TV And Films

The shows and movies I like (or don’t).

Alien

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I just got back from seeing the Director’s Cut of Alien — one of my all-time favorite Sci-Fi/Horror films — at the Seattle Cinerama.

The movie, of course, was excellent. The Director’s Cut isn’t that much of a change (I immediately noticed three differences between it and the original version, one of which was footage that’s been known of and previously seen as a “deleted scene” on the original Alien DVD), for me most of the fun was just being able to see Alien on the big screen, as I was far too young to do so when it was first released.

While I enjoyed the movie a lot, this was my first experience with digital projection — and I have to say, I’m somewhat less than impressed. I’m not really sure if this might be a side effect of the size of the Cinerama screen, and whether it might be less visible on smaller theater screens, but I could very easily see a vertical “banding”/pixillation/scan line effect. In shots with a lot of movement it wasn’t very noticeable, but in still shots with strong vertical lines (walls, fixtures, table legs, etc.) it was definitely apparent, and made the image much less crisp than I had expected it to be.

I also don’t know what medium the movies are read from, but I’m guessing it must be some form of optical disc, similar to a DVD (though I’m assuming with much higher resolution for theater projection). AT one point early in the film, there was a slight glitch, and it produced the same “blocking” artifact that can be seen on DVDs if they have fingerprints on them. It was only there for a brief moment, less than a second, but on a screen the size of the Cinerama, it’s extremely distracting.

Even with the slight technical oddities, though, it was a lot of fun.

The rest of this post discusses the various additions and changes in the Director’s Cut from the original theatrical release version. If you want to stay spoiler-free, stop here — otherwise, press on!

The additions I noticed:

  1. After Kane is brought back onto the Nostromo and is in the infirmary, there is a little more business among Ripley, Lambert, Parker, and Brett. Where in the original version we cut to the four of them in the observation area, the new version cuts to just Lambert, Parker, and Brett. Ripley descends from a ladder and enters the shot, and Lambert slaps her and they have a quick scuffle before Parker and Brett pull them apart. Lambert slumps against the back wall, and Ripley crosses in front of her, at which point we pick up where the original version cut in.
  2. When Brett walks into the machine room with the chains hanging from the ceiling, there is a quick shot of Brett from above. It’s subtle, but towards the left of the shot, you can see the silhouette of the alien as it hangs from the chains above Brett. Interestingly, this shot is not included in the original DVD’s special features.
  3. The last addition is the infamous “Dallas cocooned” scene that was present in the extra features of the previously released Alien DVD. To be honest, I’m torn on this addition. The accepted life cycle of the alien has been egg > facehugger > host > chestburster > adult alien, with most adult aliens being soldiers, while one will become a queen and lay more eggs. In Aliens, we saw cocoons being used as a way to store captured prey, either as food or as convenient hosts for future facehuggers, and it could be argued that that is what has happened here — Dallas and Parker have been cocooned for future use. However, when we see Parker, he appears to be becoming an egg — as if he were somehow transforming into a facehugger. I’ve never been totally happy with this (in addition to breaking previous canon, it’s less scientifically plausible), so while it’s definitely cool to see the sequence in the film, I’m torn as to whether or not I really like the addition.

I’m double-checking against the Deleted Scenes section on the Alien DVD I have, and it appears that more of the Deleted Scenes have been added in — I just didn’t realize it as I was watching the film, probably because I’d seen them before on the DVD. These include:

  1. Added: The crew listening to the alien transmission on the bridge of the Nostromo. Interestingly, the audio effects for the transmission are different in the new cut of the film than in the deleted scene.
  2. Partially added: The deleted scene version of the confrontation between Ripley and Lambert is longer than what was added to the Director’s Cut — Lambert’s dialogue describing them pulling Kane up from the egg chamber has been removed.
  3. Left out: A scene I was hoping would be put back in — a conversation in the infirmary after the facehugger’s blood eats through a few levels of the deck plating where Ripley notices a stain on Kane’s lung (the gestating chestburster) — was not added back in. Probably a good idea, as it could hurt the pacing of the film, but it’s still a nice bit of foreshadowing that I’ve always felt was a pity to lose from the finished film.
  4. Left out: An intercom conversation between Ripley and Parker as they harass each other.
  5. Left out: A raucous argument among the crew in the mess hall after Kane’s death, brainstorming on how to capture and kill the chestburster.
  6. Left out: The bloodier version of Brett’s death, where we watch the alien crush his skull as he screams for Parker before it pulls him up into the air shaft.
  7. Left out: Lambert and Ripley’s uneasy reconciliation, where Ripley apparently starts to explore her suspicions about Ash when she asks whether Lambert had ever slept with him.
  8. Left out (for obvious reasons): The only partially-shot action sequence where the crew almost traps the alien in the airlock, only to have it escape, wounding it and spilling more acid blood in the process. As only the bridge “reaction” shots were filmed, I didn’t expect this sequence to be put back in.
  9. Mostly added: There have been a few slight edits to the cocoon sequence. In the deleted scene version, Ripley has a few lines saying that she’ll get Dallas out and onto the shuttle before he pleads with her to kill him. Aside from losing those, the rest of the sequence has been added in its entirety.

Kill Bill, Vol. 1

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I’m going to keep my comments here fairly brief, as this is only the first part of a two-part story. So, briefly, first impressions of the first half of Kill Bill:

  • Much butt-kicking fun.

  • There is far less dialogue than you might expect from a Tarrantino film, but in this case, I can’t see it any other way.

  • There’s also a very bitter, sorrowful tone to the film that is easy to overlook during the fights and general carnage, but is very present, and very important to the tone.

  • Yes, it’s violent. Very violent. But two points on that:

    1. It’s Quentin Tarrantino. Did you really expect anything else?
    2. How can you take it seriously when every severed limb or head (and there are many) is apparently attached to a high-pressure firehose?
  • Best line (delivered by The Bride while spanking the last living henchman — a sixteen (?) year old boy — with the flat of her katana): “This is what you get for fucking with Yakuza! Now go home to your mommy!”

  • I hope that Vol. 2 gives us more of The Bride’s background. But if it doesn’t, that might not matter — in an almost zen-like way, she simply is. More background might actually detract from this.

  • Using anime for O-Ren Ishii’s background: very nice touch.

  • The fight scenes were deliciously over the top. Unrealistic, but enjoyably so.

  • One shot in the mass battle royale towards the end — a grainy, black and white travelling shot of a spinning hatchet — was almost a mirror of a shot in the diner scene of Natural Born Killers.

  • Favorite sequence (at least right now, immediately after my first viewing): the blue background silhouetted section of the battle in the restaurant.

  • I know I’m not catching the majority of the references Tarrantino is making throughout the film. That’s okay, though. I’m guessing there’s enough to fill an entire book — which will probably be at your friendly neighborhood bookseller not long after Vol. 2 is released.

  • This review (which I found thanks to Kalyx) may sum it up the best:

    Gratuitous in the most passionate, brutal and aesthetically exacting way, this first half of Quentin Tarantino’s blood-drenched mash note to the eclectic, disreputable genres he grooved on as a kid is a remarkably pure orchestration of imagery and attitude. The content of those magnificently moving pictures is whatever the opposite of pure might be: an endless orgy of degradation, dismemberment, cruelty and bile. The \”Pulp Fiction’ auteur has ratcheted it all up into a fantasy realm, and he has a point when he claims that anybody who thinks this disturbing stuff is happening to anything like a real person is crazy — or, at least, crazier than he is.

    Still, there’s nothing wrong with avoiding \”Kill Bill’ if you’re easily offended by violence to women, violence by women, violence observed by traumatized children or lots — LOTS — of violently detached body parts scattered all around the screen.

    But if you’re not like that: Man, is this movie cool.

Bubba Ho-Tep

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On a whim for something silly and fun, Prairie and I went out and saw Bubba Ho-Tep today. It was exactly what we were in the mood for.

Bruce Campbell as Elvis

Bruce Campbell plays an elderly Elvis, spending the last of his days in a retirement home under the name of Sebastian Half, an Elvis impersonator who he switched places with when he got tired of constantly being in the limelight. Along with his friend John F. Kennedy (Ossie Davis) — also in the retirement home, and now a black man (“They dyed me this color!”) — he has to battle a resurrected Egyptian mummy who is using the retirement home as his personal feeding grounds, sucking the souls out of people so close to death that no-one blinks an eye when they pass on.

BHT was done surprisingly well. While definitely an action/comedy, it did a remarkable job of not taking the camp too far, and instead, taking the time to create real characters that the audience could believe in and empathize with. It may be the best actual acting I’ve seen Campbell do, too. He’s a lot of fun as Ash in the Evil Dead series, but those are so over-the-top that they don’t really feature Campbell the actor, merely Campbell the comedian (not that that’s a bad thing at all, mind you).

Here we have an Elvis facing mortality — questioning leaving show business, losing contact with his wife and daughter, and watching his aging body fall apart. The battle with the mummy is the first thing in years to give him something to live for, and Campbell does a wonderful job of creating the character.

The setting for the movie is brilliant, too. One of the oddities of mummy movies is always that the mummy, as a desiccated corpse, really isn’t the most threatening of monsters, shuffling along after its prey, who never seem to be able to outrun it. By setting the movie in a retirement home, filled with potential victims in wheelchairs and using walkers, suddenly the threat becomes a lot more real.

All in all, well worth the time and money to see, and definitely recommended.

'ello again

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Weekend’s done, time to start poking my head up again. Had a very pleasant weekend — Prairie came in, we spent Saturday housecleaning during the day and watching The Ring (not bad at all, for a modern horror movie) with her sister Hope in the evening, then spending time with my dad on Sunday as he passed through town for work.

Now back to the normal day-to-day…

Sigh

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As of right now — 10am on the day that tickets were available to be purchased — the Lord of the Rings Marathon at the Cinerama is sold out.

At least, that’s what I’m getting from the MovieTickets.com website. For all I know, it may be different at the theatre itself, but I don’t have time to go stand in line there.

Bummer.

Ah, well. As they’re playing the Extended versions of both TFotR and TTT in two weeks immediately prior to the release of TRotK, I went ahead and picked up tickets to the Saturday showings of each of those. Not the marathon, but this might be a little more comfortable anyway. ;)

Dec. 16: LOTR Marathon

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It’s official: the Lord of the Rings Marathon will be at the Seattle Cinerama on Dec. 16th.

Leading up to the December 17 release of The Lord of The Rings: The Return of the King, the final film Peter Jackson’s epic trilogy, New Line Cinema will bring moviegoers an exclusive, One-time-only in-theater event: The Lord of the Rings Special Extended Edition Screening Engagement.

The schedule for this special theatrical screening series is as follows:

December 5-11
Special Extended Edition The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
December 12-15
Special Extended Edition The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Tuesday, December 16
One-time-only marathon of both the Extended Edition prints followed by the first screenings of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.

Tickets available October 9th!

Now comes the question — am I crazy enough to do this? I think so…

Underworld

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Saw Underworld yesterday. While I won’t go quite as far as to call it a Big. Steaming. Noxious. Pile. of. shite., I will say that I found it very disappointing and frustrating. There was a lot of promise and potential in the film, which unfortunately was entirely wasted. I’d almost prefer that a film be flat-out bad, but when you can see the seeds of a worthwhile effort in the midst of the crap, it makes it just that much harder to deal with.

First off, the good points (and yes, there are some).

The film is extremely pretty. Lots of worthwhile eye candy — cast, sets, costumes — just about everywhere, there’s something worth looking at.

The writers have concocted a new mythology for the creation of both vampires and werewolves, and included an explanation for the enmity between the two species, that I really liked. I’d have to see the movie again (rent, though, not in the theater) to get it down completely, but it involved a disease that one person had an immunity to which was passed to his children. Those two children were bitten by animals — one by a bat, one by a wolf — and the mutation that allowed their father to survive the disease mixed with the animal’s blood to create the beasties. After years of the werewolves acting as the vampire’s daylight guardians, a conflict between the two set off the years of warring between the clans. It’s a definite step away from the traditional storylines, and I liked the new ideas.

Unfortunately…

The writing, the overall story, and the direction were horrid. So much could have been done with the story to make it coherent, and it never happened. Alliances are formed that don’t make any sense, motiviation is never given for much of what happens, and too much of the plot dissolves into an incoherent mess.

The actors are something of an on-again, off-again mix. Kate Beckinsale does decently with what she has, she just wasn’t really given that much to do — her character is essentially either brooding or fighting during the entire movie. Bill Nighy as Viktor, the recently-resurrected elder of the vampire clan did fine by me up until the end, when a suddenly bleated out, “But I loved my daughter!” line completely destroyed all credibility for the character in my eyes. Sure, it was bad writing, but he played the line so badly that it just made it that much worse. Shane Brolly as Kraven, leader of the vampire clan until Viktor’s appearance was fairly ridiculous, to tell the truth. In fact, the only actor — and character — that I really though much of was Lucien, leader of the werewolves, played by Michael Sheen. Not only did he get the only character in the film given any decent amount of personal backstory and motivation, but he was the only actor to really seem like he fit his part.

Special effects wise, the movie was decent for the most part, with a few sudden moments where it got so astoundingly bad that it surprised me (Celine’s sword-slash-and-floating-jump across the pool of water at the end [which can also be seen in the trailer — it’s the sequence that looks like it could be straight out of a video game] stands out in my mind). The soundtrack, both musically and just as effects, drove me nuts. Apparently the sound designers felt that the best way to make sure that something was interesting and intense was to make it loud, and then they decided that everything in the movie counted as interesting and intense.

So that’s Underworld — some definite promise and potential that was completely pissed away during its two hours on screen. A shame, really — in my minds eye, I can see the same elements creating a film that would have been well worth watching, but it just didn’t happen here.

More on Gibson's 'The Passion'

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Dad sent me a couple articles over the last few days looking at Mel Gibson’s “The Passion“, lately seeming to be the most controversial religious film that almost no one’s seen since Dogma was in pre-release. Anyway, if you’re at all interested in the film or the controversy around it, both of these are worth a look.

‘You Can’t Whitewash the Events of the Bible’: New Testament scholar Darrell Bock recently spoke with Beliefnet about Mel Gibson’s film “The Passion,” which dramatizes the last hours of Jesus. Critics–including Catholic biblical scholars and the Anti-Defamation League–have raised concerns about the movie’s historicity and its portrayal of Jewish authorities. Bock saw a rough cut of the film in late August.

What Mel Missed: Most of us have yet to see Mel Gibson’s “The Passion,” but we’ve gained one sure impression: it’s bloody. “I wanted to bring you there,” Gibson told Peter J. Boyer in September 15’s New Yorker magazine. “I wanted to be true to the Gospels. That has never been done before.”