Category: Movies

Soyuz MS-19

Soyuz MS-19 crewSoyuz MS-19 is launched to the International Space Station from Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying a three-person crew (the first all-Russian Soyuz crew since Soyuz TM-30 in 2000) to a brief stay aboard the International Space Station. Cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov, a veteran of three previous flights, commands and pilots the mission, whose other crewmembers, film director Klim Shipenko and actress Yulia Peresild, are passengers visiting the station to shoot approximately 40 minutes of footage for a movie to be released at a later date. The revival of “space tourism” aboard the ISS sparks new controversy about the topic, particularly within the Russian space program, mirroring similar controversy surrounding the burgeoning suborbital passenger spaceflight industry. Shipenko and Peresild return to Earth after 12 days aboard the ISS, catching a ride home aboard Soyuz MS-18 alongside returning ISS Commander Oleg Novitskiy; Shkaplerov remains aboard the ISS to assume command. Soyuz MS-19 will return the current ISS crew to Earth in March 2022.

Sean Connery, actor, dies

Sean ConneryScottish actor Sean Connery, forever associated with originating the character of super-spy James Bond on film (in 1962’s Dr. No), dies at the age of 90. He played the role of Bond in six films from 1962 through 1971, relinquishing the role to Roger Moore so he could try to expand his career beyond the Bond character and franchise, though he returned to the role for a one-off 1983 film, Never Say Never Again, which was produced outside of the “official” Bond continuity and dared to acknowledge the character’s (and actor’s) advancing age. In the meantime, he had amassed a number of appearances in movies both well-regarded and otherwise, including the bizarre post-apocalyptic sci-fi film Zardoz (1974) and the sci-fi crime drama Outland (1981). In 1986, his appearance in Highlander saw the beginning of a number of films in which he played the mentor of a given movie’s nominal star, including The Untouchables (1987) and Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade (1989). His experiences in filming his final live-action film appearance, 2003’s League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, convinced him to retire from acting; family members said that he suffered from dementia in his final years.

Ennio Morricone, composer, dies

Ennio MorriconeLegendary Italian film composer Ennio Morricone dies at the age of 91. With over 500 film and TV credits to his name, he was one of the most prolific composers by either Hollywood or European standards, and his early partnership with director and college classmate Sergio Leone led to his first international success, the score from the 1966 spaghetti western The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly. That brought Morricone to Hollywood’s attention, and he went on to score such films as Once Upon A Time In The West, Two Mules For Sister Sara, Guns For San Sebastian, Duck You Sucker, Exorcist II, La Cage aux Folles, Orca, The Thing, Once Upon A Time In America, Red Sonja, The Untouchables, Bugsy, In The Line Of Fire, Mission To Mars, The Hateful Eight, and many others.

Honor Blackman, actress, dies

Honor Blackman in The AvengersHonor Blackman, who rose to fame portraying Cathy Gale in the second and third seasons of The Avengers, dies at the age of 94. Despite her success in The Avengers, she left her starmaking role behind to graduate to big screen spy antics in the James Bond film Goldfinger. Other movie roles included Jason And The Argonauts and Bridget Jones’s Diary, with TV roles in Danger Man, The Saint, Columbo, The Upper Hand, and a guest starring role in parts 9-12 of the 1986 Doctor Who story The Trial Of A Time Lord.

Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker

Star WarsThe eleventh Star Wars movie, Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, premieres, starring Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver and Oscar Isaac, alongside original trilogy stars Mark Hamill, Billy Dee Williams, Ian McDiarmid, and Harrison Ford (Carrie Fisher appears pothumously in scenes originally filmed for, but cut from, The Force Awakens in 2015). Perhaps inevitably, given the late 2010s’ tendency to politicize popular culture and its followers, and with the weight of fan expectations of a satisfying conclusion to the saga on it, the film proves somewhat controversial. Shortly after its release, work on future Star Wars feature films at Disney-owned Lucasfilm comes to a halt, and the franchise becomes a mainstay of Disney’s streaming video service.

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Stephen Moore, actor, dies

Stephen MooreActor Stephen Moore, who originated the woeful voice of Marvin the Android in the original 1978 BBC Radio production of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, dies at the age of 81. Ironically, it was another voice role, in a Czechoslovakian-made production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1959, featuring only puppets, that started Moore’s screen career. He would later go on to play memorable roles in Rock Follies, The New Avengers, Solo, and The Secret Diary Of Adrian Mole. In 2010, he appeared as a war-weary Silurian elder opposite Matt Smith in the Doctor Who episode Cold Blood. Having played Marvin’s voice on radio in 1978 and 1979, and reprising the role for the 1981 BBC2 TV adaptation of Hitchhiker’s Guide, Moore returned to play Marvin again in BBC Radio’s early 21st century adaptations of the Hitchhiker’s Guide novels that weren’t directly based on the original radio series.

Robert Forster, actor, dies

Robert Forster in The Black HoleActor Robert Forster, a fixture in films and TV since the 1960s, dies at the age of 78 following a brief battle with brain cancer. Cult sci-fi fans may know him best as Captain Dan Holland in 1979‘s The Black Hole or for his regular role in Heroes, but Forster’s credits spanned over 100 movies, the last of which – the Breaking Bad epilogue film El Camino – debuted on Netflix on the day he died. (An appearance in an episode of Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories revival would not premiere until after Forster’s death.) He was the lead in two early 1970s series, Banyon and Nakia, and received an Oscar nomination (and an unexpected resurgence of his career) for his role in Qunetin Tarantino’s 1997 film Jackie Brown. He went on to play regular roles in such series as Karen Sisco, The Grid, Alcatraz, Last Man Standing, and the 2017 revival of Twin Peaks.

Peter Mayhew, actor, dies

Peter MayhewActor Peter Mayhew, who went from a job as a hospital orderly to co-starring in the Star Wars films as Chewbacca, dies at the age of 74. Following filming on Star Wars, with no way to anticipate the movie’s upcoming blockbuster success, Mayhew returned to his orderly job, continuing that line of work after the filming of both 1980‘s The Empire Strikes Back and 1983‘s Return Of The Jedi, before becoming a full-time fixture at Star Wars and science fiction conventions (and, later, the internet, regaling fans with behind-the-scenes stories both in person and online). He had some prior monster-suit-acting experience before George Lucas hired him for Star Wars, but not enough to amount to a steady stream of work. He reprised the role of Chewie in 2005‘s Revenge Of The Sith and 2015‘s The Force Awakens before handing the Wookiee suit off to former basketball player Joonas Suotamo, but still received a consulting credit for 2017‘s The Last Jedi, coaching Suotamo during filming. He had also put on the Wookiee suit for any number of promotional appearances, playing the character on The Muppet Show and Donny & Marie, as well as the infamous 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special, which afforded Chewie a larger role than some of the movies did.

W. Morgan Sheppard, actor, dies

W. Morgan SheppardBritish-born actor William Morgan Sheppard, a genre casting favorite ever since his 1985 appearance as Blank Reg in the original Max Headroom TV movie (a role that permanently relocated him to the United States for the U.S. Max Headroom series), dies at the age of 86 in Los Angeles. With his wizened features (the result of a surgical procedure that cost him one of his eyes), classical stage training, and distinctive, vaguely-Irish-accented voice, Sheppard would go on to appear in Star Trek: The Next Generation, Elvira: Mistress Of The Dark, Quantum Leap, Star Trek VI, seaQuest DSV, Babylon 5 (a series in which he was a close runner-up for the role of G’Kar), Star Trek: Voyager, Doctor Who, and the 2009 Star Trek movie relaunch. He was the father of actor Mark Sheppard, a genre favorite in his own right, with whom he appeared in both Doctor Who and NCIS, playing older and younger versions of the same character. Prior to leaving the U.K., Sheppard had appeared in such series as The New Avengers, Hammer House Of Horror, and Day Of The Triffids.

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Donald Moffat, actor, dies

Donald Moffat as Rem in Logan's RunBritish-born actor Donald Moffat, who left England for the United States in 1956, dies at the age of 87 due to complications from a stroke he had recently suffered. A frequent face on American TV and film for decades, Moffat was a regular on the short-lived TV adaptation of Logan’s Run, in which he played the benevolent android Rem, and was a member of the ensemble cast of John Carpenter’s The Thing. He also portrayed President Lyndon B. Johnson in Philip Kaufman’s 1984 adaptation The Right Stuff, and appeared in countless other movies and TV series, including guest stints on The Six Million Dollar Man and the 1980s Twilight Zone, working steadily into the early 2000s before retiring.

Douglas Rain, actor, dies

HAL 9000Classically trained Canadian actor Douglas Rain, best known to science fiction fans as the voice of the HAL-9000 computer in 2001: a space odyssey and 2010: The Year We Make Contact, dies at the age of 90. A veteran of the Canadian stage, Mr. Rain was a founding member of the Stratford Festival, and played a variety of parts over 45 years in Stratford, Ontario, some of which led to him reprising those performances on film. It was his narration of a 1960 documentary that got the attention of 2001 director Stanley Kubrick, who hired him to provide narration, an element that was eventually jettisoned before the movie’s release. Kubrick had, in fact, initially hired American actor Martin Balsam to voice HAL, but felt that Balsam’s performance was perhaps too emotional for the ship’s computer. Mr. Rain was enlisted to replace all of HAL’s lines in ten hours of marathon recording sessions in late 1967, long after shooting had wrapped; he claimed never to have seen the final result.

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Gary Kurtz, Star Wars producer, dies

Gary KurtzGary Kurtz, producer of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back and George Lucas’ right-hand man during the making of both movies, dies at the age of 78 after a year-long battle with cancer. Kurtz was instrumental in the deal-making behind both Star Wars and its predecessor, Lucas’ American Graffiti, initially pitching both to Universal Studios. While Universal was eager to make American Graffiti, they passed on Star Wars, which was then pitched to 20th Century Fox. Kurtz was literally in the Death Star trenches helping Lucas complete the first film, directing many second-unit shots (including many of the X-Wing cockpit scenes from the movie’s climactic battle) and riding herd on the somewhat overburdened Industrial Light & Magic. Fundamental differences over the storytelling choices Lucas was making for Return Of The Jedi led Kurtz to distance himself from Lucasfilm, and he would go on to produce such films as The Dark Crystal, Return To Oz, and Slipstream.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Star WarsThe ninth Star Wars movie, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, premieres. Written and directed by Rian Johnson, The Last Jedi stars Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver and Oscar Isaac, alongside original trilogy stars Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill. Laura Dern, Kelly Marie Tran, and Benicio Del Toro make their first appearances as new characters. An unusual amount of controversy emerges around the movie’s defiance of fan expectations involving the storyline and use of characters from the original Star Wars films, which will also follow the next two films in the franchise. This is the last Star Wars film to feature new scenes with the late Carrie Fisher as Leia.

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George Romero, director, dies

George RomeroPioneering horror film director George A. Romero dies at the age of 77 after a battle with lung cancer. In 1968, his low-budget shocker Night Of The Living Dead all but gave birth to the zombie horror genre. Some of his later films attempted to tackle different subject matter, meeting with box office indifference until he returned to the zombie genre with Dawn Of The Dead (1976), which earned back more than 100 times its production budget. High-profile works after that included the Stephen King-written Creepshow (1982), Monkey Shines (1988), and a third film in his zombie cycle, Day Of The Dead (1985). Sticking this time with his connection to the genre, Romero continued to be involved in spinoffs for comics, internet shorts, and further films, including Road Of The Dead, a movie he promoted shortly before his death. His movies remain immensely influential in the horror genre.

Carrie Fisher, actress, dies

Carrie FisherActress and author Carrie Fisher, universally known as Princess Leia from the original Star Wars trilogy, dies four days after suffering from a massive heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles. Alongside a storied career that included movies such as The Blues Brothers, When Harry Met Sally, and a revival of Leia in 2015’s The Force Awakens, Fisher embarked on a writing career that included the semi-autobiographical novel Postcards From The Edge (later adapted into a movie in its own right), which fictionalized elements of her Hollywood upbringing, and autobiographies that exposed her lifelong battles with mental illness. She died at the age of 60.

Kenny Baker, actor, dies

Kenny BakerBritish actor Kenny Baker, whose long career as a circus performer and comedian took a sharp right turn when he first stepped into the “costume” of R2-D2 in 1977’s Star Wars, dies at the age of 81 due to complications from a respiratory ailment he had suffered for several years. Even though the continuing march of technology meant that Artoo was increasingly played on screen by real remote-control robots, Baker did at least some work inside the droid costume in all seven Star Wars movies that had been released at the time of his death, one of a very few performers to span all three trilogies. He had also appeared in Time Bandits, Flash Gordon, and The Elephant Man, among other TV and film appearances.

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Star Trek Beyond

Star Trek Into DarknessThe movie Star Trek Beyond opens in American theaters, having already opened overseas. Though still produced by J.J. Abrams, this third movie is directed by Justin Lin (The Fast & The Furious) and co-written by Simon Pegg, who also plays Scotty in the new movies. Idris Elba (Mandela: The Long Walk To Freedom, The Dark Tower The Wire, Luther), Sofia Boutella (Kingsman: The Secret Service) and Lydia Wilson (Misfits, Ripper Street) also star.

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Tony Dyson, Star Wars droid builder, dies

Tony DysonThe designer and builder of the original R2-D2 props/costumes for Star Wars, roboticist and former toy designer Professor Tony Dyson, is found dead in Malta. Using Ralph McQuarrie’s artwork as his guide, Dyson built eight full-size R2 units for the 1977 film, some of them remote-controlled marvels of electronics, and others hollow shells to be operated by actor Kenny Baker. Dyson’s other film credits included Superman II and the James Bond film Moonraker. He provided other specialized droids for the original trilogy, and later formed a droid builders’ club in the UK, though he was legally forbidden by Lucasfilm to use his original 1976 design specifications. Some of his proteges went on to build R2 units for Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Mr. Dyson was 68.

George Clayton Johnson, writer, dies

Logan's RunWriter George Clayton Johnson, who co-wrote the 1967 novel Logan’s Run with William F. Nolan and wrote episodes of both The Twilight Zone and Star Trek, dies at the age of 86. As part of the legendary “Green Hand” collective of golden-age SF writers, Johnson penned his stories in the company of such fellow southern California writers as Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson, Jerry Sohl, Robert Bloch, and Rod Serling (who paid Johnson for his first produced television work). For The Twilight Zone, Johnson wrote such memorable stories as The Four Of Us Are Dying, A Penny For Your Thoughts and Kick The Can, and for Star Trek he wrote a monster story called The Man Trap, which became that series’ first aired episode. Logan’s Run was adapted into a glitzy big-screen romp – arguably the last major theatrical SF event before the age of Star Wars – in 1976.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Star WarsThe first Star Wars movie to be produced since Lucasfilm’s 2012 sale to Disney, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, premieres. Co-written and directed by J.J. Abrams, The Force Awakens stars Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver and Oscar Isaac, alongside original trilogy stars Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher and Mark Hamill, all reprising their roles. Seemingly universal anticipation for the continuation of the saga propels the movie’s box office take past a half-billion dollars within half a month of release.

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The Martian

The MartianBased on the bestselling Andy Weir novel of the same name, The Martian premieres in North America, starring Matt Damon as an astronaut left stranded on Mars when his crewmates believe he has died. The movie is produced with input and cooperation from NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and real-life astronauts and engineers, and features a cameo appearance from a replica of the Mars Pathfinder lander and rover.

Kung Fury

Kung FuryTwo years after its successful Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign, the ’80s action movie parody Kung Fury debuts on YouTube. Starring, written, and directed by David Sandberg, the Swedish-made movie spoofs numerous ’80s cop and action movie cliches, and features a theme song sung by David Hasselhoff (Knight Rider). The movie began filming in 2013 with a very small crew, shooting mostly against greenscreen and creating elaborate CGI backgrounds later.

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Star Trek Into Darkness

Star Trek Into DarknessThe movie Star Trek Into Darkness opens in American theaters, having already opened overseas. This movie reunites director J.J. Abrams and the cast of the 2009 Star Trek movie, set in an alternate timeline from the original TV series and its big and small screen descendants. Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock), Peter Weller (Robocop) and Alice Eve also star.

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Star Wars “character” movies in works

Han SoloDisney announces that it has an entire empire of Star Wars movies in mind, including two movies built around the early days of specific fan-favorite characters, with Han Solo and Boba Fett being the first two characters to have movies centered around them. The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders Of The Lost Ark screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan – obviously no stranger to the exploits of Han Solo – is among those developing the storylines for these spinoff movies.

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Abrams to direct Star Wars Episode VII

Star WarsWord breaks across Hollywood that Disney has secured the services of J.J. Abrams, co-creator of Lost and director of the 2009 and 2013 movies set in a re-imagined Star Trek universe, to direct the much-anticipated Star Wars Episode VII, the first new movie in the series since Disney’s acquisition of Lucasfilm at the end of 2012. With a locked-in release date in 2015, Abrams is expected to start work on Episode VII as soon as post-production and promotion for Star Trek Into Darkness are complete for that movie’s May 2013 release.

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Disney buys Lucasfilm, Episode VII in works

LucasfilmDisney announces the purchase of Lucasfilm Ltd. for $4,000,000,000, simultaneously announcing that work will commence on Star Wars Episode VII for a 2015 release. George Lucas, having already stepped down as Lucasfilm chairman earlier in the year, is suddenly even more of a billionaire than he already was, and Disney gets the keys to the Star Wars franchise with plans for new movies “every 2-3 years.”

Project Yellow Sphere

The enigmatically titled internet short film Project Yellow Sphere debuts, revealed to be a semi-serious, six-minute live-action-plus-CGI proof-of-concept trailer for a potential Pac-Man movie. Shot and produced entirely at commercial production house Steelehouse Productions in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it’s the closest anyone has gotten to mounting a long-talked about Pac-Man film.

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Ralph McQuarrie, Star Wars illustrator, dies

Star Wars, as envisioned by Ralph McQuarrieRalph McQuarrie, the artist who envisioned key scenes and settings of the Star Wars universe, before sets or models were built and before filming began, dies at the age of 82. As the production artist for Star Wars, McQuarrie got his licks in early on how the “universe” should look, from costumes to spacecraft to weaponry. George Lucas credited McQuarrie’s artwork with keeping the movies’ “look” on track, as well as selling 20th Century Fox on the idea of financing the first movie in the absence of any kind of test footage. McQuarrie also provided concepts for a redesigned U.S.S. Enterprise for an early ‘70s Star Trek movie project, Star Trek: Planet Of The Titans, that ultimately went unfilmed. He also contributed early concept art to Battlestar Galactica, E.T., Cocoon, Batteries Not Included, and many others, and had also worked on the animated artists’ conceptions of the Apollo moon missions played during CBS’ coverage of those flights.

Space Battleship Yamato

Space Battleship YamatoYears in the making, the live-action adaptation of the classic anime series Space Battleship Yamato premieres in Japan, starring Takuya Kimura, Meisa Kuroki and Tsutomu Yamazaki. The movie takes some liberties with the basics of the Yamato storyline laid out in the early 1970s, but is surprisingly true to the look established in the animated series.

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Charlton Heston, actor, dies

Charlton Heston in Planet Of The ApesOscar-winning actor Charlton Heston dies at the age of 84. Renowned for a string of tough-guy roles in major big-screen epics that earned him an Academy Award for best actor in 1959’s Ben-Hur, Heston appeared in other blockbusters such as El Cid and The Ten Commandments; genre fans may know him best for two SF films, Soylent Green and the 1968 smash hit Planet Of The Apes. His outspoken political views were on display as much as his acting skills, ranging from marching to Washington with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to serving as president of the National Rifle Association. He had also served as a past president of the Screen Actors’ Guild.