On this day in movie history - Mars Attacks! (1996):

Mars Attacks!

directed by Tim Burton,

written by Jonathan Gems,

based on the 1962 Topps Mars Attacks trading card series,

was released in the United States on December 12, 1996.
Music by Danny Elfman.

Cast:

Jack Nicholson, Glenn Close, Annette Bening, Pierce Brosnan, Danny DeVito, Martin Short, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michael J. Fox, Rod Steiger, Tom Jones, Lukas Haas, Natalie Portman, Jim Brown, Lisa Marie, Sylvia Sidney, Paul Winfield, Pam Grier, Jack Black, Janice Rivera, Ray J, Brandon Hammond, Joe Don Baker, O-Lan Jones, Christina Applegate, Brian Haley, Jerzy Skolimowski, Timi Prulhiere, Barbet Schroeder, Chi Hoang Cai, Tommy Bush, Joseph Maher, Gloria M. Malgarini, Betty Bunch, Gloria Hoffmann, Willie Garson, John Roselius, Michael Reilly Burke, Valerie Wildman, Richard Irving, Jonathan Emerson, Tamara 'Gingir' Curry, Rebecca Broussard, Steve Valentine, Coco Leigh, Jeffrey King, Enrique Castillo, Don Lamoth, C. Wayne Owens, Joseph Patrick Moynihan, Roger Peterson, John Finnegan, Ed Lambert, John Gray, Gregg Daniel, J. Kenneth Campbell, Rance Howard, Jeanne Mori, Richard Assad, Velletta Carlson, Kevin Mangan, Rebeca Silva, Josh Philip Weinstein, Julian Barnes, Ken Thomas, Darelle Porter Holden, Christi Black, Sharon Hendrix, Frank Welker, Jim Beatty, John Bradley, Colleen Ann Brah, Greg Bronson, JoAnn Bush, Mac Canepi, George Cheung, Maria Celeste Genitempo, Geri Gilmore, Matt Gulbranson, Roger Jackson, Anthony Kopczynski, Walter Ludwig, Johnny Mansbach, Stephanie Masoner, Scott McKinley, Bob Pepper, Kelly Lynn Richards, David Sherrill, William Victor Skrabanek, Alexandra Smothers, Jay So, Edward Tubbs, Carl Washington, Don Winsor.

On this day in movie history - The Natural (1984 movie & novel):

The Natural

directed by Barry Levinson,

written by Roger Towne and Phil Dusenberry,

based on the novel by Bernard Malamud,

was released in the United States on May 11, 1984.
Music by Randy Newman.

Cast:

Robert Redford, Paul Sullivan Jr., Robert Duvall, Glenn Close, Rachel Hall, Kim Basinger, Wilford Brimley, Barbara Hershey, Robert Prosky, Richard Farnsworth, Joe Don Baker, Darren McGavin, Michael Madsen, John Finnegan, Alan Fudge, Ken Grassano, Mike Starr, Mickey Treanor, Jon Van Ness, Anthony J. Ferrara, George Wilkosz, Robert Rich III, Sibby Sisti.

Recommended reading:

The Natural

By Bernard Malamud.

Filmed as The Natural (1984), directed by Barry Levinson.

Paperback.

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

First published 1952.

ISBN: 9780374502003

ISBN 10: 0374502005

ASIN: 0374502005

Description:

The Natural, Bernard Malamud's first novel, published in 1952, is also the first – and some would say still the best – novel ever written about baseball. In it, Malamud, usually appreciated for his unerring portrayals of postwar Jewish life, took on very different material – the story of a superbly gifted "natural" at play in the fields of the old daylight baseball era – and invested it with the hardscrabble poetry, at once grand and altogether believable, that runs through all his best work. Four decades later, Alfred Kazin's comment still holds true: "Malamud has done something which – now that he has done it! – looks as if we have been waiting for it all our lives. He has really raised the whole passion and craziness and fanaticism of baseball as a popular spectacle to its ordained place in mythology."