Thursday, May 25, 2017 at 8:00PM Tweet of the Week...
"now you're in the sun-Cannes place." pic.twitter.com/jgYJNzwGb9
— Neil Young (@BohemiaStable) May 24, 2017
Get it? Oh reader, I LOL'ed and LOL'ed. Cannes fun follows after the jump but first some non-Cannes thoughts and amusements featuring Twin Peaks, Rooney Mara, Reservoir Dogs and more...
Wednesday, May 24, 2017 at 3:00PM Jason from MNPP here with this week's All Sigourney edition of "Beauty vs Beast" -- everything should always be All Sigourney, don't you think? Most especially Alien movies. I can't tell you how much I missed the grounding presence of Ellen Ripley this past weekend, whiplashing around Ridley Scott's scattered Covenant. If only we were getting Neill Blomkamp's proposed sequel, I kept thinking. An Alien without a Ripley is a body without a heart or a brain - an exo-skeleton full of acid.
So that's where I stand on Covenant. And even if they're more positive than I am most (if not all?) reviews continue to point to the first two films as the franchise's high-water mark. But instead of facing Ripley off with Giger's literal Beast I thought it would be more interesting to do a variation on the eternal "Alien or Aliens" question, and face off Scott's Ripley against James Cameron's Ripley, as the low-key smartypants of the first movie is in many ways quite a different beast altogether from the ass-kicking maternal Cassandra of the second. Which Ripley's your jam, and why?
PREVIOUSLY We tackled Alfred Hitchcock's personal fave Shadow of a Doubt (1943) last week for Joseph Cotten's birthday and it was Cotten's Uncle Charlie who triumphed over his niece Charlie (Teresa Wright), although it was close (as it ought to be with such doubling going on). Said Dancin' Dan:
"This is impossible, pitting one of my favorite Hitchcock heroines against one of my favorite Hitchcock villains. But I'm going to give an EVER SO SLIGHT edge to Young Charlie, for the sole reason that, as much amazing work as Cotten does in the role, Hitch helps him with Uncle Charlie's creepiness much more than he helps Wright (never better) in building Young Charlie's character."
Monday, May 22, 2017 at 3:15PM Tim here. With Alien: Covenant opening to #1 over the weekend, it's fortuitous timing that today marks the 25th anniversary of Alien3. The 1992 sci-fi thriller is probably best-known today for two reasons: introducing music video director David Fincher to the world of theatrical features, and knocking all the shine off of the Alien franchise for the first time (and alas! not the last).
Underperforming at the box office, and outright flopping with critics, Alien³ has never since recovered its reputation; if time has been kind to it, it's only because at least we can now say, "well, at least it's not as bad as Alien: Resurrection"...
Thursday, May 18, 2017 at 8:00PM By Spencer Coile
;)
The tagline for the first Alien film, short and deeply frightening, reads "In space no one can hear you scream." Written in tiny font, it is placed on the poster for Ridley Scott's first venture into the Alien-universe beneath what we soon learn is the egg from which the menacing title creature is born. The image is simple but punchy, rather like the power and artistry emerging from Alien, in very much the same way the monsters pop out of humans' chests. On paper, the series is simple. But only on paper. Revisiting the world of Ellen Ripley and co. as a lead-up to the release of Alien: Covenant this weekend, one thought kept running through my mind: these films are disurbing, because they get at the root of what it means to be a human, to be a monster, and to make sacrifices that benefit oursevles, but also the greater good. What may have started out as a cut-and-paste psychological horror from 1979 soon became a story that is deeply compelling and worthy of examination.
So let's put on our space helmets, grab our flame-throwers, and start exploring the storytelling of the Alien saga...
Wednesday, February 15, 2017 at 9:18AM 11 is the magic number today and 11 comes with big and appropriately twinned A list Oscar trivia.
the great Fay Bainter was the first actor double-nominated in a single year
11 is the number of actors who have been double nominated for lead & supporting within the same year! Pretty cool, right? Details and adjacent trivia starring Lange, Bergman, Blanchett, De Niro, SigWeavie, and more after the jump...
