Face Huggers Forever!

Today is the actual 25th anniversary of James Cameron's Aliens (1986) which we happen to have been celebrating all week. (Theme Weeks! Do you love or do you love?)

We meant to do a little more about the actual series surrounding this one film but our Netflix queue was beset by weird problems --  "game over, man, game over!" -- The Alien Quadrilogy is arguably the most fascinating big money franchise that Hollywood ever threw money at, functioning such as it does as Auteur Training Wheels; each film was given to a different major director near what the world presumed was the beginning of their huge career: Ridley Scott (2nd narrative feature of 19), James Cameron (3rd of 8), David Fincher (1st of 9) and Jean Pierre-Jeunet (3rd of 6)

Instead we just focused on our favorite of the Quad. Just in case you missed any, here are the four bloggy monsters we hatched for this historic day.

• Hit Me With Your Best Shot
  In which 10 blogs select what they think of as this epic's best shot.
• My Magnificent Aliens Obsession
  In which Kurt shares a surprising childhood memoir.
• Take Three: Michael Biehn
  In which Craig celebrates Cameron's go-to wrecked hero. 
• Podcast: 1986 Highlights, Oscar & Cannes 
  In which Nick and I sing the movie's praises and revisit other favorites from the year.

I'll let the paid subscribers and donors (see sidebar) choose the next theme week. If you've contributed this past month to keep the site with something approaching a shoestring operating budget (i.e. roof over head) expect soon.

Did you enjoy the Ripley action this week?

Take Three: Michael Biehn

Craig from Dark Eye Socket here with Take Three.  

The 1980s. Male. Character actor. Sci-fi. Aliens from deep, dark space and the deep blue sea and robots from the future. All under the tutelage of James Cameron. Today: It's Mr. Michael Biehn

Take One: The Terminator (1984)
It’s a good thing the T-800 didn’t find Sarah Connor any sooner than he did. He would’ve consequently deprived us of all that full-throttle Biehn action and indeed made The Terminator a very short movie, nay, franchise. (Found her! The end.) As the main man from future times, resistance fighter Sgt. Kyle Reese is electrically plonked down butt-naked from post-apocalyptic LA, circa 2029, to present-day 1984 to protect poor baffled Linda Hamilton. Biehn delivers a sturdy yet tender supporting turn. The Austrian Oak was obviously the big draw but this film triggered Biehn's signature part: the slightly wracked, occasionally cracked and often knackered hero.

Looking like a conspiracy-expounding tramp and armed with only a raincoat-concealed shotgun and an advantageous prescience, Biehn wastes no time finding his quarry. Hamilton and Biehn exerted sudden panic and impromptu connectivity believably together, making for an endearing sci-fi pairing. Of course this closeness stretched only nearly to the end of the first film, but their legacy reached further. As in Aliens, Biehn is particularly chivalrous with his female co-star. Of course his role dictates as such, but it appears to come from an uncommon aspect of Biehn’s own screen persona: it’s in the way he furtively expresses himself in the film’s calmer moments as much as when, elsewhere, he’s as blisteringly kick-ass as we’ve seen of him over the years. He’s a generous almost-leading man and a physically astute presence.  

Take Two: Aliens (1986)
Next to Reese, Corporal Dwayne Hicks in Aliens is the part Biehn will likely be most fondly remembered for. He emerges from the hyper-snoozing throng of grunts aboard the Sulaco to be the chief military man to aid and abet our Ripley. Immediately he’s an amiable presence with his wry, room-pleasing comments

Looks like the new lieutenant's too good to eat with the rest of us grunts.

He's easy to warm to amid the nefariously hard marine banter. And when it comes to Ripley, he shoots downright puppyish looks her way at opportune moments throughout the film: he bats his eyelids at her.

Click to read more ...

My Magnificent 'Aliens' Obsession

Kurt here.

Some boys of a certain persuasion – which is to say young gay cinephiles – may have found themselves a kindred, tuneful spirit in Fanny Brice, or fed their fabulous longings with [insert stereotypical icon here]. More power to 'em. For me, though, it was always about Ellen Ripley, Lt. First Class. For my boundless Ripley love, I have to at least partially thank a cocktail of deep-seeded denial and flamboyance rejection, as I was much more prepared to accept an angry woman with a gun as my savior than a ballad-belting showboat. I didn't want Schwarzenegger, but I wasn't ready for Cher. And I certainly have no regrets.

Since I wasn't donning feather boas, I'm sure my parents didn't think much of it when I began strapping toy rifles together with all manner of black plastic tubes and electrical tape, so as to recreate that shell-firing, flame-throwing, grenade-launching monstrosity that Ripley uses to resurface the industrial spaces on LV-426 (if memory serves, a black snorkel was even used as an extra gun barrel). I doubt I tripped their gaydar when I put two four-legged ottomans flush against the living room chair, then proceeded to crawl on the floor, weapon in hand, through my improvised air shaft.

Was I in drag? No. But make no mistake – I was diva-channeling.

Aliens, far and away my favorite action movie of all time, was also a liberating gay outlet long before I knew I was gay. That inherent gay need to fall headfirst in love with glorious females of outsized character was more than fulfilled by this watershed movie of womanly badassness. And my obsession with it spread well beyond playacting with plastic rifles. I regularly whipped up drawings of Ripley and those H.R. Giger beasties (I dug up some of them for this post).

I was close with these twin brothers at one point, and our friendship was pretty much based on our mutual Aliens enthusiasm – that, and the fact that they had all the action figures, even the yellow power-loader thingie. The twins' backyard was home to many an Aliens reenactment, with each of us alternating the role of James Cameron (“Okay – you be Hudson, and you be Vasquez!”). The guys never knew I was actually getting my Barbie on.

Her highnessMy mother was pregnant with my sister when she went to see Alien with my dad in 1979 (needless to say, she henceforth had a nightmare-filled pregnancy). This story has never made much sense to me, as I'm certainly the one who seems to have been psychically willed into Alien Saga obsession from the womb, not my sister. My sister doesn't even like SigWeavie. “She's ugly,” she says. (Oh yes, she did.)

Of the many gifts I've received from this franchise, the most cherished is a lifelong interest in Sigourney (who is not ugly, Heather). You'll see in the doodles that I was particularly fond of her jawline, which, by my hand, is ridiculously pronounced. I like to pretend that this masculine feature had a hand in getting Siggy the job in the first place, and I don't even know where to begin in addressing the sexual themes I suddenly realize it might represent for me. That's a lot of implications for one little post...

All this, and I haven't said a lick about Aliens's greatness as a film. I have no idea how many times I've seen it, and it's a long movie to have watched so repeatedly. I can honestly say there's not a single part that bores me, not even the mess hall conversations or the Ripley-can't-sleep prelude. This is a film that gets up, gets going and keeps going. It is notable for so much more than its titular nemeses, yet I can't pick a better creature feature (for Best Shot, which I sadly didn't participate in, I choose the pan that reveals the enormity of the alien queen, in her lair, on her throne – it's absolutely jaw-dropping). I think the best way I've ever heard Aliens described is that it has a beating heart – a racing pulse that's palpable. I'd say that it's certainly close to my heart, but that might sound kinda gay.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "ALIENS"

For the penultimate episode of Hit Me With Your Best Shot's second season (the finale is Rebel Without a Cause next Wednesday, join us) we're venturing into the Alien franchise, Aliens (1986) to be specific for its 25th anniversary (this coming Monday). We'll be spilling some acid blood, ducking into airshafts, doubting synthetic humans, and flame-throwing with Lt. Ellen Ripley a few times this week to celebrate. Yay, theme weeks!

Teamwork. How many action movies actually cheer for it?

Though Sigourney Weaver's iconic "Ripley" is the the franchise's true star (H.R. Giger's alien beasties are formidable but only runners-up; you know that's true!), one of the most commendable things you can say for Aliens (1986) is that James Cameron understands the importance of a strong ensemble and the value of teamwork. Many blockbuster franchises spin around one seemingly indestructable protagonist and though that's true here as well, the team around the good lieutenant never gets short-shrift. There's a brilliantly paired set of shots midway through the picture when Hicks and Ripley have just lost adopted daughter surrogate "Newt". Hicks rescues Ripley, dragging her to safety and then she rescues him in return when alien blood splatters on his chest plate and she drags him to their next destination.

Cameron has often been lauded for promoting women to lead duties in action pictures, but isn't it really only that he tends to balance the masculine and feminine throughout, rather than the far more common and totally lopsided cinematic impulse (i.e. heroic "doer" men and the decorative women that are there to be rescued or supportive or both). What's more, Cameron's action heroines are never just men in drag -- note this great shot of Private Vasquez (Cameron regular Jenette Goldstein) prepping her huge gun for war. It's hard not to miss her large breasts, especially since the shot begins with a closeup of them and they aren't taped down (Contrary to Mr. Lucas's famous edict, there will be jiggling in outerspace).  Earlier in the picture a fellow marine asks Vasquez if she's ever been mistaken for a man. Her simple inverted quip "No, have you?"

Best Shot
But given Ripley's place in the sci-fi and action pantheon it's fitting that the film peaks with its most female-centric setpiece: Ripley with her new child ("Newt") in her arms enters the lair of the Queen alien who is surrounded by her children; the room is littered with her violent egged babies, like sentient grenades just waiting for their pins to be pulled. Ripley begins to back away, after what amounts to a face/off and stand down with the Queen until one egg hatches and she realizes what she must do.

This shot, one of the most iconic close-ups of 80s cinema and maybe all of film history, is the climax of the mostly silent standoff between this franchise's two queens, underscored less by movie music than by their mutual heavy breathing. It's all in the steamy exhaustion, Ripley's heroic impulses, and that Oscar worthy head tilt from Sigourney Weaver.

10 Fellow Colonists

• The Red-Headed Invasion hands,  reaching out, touching you
• Tom Clift The moment when Ripley becomes.
• Okinawa Assault it's all in the art direction
• Film Actually 'the shit hits the fan moment' ...nightmares!
• Movies Kick Ass mommy metaphors
• Dark Eye Socket "payback time"
• Intifada "sharp sense vs. tantrums"
• Awards Nazi it still gives me shivers
• Awww, the Movies mother and child
• Oncoming Hope Ripley as Gaia 

Links: Dracula, Werewolf, Alien, Bridesmaid

My New Plaid Pants Oooooh Asia Argento and Thomas Kretschmann to star in Dario Argento's Dracula 3D.
Blastr the creator of MTV's new series Teen Wolf claims it's inspired by Spider-Man and Buffy. Ugh. I hate that "it's just like everything else" pitch approach to advertising but in this case it worked on me as Spidey and Buffy are two of my very favorite things. Damn you, man.
Ultra Culture "a review of Bridesmaids that's mostly just a rant about marketing."
Deviant Art Princess Leia drawn in  Alphonse Mucha style. Love it.

Last Exit to Nowhere look at this amazing fan photo to your right, in homage to Aliens.

Off Cinema
Socialite Life Glee's Naya Rivera got a record deal.
Boy Culture Do you remember these 70s and 80s tv shows? I had totally forgotten about most of these. A few I do remember vividly (It's a Living, Square Pegs)
La Daily Musto The Normal Heart stars get age-shaving portraits at Sardis. Ellen Barkin thinks she looks like ScarJo
After Elton chooses the 39 Hottest Guys in New York Theater. Thankfully there's something for everyone.
Hark a Vagrant "Brown Recluse Spider-Man" I lol'ed and lol'ed at this webcomic. Please to enjoy.