Dangerous Universe

I'm really excited about this! In this article, both SURVIVE MARS.com and the sister site DANGEROUS UNIVERSE gets mentioned in this article. VERY COOL! Oh, and if you don't believe me, follow the below link and read the article for yourself.

Go to this web-site and read this article for yourself

12.4.99

Test your skill, Earthlings.

When NASA's unmanned Mars Polar Lander begins its perilous descent to the red planet Friday, the event will be:

a) A major scientific achievement celebrating humanity's spirit of adventure at the dawn of the new millennium;

b) A Hollywood movie promotion bigger than the Pokémon coup for Burger King.

It's a trick question. The answer is both.

The Mars landing means at least as much to James Cameron, Brian De Palma and other Tinseltown types as it does to the crew back at mission control.

The two veteran directors are hoping to find gold in red dirt, as the movies cash in on renewed popular interest in extraplanetary travel.

There are currently four Mars films in the works, which are already being hyped on the Web, and Cameron is behind two of them. He is preparing an IMAX 3-D movie and a television miniseries for the spring of 2001, about the first humans to visit Mars. The shows will likely have the same cast and overlapping stories.

To Cameron, it's much more than entertainment. The man who saluted himself as "King of the World'' when his Titanic floated to box office and Oscar success, now sees himself as a JFK figure, calling upon everyone to make the conquest of Mars the next great challenge for Earth.

In a recent speech to the Mars Society, a U.S.-based interest group, Cameron said getting people to Mars is "a marketing challenge, not a technological one'' - and he's working on the marketing.

"We are going to have to build this thing up from the grassroots by infecting the public with Mars fever,'' he explained.

"Going to Mars is not a luxury we can't afford, it is a necessity we can't afford to be without. We need this, or a challenge like it, to bring us together, to all feel a part of something, to have heroes again.''

The text of Cameron's speech is on the Mars Society site (missions.marssociety.org /index.html) along with artist conceptions of the landing craft and the Martian rover Cameron will have in his Mars movies.

De Palma is planning to get there before Cameron. His movie, Mission To Mars, filmed in Vancouver for Disney's Touchstone Pictures and starring Gary Sinise, Tim Robbins, Don Cheadle and Connie Nielsen, arrives in theatres next March.

The trailer just went up on the Web, which you can access via Dangerous Universe (www.dangerousuniverse .com). It's pretty clear De Palma has decided to stop ripping off Hitchcock for once so he can remake Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Right behind De Palma, and scheduled for summer 2000, is Warner's Red Planet, the feature directing debut of advertising whiz kid Antony Hoffman. It stars Val Kilmer, Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix), Tom Sizemore (Saving Private Ryan) and Terence Stamp (The Limey).

Like Cameron's two projects, Mission To Mars and Red Planet are adventure stories involving manned flights to Earth's nearest planetary neighbour. But they seem to be less didactic than Cameron's films.

All of the Mars movies will be discussed and promoted on a new Web site called Survive Mars (www.survivemars .com), which is scheduled to open on Friday to coincide with the real Mars Polar Lander arrival. The site is currently accepting names of people who want to join its mailing list.