Solar Crisis (1990)

Solar Crisis is a film based on the novel by Takeshi Kawata. The film itself cost around $55m yet was given a very limited cinema release. Solar Crisis ended up as an Alan Smithee movie, the real director being Richard C. Sarafian.

Plot Summary from IMDB

A huge solar flare is predicted to fry the Earth. Astronauts must go to the Sun to drop a talking bomb (Freddy) at the right time so the flare will point somewhere else. Giant IXL Corp CEO Teague thinks the flare won't happen and wants the mission to fail so he can buy the planet cheaply while the scare lasts. Employee Haas prepares a surprise for the astronauts. While daddy Steve Kelso commands the space ship where temperatures rise, granddaddy Admiral Skeet Kelso is searching the desert for grandson Mike who's gone AWOL to say goodbye to his dad but who inadvertently crossed the path of the guys from IXL after meeting desert-dweller.



All in all Solar Crisis is a real mess of a movie, produced by Visual FX legend Richard Edlund and starring Tim Matheson,Charlton Heston,Peter Boyle,Jack Palance and Annabel Schofield, the film at times seems like two separate plots, the stuff on Earth seems far removed from what's happening in space. The 2007 film Sunshine follows a very similar premise about carrying a payload to the sun. The movies FX are hit and miss, being from the pre-digital era most of the spaceship work uses optical compositing techniques which suffer a fair bit from matte lines around the miniatures. The voice of the bomb 'Freddy' was provided by Paul Williams who wrote music for Bugsy Malone, The Muppets and starred and wrote The Phantom of the Paradise. I picked up this move for less that 2 quid a few years back now purely out of interest because I'd read about it's production problems, after watching it makes me wonder just how does such a big budget movie for it's time get so badly out of control !?

Robots that I like # 1

Probably my favourite robot/robots of all time are the 3 Drones from the 1972 SF Film Silent Running directed by Douglas Trumbull, Huey, Dewey and Louie. A superbly simple design and a forerunner to R2-D2. In the film they were manned by four multiple-amputee actors: Mark Persons, Steve Brown, Cheryl Sparks, and Larry Whisenhunt.

The supeb models of the 3 Drones above are made here by www.destinymodels.co.uk

Click the above picture to see Dewey's final scene in the movie, if you've never seen Silent Running you might want to watch it first as this is the end scene !

Universes shittest spaceship ?!

Niel Bushnell from Qurios sent me these pics the other day, and we discussed if this ship had any merits what so ever ?! The answer was a simple NO ! These were the gunship's that shot down the Scorpio in the final episode of Blake's 7, and as I said to Niel if I was the Scorpio I'd have been pretty pissed off to have been downed by such a naff spaceship !

Just what is it in the tree on Dagobah !?

In The Empire Strikes Back there's a scene where Luke Skywalker decends inside a tree to face an apparition of Darth Vader. What's always puzzled me is there seems to be a man made wall down there, like a corridor,maybe part of a temple, yet I've never seen or read any sort of explanation as to what it is or if it was a scene/idea that was cut early on from the script ! The wall can be seen in these behind the scenes photos from the filming of the scene.

Scenes I love...scenes I hate !

Here's two scenes from 2 Peter Jackson films, now the reason I love the wizard fight scene in Fellowship of the Ring between Gandalf and Saruman is the simplicity of what is happening, no fancy lightening bolts and digital FX, it's all pure invisible magic energy and it seems to pack a hell of a punch. This could have quite easily gotten out of control FX wise but it doesn't...

...however a scene I hate is the dinosaur stampede in King Kong, the whole thing from beginning to end is one of the biggest f**k ups in cinema history, I thought George Lucas had directed this part of the movie. The scene with just one Brontasaurus running down that narrow gully would have been pretty dangerous in terms of avoiding being squished as it ran past, yet we are given not only multiple huge dino's but the smaller and more deadly Raptor type, then there's running on the edge of a cliff as it collapses and the dodge the giant dinosaurs rolling down the hill, bollocks, bollocks, bollocks !!!

Cowboys & Aliens Super Bowl Trailer Shows Off The Alien Ship

Cowboys & Aliens Super Bowl Trailer Shows Off The Alien Ship

Hopefully this will be great as I like Jon Favreau's movies !! Click link for Trailer !!!

Rango Super Bowl TV Spot 2011 HD

Looks like it could be fun !!!