News

Innocence of Muslims / 'Desert Warrior' director Alan Roberts best-known for '70s soft-core porn The polemical anti-Islam "film" (actually, a cheap, grade Z amateur video), now has not only a producer, but also a director. The "Israeli entrepreneur Sam Bacile" has been exposed as the Egyptian Coptic Christian Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, who allegedly misled all (or most) involved in the production. And Gawker has reported that Alan Roberts aka Robert Brownell, the director of a handful of softcore porn movies in the '70s and early '80s, helmed "Desert Warrior," a cheesy Arabian adventure that was to become -- following some sloppy overdubbing -- Innocence of Muslims. Besides the now infamous Islamophobic YouTube sensation, which has been blamed for riots in several Muslim countries from Tunisia to Pakistan, Alan Roberts' movie credits include several now long forgotten titles. (Please scroll down for more details.) Alan Roberts also produced several little-known movies,...

Innocence of Muslims: Cast and crew repudiate rabidly anti-Islam 'film' An amateurish, rabidly anti-Islam 'film' -- actually, more like a homemade video made three decades ago -- whose Arabic-dubbed version was initially blamed for this week's attacks by Muslim fanatics against the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and the U.S. embassy in Cairo, Muslims was initially called "Desert Warrior." (Photo: Actor purportedly as Islam's prophet Mohammad.) According to 80 cast and crew members of the film, they thought "Desert Warrior" was going to be an adventure flick set in Biblical times. Indeed, the movie's casting notice on Backstage calls it a "historical Arabian Desert adventure film." Below is the statement submitted to CNN on behalf of those who worked on what eventually became Innocence of Muslims. (Please scroll down to check out: Innocence of Muslims creator: Coptic Christian involved in meth manufacture, bank fraud.) "The entire cast and crew...

Actress Joan Taylor, best remembered for two sci-fi / horror B movies of the late 1950s, died March 4 in Santa Monica, in Los Angeles County. Taylor was 82. According to various sources, Taylor was born Rose Marie Emma in Geneva, Illinois, on August 18, 1929. She was the daughter of Austrian vaudeville player Amelia Berky and an Italian-born immigrant who later became a Hollywood prop man. Curiously, last Friday night I watched for the first time the 1957 Columbia release 20 Million Miles to Earth. Though wasted in a non-role in this King Kong rip-off with stop-motion animation by Ray Harryhausen, Taylor looked quite pretty (as an Italian) whether angry at leading man William Hopper (son of gossip columnist Hedda Hopper) or screaming at the ballooning Martian creature. I guess it says something about her screen presence that I was rooting for the Martian Monster to gobble up the film's director (Nathan Juran), writers (Robert Creighton Williams...

Peruvian-born singer Yma Sumac has died nine months after she learned she had colon cancer. She was 86.

The 1950s sensation, real name Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chavarri del Castillo, passed away on Saturday at an assisted-living home in Los Angeles.

Sumac, who boasted a multi-octave vocal range, rocketed to the top of the U.S. charts with her debut album, Voice of The Xtabay when it was released in 1950.

But it was her technique and flamboyant style, designed to make her look like Incan royalty, that helped earn her the nicknames the Peruvian Songbird and Nightingale of the Andes.

During her heyday, Sumac sang at the Hollywood Bowl, New York's Carnegie Hall and the Royal Albert Hall in London. She also reportedly made a fortune onstage in Las Vegas.

She also featured in the Broadway musical Flahooley and appeared in the movies Secret of the Incas and Omar Khayyam.

Her profile rose more recently when her song Ataypura was featured in The Coen Brothers' 1998 film The Big Lebowski and again when her hit Bo Mambo was sampled for the song Hands Up by the Black Eyed Peas.

Her accomplishments were honoured in 2006 when she was presented the Orden del Sol award, commending her civil merit, by Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo.