Previews and Reviews that are Z's Views
Mighty Joe Young. The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms. 20 Million Miles to Earth. The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Jason and the Argonauts. The Valley of Gwangi. The Clash of the Titans.
If these movies take you back to your childhood, you’ll get a kick out of i09’s Behind The Scenes With Ray Harryhausen And His Special Effects Models.
These are photos of James Remar from scenes he filmed as Corporal Hicks in Aliens before being replaced by Michael Biehn.
Although hardcore fans knew that Remar was the original Hicks no one involved in the movie’s production ever spoke about why Remar was let go.
Wired has an interesting and informative article by Jake Rossen explaining Why We’re Just Now Getting the 1960’s Batman TV Show on DVD.
The video embedded below is to the rarely seen pilot to The Orson Welles Show.
The Orson Welles Show had it been picked up would have been a weekly anthology series hosted by, you guessed it, Orson Welles.
Sadly that was not to be. Otherwise Welles could have been mentioned right there with Serling and Hitchcock when folks spoke about the great anthology series that used to be on tv.
The trailer to I am Ali looks really good!
I took the Whose Brainchild Are You? Quiz at Brain.Mic and you can see my results above.
If you decide to take the quiz, be sure to post your results!
Mike Torrance aka The Krayola Kidd is back and he’s brought Kit Latura with him!
Mike is a great guy and his commissions are always a blast!
You can see more of Mike’s art at his Deviant Art site. Mike is available for commissions and his prices are very reasonable.
Welcome Back, Kotter burst onto the scene in September 1975 and was an instant hit. The initial idea was to focus on a young newly married teacher [Gabe Kaplan] returning to teach remedial students [called Sweathogs] at his former high school where he had been a remedial student. The show’s breakout stars turned out to be the Sweathogs.
So the focus changed.
Soon the spotlight was on the students with their teacher in a co-star or even supporting role. The teacher’s wife usually had a scene in the shows opening and again in the closing where she got to laugh at an old joke told by teacher. There were stories of an unhappy set.
Things became more complicated when Kaplan butted heads with the show’s producer and John Travolta [one of the remedial students] made it big in the movies. Both Kaplan and Travolta didn’t even appear in many of the last season episodes.
The show ran four seasons and for the first two and maybe the third it was “must-see” tv. Sadly during the the fourth and final season the audience graduated even if the Sweathogs didn’t.
The AV Club posted a piece by Noel Murray titled 10 Episodes That Show How Welcome Back, Kotter Was Like a Class in Comedy History. While that may be a bit of an overstatement, the article did bring back some fun memories of Kotter and his Sweathogs.
Film School Rejects presents 39 Things We Learned from the Banned “Dr. No” Commentary by Kevin Carr. Here are five of my favorites…
1. The iconic James Bond theme was not in the original picture. The score had “Underneath the Mango Tree” as Bond’s theme, and Young thought “that’s a really stupid idea” because eventually they would make a James Bond movie without mango trees. John Barry was referred to him, and he wrote the recognizable theme without even seeing the film.
7. It took ten takes of Bond tossing his hat onto the coat tree to get the shot. In later films, Connery became good enough to hit the mark on the first try.
23. When the Three Blind Mice try to assassinate Bond in the parking lot, Hunt did not have a shot of the passing car’s headlight that distract them from following through because Young never shot it. In order ot make the shot work, Hunt flared the film on the actors in post production to show the flash of light.
31. Young discovered Ursula Andress in a pile of photographs on the desk of a producer. He asked if he could keep the photo and took it to Cubby Broccoli to find her for the role of Honey Ryder. They cast her primarily because of her looks and never had a formal audition or test of her acting ability.
34. Ursula Andress was overdubbed by actress Nikki Van der Zyl because her accent was too thick and the filmmakers could not understand all of her lines.
I was never the biggest fan of Garfield but there is no denying that cat’s popularity. So if you’re a fan here are 20 Things You Might Not Know About Garfield.
The piece above is just a detail from one of Mike Ploog’s storyboards for John Carpenter’s The Thing. You can see the full piece as well as storyboards from Blade Runner, Hitchock’s Strangers on a Train, The Thin Red Line, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and more if you check out The Art of Storyboarding at Cinephilia and Beyond.
Neatorama recently posted 12 Things You Might Not Know About Houdini by Eddie Deezen.
My guess is you’ll know most of the Houdini facts, but there may be a few surprises if you read the piece.
I love drive-in movies. What could be better than going to a double or triple feature on a nice evening and watching movies under the stars?
Sadly drive-in theaters went the way of VHS machines once VHS machines were cheap enough to be in nearly every home in America. VHS led to Laser Disc to DVD and now Digital Download. With each upgrade for home viewing the number of drive-in movie theaters diminished.
It looks like all that is about to change.
Johnny Rockets [a retro hamburger chain] has entered into a partnership with USA Drive-Ins to open up 200 brand new drive-in theaters by 2018. That is beautiful music to my ears.
Let’s just hope that one of the 200 will be in my county!
On October 31, 2014, [What an appropriate date!] Rolling Stone posted an interview with Stephen King conducted by Andy Greene. It is well worth a look.
King and Greene cover a lot of ground and not just about King’s books and movies made from them. The interview is well worth a read by any Stephen King fan.
Mike Torrance aka The Krayola Kidd is back and he’s brought Gabe Walker with him!
Over the coming weeks/months I’ll be posting more of Mike’s sketch card commissions. My goal is to eventually get a card for every character Sly has played. We’re well on our way!
You can see more of Mike’s art at his Deviant Art site. Mike is available for commissions and his prices are very reasonable.
