“Born of Hope” debuts online

The much anticipated fan-made movie “Born of Hope” is set to debut online at Daily Motion.

Set in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle-earth (well, something more like Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth), “Born of Hope” tells the story of how Aragorn came to be.

The movie is scheduled for general release on the Internet (if you can call it that) on December 1, 2009 (which is technically today).

Made in the United Kingdom by film industry professionals, “Born of Hope” has been followed by SF Fandom for many months (in as much as one may follow an amateur film production on the Web).

Here is hoping the movie receives a warm reception.

Planet 51 kind of disappointing

I was hoping that “Planet 51″ would be another really good movie like “Monsters vs. Aliens” but it turned out be something of a dud. The premise behind the movie is simple: we’re not alone in the universe and when we finally have the chance to make contact with an alien species that is almost as advanced as we are, we turn out to be the fearsome flying saucer threat.

The movie is filled with in-jokes and homages to many other movies like “Alien”, “Terminator”, “Star Wars”, “WALL-E”, “2001: A Space Odyssey”, “Back to the Future”, “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers”, “Plan 9 from Outer Space”, “E.T.”, and a horde more than that. The in-jokes poke fun at flying saucer myths, Area 51, government conspiracy theorists, Albert Einstein, General Douglas MacArthur, and maybe James Bond. Not sure about Bond, though. I was even reminded of “Cars”.

There are funny moments scattered throughout the story but even the kids in the audience failed to laugh through most of the movie. I would not pay full price for the show.

Sorry to the people who worked on the movie but I’m afraid it just didn’t cut the mustard.

SF Fandom adds John Carter of Mars forum

Our moderation team wanted to launch a new forum dedicated to the “John Carter of Mars” movies, so now we’ve done that. I invite Edger Rice Burroughs fans to drop by and share their thoughts about the various John Carter of Mars movie projects (there have been four or five through the decades).

Here is our John Carter of Mars forum. You have to register to post but registration is free.

Unfortunately, we have had to block email accounts from Gmail.com because of abuse. If you are a Gmail user and you no longer have an alternative email address to register with please feel free to contact the SF-Fandom Administrators but understand that if you’re just wanting to drop links in the forum your posts will be deleted very quickly.

All the John Carter of Mars movie projects are welcome for discussion. This is not a Pixar/Disney-only forum.