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The Man From Earth

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Cast: John Billingsley,Ellen Crawford,William Katt,Annika Peterson,Richard Riehle,David Lee Smith,Alexis Thorpe,Tony Todd

Producer(s): Eric D. Wilkinson,Richard Schenkman,

Director(s): Richard Schenkman

Genre:Sci-Fi

Year: 2007

Rating: NR

On a cold night in a remote cabin, Professor John Oldman (David Lee Smith of CSI: MIAMI) gathers his most trusted colleagues for an extraordinary announcement: He is an immortal who has migrated through 140 centuries of evolution and must now move on. Is Oldman truly Cro-Magnon or simply insane? Now one man will force these scientists and scholars to confront their own notions of history, religion and humanity, all leading to a final revelation that may shatter their world forever.

If your looking for a Sci-Fi with spaceships and aliens I suggest you look elsewhere, The Man From Earth is a film about it's characters and dialogue and it delivers of both fronts. Basically the film is about John and his colleagues of his who have come to wish him farewell. His colleagues, however, cannot help but express how puzzled they are about him leaving, since he has established himself very well as a professor and is well liked. Each time he is asked, John either avoids the question or gives an evasive answer. He eventually responds to them by posing a hypothetical question to the group (which all have Ph.D.s in fields including anthropology, biology, and history) about what a man would be like if he had lived since prehistoric times and had the appearance of the same age for sixteen-thousand years. The story moves from there and raises some good questions as well as makes you think and challenges your own beliefs. The cast is fantastic and a real stand-out for me was Tony Todd, this man can really act and did a fantastic job in this film. Like I said this is a character piece and for that you need great writing and a cast that is able to deliver and I do not think they could of picked a better group of actors to play the roles here. This is a homage to the late great Jerome Bixby and his final work, as a Independent film it ranks among the best but as cinema in general I still feel it ranks among the best sci-fi films ever made. Story-telling just don't get much better than this. Filmed in one room and full of interesting and thought provoking dialogue that keeps you glued to the screen waiting and begging for more. The DVD comes packed with bonus features that include:

Audio Commentary with Executive Producer Emerson Bixby and Author Gary Westfahl

Audio Commentary with Producer/Director Richard Schenkman and Actor John Billingsley

Four Behind the Scenes Documentaries - On The Set, The Story Of The Story, Star Trek: Jerome Bixby's Sci Fi Legacy, From Script To Screen Released by Anchor Bay Home Entertainment. ***** Out Of *****