#Trailer for capricorn one series

This is America licking its wounds, one year on from a bicentenary celebration which had been marked by division and the Son of Sam killings in New York. Just what a maverick genius like Robert Altman might have made of Capricorn One’s central premise – live television broadcasts coming from a manned space mission to Mars are in fact fake, filmed in a studio out in the desert – is anyone’s guess.Īltman regulars Gould and Karen Black (criminally underused here as a television reporter with an inexplicably high tolerance level for Gould’s smart-alec shtick) lend the film a certain hipster gravitas, but with a journeyman like Peter Hyams in the director’s chair Capricorn One was never going to be M*A*S*H in Space. Yes, the apartment where a whistle-blower lives is mysteriously redecorated and new tenants ushered in overnight to make it look as if said whistle-blower never existed, but so far, so Rockford Files. Yes somebody fixes the brakes in Elliot Gould’s car in an attempt to silence him. What has any of this to do with Capricorn One, showing at Bradford Picturehouse as part of a season of films celebrating the 50 th anniversary of the first moon landing? Released a mere week before Star Wars, the film has much in common with Lucas’s space opera despite having its roots in one of the most persistent conspiracy theories of the 20 th century.Ĭapricorn One eschews the cynical ennui of Hollywood movies made in the eye of Vietnam and Watergate, preferring old-fashioned cornball instead. Meanwhile Lucas gambled and won on making more money from canny merchandising than from actual takings at the box office, which comes as less of a surprise than the discovery that he turned down Apocalypse Now to make Star Wars? (Ewoks don’t surf!) Who is to blame for the parlous multiplex guff that is cinema today? Easy Riders and Raging Bulls, critic Peter Biskind’s thoroughly entertaining account of how sixties countercultural freaks saved then ruined Hollywood, points the finger at Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.īack in the seventies, Spielberg was a jobbing Hitchcock copyist filling his days directing episodes of Columbo and trying to kill McCloud with a truck, when Jaws unexpectedly birthed the summer blockbuster and Spielberg got to make movies which spoke to the child within us all. Amongst the selection on offer is Capricorn One, Peter Hyams’ thriller about a fake mission to Mars.

#Trailer for capricorn one series

But let's see if we can help him out with casting suggestions: I'm going to go with the obvious and suggest Josh Brolin for James Brolin, and Jessica Simpson for OJ Simpson to get you started.BRADFORD PICTUREHOUSE is screening a series of films to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing this weekend. It's an intriguing prospect, and while Moore hasn't had the best run of luck recently he's one of Hollywood's best casual swearers so deserves the benefit of the doubt. As one of the Apollo astronauts interviewed in In The Shadow of the Moon noted, 'we went to the Moon nine times.

Incidentally, fact fans, the original was said to be inspired by that old chestnut about the Apollo missions being faked. This one will have the same plot, but this is an 'updated' and 'reimagined' version of the story, from Che screenwriter Peter Buchman. The original starred Elliot Gould, James Brolin and OJ Simpson as astronauts forced to fake a mission to Mars when their original mission is scrubbed just hours before launch. And now, having just finished production on the upcoming Max Payne, he's returning to the world of remakes with the news that he'll direct a remake of 70s space-conspiracy thriller Capricorn One.

Since the success of thriller Behind Enemy Lines, he's given us less-than-totally-successful remakes of Flight of the Phoenix and The Omen. Director John Moore hasn't had a great run of luck in Hollywood of late.