ufos Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Try to fit this title on a marquee: Three Men Seeking Monsters: Six Weeks in Pursuit of Werewolves, Lake Monsters, Giant Cats, Ghostly Devil Dogs, and Ape-Men. It's the name of a book by Nick Redfern that Universal has just bought the rights to. Now get this: the book is non-fiction. Redfern is a Ufologist and his book tells of his adventure with two buddies as the trio visited legendary mysterious places around Great Britain, including Loch Ness. The best part is that Redfern is a punk, one of his friends is a goth herpetologist (a reptile and amphibian expert) and his other friend is 6'6" and 400 pounds. Basically, this is the book I was craving as a subculture-centered, Fortean-minded, mysteries-of-the-unknown-obsessed teenager.

Fortunately, I never knew about this book (actually it came out many years after I'd stopped reading about UFOs and such), because if I was a fan and had looked forward to it being adapted into a movie, I would have been very disappointed to learn that Jon Heder is set to star. The one-note Napoleon Dynamite actor, who is surprisingly not yet a has-been despite not yet starring in another hit since his cult-fave introduction, will be producing with his brothers, Doug and Dan (his twin! there's two of them!), and he is expected to play the author (who is bald). I'm not sure who he could get to play the big guy, but for the goth herpetologist let me suggest Heder's School for Scoundrels co-star Todd Louiso, who has at least played a snake expert amusingly before, and who I can totally imagine dressing up to play Vampire: The Masquerade.

A quick note here that doesn't *technically* (read: you've really got to strech) qualify as movie news, but I think it's of interest to the geek beat that I serve, and so I'm posting it. If you don't care, you can stop reading...now.

Army Lt. Walter Haut died on Dec. 15, according to his daughter, Julie Shuster. Walter is the man who filed (in 1947) a news release claiming that a flying saucer had landed in Roswell, New Mexico. His story, and the incredible media attention that it generated, became the foundation for the now famous mythology that surrounds the small and otherwise unremarkable town. Haut had originally took dictation on the memo which stated the Roswell Army Air Field had captured an alien device- a statement which was quickly denied the very same day by a report stating that it was, in fact, a weather balloon. Haut and friends later founded the International UFO Museum in Roswell.

I loosely connect this on the simple fact that Roswell has been mentioned, featured, or otherwise noted in scads of sci fi flicks over the years. The town is an ICON of the genre, and I think the passing of the man who put them on the proverbial map deserves mention.

[via Sci Fi Wire]