Just saw the director's cut of Alien, now in theatres. And I just realized I've never seen the film before. I guess I've seen the others in the franchise, but somehow skipped the original.
It stands up quite well, some 24 years later. The film is a bit grainy by current standards. But by the time the full-grown Alien is roaming the ship, what film grain? Some of the computer screens are a bit dated -- in the future they have vector graphics displays for terrain mapping? That is like so retro.
Yes, DVD's are cool, but even HD DVD's (coming later this decade) don't match the visual richness of film. Check it out.
I just saw this too. I've seen Alien about 10 or 15 times, but never on the big screen. What a blast! There are scenes I've never really seen before (the TV doesn't do a very good job of representing the dark and murky scenes down on the planet ). Here's a snippet from an email I sent a friend about the movie:
The motherhood stuff that got blown up large in the sequels is on a much more radical axis here. The ship is called 'mother' and its womblike envelope and over-riding agenda (ie: the corporate agenda) is
baaaaad news. Yet Sigourney Weaver herself is about as unmotherly a figure as a girl can be. Which brings me to this - it's the first story I remember of a girlhero with a gun, blasting away. Nowadays its a post-feminist thing. When Alien came out it was just a shock! And to me a relief. And also very canny in its exploration of the struggles a powerful woman makes to both buck authority and assume authority, to fight the 'mother', to put her own survival first _without_ it being a fierce maternal instinct to protect her own child. There's no Camille Paglia in this. Ripley is not strong cause
she's sexy (although of course she IS sexy), she's strong cause she's strong. And all this with a pretty expendable cat in tow. The film doesn't turn her into a monster, she isn't a freak of nature, she carries these
strengths within her and maintains her tenderness at the same time. So much tension!
The trivia page at IMDb is an interesting read.
the alien quadrilogy
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It stands up quite well, some 24 years later. The film is a bit grainy by current standards. But by the time the full-grown Alien is roaming the ship, what film grain? Some of the computer screens are a bit dated -- in the future they have vector graphics displays for terrain mapping? That is like so retro.
Yes, DVD's are cool, but even HD DVD's (coming later this decade) don't match the visual richness of film. Check it out.
- mark 11-10-2003 10:18 am
I just saw this too. I've seen Alien about 10 or 15 times, but never on the big screen. What a blast! There are scenes I've never really seen before (the TV doesn't do a very good job of representing the dark and murky scenes down on the planet ). Here's a snippet from an email I sent a friend about the movie:
The motherhood stuff that got blown up large in the sequels is on a much more radical axis here. The ship is called 'mother' and its womblike envelope and over-riding agenda (ie: the corporate agenda) is
baaaaad news. Yet Sigourney Weaver herself is about as unmotherly a figure as a girl can be. Which brings me to this - it's the first story I remember of a girlhero with a gun, blasting away. Nowadays its a post-feminist thing. When Alien came out it was just a shock! And to me a relief. And also very canny in its exploration of the struggles a powerful woman makes to both buck authority and assume authority, to fight the 'mother', to put her own survival first _without_ it being a fierce maternal instinct to protect her own child. There's no Camille Paglia in this. Ripley is not strong cause
she's sexy (although of course she IS sexy), she's strong cause she's strong. And all this with a pretty expendable cat in tow. The film doesn't turn her into a monster, she isn't a freak of nature, she carries these
strengths within her and maintains her tenderness at the same time. So much tension!
- sally 11-10-2003 8:27 pm [add a comment]
The trivia page at IMDb is an interesting read.
- tom moody 11-10-2003 9:12 pm [add a comment]
the alien quadrilogy
- dave 11-19-2003 9:31 pm [add a comment]