Paul Blaisdell (July 21, 1927 – July 10, 1983) was a science fiction illustrator (The Ant Men, above), a special effects artisan, and an inspired designer of imaginative costumes and props for a series of low-budget horror, monster, and sci-fi films released by American International Pictures and Allied Artists in the 1950s. He was the ... read more »

The Los Angeles Times’ Mark Swed takes a long look at some recent film and theater projects that have dealt with classical music – including The Soloist and Francis Coppola’s Tetro – and concludes the most interesting of the lot is the Wooster Group’s theatrical mash-up La Didone (bottom), which combines a 17th Century opera ... read more »

http://www.movieweb.com/tv/TEJ16QNNEsLpNM/HUC6THCINZxpGL “I couldn’t help but say to [Mr. Gorbachev], just think how easy his task and mine might be in these meetings that we held if suddenly there was a threat to this world from another planet. [We'd] find out once and for all that we really are all human beings here on this earth ... read more »

When it came to Hollywood, Philip José Farmer (January 26, 1918 – February 25, 2009) never had the luck of SF and fantasy writers like Stephen King or Philip K. Dick. His interactions with the film industry always turned out poorly. His terrific novella, The Alley Man, about a Neanderthal living unobtrusively in the contemporary ... read more »

I just learned by way of CINEBEATS that Forrest J Ackerman, a man who inspired so many of us – as film fan and friend to film fans, as a writer, as the editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, as a literary agent, and one of the world’s leading collectors of all things science fiction ... read more »

This week’s L.A. City Beat has a fascinating cover story by Ron Garmon about one-shot auteur and “gay icon,” Tom Graeff. After producing, writing, directing, and co-starring in Teenagers From Outer Space, a 1959 cult favorite (lampooned on Mystery Science Theater) that is simultaneously ridiculous and “sensitive” – in a serious adolescent kind of way ... read more »

While personally I view Sarah Palin as more Barbie-Doll-Puppet than Angela-Lansbury-style Puppetmaster (Puppetmistress?), I enjoyed reading colleague Erich Kuersten’s post on Cinema’s Sexy-Evil Palin-Types, and would like to add one more – albeit from televison. I’m talking about whatever-happened-to-her Jane Badler who starred as Diana, Alien Overlord of Earth, in the1983-84 sci-fi TV series, V. ... read more »

If you happened to see Death Race, a $45 million action thriller currently playing at your local multiplex, you might have recognized it as a remake of 1975′s Death Race 2000, produced by Roger Corman for the comparatively paltry sum of $300,000, but executed – according to the critical consensus – with considerably greater style ... read more »

Some conservatives apparently see Pixar’s Wall-E, with its images of a future ecologically devastated Earth, as a “carbon-phobic, Al Gore-worshiping, global-warming panic-mongering assault on capitalism, President Bush and U.S. prosperity.” But not Charlotte Allen at the Los Angeles Times – HAL bless her – and she explains why here.

Books by the late Thomas M. Disch. Covers by Richard M. Powers. [Tip of the hat to Levar and S. J. Rohde.]