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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Jan 26, 2017 14:01:59 GMT -5
Wizards Dir. Ralph Bakshi Premiered February 9, 1977
If you know anything about Wizards, you know this story: in 1976, Ralph Bakshi, the legendary animator of such racially and sexually transgressive counterculture films as Fritz the Cat and Coonskin, wanted very earnestly to make “a family picture.” The resulting movie was a nightmarish, drug-fueled, post-apocalyptic nightmare with nonstop nipples and wall-to-wall Nazi imagery. It’s hard to conceive of a more total failure on Bakshi’s part; the very idea that this was meant for the whole family has become something of a running joke in film circles.
And yet, Wizards isn’t remotely the fiasco that such a reputation would suggest. I wouldn’t show it to kids, nor would I really be interested in seeking it out again, but it’s a fairly standard ‘70s fantasy, and there were things about it I really liked.
Wizards’ premise is incredibly similar to the TV series Adventure Time– two million years have passed since nuclear holocaust has annihilated modern man and all its knowledge, during which time magic has crept back into the world and everyday life has come to resemble fantasy books. The earth is divided between nations of good fairies and elves, ruled over by the ancient and somewhat dopey wizard Avatar (Bob Holt), and a still-irradiated land of mutants (read: orcs) ruled by Avatar’s technology-worshipping evil brother, Blackwolf (Steve Gravers).
After millennia of peace, Blackwolf uncovers evidence of earth’s past, particularly treasuring a copy of Triumph of the Will. Using the images of Nazi Germany to rally his mutants, Blackwolf begins rebuilding human technology to conquer world and escape the radiation. First, he creates a robot (David Proval) to assassinate Avatar. But the robot fails; instead, Avatar reprograms the robot into his helper and names it Peace. With the threat established, Avatar brings his host, the fairy princess Elinore (Jesse Wills), and the elven warrior-prince Weehawk (Richard Romanus), on a quest to defeat Blackwolf once and for all.
Wizards owes a lot to conventional fantasy, but it’s the departures I enjoy most. Instead of an everyman who inevitably becomes a Chosen One, the hero is a worldly, elderly, quite doofy wizard– he even gets a love interest in Elinore, when most characters like him are strictly asexual. And the film claims that technology is the root of all evil, but there are many times when technology saves the day, not least Avatar’s repurposing of poor, bewildered Peace; just as often, magic is a vector for evil. And while the animation isn’t nearly up to the standards of say, Disney, even Disney in the 1970s, the contrast between the overtly cartoony good guys and Blackwolf’s rotoscoped minions was far more striking than that description would suggest. At the same time, the film is very oddly paced. Just as it seems that the heroes’ journey has begun, you realize you’re halfway through an 80-minute film. If this sounds like it might be up your alley, you should check it out.
Signs This Was Made in 1977 Cabaret is referenced in a scene near the end; the kids must’ve loved that. Plus, the intermittent acid-rock score, and constant presence of nipples.
How Did It Do? With Wizards, Ralph Bakshi failed to make “a family picture.” In every other area, however, he succeeded. The film grossed $9 million against a $2 million budget and received a 61% fresh rating on RottenTomatoes. Bakshi has had no regrets about the film, and to this day hopes to make a sequel.
Next Time: Tentacles
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Jan 29, 2017 14:03:07 GMT -5
Tentacles Dir. Ovidio Assonitis (as "Oliver Hellman") Premiered February 25, 1977
As I’ve said before, making an A-list Hollywood movie takes a long time; on a good day a film will take a year and a half to go from greenlight to premiere; and accordingly that’s about as long as it takes for the big studios to try cashing in on hot new trends. But what were trends in 1977? The annual highest-grossing films of the decade up to this point were a staggeringly diverse bunch: Fiddler on the Roof, The Godfather, The Sting, Blazing Saddles, Rocky? What’s the pattern there?
Then came Jaws, released in June 1975 and almost immediately the highest-grossing film of all time. And that’s how, a year and a half later like clockwork, we started getting shit like Tentacles.
Despite being considerably shorter, Tentacles copies Jaws note for note, replacing Spielberg’s iconic shark with an octopus...that acts like a shark. As you might expect, nearly every character in the original film is incompetently reproduced here. Yet it bizarrely boasts a far more prestigious cast. Instead of cop Roy Scheider, we get reporter John Huston, and his wife is Shelley Winters. For Richard Dreyfus, substitute Bo Hopkins. Instead of Murray Hamilton, the token asshole is a construction magnate played by Henry Fonda. Curiously, there is no Robert Shaw analogue, though a cocky boater dressed exactly like Jaws’ Quint gets killed at the start, because fuck you.
The film makes no attempt whatsoever to hide the cynicism that birthed it. Tentacles was an Italian production, and despite being set and filmed in Solana Beach, California (despite all promotional material calling it “Ocean Beach”), the script crowbars as many character connections and offhand references to Italy as it can, a la “I Heart Connecticut.” The writing and direction are an achievement in wasting time; padded with unnecessary exposition, endless line repetition, and characters verbalizing every thought– indeed, any thought– that comes to mind; several scenes consisting entirely of irrelevant chatter with no bearing on the characters or plot.
The line readings, too, are strange. Many of the minor roles (read: anyone who dies) are given to Italian actors and dubbed horribly into English, but even the English speakers perform with the affectlessess of rote memorization– very Samurai Cop. And not even these desperate bids for feature length can save us from long, confusing shots of nothing in particular. In an especially memorable scene, the film intercuts between video and still photographs of boats racing and Shelley Winters talking to her grandson on the radio while, apropos of nothing, an unseen comedian performs his routine; a montage intended to usher us into the most leisurely, poorly shot action climax I have ever seen.
The most obvious problem of course is that octopuses are not scary, so the film goes to insane lengths to justify its villainy. Mr. Whitehead (Fonda) is presiding over the construction of a fancy new underwater tunnel. What possible use there could be for an underwater tunnel is not specified, except to vaguely reference environmentalism and move the plot forward, mentally enraging the titular octopus with the vibrations from its construction until it lashes out at humans and develops a taste for blood.
Unexplained is how this caused the octopus to become gigantic. The film merely presents that giant octopuses exist, that they roar (fish are also shown barking), pop shark-fin-like out of the water to leer at potential victims, and are the most fearsome creatures in the ocean– until of course the tentacled foe, which previously could tear apart entire boats, is cursorily dispatched by a pair of domesticated orcas on loan from Sea World. Speaking of orcas, this wasn’t the last Jaws ripoff of 1977, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Tentacles is bad in every way a cheap cash-in could hope to be: cynical, mindless, and hateful. Add to that confusing cinematography, blatant continuity errors, 90% filler, and the worst acting Hollywood’s elite could muster, and you already have a candidate for worst film of 1977.
Signs This Was Made in 1977 It exists.
How Did It Do? Tentacles grossed $3 million against a $750,000 budget; a technical but statistically insignificant success. It also earned an impressive-for-all-the-wrong-reasons 0% rating on RottenTomatoes. Even MGM, the studio behind Tentacles, doesn’t like it. They only released it to home video in 2004, as part of a B-movie package with Empire of the Ants, and have made no attempt to remove unlicensed copies of the film from YouTube, such as the one I saw.
Next Time: Airport '77
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Post by MarkInTexas on Jan 30, 2017 10:17:19 GMT -5
I was going to assume that Huston, Winters, Fonda and maybe even Hopkins got tons of money thrown at them, but $750,000 in 1977 is roughly $3 million today, and no $3 million film is going to get a cast like that unless it's award bait and/or a passion project for the filmmakers. So what the hell were they all doing in this movie? Blackmail?
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Feb 2, 2017 22:48:04 GMT -5
Airport '77 Dir. Jerry Jameson Premiered March 11, 1977
The Airport movies fascinate me. They fascinate me because nobody likes them, yet everyone knows about them.
Certainly Airport and its sequels benefit from being parodied by Airplane– a movie that even today gets quoted by dorky teenagers. Surely nobody under 30 would ever have heard of 21 Jump Street, a very popular TV show in its own time, if not for the sarcastic 2011 film version. And how many times in the last twenty years had you heard the name Baywatch before seeing the new trailer in front of Rogue One?
But, additionally, what if the traits that should destine these movies into the dustbin of history are precisely what’s keeping them from it? Maybe remembering them is the joke, as with pogs or the Olsen Twins.
In that spirit, I didn’t bother watching the first two Airport movies. That and not wanting to waste time (contrast with the Billy Jack films, all of which I plan to watch out of bile fascination); From what I’ve been able to tell, they’re all the same and all bad. The only things that change are the titular airport and make of airplane (not exactly models of diversity), and the entire cast except for George Kennedy, whose recurring character Joe Patroni keeps changing jobs in an illogical, arbitrary fashion, like Kirk from Gilmore Girls. Kennedy gets the last of the opening credits, a massive, screen-filling Cecil B. DeMille-type credit, but he’s only in one scene here.
The beginning of the film is massively contrived, but at least moves along; and it looks classy; it’s well-shot and features an A-list cast. A wealthy art collector (Jimmy Stewart) invites his family and various associates from Washington, DC to Fort Lauderdale on a customized 747 that would make Sara Netanyahu blush (“Signs This Review Was Written in 2017”). Along with the guests, much of the art itself is being transported to the estate on the plane, which puts its in the crosshairs of a cadre of thieves led by the plane’s own co-pilot (Robert Foxworth), who knock out the passengers with sleeping gas, hijack the plane, and fly it under the radar toward a secret location in the Caribbean. In so doing, they pass through the Bermuda Triangle, an arbitrary portion of the Atlantic Ocean which is famous for its shipwrecks because it has a name, but which air traffic control takes seriously; I know the 1970s were a superstitious decade (“hey girl, what’s your sign?”), but really?
In this effort, the plane clips the antenna of a (way, way) offshore oil rig, loses an engine, and lands at sea. Then, naturally, some boxes of cargo break the plane’s hull open and it sinks. The pressure in the plane is enough to stop it from getting crushed, but time is running out. And this is where the movie hits a brick wall. The heist plot is discarded, the story loses all momentum, and every performance turns into a dull joke, except for Jack Lemmon as the pilot, who bravely tries to find a way to signal for help and rescue the passengers, who include his star-crossed live-in girlfriend (Brenda Vaccaro).
It shouldn’t take me to tell you that Airport ’77 was an obvious ripoff of 1974’s The Poseidon Adventure, the most successful of the many ‘70s disaster films that the original Airport made possible. But it borrows more liberally from other movies in general; which isn’t clear, but you can tell that elements were randomly grabbed from other, similar works. It was very reminiscent of The Sentinel that way, but at least The Sentinel kept some semblance of pace with its randomness. The sets are impressive, the model effects less so, and the star power is wasted. Skip it.
Signs This Was Made in 1977
- The plane features a videoscreen that plays laserdiscs the size of LPs.
- The acting-challenged child characters (Anthony Battaglia and Elizabeth Cheshire) play a game of pong against their nanny (Maidie Norman). One of them wears a tiny leisure suit.
- One of the flight’s guests (Christopher Lee) is trying to stop an impending global famine arising from overpopulation, a major concern at the time that was indeed successfully averted.
- The United States Military, in full rebuilding-from-Vietnam phase, prominently features the rescue capabilities of the Navy.
Additional Notes As far as casting is concerned, the ‘70s seem to have a depressingly stacked deck. Almost every studio film so far, regardless of quality, has been stuffed with people who were already famous at the time. By the same token did we get Harvey Korman, Art Carney, and Bea Arthur in The Star Wars Holiday Special. Sometimes I fantasize about traveling back in time to a less data-driven era in filmmaking (which is, in fairness, still not a very data-driven industry) and conning my way to the top, maybe in the silent era or the ‘60s, but even fantasizing about doing that in the ‘70s is impossible.
How Did It Do? Airport ’77 grossed $30 million against a $6 million budget. It has a 40% rating on RottenTomatoes, and was nominated for two technical Academy Awards (Best Art Direction and Best Costume Design, the latter of which we will discuss in a much later review). The Airport franchise spawned one final iteration in The Concorde...Airport ’79. Considered the worst of all the Airport films, it failed to make back even its budget and concluded the series.
Next Time: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Feb 4, 2017 13:21:49 GMT -5
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh Dir. John Lounsbery and Wolfgang Reitherman 22nd entry in the Disney Animated Canon Premiered March 11, 1977
The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh was the last film in the Disney Animated Canon to feature any involvement by Walt Disney himself. You can tell.
The feature, based on A.A. Milne’s classic characters from the 1920s, was actually stitched together from a series of short films that had begun in 1966, the year Disney died. It had always been Disney’s intention to make a feature film about Winnie the Pooh, but there were too many films already in the works at that time to make it a reality. Appropriately for a company that lost such an imagination-obsessed leader (and they got really, really lost), the 1977 Pooh has a respectful, melancholy air.
Accordingly, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh doesn’t have much of a plot. The titular teddy bear (Sterling Holloway) is a good-natured if foolish character who lives in the Hundred Acre Wood where Milne’s son Christopher Robin (Bruce Reitherman, Jon Walmsley, and Timothy Turner) plays with him and other stuffed animals like fretful little Piglet (John Fiedler), overexcitable Tigger (Paul Winchell), depressed donkey Eeyore (Ralph Wright), and Kanga (Barbara Luddy) and her son Roo (Clint Howard and Dori Whitaker). Often, Pooh and the others have their own adventures with the weather and wildlife of the Wood, like the exasperated Rabbit (Junius Matthews) and pretentious Owl (Hal Smith).
The original shorts are stitched together using a very meta framing device whereby the scenes are depicted as pages in a book and the narrator (Sebastian Cabot) sometimes interacts with the characters. The sketchy animation style, which had been the company standard since 101 Dalmatians, feels more appropriate here than anywhere else, with a storybook quality and the winking appearance of the plush characters’ seams in every odd frame. The songs, all by the classic Sherman Brothers, are not only surprisingly memorable for the films of this era, but curiously evocative of a much earlier era in the company, especially “When the Rain Rain Rain Came Down” and “Heffalumps and Woozles,” the latter of which borrows thematically from “Pink Elephants on Parade” but is still very good in its own right. This was also the second Disney movie ending to make me cry (the first, believe it or not, was Wreck-It Ralph).
So yeah, not much else to say about this one except that I liked it. As compilations go, it was given a lot more care and attention to detail than any of the Warner Bros. stitchings (compare with the following year’s Bugs Bunny’s Thanksgiving Diet. Woof).
How Did It Do? Christopher Robin asks, “will you still remember me, Pooh, when I’m 100?” We do.
I was unable to find any information regarding the budget or receipts for The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. I know Disney was doing poorly in the ‘70s, so there’s that. But it certainly proved a winner with critics, earning a 92% rating on RottenTomatoes, and its commercial influence has certainly been long-lasting. Before the Disney Renaissance, Winnie the Pooh was the most recognized and most heavily marketed character in Disney Animation besides Disney’s original characters; I distinctly remember Winnie the Pooh apparel being everywhere when I was a kid.
In 2011, The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh became the second WDAS film ever to receive an official sequel, simply titled Winnie the Pooh, which was also the last of the Disney canon to employ hand-drawn animation. The first film to get a sequel, coincidentally, also came out in 1977.
And now for something completely different.
Next Time: Eraserhead
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Post by Powerthirteen on Feb 4, 2017 14:07:16 GMT -5
I have a toddler, so I have seen TMAOWP many, many, many, many times. It is ineffably charming in every way except that damned Heffalumps and Woozles song, which plays like middle-aged animators' attempt to riff on that LSD business all the young people are talking about and goes on for fucking ever. Every time it gets to that bit I surreptitiously skip to the dvd's next chapter.
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Feb 4, 2017 14:45:03 GMT -5
I am thoroughly disappointed that nobody responded to the first paragraph of my Airport review with "Don't call me Shirley."
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dLᵒ
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Post by dLᵒ on Feb 4, 2017 15:36:29 GMT -5
I am thoroughly disappointed that nobody responded to the first paragraph of my Airport review with "Don't call me Shirley." There's only one man for that job
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Post by Powerthirteen on Feb 4, 2017 16:16:39 GMT -5
I am thoroughly disappointed that nobody responded to the first paragraph of my Airport review with "Don't call me Shirley." There's only one man for that job I believe he picked today to stop sniffing glue.
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Post by ganews on Feb 4, 2017 23:37:48 GMT -5
This was also the second Disney movie ending to make me cry (the first, believe it or not, was Wreck-It Ralph). I too have eyes and a heart.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Feb 5, 2017 1:29:38 GMT -5
Airport '77 Dir. Jerry Jameson Premiered March 11, 1977
The Airport movies fascinate me. They fascinate me because nobody likes them, yet everyone knows about them. . . .
But, additionally, what if the traits that should destine these movies into the dustbin of history are precisely what’s keeping them from it? Maybe remembering them is the joke, as with pogs or the Olsen Twins.
I mean, the Olsen twins are actually quite famous fashion designers now. They even won a big prize from the CFDA a few years ago. TheRow.com So, *someone* likes them.
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Feb 5, 2017 13:28:30 GMT -5
It never dawned on me until this review that not all of them were stuffed and some were real animals.
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Feb 5, 2017 16:39:53 GMT -5
Eraserhead Dir. David Lynch Premiered March 19, 1977
With 1977, especially these early months, it has occasionally been difficult to judge some films. Eraserhead is one of them. The first of several debut features this year by some of Hollywood’s most illustrious directors, Eraserhead is easily Lynch’s weirdest film. Not that I’ve seen any of the others, my mother wouldn’t let me, but I can’t imagine anything being weirder. On a scale from 1 to 10, Eraserhead is a solid Orange.
Young, flustered Henry (Jack Nance) lives a hellish existence in a windswept industrial wasteland, dwelling in a studio apartment where he fawns over his dusky neighbor (Judith Anna Roberts) and watches performances by a tiny, grotesquely chubby-cheeked woman living inside his radiator (Laura Near). There’s also a horribly burned man (Jack Fisk) who lives inside an alien planet pulling levers and possibly causing the film’s events to occur. Going to meet his girlfriend Mary’s (Charlotte Stewart) demented parents, he discovers that Mary has birthed a “premature baby” (read: Cronenbergian abomination) and that he is the father. And then things sort of happen. Maybe. It’s that kind of movie.
Eraserhead follows dream logic, making no attempt to resemble a coherent narrative. As a demonstration of Lynch’s filmmaking abilities, however, it is superb. The sparsity of dialogue and his penchant for visual trickery (aided by the use of black-and-white film) recount silent films from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to Steamboat Bill, Jr. Maybe some Cocteau in there as well. And Godard’s mindfuckery. The locations, mostly filmed where Lynch actually lived, are a paragon of industrial decay, a tiny glimpse into some forgotten dark age. The sound and music are unnerving, from Fats Waller’s würlitzer (easily the creepiest musical instrument) to the random sounds that permeate the background of the film nonstop. It’s…certainly an experience.
Signs This Was Made in 1977 (Smiles, stares perfectly for a full minute)
How Did It Do? Eraserhead grossed $7 million dollars against a $10,000 budget, and earned an eventual 91% rating on RottenTomatoes. Needless to say, it made an impression. After years of struggling to make the film, Lynch abandoned his follow-up when Hollywood called, earning accolades with 1980’s The Elephant Man, and crashing and burning with 1984’s Dune. Lynch has continued to make weird movies and most notably co-created the creepily utopian supernatural soap opera Twin Peaks, among much, much else.
Next Time: Jabberwocky
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Post by dLᵒ on Feb 5, 2017 21:30:58 GMT -5
Eraserhead is easily Lynch’s weirdest film. Not that I’ve seen any of the others, my mother wouldn’t let me, but I can’t imagine anything being weirder.
Inland Empire. It's just ... fucking Inland Empire.
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Post by Superb Owl 🦉 on Feb 6, 2017 9:23:18 GMT -5
Ok cool, but does he like, erase stuff with his hair or something?
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Post by Return of the Thin Olive Duke on Feb 7, 2017 13:52:19 GMT -5
Jabberwocky Dir. Terry Gilliam Premiered March 28, 1977
From David Lynch’s first movie to Terry Gilliam’s first movie! At least if you don’t count Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Which, for his sake, you should, if only to offset the disappointment that is Jabberwocky.
After being dispossessed by his dying father and perpetually ignored by his loathsome crush Griselda (Annette Blanchard), business-minded apprentice Dennis Cooper (Michael Palin) strikes out into the big city, trying to improve the economic conditions there, but stymied at every turn by oligarchical forces (what’s the over/under on Bernie Sanders having seen this film?). Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, or fortunately maybe, Dennis has arrived in town just as King Bruno the Questionable (Max Wall) is hosting a tournament, promising half his kingdom and his idealistic daughter (Deborah Fallender) to the knight who can stop the man-eating Jabberwock terrorizing the land.
Based on the Lewis Carroll poem of the same name, Jabberwocky borrows either too much or too little from Holy Grail, consisting almost entirely of an elaboration on the former’s famous line that the King is the only one who isn’t covered in shit. Jabberwocky was director Terry Gilliam’s first solo directorial effort, and for better or worse, it is recognizably, inescapably his own. Like most of his films ever after, it’s a sly satire drags consistently if ever so slightly. As a result, many of the jokes, while funny on an intellectual level, fail to land. I wish I had more to say, but there isn’t much else to the movie.
Signs This Was Made in 1977 Nipples.
How Did It Do? As ever, information about Jabberwocky’s finances is hard to come by. The film received a middling-to-good 60% on RottenTomatoes, but what really matters is Gilliam himself, who went on to direct a sizable number of films, peaking in critical acclaim in the 1980s and 1990s with such movies as Brazil, 12 Monkeys, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Making his movies has always been an uphill battle, even compared to the normal rigors of directing, but he’s kept on going, and should be an inspiration to us all.
Next Time: 3 Women
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Post by ganews on Mar 26, 2017 20:48:58 GMT -5
Monty is continuing this series over at his website, Movie Years.
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Post by Desert Dweller on Mar 26, 2017 21:46:36 GMT -5
Ugh, white text on a black background. Damn you, Monty!
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Post by dLᵒ on Mar 26, 2017 23:44:12 GMT -5
Ugh, white text on a black background. Damn you, Monty! if you have some kind of Android it probably has a color inversion app or dropdown menu item, and iOS does too but it's harder to get to mcmw.abilitynet.org.uk/invert-colours-iphone-ipad/Also there's extensions for Chrome and Firefox
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Post by Desert Dweller on Mar 27, 2017 2:20:18 GMT -5
Ugh, white text on a black background. Damn you, Monty! if you have some kind of Android it probably has a color inversion app or dropdown menu item, and iOS does too but it's harder to get to mcmw.abilitynet.org.uk/invert-colours-iphone-ipad/Also there's extensions for Chrome and Firefox Ah, I will look for that Firefox extension. That's the browser I use at home. Thanks!
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Post by Powerthirteen on Mar 28, 2017 11:10:54 GMT -5
Ugh, white text on a black background. Damn you, Monty! For those of us who grew up using DOS it's like a trip to our childhoods.
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