Humorous, cheesy and somewhat difficult to sit through! It’s got robots that are Dalek imitations, Gerry Anderson-style figures, vehicles and headquarters! This is the 1964 pilot episode for a puppet science fiction TV show that never aired. Paul Starr featured Ed Bishop, the actor who later played Commander Straker in the classic 70s UFO series, in the lead role. The show was created by Roberta Leigh who had already produced Space Patrol. In this episode, atomic power plants on Mars begin to explode and Paul Starr must investigate a threat to take over the red planet.
Tag Archives: television
Not Every Time – DSLR Film from Yemen
This is a preview for a television show from Yemen. It’s all shot on a Canon 7D digital SLR camera by Aimen Kasem who functioned as the show’s cinematographer. The show is directed by Sameer Al-Afeef. People are making very beautiful things with these DSLR cameras. I’ve been using one recently for my own films and appreciate the flexibility and quality that they offer. The post production work can be very challenging but the end results are often gorgeous. I like the looks of this dramatic show from Yemen. The preview stands on its own as a short film. With such high-quality equipment and editing tools available for a modest investment, it is becoming increasingly possible to see how people in different cultures approach and think about color. The fine manipulation of color in digital film is now available to any filmmaker and has become just as much a personal expression as it has long been for the painter.
Futurama 1964!
Now that’s a future I can get into! Let’s do another ride like this today.
Batteries Not Included – Vintage Toy Commercials
A collection of vintage toy commercials put together by Jon Behrens. Do kids play war anymore?
Animation by Evan Mather: The Patron Saint of Television
Filmmaker Evan Mather made this beautiful animation about the life and visions of St. Clare of Assisi. I had no idea that television was divinely protected.
Makes me miss that old cathode ray.
Evan Mather produces films for his Hand Crafted Films company.
This is a very sly and clever filmmaker who seems to enjoy thinking about what makes certain film genres tick. He works with language as easily as he works with images. There’s lots more to post from him but you can go and explore his work on his Vimeo page.
R. Crumb and the Corporate Mono-Culture
Cartoonist Robert Crumb gets interviewed by a Los Angeles Times writer and talks about his living in France and his hatred for the pervasive corporate mono-culture that Americans seem unaware of. He can’t stand it and chooses to live outside of it.
Really good perspective.
In a culture where you’ve got a Supreme Court actually giving corporate entities the rights of individual human beings, you’ve got total corporate control of every single living man, woman and child. You can see this complete robotic control on very prominent and horrific display in the current president of the United States. He a corporate hologram who moves only when commanded to by his boardroom overseers. The entire country is oriented around cop/lawyer shows on television which are specifically designed to make you feel close and personal with the state/corporate stooges who work for police departments and gleefully lay disadvantaged people out on their faces on subway platforms and slaughter them with bullets fired straight into their backs from six inches away. ‘The Mentalist’ is probably the supreme example of this attempt to make the corporate/police control mechanism seem odd and quirky and just a little cutely but intelligently eccentric. ‘Medium’ is another. The individual with oddball abilities or perceptions is entirely consumed and controlled by the state apparatus. All cop shows are meant to make as many viewers as possible feel completely comfortable being visited by and talking to the police. That is the entire truth of American television. It’s message is simply this: when we come knocking, open the door.
That is the true subtext of every single show ever produced by American broadcasting companies.
R. Crumb is totally right.