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Assassin's Creed on HBO. It was lucky to get a two star rating.
Sorry, but can I ask which Goodbye Mr. Chips movie is being referred to above? The 1939, 1969 or 2002 versions?
I have seen the first and last versions and am about to start reading the book by James Hilton.
I have Queen of Outer Space (1958) on TCM right now. Overall, pretty horrible.
Who, 6 million miles from home says 'No' to 'Can you delay your departure a day or two?' Thank goodness for the 'happy ending,' regardless. haha
I can see where Star Trek ToS got much of its look, and some of its sensibilities, despite being produced 6 years later.
Frederik Pohl once told a fellow SF writer, after they'd seen Forbidden Planet, that it could almost have been a serial in the old Astounding Science Fiction magazine in John Campbell's time. It's not a blood-and-thunder space opera, despite having some of those trappings, but as you say, a thought-provoking adventure.Surely you know that the place to look for where Trek took its inspiration is Forbidden Planet, not Queen of Outer Space. For that matter, the uniforms and other props and costumes in Queen were reused leftovers from FP. FP gives you the captain/first officer/ship's doctor troika, a quasi-military ship in deep space, a planetary problem to be solved that's an actual thought-provoking SF idea - not a fifties Amazon fantasy (as interesting as that is from a cultural history perspective) - expensive game-changing effects and big-budget production, etc.
This is personal for me: when I was a kid, before Star Trek premiered in 1966, Forbidden Planet was the best filmed SF we had.
And me, when I was quite a bit older than that. A local SF convention, though Star Trek-oriented, used to end each convention on Sunday evening with a showing of FP; and it would always be well attended.It was M-G-M, who'd never been known for SF projects, but like everything they did, they followed the studio motto: Do it right, make it big, give it class. It's well known that the plot was, um, inspired by Shakespeare's The Tempest. Dr. Morbius is the wizard Prospero, Altara is his daughter Miranda, Robby is sprite-doing-his-bidding Ariel, the ID monster is Caliban, the crew of C-57D are the Milanese nobles... But honestly, it was the cool big-budget design and effects that hooked me as a 9-year old.