"Get Away from Her, You Bitch!": Revisiting the Alien Saga

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...  

Click to read more ...

11 Days Until Oscar -- Big Double-Honors Trivia!

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...

Click to read more ...

Links: Rogue One, Hidden Figures, The OA

Gurus of Gold the latest Best Picture chart along with Globe predictions. I went out on a limb or two for fun because the Globes usually do at least one weird thing with winners.
Variety Guy Lodge on the foreign film finalist list 
Variety on the Peter Cushing visual fx in Rogue One and performers rights to their image after death (I suppose we should talk about this eventually but I am still really weirded out and uncomfortable about it)
Jezebel in case you missed the brouhaha about Tilda Swinton's conversation with Margaret Cho about whitewash casting in Doctor Strange 

Tracking Board Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig to headline a new musical comedy Everything's Coming Up Profits: The Golden Age of Industrial Musicals
The Gothamist loves Netflix's mystery series The OA [SPOILERS] from the pair that brought us that eco-terrorist thriller The East (Brit Marling & Zal Batmanglij), remember that one? I have only watched two episodes. Not sure that I get it. Feels padded and expository to me. I'll give it one more episode
Guardian talks to Sigourney Weaver, still going strong 37+ years into her big screen stardom
Coming Soon Ewan McGregor behind the scenes on T2 Trainspotting
Variety profiles great new director Garth Davis (Lion, Top of the Lake)
In Contention tries to figure out what the Makeup Oscar people might like in next week's bakeoff
Playbill First look at Philippa Soo in Broadway's adaptation of Amélie
Awards Daily Hidden Figures plays the White House. Headed for a Best Picture nod? 
/Film Josh Boone's initial plans for the movie franchise version of The New Mutants 

List-Mania
THR 25 best performances of the year - usual Oscar buzzing people plus a few interesting off-consensus choices like Kathryn Hahn in Bad Moms
Guardian 50 best comedies of all time - as chosen by comedians. 
Pajiba best lines of the year on TV 
Film School Rejects 50 most beautiful shots in Star Wars universe 

Power Link and Iron Fist

Vanity Fair interviews reclusive legend Warren Beatty. He talks Annette, his trans son Stephen and
i09 Forest Whitaker is joining the ever-expanding cast of Marvel's Black Panther movie
Vulture Daniel Craig, newly platinum blonde, is warming up to returning to the 007 gig. Money money money. Money money money. ♫ Money money money. If you happen to be rich - .......Ooooh -- and you feel like a Night's entertainment, you can pay for a gay escapade.

 

Antagony & Ecstacy catches up with The Neon Demon and loves it more than he knows he should
MNPP it looks like Nicolas Hoult will be playing Nikola Tesla in the costume drama Current War about the fight over monetizing electricity co-starring those actors of endless ubiquity: Benedict Cumberbatch and Michael Shannon.
The Playlist Guy Ritchie will direct Disney's live action Aladdin. Weird.
/Film Boyd Holbrook will play the cyborg villain Donald Pierce in the third Wolverine movie, now titled Logan
AV Club Ron Perlman has finally given up his dream of Hellboy 3 

Power Man and Iron Fist
I don't know how many people who are into Marvel's modern universe of TV and movies knows this but Luke Cage was always paired with Iron Fist in the comicbooks. That's hard to imagine now because Luke Cage has been portrayed as such a loner in both Jessica Jones and on his own show.

I know this because I was kind of addicted to that duo as a kid. When I heard they were adapting it for television I wanted Marvel to quit whitewashing the Iron Fist character. Yes Danny was always white but since he grew up in Tibet and is a master of martial arts it would make sense that he were Asian. What's more the common narrative of the white man being better than all the Asians at the super powerful stuff they picked up over in Asia (see also Dr Strange's sorcery) is inherently a racist trope. We were not alone in this thinking. Apparently the handsome actor Lewis Tan, who will play one of the villains in the show, actually wanted to play Iron Fist but Marvel was adamant that he be white (sigh). So we get Finn Jones in the lead role who is most famous for playing Loras Tyrell, the Knight of Flowers in Game of Thrones.

In happier casting news, after Iron Fist premieres we'll eventually get the team up series The Defenders (which will feature Sigourney Weaver as their big bad (yes!))  Here's the new Comic Con teaser for Iron Fist in case you missed it.

TIFF: Michelle Rodriguez & Sigourney Weaver in (re)Assignment

Nathaniel R reporting from the Toronto International Film Festival

We must ban the use of the word "problematic" so that it may be deployed to describe pop culture offerings which are PROBLEMATIC in all caps. (re)Assignment is one of those, even if its too dumb to capitalize on its sophomoric provocations.

A hired hitman named Frank (Michelle Rodriguez...with prosthetic dick because her figurative big one wasn't enough) is drugged and operated on by an amoral vengeful doctor (Sigourney Weaver) and wakes up with breasts, vagina and a smoother more beautiful face...

Click to read more ...