News

Stars: Linn Bjornland, Eric Roberts, Justin Gordon, Jeff Berg, Alexander Leeb, Robert Okumu, Leonard Kelly-Young, Charles Chiyangwa, Lamont Hendrix, Jeff Grays, Delpaneaux Wills, Guru Singh | Written and Directed by Ted Betz

Escape Through Africa, that’s a title that conjures up visions of films from a bygone era – where soldiers took on the rough terrain and vicious locals of the vast continent, usually with stiff upper lips and a bravado that time and time again was the downfall of many a character. And that’s exactly what writer/director Ted Betz gives us with his film!

Set in 1914, Escape Through Africa follows a British nurse, Anne Corringfield (Linn Bjornland) escapes an attack on the African outpost controlled by her uncle Captain Lockwood (Eric Roberts). When Harold (Jeff Berg) arrives at the outpost and tells of a massacre – as seen in the film’s opening – of a British patrol by locals...

Wilbur Smith, whose multiple novels on South Africa won him international acclaim, died today at his Cape Town home. He was 88 and no cause of death was given on the author’s official website.

“Global bestselling author Wilbur Smith died unexpectedly this afternoon at his Cape Town home after a morning of reading and writing with his wife Niso by his side,” the statement said.

Born in Zambia in 1933, Smith suffered a bout with polio at age 16, but drew his character Garrick Courtney from that experience. He went on to write about the character in a series of 17 novels.

Smith wrote 49 adventure novels during his 50-year career, each climbing the best-seller lists. thanks to his gripping prose.

His 1964 debut novel, When the Lion Feeds, is considered his most famous work. Other well-known books include the first novel of his Ancient Egypt series, River God, and his 2018 memoir, On Leopard Rock.

It’s tendon-biting combat, with guns, trains, planes, chainsaws, and an indestructible all-terrain vehicle (that still couldn’t stand the potholes in the street of Los Angeles)! Rod Taylor, Jim Brown and Yvette Mimieux blast their way through one of the roughest of the ’60s action spectacles, as mercenaries on a mission of mercy that’s really a venal grab to ‘rescue’ a fortune in diamonds. Director Jack Cardiff pushed the limits of acceptability on this one — legends persist about longer, more egregiously violent cuts.

Dark of the Sun

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1968 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 100 min. / The Mercenaries / Street Date December 18, 2011 / available through the Warner Archive Collection / 19.95

Starring: Rod Taylor, Yvette Mimieux, Peter Carsten, Jim Brown, Kenneth More, André Morell, Olivier Despax, Guy Deghy, Bloke Modisane, Calvin Lockhart.

Cinematography: Edward Scaife.

Film Editor: Ernest Walter

Original Music: Jacques Loussier

Written by Quentin Werty (Ranald MacDougall), Adrian Spies from the...

24: Live Another Day

While there's no CTU this season, photos of the sets being used in the event series have gone online. Locations being used include CIA's London black site, a Presidential residence, and Chloe's "hacker hub" which is in an abandoned restaurant. Click here for the full gallery.

Birds of Prey

"Layer Cake" scribe J.J. Connolly has signed on to pen a TV series adaptation of Wilbur Smith's best-selling "Birds of Prey" adventure novels.

Set in uncharted Africa in the 17th century, the series traces three generations of a family as they battle to secure their fortune, battling colonial empires, privateers, settled African nations and the wilderness itself. [Source: THR]

The Walking Dead

"The Walking Dead" closes out its fourth season next Sunday with the separated characters descending upon the mysterious 'Terminus', a place that apparently promises sanctuary but could well turn out to be a trap. As 'Terminus' isn't in the comics,...

Author and screenwriter J.J. Connolly (Layer Cake) has signed on to adapt Wilbur Smith's best-selling Birds of Prey adventure novels as a TV series for Corona Pictures and FremantleMedia International. The novels -- Birds of Prey, Monsoon and Blue Horizon -- are swashbuckling tales set in uncharted Africa in the 17th century. The series traces three generations of the Courtney family as they battle to secure their fortune in Africa, battling colonial empires, privateers, settled African nations and the African wilderness itself. Story: ABC Family Orders Three Drama Pilots Smith's adventure novels have previously been made into TV miniseries, including

read more...

Exclusive: In a further foray into scripted programming, FremantleMedia is teaming with the UK’s Corona Pictures for a drama/adventure series project based on best-selling author Wilbur Smith’s Birds Of Prey. Layer Cake scribe Jj Connolly has been set to pen the adaptation of the first three novels in Smith’s Courtney Family Adventures series that begins with Birds Of Prey and includes Monsoon and Blue Horizon. All told, Smith’s 34 books have sold over 120 million copies worldwide. The swashbuckling Courtney novels are set against a backdrop of the uncharted Africa of the 17th century, which offers the promise of the adventure of a lifetime and tantalizing riches. The stories chronicle the lives of the eponymous family as they battle to secure the clan’s fortunes in a place where sea-faring empires, privateers, wild animals and settled African tribes and nations fight it out for control of the land and its treasures.

By Lee Pfeiffer

Timeless Media have released the epic 1976 adventure film Shout at the Devil as a Blu-ray/DVD combo pack. The movie, produced by Michael Klinger and directed by Peter Hunt, is an big budget affair very much in the style of John Huston's The Man Who Would Be King, which was released the previous year. Both films follow the antics of a couple of charismatic rogues in exotic settings. The film is based on the novel by author Wilbur Smith, who also co-wrote the screenplay. The movie was shot in between Roger Moore's second and third James Bond films, The Man With the Golden Gun and The Spy Who Loved Me and boasts a "who's who" of Eon Productions talent. Peter Hunt had edited the early Bond films and directed On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Ironically, Moore and Hunt never worked on a 007 film together but in...

Long time reader's of S&A will be fully aware of my aversion to and criticisms of films that tackle the broadly-termed "Somali Piracy Issue" - especially those (most, if not all of them) made by westerners (specifically white filmmakers), that tend to offer limited, incomplete portrayals of the matter. I'm sure you can guess what my concerns here would be, after reading the synopses alone for many of these films. For example, recently, it was announced that a film adaptation of Wilbur Smith’s novel Those In Peril is being developed by British production company ReelArt Media, scheduled for an eventual 2014 release. Within the novels description, is this...

More than 30 years after Stephen King first terrified readers with The Shining, he's written a sequel, drawing on his alcoholism and a near-death experience. He talks about being a drunk father and why the Twilight series is just 'tweenager porn'

Stephen King has written a lot of books – at 56 novels, he's closing in on Agatha Christie – some of which have been great, some of which less so. Still, he says, when people say, "Steve, your books are uneven", he's confident "there's good stuff in all of 'em". Now and then, a story lingers in his mind long after it's published. When fans ask what happened to Charlie McGee in Firestarter, for example, King isn't interested. But when they ask what happened to Danny Torrance, the boy from The Shining, he always found himself wondering. Specifically: what the story would have looked like if Danny's father – mad "white-knuckle alcoholic" Jack Torrance – had "found AA.

The last one we wrote about (an adaptation of Wilbur Smith’s novel Those In Peril) was in March; today brings word of what is being described as a "Somali piracy actioner" titled High Value Target. To be directed by Spenser Cohen (from a script he is co-writing with Zach Luna), the film (said to be inspired by real events) centers on "a multi-national hit-squad consisting of five elite special ops soldiers who take out a ship of 200 Somali soldiers/pirates and capture a high value target with vital information." The project which the newly-formed Energy Independent has come on board to produce, is reportedly being shopped...

The first three books in Wilbur Smith's best-selling "Courtney" series of novels have been acquired by Corona Pictures for TV adaptation. "Birds of Prey," "Monsoon" and "Blue Horizon" will be adapted into several series for a worldwide television audience, the company said Tuesday. Spanning three generations of the Courtney family, the novel series chronicles the clan's battles to secure its fortunes in 17th-century Africa, where "sea-faring empires, marauding pirates and the people who already live there" fight it out for control of the land and its treasures. In all, Rhodesian-born author Smith has...

After Salman Khan in .Dabangg. and Ajay Devgn in .Singham., get ready for John Abraham.s cop film, .Force., in which the star performs gravity defying stunts without the protective cables..He was very flexible and I didn.t use any cables. This is the first time I did any action without using any cables. John has done everything by himself,. popular action director Allan Amin told us..He had to jump from 150 ft on an air bag without using any cables and he had to pick a bike of 150 kg, which again he did without cables,. said Amin, who was also the action director of .Dhoom...It has action like .Satya. but is completely stylised,. he added.Amin shoots down reports of John.s injury while doing the dangerous stunts, saying: .He was not injured, he was bruised while doing bare body stunts. If you fall on ground with that much of weight,...

Given the unrest across Africa today, it’s easy to forget that there was similar troubles as country after country gained their independence from colonization in the 1950s and 1960s. The Congo crisis, in particular, lasted from 1960-66 as it struggled to establish itself after Belgian rule. Over 100,000 people died during the ordeal and it inspired a 1965 novel, The Dark of the Sun, by Wilbur Smith.

The novel, rather than the actual events, led to the 1968 MGM film adaptation which is finally available on DVD from Warner Archive. The film has been a favorite of directors including Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino who lifted some of the score, and its lead Rod Taylor, for use in last year’s Inglorious Basterds.

Taylor plays mercenary Bruce Curry who is hired by the iron-fisted president Ubi (Calvin Lockhart) to retrieve $50 million in diamonds from the northern country. Accompanied by his Congolese friend...