Blog Flim Sketchr Highlights Movie And TV Conceptual Design Art

There's a great blog called Film Sketchr which showcases a range of incredible artwork done for fantasy and science fiction films and television shows.  It includes concept art and paintings, storyboards and more from legends like Harper Goff (20,000 Leagues Under The Sea and Fantastic Voyage), Ralph McQuarrie (Star Wars: The Original Trilogy and ET), Andy Probert (original Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek: The Motion Picture) to legends-in-the-making John Eaves (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Oz The Great And Powerful) and Ryan Church (Avatar and Star Trek: 2009 Reboot).

Check it out here.

Spider-Man's Foe Kraven The Hunter Needs A Makeover

Spider-Man has faced his share of supervillains both in the 4-color comic book pages and on the silver screen. Green Goblin.  Doctor Octopus.  Sandman.  Venom.  The Lizard.

With Amazing Spider-Man 2 due in theaters in 2014, the villainous Electro will be added to the list.

One baddie we hope will NEVER see the big screen is Kraven The Hunter.  Kraven has simply the WORST costume design probably ever.  He wears an open vest with a lion's head - the big cat's eyes are where Krav's nipples would be (more on this later).  He also wears leopard spotted tights (Leopard.  Spotted.  Tights.) and strappy sandals.  Top this all off with a mustache that makes the Village People insanely jealous, and you have the worst-dressed spider-villain of all time.

Don't believe me, check out this pic:

Oh, and his "eye-nipples" shoot out some kinda jungle date-rape drug or sleeping gas (see panel 4, below).

Art by John Byrne and Dave Hunt, sourced from Grantbridge Street & Other Misadventures. Spider-Man and all characters shown are Copyright by Marvel Comics.

Space Ghost Designs

Hanna-Barbera produced a nifty adventure cartoon in the 1960s called Space Ghost. It ran in syndication for a number of years in the 70s which is when I eventually caught it.

Space Ghost was designed by now-legendary comic book artist Alex Toth.  I found these early Space Ghost designs at a blog called Rip Jaggers Dojo. It's always interesting to me to see an artist's design process (that early sketch would have been more cumbersome to animate).  That first sketch with the boots and the underwear on the outside would have made Space Ghost just another standard superhero costume knockoff. 

Mr. Toth's overall creedo of "less is more" prevailed and he nailed it with his amazing final minimalist Space Ghost costume design (among other refinements, no boots, no undies on the outside).

Galoob's ST:TNG Toys Revisited

Remember back in the day when Star Trek: The Next Generation first graced our tv screens?  After years of re-runs of TOS, new Star Trek: TNG episodes meant new Star Trek toys!

Whether you were an avid toy collector or just liked to keep a Data or Geordi action figure sitting atop your desk at work, or a phaser in the drawer to vaporize trespassers to your work station, the fine folks at Galoob Toys sought to please all those folks with some great toys.

The amazing site Trekcore - which this site is forever indebted to for their screencaps of every ST iteration - has a great three-part series looking at the Galoob/ST: TNG connection. It's a must read.

Trekcore's Part 1 of their Galoob retrospective.

Beam Me Up, Flipper

Post-Star Trek TOS, William Shatner guest starred on The Six Million Dollar Man as Steve Austin's friend and a fellow astronaut Josh.

Instead of getting into an accident and getting $6 mil worth of bionics, Josh instead passed through some kind of weird energy field in space and came back with the ability to understand dolphin math (and hear weird computer sounds in the process)!

Yes, apparently Flipper and his buds use sine, cosine and fractions just as much as they gulp down fish treats.

io9 has a terrific clip of these proceedings.  Just wait til you get to the end for the wacked out math stuff.

"X-Men: Days of Future Past" Teaser

On May 23, 2014, the X-Men return to the big screen in "X-Men: Days Of Future Past" an adaptation of one of the best storylines in X-Men history.

Adapting the classic John Byrne and Chris Claremont comic book tale is returning director Bryan Singer, who helmed the first two X-Men films.  Here's the first teaser trailer:

Led by the seemingly ageless Hugh Jackman - donning the indestructible claws of Wolverine - this latest movie is practically bursting with on-screen talent.  Returnees from X-Men: First Class include James McAvoy, Michael Fassbender, Jennifer Lawrence and Nicholas Hoult.  They star along with veteran X-franchise actors Ian McKellan, Patrick Stewart, Halley Berry, Ellen Page and Shawn Ashmore.  According to Screencrush, we'll be introduced to new mutants including fan-favorite Bishop, Sunspot and Blink.  Oh, and some guy from some little-seen show called Game of Thrones is also in the mix: Peter Dinklage.

The movie probably needs to run about 3 hours - we're talking Lord Of The Rings runtime - to cover all those amazing actors and all those storylines.

The Thing With Two Heads - A Movie With Half A Brain

Yesterday we had a Man With Two Brains.

Today, naturally, we get a man with two heads, or more specifically, The Thing With Two Heads.   Yup, this is what happens when you combine an Oscar-winning actor (Ray Milland, for The Lost Weekend), a former NFL football star (Rosey Grier) and a very goofy blaxspoitation script.

Or as the tag at the top of the poster so succinctly puts it, "They transplanted a WHITE BIGOT'S HEAD onto a SOUL BROTHER'S BODY!"

Steve Martin Brightens Your Halloween With His Two Brains

Because Halloween is just around the corner (or should that be "coroner?" Bazinga!), it never hurts to have an extra brain or two handy for the candy jar.

Here's a great bit from the Steve Martin classic The Man With Two Brains, with the old subdural hematoma versus epidural hematoma quandry:

Soylent Bell

You like Taco Bell?  Hey, who doesn't, especially since some marketing genius decided they should make taco shells out of Doritos chip flavors like Cool Ranch and the ubiquitous Nacho Cheese.  Brilliant!

Ever wonder about the meat in those tacos,though?  Apparently, Taco Bell prefers to call it "Taco Meat Filling" and, according to this post from Jezebel.com, only about 36% of that "meat filling" is actually, you know, meat (in this case, beef).  The other 64% is stuff like, "water, isolated oat product, salt, chili pepper, onion powder, tomato powder, oats (wheat), soy lecithin, sugar, spices, maltodextrin (a polysaccharide that is absorbed as glucose), soybean oil (anti-dusting agent), garlic powder, autolyzed yeast extract, citric acid, caramel color, cocoa powder, silicon dioxide (anti-caking agent), natural flavors, yeast, modified corn starch, natural smoke flavor, salt, sodium phosphate, less than 2% of beef broth, potassium phosphate, and potassium lactate."

Yum-my, right?

I predict we are about seven years before Taco Bell, and fast food joints in general, goes full on Soylent Green on us.  

 And, as usual, the American public will just shrug and order fries on the side.

Superman's 75th Anniversary Tribute Video Short

Superman turned 75 this year.

So uber-animation god Bruce Timm and Zack Snyder, director of this summer's Man of Steel, put together an amazing tribute video, which can be found at Entertainment Weekly's site.  (I originally got wind of this at Comics Alliance.)

So many decades, so many great artists; Additionally, it's nice they also included the most famous TV and film versions in there too.

Up, up and away!

Music Beyond The Stars

Ever see The Seven Samurai In Space?  You may remember it as Battle Beyond The Stars, the Roger Corman-produced scifi movie with John Boy Walton (aka Richard Thomas).

It's one of Corman's better releases, with lots of cool aliens, fun spaceship designs (hey, a starship with boobs!) and a nifty early effort from composer James Horner.  (Trivia fuctoid: James Cameron toiled on the movie first as a lowly model maker, but was quickly promoted to production designer/art director and visual effects supervisor.  Plus, Cameron would later select Horner to score his own films, such as, Aliens, Titanic and Avatar.)

Here's the main title theme, courtesy of YouTube:

Now we're cooking with dilithium!

Star Trek is Copyright 2013 and a Registered Trademark of CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is implied with this parody.  Screencaps from Trekcore.com. 

The Simpson's "Treehouse of del Toro Horror"

The Simpson's annual "Treehouse of Horror" (the 24th edition!) is airing on Sunday, October 6, and they have enlisted celebrated filmmaker Guillermo del Toro to create the opening credits sequence.  Del Toro is a true, dyed-in-the-wool genre fan as he includes a wide range of references, everything from Universal Studios' classic 1930s horror creatures, Ray Harryhausen and Hitchcock, Godzilla, the Shining and even Blade II (which he directed - in fact, all of GdT's films get the animated nod), to Bradbury, Poe, Lovecraft and Rod Serling, for starters.

The helpful folks at Screen Crush put together this helpful primer so we don't miss any of del Toro's ghoulish fun.

Agents of SHIELD Needs More Work

Agents of SHIELD.  Or rather, Marvel's Agents of SHIELD.  Or, more specifically, Disney's Marvel's Agents of SHIELD.

Whichever way you slice it, I watched the pilot episode of this spinoff from the Marvel Film Universe twice now.  My review: (shrugs shoulders).

It's not horrible, but it was certainly not in the Realm of Greatness that one would expect from a property that has such an amazing pedigree: Buffy/Firefly/Avengers movie god Joss Whedon directed the thing; Joss Whedon co-wrote it; acclaimed comic book writer/veteran tv writer Jeph Loeb is an executive producer; and it's based on classic comic books by Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and Jim Steranko. 

With all that going for it, it was merely okay.  And that is not okay.

In fact, The Hollywood Reporter enlisted Steranko to review the series for them.  He pretty much nailed it on the head.

Some highlights: "No menace, no tension."  Too many storylines, therefore "who in hell am I supposed to root for?"  "(Jeph) Loeb categorized the series as "SHIELD meets The X-Files." Great premise, but barely in evidence."  And "SHIELD needs to be much tougher, much stranger, much edgier to reach its potential!"

When I was watching Agents of SHIELD, I found my thoughts drifting off to the new Sleepy Hollow series.  YIKES! 

The Six Million Dollar Mustache

Re-runs of The Six Million Dollar Man are on right now.  I loved this show as a kid.

One thing: HE'S GOT A MUSTACHE! 

Yup, stone cold Steve Austin has a 'stache.  And it's a creepy looking thing: with Lee Major's patented squint, it makes Steve look smarmy, not suave (Tom Selleck's mighty 'stache has nothing to fear).  See for yourself, thanks to YouTube. 

It's probably bionic too. Or perhaps it's made from Bigfoot clippings.  Only Steve Austin's barber (and/or Dr. Rudy Wells) knows for sure.

Army Intelligence Meets Starfleet Command

"It looks like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise."

How many times have we seen that quote in a news item before?  Well, it's time to roll it out once again, according to this article in the UK's Daily Mail.

It appears that not only is Keith Alexander, the current head of the National Security Agency, a Star Trek fan, but a Star Trek fan who likes to work in an authentic Trek atmosphere (and we're not talking a Class M  planet).

When Alexander headed the US Army's Intelligence and Security Command, he apparently had the unit's workplace modeled after, yes, the "bridge of the Starship Enterprise" complete with a center command chair, a la Kirk and Picard, and a large main monitor screen on the front wall.  

Pretty nifty, but how much of the taxpayer's dime was siphoned for this fantasy workplace.  And, with all that chrome, it also could double as a Ken Adam-designed James Bond villain's lair.

Errand Of BBQ

If you're hungry and out and around Organia on Labor Day, make sure you stop at Ayelborne's for the best in out of this world BBQ.  Tell 'em Bad News From Outer Space sent ya.

Get 50% of any "Piece Threety (3-piece) Meal" when you mention this blog.

Star Trek is Copyright 2013 and a Registered Trademark of CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is implied with this parody.  Screencaps from Trekcore.com. 

This Is How Planet Of The Apes Got Started

Here are three alarms you NEVER want to see go off simultaneously. (However, they do make for the most interesting of days.)

Star Trek is Copyright 2013 and a Registered Trademark of CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is implied with this parody.  Screencaps from Trekcore.com

Shot Glasses At 30 Paces

Wanted a shot of Jack Daniels. 

Didn't have any in the station. 

Posted this instead (from my review of "Is There In Truth No Beauty?"

Sláinte!

STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark and Copyright 2013 by CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is intended with this parody.  Screencaps from TREKCORE.COM

Give Ben Affleck A Bat-Chance Internet

I wonder if the Internet has recovered yet from the announcement that Ben Affleck will be playing Batman in the sequel to Man of Steel....

...Nope, the Internet is still as stupid as ever.

Affleck has clearly matured as an actor, and as a filmmaker, since his earlier roles in Daredevil and Armageddon, for example.  He's written and directed acclaimed and award-winning movies, even nabbing the Best Picture Oscar for Argo.

I think Affleck will do fine as Bruce Wayne/Batman, but a huge and very important part of his performance will be the story he has to work with that David S. Goyer and director Zack Snyder concoct (I had problems with Goyer's MoS) and Synder's direction. 

(link to io9.com article)

Live Long and Bazinga

The Trek Collective has a nice piece up about upcoming Star Trek-related figures publicized at last month's San Diego Comic Con.  What caught my eye was this terrific and fun Mego action figure mash up of Star Trek with the cast of The Big Bang Theory.

Now you can have Leonard, Sheldon, Howard and Raj go on adventures with your Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Gorn Mego figures.  See how long it takes before Spock neckpinches Sheldon unconscious.

Too bad they can't include a special Penny figure, in the likeness of the super-cute Kaley Cuoco, in a red Yeoman Rand uniform (with or without beehive hairdo).

Live Long and Bazinga.

pic from TheTrekCollective.com

Phaser Phrasing!

We love all things Star Trek here, so when some mad geniuses combined the animation from the 1970s' Star Trek: The Animated Series with audio from current FX channel cartoon-for-grown ups series Archer, the result is, STARCHER TREK!

It's goofy, it's silly, but most importantly, it's funny.  And it was posted by the good folks of IO9.

(Also, love the shou touts at the end to Red Letter Media's Mr. Plinkett.  I too wonder sometimes, "What's with all the Ricks," but I am still waiting for Rick Berman's tell all book about his time at the helm of the Star Trek franchise.)

SHARKNADO 1, WORLD 0

We now live in a world where SHARKNADO was not only a goofy idea for a cheesy scifi movie, but a world in which SHARKNADO was actually made and broadcast on the airwaves.

It's your world, SHARKNADO, we're all just living swimming in it.

Bionic Guffaws

I just caught a couple of episodes of the late 1970s sci-fi/action series The Bionic Woman with the lovely Lindsay Wagner in the role of Jaime Sommers.  It airs in the L.A. area on COZI, an over the air station.

Yikes, but I do not remember the stories being so bad.  One was a yuck fest where Jaime teamed with a retired OSI agent with a penchant for wigs and European accents to take down a former Cold War adversary of said agent.  Even the music was so in your face hokey jokey, as if casting a huge spotlight on the goofy proceedings.  But the other episode is the one that took the cake -- hell, it made off with the entire bakery. It involved an evil hair stylist and his mind-control hairdryer!  (Read that sentence again, I dare you.)  Did they just dust off old rejected Get Smart scripts for this show?

Oh, well, Lindsay Wagner was always pretty in each episode, and a much better actress than the goofy scripts allowed.

Treknobabble Meets Takeout

I was just at the mighty Trekcore.com perusing some pics from Star Trek Into Darkness, specifically photos of the new warp core.

The first thing that immediately sprang to my mind was, "Hoisin Sauce Rotator."  I have no idea what this wacky piece of "treknobabble" means, but it makes about as much sense as any of the tech spewed on the various shows.

Now I'm seriously hungry for Chinese food.

Ray Harryhausen, 1920-2013

Ray Harryhausen, the visual effects maestro, passed away today at the age of 92. 

Across five decades Mr. Harryhausen worked alone to create true movie magic; today it takes legions of technicians, artists, and craftsmen to do what he did.

SciFi and fantasy movie fans will recall Mr. Harryhausen's work in films such as, Mighty Joe Young (1949), Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (1956), The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), the incomparable Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977), and his final film, Clash of the Titans (1981).  He is known primarily for his mastery of stop motion animation, but he was often involved in story creation, drawing and designing the various creatures encountered in his movies, and handling many other areas of the special visual effects for his movies.

Mr. Harryhausen's films took us on adventures to all corners of the globe and across the ages.  After watching Jason and the Argonauts or his Sinbad movies, who doesn't want to don a loincloth and head out across the sea in search of the unknown?

We will miss you Ray, but thank you for all the incredible films and thrilling adventures you gave us. 

MANBORG. SAY IT LOUD, SAY IT PROUD. MANBORG!

If you ever wondered what would happen if a bunch of goofballs working at a cable access station, with full run of a chroma key backdrop, spliced their shenanigans into someone's Adobe AfterEffects demo reel I imagine that you'd get something along the lines of MANBORG.

You heard me: MANBORG.  This MANBORG trailer looks incredibly stupid, but Variety and other blogs say it's good dumb - probably extremely dumb - fun.

Now I know for a fact that the mighty MANDROID from The Eliminators would kick MANBORG'S inferior metal ass like an M-1 tank rolling over a Yugo. 

Greatest Hits Collection

Screencap hijinks from previous reviews of Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS).

STAR TREK is a Registered Trademark and Copyright 2013 by CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is intended with this parody.  Screencaps from TREKCORE.COM.Why is there not a Star Trek-themed flavor of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, I mean, rilly?  Something like Orion Slave Girl Green Mint.

Trailer of Steel

The Playlist at IndieWire.com has the latest trailer for Man of Steel, the highly anticipated new Superman movie.

I think this looks really good, giving us more of a glimpse of the story of Clark Kent finding his place in our world.  I like Kevin Costner's scenes so far in his role as Jonathan Kent, Clark's human father.  A minor quibble with the trailer is the action scenes looked like they were cut together in a blender.  I hope the sequences in the actual film are much easier on the eyes, more the Steven Spielberg/James Cameron school of action set piece choreography and editing that you can follow, rather than the Michael Bay approach of totally confusing and disorienting action scenes.

Superman should be an inspirational character; he does not solve all our problems but leads by example.  We need him now more than ever.

Apes, Overlords, Ringworlds and The Great Gulf Between The Haves And Have Nots

AintItCool has quite a few interesting news items posted.

The latest big screen version of Tarzan, with Harry Potter film veteran David Yates slated as director, has been put "on hold."  Sad news indeed, as just last year marked the 100th anniversary of the first publication of the seminal pulp story "Tarzan of the Apes."  I wonder if they will ever be able to put on screen images that capture the wonder and awe of some of those great illustrated covers to the many Tarzan novels and comics, featuring the work of such luminaries as, for example, Neal Adams and Joe Jusko. 

Director Neil Blomkamp's upcoming Elysium finally gets a trailer.  Just as with his District 9, this new film looks to be visually amazing, with a timely and thought-provoking story.  Maybe this movie can get the utterly stupid Meet Dave out of my brain.

And SyFy is stepping up the SciFi with two planned mini-series of classic science fiction tales from two of the greats: Ringworld by Larry Niven and Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke.  Holy cow!  This is truly amazing as SyFy has always seemed to shun classic scifi material, especially with their longstanding deal with The Asylum to air that "mockbuster" studio's crapload of ripoffs of big budget studio summer fare such as Transmorphers (to ape Transformers), Alien Origin (Prometheus) and American Warship (Battleship). 

True, SyFy did have the foresight to give the greenlight to Ronald D. Moore's reworked Battlestar Galactica, for which we will be eternally grateful, and therefore, give SyFy some serious wiggle room.  But I have never liked SyFy's fantasy miniseries, such as Tin Man.  They felt to me as simply "TV fare" and not very good TV fare at that, never breaking out of that mold with truly interesting characters, or amazing turns by actors, or with compelling stories.