ALIEN THE PLAY: In North Bergen High everyone can hear you scream

Last month marked the fortieth anniversary of one of my most favorite films: Ridley Scott's Alien.  It's one of the most perfect science-fiction and/or horror movies in the history of anything.  It's one that often there is some detail that I missed during all the dozens of previous viewings.  Like, it was a mistake for Dallas to let the Nostromo lift off from LV-426 without its systems fully working on the lower decks: they could have detected the creature that much faster and without any further loss of life!  Patience is a virtue, kiddies.

A few months ago in March, Alien may have been given its greatest tribute ever.  A group of students and their instructors at North Bergen High School in New Jersey premiered their production of Alien The Play.

And these young men and women... yowza!!  They pulled off the impossible.  And with a dire minimum of materials to make the costumes and sets out of apparently.  They made an on-stage theatrical adaptation of Alien.  Including the Space Jockey, the chestburster, and the xenomorph itself.

Photos of the performances went viral across Twitter and Instagram and that Facebook thingy.  Tongues were wagging.  Very quickly word of it reached Ridley Scott himself, who forwarded along a few thousand bucks for the kids to run an encore performance.  That happened a few weeks ago... and who showed up but "Ellen Ripley" herself, Sigourney Weaver.

As I've come to understand it, there's a video in the works using footage spliced from four cameras that captured the magic.  But if you wish, you can watch Alien The Play right now.  Click on the link below and behold the spectacle of this very faithful (and at times creatively funny) work of high school drama department horror:

Alien The Play

Encore Performance via YouTube

(One hour 27 minutes length)

Make some popcorn and stream it to your high-def set if you can, peeps.  Turn off the lights.  And prepared to pick your jaw off the floor.

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Neil Blomkamp is making an Alien movie! And why this makes Chris very VERY happy...

YES!!!

Holy cow, this is a SERIOUS dream of mine come true! For literally decades I've been saying that there needs to be an entry in the Alien franchise that picks up after Aliens and totally ignores that Alien 3, Alien Resurrection etc. ever happened.

And now it's actually happening!!

It began two months ago when Neil Blomkamp (director of District 9 and the upcoming Chappie) twittered some concept art he had quietly been commissioning for his vision of what an Alien movie should look like.  An Alien movie where Ripley and Hicks made it back and thus totally repudiating Alien 3.

Here's some of what Blomkamp had in mind:

Needless to say, the response those pics engendered was one of frenetic approval.  Throughout social media and across reams of websites the message to Fox was clear: "we demand that Neil Blomkamp make a proper Alien movie!"

And it's really happening.  Blomkamp twittered today that his next project is officially going to be the Alien saga.

Blomkamp is the person to do it too. At long last, we are going to see Ripley and Hicks going on another bug hunt. We can forget that Alien 3 ever happened.  Blomkamp has indicated that he can begin work on this, for all intents and purposes, immediately.  I can hypothesize that this means he can have Alienwhatever ready for summer 2016.

Think I'll celebrate tonight by popping in my Blu-ray of Aliens...

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Reidsville's $30,000 monument to madness

So my hometown of Reidsville, North Carolina has decided to ultimately remove a nationally-recognized statue with more than a hundred years of history, and let it instead be replaced with a horror straight out of H.P. Lovecraft...

"We'll tear your soul apart!"

Brief recap: almost four years ago the Confederate monument in downtown Reidsville was toppled and smashed by an errant driver.  The statue of the Confederate soldier atop the monument fell and broke into pieces.  The damage wasn't irreversible however, and it was determined that the statue and the monument could be repaired and restored to normal.

Reidsville's Confederate Monument
at it's original location

That's how things should have worked in a sane world.

But former dictator mayor James Festerman would have none of that.  On his own, Festerman decreed that the monument would never go back up.  That, despite a huge outpouring of support from the community for the Confederate statue to be repaired and returned to its rightful place.  Hizzoner Festerman declared that the monument was "controversial", nevermind that it had occupied the location sine 1910 and there had been no opposition to it in all of that time.  Festerman was just pulling that out of his [REDACTED].

So the "leadership" of the City of Reidsville had its way, and though the Confederate monument was eventually repaired it was relocated to a nearby cemetery.  In its place at the roundabout on Scales Street the city installed a wretchedly ugly planter and then for the past two years or so it's been a Christmas tree.

And now in place of the Confederate monument, the City of Reidsville has decided it will erect the eldritch abomination that you see above.  Allegedly a water fountain, the creator of which has titled it "The Bud".

More often than not it's being called "The Thing".  Local writers are describing it as something out of the Alien movie franchise (it definitely has that open-egg look going for it).  Or like a prop from a Clive Barker "Hellraiser" film.  I can't print what one person told me it looked like (it's that obscene).  I should recite incantations around it when it goes up and try to summon Cthulhu with it.

Incidentally, this "work of art" which looks like third-rate H.R. Giger is going to cost at least $30,000.

Generations to come should remember it as "Festerman's Fountain": a monument to the most indolent, apathetic, indifferent and tyrannical city government in Reidsville history (and that's saying something).

Seriously: twenty years from now people will be looking at that eyesore and wondering "what the #&@$ were they thinking?!"

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First trailer for Ridley Scott's PROMETHEUS

Did you know that next year will be thirty years since Blade Runner: the last time that Ridley Scott gave us a science-fiction movie?

Based on this much-awaited first trailer for Prometheus, I'm praying that it won't be another thirty years before Scott delves into the genre again!

So if you don't know already, Prometheus is sort-of a prequel to Ridley's 1979 Alien (and by extension also a prequel to James Cameron's Aliens from 1986). It just won't have those chest-bursting xenomorphs, allegedly. Ummmm confused by that? Yeah me too, a bit. Still gonna see this on opening day though :-)

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Dear Ridley Scott: This is a HORRIBLE idea for an ALIEN prequel...

Ridley Scott's 1979 film Alien is on my very short list of all-time greatest and most favorite movies. I first got to watch it in 1984 and even today, after countless numbers of times of watching it, it has never failed to thrill and enthrall. Alien is the perfect science-fiction and horror film. Its 1986 sequel Aliens is one of the darn few movies widely regarded as being just as good, if not better even, than the original. But that was mostly an action movie: Scott's Alien was nearly pure unbridled terror of the classic form.

Unfortunately what happened to the Alien franchise after that hasn't been anywhere as up to par with what Ridley Scott and James Cameron did. Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection well, let's put it this way: they both had their moments, but I don't regard them as being true "Alien"-ish canon. Maybe they're just bad dreams that Ripley is having and she's still aboard the Sulaco along with Hicks, Newt and Bishop on the way back from LV-426. Even Alien vs. Predator was better than those entries (and I haven't seen that movie's sequel so I can't comment on how good or bad it might be).

Anyway, when word came that Ridley Scott was planning on returning to the series that he helped to create, I was ecstatic. I had been hoping that he could get things back on track. Maybe even do something drastic to make us forget that Alien 3 and Alien: Resurrection never happened to begin with.

Unfortunately, it looks as if that is not to be. We've known for some time already that Scott was going to do a "prequel" to the original Alien... which I already thought was a way wrong approach. Now it's worse. Confirming some rumors that have been making the rounds for awhile, Scott spoke to MTV Movies and revealed some details about the Alien prequel. Including what it's going to mostly be about.

And much of it will be about this thing...

Yup, the Space Jockey. That fossilized ancient extraterrestrial pilot that Dallas, Kaine and Lambert found in the derelict spaceship on LV-426. Scott told MTV that "It's fundamentally about going out to find out 'Who the hell was that Space Jockey?' The guy who was sitting in the chair in the alien vehicle — there was a giant fellow sitting in a seat on what looked to be either a piece of technology or an astronomer's chair. Remember that?"

How could we forget a thing like that? But I for one am compelled to ask: Do we want to know everything about what the Space Jockey is? That was one of the things that most made Alien succeed as a horror story: the Lovecraftian atmosphere of the film. Here are seven blue-collar working stiffs aboard a glorified tugboat. You know: people that on some level we can all relate to. And they're earning their paycheck in the depths of interstellar space: the most unknown and inhospitable setting known to man. And they come across something that they not only don't understand, but the crazy geometry of it practically screams out "you can't understand this".

Honestly, I don't want to understand that. And I've no doubt many others feel the same way. The Space Jockey - whatever the heck he/she/it is - is part of a mystique that would forever be gone if we knew any more about its back story. It is simply... what it is. Nothing more and nothing less. But this is definitely a case of "less is more".

There is plenty of potential in the Alien franchise that hasn't been touched upon at all. 'Twould be something that fans would much more appreciate if Ridley Scott took the road less traveled than that of a prequel. Seriously, I want him to return to the series... but not like this.

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GeekTyrant's retrospective of ALIEN

2009 marks thirty years since Ridley Scott's film Alien was released. Alien remains one of the most classic and influential science fiction movies ever produced... and it has not only held up against the test of time, it's one of the few films of the genre that actually seems to get better with each passing year.

GeekTyrant has posted a fine retrospective of Alien, including some thoughts and observations that had never occurred to me before, as well as lots of trivia that will now doubt come as new information to many people (like how H.R. Giger's designs for the Facehugger were held up by alarmed U.S. Customs agents at the airport, prompting writer Dan O'Bannon to drive on over and explain that they were meant for a horror movie).

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Behold the demented cartoons of Dave Lowe!

I've known Dave Lowe for a number of years now, ever since he used to submit his wicked funny cartoons to TheForce.net Humor. Dave passed along his latest handiwork...

Lord only knows how many Star Wars fans will be enjoying that one :-)

And after going to his site I couldn't resist drawing y'all's attention to this one as well...

Mash down here to enjoy more of Dave's hilarious vision!

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