PaladinNites   Posted at 2020-02-23 15:54:25(248Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Your tickets arrived in the usual way, but this time with a parcel. The note inviting you to tonight's show advises you to bring the parcel with you...  Welcome to the First Nighter Theater  Ah I see you followed the instructions and brought the parcel. You can open it now.  I see the puzzled look, let us just call this...insurance. The equipment may just come in rather handy for tonight's viewing. Especially with all the news about Coronavirus...And the fact that Wuhan just happens to be the home of China’s Bio-safety Level 4 lab, is probably just...Coincidence3 Your usual seat in the balcony awaits you..  Starring Arthur Hill, James Olson, Kate Reid, and David Wayne. Now settle in for a flick that spans 96 critical hours;  Piedmont, New Mexico. Population 68. Well down to 2 now. A Vandenburg CRT (crash retreval team) code name Caper-1 views the town thru a 1st gen Starlite scope. There is no evidence of movement in the sleepy town...excepts for all the buzzards circling overhead. A TS level satellite, code name Project Scoop, has been forced out of orbit and crashed. Telemetry beacon triangulates that it is in the town..Vandal-Decker radio call sign of Vandenburg AFB gives the order to enter and retrieve. The teams radio transmission ends in mid sentence. Something about the thing in white coming towards them. Scoop Project Director, Major Manchek orders a recon fly over of the town. The film shows multiple bodies all over the town. Locking down the base under security protocols, Manchek enters a secure room and pulls out a key marked "In case of FIRE, notify division 21 emergency only" His call sets off a WILDFIRE Alert.And sets in motion the gathering of specialists that form the strike force to investigate and hopefully neutralize any micro-biologic threat. They are; Dr Jeremy Stone Dr Ruth Levitt Dr Charles Dutton Dr Mark Hall But the only one with Top Secret Access is Dr Stone  The team of four core research scientists, who also include Dr. Charles Dutton and Dr. Ruth Leavitt, are summoned from their academic and research appointments to a top-secret underground facility with the code name of Wildfire, located in Nevada.  Wearing protective suits, Dr. Stone, the team leader, and Dr. Mark Hall, the team surgeon, are dropped in Piedmont by helicopter, where they search for the satellite. They find that the town's doctor had opened it in his office and that all of his blood had crystallized into powder. They soon discover almost all of the victims' blood had crystallized like the doctor's. Not all victims had died quickly: Two townspeople had gone insane before committing suicide. Stone and Hall retrieve Scoop and locate two survivors — a 69-year-old alcoholic and a 6-month-old infant.     Upon arrival they undergo a full day of decontamination procedures, descending through four disinfection levels to a fifth level where the laboratories are located. The Wildfire facility includes an automatic nuclear self-destruct device to cauterize,in case of containment outbreak. Dr. Hall, being single, is entrusted with the only key that can deactivate the device.  By examining Scoop the team discovers the microscopic alien organism responsible for the deaths. A greenish, throbbing life form is assigned the code name "Andromeda". [  Andromeda kills animal life almost instantly and is highly virulent. Members of the team study the organism using animal subjects, an electron microscope, and culturing in various growth media in an attempt to learn how it works. Meanwhile Hall tries to determine why an elderly Sterno drinker and the crying baby survived. What none of them realize yet is that Andromeda is constantly mutating to the environment it's in.   A military jet that overflew the restricted zone crashes near Piedmont after the pilot radios that his plastic oxygen mask is dissolving. Dr. Stone, the creator of the Wildfire laboratory, is accused by Dutton and Leavitt of designing the laboratory for research into biological warfare. Unbeknownst to other members of the team, Leavitt's research on the germ is impaired by her epilepsy, episodes of Petite Mal from flashing lights.  Hall realizes that the old drunk, Jackson, didn't die since his blood was acidotic from drinking Sterno and the baby survived since his blood was in alkalosis from crying continuously. Suggesting that Andromeda can survive only within a narrow range of blood pH. Just as he has this insight, the organism mutates into a non-lethal form that degrades synthetic rubber and plastics. It escapes the containment room into the room where Dutton is working. Once all the laboratory's seals start decaying from Andromeda's escape, the five-minute countdown to nuclear destruction is computer initiated. Hall rescues Leavitt from an epileptic seizure, triggered by the flashing red lights of Wildfire's alarm system. It is then the team realizes that the alien microbe would thrive on the energy of a nuclear explosion and would consequently be transformed into a super-colony that could destroy all life on Earth. Hall races against the laboratory's automated defenses of gas & lasers in the inner core to reach a station where he can insert his key and disable the nuclear bomb.  But does he make it. Trailer; Production Notes; Of all the many movies made from Michael Crichton novels, this in the only one in which the author makes a cameo appearance. Crichton wrote the rough draft for the novel from which this film is adapted while he was still a medical student. He was inspired after a conversation with one of his teachers about the concept of crystal-based life-forms. The Wildfire scientific lab sets cost more than $300,000 to build and were described at the time as "one of the most elaborately detailed interiors ever built." The Central Core set required the digging of a 70-ft.-deep by 40-ft.-wide hole in a soundstage. The Andromeda Strain was one of the first films to use advanced computerized photographic visual effects, with work by Douglas Trumbull, who had pioneered effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey, along with James Shourt and Albert Whitlock who worked on The Birds. Reportedly $250,000 of the film's budget of $6.5 million was used to create the special effects, including Trumbull's simulation of an electron microscope. The monkey was "killed" by being placed in a large set filled with carbon dioxide. When the monkey's cage, which contained oxygen, was opened the animal was rendered unconscious by the CO2. An assistant director was off camera and brought a breathing apparatus to the monkey, who recovered immediately. A few additional details about the controversial death scene of the monkey in the laboratory: 1) It was approved by the ASPCA who was present during the filming of the scene. For just one try. 2) While the monkey was filmed suffocating on CO2, assistant director James Fargo was standing just off camera wearing scuba gear and holding a second oxygen source. 3) The monkey was revived just seconds after going unconscious -- a little too quickly, as it turns out. Watching the scene closely, the viewer can clearly see a shadow moving towards the monkey just as it goes limp. And since there was only one take, it couldn't be edited out. A 2003 publication by the Infectious Diseases Society of America noted that The Andromeda Strain is the "most significant, scientifically accurate, and prototypic of all films of this [killer virus] genre ... it accurately details the appearance of a deadly agent, its impact, and the efforts at containing it, and, finally, the work-up on its identification and clarification on why certain persons are immune to it. If you've never seen this - do give it a go. Until next review posting Best Paladin  Last edited by PaladinNites on 2020-03-16 15:10:47 | |
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Post liked by - bigboy12 , bombegranate  , Sheolraver   , kentk9 , Deep61 , Janor , Csabaxb, miok | ||
| miokPosted at 2020-02-23 17:19:13(248Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Excellent review, as always. Thanks Paladin | |
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| CsabaxbPosted at 2020-02-23 17:21:34(248Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| very good book, read it in my youth, love it:) | |
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| Post liked by - Janor, PaladinNites | ||
| JanorPosted at 2020-02-23 18:09:28(248Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Fantastic review and very well written as all your reviews. Thank you:-) | |
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| KillerJanePosted at 2020-02-23 18:35:00(248Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| The book and the movie ... are excellents ... I read a lot of SciFi but this one is fabulous Last edited by KillerJane on 2020-02-23 18:38:06 | |
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| Post liked by - miok, Csabaxb, Janor, PaladinNites | ||
| PaladinNitesPosted at 2020-02-26 22:42:36(247Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| And one of our members has this torrent for those who would like to see it;  Best Paladin Last edited by PaladinNites on 2020-02-26 22:43:56 | |
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| Post liked by - miok, Janor | ||
| miokPosted at 2020-02-27 00:58:04(247Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| I have both Audiobooks. The Andromeda Strain & The Andromeda Evolution I'll get them uploaded very soon. | |
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| PaladinNitesPosted at 2020-02-27 01:02:57(247Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Oh that will be great miok....PM me when you do if you don't mind. Paladin | |
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| SheolraverPosted at 2020-06-26 15:12:13(230Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Nice write up PaladinNites. Thanks for the memories. A classic to be sure. Saw it with my mom in '73 as a wee lad of 9. Read the book soon after. Ever hooked. | |
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| Post liked by - miok, Beowulf, Janor, PaladinNites | ||
| bombegranatePosted at 2020-06-26 18:13:53(230Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Cool review! Cool Movie! Must have watched it at least a dozen times! | |
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| Post liked by - PaladinNites, Janor | ||
sherb Posted at 2020-06-26 22:42:01(230Wks ago) Report Permalink URL | ||
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| Fantastic review of an old classic. Thanks PaladinNites | |
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| Post liked by - Janor, PaladinNites | ||