News

Hyde Park International will launch sales and show first footage at the AFM in Las Vegas next month on the road trip comedy Northbound starring Oscar-nominated Bruce Dern.

Screen has obtained a first-look image from the film, which GateHouse Productions shot in Canada and is now in post targeting a release and awards attention in 2025.

Dern plays Arthur, an 80-something maverick inspired by director William Scoular’s father, who persuades his grandson Kevin to help him escape from his nursing home.

The pair then drive from Arizona to Canada and mayhem ensues. When they pick up mysterious stranger, bullets fly...

Directed by Doug Trumbull, 1983 sci-fi thriller Brainstorm could have been deleted as an insurance write-off – but then a London bank intervened.

When Warner Bros announced its plans to effectively delete the films Batgirl, Scoob 2 and Coyote Vs Acme, the reaction was one of outrage. Studios destroying films as a tax write-off is nothing new, however: on the 21st June 1933, the Charlie Chaplin film A Woman Of The Sea (previously called Sea Gulls) was burned on the steps of Chaplin’s own studio. The five witnesses who saw the negative go up in flames then signed a letter confirming that the film had been lost to history.

A film directed and produced by one of the most important visual effects pioneers of the 20th century almost suffered a similar fate. Brainstorm, which went into production in the early 1980s, was directed by Doug Trumbull and featured a superb cast, including Christopher Walken,...

The background is well-known to Trekkies. Throughout the 1970s, "Star Trek" exploded in popularity. This was thanks largely to some sweet eternal syndication deals, which allowed the series to stay on the air pretty much in perpetuity. In the mid-'70s, "Star Trek" conventions were born, revealing to the world that there was a passionate, ultra-nerdy contingency of Trek fans willing to discuss and celebrate their pop obsession in public. It was at these conventions that series creator Gene Roddenberry opened an ongoing conversation with Trekkies as to what made his series so appealing. One could argue that it wasn't until these conversations that Roddenberry discovered the depth of his show, and the pragmatic philosophies of pacifism and diplomacy it represented. 

It was in 1975 that Roddenberry began working on a "Star Trek" movie, although that early concept fell apart over some complex script issues. After that, Roddenberry began work on "Star Trek: Phase II,...

In the late Spring of 1979, Paramount Pictures' production of "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" was in big trouble. With a looming release date of December 7 of that year, the film was still struggling to be completed, with the bulk of its visual effects work yet to be even attempted, let alone finished.

In retrospect, given the movie's production history, this was an inevitable problem. Ever since the original "Star Trek" series was cancelled in the summer of 1969, the franchise had experienced a number of stops and starts when it came to being revived. Around the mid-'70s, creator Gene Roddenberry had seemingly set up a script and a production for the show's leap to the big screen, only for Paramount to pivot and seek to turn that work into a proposed reboot of the series back on television, to be known as "Star Trek: Phase II." That show was literal...

For a time, it seemed like an auteur war was about to break out over Adam Sandler, with some of America’s most revered directors vying to find the right role for the comedian. It was rumored, but never confirmed, that Quentin Tarantino imagined him a key role while writing Inglourious Basterds, although this might have been wishful thinking from critics who saw the talented Sandler heading in the same direction as John Travolta until Pulp Fiction saved him from a lifetime of Look Who’s Talking movies. In the end, Paul Thomas Anderson got there first, with Punch Drunk Love (2002), although the glow of a bona fide arthouse hit didn’t last long, and Jack and Jill still happened less than ten years later.

Nevertheless, though he returned to the fanbase, Sandler has always been good in serious supporting roles, even in films that don’t broadly work, like...

Star Trek is one of best and most well-known science fiction franchises of all time, so it’s no surprise that it’s had a huge influence on the rest of the genre. From other space-faring adventures to distant worlds to straight up parodies of the Enterprise and its crew, there are plenty of shows and movies that owe a bit to Gene Roddenberry‘s creation.

This is not a list of every single show or film that has been inspired by Star Trek because that list would cover a pretty good proportion of sci-fi on screen since 1966. But if you want to watch something Star Trek-adjacent, we’ve picked out 10 of our favorite shows and movies that were, to a greater or lesser degree, inspired by Star Trek.

Red Dwarf

Back in 1998, BBC 2 ran a Red Dwarf Night featuring interviews with celebrity fans, one of whom was Patrick Stewart.

Peter Schickele, whose comedic parodies of classical music overshadowed his own strengths as a serious composer, died Tuesday at his home in Bearsville, N.Y. at 88. His daughter confirmed the death and attributed it to a series of infections that damaged his health.

Schickele won the Grammy Award for Best Comedy Album four years in a row from 1990-1994. He also won in 2000 for Best Classical Crossover album.

The composer aimed at breaking down the stuffiness of classical music in the grand tradition of Victor Borge, His compositions included the No-No Nonette, the cantata Iphigenia in Brooklyn, the Unbegun Symphony, and Pervertimento for Bagpipes, Bicycle and Balloons, among other titles.

Schickele claimed to be the discoverer of 18th-century composer P.D.Q. Bach, the son of Johann Sebastian Bach, “the last and by far the least” of his 20 children. Schickele claimed to have made several unusual discoveries of P.D.Q. Bach works,...

George Lucas had a bold vision when he set out to make "Star Wars" in the mid-1970s. He did not, however, have the technology to pull it off. No one did, at least not at an affordable price.

Douglas Trumbull had recently vaulted visual effects forward with his optical innovations for Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," but his photorealistic presentation of space was based wholly in physical reality. The space stations and ships in Kubrick's masterpiece drifted gracefully in the cosmos. Trumbull replicated this galactic ballet to eerie effect in his directorial debut "Silent Running," on which he employed an upstart technophile named John Dykstra, who was eager to build on Trumbull's inventions with a more dynamic application that would jar sci-fi flicks out of their reality-bound lethargy.

When Lucas commenced work on "Star Wars" (via a go-with-god greenlight from 20th Century Fox's Alan Ladd Jr....

Biosphere feels like a movie Mark Duplass was born to lead. Small sci-fi with a provocative twist. One location, two characters, and a lot of talking. This is one of the pioneers behind the mumblecore subgenre, after all. Most of it works, and some it works really well. Written by Duplass and Mel Eslyn, with Eslyn directing (a longtime producer making her feature directorial debut), it stars Duplass and Sterling K. Brown as the last two living human beings on Earth.

They’re immediately faced with a mortal dilemma: their last female fish has died, spelling an imminent end to their sole supply of food within their tiny biosphere. Only two males remain. It’s a nifty open (preceded by a somewhat-too-cute discussion on Super Mario Bros.) that sets the stakes high. Ray (Brown) is a capable scientist. Billy (Duplass) is decidedly not a capable scientist who may (?) be the...

This story is part of The Hollywood Reporter’s 2023 Sustainability Issue (click here to read more).

In 1970, 20 million Americans participated in the first Earth Day. One of the more alarming predictions that day was from Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, who foresaw a future in which “population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” resulting in the starvation death of hundreds of millions.

Hollywood took notice and released a string of eco-disaster films in the years to follow.

In 1972’s Silent Running, a science fiction film starring Bruce Dern — and directed by 2001: A Space Odyssey effects master Douglas Trumbull — all plant life on Earth has gone extinct. And 1973’s Soylent Green, with Charlton Heston (who had starred in two other sci-fi hits, 1968’s Planet of the Apes and 1971’s The Omega Man), took Ehrlich’s ideas to scary, if campy, extremes.

Helmed by Richard Fleischer...

There are lots of ways to pitch If You Were the Last. How about “Michel Gondry remakes When Harry Met Sally — in space!” Who wouldn’t want to see that? But for all the ingenious hot takes one can dream up for Kristian Mercado’s ambitious feature-length debut, there’s no escaping the fact that it’s less than the sum of its parts. To be brutal, although it does, for an hour at least, cast a spell, raise interesting metaphysical questions, and center on an odd couple who, for once, actually don’t seem like they’ll get together and then totally convince us when they do — it doesn’t really pass muster as a movie at all.

Which is surprising, because character-based, low-budget sci-fi indies set in the howling existential wilderness of deep space do have a history of working against the odds, like John Carpenter’s blackly...

Gorillaz have released their eighth album, Cracker Island. Stream it below via Apple Music or Spotify.

Originally announced last August alongside the release of “New Gold” — a mesmerizing single featuring Tame Impala and Bootie Brown — Cracker Island not only augments the band’s canon of inquisitive pop gems, but also shows the animated quartet collaborating with an impressive list of guests, including Bad Bunny, Stevie Nicks, Thundercat, Beck, and more. With these parts combined, the sum of the album is an exciting plunge back into the search for meaning in the modern world.

For their part, the virtual band finds itself in the perfect setting for their search. 2-D, Noodle, Russel Hobbs, and Murdoc Niccals have left their West London home base for new digs in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, where fame-lust, toxic consumerism, and the occult blend together as easily as exhaust fumes and the Angeleno air.

“I’m on one per cent, but I’m there with you,” croons 2D on Gorillaz’ most enjoyable album since 2005’s Demon Days. It’s a sentiment that reflects the record’s commitment to finding collective fun in the face of isolating fatigue. Gorillaz have always been an apocalypse party of an act, but now, they’re laughing again. There’s a loose-limbed elation to the indie-funk grooves they find, with guests ranging from Fleetwood Mac’s Stevie Nicks to Australian psych-rockers Tame Impala and LA bass-bouncer Thundercat. And a sleepy solidarity in the more melancholy moments, which include a tender acoustic duet with Beck.

Britain’s first virtual band was created in 2001 by Damon Albarn and Tank Girl artist Jamie Hewlett in response to what the earnest indie purists saw as the “manufactured” state of chart music. But over the next two decades, the project has given the Blur...

If you want to attract a younger audience, you have to watch what they watch. Not what you think they are watching, says producer Dean Devlin, best known for “Independence Day” and “Stargate.” But he never designs his shows for one market.

“It’s no longer all about gender or age demographic. If you go to a sci-fi convention, they are not just kids, they are not just older people. It’s everybody!”

At Berlinale Series Market Selects, which runs as part of the European Film Market in Berlin, with his latest show, sci-fi series “The Ark,” Devlin continues to pay homage to the kind of stories he loved as a child, from Douglas Trumbull’s “Silent Running” to “The Omega Man.”

“I don’t pay any attention to trends. When we did ‘Stargate,’ every studio in Hollywood said that science fiction was dead. And then we had a hit,...

Welcome To Our weekly rundown of the best new music — featuring big singles, key tracks from our favorite albums, and more. This week Gorillaz deliver a smooth new jam, Lil Yachty gets romantic, and Blondshell rocks out, plus great new songs from Rosalia, Rae Sremmurd, and more. Check out the list, or cue it up on Spotify.

Lil Yachty, “drive Me crazy!” (YouTube)

Rae Sremmurd, “Sucka or Sum” (YouTube)

Rosalia, “Llylm” (YouTube)

Maesu, “Sex On Gps” (YouTube)

Popcaan, “Skeleton Cartier” (YouTube)

Bas, “Diamonds” (YouTube)

Surf Mesa feat. Selah Sol, “City of Love” (YouTube)

Blondshell,...

Gorillaz have shared a slinky new song, “Silent Running,” featuring longtime collaborator Adeleye Omotayo, from their upcoming album Cracker Island, out Feb. 24.

“Silent Running,” per a press release, was the first Cracker Island song Gorillaz worked on with producer Greg Kurstin at his studio in Los Angeles. Musical mastermind Damon Albarn described the mid-tempo funk gem as having “that sort of mesmerizing dreamlike state you get in when you’re just following some train of thought.”

Or, as Gorillaz’s animated frontman 2D evocatively put it, “Sometimes I get well...

Got your Pym particles ready? Then prepare to journey into the Quantum Realm for Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania – the MCU threequel that takes Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne and pitches them into the biggest, wildest adventure yet. The new issue of Empire presents the ultimate look at Marvel’s cosmic jamboree, going subatomic with the cast and creators of a so-tiny-it’s-gigantic sequel.

You can find the issue on newsstands from Thursday 19 January – with online orders available here – but in the meantime here’s a sneak peek inside its pages.

Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania

Phase 5 of the MCU is about to go off with a bang – or, more accurately, a Kang, since Paul Rudd’s diminutive hero is about to face Jonathan Majors’ maniacal despot. In a major world-exclusive, Empire speaks to Rudd, Majors, Evangeline Lilly, Michael Douglas, Michelle Pfeiffer, Kathryn Newton, director Peyton Reed, Marvel boss...

Gorillaz have linked up with Tame Impala and the Pharcyde’s Bootie Brown for a new song, “New Gold,” that will appear on their next album, Cracker Island, out Feb. 24, 2023, via Warner Records.

“New Gold” is classic Gorillaz, with a psychedelic haze floating over otherwise energetic alt-pop production. Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker delivers the song’s swooning hook while Bootie Brown blazes through a pair of verses, the second one culminating with the sign-off, “Bullshit keeps comin’, baby I’m a Matador/What are we living for?”

Before announcing Cracker Island,...

Surprisingly, veteran actor Bruce Dern hasn’t done many regular television roles throughout his six-decade career. But he jumped at the chance to work with old friend Billy Bob Thornton on the Amazon Prime legal drama “Goliath.” He played Frank Zax, former pharmaceutical executive during the fourth and final season of the series. That role over the course of the episodes brought him a barnburner of a legal battle with his ruthless brother George, played by J.K. Simmons.

During our recent chat Dern reveals, “I’d never really done a scene in a courtroom. I had been a judge in ‘All the Pretty Horses’ for Billy Bob. Movies and acting are really about photographing, in a really interesting way, conversations. I liked that style in what they were doing… Billy said you’re here because you’re you, and you’re extremely unpredictable and it’s not planned out. You have your ‘Dernsies,...

You heard them prior to the second season of "The Leftovers," which first aired in October of 2015. A moody cover of A Flock of Seagulls' "I Ran" wailed plaintively in the previews. You might have heard them in the preview for the 2015 ABC series "The Whispers." That was Mike + the Mechanics' "Silent Running (On Dangerous Ground)." If you recall the TV spots for ABC's "Blood and Oil," you heard the penetratingly dramatic cover of Duran Duran's "Hungry Like the Wolf." To cite a more recent sighting, if you listened to the music playing behind the promo videos...

The post The Story Behind the Band That Makes All Those Sad Cover Songs in Movie Trailers appeared first on /Film.

It’s no exaggeration to state that filmmaking, especially in the fields of science fiction and fantasy, might not be what it is today without the pioneering work of the legendary Douglas Trumbull.

The director and visual effects designer, who passed away on February 8 at the age of 79, had a hand in creating the screenscapes for some of the most influential genre films of all time, including 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Blade Runner. He pioneered techniques that allowed those films and many others to visualize the vastness of space, the magnificence of alien spacecraft and the eeriness of dystopian futures with a sense of scale and realism that elevated sci-fi cinema beyond its reputation as a dumping ground for hoary, cheap-looking B-movies once and for all.

Born on April 8, 1942 in Los Angeles, Douglas Trumbull followed his father Donald — who worked on the visual...

Douglas Trumbull, the legendary special effects master who helped create the worlds of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Blade Runner and Star Trek: The Motion Picture has died, according to a social media post from his daughter, Amy Trumbull. He was 79.

Trumbull developed the slit-scan photography process that was used in the “Star Gate” sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi classic. “I just happened to be in the right place at the right time,” he later said. “We were struggling with the Star Gate. Nobody knew what a Star Gate was, but I came up with some ideas that I didn’t even know at the time were based on some things I was learning as a young guy about street photography and weird photographic techniques.”

Based on his work for Kubrick, Trumbull was George Lucas’ first choice to head Industrial Light & Magic, but he...

Douglas Trumbull, the pioneering VFX master behind the groundbreaking science-fiction classics “2001: A Space Odyssey” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” has died. His daughter, Amy, shared the news on Facebook that Trumbull had cancer, a brain tumor, and a stroke. He was 79.

“He was an absolute genius and a wizard and his contributions to the film and special effects industry will live on for decades and beyond,” she wrote. Trumbull created the special photographic effects for Kubrick’s innovative “2001”, Spielberg’s aliens-among-us classic “Close Encounters” (which advanced the lessons learned from “2001”), the first big-screen wonderment of “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” and the seedy, futuristic LA of Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner.” The latter three films earned him Best Visual Effects Oscar nominations. He also worked on the VFX for the sci-fi cult classic, “The Andromeda Strain,” and Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life.”

“Speaking, solely, personally...

Douglas Trumbull, a legendary film pioneer of visual effects who worked on “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Blade Runner” and the first “Star Trek” movie, has died. He was 79.

Trumbull’s death was announced by his daughter in a Facebook post. He died Monday night after “a two-year battle with cancer, a brain tumor and a stroke,” she said.

“He was an absolute genius and a wizard and his contributions to the film and special effects industry will live on for decades and beyond,” Amy Trumble wrote. “My sister Andromed and I got to see him on Saturday and tell him that he [sic] love him and we got to tell him to enjoy and embrace his journey into the Great Beyond. I love you Daddy, I sure will miss you!”

“After 20 years, side-by-side, day and night, I say goodbye to my best friend, partner, true...

Visual effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull, one of the masterminds behind the visual effects on some of the most visually audacious science fiction films of all time, including “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Blade Runner,” died Monday from complications from mesothelioma. He was 79.

His daughter Amy wrote on Facebook. that he had cancer, a brain tumor and a stroke.

“My sister Andromeda and I got to see him on Saturday and tell him that he love him and we got to tell him to enjoy and embrace his journey into the Great Beyond,” she wrote.

He shared Oscar nominations for best visual effects for “Close Encounters,” “Star Trek: The Motion Picture” and “Blade Runner.”

Trumbull also oversaw the visual effects on “Silent Running,” “The Andromeda Strain” and “Star Trek: The Motion Picture,” and he directed eco-sci-fi film “Silent Running” and Natalie Wood-starring “Brainstorm.”

Trumbull...

Filmmaker received Academy’s honorary Gordon Sawyer Award in 2012.

Douglas H. Trumbull, the VFX pioneer who worked on 2001: A Space Odyssey and earned three Oscar nominations for his work on Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, Blade Runner and Star Trek – The Motion Picture, has died. He was 79.

Trumbull’s wife Julia said the filmmaker passed away on Monday (7) from complications from mesothelioma.

He was born on April 8, 1942, in Los Angeles, to Marcia Hunt, an artist, and Donald Trumbull, an engineer who had received his start in Hollywood as a special effects rigger on The Wizard Of Oz. Trumbull...

Douglas Trumbull has been in the “2001: A Space Odyssey” business for over 50 years. The special effects guru was a young animation artist when he worked on the spaceflight short film “To the Moon and Beyond” for the 1964 World’s Fair, which caught the attention of Stanley Kubrick while in the early stages of planning his operatic space epic. Trumbull wound up learning the ropes of visual effects on the project and played a critical role in everything from the miniatures to Hal 9000’s robotic view and the climactic Stargate sequence, which remains as mesmerizing today as it was over half a century ago.

Much of Trumbull’s work is on display in “Envisioning 2001: Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey,” an exhibition at New York’s Museum of the Moving Image that reopens this week and remains on display through September. The exhibit, a variation of an earlier show...

It is unfortunate that comparisons to Starship Troopers (1997) will plague the new science fiction film Voyagers, as the two films are indelibly dissimilar. While Paul Verhoeven’s film was an intentionally over-the-top examination of the dystopian worldview that the novel’s author, Robert A. Heinlein, saw as the inevitable outcome of human evolution, Voyagers is more of a slow-burn think piece that attempts to re-envision Lord of the Flies by William Golding as a sort of teen-centric adventure story that manages to remain engaging and somewhat entertaining throughout.

It is 2063, and the Earth is in imminent peril. Life will soon be unsustainable on the planet. The solution that is devised to ensure the survival of the human race involves hurling a couple dozen specifically bred and trained children across the cosmos to colonize a planet similar to Earth. Accompanying the children on this journey is the scientist in charge of the mission,...

Legendary movie star, Last Call‘s Bruce Dern, joins Josh and Joe to discuss a few of his favorite movies and moments.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Cowboys (1972)

Last Call (2021)

Silent Running (1972)

The Long Goodbye (1973)

The Reivers (1969)

The War Wagon (1967)

Support Your Local Sheriff (1969)

The Shootist (1976)

Sands Of Iwo Jima (1949)

Wild River (1960)

Viva Zapata (1952)

Castle Keep (1969)

The Big Knife (1955)

Attack (1956)

What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? (1962)

Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964)

Suspicion (1941)

Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

The Great Gatsby (1974)

Something Wicked This Way Comes (1983)

Ben-Hur (1959)

The Trial (1962)

Great Expectations (1946)

The Sound Barrier (1952)

Oliver Twist (1948)

The Bridge On The River Kwai (1957)

Rko 281 (1999)

Citizen Kane (1941)

Mank (2020)

The Chase (1966)

The Formula (1980)

Shine (1996)

All That Jazz (1979)

A Decade Under The Influence (2003)

Shane (1953)

The Sons Of Katie Elder (1965)

The King Of Marvin Gardens (1972)

Deliverance (1972)

Nebraska (2013)

Twixt (2011)

The ’Burbs (1989)

About Schmidt (2002)

Sideways (2004)

The Descendants (2011)

The Manchurian Candidate (1962)

The Manchurian Candidate (2004)

Charade (1963)

The Truth About Charlie...

“Minyan,” an acclaimed tale of sexual and spiritual identity directed by Eric Steel, has sold to Strand Releasing in North America.

The film, starring stage breakout Samuel H. Levine of Broadway and the West End’s “The Inheritance,” played in the official selection at last year’s Berlin International Film Festival and went on to win Outfest’s grand jury prize for U.S. narrative feature.

In Judaism, a minyan refers to the minimum amount of celebrants required for certain religious traditions. Set in 1980s Brighton Beach, the film follows a young Russian Jewish immigrant who is caught up in the tight constraints of his community. He develops a close friendship with his grandfather’s new neighbors — two elderly closeted gay men who open his imagination to the possibilities of love and the realities of loss. In the East Village, he finds a world teeming with the energy of youth,...

In a future near enough to be recognisable and far enough away to be believable, scientist George Almore (Theo James) works alone at an aging remote outpost hidden in the snowy forests of Japan. His goal is to create a new artificial intelligence for the Arm Corporation which funds his work. But secretly he has his own agenda: create a realistic robot capable of taking on the persona of his deceased wife Jules (Stacy Martin) who died in a horrific car crash that George survived.

Luckily George has Jules’ memories backed up in an Archive – a storage device created by the Archive Corporation that enables a loved one up to 200 hours interaction with the deceased as a means to come to terms with the loss and say a final goodbye. But George has good reason to invalidate the warranty by tinkering with the imposing black monolith (imagine if Stanley Kubrick...

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“Conservation In Space”

By Raymond Benson

When Silent Running was released in 1972 as a somewhat “experimental” venture from Universal Pictures, a studio that had decided to give a handful of new filmmakers a million dollars each to make whatever they wanted, it flew under the radar of most folks who weren’t into science fiction. After all, it was a tough challenge to come up with anything to compete with 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), which was still playing on second and third runs around the world. Silent Running did okay at the box office, but it wasn’t a runaway hit.

Nevertheless, Running, which was directed by one of 2001’s visual effects supervisors, Douglas Trumbull (it was his debut as a director), became a cult movie that has played revival houses and did good business on home video years later in multiple formats.

To mark the release of Silent Running, out now, and Twelve Monkeys on 14th December, we’ve been given 2 bundles of both movies to give away on DVD.

Silent Running

Botanist Freeman Lowell (Bruce Dern) has spent eight years aboard the space freighter Valley Forge preserving the only botanical specimens left from Earth under huge geodesic domes. When he receives orders to destroy the project and return home, Lowell rebels and hijacks the freighter, while plunging the craft into the gaseous rings of Saturn. From that moment on, he has only the trees, the gardens and two “Drone” robots, Huey and Dewey, to keep him company on his greatest adventure of all.

Twelve Monkeys

Between the past and the future, sanity and madness, dreams and reality, lies the mystery of the Twelve Monkeys.. the year is 2035 and humankind subsists in a desolate netherworld following the eradication of 99% of the Earth’s population,...

Bruce Dern is on a life-saving mission! After killing John Wayne in The Cowboys but before trying to massacre the Super Bowl in Black Sunday, his forest ranger Freeman Lowell committed space piracy to save the trees, man! The only one back on Earth who seems to care is Joan Baez. Douglas Trumbull’s technically-accomplished first feature film does 2001 on a tiny budget, and creates something original, if a bit mushy. The screenplay by Derek Washburn, Michael Cimino and Steven Bochco reaches a wistful ending — but is it uplifting or depressing?

Silent Running

Blu-ray

Arrow Video

1972 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 89 min. / Street Date November 17, 2020 / 39.99

Starring: Bruce Dern, Cliff Potts, Ron Rifkin, Jesse Vint, Mark Persons, Steven Brown, Cheryl Sparks, Larry Whisenhunt.

Cinematography: Charles F. Wheeler

Film Editor: Aaron Stell

Original Music: Peter Schickiele

Special Photographic Effects: John Dykstra, Douglas Trumbull, Richard Yuricich

Written by Deric Washburn, Michael Cimino, Steven Bochco

Produced by Michael Gruskoff,...

New from Arrow Video US Lake Michigan Monster [Blu-ray] (11/3) Burst City [Blu-ray] (11/10) Silent Running [Blu-ray] (11/17) He Came From The Swamp: The William Grefe Collection [Blu-ray Box Set] (11/24) via Mvd Entertainment Group Sci Fi Classics & Indie Legends, Arrow has Plenty to be Thankful for this November 2020 has felt like it’s been two decades too long already, but it’s …

The post Arrow Video US – November 2020 Release Schedule appeared first on Horror News | Hnn.

With days to spare before the opening night of this year’s Thessaloniki Intl. Film Festival, organizers were suddenly forced to contend with a dramatic spike in coronavirus cases in Greece’s second city, prompting them to scrap plans for a hybrid edition and move entirely online.

The sudden reversal, said festival director Orestis Andreadakis, was “really, really difficult,” but not entirely unforeseen, as the country grapples with a second wave of Covid-19 that has far outpaced the first wave in the spring. Contingency plans were already in place, as Andreadakis and his colleagues spent months preparing for a variety of scenarios. “It was extremely difficult, because it was as if [we were] preparing three festivals” at the same time, he said.

On Nov. 3, the Greek government introduced a raft of new measures determined to halt the pandemic’s spread, including a curfew in both Thessaloniki and the country’s capital, Athens,...

“It calls back a time when there were flowers all over the Earth… and there were valleys. And there were plains of tall green grass that you could lie down in – you could go to sleep in. And there were blue skies, and there was fresh air… and there were things growing all over the place, not just in some domed enclosures blasted some millions of miles out in to space.”

Bruce Dern in Silent Running (1972) will be available on Blu-ray November 17th from Arrow Video

In 1968, visual effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull contributed to the ground-breaking special photographic effects of Stanley Kubrick s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Four years later, he stamped his own indelible mark on the science fiction genre with his mesmerising directorial debut Silent Running.

In the not-so-distant future, Earth is barren of all flora and fauna, with what remains of the planet s former ecosystems preserved...

The dawn of the Eighties was supposed to make prog bands like Genesis, Yes, and Rush die out like the dinosaurs, now that we were in the age of MTV and New Wave. That’s not quite how it played it out, however. The men of these bands chopped off their long hair, cut their standard 20-minute songs down to size, and somehow became more popular than ever. They even joined forced in various short-lived supergroups and charted with slick hits that competed for Top 40 airplay alongside the latest offerings by Madonna and Michael Jackson.

From eco fantasies to dystopian nightmares, cinema has long explored how life might be different. Our post-lockdown existence could look to them for pointers

As we emerge blinking into the sunlight after lockdown, many of us will be daring to dream of a more harmonious, ecological future. It’s what the subjects of Spaceship Earth were hoping to create when they locked down voluntarily for two years as part of an experiment around communal, self-sufficient living. The new documentary tells the story of Biosphere 2, an Earth system science research facility located in the Arizona desert. Back in 1991, eight people moved into the huge vivarium as a dress rehearsal in case humans had to repopulate to Mars. Matt Wolf’s film is a fascinating watch that vividly recalls classic sci-fi cinema: the “biospherians” wear designer space suits and their mission references 1972’s Silent Running, in which a botanist astronaut tries to...

Here are many more movies to watch when you’re staying in for a while, featuring recommendations from Steven Canals, Larry Karaszewski, Gareth Reynolds, and Alan Arkush with special guest star Blaire Bercy from the Hollywood Food Coalition.

Please support the Hollywood Food Coalition. Text “Give” to 323.402.5704 or visit https://hofoco.org/donate!

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976)

Groundhog Day (1993)

Kung Fu Mama a.k.a. Queen of Fist (1973)

Ali: Fear Eats The Soul (1974)

Portrait Of A Lady On Fire (2019)

In The Mood For Love (2000)

Hunger (2008)

The Sweet Hereafter (1997)

Fargo (1996)

Night of the Lepus (1971)

Dolemite Is My Name (2019)

Soylent Green (1973)

Silent Running (1972)

Canyon Passage (1946)

McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971)

The Professionals (1966)

Ride Lonesome (1959)

Carrie (1952)

The Heartbreak Kid (1972)

Hello Down There (1969)

The Brass Bottle (1964)

The Trouble With Angels (1966)

Pollyanna (1960)

Tiger Bay (1959)

The Parent Trap (1961)

Endless Night (1972)

The Family Way (1966)

Take A Girl Like You (1970)

Freddy Got Fingered...

Another word for “Cargo,” a truly unique blend of Hindu mythology and mid-concept science fiction about a futuristic new process by which the recently deceased are beamed onto a spaceship far away in order to have their memories wiped and their souls cleansed for reincarnation, might be “baggage” — as in, dead people show up with their hands and pockets full of whatever preoccupied them on Earth, and it’s the crew’s job to calm them down and ease them through the transition.

“Cargo” takes place aboard a nifty retro-styled space ship — with its rudimentary computer terminals and mid-20th-century corded phone receivers — called the Pushpak 634A, whose lone crew member is a demon named Prahastha (Vikrant Massey). Demons, according to writer-director Arati Kadav’s playfully revisionist premise, once sneaked around at night stealing humans’ souls, but now, thanks to a treaty between their kind and Homo sapiens, they catalog...

The experiment known as Biosphere 2 may be best remembered now — when remembered at all — as something that spawned “Bio-Dome,” the godawful 1996 comedy that is nonetheless many people’s favorite movie involving Pauly Shore or Stephen Baldwin. Its very loose real-life inspiration also had elements of bad farce, at least in the realm of unflattering media scrutiny and, to an extent, poor judgment by its administrators.

Yet “Spaceship Earth” reclaims Biosphere 2 — thus named to remind us that Numero Uno is fragile Earth itself — from the pop-culture-footnote dustbin, capturing the spirit of genuine idealism and earnest scientific inquiry with which it was launched. This unexpectedly lovely documentary from Matt Wolf (“Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project”) duly chronicles the two-year period in which eight carefully vetted experts shared a vast, airtight Arizona desert vivarium meant to be entirely self-sustaining, a sort of dry run for a projected future of such human habitats in outer space.

If the Earth was no longer inhabitable, could we survive inside a self-sustaining biodome environment launched into space? From Silent Running to Elysium, the question is the fodder for many a sci-fi film but in 1991, an eight-person group of men and women embarked on a two-year experiment to actually put this theory to the test. What followed was equal parts inspiring and frustrating as the duplicitous crossroads of innovation and capitalism converged. Spaceship Earth comes nearly three decades after the experiment, as the devastating effects of climate change and humanity’s continued destruction of the place we all call home only continue to grow more apparent, unfortunately making it the ideal time to revisit this story. Equipped with hours upon hours of archival footage thanks to the diligent work of those involved in the experiment, director Matt Wolf goes beat-by-beat not only through the media sensation of the project, but...

Don Kaye Nov 27, 2019

John Frankenheimer’s 1979 environmental horror movie comes to Blu-ray, flaws and all. Brace yourself.

The 1979 film Prophecy (not to be confused with 1995’s Biblical horror movie The Prophecy) was very much the last gasp of the 1970s boom in ecologically tinged genre movies. It was a string of titles that included No Blade of Grass (1970), Silent Running (1972) and Soylent Green (1973), but leaned especially heavily on the “nature strikes back” subgenre, which gave us such offerings as Frogs (1972), Night of the Lepus (1972), Bug (1975), The Food of the Gods (1976), Day of the Animals (1977) and other, often low-budget quasi-exploitation quickies.

Prophecy on its face seemed to have more going for it. The director was John Frankenheimer, the man behind masterworks like The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May, and Seconds, while the writer was David Seltzer, fresh off his horror classic The Omen. Paramount sunk $12 million into the film, which...

We were concerned the audience wouldn’t know which clone was which. We talked about using a wig, but I stole Ratso Rizzo’s cough for the sick clone

I wanted Sam Rockwell to play the villain in Mute, a film I later made for Netflix. But he wanted to play a blue-collar kind of guy. We both liked the sci-fi films of the 70s and early 80s – Silent Running, Alien, Outland – and the sense of realism and mundanity they brought to space, with a lot of the day-to-day grind comparable to jobs on Earth. So I said: “Let me see if I can write something.”...

Tony Sokol Jul 16, 2019

Kim Possible directors find new ways to torture pre-teens in the Emile Hirsch-starring Freaks.

The upcoming film Freaks twists perspectives and ties genres. Shown through the eyes of a 7-year-old girl, the cameras are set low. Co-directed by Kim Possible directors Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky, the film mixes science fiction, horror and suspense to tell the a very personal story of a sad and dysfunctional family, inspired by the filmmakers' own lives.

Freaks stars Emile Hirsch as Adam, a distraught single dad who locks his 7-year-old daughter in their house to keep her safe. Chloe is played by Lexy Kolker (Shooter), and she listens to her father's warnings about the dangers outside. That is until the ice cream truck shows up.

You can watch the trailer here:

Video of Freaks (2019) Official Trailer | Sci-fi Horror | Emile Hirsch, Grace Park, Bruce Dern

The truck is driven by Mr.

Billy Drago, who often played harming but chilling gangster roles and appeared in Brian De Palma’s “The Untouchables” and Clint Eastwood’s “Pale Rider,” died Monday in Los Angeles of complications from a stroke. He was 73.

The character actor played Al Capone’s henchman Frank Nitti in 1987’s “The Untouchables.”

On TV series “Charmed,” he put his reptilian stare to good use as the demon Barbas in several episodes over five seasons.

Born William Eugene Burrows in Hugoton, Kan., his actor-director father was said to be of Native American origin. His mother’s family was of Romany extraction; he took their name Drago as his stage name. Starting out as a stuntman, he moved to New York and beginning his acting career.

Drago started acting in the late 1970s, appearing in films including “Cutter’s Way,” “No Other Love” and “Windwalker.” On television, he had guest roles in “Hill Street Blues,...

The Andromeda Strain (1971) will be available on Blu-ray June 4th From Arrow Video

Before he created Westworld and Jurassic Park, Michael Crichton first blurred the line between science fiction and science fact with his breakout success The Andromeda Strain. Two years after the novel s publication, Robert Wise (The Haunting) directed the film adaptation, a nail-biting blend of clinically-realised docudrama and astonishing sci-fi visuals that ushered in a new subgenre: the killer virus biological thriller.

A government satellite crashes outside a small town in New Mexico and within minutes, every inhabitant of the town is dead, except for a crying baby and an elderly derelict. The satellite and the two survivors are sent to Wildfire, a top-secret underground laboratory equipped with a nuclear self-destruct mechanism to prevent the spread of infection in case of an outbreak. Realizing that the satellite brought back a lethal organism from another world, a team...

Mike Rutherford had a lot working against him when he revived Mike and the Mechanics in 2010. Not only had it been 15 years since the band — best known for their songs “The Living Years” and “All I Need Is a Miracle” — scored a hit, but original singer Paul Young died in 2000 and his co-frontman Paul Carrack went back to his solo career four years later. But with help of new singers Tom Howar and Andrew Roachford, the guitarist and songwriter has re-established the group as a busy live and recording unit.

Thirty years ago this month, one of the most profoundly sad songs in pop music history hit Number One on the Hot 100. It was “The Living Years” by Mike + the Mechanics, which forced everyone within earshot of a radio throughout much of 1989 to consider that fact their parents will inevitably die and leave them with profound regret. “I wasn’t there that morning/When my Father passed away,” Paul Carrack sings in a typical verse. “I didn’t get to tell him/All the things I had to say.”

Like many things in the Eighties,...