Mystical Movies and TV Predictions

- Current movie reviews and an archive of the best and worst movies of years past.

OCTOBER 2001:

"Donnie Darko" - (Review By Andrew O'Hehir) "Those of you who, like me, suspect that the world is coming to an end will have to reassess your views after seeing "Donnie Darko," the remarkable debut film of writer-director Richard Kelly: The world actually ended already, in 1988. The more I think about this the more sense it makes; all the tawdry and ridiculous and tragic events of our public and private lives since then are just epiphenomena, clouds of cosmic dust, the shared dreams of our dying consciousness as we lie amid the rubble of so-called civilization."

Predicting the Emmys - It's shaping up to be yet another slugfest between The West Wing and The Sopranos.

Networks step up security - TV shows usually taped before a studio audience have had to make due without live applause.

SEPTEMBER 2001:

World Trade Center Edited Out of New Films - Images of Twin Towers Will be Removed from People I Know, Zoolander and Serendipity.

Movies scheduled to open in 2002:
January 25, 2002 - "DRAGONFLY" - A doctor (Kevin Costner) believes his dead wife is trying to speak to him through his patients' near-death experiences. Tom Shadyac directs ("Nutty Professor", "Patch Adams").

February 8, 2002 - "KATE AND LEOPOLD" - Kate is Meg Ryan, a scientist who specializes in time travel, and Leopold is Hugh Jackman, a Victorian gentleman she has managed to transport into present-day New York. Is love in the air? James Mangold ("Cop Land") is the director.

May 22, 2002 - "STAR WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES" - Plot details are rare. It does seem to star Hayden Christensen as Anakin, an apprentice Jedi assigned with his mentor, Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor), to protect Princess Amidala (Natalie Portman) from her political enemies.

June 28, 2002 - "MINORITY REPORT" - Steven Spielberg's thriller, from a story by Philip K. Dick, is set in a future in which technology can be used to predict crimes. A Pre-Crimes Unit investigator (Tom Cruise) discovers that he himself is a suspect in just such a future transgression and has a young whippersnapper (Colin Farrell) on his trail.

The end for 'Friends'? Will the cast of Friends be there for you? Jennifer Aniston, who plays Rachel, suggests this season will be her last.


AUGUST 2001:

Before the case of a missing Washington intern captured the glaring media spotlight, the nation wondered who killed the wife of Baretta star Robert Blake. No arrests have been made in the three months since the killing. Will the case be solved?


JULY 2001:

"Enterprise" - the next Star Trek spin-off, has its two-hour premiere Sept. 26 on UPN stations. The new series is set in the 22nd century, 100 years before the USS Enterprise of Capt. Kirk.


JUNE 2001:

Will movie inspire illegal drag racing? As a new movie The Fast and the Furious was released, kids across America were revving their engines, and several drag race deaths occurred. Police are worried that the movie could drive a resurgence in the illegal sport.

Walt Disney Co.'s "Pearl Harbor" is falling short of lofty predictions made by Chairman Michael Eisner when the World War II movie opened more than a month ago, analysts said. It cost an estimated $205 million to make and market, has sold $160.4 million in tickets in four weeks in the U.S. and Canada and $76.9 million elsewhere. Eisner had predicted that "Pearl Harbor," which depicts Japan's attack on the U.S. Navy in Hawaii in 1941, would be Disney's biggest non-animated film ever, surpassing "The Sixth Sense" with $662 million worldwide.

ATLANTIS - Animated, Disney film. Central character Milo Thatch (the voice of Michael J. Fox), an earnest young cartographer and linguistics expert, is obsessed with unravelling the ancient mystery of Atlantis.

ABC's popular game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire could soon be franchised into a daytime version. Executive producer Michael Davies confirmed to the New York Daily News that he was talking with Buena Vista Television executives about expanding the show into daylight hours.


MAY 2001:

Famed movie critic Pauline Kael's warning 20 years ago about movie mediocrity proves prophetic. "Kael complained then that multinational corporations had taken over the movie studios, so creative decisions were being made not by execs who grew up with the movies but by bean-counters driven by profit margins. She railed against the corporate timidity that rejects risky scripts or untested talent for tried-and-true mediocrity." Today, Kael's warnings read like Nostradamus, because everything she cited is worse.

"So many people to kill, so little time. That might be the lament of producer David Chase as the third season of The Sopranos winds down. ABC Radio's Heidi Oringer takes her own whack at predicting who will soon sleep with the fishes."

Study Suggests Oscar Winners Live Longer - A new study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine finds that actors who have won Oscars live almost four years longer than actors who haven't won the coveted Academy Award. And actors who have won multiple times live up to six years longer than those who have been nominated and never won. They died from the same things we all die from — cancer, heart disease, strokes — but they fought them a bit longer or their onset came a bit later.

Are 'X-Files' and programs like it fueling increased interest in the paranormal? According to several polls, a significant number of Americans believe in aliens and other paranormal phenomena, and at least one poll contends the belief is rising. If findings from a 5-year-old Roper Poll still hold true, 2 percent of Americans - 5 million people - claim to have been abducted and taken aboard spacecraft by aliens. A 1995 Roper poll indicated that nearly a quarter of Americans believe in extra-terrestrial UFOs and astrology. A Gallup poll found that 71 percent of Americans think the U.S. government knows more about UFOs than it's saying.

Megalopolis," the story of one man's battle to build an ideal world, should start shooting before the end of the year and Francis Ford Coppola hopes to get it to the cinemas in early 2003. "Megalopolis" will be set in contemporary New York and will follow its hero's fight to realize his dream to build a city of the future. Coppola said such a city could be constructed today, but he thought hidden forces were at work to prevent it. "My feeling is that if we can show people what is possible, they will want it. Therefore it is a very political (film). Who doesn't want a Utopia? Maybe those who are already on the top of things," he said.

The Monk" starring Claude Van Damme swathed in orange Buddhist robes with his head shaved. Shooting will start in six months and last 150 days. "'The Monk' will be a film made of love and action, of course, but very spiritual action where people will have enough power to read the minds of the others," Van Damme explained. "They'll be able to have like soul-mind fights and also physical fights."

NBC's lineup is getting more serious. NBC's fall schedule includes just eight sitcoms - the fewest since 1982.

ABC to add more dramas and.halve 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' to just two weekly installments next fall.

The Titanic director and self-proclaimed King of the World, James Cameron, is angling to follow in the footsteps of millionaire tourist Dennis Tito and hitch a ride on the Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station. He told The New York Post he would film the journey to share the experience with the masses. Cameron plans a series of documentaries and a 3-D Imax movie. Cameron says NASA and the Russian Space Agency are working out guidelines for his mission.

Shinji Aoyama's "Eureka" - "There's every reason to predict that "Eureka" will become one of the landmarks of the world cinema of the first decade of the 21st century. It has a daunting three-hour, 40-minute running time but is so compelling and so completely accessible that it doesn't seem as long as most films half its length. This is a work of deceptive simplicity that grapples with the eternal theme of redemption...to watch this film can be a transforming experience...it culminates with a heightened sense of how the interplay of chance and choice, of good and evil, determine an individual's destiny."


APRIL 2001:

It's down to the last four Survivors in the Australian Outback. Who will win? Las Vegas oddsmakers favor Colby Donaldson, but a supposed insider has another theory.

The biggest suspense thriller brewing in Hollywood this spring is one that even the best screenwriters can't yet resolve. Will work continue, or will actors and writers go on strike?

"From Russell Crowe's "bloke"-laden Oscar acceptance speech to the return of "Crocodile Dundee" to "Survivor: The Australian Outback," Americans are snapping up things Australian, whether authentic or imagined.


MARCH 2001 -

The trailer for the movie "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone".

The trailer for the "re-imagining" of "The Planet of the Apes" made its debut in theaters and on the Internet last week. Directed by Tim Burton, the movie, opening July 27, has new characters and an entirely different story.

An updated version of the '70s cult sci-fi TV series Battlestar Galactica appears to be in the works. It is unclear whether the new TV series signals the end for a movie version that was reported to be in the works in 1999.


FEBRUARY 2001 -

Minority Report - starring Tom Cruise - a thriller, which is loosely based on a story by cult writer Philip K. Dick, is set in the not-too-distant future, where you can be held liable for crimes you haven't even committed. According to Variety, Cruise will play a detective who's accused of, and who must solve, a murder that hasn't happened yet. The Fox-DreamWorks co-production starts shooting this spring.

Speculation about Matthew Perry's future has flared after the Friends star's announcement that he had entered a rehab facility for an undisclosed treatment.

Las Vegas oddsmakers, who annually weigh in on who's likely to take home Oscar gold, are favoring Gladiator to win Best Picture and Julia Roberts to win Best Actress — agreeing with nearly every industry analyst by doing so. The Academy Awards are March 25.

Industry analysts predict that 10,000 of the 37,000 U.S. movie screens now in existence will go to black forever. Megaplexes with daring themed designs and services such as valet parking, full service restuarants and on-site babysitting apear to be the wave of the future.

JANUARY 2001:

Sigourney Weaver reportedly has agreed to play the indestructible Ripley for the fifth time in Alien 5, to be released in 2004 on the 25th anniversary of the first film.

A British magician whose daring illusions tricked the Nazis and saved countless lives in World War Two is to be immortalised in a Paramount Pictures film starring Tom Cruise. Jasper Maskelyne, a music hall conjurer, never fired a shot in battle, but his amazing feats played a key role in the Allied victory in Africa. Among his many triumphs, Maskelyne "hid" the Suez canal and conjured up illusions of armies and battleships, fooling German forces into retreat. The movie is based on the book "The War Magician" by American author David Fisher.

"Left Behind" - A Christian film; the story is fairly intriguing. Buck Williams ( Kirk Cameron), a determined reporter, travels to Israel to interview famed scientist Dr. Chaim Rosenzweig (Gordon Currie) about his breakthrough food-growing formula that will improve the world's food supply. While the two are standing in the middle of a wheat field, they are caught in a surprise Arab air attack. Before Israel can respond, without explanation, the planes begin to explode, falling out of the sky. Then, during a flight to London, Buck witnesses the disturbing disappearance of several passengers. A perplexed Captain Rayford Steele (Brad Johnson) turns the plane around and upon arriving in Chicago, discovers people all over the planet have disappeared. Family friend Pastor Bruce Barnes (Clarence Gilyard) explains that true believers were taken to Heaven.

Australian actress Cate Blanchett (''Elizabeth'') transforms herself into a Southern mom with ''the gift'' of psychic powers in the new thriller ''The Gift.''

Grammy race too close to call, the winner could be just about anybody. Nominations for the 43rd Grammy Awards, airing Feb. 21 on CBS, meander all over the musical map. Eminem, up for four trophies, stands to emerge as Grammy's dominant force, serving both as hero and villain for his brilliant and shocking Marshall Mathers LP, the likely best-album winner. Vince Gill got four nods, along with producer Rodney Jerkins, R&B sensations Sisqo and Joe and arranger/conductor Vincent Mendoza.

DECEMBER 2000:

Oscar's Crystal Ball - The Golden Globe nominations often serve as indicators for how the year's movies will fare when Oscar nominees are announced in February. . In the past 57 years, one of the two best-picture winners at the Golden Globes has taken the same honor at the Oscars 41 times. The Roman epic Gladiator and the drug war drama Traffic led the motion picture Golden Globe nominations this year with five each. The Golden Globe Awards will air live on NBC on Jan. 21.

Stanley Kubrick's classic film 2001: A Space Odyssey presents moviegoers with a vision of the future, as seen through 1968 eyes. So how much did Kubrick get right? Take a look at what was predicted and what has come to be.

2001 - A Space Odyssey: Baby Boomers - including many future scientists, and at least one future science writer - assumed that they were seeing the future when they watched the movie in 1968 ... that by the time 2001 rolled around, passenger flights to orbit would be routine, nuclear-powered ships would ply the darkness between the planets, alien civilizations would be discovered.

There is a tendency to think of the future as an exaggerated version of the present. Unable to imagine seemingly unsolvable problems solved, people conceive of future worlds in which everything bad about the present is magnified and multiplied. It's that tendency -- to reflect present fears in imagining the future -- that makes futuristic films of the past so fascinating.

Upcomingmovies.com - Find out about tomorrow's movies today. This site provides previews of the movies heading our way in the coming months. Each preview gives cast, crew, and plot information.

NOVEMBER 2000:

Did director Mamet predict the election chaos? MSNBC reports that Mamet's new film, "State And Main," foreshadows the current election imbroglio in Florida.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is revealing a big twist about Terminator 3: This time around, the assassination machine from the future will be a female.

Australian residents who live near the location where Survivor: The Australian Outback is being filmed are convinced the site is haunted by the spirits of Aborigines massacred by Europeans a century ago. There is no historical basis for the massacre according to the newspaper, The Australian. But the word-of-mouth legend has gained attention since CBS recently began filming its hit game show (to air starting Jan. 28) .

Coming to a theater near you in 2001:
Spring:
"Bridget Jones' Diary" starring Renee Zellweger (Miramax)
Jude Law, Joseph Fiennes and Ed Harris in Jean-Jacques Annaud's "Enemy at the Gate" (Paramount)
Director Ridley Scott and Julianne Moore join Anthony Hopkins in "The Silence of the Lambs" sequel, "Hannibal" (MGM)
"The Mexican" starring Brad Pitt and Julia Roberts (DreamWorks)
Summer:
Steven Spielberg's "A.I." from a story by Stanley Kubrick, stars Jude Law and Haley Joel Osment (Warner Bros.)
"America's Sweethearts" stars Julia Roberts, Billy Crystal and Robert Downey Jr. (Columbia)
Disney's big summer animated feature is "Atlantis," with voices by Michael J. Fox and James Garner
Eddie Murphy talks to the animals again in "Doctor Dolittle 2" (Fox)
Joe Johnston takes the helm for "Jurassic Park 3" with Sam Neill and William H. Macy (Universal)
Heath Ledger is the lead in "A Knight's Tale" (Columbia)
Baz Luhrmann's musical "Moulin Rouge," starring Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman (Fox)
Brendan Fraser in "The Mummy Returns" (Universal)
Ben Affleck and Cuba Gooding Jr. in director Michael Bay's "Pearl Harbor" (Disney)
Mark Wahlberg heads the cast of Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes" (Fox)
John McTiernan remakes "Rollerball" with Chris Klein and LL Cool J (MGM)
Jackie Chan, Chris Tucker and director Brett Ratner re-team for "Rush Hour 2" (New Line)
"Shrek," with voices by Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy and Cameron Diaz (DreamWorks)
Oscar-winner Angelina Jolie in "Tomb Raider" (Paramount)
Nicolas Cage in John Woo's "Windtalkers" (MGM)
Fall/Holiday:
"Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," directed by Chris Columbus (Warner Bros.)
Elijah Wood and Cate Blanchett in Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" (New Line)
"Monsters Inc." from Pixar, with the voices of John Goodman and Billy Crystal (Disney)
George Clooney heads an old-fashioned all-star cast in "Oceans 11" (Warner Bros.)
Tom Hanks stars in an untitled Sam Mendes project, the director's follow-up to "American Beauty" (DreamWorks)
2001:
Michael Mann's "Ali" with Will Smith as the charismatic champ is back in the ring (Columbia)
Sharon Stone returns in "Basic Instinct 2" (MGM)
"Captain Corelli's Mandolin," starring Nicolas Cage and Penelope Cruz, is John Madden's encore to "Shakespeare in Love" (Universal)
Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg file "Minority Report" (Fox).
And for the Truly Eager: 2002:
Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man," starring Tobey Maguire (Columbia)
A new installment of George Lucas' "Star Wars" (Fox)
The 20th anniversary re-release of "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" (Universal).

Left Behind, an action thriller based on a series of best-selling novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. In the first book, based on the Book of Revelations, Jesus appears on Earth to take believers to Heaven. Those "left behind" must endure mass confusion, fires and hysteria until they accept Christ as their personal saviour. A Feb. 2, 2001 release of the movie is planned, and its goal is to be the biggest box office movie of that week To help promote the film Cloud Ten is embarking on a controversial marketing scheme. The company released Left Behind on video October 31 - four months before its theatre release.

Simpsons creator Matt Groening and executive producer Mike Scully have given up trying to predict the expiration date of Springfield's most famous -- and infamous -- family. The future may hold a theatrical movie, but that's not likely until after the pop-culture icon finishes its prime-time run. With solid ratings and strong merchandise sales, that may not happen for a while. Acting and studio deals remain to be worked out, but Scully expects at least one more season after this one.

OCTOBER 2000:

Upcoming movies - just because there's trouble reported on the set, doesn't mean there will be trouble at the box office. Rumors, Not Predictions.

A new movie is filming in Pittsburgh - 'The Mothman Prophecies' - starring Richard Gere. It is a sort of mystery about a reporter who connects a lot of strange events in West Virginia.

Two Ivy league professors who used wealth and population figures to predict how many medals some countries would win at the Summer Games put on a gold-medal performance. The economics professors said their formula — which also factored in Australia's home-field advantage and government support for athletes — was 96 percent accurate. They predicted exactly the 97 medals brought home by American athletes.

In perhaps the most unlikely casting in years, Jennifer Love Hewitt will play Satan in The Devil and Daniel Webster. The star of I Know What You Did Last Summer and Fox's now-defunct series Party of Five and Time of Your Life joins Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins in the classic tale. In the film, Baldwin will play a writer who sells his soul to the devil but then employs a silver-tongued lawyer (Hopkins) to win it back from eternal damnation.



SEPTEMBER 2000:

Two more reality-based shows are headed your way -
MTV premieres FEAR this Thursday: a reality game show where six superstitious contestants are abandoned inside a haunted prison, equipped with headgear cameras and are assigned various ghostbusting tasks.
The UPN Network has a produced a full order (13 episodes) of ROAD RAGE, which pits speed demons against granny-creepers in a demolition derby track.

The fall television schedule - read on to see which of the new shows you might find appealing.

Will Brad Pitt be Batman in the 5th Batman movie?

Steven Spielberg's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is being re-released to theaters in March 2002 The special edition will feature never-before-seen footage, computer-generated enhancements and a digitally remixed soundtrack. The 1982 film, starring Henry Thomas and Drew Barrymore, is the fourth-highest-grossing film of all time domestically ($400 million).

Spin-offs from the 'Survivor' show's success - Upcoming 'reality' TV shows.


AUGUST 2000:
Forty million predicted to watch the 'Survivor' finale. But will the series be the ultimate ratings champ?

According to The Hollywood Reporter , David Duchovny is in preliminary discussions to reteam with Ivan Reitman in "Evolution." "Evolution" is a sci-fi comedy about the chaotic events after a meteor carrying one-celled organisms crashes on Earth.

'Final Fantasy' - this sci-fi epic opens next summer with evil aliens, white-knuckle action scenes and planet-size explosions.

'The Invitation' - Lance Henriksen, who played Frank Black in FOX's "Millennium," has landed the lead in the independent thriller "The Invitation," according to Variety. The story is about a eccentric and wealthy writer (Henriksen) who experiences a near-death encounter and decides to share his experience with his friends -- to the letter.

ABC has launched a nationwide search for contestants to compete in reality series The Mole. The show will, ABC says, follow 10 "demographically diverse contestants as they work together to complete a series of difficult physical and psychological tasks." The catch: One of the 10 is a saboteur, or mole, whom the other players must uncover. Potential candidates must apply online.

'Bless The Child' - a supernatural thriller by director Chuck Russell. "Most films of this nature are concerned only with the power of supernatural evil. Here we have a reminder that supernatural good can be powerful also."

JULY 2000:

The studios often save their worst movies for the last full month of summer, moving potential hits to the fall. Are there any sleeper hits in the upcoming August releases?

Who will be the last Survivor on CBS' series? An extremely observant keyboard jockey noticed something strange on the network's Web site that may give away the winning castaway's identity. Survivorsucks.com has some astute fans. So astute, in fact, that they've collectively predicted the last four contestants who've been given the boot, just by catching clues CBS has accidentally let slip. The winner will be unveiled on an extra-long episode Aug. 23.

Add Christopher Lee & Jimmy Smits to the dotted line list of celebrities slated to appear in STAR WARS: Episode 2. Smits will play Sen. Bail Organa of Alderaan, a character alluded to in the original STAR WARS. Also Gabriel Byrne is in final talks to appear in this next installment, due to hit theaters Spring 2002.

TERMINATOR 2 star, Robert Patrick has been tapped to pair with Gillian Anderson for the X-FILES' 8th season replacing David Duchovny who will only be in 11 of the scheduled 24 episodes.

New fall series premiering July 24th , MYSTERIOUS WAYS - NBC will broadcast six preview episodes of the hour drama this summer before it's exiled to PAX this fall. MYSTERIOUS WAYS couples new Dixie Chicks hubby, Adrian Pasdar and Rae Dawn Chong as a psychiatrist & anthropologist who investigate spooky happenings.

'Terminator 3' - T3's plot has Schwarzenegger battling a next-generation female terminator. T3 is slated to start production in spring 2001. James Cameron, who wrote and directed the first two Terminators and Titanic, passed on the behind-the-camera chores.

The Internet could transform the Olympics.


Star Trek: Voyager producer Rick Berman says plans are underway for the franchise's fifth television series in 35 years, to start in fall 2001 after Voyager wraps up its final season. "I believe it will be more Star Trek than anything since The Next Generation," he said. Actor Patrick Stewart told the Sci Fi Channel that the 10th Trek movie is in the works.

'The Cell' , due out August 18, is predicted to provoke a firestorm of criticism. The sci-fi thriller has a plot that requires a scientist (Jennifer Lopez) to literally get inside the mind of a comatose serial killer, but the real meat and potatoes of the film is the bizarre fantasy segments. In one scene, Lopez appears as the Virgin Mary; in another, she's wearing skimpy dominatrix gear.

Dungeons & Dragons: The Movie - Slated for release either this Thanksgiving or Memorial Day 2001, the film has been ten years and $35 million in the making. Planned as the first in a trilogy, it is loaded with special effects. It charts the exploits of an inexperienced party of heroes as they brave death to save the world from certain disaster.

Opens June 16, 2000 - TITAN A.E. - an animated science fiction film, set in the year 3028, the story begins after an evil race called the Drej destroy Earth and follows a rebellious teen-ager as he searches for the lost spaceship Titan, which supposedly holds the secret to destroying humanity's alien enemies. The film combines about 80 percent computer-generated images with traditional hand-drawn animation. For example, some sequences have 2-D characters in 3-D spacesuits riding 3-D vehicles.

MAY 2000:
Remake of "On the Beach" - It's a drama about people living out their last days, their last hours, and, finally, their last minute due to a nuclear holocaust. Shute's apocalyptic vision, which was turned into a film in 1959 starring Fred Astaire, Gregory Peck, and Ava Gardner, took place in the early 1960s. This Australian production, starring Armand Assante, Rachel Ward, and her husband, Bryan Brown, is set in 2006.

Despite all the promotion strategies and industry predictions, Hollywood is always in for some surprise hits or failures. You probably won't have to camp out in front of any movie theaters or wait in never-ending lines to see this summer's Hollywood blockbusters. No blockbusters forseen for this summer.

Cops, weathermen, and the Divine Miss M are among CBS's seven new shows this fall.

ABC announces that Who Wants to Be a Millionaire will be on four nights next fall, instead of three. The WB network also presents its fall schedule.

Heartthrob David Duchovny will be chasing aliens on The X-Files for another season after signing a contract worth more than $20 million.

Gladiator shall rule the box office again. Even the mighty John Travolta will be vanquished, predicts David Davis, an entertainment analyst for Houlihan, Lokey, Howard and Zukin. "Battlefield Earth will probably be limited to a $10 million to $12 million opening.Gladiator will probably double it." Auspicious omens: Last weekend's box office for Ridley Scott's tale of Maximus, a Roman general-turned-slave who fights his way back to splendor as a gladiator, was a couple of million dollars higher than DreamWorks estimated. The studio had hoped for a $25 million to $29 million weekend, because Gladiator is rated R, which keeps out the teen trade, plus it is an imposing two hours and 35 minutes long.

What will be the hottest summer film? Mission: Impossible 2, most theater operators say. And since 1996, when USA TODAY started informally polling them, the executives' predictions have proved prescient. (Last year, they got 10 hits right, though they missed sleepers The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project. ) "Five years ago, there might have been four or five pictures that would make $100 million," says Richard Fay of AMC, the nation's fourth-biggest chain. The spread of multiplexes and rising ticket prices have changed that, he says. Twelve movies could do it this summer.

APRIL 2000:
A Sneak Peak at "Andromeda" - "Andromeda" is the latest series to bear the Gene Roddenberry name. The show is a collaboration between the late Star Trek creator and one of Deep Space Nine's most prolific and thoughtful writers, Robert Hewitt Wolfe. SPACE.com goes inside the new series starring "Hercules"' Kevin Sorbo.

Movies on the Web - About a dozen films are expected to be available online at Miramax Web sites (such as the Miramax Cafe). No target date or rental fee was announced, but it's anticipated the flicks may be up and running next year. Viewers would download the files (100 to 200 megabytes, Windows Media format), which would take 15 to 30 minutes on a high-speed connection, and enter credit-card information to watch the film. Next month (May 5), Sightsound premieres its first made-for-the-Net feature film, Quantum Project, starring Stephen Dorff, Fay Masterson and John Cleese.

Possible fall of 2000 release: "GHOSTS OF MARS" - the film is set in a dusty frontier mining town on Mars nearly two centuries in the future. The story follows dangerous criminal Desolation Williams (Ice Cube) as Martian police (including Courtney Love) transfer him from the small town to a prison in the Martian capitol. Meanwhile, mining has disturbed the ruins of an ancient Martian civilization, unleashing a ghostly defense system designed to destroy all non-indigenous life on Mars.

It's TV pilot season - "that time of year when Hollywood works up samples of proposed series for the networks. Some are built around established stars. Others have catchy concepts. And some are just plain weird (a Claymation high school from the makers of Celebrity Deathmatch?) Here are some of the shows you may or may not see this fall."

FREQUENCY is a supernatural, science fiction-flavored movie in which ham radios serve as time-travel and destiny-altering machines. A police detective named John Sullivan (Jim Caviezel) inadvertently reaches back in time -- across a "parallel universe" opened up by solar storms -- and finds himself talking to his dead father, Frank (Dennis Quaid), who is somehow still living in 1969. Visual effects beautifully portray the wild flares of aurora borealis that seem to enable their connections.

The internet trailer for the upcoming trilogy "THE LORD OF THE RINGS" has set a record, amassing 1,671,000 downloads in one day, compared with roughly 1 million for the trailer for "STAR WARS: EPISODE I." The first installment of the trilogy, "THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING", debuts in 2001.

Star Trek V is Coming. Sources close to Trek have told SPACE.com that Paramount TV chairman Kerry McCluggage has given the green light to Trek's fifth series Star Trek: Birth of the Federation.

The Matrix directors want Romeo Must Die star Jet Li, already a huge star in his native Hong Kong, to join the Matrix sequels. Work on the back-to-back sequels will begin in 2001. 'Matrix 2' is scheduled to come out around Christmas 2002, with 'Matrix 3' out the following summer.

Leonardo DiCaprio says he is not, repeat, not going to assume the Anakin Skywalker mantle in the next Star Wars film. So who will be playing Anakin?

MARCH 2000:
HOMO SAPIENS 1900 (documentary) - "There's something intrinsically creepy about the scientific quest to create a new and improved human being, and "Homo Sapiens 1900," Peter Cohen's unsettling documentary history of eugenics, mercilessly zeroes in on exactly what that is. In turning people into laboratory specimens and using genetic theory to try to breed superior strains of people, scientists play God by making value judgments about the most desirable human qualities, usually deemed to be measurable intelligence and physical endowment. "

The number of commercials on prime-time TV is at an all-time high and it's even starting to worry the people who make ads. Last November, each hour of prime-time network TV contained an average of 16 minutes, 43 seconds of advertising - an addition of 59 seconds in just a year. The amount of ad time has gone up by nearly a minute and a half in just 2 years. Except for local news, prime-time is actually the LEAST cluttered time of day!

The once-peaceful hamlet of Burkittsville, Maryland, has told the producers of the sequel to "The Blair Witch Project" to forget about filming there again. The townspeople are incensed about the thieves and vandals who defaced gravestones and stole town property when they visited after the popularity of the movie. "Blair Witch 2" should hit the theaters this Halloween and a prequel is planned for the summer of 2001.

When it comes to predictions about the NBA, the Cavaliers radio announcer is a regular Nostradamus. More than 10 years ago, Joe Tait began saying that in the future, television would be far more important to the NBA than live fans. Among other things, he predicted cameras in the locker room.

March 15 — After a three-year break from filmmaking, Steven Spielberg has finally decided what his next movie is going to be. The two-time Oscar-winning director is going to pick up where his late pal Stanley Kubrick left off on a sci-fi project called "A.I." (Artifical Intelligence). Spielberg will write and direct the film for Warner Bros., with production to begin July 10. The film revolves around a childless woman who adopts an android that resembles a 5-year-old boy. Jude Law and Haley Joel Osment, both presently contending for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar, may work together in the movie. . Spielberg's slate cleared off considerably in February when he announced he wasn't going to do a big screen version of "Henry Potter." Hollywood watchers figured "Minority Report" would be Spielberg's first project since "Saving Private Ryan," which earned Spielberg the Oscar for Best Director in 1998. However, Cruise tells E! Online's movie columnist Anderson Jones that "Minority Report" has been bumped back to April 2001.

Paramount's Sleepy Hollow, racked up the most nominations for the 26th annual Saturn Awards. The Gothic thriller scored 11 nominations from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Films.

THE THIRD MIRACLE" Father Frank Shore (Ed Harris) is a "spiritual detective," investigating if a deceased person, Helen O'Regan, should be declared a saint.

FEBRUARY 2000:
Does Regis Philbin's prime gig on Who Wants to be a Millionaire mean the end of the once-inseparable team of Regis and Kathie Lee? Kathie Lee Gifford, who's pulling guest host duties on Letterman tonight, tells the New York Daily News that she might split from Live! With Regis & Kathie Lee.

Millennial movie stupidity

Need help making your Best Actor Oscar pick ? Try Kevin Spacey. That's according to Las Vegas oddsmaker Joe Lupo, who gives Spacey 9-to-5 odds to take home the little gold statue this year.

PITCH BLACK - "Alien" meets "Psycho" in a quality sci-fi thriller with a noir twist.

The nominations won't be announced until Feb. 15, but several Iowa State University experts in film, music and pop culture are already predicting who will be triumphant on Oscar night.

Saturday Night Psychics: NBC ventures into the realm of the supernatural with its new drama 'The Others'.

THE SIMPSONS KILL OFF A CAST MEMBER - Come February 13, someone in Springfield must die. But who? The folks at the Simpsons' archive are betting on Maude Flanders, while the New York Post thinks it's Moe the Bartender.

Sir Arthur C Clarke, the visionary science-fiction author who wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, plans to open a futuristic entertainment centre in Britain on January 1, 2001. The multi-million pound venture in Sir Arthur's childhood home of Taunton, in south-west England, has the backing of American astronauts - including Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the Moon and a long-standing friend of the author - and London's Science Museum. The centre, which has the working title of Arthur C Clarke's World of the Future, will include interactive "visions of the next century" supplied by scientists from the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (Dera) and the latest film technologists.

In the battle of the epic Mars flicks, Warner Bros. is blinking first. The studio has moved its Mars-themed Red Planet back nearly four months, from June 16 to Nov. 10. That leaves Mission to Mars, the offering from rival Disney, a clear takeoff March 31.


JANUARY 2000:
Do the Golden Globes Predict Oscar Winners? The annual awards show is often seen as a hargbinger of the Academy Awards, but its track record in predicting the eventual Oscar winners is mixed. Only four of the 13 Golden Globes winners last year went on to win Academy Awards. This year the DreamWorks fil "american Beauty" stariin gKevin Spacey and Annette Bening, took home three of the top awards at the Golden Globes ceremony. (Best drama, best director and best sreenplay.) The nominations for the Oscars will be announced February 15th.

The future of TV is the Internet.

DARK ANGEL - a Fox-TV drama from 'Titanic' director, James Cameron, is a sci-fi drama that is being targeted for next fall.

When people think MGM, they don't think of science fiction, they think of the Wizard of Oz and James Bond. While Supernova might not change that, it's an encouraging sign that the venerable cinematic empire may be looking spaceward. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer has more than 5,000 films in its vaults, making its library the largest in the world, but only a handful of SF movies have ever come out of the lion's mouth.

Supernova (2000) - The crew of a medical rescue ship must cope with a crazed stranger and the weird alien machine he's brought with him. Originally slated for a 1997 release, first director Geoffrey Wright and then Walter Hill walked off the project, leaving Francis Ford Coppola to cobble a final cut together. Meanwhile, the budget edged up to $70 million, ensuring that any embarrassment MGM receives over the film will be costly.

TRIBULATION is a new $9 million movie based on Bible prophecy. The film stars Gary Busey, Margot Kidder, and Howie Mandel. Produced by Canada's Cloud Ten Pictures and released straight to video, the story takes place during the "great tribulation," an era preceding the final Battle of Armageddon when, according to the biblical book of Revelation, the Devil is turned loose to wage war against Christians.

Actor Denzel Washington says he owes his success to a prophecy. When he was a 20-year-old college dropout, he was in his mother's beauty shop one day and a woman known for making predictions that came true, wrote on a piece of paper, "This boy is going to speak to millions of people." The fateful meeting came in time to persuade Washington to give college another try -- and to discover his acting talent. "Why didn't I meet her a year ago before I got kicked out of school?" Washington asked in an interview airing Sunday on CBS's "60 Minutes." He still has the prophetic piece of paper handed to him 25 years ago. "I keep it with me all the time," he said.

Get Ready For A Ton Of Award Shows ... Hollywood Averaged Nearly One Ceremony A Day In 1999.

Twenty years ago director Francis Ford Coppola made a series of bold predictions about the immediate future of film:
"•The videotape recorder would not only revolutionize the movie industry, it would become the most popular venue for viewing films.
•The computer would become the primary filmmaking tool, and future directors would sit at terminals and animate a film the way a novelist writes a book.
•Celluloid film would be phased out, and images would be beamed by satellite or carried via cable directly to a new generation of luxury "super-theaters."
•After the first big hit was made by a kid with a video camera or home computer, the "democratization" of filmmaking would topple the monopoly of the studios.
•The new technology would create a new audience that would accept non-linear storytelling and reject the dominance of the traditional, three-act script structure.
...It's amazing how prescient he was, how many of those predictions have come to pass and how these five points define the state of cinema at the threshold of the new century and millennium:"


DECEMBER 1999:
Millennium Emporium - PEOPLE ARE CASHING IN WITH BOOKS, MOVIES AND MORE ON WHAT SOME SEE AS IMPENDING DOOM.

For people whose attention spans can't take a 30-minute comedy, the UPN network is looking to cut that in half. UPN is considering airing 15-minute shows next fall. It has ordered the development of a handful of quick, slapstick comedies, in the "Three Stooges" tradition.

Technology Could Soon Hand TV Control to the Viewer. "The year is 2025. You're watching the World Series on television. The son of Derek Jeter is at bat, and Darryl Strawberry's heir is in the on-deck circle. You're holding a remote-control device. Click. You call up Mr. Jeter's batting record. Click. You move the camera into the New York Yankee dugout. Click. You enter a chat room to talk about the game. Click. You move the camera behind the pitcher's mound to get her perspective. (Remember, it's 2025). Click. You want to buy a Yankee hat or order a set of tickets for a future game or make a bet on the current game. Click. Click. Click. "

Predicting the Golden Globes and the Oscar Awards - Front-runners 'The Insider' and 'American Beauty'

Heading straight for video is another film titled"Y2K'. In this drama, one computer that operates a top secret missile silo in the Colombian jungles thinks it's 1969 and the U.S. has just suffered a nuclear attack. Louis Gossett Jr. stars as the CIA agent who must combat a hostile drug lord to save the world.

Studios can predict - about 80% of the time, according to marketing executives - how a movie will perform based on its opening Friday night gross. By Saturday morning, a movie can already be tagged a bomb.

Playing on only 305 screens, The Omega Code shocked Hollywood by grossing $2.4 million in its debut weekend. Its per screen average of $7,933 beat studio-financed big hitters like Fight Club and The Story of Us, pushing the $7 million indie suspense flick into the Top 10 box-office chart.

Hollywood gets religion, and film fans seem to be praying for more

The film forecast for this year has been partly to mostly ghostly. Hollywood has gone from Heaven to Hell and back again with numerous recent — and several upcoming — films about witches, spirits, angels and other related but less easily described supernatural and otherworldly phenomena." Hollywood is conjuring up at least three new films and a TV mini-series in 2000 and 2001 that envision the first human expedition to Mars.

MOVIE PRODUCTION HAS INCREASINGLY LEAVING THE U.S. FOR CHEAPER PRODUCTION COSTS IN OTHER COUNTRIES. In 1990, overseas productions made up 14% of all U.S. films and TV projects. By 1998, they comprised 27%. That has meant a fivefold increase in lost wages, spending and taxes to the U.S. and equaled more than $10 billion in 1998.For Americans working in the industry, such as sound technicians, caterers, extras, and other movie-related workers, the future is only getting worse. The vast majority of the business is going to Canada.


Sightsound.com, which offers movies and music for download over the Internet, said today it will offer one of the first movies specifically produced for initial release on the World Wide Web. ``The Quantum Project,'' to be produced by Metafilmics, will be a combination live-action and special-effects feature about quantum physics, the Web and spiritual mystery. The $3 million movie goes into production this year. Sightsound.com began offering digital music downloads in 1995 and added movies this year. Its slate of films, which can be downloaded in as little as 10 minutes depending on users' Internet hookups, include ``D.O.A.'' starring Edmund O'Brien and director Ed Wood's B-movie cult film ``Plan 9 From Outer Space.''

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DUE OUT IN 2000:
The Sixth Sense" writer-director M. Night Shyamalan has landed a reported record screenplay deal of almost $5 million for his latest work, "Unbreakable," a supernatural-tinged drama set in Philadelphia. Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson are expected to star in the Disney movie. The most previously paid for a screenplay was $4 million to Shane Black for "The Long Kiss Goodnight." Shyamalan, 29, reportedly will also receive another $5 million to direct the film, which Disney plans to release for Thanksgiving 2000.

November 10, 2000 - Antony Hoffman is making his feature film debut "Red Planet'' (Warner Bros.), which is filming in Australia and Jordan and is due out by winter. "Red Planet'' uses the premise of man's first mission to Mars going awry, with one astronaut (Carrie-Anne Moss) forced to decide whether to attempt a death-defying rescue of a stranded crew member (Val Kilmer) or obey orders and return to Earth without him. The film also stars Benjamin Bratt, Tom Sizemore and Terence Stamp.

"Al" - Steven Spielberg may be lined up to direct this film which would have been Stanley Kubrick's next project. It is the futuristic story about a young "robot" boy adopted by a childless woman.

"BLAIR WITCH 2" - a sequel to the 1999 surprise blockbuster movie. Also a spinoff TV series is in the works with the Fox Network.

"TAKEN" - a 20 hour miniseries by Steven Spielberg and Dreamworks, for the Sci-Fi Channel. An "adventure that weaves together over 50 years of alien abductions into the compelling story of one man's experiences." Will run in 2 hour installments over 10 consecutive nights.

"GENE RODDENBERRY'S ANDROMEDA" AND "GENE RODDENBERRY'S STARSHIP - One of these will star Kevin Sorbo ('Hercules') and they will debut in the fall of 2000. 'Andromeda' is about a scientist on a distant planet who is inadvertently transported 500 years into the future. 'Starship' tells the adventures of an exploratory space vessel.

``THE QUANTUM PROJECT'' - to be produced by Metafilmics, will be a combination live-action and special-effects feature about quantum physics, the Web and spiritual mystery. It will be directed by Francis Glebas, who directed one of the segments of Walt Disney's upcoming ``Fantasia 2000,'' an update of the animated classic. It will be one of the first movies specifically produced for initial release on the World Wide Web. By sightsound.com

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DUE OUT IN 2001 -
SPRING 2001 - And James Cameron, who won a raft of Oscars for the blockbuster "Titanic,'' is producing and co-writing two Martian adventures -- a 3-D film for Imax and a five-part mini-series for the Fox TV network -- both planned for the spring of 2001. While the scripts will differ, the movies will share props and sets to maximize production value. Both will chronicle an imaginary but realistic 500-day mission to the Martian surface, capped by the discovery of living bacteria, Cameron said.

Indiana Jones 4 - ?Search for Atlantis

"Terminator 3" - is moving towards production - James Cameroon, who directed T1 and T2 will not be a part of T3; starring (perhaps) Arnold Schwarzenegger.