GTA Online - The Warriors

The Warriors is one of my favorite movies ever, so any time I stumble across something celebrating the movie I always excited.  The video below was made by the Youtube channel GTA Series Videos. They used Grand Theft Auto Online to recreate the intro, ending, and a number of memorable scenes from the movie.  It is a fantastic job and I can't imagine how long it must have taken.

Obviously some of the likenesses are off, but I don't think GTA Online has that many 70's hair styles loaded into it.  My only real complaint is they used some of the crappy director's cut material.  The video is amazing though and is really worth the 8+ minutes it takes to watch it.  It makes me want to both watch the Warriors again and give GTA Online a try.

Warriors Autographs

Yesterday I spent some time talking about one of my favorite movies, The Warriors.  I also showed off my collection of Warriors figures.  That battle scene is happening safely on the bottom shelf in a Detolf cabinet for everyone to see.  Some of the other Warriors items in my collection are waiting for me to figure out a place for them.  The item I’m showing off today is one of those things. 

 

 

A few years ago the FX convention in Orlando had a mini-Warriors reunion.  I wasn’t planning on getting four autographs that day; I was there for Deborah Van Valkenburgh and David Harris.  When I arrived at the convention I discovered how hard that would be.  All four actors were sitting at two tables pushed together.  It wasn’t exactly a busy table either; I had plenty of time to talk with everyone.  So my photo and two autographs turned into a photo and four autographs.  In hindsight I’m very happy it happened that way.  All of the actors were extremely kind to me and I got to spend quite a bit of time talking to them. 

I haven’t framed the photo yet.  While I have Mercy, Cochise, Snow, and Vermin’s autographs I’m still hoping that I’ll run into Michael Beck (Swan) and Tom McKitterick (Cowboy) at a convention somewhere.  Sadly Marcelino Sanchez (Rembrandt) passed away in 1986.  James Remar isn’t even in this picture, but he’s done so many other things I figured I’d never end up being able to get his autograph anyway. 

The Warriors versus the Furies

I was lucky enough to see one of my favorite movies on the big screen at the end of August.   I was alive during 1979 but considering I was three I don’t think I had many chances to get to the theater and check out movies about gang violence.  I know I fell in love with by watching it on HBO as a kid.  Over the years I’ve picked up a few different pieces of Warriors related memorabilia that I wanted to share.

 

First up are the Mezco Warriors figures.  Mezco released two different lines of figures.  The first set were 10 inch figures that looked a little cartoonish.  Each figure came in a dirty and clean variant.  The figures available were Cleon, Swan, Cochise, Ajax, Luther, and the Baseball Furies.  There were multiple versions of the Furies, mostly just changing their facepaint.  I regret not picking up the Cochise at the time, but I didn’t mind skipping Cleon and Luther.  What I really wanted was a Snow and Cowboy to finish out the Furies battle scene.

Instead of continuing the line Mezco followed that up with a line of 9 inch figures.  They looked far more realistic, had better articulation, and actual cloth clothing.  There were two Furies, Cyrus, Sully (The Orphans leader), Swan, and Ajax.  These are really nice looking figures.  When they were released I was too angry to purchase them.  I had already bought 5 Baseball furies and 2 Warriors, I wanted them to finish out the first line instead of launching a new one. 

The Warriors

Today we’re going to talk about one of my favorite movies ever, The Warriors.  It all started with a workplace discussion on movie remakes when I complained that since VHS/DVD/Blu-ray that it’s rare for movies to be re-released anymore.  I didn’t want to see someone else make their version of a movie I loved; I want to see the movie I loved in a theater setting.  It was after saying that I remembered one of the independent theaters in my area did rescreen classic movies and they put up their schedule months in advance.  So way back in June I saw that on August 27^th I saw the Enzian Theater was showing The Warriors.  I didn’t wait, I didn’t see who else could go with me, I bought four tickets immediately.

I’d never seen the movie in a theater.  My first introduction to the movie was through HBO.  The film print was grainy and scratchy but that just seemed to add to the whole experience.  The theater was sold out, so I wasn’t the only one excited to see the movie.  Before the movie started there was a small talk about the other movies coming to their cult classic showings and then some basic trivia about The Warriors.  I won't really go into the movie itself, there is a lot about it I want to say and sadly I don't have the time to do that today.

I couldn’t even begin to guess at how many times I’ve seen this movie.  Besides the countless times I’ve seen it on television, there was a long period of my life without cable.  I watched a lot of DVDs then and The Warriors was one of the movies that was always in my rotation.  It was different last night.  Sharing the experience with people was amazing.  Seeing the movie’s surreal characters on the giant screen just made me happier than I can really express. 

If you haven’t seen the movie the movie I want to give a quick word of warning.  There are two versions of the movie out; the original version and the Ultimate Director’s Cut.  Stay as far away from the Director’s Cut as you can.  That version adds horrible zooms and freezes in addition to changing some scenes into comic book panels complete with thought bubbles.  The additions slow down the movie and actually break the tension in most scenes. 

Warriors and Ramones

A friend sent me this picture a very long time ago and that still gets a smile from me every time I look at it.  The Warriors is probably my favorite movie ever made, I’ve seen it a lot.  The Ramones have been very important to my life for very long time.  I was lucky enough to see them play a handful of times, but I wish I had gotten to see them at least one more time.

 
The art work was done by Nathan Stapley; you can find more of his artwork at nathanstapley.com.