Meteor (1979)HD
Meanwhile, more meteorite fragments strike Earth (one inside Siberia), and the Soviets finally agree to join in the effort. Both satellites are coordinated, and turned towards the incoming large asteroid as smaller fragments continue to strike the planet, causing great damage, including a deadly avalanche in the Swiss Alps and a tsunami which devastates Hong Kong. With hours remaining prior to Orpheus' impact, as planned, Peter the Great's missiles are launched first because of its relative position to the asteroid, with Hercules's missiles timed to be fired 40 minutes later.
Meteor (1979)HD
Eventually, the missiles reach the meteoroid. The first wave of missiles strikes the rock, causing a small explosion, the second wave follows with a larger blast, and the third wave creates an enormous explosion. When the dust clears, the asteroid appears obliterated. In New York City, the radios broadcast the good news: Orpheus is no longer a danger to Earth. Just then, the subway station occupants are rescued.
Theodore R. Parvin received the idea for the story from a Saturday Review article by Isaac Asimov about a meteor hitting a major city in the United States. Parvin hired Edmund H. North to write the screenplay, who took further inspiration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Project Icarus. However, Ronald Neame and Sean Connery disliked both North's script and a rewrite by Steven Bach, and so hired Stanley Mann to completely re-write the screenplay. This led to a Writers Guild of America dispute over whether North should be credited as a co-writer.[7]
Don't forget also that Neame insisted on using his own piece of lava rock for the meteor of the film's title. He lumped his crew with insisting that one. From the beginning he wasn't exactly helping the VFX war.
There's a REALLY impressive black box dump tank miniature of Honk Kong (matted precisely over a still of the real city) for the epic tidal wave shot, and it really holds up today IMO. Reminds me of similar black box shots in digital effects stuff like the opening of X Files The Movie. Along with that there are many other great shots too, like the left over devastation of the New York, which is really simply but effectively handled (still photo work on an animation stand intercut with an exploding miniature of the WTC licked with coloured filters from the optical printer). The final shot of the exploding meteor is a very clever abstraction of high speed ignited gas photography.
Neame had an interview in the same AC issue (december 1979) which covered the production of Spielberg's 1941. He hardly blamed anyone at that time and he even praised Lohmann to the point of claiming he would be his first choice for every future film of his (they never worked together again, at least in a feature). I haven't seen METEOR in ages, but as a disaster film enthusiast back in my youth I never felt it was never a very enjoyable film. My problem wasn't the shoddy effects and cheap look for a major film (I believe there's even some red-tinted stock footage of collapsing buildings after the big meteor hits NYC), it was the script, which tried to hard to be serious with boring and ridiculous results. Robert Wise's THE HINDENBURG also tried to be serious and it was boring too, but it never went to that degree of campiness. And from a technical point of view, you still can't beat Whitlock's matte-paintings and Robert Surtees lush, old fashioned photography.
The single best action sequence occurs as a meteor impact demolishes the underground base where the Hercules operation is headquartered. The survivors make their way out through the subway system as suddenly the walls crack open, releasing a flood of muddy water. One incidental character actually drowns in the thick, brown sludge. Perhaps not the most expected way to perish in an asteroid flick.
First thanks for all the hard work giving meteor some new life.I attempted to build a board and tried to fire it up last night, but I ran into a similar issue as robotworkshop above. I powered the game on, saw the new light show for a few second and then random coils fired for a few seconds, turned off the pin. I am using an original MPU-200 as well, so I will try the different timings, but if you happen to figure out the issue with yours robotworkshop please let me know.
My test rig/simulator has an actual Bally transformer and bridge board and also has a full set of coils. It was acting like it did in meteor. I can usually tell right away since the flipper relay on the driver will act up too.
One snag, though: The 14 nuclear missiles won't be enough to thwart the meteor. It's too big! (It's also too big to be properly termed a "meteor," despite the film's title, but never mind.) Luckily, the Americans are pretty sure the Soviets have a counterpart to Hercules that's just as secret as Hercules is. If the Yankees and the Russkies were to combine their powers, they could save the world. But will Cold War politics get in the way?
The military commander at Hercules headquarters is Major-General Adlon (Martin Landau), and he is VERY SKEPTICAL of telling the Soviets that Hercules even exists, let alone inviting their top astrophysicist and his boredom-enhancing translator into the command center. Adlon's theory is that the asteroid will burn up when it enters the Earth's atmosphere, and that all this panicking and secret-revealing and Russia-cooperating-with is therefore unnecessary. In general, Adlon is opposed to everything, especially science, whose representatives have calmly explained that a five-mile-wide chunk of rock is too big to just "burn up" when it enters the atmosphere. (It is also too big to be called a "meteor," but I believe we have covered that.)
After a collision with a comet, a nearly 8km wide piece of the asteroid "Orpheus" is heading towards Earth. If it will hit it will cause a incredible catastrophe which will probably extinguish mankind. To stop the meteor NASA wants to use the illegal nuclear weapon satellite "Hercules" but discovers soon that it doesn't have enough fire power. Their only chance to save the world is to join forces with the USSR who have also launched such an illegal satellite. But will both governments agree?
Sean Connery is called in by Karl Malden to help plot the meteor's destruction by using a weapons platform he designed just for this purpose but which the military (Martin Landau) seized and circumvented for their own nefarious use (like pointing it at Russia).
It might have been more exciting had these little meteors affected out main cast as they have to run from place to place avoiding them and having to reset up their headquarters in preparation for the big nuke launch. Maybe have our heroes all scattered around the globe moving from place to place from the little meteors until they meet up in the main location where they prep the nukes together.
WHEN TIME RAN OUT is most assuredly the worst of the worst when it came to all of these disaster epics. Hell, even THE SWARM is more fun and entertaining than all three of these "meteor/asteroid" films. I would rather watch the 2 1/2 hour version of THE SWARM than anything directed by Michael Bay. Great review, interesting to "revisit" this pathetic movie ?
Before movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact came along and reaped a whirlwind at the box office, subject matter involving asteroids and meteors potentially falling to Earth and wiping out humanity had already been done to a more unsuccessful degree in Meteor, released in 1979. Taking elements from Fail-Safe and redepositing them into the disaster movie formula of the 1970s, which usually consisted of including a number of notable stars in the main cast and using an array of large scale and explosive special effects, this $22 million dollar turkey sank upon release and was one of the major factors in the downfall of American International Pictures.
Unfortunately, despite having a fundamentally exciting plot, the film goes nowhere and does nothing with it.It is revealed that a huge meteor is on collision course with earth, a rock so big that, unless it is diverted or destroyed, its impact could cause another Ice Age. The American president (Henry Fonda) instructs professor Dr. Paul Bradley (Sean Connery) to figure out how to deflect or destroy the meteor. Bradley used to head a research programme whose job was to compile strategies for saving the planet from rogue asteroids and meteors. After arranging to have nuclear missile-loaded satellites placed in orbit around the Earth for use against such a threat, Bradley quit when he later discovered these satellites were being used instead for espionage purposes.
At this time, the Earth's rotation turns Thành Phố Hòa Bình to face optimally towards the direction of the incoming meteors, maximising the number that rain vertically downwards, producing short trails close to the radiant point. At other times, there will be fewer meteors burning up over Thành Phố Hòa Bình, but those that do will tend to enter the atmosphere at an oblique angle, producing long-lived meteors that may traverse a wide area of the sky before completely burning up.
At its peak, the shower is expected to produce a nominal rate of around 150 meteors per hour (ZHR). However, this zenithal hourly rate is calculated assuming a perfectly dark sky and that the radiant of the shower is situated directly overhead. In practice, any real observing sight will fall short of these ideal conditions. The number of meteors you are likely to see is thus lower than this, and can be estimated using the ZHR formula.
From Thành Phố Hòa Bình, the radiant of the shower will appear at a peak altitude of 53 above your horizon, and on the basis of this, we estimate that you may be able to see up to 120 meteors per hour at the shower's peak.
On certain days of the year the Earth's orbit passes through particularly dense streams, associated with comets or asteroids which have vented particularly large amounts of solid material to space, and this gives rise to an annual meteor shower. Such showers recur on an annual basis, whenever the Earth passes the particular point in its orbit where it crosses the particular stream of material. 041b061a72