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FEATURED THREADS for 4-25-22

 
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Bud Brewster
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Joined: 14 Dec 2013
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PostPosted: Mon Apr 25, 2022 11:57 am    Post subject: FEATURED THREADS for 4-25-22 Reply with quote



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What's on the Featured Thread list for today?

A trip to Mars with a tourist whose vehicle breaks down and he can't phone home.

A shortcut from England to American which has just one obstacle blocking it — the floor of the Atlantic ocean.

A spaceship which makes an unexpected stopover on a hostile planet.




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Robinson Crusoe on Mars (1964)

Krel wrote:
I never noticed it in the movie, but the Alien Overlords are said to have been played by midgets. Possibly they rented the "Destination Moon" spacesuits, that were made for the midget actors used for the long distance scenes.

It's hard to be sure, but at the 6:00 mark on the clip below, when Draper is looking at the video he made of the slaves and the overlords, we only get one brief moment when an overlord is standing near a slave, an the slave does seem to be much taller.





However, when the overlords run after a slave trying to escape, they don't seem to move the way midgets do because of their short legs. Perhaps they just cast tall men as slaves (six feet or better) and short men as overlords (around five feet).

But it's difficult to tell because of the way the camera is yanked around so much.

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Transatlantic Tunnel (1935)

I watched this movie again when TCM aired it recently and I was newly impressed.

I think it's perhaps the best science fiction from the 1930s and 1940s, better (in my opinion) than Metropolis and Things to Come. It's a sprawling story which presents the concept flawlessly, packed with amazing special effects and well-designed sets.

The movie accurately predicts the existence of volcanic activity in the mid-Atlantic trench before it was proven, decades later.

I also admire the way the movie presents the economic, political, and scientific consideration of this engineering challenges, a task which spans more than 20 years.

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It Came from Outer Space (1953)

alltare wrote:
I saw this the first time as a kid. Two 3D scenes were impressive enough to me that I still remember them vividly today. The first was at the beginning of the movie, when Carlson and Rush were looking through his telescope. He swung the scope around toward the camera and I flinched out of its way.

The scene of the floating tray with a beer bottle and a glass in Fantastic Invasion of Planet Earth / The Bubble is so amazing it makes that bad movie almost worth watching! Laughing

alltare wrote:
The other memorable scene was when Sawyer was working at the top of the telephone pole. The camera looked down on Sawyer from above, and past him down the ladder to the people on the ground. The depth of the 3D image was very effective. Another of Bud's stills is from that scene, but taken at a different angle. Both of these scenes are still on the flat DVD, but it's pretty obvious that they were intended for the 3D camera.

This is an example of how effect 3D keeps us fully engaged in the movie, even when mundane ordinary things are being shown. We're so surprised by the illusion that we feel we're "right there" and our suspension of disbelief is fully engaged! Very Happy

alltare wrote:
I don't know where I read or heard the following about the flaw in the meteor footage:

The incoming meteor prop was reportedly a heavy metal sphere with hexagonal cutouts, with some kind of flare or sparkler inside. From a distance, it was slid down a long wire toward the camera as it burned. The "post" seen above the meteor is the equipment suspending it from the wire. Cameras are expensive, so it was actually a mirror that the meteor crashed into, while the camera viewed the meteor's reflected image at a safe distance.

The square thing to the left of the approaching meteor is actually part of that mirroring system. I can't quite figure out the relative positions of camera, mirror, and meteor in that shot, but this explanation makes more sense than anything else I've read.

Orzel-w did a masterful job of explaining how that worked (complete with diagrams that will boggle the mind) on page 2 and 3 of this thread.
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~ The Space Children (1958)
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