CelluloidKid

Elke Sommer was in the following films. including A Shot in the Dark (1964) with Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, The Art of Love (1965) with James Garner and Dick Van Dyke, The Oscar (1966) with Stephen Boyd, Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number! (1966) with Bob Hope, the Bulldog Drummond extravaganza Deadlier Than the Male (1966), and The Wrecking Crew (1969) with Dean Martin & Sharon Tate.

1 of my "ALL" time favorite Don Knotts films "The Private Eyes" Which Co-stars: Tim Conway! I remember my mother taking me to see this film when it 1st came to theaters, & then several years there after catching it on TV at various times! I was happy happy to finally see that it came to DVD a few years back! The basic plot of "The Private Eyes" is that the pair are assigned the murder investigation of Lord and Lady Morley. The case involves a big dark house, ghosts, and a questionable staff & then hilarity ensues! "The Private Eyes" is available at Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Private-Eyes-Tim-Conway/dp/6305976481/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1201804988&sr=1-1 The Best Don Knotts Films: Pleasantville The Private Eyes The Apple Dumpling Gang The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again The Ghost and Mr. Chicken The Incredible Mr. Limpet

The Adventures of Baron Munchausen Comes Back to DVD and Blu-Ray on April 8th 2008! One of Terry Gilliam's earlier films is getting released in a new edition and new format. The Adventures of Baron Munchausen will be re-released on DVD and Blu-Ray on April 8. These new releases are to honor the film's 20th anniversary. The standard disc will be priced at $19.94 and the Blu-Ray disc will cost $28.95. The film stars John Neville, Eric Idle and features early performances from Sarah Polley and Uma Thurman. Director Terry Gilliam adroitly applies his Monty Python sensibilities upon the "career" of famed German prevaricator Baron von Munchausen. Played herein by John Neville, the baron is seen quelling a war that he himself started, flying into the stratosphere on the back of a cannonball, ballooning to the moon, exploring the innards of a volcano, being swallowed by a whale....In short, all of Munchausen's fabulous lies are here presented as "truth," played out in full view of nonplussed witnesses Eric Idle, Charles McKeown, Jack Purvis, and Sarah Polley. Fringe benefits include several loving medium shots of jaybird-naked Uma Thurman as Boticelli's Venus and an extended unbilled cameo by Robin Williams -- that is, by the head of Robin Williams -- as the King of the Moon. Filmed under considerable duress on a budget eventually exceeding 45 million dollars, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen never quite caught on with moviegoers, though it has enjoyed a lucrative afterlife on videocassette. Special Features - Audio commentary with director Terry Gilliam and co-writer/actor Chris McKeown - Three-part The Madness and Misadventures of Munchausen documentary - Storyboard sequences (with all-new vocal performances by Terry Gilliam and Chris McKeown) - Deleted scenes - Marvelous World of Munchausen enhanced graphics and trivia track (Blu-Ray only)

Get ready for a much different kind of mom on DVD. Serial Mom is getting a new DVD release on May 6. There are no pricing details for this special collectors edition DVD at this time. The film stars Kathleen Turner, Suzzane Somers, Matthew Lillard and Sam Waterston. Beverly Sutphin (Kathleen Turner) is the perfect suburban housewife and mother. She likes to cook, her home is immaculately clean, she's always well-groomed and cheerful, and she loves her husband Eugene (Sam Waterston) and her two children, Misty (Ricki Lake) and Chip (Matthew Lillard). There's just one problem with Beverly -- if you do anything to make someone in her family feel bad, you're dead meat on a stick. While she does a great job of hiding it, Beverly has a vicious and vengeful streak, and when she's not making obscene prank calls to the neighbors or bribing her garbagemen to save embarrassing items from her neighbors' trash, she's mowing down whoever would be so rude as to make her husband go into his office on a Saturday, break up with her daughter, or suggest that her son watches too many horror movies. Taking John Waters back to R-rated territory after the relatively sedate Hairspray and Cry Baby, Serial Mom captures a comfortable middle ground between Hollywood professionalism and Waters' subversive sense of humor, and Kathleen Turner has a field day as the sweet-on-the-outside, evil-on-the-inside Beverly. The supporting cast includes such Waters favorites as Patty Hearst, Traci Lords, Mink Stole, and Susan Lowe; Joan Rivers and Suzanne Somers appear as themselves, and all-female grunge-metal band L7 plays the all-female grunge-metal band ****. Special Features: - Digitally Remastered Picture - Theatrical Trailer - Feature Commentary with Director John Waters and Star Kathleen Turner - Feature Commentary with Director John Waters - Serial Mom: Surreal Moments - The Kings of Gore: Herschell Gordon Lewis and David Friedman - The Making of Serial Mom

Lionsgate has found a director for its upcoming horror remake My Bloody Valentine. Bloody Disgusting tracked down the exclusive news that Patrick Lussier will be jumping behind the camera on this one. The story is set to take place in the sleepy town of Harmony, Montana. There, a series of grisly murders took place on Valentine's night. Now, ten years later, the killer is back and looking for some more bodies to slice up. The film will start shooting in late March of this year in Pittsburgh, Pa. In a March 30, 2007 issue of "Entertainment Weekly", the film was ranked 17 in a list of guilty pleasures, listed among the such films as "Dawn of the Dead" and "Escape from New York", and called "the most criminally underappreciated of the [slasher] genre." Popular filmmaker Quentin Tarantino calls it his all-time favorite slasher film

I know this came out in 2003, but the best DVD boxset was "Alien Quadrilogy" which is "all" four-movie W./a total of nine discs!! Very impressive!

I got in the middle of the film, (Yes I have seen "EYE OF THE DEVIL" before) but still I can't jsut can't beleive how silly how the whole thing is!! The ending where David Niven gets killed I just stare in disbelief ! Sharon Tate is the only worth watching the film for! YouTube - Sharon Tate Eye of the Devil trailer www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHd5zNY-hBs

Clark Gable Robert Mitchum Burt Lancaster Paul Newman Daniel Craig John Garfield Cary Grant Jimmy Stewart Steve McQueen Rusell Crowe Christian Bale Glenn Ford Robert Taylor Rock Hudson Alan Ladd Willliam Holden

"Sunset Blvd" has several references to astrology!! For example: Norma: My astrologist has read my horoscope, he's read DeMille's horoscope ALSO: Norma: I'd have to have somebody I can trust. When were you born -- I mean, what sign of the zodiac GILLIS I don't know. NORMA What month? GILLIS December twenty-first. NORMA Sagittarius. I like Sagittarians. You can trust them.

New Line Cinema is getting ready to scare horror fans with a new franchise A Nightmare On Elm Street film. According to Variety, Platinum Dunes partners Michael Bay, Brad Fuller and Andrew Form have signed a deal with New Line to re-launch the enormously popular horror series. Platinum Dunes have also signed on to remake the classic Friday the 13th franchise. New Line has signed Marcus Nispel to direct the horror franchise, which will be written by the screenwriting duo, Damian Shannon and Mark Swift. Production for Friday the 13th is scheduled to begin in April ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- MTV caught up with actor Robert Englund, who spoke about the future of him portraying Freddy Krueger and the possibility of a A Nightmare on Elm Street prequel: The 59-year-old actor revealed that there really isn't much demand to resurrect his most popular character. Krueger last made it to the theaters in 2003's Freddy vs. Jason, which ended with Voorhees carrying Krueger's severed head under his arm. The decapitated Freddy still managed to wink. "We were going to do it with Ash from the Evil Dead movies," Englund said about a sequel to Freddy vs. Jason. "[The Evil Dead director] Sam Raimi, now that he has all his Spider-Man movies and all that money, I'm sure he's going to remake The Evil Dead. I think that's what him and [The Evil Dead star] Bruce Campbell wanna do. But I've heard [the movie studio] is in talks with John Carpenter [director of the original Halloween]. So maybe Freddy and Jason are going to meet up with Michael Myers. I also hear they have a really good prequel script to A Nightmare on Elm Street being passed around. And there was talk that John McNaughton, director of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, was attached. Which means that maybe they would be making a prequel to the original A Nightmare on Elm Street with me out of the makeup for a while. You get to see Freddy Krueger, the early crimes. Freddy Krueger, the early years."

New Line Cinema is getting ready to scare horror fans with a new franchise A Nightmare On Elm Street film. According to Variety, Platinum Dunes partners Michael Bay, Brad Fuller and Andrew Form have signed a deal with New Line to re-launch the enormously popular horror series. Platinum Dunes have also signed on to remake the classic Friday the 13th franchise. New Line has signed Marcus Nispel to direct the horror franchise, which will be written by the screenwriting duo, Damian Shannon and Mark Swift. Production for Friday the 13th is scheduled to begin in April ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- MTV caught up with actor Robert Englund, who spoke about the future of him portraying Freddy Krueger and the possibility of a A Nightmare on Elm Street prequel: The 59-year-old actor revealed that there really isn't much demand to resurrect his most popular character. Krueger last made it to the theaters in 2003's Freddy vs. Jason, which ended with Voorhees carrying Krueger's severed head under his arm. The decapitated Freddy still managed to wink. "We were going to do it with Ash from the Evil Dead movies," Englund said about a sequel to Freddy vs. Jason. "[The Evil Dead director] Sam Raimi, now that he has all his Spider-Man movies and all that money, I'm sure he's going to remake The Evil Dead. I think that's what him and [The Evil Dead star] Bruce Campbell wanna do. But I've heard [the movie studio] is in talks with John Carpenter [director of the original Halloween]. So maybe Freddy and Jason are going to meet up with Michael Myers. I also hear they have a really good prequel script to A Nightmare on Elm Street being passed around. And there was talk that John McNaughton, director of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, was attached. Which means that maybe they would be making a prequel to the original A Nightmare on Elm Street with me out of the makeup for a while. You get to see Freddy Krueger, the early crimes. Freddy Krueger, the early years."

I have Blockbuster On-line which I like better than Netflix. With Blockbuster on-line you don't have to send you movies back and wiat to get more, after you watched the films you get in the mail just return them to a Blockbuster Store, & you can exhange it for another free film! In addition Blockbuster also sends coupons Via Email for free rentals too! Also I try to rent from Mom/Pop Video stores since they carry alot of hard to find films!

I would show the films from the book: "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die" !!!

CHECK OUT THIS: http://video.aol.com/video-detail/house-on-haunted-hill-trailer-legend-films/1835993049 Michael Nelson of MST3K has provided humorous and informative commentary tracks for DVD releases of "House on Haunted Hill" & "Hollywood After Dark" both films are funny as hell! Try to find them! I beleive you can get them through Amazon.com

I found this really interesting article on the film "Hellzapoppin'"!! I have "heard" of the film, but I never have seen it! It seems to be out-of-print on VHS & no DVD plans! Hellzapoppin' zooms in on the Universal Theater, where a ****-off projectionist (Shemp Howard) is watching his millionth musical through the window in the booth. As if by wish-fulfillment, the chorus girls descending a staircase suddenly slide straight into hell. Explosions and alarums lead into a brilliantly choreographed inferno scene that needs to be sampled and sampled again by today's film and videomakers. Chorus girls spin on the rotisserie; devils sharpen their pitchforks on glitter-covered grindstones, and use them to prod tuxedoed playboys in the ****. In come Olsen and Johnson ("This is the first time a taxi driver ever went exactly where I told 'im"), a pair of remarkably identical middle-aged vaudevillians. Ideally you want your comedy team to be a short fat guy with a tall slender guy--it probably goes back to Aristophanes, and I wouldn't begin to speculate why it works. But the two are almost hard to tell apart; both, middle aged plump guys in squashed hats. Anyhow, they're quickly sucked back up into the purgatory of a movie studio, The fact that they've had a huge Broadway hit means nothing: "This is Hollywood, we change everything here! We have to!" A producer hires an anemic writer (Elisha Cook Jr.) and--in-between constant interruptions by sight gags--they start to cobble together a musical comedy plot. "It's a great script. Feel how heavy it is!" A snobby East Coast manor house is going to have a Red Cross benefit show. Kitty the heiress (Jane Frazee) has theatrical ambitions. She's in a love triangle. Robert Paige is Jeff the good rich guy who won't get married until he makes a hit as a playwright. His best pal Woody (Lewis Hayward) seems to be in love with Kitty also. Prop-men Olsen and Johnson arrive with a truckload of "borrowed" props. So does a private detective (Hugh Herbert) tracking them. As in all well-thought out comedy plots, from Shakespeare on down, there's also a pair of ridiculous lovers to mock the main romance. Mischa Auer--one of the world's great dialect comedians, the Borat of his day--plays Prince Pepe of Braskovnia, a fortune hunter looking for "girls with beautiful figures. In the bank." He misidentifies Olsen's pesky sister Betty (Martha Raye) as a wealthy guest. Fans of the Sid and Marty Kroft 'verse saw Raye in her senior years assaying Benita Bizarre on The Bugaloos having little idea what what a force Raye was when she was young. She held up her own with Bob Hope--here's Bertold Blecht's column rehabbing Hope for today's hipsters, from the late lamented Suck.com. And just as there's a thin line between the cute and the uncanny, there's a real thin line between the sensual and the embarrassing. Who does Raye's kind of woman today? Maybe Kristen Johnston, late of Third Rock from the Sun, and Christopher Guest regular Jennifer Coolidge. Raye's firehose-force girl power, her oversized turned-down mouth, and her alarming curves, kept her working all through the1940s. She excelled as female terrors who did the pursuing instead of the fleeing. The slapstick background of Hellzapoppin' gave this comedienne more room to move. She chases Auer through a field full of hazards singing a number called "What Kind of Love Is This?" Nice to see the old Sideshow Bob rake gag performed by humans instead of cartoons... Despite interference from the angry Shemp, who keeps throwing the film out of frame, Olsen and Johnson decide to play matchmaker on Kitty and Jeff. They decide that the only way to get the couple together is to sabotage the big benefit show. Low comedy practical jokes, from flypaper to sneeze powder to carpet tacks, rearrange a fancy-dress ballet. Frankenstein, a guy in a bear suit, and a kennel full of trick dogs help bring the curtain down around Raye's crinoline-clad performance of "Waitin' for the Robert E. Lee." The truly dynamite musical number, though, spins off of an impromptu performance by the servants. Slim Galliard and Slam Stewart start up a piano and bass duet. This leads to a miraculous couple of minutes, one of cinema's most athletic dance numbers, by the African-American troop known as "Whitey's Lindy Hoppers" but billed here as the Harlem Congaroo Dancers. "Too bad they're not in the show," comments Olsen; once again, as in watching Cabin in the Sky or Stormy Weather, you see how much the movies lost through segregation. There's more lindying later: Raye gets in a dance also with Dean Collins, here described by a British fan as "The Fred Astaire of the Lindy Hop". Raye needs to be remembered, not just as a great slapstick actress, but also as a patriot. Despite her fear of flying, she worked as a nurse and a USO entertainer. She was made an honorary Green Beret and is one of the few civilians buried in Fort Bragg. As for Olsen and Johnson, they're planted near each other in Vegas, Some little theater actors who burn the candle for old vaudevillians operate the Ole Olsen Memorial Theater in Peru, Indiana. This group is also trying to preserve Cole Porter's boyhood home in Peru, which was recently tenanted by persons operating an illegal drug lab. That's show-business: from champagne to crack in 80 years. Hellzapoppin' s a memorial, too, to the surprising density that even tossed-off movies had back in the studio era. It really does make today's satires look like small changes by comparison. Maybe the scripts today don't weigh enough. by Richard von Busack

CHECK OUT THIS: http://video.aol.com/video-detail/house-on-haunted-hill-trailer-legend-films/1835993049 Mike Nelson has provided humorous and informative commentary tracks for DVD releases of several films incld "House on Haunted Hill" W./Vincent Price & "Hollywood After Dark"!! Both funny as hell! Try to find them! I beleive you can get them through Amazon.com

You should go rent the film: "Thank You for Smoking"!!!

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that seven films remain in competition for Achievement in Makeup for the 80th Academy Awards! ?The Diving Bell and the Butterfly? ?Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix? ?La Vie en Rose? ?Norbit? ?Pirates of the Caribbean: At World?s End? ?Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street? ?300" I have to agree that "Norbit" shouldn't be considered! Rick Baker is one great Make-Up artist & personally he should have be nominated for his work in "Enchanted", not for "Norbit"!!

Universal Studios** has announced an April 22nd release date for for it's next wave of Universal Cinema Classics promoted as Screwball Comedies. One of the new release is: She Done Him Wrong W./Mae West & Cary Grant(1933) BONUS FEATURES: Exclusive Introduction by Turner Classic Movies Host and Film Historian Robert Osborne Bonus Cartoon "She Done Him Right

Let's see my partner & I see at least 2-3 films per weekend in theater, Rent about 2 films every week & we own over 1000 DVD's between My partner and I. I also do the Phoenix and Denver Film Fest every year! When it's our day off, we have TCM playing at least 12 hrs out of a 24 hr day!

Shout! for MST3K on DVD! The cult distributor Shout! Factory has found the perfect addition to their library, securing worldwide home entertainment and digital download rights to Mystery Science Theater 3000. The deal gives Shout! Factory rights to all 11 seasons and 198 episodes of the cult classic show, and many episodes have yet to be released on DVD yet. "Mystery Science Theater 3000 is a true cult classic series," said Garson Foos, president of Shout! Factory. "Its high-camp rendition of B-movies to the small screen makes it one of the most memorable pop culture shows of our time." Foos, along with his brother Richard, formerly distributed the series under their Rhino Home Video banner, but they formed Shout! Factory after the brand was sold to Time Warner. The show, which has garnered two Emmy nominations for writing and also won a Peabody Award in 1994, ran for one season on a local Minneapolis network and then went national on the Comedy Channel (later renamed Comedy Central) for seven seasons and it finished out its run for three seasons on the Sci-Fi Channel.

It's time to renew the lease on an American classic. The Apartment is getting a new collectors edition release on February 5. The classic Billy Wilder film stars Jack Lemmon, Shirley Maclaine and Fred MacMurray. Widely regarded as a comedy in 1960, The Apartment seems more melancholy with each passing year. Jack Lemmon plays C.C. Baxter, a go-getting office worker who loans his tiny apartment to his philandering superiors for their romantic trysts. He runs into trouble when he finds himself sharing a girlfriend (Shirley MacLaine) with his callous boss (Fred MacMurray). Director/co-writer Billy Wilder claimed that the idea for The Apartment stemmed from a short scene in the 1945 romantic drama Brief Encounter in which the illicit lovers (Trevor Howard and Celia Johnson) arrange a rendezvous in a third person's apartment. Wilder was intrigued about what sort of person would willingly vacate his residence to allow virtual strangers a playing field for hanky panky. His answer to that question wound up winning 6 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay. The Apartment was adapted by Neil Simon and Burt Bacharach into the 1969 Broadway musical Promises, Promises. Special Features: - Audio Commentary from Bruce Block-Film Producer, historian, UCLA Professor and AFI Member - Inside the Apartment Documentary - Tribute To Jack Lemmon

OLDIES.COM IS HAVING A HUGE SAVINGS ON 140 RARE & OUT-OF-PRINT DVDS FROM 20th CENTURY FOX!!! Top 10 Sellers from OLDIES.com: 1. Day the Earth Stood Still Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal & Hugh Marlowe (DVD) 2. Lifeboat (Special Edition) Tallulah Bankhead & John Hodiak (DVD) 3. Call Northside 777 James Stewart (DVD) 4. Charley's Aunt Jack Benny, Kay Francis & James Ellison (DVD) 5. Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte Bette Davis, Olivia De Havilland & Joseph Cotton (DVD) 6. House on 92nd Street William Eythe, Lloyd Nolan & Signe Hasso (DVD) 7. Kiss of Death Victor Mature, Brian Donlevy & Coleen Gray (DVD) 8. Yellow Sky Gregory Peck, Anne Baxter & Richard Widmark (DVD) 9. Panic in the Streets Richard Widmark & Paul Douglas (DVD) 10. Nightmare Alley Tyrone Power & Joan Blondell (DVD)

OLDIES.COM IS HAVING A HUGE SAVINGS ON 140 RARE & OUT-OF-PRINT DVDS FROM 20th CENTURY FOX!!! Top 10 Sellers from OLDIES.com: 1. Day the Earth Stood Still Michael Rennie, Patricia Neal & Hugh Marlowe (DVD) 2. Lifeboat (Special Edition) Tallulah Bankhead & John Hodiak (DVD) 3. Call Northside 777 James Stewart (DVD) 4. Charley's Aunt Jack Benny, Kay Francis & James Ellison (DVD) 5. Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte Bette Davis, Olivia De Havilland & Joseph Cotton (DVD) 6. House on 92nd Street William Eythe, Lloyd Nolan & Signe Hasso (DVD) 7. Kiss of Death Victor Mature, Brian Donlevy & Coleen Gray (DVD) 8. Yellow Sky Gregory Peck, Anne Baxter & Richard Widmark (DVD) 9. Panic in the Streets Richard Widmark & Paul Douglas (DVD) 10. Nightmare Alley Tyrone Power & Joan Blondell (DVD)

I found this info in a book I have on Film Studios and there history! William Wadsworth Hodkinson, the man who started Paramount and came up with the logo, originally hailed from Ogden, Utah. Hodkinson's inspiration was Ben Lomond Peak, a 9,712-foot mountain that dominates the northern skyline. This certainly seems possible. According to Leslie Halliwell's biography "Mountain of Dreams," Hodkinson's logo was "a memory of childhood in his home state of Utah. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALSO THIS MAY HELP: The Paramount Pictures logo, known affectionately as Majestic Mountain, is one of the most familiar images in Hollywood. It is the oldest studio logo in continuous use. It predates the second-oldest, MGM's roaring lion, by close to a decade. Technically, it even predates the existence of Paramount Pictures as a film production entity. Paramount now traces its history back to the 1912 formation of Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company, but the Paramount Pictures Corporation name was first used by a film distribution company founded by William W. Hodkinson and other independent exhibitors in May of 1914. Paramount financed and distributed the product of Zukor's Famous Players, Jesse L. Lasky's Feature Play Company, and other producers. It was Hodkinson who first designed the Paramount logo in 1914. Legend has it that he doodled an image of a star-crested mountain on a napkin during a meeting with Adolph Zukor. It was an image he remembered of a mountain peak from his childhood in Ogden, Utah. Over the years there has been speculation about just where "Majestic Mountain" really is, if it exists at all. Many people have assumed it is Mount Everest. It has been spoofed in several Paramount films?moved to South America in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Japan in Geisha Boy, and Alaska in Road to Utopia. Probably its most audacious use was as Mount Sinai in Cecil B. deMille's remake of The Ten Commandments. If it is a real mountain at all, however, it is almost certainly 9,712-foot-high Ben Lomond Peak in the Wasatch Range near Ogden, as any Utah tour guide worth his salt will tell you. Even if Hodkinson meant it to be a generic mountain, Ben Lomond is a conspicuous landmark in the Ogden area and would have figured prominently in his conception. In May of 1916 Zukor and Lasky bought controlling shares of Paramount stock, and Famous Players-Lasky Corporation was incorporated, with Zukor as president, on May 19, 1916. Zukor and Lasky were reportedly not fond of the Paramount name?they thought audiences wouldn't know what it meant?but they realized the dominance of the mountain-top logo, so the Paramount name was retained as a trade name and Hodkinson's design soon began appearing on the new studio's releases. By 1927 the company was known as Paramount Famous Lasky Corporation, and in 1930 it became Paramount Publix Corporation. The firm went bankrupt in 1933, Lasky was forced out, and it was reorganized as Paramount Pictures, Inc. The logo was used with only minimal cosmetic changes for over half a century. Cartoons tended to prefer simplified graphics, while a more "photo-realistic" rendering by studio matte artist Jan Domela was introduced in 1953 when wide-screen masking forced a minor revision of the original layout. In that version a surrounding landscape was invented, making it look less like Ben Lomand. Basically, however, the familiar mountain with its ring of 24 stars still reigned over all. In the 1970s the mountain finally succumbed to the modern trend toward simplified, pop-art influenced trademarks and was replaced with a two-dimensional abstraction on a background of blue. It was at about the same time that two of the logo's stars fell from the sky. The simplified graphic contained only 22 stars, instead of the long-established 24. No one seems to remember why this was done, but it was probably to simplify the image and spread the stars out a little more. It wasn't too long, however, before this version went the way of New Coke, and the friendly old mountain was back in a slightly spiced-up computer generated version. When the photo-realistic mountain returned, though, it returned with only 22 stars, which is now the official count. In 1987 a computer-animated version created by Apogee, Inc. was introduced featuring a "camera move" up to the mountain while the stars fly into position, which is still being used today. On television, the logo has been a little less stable. In the early 1950s, Paramount purchased station KTLA in Los Angeles and made their first foray into television with a logo showing a mammoth television antenna atop Majestic Mountain. In 1969 Paramount Television was reanimated after a merger with Desilu Productions and over the next few years featured a variety of different logo designs based on the one-dimensional abstraction then used on theatrical films. The United Paramount Network (UPN), founded in 1995, has its own logo with its initials in geometric shapes. Its only nod to the mountain is a triangle encasing the "P". Majestic Mountain "is an enduring symbol of strength and excellence," according to Jonathan Dolgen, chairman of the Viacom Entertainment Group. And as it quickly approaches centenarian status, it seems likely to outlive all the lions, torch-bearing ladies, shields, globes, radio towers, gong-playing musclemen and other johnny-come-latelies, just as it preceded them. After all, it takes millennia to erode a mountain! ?by Marvin Jones Sources: Paramount Pictures, Inc. Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Cecil Adams?The Straight Dope TeamFX 2000 Rick Mitchell Charles M. Spero