Day: June 15, 2025

June 1990: The Summer of Dick

Everything about the summer of 1990 was Dick Tracy. Games. toys.. movies.. newspapers. It was magic for those who lived through it.

The wonderful NIGHTMARE NOSTALGIA page reminded us that this year, TODAY as a matter of fact, is the 35th anniversary of DICK TRACY being released in theaters…

It was a magical summer for the box office.. June 1990; school was out ‘forever’ and the 1990s just began. While we did not have the luxury or burden based on your point of view of delving deep into the 90s yet, the future was bright we were still wearing shades.

And after several successful summers of box office glory for super heroes, Dick Tracy entered the fray.

Armed with his watch, yellow coat, and crime fighter ability, Warren Beatty donned the famed detective hat and have us, in our opinion, one of the greatest movies of all time. The magic of the film was its creativity, its style, its music, Madonna, but its colorful array of villians.

Back then we didn’t have ROTTEN TOMATOES, but instead we all trusted Siskel and Ebert. Here is what they thought about the movie in June 1990:

The movie was released on June 15, 1990 to great fanfare and buildup in fishwrappers across America. “Dick Tracy” (1990) grossed $103,738,726 domestically, ranking it 9th in worldwide box office for the year. It reached the #1 spot at the domestic box office during the week of June 15-21, 1990

By Christmas kids, including me, were asking for and getting DICK TRACY the NINTENDO game..

Playing with action figures. Except the BLANK. That was purposely sparely placed on store racks giving kids a false hope that one day they would find it.

We were lucky that year to see this movie in a theater for the first time. It created a sense of nostalgia for the oldtimers… and something new for younger people. It even made me read newspapers again! That summer papers across America re-published old Dick Tracy comics and I for one was using my summer time off to cut them out and create a collage. I wish I still had it today.

And we had the summer of Dick at McDonalds.. We were all led to believe we were crimestoppers and could win millions on their scratch offs!

Newspapers at the time even report about the nostalgia that the then released film was bringing back:

But what made that summer EVEN better? It was one of MANY films that came out that we still watch and talk about today.

Just think.. the hot summer 35 years ago were were watching TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES, PRETTY WOMAN, and GREMLINS II. I will avoid being joyful about BACK TO THE FUTURE III, that one just didn’t hit great and today still has not caught on.

Yes indeed.. that summer was magical, vibrant.. and gave us Dick Tracy. An underrated classic that we still think holds up even in today’s times..

Dick Tracy (1990) Directed by Warren Beatty Shown (from left): William Forsythe (as Flattop), Ed O’Ross (as Itchy), Madonna (as Breathless Mahoney), Al Pacino (as Big Boy Caprice), top – Henry Silva (as Influence), R.G. Armstrong (as Pruneface)

How super will SUPERMAN be?

According to reports, the pre-sales are strong.. So much so that SUPERMAN is expected to have potentially a $185 mil domestic opening weekend..

Move over LILO AND STITCH and HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON.. if estimates are right, we are about to see a real old fashioned summer blockbuster movie coming to a theater near you.

According to reports, the pre-sales are strong.. So much so that SUPERMAN is expected to have potentially a $185 mil domestic opening weekend..

If accurate, the lowest end of that estimate would have it as the fourth highest opening DC movie ever behind only “Batman v Superman,” “The Dark Knight Rises” and “The Dark Knight” which all hover in the $158-166 million range.

If there is justice in the world, SUPERMAN will have a bigger opening than the dreadful BATMAN vs SUPERMAN…

It is also confirmed that SUPERMAN will have post-credit scenes for those who want to stick around after the ending..

The two hour and 20 minute film hits theaters July 11..

What is coming from UNDER the ice in Antarctica?

According to the results published in the Physical Review Letters, the mysterious radio waves were discovered by the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA).

Anything from Antarctica is weird, right?

Enter the fray, this:

A group of researchers in Antarctica have found strange radio waves coming from below the ice.

According to the results published in the Physical Review Letters, the mysterious radio waves were discovered by the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA).

During this experiment, the researchers analyzed signals traveling to Earth using a variety of instruments.

Using balloons to send the instruments up high into the atmosphere, the goal was to gain new understandings of cosmic events throughout the universe.

According to the release, the reason Antarctica was the site of these experiments was due to little to no interference from other radio waves.

However, the researchers found radio waves transmitting from under the ice instead.

MORE..

The team compared the signals with those from other detectors like the IceCube experiment and the Pierre Auger Observatory and found nothing, indicating that what they found was not neutrinos but something else entirely. “You have a billion neutrinos passing through your thumb at any moment, but neutrinos don’t actually interact. So, that’s the two-edged sword problem. If we detect them, it means they have traveled all this way without interacting with anything else. We could detect a neutrino coming from the edge of the observable universe,” said Wissel.

Very interesting story and mystery.. students at Penn State are lucky to have Wissel as a professor..