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"Alien" and "Psycho"

posted 8 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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Its the summer of 2017, and "Alien: Covenant" is out. Its either Alien 5 or Alien 6 (if you count Prometheus) or even Alien 7 , 8 or 9 (If the "Alien vs. Predator" movies are let in.)

Why, "Alien" has been exploited as much as Psycho! Where's that cable TV series?

Many reviews are saying the same thing: the first two Aliens ("Alien" and "Aliens" -- no numbers involved) are the only great ones in the series. But this new film Alien: Covenant is the first one to come close to them in quality.

We shall see. For his part, the estimable critic Matt Zoller Zeitz over at the Roger Ebert website gives Alien: Covenant four stars -- AND uses his review to sing the praises of a late sequel contending that to see the same old tropes(creatures busting out of chests) in new ways is actually, artful and salutary. I'm not sure about that.

With the hindsight of the decades, the take seems to be this on the first two: "Alien"(1979) , was a haunted house/Ten Little Indians horror movie about just ONE alien; "Aliens"(1986) was a high-powered war-action movie about a squad of Marines against a LOT of Aliens. More of the creatures made for a bigger movie. Each movie, BTW, had a great director attached: Ridley Scott for the first, James Cameron for the second. Though other notable directors -- David Fincher, for one -- would sign on to the later sequels.

But for all of this, its the first "Alien" I want to look for a bit.

Because "Alien" is very much a first cousin to..."Psycho."

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[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

"Alien" came out in May of 1979, selected by home studio 20th Century Fox to get the Star Wars release date of two summers before. There was a lot of hype , with the word going out: this one was going to be "Star Wars meets Psycho." Or Jaws. A great tag-line: "In space, no one can hear you scream."

I was certainly excited and I saw it with friends on the first night. Funniest memory: a woman in our group got bored and went out for popcorn right before the creature burst out of John Hurt's chest and our theater went nuts. Then she came back in: "Did I miss anything?" Uh....yeah. We couldn't stop laughing.

That chest-buster scene was certainly unique and horrifying. It goes down in screen history maybe just a few notches down from the shower scene as a famous horror scene that made its movie "an instant classic" and that lingers in our minds forever.

Mel Brooks made funny fun of it in "Spaceballs" -- using the actual actor from Alien (John Hurt) to re-do the scene so that when the lil' bitty toothy alien pops out...he dons top hat, tails and cane and sings "Hello My Honey, Hello My Baby, Hello my ragtime gal!" and dances away from the corpse. Mr. Brooks had previously made fun of the shower scene in "High Anxiety" by having a crazed hotel bellboy(played by now famous director Barry Levinson, then a co-writer on "High Anxiety") attack Brooks himself in the shower with a rolled up newspaper.

So Mel Brooks knew from famous movie horror scenes, and Psycho and Alien got their due.

But I digress...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

The big tie-in from Psycho to Alien, of course, is that both films are about someone(or something) with no human qualities and no mercy interested only in one thing: sneaking up on you, or jumping out at you, and killing you most violently -- Mother with her bladed knife, the Alien with its bladed teeth. Stephen King has written that horror, at its most basic, boils down to one thing: "Horror is when the monster gets you." Well, that's the key to Psycho. And Alien. And Jaws. And Halloween. And Friday the 13th. But NOT key...interestingly enough...to The Exorcist.

I salute "Alien" for the classic uniqueness of the chest-buster scene -- and how the trajectory is very sexual but very much in the "motherhood" way(ie sex for procreation, not for recreation): a birthing creature(the father?) "mounts" Hurt, impregnates him(via the mouth, which is suggestive, yes?); a small "baby" is hatched(but with no regard for the death of the "mother," -- a man!), and then baby grows up (superfast, within HOURS) to adulthood and murderous ways.

I also salute "Alien" for its historic art direction and look; every frame is fascinating but none more so that the Gothic steel-gray environs of the ship in distress and the deep corners of the Nostromo(none more eeire than the watery, metallic sub-chamber where Harry Dean Stanton meets his death.)

I salute "Alien" for the twist related to Ian Holm's villain(very seminal: he's a robot, and a BAD one -- the sequels would keep the robots hard-to-guess on either side of the line); and for top-billed captain Tom Skeritt getting killed surprisingly early (shades of Marion Crane.)

But here's what I DON'T salute Alien for....

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[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I DON'T salute Alien for...

...how damn slow it is.

Let's leap to the scene in which Harry Dean Stanton gets killed, for an example. First of all -- silly cliché plotting: he leaves the rest of the group to go searching for a stray cat. Oh, brother. But his walkabout to find that cat starts with great suspense and great visuals -- a cavernous industrial-like room with hanging chains and dripping water everywhere -- and then slowly, aggravatingly, goes on FOREVER as Stanton looks for the cat, finds the cat(FALSE SCREAM, more cliché), loses the cat, keeps walking around, pauses to let some water drip on his face....on and on and on.

The alien finally turns up -- slowly, behind him, like Mrs. Bates entering the bathroom -- and he gets killed. But its pretty quick and pretty unclear what's happening to him.

So what we get is a scene WAY too long in the build-up(compare this to the exquisitely extended but short lead-ups to the killings of Marion and especially, Arbogast), and way too murky in the pay-off.

The "slowness" of the build-up to Stanton's death(which I consider to show a lack of Hitchocock's timing skills on Scott's part) is matched by how long the movie takes to get going in the first place(everything leading up to the father creature leaping onto Hurt's face), and how long the movie takes to get surivivor Ripley(Sigourney Weaver, debuting as a star) out of the main spaceship and into the escape capsule. Like "Psycho," "Alien" starts on the slow side...but it is much less interesting in its slowness(no broken-up scenes of lovers, co-workers, cops and car salesmen) at the beginning and...well, no way "Psycho" was slow at the end. Measured(Lila exploring the house), yes. But boring? NO.

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I've always found Alien to be "a movie within a movie." The good movie begins with the father creature leaping on Hurt's face, and ends with the deaths of Yaphet Kotto and Veronica Cartwright. The rest is "bookends of boredom." And boy do they milk that "false alarm" cat.

BUT: Speaking of the deaths of Yaphet Kotto and Veronica Cartwright: they make the murkiness of the Harry Dean Stanton death look like a lesson in crystalline narrative. In short: it should be a big deal when these two get killed, but its so hard to tell what's happening to who when and where they are in relationship to each other that...well, I felt they died in vain.

When I saw Alien in the summer of 1979, this was the same summer that I saw THE screening of Psycho at my life. I've mentioned it before. Full house, wall-to-wall screaming, the ONLY time I ever got to see Psycho the way it SHOULD be seen.

And Alien came up pretty damn botched in comparison. For all the fragmentation of Marion Crane's murder, and for how Arbogast mainly dies off screen and below the frame...you could TELL WHAT WAS HAPPENING.

I always felt that Spielberg's Jaws killings matched Hitchcock's Psycho killings in being at once fragmented and clear as to what was happening. Its why I like Psycho and Jaws better than Alien...also, Jaws moves faster than any of them, NEVER slowing down to a crawl like Alien does.

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

And yet -- and heres the irony -- all these reviews of "Alien:Covenant" make the point that it just can't live up to the greatness of the original. In its own way, "Alien" is unassailable a "stand alone classic" as "Psycho." There's the first one, and then there are all the rest. Even "Aliens" seemed to subvert the horror atmosphere of the first one in favor of "wall to wall action."

So, "Alien"(1979) ends up being one of those movies that I WILL acknowledge as a classic, and with a classic scene(the chest buster) and that was seminal as hell.

But I had those problems with it, and I still do.

I know I do because: In preparation to see Alien:Covenant(not yet), I watched both Alien and Aliens, both of which I own despite my concerns about the first one.

Alien is just as slow as I remembered it, though clearly once it gets going , it works. And then, it stops working(after Yaphet and Veronica so murkily leave the movie.)

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[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Here is a strong positive memory about Alien, circa 1979:

I read the reviews and I was craving to see the film because: I had to know what the monster looked like. There were no photos early on in the release of the alien. You had to pay to see it.

Think about it. Jaws? You know its gonna be a shark. Halloween? You know its gonna be a masked killer. Psycho -- if you read SOME reviews, you'd know it was going to be an Old Lady(though if you didn't read the right reviews, you went in wondering just who or what the psycho WOULD be...and an old lady was shockingly surprising.)

But the Alien? I had to go see. And amazingly, the Alien was several things: he was the pulsating blob of oyster-octopus innards that sat on John Hurt's face. Then he was(as a different, second being) the silver-toothed little bitty creature that came out of Hurt's chest(mocked so well by Mel Brooks.)

But when Harry Dean Stanton met him, later and bigger...those TEETH. What a great creation, I thought: a set of small teeth INSIDE the open mouth and larger teeth and -- more industrial robot than animal -- the small teeth came blasting on extension out of the mouth of the beast and into Harry's forehead and...cool, man. Plus the cucumber-penis shape of the alien's head (a very sexual movie, Alien), the spear at the end of his tail, the feeling of a creature at once like a big lizard and some kind of insect...but with a steel-metallic robotic aspect to those power-plunger teeth.

I suppose that the alien itself has to be saluted as a classic aspect OF "Alien," even as I felt the first movie was way too slow, way too murky in the killings, and a bit too clichéd about that cat.

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Some final Alien odds and ends:

There's a Hitchcock actress in it: Veronica Cartright, Cathy from The Birds(or was it Kathy.) 16 years on, the fragile child of The Birds seems to have morphed into a full-fledged bug-eyed neurotic, yet again trapped and menaced by creatures. The two performances seem very linked to me, they play as one.

There's a Hitchcock ACTOR almost in it: now-famously, Jon Finch, the little-known star of "Frenzy" had the John Hurt role in Alien , but diabetes-related illness forced him out of the part. How sad -- Finch would have gotten the fame that "Frenzy" had not given him. Hard to consider if he would have become a star. John Hurt got the very special role of The Elephant Man, but downshifted back to character parts rather quickly. Still, Hurt died (in real life) famous for Alien more than anything else. And Finch died as the man who "lost the great scene in Alien." So I guess it helped his persona a little bit.

Harry Dean Stanton and Veronica Cartwright were/are great lifelong pals of Jack Nicholson. Seeing them together in "Alien," I always feel like Nicholson is "ghosting the movie," floating over it in spirit. Its a Nicholson-KIND of horror movie, really. I wonder if he was offered the Tom Skerrit role. No matter, he was busy starting work on HIS horror movie, The Shining.

I expect my take on "Alien" will draw its (justified) attackers. I think each of us has a different take on "slowness" in movie scenes and movie cutting. And maybe its just my problem with the "throwaway murkiness" of the deaths of Kotto and Cartwright. But I remember Alien bothering me then about that, and it still bothers me now.

In 1979, I was using "Psycho" as my comparison for everything, and I found "Alien" to be close...but no cigar.

[–] Doghouse (447) 8 years ago

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[–] Doghouse (447) 8 years ago

If it's okay, I'll append to this post observations on selected comments from the entire thread (I tried posting this once, but the formatting went all wrong, so I'll try again without it).

- "With the hindsight of the decades, the take seems to be this on the first two: "Alien"(1979) , was a haunted house/Ten Little Indians horror movie about just ONE alien"

Very much so. I'm unsure how far back the literary form goes, but the cinematic one dates at least to 1927's The Cat and the Canary, which predates Christie's "And Then There Were None" by more than a decade.

There was a 1958 film I saw as a kid several times on local L.A. broadcast: It! The Terror From Beyond Space. I hadn't seen it for years when I saw Alien in '79, and didn't make the connections until catching up again to It! sometime later: an earthbound spaceship has picked up an unwanted and invincible "hitchhiker" who systematically corners the crew and bumps them off one by one, and is ultimately dispatched by blowing out an airlock.

- "I salute "Alien" for the classic uniqueness of the chest-buster scene -- and how the trajectory is very sexual but very much in the "motherhood" way(ie sex for procreation, not for recreation): a birthing creature(the father?) "mounts" Hurt, impregnates him(via the mouth, which is suggestive, yes?); a small "baby" is hatched(but with no regard for the death of the "mother," -- a man!), and then baby grows up (superfast, within HOURS) to adulthood and murderous ways."

Motherhood runs through Alien as a subliminal theme (even the ship's computer is named "Mother") and through Aliens as an overt one (Ripley becomes surrogate mother to Newt, going to Stella Dallas/Mildred Pierce extremes to protect her, and ultimately does battle with the alien "queen" who has tried first to protect, and then avenge, her own offspring). And the whole creepy "human gestation vessel" imagery infuses both.

...cont'd...

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

If it's okay, I'll append to this post observations on selected comments from the entire thread (I tried posting this once, but the formatting went all wrong, so I'll try again without it).

--

Hey, whatever works! This site has been a Godsend, but I've had to play with it to make it work for me.

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- "With the hindsight of the decades, the take seems to be this on the first two: "Alien"(1979) , was a haunted house/Ten Little Indians horror movie about just ONE alien"

Very much so. I'm unsure how far back the literary form goes, but the cinematic one dates at least to 1927's The Cat and the Canary, which predates Christie's "And Then There Were None" by more than a decade.

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Yep. I think what's interesting about "Alien"(the original) is that as much as it was sold as a "haunted house/10 Little Indians" picture, it really plays in a more sophisticated way. The little bitty chest-buster kills John Hurt in a manner entirely different than the big guy stalking everyone for the rest of the film; Hurt's is not a haunted house death.

And I recall, when Ian Holm started freaking out and spinning around, I thought.."Uh oh...he's got one of those aliens in him " but no..he was revealed as a robot.

Still, the deaths of Harry Dean Stanton and Tom Skerritt(great fun shock, no footage of the actual killing) and Kotto/Cartwright were well in the haunted house tradition, as was the (overlong) stalking of Weaver at the end.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

There was a 1958 film I saw as a kid several times on local L.A. broadcast: It! The Terror From Beyond Space.

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Yeah, baby! I was going to talk about this somewhere on this thread; glad you beat me to it.

Before talking about its obvious influence on Alien, I will point out that my childhood showings (in LA, on the Saturday afternoon horror movie franchise, "Strange Tales of Science Fiction" on KHJ-Channel 9...oh the memories) of "IT!" were, simply , terrifying. They might as well have shown me Psycho, and frankly, some of the violence in IT! plays at Psycho level(more the few-shots of Arbogast's killing than the montage of the shower.)

I recall these key shocker moments:

ONE: A male victim falls out of an air duct, his face drained of blood and puckered(IT sucks blood out of you.)

TWO: A male victim crawling IN an air duct suddenly gets his face clawed and bloodied out of nowhere by IT (hello, Arbogast.) I think that guy escaped.

THREE: Scariest of all. Two men are chased together in a room by IT. IT catches and kills one of them, beating down on his unseen body with his huge pincer like hands. Scary enough. The other guy is trapped in a corner and radios to his comrades. I'll never forget this conversation:

VOICE: Are you OK? What happened?
MAN: I'm OK, but it killed Dave.
VOICE: What's happening now.
MAN: Oh, its just sitting over there...lickin' its chops.

"Lickin' its chops." Idea being that IT had killed its one victim and made a meal of him. And now IT turns and comes over to kill the OTHER guy, who fends IT off with a blow torch...but how long will that flame last?

IT was a man in a suit, but they gave him a particularly ugly face, and those huge claw hands to beat up and slice up his victims.

It was a terrifying, seminal film of my youth -- much scarier, I thought, than The Thing with James Arness. And it had enough "jump scares" in it to rival Psycho.

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I hadn't seen it for years when I saw Alien in '79, and didn't make the connections until catching up again to It! sometime later: an earthbound spaceship has picked up an unwanted and invincible "hitchhiker" who systematically corners the crew and bumps them off one by one, and is ultimately dispatched by blowing out an airlock.

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As I recall, IT also ties into AlienS, in that a sole survivor of one massacre is picked up and suspected of the killings. This was overt in IT; they lock the survivor (Marshall Thompson , remember him?) up at first. I can't recall if they did that to Sigourney Weaver in Alien.

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I think there may have been a lawsuit and a settlement by the Alien writers over IT, but obviously, Alien took that concept to all sorts of new and different places.

Which reminds me: I have read that QT's The Hateful Eight is a near-match in plot for an episode of the 1960's TV Western "The Rebel" with Nick Adams(remember him?) I doubt that episode featured the profanity, sexual content, or racism(criticized) in The Hateful Eight, but I wonder if QT had to pay some damages?

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Motherhood runs through Alien as a subliminal theme (even the ship's computer is named "Mother") and through Aliens as an overt one (Ripley becomes surrogate mother to Newt, going to Stella Dallas/Mildred Pierce extremes to protect her, and ultimately does battle with the alien "queen" who has tried first to protect, and then avenge, her own offspring). And the whole creepy "human gestation vessel" imagery infuses both.

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Yes, the motherhood theme runs deep through both films.

...but boy is it perverted in the first one.

One thought about how the creature(or its "father" incarnation) impregnates John Hurt: this impregnation requires the violent death of the "mother"(Hurt.) It is an act of procreation that is also an act of savage murder, and we feel that viciousness as part of the "nature's evil" of the aliens.

I'm reminded that numerous animal kills other animals to facilitate birth. Certain wasps kill large spiders, flip them over , tear a hole in the corpse...and deposit their baby eggs in there. I saw this on a TV nature show..so "Alien" simply took it to the next level: HUMANS used as living incubators and then forced to die in childbirth. Scary. Sexual. And yet...as if part of "the cycle of birth and death."

[–] Doghouse (447) 8 years ago

- "The alien finally turns up -- slowly, behind him, like Mrs. Bates entering the bathroom -- and he gets killed. But its pretty quick and pretty unclear what's happening to him.

So what we get is a scene WAY too long in the build-up(compare this to the exquisitely extended but short lead-ups to the killings of Marion and especially, Arbogast), and way too murky in the pay-off."

Pure theory here: could Scott have been consciously subverting comparisons not only to Hitchcock but to the then fairly fresh slasher genre by, after interminably drawing out the suspense, deliberately cheating the audience of a graphic payoff? They fear (or know) what's going to happen, but don't get to really see it. I will say this much: my recollection of it is of something terribly quick and violent, the unclear nature of which somehow made it all the more alarming, and generated dread of the next possible killings; would they, in a Psycho reversal, become increasingly graphic rather than less?

- "There's a Hitchcock actress in it: Veronica Cartright, Cathy from The Birds(or was it Kathy.) 16 years on, the fragile child of The Birds seems to have morphed into a full-fledged bug-eyed neurotic, yet again trapped and menaced by creatures. The two performances seem very linked to me, they play as one."

And this was on the heels of her new-agey, post-hippie, '70s-San Francisco girl in Invasion Of the Body Snatchers, menaced by other alien creatures who, in their own way, "get inside you." Two decades later, incidentally, she had a recurring role on The X Files as an alien abductee (who also happened to be the mother of a shifty FBI agent suspected of being in on the "alien conspiracy" which was the basis of the show's running mythology).

...cont'd...

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Pure theory here: could Scott have been consciously subverting comparisons not only to Hitchcock but to the then fairly fresh slasher genre by, after interminably drawing out the suspense, deliberately cheating the audience of a graphic payoff? They fear (or know) what's going to happen, but don't get to really see it.
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Those are all great points and I'm sure that Ridley Scott gave a lot of thought to how to stage and time the scene...and what to show.

I mean, I was impressed and a bit enthralled by those "teeth within the teeth" that came out of the alien's ooze-dripping mouth and plowed into Stanton's forehead like a hydraulic drill...I could tell THAT much...but it became way too sketchy after that. And honestly, this WAS clear, much more clear than the later Kotto/Cartwright killings.

The whole issue of "what is too long? What is long enough?" will divide fans of anything.

I've found Hitchcock's timing "just right." DePalma's? Not so much.

I loved the build-up timing in Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch to gunfights, but I have found Sergio Leone's spaghetti Western shoot out buildups(in GBU and Once Upon a Time in the West ) to be LAUGHABLY too long...and yet others worship that long, long, long build-up.

I bought last year's Magnificent Seven remake(my fave of 2016, and moreso now) and I did notice that in the first shootout between the Seven and some subsidiary baddies...THAT one used Sergio Leone 'overkill" for the build-up. But I found myself nodding. Leone is revered; this Mag 7 is looking to honor Leone. In this scene, at least.

So, I'm not "right" about how perfect the timing of Hitchcock and Peckinpah is versus Leone and DePalma -- its just a matter of my taste.

And I guess the Stanton death build-up I Alien is more Leone than Hitchcock..

[–] Doghouse (447) 8 years ago

- "I expect my take on "Alien" will draw its (justified) attackers."

I shan't be among them; I find all your observations pretty well on-target. What's interested me are the varied impressions with which Alien left different viewers. My hubby, for example, recalls that murkiness to which you refer as an overriding visual characteristic of the film, and one of which he disapproved. The film opens that way, concludes that way, and engages it at various points throughout. But when he was induced to watch it again just a couple years back, he was surprised to realize how much of the film also employed a brightly-lit, gleaming white visual sterility.

This may seem an odd comparison, but Paul Schrader's 1980 American Gigolo (in production prior to Alien's June '79 release) indulges a similar visual signature: in the film's first half, the dominant visual motif is of sunshine and warm pastels; as the story becomes darker, so does the look, giving way to cool blues and the like, along with a reliance on nighttime scenes (and even Richard Gere's wardrobe accommodates this progression).

Both these films, along with Michael Mann's 1981 Thief, remain among my favorites of the period simply to look at for their color, lighting and photographic design.

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

- "I expect my take on "Alien" will draw its (justified) attackers."

I shan't be among them;

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Whew! Now I only have to parry with swanstep on that count. Which I look forward to.

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I find all your observations pretty well on-target.

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Thank you.

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What's interested me are the varied impressions with which Alien left different viewers.

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Very much my point. I honor Alien as a classic as a I honor The Exorcist as a classic. In both cases, something about them DIDN'T work for me, and as a matter of my more youthful hubris at the time, I reacted against them.

I will admit that both Alien and The Exorcist look better to me today than when I saw them. Some preconceived notions have fallen away, I more clearly SEE them. (Both suffered against Psycho for different reasons the first time I saw them, and I've managed to pull that comparison away.)

That said, I loved Jaws from Day One and I guess I can "self analyze": Why did I love Psycho and Jaws but was less inclined to love Alien and The Exorcist? The scripts? The characters, the set-pieces? Probably all of the above.

.

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

My hubby, for example, recalls that murkiness to which you refer as an overriding visual characteristic of the film, and one of which he disapproved. The film opens that way, concludes that way, and engages it at various points throughout. But when he was induced to watch it again just a couple years back, he was surprised to realize how much of the film also employed a brightly-lit, gleaming white visual sterility.

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I think the breakdown is: in the main "working rooms" of the spaceship, everything is bright(including the room where John Hurt gives birth); in the deep, dark, dank bowels of the spacecraft, things are dim. But the "murkiness" to which I allude is pretty much in the killing scenes -- what's going on?

Which made Tom Skeritt's death fun and kind of funny: We don't even see the attack, just the alien -- more clearly viewed "in full body" - right behind him, ready to attack and eat. "Lights out." That one worked because of the great build-up(that dot moving towards HIS dot like Pac-Man) and the sudden-death jump scare.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

This may seem an odd comparison, but Paul Schrader's 1980 American Gigolo (in production prior to Alien's June '79 release) indulges a similar visual signature: in the film's first half, the dominant visual motif is of sunshine and warm pastels; as the story becomes darker, so does the look, giving way to cool blues and the like, along with a reliance on nighttime scenes (and even Richard Gere's wardrobe accommodates this progression).

Both these films, along with Michael Mann's 1981 Thief, remain among my favorites of the period simply to look at for their color, lighting and photographic design.

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It was a time for color, wasn't it? I also loved American Gigolo for elements of its plot -- the whole IDEA of a male hooker whose clientele range from young-ish right on up to "old ladies" was something new and different to me(John Travolta had the role first, and dropped it; same thing with An Officer and a Gentleman -- Richard Gere owed Travolta a lot.)

The scarier thing about Gigolo was how Gere's fashionable, semi-rich life is simply taken away from him in the second half of the film(he's framed for murder, all his clients disown him, and he accidentally sorta/kinda really kills another guy.) Very harrowing.

But..the colors. The fashions. "Call Me" all over the 1980 radio...

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[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

As for "Thief," it was almost my favorite of 1981(I have given the nod to Raiders of the Lost Ark for the fun and intelligent summer event it was), and I was deeply impressed by Michael Mann's command of color -- deep greens and blues are the colors he choose, to paraphrase James Taylor.

Thief had a Tangerine Dream score, too, and James Caan in a great role with a "Gigolo" edge -- he's doing "one last job," he's got a woman to marry and a child to adopt but...the Big Boss lays down the law: "You'll keep working for me or I'll have the kid taken away and put your wife to work as a hooker." Caan explodes in vengeance. Great crime story.

I liked "Thief" so much that I was pleased to see Mann get "Miami Vice' later and REALLY pleased to see Mann announced as the director of "Red Dragon," the first book about Hannibal Lecter, which I had read and loved.

And then "Red Dragon" was retitled "Manhunter" and didn't work, even with all the "Thief"-like color control and scoring in the world. I was stunned. Thank God for Silence of the Lambs!
And Michael Mann rebounded nicely. Heat and all the rest.

[–] swanstep (2715) 8 years ago

The alleged slowness of Alien's first 35 minutes has never bothered me. We get to know all 7 characters in very natural ways - they're space-truckers bitching and moaning about money but they all have their own agendas - we get to know the world of their spaceship, see them get down to the surface of a planet more realistically than we've ever seen that handled before (it's complicated, looks complicated, space is difficult). We see them traverse the surface of world and explore a structure on the surface of the alien world - again, all this is all more convincingly rendered than anything before or since. Hurt's Kane gets infected at about the 35 minute mark. After that it's a quickfire march through consequences: e.g., with everyone against her Ripley won't let the infected/injured Kane be brought on board, insisting that 24 hour quarantine protocols be followed saying 'If we let Kane on board with that thing we could all die'. The science officer Ash defies her and procedure and opens the hatch. But before we can even process that we're immediately confronted with trying to cut Kane's helmet off and all the process of analysis and diagnosis that terminates with the first tentative steps towards cutting the thing off Kane....and it's got super-acid for blood so you 'don't dare kill it' (esp. not on a spaceship where you're just a few layers of metal from oblivion). How ominous is this? Again, the whole predicament of being infected with a space parasite of some sort that's more than capable of defending its interests is rendered more realistically than it's ever been before or since. After all this we're only at the 40 minute mark and *to me* it's always felt like a *lot* has happened. Everything's ready to blow basically both with the creature, with Ash and Ripley, and so on, and we feel like we've got a deep understanding of the physical and social environments in which those forthcoming explosions will play out.
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[–] swanstep (2715) 8 years ago

In sum, then, I rate the first 40 minutes of Alien very highly and frankly wish more predicament-based movies would expend their energies on imagining and inhabiting their premises the way Scott did in this film.

I want to respond to a few criticisms that have been leveled at various death scenes (and launch one criticism of my own).

1. Harry Dean Stanton/Brett's death scene seems to me pretty deftly handled. I do however have a conceptual problem with it. Brett gets in trouble because he like the rest of the crew think they're still dealing with a small lizard-like creature roughly the same size as the original face-hugger parasite: something that's a danger if it gets on you but that you probably should be able to avoid and contain if you're properly on guard. Tough luck for Brett when he shockingly gets taken by a top-predator, something the size of a Grizzly bear or Great White Shark. My conceptual problem is just the obvious: nothing can add X amount of mass without consuming *at least* X amount of food (with all the energetic costs of digestion and growth then, even assuming super-fast and -efficient alien processes, the mass the alien must take on board to go from lizard to great white size/mass is probably more like 2X, i.e., *before* chowing down on Brett the alien critter *has* to have been almost continuously eating to reach its finished huge form.

For me then, there's a scene missing: when the crew members split up to look for the lizard-critter, one of the crew members should find that some store of food or energy source on board like oil (part of their cargo) has been ransacked. It's not important that whoever discovers this is even completely sure that this means that 'the Alien has been here', perhaps it could be just a leak or something. In retrospect, however, this would be a clue adducible in the light of Khotto/Parker's news that the thing he half-saw get Brett was *big*.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 8 years ago

2. Parker's and Lambert's Deaths. I've never found the scene particularly confusing but I'll concede that how Scott and his editors put the scene together represents a series of choices for which it would be interesting to see alternatives. As cut, the scene transpires as parallel action with many many cutaways to Ripley up on the flight deck (where she's been looking for the darned cat after prepping the shuttle and) where she's got audio from Paker and Lambert down in the loading-bay. Scott and co. have us experience about 50% of Parker's and Lambert's death as audio only.

I find this very effective but tastes vary. I strongly suspect that Scott really had to work hard to find shots of the Alien that worked well so having lots of cutaways to Ripley and audio kept down the load of completely convincing hard-to-get shots he needed. We're down the end of the movie we're he's going to have to show the whole creature, possibly removing mystery and courting ridiculousness.

Jaws' sfx stop being convincing around the time that Quint dies (and some of the underwater stuff intercut with Hooper in a cage is pretty obviously with real, much smaller sharks). This isn't *too* much of a problem because by that point the audience is too involved to care (Spielberg knew that the shots of the shark in the 'pond' were crucial and sweated bullets over them - *they* had to be great and completely convincing because at that point the audience still might start laughing at the film - not so later.).

Alien's task is more difficult because asking people to accept an Alien as realistically itself and not a guy-in-a-suit is inherently precarious. Even if you don't laugh, if the thing's after-all just a guy in a suit then that'll be hugely disappointing. Parker's and Lambert's death's in my view actually come close to blowing our sense of how ferociously alien the creature is, e.g., the shadow of the alien moving that's cast on Lambert looks too human I think.

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[–] swanstep (2715) 8 years ago

Still, I think Scott and his editors just pull it off: we see a lot more of the Alien but everything's kept just abstract enough so that the nightmare continues.

Another consideration about the scene that I'm sure was difficult for Scott was exactly how gory the scene could get. As it is we get a few frames of maximum gore with the Creature punching through Parker's skull with its projectile inner mouth/tongue but I wouldn't mind betting that they tried a bunch of other alien shots and gore shots and either couldn't get them to work or thought they'd never get an R with them in the film or both.

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

Parker's and Lambert's Deaths. I've never found the scene particularly confusing but I'll concede that how Scott and his editors put the scene together represents a series of choices for which it would be interesting to see alternatives.

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I guess with this one , word is that there was a longer version shot with more overt brutality and it was cut . But still, what's left is very disconnected to me..what IS happening to Kotto in that last bloody look at him? And Cartwright gets the bit of the speared tail coming behind her back but...no more.

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As cut, the scene transpires as parallel action with many many cutaways to Ripley up on the flight deck (where she's been looking for the darned cat after prepping the shuttle and)

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That darned cat! They should have shot it. (Just kidding.)

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where she's got audio from Paker and Lambert down in the loading-bay. Scott and co. have us experience about 50% of Parker's and Lambert's death as audio only.

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I got that, but it felt like a bit of a cheat.

In talking in such detail about brutal death scenes, I suppose we have to confront the fact that they can be done: with no violence(how Skerritt gets it) with a lot of violence(Herschel Gordon Lewis, no mainstream acceptance) or with some clever, cinematic skill(the Psycho murders, the Godfather murders, the killing of the boy on the raft in Jaws) that mixes blood and style in equal measure.

I don't think the Alien deaths quite rise to this level BEYOND the most famous, the first, the chest-buster.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

Jaws' sfx stop being convincing around the time that Quint dies (and some of the underwater stuff intercut with Hooper in a cage is pretty obviously with real, much smaller sharks). This isn't *too* much of a problem because by that point the audience is too involved to care

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Exactly. I've always felt that the rubbery shark as revealed at the end of Jaws is just like Anthony Perkins finally revealed in drag in the fruit cellar in Psycho: potentially silly and laugh-inducing, but NOT...because we've been so terrified by their bloody,monstrous murders. Silly they may look, but they KILL PEOPLE.

That said, I'm fine with the shark as revealed and ever so slowly chomping down on Quint who slides so inexorably into its jaws(I still remember everybody screaming, loud, LOUDER). When I saw Jaws in 1975, I didn't know from Spielberg's shark problems, I just felt he wanted to slowly increase the visibility of the shark and the graphicness of his attacks until he could show an attack "full frontal, start to finish" -- the eating of the toughest guy in the movie.

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(Spielberg knew that the shots of the shark in the 'pond' were crucial and sweated bullets over them - *they* had to be great and completely convincing because at that point the audience still might start laughing at the film - not so later.).

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The way the shark just sort of "materializes" in an overhead shot to eat the lifeguard was great -- FINALLY, we can SEE the shark(unseen when he killed Chrissie, barely seen when he killed the Kintner boy.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

I want to respond to a few criticisms that have been leveled at various death scenes (and launch one criticism of my own).

1. Harry Dean Stanton/Brett's death scene seems to me pretty deftly handled. I do however have a conceptual problem with it. Brett gets in trouble because he like the rest of the crew think they're still dealing with a small lizard-like creature roughly the same size as the original face-hugger parasite: something that's a danger if it gets on you but that you probably should be able to avoid and contain if you're properly on guard. Tough luck for Brett when he shockingly gets taken by a top-predator, something the size of a Grizzly bear or Great White Shark.

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Great point. And it was part of the entirely unique and surprising NATURE of this particular monster. One was left aghast: "Is that ANOTHER one? No, wait, it GREW!" One worried about just how much bigger it would grow. (Not much.)

Still, its how long he meanders around, the cat gambit(why do people split off from the group in these pictures? At least that issue couldn't even arise in Psycho for Marion and Arbogast.)

My conceptual problem is just the obvious: nothing can add X amount of mass without consuming *at least* X amount of food (with all the energetic costs of digestion and growth then, even assuming super-fast and -efficient alien processes, the mass the alien must take on board to go from lizard to great white size/mass is probably more like 2X, i.e., *before* chowing down on Brett the alien critter *has* to have been almost continuously eating to reach its finished huge form.

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That's some detailed thought! Me, I just sort of went with the flow that this "creature from another world" was simply built to grow fast. "Like magic." Something cellular, maybe? I mean the "pregnancy" was barely 24 hours. Its all "magical" and according to its own rules, it seems to me. (Which might be another point against it versus the plausibility of Psycho.)

[–] Doghouse (447) 8 years ago

[deleted]

[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

The alleged slowness of Alien's first 35 minutes has never bothered me.

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And alleged it is -- here by me. And not necessarily with much spine or heart.

I think I elected to "use my 1979 memory" first -- the killings were unclear, it was definitely too slow at the end, the build-up to Stanton's death was too slow -- to "oversell" my disappointment.

I acknowledge Alien as a classic. And it inspired at least five sequels, often with great directors at the helm and very big budgets(none of the Psycho sequels got that kind of budgetary respect, and only Tony Perkins himself proved a director of quality after Hitchcock.)

Having just watched it again the other night, I noticed the slowness..but I noticed it bothered me less this time. Maybe I'm mellow now.

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We get to know all 7 characters in very natural ways - they're space-truckers bitching and moaning about money but they all have their own agendas -

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That was great. No Luke Skywalkers and Han Solos here. A mix of scientists and "grunts" complaing about their bonuses. A couple of women, but no noticeable sexual tension. Wait a minute -- did I LIKE the first 35 minutes? Well, I dunno, maybe its a case of "slowness that had to be slow." Getting all the details of the "ship while it sleeps." Taking all the necessary time to discuss the distress signal, and get them down to the distress signal craft.

In the VHS/DVD years, I often fast forward this material. But the other night -- with a new young viewer at my side -- I let it all play.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 8 years ago

we get to know the world of their spaceship, see them get down to the surface of a planet more realistically than we've ever seen that handled before (it's complicated, looks complicated, space is difficult). We see them traverse the surface of world and explore a structure on the surface of the alien world - again, all this is all more convincingly rendered than anything before or since. Hurt's Kane gets infected at about the 35 minute mark.

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Hmm..I don't like the first 35 minutes WHY? Maybe I'm wrong. Still, in roughly those same 35 minutes in Psycho, Hitchcock gave us about five scenes in different locations and one sexy love scene among them.

I do remember being enthralled by the matte painting of the dead spaceman at the controls of his spacecraft who looked like a GIANT. With a hole in his skeleton's chest.

I dunno. Maybe "Alien" just felt like a three star movie to me and not a four star one.

But this: swanstep and I have discussed how my "Big Three Superthrillers"(Psycho, The Exorcist , Jaws) could well include Alien as a Fourth (in terms of unique, historic storytelling impact) but we found that Alien didn't earn like a true blockbuster, as the other three did. I wonder why?

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

But this: swanstep and I have discussed how my "Big Three Superthrillers"(Psycho, The Exorcist , Jaws) could well include Alien as a Fourth (in terms of unique, historic storytelling impact) but we found that Alien didn't earn like a true blockbuster, as the other three did. I wonder why?

I'm not sure what I said the last time this came up but here's my main thought about it now: Psycho and Jaws were both non-R rated films so kids and families could go to them, and in any case Alien isn't *that* far behind Psycho when you adjust for inflation( $272 vs $377 million - compare The Matrix made $291 million, Silence of the Lambs $268 million - Alien/Matrix/Silence were surprise, cool, culture-changing, massive hits and Psycho was bigger than all in both regards - but none of them were true back-up-the-money-truck events a la Jaws, and Exorcist.

The Exorcist is the biggest anomaly, it's still *by miles* the biggest grossing R-rated film of all time ($892 million). When you look at the list of biggest, domestic, R-rated films of all time adjusted for inflation:
http://tinyurl.com/za6nfh4
what's striking is how many of the very biggest - the real anomalies - are from the '70s and especially the early '70s. With Godfather, Blazing Saddles, Exorcist you have 3 of the (adjusted for inflation) top-4 grossing R-rated films of all time. This shows in part, I believe, just how anomalous the early '70s were. The studios were all dying and being taken over, tix sold overall were the lowest they'd ever be, and yet when something connected with that disenchanted-with-movies audience they'd come out in droves regardless of rating. It's also hard to escape the conclusion that around 1973 there was the biggest audience out there for relatively extreme cinema that there'd ever be.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

But this: swanstep and I have discussed how my "Big Three Superthrillers"(Psycho, The Exorcist , Jaws) could well include Alien as a Fourth (in terms of unique, historic storytelling impact) but we found that Alien didn't earn like a true blockbuster, as the other three did. I wonder why?
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I'm not sure what I said the last time this came up but here's my main thought about it now: Psycho and Jaws were both non-R rated films so kids and families could go to them, and in any case Alien isn't *that* far behind Psycho when you adjust for inflation( $272 vs $377 million

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That's pretty good for Psycho, inflation-adjusted. And of course, Psycho came out when the national and world populations were lower.

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- compare The Matrix made $291 million, Silence of the Lambs $268 million - Alien/Matrix/Silence were surprise, cool, culture-changing, massive hits and Psycho was bigger than all in both regards - but none of them were true back-up-the-money-truck events a la Jaws, and Exorcist.

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Good old Psycho: outpaced perhaps at the box office by its successors, but still the one that set the stage for the rest to exist at all. That's among its many, many claims to fame.

The Godfather, The Exorcist, Jaws, Alien...all owe something to Psycho.

The Matrix? Perhaps more to North by Northwest(the regular guy thrust into heroism and adventure...and the villain's voice is mannered and air-sucking, like James Mason's.)

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

The Exorcist is the biggest anomaly, it's still *by miles* the biggest grossing R-rated film of all time ($892 million).

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I would expect that this includes the high gross of the film's 2000 theatrical re-release (and other re-releases along the way before VHS.) But still...you gotta respect that number. Something really hit home with that one.

It is conceivable, I suppose, that the overt religious content of "The Exorcist" -- and its message, "when the doctors can't help you, bring in the priests" brought in a huge religious-based audience to a film that was otherwise hard-R and sexually disgusting. Recall Pauline Kael's comment, "The Exorcist is the biggest advertisement for the Catholic Church since Going My Way."

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When you look at the list of biggest, domestic, R-rated films of all time adjusted for inflation:
http://tinyurl.com/za6nfh4
what's striking is how many of the very biggest - the real anomalies - are from the '70s and especially the early '70s. With Godfather, Blazing Saddles, Exorcist you have 3 of the (adjusted for inflation) top-4 grossing R-rated films of all time. This shows in part, I believe, just how anomalous the early '70s were.

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Yes. Well, the filmmakers themselves were hippies inspired by Eurofilm. They probably brought a lot of fans to theaters(especially collegiate fans) of the same measure.

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

The studios were all dying and being taken over, tix sold overall were the lowest they'd ever be,

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All true. Evidently this was as close as the movie biz came to closing down. Television would remain in place, it was discussed, but movies would be a rare occurrence, still being made, but so rarely as to no longer be a mass medium. Eventually more and more movies would hit so as to justify a full slate of films per year again.

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and yet when something connected with that disenchanted-with-movies audience they'd come out in droves regardless of rating. It's also hard to escape the conclusion that around 1973 there was the biggest audience out there for relatively extreme cinema that there'd ever be.

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Well, I find the phrase "Vietnam/Watergate" era a bit of an overgeneralization, we were probably a darker-minded group. And there was a "dark exhilaration" in going to the movies and feeling the shackles of the Hays Code falling away, even if the results were shocking: Straw Dogs and Frenzy (rape of a woman), Deliverance(rape of a man), Chinatown(incest), Language(The Exorcist, The Last Detail), consensual sex(Don't Look Now.) And "the bad guys win"(The Godfather.). And ultra-violence(everything.)

In some ways, once we had experienced all that taboo-breaking, the fever broke. Star Wars launched the teenage-driven period that has lasted til today, and movies "that feel like the 70's"(I'd include all of QTs work) are actually considered quite perverse.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I'm back after reading all manner of four-star, "Greatest Movie," and fan-loving reviews of "Alien" and I must admit I feel a bit cowed in undervaluing it.

I suppose its a guided tour of my own movie mind, and how once I had set Psycho as a particular standard, every A-thriller(even with a SciFi backdrop, as Alien) to my mind would be pitted against it.

Which is pretty weird, because some of the scenes with Sam and Lila(even out at the Bates Motel, in Cabin One) look fairly minimal and almost pedestrian next to all the massively art-directed invention of Alien. But I guess I'm thinking about the overall structure of the films -- Psycho worked perfectly for me; Alien did not.

On my personal "favorite films" list the years play like this:

1960: Psycho.
1973: American Graffiti(not The Exorcist)
1975: Jaws
1979: North Dallas Forty (not Alien)

That tells me something...but only about myself.

MORE

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

..what I think it tells me is that I have a penchant for dialogue and character that in some ways overrides a desire for shocks or excitement. "Surprise, surprise"...to me.

The parlor scene. Arbogast's verbal duel with Norman. Sam meeting Lila and Arbogast in his hardware store. Even, perhaps, all the richosheting characterizations in the real estate office.

Alien doesn't have scenes like this because its 19 years down the road and interested at once in (1) more realistic, improvisational, almost mumbled dialogue and (2) scientific precision of talk. Its not worse than Psycho's dialogue, just different.

Its rather intriguing to me that, for all my love of Hitchcock and thrillers(and some horror)..American Graffiti and North Dallas Forty weren't of that nature at all. But those are the ones I loved the most in their years for various reasons.

I will definitely say this: Alien is a movie that I liked less on first viewing and that grew on me over the years, and here's the thing:

I'm willing to bet that if I saw Psycho IN 1960 -- and not on TV after a long wait, and after every parent and classmate around me told me it was the most horrifying movie ever made -- maybe I wouldn't have been THAT impressed by IT, either.

The movies come to us as they come to us...time, place, age, mental state....

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

(NO SPOILERS, NO PLOT DESCRIPTION, NOTHING.)

I have seen "Alien: Covenant."

I have come to believe that even in my "minor spoiler" assessments of recent films I have viewed have spoiled something, so I come here only to make the statement that I have seen the new film, after first viewing "Alien" and "Aliens" about a week ago, back to back, with company. And I will raise just a few non-plot points about the movie:

Non-plot points:

ONE: The director is Ridley Scott, the director of the original , 38 years after he directed it. Imagine if Hitchcock directed a Psycho sequel 38 years after he made Psycho. Why, that would be 1998 -- the year of the Psycho remake!

TWO: "The murkiness of the killings" issue has been absolutely, positively SOLVED. We now see EXACTLY what these creatures do to their victims. Maybe Mr. Scott heard the complaints of some of us. Heh.

THREE: Lots of visual/dialogue references to the original. In that regard, its like the final season of Bates Motel. That's good in both cases -- also a great parlor game.

FOUR: One of the astronauts is Damien Bachir, one of The Hateful Eight. Kurt Russell was another of The Hateful Eight, and he's in GOTG 2,so I've seen two Hateful Eighters in two weeks at the movies. Nice.

..and Alien: Covenant is definitely worth seeing.

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

I felt so burned by Prometheus (and every thing else since 1986 really!) that I'm inclined to wait and watch A:C at home. A:C is getting a few decent reviews, but I'm also getting the sense that like Prometheus it's a bit of a windy, over-art directed shambles with the Aliens again somewhat incidental.

It is *amazing* that at age 80, Scott's got the energy to be able to control vast productions like A:C, The Martian, Prometheus. He's one of those few guys (Spielberg is another) who can bring in these sfx epics on time and on budget (or better).

I'm personally just a bit sad that Scott is using his still amazing reservoirs of energy to make ropey Alien prequel/sequels rather than making some of teh other sci-i projects he's long had the rights to. In particular, he's got the rights to The Forever War - a famous '70s sci-fi novel about space marines fighting a big inter-stellar war where because of time-dilation effects every time they come back from a tour they've only aged months whereas 50 or 100 or even 1000 years has passed back on Earth. So... there's nothing for them back on Earth and there's really nothing for them to do but re-enlist. The sfx demands of a Forever War movie are enormous and Scott's one of the few people who could probably pull it off...hence he snapped up the rights well over a decade ago. But he's done nothing with them! Grrr. (and it's led me to irrationally resent the stuff he has made).

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I felt so burned by Prometheus

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Which I did not see...I had to do some serious guessing as to how it "preps" this one...

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(and every thing else since 1986 really!)

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Its true, isn't it? Alien was perhaps THE event movie of summer 1979(back when those were rare, as we've discussed) , and Aliens was -- surprisingly -- ALMOST the event movie of summer 1986 (Top Gun hit that summer, too.) I believe that Alien got a Newsweek cover and Aliens got a Time cover -- back when such covers were a really big deal.

Each was major in its own way -- Alien with its hybrid of Star Wars/Psycho/Jaws and Aliens as very 80's action piece -- well in accord with The Terminator(an earlier James Cameron hit) and well in accord with the gung ho militarism of Reagan, Top Gun and Rambo.

I saw 3 and 4, and sorta/kinda remember them...but even with Fincher on one...they aren't classics, are they?

And 3 infuriated me by opening with the info that Newt, the little girl from 2, had DIED! I'm p'oed just thinking about the throwaway nihilism of that reveal -- its almost as bad as the Sopranos non-ending.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

A:C is getting a few decent reviews,

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Well, I saw that MSZ four-star rave before going in, but I read a few less enthralled ones after. Plus imdb still allows "viewer reviews" and the fanboys are ripping it apart. Here at moviechat, too, I think.

I'm somewhere in between...

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but I'm also getting the sense that like Prometheus it's a bit of a windy, over-art directed shambles with the Aliens again somewhat incidental.

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Somewhat, but the aliens show up and do their thing quite a lot. Were they in Prometheus?

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[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

It is *amazing* that at age 80, Scott's got the energy to be able to control vast productions like A:C, The Martian, Prometheus. He's one of those few guys (Spielberg is another) who can bring in these sfx epics on time and on budget (or better).

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Soon, QT will be somewhat embarrassed by his quote about how directors should quit around 60 and how ones who didn't made lousy later films.

I realize now that QT was judging men(pretty much) from an era when 60 was older and hard drinkers like John Ford and obese men like Hitchcock simply didn't have the energy. We're generating plenty of 70-something superstar directors(Spielberg, Scorsese) and now some 80-year olds.

Clint Eastwood is 87 and making fun of QT without naming him, saying in interviews: "I'm directing in my 80's. Isn't it terrible that guys like Capra and Ford quit way before their time? They could have made so many more great movies." Well, maybe, Clint. But they WERE pretty old and out of it.

I expect with all this CGI loanout work(on Sully for Eastwood), an 80 year old director can sit back and let Silicon Valley make a lot of his movie for him(or her.)

But this: Eastwood is almost promising he will act again. Could be fun. I can name two actors(now both dead) who acted after 90: Ernest Borgnine and Eli Wallach.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

The sfx demands of a Forever War movie are enormous and Scott's one of the few people who could probably pull it off...hence he snapped up the rights well over a decade ago. But he's done nothing with them! Grrr. (and it's led me to irrationally resent the stuff he has made).

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Ha. Well...here he is rehashing past victories. There's a Blade Runner sequel in the fall -- Old Harrison Ford again, with Young Ryan Gosling.

I hope that Scott makes that movie for you...and that it is not made by another. Spielberg's AI really wasn't the Kubrick film it was meant to be.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

https://moviechat.org/tt0079640/North-Dallas-Forty/58c735535ec57f0478fa11f1/Probably-the-Best-Football-Movie

OT: A link to an imdb thread on North Dallas Forty, from the Alien year of 1979. My comments down the thread...11 years ago!

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

I do remember being enthralled by the matte painting of the dead spaceman at the controls of his spacecraft who looked like a GIANT. With a hole in his skeleton's chest.

That was no matte painting, rather they built one of the largest and most detailed sets *ever* for that and then they ingeniously and undetectably used little kids in the space suits in long shots so make that huge set look even bigger. Little kids were also used in the spacesuits in the longshots of figures exiting and entering by the legs of the company spaceship for the same reason.

One 1979 memory I've never been able to recreate in home viewings is that all the strobe lighting and hand-held camera and booming, oppressive sound design that kicks in almost immediately after Parker's and Lambert's deaths and especially after the auto-destruct mechanism is activated was unbelievably stressful through the climax of the film on the big screen. At home, the strobing effect and sound has just never had the same punishing impact again (in the cinema one of my eyes couldn't cope very well and started to close up).

Anyhow, that Alien was *so* immersive that it could elicit physical, shut-down responses from you marked it out as something special. Films that overwhelm and attack you in that kind of way don't come along that often. It was certainly part of The Exorcist's original claim to fame. Requiem for a Dream is another, but almost nobody saw that in the cinema - now if it had been released in 1973....

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I do remember being enthralled by the matte painting of the dead spaceman at the controls of his spacecraft who looked like a GIANT. With a hole in his skeleton's chest.

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That was no matte painting, rather they built one of the largest and most detailed sets *ever* for that and then they ingeniously and undetectably used little kids in the space suits in long shots so make that huge set look even bigger.

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Interesting. It was a great shot -- and its in those first 35 minutes. I recall a photo of it being used in Time or Newsweek. On the other hand, I've always found a disconnect between the size of the pilot in the long shot and the cut to the astronauts standing near him. He seemed to get smaller.

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Little kids were also used in the spacesuits in the longshots of figures exiting and entering by the legs of the company spaceship for the same reason.

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Hmm..well , Hitchcock had Mitzi the midget attack Arbogast on the stairs(because of Balsam's shortness?)
And Wilder reportedly used little people in the background behind Jack Lemmon in the opening shot of his ant-like workplace in The Apartment.

The tricks of the movie trade aren't ALL special effects.

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

That was no matte painting, rather they built one of the largest and most detailed sets *ever* for that and then they ingeniously and undetectably used little kids in the space suits in long shots so make that huge set look even bigger.

In my mental file cabinet, right next to the folder labeled "Stuff I Knew Without Knowing I Knew It" is another: "Stuff I Forgot I Knew." Hubby used to subscribe to an excellent magazine called Cinefex, which featured extensive articles on film special visual effects, and its very first issue in 1980 was devoted entirely to Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Alien. In it, they went into great detail about, among other things, what the production crew came to call the "space jockey." I found an on-set photo of Scott and crew gathered around it, lining up a shot (note the Panavision camera at the lower left):

http://avp.wikia.com/wiki/The_Pilot?file=Space_jockey_set_small.jpg

It's odd, but even in that photo with live human beings, much of it still looks like matte painting, doesn't it? The web page goes on to state that it was "built around a steel and wood frame, shaped using ribbed tubing, plastic and Styrofoam molds and plaster. The entire piece was 26 feet tall when completed, and mounted on a swivel so that it could be quickly rotated to capture different camera angles...For some shots in the scene featuring the Pilot, the Nostromo crew members were actually played by children, namely Scott's sons Jake and Luke and cinematographer Derek Vanlint's son, in order to make the set appear even larger than it was."

...cont'd...

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

[deleted]

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

I've always found a disconnect between the size of the pilot in the long shot and the cut to the astronauts standing near him. He seemed to get smaller.

I notice similar inconsistencies when watching King Kong; his size occasionally appears to vary somewhat from scene to scene. Remember Peter O'Toole's admonition to Steve Railsback in The Stunt Man about film illusions? "Do you not know that King Kong the first was just three foot six inches tall? He only came up to Faye Wray's belly button!"

In truth, Kong was only half that size. I've actually seen him, up close and personal, at a Los Angeles exhibit 30-odd years ago that featured other special effects artifacts (like the Close Encounters mother ship). I should say, I've seen what's left of him: the metal armature "skeleton" with only the odd bit of dried-out foam rubber and monkey fur still clinging to an extremity here or there. No more than 18 - 20 inches, tops.

...cont'd...

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

I notice similar inconsistencies when watching King Kong; his size occasionally appears to vary somewhat from scene to scene.

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As does Talos the Bronze Statue in Harryhausen's Jason and the Argonauts, and the 1998 Godzilla. Hard to hold to scale, I guess.

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Remember Peter O'Toole's admonition to Steve Railsback in The Stunt Man about film illusions? "Do you not know that King Kong the first was just three foot six inches tall? He only came up to Faye Wray's belly button!"

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Great line. Great actor(O'Toole.) Pretty good movie.

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In truth, Kong was only half that size. I've actually seen him, up close and personal,

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Cool!

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at a Los Angeles exhibit 30-odd years ago that featured other special effects artifacts (like the Close Encounters mother ship). I should say, I've seen what's left of him: the metal armature "skeleton" with only the odd bit of dried-out foam rubber and monkey fur still clinging to an extremity here or there. No more than 18 - 20 inches, tops.

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Isn't it amazing to think that that lil' bitty skeleton figure terrorized the world in '33 and lives forever in our imaginations ...a lot BIGGER?

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

Hitchcock had Mitzi the midget attack Arbogast on the stairs(because of Balsam's shortness?) And Wilder reportedly used little people in the background behind Jack Lemmon in the opening shot of his ant-like workplace in The Apartment.

You've probably heard that similar "forced perspective" was used in Casablanca, with little people portraying the ground crew around the half-scale plane behind Bogart and Bergman in the climactic scene.

When you add up the strangeness of an Alien physical set looking like matte painting and the real-world solutions to shots in The Apartment or Casablanca, and stack it up against "cyber reality" that now allows putting things onscreen that no practical or optical effects could accomplish (or any actor or even stunt performer survive), the irony becomes rich. A CG Kong might LOOK more real to the eye, but the patently phony (if we're being honest) miniature, stop-motion Kong FEELS more real to the brain. Because, after all, he was. Not alive, but still real.

[–] swanstep (2715) 7 years ago

A CG Kong might LOOK more real to the eye, but the patently phony (if we're being honest) miniature, stop-motion Kong FEELS more real to the brain. Because, after all, he was. Not alive, but still real.

I guess that the Alien franchise is the *ultimate* test of this because the first two films had completely practical alien fx whereas I think the recent films have gone to completely digital critters, which do indeed *look* amazing but still something *feels* off (maybe the problem is more with the surrounding performances - it's harder to act against digital void - and with the shots that digital reality encourages directors to pull off).

Another good, recent contrast case of purer and purer CG vs lots of practical and forced perspective/in-camera FX is The Hobbit films vs LOTR. For LOTR Peter Jackson did most of the 'hobbits are small' fx in-camera with forced perspective sets etc. whereas on the Hobbit films they were more under the gun for time and instead just did everything with CG in post. The difference to my eyes was *enormous* - whereas the first two LOTR films in particular ring 'true', the Hobbit films started off looking like video-games and never escaped that fundamental un-reality. Even Jackson now practically disowns them as unwatchable garbage.

[–] Doghouse (447) 7 years ago

I guess that the Alien franchise is the *ultimate* test of this because the first two films had completely practical alien fx whereas I think the recent films have gone to completely digital critters, which do indeed *look* amazing but still something *feels* off (maybe the problem is more with the surrounding performances - it's harder to act against digital void - and with the shots that digital reality encourages directors to pull off).

Where CGI appears to be of the best utility is in the creation of environments that would be prohibitive to construct as physical sets; when it gets into moving objects (careening automobiles or crashing planes, for instance) or depictions of organic forms (as in mythical creatures or, say, the bear in The Revenant), the artificiality reveals itself. It's hard to put a finger on specifically, but it seems to have something to do with the physics of motion and mass; there's what I could describe only as a certain "weightless" quality that doesn't fully comport with what we instinctively understand and feel about laws of gravity and inertia. I wish I could put it better, but that's the best I can do.

I've given much thought to the challenges that actors face when playing against "nothing," and that may in fact affect the performances of some (I think the subject even got kicked around a bit back on the IMDB boards). It may have to do with nothing more than training. When I did some acting in high school, later on for friends who were in college film or television courses and then some community theater, we always began with "nothing" - just an empty and bare stage or studio - and got our performances pretty well-honed long before we had anything physical with which to interact, whether it be sets and furnishings, hand props or what have you. I dunno; maybe today's actors who grow up in front of cameras don't get that kind of grounding.

[–] ecarle (14979) 7 years ago

You've probably heard that similar "forced perspective" was used in Casablanca, with little people portraying the ground crew around the half-scale plane behind Bogart and Bergman in the climactic scene.

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No, I have not heard that. I am constantly learning! The older pictures required all sorts of tricks. Like with Cinemascope, table tops raised 8 feet in the air for a dinner scene, so as to be seen on camera. Or of course, Ingrid Bergman walking in a ditch beside Claude Rains in Notorious to get equal height with him...

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the irony becomes rich. A CG Kong might LOOK more real to the eye, but the patently phony (if we're being honest) miniature, stop-motion Kong FEELS more real to the brain. Because, after all, he was. Not alive, but still real.

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Exactly. That definitely goes for the new Aliens. They are CGI and you can tell -- even though they perform new tricks. The combination of puppets and a guy in a suit from the original not only feel more real -- the CGI aliens seem way too much like every OTHER CGI effect out there -- they lose their 1079 personality.

I'm also reminded that along the way, "Jurassic Park" gave us those "raptors" of rather the same size and movement of the aliens. Sometimes I confused one for the other, in this new movie.