Meteor

OK, maybe this might not be the movie it should have been, and OK, there are better ones out there nowadays, but this is still no excuse for releasing it this way on DVD.I explain.I own a Laserdisc released some years ago bi Imagine Entertainment. I compared the Laserdisc and the DVD and the evidence is there.One seems a copy released by Orion Pictures (Laserdisc) and the one on DVD is a copy released by American International.Both video transfers seem to be equals, but where they differ a lot is in the sound reproduction, and here as it is usual by now for MGM/UA releases, no effort was made to seek a Surround sound copy of the movie.THIS MOVIE CAN ONLY BE FULLY ENJOYED IN SURROUND!The Laserdisc by Image/Orion has a conventional Dolby Digital Surround Stereo sound. From what I have experienced on my Home Theatre, it appears to be 4.1 Surround Stereo, because my subwoofer came wide alive during the main titles and the entrance of "Meteor" (the gigantic meteorite).It truly chills your blood when you hear it this way.The MGM/UA release instead, despite being a 2.0 channel Pro Logic Mono, is flat and mostly compressed towards the Center Channel, and this for a movie of the '70s!Earthquake, The Towering Inferno, Midway and also this movie were all commercialized at the time of their releases for being provided with the Sensurround process, which is a multi-channel process and not, as everybody knows, a monaural one.I could have still stomached a conventional 2-channel Stereo version of this movie, but releasing it this way, just as it happened with Universal and their own dud on DVD, Midway, and yes, even MacArthur, just lets me assume that there are morons out there who do not know anything about movie history, nor do they know what marketing is all about.Studios complain constantly that they don't have the money to restore all the movies, but amazingly they always find the millions to continue producing stupid and lousy movies, while neglecting their own vaults of the past.Yes, every now and then they make an exceptional effort to dish out a decently remastered old movie, but there are many that never get the royal treatment.OK. "Meteor" is not a masterpiece, nor is it a classic, but what it is and was even back then, is to be an experimental movie, just as the others I have mentioned before.They were blockbusters in their own time, because they had innovated the sound barrier, just as twenty years earlier happened with panoramic Widescreen processes.To demote such pictures to flat Mono Sound, is not just an insult to us, the collectors, but rather an insult to all the people who worked so hard to make these movies, such groundbreaking products.It is amazing that in our day and age of High Technology, Digital Revolution and miniaturization we're just not able to find the correct copies to release on DVD.This speaks volumes for the neglect and the carelessness that the major Studios have had for their own movie vaults...They might have known glory in the past, but today they show us quite a different face. Age has caught up with them...Unfortunately, there are some out there, like me, like you the movie collector, who know these things better than even Studio owners and managers.I would like to know who hires them, and how really the Movie Studios are lead, to have become so shallow, ignorant and disrespectful for their own acquisitions and investments of the past...Shall we have the same story as with "The Dirty Dozen", "A Bridge Too Far" and "Battle of Britain" all over again?Being re-released various times in Mono sound, just to be, Miracle of Miracles, re-released one more time, and this time not just in plain Stereo, but rather with very sharp 5.1 Surround tracks.Is it just laziness then?Or is it just, what they seem to think, a "smart" marketing move?If a movie, all of a sudden, is finally released with its proper soundtrack, when all we had to deal with for years were bad copies of the same, it can only mean one thing: they were sitting on the good one all that time, speculating for the right time to pop it up under our noses.This is the same thing happening here, with "Meteor".Dealing with the movie itself, I still prefer it much more to the newer ones around these days. My reason being oriented toward the acting and the actors playing in this movie.Where else can you find Sean Connery, Natalie Wood, Brian Keith, Martin Landau and Henry Fonda assembled in a movie?Only here, in this one, and they do indeed deliver.Have you ever experienced Brian Keith in Russian? Well here he DOES so, and pretty brilliantly too, so much so that there isn't even an American inflection in his Russian (must have been a Hell of a Speech Coach he had at his side!).The special effects, for those years were top notch and should be viewed these days with some detachment.My four stars go to the movie, not the DVD. The DVD deserves 1 Minus.Still, if you don't own it and want to watch a dated but still entertaining movie, I can still recommend it, although with strong reserves.

There’s something about a good disaster flick that we just can’t seem to resist. Inexorably, we’re drawn to the spectacle of destruction, the magnitude of disaster, the utter futility of man’s diminutive efforts in the face of seemingly insurmountable forces arrayed against him. There have been films about fires and shipwrecks, storms, earthquakes, tornadoes, and even nuclear war. The granddaddy of them all, however, concerns perhaps one of the greatest potential disasters mankind could possibly experience: the impact of a giant asteroid upon the Earth.If you’re thinking that this has been done already, you’re right, but neither Armageddon nor Deep Impact were the first asteroid/comet disaster flick. I’m not even sure if that honor falls to 1979’sMeteor, a film that is perhaps less well known but every bit as good as the aforementioned films. Meteor features a star-studded cast and interesting plotline that will keep your attention until the final few moments.Paul Bradley (Sean Connery) is an ex-NASA scientist who has been recalled to duty by Harry Sherwood (Karl Malden). Bradley isn’t happy about this, but any misgivings he has are quickly put by the wayside when he discovers the reason. A recently discovered comet has plowed through the asteroid belt and impacted with one of the larger ones, Orpheus. Some of the fragments are headed for Earth, including a chunk of rock five miles wide traveling 30,000 miles per hour. If it hits, it will be the end of civilization.But there’s hope. Bradley’s main project at Nasa was Hercules, an orbiting platform bristling with nuclear missiles and designed for an emergency the likes of Orpheus. Problem solved, it seems, but things aren’t that easy. Hercules’ missiles are not targeted at space, it seems, but rather have been redirected at the Soviet Union. The platform’s very existence is a closely guarded secret, and its control has been turned over to General Adlon (Martin Landau), who vehemently opposes their revelation and use.Fortunately, wiser heads prevail, and the president (Henry Fonda) announces the existence of Hercules to the world. But again, there’s a problem. The considerable explosive power of the American missiles are not enough, it seems, and the president calls upon the Soviets to add to Hercules firepower with their own orbital nuclear weapons.At first, the Soviets refuse to admit to the existence of their own space platform, but after Dr. Alexei Dubov (Brian Keith) and his attractive translator Tatiana Nikolaevna Donskaya (Natalie Wood) arrive in New York to see the preparations being made by the Americans to destroy Orpheus, they finally agree to use Peter the Great, their counterpart to Hercules. The combined nuclear megatonnage of both nations’ missiles is enough to destroy Orpheus, but nothing like this has ever been tried. Will it work? Will the Earth be saved? As smaller fragments begin to rain down and cause their own havoc, the inhabitants of planet Earth can only wait in agonizing anxiety for the final answer.Meteor is great fun. The action is well paced and thought out; there’s never a moment when we’re not engrossed in the goings on. The acting is top-notch, but that’s to be expected with a cast of this caliber. Connery is, well, Connery. He’s great as Bradley, and is every bit as convincing an intellectual as he was a secret agent as James Bond. Karl Malden also performs admirably, though his character always seems to be ancillary to Connery’s.The real fun, though, is watching Landau and Keith. Landau is brilliant as the single-minded Adlon. He’s constantly ranting and raving about the dangers he sees in admitting to Hercules, and later about allowing the Russians into a top-secret American facility. He’s utterly believable and eminently convincing. Quite often, he steals the scene when he’s on a roll.Then there’s Keith. He’s delightful as Dubov, and gets to deliver most of the film’s humor. His lines, mostly in Russian, are well delivered and his mannerisms are on the money. We believe he’s Russian, and we like him. Surprisingly, Natalie Wood’s role is limited. For the most part she’s relegated to translating for Keith, although she does have a few scenes developing a budding romance with Connery. Want more? There are also appearances by Trevor Howard, Richard Dysart, Johnny Yune, Bibi Besch, and Joseph Campanella.How about the plot? As you can imagine, it revolves around the impending impact and man’s efforts to stop it. But there are also subplots, Bradley’s history with NASA, the obligatory romantic interest, and the broader political difficulties in orchestrating a joint American-Soviet assault on Orpheus. In this respect, Meteor is a product of its time.If there’s a weak point to Meteor, it is the special effects. The missiles and space vehicles look like models, and Orpheus resembles nothing so much as a large piece of rock from your gas grill. The disaster scenes are a little better, but at times we can “see the strings”. None of this is ever enough to detract from the fun, however, and to a degree even adds to it.Arriving among the last wave of the seventies disaster flick craze, Meteor deals with a genuine threat to planet Earth. The film is science fiction, though, and as such there’s plenty of fiction mixed in with the science. It’s doubtful whether a score of nuclear missiles would be able to destroy a five-mile wide asteroid; more likely they would shatter it into a host of pieces that might do even more damage.Still, Meteor is a great film when taken for what it is: escapist sci-fi disaster flick entertainment. It’s one of my favorite all time films, and I’m sure it will be one of yours, too.Note: This bluray release was a surprising find for me. Finally, one of my favorite movies is available with crystal clear picture and sound. To some degree, that brings more attention to the questionable effects, but if you consider the time period when the film was made you can get by that. Most enjoyable ride!

I would list this movie as one of the reasons I am grateful you can buy DVDs of your favorite movies. If I could only have 10 movies in my video library, this would be one of them.Some of the biggest screen stars of the day were featured in this last gasp of glasnost. Sean Connery, Brian Keith,, Martin Landau, Natalie Wood (who is coincidentally cast as a Russian translator when she herself was born to Russian parents).The screenplay adds lots of nice realistic touches that draw you into the panic of a world on the uncontrollable brink of annihilation. It is gratifying to see Sean Connery unfettered and free to curse and rail.Part of the appeal is to see high-level bureaucrats at each others throats and to see how there is a rest of the world and that they are affected as well. It is eerie to see that the very first American landmark struck is the World Trade Center towers.It should be noted that the screenplay was written by those whose having a great deal of war movie screenplay experience, such as "Patton", "Sink The Bismarck", and "The Day The Earth Stood Still".The orchestration aptly relays the gravity of the moments where dialog is not possible.

... or made in a time where the cutting-edge digital billion dollar special visual effects and animation weren’t available. I have been waiting AGES to see this disaster flick (as a HUGE fan of the genre). Sad to say (/type) the wait SO was NOT worth it. Don’t get me wrong it’s better than The Core, but it’s so nowhere near as awesome as Earthquake/ Towering Inferno. My second favourite Bond is a great, unsurprisingly, leading action hero man. However even he can’t make this, rather disturbing in places, movie work. It’s entirely watchable, if somewhat boring in places. It’s also terribly slow in parts. The sequences of mass E.L.E.s are quite well done but the lack of budget / advanced effects becomes glaringly obvious. Picture quality, for blu ray, ain’t great. The film does play in English. However there’s no subtitles, not even english. At 1 hour 46 minutes it’s not a tough slog. The disc played on my uk bought blu ray player. The cast is quite good. Worth a watch but perhaps as a rental.

Average Thriller from 1979, Starring Sean Connery as a Scientist trying to Stop a Giant Meteor from Destroying Mankind, This was before Armaggedon and Deep Impact, But still a Classic which probably Flopped in Cinemas back in 1979.

One of those Sean Connery films not often on the radar, but its a good watch with a good cast and effects

This is a film which I ordered on behalf of my brother, Stefan. We both loved this film and I used to have it on Beta Max and on VHS. Sean Connery was really good in this film.

Region 1 only all star cast usa and ussr must work together to destroy a meteor heading earths way.... Very good film. In its day