Tomorrow at 6:30pm at the Alamo Drafthouse Mason Park I'm hosting the Badass 101 screening of Paul Verhoeven's Robocop with Robocop himself in attendance! Would you buy that for a dollar? (Tickets are actually $9).
Remember - all prints in the Badass 101 series are always 35mm!
The deal:
The world is getting soft. We are getting soft. As civilization slowly marches towards a future full of politically correct, health food conscious, light beer sipping emotional marshmallows that don't know how to take a punch, it is becoming evident that we, as a society, need to relearn how to be a badass. The Alamo Drafthouse is here to help with a new monthly series at Mason Park dedicated to teaching the art of badassery.
Every month, we’ll screen a film that has proven itself to be badass. Screened from a 35mm print, these movies are the cinematic equivalent of wearing sunglasses, a leather jacket and chewing on a toothpick. In conjunction with each month's screening, we will host a special guest from the community as they teach the audience a badass technique. If humanity is to survive long enough into the future to enjoy flying cars and colonies on Mars, we are going to need to learn how to toughen up. Starting this May, class in in session — one movie at a time.
Lately there has been a glut of superhero movies hitting the big screen. It's hard to swing a dead cat without hitting a comic book fanatic who is eagerly awaiting the big screen debut of a favorite four-color hero. The '80s, though, were a different time. In a decade known for excess, comic book fans faced a clear drought of superhero movies.All was not bleak, though. A select few films burned brightly in the night sky like a Batsignal, heralding the arrival of a new breed of hero. Most of them didn't even wear masks. Heroes like John McClane or Martin Riggs understood what it took to fight the war on both drugs and evil Europeans alike.
One hero, though, stood out from the rest. This was a hero that knew sometimes the only way to stop a bad guy was to dip him in acid and run over him with a car. This hero, of course, was part man, part machine and all cop.
A movie very much of its time, 1987's RoboCop combined explosions and satire in the story of a Detroit cop, Murphy, who is gunned down only to be reborn as the iPhone of law enforcement officers. Celebrate the 25th anniversary of ROBOCOP with a 35mm screening featuring a robotics expert on hand to answer your questions regarding our impending cybernetic masters.
Come and see me! Get tix here.