'The Thing': new red-band trailer

Silver Screen Saucers

WARNING: contains violence, gore and potential plot-spoilers...

Hill abduction case headed for silver screen

Silver Screen Saucers

The 1961 Betty and Barney Hill UFO abduction case - perhaps the most significant abduction case on record - is being developed as a feature film entitled Shades of Gray. The main brain behind the film - Hollywood producer and author, Bryce Zabel - announced the project yesterday and revealed that the film is to be based on the popular 2007 book Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience, by Stanton Friedman and Kathleen Marden.

Over at his After Disclosure web site, Zabel writes:

“I'm pleased to announce, in time for the 50th anniversary, that my production company, Stellar Productions, has optioned the film rights to Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience (New Page Books) by Stanton T. Friedman, MSc. and Kathleen Marden. Friedman, of course, is the leading scientific ufologist of our time and a former nuclear physicist, the man who broke the Roswell case. Marden is Betty Hill's niece and the trustee of her estate. I'm thrilled to be in business with them in bringing this profound and unsettling case to what we all hope will be its largest audience yet.”

Zabel acknowledges that his won’t be the first feature-length screen rendering of the Hill abduction case - the 1966 book, The Interrupted Journey was adapted as a TV movie in 1975 - but states confidently that his adaptation of Captured! will be “the most definitive book film/combo that has come to the screen.”

Zabel’s fascination with the Hill case was first shared publicly in 1996 in the pilot episode for his UFO-themed NBC TV series, Dark Skies, in which the Hill characters make a brief but very notable appearance (see below).

Zabel writes of Shades of Gray: “This will not be an easy process, getting such a controversial book made into a film, but difficult or not, it starts now.”

For more information on Shades of Gray and the Hill abduction case, head on over to After Disclosure.

NASA turns to Hollywood to explain new find

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

Science fiction became science fact yesterday as NASA announced its discovery of the first known circumbinary planet – that is, a planet which orbits not one, but two stars. Up until now, circumbinary planets had been the stuff of fantasy. In 1977, George Lucas’s Star Wars famously depicted two suns in the sky of Tatooine – the home planet of Luke Skywalker. It was fitting, then, that joining the panel of NASA scientists that made yesterday’s historic announcement was none other than John Knoll – a renowned visual effects supervisor with Lucas’s effects company Industrial Light and Magic (ILM). Knoll worked on five out of the six Star Wars movies, as well as on other alien-themed productions, including The Abyss (1989), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), and Avatar (2009).

NASA’s decision to include Knoll on yesterday’s press briefing panel may seem rather odd, but in fact it was a savvy PR move on the space agency’s part. NASA clearly recognises that, for the scientific layperson (i.e. the majority of the populace), the visual characteristics and cosmic significance of this most recent extra-planetary discovery are most effectively crystallised through the use of iconographic Hollywood imagery and narrative devices. Several times throughout the press conference, NASA scientists used Star Wars as a natural reference point by which to clearly convey the complex notion of a circumbinary system, even screening a clip of the movie for good measure.

Following the formal briefing session, the question was raised by an audience member whether or not the public might be allowed to choose a less clinical name for the new planet than its official designation of “Kepler 16-b” and asked if the panel had yet considered any alternatives. The scientists – bless their logical hearts – seemed somewhat bemused, as if they were struggling even to grasp the premise of the question. Luckily, ILMs’s John Knoll was standing-by with the perfect answer: “Tatooine!” Well, naturally. And see if that name doesn’t stick.

Dan Aykroyd talks UFOs

Dan Aykroyd's fascination with UFOs is well documented. Recently, Alejandro Rojas of Open Minds seized the opportunity for a brief chat with the movie star about the past, present and future of UFOs and UFO research...

For the rest of the story on Aykroyd and UFOs, head on over to Open Minds.

'The Thing' 2011: 'chilling' new footage

Silver Screen Saucers

Empire Online reports on the forthcoming prequel to John Carpenter's 1982 sci-fi/horror classic, The Thing, providing a fresh clip of the movie for your viewing pleasure (see below).

"This story picks up a thread briefly touched on in the [original] Thing, wherein we learn that the alien had been discovered under the Antarctic ice, deep-frozen, and brought inside by the staff of a Norwegian Antarctic base. Given the havoc it wreaked in John Carpenter's film, it's no spoiler to say that not all of them would, with hindsight, describe the decision to bring the thing indoors as a good one."

Although billed as a prequel (which, technically, it is), judging by its trailer, in terms of both style and content The Thing looks to be more of a straight remake of Carpenter's 1982 version.

The Thing (2011)...

The Thing (1982)...

The Thing prequel (2011) stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton and Eric Christian Olsen. It will hit US cinemas on October 14. UK cinemas December 2.

Hollywood propaganda post-9/11

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

With the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks upon us, I thought it might be fitting to draw attention to a new book on the subject of post-9/11 Hollywood propaganda entitled Screens of Terror. Though not dealing with UFOs, the book should nevertheless appeal to anyone with an interest in media manipulation and Hollywood's depictions of controversial political issues in the post-9/11 world.

This from the publisher:


"Right from the first moment, the 11 September 2001 attacks and the 'war on terror' were closely associated with film and media. In an effort to 're-brand' US foreign policy, Washington consulted with the advertising and PR industries and within days of 9/11 - itself often described as being 'like a movie' - also consulted Hollywood. It seemed that film-makers might be about to cooperate with a major, long-term propaganda offensive, harking back to the films of the early Cold War era or even those of World War Two. Screens of Terror examines whether such expectations have been borne out. It asks:

� How far have the film and TV industries been supportive of the 'war on terror' and how far have they been critical of it?
� How has the war film genre developed since 9/11?
� How have other popular genres responded to the 'war on terror'?
� How have film and TV represented the enemy Other and the Western Self?

Ten years on, this volume brings together European and North American scholars working in politics and international relations as well as in literature, film, media and cultural studies to take stock and assess the shape and significance of the post-9/11 cultural moment."

Among the scholars to have contributed to Screens of Terror is my colleague Dr Matthew Alford, whose excellent book Reel Power: Hollywood Cinema and American Supremacy is a must-read for anyone interested in the politics of Hollywood and the powerful interests working tirelessly to exploit this so-called 'dream factory', both from outside and within.

As for the topic of UFOs & 9/11, debate is currently stirring at the After Disclosure site, where Bryce Zabel and Nick Pope are asking to hear your thoughts on whether or not these two distinct and highly divisive topics should be mixed in the public mind. So, let your thoughts be known.

Related viewing:

Hollywood and the War Machine...

Related articles:

Lights, Camera, Covert Action: The Deep Politics of Hollywood

In the Parents' Best Interests: The Deep Politics of Hollywood

Michael Moore: I Was the Most Hated Man in America

Bradley Cooper to star in Dulce base movie 'Umbra'?

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

Star of The Hangover and The A-Team Bradley Cooper is in talks with Endgame Productions to star in the alien invasion thriller Umbra, which - as revealed last month by Silver Screen Saucers - draws inspiration from longstanding rumours surrounding the Dulce base - an alleged deep underground biogenetic research facility said to be located in New Mexico.

According to horror news site Bloody Disgusting, if cast, "Cooper would play the character of 'David Underwood,' an investment banker who finds himself mixed up in a major government conspiracy - one that's life changing. His world unravels when he is accidentally delivered an audio cassette which reveals the government's complicity in an alien plot to breed with human chromosomes."

For an overview of Umbra's alien/Dulce-related content, check out my brief review of a leaked early draft of the movie's script.

For the script itself (currently being re-written), see here.

Umbra will likely hit cinemas in early 2013.