Thursday, April 05, 2007
Things That Came To Come
SCI-FI-LONDON, the UK's only annual festival of science fiction and fantastic film announces that the restored, extended edition of THINGS TO COME (TTC) will be given its first theatrical screening on 2nd May 2007 at the SCI-FI-LONDON Film Festival. This version of the film is the longest in existence anywhere in the world and contains four additional scenes which have not been seen since the film’s original theatrical release in 1936.
Every version of TTC shown in cinemas, on television and available on video since 1936 has been drastically cut. Network has commissioned the best and longest known version to exist of this film anywhere in the world in H.D.
The film adapted from the HG Wells novel The Shape of Things to Come (1933), can be viewed at SCI-FI-LONDON, from 2nd-6th May and it will be released as a special edition DVD on 7th May 2007 by Network DVD.
The film is of interest to us because it contains images of mobile phones, flat plasma video screens, voice projectors, desktop laptops, an education channel and biological weapons. So it's no wonder some have suggested Wells was a contactee who worked his experiences into his novels. I don't buy that, rather this just indicates that there was plenty of technological images of the future that contactees could draw on from "popular culture" even if they were never sf fans.
Wells' book also predicted World War II; it includes cities being destroyed by aerial bombs and predicts the rise of Fascist dictators.
Other amazing facts about THINGS TO COME, according to the press release:
* Mussolini banned the film in Italy because he believed that Ralph Richardson’s portrayal of The Boss was a parody of il duce
* Hitler also banned the film in Germany but Hitler was so impressed with the image of a British city being destroyed that he ordered the head of the German air force, Herman Goering, to screen it to his subordinates
* The last engineers and scientists establish their base in Basra - Iraq!
* TTC is the first western film to show human civilization reduced to ashes
* TTC was released in the year that Guernica was bombed
* Arthur C. Clarke showed the movie to Stanley Kubrick when they began production on 2001: A Space Odyssey
* Homage was paid to TTC in the 1951 Ealing Comedy The Man in A White Suit
Every version of TTC shown in cinemas, on television and available on video since 1936 has been drastically cut. Network has commissioned the best and longest known version to exist of this film anywhere in the world in H.D.
The film adapted from the HG Wells novel The Shape of Things to Come (1933), can be viewed at SCI-FI-LONDON, from 2nd-6th May and it will be released as a special edition DVD on 7th May 2007 by Network DVD.
The film is of interest to us because it contains images of mobile phones, flat plasma video screens, voice projectors, desktop laptops, an education channel and biological weapons. So it's no wonder some have suggested Wells was a contactee who worked his experiences into his novels. I don't buy that, rather this just indicates that there was plenty of technological images of the future that contactees could draw on from "popular culture" even if they were never sf fans.
Wells' book also predicted World War II; it includes cities being destroyed by aerial bombs and predicts the rise of Fascist dictators.
Other amazing facts about THINGS TO COME, according to the press release:
* Mussolini banned the film in Italy because he believed that Ralph Richardson’s portrayal of The Boss was a parody of il duce
* Hitler also banned the film in Germany but Hitler was so impressed with the image of a British city being destroyed that he ordered the head of the German air force, Herman Goering, to screen it to his subordinates
* The last engineers and scientists establish their base in Basra - Iraq!
* TTC is the first western film to show human civilization reduced to ashes
* TTC was released in the year that Guernica was bombed
* Arthur C. Clarke showed the movie to Stanley Kubrick when they began production on 2001: A Space Odyssey
* Homage was paid to TTC in the 1951 Ealing Comedy The Man in A White Suit
# posted by Nigel @ 15:40 
