1990s SF film
Feb. 13th, 2012 05:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
peteryoung
Without Warning, 1994, USA DIRECTED BY ROBERT ISCOVE
The famed 1994 mockumentary about three simultaneous asteroid strikes on Earth that reveal an intelligence behind their arrival. This was made to echo Orson Welles's 1938 radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds and was gamely anchored by the famed NBC White House correspondent Sander Vanocur. Like Welles's broadcast it took in quite a few people when it was broadcast on Halloween night, despite repeated self-defeating spoilers that it was fiction, during the commercial breaks. It was a further nine years before this was released on DVD and it's never been reissued; overall this hasn't aged too badly despite some of the actors hamming it up way too much, and a few scenes where the dialogue is clearly scripted and the camera motions seem too rehearsed. Aside from Vanocur playing himself, easily the most natural and relaxed actor here is Arthur C. Clarke, who provided a satellite interview from Sri Lanka while never letting on that he was in on the joke. But if you look closely there are many other things that give the game away: there's a fictional Wyoming town of Grover's Mill (as opposed to the real New Jersey location that Welles used), recognisable genre actors such as John deLancie and James Morrison, plus typically sinister characters from the Pentagon and the military that never really convince you they're genuine. It does become increasingly ridiculous towards the end especially when some of the journalists start cracking up emotionally on the air, but this is still rather good fun even though it's not nearly as convincing as that even harder-to-find American faux news masterpiece Special Bulletin.
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Date: 2012-02-13 01:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-13 04:05 pm (UTC)