Cinema Retro has received the following notice regarding guests on Dave White Presents, a web-based entertainment program:
Star Trek visual effects
supervisor Ron B. Moore will be a special guest on this week’s edition of “Dave
White Presents†airing over KSAV Tuesday, June 23.Trek fans know Ron’s work
on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star
Trek: Voyager and Star Trek:
Enterprise. So, in his conversation with Wes Britton, Ron talks about
creating the models, gadgets, aliens, and starships of the 24th
Century and how new technology has helped shape what we see on the screen.Ron’s career also
includes work on Ghost Busters, Fright
Night, Moonstruck, 2010 . . . and on top of all that, he’s the guitar player
in the Enterprise Blues Band, a unique congregation with musical comedy for Star
Trek fans live and on CD. We’ll play a few gems for you. In fact, Ron has so
much to say that this special interview will be a two-parter broadcast over our
next two shows.
Of course, the name of
the show is “Dave White Presents,†and Dave has cooked up his usual “predictably
unpredictable†menu. He’ll present part 3 of his very popular talk with author
Steve Cox about his very popular book on the Three Stooges. Dave’s own
comic—hopefully—bits include a new “Moral Compass†and “News from Clancy’s.†All
this will first air over
Summer is here which can only mean one thing: the
Hollywood blockbuster has arrived and, in particular, the much maligned bête noireof all right-minded cinema goers, the big budget
remake is rearing its ugly head. Brad Silberling’s Land of The Lost is a new look at Sid and Marty Krofft’s much loved
70s television show that followed Dr Will Marshall, originally played by Wesley
Eure, as he travelled back in time to a land full of dinosaurs and cavemen. The
film had its world premiere in Sydney and we were lucky enough to have a few
words with Silberling and the new Dr Marshall, comedian Will Ferrell on the red
carpet.
“It was such an insane mash up of ideas that only
the Kroffts could do,†explains the director. “It was the bravery that comes
from innocence. Sid Croft in particular is an incredible puppeteer, he’s very
innocent, he’s kind of child like which prevents him from questioning the
combination of elements together which should have never have been in the same
show. You’ve got dinosaurs, aliens, a banjo; only Sid could do that without
thinking twice about it. It’s like a little bit of Willy Wonka, he liked that
flavour, he liked this flavour so he included them all. It’s why it stayed with the audiences in the
States.†Those flavours in the new film have been transformed into a fabulous
CGI rendered T-Rex called Grumpy, slow moving extraterrestrials called
Sleestacks and a cavemen called Chaka in a surreal land that fuses the past,
present and the future as a backdrop for Ferrell to work his comic madness.
.
Brad Silberling (Photo copyright David Michael Brown)
A mutual love for the show brought the director and
Ferrell together for the project. “It was Will. At some point Will was talking
to a couple of friends and he, like I, was an original viewer of the show. His
manager and producing partner Jimmy Miller tried to sort out how to get the
rights to the show to potentially adapt it. It was just circumstance that I got
involved; Will and I have known each other for a very long time but have never
worked together. I was writing a piece and had a role in mind for Will, we were
just having lunch. He said 'OK, I want to talk to you about Land of the Lost.' He wanted to make the movie and there was also a
threatened SAG strike. I had been an avid watcher but hadn’t set eyes on the
show for thirty five years. It was fantastic when he told me, I just started
cracking up. My memory bank immediately refilled with the images that stayed
with me. The concept of taking a comedic sensibility and then selfishly
harnessing the elements of the show that we remembered was kind of fantastic.â€
Ferrell adds his own side to the story, “It actually had already got started
before I got signed on but when I heard it was going to hit the works I thought,
‘Oh, that is going to be so much fun because I love the show.’ When I heard the
premise that they were going to ignore the kitsch style special effects and go
for the realistic ones and play the comedy off of that, it sounded like a lot
of fun to me.â€