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At the beginning of Robert Wise's 1951 sci-fi classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still," a flaying saucer lands in Washington, D.C. and a stern, masked alien named Klaatu (Michael Rennie) emerges. He announces to the gathered military and curious humans that he comes in peace, and even has a gift for the people of Earth. He extracts a small, palm-sized tube and flicks it open, revealing multiple small antennae. The flicking device, however, spooks one of the nearby military men, and he fires off a shot, injuring Klaatu's hand. He falls in pain. 

Almost instantly, as if sensing Klaatu's panic, an enormous eight-foot humanoid robot emerges from the flying saucer. It is silvery and featureless, sporting a mysterious visor across its face. This is Gort. Gort steps out onto the ground, and its visor lifts, revealing a glowing power source. A laser beam emerges from Gort's head, striking all the Army's weapons.

Third Man on the Mountain

1959 / 105 Mins. / 1.66: 1

Starring Michael Rennie, James MacArthur

Written by Eleanore Griffin

Directed by Ken Annakin

CineSavant Revival Screening Review

From Newbery Medal to amusement park thrill ride, James Ramsey Ullman’s Banner in the Sky climbed the ladder as deftly as the men who scaled the mountains in his 1955 best seller, a fictionalized account of the first explorer to make it to the top of the Matterhorn.

It was rarefied air even for Ullman who, when he wasn’t writing, could be found shinnying up the nearest cliff side—though not recognized as a “high end” climber, the writer’s attraction to life or death experiences made him an honorary member of a lofty clique. In 1957, Walt Disney purchased the rights to Ullman’s novel and set the Mouse Machine in motion, first the tie-in paperback, then the Sunday comic strip, and after much fanfare,...

Newcomers to science fiction might not know where to start diving into this strange and fantastical genre -- or even if it's worth the ride. But, good news! Sci-fi is incredibly versatile, containing elements and expectations that fit into several subgenres like action, horror, romances, and even comedies.

The World Fantasy award-winning Ray Bradbury once told The New York Times (via Reuters), "In science fiction, we dream." Sure, the genre allows writers, filmmakers, and viewers to imagine far-flung, fantastical worlds and creatures. But it's also a clever way to comment on humanity. Bradbury also said, "Science fiction is also a great way to pretend you are writing about the future when in reality you are attacking the recent past and the present." Sci-fi asks questions like: What might the world be like if we all suddenly learned that we are part of something larger?

Here's a chronological list of landmark...

As Disney quietly disappears huge swathes of film history into its vaults, I'm going to spend 2020 celebrating Twentieth Century Fox and the Fox Film Corporation's films, what one might call their output if only someone were putting it out.And now they've quietly disappeared William Fox's name from the company: guilty by association with Rupert Murdoch, even though he never associated with him.***Dangerous Crossing was directed by Joseph M. Newman in 1953, not long before the one title he's semi-remembered for, This Island Earth. It seems to have been greenlit as a B-picture to take advantage of the sets built for Fox's Titanic, as it's an ocean voyage mystery.Newlywed Jeanne Crain boards ship with her husband, who promptly vanishes, and nobody will admit to ever having seen him. Of course the plot kernel was used before, by writers Launder and Gilliat for director Hitchcock in The Lady Vanishes.

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By Doug Oswald

William Holden commands a newly formed commando group in “The Devil’s Brigade,” available by Kino Lorber on Blu-ray. On the heels of the successful “The Dirty Dozen” from the previous year, “The Devil’s Brigade” is based on the 1966 book by Robert H. Adleman and Colonel George Walton. It chronicles the true events of the 1st Special Service, a joint American and Canadian commando unit assigned to the United States Fifth Army. Inspired by true events, the movie follows the standard tropes of this type of action adventure men- at -war movie. A rag-tag group of soldiers are brought together for a mission, they initially mistrust each other, get into a fight, train together, get into another fight this time working together against another group, graduate from their training and then deploy on their mission to fight the enemy.

In a world where a Democrat presidential candidate can insult a Us voter by calling them a "...lying, dog-faced 'Pony Soldier'...", referencing the 1953 John Wayne western "Hondo", the title "Pony Soldier" was actually a 1952 feature starring Tyrone Power as 'Constable Duncan MacDonald' of the 'North-West Mounted Police':

"...in 1876, the 'North-West Mounted Police' send 'Constable Duncan MacDonald' (Power) and 'Blackfoot' scout 'Natayo Smith' (Thomas Gomez) to negotiate with the 'Cree' to sign 'Treaty 6' with the Brit Crown. Initially hostile, the Cree are influenced by a mirage they mistake for the power of 'Queen Victoria'. In addition to negotiating with the Cree, MacDonald rescues hostages 'Jess Calhoun' (Robert Horton) and 'Emerald Neely' (Penny Edwards), arrests a killer and adopts a Cree son (Anthony Earl Numkena)..."

Cast also includes Cameron Mitchell, Howard Petrie, Stuart Randall, Richard Boone, Frank deKova and Earl Holliman, with ending narration by Michael Rennie ("The Day The Earth Stood Still...

“Brennan Went to Film School” is a column that proves that horror has just as much to say about the world as your average Oscar nominee. Probably more, if we’re being honest. “Michael Rennie was ill the day the Earth stood still, but he told us where we stand…” These are the first words you […]

The post BwTFS: How to Read Rocky Horror appeared first on Dread Central.

Two-fisted Hong Kong racketeer Clark Gable goes out on a limb to recover Susan Hayward’s husband, held prisoner in Red China. In a literal pirate vessel armed with a stolen cannon, Gable literally goes to war, risking his smuggling empire by half-kidnapping Michael Rennie’s Hong Kong cop. This lush CinemaScope action-travelogue-romance now comes off as comfort food movie viewing: familiar stars doing what they do best. It’s a German import from a Hollywood Studio whose library titles may no longer be licensed to hard media home video.

Soldier of Fortune

Region-Free Blu-ray

Explosive Media GmbH

1955 / Color / 2:55 widescreen / 96 min. / Street Date September 26, 2019 / Treffpunkt Hongkong / Available at Amazon.de

15.99 Euros Starring: Clark Gable, Susan Hayward, Michael Rennie, Gene Barry, Alexander D’Arcy, Tom Tully, Anna Sten, Russell Collins, Richard Loo, Frank Tang, Jack Kruschen, Leo Gordon, Mel Welles, Robert Quarry.

Cinematography: Leo Tover

Film Editor: Dorothy Spencer

Original Music:...

This (British) trailer goes out of its way to oversell the debuting David Bowie (the best-cast alien since Michael Rennie in Day The Earth Stood Still), but Nic Roeg and Paul Mayersberg’s adaptation of Walter Tevis’ novel faced a rocky reception when producer Paramount Pictures refused to distribute it after its first screening. Picked up by arthouse indie Cinema V, it was brutally cut for its initial Us release but managed to find cult status anyway. It’s since been restored and is a must-see; one of the most intelligent science fiction films ever released.

By Hank Reineke

Though often dismissed as a low-budget “Made for TV” feature, director Franklin Adreon’s Cyborg 2087 enjoyed a brief theatrical run prior to its debut on broadcast television in March of 1968. In April of 1967 the film was packaged alongside such similarly low-budgeted, independent features as Death Curse of Tartu, Sting of Death, and even a second Adreon “time travel” themed film, Dimension 5. Though this somewhat lackluster film seemed destined for relegation to the late-night drive-in horror movie circuit, Cyborg 2087 nonetheless displayed some small measure of staying power. That same summer, Adreon’s film was still making the rounds of the secondary flea-pit theater circuit, sometimes serving as the under bill to Sidney J. Furie’s contemporary political thriller The Naked Runner featuring Frank Sinatra.

Though he had worked on serials and a handful of feature films in the early stages of his career, director Adreon was laboring...

“Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock!”

The Third Man screens Wednesday May 3rd at The Tivoli Theater (6350 Delmar in ‘The Loop’) as part of their new ‘Classics in the Loop’ Crime & Noir film series. The movie starts at 7pm and admission is $7. It will be on The Tivoli’s big screen.

Roger Ebert called Harry Lime, the character played by Orson Welles in the 1949 classic The Third Man, his favorite screen villain of all time. Fittingly, he gets one of the great movie character introductions — an unforgettable one involving a doorway, a cat, and a sudden beam of light.

Tony Sokol Nov 26, 2018

The Man Who Fell to Earth gains its vision by losing sight of the stars.

The Man Who Fell to Earth isn’t like any other science fiction movie, even though it inspired and continues to pour new life into the genre. It is subtle, ethereal and a wholly human story. Indeed, David Bowie’s Thomas Jerome Newton is the most human character in the film. If not more human, certainly one with more humanity. He is an ideal that the people who betray him, and that’s almost everyone in the film, could only aspire to. Bowie’s alien is an outsider, a visitor suffering from hyperopia who becomes more myopic as he is corrupted by the temptations of his new home. At first he is focused on the plight of his home planet, but that gets hazy through the tunnel vision of the problems of a suspicious and greedy world.

How could England have won the war without him? Horatio Smith sneaks about in Nazi Germany, liberating concentration camp inmates right under the noses of the Gestapo. Leslie Howard directed and stars in this wartime escapist spy thriller, as a witty professor too passive to be suspected as the mystery spy.

‘Pimpernel’ Smith

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1941 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 121 min. / Street Date November 15, 2016 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98

Starring Leslie Howard, Francis L. Sullivan, Mary Morris, Allan Jeayes, Peter Gawthorne, Hugh McDermott, David Tomlinson, Raymond Huntley, Sebastian Cabot, Irene Handl, Ronald Howard, Michael Rennie.

Cinematography Mutz Greenbaum

Camera Operators Guy Green, Jack Hildyard

Film Editor Douglas Myers

Original Music John Greenwood

Written by Anatole de Grunwald, Roland Pertwee, A.G. Macdonell, Wolfgang Wilhelm based on a character by Baroness Emmuska Orczy

Produced by Leslie Howard, Harold Huth

Directed by Leslie Howard

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

I like movies...

Ryan Lambie Nov 14, 2016

As well as a great sci-fi thriller, Arrival is a film that offers a message of hope in a year of division and uncertainty, Ryan writes...

Nb: The following contains mild spoilers for Arrival.

It's no coincidence that the wave of science fiction films that emerged in the 1950s rode on a tide of post-war anxiety. The advent of the atom bomb, the Cold War, renewed fears of Communist incursion: these were just some of the fears that emerged as World War II shuddered to a close. And as the 40s tipped over into the 50s, those fears began to play out in movies: giant atomic monsters tore apart cities in the Us and Japan. Alien invaders arrived in their saucers, raining down great waves of death and destruction. Other invasions were more insidious: the aliens looked like us, lived among us, even controlled us from within.

Join us for some old-school 16mm Movie Madness! – It’s our monthly 16Mm Double Feature Night at The Way Out Club (2525 Jefferson Avenue in St. Louis)! Join Tom Stockman and Roger from “Roger’s Reels’ for a double feature of two complete films projected on 16mm film. The show is Tuesday July 5th and starts at 8pm. Admission is Free though we will be setting out a jar to take donations for the National Children’s Cancer Society.

“Klaatu barada nikto!”

First up is: The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951)

The sci-fi parable The Day The Earth Stood Still starring Oscar winner Patricia Neal tells the story of Klaatu, a visitor from another world (played by Michael Rennie) with his allmighty robot Gor who land unexpectedly at the White House to stop people from expanding the human violence beyond frontiers of the planet Earth. When he sees that he cannot...

By Todd Garbarini

The Ahrya Fine Arts Theater in Los Angeles will be presenting a fun-filled weekend of six science fiction classics from Friday, April 15th to Sunday, April 17th. Several cast members from the films are scheduled to appear in person at respective screenings, so read on for more information:

From the press release:

Anniversary Classics Sci-Fi Weekend

Part of our Anniversary Classics series. For details, visit: www.laemmle.com/ac.

Re-visit the Golden Age of the Science Fiction Film as Laemmle Theatres and the Anniversary Classics Series presents Sci-fi Weekend, a festival of six classic films April 15-17 at the Ahrya Fine Arts Theatre in Beverly Hills.

It was dawn of the Atomic Age and the Cold War, as Communist and nuclear war paranoia swept onto the nation’s movie screens to both terrify and entertain the American public. All the favorite icons are here: Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet,...

Merle Oberon films: From empress to duchess in 'Hotel.' Merle Oberon films: From starring to supporting roles Turner Classic Movies' Merle Oberon month comes to an end tonight, March 25, '16, with six movies: Désirée, Hotel, Deep in My Heart, Affectionately Yours, Berlin Express, and Night Song. Oberon's presence alone would have sufficed to make them all worth a look, but they have other qualities to recommend them as well. 'Désirée': First supporting role in two decades Directed by Henry Koster, best remembered for his Deanna Durbin musicals and the 1947 fantasy comedy The Bishop's Wife, Désirée (1954) is a sumptuous production that, thanks to its big-name cast, became a major box office hit upon its release. Marlon Brando is laughably miscast as Napoleon Bonaparte, while Jean Simmons plays the title role, the Corsican Conqueror's one-time fiancée Désirée Clary (later Queen of Sweden and Norway). In a supporting role – her...

Elsewhere on Trailers from Hell, Joe Dante describes Jack Arnold’s 1958 "The Space Children" as that rare example of a "pacifist" sci-fi thriller. Robert Wise’s 1951 "The Day the Earth Stood Still" could qualify as the granddaddy of that genre were it not for its ambivalent message, which is, loosely translated, "Be peaceful or we’ll blow you out of the solar system." Regardless, Klattu, the kinder, gentler alien who visits Earth carrying a stern warning from space, embodies the humanism at the center of Edmund North’s screenplay. An intelligent and, at times, lightly satirical look at '50s paranoia, mixed with high-caliber sci-fi thrills—personified by Klattu's interstellar bodyguard, the ominous robot Gort—Wise’s film continues to make a lasting impression on all who see it. Michael Rennie plays Klattu and the thrilling theremin-powered score is by Bernard Herrmann.

Elsewhere on Tfh, Joe Dante describes Jack Arnold’s 1958 The Space Children as that rare example of a “pacifist” sci-fi thriller. Robert Wise’s 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still could qualify as the granddaddy of that genre were it not for its ambivalent message which is, loosely translated, “Be peaceful or we’ll blow you out of the solar system”. Regardless, Klattu, the kinder, gentler alien who visits earth carrying a stern warning from space, embodies the humanism at the center of Edmund North’s screenplay. An intelligent and, at times, lightly satirical look at 50s paranoia mixed with high-caliber sci-fi thrills (personified by Klattu’s interstellar bodyguard, the ominous robot Gort), Wise’s film continues to make a lasting impression on all who see it. Michael Rennie plays Klattu and the thrilling theremin-powered score is by Bernard Herrmann.

Billy Wilder directed Sunset Blvd. with Gloria Swanson and William Holden. Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett movies Below is a list of movies on which Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder worked together as screenwriters, including efforts for which they did not receive screen credit. The Wilder-Brackett screenwriting partnership lasted from 1938 to 1949. During that time, they shared two Academy Awards for their work on The Lost Weekend (1945) and, with D.M. Marshman Jr., Sunset Blvd. (1950). More detailed information further below. Post-split years Billy Wilder would later join forces with screenwriter I.A.L. Diamond in movies such as the classic comedy Some Like It Hot (1959), the Best Picture Oscar winner The Apartment (1960), and One Two Three (1961), notable as James Cagney's last film (until a brief comeback in Milos Forman's Ragtime two decades later). Although some of these movies were quite well received, Wilder's later efforts – which also included The Seven Year Itch...

A genre constantly overlooked at awards ceremonies, sci-fi cinema is full of stunning performances - like these...

Should we care whether the Academy likes science fiction or not? Does it matter that the genre and its best performances are regularly overlooked by most mainstream awards bodies? Probably not. But consider this: cinema is by now a long-established artform. Movies chart all aspects of the human condition: birth, death, happiness, sadness, ennui, fear, elation, empathy.

The best sci-fi movies arguably achieve the same thing. Where else is the sense of mystery and triumphant discovery felt more keenly than in, say, Solaris? What other genre could explore the nature of addiction with the same humour and pathos as A Scanner Darkly? Could the themes of ageing and disease in The Fly be transposed to a realistic drama and still be as thrilling, bizarre and tragic?

It’s still the case that science...

Patricia Neal ca. 1950. Patricia Neal movies: 'The Day the Earth Stood Still,' 'A Face in the Crowd' Back in 1949, few would have predicted that Gary Cooper's leading lady in King Vidor's The Fountainhead would go on to win a Best Actress Academy Award 15 years later. Patricia Neal was one of those performers – e.g., Jean Arthur, Anne Bancroft – whose film career didn't start out all that well, but who, by way of Broadway, managed to both revive and magnify their Hollywood stardom. As part of its “Summer Under the Stars” series, Turner Classic Movies is dedicating Sunday, Aug. 16, '15, to Patricia Neal. This evening, TCM is showing three of her best-known films, in addition to one TCM premiere and an unusual latter-day entry. 'The Day the Earth Stood Still' Robert Wise was hardly a genre director. A former editor (Citizen Kane, The Magnificent Ambersons...

Read More: 9 Cult Films That Deserve a Television Prequel Series "Michael Rennie was ill / The day the Earth stood still / But he told us where we stand. / And Flash Gordon was there / In silver underwear, / Claude Rains was the Invisible Man. / Then something went wrong / For Fay Wray and King Kong, / They got caught in a celluloid jam. / Then at a deadly pace, / It came from Outer Space, / And this is how the message ran..." The opening lines to "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" reference American low-budget productions in the horror-sci-fi genre that were made between the 1930s and 1950s. Michael Rennie starred as an alien visitor in "The Day the Earth Stood Still;" Flash Gordon, who originated as a comic strip hero in the 1934, became a film franchise by the end of the decade; Claude Rains had a breakthrough performance as the titular Invisible Man in 1933 and Fay Wray portrayed the equally.

“Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock!”

The restored, 4k update of The Third Man opens Friday, August 7th in St. Louis at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Theater

Roger Ebert called Harry Lime, the character played by Orson Welles in the 1949 classic The Third Man, his favorite screen villain of all time. Fittingly, he gets one of the great movie character introductions — an unforgettable one involving a doorway, a cat, and a sudden beam of light. There’s a reason that the only Academy Award won by The Third Man, one of the most beloved films of all time,...

The legendary Lost in Space turns 50 years old this year and Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment will celebrate the occasion this September by releasing the complete series on Blu-ray, with over six hours of bonus features included.

At Comic-Con, Daily Dead was honored to take part in roundtable interviews with Lost in Space cast members Mark Goddard, Marta Kristen, Angela Cartwright, and Bill Mumy, who reflected on their favorite Lost in Space memories, the show's legacy, the upcoming Blu-ray, and much more.

The cast reflects on their favorite memories of working on Lost in Space from 1965–1968:

Mark Goddard: My moments are always the fun that I had with Bill [Mumy] on the show. I'm a prankster, and Billy came along with me during my pranks because I had to have him with me because I might get in trouble. If I had Billy with me, I wouldn't get in...

This (British) trailer goes out of its way to sell David Bowie (the best-cast alien since Michael Rennie in "Day The Earth Stood Still") as The Second Coming, but Nic Roeg and Paul Mayersberg's adaptation of Walter Tevis' novel is one of the finest sci-fi pix ever made. Brutally cut for its initial Us release, it's since been restored and is a must-see.

'San Andreas' movie with Dwayne Johnson. 'San Andreas' movie box office: $100 million domestic milestone today As the old saying (sort of) goes: If you build it, they will come. Warner Bros. built a gigantic video game, called it San Andreas, and They have come to check out Dwayne Johnson perform miraculous deeds not seen since ... George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road, released two weeks earlier. Embraced by moviegoers, hungry for quality, original storylines and well-delineated characters – and with the assistance of 3D surcharges – the San Andreas movie debuted with $54.58 million from 3,777 theaters on its first weekend out (May 29-31) in North America. Down a perfectly acceptable 52 percent on its second weekend (June 5-7), the special effects-laden actioner collected an extra $25.83 million, trailing only the Melissa McCarthy-Jason Statham comedy Spy, (with $29.08 million) as found at Box Office Mojo.* And that's how this original movie – it's not officially a remake,...

This Sunday, I’m pleased to be part of a new series of Walt Disney presentations on Turner Classic Movies. I’ll be joining Ben Mankiewicz to introduce a full evening of Disney treats, including the classic Silly Symphonies short Santa’s Workshop (1932) and two other wintry cartoons, the wonderful behind-the-scenes feature The Reluctant Dragon (1941) featuring Robert Benchley, my boyhood favorite Davy Crockett, King of the Wild Frontier (1955), the Oscar-winning True Life Adventure The Vanishing Prairie (1954), and another film I’ve always liked, Third Man on the Mountain (1959) starring James MacArthur, Michael Rennie, Janet Munro, and Herbert Lom, followed by Perilous Assignment, an...

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We all from time to time enjoy a comfortable stay when vacationing anywhere in the world. So why should movie characters not appreciate a great place to stay as well? Interestingly, big screen hotels and motels almost play an important part as an extra movie character in addition to serving as a backdrop to the proceedings.

In Enjoy Your Stay: The Top 10 Movies About Hotels/Motels let’s look at some special selections where hotels and motels in film are featured and play a primary role in plot and theme. Cinematic room service has never been so accommodating.

The Enjoy Your Stay: The Top 10 Movies About Hotels/Motels selections are (in alphabetical order):

1.) The Best Exotic Manigold Hotel (2011)

Director John Madden’s The Best Exotic Manigold Hotel juggles various topical matters at hand: the aging process, deception in advertising, exotic travel and cultural clashing. Madden assembles a notable cast...

Tony Sokol Sep 26, 2019

"Science Fiction Double Feature" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show references lots of movies. We unpack it all...

I have watched, well, not exactly watched, but experienced The Rocky Horror Picture Show over 100 times. I’ve only watched it about 30 times. I saw it in the movies and on HBO about five times before I couldn’t take it anymore and troweled makeup on, ripped up some fishnet stockings and took to a stage myself. Figured I was a natch, had the same hair as Tim Curry and did his voice in a passable mimic, not that I'd need it.

I performed in a Friday night cast 72 times from when I was 15 to when I was 17. I started as Dr. Frank N. Furter and when I was replaced by a woman in lingerie, as opposed to a guy in drag, I played Janet for a while. The...

Some of our favourite sci-fi films and TV programmes have, at their core, a partnership which hooks us in. Often the two are polar opposites, sometimes they are thrown together by chance, but they connect, spark and we join them for the ride.

To celebrate the release on DVD of Lost Girl Season Two we set out to find the most enduring and endearing sci-fi partnerships around and there was no shortage of contenders. In the end we went for the duos who led us through some of our favourite adventures, and there are many more bubbling under.

Here are some of our favourites, let us know yours in the comments.

Kirk & Spock (Star Trek)

The only factor that could have prevented this pair turning up on our list of favourite sci-fi duos was DeForest Kelley’s Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy, who was always this writer’s favourite member of the USS Enterprise crew.

Jeanne Crain: Lighthearted movies vs. real life tragedies (photo: Madeleine Carroll and Jeanne Crain in ‘The Fan’) (See also: "Jeanne Crain: From ‘Pinky’ Inanity to ‘Margie’ Magic.") Unlike her characters in Margie, Home in Indiana, State Fair, Centennial Summer, The Fan, and Cheaper by the Dozen (and its sequel, Belles on Their Toes), or even in the more complex A Letter to Three Wives and People Will Talk, Jeanne Crain didn’t find a romantic Happy Ending in real life. In the mid-’50s, Crain accused her husband, former minor actor Paul Brooks aka Paul Brinkman, of infidelity, of living off her earnings, and of brutally beating her. The couple reportedly were never divorced because of their Catholic faith. (And at least in the ’60s, unlike the humanistic, progressive-thinking Margie, Crain was a “conservative” Republican who supported Richard Nixon.) In the early ’90s, she lost two of her...

The Day the Earth Stood Still

Written by Edmund H. North

Directed by Robert Wise

U.S.A., 1951

Whether rightly or wrongly, Man has been declared as the superior being on planet Earth. The scope of their cognitive skills, their ability to emote in countless ways, the complexity of their intellect, such factors have led humans to dominate, so to speak, other forms of life as well as organize itself in vast, regimented societies with hundreds of customs and rules. For all its demonstrations of intelligence and capacity for reason and love, Man has also proven time and time again to be an inherently violent and infuriatingly stubborn creature, incapable of finding common ground with neighbors and therefore resorting to battle and, sadly, killing in order to resolve differences. This fatal flaw in mankind’s psyche is the thrusting force that brings a potentially benevolent or deadly alien visitor to Earth in the 1951 science-fiction classic,...

By Lee Pfeiffer

The Rains of Ranchipur is yet another major film I probably would not have sampled had it not been released by Twilight Time. This Blu-ray edition is limited to 3,000 units. The film is primarily a soap opera based on the book The Rains Came by Louis Bromfield.  The story had been brought to the screen previously in 1939 under the book's title and starring Myrna Loy and Tyrone Power. It features a glamorous cast of acting heavyweights who compensate for some of the weaker elements of the production. Turner, still gorgeous as ever, is Lady Edwina Esketh, a rich American socialite who married her cuckolded British husband Albert (Michael Rennie) simply to get the title she always craved. Theirs is a sexless union based on their mutual selfishness. Although Albert is genuinely in love with Edwina, he admits that her personal fortune was a prime motivation for marrying her.

To mark the launch of its new game, Stratego Sci-Fi has surveyed more than 2,000 Britons to chart the Stratego Sci-Fi 100 – the nation’s top 100 stars of the sci-fi world – as well as a separate poll charting the best sci-fi battles from the silver screen – and has crowned Superman the greatest sci-fi character of all time

Following up the Man of Steel in 2nd place in the Stratego Sci-Fi 100 was Harrison Ford’s gruff but lovable rogue Han Solo, with Frank Oz’s jedi master Yoda coming third, both representing Star Wars in the top three and rounding it out firmly in George Lucas’ favour. Steven Spielberg’s E.T may be one of the most lovable characters of all time, but only made it to fourth in the list, followed by Will Smith’s Agent Jay from the hugely popular Men in Black series at number five.

The Stratego Sci-fi...

"Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939): Despite the title, a Los Angeles soundstage was the main setting -- but you wouldn't know it from watching -- of the Frank Capra-directed classic about a novice politician (James Stewart) who learns how some of the big boys play.

"The Day the Earth Stood Still" (1951): Earthlings, if you want to ensure that the Lincoln Memorial remains intact, do not mess with alien visitor Klaatu (Michael Rennie) and his towering, death-ray-firing robot Gort.

"The Exorcist" (1973): Washington's Georgetown section gets big play in director William Friedkin's chilling version of William Peter Blatty's novel.

"All the President's Men" (1976): Shots of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman) racing through the nation's capital at all hours lend authenticity to the Oscar-winning docudrama of how the reporters broke the Watergate scandal.

"Broadcast News" (1987): A D.C. television newsroom is...

By Lee Pfeiffer

Released in 1954 at the height of Marlon Brando's popularity, Desiree has the dubious distinction of being one of his least-remembered films, possibly because it was eclipsed by Kazan's On the Waterfront, released the same year. Desiree was a prestigious Fox production based on a romance novel that apparently had been so much the rage during this time that it was marketed as rivaling Gone With the Wind. The film version purports to explore the romantic relationship between Napoleon Bonaparte (Brando) and Desiree Clary (Jean Simmons), a young French girl of humble background who is employed in a shop owned by her family. When we first meet young Napoleon, he is on skids, his career and life threatened by the madness and paranoia that engulfed France in the aftermath of the Revolution. Still, he perseveres and survives the threats. He enters a playful romance with Desiree and even proposes to her.

Last week saw the release of a handful of new international films, with Jo Nesbø’s Headhunters topping the list, and this week brings with it a rather different line-up, with Peter Berg’s Battleship being the biggest name amongst the new arrivals, opposite Kevin Macdonald’s critically acclaimed documentary, Marley.

My picks of the week:

Kevin Macdonald’s Marley & Daniel Lee’s White Vengeance.

Marley Iframe Embed for Youtube

DVD and Blu-ray (inc. Digital and UltraViolet Copies)

Oscar-winner Kevin Macdonald (The Last King of Scotland) returned this year with Marley, a documentary following on from his Life in a Day project last year, bringing us a portrait of one of the most iconic figures in music of the last century.

And we’ve currently got three copies of the film on Blu-ray to give away – click here to enter the competition.

“Marley is the definitive film about one of...

Thirty-six years ago today, on April 25th, 1976, filmmaker Carol Reed passed away. One of the greatest directors ever to come out of the U.K., Reed started out as an actor, but gained fame as a writer-director in the late 1930s and 1940s, thanks to films like "Night Train To Munich," and the outstanding "Odd Man Out" and "The Fallen Idol." Later, he'd also find success with films like "Trapeze," "Our Man In Havana," "The Agony and the Ecstasy" and "Oliver!," for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director, beating out Stanley Kubrick's "2001" and Gillo Pontecorvo's "The Battle of Algiers."

But Reed's undisputed masterpiece is "The Third Man," a 1949 film noir based on a screenplay by the great British writer Graham Greene. The film involves a writer of Westerns, Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), who comes to post-war Vienna after being promised a job by his childhood friend Harry Lime.

Whether they’re male or female, old or young, they’ve illuminated some classic movies. Here’s our top 50 list of sci-fi heroes and heroines…

On the face of it, compiling a list of truly great sci-fi protagonists should be easy. Pick a load of familiar names from a hat, write some breathlessly adoring drivel beneath them, and head off to the pub to reward a job well done.

Except it was never going to be as simple as that – and compiling lists seldom is. For every character making an appearance in the list below, there were at least two other possible candidates who didn't quite make the cut. Some sci-fi heroes were removed, then quickly reinstated. The order was jiggled around, then reordered again.

At one point, your humble writer realised there were more than 50 entries, and then had the unenviable task of hunting back through to decide which poor soul to eliminate.

A genre constantly overlooked at awards ceremonies, sci-fi cinema is full of stunning performances. Here’s a list of 10 that deserved Oscar attention…

There are certain aspects of cinematic storytelling that Oscar judges absolutely love: feel-good dramas in which characters triumph over adversity, sweeping period epics, or films in which a popular Hollywood actor undergoes some startling, uncharacteristic change (see Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, for example, or Ben Kingsley in Ghandi) are a few examples.

Should a film somehow incorporate all three of these features, it will almost certainly walk away with an entire armful of golden statues. It’s a depressing fact, meanwhile, that genre movies are regularly overlooked by almost all mainstream film awards, and not just the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

If you’re an actor in a science fiction film, for example, it’s quite unlikely that you’ll receive much attention for your performance,...

Jean Hagen, Debbie Reynolds, Singin' in the Rain Debbie Reynolds on TCM: The Unsinkable Molly Brown, The Singing Nun Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am The Affairs Of Dobie Gillis (1953) A lovesick teenager searches for romance at college. Dir: Don Weis. Cast: Debbie Reynolds, Bobby Van, Barbara Ruick. Bw-73 mins. 7:15 Am I Love Melvin (1953) A photographer's assistant promises to turn a chorus girl into a cover girl. Dir: Don Weis. Cast: Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds, Una Merkel. C-77 mins. 8:45 Am The Tender Trap (1955) A swinging bachelor finds love when he meets a girl immune to his line. Dir: Charles Walters. Cast: Frank Sinatra, Debbie Reynolds, David Wayne. C-111 mins, Letterbox Format. 10:45 Am Bundle Of Joy (1956) A shop girl is mistaken for the mother of a foundling. Dir: Norman Taurog. Cast: Eddie Fisher, Debbie Reynolds, Adolphe Menjou. C-98 mins. 12:30 Pm Tammy And The Bachelor...

With Battle La unleashed on Blu-Ray this week, Falling Skies debuting on UK TV last week and Super 8 due out in three weeks … I decided to gather together my Brains Trust and have a conversation about Alien Invasion Movies. It very quickly became obvious that there are more of them, and a wider variety of them, than you might at first think.

Firstly we found ourselves breaking them down into five sub-genres:

The Small Town Invaders: These invasions begin small in some hick town in the armpit of nowhere and begin to build a bridgehead that way.

The Worldwide Invaders: Often arrive more publicly and aren’t shy about landing on the White House lawn.

The Solo Invader: Arrives by itself, often by accident, but promises to take over the world eventually anyway.

The Friendly Invaders: Means us no harm and generally finds that the sentiment is not reciprocated and,...

One of the earliest motion pictures to consciously depict the fear and suspicion that permeated the early Cold War, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” precipitated the 1950s science fiction boom. After landing his sleek, futuristic-seeming flying saucer, designed by Thomas Little and Claude Carpenter with consultation from Frank Lloyd Wright, on a baseball field in Washington, D.C., Klaatu, accompanied by the eight-foot robot Gort, warns the leaders of Earth to dismantle their burgeoning atomic programs or face utter destruction. His people will not tolerate of the spread of human violence throughout the galaxy. Unlike movie aliens before or many since, the human-appearing Klaatu spends time among ordinary people, not to conquer or hurt but to observe and learn. Working loosely from the 1940 short story “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates, director Robert Wise and screenwriter Edmund H. North created the unique production with an economy of action and an exhilarating pace.

One of the earliest motion pictures to consciously depict the fear and suspicion that permeated the early Cold War, “The Day the Earth Stood Still” precipitated the 1950s science fiction boom. After landing his sleek, futuristic-seeming flying saucer, designed by Thomas Little and Claude Carpenter with consultation from Frank Lloyd Wright, on a baseball field in Washington, D.C., Klaatu, accompanied by the eight-foot robot Gort, warns the leaders of Earth to dismantle their burgeoning atomic programs or face utter destruction. His people will not tolerate of the spread of human violence throughout the galaxy. Unlike movie aliens before or many since, the human-appearing Klaatu spends time among ordinary people, not to conquer or hurt but to observe and learn. Working loosely from the 1940 short story “Farewell to the Master” by Harry Bates, director Robert Wise and screenwriter Edmund H. North created the unique production with an economy of action and an exhilarating pace.

Article by Dana Jung

When I was a kid, in between wanting to be Spider-Man and serving aboard the starship Enterprise, I wanted to join the Khyber Rifles. All my friends wanted to join, too. We had seen this really cool movie on the late show called King Of The Khyber Rifles, and it was full of adventure, romance, and exotic locales. It had one of Hollywood’s most versatile and underrated directors in Henry King, a stirring musical score by the great Bernard Herrmann, plus one of the great matinee idol action stars, Tyrone Power. Unfortunately, none of us grew up to be Ty Power, and our quest went unfulfilled. But now, as an adult, I find myself occasionally wanting to relive those exciting scenes of derring-do, which is difficult, since King Of The Khyber Rifles is not available on DVD.

Released in 1953 by 20th Century Fox, Khyber Rifles...

Aliens… They aren’t all bad you know! Some aliens just want to contribute to society, pay their dues, and become outstanding citizens. Maybe they feel like they can relate to us… maybe they come in search of Reece’s Pieces… Maybe they just want to rescue the girl from harms way… Point is, we here at Wamg are more than happy to have them on our site, and are not about to argue with them! So, in honor of I Am Number Four, in theaters this Friday, March 18th, we bring you

Top Ten Heroes From Another Planet

Cue The Music!

(Sidenote: Tell me that keyboard player isn’t really bringing the pizazz about 12 seconds in!)

Honorable Mention: *batteries not included

Wouldn’t it be nice if little alien robots could assist in all of life’s problems? Well, that is exactly what happens in *batteries not included. When...

Welcome to No Fact Zone’s weekly roundup of cultural references on The Colbert Report. From Darcy to Danger Mouse, String Theory to Shakespeare, we’ve got the keys to this week’s obscure, oddball, and occasionally obscene cultural shout-outs (hey!)

Sveiki Zoners! Wow, what a somber and precarious situation to follow up. I was pleased with how Stephen and the writers handled it. The rest of the week was great, and stayed on point with the events that continued to unfold. Also, as someone married to a man with Lithuanian heritage (not recent, though), the bit on the Lithuanian national perfume was, by far, my favorite clip of the entire week. I never thought Stephen would give me such fodder for family gatherings. What were your favorites this week?

Monday:

Difference Makers: Galactic Edition – Pt 2

During the segment, we are shown two movie posters. One is The Day the Earth Stood Still...

Article by Dana Jung

In 1959 director Fritz Lang (Metropolis, M) released one of his last works, a two-part film known as The Indian Epic. The films (The Tiger Of Eschnapur and its sequel The Indian Tomb, both available on DVD but currently out of print) were part adventure and part travelogue. Today, these films are remembered (if at all) for two things: their incredible location photography, and the erotic dances of star Debra Paget. The scenes with a barely-clad Paget writhing seductively were considered so sexy at the time that the films received a write-up in Playboy magazine. But just five years earlier, as a 20th Century Fox contract player, Paget had played basically the same role (complete with dancing!) of an exotic beauty caught up in political turmoil. The film was the 1954 Fox B-picture Princess Of The Nile, which is sadly Not available on DVD.

The movie opens with...

As the Strause Brothers’ Skyline prepares to take over cinemas, we take a look back at the 50s era of classic alien invasion films…

Looking back over the history of science fiction cinema, it's fascinating to note just how long it took aliens to invade the big screen. Hg Wells' The War Of The Worlds popularised the alien invasion subgenre in 1897, but it would be more than 50 years before an adaptation made it to the big screen.

Before the 1950s, sci-fi cinema was dominated by mad scientists and monsters on the rampage, from James Whale's 1931 classic Frankenstein to Ernest B. Schoedsack's brilliantly odd Dr. Cyclops (1940), in which a mad professor shrinks a group of explorers using radiation.

It took the post-war paranoia of the Cold War to usher in a golden age of sci-fi, and with it, a rash of alien invasion movies. These invasions came in many forms,...