Trek Alumni Celebrated At Film Festivals

Star Trek alumni are being honoured at several film festivals this autumn. Writer John Logan and actor William Shatner will be feted at upcoming events, while a ghost story starring Marina Sirtis and Linda Park has taken top awards at a genre festival.

Logan, who wrote the screenplay for Star Trek: Nemesis based on a story he worked on with his friend Brent Spiner (Data), will receive the Screenwriter of the Year Award at the Hollywood Film Festival, according to eMediaWire. FilmStew.com will be the sponsor for the award on October 18th. Logan, who has earned Oscar and Emmy nominations for his work on Gladiator and RKO 281, has earned positive buzz recently for the screenplay for The Aviator, a biography of Howard Hughes, which will be released at over the winter holidays. The story and screenplay for The Last Samurai and Any Given Sunday are also on Logan's resume.

Shatner will be the subject of a London, Ontario film festival on October 23rd, according to CBC News. The First Annual Mini Shatner Fest will focus on little-known movies made by the actor before and after his fame as Captain Kirk on the original Star Trek. Among the films will be The Intruder (1962), Impulse (1974) and Kingdom of the Spiders (1977). In between the films, selections will be played from Shatner's first album, The Transformed Man.

Organizer Skot Deeming described Canadian-born Shatner as "probably one of the most popular human beings in the world" and said that the festival will celebrate Shatner as the epitome of "the cult of celebrity elevated to the point of absurdity." In the Roger Corman-directed The Intruder, Shatner plays a white supremacist who incites a race riot, while in Impulse he plays a serial killer. The festival, which is free, will take place in the basement of the comic store L.A. Mood.

Sci-Fi Online reports that Spectres, a feature film directed by Phil Leirness and starring Sirtis (Deanna Troi), won Best Science Fiction Feature and Best Actress honours at the Shockerfest Film Festival in Modesto, California last month. The ghost story about a widow whose daughter has paranormal experieces also stars Enterprise's Park. Xenon Pictures has scheduled the film for release early in 2005.

Discuss this news item at Trek BBS!
 Add TrekToday RSS feed to your news reader or My Yahoo!
Also a CSI: Crime Scene Investigation fan? Then visit CSIFiles.com!