Interview - The Other ‘Star Trek’ Crew
SLEEK, GEEK, CHIC
‘Star Trek’ fans go where few have gone before with new movie
by Mark Volpe
Once there was an Elvis impersonator who wanted to be a part of the original “Star Trek” universe. Seriously. You can’t make this up.
Using the original series blueprints (acquired via his role as a costumer on “Star Trek: The Next Generation”), James “Kirk” Cawley and his friends rented a studio flat to construct their scale model of the Enterprise NCC-1701’s bridge and began shooting a fourth season of the original “Star Trek” as if the show had never been cancelled in 1969. Under the title “Star Trek: New Voyages,” their pointillist, pointed-eared attention to detail caused a Trekkie sensation. Cawley’s gamble that the original series characters could be personified by fresh faces paid off, producing the finest “Star Trek” fan films (fan-produced tributes) to date. The four films to date are greatly ambitious in their […]
Original post by Robert Newton
Interview - Claire Danes (”Stardust”)
LIKE A DIAMOND IN THE SKY
Talking with stellar Stardust star Claire Danes
Interview by Robert Newton
At 28, Claire Danes would seem far too young to have two dozen films in her filmography already, but it is true, statistical tables be damned. From her debut as Beth March in Gillian Armstrong’s 1994 adaptation of Little Women to her dreamy turn as the fair Capulet in Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 Romeo + Juliet to recent stalwart leading roles in films like Lajos Koltai’s Evening, the blonde beauty makes memorable most any part she plays. In the adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s dark bedtime story, Stardust, in theatres Friday, the New York City native lights up the screen in every way…playing an actual fallen star, and opposite heavies like Robert De Niro and Michelle Pfeiffer.
Even though Danes has been in a number of sci-fi and fantasy films lately, like It’s All About Love, Princess Mononoke and […]
Original post by Robert Newton
Interview - Danny Boyle (”Sunshine”)
WHO WILL SAVE YOUR SOL?
Talking with Sunshine director Danny Boyle
Interview by Robert Newton
Danny Boyle really knows how to get people talking. Whether he is creeping us out with dead babies crawling on the ceiling in a junkie’s waking nightmare in Trainspotting, scaring the hell out of us in the apocalyptic ‘nad-blow 28 Days Later or pondering the innocence of childhood so simply and beautifully in Millions, his efforts never pass quietly as footnotes. Now, in Sunshine, the 50-year-old English director (who once turned down a chance to direct an installment of Harry Potter) takes on another genre — science fiction — with a story by frequent collaborator Alex Garland about a mission to jump-start our dying sun with a bomb the size of Manhattan. Boyle never loses sight of the “what if?” of any story fantastical or mundane, and always follows it up with the kind of detail that makes […]
Original post by Robert Newton
Movie DIY - The 21st Century Drive-In
Turn off, tune in, drop out:
The American drive-in meets the 21st century
By Robert Newton
Ever since Richard Hollingshead opened the first drive-in movie theatre in Camden, New Jersey in 1933, the concept has resonated with car nuts and movie fans alike. Like any industry, the drive-in business has seen its ups and downs, and while only a fraction of the thousands of outdoor screens once in operation in the drive-in’s 1950s heyday are open today, their numbers remain steady. Now, the biggest enemy of the drive-in is not a trend toward anti-social alternatives, but the real estate developer, who typically eyes such large tracts of land as the perfect location for a wholesale outlet or home supply store (because surely, we don’t have quite enough of either of those).
Just as Hollingshead propped up a movie projector on the hood of his car, so go the innovators of the 21st century, but […]
Original post by Robert Newton