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Get loving ready, Aliens 4K (possibly) coming soon. Oh yeah and True Lies and The Abyss.
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Oct 11, 2023 05:55
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feedmyleg posted:How do I get my Building Better Worlds PDF? I didn't see anything in the confirmation or email, nor on Drive Thru You should get a second email with the download link.
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Oct 11, 2023 06:57
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Don't think I posted it here first time round, but I've just put together the text version of my video essay about Aronofsky's Noah and, more relevantly, Ridley Scott's Prometheus.
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Oct 20, 2023 00:18
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josh04 posted:Don't think I posted it here first time round, but I've just put together the text version of my video essay about Aronofsky's Noah and, more relevantly, Ridley Scott's Prometheus. Didn't read it yet, but did you reference the Ridley Scott Moses movie and Kingdom of Heaven? I think 90 year old Scott really has a grudge to pick with religion.
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Oct 20, 2023 01:16
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Ridley Scott has seen the new Alien movie, titled 'Alien: Romulus' and told director Fede Alvarez that it's "loving great" This is excellent news!  or This is going to be terrible  ...depending on how you feel about Scott's opinion. quote:Production on Alien: Romulus, the upcoming Alien film from writer/director Fede Alvarerz, wrapped back in July and Fede has been working away on assembling his cut of the film! Talking to Guillermo del Toro while on stage at Directors Guild of America Latino Summit, Fede told del Toro and the audience (at 18:34 in this video) that he had completed his Director's Cut and spoke about handing Sir Ridley Scott his edit.
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Oct 20, 2023 09:03
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Darko posted:Didn't read it yet, but did you reference the Ridley Scott Moses movie and Kingdom of Heaven? I think 90 year old Scott really has a grudge to pick with religion. I don't, sadly, Scott's got so many relevant films to dig into that I made a call at some point to stick with looking at his early stuff - I only slightly touch on Covenant, even. Exodus in particular was so obviously relevant (another biblical epic in the same year as Noah) that I was worried I'd end up having to rewrite the whole thing. Scott's definitely got some capital-v Views about religion though, yeah. Prometheus is a breathtakingly cynical movie.
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Oct 20, 2023 09:26
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Ridley Scott hasn’t made a bad Alien movie yet so I trust him
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Oct 20, 2023 10:25
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I'm silly for sleeping on Raised by Wolves for so long. It's such a focused piece of things Ridley has been fascinated about his whole career, but also arguably even more of a Prometheus 2 than Covenant was
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Oct 20, 2023 12:41
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josh04 posted:Scott's definitely got some capital-v Views about religion though, yeah. Prometheus is a breathtakingly cynical movie. The deliberate cynicism is what makes both films so interesting and memorable, though. This is dialed up to 11 in Alien Covenant. The religious characters receive the most brutal deaths, which is intentional: Remember the religious Captain Oram? Dies horribly screaming from the chestburster right before David, the clear Lucifer/Satan allegory, reveals his true identity to him. Kind of deserved it IMO for deciding to explore an uncharted planet on a “leap of faith” and risking everyone’s lives in the process. Remember Rosenthal? The woman with the Star of David necklace? She gets her head graphically bitten off by an alien. There’s even a couple of shots of her head floating in the fountain of life/baptist pool. What about Upworth? Receives a literal bloody facial (from her slaughtered husband!) by the penis monster in the shower right before she dies. I did like the part in Prometheus how the pathogen’s evolution from Holloway —> Shaw —> Trilobite resembled an Unholy Trinity. And the trilobite itself is literally an aborted fetus that went on to kill God. Some capital-v Views on religion indeed! The Alien prequels are inspired by Paradise Lost, Frankenstein (subtitled the Modern Prometheus!), and HP Lovecraft. All three are quite deep explorations of human emotions of hubris/arrogance/vanity and how they lead to suffering and eventually death. It’s why the characters “act stupid” (And I don’t wanna hear how scientists making dumb decisions is bad writing, especially in a post-COVID world!). In Paradise Lost Satan becomes demented by his own vanity which leads to his fall. So remember in Covenant when David got the poem’s author wrong? Or when the Alien destroyed the computer screen with his face on it? Lucifer and David, supposedly both creations of perfection, become flawed just like the creatures called humans they hate the most simply by being grandiose, arrogant assholes. Frankenstein is about the clear dangers of humans creating life/AI and the moral implications of that. Pretty much anything by Lovecraft is about humans discovering they live in an indifferent, chaotic universe that doesn’t give a poo poo about them, which is inherently anti-religious. Prometheus had a strong Mountains of Madness influence on it: The Engineers created both humans and the black goo/Alien. The Elder Things created both humans and the shoggoths. Both were eventually destroyed by their own creations. It’s clear Ridley Scott is saying the same is gonna happen to humans with AGI lol. There’s more but I’d have to watch them again for more juicy details. And here’s hoping Alien Romulus doesn’t suck. Ridley said he saw and loved it so there’s that. Zadok Allen fucked around with this message at 07:08 on Oct 22, 2023 |
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Oct 22, 2023 07:04
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CelticPredator posted:Ridley Scott hasn’t made a bad Alien movie yet so I trust him Well I mean other than the last two he made, you’re right.
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Oct 22, 2023 07:34
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Rewatched Prometheus and it rules, still disappointed Covenant wasn't the original Paradise follow up that was suggested And also that Robert Rodriguez didn't get a story by credit for "Do you think God stays in heaven because he too lives in fear of what he has created"
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Oct 22, 2023 11:17
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Oh yeah, to be clear I love it.
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Oct 22, 2023 15:20
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Zadok Allen posted:What about Upworth? Receives a literal bloody facial (from her slaughtered husband!) by the penis monster in the shower right before she dies. this sure is a read
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Oct 22, 2023 15:49
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I laugh every time I remember jussie smullet is in that movie
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Oct 22, 2023 17:59
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A thought about Alien and Aliens: There is no proof in Alien that the Xenomorphs bleed acid. In fact, we are shown evidence blatantly to the contrary! Remember when Ripley shot the Xenomorph in the chest with a grappling hook to punt it out of the airlock? Two things: The Xeno sprays a gratuitous amount of blood as the payload digs into its chest, but there's no remark of it digging through the hull of the escape pod (which should have considerably less layers to eat through than the Nostromo's floor):  We can tell that the payload dug in significantly deep, since the payload itself is rounded and blunt yet has a strong enough hold to drag the alien back towards the ship moving at escape velocity. Note also the relative thickness and angular nature of the hooks themselves, plus the outward-pointing ends. The hook dug in deep via brute force, despite having a build that would be extremely counterintuitive for digging into anything (maybe the Xenomorph is very soft).  Now, the problem: why doesn't the hook melt? We've been shown the blood from the facehuggers to be strong enough to melt through several thick layers of metal, strong enough to support a fully kitted floor in what is presumably Earth gravity. It does this in a matter of some seconds, not minutes. The hook itself is MUCH less matter to eat through compared to the Nostromo's floor, yet it stays strong enough to haul the alien back to the escape pod, and even to hold for a moment against its ion jets. Given this evidence, we can't readily conclude the Xenomorph bleeds acid in the movie Alien. If it does, it is SIGNIFICANTLY weaker acid than is shown in the sequels. As in, maybe hazardous on the level of normal acid. Here's where we get to the more interesting part. In Aliens, Ripley recalls that the Xenomorph bled "concentrated acid". It's clear that she is referring to the Xenomorph itself in her testimony, and not the facehugger. "'A creature that gestates inside a living human host'... These are your words. 'And has concentrated acid for blood'." Ripley is, of course, getting her memories mixed up. There was a creature that infected Kane, bled acid, killed Kane and the rest of the crew... It's a blur of nightmares for her, which also leads her to the paranoia that one of these acid panthers would kill everyone on Earth. It's understandable, as it was a very traumatic experience. However, the Xenomorphs DO blatantly bleed concentrated acid in Aliens. Ripley's distorted memories of her trauma retroactively become truthful! This distortion is strong enough that it also made James Cameron himself misremember the nature of the monster in Alien. End of Shoelace fucked around with this message at 13:46 on Oct 23, 2023 |
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Oct 23, 2023 13:42
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Death of the Author and everything, but it was definitely supposed to have acid blood. That was something Ron Cobb suggested to Dan O’Bannon to explain why they don’t just shoot the thing. They do have guns onboard. In the unfilmed sequence where they almost trap the alien in an airlock, it gets an arm stuck in the inner airlock and rips it off trying to escape. The resulting acid spray causes decompression bad enough that it gave Ripley a nosebleed and in an earlier draft sucked Lambert out into space, Alien Resurrection style.
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Oct 23, 2023 14:01
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Poor Lambert, doomed to get the most awful death in any version of the story
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Oct 23, 2023 14:10
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we will not do this. Thanks
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Oct 23, 2023 14:32
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david_a posted:Death of the Author and everything, but it was definitely supposed to have acid blood. That was something Ron Cobb suggested to Dan O’Bannon to explain why they don’t just shoot the thing. They do have guns onboard. Well, "supposed to" means a lack of the thing in question. If the Xenomorph is "supposed to" have concentrated acid blood in Alien according to what we're shown, that would mean it's blatantly NOT shown to have concentrated acid blood.
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Oct 23, 2023 15:57
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End of Shoelace posted:A thought about Alien and Aliens: It's never really going to make sense and that's fine, but the RPG tries to work with this by basically having the acid get a lot weaker overall as time goes on, and having some variations of them even within one hive kind of like different castes of ants have "acidic" blood from a chemistry standpoint but not to the point where it like melt through your skin or whatever, some have stronger stuff, etc. Like compare how many decks of the Nostromo the facehugger acid blood melted through (and the very small amount of acid blood that came out that did that much damage) to how in Aliens you can get some one you and still live. Like if it was as strong as the Facehugger stuff I don't think Hicks would have made to out alive. Neo Rasa fucked around with this message at 16:22 on Oct 23, 2023 |
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Oct 23, 2023 16:17
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Ripley rolled crit damage while buffing out her reduce damage stats
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Oct 23, 2023 16:23
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The acid blood is precisely as potent as it needs to be for the dramatic tension of the scene, even if that means it gets forgotten about entirely (such as the Alien’s death in the first movie). There is no consistency, and that’s fine.
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Oct 23, 2023 16:23
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acid also entirely depends on what it comes in contact with. Variation in acid-effects could easily be explained by different compositions of materials its reacting with. The decks of the ship could happen to be extremely reactive with the aliens acid, someone's armour less so, and some random grappling hook perhaps was some sort of stainless steel or space-metal that barely reacted. Like right now humans are transporting incredible amounts of powerful acids all over the place in trucks and trains, it all depends on what the container is made out of. I remember in my geology 101 "rocks for jocks" class we played with some powerful acid. Some rocks would almost melt like a scene from aliens, others would barely do anything, others would do absolutely nothing. Chemistry!
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Oct 23, 2023 16:53
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Baronjutter posted:acid also entirely depends on what it comes in contact with. Variation in acid-effects could easily be explained by different compositions of materials its reacting with. The decks of the ship could happen to be extremely reactive with the aliens acid, someone's armour less so, and some random grappling hook perhaps was some sort of stainless steel or space-metal that barely reacted. The Colonial Marines Technical Manual brings this up in the last chapter, as I think about it. The characters theorize that the acid blood could be hydrofluoric acid, which can burn through a ton of stuff but would be stopped cold by things like Teflon.
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Oct 23, 2023 17:29
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Also, maybe the acid needs oxygen to react as well, so since the Narcissus is depressurizing I assume all of the Alien blood is getting vacuumed out so it never comes in contact with the escape pod itself and that being is Space may neutralize it.
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Oct 23, 2023 17:42
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Xenomrph posted:This is a really good point. To be pedantic, we are literally not shown that the Xenomorph's blood corrodes anything. The only time it has the chance to, it doesn't, to the extent a scene depends on the hook and wire not being dissolved. I think it's an interesting thought about how the indeterminate qualities of the Xenomorph might not come from the objective qualities we are shown on the screen, but from "survivor stories" of both characters who encounter the alien in the movies and people who watch the movies. Is there something intrinsic in the Xenomorph that blurs memory and concepts together? Could this be read into the black goo, which simultaneously corrodes and creates?
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Oct 23, 2023 17:42
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End of Shoelace posted:To be pedantic, we are literally not shown that the Xenomorph's blood corrodes anything. The only time it has the chance to, it doesn't, to the extent a scene depends on the hook and wire not being dissolved. We know Aliens bleed acid, we see it in later movies (and it didn’t happen in ‘Alien’ because relevant scenes were cut or unfilmed, or didn’t show it for dramatic effect). We know James Cameron read the script for ‘Alien’ - he references things from it that aren’t in the movie, and addressed changes he made for his movie in interviews. He didn’t fabricate the “adult Aliens bleed acid” thing from whole cloth, it was intended for the movie but not shown in the Final Cut for various reasons. As for why it didn’t happen in ‘Alien’, that leaves us with having to make up a post-hoc explanation, such as the metal of the grappling hook not being reactive. Edit— That said, “Aliens psychically affect humans and alter their memories” isn’t an entirely outlandish proposition given the route the old comics and novels went. Xenomrph fucked around with this message at 18:14 on Oct 23, 2023 |
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Oct 23, 2023 18:05
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Xenomrph posted:That’s because the scene depends on the hook and wire not being dissolved, for dramatic reasons. If nothing else, it's an interesting example of "Kirk Drift" in action.
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Oct 23, 2023 19:26
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End of Shoelace posted:If nothing else, it's an interesting example of "Kirk Drift" in action. For my own knowledge, what is Kirk Drift?
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Oct 23, 2023 19:27
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The best fast and furious movie
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Oct 23, 2023 19:30
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Xenomrph posted:For my own knowledge, what is Kirk Drift? in the original star trek, kirk is not a womanizing dudebro. but a sort of cultural impression grew that he was, and that then influenced later writers to make the character more like the parodies in later iterations.
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Oct 23, 2023 19:43
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Xenomrph posted:For my own knowledge, what is Kirk Drift? It refers to the phenomenon wherein people will start to remember things wrong about (fantasy) media over a long period of time. However, instead of this "drift" being corrected by a rewatch or re-assessment of the thing in question, the false impressions begin to be established as accurate, which creates strange phenomena. Coined in an excellent article by looking at the character of Captain Kirk and how people's impressions of him have dramatically changed due to memes supplanting knowledge of the show itself. As in, the false impression of Kirk as a hunky, himbo womanizer, as in Zapp Brannigan. http://strangehorizons.com/non-fiction/columns/freshly-rememberd-kirk-drift/ Another good example is the "Luke, I am your father" vs. "No, I am your father" thing.
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Oct 23, 2023 19:48
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Someone put alien acid in my braiiiiinnn
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Oct 23, 2023 21:47
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I like Prometheus more and more as time passes
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Oct 24, 2023 04:16
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Same. I also loved it when it came out, but now I just love it more and more. Covenant I bounced off the first time around, but that one's really grown on me. It's way better than its detractors give it credit for. It still pains me that it pulled some punches from the end of Prometheus and may have been a bit compromised by studio demands or fan backlash, but it's a really loving cool movie that makes a lot of bold, bold swings. It also celebrates what is so cool about Alien at the same time, which doesn't feel necessary but the more I settle into it the more I enjoy that aspect. I felt a bit similar about Blade Runner 2049 the first time around—at first I felt like it was a great movie despite having to shoehorn in the Deckard aspect of the story. But after a few viewings that really settled in and while may or may not be essential, I have grown to like it.
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Oct 24, 2023 04:31
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oldpainless posted:I like Prometheus more and more as time passes 
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Oct 24, 2023 06:54
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feedmyleg posted:Same. I also loved it when it came out, but now I just love it more and more. I think you’ll love this. I normally ignore video essays but the production values were exceptional here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLw_fQn5ors
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Oct 24, 2023 07:28
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That seems right up my alley, yeah—video essays on film are usually garbo but I'll definitely check this one out. Also, if I were to burn my Audible free trial on an Alien audiobook or drama, what's the cream of the crop? Ideally not an adaptation of one of the books/scripts, but open.
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Oct 24, 2023 15:56
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feedmyleg posted:That seems right up my alley, yeah—video essays on film are usually garbo but I'll definitely check this one out. The William Gibson Alien3 is cool if you want to hear an interesting alternate take on what Alien3 could have been (including Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen), although any of the Dirk Maggs audio dramas are worth your time.
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Oct 24, 2023 16:09
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Neo Rasa posted:It was absolutely the best 3D I ever saw in a theater that wasn't Avatar. Prometheus' 3D was great in the abortion scene I distinctly recall how well the depth effect enhanced the pod feeling claustrophobic.
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Oct 24, 2023 19:05
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