UFO movie news round-up (10 Nov. 2012)

Silver Screen Saucers

 

George Clooney to star in Disney’s Top Secret UFO movie, 1952?

 

 

First pic of Tom Cruise in alien invasion flick All You Need is Kill...

 

 

Not content with owning Star Wars, Disney may also soon add Transformersto its collection!

 

 

 

Star Wars Episode VII gets a writer

 

 

 

Ridley Scott talks Prometheus 2

 

 

 

Thor: The Dark World gets an official synopsis

 

 

 

Ben Affleck: "Hollywood is full of CIA agents"

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

 

Discussing his new film Argo this week, Ben Affleck has stated that Hollywood is likely teeming with CIA operatives. In a video interview with the actor, The Guardian's Catherine Shoard asks: "Are there many actors in Hollywood who also moonlight as agents do you think?" At this point, Affleck sits forward in his chair and laughs uncomfortably. He replies: "I think there are probably quite a few, yes. I think probably Hollywood is full of CIA agents and we just don't know it. And I wouldn't be surprised at all to discover that this was extremely common."

Shoard then asks: "Are you CIA?" To which Affleck responds, with a strained smile: "I am yes."

Obligatory laughter then follows from Shoard as Affleck adds: "And now you've blown my cover, so there goes my career, so I hope the directing thing better work out."

Argo is the true story of a CIA mission to rescue six Americans holed up in the Canadian embassy in Tehran during the hostage crisis of 1979. Affleck, who directs and stars in the film, is no stranger to working with the CIA. In 2002, he starred in the big screen version of Tom Clancy’s TheSum of All Fears, whichdepicted the Agency as tracking down terrorists who detonate a nuclear weapon on US soil. For this movie, CIA director George Tenet gave Affleck a personal tour of the Agency’s Langley HQ. The actor also consulted with CIA analysts and worked closely with the Agency’s former Entertainment Liaison Chase Brandon, who served as the movie’s on-set advisor.

Affleck’s wife, Jennifer Garner, enjoyed an even cosier relationship with CIA as the star of the Agency-supported TV series Alias (2001 – 2006). Garner even starred unpaid in a CIA recruitment video in 2004.

Incidentally, Catherine Shoard, who conducted the interview with Affleck, was the Commissioning Editor of an article I co-authored in 2009 for The Guardian’s Film Blog examining DoD involvement in Hollywood’s UFO movies. The Guardian also published a major feature article by myself and Dr Matthew Alford in 2008 looking at CIA infiltration of Hollywood.

For the most up-to-date and comprehensive article yet published on CIA involvement in Hollywood, I highly recommend Matthew Alford’s new article co-authored with Professor Tricia Jenkins, which appears in the June 2012 issue of Scope: An Online Journal of Film and Television Studies. Read it HERE.

Related:

Ben Affleck, Rwanda, and Corporate Sustained Catastrophe

Aliens escape from Area 51 in new UFO movie

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

How genuinely refreshing to see Hollywood filmmakers sticking their necks out on a UFO movie in which the US military is depicted as the hostile force rather than the alien visitors.

The new trailer for Escape from Planet Earth would seem to indicate that Hollywood still has some faith in the non-hostility of potential extraterrestrial intelligences despite Tinseltown’s long and successful history of aggressively demonizing life beyond Earth (UFO buffs will note the references to modern human technology being seeded -- or in this case literally produced -- by ETs... Philip Corso, anyone?).

 

 

 

Here’s the official blurb for the movie:

“The 3D animated family comedy Escape from Planet Earth catapults film goers to planet Baab, where admired astronaut Scorch Supernova (Brendon Fraser) is a national hero to the blue alien population. A master of daring rescues, Scorch pulls off astonishing feats with the quiet aid of his nerdy, by-the-rules brother, Gary, head of mission control at BASA. When BASA's no-nonsense chief Lena (Jessica Alba) informs the brothers of an SOS from a notoriously dangerous planet, Scorch rejects Gary's warnings and bounds off for yet another exciting mission. But when Scorch finds himself caught in a fiendish trap set by the evil Shanker (James Gandolfini), it's up to scrawny, risk-adverse Gary to do the real rescuing. As the interplanetary stakes rise to new heights, Gary is left to save his brother, his planet, his beloved wife Kira (Sarah Jesscia Parker) and their adventure hungry son Kip.”

Okay, so the trailer makes it clear that we shouldn’t be expecting cinematic greatness, but the concept of aliens in peril at the hands of paranoid human officials puts Escape from Planet Earth in the company of E.T. The Extraterrestrial, Super 8, and only a handful of other films of this ilk to have been produced in the history of the UFO subgenre. More like this, please, Hollywood. You can do it if you try.

Escape from Planet Earth is due for release Feb. 14, 2013.

Halloween Contest at the Vault - ENTER NOW!

Hey all! Bet you thought you'd never see anything new around The Vault eh? Well you're wrong... DEAD WRONG.... err... maybe just plain incorrect. In any case, Halloween is a week away (WOO!) and it is contest time here at the Vault! Two contests are running from RIGHT NOW until midnight on All Hallow's Eve, so you best get your entries in ASAP!

CONTEST #1: THE COSTUME CONTEST
Send me a photo of yourself in your latest Halloween costume. Store bought or homemade, it doesn't matter! Just try and WOW me with your creativity, or the size of your bank account. Send a pic of yourself decked out in your Halloween garb to vault_master@bmoviefilmvault.com, or send the photo to me at the Vault's Facebook page (to do so, you have to LIKE the Vault on Facebook, which I totally suggest you do because I'm always posting mini-reviews, movie news, and contest links on a daily basis!). This is a totally open contest for all ages; if enough people get entries in I'll prob create a few categories for costumes (e.g. kids, adults, sexy costumes, etc.) because I have quite a few awesome DVDs and VHS tapes to give away!

The Vault Master as The Angel of Macho Man Randy Savage! OOOOHHH YEEEEAH!

CONTEST #2: THE PUMPKIN CARVING CONTEST

There are a lot of folks out there that have turned pumpkin carving into an art form. Show me what you got this Halloween season and carve yourself an award winning pumpkin. Then take a picture of it and send it to me on Facebook (LIKE THE VAULT to do so) or e-mail it to me at vault_master@bmoviefilmvault.com! Please, enter your OWN work, and don't steal photos off the web and sent them in. For this reason, make sure YOU are in the pic with your (possibly) prize-winning jack-o-lantern!

Pumpkin carved by my best friend. Stupid face courtesy of yours truly.

THE PRIZES

So why should you dress up or carve a pumpkin this year? (Other than because it's friggin' Halloween time!) Because I am giving away some cool DVDs and VHS tapes. I'm still sorting this portion of the contest out (and probably will be up until Halloween night) but I can say without a doubt that two awesome SOMETHING WEIRD VHS COMPILATIONS are up for grabs, as well as SHRIEK SHOW'S TWO-DISC ZOMBI DVD RELEASE (with a cool ZOMBI mini-poster!). I have a few other discs lying around that I will also part with, and will announce them soon as well. 

So get going fellow Halloweeners because the clock... is.... TICKING!

Disclosure through Disney in 2013?

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

Disney's aborted 1950s UFO acclimation movie headed for the big screen?

Earlier this year, Silver Screen Saucers asked: “Could it be that Disney is producing a dramatization of the flying saucer fever that swept America in 1952?” That question was prompted by the enigmatic title 1952 – a “top secret” Disney production quietly announced by the House of Mouse back in June of 2011. We were told that a script was being penned by Damon Lindelof (Prometheus, Cowboys and Aliens), and nothing more. We subsequently learned that Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles) had signed on to co-write and direct.

But yesterday (Oct. 17) saw some intriguing (and confusing) developments when Vulture reported the following:

• Despite its title, 1952 is largely set in the present day.

• Its plot will focus on aliens visiting Earth for the first time.

• The film will also reportedly follow a man in his late 40s through this alien ordeal.

• Lindelof and Bird are aiming to re-create the magic of Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

 

1952 co-writer Damon Lindelof

 

Vulture also reported on the movie’s mysterious back-story, which goes like this: last spring, Disney’s head of production, Sean Bailey, arranged for screenwriter Lindelof to be given access to “one of the studio’s odder curiosities: a banker’s box of files and documents that had been left moldering in Walt Disney’s personal development lab, WED Enterprises, which later became the studio’s vaunted Imagineering department.”

According to Vulture’s “spies”, the box was originally labelled with the title of Disney’s 1965 comedy That Darn Cat!, which had been crossed out and in its place was written “1952.” Apparently, inside the box was a “collection of documents and primary source materials that, when looked at all together, indicated that someone had been working on a project (movie? Theme park ride?) about alien contact." 

The identity of this “someone” from Disney’s bygone era working on a project about alien contact has not been specified. As it turns out, though, we may already know... the name “Ward Kimball” springs to mind.

While at a MUFON symposium in 1979, Oscar-winning Disney animator and Imagineer Ward Kimball (the man behind Jiminy Cricket, The Mad Hatter and Pinocchio) claimed that the United States Air Force (USAF) had approached Walt Disney himself during the 1950s to request his cooperation on a documentary about UFOs that would help acclimate the American public to the reality of extraterrestrials. According to Kimball, in exchange for Disney’s cooperation, the USAF offered to furnish the production with genuine UFO footage. Kimball claimed that Disney accepted the deal and – ever faithful to Uncle Sam – began work immediately on the USAF project. It wasn’t long, however, before the USAF reneged on its offer of UFO footage. When Kimball challenged the USAF Colonel overseeing the project he was told that "there was indeed plenty of UFO footage, but that neither Kimball, nor anyone else was going to get access to it." The project was then abandoned and eventually forgotten by all but the few who had worked on it.

 

Walt Disney's most trusted animators - his "nine old men" - included Ward Kimball
(pictured far left, front).

 

So, could Disney’s mysterious 1952 be a 21 Century revival of its aborted 1950s UFO acclimation project? Based on the information thus far presented, there would certainly appear to be a connection... but hold on there, because here’s where it gets confusing...

Within hours of publishing his inside scoop on 1952, Vulture’s Claude Brodesser-Akner posted the following correction to his report: 

“Apparently I misunderstood my source for this story, who contacted me after it was posted to clarify that while it is true that 1952 is very much in the spirit of Close Encounters (and centers around a Roy Neary-like protagonist), it is not in fact about an alien encounter. My apologies for the erroneous plot description.”

Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfuss) making first contact in
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

 

 

Hmmm. So when the unnamed source told Vulture: “It will be set largely in the present day and it is about aliens making contact here on Earth,” and that the aborted Disney project that inspired it was “about alien contact,” apparently this was just a miscommunication. And yet it is just like Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Hmmm. Could it be that Vulture’s source (almost certainly an official viral ‘leaker’ for Disney) spilled one too many beans in his revelation of the movie’s alien aspect, has been reprimanded by the studio and has subsequently issued a rather implausible “correction”?

It’s hard to say for sure, but given the past UFO-themed credits of screenwriter Damon Lindelof, and in light of Disney’s longstanding fascination with the UFO enigma– not to mention the strong UFO-related connotations of the 1952title – my money is still firmly on this movie being about aliens.

In terms of the movie’s marketing, Vulture also reported the following: 

“The collaborators are planning an elaborate, very J.J. Abrams–like advanced marketing campaign that will start before filming even begins. The idea is to stage a treasure hunt for intrigued moviegoers that will gradually reveal clues about and build intrigue for the film right up until its release, and which may or may not be related to the contents of the box.”

Perhaps, then, the “box” is just a viral marketing device vaguely inspired by Kimball’s story? Or perhaps it is, as the source originally stated, a real box with real photos and documentation that have directly inspired a new and highly secretive Disney project? Perhaps the box is a remnant of the aborted Disney UFO documentary?

Indulging the latter assumption for a moment – that this new movie will feature real photos and/or footage of UFOs and perhaps even their occupants – what would be the point? If presented in a fictional context (as apparently it would be), said material would immediately be fictionalized by way of its presentation in a “science-fiction” movie. Also, in today’s world of photorealistic CGI and Performance Capture technologies, debates surrounding “real” and “faked” footage would be very difficult to resolve. We could be looking at genuine alien landing footage from any time during the modern UFO era and automatically assume it to be CGI. 

So again I’ll say, “hmmm.” Intriguing stuff, for sure, but until Disney hits us with more info on 1952, I’ll quit with the speculation. Watch this space...

 

1952 is scheduled for release in 2013.

cinetortura

cinetortura

“I was there to debunk for the BBC”, says presenter of "truth"-seeking UFO show

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

 

 

In a new interview with the UK comedy website Chortle, Irish comedian Andrew Maxwell has described his ordeal of being detained at gunpoint at Area 51, the super-secret US military facility in Nevada believed by some to house extraterrestrial technologies. The events unfolded while Maxwell was filming a UFO-themed episode of the BBC documentary series Conspiracy Road Trip earlier this year.

Maxwell told Chortle: 

“We got to the [Area 51] barrier and I’m expecting some soldiers to come out and tell us to “piss off”. We’ll have that on camera, job done, that’s enough for British TV.”

“Then, one of our group knocks on the guard hut door and all hell breaks loose, four soldiers rush out with M16s. ‘On the fucking floor! On the floor right now!’ We spent three, maybe four hours like that. Passports taken, all the footage and equipment.”

According to the BBC, Conspiracy Road Trip is “an effort to tackle the truth” about conspiracy theories, with individual episodes examining various conspiratorial subjects, including state-sponsored terrorism and, in this case, UFOs. However, Maxwell’s statements to Chortle indicate that the BBC series is less concerned with “tackling” uncomfortable truths than with debunking them. In his interview, Maxwell makes no secret of the fact that this particular episode was rigged from the outset to ridicule the UFO subject – a fact that apparently saved him and his group from being incarcerated:

“Luckily, when the sheriffs turned up this deputy had a sense of humour. It had been rung through to him that I was an Irish comedian leading these UFO nutjobs, that I didn’t believe any of it and was there to debunk it for the BBC.”

Conspiracy Road Trip: UFOs will be broadcast Monday October 15 at 9PM on BBC 3.