Announcement: The Blogathon From Another World, April 9–10, 2016

It's on. The Blogathon From Another World has started. To see the posts, go to:
http://chrissturhann.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-blogathon-from-another-world-hits.html

In honor of two Sci-Fi movie milestones in April, Blog of the Darned will be hosting The Blogathon From Another World, April 9–10, 2016:

• April 7 would have been the 70th birthday of science fiction special effects makeup artist, Stan Winston. Winston died in 2008 of multiple myeloma, a blood cancer. Stan Winston did landmark effects in the John Carpenter's The Thing, The Terminator (and Terminator 2: Judgment Day), Aliens, Predator, Jurassic Park, and many more.
• April 6, marks the 65th anniversary of the 1951 Christian Nyby/Howard Hawks classic, The Thing From Another World.
  [Updated April 6, 2016: I'm not sure what happened here. It turns out the release date for The Thing From Another World is actually April 27, 1951, not April 6. Both IMDB and Wikipedia agree on that date. I'm not sure where I got April 6, I'm pretty sure I didn't pull it out of my butt. Possibly, the date was updated since I posted this or I got it from a different source. Anyway, apologies.]

In the context of The Blogathon From Another World, the broadest possible definition is applied. Films can be of any era from Georges Méliès A Trip to Moon to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The only restriction is that it must be a theatrical film, not television, i.e., Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan is fine, Star Trek, the original TV series, not so much. Beyond that, just about anything is fair game, Godzilla (radioactive monster), Spider-Man (radioactive spider), or Kiss Me Deadly (radioactive beach house). Okay, so maybe the last one wasn't the best example, but I bet if you turned on Kiss Me Deadly during the two minutes you might think it's a Sci-Fi film.

Since most of my film cronies lean toward classic film, I encourage participants to step outside of their comfort zones. Obviously the 1950s was great time for science fiction, but so were the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. Some ideas just to get you started:

• A comparison of a classic sci-fi film and its modern remake, like the 1953 War of the Worlds with the Spielberg version. 
• A look at several Sci-Fi films by the same actor, director, or effects artist. For example, two of my all-time top five science fiction films star the same actor, and no, it's not Harrison Ford. 
• A review of a great underrated Sci-Fi film, like They Live or Miyazaki's, Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
• Sci-Fi films where the sequel is better than the original, or where the sequel is so bad it kills the franchise

Lineup so far

• 301 Words – Baseball writer Geoff Young steps out of the batter's box and looks at Serenity (2005)
• Blog of the Darned – That would be me. I'll be doing The Evolution of Movie Robots: Metropolis to Chappie 
• BNoirDetour! – BNoirDetour looks at Dark City (1998)
• Christy's Inkwells – Christy looks at Mysterious Island (1961)
• CineMaven's ESSAYS from the COUCH – CineMavens brings us a Mara Corday Triple Feature, briefly covering three sci-fi classics from the 50's: The Black Scorpion (1957), Tarantula (1957), and The Giant Claw (1957).
• F for Films – Josh Wilson looks at Tron (1982)
• Film Perspective – Elise Sitzman tackles Contact (1997)
• Horrible Imaginings Film Fest & Podcast – My San Diego homeboy Miguel Rodriguez and I will be doing a podcast on Frau im Mond (1929). Great suggestion, Miguel. This has been on my bucket list for a while.
• In The Good Old Days Of Classic Hollywood – Crystal takes on Spielberg's 1982 classic, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial
• Movie Movie Blog Blog – Steve Bailey looks at Spiderman 2 (2004), a film where the sequel surpasses the original
• Serendipitous Anachronisms – Summer Reeves looks at the anime classic Akira (1988)
• Speakeasy – Kristina looks at The Valley of Gwangi (1969)

Please use the #BlogathonFromAnotherWorld when promoting the blogathon. I also created the following graphics. Please feel to use any of them or the one at the top to promote/use on blogathon posts. More to come later.

I created this with the Star Wars Crawl Creator;
you can see the full crawl here
[Need to click, BEGIN to see it run] 

If you are interested, please post a comment indicating your planned topic. Or feel free to contact me using the email link by clicking my name under About Me.

Thank you