Wikio - Irwin Allen

Flood (2007) (DVD Talk)

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 02:00:56 GMT

Skip It No, it's not Flood! , Irwin Allen's 1976 TV movie - and more's the pity (I hear the faint sounds of hundreds of mice clicking off this review). At least that schlock-fest only ran 100 minutes. This distended, water-logged British disaster film, made in 2007 and starring the likes of Robert Carlyle, Tom Courtenay, Joanne Whalley and David Suchet, runs an unimaginable three hours...

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I Always Credit My Enemy, Whatever He May Be, With Equal Intelligence (Something Old, Nothing New)

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:28:00 GMT

In honor of the 30th anniversary of the worst movie of the '70s if not ever, Irwin Allen's The Swarm , I put together a sampler of some of the highlights from the film that literally redefined the term "disaster movie." I've left out some of my favorite pieces of bad dialogue (like Ben Johnson saying "I am a retired master mechanic") and bad special effects (a nuclear power plant exploding...

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Pastor Gave Prophetic Sermon - His Secret? MySpace! (Neatorama)

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 05:37:32 GMT

Last Sunday, Pastor Irwin Allen of Peoria, Arizona, deliverd a sermon about sins so specific that some people in the audience gasped with recognition. So how did Pastor Allen gave such a "prophetic" sermon? He read the blogs of the people in his congregation: Pastor Alton, who cultivates a reputation as a computer illiterate techno-phobe, is actually [...]

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Snickers: Get some nuts! (Varifrank)

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 19:52:42 GMT

Back when the earth was young, dinosaurs roamed the Earth and all TV shows were made by either Irwin Allen, Quinn Martin or Sheldon Leonard, this would have been considered funny to one and all, but lo, in the...

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Mr. Beaks Looks Forward to Roland Emmerich's Splendidly Stupid 2012 (Ain't it Cool News)

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 08:43:15 GMT

I bear Roland Emmerich no ill will. Without him, AICN wouldn't have its wonderful 'splodin' backdrop, humans wouldn't be able to outrun a cold snap, and mankind... (pause for emphasis) "mankind"... that word wouldn't have new meaning for all of us today. Emmerich has given us so very much. By brazenly melding the disaster cinema of Irwin Allen with the awe-for-awe's-sake aesthetic of...

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Hopscotch (DVD Times)

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:13:59 GMT

... became known as a safe pair of hands who was versatile enough to move from farcical comedy to an Irwin Allen disaster movie via Hollywood musical. Although his style is usually quite self-effacing, one of the constants of Neame’s work is his ability to get the best out of actors. He managed to wring great work out of Judy Garland in I Could Go On Singing and worked fruitfully with...

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Flood, ITV Midnight Man, ITV Shrink Rap, More 4 Clarissa and the King's Cookbook, BBC4 (The Independent)

Sat, 10 May 2008 23:00:01 GMT

... him at some length, as news of his demise reached the other characters, who were heartbroken. Irwin Allen would never have stood for this. I'd rather have the slick professional sentimentality of his Towering Inferno any day. Flood had pretensions to better things, but it was a cut below the classic disaster movie.Occasionally it showed glimpses of how a good modern disaster movie...

Source : The Independent (subscribe)

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Metro Survive: Volume 1 Review (IGN)

Wed, 07 May 2008 05:48:00 GMT

Metro Survive Vol. 1 Yuki Fujisawa Yuki FujisawaThere was a period of time, we'll call it the 1970s, when a certain genre of movie was king – the Disaster Flick. At the pinnacle of this movie-making empire was a guy named Irwin Allen, who made movies like The Poseidon Adventure, The Towering Inferno and even man vs. nature disaster movies like The Swarm, which dealt with an evil swarm...

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What I wouldn't have given to have seen this actually happen in a classic Trek episode. (Mike Sterling's Progressive Ruin)

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 07:01:00 GMT

from Star Trek #7 (March 1970) - art by Alberto Giolitti & Giovanni Ticci Not that I have anything against the Eiffel Tower or our French friends...I'm just appreciating the sheer Irwin Allen disaster movie vibe of the scene. Anyway, I'd like to apologize for the dependence on scans over the last few days. My "Low Content Mode" from a couple weeks ago seems to have extended itself, due...

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Om Sweet Om (New York Times)

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:17:35 GMT

Fifteen months in India in the early 1960s had a lasting influence on Allen Ginsberg.

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Book Review: Deborah Baker's 'A Blue Hand' (International Herald Tribune)

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 14:32:53 GMT

... Miles ("Ginsberg: A Biography") and Bill Morgan ("I Celebrate Myself: The Somewhat Private Life of Allen Ginsberg") have given brief accounts of the visit. In new and far greater detail, and with a contagious sense of enjoyment that sometimes pushes her into the present tense and the personal, Baker shows how much the Beats owed their name and their legacy - including some of their politics...

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Blu-ray Review: 10.5 Apocalypse: The Complete Miniseries (High-Def Digest: Blu-ray Disc News)

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:00:00 GMT

As a closet lover of all things Irwin Allen, I secretly wanted to embrace '10.5: Apocalypse' in all its cheesiness. The problem is, while there's nothing wrong with another 169 needless minutes of earthquake porn, the movie has been done on such a cheapie TV-movie budget that it fails to deliver the money shots. The "special effects" are poor, even by basic cable standards, with giggle-inducing...

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Movie Notes: The Towering Inferno (Webomatica)

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 14:57:29 GMT

= 4 stars Starring Steve McQueen, Paul Newman, Faye Dunaway Directed by John Guillermin, Irwin Allen Synopsis A San Francisco mega-skyscraper goes ablaze due to ill-advised construction cost-cutting. Architect Doug Roberts (Paul Newman) and fire chief O’Hallorhan (Steve McQueen) battle the blaze to save a literal cast of thousands trapped within. The Good The fictional tower is located...

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One More SWARM-ecdote (Something Old, Nothing New)

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 21:42:00 GMT

After I posted on The Swarm I looked around and couldn't find this anecdote posted anywhere else, so here's a story Richard Chamberlain (who had also been in Irwin Allen's The Towering Inferno ) told on TVOntario's Saturday Night at the Movies about Irwin Allen's directorial, um, style: Allen is about to do a scene involving some of the real (de-stung) bees who had...

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A Chartist's View of the Markets Today (Infectious Greed)

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:13:16 GMT

Funny -- even if somewhat insider-ish -- graphic follows of a chartists' view (complete with Irwin Allen-style collapsing candles) of how tremors are affecting financial markets: [via FT ]

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Blu-ray Review: Independence Day (High-Def Digest: Blu-ray Disc News)

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 17:00:00 GMT

... cliches and a glorious cast of B-level stars. Unfortunately, with phoned-in melodrama so bad even Irwin Allen couldn't have written it, those initially cool shots of aliens about to destroy us are all 'ID4' really has going for it. Once the movie gets the big explosions out of the way, it collapses under the weight of endless sci-fi cliches and its own sheer hokiness. With a set-up...

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Producers Turned Directors (Something Old, Nothing New)

Tue, 04 Mar 2008 11:47:00 GMT

With all the Irwin Allen mockery, there's a semi-serious question that arises when you look at his filmography: why do producers make such bad directors? Allen started as a producer, moved into directing, found success when he stopped directing and stuck to producing, and finally humiliated himself completely when he returned to directing for The Swarm and Beyond the Poseidon Adventure...

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A Diva's Place Is In the Home (Big Media Vandalism)

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 03:18:00 GMT

... the movie Blacker simply because he was Black, but he also created a bigger disaster than anything Irwin Allen got his hands on back in the 70's. As a filmmaker, he was worse than Uwe Boll . Mahogany probably would work better as an event rather than a movie. In New York City, they turned The Sound of Music into a sing-a-long, and gay men and people's mothers (the only people who...

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Bees! Bees! Millions of Bees! (Something Old, Nothing New)

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 03:12:00 GMT

Do you realize that this year is the 30th anniversary of Irwin Allen's The Swarm ? The Swarm is probably the worst movie of the '70s if not ever, and since it has a huge all-star cast of distinctive actors who are all embarrassing themselves, it's one of the easiest movies to mock. There's something terrible not just in every scene but in every moment. But since a big-studio movie like...

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A History Of Sci-Fi Television (Technoccult)

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 04:49:55 GMT

“A rare documentary of science fiction on American television. During half an hour you will watch a synthesis of what was the first forty … all » years of the science fiction production for television. From precursors as “Rocky Jones, Space Ranger”, “Space Patrol” and “Flash Gordon”, to cult series of Irwin Allen (”The Time [...]

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