Movies from the 1980s that anyone born after 1990 needs to watch

Hello all

In my part time job at the Lord Ted, I work with a lot of people were born in the latter half of the 1990s, meaning that by the time that they reached an age where they can remember stuff, they had virtually no chance of watch or hearing of. So below are five movies from the 1980s that won't be well known by the younger generation that I would highly recommend.

Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989)

Long before before he was Neo in The Matrix, Keanu Reeves was part of a film about two high school slackers who are about to fail their history class. They make a half-arsed attempt at their last report before a person from the future comes and tells them that they eventually form a band that brings world peace, however, they must pass their history class to do it was Reeves' character will be sent to military school if they fail.

They use a telephone booth to travel through time and gather various famous figures from history, such as Billy the Kid, Socrates, Abraham Lincoln, Sigmund Freud and various others. Various problems occur along the way, such as having part of their booth destroyed by a member of Ghengis Khan's army, and they struggle to deal with it due to their slacker nature.

This is a fun movie and definitely the type that you don't get these days. It's 90 or so minutes of fun. It was so successful that a sequel came out in the early 90s, although the lacked some of the charm of the original and had a much, much darker tone, including being killed by clones and having to fight their way through the after life in order to save their girlfriends.

There is also talks of a third film coming out soon, but given that Reeves and co-star Alex Winter have gone on to have significantly different careers, it'd be surprisingly if it does ever come out.

Spaceballs (1987)

Arguably the biggest films of the 1980s were the second and third installments of the original Star Wars trilogy, but they were far from immune from the Mel Brooks treatment. Mel Brooks was one of the main spoof directors of the 80s and 90s and his legacy ranged from westerns to Robin Hood, however, this spoof of Star Wars is probably the best of the lot.

The story is that the people from the planet Spaceball are running out of oxygen and have decided to steal their air from a nearby planet. Meanwhile, on the nearby planet, a princess is getting married but runs out on her groom and the king hires a guy called Lonestar to track her down, eventually the two stories meet and Lonestar tries to prevent Dark Helmet (the leader of the Spaceball army) from executing the plan.

Spaceballs is one of those great films where you can just sit back and enjoy, it takes no thinking power whatsoever and it's just fun, a thing that a lot of movies of today have forgot about. I guarantee you will laugh and if you're not a big Star Wars fan, you will find this brilliant.

Willow (1988)

My favourite film comes from the 1980s. I love this film.

The storyline is about a baby that is destined to kill a witch who controls the land. The baby ends up in a village of Nelwyns (basically midgets) and in particular, Willow (played by Warrick Davis). He and several others set off on a trip to find the nearest Dikini (normal sized humans)  but ends up staying with the baby even after they find someone who agrees to take her....Madmartigan. What follows is the struggle that the good guys have against the witch's army, as well as the desperation to protect this baby.

The film revolutionised morphing technology and was a true pioneering film of the industry. I love this movie as it has pretty much everything, action, adventure, comedy, drama, war, romance, horror, everything is rolled into this film and it fits the bill regardless of what mood you are in.

Unfortunately Willow didn't do that well at the box office and that's why many people from the younger generation haven't heard of this film, other than from myself probably. It was the first film featuring Val Kilmer as the lead actor, and also Warwick Davis' first appearance on a film where he wasn't covered in prosthetics or heavy, heavy make up.

Krull (1983)

Krull is a film from the 1980s that I doubt many from the 80s will remember or even heard of. I can't even

remember when I first saw this film but all around, it was quite a good film.

The story is about a prince and princess are set to wed on an alien planet before a destructive alien race kidnaps the princess. The prince then goes on an adventure with a vast array of different characters, such as a wizard, a cyclops, a magician and various bandits. Throughout it all their journey to the ever-moving castle, they have to deal with the powers of the alien leader taking over various members of them, their struggles as members of their team are regularly killed and the various personal difficulties throughout.

In what was a largely unknown cast at the time, it contained several people who would become very well known actors in holiday, such as Liam Neeson, Robbie Coltrane and Alun Armstrong.

Much like Willow this film had a lot of different elements to it, with the exception of comedy, and again is a good all around romp. It's slow paced though with a lot of time dedicated to character development.

Masters of the Universe (1987)

Basically "He Man" the movie was a film I had largely forgotten about until I found it recently on Youtube.

The story for this is that a key that can open doors to any world has been sent to Earth accidentally and the evil Skeletor wants it, however, He-Man and his team try to defend Earth and the key. Meanwhile, a young couple are dealing with their personal difficulties and the two storylines mix, making He-Man's task all the more difficult.

He man is a film that doesn't take itself too serious, whilst not actually being a comedy. If you like a good old sci-fi romp with some terrible acting then this is the film for you. It has it's moments throughout and whilst not a brilliant film, it's certainly not a boring one.

If you've got about 2 hours to kill then I would recommend this film. Again, you will think at several points that it is a bit rubbish, it's certainly not one for the awards categories, but again, it's a good laugh and for a non-comedy film, it does have it's moments again, although nothing I can personally point out.

New chapters, my face and a girl from Norway

Hello all

I trust everyone is well?

Firstly, a song for you all to enjoy. I know, I'm generous aren't I?

Well it's been an interesting few days to say the least. To cut a long story short I got a new job, yay me. After four years of working for Vodafone, I got offered a job at British Telecommunications and I accepted. Not only is it a new chapter in terms of job, but in terms of location. The BT centre is located in Accrington, over 100 miles away, meaning that I will be moving to the area and it's the first time in my life that I will be living outside of the East Midlands, so just that on it's own is a scary prospect, but it's a good kind of scary. I could sit here and whine and bitch about my time at Vodafone, and believe me, part of me really wants to, but I won't.

Accrington - One of a few places to choose from.

It will be nice to live in an area where no-one knows me, it's effectively a clean slate. No-one there knew me as Nathan and therefore very few people could refer back to stuff I use to do and question it. I have wanted to get a new life for a while and whilst I wouldn't necessarily have chosen Lancashire, it's a good place to start relatively.

There are a few places of where to choose to live, I could choose the easy option and say Accrington, but I've been to Accrington many times and there isn't a lot to do. Nearby are also Preston, Burnley and Blackburn, which the latter of the three being the most likely choice and I do have some views of houses booked for in the near future.

Then we get onto the gender change. Things are moving slowly in terms of physical changes, however, I am told that hormones really start to kick in after a year, so I won't worry about it until it reaches December, which will be a year on hormones. I'm really struggling with the voice therapy and after three sessions I am no closer to having a feminine voice than before I started, which is frustrating. It's not that I can't get my voice to a higher pitch, but the difficulty is proving to be getting it like that whilst still breathing normally. I can't really stress enough how difficult it is.

My face continues to show no development so on Friday I went to a facial surgery consultation in London and the real life simulations were interesting. I don't think that I looked that different but it's something to consider and as they say, every little helps....whether I will be able to afford it or not is another matter, however, as I will be getting paid considerably more at BT than I was at Vodafone, that will certainly help.

Miriam's before/after shots
Taken from http://www.thehiddenwoman.com/

However, the most memorable part of the trip came afterwards, I had time to kill so ended up talking to two women called Jenny and Miriam, the latter of which had been through the facial survey herself and I was absolutely amazed, I would never have guessed that she was trans. After seeing her before/after pictures, I was convinced that FFS was a good thing to be considering, and if I can financially commit then I'm going to go for it, although I don't know how much it will cost at this point (a lot I imagine).

As you can tell from the pictures on the right, Miriam's facial transformation as a result of the surgery was absolutely incredible. I am still struggling to believe it now.

But yeah, anyway, I spoke to Jenny and Miriam for a while and it was the first time that I have had felt like I have had a genuine connections with new people that I have met, it feels quite strange in many ways, but all of them good.

I stayed for three hours after my appointment just talking and what we have established is that I have been mispronouncing Tromso for many years (apparently it's not said like it's spelt), that at some point I will go over to Norway and Miriam will teach me how to snowboard, I will take her to a Manchester United game at some point....and I owe her a drink.

I must say that although I am nervous, I am really looking forward to the new parts of my life.

Reasons I hate London

Hello all

Today I went to London and it was one of the most incensing trips to our capital that I think I've ever had. Why the fuck people would ever holiday in London, I will never know. You go on a holiday to relax, something that is impossible in London. So, here is a list of everything I hate about London.

"Busy" queue jumpers

You're in, let's say for argument's sake, a coffee shop and there's a line, all of a sudden someone walks in and just walks straight to the counter as says "coffee, black, to take out" and when told by the staff and the queue that they have just pushed in front of that they will have to go to the back of the line, they say "I'm too busy to wait in line and am due in an urgent meeting!"

If this only happened once or twice then I wouldn't mind, but at one point a few months ago I was waiting in a Starbucks and on four occasions in the same queue, someone came in and tried to jump queue because they were "too busy" to wait.

Randomly direction changers

So you're walking behind someone and perfectly minding your business......all of a sudden the person changes direction randomly and without warning, you almost walk into them and they look at you as if it's your fault.

I know you can get this anywhere but in a 35 minute walk from Wimpole St to Kings Cross today, this happened on at least 8 occasions.

"Have a newspaper"

So, I'm in WH Smiths today, I have a bottle of water and some haribo, I get to the self service till and I scan in the water and all of a sudden the "helper" just scans in a newspaper for me.

"What are you doing?"
"It works out cheaper if you get the newspaper."
"Well how about asking me before you scan it in. I don't want the newspaper and don't care if it works out cheaper, so take that newspaper off of there now!"

He didn't have authority so had to get a team leader to do it, I told them what had happened....they weren't impressed with the person.

The amount of people in London trying to give you a newspaper is ridiculous. I could probably collect a tree's worth of paper in a day if I wanted to.

Central London - Yeah, it looks nice, but move a few miles down the road and London is not pleasent

Groups gathering

So, the path is quite narrow and it's the middle of the day, meaning that there are a lot of people about. What you don't need in this case is groups of people just hanging about in the middle of the path and forcing people to bottle neck, and much like everything else on this list, this happens a hell of a lot more in London than anywhere else and on the 35 minute walk I mentioned earlier, I had to stop four times because groups were causing bottle necks and people walking the other way weren't allowing other people through.

I have no problem with people gathering, just as long as it's not on a narrow path.

Oi, dickhead, someone is behind you.

Slow walkers in confined spaces. Enough said.

I know you go to this tube stop before me, but.......

Much like most other train systems in the world, there is an attitude of "I don't care how long you've been

waiting, I am getting on this train before you," but I have never seen it in action as much as on the Underground. Infact, on several occasions I have seen someone run past the people waiting for those to get off of the tube before getting on themselves, yes, running past them. It wasn't even busy.

The tube is a test of patience, endurance and most importantly, trying not to lose your sanity. I never willingly subject myself to it during the middle of the day and it's only in the evenings it becomes relatively tolerable, that is unless you're getting on at the first few stops on the route before it goes into central London.

"London is brilliant"

There are those that claim that London is brilliant, mostly Londoners, not, whilst the touristy bits are nice, about 90% of London is a proper shit hole. Whilst the central areas of properly nice, during my life I have visited various other areas of London where words such as "glamourous" certainly do not apply.

I'll bring this into some sort of context and base this on the assumption that "if it's on the tube routes, it's in London" and on that, I have been around the areas of Barnet, Leyton and Dagenham, amongst others, and they were all complete shitholes. I mean seriously, one of the most common lines of 2012 was "The Olympics showcases all of the brilliant bits about London" and my immediate response was "yeah, but it ignores the other 90%.

Seriously, London is, for the majority, a shithole. Like every city and town, it's has it's nice areas and it's shit areas, but nowhere that I have been to has a higher ratio of shit places to nice places.

Again, it looks nice and pleasant.....but then again so do many of the world's most dangerous plants