Skunk Works says Darkstar isn’t necessarily real, but that the capabilities depicted are not necessarily “mere fiction.”

It's one of the best military thrillers Hollywood ever put out, and it's certainly among the lead of the pack in the submarine genre. Nearly 30 years after it first hit theaters, The Hunt For Red October continues to hold up incredibly well today. There's are reason for that—director John Campbell McTiernan and his team went the extra mile bringing Tom Clancy's Cold War yarn to life on the silver screen.

Part of this included building highly-elaborate sets of the USS Dallas and the semi-fictional Red October's control rooms. They were set atop a large mechanical gantry that articulated at extreme angles to mimic "angles and dangles" experienced as real submarines make rapid depth changes and hard turns. The picture below captures one of these amazing sets and the two stars of the film—Sean Connery and Alec Baldwin—posing on it: //

https://youtu.be/2_epfA20dOY

It’s not everyday you see an Embraer Phenom private jet fly an approach on a U.S. Navy carrier, but Top Gun: Maverick made it happen.

This action-packed movie captures the desire and adventure behind treasure hunting, even if it does come off as a little cliché.

We spent a day with Ridley Scott et al in Toronto to hear how the film came to be.

The Man In The High Castle Seasons 1-4 DVD Set
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When the National Gallery in London is flooded the Director, Quentin Lester, decides to transfer the entire collection to the Welsh caves where the collection was stored during World War II. The entire operation is supposed to be secret and the cover story is that they are a mining company looking to reopen the mines, good news to the economically depressed town nearby. It takes local school teacher, Angharad Stanner, all of a day however to learn what is really going on. She soon has the entire school at the site taking a tour but Quentin's refusal to open any of the packing crates leads to something of a falling out. Gradually, Quentin gets to know the locals, particularly the Hughes family. In the end, everyone benefits and learns from each other.

This is my interpretation of how the Axis won WW2 in the timeline of The man in the high castle on what is mentioned. It is not the most accurate way the war could have gone but I had to fill in the missing info with the most likely results still in Axis favor.

On February 15, 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt is assassinated by Giuseppe Zangara. Afterward, the United States is subsequently led by John Garner (FDR's vice president) and then by Republican John Bricker. These presidents led to the destabilization of the country and both failed to enact the New Deal to pull the country from the Great Depression. They continued to maintain an isolationist philosophy during the war and, as a result, they were unable to support the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union and they are unable to protect The World from the rise of the Axis threat of the Greater Nazi Reich and the Japanese Empire.

1965 Jaguar E-Type in How to Steal a Million, Movie, 1966 IMDB

These picks spotlight true stories and popcorn flicks that will inspire, challenge, and give you a good time at the movies.

Crowdfunding has raised millions for ‘The Chosen,’ an ambitious series exploring characters from the New Testament. Fans have already chipped in enough for three seasons—and are driving ticket sales for a Christmas special coming to movie theaters. //

The success of the series is a powerful reminder to Hollywood that faith-focused projects can sometimes become breakthrough hits. But what makes “The Chosen” even more of an outlier is the way it is supercharging the crowdfunding model to sustain production through multiple seasons. Though “The Chosen” is free to watch, viewers have poured $40 million and counting into its production budget, enough to pay for three out of a planned seven seasons. The costs of building the new production facilities, on a 1,200-acre camp owned by the Salvation Army, are being covered by a smaller group of the show’s fans.

The Chosen' is pioneering an innovative delivery method with potentially groundbreaking implications for content creators, particularly faith-based ones.

“The Chosen” is both an app and a television series. It is both the largest ever crowdfunded entertainment project, and a Christian program about the life of Jesus. It’s also flying under Hollywood’s radar. That’s quite alright by creator Dallas Jenkins, who says his team’s outsider status allows the show “to be really nimble.” //

The one-app-one-show structure is critical part of “The Chosen’s” innovation, alleviating the option paralysis so often induced by browsing big streamers. “If you want to watch this show, you don’t have to sort through a bunch of other shows on another streaming service, you can literally just get our show. And that’s what I think could be the future,” Jenkins said.

“Some people have said, ‘Oh, I can’t wait till you get picked up by a big studio, and we said, ‘We wouldn’t have developed a brand new technology and gone this whole route if we wanted to get picked up by a big studio,” Jenkins insists. “We’re not doing this to be sold, we’re doing this to create a whole new alternative for people.”

Here's a preview of this winter season's on-screen stories that aren’t simply remakes or sequels.

As the movies of Hollywood’s golden age assumed viewers would be intrigued enough by the plot to overlook the era’s shortcomings in special effects, “Old Henry” assumes the plot is compelling enough that extensive special effects aren’t needed. If anything, they would detract from this simple story of a protagonist who appears to be a simple man. //

“Old Henry” may not be an epic or a big box office moneymaker (it only aired at 30 theaters before moving to streaming platforms), but it isn’t intended to be. And because it doesn’t try to do too much, what it does is refreshingly good.

I admit up front I’m a fan of Bond, James Bond. I’ve seen 24 of the 25 Bond movies over these past 58 years, most of them several times. I loved them all, sometimes more on third viewing than first.

So, who will be Eon Productions No. 7 007?

The producers must find a new leading man for their evergreen gold mine based on the character from Ian Fleming’s initial James Bond novel in 1953, “Casino Royale.” Or must it be a leading man? //

To some of us, a Yankee James Bond is an oxymoron. He’d become Jimmy Bond with cool dance moves. He’d hire someone else to do the chasing. He’d favor some obscure craft brew but would get in on the wrong side of an Aston Martin. //

Sean Connery was a raw, virile Scottish bodybuilder when Albert Broccoli picked him over David Niven, Ian Fleming’s favorite sophisticate. “I’m looking for Commander Bond,” said the initially unimpressed Broccoli, “not an overgrown stunt-man.”

Connery and Roger Moore each played the Bond role seven times. Craig did five times, Pierce Brosnan four, Timothy Dalton two, and David Niven and George Lazenby one each. Niven was in a Bond parody with Woody Allen, the first “Casino Royale.”

Lazenby, an Australian model and actor, generally gets a low Bond ranking, but interested me as a less slick secret agent, rather like I think I would be. And he wore a kilt. //

Sean Connery remains my favorite actor – in that and pretty much any role. Until Craig, my second favorite was Lazenby.

Now retired Craig, who brought a more nuanced secret agent to the MI6 role, has offered the opinion that a woman should not seek the James Bond role. Producers, he said, should instead create stronger parallel female characters.

Barbara Broccoli, the longtime producer, has issued her opinion. And, quite honestly, polls aside, it’s the only opinion that counts:

James Bond is a male character.

Using clues from Sean Connery's six official James Bond films, a fan makes the case that 1996's The Rock is 007's last adventure. //

A fan on Reddit believes they have proven the fan theory that 1996's The Rock isn't just an action thriller -- it's a James Bond movie. //

Directed by Michael Bay, The Rock stars Connery as John Mason, a former SAS captain renowned as the only inmate who ever escaped from the federal prison on Alcatraz Island. Mason is recruited to join a band of Navy SEALs to slip onto the island and defeat a terrorist threatening to destroy San Francisco with missiles if he isn't paid a $100 million ransom for the civilians on the site.

Connery debuted as Bond in 1962's Dr. No, and a line of dialogue in The Rock states Mason was "incarcerated on Alcatraz in 1962… escaped in '63." Dr. No ended with Bond destroying the title villain's headquarters in Jamaica and drifting off with Honey Ryder rather than join CIA contact Felix Leiter, who brings the U.S. Marines to mop up operations. The theory posits that in the confusion, Bond was captured by a Navy patrol and, being undercover with no credentials, was sent to prison. In the next Bond film, From Russia With Love, there's a line of dialogue that Bond went missing for six months after that adventure -- the time Bond-as-Mason would have been behind bars.

"I remember James Cameron just looked at me and said, 'That one's hard'," Goyer tells BBC Culture in a video call. If the director of epics including Aliens, The Terminator, Titanic and Avatar tells you a project is difficult, it tends to give you pause for thought. //

There have been several attempts to bring Foundation to the screen, but the series of books was long held to be unfilmable because the saga weaves together so many plotlines and spans centuries. Indeed, the writing of it spanned half a century. But now the "unfilmable" has finally been filmed and this week an adaptation of Foundation starring Jared Harris and Lee Pace premieres on Apple TV+. //

So, when Goyer was told four years ago that the rights were once again in play, he took the night to think about it but his answer was never really in doubt. He pitched it to Apple TV+ as "a 1,000-year chess game between Hari Seldon and the Empire… All of the other characters are being utilised as pawns by one side or the other. But in chess, if a pawn makes it to the opposing side, it becomes a queen, and those shifting power dynamics can happen in our story." And part of the solution to the problems presented by the complexity and scale of the work is to tell the story via long-form television – the first season has 10 episodes – rather than to try to compress it into a movie or even a trilogy of movies, as previous attempts have done. //

But now, after four years of hard work there are 10 episodes of visually stunning, emotionally engaging, thought-provoking drama. They have already been made available to critics and are so richly layered that they bear an instant rewatch.

Anyone who tells you that they expected the first promotional image for the LOTR on Prime series to reveal an iconic panorama of Valinor — the land of angelic beings of Middle-earth — is either a liar or is inside the production. //

At first, you think: “Well, it’s another Middle-earth city. But, hey, it’s pretty cool.” You’re expecting, perhaps, Armenelos or Rómenna on the island of Númenór. After all, we know the series is supposed to encompass the rise and fall of the island kingdom and there does seem to be a glittering body of water even if it’s a bit small to be a bay, much less the ocean.

Then your eye is drawn inexorably to the background glow and it dawns that what you thought was merely the sun nearly (and neatly) conceals a pair of colossal trees.

And in an instant your whole worldview of the series just … changes.

Because, you know — if you’ve tried your hand at reading The Silmarillion or have delved into the pre-history of The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit — that these aren’t just any pair of trees.

It’s the Two Trees.

The tree of silver and the tree of gold that are the source of all light in Valinor. That provide the light for Fëanor’s Silmarils, and ultimately for the Phial of Galadriel. And whose destruction triggers a cascade of events that stretches all the way to the end of the Third Age.

If anything can be, this is the heart of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth mythmaking.

LOTR on Prime has enormous ambitions and it’s not afraid to declare as much.

The map to good Christian storytelling started with Christ, then Tolkien and Lewis modernized it. We know how to do it, but we just don’t, and I think the reason is that Christians are too afraid that they’ll be judged by other Christians for it.

And you know what? They’re right.

Like Kanye West said in his debut Christian album, Christians would be the first ones to judge him and make him feel alone for releasing a Christian album in his own manner, and not follow the color-by-numbers methods of making it safe and sterile.

Any filmmaker looking to create a Christian film is going to be destroyed by Christians. If it can’t be shown to a church congregation on Sunday, then it would be hailed as a perversion of the word and deem it unsafe for public consumption.

Here’s the brutal truth. The Bible isn’t safe for work. //

These stories can be told with good cinematography, solid acting, good writing, and in a way that lends more to realism and dynamism without resorting to stripping the film of context, indication, and even scenes that would, frankly, make the rating of the film drift into the “R” category. It would be a far more honest telling and that honesty would glue the viewer and get them interested for more. Does it add shock value? Sure, but the Bible is pretty shocking. It wouldn’t be shocking for shock’s sake, it would be there to help drive home the stakes and feel of the story home.

These stories will never be heard by the mainstream if we’re only making films that play it safe and never take chances. We have to ditch this idea that we’re going to charm the masses with wholesomeness and family-friendly entertainment. We’re not. //

Let’s not be afraid to make something worth watching and break away from the “church” method of making films. Let’s Martin Luther Christian media.

June 12 marked the official 40-year anniversary of Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first film in the Indiana Jones epic adventure series starring Harrison Ford.

Ford rose to popularity after playing Han Solo in Star Wars, and director Steven Spielberg tapped him for the whip-cracking Indiana Jones role after Tom Selleck backed out. What some fans may not realize is that the actor performed many of his own stunts, including that famous boulder chase. And Spielberg once called himself an “idiot” for putting Ford in that situation. //

Spielberg explained that they had to take the proper safety precautions to prevent injuries. But filming Ford directly from the front worked best for the scene “because the rock was more effective chasing Harrison with Harrison running toward camera, it just didn’t work as well having him doubled.” //

“A double would have cheated his head down, so Harrison volunteered to do it himself,” wrote Spielberg. “He succeeded. There were five shots of the rock from five different angles — each one done separately, each one done twice — so Harrison had to race the rock ten times. He won ten times — and beat the odds. He was lucky — and I was an idiot for letting him try it.” //

Though it was only a fake prop, Spielberg revealed it could have caused real damage to anyone in its path. Like death-level damage. He said it stood 12 feet and weighed 300 pounds. //

“We went to great lengths to make a 12-foot rock out of fiberglass and wood and plaster precisely so that it wouldn’t weigh as much as a real 12-foot boulder,” Spielberg recalled. “So whether it weighed 300 pounds, which it did, or whether it weighed 80 tons, as it would have, it could still have done bodily harm to anyone falling beneath it…” //

To operate it, they used a special rod hidden among rubber stalagmites on set. The entire contraption required a fully constructed set that could accommodate all its moving parts and enable the fake boulder to move 40 yards.