h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ooh... Alien^3, tough break for Glover.


David Fincher tells the story about being asked to direct Alien^3. He said he was thrilled when he got the offer. He was a young, unknown director being offered a sure blockbuster franchise. He couldn't say no. Then when he was filming it and saw what a train wreck the plot was, he wished he had. Still, he made the best of it. It's a very well directed pile of steaming .


Same with Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Alien Resurection. If you watch it again just for the visual style it's a brilliantly directed pile. And Jeunet's style really comes through. Notice all the beautifully lit and filmed underwater scenes and think of City of Lost Children.

You know something? I'd forgotten how many names are in Alien 3; some already famous, some about to become more so, some known for signature roles.

Charles Dance (who made women swoon as Guy Perron in The Jewel in the Crown) and Brian Glover I remembered, but I'd forgotten that Paul McGann was in it and also Ralph Brown, both of whom are connected by Withnail and I; McGann being 'I', and Brown, of course, played Danny the Dealer

Christopher Fairbank - Moxey from Auf Weidersehn Pet.

Pete Postlethwaite - where to begin! Brassed Off, Usual Suspects, In the Name of the Father, all kinds of TV plays and dramas.

Phil Davis - already known for being one of Mike Leigh's go-to actors for both films and TV plays (Vera Drake, High Hopes), played Wilfred Bramble in a play about Steptoe and Son, was also in In the Name of the Father, was in a film about the Tolpuddle Martyrs called Comrades (one of the few films I've seen that has a bona fide intermission), was in one of my favourite TV series - Moving Story, played Chalky in Quadrophenia, and even showed up as one of the Timpson clan in Rumpole of the Bailey

I guess you won't be familiar with some of those names and films/shows, but to a British person of a certain age they'll be very well known indeed, and much-loved too, I reckon.

It doesn't help that I watched Alien^3 maybe twice.

In my most humble opinion, there is exactly ONE Alien film. And it was a suspense/horror film, not an action adventure.

No other film was as frightening to me as Alien. It was even more frightening because they didn't show off how cool their special FX alien looked in every third scene. Ridley Scott knew how to make a SciFi movie back then. He even did a fair job of a Fantasy (Legend).


Then he did Thelma and Louise and G.I. Jane and I've never forgiven him.

I have to agree with you. It scared the out of me when I saw it the first time, at the flicks when it came out (on a first date ), and it has continued to do so ever since then. I went through a phase of just not being able to watch it, even though I saw the other three when each of them came out.

At the age of 57 I still have to steel myself to watch it. Like you say - sparing on the effects, and also adding a touch of everyday-ness (the politics of the corporation and the workplace) and griminess to to a spaceship which you might only otherwise see in something like Red Dwarf. Or on a Klingon bird of prey.

And I've probably said this several times before, but what gets me most about it is the fact that the crew are in a place they can't get out of, with something they can't beat, and it's eating them. Humans aren't meant to be part of the food chain, and they're certainly not meant to be eaten alive or used as hosts. Plus you've got the creepy designs of HR Giger which aren't like anything else, and are just plain scary to begin with.

No, it's definitely a horror film. I can't see it as action adventure at all.

I was a teenager when I saw it. I watched it many times on cable. And when I knew it would be on, late at night, when my parents were away, I turned off all the lights, opened the doors and windows, and sat right in front of the TV with the whole room open behind me... and scared myself silly!

Everything was tuned to make it scary. Like you said, there was no escape. It was claustrophobic. The "chase" scene in the ventilator shafts with the moving dots pinging on the displays... we studied that in a film class I took at college years later as one of the best chase scenes ever made and it only showed the thing doing the chasing for 3 single frames at the end! BOO!

Also, there were rumors that there were nearly subliminal yonic designs in the alien ship set design to prey on psychological mother issues of young men watching the film. Also that there were sub-aural frequencies in the sound track to make the audience feel like a chest burster was crawling around inside them.

I don't know if those are true, but it didn't matter. In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream.

Ah, that must be one of the most appropriated and parodied taglines in film history

Heh... yeah, I saw something the other day where someone was about to say it and was cut off because it was too cliche.

And it usually starts off "In case no-one can..."

Finally got around to watching this. It's been sitting on my BD player for a week or so. I'll try not to spoil anything and be brief. I mostly enjoyed watching it. I had heard a few comments that made me suspect that the ending might surprise or confuse viewers.

OK, it's no spoiler to say that much of the film involves a boy and a tiger on the ocean. I will say, that I started to get a bit weary after an hour or so of that. It was probably just a pacing problem at that point. But, after I got to the end of it, and pondered it a bit, and slept on it for about 10 hours.

I liked it.

Damn, this place is dusty. I've seen a lot of films since Life of Pi.


Well, anyhoo...


Night before last, I watched a "Drafthouse Film". I believe that this just means it's being distributed by a subsidiary of the Alamo Drafthouse. They're probably featuring low budget indie films.

I Declare War was a fun flick to watch. It's "kinda", "sorta", "not really at all" like a small version of Battle Royale. It's a Dozen Dirty kids playing "war" in the woods. They imagine the sticks and cap guns they carry are real weapon, so that's how it's shown on screen, as real AK-47s and nickel plated .45 Smith & Wessons. This is the story of what happens when a serious game of capture the flag gets a bit too serious. It's got a bit of Lord of the Flies feeling to it.

Here're some trailers:

[WARNING: Trailer 1 is a bit more spoilerific. Skip if you're planning on watching it soon.]

1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GFu8Vileik
2) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfEGoJh8FXQ

I really enjoyed how it alternates between "real" weapons and sticks/toys depending on how seriously the kids are playing at the moment. I also like how while the film is set as modern day, they could be kids in the 70's or 80's. Their clothes and hair are ambiguous. (A cell phone is dealt with early to get it out of the way.) These kids are real kids. They're not some Hollywood version of what adults think kids are like.

But, like I hinted, this isn't nearly as dark as Battle Royale. While they are mostly "pretending", there is a good amount of tension throughout the film.

I recommend it. I even recommend it for those with kids. While there is a lot of gunfire, there's no real gore or anything like that.

Yep, Drafthouse Films is Mr League's film distribution company. That bloke will soon have his fingers in more pies than Little Jack Horner.

Four Lions was their first film.

That reminds me

Oh, I saw that too. Good flick.

This is a good film... it is.

I just couldn't finish it. It runs 3 hours and I just couldn't really get into it. I'm sure I would have enjoyed it if I had watched it through, but I was looking at the clock and after 10:00 on a "school night" I had to stop. And I just don't think I would have put it back on if I hadn't sent it back this morning.

It's the story of a young French woman in High School discovering her sexuality , love and herself. It avoids all the cliches. The graphic sex scenes do not feel gratuitous, they're integral to the story. The lead actresses are excellent in their abilities to express themselves nonverbally.

It's just paced too slowly for me and I just can't find that much interest in the main characters. It's just me personally. I just don't care about the lives of high schoolers. If I was still in high school, I'd probably love this film, but not for it's cerebral aspects, if you know what I mean.


I also recently watched Despicable Me and I was not impressed. This one had none of the ageless charm of something like Monsters Inc, or Toy Story. It's just a rather dumb story for kids with some funny accents and disposable hench-thingies thrown in for prat falls.

Meh.

I was unaware that The Lady in the Water was an M. Night Shyamalan film until the end credits. Seeing as he plays a major role in the film tells you that I wasn't really paying attention to him when I saw him in interviews or at awards shows, (well, I don't watch award shows.)

I enjoyed this film. It's supposed to be a Bedtime Story he tells his children. And it works well as such. The characters aren't well developed because they don't have to be. They are intentionally archetypes. I didn't worry about plot holes or inconsistencies because the film doesn't take itself too seriously. You know it's just a fairy tale.

It's nice to watch a film, get emotionally involved, without being critical.

It's got a good cast, especially Paul Giamatti, through whom the story is told.

Apparently this film flopped at the box office. I suspect people, especially critics, expected it to be something else. I had no preconceptions. I think this one may have been recommended to me by someone at the pub. I just stuck it in the BluRay player and enjoyed it. I suspect that it might not stand up to a second viewing, but I quite enjoyed the first viewing last night. I think I'll just leave it at that.

Yes, I watched A Hard Day's Night for the first time this week. It was recently released in the Criterion Collection. I don't know why I didn't see it before. I guess it's because I was a later Beatles fan and their early music doesn't appeal to me as much as their later work. They're really like a different band. Just this week, I heard a young comedian describe them as "the definition of a boy band". And that is definitely the tone of the film. It's still fun and I enjoyed it.

This was an interesting story. An inventor in San Antonio becomes obsessed with Johannes Vermeer's amazing artwork and creates a method by which Vermeer may have created his nearly photographic paintings three hundred and fifty years ago. I've been interested in optics since school; my degree is in photography. I'm also fond of Vermeer's artwork, even if I didn't know him by name. If this hypothesis is true, it's just amazing, that one of the greatest artists in history could simply have used a tool to so adeptly recreate the intricate subtleties of light, shadow, and color.

Just amazing.

http://youtu.be/CS_HUWs9c8c

Hint on color matching with a camera obscura, illuminate something in light of its own color.

Some people simply have an extraordinary gift that way, like the occasional musician with perfect pitch.

Illuminate something in light of its own color, it will appear white.

That was the problem with simply using a camera obscura, color matching. Inside the camera obscura, if you have, say, a blue area and put down blue paint under blue light it appears much too dark (it does not appear white). The only color of paint you can put down such that it matches what is projected on the canvas is more white. Tim Jennison's breakthrough is to use a mirror at 45° to the image with the canvas perpendicular to the image and look along the edge of the mirror and color match, blend the paint until the mirror edge seems to disappear.

Here's a quick demonstration of the concept.

http://youtu.be/YuPalXgauL4