Avengers Trailer is GO + New FRIGHT-RAGS tees!

Been a while since I posted anything, so here's a dose of awesome to kick off your Tuesday. First up, the 100% official trailer for next May's THE AVENGERS has hit the web and it looks amazing! Robert Downey Jr. looks like he'll be bringing his A-game as Tony Stark, and will provide a good foil for fellow Avenger Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America. Check out this trailer and get excited:

CLICK HERE TO WATCH IT! 

(Video was too big to embed on my blog.)

Now for something more holiday oriented. Those magnificent folks over at Fright-Rags have released SIX new horror-themed tees that are cool as hell, plus they are briefly re-releasing their much-loved "We Belong Alive" shirt design. All sales of that shirt will be donated to the ongoing war against breast cancer. (Forget saving the whales; save the boobies!) Check out the designs below then pony up some dough before they are gone!

Buy this for a very good cause.

"I'm gonna sleep in your bloody carcasses tonight!"

Laid to Rest 2: Electric Boogaloo

Is there someTHING in my teeth?!

Your bones will stay crunchy in milk!

The chocolatey goodness will drive you MAD!

Snap, Crackle, BRAIIIIINS!

All shirts are $19.95 (plus shipping and handline), except for the extremely limited (200 shirts only) Rue Morgue THING tee and the limited edition "We Belong Alive" design. Both of those bad boys are $24.95 apiece, and well worth it!

Well that's it for today b-movie fans. I'm going to try and get off my lazy arse and get some new content up on the site soon (this is after all, my month to shine). I'm thinking a few new reviews and maybe a podcast on the main site, along with some fresh new content here at the main Vault blog and over at Genre Watch, The Casual Gaming Blog, and The Riff Brothers should sate you as October rolls onward. Check back soon for new stuff and if you haven't started watching Horror flicks daily, you best start because there's only "twenty more days 'til Hall-o-ween! SIL-VER SHAM-ROCK!"

Charles Fort: the movie!

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

The Dark Horse Comics series

An early pioneer in the research of anomalous phenomena - from ghosts to UFOs and everything in between - Charles Fort is to get his very own eponymously titled Hollywood movie.

Charles Fort is to be produced by Robert Zemeckis for Universal Pictures and adapted from the 2002 Dark Horse Comics series Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained, which portrayed Fort as an adventurous investigator pursuing aliens and murderers in turn-of-the-19th-century New York City.

According to The Hollywood Reporter:

"Fort, which is being described by some who know the material as a "period Ghostbusters," is the first project set up under Zemeckis and his Imagemovers' newly minted first-look deal with the studio [Universal].

Charles Fort was an early-twentieth-century American researcher and writer whose focus was "anomalous phenomena" and the unexplained. Books Fort wrote such as The Book of the Damned (1919) and New Lands (1923) were some of the first to explore everything from levitation and teleportation to alien abduction and other paranormal pursuits. Fort was essentially a curious skeptic who enjoyed collecting data to support explanations for things that he felt were no less possible than the scientifically accepted ones.

In addition to Zemeckis, Dark Horse's Mike Richardson is producing the film, as are Imagemovers partners Jack Rapke and Steve Starkey."

Will Charles Fort be embraced by Forteans and UFOlogists? Or will it be seen as an unforgivably sensationalised distortion of the life and achievements of a true trailblazer in the world of the weird? We'll find out for sure when the movie hits cinemas sometime in 2013.

'The Thing': new featurette

Silver Screen Saucers

Contains new footage and interviews with the stars...

Area 51, UFOs, and media manipulation

Silver Screen Saucers

As Hollywood’s first Area 51 movie – creatively entitled Area 51 – edges nearer to the big screen (no official US release date has yet been set, though it is expected sometime in Spring, 2012), over at The Presidents UFO Website, tireless researcher Grant Cameron has a new, in-depth paper about Area 51 and the Bob Lazar S-4 story.

It’s a must-read for any student of UFOlogy – especially those who are interested in the government’s covert efforts to manipulate media representations of UFOs. In this context, Grant revisits two cases involving filmmaker Robert Emenegger:  the bizarre 1988 TV broadcast of UFO Cover-up Live, and the 1974 government-backed documentary UFOs: Past Present and Future. And there’s a whole lot more besides in Grant’s epic article, so check it out.

Related posts:

'Area 51' movie update

'Area 52' headed for the big screen

A History of Government Management of UFO Perceptions through Film and Television

'Invaders from Mars': UFO acclimation movie?

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers



Invaders from Mars: UFO acclimation effort?



In 1953, director William Cameron Menzies gave the world Invaders from Mars – a fascinating if typically clunky addition to what was then the burgeoning UFO subgenre. The movie did what it said on the tin: there were invaders, and they were from Mars, and – aside from the film’s none-too-subtle communist invasion allegory (then obligatory for movies of its ilk) – that was pretty much it. Yet Invaders from Mars bears closer scrutiny from a UFOlogical perspective, with one scene in particular screaming out for analysis. 

The scene in question sees the film’s hero – an implausibly square-jawed astronomer – declare the Martians’ arrival as no surprise. He explains that the government has been studying the saucers for a number of years and is well aware that they are extraterrestrial in origin.

In the fashion of a public service announcement, the astronomer goes on to describe various real-life cases catalogued by the Air Force’s “Project Saucer” (officially named Project Sign), including the UFO-related death of Captain Thomas Mantell in 1948 and the “Lubbock Lights” of 1951. The astronomer illustrates his eight-minute lecture with genuine news-clippings and UFO photographs: “Life can, and does, exist on other planets,” he intones, before displaying scale models of the multiple saucer types he says are known to exist by the Air Force.

This lengthy scene clearly was devoid of narrative function and it did not appear in the US theatrical cut of the film. That it was scripted and shot at all raises questions about the possibility of subversive government involvement in the filmmaking process – a notion that cannot easily be dismissed in light of the US government's documented historical efforts to manipulate the content of Hollywood's UFO movies. Such efforts typically were geared towards debunking the UFO phenomenon; in a few select cases, however, the objective apparently was to acclimate the public to the notion of UFO reality (with the Robert Emenegger case of the early 1970s standing as perhaps the best example of this approach).

Watch the Invaders from Mars scene (as well as the rest of the movie) and see if you're not intrigued...

NOTE: This article was originally posted on Silver Screen Saucers in March 2011.

Kiefer Sutherland believes in aliens

Silver Screen Saucers

Sutherland scans the heavens in Melancholia (2011)

Kiefer Sutherland - star of Monsters Vs. Aliens and the new 'rogue planet' movie Melancholia - has spoken to the press this week about his belief in life elsewhere. According to CTV News:

"The 44-year-old actor thinks it is 'arrogant' to suggest humans are the only form of life in the universe, and often ponders about extra-terrestrials when he looks up at the stars.

He said: 'When I look up at the sky on a clear night and see the wash of stars and planets, and everything that is outside our universe, I have to believe there is life everywhere.

'It would be very arrogant to believe this is the only planet that could sustain some kind of life.'"

Related posts:

Shades of Nibiru

'Cowboys and Aliens' writer alleges UFO cover-up

Jodie Foster helps save SETI

Dan Aykroyd talks UFOs

Reagan wasn't joking, and Spielberg knows it

‘The Thing’ prequel: news round-up

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

A new Russian poster for the 2011 prequel to John Carpenter’s 1982 sci-fi horror The Thing offers a glimpse of the craft that brought the alien beastie to Earth...

Also, a new clip of the movie reveals yet more mimicry of John Carpenter’s original...

Meanwhile, writing for the UK Guardian, Ben Child does not have high hopes for the prequel, noting that the director, Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., “hardly has the pedigree of a The Thing-era Carpenter, being best known as a director of car commercials,” adding, “Hollywood is not quite what it was in 1982.”

Considering 1982 gave us not only The Thing, but also E.T. and Blade Runner in the sci-fi genre alone, it’s hard to disagree.