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As the world prepares to see a new He-Man hit the big screen next year, it has been sadly reported that the voice behind the original animated version of the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe character, John Erwin, has died aged 88. The actor, who began his career working in adverts in the late 1960s, made a number of other appearances, but for many, it was his role as He-Man that he will be most remembered for. As well as leading the show in the role of He-Man, Erwin also played the monstrously dim-witted Beast Man.

According to PR firm Celebworx, who represented the star, Erwin actually died last month, “around December 20,” of natural causes. The announcement not only drew reactions from many children of the ‘80s, but also Erwin’s costars, Alan Oppenheimer, who voiced Skeletor, and Melendy Britt, who provided the voice of She-Ra. In a...

John Erwin, the reclusive actor who provided the voices for the heroic title character in He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and the vain frenemy Reggie Mantle in a series of Archie cartoons, has died. He was 88.

Erwin died of natural causes “around Dec. 20” in his home in Camarillo, California, his reps at the PR firm Celebworx announced.

For nearly a decade starting in 1969, Erwin was heard in dozens of TV commercials as the snarky Morris the Cat, the finicky orange tabby who would eat nothing but the 9Lives brand of cat food. The hugely successful campaign was created by the Leo Burnett advertising firm.

Earlier, Erwin was seen on camera when he recurred as the cattle driver Teddy on CBS’ Rawhide, starring Clint Eastwood.

For Filmmation, Erwin voiced the blond, muscular He-Man (and his alter ego, Prince Adam) on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe from 1983-...

This article contains massive spoilers for "The Substance."

Tales of the folly of beauty have been told since time immemorial. Once human beings understood the irreconcilable fact that youth and beauty are natural attractants even though the ravages of time and age are impossible to hold back, cautionary stories of characters either looking to hold on to their beauty forever or simply trying to recapture it have cropped up. These are stories with characters who become so obsessed with their own vanity that they're willing to commit crimes or atrocities in order to maintain it are viewed as people who've fallen from grace, their external beauty masking their internal corruption.

In recent decades, these tales have grown a new wrinkle, as they've absorbed the effects that society, industry, and the media have had on reinforcing such damaging ideals. Just using cinematic examples, there've been films such as "Looker," "Death Becomes Her,...

Film historians agree that computer-generated imagery (CGI) was first used in a motion picture as far back as Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), which utilized abstract computer animation under its opening credits. Of course that’s not immediately what comes to mind when we think of CGI (or just plain CG) today: the earliest, crude instances of the kind of CG that dominates modern filmmaking were first seen in Westworld (1973), Star Wars, Looker (1981), the groundbreaking Tron (1982), Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), and The Last Starfighter (1984).

But the first genuine leap in using CG to animate and incorporate photorealistic three-dimensional objects into live-action came in James Cameron’s The Abyss (1989) via the creation of the alien pseudopod made out of digital ocean water. The techniques developed by Industrial Light and Magic for that film blew open the doors to the true CG revolution in cinema, which began in the 1990s...

The Wolfen episode of The Black Sheep was Written and Narrated by Andrew Hatfield, Edited by Brandon Nally, Produced by Lance Vlcek and John Fallon, and Executive Produced by Berge Garabedian.

A black sheep doesn’t have to be considered bad to have that loving title and distinction. I mean, some of them are considered quite bad and need the layers peeled down to show off the good inside. There are other cases though. A movie can also be a black sheep if it was buried by a more popular outing like The Last Broadcast being utterly forgotten after the behemoth The Blair Witch Project made its appearance. Sometimes, like Last Broadcast, it can just be buried withing its own genre, decade, year, or as in today’s title, all 3. I’ve seen more than a few comments for this one so let’s take a look at werewolves in 1981. No,...

Far be it from me, a lowly film journalist, to tell the most powerful and exorbitantly rich decisionmakers in all of Hollywood what to do. But I'd like to think I can speak for anyone with even a modicum of common sense that it's generally not great to deceptively compel hordes of background actors and extras into giving away the rights to using their likenesses however these studios see fit. That would remain true at the best of times, of course, but that ought to go double for a period when the industry knew that SAG-AFTRA (the guild representing the majority of working actors) would imminently have to negotiate a new deal with the studios, represented by the AMPTP.

Now, both the writers and actors have been forced into a two-pronged strike, where battle lines have been drawn over a host of issues. One of the most pressing involves...

San Francisco, July 17 (Ians) Google has introduced a new media viewer for Google Chat on Android devices, which improves the media browsing experience.

“Now, media thumbnails open faster in full screen, repeat playback is quicker, and you can swipe between all of the media in the conversation,” the company said in a Workspace Updates blogpost.

The company also added a shared media option that allows users to quickly browse through all media shared in a Chat conversation, which is accessible from the conversation as well as from the full-screen view of every media

item.

Moreover, the tech giant mentioned that currently it timeout any queries that take longer than five minutes for Connected Sheets.

However, now, it has extended the timeout time from five minutes to 10 minutes for BigQuery and Looker.

Also, Looker users are now able to filter by measures in a pivot table, which allows for even more targeted analysis on Connected Sheets.

Before Michael Crichton was known as the bestselling author of works like The Andromeda Strain, Jurassic Park, Congo, Sphere, Rising Sun, and Disclosure, and before he directed movies like Westworld, Coma, The Great Train Robbery, Looker, Runaway, and Physical Evidence, he was a medical school student who was publishing novels under the pseudonym John Lange because he didn’t want his future patients to worry that he would use their stories in his writing. Now Deadline has broken the news that CrichtonSun, which is run by the author’s widow Sherri Crichton, has secured a deal with Blackstone Publishing to get the eight John Lange novels re-published.

According to Deadline, Blackstone Publishing has made a seven-figure deal with CrichtonSun to acquire the worldwide print, eBook and audiobook rights to Crichton’s first series of novels, which he wrote under the pseudonym John Lange. The eight books comprise unconnected tales of...

The creators of HBO Max’s Search Party join Josh and Joe to talk about their favorite films.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Tenet (2020)

Piranha (1978)

Piranha 3D (2010)

Jurassic Park (1993)

Jaws (1975)

E.T. The Extraterrestrial (1982)

Looker (1981)

The Lost World: Jurassic Park (1997)

Waiting For Guffman (1996)

True Stories (1986)

Another Year (2010)

Abigail’s Party (1977)

Brazil (1985)

The Pink Panther (1963)

It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

Network (1976)

Idiocracy (2006)

A League Of Their Own (1992)

Desperately Seeking Susan (1985)

About Schmidt (2002)

Please Give (2010)

Duck Soup (1933)

The Gold Rush (1925)

The Cocoanuts (1929)

A Night At The Opera (1935)

The Terminator (1984)

Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Love Potion No. 9 (1992) – Sarah

The Birdcage (1996) – Charles

Mandy (2018)

Other Notable Items

Search Party TV series (2016- )

The Coen Brothers

The DGA

Jon Favreau

Garry Marshall

Christopher Nolan

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation TV series (2000-2015)

Jurassic Park series

Laura Dern

Jeff Goldblum

Sam Neill

Steven Spielberg

Jurassic Park novel by Michael Crichton...

Emily Mortimer is to reboot classic British series Rumpole of the Bailey – the legal drama originally created by her father John Mortimer.

The Newsroom and Mary Poppins Returns star is in the early stages of development with the remake, which will be produced by her own indie King Bee and eOne.

The series, which ran on ITV predecessor Thames Television between 1978 and 1992, starred Leo McKern as Horace Rumpole, an elderly barrister in London who defended a weird and wonderful mix of clients. It started as a radio play on the BBC before making the move to television.

The reboot was revealed at a Deadline-moderated Banff Connect event in London by Polly Williams, eOne’s head of scripted development in the UK. The Designated Survivor studio has a first-look deal with Mortimer’s company, which she runs with her husband Alessandro Nivola.

Williams told Deadline that Mortimer has “reimagined” the series...

Entertainment One has acquired rights to Laura Sims’ debut novel Looker to develop as a TV series with former The Newsroom star Emily Mortimer set to executive produce via her King Bee Productions banner, part of her first-look deal with the studio. She also intends to appear in the project.

Looker, released this month by Scribner, centers on an unraveling Brooklynite, unhappily childless and recently separated, who becomes fixated on a movie star and her perfect family living in the beautiful brownstone next door. The book is described as “a brilliant debut that is a tightly coiled Hitchcockian thriller and part satire of those living their best lives in the post-gentrified, Instagram-ready city.”

Mortimer and her husband and producing partner Alessandro Nivola will produce via their King Bee. eOne will serve as the studio and distribute the project worldwide. Jacqueline Sacerio will oversee for eOne. Lizzie Nastro is the executive for King Bee.

By Tim McGlynn

“You probably think I’m beautiful, but I’m not.”

Super model Tina Cassidy (Kathryn Witt) visits Hollywood plastic surgeon Larry Roberts with a specific list of tiny imperfections that need to be corrected at the request of Reston Industries, a producer of glossy television commercials. Dr. Roberts becomes curious when he realizes that several of his recent patients have had the same type of list.

What follows is a science fiction/police procedural that involves the murder of these same models. The police become suspicious when it is discovered that all the victims were patients of Dr. Roberts

Director/Writer Michael Crichton once again makes predictions based on emerging technologies. His first feature film, Westworld (1973), pioneered the use of digitized imagery to present the point of view of Yul Brynner’s android gunslinger.

In Looker, we have actors being converted to computerized images that may be manipulated through animation.

Former USC and National Football League star Tim Rossovich, who built a post-athletic acting career in various roles, has died after a long illness, according to USC News. He was 72 and passed Thursday in Sacramento.

Rossovich was an All-American and co-captain of the USC national championship team in 1967, remembered for star O.J. Simpson at running back. He became one of five USC players drafted in the first round in 1968, going to the Philadelphia Eagles as the 14th pick of the first round.

The lean defensive end made the Pro Bowl in 1969 during a career that saw him play for the Philadelphia Eagles, San Diego Chargers, and Houston Oilers. He later played for the Philadelphia Bell in the short-lived World Football League.

After rooming with actor Tom Selleck in college and given his USC connections, it seemed inevitable that Rossovich would become an actor. He started as stunt double in the Burt Reynolds film Hooper,...

It’s always fun to peruse the impressive career of writer-director Michael Crichton, whose brilliant, commercially savvy ideas so often hit the mark. He even invented a plausibly credible dinosaur movie. This 1981 thriller may be his least coherent show, with too many screwy ideas and a supporting cast that needed better direction. Yet it has the winning combination of Albert Finney and Susan Dey, and some very original thriller elements.

Looker

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1981 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date September 18, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Albert Finney, Susan Dey, James Coburn, Leigh Taylor-Young, Dorian Harewood, Tim Rossovich, Darryl Hickman, Kathryn Witt, Terri Welles.

Cinematography: Paul Lohmann

Film Editor: Carl Kress

Production Designer Dean Edward Mitzner

Original Music: Barry DeVorzon

Produced by Howard Jeffrey

Written and Directed by Michael Crichton

Best-selling writer Michael Crichton got into directing early, and by the time of Coma and The Great Train Robbery...

Director Curtis Harrington always offered up solid, unassuming genre fare on the small screen (How Awful about Allan, the wonderfully goofy Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell); and when he collaborated with noted scribe Robert Bloch (Psycho), the result was NBC’s The Dead Don’t Die (1975), an effective throwback to the Lewton/Turneur era beloved by both, shot through with a big dose of pulpy goodness.

Originally broadcast on January 14th as an NBC World Premiere Movie, Tddd didn’t stand a chance against the likes of the ABC Tuesday Movie of the Week or the ironclad CBS lineup of M*A*S*H/Hawaii Five-o, and Bloch is on the record as not being a fan. Oh well; I still dig its entertaining mashup of neo noir and old fashioned zombies even if he doesn’t. And you might too if that particular elixir peaks your interest.

Crack...

I don’t know if you’re anything like me, but I can often spend hours upon hours trawling through iTunes looking for new movies to buy… Usually I’ll randomly come across a title I haven’t seen in years and use the “Cast & Crew” links to make my way down the rabbit hole to the more obscure side of Apple’s digital movie service.

Now whilst many will decry that iTunes is a terrible VOD service due to Apple’s desire to lock its audience to their platforms, if you have an Apple TV or iPad be aware – there are some truly obscure films hidden away in the depths of the vast collection of movies. Some of which have been made available in the UK for the first time since VHS and a Lot that have been added to the service in their original uncut form!

So, with...

Ryan Lambie Sep 12, 2016

It was a camp classic in 1995, but did you know Congo was once going to be made in the early 80s with a real gorilla and Sean Connery?

"Congo is a dead project that will never be made" - Michael Crichton, 1983

Just about everywhere you looked in the summer of 1995, a pair of simian eyes stared back at you from the poster of Congo. Based on the best-selling Michael Crichton novel, Congo was billed as that year’s equivalent of Jurassic Park - another exciting creature feature with cutting-edge special effects and maybe just a tiny dash of horror.

“It’s a little like Alien at the beginning,” enthused director Frank Marshall, “in that it’s based in science fact, and like Indiana Jones at the end, with the lost city of Zinj.”

Determined to push Congo as a must-see summer film capable of competing with such...

Tom Selleck and Gene Simmons starred in Michael Crichton's 1984 sci-fi thriller, Runaway. Ryan looks back at a flawed yet intriguing film...

Late 1984 saw two killer robot movies make their debut in Us cinemas. You've probably heard of the first one, released in October: The Terminator, the film that launched the career of James Cameron and cemented Arnold Schwarzenegger's status as a movie star.

The second was Runaway, another sci-fi thriller that, in theory, could have been the bigger hit. It starred Tom Selleck and Kiss singer-bassist Gene Simmons. It was written and directed by Michael Crichton, the director of the superb Westworld and writer of such best-selling novels as The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man, both adapted into great films. Six years after Runaway, Crichton would write Jurassic Park, a book that is still sending ripples through pop culture today.

Runaway ended up making about $7m in...

Madame Tussauds in Hollywood unveils its Hugh Jackman

Birthday shoutouts go to Michelle Forbes, who is 49, Stephen Hawking is 72, Dame Shirley Bassey is 77, and David Bowie is 67. What’s his greatest single? Here’s my pick.

EW has the clip of Misty meeting Stevie Nicks on tonight’s Coven. I would probably have the same reaction … plus crap myself.

Utah won’t recognize gay marriages performed before stay. They better be ready to pay out.

Why I Hate ‘Outing’ and How It Lets Aaron Schock Off the Hook

Russell Tovey is happy to play gay.

True Blood Star Alexander Skarsgård Poses Naked After Reaching South Pole.

Sarah Jessica Parker Hints At A Sex And The City Reunion.

Own’s The Haves and The Have Nots returned for Season Two, and was the third highest rated program in the network history.

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from...

CGI (Computer generated/graphic imagery) has increasingly been a dominant source of technology used in cinema… and there’s no going back!

Although the application and contribution of computer graphics to film imagery isn’t a new idea, the rapidly evolving form of ground-breaking technology has amazed us with picture perfect possibilities in film, and animation, throughout the years.

Here is a time-line showing key uses of CGI in cinematic history:

1973: Sci-fi thriller Westworld (directed by Michael Crichton) was the first film to use 2-D image processing to portray the infrared point of view of the Gunslinger android. 1977: Star Wars uses 3-D wireframe graphics for the trench run briefing sequence. 1978: Superman: The Movie is the first film to use CGI in the film’s title sequence. 1981: Looker (also directed by Michael Crichton) introduces Cindy as the first CGI human character. 1985: Barry Levinson’s Young Sherlock Holmes...

Coma (1978) Although he’s known primarily as the writer of cutting edge novels like the “Jurassic Park” series, “Congo”, and “The Terminal Man” (among many, many other titles), Michael Crichton was also a director, with his most high-profile decade coming in the ’80s on films like “Looker”, “Runaway” and “Physical Evidence”. One of his earlier films was 1978′s hospital thriller “Coma”, which, ironically enough, is an adaptation of a novel not written by him, but instead an adaptation of a Robin Cook book. The hero of “Coma” is actress Genevieve Bujold, who plays a spunky young MD name Susan Wheeler at a Boston area hospital who discovers that sinister shenanigans are taking place right under her nose. Unfortunately for her, the conspiracy goes right to the very top, which makes her investigation into the situation problematic, not to mention dangerous to her health. Michael Douglas plays Bujold’s boyfriend, a fellow doctor and friendly ear,...

Wonder

If I was going to devise an emotional spectrum for movies, I’d put Contempt on one extreme with Wonder on the other. Films that fall under Contempt tend to be the ugliest and most disenchanting that cinema has to offer, while those under Wonder are the most rejuvenating and magical. I’ve traversed the spectrum many times throughout my movie watching career, perhaps mixing my concept of Contempt and Wonder a little along the way.

When I was much younger, my imagination was captivated primarily by non-provocative movies like The Last Unicorn . Except for maybe The Secret of Nimh, The Last Unicorn is the animated film that I’ve watched more times than any other. In fact, before Beauty and the Beast came out, it’s one of the very few that I remember watching, period. As an adult, I’m not entirely sure what the appeal was.

Computer-generated imagery (CGI) has been playing a role in films for over 30 years. It began merely as the ability to draw lines on TV screens but has evolved into nothing short of the power to create worlds.

Beginning with 1981′s “Looker,” in which a naked image of Susan Dey was generated on a computer, and continuing on through “Avatar” (2009) in which a blue, naked, CGI lady flies around on a dragon, determined computer nerds FX pioneers have tirelessly pushed the boundaries of this technology.

With the much anticipated “Tron: Legacy” landing in theaters, we thought it would be a good time to look back on the history of the digital revolution that the original “Tron” helped launch.

‘Tron’ (1982)

Disney’s “Tron” put CGI in the public eye. In 1976, after encountering the old, old, old-school video game “Pong,” director/animator Steven Lisberger became obsessed with incorporating CGI into films. The graphics...

Is it an 'intense and eerily plausible' thriller, or a boring sci-fi flick saddled with an 'impossible to follow' plot? You decide.

By Eric Ditzian

Bruce Willis in "Surrogates"

Photo: Stephen Vaughn/Touchstone Pictures

Bruce Willis' "Surrogates" asks the following question: Would you like to kick back in the safety of your own home while your much better looking robot double heads out into the world in your stead? That's a question almost everyone in this movie (in theaters Friday, September 25) has answered in the affirmative, which has worked out fairly well until surrogates and their real-life users begin to die. It's up to Willis as FBI Agent Greer to solve the murders and maybe bring humanity out of this techno-induced indolence.

How are critics answering the question of whether or not "Surrogates" is worth checking out this weekend? The reviews are in, and MTV News has gathered them...

It's a seven-year-old boy's dream team -- Steven Spielberg, Michael Crichton and David Koepp moving on from rampaging dinosaurs to marauding pirates.

DreamWorks Studios has acquired the film rights to the action-adventure novel "Pirate Latitudes," which Crichton wrote just before his death in November. Spielberg, who directed Koepp's adaptations of Crichton's "Jurassic Park" and "The Lost World," will produce the film and possibly direct.

Koepp has signed on to adapt.

"Michael was a scrupulous researcher and one of the most innovative writers of our era," said Koepp. "To have gotten to work with one of his novels was a privilege; to work with three seems like a dream."

"Latitudes," which takes place in 1665, is about a daring plan to infiltrate Port Royal, one of the world's richest and most notorious cities, and raid a Spanish galleon filled with treasure. HarperCollins will publish the novel, which Crichton's assistant found in a completed manuscript after his death,...

A new trend appeared this week with famed directors trading in the clapboards and megaphones for inkwells and laptops.  The reverse has happened before with author Michael Crichton directing cinematic classics like Coma, Looker, and Runaway, but I don't recall a director who moved from the big screen to the Kindle... until now.  (There must be previous directors who've written novels so if you know of one, please enlighten me below.) First up, The Independent is reporting (via Fearnet) that David Cronenberg (The Brood, Crash) has just signed a deal for his first novel.  Only forty pages of  "Consumed" have been written so far but that was enough for publisher Fourth Estate to snap up the rights in a "vicious bidding war" that somehow only netted Cronenberg a five-figure sum.  The plot... revolves around a married couple, who are investigative journalists working on two separate stories. The wife is in Paris, delving...

Mention the name Michael Crichton to a heavy reader, and they'll probably think of a very smart man who used real science as a springboard for some truly fantastic stories. Mention the name to a movie geek, and their reaction will probably depend on how old the movie geek is. First and foremost I believe Mr. Crichton will be remembered as the author of Jurassic Park, mainly because the book and the film were such massive hits all over the globe. But if you focus solely on the late Michael Crichton's cinematic output, you start to realize what a silly streak the smart man must have had.

Looker (1981, screenwriter / director) -- Once again, a novel concept that's way past its expiration date in 2008, but it's about a plastic surgeon who slowly comes to discover a conspiracy involving computers, supermodels, and TV commercials.

Runaway (1984, screenwriter / director) -- What must have...

CNN is reporting some sad sad news this morning. Michael Crichton, one of the most influential science fiction authors of my our time, has died of Cancer at the age of 66. What a blow, particularly in light of the fact that his fight was not public.

I grew up on Crichton. Obviously the Jurassic Park team up with him and Spielberg blew everyone away, but I remember watching and loving all the awesome unsung films he directed when I was just a kid. Films like Looker, Coma, and of course Westworld. As a writer he was responsible for The Andromeda Strain, Sphere, Twister, Congo, Terminal Man, 13th Warrior, Timeline, the list of great works goes on and on.

Sad day. Now go watch Coma and Robert Wise's Andromeda Strain.

The Los Angeles Times reports that author/screenwriter Michael Crichton died yesterday in La. The creator of Jurassic Park and numerous other science-fiction thrillers, who had been privately battling cancer, was 66.

The Chicago-born Crichton was an English major at Harvard University before dropping out to travel across Europe, then returned to Harvard to study medicine—a background that served him well both in his novels/screenplays and as creator of TV’s hit series ER. His first novel to hit the big screen was The Andromeda Strain, about a team of scientists trying to halt the spread of a deadly extraterrestrial virus, filmed in 1971 by director Robert Wise; a new Andromeda adaptation aired last year on A&E. Crichton made his feature directorial debut (following the 1972 TV movie Pursuit) with 1973’s Westworld, which he also scripted, set in a futuristic amusement park populated by robots that violently turn on the guests.

The Los Angeles Times reports that author/screenwriter Michael Crichton died yesterday in La. The creator of Jurassic Park and numerous other science-fiction thrillers, who had been privately battling cancer, was 66.

The Chicago-born Crichton was an English major at Harvard University before dropping out to travel across Europe, then returned to Harvard to study medicine—a background that served him well both in his novels/screenplays and as creator of TV’s hit series ER. His first novel to hit the big screen was The Andromeda Strain, about a team of scientists trying to halt the spread of a deadly extraterrestrial virus, filmed in 1971 by director Robert Wise; a new Andromeda adaptation aired last year on A&E. Crichton made his feature directorial debut (following the 1972 TV movie Pursuit) with 1973’s Westworld, which he also scripted, set in a futuristic amusement park populated by robots that violently turn on the guests.