Ridley Scott to direct prequel to Alien!!!!!!....

[BIL]

Yeah, you can't go wrong with his The Fly (1986). Great human story of reckless ambition with some gut-wrenching body horror. The traumas of both play off one another perfectly. It's not scary, really, but it's definitely intense and the practical effects are spectacular.

And it has Jeff Goldblum! Now I want to watch it again.

[Udderdude]

Boy, I sure do miss the 80's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x1YuvUQFJ0 (Warning: Spoilers ahead!)

[Mischief Maker]

Yeah, you can't go wrong with his The Fly (1986). Great human story of reckless ambition with some gut-wrenching body horror. The traumas of both play off one another perfectly. It's not scary, really, but it's definitely intense and the practical effects are spectacular.

And it has Jeff Goldblum! Now I want to watch it again.

And in case you're wondering what the film is "about": AIDS.

You might also give the Japanese flick "Tetsuo: the Iron Man" a try. AIDS again.

Waitaminute... I think I know what this Prometheus film about the perils of stroking strange penises of unknown origin might be about...

[LSU]

Would I be derailing to ask if someone could actually recommend some good horror? Films like Alien and The Thing works because of what they managed psychologically, but I think also because what Mischief Maker is calling Body Horror. I really haven't seen a film that disturbed me in a long time, but am not just looking for a gore fest or something like Cannibal Holocaust. Need to rewatch The Shining, though I never was really scared by it. Just want to enjoy the moving steady cam shots again.

Alien and The Thing are my two favourite films..! And The Shining is of course brilliant.

If you like those I'd recommend:

Videodrome (Cronenberg's best film IMHO although really all his films are great)
The Fog (More classic Carpenter, my second favourite of his after The Thing - very atmosphere and story focused)
Prince Of Darkness (Later Carpenter, doesn't have anything like the visuals or flair of his early films but nonetheless it has it's moments)
Wolfen (you'll either really love or hate this one, some people have said it's a bit slow but I disagree)
Marebito (Surreal and metaphoric J-horror somewhat in the style of a David Lynch nightmare)
Lost Highway (Not really a horror but creepy as hell... and since I referenced Lynch above this couldn't go unmentioned)
Night of the Demon (Amazing 1957 horror, easily my favourite old B/W horror flick)
The Mist (Darabont doing his best, another Stephen King adaptation)
Forbidden World (Super cheapo Roger Corman Alien rip-off but somehow manages to be brilliant in its own B-movie way)
Jacob's Ladder (Simply a work of art, better than any other of Adrian Lyne's films by a mile)
Se7en (Again not really a horror but if you enjoy suspense over gore this is top notch stuff and deservedly put Fincher on the map... amazing, bleak, beautiful photography from Darius Khondji)

[Mischief Maker]

Jacob's Ladder (Simply a work of art, better than any other of Adrian Lyne's films by a mile)

Ooh! Great pick. And if you grab the DVD, make sure to watch the deleted scenes. Unlike Aliens and Terminator 2, this is a film that would be a million times better with the deleted scenes restored.

Some might say Jacob's Ladder "inspired" a certain long-running series of Konami's.

[xris]

Jacob' Ladder is one of my all time favorite movies. Extremely well filmed, terrifying, and deals with a hobby topic of mine.
Yo, Prometheus was a mess. It should have taken place well after the series, and should not have ever had old dude in the movie at all.
It could have been saved by having the evil ass android saying, "We have been unable to obtain the bio weapon that was previously encountered, but we have found a genetic material that may have been a precursor."
I must have sneezed or something, because I totally missed the final monster somehow. Oh well, next watching I guess.
What the fuck did Theron's character do? She was powerless, unneeded, worthless, lurky, and I never saw any nekid push-ups. Really, this was on of the most pointless characters ever, and testament to the difficulties this movie has.
I really pray this doesn't impact any future releases of science fiction movies in the future. We have been lucky to have a slight resurgence of hard scifi in the last few years.

[CMoon]

Thanks guys. I've actually seen almost everything you've mentioned, but its partly reassuring to note that I've covered my bases. Almost mentioned videodrome in my 'I'm looking for things like this...' Yeah, personally I think the horror genre is pretty well dead, sadly.

[CMoon]

Boy, I sure do miss the 80's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x1YuvUQFJ0 (Warning: Spoilers ahead!)

He almost slips into 'Plinkett mode' here. Nice clip.

[xris]

Event Horizon is damn good scifi horror as well. Leviathan is The Thing on a submarine, kinda. Pandorum is decent if you can be a little forgiving. Triangle, isn't straight up scifi, but I liked it - I do know a couple people that hated this though.
Friday the 13th - Jason in spaaace!

[GaijinPunch]

The Thing is top notch. Classic.

So... w/ all the Prometheus hate, can we say that film is now in the same boat as video games? Simply no classics being made? Studios meddling too much? I guess the last things I saw in the theaters that I saw and thought, "I want to enjoy this with my son when he's old enough" was the LOTR trilogy, and that's 10 years old now.

[Op Intensify]

I'd say film is doing worse.

We still get some truly classic video games every now and then, even if they're completely ignored by the mainstream press and/or not released in all territories.

On the film side, even indie/auteur filmmaking seems like it's completely stuck in a rut. It's almost a mirror image of Hollywood at this point, just the same few tired concepts joylessly rehashed with a new coat of paint. And then you have your pretentious artsy wank garbage: some film major's senior project at my uni was just three projectors showing different angles of him sleeping for ten minutes. There have been some entertaining movies, sure, but nothing that's going to be talked about ten years from now. All the talent's gone into television, which I have little interest in.

[BIL]

Some might say Jacob's Ladder "inspired" a certain long-running series of Konami's.

Including those behind the series.

[GaijinPunch]

All the talent's gone into television, which I have little interest in.

Should give it a shot. There's quite a few TV series I think I will be rewatching down the road, if I haven't done so already. And with the censorship getting more and more lax, a lot of this is stuff that previously couldn't have been done.

[antron]

Neil deGrasse Tyson (US physicist, Sagan protege) was on National Public Radio this morning talking about the film.

His comments:

If the Earth was sporred from outer space, it wouldn't have been from humanoids, but bacterium.
A computer screen in the film had the distance to Jupiter way wrong.
Green blood is possible, as copper is a good carrier for oxygen (shellfish use it)

[replayme]

went to see this the other day. again. so i've seen it twice now.

it does grate on repeated viewings, and the stupidity of the main characters becomes even more glaring.

can't believe r scott botched this film so bad. i can understand it if he was brought on board as a work-for-hire director, but prometheus/alien was his baby.

just can't understand as to why the film received so little love from him... especially considering that he birthed the entire saga.

[BIL]

Does anyone remember hearing something about a scene where the space jockeys, ignorant of human reproduction, would try forcing two male characters to "mate?" Can't say I was bummed (bahahaha!) this wasn't in the film, especially as Dark Horse's Labyrinth comic did something similar only soul-destroyingly worse, but that's the kind of awkward, left-field, genuine unearthly unpleasantry I was expecting from this movie.

Pretty much everything that went down is old territory. Bad alien shit getting into people's bodies and either killing or horribly deforming them while a greedy corporate entity plays with lives from behind the scenes, again. But this bad alien shit isn't particularly interesting, being limited to evil jizz, arseface the snake, jumbo calimari and Baldy McPunchyface. Plus the old Giger creature and a Fast Zombie™. It's all competently done, sometimes better than that (DIY caesarian was an intense riff on the old chestburster), but I never felt surprised at any point. Some of the setpieces are absolutely ancient ("oh look what a cute creaturBYAAAAAAAAAA")

Not trying to put the boot in, as I still like the movie per my original impression of it. But I can believe those comments posted earlier about it being diluted from its original vision for franchising purposes.

[Lordstar]

Jacob's Ladder

Some might say

no some might say about it! Its fact. I love silent hill for this

[cj iwakura]

Well, I'm glad I now know what to call the genre of horror that unsettles me most!
(Body)

The cocoon scene in Alien was great for mythos, but pure nightmare fuel.

That's the reason I'm reluctant to see Prometheus, that and I've heard it's a narrative mess.

Ah, Fox, when won't you screw with a script?

[BryanM]

One of the more bowel-emptying moments in tv history:



Not the kind of thing you want to come home to after a long day of banking.

And of course Vince Masuka and his wacky theories are worth hearing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DnAJ7Z6lHk

For how dark the series supposedly is, it actually goes the extra mile to tone things down. The torture video, if you actually pause the screen and look at it, leaves the bikini zone 100% safe, and all the men are doing are adjusting their belts. It creates the illusion of horrible, instead of going there.

Most of time. John Lithgows are immune to decency. The rules don't apply to them.

can we say that film is now in the same boat as video games?

I've felt that film's been dead for over a decade now. Pixar releases decentish flicks, but by and large the only things I actually want to see are trash that can be enjoyed while drunk. Like that horror movie ad that had one dude pushing a dude in a shopping cart, and the shopping cart dude wakes up and sees another guy's arm is attached to his body and begins screaming. The guy pushing the cart mellowly goes "sorry, they were out of caucasian."

I had thought this was a matter of scope, that you can't say much in the allocated time. And since you're in competition with every movie ever made, you're going to come up short most of the time in comparison. I remember watching Terminator 2 as a young lad and thinking "this is amazing; what will they come out with in the future?" But now here we are, with no movie in that genre that comes close.

But after all that.

Dr.Horrible is released on the internet for free, and slaps me in the face with it's 40-minute long penis of awesome. Shattering everything I believed in. Now... now all I can say is Hollywood just sucks.

It makes me want to make that "Lovecraft with Muppets" series I've always dreamed of. Because, why the fuck not.

Same thing goes for video games. They suck? Make one of your own. Look around; it's obvious the world needs more of you, and less of Them.

[CMoon]

I've felt that film's been dead for over a decade now.

Took a little self-inventory and realized I was only going to see films by Wes Anderson, Studio Ghibli, the Cohen Brothers and Werner Herzog. Why movies stink today is its own thread, but we don't really need to start one because it the gist of it can be summed up with one example: Transformers 3 made more money than God.

[BryanM]

Transformers

Proof that we need to get the Annihilatrix up and running pronto.

[Ruldra]

Watched Prometheus yesterday night. Despite the plot holes and seeing the characters doing odd and stupid things, I enjoyed the movie for what it is.

I found an interesting analysis of the movie here: http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html

EDIT: lol

[Mischief Maker]

Watched Prometheus yesterday night. Despite the plot holes and seeing the characters doing odd and stupid things, I enjoyed the movie for what it is.

I found an interesting analysis of the movie here: http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html

EDIT: lol

For the record, Ash wore gloves in "Alien." George Lucas isn't the only director who's gotten lazy with the details in his old age.

[JBC]

For the record, Ash wore gloves in "Alien."

Ash was trying to blend in.

[Skykid]

I've felt that film's been dead for over a decade now.

It has, at least where commercial film is concerned. Hasn't affected anyone's bank balance though, because kids are so successfully indoctrinated into the church of materialism, celebrity and unreality TV that they embrace garbage like a long lost friend.

If up and coming generations were all avid book readers, this:

Transformers 3 made more money than God.

...would probably never happen.

[Randorama]

If up and coming generations were all avid book readers, this:

Transformers 3 made more money than God.

...would probably never happen.

...I knew a kid who devoured books and magazines about celebrities, gossip, etc. Or: we need kids to be avid readers about good stuff, not just stuff

re: things.

I think that this movie, like many other sci-fi movies in the past, has one very general problem.

If authors want to touch philosophical themes and take continental philosophy themes, then the result will be a bit of a mixed bag. Nietzsche, Baudrillard, etc. are, as continental philosophers, anti-scientist in their thinking. Science Fiction is fiction based on pushing scientific speculation to its limits, by definition.

So, mixing the two opposing tendencies can easily leads to inconsistent, intellectually vapid outcomes (this movie, but also tons of other previous movies). I confess that I think that sci-fi works for tv series, books, comics, and other serialized products: good ideas and characters take more than 2 hours, to be developed.

Unless you're Michael Bay [/troll]

[CMoon]

There have always been bad movies. Michael Bay is not keeping good movies from being made. What has changed is the absence of directors/studios willing to invest a lot of time/money into films that are not inherently money grab attempts. What I would like to know is whether we suffer from a lack of strong willed directors, or rather that studios have such tight control over the creative process/budget that directors can no longer make daring cinema?

I don't know whether to cheer on the 'reading' comment or not. It would be nice to blame the poor taste of movie goers, but I think the lowest common denominator has always been pretty low; that and we're forgetting the major demographic here: kids. Admittedly, Prometheus isn't aimed at kids, but the phenomena of the PG-13 movie certainly is. When the target audience of most films is 12-25, that really does change the landscape of cinema quite a bit. What we need are more directors willing to make the kind of movies they want to see.

[Mischief Maker]

If up and coming generations were all avid book readers, this:

Transformers 3 made more money than God.

...would probably never happen.

Yeah, and we'd never have to suffer through crap like the Harry Potter movies, or the Twilight Series, or those godawful Girl with the Dragon Tatoo movies ever again!

[Skykid]

Yeah, and we'd never have to suffer through crap like the Harry Potter movies, or the Twilight Series, or those godawful Girl with the Dragon Tatoo movies ever again!

I doubt the majority audience for those films read the books.

...Except maybe Twilight, but that's not literature, that's like pouring a measuring jug full of acid into your eyeballs.

[Dave_K.]

I found an interesting analysis of the movie here: http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/584135.html

Thanks for this. I might go see this movie afterall.