Ridley Scott's Return To Science Fiction

Ridley Scott directed two landmark science fiction films, Alien (1979) and Blade Runner (1982). The former set the standard for sci-fi/horror, while the latter is the best film noir via sci-fi story there is.

Both movies are also rightly known for their trendsetting production design, with their gritty, lived in look and details. To this day, any new science fiction movie cribs from the look of one or both of these films.

Now, three decades later, Scott returns to the genre with Prometheus, a quasi-prequel to Alien. Here's the first real trailer for the film at BleedingCool.com, which opens June 2012. And here's a very cool trailer screencap breakdown BleedingCool did a few days later.

I love that they used the original Alien trailer's sound effects over this new ad. It just serves to further tie Alien and Prometheus together, and if you didn't know where that sound came from, it is still creepy/scary and totally appropriate for the trailer.

Happy Happy, Joy Joy!

Star Trek is Copyright 2011 and a Trademark of CBS Studion, Inc. No infringement of their rights is intended with this parody. Screencaps from Trekcore.com

GREAT Apes, Indeed

This short bit of video footage, found at io9.com, is more thrilling, amazing and moving than the entire recent Rise of the Planet of the Apes movie (sorry, Andy Serkis).

Just watch it and see.

Seriously. (The action starts at about the 1:05 mark).

The Restoration of Manos

SOMEONE IS RESTORING "MANOS: THE HANDS OF FATE!"

Sorry about shouting that, but, seriously, according to this NPR post, a film school grad - dude named Ben Solovey - wants to restore "Manos," one of the the WORST films ever made.

You were likely introduced to "Manos," as I was, through the glory days of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Is this a good thing, Torgo, or should such wretched celluloid cheese be left alone in all its scratchy, grainy glory?

Odds n Ends

Movie critic Christy Lemire lists her Five Favorite Performances by Robert Downey Jr. I agree with her assessments of Downey's work in Iron Man, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang and the hilarious Tropic Thunder. I also agree with her that RDJ's Sherlock Holmes is a waste of celluloid. Rent the BBC's recent 3-episode series Sherlock if you want some adventurous fun with the brilliant detective.

We are all into the late lamented sci-fi western series Firefly here at the BNFOS Orbiting Space Station, and io9.com has a fun piece about how artist Dan Dos Santos did the cover art for a recent Dark Horse Comics Serenity issue.

These toy designs that would have been tie-ins to a Tim Burton directed Superman movie are some premium nightmare fuel. Superman is THE FIRST superhero ever. Why the fuck do they want to mess with that simple iconic design? "Underwear on the outside?" That's just the way it is, leave it alone. If a man flew out of the sky, landed in front of you and lifted a car over his head (on a movie screen, natch), if the first thing you say is, "Your underwear is on the outside" you are a complete idiot.

An Off-Road Segway

Holy shit, but this is so cool.

You know what a Segway is right? That weird two-wheeled thingy that was supposed to revolutionize transportation, or something. Know anybody who owns one? Didn't think so. (I've only seen it on tv used by mail men or cops.)

Inventor Ben Gulak did the Segway one better: he put tank treads and a 200 cc engine into a Segway-like off-road devil called a DTV Shredder. It's all in this Rolling Stone piece.

I wonder if Ben got his inspiration from the Mandroid in that goofy scifi masterpiece The Eliminators (see my running commentary of that funfest here)?

John Byrne Art

Artist John Byrne has some fun pin ups at his website Byrne Robotics.

If you're an X-Men fan, he revisits a piece he did for the Comics Reader back in the day, where he put the "all new, all different" X-Men into the original team's school uniforms.

Then he flips that idea on its head and puts the Fantastic Four in original X-Men style uniforms. I wonder if there is a "What If?" story hiding in here somewhere.

And lastly, he gives us this great looking "future girl soldier" piece, where the partial coloring gives it a distinctly European or Heavy Metal magazine vibe. I'd love to seem a scifi story done with this woman.

The Walking Dead - Fall Finale

AMC's The Walking Dead just aired its fall finale. What a long, strange trip it's been.

Our intrepid band of zombie apocalypse survivors has slowly been coming apart (a little too slowly this season), mostly over the handling of The Search For Sophia, Carol's daughter and Carl's friend, who went missing after the group encountered and evaded that awesome Zombie Herd (TM) on the highway in this second season's opener.

Shane (Jon Bernthal), he with the chest which makes Arnold Schwarzenegger openly weep, is going into uber-survivalist mode: he will do anything - kill anything and anyone - that stands in the way of his safety, and of those under his protection. Of course, this philosophy directly conflicts with the views of his best friend Rick (Andrew Lincoln), the show's star and the erstwhile leader of this ragtag group, who still believes in notions like civilization and respect for other people's viewpoints and property. Rick and Shane will ultimately come to a reckoning - a "Come to Jesus/George A. Romero" moment - and I believe that's gonna be a brutal, ugly thing (which is great for a post apocalyptic survival horror-drama).

I blame the firing of Frank Darabont for the meandering this show has taken in its second season. The first season only had six episodes and then-showrunner Darabont kept the plotting nice and tight. Season two has twice the episodes (13 eps, actually) but they appear to have stumbled a bit with the transition from Darabont to current showrunner Glen Mazzara. The search for Sophia and the stay at Herschel's farm has taken up the most of the entire first half of the current season, with a lot of that "spinning our wheels, going nowhere" feel during much of it.

How many times did they have the scene of the gang gathered around a map on the hood of a car mapping out search grids as they attempted to locate Sophia? It could be its own Internet meme. Plus, Lori's whole "I might be pregnant but I'm not going to tell my husband storyline" was drawn out so much I thought they might finally resolve it after she gave birth to the kid and he or she went off of Post Zombie College.

The last ten minutes of the fall finale, "Pretty Much Dead Already" almost, and I mean almost, makes up for the slow plotting and pacing that came before it, with Shane going bugnuts (he made a lot of sense in that scene - and Bernthal was great) at the barn and those utterly heartbreaking final moments (my jaw was on the floor).

The Walking Dead is perhaps my favorite show on right now, but I sincerely hope that the plotting gets tightened up for the last six episodes of the season. If this episode is any indication, they are on the right track.

Martians And Kung Fu, But No Martian Kung Fu

Here are some new pics from the upcoming and eagerly anticipated JOHN CARTER, directed by Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo and Wall-E). from io9.com

I never read the pulp novels, but I recall fondly reading the Marvel Comics adaptation "John Carter: Warlord of Mars," with the curvaceous Dejah Thoris, the four-armed Tharks, and assorted Martian strangeness.

Also found on io9 is this wackass Chinese fantasy kung fu movie called Demon of the Lute. They feature a clip where the hero is first attacked by some ninja-types with hidden trampolines (trampoline fu, as Joe Bob Briggs might say), then a bald dude with an orange goatee. Mr. Orange travels by way of a cannibalized Radio Flyer wagon-as-chariot pulled by a pair of German Shepard dogs.

Mr. Orange - who could film a Rogaine commercial when he magically grows a full head of orange hair that would put Carrot Top to shame - could cut down on the between-meal snacks as they have to speed up of the footage of the dogs pulling the wagon or those scenes would take up the movie's whole runtime.

Run, Run Away!

Movie car chases usually get all the glory, but now EmpireOnline.com has this great piece up featuring "35 of Film's Best Foot Chases."

There's some amazing and even fun stuff here, everything from Ferris Bueller's crazy run home to beat his sister Jeannie, to the cool efficiency of the Bourne films. Also included are foot chases from recent films like Inception, Kontroll and Kung Fu Hustle, and also classic films including French Connection II, Bullitt and Blade Runner.

Lace up your sneakers and join in, won't you?

A Lizard and a Toaster Watch Movies

Move over Roger Ebert, Nomad & The Gorn are gettin' into the movie review biz.


Star Trek characters copyright 2011 by CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of their rights is intended with this PARODY. Screencaps from Trekcore.com

Show? Out of Danger?

David Letterman isn't known for his movie parodies, so this recent gag is a bit of an oddity.

Dave starts the normal Top Ten List countdown and something gums up the works - perhaps a particle of pre-animate matter caught in a matrix.

He sends a stagehand downstairs to investigate. Now either Letterman is a closet Trekkie, or someone on the writer's staff got a favor called in. And check out the use of James Horner's music in the piece!

(I found this courtesy of a post at the John Byrne Forum.)

Title, Movie Title

"James Bond Will Return."

That message has always been appended to the end credits of every James Bond film since the first one in the series, Dr. No, appeared on screen in 1962.

The latest Bond, Daniel Craig, will return to the 007 role in the just announced Skyfall, slated to appear on screens in November 2012. (From the L.A. Times' blog Hero Complex.)

Is it me, or does the title not sound very exotic, very Bond-like? Skyfall? Skyfall? Put it up there next to You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me or even the last film, Quantum of Solace, or even the single word titles like Thunderball or Moonraker (we can leave out Octopussy).

Oh, well, at least it's not Attack of the Clones.

Daniel Craig is back in the fitted tuxedo, Judi Dench returns as M, Javier Bardem is a new bad guy, and they are being directed by Sam Mendes, so Skyfall sounds very promising indeed.

Claws Versus Katanas

The Wolverine, the sequel to the disappointing X-Men Origins: Wolverine, is scheduled to start filming next year.

James Mangold has been enlisted as director. I'm very excited about this. He directed two films I enjoyed very much, Walk The Line and 3:10 to Yuma.

Mangold's strength is characters, and Wolverine is more than just a set of claws and a killer squint. The new movie is set in Japan and will be heavily influenced, apparently, by the seminal comic book mini-series from writer Chris Claremont and artist Frank Miller. It will explore the samurai code, Yakuza, ninjas and lots more according to this post from SuperheroHype.com.

With the recent success of X-Men: First Class, which had a huge James Bond vibe in its 1960s setting, and now The Wolverine being set in Japan - "like a foreign language film" per Mangold - maybe they will take more chances with comic book movies and move away from the cookie cutter approach they've long been taking.

Maybe.

Happy Halloween Weekend, You Things From Another World, You

The above pics are from my previous review of the trick or treat episode "Catspaw" from Star Trek TOS.

Go Tell It On The Mountain

Recently, I sat down to watch a movie I knew nothing about, other than it starred Clint Eastwood and featured mountain climbing. The movie was The Eiger Sanction, and it was a pleasant surprise.

Eastwood, who also directed, played a college art history professor with the awesome name of Jonathan Hemlock. Unbeknownst to the college and the cute coeds who make googley eyes at the prof, Hemlock is also a government assassin who worked for the shadowy agency C2.

Hemlock is sent to “sanction” or terminate the people who killed one of the agency’s own. He realizes this is pointless, but accepts the work for the money which he uses to buy black market art pieces (hey, everybody got to have a hobby).

I wasn’t expecting the movie to have the “American James Bond” vibe that it did. Most of this was courtesy of Hemlock’s creepy agency boss who goes by the name, Mr. Dragon, played by Thayer David. Dragon is an albino with white eyes and a need for his office to be bathed in red light, a spectrum which he can tolerate. Hemlock and Dragon’s exchanges bring to mind those of Bond and his boss M, but with a bit more venom, as Dragon is a real asshole (both characters know this). Dragon even has a nurse named Miss Cerberus, a combination of Nurse Ratchet and Young Frankenstein’s Frau Blucher, who changes his blood!

The movie, based on a popular novel by “Trevanian” (a European sounding pseudonym for American writer Rodney William Whitaker) is slower paced than contemporary action movies, or even James Bond movies of the time. However, the mountain climbing scenes were well done – no CGI or crappy process shots - with Eastwood and company actually climbing the mountain in Europe, as well as mountains at US locations seen earlier in the film in sequences showing Hemlock training for the Euro-climb.

George Kennedy was a treat as Hemlock's old pal and climbing trainer, Ben Bowman. Here he brings a bit of the fun and energy he had in his Academy Award-winning role in Cool Hand Luke.

The movie is a little on the longish side, it could easily have had 10 minutes trimmed off, but Eastwood was in top form, as were many of the lovely unclothed ladies featured in this R-rated film. And the film is topped off by a nice romantic John Williams score.

Does The Future-NRA Know About This?

The new Fox series Terra Nova is the most expensive show on tv, with an estimated budget of $4 million per episode. But there appears to be an area where they are skimping on the dineros: props.

Now, every sci fi series has had to take "found" objects, modify them, and turn them into futuristic props of some kind. The old Star Trek was famous for taking fancy silver salt shakers and, with some snazzy sound effects, turning them into Dr. McCoy's 23rd century surgical tools.

The prop people on the original Star Wars took a German broom-handled Mauser pistol, added machined parts, a scope, a new muzzle, and created Han Solo's iconic blaster.

But Terra Nova, according to this piece at io9.com, apparently took some orange and blue plastic NERF toy guns and...just spray-painted them black to use as guns. They didn't use the NERF guns as the basis of a new cool future weapon, adding cool new parts to it, as the Han Solo weapon above was created; they just took something that was one color and painted it another.

For $4 mil per episode, I would have expected some original designs, manufactured just for the show (after all, in the storyline, the tech comes from 100 years in our future). But, seriously, spray-painted plastic NERF guns? That's something a movie with a $4,000 budget would pull.

Patroling The Highways And Byways In Style

Remember The Highwayman, the jaw-droppingly stupid 80s adventure series starring Sam J. (Flash Gordon) Jones and, in his inexplicable 15 minutes of fame, Australian weirdo Jacko as dudes who patrol the roads of the near-future in a big rig that just happens to covert into a helicopter? (Yeah, it was a Glen (Knight Rider) Larson production.)

Here's the $3 million luxury RV version, but instead of converting to a copter, they added a mini-bar. (from Yahoo News)

Marvel Short Kicks Butt

In this Marvel Films short at ComingSoon.net, we get to see just why Phil Coulson is an Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Funny and cool at the same time. It will be included with the Captain America movie DVD out next week.

Avengers Assemble a Trailer

Here's the newest trailer for The Avengers movie, due out in May 2012 (via io9.com).

This. Is. Looking. Good.

Steve Jobs - Tribute

Apple Computer founder Steve Jobs passed away earlier this week at the age of 56. Mr. Jobs gave the world its first personal computers (the Apple II), popularized smartphones (the iPhone) and believed in a little computer animation company (Pixar) when others didn't.

The amazing logo above is the work of Hong Kong art student Jonathan Mak Long, which I found in this Yahoo News piece. I love it for its stark simplicity.

Catch 1970s Fever All Over Again!

When I was a junior space cadet, I lived on the movies and tv series of the 1970s.

I feasted on everything from re-runs of Star Trek, Space: 1999 and UFO, first run episodes of Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers, to Ark II, Space Academy, Return to the Planet of the Apes (animated monkeys!), and, of course, Land of the Lost on Saturday mornings.

Trips to the movies included fare such as Message from Space ("Hey, walnuts!"), Alien and some movie called Star Wars.

Now, there's a blog that helps us re-live those special, polyester-clad days - it's called Space: 1970.

Do stop by, and tell 'em Bad News From Outer Space sent ya.

Terra Nova Limps Across Our TV Screens

Alright, Terra Nova, you and me are gonna have a little chat. I just watched your two hour Fox Network pilot again, and you definitely do not have me hooked. SPOILERS AHEAD.

First of all, WHY do you want me to watch you, for what reason? It’s not the dinosaurs, which, I’m sorry, while they look like decent “Walking With Dinosaurs” caliber viz effects, they are definitely NOT “Jurassic Park”-level effects, which we as an audience are expecting. Seriously, it’s been 18 years since “Jurassic” premiered in theaters and Steven Spielberg is one of your producers. Couldn’t you just use the ILM software from back then?

Also, Spielberg apparently doesn’t want to use the same dinos from the Jurassic movies, so instead of everyone’s fave Tyrannosaurus Rex, we get their limp Cretaeous stand-ins Carnotaurs. In place of Velociraptors we get the goofy “Slashers” with their blade-tipped tails which are an entirely MADE UP species of dinosaur. I’m sorry, but you’re not simply taking liberties with animal traits/abilities (like the spitting dinos in JP), you’re just making shit up. Not cool.

Another Spielberg influence is apparently that we humans cannot be shown killing a dinosaur, even one that is trying its darnedest to slash/chew/eat/devour us. You can fire an A-Team episode's worth of ammo at the suckers but they will never fall -- "their hide is too tough" or some nonsense -- or even be scared off by the sound and muzzle flashes. This is a bunch of baloney.

The physical look of Terra Nova is great. Using amazing Australian locations, with lush jungles, craggy rocks and water falls; you’ve built a wonderful “frontier town” (although it’s just a bit TOO comfy, with its modern buildings, amenities, technology and defensive weaponry).

No, Terra Nova, the real reason I don’t like you is the Shannon family. In the future of 2149 where the story began, with its dwindling resources and severely pollution-damaged earth, there is a two child per family limit. According to the pilot, Jim and Liz Shannon simply decided to have a third child, risking their entire family’s safety in the process. Well, they are indeed found out, and Papa Shannon is sent to prison for a spell. The Shannons knowingly broke the law in having a third kid and they hid her for three years before the Terra Nova project came along to save them all. If Terra Nova didn’t exist what kind of life could their youngest kid have in 2149 (talk about an “illegitimate child” - was she going to live her whole life in the house's airduct?).

It would have been better from a story standpoint if Liz Shannon got pregnant despite taking government-supplied contraceptives, so instead of Jim Shannon telling Commander Taylor they had a third child “because it seemed like the thing to do” which is a witless moron’s answer, he could have said something a bit more profound and sympathetic, e.g., “We did everything we were supposed to; we didn’t plan to have Zoe, but her spirit would not be denied.”

Mrs. Shannon apparently comes from some means, and the overall vibe is this family gets whatever it wants. They have a third child against the rules, hubbie breaks out of a maximum security prison (apparently due to a lot of money being put in people’s hands), Zoe their little girl is taken from wherever the hell she was being held for two years while Pops Shannon was in the joint, the family is reunited and gets to start all over again in the past. They come across as over-privileged people, and that’s not someone I’d like to root for each week.

Couple of Hoods

Star Trek is a Registered Trademark and Copyright 2011 by CBS Studios Inc. No infringement of those rights is intended with this parody. Screencaps from Trekcore.com.

We Have Foreign Movie Sign!

Blastr.com has a fun post looking at foreign movie posters for some very well known American sci-fi movies.

Now most of these movies are iconic films in the genre, but you'd never guess it from these weird ass graphics. It's one thing to use Campbell's Soup cans in the Army of Darkness poster. We get it, foreign ad agency guy: the dude who plays Ash has the same last name as the "Andy Warhol soup." Fun-nee.

The Ghostbusters poster is six kinds of fucked up. What the HELL is that thing supposed to be, a jester?

The Gremlins poster looks like a cheap supermarket greeting card.

King Kong has a shark in one hand, a snake wrapped around the other, and one foot on the Titantic, but at least he's all ferocious and shit.

In the Empire Strikes Back poster, Yoda looks like he's had the contents of six vacuum cleaners dumped on his head, which is the correct look for Yoda in the PREQUELS but certainly not in Empire.

Willow...really, WTMcF?

Next Stop Blue Screen Mountain

Vulture at NYmag.com has this great clip from the new Sarah Michelle Geller series Ringer.

Now if you recall, old Hitchcock movies like North by Northwest had obvious process work, where you could plainly tell that an actor was in the studio and not on location. Same for many of the early James Bond movies where Connery was in a nice cozy English studio for the close ups of him driving his Aston Martins and such.

We see a speedboat in the clip's opening and closing moments, then they cut to Sarah, playing identical twin characters on-board. The problem is that it is OBVIOUS this was shot in a studio. Did they even TRY to match the on location lighting?

If this clip is any indication, the special effects budget is about the same as a Starbucks' vente.

Working For A Living

(With apologies to Chuck Jones.)

Star Trek is a Registered Trademark and Copyright 2011 by CBS Studios, Inc. No infringement of those rights is intended with this parody. Screencaps from Trekcore.com.

It HAD To Happen Sooner Or Later

Mainstream movies of the last several years seem to be having more explicit sex scenes; films like Ken Park, 9 Songs, Shortbus, The Brown Bunny, Lust, Caution, Antichrist, and Blue Valentine dip a toe, or other body part, into territory usually reserved for adult films (especially those that feature actual sex and not just the simulated variety).

Now comes the news that a porno company is making a sci fi film, called Horizon, with heavy emphasis on the sci fi. (This is via blastr.com.)

Great! Just what we all look for in our porn: more plot!

These porn actors and actresses have enough trouble trying to act in complex scenes involving pizza delivery and cable repair, imagine having to deliver lines about post-apocalyptic conditions on Mercury and alien invasion tactics. The mind boggles.

Up, Up, and AWAAAY!

File this under, "If I had a million bucks just lying around doing nothin'."

Sideshow Toys is offering an amazing Superman figure, based on the likeness of THE Man of Steel, the late Christopher Reeve.

The costume is spot on -- when costume designer Yvonne Blake adapted the blue and red togs from the comics to the real world, she nailed it (compare this version to the costume interpretation in the new Zack Snyder film - guess which one will be remembered the longest). The figure's body is incredible, with just the right amount of musculature to emulate/duplicate the physique that Reeve worked so hard to create (no padded-muscle-suit wearer he).

The range of motion is terrific, based on the gallery pics. The figure looks very life-like in the poses featured.

The one slight flaw is in the figure's expression. The sculptors did an astonishing job, but something about the eyes is not right. Compare this to Hot Toys work on a similar Michael Keaton-Batman figure, wear they got it 110% right.

The (Animated) Adventures of Jonny Quest

Jonny Quest, which ran for only one season in 1964, is one of the greatest animated adventure series ever made.

George Lucas must have seen this series as a geeky kid starting film school, as Jonny's adventures crossing the globe, traveling to exotic lands and encountering "scum and villainy*" (often with a supernatural bent) feel like mini-Indiana Jones tales.

I bring up this beloved series because an enterprising guy named Roger Evans has recreated the opening titles of Jonny Quest with stop-motion animated figures. It's a hoot and a half, and a real work of love. Evans does nearly shot for shot recreations, with some tweaking here and there (e.g., the Quest jet design). Here's the original article at io9.com.

And the JQ theme by Hoyt Curtain is still one of the greatest pieces of music ever composed for TV!

*yes, I know that's from Star Wars not Indy!