Shot On Site - A To Z / Laverne & Shirley California Apartment
By Paul Rudoff on Feb. 16, 2015 at 8:31 PM in Filming Locations
At the beginning of Laverne & Shirley's sixth season in 1980, the ladies leave Milwaukee for the warmer weather of Burbank, California. They are seen moving into an apartment building that was supposedly located at 113 1/2 Laurel Vista Drive.
Shot On Site - Mulaney Apartment Building
By Paul Rudoff on Feb. 12, 2015 at 8:30 PM in Filming Locations
For the 2014-2015 television season, Fox premiered a show called Mulaney based on the stand-up routines of its star and creator, John Mulaney. Although the show is still airing as I write this, I doubt that it will last past the season. I stopped watching after the first five episodes, but not before I could identify the location of the apartment building Mulaney and his friends live in.
Shot On Site - Crash and Bernstein John Marshall High School
By Paul Rudoff on Feb. 9, 2015 at 8:29 PM in Filming Locations
Here I am again with the (should be) final Shot on Site article about the Disney XD series "Crash & Bernstein". This one is about a location that has appeared in so many different movies and TV shows, that I recognized it as soon as I saw it.
Shot On Site - East Pavilion Hospital Stock Footage
By Paul Rudoff on Feb. 5, 2015 at 8:28 PM in Filming Locations
Today's Shot on Site article will be a little different than the rest. Instead of focusing on a TV show or movie and ID'ing the locations used within, I will be writing about a piece of stock footage I've seen in a few different shows.
Shot On Site - Crash and Bernstein Pizzeria
By Paul Rudoff on Feb. 2, 2015 at 8:27 PM in Filming Locations
Here I am again with another Shot on Site article about the Disney XD series "Crash & Bernstein". This one is about a one-off location that, to my knowledge, only appeared in one episode.
Shot On Site - I Didn't Do It Rumble Juice
By Paul Rudoff on Jan. 29, 2015 at 8:25 PM in Filming Locations
The gang on the Disney Channel series I Didn't Do It hangs out at a juice bar called "Rumble Juice". Every time I watch an episode and they show a shot of the place (which I believe to be stock footage), I keep wanting to know where it is in real life.
Shot On Site - Crash and Bernstein Apartment Building
By Paul Rudoff on Jan. 26, 2015 at 8:24 PM in Filming Locations
Okay, so for my second Shot on Site article here, I will, again, be writing about a kid's show. Specifically, the Disney XD series "Crash & Bernstein". My next few SOS articles will be about this show because I already have the images ready for it.
Shot On Site - Girl Meets World Nighthawk Diner
By Paul Rudoff on Jan. 19, 2015 at 8:20 PM in Filming Locations
On Spook Central, I have a series of Shot On Site articles detailing Ghostbusters filming locations and how I, or others, were able to identify them. I like working on those articles, but the amount of Ghostbusters filming locations left to identify is very slim, and likely unidentifiable. So, the only way to continue the fun is to write articles about non-Ghostbusters filming locations. That's what I will be doing from time to time on this blog/site. The locations will be rather random. If I watch a movie or TV show, and I see a location that I'm able to identify, then I'll write about it. Sometimes it'll be a kids show, sometimes it'll be something for the adults...there'll be no rhyme or reason as to what I choose to write about, other then it being something I was able to identify and had fun doing so.
Welcome To The New Blog / Beetlejuice Ghost Guide
By Paul Rudoff on Oct. 31, 2014 at 5:09 PM in Miscellaneous
Okay, okay, maybe that's overstating things just a little bit. In any case, welcome to The Corner Penthouse, my new site/blog where I will post articles and insights on topics that are NOT Ghostbusters-related. Since August 1996, I've run the Ghostbusters fansite Spook Central. Occasionally, I've snuck some non-Ghostbusters items on there, but the plans I have would be TOO non-Ghostbusters to use there. I've become quite interested in identifying filming locations in TV shows and movies I watch, so the majority of stuff I have for this second site/blog will be stuff like that. I've identified WAY too many sites to use on Spook Central, and it's not a suitable project for The Corner Penthouse Facebook page, so I had to create a new site just to have a place for it.
You may notice that, even though this is a welcome post, it's not the first post here. I have decided to move all of the reviews and articles I've written on other sites over the past 15 years. I want to have all of my work in one place.
I'm opening this site on Halloween not with a filming location article, but with a rare Beetlejuice promo booklet eBook download. Back when I was in grade school in the 1980s, I acquired the "Beetlejuice: Beginner's Guide To Seeing Ghosts" theatrical promo booklet. I'm quite positive that this was given out to moviegoers at the first public screenings of Beetlejuice back in 1988. Before I sold it, I scanned it in so I could retain a digital copy, and archive it for future generations (something I do with vintage out-of-print Ghostbusters book as part of Spook Central's arm of the Ghostbusters PDF eBook Preservation Project). So, without further ado, click on the cover image to download the 2.8 Mb file. Thanks to Matthew Jordan (Spook Central and Ghostbusters Wiki staff member) for cleaning up the images.
By the way, the PDF has a Spook Central credits page because I'm too lazy to create a new one for this site.
No Holds Barred Blu-Ray Review
By Paul Rudoff on Apr. 20, 2014 at 12:00 PM in Home Video
Blu-Ray Has Better Extras, But They Replaced Hulk's "Real American" Music In Them!!!
When WWE finally released the Hulk Hogan/Tiny Lister flick "No Holds Barred" on DVD in 2012, I was overjoyed. Not because it's a good movie - far from it - but because it has special sentimental childhood value to me, so it was a film I wanted to have as part of my current video library (I had previously owned it on VHS and laserdisc). When that disc came out, two things I wondered about were (1) Why was there no simultaneous Blu-ray release?, and (2) Why does the DVD not include the tie-in wrestling matches and other promotional materials that WWE has in their massive tape library? The only extra on the DVD is a photo gallery. I put off buying the DVD for over a year because it wasn't worth the price being charged for so little content.
A few weeks ago, when I read that the film had just been released on Blu-ray, and with TWO of the tie-in wrestling matches, I was again overjoyed. I could finally have it on Blu-ray AND have TWO of the tie-in wrestling matches. (I don't remember if there were any more tie-in wrestling matches, though Tiny Lister DID appear in WCW as Z-Gangsta, so that's somewhat related.) The two bonus tie-in wrestling matches included are:
• Summerslam Match (8/28/1989, 29:51) - Zeus & "Macho Man" Randy Savage with Sensational Sherri vs. Hulk Hogan & Brutus Beefcake with Miss Elizabeth.
• "No Holds Barred" Steel Cage Match (12/27/1989, 18:12) - Zeus & "Macho Man" Randy Savage with Sensational Sherri vs. Hulk Hogan & Brutus Beefcake.
My heart absolutely sank when I played these matches and heard the most atrocious audio abomination playing in place of Hulk Hogan's classic "Real American" theme song. Yes, the song that defines the Hulk Hogan character has been replaced with music that not only doesn't sound even remotely close to "Real American", but is pure torture to listen to. Because - SPOILER ALERT - Hulk's team wins both matches, you are forced to hear this audio abomination at the beginning AND end of each match. What I don't understand is WHY "Real American" was replaced. It's been used on many WWE DVDs, such as those devoted to Hogan. I *think* WWE might have even bought the music, or at least the perpetual rights to it (though I could be wrong about that).
Offhand, it seems that Howard Finkel might have re-recorded his ring intro for Hulk so that the music could be replaced. I'm sure about this on the second match, where there is no commentary heard at all during the replacement music. Since that seems odd, I'd bet WWE doesn't have the commentary on a separate track, so they just had to cut out all of the commentary that was originally heard under "Real American".
Kurt Fuller (Hardemeyer in Ghostbusters II) and Hulk Hogan
The other bonus feature on the Blu-ray is the photo gallery that was on the DVD, except all images are shown in the full HD widescreen and are not framed into tiny boxes like on the DVD (the tradeoff is that the very top and bottom of the images is cut off on the Blu-ray). There are a total of 42 images on the Blu-ray. The DVD has one more image; the 26th image showing Rip by Randy's hospital bed. I have a feeling that this image was accidentally left off the Blu-ray as I see no reason for it to have been purposely removed.
The movie itself appears to be the same as on the DVD (I didn't compare them). Both have the New Line Cinema logo replaced with the WWE Studios logo at the start. The Blu-ray ends after the credits fade out, while the DVD shows a blue PG-13 rating screen after the credits. The movie runs 1:32:43 and contains 12 chapters.
The DVD has boot-up ads for WWE Home Video, ECW Unreleased Vol. 1, and Bending The Rules (movie with Edge and Jamie Kennedy). The Blu-ray doesn't have the first two, but has the last one and SEVEN MORE trailers shown at boot-up for all of the other WWE-produced movies. You have to click "next" on your remote to skip through all of the them (you can't jump straight to the menu). That's really annoying.
Overall, the Blu-ray is a vast improvement over the DVD, but falls short of what *could* have been - especially with the replacement of Hulk's "Real American" theme music.