS, but I seem to have gone over it...

(Available here)

Batman #222: Dead... Till Proven Alive! / Case Of No Consequence!

Story: Frank Robbins (Dead... Till Proven Alive!), Mike Friedrich (Case Of No Consequence!)
Art: Irv Novick & Dick Giordano


Funky radio DJ: "Yay, keeds -- This is Ho-Ho-Ho, your jolly green deejay at XJL -- with the newest poop on ye great "Oliver Twists" mystery!

Dig the seventh groove on our boys' 'Summer Knights'! Spin at 78 R.P.M. instead of 33 -- take it off on tape -- and playback at 1-⅞ I.P.S.!"

I had to read that opening page three times just to figure out what on Earth was going on there.

And the solution to that particular bat-mystery was... that it was the year 1970.

The whole lead story is a spin on the real life "Paul McCartney Is Dead" urban-meme from the previous year, to the point of featuring a 4-boy pop group from Britain called 'The Twists'. (pictured on the cover) The above radio opening reveals a backmasked, or rather fastmasked, message hidden in one of their songs, hinting that their singer Saul Cartwright (geddit?) is in fact deceased.

Hidden message: "Sure was a ball, Saul -- Too bad it's over!"

Well, that's good enough evidence for me, but not apparently for Batman and Robin, who go to farcical extremes to ascertain just whether or not the lad from 'Lunnon Town' has in fact now been replaced by a lookalike imposter. They secretly record him speaking, secretly record him singing (I said it was farcical) and even bug his phone calls. Do the good guys sound to you a bit, well, obsessed?


Sheesh, they're just a pair of fanboy stalkers now!

By the end of the story the good guys have even broken into a recording studio, however despite his tunnel-vision, the world's greatest detective does still come through with the correct solution by the end of the strip.

And as twists in the tale go, this one's an absolute doozy. In fact I thought the ending was so good that I couldn't possibly tell you what it is here, you'll just have to find a copy of this and read it for yourself. Or look it up elsewhere on the net, I'm sure it won't be too hard to find. Suffice to say that it's completely plausable.

The media theme then continues in a single page of text by Joe Kubert about how to draw comics. Then there's this issue's back-up strip Case Of No Consequence!, which concerns Bats' attempts to recover a stolen camera on behalf of a deaf-mute. It's fortunate for said innocent that Bruce Wayne is not just a photography buff, but also versed in basic American Sign Language.

The Letters To The Batcave page features epistles from one "Mike W Barr" and also a "John Workman" (surely not?), but the media element that most interested me here had to be the advert on the inside back-cover for an 8mm ciné projector.


Not only could this ingenious contraption project both black-and-white AND colour film, but it was also battery-powered, and even came with a free pair of "Miracle Specs".

"FREE NEW THRILLING SENSATION!

ADDS 3-D STEREO EFFECT

Makes People Look So Full and Real, You'll Feel You Can Reach Out and Touch Them

Just put on the "Miracle Specs" and you achieve a thrilling new experience. You see - not the old flat pictures you've seen for years - but life-like round images so real you "know" you could reach out to touch and feel them."

In my quarter of a century as a ciné enthusiast, I have never come across such incredible technology, let alone any projector powered solely by batteries. Just who was this genius who was capable of manufacturing such an unheard of device?

On the evidence that I have available, I'm guessing Bruce Wayne.

(with thanks to Herschel)

Day & Night

Charming cartoon short, made to support Toy Story 3, in 3D.

Well, 3D and 2D. It concerns a couple of characters in silhouette (hence the 2D) whose areas each display the same deep 3D landscape, but one in the daytime, and the other at night.

Well, I guess you gotta see it.

As always, Pixar have brainstormed and polished the whole thing to flawlessness, telling a story in a way that I've just never seen before. If any aspect does fall short of perfection then I guess it would be the inclusion of dialogue from a radio station to explain the tale's moral, but that's really just a matter of taste.

Both characters appear to be male, which in 2011 lends the sense of there being a gay agenda behind it. Perhaps this is also because, for a film portraying two opposite characters discovering their common ground, it seems a surprising oversight that they're not opposite sexes too.

Anyhow, another short classic. Long may Pixar's creativity continue!

Beckham Taunted By Evil Doppelgänger From Parallel Universe

The Mummy / The Mummy Returns / The Mummy: Tomb Of The Dragon Emperor

The thing that I remember the first Mummy film for is its cliffhangers.

For example - at one point a character gets trapped by a swarm of beetles. Oh, wait, that's at the end of the film when Beni dies. Oh well, bad example. Still a great cliffhanger moment though.


The thing that I remember the second Mummy film for is its technical shortcomings. Much of the early dialogue just hasn't been recorded clearly. Some of the parallel editing shows too much taking place in-between scenes that run straight on. A window shatters and is then intact again.

I also remember at the time reading an interview with the actress playing Evelyn - Rachel Weisz - in which she said that she wouldn't be doing the next one.

Still, I found them to both be enjoyable, if ultimately forgettable, trips to the cinema.


Sadly, the third one has no chance of winning that accolade, although admittedly this is because I watched it on TV, off of a VHS tape, that had been recorded in Long-Play.

And you know what? It's my favourite of the three.

Alex: "It's only the greatest find since King Tut!"

Not because it's necessarily better or anything, but just because, being a runaround, I found it the easiest to follow. There are great action sequences and cliffhanger moments again, so it certainly lives up to expectations.

All three lead characters seem to have aged by different degrees over the course of the trilogy though. Evelyn has not just had a change of appearance, but also of characterisation, being no longer the clutz of the first movie. Maria Bello compensates admirably for not being Rachel Weisz by playing the older role with so much presence that you can easily believe she actually was in the first two, if only she didn't look so different. (her eyes are too small)

There's also plenty of goofy comedy on show, and the funniest line is the one that closes the whole series. (to date)

I can take or leave the Mummy series, but overall I'm glad I took it.

Available here.

Woody's Roundup - A Rootin'-Tootin' Collection of Woody's Favourite Songs!

This is the CD release of a soundtrack LP to an unfinished TV series that has never existed.

As you know, in the film Toy Story 2 Sheriff Woody discovered that he was a piece of merchandising from a 1950s puppet TV show. There's a magical scene in which he, Jessie the Yodelin' Cowgirl and Bullseye the horse all go crazy together amidst a huge collection of their old tie-in merchandise. They watch old episodes, put coins into a special themed money-box, set-off a snake-in-the-boot (jack-in-the-box) toy, and generally frolic.

They also spend a moment running on the spot as the series' own 12" soundtrack album spins beneath them on a record player. You remember, they play at speeding it up, slowing it down, and generally knocking the stylus back and forth between different tracks on side one. (it ignores this and continues to play the show's theme tune regardless)

Heck, this event is even pictured on the cover above.

This, then, is that soundtrack album!

Quite where the idea came from is anyone's guess, but something possessed Riders In The Sky to lay down eleven country / bluegrass tracks bearing only the slimmest of connections to the popular Toy Story franchise, and for this we can be supremely grateful.

These are delightful ballads both about and sung by all three speaking characters, although not voiced by Tom Hanks, Joan Cusack or Kelsey Grammer. This change in casting is fair enough for a couple of reasons:

1. These old tie-in records often featured different vocal actors to the original series that they were based upon.

2. In Toy Story 2, Woody, Jessie and Stinky Pete had different voices in the clip of the TV series due to being played by human actors. This means that since the TV series came first, the voice that plays when Woody's pull-string is drawn - and therefore Tom Hanks' voice throughout all three films - is incorrect anyway.

Consequently Devon Dawson takes on the role of Jessie for a couple of these tracks, including teaching us all how to yodel...

Cowboys: "Help Us Jessie!
How do we yodel?"

Jessie: "Yo-del-ay-ee-too!"

Cowboys: "When do we yodel?"

Jessie: "Any time we-ill doo!"

Cowboys: "Why do we yodel?"

Jessie: "I wish I knew-oo!"

Cowboys: "Boy-ee! We-ee do-oo too-oo!"

Jessie: "Why, it's not so hard boys, y' just got t' start simple 'n work y' way up thru trickier 'n trickier yodels 'til ya yodel like ME - Jessie, the yodelin' cowgirl!"

[She then yodels for over thirty seconds. Then Ranger Doug takes over.]

Some of these songs hint at what individual episodes of this monochrome series might well have been about. For example, after the opening theme tune, Act Naturally features Woody singing about a possible future as a cowboy in the movies.

Generally though there is only the odd hint that this album is actually a post-modern product from 40 years later. One such instance occurs in "One, Two, Three," Said The Prospector when Stinky Pete exclaims "Oh my God!", something he'd never have gotten away with in the 1950s.

"... And blew himself clean to... Oregon!"

Additionally, there are two further tracks which blow the album's authenticity as high as Pete's biscuits. My Favourite Toys mentions by name almost every character from Toy Story 2, from Andy to Zurg, while the final secret bonus track breaks the spell again in its own way.

These two breaches in the TV series' fourth wall might mean that I've read the album's concept all wrong, but I can't come up with another reason for how this CD came to be. As well as the cover artwork, even the CD itself appears designed to pretend that it's a record:


Finally, despite this CD winning a Grammy for Best Musical Album For Children in 2001, and Toy Story's ongoing popularity, its existence seems to have fallen into obscurity. I first discovered a lone copy hiding in Real Groovy on Queen Street in 2005, but left it too long before going back to buy it, figuring that I might find it cheaper on the net. Well, at time of writing there are gazillions of copies available on Amazon, 25 of which are going for less than NZ 15c.

Maybe Stinky Pete should give up his prospecting, and instead invest in these gold nuggets.

Track Listing:

1. Woody's Roundup
2. Act Naturally
3. Jessie, the Yodelin' Cowgirl
4. The Ballad of Bullseye
5. You've Got a Friend in Me
6. Hey Howdy Hey
7. My Favourite Toys
8. How Does She Yodel?
9. The Prospector Polka
10. You've Got a Friend in Me (Instrumental)
11. "One, Two, Three," Said the Prospector
12. Home on the Range
13. Shh! A Secret Bonus Track!

Available to sample and buy here.

Charlie And The Chocolate Factory (2005 film)

It's been maybe three decades since I read the book / watched the 1971 movie adaptation of Roald Dahl's disturbing tale of events at a chocolate factory, so although some of the elements here were familiar, I still came to this pretty fresh.

As a film in its own right, I was hooked. The music, surreal concepts and eerie design had me transfixed from fairly early on. It's helped by investing so much of that first half hour in establishing Charlie and his family, making them believable and fun before plunging us into the weird world of broken-down cocoa beans.

The cast are all outstanding, and even the editing had me chuckling in places. Be warned however, the special effects are lazy right from the extensive CGI factory in the opening credits. Reusing the same actor over and over for the surreal Oompa-Loompas is one thing, but not for Mr Salt's human employees at his nut shelling business.

Some fun lines though, particularly pointing out the holes in the film's own story. When Mike Teavee protests that people cannot materialise within the two-dimensional world of a TV image, he verbalises something I've wanted to tell programme-makers since I was a teenager, but never known the concepts to express.

"You don't understand anything about science! First off, there's a difference between waves and particles! DUH!"

It's a good job that Mike isn't around earlier on to point out the slim probability of a golden ticket finder living just one street away from the factory. Or to ask how Charlie could have built an entire model of Willy Wonka and his factory out of toothpaste tops without ever having heard the story of how his live-in Grampa used to work there.

All right, I'll stop mumbling...

Throw in the great Christopher Lee, and all in all I really enjoyed this.

Really feel like I should go visit the dentist now though.

Available here.

Music While You Watch

Another CD collection of test card tunes, interlude music and TV themes from yesteryear, sold in aid of the ever-young Winchester Hospital Radio.

What distinguishes WHR's releases from the other TV music compilations is their obvious love of the forgotten. These are not the same old popular theme tunes that get endlessly recycled in more mainstream collections.

Where else can you find the theme for Arthur Lowe's forgotten first series of Potter, the French-language education series Répondez s'il vous Plaît or the intro to Southern TV Weather? Not to mention sneaking in the Humphrey the tortoise music from the groundbreaking sketch show for deaf kids Vision On.

A few tracks do challenge my memory. For example, the lifeless Distant Hills is definitely not the Crown Court theme that I remember, so I guess they must have changed it between series.

One track that did have me rushing to dig out and compare my old 1980s off-air tapes with was Paddy Kingsland's theme music for Leonard Rossiter's final sitcom Tripper's Day. The piece is titled here March Of The Moogs (presumably a reference to the Moog synthesiser), and is definitely not the same arrangement that accompanied the short-lived series. In other words we seem to even have an untransmitted recording in here, which is entirely in-keeping with the obscurity of these collections.

Still, the ambiguity of the sleeve-notes is a surprise for a label that usually demonstrates so much enthusiasm for its material. While Tripper's Day might just be an oversight, about half of the compositions on disc one have no specific context listed, leaving us to wonder just which channels played them, when and for what purpose. Something of a mystery tour then!

As a result numbers like John Carmichael's Morning Call are instead free to conjure up impressions of a 'busy' scene from an MGM Technicolour musical, rather than maybe a plain old news page from Ceefax.

Another listing which stands out is for the conveyor belt sounding Swinging Pizzicato, which these days forms the retro opening to Channel 5's House Doctor.

The second CD feels like a separate release in its own right, constructed entirely of Channel 4 test card transmissions from the 1980s. Although each one of these melodies is distinctive, there's more of an overall uniformity to this disc.

The two tracks that I made a point of recording off-air in my schooldays (I was a very un-hip teenager) are not on here, but the one which stands out the most to me is Winners by Trevor Bastow. At the time this also found its way onto LBC Radio as the sound bed for Pete Murray's Nightline trails.

Proving that it wasn't just music while you watched.

Track listing:

CD1

1. Smiley (Phil Chilton) - Projection
2. Four in Hand (Max Harris) - The Otto Keller Orchestra
3. Merry Ocarina (Pierre Arvay) - The Pierre Arvay Group
4. Song of Autumn (Reg Tilsley) - The Reg Tilsley Orchestral
5. Get Up and Go (Ernest Ponticelli) - The Richard Nielson Group
6. Mazurka to Minuet (Johnny Gregory) - The Pandora Orchestra
7. A Girl Like You (Keith Mansfield) - The European Sound Stage Orchestra
8. Boulevard St. Michel (Jack Trombey) - The International Studio Orchestra
9. The Greatest Show on Earth (Peter Reno) - The Reg Tilsley Orchestral
10. Lumineux Cheverny (Raymond Guiot) - Raymond Guiot
11. Danza Gaya (Madeleine Dring) - The Raphaele Woodwind Sextet
12. Summer Convertible (Reg Tilsley) - The Reg Tilsley Orchestral
13. Bouncing Boots (Jack Trombey) - The London Studio Group
14. March of the Moogs (Paddy Kingsland)
15. Open House (Alan Langford) - The William Gardner Group
16. Sweet Unity (Johnny Pearson) - The Otto Keller Orchestra
17. Family Theme (Johnny Hawksworth) - Johnny Hawksworth Group
18. Distant Hills (Haseley, Reno) - The International Studio Orchestra
19. Snowdrops and Raindrops (Steve Gray) - The European Sound Stage Orchestra
20. Morning Call (John Carmichael) - Orchestra Raphaele, cond. Peter Walden
21. Doodle (Syd Dale) - Munich Concert Pop Orchestra
22. Live Free (Simon Haseley) - The International Studio Orchestra
23. Spindoe (Derek Hilton) - The Modern Sound
24. Swinging Pizzicato (Gerhard Narholz) - The Gerhard Narholz Orchestra
25. Sparky (Roger Webb) - The Roger Webb Group
26. Pink Skies (Julius Stefano) - The International Studio Orchestra
27. Kitten (Ted Dicks) - The Pandora Orchestra
28. The Little Hacienda (Arno Steinberg) - Orchestra Raphaele, cond. Peter Walden
29. Perky Flute (Earl Ward) - The International Studio Orchestra
30. The Glass Triangle (Pierre Arvay) - The Pierre Arvay Orchestra
31. Mr Pickwick (Syd Dale) - The Group 10 Players
32. The Muffin Man (Trad. arr Smith, Chilton and Naiff) - Projection

CD2

1. Superstar (A) (Keith Mansfield)
2. Butterfly 1 (Johnny Pearson) - The Bruton Light Orchestra
3. Spacefree (Memo Kurt)
4. A Boy and a Girl (Johnny Douglas) - The Anthony Mawer Orchestra
5. Heroes (Acock, Bunker, Edwards, Giltrap) - The Gordon Giltrap Band
6. Laurel Canyon Backstep (i) (Guarino, Sandberg) - Polson Pickers
7. All The Good Times (B) (Keith Mansfield)
8. Dot’s (Martin Kershaw) - The Bruton Players
9. Electronic Toccata (Monica Beale)
10. Taste for Living (John Fiddy) - The European Sound Stage Orchestra
11. Jazz Prelude (Brian Bennett, Cliff Hall) - The Brian Bennett Group
12. Looking Forward (A) (Nick Glennie-Smith)
13. Family Affair (John Scott) - The Bruton Players
14. Pennyweight (Kevin Peek)
15. Colour Supplement (Dave Lawson) - The Bruton Beat
16. Those Sparkling Eyes (David Snell) - The David Snell Quartet
17. Winners (Trevor Bastow) - The Bruton Beat
18. Sunny Day (Trevor Jones)
19. Sherwood Forest (Alan Parker)
20. Sunday in the City (Ray Davies)
21. Motivation (Andy Clark)
22. Flirtation (Peter Morris) - The Bruton Players
23. Prelude (Kathleen Crees)
24. Charisma (Anthony Mawer) - Michelangelo
25. Airedale Curry (Geoff Bastow)
26. Country Squire (Darryl Way) - The International Studio Orchestra
27. Soul Machine (Baker, Morgan) - The Bruton Beat
28. Rose Petals (Kevin Peek)
29. Lots of Fun (Louis Clark) - The Bruton Players
30. Captain Quirk (Memo Kurt)

Available here.
Reviews of other WHR releases:

Girl In A Suitcase
Natural Born Fillers

A Christmas Carol (2010/11 play, Trafalgar Studios London)

Play about a miserable old skinflint who hates Christmas until four ghosts convince him to have a go at being nice for a change.

What's that? You say you've heard this story before? Oh no you haven't - take a leaf out of Scrooge's book and cut author Charles Dickens some slack here, even if he does tend to get away with churning out the same dozen plots again and again these days.

Page 12 of the show's programme discusses the audience's familiarity with such an iconic tale far better than I can:

"Had Charles Dickens met his own Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, would he have been pleased or horrified to learn how often and under how many guises A Christmas Carol would be re-told each winter?

It is not surprising that A Christmas Carol is hugely appealing to today's audience - it is set in a far-gone era; it has ghosts and time travel; it is a horror and a drama with a happy ending - something for all. And though Ebenezer Scrooge is not a character we ever want to resemble, there are moments when we are likely to identify with him. Ultimately, Scrooge's story preys on a common fear - what regrets might we, each one of us, have on our deathbeds?"

Bearing in mind that I've never read the original book, this production includes all the elements that I've come to expect of the story (barring muppets) in a suitably imaginative and surreal way.

I do hope that humbugs were available in the foyer.

The Dukes Of Hazzard (2005 film)

Mistifyingly bawdy, cuss-filled remake of the well-loved family-friendly TV show.

If you can ignore those two elements then the rest of this is rather fun, and the most fun is to be found in the friendship of Seann William Scott and Johnny Knoxville as Bo and Luke Duke respectively.

The TV show used to go out on Monday nights in the UK when I was a kid, with the result that I would only ever catch the end of each edition due to going swimming that night. After actually watching a whole episode in Canada in '96, I formed the opinion that this had been a fortuitous way to see the series, figuring that the car chase at the end was what it was really all about.

In that respect, this movie certainly doesn't disappoint. The final act is an adrenaline-fuelled tour de force, even giving 1997's Dukes Of Hazzard: Reunion! movie a run for its money.

Available here.

Uno Of The Daleks

The problem with Uno is that it's already a great card game, so adding a twist to the popular format always runs the risk of subtracting from its enjoyment, rather than enhancing it.

Tonight, still suffering from our defeat at Elmo's hands when playing Uno Spin recently, Herschel and I made the mistake of trying this version out as a two-hander.

I say mistake because it really needs at least three players.

This is because as well as the excellent ornamental box and slightly harder to distinguish picture-cards, the real spin in this version is the inclusion of four Exterminate Cards. These require the player with the fewest cards remaining to pick up four more. In a two-player match, about half the time they're the same as a regular Pick Up Four Card. The other half of the time the victim is yourself. It's a shrewd way of making it slightly tougher to win a game, especially since you don't really want to call Uno only to then force yourself to pick up four more cards.

I personally think the Dalek card should have impaired the player's vision so that they could not see their hand, and had to play it blind for a round, but that's just me.

Although I enjoyed this, I guess I'm still a purist, on both counts.

Horton Hears A Who (movie)

This fun movie's dizzyingly high USP is testament to the tale's origins in another media, specifically the well-known Dr Seuss book. Hollywood could never have green-lit this great idea all by itself.

Using his enormous ears, Horton the elephant perceives a slight noise emanating from a tiny speck on a flower. Living on the speck is an entire race of microscopic beings - the Whos of the title - whose fragile existence is at the mercy of events in Horton's comparatively ginormous jungle.

The agenda behind this production is admirable - to broaden its audience's imaginations and sweeten the lesson with plenty of fun along the way. Enter Jim Carrey and Steve Carell as the two leads, almost reunited from Bruce Almighty, and both playing loopy eccentrics in danger of ostracisation from their respective societies for believing in another world which cannot be seen.

This is a pretty effective metaphor for treating those of unfamiliar beliefs in our own world with humility and reconciliation. Religious tolerance is an obvious one, but I reckon the lesson applies to those with less popular convictions too, such as belief in ghosts or aliens for example.

Although the film encourages the viewer to think, it paradoxically also punishes this attitude, as again and again violent events in Horton's jungleverse fail to have any impact on the Whos whatsoever. Just how many times does he stumble and fall around whilst holding that flower, without causing any earthquakes?

Another scene features Horton inadvertently destroying a bridge behind him as he crosses a wide gorge, even though many characters later follow him across off-camera with no problems.

Though I found it took a little getting into, there are enough ideas and inspired lunacy in here (the manga sequence!) to make this one very fun movie by the end, even if Channel 4 did speed-up the closing credits, without doing the same to the characters' dialogue.

And then they squashed the picture by 50% because, y'know, they just had to trail the upcoming Annie, 100 Greatest Toys with Jonathan Ross and Come Dine With Me, the first two of which weren't even scheduled until the following day.

Come on Channel 4, learn from the film, these movie characters are supposed to be real too.

Available here.

Test Card Classics 2 - Big Band Width

A second CD selection from the diverse archives of the BBC Test Card.

While the range of styles here varies from big band to pseudo-Cuban, the majority of these tracks are inspiringly lively and upbeat. Many feature a comical element, such as Frank Valdor's track 21 Hallelujah, Honey, which is a chirpy, yet also slightly drunken, interpretation of the traditional hymn Hallelujah.

That's followed shortly (no pun intended) by track 24 - Walking On The Shore, which has to be the mellowest melody I've ever heard. It's perhaps no surprise that, upon skipping through this CD a week later to write this review (Jan 13th here), I zoned-out at the start of this track and only returned to self-awareness at the end. It's that chilled.

29 - Jeff's Special - is presumably named after composer and orchester Jeff Hasky, and is another sprightly and fast number to approach the end of the disc with.

All in all, another top compilation from Lucy Reeve and Tony Currie of Chandos Records. Though I didn't find each track quite so distinctive as on the first CD, I reckon the consistent jolliness makes this volume the superior one.

Downer that there's no noughts and crosses game to root for on the cover though.

Available to sample and buy here.

popshopping 2 - more music from german commercials 1962-1977

Fancy a cosy night in with your loved one? Then why not invite them over and pop on another CD collection of German advertising music from the middle of the last century?

Dream of your idyllic future life together to the groovy score for a documentary about the exciting Krupp factory. (they produce ammunition)

Plan the perfect holiday together, to Schäfer, Richter and Hoffman's roving London Look, and then abandon it because this version of London sounds like it's populated by empty-headed zombies.

Lose yourselves in the needle crackle, narrow dynamic range and nostalgic distortion that is inherent in the recovery of some of these archive recordings from decomposing master tapes and biro-indented flexi discs.

But most of all, stay safe you kids, and pay close attention to the final advertising number for 1971's sex-educational magazine Jasmin. Or don't. Sure, "Da da da" probably just translates into English as "La la la", but in some parts of Europe it can mean "Yes yes yes", so maybe you'd best just switch off before you get to that one.

Other tracks of note include the time-dilating Zigarillo. Since I presented the full lyrics to Moulinex in my review of volume one, I'm tempted to provide the same service for this song, but I think you can guess them.

A more interesting one to examine closer is track 7 - Wenn der Teekessel singt. This is a cover-version of Cat Stevens' iconic Father and Son, yet here its title translates literally as If The Kettle Is Singing. So instead of "Find a girl, settle down" etc., we get

"Wenn der Teekessel singt,
Und der Gold Teefix duftet,
Hat manns gut,
Hat manns gut,
Ja dann hat manns wirklich gut."

According to Google Translate, this roughly means:

"If the kettle is singing,
And the Gold Teefix smells,
Has man's good,
Added man's good,
Yes it's really good."

Well I can't argue with that.

Another jammy translation is the lawyer-avoiding Der Mann met der goldenen Hand. Obviously a James Bond evocation, yet with much of it played on a distant horn, conjuring up the image of a single sombreroed Mexican enthusiastically performing Goldfinger atop a sandy hill somewhere in the desert.

Like the preceding volume, this indecipherable (unless you speak the obscure language of 'German') lounge collection offers an hour of optimistic joy. It's sublime, and transported me back to a time I don't remember in a place that I've never been to. I mean how can anyone not want to listen to a track that calls itself the "Shoe Shoe Twist"?

Highly recommended. And remember - Happy Meeting!

Track listing:

1. Olivin (Peter Schirmann,1969) - Olivin
2. Zigarillo (Botho Lucas / Ericht Becht, 1972) Interpret: Botho Lucas Singers und die Sound Masters - Dannemann
3. Exposition K'71 (Hermann Gehlen, 1971) Interpret: The Brass'n Beatmachine Hermann Gehlen - VHS Düsseldorf Kunststoffmesse K'71
4. Miss Fenjala (Claudio Szenkar, 1974) - Johnson & Johnson
5. Sorry Doc (Hartmut Kiesewetter, 1971) Interpret: Hardy's Jet Band - Wochenend
6. BMW - (Peter Schirmann, 1970) - BMW
7. Wenn der Teekessel singt (Cat Stevens, 1977) Interpret: Oliver Peters - Teekanne
8. Super-Nowa-Jingles (Charles Nowa, 1965-1975)
9. London Look (Schäfer / Richter / Hoffman, 1967) - Yardley
10. Wollsiegel Party (Max Meier-Maletz, 1970) Orchester Udo Gerlach - Wollsiegel
11. Die deutschen Bullen - die Kraft und der Fortschritt (unknown, 1969) - Magirus Deutz
12. Der Mann mit der goldenen Hand (Charles Nowa, 1970) - Trompete: Horst Fischer - Edeka
13. Edelkakao Cha Cha (Wolfgang Dauner, 1964) - Stollwerck
14. Frucade Hit (Hartmut Kiesewetter, 1971) Interpret: Hardy's Jet Band - Frucade Limonade
15. Das neue Haus - Hauptthema (Martin Böttcher, 1968) - Gerling-Konzern
16. Shoe Shoe twist (Fischer / Maltz, 1962) - Servas Schuhe
17. Opening (Johnny Teupen, 1972) - Olympiade 72
18. Sabaphon TK 125 (Wolfgang Dauner, 1964) - Saba
19. Olivin 2 (Peter Schirmann, 1969) - Olivin
20. Go to Rallye - (Harald Rosenstein / Claudio Szenkar, 1974) - Library Jingles
21. Widia Sound '70 (Martin Böttcher, 1970) - Krupp
22. The World's Over (Ralf Heninger, 1970) - International Partners
23. Happy Meeting (unknown, 1972) - Messe Frankfurt
24. Aral - den Fortschritt nutzen (Peter Thomas, 1971) - Aral
25. Island of my Dreams (Hartmut Kiesewetter, 1975) - Quelle
26. Lux International (Charles Nowa, 1968) - Lux
27. Jasmin (Peter Schirmann, 1971) - Jasmin

Available to sample here and buy here.