Everything you never wanted to know about the 2004 movie of Thunderbirds in one impossible-to-digest video. We’ll work on the tagline, but hey, it’s finally here! Earlier this year, Andrew Clements came to me with the idea of commemorating the 20th anniversary of the Thunderbirds movie. Andrew wrote an enormous review of the movie forContinue reading “Thunderbirds (2004) The Movie | A 20th Anniversary Retrospective”
Category Archives: Analysis
In Conversation With Peter Borg: The Making of Gerry Anderson’s The Investigator
For the first time in over 50 years, Maltese actor Peter Borg speaks about his experiences making the Gerry Anderson pilot film, The Investigator.
Filmed In Malta: Rare 1970s Interview with Gerry Anderson
Thanks to the team at Filmed In Malta, I am delighted to share and analyse two archive newspaper reports from The Times of Malta dated 1971 and 1973, which shed some light on Gerry Anderson’s visits to Malta during the filming of both The Protectors and The Investigator. They are revealing glimpses into the shift in Gerry Anderson’s career, as well as the British film industry as a whole during the early 1970’s.
VIDEO: The Complete Map of Four Feather Falls Explained
In 1959, musical maestro Barry Gray approached Gerry Anderson and the AP Films team with a concept for a television series set in the Wild West. AP Films had recently started developing the technique that would later become known as Supermarionation to produce puppets with automatic electronic lip sync. Having worked for several years under the control of children’s author Roberta Leigh on The Adventures of Twizzle and the first series of Torchy The Battery Boy, Barry Gray’s Western series was the stepping stone for AP Films to become television producers in their own right.
All About Star Fleet with Ben Page and Jack Knoll
Settle in for an in-depth conversation about the 1980s puppet television series, Star Fleet, originally made in Japan as X Bomber. Now, before you blow a gasket, yes, I’m aware it’s not a Gerry Anderson series. But it’s puppets and it’s sci-fi and it was influenced by Supermarionation so as far as I’m concerned it’s fair game! However, I’m a newbie when it comes to Star Fleet so I needed to recruit an expert to help me cover this unique television series. Enter filmmaker, puppeteer, and Anderson Entertainment content producer, Ben Page.
The Thunderbirds Video Games Retrospective
Thunderbirds has action, suspense, some combat scenarios, a range of vehicles to operate, and a wide collection of characters with unique specialist skills. Surely, a video game based on the format is as easy as interpreting Alan Tracy’s nigthmares? So, why has every single Thunderbirds game that’s ever been produced not hit the mark for me?
The Dark Side of Four Feather Falls
The richly detailed Wild West world of Four Feather Falls is full of colourful characters. Gerry Anderson fans who are only casually familiar with this early Supermarionation series might think it’s a charming and twee show for kiddies about talking animals, a singing sheriff, and a magical Native American chief. Now, they’re not exactly wrong about that, but there’s quite a bit more to it.
Which scene from Thunderbirds is being filmed in this photo? Here’s the long answer…
For years I’ve looked at this behind the scenes photograph from Thunderbirds and tried to work out which episode/scene is being filmed. It’s been published in countless books, magazines, and websites over the years and I’ve never found a definitive answer. The puppet characters and the set being worked on are so brightly lit and generic that it’s difficult to make out any distinctive details to make it abundantly obvious which scene is being worked on. In the past I’ve seen some folks identify it as Pit of Peril, End of the Road, Edge of Impact, and a miriad of other alternatives – some of which seemed credible but didn’t quite sit right with me. So, I finally decided to undertake my own investigations. This article started life as an unpublished tweet that got out of hand. You folks know how I like to make a mountain out of a mole hill, so I’ve decided to convert my research into a blog post so that I’m not hampered by Twitter’s pesky character limits. But just like Twitter, the whole thing ended up turning into an argument…
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