YouTube Goodness

[GeorgeC]

Yeah, 2001 really WAS pretty darn disappointing when it did come around!

No nuclear-powered spaceships taking people to Jupiter/ Computers STILL aren't as smart (and alive) as HAL-9000 was! ( => and that might be a good thing... People are forgetting about The Terminator... THAT film is getting closer to becoming reality!)

(And I was kind of looking to the skies in 1999 but I'm fairly certain that the SDF-1 did NOT crash land in the South Pacific... Unless the Japanese or American governments are hiding something from us. I wouldn't put it past them! )

And, then, there's this film... I'm fairly certain it's public domain =>

"Just Imagine" (1930)



Remember the future where everyone was going to have a serial number for a name instead of Roman numeral letters?

(Instead of Ben, it would BT-9378.... George = G-3798, Rand = RX-TK421, and so on...)

The buildings would be 250 stories tall and we'd ALL be flying in gyrocopters instead of cars!



P.S. -- It's a sci-fi comedy film. I think I saw a clip of it in the 1980s film, "It Came From Hollywood"

[Ben]

I think George means 2015...! That was kind of the point...2001 is just sooooo, well, 2001!

Or maybe his sentence just needed an 'and' in there? Not sure...but the Terminator IS becoming more of a reality - the photos here don't look as good as in person, but this is pretty mind blowing:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/p ... jing-china

Just Imagine...I thought this was a short that I'd seen before, as a lot of the opening looked familiar...but then it just went on and...wait it's a full feature at almost 1:50 in length!? At a time when the average filler picture was 65 minutes, least they got the length of the average movie right for the future!

I'll have to sit and watch the whole thing sometime.

It could be that I remember it from It Came From Outer Hollywood, too. The Dan Aykroyd-hosted clips movie that you can't get anywhere? Wow...you are only the second person ever in my LIFE to have mentioned/seen that if it's the same one we're thinkng of...!

-- BT-9378

[GeorgeC]

No,

I meant 2001!

The reality of spaceflight has been so disappointing! Trapped in orbit for over 40 years and that's darn boring manned flight-wise.

I think even Stanley Kubrick would have been disappointed that his movie looked MORE futuristic than current manned spaceflight does!

(Then again, look what's happened in movies! The USS Enterprise in 1979 had a more convincing engineering section than it did in 2009! The 2009 version looked liked a brewery! Gee, I wonder why? )

I guess... I guess art design for some reason occasionally looks WAY MORE appealing and futuristic than real-life does at times! It seems to go in 'good' and 'bad' waves in the movies, too. You know that I DON'T think the sci-films today are (in general) as well designed as they were in the late 1970s and 1980s. 2001 was an exception... that was a HECK of a lot better designed than any other sci-fi film prior to Star Wars...

Okay, on second thought, I'll give the Germans credit for Metropolis.

**************************************************************

It Came From Hollywood used to be shown on TV ALL the time where I live. I think I last saw it on Comedy Central in the late 1990s.

(The film ISN'T that hard to find online...)

The ironic thing is that probably a half-dozen or so of those films would be considered public domain so there shouldn't be an issue with copyrights with THOSE films. Unfortunately, there's still enough of it that's still owned by somebody that they won't let it be licensed because of stupid clearance issues if they have them!

Here's a list of what films have clips in It Came From Hollywood => http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Came_from_Hollywood

Yeah, this film is clip clearance hell right there! It's sad that the film owners have gotten greedier and stupider about this stuff as time has moved on. You would think it would be in the best interests of these companies TO LET films like this be released with less fuss on home video because THIS film (It Came From Hollywood) is THE BEST kind of advertising for all those OTHER old movies!!!!!!!! Darn the beancounters and other money people... Yeesh!

This film is where I learned about some other crazy junk like "Prince of Space" and was also reminded of the pre-Rocketeer movie serials I saw on reruns in the 1970s. I just made my point about advertising right there!

I dunno... It could also be something as dumb as the fact that whoever owns that film doesn't even know they own it!

The last time it was released on home video was ON LASERDISC!!!! They had plans for a 2002 DVD release but according to a movie fan on IMDB that DVD release got cancelled because of clip clearance issues. The Paramount home video rep said it wasn't worth their time trying to get all those other film clip owners to sign off on the home video release!

[GeorgeC]

Technically MIGHT be a double-post but this is for those who DON'T want to wade through the Star Wars thread =>




Heh... Talk about the ultimate black screen for movie models!



I didn't want to push my luck with TRIPLE posts so here's ANOTHER neat YouTube video... (Forgive if I posted this before -- I honestly don't remember!)

This is of the record-breaking, jump from close to 130,000 feet two years back.

That jump was the FIRST time a man broke the speed of sound in a dive --- WITHOUT an airplane!
The headcam footage was fanastic. The guy almost DID lose control when he was in a spin for a while. Spins ARE very, very bad. If you don't get control quick enough, you will either lose altitude and crash before you know it, OR get knocked unconscious when the RPM's get high enough AND hit the ground before you regain consciousness/control again => either way can get you dead!

[GeorgeC]

Disney/Pixar's X-wings

-- the next LOGICAL spin-off of the Star Wars movies!

It can't be worse than the prequels, right?







P.S. -- This is a joke, guys... It's NOT a real film. The video was posted on April 1st which is a HUGE clue besides the notice at the beginning of the video!

[Randall]

I did watch that last month. Pretty cute, actually. And spot on.

[GeorgeC]

Two more videos... I'm on a roll this week!

But seriously, I LIKE Battlestar Galactica -- the ORIGINAL series. I don't much care for the reimagined SyFy version (by Ronald Moore of ST:TNG, ST:DS9 fame) that is Galactica in name only. The reimagined version lacked the optimism and larger-than-life characters the original TV series had. It was also way more violent, had cheesy Cylons (bad CG bad guys and human replicants), and an ultra-wimpy Baltar who was always inspecting the tonsils of one of the human replicants in the series if you catch my drift...

(tonsil inspection aka 'sucking face')

First up is the trailer for the proposed revival of the TV series. This project was pushed by Richard Hatch, the original Apollo in the 1978 TV series. He raised money and they actually produced a half-hour pilot episode with many of the original series surviving cast members. Starbuck WAS mentioned but as far as I know Dirk Benedict was NOT in the pilot... Pretty much every other major cast member returned -- with the notable exceptions of Lorne Greene (Commander Adama) who was already deceased for many years, Laurette Spang (Cassiopeia), Anne Lockhart (Sheba), and Mare Jensen (Athena). They recast the role of Athena with another (much younger) actress. The pilot was cut down into a neat little 4-minute trailer that was originally shown only at cons for around a year or so... As far as I know, they never showed the full pilot film outside of presentation meetings with Universal reps. Allegedly, Battlestar creator Glen Larson played a role in killing the Hatch Galactica revival proposal but don't quote me on that...

Right now, there IS a Galactica motion picture under development that is supposedly much closer to the original TV series than the SyFy reimagined series was.

Here is Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming (1998)

This is the best quality copy of the trailer that was on YouTube. The other copies on YT are compressed poorly. The video ISN'T quite as clear as I remember it being but it might be the monitor I'm watching it on, too.





Here's a Galactica spoof... It's called Gary the Cylon. It's Episode 22 so there have been a BUNCH of these up already! Some very clever editing of original TV series footage and a guy throwing in a voice and another fellow wearing a Cylon 'buckethead.'

It's good for laughs!

[Ben]

Battlestar creator Glen Larson played a role in killing the Hatch Galactica revival proposal...

Sorry...couldn't resist.


Here's something fun...retro stylee!



Love how the West clips actually fit in pretty well, as in they don't look too out of place. And the Bat-logo on the end? Cracked me up!

[EricJ]

Disney/Pixar's X-wings

-- the next LOGICAL spin-off of the Star Wars movies!

(Y'know, if Planes 1&2 have to suffer any more fan public-stonings for the sins-of-the-father Cars 2, they're going to have to change their names and move to South America... )

Here's something fun...retro stylee!

Yep, showing us Christopher Reeve is really going to make us hate/reappraise Superman in the new one.

(And yes, I know that was the joke, but any shot of the Donner films just SO sums up what's wrong with Snyder's "Comic uber-fan wants validation" approaches to the material.)

[GeorgeC]

Love the mix of the Reeve Superman with the Adam West Batman!

(I think I recognize which films all the clips come from... Obviously, the first two Reeve Superman films, West's 1966 Batman movie, and probably Star Wars Episode III for the 'lava planet' clip.)

Ironically, those two are the ONLY live-action versions of DC characters that I really like.

Whoever came up with that Batman V Superman edit chose the RIGHT Batman clips to use from the 1966 Batman movie. I saw it not too long ago and recognized it right away. That was Catwoman (Lee Meriwether) with West's Bruce Wayne in the carriage... The '66 Batman film is worth seeing for the bomb/pier sequence alone!

I honestly think that trailer will probably end being a MUCH better movie than the real Batman V Superman.

I already have plans NOT to waste my money when that film gets released. The only way I will bother to go into a theater to see that film is if I get free tickets!

[GeorgeC]

Wow...

What a day. Wake up to hear two people who I knew from roles on TV and film have passed away... One was Grace Lee Whitney (Yeoman, Star Trek:TOS), the other was King Arthur himself from Excalibur (1981), Nigel Terry.

I love that movie... It's one of my favorite fantasy films. It's definitely the best screen version of the King Arthur mythology that I've seen and has a great soundtrack made up of appropriate opera music. That film is where I first heard a lot of Wagner. I had heard "Flight of the Valkyries" in other movies but there was a lot of other great music from him I hadn't heard or didn't recognize. I think music was adapted/borrowed from Parsifal and Tristan and Isolde in addition to The Ring, obviously. "O Fortuna" from Carmine Burana was also used for the horse-riding/cavalry scenes. The theme of Excalibur (film AND sword)/King Arthur was "Siegfried's Funeral March."

Terry is NOT the first cast member from the film to pass on. The actor who played Merlin, Nicol Williamson, has been dead for a number of years. So has Nicholas Clay, who played Lancelot, and probably the first major cast member from the film to pass away. Definitely the best-known actors from Excalibur are Helen Mirren (Morgan Le Fay) and Patrick Stewart (Leodegrance, Queen Guinevere's father). Yes, this was an earlier role for Captain Picard/Professor Xavier! (I first saw Patrick Stewart way back in David Lynch's Dune. I saw Excalibur many years later after I saw Dune in theaters.)

Here's scene from Excalibur that shows why I like that movie... Fight scenes are great but it's character moments like this that make a film memorable and enduring.



And just to show that I have a sense of humor about this... BY FAR, the best-known film version of the Grail Quest story is STILL Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (It's also the best Python movie I've seen, period... Something about first films being better than the later ones. Seems to be true many times for comedians/comic troupes!) The scene below is probably the most-quoted moment from that film!

[Ben]

(Holy Grail was Python's second film.)

[GeorgeC]

Oh, c'mon!

A clip movie like "And Now for Something Completely Different" does NOT count!

You're being technical just to tease!

Meany...

[Ben]

(It's not actually a clip movie.)

[EricJ]

(It's not actually a clip movie.)

True, judges have to concede the point--Restaged sketches do not constitute "clips".
(Even though Sony refused to release it in the US, because the series hadn't aired yet, nobody back then knew what an Upper Class Twit was, and the studio thought the movie was making fun of the handicapped.)