steveldead's - Rented List

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At NASA's Mission Control the first manned space flight manned space flight to Mars is about to blast off. Bit as its three astronauts (James Brolin, O.J Simpson and Sam Waterston) await their historic journey a mysterious man enters the craft and insists they leave.

He explains that the spacecraft is dangerously flawed. The mission, however, must be seen to go ahead, otherwise the Government will stop funding the space programme. In a television studio the astronauts are coerced, through threats and bribery, to make broadcasts as if they were on the Red Planet. Robert Caulfield (Elliott Gould), a journalist becomes interested in the Mars mission when a technician friend becomes suspicious and sets out to investigate.

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This documentary looks at the production and impact of '2001: A Space Odyssey', the landmark 1968 Stanley Kubrick epic that has inspired generations of science-fiction fans, film-makers, visual effects specialists and pretty much everyone ever involved with NASA's space effort, then or now.

'2001 And Beyond' compares Kubrick's and, co-screenwriter and science-fiction novelist, Arthur C. Clarke's '2001: A Space Odyssey' with the year that came and went. There is commentary on the future we are about to enter, and the one we have missed, from scientists Freeman Dyson and Richard Terrile, sci-fi authors Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Rob Sawyer and Harlan Ellison, lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, just to name a few. Finally we will invite our guests to speculate on the next 33 years from the most basic such as "Will we ever achieve space flight using true suspended animation?" to the most profound, like "When and if will we achieve anything like the burst of human evolution seen at the climax of the film?"

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Washed-up Richard Thorncroft (Julian Barratt) peaked with hit 1980s detective show Mindhorn, playing the titular Isle of Man sleuth with a robotic eye that allowed him to literally "see the truth".

Decades later, when a deranged Manx criminal demands Mindhorn as his nemesis, Thorncroft returns to the scene of his greatest triumphs for one last chance to reignite his glory days, professional credibility and even romance with former co-star/paramour Patricia Deville (Essie Davis).

In modern-day London, a sex criminal known as 'The Necktie Murderer' has the police on alert, and in typical Hitchcok fashion, the trail is leading to an innocent man, who must know now elude the law and prove his innocence by finding the real murderer.