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Beetlejuice released March 30, 1988

Mar 302010

Beetlejuice is a 1988 American comedy horror fantasy film directed by Tim Burton, produced by The Geffen Film Company and distributed by Warner Bros. The plot revolves around a recently dead young couple who become ghosts haunting their former home, a quaint and quiet house on a hill overlooking the fictional town of Winter Rivers located in Connecticut. When a family of metropolitan yuppies from New York City move into the house, the ghosts seek the help of an obnoxious, devious and mischievous “bio-exorcist” named Betelgeuse from the underworld in order to scare the new living inhabitants away permanently. Beetlejuice stars Alec Baldwin, Geena Davis, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, Jeffrey Jones, Sylvia Sidney and Michael Keaton as the titular Betelgeuse (the film’s title being a phonetic spelling of the character’s name).

After the success of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, Burton was sent several scripts and became disheartened by their lack of imagination and originality. When he was sent Michael McDowell’s original script for Beetlejuice, Burton agreed to direct, although Larry Wilson and Warren Skaaren were hired to rewrite it. Beetlejuice was both a financial and critical success, grossing $73.33 million from a budget of $13 million. The film spawned an animated television series that Burton produced, and the unproduced Beetlejuice Goes Hawaiian sequel.

Trivia:

The receptionist in the waiting room is Miss Argentina.
Tim Burton originally wanted Sammy Davis Jr., a favorite star of his since childhood, to play the role of Betelgeuse but studio executives didn’t like that idea at all.
Director Trademark: [Tim Burton] [music] music by Danny Elfman
In the wedding scene, Lydia’s dress is a bright red. According to the old rhyme about wedding dress colors, it’s “Married in red, better off dead.”
During the sequence where Adam and Barbara enter Juno’s office and see her speaking to a recently deceased football team, a movie theater full of ghosts can be seen through Juno’s office window. When the film was first released in theaters, the scene created the illusion that the audience were themselves being watched by the ghosts. Among the ghosts in the audience are a red skeleton and a green skeleton (identical to the ones seen in Tim Burton’s later movie, Mars Attacks! (1996)), a woman with red hair, and two men in suits and Ray-Ban style sunglasses.
Director Trademark: [Tim Burton] [dogs] The Maitland’s deaths are caused by a stray dog wandering around the bridge their car topples over.
Michael Keaton spent only two weeks filming his part in the film, which lasts 17.5 minutes out of the 92-minute running time. It is Keaton’s favorite film of his own.
Director Trademark: [Tim Burton] [TV commercials] Betelgeuse’s TV commercial.
Director Trademark: [Tim Burton] [stop-motion animation] The sculptures, sandworms, and various effects.
The original script was a horror film, and featured Beetlejuice as a winged, reptilian demon who transformed into a small Middle Eastern man to interact with the Maitlands and the Deetzes. Lydia was a minor character, with her six year old sister Cathy being the Deetz child able to see the Maitlands. Beetlejuice’s goal was to kill the Maitlands, rather than frighten them away, and included sequences where he mauled Cathy in the form of a rabid squirrel and tried to rape Lydia. Subsequent script rewrites turned the film into a comedy and toned down Beetlejuice’s character into the ghost of an Ebonics-speaking con-artist rather than a demon.
As the Geffen logo rolls during the intro, soundtrack composer Danny Elfman is heard singing “Day-o, he say day-ay-ay-o.” This was added during post-production and is heard on the released soundtrack.
The title character of Beetle Juice (1988) is named for a bright red star in the constellation of Orion, Betelgeuse. The studio disliked the title and wanted to call the film “House Ghosts”. As a joke, Tim Burton suggested the name “Scared Sheetless” and was horrified when the studio actually considered using it.
The only cast member who would initially commit to the project was Geena Davis. Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, and Sylvia Sidney all said no at least once. Producer David Geffen convinced Michael Keaton’s manager to convince Michael to meet with director Tim Burton. Once Michael said yes, Tim Burton personally called Sylvia Sidney and begged her to do the movie, and he flew out to meet with Catherine O’Hara to convince her as well.
Catherine O’Hara was a replacement for an ill Anjelica Huston as Delia. On the set she met her future husband, production designer Bo Welch.
The original plan for the dinner party was to have the guests dance to “a song by The Ink Spots,” but Jeffrey Jones and Catherine O’Hara suggested the music be calypso.
When Adam and Barbra are in the office, a voice on the PA systems announces the arrival of Flight 409 (“Flight 409 is arriving at Gate 3″). On October 6, 1955 United Airlines Flight 409 crashed into a mountain over Wyoming killing all passengers and crew aboard. It was the worst crash in history to that point. To this day, no one knows why it crashed.
Director Trademark: [Tim Burton] [Claymation] The Priest, Fireplace and decomposing versions of Adam and Barbra are all Claymation.
A toy line was released in conjunction with the film, featuring action figures of most of Beetlejuice’s incarnations, Otho, Adam (whose figure featured him wearing a red baseball cap), and the Shrunken Head Man from the waiting room, whose figure was named “Harry the Haunted Hunter” and came with a detachable head showing what he looked like before death.
Adam and Barbara are the only spirits that look “normal”, compared to the other deceased in the Netherworld.
Juliette Lewis auditioned for the role of Lydia. Lori Loughlin, Diane Lane, Sarah Jessica Parker, Brooke Shields, Justine Bateman, Molly Ringwald and Jennifer Connelly all turned down the same role.
The snake scene had been filmed before Michael Keaton was cast as Betelgeuse, and the animatronic snake used bore no resemblance to the actor. After Keaton had been cast, some additional film was shot for the scene, using a stop-motion snake that looked more like Betelgeuse. This was suggested by the studio to make sure the audience knows the the snake is actually Betelgeuse and not some random monster from the afterlife.
The number 3 is used ’3′ times: The number of times to say commands (“Betelgeuse”, “home”), the number of times to knock on the door to get to the other side, and the number of first class intersessions allotted.
Producer Jon Peters thought of casting controversial comedian Sam Kinison as Beetlegeuse, but Kinison’s agent never told him about it.

Splash released March 9, 1984

Comedy, Fantasy, Romance No Responses »

Mar 092010

Splash is a 1984 fantasy romantic comedy film directed by Ron Howard and written by Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. The film was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. The original music score was composed by Lee Holdridge. It was the very first film released by Disney’s Touchstone Films (now known as Touchstone Pictures).

Trivia:

The first film released under Disney’s Touchstone Pictures label, which was created so the studio could release more adult-oriented fare.
Daryl Hannah a vegetarian, refused to eat real lobster for the restaurant scene. The crew scooped out the insides of real, cooked lobsters and filled them with a thick, tofu-like paste. In an interview for ‘Biography (1990)’, Director Ron Howard said Hannah cried after each take over the deaths of the lobsters for their shells.
Before Tom Hanks accepted the role of Allen Bauer, it had already been turned down by John Travolta and Michael Keaton.
At the time of filming, Daryl Hannah was extremely shy about her body. According to director Ron Howard, she wore both band-aids and makeup over her nipples to conceal them.
David Morse was considered for the lead role.
Credited with introducing the girl’s name Madison, which has since become one of the most popular names for newborn girls in the early 21st century.
When Madison watches television at the department store, the little boy in the toothpaste commercial is Emmanuel Lewis.
The fountain from the movie is now on display at Disney’s MGM Studios at Walt Disney World. The mermaid fin Daryl Hannah wore is behind the bar at Planet Hollywood in Downtown Disney.
The mold used to make the mermaid fountain had also been used to make the ice sculpture in Herbie Goes Bananas (1980).
The scene at the racquetball court, where John Candy serves and the ball hits him in the head, was done in one take.
The map from the shipwreck that Madison uses to find Allen’s home is an old map of the Province of New York. It bears the name ‘His Excellency William Tryon Esq.’ Tyron was the colonial governor of the Province of New York from 1771 to 1780.
The “Crazy Eddie” commercial that surprises Madison was for a real electronics store. Eddie and Sam M. Antar opened Crazy Eddie in Brooklyn, NY in 1971. Their spokesman was WPIX-FM disc jockey Jerry “Dr. Jerry” Carroll, whose frenetic nonstop sales pitch was based on used car salesman Earl “Madman” Muntz. The pitch always ended with “Crazy Eddie, his prices are IN-SA-A-A-A-A-A-ANE!” The chain grew to 43 stores in 4 states. It closed in 1989 after charges of fraud and security violations.
Jodie Foster auditioned for the role of Madison, but turned it down in order to play a character in The Hotel New Hampshire (1984).
Rosanna Arquette auditioned for the role of Madison, but had to back out.
Brooke Shields reportedly turned down an offer to play Madison so she could study French Literature at Princeton.
Before Daryl Hannah accepted the role of Madison, it had already been turned down by Tatum O’Neal, Michelle Pfeiffer, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Melanie Griffith,, Diane Lane, Kathleen Turner and Sharon Stone.
Debra Winger reportedly wanted the role of Madison, but Ron Howard turned her down.
While Allen is offering girls names to the mermaid before she settled on Madison, the last two he suggests are Elizabeth and Samantha. Elizabeth Hanks is Tom Hanks’s daughter and Samantha Lewes was his then-wife.
According to Biography Channel, Bill Murray and P.J. Soles were considered for the roles of Allen and Madison, but Murray turned it down.

Marc Singer Birthday January 29

Birthdays No Responses »

Jan 292010

Marc Singer

Marc Singer (born January 29, 1948) is a Canadian-born American actor known for his roles in science fiction films and television.

Singer has appeared in several fantasy adventure films and series, such as The Beastmaster and its sequels, in which he played the title role, and as Mike Donovan in the 1983 mini-series V, the 1984 sequel V: The Final Battle, and the TV series V: The Series.

Other roles include the 1982 film If You Could See What I Hear (where he portrayed blind musician Tom Sullivan), Body Chemistry, Something for Joey (as football star John Cappelletti), Watchers II, High Desert Kill, The Fighter, Go Tell the Spartans and Dead Space, as well as General Klaus Von Kraut in A Man Called Sarge.

Singer voiced the character of Man-Bat on Batman: The Animated Series. He has guest-starred on television series, such as Dallas, The Twilight Zone, The Hitchhiker, Murder, She Wrote, The Young and the Restless,The Ray Bradbury Theater and Highlander: The Series.

Singer is active in theater and played Petruchio in the American Conservatory Theatre (ACT) production of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. He also played Christian in ACT’s Cyrano de Bergerac. Both Taming of the Shrew and Cyrano were filmed.

Singer is currently teaching kids inter-disciplinary tactics at the Heifetz International Music Institute, which is located in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire.

Trivia:

Brother of actress Lori Singer and Gregory Singer.

Cousin of director Bryan Singer.

Has a black belt in kung fu.

Ex-brother-in-law of Richard Emery.

Brother of Claude Singer.

Son of Jacques Singer, a symphony conductor, and Leslie Singer, a concert pianist.

Daughter with wife Haunani named Phoebe.

J.R.R. Tolkien Birthday January 3, 1892

Birthdays, Fantasy, GoreMaster People No Responses »

Jan 032010

J.R.R. Tolkien

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE (3 January 1892 – 2 September 1973) was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion.

Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford from 1925 to 1945, and Merton Professor of English Language and Literature from 1945 to 1959. He was a close friend of C. S. Lewis—they were both members of the informal literary discussion group known as the Inklings. Tolkien was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II on 28 March 1972.

After his death, Tolkien’s son, Christopher, published a series of works based on his father’s extensive notes and unpublished manuscripts, including The Silmarillion. These, together with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, form a connected body of tales, poems, fictional histories, invented languages, and literary essays about an imagined world called Arda, and Middle-earth within it. Between 1951 and 1955 Tolkien applied the word legendarium to the larger part of these writings.

While many other authors had published works of fantasy before Tolkien, the great success of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings when they were published in paperback in the United States led directly to a popular resurgence of the genre. This has caused Tolkien to be popularly identified as the “father” of modern fantasy literature—or more precisely, high fantasy. Tolkien’s writings have inspired many other works of fantasy and have had a lasting effect on the entire field. In 2008, The Times ranked him sixth on a list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945″.

Trivia:

Much of his work was published posthumously by his son Christopher Tolkien.

Tolkien served in the Lancashire Fusilliers in the first world war and fought in the Battle of the Somme. He was discharged in 1917 suffering from “trench fever”.

During the flower-power sixties Leonard Nimoy recorded “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins”.

A friend and fellow Oxford don with C.S. Lewis. They were both members of the Inklings.

Tolkien was one of the translators for The Jerusalem Bible.

Made up languages as a young child.

Widely considered as the founder of modern fantasy; the man who changed children’s faerie tales into epic adventures (without losing the appeal).

As of 2001, his novel, ‘The Lord of the Rings’, has sold over 52 million copies worldwide and has been translated into 25 different languages.

Tolkien and his wife, Edith, are buried together in a single grave in the Catholic section of Wolvercote cemetery in the northern suburbs of Oxford. (The grave is well signposted from the entrance.) The legend on the headstone reads: “Edith Mary Tolkien, Lúthien, 1889-1971″ and “John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, Beren, 1892-1973″. The character names are those of lovers in Tolkien’s novel, ‘The Silmarillion’.

Member of the Oxford literary circle along with writers C.S. Lewis, Jeremy Dyson, Charles Williams, Messrs Coghill, and Owen Barfield.

Tolkien’s reaction to several proposed film productions of his books was that he considered his works to be unstageable; he simply didn’t feel that they could be successfully translated to a dramatic form. Although he had sold the film rights long before he died, he had no real expectation that “The Lord of the Rings” could be successfully filmed.

Tolkien’s mother introduced him to Latin, French, and German. While at school (mostly at Oxford) he was taught or taught himself Greek, Middle English, Old English (also called Anglo Saxon), Old Norse (also called Old Icelandic), Gothic, Modern and medieval Welsh, Finnish, Spanish, and Italian. Other languages of which he had a working knowledge include Serbian, Russian, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Dutch, and Lombardic. In addition to these languages, Tolkien invented 14 different languages and assorted alphabets for his Middle-earth dwellers.

Father of Christopher Tolkien, Michael Tolkien, Priscilla Tolkien, and Father John Tolkien

The British rock band Marillion, popular in the UK during the 1980s, took their name from his novel ‘The Silmarillion’.

His father died when Tolkien was 4, and his mother when he was 12. He and his brothers were then raised by a Catholic priest.

Taught at the University of Leeds before teaching at Oxford from 1925 – 1959.

Studied Old Norse and Old English at Oxford.

In 1999, 250,000 Amazon.com customers voted his The Lord of the Rings (first published 1954) as the “book of the millenium”.

He was a philologist – someone who studies the history of languages.

The Inklings (Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams & Owen Barfield) met on Tuesdays for lunch at the ‘Eagle and Child’ pub in Oxford where they would read out pages from their books.

Won the ‘International Fantasy Award’ in 1957 for his book ‘The Lord of the Rings’. In 1973 he won the first ‘Gandalf Award’ (named after a character from his books) as Grandmaster (lifetime fantasy achivement). Posthumously he has been awarded the ‘Locus Award’ in 1978 for ‘The Silmarillion’ and the ‘Mythopoeic Award’ in 1981 for ‘Unifinished Tales’. The ‘Balrog Award’ is also named after a character from his books.

Lord of the Ring-saga’s world and its cast of characters have roots in real-world history and geography, from the world wars that dominated Tolkien’s lifetime to the ancient language and legends of Finland. The Finnish national epic Kalevala inspired Tolkien and he taught himself the Finnish language so he could read it.

The German Heavy Metal band Blind Guardian base a lot of their songs on Tolkien’s work, such as Nightfall in Middle-Earth (which is based on the Silmarillion), and other songs: Gandalf’s Rebirth, Lord of the Rings, By the gates of Moria, etc.

Was extremely annoyed when ‘The Lord of the Rings’ was published in the mid-50s as three different stories, because he had never intended the tale to become a trilogy.

He opposed the development of the Concorde supersonic jetliner.

The lead characters in his best known works, Bilbo Baggins from The Hobbit, and Frodo Baggins from The Lord of the Rings, have both been played by Orson Bean and Ian Holm.

Locus magazine conducted a poll in 1987 from among its readers to vote for the Best All-time Fantasy Novel. Tolkien’s ‘The Lord of the Rings’ (1955) and ‘The Hobbit’ (1934) won 1st and 2nd place respectively. They beat out classics like Alice in Wonderland (1865), Dracula (1897) & The Wizard of Oz (1900).

The British progressive rock band Barclay James Harvest, popular in the UK during the 1970s and 1980s, recorded a single record under the pseudonymous name of ‘Bombadil’ in 1972, and a song under their own name of BJH, titled ‘Galadriel’ on their second album ‘Once Again’ (1971). They found much inspiration from Tolkien’s writings, having come from the Saddleworth country in northern England.

The original publication of The Lord of the Rings was delayed for two reasons. Tolkien tried to get out of his obligation to his publisher, Allen & Unwin, because another publisher had agreed to his wish to use different colors of ink for different parts of the book. In particular, he wanted the writing on the Ring to be printed in red ink. That deal fell apart, and he went back to Allen & Unwin. The second reason was that he wanted The Silmarillion; which told the history of the Elves and of Aragorn’s race, the Numenoreans; to be published alongside Rings. No publisher would agree to this, so The Silmarillion was not published until after his death.

One change that he vehemently opposed in any adaptation of his work was the intercutting of the various story threads that he had deliberately kept separate. To date, every adaptation has intercut the stories.

In “The Lord of the Rings”, the wizard Gandalf is revealed to have an Elvish name, Mithrandir. This is an indirect reference to the story’s Christian underpinnings. The name Mithrandir is derived from Mithras, a Pagan god with several parallels to stories of the life of Jesus: he was born on December 25 as the offspring of the Sun, had a Last Supper with his twelve followers, died, was buried under a rock, and reborn. Gandalf, like Mithras and Jesus, dies and is reborn. Mithras sacrificed a cosmic bull, symbolizing darkness, while Gandalf falls fighting the Balrog. According to the book, the Fellowship that Gandalf leads sets out on December 25.

Shortly after the original publication of The Hobbit in 1937, his publisher, Allen & Unwin, tried to license several foregin language version, included a German version. Before any German publishers would publish it, the Reich government wrote him a letter asking whether or not he was Aryan. He responded by saying that “I can only assume that you are asking if I am Jewish. I regret to respond that I have no ancestors among that gifted people.” On account of this backhanded reply, The Hobbit was not published in Germany until after 1945.

By 2004 his “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy [1954-55] had sold more than 100 million copies and is the best selling fiction book of all time. It is the 3rd best selling book of all time after “The Bible” [c. 1451-55] (more than 6 billion copies) and “Quotations from the Works of Mao Tse-Tung” [1966] (900 million copies).

He started writing The Lord of the Rings with no idea where the story would eventually go. This led to it not being structured at all like a proper novel, with many characters left underdeveloped, many ideas repeated, and character groups being essentially forgotten for very long periods.

Said in an interview that the character Faramir was the Lord of the Ring character who was the most like himself.

The only actor from Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of “Lord of the Rings” to have actually met JRR Tolkien is Christopher Lee. Lee was very fond of Tolkien’s books and Tolkien himself even said that Lee would have been a good choice for the role of the wizard Saruman.

Once met Ava Gardner and neither knew why the other was famous.

While writing the Lord of the Rings, he originally intended for Aragorn to marry Éowyn, but later decided to have her marry Faramir and created the Arwen character for Aragorn.

Prior to their reunion inside the city of Minas Tirith, his characters Aragorn and Eowyn only have one conversation during the course of The Lord of the Rings, and it takes place shortly before Aragorn takes the Paths of the Dead in The Return of the King. Peter Jackson’s film adaptation adds several more scenes between them, beginning in The Two Towers. Although all of these interactions were invented for the movie, all but three of them use dialogue from their one scene together in the book.

The appendices to The Return of the King features The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen, in which Aragorn’s relationship with Arwen is given in detail, as well as his relationships with Elrond and his mother, Gilraen. His mother’s final words to him are “Onen i-Estel Edain, u-chebin estel anim,” which means “I have given Hope to the Dunedain, I have kept no hope for myself.” This line is used in the film as the last verbal exchange between Aragorn and Elrond. In addition, Estel, or Hope, was a name by which Aragorn was known before his true heritage was revealed to him.

Biography/bibliography in: “Contemporary Authors”. New Revision Series, vol. 134, pages 427-436. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005.

Many of his papers, including original manuscripts and illustrations for “The Hobbit” (1937), “Farmer Giles of Ham” (1949), and “The Lord of the Rings” (1954-1955), were sold to the Raynor Memorial Libraries of Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA. The library approached him, Tolkien selected Marquette because he wanted his papers to be kept by a Catholic institution which would be willing to provide for proper care and preservation of the materials. The library periodically puts selected items from the collection on public display. His other papers are at the Bodleian Library of Oxford University.

Colleagues urged him to submit his elvish alphabet for consideration to win a prize established by George Bernard Shaw for the creation of a phonetically consistent alphabet for English. He declined to do so, another example of his reluctance to exploit his creation.

The first music inspired by his work was written by the English songwriting team of Donald Swann and Michael Flanders, who set poems from “The Hobbit”, “The Lord of the Rings” and other works to music and included them in their 1963 revue “At the Drop of a Hat”. When an interviewer called Swann “elfin”, he said, “Yes, and in the show, I sing in Elvish!” In 1970, Swedish keyboardist Bo Hansson recorded “Music Inspired by ‘Lord of the Rings’”, becoming the first in a series of pop artists to do so for the rock-oriented market.

Derived his two main Elvish languages from a fictional root language. High Elvish (or Quenya) was derived from the root using the principles of Finnish phonology and grammar, while Low Elvish (or Sindarin) was derived using the principles of Welsh phonology and grammar.

The character of Gollum from his epic “Lord of the Rings” trilogy is ranked #10 on Premiere Magazine’s 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.

Once said that the words “cellar door” were the most beautiful phrase he had heard. Though he is not identified as the person who said this, and director Richard Kelly mistakenly gives credit to Edgar Allan Poe in his DVD commentary, his fondness for the phrase is referenced by Drew Barrymore in the film ‘Donny Darko’ (2001).

One Million Years B.C. released December 30, 1966

Adventure, Cavemen, Fantasy, Hammer Films, animation No Responses »

Dec 302009

One Million Years B.C. (1966)

One Million Years B.C. is a 1966 (released in the United States in 1967) adventure film/fantasy film starring Raquel Welch set – loosely – in the time of cavemen. The film was made by UK’s Hammer Film Productions, and was a remake of the 1940 Hollywood film One Million B.C., and it re-creates many of the scenes of that film (such as an allosaurus attacking a tree full of children). It is marketed with the taglines “Travel back through time and space to the edge of man’s beginnings…discover a savage world whose only law was lust!” and “This is the way it was.”

Like the original film, this remake is largely ahistorical. It portrays dinosaurs and humans living together, whereas, according to the Geologic time scale the last dinosaurs became extinct roughly 65 million years BC, and homo sapiens (modern humans) did not exist until about 200,000 years BC. Harryhausen has stated in a commentary of the unfinished film, Creation, shown on the King Kong 1933 DVD, that he did not make One Million Years B.C. for “professors” who in his opinion “probably don’t go to see these kinds of movies anyway.”

Raquel Welch in One Million Years B.C. (1966)

Trivia:

As the Shell People are attacked by a giant turtle, the women call it “Achelon” which is the real scientific name for the animal.

Robert Brown (Akhoba) wears makeup identical to that worn by Lon Chaney Jr. wore in the same role in the 1940 version (One Million B.C. (1940)).

The exterior scenes were filmed in the Canary Islands in the middle of winter.

This was Hammer’s 100th production.

Raquel Welch was dubbed by Nikki Van der Zyl.

Guillermo del Toro Birthday October 9

Directors, GoreMaster People, Horror, Makeup Artists, On this Date, Sci-fi, Science Fiction, Thriller No Responses »

Oct 092009

Guillermo Del Toro

Guillermo del Toro Gómez (Spanish pronunciation: [ɣiˈʎermo ðel ˈtoɾo ˈɣomeθ]; born 9 October 1964) is an Academy Award-nominated Mexican director, producer, screenwriter and designer whose work has gained both critical acclaim and a devoted fanbase. He is mostly known for his acclaimed films, Pan’s Labyrinth and the Hellboy film franchise. He is a frequent collaborator with Ron Perlman and Doug Jones. His films draw heavily on sources as diverse as weird fiction, fantasy and war.

Del Toro was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. He studied at the Instituto de Ciencias, University of Guadalajara. Del Toro first got involved into filmmaking when he was about eight years old and studied special effects and make-up with SFX artist Dick Smith. He participated in the cult series La Hora Marcada along with other renowned Mexican filmakers such as Emmanuel Lubezki, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Alfonso Cuarón.

He executive-produced his first short film, Doña Herlinda y su hijo, in 1986, at the age of 21. After that, he spent eight years as a special effects make-up designer, and formed his own company, Necropia. He also co-founded the Guadalajara International Film Festival. Later on in his directing career, he formed his own production company, the Tequila Gang.

In 1997, at the age of 33, Hollywood opened its doors to his talent. Guillermo received $30 million budget from Miramax studios to shoot his second film, Mimic.

Guillermo del Toro has directed a wide variety of films, from action hero comic book adaptations (Hellboy and Blade II) to historical fantasy and horror films, two of which are set in Spain in the context of the Spanish Civil War under the authoritarian rule of Francisco Franco. These two films, El espinazo del diablo (The Devil’s Backbone) and El laberinto del fauno (Pan’s Labyrinth), are among his most critically acclaimed works. They share similar settings, protagonists (young children), and themes (including the relationship between fantasy/horror and the struggle to live under authoritarian or dictatorial rule) with the 1973 Spanish film The Spirit of the Beehive, widely considered to be the finest Spanish film of the 1970s.

Trade Mark:

Often uses insects or insect imagery.

Uses a lot of religious relics and artifacts. Always mentions Catholicism.

Archangels, symbols and other religious items.

Many of his films have major scenes based in underground areas such as subways systems (Mimic (1997), Hellboy (2004)), sewers (Blade II (2002)), or large basements (El espinazo del diablo (2001)).

Likes to use amber as a dominant color in his movies. This is especially noticeable in Blade II (2002) and Hellboy (2004).

Clockwork designs and motifs (for example, Kroenen’s lair in Hellboy (2004) and the captain’s obsession with his father’s watch in El laberinto del fauno (2006) ).

Often casts Ron Perlman, Doug Jones, and Federico Luppi.

Frequently works with cinematographer Guillermo Navarro.

One or more of his protagonists are often strongly and pivotally influenced by their father figures.

Trivia:

Became a vegetarian after seeing The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) but only for four years. Currently, he’s no longer a vegetarian.

Turned down a chance to direct Blade: Trinity (2004), AVP: Alien vs. Predator (2004) and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) to work on his dream project: Hellboy (2004).

Fought the film studios for almost seven years to get Ron Perlman for the title role in Hellboy (2004). The studio wanted a bigger name to ensure the success of the movie, but del Toro thought that Perlman was the perfect choice and wouldn’t make the movie if he wasn’t cast.

He is friends with fellow successful Mexican directors Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Has a photographic memory.

1997: His father was kidnapped in Mexico and held for seventy-two days until his ransom was paid.

In a January 2007 interview on the radio program “Fresh Air with Terry Gross,” said that his strictly Catholic grandmother was a “Piper Laurie in Carrie (1976)” figure in his childhood. He told Gross that his grandmother would require him to mortify himself in self-punishment, in one case placing metal bottle caps into his shoes so that the soles of his feet were bloodied while walking to school. She also tried to exorcise him twice because of his persistent interest in fantasy and drawing monsters from his imagination.

His favorite movie monsters are Frankenstein’s Monster and the Creature of the Black Lagoon.

In 2007, he was one of 10 Mexican Oscar-nominees. The others were Alejandro González Iñárritu, Guillermo Arriaga, Adriana Barraza, Alfonso Cuarón, Guillermo Navarro, Emmanuel Lubezki, Eugenio Caballero, Pilar Revuelta and Fernando Cámara.

Lost 45 lbs. while making El laberinto del fauno (2006), which he admitted in the DVD’s video prologue.

Turned down a chance to direct I Am Legend (2007), One Missed Call (2008), Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) and Halo (2012) to work on Hellboy II: The Golden Army (2008).

Turned down the chance to direct Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996).

States Mimic (1997) as the worst of his films and has disowned it, blaming constant interference from the producers as the reason for the poor result.

Dec. 2007 – Ranked #37 on EW’s The 50 Smartest People in Hollywood.

Was asked to direct End of Days (1999), but he turned it down.

His movie and comic book collection is so huge that he had to buy an extra home to accommodate it.

Is good friends with director Robert Rodriguez.

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Happy 50th Twilight Zone! October 2

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Oct 022009

Twilight Zones first episode aired October 2, 1959.

The Twilight Zone is an American television anthology series created by Rod Serling. Each episode (156 in the original series) is a mixture of self-contained fantasy, science fiction, suspense, or horror, often concluding with a macabre or unexpected twist. A popular and critical success, it introduced many Americans to serious science fiction and abstract ideas through television and also through a wide variety of Twilight Zone literature. The program followed in the tradition of earlier radio programs such as The Weird Circle and X Minus One and the radio work of Serling’s hero, dramatist Norman Corwin.

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The success of the original series led to the creation of two revival series: a cult hit series that ran for several seasons on CBS and in syndication in the 1980s, and a short-lived UPN series that ran from 2002 to 2003. It would also lead to a feature film, a radio series, a comic book, a magazine and various other spin-offs that would span five decades.

Aside from Serling himself, who crafted nearly two-thirds of the series’ total episodes, writers for The Twilight Zone included leading genre authorities such as Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, Jerry Sohl, George Clayton Johnson, Earl Hamner, Jr., Reginald Rose, Harlan Ellison and Ray Bradbury. Many episodes also featured adaptations of classic stories by such writers as Ambrose Bierce, Lewis Padgett, Jerome Bixby and Damon Knight.

Twilight Zone Creator Rod Serling

The term “twilight zone” predates the television program, and originally meant simply a “gray area.” (Intelligence analysts in the early Cold War labeled a country a twilight zone if there was no definite U.S. policy on whether to intervene militarily to defend it.) Rod Serling himself chose the title of the series, and said that only after the series aired did he discover that the “twilight zone” was also a term applied by the US Air Force to the terminator, the imaginary border between “night” and “day” on a planetary body.

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CBS purchased a teleplay in 1958 that writer Rod Serling hoped to produce as the pilot of a weekly anthology series. The Twilight Zone episode “The Time Element” marked Serling’s first entry in the field of science fiction.

The story is a time travel fantasy of sorts, involving a man named Peter Jenson (William Bendix) visiting a psychoanalyst, Dr. Gillespie (Martin Balsam), with complaints of a recurring dream in which he imagines waking up in Honolulu just prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. “I wake up in a hotel room in Honolulu, and it’s 1941, but I mean I really wake up and it’s really 1941,” he explains, concluding that these are not mere dreams; he actually is travelling through time. However, Dr. Gillespie insists that time travel is impossible given the nature of temporal paradoxes. During his

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dream, taking advantage of the situation, he bets on all the winning horses, all the right teams and, eventually, tries unsuccessfully to warn others — the newspaper, the military, anyone — that the Japanese are planning a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. His warnings are seen as crazed ravings, and are either ignored or met with physical violence, as he is punched out by an engineer who works on the USS Arizona, after insisting that it will be sunk on December 7. Jenson’s dream always ends as the Japanese bombers fly overhead on the morning of December 7, prompting him to yell out “I told you! Why wouldn’t anybody listen to me?”. Jenson finally discloses to Dr. Gillespie that he was actually in Honolulu on December 7, 1941. While on the couch, Jenson falls asleep once again, only this time, Japanese planes flying overhead shoot inside the windows of his room and he is killed. When the camera cuts back to the doctor’s office, the couch Jenson was lying on is now empty, and Dr. Gillespie looks around, confused. Although Jenson had smoked earlier, the ashtray is empty. He looks in his appointment book and finds he had no appointments scheduled for this day. Gillespie goes to a bar and finds Jenson’s picture on the wall. The bartender said that Jenson tended bar there, but was killed in Pearl Harbor.

William Shatner in ''Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.''

With this script, Serling drafted the fundamental elements that would distinguish the series still to come: a science-fiction/fantasy theme, opening and closing narration, and an ending with a twist. But what would prove popular with audiences and critics in 1959 did not meet network standards in 1957. “The Time Element” was purchased only to be shelved indefinitely, and talks of making The Twilight Zone a television series ended.

This is where things stood when Bert Granet, the new producer for Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, discovered “The Time Element” in CBS’ vaults while searching for an original Serling script to add prestige to his show. “The Time Element” (introduced by Desi Arnaz) debuted on November 24, 1958, to an overwhelmingly delighted audience of television viewers and critics alike. “The humor and sincerity of Mr. Serling’s dialogue made ‘The Time Element’ consistently entertaining,” offered Jack Gould of The New York Times. Over six thousand letters of praise flooded Granet’s offices. Convinced that a series based on such stories could succeed, CBS again began talks with Serling about the possibilities of producing The Twilight Zone. “Where Is Everybody?” was accepted as the pilot episode and the project was officially announced to the public in early 1959. “The Time Element” is rarely aired on television and it was only available in an Italian DVD box set titled “Ai confini della realtà — I tesori perduti” until it was shown as part of an all night sneak preview of the new cable channel TVLand.

Throughout the 1950s, Rod Serling had established himself as one of the hottest names in television, equally famous for his success in writing televised drama as he was for criticizing the medium’s limitations. His most vocal complaints concerned the censorship frequently practiced by sponsors and networks. “I was not permitted to have my Senators discuss any current or pressing problem,” he said of his 1957 production The Arena, intended to be an involving look into contemporary politics. “To talk of tariff was to align oneself with the Republicans; to talk of labor was to suggest control by the Democrats. To say a single thing germane to the current political scene was absolutely prohibited.”

Twilight Zone’s writers frequently used science fiction as a vehicle for social comment; networks and sponsors who had infamously censored all potentially “inflammatory” material from the then predominant live dramas were ignorant of the methods developed by writers such as Ray Bradbury for dealing with important issues through seemingly innocuous fantasy. Frequent themes include nuclear war, mass hysteria, and McCarthyism, subjects that were strictly forbidden on more “serious” prime-time drama. Episodes such as “The Shelter” or “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” offered specific commentary on current events. Other stories, such as “The Masks” or “The Howling Man,” operated around a central allegory, parable, or fable that reflected the characters’ moral or philosophical choices.

Despite his esteem in the writing community, Serling found The Twilight Zone difficult to sell. Few critics felt that science fiction could transcend empty escapism and enter the realm of adult drama. In a September 22, 1959, interview with Serling, Mike Wallace asked a question illustrative of the times: “…[Y]ou’re going to be, obviously, working so hard on The Twilight Zone that, in essence, for the time being and for the foreseeable future, you’ve given up on writing anything important for television, right?” While Serling’s appearances on the show became one of its most distinctive features, with his clipped delivery still widely imitated today, he was reportedly nervous about it and had to be persuaded to appear on camera. Serling often steps into the middle of the action and the characters remain seemingly oblivious to him, but on one notable occasion they are aware he’s there: In the episode “A World of His Own,” a writer with the power to alter his reality objects to Serling’s unflattering narration, and promptly erases Serling from the show.

The original series contained 156 episodes. Seasons 1, 2, 3, 5 were half hour shows. The fourth season (1962-1963) contained one-hour episodes……Source(s) Wikipedia

Ray Bradbury Birthday Today – August 22

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Aug 222009

Ray Bradbury

Raymond Douglas “Ray” Bradbury (August 22, 1920) is an American mainstream, fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles, Bradbury is widely considered one of the greatest and most popular American writers of speculative fiction of the twentieth century. Ray Bradbury’s popularity has been increased by more than 20 television shows and films using his writings.

From 1951 to 1954, 27 of Bradbury’s stories were adapted by Al Feldstein for EC Comics, and 16 of these were collected in the paperbacks, The Autumn People (1965) and Tomorrow Midnight (1966). Cover art for both books was done by famed fantasy artist Frank Frazetta. The reprints were published by Ballantine Books.

Also in the early 1950s, adaptations of Bradbury’s stories were televised on a variety of shows including Tales of Tomorrow, Lights Out, Out There, Suspense, CBS Television Workshop, Jane Wyman’s Fireside Theatre, Star Tonight, Windows, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. “The Merry-Go-Round,” a half-hour film adaptation of Bradbury’s “The Black Ferris,” praised by Variety, was shown on Starlight Summer Theater in 1954 and NBC’s Sneak Preview in 1956.

It Came From Outer Space (1953)

Director Jack Arnold first brought Bradbury to movie theaters in 1953 with It Came from Outer Space, a Harry Essex screenplay developed from Bradbury’s screen treatment, “The Meteor”. Three weeks later, Eugène Lourié’s The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), based on Bradbury’s “The Fog Horn,” about a sea monster mistaking the sound of a fog horn for the mating cry of a female, was released. Bradbury’s close friend Ray Harryhausen produced the stop-motion animation of the creature. Bradbury would later return the favor by writing a short story, “Tyrannosaurus Rex”, about a stop-motion animator who strongly resembled Harryhausen. Over the next 50 years, more than 35 features, shorts, and TV movies were based on Bradbury’s stories or screenplays.

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Oskar Werner and Julie Christie starred in Fahrenheit 451 (1966), an adaptation of Bradbury’s novel directed by François Truffaut.

In 1969, The Illustrated Man was brought to the big screen, starring Oscar winner Rod Steiger, Claire Bloom, & Robert Drivas. Containing the prologue, and three short stories from the book, the film received mediocre reviews.

The Martian Chronicles became a three-part TV miniseries starring Rock Hudson which was first broadcast by NBC in 1980.

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The 1983 horror film Something Wicked This Way Comes, starring Jason Robards and Jonathan Pryce, is based on the Bradbury novel of the same name.

In 1984, Michael McDonough of Brigham Young University produced “Bradbury 13,” a series of thirteen audio adaptations of famous Ray Bradbury stories, in conjunction with National Public Radio. The full-cast dramatizations featured adaptations of “The Man,” “The Ravine,” “Night Call, Collect,” “The Veldt,” “Kaleidoscope,” “There Was an Old Woman,” “Here There Be Tygers,” “Dark They Were, and Golden Eyed,” “The Wind,” “The Fox and the Forest,” “The Happiness Machine,” “The Screaming Woman”, and “A Sound of Thunder”. Voiceover actor Paul Frees provided narration, while Bradbury himself was responsible for the opening voiceover; Greg Hansen and Roger Hoffman scored the episodes. The series won a Peabody Award as well as two Gold Cindy awards. The series has not yet been released on CD but is heavily traded by fans of “old time radio”.

From 1985 to 1992 Bradbury hosted a syndicated anthology television series, The Ray Bradbury Theater, for which he adapted 65 of his stories. Each episode would begin with a shot of Bradbury in his office, gazing over mementoes of his life, which he states (in narrative) are used to spark ideas for stories.

Five episodes of the USSR science fiction TV series This Fantastic World adapted Ray Bradbury’s stories I Sing The Body Electric, Fahrenheit 451, A Piece of Wood, To the Chicago Abyss, and Forever and the Earth. A Soviet adaptation of “The Veldt” was filmed in 1987.

The 1998 film The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit, released by Touchstone Pictures, was written by Ray Bradbury. It was based on his story “The Magic White Suit” originally published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1957. The story had also previously been adapted as a play, a musical, and a 1958 television version.

In 2002, Bradbury’s own Pandemonium Theatre Company production of Fahrenheit 451 at Burbank’s Falcon Theatre combined live acting with projected digital animation by the Pixel Pups. In 1984 Telarium released a video game for Commodore 64 based on Fahrenheit 451. Bradbury and director Charles Rome Smith co-founded Pandemonium in 1964, staging the New York production of The World of Ray Bradbury (1964), adaptations of “The Pedestrian,” “The Veldt”, and “To the Chicago Abyss.”

In 2005, the film A Sound of Thunder was released, loosely based upon the short story of the same name.Short film adaptations of A Piece of Wood and The Small Assassin were released in 2005 and 2007 respectively.

In 2008, the film Ray Bradbury’s Chrysalis was produced by Roger Lay Jr for Urban Archipelago Films, based upon the short story of the same name. The film went on to win the best feature award at the International Horror and Sci-Fi Film Festival in Phoenix. The film has been picked up for international distribution by Arsenal Pictures and for domestic distribution by Lightning Entertainment.

A new film version of Fahrenheit 451 is being planned by director Frank Darabont.

Trivia:

Father of 4 daughters: Susan, Ramona, Bettina and Alexandra.

Son of Leonard Spaulding Bradbury, linesman with the Waukegan Bureau of Power and Light, and of Esther Marie Moberg.

He wrote the original manuscript of “Fahrenheit 451″ on a rented typewriter in a public library, from handwritten notes and outlines. It first appeared in print in a shortened form (of about 25,000 words) in Galaxy magazine and later in its present length but in serial format in the just starting out Playboy magazine.

Though considered by many to be the greatest science-fiction writer of the of the 20th century, he suffers from a fear of flying and driving. He has never learned to drive, and did not fly in an airplane until October, 1982.

National Public Radio’s “Bradbury 13″ (1984) was a 13-episode program based on many of his stories.

Recipient of a 2004 National Medal of Arts, awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts (USA).

There is a noted irony in the names of two characters in his novel “Fahrenheit 451″: “Montag” is also the name of a paper mill and “Faber” is a manufacturer of pencils. Ray Bradbury insists that this was unintentional.

His original title for one of his novels was ‘the Fireman’. He called his local fire department and asked them what the temperature at which paper burns at – and was told “451 Fahrenheit”. He reversed it to make it the title of his novel ‘Fahrenheit 451′.

He is the great-great-great grandson of Mary Bradbury, a woman who was tried in the Salem Witch Trials in 1692, but saved herself from being hanged for witchcraft.

He had a series of short stories which his publisher said would never sell, so he linked the stories together, while living at a local YMCA, and created the novel, “The Martian Chronicles.” He was paid just $500 for the story.

He voiced his displeasure at documentary filmmaker Michael Moore for appropriating the title of his book “Fahrenheit 451″ for the documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004). However, Bradbury himself is the author of “Beyond 1984″ (title appropriated from George Orwell’s “1984″) and “Another Tale of Two Cities” (title appropriated from Charles Dickens ”A Tale of Two Cities”).

As a bedtime story for each of his daughters, he read (in nightly installments) “Hound of the Baskervilles” by Arthur Conan Doyle.

As a young boy, a friend once ridiculed his collection of science fiction and comic books, and heckled him into throwing them away. A day later, Bradbury was heartbroken, feeling that he had trashed his best friends. He immediately rebuilt his collection!.

Says that he remembers being born.

He and famed animator Chuck Jones have been close friends for more than 50 years.

In Chaplin’s Goliath (1996), a documentary about silent film star Eric Campbell, the Rosedale Cemetary spokeswoman mistakenly claims Ray Bradbury is interred there.

A hero of his was the Italian director Federico Fellini. When they first met, as Bradbury claims, Fellini ran up to Bradbury, embraced him, and said ‘My twin! My Twin’ They became great friends but never collaborated on any projects.

The Beastmaster released August 20, 1982

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Aug 202009

Marc Singer

Special Edition DVD

The Beastmaster

is a 1982 fantasy film directed by Don Coscarelli that starred Marc Singer, Tanya Roberts, John Amos and Rip Torn. It was loosely based on ideas from Andre Norton in her seminal science fiction novel The Beast Master, although it did not use plot, setting, or characters from the novel. The film was marketed with the tagline “The courage of an eagle, the strength of a black tiger, and the power of a god.”

Tanya Roberts

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGEigptwPOU]

A sword-and-sorcery fantasy about a young man’s search for revenge. Armed with supernatural powers, the handsome hero and his animal allies wage war against marauding forces.

Make Up Department
  Tara Candoli … makeup artist
  Louis Lazzara … makeup artist
  Louis Lazzara … makeup artist: second unit
  David B. Miller … makeup special effects artist
  William Munns … special makeup designer
  Mark Shostrom … special makeup effects artist
  Peter Tothpal … hair stylist

Special Effects Department
  Frank DeMarco … special effects
  Roger George … special effects
  Bill McCamey … pyrotechnician (uncredited)
  R. Bruce Steinheimer … special effects technician (uncredited)

Visual Effects Department
  Allen Blaisdell … visual effects
  William Cruse … visual effects
  William Guest … visual effects supervisor
  Michael Minor … special visual effects consultant
  Bruno George … optical camera operator (uncredited)

beastmaster

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Happy Birthday! David Warner July 29

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Jul 292009

Actor David Warner

Warner was born July 29, 1941 in Manchester England. In 1963, he made his film debut in Tom Jones, and in 1965 starred as Henry VI in the BBC television version of the RSC’s The Wars of the Roses cycle of Shakespeare’s history plays. Another early television role came when he starred alongside Bob Dylan in the 1963 play The Madhouse on Castle Street. A major step in his career was the leading role in Morgan: A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966) opposite Vanessa Redgrave, which established his reputation for playing slightly off-the-wall characters. He also appeared as Konstantin Treplev in Sidney Lumet’s 1968 adaptation of Anton Chekov’s The Sea Gull and starred alongside Jason Robards and Stella Stevens as Reverend Joshua Duncan Sloane in Sam Peckinpah’s The Ballad of Cable Hogue, perhaps one of Warner’s (and Peckinpah’s) least known or appreciated films.

The Omen (1976)

In horror movies he appeared in one of the stories of From Beyond the Grave, opposite Gregory Peck in The Omen (1976) as the ill-fated photojournalist Keith Jennings, and the 1979 thriller Nightwing. He also starred in cult classic Waxwork (1988), and featured alongside a young Viggo Mortensen in 1990 film Tripwire.

Evil Genius in Time Bandits (1981)

Since then, he has often played villains, in films such as The Thirty-Nine Steps (1978), Time After Time (1979), Time Bandits (1981), Tron (1982), and television series such as Batman: The Animated Series playing Ra’s al Ghul, the anti-mutant scientist Herbert Landon in Spider-Man: The Animated Series, as well as rogue agent Alpha in the animated Men in Black series and the Archmage in Disney’s Gargoyles and finally The Lobe in Freakazoid.

Time After Time with Malcolm McDowell

He was also cast against type as Henry Niles in Straw Dogs (1971) and as Bob Cratchit in the 1984 telefilm of A Christmas Carol. In addition, he played German SS General Reinhard Heydrich both in the movie Hitler’s SS: Portrait in Evil, and the television mini-series Holocaust.

with Gregory Peck in the Omen (1976)

In 1981, Warner received an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Special for Masada.

He has appeared in movies such as Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Avatar, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze (1991), Titanic (the third time he has appeared in a film about RMS Titanic), Scream 2, and more recently in independent television’s adaptation of the Hornblower series (which starred Ioan Gruffudd, Warner’s co-star on Titanic). He appeared in three episodes of the second series of Twin Peaks (1991). He also continues to play classical roles.

In “Chain of Command”, a 6th-season episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, he was a Cardassian interrogator. He based his portrayal on the evil “re-educator” from 1984. His less-spectacular roles included a double-role in the campy low-budget fantasy Quest of the Delta Knights (1993) which was eventually spoofed on Mystery Science Theater 3000. He also played Admiral Tolwyn in the movie version of Wing Commander.

On the “nice guy” side, he played the charismatic Aldous Gajic in Grail, a first-season episode of Babylon 5 and Chancellor Gorkon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

Senator Sandar in Planet of the Apes (2001)

He also portrayed the sympathetic character of Capt. Kiesel in Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron. In an episode of Lois & Clark he played Superman’s deceased Kryptonian father Jor-El, who appeared to his son through holographic recordings. He has also played ambiguous “nice guys” like vampire bat exterminator Philip Payne in 1979′s Nightwing; and Dr. Richard Madden in 1994′s Necronomicon: Book of the Dead, who had to kill to sustain his life, but was a generally nice person. He was the supporting role in Seven Servants by Daryush Shokof where he was to assist his long time best friend “Archie” in peaceful death with “unity” of man-kind in vision as he bodily “connected” to Archie played by the legendary Anthony Quinn in 1996.

Tron

He also appeared as mad scientist Dr. Alfred Necessiter in the film The Man with Two Brains in 1983 alongside Steve Martin and Kathleen Turner. – source Wikipedia

Trivia:

Has vertigo. Was doubled in Time Bandits (1981) in the scene where the Evil Genius walks up the steps after caging the bandits, because he could not handle the drop below him.

Has been in 3 movies about the Titanic: S.O.S. Titanic (1979) (TV); Time Bandits (1981) and Titanic (1997).

Has played at least three different species in the Star Trek universe: a human in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989); a Klingon in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991) and a Cardassian in “Star Trek: The Next Generation” (1987).

Is one of only 32 actors or actresses to have starred in both the original Star Trek (up to and including Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991)) and then in one of the spin offs.

Played an ape in Planet of the Apes (2001), a character obsessed with gorillas in Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966) and did a gorilla impression in The Man with Two Brains (1983).

Has appeared in three different films involving time travel: Time After Time (1979); Time Bandits (1981) and Planet of the Apes (2001).

In Time After Time (1979), he played John Leslie Stevenson (Jack the Ripper). In “The Outer Limits” (1995) episode “Ripper”, he played Inspector Langford who was investigating Dr. Jack York (Cary Elwes) who was suspected of being Jack the Ripper.

Chosen by Tony Richardson for his role in Tom Jones (1963) after the director enjoyed his performance in the play “Afore the night” (1962)

Although he played Reinhard Heydrich, one of the key architects of the Holocaust, in both “Holocaust” (1978) and Hitler’s S.S.: Portrait in Evil (1985) (TV), he is Jewish in real life.

By appearing in Batman: The Animated Series (“Batman” (1992)), he became the first actor to play the villain Ra’s-Al-Ghul. To date, he has been succeeded only by Ken Watanabe and Liam Neeson.

He has two roles in common with both David Collings and Richard E. Grant. All three have played Bob Cratchit – Warner in A Christmas Carol (1984) (TV), Collings in Scrooge (1970) and Grant in A Christmas Carol (1999) (TV) – and the Doctor from “Doctor Who” (1963) – Warner in the Big Finish audio dramas “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Masters of War”, Collings in the Big Finish audio drama “Full Fathom Five” and Grant in Comic Relief: Doctor Who – The Curse of Fatal Death (1999) (TV) and “Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka” (2003).