Monday, January 30, 2012

Area 51 movie “a work in progress”, plus more alien-themed ‘found footage’ movies on the horizon?

 Silver Screen Saucers

Found footage, missing movie: there's still no
sign of Oren Peli's Area 51.
Horror movie news site ShockTillYouDrop.com (STYD) posted an article last week highlighting the continuing popularity of ‘found footage’ movies and previewing some future entries in the sub-genre.

Most of the upcoming movies mentioned in the STYD article have paranormal themes (ghosts, demons, etc.), but, judging by the brief story outlines provided, a handful of the titles may turn out to feature aliens. Indeed, one of them – Area 51– definitely does (no great surprise there).

Regular visitors to Silver Screen Saucers will know that Area 51 has gone through a bumpy – or, at least, staggered – production process. In June of last year, the film’s producer, Jason Blum, told STYD, "I anticipate the movie will be mostly done in three or four months." Obviously, that was seven months ago, and still no sign of it.

Here’s what STYD has to say about Area 51:

“Oren Peli’s sophomore directorial effort has been in the can since November 2009. Sort of. While Peli, who has been wearing his producer cap since Paranormal Activity, will remain mum on anything related to Area 51 that hasn’t stopped the rumor mill from churning out whisperings of re-shoots that continue to this day. Producer Jason Blum told us in an interview that it was a work in progress. With so many projects in development from Blum/Peli, they can afford to take their time. However, will similarly-themed Area 51 films being made take the wind out of this film’s sails by the time it comes out?

The film itself, when it reaches the screen, follows a trio of kids who trespass on the eponymous government base and encounter an alien menace that has been set loose.

Status: Completion and release date unknown. Paramount is distributing.”

You’ll notice that STYD mentions “similarly-themed Area 51 films”, implying that others may be in the works. If there are, I’m not aware of them. Unless, of course, STYD is thinking of the upcoming Area 51 TV series based on the controversial book by Annie Jacobsen?

In addition to Area 51, there are also three other upcoming ‘found footage’ movies in which ETs might put in an appearance.  

Here they are as described by STYD:

Bermuda 

“Here, the found footage consists of the final days of a documentary film crew that ventures into the Bermuda Triangle. Again, a no-brainer, I suppose. “Found footage” is going to permeate every possible thematic angle; it was only a matter of time before the Bermuda Triangle came into play.

Status: In development at WWE Studios with a script by Bobby Lee Darby and Nathan Brookes."

Evidence 

“About a camping expedition that goes wrong when the main characters encounter a bevy of weirdness out in the woods, including a creature that runs around on four legs, government experiments and more.”

Status: Complete. Seeking U.S. distribution."

You can read an early - and very positive - review of Evidence over at DreadCentral.com, where you'll also find clips of the movie. You can view the trailer right here...



The Warning

“UK found footage thrills from director Dominic Burns.

The plot goes like this: In December 2011 a strange futuristic-looking artifact was uncovered in an uncharted Mayan temple in Mexico – examination of the artifact revealed binary coded information which appeared to be encoded footage. The content was unlocked by students at Chicago state university and appeared to be several hours of video footage heralding the end of the world… time stamped in the near future. Investigation of those featured in the footage produced several names and the authorities attempted to question those involved about the validity of the footage. But all of the people featured in this footage have disappeared.

Status: In production.”

So, we have one film (Bermuda) in development; one film (The Warning) in production; one film (Evidence) complete and seeking distribution; and one film (the hotly anticipated Area 51) pretty much in the can but clearly not yet ticking enough boxes on distributor Paramount’s checklist of audience-friendly qualities to justify its theatrical release at this time.

Will Area 51 see the light of day in 2012? Maybe, but don’t hold your breath. Still, it will hit the big screen sooner or later, and with that in mind, let’s just hope it’s more compelling than Hollywood’s last alien-themed ‘found footage’ movie, Apollo 18 (note to screenwriter: rocks not scary... even with legs).

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Quiet again, not really

Our visitors from Duke University left last night.  They were a good group and helped out a lot with outplanting native plants and getting rid of non-native plants.  They also helped out with marine debris pickup and Laysan duck surveys.  Our regional office/Washington D.C. office visitors left on Monday, so it was a short, but good visit.
We had a medevac today also.  We had to go pick up a person from a passing cargo ship.  The US Coast Guard will be picking that person up tonight. 
I'll be going back to Honolulu for the next couple of weeks to attend the Pacific Seabird Group meeting on Oahu.  I'm not sure if I'll do a blog or not from there.  I guess that depends on if I find anything interesting to talk about, or if I get enough Midway photos before I leave.

 A Black-footed albatross chick is working its way out of the egg.

 Here's a chick that's a little older.  The Black-footed chicks are usually whiter than the Laysan albatross chicks.

 I tried to get another photo of the Short-tailed albatross chick, but the mom never got up.

Here's one of our indoor soccer games in the gym.  

There have been a lot of turtles on Turtle Beach lately.  This day there were 48 of them out basking.  There were a few nets that had washed up on the beach and the Duke students took one of their mornings to do a big cleanup there. 

The Duke students also got to see the spinner dolphins.

 Another spinner dolphin pic.  I hope you aren't getting tired of them yet.

A few brown boobies are hanging out on a buoy as the cargo ship passes by.

The swells were a bit big out there today.

The waves were smashing the old water barge that is grounded near the channel.  It's been getting beat up for decades, but is still there.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Robin Williams will do 'Absolutely Anything' for Monty Python team in new alien movie


The surviving members of the Monty Python team are to reunite for the first time in 15 years to bring to the big screen a sci-fi comedy combining CG and live action. The film – titled Absolutely Anything – will also feature dogs, aliens and Robin Williams.

According to Variety, the film is about:

“A group of aliens [voiced by Terry Gilliam, John Cleese and Michael Palin] who endow an earthling [played by Robin Williams] with the power to do "absolutely anything" to see what a mess he'll make of things—which is precisely what happens. There's also a talking dog named Dennis who seems to understand more about the mayhem that ensues than anyone else does." 

Absolutely Anything is to be directed by The Life of Brian's Terry Jones from a script he's been developing for 20 years. Eric Idle is not yet on board, but the other Pythons are currently trying to sway him.


Above: Robin Williams as the alien Mork in the TV show Mork and Mindy. Right: The original Monty Python team.

Thanks to Red Pill Junkie for bringing this story to my attention.

Large Hadron Collider to feature in MIB III?

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers


The viral marketing campaign for Men in Black 3 is intensifying in anticipation the movie’s May 25 release date. Late last year, a mock conspiracy theory blog popped up run by a UFO-obsessed 14-year-old boy calling himself "BugEyes126.” He’s been posting paranoid little rants since December 2011.

Last week, he posted a sketch of a particle accelerator, along with the following note:

“I was doodling in science class yesterday, this image that I just couldn't get out of my head. Wasn't sure if it was something I've seen before or maybe just from a dream I had. My lab partner saw it in my notebook and said it kind of looked like some large particle accelerator?

So I looked it up, and these “colliders” can cost over 6 billion dollars! Yeah, billions spent to build this just to “see what would happen”. Not sure I buy it.

Using it to secretly transport aliens to and from distant plants seems more likely… Not that I think the Men In Black Suits have anything to do with this. They wouldn't use this for interplanetary transport of ETs. It's just a giant school science project! Right?”

Sketch posted on the MIB III viral blog

Is this a hint from the makers of MIB III that a particle accelerator will play a role in the movie’s story? If so, judging by the sketch, it will be none other than the Large Hadron Collider, which has already been the subject of much conspiratorial chatter around the world.

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN, near Geneva

BugEyes126 also posted another blog entry earlier this month. It reads as follows:

“I keep finding this formula online, and I have a hunch it has something to do with the Men In Black Suits.

Any idea what this is or what it could mean? Can anyone help me decipher what this is all about?”


Sorry, BugEyes, I can’t help you. I never liked equations. Any scientists / mathematicians out there?

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

2012 Maya / ET documentary backed by major Hollywood players... and Vatican?

 UPDATED: 26 Jan. 2012

Oh dear. It looks like "producer" Raul Julia-Levy's dreams of "shaking the world" with his much-hyped documentary may never be realised. Because Raul Julia-Levy may not be Raul Julia-Levy at all, but rather a con man by the name of Salvador Alba Fuentes. For details, see:

Six Degrees of Raul Julia (NY Times, 2005)

Raul Julia To Be Dug Up for DNA Test (Contact Music, 2006)

Spank My BabyDol and Call Me Julia (The Darwin Exception, 2007)

Raul Julia Levy in Hollywood (2009 YouTube interview with the man himself. If this guy is the real deal then I'm a Reptoid!)

RG.
___________________________________________________________

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

Los Angeles-based producer Raul Julia-Levy has told The Hollywood Reporter that his upcoming 3D documentary, Revelations of the Mayans 2012 and Beyond, will reveal “the most important archaeological finding in the history of mankind” and prove beyond doubt that the Maya had contact with extraterrestrials.

Announced in August last year, the much-hyped documentary is a collaboration between archaeologists, scientists and the governments of Mexico and Guatemala and allegedly draws on previously classified government documentation dealing with the Maya and 2012.

Unsurprisingly, the documentary has become the subject of fervent speculation and debate in the UFO and New Age communities. But many commentators are viewing with suspicion the fine print of Julia-Levy’s description of the project, suggesting that the documentary may turn out to be little more than a savvy marketing campaign for the tourism ministries of the Mexican and Guatemalan governments.

In October 2011, Antonio Huneeus, writing for OpenMinds.TV opined:

“It seems to me that this story has much more to do with PR hype by the film producers and by Mexican authorities wishing to promote tourism in the wake of mounting expectations about the end of the Mayan calendar in December 2012, than to a real program of disclosure. What we know for sure is that the documentary... is sponsored by the Mexican Ministry of Tourism’s Mundo Maya (Mayan World) Program, although its financing comes from American sources”.

Image provided to the The Wrap by
Raul Julia-Levy. See here for info.
Just who these “American sources” are is still a mystery, though producer Julia-Levy has insisted to The Hollywood Reporter that the documentary’s financial backers and distributors are “major” Hollywood players. He also claims his documentary will feature an underwater Maya city, a millennia-old landing pad once used for spacecraft, and evidence of ancient human contact with extraterrestrials.

Julia-Levy describes the alleged underwater city as “a city that was built under water, and not a sunken city,” and claims it was found at the bottom of a lake in Guatemala. He says footage of the underwater city will feature in the documentary. Additionally, the producer claims his film will reveal “a 3,000-year-old spacecraft landing pad that was allegedly built atop a rock structure capable of holding electromagnetic energy.”

Raul Julia-Levy told Pijama Surf that this image represents a teleportation machine, a time machine or some kind of technological artifact, this according to a report he received from Guatemalan archaeologists.

If all this weren’t intriguing enough, in a new twist, Julia-Levy claimed last week that he was recently contacted by the Vatican. In a telephone conversation with the Pijama Surf website, Julia-Levy said he had received official communication from the Vatican spokesman, Federico Lombardi, who has requested a meeting with him about the documentary.

Julia Levy told Pijama Surf that, although excited by the Vatican’s interest, he is proceeding with caution due to what he views as the Catholic Church’s historical secrecy surrounding the UFO issue. Nevertheless, he believes the Vatican is acting in a spirit of cooperation and hinted that it may even furnish his production with information from its own murky UFO files.

Images provided to Pijama Surf by Julia-Levy.
Revelations is set to begin production in February in the jungles of Campeche, Mexico, at the Maya ruins of Calakmul. It is at this site, claims Julia-Levy, that the documentary’s most shocking secret will be revealed. Just what this secret is, he won’t say, but he claims it is nothing less than "the most important archaeological finding in the history of mankind,” adding “It's going to open the eyes of humanity and elevate the consciousness of every human being on the planet. I guarantee it."

An official announcement of the project is due in the coming weeks and a provisional release date has been set for August. Originally, the acclaimed Mexican director Juan Carlos Rulfo (Those who Remain) was onboard to helm, but conflicting schedules with his other film projects recently forced him to pull out. He has yet to be replaced.

Image of a Mayan inscription interpreted as an alien by Guatemalan archaeologists, according to Raul Julia-Levy.

So, is Revelations a major step towards Disclosure, or merely an ambitious attempt at boosting Mexican and Guatemalan tourism in the historic year of 2012?

For now, all we have is the word of Raul Julia-Levy. He insists that his documentary shows a deep respect for Maya culture and that its impact will be global:

“The problem with most of the productions going on now that are related to the Maya theme is that they're doing them in an erroneous and irresponsible manner... This documentary is going to shake the world.”

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

UFO movie news round-up (24 Jan. 2012)


Atlantis Rising

Scott Mitchell Rosenberg and Mark Canton of Platinum Studios Inc. announced last week that they are developing the comic book mini-series Atlantis Rising for a new, ongoing film franchise.

Atlanteans as they appear in the comic book series Atlantis Rising

According to ComingSoon.net, “The film is set against an undersea civilization that began over 10,000 years ago, and whose presence is unknown to the surface population.” Producer Mark Canton says of the production:

"Atlantis Rising has the franchise potential of Men in Black, which I green lit for Scott while at Sony's Columbia Tristar Motion Picture Companies...  I'm looking forward to bringing it to the screen with Platinum as a dynamic, state of the art action thriller."

To which Scott Mitchell Rosenberg adds: "Atlantis Rising is a provocative sci-fi thriller that at its core brings up the question: whose planet is this? We hope to duplicate... the enormous success of the Men in Black franchise."

As yet, there is no indication as to whether nor not the movie’s Atlanteans will be of extraterrestrial lineage or have any connection to ETs at all. Regardless, the movie will be interesting for its depiction of the meeting of two civilizations and the potential societal impact of such a meeting on both sides. It’s an idea that no doubt will strike a chord with all who take an interest in the UFO phenomenon.

Incidentally, if the “Atlantis Rising” title rings a bell, that’s because UFO writer Brad Steiger used it for his 1973 book exploring lost civilizations and ancient alien contact.

Alien At Large

Scott Mitchell Rosenberg has a thing for aliens, it seems. Not content with playing a major part in bringing Men in Black to the screen and writing the Cowboys and Aliens comic book and producing its movie adaptation, Rosenberg is also currently developing the sci-fi comedy, Alien At Large.

ComingSoon.net reports that Alien At Large is being adapted from the graphic novel by Bob Keenan, which “tells the story of Earth's first interstellar ambassador, who is not the brightest star in the galaxy. Although he means well, he has the uncanny ability to turn a harmless situation into utter catastrophe. Yet his bumbling might just save our planet, as his arrival unwittingly disrupts a nefarious alien conspiracy.”

The Host

Deadline.com reports that Diane Kruger is currently in negotiations to star alongside Saoirse Ronan, Max Irons and Jake Abel in The Host, a big screen adaptation of the Stephenie Meyer alien invasion novel.

According to Deadline:


“The film takes place at a time when a parasitic alien species called The Souls has just about wiped out the human population. [Kruger] will play The Seeker, who is charged with overseeing the conversion of a young rebel soldier (Ronan) whose consciousness has been infiltrated by Wanderer, a soul that has taken control of bodies and minds but who is daunted by the young human’s spirit — and obsessed with the memories of her boyfriend and her brother — and sets out to track them down. The Seeker pursues her, knowing that the conversion of the rebel will lead to the discovery and eradication of the rebel movement.”

Although based on just one book by Stephanie Meyers, the movie – directed by Andrew Niccol – is being set up as a trilogy. For more info on The Host, see here.

Aliens vs. Wizards

Russell T. Davies
British screenwriter Russell T. Davies of Doctor Who fame is teaming-up with the BBC and FremantleMedia Enterprises to bring to the small screen a 12-part series aimed at children.

According to Variety, Aliens vs. Wizards “depicts the clash between young wizard, Tom Clarke, and aggressive aliens, the Nekross.” The show will be broadcast on CBBC in the UK as well as on stations in “all other” international territories.

Davies said: "We're joining genres -- the show's a wild, funny, thrilling and sometimes scary collision of magic and science fiction."

Aliens vs. Wizards will hit the small screen later this year.

New John Carter pictures

Finally, Disney has released several new images from the upcoming Mars-based epic, John Carter (for JC pics, see here)...



Monday, January 23, 2012

Short-tailed albatross Chick

You may have already heard, or maybe not, but our Short-tailed albatross egg hatched and we have a new chick.  This is the only known breeding pair outside of Japan.  And if you remember, last years chick was washed away from its nesting area twice, once by storm surge and once by the tsunami.  It survived and flew off.  I hope this chick doesn't have to go through that too.  It hatched last week, on Jan 12, so if all goes well, it should be out of here in July.
Here's a (long) link to the press release:

Here's a link to a couple of my photos on Flickr:

We've got a couple other groups here right now too.  We have a group of USFWS people from the regional office and a few from the D.C. office.  They are only here for a couple of days, but it's important that the people who make decisions for us out here, to have been here.

We also have a group from Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment.  They come out here as part of a class to learn about marine conservation biology.  This is the 5th year that they've been here, so as I've done in the past, I'll link to their blog:  http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/hawaii/2012/

I highly suggest reading their entries.  They take turns writing the blog and they write a lot more than I do.

This is the female Short-tailed albatross on the chick the day after it hatched.
The male came back a few days later to take his turn incubating the chick.  The parents will continue to trade incubation stints for a few more weeks before they both leave and go out foraging.

We had a nice little shindig at the All Hands Club tonight.  The band played for the Duke Students and our other visitors.  It was a good time as usual.

The team ping pong was getting pretty crazy tonight.

 A Laysan albatross takes off.

This is a sailfin tang from my snorkel trip last week.  There's also a spectacled parrotfish in the background.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

Man in Black to play legendary UFO insider in new movie... but no UFOs on the radar

By Robbie Graham Silver Screen Saucers

Men in Black star Tommy Lee Jones has secured the part of General Douglas MacArthur in the upcoming historical drama, Emperor, which ComingSoon.net describes as “an epic story of love and understanding set amidst the tensions and uncertainties of the days immediately following the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II.” MacArthur – as the de facto ruler of post-War Japan in his role as Supreme Commander of the occupying forces – will be a major character in the story.

Emperor is based on a screenplay by David Klass (Walking Tall, Desperate Measures) and Vera Blasi (Woman on Top). It stars Matthew Fox as General Bonner Fellers, “one of MacArthur
s leading Japanese experts, who, at the end of World War II, is charged with reaching a decision of historical importance: should Emperor Hirohito be tried and hanged as a war criminal?”

ComingSoon.net continues:

“Interwoven with this nail-biting political thriller is the story of Fellers love affair with Aya, a Japanese exchange student he had met years previously in the U.S. Memories of Aya and his quest to find her in the ravaged post-war landscape help Fellers to discover both his wisdom and his humanity and enable him to come to the momentous decision that changed the course of history and the future of two nations.”

Politically fascinating material, for sure, and more than worthy of the silver screen treatment. Also fascinating are General MacArthur’s alleged ties to the UFO issue and public statements he made about what he perceived to be a potential threat to Earth from extraterrestrials. In a speech to cadets of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in May, 1962, MacArthur said:

“We deal now, not with things of this world alone, but with the illimitable distances and as yet unfathomed mysteries of the universe. We are reaching out for a new and boundless frontier. We speak in strange terms, of harnessing the cosmic energy... of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy.”

The General made a similar statement to the Mayor of Naples, Achille Lauro, in 1955. In an October 7 meeting between the two men that took place in New York, MacArthur told Lauro that the nations of Earth would one day be forced to “make a common front against attack by people from other planets.”

MacArthur and President Truman, Wake Island, Oct. 15, 1950

What inspired such seemingly bizarre comments from MacArthur may never be known for sure, but certain ‘whistleblowers’ have suggested that the General was intimately involved with the UFO/ET issue, both during and after the War.

Disclosure Project witness Buck Sergeant Leonard Pretko (USAF retired), for example, is on record with his story of how, in the early 1950s, one of MacArthur’s personal security guards told him that “General Douglas MacArthur was very familiar with the Roswell incident, the crash material, and also the bodies because he himself has seen them.”

Another Disclosure Project witness, Sergeant Clifford Stone – who claims to be a deep insider on the UFO/ET issue – goes even further. Stone says that MacArthur was in charge of the Army’s Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit (IPU), which is thought to have been established sometime during the early-to-mid-1940s.

In September 2000, Stone told Disclosure Project Director Steven Greer that the IPU “continued all the way through to present day. Names have changed and records still haven’t surfaced.” Stone, also said that the IPU bore fruit:

“It came to conclusions that were not popular, i.e. interplanetary spacecraft. And they [the IPU] continued to do exactly what they do today and that is to be part of a multi-intelligence operation in the recovery of objects of unknown origin, particularly those that are of non-Earthly origin.”

Stone went on to tell Greer that the IPU’s purpose is to “get raw field intelligence data, and process that data into some type of useful intelligence product to disseminate to the field – to those people who have a need to know.”

“MacArthur definitely had physical evidence,” said Stone. “From the documentation I saw [while working this issue in the Army], I was not able to ascertain exactly what that evidence consisted of, but it was there.”

The IPU is intriguing. Still shrouded in mystery, the existence of the unit was not formally acknowledged until 1984 (approximately forty years after its formation) when UFO researcher William Steinman made an enquiry about the IPU with the Army Directorate of Counterintelligence. In response to Steinman’s enquiry, Lieutenant Colonel Lance Corine explained that:

“The unit was formed as an in-house project purely as an interest item for the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence. It was never a ‘unit’ in the military sense, nor was it ever formally organized or reportable, it had no investigative function, mission or authority and may not even have had any formal records at all. It is only through institutional memory that any recollection exists of this unit.”

Three years later, in 1987, UFO researcher Timothy Good made a similar enquiry with the same office. The response was brief and clearly intended as the Army’s final word on the subject – but it was also encrusted with a twinkly UFOlogical nugget: the IPU’s files, it turned out, had long ago been handed over to Project Blue Book – the US Air Force’s long-running UFO investigations program that was disbanded in 1969.

Colonel Anthony Gallo Jr, Director of Counterintelligence, informed Good that the IPU “was disestablished during the late 1950’s and never reactivated. All records pertaining to this unit were turned over to the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations in conjunction with operation ‘BLUEBOOK’.”

Letter to Timothy Good confirming that the IPU's files were turned over to Blue Book

That the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit was associated with the UFO issue is hugely significant in light of the unit’s name: this was not a unit concerned with the discussion or investigation of advanced German or Soviet technology; it was not concerned with flocks of geese, weather balloons, swamp gas or other unusual atmospheric phenomena as explanations for UFOs. No, the IPU’s UFO concerns were“interplanetary” in nature...


in·ter·plan·e·tar·y:

adj.

Existing or occurring between planets


Some UFO researchers believe that the IPU was established in response to the Battle of Los Angeles, in which flying elliptical objects – still unidentified to this day – were sighted over LA on the morning of February 25, 1942. The unknown objects were greeted by heavy but seemingly ineffectual artillery fire from the US Army. Six civilians were killed during the “raid.”

It is notable that, to date, no documentation from the IPU whatsoever has been officially released. However, a number of leaked documents – the authenticity of which is debatable – paint a truly eye-popping picture of the IPU’s activities during the 1940s. In one document, dated March 5, 1942 – just nine days after the Battle of Los Angeles – General George C. Marshall states in a Top Secret memo to the President:

“This Headquarters has come to the determination that the mystery airplanes are in fact not earthly and according to secret intelligence sources they are in all probability of interplanetary origin."

Marshall continues: "As a consequence I have issued orders to Army G2 that a special intelligence unit be created to further investigate the phenomenon...” Thus was established the Interplanetary Phenomenon Unit, which, so the story goes, would soon be headed-up by General MacArthur in close cooperation with General Marshall himself.

IPU field order instructing the officer in charge (OIC) to lead a counterintelligence team (including a scientist and medical doctor) to the Roswell crash site and to provide a report by 28 July. This leaked document is dated 4 July, 1947.

Admittedly, rumours of MacArthur’s involvement with the IPU have never been fully substantiated, but then neither have rumours about J. Edgar Hoover’s romantic feelings for his FBI number-two man, Clyde Tolson. Clint Eastwood nevertheless saw fit to explore these rumours in his recent biopic of the FBI head honcho, J. Edgar – a movie in which the UFO issue receives not one mention, despite reams of official FBI documentation detailing Hoover’s forty-year preoccupation with flying saucers.

I am certainly not suggesting that all biopics of historical figures whose lives have intertwined with the UFO mystery should devote screen time to the issue (though, in a post-disclosure world, this may well become the norm), but how refreshing it would be for just one Hollywood screenwriter, just once, to draw inspiration from beyond the established historical meta-narrative and to transcend generic conventions when penning biopics of heavyweight political, military, and intelligence figures. John F. Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, James Jesus Angleton, Margaret Thatcher – all have had varying degrees of knowledge about the UFO issue, and all have been the subject of award-winning Hollywood movies in which the term “UFO” is not once uttered.

The upcoming Emperor may tick all the boxes required to receive an Oscar (and no doubt Tommy Lee Jones is already making space on his awards shelf), but ask yourself: what would you rather the focus be in a movie about MacArthur – a predictable cross-cultural romance as promised by the synopsis, or, instead, a legendary military leader in a war-torn land, deeply concerned, not only by weighty post-War terrestrial matters, but also by “interplanetary” events quietly but dramatically impacting our world (details of which are known only to the most highly polished of officialdom’s top brass), all the while trying desperately not to drop the ball for fear that enemy nations will exploit these otherworldly phenomena to their military advantage...

Now that’s a movie I’d pay to see. Sadly, I think I’ll be waiting a while to see it.

 
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