Previews and Reviews that are Z's Views
I’ll bet most of us have played or allowed our kids to play the arcade game Clyclone. It’s the one that has a light speeding around a dome. You press a button to stop the light and if it stops directly in front of you, you win.
As it turns out, the game is rigged. There’s no skill involved and it is designed to make you think you’re close to winning so you’ll keep playing. Check out the video below for full details.
Don Kaye and SyfyWire posted Firsts: Gene Roddenberry’s Original Pitch for Star Trek that will be of interest to fans. Here are just a few things I found interesting…
The first captain of what became known as the U.S.S. Enterprise was not Christopher Pike or James Kirk, but Robert April.
Spock was originally conceived as “probably half Martian,” with a reddish complexion, semi-pointed ears, and a “Satanic” look.
Dr. Phillip “Bones” Boyce was the doctor not Leonard McCoy.
A shuttlecraft was used to take folks from the ship to other planet surfaces. There was no transporters… no “Beam me up, Scotty.”
There were no phasers for the crew. They were originally going to carry rifles and pistols that fired either bullets, tranquilizer pellets, or explosive projectiles.
Thanks to Miguel Lopez for the heads-up.
MeTV has posted a fairly easy classic tv quiz. As you can see, I scored 11 out of 12. I’m sad to say, I missed the first question because I didn’t go with my first thought. I’m sure you can do better.
Me-TV presented 10 Reasons Jack Lord was Truly the Most Interesting Man on Television. I say, “presented” since the article is no longer available. Still, here are three of my favorites…
4. He was an accomplished painter.
In his youth, Lord also studied at NYU — where he had a football scholarship, no less — and earned a degree in Fine Arts. Yes, he was an artistic athlete. He had at one time hoped to be an art instructor. At the age of 20, he had two of his works accepted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. You can spot his paintings through Hawaii Five-O, hanging on the walls, in episodes like “Invitation to Murder,” “How to Steal a Masterpiece,” and “‘V’ for Vashon.”6. He was offered the role of Captain Kirk before Shatner.
In some alternate universe, Star Trek reruns are airing with Jack Lord and Martin Landau in the roles of Kirk and Spock. (Now that sounds like a Star Trek plot.) After the captain of the original pilot episode, Jeffrey Hunter, was given the boot on the show, Gene Roddenberry offered the new lead role of James Kirk to Lord. However, Lord had rather high salary demands. He reportedly wanted 50% ownership of the series. Shatner was simply cheaper.7. He holds a notable place in James Bond history.
While he never made it aboard the Enterprise, Lord did take part in another iconic series. In the first James Bond film, Dr. No, Lord portrayed Felix Leiter, the familiar C.I.A. ally of 007. He was the first actor to play the role in the film series. He might have appeared in more — but money was again the issue. For Goldfinger, Lord wanted more screen time and higher billing. Alas, these are Bond movies, not Leiter movies.
Mike Cotton asks…
Based on this graphic—& assuming Kristoff was pistol-whipped to death—is Theo the only person who gets arrested for the attack on Nakatomi Towers?
Our last public service announcement was Your Parachute Just Failed — Here’s What to Do!
Today we want to prepare our loyal readers in How to Escape a Sinking Car. Just click on the chart above and you are good to go, er, get out should you ever find yourself in a sinking car.
Source: Bits & Pieces.
Josh Starling and InspireMore present Randy Olson’s Map Of The Most Perfect US Road Trip, According To Science.
Olson used a genetic algorithm that found the best routes…
This route takes you across the continental US and lets you stop at all the famous landmarks in each and every state.
If you actually plan to execute the trip, you should budget 13,699 miles of driving — or about 224 hours. Attempting to do the trip in one go would take about 9.33 days, although it would actually take 2–3 months to finish in reality.
I love road trips. Every year I take a few, but never any of this length. Who has?
I did notice the Florida Keys weren’t included. That’s a place I’ve never been and is definitely planned for a future road trip. I’d also like to see the area of Custer’s Last Stand and that didn’t make the list. You can click over and see the 50 locations that did and then start planning your next outing.
In 2017, Me-TV posted 12 FASCINATING FACTS ABOUT ‘BRIAN’S SONG’. Although the article is no longer available here are three of my favorites…
JAMES CAAN WAS THE FASTER RUNNER IN REAL LIFE.
It seems James Caan grew up playing high school football and could run circles around Billy Dee Williams, so when they had to film their racing scene, Caan had to make himself go real slow to convince viewers that Williams’ was the speedier of the two.
BILLY DEE WILLIAMS WAS NOT THE ORIGINAL ACTOR CAST AS GALE SAYERS.
Louis Gossett Jr. was originally cast as Gale Sayers, not Billy Dee Williams. Just before shooting started, Gossett managed to tear his Achilles’ tendon. That’s when Williams stepped in and took over the role, shattering Gossett’s spirit worse than the pain of his injury. As the story goes, producer David L. Womper made a big promise to cast Gossett in the next beefy part he could place him in to cheer the actor up. That promise took six years to fulfill, but it was worth the wait when Gossett’s 1977 performance as Fiddler in Roots won him an Emmy and made him a star.\
‘BRIAN’S SONG’ WON MORE AWARDS THAN ANY OTHER ABC MOVIE OF THE WEEK
For airing Brian’s Song, ABC took home four Emmys and a Peabody Award. They also received commendations from both the NAACP and the American Cancer Society. In total, the movie was nominated for eight Emmy Awards. The only other ABC Movie of the Week films to get that kind of attention was The Immortal in 1969 (1 Emmy nomination) and That Certain Summer in 1972 (7 Emmy nominations, 1 win).
Me-TV presents THESE ‘GOMER PYLE, U.S.M.C.’ FACTS WILL MAKE YOU SAY ”SHAZAM!’ Here are three of my favorites…
IT WAS A SPIN-OFF OF A SPIN-OFF, OF SORTS.
The characters from The Andy Griffith Show were first introduced to American audiences in a 1960 episode of The Danny Thomas Show (Make Room for Daddy), “Danny Meets Andy Griffith.” It was more of a marketing maneuver, but technically that makes Andy Griffith a spin-off. The pilot episode of Gomer Pyle arrived as the season four finale of Andy Griffith in 1964.
IT WAS INCREDIBLY POPULAR, RIGHT UP UNTIL THE END.
The show finished outside the top three only once in its five-year run, when it slipped to No. 10 in the Nielsen ratings in 1967. Yet it bounced back strong, gaining some of its best ratings in its final season. In fact, Gomer Pyle was the second most watched show in television when it shut down.
FRANK SUTTON WAS A BLACK BELT IN JUDO AND SERVED IN THE ARMY.
As Gunnery Sergeant Vince Carter, Sutton set the mold for the hard-as-nails, shouting drill sergeant so common to military narratives. Ironically, in real life, the actor failed a Marine physical and instead served in the Army during WWII, where he proved himself in taking part in over a dozen assault landings around the Philippines. He also had a black belt. That’s some man. Sadly, Sutton passed away too soon at 50 from a heart attack.
46. Rocky (1976) Did you know? There’s a scene when Rocky Balboa points out a mistake in the poster at the match venue, and it was in fact entirely unscripted. Sylvester Stallone was forced to add the line because the art department made a genuine mistake when producing the prop, making the Italian Stallion’s boxing trunks completely the wrong colour. Although, it does work to signify how Rocky isn’t treated with much respect as an underdog.
41. Alien (1979) Did you know? When the Nostromo crew explore the Derelict ship they discover a gigantic chamber full of xenomorph eggs. It’s a dark, sinister room that required a certain type of lighting to create the right feeling. Ridley Scott found a practical solution to lighting it by borrowing blue laser lighting from The Who, who were rehearsing their stage show in the soundstage next door.
31. American Psycho (1998) Did you know? After catching an episode of The Late Show with David Letterman, on which Tom Cruise guest-starred, Christian Bale decided to base his portrayal of Patrick Bateman on the actor. According to director Mary Harron, Bale said it was Cruise’s “very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes” that he thought would be perfect for Bateman.
7. The novel doesn’t spend much time at all with the transit cop character played here by Walter Matthau as Lt. Garber, and the book actually has a separate character named Garber as well. The actor loved the script, written by Peter Stone — who had written two previous films co-starring Matthau — and once he expressed interest they began beefing up the role.
19. Sargent recalled it being a “golden safety rule” during filming that no one get close to the electrified third rail despite the mostly confident belief that it was powered off by the transit authorities. There was apparently always a risk that someone might turn it back on again by accident or because they were unaware that it was off for a reason.
20. They rightly point out that today’s action films would rarely allow the villain to take his own life. “He would have to be shot eighteen times by Walter Matthau, and then fall and then a train would run him over, and that would propel him into the street where he’d get hit by a bus.”
EASTWOOD WORE HIS ‘RAWHIDE’ BOOTS IN ‘UNFORGIVEN.’
No need for a wardrobe department when it comes to Clint. To bookend his career as a cowboy, Eastwood wore his same Rowdy Yates boots in his Oscar-winning 1992 masterpiece Unforgiven.LOADS OF SOON-TO-BE-FAMOUS FACES APPEARED ON THE SHOW.
That’s Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery taking aim in “Incident at El Crucero,” in a guest role that would foreshadow her gig as Mrs. Sundance. Star Trek crew members Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley appeared on the Western, too. Sitcom legends Buddy Ebsen, Barbara Eden, Alan Hale, Jr., June Lockhart, Gavin MacLeod, Marion Ross and William Schallert also pop up — just to name a few. Then there’s Martin Landau, Frankie Avalon, Anne Francis, Peter Lorre…TWO EPISODES WERE SLAPPED TOGETHER TO FORM A MOVIE, UNTIL EASTWOOD PREVENTED ITS RELEASE.
Rawhide finished its run in the first week of 1966. By that year, Eastwood was a star of small and big screen. The classic Spaghetti Westerns A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) revolutionized the genre. To further capitalize on Eastwood’s fame, Jolly Film, the studio behind A Fistful of Dollars, pieced together a couple old episodes of Rawhide, primarily “The Backshooter” with Louis Hayward and Slim Pickens, and labeled the flick The Magnificent Stranger, the original shooting title for A Fistful of Dollars. However, Eastwood sued and had the 1967 film withdrawn.
2. James Caan was not his first choice for the film, and he instead was turned down by Robert Redford, Warren Beatty, William Hurt (twice), Richard Dreyfuss, and others. “But at the end of the day you can’t imagine anybody else playing the part.”
13. Bates was stage-trained and preferred excessive rehearsals while Caan is more “instinctive and naturalistic,” so they had to balance the rehearsal time to make it less than she wanted and more than he wanted.
18. The novel has Annie chop off Paul’s feet and cauterize the stumps, but they opted to simply hobble him instead by having her break his feet with a sledgehammer. Their thinking was that they wanted him to be victorious in the end, and losing his feet would be too high of a price. “It was pretty darn painful to look at, so I don’t think we compromised it too much.”
James (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 1 & 2) Gunn recently listed his 50 favorite horror movies. Of Gunn’s 50, I’ve seen 35. His list is a good one and has alerted me to horror movies I should add to my “to be seen” list.
Source: /Film.
