Isegoria

Kevin Conley asked stuntmen what they considered the best stunt films of all time:

The Matrix Trilogy: Hard to put a Keanu vehicle at the top of any list, but the film changed the business for stuntmen. As they explain it, producer Joel Silver traveled to China to beg a reluctant Yuen Wo-Ping, the action director for such kung fu classics as Iron Monkey and Fist of Legend, to choreograph the fighting in this movie, and Wo-Ping set ridiculous demands in the hopes that Silver would just go away: a huge budget, a ridiculous salary, and six months of training with the actors and stuntmen. Much to his surprise, Silver agreed to everything, and when the series became a blockbuster, the practice of hiring stuntmen for lengthy training and rehearsal periods took off.

Stagecoach: Stunt folk don’t watch the whole movie anymore, since now you can just check out the most famous and dangerous stunt ever on the Internet. Yakima Canutt, doubling an Apache, rides up to a team of horses, leaps over the lead horse onto the hitch between them, gets shot off, falls to the ground, slides between the hooves of the running horses and under the axles of the stagecoach wheels. In Zorro’s Fighting Legion and Idaho, Yak catches onto the back of the wagon then climbs up and over it and gets into a fistfight with the driver, but in Stagecoach, the most successful of the three movies, he skips that part and just lies dead on the dry bed of Monument Valley.

Read the whole list.

The Hunt For Gollum is a 40 minute independent film inspired by The Lord of the Rings.

Naturally I found myself most interested in the behind-the-scenes story of how they made the film.

Amy Wallace interviewed “the world’s favorite angel” before her death — about Ayn Rand:

How did you first learn of Ayn Rand’s interest in you? I gather she got in touch in the late ’70s, when Charlie’s Angels was one of the biggest hit shows ever to appear on TV?

Ayn contacted me with a personal letter (and a copy of Atlas Shrugged) through my agents. Even though we had never met (and never did), she seemed to think we must have a lot in common since we were both born on the same day: February 2nd.

Why did Rand say she was so determined to see you in the role of Dagny Taggart, the female heroine in Atlas Shrugged?

I don’t remember if Ayn’s letter specifically mentioned Charlie’s Angels, but I do remember it saying that she was a fan of my work. A few months later, when we finally spoke on the phone (actually she did most of the speaking and I did most of the listening), she said she never missed an episode of the show. I remember being surprised and flattered by that. I mean, here was this literary genius praising Angels. After all, the show was never popular with critics who dismissed it as “Jiggle TV.” But Ayn saw something that the critics didn’t, something that I didn’t see either (at least not until many years later): She described the show as a “triumph of concept and casting.” Ayn said that while Angels was uniquely American, it was also the exception to American television in that it was the only show to capture true “romanticism” — it intentionally depicted the world not as it was, but as it should be. Aaron Spelling was probably the only other person to see Angels that way, although he referred to it as “comfort television.”

Did Ayn have any favorite episodes of the show?

I have to admit that I don’t think Ayn was a big fan of the stories themselves because she kept saying that someday somebody would offer me a script (and a role) that would give me the chance to “triumph as an actress.” Ayn wanted that script to be Atlas Shrugged and that role to be her heroine, Dagny Taggart. But because of the challenges in adapting and producing the novel for television, several years went by and the script and role that Ayn hoped I would someday be offered turned out to be The Burning Bed and the role of Francine Hughes instead. And so, in an unexpected way, Ayn’s hope or expectation for me did come true. Looking back, she seemed to see something in me that I had not yet seen in myself.

Had you read Atlas Shrugged or any of her other famous books? What was your familiarity with the Rand world view?

At the time that Ayn contacted me about Atlas Shrugged, my only real familiarity with her work was the movie version of her previous novel, The Fountainhead, with Gary Cooper. I remember liking the movie because it was unique in that the characters seemed to be the embodiments of ideas as opposed to real flesh and blood people with interests and lives. Now that I think about it, I think that’s why Ayn was drawn to Charlie’s Angels. Because the characters that Kate, Jaclyn and I played weren’t really characters (the audience never saw us outside of work) as much as personifications of the idea that three sexy women could do all the things that Kojak and Columbo did. Our characters existed only to serve the idea of the show (even “Charlie” was just a faceless voice on a speaker phone).

But I also responded to The Fountainhead because, as an artist (a painter and sculptress) myself, I related to the architect’s resistance to make his work like everyone else’s — which was, of course, what Ayn’s own art was all about. And that resistance to conformity is probably one of the reasons that she was so determined to see me play Dagny: At the time I would have been the completely unexpected choice.

It sounds as if you and Rand got along pretty well.

Later, when I read Atlas Shrugged, I was reminded of my first and only conversation with Ayn and how some of the characters in her novel(s) take an immediate liking to each other, almost as if they had always known each other — at least in spirit. And this was the feeling I got from Ayn herself, from the way she spoke to me. I’ll always think of “Dagny Taggart” as the best role I was supposed to play but never did…

The release of the new Will Ferrell movie naturally had me thinking of the original Land of the Lost television show from my childhood. So, when I saw that the Sci-Fi Channel was showing a marathon, I briefly popped over for a chuckle — and the show seemed much deeper than the one I remembered.

I remembered the Sleestaks, of course — vividly — but I did not remember Enik the Altrusian — the “good” Sleestak. In fact, I did not remember most of the science-fiction elements of the show.

Anyway, Enik’s philosophical discussion with the Sleestaks in the Library of Skulls segued into some truly terrible special effects and ham-acting from the older brother character, so I changed channels, unable to take it — but when I did a little reading, I was shocked to find out that the show’s writing had quite a pedigree:

A number of well-respected writers in the science fiction field contributed scripts to the series, including Larry Niven, Theodore Sturgeon, Ben Bova, and Norman Spinrad, and a number of people involved with Star Trek, such as Dorothy “D.C.” Fontana, Walter Koenig, and David Gerrold. Gerrold, Niven, and Fontana also contributed commentaries to the DVD of the first season.

The next day, when Chiller, a station I didn’t even know I had, was playing its own marathon of the show, I gave it a second chance and recorded a few episodes. (I’ve since found the first season on Hulu.)

The special effects and production values are awful, as is most of the acting — so awful that it’s hard to recognize the writing underneath it all, but if you do, you might enjoy an Altrusian epic:

The series moved along, more memorably than anything else seen on kids’ TV, but did not rise to genius level until the sixth episode. “The Stranger” was written by Walter Koenig and not only introduced Enik and explained some of the background of the show, but also worked beautifully as a morality play. Enik criticizes the Marshalls for being creatures of emotion and not logic, the same flaw that destroyed his race. Will steals the magetti, a device Enik claims will help him get home, in a bout of selfishness that seems to prove the Altrusian’s point about humans until Enik uses his mind powers to force the humans to confront their fears. When Rick forces Enik to own up to his own inadequacies of passion and morality, it is a humbling moment for both the principals and the audience, and Spencer Milligan’s performance is flawless, easily making up for the inadequacies of his young co-stars. It’s a shame Koenig did not write for the show again.

Enik only appeared twice more in the season and the Marshalls took their time exploring their world.

I semi-recommend the following episodes: The Stranger, The Hole, The Search, and Circle.

The marketing power of the incredibly cheap independent film has hardly diminished as Hollywood eyes a $70 zombie movie that’s wowing Cannes:

It was by advertising for volunteer zombies on social networking site Facebook, borrowing make-up from Hollywood blockbusters and teaching himself how to produce special effects that thrifty director Price was able to make the film for less than the price of a zombie DVD box set.

“The approach was to say to people, ‘OK guys, we don’t have any money, so bring your own equipment,’” the the 30 year-old director told CNN.

With help from a makeshift band of friends and volunteers, Price shot and edited the feature — which ingeniously spins the zombie genre on it’s head by telling the story entirely from the zombie’s perspective — over a period of 18 months while working nights part-time as a booker for a taxi company.

Online social networking was an invaluable tool in both generating buzz and cheaply sourcing the undead: “We went on Facebook and MySpace and said ‘Who wants to be a zombie?’” Price told CNN. “We managed to get 50 brilliantly made up zombies and stuff them into a living room.”

In keeping with Price’s beg and borrow approach, most of the zombie make-up in the make-up artists’ cases was inherited from other movies. “One of our make-up people came off ‘X-Men 3,’ so we were having the same latex that was put on Wolverine,” he told CNN.

Price says he came up with the idea to make a no-budget film because he realized that he and his friends would never be able to scrape together enough money to make even a low-budget film.

“A couple of friends were round a few years ago watching Romero’s ‘Dawn of the Dead,’ recalls Price. “And we were lamenting the fact that we could never make a zombie film — we wouldn’t be able to acquire a budget.”

“Then I just woke up before everyone else — I was probably a bit hungover — and I wondered if a zombie movie from a zombie’s perspective had been done before.”

The end result is “Colin,” a zombie film “with a heart,” Price says, shot using production values cribbed from endless re-watching of making-of featurettes and director’s commentaries from his personal DVD collection.