5-25-77 on 8-02-05

Hey guys, it's Donnie...One day in high school someone put flyers up all over campus that said "GO HOME AND WATCH ANGUS...AND LEARN SOMETHING."

It wasn't me. Seriously, it wasn't.

However, I do really enjoy Angus, which, sadly enough, does not yet exist on DVD. Anyway, the guy behind it, Patrick Read Johnson (who also wrote/directed Spaced Invaders, a guilty pleasure from my childhood. "Prepare to die Earth scum!") has been working on his latest flick seemingly forever. It's called 5-25-77. (For you less-than-ubergeeks, that's the date that the original Star Wars was released.) The movie is quasi-autobiographical and details Johnson's quest to see the movie on opening day and how his life would be forever changed from that day forward.

Not only does the movie star John Francis Daley, aka the younger brother from Freaks and Geeks, but it also stars Christopher Lloyd, most of the cast of Angus, (sans Dawson) and Kenneth Mitchell, who was decent in Miracle, as the great John Dykstra, visual effects supervisor for the first Star Wars, who developed the first computer controlled motion-control system. Also, I'm pretty sure that the director cameos as his own father, which is pretty damn funny.

Johnson will be showing a 35 minute preview of the flick at the Midwest Independent Film Festival in Chicago on August 2nd. Still no word on when or if it'll ever get a wide release, but I have a really good feeling about this one and anxiously await the day it makes its way to Boston. Click it here to check out the official website which is full of some fantastic stills. Quint at AICN called it Dazed and Confused for geeks, and after cruising the stills gallery, I have to agree. Nods to 2001, Close Encounters, ET...what's not to love?