Radar Men From The Moon: Chapter 8

Devil Girl From Mars

Radar Men From The Moon: Chapter 7

I Was a Teenage Werewolf

Iron Man 2

The new Iron Man trailer. I don't know if this will be any good, but at least the writers were smart and Tony Stark is still a jerk.

Guaranteed Oscar trailer

Unfortunately, it works just like this.

Radar Men From The Moon: Chapter 6

Puma Man

Radar Men From The Moon: Chapter 5

The Blood Waters of Doctor Z

Radar Men From The Moon: Chapter 4

The Magic Sword

2010: The Year We Make Contact

I was re-watching the 1984 film 2010: The Year We Make Contact last night. Might as well while the irony is fresh, I thought. It's a fairly pedestrian film, which wouldn't be a criticism of a summer blockbuster if it weren't a sequel to one of the greatest films of all time with a script written with the help of Sir Arthur C Clarke himself.

Picking up where 2001: a Space Odyssey left off, 2010 opens with Dr Heywood Floyd learning that the abandoned spaceship Discovery with all its data about its ill-fated expedition is in a decaying orbit and will crash into Jupiter before the next American expedition can reach it. However, a Soviet ship will get there a year earlier and so Floyd, the designer of Discovery, and the man who built the homicidal Hal 9000 hitch a ride on the Soviet Leonov.

Not surprisingly, 2010 doesn't hold a candle to its predecessor, though you can't fault the director, who undertook the herculean task of re-building all the sets and props that Kubrick insisted be destroyed back in 1968 to prevent them being reused in other sci-fi films. Unfortunately, attention to that sort of detail doesn't necessarily make for a good film–especially when all the other costumes, props, and models look like they came from a completely different universe. Imagine if the makers of Star Trek kept confusing it with Star Wars and you get the idea. It also doesn't help that without Stanley Kubrick's cynicism and vision, Sir Arthur fell back on his own admirable, but overly tidy imagination that resulted in the transcendent mysticism of the first film falling sequel by sequel in this film and the novels into more and more pedestrian (and manageable) explanations about what was behind all the mysteries.

What many people might find interesting in the real 2010 AD is how far off the mark the film version is. I don't believe for one minute that Sir Arthur seriously thought the Russians would be building spaceships the size of frigates by now, but I'm sure he hoped so. What he probably didn't believe was that the Americans would start a new manned spacecraft programme and then abandon it (both being right decisions made for disastrously wrong reasons), that said spacecraft would be merely an supersized Apollo capsule while all the other versions public and private around the world would be merely updated versions of the Soyuz. Nor that the world's only space station would be built merely as an exercise in building a space station. Mind you, I'm not sure what to make of Pan Am going out of business or the notion that the Hal 9000 uses a Kaypro keyboard or that modern monitors would be the size of 30-inch CRT televisions circa 1995.

Unlike most other sci-fi writers of the Golden Age, Sir Arthur's politics aren't very easy to deduce. Or rather, they aren't until you realise that he didn't actually have any politics as such. If Sir Arthur did have any, it was that politics of any stripe is merely a temporary state of affairs until Science got a proper grip on the world and all that petty squabble would just melt away. Despite having folded like wet cardboard in 1991, the Soviet Union in 2010 is still going strong and the Cold War hasn't shifted an inch since 1984. In fact, the USA and USSR are still happily playing brinksmanship over Central America and teetering on the edge of nuclear war, so the last 26 years must have been awful "samey". That doesn't matter to the Americans and Soviets aboard the Leonov, though. That's because they're all Scientists with a capital letter. In fact, everyone in the cast is a Scientist. I even suspect that Dr Floyd's five-year old son is a Scientist, but hasn't finished his thesis yet. True, there is tension in orbit around Jupiter, but only because the Earthmen are obliged to follow the orders of their unenlightened countrymen. Left to themselves, the Soviets and Americans get along fine because Science is ever and always the objective and selfless pursuit of the truth in which politics has no place. It isn't that our heroes disagree with their governments, they can't even see the point of posing the question.

There's something charming about Sir Arthur's attitude–or would be if it didn't require him to indulge in moral equivalence to work. Even back in the 1950s in novels such as Childhood's End and Earthlight he couldn't imagine an enemy who might actually be ruthless and totalitarian or that the Cold War might have something to do with the Communists being really, really nasty. In 2010 I can't help but think that the commissar at Baikanour has fallen down on the job and is slated for a one-ounce retirement package in the back of the head. Surely the crew of a major Soviet spacecraft would have been chosen first and foremost for political reliability (fanaticism) before technical competence.

More to the point, Sir Arthur always struck me as being a bit naive when it came to science being apolitical and altruistic. You would have thought that Lysenkoism and Eugenics would have put paid to that. These days, what with the radical environmentalism of Rachel Carson et al and the tens of millions of deaths they've caused exposed to the world, the sexually self-serving fraud of Margaret Mead, and the on-going scandal of Climategate it's obvious that scientists are just as vulnerable to the corrupting temptations of money, power, status, and ideology as any politician.

That was true in 1984. It was true in 2001. And it is true in 2010.

Radar Men From The Moon: Chapter 3

Hobgoblins

Radar Men From The Moon: Chapter 2

Harrison Bergeron

Avatar in Depth

This guy almost hates Avatar as much as I do.

Almost, but not quite.

Caution: Profanity.

Radar Men From The Moon: Chapter 1

Manos: The Hands of Fate

We deeply apologise for this.

It Happened Here

If you look up the 1965 release It Happened Here in the Guinness Book of Records you'll discover that it holds the record for the longest film production: Eight years with another year's wait for it to hit the cinemas.

It's a story that deserves to be turned into a movie of its own. Produced, written, and directed by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo, who were 18 and 16-years old when they started work on the film, It Happened Here doesn't seem very impressive in its opening scenes; a load of stock footage carefully selected to give the impression of a successful Nazi invasion and occupation of Britain in 1941. Unimpressive, that is, if you don't know that Brownlow and Mollo didn't use an inch of stock footage, but got their effects by using a 16 mm camera to shoot their huge cast of hundreds that included only two paid actors. The rest were volunteers; many of them science fiction fans who were willing to give up their spare time out of fascination with the film's alternative history plot line.

Ostensibly, It Happened Here is the story Pauline, a district nurse who is evacuated to the "demilitarised" city of London after resistance fighting breaks out near her village. Once in the half-destroyed capital, which has Germans the way some people have mice, Pauline discovers that the only way she can find work is by joining the local Fascist party; a step that brings her face to face with the horrors of the new order while alienating her from her old friends.

All that, however, is just a framework on which Brownlow and Mollo can hang their extended scenes of Britain under Fascist rule. It's a world of hordes of Wehrmacht soldiers sightseeing around London, relentless martial music of Prussian stridency, and endless speeches by blackshirted English fascists (a couple of them the real thing!) as they harangue the masses about Jewish inferiority and the unbreakable bond of Anglo-German friendship. These scenes are a mixed bag and often go on far too long. I came away thinking that the simple image on the DVD cover of German soldiers parading outside the Palace of Westminster had far more impact because of its economy. Despite having spent eight years, Brownlow and Mollo weren't entirely certain what the film was about. Was it a story of Britain conquered by the Nazis or was it an examination of Fascism? In the early part of the film it seems the former, but the latter dominates the last half of the film as we're shown an England where the population grab onto Nazism with such enthusiasm that they make the Vichy French look like the Finns as Englishmen left and right start sieg heiling, rounding up Jews, joining the Wehrmacht, and committing genocide with the worst of them. What the British government in exile or the Royal family were up to while these shenanigans were going on it left unexplained. At some points, it reads like those insane "histories" of the war written in the '80s that, with a straight face, condemned the British for the crimes of collaboration that they didn't commit because they weren't conquered.

Still, this is an important film. Not only are many of the images unforgettable, but it stands out as the first of the alternative history dramas that would soon lead to more polished works like An Englishman's Castle, Fatherland and a very cool Doctor Who episode that featured not only British Fascists in eye patches, but subterranean werewolves.

What more could you ask for?

Late review

H G Wells reviews Metropolis and demonstrates that one can be a literary giant and still misunderstand how another medium works (though, to be fair, he does seem to have seen one of those horribly edited versions that went into general release).

Today's phrase, Herbert, is "visual metaphor". Please provide the definition and use it in a complete sentence.

Chimpanzee cinema

From the BBC:

The world's first film shot entirely by chimpanzees is to be broadcast by the BBC as part of a natural history documentary.

First? From what I've seen, I thought Hollywood was run by them for years.

Or maybe that's baboons.

The Woman in Green

Coming next week

The Infidel

Satarist David Baddiel makes a comedy mercilessly mocking Jihadists.

That sound is his enormous brass balls clanking together.

Dressed to Kill

Avatar blues

Cool guys don't look at explosions

Hasn't anyone ever heard of shrapnel?

Terror by Night

Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon

Avatar: The Making of the Bootleg

Avatar: Born to be bad

In 1977, a film came along that remade the entire industry. It ushered in the era of the blockbuster, introduced rafts of new technologies and marriages of old, integrated symphonic music into popcorn cinema, and demonstrated that the audience had become so familiar with the vocabulary of science fiction that they no longer had to be sold on the concept in the story. It was the most successful film up to that time, influenced the popular culture of a generation, was responsible for at least half of all content on the early Internet, and resulted in some of the best jokes on Spaced.

It was also one of the worst films ever made with a plot that was stitched together with a cleaver and dialogue so bad that one of its stars conned the director into killing his character off early so he wouldn't have to say any more of those god-awful lines.

Yes, I'm talking Star Wars. It was beautiful. I well remember back then how incredibly impressive it was sitting in the Odeon with the first chord of John Williams's score, the story so far roller, and the unforgettable opening shot of the spaceship that went on forever with all ray guns blasting.

God, it stank.

I never thought I'd relive that time of youthful innocence, but I have. I have seen Avatar.

God, it stank.

I know I said I wouldn't see it until it came out on Pay Per View, but it's the Christmas hols and I was outvoted by my wife, daughter, and the five-year old neighbour boy who went with us, so it was jumbo popcorn and 3D specs all 'round.

First, let's get the praise out of the way. The CGI is very impressive. The resolution is very high, the textures are detailed to the point where you could almost touch them, the lighting effects are excellent, and the motion capture technology is state of the art. In fact, it works too well. It's the first time I've seen the subtleties of facial expressions captured properly, allowing the actor to really come through. This is great if the subject is someone who has some real acting chops like Sigourney Weaver. For others, this is not an advantage. The tag line could have been, "You will believe that a CGI character can overact". Overall, however, the effect of all the computer animation was that I kept reaching for the game controller, which is where I suspect most of the CGI techs cut their teeth.

As for the much-vaunted 3D, I merely found it distracting for the first five minutes and then I forgot about it entirely. On the upside, the Polaroid glasses are much more comfortable and don't give me a headache the way the old bichromatic jobs did.

The plot? If you've seen A Man Called Horse, Dances With Wolves, Soldier Blue, At Play in the Fields of the Lord, The Last Samuri, or even Dune, the Endor scenes from Return of the Jedi, or pretty much any trendy lefty film since 1972, then you've seen this film–over and over again. Civilised man meets primitives, man is accepted by primitives as one of them, man turns traitor and slaughters his civilised brethren. If you're into written science fiction, if you've read Poul Anderson's "I am Joe", Clifford D Simak's City, Alan Dean Foster's Midworld, Harry Harrison's Deathworld Trilogy, Ursula le Guin's The Word for the World is Forest, Eric Frank Russell's "Symbiotica", or just about anything else written since 1935, you know the fantastic side of the story. I'd include Edgar Rice Burroughs and Alex Raymond as well, but the poor men have already suffered enough and our hero isn't John Carter or Flash Gordon by a long chalk.

Short version: Paraplegic ex-marine Jake Sully is sent to Pandora, the tropical moon of a gas giant orbiting Alpha Centuri to pilot an "Avatar"; a genetically engineered duplicate of the Pandoran natives. Using a padded coffin strung with magic Christmas lights, Sully can connect his mind to his Pandoran body so he can move about freely in the moon's poisonous air and make contact with the natives to learn more about them and negotiate peaceful relations. He's a bit of a cipher and, given the plot, I'd have been happier if he'd been written as a 22nd century Harry Flashman (Flashman and the Blueskins!), but...

Unknown to Sully or the altruistic missionaries scientists who created the Avatars, the evil military commander and the evil corporation that apparently runs the evil military in 2154 not-so secretly plan to wipe out the natives because it's so gosh darn more fun than haggling over mineral rights. In a burst of incredible originality, Sully learns the ways of the natives and when he discovers the evil Earthmen's evil plans to evilly destroy the natives with great evilness, he turns traitor, leads the natives (who follow him out of curiosity) into battle, and slaughters thousands of his fellow humans without a touch of remorse. The human survivors are then frog marched aboard their spaceships back to Earth and the natives and Sully live happily ever after–or until Earth Command sends an orbital bomber force to wipe them all out a month later, but the film doesn't explore that detail.

James Cameron worked on getting Avatar to the screen for fifteen years, though from the plot it seems more like since 1968. Indeed, the frog march ending reads like a Vietnam War protester's wet dream. During the climactic battle I kept waiting for our hero to scream, "Damn you, Bush!" while Dick Cheney whizzed by in an attack helicopter with Tony Blair in the Gunner's seat.

The entire film is a beautifully imaged cliche fest. The military are mindless killers lead by a commander who is just itching for an excuse to take the safeties off for no readily apparent reason other than racist blood lust. Of course, he and his men a) have all the brains of a wet teabag b) make every mistake imaginable and c) have never seen the Endor bit in Return of the Jedi, so it's no wonder that a 22nd century force is taken down with bows and arrows. Any other director I could excuse this from, but James Cameron? The man who coined the phrase, "Nuke the site from orbit"? Doesn't he even see his own movies?

The natives, on the other hand, are without exception brave, noble, wise, in harmony with nature, have perfect teeth, vote Labour, recycle, buy only Fair Trade coffee, and drive Prisuses. Even Rousseau would feel his dinner coming back around this bunch. Mind you, for all their virtues, not a one can hold a bow string for toffee. And they have yet to discover anything resembling a sense of humour or the ability to speak in other than the most stilted of sentences. Though they live an idyllic existence, they do suffer, as do the Earthmen, from one pestilence of civilisation: The Action Girl cliche that was old when The Swordmaster's Daughter hit the stage in 1894. It never works unless the writer and director really think it through and here it's just embarrassing. When our native princess went into a knife-wielding crouch toward the end of the film, I literally burst out laughing. Dejah Thoris this Pandoran is not.

Okay, but suspension of disbelief and all that. Sorry, I'm all for it and will suspend with the best of them, but the flying mountains wrecked not only my suspension, but my shocks of tolerance and leaf springs of credulity as well. As in Titanic, Cameron imagines that imagery will cover every plot hole and excuse his dogged refusal to pick up better plot opportunities that would have improved his story immeasurably. Instead, we have a nearly three hour diatribe about Cameron's ideal Gaia-worshiping aliens who are literally connected to their world fighting off wicked Earth capitalists who deserve no better fate than to go back to face extinction on their own dying planet. It's a message that is not only offensive in its self-loathing (especially when I drop $12 for the privilege of his insult), but also because Cameron, who produced at least two excellent films back in the '80s, has prostituted his own art to share his loathing with the rest of us.

But, say other reviews I've read, don't be so negative. It's only a movie. Forget the plot and just go with what's on screen. At that point, I merely sigh and answer with two words: Star Wars.

The Final Sacrifice

Scrooge

Watch Scrooge (1951 Alastair Sim) DVDRip XviD MP3.avi in Entertainment  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Our Christmas Eve treat and a story I've done many times on stage. Never as Scrooge, I fear, but my Bob Cratchit was very well received.

Avatar defined.

What I suspect will be the definitive review of Avatar.

No, I haven't seen it, because from what I've seen and heard (and having survived the horror of Titanic) I'm waiting for it to show up on Pay Per View.

Update: This one comes a pretty good second.

Twelfth Night

This brings back memories. Last time I played Malvolio it was in an outdoor production in midsummer in the blazing sun while double costumed all in black with yellow tights underneath.

I nearly lost consciousness and I think I drank five gallons of water afterward.

Non Stop New York

Capricorn One

From the CRU guide on how to handle those little glitches in the research.

Quatermass 2

The Giant Claw

The Mole People

Edward Woodward 1939-2009

Edward Woodward has gone to the Great Wicker Man in the Sky.

Lord Summerisle was unavailable for comment.

The Transatlantic Tunnel

Hurrah!

Curse of the Demon

Gog

So transgressive, so cowardly

After all, some things are sacred.

In his upcoming film 2012, instigator of random chaos director Roland Emmerich happily destroys the Sistine Chapel, St. Peter's Basilica, the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro ("Because I'm against organized religion."), but he baulked at showing the Kaaba in Mecca getting trashed because:

Well, I wanted to do that, I have to admit, but my co-writer Harald said I will not have a fatwa on my head because of a movie. And he was right. ... We have to all ... in the Western world ... think about this. You can actually ... let ... Christian symbols fall apart, but if you would do this with [an] Arab symbol, you would have ... a fatwa, and that sounds a little bit like what the state of this world is.

Good Dhimmi. Here's a biscuit.

Update: Meanwhile, standby for the $150 million biopic of the life of Mohammed.

Without Mohammed.

Or his life.

Häxan

Bonus Feature: The Satanic Rites of Dracula

Happy Halloween from Ephemeral Isle.

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916)

Destination Moon

If it's French, it must be art

Oh, Lord. Cue the overacting and the screenwriter who thinks the height of drama is screaming F***. Where's Mike and the 'bots when you need them?

Trapped by Television

The Phantom of the Opera (1983)

Saving the worst for last.

The Phantom of the Opera (1962)

Finishing up our look at manifestations of The Phantom of the Opera we have the 1962 remake by Hammer Films. It's a very different film that strays a long way from the previous two incarnations as well as the original novel, though it does recreate the atmosphere of the book much better while dodging some of the more insane melodramatic bits about flooding dungeons and stores of explosives primed to go off at any second. Where the 1943 version concentrated on the music with the Phantom as essentially a framing device for Nelson Eddy's arias, the 1962 version is more of a Hammer's brand of horror as morality play that centers around betrayal and redemption.

The screenplay is a bit of a Chinese post office exercise; based on the 1943 version, which based on the 1925 version, which is based on the novel. Herbert Lom gives an excellent performance as a Phantom who is clearly insane (as in stumbling about his lair babbling to himself crazy), though oddly not at all evil. Okay, there is lots of hangings and eye-stabbings, but that's due to the Phantom's overachieving servant. Before you think that Hammer all of sudden went soft, bear in mind that the 1962 version was written especially for Cary Grant, who was dead keen on playing the title role until his agent vetoed the idea.

The Christine, on the other hand, seems, at first to be ill cast. Her personality isn't that strong and she seems a bit jowly in Victorian dress, but when she's on stage as Joan of Arc you can see why she got the part. More interesting for horror fans is Edward De Souza as Our Hero, who Radio 4 listeners will remember as The Man in Black from Fear on Four. And then there's Michael Gough having a very good time as a villain who one suspects spends his evening kicking puppies and tearing the last chapter out of Agatha Christie novels.

This production has a much more British feel to it–not surprising when the action is moved from Paris to London. It lacks the spectacle of the 1943 version, which may disappoint some, but it allows the plot to take centre stage and the opera within the story has the much more intimate feel that you'd expect on a London stage with music that is much more dramatic and intended to support the story rather than an end to itself. Amazingly, some real romance is even allowed to intrude. And there's even an actual confrontation between the Phantom and Our Hero, which is usually lacking in other versions.

And, yes, the famous chandelier scene is there, though with a rather unexpected victim getting caught under it.

Well worth a butchers.

The Wasp Woman

Phantom of the Opera (1943)

During a major war, a lot of things get put away for the duration. One of them, understandably, is the horror film. When cities are being bombed out of existence, civilians flee in terror and a generation of young men march to meet other young men who may be less than sympathetic, then the goings on of the working vampire or struggling werewolf tend not to be a big box office draw. Small wonder that the 1940s were a decade singularly lacking in the spine chilling.

One of the rare exceptions was Universal Studios' 1943 remake of The Phantom of the Opera. Or it would be, if it actually was a horror film instead of a Hollywood spectacle that takes a feeble stab at the genre. True, the original 1925 production starring Lon Chaney was also a spectacle, but it was a spectacle... of TERROR! Sorry, I couldn't resist the bad advertising copy. I've seen too many trailers. The most important part of any horror story is setting the atmosphere. You need to introduce the props and settings that tell the audience "Your popcorn will be scattered all over the place by the end of act two". There has to be gloom, or overbearing architecture, or a black cat, or a flickering shadow, or a creepy undercurrent to the music, or a clown. Definitely a clown. That doesn't mean that every horror story needs to start with a fog-shrouded, dilapidated graveyard overshadowed by ruined castle with a solitary light in the highest tower suggesting ancient secrets straining to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world (though it helps). A story can open on a cheery, sunny day with flowers and bunnies so long as one of the bunnies has a sinister air about him. That's not what we have with this Phantom, however. Not that it's really a surprise when Nelson Eddy gets top billing. We open with an opera set (the one from the original 1925 film, by the way) lit for Technicolor with a happy opera number just warming up. In a real horror film we'd get about eight bars in before the camera cuts to a shadowy figure undoing a rope. Here, the camera pans, zooms in, and before you know it, we're through the proscenium and on stage with the actors. And if you know anything about musicals, you realise that at this point, all hope is lost.

Don't get me wrong. Phantom of the Opera isn't a bad movie. In fact, it's a very good one. It whittles down the Gaston Leroux novel to its bare bones, but at least it preserves the story of an obsessed, hideously disfigured musician whose idea of "helping" a struggling young singer at the Paris Opera is by lurking in the woodwork and killing anyone who gets in the way of her career, and the Claude Rains turns in a solid performance as the Phantom. The film is beautiful to look at with an excellent "opera" score pieced together out of symphonic pieces because the war made securing the rights to operas still under copyright next to impossible. Not to mention that the Oscar it picked up for use of colour was well deserved and the film did make an unprecedented four million dollars at the box office. True, the costumes have the period's usual Hollywood over the top quality and I cannot believe that an opera manager's office was ever larger and more ornate than the apartments of Louis XIV, but such lavishness is excusable, given the source. What is wrong with it is that it isn't a horror film. It's a musical flying under false colours.

During my years in the theatre, I've only been involved with one musical when I did dialect work for a production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It was a fascinating experience. First, because I was the only unattached straight male in the company, which did my social life no end of good, and I got to see a completely different side of how to put together a show. In a normal play with musical numbers in it, the usual way of rehearsing is to work all the lines and blocking. When you get to the musical bit, everyone just goes "La, la, la. We'll stick that in later" and you carry on with the dialogue. With musicals, it's exactly the opposite. I was amazed to watch the performers go through very intricate song and dance routines, get to the end, and go "Blah, blah blah, we'll stick the dialogue in later".

That's what we have here. The focus is not the tortured Claude Rains or his terrified involuntary protege. It's spectacular musical number after musical number; each staged in a pseudo-operatic fashion that is actually that of a high-brow Hollywood musical complete with musical comedy bits and romantic interludes to lighten a story that it already so frothy that it's a wonder it doesn't float away on a light breeze. Even having the infamous chandelier crashing down at the climax doesn't help matters when it refuses to fall until Mr Eddy has finished his aria. The lesson is that if you're here for the Technicolor and the music, then you're in for a great time. But if you in it for the suspense, then the plot will drag from the first five minutes and there are long stretches where you forget that Claude Rains is even in the picture and his end turns out to be, shall we say, perfunctory while the end of the film seems as long as a Minnesota goodbye with a closing gag that I've heard inexplicably quoted three times today.

All in all, it would be a very fallow time until Hammer produced a decent remake in 1962.

Prince of Space

Your weapons are useless against me!

Gizmo!

A couple of readers spotted that this item on the Triphibian was included in documentary Gizmo (1977), so I thought it was a good excuse to post the whole thing again.

I've always had a soft spot for Gizmo. Aside from being a lot of fun to watch, it was also one of the inspirations for Tales of Future Past. It's one of those goodhearted documentaries where it's clear that the filmmaker loved his subject, or at least had tremendous empathy for it. Like The Atomic Cafe, released five years later, uses a collection of stock footage to make its point, However, unlike The Atomic Cafe, which derives its humour from sneering at its subject, Gizmo positively celebrates these incredible eccentrics of the past and finds its humour by not just looking at the silliness and shortcomings of the various inventors, showmen, exhibitionists, and stuntmen, but also their dreams and ambitions that turns what could have been a collection of mockery into tribute to human ambition. In many ways, these are people we have a better chance of identifying with than an Edison or Bell. I certainly expect that if I built an aeroplane it would look more like the ones in Gizmo than something that rolled out of the Wright brothers' shop–and fly just about as well.

Fantastic Planet

Duel

The Space Children

Beware the horror of Jackie Coogan's shorts.

The Andromeda Strain

Quatermass and the Pit

Crack in the World

Remember, it's only a movie.

Or is it?

The Illustrated Man

Robot Monster

To live... To love like the Hu-Man; why was this not in the Plan?

Cat-Women of the Moon

Yes! Yes! I posted this! And I'd do it again! Bwahahahahaha!!!! (Crash)

Bride of the Monster

Home? I have no home...

The Man From Planet X

View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

The Great Train Robbery

Stranger from Venus

An insomniac's delight.

X the Unknown

Trog

Of the two, I'd say Joan Crawford was the scarier.

The Last Woman on Earth

Men in Black

It appears that I Am Legend isn't the only crappy remake Wil Smith was involved in.

D-Day

Overdrawn at the Memory Bank

Interface!

Battle Beyond the Sun

Corman and Communist sci fi; what more can you want?

Star Wars: The Rewrite

Mystery Man on Film looks at the many rough draughts of the script that eventually became Star Wars and discusses how different the finished product was from the original idea (Luke Skywalker was an aged general, Darth Vader got barely a look in , etc.). And, this being Lucas, the reams of staggeringly bad dialogue.

I particularly like this because Lucas and I share the trait of ruthlessness towards changing or discarding pretty much everything while writing. It's one of the reasons my wife and I drive each other crazy when we collaborate on a play. She'll come to me with an idea and I'll tear it to shreds while I try to come up with a way to make it work (Instead of the protagonist being a alcoholic, divorced Soviet nuclear physicist, let's make him an elephant and rather than him trying to keep his sanity while trying to reconcile himself with his daughter while coming to grips with his past, maybe he's lost a balloon.). After that there's loads of shouting and we resolve never to work together ever again until the next day.

Writing; always a joy.

Green Lantern

The announced Green Lantern feature is still months away from beginning production, yet one fan has already released the trailer. Though it's mostly CGI mixed with clever edits from other films, it already sets the bar higher for when the real thing comes along because this is what a GL film should look and feel like. Besides, after what they did to Biggles back in the '80s, I haven't got that many boyhood heroes left for Hollywood to screw up.

Let me put it this way, if it turns out to be another Fantastic Four, I'm writing a letter to the Times.

Le Rendevous

Via Last of the Few we have this film from 1978 that features a bumper's eye view of an insane car trip through Paris. It's supposed to be a sort of underground classic, but frankly it looks like every taxi ride I've ever had in Paris.

The Omega Man

What with the credit crunch, swine flu, Barack Hussein Obama, and Gordon Brown, this is pretty much my game plan