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Next month over on streaming giant Netflix offers up a giant selection of films of all stripes — modern to classic, animated to live action, Oscar contender to…not so much — and we’ve picked seven (well, really 11) that you should watch as soon as humanly possible, either for the first time or as part of a nostalgic little binge. Enjoy.

1. “Footloose” (available September 1)

If you’ve never experienced the original “Footloose” — no, not the one starring Miles Teller, though he is quite serviceable in a charming role — do yourself a favor and check out Herbert Ross’ 1984 classic. Yes, the concept of a town outlawing dancing is bizarre and outdated, but Ross and his cast (including Kevin Bacon in the kind of star-making role that’s so rare these days) really sell the concept, thanks to some serious drama and hard-earned emotion. But there is also dancing! It’s joyous and gymnastic and pure,...

While other 11-year-olds in Biloxi, Mississippi might have spent their 1980s summer vacations playing endless hours of Space Invaders at the local arcade or tricking dimwits into painting picket fences, Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala, the subjects of the new documentary Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made (opening June 17th), were busy lighting each other on fire.

The two boys first saw Raiders of the Lost Ark in the summer of 1981, and like any right-minded latchkey kids in search of adventure (and father figures), they instantly fell in love.

Forget your $250 million budgets and A-list megastars, sometimes all you need to make a good film is a bit of creative thinking and passion for your characters (intellectual property rights optional).

With feature-length fan film Star Trek: Renegades setting fandom abuzz, here's a host of unauthorised movies that put Hollywood to shame.

1. Batman battles Predator

Back in the Dark Knight's movie wilderness years (thanks for that, George Clooney!), short Batman: Dead End made waves online thanks to a mega-twist that saw the Caped Crusader in a rain-soaked showdown against a Predator. If it bleeds, Batman can kill it.

2. A Judge gets back in the saddle

A tepid box office showing from 2012's Dredd means a sequel is probably never going to happen. However, hardcore fans had their thirst quenched by the moody Judge Minty, about an ageing Mega City One Judge striding through the Cursed Earth. Think of this as...

The organizers behind the Ithaca International Film Festival in upstate New York have released promotional artwork from comic and video game industry veteran Steve Ellis (The Only Living Boy, Green Lantern Corps). Now in its fourth year, Iifff celebrates the weird and the wild in International cinema. The annual program includes a competition of genre films from around the world as well as a retrospective showcase of cult classics and genre heavyweights. The art from Ellis, who has created the poster every year since the festival’s inception, is always one of the highlights of the buildup to the event in November.

This year’s Iifff retrospective promises to be the most skin-crawling yet with Organic Horror: Obsessions with Body Alterations. Ellis’s moody and evocative image appropriates iconography from several of the films that will be screened, including Georges Franju’s Eyes Without A Face, Andrzej Zulawski’s Possession,...

The story of the Raiders Of The Lost Ark fan film is brought brilliantly to life in this new documentary...

I love fan films. I remember the very first fan film I ever saw: Hardware Wars (a Star Wars spoof). I’ve been hooked ever since. They’ve come a long way since then, some of them nowadays boasting a production value that almost rivals Hollywood productions. When I watch, for example, the Piano Guys’ Cello Wars (which in essence, is still a fan film), I’m amazed how much fan films have evolved, but my favorites remain the older ones, like Closet Cases Of The Nerd Kind (who can forget those singing mailboxes?).

But while some fan films of that era were happy to simply parody blockbuster movies, in 1982, two kids from Ocean Springs, Mississippi, Chris Strompolos (11 years old) and Eric Zala (12 years old) set our to produce a...

I don't believe that they are "just" movies. I mean, sure, there are plenty of movies that I would consider inconsequential, and many of those are even movies that I like. But the entire culture of films, the idea of these shared narratives that make up something that unites people from around the world, is something that I think people dismiss too easily sometimes. Films are transformative. Films can force you to see things in a new ways. They can build or destroy communities. They can be powerful forces for social change, and they can shine a spotlight on things in a way that is undeniable and immediate. And, in their best moments, they can save lives. Right now, "The Wolfpack" is making its way into theaters, a documentary about a family of young men, all raised by a domineering father who intentionally cut them off from the outside world.

Documentaries are particularly wonderful as a genre in how often they introduce viewers to people that they’d otherwise have about as much of a chance of meeting as they’d have of landing on the moon.

Case in point: the Angulo clan, subjects of Crystal Moselle’s intriguing and often unsettling The Wolfpack, live in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, but it’s a wonder that even Moselle came across them. The family’s seven children (six boys and one girl, all with hair tumbling down to their waists) were raised almost exclusively within the confines of a four-bedroom apartment. Their father held the sole key to the front door, and he kept it locked. Home schooled by their mother and educated by a vast assortment of movies borrowed from the library and bought at a discounted price, the children were barely ever allowed outside during their formative years.

Over 30 years ago, a trio of 11-year-olds in Mississippi began making a shot-for-shot remake of their favorite film, "Raiders of the Lost Ark," a project that continued for seven years and resulted in an all-kid cult classic. Chris Strompolos, Eric Zala and Jayson Lamb chose a Spielberg film with impossible-to-replicate special effects and complex set pieces. For years, the boys requested only costumes and film props for birthday presents, and spent summers reenacting dangerous Indie stunts with their friends and family. Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News called the "Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation" a better remake than Gus Van Sant's "Psycho," because it was "made with love." Horror director Eli Roth and actor John Rhys-Davies, who starred in the original "Raiders," also praised the film, and Spielberg himself invited the boys to meet him. But the "Raiders" remake never got finished—one scene was...

It’s pretty safe to say that Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala never thought they’d be the subjects of a movie, even as they were making their own. When the two were 8-years-old, they decided to remake Raiders of the Lost Ark shot-for-shot – and then stuck to their guns for the next 30-something years. Now in their 40s, the duo finally finished Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation with a Kickstarter-themed, fully-color corrected, professionally-shot version of the infamous airplane-fight scene done, and a documentary about the whole process in the

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It's like Boyhood meets American Movie: In 1982, a pair of 12-year-old best friends, Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala, embarked on a journey to create a shot-by-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark on a shoestring budget with a cast of friends and non-actors. With Strompolos portraying Indiana Jones and Zala serving as director and the villain Rene Belloq, it took the two teenagers seven years to complete their adaptation of Raiders; the viewer watches them age from 12 to 19 as the film moves toward its Ark of the Covenant-opening end.

There's already a book on shelves and a documentary adaptation in the works about Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala, two kids who decided to put together a homemade adaptation of Raiders of the Lost Ark when they were kids. The film has been shown at some special screenings around the country, but catching it has been pretty damn hard. However, the film has never been 100% completed because it's missing the infamous airplane scene featuring Indiana Jones facing off with a tough, bald Nazi mechanic before meeting a bloody end. But now Strompolos and Zala are trying to finish it, and they've asked Kickstarter for help. If you're not aware of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, here's the Kickstarter video to explain: And as for why they've decided to shoot this scene now, well the page explains: As a solo project, and also as a driving set piece for Jeremy Coon’s documentary,...

It took buddies Eric Zala and Chris Strompolos seven years to create a shot-by-shot, stunt-by-stunt remake of the 1981 action-adventure classic Raiders of the Lost Ark. Dubbed Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, the pals begged, borrowed and stole for their fan film (shot on Betamax and eventually VHS), recruiting neighborhood kids to play roles, building massive props (like a six-foot fiberglass boulder), and scouting for desert locations in Mississippi. Chris had his first kiss on camera, Eric almost melted his face off, and his house was nearly destroyed. Through the years, their friendship was pushed to the limits as the guys faced personal struggles (parents divorcing, remarrying, moving away), and more. Raiders: The Adaptation became a documentary of a friendship and a...

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In 1982, a pair of Mississippi kids named Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala set out to create their own shot-for-shot remake of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, a project that spanned seven years, two home video formats, several near-brushes with serious injury and damage to their parents’ houses, and the normal, ravaging effects of puberty. But it all paid off with the completion of Raiders Of The Lost Ark: The Adaptation, which became an Eli Roth-championed festival hit that spawned a glowing Vanity Fair profile, a book about their journey, and now, possibly two upcoming films about their film of ...

When they were 11, Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala set out to make a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark. They finished it just in time to celebrate with a legally bought pack of cigarettes or an “I Voted” sticker. Their efforts have become something of a cult phenomenon, and now, according to Deadline Hollywood, Napoleon Dynamite producer Jeremy Coon has optioned the book that was written about the childhood friends and their fan film with the intention of making a documentary and a fictional feature. Naturally, he’ll have to work out an arrangement with Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, but if they give him their (legal) blessing, it could also be a big boon for the legitimacy of his projects. A tacit thumbs up from two titans. A documentary sounds excellent. It’s easy to imagine that there’s a lot of worth in hearing the full story of how and why they did...

Last fall, we highlighted a new book called Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made, an account of the making of the greatest fan film ever made - Chris Strompolos & Eric Zala's Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, a shot-for-shot remake shot in 1989 of Steven Spielberg's original Indiana Jones movie. Now the story has caught the eyes of Napoleon Dynamite producer Jeremy Coon as the book by Alan Eisenstock has been optioned for a feature film deal. The process of shooting the much buzzed about fan film lasted seven years, with the kids beginning at age 11 and finishing at 18 years old. The kids even shot part of the film on Betamax at first, but then were forced to moved to VHS when the former became obsolete. Strompolos and Zala, who are now in their 40s, will produce the adaptation, but first they will...

Producer Jeremy Coon ("Napoleon Dynamite") has optioned Alan Eisenstock's book "Raiders!" which follows two Mississippi kids who set out to do a shot-for-shot remake of "Raiders Of The Lost Ark".

The duo, Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala, started filming when they were 11 and finished when they turned 18 - sequences were shot each summer. In the process they re-staged every scene and stunt in their backyards and basements.

The final film, "Raiders Of The Lost Ark: The Adaptation," has since screened at film festivals where Coon saw it.

Strompolos and Zala are now in their early 40s and will produce two projects with Coon. The first is a documentary which Coon will direct, the second is a full-on feature about the making of this fan film.

Source: Deadline...

Napoleon Dynamite's Jeremy Coon is planning to make Raiders!, a film about two Mississippi boys who remade Raiders of the Lost Ark in their backyards.

Coon has optioned the rights to Alan Eisenstock's book Raiders!, detailing how Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala met at elementary school and re-staged Harrison Ford's first Indiana Jones adventure - shot-for-shot - on Betamax and VHS.

The duo will produce both a Raiders! documentary and narrative feature film with Coon, reports Deadline.

Stompolos and Zala's Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation was completed in 1989 after seven years' work and has screened at various film festivals since 2003.

"I thought the movie was an urban myth but when I saw it, from a filmmaker perspective it was more inspiring than any movie I'd ever seen," Coon said, adding that he admired the lack of cynicism in the endeavour.

Raiders! may need the blessing...

News Simon Brew 15 Oct 2013 - 06:12

The story of two youngsters remaking Raiders Of The Lost Ark is to become a new film from the producer of Napoleon Dynamite...

It was back in 1982 that two 11-year olds, Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala, embarked on what would become one of the most famous, and earliest, fan films of all time. They started work on a shot for shot remake of Steven Spielberg's Raiders Of The Lost Ark, a project that would take them through until they were 18. And when Raiders Of The Lost Ark: The Adaptation was finally complete, even the likes of Steven Spielberg was impressed with the end results.

Their venture was charted in a book called Raiders!, by Alan Eisenstock, and that book has now been optioned for the big screen by Jeremy Coon, the producer of Napoleon Dynamite. Coon intends to make two films, the first being a documentary,...

Every summer from ages 11 to 18, Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala worked on their $5000 shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Nothing much came of it after they premiered it to a local Missisippi audience in 1989, but Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation found a second life at the turn of the century. By 2003, the imitation reached Steven Spielberg---he sent the filmmakers a letter of congratulation. Producer Jeremy Coon (Napoleon Dynamite) wants to tell their story. Coon optioned Alan Eisenstock's book Raiders!, that documents the behind-the-scenes from the genesis of the idea to the boys' eventual falling out. Coon intends to start with a documentary as he works to set up a narrative feature. More after the jump. Coon describes some of the craziness to Deadline: “They shot the Nepal bar scene in Eric’s basement and lit the whole thing on fire. His mom saw what...

Exclusive: Napoleon Dynamite producer Jeremy Coon has optioned Raiders!, the Alan Eisenstock book that tells how two Mississippi kids set out to remake Raiders Of The Lost Ark. The pals started at 11 and finished when they turned 18, and in that time managed to re-stage every scene, shot and stunt in their backyards and basements. They first shot on Betamax and then on VHS when the former became obsolete. The kid filmmakers, Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala, met in elementary school and are now in their early 40s. They will produce with Coon two projects and their life rights are part of the package. First, Coon intends to direct a documentary as he works to set up a narrative feature, which is essentially a movie about the making of a movie that is a remake of another movie. When Coon first saw Raiders Of The Lost Ark: The Adaptation at a film festival,...

Back in 1982, two 11-year-old boys, Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala, set off to make their own shot-for-shot remake of Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark , spending a full seven years to complete what is now known as Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation . Their fan film achieved quite a bit of notice some years back, including commendations from Spielberg himself. While a narrative version of the boys' coming-of-age story has been rumored for awhile, Deadline today reports that the project is moving forward with Napoleon Dynamite 's Jeremy Coon coming aboard to produce. "Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made," a 2012 book by Alan Eisenstock about the production, is set to serve as the film's source material. At one point, Ghost World...

If you're into movies and especially the Indiana Jones movies by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, then there.s a good chance you were already aware of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation , the shot-for-shot homemade version of the Steven Spielberg action classic that teenagers Eric Zala, Chris Strompolos and Jayson Lamb spent seven summers during the .80s filming, a project that lay dormant for over 12 years before it was discovered on video tape and brought to the public.s attention by Eli Roth and Harry Knowles. This past November saw the release of Alan Eisenstock's book "Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made," written with the participation of Zala and Strompolos which brings new attention to their fascinating story, one that offers lots of...

In 1982 a group of friends set out on a journey to remake Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark, shot for shot. It took them seven years to do it, but it was done. In recent years it's become a huge hit among fanboys and fangirls, who say that this is the greatest fan film ever made.

The fan film is called Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation and was made by Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala. Author Alan Eisenstock found the story behind the making of this film so interesting that he wrote a book detailing the fan film called Raiders! The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made. A great trailer has been released for the book, which is set to be released on November 13th.

Here's the description of the book:

In 1982, in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, Chris Strompolos, eleven, asked Eric Zala, twelve, a...

Every scene. Every shot. Every stunt. We're taking a short tangent here to feature an outstanding trailer for a book that many movie fans should be interested in. It's called Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made, and it's a complete account of the making of the greatest fan film ever made - Chris Strompolos & Eric Zala's Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation, completed in 1989, a shot-for-shot remake of Spielberg's original Indiana Jones movie. You've probably heard a bit about the story, or even seen the epic fan film itself at a screening, but now you can read the full story behind it. The trailer for it comes in at a whopping 4 minutes and features some interview segments and a lot of background. Check it! Tailer for Alan Eisenstock's Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made via YouTube: Here's...

Lots of kids are inspired to make their own version of a movie when they're on a high walking out of a blockbuster on a hot summer day – but Chris Strompolos and Eric Zala and took their obsession much, much further after seeing Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981. The pair set out to remake the entire Steven Spielberg classic shot-for-shot, and while making the bargain-basement film almost destroyed their friendship, the incredibly impressive final cut has reached cult status and even caught the attention of Spielberg himself.

Watch the first 10 minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation Here.

"It's really something to meet your boyhood hero and find that you've chosen your heroes well, " Eric tells Et exclusively about their meeting with the Hollywood legend, describing Spielberg as "warm and paternal" and detailing how they spent 45 minutes talking about "life and movies" before he treated them to some never-before-seen Raiders outtakes. "It was a real...

The film industry used to have all the power over filmgoers. But home video and the internet have changed that relationship

1896

Auguste and Louis Lumière's Train Pulling Into a Station

Whether or not audiences actually ran screaming, the story exemplifies the astonishing impact of cinema's arrival.

Early 1900s

Local films for local people

The very early film industry has strong local connections, filling venues by offering footage from the neighbourhood.

1915

Birth of a Nation

With the film industry by now settled in Los Angeles, Dw Griffith's breakthrough confirms the ascent of a film language requiring industrial production.

1925

Lucille LeSueur is renamed Joan Crawford by a fan-magazine competition

Keeping fans happy is crucial to the movie industry from the beginning – including giving them some power.

1930s-1960s

Hollywood's Golden Age

In its prime, the studio system was hugely efficient at concentrating power over cinematic output in executives' hands.

1969

Easy Rider...

Homemade tributes to Hollywood classics turn blockbusters into folk cinema. The studios can't decide whether they are terrified or charmed by the trend

Princess Leia is in a tight spot. Grand Moff Tarkin has informed her of her impending execution and the activation of the Death Star. Our heroine is defiant: "The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers!" Only it's not Carrie Fisher on screen but a grandmother in a white bathrobe and brown ear-muffs, standing in a front room, reading from a cue card. She's awfully cute. She's also a harbinger of the end of Hollywood as we know it.

This senior Leia appears in Star Wars Uncut, a shot-by-shot remake in which a legion of amateurs recreated George Lucas's feature one 15-second chunk at a time, in styles ranging from lo-fi home movie to psychedelic animation and drag pastiche.

They do make them like they used to, says Luke, as he checks out Jj Abrams' Super 8...

On the off chance anyone should underestimate the influence Steven Spielberg had on a generation of moviegoers in the 70s and 80s, one story sums it up better than most. In 1982, three 12-year-old friends from Mississippi had grown so obsessed with Raiders Of The Lost Ark that they embarked on their own shot-for-shot remake. Armed with a Betamax camera, some five dollars a week worth of pocket money, and a willingness to set themselves on fire for that all important burning bar scene, it took them just seven years. 

Eric Zala, Chris Strompolos and Jayson Lamb's paean to the adventures of Indiana Jones, Raiders Of The Lost Ark: The Adaptation, is a fitting tribute to one of the most glorious adventure movies of all time. It's goofy, sure, yet also exhilarating.

"A downbeat homage to bright-lights showbiz dramas, an epic orchestration that indulges in stubbornly obsessive riffs, Martin Scorsese's New York, New York (1977) seems to value awkwardness and indecision above all else," writes Dan Callahan for Alt Screen, and much of what follows is pretty rough medicine for those of us who love this film. "Coming off the success of Taxi Driver (1976), Scorsese secured a big budget and MGM sound stages for what was meant to be his tribute to and deconstruction of classic Hollywood musicals, but the tribute got lost somewhere in the deconstruction." The movie "plays out like some errant crossbreeding of Charles Vidor's Love Me or Leave Me (1955) and John Cassavetes's Minnie and Moskowitz (1971)."

It's screening as part of Hollywood Musicals of the 1970s and 1980s, Part 1: The 1970s, a series opening tomorrow at Anthology Film Archives and running through June 26. In his overview for the L,...

In 1981 Raiders of The Lost Ark was released and like many young boys Eric Zala, Chris Strompolos and Jayson Lamb saw the film and were enraptured by it.

Like many kids Chris wanted to be Indiana Jones, to have his own adventure, to fight nazis, hunt for treasure and get the girl. He therefore decided that he would remake the whole film shot-for-shot and that he would play the starring role of Indy. Chris discussed this with his friend Eric who agreed to help and realising they could not achieve the necessary special effects themselves they got another friend, Jayson, involved in the project.

Together, over the next seven years, the three boys, with the help of almost 100 others, made the greatest fan film ever made, Raiders Of The Lost Ark: The Adaptation. When the boys started they were just 11-12 years old and when they finished they were adults.

The last word we got about Paramount's Footloose remake was that Craig Brewer would be taking up the reins as director while Chace Crawford had dropped out as the film's lead, pushing the release date back from this summer to who knows when.

But this isn't stopping 52 different filmmakers from collaborating on their very own remake, one that will be out this summer. "Our Footloose Remake" sees the film remade scene by scene by fans from all across North America, and it'll have its prom-themed premiere on July 1st in Los Angeles before making its way across Canada and the U.S. and eventually being made available online -- for free.

It's curious to see fan-made novelties like this, one-man First Blood remake Flooding with Love for the Kid, and the legendary Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation break out beyond YouTube (Be Kind Rewind was right!). Now I'm...

The People vs. George Lucas Directed by: Alexandre O. Philippe Over the past decade or so, we have been subject to a never ending wave of documentaries about fans and fan culture, largely produced by fans themselves. The majority of them are ultimately self-serving and shoddily produced, but every now and then one of them manages to rise above the rest and prove itself to be something more. The People vs. George Lucas is not one of those films. Don't get me wrong -- a lot of people will definitely be entertained on a surface level, but but as an insightful look at the lasting appeal of Star Wars, the mind of George Lucas, and the battle for ownership of art in the digital age, the movie fails to shed new light and simply indulges its subjects a little too much. There is plenty of potential for a documentary of this sort,...