Category: Sci-Fi

I watched this free movie, that’s also commercial-free, in 10-minute chunks over the past couple of weeks. Note that the video can’t be embedded here, so you’ll have to follow the link. I suspect YouTube will eventually end embedding, just as monetizing is becoming standard, even for submissions from users who haven’t signed up for the program.

Mirage, with its overly contrived plot and a small sci-fi twist at the end, is a failed Hitchcock wannabe, but it’s an interesting curiosity. For Gregory Peck the role is a return to Hitchcock’s Spellbound, from 20 years earlier, with him again trying to remember a traumatic event. The movie’s hook for me is the gorgeous “brunette Grace Kelly,” Diane Baker, who was seven years old when Peck was in Spellbound. A year before Mirage, Baker appeared in Hitchcock’s Marnie.

The hard contrast of the photography, along with some cheap looking sets, give Mirage the appearance of a widescreen 60’s TV production. The New York locations are interesting, and Walter Matthau does his usual Walter Matthau thing. George Kennedy and Jack Weston are both menacing and goofy. Fun fact: I’m the same age as the little girl who plays Irene in the middle of the movie.

It’s Tolkien Reading Day. Brian Sibley, a friend of the blog, will do a live reading of “The Black Gate Opens” between 11-11:30 AM ET.

https://youtu.be/ylKhee_3z-M

Brian is rightly proud of his work on the 1981 unabridged BBC dramatization of The Lord of the Rings. I have the CD box set. It was the first time that the late Ian Holm played a Tolkien character.

Waiting for the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, combined with cabin fever, is stressing me out.

Good ol’ Denro pointed out this new video on YouTube’s Star Wars channel. During the summer of 1980, when I went to the movies to see something, I often ended up seeing The Empire Strikes Back instead.

There was also plenty of “snow” on the set of that other 1980 movie with Carrie Fisher, The Blues Brothers.