"Aliens" Revisited.

by Nathaniel R

How long was I out. HOW LONG? Please."

This week I had the pleasure of guesting on InSession's podcast to discuss James Cameron's sci-fi/horror classic Aliens (1986). When they asked me to guest on the show I secretly thought "What more can I say about it? I've been talking about this movie forever!" but then of course I couldn't shut up and the episode was too short for me to squeeze in everything that was inside of me. So herewith some notes and, of course, the podcast itself...

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House at the End of the Link

Untapped New York "My Day as a Paparazzo" how New Yorkers react to celebrity sightings and how it changes when the paparazzi are involved.
Roger Ebert remembers Diary of a Lost Girl one of my very favorite silents starring Louise Brooks.
Geekscape wonders what The Avengers might have looked like had it been made in the 1980s. Michael Biehn for Steve Rogers and Cary Elwes for Tony Stark? I could deal.
Stranger Than Most names the laziest tagline ever. Oh Safe House. Try harder!

In Contention Julian Fellowes to right Cameron's wrong on Titanic. Oh dear. Fellowes has let Downton Abbey go to his head. Aint nothing wrong with Titanic (1997) that isn't so wrong it's right.
Deja View remembers an animated bit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988)
Awards Daily new images from Woody Allen's To Rome With Love. How many title-changes has this one gone through now? 
Animation Mag here's a fun one for Los Angeles based readers. There will be special one-off screenings of Snow White and The Seven Dwarves (1938) and  20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre next month.
Rope of Silicon first image of Jennifer Lawrence in House at the End of the Street. Elisabeth Shue co-stars (yay!) 
Vulture Star Market Jennifer Lawrence 

And speaking of... yeah yeah we'll talk about Hunger Games soon. My review will be up Sunday at some point. Stay tuned.

click to remember this house

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.

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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 

Tech Noir "The Terminator"

This article was originally published in summer 2009. [Thanks to Leave Me The White for some of the screencaps] I'm reposting with minor edits in celebration of the 20th anniversary of its sequel Terminator 2: Judgment Day on this 4th of July Weekend.  Plus, what's more American than spectacles of Hollywood violence that launced billion dollar franchises?

Arnold Schwarzenegger as "The Terminator"

"Tech Noir"
In March of 1984 when The Terminator began filming, the director James Cameron and the producer Gale Ann Hurd were no Hollywood heavyweights. Cameron was no one's idea of a visionary (except for perhaps his own) and had only one feature under his belt, Piranha 2: The Spawning -- auspicious beginnings! Hurd had learned the production ropes on B movies for Roger Corman. Cameron and Hurd intended for the dark, fast and cheaply made robot movie to be their calling card. Seven months later in October the movie premiered with only its deceptively simple premise (killer machine hunts woman) and Conan the Barbarian (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to sell it. The Terminator was an immediate hit, though not quite a blockbuster. It earned a Conan-like $38 million gross in its initial run (which I believe is something roughly in the ballpark of $100 million in today's ticket sales).

As a franchise it was a slow starter but as a stand alone movie The Terminator was anything but. The movie begins with a bone crushing (literally) view of "The Year of Darkness", in which massive machines hunt humans in desolate post-apocalyptic ruins. Very quickly we're thrown back to present day Los Angeles ...present day in in the 80s at least.

An electric storm begins and a naked crouching man rises from the clearing smoke. He proceeds to walk emotionless through LA and slaughters some punks for clothes. A second electrical storm follows dropping another naked man into downtown LA. The twin sequences are mostly wordless but already Cameron's story instincts are shining: The first man (we don't technically know he's a machine) is already embedded in the audiences mind as an cool collected deadly force to be reckoned with, the second Kyle Reese (Michael Biehn) is, in contrast, a scurrying, less capable and frankly desperate looking man.

Contrasting Entrances

In short, he's mortal.

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