Post #396,135
11/7/14 5:02:37 PM
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Watching "Alien" again recently
It holds up far better after thirty-five years than, say, Forbidden Planet did after fifteen. Of course, 2001 raised the bar way, way higher in the interim.
I like the hell out of it still. Masterful pacing, clinically perfect ramping up of tension. To this day I've never seen a more persuasive agglomeration of sets adding up to a spaceship than those Ridley Scott devised for Nostromo. Giger's alien wreck has never been equalled.
Initially saw it in the company of my first wife within a couple of weeks of its release in 1979. At the chest-burster scene, the couple seated directly in front of us rose, left the theatre, never returned. As Sigourney Weaver fled the spacecraft with the self-destruct clock ticking, members of the audience were shouting "No! No! Fuck the cat! Leave the fucking cat!" I gotta tell you, it was a real collective experience. Much as I enjoyed taking it in again from my sickbed, it wasn't the same without a mass audience.
cordially,
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Post #396,138
11/7/14 5:46:15 PM
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Most excellent film
Alien and The Thing are my two favorite scifi horror films, and both are the sort of thing that is best kept far, far away from young, impressionable minds.
Alien is particularly rife with tension. Curiously, the song that plays during the final credits (Howard Hanson's Symphony #2) is the music traditionally played to close Interlochen concerts. My eldest sister, an Interlochen alumnus, was a bit disturbed by the end of the film as a result. Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
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Post #396,141
11/7/14 7:42:56 PM
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closing music
No one else believes me, but I will go to my grave convinced that Italian singer Paolo Conte ripped off Howard Hanson when he recorded Alle Prese Con Una Verde Milonga.
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Post #396,161
11/8/14 4:38:21 PM
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Yeah, I'm not hearing it either.
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
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Post #396,186
11/9/14 9:35:00 PM
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You need to listen again, and sequentially
...but it's true that no one else believes me.
delusionally,
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Post #396,146
11/8/14 2:07:55 AM
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And by comparison
Event Horizon is a big pile of clichéd shit.
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Post #396,185
11/9/14 9:33:56 PM
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Event Horizon
Saw that on the big screen. First time (not, alas, the last) I ever had to shield my ears against the hazardous volume of a cinema soundtrack.
cordially,
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Post #396,139
11/7/14 5:55:11 PM
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Making Of Alien
Regards,
-scott
Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
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Post #396,140
11/7/14 7:05:54 PM
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It is indeed a great film. (Hope you're feeling better!)
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Post #396,144
11/8/14 1:15:25 AM
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It was ground-breaking in many many ways.
Amongst other things, I read somewhere that the characters died in order of their actor's Hollywood profile. That's why John Hurt's character died first and why Sigourney Weaver's character survived (just).
Wade.
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Post #396,157
11/8/14 1:51:45 PM
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Hitchcock did it first
Janet Leigh was the star, Tony Perkins was a nobody. She had top billing on the marquee.
You don't kill your star in the first reel ... unless you want your audience to transfer their sympathies to the unknown next to her.
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Post #396,165
11/8/14 7:56:09 PM
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I'm not surprised. :-)
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Post #396,187
11/9/14 9:38:08 PM
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Hollywood profile deaths
I must say that your assertion is on the face of it highly unpersuasive.
cordially,
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Post #396,189
11/10/14 5:51:40 AM
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Care to elaborate?
I could be wrong, although it is widely known that the film definitely moved Sigourney Weaver's career up.
Wade.
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Post #396,195
11/10/14 2:08:32 PM
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Siggy's Hollywood career
...consisted at that point of a walk-on in Annie Hall. Sort of like starting at the South Pole: nowhere to go but north.
magnetically,
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Post #396,196
11/10/14 2:14:32 PM
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Dang, didn't realize it was *that* early in her career
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Post #396,209
11/10/14 6:11:32 PM
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Alien was her first leading role.
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Post #396,147
11/8/14 3:35:22 AM
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Then there's "Ash"..
the first Rogue Science Officer to, incidentally, put a *face on Corporate thinking (the theme further fleshed out in Aliens 2, where the Face was on a human creep.)
* the 'man' being artificial, thus the face literally a mask: I call that a second-order fit of a Corporate-Face icon.
I still think of them as an essential Pair, though.. who doesn't love Sigourney W's Mistressful depiction of an authentic Super-hero? the kid was stellar, then that final quip by (half-of..) the Good-artificial-Guy:
Not bad for a hyuu-man!
Does anyone recall #3? I retain almost nothing of plot, it's arguable raison d'etre. I trust that means, no #4 ever.
As to those crude cat-calls, in a modrin audience.. at least there are plenty of us folk who know why she went back for the cat..
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Post #396,151
11/8/14 10:29:00 AM
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Did you ever see the ship at the LA Science museum?
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Post #396,181
11/9/14 3:24:50 PM
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+5 Provocatively surreal.
Never thought about their having saved that ghoulish masterpiece, so evocative of every form of Bump-in-the-Night shrieks.
Get married (or divorced) there?
Face all your inner-Demons: LIVE?
Catharsis during terminal disgust with..
A) Your job/Boss/neighborhood/Color of your 'State'
B) The Hells Angels clubhouse next-door
C) The Fracking machines next door
D) the neighbors with 6 yap-dogs, outside daily
E) The D- in chemistry, for the oxygen generator explosion when you used Potassium Perchlorate, not -Chlorate.
F) The Tea Party/The Libruls/The Evangelicals/The Militant Atheists/Fascists/The Haters/The Lovers
F) Your entire liff..?
See? Something for.. just everyone!
Bet the museum could cover all Staff costs by renting it out!
($50 a pop for Hallowe'en. Or July 4, 2015, after all the meeja nonsense heard en passant?)
OK.. just Clone It: Depots all over; get rich, move to an Island.
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Post #396,197
11/10/14 2:39:19 PM
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It was a cheap date when I saw it.
Took my girlfried up to see it. Cost: $0.00.
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