Had to write something about an excellent post by Scott Dutton over at catspawdynamics. Mr. Dutton is a former artist for Greater Mercury Comics (Eradicators #3  &  #4), and has also wrote a John Carter of Mars novel, ‘Return to Barsoom‘, which is available free on his site. 

In his latest post (and first tweet!) Scott shares with us material from the press kit for the 1981 sci-fi film classic Outland starring Sean Connery, and his thoughts as well. It is a very, very long post and totally engrossing…there is a lot of great info and background on the motion picture and it’s production.

I’ve always enjoyed Outland as a science-fiction film that focusses on a human story instead of the fantastic. It’s backed up by well-thought-out world building, production design and special effects.

Collected here are the press kit, stills and other pieces.

P.S. If anyone wishes to compare the film to High Noon and use language like “fails to transcend the genre,” please, just don’t. Save that for IMDB. This post is about celebrating the film.” – catspawdynamics

The production notes are extensive and just go on and on…casting notes, pre-production design sketches and model building…I got halfway through the post and was still amazed.

Outland Graphic Novel adaptation sample, by Jim Sterenko

And of course, being a press kit, there are a lot of photos and behind-the-scenes stuff. I found one of the included links particularly interesting, a link to the first 9 pages of the graphic novel adaptation by Jim Steranko that appeared in Heavy Metal magazine.

He even includes the original theatrical trailer. Again, an excellent post Scott.

Be sure to get Mr. Dutton’s first novel, Return to Barsoom, while your there! It is described as “a modern look at Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars” and is available in epub and Moby! formats.

Outland: The Press Kit

http://www.catspawdynamics.com/outland-the-press-kit/