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Ron Ely, the hunky and handsome Texas native who portrayed the Lord of the Jungle on the first Tarzan series for television, has died, his daughter Kirsten told Fox News Digital. He was 86.

He died Sept. 29 at the home of one of his daughters near Santa Barbara, The New York Times reported.

Ely also hosted the Miss America pageant in 1980 and 1981, stepping in for longtime emcee Bert Parks, and presided over a syndicated game show called Face the Music around that time.

The 6-foot-4, blue-eyed Ely had appeared opposite Clint Walker in The Night of the Grizzly and with Ursula Andress in Once Before I Die in films released in 1966 when he was hired to don the loincloth in a new NBC series executive produced by Sy Weintraub.

Ely was offered the Tarzan gig after former NFL linebacker Mike Henry, who had played the Edgar Rice Burroughs creation in three ’60s films,...

“Coraline,” the masterful stop-motion debut from Oregon-based Laika, turns 15 this year. It’s currently being honored with a 3D remaster in theaters (also screening in 2D through Fathom). In addition, there’s a bevy of merch, including a new Mondo vinyl soundtrack by Bruno Coulais, a Converse collection, and a partnership with Portland’s Stumptown Coffee.

Which is why “Coraline” director Henry Selick was recently in London promoting the 3D remaster and appearing at the launch of the “Laika: Frame x Frame” exhibition at BFI Southbank. He spoke to IndieWire via Zoom about ushering in the digital stop-motion revolution at Laika in 2009 and creating the iconic rebel with blue hair and yellow raincoat.

“I had incredible support from Laika and Travis Knight [the studio’s president and artist-turned-director] to pursue exactly what I wanted,” Selick said. “Not that every moment of the film was dictated by myself, but I was able to make the choices and...

“You know you can watch that at home, right?” Such was the advice directed my way by a wisecracking passerby while queued up for a screening at the 2024 Turner Classic Movies Film Festival in Hollywood, California. They were clearly not a festival passholder, but the indifference heard right there on the Hollywood Walk of Fame was another instance of the trampling of history that both the festival and its parent channel aim to counter.

Probably the most even-handed response to that trampling would be a reminder—to flip a well-known phrase—that a home is not a house (not a movie house anyway). The folks who flock to Los Angeles every year from all over the world to attend this festival, probably all subscribers or rabid devotees of the channel that bears its name, cough up a prodigious amount of money to do so. It’s clear that for them,...

Martin Scorsese's non-profit Film Foundation was first founded in 1990 as a means to restore and archive films that stood on the brink of being lost. Scorsese, one of the world's preeminent cineastes, was aghast to learn that only about 10% of the films made before 1929 still survive and that more than half of the films made before 1950 were lost forever. The Film Foundation is run by a consortium of famous filmmakers who raise money for extensive restoration efforts. To date, the Foundation has restored over 1,000 movies. Many of the films can be watched online on the Fest Foundation's website. The Foundation also provides educational materials for teachers who might want to show some of these movies to their students. Scorsese wants to make sure that audiences have a chance to see some of the greatest films of all time.

His efforts expanded in 2007 when the director founded the World Cinema Project,...

Exclusive: Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane is partnering, through his Seth MacFarlane Foundation, with Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation to fund the first-ever, curated restoration of historically significant animated shorts from the 1920s to 1940s.

MacFarlane is committed to saving and honoring the art form from its earliest days forward. He’s been fascinated by animation since childhood when he began drawing. He’s also an animation alum of Rhode Island School of Design. This year MacFarlane’s The Family Guy is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

“I’m so grateful to Seth MacFarlane for his enthusiasm and his support on these restorations,” said Martin Scorsese in a statement. “What an astonishing experience, to see these remarkable pictures that I experienced for the first time as a child brought back to their full glory. Imagine the reactions of children today! Because the films now seem as fresh as they did when they were newly made.

Being appreciated by your hero or someone who inspired you is something everyone looks up to but unfortunately, not everyone is lucky enough to have that honor. This is true even for most A-listers in the industry.

Denis Villeneuve | Source: Wikimedia Commons

However, Denis Villeneuve recently became a member of an elite club as he was praised by one of the greatest filmmakers the world has ever seen and his own personal hero, Steven Spielberg.

Steven Spielberg praises Denis Villeneuve after the massive success of Dune 2

Denis Villeneuve is one of the most established filmmakers in the industry at the moment. The Canadian filmmaker has been making a lot of headlines recently after he released the movie Dune: Part Two which was a massive critical and commercial success at the box office.

Suggested“The biggest robberies I’ve seen in a long time”: Fans Still Have Not Forgiven...

Steven Spielberg has weighed in on Dune: Part Two, and the iconic filmmaker had some strong praise for director Denis Villeneuve’s sequel — and for one scene in particular.

The duo appeared together on DGA’s Director’s Cut podcast, where the filmmaker behind sci-fi classics Close Encounters of the Third Kind and E.T. The Extra Terrestrial heaped praise on the Dune and Arrival director.

“This is truly a visual epic, and it’s also filled with deeply, deeply drawn characters,” Spielberg said. “Yet the dialogue is very sparse when you look at it proportionately to the running time of the film. It’s such cinema. The shots are so painterly, yet there’s not an angle or single setup that’s pretentious … you have made one of the most brilliant science fiction films I have ever seen.”

Spielberg also got detailed in his praise for the blockbuster film. “There...

The 1980s enjoys a privileged, some might even argue inflated position in the sci-fi pantheon. In the US, it was the decade that gave us two thirds of the original Star Wars trilogy, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Terminator and Tron. In TV land, Star Trek got a brand new Generation, Quantums Leapt, Knights Rode, and of course, Alf.

But on the other side of the pond, British science fiction television was doing things the way we British always have – for less money, and a bit more bleak. But it wasn’t all creepy John Wyndham adaptations and hostile alien invasions, the 1980s also delivered a couple of British space comedy classics, along with the most underrated series in sci-fi history.

The Day of the Triffids (1981)

Stream on: purchase-only on Sky Store, Google Play, Amazon (UK); disc import only (US)

For our money, still the only decent adaptation of John...

The Academy Awards grew up at the 16th annual ceremony March 2, 1944. Since the first Oscar ceremony at the Hollywood Roosevelt’s Blossom Room in 1929, the Academy Awards were small banquet ceremonies for La La Land movers and shakers. But that all changed 80 years ago. World War II was in its third year and movies meant more than ever to war-weary audiences.

So, the Oscars moved to the then-Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood and bleachers were introduced giving fans a chance to see their favorites walk the red carpet. And instead of a select industry audience, attendees included members of all branches of the armed services many of whom sat in bleachers on the stage at the Chinese. The ceremony was heard locally on Kfwb; Jack Benny hosted the international broadcast for the troops on CBS Radio via shortwave. And for the first time, supporting performers finally received a full-size Academy Award.

The 1950s are considered the “Golden Age” of science fiction cinema, and that’s not just hyperbole. By many accounts, more than 200 sci-fi movies were released during that decade. And while the film industry had sporadically produced quality sci-fi in the years before—ranging from Aelita (1924) to Metropolis (1927), to The Invisible Man (1933)—it wasn’t until the 1950s that classic after classic began to arrive like riches from a long-lost hidden treasure.

And when we say classic, we mean films that essentially created the template for all science fiction movies that followed. Just look at this list. The first half of the decade brought us The Thing from Another World, When Worlds Collide, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Godzilla, and Them!, while the second half ushered in This Island Earth, Forbidden Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Blob, The Fly,...

Science fiction on film has been around almost as long as cinema itself. Starting in 1895 when the first public showings of motion pictures commenced in France and the United States, and as filmmakers began to realize that they could string scenes together to tell a complete, coherent story, the genres of sci-fi, horror, and fantasy were part of the equation.

Celluloid offered ambitious storytellers the chance to put images on the screen—crude at the time, but still groundbreaking—that had only been glimpsed in the pages of novels, short stories, and later, comic books and pulp magazines. And as filmmaking techniques themselves progressed, and the motion picture industry began to take shape in the early 20th century, visionaries came along with audacious ideas that moved the art form, the technology, and the genres forward well into the new millennium.

Below are 16 such visionaries; men and women who either grew...

The cinema of science fiction began to mature in the 1950s, concurrent with the arrival of the Cold War and the Atomic Age, as well as the growing sophistication of the literature. But it was during the 1960s that the genre really began to expand in different directions, still heavily influenced by the ideological paranoia and existential dread of the previous decade, but finding even more distinctive expressions of it.

At the same time, the 1960s was also the decade in which sci-fi movies truly started to become event films, not just B-movies and drive-in fodder, as evidenced by the likes of landmarks like 2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes, both released in 1968. There were other successes as well, some of them on our list below, but a lot of remarkable sci-fi films of the era did not initially score with critics, audiences, or either. Yet nuclear terror,...

Flying saucers and alien invasion movies were the trend in the 1950s. UFO sightings in Washington State in 1947 and the famous crash near Roswell, New Mexico in 1948 had ignited a fever for all things alien. The movies soon followed the public interest with films like The Thing from Another World (1951), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), War of the Worlds (1953), This Island Earth (1955), Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (1956), Invasion of the Saucer-Men (1957), and many more of varying levels of quality. Many of these science fiction/horror hybrids were aimed toward an audience of children and teenagers and often featured young people, but few placed the viewer so deeply in the child’s perspective as the 1953 classic Invaders from Mars.

In many ways, Invaders from Mars walked so that Invasion of the Body Snatchers could run just three years later. Much of this is due to its extremely low budget and independent production.

Cinema fans have been familiar with Michael Berryman for decades. He made his first screen appearance in the 1975 film Doc Savage: The Man of Bronze, following that up with a role in the Best Picture winner One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Next up was his most iconic role, that of the desert-dwelling cannibal Pluto in Wes Craven’s 1977 film The Hills Have Eyes, a role he reprised in the messy 1984 sequel The Hills Have Eyes Part II. He has gone on to rack up over one hundred more credits, including roles in films like Deadly Blessing, Invitation to Hell, Cut and Run, Weird Science, My Science Project, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, The Guyver, Beastmaster 2, Wizards of the Demon Sword, Teenage Exorcist, The Devil’s Rejects, Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield, The Haunted Casino, The Lords of Salem, and Death House.

While many of us may still be feeling the icy chill of winter, Scream Factory already has their sights set on a scare-filled spring, as they've announced new 4K Uhd releases for Skyline, Brotherhood of the Wolf, and The Haunting (1999) this May, as well as a Blu-ray double feature for Conquest of Space and I Married a Monster from Outer Space:

From Scream Factory: When sunrise arrives two hours early in the form of a haunting light from an unknown source, a group of friends watch in terror as people across the city are drawn outside and swept into massive alien ships that have blotted out the L.A. skyline. Now, it will take every survival instinct the group has to elude capture in Skyline, starring Eric Balfour (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Donald Faison (Scrubs) and Scottie Thompson (Star Trek).

Pre-order: https://shoutfactory.com/products/skyline?utm_source=facebook...

The Oscars’ animated feature category turns voting age this year, which means none of the genre’s masterpieces dating back to the 1930s ever competed for the coveted prize. And that means one of this year’s competitors for the prize, “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” represents something of a fresh chance for a story that worked so well for Walt Disney back in 1940 that it still garnered two Oscars — for song and score — and the kind of praise filmmakers of all genres and stripes can only dream of.

Variety’s review of Walt Disney’s masterpiece was typical of the ecstatic mood that greeted the film’s release back in early 1940: “Technically an improvement on ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,’ and in many ways quite as captivating in imaginative fantasy, Walt Disney’s ‘Pinocchio’ (Pin-oak-io) is the finest piece of feature length animation yet created.

“ ‘Pinocchio’ has...

For many, this coming Sunday is all about football and Rihanna (not necessarily in that order). Kickoff for Super Bowl Lvii begins at 6:30 p.m Et on February 12, with the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles competing to win the championship. Fox is set to air the event, which will feature Chris Stapleton performing the national anthem and Rihanna making a return to performing during the Halftime Show.

For the less sports-inclined among us, it can be hard to find other ways to spend your time on Super Bowl Sunday. Luckily, between endless streaming shows and cable programming, there’s no shortage of films and TV shows to enjoy. Here’s a guide to all the counter-programming available during the Super Bowl — whether you’re tuning out entirely, only checking out the Halftime Show, or quit halfway through when your favorite team starts losing.

Dog Shows

The most famous “Super Bowl” alternative is,...

VFX educator Pam Hogarth and Pixar’s Pete Docter were among the honorees at this year’s Visual Effects Society Honors Celebration.

The in-person ceremony took place on Oct. 14 at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, Calif., where Ves members celebrated their colleagues’ achievements and the organization’s 25th anniversary.

Docter, Pixar’s chief creative officer best known for directing “Monsters, Inc.,” “Up,” “Inside Out” and “Soul,” received this year’s Honorary Membership.

“It’s been a dream of mine to join Ves without having to pay,” Docter said jokingly in his acceptance speech. “I had one overriding obsession: to sell insurance. But instead, I got a job in animation … To everyone at Pixar, who would’ve dreamt that someday I would be lucky enough to work alongside hundreds of amazingly talented people using the latest cutting-edge technology — all to avoid dealing with real life.”

Docter also acknowledged Pixar president Jim Morris,...

Click here to read the full article.

As the Visual Effects Society marks the occasion of its 25th anniversary, the annual Ves Honors ceremony on Friday included celebration along with a call for more diversity and inclusion, as well as a greater effort to achieve a work-life balance amid industry-wide attention on the long work hours kept by many VFX artists under current business models.

Friday evening at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, honorees included three-time Oscar winner and Pixar chief creative officer Pete Docter and VFX vet and educator Pam Hogarth.

Hogarth received the Ves Founders Award as well as life Ves membership, and sent a message of community while urging more work toward diversity and inclusion. “The reason we are here is for the community,” she said. “We do this because we love the people around us and the Society. We are so lucky to work with smart,...

A lot of episodes of "The Twilight Zone" have become stone-cold classics in the 60+ years since the show was on the air. There are some episodes that are pop-cultural touchstones, twist-ending stories that everyone remembers: the monster on the wing of the plane, the one where she's beautiful and everyone else is ugly, the one where it's a cookbook, etc. The most famous episodes have been made and re-made several times over the course of the show's life, reappearing in films, revival series, and even as radio dramas (now available in podcast form thanks to iHeartRadio!).

However, there were 153 episodes in the original run, and they can't all be re-run in primetime on SyFy every New Years' Day. Marathons tend to stick to the classics. Still, there are plenty of other episodes well worth checking out. Even when "The Twilight Zone" wasn't at its absolute best, it's still "The Twilight Zone,...

Behold — it’s Indiana Jones in embryonic form. Paramount’s South American adventure exploits Peruvian scenery and the ’50s exotica phenomenon that was the unique songstress Yma Sumac. The production receives hearty input from Charlton Heston, Nicole Maurey and Thomas Mitchell, but it’s mostly a relic today. Not because the Raiders films have stolen its thunder . . . because it’s plenty hokey, even for 1954.

Secret of the Incas

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 154

1954 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 102 min. / Street Date August 31, 2022 / Available from [Imprint] / au 39.95

Starring: Charlton Heston, Robert Young, Nicole Maurey, Thomas Mitchell, Glenda Farrell, Michael Pate, Marion Ross, Leon Askin, William Henry, Kurt Katch, Yma Sumac, Booth Colman.

Cinematography: Lionel Lindon, Irmin Roberts

Art Director: Hal Pereira, Tambi Larsen

Film Editor: Eda Warren

Original Music: David Buttolph

Written by Ranald MacDougall & Sydney Boehm, from stories by Boehm and Boehm Maximum

Produced by Mel Epstein

Directed by Jerry Hopper

Everybody loves a good...

It’s one of the year’s most awaited discs: the recent restored and remastered The War of the Worlds ’53 in a glorious 4K Ultra HD edition. A second Blu-ray disc of When Worlds Collide ’51 is too good to be called a bonus extra: this edition looks better than anything seen since original Technicolor prints. In one show we endure scurvy invaders from The Red Planet; in the other a rogue Astral Body threatens Earth with obliteration, necessitating escape on a space ship. Don’t bother checking online for tickets, the flight is sold out. CineSavant has the lowdown for collectors: how good does the new release look?

The War of the Worlds on 4K Ultra-hd

When Worlds Collide on Blu-ray

Digital HD Access for both titles.

Paramount Presents

George Pal Sci-fi Double Feature

Color / 1:37 Academy / Street Date September 27, 2022 / 167 minutes / Available from Amazon / 39.99

Starring: Richard Derr, Barbara Rush, John Hoyt; Gene Barry,...

Producer-director Michael Curtiz’s femme fatale noir has a lot going for it — high production values, VistaVision, and new film talent in Tom Tryon, Carol Ohmart, Elaine Stritch & Jody Lawrance. Excellent location shooting and a Nat King Cole song provide authentic Los Angeles atmosphere. But the storyline is ten years out of date. The advertising promoted Ms. Ohmart as a new ’50s sex symbol. She may have caught fire, but the show didn’t.

The Scarlet Hour

Region free Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] #152

1956 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 95 min. / Street Date August 31, 2022 / Available from Amazon Au / 39.95; / Available from Viavision / 39.95

Starring: Carol Ohmart, Tom Tryon, Jody Lawrance, James Gregory, Elaine Stritch, E.G. Marshall, Edward Binns, David Lewis, Billy Gray, Jacques Aubuchon, Scott Marlowe, Nat ‘King’ Cole, Richard Deacon, Benson Fong, Theron Jackson, Almira Sessions.

Cinematography: Lionel Lindon

Costumes: Edith Head

Art Directors: Hal Pereira, Tambi Larsen

Film Editor: Everett Douglas

Original Music: Leith Stevens...

The Visual Effects Society today announced the newest inductees into the Ves Hall of Fame, including pioneering animator, producer and director Mary Ellen Bute; the first woman to ever direct a film, Alice Guy-Blaché; American computer scientist Grace Hopper; commercial computer animation visionary Bill Kovacs and Hungarian-American animator, film director and producer George Pal. The Hall of Fame inductees – and other special honorees – will be celebrated at a special event this Fall.

“Our Ves honorees represent a group of exceptional artists, innovators and professionals who have had a profound impact on the field of visual effects,” said Ves Board Chair Lisa Cooke in a statement. “We are proud to recognize those who helped shape our shared legacy and continue to inspire future generations of VFX practitioners.”

As previously announced, educator and industry leader Pam Hogarth was named recipient of the 2022 Ves Founders Awards. The Society designated Jeff Barnes, Patricia “Rose” Duignan,...

In case you haven’t heard, Jordan Peele has a new movie out this weekend, which is exciting. And while we can be reasonably sure that a huge chunk of the plot and premise of Nope won’t be revealed until you are sitting in your cinema seat, we already know it has a sinister cloud and, at some point, a flying saucer. So it’s not too much of leap to guess that aliens are going to be invading Earth again. When it comes to movies though, that’s kind of their thing…

If you are the pernickety, ruin-everyone-else’s-fun kind of science fiction fan, most alien invasion storylines present a bit of a problem: If you can build spaceships capable of carrying a military force large enough to subdue a planet, and transporting that force the vast interstellar distances between habitable worlds, well, you probably don’t really need to invade anywhere.

George Pal’s ill-fated ‘future docu’ followup to Destination Moon still stirs the imagination, rendering in vivid Technicolor the visionary images that amazed us in Chesley Bonestell’s paintings about space travel. We still love the movie even if we want to shove the script and whoever approved it out an airlock without a space helmet. It’s fun to pick it apart, but when Van Cleave’s trilling ‘spacey’ music plays we know we’re back in 1950s Sci-fi Nirvana, anticipating a techno-future of space marvels. [Imprint] gives the movie a classy Blu-ray showcase.

Conquest of Space

All-Region Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] #112

1955 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 81 min. / Street Date April 6, 2022 / Available from /

Starring: Walter Brooke, Eric Fleming, Mickey Shaughnessy, Phil Foster, William Redfield, William Hopper, Benson Fong, Ross Martin, Vito Scotti, Joan Shawlee, Michael Fox, Rosemary Clooney.

Cinematography: Lionel Lindon

Art Directors: Hal Pereira, Joseph MacMillan Johnson

Film Editor: Everett Douglas

Original...

The big-scale Cinerama fantasy once thought unrecoverable is back — a terrific restoration brings us George Pal’s ode to fairy tales, filmed on Bavarian locations with an international cast. Laurence Harvey and Karl Boehm are the brothers that compiled the famed tales of princesses, witches, magic spells and fiery dragons. Their idealized biography is interspersed with three full fairy tale stories, about a magic cloak of invisibility, a cobbler’s helpful elves, and a pair of fearless dragon slayers. The show has dancing, beautiful locations, a sequence with Puppetoons and a terrific animated dragon. Featured stars are Claire Bloom, Walter Slezak, Barbara Eden, Oscar Homolka, Martita Hunt, Yvette Mimieux, Russ Tamblyn, Jim Backus, Terry-Thomas and Buddy Hackett; a long-form docu goes into fascinating detail explaining how Dave Strohmaier and Tom March accomplished the mind-boggling restoration.

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1962 / Color / 2:89 widescreen [Smilebox] widescreen / 140 135 min.

“Once upon a time, there were two brothers…”

The classic film The Wonderful World Of Brothers Grimm (1962) will debut as a Two-Disc Special Edition Blu-ray on March 29 from the Warner Archive Collection. This release features Restored 1080p HD Masters from 6K composite scan of original Cinerama 3-panel Camera Negatives

The classic film The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm will debut as a Two-Disc Special Edition Blu-ray on March 29 from the Warner Archive Collection. Restored in 4K (3840 x 2160) master files from 6K files of original Cinerama Camera Negatives, with the most advanced technology available used by Cinerama Restorationists David Strohmaier and Tom H. March, to eliminate the “join lines” that plagued traditional release prints, and early video format releases. The Cinerama 7-channel sound has also been restored for a new 5.1 mix that brings a spectacular sonic experience to match the amazing Cinerama imagery.

The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm...

Veteran actor and frequent scene stealer Bruce Davison joins Josh Olson and Joe Dante to discuss a few of his favorite films.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Extra School (2017)

Gone With The Wind (1939)

Willard (1971) – Joe Dante’s review, Lee Broughton’s Blu-ray review

Fortune And Men’s Eyes (1971)

Short Cuts (1993) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Longtime Companion (1989)

Last Summer (1969) – Larry Karaszewski’s trailer commentary

Short Eyes (1977)

The Manor (2021)

Ulzana’s Raid (1972) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review and All-Region Blu-ray review

King Solomon’s Mines (1950) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937)

Them! (1954) – Joe Dante’s trailer commentary

Tarantula (1955) – Joe Dante’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

20,000 Leagues Under The Sea (1954) – Mick Garris’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Spartacus (1960) – Larry Cohen’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Ben-Hur (1959) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Psycho (1960) – John Landis’s trailer commentary,...

This creepy-crawly epic enjoyed a strong reputation on my grade-school playground! Does George Pal’s man-versus-the-elements saga hold up 68 years later? The ‘exotic’ special effects get the point across but the real appeal is the suppressed lust between Charlton Heston and his mail order bride Eleanor Parker — all heavy breathing and stern reproaches. I’m surprised nobody has fully exploited the original short story, which back in the ’60s showed up in numerous best-of collections. “Marabunta” is not a new fragrance line from Arpege.

The Naked Jungle

All- Region Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint]

1954 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 95 min. / Street Date December 29, 2021 / Available from [Imprint], Amazon.us /

Starring: Charlton Heston, Eleanor Parker, William Conrad, John Dierkes, Abraham Sofaer, Douglas Fowley, Rodd Redwing.

Cinematography: Ernest Laszlo

Production Designer: Art Director: Hal Pereira, Franz Bachelin

Film Editor: Everett Douglas

Special Photographic Effects: John P. Fulton

Matte artist Jan Domela

Miniatures Ivyl Burks

Optical cinematography Paul K. Lerpae...

By Lee Pfeiffer

Actress Yvette Mimieux passed away on Tuesday from natural causes. She was 80 years old. Mimieux rose to fame starring opposite Rod Taylor in George Pal's 1960 screen adaptation of H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine". Prominent roles in major films soon followed and she won acclaim for her abilities primarily in dramas, although the1960 film "Where the Boys Are" combined comedy with tragedy and Mimieux's star rose further when the movie became a boxoffice hit with teenagers. In 1962, she teamed again with George Pal for his Cinerama classic "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm".  Other major films in which she starred included "The Light in the Piazza", "Toys in the Attic", "Diamond Head", "The Reward" and the Disney hit "Monkeys Go Home!". In 1968, she reunited with Rod Taylor for "Dark of the Sun" (aka "The Mercenaries"), a brutal but well-made adventure film centering on social unrest and revolution in the Congo.

Actress Yvette Mimieux, who starred in movies including “Where the Boys Are,” “The Time Machine,” “Light in the Piazza,” “Toys in the Attic,” “Dark of the Sun” and “The Picasso Summer,” died Tuesday. She was 80.

The beautiful blonde Mimieux made most of her films in the 1960s, but she was also among the stars of Disney’s 1979 sci-fi film “The Black Hole.”

Among the films Mimieux made in 1960 were MGM’s glossy teen movie “Where the Boys Are,” in which four coeds including Mimieux’s Melanie head to Fort Lauderdale for spring break in search of fun and the “right” boy, and George Pal’s adaptation of H.G. Wells’ “The Time Machine,” starring Rod Taylor and with Mimieux third billed as Weena, Taylor’s romantic interest, who lives among the Eloi, a peaceful race living in the year 802,701.

In 1962 she appeared in four films, including the big-budget critical and...

Yvette Mimieux was found dead this morning, a rep for her family confirmed. She had just turned 80 on January 10, and she passed away in her sleep of natural causes.

Mimieux was a prolific actress who is best remembered for starring opposite Rod Taylor in the 1960 George Pal-directed film version of the H.G. Wells novel The Time Machine at MGM where she was soon put under a long term contract. Another big hit came months after in Where The Boys Are. Among her other credits around that time were Platinum High School, Mr. Lucky, Where the Boys Are, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Light in the Piazza. The latter garnered her strong reviews for playing a mentally disabled girl and the time she said, “I supposed I have a soulful quality. I was often cast as a wounded person, the ‘sensitive’ role.

She would take a detour and guest...

The movie awards’ season is in full flower with such films as Jane Campion’s “The Power of the Dog”; Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story”; Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast,” Guillermo Del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley” and Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” among the favorites for top prizes. But one thing we know for certain is that there is no sure thing when it comes to the Oscars. Consider the case of seventy years ago. Not only were there surprises among the nominees, but there were also some shocks when it came to the winners of the 1952 Oscars.

Let’s revisit the 24th Academy Awards, which took place March 20, 1952 at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood and were hosted by Danny Kaye. This was the last time the ceremony was presented on radio. The show moved to television the following year. Among the presenters that evening were Lucille Ball,...

By Hank Reineke Normal 0 false false false En-US X-none X-none

Lesley Selander’s Flight to Mars (1951) was one of the earliest offerings of cinematic science-fiction’s Silver Age. The film is not one of the best of that era’s productions, and not even the best of 1951 – that honor would arguably go to Rudolph Maté’s When World’s Collide due to that film’s ground-breaking animation of George Pal. But the stage was already set for science-fiction to replace door-creaking Gothic horror as more dependable, bankable product. Moviegoers of 1945 through 1950 had already been primed for space-travel and alien-enemy films through such entertaining Republic serials as The Purple Monster Strikes, King of the Rocket Men and Flying Disc Man from Mars. The 1947 crash near Roswell, New Mexico, also made a lot of folk’s look up to the skies to ponder – and fear – what might be floating above them in the cosmos.

The Wade Williams Collection yields another ’50s sci-fi notable, Monogram Pictures’ ambitious space travel movie filmed in glorious green-challenged Cinecolor. Cameron Mitchell and Arthur Franz sign up for a semi-suicidal space expedition, but instead of murderous Bat-Rat-Spider-Crabs, waiting for them on Mars is the glamorous, mini-skirted Marguerite Chapman. It’s core sci-fi fun from early in the Golden Era. The Film Detective adds a commentary, two new featurettes and an insert booklet; the film itself is lovingly restored to its original Cinecolor brilliance.

Flight to Mars

Blu-ray

The Film Detective

1951 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 72 min. / Street Date July 20, 2021 / Available from The Film Detective / 24.95

Starring: Marguerite Chapman, Cameron Mitchell, Arthur Franz, Virginia Huston, John Litel, Morris Ankrum, Richard Gaines, Lucille Barkley, Robert Barrat, Russ Conway, Edward Earle, Everett Glass.

Cinematography: Harry Neumann

Production Designer: Ted Haworth

Film Editor, Associate Producer: Richard Heermance

Special Effects: Jack Cosgrove, Irving Block, Jack Rabin

Original Music:...

It was 40 years ago, in June 1981, that Clash of the Titans, the last film to feature the stop-motion animation effects of Ray Harryhausen, was released.

Starring a then-unknown Harry Hamlin, along with veteran stars like Laurence Olivier, Maggie Smith, Burgess Meredith, and Ursula Andress, the film was loosely based on the Greek myth of Perseus (Hamlin), weaving in strands of other mythologies and legends and putting its hero into conflict with creatures like the Kraken, Calibos, Medusa the Gorgon and a two-headed dog named Dioskilos.

“Greek and Roman myths contained characters and fantastic creatures that were ideal for cinematic adventures,” wrote Harryhausen in his memoir, Ray Harryhausen: An Animated Life. “If some of the adventures were combined with 20th century storytelling, a timeless narrative could be constructed that would appeal to both young and old.”

Harryhausen was already a filmmaking legend by the time he began work on Clash of the Titans.

It’s another CineSavant review of a movie largely unavailable, especially the original Japanese version. This third Ishirô Honda / Eiji Tsuburaya outer space action epic is probably the best Toho science fiction feature ever, an Astral Collision tale in which the drama and characters are as compelling as the special effects. Nothing can stop a colossal planetoid heading toward Earth, but science comes to the rescue with the biggest construction job ever undertaken by mankind. The fine screenplay generates thrills, suspense and human warmth. It also takes place in the far, far future: 1980.

Gorath

CineSavant Revival Screening Review

Not On Region A Home Video

1962 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 88 83 min. / Yôsei Gorasu

Starring: Ryô Ikebe, Yumi Shirakawa, Akira Kubo, Kumi Mizuno, Akihiko Hirata, Kenji Sahara, Jun Tazaki, Ken Uehara, Takashi Shimura, Seizaburô Kawazu, Takamaru Sasaki, Kô Nishimura, Eitarô Ozawa, Hideyo Amamoto, George Furness, Ross Benette, Nadao Kirino, Fumio Sakashita, Ikio Sawamura, Haruo Nakajima.

Isle of the Dead

Blu ray

Warner Archive

1945 / 1.33:1 / 72 min.

Starring Boris Karloff, Ellen Drew, Katherine Emery

Cinematography by Jack MacKenzie

Directed by Mark Robson

The Swiss symbolist Arnold Böcklin produced several versions of Isle of the Dead in the late 1800’s—none of them suggested a typical tourist attraction but more than a few artists used that gloomy seascape as a port of inspiration; Rachmaninov composed a symphony, Dalí produced a surrealist tribute, and Strindberg sketched the fragments of a play, Toten-Insel. There’s even a hint of the painting’s portentous cliffs in Welles’ Xanadu. In 1945, Val Lewton, Mr. Dark Shadows himself, conceived an entire film built around Böcklin’s haunted island.

Directed by Mark Robson, Isle of the Dead is thematically rich, even for a Lewton project; set in Greece at the end of the Balkan wars, a plague joins forces with the supernatural to wreak havoc...

It’s a guest article by author and long-time associate Stuart Galbraith IV, an interview with Arnold Leibovit, the man behind an impressive, on-going restoration of the animation legacy of George Pal. The beloved producer-director persists as a fan favorite. All know his famous sci-fi pictures but the revival of interest in his fantasy replacement-animation ‘Puppetoons’ is well underway.

CineSavant Guest Article by Stuart Galbraith IV

Sometimes it takes a one-man army to preserve and resurrect movies the big conglomerates have forsaken. Think Dave Strohmeier and his efforts to preserve and give new life to the original Cinerama films, or Bob Furmanek’s 3-D Film Archive. While they’d be first to insist they were fronting a team of restoration experts and myriad financial backers, without them would the films they champion ever have seen the light of day, or would they still be languishing in warehouses, slowly deteriorating into nothingness?...

Viavision’s first deluxe Film Noir boxed set gives us four titles that emphasize star power — Glenn Ford, Ray Milland, Kirk Douglas and Lee J. Cobb. The Australian release includes three Columbia titles and the home video premiere of a rare Paramount picture. Which ones are core Noir and which are merely ‘noir adjacent?’ The special extras invest in a quartet of audio commentaries from the top experts and Film Noir Foundation creators Eddie Muller and Alan K. Rode. There’s nothing that pair doesn’t know about these pictures.

Essential Film Noir Collection 1

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 18, 19, 20, 21

1947-1957 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 366 min. / Street Date October 28, 2020 / Available from Viavision [Imprint] / 149.99

Starring: Glenn Ford, Janis Carter, Barry Sullivan; Ray Milland, Audrey Totter, Thomas Mitchell; Kirk Douglas, Eleanor Parker, Joseph Wiseman, Lee Grant; Lee J. Cobb, Richard Boone, Kerwin Mathews.

Directed by Richard Wallace, John Farrow, William Wyler, Vincent Sherman

The Australian disc boutique...

Talk about the Lost Arts — Animation of various kinds, even stop-motion, is now a major part of filmmaking entertainment. But back in the 1940s the wonder man for ‘how’d they do that’ Technicolor marvels was George Pal, a grateful displaced European who made marvelous ‘trickfilm’ animations using little wooden puppets with hundreds of interchangeable pieces. Arnold Leibovit follows up his first Puppetoon disc with a bounteous, bigger collection of animated gems in Blu-ray HD. They’re fascinating to study in slow motion — the volume of craft, patience and artisan labor that goes into these shows is staggering.

The Puppetoon Movie Volume 2

Blu-ray + DVD

Arnold Leibovit Entertainment

1934 – 1946 / Color + B&w / 1:37 Academy / 186 min. / Street Date December 1, 2020 / Available from Puppetoon Dot Net / 39.95

Starring: Jim Dandy, Punchy & Judy, Jasper, Professor Scarecrow, Rusty, Bugs Bunny, Wilbur the Lion.

Disc produced by Arnold Leibovit

Produced and Directed by George Pal

Arnold Leibovit follows up his extraordinary,...

If you’re a horror fan you’ll have one. A memory of a moment, or a series of moments, where you first felt the thrill of the genre. That sparkly feeling of fear and delight, when you want to look away but you feel like you can’t.

It could be a book, a film, a tv show, a snatched glimpse of something you shouldn’t have seen when you were too young to understand it. We all start somewhere.

Den of Geek spoke to a whole range of top people working in horror movies and tv to find out where it all started.

Horror fans – let us know your origins stories in the comments!

Clive Barker

Playwright, novelist, film director, and visual artist. Author of Books Of Blood, director of Hellraiser.

“At the age of 15, I went with a friend of mine to see a horror movie called Psycho,...

George Pal’s second science fiction classic has conceptual imagination and visual wonder to spare, along with a million awkward and dated details. When rogue planets threaten to obliterate the Earth, a super-Ark spaceship is built to spirit forty ‘chosen ones’ to safety. The Ark passengers have the right stuff, but you may be enraged by the rigged process to select who gets to go. Gee-whiz spectacle is the order of the day — how many End Of The World movies actually show terra firma expunged from the Solar System? Barbara Rush and John Hoyt are the acting standouts, but top honors go to Pal’s visual effect artists and designers.

When Worlds Collide

Blu-ray

Viavision / [Imprint] 6 (Australia)

1951 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 83 min. / Street Date August 26, 2020 / available through [Imprint] : $34.95

Starring: Barbara Rush, Richard Derr, Larry Keating, John Hoyt, Judith Ames, James Congden, Stephen Chase, Frank Cady, Hayden Rorke, Kirk Alyn, Casey Rogers, John Ridgely,...

George Pal’s second science fiction classic has conceptual imagination and visual wonder to spare, along with a million awkward and dated details. When rogue planets threaten to obliterate the Earth, a super-Ark spaceship is built to spirit forty ‘chosen ones’ to safety. The Ark passengers have the right stuff, but you may be enraged by the rigged process to select who gets to go. Gee-whiz spectacle is the order of the day — how many End Of The World movies actually show terra firma expunged from the Solar System? Barbara Rush and John Hoyt are the acting standouts, but top honors go to Pal’s visual effect artists and designers.

When Worlds Collide

Blu-ray

Viavision / Imprint (Australia)

1951 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 83 min. / Street Date August 26, 2020 / available through [Imprint] : $34.95

Starring: Barbara Rush, Richard Derr, Larry Keating, John Hoyt, Judith Ames, James Congden, Stephen Chase, Frank Cady, Hayden Rorke, Kirk Alyn, Casey Rogers,...

“It neutralizes mesons somehow. They’re the atomic glue holding matter together!” For most of the 1950s George Pal’s Martian invasion spectacle reigned as the top Sci-fi spectacle about an alien invasion. All the money went into the visuals, beautifully turned out by Byron Haskin and Gordon Jennings. Paramount’s much-awaited full restoration job does the picture justice, even if fussy fans will continue to argue the ‘what about the wires?’ battle. Even more impressive than the visuals is the film’s superb sound design, which still blows audiences away whether in mono or a new 5.1 remix. Criterion’s extras don’t critique the film as much as they tout the high-class restoration (and minor revisions).

The War of the Worlds

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1037

1953 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 85 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date July 7, 2020 / 39.95

Starring: Gene Barry, Ann Robinson, Les Tremayne.

Cinematography: George Barnes

Film Editor:...

Out this week from the Criterion Collection comes the 1953 adaptation of the famous H.G. Wells tale, The War of the Worlds, directed by Byron Haskin and produced by George Pal, AP Frank Freeman, Jr., and the uncredited EP, Cecil B. DeMille. Haskin was primarily known as a cinematographer and for his special effects work before he became a full-fledged director, and Pal was an animator, director, and cinematographer. As you can guess, The War of the Worlds is a highly influential film on many filmmakers, notably...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Skipped this one because it’s by Spielberg? The 9/11- inflected take on H.G. Wells’ classic reproduces thrills from the book not captured in George Pal’s 1953 atom-age update. For this reviewer it was a big surprise — a Tom Cruise movie in which he plays an appropriately terrified character instead of his annoying big star persona. Nervous audiences loved this in 2005… it actually generates some good scares. Seen on a good Ultra-hd setup, those scares translate well to home video.

War of the Worlds

4K Ultra-hd + Blu-ray + Digital

Paramount Home Video

2005 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 116 min. / Street Date May 19, 2020 / 29.99

Starring: Tom Cruise, Dakota Fanning, Miranda Otto, Justin Chatwin, Tim Robbins.

Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski

Film Editor: Michael Kahn

Original Music: John Williams

Written by Josh Friedman, David Koepp from the book by H.G. Wells

Produced by Kathleen Kennedy, Paula Wagner, Colin Wilson

Directed by Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg’s remake of...

When I think of classic literature that really gets under my skin and leaves some scars, H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds is at the top of the list. The many adaptations of Wells' timeless extraterrestrial tale are just one indication of the novel's enduring legacy, and that legacy continues to grow now that the first The War of the Worlds film is coming to the Criterion Collection.

Announced on Criterion's Twitter account, The War of the Worlds (1953) will join the Criterion Collection this July as a new Blu-ray featuring a 4K digital restoration and new cover art by artist Patrick Leger.

We have the full release details and a look at the cover art and images from the film below, and be sure to visit the Criterion Collection online for more information.

From Criterion Collection: "A mysterious, meteorlike object has landed in a small California town.

Movies to watch when you’re staying in for a while, featuring recommendations from Dana Gould, Daniel Waters, Scott Alexander, and Allison Anders.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Destroy All Monsters (1969)

Planet Of The Apes (1968)

Beneath The Planet of the Apes (1970)

Escape From The Planet Of The Apes (1971)

Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes (1972)

Battle For The Planet Of The Apes (1973)

Suparpie

The Wizard Of Oz (1939)

Hello Down There (1969)

Koyaanisqatsi (1982)

Thirteen Days (2000)

Stalker (1979)

Last Year At Marienbad (1961)

No Exit (1962)

The Exterminating Angel (1962)

Sleeper (1973)

The Tenant (1976)

Final Cut: Ladies And Gentlemen (2012)

The Adventures of Ford Fairlane (1990)

La classe américaine (1993)

The Sex Adventures of a Single Man a.k.a. The 24 Hour Lover (1968)

The Omega Man (1971)

Soylent Green (1973)

Knives Out (2019)

The Hunt (2020)

Banana Split (2020)

The Cocoanuts (1929)

Animal Crackers (1930)

Monkey Business (1931)

Horse Feathers (1932)

Duck Soup (1933)

A Night At The Opera (1935)

The Incredible Two-Headed Transplant (1971)

Susan Slade (1961)

My Blood Runs Cold...